TERNLF Vol. 2 Chapter 1 Part 4

Then, confirming what lay inside, I turned back to them.

“That,” I said, pointing toward the floor, “is what I was looking for: the Mole Tunnel.”

The room was completely bare; no furniture, no windows.

At first glance, it looked like an empty storeroom.

“Um… it looks like there’s nothing here.”

“Where’s this so-called ‘Mole Tunnel’ supposed to be?”

The two, who had followed me into the room, looked around and voiced their doubts.

To be fair, if I had come in here without knowing anything, I would have wondered the same.

“Just watch.”

I walked to the center of the room—

“Right about here.”

—and stomped hard on the floor.

“Wah!”

“Ehhh!?”

A section of the floor, a little ways from where I had stomped, sank downward, revealing a staircase leading underground.

“This should take us to the Mole Tunnel.”

“There was a staircase there?”

“Toa, how did you even know about a mechanism like this?”

“Hm? Oh, my mentor told me about it ages ago. This is my first time seeing the real thing, though. Anyway, hurry—these stairs will close up fast.”

Saying that, I dashed down the steps.

“C-Close—wait for us, Toa!”

“Tell us that before you run!”

They scrambled after me. Thanks to the magic lamps set into the walls, our footing was clear.

“We’re here. This is the Mole Tunnel.”

With three landings along the way, we had descended about as far as the third or fourth floor of a building.

What spread out before us had to be a first for Nikka and Grassa.

“I can’t believe this was under the city.”

“Wow… it’s a cave, right? How far does it go?”

“It’s bright here, but it’s pitch-black farther in.”

“Yeah, I can’t see a thing.”

The place we stepped into was, so to speak, like a station platform.

We stood on a narrow platform, and in the slightly lower space ahead, two rails ran straight into the cave’s darkness.

That said, the platform was only about two meters wide and six meters long, more like a tram stop than a full station.

The track was single-line and narrow gauge; clearly not meant for a train.

“Was Cheki taken through this cave?”

“Yeah. I’m sure this tunnel reaches Kudu Village, or at least close to it.”

“Does the Mole Tunnel really connect that far?”

I nodded and relayed what I had heard from Rish.

The Mole Tunnel was a network of secret underground passages, dug by the Dwarves for travel, spreading outward from the Dwarven Kingdom.

They weren’t everywhere, nor were they built according to any master plan.

That was because the Mole Tunnel wasn’t an official public work of the Dwarven Kingdom.

The Dwarves’ realm lay carved into the western end of the Teenic Mountains, the range that split the western continent where the Kingdom of Preasole stood. They had originally gathered there for the mineral resources in the mountains and decided to stay.

The Dwarves, aside from a few exceptions, were a very closed people.

They rarely mingled with other races and lived quietly in the mountains, but there were still many things they could only obtain through outside trade.

So they expanded the mountain-spanning tunnel they had dug when founding their nation into a road linking the northern and southern parts of the continent, and opened a trade post along the route for dealing with other races.

The merchant earlier had said he bought the bracelet in the Dwarves’ country; he must have meant that trade post.

But that post had problems.

To enter the tunnel, travelers had to pay a toll, and all cargo was subject to inspection by the Dwarven Kingdom.

“Some Dwarves wanted to handle goods they didn’t want inspected.”

Those Dwarves quietly created the underground smuggling routes known as the Mole Tunnel.

Which made these tunnels dangerous in several ways… I never asked Rish how he knew about them; it was better not to.

Still, now that we had found a Mole Tunnel here, it was reasonable to assume Cheki’s abductors were Dwarves.

“This is one of those smuggling lines, and it probably reaches all the way to Kudu Village.”

I dropped down onto the rails.

“And this is the method the Dwarves chose to travel inside the smuggling routes.”

I tapped the rails with my toe and continued.

“They load goods, or people, onto a trolley and send it along these tracks.”

“The lumber guild in our village used trolleys to move logs.”

“Big trading companies use them in their warehouses too. But trolleys are slower than horses.”

They were right. This world used rail trolleys for heavy loads, driven by manpower or by slow but strong beasts like oxen. This made them far slower than a wagon or a horse. Heavy cargo traveling at high speed was also dangerous.

“Ordinary trolleys wouldn’t be practical for travel. But the ones used here aren’t ordinary.”

“Not ordinary?”

“Right. Not only here, Dwarven Kingdom trolleys use a non-public magic drive. There should be a spare somewhere…”

I looked around.

Farther down the track, I found a single trolley: maintenance stock or a spare.

Hauling it back, I checked whether it would move and explained the magic drive to the two of them.

“A magic drive is, simply put, a magic tool that uses mana in place of oxen or horses to move a wagon or trolley. To be fair, the kingdom researches magic drives too; they’re not Dwarf-exclusive.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but they aren’t widespread for a reason.”

In my noble days, I had once accompanied my father on an inspection and seen a prototype magic-drive engine.

It was… a magic circuit sprawling across half a large room, rows of magic stones, and, in front of them, line after line of mages.

“With our current technology, it takes about ten mages feeding mana constantly into the engine just to pull a single wagon.”

“Ten… and if it needs mana the whole time it’s running, they’d be drained in no time.”

“Exactly, Grassa. At that point, it’s more efficient to use wind magic directly for a tailwind or keep casting 【Heal】 on the horses.”

Efficiency was the problem.

To convert mana into motive force, you needed magic circuits etched into magic stones and catalysts, but a massive loss occurred as mana flowed through those circuits.

Given the poor efficiency and the bulk of the apparatus, magic drives had yet to see practical adoption.

“The Dwarves’ magic drive solves all of that.”

I opened the lid of a boxy unit mounted on the trolley’s side and fed a little mana into the magic stone inside.

This was the heart of the magic trolley: the magic drive unit.

A thin, board-like component linked to the stone by a magic circuit began to glow with a wavering, pale red light.

“Ah, it lit up.”

“Pretty.”

Grassa and Nikka voiced their awe.

But because I had fed only a trickle of mana into it, the glow faded almost at once.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A magic circuit, right?”

“Not that, what it’s made of.”

I pointed to the plate etched with magic circuits behind the magic stone and asked again.

While Grassa tilted her head, Nikka raised a hand adorably.

“Could it be the same hihiirokane as Grassa’s bracelet?”

“Correct.”

I sent mana into it again, this time a little more.

The plate flared with a deeper, red, wavering light than before.

“Same as this?”

Grassa looked back and forth between the glowing plate and the bracelet on her wrist.

“Maybe I should do this…”

She must have poured mana into it, because the bracelet on her wrist began to shine crimson as well.

“You’re right… ah!”

“What is it?”

“I just connected with Cheki again for a moment—but it cut off right away.”

“Cut off?”

“Does that mean the kidnappers noticed the bracelet and took it?” Nikka asked.

Grassa shook her head.

“No, it didn’t feel like that. I saw something like a forest, and I felt like he was walking—then it faded thinner and thinner and disappeared.”

“A forest… then he might be moving from Kudu Village to somewhere else.”

Which could mean he had moved beyond the Oath Bracelet’s effective range.

If so, we could not afford to dawdle.

“If he gets much farther, we might lose him completely.”

“That’s bad!”

“Then we have to hurry. We’ll help!”

We quickly checked the running gear and the magic drive unit, climbed into the magic trolley, and activated its circuits.

“W-Whoa—!”

“This magic trolley is much faster than a wagon.”

“Told you. Though, this is my first time riding one too.”

Once it started, the trolley picked up speed far beyond my expectations.

Even so, despite the pace, it did not feel especially dangerous.

Thanks to Dwarven engineering and earth magic, the tunnel had been flawlessly finished—no falling rocks, no warped rails—so there was less vibration and sway than I had anticipated.

“Please wait for us… Cheki.”

“We’ll save you, no matter what.”

Watching the two of them staring ahead as if in prayer, I kept my focus on controlling the magic circuits.

—

We hurried the trolley as fast as we could, but by the time we reached Kudu Village it was already the dead of night.

The house lights were out, and the villagers had long since gone to sleep.

“It isn’t a forward line that’s always on alert, so there probably aren’t any patrols either.”

The Mole Tunnel’s exit was inside a watermill on the edge of town.

According to Grassa, the view she had first seen when she sensed Cheki’s heart had indeed been what lay outside this watermill’s window.

The Dwarves had likely holed up here after arriving and waited until dark.

“Grassa, can you see where Cheki is one more time?”

“Okay. Give me a second.”

Before we boarded the trolley, the distance must have been too great, so the Oath Bracelet’s link had cut out.

Now that we were in Kudu Village, it might connect again.

“…”

“Did you get anything?”

“Hm… just a little more…”

Grassa’s bracelet shimmered red, so the effect had activated, yet she kept her brow knit in frustration.

“…Haa. No good. I can’t connect.”

In the end, it would not link. She let out a long breath and flopped onto her back in a starfish sprawl.

“Do you think they used another Mole Tunnel and took him even farther?”

“Could be. If so, that means the next ‘station’ is somewhere in the forest Grassa saw.”

“Toa, what should we do now?”

Nikka peered anxiously out the dark window lit only by faint starlight.

If the moon had been up, moving would have been easier, but luck had it we were at new moon and there was no moon to be seen.

“With 【Night Vision】 we could head into the forest…”

I pictured the continent map in my mind.

Kudu Village lay near the northern edge of the Kingdom of Preasole.

It was a bit removed from the Teenic Mountains that divided the continent north to south, with broad plains and a river nearby, making it a very prosperous farming village.

Between that village and the mountain range stretched the vast woodland known as the Beast Forest, where the Dwarves had likely slipped in.

The Beast Forest spread from the northwest to the west-northwest of the kingdom.

It was the largest and deepest of the kingdom’s forest regions.

Which also meant it was the most dangerous.

“No—we should wait for sunrise.”

I could have managed on my own.

But pushing through the Beast Forest while protecting Nikka and Grassa was far too risky.

“Will Cheki be okay if we don’t move right away?”

“From what Grassa felt, it didn’t seem like the Dwarves intended to do anything to him immediately.”

“It isn’t only Cheki I’m worried about…”

Nikka looked a shade pale—no, she truly was a little pale.

“It’s that, right? Nikka, you’re scared of beastkin, aren’t you?”

Still sprawled on the floor, Grassa chimed in from the side.

Thanks to that, I understood what weighed on Nikka’s mind, so I spoke in as reassuring a tone as I could.

“That really is fine. Contrary to the rumors, the beastkin who live in the Beast Forest do not catch and eat people.”

As the name implied, the Beast Forest had been home since ancient times to the race known as beastkin; a realm where laws and order different from the kingdom’s held sway, a true demesne of the wild.