The Call of the Underground 1
Gust of Wind was a spell that whipped up a powerful gale, scattering gas and fog and knocking airborne enemies out of the sky.
Most magic could be summed up as "a spell that summons XX," and Gust of Wind was no exception — a spell that summoned a blast of wind. And most mages directed that blast outward from themselves toward their target.
In other words, what Han Se-ah had just pulled off — controlling the wind so it flowed from behind a freefalling Vacuum Stone in midair, toward someone who'd kicked off into empty space — was the magical equivalent of a right-handed person writing mirrored, 180-degree-reversed letters with their left hand. A genuine stunt.
Han Se-ah… is she a god?
It wasn't the kind of control you expected from someone who'd reached the Upper-grade rank by clearing a game quest and collecting a reward, rather than through years of steady training and meditation. It was artistry.
And the Han Se-ah who'd just pulled that off was currently—
"Hwaah… I wann' keep goiiing…"
"Hanna? I know you're disappointed, but you need to close your eyes and rest."
"I knooow, unnie…"
—slung over my back, being carried along without even managing to stash the Vacuum Stone in her inventory.
Right after getting high off dumping an absurd amount of mana into the Upper-grade spell Call Lightning, she'd slammed every last scrap of residual magic into Gust of Wind. The backlash had left her completely mana-exhausted.
I'd thought she was pouring a little too much into that lightning call…
Han Se-ah… is she an idiot?
Mana was an energy that circulated inside the body the same way life force did, so draining it dry came with side effects. Just as running out of stamina brought on dizziness and lightheadedness, burning through every last drop of mana left you like this.
Ever since her novice adventurer days, Han Se-ah had always kept about thirty percent of her mana in reserve on my advice. She'd hunted with Sparks and staff-whacking instead of spamming Magic Missile, so this was her first real mana exhaustion.
I'd heard that ordinary mages felt a searing pain in the heart alongside a seasick, spinning dizziness — but apparently the game had only implemented the vertigo and left out the agony. Hit with a mana-exhaustion debuff that felt more like a hangover, Han Se-ah babbled at her viewers.
"Aiiigh, whose aim is this sloppy? The second I get mana exhaustion my arms and legs won't move right and my jaw won't work either? Inventory won't even open. For real."
There was a reason for the bizarre sight of me retreating with a cloth-wrapped Vacuum Stone dangling from my left hand like a watermelon and Han Se-ah on my back with my right.
There was no way we were walking into the unknown territory of a harpy nest with a party leader who could barely speak from mana exhaustion. So the plan changed naturally — grab the Vacuum Stone and head for the Stone Dwarf city on the 41st Floor. Monsters or not, the harpies didn't react much even after their cliff-path-cutting gambit got shut down. They just let us go.
Leaving the cloud-wreathed high peak behind us, we moved on without a single black harpy diving at us and found a suitable cave to rest in.
"So this is a Vacuum Stone? Weird how bright red it is."
"They're not going to use it raw, right? They'll process it somehow?"
"Probably? The Stone Dwarves all seem like master craftsmen."
Fortunately, the cave interior was calm enough that we didn't need Han Se-ah's help. Since she couldn't open her inventory through the mana exhaustion, the party just sat down on the floor and gawked at the Vacuum Stone together.
For something the Stone Dwarves had called rare, the Vacuum Stone looked a little cheap. A bright red rock — how to put it — like the iron oxide ore you'd see in a science textbook. Being a mineral rather than a gemstone, it was just a rough, reddish, lumpy boulder. Nobody was going to call it beautiful.
I was curious what would happen if you poured mana into it, but if I poked it carelessly and punched a hole straight through the cave floor into whatever lay below, there'd be no bigger farce than that. The Stone Dwarves could satisfy my curiosity. I'd hold off.
"Yeah, better not mess with this."
"We'll get to see the Stone Dwarves use it. Let's be patient a little longer."
Katie and Grace seemed to be thinking the same thing — both of them twitched their fingers as they stared at the Vacuum Stone sitting alone on the magic-tool sealing cloth. For something we'd only gotten after our party leader collapsed from mana exhaustion, it looked a little underwhelming, which somehow only made the curiosity worse.
The mana-exhaustion debuff cleared faster than expected, as if the game had no intention of locking a player down for a full day, and the Vacuum Stone slipped neatly into her inventory.
After spending a night in some cave on the 42nd Floor, we brought the Vacuum Stone out in all its crimson glory in the dwarves' city — and the Stone Dwarves lost their minds. Old Bobo just nodded along, but the younger Stone Dwarves all started talking at once like a choir.
"Well I'll be… that's a real Vacuum Stone…?"
"The soft-skins brought a Vacuum Stone!"
"That's a Vacuum Stone? I've never seen one…"
Whether it was precious or not, it was clearly rare — most of the younger-voiced Stone Dwarves had only ever heard of Vacuum Stones and were seeing one in the flesh for the first time. The way they buzzed with curiosity but couldn't quite bring themselves to approach was pretty striking.
Then again, a Vacuum Stone was a vicious thing that disintegrated the rock and soil around it. Not many people would walk right up to a blast furnace just because they'd never seen one. Or maybe it was more like standing face-to-face with an industrial-grade rock crusher.
Only Old Bobo gently ran his stone fingers over the Vacuum Stone, appraising it. Craftsman race or not, they had no facial features to speak of — but those stone hands were exquisitely delicate.
"No doubt about it. This is a Vacuum Stone from Old Pipi's mountain range."
"But that's not a place soft-skins can reach in a few days' walk."
"Didn't the soft-skins say our whole mountain range got moved somewhere?"
While Old Bobo appraised the Vacuum Stone in silence like a jeweler examining a gem, the other Stone Dwarves kept chattering. Talk of the Vacuum Stone naturally drifted toward Old Pipi.
They called her Old Pipi so familiarly that I'd assumed her city was nearby — but listening to them, it turned out the place was so distant they only traded through soft-skin caravans on a yearly basis.
The Stone Dwarves themselves had never left their mountain range, but according to soft-skins, hiss-hisses, long-ears, and all the other races, it was a journey of several months by carriage. We'd made that trip twice in less than a month. No wonder they were stunned.
"What even is a 'stone race,' you weeb trash. …Okay, but they really do talk a lot. Look at Grace unnie and Katie — both of them are so buried in chatter their lips are just twitching. Only Irene unnie looks calm, and that's because she's used to kids."
Just as Han Se-ah said, Grace and Katie were drowning under the sheer volume of chatter and could only listen, while Han Se-ah — whose gossip resistance had been leveled up through Antenor — let it all go in one ear and out the other, killing time by chatting with her viewers.
Of course, her viewers weren't the type to sit still for that, so they chewed her out about how there might be important hints in the dwarves' talk. But Han Se-ah wasn't about to fold over that level of nagging. She brazenly told them to figure it out themselves, and even those vicious viewers could only click their tongues.
"Hey, soft-skins. Appreciate you bringing the Vacuum Stone. But I've got one more favor to ask. More precisely — a commission. You lot said you were adventurers, didn't you?"
"Yes, we're adventurers."
While we'd been passing the time, Old Bobo seemed to reach some major decision. He nodded to himself and approached Han Se-ah.
Naturally, no player was going to turn down a quest. I'd thought it was a side quest, but the way things were shaping up, you could call it a main quest without stretching. If the viewers' theory panned out and an underground passage got carved from the 41st Floor all the way to the 50th, the impact would be enormous.
Han Se-ah smiled as if to say just name it, and Old Bobo pressed on without missing a beat.
"I don't fully believe what you've told us… but it's strange that the other caravans — the ones who said they were fighting the Demon King — haven't shown up. Soft-skins and long-ears both claimed they kept the front lines supplied with goods from our city."
Any ordinary surface race would have questioned the permanently locked weather outside and believed us — but the Stone Dwarves, unfortunately, were a people who'd lived their entire lives underground. That was probably why they still couldn't quite accept that their whole city had been dimensionally relocated.
"So we need to start moving. We're planning to dig a passage to another city — will you escort us? There are uninvited guests down in the mountain depths who come running whenever things get noisy."
"Of course!"
And just like that, a new quest began.