Chapter 463 – Search and Trail

000

Around the time that a great uproar was taking place on the ground, formidable things were happening underground.

“Artis! Get your assistants behind the barrier! Amelia! Don’t go too far! Innis! You intercept!”

When Lyla’s busy voice resounded in the wide aisle, people moved quickly according to her instructions her, and Innis, who had been waiting in the back her, jumped forward holding a flame sword in both hands.

[Remove intruder. Eliminate intruders.]

“Were they also inside… The defense system.”

Hiding behind Layla’s back her and adjusting her glasses in an interesting way, what Artis saw at the end of her gaze was a machine with a white body, just like the drone.

However, unlike the previous flying saucer, it was shaped like a barrel wrapped in plaster, with the cylindrical body covered with a special metal.

And, what appears to be legs hangs in three places at regular intervals and moves quickly on the ground using wheels attached to them.

The armament is the same cannon that the previous drone used.

It has 4 gates attached to it, twice as many as the drones, and it chases and attacks the moving party while rotating at high speed.

“Bah, it’s good that there’s a protection department…!”

Thanks to the protection that can withstand one to two feet, everyone was able to return to Layla’s back her without anyone getting seriously injured.

However, Innis still danced outside, swinging his sword while running on the ground, on the walls, and on the ceiling.

The Flamberge of Flame, which has no material form, cuts through the mechanical guard robot without any resistance.

“Wow!? It won’t cut!”

Said Innis, raising his voice.

“Because it’s bigger than a drone, does it have strong defense? No, in this case, should I say heat resistance?”

Lyla clicks her tongue when she hears Artis’ carefree analysis of her.

Chasing after Innis who had attacked him, the three-legged keg guy fired rage cannons continuously.

“It hurts so much!”

Her body her is many times stronger than a human’s, and thanks to her her magic field her spread around her, she can stop the pain from being hit hard with her fist, but if she went on like that, her her body could have been crushed.

“Ah, really. I didn’t intend to use it in this narrow space!”

With her helpless cry her, Layla placed a seal on her other hand her, concentrating her magic into one of her hands her, spreading her magic wall her.

‘In order to control the power and limit the range… I have no choice but to use this magic…!’

“O tenacious flames! Become limbs that hold the enemy, appear here now! Flare spikes!”

When the minimally simplified incantation burst out of her mouth, her magical energy her formed according to the prescribed formula.

A ball of fire appears above Layla’s head her, and spikes of flame extend from it and attach to the machine that is chasing her Innis.

Snuggle Geek!

The deafening sound of tires rubbing against the ground rises, and it can no longer move and is caught.

The thorns of the flame penetrated the joints of the machine and melted the relatively weak parts with the tremendous heat.

And-

Kwajik! When the leg with the tire snapped off with a noise, the guy rolled on the ground, and the red eye-like part in the middle of his body he moved quickly as if looking here and there.

“Innis! Destroy those eyes!”

“Ah, yes!—Ha!”

Hearing Lyla’s command, Innis stopped escaping and struck the flame sword once again, piercing the red part of the machine.

Unlike the other metal parts painted white, her sword might have been made of a material that could be penetrated, and when the red part was pierced with a crackling sound, it emitted black smoke while making a squeaking sound. –

“Oops! Innis! Get out of there!”

“Eh?”

Attis had a bad feeling and shouted that to Innis, but the machine exploded violently.

“This, Innis-!”

Amelia hurriedly shouted her voice her, but she, caught in the explosion, walked out pretty well, except for the black stains on her skin and clothes her as she coughed in the black smoke that billowed up from her.

“It’s all good…”

Amelia lets out a sigh of her relief her, but Lila sees her and lets out a different sigh of her own.

“That guy’s durability won’t be damaged by an explosion like that.”

“Even so, you can worry about it, right?”

“Well. You can worry about the facility being damaged.”

At Layla’s unreasonable statement, Amelia lets out a voice that sounds like she’s thinking about it.

But as she went straight to Innis and brushed off the soot from her hair and clothes her, she tilted her head.

To such Amelia, Artis talks.

“Well. Being disingenuous means talking about things like that. It’s really cute.”

“Hey, don’t say useless things. There are wreckage left here, so please investigate.”

“Wow, there are parts left.”

Lyla immediately restrains Attis, as if to stop it, and points to the wreckage of machines rolling across her ground her—parts tanned even blacker than Innis—as she speaks to Attis and her assistants her.

Artis looks excited with his mouth his, but immediately glances at his assistant his.

Then the assistants rushed over and started looking at the parts.

“Anyway. I don’t think that warning message and facility name were bluffs.”

Then, she approached Leila and quietly talked to her.

“What… Do you need to be bluffing with something like that?”

At the same time, what Layla and Artis think of is exactly 10 minutes ago.

Starting from the passageway of the hangar, proceeding inward, discovering along the way, a map of the facility’s internal structure.

There, the name of this facility, ‘Apocalyptic Weapons Laboratory’, was written on a fairly large scale.

Below that, in the case of illegal intruders, there was a phrase that warned and could be killed at the same time.

I had already been attacked by drones from the entrance, so I walked forward thinking that there could be nothing worse than that.

“Professor! Here’s a guy with a live circuit!”

At that time, Artis raised the corner of her mouth at the voice she heard from her assistant and looked a little at the board the assistant handed her and the power source attached to it.

“Ah- this is a magic circuit. Unlike drones, I saw that this guy used a certain amount of magic power. And. This board is probably the main circuit…”

With that said, just like when you looked inside the drone, take out your own pen and shine a red light on the circuit.

In front of her, once again, something like a blue translucent vision of a mechanical blueprint appears.

“It’s convenient to see you again.”

“Hehe.”

As if Lila’s words of envy made her feel better, when Artis rang her nose her, she had succeeded in finding information to determine the identity of the machine in the blueprints.

“I’ve found it. This guy, Canon Pod. It’s a type of unmanned weapon called the Pod series. Like a drone, it’s a machine designed to repeatedly carry out pre-supplied commands even if it’s not piloted by a human. After all, it’s similar to an automata. It’s more like a golem.”

“Ford… Series? So, are there more similar ones?”

At Amelia’s words, Artis nods her head and continues her story of her.

“This guy is equipped with cannons. Pods equipped with firearms. Saw blades equipped with saw blades. Electric pods that fire electricity. … It seems that these guys are in charge of guarding this facility, right?”

“Huh…”

At that time, Amelia confirmed that a red dot continued to flicker on one side of the translucent blueprint that Artis had floated, and she pointed to that part.

“Hey, Artis. What is this red thing?”

“Huh? Ah… That’s a sign that a signal is occurring.”

“Signaling?”

When Amelia tilts her head, Artis speaks while adjusting her glasses.

“Yes. Even if the machines of the ancients are far away, they can use communication through electrical signals rather than magic power. They say that they were able to contact them. This is sending a signal that they are now destroyed.”

“…To whom?”

“Well, they must be colleagues—”

After Artis had said that, he stopped talking when he heard the sound of a machine clicking and turning on a key and the sound of tires from across the hallway.

“Hey Artis. Answer me that it’s different from what I think.”

“Sorry. Lying isn’t my specialty.”

And, if a red light flashed across the hallway.

Kiyiying! There was the sound of something spinning rapidly and approaching.

“It’s a saw blade! It’s a saw blade!”

As Artis shouts and quickly runs in the opposite direction, the assistants also start running.

“What is it? Running all of a sudden? I won’t lose either!”

“Innis! Take Amelia and run!”

Lyla shouted to Innis, who was about to run away, and Innis immediately lifted Amelia, who was next to her her, into her princess arms her, and sprinted away with Lyla and her her.

001

Even after that, the investigators encountered pods blocking their way several times, and were able to advance into the facility somehow.

Sometimes Anise does it in a way that makes no sense, sometimes the assistants come up with a trick.

Sometimes, with Artis using his pen to self-destruct his pod.

Fortunately, no one was hurt, but most of the rooms along the way were living rooms used by the staff of this facility, and no significant results were obtained.

Searching through the wreckage of drones is getting tiring.

In front of the party’s eyes, a huge translucent door of a completely different shape appeared and blocked them.

“It seems that beyond this is the weapons development room.”

“Then… That means it was a skirmish up until this point.”

Lyla, who hears Artis talking while looking at her copied map of her, looks around the door with her arms crossed.

What stood out was the machine hanging on the wall on both sides of the door, at eye level.

“Looks like you’re opening a door with this? What do you do with that pen?”

“Okay. After all, when exploring a facility like this, you can be invincible with a pen.”

When Artis raises the Artifact Pen and confidently brings it to the machine, it emits a red light-

“…”

For a while, there was no reaction.

“…Is nothing happening?”

“Uh, uh…? Wait a minute.”

Attis, taken aback by Amelia’s point his, tapped his pen and pointed it at his mechanical device with a red light once more, but his assistants his began to mutter that nothing had happened.

“Could it be that the professor’s pen doesn’t work?”

“So. Are we supposed to solve puzzles, find secrets, and open doors like traditional archaeologists?”

“Well, that would be nice…”

Since she had always been able to easily break through her ruins using a pen and a rock pick, her assistants who accompanied her had, in a sense, yearned for the traditional archaeologist’s method.

“Hey! Can’t we be sad about the professor not being active!”

When Artis said that, all her assistants turned their heads away.

“It’s self-employed.”

When even Layla becomes sneering as if she’s not good enough, Artis sighs and looks back at her machine.

And then, with one of her hands, she fashioned her knives-

“Haha!”

And she slapped the machine that couldn’t accept her.

Kwajik! Hearing the sound, and seeing the surface of the machine being crushed, Layla, Amelia, and the assistants all look surprised.

Innis couldn’t make a face either, but he was surprised.

“What, what are you doing!?”

When Lyla is startled and rebukes Attis, Artis talks while wiping her red, swollen right hand her.

“My father once told me that if the machine in the primordial world is broken, it’s usually healed by hitting it.”

“How could that be! Are you still an archaeologist?”

Lila grabs Artis by the shoulder and shakes him.

Maybe if that machine is broken, there might be no other way to get inside.

But, that’s for a while.

[Detecting a strong impact on the authentication pad. A forced restart signal has been sent to the system.]

As the voice resounded, the lights came on all over the door that had simply been standing there.

“…Have you seen it?”

“No… Really? Is this… Going to be like that?”

Lyla is dumbfounded, and her assistants her run straight for Artis.

“You’re a professor, too!”

“Long live the professor! I will follow the professor from now on!”

“Oh, yes, yes.”

As if he had become a king, Artis laughed haha ​​and was praised by his assistants.

Lila looked at the investigators with cold eyes and then-

[Welcome. To the Great Apocalypse Disaster Weapons Research Institute under the control of the apocalypse countermeasures organization. We welcome your visit. Please do not stop and advance inside. When everyone has entered, the door is sealed.]

An artificial woman’s voice was heard, and at the same time, the door blocking the group’s path opened.

The party looked at each other for a while, then went through the open door and went inside.

Beyond the door, in a really wide area, various research machines were arranged here and there.

Everyone was a little overwhelmed by the fact that it was much bigger than the Tris laboratory that they had seen in Amelia’s hometown her.

Again, a woman’s voice is heard.

[After entering inside, please disinfect immediately and change into protective clothing]

[Currently, there are two ongoing projects in the lab.]

[The organic growth weapon – ‘synthetic water’ manufacturing project is in progress in Area A.]

[In area B, the final weapon of the end of the world – ‘Leviathan’ adjustment project is in progress.]

“Synthetic water…? Leviathan?”

Composite numbers were something that even Lyla knew.

It was called ‘Chimera’, and it was the result of alchemy and magic experimentation, created by combining the characteristics of various beasts into one.

If only there was something like a hideous tattered golem that was made by stitching parts together while still alive.

Most of them were created by injecting various mana into animals in a fetal state and forcibly transforming them.

‘Synthetic water, if the technology of the primordial world is the origin… Maybe, there might be a high-level magic control facility.’

Layla’s thoughts went that far, looking back at Artis.

Artis glances at the section of the ceiling where the voice came from, and adjusts her glasses.

That expression on her face wasn’t the kind of relaxed smile she had shown on her way to this place, and it wasn’t the smile that made people angry.

She opened her mouth, her eyes shining with an infinitely cold, intelligent light.

“Show me details about Project Leviathan.”

As if Layla was speechless in her voice, as if she was sure that if she said that, she would get an answer.

After a moment of silence, the voice of a woman guiding us was heard again.

[The Leviathan Project is a project about a giant weapon being built in the eastern part of the continent. Currently, drying is complete, and the adjustment of the final control unit is in progress. For detailed information, please check the Command Room in Area B. It projects a holographic map.]

Then, while looking at the huge map appearing over the heads of the party, Artis licked her lips.

“Lyla. First of all, I want to confirm something about Leviathan.”

“You really want to say that Leviathan is a gigantic mechanical snake at the bottom of the Dead Dragon Mountains?”

At Lyla’s question, Artis nods her head.

“Finally. Finally, I can catch a hint of what her father was after.”

“…It can’t be helped. I understand. But, when that’s over, we’ll have to go to the synthetic water side as well.”

At Lila’s answer, Artis smiles and nods her head.

“Now! Then, the investigation team. Follow the map that floated above your head to Area B! The item we want is right in front of you!”

Following Artis’ instructions her, as her party begins to move, Amelia briefly looks behind her.

Apparently, everyone passed through, but the door was not closing.

“Amelia? Don’t be blank.”

As Lila’s voice urges her on, Amelia hurries toward her.

[Confirm power pass. Close the door.]

And, only after Amelia and the other members of the investigation team completed their passage, the door closed.

And, what appeared there was-

“Hmm. This place… Whoops. Composite water. There must be something interesting.’

He was a regressor who wore a maniacal smile and took off the cloak that concealed his appearance.