by Sakon Kaidou
In unrelated (?) news, later in the day, a strange rumor was born. People said they saw an unnerving creature holding a dark flag, as well as a shady-looking masked woman, both of whom were riding a silver horse...
◇◇◇
Thirty minutes on horseback later, we were in so deep that there was literally no one nearby.
Still, I kept Silver galloping slowly enough to not crash into any people that might jump out at us.
“What are we gonna do when we’re there, anyway?” I asked Azurite.
“First and foremost, we will investigate the technology kept in these ruins,” she replied.
“You said that you can never tell what these ruins contain, right?”
“Yes. Also, there are two types of ruins — storehouses and factories.”
“Oh?”
“Storehouses are full of items left behind by the pre-ancient civilization,” she explained. “But there is no equipment to produce more of them, so you never gain much technology from them. You can salvage parts of it from the items, but it’s still very little. Factories, on the other hand, are places that actually make the items. If the equipment isn’t broken, you can use it for production right away, and even if it is broken, you can still look into how the items were made.”
I see, I thought. Storehouses are like huge treasure piles, but factories are way more useful to countries.
“What do you think about these ruins?” she asked. “Is it a factory or a storehouse? I don’t mind if you aren’t too certain.”
“A factory,” I replied with confidence. “Yesterday, Dr. Mario was asked to examine stuff like artificial diamonds and metal plates — things that were more like materials than products. I think it’s likely that this is a factory where they were making items using those and other things.”
“But that’s not quite enough to discard the possibility that this is a storehouse, is it?”
“Yeah. And that’s where the large crystal comes in.”
She nodded. “Fair point.”
It was just like the matter of Miss Aberration and the state religion’s shared monopoly over the priest grouping crystals.
Looking at it from that angle, it was safe to assume that the crystal here was secured so that the workers here could have easy access to jobs like Engineer and Mechanic.
Or, rather, this whole factory had been built around that crystal.
“I saw no corrosion on any of the walls here,” said Nemesis. “If this is a factory, the equipment must be intact, as well.”
“True,” Azurite nodded. “That is likely.”
The idea that a factory could still be running after two millennia spoke volumes about the technological prowess of the pre-ancient civilization.
Thinking about that made me wonder how a culture so advanced had collapsed in the first place.
Hugo had told me that it was destroyed by a god and his thirteen servants, while B3 told me something about another ancient civilization that had collapsed at about the same time.
I couldn’t help but wonder about that.
“I’ll have to ask Dr. Mario,” I muttered.
An archeologist like him is bound to know something about that... hm?
“Ah!” I gasped as I saw a light coming from further ahead in the hallway.
In a haste, I moved my Black Warcoat to hide my face with it, and a second later, I felt it absorb something.
“Ray!” Azurite exclaimed.
“I’m all right! But there’s something up ahead!”
Soon enough, the monsters that were out of sight came into vision.
There were two of them, and they were much like the construct that had attacked Shirley yesterday.
That extended to having names that didn’t suit them at all — Goblin Warrior and Pashi Rabbit.
One of them was wielding firearms similar to yesterday’s Teal Wolf (?)’s, but the other one had a design focused around the energy pipe it had for a head.
“That’s the thing that fired the beam!” I exclaimed as I made Silver accelerate towards them, figuring that being too far away from them was a bad idea.
The one with the firearms responded by attacking us with bullets and shells, but I avoided them by making Silver gallop across the wall.
The one with the beam gun aimed at us and fired again, but just like the previous beam, I saw it coming.
“OARGH!” I roared as I made my Black Warcoat dance and block the beam.
Soon enough, I was right next to them. Not wasting any time, I howled, “Vengeance is Mine!” and destroyed the head of the beam model (Goblin Warrior).
As I did that, Azurite used what looked like the skill she’d talked about, Laser Blade, to split the firearm model (Pashi Rabbit) in half.
The two monsters stopped moving, released particles of light, then ceased all function.
“Phew...” I sighed in relief. That battle had been really sudden, and I was glad it’d gone so smoothly.
“The first attack you received here was a laser straight to the face,” commented Nemesis. “How gruesome.”
Yeah. If I hadn’t had Monochrome, I’d have probably lost my head, I thought in response.
It had given me some Shining Despair charge, though. A silver lining.
I asked, “You okay, Azurite? Got hit by any stray bullets?”
“No, I’m unharmed. That aside, these monsters with absurd names... I’ve heard of them from the countess.”
Azurite and I examined the two monsters we’d beaten. The names above their heads had already vanished, and the particles of light were a sure sign that the monsters were dead. However, the machine parts, though broken, were still there.
It was the same as yesterday.
“This one’s the same model as the one I saved Shirley from,” I said.
“Are you implying that the monsters from these ruins escaped outside?”
That would’ve come as no surprise. Ruins were natural dungeons, meaning that, unlike how it was with created dungeons, the monsters inside weren’t bound to them. It was entirely possible that they’d leaked out.
For all we knew, there might be ways out of here other than the main entrance, and the monsters might be capable of leaving through them. Thus, the idea of them leaving the dungeon wasn’t strange at all... unlike these things.
“I heard of this, but it’s still so odd,” muttered Azurite. “These are monsters, so why are they not disappearing?”
Azurite had the exact same question as me.
Normally, monsters became light and disappeared the moment they were defeated, and non-living creatures, such as golems, were no exception. I’d seen this happen many times with the Balloon Golem Kasumi often summoned, so that was pretty much certain.
Despite that, these mechanical monsters actually had physical remains.
And no, these weren’t drops... Based on what’d happened yesterday, it was clear that these were their actual parts, left behind despite their destruction.
I picked up a part, examined it, and just like yesterday, the only description I got was: “The remains of a mysterious machine.”
Perhaps an archeologist like Dr. Mario would know more about this? I thought.
“Let’s take these remains with us, shall we?” Azurite suggested.
I nodded in response, and we gathered the pieces and stored them away.
◇
Ten-odd minutes had passed since our clash with those two monsters.
We were in another part of the hallway, stunned by what we were seeing.
“Looks like those two were left functioning by accident,” I muttered, as I eyed all the mechanical remains lying around.
These remains were of the same types as the two we’d encountered, but there were at least ten of each.
“The destruction on the surroundings is fresh, and the split constructs are still sparking,” said Azurite. “They were destroyed only recently.”
She wasn’t wrong there — the damage on the machines was clearly new. Th
e damage looked pretty varied, too. Some machines had three parallel cuts on them, some had a single cut that split them apart, some had holes that looked like they were caused by arrows in them, et cetera.
It felt like the aftermath of a fight from someone in the gladiator grouping. Someone who’d used many various weapons.
There was another thing of note, here...
“These are... traps,” I noted.
There were machines poking out of the walls and the ceiling.
Most of them were gun-like in appearance, but there were also some lens-like devices that seemed as though they’d been designed to horizontally slide on the walls.
That’s the generic SF laser trap that splits people apart, isn’t it?
“It’s quite clear that these traps were triggered,” said Azurite.
“There’s nothing on the ground, though, so whoever triggered them made it through.”
A tian’s body wouldn’t disappear, and a dead Master would leave behind a set of random drops. This meant that whoever had passed this place had been unfazed by the traps and gone on ahead.
The kind of person could do that and... Hm?!
There was a sudden sound that seemed very familiar.
“Ray!” Azurite called out.
“That sounds like battle, all right,” I nodded.
“Mm-hm,” Nemesis joined. “Those echoes are coming from further in the hallway.”
The hallway took a turn about 100 meters ahead, and it sounded like someone was fighting someone up ahead.
“Let’s go check it out,” I said, as I made Silver gallop towards the source. He arrived at the corner in a flash, and we could now see what was happening beyond it.
There was a bigger space, much like the room with the large crystal. Floor, ceiling, walls... everything was covered in metal.
And there were nearly 50 mechanical, battle-ready monsters.
However, not a single one of them was looking at us.
They were shooting their guns and lasers at something moving in seemingly every direction at incredible speeds.
As I watched this dumbfounding battle...
“Grimalkin at the mercy of the waves.”
“Grimalkin at the tail of the wind.”
...I heard someone recite a poem.
Despite all the gunfire, I could hear it pretty clearly.
“Grimalkin under the leaves.”
“Grimalkin in the shade of fire-sparks.”
The source of this poem was the thing the machines were aiming at, the thing they were firing at, but were unable to shoot down.
It was a man with a cat on his head.
“Grimalkin beyond the stars.”
“Grimalkin within the heart.”
He was The Lynx, Tom Cat — the second in the kingdom’s duel rankings, and the reigning champion before Figaro’s taking the title.
“Now dance, Octachrome Cat — Grimalkin.”
The moment he said that, Tom’s trademark cat, Grimalkin, jumped off his head.
The Embryo landed on all fours, then stood up on its back legs.
It didn’t end there. The cat then grew, lost its fur... and became another Tom in a blink of an eye.
That was surprising enough, but there was even more. Both the original Tom and the Tom that had been Grimalkin multiplied, and the two Toms became four.
Then the four Toms became eight.
“Grimalkin says goodbye.”
Suddenly, they all attacked the mechanical monsters.
They were too fast for me to follow with the naked eye.
I’d already seen supersonic movements from Figaro, Xunyu, and other top duel rankers. Thanks to all the mock battles I had with them, I was more or less used to such speeds.
It was pretty obvious that Tom’s job, The Lynx, was an AGI-focused job that allowed supersonic movement, and normally, I’d have been able to follow him with my gaze.
However, I couldn’t do that with eight of him.
Some were running on the floor, some dashed up the walls, others moved through the air.
All eight moved in all three dimensions, and with unparalleled precision. They even left afterimages so solid that they seemed like new clones, making it even more difficult to follow them.
One had claw-like bracers, one had a longsword, one had a bow... their weapons were varied, and it felt like there were even more of them than there actually was.
Eventually, the entire room became completely filled with Toms and their afterimages. It was as if this very space belonged to him alone.
Their ferocious, supersonic attacks quickly dealt away with the mechanical monsters.
“Monster Cat Mansion.” I unwittingly muttered his nickname.
This was the first time I’d seen him fight, and it was abundantly clear how he’d gotten that nickname. It was his immensely powerful self-cloning ability.
Of course, this wasn’t the first such ability I’d seen. Marie’s Death Shadow job gave her something in the same vein. However, that skill divided her stats between the clones. The more clones, the weaker they were.
Considering that made Grimalkin seem even more fearsome. Creating seven clones as powerful as yourself was stunning, even for an Embryo’s ultimate skill, and combining that with a speed so great that you formed solid afterimages was just insane.
Staring at the eight, I couldn’t follow them at all.
“Right, up... landed,” muttered Azurite, standing at my side.
She was moving her head as though she was looking at something... someone... specific.
“Are you still following the original Tom?” I asked.
“Yes. Only barely, though.”
That wasn’t something I’d expected from a high-rank job. Perhaps there was truth to the idea that tians were the better technical fighters, and we Masters only surpassed them because of skills and stats.
Well... there were exceptions like Shu and Figaro, but my point still stood.
“That aside, do you perhaps know Monster Cat Mansion?” she asked me.
“We’re acquainted, yeah. You too, I assume?”
“I do not know him in person, but I have heard of him, of course. He was the kingdom’s duel champion for years, after all.”
“Good point.”
Tom had been the king of the arena until Figaro had come and taken the crown, so it was only natural for tians to know of him, too.
Hold on, I thought. Figaro became top duelist when he was still in his sixth form. That was over two years ago in Dendro time, so... when, exactly, did Tom become the champion?
“Ah! Ray!” Azurite exclaimed.
“Eh?!” I brought my attention back to Tom’s battle with the monsters.
With most of the monsters destroyed, the winner here was as good as decided.
But then, a great number of gun-like objects with lenses at the muzzle protruded out of the walls.
They were the same as the sentry gun traps Tom’d destroyed in the hallway.
I didn’t know if it was because they were old, but only about half of them properly worked. However, that was more than enough.
The Toms were suddenly assaulted by a barrage of lasers, more than 100 of them. Not even supersonic speeds allowed the many clones to avoid that number of high-velocity projectiles. Both the afterimages and the actual clones alike were shot.
“They hit the original!” Azurite exclaimed.
“What?!”
Azurite pointed at one of the countless Toms.
The Tom wielding claw-like bracers was shot in the head and became particles of light... but then transformed into a fat cat, meowed, and vanished.
“Huh... eh?” Azurite was dumbfounded.
“Sure it wasn’t a clone?” I asked.
“N-No! I was certain that was the real one... huh?”
We looked back at Tom. The afterimages had vanished, and only one of them was left now.
He then became two, and a second later, the one that had been there fr
om the start was turned into swiss cheese by a barrage of lasers.
However, despite seemingly being the original, he became a cat, meowed, and vanished.
Then the Tom that was seemingly a clone began multiplying again.
And so, the Toms were eight once more. They started moving at supersonic speeds again, creating afterimages and making short work of the sentry guns.
“What is that?” Azurite exclaimed, utterly flabbergasted by what she was seeing.
I, on the other hand, now understood the true nature of Tom’s ultimate skill.
It didn’t create “clones,” oh no.
It created new “originals.”
From what I could tell, they all shared a single consciousness, but when the “original” housing the consciousness was beaten, it would move to another “original.” Thus, the supposed “original” would become a “clone.”
That ultimate skill couldn’t be countered unless you defeated all eight Toms quickly enough to prevent the remaining ones from multiplying.
This was the power of Grimalkin, the Embryo of the previous duel champion.
“You didn’t know about this, either?” I asked Azurite.
“I only knew that he could create clones... I never saw any of his duels.”
I see. I never saw him fight, either, so I’m pretty shaken right now.
“Few Embryos give their Master as much survivability as this one does,” commented Nemesis.
Yeah.
This also gave me a decent idea of how Figaro had won against him.
At first, he’d focused entirely on defense, bearing Tom’s onslaught until his battle length-proportionate enhancement had given him the power he needed to defeat the Toms before they could multiply again.
And then there was Kashimiya — the third in the rankings. Juliet had told me that he couldn’t beat Tom because of compatibility issues, which probably meant that he had no way to stop him from multiplying again.
And that was exactly why I had no chance against him, either.
“Strange to think that he isn’t a Superior,” I muttered.
I felt Nemesis nod in response and continued to watch Tom clear the room.
◇
Once the room was completely emptied, Tom noticed us, waved, and walked over.
“If it isn’t Ray and... a masked lady I don’t know. Hellooo,” he greeted us.