Chapter 439: Indo Mine (2/2)

“How petty. It seems to be full of greedy people like these all over the world.”

“I agree. So, what should we do?”

“Let’s leave them be. It’s the same with or without such a poor mine. Besides, we’re talking about My Lord. It’s possible that he won’t even bother himself to manage it out of it being too troublesome.”

It was no wonder that Laojun described the mine as “poor”.

The daily production of the Inad Mine was about 0.5 kg of gold, 3 kg of silver and 6 kg of copper. 4 kg of tin and 10 kg of zinc. 0.1 kg of Mithril silver. 150 kg of quartz, and 15 kg of agate. And about 0.5 kg of Magi Crystal.

It was about 1/500 of Hourai Island’s overall production. And even then, this amount was possible only due to Jin’s general-purpose golems. When humans used to work the mine, its production wasn’t even one tenth of this.

“Even so, it seems they have dug quite deeply.”

The Inad Mine was a higher point than that of Kaina Village. Its main tunnel had already been dug past 100 meters deep, and was about to reach the 150-meter mark.

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July 1st. It was the day when Lithia officially became the head of Toka Village.

Viscount Buyer stopped resting in Toka village the previous morning and left to avoid quarreling with Lithia. He knew that Lithia was close to Jin to some extent.

“Well then, the right time is near.”

Out of the five wagons under his command, four had already been sent back with the goods. The remaining wagon was also filled with more than half of its capacity with ore. It would be full in a day or two.

Even though the general-purpose golems performed way better than humans, it still took longer than expected to carry ore to the surface from about 150 meters underground.

“If it were any less efficient than this, it wouldn’t even be profitable.”

It had already become a mine that was impossible for humans to work in. To give a mine in those conditions to someone could be seen as an act of disdain towards them, but the Viscount didn’t care about such a thing.

The ones who cared were the country and the royal family. He just did the job he was ordered to do.

(Though I am taking a cut here…)

Viscount Buyer muttered that in his mind. From the excavated gold ore, he secretly smelted about 2 kg of gold and took them for himself. The viscount used the Engineering Magic spell “Smelting” to that end.

Then, on July 2nd…

The wagon was almost full and the work was completed in a single day.

Bolton, who was appraising the ore every day, was the one most pleased.

“Should we go back with this now? Even though it was an order, I didn’t really want to do this job… By the way, I heard that Gloria is coming to Toka Village, perhaps I should meet with her tomorrow.”

He had such trivial hopes.

However…

At 6 PM, the depth of the main tunnel had reached 200 meters deep.

At that moment, a sudden tremor took place underground.

“What was that?”

Then, a cloud of dust was spewed forth with a thunderous roar.

“A cave-in?”

If a tunnel over 200 meters collapsed, not even golems would be able to escape in one piece.

Thinking he could lose 10 valuable general-purpose golems, and the responsibility for that would fall to himself, Viscount Bayer turned pale.

But the situation wasn’t as simple as that.

A large amount of rock spouted from the crumbling tunnel. It flew in the air for tens of meters before falling. The standing tree near the exit of the mine was broken into pieces.

The 10 general-purpose golems have also been hurled out of the mine all together. However, none of them were unharmed. Many of their arms were missing, and many of their legs had been bent.

“T-This isn’t just some cave-in!”

Bolton cried out at the unstoppable sound of the earth rumbling. Heintz was also alert. The only one who seemed to be flustered and not knowing what was going on was Viscount Bayer.

Then that appeared.

“W-What is that…?”

It came out of the mine.

About 5 meters wide, and 50 meters long. The surface of its body had a metallic luster about it, and glittered in metallic green. Countless legs were wriggling on both of its sides. Its four eyes were shining red.

“A… Centipede?”

It was a monster that looked like a giant centipede.

“U-Uwaaaaahhh!”

It wasn’t only one. Two, three… A total of five giant centipedes had crawled out of the tunnel.