The rift had been impressive even from the sky, but once I descended into it, its scale was overwhelming.
The sight of glacial meltwater pouring down into an endless rift more than a hundred meters wide was unlike anything I had ever seen on Earth—or anywhere else.
Ruuuuumble!
As I descended into the rift, the roar of falling water echoed through the entire chasm, hurting my ears.
It was so loud I couldn’t even hear the rotors of the drone flying ahead of me.
Then, through the earphone in my ear, I heard the voice of a female scientist.
It was Dr. Ella, who had agreed to stay in contact with me by satellite phone while Dr. Miller operated the drone.
—Is your breathing all right? The inside of the rift is filled with carbon dioxide and methane released from the Antarctic continent. If you went in there without an oxygen mask, you wouldn’t last even a few minutes. An ordinary person, that is…
At her awkwardly trailing voice, I looked around.
A translucent membrane spread around me was repelling the water pouring down.
The shield Soph had made did more than just repel water.
Just as it had protected me from the heat of Venus, Soph’s shield allowed me to breathe even inside the rift.
[But it would be troublesome if you took too much leisure. I have merely filtered out the harmful components and isolated oxygen within the shield, so there is a time limit.]
I knew what magic had been cast on the shield as well.
At Soph’s words, I nodded.
[If I remembered purification magic, there would be no time limit. I cannot understand why I do not remember this spell.]
“You’ll remember it soon.”
I comforted the regretful Soph.
[That does not sound like you. Is there some other problem?]
When I answered kindly for the first time in a while, Soph asked me with a serious tone.
It wasn’t that there was a problem.
I had simply grown troubled after seeing the soldiers left behind in Australia and the scientists remaining in Antarctica.
But that unease vanished entirely at Soph’s words.
I placed a hand on my earphone and answered Dr. Ella.
“I’ll be fine for a few hours. Let’s keep moving.”
After hearing my answer, I heard Dr. Ella muttering quietly.
—How on earth did he do that? Freezing water, flying through the sky, and on top of that, can magic even isolate air? Then carbon dioxide purification too?
She had whispered so softly that an ordinary person would never have heard it, but I could hear every word.
“Air isolation is possible. But removing or purifying carbon dioxide is impossible.”
I heard her inhale sharply from beyond the earphone.
—Ah! I’ll keep taking you down.
Flustered, she answered me.
Tatatatata.
The drone descended with a rough clatter.
Seeing the drone flying while scattering droplets with its rotors, I had the feeling it wouldn’t last long either.
“O light.”
Crackle!
After creating a bright light at the tip of my spear, I followed the drone deeper into the rift.
I descended for quite some time, but the end of the rift was nowhere in sight.
The farther underground I went, the more the light faded.
Before long, only the drone’s headlights and the light at the tip of my spear illuminated our surroundings.
—The ice covering Antarctica is more than two kilometers thick on average. In the thickest places, it’s close to five kilometers. Where we are now is also over three kilometers.
Just as she said, the rift formed by the split ice was truly deep.
After descending more than a thousand meters, the water that had been pouring like a waterfall throughout the entire rift began gathering in several places, forming massive waterfalls and streams of its own.
Waterfalls pouring over the ice walls, streams flowing between them, and the ice walls reflecting the light fixed to the tip of my spear.
The scene deep within the rift was incredibly mysterious.
Unless it were an ice planet with an underground city, I never would have imagined that beneath Antarctica’s ice was a place like this.
After descending for a long while through Antarctica’s otherworld, I began sensing things that were not ice.
It was the Antarctic continent, buried beneath the ice.
I descended a little farther, then stopped in place.
Floating there between the walls of the rift, I withdrew the light hanging from the tip of my spear.
Even after I withdrew the light, it wasn’t dark.
That was because of the light flowing out from the Antarctic continent below my feet.
A red glow illuminating the surroundings, along with an immense amount of steam.
On the Antarctic continent, several kilometers beneath the glaciers where the rift had formed, lava was flowing.
Lava streamed in a long line along the rift.
It seemed the enormous rift in Antarctica had also been created because of this lava.
Some of the water that had flowed down this far had turned into steam from the lava, while the rest seeped into the ground where the lava did not flow.
It seemed there were underground water passages beneath the Antarctic continent.
As I watched the lava flow, a voice came through the earphone again.
—Crackle, we’re here. The ruins are near where the lava is flowing.
Perhaps because we had descended so deep, the communication quality was poor.
The signal seemed bad for the drone as well.
The drone wobbled here and there as it descended.
It moved toward an ice wall a little distance away from the lava, the place Dr. Ella had mentioned.
Embedded halfway in the ice wall toward which the drone was heading was a building.
It looked distorted because of the translucent ice, but even at a glance, it resembled the ruins I had seen in Nagwon and Taepyeong.
[Ruins made by Venusians.]
Soph seemed to feel the same way I did.
Although buried in ice, the ruins looked intact.
I had always felt this, but the long lifespan of ruins made by mages was hard to believe.
Just as the ruins were intact, the entrance to the ruins also looked fine.
The entrance was on the front of the building protruding from the ice.
The slightly open entrance to the ruins was large and majestic.
The drone guiding me stopped at the entrance, and I landed behind it.
Thud.
It was ground that had been buried in ice for ages, but it was no different from any other ground.
Perhaps because of the lava, the earth was dry.
I walked toward the entrance.
It was somewhat away from the lava, and the falling streams of water did not flow this way, so entering the ruins didn’t seem difficult.
As I stood beside the drone, Dr. Ella’s voice came through.
—Crackle, crackle, once you enter the ruins, communication probably won’t work. Crackle, we lost a drone too when we tried sending it inside.
At her words, I looked at the drone swaying beside me.
Just as she said, the drone couldn’t even move properly.
“Then I’ll enter.”
—Crackle, be careful. I hope you get good results.
After hearing her farewell, I put the earphone into the box.
Then, together with the drone, I entered the ruins.
Once we entered the ruins, a large lobby greeted us.
It was a huge, empty lobby.
There were marks on the floor and walls of the lobby that looked as if ice had melted and flowed over them, but even so, the interior of the ruins looked intact.
A lobby that seemed strangely familiar.
However, this lobby was different from the ruins I had seen on Earth—the ones on Baekdusan, in Tibet, and in Djibouti.
“Could this place not be a spatial transfer ruin?”
[It does not appear similar, but it is not certain yet. It also looks as though it may be from an entirely different era.]
I couldn’t know that much, but since Soph was an expert on magical civilization, his words were probably correct.
Like that, I examined the inside of the ruins and continued farther in.
Contrary to what I had heard outside, the drone was still moving as well.
Seeing that, I considered taking out the earphone again, but when I saw the wreckage of a drone smashed deep inside the lobby, I gave up on the thought.
This drone was still fine for now, but that would not last long either.
Once it reached the place where that wreckage was, this drone would surely lose communication and be smashed like the wreckage there.
‘Wait. Its communication was cut off, but only wreckage remained?’
At the thought that occurred to me, I stopped walking, but the drone flying beside me did not stop.
Buuuuung!
The drone continued moving, advancing close to where the wreckage lay.
Bang!
The drone shattered there.
New debris scattered beside the previous drone wreckage.
I blinked as I watched the drone break apart.
This drone, and the previous drone as well, had not stopped because communication was cut off. They had been attacked and destroyed.
It was a stealthy attack with no killing intent, one even I had trouble detecting, and it was an attack I had not anticipated. Still, if I had tried to block it, I could have.
But after seeing the attacker, I hadn’t even thought to block it.
What attacked the new drone was a ball of fire hiding among the drone wreckage.
A small fireball, about the size of a fist, suddenly popped out and struck the drone, so I hadn’t reacted immediately.
Pointing at the fireball rolling around the new debris, I asked,
“What is that?”
[What else? Is it not a golem?]
Soph asked back in a puzzled voice at my question.
I knew what a golem was too.
It was strange that a burning ball could be a golem, but since ice golems existed, fireball golems could exist as well.
“But why is there a golem here? A moving one, at that.”
As I spoke to Soph, I approached the rolling fireball.
When I came closer, the fireball charged at me.
Thump! Thump!
The fireball charged and kept bouncing off the shield.
As I watched the fireball with curiosity, Soph answered my question.
[It is small, but it seems to be a guardian protecting these ruins. Its small size is likely because it lacks energy. As for a golem moving on Earth, where there is no dark energy, the reason is probably similar to what we saw in the Venus ruins.]
“This golem is also moving on another form of energy instead of dark energy?”
[Judging by the shape of the golem, it appears to be using the heat from the lava outside.]
When I examined the golem, Soph’s words were right.
The reason I hadn’t noticed this golem was not because it was good at hiding, but because it had almost no energy.
Even now, it was emitting energy with all its might, but it didn’t seem as if that energy would last much longer.
“A guardian golem protecting the ruins. I feel like I’ve seen this before.”
Back then, I had even fought Akzar monsters alongside the guardian golems protecting the ruins.
Come to think of it, these ruins were similar in structure to those ruins.
The patterns and material of the walls were from a different era, and the planet that made them was different as well, but the basic reason these ruins had been built seemed the same.
“If there’s a lobby at the entrance, then there should be a passage inside, and stairs at the end of the passage.”
With the golem still attacking my shield, I headed toward the passage deeper in the lobby.
Just as expected, there were doors on both sides of the passage, and at the end, there were stairs leading underground.
I descended the stairs.
At the end of the stairs, after going down for a long time, there was, just as expected, a large hall and a stone slab with a control panel attached.
“As I thought, this place is…”
[Terraforming ruins.]
These were terraforming ruins made by Venusians.
Terraforming ruins created in the era when Earth and Venus had dark energy.
The Venusians had created terraforming ruins to block the carbon dioxide erupting from Antarctica.
The Venusians were mages who had prepared far more thoroughly than I had imagined.
[But even they did not think dark energy would disappear from the solar system.]
That was why these terraforming ruins had been abandoned beneath the ice like this.
I walked to the center of the hall and placed my hand on the stone slab.
It was only natural that it would not operate without dark energy, but the moment I placed my hand on the slab, my vision turned white.
Flaaaash!
This was Soph’s memory.
Terraforming