Chapter 139

The Allied Army’s Blacksmith (2)

Thrandul, a steelmaster of Feractrum, stood gazing down into the pit Brumbar had entered. Its pitch-black darkness looked like the gaping maw of an abyss.

He wanted to go in himself, but he couldn’t.

“Eleven kilometers...”

It was an utterly unimaginable depth. Hell, even Feractrum, the kingdom of the dwarves, wasn’t that deep underground. In the end, all Thrandul could do was wait for Brumbar to return, however long it took.

It was tedious, but patience was a dwarven virtue. How many years had he spent silently hammering metal? For Thrandul, a master of top-tier smelting, waiting was a form of tempering himself.

One day passed, then two, three, and four. On the fifth day, he sensed someone stirring in the depths of the abyssal pit. Before long, Brumbar slowly came into view.

Brumbar’s skin was scorched black, and his clothes were charred. It was immediately clear just how intense the heat underground had been.

“Chief! Did you get a good look? How is it?”

Brumbar brushed himself off as he replied.

“I estimate there are roughly 1.6 billion tons of runesteel ore buried down there.”

“Good gods!”

Thrandul’s eyes widened in horror. And no wonder. A billion and six hundred million tons?

“How is that possible, Chief? How could there be that much runesteel ore—!”

“The strata date back to the Archean Eon.”

The Archean Eon. These were ancient strata formed in the era when life began. Tectonic activity had been vigorous then, and the active formation of sedimentary basins and volcanic activity had allowed certain minerals to accumulate in high concentrations.

“Chemical precipitation in the early oceans seems to have played a part as well.”

In other words, substances dissolved in seawater had gradually settled, forming a runesteel vein.

“What lies beneath us is the product of billions of years of geological change.”

“Then that means...”

“We can get the 150,000 tons of runesteel we need.”

But Thrandul’s expression did not readily brighten. The runesteel vein lay eleven kilometers underground, amid extreme heat and pressure. It was practically a layer of molten lava, an environment even he couldn’t endure.

“Chief, can you build the mining facilities?”

“Hmm.”

“It’s not just the heat and pressure. At that depth, mana interference will be severe, too. We don’t even know whether conventional mining equipment will work properly.”

Brumbar did not argue. It was all true.

“It looks like we’ll have to bring that.”

“You mean...”

Thrandul trailed off. A brief silence followed.

“That’s your life’s greatest masterpiece, Chief. Are you really all right with handing it over?”

Brumbar maintained his silence at the question. He wasn’t all right with it. How could he be, when it meant giving a human all the years and effort he had poured into completing it?

Above all, he disliked becoming entangled with humans this way. Once they became involved, what would the humans demand next? Whenever humans got what they needed, they always wanted more. That was why Brumbar was not all right with this.

And yet.

“I am Brumbar.”

That name also carried a responsibility: to forge what was unacceptable into something he could accept.

* * *

Most regrettably—

“I’m so, so sorryyy...”

Adlan had failed to produce a trial batch of chestnut beer.

With the additional investment of five million gold...

“It isn’t perfect, but I did somehow manage to finish the research...”

Adlan had been able to complete his research on the prototype.

But finishing the research wasn’t the end of it. Fermentation tanks, aging rooms, temperature-control systems—none of the production facilities were in place yet.

“The fermentation process is completely different from ordinary beer, so I couldn’t use the existing equipment...”

Even I could see that asking him to produce a trial batch in just five days under these circumstances had been unreasonable. If anything, it was astonishing that he’d finished the research at all.

“I’m truly ashamed...”

“No. You did your best.”

I had no choice but to return to the county empty-handed.

When I reached the drawing room at Whitewolf Castle, Seraphia called out happily.

“Oh! Brother! You’re just in time!”

Brumbar sat across from her. For some reason, though, Thrandul, the dwarf who had accompanied him, was nowhere to be seen—

“How did it go?”

“I accept your proposal.”

“Does that mean you can build the mining facilities?”

Brumbar gave a solemn nod. Just as I’d expected of him. His technical prowess was every bit as impressive as it had been in my previous life.

“But there is a problem.”

His expression serious, he continued.

“After inspecting the vein, I found that it lies in Archean strata. Given the properties of those strata, I expect severe mana interference.”

“Please go on.”

“As such, building the facilities with conventional mining equipment would be difficult...”

He proceeded to unleash a torrent of complicated terminology.

Honestly? He’d lost me at “Archean strata.” Fortunately(?), he summed it all up in one sentence at the end.

“To build the mining facilities, we need the Arcanoheart.”

The Arcanoheart...

“Do you mean the Mana Fusion Core?”

The Mana Fusion Core was a device that produced tremendous energy by inducing fusion reactions in mana, a primordial energy. It was the pinnacle and crowning achievement of magical engineering—and the greatest masterpiece Brumbar had ever created.

“How do you know about the Arcanoheart?”

Brumbar’s eyes narrowed as he questioned me. It was much like when Isolde had asked how I knew about Divine Ascension.

‘Oops.’

... I’d slipped up.

“Well... I read about it in a book.”

“A book?”

Seraphia tilted her head, but I did my best to ignore her.

Brumbar was silent for a moment. Fortunately, he didn’t press the issue.

“The Arcanoheart is currently in Feractrum.”

Feractrum, the kingdom of the dwarves.

“It must be physically transported here.”

“And transporting it won’t be easy.”

“Correct.”

Brumbar nodded. With good reason.

“The Arcanoheart is a fusion reactor that produces explosive amounts of energy through mana fusion. If we handle it too roughly during transport—”

“There’s a chance it could explode.”

The blast would be powerful enough to wipe an entire city off the map. In my previous life, we had even turned that to our advantage and used it as a strategic weapon.

“But there’s no need to worry. It has built-in safeguards, so it won’t explode even in the worst-case scenario.”

Without those, handling such immense energy would have been impossible. But...

“So long as no ignorant fool tampers with the reactor’s circuitry.”

To prevent precisely that sort of incident, the Arcanoheart used its own magical field to emit specific ultrasonic waves and vibrations into its surroundings.

“They resemble the biological waves a dragon emits. I deliberately designed them that way.”

It was meant to keep unwitting subterranean creatures away from the reactor.

Thus, the Arcanoheart generated a magical field imitating a dragon’s biological waves—Dragon Fear—naturally keeping monsters and other creatures from approaching. It was the ideal method of providing continuous protection while consuming minimal energy.

Provided, of course...

“Huh?! That’s actually possible?!”

...that one could artificially reproduce Dragon Fear.

“It is.”

Brumbar’s reply was firm. Seraphia’s eyes widened in surprise, but I wasn’t particularly shocked. I already knew. I had seen it often in my previous life and used it several times myself.

Of course, being a dwarf wasn’t what made him capable of creating it. He could create it because he was Brumbar. Brumbar, the hero of the allied army who forged the continent’s history. That was no exaggeration.

Civilization’s stages were classified by such terms as the Stone Age and Iron Age for a reason: smiths had driven the progress of civilization across the continent. Brumbar was the greatest blacksmith of all, revered even by his fellow craftsmen. That was why the allied army called him the [Celestial Blacksmith], a man who seemed to forge destiny with the power of the heavens.

In any case, all the continent’s monsters and creatures instinctively detected the Dragon Fear emitted by the Arcanoheart and wouldn’t go anywhere near it. With one exception.

“There’s one creature that won’t flee even after sensing a dragon’s waves.”

More precisely...

“It will attack despite knowing it’s a dragon.”

In short, it was insane. Yet however many lunatics the world held, that degree of insanity was rare. No, unheard of. What lunatic anywhere on the continent would pick a fight with a dragon? Still, the continent was vast, and it had its share of exceptions.

“That creature might appear while we’re transporting the Arcanoheart.”

Only now did I fully understand the “problem” Brumbar had mentioned.

“How likely is it to appear?”

“It’s more likely that it won’t. But if it does...”

“The Arcanoheart could end up exploding.”

Brumbar nodded gravely.

Silence fell for a moment as I considered the problem. There was actually a simple solution: the Infinite Inventory. I could just store the Arcanoheart in my Inventory and bring it here.

But the Inventory only accepted things I owned. The Arcanoheart was Brumbar’s life’s greatest masterpiece. There was no way he would hand it over to me, and I didn’t even know whether that would count as ownership.

‘Still, it might work.’

I would keep the possibility open, but I needed an alternative. As I continued turning it over in my mind...

“... What creature is it? Tell me, too! I want to know!”

Seraphia bounced on her feet as she asked. Apparently, however hard she thought about it, she couldn’t figure out what kind of lunatic would attack a dragon.

Well, neither had I. I simply hadn’t been able to believe that such an insane creature existed. But after coming face-to-face with one in my previous life, I had learned.

A mad creature that attacked dragons, the mightiest lifeforms reigning over all others. A deranged beast that hunted their young—hatchlings.

“An ogre.”

I had learned what an ogre was.

* * *

Tens of millions of years ago, there was an animal that had entered the sea, unable to support its own enormous bulk: the whale.

But not all the ancient whales ancestral to modern whales had abandoned land entirely and evolved into marine animals. Some of their ancestors had remained on land. Most went extinct, but a few survived to carry on their lineage.

[“The hippopotamus is a prime example.”]

The hippo: a whale that had survived by moving between rivers and lakes.

[“Instead of entering the sea, the ancestors of hippos became smaller.”]

In doing so, they had evolved to move freely between water and land, and ultimately survived.

But another descendant of the whale had evolved differently. They grew even larger and retained their powerful muscles. Then a mutagenic factor called Madness intervened, and some evolved into monsters. Carrying on the lineage of the whale, the sea’s supreme predator, they were reborn as the supreme predators of the land—

“An ogre?!”

Thus, the ogre was born.

There was a simple reason ogres went berserk in response to a dragon’s biological waves: to hunt their young, the hatchlings. And the reason they targeted hatchlings—

[“Because dragons are their only natural predators.”]

Once a dragon matured, it would prey on ogres. That was why they cut down dragons while they were still young.

[“It’s like wolves risking their lives to hunt tiger cubs.”]

In other words, it was an instinct to ensure the survival of the ogre species by reducing the population of their natural predator, the dragon.

Ogres were therefore treated as natural disasters. A creature powerful enough to hunt hatchlings was unstoppable once it began rampaging. All anyone could do was minimize the damage and wait for it to stop on its own.

“But as I said, an ogre is unlikely to appear. They should be hibernating right now.”

I agreed with Brumbar. Ogres were nearly extinct on the continent, and it wasn’t yet time for them to wake—

“Um... I’m sorry to have to tell you this.”

Seraphia spoke hesitantly.

“There’s an ogre awake right now.”

“An ogre has come out of hibernation?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I recently heard that an ogre had been sighted.”

“Where?”

Even I hadn’t heard that.

“At the court social gathering.”

“The social gathering?”

“The tea party, to be precise. I listened closely to what the nobles were saying. They said the roads in the central region were in a terrible state because an ogre had appeared...”

“Ah.”

Seraphia remembered The Forgotten Social Gathering in detail. She had said that listening to the nobles’ conversations let her gauge the kingdom’s situation and pick up valuable information.

“I heard it was causing problems with shipping Belgard’s local specialties.”

She had quite a keen instinct for gathering information.

“Then we must assume it will definitely appear.”

Brumbar’s expression hardened. Had it been hibernating, things would have been different. But if it was awake, its appearance was all but guaranteed.

“What about postponing the transport?”

“Until the ogre goes back into hibernation?”

“Yes.”

That would delay mining the runesteel vein, too, but there was still time before the Emperor began moving in earnest. It would be better than taking on the risk of an ogre, but...

“I would like to... but we need runesteel right now.”

Brumbar lowered his gaze and explained their circumstances. Unprecedented shifts in the underground strata were occurring in Feractrum, the dwarven kingdom. They needed 150,000 tons of runesteel ore to stop them.

“Disaster will strike within the next six months.”

But winter had only just ended. They couldn’t wait until winter returned and the ogre went back into hibernation.

Even if I wanted to tear out the ore for them, 150,000 tons was too much. Extracting that first ton had taken an entire day of backbreaking hell. To extract 150,000 tons? Simple arithmetic put that at 150,000 days.

‘No wonder.’

I’d thought Brumbar had taken the bait awfully quickly. But...

‘I never heard about this in my previous life.’

I searched my memories, but nothing came to mind. That narrowed it down to three possibilities. One: Brumbar simply hadn’t bothered to mention it in my previous life. Two: the shifts had never actually occurred. And three...

‘The empire has made a new move, something different from my previous life.’

In other words, some experiment or action by the Emperor that hadn’t occurred before might have triggered the shifts.

There were already some oddities, starting with the ogre’s appearance. This seemed to warrant a separate investigation.

In any case, that left only one option. Hunt the ogre. We would have to kill the land’s supreme predator. But that would be anything but easy.

“...”

Brumbar’s expression grew heavy. He knew all too well how dangerous an ogre hunt would be, and how many lives it might cost.

Perhaps that was why it happened.

◆Evolution Quest, [There Cannot Be Two Suns Under Heaven], has arrived.

A quest notification suddenly appeared before my eyes. And it was a newly introduced kind—an “Evolution Quest.”

==[There Cannot Be Two Suns Under Heaven]==

[Objective] - Devour an ogre

[Reward] - Awakening of the <Protohuman> Bloodline

[If Declined] - No penalty

‘Protohuman?’

My head tilted of its own accord.