031. Ice Shell (2)
031. Ice Shell (2)
"We must be almost there."
After Laika took down the 17th Legion, I murmured that to myself.
Thanks to her hard fighting, we broke through the hilly area in question without incident.
At the end of the path, the forest where Laika had said Seo Se-rin collapsed stretched out before us.
It stretched out before us, all right.
"Disgustingly huge."
"Yeah, totarry."
Laika and I were in total agreement.
The map had marked it as a fairly large forest, but the actual forest before us seemed much bigger.
Snow had piled up knee-high throughout that vast forest.
And on top of that, Legions were scattered everywhere.
In a place like that, we were supposed to find remains left behind a year ago — not just a few days ago.
This wasn't going to be easy.
"...Laika, any chance you remember something about the spot where the remains are?"
"Uung... that's kinda..."
That figures.
A forest is, after all, a forest.
The scenery would be more or less the same everywhere.
Still, Laika sank into thought for a long while, then suddenly let out a small "Ah—" as if something had just occurred to her.
"There was something like a huge ice wall nearby."
"An ice wall?"
"Yeah. That one part had especially high ground, so it felt like a really low cliff. Think we can find it with just that to go on?"
Of course we could. This forest was located inside a basin and had almost no inclines anywhere.
So we started searching, focusing on the areas that did have some incline.
How many areas with ice walls and slopes had we searched by then?
At what was probably the fourth spot, Laika flinched the moment we entered.
"...Th-this is the place, I think. No, it's definitely here."
Laika said that and approached a large spruce tree that had grown in front of the ice wall.
That was probably where Seo Se-rin had collapsed.
So, taking the utmost care not to damage any remains if they were there, we began digging through the snow and earth around the spot.
We dug down, and dug down further.
But nothing that could be called remains turned up.
Not even scraps of clothing, or any other traces.
Meanwhile, darkness had already fallen around us.
That aside, the weather had been acting strange for a while.
The snowfall, which had been drifting down hazily, was gradually intensifying.
"No, this is..."
I set down the worn-out field shovel and briefly activated the scanner.
This time the scanner's measurement target was the phase pressure in the vicinity.
In other words, I was checking whether what was happening around us was a normal natural phenomenon or the result of a supernatural skill.
And the result was.
[Detected phase pressure is 87%.]
[Legion skill activity in progress. Immediate evacuation is advised.]
Just as I thought.
This blizzard was no ordinary blizzard.
It was a Legion skill powerful enough to influence the climate of the entire region.
There was only one entity in this area that could use a skill of that magnitude.
Frost Phantom.
"Laika, it looks like the Lord Legion is active. We'd better take cover for a bit."
I spoke to Laika.
At that moment, Laika was still digging into the ground.
Even the careful movements she had shown when we first started were now discarded — she was digging violently.
Scrape. Scrape.
Digging at the ground haphazardly.
I couldn't scold her for being reckless.
Dangerous variables like this blizzard were everywhere.
If even one of them caught us the wrong way, we would have no choice but to withdraw with nothing gained.
So, she wanted to find it somehow before that happened.
To find it, to meet again, to deliver the gift she hadn't been able to give.
"U-uu..."
Laika was crying as she dug into the ground.
Her tears froze as they fell, and the blizzard wiped those frozen tears away in my stead.
Thanks to that, I was able to give the command a little more coldly.
"That's enough."
Laika set down the field shovel.
***
For a resting spot, we chose a narrow cave in a gap in the ice wall.
...No, maybe I can't even say we chose it. There weren't any other options.
I had brought a tent, but there was no way we could set up a tent out in the open while a blizzard was raging.
So it was more like the only nearby place that could block the blizzard — the gap in the ice wall — became our shelter by default.
The gap in the ice wall we entered was narrow. If one person went in, it would be reasonably spacious, but with two people inside, we inevitably had to press close together.
So if Laika had been in a more normal state, we might have both been embarrassed.
But right now Laika was in such an emotional state that she showed no signs of embarrassment at all.
She was just trembling faintly.
About thirty minutes had passed since we had taken shelter from the blizzard together like this.
The snowfall grew fiercer, while Laika's trembling subsided a little.
"Are you calm now?"
"...Just a tiny bit."
As she answered, Laika shifted in place.
Then, whispering, her warm breath close to my neck, she spoke.
"I'm sorry. Laika keeps... being a bother. But I couldn't help it. I suddenly... had that kind of thought."
"That kind of thought?"
"That maybe in the end, Seo Se-rin resented me."
...Hm.
"Why would she?"
"Because she vanished."
Laika spoke.
"That she was disappointed in Laika, that she thought having a subordinate like Laika was the worst, that she never wanted to see me again... and so she just disappeared from this forest. That's the kind of thought I get."
I answered immediately.
"That's a completely groundless delusion."
When she was under the spruce tree Laika had pointed out, Seo Se-rin had been injured badly enough that returning to her unit was impossible. She might have managed to move some distance, but getting completely out of the forest would have been impossible.
Above all, the Seo Se-rin I had confirmed through the letters was not the kind of person who would find fault with Laika's abilities and resent her.
On the contrary, she would have been worried that Laika might be emotionally scarred because of her. That Laika might be repeatedly returned due to that trauma and end up disposed of. That was what she would have been worrying about.
Laika probably knew those facts.
She knew them far better than I did.
It was just that Laika was afraid.
Afraid that this chance — so hard-won, and perhaps the last — might vanish forever.
I was the same. When I lost Sion, there were nights I couldn't sleep because I thought she might have resented me.
No, to be honest, even now.
I still sincerely worry: what if she, still alive, resents me? What if she doesn't actually want me to find her again? I genuinely worry about that.
So, because I understood the fear and pain Laika was feeling, I didn't try to argue her out of it.
...That said, I couldn't just leave her be either.
In a situation where Laika was this anxious, if a Legion were to show up, I wasn't sure she could handle it properly.
And putting that aside, just watching Laika like this was difficult and painful in itself.
So.
Since things had come to this — with that sort of feeling, I did something a little embarrassing.
I turned toward Laika and opened my arms to her.
...It wasn't as if I openly told her to come into my arms. It was more of an indirect suggestion: how about this?
If she didn't notice, or noticed but refused, I planned to just write it off as an awkward posture that happened while shifting positions.
But a moment later, Laika.
"...Nn."
Slipped right into my arms.
And then a moment later, murmuring.
"It's cramped... so maybe we have to..."
It was clearly an excuse, but it was also an undeniable fact.
With Laika tucked neatly into my arms, it became incredibly comfortable to sit.
It wasn't uncomfortable or cramped. If anything, our shared warmth softened the chill pressing in from outside, making things much more comfortable.
So, I had lost any pretext to return to the previous posture.
More than that, I just wanted to stay like this.
Forever and ever.
Listening to the raging blizzard.
The two of us, together.
...Of course, that couldn't happen.
Because before long, the blizzard stopped.
And even before I could confirm that with my own eyes, Laika spoke up like this.
"Inside."
Laika opened her eyes wide and said.
"Inside the ice wall, I feel a familiar phase."
***
A phase could be felt inside the ice wall.
It was just like Seo Se-rin's signal.
Human remains possess phase power, though not to the same degree as when the person was alive.
So a biodroid with a high degree of resonance could detect a dead Commander's remains at close range.
Of course, there was a possibility Laika was mistaken.
She was exhausted and worn down in many ways.
She might also have misread the phase signal amid the blizzard formed by the skill.
Nevertheless, upon investigating the ice wall.
"...I think your feeling might be right."
I said.
"This isn't an ordinary ice wall."
"Then?"
I held out the scanner screen.
This time, I had scanned the massive ice wall itself blocking our path.
The scanner was reporting that the ice wall's phase pressure was 100%.
The scanner's reading indicated how far the target phenomenon or existence was removed from our own phase.
For example, the blizzard that registered 87% meant that 87% of the phenomenon was composed of a Legion's skill.
In other words, the remaining roughly 13% was not directly formed by a skill — it was at least partly a natural phenomenon.
That meant a 100% phase-pressure reading on this ice wall could only mean one thing.
"That this enormous mass of ice itself is entirely composed of a Legion's skill."
"Uh, why would...?"
From there, of course, we were in the realm of speculation.
Speculation, yes.
But I had one very strong theory.
"...It's Frost Phantom's doing."
Frost Phantom.
This thing was a variant of the B-Rank Legion commonly called a Phantom.
And Legions have a tendency to imitate animals on Earth.
Mainly large beasts. Wolves, lions, or large predatory animals that went extinct long ago.
That's usually the case, but.
They don't always imitate large mammals in that way.
The Phantom is a prime example.
The Phantom is a Legion that imitates a spider.
When I say it imitates, I don't mean just its outward appearance. Legions tend to imitate not only the appearance but also the habits of the original creature.
For instance, in the Phantom's case, it faithfully copies one of the spider's habits: the habit of storing hunted prey in its nest.
So biodroids or humans killed by a Phantom end up dangling in clusters from the webs it creates with its skill.
And Frost Phantom is, as I said, a variant of the Phantom.
Unlike the common Phantom which shoots out webs like a normal spider, Frost Phantom emits blizzards and forms structures made of ice.
Which is to say, for this creature, this ice wall is the equivalent of a web.
"...Then Seo Se-rin is."
"Trapped inside that ice wall. Like a butterfly caught in a spider's web."
As Frost Phantom's trophy, and its prey.
Eternally inside that cold ice.
At my words, Laika bit down on her lip.
Not stopping there, Laika struck the massive ice wall with Last Bloom.
To get the Commander trapped inside out.
She struck again and again.
—Bam! Bam!
Not even a scratch appeared on the ice wall.
It was beyond Laika's strength.
It probably wasn't even the kind of material that could be smashed by force in the first place.
Laika barely accepted that fact and lowered her shield.
And with a wretched face, she asked me.
"...What should we do?"
I had been pondering the same question.
We couldn't leave Seo Se-rin inside there.
The data pack we needed was still likely on her person, and even setting that aside, we couldn't leave things in this state.
If we turned back like this, Laika would be tormented by self-blame and despair far worse than before.
So.
So what we had to do was.
"We have to take down Frost Phantom."
"...What?"
Frost Phantom had never been subjugated before.
But there were numerous cases of regular Phantoms being subjugated.
And each time, one fact was commonly observed. When the main body, the Phantom, was killed, the web — the nest it had constructed — also vanished along with it.
Naturally. A nest with this level of defensive power couldn't persist on its own. It could only exist because the main body was supplying it with phase energy.
So in that sense, if the main body — the source of that energy — died, the nest had no choice but to vanish on its own.
The same applied to this ice wall, built as a nest by Frost Phantom, the Phantom's variant.
But how?
I unfolded the military map.
And I considered every condition we had been given.
Laika's abilities.
Her skills.
What I could do.
A short while later, I spoke to Laika.
"Laika, I have one method."