Rock vs Flight 1
The cave stairs hidden on the 41st Floor were so dark you couldn't see a step ahead — nothing like the open cavern of the 40th. Han Se-ah conjured a light with magic and started down the stairs, chatting to her viewers as she went.
"Looks like this space only showed up after the harpies got smarter. We're on the 41st Floor and other adventurers still never found it. Either there are just too many caves to check, or everyone was rushing down from the 45th and blew past the 41st too fast."
Obviously, it was because it was boring.
Right to left, left to right. The stairs looked like someone had carved a zigzag straight through the mountain's insides — as if they'd copy-pasted an apartment stairwell over and over. Walk forward, drop down, swing a full 180, and walk down again.
They'd already crossed the mountain range on the 41st Floor without a single fight. Now they were just walking down stairs from cave to cave. It was the exact situation viewers who loved watching Heroes Chronicle streams hated most.
This was the most tedious, soul-crushing stretch of any broadcast — the kind of dead air where some female streamer would hang at the back of the party, flash a little cleavage, get caught, and forever be branded the exhibitionist teammate; or where someone would leave video donations wide open and get assassinated by lookbook content until they were forced to cut the walking segment entirely.
After what felt like hundreds of steps — maybe a thousand — the stairs finally ended.
"Another cavern? Looks just like the caves on the 30th Floor."
"To carve out the inside of a mountain like this… who could have made a place like this?"
"Well, we did, of course."
Beyond the stairs that had seemed endless lay a short passage, and past that passage a vast cavern opened up. The hollow carved into the mountain's heart dwarfed anything on the 30th Floor.
Irene, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it, murmured under her breath — and someone answered her just as quietly.
"W-who's there?!"
"Eek—!"
"Hoho, me, you mean?"
Even Grace, now a 5-star guide archer, hadn't sensed a thing. Which was why Grace startled harder than Irene did, nocking an arrow with ghostly speed and spinning to aim behind them.
Katie and I felt no hostility or killing intent, so we only rested our hands on our weapon hilts and waited. Grace and Han Se-ah, though, had clearly been properly spooked. The camera spun a full 360 and then whirled through the air like a blender.
"I believe that's my question to ask, little softies. How did a bunch of soft, squishy things like you punch through those feathered pests and come down from above?"
The figure who had been hiding dead silent in the passage between the stairs and the cavern — quiet enough to fool even Grace's senses — spoke at a leisurely pace.
It was a slow, warm voice, the kind that made you expect an old man to toss you a scorched-rice candy while spinning a folk tale. Grace, still aiming her bow toward the source of the sound, faltered and lowered her arrow — down, and further down.
Because the one who'd spoken was a Stone Dwarf.
Not a dwarf. A Stone Dwarf.
"Those feathered pests have been a real nuisance lately… You softies look soft enough, but maybe you've got some real skill?"
It wasn't a stocky, bushy-bearded dwarf. What stood there was something like a stone-carved child monk, scratching its chin and shedding little chips of rock. About 140 centimeters tall, it looked half like a walking knockoff stone guardian statue and half like one of those rock troll fairies from an ice-queen cartoon I'd seen in a past life.
One thing was certain: it looked like a player-friendly NPC.
No killing intent or not, it had appeared from behind us at the perfect ambush timing — slipping past Katie and me, who were supposed to handle close-range escort, and startling even Grace the guide — and it was still cracking jokes and asking questions.
"You seem strong for softies, but it's been so long I can't quite get a read on you."
"Um, ah… Brother, who are you?"
"Brother, is it? So that softie over there serves a god, then?"
"Yes, that's right. I am Irene, a sister who follows the word of the Goddess."
"I'm Bobo. Call me Elder Bobo. You're awfully well-behaved for a softie who serves a god."
Of the whole party frozen stiff by the surreal sight of a pebble on the path standing up and talking, Irene was the first to recover. Elder Bobo looked her up and down with open curiosity, as if in his world the default setting for religious folk was fanatic zealot.
Every time he tilted his head, little stones rattled and rolled — clack-clack — which was oddly fascinating. Still, with no hostility or murderous intent in that gentle manner, the rest of the party began joining the conversation one by one.
Elder Bobo the Stone Dwarf was not alone.
Obviously — a single 140-centimeter dwarf carving out this entire cavern under the mountain range didn't seem plausible. With a chorus of rolling, rumbling stone, more Stone Dwarves appeared. Led by Elder Bobo came Popo, Roro, Lara, Lulu, and others with names so halfheartedly slapped together it was almost impressive, all tumbling toward us in a noisy wave.
"Wow, Elder Bobo was right!"
"Softies everywhere!"
"How'd they get all the way here? How long has it been since we last saw softies?"
They came pouring in like a landslide down a slope. Round and flat, jagged and lumpy — little rock kids who seemed to express personality through material instead of faces — swarming and chattering until it was pure chaos.
The fact that mouthless stone faces could produce human voices was strange enough. Then the headcount climbed past dozens and edged toward a hundred, as if this whole open ground were their village or city, and picking out individual words became nearly impossible.
"Ahem. Try any dirty talk thinking this is your moment and you'll be paying bail. Our evolved Snippy MK.2 got a lot stronger, you know. Even a 'I almost said it~' doesn't get a free pass — it chops the neck clean off, so watch yourselves."
"You lot, get inside first. These don't seem like bad softies, and they look like they don't get along with those noisy flappers up top either."
"Flappers… you mean the harpies?"
"That's what softies call the winged softies."
Surrounded by Stone Dwarves, I felt a bit like a sheepdog herding a flock. Listening to the jumble of voices rolling out with the sound of tumbling rock, we moved toward the open ground.
It had been too dim to tell before, but once we approached with the light magic still going, what had looked like dark boulders scattered across the wide clearing turned out to be houses built entirely of rock. Round, storybook-illustration houses, every one a different shape and size.
Stone Dwarves who carved out the mountain, lived inside it, built stone houses near a stone plaza, and furnished them with stone furniture — total Stonestadt collapse in real time. Elder Bobo, the first of them to find us, stepped forward as their representative.
"First things first. How did you softies get all the way here? Outside, the flappers go berserk the second they see anything walking on two legs."
"We're just that strong. They didn't even try to jump us."
"Soft or not, looks like you've got what it takes to climb this high."
The Stone Dwarves looked like actual rocks, but they acted a lot like dwarves. Not a blacksmith race exactly — more an underground people of gem-cutting and metal-smelting.
Born from deep rock in the earth, living on stone, mining metal and jewels from inside that stone to cut and refine and sell. It almost felt like earthworms eating dirt and leaving fertile soil behind.
And of course, their world seemed to have been destroyed by the Demon King too. As a race that dug into mountains and lived inside them, they might never have faced the Demon King's army directly — but the whole world had somehow collapsed, and they'd been buried underground and copied into the Tower just the same.
"The Demon King destroyed the world and now we're inside a Tower? Softie jokes are hard to follow, I'll tell you that."
"No, it's not a joke…"
Watching Han Se-ah nearly floor the gas on another rant about the Tower to Elder Bobo — only to learn, via financial therapy, how to shut her mouth — told me everything I needed to know.
The black Naga warriors down below had known they were dead, prayed for the Goddess's mercy, and burned with hatred for the Demon King's army. But the Stone Dwarves of this rock city inside the mountain range simply refused to believe they were inside the Tower.
So they dismissed Han Se-ah's Tower talk as some other race's incomprehensible joke, moved on, and told us they had a favor to ask. Main quest and side quests, naturally.
So… was the 41st Floor a racial war, then?