Chapter 437 - Progress (2)
"Master, shall I give you a hand?"
"A brat who can't even keep his own balance properly dares to… I'll climb up on my own, so just get out of the way. Unless your plan is to make me fall, then stay right there."
For a moment, Linus felt the urge to hurl a stone at Gharun, but he held himself back.
He wasn't the first dwarf whose anger had been tempered by those hands honed over centuries.
[If Your Majesty requests assistance, you could easily be pulled up.]
"I said I'm fine."
Thud.
With an old pickaxe strapped to his waist, Gharun leapt lightly, grabbed a small outcropping of rock, and propelled himself upward with sheer arm strength.
Brutish force.
At the same time, he hooked the hammerhead of Markuab onto the cliff like a grappling hook, and clambered up to solid ground in long strides.
Sparkle, sparkle.
Alpha's single eye flickered slowly.
Despite dwarves being physically unsuited for climbing cliffs, it couldn't comprehend why he was climbing up alone.
"..."
Verden simply waited.
Since Gharun had rejected his disciple's hand, to help him unasked would not suit the situation.
Tact.
It was something Alpha had yet to acquire.
"Nggh."
Having freed himself from the pit, Gharun stretched lightly, then snorted as he looked at Alpha coming toward him.
"Do you think just because I'm a dwarf, I'd thrash about begging for my life because I couldn't climb some cliff? There's nothing wrong with my body. Forget it. If that was the case, I would have just come piggyback from the start."
"But sir, since you rode here in a flying carriage controlled by His Excellency, isn't that, in a way, being carried? You barely took a few steps on your own."
"You call that logic? That's that, and this is this."
[?]
Alpha tilted its body in puzzlement.
The meaning behind Linus and Gharun's exchange lingered in a vague boundary between efficiency and inefficiency, making it difficult to grasp rationally.
At that, Verden added his words.
"Just because something is rational doesn't mean it is the right answer for everyone. To put it simply… say, if someone else were to run the laboratory in your place."
[!]
"And if their results far surpassed yours, would you accept that simply because, from an efficiency standpoint, it made sense?"
There was no hesitation.
[I could never permit that.]
"That is pride."
Pride is an instinct that all beings with emotions carry, and it is the primary cause of endless conflicts.
Look closely, and even the clashes between Gharun and the Red Volcano clan chief could be seen as a collision of pride.
Yet that does not mean it is only negative.
Pride is also what establishes the self.
Just as Gharun stubbornly clings even to the smallest matters, from such grains of insistence emerges an independent being.
It is not something to be weighed by outcome.
Had Verden cast aside himself and bent to everyone for the sake of mere efficiency, bowing and flattering, it is obvious he would have achieved neither transcendence nor even Mado.
Reason and emotion.
Combined, they form the heart, and those who carry a heart are us.
[Pride… the heart… understood.]
"Truly?"
[About 50%.]
Alpha raised one arm, saying it had understood only halfway.
Gharun, watching that, gave a dumbfounded laugh.
"This isn't child-rearing… how on earth is that thing a golem? I'm curious, may I take a look at the inside, just briefly? I'll restore it properly afterward."
[Tsk.]
Alpha clicked its tongue in imitation and refused.
That only piqued Gharun's interest more. Stroking his beard, he placed a hand on his waist.
The texture of the alloy body of the dwarven scout relic was rough to the touch. Instinctively frowning, a flicker of emotion passed through Gharun's eyes.
Verden asked.
"Is it something you know?"
"It's been so long I can't recall the owner… but yes, I know it."
Gharun gripped the pickaxe with both hands.
"Because I saw it once, long ago."
***
There was once a dwarven clan that made their home at the Black Volcano.
Aside from the intense heat of the volcano, they were not much different from other clans. But with the birth of the dwarf later known as the "Golden Anvil", they entered an unprecedented golden age.
The creativity and craftsmanship to fashion works of a different class from the same materials.
The forging and smelting performed in facilities of his own design.
The obsession that drove him to keep hammering even in a body emaciated to the brink of starvation… no dwarf could compare.
Thus the Golden Anvil grew ever greater with the passing years, and among legendary dwarves, he came to hold a singular status.
Then came the day.
A tectonic upheaval, unseen in dwarven history, swallowed the Black Volcano.
The omen was the disaster itself.
The terrifying change struck in an instant.
Rumble, rumble, rumble…!
The blue sky turned yellow.
Clouds, once as white as sailing ships, faded, split into hundreds of pieces, and disappeared.
Above, even the air was unbreathable, birds wheezed mid-flight and plummeted to the earth, skulls shattering on impact.
The once-warm earth blackened, lost its heat, and through repeated upheaval and subsidence, was utterly shattered to pieces.
Withered plants.
Animals buried alive underground.
Even dwarves, wandering leisurely through the mineshafts, suffocated and thrashed before plunging into the abyssal dark.
Was it that this prosperous volcanic land grew envious of the Golden Anvil's hand, or was it simply one of nature's disasters?
No one could know.
What is certain is that the Black Volcano, the furnace of the greatest clan, sank with the Golden Anvil and its fortress into the screams of the world.
Perhaps forever.
"This, here, is the border demarcating the Black Volcano's territory… luckily, this was passed down by a wandering dwarf who happened to be outside. About three hundred years ago."
Gharun gazed into the distance.
"As I've said before, at the time, no one thought of it as cursed land. The scale was simply too vast to accept so easily. And unlike the tales, we can breathe here, after all. Perhaps back then, even the air itself had dried up… In any case, that's how it was. With time and distance, the clans were sure the disaster had ended, so they sent out expeditions."
The anomaly at the Black Volcano could not be ignored. It might strike other clans as well.
For dwarves, it was a matter of survival.
But the Black Volcano's land was far too harsh for the short folk.
The bitter cold could be fended off with robes that maintained body temperature, but the treacherous terrain, and the abnormal species nesting there, were constant nuisances.
"Besides, the Black Volcano was the widest of all volcanic regions. The expedition, through repeated advances and retreats, made little progress. The search for the Black Volcano clan dragged on, and even ten years after I was born, it was the same… until finally, they uncovered a decisive clue."
"They must have found a survivor."
"Indeed. The expedition discovered a dwarf of the Black Volcano clan, hidden in a rock crevice. He was gaunt and his beard ragged, but being acquainted with other clans, his identity was quickly confirmed. His health was failing, so they brought him to the nearest Red Volcano, struggling desperately to save him."
The bustle of a crowd.
A dwarf in a dreadful state.
Though Gharun's memory wasn't strong enough to hold clearly the span of 283 years, that scene remained vivid.
"But he was already as good as dead. No matter what they fed him, no matter how much rest, it was the same. After a few days, he survived only with ragged breaths, until finally, with a few heavy blinks, he left behind a short will. 'Save the fortress'. That was all. By chance, they had obtained testimony from a survivor."
Gharun flicked the pickaxe with his hand.
A fragment of rust, broken loose by the shock, fell onto the cold ground.
"The clans dispatched their elite dwarves, following the faint trail left by the survivor. Six months later, the returning expedition brought back a definite report, they had discovered the fortress of the Black Volcano."
"They found the entrance to the fortress?"
Gharun shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know the details. The investigation of the Black Volcano was a matter for the adults. As a child, all I had were the passing rumors. In any case, thus the first search party was newly dispatched."
Decades had passed, but no one knew how many dwarves might still remain within the fortress.
The dwarves' survival ability was unmatched.
Fully prepared, the clans crossed the Black Volcano with plans drawn as meticulously as their schematics.
"And none of them ever came back."
Even after two full years, there was no sign of return.
The direction of the Black Volcano was silent.
Even after swallowing that many dwarves and their equipment, it showed not a trace. Some dwarves found it so eerie that they could not even bring themselves to look westward.
"But they could not simply give up in fear. Too much time and effort had already been spent on the Black Volcano. And there was still the possibility that the first search party was stranded somewhere. So the clans gathered their strength once again, and sent out a second expedition. My older brother was among them."
"…What?"
Linus' eyes widened.
"Master, you had a brother? This is the first I've heard of it."
"Of course. I've never spoken of it in over two hundred years. What good would it do to prattle about blood long buried in the ground?"
"Ah… I, I apologize."
"Forget it. No need to apologize over nothing."
Gharun took a swig of liquor.
"As you might expect, the second search party that went into the Black Volcano never returned. The loss to the clans was immeasurable. Even so, they overextended themselves to form a third search party… but after clashing several times with abnormal species along the way, they lost half their number and had to retreat back to the clans."
"..."
"In the end, about two hundred and fifty years ago, the investigation of the Black Volcano was declared a failure and completely terminated. It became a taboo. Records were burned, and all the vanished expeditions were declared missing. My brother was among them. Perhaps it was then that the Black Volcano came to be called cursed ground, and rumors began to spread."
The curse, passed down by word of mouth.
Time added flesh to the tale, until at last the dwarves came to see it as terror.
Gharun did not fear the Black Volcano, but since he had no good memories of it, he made a point of avoiding the place.
He buried his brother's death deep within.
Hammered it down endlessly with heat and metal, with unceasing strikes of the hammer.
...
The atmosphere grew heavy.
Sensing it dimly, Alpha quickly flickered its single eye in silence.
It was Gharun himself who first broke the silence.
"This is everything I know about the Black Volcano. And this pickaxe, it belonged to the first search party… if we're lucky, the fortress might be close. Yes, all we can do now is follow in their footsteps."
He strapped the old pickaxe to his waist and climbed into the flying carriage.
"If you're a transcendent, you can find such traces easily, can't you? Let's depart."
Thunk, thunk!
Gharun pounded the carriage.
Linus went pale at how casually he treated a transcendent being, but Verden was utterly unconcerned.
The expedition resumed.
***
Swiftly flying through the air, casting wide-range mana detection.
The product of techniques gained upon transcendence, combined with
Perhaps only the Mage King of the age, or the tower master of the first-ranked magic tower.
Fwoooosh!
As he grew accustomed to the large-scale detection, the pace only quickened.
He did not tire.
His infinite mana remained unchanged, and physical fatigue was nearly nonexistent.
Of course, he could not live forever without sleep or sustenance.
He was not an undead.
But the vitality of a transcendent body was nearly its equal.
Exploration without distinction of day or night.
Whenever something abnormal was detected, the ground was overturned, and in about two out of ten instances, traces of the dwarven expeditions were found.
A tattered banner.
The bones of dwarves.
Damaged armor.
A warhammer without a handle.
A double-edged axe crumbled with rust.
Even the wreckage of dwarven transport devices…
Though it seemed much, in truth, only a few relics had been buried.
"These belong to the first and second expeditions, mixed together. Judging from where they were found, they seem to point somewhat diagonally… that can't be coincidence, can it?"
"Indeed."
At Gharun's words, Verden nodded.
By all appearances, the traces from centuries ago were not scattered at random, but seemed to point out a path.
It could have been due to abnormal species, or minor tectonic shifts along the way.
But he dismissed it.
'To abandon the likeliest possibility and chase after the unlikely would be irrational.'
As they tracked the scant clues, they came upon it.
A small cave.
More precisely, a natural fissure that had been artificially widened into a tunnel.
The Black Volcano's territory was frigid, with scarcely any wind, so the traces remained perfectly intact.
"Follow me."
Verden led the way in.
It was wide enough for about five dwarves to walk side by side, so it did not feel cramped.
The height was adequate as well.
The slope of the ground was steep, about thirty to forty degrees, but with Verden manipulating gravity, no one stumbled.
"Haaah…"
After about two hours of brisk walking, just as Linus was about to catch his breath, an immense cliff appeared before them.
A colossal circular chasm.
A bottomless pit, its floor unseen.
"…At last, we've found it."
Muttering softly, Gharun gazed at the Black Volcano's crater, slumbering beneath the earth.
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