The Hidden Mine
After digging for a full day, the place we reached after about three minutes of movement looked no different from the terrain we'd been walking through until now. A refreshing plain stretched out beneath a sea of green. The only real difference was that the elevation here was slightly lower than the surrounding area.
"Hmm... Are you sure there's really a path to a mine here?"
I nodded firmly at Yeonhee's question, then took a few more steps and pointed at the ground. She nodded in understanding, then began chanting a spell and summoned something from her portal.
"Wangwang-ah—"
Yeonhee called forth the master of tunnel digging, and soon a plump, chubby dog appeared.
"Huh? You even have a Mole Cricket?"
"I didn't realize you only kept combat-type summons. That's amazing..."
"...A chubby, cute puppy... Summoner... What a nice class..."
Of course, everyone present knew exactly why she'd brought Wangwang out.
(Time to put in some work, you pig.)
"Woof!!"
Wangwang snorted at me before quickly starting to dig where I'd pointed. Naturally, I joined in beside him, tearing into the earth to test the performance of the newly acquired trait Tunnel Digging.
Scratch scratch scratch—
'Oh, the ground definitely feels softer now.'
"Woof?!"
When Wangwang saw me digging with the Tunnel Digging trait, his already adorable eyes grew even rounder, as if he'd sensed the same energy.
"Woof! Waaang— Woof!!"
He started working his front paws even harder. The difference in hand structure was obvious—his digging speed was on a completely different level from mine. It seemed at least ten times faster.
'I should buy a shovel and some other tools.'
If I wrapped a shovel in mana and dug, I'd be much faster than this. Of course, the massive mana consumption would be a problem.
"Wow! This is my first time properly seeing a Mole Cricket dig a tunnel~"
"Same here. But Ilwol's really good at digging too? I heard the ground inside dungeons is hard to dig through... What the heck is he? I'm starting to get a little scared?"
"......"
Using Jua and Arin's chatter as fuel, we dug for another ten minutes or so. Then Wangwang stood up on his hind legs and signaled to Yeonhee.
"Looks like something came up."
"Whoa... L-let's head down first!"
Arin and Jua wore expressions that said they still couldn't quite believe we'd actually found a mine. I fumbled around the hole I'd dug, grabbed the handle with some effort, and lifted. A heavy door hidden beneath the ground began to open with a long, groaning creak.
The entrance was large enough to fit four or five refrigerators at once.
Clunk—!
Gulp—
Everyone held their breath as they stared silently into the open doorway. Thick clouds of long-accumulated dust swirled for a while before finally settling, revealing a staircase leading downward. The party's faces brightened noticeably.
"S-stairs...! Whoaaa!! It's real!! Wahahaang!"
"Kyaaaaa!!"
"...Hehe... Khehehe..."
The moment the distinctive spiral staircase leading to the mine appeared before us, everyone who'd been holding their breath burst into cheers at once. Even the usually quiet Ham Eun-young let out a soft "Pshhh—" of laughter.
'Should check out a mine for the first time in a while...'
I already had a rough idea of the value of what was inside, so I remained calm. But the party members, faces flushed with excitement, began carefully descending the stairs.
Step— Step—
The staircase leading down wasn't very long. But when the group reached the bottom, they were greatly flustered by the maze of branching paths spreading out in every direction.
For a moment, everyone's heads turned toward me. But I wanted to see how they'd handle it on their own, so I pretended to rummage through the sack of the Kobold, Ttungi—who I wasn't even sure when I'd summoned.
Deprived of my help, they all seemed to dig up fragments of long-forgotten knowledge. Their eyes drifted left as they fell into thought. Among them, Yeonhee was the first to step forward and take action.
"Umm... So..."
She picked up a stone that had fallen on the floor of one of the paths and threw it as hard as she could.
Clack— Rumble— — —
She tilted her head and listened carefully to the sound, then repeated the process at each fork. Finally, she pointed to the far-right path.
"Th-this one seems to be the longest..."
"That's right~!"
'Oh...? Correct answer.'
The far-right path where the sound of the stone had grown gradually fainter over a long time.
"It's certain. They say the longest tunnel usually has the most magic stones buried in it, right?"
"Yeah. Otherwise there'd be no reason to keep digging in that direction. Shall we go?"
Yeonhee sent Ran and Ttungi ahead down the chosen path to scout first. After walking along the tunnel for about fifteen minutes, the two returned with positive news.
(Master. There were quite a few things that were shining quite brightly.)
"Thanks, Ran. Everyone, it looks like this is the right path."
"Hoooo... We're really the owners of a mine...?"
"......"
A short while later, we entered a wide-open cavern where dozens of small tunnels had been drilled into the walls. It wasn't completely covered in glittering magic stones, but we could clearly see quite a few high-quality ones embedded throughout.
"Kyahahaha!! Jackpot!!"
"What is this on our very first day partying with Yeonhee!!"
As far as I remembered, the value of this place was around fifteen billion won. Of course, that was a simple calculation based on the amount of magic stones buried here. Once you subtracted labor costs for the miners, equipment, security personnel, and so on, the actual net profit would drop significantly. On top of that, this was a government-managed dungeon. The profit that would actually come to us wouldn't be nearly as much as they thought.
"How long does mining usually take?"
"I heard a place much larger than this took two full years of steady work to finish. At this scale, maybe within a year?"
"Haa, we can't just keep all of this for ourselves?"
"I heard magic stones from nature are hard to sell unless you go through official channels..."
Magic stones obtained from monsters are already refined enough to be used in daily life, but naturally occurring ones must be extracted along with the surrounding rock and go through several stages of processing by hunters with the Alchemist trait before they can be used. So even if we wanted to keep them all for ourselves, we couldn't.
"We'll have to report it first. From what I heard before, it takes several months before any profit comes in..."
"That's right~ Still, after about a month, we'll start getting steady deposits like a salary!"
"Hehe... Salary..."
"Yeonhee, you're seriously black..."
Suddenly, Bae Jua and Baek Arin hugged Yeonhee tightly and rubbed their faces all over her cheeks.
"Eh? W-wait..."
In a way, it was only natural. Any mine discovered inside a dungeon was automatically divided equally among party members. Since they'd hit the jackpot without lifting a finger, they couldn't help but feel grateful to Yeonhee, who possessed me.
'When I received it before, I think it was about one thousand five hundred per month...'
The amount we received was slightly over ten percent of the estimated initial deposit value. That was then divided among four people and spread out over several years. The payment period the group knew about would stretch out much longer than they expected. The management agency had set it up to take at least two years minimum, because paying out profits in a short period would cause their expenditures to fluctuate wildly.
"At least a hundred million per month, right?"
"Gasp! Jackpot!"
"A hundred million... Hehehe..."
"Ilwol, should we move?"
I nodded.
Unfortunately, there was a huge gap between their expectations and reality. For a brief moment, I recalled the memory of a former colleague who had thrown a fit, complaining about how much the country was taking from him despite everything it had done for him.
Anyway, I slipped away from the excited party members who were busy exploring the mine and narrowed my sensory range to search the outer areas.
'Where are you, you little bastard.'
What I was looking for was a rare mineral called Kardinite, which would serve as material for a greatsword. Weapons were normally made primarily from magic stones of defeated monsters and iron ore obtained inside dungeons. Adding Kardinite greatly improved their strength, durability, and corrosion resistance.
'Found it.'
I sensed a foreign mineral embedded deep inside one corner of the wall. The deposit was small—about the size I could grab if I spread my arms wide. But since it was used as an additive, the amount needed was small. There was more than enough here to craft my weapon.
Scratch scratch—
I wrapped my hands in mana to strengthen them and began tearing into the wall.
"Huh? Is there something else?"
When I suddenly started scraping at the wall, the others came over with curious expressions.
'This is ours.'
I spent quite a long time digging into the wall before I reached something my hands couldn't even scratch.
'How do I do this...'
A portion of the Kardinite chunk firmly embedded in the wall had been revealed. I briefly considered using a bomb to blast it out but quickly shook my head. Doing it wrong could damage the mine itself, and the noise might attract monsters, which would be a huge hassle. So instead, I carefully chipped away at the wall with a dagger, like a paleontologist carefully extracting a fossil.
It still wouldn't fit in my inventory yet, but once more than half of its shape was exposed, I should be able to store it.
Scrape— Scrape scrape—
'Ugh, damn it. Half? No way.'
I quickly realized this method would take forever. In the past, I had never mined it myself, so I hadn't realized how difficult it would be.
At that moment, Ttungi, who had been blankly staring at me from behind, tapped me on the back.
(Hmm? What is it?)
Without answering, the little guy started rummaging through the sack on his back and pulling things out one by one. Chisels, a chisel-like tool, a hammer-like mallet, a pickaxe, a small shovel the size of a trowel—various tools came out in a steady stream. Every single one of them was covered in years of wear and tear.
'Wait... When I searched through it earlier, none of this was there?'
Was it some kind of magic sack? I tilted my head in confusion while Ttungi expertly threw himself into the small hole I'd dug in the wall.
Clang— Clang— Clang— Clang—!
The moment he went in, rhythmic metallic sounds began ringing out in perfect time. Ttungi's swift movements, something I'd never seen before, were enough to captivate my eyes. And on his face, I could clearly see an unmistakable look of satisfaction.
Yeah... So you had something you enjoyed too...
But watching him, I couldn't help but laugh inwardly.
'This bastard is insanely fast?'
I was now convinced that his usual act of pretending to be a lazy sloth was completely fake. Still, since he was diligently helping me right now, I decided to leave him be until his true nature fully revealed itself.
Twenty minutes later.
'Wow... He cut it all in just twenty minutes?'
Ttungi lay sprawled on the mine floor like he'd burned himself white, breathing heavily. When I looked into the hole he'd dug, the Kardinite—which had clearly been tangled up with all sorts of other random minerals—was now neatly separated and lying on the ground.
I picked up every red-tinged stone, big and small, and tossed them into my inventory.