Chapter 192: Exploiting Monsters for Ore Mining?!

Kai raised an eyebrow. "Are you feeling sentimental over a bunch of Goblins?"

"No. I’m worried about missing a crucial clue."

"Fair enough." Kai grinned broadly, then stepped forward to shield Kei with his body. "Just stay behind me. If any more of them leap out, I’ll handle them."

"You phrase it as though we’re out on a casual stroll."

"Well, I am strolling along with you," Kai stated deadpan. "Just with a few extra monsters thrown into the scenery."

Kei couldn’t help chuckling, though the sound dissolved instantly in the damp, chilling air.

Kai moved forward, his stride noticeably more cautious this time around. Kei tracked his footsteps closely, occasionally glancing down at the stone floor. Tiny footprints stamped into the mud, deep carriage ruts grooved into the rock walls, and scattered heaps of half-hewn stone littered the standing puddles.

This Dungeon genuinely resembled a mine shaft. Yet those traces belonged to far more than mere monsters alone.

In certain sectors, the stone floor bore elongated drag marks, as though ore minecarts had frequently trundled past. Clinging to the wall hung the frayed, snapped remains of a thick hemp rope, adjacent to a deep gouge trailing all the way down to the surface of the floor.

Kei reached out to brush his fingers against the claw mark.

A piercing, bone-numbing chill shot straight through his fingertips.

He yanked his hand back instinctively. Across the stone surface surrounding the gouge rested a fine layer of black dust, so powdery it virtually melted into the shadows. Kei stared at it intently, yet no system annotation manifested before his eyes.

His newly unlocked skill could grant him comprehension over raw materials, but it couldn’t decipher every hidden mystery embedded within a Dungeon.

"What’s wrong?" Kai halted his steps to inquire.

"This claw mark is much fresher than the others." Kei wiped the dust away with a handkerchief. "Something dragged a heavy load across here."

Clack. Clack. Clack.

This time, amidst the steady rhythmic impacts, Kei caught a faint, metallic clinking sound dropping against the stone. He and Kai pivoted simultaneously toward the front. At the far end of the corridor, a pale, sickly-blue light flickered across the rock face before snapping out entirely.

Kai dropped his playful demeanor instantly. Striding forward, he sheltered Kei behind his back.

"There’s something up ahead."

Kei stared at the light that had just vanished, his fingers instinctively tightening around his Space Ring. He had journeyed here specifically to track down Thunder and Emma. Yet this Dungeon might harbor a vital link connecting the Golden Mithril to the three external Dungeon Breaks.

The two of them advanced silently toward the azure radiance, while the sound of pickaxes striking stone resumed echoing from deep within the cavern.

A diminutive cavern entrance lay concealed beyond a bend. A dim, amber glow leaked outward, washing a pale smear of light across the stone floor.

Kai signaled Kei to halt, then leaned sideways to peer through the threshold.

Beyond lay a subterranean mine so colossal it left Kei breathless. Sheer rock walls plunged vertically down into a bottomless abyss; overhead spanned interlocking tiers of wooden scaffolding, linked together by suspension bridges and rope ladders. Hanging lanterns punctuated the pathways, illuminating merely a fraction of the vast space. Farther away, impenetrable darkness swallowed the cavern ceiling whole.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The sound of shattering rock reverberated from every corner. Dozens of Goblins swung pickaxes, hacking frantically into the ore-rich walls. Interspersed among them were human laborers clad in grimy, tattered garments, gaunt and silent as they shoveled newly harvested stone debris into minecarts.

From the exposed mineral veins crisscrossing the cavern walls, a dazzling golden shimmer traced branching veins across the rock. A single glance was all Kei required to identify the substance.

It was entirely Golden Mithril.

He froze. The ore samples Clark had handed him were merely two minuscule fragments, yet this location housed an ore vein so massive it stretched endlessly beyond the limits of vision.

"Bizarre..." Kei murmured. "Why on earth are Goblins collaborating with humans to mine Golden Mithril?"

To a Goblin, such precious ore held zero intrinsic value. They lacked metallurgical knowledge and couldn’t forge weapons or armor for themselves. So why were they mining it, let alone laboring side by side with humans?

That tableau sent a chill racing down Kei’s spine. Not because of the monsters’ presence, but because of the humans toiling amidst them, appearing indistinguishable from prisoners locked away together inside a forced-labor mine.

A harsh, grating sound echoed nearby.

A Goblin collapsed face-forward onto the stone. The pickaxe slipped from its grasp, clattering across the rock before coming to a stop; it made no move to stand back up.

A skeletal figure draped in tattered robes stepped forward, gripping a long leather whip in its bony hand.

Crack!

The whip lashed downward viciously across the Goblin’s spine. The gray-green body spasmed, yet remained motionless.

"Useless Goblin scum! Daring to slack off? Get up and get back to work immediately!"

Kei widened his eyes.

He understood the language spoken by this skeleton.

It wasn’t a dialect native to this world. The skeleton was speaking in the tongue of the undead monsters from Kei’s old world, a language he had heard countless times during his years of campaigning against the Demon King.

Kei’s hand clenched instinctively against the edge of the rock wall. His entire body stiffened.

The skeleton cracked its whip a second time. When the Goblin still refused to stir, it grunted irritably, crouching down to thrust its skeletal fingers right against the monster’s snout.

A brief silence followed.

"Dead already?"

The skeleton spat out a harsh curse. "How utterly unlucky."

It grabbed the Goblin by the leg, dragging the corpse toward a dark corner before kicking it unceremoniously into a pile of rubble. The diminutive body slammed against the rock face, collapsing into a crumpled heap amidst the dust, no different from a ruined sack of ore tossed aside as refuse.