novelraw Chapter 213
Chapter 213
Chapter 213
“Sure. I was the village chief of this town.”
The dwarf village’s village chief sat solemnly and greeted us. Unfortunately, his demeanor carried no real dignity — no wonder, since half of his beard had been singed away and looked shabby.
The culprit was none other than Evangeline.
It had happened because the chief had dismissed her as a child. As a result, his once-lush beard had been reduced by about half and the room smelled faintly of burnt hair, but I held myself back from laughing because I knew this wasn’t the place for it.
“Anyway!”
Realizing that all the guests were staring only at his beard, the village chief raised his voice. It was clear he wanted to change the subject somehow.
“If these humans are vouched for by Lady Evangeline, then they might be trustworthy. But I’m sorry — I cannot accept your request.”
“Is the reason ‘that thing’ from earlier?”
“…….”
The chief met my eyes for a moment, then crossed his arms and sighed heavily as if dissatisfied.
“There’s no use hiding it, I suppose. Fine. There was a problem in this village.”
“What kind of problem, specifically?”
“I don’t see the point in explaining to outsiders who can do nothing about it…but well, I’ll just tell you.”
The chief began to explain.
“The flow of the ‘강’ had been weakening. A witch of Lady Evangeline’s caliber would have noticed it immediately, wouldn’t you?”
“Mm. That’s right.”
“Well, it’s an embarrassing thing to admit, but as the river weakened, we could no longer imbue objects with enough of its power.”
“So that’s why the things the dwarves made earlier exploded and broke like that?”
“That’s right.”
“Hmm….”
I sank into thought for a moment.
If my memory wasn’t wrong, being invited to the dwarf village was supposed to happen much later…at least six months from now.
And in the original work, the dwarves had often been portrayed simply as a comic relief race.
The protagonist and his group, having become second-years, were on their way to rack up the Academy’s mystic extermination activity record when they chanced upon the dwarves and were invited, that was all.
‘I thought they were just there to lighten the mood,’ I had thought.
But it turned out their problem was more serious than I’d expected. That meant an element I had to consider arose.
‘What was the author thinking?’
I had thought I had come to find the dwarves to resolve the problems of the [Cloud Spider] and [Corpse Eater] modules that had leveled up to Lv.6 by my own will, but increasingly I felt this was all a stage the author had set.
‘In the end, they wanted me to move the way they intended if I wanted a reward — but it didn’t sit right with me.’
Call it rebelliousness or suspicion. To be honest, a lot of it was a backlash against how stingy the rewards had been in the hunting grounds.
‘I kept feeling like I was being used.’
My goal had always been fangirling.
Granted, far too many incidents had blown up over the last year, but was that really all my fault? Other possessed people and the Stingray Chairman had not left me alone, either.
I could even accept being used.
As the transmigrator who had taken on the protagonist’s role — in other words, the player was already dead — using the munchkin character ‘Aaron Stingray’ to steer the episode the author wanted to show would have been the easiest and most convenient choice.
I, too, was a fan who had once admired the author beyond liking, so it would be a lie to say I wasn’t at least somewhat excited about the new episode the author had prepared.
If I suffered a little to see our kids’ awesome exploits and growth, and to see small settings or scenes not shown in the original, I had no reason to refuse.
But the problem was….
‘They were being too stingy and exploiting me.’
While the others were easily scoring the items they wanted or needed in the hunting grounds, even if I slaughtered thousands of monsters I got nothing — and that annoyed me a lot.
“Balance tuning,” they’d say?
Screw that. I suspected that the Honeycomb City incident had some of the author’s design in it, too.
In other words, my fighting ‘Omega’ to the death had been partially the author’s doing, which made it annoying that only I met such hardcore enemies for balance reasons. If they tuned the balance that way twice, I’d be toast.
I was their fan, after all.
I could’ve at least bought them a chicken. I won the quiz contest and got a munchkin body named Aaron Stingray — were they going to keep milking me like this?
So I decided not to accept it anymore.
This time I planned a kind of “power play.” After all, the author couldn’t properly roll out future episodes and settings without me, could they?
If they wanted to use me, they should give proper rewards.
Make it easier. Hand out points generously, throw around hunting ground tickets, raise drop rates, lower enemy difficulty a bit — consider convenience. Did I win first place in the quiz contest and become Aaron Stingray to suffer like this?
Think about it.
There was no one who loved this work as much as I did.
Who else would have stuck with it past 300 chapters as readership dropped, and reread it over and over until the end? They should be grateful to readers, damn it.
As I grumbled inwardly and stared into the air at a forty-five-degree angle, Iri looked at me strangely.
“Chairman? Why are you like that?”
“…It’s nothing.”
As expected, there was no response from the author this time either.
Meanwhile, the dwarf chief continued speaking.
“In short, the ‘river’s’ power had weakened, so it was hard for us to accept your requests. With our current ability, making satisfactory items was difficult.”
“I see.”
“What should we do, Chairman?”
“This was troublesome.”
“It’s okay, Aaron. I’ll do something…!”
One by one, Iri, Evangeline, and Miyu responded.
They behaved like themselves, which was nice to see…but I didn’t know what to do.
Then.
A dwarf, Hans, opened his mouth.
“Old man.”
“What did you say? What did you call me, Hannies?”
“Haven’t you been like this long enough, old man? I left here years ago, and you’re still like this?”
Hans’s voice was surprisingly serious.
But the chief simply lost his temper and burst out.
“What does your child know, spouting off like that! I spoiled him thinking he was a genius, and now he acts like he owns the place! He broke the rules and left the village and came back even more ill-tempered!”
“What can I do if a dwarf’s nature is just like that! I’ll take care of my own temper, so don’t meddle! Rather, you should follow my words!”
“Abandon the ‘river’!? Learn technology from humans? You expect us to seriously listen to such garbage from gutter scum? You’re going to keep acting like this in front of guests?”
“Why couldn’t we do what humans do? We were able to make anything, but at the same time we were ignoramuses without tech! Look at those humans, old man! They created ‘artifacts’ without borrowing the ‘river’s’ power! Why can’t we do it!?”
“Damn it! Drag that bastard out! Get him out now!”
“Village Chief told us to bring them—”
“I said get out! Everyone, out!”
“Oh dear, Chief! It’s already hard enough to make new furniture, and now you’re going to destroy what little we have left! Please, calm down, calm down!”
The village chief finally rose from his seat and began hurling whatever objects he could reach. His strength was so tremendous that even items several times larger than his body flew through the air.
In the end, while Morus and Prielder—the guides—tried to restrain the chief, we fled the place as if escaping a battlefield.
Thankfully, we weren’t told to leave the village altogether, but we were at a complete loss as to what to do next.
“Hmm. This has gotten troublesome.”
“What exactly happened? Why was that dwarf so angry?”
“Don’t ask me. Ask him.”
When I turned to look at Hans, he let out a long sigh.
“Sorry you had to see that embarrassing sight.”
“Looks like there’s a story behind it.”
“Well, yeah.”
Hans clicked his tongue lightly and stroked his beard.
“This isn’t really the kind of talk we should have out here. Let’s go to my house. It should still be standing. I’ll tell you everything there.”
Following Hans’s lead, we went to his house. Compared to the one he had in the Fallen Sector junkyard, this one was in much better condition.
Of course, it was covered in dust and soot as if untouched for years, but still, it was quite an impressive home.
There were no chairs suited to human size, so we had no choice but to sit on the floor. Once we settled ourselves in the living room, Hans slowly began to speak.
“The weakening of the ‘river’s’ flow had started quite a while ago. Ah, well, by human standards, that is—maybe about five years ago?”
He explained that although it wasn’t this bad back then, it was always somewhat traditional for dwarves’ creations to sometimes malfunction, explode, or turn into strange objects.
However, such incidents had been rare, the sort of thing dwarves laughed over and teased each other about.
But at some point, the number of such ‘failures’ began to steadily increase. At first, no one noticed anything strange, but Hans alone in the village realized the anomaly.
“I was called a genius, you see. I could tell the problem at a glance. And I quickly reached a conclusion.”
The problem was that the ‘river’s’ flow had weakened.
But the ‘river’ was something that only high-ranking wizards or witches could control. Thus, the dwarves had only two options left.
“One was to move the whole village to another place where the ‘river’ hadn’t dried up. But that would have risked conflict with other dwarf villages. Even if we didn’t fight, we’d be mocked for it.”
Proud as they were, the dwarves completely rejected that choice. Which left only one option.
“To change the method of production.”
That meant crafting things in the same ordinary way humans did—without using source power.
“I always thought humans were incredible. They can’t hear the ‘spirit of iron,’ nor use source power, and yet they somehow make the tools and objects they need with ease.”
“So that’s why you came to the humans’ cities?”
“Exactly.”
Hans nodded.
He had argued that they should learn human technology and open a new path forward, but the chief and the villagers refused to listen.
To them, humans were fools who couldn’t hear the voice of tools or iron, and thus there was nothing worth learning from them.
Some even called Hans a traitor, citing the various wars fought with humans over the past two hundred years.
So Hans left the village.
He sought to learn human technology and establish theories to revive his village.
“In this town, they put beer into everything. They believe it’s the foundation of metallurgy. But I disagree. Beer isn’t the answer.”
“Obviously…” Miyu muttered under her breath, but Hans continued as if he hadn’t heard.
“Sometimes it’s not beer but beard hairs, or even water, that works. There are also methods involving prayer—or grinding the bones of animals to mix in.”
“Wait, what…?”
Miyu’s lips moved as if she had much to say, but instead, she let out a quiet sigh and whispered to me.
“Actually, grinding bones was a real technique once. The calcium and carbon in the bones strengthen the metal. Ninety percent of what he said is nonsense, but that one part’s legit.”
“I see.”
I could clearly picture the sight from six months ago—Hans wrestling with Miyu, throwing together absurd inventions and driving her mad in the process.
“To think that guy was the most open-minded among the dwarves?”
“Apparently so. Surprisingly enough, he was truly a ‘genius’ among them.”
“But it still isn’t enough!”
As we whispered to each other, Hans, still in the middle of his speech, slammed his fist onto his knee with a loud thud.
“This won’t do. No matter how much I refine the theory, at this rate it’s too slow. Everything I make has too many trial-and-error steps.”
Dwarves could make anything they wanted. Even without using ‘source power,’ they could still complete it. Sometimes it even worked—partially.
That’s why they often realized too late that something they’d thought a “success” was actually a failure.
For humans, completion itself might be impossible, but dwarves, who could half-succeed through some ridiculous means, found it too hard to systematize theory.
“We met about half a year ago, didn’t we? Back then I couldn’t swallow my pride either, but after seeing the state of the village today, I realized—at this rate, even in five hundred years, nothing would change.”
Hans climbed down from the chair that looked like it was meant for a toddler, then suddenly dropped to his knees before us. He bowed so deeply that his forehead nearly touched the ground.
“I beg you. This body… no, please, teach me the technology of humans.”
Dwarves were an extremely proud race. They loved beer, were bold and boisterous, loved fighting, and considered bowing to someone akin to giving up their life.
Yet this ‘dwarf,’ Hans, bowed to us. That alone showed how seriously he was taking this crisis.
“……”
All our gazes naturally turned to Miyu.
Among us, she was the only technician. She alone had the qualifications of a theoretical instructor.
After briefly glancing at me for approval, she sighed softly and nodded.
“Alright. I’ll do what I can.”
“Truly!? Thank you!”
As soon as Miyu agreed, the dwarf sprang to his feet and grabbed her hand with his massive one. Miyu let out a startled “Eek!” but couldn’t bring herself to pull away.
Just as the atmosphere was about to wrap up warmly—
I cut in.
“Wait. There’s one condition.”
“C-condition?”
Hans looked at me nervously.
I smiled faintly and replied.
“You’ll also teach Miyu how to handle ‘source power.’”