Chapter 1197: Visiting the Mine, Infrasonic Detection

Under Xia Duo's active guidance and output of dry goods, Lord Leisen and Stern also gradually entered a state of open communication.

It was not until near noon, when an attendant came to report the list of dishes and drinks for the noon banquet, that the three men's conversation came to a temporary pause.

"Lord Xia Duo, let's go eat first. This afternoon, I will have Stern take you to the Mithril Mine."

"Very well."

The matter of the Mithril Mine was also initiated by Xia Duo, the reason being that the Seventon Council had just announced the Mithril Refining Technology, and he was preparing to purchase a batch of mithril ore to take back and attempt refining.

Besides that, he also said he wanted to visit the Mithril Mine, just so he could try to find mithril mines himself after returning to his Territory.

Of these two reasons, the former seemed very reasonable to the average person and was also quite consistent with the normal behavior of a Netheril Lord.

But the latter was a bit of a stretch; how could the experience of prospecting for mithril mines be learned just by visiting a few times?

Yet, Xia Duo's true purpose was precisely the latter; he had special techniques for prospecting!

Lord Leisen did not refuse Xia Duo's visit to the Territory's Mithril Mine, but only had Stern accompany him to avoid any unnecessary trouble.

To this, Xia Duo readily accepted.

……

After lunch.

Led by Lord Leisen's son, Stern, and a mine manager named "Pite," Xia Duo arrived at the Mithril Mine located northwest of Leisen Territory via the Mage Tower's Teleportation Array.

There were a total of three Mage Towers in Leisen Territory, and one of them was located here.

When Xia Duo walked out of the mine's Mage Tower, he was stunned by the scene before him. It was a massive open-pit mine; judging by the circular area currently being excavated, it was hundreds of meters in diameter.

As for the depth, the circular excavation area went deeper from the outside to the inside, resembling a wide funnel spiraling downward.

At the deepest point, if one were to throw the Mage Tower behind Xia Duo into it, not even the tip would be visible from the surface!

In this mine, thousands upon thousands of countless Gnome slaves were working diligently under the supervision of human foremen.

There were those chiseling the ore body, those sorting and classifying ore, those refining and crushing it, and those collecting and transporting it; it was endless, with every process proceeding in an orderly manner.

Xia Duo had never seen a real mine in operation on Earth, and as for purely manual ancient mines, he knew even less. The scene before him truly opened his eyes.

On the outskirts of the mine, not far away, there were more than twenty gray-black smoke columns shooting into the sky. Seeing Xia Duo's gaze turn that way, the mine manager Pite introduced them at the right moment:

"Lord Xia Duo, those are the crude refining workshops for silver ore and copper ore!"

According to Pite's introduction, this massive open-pit mine, although named a Mithril Mine, did not only produce mithril ore; in fact, mithril ore was only a minority!

There was much more silver ore and copper ore, and of course, a small amount of raw Gemstone output.

But in the past, the mithril ore and raw Gemstones would all be packed and shipped to Asikeer after several rounds of rough selection, to be distributed by Yierlan and Danzo.

But now, Leisen Territory had stopped selling mithril ore externally, and as for the future, that would depend on the development of the specific situation.

……

Led by Pite, Xia Duo and Stern gradually headed downward along the winding mine paths along the edge of the mine.

Descending to about forty or fifty meters, perhaps due to limited rich ore or increased mining difficulty, the ore extraction here was no longer like it was above, where everything was mined out.

Instead, there appeared "mine tunnels" in the true sense, which, according to the direction of the ore veins, went deep into the rock mass, twisting and turning in a very complex manner.

Without the guidance of Pite, this "old hand" of the mine, even a Senior Arcanist like Xia Duo would easily get lost inside.

It was just that if a Spellcaster got lost, they could actively teleport out, rather than passively waiting for death like an ordinary person.

"Lord Xia Duo, currently the mithril ore ratio produced in Mine Tunnel No. 16 is the highest; the crude ore ratio can account for about three to four tenths of the total ore."

"So high?!"

Xia Duo had done his homework before coming. Generally speaking, the vast majority of mithril mines were symbiotic with silver and copper mines; pure mithril mines probably only existed in legends.

The No. 16 mine tunnel that Pite introduced, where the ratio of crude mithril ore could reach three or four tenths, was undoubtedly a rich mithril mine.

It would not be an exaggeration to even call it a pure mithril mine.

Under normal circumstances, crude mithril ore could only account for about two-thousandths of the total volume—that is, two-thousandths of the total useful ore after rough selection.

And not two-thousandths of the total mining project volume!

If one calculated the total mining project volume, it would be even lower!

……

Xia Duo absolutely had to record rich mithril mines like No. 16. After greeting Stern, he began to cast spells to detect the characteristics of the ore vein.

The spell Xia Duo was currently using was called 【Infrasonic Detection】. The prototype of this spell came from the Drow's 【Ley Line Detector】, and he had also learned the formal Mage version in 【Projection Plane: Underdark】.

But when Xia Duo was an Apprentice, he had created a similar spell called 【Imaging】, only he did not use low-frequency infrasound, but ordinary sound waves audible to the human ear.

Its penetrating power, especially in rock layers and earth and stone, was far inferior to the Drow's 【Infrasonic Detection】, but Xia Duo's 【Imaging】 had its own unique features in processing echo feedback.

Combining the two, it became this improved version of 【Infrasonic Detection】 that he was using today.

Soon, Xia Duo received feedback from the spell, but in front of Stern, he did not take out paper and pen to record it, but prepared to trace his memory after returning.

……

Next, Xia Duo conducted infrasonic detection from multiple angles according to the direction of the ore vein and collected the echo feedback. Thus, it counted as relatively complete ore vein characteristic data.

After Mine Tunnel No. 16, he was led by Pite to visit mine tunnels with higher ratios of crude mithril ore in sequence, such as No. 19, No. 28, No. 4, and No. 25.

As for the other mine tunnels, Xia Duo did not detect them one by one. On one hand, there were too many mine tunnels; even if he walked for a day, he might not be able to measure them all, and he also had to consider his Spellcasting state.

He could not exhaust all his energy here.

On the other hand, the data he had collected now was almost enough.

Nowadays, the population of Savile Territory and Daxia Territory was limited; mithril mines below a certain threshold were simply not worth mining. Even if the population increased in the future, it was impossible to mine every single deposit.

After all, there were no free Gnome laborers to use now. Unless high-efficiency mining tools appeared in the future, and at the same time, resources were in short supply, there would be no need to continue mining those poor-quality mines.

For now, just mining the rich ones was enough.

He had already collected enough echo feedback data for the rich mithril mines in the Leisen Territory mine; if he wanted more, he would have to go to other mines.

As for the data on poor-quality mines, it might be useful for subsequently establishing a perfect mithril ore vein echo feedback model, but it was not that useful.

Weighing the pros and cons, Xia Duo only collected a few symbolically and then gave up.