"In that case, let’s just ride this thing down."
Lava General nodded slightly, then added, "Don’t worry, I’ll take the lead. The others will protect you guys."
"Of course we trust you. With you here, there’s nothing that can threaten us." The mine supervisor gave a reluctant smile, but the worry on his face was clear as day to anyone who could see.
The mine’s structure wasn’t exactly primitive—there were so simple magic arrays and chanical devices—but the ventilation was terrible, the air was very foul, and the entire mining area was dark.
Who knows if it was to test oxygen levels or just because they couldn’t bear to invest in building self-charging arrays and a Magic Power Network—the lighting choice was still torches.
As the monkey car continued descending, the surroundings got darker and darker. The torches created quite a bit of smoke, making the air quality even worse, and it got stuffier and hotter.
"Mining in this kind of environnt must be pretty bad for your health, right?"
Even he, a magician, couldn’t help but turn on his filter, let alone the ordinary people here. Lava General instinctively asked the question.
The mine supervisor and staff obviously hadn’t expected to suddenly face this question. They froze for a good while before speaking. "If they don’t mine here, their lives would be very difficult."
Miners were generally slaves or refugees from far away. Anyone who had a job locally or a piece of land, even if they were fairly familiar with nearby lords and could work in their territories, would never co work in the mines.
Who doesn’t know that mines eat people?!
Monsters eat people... but wasn’t the mine itself the sa?
Every year hundreds, even thousands of people died from various accidents in the mines—poisonous gas, cave-ins—way too common.
But for survival, to let their families eat, these people had no choice.
"There will be new thods."
Lava General was silent for a mont before speaking. "I haven’t been to Roster territory’s iron mines, but I know that guy Roster would definitely not let his territory be like this. His ore mining magic conductors and such would definitely be able to avoid these problems."
The mine supervisor looked at Lava General, his eyes full of surprise. Was this really the Lava General he’d heard about, who had completely rooted out all the Church of the God of War remnants in those eighteen countries?
Totally ruins the image!
But this kind of change really made people like them in the governed areas feel an unprecedented sense of security... though he didn’t pay too much attention to the better thods Lava General ntioned.
Plenty of people had said these kinds of platitudes before, and he was one of them. But they’d never actually thought about really doing sothing about it.
The sizzling sounds kept coming as the monkey car continued slowly moving down. Along the way, they could also see quite a few miners walking up from below along the stairs.
The massive mine was like a maze.
All along the way, Lava General clearly saw more than a dozen intersections. So of these intersections had places where you could find so ore, while others had long since beco dead ends.
"General, as long as you’re in this mine tunnel, if you can find this initial passage we’re in now, you can safely leave. But if you just wander around randomly, you might not be able to find your way back."
Seeing Lava General occasionally look toward so caves, the mine supervisor quickly spoke up.
Just like that, chatting while continuing to slide down the main road, after passing who knows how many weird branch passages, the monkey car finally reached its endpoint.
"General, sorry, but the area ahead requires walking because we haven’t completely determined the next excavation direction yet."
"No problem. Where were the people who were attacked?"
"Any place is possible. As long as it’s in these new excavation sites, any mine tunnel is possible."
After a brief silence, the mine supervisor added, "Mining doesn’t necessarily an you’ll find sothing just by digging down, so a lot of tis we need so scholars to assess. And when scholars co to investigate, they often excavate caves like this. These can basically be ignored."
"So you’re saying those so-called scholars co up with guesses about certain places, have people dig, and if they don’t find anything they just abandon it without doing any backfilling at all?!" Lava General’s gaze sharpened.
If that was the case, searching would be a pain. It could be anywhere, or nowhere. Did they need to enter every single area?
But who could guarantee that when entering the next one, they wouldn’t dig out and go to another area that had already been explored?
It just wouldn’t work.
"Y-yes." Seeing Lava General’s expression change slightly, the mine supervisor beca even more nervous.
"Fine, take to the most recent place where that monster injured people. I’ll go look for clues." Lava General waved his hand, unable to help thinking about many things.
"That was a naturally ford underground cavity. A scholar brought seven miners there, but in the end, only half a miner was rescued by us."
The mine supervisor thought for a mont and added, "Literally half. When we found him, the monster had eaten his leg and he’d been scared unconscious."
Lava General didn’t say anything. He just had the mine supervisor and guide lead the way. Soon they passed through a space that could only fit one adult, and after walking about ten ters or so, their view suddenly opened up.
This was a space of roughly 100 square ters with a height of about four ters. Entering here, they no longer felt the previous sense of oppression.
However, you could also see that this area had so obvious excavation marks, though not many. This was probably the scholars’ thod of testing.
"You found the person who was attacked here? How did you find them?" Lava General’s brow furrowed. He didn’t understand—under what circumstances could people precisely navigate through that kind of passage and find this place?
"Yes, when we found the distress call, it was right here. But by the ti we arrived, there was only one guy with bloody stumps where his legs should be. The rest of the people—we couldn’t even find their bodies. It was like they’d never appeared in this world at all."
Every ti the mine supervisor thought about that survivor’s condition, he couldn’t help but shudder.
And at this mont.
Not far from them.
In a small exploration mining team, a lean-looking man shouted excitedly, "Found it! Very high-quality iron ore, and it looks like there’s a lot!"
As soon as he said this, the other teammates all ran over, including soone dressed like a scholarly type.
"That’s right, it’s iron ore, the very high-quality kind. Quickly dig this area open a bit. I need more information to confirm exactly what the situation is here! If we can mine it on a large scale, we’ll be rich!"
After carefully examining it, the scholar showed a delighted expression.
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