Chapter 237: Successful Deprivation, Attention from the Underground City’s Will

Chapter 237: Chapter 237: Successful Deprivation, Attention from the Underground City’s Will

The Rusted Stone Echo Underground City, First Area, Outer Mine Tunnels.

Mining lamps hung at regular intervals along the ochre rock walls, keeping the area reasonably well-lit.

The sound of hurried footsteps echoed through the tunnel.

A green-skinned Goblin was sprinting for its life, its short legs churning desperately.

A hemp rope hung around its neck, with three or four Stone-Iron Alchemy Bombs dangling from the end.

The short, green creature kept glancing back in terror as it ran, as if something dreadful was in hot pursuit.

As it turned out, its intuition was right.

A muffled thud echoed out.

The massive corpse of a bat came flying out from the deeper part of the mine, smashing squarely onto the Goblin’s back.

With a heavy thud of impact, the Goblin was pinned firmly to the ground.

It was a bat with a wingspan of over two meters.

It possessed a pair of massive, sharp, curved claws. More peculiar still, its broad wing membranes were not covered in fur but in a dull, metallic sheen, like the surface of ore. Even in death, it gave off a sense of unyielding hardness.

The impact left the Goblin dizzy and disoriented.

It struggled to push the heavy corpse off and get back up to continue its desperate flight.

But before it could plant its hands on the ground, a foot shod in a heavy Land Boot stomped mercilessly onto its spine, pressing it back down.

Immediately after, a large hand clad in dark red Hand Armor covered the Goblin’s head.

With a sharp, clean CRACK, the little green creature’s struggles ceased completely.

[Crown Value +1]

[Professional Experience +1]

"Oh? It still gives experience?"

Lance flicked the viscous fluid from his Hand Armor, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

He had tested it upon entering the Underground City; once you crossed the threshold to become a Professional, you no longer received any Professional Experience for killing Ordinary Demons below Level 1.

’I didn’t expect this Bomb Goblin to be so unique.’

’It doesn’t seem to belong to the main Goblin species, nor is it a variant.’

’It’s a very special kind of Demon.’

’An Underground City special, maybe?’

[Demon: Sound Wing Beast (Ordinary) Research Progress +1, Level 1 (2/20)]

[Demon: Bomb Goblin (Inferior) Research Progress +1, Level 1 (1/20)]

Since becoming a Professional, the research panel had changed subtly; all Demons were now marked with more precise Level tags.

"Inferior Tier" represented Demons below the Professional Level.

The fact that the Bomb Goblin was listed as a separate research subject struck Lance as rather interesting.

’I wonder what kind of strange Racial Talent I’ll get if I max out its research progress.’

’When it comes to Goblins, the more the merrier. It would be awesome if every single variant had its own research entry.’

Lance then glanced at his Main Profession progress.

[Pale Guard Level 1 (21/5000)]

The large bat he’d just stomped to death, known as a "Sound Wing Beast," was a standard Level 1 Professional Level Demon.

Killing one consistently yielded 10 points of Professional Experience.

According to the informational Manual Uncle Rein had prepared for him, this type of Demon was a permanent resident of the mines in the First Area.

「In the Material Realm.」

They primarily subsist by gnawing on ore from the cave walls and are solitary, non-gregarious creatures.

Years of consuming minerals had caused their claws to evolve to be exceptionally sharp, and even their outer membranes were covered in a tough keratin layer, granting them impressive Defense Power.

However, this posed no threat to Lance; after all, his [Melting Gold Armor Shattering] was the perfect counter for such hard targets.

This Underground City, codenamed "Rusted Stone Echo," had existed in this world for nearly twenty years.

Every year, countless Adventurers cleared it, turning it over like a farmer plows a field.

As a result, the terrain and Demon distribution in this outer area had long been thoroughly mapped out by the scouts from the various Grand Guilds.

Because the danger level wasn’t high, the Adventurer’s Guild had designated it a "Resource-Type Underground City."

Just as Lance was collecting his loot.

The sound of heavy footsteps echoed from further down the cavern.

Although the caverns had numerous branching paths, the main passage was carved out to be quite wide.

Soon, a group dressed in simple, coarse-spun tunics rounded a corner and came into view.

Each of them carried a thick bamboo basket on their back, almost a person tall.

They were filled to the brim with mined, dark-gold ore.

Flanking this group of porters were a dozen or so weapon-wielding Adventurers.

When these Adventurer guards saw the black-haired youth standing in the passage ahead—a long spear on his back, one foot resting on the corpse of a Demon—

their hands visibly tightened on their weapons, and their eyes filled with wariness.

In a place like this, Adventurers were often more dangerous than Demons.

It was only when Lance took the initiative to step aside, ceding the wide main path with a nod,

that the group of Adventurers relaxed their guard somewhat.

They quickened their pace, escorting the team of porters swiftly through that section of the tunnel.

These were the "resource teams" mentioned in the Manual, a unique feature of the Underground City.

They didn’t participate in clearing any of the areas, nor did they care about the Summer Crown. Their only purpose here was to excavate the minerals embedded throughout the rock strata.

The dark-gold stones in their baskets were Echo Stones, an indispensable core material for the Alchemy Workshops on the outside to craft Memory Crystals.

「Out in the world.」

Hauling out a full basket of that raw ore could fetch a high price of at least several dozen Silver Coins on the market.

Even after multiple parties took their cut, the final payment that reached the porters was still substantial.

This was why, despite knowing the dangers of the Underground City, so many impoverished commoners were still willing to come here and risk their lives, one after another.

However... as the team filed past Lance, his gaze swept over the porters.

He clearly saw strange, bluish-purple patches emerging on the necks and cheeks of several porters. Some even showed signs of slight, twisted deformities beginning at their arm joints.

Those were symptoms of the body being corrupted by the Underground City’s ambient Ether.

Lance glanced at his own status panel.

[Status: Corroding in high-concentration Ether environment...]

[Passive Talent "Hevagmir’s Boiling" detected. Initiating check...]

[Check passed: You have successfully resisted the environmental corrosion. Current Status: Healthy]

’This old Talent just keeps proving its worth.’

Professionals possessed an Ethereal Melting Furnace, but even so, the limit for continuous activity within the Underground City’s Chaos Ether-saturated environment was only about twelve hours.

If they exceeded that time, their bodies would be forcibly afflicted with various debilitating status effects at set intervals.

As for ordinary people, who lacked even a Melting Furnace, their absolute limit of endurance was no more than six hours.

Furthermore, even with frequent trips in and out of the shallow areas, the long-term, cumulative exposure would still cause irreversible physical deformities.

Lance had observed them closely; the resource team was composed entirely of physical-type Adventurers, without a single Priest capable of casting a Purification Spell.

This meant that in the eyes of their employers, these porters risking their lives for a few dozen Silver Coins were merely cheap, disposable assets, to be replaced at will once they were used up.

As the team moved further away, he could faintly hear a few of the Adventurers at the rear cursing and complaining.

The forced activation of the Summer Crown had agitated the Demons in the Underground City, making their purely for-profit gathering missions more troublesome and dangerous than usual.

Clearly, not everyone was looking forward to this grand event.

Lance retracted his gaze and crouched down.

He reached out and forcefully ripped the Stone-Iron Bombs from the dead Goblin’s body.

The bombs were crudely made, each about the size of an adult’s palm, and they felt heavy in his hand.

Although they looked like defective products discarded from an Alchemy Workshop, they were, after all, real explosives.

Any consumable item even tangentially related to the word "Alchemy" was never cheap, no matter how inferior its quality.

According to the common knowledge of this world, items naturally created by the chaotic laws of the Underground City were inherently repellent to all intelligent life from the Material Realm.

Attempting to use one would only trigger a catastrophic Suicide Bombing.

But that was just common knowledge.

’Royal Armory!’

Lance recited the name in his mind, directly activating the Golden Legend Protection he had just acquired.

[Royal Judgment initiated... Target Resistance Threshold is 1...]

[Warning: The Underground City’s will has intervened to resist. Target Resistance Threshold temporarily +1]

[Current King’s Authority Value 3 > 2. Judgment: Overwhelming Success! Forcibly stripping ownership of "Chaos Artifact: Goblin Inferior Explosive"!]

[Special Notice: Your rule-ignoring act of Plunder has attracted the attention of the Underground City’s chaotic will...]

Before he could even finish reading the stream of messages popping up on his panel, Lance’s attention was completely captivated by the item’s description.

[Chaos Artifact: Goblin Inferior Explosive] (Resistance Threshold: 2)

[Trait 1 (Energy Level Blast): A dangerous and extremely unstable product of the Underground City, crudely manufactured by Goblins. Upon detonation, it instantly releases destructive power equivalent to "Level 2 Energy." The resulting shockwave and shrapnel are highly penetrative; even a Professional in conventional Enchanted Armor will suffer fragmentation damage from a direct hit.]

[Chaos Trait (Ether Repulsion): As a special item born from the chaotic laws of the Underground City, this item is absolutely repellent to the Ether Energy of Professionals from the Material Realm.]

[Notice: Ownership has been stripped by "Royal Armory." Can now be used safely.]

[Special Synergy Notice: If the wielder uses the "Suicide Bombing" Enchanted Equipment to inject this item with "Ash Dragon Breath" before throwing it, it will trigger an "Overload Detonation." The explosive’s energy level will be +1, its explosion radius will be +1, and the blast will produce a "Molten Armor" splash and a "Healing Ban" effect.]