Ch.223Delivering Hope

# Wellord Rock Salt Mine

It was originally a place where no barrier tower was planned to be installed.

Although salt is an indispensable resource in human diet, sufficient quantities were already being produced at the salt farms near Mothertown.

Most of these salt farms were a kind of state-owned enterprise managed by the New Continent Development Headquarters, so adequate amounts of salt were being supplied to each city and outpost of Grantis at affordable prices.

Therefore, even though the rock salt vein was a welcome discovery, it was merely considered a nice-to-have facility, not worth developing into an outpost by using precious magic cores.

But it seems the housewives’ opinions differed from those of the politicians.

The rock salt discovered here had a high iron content giving it a pink hue—equivalent to what would be called Himalayan pink salt on Earth—and it began to gain explosive popularity among both colonist and native housewives.

Located too far even from Leatherwork, this pink rock salt could only be obtained by placing requests with the Adventurers’ Guild.

The voices demanding stable production grew louder by the day, and eventually, the New Continent Development Headquarters allocated the smallest magic core to this geographically unremarkable location to increase citizen satisfaction.

And so, the small outpost with approximately 100 permanent residents, Wellord Rock Salt Mine, was now—

*Crash!*

Gradually turning into ruins under the relentless barrage of stones thrown by Lesser Demons day and night.

“Damn it! Those cursed monsters… what’s even left for them to destroy that they’re still throwing stones!”

“You’d think they’d retreat after doing this much damage. They can’t even enter inside the barrier anyway…”

Due to the Lesser Demons’ ceaseless attacks day and night, the residents’ stress had already reached its limit.

They could sense that these stone throws weren’t meant to harm people directly, but rather to thoroughly destroy their homes and livelihoods.

“Do you think Smith made it safely to Leatherwork?”

“Let’s hope so. If all goes well, news should reach the big city by tomorrow, and a rescue team should come within a week if we can just hold out.”

“That’s if we don’t all starve to death before then.”

“……”

In truth, the isolated mine residents weren’t particularly worried about being killed by monsters.

While wooden warehouses and houses were half-collapsed or in shambles, the barrier tower made of special metal still maintained its form.

The problem was food.

With houses, warehouses, and silos collapsed, most of their food supplies were buried—a situation that couldn’t be described as good by any stretch of the imagination.

Even attempts to recover food from the rubble were impossible with large rocks raining down from above.

After four people had already died and seven were seriously injured making similar attempts, who would dare to step forward?

“Ah~ If I’d known this would happen, I should have learned magic at the Academy.”

“Would being a mage make any difference with so many monsters out there?”

“You never know, right? I heard high-level mages can use incredible magic. If they cast one big spell where dozens of monsters are gathered, then boom~”

*BANG!!*

Just as he stretched out his hand jokingly, a series of blue explosions actually occurred in mid-air, causing Lesser Demons to fall to the ground.

It came from the direction of the entrance, which had been heavily targeted by monsters since someone had left to seek help at Moon Lake.

“Huh…?”

The young miner stared at his palm, wondering if some hidden magical talent had suddenly manifested in him.

As the refugees were bewildered by this unexpected situation, the sound of powerful hoofbeats began to reach their ears.

What eventually came into view was a large passenger carriage pulled by a huge black horse.

There was no one sitting in the driver’s seat, yet it skillfully avoided the piles of stones and building debris while withstanding the monsters’ thrown rocks as it rapidly approached the mine entrance.

Then, a black-haired young man leaned out from the door right behind the driver’s seat and shouted to the mine refugees:

“Hey! Clear the way up front! Supply carriage coming through!!”

Upon hearing this, two young men quickly snapped to attention, moved people aside, and began to open the wooden doors at the mine entrance wide.

The entrance to the Wellord Mine was built large enough for carriages to enter and load salt directly.

It was the first time since the loading dock’s completion that such a large amount of supplies was being brought in.

“Phew~ Somehow we managed to complete the food delivery safely.”

“Thank you so much. We had no food supplies stored in the mine, so we thought we wouldn’t be able to hold out until rescue arrived.”

After safely arriving at the mine and unloading the supplies, the head manager of the rock salt mine approached to express his gratitude.

It would have been better for Jessica, our party leader, to respond in this situation, but she was currently treating the injured inside the mine, so I had no choice but to step up.

“If you want to thank someone, thank the man who escaped on horseback. He rode all the way with his body covered in blood, which is how he happened to run into us while we were briefly stopping at Leatherwork.”

“Leatherwork… I thought it was strangely early for help to arrive. Even riding on horseback, it would still take another day or two for news to reach adventurers after arriving at Moon Lake.”

“News has probably already spread to the western cities as well. We have an artifact that allows us to immediately contact our acquaintance in Riverside. I imagine emergency quests have already been issued and adventurers are gathering as we speak.”

“Oh… then—”

“At the earliest, a support force of adventurers should arrive in about 5-6 days to begin a full-scale recapture operation.”

The head manager’s expression brightened somewhat after hearing my explanation, but in reality, the mood among the refugees couldn’t exactly be called positive.

While they were grateful and relieved to have escaped starvation, they also looked at their thoroughly destroyed and collapsed homes with blank expressions.

Even if they survived this dungeon overflow incident, what awaited the residents of Wellord Mine was a thoroughly violated homeland.

*’Strictly speaking, it’s hard to say they’ve safely overcome this incident…’*

Currently, there are 74 residents taking refuge in the Wellord Mine.

That’s 22 fewer than the 96 who were residing here before the dungeon overflow occurred.

Even though the barrier tower prevented monsters from entering and the enemies’ only means of attack was throwing stones, Wellord Mine had already suffered significant casualties.

People who were working outside the barrier and couldn’t evacuate in time were attacked by monsters.

Those who tried to prevent the destruction of silos and warehouses were killed in the fight.

Some were hit by rocks while fleeing to the mine, lost consciousness, and never woke up again.

Others were crushed to death by collapsing ceilings while sleeping deeply after finishing night shifts.

By simple calculation, over 20% of the resident population had perished, so regardless of the joy of escaping starvation, it was impossible to shake off the feeling of devastation.

“From now on, it’s a race against time. Our priority is to protect the barrier tower until reinforcements arrive and prevent any more injuries or deaths.”

“We understand that, but… seeing all this, it’s hard to just sit still and do nothing.”

*CRASH!*

No sooner had the head manager finished speaking than a rock the size of a human head flew into the barrier tower installed in the center of the village.

The barrier tower in a small outpost like Wellord Mine is much smaller than those in western cities. Perhaps only about the height of an adult man?

Nevertheless, the durability of the tower made of special alloy is no less than that of city barrier towers, so despite the collision with large rocks, it only suffered slight scratches on the surface with no significant damage.

But even so, we couldn’t simply ignore the situation where the exposed barrier tower was serving as a target for the monsters’ stone-throwing.

Although the damage might be negligible, if it continued to accumulate, fatal damage could occur to the barrier tower, or even if it appeared intact, problems could arise with the activation of the magical formulas.

“We’ll need to do something about that too. I should talk to Mina about countermeasures…”

“If there’s anything we can help with, please let us know. We’ll do our best within our capabilities.”

“Ah, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Looking at the swarm of Lesser Demons blackening the sky, I let out a small sigh, quiet enough that others couldn’t hear.

In this scene that could overwhelm anyone with despair just by looking at it, how long could the residents of Wellord Mine maintain their composure?

Making that last as long as possible was the mission currently entrusted to us.