Cave Exploration 5
Less than a week had passed, and already six mana stones had been gathered. Two from our party, four from other adventurers who'd taken the commission. At this pace, we were looking at roughly one stone a day — an absurd rate of collection.
"These aren't just regular mana stones, are they? There's so many of them…"
"I don't think so, Grace. The color alone is different."
"True. The Tower's mana stones were blue. The ones from the Full Moon Wolf and the Orc Chieftain were red."
If Han Se-ah hadn't stuffed one into her inventory and confirmed it as a quest item — and if these stones hadn't been red, the exact opposite of the usual blue — we probably would've just sold them to the Magic Tower as ordinary mana stones without a second thought.
Contrary to my expectations, Han Se-ah's, and even the viewers', the golem mana stones weren't merely plentiful. They were abundant. Not the kind of quantity you carefully hoard to open a hidden door — more like the kind you stockpile by the hundreds and trade in bulk.
Which meant Grace and Irene were looking at me with eyes so mournful they were practically glistening. Every time a mana stone landed in Han Se-ah's inventory, they gazed at me as if ten gold coins had just melted into thin air and vanished forever.
"Doesn't seem like we'll find much more on the twenty-first floor. Want to head up to the twenty-second?"
"Think there are golems on the twenty-second floor too…?"
"Maybe they're on every floor. The commission hasn't been up long — people just might not have found them yet. We already reported the golem body stones to the Magic Tower, so something should come of that."
If I was going to hire other adventurers with money, I might as well put the Magic Tower to work too. A tin-can warrior and a streamer cosplaying as a mage could knock their heads together for a hundred days and still not come close to what the Tower's actual researchers could do.
The maze. The golems. The mana stones. And ten gold coins apiece.
Everyone was drifting off into their own thoughts, concentration fraying, so I clapped my hands once — smack — and pulled their attention back. Other adventurers would keep collecting the golem mana stones. The Magic Tower's mages would analyze the golem bodies. Which meant we needed to keep climbing the Tower.
…And for the sake of one pitiful mage, we still had moss to gather.
"We've already put in a guild commission for exploring the cave maze, so today we push up to the twenty-second floor. The golems from the maze are special cases, so we'll skip those for now. We've confirmed that Hanna's magic works on cave spiders and vampire bats, so we'll take it floor by floor."
"For sure — once she started using intermediate-grade magic, the destructive power was insane."
"I do wonder whether golems will appear on the twenty-second floor as well. I'm still not used to channeling mana into my weapon…"
And just like that, Kayden had latched onto the golem topic again, sinking into serious contemplation.
If mages progressed through beginner, intermediate, and advanced ranks — each tier unlocking more complex and powerful spells — then warriors like Kayden and me measured our ranks by how well we could load mana into our weapons. Beginner-grade was barely enough to toughen your own body a little. Intermediate-grade meant linking body and gear with mana to reinforce both. From upper-grade onward, you hit the territory of every Korean fantasy novel's favorite guest star: sword aura, mana overflowing outward from the blade.
Kayden might be a 4-star, but her actual rank as a swordswoman still wasn't that high. If she went hammering on golems with the family sword she'd brought from home, the edge would chip right off.
"Kayden, that sword of yours has a pretty unique design, so replacements won't be easy to come by. Think about a secondary weapon. I can't guarantee we'll keep fighting golems, but it never hurts to be prepared."
"Yes. Understood."
The blunt reply, the slight nod of her head — looking at her like that, I suddenly felt the urge to just rip that disguise right off. Knowing that this entire persona was Katie Wellesley's idealized performance of what an adventurer should look like made a mischievous impulse sprout and flourish in some corner of my chest. I really wished Han Se-ah would hurry up and progress Kayden's character quest.
Talking about secondary weapons with Kayden naturally handed the floor to Han Se-ah, who launched into a briefing of today's schedule as party leader.
"There's something we can run in parallel with the moss-gathering commission from the Magic Tower. We'll collect cave moss and mushrooms while we scout the twenty-second floor, and maybe camp out in the cave for a night."
"Camping in a cave… that'll be a bit different from camping in the forest, won't it?"
"The air alone is different… Still, if we pick a good spot, standing watch should be easier."
The party took the idea of spending a night inside the Tower in stride. After checking the food and tent gear stashed in Han Se-ah's inventory, we headed back toward the Tower.
A dim passageway. Stale, musty air. Pitch-black cave walls and a clinging, subtle dampness. I could say with absolute confidence that this was a terrible environment for anyone to sleep in.
"There won't be any monsters bursting through the cave walls, right?"
"Come on. As if something like that would show up."
In one corner of the cave — a dead-end path with a narrow entrance like an animal den that opened into a slightly wider space at the end — we started pitching the tent. Calling it a clearing was generous; it was barely big enough. Two beautiful women chatting cheerfully while setting up a tent in a place this miserable.
They'd even stripped off their gear for rest, and the chat window's viewers started having a full-blown meltdown that never seemed to get old. Not even underwear — just shirts — and they were thrashing around like addicts.
"Excuse me? Some of us are currently pulling mushrooms in a cave with terrible air quality, and you're talking like that? Keep it up and I'll lock the camera on Roland's face while he's on watch until tomorrow morning."
Han Se-ah delivered a threat that made my chest seize just hearing it, hammering tent stakes into the cave floor with solid thud-thuds. At least the forest experience had paid off — she drove the stakes into the hard ground with practiced ease and secured the tent.
While I blocked the only passageway and stood watch, Han Se-ah pitched the tent, Grace and Irene prepped the meal, and Kayden wandered around hauling supplies and handling odd jobs. Midway through all that, Han Se-ah sidled up and tapped me on the back.
"Roland, I've got a question."
"Hm?"
I had the passageway sealed off, Han Se-ah's stream window floating in a corner of my vision, and was quietly browsing the internet when her question came out of nowhere.
"That maze with the golems — is it impossible to just smash through all the walls and push forward?"
Traveling with a superhuman who wielded mana made it a fair enough question, in a way. Same logic as when I'd gotten sick of orc hunters in the forest and just body-slammed through trees and traps alike — couldn't we punch through the maze the same way?
Even if the cave walls had smoothed over, they hadn't gotten any harder, so it seemed doable. But there was one problem with that approach.
"Smashing the walls is possible. What comes after is the issue."
"What comes after?"
"If I start randomly demolishing walls, won't the ceiling come down?"
"…Ah. Right."
This wasn't an open forest with sky overhead — it was the dark interior of a cave. Start smashing things indiscriminately and there was no telling what the aftermath would look like. No matter how tough and durable I was, if the whole cave collapsed and dozens of tons of rock buried me, I wouldn't be able to move an inch.
…Thinking about this fraudulent body of mine, I could probably dig my way through the ground and keep moving. But if I got buried under boulders and lost all sense of where the cave passages even were, I still wouldn't be able to go anywhere.
"In a swamp, if a fight gets desperate, people will evaporate a water hole or something — but I've never heard of an adventurer who just smashed through cave walls. Nobody knows if there's open ground above this, or just infinite rock."
"So you can smash them, then. Wait — swamp?"
"The thirty-first floor swamp is basically upper-grade adventurer territory. Sometimes they fill the swamp with earth magic, or blast the water away with shockwaves from mana strikes — just to make the fight a little easier. It wastes mana, so they only do it against named monsters or really annoying enemies."
"Uh, is it weird if I say this? It feels like pure streamer content gold. If I get up there first and just boil the entire swamp, I could milk those view counts dry. 'How to eat thirty-first floor monsters like cake' — something like that."
Han Se-ah had started out thinking about smashing maze walls and somehow derailed completely into calculating her own stream viewership angles. Watching her blank, vacant expression, I noticed Irene off in the distance raising her hand high, ladle held aloft.
"The stew's ready! …Oh, if you're going to eat over there, shall I bring it to you?"
"Ah, I'm coming! …How does the chat fill up with 'Mamang' in under a minute. You guys are seriously unhinged."
Her idle daydreams were cut short by the viewers, who had erupted all over again at the sight of Irene smiling benevolently with a ladle in hand.