Ch.61Mining and the Vampire (2)

The chase ended anticlimactically.

No matter how well those thieves knew the area or how much they dominated it.

There was a stark difference between them and us.

Of course, Grim Darker wasn’t a game where level was everything.

Even at the same level, weaknesses could be pronounced depending on one’s build, and you could die just by allowing a lower-level character to get close.

It was a game where you could die from carelessness regardless of your level or build strength, depending on the difficulty. That’s why every build had exploitable weaknesses.

Taking Melody as an example, she was a level 20 bard, not a level 20 warrior, so she had deficiencies compared to warriors of the same level.

Of course, she had excellent magical and supporting abilities, and could still put up a decent fight against warriors of the same level.

But not enough to cover her weaknesses.

She couldn’t perform well with low dexterity, and if her spellcasting was interrupted, she couldn’t do much of anything.

That’s how the Three Clans tried to kill her. Without me, they would have easily succeeded.

That’s why I’ve been cautious since arriving in this world.

I never underestimated enemies or let my guard down, always moving with the assumption that someone might exploit my weaknesses at any moment.

But despite such efforts, there were situations where that wasn’t possible.

This could be compared to nature rather than a game.

Just as a lion and a rabbit aren’t equals.

Just as a rabbit can’t surpass a lion no matter what it schemes.

These thieves or thugs, whatever they were, couldn’t escape from us.

That’s why we were now in the basement of a tavern.

To put it bluntly, the tavern basement wasn’t clean. It was rather filthy.

Having lived in a semi-basement myself, I was strict about cleaning, as was my sister who taught me, so this was quite different.

Isla was grimacing, and Lorian was pinching her nostrils while painfully furrowing her brow.

In that space, I looked down at the thugs steeped in drugs, violence, and various depravities.

“Well, have you calmed down a bit?”

The thug my question was directed at had a different level of depravity.

His head was shaved, but rather than looking clean, he gave off an impression of misfortune.

The sleeveless leather armor he wore was soaked in all sorts of foul odors, making it painful just to look at him.

The basement was filled with a sweet yet somehow nauseating smell that became more unpleasant the longer you breathed it.

“Blue grapes,” Isla said.

Only then did certain things catch my eye.

Fermentation vats filled with blue liquid befitting a tavern basement, and something resembling water pipes where dried peels were smoked after the pulp was removed.

“…They smoke blue grapes here too?”

It was a drug.

Unlike the alcohol made from fermenting the blue-tinged pulp, the grape’s skin had effects similar to narcotics.

Effects that enhanced magical power, sharpened the mind, and alleviated pain.

Usually, the skin was dried, crushed, and smoked like tobacco.

I’d only heard about and seen it in the game, but apparently this sweet yet foul smell was from those blue grapes.

“What else could people like us sell here? Blue grapes are… relatively moral.”

The bald thug’s gaze was now directed at Lorian rather than me.

The meaning behind that gaze was obvious.

That their selling blue grapes was far more moral than what the Blood Clan did.

It was hostility displayed despite knowing we held his life in our hands.

I was dumbfounded. Was he high from chain-smoking blue grapes?

But Lorian didn’t even twitch her cheek in annoyance.

Instead, she stood silently before him.

A girl who was obviously a vampire. Though her actual age might not be that of a girl, Lorian, who appeared to be one, maintained an expressionless face against his gaze.

She knew showing any agitation here would be meaningless. Instead, she rested her right hand on the hilt of her executioner’s sword.

A seemingly relaxed posture, as if she had no intention of drawing the blade.

I nodded to Lorian as our eyes met.

“Have you seen Blood Clan members before?”

“…Heh, I thought this one might be fake.”

A laugh tinged with regret. The meaning was obvious.

He didn’t doubt Lorian was real, and he had seen vampires before.

And he had seen them multiple times.

“What did they look like?”

No answer came. It wasn’t that he refused to speak.

It was clear just by looking that he had no loyalty to protect, and one couldn’t expect such things from a city thug.

Rather, it was a forced effect.

He wanted to speak and opened his mouth, but veins bulged in his neck and he had to stop. Even when he forcibly strained his vocal cords, all that came out were groans of pain.

“A prohibition.”

Lorian’s face darkened as she nervously fidgeted with the hilt of her executioner’s sword.

It was the same reason she couldn’t tell me many things before.

The Blood Clan had already forbidden this thug from speaking about them.

We couldn’t force it out of him. I placed my hand on Lorian’s shoulder as she looked troubled.

A shoulder with pale, faint warmth.

Her bare shoulder, exposed by her sleeveless dress, was delicate, unlike the powerful sword energy she wielded or her steadfast temperament.

That shoulder trembled slightly.

Does the mind follow the body? She seemed more fragile than when we first met.

I shook my head at her wavering eyes and moved her back.

“Are they in this city?”

He still couldn’t speak due to the prohibition. I continued asking regardless.

“What’s your name?”

“Geldon.”

“Right, Geldon. Let’s establish a rule for this interrogation.”

The bald man’s expression turned puzzled. I spoke while looking at his sullen face.

“Stay quiet when it’s not true, and answer when it is.”

His face twisted in confusion. I opened my mouth as I watched him.

“The vampire who placed this prohibition on you, are they in this city right now?”

*

“I don’t like this.”

The breath that hit my face carried a strangely sweet scent, perhaps from the roasted fruit she had eaten earlier.

It was a pleasant smell. But it also reminded me of the sweet scent of blue grapes I had smelled earlier.

“What don’t you like?”

“It feels like a trap.”

Isla said this while slightly frowning.

With her face almost pressed against mine, I could only see her lips, but that’s how it seemed.

But I couldn’t tell her to back off or try to create some distance. Physically, there was no space to do so.

“But we have no choice, do we? If it’s my clan… it’s not something we should approach openly.”

This time the voice came from behind me.

A somewhat rough girl’s voice, different from Isla’s refreshing tone.

The owner of that voice, Lorian, was pressed tightly against my back, softly groaning whenever our surroundings shook.

It couldn’t be helped.

We were riding in the narrow cargo area of a carriage.

“Do we really have to be like this?”

It was natural for Isla to express rare discontent. I understood but tried to appease her.

“We have no other way to get the blue mineral. Please bear with it.”

“That’s not it.”

Isla said that, but it sounded like an empty protest. I pretended not to hear and thought to myself.

The blue mineral definitely exists in this region.

Having come here to obtain it, we needed to achieve at least part of our goal.

At the very least, to avoid feeling like we’d wasted our journey, we needed to find even a fragment or learn where it came from.

The vampire was just entangled in the process. The vampire was merely a secondary issue.

How did we end up like this?

To summarize:

The thug accepted our proposal and agreed to let us into the mine.

The result was our current situation.

I was standing between the two women like a sandwich ham, among the cargo.

“W-we’ll arrive soon, so if you could just bear with it a little longer…”

A whispering voice from the front of the carriage. Fortunately, the thug acting as the driver wasn’t lying.

After the carriage had been jolting for quite some time and finally stopped, we discovered a massive tunnel entrance welcoming us outside.

“I-I’ll…”

“Go back. If you don’t want to get caught up and die.”

The thug, terrified, retreated with the carriage. I looked at the long tunnel and organized the information obtained through interrogation.

Mainly questions I asked, with Geldon either remaining silent or confirming with his scalp turning red.

First, there was a vampire in this unnamed underground city.

Not just any vampire, but a true member of the Blood Clan, not some random person turned into a vampire at the moment of death.

A vampire who seemed to hold an important position in the Three Clans.

For some reason, they existed in the tunnel and rarely came out.

Normally, hearing such facts, I would have given up or tried to find blue minerals that had already been mined and stored somewhere, but I didn’t.

Instead, I recalled one fact:

If we could just take down the vampire in the tunnel, we could freely take as much blue mineral as we wanted from this city.

And I was the type who believed in extracting every last drop of benefit when there was an opportunity.

Even if I died getting hit by the tower, like a jungler who ganks and destroys both the enemy top laner and tower.

I saw this as an opportunity.

There didn’t seem to be anything else besides the vampire.

As I already knew well, these Three Clans weren’t particularly unified.

My aim was to exploit that gap to take down the vampire.

Gain experience points in the process, make Lorian fall out of favor with her clan to the point where she couldn’t betray me again, and farm resources.

A perfect three-birds-with-one-stone situation. So there was no hesitation in my steps.

“It’s spacious.”

“Considering carriages have gone inside… it wouldn’t be strange if the clan has some devices they use.”

As Isla and Lorian said, the tunnel was quite large.

Considering the Three Clans were capable of creating mechanical devices, it wasn’t surprising. Perhaps there might even be mining drills perfectly sized for this tunnel.

“Let’s go.”

I led the two of them forward.

I was at the front, with Lorian at the rear and Isla in the middle.

If the thugs betrayed us, having Lorian, who could cast barriers, at the rear would be fine, and I could block most attacks with my body.

Without fear, our advance was swift.

[Play Time: 9,312 hours]

Our advance didn’t stop even as the wide tunnel gradually narrowed to a cramped size, and small caves connecting tunnel to tunnel began to intertwine like a confusing maze.

What stopped us wasn’t a dead end or enemies lying in wait.

“…A child?”

It was a child playing with stacked rocks on top of the tunnel.

“That’s…”

Lorian stopped speaking, her complexion worsening. Her already pale face seemed to turn even whiter.

And as soon as the child saw us, they widened their eyes and fled.

Strangely, the child had pale skin and red eyes. Despite an ominous feeling holding me back, I didn’t hesitate to chase after the child.

They were fast for a child. They fled through winding, narrow tunnels.

But we were too fast to be shaken off so easily.

Eventually, we caught up with the fleeing child.

It was a cavity situated between rock caves. A large cavity, not too humid, with wooden reinforcements making it a living space.

There, the fleeing child was glaring at us.

Only then did I realize I had been lured.

People emerged from the darkness, surrounding the child.

They were diverse.

Men and women alike.

There were even elderly among them, and quite a number of teenagers slightly older than the child who had led us here.

They all had something in common.

Pale skin, red eyes, and vibrant bodies beneath their shabby attire.

I found myself gaping.

“How…”

They were all vampires.

Not prestigious members of the Three Clans, but mere half-bloods.

I saw hundreds of victims surrounding us.