The Vanished Fragment
The tubes were still flowing black, but compared to the beginning, it was nothing.
'The tubes connected to the Undergrounder are wrapping around the glass casing. This isn't protection — its purpose looks more like binding.'
Allen's gaze climbed upward along the bundle of tubes. They weren't visible from here, but the Undergrounders were up there somewhere.
'If the tubes are conduits for mana, then the Undergrounders must have been laid to sleep inside the walls as offerings to seal the fragment.'
Allen recalled the hidden cemetery beneath the stone mountain in the Primeval Forest. Beneath the countless gravestones standing there, there had been nothing at all.
'If I connect the dots, the Undergrounders sleeping in the labyrinth must be the owners of those gravestones.'
Their bodies were here, so they must have written only the names on the stones and built a memorial ground.
'What on earth is this thing?'
Allen reached his hand toward the fragment. The moment his palm touched the glass casing, the black energy coiled around the fragment moved with startling speed.
It penetrated through the glass wall and into Allen's hand, crawling up past his wrist, his forearm, his shoulder — climbing steadily higher.
'Parasitism? Is its destination my head?'
Light burst from the space between Allen's brows. He normally refrained from manipulating mana inside his own body unless absolutely necessary, but this was no time for caution.
His full-to-bursting mana linked hand over hand, erecting a solid wall. In an instant, the black energy was surrounded.
With its escape route completely severed, the energy threw itself against the wall. Each impact thinned the energy and chipped away at the barrier, but Allen's supply showed no sign of running dry.
In the end, the black energy knelt before the endlessly regenerating wall of mana. It vanished entirely, leaving not even a trace behind.
'Would it have been dangerous without the Destroyer's energy?'
He could have protected his head, certainly, but to annihilate it completely the way he just had would have taken a considerable amount of time.
'And then I'd have been stuck lying quietly in bed, unable to explore the labyrinth. Reading books for long hours. Hm? Actually, that doesn't sound half bad.'
Of course, that didn't mean he had the slightest intention of accepting an unidentified energy into his body just like that.
Allen stayed still for a while, and Taylor finally asked carefully.
"You all right? Did something happen?"
"Nothing happened."
"..."
Hearing that, Taylor pointed at the fragment. It had turned from black to pure white — as if to say, you expect me to believe that?
Allen stored the fragment inside Box and shrugged.
"Which means, in the end, nothing happened."
Thoom!
The moment Allen finished his excuse, a heavy sound echoed from above. Even without checking firsthand, he could roughly guess what had just occurred.
"So we can get out of here now. Let's head back up."
Allen draped his cloak back over his shoulders and swept his eyes around the chamber. The fragment had escaped the glass casing, and something had happened in the labyrinth above — it was only procedure to check whether anything had changed here as well.
His quick-moving eyes dropped downward. Beneath the once-smooth glass casing, a line of writing had appeared.
[If the seal has been broken — if you are not one of them — seek the Dragon.]
Easier said than done. It was only thanks to objects left behind by dragons or wyrmkind that their existence was known at all, and the academic community theorized they had long since gone extinct.
All Allen had gained was another unanswered question. Just as Taylor had predicted, the metal door reappeared. Beyond the wide-open door, a crevasse was visible.
Having already been trapped here once, they left without so much as a backward glance, slipping out through the crevasse passage.
Thud!
The sound of the door closing rang out, and then there was nothing but ice, as if the ruins had never existed at all.
"Huh?"
Sion's pupils shook violently at the sight.
"Senior, what's wrong?"
"The ruins just vanished!"
"You saw it happen, didn't you?"
"We were getting a large mana essence stone from here on a regular basis! Now what am I supposed to do? What do I even say to the Chairman?"
Was this the face of an employee who had just fumbled away a major client through sheer carelessness? Allen had never seen Sion react like this before.
It was obvious the fragment had caused all of this. The moment that thought struck him, Allen reached his hand out toward Box.
"Show me the fragment."
Beep...
The sound Box made was incredibly weak. It was like a puppy whimpering after being caught doing something wrong.
"?"
Allen opened Box's drawer — and the spot where the fragment had been stored was empty.
"Where did the fragment go?"
Beep...
Strangely enough, the drawer now looked vastly deeper. The items and spiders stored beside the fragment had shrunk to a minuscule size. They hadn't actually shrunk — it was an illusion of perspective.
The Seal (4)
Allen stared down at Box for a long, long moment. The crab-like camera eyes spun round and round, unable to find anywhere to rest.
When Box turned its back and went still, the Leopard behind it wriggled its hindquarters, charged silently, bopped it on the head, and returned to its original position.
Under normal circumstances, Box would have raised its pincers and lunged right back — but right now, it couldn't.
Allen regarded the inside of the drawer with a perfectly placid expression. Of course, thanks to his helmet visor, no one could see what his face actually looked like.
After he had been standing there for a while, Taylor — who had been basking in the joy of their escape — sidled over.
"What's going on?"
"The fragment we got from the secret chamber is gone. Instead..."
Showing was easier than telling, so Allen pushed his arm into Box's drawer. It sank in up to his shoulder, and the bottom was still nowhere in sight.
Taylor, watching, did the same. His fingers, too, never touched the bottom.
"Oh, nice. A dimensional bag that suits your taste would've cost you at least ten billion to get your hands on, and here you've landed one for free. Well then, shall we see how much volume it holds?"
"That's not the point."
"Then what is?"
"You remember the energy the fragment carried, don't you? It was deeply ominous."
"But it's gone now. The honey-loving bear and your mana purified it, remember?"
"Still..."
"Think of bottled water. That's just dirty pond water or groundwater to begin with. It gets purified until it's clean and ends up on a supermarket shelf in a consumer's hand."
"The end result is good, yes. But that's a result that understands nothing of the process. I need to know why this happened."
"That's your call. I won't stop you."
Once Allen's curiosity caught fire, no one could hold him back. How could anyone persuade a man who would travel all the way to Kasara out of sheer curiosity — and meet the Destroyer besides? Not that meeting the Destroyer had ever been part of the original plan.
Knowing his temperament, he would throw himself into research for a good while, which meant that once they got back up top, Taylor could finally rest properly. He smiled at the thought of somewhere green and full of plants.
Allen would have loved to start researching right then and there, but with the party present, that wasn't an option. If he wanted what he wanted, he'd have to get back to the surface — and Sion's condition was anything but normal.
"Senior."
"..."
Sion only kept staring at the ice wall where the door had vanished. When a second call went unanswered, Allen approached and placed a hand on her shoulder.
Her shoulder flinched — and in the next instant, her hand had seized the gauntlet of his powersuit. From those slender fingers came a force so powerful it was hard to believe.
"Ah. It's you. I reacted on reflex."
"What are you thinking about so hard?"
"That..."
Her voice was hollow as she pointed at the vanished ruins.
"What am I supposed to tell the Chairman?"
"Tell him the truth, plainly. He's not the sort to be fooled by lies or excuses anyway."
"...I suppose that's true."
Even as they walked along the passage, Sion kept glancing back, lost in other thoughts.
After walking for a long while, they reached the point where they had first fallen into the crevasse. Taylor, leading the way, knocked on the ice.
"How do we get up? Sion, snap out of it. If we wait like last time, will the way open up again?"
"Yeah. Once the crevasse opens, just run up the cracks in the ice wall. Easy, right?"
"Easy?"
"I'll have to put in some effort."
Shiba, listening in on the conversation, looked up. His thick neck bent back nearly ninety degrees.
After waiting about two days, a massive tremor shook everything and the crevasse yawned wide open. There was no exhausted collapse, unlike what Taylor or Shiba had feared — thanks to the rune letters Allen had engraved into their boots, they could sprint straight up the vertical ice wall.
On the way out of the snowfield, a reindeer cyborg blocked their path, but it was blasted to shards by a barrage of mana rounds and scattered across the snow. Thanks to Allen taking the initiative, the battle was over the moment it began.
"You put some real force into that."
"That sort of thing isn't my way. For research, I need to hunt specimens as intact as possible..."
"You know yourself well."
Distracted by a far more pressing subject of inquiry, Allen was impatient. In anyone else, such scattered focus would have dulled their attacks — but Allen's strikes only grew fiercer.
A week after their return, Allen still sat in front of Box. Even its breathing was so quiet and regular that he'd lost the heart to break the silence.
"Hachoo!"
Shiba, trimming his beard, was pricked in the nostril and sneezed furiously. Taylor, who had been rolling only his eyes until now, finally let out a long breath.
"Whew... Allen, is it working?"
"No."
A full week of observation, and he hadn't found a single clue about the spatial expansion. The knowledge of rune letters, circuit magic, and star letters turned up no singularity. And it wasn't shamanism or psychic power either.
The mysteries of the labyrinth remained an unknown domain. More than half the Oparts that explorers hunted for were used without anyone understanding their principles, so in a way, this outcome was only to be expected.
Of course, even knowing that, Allen hated ending on "I don't know." Even if he couldn't grasp the principle, he wouldn't be satisfied until he at least knew what it was.
"The spatial expansion itself is now bound to Box's soul stone. An unknown space has appeared in the star-letter input field."
An input field resembling the universe, with star letters glittering like stars. And in one corner of it, a pitch-black region had appeared, as if a black hole lurked there. It was dark enough to stand in stark contrast to the black around it.
"Is that so? Well, that's a relief. As long as the soul stone's intact, you can reshape the body however you like."
"What bothers me is that ominous energy the fragment carried at the start."
"But it was purified. You concluded yourself that the energy vanished completely. Explorers using cursed Oparts is common enough. Of course, the utility has to outweigh the drawbacks."
"That's true. But the Undergrounders must have had a reason to seal the fragment."
"Considering it reacted to the energy the Destroyer planted, too..."
Taylor sank deep into the sofa. Thinking was Allen's job; all he had to do was move his body.
Maybe it was because his mind was at ease — a sudden thought popped up.
"Why not ask Professor Oros? You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who knows more about the labyrinth than that man. Most important of all, though, is trust. What do you think?"
"If it's the Professor, he's someone I can broach the subject with. I'll take this chance to go pay him a visit."
Perhaps because he'd been so buried in the fragment and the spatial expansion, Allen hadn't thought that far. He accepted Taylor's suggestion on the spot and rose from his seat.
He swiftly reassembled the disassembled Box and patted its head.
"You stay put, just like the Leopard."
The Leopard, sprawled on the floor, glanced sideways at its master, and Box nodded its eyes up and down.
Before leaving the warehouse, Allen glanced back over his shoulder. With the spatial expansion stored in the soul stone, the body could be freely modified.
'I suppose the plan to split the soul stone like the Ice Golem's will have to be scrapped.'
As he stared quietly, Box hid its eyes.
When Allen arrived at the Municipal University, he took in the scenery where concrete trees mingled with real ones.
Brilliant minds strolled the campus grounds. The mere fact that not a single person was drugged out of their mind spoke volumes about the university's standing.
He boarded a disc-shaped personal transport device and headed straight for the Maze Studies building. Its exterior, decorated to look like brickwork, caught his eye at once.
Reviving his memories of visiting with Rector, Allen made for the professor's office — then stopped in his tracks.
'I made a mistake.'
His eagerness had made him barge in without even sending word first. He wasn't even a student of the Maze Department — this was rudeness, plain and simple.
As he walked the corridor entertaining such thoughts, a familiar blond man came toward him from the opposite direction. It was Carlson, his companion from the expedition.
He was carrying a cardboard box, and the area beneath his eyes was pitch black. His eyes — like fish on display at a fish market — glimmered faintly when they landed on Allen.
"Oh, it's you. What brings you here?"
"You're one to talk, Carlson — you look exhausted. Are you feeling unwell?"
"Thanks for the concern. I'm just tired, that's all."
"Because of your coursework?"
"No."