Chapter 134

Bait

An immense quantity of runesteel lay buried in Whitewolf County 2. But to check its concentration and purity, I had to go there, extract some ore, and inspect it myself. Heading straight to County 2 was more efficient than stopping at Whitewolf county first.

“I'll be going my own way from here.”

That was what I told Seraphia as she leaned her head out the carriage window, but...

“Whaaaaat?!”

She suddenly cried out in alarm, whipping her head around. The rushing wind sent her silver hair flying in every direction.

“Y-your own way? What do you mean?!”

“Exactly what I said. I'll be traveling separately from here, so go on ahead to the county.”

“... What?”

Seraphia leaned farther out of the carriage.

“Then what about you, Brother?!”

“I have something to take care of.”

“Something to take care of...?”

“I need to inspect the territory His Highness Leon granted me.”

“Then I'll come with—!”

“There's no need.”

“Why? Is there some reason I can't come with you...?”

Confusion and anxiety flashed across her face at once. I considered how to explain this.

An immense amount of runesteel lay beneath County 2. Of its total area of 282 km², 46.7 km² consisted of runesteel veins. In other words, runesteel veins covered roughly 14% of County 2.

And yet...

'Avarus didn't know there was this much runesteel buried here.'

Despite having spent at least several years in Veneron viscounty.

And it wasn't just Avarus. The Emperor hadn't known either. That defied common sense. It made no sense for such a vast quantity of runesteel to have gone undiscovered by everyone.

In other words, there had to be a reason Avarus hadn't discovered the vein, a reason the Emperor couldn't have found it. Either that, or the runesteel wasn't of sufficient quality to make mining profitable.

Unfortunately, 「Management Mode」 didn't provide that sort of information. Without knowing what the problem was, I couldn't reasonably take Seraphia along.

“I'm only going to have a look around.”

“...”

“So go on ahead to the county.”

Behind her windblown silver hair, Seraphia's eyes wavered with distress. She looked as anxious as a puppy in the rain. I could more or less tell what she was thinking, so I added with a quiet sigh,

“I'll return to the county once I'm done.”

“R-really?”

“Yes.”

“You mean it?!”

“Yes.”

“You'll definitely come back?!”

“...”

“A-all right! I won't ask again!!”

Seraphia scrambled back, ducking into the carriage as quickly as a mole.

“H-he'll come back, won't he...? He'll definitely come back.”

I could hear her muttering inside, still unable to shake her unease.

As if to shake it off myself, I changed course and ran away from the procession.

* * *

As Iliana, a hero of the allied army, had told me:

[“Ore veins are generally buried in environments with intense tectonic activity, where minerals can accumulate over long periods.”]

That was why ore veins were usually hidden deep underground.

The Blacksmith, another hero of the allied army, had put it this way:

[“Ore veins are the earth's blood vessels, the hidden arteries of its heart!”]

That didn't mean they existed only underground. Mountainous terrain also met the conditions for runesteel deposits. So I dug into the earth and scoured the mountains in search of the vein.

Fortunately, digging wasn't much of a problem. Even without Monomolecular Blade[S], Dragon's Claw[A] could easily break through enormous rocks and layers of earth.

After five full days of searching for the runesteel vein...

“... Why isn't it here?”

I still hadn't found it.

By now, I'd searched almost all of County 2. If runesteel veins covered roughly 14% of its area, I should have found one long ago. Could the information possibly be wrong?

“That shouldn't be the case.”

The messages might be unhinged, but they didn't lie.

“So there really was a reason Avarus and the Emperor couldn't find it.”

On the other hand, this made it more likely that the runesteel's quality would exceed my expectations. They probably hadn't left the vein untouched despite knowing about it; they'd simply failed to find it. The problem was, I was having trouble finding it too...

“Guess I don't have a choice.”

I brought up 「Player Information」.

I hadn't idled away the journey back to the county. First, there were Assimilation[B] and Low-Light Vision[C]. By hunting Shameleon and Noctura, I'd completed both abilities. I'd also explored ways to manage Predator[M]'s overload while training my body every day.

==「Player Information」==

[Name] - Adrian Whitewolf

[Title] - Ruler of the North

[Level] - Level 109

[HP] - 12,940

[MP] - 0

[Sanity] - 54/ℵ0

[Stats] - Strength:101.2(+13.2) Agility:163.8(+37.8) Stamina:118.3(+27.3) Mana:6.9(+0.9)

[Experience] - 3.89%

Strength, Agility, Stamina. All three stats had surpassed 100. Those numbers included the boosts from passives and my title, though. In terms of base stats, only Agility was above 100.

“Strength and Stamina are rising so slowly through training.”

As my base stats approached 100, their growth through physical training was slowing dramatically. On that note, no amount of training was raising my Agility at all.

Anyway.

“Whew...”

I let out a deep breath. I couldn't help feeling nervous. And with good reason.

“Is this the first time since Violess?”

The excruciating pain had made me reluctant to use it.

But now that things had come to this, perhaps it was just as well. I could build up my proficiency in the process.

“If I tear this whole place up, it should turn up eventually.”

◆Activating evolved skill, Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon[L]!!

* * *

A thunderous roar burst from my fist.

ROOOAAARR!!

As the blazing Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon tore across the mountains, everything shattered as though raked by a dragon's claws.

And...

“Ghhhh...!!”

I felt like I was going to die.

My veins bulged as though on fire, and my muscles swelled as if about to tear. As my limbs began to tremble and my vision shook...

◆Withdrawing waste oil from Inventory.

I took out the oil and poured it into my mouth. Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon[L] only sacrificed one arm, so I could replenish my calories myself.

I replenished my calories and fired off Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon again and again. Every time, without fail, my joints tore apart. My flesh twisted, and my burning cells screamed with maddening pain.

By the time the number of blasts reached double digits, I was starting to get the hang of it. How many more times did I fire after that?

◆You have acquired the derived skill, Dragon Burst[E]!

I'd acquired a new derived skill. “Derived” meant something that branched off from an original. Find Weakness[U], for instance, was a skill derived from Predatory Instincts[S]. In other words, a derived skill was a modified, expanded version of its parent skill.

◆Dragon Burst[E]

: When using this skill, the player can select [any desired amount] of calories and [concentrate their consumption] in [any desired body part] to release an [instantaneous] explosion of energy.

This deals focused damage equal to [calories consumed x5] to enemies in a straight line.

<This is a derived skill originating from Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon[L].>

Its power fell far short of its parent skill, Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon[L]. But it let me release an instantaneous explosion from any part of my body.

If I concentrated calories in my forearm and released them, I could punch through an enemy formation with a single blow. If I concentrated them in my legs, I could charge forward explosively, tearing up the ground.

Its power had been halved, but in exchange, it had gained precision and utility. There was a reason it had been rated [E] for Epic despite being a derived skill.

* * *

I kept replenishing my calories and firing Dragon Burst[E], building my proficiency. As a result...

“... No wonder they didn't know.”

I realized the Emperor truly hadn't been able to discover the vein.

There were several interconnected reasons, but they boiled down to two main ones. First:

“This must be about eleven kilometers down.”

The vein lay unimaginably deep beneath the surface. Neither artificial explosions nor fissures caused by earthquakes could have exposed it. Even Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon[L] had its limits. Without boring down with concentrated bursts of Dragon Burst[E], I would have struggled to find it.

Even that had only been possible because I could precisely carve away the ground with Monomolecular Blade[S]. But what lunatic would do something like that to an innocent patch of earth? Without the information from 「Management Mode」, even I wouldn't have considered it.

That was the first reason the runesteel vein had remained undiscovered. But it wasn't the whole story. Deep as it was, a magical device designed to detect ore veins could still have located it.

The second reason the runesteel vein had gone undiscovered lay in runesteel's ability to nullify mana.

◆Runesteel Ore

[Runesteel Content] - 18.1%

A full 18.1% purity. Runesteel ore with a purity of around 0.0005% was classified as medium grade. High grade was roughly 0.0015%, and the highest grade was 0.003%. But at 18.1%, this was “Prime” grade, far beyond even the highest grade.

“At this purity, an ore-detecting magical device wouldn't pick it up.”

Its purity was so high that it completely nullified mana.

No magical detection method could sense it. The sheer size of the deposit made it even harder to detect, leaving it undiscovered throughout history.

In other words...

“Jackpot!!”

No, the jackpot of all jackpots.

* * *

After confirming the runesteel vein's existence, I headed not to the county, but to the commercial city of Frecce.

A purity of 18.1%. A staggering 1.67 billion tons of runesteel. This could do more than change the course of a war. It could turn the whole thing upside down.

But it wasn't all cause for celebration. For one thing, the runesteel vein was far too deep. Mining it would be more than difficult; it would be nearly impossible.

Rigid Body Transformation[U] let me endure the conditions to a degree, but only to a degree. I couldn't last even five minutes. The pressure and temperature underground were that severe. Even a knight cloaked in aura would have their skin cooked.

Digging so deep had also destabilized the ground. The risk of an immediate collapse during mining was enormous. Installing safety measures, hiring workers, and so on would require a tremendous initial investment.

“Funding isn't much of a problem.”

The problem was technology. Technology to make specialized equipment that could withstand the underground pressure and heat. Technology to stabilize the ground.

And that wasn't all. Even if I somehow managed to mine the runesteel ore, smelting it would pose another major challenge. Runesteel was extremely difficult to smelt. Only skilled artisans with advanced techniques could do it. But Whitewolf county had neither such artisans nor the necessary equipment and facilities.

To be brutally honest...

“There's nothing I can do with it right now.”

It was a prize completely out of reach.

But that was fine. It wasn't as though I had no options. There was a way to gather the continent's finest artisans in the county and build the continent's best facilities and equipment.

To that end, I'd torn out roughly a ton of runesteel ore and stored it in the Infinite Inventory. The underground conditions had been hard to withstand even with Rigid Body Transformation[U]. Extracting that ton had been a hell of an ordeal, but...

“Time to put out some bait.”

If he was the man I knew, he might come charging in as early as tomorrow, kicking down the county's gates.

* * *

Cambions. The bastard offspring of nightmares and humans. Some cambions, however, longed to abandon a life sustained by physical seduction and desire, seeking instead to live in harmony. From that longing arose a race of nature: elves.

Together with spirits, elves sought harmony with nature, finding ways to damage it as little as possible. They shunned unnecessary technological development. Mass production in particular was strictly forbidden, regarded as an act that disrupted nature's harmony.

But just as one or two wolves in a pack had grown friendly enough to rely on humans, giving rise to dogs, and just as a few cambions had dreamed of harmony with nature, giving rise to elves, some elves did not seek harmony with nature.

They said:

We merely wished to be free of greed and desire. We never wished to be bound by nature. Must we subject ourselves to such an inconvenient life for nature's sake?

You call it the natural order when a wolf eats a deer, so why condemn an elf for doing the same?

How arrogant. We elves are part of nature too.

You claim to live in harmony with nature, yet under the guise of harmony, you indulge in the arrogance of believing you stand apart from it and can rule over it. That is why you pity life and nature.

The elves eventually split, taking two separate paths and turning their backs on one another. Those who refused to be bound by nature, who sought only freedom, ventured underground, where the earth's resources were plentiful.

Elves who lived in the deep darkness beneath the earth. To distinguish themselves from other elves, they took a different name.

Dökk, meaning black.

Álfar, meaning elves.

Dökkálfar.

In other words, they called themselves dark elves. Elves of the underground. Dark elves.

Over many long years, the underground environment changed the dark elves. Living underground made them shorter. Working ore veins replaced their slender frames with muscular bodies.

As they rejected harmony with nature, spirits faded from their memory. Aesthetic beauty was melted away in their furnaces. Short stature. Ugly faces. Heavily muscled bodies.

Humans thought:

'These things are supposed to be elves?'

Search as one might, they bore no resemblance to the beautiful elven race. Since they looked nothing like elves to human eyes, humans gave them a new name meaning “a person with dwarfism.”

And so the race known today as dwarves was born.

Dwarves, a race of master artisans. Unlike elves, dwarves maintained contact with humans for many years.

But humans, blinded by greed, betrayed their trust and exploited their strong bodies and exceptional technical skills. In the end, the dwarves turned their backs on humans, just as the elves had. They retreated even deeper underground, where humans could not find them, and established a kingdom of their own. Feractrum, the subterranean realm deep beneath the earth, faded from human memory.

Feractrum barred outsiders with self-regenerating labyrinths and gravity distortion fields. Rivers of dark red lava flowed languidly along the walls of vast caverns. Iron filings and sparks flew between the rock faces, and the echoes of hammering never ceased.

“Chief! Hey, Chief!!”

A dwarf violently kicked open the smithy's door.

“Word is, some high-purity runesteel ore has turned up in that human city, Frecce!”

The muscles of Brumbar, chief of the dwarves, twitched.