Although, that probably wouldn't be very popular with the other pantheons. Not that I really care what the other pantheons think, but the goddesses probably do. I guess I will just wait and ask them if I end up deciding to build a golem army.

  For right now, I just keep grabbing ore as fast as I can until I hear wings outside. As soon as I hear that, I rush over to the door to take a peek and see what I am up against. Surprisingly, it is only a single four-wing and seven two-wings, so I attack and kill them.

  7 Rank 3 Angels defeated! 21,000 Exp gained!

  1 Rank 5 Angel defeated! 5,000 Exp gained!

  As soon as the last angel falls, I quickly rip out their cores and then rush back to the hut. Now I am really short on time, the next group will be a serious threat. That is if Holos doesn't just come himself, but I am hoping that doesn't happen.

  I manage to finish looting the second hut before anything else arrives. So, I rush to the third hut, but when I enter I am very disappointed in what I find. They must have just recently filled the second hut because the third one is practically empty.

  However, I do not let my disappointment stop me from looting what ore there is. Once that is done, I prepare to open a gate home, but then I have second thoughts. I am being greedy and I know I am being greedy, but I still don't open the gate.

  Instead, I exit the empty hut and head into the tunnel into the mountain. There is bound to be more ore inside and possibly some souls who didn't manage to escape. Besides, defending a tunnel against a bunch of angry angels sounds fun.

  So, I enter the tunnel and pick up any ore that I see lying around, but I don't kill the souls. Instead, I let them run deeper into the mine so that they will group up and I can kill them all at once. It is a little cruel, making them suffer the fear as they wait, but it saves me time.

  Besides, I am counting on the deaths of those souls to lure the angels into the mine after me. Outside, in the open, they could surround and overwhelm me, even attack from the air. In here, they can only come from one direction and can't fly, I should be fine.

  The farther into the mine I go, the more I realize how strange this place is. The tunnel doesn't go up or down, it just has a slight curve to it, like it circles the mountain. It also doesn't have any offshoots or side passages, like the ore follows the same path.

  Also, the amount of ore I am finding on the ground is too high to have just been dropped. My guess is that there are two groups, the miners and others who move the ore. From the looks of it, the miners mine the ore far faster than it gets moved, which is weird.

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  Unless Holos is using his power to restore the ore in the mine, then the miners just need to break it free. That would make sense, but if Holos is making the ore, why bother making his people mine it? It would be just as easy to make the ore appear in the open, wouldn't it?

  Just how perverse is Holos, making the souls of his believers work for no real reason? It makes me wonder how much lying and acting he had to do to get followers in the first place. He probably also had to fool his pantheon, or they would have kicked him out long ago.

  I don't know much about the southern pantheon, but my opinion of them has lowered. Well, it doesn't matter too much, I shouldn't be having many dealings with them. Being able to avoid politics is one of the perks of the goddesses being in hiding.

  The tunnel that I am following ends up being a lot longer than I expected it to be. In fact, I am pretty sure that I just passed where the entrance should be. So, it turns out that rather than circling the mountain, this tunnel is a spiral.

  However, I am more than happy to keep following it and picking up ore as I go. By my estimate, I have already picked up enough ore to have filled the third hut. Even if I don't do anything else, it was already worth it to come into the mine.

  Not long after that, I come to the end of the piles of ore on the floor of the tunnel. This must be where the miners stopped working, from here on the ore is still on the walls. However, it is actually sticking out from the walls and I find that I can just pry it loose.

  It seems that I was right about why the miners were so fast, this isn't really mining. Although, having to pry the ore loose does slow down my progress down the tunnel. Still, I don't plan to leave a single piece of ore behind if I can help it.

  Thanks to that, it takes me hours to reach the end of the tunnel at the center of the mountain. The tunnel ends at a rather large cave and inside I find over a hundred human souls. They are cowering behind a single four-winged angel, but I don't even hesitate to attack.

  168 Human Souls defeated! 16,800 Soul Exp gained!

  1 Rank 5 Angel defeated! 5,000 Exp gained!

  After collecting the angel's core I take a look around the central cave, but what I find disgusts me. At the center of the cave is a statue made of ore, a statue of Holos. So, the souls mine their way from the entrance to the cave and then have to pray to the statue.

  My guess is that the ore won't replenish until the souls have prayed enough. The more I learn about the way that Holos does things, the more he disgusts me. I would totally be planning a way to kill him if the cost wasn't so high.

  No matter what, killing him would not be worth being turned into a god myself. So, I am going to have to leave it to his pantheon to deal with him, but the statue is another matter. I happily smash it into pieces and then stuff them into my pouch, no point in wasting ore.

  I take another look around to make sure I didn't miss anything and then head back into the tunnel. It is time to go see if my plan worked and lured the angels into the tunnel. To be honest, I was expecting them to at least check the mine a while ago.

  I make it about halfway back to the entrance before I decide to stop and wait. I don't want to be too close to the entrance since I am worried about Holos. If he is outside, I don't want him getting to me before I have a chance to open a gate.

  I don't have to wait for too long before I start hearing footsteps coming up the tunnel. The first angel that I see is a female six-wing and behind her are several four-wings. There are more behind them, but I can't see past them to count the wings.