Chapter 262 Valueless Minerals
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
In the year 2223 of the Grigis calendar, 2 weeks have passed since the negotiations with Viscount Hedmar concluded and the road maintenance began in the Ice Star frontier settlement.
Today, I used a secret underground passage that sprawls throughout the settlement to visit the construction site without being seen.
”You’ve made good progress in just 2 weeks.”
I let those words slip out as I looked at the massive hole in the mountain.
The hole was wide enough for a carriage to pass comfortably and tall enough for a person to stand on top of the cargo.
While the width seemed fine, I thought the height might be a bit excessive, but considering the larger races, it seems to be just barely adequate.
In response to my words, Ronim-san, who was standing next to me, replied.
”Creating a hole in the mountain is no trouble for us. According to the plan, we should have dug a bit deeper by now.”
Ronim-san said this with a dissatisfied expression as he directed his gaze toward a pile of pitch-black metal being carried out of the tunnel.
”It’s bad luck to run into a vein of Gioniium.”
Gioniium is a type of black ore famous for having an unparalleled capacity for magical energy.
It is said that filling a Gioniium the size of a fist with magical energy requires 3 magicians.
Well, the amount of magical power varies greatly from person to person, so even if you say there are 3 magicians, it’s hard to understand the amount, but as long as you understand that it is possible to put a considerable amount of magical power into it, there is no problem.
Although gioniium has such unique characteristics, its value as a mineral is inferior to that of scrap iron, and it has been branded as less than scrap.
Gioniium seems to be valuable just because of its overwhelming magical capacity, but it has a drawback that cannot be ignored: once magical power is put into it, it cannot be taken out.
To be precise, it’s not that it can’t be extracted at all. If the gioniium is filled with a lot of magical power, it’s possible to extract some of the magical power from the surface, but compared to the amount that was put into it, it’s only a small amount.
There were those who thought that if it could be retrieved from the surface, they could break it apart to expose the inside, but the result was an explosion the moment it was shattered due to the sudden release of its internal magic.
Then there was the suggestion to use it as an explosive weapon, but it was ultimately dismissed since casting attack magic was far more efficient in terms of magical energy expenditure than exploding the gioniium.
There were also movements to develop magic tools to seal magic, but gioniium only has the ability to contain its internal magic; it has very little capacity to absorb external magic.
Therefore, if the target does not leak magic continuously or voluntarily pour their magic into the gioniium, it becomes a defective item with no efficacy as a restraint. In this way, various methods of utilizing gioniium have been considered since ancient times, but no effective usage has ever emerged, and it was treated as a worthless mineral.
Returning the conversation to construction, the emergence of gioniium during tunnel work is quite troublesome.
As a fundamental premise for this explanation, tunnels in this world are reinforced by magic to prevent collapse, unlike the tunnels in my original world which are covered with concrete.
Since it relies on magic, if the magical energy is depleted, the power will be lost and the tunnel will collapse; however, gioniium has a slight ability to absorb external magic.
This “slight” aspect is troublesome. If this absorption power were normally strong, it would suck up magic from the walls as they were reinforced, which would also be problematic but easier to detect an anomaly immediately.
However, if the absorption of magic happens very slowly, it becomes difficult to notice.
There have been multiple reports of incidents where tunnels collapsed because they were reinforced without realizing the presence of gioniium, and the magical energy for reinforcement ran out before the regular inspection.
Therefore, gioniium veins must be excavated as soon as they are found, and because of this, the progress of work was hindered, which made Ronim-san displeased.
”If only it had some value… is there any way to make use of it?”
”Why are you looking at me there? Let me tell you, if it were that easy to come up with an effective way to use Gioniium, our ancestors would have discovered it a long time ago.”
”But you have come up with several inventions that the ancestors could never imagine. If you’ve thought of 2 or 3, then thinking of one more shouldn’t be any different.”
”Please don’t say anything unreasonable.”
I give a wry smile at Ronim-san’s unreasonable request.
The ideas I came up with are all things anyone from a similar world could think of, so the reason they haven’t existed in this world until now is that the ihomono are transporter.
I ended up reincarnating due to a misunderstanding by the gods instead of being transported, but thanks to that, I was able to gain time to learn about this world and an environment to conduct research.
However, the other ihomono who were transported to this world alone had neither of those, and they had to start by ensuring their own safety.
If they could be protected by a kingdom that seeks the power of the ihomono, they might have a time to learn about this world and an environment for research, but the kingdom doesn’t protect just any ihomono.
What the kingdom seeks is the power to defeat other countries, and if they don’t possess skills or knowledge that meet their criteria, they probably wouldn’t even be considered.
Even if they somehow managed to create an environment where they could conduct research freely, in this world that operates under different rules than the one I came from, it would be impossible to reproduce things as they are.
For these reasons, inventions from other worlds haven’t really spread in this world, and mainly the languages and cultures of other worlds have been circulating.
Thanks to this, items like item boxes or alchemical fertilizers, which it’s not strange for some ihomono to have already thought of, haven’t been invented even to the modern day.
Having made several new inventions for this world, I’m seen as someone with extraordinary creativity by those around me, and it’s only natural that Ronim-san has such expectations, but the truth is that I’m just an ordinary person with only the luck of having a favorable environment.
In the past, I once had a casual conversation with Mei about ways to utilize giionium, but all the ideas we came up with at that time had already been tried and failed in the past.
It was just a casual conversation and we weren’t really discussing it seriously, but we came to the conclusion that the discussion on Giionium was “over” as our ancestors had done decades ago, and that opinion hasn’t changed even after several years.
Even if I think about it now──
”………”
”What’s wrong? Did you come up with some brilliant idea?”
”Well, it’s not something I could call a brilliant idea, but I did think of one thing that might not have been tried by those who came before us… though I’m not sure what the outcome will be.”
”Oh! I don’t know what it is, but as expected, you’re impressive. I thought it would just be cheap talk, but you came up with something right away.”
”I apologize for the expectations, but it’s really not anything significant.”
”That doesn’t matter. If even a little can give meaning to what we are doing now, it will spark some motivation.”
At least, it’s much better mentally than keeping digging up worthless stuff, I thought, as Ronim-san’s cheerful voice replied.
”Wow, I heard they were developing the road, but it’s more extensive than I expected.”
When I heard a male voice from behind me and turned around, there stood a silver-haired man in his thirties to forties.
”What’s piled up over there is giionium. It’s bad luck to run into it when boring through a mountain. If you’d like, I can help you dispose of it?”
”Who are you? Showing up out of nowhere and chatting away… suspicious guy!”
”Whoa, why are you being so confrontational? It’s not like this place is off-limits to outsiders.”
True, it’s not off-limits to outsiders, but that’s because this isn’t exactly a place where unrelated people would come to visit, being a bit away from the frontier settlement in the mountains.
I suppose it’s inevitable that a stranger approaching in such a place would be suspicious, but for some reason, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu, or even a sense of familiarity, even though it was the first time I’d seen him.
”Um, who are you?”
”Oh, that reminds me, I haven’t introduced myself yet. My name is Golarf.”
”What?”
I couldn’t hide my surprise at the name.
Because that name was one of the people who founded Grelego 300 years ago, and was also the name of Lewya’s uncle who disappeared from the elven village 300 years ago.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
Thanks for reading.
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