Visiting the dwarven mines was one of Ed Singall's childhood wishes, but he never imagined that his first visit to the land of the dwarves would be under such circumstances.

He clung to the wall like a gecko, staring at the brightly lit roads and patrolling dwarves in front of him, thinking and undecided. He's been ...... well Or luckily moved down some distance. At first, he could faintly hear the dwarves screaming as they chased the elves, and even the unsettling sound made him feel that he was not alone, but now, the voice was long gone, and he didn't know if the elves had been captured or had fled further away.

The elves did buy him a little time, but the dwarves quickly restored order and continued to search for escaped prisoners in every path and crevice, albeit with far fewer people than before, still a test for Ed. He narrowly evaded several seekers, one of whom was within a foot of him, desperately thinking he would be discovered, but the dwarf looked straight ahead and walked past him without squinting.

That can no longer be described as "lucky", it is a miracle. Ed Singer, on the other hand, is a very practical person in the sense that he believes in miracles, but he also believes that any miracle must happen for a reason.

- Well, that's one of the many useful and useless life maxims that the old man of his family taught him. As a businessman, River Singer half-hearted worships many gods and will never skimp on a little saliva when it is time to pray. He has traveled enough places, seen enough miracles, and can calmly accept many things that are difficult for ordinary people to accept, but at the same time, he is quite practical and only trusts what he can see and touch.

Ed suspects that he is invisible, because of the elves' spells...... But Norway wasn't a mage or a priest, and he didn't know any spells at all.

Or the spell of the half-elven priest who never showed up, or the little crystal ball on his chest...... He was sure it had somehow warned him when he was about to step on that trap. But when he had the audacity to move out of the shadows, he immediately saw half of his own shadow clearly imprinted on the ground, and he was so frightened that he immediately shrank back again.

But he can't stick here forever like a cockroach that has been flattened.

- Ed Singer, see how far you can go!

He cheered himself up again, took a deep breath, was mentally prepared to face various situations and gave up on himself with the self-deprecation of "no matter if he died, anyway, there is no other way", took two steps forward, and stepped into the light.

Two dwarves patrolled back and forth in the passageway, and a team of three was searching room by room, and they were now scrambling out of a room, annoyed that they had found nothing again.

No one looked at him.

Ed could finally be sure that he was truly invisible.

He wanted to jump up and cheer, but reason told him it might be beyond the power of invisibility, so he just clenched his fists and flailed wildly, spun in a cheerful circle, expressing his sincerest gratitude to the caster who he didn't know who it was.

As he crept past the first dwarf, he wished the spell would block out the sound of his heartbeat as well—it beat fast and loudly, thumping against his eardrums.

He held his breath as the dwarf turned his head in confusion, as if looking for something.

The dwarf did sense something around him, but he didn't see anything, and eventually shook his head, telling himself it was just a breeze.

He stepped forward and walked on, unaware that a young human, silently relieved, grimaced at his back.

Descending to a certain level, Ed paused, bracing his waist to breathe, marveling at the dwarves who had dug a mountain into such a labyrinthine kingdom. He hadn't lost his way in any city, but here he had gone wrong at least twice, and sometimes he would somehow take him back to the upper floor, even though it looked like it was a downward passage. If one side of the road was the abyss in the middle of the pit, he could use the broken bridges as a reference, but if he walked into the path with caves on both sides, he couldn't predict where it would take him.

Halfway through, he saw a group of dwarves carrying three men walking over, presumably the escaped prisoners they had captured, but he didn't see Naria and Tess.

He also heard the dwarves whisper about the ice dragons they had locked in the deepest part of the pit. More than a dozen dwarves died in the battle with the ice dragon, and many more were injured, but the ice dragon also fell and seemed to be unconscious all the time.

It took Ed a few moments to digest the bad news, bitterly admitting that his naïve plan had failed before it could be implemented. The ice dragon's hands were stained with the blood of the dwarves, and even if the dwarves attacked first, even if he was only in self-defense, no one would believe that he was not the embodiment of evil.

But he still refused to accept another possibility, a possibility that Alan and Norway had vaguely reminded him of that he had been deaf to - that dragons were dragons after all, that he could not resist his own nature, and that the soul in that huge white body was no longer Ises Christus, his quiet and introverted friend.

He remembered the last time they had met, the beast that had perched on the ruins of the castle of Chrissus, its eyes as if it were filled with molten gold, and there was only cold anger in its eyes.

But he didn't hurt him after all, and he saved Norway and Tess, not long ago.

Ed patted his face gently. He should have had more faith in Is, his friend needed his help now more than ever, and he had to get him out before he could deal with the rest of the trouble.

"There's always a way. He told himself silently, writhing from side to side trying to soothe his muscles that had been sore from the constant tension, as he watched another group of dwarves pass by him, noisily discussing where to relax after a long day.

Ed was also eager for a glass of ale, and even better with a risotto—he and Norway had absentmindedly eaten a little while they waited outside the door for the dwarf to open the door, but it had long since been consumed. He feared that if he didn't get anything to eat, he would be spotted by the dwarves because of his stomach growling.

He looked around and began to look for what looked like a tavern or a place to store food. The dwarves' caves are much the same, but they still hang signs in shops, taverns, and the like.

But in the end, it was his nose that helped him find food.