[That thing has completely stopped. It will never wake, so don’t worry.]
Even without Soph saying so, the monster looked as if only its shell had remained as a fossil.
But thinking about it, that made it even more incredible.
I had never imagined a fossil that had died tens of thousands of years ago could still frighten people.
After reassuring the team, we passed in front of the fossilized monster and walked deeper into the building.
The path to the warehouse was not hard to find.
There was only one large passage.
However, many parts had collapsed, so we practically had to carve out a new path.
We had to leap over the fallen debris and clear away the stones and boulders blocking the passage.
Jumping over obstacles was not difficult, but moving the stones blocking the passage was no easy task.
Thanks to Soph’s magic, we were barely able to clear the stones and boulders away.
“The boulders are incredibly light. Did gravity change again?”
The team members were puzzled, but still delighted that we had opened the way.
Was it because the passage had been blocked midway?
The warehouse Soph had mentioned was intact.
Inside the huge warehouse, its door half-open, countless stone materials were piled up.
Countless stones, neatly cut into various shapes.
It was like we had arrived at a quarry.
[It seems there was no need to cast magic on them at all.]
Even without magic, the stones looked as though they would have remained intact for thousands, even tens of thousands, of years.
[There isn’t only stone. There are iron pillars too, and other materials. All of them were materials prepared to build the underground bases.]
This was not a quarry, but an intermediate processing facility where materials were gathered, processed, and then sent to their destination.
It was a place where stone from the quarry was cut, and metal sent from the mines was processed before being delivered to the underground bases under construction.
[After the Akzar appeared, we realized we needed underground bases. In order to build those bases, we had to establish this processing warehouse.]
Soph continued in a calm voice.
[We were being pushed back constantly, so we could not place processing facilities at the mines or quarries. We never knew when they might be taken from us.]
Soph spoke calmly, but the story contained within his words was desperate.
In the end, judging by the fact that this place too had collapsed, their concerns had not been wrong.
As Soph said, there were many iron pillars on one side of the warehouse.
Unlike the metal used for weapons, the pillars were ordinary iron pillars.
[The metal used in weapons was an alloy made by mages for energy transmission. Even for us, making construction materials like that was too much.]
At that moment, Tom’s appalled voice came from behind Soph’s.
“Wow, with this much, we could probably build a tall castle around the rocky mountain.”
His mouth was hanging open as he looked up at the stone materials piled in the warehouse.
Hanna was also staring at the mountain of stone with widened eyes.
Magreta asked,
“What do we do now?”
At her question, asked with a smile, I gave my instructions.
“I will take care of collecting the goods, so everyone else search the area. There may be something useful.”
The warehouse was larger than I had expected.
Even if everyone joined in the search, it seemed it would take some time to check it all.
“Yes!”
“Understood.”
“I wonder what there’ll be.”
After hearing my instructions, the team members scattered in all directions.
Once they had left, I took out the box and stood before the mountain of stone.
The mountain where the stone materials had been gathered was enormous, but each individual stone was also extremely large.
If the box had not ignored size and weight when taking things in and out, it would have been impossible to put them inside.
“If it could only store things based on weight, I doubt I would have been able to fit even a few of these.”
[The same would go for volume.]
Soph was right.
I had thought the inside of the box had become incredibly large, but that had been an illusion.
At present, the interior of the box was about thirteen meters in diameter.
It was more than twice as spacious as before, large enough to hold a thousand tons of water.
But compared to the materials piled up here, that was nothing.
As I filled it with the stone materials and metal rods near the front, the box was full before long.
“I never thought I would actually fill the box.”
[To be honest, by your standards, you put in an enormous amount. Even a mage would not find it easy to store that much.]
At the mage’s candid praise, I scratched my head.
Still, I felt regretful.
If I had known this would happen, I would have taken out more of the monster corpses when we were at the base.
The monster corpses were too precious to take out here.
“Still, if we make two or three more round trips, that should be enough, right?”
If we were not trying to build a castle, that much would be sufficient.
Soph did not disagree with me either.
Since the work was simply putting things into the box, it was over quickly.
I shouldered the backpack containing the box again and set out to find the scattered team members.
I was able to find them quickly.
Contrary to my expectations, the team members were gathered in one place.
They were in a corner of the warehouse.
Seeing the stone materials scattered about, it looked as though the stacking had been stopped midway.
As I approached, I heard a strange sound.
Crack! Smack! Craaack!
No way, was that the sound of a whip?
I approached in surprise, and it really was the sound of a whip.
Magreta was standing to one side, swinging a whip.
Hanna was watching the sight with fascination, and Tom’s eyes were following the whip as it moved without rest.
It was a whip I had never seen before. It seemed to be a whip she had found in this warehouse.
Swish! Swish!
Every time the whip struck the floor, cracks split across the warehouse floor.
The stacked stone materials were the same.
The stones struck by the whip split cleanly in two.
Magreta, swinging the whip excitedly as beads of sweat flew, looked—though I felt I should not say this—extremely suited to it.
There was even someone who, upon seeing her, had a strange fantasy.
“My queen…”
At Tom’s words, Hanna moved away and hid behind me.
Magreta stopped whipping.
With an excited expression, she shouted to me,
“This whip is amazing. It fits perfectly in my hand, and the feeling when I swing it, and the sound it makes when it hits—everything is the best!”
When she liked it that much, I could not very well say anything to her.
Instead, I protested to Soph.
[Don’t tell me this planet used slaves too.]
One image sprang into my mind.
Slaves carrying stones on their backs, being whipped as they entered the underground ruins.
Behind them, Soph and the mages were laughing loudly as they swung whips.
Thankfully, my imagination vanished at Soph’s rebuttal.
[Of course not! That is not a whip. It is merely a magic rope. It is nothing more than an incredibly sturdy, length-adjustable ordinary magic rope made for transporting stone materials.]
[But its shape is…]
Seeing it cut through stone, it certainly was sturdy.
I could also see its length changing whenever Magreta swung it.
But for a rope, its handle was far too ornate.
The handle in Magreta’s hand was an exquisitely crafted one, completely covered in patterns.
[That is because of the magic. Though I do think the taste of the mage who made it played a part as well…]
That was definitely the creator’s taste.
[Still, honestly, does it not look good? A whip wielded by a strong woman. It is a scene so splendid it gives one chills.]
It was not only the creator.
I felt I might have to question the tastes of all mages.
The new whip—no, rope—was decided to be used by Magreta.
Tom, who had come to his senses, also searched the warehouse diligently, saying he would find a new weapon, but there was nothing useful in sight.
The other team member, Hanna, had no interest in other artifacts.
It was not that she disobeyed the order, but she merely walked around and glanced over things in passing.
“There aren’t any particularly shining objects.”
It was a strange statement, but it probably meant there were no good items.
After searching for quite some time, we came out of the warehouse.
It seemed we had done everything we needed to do in these ruins.
We had filled the box with materials, and we had managed to secure one artifact.
We had not yet looked through the entirety of these ruins, so there might be something more, but we decided to return at once.
“You said there was poison. And it smells bad here too, so it’s hard to sleep.”
As Magreta said, even inside the ruins, we could feel the swamp’s poisonous air.
We made our way back up the half-collapsed passage.
The large passage that must once have transported stone materials was now so ruined it was difficult to recognize its original form.
As we walked through the passage, I asked Soph,
[By the way, how did you transport all these stone materials? Did mages with boxes carry them every time?]
Soph had clearly said there were not many mages whose boxes had a greater capacity than mine.
Moreover, when these ruins were intact, they had been at war with the monsters.
In that case, mages who should have been fighting monsters would have had to transport boxes.
No matter how I thought about it, that would have been a waste of a mage’s abilities.
[Of course not. Using mages as porters? Utter nonsense.]
But I was a porter too.
[It cannot be helped. If you want to see it, even broken, I will show you before we leave.]
At the mention of showing us something, we headed toward the place Soph indicated.
The place Soph told us about was where the fossilized monster was.
Taking the horrified team members with me, I went behind the monster, and there was a large space there.
A vast open area connected to the passage.
In the center of the open area was a broken altar.
[It is a spatial transfer device. The monster broke it, but until then, it transported large amounts of materials.]
[You mean like the spatial transfer ruin we crossed through?]
Could it be that this artifact could also take us to another planet?
[Of course not.]
Soph immediately denied it.
[This is only a short-distance transfer device for transporting materials. A device that travels to another planet must magically realize time and space, gravity and even strong-force dynamics, so making even one is no easy task. Operating it properly is not easy either.]
In other words, the ruin we had crossed through was like an airliner, and this was a handcart.
To me, both were incredible.
[Can’t you fix it, Soph?]
The altar had been split into three pieces.
The patterns drawn on the altar looked intact, but the altar itself had been cut apart cleanly, with no parts still connected.
Seeing the way it had been cut as if slashed by claws, it seemed the fossilized monster had broken it.
[That was physically destroyed. It is something I could barely do only after recovering all my memories.]
In other words, he could not fix it.
That was disappointing. If only we could repair that altar, we would not have to make multiple round trips.
As I was thinking that, someone suddenly came to mind.
“That’s right. The blacksmith—couldn’t the blacksmith fix it?”
Because I said it out loud, all the team members looked at me.
“Why the blacksmith all of a sudden?”
Magreta asked on everyone’s behalf, but I had no time to answer while waiting for Soph’s reply.
[…Hm. That is…]
Soph hesitated instead of answering immediately.
[It will work.]
[Well, perhaps it might…]
The mage stumbled over his words.
That meant it would work.
I said to the team members,
“We need to hurry back and bring the blacksmith here.”
“What?”
At my abrupt words, the team members widened their eyes.
“This altar is a spatial transfer artifact. Seeing how it was cut apart, I think the blacksmith may be able to fix it. If we repair this, we can move all the materials here without having to keep going back and forth.”
At my words, all the team members looked at the cut-apart altar.
“Wait a minute. That’s a spatial transfer artifact?”
Magreta, who had been looking at the altar, suddenly shouted at me in surprise.
“Yes. It doesn’t seem to travel between planets like the artifact we crossed through, but it should be enough to move materials to the base.”
As I spoke, I desperately racked my brain to come up with a reason for how I knew about this artifact.
But there was no need.
Magreta was not curious about the reason.
“If that’s true, materials aren’t the issue!
If this is a spatial transfer artifact, that means we can move between here and our base in an instant too. Then we could make this place a new base as well, and if we study the artifact further, we might find other connected ruins too… Wait.”
Magreta, who had been chattering excitedly, suddenly stopped.
It seemed something had occurred to her.
She asked cautiously,
“Can that artifact be moved, by any chance?”
Unlike the ruins we had crossed through, this artifact had patterns drawn only on the altar.
That meant spatial transfer was possible with just this altar.