What Do You Mean I Have To Comprehend Dao As A Mortal God?

”What did you say?” Olivia asked, leaning over her.

Maylene actually got a little surprised by Olivia’s intense stare that she flitted behind me to hide behind my leg.

That was pretty cute.

Maylene peeked around my leg to answer Olivia, ”We... We are mining this stuff...”

Olivia straightened after realizing she was probably scaring the bunny girl a little, ”You found a vein of Mana Crystals? Where?”

”In the colony... At the bottom where you saw the machines yesterday? We have miners and refineries there.”

Almost instantly, everyone here shared a worried look as we understood what that meant.

Mana Crystals only form around places with a high concentration of Anomalies so right now, their colony was basically set up somewhere where there might be a horde of Anomalies near them.

Additionally, there could be more than one vein of Mana Crystals so this group of Anomalies might not even be close to the Gatekeeper.

”How long have you been mining that vein?” I asked.

”Eh? Umm... Ever since we found it so... Maybe about six years by now? We were planning to expand the mining operation recently too. Wait... If I’m not wrong, it’s today.”

Shit...

”Go, quickly! We have to stop them!” I cried out, already running back the way we came.

All of my Guardians also ran after me without hesitation as Maylene chased after us, looking bewildered.

”Did... Did we do something wrong?”

”You guys might be mining right into a horde of Anomalies right now! Mana Crystals are formed where there is a large concentration of them!!”

Her eyes widened and she gave me a panicked look, ”Do you remember the way back to our colony?”

I nodded, ”I do. Hurry up and go!”

She sped off in a blue, disappearing into the tunnels as we ran behind her.

She doesn’t even seem bothered by the darkness, like she had the entire network of these tunnels memorised in her head.

We followed behind her and I made full use of my navigation skills to lead us back to where the colony was located.

Thankfully, my memory did not fail me and we managed to reach the stone wall that I remembered was the entrance to the bunny colony.

The door had even been left ajar and I could see several bunny girls looking in the direction of the colony in confusion.

That means we must still be relatively close behind Maylene and she most likely only just entered before we got here. Getting them to open up the door must have slowed her down considerably.

I ran towards the door and surprised one of the bunny girls there who immediately tried to close the door.

”Wait! We’re friends of Maylene! Remember? We came here yesterday!” I called out.

The bunny girl that had been trying to close the door paused before looking at me with suspicion from behind the door, ”Why did she rush back here then? Was she running away from you?”

”No! We just found out you guys are mining something dangerous down below! We’re here to stop you! Please hurry and let us--”

A loud explosion came from inside the cavern and the tunnels shook around us.

Shit... That sounds like we were too late...

I glared at the bunny girl that was standing behind the door, ”Move. Now.”

The forcefulness of my voice must have scared her as she immediately stepped back.

I grabbed the edge of the rock and shoved it open.

Unfortunately, I used a little too much force and ended up tearing the rock door off its hinges but I had no time to care about that right now.

I dropped the rock by the side and leaned it against the wall before I leapt into the cavern, running towards the tunnel that would lead me towards the chasm.

The rest of my Guardians followed behind me, some of them moving slower because of the fact they needed to squeeze through a smaller space.

I rushed out towards the chasm and despite the explosion earlier, the other rabbit girls didn’t seem to care about it.

That’s not really surprising since they must have used explosives to expand their colony before and everyone here knew about the expansion.

I looked down into the chasm and while I could use the spiral path to descend down to the bottom, that would take too long.

”I’ll see you down there,” I told them, right before I leapt over the railing to fall towards the bottom of the chasm.

I activated Kris’s ability and manipulated the direction of gravity on myself, slowing myself down as I neared the bottom and touching down softly.

I looked around and tried to find where they were mining the Mana Crystals but the only thing I could find was the entrance to the forge area.

Wait... Maylene did say that they were mining there, so maybe it was deeper inside?

I rushed into the room and squeezed myself between the machines and conveyor belts, figuring that I should just follow along the opposite direction of where the conveyor belts were heading to find where the Mana Crystals were.

Sure enough, there was another tunnel at the far end and Mana Crystals were being transported along the conveyor belts into one of the machines which meant I was on the right track.

I eventually found the Mana Crystals and there was a whole bunch of what looked like automated mining machines that were chipping away at the crystal veins to drop them on the conveyor belt.

It was clear they had basically been mining the crystals that were located at the very edge of a nest judging by the fact that there were only three outcroppings here. The rest of the crystals must have formed a protective wall against any Anomalies that might have been on the other side.

But I’m guessing these three crystals were no longer enough for their production needs and they decided to expand it to find more veins.

As I went deeper into the tunnel, I heard voices coming from the front and hastened towards them.

”We need to go!”

”Maylene? You’re not making sense.”

”I’m telling you that this is an Anomaly nest!”

”What the heck is an Anomaly?!”

”The Rock Munchers!”

”How can there be Rock Munchers here? We’ve already done the scans and there’s nothing here.”

”Our saviour said that we are mining straight into a Rock Muncher nest!”

”How would he even know that? You know that if we still can’t find a new source of water...”

I turned around the corner to find Maylene facing her sisters, all of them standing in front of a large, inky black hole that they no doubt blew open to expand their mining operations.

All of them clamped their mouths shut the moment they saw me, clearly not expecting me to show up right then.

”Qing!” Maylene called out to me. ”I’m sorry! But I was too late! Umm... Are we still safe?”

I was about to tell them to back away from the hole when an arm reached out from the darkness of the hole to grab onto Sagia, the eldest bunny sister.

She let out a scream and her sisters turned to watch in horror as she was pulled towards the hole, the arm retreating slowly like it was intentionally showing everyone what was happening.

I did not hesitate and leapt towards the hole, my hand reaching out to grab onto the wrist of the creature to stop it from moving any further.

The flashlight on my chest also illuminated the creature I was facing, revealing it to be one of those orc shaped Anomalies that was also covered from head to toe with rock solid armour.

The Anomaly seemed to glare at me as though offended that I would even try to stop it.

It tried to grab me with its other hand and I punched at its palm, forcing it back.

I then squeezed on the wrist of the hand that was still holding the bunny girl as hard as I could, breaking its wrist with a loud crack and forcing it to let go of the bunny girl.

I caught her before she dropped on the ground and lowered her back on her feet.

The Anomaly in front of me recovered and started to advance towards us again, clearly intent on finishing the job.

”Run,” I ordered, standing in between the bunny girls and the Anomaly protectively.

I didn’t wait to see if they obeyed as I leapt towards the orc Anomaly, knocking it away from the hole and into the darkness.

As we tumbled into the cavern behind it I kicked off from the Anomaly to land on my feet, only to hear the stomping of feet coming from around me.

I spun around to see that I was now standing in the middle of an open space with dozens upon dozens of Anomalies all surrounding me, all of them moving in to prepare to attack.

Right... I guess I’m going to have to hold out until my Guardians get here...

Bring it on then.