It was hollow inside, and deep.
Tetsu no Sosuke blinked. "Is this a volcano?"
It was a volcano, all right, but an extinct one. Could the things in his hand be volcanic rocks?
That didn't seem right, though. He had seen volcanic rocks before. They were rough and riddled with holes, nothing like these round lumps.
Yet there were countless stones like them inside the extinct volcano.
Tetsu no Sosuke gauged the height. If he jumped down, he probably wouldn't be able to get back up.
Comet Waltz let him propel himself upward again and again, but there was still a limit to how high he could go. Otherwise, he could have used that one move to turn himself into a human helicopter.
After a moment's silence, he began stripping bark from the trees.
He pounded the bark into coarse fibers, then twisted the fibers together and braided them into a rope.
He tested its strength. It was much sturdier than he had expected.
He wrapped the rope around a tree, lowered it into the depths of the volcano, then gripped it and made his way down bit by bit.
The volcano looked extinct, but he knew little about such things and couldn't be sure what lay inside.
What if only the surface looked solid? If he jumped down, broke through it, and landed in lava... He wasn't the protagonist of Minecraft. He didn't enjoy swimming in lava.
When Tetsu no Sosuke reached solid ground, he looked up and saw a circle of night sky.
The stars glittered, making for an unusually beautiful sight.
He didn't watch for long. Stargazing alone was lonely, and this was no place for it anyway.
A heavy smell of sulfur filled the air. Frowning, he looked around and began searching carefully.
Black stones lay