The reason Signe had said it would take three hours to "walk" became clear after they tried various methods to shorten the time. There was a problem in this area: flying or using teleportation would send the caster to a different location than intended. If one used teleport targeting the fog-dense area, they would unexpectedly find the lake beneath their feet.
The phenomenon—repeatedly using magic only to be transported to an irrelevant place—was similar to the characteristics of Celestia, the city in the sky. Since she had said compasses didn’t work either, perhaps the two regions shared similar features, like differentiated magnetic field flows.
The problem was that even considering the lake’s considerable size, it was difficult to move beyond its vicinity on foot. Though it was clearly an open plain in every direction, it felt like circling the same spot, as if trapped in a labyrinth. The result was the same no matter what method they used.
"Ah, I can't go any further—. Let's rest a bit before continuing."
Around two and a half hours after wandering near the lake, Signe—who had been boldly proclaiming her military spirit—sprawled out beside a stone tablet.
In fact, this was already her third rest, so Leonardo looked at her with disapproval rather than concern.
"Resting again?"
"Really, just five minutes, just five minutes."
Signe, alone drenched in sweat, wiped her face with her forearm and tried to steady her increasingly unstable breathing. Somehow, rather than being a guide, she seemed to have taken the position of package 3, trailing after the two guys he’d met on the peninsula.
The stone tablet beside her was serving as a signpost, and it was so small that most of it would be covered if an adult spread both palms over it. Its height was much lower than Signe’s upper body, rising and falling on the ground.
In the plain full of wildflowers, it was something you’d only find by staring at the ground until your eyes popped. Such stone tablets were scattered throughout the land, spaced quite irregularly, with sentences engraved on them. They were worn and hard to make out, but generally written in an ancient language. If Signe hadn’t told him, he would probably have taken them for ordinary stones.
The marker she claimed only she and her sister knew was also on this stone tablet. The star-shaped mark scratched into the blue-gray surface remained intact—a trace of young sisters enjoying adventures disguised as play in the vast field.
Leonardo, carefully examining the stone tablet they’d come across again, took his hands out of his pockets and knelt down in front of it.
'This isn't a rock you'd find in this area.'
From the cross-section at a broken edge, the stone tablet was schist. And if you looked around even a little, you could see rocks and fragments of schist rolling through the field or by the stream. Schist, a metamorphic rock subjected to heat and pressure for a long time, isn’t easy to find in a wide plain rather than a mountainous area.
Leonardo, who had been scanning the terrain, turned his head to Signe, still sprawled out. Then he muttered, sounding like she was pathetic:
"You applied for the military—would you be like this in a minefield too?"
Seeing her panting in her uniform, the stern voice he used when training Nero came out naturally. Signe flinched, pressed her hands to the ground, and hurriedly raised her upper body. But it seemed too much to stand, so she sat with her butt on the grass and clasped her trembling knees.
"Hey—, aren't you tired at all?"
"What's there to be tired about?"
"My legs are too heavy. It feels like the ground is pulling me down."
Signe, uncharacteristically whining, looked like she’d reached her physical limit, saying her legs were sinking more and more. It was poor endurance for someone who had passed the military’s test. Leonardo raised one eyebrow as he watched her about to flop back down again.
"The ground is pulling you down?"
He tapped the grass with the sole of his boot for no real reason. It was because he wondered if there might be a connection between the rumor about disappearing corpses and her complaint.
'Is it really related to gravity or magnetic fields?'
But to Leonardo, who couldn’t understand her exhaustion, nothing else felt different.
"Signe. Did you ever feel your body get heavy when you came here before?"
"Huh? Well... It was harder than usual running around, but not to this extent. Damn... I’m enlisting tomorrow—what if I get sick like this?"
She seemed to have no intention of moving, sprawling out again and using the stone tablet as a pillow.
"Ah... I feel like I might live now that I’m lying down. But since you mentioned it, there’s one thing I remember. My dad used to say that metal objects got heavier every time he came here. He was sensitive to that kind of thing because he was a blacksmith."
"Metal objects got heavier?"
"Yeah. This area is especially like that. When I was young, an axe head used in a store near the station bent, and he found out while helping to fix it..."
Metal objects were representative materials affected by magnetic field flows. Leonardo instinctively felt that part of the hypothesis he’d been unconsciously building was starting to match. With narrowed eyes, he listened to Signe’s story—then formed a lightning spear in his hand, sparks flying.
At the sudden threatening fizz, Signe, who’d been muttering while blankly staring at the sky, rolled her eyes. Before she could even look surprised, Leonardo threw the lightning straight up.
The lightning spear, shooting vertically, wavered in shape and soon split into several branches, scattering in different directions. It was difficult to track with the naked eye, but it wasn’t hard for a mage to detect the current they’d created with their own mana.
'That's...'
The current flowed somewhere, as if winding along distorted space-time. Most of its ends were in the middle of the lake or within the fog-dense area. Watching the phenomenon, Leonardo twisted the corner of his mouth and let out a soft chuckle.
"Now I understand a bit."
So this region, though it looked like a simple wide plain on the surface, actually contained tangled spaces. The evidence was the unstable magnetic field flow, the endless path no matter how far one went, and the anomalous phenomenon where teleportation didn’t work properly.
In other words, what he saw wasn’t everything. Rather, pieces of space were connected like irregular portals. He couldn’t know the exact cause, but if there was one thing he could guess, it was stronger gravity than in other regions.
If gravity was strong, it made sense that the magnetic field would be affected and bend, and that space-time would be distorted. Though it was the opposite result from Celestia, where anti-gravity formed, the texture was similar. The principle of casting Pentagon—which he’d briefly thought of earlier—also fit. If distortion occurred through gravity’s action, it was theoretically understandable that time flowed differently only in this place.
"You, you could do that too?"
Signe, still sprawled out, opened her eyes wide as if she were only now realizing it. Despite him already having supported her and even used teleportation, she reacted intensely every time he revealed new magic. Leonardo shrugged, extended a hand for her to take, and asked:
"Your father said metal objects got heavy only when he came here, right? That’s probably due to the magnetic field and gravity. This area has distorted space, so the magnetic field’s flow is tangled too. Maybe even the sudden disappearance of corpses is related."
"...What? Magnetic field? Distorted space? What are you talking about?"
Signe frowned at the unfamiliar words. Leonardo explained the hypothesis in slightly simpler terms. Even though he hadn’t fully organized it himself, he wasn’t sure he could make her understand.
"...So my legs feel this heavy because gravity is stronger."
"That’s my guess."
"Then it’s not just a rumor—it’s actually possible? That dead people go missing?"
"There’s teleportation, there are portals. Even Bermuda, where children turn up in the middle of a wasteland—so there’s nothing impossible about corpses disappearing."
Signe, half-lifted, opened and closed her mouth while barely holding onto Leonardo’s hand. Then he hauled her up in one smooth pull. He seemed unaffected—to the point that her wobbling a moment ago became embarrassing. As if he were a being untouched by that gravity.
"So this place is, in essence, a maze without visible barriers. In reality, it’s more complex than a maze blocked by walls. You think you're going the right way, but you don’t know where you’re heading, and the only thing to rely on is this stone tablet, which isn’t even arranged regularly. The fact that you and your sister were able to get there a few years ago might have just been luck."
Leonardo pointed with his chin toward the foggy area that didn’t seem too far away.
Signe had said that she and her sister, when they were young, gradually approached the old castle in the fog by leaving marks on the stone tablets, and eventually reached the destination. The marks they were following now were those traces—but thinking about it now, Leonardo wasn’t sure the route the sisters had taken back then would still be valid today.
If even a tiny deformation had occurred in this place where space-time was distorted, their pioneering path would quickly become useless.
Though he didn’t say it outright, Signe seemed to roughly understand what he meant, staring blankly toward where the old castle would be. Leonardo looked at her and calmly added:
"Anyway, it’s certain we’re lost now. If we keep going like this, we’ll just go deeper into the maze with no guarantee of ever reaching it. It’s better to go back first."
"......."
"Your stamina is almost depleted, and you have less than thirty hours until enlistment. You know what happens if you don’t show up on time, right?"
Leonardo said it while looking down at the military watch tied to her wrist. It wasn’t a path to navigate with package 3—someone who needed to be delivered within a set time—when it would be dangerous even for him alone.
Signe, who had been uncharacteristically silent, suddenly looked °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° down at the stone tablet at her feet. As if something surfaced from memory, she blurted out:
"It wasn't because we were lucky."
She raised her head, her face rather serious.
"My sister said exactly the same thing as you. That this place is like a maze. We found the way knowing the path. My sister could read the content of the stone tablets."
