Convenience Store Worker From Another World Chapter 141

Episode 141. Regular Customer Assembly (4)

* * *

A characteristic of general gates. They act as a gateway while sucking in the space around the point of occurrence, and form another subspace inside.

“It’s the opposite now. The space around the point of occurrence is expanding, and it seems like this place itself, rather than the inside, has become a subspace…”

“Can you tell just by looking at it?”

“Roughly. Can you see it at the end of the sewer over there?”

My sister pointed to the other side of the sewer with just a nod. It was extremely dark because the only light source was the light coming from the manhole, but there was one thing that caught my eye.

The other end was not horizontal. It was bent in a gentle curve.

Unless the plumbing dwarves who built this place had a useless sense of aesthetics, or drank a whole tank of vodka during construction… .

“Are you saying that this place is now swollen into a circle? The entire space?”

“That’s right. The place we’re standing is the surface of a bulging space. Can you picture it in your head now?”

“uh….”

To be honest, I majored in liberal arts. Should I confess this even now?

I swallowed what was about to spill out of my mouth. But I didn’t fall asleep during middle school science class. Anyway, we’re going to find the gate core, and the core is usually in the center.

Then this gate core will also be in the center of the bulging space. Since we are standing on the surface, to get to the center… .

“This isn’t the end, we have to go down further from here?”

“That’s true too.”

“how?”

The only things you can see around you are a few oddly twisted concrete pillars, a drainage pipe, and a pool of sewage just high enough to soak the soles of your shoes. At least you can’t get down here.

“… First, let me check what we have, Sister.”

“Yeah, Yoonha.”

“I think I need to check exactly how this space is structured and how big it is. Is that possible?”

“I guess it can’t be helped. I’ll think about it for a moment. Hmm…”

After thinking for a few seconds with his arms crossed, he snapped his right hand fingers. At the same time, a white sphere of light the size of a handball appeared above the store manager’s head.

With one hand, he holds the floating sphere, while with the other hand, he takes his phone out of his pocket and gently pushes the sphere he is holding towards the darkness on the other side of the sewer.

As soon as it left the store manager’s hand, the sphere flew away into the darkness. Next, the store manager pressed the phone screen with his thumb, looked up at us, and spoke.

“I set the speed to about 50 meters per second, so it won’t take long. I’ll time it with a stopwatch.”

“Isn’t that what detection magic is all about, boss?”

“It’s a bit different. It’s common to shoot like a sonar, but I don’t know what’s inside… .”

So it seems that he used silent drone magic instead of sonic magic. As the stopwatch ticked down to one minute, the sphere reappeared in the opposite direction from where the store manager had sent it.

The store manager gently stroked the returned sphere with his hand until it disappeared, then looked at his older sister again and spoke.

“If you go in a straight line without any obstructions, the circumference is 3km per minute… so it’s about 500m to the center?”

“Is there anything else?”

“There was a place that looked like a beach. It was quite large and rather bright.”

“… How long does it take to get there?”

“Um, about 20 minutes?”

It’s a remark that stimulates the imagination in a bad way, because it seems like my older sister had chosen it as a candidate for the path down to the lake.

If I remember correctly, I have never been in water deeper than 3 meters deep. I wonder if this can be done with magic, but as I was thinking about it, my sister turned around and continued talking.

“I think we should go and see what my sister said first. Do you agree, sir?”

“If my escort agrees, I will do so.”

“I… yes. I should go.”

Still, I answered as quickly as I could. I wasn’t here to visit, and if I gave a demotivating answer, people would call me tactless.

* * *

Just before leaving, the store manager snapped the fingers of his right hand.

Then, a sphere the size of a tennis ball appeared above my head, just like before, but it was much brighter and moved around more slowly.

“Now that you mention it, a lightbulb seems to have popped up in my head, store manager.”

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

He looked up at his head as if he was satisfied, then opened and closed his fingers and spoke.

“There are now four left.”

“uh….”

“Still, it’s better than not being able to see anything because it’s dark. Remember it well, Chan-ah, because I might forget.”

“…yes.”

I made a mistake. If I had known this would happen, I should have brought a flashlight.

Next, the old man took off his hat. He wanted to be as alert as possible, as he didn’t know what might pop out from his surroundings.

“We are always free when we don’t have work.”

I think you can take it to mean that if there is no threat, there is no need to escort. At this point, my older sister was curious about my identity, so she did the same leading questioning that I did.

“When are you working as a knight, Elder Wolf?”

“Yes, Miss Yoon-ha. That’s what a surrogate mother does.”

The old man responded in the same way as I did. It may be because of his mood, but I think he secretly enjoys having these conversations… .

“Oh, yes. You were a surrogate driver… .”

“Would you like me to cast a spell to reduce the surrounding noise, Elder Wolf?”

“It’s okay. I’m just trying to lighten the workload of the owner, and I like it if the noise level is moderate.”

As he spoke, the tips of his fluffy ears occasionally perked up. He seemed to be starting to concentrate, so I said one more thing.

“I have a favor to ask, sir.”

“yes.”

After this brief preparation, I walked for about 15 minutes, wading in shallow water. The only sounds outside were the occasional dripping of water and the sound of wind blowing from somewhere.

While I was walking, my older sister told me this.

“The demons might appear if they hear noise, so please be careful not to make any noise while walking around. It’s a bit much to waste time.”

“A demon? There’s a demon here, even though this isn’t even inside the gate?”

I asked as I followed her. I clearly remember what she had told me before that demons only live inside the gate. When I asked, my sister looked up at the twisted pipes on the ceiling and answered.

“It’s a bit ambiguous to call this place the outside of the gate. It’s like that.”

“really….”

“There’s something suspicious there too. Look.”

As I glanced at the place my sister was talking about, I saw a lump of tar stuck in the corner of the outer wall of the sewer. I don’t want to admit it, but it seemed to be moving around a little. So.

“Is that slime or something…?”

“I won’t know until I see if there’s a slime core floating inside. It could just be a blob of grease, or it might just be sitting there for now since it seems to be still.”

“Why are you just standing there?”

“It doesn’t move unless you physically touch its core. It has no hearing or olfactory organs, and it becomes quiet after sucking up the surrounding liquid.”

Additionally, it is said that it has the property of changing itself into the components of the liquid it absorbs. If it were slime, it would become sewage slime since it absorbed sewage.

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

“Sister. If they live on liquids, do they drink cola well?”

“I’ll eat it. But why are you asking that?”

“If you touch those nukes, they won’t move. If you drink cola and your body turns into cola, won’t they explode on their own while moving?”

“… … .”

“If you throw a mint candy or ice cream, it will explode even bigger.”

My sister was dumbfounded by this question and didn’t say anything. Instead, the store manager answered.

“Chan-ah. I saw that on TV commercial a long time ago. I thought it would sell well, so I brought it into our store.”

“Oh. Are the sales good?”

“Since none of them were sold, they were all disposed of. They were discontinued shortly after.”

“What did it taste like?”

“Herbal flavor.”

I don’t think I’ll drink it either. If it’s cola, it’s cola. If it’s herbal, it’s herbal. What’s with herbal-flavored cola? Are you trying to kill two birds with one stone, health and taste?

“… Hey, Lee Chan.”

“uh.”

“Thinking about it now makes me feel a little more relaxed. Thanks.”

“Then that’s good.”

I glanced at her occasionally, and her face seemed slightly stiff. Anyway, after walking for a few more minutes, I arrived at what I assumed to be my intermediate destination.

This is a place where you definitely feel the need to visit. First of all, the surroundings were bright and wide enough that you couldn’t see the end, and the reason was… .

“Hey, what the heck is this place?”

Because this was a beach. What kind of causal relationship must there be to create a beach underground in a downtown sewer?

It wasn’t just any beach. Just like the structures along the way, this one was just as twisted, and it wasn’t just a few twisted pipes or pillars.

It was just, just plain weird. Not only was the sea water a strange dark color, but the palm tree trunks were not tree trunks but drainage pipes. Why on earth?

The palm leaves weren’t just simple leaves; they looked like they were made of similarly colored trash bags that had been torn and hung carelessly, and the sand was made of rotten dirt that you’d expect to find at the bottom of a sewer.

The reason I took a picture of Hwalongjeomjeong was because of the active volcano in the distance. The volcanic ash pouring out from the top of the volcano was mixed with volcanic bombs that fell into the sea, and as I watched, I suddenly had a craving for sweet potatoes.

“It’s hot.”

This was my sister’s one-line review, but her voice was so calm that it didn’t seem like a very pleasant situation. I need a more detailed evaluation than this.

“Why is there something like this in the sewer? Is this a Mexican cornfield?”

“Where is Mexico again?”

“There’s a spicy food specialty restaurant in the countryside where I live. Anyway, that’s not the point, but why does something like this exist?”

“It doesn’t just exist. It’s being created.”

At first, I thought it was a red herring, but after looking around the garbage beach a little more, I understood what my sister meant. The dirty seawater, the drainage pipes, the palm trees, the rotten mud beach.

All of this is slowly changing. The sea water is becoming clearer, the palm trees are becoming more and more realistic, and the mud beaches are becoming drier. I had a conversation with my sister a few days ago about a similar scene.

“So, a beach-themed gate is being created…?”

“Oh. After being created here, they disappear, and then they appear half in the academy district and half in the forest park.”

The gates had different interior themes depending on the region. The gate on the academy district side looked like a beach, and the one on the forest park side looked like a volcanic zone.

The story was that this place was basically a factory that was creating the gates. Judging from the palm-like structure, it seemed like they were using the structures inside the sewer as a medium.

“But I do know one thing. We’re not doing anything in vain.”

Even I, a layman, would know this. If this kind of gate were common, my sister would have said something long ago. My sister, who was looking at the water that was becoming clearer, turned around and spoke to us.

“This is where the problem starts. I think this needs to be decided by majority vote….”

“What kind?”

“I think I need to dive down here. Do you know how to dive?”