Chương 17: Chapter 16: Gods' Mouth

The tunnel expansion hit iron. Matthew was working the south corridor, carving through the bedrock with Territorial Manipulation while the dungeon sense mapped the stone ahead like a miner reading a core sample. He found a seam of iron oxide running through the limestone a few meters down. Iron meant tools. Iron meant weapons. It was the difference between a tribe with stone knives and a people with metal blades. Metal was one of the roots of the great tree of civilization. The vein was large.

The seam was thin, maybe half a meter thick, but it ran in both directions for a distance the dungeon sense could not fully reach. TERRITORIAL MANIPULATION: ACTIVE Tunnel Expansion: South Corridor Cost: 2 Mana per meter carved Mana: 1, 870 / 2, 000 He carved the rest of the way. The iron was there, dark red-brown against the gray limestone, embedded in the rock. Using his ability to reshape the warren, he simply cut off a piece of iron from the wall behind it. The lump fell right into his hand.

But unless he wanted to do this all by himself and become a full-time miner, he needed picks so that his people could do this independently. He did not have picks. But he did have gear from adventurers. The weapons and equipment sat in the warehouse, sorted. Swords, axes, knives, a crossbow, and assorted hardware, most of it better steel than the goblins could produce and most of it too large for goblin hands. But steel was steel, and a furnace could change its shape. However, Matthew did not have a furnace.

The goblin king sighed. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. He had a hearth and a smokehouse and a fire hot enough to cook meat but not hot enough to smelt metal. Smelting needed temperatures a campfire could not produce, which meant he needed a specialized furnace. Good thing he used to watch all of those 'Jungal Survival' videos about a shirtless man recreating technology using only mud and sticks back in his old life.

Under his direction, Linda and her team spent two days hauling heavy, gray clay from the stream bank, packing it into a thick, reinforced cylinder that encased the hearth's primary flue. Matthew used Territorial Manipulation to fuse the clay into a seamless, heat-resistant lining, shaping it into a tapered chimney that narrowed as it ascended toward the ceiling vent.

By integrating the kiln directly into the existing hearth, he created a natural draft, a vacuum that pulled oxygen from the chamber and forced it upward through the clay pipe, superheating the air within the cylinder. The result was a crude but powerful blast furnace, a vertical column of fire that transformed the hearth from a source of warmth into an industrial tool.

As the first batch of iron ore was loaded into the base and the fire was stoked to a roar, Linda stood beside Matthew, her eyes wide as she watched the red-brown stone begin to glow. He walked her through the process, explaining the relationship between airflow, fuel, and the melting point of the metal. He showed her how to gauge the temperature by the color of the flame, from a dull orange to a blinding, liquid white. He didn't really know if she 'got' it. Probably not. But Linda was fascinated nonetheless.

Once the iron was melted, they poured it into a clay mold with a crescent moon indentation. After that, he just had to fit it with some wood for a handle. NEW TOOL CREATED MINING PICK (IRON, CRUDE) Quality: Poor Durability: Low He did not care about the rating. What mattered was that the picks were proof that the warren could make its own tools from raw materials, and that proof was worth more than any grade the system assigned. A tribe that could make its own picks could make its own everything. Knives. Hammers.

All of it. The goblins gathered in a tight circle, their breath hitching in a collective, silent gasp. They had used salvaged steel before, but those had been treasures found in the ruins of other people's lives. This was different. This was the first thing the tribe had crafted from the raw soil. The goblins shifted their weight, their eyes wide, their expressions a mixture of fear and profound curiosity. They looked at the tool, then at Matthew, and then back at the tool.

"Tandaradei!" shouted a voice from the crowd.

"Tandaradei!" chanted the rest. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. He started the mining operation the next day. From there, the pile of raw iron grew by a few dozen pounds a day. It was hardly a full-fledged mining operation. But it was a start. He had been so obsessed with the metal that the spiraling passage just past it was a surprise. The miners had found it, breaking through into an empty pocket.

The boundary opened into a natural fissure, a spiral tunnel widened by water over millennia, descending deeper than Matthew had ever mapped. He followed the spiral down, having a sense where it would lead already. The passage angled steeply, the water-smoothed stone carrying him downward, the air turning cold and smelling of sulfur and damp stone. Sure enough, the passage opened onto a long, flat ledge overlooking a void. The whirlpool.

This was a natural way down to its side, rather than the stream waterfall that fed directly into the pit. The dungeon sense mapped a cavern so large the far wall remained beyond his reach. At the center lay a black lake. The water spiraled in a majestic rotation, a vortex. The Gods' Mouth. The name rose from the buried archive of his innate knowledge, sort of like how all goblins knew certain things about the world from birth.

It was the place where the world went down and did not come back up, where the darkness had a center. Looking up and to the right, very high up, he could see the waterfall that was the stream that ran below the dryad tree. It looked like they had found a way to navigate their way down here now. Matthew stepped onto a ledge overlooking a cavern he could not see the far side of. The dungeon sense, which normally felt the boundaries of his territory like a skin around him, could not reach the far wall.

The space was too large and the energy of the whirlpool almost seemed to somehow distort his sense of perception. He could feel the near edges, the ledge, the walls curving away in a vast concave arc, and the ceiling lost somewhere above. The far side stayed beyond his reach. The whirlpool roared, churning. Its water spun and spun, the entire lake constantly in motion like an endless ocean trying to flow down a drain. From the shores, it was dizzying to watch but fascinating.

Looking around himself, Matthew studied the lower chamber. The 'shore' of the underground lake was a large region of water-smooth rock with high ceilings. There was so much space that it was deeply disorienting for him. There was a lot to work with here and with the rate new goblins were being born, they certainly needed the space. The goblins treated the chamber as a holy space. Their faces held the look of people who had seen something that shifted their perspective.

Within two days, the entire warren knew what the original nine survivors knew. They began visiting in pairs or small clusters, standing on the ledge in a silence that happens when people are in the presence of something they do not understand. Given their stubbornness about their traditions, he thought it would take some time to get them open to the idea.

But after a few days, he already began seeing a few of the shyer goblins having nested themselves down in the grooves and channels of the rock 'downstairs', in order to get away from the rest of the tribe. What Matthew did note, as a point of interest, was the goblin culture almost seemed to be something they were born with. Their reverence for the same things, the dryad tree, the stream, the whirlpool, it was an innate feature of their existence somehow. He couldn't explain it. Billy was a quiet goblin.

He was one of the newer spawns, matured and assigned to general labor by Nicole's onboarding system until Matthew could find him the perfect spot. He was average in every way the system measured. Billy was also down in the Gods' Mouth. Matthew knew this because Billy had missed his shift and Nicole had been grunting at him to do something about it. — Apparently, that was also his job. He figured it was a part of hers, but no. Far be it from him to second-guess Nicole.

Billy stood alone on the ledge, looking at the water. He had been there for hours. He had not moved or spoken, and his eyes were fixed on the vortex with a focus that was not curiosity, not fear, and not the aimless staring of a goblin with nothing else to do. Matthew went down. The passage was long and cold and the mana was thick, and Billy was still standing there when he arrived.

"Billy. Big B. Billy-boy." Billy did not turn around.

"You're supposed to be in the north tunnel, helping with repairs." No response. His hands hung open at his sides, and the mana in the air around him was moving. Matthew stopped. It was not moving randomly, and it was not the ambient background flow the dungeon sense registered everywhere. Rather, it moved in a pattern, slow and spiraling, matching the vortex in the water below, centered on Billy. He was not pulling it or pushing it or doing anything.

He was simply standing there, and the mana moved around him as would water move around a stone in a stream. Matthew could see his ears twitch. Billy was listening to something. Matthew could see it. The goblin might not have been moving, but his ears sure were. They twitched up and down, as he had gotten used to seeing in the others when he spoke to them. — And here, something that was in the water was speaking to Billy.

Something that not even Matthew could hear as anything more or less distinct than a droning, ambient roar. [SYSTEM NOTICE] [New Evolution Unlocked: SHAMAN] Unlock Condition: Expand the warren underground to the Gods' Mouth. A spiritual and magical specialist with an instinctive connection to ambient mana. Unlike combat-focused variants, the Shaman channels mana for healing, warding, and elemental manipulation.

While receiving few physical enhancements, shamans are exceptionally smart and intuitive, gaining access to the world's ambient magical systems. May cast rudimentary spells and conduct rituals. Your tribe has a WATER/DARK affinity. Cost: 150 Mana (Royalty Clause): While alive and inside the warren, pays +1. 0 Mana/hour to the dungeon. Ah, finally. It happened. Matthew read the notification. His first thoughts were of the raw information. A shaman, a magic-user variant, was the first the tribe had ever produced.

The next was for the implications. The warren now had access to the exact capability the demon commander's fire had exposed as its greatest vulnerability. A shaman changed that and who knew what else? Matthew had limited experience with magic and he finally had some at his fingertips. — Not literally, but instead, through the wonder of the miracle of delegation.

"Well, Billy. Looks like you're being promoted!" he said, excited. Billy's eyes opened, staring focused on something Matthew could not see. He didn't seem so thrilled.