Volume 4 Chapter 1.2
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Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes
「I guess when you get to be as good as Sensei, the proportion of magic steel and mythril and all that increases before your very eyes.」
「Dunno if that’s a good thing for the other people out there, but yeah, mate.」
Just as Mio had pointed out, everyone had dug in practically the same place, yet Hiroshi, Mio, and Haruna had found clearly different information surrounding the ore they dug up.
Haruna really only dug up bad quality iron, being a novice as she was. There also wasn’t much in the way of kilograms of minerals, essentially trash iron ore.
With Mio, who had her excavation skill in Advanced Class, she uncovered seventy percent high quality iron ore, while the remaining thirty percent consisted of magic steel and mythril, essentially mid-level metals, still not enough to paint a good picture of the distribution but nonetheless outputting some earth elemental ore.
Now, with Hiroshi, the percentage of normal iron ore dropped to thirty percent, and all of it could easily be melted and hardened once to shift the material into normal iron ingots, with essentially low purity. The remaining seventy percent consisted of magic steel and mythril in a one-to-one ratio of sixty percent, which were unfathomably versatile to where you could practically use them as metals just by melting/solidifying them one time, and then the last ten percent consisted of every kind of element ore you could think of in addition to orichalcum, adamantite, high quality metals that would give anyone a run for their money.
Hiroshi had anticipated this to an extent, so he was not particularly surprised, but this was still troublesome.
「So we know the substance is the same as we thought it would be, but is it really okay to tell the other people that Hiroshi can dig up that kind of ore？」
「That prolly ain’t no problem. Mythril, magic steel, ‘n all that jazz, there’s so much of it and there are plenty of people who could pull off the same stunt.」
「Can you guarantee that being high level in excavation won’t be problematic, though? When you consider your other crafting skills and everything, I don’t think we can be so optimistic about how they’ll receive you.」
「Excavation, harvesting, ‘n felling are said to work well if ya have other craftin’ skills, and if ya continue like that day afta day diggin’, fellin’, ‘n harvestin’ materials, yer abilities are gonna skyrocket. Long-lived races like dwarves could dig day in and day out and I bet ya there’s a few o’ them who’ve practically maxed out advanced class.」
Makoto gave Hiroshi a doubtful look for his optimistic expectations. Hiroshi’s unusual manufacturing skills were fairly well known here and there, but she couldn’t help but think it would still be dangerous to just casually let everyone know who he was.
「Well, it’s a lil’ weak fer evidence, but there’s another reason why I think it’s gon’ be alright.」
「What’s the reasoning on that？」
「People are already excavatin’ orichalcum ‘n adamantite, even though there ain’t much of it. Processin’ technology ain’t caught up yet, plus there’s hardly any ya can get from mines, so products, ore, whatever ya name it, it ain’t circulatin’ around.」
「……And that’s your reason？」
Still not satisfied by Hiroshi’s explanation, Makoto interjected with yet another question. Haruna and Tatsuya didn’t appear very convinced either. Conversely, Mio, who also had high crafting skill, was extremely persuaded by what Hiroshi said.
「Production would imply that there’s someone who’s got the skills to dig up the stuff. If ya take those kindsa people along to dig up dungeon walls, I’m purty sure half of ‘em would change to mythril or magic steel, y’know？」
「In order to dig up orichalcum in a regular mine, you have to double back on advanced class excavation or else it’s impossible.」
Mio added a supplemental explanation to what Hiroshi said. In the game, fields, regular mines, and dungeons each had slightly different excavation difficulties, and the ore table you could excavate had gigantic differences all around. The excavation difficulty in the field was high, and you needed at minimum enough skill to double back on beginner class in order to find places where you could dig up decent quality ore. Naturally, the higher quality the ingredients you wanted to dig up, the more the necessary skill would jump up, and unless you got into fairly dangerous regions, you probably wouldn’t even get your hands on any magic steel, a truly thorny predicament.
Though it did take quests and money in order to enter mines, on the other hand, the excavation points were easy to find and the varieties of minerals were guaranteed the minimum quality, such as iron yielding iron, mythril yielding mythril, etc. In exchange, there was practically no bonus for proficiency skills like in the field, so if you wanted to get your hands on more rarely produced resources, such as trying to get magic steel or orichalcum in mythril mines, it would be impossible unless you had the advanced class to back up your skills like Mio said.
Things were entirely different in mining dungeons, where the occurrence table of ore for every excavation point you had would be decided at random. Proficiency points and random numbers would revise each table, so on occasion, despite having high proficiency points, all you would get might just be iron, for instance. But despite all this, if your proficiency was low, then not only orichalcum or adamantite, but also magic steel or mythril or any sort of high quality iron could not be excavated. Then again, it was more that pickaxes simply lost in the production table when your skills were that low, so this whole situation was practically harassment. When you also considered how stronger monsters than in the field would come and pick fights with you all throughout this, the dungeons probably had the highest total excavation difficulty.
「I dunno if it works the same way in these dungeons as in the game, but I can say for sure that unlike normal mines, yer skills influence a heck of a lot. Seems like these mines already had a lotta orichalcum in the first place, so I bet there’s a ton of people who’re able to extract orichalcum.」
「Fair enough. Come to think of it, how do you even go about checking what minerals are in the stones you dig up？」
「Once ya pick up some skills, ya generally get an idea of it, but if ya wanna git precise results ya gotta use “search metal” magic. Use this magic ‘n ya know immediately how much is mixed in of what, but unfortunately there’s a limit on it: ya can’t use it on anythin’ but stones you’ve dug up before. Findin’ veins basically requires ya to rely on yer craftsman’s skills and yer intuition.」
「Don’t know whether to call it convenient or inconvenient magic……」
「Hey, it has its uses for sure, mate. Yer always gonna know what purification method ya gonna use.」
Tatsuya and Makoto weren’t sure if they should trust what Hiroshi had just said. Meanwhile, for Haruna and Mio, who were in the middle of training in smelting and excavating, knew very well how handy the magic was, nodding strongly.
「So, leavin’ the ore and whatnot aside for now, there seems to have been some discussion about how the investigation wasn’t quite thorough enough.」
「Well yeah, that’s to be expected.」
「Everything barely happened yesterday, so most of the tunnels connecting to the depths ain’t been investigated yet, plus they gotta figure out what kind of a mine it is, so they’re gonna ask me to help out s’more startin’ tomorrow, but what’re y’all gonna do？」
Hiroshi asked them a question that was practically decided anyway, and everyone just grimaced. Having come this far and not going into the dungeon itself? That was the same thing as an entertainer in a bent-over posture getting ready for something, telling you to “not push” them, and you not pushing them even though that was what they were hinting at.
「But from the way you’re talking about it, it’s not like we’re going to another town or anything, right？」
「Well, no, not usually.」
「As an entertainer, I do think there’s something wrong with you, Hiroshi-kun. You don’t just pretend like we have other options.」
「Ah, makes sense…」
Scolded by Haruna, it was Hiroshi’s turn to grimace as he nodded. He, too, had similar thoughts, so there was no way to argue back.
「So we know we’re going underground, but how much effort do you intend to put into it？」
「Yup, that’s the problem. We gon’ hafta decide what benefits us more based on how strong the monsters are and whether it’s best to destroy the dungeon ‘n return it to the previous mine or lettin’ it settle for a bit. Trying to go for equilibrium, essentially.」
「Figured…」
Tatsuya sighed, basically expecting it to turn this way. Assuming no monsters emerged from the dungeon like what happened with Sweltering Tower, the team could very well choose to let it be destroyed on its own. Plus most of the monsters that swarmed out of the tunnels could pretty much all be defeated with ease, and with proper protection and patrolling, there wouldn’t be much of an issue with just using it like they used the original mine. As long as nothing especially dangerous came out from the depths, leaving the dungeon be might not be so unrealistic.
「But I’m amazed you even brought us into this situation despite us only being a Class Seven adventurer team. How’d you do it?」
「From yesterday and today’s investigation, we checked both the regular monsters ‘n the map, so nobody else knows what kinda place the mines are right now. So in order to get data on this, they need a team that can get their hands on some good metals ‘n who have good combat prowess.」
「And so they wanted us to help out, you’re saying？」
「Purty much. Tomorrow’s the same sorta thing we did today, and after that we enter through other entrances ‘n take two days excavatin’ that area until we go around all the entrances, then we take two or three days diggin’ through the deeper areas.」
「Mm, got it.」
Everyone nodded as Hiroshi told them what the mining guild wanted. They hadn’t planned to rush on this trip in the first place. It wasn’t the first time that the group had taken a detour.
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