There were eight places connected to Venus by lines in all.
One to Mars, three to Earth, and strangely enough, one line was even connected to a moon of Saturn.
And three lines stretched beyond the solar system.
[One is connected to TRAPPIST, and two are connected to star systems close to this place. One of them must be the place called Paradise.]
Several stars connected by spatial transfer devices.
I wanted to visit every one of them, to see what kind of places they were.
But I couldn’t do that right now.
“We can’t go immediately, can we? There’s only one black stone that’s been modified so it can be used. It’d be troublesome if we used it carelessly and then couldn’t get to TRAPPIST.”
I had quite a few black stones with me, but the only one modified for use in the ruins was the black stone mounted on the spear.
[You understand well. It has endured this long because it is the black stone of a control object. If it had been an ordinary black stone, it would have been difficult even to revive this facility.]
As expected, he’d been tempting me despite knowing that.
If I had said I would go, I was sure he would have told me to come to my senses.
No matter how I thought about it, the old man had a nasty personality.
“Besides, we don’t have much time, and if we do another spatial transfer, we don’t know how many things will be left inside the box.”
I took the box out of my backpack and checked it.
We hadn’t come from that far away, but since we had used spatial transfer, many of the items inside the box should have disappeared.
I had brought plenty with that in mind, but we still had to make one more spatial transfer to TRAPPIST.
But after checking inside the box, I tilted my head.
“Huh? It looks like more than half is still left.”
There were more than twenty generators each, and more than half of the electronics remained.
We hadn’t traveled a great distance, but there was more left than I had expected.
Soph spoke in a dumbfounded voice.
[You’ve grown again. At this rate, it seems you may stop losing the things inside the box before I regain gravity magic.]
Soph seemed dispirited by my growth, but I was simply pleased that so many things remained.
“That’s good. But it’s strange that things remain because I’ve grown.”
[It’s because of that absurd sense of yours. You must be instinctively using magic to fix the coordinates of the objects inside the box.]
In other words, I had used magic without realizing it when we transferred through space.
[If you become aware of that magic you use instinctively and learn to use it consciously, you too will be called a high-ranking mage.]
“Before that, I need to solve my long-range problem.”
I was fine because I had Soph, but I was a half-baked mage who could only use close-range magic.
Other people would curse me if they knew, but I wanted to fix that weakness.
[If you learn diligently and keep using it, that problem will be solved as well.]
Well, that was probably the best method.
“Then, let’s leave the other ruins for next time… Shall we look around this ruin first?”
[Before examining the ruins, look at this. There is also a recording left by the final administrator here.]
All the holograms floating in the air disappeared, leaving only the image of a young man.
He was a Black man wearing clothes resembling a mage’s robe.
With a face full of fatigue and gloom, he looked at the screen.
—I do not know when or who will see this recording, but as the administrator of the final spatial transfer device, I leave this message.
The final spatial transfer device?
Did that mean this place was the final base on this star?
—After the environmental purification facilities stopped, this star became a place where no life could survive. It must be because this star system left the dark energy zone.
It seemed there had been dark energy in the solar system in the past.
Well, if there hadn’t been, there would be no reason for a spatial transfer device that used that energy to remain on Earth.
—After dark energy disappeared, all our efforts came to nothing.
Even the energy stones called black stones, brought from a nearby star system, could not restore this star. There were not enough even to maintain the spatial transfer facility.
Lastly, we placed our hopes in the mages who had departed for distant stars, but none of them returned. Perhaps because, if they returned, they would not be able to go back.
The nearby star system would be Paradise, and the distant star was TRAPPIST?
[It was true that they could not return, but more than that, TRAPPIST at the time was far too devastated. I heard they were in a situation where they had to worry about immediate survival, so they couldn’t even think of their home star. By the time things finally stabilized, it was already far too late.]
Soph’s words made me think of the mural of the first emperor I had seen in the ruins.
The mural of a young mage fighting monsters on a devastated star.
By the time he wore a crown, he had become an old man.
While I recalled the mural, the man continued speaking.
—We, the final survivors, have now decided to leave this star as well. I and the several hundred ordinary people remaining in this facility intend to head to the third star, like the people who escaped from other facilities.
I am worried because it is a cold star, but with the energy remaining in this facility, it is impossible to go anywhere farther.
The third star would be Earth.
In the end, the people who had been in this facility headed to Earth.
In the middle, the weary man changed the subject as if making a joke.
—Since there is no dark energy in this star system, I am worried that the same carbon dioxide explosion might happen on that star as well, but it would take a million years for a carbon dioxide explosion to occur. There is no need to worry about that now.
To me, those words did not sound like a joke.
“Don’t tell me the abnormal climate isn’t the cause?”
[Who knows. It may be part of the process of destruction, or the humans of Earth may have shortened that period. Either way, it seems destruction is indeed coming.]
After that joke that did not feel like a joke, the man looked around one last time.
—This will likely be the last time I see a facility like this. The third star has no energy, and only the spatial transfer facility that was made there long ago.
Now, magical civilization will completely decline. Even I, a mage, will have to live as an ordinary person.
It was exactly as he said.
Magic disappeared, and civilization was reset.
The people who came to Earth regressed to Paleolithic civilization and had to live as primitive humans for hundreds of thousands of years.
—But it is better than dying here. May fortune be with everyone.
With those words, the screen disappeared.
The recording had ended.
Perhaps because this place had nothing to do with Soph, I was not drawn into Soph’s memories.
After the recording ended, I asked Soph.
“Do you happen to have any information on the people who escaped from TRAPPIST?”
[Unfortunately, there was no such information. Since this side has no dark energy, it seems they went somewhere else.]
Well, people who had left because there was no dark energy had no reason to come back.
Still, we couldn’t stop here.
“Let’s keep looking. There are still many places we haven’t been to.”
There were other planets, and there was Paradise as well.
If we could obtain even a small piece of information, we could infer where they had gone based on it.
I scattered my lingering regret and asked Soph.
“Then, what about this ruin?”
[Unfortunately, almost nothing remains. Too much time has passed. The external environment is poor, and humans entered and ruined the preserved environment as well, so there is likely almost nothing usable.]
I had expected a little, but it seemed this ruin itself was all that remained.
As I was feeling disappointed, Soph spoke.
[There is one place where the seal is still maintained. Though energy was lacking, it seems they somehow managed to hold out in at least one place.]
Soph’s words revived my spirits.
I asked immediately.
“Where is it?”
[The armory.]
“Excuse me?”
Hearing Soph’s words, I clung to the shelf.
An armory!
An armory from hundreds of thousands of years ago remained?
“Hundreds of thousands of years have passed, and an armory still remains?”
[It seems they used fixation magic. The humans who entered the facility also appear to have failed to find the entrance. It still looks all right.]
“Let’s go right now.”
[There won’t be anything worth expecting. Even if they are weapons, they are things from a very long time ago, so there won’t be anything usable.]
Soph’s words failed to lower my expectations.
In any case, they were weapons from a magical civilization.
Performance aside, I couldn’t help but be curious what kind of weapons they were.
We decided to go at once.
“Can you come with me?”
[This ruin is now under my control. I have injected energy into it, so unless it is spatial transfer, I do not need to remain in place.]
At Soph’s words, I grabbed the spear and left the room.
Psssh.
As I approached, the door opened wide.
Just as he had said, the ruin was in Soph’s hands.
Outside the door was a large vertical passage, and along the wall of the passage, a spiral staircase stretched upward.
There were closed doors in the walls partway up the staircase.
There must have been various facilities beyond those doors.
But now, nothing remained.
Soph had shown me through images, and it was the same when I checked them myself.
After climbing the stairs like that and passing several doors, Soph stopped me in front of a blocked wall.
“Is it here? How fascinating. Even with my senses, I can’t tell what’s behind it.”
I didn’t know what metal it was, but it blocked all of my senses.
I understood why the people who had come here had failed to discover the armory.
As I waited in front of the door, the wall began to open.
Chiiik.
Perhaps because it had been so long, the wall moved with great difficulty.
Still, it opened wide enough for me to pass through.
I entered through the opened wall.
Inside the wall, as Soph had said, weapons were piled up everywhere.
Strange weapons I had never seen before.
However, I was bewildered when I saw them.
It wasn’t because they were unfamiliar. Every one of the weapons looked like something I had seen somewhere before.
As I swept my astonished gaze across the armory, Soph spoke in a regretful voice.
[I heard the home star had far more ordinary people, and indeed, these are all weapons for ordinary people.]
Even to me, it didn’t seem like mages would use weapons like these.
I pointed at one of the weapons and asked Soph.
“Isn’t that a gun?”
[It is an item I have seen in books. That is a dark energy projection device. It is an object for those who cannot use magic.]
At Soph’s words, one kind of object came to mind.
A weapon that appeared in every science fiction film.
“It fires dark energy? Then does that mean it’s a laser gun?”
[It would feel similar. The energy being emitted would be visible to the eye. However, since it uses the user’s own energy, the amount used varies from person to person.]
At Soph’s words, I ran over almost at a leap and picked up the energy gun.
A long gun without a magazine.
It truly resembled the laser guns I had seen in movies.
The moment I grasped the gun, I immediately understood how to use it.
As I pushed energy into the gun, I asked Soph.
“If it uses my own energy, does that mean I can fire an enormous amount?”
If things went well, I might be able to shoot it like it had an infinite magazine.
[What is a mage talking about? This is an object used by ordinary people. Against the Akzar, it is completely useless, and it is only effective against native monsters.]
The moment I held the gun, I could tell that much myself.
Since it was an item used by ordinary energy users, it was only natural that it was weaker than a mage.
But to me, who had been a soldier until not long ago, a gun with an infinite magazine inevitably felt different.
[Don’t tell me you’re going to talk about romance or whatever and use that instead of the spear?]
“…Of course not.”
At Soph’s words, I barely managed to set the gun down.
In addition to guns, the armory was piled with other equipment, such as swords, leather breastplates, and coats.
After checking the guns, the other items no longer looked ordinary either.
I picked up a sword and asked Soph.
“Then these swords aren’t just swords either?”
[They are swords that form an energy membrane on the blade. These are not particularly effective against mages either.]
I pushed energy into the sword.
Light burst from the blade.
It was not the hazy energy others had shown.
It was an intense light.
A proper energy blade had formed.
It was similar to the energy blade used by the Chinese sword aura user I had fought before.
[Perhaps because it was a world with many ordinary people who used energy and no monsters, most of the weapons are for ordinary people.]
Weapons used by ordinary(?) energy users, meant for fighting people.
If that was the case, it was not strange for the weapons to have taken this form.
[Still, this is usable. It is clothing that protects the body by injecting energy into it. If one has plenty of energy, it should withstand impact fairly well.]
At least Soph praised the leather breastplates and coats.
“Let’s take everything. Since we brought other things, we didn’t bring any weapons at all, so this is fortunate. We can distribute them to the team members and stockpile some just in case.”
With this quantity, even if some disappeared along the way, we should be able to give them to many people.
And if some remained after distributing them, I could use them too.
I was absolutely not taking them because I wanted to use them myself!
Whistling, I filled the box to the brim with weapons.
Base