TERNLF Vol. 2 Chapter 2 Part 3

“To think there was a Dwarf escape route in a place like this.”

We walked in the direction I had roughly estimated with 【Echo Vibration】, and when we finally arrived, what stood before us was the remains of an exceptionally massive tree.

In that spot, where the canopy opened into an isolated patch of sky, there had once existed something known as the “World Tree”.

They said it had towered toward the heavens, its branches and leaves spreading so wide they blanketed a portion of the forest. But several centuries ago, it had suddenly withered, and the only thing left now was the stump-like ruin in front of us.

“So this is the World Tree, huh.”

I rapped my fist against the remains.

What came back through my knuckles felt less like wood and more like punching a concrete wall.

“It seems to have turned completely to stone.”

“Was this really a tree? I can hardly believe it.”

“What bothers me more is the size. Even if a hundred adults held hands around it, they still wouldn’t be able to surround it.”

Beside me, Nikka and Grassa stared, eyes round.

Just as Grassa had said, the circumference of the remains had to be close to two hundred meters. Both the surface and the inside appeared almost entirely petrified, which was probably why it had not rotted away.

What in the world could have happened for a giant tree like this to suddenly wither?

“That I do not know. Even if we wanted to investigate, the beastkin’s senses grow strangely dull around the World Tree, so no one cares to come near it.”

“I see. If this is a place beastkin avoid, then it makes perfect sense for the Dwarves to build a Mole Tunnel station here.”

Deep in a forest where other races could not easily intrude, and on top of that, a place where the beastkin’s sharp senses were blunted; there was no better option than this.

I climbed up and down the roots of what had once been the World Tree, searching for an entrance.

It had been hidden quite cleverly; just looking around was not going to reveal anything. So we split up and began tapping on the petrified World Tree, listening for any change in the sound.

The only beastkin who had come along to search with us was Vezzo. The other three had gone to report my story to the Forest Chief, so they were not here.

The Forest Chief was the one who presided over the Council of Elders and, to put it plainly, was effectively the king of this beastkin nation.

“Hey, Toa. Something feels off around here.”

Vezzo, who had been investigating a short distance away, called out to me.

“Where exactly?”

“I do not see anything unusual at all.”

Hearing his voice, Nikka and the others came over, peered at the spot he indicated, and voiced their doubts together.

At a glance, there was nothing there that resembled an entrance; it looked no different from the surrounding wall.

But I knew the extent of Dwarven craftsmanship.

“Let me check it out.”

“I leave it to you.”

Once Vezzo stepped back, I moved up to the wall and placed my hand against it.

“【Echo Vibration】.”

I focused my mind on the echoes of the spell I had cast countless times since entering the forest.

There was no need to examine a wide area; as long as I could get a rough sense of the hidden door’s structure in front of me, that was enough.

“Right here.”

Pinpointing the spot where the mechanism was from the echoes that returned, I pressed my palm against it.

Keeping my hand there, I slowly twisted my wrist.

“What, it turns in a place like that!?”

“I couldn’t tell at all. It blended in perfectly.”

“You can’t even see a seam.”

As Nikka, Grassa, and Vezzo each voiced their amazement, I turned the knob that had been completely merged with the surrounding surface about half a rotation.

—Click.

With a faint sound, seams that had been utterly invisible until now rose into view, and the door slowly swung inward.

“This looks just like magic.”

“There’s a room inside. I see furniture.”

“There’s all sorts of stuff here. Looks like they use it as a rest stop.”

The interior carved out of the World Tree’s remains turned out to be a more spacious room than I had imagined.

Roughly the size of a small single-story house, it was stocked with enough supplies that someone could live here for a while, giving the place a lived-in feel that Loch’s hideout had lacked.

At the back of the room, a staircase led down underground. That was probably where the station was.

“Grassa, could you use the bracelet to check on Cheki one more time?”

I called out to Grassa, who was looking around the room with curiosity.

“Okay, got it. Just a minute.”

Answering with her usual energy, Grassa closed her eyes to concentrate.

In response, the Hihiirokane bracelet on her wrist began to emit a faint red glow and then, after a short while, the light went out and it reverted to its usual lumpy shape.

“How was it?”

“No good…”

“So we’re still too far away.”

Grassa, shoulders slumped when Nikka asked, shook her head at my question.

“No, that might be part of it, but… it felt different this time. Like there wasn’t even a hint of a connection taking hold. Before, even if it didn’t quite link up, there was at least a feeling like it almost would.”

After saying that, Grassa closed her eyes again and focused her mind.

But the result was the same, the light vanished almost immediately.

“It’s still not working… don’t tell me Cheki’s already…”

At her muttered words, a heavy gloom settled over the room.

Grassa had probably assumed that the bracelet wasn’t reacting because Cheki had been killed.

But there were several other possibilities.

For example, the Dwarves might have discovered that the bracelet Cheki was wearing was a Bracelet of Oath.

If they had seen it in operation, it would hardly be strange for them to confiscate it.

In fact, it was far more natural to assume that than to think they had suddenly decided to kill Cheki now. If killing him had been their goal, they would have done it much earlier.

When I explained my reasoning, both Grassa and Nikka looked visibly relieved.

However, if that was the case, then there was a high chance the Dwarves had realized someone was pursuing them.

Either way, we needed to hurry.

“For now, we focus on catching up to Cheki.”

I said this as I headed toward the stairs leading down into the Mole Tunnel.

“Right.”

“We should hurry.”

“I will come as well.”

When the four of us descended the stairs, just as expected, a Mole Tunnel platform awaited us.

Unlike the platform beneath Loch, this one seemed to see regular use; there was no sign of accumulated dust.

Back there the line had been single-track, but here it was double-tracked: two rails in each direction, four in total, stretching into the depths of the cave.

However, there was one major problem.

“There’s no minecart. What do we do?”

Just as Grassa had said, the tracks were missing the most important thing: the carts themselves.

“Damn. If I’d known, I should’ve stored the magic minecart we rode from Loch and brought it along.”

“Then we have no choice but to walk, don’t we?”

“If it’s as far as it was from Loch, we won’t make it in a day or two.”

Nikka and Grassa’s words matched my own thoughts as I searched the area, hoping at least for a spare magic minecart.

I did find what looked like repair parts, but there wasn’t a single cart that looked usable.

“Toa, couldn’t you build a magic minecart from these parts?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I could probably put together a regular minecart with the wheels and other components, but I can’t do anything about the magic drive.”

“Then why don’t you just make a cart, and you push it from behind?”

“If I cast 【Body Reinforcement】 I might manage somehow, but there’s no way I could reach the same speed as a magic minecart, and I’d probably drop dead halfway.”

It was while we were having that conversation.

Vezzo, who had gone deeper into the cave to scout ahead, came back and made an unexpected suggestion.

“In that case, should I pull the minecart?”

“You, Vezzo?”

“Yeah. There’s a trolley line in the forest that connects the settlements. I’ve served as the puller a few times.”

“You pulled a cart by yourself?”

“Of course. Is that strange?”

Vezzo tilted his head, genuinely puzzled, and Grassa averted her eyes as she answered, “W-Well, beastkin are stronger and faster than we are, after all.”

Still, a ray of hope had appeared.

“Can we really ask that of you? From here on we’ll probably—”

“I told you to leave it to me. I caused you trouble, and I owe you besides. And if the Dwarves are involved in kidnapping beastkin, it’s not something I can just ignore.”

He cut me off just as I was about to say we would effectively be sneaking into the Dwarves’ country.

With his fist pressed to his chest, there was a fire of resolve and anger burning clearly in Vezzo’s eyes.

“Got it. I’ll hurry and assemble the minecart, so I need you two to help me.”

“Of course.”

“Leave it to me!”

Smiling wryly at Vezzo’s reliable response and at Grassa trying to force a bicep pose with her thin arms, I turned to Nikka as well, who was watching with shining eyes, clearly waiting for her turn to contribute.

“Nikka, you… right. If anyone gets hurt, I want you to heal them immediately. I’ll also leave some ingredients here, so could you get them ready so we can eat during breaks?”

“Yes, understood. I can’t really help with heavy lifting, but I can at least do that much.”

She clenched her hands in front of her chest, determination settling over her expression.

Then, to everyone who was waiting for my instructions, I declared, “All right, let’s put this minecart together and go save Cheki!”

—

“Wind magic, 【Blessing Wind】. Earth magic, 【Blessing Earth】 and weld it together with fire magic, 【Blessing Tinder】.”

“Ho. You’re quite deft with your hands.”

“That’s pretty much my only redeeming feature.”

As I assembled part after part, Vezzo, who was holding the components in place, watched and nodded in admiration.

His strength surpassed mine even when I used 【Body Reinforcement】, so I had put him in charge of holding and fixing the heavier pieces.

“Toa, I finished duplicating the parts.”

Grassa came over carrying the components she had replicated with magic.

“Your mana still holding up?”

“I’m totally fine.”

“Then I’ll have you duplicate these screws too.”

Trying to build a single minecart from the small stock of spare parts lying around naturally left us short on pieces.

I had considered forming replacements with earth magic, but parts engineered with Dwarf craftsmanship were so precise that even minor discrepancies could keep them from fitting properly, and I was also worried about their durability.

That was when I thought of using Grassa’s 【Duplicate】 magic to copy the parts.

Before that, I made Vezzo promise he would never breathe a word of it to anyone, then told him that she could use 【Duplicate】. Our acquaintance had been brief, but I trusted that he was not the sort to break his word.

“—Phew, that should do it.”

Thanks to the combination of Vezzo’s brute strength and Grassa’s 【Duplicate】, the minecart was finished much faster than I had expected.

Of course, it was not a magic minecart, and it had no drive system.

Instead, like a carriage, a pair of shafts jutted forward from the front of the cart.

Those were to be connected to the harness we fixed around Vezzo’s torso so he could pull the minecart.

Incidentally, the harness was made from the hide of the Tauros I had defeated before… as one would expect from a high-rank monster material, its toughness was second to none.

When we tried it on him, Vezzo’s verdict was extremely favorable; he even went so far as to say he wanted me to hand it over to him.

He said he would pay whatever price I named, but I had heard that beastkin did not have much money, so I told him I would give it to him as a present, and—

“That will not do. I know, let us become sworn brothers!”

—he suddenly came out with that bit of nonsense. It sounded like trouble waiting to happen, so I decided we would discuss it after everything was over.

Honestly, I hoped he would forget about it by then.

Thinking such things, we quickly finished the meal Nikka had prepared for us and climbed into the minecart.

“Make sure you hang on tight.”

“I’ve tied the two of them down to the floor with wire-reinforced rope, so they should be fine.”

In response to Vezzo’s warning, I checked the wire-cored ropes securing Nikka and Grassa to the cart.

“Toa, don’t you get thrown off either.”

“Relax. Besides, if you get tired, I’ll take over pulling.”

“Hmph. You won’t be getting a turn.”

“You sound awfully confident, considering you’re pulling not just the three of us but the cart itself.”

Even if it ran along rails, the total weight was no joke.

After finishing the cart, I had tried pulling it myself with 【Body Reinforcement】 and concluded that, at best, I could manage about an hour of continuous hauling.

Vezzo just snorted at my comment.

“Don’t underestimate me, who ranks among the top beastkin in both speed and strength! Here we go!”

Clank.

With his shout, the minecart lurched forward.

At first it moved slowly, but its speed steadily increased.

“This is faster than I thought. At this rate, even without a magic drive we won’t fall that far beh—”

“Hmph. We’re only getting started. Hold on tight!”

“Wait, what—”

Whoom.

Vezzo’s body, pulling the cart in front of us, suddenly dipped as his posture changed, and an explosive acceleration slammed into our bodies.

Apparently he had switched from running on two legs to charging on all fours.

“This might be rough on those two.”

I hastily grabbed the rim of the cart and checked on Nikka and Grassa.

“W-What is th-th-this!? It’s way too fast!”

“W-W-whoa!”

Thanks to the ropes holding them securely, it did not look like either of them would be thrown out. As for the wind pressure… well, if they could still manage to speak, it probably was not a serious problem.

Even so, being able to talk at all at this speed, with so little shaking, really drove home how outrageous Dwarven engineering was.

And we were about to charge straight into the territory of people with that level of technology to rescue Cheki.

“For safety’s sake, we should probably have the two of them hide somewhere once we arrive, and let Vezzo and me handle the searching.”

Considering that the Beast Forest lay on the outskirts of the kingdom, and the direction in which the minecart was heading, the end of this line was almost certainly the Dwarf Kingdom.

I had never actually been there, but I knew something of its inner workings.

The Dwarf Kingdom was a monarchy, but its throne changed hands once every ten years.

The new king was chosen through a special process: candidates presented their works at an exhibition, and the one who took first place was granted the crown.

What was more, despite being a monarchy, the king’s actual duties were minimal.

Of course, there were responsibilities as the nation’s representative, such as diplomacy, but to the Dwarf Kingdom, the king was little more than a kind of status symbol.

What mattered most to them was creating magnificent works and having those works recognized; power and wealth were things they believed only needed to exist in the barest necessary amounts.

“The races in this world all have completely different values. I honestly have no idea what Beastkin, Dwarves, or Elves are thinking.”

“From our side, we don’t really understand how humans think either.”

Apparently Vezzo’s sharp ears had picked up my sigh-laced muttering.

“Figures.”

“Not that I’ve had enough dealings with humans to really get a handle on you.”

Talking like that, we rode on for just under two hours.

“…The Dwarves’ scent is getting stronger.”

Vezzo sniffed the air as he spoke.

It seemed we were getting close to the end of the line.

“Vezzo, can you start slowing down bit by bit?”

“Understood. Still… there’s another scent mixed in with the Dwarves’. I don’t really know what it is, but I’d wager it’s whoever you’re looking for.”

His wording felt a little vague, but there was no doubt Cheki was somewhere up ahead.

When we reached what looked like a platform, I lightly slapped the cheeks of Nikka and Grassa—both completely wiped out—to wake them.

Then I took a certain something I’d bought earlier in the Loch marketplace out of storage and handed it to the two of them.

“Put on these rabbit-ears and cat-ears headbands.”

“What is this?”

“I didn’t know you were into this kind of thing, Toa.”

Bewildered by the disguise tools I’d produced, they still accepted them and set them on their heads.

“How’s this, hop?”

“Where in the world did you even buy something like this, meow?”

Nikka with her rabbit ears and Grassa with her cat ears looked at me, adding strange endings to their sentences.

Honestly, I had been ready for them to be disgusted, so it was actually me who felt a little taken aback by how into it they were as I answered.

“I found them in the Loch marketplace and… couldn’t help myself.”

“No way, when did you even buy them?”

“I didn’t notice at all.”

Apparently they had realized the cutesy speech tics were overdoing it, because they soon slipped back into their usual way of talking.

I couldn’t help it. Who would expect clip-on ear headbands to be for sale in this world? Of course I was going to buy them once I saw them.

But for them to actually come in handy now of all times… good job, past me.

“Hm. This should make you pass for beastkin. As long as you hide your real ears under your hair, the Dwarves won’t notice.”

Vezzo gave his seal of approval.

“Are you sure something this simple won’t give us away?”

“Yeah. The Dwarves aren’t the type to pay much attention to how other races look. As long as you’ve got the ears, they’ll mistake you for beastkin.”

Vezzo nodded in response to Grassa’s worry.

I had figured that disguising ourselves as beastkin—the race they were used to dealing with—would be the safest way to slip inside the Dwarf Kingdom, and it seemed that plan had indeed been the right call.

“…Guess I’ll disguise myself too.”

I pulled a headband with raccoon-dog-like ears out of storage and set it on my own head.

Unlike the girls, my hair wasn’t long enough to hide my real ears, so I wrapped a towel around my head like a bandana to cover them.

“How do I look?”

“You look cool, Toa!”

“Huh? I think you look more cute than cool.”

“No problem.”

Satisfied enough with their three very different reactions, I moved on to a final review of our plan.

“Our minimum objective is to rescue Cheki and get out of the Dwarf Kingdom.”

Catching the kidnappers themselves would be ideal.

However, we were just a month away from the once-in-ten-years exhibition—the tournament that decided who would become the next king of the Dwarves—so tempers in their country were apparently running high.

We would have to act as inconspicuously and cautiously as possible.

“I really would rather have you two hide somewhere safe and wait this out.”

“Cheki ended up like this because of us.”

“That’s right, Toa. We can at least help search for him.”

There was no stopping the determination burning in their eyes.

Even so, if I hadn’t already heard from Vezzo and the others that the Dwarf Kingdom’s public order was reasonably good, I would never have agreed.

“They basically have no interest in anything but their own creations. Just in case, you’ll be pretending to be beastkin, but even if the disguise fails, the worst they’re likely to do is throw you in a cell.”

“Then why did they kidnap Cheki? And sell beastkin to humans on top of that?”

“I told you, that’s just ‘in general’. I don’t want to believe it either, but there are villains among them.”

In any case, the cause didn’t matter to us right now.

Once we finished our preparations while talking, we let Vezzo take the lead and advanced down a passageway next to the platform.

Several doors that probably led into rooms lined the corridor, but there was no sign of anyone inside.

We continued on until we eventually reached a staircase leading upward.

Most likely, the top of those stairs was the Dwarf Kingdom.

“Hold.”

A short way up the stairs, Vezzo suddenly stopped and held a hand out to halt us.

“Something’s off.”

“Do you hear something?”

Vezzo’s ears were absurdly sensitive. He could pick up sounds that humans couldn’t hear even with magically enhanced hearing.

Those ears flicked as he listened to whatever was happening above the staircase.

“I don’t know. It’s just… there’s a weird amount of commotion up there.”

“The exhibition, right? Isn’t it just because that’s coming up?”

“No, I don’t think that’s it. If we go a little farther up, I might be able to tell. Stay on your guard.”

“Got it.”

Vezzo climbed the stairs one by one, cautiously, listening intently as he went.

After we had gone up about twenty steps, he came to another halt.

“Elves…?”

“Elves?”

Elves were the foes the Kingdom of Preasole had been fighting across the frontier fortress for many long years.

There were a few like Theo, who had left the Elven nation and lived in the kingdom’s guild, but they were extremely rare.

Especially in the south of the Teenic Mountains range, which split the continent in two, you almost never saw them. That was partly because they opposed the Kingdom of Preasole, which ruled the southern half, but more importantly because their ancient archenemies, the Dwarves, with whom they had never-ending quarrels, had dug in across the mountains.

“Yeah. Looks like they found out an Elf slipped into the Dwarf Kingdom, and everything upstairs has erupted into chaos.”

As we cautiously climbed the stairs, even we began to feel the noise of the city.

We could tell, too, that the atmosphere carried a note of unease.

The stairs ended, as usual, beneath the floor of some building. After confirming there was no one outside, we worked the mechanism that opened the floorboards.

“It feels like a war between Elves and Dwarves could break out any moment.”

“Our objective is Cheki, not the Elves.”

“I know that.”

Nodding to anxious Nikka and to Grassa, who answered with a trace of tension, we stepped out of the passage.

We emerged into a small storage room with no windows and only a single door. Apart from a few miscellaneous crates probably placed there to disguise the entrance to the tunnel, there was nothing else.

“Looks like some house’s storeroom.”

After checking that there was no one on the other side of the door either, we left the storage room.

Outside was an ordinary home, clearly lived in by someone.

The owner was no doubt a member of the organization using the tunnel, but we saw no sign of them.

The original plan had been to grab that person and make them spill Cheki’s whereabouts… but if that was impossible, we would just have to move on to the next plan.

“So, what now?”

“Same as we discussed, ask around the neighbors.”

I answered Vezzo’s question, and Nikka and Grassa nodded.

According to our plan, we were to split into two groups to gather information.

One team would be Nikka and me; the other, Vezzo and Grassa. With those pairings, most dangers would stop being dangerous at all.

“Then Nikka and I will take the left side. Vezzo, you two take the other way.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll do my best!”

Once we finished that last confirmation, Nikka and Grassa, both fired up, answered brightly.

But—

“Vezzo?”

He alone wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was glaring toward the front door.

“—We’re surrounded.”

“What? I don’t sense anything…”

“I got careless. The Dwarves have all kinds of technology we’ve never even heard of. They’re probably using some sort of magic tool that erases their presence.”

I could hardly believe there was a magic tool capable of fooling even Vezzo’s senses, never mind mine.

But Dwarves were the sort of race that invented magic tools other races couldn’t make, like magic engines or Oath Rings. It wouldn’t be strange if they had created something like that.

“Should we retreat into the tunnel—”

“No, it’s too late. Brace yourself, Toa!”

Bang!

Vezzo had barely finished speaking when the door in front of us exploded inward with a tremendous crash. At the same time, the sound of shattering glass erupted from the other rooms.

“【Shiel—】”

Bababababam!

I tried to hastily invoke 【Shield Magic】, a short-duration barrier that could block both physical and magical attacks to a certain extent.

But before I could finish, something thrown in from every direction burst, unleashing violent flashes of light and deafening noise.

I had never imagined I would get hit by a stun grenade in a world like this.

My sight and hearing were stolen in an instant.

I froze on the spot, unable to move.

“There’s a beastkin among the infiltrators!”

“I see. No wonder it was easy to slip past us if a beastkin was helping the Elf.”

“The other rooms are clear, no one else inside.”

Apparently I’d just barely managed to get 【Shield Magic】 up in time, even if the deployment was imperfect.

I could faintly hear voices around us.

It seemed they had mistaken us for the group that had guided the infiltrating Elf.

I wanted to shout that we were innocent, but with my consciousness spinning, I couldn’t even manage that—

“Captain! We found something. There’s a tunnel here!!”

“The Dwarves’ dark legacy… Seal the entrance for now so no one can use it!”

“Yes, sir!”

At the edge of my vision as I lay sprawled on the floor, I saw what looked like the tip of a boot.

“Hm? This one…”

The man who seemed to be the Dwarf squad captain touched my head with a rough, rocky hand.

“Fake ears…? Check the others’ heads too.”

“Yes, sir!”

So our captain had already seen through the fact that our beast ears were fake.

“One of them is definitely beastkin, but the others are humans.”

“They don’t have tails either.”

Hey. If you laid hands on Nikka and Grassa’s rear, I won’t forgive you.

As that anger flickered up, someone grabbed my rear as well.

“This one’s fully human too. Restrain them all. Use enhanced restraints on the beastkin.”

And that was how, not long after arriving in the Dwarf Kingdom, we ended up captured.