Convenience Store Worker From Another World Chapter 142

Episode 142. Regular Customer Assembly (5)

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Before answering, I glanced at the dark blue sea. Hmm… .

“Exactly how many meters deep are you planning to dive?”

“500 meters.”

“hmm…….”

“Hey, you little brat. Are you scared?”

When my sister said that, she seemed to be trying to ease my tension by snickering. If you’re not nervous, are you just a pervert? A hero in a movie?

No matter how much I thought about it, I kept wondering if this was even realistically possible. My last diving record was when I was in elementary school, in the cold water of the neighborhood bathhouse.

At that time, the best record was 80cm. Even if I had a talent for deep-sea diving that I didn’t realize I had, and I were to awaken it now and break the record 100 times, it would only be 80m.

It’s obvious that I’ll get the bends if I leave, right? Or I’ll get crushed by the water pressure and turn into a rat trap. Something like an oxygen tank. Miss Elena made me a magic potion, so I guess I’ll be able to use that to somehow fix it…

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not happening. Not now.”

My sister must have known that the explanation was omitted, because she squatted down next to me and poured the water she had scooped up with one hand toward the edge of my hand.

The way the water flowed down was different from normal water. It didn’t flow down in a straight line, but spread out like dry ice, and the speed was slow.

“This is how the inside of the gate is created, Lee Chan. At first, it’s just a lump of mana without a specific shape, but as time passes, it becomes physically realized.”

“aha….”

“This is not yet fully realized as seawater. Although it looks like seawater, it is still closer to a lump of mana than seawater.”

My sister seemed to be saying that it would never become a flat boulder crushed by hundreds of meters of seawater, but as I listened, another question came to mind.

“If you dive into a lump of mana instead of seawater, then there’s no problem at all?”

“That’s why I said majority rule. Honestly, I don’t want to do this either… .”

“Is there no other way besides this, Yoonha?”

The store manager asked along the way, and my older sister answered sharply.

“I think so, Sister. Do you see the beach behind that volcano?”

“Yeah. I’m watching it now.”

I haven’t seen it yet. I looked straight at the store manager’s gaze, and just as my sister said, I saw some rotten mud and a few palm trees shaped like sticks. After that, there was a sewer entrance that looked exactly like the one we came out of.

“If we had walked in the opposite direction, we would have come out of that entrance. Judging by the size of this place now, it seems like this is the entire surface area of the core gate… .”

“Is this the only place I can even try? The rest are all corridors?”

“Oh. And, the sooner you decide, the better.”

He added that a gate is being created in the city at a rate of about one every 30 minutes. From here on out, it’s speculation, but he also said that most of those gates will be created here.

It is understood that the creation will be completed within 30 minutes at the most. After that, it will fly away somewhere within the city, and another gate will be created again… .

“We don’t know what the internal environment of that gate will be like. If we’re unlucky enough to end up in a snowy mountainous area or a jungle, then we’ll really have to go down through the underground.”

In that case, since there was no guarantee that we would be able to get down on time, my sister’s final opinion was that it would be better to skip the process of going down underground.

What I felt after hearing everything was that, although this was a crazy thing to do, it was a crazy thing that had to be done. The old man who had been staring blankly at the sea opened his mouth.

“I haven’t heard anything suspicious yet, Miss Yoon-ha. But you know.”

“Speak, Elder Wolf.”

“I feel a regular, subtle vibration at the tip of my toes. At first, I thought it was the vibration of that volcano erupting.”

Oh shit, it’s finally here.

“Is it possible that there is a demon in that sea?”

“Yes. I definitely believe it exists.”

When I first heard that there were demons in this world, I honestly thought, where in the world is something like that? A horse with blazing manes, or a dire wolf’s teeth.

I never thought about it seriously. It seemed like it had nothing to do with me. I just had to scan the barcode at the convenience store counter, so why did I have to see that with my own eyes?

I’ve finally had to pay the price I’ve tried so hard to avoid. And I’m doing it in the middle of a sea where I can’t see even an inch ahead of me, half underwater and half underwater. Still.

Still, still, I took this into account. I asked just to confirm.

“Sister.”

“uh.”

“There is no other way. Am I right?”

I’ll stop here. I’m sure my sister understood. She answered my question without any hesitation.

“I swear, even if something bad happens to me, it won’t happen to you.”

“I’ll go. Then.”

I didn’t prepare myself to die. What difference would it make if I prepared myself for a hundred days without being able to keep it? If a robber threatens me with a knife to my neck, I’ll change my mind right away.

But I still have the determination to finish what I have to do and go back. If I don’t do what I have to do, my job will collapse, my livelihood will collapse, and the safety of the acquaintances I’m just beginning to get to know will also collapse.

Then I should go. What should I do? After swallowing my saliva so that no one could hear, I was the first to bring up the topic.

“What about the other two?”

“If the boss goes, it’s only right for me to follow.”

“This isn’t something that should be expected, though….”

“No. It’s a given.”

If you think of this as a mission, you don’t have to go that far. I prepared an answer in advance, but the old man bent down, folded his trousers, and said something quite unexpected.

“How could I just sit back and do nothing when a young man shows such courage?”

You must have heard me swallow dryly. Well, he’s the kind of person who would never say something like “you guys go your separate ways” even if he died… .

“Chan-ah.”

This time, it’s the store manager. He must have prepared this in advance, because he’s folded the sleeves of his cardigan twice and pulled them up to his upper arms.

“I have something to say to Chani.”

“What is it?”

“Not here, but down there.”

As I stuffed my socks into my cardigan pocket and looked up, something seemed to pass me by. I couldn’t be sure, but it was something close to the shadows.

“So I’ll go too.”

It was an unusually vague statement for a store manager, but I couldn’t ask any more questions because the manager kept his mouth shut. Anyway, let’s say the four of us are going now.

Now there were two things left for me to do. First, I slightly unzipped the non-woven bag on my shoulder, took out the vials gathered in the corner of the bag, and spread them out on my palm.

After putting all but the sedative back in, he asked into the slightly open bag.

“Hey, puppy. What are you going to do?”

The old man still doesn’t know that this guy can talk. He thought he would just bark or whine a little, but all of a sudden, the puppy started saying this.

“The most enjoyable thing is when I’m with you, boss. The second most enjoyable thing is walking around the streets at night.”

“Uh… okay.”

“If I follow the boss now, wouldn’t I be able to solve both problems at the same time?”

“maybe?”

“Then I will follow. I don’t know yet what the main character can do….”

He trails off as if he is not confident, but then comes to his senses and ends his speech.

“… Ah. Please tell the old man outside that I will greet him properly when things get better. From what I just heard, he seems like a very upright person.”

After that, it became quiet. I thought for a moment, then tried my best to pretend that it was nothing serious and told the old man.

“That’s what they say, sir.”

The old man looked at me with an expression that said, “What on earth is going on?”, but the expression didn’t last long. He just laughed and looked at his bag and said,

“Yes. Let’s have a cup of tea together later.”

That’s what he said. He immediately opened the cap of the sedative, drank all the contents, and spoke to his older sister.

“What are we going to do now, Sister? Warm-up exercises?”

“The water isn’t that cold, Tasha. But it does seem right to go in slowly. There’s no need to go around making a fuss about going down…”

* * *

Short preparation. The five of us shared the underwater breathing medicine that Miss Elena had given us. It was also the first time since elementary school that we had taken medicine through our noses.

After taking it, the store manager snapped the fingers of his right hand over his head, coughed, and then explained.

“I tried to make it so that you can have a normal conversation while in the water. The radius is about 20 meters.”

“Uh… Is it like telepathy?”

“It’s not telepathy. Unless the PC is used to using telepathy, everything, including the screaming in your head, comes out.”

So, I used magic with the condition of ‘saying it with my mouth’. I don’t know much about magic, but I wondered if even this kind of magic was included in basic magic.

“I mixed several spells to get similar effects. Otherwise, I’d be caught.”

“Aha. I guess they spoke roughly.”

“Yeah. They were just talking nonsense.”

One spell, one time, a mix of spells, one time. They’re both the same, right? Well, that’s how it is, so I guess that’s what it is.

After that, I rolled up my trouser legs and sleeves and raised them to my knees and arms. When I dipped my feet in the sea water, only the top of my feet was visible.

Still, I can definitely feel that it has become clearer than before. Just like my sister said, the water wasn’t cold. Before I could say it was cold or warm, it was rough.

“Can we just go down like this?”

“Oh. The slope will be really steep down there, so don’t panic.”

“okay.”

Finally, I took a deep breath and went into the water. It only took six steps for my head to be submerged.

The scenery inside the ocean was dark, at least to me. It felt like I was floating in the night sky.

It seemed like this because the water was originally dark. Or maybe my body was so tense that it was blocking out things that should have been visible, or maybe it was because I had no magic power.

The other three were moving without any hesitation. This was also not visible, but the murmurs of voices that could be heard were generally peaceful.

– It seems okay so far. What do you think, Yoonha?

– I think it’s okay. But, Sister, can you hear what we’re saying from far away?

– Not at all. I made it so that only we can hear it.

― Well, I don’t know how my sister uses this kind of magic… .

– If you feel wronged, Yoon-ha can become the great magician of the past.

– Okay, Sister. It’s a huge headache just trying to handle one of my magic spells.

It was close to the tone of everyday conversation I’ve heard so far. As I listened, I realized that although I knew that the store manager and his older sister were close, I’ve never actually heard how or why they became close.

How did the self-proclaimed eternal 18-year-old and the 30-year-old A-class hunter meet and become friends? I don’t know if they met before the store manager retired or after…

– Everyone, please pause for a moment.

This is an old man’s voice. He tells me to stop, but there’s no way out right away, so I grab onto whatever I can on the slope I’m standing on. I think I grabbed some seaweed. Or maybe the end of a trash bag.

I could vaguely see an old man a few meters away, but I couldn’t tell what he was looking at except that he was looking in one direction. I asked him out of anxiety.

“What do you have, sir?”

– Yes. And it seems to be coming this way. Not very fast, though… .

Be careful, if you move right now you might hit it.

I wondered what he meant when he said, “Be careful, you’ll touch it, whether it’s a dolphin or a fish coming at you.” But after a while, I was able to immediately understand what he was saying.

Something had really come near. It was something about the thickness of an old tree, and it had something rough and densely packed on its surface. So, this.

“…sucker?”

It looks like an octopus leg. In the same weight class, there would be a seafood called a kraken… .