91
Chapter 91
Ruumble!! Rummble!!
'W-what in the world is happening?!'
While Parang panicked amidst the chaotic situation that felt as if the entire earth was shaking and roaring, Alice seemed to think she had grasped an opportunity to get out.
Fortunately, even amidst the dashing chaos, Parang was fully focused on Alice, so she didn't miss the scene.
Riiiip- Riiiiiip-
After poking a tiny hole, Alice peered outside through it.
Her eyes darting around endlessly were undoubtedly searching for a suitable escape route.
Her movements were so incredibly cautious that Parang felt herself tense up as well.
Continuing on, riiip, riiiiiiip.
At first, Alice tore the cocoon stealthily and carefully, as if trying not to draw attention in this noisy situation, but her actions grew bolder when it seemed the statues couldn't notice her tearing the cocoon amidst the chaos.
Now the hole had widened even further, enough for Alice's face to be completely visible from the outside.
Ruummble!! Cruuumble!!!
Even so, the tremors showed no signs of stopping, and the statues were busy running around, scrambling to prevent the building from collapsing.
'Are those guys not guarding the cocoon?'
At a glance, there seemed to be nothing more important in this building than the cocoon holding Alice, yet none of them were checking on the cocoon's condition.
Parang could only feel puzzled.
'Wait a second, looking closer.......'
These movements didn't seem to stem simply from not caring.......
'Are they......just unable to approach it?'
Her thought was correct.
From the moment Alice made a hole in the cocoon, no, from the moment the whole building started shaking, or perhaps.
'From the very beginning......?'
Yes. From the very beginning, the statues hadn't approached within a certain distance of the cocoon containing Alice.
Parang flew to the ceiling of the building and looked down at the scene to confirm if it was true.
'I-it's actually true?'
Surprisingly, the statues weren't stepping even a toe into a space with a radius of about five meters centered around Alice's cocoon.
Continuously since the moment Parang entered this memory. No, perhaps, with almost 100 percent certainty, even before that.
The statues hadn't stayed near Alice.
Whether they chose not to stay or simply couldn't, it was unknown.
And as far as Parang knew, her old friend Alice.......
Riiiiip, riiiiiiip!!
Was absolutely not the type to miss such an obvious opportunity.
Using both hands with all her strength, she tore open the cocoon she had been inside and stepped out.
An ominous aura surrounded her body, and the needles that trailed from inside the water tank pulled out clumsily, leaving wounds all over her.
Underwater, her blood spread out like mist, and the blood vessels beneath her skin glowed with a purple light.
Her face was gaunt, and her body trembled as if she would collapse from a mere tap, perhaps because she hadn't moved in a long time.
And the status window accurately explained this condition of hers.
[ Warning: 'Fusion' has been abruptly interrupted before completion. A severe anomaly is detected in the user's body. ]
[ If Fusion is not resumed or other appropriate measures are not taken, the probability of death is extremely high. ]
From both inside and outside her body, countless pieces of evidence screamed that she was going to die soon.
But, her eyes.
Those beautiful and flawlessly clear eyes, shining brilliantly with a light purple hue.
Those steadfast eyes that looked only forward, even as she barely managed to stand with a trembling body.
Those eyes alone, filled with a burning desire for survival and an even more fiercely dashing willpower, declared that Alice had absolutely no intention of dying here.
Alice stood still and looked back at the cocoon she had torn her way out of.
Riiip- Riiiiiip!!
When she grabbed it, forcefully ripped it off, and draped it over her back, it looked as though she was wearing a purple cloak.
'Huh? That is.......'
And from the inside of the cocoon Alice had ripped off, something caught Parang's eye.
A black mist.
In the spot where Alice had been lying just moments ago, a black mist shaped exactly like her had taken its place.
Parang had seen that purple light faintly emitting from where its eyes should have been once before.
'That's from, back then.......'
That mist-shaped monster fish she had seen in Alexandra's memory.
It was the entity that had appeared when she first saw the memories of the Slayers.
If Parang's life were written as a novel, it would be around the time of chapter forty-four.
'Is that, like a byproduct......of Alice?'
Did that mean the Slayers were originally supposed to fight the fused Alice instead of that thing?
Parang wanted to think about it more, but it was more urgent to focus on the memory right in front of her, so she briefly turned her gaze away from it.
Meanwhile, Alice—perhaps having realized through instinct, intuition, deduction, or whatever means that there was no one here to stop her—began to walk forward slowly but surely.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sound of bare feet stepping on the stone floor shouldn't have been audible since this was underwater, but strangely, Parang could hear it perfectly well.
The building was still shaking mercilessly, but oddly enough, the space where Alice stood and her immediate surroundings were endlessly quiet, like the calm waters of a clear lake.
The statues inside the building silently watched Alice, who had torn her way out of the cocoon, as if they had become real statues themselves.
Once they stopped holding it together, the rumbling building rapidly began to collapse, and boulders and decorations started falling mercilessly from the ceiling, walls, and pillars.
However, parting the water and falling sluggishly, rather than stopping Alice, they merely poured down beside her, adding a dramatic effect.
And after walking out of the continuously collapsing audience chamber, she suddenly arrived in front of the door.
During that time, the statues couldn't even come near her, as if blocked by an invisible wall.
Without facing any interference, Alice pushed the thick, heavy stone door with all her might, and the outside view unfolded before Parang and Alice's eyes.
'H-here is......!'
The scenery outside was something Parang had never seen before.
They were at the peak of a mountain underwater.
An enormously colossal mountain, sized so grandly that one might believe it surged from the very bottom of the sea to the surface.
Parang had never seen such a massive mountain, not just on land, but even on the seafloor.
Towering within the beautiful, bright turquoise water stood a pale stone mountain without a single tree, and perched at its summit was a temple.
From the temple's main gate down to the mountain's floor, a wide path wound down along the ridges, and the entire mountain was filled with ancient Greek-style stone buildings made of black rock.
The sizes of those buildings varied greatly; some looked like homes where a human lived, some like homes for a giant, and the largest ones were so vast you'd believe an entire mountain range resided inside.
Not only that, but even reaching the plains at the foot of the mountain visible far off in the distance, the sight of black buildings lined up continued for a long while.
Parang had absolutely no idea where this place was, but among the things she knew, there was one that shared a similar vibe.
She unconsciously muttered that word aloud.
"Atlantis......."
The lost city, Atlantis.
Parang thought that if it truly existed, it might look something like this.
But that thought only lasted a moment, as there were plenty more things left to shock Parang and Alice.
Right away, there was the source of this vibration that had been relentlessly shaking the entire seabed from earlier until now.
Parang had thought this was a naturally occurring earthquake.
Because the oceanic crust was indeed unstable, it was quite common for earthquakes like this to occur during explorations.
However, this time was different.
'That is.......'
Not too far from the mountaintop where Parang and Alice were located, 'that eye' was there.
[ The skill, 'Waterproof Sanity' is currently active. ]
That eye Parang ultimately had to subjugate. The very entity that drove people mad just by looking at it was right there.
'Ughhhh......!!'
Parang's head started to ache intensely.
Throb, throb. It felt as if she was trying to wake up from a drunken stupor after drinking heavily.
Strangely enough, Alice didn't seem to feel anything wrong. Was it the effect of the fusion?
But that was exactly it. Aside from the headache, there were no particularly bizarre or unpleasant effects.
Even in the midst of her confusion, Parang remembered that her actual body was underwater.
'How did she manage to rest inside a water tank, too.'
Parang thought that she had greatly benefited from her habit of sleeping inside the water tank, and that she should probably continue sleeping inside the water tank whenever possible.
Its pupil was facing the opposite side of the temple so it couldn't be seen at all, which thankfully allowed Parang to see its back.
Parang figured this was probably the reason for the relatively weak mental burden.
Even when she first saw it, the mental attack had begun the moment it opened its eyes.
Thinking that the clue to subjugating this eye monster might lie here, Parang desperately engraved this fact into her mind.
'This is my first time seeing its back. It looks surprisingly ordinary.'
While looking at it, which from behind just looked like a sphere with a few tentacles attached, Parang noticed something anomalous this time.
Beyond it. That is, what the eye was currently looking at. Because the appearance of the thing confronting the eye was a bit bizarre.
No, rather than bizarre, it was more like absurd.
What was there was.......
[ Kraken ]
The text...... Kraken.
Yes, text.
As if a clumsy editor had forcefully crammed a text box into a photo, the word Kraken existed in a spot where the space of the blue sea had been completely cut out, leaving only a white background.
Just like that, written plainly.
'What in the world is that.......'
Parang couldn't just let this slide, so she organized a few possible scenarios in her head.
'First of all, there is no such creature that looks like that.'
It made no sense that something looking like that was confronting the eye and causing this earthquake.
It was highly likely that a distortion in perception had occurred somewhere in the process of Alice's memory being transferred to Parang through the evidence.
'Then from where?'
First, it probably wasn't that eye or the Kraken. There was no way they could overlay the word Kraken in such a neat font into the memory. That was the work of a human.
'But even if a human did that, it is even stranger.'
Was there even anyone to meet Alice? Her, whom Oceanus couldn't find in the end even after searching the entire ocean? This was dismissed too.
Then only one possibility remained.
'Alice herself.'
For some reason, she had cut out the image of the Kraken remaining in her memory and planted that text instead.
Though the method and intention were still unknown.
'I should ask her about this too if we meet later.'
Parang once again attached a memo to the notebook in her mind.