I Have to Sleep by Nine
'There it is!'
A cold metallic shriek pierced straight through his eardrums.
Cold sweat broke out in Marcus's cockpit.
'Armored beasts.'
The metallic lifeforms were shaped like wolves. He remembered reading about them in the information books he'd studied up on before departure.
Armored wolves were small, fast, and hunted in packs, which made them surprisingly hard for massive Titans to pin down. Not that they were strong enough to threaten a Titan — but Marcus had figured that with seven Titans crossing paths and tripping over each other's firing lines, things could get messy.
Flash! A blinding streak of light washed the dark corridor white.
'Huh?'
By the time he blinked, the lead wolf was already collapsing into a pile of scrap metal, a neat round hole punched clean through the center of its body.
'Killed in one shot?'
A barrage of mana cannons, fired by every Titan in formation at once. It lacked the punch to pierce a Titan's heavy armor, but against small armored lifeforms, nothing could be more efficient — seven Titans focusing on a single target meant one shot, one kill, every time.
"……!"
Flash, flash!
Streaks of light exploded one after another down the corridor.
The fierce back-and-forth battle Marcus had braced for never happened. Wherever the light passed, nothing remained but mangled wreckage and the beasts' scattered remains.
He was standing there blankly admiring the spectacle, half-convinced it was magic, when—
"What are you doing…?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You're supposed to be picking that up on your own."
It took him a beat to snap back to attention and work out what she meant. Gathering up the salvage was the cargo pilot's job. His job.
"Yes, ma'am. On it right now."
Clack! Clack! Like a kid working a claw machine, he plucked mana cores out of the scrap heaps one by one with the Titan's pincer arms. He'd spent his whole life handling Titan parts; he knew better than most what was worth money.
'She really is a Titan Knight, huh.'
He clicked his tongue even while he worked. This was the first time he'd witnessed the brat's combat with his own two eyes. All he'd ever seen at the shop was her acting like some useless kid, so he hadn't realized — but she was clearly not just any freelancer.
'Thank god I never got cocky with her.'
The advance continued unrelenting from there. Crunch! Crunch! The armored wolves that popped out sporadically died without so much as a scream, dropping off like stray dogs put down in some back alley.
They were still only at the entrance of the Abyss, too shallow for any high-risk monsters to appear, so the two of them pushed forward at a merciless pace.
'So my actual job is… basically nothing?'
Marcus glanced around. His hands kept up the salvage work while his gaze drifted naturally to the scenery beyond the transparent screen.
The view spreading out before him was, frankly, breathtaking.
'So this is the Abyss.'
Shaaaaaa—!
The roar of a waterfall filled his ears. Before he knew it, the eight Titans were crossing a colossal waterway, its current glowing with captured light.
This was the Abyss, after all — a place where ruins, deserts, rivers of magma, anything at all might appear without warning.
According to the rumors, the Kingdom's expedition force descended this waterway's lower reaches to return to the surface. Supposedly the unexplored upper layers held vacuum zones, even places where gravity had all but vanished.
'What a staggering place.'
If the layers shared anything in common, it was that everything here was overwhelmingly, absurdly large. The spiral staircase they were climbing now looked like it belonged in a world of giants. Viewed from the sky, surely the line of eight marching Titans would look no more significant than a column of ants.
Thud, thud, thud! At last the long staircase ended. They had crossed every bridge laid over the waterway.
That was precisely when the doubt crept in.
Prodded by a vague unease, Marcus worked up the nerve to ask.
"Boss, uh… when exactly are we arriving?"
They'd set out well over an hour ago. Going by the route he'd memorized in advance, the first base camp should have appeared ages ago.
"We're almost there…."
He scanned the surroundings — not so much as a whisker of a base camp building in sight. The map on his panel said the same. No massive waterway, no bridge supports, none of it was marked anywhere near the camp's coordinates.
'We're not lost, are we?'
A useless worry began to gnaw at him. If they'd wandered into a fog-shrouded region by mistake, there wouldn't even be bones left to bury.
He was licking his dry lips inside the cockpit when—
"Ohhh, I get it now…"
The lead Titan ground to a halt, and a voice drifted out of it, the machine's tail wagging as if something had finally dawned on her.
"I gotta pee."
"…Pardon?"
"Just hold it a little longer… we really are almost there…."
The Titan's tail swept around, pointing at a spot in the empty air.
"That's a dungeon right in front of us."
Beneath the sheer cliff of a canyon stood something like an ancient ruin, exuding a faint haze of mana.
'…What?'
"It's too late today, so… we'll raid it tomorrow?"
Marcus's eyes narrowed further. He couldn't parse a single word of that.
Weren't we on our way to base camp right now?
'A dungeon?'
Of everything within the Abyss, dungeons were the strangest zones of all. Relics of aliens, remains of some forgotten hyper-advanced civilization, the blessings of god — every theory imaginable had sprung up around them, because modern arcane scholarship simply could not explain what they were.
'She says she's going to raid a dungeon?'
Dungeons were where artifacts worth more than the finest Titan parts were unearthed in heaps. And the rewards were matched by the danger — the dungeon guardians' threat level bordered on the unimaginable. They were far beyond any individual's strength; even the Kingdom, five years ago, had needed a full thirty Abyss Exploration Knights to conquer one.
'Surely she's not saying she'll solo it.'
He shook his head and reassessed. Scavengers tended to gather around dungeons too, circling to scoop up whatever debris fell. Treasure hunters, they were called — and the lucky ones could earn a lifetime's money in a single night.
'Probably something like a treasure hunter, then?'
That must be roughly her aim. With her skill, she could probably take down a guardian or two, and if he could just lounge behind her picking up the loot, it suited him fine.
'…!'
That was the exact moment it happened.
Ka-chunk—! The tail-bearing Titan abruptly threw open its cockpit.
'What the—!'
Marcus's jaw went slack. He held his breath at the sight of Rosetta calmly swinging the hatch wide and poking her head out.
She's going outside the Titan? Just like that?
Every trainee had it drilled into them: outside a base camp, you never, ever expose your bare body in the Abyss.
'Oh no….'
Mana backflow. Asphyxiation. Death in an unrecoverable state, no rescue possible!
'…She's fine?'
Everything he thought he knew just broke. The girl was tiptoeing down the footholds with little whimpers, and somehow — somehow — though she was breathing the outside air the whole way down, she was perfectly fine. She reached the ground, stretched, yawned, and still nothing happened to her.
'Why?'
Any ordinary person would have collapsed coughing up blood by now. How was this girl keeping that innocent, guileless expression on her face?
'Must be the sheer amount of mana she has.'
He understood, belatedly. Abyss Exploration Knights were monsters in a class apart from ordinary people to begin with — and among them, the rarest few were said to withstand the pressure of even the thin outer layers of mana. He'd only ever heard it as rumor. He hadn't expected such a human being to actually exist.
'Even so, that takes some nerve.'
Knowing the principle didn't make the sight any less impressive. Naturally, Marcus would never dream of imitating it — a man who wasn't even a Titan Knight would drop dead the instant the Abyss's air touched him.
"Aren't you coming down, mister?"
"I beg your pardon?"
He was still busy patting his chest in relief when the girl started muttering something even stranger.
"Oh, r-right… I forgot there's no button to open your hatch…."
Nonsense. The kind of nonsense you don't want to make sense of.
'Uh oh—'
But he had no window left to shout anything.
Ka-chunk—! The cockpit of his Titan was forced open, just like that. She'd manipulated the mana remotely and blown the hatch herself.
'Hey, are you insa—!'
Thud. The moment the outside air seeped in, his heart fell straight through his stomach. Every warning notice from the Abyss training materials flashed through his mind at once. Safety rule number one: lowborn trash like you must never set foot outside the Titan — wasn't that how it went?
"Aaaaagh! I'm dying—!!"
Mana poisoning! Muscle rupture! Suffocation! Hemorrhaging! Death! The moment the air touched him, it was over!
Half-convinced his lungs were bursting, he curled up and screamed—
"—dyiiiiing…?"
Somehow, his voice came out perfectly normal. Forget blood — no pain arrived at all.
'Huh?'
Slowly he opened his eyes and took stock of his body. Nothing hurt. His breathing was calm. Why? His mana was nowhere near strong enough to hold off the Abyss's air.
'There's… a light around me?'
In that instant, he noticed the thread of light extending from his body. A single bluish strand, stretching away into the distance — to the silver-haired girl, far ahead.
"Bathroom, bathroom…."
Even after she vanished beyond the waterfall, the strand stayed connected to his body.
'The brat's mana?'
It was the same ability she used to remote-pilot the Titans. Presumably her mana was flowing out through the strand — and that was what was shielding him from the Abyss's dense air.
'She can even do THAT?'
Past astonishment, it was almost laughable. He'd never heard rumor of such a thing. Even Titan Knights could barely shield themselves — and her mana was strong enough to protect another person's body entirely?
'Must be an artifact or something, right?'
Far more likely, he decided, than raw mana — one of the Abyss's inexplicable relics. Fencing stolen goods, he'd had the occasional chance to see lesser artifacts and relics up close. Maybe she had some kind of defensive artifact stashed on her somewhere.
For a man who couldn't manipulate mana, that was the best explanation Marcus could land on.
And while he was turning all this over in his head—
'Wait. The time—!'
Marcus's brain lit up like a struck match. His first time in the Abyss had him so wound up he'd forgotten the single most important thing of all!
'Nine o'clock!'
He checked his wristwatch and his heart lurched. He'd watched the girl's daily life with aching clarity for a full week now. He'd seen, time and again, how she'd keel over at nine in the evening like some well-raised schoolchild — so intuitively, he knew: something was screwed.
"Damn it, Boss!"
Shaaaaaa—
Marcus sprinted desperately around the rocks where the waterfall thundered down.
"Are you all right?!"
Sure enough — she was sprawled fast asleep, teetering on the very lip of the cliff where the waterway poured over the edge.
He carefully gathered the girl up in both hands from the treacherous perch where she'd fallen, and at last a sigh of relief escaped him.
She'd managed to finish her business on her own. She hadn't drifted over the waterfall in her sleep. And above all — thank god, thank god — the blue barrier around his body hadn't vanished for even a moment, not while she lay there sleeping like she hadn't a care in the world.
'At this rate my heart's going to give out before anything else does.'
He laid her back in the Titan's cockpit and shook his head. Come to think of it, every single moment since the day they'd met had been a test of his nerves. Somehow he'd wound up working with her, but God only knew what disaster she'd cook up next.
'I wonder… would they pay out a hazard-to-life allowance?'
Day by day, Marcus was coming to dread the arrival of tomorrow.
A cliff face sheared down toward the heavens.
Directly below it, a river swelled vast as a lake. Shaaaaaa— Spray burst and shattered against a colossal bridge support, and before it, dozens upon dozens of Titans stood arrayed in flawless formation.
"Scan complete!"
"No trace of any other Titans having passed through!"
Karinne gave a measured nod at her subordinates' reports.
'Pushing the expedition schedule forward at all costs — it was worth it.'
That great river was, for all practical purposes, the border between the Kingdom and the Holy Theocracy. The two nations' Abyss entrances faced each other across its waters. And when a dungeon had surfaced on an island rising from the very center of that river, the entire expedition had come down to a race against the clock.
'The Kingdom got here first.'
Karinne's fist tightened. Even so, it was too early to relax. To finish charting the dungeon's interior before the Theocracy arrived—
"All members, entering the dungeon!"
In the instant Karinne's Titan leveled its sword forward, the Titans behind her locked into formation and began their advance as one, steel soles carving through the shallow current.
Today, the tide stood with the Kingdom.
Meanwhile, some distance away.
Atop the cliff, two figures gazed down at the Abyss's river. One who led an Order of Light; one who led the shadows of darkness. Both were masters capable of withstanding the air of the Abyss's outermost layer with their bare bodies — and the latter was the very man who, days ago, had infiltrated the Kingdom to destroy its Abyss gate.
"It's begun."
The man of light murmured the words, sneering at the sight of the Kingdom's knights churning up the spray like a swarm of ants.
"Fools."
The Kingdom had clearly been abandoned by God. Only when the full moon reflected perfectly upon the lake's center would the dungeon's gate open at all. Those who had never received that oracle were merely wasting their effort on a pointless scramble.
"We strike after the full moon rises."
Behind the man as he spoke, more than fifty Titans of the Order of the Holy Knights stood drawn up in ranks. If the guardians attacked from the front while they struck the rear, those arrogant knights would be annihilated where they stood.
"For now, let them toast their hollow little victory."
The operation was already flawless, complete. And yet the shadow commander standing beside him wore an expression troubled in some unnameable way.
Until so recently, he had never been the sort to wear his feelings so openly.
"Still dwelling on that affair?"
"……."
He had changed strangely since the Abyss destruction operation. Losing his Titan and crawling back alive by the skin of his teeth had surely been a shock. Even though the Holy King himself had pardoned his failure, the man still seemed mired in the swamp of his own guilt.
"It was not your fault. It was the oracles' blunder — they failed to foresee the Kingdom's movements."
He was offering that consolation when the shadow commander, who had been staring into empty air, abruptly turned his head and posed a strange question.
"Have you ever seen an angel?"
The man of light narrowed his eyes. What could prompt so sudden and out-of-nowhere a question?
"I see them at every morning's devotion. They are ever watching over us."
Taking it for a religious figure of speech, he answered lightly — but the shadow commander shook his head with grave earnestness, as if that were not what he meant at all.
"I do not speak of that."
"…?"
"A living angel. A true one."
It had been the moment of his despair.
When all his senses were fading in his dying body, the one who appeared had lifted his chin and poured the elixir into his mouth with her own hand. That silver figure, whose every breath seemed sacred, was engraved on his memory still, vivid as the day it happened.
"That story again?"
But when he had opened his eyes on that sickbed, his miracle had been flatly denied. A vision glimpsed on the edge of death — nothing more than a hallucination born of mana poisoning. Even the four subordinates who had crossed the threshold of death beside him had looked at him with eyes that could not truly believe his words.
"We will speak of it again in private. We are in the middle of an operation."
The man of light, too, seemed to take none of it seriously.
Left with no choice, the shadow commander turned the question over on himself once more.
Why did the angel reveal herself before me?
Search the scriptures, and the answer was plain enough for even the oldest nun of the church to give.
-The wings of light shall embrace both sword and shield without distinction.
An absolute peace that saves all. The Kingdom's people had been in peril, and so the Kingdom was saved first; when his own life hung by a thread, he too was saved. Perhaps she had shown herself to him alone because he was the man who had shed more blood than any other in the Theocracy.
"……."
Then what was the deed he intended now?
Was returning to the battlefield truly the right thing to do? If he annihilated the Kingdom's forces, there would inevitably be men who could never make the emergency recall — men left behind to die.
'Would you forgive me, just once more?'
Of course, as a Holy Knight he could not turn his back on his loyalty to the fatherland either. But neither did he wish to betray, ever again, the sacred grace that had spared his life.
'This time — it will be the last.'
He closed his eyes slowly, and opened them again.
Within the wind of mana brushing his face, he settled what he had wrestled with for days.
When this battle ended, he would break his own sword.