The Call of the Underground 2
Saying they would dig through the underground did not mean construction started right away.
As with any large-scale civil engineering project, even Stone Dwarves who lived underground and spent their lives carving through earth still had a mountain of surveying and preparation to do. Watching the other Stone Dwarves break into a mad sprint the instant Elder Bobo suggested opening a passage, though, gave the whole thing a rather different flavor.
Looking at the younger Stone Dwarves, it felt less like a major excavation and more like they were prepping for a festival. As if to confirm that impression, one of them helpfully filled me in.
"When we punch a big tunnel with a Vacuum Stone, we get to haul out tons of rare ores and gems that come up along the way!"
"Ah, I see."
"What do you mean, 'thanks'? We're the ones who should be thanking you, Softie!"
Apparently, carving a new passage was something like a festival to them. No wonder the young Stone Dwarves with those high, boyish voices had looked ready to die of joy at Bobo's words.
"So that kid dwarf who said he wanted to open a passage when we took the subquest was foreshadowing after all. But do ores and gems really just show up from cutting a path?"
And so we found ourselves with free time in the underground city.
Grace and Katie headed for the market to browse weapons the Stone Dwarves had forged for the multi-race alliance fighting the Demon King — arrows, swords, and the like. Han Se-ah had meant to tag along and show the underground city to her viewers, but Irene had already latched onto her.
Having watched her collapse from mana exhaustion, Irene was not about to let go, and marched her straight toward the inn. I had no particular desire to window-shop the market either, so I went with them. Naturally, my plan was to kill time on the internet.
Grace and Katie had clearly been hoping I would come along to the market… but I already knew how this worked. Two women browsing weapons was still shopping, and once you got snagged there was no escape.
"Come on, Unnie, I'm really fine…"
"Even so, you need a full day of proper rest. I heard monsters might appear when they open the passage, so you have to manage your condition."
Watching Han Se-ah get hauled off by the arm, I slipped into an empty room of my own. The entire city had been transplanted into the Tower, so the inn had no other guests, and the Stone Dwarf who ran the place had vanished somewhere the moment he heard about the Vacuum Stone.
It was a city of stone, but caravans came through often enough that at least the beds were not rock. A stone mattress would have made lying down to watch holograms a little uncomfortable.
The building itself was stone, but they had considered their guests — the door was wood. Most of the furniture was stone, yet the bed still held a proper mattress. This inn might have been the only place in the whole city where something that was not stone existed.
I cracked open a hologram window and peeked at Han Se-ah's stream. Irene's hands were guiding her down onto the bed. Han Se-ah grumbled that the city tour was a lost cause, while the viewers cooed that this was even better.
Same old scene. I huffed a quiet laugh and closed her stream, opening a video site instead.
Just as news articles casually featured stories about Heroes Chronicle, the first virtual reality game, video sites had been flooded with content about it for quite a while now.
Everything from raw gameplay footage to reviewer breakdowns, science-and-trivia channels talking about virtual reality, and even fake news from people deep in conspiracy theories.
The idea that a VR game machine is a satanic coffin that sucks out people's souls is pretty novel, I'll give them that.
Among the trending videos sat one from none other than streamer Kim Seok-hyeon.
"Ah, damn — lizardmen again?"
Having cleared the thirtieth floor, Kim Seok-hyeon was clearly suffering through a poisonous swamp, and his overall appearance had gone ragged. The shield and armor covered in nicks and scrapes made him look less like a player and more like a seasoned veteran mercenary.
"Antonios, got any holy power to spare?"
"Of course, Brother."
It was not just the look. Kim Seok-hyeon, now up through the thirty-third floor, walked out toward a pack of lizardman skeletons with sword and shield in hand.
Apparently taking notes from Han Se-ah's stream, the mage called Emmett immediately turned the swamp into solid dirt, and Kim Seok-hyeon advanced across it. This was the thirty-third floor, not the thirty-first, and the experience showed — there was not a shred of hesitation in the way he charged a pack of a dozen-odd monsters.
This was the same man who had once yanked a giant iron plate from his inventory to stop a horned wolf's charge, who had rolled through the dirt dodging the coordinated strikes of five or six orc warriors — clumsy, but with raw talent shining through.
If not for the chat scrolling up in the corner of the recorded video, it could have passed for a promotional clip made by BB Games — the combat was that clean.
A worn, rusted scimitar and a one-handed sword sparked as they clashed, but only for a moment. The one-handed blade rode smoothly up the scimitar's flat and flicked through the skeletal lizardman's neck. A sharp, clean cut that dropped the lead runner in a single stroke.
"I'll hold the front — just cover the ones trying to flank!"
The fight that followed was just as one-sided. He knocked blades aside with a small shield, and whenever sword met sword he twisted his wrist with almost magical subtlety, parried, and took the neck. No flashy effects — just clean, concise swordsmanship that stole a life the moment you blinked.
In the ten-minute edit uploaded to the video site, Kim Seok-hyeon alone took seven heads out of fourteen enemies.
………If the related videos had not immediately served up a comedy clip of him chatting with viewers, misstepping, and sinking into a paralysis swamp, I almost would have rated him upper-grade adventurer material. Between Han Se-ah and Kim Seok-hyeon, the ones with good control always seemed to be missing a screw somewhere.
"Lately every other streamer is so buried in Heroes Chronicle I can't even book a collab~"
"Weapons? A real man goes greatsword, no question. …What? You were carrying a greatsword, snagged it on a tree, and got your skull caved in by an orc?"
"Nooo~! This isn't my aim — the tank suddenly moved sideways, okay?!"
The moment Kim Seok-hyeon's video ended, related videos from other streamers' Heroes Chronicle playthroughs sprouted up in a flood.
As expected of a game that demanded you use your actual body, people who fought as cleanly as Kim Seok-hyeon or Han Se-ah were rare. Most of them rolled through the muck, hit game over over and over, and barely managed to support their party members.
There seemed to be a particular romance around ranged DPS, too — among streamers who picked mage or archer, videos of them shooting their own warrior in the back were surprisingly common. Teamkilling by accident was more stimulating than a plain game over, and more fun to watch.
"Heyyy, what are you doing?!"
"This is why I can't stand rookie archers!"
"Mage, what are you doing?! Did you even learn properly at the Magic Tower?"
Warriors hit by friendly fire while fighting goblins or orcs would roll across the ground, faces twisted in fury. From burly, shaggy-haired men to sharp-eyed women, all kinds of NPCs would lose their tempers, and the streamers would tuck their tails and frantically mash the reset button.
Past those clips, wandering the vast cyber world, another kind of video started to appear. Beyond the skilled players and the hopelessly uncoordinated ones — virtual reality girl streamers had arrived.
Women confident in their faces and figures but not in combat. What they chose was to become part-timers or small business owners in the adventurer cities. Carrying beer mugs through inns, listening to adventurers' exaggerated tall tales, and chatting with their viewers the whole time.
"Aww, oppas. Orcs can smash a log barehanded? Is that for real?"
"Today's earnings: forty-two silver! If I save a little more I could open a street stall — should I go stall vendor, or tough it out until I can open a proper shop?"
"Me? I've always wanted to be a café owner. They have macarons here too, right?"
In short, they were running fantasy versions of part-time job vlogs.
People really would stretch their creativity in every direction when there was money to be made. A female streamer in a waitress outfit with a suspiciously deep neckline was cooking stew for an inn-waitress vlog, chatting with her viewers the whole time.
A cook-stream that showed off her figure, while also listening to boastful adventurers' jokes and talking to chat. Types of streams I never would have imagined were overflowing everywhere.
…Watching that soft voice and the bubbling stew, time slipped past, and morning arrived even in the dim underground city.