After breakfast, the three of them set out once again toward the mine.
The already narrow path had become even more muddy and difficult to traverse due to the heavy rain.
Having rained all night, the water had already risen past their ankles, and in some places, it was nearly knee-deep, making every step an uphill battle. The muddy water seeping into their boots only made their feet feel heavier.
Around noon, the three of them finally reached the foot of the volcano.
It was raining here too, and the rainwater carried a pungent, acidic smell of sulfur.
Fortunately, the mine entrance was near the foot of the mountain, and it didn't take them long to duck inside.
Despite the rain, work in the mine had not stopped.
Many workers, carrying their tools, queued up to enter the shafts.
These were workers who had been escorted here by adventurers. Since hiring adventurers for escorts was expensive, the workers simply built huts near the mine and worked inside for weeks or even a month or two at a time.
Lynn and his party soon met their contact for this commission.
The contact from the Colzan Chamber of Commerce looked incredibly busy. He shoved a map into Lynn's hands and hurriedly left.
Referencing the map, the three of them gradually made their way deeper into the cave system.
The shallow sections of the mine had almost no harvestable veins left. Most of the ore was now deep underground.
Thus, the miners had to follow the tracks deep into the earth to extract the ore.
Fortunately, the Mages had learned from the advanced experience of the dwarves and developed power mine carts.
These only required a magic stone and some manual effort to drive.
As they descended underground, Lynn saw the first batch of power mine carts, fully loaded with ore, beginning their ascent to the surface.
Two workers sat on a handcar, closely following the power mine cart in case anything went wrong.
The power mine cart looked like a large metal box equipped with four arthropod-like legs, allowing it to navigate the intricate and complex environment of the mine.
As Lynn passed by, the power mine cart beside him suddenly ground to a halt, as if caught on something.
On the handcar, one of the men instructed:
“What's gotten into this power mule? Go check if the magic stone has come loose.”
His colleague climbed down from the handcar and walked over to tap on the power mine cart.
“Strange. Why have these power mules been acting up so much lately? Didn't the Mages say this thing would last ten years without breaking?”
Lynn took a glance and quickly passed by.
After this brief interlude, Lynn's group successfully descended to a depth of nearly a hundred meters.
This was the main mining area, where many workers were gathered, hammering away at the rock walls with their pickaxes.
Lynn said to his two teammates behind him, “It's not far ahead. We need to be careful.”
Hilda and Henry both nodded.
The point marked on the map was an abandoned mine shaft.
And the kobold tribe was hidden right inside.
However, they hadn't directly occupied the abandoned shaft itself. Instead, they lived in the stone chambers on either side of the shaft and had dug out paths connecting them.
This way, if humans came to mine, the kobolds could launch a surprise attack at any moment to steal their ore.
And if adventurers came to clear them out, they could retreat back into the stone chambers through their side passages.
Because of this, kobolds were not a very good target for inexperienced novice adventurers.
After walking a bit further, they finally found the location of the abandoned mine shaft from the map.
A mine shaft reinforced with a large amount of wooden supports appeared before them.
Having been abandoned for a long time, moss grew all over the stone walls on both sides of the shaft, and green, filthy water seeped from the cracks in the rock.
Even the unmaintained wooden supports had become soft and rotten from being soaked in the filthy water, making one wonder if the shaft would collapse at any moment.
This was indeed a bit of a problem for Lynn.
Here, Lynn didn't dare use Magic Missile.
Otherwise, a single explosion might risk bringing the entire shaft down on them.
“This should be the place. Let's go in,” Lynn said, leading the way. Hilda followed immediately.
Henry looked at the “tottering” shaft, feeling a bit apprehensive. Gritting his teeth, he followed them inside anyway.
Inside the shaft, there were still wooden tracks that had not been dismantled, which were meant for the workers' handcars.
A few white skeletons lay exposed in the shaft.
However, they did not look like human remains.
The skeletons were small, with protruding snouts on their skulls and a pair of horn cores on their crowns. They were reptilian humanoids.
These were likely the remains of kobolds.
Despite being named kobolds, these monsters were actually lizard-like reptilian creatures.
Hilda looked at Lynn walking ahead and cautioned, “Everyone, stay alert. Kobolds are very likely to have set traps here.”
Kobolds were a long-lived but weak race, so they preferred to set traps to make up for their lack of combat power.
However, Lynn didn't pay much mind to Hilda's warning.
It wasn't that he looked down on the traps set by kobolds.
It was just that his Lv.2 Echolocation now had a slight wall-penetrating capability. It was no problem for it to detect thirty or forty centimeters into the rock walls.
As a result, all the traps set by the kobolds were laid bare before him.
After walking a short distance down the shaft, Lynn found that the kobolds' trap-making skills were indeed quite decent.
In such a small shaft, they had set up dozens of small traps, ranging from tripwires, flying stones, and throwing poisonous centipedes to corrosive liquids in clay pots. There was a wide variety of traps.
If not for his Echolocation, Lynn might have actually fallen prey to such a high density of traps.
Lynn warned his teammates, “Follow closely behind me. Watch where I step.”
The two naturally trusted Lynn implicitly.
Under Lynn's guidance, the three of them reached the end of the abandoned shaft without triggering a single trap.
The sound of dripping water gradually echoed in their ears, yet no water source could be seen.
Even under the detection of Echolocation, no water source was found within a radius of dozens of meters.
However, though no water source was found, the Echolocation scan was not entirely fruitless.
Several small crawlspaces were detected.
But extending from behind these crawlspaces were long, winding tunnels, complex and forming a labyrinthine network.
And the exit of this labyrinth was precisely the destination of their trip—the stone chambers occupied by the kobolds.
Through the sound waves echoing repeatedly within the stone chambers, Lynn could roughly estimate the number of kobolds inside.
There were... about thirty of them.
Since most kobolds were similar in strength to goblins, this number wasn't particularly large.
However, Lynn wasn't sure if there were any powerful mutated kobolds inside.
If there were a few Tier 1 monsters blocking the exits of the tunnels along with the ordinary kobolds, it would clearly cause a lot of trouble for Lynn and his group.
Rate on N.U.
