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

The week went by without any problems and I got to spend the entire week with my family.

My sister wanted me to stay longer but unfortunately, it was time for me to return to the island again.

She made me promise that I would return home before I leave and I simply pointed out the fact that I was leaving home with nothing but a spare change of clothes to assure her that I wasn’t going to leave home yet.

She seemed to be placated by that and I left home to find a secluded corner where I could create the teleportation door before walking through it.

The door appeared near the chalet and I stepped out, finding Leena seated near a table doing maintenance on her weapons.

Incidentally, she was in her human form which I suppose made sense if she wanted to sit down on the chair instead of laying down with her equine half.

She noticed me almost immediately and she stood up to give me a salute, ”Mortal God.”

I waved at her, ”No need to be so formal all the time especially when it’s just amongst us. I think we’ve spent enough time working together for that?”

She lowered her hand, ”As you wish, Mortal God.”

”Where’s Olivia? She told me that the mining is done and I should come here to check things out.”

”Ah. She’s gone into the rift with a few of the bunnies earlier, Mortal God. I can take you to her.”

”Oh, that would help.”

She quickly assembled the gun she had broken apart on the table in record time before she stood up and made her equine half appear behind her.

I have to admit, it was quite weird to see the lower body of a horse reverse out from behind her right in front of my eyes.

Eventually, her horse half was fully extended and she lowered herself down onto the ground before gesturing to her back.

”Here, Mortal God.”

Ah... Right... I guess I should have seen that coming.

I put on my mask before I went over to Leena and slowly climbed on top of the centauress.

She waited until I was seated firmly on my back before she stood back up.

”Hold on, Mortal God.”

I grabbed onto her shoulder and she gave me a moment to adjust myself before she started to move.

She started out at a trot first until we reached the main path before she started to gallop towards our destination.

The scenery around me sped past in a blur and I had to hold tighter onto her to stop myself from being thrown off her back.

It only took us a short moment before we reached the beach where the portal was, the place now a completely empty stretch of beach after we had officially cleared the rift.

Heck, even the previous monitoring equipment had been removed since it was deemed to be unnecessary now, though the real reason was to prevent what we were really planning to do from leaking out.

I thought she would stop here and let me down to walk on my own but Leena just continued forward and jumped into the portal with me still on her back.

We appeared on the other side and the cavern we appeared in obviously had signs of people having been here before.

First, the tunnel entrance had been enlarged to allow the mining equipment to pass through them and second... Well... It’s a little sad but there’s now pieces of rubbish that have been dumped at the side of the cavern by some of the people who had been here during the expedition.

It’s a sad fact but... You know... Since the rifts are places where we would have to close up and never see it again after beating the Gatekeeper... Some countries basically treat them as dumping grounds for their rubbish.

There’s some environmentalists who protest against that stating that it’s still another world but... They aren’t really convincing anyone since the alternative was to continue dumping the trash in our world... Thus, no one really pays attention to them.

For me... I honestly don’t really care unless there are actually consequences to dumping trash in these rifts since I’ve seen how bad these places already are so I doubt dumping plastics here would change anything.

Putting that aside, I also found the Gatekeeper chained up in the corner of the cavern, ready to be slaughtered the moment we are done with this rift.

I also realised why Leena was keeping me on her back because the mining company had flattened out and expanded the tunnels so she could easily run through them with me on her back without worrying about throwing me off.

Even the chasm had work done on it and they installed a lift that lowered all the way down to the bottom.

I believe this would just be left here instead of dismantled since it would not be worth the effort of dismantling it once we were done with this rift.

Leena stepped onto the platform and the machine hummed to life before we descended down at a relaxed pace.

She still showed no signs of letting me down so I didn’t ask, continuing to hold onto her shoulder from behind her back.

It took a full minute for the platform to reach the bottom before Leena continued running towards the direction of where the Mana Crystal cavern was.

The chasm that had been filled with the dead bodies of Anomalies had also been cleared as their bodies were dumped in several piles close to the wall, creating an unobstructed path that led towards the cavern at the back.

There were also light poles set up that illuminated the place and I could see tracks from the machines they used to transport Mana Crystals back from the cavern.

We finally reached the cavern and the place that had been filled with veins of Mana Crystals was now completely empty.

Not even a single shard of Mana Crystal remained as the walls had been scraped clean of them completely.

Near the walls on the other side was Olivia with a few of the bunny girls, all of them seemingly busy setting up some machinery.

The sound of Leena’s footsteps echoed around the cavern and they turned to see me arriving on her back, the centauress finally laying herself down to allow me to get off.

”My Lord,” Olivia greeted with a curt bow. ”Thank you for joining us.”

Maylene, Sagia and their other sisters also hopped over to her side and gave me a wave in greeting.

”Good morning, Qi-- I mean... Good morning, Mortal God!” Maylene greeted, correcting herself before she blurted out my name.

There were other bunny girls here aside from them so they couldn’t just address me by name right ow.

I slipped off from Leena’s back and nodded back in greeting, ”Good morning everyone. How are things here?”

”We’re ready for the second phase, my Lord,” She announced, gesturing at the wall.

I stepped towards the wall and reached out my hand towards them, drawing upon my concentration before flicking my hands outwards.

The walls shuddered before they started to open up, the rocks and earth flowing like water to reveal the two entrances I had covered up.

”So cool...” Maylene squealed at the sight before hopping over to the machine to start fiddling with it, prompting the other bunny girls to join her as well.

The machine that the bunny girls were fiddling with turned out to be a generator as it came to life after Maylene inserted a Mana Crystal into it.

Right after that, she dropped several other objects on the ground and they looked like miniature mining machines which the bunny girls then picked up and ran off to set them up inside the newly revealed caverns.

”What’s the plan now?” I asked Olivia.

”They’re going to set up a conveyor belt system here to start mining for materials. They’ve prospected this place and there’s minerals like iron, copper, bauxite and even gold that they could use to build our new base so we can save on importing materials if we can make use of this place.

”For how long though? It would be troublesome if the rift ends up stabilising and we end up causing a rift breakout...”

”After we cleared out all those Anomalies, I reckon we have at least quite a while before the rift can stabilise, my Lord. We should have more than enough time to mine enough minerals to be self-sufficient for a while at the very least. In fact, we might even end up exporting some of them since there’s quite an abundance here.”

I raised an eyebrow underneath my mask, ”That much?”

She nodded, ”That’s how they’re able to advance their technology so quickly too. The threat of the Anomalies in addition to the abundance of resources pushed their need to innovate as hard as they could. Now I guess we’re benefitting from that.”

I have to admit that I am kind of looking forward to seeing what they will build too.

For now... I guess they need the materials to do so first.