Icehenge
This was the reason explorers flocked to Icehenge.
Runic inscriptions had existed even before the Labyrinth was discovered, but nearly every rune that surfaced afterward traced its origin back to the Labyrinth.
With a stroke of luck, a discovery of the century might be waiting; failing that, one might stumble upon runes hidden away by some corporation or individual who wanted to monopolize them.
Whoever controlled Icehenge could claim exclusive rights to its knowledge—but the moment they tried, the whole world would descend upon them. That was how vital a place this was to the academic community.
When Alan opened his eyes, he found Taylor already watching him, and their gazes met.
"Alan."
"I'm not going anywhere."
Going missing here was no joke. Explorers who visited Icehenge had a habit of vanishing—and every one of them had been up on the pillars when a blizzard struck. And in the Labyrinth, missing meant dead.
Alan loved knowledge, but he had no intention of gambling his life for it. With a world this wide still waiting for him, dying now would leave him so aggrieved he wouldn't even be able to close his eyes in peace.
A day passed, and the blizzard subsided. The people who had been biding their time came pouring out all at once. Alan was no exception.
As he pressed himself close against an ice pillar and gazed upward, Taylor's voice drifted up to him.
"Your body holding up all right?"
"I have the Power Suit for that."
Since the suit shouldered all the hard labor, the strain on his own body was kept to a minimum. Alan's mana overload condition would make things harder than usual, but it was nothing he couldn't endure.
When he flexed his hands and feet, sharp spikes jutted out from them, and as runes of [Attraction] and [Adhesion] flared to life alongside them, his body slapped flat against the pillar.
Alan began to climb like a lizard. Even under clear skies, the pillar rose so high that its peak was impossible to make out.
In truth, the height meant nothing. What mattered far more were the runes carved somewhere along the pillar.
Alan spiraled slowly upward. The burning stares of onlookers, as if they might bore holes clean through the ice, came free of charge.
Now and then he did find runes.
[Explosion], already known.
He was long familiar with that one. He'd seen it so many times he could carve it with his eyes closed.
About ten meters up.
[Explosion].
He climbed that much farther again.
Another [Explosion]?
Finding runes at all was a positive sign, but the constant stream of ones he already knew was draining his enthusiasm.
Not that I could blow the pillar apart anyway.
He could bore shallow holes into the surface, but snapping the pillar clean in half was beyond him. That was simply the nature of the Labyrinth. Even if Breaker's chairman pounded on it with everything he had, the result would be exactly the same.
By the time he'd found his fourth [Explosion], the sky was beginning to darken. Clouds materialized out of nowhere, and the blizzard rolled in again.
"Alan!"
Along with the loud call, a strong beam of light shot up from below. He wanted nothing more than to keep climbing, but now was no time for stubbornness.
As Alan prepared to slide down the pillar, he glanced up in lingering regret.
Huh?
Alan's eyes—his left eye, to be precise—caught a flicker of something glinting. He tried to look closer, but the moment his boots touched the ground, the light was gone.
Taylor brushed the snow from Alan's head and shoulders and pointed at the tent.
"Come on, get inside."
"Yes, sir."
Even as he answered and stepped into the tent, Alan kept looking up. The glimmer from before was nowhere to be seen. He raised a hand and rubbed the area near his left eye.
Katan was said to be fond of Icehenge.
There was no way to confirm that now, though. Taylor had taken a seat at the tent's entrance, keeping watch in his direction.
< Icehenge (1) > End
< Icehenge (2) >
Katan, the great magitech engineer. His original name was simply Tan, but with the title Ka—meaning "Great"—prefixed to it, he became Katan.
He was also known as the decipherer of Star Script. Why decipherer? Because the Star Script written into soul stones had not existed before the Labyrinth was discovered.
There had been similar scripts, yes—but Star Script's overwhelming utility had buried every one of them into obsolescence.
Inside a tent large enough for a grown man to stand upright without his head brushing the ceiling, Alan sat on a field cot.
"People trade all sorts of opinions about Katan, you know."
"What's this all of a sudden? Well, fine, I'm listening. Go on."
Taylor started to tilt his head, then thought better of it. Alan's train of thought switched tracks so quickly that mid-conversation, he would sometimes leap several steps ahead.
For instance, someone might mention they were getting married, and Alan would immediately respond, "By the time the kid's ready for university, such-and-such would make a good career, wouldn't it?"
Since the blizzard made anything else impossible anyway, Taylor simply listened.
"The question of how he actually deciphered Star Script."
"Well, he must have been brilliant."
"Star Script is called a script, but it bears no resemblance to any other writing system. It's nothing but dots placed and gathered together. Could anyone really interpret that?"
"Fair point."
"If Katan had invented it himself and assigned meaning from the start, that would be one thing. But divining the meaning of a script that already existed is a different matter entirely."
"Which is why they say he had the Dragon's help, hm?"
"We did talk about that before. Good memory, sir."
"That much is nothing."
"It could have been a Dragon—or the memory might have been passed down through an Oopart."
"Shiva! Snow's getting in!"
White flakes were settling onto Taylor's white hair. Curious about conditions outside, Shiva had cracked the tent open slightly, and a fair amount of snow had blown through the gap.
"Shiva!"
"Brother, there's no need to emphasize my name quite so much. I'm well aware that in certain nations of the Eastern Continent, my name is an insult."
"Oh. Right."
Taylor gave an awkward smile and looked at Alan, the gesture plainly adding: hurry up and talk, what are you waiting for?
"So what's the conclusion?"
"When the blizzard started earlier, I took a quick look at the tops of the pillars. Something glinted—but I've never heard of a sighting like it, not until now."
"Brother, shall I open the tent?"
"Ah—hold on a moment. You open that and the snow dumps right onto my bed. So, you want to poke your face out and have a look now?"
"It wasn't visible from the ground."
The moment Alan finished speaking, Taylor quietly edged toward the tent entrance.
"Not now."
"..."
This was exactly why he hadn't wanted to bring it up—but somewhere in the conversation, it had slipped out on its own.
"If you're that desperate to go out, just send the spider up."
"Already did, sir."
"And what happened?"
Alan shook his head.
"The connection suddenly cut and it vanished. The glint was gone too, naturally."
"So something remarkable is indeed packed into that left eye of yours. And didn't you say it was made by a disciple of a disciple of Katan?"
"I'll have to climb one of the other pillars first."
"Only when there's no blizzard. And you promise—if a single snowflake falls, you come straight down."
"...Yes, sir."
"That answer took too long. Shiva, make him say it again."
"Brother Alan, I regret to inform you that your reliability on this matter is at rock bottom. Therefore, I shall climb with you myself."
Dwarves were, by nature, a race born of the mountains. Shiva had grown up in a monastery from infancy, but his body still carried the genes his bloodline had left in it.
Before long the blizzard died down, and the full panorama of Icehenge spread out before them. Well—no, it didn't. The pillars were simply too enormous for that.
Each pillar rivaled a supertower, so even spaced generously apart, Icehenge's domain stretched vast and wide.
Alan moved to a different pillar and began climbing slowly. Not a trace of the holes other parties had drilled for their climbing ropes remained.
"Brother, wouldn't it be easier to just use the spider?"
"The runes appear in a different spot every time. To catch those faint flows of mana, it's better to move in person than rely on golems or machines."
"Then what about—"
"Flight is out for a different reason. The moment a blizzard strikes, if you're separated from the pillar, your odds of vanishing climb exponentially."
Why else would pale-haired scholars and thin-armed researchers take to the ice walls with their own hands? Everything had its reasons. Truthfully, anyone who made it down this far was either well-trained or well-augmented with magicware, so it wasn't as grueling as all that.
As Alan climbed, he sensed a faint flow, made his way toward it, and let out a voice steeped in disappointment.
"This is all I keep seeing, since yesterday."
"Brother, what on earth do you mean?"
"There's an [Explosion] rune carved here."
The rune that had teased Alan vanished soon after, as if mocking him.
Perhaps a hundred meters above the ground, the sky darkened once more. Black clouds appeared without warning and began dumping white snow.
Alan lifted his head. Regrettably, no glimmer this time. But that was what exploration was. Only those who strove and endured could claim the sweet reward.
He released his grip and pressed his palms flat against the pillar. The sharp spikes retracted inward, and with his body still flush against the column, he slid rapidly downward.
The moment his feet touched the ground, Taylor—who had been gazing up at him the whole time—pointed at the tent he had relocated.
"Find anything?"
"No."
"Well. It happens."
Alan repeated the same routine again and again. After a good stretch of time, a clear distinction emerged between the pillars that glinted and the ones that didn't.
He built a three-dimensional model with holograms and ran through attempt after attempt—connecting the glints with lines, stripping the model down to only the glinting pillars, rotating it to view it from above.
Taylor, watching from the side, asked,
"Is this like last time, with some message written in it? A lantern? A veil?"
"No."
Alan shook his head, his attention still fixed on the model.
"For a complete interpretation, I may need another element."
The best method would be to climb all the way to the summit where the glint was presumed to be—but the blizzards struck far too often.
Alan wasn't the only one entertaining such thoughts. While the tents were being taken down to move to another pillar, a group of explorers with a few scholars mixed in passed close by.
"Seriously, what is going on? The blizzards have gone insane."
"I made it to the top a few times last visit, but this trip's looking hopeless."
"Is it always like this? It's way too frequent. And the moment I get partway up a pillar, it hits without fail."
"No idea. I heard it happens from time to time, but I never expected it on this expedition of all trips. Wait—could this be because of you?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You were supposed to go into a different Labyrinth in the first place."
"I did come down here after hearing a Spatial Gate had opened. Couldn't use it, of course—had to slog all the way down to this floor."
"The Labyrinth's territorial too, huh."
"That's absurd—"
As they moved away, their voices naturally faded. But Alan had fixated on a phrase one of the scholars had let slip.
Territorial...
Maybe that was exactly right. The Spatial Gate was a revolution. A welcome change for explorers—but to the Labyrinth, it might have felt like the opposite.
The Key that had opened the Spatial Gate, and the Cube presumed to serve as its seal. Of the two, the Cube had once seized dominion over Alan's mind and tried to drag him beyond the ruin.
Alan stomped down on his own shadow a few times, just in case. Naturally, the shadow stayed put; only the snow was packed deeper.
He strode toward the next pillar and spoke.
"Old man."
"What?"
About the disappearances—had Breaker turned up nothing on that?
"Within the circles I could reach, it was all explained away as just another mystery the Labyrinth spawns."
Whether because his magicware had been gutted and rebuilt wholesale, or because traveling with Alan had exposed him to one thing after another, Taylor's taboos had all but vanished. And still, no clear answer emerged.
One option remained: reach the summit before the blizzard hit. The sky turned pitch black around the midpoint of any climb, so he needed a way to ascend fast.
Alan's gaze drifted, quite naturally, to Box.
Beep...
"Come here."
Even as Box tried to hide behind Taylor, Alan's hand reached out mercilessly and detached a single component.
It was a levitation unit—one recovered from the Death Eye they'd fought beneath Kasara. Normally a limiter capped it, letting it fly at only a modest pace, but...
"There's a way."
As a magitech engineer, Alan could strip the limiter with ease. Output restrictions would vanish, the strain on the unit would grow and shorten its lifespan—but exploration mattered far more right now.
Taylor watched as Alan affixed the levitation unit to parts of the Power Suit and elsewhere.
"Will that thing hold up?"
"Thanks to the device, we'll manage."