Book 16 Chapter 29
Episode 89
“Uuuuuugh… Uwaaaaaah! Here I goooooo!”
Rista squeezed her eyes shut.
Then, gripping Rin’s shoulders tightly with both hands, her lips… their lips… carefully…!
“Drakutos!”
At that moment, the dragon’s crimson flames, surging in, not only vaporized all the Undinas but also annihilated the outer wall of the deeper part of the cavern.
It was originally an intangible, incorporeal wall! The swamp’s steam merely induced hallucinations, making them believe a wall existed.
This was why all of Rista’s attacks had been ineffective.
“Kya-ha! If you’re up against the Priestess of the Fire Dragon, even an Archmage’s cavern is nothing… But what are you two doing?”
As the ‘event’ (?) was about to begin, the two’s actions were immediately noticed by Friede and Pipi.
“Wow, with a fourteen-year-old? That’s a bit much.”
“That’s a bit, bit, bit.”
Leonia, who had hurriedly rushed down, cried out.
“You cat burglar! What were you trying to do to my Rin?!”
“Misunderstanding, it’s a misunderstanding! Rin told me to! I really didn’t want to!”
“Lie! Rin, it’s a lie, right?”
Leonia hastily asked, but Rin tilted her head and replied.
“No, it’s true.”
“?!”
“Isn’t this something only Rista can do among everyone here?”
What a promising charmer!
Rista’s face flushed even redder, Friede whistled, and Khies clapped like a seal!
Leonia trembled all over, then wiped away tears and fled from the scene.
“Damn it, just you wait! Peyquerer is unmarried, after all! Why do you keep getting in the way?!”
Rin didn’t understand the flow of the conversation at all, but she had no mind or time to care.
Right in front of her, it was there!
The grimoire of the 10th Great Archmage, Hurk!
The grimoire was as pristine as a new book, even after a hundred years.
The problem was that Hurk’s handwriting was like squiggly worms, but if she deciphered it with patience, she would eventually be able to read it all.
“Kuh~ I’ve got it. The book written by the strongest from a hundred years ago!”
It was precisely then, as Rin excitedly opened the book.
Drrrrrr…!
The cavern began to shake violently, and suddenly the ceiling collapsed, and something burst out.
“This is…?”
It looked like iron, but it was iron in a form that current human metallurgy could not reproduce. The iron spiraled towards a vanishing point.
“It’s an ‘Ones That Came’ subterranean drilling artifact… a drill!”
The drill, a weapon that the ‘Ones That Came’ reportedly used to eradicate the subterranean abyss during the Mythic Era.
There was no way to operate it with present-day technology, yet a larger quantity of these were unearthed from underground compared to other artifacts.
In other words, they don't work and aren't particularly rare. Their artifact rating naturally had to be low.
But to see one working like that… Friede looked up at the sky through the hole in the ceiling and doubted her eyes.
“……?”
How could it be? A mass of iron was flying through the sky, fiercely rotating its iron windmills.
That too was a relic of the ‘Ones That Came’.
An artifact refers to something that humans can carry and use, so this cannot be called an artifact.
If Friede, who had learned the language of the ‘Ones That Came’, could have gotten closer, she would have been able to read the identification code inscribed on its surface.
D36-CC class Vertical Take-Off and Landing transport.
Keltoros.
In other words, although it was clearly a legacy of the ‘Ones That Came’, the aura emanating from that mass of iron was utterly malevolent and alien.
It was emitting the darkness of the abyss, not the light of the ‘Ones That Came’. A voice emanated from the mass of iron.
[Target acquired.]