I squinted but could make out no teleport traps, warps, or dimensional rifts.
I stuck a marker on our current location and set a seal slate.
This time, I stepped into the Otherworld alone, making sure I could get back with Return.
“No problems escaping—” I considered this a moment, then looked at Mia. “Wanna explore?”
“Mm, let’s.”
If she was with me, I could keep her safe from anything, and with pseudo-spirits guarding her, she’d be fine even if we got separated. Worst came to worst, I could take the risk and use “Unit Deployment” to escape from literally anywhere.
Hand in hand, we stepped into the Otherworld.
It looked exactly like the forests and landscapes of the Azure Land, but the ruin wasn’t the only discrepancy.
It was like a find-the-difference puzzle—just little bits of weirdness, like they’d long ago copied a patch of land and just maintained it as is.
“How big is it?”
I couldn’t use my map here, so I tried tossing rocks around, but they didn’t seem to be hitting any walls. I hovered, using Laser to take measurements, but they didn’t seem to hit anything—at the very least, it was over a dozen miles wide. That meant it was bigger than the space generated by my Desert Mirage.
“Ruins?”
“Yeah.”
These didn’t look like Lalakie or Flue architecture.
I did a quick comb through my reference materials and found similar constructs in the data we’d found at the Tower of Wisdom. This suggested it resembled civilizations that had held sway after the fall of Lalakie.
Conveying that to Mia, we moved onward.
Her massive behemoth had not been able to follow us, so she’d summoned a new sylph.
“Golem?”
“No, just statues, I think.”
There were ten-yard-tall pillars by the stairs to the main entrance and statues half that height standing guard at their bases.
“Spirits,” Mia said, pointing at the gate, her eyes silver.
I turned “Spirit Vision” on myself and found the spirits swirling around the gates.
A moment later, golden bands appeared out of nowhere, wrapping round the statues like golden mummies—and coating the statue surface in a glass-like substance. Not sure of the exact composition, but those bands were an orichalcum alloy.
The principle here eluded me, but I could make good use of this Bandage-like orichalcum, so I very much wanted a sample.
“Moving.”
The statues smoothly stood up.
They’d just been stone—but now they’d turned into guardian constructs.
It looked like glass, but the way the clothes and capes moved was every bit as soft as fabric.
“Invaders, exterminate!”
Ominous words in the ancient language.
They’d popped up on my radar the moment they started moving, but those white dots now turned red.
“Vanished.”
“‘Sense Danger.’”
I picked Mia up and “Warped” away.
An instant later, the ground where we’d stood collapsed, and through the dust cloud, I caught a glimpse of a statue with its fist down.
These seemed to have some sort of optical camouflage.
Whatever the camouflage or invisibility effect, my eyes could always sort of see them, and the red dots were on my radar, giving them away.
“Also—”
They were moving fast, but not too fast for my eyes to follow.
They were around level 50, but a bit too nimble to let Mia face them; I kept my distance with “Warp,” blasting them with Implosion.
Shockingly, the glass-like orichalcum covering the statues maintained its shape.
That alloy looked fragile but was every bit as tough as regular orichalcum.
If I was fighting with regular weapons, this might have been pretty tricky.
“Not exactly a safe space.”
“Mm, caution.”
Mia didn’t seem inclined to retreat, so we kept going.
They’d shown up on the radar before they took action, so as long as I didn’t let my guard down, we’d be okay.
“The outside was stone, but not the inside.”
“Mm, imposing.”
Soaring ceilings, elaborate reliefs on the walls and columns—it gave off a kind of religious vibe.
Statues like the ones at the entrance showed up here and there, but I grabbed them with Magic Hand before they moved, sentencing them to my Storage. At that point in time, they were still just statues.
There was some extra golden Bandage orichalcum on a pedestal, so I put that and a magic device designed to help equip it in my Storage. Seemed useful enough to justify the trip here.
“Satou.”
Mia was pointing at a mural.
On either side of it, vast chunks of land floated in space—between these, flying whales and castles were trying to shoot through one another’s barriers with light beams. I didn’t notice until I got closer, but that sure looked like demons and airships joining the fray.
“Lalakie?”
“Likely, yeah.”
One of the landmasses looked like Lalakie.
Their flying castles looked like what we’d seen in the Seadragon Islands and Lalagi.
“Look here.”
“Something written…”
In ancient writings, it said, THE FREEDOM ARMY FIGHTS THE EVIL LALAKIE EMPIRE, RULED BY THE FOOLISH GODS. I assumed it was the title of the mural. Based on that, these ruins had been left behind by the armies of the Dogheaded Demon Lord. They’d called themselves “freedom fighters.”
Nearby the bit about the foolish gods was some additional exposition.
“Read,” Mia requested, so I translated that for her.
Opposite Lalakie, floating island of the god, was the flying fortress Arcatia.
“Arcatia?”
“No, Mia. This one’s Arcatia.”
She’d confused it with the name of the fortress city.
Was Arcatia the name of some utopia? I had stronger associations with a space pirate ship flying the flag of freedom, but if it was named by someone reincarnated, either origin was possible.
“Blacksmoke Island.”
“Where the samurai were?”
“Mm.”
I’d meant to ask why she’d brought that up, but I remembered before she answered.
The pirates who’d attacked that island had been looking for the flying fortress. Nobody had specifically mentioned the word Arcatia, but it seemed likely this was what they meant.
Mia and I kept exploring the ruins, collecting statues.
We found several other murals depicting historical events. Obviously, since they’d been left by Lalakie’s enemies, they frequently depicted Lalakian oppression and the harsh conditions of lives in nations forced to turn to the Freedom Army.
“Paintings.”
“From this point on, they’re depicting a different time?”
Later generations had worked on these; the paint supplies and canvases were different. The Fixify spells were dying, and they were all in bad condition.
I assumed they depicted leaders of the Freedom Army, but I could only identify Doghead.
“Demon Lord,” Mia muttered, and I nodded.
By the time these paintings were done, he’d already dressed like he had in Celivera Labyrinth.
“Children?”
“And their dad?”
Next to Doghead was a man in a black suit and three little girls. Half the man’s face was peeling off, and the lower half had a beard—all I could make out was a strong chin.
But it wasn’t the man who took my breath away. The little girls’ hair—it was pink, like Princess Menea’s of the Lumork Kingdom. Coincidence? Or were they connected to the Lumork royal family? I was curious.
I would have been far less intrigued if they’d had purple hair, like Arisa.
“Read.”
“Um…‘The God of Freedom and his apostles.’”
Given the sequence of pictures, these were likely the army’s leaders. They’d called Doghead a false god, but these outranked him. Was this who Doghead called his lord?