Ch.242[Chapter 242] Data Miner

“Damn it, damn it!”

The entity that had threatened Unryu Hime revealed itself.

He… no, she was a miner wearing a safety helmet with a headlamp, with dynamite and a canteen attached to her waist, and a pickaxe in her hand.

“Damn, was I discovered all the way here? Or am I just being paranoid?”

The miner anxiously bit her fingernails, blackened with dirt, while glancing at where Unryu Hime was.

There, Unryu Hime was restrained, tied up with rope that appeared to be safety lines typically used to prevent getting lost in mine tunnels.

“I still haven’t gotten the next update information. I need that info to pay off my debts…!”

The miner thought about her Gacha Stone account, which was currently in the negative.

Normally, resources in GachaLand couldn’t go negative, but it was possible in some extremely exceptional situations.

Either when someone borrowed resources from others and failed to repay, or when resources were confiscated due to illegal use.

The miner fell into the latter category.

“Damn, it makes me so angry just thinking about it! What did I even do to deserve this penalty?”

The miner suddenly burst into rage.

“Come on, I should be able to profit a little from data mining before updates, why be so petty about that…!”

Data mining.

In GachaLand, data mining was a profession that involved discovering the future through non-interactive objects that appeared before updates.

Perhaps in GachaLand, they could be compared to prophets or seers.

However, just as everyone pursues different values, data miners also had different goals.

Most data miners sought information about upcoming updates out of pure curiosity.

But some data miners chose profit over curiosity.

Their main values and interests were to use information obtained through data mining to predict the future, hoard items that would increase in value to make a profit, or sell information to those engaged in illegal activities like Mountain Bridge Marsh to earn resources.

Naturally, the miner who had subdued Unryu Hime was the latter type—a data miner pursuing profit.

She was a reseller, a hoarder who predicted the future, bought up related items, and sold them bit by bit for profit.

However, as evident from her current lamentations, she had been reported for hoarding and had all her earned resources confiscated.

“If I had known this would happen, I should have hidden at least 20,000 Gacha Stones out of the 270,000.”

The miner licked her lips.

Of course, even if she had hidden her resources somewhere, they would have been immediately confiscated as long as they were under the system’s management. But if she had been capable of such foresight, she wouldn’t have engaged in illegal data mining in the first place.

“Anyway, that ninja is the problem now…”

The miner shook her head as if troubled, then peeked through the wall to look at the space where Unryu Hime was tied up and isolated.

The miner had tied up Unryu Hime and confined her in a nearby room. The entrance and walls had the same appearance, making it look like a sealed room with no entrance from the outside.

Unryu Hime sat quietly, tied up without moving, and while the miner was satisfied with Unryu Hime’s docile attitude, she couldn’t shake off an uneasy feeling.

“If I let her go, there’s no guarantee she won’t report me, but using this would be a waste of money…”

The miner sighed, looking at the black card in her hand.

The black card had the number No.03-00003438 written on it, which appeared to be a hacked account ID.

“Damn it, I got nervous for nothing and made things worse!”

The miner threw her pickaxe to the ground in another burst of anger.

Unable to contain her frustration, she hissed.

“You’re not even police, why come here! You made me misunderstand!”

The miner now directed all her anger verbally toward Unryu Hime.

Of course, she kept her voice as low as possible.

No matter how angry she was, and despite how empty this Glitchburg was, it never hurt to be careful.

Expressing anger with all her might while keeping her voice as quiet as possible.

It was a small habit she had developed while doing illegal data mining.

“So what should I do now?”

After venting her anger with all her might, the miner seemed to have calmed down and regained her reason.

Agonizing between killing or releasing Unryu Hime, she soon came up with a good idea.

“That’s it…! I can just leave her here! Then I won’t risk being caught. Plus, I can save this expensive hacked… I mean, secret weapon. Two birds with one stone!”

The miner smiled brightly, praising herself for the good idea.

“My, how smart am I to come up with such a brilliant idea?”

After this self-praise, the miner left Unryu Hime behind and slipped away into the darkness.

For her, money was more valuable than the life of a stranger.

“…”

But the miner didn’t know.

Something dark and sticky was watching her intently, and had begun to track her.

…

Sir Dominic and Aaa had been walking in the darkness for quite some time.

“This is strange. Why can’t we find Lady Unryu Hime…”

“It can’t be helped. Glitchburg is as vast as GachaLand. Once you get lost, it’s not easy to find your way.”

Sir Dominic nodded absently at Aaa’s words.

Glitchburg was hardly a place for people to live.

The space was unnecessarily vast, filled with all kinds of bugs, mysteries, and easter eggs that GachaLand people had never found, making it exhausting for people.

Above all, Glitchburg was too dark. Perhaps it was natural since it wasn’t designed with human visitors in mind.

It might have been an effort to save on lighting costs, but that pitiful effort was none of Sir Dominic’s concern.

“I don’t understand why it’s so dark. Even with a torch, I can only see about ten steps ahead…”

Sir Dominic complained to Aaa, unable to contain his frustration any longer.

Aaa nodded in understanding, then laughed loudly.

“Still, it’s better than before. In the past, you could only see one square in each direction… about a 2-meter radius. There was no map, and even with a torch, you could only pass through ‘darkness’ attribute tiles without actually improving visibility. It’s much improved now.”

“Of course, there’s still no map,” Aaa added, delivering what he considered a witty joke.

“But you remember all the paths.”

“Of course. I practiced for 10 years just to shave off 0.1 seconds here.”

Aaa said something incredible with a nonchalant expression.

“Speed runners have created an unofficial map. A map marking where the bugs are and where the easter eggs are. A masterpiece created by three thousand people over four hundred years.”

Sir Dominic stared at Aaa with wide eyes, aghast.

Three thousand people worked for four hundred years just to find one shortest path?

Sir Dominic considered himself quite strong-willed, but compared to the speed runner before him…

“Ah, of course, I only participated in the last 30 years or so. I’m a newbie who just started speed running. I’m only ranked 14th in the GachaLand glitch run rankings… Oh, I’m rambling. Anyway, let’s try to deduce where your colleague, Lady Unryu Hime, might have gone.”

With those words, Aaa stood in one spot.

“This is the center of Glitchburg. As you can see, there’s a mannequin here, with trees around it. Don’t ask why there are trees in this dark space.”

As Sir Dominic looked around at Aaa’s words, indeed there were trees extending in four directions and a mannequin with its right arm extended, palm facing outward.

“This is also one of the exits from Glitchburg. However, you need to solve one of eight riddles located in eight directions, then navigate through a maze that appears after solving the riddle, then solve a puzzle full of random number tables to get a token, give that token to this mannequin, and repeat that three more times.”

“…Just hearing about it makes me dizzy.”

“Of course. The current record for the regular route speed run without using bugs is 122 days, 7 hours, 21 minutes, 43 seconds, and 11 milliseconds.”

Sir Dominic kept his mouth shut at this remarkable record in many ways.

If even the fastest person to officially escape Glitchburg took 122 days, Sir Dominic, who was weak at such puzzle elements, might need to spend decades here.

“That’s why I was guiding you through the glitch route… Ah, wait a moment. Let me quickly scan through all of Glitchburg and come back. Please wait here.”

Only after hearing Aaa’s words did Sir Dominic remember that they had returned to look for Unryu Hime.

He had been so focused on Aaa’s words that he momentarily forgot that fact.

Before Sir Dominic could respond, Aaa began jumping diagonally, building up speed until he moved almost faster than the wind, and then disappeared into the darkness.

Sir Dominic marveled at the incredible speed, but before his admiring eyes could blink three times, Aaa was back in front of him.

Sir Dominic thought Aaa might have forgotten something, but he quickly realized how wrong that assumption was.

“It seems she’s trapped somewhere. I’ve checked all the connected paths and she wasn’t there. That means she must be in one of the isolated rooms.”

Aaa spoke to Sir Dominic as if he had just toured the vast Glitchburg in an instant.

All Sir Dominic could do in response to Aaa’s words was blink his eyes and look dumbfounded.

This was the speed of the 14th-ranked glitch speed runner.