Chapter 50: A Difficult Road Home 2

“Haha! That means it’s time to sleep,” Dex explained when he noticed Kent’s puzzled expression. “It always looks the same down here, so we use drums to mark the time. Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll take you to the City Lord’s residence and have you officially registered. Since you’re a mage, the City Lord shouldn’t make things difficult for you.”

That night, Kent did not sleep.

Instead, he spent the entire night meditating.

But the more he thought about his situation, the more anxious he became.

So many people had lived in the Underdark for generations, yet none of them had managed to return to the surface. With his current pitiful level of strength, there was even less reason to think he could accomplish what all of them had failed to do.

After thinking it over carefully, Kent realized that the most important thing he could do right now was increase his strength.

Repairing an existing spatial teleportation array should certainly be easier than constructing an entirely new one from scratch.

But even repairing one required understanding how the array was constructed in the first place.

And naturally, it would also require enough magical power to activate it.

That thought immediately gave Kent another headache.

He only remembered some of the fundamentals of magical arrays. Even among elemental formations, he was familiar only with the basic principles of water, fire, wood, earth, metal, and wind.

As for darkness, light, lightning, and several other elemental systems, he knew virtually nothing.

Magical arrays were much like electronic circuit boards.

A tiny error in even one part could cause the entire system to fail.

There was absolutely no room for carelessness.

For now, Kent could only hope that the underground world possessed books on alchemy. Otherwise, his only remaining option would be to cultivate relentlessly until he reached the Legendary rank himself.

But even Kent lacked confidence when he thought about that possibility.

How many Legendary mages were there in the entire world?

Could he really become one of them?

“Uncle Dex, could I wait a few days before going to the City Lord to register?” Kent asked the following day. “I feel like I’m about to advance to Level Two.”

During his meditation the previous night, Kent had clearly sensed something unusual about the Underdark.

The concentrations of fire, earth, metal, water, and dark elemental energy here were extraordinarily high.

At first, the sheer density of magical elements had startled him.

Of course, Kent’s method of cultivation was completely different from that of ordinary mages.

He did not particularly care what kind of elemental energy he absorbed. Fire, water, earth, metal—it made little difference to him. He simply drew everything he could into his mind, where the various elemental energies would eventually be transformed into that strange silver-white magical power within him.

That meant the density of the surrounding magical elements made an enormous difference to his cultivation speed.

If Kent’s spiritual power were compared to a fishing net, all he had to do was cast that net into the water.

Crabs, eels, lobsters, turtles—it did not matter what he caught.

He would take everything.

The more crowded the waters were, the greater his harvest would naturally be.

An ordinary mage, on the other hand, was more like a fisherman using a rod and line.

If he was fishing for one particular kind of fish and accidentally hooked a turtle, he would have no choice but to throw it back.

That was the difference.

And because the elemental energy in the Underdark was so extraordinarily dense, Kent could already faintly feel that he was approaching a breakthrough.

He did not fully understand why, but he trusted the sensation.

The only real problem was the special qigong posture he used during cultivation.

At present, Kent could maintain it for only about an hour.

That was unfortunate because the magical elements absorbed through the soles of his feet while he held that posture were converted into magical power with virtually one hundred percent efficiency.

By comparison, only about half of the elemental energy gathered through his spiritual power was successfully converted.

Kent therefore intended to push himself harder and advance to Level Two as soon as possible.

Once he became a Level-Two Mage, he would be able to make certain magical scrolls.

More importantly, he would finally be able to mass-produce things like magical land mines.

And in the narrow tunnels of the Underdark, mines would be even more devastating than they were on the surface.

After all, a cave passage was only so wide.

If Kent planted eight or ten mines inside a single tunnel, the chances of an enemy stepping on one would be more than doubled.

“What talent...” Dex murmured, his face filled with envy. “A Level-Two Mage at only eighteen years old.”

Of course, eighteen was an age Kent had made up.

Fortunately, his body was well developed enough that he looked roughly that age, so no one had questioned him.

Kent had also deliberately concealed the fact that he could use more than one school of magic.

He had only casually mentioned that he was an alchemist as well.

Dex, however, clearly did not believe that part.

Kent turned his gaze toward the distant volcano.

Suddenly, an idea occurred to him.

“Uncle Dex, are there people living or working near that volcano?”

Dex chuckled.

“That’s where we dwarf smiths do most of our forging. I work over there myself.”

Kent’s eyes immediately lit up.

“Then let me go with you, Uncle Dex. I can meditate there.”

He looked toward the distant glow of the volcano, unable to hide his excitement.

“The closer we get to the volcano, the denser the fire-element energy should be.”

Dex led Kent toward the place where he worked.

As they made their way through the city, Kent finally had the chance to get a proper look at Muan City.

The place truly was home to every sort of people.

There were gnomes, dark elves, dwarves, humans, and patrols of armed soldiers marching through the streets in organized groups.

From Dex, Kent also learned that mages were relatively rare in the Underdark.

There was a simple reason for that.

Inside the underground caves and tunnels, mages were often far less useful than archers.

Dark elves possessed natural darkvision, allowing them to see clearly in near-total darkness. A mage, however, produced visible magical light whenever casting a spell.

In the darkness of the caves, that glow might as well be a beacon announcing, Here I am.

It made the mage an excellent target.

Because of that, mages were somewhat awkward to use in underground combat.

They could not make much use of flight in narrow caves, either.

Their true value only became apparent in large-scale battles—for example, when defending a city against an assault by magical beasts.

Such attacks were common in the Underdark.

Magical beasts frequently raided settlements, which was exactly why cities like Muan had been built in positions that were easy to defend and difficult to attack.

Sentries were stationed throughout the surrounding area, keeping watch at all times.

Every city also maintained specialized hunting parties and food-gathering teams.

Those with relatively little combat strength traveled with larger groups to gather mushrooms, ferns, and other edible plants.

The stronger warriors were responsible for hunting and culling magical beasts.

The key was to keep their population within a certain range.

As long as the magical beasts had enough food available in the wild, they were less likely to attack the cities.

“Where does all that lava go?” Kent asked.

He was following Dex across another broad stone bridge.

Beyond the bridge, streams of molten lava poured down from the rocks like glowing rivers, splitting into countless narrow channels before disappearing into an abyss so deep that the bottom could not be seen.

From the far side came a constant chorus of metallic clangs.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

A massive fortress-like structure made of dark stone stood on the opposite side of the bridge.

Kent immediately guessed that this must be where Dex worked.

“Oh! Dex! Where did you pick up this idiot? He even has to ask where the lava goes? Gods above!”

A strange, mocking voice suddenly came from behind Kent.

Kent turned around and saw another dwarf approaching them.

The newcomer was built much like Dex—short, broad, and solid.

Dex rolled his eyes.

“Tanis, can’t you keep that filthy mouth of yours shut for once? What happened? Did you drink too much piss last night?”

“Dex!”

Tanis exploded immediately.

“You trying to make me angry? Well, congratulations—you did it, you damned bastard! Come on, then! Come on! You coward!”

He began jumping up and down while waving his short arms furiously in the air.

“Fine, Tanis. You win today,” Dex snapped. “I’m going to beat your ass so badly you’ll run home crying for your mother!”

The moment the words left his mouth, Dex charged forward.

Tanis met him head-on.

A second later, the two dwarves were wrestling and punching each other with their bare hands.

Neither of them used battle aura.

Kent stared at them in disbelief.

He had read that dwarves were straightforward by nature, but also notoriously hot-tempered. According to the books, it was not unusual for two dwarves to start fighting after only a few harsh words.

Kent had never really believed the stories.

Now, watching Dex and Tanis tear into each other and send everyone nearby scrambling out of the way, he could not help finding the whole scene hilarious.

A laugh escaped him.

“Hey, kid. What are you laughing at?”

A hand suddenly slapped down on Kent’s shoulder.

“You looking down on us dwarves or something? Want to have a go?”

Kent turned his head.

At first, all he saw was a hand resting on his shoulder.

For a split second, it nearly scared him half to death.

The lighting underground was dim to begin with, and the dwarf was short enough that Kent had completely failed to notice him standing there.

Looking down, Kent realized that it was one of the younger dwarves who had arrived with Tanis.

He seemed considerably younger than the others.

Kent had developed his own simple method for estimating a dwarf’s age: look at the beard.

Dwarves apparently never trimmed their beards, so the longer the beard, the older the dwarf was likely to be.

“Sure,” Kent replied.

He looked at the young dwarf, who was staring at him with obvious disdain, and a faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“So what kind of contest do you want?”

Kent paused deliberately.

“Words... or fists?”

From what Kent could sense, the dwarf’s strength was only around Level One.

There was no reason for him to back down and lose face in front of someone at that level.