Chick Out of the Cradle (3)
Chick Out of the Cradle (3)
<lg> <chaptitle>Chick Out of the Cradle (3)
Naturally, I'd already thought through a plan before my feet touched Scottish soil.
Even a simple trip needs a plan. Something this important? If I moved without one and anything went sideways, I'd just waste time.
I'd left Siyoram on Friday evening, so I had roughly two days and change—about six hours on top of that.
If I had leeway, I could be back by Sunday evening. If time ran tight, I just needed to be back before Monday dawned.
First, use the gate to step into Edinburgh, then take a train to Sipnaha.
But as it turned out, there was no direct train from Edinburgh to Sipnaha.
Sipnaha sat in rugged, relatively remote terrain, so I had to change trains several times.
That part wasn't a problem. If anything, since my plan was to pick up hidden pieces along the way, changing trains was a given.
So I changed trains over and over, diligently searched for the hidden pieces I remembered...
and everything went to shit.
'Fuck.'
After reaching Sipnaha, I somehow managed to secure lodgings.
Travelling around an unfamiliar place like this wasn't something I was used to, but with Spatial Perception, that didn't really matter.
As long as I roughly skimmed the information coming into range, I could pick up both the inn I needed and the route to it.
After finishing the procedures, I sat dazed in the ground-floor dining room, mechanically spooning soup into my mouth, when the mental calculator started running on its own.
No profit. Nothing but a string of negative numbers.
Those numbers pressed down on my body. I couldn't bring myself to lift my head, so I just let it thud onto the table.
My cheek rubbed hard against the cold surface.
'Urrrgh...'
A groan echoed inside. I swallowed my tears, trying desperately not to let it slip out of my mouth.
Profit... Six hidden pieces I'd checked on, and I'd managed to locate exactly one of them.
Even that one, the moment it touched my hand, convulsed and promptly departed this world.
Costs? I'd spent money to buy that one piece I found.
It was fuck-off expensive.
Part of it was that my perception of spending was still stuck in the gutter, but mostly it was because the item was a monster by-product, so the price was pretty steep.
A Bicorn's horn. Just thinking about it again sent heat rushing to my head.
'Nooo...'
A bicorn.
As far as I knew, it was a mythical species passed down since medieval Europe—a fictional animal, but in this world, a real monster.
Its Standard Rank fell at 6th Rank, and factoring in variables, it was a monster with the potential to spike all the way to 5th Rank.
That was the by-product of such a monster. Not just any by-product—the horn of a creature also called a two-horned beast.
So the price tag was something else.
Even then, the cost had only come down because a lot of time had passed since it was slain and it looked to be in poor condition on the outside.
Under normal circumstances, it wasn't a price you could pay just by diligently stacking up maintenance allowances.
A by-product that pricey... touched my hand and crumbled into powder—annihilated.
Right there in the seller's hands, the Bicorn's horn turned to dust. I wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him silly as he tried to weasel out of it, claiming it wasn't a product issue...
'Haah...'
Thinking about it, the problem really did seem to lie with me.
If you had to list a bicorn's traits, impurity and chaos were usually the top picks.
A mana nature that corrodes and defiles. Because of that, wounds inflicted by a bicorn were especially hard to recover from.
A unicorn's traits were the exact opposite: purity and innocence. Its mana was clean and possessed a nature of purity.
Perhaps because of that difference, unicorns were monsters that fell on the relatively gentle side.
And, well, unicorns and bicorns were almost always linked together.
Part of it was that they were mythical species tied together by the same folklore, but the bigger reason was that if those two so much as saw each other, their eyes would roll back in madness and they'd come charging.
As if they couldn't tolerate each other's very existence—like meeting the sworn enemy of your bloodline on a one-log bridge—they relentlessly fought to the death. That was the widespread rumour.
It didn't hurt the rumour mill that their combat tended to unfold in unusual ways, either.
Their mana natures weren't just different; they stood diametrically opposed. So every time their mana clashed, a violent repulsion reaction supposedly occurred...
A repulsion reaction.
A bicorn's mana was impurity and chaos.
A unicorn's mana was cleanliness and innocence.
What about my mana? People kept calling it pure, unsullied...
The moment I first observed the bicorn horn, the rejection had my insides churning from mana alone, never mind Spatial Perception.
The instant we touched, the horn's energy and my mana rippled, neither able to acknowledge the other...
I turned it over in my head. One by one, I began fitting together the scattered puzzle pieces.
Call it reasonable doubt.
Rather than the theory that the bicorn horn was actually defective, the scales tipped toward the hypothesis that it had shattered because it clashed with my mana...
'Nooo... How was I supposed to know that...'
It's not like I was some kind of unicorn.
It was so unfair. Who could have guessed that just barely touching it would suddenly make it crumble into dust?
And on top of that, instantly? Just poof into powder right away. I don't know what was going on with its durability.
Bicorn vs. unicorn matches were a spectacle I'd often enjoyed even in the original work. I'd even deliberately capture them and pit them against each other for fun.
The repulsion reaction had never been this immediate or intense.
At the very least, their horns hadn't been so fragile as to pulverise on mere contact...
This was just a cheap shot. The only thing I'd done wrong was not grabbing tongs the moment I felt that sense of rejection.
Spouting lame excuses to myself, I listlessly pushed morsels of food into my mouth.
I'd ordered a suitable dinner selection, and it had come with a lot of fried food.
Something about how vegetables were hard to come by due to the climate, and because the geography hugged the coastline, they ate a lot of meat.
Maybe because of that, Scottish food was supposed to be greasy, but with this tongue of mine, there was no way to know the truth.
By outward appearances, it definitely looked the greasy sort.
.
.
.
If I'd had my way, I would have marched straight out and started searching for the dungeon the moment I arrived in Sipnaha.
With time draining away and zero harvest to show for it, a sense of urgency was creeping in.
But thinking rationally, I knew that would have been a bad move.
The moment my sparring with Professor Atra ended at Siyoram, I'd set out. Other than briefly sitting on the train and catching spotty rest, I'd had no real break at all.
It wasn't as if my stamina was completely shot. Mentally worn out, sure, but it was nothing more than bellyaching.
But the place I was headed now was a dungeon.
It wasn't like Siyoram, where all the traps were cleared, intel was abundant, and the Vice Headmaster had prepared a safety mechanism.
One misstep and I could actually die.
Even if my skills were growing fast, if you asked whether that was enough to feel confident, my head would shake on its own.
So I closed my eyes, even if only briefly, before heading out of the city.
Of course, I couldn't manage a full hour of sleep, and a nightmare struck to ruin my mood. But either way, maybe because I'd at least gotten some sleep, my physical condition was a little better.
- <ise>step
The Grade 4 Dungeon, 「Echoes of the Ghost Valley」, sat in the middle of a mountain ravine.
The terrain around Sipnaha was quite rugged.
The city itself was surrounded by mountains, lending it a secluded feel, so train traffic was sparse.
I set out at dawn, before the sun had managed to climb fully into the sky.
All I had was a rough location. Even that was nothing more than in-game information, so I intended to invest the time to search.
As expected, finding the dungeon took a fair amount of time. It took a while even with Spatial Perception, so if I'd been searching with the naked eye, pouring in days wouldn't have even come close to enough.
"......."
The Great Cataclysm had inflicted a massive wound on humanity.
The dungeons that surged up from nowhere gnawed away at the world where humans lived, and the monsters that spawned like roaches harmed and devoured people.
For over a hundred years, such calamities continued. It was an era where living a humane life was a struggle.
It was different now. Peace attained through the blood shed by past heroes.
Though, going by the original story, that peace is supposed to come to an end a few years from now. Anyway.
That was why such professions were specifically called heroes.
Their prestige might have comparatively fallen now, but in the past they were literally treated as heroes.
The heroes of that time welcomed and took pride in such a title.
Heroes deemed slaying monsters a noble undertaking.
They also considered conquering the dungeons that spat out monsters an honourable endeavour.
Perhaps because of that, there was a piece of old-hero culture that was now hard to find.
The culture of inscribing their own traces—or the traces of their group—on the empty, floating spot where a dungeon had been conquered.
"......"
The location... where Echoes of the Ghost Valley should have been.
An empty lot perched abruptly on the slope of a long mountain range, looking unnatural.
A somewhat damaged monument placed at its centre, and the names inscribed there...
───────
On some dark day, may this record become a ray of light
Georok Grass
Dennis Bearden
Richard Carlyle
Artovan Maxwell
Trian Slade
───────
'Ah.'
One of the reasons I'd felt pressed for time became clear.
Because this was reality, not a game. Because this region was one where hunters were active. Someone might have already found it. Someone might have already conquered it.
My head tilted back on its own.
I couldn't see the sky.
The Sky Wing Feather draped over my shoulders drooped limply.
'Fuck.'
I shouldn't have come out here.
What a shitty situation.
* * *
A dungeon situated comparatively close to Sipnaha.
Inside the dark cave, shadows danced, cast by a faint light source.
- <ise>grrrrr
Having repelled and consumed all the intruders, the monster let out a satisfied rumble from its throat.
The cave echoed with the murmur from its gullet. At the sound of their leader, the weaker kin bustled about.
Dogs of red fur buried their snouts toward whatever scant scraps of flesh remained.
The monster watching the scene turned and inspected its own hulk at a squirming jolt of pain.
It was regenerating, yes, but there were many gashes carved between the traces of fur.
The intruders had been strong. Limbs that lacked claws and seemed skinny and frail had contained Giant Strength.
Had it fought them head-on, even a monster of its calibre would have struggled to repel them.
So it had hunted.
It had pushed its weaker kin forward to induce carelessness.
The intruders hadn't possessed good night vision. Nor had they paid attention and checked their surroundings.
The monster had hidden its body in the darkness and held its breath, then killed the intruder who appeared to be the leader at the optimal moment.
The intruders were strong, but they lacked the same regenerative power as itself. A decapitated intruder had died easily.
The remaining small fry had been easy, tasty prey.
- <ise>grrrr...
The monster, whose body could easily be mistaken for a massive boulder, tilted its head back.
It could not see the sky.
To a monster not long from its birth, the sky was essentially a ceiling of stone.
Nothing but dreary rock forming the heavens.
But at this moment, something else could be read in the monster's two eyes.
The self-awareness this space possessed.
The space that was granting it power whispered.
That the sky would open soon.