Wizard of the Abyss - Chapter 274

Chapter 274: The Ark (5)

TL/ED – Miso

The next morning.

The dwarves, still steeped in liquor, hammered away wildly at the lumps of metal on their anvils.

“Today, we’re cutting that damned sword no matter what…”

“Let’s just shape the blade like a saw. At this point, who cares about pride or anything else?”

The fact that they’d spent days unable to best a sword some mere human had forged in ten minutes had clearly wounded their pride as a race, and they looked thoroughly out of sorts.

-Clap! Through that gloomy mood, a clapping sound that tore through the air rang out.

The dwarves’ gazes converged on one spot.

“Everyone, listen up.”

“What is it, old man Kaldrak?”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?”

Kaldrak, the old dwarf who had spent hours the day before in heated debate with me about the dwarves’ future, had eyes every bit as bloodshot as theirs.

It was because he hadn’t slept a wink. He looked at the bewildered dwarves, cleared his throat, and then opened his mouth.

“Pathetic, the lot of you. You still can’t cut a sword that one single human made? And you call yourselves dwarves?”

“…”

“…”

Kaldrak clearly commanded deep respect among the dwarves, since none of them voiced any complaint even at such a blunt insult.

Instead, perhaps feeling it was unfair, one dwarf raised an objection.

“Old man, we did try. Honestly, I’d say we already surpassed that sword’s level of craftsmanship.”

“Then why is that brat still hanging around our city?”

“…The material’s strange.”

Another dwarf answered, stroking his beard as if suspicious.

“You might think it’s an excuse, but that sword… it’s not some ordinary metal. No, it doesn’t even seem to be a lifeless thing to begin with.”

“You felt it too? Same here. Normally, when blades clash, even the finest sword takes some kind of mark. But that sword doesn’t leave a single one. It’s like the sword repairs its own wounds by itself.”

“It was definitely strange. Not that the forging itself was poorly done, but…”

As dwarves who had handled swords their whole lives, they had clearly sensed that something was off about the Ego Sword made from Nightchase, and once one of them opened the topic, several others nodded along.

Just before their suspicion could turn into certainty, Kaldrak clicked his tongue and glared at the dwarves with a contemptuous look.

“And so?”

“If we’d used the same material, a long time ago we’d have…”

“That’s an excuse, what else would you call it? If you had any awareness of being dwarves, you should have beaten a human even if you’d been handed nothing but leaves for material. Am I wrong?”

“W-well, that’s true.”

“What a sorry sight. The only thing more disgraceful than losing is refusing to admit you’ve lost. And that’s exactly what you lot look like.”

Having shut the dwarves up completely with just a few words, Kaldrak tossed a few lumps of metal out of his pocket as if getting to the point.

“Still, your guess was right. The brat was using entirely new metals. That’s probably why you couldn’t cut that sword.”

“What is this…”

The dwarves examined the dropped ores this way and that with curiosity, and then their eyes filled with astonishment.

“Huh, what is this? It’s not even steel?”

“Where’s something like this even come from?”

“Apparently he developed a new mine in complete secrecy. All of these were mined from there. From the start, the brat’s goal wasn’t to take the sword and leave; it seems it was to make us aware of how efficient that metal is.”

“That cheeky little brat…”

“Tch, he did succeed, though.”

The dwarves looked the ores over this way and that like children given a new toy, then asked back with anxious expressions.

“…So, old man, did you turn it down?”

“Are you planning to cooperate with the humans?”

“Well, no, it’s not like we’re saying we should cooperate, but…”

The dwarves glanced at one another and quietly slipped the ores into their pockets.

“Honestly, all this time we’ve just been making the same alloys and hammering away, it’s been boring. And we keep melting down every weapon we make, too.”

“It’s not that I’m saying we should strike a deal with the humans exactly, but still… I figure it’s at least worth hearing out what they have to say.”

“Right. If they need us that desperately, and we’ve already taken their help, we could give a little ground.”

Purely on the merit of the metal’s quality, it surpassed the techniques they had spent their entire lives mastering.

It was the sort of thing that might well have left them feeling defeated, yet once they actually thought about getting their hands on that metal, greed seemed to take hold of them.

Kaldrak waited until eagerness crept onto the dwarves’ faces, then let out a sigh as if he had no choice.

“What they’ve set as their condition is the building of a city.”

“That’s easy. I could do it on my own.”

“Except, a city vast enough for every living thing to live in.”

“…Every living thing?”

“That’s right. They asked us to build, underground, a city where animals including humans, plants, and even we ourselves could live for a long time.”

“Why would they ask us to build something like that?”

“How should I know?”

The dwarves hesitated for a moment, then soon smiled with confidence.

“But still, hard as it is, it’s not impossible. Worth taking on, isn’t it?”

“Within three months.”

“…No, that’s not happening. They just don’t want to give it to us at all!”

“In exchange, they’ve already prepared the space and laid the groundwork, and they said they’d assign us millions of assistants.”

“They’ve done the groundwork already…? Is that even possible? Hmm…”

The dwarves frowned and mulled it over as if weighing the various conditions, then at last gave a slight, reluctant nod.

“It might just be doable…”

“Hngh, but can it really be done within three months?”

“Then let’s put it to a vote.”

Kaldrak raised his hand as he answered, as if he had no more wish to talk.

“If even one of you objects, I’ll turn it down on the spot. Anyone opposed to building the underground city?”

No one raised a hand.

“Tch, you greedy lot.”

Kaldrak clicked his tongue as if displeased, then waved his hand about and left the place.

“Get ready. We’re leaving right away.”

“Heh, an underground city big enough for every living thing to live in, huh.”

“Looks like we’ll have to forge a few tens of thousands of shovels for this.”

While the dwarves, already blinded by the ores, headed off to their homes to gather their tools.

Watching that scene from afar through Current Sense, I shaped a sound right beside Kaldrak’s ear.

[Good work back there. You really do persuade them with ease.]

“I’m the one who changed the diapers of the oldest one here. And you…”

Kaldrak frowned and glared toward the hill in the city where I was.

“You know the groundwork matters most, don’t you? The reason those fellows accepted that condition is that in a large-scale project like this, the groundwork is what takes the longest. If the underground city collapses later, then that…”

[No need to worry, I’m working on it right now.]

“…Doing it right now? What nonsense is that? Groundwork takes at least a few months to…”

[Don’t worry. It’s almost done.]

As I answered Kaldrak, I slowly pushed up the last of the earth.

-Crrrack!

“…Ouch, my fingers.”

A desert thousands of meters away from here.

The earth and sand that rose up from beneath it formed the eighth mountain.

I rubbed my slowly aching back and let out a groan. After all, I’d been at this for hours on end ever since the night before.

A deep underground that would never flood, even if the entire surface were submerged beneath the sea.

Within it, the Sea Water was digging downward and compressing things like mad.

The space I was using as a reference was this city. The underground city the dwarves had built was very precisely designed, so it was a simple matter of taking this space, which I’d confirmed through Current Sense, and widening it several million times over.

Though it had taken a full twelve hours.

“Well? Think this is enough room to fit the entire population?”

I made a puddle on the ground and dipped Nightchase, who was still taking the form of a sword, into it before pulling her back out.

She said nothing for a while, then ground teeth that couldn’t possibly exist and threw a question back at me.

“This is… a little, no, very unfair.”

“What is?”

“This isn’t simply a matter of governing a different kind of world. In all my life living as a god, I never even dreamed of doing something like this. I could understand if you took your time, but you made it in a single night?”

Even by an Outer God’s standards, creating an underground space large enough to hold every living thing in a single night seemed to be something close to a miracle, and Nightchase couldn’t hide her amazement.

“Since when has this been possible for you? Only a few months ago you were nothing but a human…”

“It’s because I grew up eating good food.”

I slid the indignant Nightchase back into her sheath and stretched.

The underground was a space where there was no fear of being noticed by the sky. Perhaps because of that, I’d had plenty of time to unleash my abilities to my heart’s content in all sorts of ways, and to figure out for myself just where my limits lay and how far I could go.

And what I learned from that was that, in truth, there were no limits at all.

‘A good thing I devoured the Mimicry.’

If I wished, I could become a single droplet of water, and the next moment I could send an entire city to the bottom of the sea.

Just by discarding the fixed notion that something was impossible, the things I could do increased by dozens at a time. By now I was even starting to doubt whether I was truly a being that could die at all.

I shouldn’t grow arrogant, but at the very least, it seemed I shouldn’t underestimate my own abilities and end up failing to do what I was capable of.

As I was lost in such thoughts, Kaldrak arrived at the hill with a sullen face.

“Follow me.”

Without saying much, he beckoned me along with a gesture and led me to his forge on the hill.

When I quietly followed, we arrived at a plain little forge that was less than I’d expected, and I started to follow him into the furnace, then stopped.

“What are you doing right now?”

I doubted my own eyes. Kaldrak was about to throw himself into the furnace.

“Surely a so-called god isn’t afraid of a little molten metal?”

“I’m fine, it’s just…”

“I’m fine too. And it’s only by hiding things in a place like this that monsters like you won’t even think to look.”

…True enough.

I hadn’t gone so far as to monitor the inside of the furnace with Current Sense. Scratching my head, I watched in bemusement as Kaldrak dove into the molten metal without a care, then formed a light protective barrier of water around my body and followed him in.

After diving for a few dozen seconds, passing through the bottom and rising up, I saw a small door.

Kaldrak shook the molten metal off his head, took out a key, and muttered as he unlocked the intricately bolted door.

“To think that in all my life I’d show a human something I’ve never even shown my fellow dwarves… Life really is something you only understand by living it.”

-Click.

I hadn’t bothered with the unromantic act of checking the inside with Current Sense, and when I saw the secret place he’d hidden, I let out a dry laugh.

“Huh. I thought you melted everything down.”

“Now and then, things too good to melt down come into being. About once every few years.”

Inside was a storehouse.

An armory.

Even to a layman like me, the entire walls were filled with nothing but masterpieces of the century, their artistry and combat-worthiness standing out so strangely that it was almost unsettling.

“You said you were going to fight another Outer God?”

“Ah, yes. Though I wasn’t planning on using a weapon.”

Kaldrak silently pulled out the shabby Brass Dagger hanging right in the very center.

“…”

I slowly frowned.

It gave me a bad feeling.

For reasons I couldn’t explain, that dagger looked like the single blemish among the masterpieces, so much so that even gazing straight at it with my own eyes felt repulsive.

“Then change your mind.”

Kaldrak slowly slid the dagger into its sheath as if handling a treasure, and held it out to me.

“Because this dagger will work even on your enemy.”

“What is this?”

“It’s the dagger that killed a wizard.”

“But my enemy isn’t a wizard…”

When I tilted my head and asked back, he replied with a wicked grin.

“I didn’t explain enough. This is the dagger that killed The First Wizard.”

*****

Join our discord server: https://discord.gg/Bv5qu2Qbb

Join my Patreon to read more chapters: patreon.com/misoinapocalypse