Chapter 603: Amusement Park

After passing through the subway tracks for the second time, we finally arrived at the unexplored sector where Lily was waiting.

But that was as far as we would go today.

One way or another, it had taken us the entire day to make it through the central district. Under Avalon’s crimson sky, it was easy to lose all sense of day and night, but by my reckoning, it was already close to midnight.

Going aboveground was too dangerous. With the secondary guns of the flying warship Shangri-La, Lily held an enormous area within firing range. For safety’s sake, we decided to rest on the subway platform.

And then, the next day, the 11th of the Month of First Fire.

“First, we scout the surrounding area.”

In truth, every part of me wanted to charge straight at Lily now that she was practically within reach. But this was one moment where caution had to win.

More accurately, the order to scout was only an excuse on the surface. There was something else we needed to investigate.

“We regroup here in three hours and report in. Do not enter the firing range of that cannon under any circumstances.”

After a brief confirmation, we quietly slipped out of the station.

“It really is a complete ruin of a city.”

I had already known that from Vivian’s information, but seeing it with my own eyes struck differently. The preserved parts of the ancient city we had passed through until now had felt unreal somehow… almost like wandering through Last Rose’s dreamscape. There were even theories that those streets hadn’t truly survived intact through ancient technology, but were some kind of advanced illusion, that the whole thing was little more than a mirage.

So perhaps every other section had once looked just like this. Perhaps beneath the preservation and grandeur, it had all been nothing but ruins.

At the very least, this broken cityscape lay bare exactly as it was, with nothing hidden, exposed to the passage of time without mercy.

“All right. Let’s go.”

Following the directions we had agreed on beforehand, I set out alone. No, not quite alone. Vivian was with me, and Simon too, hidden as always.

Our destination was the site of the church-like structure where Fiona and the others had spent the night.

“Wow… there’s really nothing left. Are we sure this is the place?”

“Yes. This is definitely it.”

If Vivian said so, then it had to be right.

Fiona’s group had set out from here to confront Lily, only to be hit by a preemptive bombardment and forced to flee back to the subway station in miserable condition. That meant this place was already inside Lily’s firing range.

I doubted Lily would fire a direct killing shot at me with the secondary gun, since she had no intention of killing me. Still, caution was necessary. I kept Over Sky, my emergency escape option, ready in case a cannon shell, missile, or Meteor Strike came flying our way at any moment.

And while staying on guard, I began my search.

“…As I thought. This one’s no good.”

From beneath the rubble, I picked up a palm-sized black fragment and sighed.

The thing we were searching for was the Zero Chronicle of Beginning History.

To counter the overwhelming firepower and range of Lily’s bombardment, Fiona had used the teleportation function hidden within the Zero Chronicle of Beginning History. I doubted Lily would fall for the same trick twice, but the device was still worth investigating. There might be a side route hidden in it. Or perhaps some other information we could pull from it.

That was why Simon was here.

My theory was that the Zero Chronicle of Beginning History was not merely a transportation system powered by teleportation magic. Rather, teleportation was only one of its functions. At heart, it seemed more like an advanced magical information terminal.

Normally, it did nothing more than display glowing text in praise of the Demon King Mia, like some kind of obelisk screen saver. Perhaps that was all it had been doing all this time, sitting in sleep mode because the ancient civilization had vanished and no one alive knew how to use it anymore.

But if it could still light up, then some part of it was still alive.

And if someone knew how to operate it, then it might be capable of far more.

Still, no matter how miraculous some ancient super-computer might be, if it was blown completely to pieces, there was little anyone could do with it. I had already suspected the terminal here had been destroyed in the bombardment, and in the end, that suspicion proved correct.

We would just have to search elsewhere. With the five of us combing the area, we ought to find at least one.

Three hours later…

“Nope. Nothing.”

“I found nothing either.”

“Same here. Most of it’s collapsed. This might really be hopeless.”

“I found only a single fragment that resembled one. If the rest are buried under the rubble, there is no finding them.”

We had been too optimistic. Reality was cruel.

“Lily might’ve smashed the nearby ones herself,” I muttered.

It would certainly be safer to destroy the hardware outright than to risk someone accessing a security program.

“There are still many places we haven’t searched. While we scout, let’s make one full circuit around Lily’s base.”

It was too soon to give up. So we spent the rest of the afternoon searching for the Zero Chronicle of Beginning History.

But the result did not change. About the only thing we gained was a distant look at Lily’s base itself. By the time we dragged ourselves back to the subway station, we were more exhausted in spirit than in body.

“So, what now?”

“If it isn’t there, then we’ve no choice. We go in the straightforward way and…”

“Ah, there it is!”

At last, a cry of discovery.

And the one who shouted was Simon.

“No way!”

“Yeah. I think this place might be the station control room.”

So that was how it was.

We had only made a quick sweep of the station interior to check for enemies. We hadn’t searched it closely. The room Simon led us to did, in fact, look like some kind of staff office, the sort of place ordinary passengers would never enter.

It was a plain, functional room with metal desks lined up inside. When we brushed the soot from one section of the wall, there it was: a small black-gloss terminal embedded in the surface.

The Zero Chronicle of Beginning History.

“Will it work?”

The thing was only about thirty centimeters square, and no text glowed on it. At a glance, it looked like nothing more than a black stone panel.

“Hang on.”

Simon dropped his backpack, rummaged around, and produced another terminal of similar size.

“I brought this out of Taurus’s cockpit.”

So he intended to use a matching terminal to try and gain access.

Even so, there was no USB port or slot here, no cable to physically connect anything. So how in the world…

“Got it. They connected. Looks like this one’s just out of magical power. The main body isn’t broken.”

Like a dead laptop battery, then.

As Simon manipulated the glowing white letters on the Taurus terminal, the stone panel in the wall responded. Ancient script lit up across its surface.

“Ohhh, that’s incredible…”

“So he’s operating an ancient ruin?”

“Come to think of it, there was something similar in the Grand Coliseum too…”

“What kind of principle even makes this work?”

Each of us murmured our own thoughts as we watched Simon work.

“Well?”

“For now, it seems to be functioning normally. I still don’t know how much this terminal can do exactly, so I’ll have to poke around a bit more… but from here on, this is my job.”

That was true enough. None of us could help him with this.

“All right then. I’m counting on you.”

“Yeah. Leave it to me.”

The physically inclined swordsmen would do well to stay out of the way and let the brainy alchemist work.

So that night, we rested in front of the control room, guarding Simon while he worked.

And then, the following day, the 12th of the Month of First Fire.

Simon spent almost the entire day trying to access Lily’s base through the station terminal. He had warned us it might amount to absolutely nothing, but…

“I got a map of Lily’s base.”

Only after dinner did the good news finally arrive.

We all gathered inside the control room and listened as Simon, looking more than a little tired, gave his report.

“All right. This is the overall map.”

He touched the station terminal, and a three-dimensional image rose into the air like a hologram. I had seen something similar once before in Garahad Fortress.

Apparently, ancient projection devices were rare enough that even this drew a small chorus of amazement.

“Man, this place is seriously weird.”

There was a castle, a ship, and all kinds of bizarre structures. To someone like Kai, born and raised in this world, it must have looked utterly incomprehensible.

“Hey… isn’t this maybe some kind of place for fun?”

“Sharp eye, Falkius. You’re right.”

Maybe it was because he was a gladiator, an entertainer by nature, that he could sense the atmosphere of a leisure park.

“You know what it is, Chrono?”

“Yeah. It’s an amusement park.”

Anyone from Earth would have recognized it instantly. The fairy-tale castle. The Ferris wheel. The roller coaster. The merry-go-round. The haunted house. And all the other attractions besides.

If that floating warship hadn’t been planted right beside the white castle, it would have been a perfect amusement park.

“So if it’s not a military facility, then it wasn’t built with defense in mind.”

Seris murmured that perhaps that gave us a chance.

“Unfortunately, Lily’s using Shangri-La’s systems to fortify it anyway.”

Simon touched the terminal again, and the three-dimensional image flattened into a map. Each section had a label, but of course it was written in ancient script, so none of us could read it.

“This is the main gate. The castle’s in the center, and this red section is Shangri-La.”

Simon quickly explained the layout.

“And this is the rough distribution of magical energy.”

Blue points of light and lines appeared across the map.

“This biggest blue point is the heart of the whole base. It’s supplying magical energy to everything. That’s definitely Shangri-La’s reactor. It’s probably running at less than one percent of its original capacity, but even so, it’s enough to power defenses better than most fortresses.”

That energy source was what let Lily fire the secondary cannon and deploy large-scale barriers. No individual could power that kind of machinery with their own magic for long without burning out.

“Then the scattered points are barrier generators?”

“Yeah. Judging from the layout, I think so.”

The classic magical apparatus for defending a castle was the barrier generator. Garahad Fortress had them too. Most strongholds paired their walls with barrier systems to ward off large-scale attacks. Without them, dragoons and pegasus knights could assault from the sky at will.

Looking at the blue points positioned all around the amusement park’s perimeter and the lines connecting them back to Shangri-La’s reactor, it could hardly be anything else.

“If that barrier goes up, I think you’ll be trapped inside. Once you enter, there won’t be any escape.”

Right.

For Lily, this barrier wasn’t a wall to keep enemies out.

It was a cage to keep me from getting away.

“Heh. Dungeons are full of traps like that.”

Kai just laughed it off. Boss rooms were usually the same, after all.

We all knew what we were doing. Everyone had come this far prepared for exactly that. And as for me, I had no intention of turning back until I had all of them.

“But here’s the important part… besides the barrier generators, Shangri-La and the castle both have a few other locations being supplied with magical energy.”

The map zoomed in. Sure enough, several blue points glowed there.

“There has to be some kind of equipment there that consumes a lot of power. An ancient weapons maintenance chamber, maybe. A homunculus production facility. Or… containment units holding Fiona and the others.”

I see.

So these points were our best candidates for where the hostages were being held.

“All right, if we know where they are, then the rest is easy!”

“Yes. We infiltrate, and we free them.”

“That’s our real job.”

“Princess Nell… we will save you. No matter what.”

Exactly.

This was why I had gathered allies in the first place.

I was the one who needed to fight Lily. No one else. It had to be me. If I couldn’t take Lily with my own hands, then there was no meaning in any of this.

But if she took hostages at the crucial moment, I would be finished.

That was why I needed my companions. They would rescue the hostages.

Lily was powerful, but she was alone. If I kept her occupied, she wouldn’t have the freedom to deal with the others. She would set appropriate defenses, of course, perhaps Living Dead and worse. But with this team, there was very little they couldn’t handle.

“Thanks, Simon. This is more than enough.”

“Hehe. Then it was worth coming along.”

The greatest obstacle to the rescue was simply not knowing where the prisoners were. Lily’s amusement park was enormous. If four people had to search it blindly, night would fall before they found anything. And if it took that long, Lily would have all the time in the world to prepare.

A rapid rescue operation was our only chance.

And thanks to Simon, that greatest concern had been solved.

“All right. At first light, we go in. Until then, memorize this map.”