Chapter 47:
The Ruins
“Here we are…”
Around half an hour later, the group, led by the demons, arrived at a peak in the rocky mountains. There, they saw a small, unassuming cave—or rather, something like a nook in the cliff face, half-hidden by its own strangely shaped opening. It seemed to be blocked by a large rock in which something or the other had opened a tiny gap.
Had they not come here expressly searching for this place, they might never have found it. It was in a mountain range that people rarely visited, in a place completely separate from the usual, far-easier routes that people usually took to traverse the range. Plus, the gap itself was mostly hidden by the protruding rock.
“Our guys on the investigation team are just through here.”
As it happened, the full team consisted of the five demons the Vow had encountered, who were there as bodyguards, along with
three others serving as investigators. When they had initially begun their search for the ruins, each of the investigators had traveled with a single guard, while the remaining two moved separately to serve as a vanguard against any humans or monsters who might approach. However, now that they had found what they were after, all of the investigators stayed together. Normally, three of the guards would remain with them while the other two scouted the perimeter, but since they had spotted the Crimson Vow approaching, all five had gone out together.
With the demons taking the lead, the Crimson Vow squeezed through the narrow entrance into a passageway that was only barely tall enough to stand in and no more than two humans wide. The walls and floor were bare rock. However, as they walked, this began to change.
“Have humans been through here?” Reina asked.
Indeed, just as she suggested, the walls, floor, and ceiling now appeared as though they had been purposefully carved.
“I wonder if they’re the same as those other ruins…”
However, there was no one who could answer that. The Crimson Vow had no way of knowing—and the demons would have no clue what was meant by the “other ruins” at all.
It was clear that this makeshift thoroughfare was not used often. Though there was a clear spot toward the center of the floor where the demons had passed through countless times, this was the only spot where some of the rock showed through, and the sides of the pathway were piled with dust and rubble. It wouldn’t be strange for monsters or beasts to make a home of such a cave, but there was no indication that this had happened. Was it merely a coincidence? Or was there some particular reason…?
“We’re back!” the leader shouted just before they turned a bend so as not to put the others on alert.
“Oh, hey guys!” a voice answered from within. “How’d it go with those pretty hunters?”
Hearing themselves referred to as such, the members of the Crimson Vow all suddenly looked rather shy. The five demon guards looked at them in disbelief, as if to ask, “Since when are you all the bashful type?!”
“Wh-what are they doing here?!” the three investigators shouted, reflexively putting themselves on guard as the escort team rounded the bend with the Crimson Vow. “You captured them? But then why did you bring them here?! We thought you were gonna scare them off. Seriously, what the hell were you thinking?! It’s like you gave up our location on purpose…”
The investigators appeared quite vexed. With a regretful look upon his face, the guard leader explained.
“Actually, we did. We were the ones who were captured. They beat us and made us bring them here. I’m sorry, guys. I’m really sorry…”
The four others bowed their heads deeply alongside him.
“Wh…?”
The report was ridiculous and rather hard to swallow. The investigators could only stand there, silent and shocked.
The guard team explained the situation.
“Zawin, you—” one of the investigation team began.
“Don’t say it! I’m begging you, please don’t say anything!” The leader of the guard team bowed his head. Apparently, his name was Zawin.
As the girls understood it, based on what they had been told on the road back to the mountain, the leadership of the group was split between the head of the investigation team and the head of the guard team. When it came to matters involving the investigation itself, it was the investigation leader who made the decisions, while in matters of battle and anything related, the guard leader called the shots. In either case, the full team was expected to defer to their judgment.
In other words, since Zawin had decided to surrender, the full team, including the investigators, was expected to abide by that decision.
“Well, what’s gonna happen to us now?! Are we gonna be taken prisoner and interrogated by the humans?! We couldn’t possibly allow that to happen… I’ve got it! Even if you guys were defeated, there’s still a chance for us to show our strength! All we have to do is win, right? That’ll invalidate the previous result, and we’ll be fine!”
The other two investigators nodded enthusiastically at the proposal of their leader, Helst, but the five guards shook their heads sullenly.
“Don’t bother.”
“I mean, I’m guessing that you all went easy on them because they’re little girls, and then they just happened to get an opening, right?” Helst argued. “If we take them on seriously, then…”
Zawin looked at him wearily and replied, “Were you not listening to what I said earlier? I told you, we fought them all one by one. Are you sayin’ that we still would’ve gone easy after seein’ our guys lose one after the other? Yer sayin’ that they just ‘happened’ to get an opening four times in a row? No wait—five, if ya count Kohyal, who got knocked out first! Do y’all seriously think we’re that stupid?”
“………” Helst was silent.
“This is my decision as leader of the guards, which means it’s an order. We cannot beat those girls. If they took us on seriously, we’d be wiped out or dragged half-dead to some human village. And then what do you think would happen to us?”
“………”
Seeing that the investigation trio had no response, Zawin turned haplessly to Mile.
“Sorry. Could I get you to show ’em a bit of whatcha got?”
Mile caught his drift perfectly and quietly pointed to the rock face.
Chnkchnkchnkchnkchnkchnkchnkchnk!
Silence spread across the area.
Even for a spell that she had recited in her head, it had manifested absurdly fast. The shots were rapid-fire, with immense speed, from an entirely silent incantation…
Eight holes of unknown depth had now opened up in the wall.
Eight—the same as the number of demons who were currently present.
Such rate of fire, such speed of casting, and such force…
There was no one who could guard themselves against that.
“…Forgive me.” Helst bowed his head to Zawin in apology. “I knew how skilled you all are, and I still doubted your judgment. I was wrong.”
If he sincerely apologized, Zawin would forgive him, Helst assumed. Zawin, however, did not reply. Helst lifted his head slowly, thinking that Zawin must truly be angry.
“W-w-we-wer…” Zawin was pointing at the little human girl, and trembling. “Were you holdin’ out on meee?!?!”
***
“So, if y’all hear the whole story and decide there are no problems here, you’ll leave us alone?”
Once Mile manufactured some excuse to pacify the raging Zawin, both groups finally sat down to have a discussion. The main parties were Zawin, on the demons’ side, and Mile, for the Crimson Vow.
“Yes. We already heard the gist of it from that elder dragon errand boy—what was it again? Um, oh yes—Berdetice. So the humans are already aware of what’s happening. I’d imagine the intel is currently being spread all across the land by now. Therefore, as long as you all can prove that you’re operating within that scope and have no intention of meddling within any human territories, then we can commit that to our report and call it a day.
“Of course, I have no idea how the lord and king of this place will react or what they might decide to do—but at the very least, that’s all that we, who undertook this investigation, would have to do to fulfill our obligations. Once we’ve done it, we’ll go home—and I get the feeling that the leadership won’t be too interested in sticking their noses into this, either.”
“You’ve met Lord Berdetice?! W-wait, what do you mean ‘errand boy’…?”
“Hm? Well, that’s what he called himself, anyway. He said, ‘I am but a humble intermediary.’”
“An intermediary and an errand boy are two very different things,” said Zawin. Still, it was true that Berdetice, despite being a high-ranking elder dragon, was being sent around to do follow-up at the various sites. If one thought about it, the role he had been given was more or less that of an errand boy after all. Thus, Zawin could not truly argue with Mile’s interpretation.
At any rate, now that they had confirmed that the girls did possess some measure of information, Zawin could tell them anything that fell under the categories of ‘what would not be a problem for them to know’ and ‘what they probably already know,’ and that would likely be enough to satisfy them. Of course, how long they intended to be at the site, and where they stood in the overall progress of their investigation, was, as of yet, undecided.
However, as for their current status…
They were currently conversing in a wide-open space. In the wall at the end of the space, there was something…
“Um, about that there…?” Unable to hold back any longer, Mile turned to Helst with a question.
She had noticed it the moment they had rounded the bend and spotted the investigation trio. Since then, Mile could not take her eyes off of it.
“Ah—that? It’s a little room that looks like some kind of treasure vault. It dead-ends there. Though I guess, since it’s so small and made of metal or something, you could probably say it’s more like a safe. It took a lot of work, but we managed to force it open, only to find it was empty inside. I guess it’s no surprise that whoever built this place would’ve taken whatever was in there with them when they abandoned it.”
“………”
It was just the same as the ruins from before.
To the demons, and to Reina and the others, it would have looked like a vault or a safe. This, however, is what Mile saw: the wrenched-open, mangled doors of an elevator…
Would an ancient civilization that was supposed to be far more advanced than those on Earth really use something so primitive that Mile could identify it as an elevator as first glance? Would they not use some locomotive device that was far more fantastical? Mile wondered this briefly but quickly set herself straight.
It wasn’t as though this previous civilization had simply collapsed overnight. If they declined slowly, then it was possible that in their final years, most of their technological advances and equipment had already been lost.
Plus, no matter how many scientific advances they may have made, that didn’t mean that they would stop making use of older technologies. Necessity, safety, reliability, low maintenance costs, and any other number of reasons might see to their continued use.
No matter how advanced your technology was, you wouldn’t use a science fictional transporter just to go to the next room. Even on Earth, though every department store in the world had elevators and escalators, they all still had stairs, too. There were also things like fire escapes and other apparatuses for emergency evacuation. Perhaps this was just that—an elevator to be used in case of an emergency.
Even if it resembled an elevator from the outside, it might actually be some kind of teleportation device. Or it could use some kind of gravity control or maglev technology instead of cables. Or maybe it was powered by an antimatter engine or something like that.
Only one thing was for certain: as old and decrepit as this passageway was, there was no way that the thing could possibly still move. And even if it did seem like it had any chance of still operating, she would be far too terrified to try and ride in it. Plus, if it had still been functional up until its rediscovery, now that the doors were in shambles, it probably would no longer operate with any modicum of safety.
Secretly, Mile activated her magical sonar.
Indeed, she supposed, if this was in fact anything like an elevator, there was certain to be something like a set of stairs or a maintenance pit somewhere nearby.
***
“Well, that will be it for us then,” Mile announced, as spokesperson for the Crimson Vow. “We will make camp somewhere in the vicinity tonight and depart in the morning. We will report that this appears to be nothing more than a standard investigation with no special concerns. However, there is the possibility that others may be sent here to investigate or that travelers may come passing through, so please do take care. Word of the previous incident at the ruins may make it here sooner than you know, and then the humans may begin to connect the dots…”
The demons nodded.
The Crimson Vow then stood to take their leave.
“Say, though,” Zawin called out to them, “Could ya tell us one thing? Are all humans these days just as strong as you four? How many’re there out there like you?”
“You are aware that, save for G, which is merely an apprentice level, we hunters are divided into seven ranks—F, E, D, C, B, A, and S—correct?” Mile replied.
“Y-yeah, I mean I have heard something like that…”
“The four of us are only C-ranks.”
“You’re…what now…?”
The demons were awestruck, dumbfounded, and horrified.
As Mile and company left the room, they left eight stone statues, their mouths all agape, behind them.
***
Late that night, as they all slept within their tent, Mile rolled up her blanket and quietly slipped outside.
The very next second…
Plink!
Ka-fwump!
“Gah!”
Mile tripped over a string and took a spectacular tumble.
“Wha-wh-wh-wh…?”
Mile flailed about as the other three groggily awoke.
“We thought you might try something like this, so we tied a string to your ankle after you fell asleep,” Reina announced proudly, still reclining, but with her hands on her hips.
“Th-that’s cruel!”
“And just which of us is the cruel one, huh?! You’re the one who was trying to sneak off and leave us behind again, weren’t you?!” Pauline jabbed.
“Nnh…”
Mile was fuming, but to that conjecture she had no reply. Reina and Mavis were one thing, but she still owed Pauline for the Attempted Abandonment Incident.
“I’m sorry.”
“Anyway, you gave yourself away when you said that you wanted to ‘camp somewhere nearby’ for the night.”
“Er…”
Already, Reina and Pauline seemed to have developed a sense of precognition when it came to Mile’s thought processes. Not that it was quite on the level of Marcela’s, of course…
“All right then, let’s get going!”
“Okay…”
Naturally, the cave was their intended destination.
“The demons did say that they were camping inside the cave. They’re probably sleeping in the deepest part of it with someone out near the entrance keeping watch,” Mile mused.
“Sounds about right to me,” Reina agreed.
As they neared the entrance of the cave, Mile activated her location magic.
“There are two of them just beyond the entrance. The rest are deeper inside, exactly as we assumed.”
Mile then used a sleep spell. Medicinal particles that would induce sleep began to drift around the demons’ faces.
Unlike on TV, it was impossible to instantly knock someone out with a handkerchief soaked in chloroform or ether or something. It took a little more time than that for any inhaled anesthetic to start working, and administered poorly, it could even lead to paralysis of the respiratory organs, followed by death.
This drug, however, was one produced by the nanomachines, and it was nothing like anything ever made on Earth. For them, it was no trouble to conjure a substance that was exactly as Mile requested: colorless, odorless, and instantaneous in its effects, with no health risks or side effects.
And so, the two demons silently fell unconscious, still sitting on the ground. Had the two been standing, Mile would have devised some other method, for if they had fallen onto the rocky ground from a standing position, they could have been seriously—and possibly even fatally—hurt.
The four members of the Crimson Vow slipped into the cave, carefully eyeing the sleeping demons out of the corners of their eyes. After they proceeded a short distance, nearing the place where the others resided, Mile once again began her sleep spell.
Because these demons were already asleep, nothing changed on the surface, but this way, it would take more than just walking by them to wake them up. Still, Mile summoned a sound-dampening barrier around them, just in case.
“Shall we?”
Rather than heading straight over to the busted open “elevator-like object,” Mile began fumbling around with something along one of the walls a little bit away.
“Um, now, I think if I do this…”
Previously, when using her search magic in the cave, Mile had asked the nanomachines to find out if there were any staircases or any other accessible entrances around them. What they had reported to her was that the entrance she was after was merely camouflaged and that the mechanism that would open it was still in functional condition—not locked or rusted shut.
Perhaps it merely lacked a lock because it was a passage for emergency use. Or maybe the last person to leave the place forgot to lock it. Or perhaps, they had not had time…
Ka-chink.
As Mile searched the underside of a small rock protrusion with her fingers, there was a soft sound.
“All right!”
She gripped the knob with her hand, pulling it to the side as hard as she could, and suddenly, soundlessly, part of the rock wall slid aside, revealing a small opening.
“Wh-what is…?”
“I think it’s some kind of emergency exit. I don’t know if it’s unlocked because there’s no point in locking an emergency exit or if they just forgot to lock it, but, well, either way, this is pretty convenient for our purposes.”
She could not even begin to imagine what kind of locks would have been employed by the people who had built this place. Of course, she could have simply asked the nanomachines to investigate the mechanisms for her if she had to, or else, she could have simply used force and destroyed it. However, the sentimental part of Mile balked at the idea of smashing some part of these ruins like they were only rubbish after they had withstood the test of the eons.
The other three followed Mile into the new opening, finding a set of dimly lit stairs leading further underground.
Was the light this dim for the same reason that some northern Europeans prefer dimmer light than Japanese people—because they have less pigment and are more susceptible to the sun? Or was it that someone decided that this place didn’t need very much light because it was merely a passageway? Or was it simply to save on costs and energy usage?
The light came not from any torch or electric light but from the walls themselves. Rather, it seemed that the whole space was glowing from some mysterious, unseen source. Whether the light was magical or a product of some ancient technology, there was no way to say.
Mile suddenly recalled a quote she had once read in a book in her previous life:
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
And with that thought, Mile ceased to ponder the matter.
It wouldn’t be any fun to ask the nanomachines about every little thing, and besides, she didn’t have the time for that at the moment.
All that mattered was that they had light, and so, Mile shut the entrance with confidence. Presumably, it would shut cleanly again, making it imperceptible from the rest of the rock face from the outside.
“Let’s go. We need to be careful and move quietly. This place is probably really old, so I don’t think that there’d be anyone still living here, but there might be traps to guard against intruders—or these old stairs might crumble under our feet. So, let’s take it slow. And please, everyone, it’s imperative that you try not to touch anything or raise your voices. If you notice anything weird, please make sure to tell the rest of us right away,” Mile warned.
With grave faces, the other three nodded.
As they moved slowly down the stairs, Mile thought to herself, These are different from the ruins we saw last time… Except for those amazing murals, everything there could be constructed with the technology we have now—aside from the fact that it would take a ridiculous amount of time and labor. But this place is…
Indeed, these ruins were clearly different. From the illumination to the crisp construction of the floor and walls, to the stairs descending deep underground…
Yet, although the cave itself had clearly been subject to some level of human interference, other than the “elevator-like object,” it was still nothing more than what the people of today could achieve. In fact, even that “elevator-like object” looked like nothing more than an ancient vault or safe in the eyes of everyone other than Mile—and a cave like this was not that peculiar of a place for such a thing.
This was probably on purpose, in the event that some human or similar lifeform should happen upon the place. If anyone came inside, they would conclude it was a cave that had once contained treasures that had been removed, at which point they would investigate no further.
So does that mean that these really are ruins of that ancient civilization that Dr. Clairia and the elder dragons mentioned? If they really are that old, wouldn’t all of their records, their devices—really, even the metal itself—have corroded away?
No matter how well constructed this cave and these stairs are, and no matter how far down these stairs might go, they’re still just carved out of rock. It’s possible that even the light here might just be from rock that has some naturally luminescent property.
Of all materials, rock is the longest lasting, and as for the luminescence, if it’s something like Uranium-235 or 238, then it’d have a half-life in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of years… Gah! That’s terrifying!
No no no no no, I’m sure that no advanced civilization would ever use something that would give you radiation poisoning…
Mile made a worried face as she walked, deep in thought. The others proceeded in silence as well, with similarly grave expressions.
“Sure goes on for a while…”
A fair bit of time had passed since they had begun their descent. Though they were well conditioned for walking along roads or through the forest, none of them were in good enough shape to walk down this many stairs. Since this world obviously had nothing like skyscrapers, this should come as little surprise.
Of course, there were castles, which had fairly high areas within them, but in the grand scheme of things, those were really not all that high. Anyway, it was not as though any of the girls had had the chance to go walking up and down castle towers. However, the biggest problem was…
“Ngh! My knees…and my back…”
Per Pauline’s complaint, long flights of stairs took a toll on one’s knees and lower back, especially for individuals who were not accustomed to the movement.
After a while, the girls finally reached what appeared to be the bottom. Considering that there were no doors or landings along the way, the probability was fairly high that these stairs were not meant for practical, everyday use but rather as an emergency egress—the quickest path possible from the lowest level of the caves up to the surface.
At the end of this passage lay a single door.
“Shall we then?” asked Mile.
The other three silently nodded.
Slowly, gently, Mile opened the door just a crack and peeked inside.
Clack.
And then she pulled the door shut.
“Th-there’s something in there…” she said.
“Wh-what is it?!” asked Reina.
“Th-there was something in there…”
Sweat dripped down Mile’s brow.
“And just what do you mean by ‘something’?!”
“Something…”
As this exchange was going nowhere, Reina herself opened the door and peeked inside.
And then the door shut.
“There is something in there…”
“And just what is it already?!” Mavis and Pauline chorused.
They peeked behind the door as well.
“Something’s there…”
Indeed, beyond the door was what appeared to be a hallway, and in that hallway was…something.
Something the size of a large dog, scuttling around on six legs…
It was insectoid but not an insect. It had six legs and a black, lustrous carapace, but its greatest feature was not insectoid at all. On top of the torso that bore the legs, was a second, vertical, humanoid trunk and head that sprouted from it, with four arms of its own.
It was grotesque.
There was no other word for it. It was a grotesque, otherworldly form that blurred evolutionary lines.
And it was walking the halls just beyond that door.
After a brief silence, Reina finally spoke. “A scavenger.”
“A scavenger?” Mavis repeated, intrigued.
“They never taught us about them at the prep school, but I heard about this from the Crimson Lightning. They’re lifeforms that live outside of the bounds of nature—few have ever seen them.
“They gather around the corpses of parties who have been wiped out and take things from their bodies—weapons, armor, equipment, money—anything made of metal. They never touch the bodies themselves, so no one knows what they eat or what they take the metal for. They’re mysterious creatures. Even if you try to follow them, they always seem to be heading off somewhere incredibly far away, so no one has ever managed to discover one of their lairs. Given the fact that they stay away from living humans and have never harmed anyone—and since there are so few eyewitnesses, the creatures rarely come up in conversation. Almost no one has heard about them. Obviously, I don’t have any firsthand proof that they even exist, but that thing behind the door looked a lot like what I heard about in those stories…”
A bug-like creature that lived in caves underground. It was a common tale, which no one thought much of…except for Mile.
I-It was metallic! It definitely looked metallic! And it’s been working all this time… That’s pretty metal. Wait! What am I saying?!
“I see,” said Pauline, “Of course. If you lived deep underground in a ruin like this, no one would ever find your lair…”
“Hang on. When you put it like that, it’s creepy. Anyway, she said that they aren’t interested in humans, so we should be fine.”
Pauline’s words and Mavis’s reply entered Mile’s ears but did not register.
Ruins. Insectoid robots. Collecting metal. Doing no harm to humans. That means…
All the gears in Mile’s head spun furiously, clicking to a stop on a singular conclusion.
They’re automatons in charge of maintenance or preservation…
If that was true, there was only one further conclusion to draw.
“These ruins are still being used…”
“What did you just say?” Reina asked suspiciously.
“It seems like these ruins are still being used.”
“What?” The other three were perplexed.
“Well, those scavengers. I’m wondering if they aren’t doing some maintenance, or rather, upkeep on these ruins…”
“Oh, I see! That’s what they need the metal for!”
Naturally, Mavis was on the ball when it came to things like this.
In all matters of common sense, Reina was the one to ask. Mercantile affairs and money? Pauline. Combat, warfare, and logistics and supplies were Mavis’s area, and Mile covered anything beyond the realm of conventional wisdom. Together, they were an unstoppable encyclopedic force.
“N-now just hold it right there! What’re you saying here? That those bug monsters are some kind of sentient rulers?!” Reina shouted, her eyes wide in shock. Obviously, that was not the case.
“No, I mean, they aren’t rulers or anything… I think they’re merely doing as they were ordered to. Just as the people who lived here a long, long time ago ordered them to.”
“W-wait a minute, Mile! Wouldn’t that mean that those creatures would have been alive this entire time?”
Pauline’s skepticism was perfectly reasonable.
“No. I actually don’t think that those are ‘life-forms’—not in the traditional sense. I think they’re… how to put it? More like golems. If they break, their comrades can fix them, or they might even just make new copies of them themselves… Anyway, that means that as long as they don’t all happen to be destroyed at once, they can repair themselves, reproduce, and keep on living indefinitely. That’s my thinking.”
“Indefinitely,” as Mile said, implied not an invincible immortality but rather a ‘self-perpetuating’ existence.
“………” The others were silent.
“Well, there’s no use in us just standing around here. Let’s go forward,” said Mile.
“B-but if we go forward, then…” Reina stammered, hesitant.
If they continued into the passage, a scavenger might spot them. Even if the stories said that they would never harm humans, those were just hearsay. Plus, there was no guarantee that their apparent benevolence would extend to people who had just invaded their home—or that they had not been ordered to protect this place against any invaders “by any means necessary.”
Furthermore, Reina had never heard any tales of humans fighting against the scavengers in the past. Was this because these battles themselves had never occurred? Or simply because no one had lived to tell the tale?
How might such creatures fight? Did they have poison? Would they group together for a swarming strike? The risks of taking on an enemy that they had never encountered before and had not a single piece of information on, ran very high.
“Don’t worry, I’ll put up an invisibility cloak and a sound barrier. That way they won’t detect us.”
“Invihsuhbilitee cloke?” Reina repeated, utterly bewildered, a question mark practically floating above her head.
“It’s something that’ll make sure the enemy can’t see us. It’s like the sound barrier but for light instead of noise.”
“Mm-hmm…”
Mile answered in such clear terms that Reina accepted her words without question, though there was still something a bit vexing about her explanation.
To make a sound barrier, one simply had to erect a screen that would disrupt the vibrations moving through the air between yourself and an opponent. However, doing that with light would mean that, while your opponent would indeed be unable to see you, you would not be able to see your opponent, either. Light being unable to get through would also mean that it would be pitch black around you, and you would be frozen in place, unable to see your surroundings even as your opponent saw something like a pitch-black dome of darkness where you stood, making it easy to determine your hiding place.
Furthermore, if you were somehow able to make it so that you could see outside of your dome, allowing the light and electromagnetic waves from the outside to get in without letting the light reflecting off you escape, the temperature on the inside would rise to untenable temperatures. It would be a greenhouse effect.
If you then tried to vent the heat out, the scope of your external visibility would increase; opponents who could see infrared waves visually, as well as opponents with things like snakes’ pit organs, which can sense infrared waves, would easily be able to detect you.
In addition, this could not be thought of as a simple matter of isolating their reflected light. Any light reflected from the scenery behind them would still have to pass through in order to give the illusion that they were not there. Figuring out how to clear all of those hurdles would be a problem far beyond the reach of the people of this world, who did not have a concept of the visible light spectrum, much less infrared waves, heat, and the other special properties of light.
Was Reina able to accept Mile’s explanation so easily because she had no understanding of such matters and merely thought that it really would operate the same way as a sound barrier? Or was it because it was Mile, which always meant that there was no point in questioning her logic?
On that note, it would be absurdly difficult for any normal person to enact a field of total invisibility using magic. Without sufficient scientific knowledge, forming and emitting the appropriate thought-pulse to overcome all of these factors—unconsciously, no less—would be an impossibility for the common man.
In Mile’s case, though, all she had to think to herself was, “Invisibility cloak, activate! Make me invisible and deal with all the complications of that for me, please!” and the nanomachines would take care of the rest. By Mile’s reasoning, this was simply a normal use of magic as directed by her thoughts, though obviously, that was not the case.
She had a nanomachine authorization level 5.
Even if she was unable to conceptualize and emit the image of the appropriate concrete process for the nanomachines to actualize, as long as her words and the image of the result she wanted were fitting, she could count on the nanomachines to take care of all the necessary details at their own discretion.
It was essentially the difference between filling out all of your income tax forms manually, and simply paying a tax advisor who would handle everything for you.
“Now then, shall we?”
With that, Mile activated her sound barrier and cloak and put her hand to the door.
The Crimson Vow gently pushed open the door and stepped into the hallway. Seeing that there were no scavengers around, they shut the door, and then, after giving the place a careful look around, continued their investigation.
“So, which way should we go?”
Even before Mavis asked, Mile was already pondering this same question.
After thinking for a short while, she pulled a single rusted sword from her inventory. It was something she had looted off of bandits they had wiped out some time ago. She placed it gently on the floor of the hallway and directed everyone to move a short distance away.
About ten seconds later, a single scavenger approached from one side of the hallway. The moment it noticed the sword lying on the floor, it scurried over to collect it and then returned in the direction from which it came.
“Looks like that’s the way!” said Mile.
The other three nodded.
Though Reina had initially reported that the scavengers were fairly quick, this one did not appear to be moving very quickly at all. It was quite possible that it could go faster if it put its mind to it, but its normal speed was clearly a fair bit slower than that. Moving quicker would expend more energy and cause more wear on its body; given that it did not appear exceptionally strapped for time, there was no need for it to push itself that far.
Thus, the girls were able to follow the scavenger without overexerting themselves.
“Oh,” Mile remarked. “Looks like it went in that room.”
Indeed, as she had noted, the scavenger had just crossed the threshold of what appeared to be some sort of entrance.
Naturally, this entrance had no door. Given the creature’s height and build, it would have been quite the chore for it to have to open and shut doors all the time. Of course, it could have employed an automatic door or something, but devices with a lot of moving parts were unlikely to withstand the test of time, and doors did not seem like they would be necessary for something like a scavenger.
And so, the four crept through the entrance behind it.
“Wh-what the heck is this…?”
“………”
This was the scene that unfolded before them: A swarm of scavengers, holding items that appeared to be tools in their hands, around a long line of work tables piled high with various objects.
Reina, Mavis, and Pauline could not even conceive of what was happening before their eyes, but to Mile, this was how things appeared:
“It’s a workshop…”
As the word suggested, the operation was a small one—less a large-scale industrial plant than the sort of second-rate factory that might pop up in some backwater town. Of course, there were no conveyor belts or anything to aid the assembly line—just a number of scavengers facing the objects that were set upon the stationary tables, working away at something or other.
“They’re…golems…”
In fact, what lay upon those tables were the bodies of golems—rock golems and iron golems.
The metallic golems might have actually been made of something like copper as opposed to iron, but they were called “iron golems” nonetheless. Rock golems could not compare to their strength. Even among the Crimson Vow, perhaps only Mile stood a chance of being able to cut through one.
The saving grace for hunters was that golems never left their own territories, meaning that it was essentially unheard of for them to come into human settlements and attack. The only time golems ever laid a hand on humans was when humans went trespassing in their territories, and even this only happened when the invading hunters were after game or other materials from the land—or when they aimed to make the golems themselves their harvest and engaged with them in battle. In such cases, the percentage of hunters who were able to best an iron golem was incredibly low.
“Wh-what could they be doing…?” Pauline whispered.
“Repairs, I’d guess. Since you can’t really say that you’d ‘heal’ a golem,” Mavis replied.
As the scavengers did not appear to be producing any new individuals, Mile was inclined to agree. If they had been continually producing brand-new golems for tens of thousands of years, golems would have spread across the entire planet like a pox. Given that this was not the case, and that the golems’ territories did not appear to be increasing, this was a sound judgment to make.
“That’s it!”
Mile was struck with an epiphany. Finally, she knew the reason why golems would suddenly cease to function with the destruction of their heads, which contained nothing more than auditory and visual sensors.
More than likely, the golems relied on calculating their current surrounding circumstances to move, a calculation that would be based on information transmitted from an external source. If this were cut off, then they might end up attacking their own allies, or unintentionally harming their (probably long-gone) “masters,” so they would have been designed to cease functioning if all of their sensors were destroyed and to wait until someone could come to collect them—someone such as the scavengers.
“And what conclusions are you coming to all by yourself over there, genius?” Reina said snidely. To be fair, this was neither the time nor the place for Mile to be giving any long-winded explanations.
With that in mind, Mile ignored her and began using her surveillance magic, thinking that a modest operation like this could not be the only thing present in a facility built this deeply underground. There was little doubt that these ruins were made up of a variety of different, smaller operations, all combined into one greater institution.
“An ancient industrial complex…”
In her previous life, Mile had been rather fond of flipping through pamphlets about machinery. She was enamored of their aesthetics. Naturally, this interest extended to large-scale equipment as well.
“Wh…?”
There was nothing.
What her magical scan found was that there was not a single other workshop in operation anywhere else in this facility.
That said, she did get a number of pings from rooms that were buried in rock or dirt, the wreckage of machine-like constructions that had been crushed by fallen rubble, and other things of that ilk. Even the machine-like constructions retained not even the faintest resemblance to their original forms—they were nothing but heaps of rusted metal and dust.
The ones that were buried could probably be excavated, given enough time. The reason that this had not happened thus far was that this was likely outside of the scavengers’ programmed responsibilities. Furthermore, they were machines that belonged to the scavengers’ “masters,” so taking them apart to recycle the metal would probably be out of the question. Or perhaps it was merely that there were others who were meant to be in charge of the machines’ upkeep, and those units had already been destroyed…
The scant number of scavengers that had lived on were left repairing themselves and their comrades in arms and using a meager amount of materials to create a few more of their number.
For what? In anticipation of something?
Had their masters ordered them to await “a day that would one day come?”
Were those masters down in those buried rooms still, existing as mummified remains? Or had they made use of those stairs and that elevator to make their safe escape?
The girls had no way of knowing what had occurred so very long ago.
“Let’s go back. It doesn’t seem like there are any other facilities around here, and I want to leave these guys to their work.”
“………”
The three were silent.
“All right. Let’s go then,” Reina replied, several seconds later. Mavis and Pauline nodded in agreement.
If they were to destroy this place, then the number of golems in the region would slowly decrease, and eventually they would vanish altogether. This, of course, would probably be a boon to the humans. However, none of the girls could have mustered the strength to do such a thing.
Did they all agree because the request had come from Mile, who so very rarely voiced her own desires? Or was it because they would feel guilty destroying ruins that had stood for so many long years? Or was there some other reason? Only each girl herself could know.
The members of the Crimson Vow retraced their steps and returned to the inner portion of the cave.
Because their return up the stairs was an upward climb, it required much more stamina than the first part of the journey, but at least it was far easier on their knees and backs. It was manageable as long as they took breaks along the way. The four of them were C-rank hunters, after all.
They put the entrance wall back the way that they had found it, and once Mile confirmed that the demons would not be able to detect it, they slipped back around the corner, and she released a spell to nullify the effects of the sleeping drug.
As the demons had already been asleep in the first place, she could have simply left them as they were and let them wait for the drug to wear off naturally, but if some monster or bandit should slip in while they were still under its effects, they would be wiped out. She was not prepared to needlessly put anyone in harm’s way.
Especially considering that the lookouts were still asleep.
The members of the Crimson Vow returned to their campsite to sleep the rest of the night.
“My assumption is that entrance was closed off with a rock on purpose so that no one would use that passageway anymore. It just happened that some kind of movement caused the rock to shift, which opened it back up a crack. I wonder if it’ll just be left the way it is or if the scavengers will realize that it’s been opened and start using it as an entryway again… Well, I bet they have a bunch of other entrances around, so they probably won’t bother with it even if they notice. They probably will fix that elevator-looking thing though, so it should be a lot easier going down next time.”
“Hang on, ‘next time’?” Reina asked. “Are you planning on going back there again? Why would you wanna do that?”
Mile did not reply, thinking privately, I forgot about it this time, but I hope I can return it someday.
Yes, that. The orb that she had taken from within the chest of the rock golem they defeated so long ago that now rested within her inventory.
Somewhere along the line, she had realized that this orb was where a golem’s heart resides.
***
“Well, if the demons do find that place, then there’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t have any right to interfere, and they’d be free to claim that all they did was discover a monster’s nest and destroyed it. It wouldn’t be any bother to us—or rather, to us humans. Plus, those guys would probably have no idea what any of that stuff down there means, so they’d just conclude that the place was another miss—just some empty ruins that monsters had taken up residence in. They’d move right on to investigating the next site.”
Mile explained all this to the others on the way back to the capital, though in fact it was unlikely that the demons would ever come across those stairs or that underground facility.
That said, even if they did discover them, it wouldn’t matter. She had already explained that much.
Her desire to leave the ruins as she had found them was little more than sentiment. They were a group of machines, working tirelessly since some time in the distant past, honoring the commands of the masters who had built—
Suddenly, she was struck with a sense of déjà vu.
Hey, Nanos?
She called out softly within her head, but in a rare turn, the nanomachines did not reply.
Huh. Wonder if they’ve all gone off somewhere…
Mile then began to wonder—were there other such “living ruins” out there in the world? If any of them had been maintained in a more complete state, would that be what the elder dragons were seeking?
For now, all she could do was pray that their true aims were peaceful ones.
***
Upon returning to the Capital, the Crimson Vow headed straight to the guild hall to give their report.
“Pardon, but we’d like to give our job completion report directly to the guild master, if possible…” Mavis said to Felicia, the clerk.
Her eyes went wide. “Y-you all…” She greeted them as though they had suddenly ripped off a disguise. “I-I’m glad to see you all back safe, but is the job really complete? Were you able to confirm the identities of those suspects?”
“Er, yeah…”
Mavis took a step back as Felicia leaned out over the counter, bearing down.
“And you’re telling me that you want to give a direct report to the guild master himself, not to a lowly clerk like me, out here where the other hunters can hear you?”
“Erm, y-yes…?”
Mavis was petrified beneath Felicia’s gaze, but her resolve was unwavering.
“Come with me, then. Necelle, mind the counter!”
Felicia turned the reception desk over to another employee and led the way, the Crimson Vow following behind her.
The guild master’s office was up on the second floor, as it always was in these sorts of buildings. Felicia went in alone to explain the situation while the other four waited outside. Afterwards, they were called in.
“Well then, let’s hear it,” the guild master pressed them for their report.
This guild master, the master of the capital branch of the hunters’ guild in the Kingdom of Vanolark, gave the immediate impression of being a retired upper-rank hunter somewhere in his late forties or early fifties. His age would be no trouble were he a mage, but for a frontline, melee fighter, living to be middle-aged could be difficult. The fact that he had become the master of the capital guild branch after retiring meant that he had to be incredibly skilled. He had a brazen expression and a distinguished beard that appeared as though it had been cultivated especially for the sake of lending him a further air of dignity.
Because they were a young, rookie party who had received this meeting by their own petitioning, their standing here was low. So the Crimson Vow remained standing, facing the guild master straight on as he sat behind his desk. Felicia was standing in wait as well to the guild master’s side.
“I am Mile of the Crimson Vow, C-rank hunter. I would like to inform you as to the results of the job that we accepted, as well as some other recently developing information from abroad. I do not believe this news has reached the area yet, but I feel it may be pertinent.”
With that, Mile laid out all that she knew—except, of course, the details about the underground workshop and the stairs that lead down to it.
“I accept your report, and I suspect that any next steps will be a matter for the Crown to decide. That being said, given what you’ve told us, I imagine that once the palace officials are done endlessly debating and finally decide to act, the demons will already have packed up and left.
“Good work out there, in any event. I give your achievements an A-grade.” He turned to direct his words at Felicia. “Oh—and see that they get a one-gold bonus for bringing us additional information, as well as some contribution points.”
And so, the Crimson Vow’s very first job from the capital guild branch in the Kingdom of Vanolark was a great success.
I am glad that they came back safely, Felicia thought to herself as she revised the Crimson Vow’s valuation to reflect the surprise increase in compensation. But for them to have been able to investigate a group of demons so efficiently… Plus, the fact that they mentioned elder dragons and beastpeople in the report to the Master… It’s all rather… Hm, I wonder if I was too hard on the Silver Fangs. Well, it wasn’t really that big of a deal.
Though Felicia was quick to write the matter off, it had been quite the bother to the members of the Silver Fangs themselves.
When they had come wobbling back to the guild hall defeated, they had been violently dressed down in front of all the other hunters and guild employees. Felicia had reproached them as “weakly cowards” and “good-for-nothings who can’t even keep up with a group of children.”
From Felicia’s perspective, there was no way that a group of B-rank hunters should have been able to lose track of a party of little girls, some of whom were still underage. She could only assume that they had decided that the assignment was a pain and given up halfway through, coming back home with some made-up excuse.
Giving up simply out of boredom meant that they were directly defying her orders and abandoning a group of rookie hunters by the wayside, leaving them to die practically before their eyes. This had been the foundation of Felicia’s stern rebuke of the poor hunters of the Silver Fangs.
The Silver Fangs, so abused, offered no word in reply, simply dragging themselves back to their inn, their heads hung low and their tails between their legs. They were in no shape to set out on the road as they had planned to, so they had little other choice.
The shock for the Silver Fangs was doubled by the fact that Felicia’s digs at them were not just insults—they were, in fact, the truth. No matter how heavily laden they had been, the fact of the matter was that they had not been able to keep up with a group of children. They, who called themselves B-rank hunters.
The Fangs had lingered in the inn a few more days, still in shock. When they finally received word that the Crimson Vow had returned home safe, their job completed, they were able to psych themselves back up. It was clear that the Crimson Vow must be fairly skilled and that it had been their mistake to take the situation for granted as B-ranks. A few days behind schedule, they finally set out on their distant journey.
It would probably take a little longer for the Silver Fangs to rise to the level of an A-rank party after all of that.
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