‘They said it was an underground mine, so I pictured an ordinary mine.’
I switch on the light I took from the soldier.
I look around a bit more.
“This isn’t any kind of mine.”
Apparently,
what this world calls a mine is a little different from what comes to mind on Earth.
When you think of a mine, you picture a deep, narrow, dark tunnel.
Unsteady timbers and stone dust raining down with every step...
None of that was here.
A look far removed
from such harsh conditions.
‘Just how advanced was their civilization?’
Srrrk.
When I lay my hand on the wall,
cool smoothness, precisely machined, skims my fingertips.
The entire wall was neatly finished in a vintage-looking material,
and here and there, sacred-looking motifs were carved into it.
Looking around,
the passage I stand in is studded with massive pillars of a style I’ve never seen.
Rather than a mine...
yeah...
“It feels like a temple.”
A temple-like feel.
Come to think of it,
there was one puzzling point.
‘This world’s path... it diverges a bit from other worlds.’
Seohwan’s world, Dasmur, the Green Manes tribe—
when other races faced an extinction crisis,
their world’s great being—
‘They received help from a god and fled elsewhere.’
But
the history of Dwe Morzan shown in the Gate’s description
contained something quite different.
‘From the start there’s no mention of any god... and when annihilation came, they were simply annihilated.’
Hmm.
Honestly, saying there isn’t a god isn’t all that strange.
‘We’re like that too.’
There was no entity on Earth deserving to be called a god.
If there had been, annihilation wouldn’t have come upon us this helplessly.
It’s just—
other worlds all acted as if gods existed,
so I’d apparently mistaken it for granted that every world but ours had a divinity.
‘Turns out there are worlds without one.’
That world—Babylonia—where they had to build [Vimana],
this place, Dwe Morzan,
and Earth are the exceptions.
What’s a little odd is that this place looks like a temple,
but that’s not necessarily strange.
Religion doesn’t require a literal god to exist in order to arise.
‘Like Earth, where religion existed despite the lack of gods.’
This mine, which provided them with tremendous mana,
must have served as a kind of object of faith.
Anyway,
in appearance, it’s a place that hardly deserves to be called a mine.
The only element that confirms
this is indeed an underground mine
was exactly one thing.
“...How deep does it go?”
At the passage’s outer edge,
a gigantic shaft bored straight down below.
That unimaginably large, deep, wide hole of unknown depth
was the only thing
that confirmed we were underground.
On closer inspection,
the passage I’m on spirals around the edge of that shaft.
A structure that lets you descend by looping widely along the wall.
And then...
“Hrmm. Let’s head back.”
Once I’d confirmed that much,
I decided to retreat quietly.
It’s not that I didn’t feel the urge to look around more, but—
—Thoom... thoom...
—Kkiiiieeaaagh...
Those grotesque cries echoing from inside.
“Going in there alone is... a bit much.”
Even so,
charging in solo against things that make those sounds
is just not it.
****
I return through the hole Kkamang burrowed,
and, clinging to that wall like I’m rock climbing, I scamper up.
Up above, I see something like a wall set across the opening.
‘They sealed it well.’
The order I gave to block the entrance just in case—
looks like the soldiers carried it out pretty well.
Tuk, tuk.
I rap on that wall a couple of times.
A moment later—
“Sergeant Shin...?”
The wall slides aside,
and the outside comes into view.
“Are you okay, sir?!”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Ah—don’t come closer, it’s dangerous.”
I really was fine.
I’d heard the sounds of who-knows-what monsters below,
but I came right back without fighting.
However...
“F-fine, sir?”
“How are you fine...?”
The soldiers
stared at me with eyes that couldn’t make sense of it.
‘Huh?’
I wondered why,
and—
“Private Lee Byungmin... was poisoned.”
“...Ah.”
“It was a vicious toxin. The healer and the priest both had to work on him for a long while before they could fully cure it.”
Our unit’s healers, as expected.
They quickly identified the cause and finished treatment.
And
only then did I understand what those looks meant.
“Byungmin was down there mere seconds and ended up like that.”
“Weren’t you down there at least ten minutes, Sergeant Shin...?”
In a space suffused with that kind of vicious miasma,
how could I be fine?
There is...
something I can guess.
[Nepenthes that Melts Souls]
‘This, probably.’
My friend guarding the Ammunition Battalion—
the parasite vine I received from the Alraune.
It has the ability to produce a toxin of incredible purity.
And by parasitizing on my arm,
one of the effects it gave me is this:
[If parasitism is permitted, you gain immunity to all poisons of a lower grade than ‘Soul-Melting Poison — Nepenthes’.]
At least around the passage where I was,
that means
the miasma was weaker than the Nepenthes’ toxin.
From what I heard of Byungmin’s ordeal, it was by no means a weak poison,
but the Nepenthes’ poison surpasses even that.
I could newly feel just how tremendous a gift the Alraune gave me.
“Well... I have my own method.”
“Good lord.”
The unit members looked dumbfounded,
but as always—
“...At this point it’s hardly surprising.”
“Guess we just have to take it as it comes.”
—they chose not to try to understand it.
“Anyway...”
What matters isn’t how I withstood the miasma,
but—
“Is it... actually possible to clear that place?”
“Even if there really is something inside we can harvest mana from.”
Their eyes turn toward the roughly sealed hole.
“With miasma that thick...”
“Just getting inside looks tough.”
They’re right.
Down below is apparently a [manastone mine],
but with miasma that dense,
mining those so-called manastones will be hard.
...Hmm.
“There is a way, not that it’s free of issues.”
“Sir?”
I recall the text that appeared
when I appraised the miasma saturating that underground.
[The result of rot and resentment being provoked by something, manifested as a very powerful toxin.]
That miasma—
is produced because something inside is provoking it.
Which means—
“If we can resolve the something that’s the cause, we might be able to eliminate the miasma.”
If we can do that,
we can secure a colossal amount of mana.
No—
not just that.
‘They called it a magic-tech civilization, right?’
Which means,
once the mages—currently unconscious—come to, there might be something we can gain here.
“Uh... even if you say so...”
“Unlike you, Sergeant, we’ll be in trouble the moment we touch the miasma...”
Right.
That was the problem.
Their eyes pin me.
“Couldn’t we do something with your cooking, Sergeant?”
“...Mm. It’s not impossible.”
“Oh! As expected of you, Sergeant...!”
If nothing else,
I’m confident in my cooking.
“In that case, we should—!”
“But there’s one problem.”
If I feed them the dishes I make,
I’m certain the unit members could fully resist the miasma.
However—
“Take a look at this.”
“What is...?”
I reach into my shadow
and pull out one of the ingredients inside.
[Carrot Tainted by Poison]
Rather than calling it a carrot,
it’d be more accurate to call it something that used to be a carrot.
“It’s contaminated by the miasma.”
“Exactly.”
The carrot
had half-melted under the miasma.
“So the miasma even seeps into that pocket space of yours, Sergeant?”
“Yeah. I only realized it after I came out.”
It seemed less severe than outside proper.
The vampires in the shadow didn’t cry out in pain, after all.
But—
food is something you put directly into your body.
“The moment the miasma gets on a dish, that dish is a write-off.”
“Which means...”
“Doing additional cooking inside is impossible, and even if we bring in Combat Rations, they’ll pick up the miasma quickly. In the end, we have to apply the buffs outside and then go in.”
No matter how great my cooking is,
because this world resembles a game in some ways,
there’s one unavoidable limit.
“Once the effect ends, we’ve got nothing.”
Duration.
The duration of a dish’s effect varies with the care and flavor put into it,
but there is a ceiling.
‘It can’t be infinite.’
Thankfully there’s no cooldown to reapply,
so I’ve been using the insane skill [Combat Rations]:
the moment a buff expires, the soldiers can resupply the buff with Combat Rations.
But that place makes it impossible.
‘The Gate’s name is [An Underground Mine Dug Too Deep].’
It’s guaranteed to be very deep.
With no idea how deep the source of the toxin lies,
if we charge in rashly,
the instant the dish effects end, everyone will be paralyzed by the toxin.
“Mm...”
At that,
as the soldiers wrestle with the dilemma—
“Uh. Well. How should I put it...”
One soldier,
as if nothing was worth worrying about, opens his mouth.
“Do we even need to worry about this?”
“Huh?”
“We may be helpless against that toxin, but you aren’t, Sergeant.”
A recruit who joined the Legion relatively recently,
eyes shining,
looks at my face.
“Then couldn’t you go in alone and take care of everything for us, Sergeant?”
“...”
Yeah, damn it.
This has been the problem from way back.
‘How would that even work.’
Because my evaluation has been inflated too much,
unit members sometimes expect the ridiculous from me—
expectations so excessive I find them absurd.
‘I can resist the miasma, true, but that’s it.’
Nine-tenths of my combat power...
no, call it nine-and-nine-tenths,
comes from dish buffs.
‘Inside, I can’t eat additional dishes.’
Without the layer-caking of dish buffs via [Absolute Palate],
my combat power... well.
I’d be about on par with that soldier who just spoke.
‘Recruit standards have gotten strict lately... honestly, I might even lose to him.’
With the unit, I believe we can overcome most crises.
But whether I can just slam into something this ridiculous—totally different question.
And explaining all that as-is
would go against what Taejun said.
How do I get past this...
My head starts to ache a little when—
“...Mr. Tae-woo.”
“Ma’am?”
Our production lead,
one of the earliest survivors to join us—
“Are you kidding right now?”
Lee Sanga says,
with an icy smile.
****
“Mr. Tae-woo. Are you kidding right now?”
At Team Lead Lee Sanga’s chilly line,
tension tightens the soldiers’ faces.
“Uh? What do you mean...”
“Clearing this Gate is a mission given to every unit member here. With a mission like that in front of us, and when we should be wringing out solutions... a legionary asking the Corps Commander to fix it for him?”
Her eyes were clearly smiling as she spoke,
but her mouth was not smiling at all.
“Do you think that makes sense?”
“T-that’s... I didn’t mean it like that...”
“I’d wanted to address this at some point anyway, so this is perfect.”
Her gaze
sweeps over every unit member gathered here.
“From time to time I’ve noticed a few soldiers indulging in odd ideas.”
“...”
“Things like, ‘even if we can’t do anything, the Corps Commander will solve it somehow’... talk like that.”
What little trace of a smile remained
vanishes from her already frosty face.
“We are the Iron Legion.”
“Uhh...”
“In an army, soldiers are the ones who obey the commander’s orders. Not the ones who dump everything on the commander!”
Thud!
She must be properly angry.
She slams her giant steel shears into the floor and continues.
“Just now too. The Corps Commander goes down first into that dangerous underground to scout? That was a kindness he extended for the soldiers’ sake. Originally, that was the soldiers’ job!”
Her eyes
turn to Private Lee Byungmin, convalescing in the corner.
“Byungmin knew that, which is why he followed closest on the Corps Commander’s heels. It’s thanks to him that we were able, albeit belatedly, to assess the miasma down there.”
“T-that’s... true.”
“And yet some soldiers... the moment they learn it’s not immediately lethal thanks to the Corps Commander, they go, ‘good thing,’ and whatnot...”
Tsk.
“The Legion is a gathering of those who want to survive in this world. We recruit only the very best elites for that.”
“...”
“Here’s a warning.”
She sweeps the room with a cold gaze.
“If you relax just because you managed to join the Legion... you won’t last long.”
“...”
“The Corps Commander’s ability is tremendous, yes, but those who only try to lean on it are not needed in this Legion.”
As she says—
this is...
a warning.
“Don’t try to lean. Think of how to help.”
“...”
“That is why the Legion accepted you.”
Those who grow complacent under the Legion’s name are unnecessary.
Legionaries...
must always strive to prove themselves.
“U-understood.”
“I... was too shortsighted.”
The soldiers who ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) first spoke up, and
those who’d been quietly agreeing with them, all flush and bow their heads.
‘...No wonder she used to lead a survivor group, huh?’
The way she sharply brings the unit to heel—
that’s some charisma.
Thanks to her, we escape a bothersome moment, too.
‘Come to think of it... the reason I survived the Green Manes’ assassination last time—’
Because she worried about me,
she forced Kkamang into my arms.
If she hadn’t warned me to take Kkamang along just in case,
I wouldn’t have survived that Green Manes assassination.
‘The other team leads are like that to a degree, but...’
she, especially,
acknowledges my ability yet worries over me a lot.
It’s thanks to that I’ve stayed alive this far.
I’m grateful.
“Of course, someone could say, ‘Fine words, but what help are you, really?’—about me.”
“W-what? No, ma’am!”
“How could anyone...! There isn’t a single soldier who thinks Team Lead Lee Sanga isn’t helpful!”
“It’s fine even if someone does think that. Because...”
But
she hadn’t finished.
“I—no.”
She smiles,
brimming with confidence.
“We... might be able to help.”
“...?”
As those words leave her mouth,
from outside the Gate—
“Team Lead!”
“Oh. You’re here.”
One of the production soldiers
rushes in, carrying something.
“The prototype you asked for... I brought it!”
Then,
blacksmith Grandpa Park
and Corporal Lee Gongu, head of the engineers, crowd in around the item.
“Heh heh... Spending so much time at the fortress gave us hours to burn. All those little trials are finally paying off.”
“I did think it’d be better if we never needed to use it... but I’m glad we prepared in advance.”
“?”
What could it be—
that they had to fetch it from outside the Gate in the middle of all this?
Curious, I step closer to see the item.
And then,
at the sight,
“...”
I’m at a loss for words.
Because it’s... how to put it.
‘Familiar.’
It was extremely familiar to me.
Naturally so—
this is...
“A CBRN suit.”
The thing every soldier inevitably goes through:
he... no, no.
Hellish training.
“As expected of you, Sergeant!”
“Hehe. The Corps Commander recognizes it at a glance?”
The gear used in CBRN training...
a gas mask and a protective suit.
