Icehenge (1)
The street was teeming with explorers.
Taylor scowled at the sight.
“Just looking at it makes me nauseous.”
“It's changing at an incredible pace. Last time we came down, there wasn't a single building over there.”
“They hauled the materials down in dimensional packs and assembled them, obviously. Concrete curing? If you've got money to burn, magic can handle that in a day. And Essel Magic Tower can command mages by the unlimited dozen.”
The streets were packed so densely that explorers brushing shoulders was an everyday occurrence, yet not a single pickpocket dared to operate. There were simply too many seasoned veterans around—anyone foolish enough to try would likely get a sound thrashing and lose a hand for their trouble.
Alan passed by a magicware service shop, catching snippets of a haggling session.
“Wow. With the Spatial Gate up, everything's instant, but the prices have already doubled.”
“The entry fee alone is ten million coins. You hate paying double, but you're going to climb all the way back up and pay that instead? And don't forget the queue. Why not get yourself repaired while you're at it?”
“I'll do repairs when I'm resting.”
“Repairs count as rest?”
“If it's enjoyable, it's rest.”
Taylor shook his head with a look of utter disgust. Alan took a moment to survey the street.
Explorers everywhere.
They would tear through the Labyrinth with ferocious intensity, and the mysteries still buried below would keep surfacing as a result.
So this is what the Cube was trying to prevent. Did it consider this cheating, of all things?
No matter how he turned the question over, no answer came. The closest thing he could think of was the leakage of Labyrinth creatures—but the mages had already tested that. The animals collapsed the instant they passed through the gate, so no lengthy experiments were needed.
Alan was still absorbing the changes when a hand tapped his shoulder and he turned. It was Taylor.
“So, heading straight down?”
“That's the plan.”
On the Snowfield stood a structure known as Icehenge, its massive pillars of ice raised against the sky. It was the destination of this expedition.
“That place has been picked clean to the bone, so if we want profit, we'll have to hunt often.”
Taylor hadn't said it for nothing. The ice pillars of Icehenge were densely carved with runes.
And with runes in front of them, what mage or magitech engineer could stand idle? If the site had been on the surface, scholars alone would have worn a canal into the ground with their footprints.
In any case, because of the abundance of runes, it was a famed destination that mages in need of enlightenment visited frequently.
The runes I can currently handle number four.
Each additional rune made the process dramatically more treacherous. The runes repelled one another, or mana would surge and burn out entirely. But climbing higher demanded overcoming exactly this kind of hurdle.
Magitech engineers were generally ranked as artisan, master, and grandmaster—artisans handled three runes, masters six, and grandmasters nine or more.
Those capable of repairing Ooparts were sometimes called grandmasters as well, but the formal criteria were as above.
Moreover, disciplines, however separate, were ultimately connected. Broadening one's horizons through runes deepened one's insight into Star Script as well.
Then let me build a small automated facility inside Box, and improve Leopard while I'm at it.
Right on cue, he spotted Leopard batting away Box's grasping claw. Box was a nuisance, true—but Alan had programmed light attacks to be deflected just like that, which meant the automaton had classified Box's touch as precisely that category of threat.
Hm. What if I put both of their soul stones into one body? Leopard's stone handles combat, Box's handles production.
Alan imagined the great feline sweeping across the land. The war machines and automatons it devoured would be broken down into resources within its belly, only to be reborn as new automatons.
A land carrier? It runs on four legs, so maybe not a carrier after all.
When Alan turned a quiet, level gaze on Leopard and Box, the two stopped fighting at once and hid themselves behind Taylor.
A Spatial Gate covered in an instant a distance that would otherwise take two weeks. Most people assumed exploration would simply speed up, but Alan shook his head.
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Because when people crowd in, the monsters get spread thinner relative to their numbers. That makes the magic stones you need to run the compass much harder to come by.”
Plenty of people wanted to descend, but the monsters available to each individual had dwindled accordingly. The creatures hurled themselves at any explorer they saw with hungry, burning eyes and respawned without end, yet even they had limits.
Alan's party now needed more than twice their usual time to clear a single floor.
That was why the Labyrinth itself changed. Where explorers once kept their distance from other parties or moved in the opposite direction—
“Hey, you heading down to the 30th floor?”
—the frequency of approaches had climbed. Even now, a pack made up entirely of wolf Lycans was striding toward them.
“Yes.”
“We're headed for the 30th too. How much have you stocked up on magic stones? Here's what we've gathered so far.”
“More than enough to run the compass. Hand it over, please.”
When Alan fed the stones into the device, the compass needle swung and pointed toward the gate leading to the next floor. Alan's party took the lead, and the Lycan pack followed slowly at their heels.
The 30th floor was much the same. The moment they passed through the gate, explorers could be seen moving between the trees. For a place that held nothing but trees, darkness, and monsters, it was a rare sight indeed.
Shiva bowed his head toward the Lycan pack as they waved, and spoke.
“To think there are this many people even on the 30th floor. With any luck, we may see Brothers and Sisters of ours.”
“It's the opening rush. The gate's open, so everyone's flocking down out of novelty. Give it a month or two and things will go back to normal.”
“Why do you believe that, Brother Taylor?”
“Floors one through twenty-six are tedious for explorers confident in their skills. But put another way, the ones who gave up on exploring were the ones who couldn't stomach the patience it demanded.”
“Still, far more will remain than before, won't they?”
“That much is true. Once six months pass and explorers from other countries join in, the change will be noticeable.”
Apart from those who had come down on a lark to gawk, the odds favored explorers staying for good. Because they had found the Spatial Gate.
When someone sets a new record in a field, or makes a first discovery, what do people think?
Truly remarkable. What effort did it take? He eats all day, of course he pulled it off. That is how outsiders see it. But among those who do the same work—
He managed that? Then so can I.
That was how it went, almost every time. Unprecedented events would remain vanishingly rare, but once one occurred, the same phenomenon could repeat itself at any time.
The explorers who stayed behind in search of another Spatial Gate would descend into the Labyrinth more relentlessly, more fervently than ever before.
“Jake must be delighted.”
“Why the Chairman?”
“He loves it when the overall caliber of explorers rises. He might even be hoping a new wave flows down and punches through the floor that's been blocking him.”
“Even Depth 7 powerhouses struggle with the Labyrinth's deeper layers, then.”
“That's why no one has ever reached the lowest floor in over a hundred years.”
“Surely the Chairman will form a party and descend too?”
“Naturally.”
Which meant that even parties of explorers capable of matching the Chairman's strength had failed to break through.
“Wouldn't it be easier if the Depth 7s cooperated?”
“Never heard a whisper of such a thing. Maybe they're already pooling their strength behind closed doors.”
This time as well, they hunted their share, gathered magic stones, and joined forces with other groups of explorers to locate the next floor.
The bear guarding the gate to the 31st floor was, of course, missing. There were even parties trailing the gate doggedly, determined to hunt the bear down.
Alan passed them by and stepped through the gate. The moment he crossed the darkness, a white land of snow and ice spread out before them.
Taylor and Shiva, already bundled in their cold-weather gear, hunched their shoulders against a biting wind that seemed to blow from everywhere at once.
“Isn't the lubricant going to freeze at this rate?”
“It holds down to minus forty, so we're fine. Even if it drops lower, I have a heating unit installed—no issue there.”
“Even if it breaks, you'll be around to fix it. But minus forty? We'd freeze to death first.”
“Really, Brother. You have a heating unit and you still wrapped yourself up like that?”
“Bah, there's no bargaining with the cold. You've got fur all over and you dressed for it too. You look like a ball of laundry under there.”
Taylor wasn't wrong—Shiva's bulk had swelled enormously. He was so perfectly round that one expected him to roll rapidly down any slope.
While they exchanged banter, the clear sky vanished as if it had been a lie, and a blizzard came howling down. The snowflakes were so thick and heavy that it was hard to make out anything ten meters ahead.
The party, transformed into a row of snowmen, pressed on. Their feet sank deep, carving long furrows through the drifts, but look back a moment later and the snow had already filled them in.
Shiva, so tall that he plowed the snow with his belly instead of his legs, shouted out.
“If only we'd run into the Mistletoe Inn again, like last time!”
“Not a chance. They're mages at heart, but they run that inn to turn a profit. And there's a flood of explorers down here right now.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Peak season.”
“Ah.”
Shiva understood at once. He had lived in a monastery all his life, but even he knew how the market worked. When demand spiked, prices soared.
“Anyone descending this far has deep pockets anyway, so they'll stay put regardless. There probably isn't a vacant room to be had.”
“Still, I wish we'd find them.”
Shiva's hope went unfulfilled. In all their travels toward the next floor, they encountered nothing but snow, ice, and monsters.
As Taylor pitched the tent against a hillside that offered the barest shelter from the wind, he voiced his regret.
“If we still had that sea anemone hide we got last time, we could've burrowed under the snow and slept warm.”
“The hide melted away the moment we left, so there's nothing to be done.”
It had gone limp as they left the ice maze, then vanished entirely upon exiting the Snowfield. Objects bound to the Labyrinth were hardly rare, but having actually used it once made the loss sting that much more.
Alan arrived at Icehenge on the 32nd floor. The last time he had come with Sion, they'd taken a different route straight down to the 33rd, so this terrain was unfamiliar to him.
Across the flat plain rose pillars of ice as thick as skyscrapers, every one of them stretching skyward. Even trying to gauge their height was difficult through the blizzard.
“Come down!”
An explorer shouted up toward the heights, but the fierce wind swallowed his voice. Someone aimed a lamp of blinding brilliance upward, and a figure came sliding down a rope lashed to one of the pillars.
“I'm in the middle of recording runes—why call me down?”
“Wait out the blizzard unless you want to disappear.”
They were seekers of knowledge, the same as Alan. The pair ducked into a tent lashed firmly to the pillar. Similar groups could be seen here and there.
“Alan, where are we setting up?”
“If we're too close to other explorers, it could interfere.”
Alan scanned the surroundings. In the blizzard, dark, colossal shapes swayed and shimmered. Every one of them was an ice pillar.
Having found a suitable spot, Alan pitched the tent like the others and climbed inside. Taylor lit the magic-stone lamp.
“You heard them earlier, right? There's a risk of vanishing, so no climbing while the blizzard's blowing.”
“I'm well aware.”
“Then why do you keep making people nervous?”
“Am I?”
“Yes, you. Don't go up there citing sleepwalking as your excuse.”
“I do not have such a condition.”
“I know that. But better to cut off every possibility in advance.”
Alan, eager to escape Taylor's relentless prodding, turned to Shiva instead. The snow clinging to his clothes and beard was melting, and the snowman was reverting into a man.
“You agree with him, don't you, Shiva?”
Shiva nodded without a moment's hesitation.
“...”
“On other matters, perhaps—but anything touching on knowledge like runes, your reliability drops very, very, very considerably. You would rank alongside the wicked Brothers and Sisters who joined the Purification Volunteer Corps.”
Stung, Alan closed his eyes and turned his mind to other pursuits. The runes stored in his left eye—the ones he could currently wield—rose like stars across a field of vision dyed black.
One by one, he examined them, pondering how to link them, which combinations would prove devastating.
Not all runes were created equal. Alan could combine up to four at once, yet certain runes, wielded alone, could unleash power beyond even that.
Special runes existed—and the footsteps of those seeking them stretched on without end.