Discovery
"Wh— what—!!"
The moment the security team realized the shadow was an enormous bear, the color drained from their faces. Lee Chan, first to grasp what they were looking at, shouted.
"Hold the line!"
The words weren't even finished before the bear's forepaw came crashing in. Air tore with a sickening shriek, and the tanks' shields, thrown up at the point of impact, met the paw head-on.
KWA-AAAAANG!!!
The collision shook the entire snow wall. The result wasn't bad. Even against a heavy blow carrying the creature's full weight, the tanks didn't give much ground. One of them dropped to a knee as his strength failed, but he still wasn't driven back. Better than I'd expected.
A spear tip shot out of the blind spot and punched through the hollow eye socket. A clever strike. The eyeball had long since rotted away, so the blow had nothing to do with vision—but even dead, an animal's instincts remained, and the thing was still sensitive to an attack on its face.
Sure enough, the enraged bear's gaze slid down the spear shaft. In that instant its head blew apart.
The right eye socket and skull shattered in a single blow, a strike powerful enough to blast away roughly thirty percent of the head. And yet Lee Chan, the one who had landed it, looked sour.
"Damn it...?"
The arrow had been aimed dead between the thing's eyes. The power was sufficient. The speed was not. Just before it buried itself in the brow, the creature twisted its head, and one eye survived.
"KRAAAAAAAAH!!!"
Face twisted with rage, the beast raised its forepaw high. A damage dealer who had gone blank at the savage roar yanked his spear back in a panic, but he was already too late. The second arrow still hadn't left the string. The tank's reaction was quick. The bear's urge to kill was quicker.
The spearman's death was certain. He was already dead—head burst, body torn to shreds.
Then the bear's movement hitched. Its whole body shuddered once. Instead of ripping the spearman apart with a swing of its paw, it dropped to its knees.
The weight on those knees punched through the piled snow and shook the ground. The beast just stood there, blank, unable to understand what had happened to it. Viscous fluid streamed down between the rotting, loosened fur, and in a flash the bear's hide, emptied from within, collapsed onto the snowfield.
"......"
Stronger than I'd thought. The other undead monsters hadn't been able to withstand Holy Fire's purifying force and had simply burst. This one hadn't exploded at once, and at the very end it had even managed the faintest movement—even with its death core pierced clean through.
Maybe penetration alone isn't enough against something this large.
Maybe so. Unexpected, but nothing to panic over. These past few days I'd already worked through countless contingencies and trained a variety of form conversions. Match the method of attack to the situation and the enemy as they came, and that was enough. Satisfied that I hadn't lost a shred of focus even in a moment this urgent, I turned my head.
"Uh..."
Lee Chan's mouth was working, as if he meant to say something and kept cutting himself off. Even so, this had to be said.
"Run."
Kurrrrrr...!!
The small crack the giant beast had kicked into the cliff as it launched itself was swelling into an avalanche and coming down on us.
"A-an avalanche...!!"
"If we don't turn back right now, we might get buried in the snow..."
"It's too late to go back."
I cut off the workshop chief's panicked shout. Catching the carts in mana threads, I looked around at the others.
"We're going into the cave."
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Droplets falling from the ceiling echoed through the dark. Fortunately, we'd made it into the cave without any serious injuries. Even so, everyone looked as though they needed a little more time to find their composure again.
"Perry."
"...Y-yes?"
"How many exits does the Crystal Cave have?"
Focus returned to Perry's blank eyes.
"Ah. Three that have been confirmed, Mage."
His answer had grown oddly respectful.
"Measured from the rock plain, there are exits at two kilometers, eight kilometers, and thirteen kilometers. The collapse was around the two-kilometer mark."
"...Hm."
If there were other exits, it hardly mattered. Finish the request, take the reward. That was all. A little extra time wouldn't be a problem.
Watching the others, who had barely pulled themselves together and started comparing plans, I asked.
"Where did Choi Geon-woo go missing? Which exit is it closest to?"
"Closer to the eight-kilometer side. Altheon Workshop and the Shield security team were planning to come out that way from the start."
Good. The entrance had collapsed, but that was separate from the plan. We could still move as intended, and the others were gradually settling on the same conclusion.
A short while later, security team leader Lee Chan came over and bowed his head.
"Thank you, truly. If it hadn't been for you, Transcendent, we'd have been in serious trouble."
I gave him a light smile.
"I'm glad I could help."
My head, though, was a little tangled. The fight from a moment ago kept circling through it.
Lee Chan's arrow, blowing the bear's head apart. Powerful enough, but not the best he could have done. If he'd moved a single step from where he loosed it, he could have taken the bear's blind spot. Its field of view would have been gone before it had time to turn its head, and a teammate would never have been put in danger.
Seen that way, an Awakened's ability isn't decided by destructive power alone. In an unforeseen crisis, can you rapidly judge the enemy's capabilities and the situation around you, and put yourself in the best possible position? That judgment is what divides life from death.
"Instead of waiting for rescue, we've decided to move as planned. We already had a separate exit we meant to use."
"I'll follow whatever you've decided."
At my answer Lee Chan bowed once more. He had started to turn away when his gaze came back to me.
"If there's anything we're lacking, please don't hesitate to say so."
"......"
"You seem more skilled than any of us. Just as you followed our judgment, Mage, I'll follow yours if we run into trouble."
"Understood."
Lee Chan's back receded. Watching him go, a thought occurred to me. He might not be an Awakened of the highest caliber. As a leader, though, he was more than good enough.
Soon we were on the move.
The monsters of the Crystal Cave were rather peculiar. Mineral-types whose whole bodies shone transparent. Insect-types that ambushed by turning the minerals' reflected light to their advantage. The most threatening of them were the swarms of bats dropping out of the pitch-dark ceiling. There were so many that even I had to step in.
"Kzzk—screeeee!"
"Kieeeeeek!!!"
Dealing with them wasn't difficult, of course. Not after I'd already succeeded at Form Conversion, the highest difficulty of Crimson Flame. Spreading fire to seal off the path ahead was nothing at all.
Fwoosh!!!
In an instant a vast curtain of flame blanketed the cavern ceiling. Hundreds of bats came plunging down over the blaze, fierce and confident. Nothing actually made it through the fireball. Only burning powder drifted lightly on the wind.
"Whoa... insane."
"Huh..."
"So this is why everybody won't shut up about mages."
The reactions weren't quite the same. If the gasps from the Altheon Workshop side were pure, the eyes on the Shield security team were a shade heavier. Lee Chan's especially. He'd already swept me from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes more than a few times.
"...You're going to wear a hole in me. Mind not staring?"
"...Ah! S-sorry..."
We went on like that for about an hour. Breath that had been faint at first grew considerably thicker, and even with plenty of cold-weather gear, some of them started shivering hard.
Was it just a feeling? The shapes were the same, but the monsters seemed to have grown quite a bit stronger.
"How much farther?"
"About fifteen more minutes."
Frustrating. Whether it was the cave's peculiar resonance or the mana inside the Crystal Cave, my Detection skill was limited to a range of about eight hundred meters. Anything beyond that came back inaccurate. It only got in the way, so I'd narrowed my senses.
Fortunately, after another fifteen minutes the passage came to an end. What opened beyond it was an enormous cavern. A wide clearing spread out, and at its far edge stood a cliff sheared as if cut with a blade, pure white stone embedded here and there along its face. The workshop crew's expressions brightened.
"That's quite a lot, isn't it...?"
"Quite a lot? This is a jackpot. A jackpot."
"Looks like a fair amount of cold came down from the upper layers...?"
Watching them dash off in high spirits, Perry said,
"When the unique chill the snow wall's mana produces meets rock, there's a low chance it forms Snow Rock. The frequency is irregular and the yield does whatever it wants, so everyone's on edge until they actually get here."
The production-class Awakened began setting up climbing gear at the base of the cliff. The security team, already in position, kept watch on the surroundings. I watched them a moment, then spoke to Perry.
"I think it's fine to head out around now."
"To where he went missing?"
"Yeah. You said it wasn't far."
Perry nodded.
"Understood. I'll go tell them and be right back."
He sprinted to the cliff, spoke briefly, and came back smiling.
"They said it'll take a long time anyway, so take your time looking around. They also said to speak up if you need support. This way."
The cavern was considerable in scale, and there were quite a few passages. Even with a rough map, I wouldn't have found the place easily on my own. I felt a fresh gratitude toward Han-ul for assigning Perry to me.
The passage we entered next was narrower than the last. I was clearing out the rock monsters that charged in, pounding the floor, when Perry's voice came from behind me.
"At the ends of narrow passages like this, the cave's magic tends to concentrate. Every so often rare minerals form, and the missing person probably went in thinking of that. So..."
A narrow passage was good news for me. Listening as he went on, I spread my mana threads. Just as when I'd found the hidden space in the kobold ravine, eight hundred threads began combing the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. Perry, who had been following along without much thought, must have noticed them, because he let out a bizarre sound.
"Eeeek?"
"Don't mind them. They're just ordinary mana threads."
"Uh... ha, haha... how is this an ordinary mana thread? It's not a jellyfish, and it's not a tentacle monster..."
"Keep talking. You're being helpful."
Perry, smiling awkwardly, slowly went on. Ears on his words, threads feeling along the passage—and after a long while I stopped and stared at the panel.
"......"
The passage was coming to an end. There wasn't a single trace. No sign of a grand fight. No sign that some bizarre monster had appeared. Not even a hint that there had been any decent resources.
This is awkward.
I'd thought top-level mana threads and a detection skill would turn up even the smallest trace. Was it arrogance? The thought pulled a short laugh out of me. How long had it even been since I Awakened, for me to get this cocky? Maybe things had gone well until now simply because I'd been lucky. And now that luck had just run out.
"This is as far as it goes."
The passage ended, and a new place appeared. A modest space, roughly the size of a two-room apartment. I scoured the whole of it with mana threads and stared holes through the panel, but there was nothing special.
"......"
Awkward. At this rate the request was a failure. I'd be letting the thing I needed most slip away right in front of me.
"You're sure he went missing from here?"
"The last time the workshop people saw Mr. Choi Geon-woo was about a hundred meters back from here. He vanished after that, so it's fair to say it was somewhere around here."
...Then I ought to sweep that hundred meters again. I turned around with that thought.
Hwoooooong!!
All at once the air shook. My honed senses told me it wasn't a wind blowing in from outside. When I raised them, I even felt a strange vibration—an odd resonance, like a ship's horn.
Perry shrugged as if it were nothing.
"It's a sound you hear now and then in the Crystal Cave. Maybe some terrifying monster is asleep somewhere?"
Hearing him, I understood. He caught only the sound. He wasn't picking up the fine tremor in the air. If even someone this familiar with the Crystal Cave didn't know, the other Awakened might well be the same.
And was that a coincidence? In that instant a scene rose clear in my mind. The Labyrinth's suffocating dark. A single red dot rising on a panel where there had been nothing, then splitting into five. A mineral plant.
Five Vine Creeper.
If a mid-grade monster could parasitize even a single piece of mithril the size of a torso, would a bizarre cliff that periodically produced magic minerals really be an exception? It wasn't strange that Detection couldn't find it, either. Just as Yu Seo-ha hadn't been able to find the Five Vine Creeper, I could fail the same way easily enough.
I spread the mana threads at once and began feeling through the space. I couldn't miss even the smallest thing. If there was anything that felt even slightly different from the rock here—
"......?"
I lifted my head. One strand was wavering above the crown of my head, as if sending a signal. To the naked eye there was clearly nothing. But the moment a thread swept the ceiling, I felt it. Appearance and texture perfectly identical to the rock, and one thing unmistakably different.
Temperature.
I tilted my head back and stared hard at the ceiling. By eye and by sense alike, it was an ordinary rock ceiling, without a single point of interest. Moisture gathered at intervals, turned to droplets, and fell to the floor.
Gather, and fall. Drip.
Gather, and fall. Drip.
Gather, and fa—
Slip.
For a moment I lost whatever I'd been about to say. A droplet ignored gravity and hid itself up into the rock ceiling. A hollow laugh escaped me.
Found it.
The roots had been drinking the water.
That was when it happened. The ceiling flinched, as if it had noticed that I'd noticed it. Then the entire rock cave shook violently, as if an earthquake had hit.
KUGUGUGUGUNG...!!!
At the same time the panel before my eyes flooded entirely red. Hundreds of plant roots that had already punched down through the rock ceiling turned their heads toward me, as if they had eyes.
Perry spoke.
"Mage?"
"...Yeah."
"What do we do?"
"What do we do? What is there to do? I can't even see the enemy properly."
Meeting his expectant eyes, I shrugged.
"We run."