Beneath the Ice (2)
She had even ground her teeth against it. The crystal that hadn't so much as flinched under the mining drill crumbled into powder and sifted down to the floor.
Alan backed further away. The Blue Lady couldn't bore straight through the rock the way she did through ice, it seemed — after scraping furrows across the surface, she had coiled herself up in the center of the cavern.
“Whew…”
“Brother Taylor, you said she wouldn't move on a full stomach.”
“Knowledge can always be revised, Brother Shiva. The MM Corp scale-worm hunt may have whetted her appetite — or perhaps she's simply drawn to the mana bleeding out of the melting crystal.”
Taylor peered cautiously at the great beast. “There were eggs stuck to the Icesteel surface, weren't there?”
“Yes.”
“Her offspring, then?”
“From what we know, she shows no maternal instinct whatsoever.”
“Maybe she's grown so large her intelligence has awakened. Stop thinking of it as a monster — treat it as a spirit beast, or better yet, a demon beast.”
The Blue Lady showed no sign of intending to leave the cavern. And in fairness, this was her home; the intruders were Alan and his party.
“Shall we turn back?”
The moment they angled toward the narrow passage that remained, the prone creature's head slid ever so slightly toward them. Cayden jerked back, trembling like a leaf.
“Sh-she's watching us!”
Though her eyes had vanished somewhere along the long road of evolution, no other expression could have described it better. The Blue Lady's head tracked Alan's party with unnerving precision.
“She's terribly persistent, isn't she?”
“You're the one who named that thing a noblewoman?”
“That's what was written on the researchers' terminals.”
Erase the massive, elongated body from the mind's eye, and what remained was a creature sheathed in deep blue scales. The scales embroidered across her every inch evoked the image of a blue gown.
“Creatures that transcend common sense do tend to pick up names like that. Not that I care for 'noblewoman.' 'Old witch' would suit her better.”
Whether she'd heard him or not, the Blue Lady shook her head violently. Even that one motion set the whole cavern shuddering, and rocks rained down in place of tears.
“So how do we get out of here?”
“There's a passage the MM Corp personnel are presumed to have used.”
“I saw it too. But the moment those bastards laid eyes on her, they must've hauled ass out of here.”
Alan stared hard into the crystal, trying to make out what lay within, but came away with nothing. Unlike the Icesteel outside, the crystal was far too dark and opaque to see through.
“Hoo… hoo…”
Cayden, an ordinary man, was struggling. Mental pressure and physical exhaustion assailing him at once — in a way, it was only natural.
The mana inside the crystal was so dense that it acted as poison to ordinary people. It was much like how breathing grows labored when air pressure climbs too high.
“We'll have to head deeper in.”
It would bring them closer to the Destroyer's domain, but there was no other way to slip out of the Blue Lady's detection range. Her head was still faithfully following Alan's every movement.
“Why does she keep staring at you?”
“Hard to say.”
“Something about your constitution make you look like an elixir to her?”
“Oh, that sounds about right.”
People carve open the bellies of monsters and spirit beasts to consume their inner cores and rare organs. The reverse, then, ought to hold just as true.
“Doesn't seem like much of a thing to be pleased about.”
“Still, it's fascinating. I can't tell whether it's instinct or a judgment made with genuine intelligence. Honestly, I'd love to cage her up and observe her — though I wonder how strong I'd have to become to manage that.”
“The Destroyer's level, maybe? I'm only saying it because it came up — who's more of a monster, him or her?”
“I couldn't say without solid data. I've seen Depth 7 combat firsthand, but neither the Chairman nor the Collector was fighting seriously, so it's hard to draw a conclusion.”
Alan kept up the conversation as they burrowed deeper. The further in they went, the more fragments of concrete littered the way.
Even the Blue Lady, who had been lying still, pressed her mouth to the crystal and began rotating her head in slow circles. The grinding sound never stopped.
“She's following us right now, isn't she?”
“Don't worry — our speed is overwhelmingly better. Oh, one of her teeth broke off. Think a spider could go collect it…?”
— End of 〈Beneath the Ice (1)〉 —
〈 Beneath the Ice (2) 〉
Alan turned the hard, pointed object over in his hands. The fragment of the Blue Lady's broken tooth was about the length of a dagger, but intact, it must have rivaled a full-sized sword.
Taylor had witnessed the moment while pushing back the water left behind by the melted Icesteel. “You actually picked it up.”
“I couldn't pass up an opportunity like this. Most alloys out there are softer than one of her teeth.”
Scritch! Scritch!
The sound of ice being scraped still echoed through the dark. With nowhere for the sound waves to escape, they rebounded again and again through the cavern.
A mining drill fitted with a Moon Crystal Lens removed raw Icesteel the way sunlight melts frost — silently, or nearly so.
Which meant the noise had another source entirely. And its star performer, the Blue Lady, was still hot on Alan's trail.
“Persistent. So damn persistent.”
“Why does she keep chasing us, I wonder? I'd very much like to hear Brother Taylor's opinion.”
“No idea. Like I said before — does Alan really look like an elixir to her?”
“Judging by the noblewoman's sheer size, a human is smaller than a snack. We'd amount to a single fleck in her stomach.”
Taylor glanced back over his shoulder.
Beyond the path they'd carved, something enormous writhed. The Blue Lady's mouth hung open, baring glistening red flesh in all its raw, unvarnished glory — though it was the teeth packed wall-to-wall inside that truly seized the eye.
She felt larger than before. Not that her bulk had physically swelled.
“Alan? Something's off here.”
“I suspect you're thinking exactly what I'm thinking.”
“And what's that?”
“You felt her getting closer, didn't you? Your hunch is correct, sir. The Blue Lady's speed keeps increasing. By my calculations, she'll catch up within the hour.”
“Oh, wonderful…”
Taylor imagined his own body slowly dissolving in stomach acid. The metal skeleton beneath his synthetic skin would corrode away just the same.
“She's lived long enough to match her size, so I suppose she really has awakened into a true spirit beast, like you said. She keeps changing the shape of the mana she wraps around her teeth to grind the Icesteel more efficiently. It looks like she's starting to get the hang of it.”
“Any way to slow her down?”
“You saw for yourself, sir. Magic is weaker than a drizzle, and bombs don't even rate as a massage.”
“…”
“Our only other option is following the route MM Corp already cut through. We may run into them partway, but…”
“Given how that noblewoman chases you around, they'd probably come running to kill us the second they saw her coming.”
Shiva, who had been calming the terrified Cayden, caught the conversation and beat his chest with both fists. “Brothers, we are explorers of no small skill. Even if they hold the advantage in numbers and raw strength, we have more than enough force to negotiate.”
“Colonel Steven commands one of the megacorps' armed security divisions. Companies usually seat at least a Depth 5 in posts like that.”
“Then their negotiating power is the greater. But would a man of his rank actually come to the field himself?”
“All that commotion broke out — he'd come to check on it. That's what a manager is for.”
In the end, they changed course as Alan proposed, linking the path they'd been carving to the tunnel MM Corp had made.
With no more waiting for Icesteel to melt, their pace improved dramatically.
The distance to the Blue Lady stretched wide in an instant, but the tremors and grinding noise made it clear she was still coming.
As Alan pressed swiftly forward, they ran headlong into MM Corp's survivors — battered remnants who, as the state of the cavern suggested, had already borne the brunt of the Blue Lady's tantrum.
One figure stood out sharply even among the routed soldiers. A big, close-cropped young man, around whom every MM Corp member seemed to orbit.
Alan fixed his gaze on him and spoke. “Colonel Steven, I take it?”
“The Colonel is an old man.” Cayden's whisper came from behind, and Alan answered it kindly.
“Given the appearance, he must be borrowing the power of bioengineering. Human on the outside, but stuffed with artificial muscle and organs underneath. The real body is elsewhere — that thing's a puppet operated by the genuine article, I'd guess.”
“Well-informed. Did Moon Glow Cave tip you off? Or that fox woman? Could be Breaker, I suppose.”
“Which of the three, would you say? Or some other organization entirely?”
Despite Alan's deliberate evasion, Steven answered with perfect calm. Strangely enough, that youthful voice carried the hard-won polish of long years. “You're only trying to muddy the waters. But your movement patterns have already been fully analyzed.”
“How fun. Your uplink terminal must be somewhere above us, then?”
“Enough inane chatter. Give me one reason I should let any of you walk away.”
“You're not even the real body. I've been gauging you since the moment we met — you're about Depth 4. Mid-tier at best?”
Steven tried to raise his mana and press it down upon Alan, but it refused to take. It was like jabbing an iron sphere with a feather.
“So you do have something to lean on. But we have numbers.”
True to his word, several dozen fighters ringed Steven, and most of them were combat-ready.
Alan pushed back hard. “In a space this narrow, numbers mean nothing. You'd have to come at us one pair at a time — a repeating four-on-four, in other words.”
When Cayden started to hunch his shoulders in fear, Taylor thumped him on the back with a fist. Cayden straightened with a yelp of pain — which, to the men opposite, looked rather like a threat display.
Steven stepped forward, stoking his fighting spirit. Mana on the verge of being shaped into form wrapped around his body and rose from him like heat shimmer. “Then I go first. My men will rotate through rest and combat around me.”
“You treasure your men, but everyone else…”
Alan cut himself off. At the end of the day, every person ranked themselves first, and the world interpreted itself through the eyes of its beholder.
Put simply, their views simply diverged. What the one on the receiving end might find outrageous could be nothing at all to the one acting.
Alan raised a palm toward Steven, who was on the verge of moving. “Ah — one moment, please.”
The trickle of melted Icesteel ran soft and constant at their feet. It was too little to mean a large crystal had melted, but everyone understood the mana was the cause, and thought nothing of it.
What mattered was that Alan's voice carried, crisp and clear, above even that noise. At Steven's words, the battle-hardened fighters found themselves listening in spite of themselves.
“Try pausing your work for a moment.”
Steven's brow furrowed, and instead of answering, he flung his gaze far back — precisely, behind Alan. His eyes narrowed to slits.
“All work stops! Total silence!”
The moment the order fell, everything went still. Only then did the sound that had been needling Steven become unmistakable.
Scritch! Scritch!
Something was scraping away at the ice, the sound traveling through the cave hollowed out inside the crystal. A faint vibration was even climbing up through their boots.
“What is that? Don't tell me—”
“The scale-worm. The one your people named the Blue Lady.”
“Why? Why in the hell is she following us?”
“Well, now we're finally in a position to have a proper conversation.”
“Skip the games and answer the question.”
Alan pointed at the mining drill with its stacked lenses. It was still radiating fierce light, still melting Icesteel without pause.
“Why that? It doesn't produce anywhere near enough vibration for her to notice.”
“It's not the vibration — it's the mana released as the Icesteel melts. From where the noblewoman stands, it must feel like lifting the lid off a serving tray right under her nose. If a fight does break out, our side will be going straight for your Moon Crystal Lenses.”
Steven glared at Alan for a long moment, then turned to one of his researchers. “Is he right?”
“…The possibility is more than sufficient.”
“So our only escape route turns out to be the rope around our own necks. Interfere with us, and I won't let it stand.”
Steven delivered the threat with force — yet his eyes never left Alan's party.
For now, an unspoken mutual disregard settled over both sides. A prolonged battle here served no one; as Alan had said, if the lenses were destroyed, they were all dead where they stood.
Taylor wrote something out with his hand in front of the camera on one of Alan's spiders.
The spider skittered its forelegs across Taylor's forearm, scratching the reply into view.
Alan had attached the external expansion unit to his Power Suit, enabling wireless communication — but in case anyone was intercepting signals, he preferred this old-fashioned method of conversation.
Catching on, Steven growled low. “What are you doing over there?”
“Pay it no mind.”
Of course, there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. Had the man come in person, he'd have simply charged in — but operating a puppet remotely left him with far too many liabilities. His men, the Blue Lady, and the true strength of his enemies.
Alan kept the spider moving.