Chapter 607 – Escort
The movement within the tunnel itself was smooth.
But I had doubts.
‘Is it efficient if so many people enter at once?’
I don’t know if the magic stone weighs a lot or is a bulky item… But it’s not difficult to transport it in a small bag.
Although it is a magic stone mine, it is not mined in abundance, so the amount of mining per day will not be that much.
In short, the more people there are, the less profit there is.
My doubts were somewhat resolved when I arrived at my destination.
The end of the shaft was different from the place Nora and I were mining.
It was a large enough place for about 11 people to comfortably sit and mine.
Was the tunnel in the lower place originally this wide? Or it may be a mining location that you have seen in advance.
When the prisoners arrived at their destination, they familiarly installed torches on prefabricated stands to ensure visibility, took out pickaxes they had brought with them, and began pounding on the walls of the tunnel.
The pickaxe they brought was different from mine, a small pickaxe that could be held with one hand.
Aside from the fact that the pickaxes were small… The quality of their pickaxes was strange.
Pickaxing is an act of attracting aggro from monsters, but if you’re lucky, magic stones can come out of the broken stones.
However, rather than trying to break the stone, the inmates were closer to ‘knocking on it’.
There seemed to be no intention of breaking the stone and collecting the magic stone.
As a skilled person, the crackling of the pickaxe made my mouth itch in frustration, but… I am not the leader of this party.
In the first place, I did not come to collect magic stones, but was just a guard and guard who prevented others from approaching from behind.
Bolton, the party leader, stayed quiet, so it wasn’t my place to interfere.
“Oh, it’s coming!”
“It’s coming.”
The prisoners must have heard the sound of a monster coming, so they stop picking with pickaxes and step back in shock.
And instead of a pickaxe, they picked up a weapon they brought with them.
“Everyone, you need to form a formation. Anyone holding a shield, please come forward.”
Bolton comforts and directs people who are very nervous.
There are large shields in the front line, and people holding spears behind them stand in battle formation and look at the tunnel wall with bated breath.
-Suddenly. Suddenly…
The sound of a monster approaching is getting closer.
Accordingly, people’s faces became hard.
Not long after, a monster was seen writhing and breaking through the tunnel wall.
-Totuk. Tuk.
The giant X, writhing and crawling from the floor, still looked hideous.
〈Is it homophobia? 〉
“…”
There were no such vicious teeth on my glans.
There were only two monsters.
It’s shabby compared to when at least five or six of them fell out at once when I was picking a pickaxe.
The reason was roughly predictable.
If you’re like me, you have to be diligent with the pickaxe to collect monsters, but since I just tapped like a wooden table, maybe there were fewer monsters that came?
The prisoners were divided into groups of 5 or 6 each to deal with the monster.
I thought it was a bit excessive to have five of them fighting against one animal.
In my opinion, two seemed appropriate, and I thought three would be enough if it was really safe.
But the battle went differently than I thought
“Stop it!”
An inmate holding a shield blocks the monster that bounces and rushes at him.
-Tung!
“Ugh…”
The inmate holding the shield, unable to relieve the shock from the monster’s headbutt, stumbled.
It’s clumsy.
‘Tsk tsk… I need to bend my legs more and lower my center of gravity…’
That wasn’t the only problem.
The clumsy attack by the prisoners with spears failed to kill the monster with one hit. So, the wounded dick… No, the monster was prone to writhing and going crazy, spraying white bodily fluids everywhere.
When I saw the white fluid splattering everywhere, I got cold and had no choice but to take a step back.
The prisoners were struggling even though there were only 5 people fighting one monster.
“Aaaaah!”
A woman stabs her spear and falls and screams.
Fortunately, the monster didn’t pay attention to her. Instead, she aimed elsewhere.
It was the leg of a man holding a shield.
“Ahh! I got bitten!! Please help me!!”
The man’s foot is sucked into the sucker-like mouth with round teeth on the side of the monster’s head.
The man holding the shield is shaking in panic.
People who saw this urgently stabbed the monster with spears.
“Ahh!! That’s my leg!!”
The monster was biting her man’s foot, and in order to kill her man, it seemed that her spear had pierced her leg, as she had to attack his head.
It was a mess, but the inmates were able to focus their attacks on the monster’s head using the man’s feet as bait, and the creature finally went limp.
The shield man’s leg was safe.
The protective gear I was wearing on my legs seemed to be stronger than I thought.
And I had no choice but to evaluate their battle like this.
“That’s shit.”
There was no such mess.
They had only caught one monster, but it was covered in sticky white fluid all over its body.
In particular, seeing the men covered in white bodily fluid made me feel nauseous for some reason.
The fighting ability of my contemporaries was more serious than I thought.
That X monster is a monster that even an unawakened hunter on Earth can catch alone.
It is said that the magical power is suppressed, but there were five or six people who had awakened the magical power and were struggling with one animal… From my point of view, it was absurd.
“…”
… If you think about it, Earth’s hunters are people who are ready for battle.
You may also receive training for a certain period of time.
However, it has been less than 15 days since the prisoners here fell into Karaz without knowing anything.
When I think about it, it seems to make a little bit of sense… But it was so confusing that it was a refreshing culture shock for me.
I didn’t think they would be good at fighting, but I didn’t know they were this clumsy.
I was anxious to receive advice, but I decided to endure it.
People must take responsibility for what they do.
Giving instructions means that I teach them. I had no intention of doing that to people who may or may not see me today.
And since I did not come to mine magic stones but to guard them, the amount of magic stones they mined had nothing to do with my reward.
Still, humans are adaptive animals with the ability to learn.
Even if I don’t teach them, as time goes by, and they get used to it, they will get better.
The prisoners’ anxious monster hunting continued.
Prisoners usually lured one to two monsters and hunted them.
It seemed a little frustrating to me to see it cluttering around, but I couldn’t help it.
In terms of their abilities, two at a time seemed to be at the maximum.
In the midst of such timid baiting and hunting, an accident occurred.
Behind the people who were hunting the two animals with all their might, another animal fell from the ceiling.
“Back, behind!!”
The person who first discovered it shouted with a pale face.
“Three?!”
“Look, Mr. Bolton. Uh, how…”
The prisoners were confused whether this was the first time three monsters had come at once.
Bolton, the party leader, also clearly looks embarrassed.
All the prisoners look at Bolton, the leader, with trembling eyes.
“I will handle it.”
In the end, I had no choice but to step forward.
This is because their eyes seemed filled with the intention of running away without even looking back as soon as Bolton said one word.
And there was also Nora’s request.
Did you say that the more you save someone from a crisis, the less likely they are to think about leaving the organization?
-Cuzik!
My pickaxe smashed the monster’s head in one blow.
And I felt their eyes looking at me filled with surprise and trust. If there was a feeling of being a little untrustworthy before, that feeling has completely disappeared.
“Thank you, Bark! Just like Nora said, you were a great person!”
Bolton, who had finished the grueling battle, approached me with a bright face.
I recoiled when I saw him covered in monster body fluids.
“Haha… Excuse me.”
My behavior may have been somewhat unpleasant, but he didn’t look displeased at all.
I just felt happy that I had completed mining safely.
“Let’s go back slowly.”
People breathe a sigh of relief at Bolton’s words.
They were covered in dirt and monster fluids, and their clean appearance in the morning was nowhere to be seen.
While exiting the tunnel, I encountered a group of people.
Even if it was the same tunnel, there was a fork in the road.
It seemed like we encountered a group mining stone at a different crossroads than ours.
They also had a scruffy appearance, not much different from our people.
“Let’s go first.”
Bolton makes concessions first.
“No. We will follow you.”
“…”
“…”
The leaders of each party stood close to each other.
It seemed like he didn’t want to give the rear end.
Should I call it a feeling of caution bordering on trauma?
To me, it looked like a battle of wits between highly poisonous herbivores.
Moreover, each of them is now holding the magic stone that they worked so hard to collect.
It was worthy of sensitivity.
Well… It was a sight that really made me yawn.
I decided to put an end to this pointless battle of wits.
“Bolton, I’ll look after you, we’ll go first.”
After hearing my recommendation, Bolton seemed to think for a moment and then nodded.
None of the other party members objected.
“If Bark says so… I understand.”
Perhaps it had the effect of helping the crisis, but Bolton showed that he actively accepted what I said.
