The Cross-Dressing Girl 3

An inorganic female voice rang out through the now-quiet hangar.

It was a flat, emotionless voice, the kind that sounded like it had been spit out by a text-to-speech generator — the sort that would cheerfully tell you a representative would be with you shortly and then leave you on hold forever. After announcing the mana shortage, it fell silent.

The party jumped, clearly never having expected a voice to suddenly pipe up out of nowhere. Once their cute little startled shoulders had settled back down, Irene slowly raised her hand.

"I pressed this part, and a lady's voice just… came out…?"

"Looks like the entrance needs mana, but the interior doesn't require any."

In front of Irene sat a broad, flat panel half-hidden behind a forest of mechanical arms. To an NPC living in a fantasy world, it probably looked like the same kind of panel that opened the entrance, so she'd poked it without thinking. From a modern person's perspective, though, this was unmistakably a monitor — no room for debate.

Assuming the flat rectangular slab was a monitor and shoving the mechanical arms aside made it even more obvious. A desk buried under a thick layer of dust, three monitors fixed in place on side-mounted monitor arms, and a row of massive mechanical arms standing around the desk.

Since golem piloting was done through crystal orbs and the fuel was mana, there was no keyboard or mouse — but anyone could tell this looked like an office worker's desk. Or maybe an engineer's desk would be a better fit.

"Hey, if this desk just had a keyboard on it, I'd believe you if you said it was our editor's setup. …No! I'm not dunking on the editor for living like a slob — I'm saying it because there are three whole monitors, okay?! Wow, you people are absolute professionals at twisting someone's words."

While the rest of the party still had no idea what any of this was, Han Se-ah naturally settled herself in front of the desk. Everyone turned expectant eyes on her, as if thinking, Of course, she's a mage, she must know. Between the inventory, the minimap, and now the monitors, the "Han Se-ah Genius Mage Theory" was only getting stronger.

Basking in all those hopeful stares, she stood before the desk. With no keyboard and no mouse, she tapped the three monitors with her fingertips the way you'd work a kiosk touchscreen.

Given that it had started up even when Irene poked it by accident, this thing seemed to run ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fine without any mana poured into it. Maybe injecting mana was more of a security measure than anything else. You needed a key to open the hangar door, but once you were inside and wanted to boot up the office computer, anyone could just hit the button.

"Ugh, what is this writing — some kind of hieroglyphics? This isekai isn't ancient Egypt, come on… I guess this means we're supposed to just wing it from the pictures?"

The moment she tapped, text appeared on the monitors. Of course, there was no friendly Korean manual waiting for her. Peering over her shoulder at her grumbling, I could see that there really were hieroglyph-looking characters packed in alongside a bunch of diagrams.

Ignoring the hieroglyphs and looking only at the pictures, it showed something like a massive water tank with a tangle of pipes branching off it, some of them tinted red. Even without the text, the image basically screamed: fill the empty tank with fuel and repair the pipes.

"That big container drawing is a vessel for mana fuel, right?"

"Hmm. We'll need to find whether there are pipes along the walls. Though if those pipes are inside the walls, I'm not sure how we'd even repair them…"

The party, clustered curiously behind Han Se-ah, nodded along as they roughly pieced it together. This might have been a medieval fantasy game, but magical tools meant heating, cooling, and plumbing systems all existed — so this much, at least, they could figure out.

With that rough reading of the diagrams done, we started combing through the hangar all over again. Han Se-ah went by feel, tapping at the pictures, while the rest of us — myself included — used the desk as a starting point and re-examined everything around it.

But of course, we found nothing more. The pipes weren't exposed anywhere, and there was no way a priestess, an archer, and a swordsman were going to dig up mechanical engineering — or architecture, or magical engineering — knowledge out of thin air.

"In that case, I suppose we'll have to pay a visit to the Magic Tower."

"…Then what do we do about that worm's corpse?"

"I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠don't think anyone could haul that thing off. Leaving it here while we go should be fine, right?"

"True. Who's going to pick up something that big and run off with it."

Famous last words, as they say.

"Who the hell carried that giant thing out of here? The golem's still sitting there perfectly fine!"

The passage had been low enough that the boss monster had barely fit through, and we'd already recovered the remaining mana stones from the Knight-type Golem's back. In the Tower, the money was in mana stones and byproducts — not some enormous carcass — so we'd confidently headed outside, fetched Charlotte Cavendish from the Magic Tower, and come back…

"Hmm, Miss Hanna? So you're saying there was a Giant Worm corpse from the southern desert here… is that right?"

"Yes! Look here — there are crawl marks on the floor and even bloodstains."

In a single night, the Giant Worm's corpse had vanished without a trace. All that remained were sticky bloodstains caked thickly onto the floor, reeking with a foul stench, plus shattered shell fragments and broken teeth from where the Knight-type Golem had smashed it.

Hunting a boss monster only to have the corpse stolen was an unprecedented disaster, and the viewers tore into Han Se-ah even harder than usual. The donation rate was easily double what it normally was.

"This rock-hard carapace does seem to be a Giant Worm byproduct… but the fact that this creature appeared in a cave is strange, the fact that the corpse didn't despawn is strange, and the fact that something that huge got stolen overnight is all rather peculiar."

"Was it stolen, though?"

"If it were stolen, wouldn't there be some sign of it being moved? Hmm… it looks like nothing but combat traces to me."

"Yes, milady. There are no signs of the worm's corpse being carried off on a stretcher or anything of the sort. If someone had physically moved it, the pooled bloodstains over there would have been smeared and disturbed."

While Charlotte and Han Se-ah stood in front of the Knight-type Golem, Mary the maid — who had thoroughly searched the area — delivered her report to her mistress. Neither the archer nor the thief had found a single trail. On top of that, Han Se-ah's quest order seemed to have gotten completely tangled.

When they'd dealt with the orcs on the 20th floor, stories about the shamans and warriors, the forest altar, and the orc chieftain had appeared in sequence like breadcrumbs. This was the complete opposite.

So basically, because we already killed the Giant Worm, the mid-stage quests aren't updating?

If things had progressed the normal way, the quest window probably would have dropped a hint like, "There's supposedly a way to lure the Giant Worm somewhere around here~." Ironically, the one who pulled Han Se-ah out of this maze was one of the same vicious viewers who'd been roasting her.

"Mentioning other streamers is… allowed! Wait, hold on! That guy's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠already on the 30th floor?"

Maybe it was because she'd said mentioning other streamers was fine, but chat lit up as everyone started tossing out bits of knowledge to show off. Charlotte was looking at Han Se-ah with a puzzled expression, but Han Se-ah didn't even notice — she just stood there staring blankly at her holographic internet window.

Looks like she was thinking of watching Kim Seok-hyun's stream. Was spying on another broadcast even allowed?

"Should I? Make a little goodwill gesture and then check what the quest window looks like when you run into the worm on the 30th floor first?"

The viewers seemed to be thinking along the same lines — donations and suggestions poured in. That other stream's audience was apparently pretty sizable too; the usernames were a bit much, but the suggestion itself wasn't wrong. Watching someone else's stream wasn't illegal, and Kim Seok-hyun had said himself that he watched Han Se-ah's broadcasts.

So while Han Se-ah was fumbling around getting ready to send a donation to a fellow streamer as an information fee, Charlotte — who had been examining the worm traces beside her — quietly sidled up to me.

"Um, Roland?"

"Hm? What's up."

"…That young lady over there — is she perhaps from the North? What happened to the mercenary swordsman who was with you before, and why is she in the party now?"

…Come to think of it, Katie still hadn't fixed her magical tool. And Charlotte, as a noble young lady, had been raised with basic common knowledge and etiquette. Looking at that refined appearance, the silver hair and blue eyes, the long one-handed sword — she could probably tell roughly which house that pointed to.