Five days had passed since I’d begun my pilgrimage. I’d gone to every cave and cavern within the barrier—a search area that was obviously much wider than it had been a week earlier. I’d extended the barrier farther than I thought.
And it doesn’t help that there’s so many bloody caves! This is ridiculous!
However, while I was (figuratively) up to my eyeballs in caves, none of them contained what I was desperately searching for. The most recent spelunking spot contained two types of crystals—one red, one blue, both glittery—but no iron. Fluffy zoomed around excitedly for some reason upon seeing the sparkly crystals, but I chose to find out why later.
Whatever it is, I’ll check it out after I find what I’m looking for. Sorry, Fluffy.
The cave after that one was more like a labyrinth. I gave up searching halfway through. Postponing this for later too.
The next cave was more of an accidental discovery; I only just caught a glimpse of the entrance through the thick vines obscuring it.
I’ve got a good feeling about this one... All right, in we go!
I pushed through the vines to find a squirrel standing in front of me. Actually, it wasn’t really standing, per se—it was frozen solid in a block of ice. Purification had no effect on it, so it didn’t seem to be cursed.
Still... A frozen squirrel? It’s a bit creepy.
I made to leave but hesitated. I was a bit curious. I carefully knelt down in front of the squirrel and pressed my fingers to the ice. It wasn’t cold.
So not ice, then. Also, this squirrel... Er, does it have horns? Yeah. And it’s blue. Well, turquoise. Horns—I wonder if it’s aggressive? Or was aggressive... Is it dead? It doesn’t look very dead. This is weird.
A sudden snap echoed as a crack formed exactly where I’d touched the icelike block.
Crap. I didn’t mean to break it, I swear.
The crack spread across the block, and the whole thing shattered.
Crap, what do I do? Fix it? I don’t know how to make fake ice!
I looked around frantically. Kisa was glaring at the squirrel-thing warily, although Soa didn’t seem particularly worried.
So is it dangerous or not?!
I nervously peered at the now-defrosted turquoise, horned squirrel-thing. Our eyes met.
Ah. So it is alive... Still don’t know if it’s aggressive though.
The squirrel-thing just ignored me and leaped away, stopping in front of—
Another squirrel-thing.
There were more of the ice blocks scattered around the cave, each containing another of the weird squirrels. The singular defrosted squirrel-thing looked at the blocks, and then back at me.
With a half-hearted shrug, I proceeded to shatter every ice block.
How many of these squirrel-things are there? Forget it, I’m just calling them squirrels. Close enough.
There ended up being thirty-four of them in total. Thankfully, none of the squirrels seemed even a little bit aggressive. Koa and Spider Boss showed up just after I’d freed the final squirrel—I must have been gone a while. They both seemed a little surprised, but not scared, to see the swarm of squirrels.
The squirrels were adorable. One climbed up to sit on my shoulder and rubbed its head against my cheek, which would have been even cuter if I hadn’t been so nervous about its horn. Still, they were rather charming, if a little oddly colored. With no obvious signs of aggression, I decided to declare the squirrels safe and take everyone home.
Oh, but I was looking for iron... Eh. There’s always tomorrow.
I felt somewhat—
What’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah. Miserable.
I felt somewhat miserable.
On the way back home we passed by the cave closest to the house, the one where we’d found Chai’s friends. Since we were there anyway, I’d decided to pop in to quickly check for iron.
The magnet stuck to the rocky wall, which was when I remembered: This was a parallel world. There was no guarantee that iron ore—or something like it anyway—was going to be the same silvery brown color I knew. The stone in the cave was black with lime-green flecks scattered throughout.
Lime-green iron, huh... If this even is iron. Just because it’s magnetic, doesn’t mean it’s iron—especially not here. How can I tell, though... Well, there’s no point worrying about things I don’t know the answer to!
I extracted a chunk of the black-and-lime-green rock. Trial and error was going to be the only way to figure anything out—just like everything else in this world.