Mastore 141 - Dumpster

Magic Realm Convenience Store – Ch. 141

Regular customer assembly (4)

A characteristic of regular gates. They act as portals while simultaneously sucking in the surrounding space at their point of origin, forming another subspace inside.

"But this one’s the opposite. The space around the point of manifestation is expanding, and it seems like this place itself, rather than the inside, has become the subspace....”

"You can tell just by looking?"

"Roughly. See the far end of the sewer over there?"

She nodded towards the far end of the sewer. The only light source was the faint illumination trickling in from the open manhole, making it extremely dark. Yet, there was one clearly odd thing noticeable.

The far end wasn't horizontal. It curved as if drawing a gentle arc.

Unless the dwarf construction workers who built this place unnecessarily exercised their aesthetic sensibilities, or drank tank-loads of vodka during construction...

"So you’re saying this place is bulging outward in a spherical shape? The entire space?"

"Exactly. We’re standing on the surface of that expanded space. Starting to make sense?"

“Uh…”

To be honest, I have a liberal arts background. Should I confess this even now?

I swallowed the words that were about to spill out. At least I didn't sleep through middle school science class. In any case, we were looking for the core gate, and the core would typically be located at the center.

Then this core gate will also be in the center of this bulging space. Since we were currently standing on its surface, to reach the center…

“This isn’t the end, so we need to go deeper down from here?”

"Also correct."

“How?”

Looking around, all I could see were a few bizarrely twisted concrete pillars, drainage pipes, and puddles of dirty water barely enough to wet our shoe soles. At least from here, we can't go down.

"...Let's first check what's here. Unnie."

“Un, Yoonha.”

"I think we need to check exactly what structure this space has and how large it is. Is that possible?"

“No reason why it wouldn't be. Let me think for a moment. Hmm…”

After a few seconds of contemplation, Manager snapped her fingers. Simultaneously, a white orb of light about the size of a handball materialized above Manager's head.

She gently grasped the floating orb with one hand and took out her phone from her pocket with the other. She then softly pushed the orb into the darkness of the sewer ahead.

The moment it left her hand, the orb shot forward like an arrow. Next, Manager presses her thumb firmly on the phone screen and looks up at us as she speaks.

“I've set the speed at roughly 50 meters per second, so it shouldn’t take too long. I’m using the stopwatch to measure the time.”

"Is that how detection magic usually works, Manager-nim?"

"It's a bit different. Usually it's shot like a sonar, but since we don't know what might be in here..."

That was probably why she chose silent drone magic instead of sonar wave magic. When the stopwatch showed around 1 minute, the orb reappeared from the opposite direction from where Manager had sent it.

After gently stroking the returned sphere to make it disappear, Manager looked back toward Noona and spoke.

“Straight ahead without obstacles, with a circumference of about 3 kilometers per minute… that means roughly 500 meters to the center?”

"Anything else?"

"There was one area that looked like a beach. It was quite large and rather bright.”

"...How long to get there?"

“Um, about 20 minutes?”

It was the kind of comment that stimulates my imagination in a bad way, because it seems like Noona had chosen it as a candidate for the path down to the lake.

If my memory serves me correctly, I've never once entered water deeper than 3 meters. I was wondering if this too could somehow be managed with magic when Noona turned to us and continued.

"I think we should go to the place Unnie mentioned first and check it out. Do you agree? Elder?"

"If the one I’m escorting agrees, then I shall comply."

“I... yes. We should go.”

Still, I answered as quickly as possible. I wasn’t here to sightsee, and giving a demotivating reply would just make me look inconsiderate.

* * *

Just before leaving, Manager snapped the fingers of her right hand.

Then, an orb the same size as a tennis ball appeared above her head, but much brighter though it floated sluggishly.

"Now you look like you’ve got a lightbulb over your head, Manager-nim."

“Right? I was kind of aiming for that.”

She looked up at her own head with satisfaction, then spoke while opening and closing her fingers.

“Now four uses left.”

“Uh....”

"Still, better than stumbling around in the dark. And since I might forget, remember this well, Chan."

"...Yes."

I made a mistake. If I had known it would be like this, I should have brought a flashlight.

Next, the Elder took off his hat. He explained he wanted to enhance his senses as much as possible since we didn't know what might jump out at us.

"We’re usually idle when there’s no trouble."

I interpreted it as meaning there would be no guarding to do if there wasn't any threat. At this point, Noona must have been curious about the gentleman Elder's identity, as she used the same leading question I had.

“You mean during your work, Elder Wolf?”

“Yes, Miss Yoonha. Such is the life of a chauffeur.”

The gentleman Elder countered in exactly the same way as he did with me. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but he seemed to be enjoying these interactions a little.....

"Ah, right. You were a chauffeur..."

"Would you like me to use a magic to reduce ambient noise, Elder Wolf?"

"No need. I’m here to spare Miss Owner trouble, and some ambient noise is preferable."

As he spoke, his furry ears occasionally twitched slightly. He seemed ready to concentrate, so I added just one more thing.

"I'll be counting on you, Elder."

“Understood.”

After that brief preparation, we spent about 15 minutes walking, splashing gently through shallow water. The only other sounds were the occasional dripping of water and the sound of air leaking from somewhere.

As we walked, Noona made this remark.

"Since magic beasts might appear due to noise, everyone please be careful to walk quietly. I don’t want us wasting any unnecessary time.”

"Magic beasts? This isn’t even inside the gate yet but there are magic beasts here?"

I asked as I followed behind. I distinctly remembered being told before that magic beasts only inhabit the inside of gates. When I asked, Noona looked up at the twisted pipes on the ceiling and replied.

“It’s a bit ambiguous to say this is outside the gate, given how that looks.”

"True..."

"And there's something suspicious over there too. Look."

Looking where Noona glanced, I saw something like a tar mass congealed in the corner of the sewer's outer wall. Reluctantly, I had to admit it seemed to be squirming slightly. Meaning.

"Is that a slime or something…?"

"Can’t say for sure until we confirm if there’s a slime core floating inside. It could just be a mass of oil, and even if it's not, it seems to be staying still for now so we're leaving it alone."

"Why is it staying still?"

“It stays still as long as you don’t physically touch the core. It has no hearing or smell; it just absorbs surrounding liquids, and once it's done that, it calms down.”

She added that slimes have the property of changing themselves based on the liquids they absorb. If that is a slime, it’s probably a sewage slime by now.

After hearing this, a joke came to mind. I casually asked.

"Noona. If they live on liquids, would they eat cola well too?"

"I suppose they would. But why?"

“If touching their core makes them move, and their body turns into cola after absorbing it, wouldn’t they just explode on their own while moving around?"

“.....”

"If we throw mint candy or ice cream at them, they would explode even bigger."

Noona seems dumbfounded by this question and said nothing. Instead, Manager answered.

“Chan-ah. I saw that on TV commercial a long time ago. I thought it might sell well, so I stocked it in our store once."

"Oh. Did it sell well?"

“Not a single one sold, so we threw it all away. They discontinued it soon after.”

“What flavor was it?”

“Herbal flavor.”

Yeah, I wouldn’t drink that either. Cola should be cola, and herbs should be herbs. What's with herbal-flavored cola? Are you trying to kill two birds with one stone, that’s health and taste?

“...Hey, Lee Chan.”

“Yeah.”

"Thinking about that actually eased my tension a bit. Thanks."

"That's good then."

I glanced at her occasionally, and her face seemed slightly stiff. Anyway, after walking a few more minutes like this, we arrived at what appeared to be our intermediate destination.

It’s definitely a place worth visiting. Besides being brighter than the surroundings, it is so vast that the end wasn't visible, and the reason for that is precisely...

"What the hell is this now?"

Because this is a beach. What kind of twisted causality would allow a seaside resort to form in the sewers beneath a city?

And not just any beach. Just like the twisted structures we saw earlier, everything here is warped in an even stranger manner, and it isn't just a few twisted pipes or pillars.

It was just, disgustingly bizarre. The seawater being suspiciously black was one thing, but the palm trees’ trunks were made from drainage pipes. Why on earth?

The palm leaves weren't simple foliage either, but appeared to be recycling garbage bags of a similar color then roughly torn and haphazardly attached, and the sandy beach was made of rotting soil that one would expect to find at the bottom of a sewer.

The cherry on top was an active volcano far off in the distance. Volcanic ash and occasional lava bombs spewed from its peak, plopping into the sea. Watching it oddly made me crave roasted sweet potatoes.

“It’s hot.”

That was Noona’s one-line review, delivered with such apathy it hardly matched the scene. Personally, I needed a more detailed assessment.

“Why is this nonsense even here, in a sewer? Is this some Mexican cornfield now?"

"Where’s Mexico?"

"There’s a spicy food joint back in my rural hometown Anyway, that’s not the point. Why does this even exist?"

“It doesn't just exist. It's being created."

At first, I thought her response was unrelated, but after taking another look around this trashy beach, I understood what Noona meant. The murky water, pipe-palm-trees, rotting sludge beach.

All of these were gradually changing. The seawater becoming clearer, the palm trees becoming more convincing, the sludge beach drying out. Noona and I had discussed a similar phenomenon a few days ago.

“So, you're saying a beach-themed gate is forming here…?”

“Yeah. After it fully forms and disappears from here, it’ll probably appear half in the Academy District and half near the Forest Park.”

The gates had different interior themes depending on the region. The Academy District’s resembled beaches; Forest Park’s, volcanic zones. This place was essentially a factory for those gates.

This place was practically a factory creating those gates. Judging by the palm tree structures, it seemed to be using objects from inside the sewer as a medium.

“At least we know one thing for sure: we aren't wasting our time here.”

Even me as a layman understands. If this were a normal gate, Noonawould have said so long ago. She was watching the increasingly clear water before turned to us and said.

“Now comes the real problem. We might have to decide this by majority vote…”

"Decide what?"

"I think we need to dive down from here. By any chance, do you know how to dive?"


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