Rock vs Flight 2
A passage discovered in a cave on the 41st Floor, leading down beneath the mountain range. Follow the stairs long enough and you arrive at a city of Stone Dwarves — the kind who call humans "Softies" and harpies "Flappers."
What passed for eyes, a nose, and a mouth were little more than shallow carvings on the pebble that sat where a head should be, yet they spoke just fine, sniffed the air, and looked us over without any trouble. If they'd been larger, they might have looked like something out of a horror movie. Being small, though, they were nothing but cute.
"Softies like shiny things, don't they? There's a rock that only grows outside the mountain range — bring me some and I'll give you this gem."
"Some Softies who came to buy from me got kidnapped by Flappers once. Bring me a Flapper's red feather and this is yours."
"Hi, Softies! So, I want to dig a tunnel to another mountain range, but the grown-ups keep stopping me. Could you bring me some stalactites from a different cave instead?"
The sub-quests we picked up that way were all over the place. Everything from hunting the harpies who attacked visiting customers — mortal enemies of the Stone Dwarves — to gathering rocks and stalactites, as you'd expect from a race that literally ate stone.
Guild commissions wanted herbs and flowers that bloomed on the high cliffs of the alpine zone. The Stone Dwarves, true to their nature, wanted rocks from every location imaginable. That novelty alone had the viewers reacting pretty well.
The chat that had been boiling over from nothing but Han Se-ah's walking streams had gone strangely well-behaved, as if that whole mess had never happened.
"Right? Is there a reason they can't dig a new passage? Feels like we might have to take down some giant boss monster underground, not just the harpies. You know that feeling?"
They weren't the curvy-elf type, but a friendly demi-human race that could actually hold a conversation had shown up, and the viewers had gotten a lot more talkative because of it. Instead of the usual Han Se-ah roasting or the meaningless spam of gibberish, the chat was full of people piecing the story together.
A massive beast would appear underground and threaten the Stone Dwarves. Completing the quests and linking a passage to another mountain range would reveal another underground city. The harpies had to have a nest somewhere, and eventually we'd invade it—
"If we get the Stone Dwarves' help, we might be able to find those flashy harpies' nest."
"A nest, huh. That actually sounds pretty plausible."
"Even birds with wings can't stay in the air forever."
Among the theories, one matched what the party had been thinking — talk of a harpy nest.
Horned foxes hid themselves in piles of their favorite herbs. Orc warriors built their own villages. Monsters in the Tower had a habit of making dens. So even harpies that did nothing but fly around and harass us probably had a nest somewhere among the peaks. They even seemed to keep unicorn goats as livestock, didn't they? They formed flocks, had a hierarchy, and raised livestock — no way they were just roughing it without a nest.
The viewers expected a nest too, and Grace and Katie offered similar thoughts. Just as Manash the black Naga had helped us, getting the Stone Dwarves on our side might be the key to pushing through to the 50th Floor.
"Then first things first — we need to do their favors and get on friendly terms."
"It's kind of convenient, actually. A lot like guild commissions. And those have been drying up lately anyway."
"Yeah, the alpine zone starting from the 41st Floor doesn't have many people who know it, and not many adventurers come through, so the guild barely gets any requests."
And so, loaded down with sub-quests and every bit of armchair advice the viewers could offer from the underground city in the mountains, Han Se-ah climbed the stairs with a bright grin on her face.
Doing gathering quests beat walking under the harpies' eyes with no combat at all, right? Whether the metal ingots or the glittering things — gems? crystals? — the Stone Dwarves offered were actually valuable was anyone's guess, but these were still 41st Floor quests.
I'd heard that people move more for nearby rewards than distant goals, and Han Se-ah was the poster child for that. She still had no real way to counter or hunt the harpies, but she was beaming at the thought of digging up rocks.
"For now the harpies aren't attacking, so let's look for the passage to the 42nd Floor while we track down the things the Stone Dwarves asked for."
"Sulfur-colored rock from high up the range, stalactites from the safe zone on the neighboring mountain, and a harpy's red feather, was it? The feather's going to be tough."
"The guild commission is gathering flower petals that only grow high on the mountains, so we can look for those at the same time."
The rest of the party chatted among themselves as they climbed, still buzzing from meeting a demi-human race.
Me? Well… from my perspective, they were the ones from another world to begin with. Broaden the scope a little and Han Se-ah counted too.
After taking the Stone Dwarves' quests, we resumed exploring the 41st Floor — once we'd made a quick trip outside the Tower for supplies.
"…Something's tailing us quietly from below the trail. Feels like that shadow leopard Roland mentioned."
"If the mana stone rolls off the cliff it'll be a waste, so once it finishes climbing and jumps us, I'll take it."
Honestly, I wanted to grab old man Antenor's lantern from when he'd retreated on the 45th Floor and just blast straight through… but that would tangle the quest line into a knotted mess all over again. The Stone Dwarf city itself had been hidden in a safe zone on the 41st Floor, after all.
There was the leveling issue, the quest issue, and outside the game entirely, the matter of our party's experience. So we walked the cliff paths under the harpies' watch, and the only things that came at us were wild shadow leopards.
They lived up to the name — creeping up the cliff face below the trail to bite an ankle and drag you down, or scaling the rock wall to ambush from overhead.
"Hoo — they're tough, all right—!"
Other monsters roamed in packs of a dozen or more. The shadow leopard proved there was a reason it traveled alone, lashing out with claws honed to a razor edge.
It looked like a cute little kitty punch from the outside, but the force behind it rivaled a sword charged with aura. The near-black, deep ash-gray leopard threw out rapid-fire paw swipes, and Katie met every one of them with gritted teeth and a flare of pale blue aura.
Even so, Katie — now promoted to 5★ — put on a fight worthy of the title Frost Blade. Every time her pale blue aura slipped past the claws and scraped cleverly across the hide, frost bloomed across that sleek fur.
Kyaaaang—!!
"Hyaaat—!"
Sensing the tide turn, the shadow leopard twitched and tried to spin away. But it had taken hit after hit from that always-broken ice-attribute sword, and the slow stacks had piled up too high — it couldn't even pull back before its throat was cut.
Seogak— The sharp aura knocked aside a dulled foreleg and sliced clean through the neck. With a limp pyoong, the leopard collapsed into a mana stone.
True to a 41st Floor monster that didn't travel in packs, the stone was bigger than a fist and glowed with a rich light. Unlike the goblin mana stones so faint you couldn't tell if they were transparent or sky-blue, this one was a deep, vivid blue.
"Wow, the color's gorgeous. I heard some rich noble used mana stones like jewels — now I see why."
"Mana stones as jewels? …They are pretty, I'll give you that. But pure value-wise, aren't mana stones way cheaper than actual gems?"
"Uh… yeah, they are."
Still catching her breath, Katie picked up the mana stone from the tough leopard. Grace sidled over with some nonsense chatter. There was a reason the two of them were staring at the stone and talking about nothing in particular.
Far off, something red was visible among the dark mass of harpies.
A red-feathered harpy so small it looked like a floating speck in the air. Apparently the crone harpies weren't cutting it as our opposition, so she'd come out herself.
"…She can't hear our voices from here, right?"
"Good eyes, sure, but good ears on top of that? If she could hear us at this distance, she'd have attacked already."
The party huddled around the mana stone like they were admiring it, eyes fixed on the stone while they traded opinions. Through all our exploring and rock-gathering on the 41st Floor, we hadn't so much as tried to attack the harpies watching from a distance.
We'd never loosed a pointless arrow or spell — just moved with them trailing us like a tail — so the harpies had come closer than expected. Even with a command unit in the mix, the ones actually doing the watching were still the crone harpies: low-intelligence monsters.
The crone harpies let their guard down and edged closer bit by bit. The beauty harpy, watching them, used the crones as a shield and drifted in with them to satisfy her own curiosity.
"…Now, Unnie!"
"Got it!"
The result was a barrage of alchemical arrows from Han Se-ah, who had finally raised her alchemy level after soaking up viewer donations. Grace had been standing empty-handed, pretending to admire the mana stone — then she took the bow and arrows Han Se-ah pulled from her inventory and, in less than a second, opened fire like a machine gun.
No aiming, nothing — she just sprayed arrows into the air the way a cowboy empties a revolver, and not a single one missed. They sailed clean past the eagle-bodied crones and detonated in front of the beauty harpy floating a little higher, blooming outward like a spreading net of bright green adhesive.
An Intermediate-grade alchemical sticky bomb, the kind used for live capture.
"Hey, whatever — we caught her, that's what matters! …That way! She went down on that ridge over there!"
"Don't tell me she rolled off the cliff."
Through the panicking crone harpies, the beauty harpy spun as she fell. The near-fluorescent bright green adhesive was thoroughly tangled in her red feathers — you could see her thrashing as she dropped.
The silver lining was that she didn't plummet in a straight line. Desperate wingbeats sent her spinning in a gradual descent. Survival instinct kicked in; instead of vanishing into the abyss, she whirled and slammed into the mountainside — right on a trail players could actually reach.
We ignored the chaos among the harpies and sprinted over. There she was: a red-feathered harpy, knocked out cold and buried in dirt-caked adhesive.
"That's mission complete! She's alive! Capture a harpy unnie for close-up photos — mission accepted!"
Capitalism. Truly a terrifying force.