Chapter 16: The Walking Catastrophe [2]
Rian watched the human machine as she walked just in front of him.
She was barefoot, and as she moved her head left and right like a little parrot, the white halo above her forehead drifted along with it.
That halo was the reason she could draw such a refined amount of Holy Mana into her body. It wasn’t as pure as the Holy Mana the Holy Mark produced, but it came close.
’...So both she and the Holy Mark came from the same origin.’
He thought back to his past life, where Jeanne and her forces had dedicated a part of every day to praying to the Gods above.
They believed the Holy Mark had been bestowed upon them by someone almighty, someone they called their God.
’...Turns out it was all just the experiment of a mad scientist.’
Then again, Rian himself didn’t know much about the Holy Mark either.
’...Guess this human machine will bring me some answers.’
He glanced at her back, watching the way she moved, so precisely close to how a normal human walked.
’...I wonder how she was made.’
What was even inside her? Did she feel things the way a human did? And if so, then how did it all work?
Gulp...
Rian couldn’t wait to get back to his room and split her open.
As he thought that, the human machine named Sister came to a stop.
"...Is something the matter?"
Sister brought both her hands near her face and looked up at the clear sky.
"...It has been a while since I last saw the sky."
"Really? So you never left the Labyrinth before?"
She shook her head. "I couldn’t leave, because the Archon Blade needed a new master. As its caretaker, I had to make sure it never fell into the wrong hands."
"...Huh, is that so? Then do you think it’s in worthy hands now?"
"Indeed. After all, you are the bearer of the Serpent of Time. That makes you automatically eligible to wield or operate anything Lady Zelda ever made."
"...Really?"
Rian blinked, clearly stunned by the intel.
If Sister was right, then it meant there were other artifacts out there like the 「Archon Blade of Zelda」, and that his Holy Mark was the key to using all of them.
That being said, there was still one thing Rian didn’t understand.
Those corpses he’d seen inside the Labyrinth, all along the path to that door, how had they ended up like that?
Clearly the Holy Mark was what let Rian open the gateway in the first place, which would mean anyone else needed a Holy Mark bearer in their group just to get inside.
Unable to hold back his curiosity, Rian asked the tiny mechanical girl walking ahead of him.
"Is there any other way to enter the Labyrinth?"
Rian asked it because he suspected those rotten corpses hadn’t belonged to any Holy Mark bearer at all. And if that were true, then there had to be some other way inside.
Sister walked on at her usual pace, answering him as she went.
"There indeed is."
"Oh? And where is it? Does the Holy Mar—I mean, does the Serpent of Time not need to be there to open it?"
Rian thought he’d finally get his answer.
He was wrong.
"I do not know. Lady Zelda told me there exists more than one entrance to each of her Labyrinths, but where those entrances are located was never shared with me."
’...I thought so.’
"So the corpses I saw earlier must have come in through one of those other paths," Rian muttered to himself.
This new piece of information almost made him sad, because even though the Labyrinth had more than one entrance, he had never once managed to discover a single one of them.
Even this time, he’d only reached this place because Jeanne had told him about it in his previous timeline.
Just how well did Zelda hide these things?
Rian wished he knew.
Sigh...
A regrettable sigh escaped his mouth.
And then there were the several hundred corpses inside the Labyrinth, piled up over the span of three thousand years.
Which meant those people had found their way in, and been killed after entering.
Rian was almost certain it was this mechanical girl who had killed every last one of them over those three thousand years.
’...Well, that clears up one mystery about this place, at least.’
Rian thought it over, carefully reviewing his findings inside his head.
As Rian followed after Sister, his Holy Mark reacted once again, just like before.
"...!!"
The warmth was intense this time, as if the Mark was trying to force something away from him.
And it didn’t fade either.
Rian clenched his fist hard, keeping it contained, and thought to ask Sister if she knew anything, because when it came to Holy Mana, Rian was a complete newbie.
Hell, he’d never so much as cast a single Holy spell in his life, so calling himself a newbie was giving himself too much credit.
"...Lady Zelda..."
Sister’s voice came out weak.
As Rian turned to look at her, he saw that the halo above her head was pulsing, in the exact same rhythm as his Holy Mark.
"What’s happening?" Rian asked, still clenching his hand.
"Just now, someone cast a wide-range Anti-Holy Mana interference spell."
"...Excuse me?"
Sister couldn’t feel pain, but the abnormality was plain to see, in the way her halo pulsed, and in how her movements had grown weaker.
Sister turned and looked straight towards at four o’clock.
"I have located the source, Lady Zelda. And it came from that direction."
Rian turned to the exact spot she was pointing at.
"...No way. That’s where Thalia went."
Rian had a bad feeling about this.
She’d told him earlier not to worry about such trivial things.
But after seeing how his Holy Mark and the halo above Sister’s head were reacting, he wasn’t so sure anymore about what Thalia was actually dealing with.
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