Chapter 634: Underwater Barrier, Heart-Star Vault (3)
Clunk, clunk!!
Above the colossal, ceaselessly moving conveyor belt.
The width of the belt visible to the left and right stretched over a dozen meters, carrying all sorts of objects along its path.
Lennok, who had been lying on the belt, gazing blankly at the passing scenery, slowly rose.
His eyes, now refocused, gleamed clearly.
‘Only about five seconds passed in my body’s time. I wasn’t unconscious after all.’
High-level wizards who have reached a certain mastery can accurately measure time even when completely disoriented.
Although the concept of time is relative, by setting a few of their own biological responses as reference points, they can calculate how much time has passed.
Lennok hadn’t lost consciousness and fallen onto this conveyor belt the moment he opened the Underwater Barrier.
It was as if a long time had passed since he entered the barrier, yet he had merely collapsed as if adrift in this space in the blink of an eye.
Click!!
He snatched an unknown handgun that had been traveling on the conveyor belt alongside him.
‘Mana is faintly leaking, but the magazine is crushed, and the muzzle is bent. Irrecoverable. It’s completely broken.’
Not only that.
Other equipment and items on the conveyor belt, though appearing decent on the surface, were mostly defective.
Occasionally, there were intact items, but other discarded goods falling off the belt were in similarly poor condition.
Thud!!
Lennok turned his head at the deafening sound of something falling from the rear of the conveyor belt, a wry smile playing on his lips.
He saw the twisted, inverted shape of an exploration vessel, lodged at an angle amidst mountains of discarded goods, broken equipment, and items.
Lennok immediately walked over to inspect the vessel’s condition.
“The Armadelta Alloy’s wear is less than I expected. I think it could be ridden at least once more……”
He had considered an escape method since he first entered the Underwater Barrier, but if the exploration vessel was intact, there was no reason to take risks.
Thinking so, Lennok immediately shrunk the vessel’s form and stored it within his pocket.
After retrieving the exploration vessel, Lennok stepped off the conveyor belt and slowly surveyed his surroundings.
“Hmm……”
A colossal glass cavity, its size difficult to ascertain.
Beyond the conveyor belt, which continued endlessly to the end of the cavity, unknown objects ceaselessly poured out.
Beyond the transparent glass, a faint blue, clear sea shimmered, and the dense foliage of palm trees and various other intertwined trees formed a forest.
A paradise of magic engineering. The essence of mechanical civilization, known as the heart of Machina.
Yet, the scenery inside the Underwater Barrier, reputed to be its most crucial core area, unexpectedly seemed the least related to magic engineering of anything Lennok had ever seen.
At first glance, it appeared to be a purely natural landscape, preserved without any human intervention or measures.
To find the Heart-Star Vault, he would likely have to go in reverse, against the direction the conveyor belt was moving.
Whirrrrr!!
Walking backward against the ceaselessly moving belt, Lennok retraced his steps through the cavity, but after a short while, he was blocked by a gigantic glass barrier.
An alert, emblazoned with magical runes, appeared on the solid glass barrier.
[Area 44B. Closed and incinerated today.]
[Personnel are to remain on standby until further notice.]
“Closed, huh……”
Come to think of it, he had heard an announcement about closing the area immediately after entering this space.
He had dismissed it, but perhaps it meant no one was allowed to exit beyond this space.
The conveyor belt continued to move, but with the barrier closed, no more discarded goods or items entered.
The moment Lennok pondered this fact, lost in thought, the air within the glass cavity suddenly grew scorching hot.
Whoosh!!
A pure white flame surged from beneath his feet, instantly engulfing and devouring the mountains of discarded goods piled everywhere.
Various items, discarded goods, and trash melted away instantly in the immense heat.
The firepower was so intense that even Lennok would struggle to endure it long without a shield.
Lennok frowned faintly and immediately used Flicker to escape outside the glass cavity.
Flash!!
Lennok’s current location was the jungle on the outermost edge of this massive island.
A winding glass cavity passage cut through the heart of the jungle, circling the island like a ring.
To reach the center of this island, he would have to follow the serpentine glass passage, but……
Lennok abruptly turned and plunged into the sea stretching out along the island’s periphery.
Splash!!
As the seawater reached his waist and gentle waves rippled, Lennok plunged his hand beneath the surface.
He picked up a few wet grains of sand from the seabed and spoke.
“Davi. Can you see this?”
[Yes. Do I just need to calculate the curvature?]
Davi replied, immediately understanding Lennok’s words.
[There are 42 grains of sand in Master’s hand. All of them are perfect spheres.]
“Just as I thought. They meticulously replicated the natural environment, but they neglected the terrain beneath the sea.”
Lennok murmured, washing the sand off in the seawater.
“This is a meticulously designed artificial miniature garden. The sand and sea we stand on, the glass cavity, and even the conveyor belt are all spaces created with magic engineering.”
Lennok walked out of the water and lightly brushed off his coat, and the clinging seawater and salt vanished as if washed away.
With a single gesture, Lennok neatly tidied himself and gazed at the colossal forest unfolding before him.
“To use cutting-edge magic engineering to create a space that resembles the most primal nature… there must be a reason for it.”
Instead of returning to the glass cavity, Lennok began walking through the dense forest outside the cavity, unshielded.
Whoosh!!
As soon as he entered the forest, a stale, heavy air enveloped him.
A normal human would likely collapse from dehydration, unable to endure it for long.
But Lennok, while protecting himself with various spells, focused his mind to not miss any environmental changes around him.
‘Considering the Penteract’s location, Teremer’s Demise must be here. But……’
Why would the Heart-Star Vault, which should be housing precious Old World relics, take the form of such an unmanaged, uninhabited island?
The specific reason was hard to ascertain, but they undoubtedly had a reason for artificially creating such an environment.
Lennok, continuously scanning with his mana sense to miss no detail of his surroundings, discovered a suspicious presence nearby.
[Master?]
“Between these tree stumps here. The roots are strangely twisted.”
A clearing made by forcibly removing roots. Something was hidden there.
Crack!!
Using common magic to dig into the ground, Lennok lowered his gaze at the sensation of something obstructing him.
“A skull? No, rather than a skull……”
Lennok’s expression subtly changed as he carefully picked it up with his gloved hand.
What appeared to be a human skull, upon closer inspection, bore the skeletal structure of an entirely different creature.
It had three horns on its forehead, a single nostril, and more than five skeletal joints below its jaw.
Without a doubt, its living form must have been a monster with a four-way split mouth.
But Davi immediately denied Lennok’s assessment.
[If the creature’s jaw bones were attached like this, its jaw would have ground down every time it ate.]
“So it’s not the skull of an actually existing creature.”
Indeed, as Davi said, despite the skull’s lack of inherent strength, there were almost no signs of abrasion from bone-on-bone friction.
All that remained were traces of erosion from the passage of time and sand.
Lennok, standing lost in thought for a moment, muttered.
“It’s better to think in reverse. What if they made the skull to reproduce such a creature, rather than such a creature existing and leaving behind a skull?”
[Are you hypothesizing that even this skull is a trace of an artificial experiment?]
“If the failure of the Ascension Gate is connected to the Old World, then this, too, would be a failed product created in the process of recalling memories of the Old World……”
Lennok stopped there, offered a wry smile, set the skull down, and stood up.
“I think I understand now what the Machine City hoped for when they tried to build the Ascension Gate. And why they failed.”
[…….]
Tap, tap!!
As he was lost in thought, Lennok turned his gaze at the sound of footsteps approaching from afar.
Two presences registered in his mana sense. Their vital reactions were active, and their mana condensation was high, indicating skilled physical abilities.
Lennok’s form shimmered at that spot, and simultaneously, someone pushed through the undergrowth and appeared.
“Phew……”
Two men, carrying heavy, blood-stained sacks.
Wearing metal suits that obscured their faces, and with epaulets on their shoulders, they clearly appeared to be high-ranking personnel.
What was striking was that both soldiers were covered in dust, and their movements seemed quite fatigued.
The soldiers surveyed their surroundings briefly before setting down their sacks, catching their breath, and starting to converse.
“How much time has passed?”
“I’m not sure either.”
The other soldier replied, carelessly tossing the contents of the sack onto the ground.
Strange, unique bone fragments, identical to the one Lennok had found earlier in the dirt pile.
“Our sense of time completely breaks down while we’re inside this Underwater Barrier.”
“I heard the interception system outside the barrier activated. They said if anything happens, we might have to stay here even longer.”
“……Don’t talk nonsense. Probably those deep-sea monster bastards rammed their heads into the barrier again.”
“It was a top-level alert. I hear other units are starting to talk about it too.”
“……A top-level alert?”
At those words, the other soldier’s voice turned sour.
“Damn it, that’s not what I wanted to hear.”
“Still, it feels like we’ve been working non-stop for days, so it’s about time for a cycle to end, isn’t it?”
“I hope so……”
The soldier, who had sighed deeply, was about to gather the bone fragments and place his hand on the ground to bury them when his voice suddenly changed.
“Hey, have you ever come here alone?”
“What?”
“The ground’s evenness is much more uniform than I remember. It looks like someone dug it up.”
“……No.”
The two soldiers looked at each other, instantly grasped the situation, and sprung to their feet.
Without a word, one pulled out a communicator, and the other reached for his waist.
Mana boiled within their metal suits, and the moment mana flashed from his waist.
Crack……!!
A streak of lightning, flashing through the undergrowth, simultaneously pierced both their temples.
“Gurgle……!!”
Davi’s cybernetic interference command, mixed into the electric current, activated a beat too late.
The front of the suits sprang open on the spot, spitting out the two unconscious soldiers.
Lennok identified the faces and identities of the unconscious soldiers, quickly completed the mana pattern and Ticket replication, and slipped into the metal suit.
Click!!
[Pattern code recognized.]
[Lieutenant Erik Prausch, Special Forces, 3rd Mechanized Division, Mechanized Troops.]
As he put on the suit and poured Erik’s mana pattern into it, the suit recognized its owner and moved accordingly.
This must be advanced equipment designed to assist Lennok’s movements in real-time, correcting them and even aiding in combat.
However, because it was customized to Erik’s body, a slight sense of foreignness was unavoidable.
Following the mana traces left by the two soldiers, Lennok walked through the forest, and before long, another glass cavity began to appear.
[13F]
Beep!!
He placed Erik’s pre-replicated Ticket against the cavity wall, and the door opened easily.
This number, 13F, was considerably closer to the center compared to Area 44B where Lennok had woken up.
However, Lennok had already expected this outcome the moment he discovered that bizarre skull.
The skull mimicked the traces of a living creature. Considering the relationship between the Ascension Gate and the Heart-Star Vault, it was undoubtedly an attempt to mimic an Old World fossil or creature.
Unlike the discarded goods in Area 44B, which had faint mana but little value, data on Old World creatures was highly valuable for research.
Therefore, it was clear that such important material would be handled in an equally important area or location.
Upon entering the glass cavity of Area 13F, Lennok saw several soldiers, also in metal suits, moving busily.
Other soldiers immediately recognized Lennok and spoke to him.
“Erik. Weren’t you out with Justin?”
“Justin was seconded to another area immediately after completing preservation work on site.”
Lennok replied without blinking an eye.
“He asked me to help with the recovery of debris that wasn’t disposed of during the incineration process in Area 44B.”
“……Area 44B? Were there still personnel left there?”
“……”
A slightly tense atmosphere fell as the other soldiers looked at each other, but Lennok believed his lie had a high chance of succeeding.
The message requesting cooperation from personnel just before Area 44B was closed.
He was certain that the Machine City would never issue a meaningless order in its most secret and confidential zone.
As expected, someone, having checked the communication line in that short time, spoke in a slightly softened voice.
“It’s true that orders regarding the closure and incineration of Area 44B and the request for cooperation were issued. It seems temporary, unreported action was taken on site.”
“Hmph…… I wish they’d stop arbitrarily using our personnel like this.”
“There’s no choice but to move for now. Erik, you come along too.”
The other soldiers collectively began moving backward against the conveyor belt inside the glass cavity.
Lennok naturally followed behind them and asked.
“Where are we going?”
“An order came from above. All personnel responsible for the biological and livestock sections of the Heart-Star Vault are to gather at the center.”
One of the soldiers said in a stern voice.
“We’re going to the most dangerous uncharted territory within the Underwater Barrier. Even if you hear something, be thoroughly careful never to remember it or speak of it.”
As they quickly moved against the conveyor belt, following the other soldiers, Lennok felt the surrounding facilities and scenery change as they approached the center.
The traces of haphazardly scattered discarded goods or items disappeared, and the area around the ceaselessly moving conveyor belt became impeccably clean.
Other soldiers were seen here and there, loitering around the belt, classifying the grade of incoming objects, and allowing low-value equipment or items to simply flow on the belt.
As they moved backward through the glass cavity, the width of the cavity expanded, and the mana concentration felt increasingly intense.
And one by one, from the center of the cavity, people leading other soldiers began to appear.
The first leaders Lennok encountered in this cavity.
The moment Lennok raised his mana sense and focused his mind, he realized their identity and gathered his mana with a surprised expression.
“……Meisters?”
The Meisters who had served as judges during the Selection Ceremony, evaluating Lennok’s and other artisans’ creations.
These artisans, who had passed various qualifications and verifications long ago and reached a state of mastery, were, surprisingly, gathered inside this Underwater Barrier.
Though they wore suits of unknown identity, their presence and unique mana remained in Lennok’s memory.
Lennok carefully observed the Meisters, following them to the very end of the colossal glass cavity passage.
He arrived at a vast lake located at the deepest underground level.
‘This is……’
It wasn’t that a lake existed within a giant cavity.
Rather, the entire space, stretching from the end of the corridor, was a lake composed of a colossal body of water.
But even as the Meisters walked upon the lake’s surface, only faint ripples appeared, and they did not sink beneath the water.
Naturally, Lennok lightly levitated himself using floatation magic and looked down into the lake, realizing it wasn’t entirely transparent, and his eyes gleamed.
Beneath the surface of the beautiful lake, which at first glance appeared to be melted glass, reflected various pieces of equipment and components.
Beneath what looked like a giant glass lake, various pieces of equipment Lennok remembered seeing floated.
The relics of the Old World confirmed at the Selection Ceremony. Was this the vault where the ultimate treasures, known as the Heart-Star Vault, were gathered?
Even the Meisters, who had seemed uninterested in the surrounding scenery until now, appeared unable to tear their eyes away from the gleaming equipment beneath the lake.
At that moment, a voice called to them again from the other side of the lake.
“You’re late. I’ve been waiting a while.”
The Meisters, startled by the utterly serene formality, abruptly raised their heads.
“That’s my line, Hermes.”
The Meister at the forefront slowly took off his suit helmet with both hands, revealing his bare face.
Hiss……!!
“It’s too early. Weren’t we supposed to reassemble on the Machina’s District Relocation Cycle day?”
“……”
At those words, someone slowly emerged from the other side of the lake, shrouded in mist.
It was a young man with dazzling silver hair, long enough to reach his waist.
Wearing a white uniform, the man’s expressionless face, as he gazed at them, was so neat it felt almost inorganic.
Behind his back, a colossal circular ring floated majestically.
Dozens of large and small rings overlapped, rotating in different directions and at different speeds, emitting light – an utterly mysterious sight.
Hermes, with the dazzling rings of light behind his back, smiled faintly, his hands clasped behind him.
“My apologies. There was something I absolutely had to test before the gate closed.”
“Something you had to test?”
“Yes. The acquisition of disassembling resources and discarded goods for this quarter is complete. All that remains is to confirm and dispose of the verified Old World creatures.”
With those words, Hermes’s pristine white eyes lightly swept through the Meisters.
He slowly looked around the empty air, transparently gazing at the serene white lake beyond.
Hermes paused for a moment, as if observing someone’s invisible reaction, then opened his mouth.
“But wouldn’t you like to see a real human, not some non-existent livestock or foolish creature?”
“……What?”
“If what we extract from beyond this gate are truly broken toys of a ruined world, then wouldn’t there be humans like us beyond it as well?”
Hermes, with a face completely devoid of blemish, gave an innocent smile.
“It wasn’t planned, but today, here…… I intend to load an Old World’s God-Slayer. Will you cooperate?”