Chapter 119
Chapter 119
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 118
Chapter Title: Dwarves in the Depths
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[What? Are we leaving? Or should we push through?]
“Eek!? Y-you heard that!”
“Uwaaak!”
“What the hell is that!? What is that thing!?”
The dwarves freaked out at the majesty of the mythic pet. A few of them were so shocked they even dropped the crossbows they were holding.
As they fell, the triggers must have gone off.
Pewk! Pewk!
Two bolts embedded themselves in nearby rocks.
Ting! Ting! Ting!
The three that flew toward the Landworm couldn't even scratch its scales and bounced off.
Clack.
I caught the last one in my hand.
“Not bad speed. And the power’s impressive too. A mechanical crossbow, huh.”
I bent the bolt’s tip.
Kreeeak!
It curved. The fact that the arrowhead bent without breaking was pretty significant.
“Oh, you made the tip out of steel? That’s some impressive craftsmanship.”
“Y-you... what are you? Did you just catch a bolt with your bare hand?”
“No way... treating an alloy arrowhead like putty...”
I asked the stunned dwarves,
“Aren’t we near the Great Forest by now? Why are there dwarves instead of elves?”
“Before that, tell us who you are! Who the hell are you? And what’s that weird... monster? Mount? Whatever it is, what is that thing? How did a human get all the way here?”
The girl holding the gun stepped forward.
The Landworm reacted.
[Wak!]
“Eeeeek!!”
Rat-tat-tat!
Bullets poured out. This time they weren’t aimed at me—they all lodged into the ceiling.
“Whoops, don’t tease them too much.”
[These punks keep pretending they can’t see me? I might overlook these little shits, but them ignoring me? That doesn’t make sense.]
Ignoring the grumbling Landworm, I checked out the gun the girl was holding.
‘Full-auto, huh...’
I’d figured it was at most a musket, but this was close to a rifle.
Dwarves were good with their hands, sure, but this was beyond common sense. It was like jumping the era ahead by a century.
Clack.
I snatched the rifle from the fallen girl and held it up.
“Oh. Pretty decent. A bit crude, but...”
Click-click!
“Ah!! G-give it back!”
Ignoring her shouts, I pulled out the fixed pin and disassembled the gun. It had everything: loading handle, bolt carrier, piston, magazine.
But the specs were all over the place, so it looked like it was still in development.
And there was something unique.
“Huh? This takes 5.56mm rounds?”
A standard with history and tradition.
Even modern personal firearms in South Korea still used these. The only difference was whether they had runes engraved on parts and ammo—the basic structure was the same.
Plasma rifles and railguns were a whole different spec, so irrelevant.
“Hey!! Give it back!! Do you know how valuable that is?! You’re spying on the Crystal League’s latest military tech!!”
Her shrill scream sparked a mischievous urge in me.
“This is your latest military tech? Looks like a toy.”
“What? You have no idea how terrifying this new weapon is...”
“Let’s see.”
Clack! Click!
I reassembled the gun in seconds.
It differed from Earth’s cutting-edge firearms in many ways, but my experience tinkering with guns in Ardania made it easy enough.
Once assembled, I aimed the rifle at my own head. Sized for dwarves, it fit perfectly.
“Huh? Wh-what?? What are you doing...”
“It’s a joke, right? Stop!!”
“You idiot...”
Ignoring the dwarves’ shock, I pulled the trigger.
Bang!
“Kyaaak!!”
The dwarf woman squeezed her eyes shut. The others looked stunned too, so the rifle’s power must be well-known.
But of course, my head didn’t explode.
Ting~!
A flattened lead bullet rolled across the floor.
Curious, I asked,
“This isn’t steel—it’s lead. The 5.56mm spec too... You didn’t make this, did you? Makes sense. If the Crystal League had machine guns, they’d steamroll the Empire and anyone else.”
“......”
“......”
“......”
Everyone stared at me blankly.
I smirked and said,
“Dismissed, Landworm.”
Poof!
Whoooosh!!!
“Uwaak!”
“Wha...”
The crawling building vanished in an instant, whipping up a gust in the cavern.
When the wind died down...
“Ah...”
“That’s...”
“My god.”
The massive tunnel hidden by the Landworm came into view.
“Too late for introductions. I’m Emperor Han Jaeyeon of the Human Empire.”
“Han Jaeyeon?”
“Han Jaeyeon...”
“Han Jaeyeon!”
For some reason, they were more shocked by my name than the grandiose title of Human Empire Emperor.
The girl shouted on their behalf.
“That’s the name that pops up in notifications all the time!”
“......Notifications?”
“Those letters floating in the air.”
‘Ah, World Messages.’
Seemed like the Crystal League’s term for them.
‘They’re adapting to the system in their own way.’
Take the ammo she was using, for example.
[5.56mm NATO Round (Common)]
‘Ammo drops from monsters... Got it. Otherworld Elf Sniper (Rare), huh.’
They were reverse-engineering monster drops.
“Lower your weapons. It wouldn’t work anyway.”
“We figured you were a monster from all the item acquisition messages, but... this is beyond imagination. Taking a plate-penetrating round barehanded...”
The dwarves unloaded their crossbows and released the taut strings.
They looked completely defeated—no more hostility.
“I’m Hellaine, engineer of the Steel Anvil Clan. Pleased to meet you. Han Jaeyeon... or should I say, Your Imperial Majesty?”
“Whatever works. So, where are we? Didn’t expect to run into anyone at this depth.”
“What do you mean ‘where’? You show up out of nowhere, cause a ruckus, and now ask that? The ground shook—we thought the mine was collapsing!!”
“A mine, huh. Makes sense. What else would be dug this deep?”
I walked past them to check the tunnel. Scaled for dwarves, the ceiling was too low for me.
“Are you listening? If you’d come looking for this place...”
“I didn’t come here on purpose. This was just a path I was passing through.”
My minimap showed a marker right above my head.
I’d been heading for the fire point—er, leyline—in the Great Forest, so I’d planned to pass by, but here I was stopped.
“Passing... through?”
“Yeah. To the Great Forest’s fire point... no, leyline.”
Hellaine looked baffled at my words.
“The Great Forest’s leyline is way south from here. Passing through...? Wait a sec.”
She turned from me to the massive tunnel pitch-black with no light.
“This tunnel... where the hell does it connect?”
“Windbreak Plateau.”
I gazed into the dark tunnel too.
Not just subway-sized—this was big enough for buildings to pass through.
“In other words, it connects straight to the end of this continent.”
A grand road over 1,000km straight.
“Wait, Hellaine. A tunnel this massive stretching that far...”
“It’s wide enough for the whole League to use.”
“No, hold on! More importantly!”
Hellaine silenced the murmuring dwarves and pointed wildly.
“C-come to think of it, what was that earlier? It looked like a wall... No way that was its head? A monster that digs tunnels this big exists in the world?”
Her words paled the dwarves’ faces.
“Wait, wasn’t that thing a golem or something?!”
“And it talked...!”
“That wasn’t a protrusion—the whole thing was its body?!”
They screamed belatedly. Their earlier freakout hadn’t fully sunk in.
‘Well, the Landworm is huge.’
Beyond huge. [A skyscraper crawling on its belly]—from afar, it messed with your depth perception; up close, your sense of reality.
Digging a tunnel to fit itself, its head alone looks like a wall. From the front, hard to guess it’s a living snake-like thing.
“A living tunneling machine.”
“Bigger than mountains. Deeper than abysses...”
“A disaster that could swallow the world... For real?”
“You’ve seen the messages too, huh. World Messages, naturally.”
I stepped forward with a chuckle at the Landworm summon text. The dwarf-sized tunnel was low, but bending my waist let me pass.
“......A human?”
“Why’s a human here...”
After a long climb, a spacious area opened up. Dwarves, beastkin, and elves spotted me and stared blankly.
Unlike Hellaine, though, no one aimed guns or showed hostility.
‘They don’t even have the energy.’
I kept going.
“Hey, hey! Wait up!”
“Don’t just wander around...”
Hellaine and dwarf warriors followed, but couldn’t stop me. They’d felt the overwhelming gap in power.
Whoooosh-!
“Ugh! Why’s the wind suddenly... Huh? A human?”
“A human.”
“How’d a human get here out of nowhere.”
Murmurs grew as I moved, but I ignored them and passed through a large entrance.
Beyond it lay a space on another level of vastness.
“Whoa... This could pass for an underground city.”
Dozens, hundreds of buildings and holes everywhere. The Landworm’s digging vibrations had spooked them—beastkin were peeking out from the holes.
‘Like a horde of beggars.’
They looked rough at a glance. Starved to skin and bones, pale from underground life.
Rabbit, boar, deer beastkin—all patchy fur, wretched state.
“This is the Crystal League’s largest iron mine. In its heyday, over 10,000 workers stayed here.”
Hellaine, giving up on blocking me, explained as I scanned around.
“Looks like more than that heyday now.”
She gave a bitter smile.
“Of course. Original residents plus dwarves, beastkin, even elves from the surface crammed in... Estimate’s over 100,000.”
Packed with refugees, the massive mine felt cramped and filthy. Severe food shortages, dust-covered faces devoid of hope.
Frankly, I was amazed this many had survived over a year.
“Human! What the hell! Hellaine, why’d you bring a human here!”
Then a group of beastkin pushed through the crowd.
“Oh, werewolves.”
“You! Human! What’re you after coming here?! No, how’d you even get in? Fake elf bitches are outside!”
“Fake elves? Ah, Otherworld Elf Sniper right above, huh.”
“What’re you? Ignoring me?!”
The excited wolf beastkin lunged for my collar. Or tried to.
Clack.
“Huh?”
The moment our hands met, the wolf’s expression changed.
Those who use strength know instantly from a grip.
“Wh-what...”
The wolf, who’d charged murderously, backed away shakily. Stiff fur settled, mangy tail drooped to the floor.
I stepped forward; it collapsed.
“Good boy.”
I petted its head; it didn’t dare protest. Its followers panicked.
“S-sis? You okay?”
“What’s wrong all of a sudden?”
With their leader cowed, the beastkin floundered. I ignored them and surveyed the crowd.
A human appearing out of nowhere. Commotion with the beastkin. Thousands of eyes locked on me.
“Ha. Gotta do this again.”
I smiled wryly and opened my inventory.
Good thing I had plenty. Ten alts at Windbreak Plateau.
Pewk! Pewk! Pewk! Pewk!
I pulled out four bone longswords and stabbed them into the ground. Then wood planks on top for an impromptu table.
And placed on it.
Thud.
A 15kg wild boar hind leg.
“......Huh?”
“......Meat?”
Blank stares lit up greedily. Before they could murmur, I hurried.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Wild boar hind legs piled up on the table. Endless legs materializing from thin air—everyone gawked, lost.
Unsure if real or illusion.
“What’re you staring at?”
“Uh... Huh?”
I called to the dazed Hellaine.
“Light a fire.”
“H-huh? Oh! Y-yes! Right!!”
As she scrambled, I turned to the beastkin.
“Let’s eat first.”
Mealtime.