Chance

The next day, once everyone had recovered from their hangovers, we decided to set up a place for discussion.

By doing Magros Wrestling and having our valor acknowledged, and then sharing drinks together, we had been able to engage in dwarven-style bonding.

Because of this, we were now treated as having been recognized by the dwarves living on Mount Magros as equals.

Yes, in other words, it was not a matter of just drinking and being done with it.

Whether or not we could negotiate and draw the dwarves into Wenti depended on my skill from here on out.

So, we began the negotiations.

Since it was the very next day after all that, I had assumed the talks would move along smoothly, but somehow the response was not very good.

“Hmm…”

It was not that they thought badly of Wenti, but rather that they could not quite bring themselves to decide.

When I asked whether there was some concern, they instead fell silent with their mouths shut.

Wearing a bitter expression, Vis-san slowly opened his mouth.

“I think Wenti, which Woody-dono governs, is an extremely attractive land. If we speak of it, I am sure many would want to go. I truly would like you to take in many of our people if possible… but right now, we are carrying a somewhat difficult problem.”

“Vis, this is a problem for us dwarves of Magros! Getting outsiders involved is…”

“A problem…?”

I decided to forcibly cut into the conversation of the dwarves, who did not seem very eager.

I had not noticed it during yesterday’s drinking feast, but… it seemed the dwarves were currently facing some kind of serious problem.

If they were troubled, then I wanted to lend them a hand.

And if solving that would remove their concerns, then I very much wanted to do everything I could to help resolve it.

“The truth is…”

The problem currently faced by the dwarves led by Vis-san.

It was, just as I had imagined, a problem related to the volcano, and yet the actual nature of it was far outside my expectations.

“The dungeon inside Mount Magros is actually nearing its limit.”

I had not known it at all, but… apparently Mount Magros had in fact become a dungeon several hundred years ago.

“A dungeon!?”

“To think there was a dungeon not all that far from Wenti…”

A dungeon, more precisely also called a labyrinth, was a place where monsters sprang forth.

It was a kind of natural phenomenon, created accidentally when magical power built up in one place.

Inside a dungeon, space was distorted just like the “Storage Bag” I possessed, making it far larger than it should naturally be.

And within a dungeon, monsters with special properties born from magical power would begin to appear.

I had never seen it myself, but apparently when dungeon-born monsters were defeated, they left no corpse behind, instead returning to magical power and vanishing like mist.

And when monsters were defeated, they dropped materials.

For example, if you defeated a dungeon goblin, things like the goblin’s ears or the weapon it was carrying would remain as dropped items, while everything else would disappear.

“You left it alone for that long… have you at least been properly thinning their numbers?”

“…No, we have utterly failed to do so because we do not have enough manpower. So for now, we have sealed the entrance and are forcibly holding the monsters back. Because of that, it would not be strange if a stampede happened at any time.”

“—What!?”

Nadja cried out in a voice like a scream.

Dungeons carried considerable danger, to the point that the term “dungeon disaster” existed.

A dungeon absorbed magical power from its surroundings, drew magical power up from the leylines, and transformed the humans who came there and their equipment into magical power, all for the purpose of continuing to generate monsters.

Because of that, monsters kept being produced one after another, but for reasons no one understood, dungeon-born monsters never attacked one another.

And what happened then was… the monsters produced inside the dungeon just kept piling up.

Since dungeon-born monsters lived by feeding on magical power, their numbers did not decrease through starvation either.

Unless regular thinning was carried out, at some stage the monsters would no longer fit inside the dungeon and would come pouring out.

That was called a dungeon disaster—or in other words, a stampede.

Apparently Mount Magros was currently in a state just short of a stampede.

The reason they had burst out so suddenly yesterday when Nadja stomped the ground was because they had mistaken it for one of the periodic monster attacks becoming active again.

Apparently some of the monsters sometimes eroded through the mountain of Mount Magros and came out to the outside.

And each time that happened, the dwarves defeated the monsters that emerged, and then used their skillful craftsmanship to seal up the place. Thanks to their excellent workmanship, it seemed there had not been a single case so far of reinvasion through one of those opened holes.

That was absolutely the wrong place to be putting those skills to use…

“Under kingdom law, concealing a dungeon is a crime! Why did you keep leaving it alone until it got this bad!?”

“Please calm down, Nadja. To begin with, they are not our subjects or anything of the sort, only dwarves. Kingdom law does not apply to them.”

“B-but still… ngh…”

Nadja ground her teeth with a frustrated “ngh…” and stamped the ground.

As a noble of the kingdom, she probably could not forgive the fact that a dungeon had been left unattended for so many years.

Even in the kingdom, which among the surrounding nations had very preferential policies regarding the hunting of monsters, stampedes were by no means things that never happened.

When various factors overlapped, one would occur once every few decades.

And when that happened, it almost always caused great damage, and the economic impact often spread across the entire nation.

“Thanks to it becoming a dungeon, minerals that had nearly run dry began to be produced again. Because of that, we did not have any trouble at all with materials. …Though in exchange, monster damage began to occur.”

“I see…”

“Apparently until my father’s generation, it was a real gold mine, and because of the agreements from back then, it has been hard to get the other dwarves to agree to anything.”

Apparently the dungeon damage had only become serious in recent years.

In the days of Vis-san’s father and the generation before that, once it became a dungeon, minerals were produced in such abundance that they could make things to their heart’s content, and the dwarves had apparently been thriving.

And because of the various rules established back then under the thinking of “We will not hand over this ideal environment to other dwarves!”, it had been difficult for them to even seek aid from other dwarves.

“Please wait, there are other dwarves as well?”

“Yeah, in the northern part of the desert there are still many more dwarven settlements, each divided by clan. Though even if we had sought help, I doubt they would have come…”

“Vis, why is there any need to tell outsiders this…”

“We dwarves must change. At this rate, before too long, we will be swallowed up by the dungeon of Mount Magros.”

“Th-that may be true… but…”

The dwarves themselves probably understood that things could not go on like this.

The voices objecting were weak, and at Vis-san’s words they all lowered their heads.

After confirming that no more objections were coming from his companions, Vis-san bowed his head toward us.

“Woody-dono, I know this is a shameless thing to ask. But if you would… would you be willing to extend a helping hand and save us?”

I somehow restrained myself from nodding at once to Vis-san’s proposal.

This course of action would have a tremendous impact not only on me, but on the people of Wenti as well.

So this was not something I could decide purely on impulse.

—Dungeons were not only harmful to humans, but at the same time, they were also existences that brought blessings.

A dungeon was an extremely dangerous place, effectively a massive landmine that would trigger a stampede if left alone.

And yet, there were currently many dungeons within the kingdom, and there were even towns called labyrinth cities that had sprung up around them.

As one could tell from what Vis-san had said earlier, dungeons possessed many effects beneficial to humans.

They could even restore abandoned mines, and among the monsters born from magical power and the dropped items gained from them were many things that could not normally be obtained.

So, as Nadja had said earlier, kingdom law stipulated that dungeons had to be reported as soon as they were discovered… but now, what should I do?

Now that it had been found this close to my territory, I probably also had a duty to report it to the royal family.

After thinking for a moment, I walked over toward Nadja, who still did not seem to have calmed down.

“Nadja, this is a chance.”