Chapter 215

“Because of the river!”

What was that all of a sudden?

I looked at Evangeline with a puzzled expression, and Iri spoke in her stead.

“There was a river flowing near the village. Not that magical something — an actual river with real water flowing through it.”

“And what of it?”

“The smell of that river was exactly the same as the smell when I was in Polen. It looked clear at a glance, but it gave off that distinctive sharp scent.”

“Anti-rain, then.”

“Yes. It looked like that.”

Iri nodded.

“GPS didn’t work, so it was hard to pinpoint the exact location, but it might not be that far from New Valhalla City. The wastewater from the city must have formed a river and flowed all the way here.”

The birthplaces of the world’s four great civilizations had been regions where huge rivers ran, and like many great cities around the world that had prospered beside great rivers… the existence of a river was extremely important. But New Valhalla City had no such ‘river’ at all.

Then again, New Valhalla City was a place that had to spray huge amounts of Anti-rain to survive.

They saturated the over-hundred-million-strong megalopolis with Anti-rain almost every day to keep even the smallest amount of mana from seeping into the city — the sheer volume must be enormous.

If there were natural waterways like Seoul’s Han River or England’s Thames, the artificial chemical rain called Anti-rain would cause floods every day.

That meant the city would have to expand by as much as the area a large river would occupy in the center, which meant extending the city’s defensive lines and, in turn, raising defense spending.

Since it was the only remaining civilized city in the world, no other country would really visit for tourism, and with chemicals pouring out every day, there probably wouldn’t be any fish left to live there.

Also, farming and livestock were done inside huge Smart Farm buildings, so there was no real need for natural rivers.

No — because river maintenance would be necessary too, it was more trouble than not having one at all.

So New Valhalla City had staked itself in the middle of a desert and met much of its water demand with groundwater and artificial rainfall.

Of the rainwater that fell, people purified what they needed and discharged the rest outside the city. That was as much as I knew.

I had no idea what happened to the discharged water afterwards. The novel had never really described it, and I had never traveled along an Anti-rain river myself. Besides, it wasn’t my job.

“In Polen, we used to cluster around the sewers on the city wall and live there. We purified that water to drink it, or sprayed it near our houses to keep the Mystics away. Also, the area near the sewers was warmer, so it helped with heating.”

Iri’s brow tightened slightly as she explained, as if it wasn’t a pleasant memory.

“But I never thought a river that flowed like that would reach here. The Dwarf village and the territories of the Mystics are all Otherworld-Transformed areas, right? I never imagined wastewater processed by humans would affect the Mystics like this…”

Anti-rain contained chemicals that erased ‘mana.’ I didn’t know the exact mechanism, but it was plausible that when it came into contact with the Source Power River, it affected it in some way.

“Hans, did you know about this?”

“I didn’t. I left the village not long after the river’s flow began to weaken. Even if I had known, it wouldn’t have made much difference.”

“Why not?”

“Dwarves aren’t particularly interested in human technology. Even if there was a slightly smelly stream, or if it made them feel unwell, they wouldn’t have thought to connect it to the weakening of the Source Power. And in the first place, seeing the Source Power River with one’s own eyes is difficult unless you’re an exceptional witch or wizard…”

Even if they could see it, they wouldn’t have known what Anti-rain was, so they wouldn’t have linked the two. And even if they had known, there wouldn’t have been much the Mystics could do.

I gathered my thoughts for a moment and asked Hans.

“When did you say the flow of the Source Power River began to weaken?”

“About five years ago.”

“Did something happen on the New Valhalla City side around then?”

“…….”

He didn’t know.

Even though I had a lot of knowledge from the novel, I literally only knew what had been narrated in it.

Even if fragments of memory remained of my life as Aaron Stingray, they didn’t help much here. Aaron wasn’t the sort of man who remembered every little thing that had happened five years ago.

“What matters, anyway, was that this was a problem we could solve.”

“We could just redirect the Anti-rain so it didn’t touch the Source Power River.”

“I’ll talk to the village chief first.”

Hans left immediately for the chief’s house.

Fortunately, a survey team was formed in less than an hour. Earlier, the chief and Hans had been on the verge of coming to blows, but that only showed how important this incident was to the Dwarves.

And in less than an hour the results were in and the village meeting was called. Because they had discovered the cause of the incident, they allowed outsiders like us to attend the meeting.

Of course, some of the Dwarves were furious that the Anti-rain river’s source was a human city and yelled at us. But Evangeline shot one of them a glare, and the chief intervened on our behalf.

In any case, the meeting began.

The general situation had already been transmitted to all attendees. Actually, it seemed people had known about the strange river for quite some time.

They just hadn’t thought it would be the cause of this incident and therefore hadn’t investigated it in detail.

I felt a little sick at how casually everyone treated it, but the chief — true to a people who disliked petty formalities — spoke only once.

“To put it bluntly, changing the river’s flow seems unlikely.”

The reason was that the concentration of chemicals in the Anti-rain river was quite high. In other words, it was like a poison that affected only the Mystics, and it was potent.

“We tried a bit earlier, but everything we made there broke or shattered. Just getting close tore pickaxes, shovels, hammers, even clothes.”

“Couldn’t we cut a channel in advance and lead it that way?”

At my question, the village chief shook his head as if I had said something absurd.

“How do you plan to cross the river?”

He pointed to the map as he spoke.

The drawing was rather crude, making it hard to read, but roughly, a river ran across the center of the map, and the Dwarves’ village lay on the left side.

“To reroute that damned river, we’d have to divert it northeast from about here. We’d need to start construction around this area, but to do that, we’d have to cross the river first.”

Even if they built a boat, it would break apart immediately, so they would have to swim across. And for Dwarves, that was no different from swimming in hydrochloric acid… No, wait — they built dimensional leapers too.

“There’s always the option of flying there in an airship, or teleporting with a dimensional leap like before. Couldn’t you just make disposable devices every day and commute back and forth?”

When I asked that,

“We tried it, but it didn’t work.”

A voice came from one side of the hall. I turned to look — there stood a group of Dwarves, completely soaked. For a moment, I didn’t even recognize them as Dwarves, and with good reason — their beards were completely gone.

“When we fell into the water, our beards vanished.”

“Even when we tried flying over with an airship—”

“Or using a dimensional leaper—”

“For some reason, we just plopped straight into the river.”

“……”

So they had already tried it.

Feeling slightly embarrassed, I heard Evangeline whisper in my ear.

“The ‘Source Power River’ does not always flow underground. Some of its paths run through the sky. It’s likely that the tangled flow near the Anti-rain disrupted their equipment.”

Well, that was a troublesome situation.

In the end, I had to admit that my idea wouldn’t work.

The meeting continued after that, and various suggestions were made about how to deal with the ‘Anti-rain River’ that was shaking the village’s Source Power.

Unfortunately, the issue wasn’t just technical — it was political too. There were ongoing quarrels between Dwarven villages, and to make matters worse, just east of here lay the Elves’ territory.

It was only natural. As usual in these kinds of settings, Dwarves and Elves were sworn enemies, so to avoid provoking them, they would need to carry out the engineering work with extra care. But with Dwarven-made tools breaking and corroding left and right, it was impossible to proceed properly.

The best solution would’ve been for the humans — the ones who had unleashed the massive thing called “Anti-rain” — to fix it themselves, but that was never going to happen.

What kind of mad politician would ever undertake river construction just to make life more comfortable for the Mystics? Even if I used the connections of the Transmigrator Alliance to pressure the political circles, it would probably all get buried under bureaucracy.

When I laid out that reality, some Dwarves started hurling curses at us, but once again, Evangeline silenced them all.

However, that only fanned their resentment further. What had started as a relatively calm discussion grew heavier and heavier with tension.

The humans’ fault.

More and more of them began to glare at us as if blaming us for everything, and a few looked ready to pounce at any moment.

‘This is getting troublesome.’

In this atmosphere, there was no way to negotiate for a Lv.6 module commission — in fact, a war breaking out wouldn’t have been surprising.

Of course, with just Iri and me, we could’ve taken down the whole village easily… but considering the matter of responsibility, I didn’t want a direct conflict.

‘Yeah… sorry, humans really messed up this time…’

My mouth tasted bitter.

Just as I was feeling an odd sense of guilt and thinking it was about time to withdraw—

KWAANG!

Someone suddenly stomped down in the center of the hall. The impact shook the floor slightly.

The one who had caused that uproar was none other than Hans. And beside him, for some reason… stood Miyu.

“Hanies? W-What are you doing?”

“I’ll do it! No — we’ll do it!”

“H-Hans, wait! Just a moment—!”

Ignoring the flustered Miyu, he grabbed her wrist and lifted it high.

“We’ll make the equipment! This human girl and I will build and supply the necessary gear, so stop blaming the humans for everything!”

“Hanies, are you seriously—!”

“Silence! It’s not as if the humans were trying to feed us watered-down beer and this happened! We’ve cut down forests into barren hills ourselves — who are we to point fingers? What matters is taking responsibility!”

His point was clear.

He and Miyu would create the necessary equipment using “human technology,” distribute it, and then the Dwarves could carry out the construction.

Hans even winked at me as he said it. Getting a wink from another man wasn’t exactly pleasant, but… it wasn’t a bad idea.

“Hm. I suppose we have no choice.”

So I decided to go along with it.

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