The location of the Earth Origin Fragment was a place name that sounded somewhat familiar.
Redstone Mountains, Golden Glory Underground Palace.
The Redstone Mountains were one of the largest mountain ranges in the human world. Their range covered an immense area, stretching across eight kingdoms. The true heart of the range, however, lay outside those kingdoms, close to desolate regions devoid of human habitation.
Although the empires and kingdoms of the human world far exceeded the Devil Race in both number and territory, there was still a limit. Just like the Demon Realm, it too had remote wildernesses where scarcely a human foot ever trod.
The main body of the Redstone Mountains lay in such a remote wilderness. Though sparsely populated and filled with all manner of dangers, its resources were exceptionally rich—especially its mineral deposits. Thus, the cave dwarves, skilled in mining ore, had chosen this place as their main base and carved out an astonishing underground world: the Golden Glory Underground Palace.
The Golden Glory Underground Palace had once been one of the Surface World's most important sources of minerals. Merchant caravans arriving to place orders or trade supplies for ore came in an endless stream, even giving rise to a distinctive "ore trade route."
Just over a year ago, an unprecedented earthquake struck the main range of the Redstone Mountains, affecting even the nearby nations. The greatest victims were the cave dwarves of the Golden Glory Underground Palace. Their painstakingly built underground homeland had entirely collapsed and been destroyed in the great quake. The cave dwarves had been forced to leave the Redstone Mountains and migrate to the Blackrock Mountains within the human kingdoms, to the hill dwarves' Thick Earth Castle.
However, that was merely the surface appearance known to the outside world. After the incidents at