NOVEL NEXT chapter 37
37 – The Dwarven Mine
“But…”
Since the biggest problem remained with the three women who mutually agreed that I could sleep in this room…
“Who is sleeping next to the hero?”
There was silence between Clara and Irene at Lucia’s naive question.
“It’s as if my brother made a mistake, so I, a blood relative, take responsibility.”
“The unmarried princess sleeps with an alien man?”
“Then Irene-nim is going to sleep next to you?”
“It’s me… well… I don’t care…”
I wondered if a quarrel between Clara and Irene would begin…
“Since you two are royalty and nobles, wouldn’t it be better for me, a commoner and half-elf, to sleep next to you?”
As soon as Lucia finished speaking, the two women glared at her as if they were going to eat her.
Caught between two strong women, Lucia eventually lowered her tail and she clung to my side.
“Princess, I can just sleep on the floor…”
“No. How can I put the warrior to sleep on the floor? I’m fine, so you can sleep next to me. Apparently, the bed is big, so it won’t be too uncomfortable.”
Clara measures the size of her bed with her own hands and says that she is fine, but
From my point of view, it was a bed of a size that would be okay if you sleep with your back turned, but if you turn your body incorrectly, you could come into contact.
“Since I can install an ice wall while sleeping next to you, will the princess stop being rude?”
“How can you believe that if everyone else is sleeping, you can remove the wall and sleep next to each other?”
Leaving behind the two fighting women, Lucia approached me…
“Hero, let’s go down to eat.”
“Is that so?”
I took my hand and headed out the door, and in the hallway my voice was getting so high that I could hear the two women fighting.
When we came down to the first floor, there were fewer people than when we first entered, but there was still a complicated restaurant…
“Would you like to have dinner?”
“Yes. They say the lamb steak here is famous.”
“Of course! In my village, we graze sheep directly on that mountain. It has to be famous because it is caught that day and used as meat that day.”
“Then I want a lamb steak and… This is…”
I like meat, so of course I ordered lamb steak.
Lucia, who doesn’t like her meat very much, looked at her with concern.
“I want a lamb steak too.”
Luckily, she ordered the same thing.
“Yes~ I will make it especially delicious, so please wait.”
The innkeeper must have been cooking himself, so she said and went into the restaurant.
“Lucia, will the meat be okay?”
“Yes. Are you okay. I’m not really a vegetarian either. If you come to a place that tastes good, you should try it once.”
Lucia was eating the soup and bread the innkeeper brought before the lamb steak was served, when two women were coming down from the second floor.
Irene doesn’t show her emotions very well, so I don’t know, but Clara was coming down towards her Lucia with her face full of betrayal.
“What? Lucia? Is this what it is?”
“Yes?”
“If you are going to come down to eat, we should all come down together. Shamefully…”
“That’s… I was so hungry… I thought the story would be long for the two of you, so I came down with only the warrior…”
Lucia was immediately intimidated by Clara’s voice…
“That… I asked to go down. I’m hungry too…”
“Ah.. Then you should have said it earlier. Ho ho ho.”
Clara, who frowned when Lucia spoke, answered with a wide smile when I spoke.
“Add 2 lamb steaks here, please.”
Then Clara orders loudly towards the kitchen and sits down.
“By the way… I guess you used to go to restaurants like this often in the capital…?”
“Yes! I went out with my brother a few times, and when the warrior comes back, I went alone to go to a restaurant together.”
“…..”
Seeing that Clara, who knew how to eat the food brought by the ladies-in-waiting every day in the royal palace, even ordered from her own hands, she didn’t look like she had been to the outside once or twice.
“Did you hear that rumor?”
“What rumors?”
At that time… At the table behind us, people who seemed to be pulling wagons were talking to each other.
“The reason why the dwarves’ mines are blocked!”
“Is there another reason for the blockage? I thought it was closed because of the whims of the dwarves?”
“What a whim… Well, a dragon appeared in that mountain range!”
“What… What!? Dragon?”
“Ah! Is that so? Among the peddlers I know, there is one who trades with the dwarves in the Dwarf Mine. He saw it with his own two eyes.”
“Oh my God… Dragons these days…”
As we talked at the table in the back, our table fell silent in an instant,
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but when it comes to dragons appearing in real dwarf mines, it’s usually not serious.
It would be better if the Demon King’s Army or the Demonic Spirits took possession of it, but it would be better if they just got rid of it and regained it.
It was impossible to easily kill the dragon, the strongest race on earth.
“I’m sorry for saying that.”
I put down the bread I was eating and went to the table behind me to greet the two people who were talking.
They stopped talking and at the same time seemed wary, looking at me as a stranger.
“I am a merchant on my way to the dwarven mines. Is there anything going on there?”
“Heh heh.. Didn’t you hear about that even though you were a merchant?”
“Yes?”
“The reason why the dwarf mine was closed was because a dragon appeared, so now all the dwarves who lived in that vast mine were kicked out and have no place to go, so they live worrying about food for a day.”
Those rich dwarves are worried about their daily meal…
Since ancient times, Dwarves, who didn’t know how to farm, paid the price by making appropriate equipment or items instead of getting food from humans or elves…
They couldn’t make anything in the yard that even the dwarf mines were closed. Even their pride was so strong that they couldn’t find food and seemed to be in a position to worry about their daily meal.
“Then… Are you not going to be able to mine in the future?”
“Isn’t that obvious? How will the dwarves mine mines before expelling the dragon?”
Exorcise the dragon…
A horse drives you away, you may have to fight to the death…
If that happened, even I couldn’t guarantee victory.
Of course, my holy sword, Ascalon, was made from the heart of a red dragon, the fire dragon, so the abilities may be roughly similar, but
I wondered how long I would be able to hold the holy sword that sucked mana like crazy.
“If you’re thinking of going, just put it aside.”
“Yes? Why?”
“We are also cart drivers who carry minerals in the Dwarven Mine, aren’t we playing like this? If you guys are merchants too, I’m telling you because it’s obvious that you’ll be in vain if you go there.”
“Yes… Thanks for the advice.”
After talking with the wagon drivers, I returned to our table and had to sit in my thoughts without even touching the lamb steak I had ordered.
Is it because I’m a little nervous at the thought of fighting a dragon that is said to be as strong as the Demon King?
Has infinite mana and uses more than 10 circles of magic that humans cannot use,
Above all, dealing with a dragon that even blows a terrifying breath was tricky…
“Hero, what do you think?”
As I was making a serious face without even touching the steak, Clara, who was worse off, was calling out to me while stroking my hand.
“I think things are going to get a little complicated.”
“Yes? Why?”
“The reason the dwarf mines stopped production is because dragons appeared.”
“A dragon!?”
Surprised by her word dragon, Clara shouted loudly, and I quickly covered her mouth and looked around.
“Princess, the voice…”
“Ah… Sorry. But what about a dragon? So, did the production of the mine stop because of the appearance of the dragon?”
“Yes.”
Clara, who became quite serious at the word dragon, was thinking hard about something.
He seemed to be contemplating whether or not to give up going to the Dwarf Mine.
“But don’t worry. Dragons are a species that can communicate with humans, so you should speak well.”
“What if that doesn’t work?”
“At that time… what…”
I didn’t tell you the story behind it, but Clara was looking at me with a worried face, as if she understood roughly,
I just smiled at her and reassured her as much as I could.
*
As Clara said, the lamb steak at this inn was the best,
Probably out of all the steaks I’ve eaten so far, it could fit within three fingers.
And when they came up to the room on the second floor, their fight started again…
Continuing from earlier, there was a fight to share the same bed with me, so
The three tried to share the same bed as me, putting forward valid reasons for each other.
In the end…
“Rock, Paper, Scissors!”
As they couldn’t convince each other with words, they decided to settle down through Rock Paper Scissors, a fair game for all people.
“Rock, Paper, Scissors!”
Clara is proud of herself..
“Rock, Paper, Scissors!”
Lucia shyly throws up a rock…
“Rock, Paper, Scissors!”
Looking at her expressionless face, it seems like she’s forcing herself to do something she doesn’t want to do, but when it comes time to release a rock, Irene is actively producing it…
“I won!!!”
The winner went back to Clara who handed out the wrapping cloth, and before the two of them could say anything else, they quickly came over to the bed where I was sitting and lay down.
“Hero! Let us sleep now!”
“Princess, the reason I slept next to her was when others found out later, and above all, Edwin kept me quiet…”
“Noisy, stop sleeping!”
Amid all my worries, I couldn’t afford to lie next to Clara, so I tried to get out of bed, but
I was already caught in her grasp and forced to lie down.
“Then I am from this side…”
While her right arm was grabbed by Clara and she couldn’t get up, Lucia lay down on my left side and pulled her arm.
“Lucia, it’s a foul. You lost at rock-paper-scissors.”
“Yes. That’s why you first lay down in the direction Clara-sama wanted. I’m left on this side, so this way…”
“Despicable!”
With Lucia lying on the bed, the two-person bed soon became three people, and as I kept pushing from both sides, my seat was getting smaller and smaller before I knew it.
In this way, their upper bodies were tightly pressed against my arms,
Only Irene was sitting alone on the wide bed, looking only at us with an expression that did not know whether it was emotionless or envious.