Chapter 187: Origin of the Grak Steel

Rhadak stayed silent for a while, his lone red eye fixed on Magna’s face.

Finally, he opened his mouth. "Human child. You didn’t say why you are here."

Magna had expected an answer to his question. Instead, he was met with another question, which left him disappointed.

Probably Rhadak didn’t trust him enough yet to answer.

To at least gain that trust, Magna answered honestly. "I’m also not sure. I fell into a pool, and when I opened my eyes, I was here. It was an accident."

He skipped the details in between, especially the part where the Drakon girl punched him and sent him flying, the part where he fell into the boiling water, and the long time he spent sinking to the bottom.

But even this much was enough to surprise Rhadak, whose voice rose a pitch higher. "You passed the entrance accidentally?"

For a moment, Magna wondered whether he had said something he shouldn’t have, since the red eye looking at him started to glow faintly in a strange way.

He couldn’t tell whether the Stoneman was angry, agitated, shocked, or something else. The only thing he knew was that Rhadak’s mood had suddenly changed after hearing the word "accident."

While Magna tried to figure out which one it was, Rhadak turned around and started to walk. "Come with me."

When he saw the Stoneman heading toward the cave, he started following him right away without thinking twice.

He was too curious to care about anything else. He wanted to see what they were keeping there, why all the Stonemen kept carrying rocks inside, and what Grak Steel was.

When they arrived, the Stonemen were still working nonstop.

They broke the hard rocks at the foot of the mountain, lifted huge pieces onto their shoulders, and carried them through the cave entrance in one line. Another line walked out empty-handed to repeat the process.

When they saw Rhadak coming, his marble body shining under the crimson light of the sky, all of them paused for only a second. They raised their hands and struck their chests once in greeting, and the sound of stone hitting stone echoed. Then they returned to their work.

Rhadak returned the same gesture while he kept walking inside, between the 2 lines.

Magna followed behind. As soon as he entered the cave, he felt the air change. It suddenly became hotter inside.

"If you feel uncomfortable, just say so. I’m aware that humans are not very resistant to heat."

Rhadak was considerate enough to ask about his well-being. Magna just shook his head. "I’m okay."

He didn’t care about the heat. The only thing he cared about at that moment was seeing what this Stoneman wanted to show him, as well as the golden glow shining at the end of the cave.

The temperature of the cave kept rising while they walked. The surroundings also grew darker, but not so pitch black that Magna couldn’t see.

That also became less of a problem after a while, since they came to a section with red crystals embedded in the walls that lit up the surroundings.

’Aren’t these crystals the same as the ones I saw before?’ Magna looked closely at one of the crystals, which glowed like a flame inside. It reminded him of the ones he saw in the boiling pool room.

He even had one in his pocket, which he had taken to show to Matrim. He took it out to compare them. They were indeed identical.

The crystals were not the only thing that caught his attention. There were also strange drawings on the walls, resembling the cave paintings left from ancient times on Earth.

The Stonemen seemed to be like the first humans who lived in the Stone Age, keeping a record of their stories by drawing them on the walls.

The drawings increased toward the depths of the cave, and they had even started to become more detailed.

At first, Magna could barely understand what the drawings were. As they went further, the drawings became clearer, so he started to understand them more easily just by looking at them.

One of them, though still roughly drawn, showed a Stoneman holding his spear with a worm impaled on its tip.

In another drawing, 2 Stonemen reached out their hands to each other, as if they were wrestling.

In another one, there was again a picture of a Stoneman, this time lying on the ground. It was not clear whether he was dead or just sleeping, since their drawing skills unfortunately did not seem very good.

He even saw some drawings of figures wearing hats and robes that resembled a Witch’s, as well as figures that looked like human men.

One drawing of a human man especially caught his attention, since it actually looked like Arthas, with his long hair and knight armor.

Many Stonemen were drawn around him, all kneeling to him. It looked like he had won a fight against them, and the Stonemen had submitted to him.

His drawing was even better and more glorified than the Witch drawings.

’Looks like I was right. They really do respect physical strength here.’

While Magna kept walking and studying all the drawings, they soon reached the place where that golden glow was coming from.

The cave opened into a huge cavern, so wide that Magna could not see its far side through the haze of heat.

The golden glow came from the center, where something enormous lay on the ground.

At first, Magna thought it was a small mountain made of dark stone. Then he saw the golden glow of mana moving through the cracks in its body. It was slowly rising and falling, like something breathing.

It was a creature, a stone monster so huge that the Stonemen around it looked like children.

Its body had no clear shape. It was a round, lumpy mass of dark stone with no arms and no legs. A single enormous red eye shining like a ruby and a wide mouth were set into the front of it. They looked like the Stonemen’s, only far bigger.

The Stonemen stood in a long line at its head. One by one, they lifted the rocks they carried and threw them into its enormous open mouth.

The monster chewed slowly. The grinding sound of stone against stone shook the whole cavern.

Magna finally understood where all those rocks had been going.

Whatever this monster was, they were feeding it.

At the other end of the monster, more Stonemen waited with long stone hooks. Every so often, the monster dropped a heavy lump. The Stonemen quickly hooked it and dragged it away from the body.

The lumps slowly hardened into dark metal bars, which other Stonemen stacked in neat piles along the wall.

Interestingly, the metal bars were shining with a golden glow in Magna’s eyes. The pile at the edge shone so brightly that it had to be the glow he had seen coming from inside the cave when he was still outside.

Magna looked at the bars. Then he looked at the place where they came from. Then he looked at the bars again.

’Wait... Don’t tell me that is Grak Steel?’

While Magna was still struggling to believe that the precious mana metal actually came from this monster’s butt, Rhadak started to speak.

He lifted his head toward the monster, his lone red eye glowing softly. "This is our Mother. Every Stoneman in this land was born from her body."

It was clear now why the Stonemen never rested, apart from the time they spent hunting and eating. They always kept carrying stones into the cave. This enormous mother looked like she was never full.

"We bring her stone, and she gives us life. What she leaves behind after she eats is Grak Steel."

’So it really is her waste.’ Magna looked at the neat piles of dark bars again.

He kept his face as straight as he could, since laughing in front of a Stoneman while he spoke about his mother seemed like a very bad idea.

He found the whole thing quite funny, because a while ago he had thought that he would eat even a stone if it let him absorb the mana inside.

But once he realized that this mana-filled metal was actually poop, he had to reconsider. Eating something just because it held mana might not be such a healthy idea after all.