Ending Maker Chapter 45
Ending Maker Chapter 45
Chapter 12 - The Armory
The ancient dwarves were superior to the dwarves of today in many ways, and the difference was especially striking when it came to physique.
"The ancient dwarves were pretty tall."
"Wasn't it more that they were just big, not tall?"
"Well... either way, they were big."
While even the sturdiest adult dwarves of today stood around 130 to 140 centimeters tall, the ancient dwarves had an average height of 170 centimeters.
'As Cordelia said, it was more that they were big than tall.'
What that meant was that the ancient dwarves' body type itself was the same as the dwarves of today.
Short limbs, broad shoulders, and a fairly large head.
Their body type stayed the same, but as their height increased, everything else grew larger along with it.
Their hands were big, their feet were big, and their heads were big.
In any case, it was a rather useful fact for Yuder and Cordelia right now.
Because the panel that opened the armory door was positioned at just the right height for humans to use.
"Hm."
"What?"
"No, it just seems a bit big."
"Big? You mean your height?"
"Yeah, maybe because the Nine Yin Meridian Blockage is getting better?"
At the start, Cordelia and Yuder had been similar in height, both in the mid-160s.
But now, when they stood side by side, the height difference was enough that Cordelia had to lift her head to meet his eyes.
"Well... the Nine Yin Meridian Blockage did stunt your growth. Yuder grows to almost 180 later anyway. So I'll grow too."
"Hm, 180, huh."
Cordelia took a step back and looked Yuder up and down as if appraising him.
"Well, that wouldn't be bad."
"Thank you for the kind assessment, ma'am."
"Yes, Mom. Anyway, open the door."
"Wouldn't Dad be better than Mom?"
"You want to be called Dad? Should I call you Papa from now on? Okay, Papa. You have unique taste."
"Just call me Mom."
Exchanging silly banter, Yuder brushed the dust off the panel attached to the wall.
It was a numeric keypad panel that could be seen anywhere, and the door was structured to open only after entering a nine-digit password.
In the original, they had to find the notebook of the "forgetful caretaker" hidden somewhere on the 5th floor to learn the password, but this time there was no need for that.
"Open it quickly, quickly. Doo roo roo roo."
"Wait, let me dig through my memory."
Ignoring Cordelia's humming, Yuder searched his memory palace.
A few more minutes passed like that.
When he finished entering the password without issue, a clunking sound rang out and the seal on the armory's great steel door was released.
"My heart's pounding."
"Mine too."
Yuder answered Cordelia, then pushed hard on the sliding steel door and opened the armory.
"It's exactly like the original."
Cordelia spoke quietly, her cheeks flushed red, and looked around the armory.
It was a square room with each side about 10 meters long. Perhaps because it had been sealed until now, it was cool but not completely frozen like the other rooms of Frost Anvil.
"The real stuff is further inside, right?"
"Yeah, but let's check this side first."
When Yuder pointed at the shelves along the wall, Cordelia quickly nodded.
"Right, right. I always wanted to grab all this stuff when I played the game."
Since they weren't obtainable objects, they'd always been tantalizingly out of reach, but not anymore.
"Is it a basic armor set?"
Cordelia rushed over to the shelves and examined them. Gloves, shoes, vests, and round helmets were arranged in complete sets.
"Hm, so that's what it was. It's more of a gear storage than a proper armory."
"Why? What does it say?"
"No, it's... work clothes."
"Work clothes?"
"Yeah, Frost Anvil was an underground city, and they were constantly mining and expanding. Safety helmets, safety shoes, safety gloves... that kind of thing?"
But even so, they were relics of the ancient dwarves. Moreover, since they were work clothes, they would be sturdy and tough, making them perfect for use as armor.
"But they're too big."
The safety helmet was average-sized by ancient dwarf standards, but on Cordelia it looked like she had put a large pot on her head.
Yuder barely held back a laugh, then rummaged through the shelves as well and said,
"Look carefully. They're work clothes, but since they're safety sets, there should be children's sizes too. The gloves and shoes will adjust their size automatically."
Just as Yuder said, a few children's safety sets were prepared in the corner of the shelves.
"Pfft, you look like a chick."
"Hey, you're wearing the same clothes as me, you know?"
The safety helmet, safety shoes, safety gloves, and vest were all yellow.
Since they were work clothes, they had apparently been made to be highly visible.
"No combat gear?"
"Even if there is, it probably won't fit."
There wouldn't be children's sizes for combat gear.
"Besides... isn't this already good enough?"
As expected of ancient dwarf equipment, both the gloves and shoes were enchanted.
"The gloves have strength enhancement... and the shoes have agility increase on top of that?"
Cordelia said as she bounced up and down on the spot, and sure enough, the effect was real—she jumped much higher than usual.
"Good, I like it. This'll be enough for a while."
Yuder even tried out his footwork while he was at it, then looked down at his feet with a satisfied face.
The safety shoes were exceptionally sturdy, so his kicking power would be greatly enhanced from now on.
"Let's open the inner area quickly too."
The power spear used to defeat the giant white serpent in the original was stored behind the second door, which could be called the true armory.
"Okay, hold on."
Yuder immediately operated the numeric panel on the second door and opened it.
Then, just like in the original, an event occurred.
[I am Jamu, the one in charge of the armory. Please hear my story.]
A translucent ancient dwarf appeared right in front of the door and spoke in a solemn voice.
It wasn't a ghost but a hologram—a kind of artificial intelligence that managed the armory, just as it had said.
"It can't physically stop us, so let's just go past it. All it does is give a standard explanation of the armory anyway."
Yuder said that and was about to walk right past Jamu.
"Wait, wait a second."
Cordelia grabbed Yuder's hand, stared at Jamu with a thoughtful face for a moment, then spoke to Yuder again.
"Let's not do that. Let's hear the story."
"The story?"
"Yeah, it was the same in the Witch's Forest. Remember how we skipped everything because we thought we knew it all and ended up going through hell? And the event where you get the Power Spear was only shown as a cinematic, right? What if there's something here that the video didn't show us?"
It was a fairly reasonable point.
So Yuder nodded right away.
"There's a possibility...!"
"Hey, I said that was mine, didn't I?"
"Anyway, let's listen then. We have plenty of time anyway."
Having made up his mind, Yuder spread out one of the vests from the shelves and even made a seat.
"Ma'am, please sit."
"Yes, Dad."
Cordelia crouched down next to Yuder and looked up at Jamu, and Yuder began.
"Jamu, tell us your story."
[May I tell my story?]
"Yes, I want to hear your story."
At Yuder's words, Jamu made a rather moved expression.
It was an artificial intelligence, but it seemed to have some degree of emotion and ego.
[Ahem, understood. To show interest in my story—you are a person of excellent discernment. So, this story begins in Frost Anvil Year 004, when I first opened my eyes in the armory.]
The moment Jamu began its story, Cordelia unconsciously turned to Yuder, and Yuder turned to her.
That opening somehow sounded ominously familiar.
And five hours.
Their prediction became reality.
* * *
"I think my ears are bleeding...."
After listening to Jamu's entire story for five long hours, Cordelia said with a half-dead look on her face.
If she dozed off in the middle, Jamu would repeat the story from that part, so she had even been forced to concentrate.
Yuder looked at Cordelia, who was leaning her head against him with a face on the verge of tears, and said in surprise,
"Hey! Your ears really are bleeding!"
"R-Really?"
"As if."
When Yuder clicked his tongue, Cordelia found strength from somewhere and started hitting his back wildly.
"Ow! Ow!"
"I told you before, right? I'm hitting you so it hurts. And I'll hit the same spot again."
In any case, thanks to that, the two of them woke up fully and stretched as they rose from their seats.
"In the end, it was just meaningless chatter."
"No, well... it wasn't completely unhelpful."
They had learned roughly how to use the weapons stored in the armory.
"Besides... Jamu seems satisfied too."
"Yeah."
Just as Yuder said, Jamu stood with its eyes closed and an extremely refreshed expression, as if it had relieved a thousand-year-old grudge.
If it had been a ghost instead of an artificial intelligence, it looked like it would have ascended to heaven on the spot.
"Anyway, let's go quickly. I'm sleepy."
"Yeah, let's just grab the weapons and rest for today."
The two of them entered the true armory while yawning, but that only lasted a moment.
"Whoa... there are five power spears."
"These look usable for us too."
Cordelia admired the power spears lined up against the wall, and Yuder examined the daggers and said,
"Look at this, there are knuckles too. Try them on and see if they fit your hands."
"These are more like... power fists than knuckles."
Yuder put on the gauntlets that covered up to the back of his hands and clenched and unclenched his fists a few times.
True to the ancient dwarves' no-frills aesthetic, there were no notable decorations, but the moment he put them on, they had the heavy feel of lethal weapons, reminding him of the first time he had held a gun.
"How is it? Think they're usable?"
"Yeah, good. Is there one for the left arm too?"
"Here."
Cordelia scurried over like a squirrel gathering acorns and brought back the other power fist.
"Mm, good. With these, using the power spear will be easier too."
"Right? How much did your attack power go up? Did your strength go up by about 1.2 times? What about the options?"
"What can I say... you really are a rotten fossil."
"Tch, coming from the fossil fuel."
Cordelia grumbled, but soon smiled brightly and looked around the armory again.
Since the ancient dwarves had many warriors, there wasn't much for Cordelia, a mage, to use, but she seemed happy just finding equipment for Yuder.
'It's like equipping a party member with new gear in an RPG.'
Yuder chuckled, then examined the power spears, which could be called the armory's reason for existing.
They had a simple structure with a large spearhead attached to the end of a long shaft, but that was only on the outside—the internal structure was quite complex.
'It releases stored psionic energy through the spearhead.'
The output could also be freely adjusted, and when fired at maximum output, it was essentially a beam cannon rather than a spear.
'They're basically single-use, but there are five of them.'
Yuder nodded with a satisfied face and gathered up the power spears, while Cordelia grunted as she gathered hammers, maces, and greatswords.
There was no one to use them right now, but it felt too wasteful to just leave them behind.
"You really are like a squirrel."
"Huh? Me?"
"Yeah. Like a hamster too."
Like one with its cheeks stuffed full of food to save for later.
"I don't think that's a compliment, so I'm going to hit you once."
"Hey now, let's rest here today, eat breakfast tomorrow morning, and set off again."
"Sure, but about the Sunflower Herb—it's in the 7th floor power room, right? There was a secret passage there too, wasn't there?"
"There was."
The flow in the original was as follows.
The protagonist's party encountered the giant white serpent on the 7th floor, and during the fierce battle, they happened to discover a secret passage.
The party entered the secret passage to escape the white serpent, obtained clues about the armory from the corpses of dead ancient dwarves, then used the secret passage to enter the armory and secure the power spear to defeat the white serpent.
"So if we use the secret passage, we can go straight to the power room where the white serpent and the Sunflower Herb are."
"But we're not going to use the secret passage—we'll go up to the 3rd floor and then come down the proper way, right?"
"Of course."
If they killed the white serpent, their levels would go up by several, which would make the experience efficiency of the trash mobs between the 3rd and 6th floors worse.
Hero Legend's experience system was a mix of absolute and relative values.
It was a system where a basic absolute value was adjusted slightly based on level difference, so the lower the player's level and the higher the monster's level, the more experience could be gained.
"Every little bit adds up. We have to take every advantage we can."
"Right, right."
The two of them were perfectly in sync.
"Besides, it's not urgent. Even if we sweep down from the 3rd floor, the white serpent will still be hibernating."
The white serpent was, as its name suggested, a white snake.
To be precise, it was a magic beast of the ancient overlord Leviathan, who had driven Frost Anvil to ruin. But either way, it was still a snake.
'And snakes are cold-blooded animals.'
In the first place, the reason Frost Anvil had become a freezer was actually because of the white serpent.
'To trap the white serpent in Frost Anvil, they overloaded the magic furnace and dropped the temperature to the extreme.'
They could not let that wicked magic beast outside.
They had to trap it here.
It was the heroic decision made by the nameless ancient dwarf who was the last survivor of Frost Anvil.
It had displayed monstrous strength even after a thousand years without proper nutrition. During the invasion of Frost Anvil, when the magic beast was in its prime, its power and majesty must have been truly terrifying.
"The setting is that the white serpent, which normally sleeps, briefly awakens when the Sunflower Herb blooms and releases a massive amount of yang energy, right?"
"Yeah, so it should be asleep right now."
In the game, they had reached the 7th floor a day after the Sunflower Herb bloomed, but now they had actually arrived several days early.
"We'll shove a power spear into the hibernating thing's head and boom!"
What did it matter if it was a monster dozens of meters long? It was hibernating.
"Wow, that's a total freebie."
"And you don't like that?"
"No, I love it. Freebies are the best. I want freebies every day. Please let me have freebies."
"Me too."
Yuder and Cordelia smiled brightly at each other, then hummed as they left the armory.
And three days later, in the morning.
The two of them swept away every monster between the 3rd and 6th floors and reached the 7th floor, where the giant white serpent that had once plunged all of Frost Anvil into terror met a mysterious death.