Once again, within the bright light, I sensed the flow of energy.
Dark energy slipping between my fingers.
Just as I tried to examine the energy more closely, the brilliant light vanished.
What appeared in its place was a vast world of ice.
A mysterious, beautiful sight glittering in the light of the star.
The moment that sight stole my gaze, my body began to tremble.
I had heard this was a star farther away than the one we had been on, but I had not expected it to be this cold.
“Achoo!”
Beside me, I heard Hanna sneeze.
“I-it’s incredibly cold!”
Tom’s voice was trembling too.
Magreta and Sergeant Woo were no different.
Unlike me, who merely felt cold, the team members’ faces had gone deathly pale.
They all looked as if they would get frostbite at any moment.
The energy each of us possessed was different, but there was a simple reason the team members felt colder.
Unlike me, who had a leather blanket draped over myself, the team members had nothing over their clothes.
Before we set out, we had been told this star was cold, but there had been no helping it.
When spatial movement was performed, the amount one could take along differed from person to person.
Some team members could carry up to two bags, but if they moved while wearing a leather blanket, they might end up leaving the blanket behind.
So I had brought all of the group’s luggage myself.
During spatial movement, we could not put items inside boxes, so there were things we had left behind there, but even so, I had brought as much as possible.
I set down the luggage that had been filling both my hands.
Then I handed out the leather blankets to the team members.
Once they wrapped themselves in the leather blankets, they seemed a little better.
But the leather blankets alone could not block out all the cold.
“Let’s go back quickly. This doesn’t seem like a place people can live.”
Magreta said to me, bundled tightly in a leather blanket.
‘So this was Magreta’s weakness.’
It seemed Magreta was more sensitive to the cold than other people.
The others were less so than her, but they were the same.
Still, now that the immediate crisis had been dealt with, it seemed we had time to check our surroundings.
The place we were in now was a half-destroyed surface ruin.
A ruin with no ceiling in sight and only half its walls remaining.
A large magic circle was drawn around the spot where we stood, but no console to control the magic circle could be seen anywhere nearby.
While I looked around, the team members, having gathered themselves, also checked the surroundings like I did.
Hanna gazed at the ice mountains in the distance, and Sergeant Woo narrowed his eyes as he quickly scanned the area.
Unlike usual, Magreta was stamping her feet, while Tom, as if fascinated, breathed out white mist from his mouth.
“It looks like there’s nothing but ice, yet we can breathe. How is that possible?”
I had a similar question to Tom’s, but Soph answered it right away.
[It is because this is a place where terraforming was attempted and then halted. They changed the atmosphere so living creatures could survive, but failed to raise the temperature.]
After listening to Soph’s explanation, I looked around again.
It truly was a magnificent sight.
A world of ice, more silent and vast than Earth’s polar regions.
At any other time, I would have wanted to take time and explore this star.
But right now, I could not.
We had no time, and the team members were far too cold.
[This is my first time here as well, but I heard the control room is below. Since the spatial movement device is intact, the underground should be fine. It is underground, so it should be warmer than outside.]
I had been worried because I could not see a console, but apparently it was somewhere else.
[Set the staff upright at the center of the magic circle.]
When I set the spear upright as Soph said, a small hologram appeared above the spear.
Grrrrrrng.
Then one side of the floor moved, and a staircase appeared.
It was not that Soph had moved the ground with magic. The ruin itself had moved and created a passage.
[Many parts are sealed, but the basic systems are functioning. Now you only need to go down.]
I withdrew the spear and said to the team members,
“Let’s go down. The control room is underground. It should be warmer there than here.”
The team members, who had been shivering from the cold, quickly moved at my words.
Unlike usual, Magreta moved first.
I put the luggage I had brought into the box and followed after them.
It was just as Soph had said.
As we descended the stairs, it grew warmer and warmer.
***
A dark interior that had been without light for tens of thousands of years.
Fwoooosh.
For the first time in a very long while, light entered that place.
The light descending from the ceiling reflected off the ice in every direction, illuminating the inside.
The now-bright interior was entirely covered in ice.
The floor, the walls, and the ceiling were all ice.
Even the light was flowing out from within the ice of the ceiling.
At the center of the large ice plaza stood a single ice pillar.
It was a large ice pillar that shone brilliantly, as if a giant gemstone had been carved into shape.
Inside that ice pillar was a person.
It was a young woman.
Wearing a fluttering dress, she floated inside the pillar as if asleep.
A short while after the light came in, a sound was heard.
Wooooong.
It was a low, faint sound, almost too quiet to hear.
When the sound rang out, a change occurred inside.
The woman within the ice opened her eyes.
After opening her eyes, she listened for a moment to the sound she heard.
Tilting her head, she gently moved her body.
She slowly walked forward.
Srrrrrr.
Absurdly, her body emerged from the ice pillar without any obstruction.
The woman who had come out of the ice pillar looked up at the ceiling where the sound was coming from.
Tilting her head once more, she lightly stamped her foot.
Tap.
Her body rose into the air.
As if floating in empty space, she began to fly.
Behind her body as she flew through the air, the ice walls and ceiling could be seen.
It had not been noticeable when she was inside the ice pillar, but her body was transparent enough that one could see through to the other side.
She was not human.
The woman who looked like a ghost stamped her foot in midair once again.
Her body shot upward.
The ceiling was covered in ice, but that did not matter to her.
After passing through the ice, the woman continued upward.
***
The staircase was not long.
After descending roughly a hundred steps, about five floors’ worth, a spacious underground area greeted us.
A wide space with metal walls.
It looked like a warehouse where many things might have been piled up in the past.
But now, it was empty.
[They must have taken everything when they withdrew.]
As I looked at the empty interior, Soph’s words reached me.
I asked Soph,
[By withdrawal, do you mean when they stopped terraforming and left?]
[The terraforming stopped much earlier. Even after that, this place was used as a research facility. The withdrawal was after those Akzar bastards invaded. In a situation where humanity’s survival was on the line, they could not leave personnel on another star.]
It made sense.
It was not much different from giving up on environmental protection when Earth’s destruction drew near.
While I was talking with Soph, the team members also loosened their stiff bodies.
“I feel like I can finally live now.”
“It really was too cold.”
Magreta had returned to her usual self, and the others were half taking off their leather blankets as well.
Even in the middle of that, Tom was checking the temperature.
“It’s much warmer than outside, but... it’s still below freezing.”
When he said that, breathing out mist, Magreta shuddered.
“Then just how cold was it outside?”
In truth, everyone carried energy within them, so they could endure ordinary cold well enough.
Yet they had still found it difficult to bear, so the cold outside was anything but normal.
It was enough to make me understand why they had abandoned terraforming because it was too cold.
The air had grown warmer than outside, but what I was looking for was nowhere to be seen.
I asked Soph again.
[Where do we go now?]
[I heard the control room is farther below. Since there are no stairs here, it must be behind that door.]
Just as Soph said, there was a large door on the opposite side of the warehouse.
It was a wide metal door that rose upward, like the ones I had seen on Earth.
Just as we were moving toward that metal door,
Drrrrrrrrk.
The metal door began to rise before we reached it.
“You didn’t open that, did you, Captain?”
Seeing the door suddenly open upward, Sergeant Woo asked me.
I shook my head.
“As expected, there’s something here again.”
“I knew this would happen.”
Magreta clicked her tongue, and Tom let out a sigh.
They were probably joking, but I felt a little wronged.
I had not done anything, yet they were treating me like this.
[Even to me, it looks as if you carry misfortune around with you.]
On top of that, Soph also chimed in with a comment.
Hanna, however, was wearing a strange expression. It was an odd look, as if she had seen something unexpected.
In any case, we prepared to fight.
Everyone threw off their leather blankets and grabbed their weapons.
I, too, prepared to use magic.
When we had finished preparing, the warehouse door opened wide.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
A sound came from beyond the door.
It was a heavy footstep, like a giant walking.
‘No way?’
At the sound, similar to something I had heard in the past, I could guess what would emerge.
[It is a golem.]
Before Soph’s words had ended, the owner of the footsteps revealed itself.
A massive figure appeared beneath the open door.
As Soph said, it was a golem.
However, it was different from the earth golem I had seen before.
A golem with a transparent body that glittered in the light.
It was a golem made of ice.
It was similar in size to the earth golem, but it looked far sturdier.
I recalled the time I had fought the earth golem.
When it had been on my side, it had been a great help, but when I had fought it as an enemy, it had been no easy opponent.
Just as the team members had said, nothing ever went smoothly.
When I thought about it, it was not strange for there to be a golem in these ruins.
There had been one in the terraforming ruins too.
What was a little strange was that Soph had not known.
He knew quite a lot about these ruins.
[You didn’t know?]
[If I had known, I would have said so. How strange. I never heard anything like this...]
If he did not know, there was nothing to say.
Well, I could hardly expect more from an old man whose memories came and went.
[I did not fail to remember it. That fellow never told me.]
Now he could guess what I was thinking even if I did not say it.
I could not tell whether he had not been told or simply could not remember, but I nodded for him.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Meanwhile, the golem approached, swinging its ice arms.
I said to the team members,
“Please draw its attention for a moment. There’s something I want to try.”
At my words, the team members began attacking immediately, without the slightest doubt.
Tom and Sergeant Woo ran to the left and right, and Hanna loosed an arrow.
Then Magreta swung her whip, and the approaching ice golem stopped in its tracks.
As expected, the ice golem was sturdy.
Ting! Ting!
The arrows bounced off, and the whip snapped.
Its movements were faster than I had thought too.
Tom and Sergeant Woo could not get close to the golem.
But the team members had drawn its attention well enough.
In the meantime, I was able to get behind the golem.
I leaped upward.
I did not even consider climbing up the golem’s body.
It was obvious I would slip.
When I jumped with all my strength, I reached the back of the golem’s neck.
Thick, solid ice lay before my eyes.
I thrust the spear straight into it.
Thwack!
Ice powder scattered as the spear embedded itself in the nape of its neck.
Only the spearhead barely sank in, but it was enough for me to hang from it.
Holding the spear, I placed my other hand on the golem’s head.
I focused my mind.
I conjured an image in my head.
The sight of water flowing and splitting apart.
The image turned into a magic circle. Then equations unfolded.
The magic was cast.
Crack.
Starting from the head where my hand touched, the ice began to split.
From the head, down past the neck, and through the whole body.
The entire mass of ice cracked and broke apart.
Kwa-rurururu.
Shattered ice came pouring down.
I landed on the floor along with the falling ice.
[No, this was an ice golem, was it not? What you used was water magic.]
[Ice is just water that froze. If I can move water, I can move ice too. It is a little different, but it works.]
[What kind of absurd nonsense is that...]
Soph kept grumbling, but I ignored him.
There was a more pressing problem than listening to Soph.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
There was not only one ice golem.
Behind the door, dozens of golems were waiting for us.
The golems began to move.
But we did not look at the approaching golems.
Something even more astonishing had appeared.
A translucent person rose up from beneath the floor.
It was a beautiful woman wearing splendid clothes.
Because of her translucent form, she did not look alive, but in any case, this woman looked like a person.
[How dare you! What have you done!]
Soph roared in rage.
Energy was sucked into the staff.
The staff shone brilliantly.
Soph was about to cast magic.
When I saw the woman, I felt I knew why Soph had become angry.
The woman who had appeared before the golems looked exactly like the lover I had seen in Soph’s memories.