v1c14 - Nina digs in the ground looking for Iron and finds something
“Mister. Nina is going to go digging in the ground and get the minerals that are underground.”
“I appreciate that, but please don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
After carrying Nina who was surprised by the Shadow Wolf to the cabin and after a delicious lunch from Lydia.
Nina said she was going underground in search of iron because it seemed safer and calmer in the dirt.
However, she might be used to digging the ground since she is a dwarf, but she was wielding a pickaxe when she came here, and we would have to make her do the same work we did when she was a slave.
“Oh, are you perhaps misunderstanding, Mister? Nina likes to dig holes. When she came here, she wasn’t forced to dig holes, she was digging holes as much as she could in the mine to relieve stress.”
“I-Is that how it is?”
“Yes. I’m a dwarf, after all.”
With that, she left the cabin, and Nina began digging a hole from a short distance away, diagonally downward.
Perhaps because she was using a pickaxe enhanced with her Blacksmith skill, Nina easily dug her way through the hard ground as if she were scooping jelly with a spoon.
There are no ropes or ladders, so we can’t dig right down, but Nina said she has skills to prevent falling down, and more importantly, she seems to be used to digging, so it should be fine.
“Well, then, we’d better get to work on the fields.”
“Yes. We’ve grown quite a variety of crops. Is it okay if we start growing different strains of vegetables?”
“Hmm? Which means?”
“You see. If Nina-san could find an iron and make a deep pot, we could do stews and such. With a shallow frying pan, what we can cook will be limited, but with a deep frying pan, we can expand our range of cooking and have more fun.”
“So that’s what you mean. I’m sorry that I’ve left the meals entirely up to Lydia, but …… you can cook whatever you like instead, although it’s not necessarily.”
Lydia says that until now we have mainly planted crops that suit the cooking methods of grilling and frying, and from now on she will grow different crops.
As far as I’m concerned, the food is good enough for me at this point, but for Lydia, it seems that she still wants to do more.
First of all, I turned the newly tilled area into a radish field and watered the other crops.
A little while later, Lydia cooked dinner and I decided to go call Nina.
“Kuh …… this is kinda cramped.”
Nina has dug a hole just high enough for her to get through, so it’s only as high as my chest, and I have to bend over quite a bit to get through.
It’s not pitch black because of Nina’s skill, or maybe it’s just a faint glow in places, but my back starts to ache, so I stop after a while of progress.
And then I yelled out loud towards the back.
“Nina! It’s dinner now, come back first!”
“Mister! It’s bad! Come here!”
On the contrary, I was called by Nina who seemed to be in dire need.
It was hard for me to be honest, but I couldn’t just leave her alone since she seemed to be asking for help.
Bending down, I went straight ahead and through the tunnel heading north.
“Mister …… look over there.”
In the narrow tunnel, I managed to swap bodies with Nina.
Looking further into the place where Nina was, I saw a narrow crack in the innermost wall, and a large space spread out behind it.
“An underground cave?”
“It looks like it. I didn’t know if there were any monsters or not, and since I didn’t know what was out there, I stopped for a while”
“I understand. It is too late to explore now, so let’s wait until tomorrow to find out what happens next. Can you go get Lydia to help us seal off this wall?”
Nina hurriedly brought Lydia to me, and I immediately asked her to block it with a stone wall.
Even if it is a small monster that can pass through this gap, I don’t want it to go through this tunnel and come out inside the wall, after all.
“Then, let’s go back. The rice Lydia made for us is waiting.”
“Yay! Rice, rice.”
“Now that the meal was for three, it was fun to make so many.”
As I am walking back through the tunnel, chatting with the others as I go, I suddenly think.
“Nina. Come to think of it, where did all the dirt you dug up disappear to?”
“It hasn’t disappeared. They are just temporarily saved by the dwarves’ skills.”
“What do you mean by “saved” ……?”
“Nina doesn’t know the details of how it works, but we can store soil in another space. Later, when we get above ground, I’ll need to dump it in that area.”
“Storing in a space …… A [Storage] skill, huh! That’s great. That’s a pretty rare skill, you know!”
“But you can’t put anything in there except dirt and minerals. Besides, any dwarf can use it.”
So soil-only storage.
It seems a little disappointing, but it’s still great.
We went back above ground, I had Lydia dig a hole with her skills, and put the soil that Nina dug into it ……
“Wait, where did all the dirt Lydia dug up go then?”
“…… I wonder where?”
After all, it seems that there are still many things about skills and magic that are yet to be figured out.