After meeting Magreta, we headed for the surface together.
But before we could emerge aboveground, we had no choice but to stop.
“It collapsed.”
The passage leading to the surface had been blocked.
Magreta and I stood before the collapsed passage and looked at each other.
This was unexpected.
The passage was blocked?
Then what had happened to the people?
Just then, an extremely faint sound came from beyond the wall.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It was a sound I could barely hear only by heightening my senses.
Was someone pounding on the wall—or was it the sound of someone breaking it down?
Rumble, rumble.
On top of that, there was even the sound of flowing water.
It was too far away to tell for certain.
“What do we do?”
Magreta’s eyes trembled uneasily.
I was surprised as well, but we had to confirm the situation.
First, I examined the collapsed passage.
The passage had caved in, leaving rough traces behind.
Needless to say, it had collapsed not long ago.
While I examined the visible marks, Soph checked the flow of energy.
[It was destroyed by magic—no, by what you people call abilities.]
That meant the people at the base had brought it down.
‘Don’t tell me a rebellion broke out or something.’
Had rumors spread that the war was ending?
Or had they found out that Earth was doomed?
One bad thought after another followed in a chain.
But I shook my head and brushed them all away.
I hadn’t seen anything with my own eyes yet.
There was also a way to check.
“Let’s go back. Let’s head to the terraforming ruins.”
“Right. We could teleport through those ruins, couldn’t we?”
Magreta’s expression brightened.
It seemed she had remembered as well.
We went back again.
The sounds we had heard from far away could no longer be heard.
After returning to the underground ruins, I walked to the altar at the center of the stone chamber.
Then I brought the tip of my spear to the altar in the center of the ruins.
The spear began to glow, and small holograms rose above the altar.
Characters I had never seen before passed through the holograms.
[After we returned to Earth, there were several teleportations to the terraforming facility. If we go there, we should be able to find something out.]
That was a relief.
I didn’t know what had happened, but it seemed Hanna had teleported in time.
“Will you be all right?”
“I’m fine. We can go right away.”
I was worried because it hadn’t been long since we had teleported, but Magreta shook her head at my words.
There wasn’t much energy gathered in the altar, but it was a short distance, so it was enough to move two people.
We teleported again.
Flash.
After white light enveloped my vision, it vanished immediately this time.
The space around us changed.
A small shelf and a large greenhouse appeared before my eyes.
We had arrived at the underground plaza of the terraforming ruins.
The underground plaza was not empty like before.
“Ah! Oppa! Unni!”
“You’ve finally returned.”
Hanna and Sergeant Woo were waiting for us.
“I’ve really been waiting.”
“What happened?”
“Well, what happened was…”
When Hanna tried to explain in a hurry, Sergeant Woo spoke from beside her.
“I’ll go up and tell them that you two have arrived.”
“Ah, please do.”
At Hanna’s farewell, Sergeant Woo waved his hand and left the plaza.
Once he was gone, Hanna opened her mouth again.
“That scout monster stormed into the base.”
The words she spoke were exactly what I had been most worried about.
Magreta seemed startled as well. She grabbed Hanna by both arms and asked urgently.
“Is everyone all right? How many people died?”
At her question, Hanna shook her head.
“They’re fine. A few people were injured, but everyone is safe. We were all able to take refuge in these ruins.”
That, too, was startling news.
An Akzar scout had attacked, and yet no one had died? What on earth had happened?
“What happened was…”
With our faces pushed right in front of her, Hanna began explaining.
“On the day Hyun oppa went to Earth, one of the hunting teams brought back an injured person. They said he’d been hurt while out scouting. But as it turned out, that injured person wasn’t human.”
“Wasn’t he someone you’d seen before?”
“His face was badly injured, so we couldn’t check properly, but he looked quite similar. And because his face was hurt, he couldn’t speak either.”
Don’t tell me it killed someone who had gone out scouting and then impersonated him?
[They could have checked with magic… but that wasn’t possible for them.]
Soph seemed about to say something more, but simply clicked his tongue.
“Tom noticed something strange while treating him. At that moment, the injured person went berserk and ran away just like that. We tried to catch him after the fact, but it was too late.”
At Hanna’s words, Magreta also let out a sigh.
“So in the end, we let a spy right into the house.”
“I think Uncle David thought the same thing.”
Perhaps because I had already heard there were no deaths, I could listen a little more at ease.
As we listened to Hanna, we left the plaza.
The area in front of the plaza door was empty.
It was the place where the earth giant, the Guardian, had stood watch before.
Now that there was nothing there, it felt a little desolate.
As we left the plaza and climbed the stairs, Hanna continued explaining.
“Uncle David called all the hunting teams back, and made everyone who had been outside go into the cave where the ruins are. Then he put the people who had gained abilities on top of the wall to keep watch.”
As expected, David did his job properly when it mattered.
Even if I had done it, I didn’t think I could have done more than that.
“That night, the scout monster came charging in. I’d seen it before, but it was still really terrifying. Needless to say, it was even worse for the others.
Fortunately, it let out a scream from far away, so everyone was able to take cover. David collapsed the middle of the passage with the others, and I activated the teleportation device and moved everyone to the terraforming ruins.”
By the time she finished speaking, we had reached the top of the stairs as well.
There were people in the first-floor corridor.
They were people I had seen at the base.
People looking at the earth doll Guardian standing in the hallway, people talking gravely among themselves.
There were even people crouched in the rooms beside the corridor, asleep.
They were all doing different things, but every one of them had a grim expression.
Among them, a few had been watching the stairs, and when they recognized Magreta and me, their eyes widened.
“It’s the expedition captain. That American woman is here too.”
“So they were alive?”
“How did they get here?”
“Don’t tell me it’s connected to other ruins too?”
The people still did not know that we had gone to Earth.
If Magreta’s makeup had still been on, it would have aroused suspicion, but astonishingly, she had wiped it off while we were coming up the stairs.
Even so, her clean beauty remained, and it continued to draw people’s gazes.
I raised a hand and stopped the people approaching us.
“I need to report to David first. I’ll speak to you after that.”
At my words, everyone stopped walking.
It seemed David’s authority was still working well enough.
However, Magreta seemed to think differently.
“The people are watching each other’s reactions.”
When I glanced around at her words, everyone avoided my eyes.
“It’s because they all saw the living scout. Hyun oppa, you caught that monster, remember? That’s why everyone is being careful.”
Hanna seemed prouder of it than I was.
As we passed by them and walked down the corridor, the people followed behind me.
I couldn’t stop them from following.
Together with them, I headed to the entrance lobby of the ruins.
A short while later, in the lobby we arrived at, the rest of the people had gathered.
David and Carlo, the other advance team members, and the follow-up team members as well.
A few of them were wrapped in bandages, but as Hanna had said, everyone was alive.
Perhaps having heard the story from Sergeant Woo, David quickly approached.
“You came at a good time.”
Unlike before, David hugged me tightly.
It seemed like an excessive gesture because other people were watching, but half of it was a sincere embrace.
“I was waiting for Captain Hyun to come.”
At those words, Magreta cut in.
“I guess you weren’t waiting for me.”
“I was waiting for both of you.”
This time too, David smoothed it over gently.
When someone was this overly kind, it actually made me uncomfortable.
I subtly stepped back.
Even when I stepped away, he didn’t mind.
He looked at me with desperate eyes.
“There are a great many things I need to say, but first, there’s something I have to ask.”
As expected, there was a reason he was acting strangely.
“How much food did you bring?”
At his words, I looked around at the people.
Everyone was looking at me with hungry eyes.
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing to eat.”
“It was all we could do to move the people. There was no time to carry food as well.”
It wasn’t only food that was missing.
The things they had worked hard to make, their daily necessities—none of them were in sight.
The people had literally escaped with only the clothes on their backs.
Of course, there was food in my box.
But I didn’t take it out right away.
If I brought out food from Earth here, people would have no choice but to become suspicious.
Now was not the time to reveal that we had been to Earth.
“Wait a moment.”
Instead, I walked toward the entrance of the ruins.
The entrance, which had turned into a hole, was blocked by an earthen wall.
It was an earthen wall Soph had raised with magic.
Since it was maintained by the energy of these ruins, I didn’t have to pay it any attention myself.
[Open it.]
At my words, Soph brought down the earthen wall.
Ruuumble.
The wall collapsed, revealing a gaping hole.
Beyond the hole, a desert swept by a sandstorm came into view.
I left the building and walked into the sandstorm.
Surprised voices rang out from behind me, but there was nothing to worry about.
I had passed through the sandstorm several times already.
Now, for short distances, I could move around well enough even without Soph’s help.
After arriving at a spot not far from the ruins, I placed my hand on the ground.
It was something I could have asked Soph to do, but I could manage this much now.
I cast magic.
Shhhhaaaak.
The sand beneath my hand withdrew, and the things buried there surged up to the surface.
Weapons and junk, monster corpses, and a small amount of food.
They were the things I had buried before going to Earth.
I put them back into the box.
“This should let us hold out for quite a while.”
[But it isn’t enough to hold out for long.]
“That doesn’t matter. It only needs to be enough until we retake the base.”
[You mean to take back the base? Do you think that’s possible?]
“Yes. The odds aren’t high, but I think there’s still a way.”
First of all, I had new weapons.
A recoilless rifle, grenades, and C4 plastic explosives.
Only some of them remained, but even with the remaining explosives alone, I could easily blow up a house.
Of course, with only that, all I could do was wound it at best.
But I had Soph and my companions.
And there was also the sound I had heard from the collapsed passage at the base over there.
If that sound was what I thought it was, there was a way to bring the creature down.