WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle

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◈ I Became the Ophidian of the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 96: The Snake Comes Down. (Illustration)

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The Trawl Clan had already fallen apart.

So I founded the Sunglasses Clan.

Honestly, I didn't think sunglasses could completely protect dwarves from the fire.

Still, they had to be better than squinting.

"Don't look at the fire with your bare eyes. If anyone freezes up, slap each other awake immediately."

We went over the instructions one more time.

The dwarves split into two groups.

Dunkel, Manjin, and Trawl made one group.

The remaining dwarves went with Helmut.

They each had different jobs, but their goal was the same.

Subdue Bluebeard, who had been ensnared by the flames, and extinguish the Fire Demon behind it all.

Helmut shouted,

"Handle the explosives carefully. Assume that if you drop one, it'll explode on the spot and kill us all!"

The young dwarves who followed Trawl went pale.

Each of them had a backpack packed full of explosives.

"Will they really explode if we drop them?"

"Assume they will, you bastard!"

"Y-yes, sir!"

Even with one arm missing, Helmut was terrifying.

That side had an excellent old soldier as its leader, so they should be fine.

The worrying side was this one.

"C-can I really be the leader?"

Dunkel said.

After Helmut and I gave it serious thought, we decided Dunkel would lead.

It wasn't as if being the leader made someone special.

They stood at the front, commanded everyone as situations changed rapidly, and handled the talking when something happened.

No, now that I put it that way, it wasn't a light role at all.

Helmut strode over and stopped in front of Dunkel.

He pulled something that looked like a filthy sock from inside his clothes.

Then he placed it on Dunkel's head.

"It's the hat Bluebeard wore when he was young."

So it wasn't a sock.

But why did that old man Helmut have it?

"It suits you much better."

"......Yes."

Dunkel looked completely lost.

I felt much the same.

"Don't worry."

For a moment, I thought Helmut was finally about to encourage Dunkel.

"Even if you fail, what else can happen besides all of us dying?"

Yes, that was true.

I patted Dunkel on the shoulder.

"You can do it!"

'Let's go!'

Tap, tap. All right, the players enter the field.

* * *

Even if the mine could never be called pleasant, the dwarves had always been full of energy.

Whether they were doing backbreaking work or drinking after their shifts, dwarves always sang.

But no songs had been heard for days.

There was no clanging of pickaxes or thudding of hammers.

They said the only dwarf who stopped working was a dead dwarf.

In that sense, Red Anvil Mine might already have been filled with death.

Orange flames burned throughout the lower levels.

Dwarves sat blankly around them.

Then three young dwarves wearing sunglasses appeared.

Tempting flames surrounded them, but they never gave them so much as a glance.

Step, step. They didn't stop.

They pinched their thighs and occasionally chewed lemons to stay alert.

At last, they stopped before the door leading to the deepest levels.

"Stop."

Rosena had originally guarded this door, but now one of the dwarves called Bluebeard's Five Fingers stood there.

It was Happy, a warrior whose nose tip had been cut off while fighting orcs long ago.

"Dunkel, you bastard, where have you been?!"

Happy barked at Dunkel.

"......It's been a while, sir."

"What's with this 'been a while' crap?"

Dunkel cautiously asked,

"Have you...... been charmed by the fire too, sir?"

"Charmed by what?"

The warrior's eyes went wide, as though he had heard something absurd.

"I'm completely sane."

"I heard you burned the patients."

"Hey, I didn't do that because I wanted to. What was I supposed to do when there was an epidemic? We had to isolate them and disinfect everything as quickly as possible."

"You shouldn't say it like that. And it wasn't an epidemic. We found a cure too."

"I keep telling you, I don't know! Why do you keep bothering me, you little bas-tard?!"

The warrior suddenly exploded in rage.

Dunkel and Manjin jumped.

Trawl instinctively reached for their axe, but Dunkel stopped them.

The warrior before them clearly wasn't sane.

"That's why we've come to see him ourselves."

"What?"

"Bluebeard, the mine lord."

Perhaps some loyalty still remained in him.

The warrior's excitement subsided.

"The mine lord? Don't be ridiculous. He hates you."

"That's right. But I still need to see him. There are things I need to say."

Dunkel stared at the warrior with a serious expression.

The warrior scratched his head as though considering it.

"No."

He drew his axe.

"You need to see the flames too. I heard you just ran away, but you should see them first. They're really incredible."

Why did he draw an axe while saying that?

Still, this development was within our expectations.

Fortunately, Dunkel spoke before it was too late.

"I found it!"

He pulled a bucket and a chain out of his backpack with astonishing speed.

It was the Celestium bucket the snake had stolen.

"This is......"

"Isn't this what that snake stole? I found it. I'll give it directly to Lord Bluebeard."

"Wow, that snake was incredibly quick. How did you catch it?"

"I ran really hard."

"Still, I could just deliver it for you......"

"I caught the snake too!"

The warrior's eyes rounded.

When he cautiously touched the lidded bucket,

Thump, thump, thump!

Something alive thrashed inside.

"Wow, that's pretty impressive......"

"I want to deliver it myself."

"At this point, I suppose that's fair."

Good, the persuasion worked.

"Fine, follow me. Hey, you! Guard this place for me."

The warrior left another dwarf in charge of the gate and opened the door to the deep levels.

A wave of scorching heat poured out.

It was the first time all three of them had entered the deep levels.

Trawl, the bravest among them, was the most tense. Surprisingly, Dunkel, who was normally timid, was the boldest.

"What are you waiting for? Hurry up!"

At the warrior's shout, the three quickly followed.

"Whew, was it always this hot?"

Dunkel wiped away the sweat streaming down his face.

The deep levels were unbelievably hot.

Even heat-resistant dwarves found it difficult to breathe.

"It's gotten much hotter than before. The fire keeps growing."

"The fire?"

"Yeah, the Heart of the Mountain."

It isn't the Heart of the Mountain.

That's the flame of a vile, wicked demon.

Dunkel held back those words.

The dwarves in the deep levels looked grotesque, their faces and bodies covered with cloth soaked in cooling water.

They were the ones who rarely came back up, so their nutrition had likely become the most unbalanced.

They probably had the highest number of cases of scurvy, the sailor's disease.

Yet there were barely any dwarves in the deep levels now.

Had they already burned to death?

There was no way to know.

"Dunkel."

Manjin whispered carefully.

He pointed down below.

The floor door leading to the lowest depths was already open.

Bluebeard stood before the stairs leading down.

Fortunately, no orange flame that clouded the mind burned here.

Perhaps that was only natural, since only those already charmed by the fire remained in the deep levels.

Bluebeard's eyes met Dunkel's.

Even from so far away, they could see Bluebeard frown.

Dunkel felt intimidated for no reason.

Thump, thump, thump.

Something squirmed inside the bucket.

Right. He had to pull himself together.

Dunkel forcibly steadied his nerves.

Then they finally reached Bluebeard.

"Happy. What's going on?"

Bluebeard frowned as he asked the warrior what had happened.

The warrior approached Bluebeard and explained everything that had occurred.

Bluebeard's eyes widened.

He had realized that what Dunkel held was the Celestium bucket he had lost.

"You brought that back? You?"

"Yes."

Bluebeard walked over to Dunkel and held out his hand.

Dunkel hesitated briefly before handing over the bucket.

Thump, thump, thump!

The snake thrashed inside the bucket once more.

"I don't know what made you change your mind, but you did well."

Bluebeard praised Dunkel.

It was the first praise Dunkel had ever heard from Bluebeard, and an inexplicable smile slipped out.

Then Bluebeard opened the bucket's lid.

Flutter!

A bat burst out of the bucket.

"Huh?"

Happy, the warrior who had led Dunkel's group here, stared in disbelief.

The bat frantically flew away and vanished from sight.

Bluebeard silently glared at Dunkel for a moment.

Soon, he noticed a piece of paper stuck to the bottom of the bucket.

As he leaned closer to inspect it, he suddenly threw the bucket aside.

Whoosh!

Flames burst out from inside the bucket.

"......Dunkel, are you playing a prank on me?"

If it was a prank, it was a nasty one. If it was an ambush, it was a pathetic one.

But Dunkel didn't panic.

This hadn't been planned to burn even Bluebeard's beard in the first place.

"Did that wake you up?"

"Not funny."

Dunkel smiled bitterly.

It was the first time he had played a prank on Bluebeard, despite always imagining ways to make his life difficult.

"It's not as fun as I thought."

Then, after a brief pause,

"......Father."

An icy silence fell over the area.

Shock. Disbelief.

Everyone looked as though they were wondering if Dunkel had just made a joke.

Manjin and Trawl stared at Dunkel as if their eyes might pop out.

* * *

Whoosh.

Eek!

The talisman I carried with my tail caught fire.

That meant the magic in another talisman linked to this one had activated.

They were linked talismans Pelerian had helped draw.

The talisman linked to mine had been attached to the inside of the Celestium bucket.

Since it would burn as soon as the lid opened, that meant the bucket had at least reached Bluebeard's hands.

Yes, I had made a bold investment.

I had built this plan prepared to lose the Celestium bucket.

If the operation succeeded, I would become Red Anvil Mine's guardian dragon.

Then I would receive regular tribute from the dwarves.

I had already negotiated that with Helmut and Dunkel.

"Sssaaaak!"

I roared.

The dwarves who had been sitting and resting scrambled to their feet.

Getting the timing right was important.

Actually, we had moved earlier than Dunkel's group.

Dunkel had left a day after us.

For an entire day, we had dug through a tunnel that connected directly above the deep levels.

There were several things dwarf miners considered nightmares.

One was encountering a swarm of Blood Moles after losing their lights.

I had already survived that situation once.

Something even less likely could happen, though if it did, it would become a disaster beyond imagination.

Contacting an underground water vein.

Groundwater was more common than one might think, so encountering it wasn't unusual.

If you dug into the earth and found wet soil, you just avoided that area.

Very occasionally, though, misfortune piled atop misfortune, and miners struck an underground lake.

If they disturbed the water collected there, the pressure would force it to burst out.

They could drown underground if they weren't careful.

To prevent that, skilled miners looked for signs of underground lakes in advance and avoided them.

This time, we did the opposite.

We spent an entire day digging toward where we believed an underground lake lay.

It was dangerous.

Helmut, an explosives expert, carefully calculated everything and planted explosives throughout the tunnel.

"Fall back! Get to high ground, get to high ground!"

He directed the dwarves.

"Move it, you bastards! Don't step on the fuses!"

The dwarves ran about, thoroughly excited.

None of them were friendly with water.

Everyone retreated to higher ground.

"Whew, whew."

Even the seasoned Helmut looked a little tense.

"I never thought I'd get to do something this thrilling before I died."

No, he wasn't tense. He was excited.

Helmut adjusted my sunglasses so they wouldn't come off easily.

"Will you really be okay? It's going to be extremely dangerous."

'I'll be fine. This is nothing.'

I stayed with Helmut instead of Dunkel.

Kibaemi's ability was excellent at finding water veins.

Kibaemi refused to be apart from me, so we had to stay together like this.

I put Kibaemi back into Subspace.

What was about to happen would be extremely intense.

"Then I wish you luck. Prepare for the blast!"

Helmut approached the detonator.

"Three, two, one, blast!"

When he firmly pressed the detonator,

the fuses burned down at astonishing speed.

Sizzle!

Then an enormous explosion erupted.

Boom!

The explosives shattered the wall of the underground lake.

Water began to pour out under tremendous pressure.

"Wait for the rubble to pass!"

My ears rang so badly that I could barely hear Helmut's voice.

A raging torrent poured down below.

Now that the rock fragments had passed and only clear water was flowing,

*「You use Black Scales Lv. 3.」

I used Black Scales, which I could now control freely.

Then I jumped into the water.

*「You use Swimming Lv. 1.」

Swimming, which I hated more than anything.

And this was a terrifying water slide.

I plunged down with the water.

Through the wide-open hole below, toward the deep levels.

* * *

"I never had a child like you."

"Because you abandoned me."

"......Did Helmut tell you?"

"Yes."

Dunkel answered with a pale face.

A baby born without hair.

And an illegitimate child.

Bluebeard had refused to acknowledge Dunkel as his child.

That was why Dunkel had lived as an orphan his entire life.

"Did you come here expecting an apology from me?"

"No."

Dunkel spoke calmly.

"I'm going to defeat you and save the mine."

"Ha......"

Bluebeard was about to sneer.

Boom!

A deafening blast echoed from high above.

Chunks of rock rained down.

The explosion had opened a hole in the ceiling.

Directly above them.

"What the!"

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

Then came a thunderous roar, as though something was rushing toward them.

Bluebeard looked at Dunkel and the others in alarm, only to find that they had already turned and run toward higher ground.

"Chase......"

He couldn't even finish ordering them to be chased.

A torrent of water crashed down from the ceiling.

In the violent stream, like a waterfall, was a snake.

It was the same small white snake he had seen before.

The snake was falling directly toward Bluebeard.

That alone wasn't especially frightening.

The problem was that the snake suddenly became enormous.

At the very bottom of that deep mine.

The snake comes down.

Footnotes:

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