Beneath the Ice (1)

"Let's go."

Alan quickened his pace at Taylor's urging, the old man already far ahead of him. He kept walking through the cavern, examining the crystals as he went. The Icesteel formations were colossal — so vast they had to be measured in kilometers, not meters.

And more than that, there was the way the crystals were arranged, and where.

Something at the center must be drawing the Destroyer.

Alan didn't believe the Destroyer had claimed this place as his domain on a whim. There was a value here, something worth settling down for — and everyone who had shared that suspicion, everyone brave enough to dig for the secret, had ended up as corpses.

So stay alert. Always.

His footsteps slowed for a moment as he mapped the mine and the cavern system in his head, overlaying the route they had walked so far. Adding in the passage stretching out ahead of them, he could estimate their current position with reasonable confidence.

Thankfully, we're not inside the Destroyer's territory.

The cavern had been dug in a wide arc around that domain. The best possible future was one where they simply kept moving like this and found an exit leading upward.

A cavern where even the heat of battle had been stolen away by the Icesteel. The MM Corp employees had gathered their dead in a single place.

"It's cold enough down here that we don't need to worry about rot. Stitch up what tore open and they'll almost look presentable."

"Watch your mouth."

"Yeah, yeah. Reinforcements just came in. Who's leading them?"

"You idiot. It's the Colonel."

Stephen entered the cavern without sparing so much as a glance for the fallen, striding straight up to the site manager.

"Status report."

"At first the mining drills couldn't cut through the Icesteel at all. It caught us completely off guard, but—"

"And?"

At the Colonel's question, the manager pointed to one side. A slightly modified drill was boring into an Icesteel crystal.

"We stacked two lenses and the problem solved itself. The Icesteel melts like water — but honestly, tunneling downward matters far more than preserving the material. I can't believe we never figured out something this simple until now."

"Shifting a paradigm is always harder than it sounds. Wipe any thought of wasted time from your mind and focus on the work."

"Understood."

Stephen deliberated for a moment. Should they push on toward the original objective through the tunnel the drills had opened, or hunt down the intruders instead?

As he weighed it, one of his men approached.

"Colonel."

"Report."

"Scout teams confirm the intruders escaped by collapsing the tunnel behind them. Clearing the rock will take some time."

"Then that settles it. Leave a skeleton crew and order the rest back."

The report ended his deliberation for him. Stephen crossed his arms and sat down atop the corpse of a scale worm, his gaze locked on the downward slope the drills had carved into the crystal.

Alan's party reached a dead end. The passage technically continued, but it was only crawl-height — as good as sealed.

"So we crawl? If the route blocks up halfway through, that's a real problem."

"Brother, I suffer from claustrophobia."

"A dwarf with claustrophobia? Then how do you ever get through caves? Just say you don't feel like crawling and be done with it."

"That is correct."

The two of them were trading whatever popped into their heads, idle banter to pass the time. Off to one side, Alan leaned against the wall, piloting his scout spider.

When he opened his eyes, Taylor asked, "Well?"

"There is a path. However..."

"However what?"

"We'd have to crawl for two hours."

"Oh, you've got to be shi—"

Taylor swallowed the curse. Escaping was the top priority, but the thought of two hours on his belly made fury bubble up in him — the physical strain and the mental pressure of it would be unbearable.

Alan looked at Leopard and Box. Leopard could simply flatten itself and slither through, so it was fine. Box was another matter entirely.

Unfortunately, he'll have to detach.

Alan sprang up and walked over to Box. The automaton, blissfully unaware of his own grim future, was engrossed in the Icesteel crystal. The moment Alan reached out to grab him, the crystal melted away.

"Huh?"

He let out the question without meaning to, scanning the scene. A closer look at Box revealed the truth — the automaton was toying with two Moon Crystal lenses stacked atop one another.

And where the Icesteel had melted, Alan spotted something. It looked like shattered rock at first glance, but something about it bore an uncanny resemblance to the concrete used in the architecture of the cavern's twentieth floor.

The mass embedded in the Icesteel was concrete. An ordinary building material you could find anywhere — and yet its presence underground, sealed inside Icesteel of all places, was deeply suspicious.

In truth, it wasn't the concrete itself that brought the twentieth floor's architecture to mind. It was the pattern carved into its outer surface.

Not identical, but similar.

For now it was still only Alan's conjecture; confirming it would take more evidence. Rain could fall on both desert and grassland — the two remained entirely different regions all the same.

Alan was lost in observation, so Taylor stepped in and cut the moment short.

"Alan!"

"Yes, I'm listening."

"What did I just say?"

"..."

Taylor pulled a well-that's-that face and explained it again: escape came first, and this was the plan he'd worked out to make it happen.

"The passage looks like that, so much as it chaps me, we crawl. Shiva's body is built for exactly this kind of work, so he takes point."

"Hoo..."

Shiva heaved a long sigh and wedged himself into the narrow passage. When word came back that he was making good progress, Taylor bent down.

"Then I'm next."

The moment Taylor started to push his head in, Alan spoke up.

"Not so fast. There's no guarantee there's an exit at the end of two hours of crawling."

"You said earlier—"

"Think back to exactly what I said."

Taylor rolled his eyes around in circles, then nodded. Come to think of it, Alan had said two hours of crawling — he'd never said anything about an escape route waiting on the other side.

"Ah, right. If there's a way through, fine — but if it's blocked, we'd have to crawl all the way back."

"It also trends toward the Destroyer's territory, which I don't love. Instead, I have a better idea."

"Which is?"

Alan pointed at Box. The floating automaton clutched his Moon Crystals tightly to his chest and scooted backward.

"I'm not going to take him apart. Thanks to this little one, I found a way to alter the Icesteel itself. Instead of gambling on that uncertain tunnel, we backtrack through the Icesteel the way we came."

"Back to the cavern? We stirred that hornet's nest once already — they'll be on high alert."

"We hide nearby and observe. If I use the spiders to tap into MM Corp's database, we can map the underground terrain."

"Hmph. True enough, they'd have been moving around and charting the place rather than sitting on their hands. Fine — that's the surer bet."

Once the plan had taken shape, Taylor poked his face into the narrow passage and shouted, "Shiva! Come on back — Alan's got a better way."

The sound ricocheted off the walls in every direction, carrying even to Shiva, who had already crawled a fair distance. His reply came echoing back in much the same mangled form.

"Ah, dammit all—"

"You just cursed, didn't you?"

"I did not! What kind of person do you take me for?"

"Swear it to the Mother?"

"..."

They began the return journey. It was ground they had already covered, and there were no side passages branching off, so their pace was extremely fast. Which meant they kept running into the spots they had collapsed on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the way out.

If not for Box's mischief, they would have had to laboriously clear the boulders one by one — but now there was no need. One wall of the cavern was rock; the opposite wall was Icesteel crystal. Split right down the middle, so instead of removing the rock blocking the way, they simply melted through the Icesteel and passed to the other side.

Alan was crossing one of these blocked points after another when he stopped dead. Melted Icesteel ran blue — yet for some reason, a red tint shimmered in the flow.

"Smells like blood. Yeah, it is."

"There are scraps of the defensive suits those combat personnel were wearing scattered around, too."

Reconstructing what had happened was easy enough. On the rock side of the wall, holes gaped where a scale worm had bored through.

"They must have tried to punch through the collapsed tunnel and provoked the worm. Cornered in a narrow space, they didn't even manage to resist before it ate them."

"Good call, turning back."

Alan nodded at the remark that came out of nowhere; Shiva and Cayden just looked baffled.

"The comms went silent and no reinforcements were ever sent — that means the people at the cavern don't have anyone to spare either."

"That's exactly what I was going to say."

As they drew near the cavern, Alan stopped and brought out his spiders. He had each one carry a Moon Crystal lens, bored small holes through the Icesteel, and eased them forward.

The crystal was so opaque that the spiders could have been moving right in front of someone's face without being noticed. Alan intended to use that to scout the cavern's interior.

Except—

"Huh?"

Alan narrowed his eyes the instant he surveyed the cavern through the spider's camera. When they'd broken through, the place had been swarming with people. Now it was the complete opposite.

"The MM Corp personnel are all gone."

"What? Explain. In detail."

"Faster if you see it yourself."

Taking no chances, he carved a passage through the Icesteel and entered the cavern proper, then drilled a small opening and observed. It was exactly as the spiders had shown: not a single person in sight, only the equipment they'd abandoned scattered in every direction.

Alan opened a large hole and stepped boldly outside. The cavern was still silent.

"Cayden, wait inside just in case. Shiva, stay with him."

"The place is a disaster zone and it's dead quiet. What the hell happened here?"

Just as Taylor said, every piece of mining and detection equipment in the cavern had been wrecked — as if something enormous had crushed it all flat with a rolling pin.

"Food and water are untouched. They left in a hurry."

"Apparently. Some massive thing went on a rampage... The thing that devoured that crew in the tunnel — did it come back?"

"They didn't retreat on a whim, though. Look over there."

Alan pointed to a large hole punched through the crystal — wide enough for a mining drill to pass through easily.

"So they figured out how to melt the crystal too."

"I'll check the other side."

While Taylor examined the area around the hole, Alan went hunting for magitech devices and communicators. Any tool with finely flowing mana had a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠high chance of being what he was after.

He quickly located a personal data terminal with its power still on. It was glowing in the dark, so it wasn't hard to find. It belonged to one of the researchers, it seemed — on the screen was a journal kept in observation format.

"The Lady?"

Reading the context, there was no doubt the entity called the Lady was the colossal scale worm they'd seen in the gallery.

"Sir."

"What? Hold on, look at this first. They ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dropped all sorts of things as they fled into the crystal."

"They had a reason to run. The thing called the Lady—"

Drip!

A drop of liquid fell from above and ran down the surface of his visor.

"Water?"

Too viscous to be water. When he touched it with a fingertip, it stretched out into a long, sticky strand.

Alan tilted his head back to find where the liquid had come from — and the instant he saw the ceiling, he shouted.

"Into the crystal — NOW!"

The entity they'd seen in the gallery — the one christened the Lady — was on the ceiling. To be precise, it was half-buried in it, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mouth gaping downward. The word colossal had been invented for creatures exactly like this one.

A chill crawled up Alan's spine. Even as he sprinted, his brain spun at full speed.

How can something that size make no sound at all?

It was truly a baffling thing.

KUUURRRUMBLE!

Thunder cracked without warning through the underground, and the whole cavern shook as though an earthquake had struck. The Power Suit, running on copied movements of Sion's footwork, kept its balance even through the chaos and tore ahead.

Alan didn't bother looking back. The feed from a linked spider filled one corner of his visor: the Lady, fallen from the ceiling, her mouth spread impossibly wide as she chased after them.

How do I stop her? I don't. Just run.

No trick or technique would buy him even a single second. If anything could delay the Lady by even a tenth of one, it would count as a monumental feat.

Instead, he used the Rune Canvas to reinforce himself. Building on [Acceleration] and [Elasticity], he conjured an effect approximating a swiftness spell.

BANG!

The instant Alan slipped inside the crystal, the creature's scorching breath churned the space behind him.

SCRAAAPE!

Its teeth ground into the Icesteel—