The Call of the Underground 4
The defense-type sub-quest was eating up more time than I'd expected.
The device the viewers had compared to some kind of boring machine from another game fired a blazing red laser beam that punched through the underground walls like a spoon scooping through pudding. Wherever the beam carved its path, raw ores of various metals and gemstones lay scattered about, and every time the device paused to rest, the Stone Dwarves would scramble over to scoop them up. Rinse and repeat.
And then, drawn by the scent of mana and the clamor of the Stone Dwarves, Earth Beetles would come wriggling in — as few as ten, as many as a little over twenty. That, too, kept repeating.
"Yeah, there's less tension than I expected. Because it's a sub-quest instead of a main one, maybe? Honestly, we're not doing anything that impressive — we're just opening the first passage on the 41st floor. Could be a kind of path-clearing tutorial."
Grace was conserving her alchemical arrowheads, and Katie had charged out saying she wanted a turn at them and cut the things to pieces, so it was hard to call these monsters threatening at all.
Living deep underground, crushing rock with their powerful jaws, their pill-bug-like shells hard as anything — you could call them the natural predators of the Stone Dwarves. But in the end, a rock shell was still just rock. If a mere stone could block aura, who would ever respect the Upper-grade realm?
Grace's vital-point defense-and-resistance-piercing arrows punched through their heads; Katie's aura split their bodies in half, and they turned into Mana Stones. As if to make up for the Mana Stones we hadn't been able to earn from the harpies, they kept pouring in and turning into Mana Stones.
"Don't hand everything over to the Stone Dwarves. Set some aside for the Guild and the Magic Tower as report samples — first time seeing this monster."
"Ah, right! We should let the Magic Tower know."
"We're handing them over for now since we're still opening the passage, but once a real path to another floor is established, we report to the Guild, the Magic Tower, and the Temple. No reason for us to monopolize contact with the Stone Dwarves, is there?"
Earth Beetles appeared from the far side of the passage and turned into Mana Stones before they'd even crawled halfway. Since they were rock-chewing bugs, the Stone Dwarves watching from nearby cheered every time one of them died — as if wondering whether the things ate Stone Dwarves too.
With that kind of atmosphere, our party's tension had loosened considerably. If a sudden threat hit us now, it could get a little dangerous… but at times like this, you just trust Grace's detection ability.
We chatted among ourselves, eavesdropped on the Stone Dwarves' conversations, and I snuck peeks at Han Se-ah's hologram window as she bantered with her viewers — and before I knew it, the Vacuum Stone had lost its crimson glow and fallen quiet. A passage connecting city to city wasn't going to be finished in a single day, so they were probably ready to rest.
At least BB Games had some conscience — once the Vacuum Stone shut off, the Earth Beetles stopped coming up. Fair enough. Even gamers need to turn the game off and rest at night. How were you supposed to run a 24- or 48-hour no-sleep all-nighter defense game?
"It'd be great if a passage from the 41st floor to a city on another floor actually connects. Crossing rope bridges while watching out for harpies isn't exactly a pleasant experience."
"The Magic Tower mages who retreated will probably come back too. With so much more to research, they might even be happier about it."
With our backs turned to the Vacuum Stone — still radiating a red light so intense it hurt the eyes — we talked among ourselves, and just like that, the first day of the defense slipped by.
Thinking of it as a game, day two probably wouldn't wrap it up. Ideally it'd finish within three days. Day one as the tutorial, day two for the mid-boss, day three for the final boss — wouldn't that fit perfectly? I didn't know why, but these things always felt cleaner when they broke on numbers like 1, 3, 5, 10…
While I was having those idle thoughts, a few Stone Dwarves approached us with arms full of ore. They held out some raw stones as if offering gifts, so I accepted them gracefully and stowed them in my inventory.
Surely this defense won't drag on past three days. That would be way too annoying…
And so, after another night at the inn, came the second day. Whether it was because we'd helped with the Vacuum Stone defense, or because the silver coins from last time had left a good impression, the innkeeper didn't charge us for lodging today.
The Stone Dwarves gathered before the Vacuum Stone the next day numbered a few hundred. I'd thought there were too few Stone Dwarves for a city this size — until someone explained that this vast city had been built to accommodate all kinds of other races from every region, and I found myself nodding along.
Stone Dwarves who never set a single foot outside the underground had handled all the metal refining and gem cutting, so of course the various other races of that world would flock to this city. How to put it — if you wiped out all the transient population from a certain district of Seoul, you'd end up with neighborhoods that barely had enough permanent residents.
"Honestly, listening to your story, we thought something was off too. There's no way only five Softies would show up in our city."
"Right! Normally Softies should come pouring in like the gravel on that mountain and pack our inn full. We even stocked up a ton of grass for the Long Ones."
So the fresh vegetables we'd received at the inn had been for the elves' meals.
True to the defense-game format, Earth Beetles came swarming out. The bugs the Stone Dwarves called "Wrigglers" poured forth, only to melt before the alchemical arrows Han Se-ah crafted and Grace fired — and watching that spectacle, the Stone Dwarves started chatting with us.
While Han Se-ah had been stuck under Irene's nursing care and missed exploring the city, she'd apparently rented out the empty alchemy workshop in the meantime and restocked her arrows. That was probably why Stone Dwarves she'd never met before were striking up friendly conversations — her social skills were genuinely impressive.
A dwarf who seemed to be the innkeeper and another who appeared to manage the alchemy workshop began sharing all sorts of stories at Han Se-ah's side.
"I always thought it was weird that only we were left in this city. Ever since my grandfather's grandfather first lit the flame in the alchemical circuits, I've never seen a city without Softies!"
"Same here. Unlike Softies, the Long Ones never lie — but this time they broke a time appointment, you know? Those Long Ones are great with bows. There's no way Flappers could take them down. The fact that they never showed… maybe, just like these Softies said, the Demon King did something."
It took a moment to translate the Stone Dwarf dialect, but what they were saying was clear.
The Stone Dwarf who managed the alchemy workshop had always sold wartime alchemical catalysts to humans, and the one who ran the inn said the elves who'd reserved rooms never arrived even after the appointed time had passed.
In short, when their city had been swept into the Tower, all contact with the outside world had been cut off. The reason they'd started believing our words was that not only had the guests who should have arrived from outside vanished — so had every guest who should have already been in the city.
Just as Manash, dyed black, had only hazy memories of the moments before his death, the Stone Dwarves who'd been carried here city and all seemed not to remember why their city had emptied out. Suddenly the city was vacant, their memories were foggy, and five strange Softies had shown up carrying a Vacuum Stone — so they figured they'd give us the benefit of the doubt.
"Whoa—! A King Wriggler!"
"Wow, a King Wrigg— pffft—!"
What cut short the two Stone Dwarves' chatter — which had been functioning like some kind of behind-the-scenes narration — was another dwarf's shout. The moment the red mana laser beam stopped, Han Se-ah burst out laughing and immediately swung the camera over. And there it was: a genuine King Earth Beetle.
A regular Earth Beetle looked like a giant woodlouse body with a predatory beetle's jaws bolted on — a compact-car-sized bug that wriggled along in a shell of ash-gray rock.
But the King Earth Beetle lived up to its name, dwarfing the ordinary ones. Whether it had simply eaten well and grown large, or whether it carried mana in its body like an Upper-grade monster, its shell gleamed. Not ash-gray rock, but a near-black metallic shell — and a body the size of a heavy dump truck.
"…Yeah. That definitely deserves to be called a king."
"The shell looks way tougher. Will arrows even work?"
Even at compact-car size, these things were practically man-eating predators the Stone Dwarves could barely fight. A dump-truck-sized bug chewing through stone as it advanced wasn't a predator — it was a murder tank. How was an elementary-schooler made of rock supposed to stop heavy construction equipment?
"I'll take that one. There's something I want to check."
To pull that off, you'd need a fighter who'd reached the Upper-grade realm — someone who could project mana outside their body.