---Viktor's POV---
Very strange.
Although Aeltia's level of technology was not advanced, it had entered the Iron Age.
Mining for iron and silver ore shouldn't be a problem.
With such a large ore vein right on Honeyvale Town's doorstep, there was no reason it wouldn't have been mined.
I picked up a piece of iron ore fragment scattered on the ground and crushed it with force.
The stone couldn't withstand the hardness of my hand bones and easily crumbled.
The scent of rust permeated the air.
My heart sank. "Not only has no mining taken place, but the quality of the iron ore is shockingly good!"
Honeyvale Town has been abandoned for at least decades, if not a hundred years.
The nearby river kept the environment in the mine damp, making the iron ore prone to oxidation and rust.
Yet despite this, the fragments of ore showed medium quality, remaining highly usable!
This suggests how exceptional the quality of the ore vein had to be.
Edgar's expression was equally grim. "I'll check out the mine entrance."
He stepped away from the players pushing and chatting behind him and quickly disappeared around the corner of the mine tunnel.
Seeing how seriously we were treating the situation, NeverShowOff straightened his expression.
"Isn't high-quality iron ore a good thing?"
---
Luminaris, perched on my shoulder, sneered twice. "Hah, ignorant undead of another world!"
Though he wasn't clear where I had found the peculiar creatures, his observations over the past two days had confirmed that the undeads retained their stereotypically low intelligence.
He was about to taunt them further in Aeltia Common Tongue when I silenced him without mercy.
Hasn't learned his lesson after two days of quiet, has he?
I turned to the players to explain, "Putting aside other factors, high-quality iron ore is, of course, a good thing."
"There's a magical node at the center of Honeyvale Town where magic flows steadily and is of higher concentration. Within its influence, nearby natural resources are richer."
"Moreover, it makes it more likely to produce magical resources like starlight stone or enchanted iron. The ore vein before us absolutely meets the baseline for generating magic-infused minerals!"
Even if the magical node in Honeyvale Town wasn't particularly powerful, the quality of the ore vein alone could compensate.
If we could extract enchanted iron with properties similar to the hypothesized enchanted ore, it would greatly benefit the town.
Since Honeyvale had been chosen as the players' starting point and my place to recover, we would need to survive the magical tide in winter—a challenge we could not avoid.
I had already posted a mission in the game's quest log for constructing defensive walls to resist the tide.
However, I locked it in the first slot, making it inaccessible to players for now.
The reason was simple: we currently lacked the resources to complete the objective.
The quest was listed only to warn players in advance, so they wouldn't be caught off guard and overwhelmed when the magical tide arrived.
But with enchanted iron, things would change!
Enchanted iron had high magical resistance, capable of absorbing and converting most magical attacks while also being physically durable.
This made it an ideal material for the first line of defense—protective city walls against the magical tide.
While Edgar was still investigating, I patiently introduced this to the players.
Their eyes lit up with excitement.
They ignored the technical talk about Aeltia's mining principles and focused only on the final point.
ProGamer_Daddy grabbed my skeletal hand and asked eagerly, "So, if we mine enchanted iron, we can unlock the lucrative city wall construction mission?"
"Uh... if we can actually mine enchanted iron," I hesitated before replying.
I had only said there was a possibility of finding enchanted iron, not a certainty.
Moreover, the process of refining enchanted iron and constructing defensive walls involved many additional challenges.
However, disregarding the subsequent mission difficulty, mining the enchanted iron would indeed fulfill the unlocking conditions.
Having an enchanted iron ore deposit hanging overhead would serve as a better reminder of the impending magical tide than the abstract locked mission.
"Great!"
This was all he needed to hear.
NeverShowOff looked enviously at him. "Nice job, man! This find wasn't a waste at all!"
Garble frowned. "Don't celebrate too soon. Mining this ore probably won't be so easy."
"Oh, right!" ProGamer_Daddy scratched his head. "Lord Viktor, can we actually mine this vein?"
The three players looked at me expectantly.
I simply smiled without answering, turning instead to look behind them.
There, Edgar had returned.
His expression was even graver than when he had left.
"Confirmed. There's a sealing array on the wooden boards at the mine entrance. But the mage who set it up wasn't particularly skilled, and it's long since deteriorated over time."
Oh, he had spent some time restoring the traces of the array to figure out its purpose.
I lowered my head in thought. "As expected. Was it a magic-sealing array?"
"Correct," he replied. "The caster originally tried to create a siphoning array to drain the magical energy."
I sighed. "Unfortunately, they failed."
ProGamer_Daddy, listening to our conversation, was utterly confused.
"What does sealing magic even mean? Does it mean we can't mine this vein?"
NeverShowOff surveyed the mine tunnel surroundings.
"Why does this sound less like an ore vein and more like some monster containment zone?"
"Unfortunately, you guessed correctly," I suddenly said.
???
They immediately formed a comically exaggerated defensive stance, standing back-to-back.
"What evil being dares appear? Show yourself now!" ProGamer_Daddy shouted.
NeverShowOff carefully held up a flame on his fingertip, wary of anything lurking in the shadows ready to bite him.
"Wait, are there actually monsters—or, uh, magic creatures—nearby?"
Garble's back tensed. "Not sure, but there's no activity at the moment!"
I watched their antics in silence.
The players' knowledge of magical creatures was still too limited, leaving me to explain.
"Not right now. But if you dig a little deeper, it's a different story."
Magical creatures come in diverse forms with various abilities.
Their living habits vary accordingly.
"So some magical creatures like to nest in ore veins?" Garble speculated.
"No. Magical creatures can't move far distances, but that doesn't mean they dislike movement. Nesting in ore veins locks them to one spot."
I quickly dismissed his guess and revealed the truth.
"However, ore veins rich in magical properties can be used by magical creatures—or even consumed as food."
"... The ore vein serves as a hatchery for magical creatures."
"A hatchery?!"
I watched as the three players immediately relaxed their tense nerves.
ProGamer_Daddy wiped the non-existent sweat off his forehead.
"Geez, just unhatched monster eggs. Scared the life out of me."
"False alarm," NeverShowOff patted his chest. "Lord Viktor, next time, could you finish your sentence in one breath?"
This dramatic pause nearly gave them all a heart attack!
"Garble" let out a sigh of relief. "Unhatched monsters probably don't have much combat power…right?"
I noticed how his tone grew less confident as he looked between Edgar and me.
"In general, that's true," I explained. "Before monsters successfully hatch, they're indeed in one of the few fragile phases of their lives."
"But once they break out of their shells, they seamlessly inherit their first God's Chosen talent and step into a path of unrivaled power among their peers."
Unlike true Chosen of the Gods, who have to painstakingly awaken their talents, monsters skip this step entirely thanks to their ability to absorb divine remnants. Over time, they'll awaken their second and third talents as well…
"But not in this case," Edgar chimed in without missing a beat.
ProGamer_Daddy gasped. "You're kidding, right? Monsters that can attack with their placenta while still in the egg?!"
I nearly burst out laughing as I watched Edgar swallow his words, his expression growing increasingly complex.
I could tell that he was doing his best to accept the player group's antics. But their irreverence and lack of restraint were truly beyond what most natives of Aerteia could tolerate.
I cleared my throat. "Let me explain."
As mentioned earlier, monsters could consume magically-infused minerals as food. To be precise, this food was intended for unhatched monsters.
So, monster eggs could absorb external energy to speed up their hatching process.
But aside from minerals, the primary food source for adult monsters was intelligent beings—humans, elves, sirens…all on their menu!
Even while in the egg, monsters had already added humans to their diet.
If someone recklessly mined these veins and accidentally fell into a monster hatchery…
Losing an arm or a leg would be the least of their concerns.
The real fear was that eating just a bit of flesh might give the monster enough energy to hatch prematurely.
I made my tone gravely serious, "I don't know the exact time Honeyvale Town was destroyed."
The last time I visited was 400 years ago, after all.
"But judging from the signs of decay in the town, it's been abandoned for at least 50 years. That means the mine was discovered over 50 years ago, and with it, the hidden magical creature hatchery inside."
This timeline likely coincides closely with Honeyvale's downfall.
After all, if monsters were nesting right at their doorstep, sealing the mine would have been the only option—a method no thriving town would normally resort to.
But 50 years was a long time.
A monster that had been hatching for over 50 years…
Even if it was just hatched, the players wouldn't stand a chance against it.
Even I was not entirely confident I could defeat it now.
"So you're saying the monster in the mine could break free at any moment?" NeverShowOff asked.
"Of course! After 50 years, even if it's not fully formed, it's definitely not some weak yolk-and-egg-white situation. It'd be insanely strong!" ProGamer_Daddy declared confidently.
I wanted to explain that monster eggs weren't like chicken or bird eggs. But this analogy was easier for them to grasp. Once they saw a real monster egg, they'd understand. I kept these thoughts to myself and didn't elaborate further.
Still, after learning about the powerful monster lurking nearby, I noticed the players' fear and anxiety lasted only a short while.
What followed was endless excitement.
A monster incubating for over 50 years? That sounds like the first major boss for new players, right?
Though they couldn't defeat it yet, that didn't stop them from pestering me for specific details about the monster.
After all, doing a bit of research to prepare for a boss fight never hurt.
These were things I had planned to share anyway, so I went ahead and explained.
For instance, how could a monster egg eat meat inside its shell?
Take the example of the two-headed howling wolf, whose body was covered in corrosive pustules.
It dissolved meat into a nutrient-rich liquid that could be absorbed.
Monsters might lack familial bonds, but they still had a strong instinct to protect their offspring.
Before leaving their eggs behind, adult monsters ensured the hatchery was well-equipped with nutrients and defenses to safeguard their young.
I stroked my chin and speculated, "The residents of Honeyvale likely sealed the mine hastily because they feared the hatchery would take over the entire vein."
"A monster that even an entire town couldn't handle?" Garble was deeply alarmed.
I could see this gave him a clearer understanding of the power disparity between ordinary people and monsters in the game's setting.
NeverShowOff frowned in thought. "Is there any class that can tame monsters as tools?"
"No," I said decisively. "Monsters can only ever be enemies. They're fundamentally different from normal animals and completely impossible to communicate with!"
"They're one of the key triggers of the apocalypse prophecy!"
Yes, the prophecy used as the players' introductory plot was mostly fabricated—but this part was undeniably true.
Six hundred years ago, the gods fell, changing countless things.
Only species without intelligence could absorb the divine remnants and transform into monsters. And monsters' diets exclusively consist of intelligent beings—without exception.
Unlike other species, monsters grow less intelligent over time, eventually becoming completely brain-dead.
They could only extend their lives by consuming intelligent beings and "stealing" their intelligence.
This fundamental conflict couldn't be reconciled or changed. So, the concept of a monster tamer didn't exist.
Garble nodded in realization. "Trading intelligence for power and longevity—it's no wonder you don't consider them part of the ecosystem."
This method of growth and survival was less like a biological process and more like a machine operating on extreme parameters.
"Why? Why would such a bizarre creature exist?" ProGamer_Daddy was utterly baffled.
"Who knows?" I shrugged indifferently. "It's just how it is."
"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Goddess of Wisdom was the first to die."