Chapter: 343
“…Last time when we went to hunt the Witch of Lust, I thought I’d never have such a strange experience again since we had to search under the sea. Now we’re supposed to dig under the ground? Ha, what a bother. I guess dealing with witches really leads to all sorts of bizarre experiences.”
“Exactly, haha…”
As I mentioned that we had to search through a massive hole leading underground, Sylvia muttered to herself looking rather troubled.
Her words resonated with me so much that a bitter smile appeared on my face.
Do witches just have to shove whatever they’re hiding into such crazy places?
Sure, it might be an optimal hiding spot from their perspective, but it’s a real hassle for those of us trying to find it.
Just as I was lamenting the inconvenience caused by witches, Sylvia, who was observing the large hole, tilted her head and said something seemed off.
“By the way, that hole feels unnatural. It doesn’t fit with the surrounding rugged terrain, and the edges are unnaturally smooth—it almost looks like someone artificially made it.”
I nodded in agreement with her keen observation and replied.
“Good eye. That hole was created during the fight with the Witch of Sloth.”
“…What?”
Upon hearing that, Sylvia looked blankly at me, unable to understand at first.
Yoon Si-woo, who was standing next to her, pointed at a large rocky mountain nearby.
“Literally. There was a rocky mountain similar in size to that one where the hole now is, but it got obliterated by that witch’s powers during the fight. Scarlet carried on the battle after I collapsed, so the hole must have formed then.”
Sylvia stared dumbfounded between the rocky mountain and the newly formed hole in the ground.
She gazed at the towering mountain that reached up to the sky and the deep, enormous hole as if wondering how even such a massive boulder could fit into it.
Upon realizing that the gigantic hole was evidence of the fierce battle from moments ago, she asked us in a somewhat dazed voice.
“…What on earth happened here?”
Recalling the previous brutal fight, Yoon Si-woo and I shivered simultaneously, murmuring.
“…A terrifying battle took place. Just thinking about it makes me shudder.”
“…I wouldn’t say I’m terrified, but you can count me in on not wanting to remember it if possible.”
Seeing our reactions, Sylvia looked at us both, seemingly a bit guilty for making us go through that ordeal.
However, I didn’t want her to feel sorry about it unnecessarily, so I turned the conversation toward the search party she brought with her.
“By the way, Sylvia, I think I see a lot of familiar faces among the search party.”
In fact, I asked purely out of curiosity.
After all, the search party Sylvia brought seemed full of veterans, except for one notably small girl with orange hair.
“…If I’m not mistaken, that’s Jessie, right?”
Even though one of her eyes was closed, if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, the small girl over there was indeed Jessie, my classmate from the Academy.
Of all people, what was she doing here?
Just as I was pondering this in confusion, Jessie, realizing she was the main topic of our conversation, dashed over with her short legs and exclaimed.
“Scarlet!”
“…Jessie, what are you doing here?”
“Hehe, of course, I’m here as a squad member to help search for the Sacred Remnants!”
Well, that much was obvious, but…
I glanced over at Sylvia, wondering what was going on, and she shrugged, explaining.
“Well, there was an interview for selecting search members, and Jessie applied for it.”
She continued with her explanation.
“At first, we considered excluding her due to her age, but after Dwight, Marin, and Florene, all experienced hunters, made significant contributions as squad members, we couldn’t just ignore her.”
So we decided to hold a proper interview, and she had more competition than we expected, hence why she was brought along.
“Lately, it seems like all the mages are busy preparing spells to counter the Witch of Gluttony, so having someone like Jessie with telekinetic abilities is quite a rare asset. Plus, she insisted that she wanted to come along, so we had no reason to turn her down.”
Upon hearing this, I looked at Jessie, who sheepishly murmured.
“…I felt really bad for what I did to you, Scarlet. I’m not great in fights, so I wanted to help you in any way I could.”
The ‘bad thing’ she was referring to must have been when she attacked me just before I escaped the city.
Though, considering the circumstances, she ended up trusting and helping me in the end, so I had completely forgotten about it. It seemed she was still feeling guilty over that incident.
I felt both pity and admiration for her desire to repay her emotional debt to me, so I tousled her fluffy hair and said.
“…Honestly, you don’t need to worry about that anymore. I’m grateful you came to help anyway.”
“Aah! If you mess up my hair like that, it’s going to be a mess!”
After giving such a cute friend a big dose of affection, I felt energized.
Filled with motivation, I turned to the entire search party gathered around us and shouted enthusiastically.
“Alright then, everyone! Let’s go find the Sacred Remnants!”
And so we all plunged into the huge hole beneath us to search for the Sacred Remnants.
Thirty minutes later,
“…How are we supposed to find anything here!”
The enthusiasm that had brimmed within me was utterly shattered in just 30 minutes.
The number of reasons for this was many, but first and foremost…
“It’s dark…!”
Naturally, being underground, it was incredibly dark since there was hardly any light.
Without the glow created by Sylvia, Yoon Si-woo, and the tools we brought, we wouldn’t have been able to see a single step ahead.
Yet, once the lights were lit, what unfolded before our eyes was an otherworldly sight.
Even though parts had crumbled and been buried beneath piles of rocks and dirt, there were still innovative buildings full of ruins.
According to Sylvia, we’d probably stumbled upon an ancient underground kingdom of the Dwarves. At first, we were a bit excited.
Yeah, for about 10 minutes.
The reason for this was,
“It’s too complicated…!”
The underground structure was overwhelmingly convoluted.
The pathways between buildings were like a maze, impossible to survey from above, resembling ant tunnels.
It truly felt like it was designed to confuse and trap anyone trying to enter.
The most significant issue was, of course,
“Plus, it’s too vast…!”
The sheer size of the area.
With pathways blocked by rocks and mounds of dirt here and there, each time we reached an obstacle, we had to dig through it, and if we kept searching blindly, it could take days to finish.
Damn you Beatrice, you didn’t explain there’d be this kind of mess below just because you said it was down here!
I couldn’t help but let out a stream of complaints from my frustrated heart.
“This is troublesome.”
“Searching through here to find the Sacred Remnants feels like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
And just as I thought that, the other members of the search party were also looking equally puzzled.
In that moment, Jessie, who seemed to be using her telekinetic powers to move rocks about while searching the area, quietly raised her hand and murmured.
“Um… I think I might know how this structure works.”
“…Eh? You know how?”
Everyone looked on in surprise as Jessie shyly answered.
“When I was little, my grandfather told me a story about this place. Dwarves are quirky and when they built their kingdom underground, they made pathways people couldn’t find unless they knew their secret codes. I happened to get obsessed with that and learned how to decipher it a while back…”
“Huh? How do you know the codes only the Dwarves understand? Oh right, didn’t you mention that you have Dwarven ancestry?”
I think I vaguely recall hearing something like that from before.
As I asked, Jessie nodded and replied.
“Yeah. That’s why I know about Dwarven culture. Anyway, I decoded the codes drawn on that wall, and if you press this brick… Hup, like this…”
As Jessie spoke, she pressed one of the wall bricks and with a loud rumbling noise, the wall spun around and revealed a passageway.
“Whoa…! What’s this? A secret passage?”
“Yes! Following this path should lead us to the central area where main facilities are located.”
With some hesitance, we entered through the pathway she indicated.
Soon, we emerged in a space where the floor was covered in a black sheen like obsidian, revealing numerous architectural structures that looked quite significant.
There was no doubt; this looked promising.
As we marveled, Jessie cleared the dust off the buildings with her powers and said.
“This looks like the conference room, and that over there seems to be the bank. Overall, I think this is where the main facilities are located. The Sacred Remnants must have been important items to the Dwarves, so they should be stored in one of these buildings nearby.”
That much was sure.
By the way, if it weren’t for Jessie, we would have probably searched every single building outside.
I truly felt relieved to have Jessie here.
I sincerely breathed a sigh of relief and expressed my gratitude to her.
“…If you hadn’t been here, we’d have been in real trouble. Thanks for coming along.”
“Hehe, not at all… Anyway, let’s all search around here.”
“Right. Thanks to you, the area we need to search has been greatly narrowed down, so we should be able to find it soon.”
Thus, with Jessie’s assistance, we started our search, and unfortunately, after some time, we hadn’t made any meaningful progress.
“…Where on earth could that Sacred Remnant be?”
“Yeah… It feels like we’ve checked all the promising buildings.”
As I grumbled about the lack of visibility of the Sacred Remnant, Jessie shook her head as if something was off.
Having checked all the buildings nearby and still finding nothing meant it likely wasn’t in this area, but then where could it be?
“The Dwarven Sacred Remnant… was it called Everlasting Furnace? So, I figured it might be in a building like a forge, but there’s not a trace of a forge anywhere around.”
“Exactly. There’s no way a race obsessed with crafting and creation wouldn’t have a forge somewhere. I’ve definitely heard there was supposed to be an enormous forge in this kingdom…”
While searching together, Jessie and I grumbled and eventually decided to take a breather, sitting down on the ground outside the buildings.
At that moment, suddenly, Jessie’s eyes widened, and she began looking around as if she heard something.
“Scarlet! Did you hear that sound just now?”
“Huh? What sound?”
“The one that sounded like a hammer striking metal… Oh, hold on, it’s happening again…”
Saying that, Jessie looked around, trying to locate the source of the sound.
However, I had no idea what sound she was talking about.
It was strange.
It wasn’t like I had lost my sense of smell or taste; my hearing seemed perfectly fine.
What was Jessie hearing?
Confused, I asked her.
“I don’t hear anything. What sound are you talking about?”
“What? That can’t be! It was so loud! Oh, look, it’s coming from down below again…!”
As Jessie looked below, her eyes suddenly changed in a curious manner.
“Ah, I see! The furnace, black! That’s why!”
Muttering something I didn’t quite catch, Jessie suddenly grabbed my shoulder and shouted.
“Scarlet! It’s below!”
“Below?”
“Yes! Right beneath this floor! It’s completely black, isn’t it?”
Following her gaze, I looked down.
Sure enough, the floor beneath us was uniquely black.
But so what?
I gave Jessie a look that questioned her, and she exclaimed in frustration.
“Remember? The prosthetic arm I made for you! It was black!”
“…That’s true.”
“That’s it! Heat-resistant alloys usually appear black! The reason this floor is black is that it had to be made of heat-resistant materials! Which means, this isn’t a floor, but a ‘ceiling’!”
Jessie shouted excitedly and darted toward a specific spot.
In that instant, where she stepped seemed to dip down, and a massive gear grinding sound echoed throughout the building.
At that sound, everyone searching in the building rushed outside.
And there it was.
A piece of the ground we had just assumed was the floor slowly opened up.
“This below here was the forge where the Everlasting Furnace is located!”
As Jessie said that, her face lit up with excitement, ready to face the legends waiting within.
“Look! That’s where the Dwarves take pride in all those legendary weapons that were born from here—!”
But as her expression piqued with enthusiasm, it suddenly went cold.
“…What?”
Beyond the opened floor, a cold, desolate ruin was waiting for us.
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