Chapter 475

The Archangel was Level 781. The giant mummy was Level 809. And so the announcements continued - while lower than the two before it, even the shield magical beast was Level 754, far above both Tatsuro and Ai.

As a result, level-up announcements rang out for nearly everyone present.

Tatsuro received: "You have reached 'Level: 382.'"

Ai received: "You have reached 'Level: 350.'"

Cardina received: "You have reached 'Level: 164.'"

Jeanne received: "You have reached 'Level: 164.'"

Nana received: "You have reached 'Level: 164.'"

Leah received: "You have reached 'Level: 337.'"

Athena received: "You have reached 'Level: 164.'"

Amaterasu received: "You have reached 'Level: 155.'"

Tsukuyomi received: "You have reached 'Level: 155.'"

Ishtar received: "You have reached 'Level: 169.'"

Furthermore, Dainsleif - who had dwelt within Nana's Fang Thrust Weapon - shot straight up to its level cap of 49.

Leela, as usual, saw no level-up. As for Aito and Aika - or rather, Sai - he had not broken through the Level 50 wall, so he remained capped at 49.

Even so, in exchange, the title of Magic King Species Slayer had been firmly acquired, which made it a net positive in the end.

The rest of the group also saw their Magic King Species Slayer bonus values increase, and since Leah had crossed into the 300s, her Transgressor bonus value had increased as well.

Tatsuro set about carefully sealing the pulverized remains of the jewel into a bottle, intending to eat or drink it later.

"Sai's level didn't go up from this battle, huh. Since the experience was from something so far above us, I thought it might just be enough."

"Awww, too bad."

"Too bad~"

The two of them - in their child forms as devil and angel - stuck out their lips in unison.

"Come to think of it, what level is Gramps at now?"

"Neigh. Neigh, Neigh."

"When I saw him earlier, he was at Level 56, apparently."

"When did he break through the Level 50 wall...?"

Since Tatsuro's impression of the centaur was primarily that of the castle's caretaker, the question caught him off guard - but it turned out that Aito and Aika had been present for the very moment it happened. Trading off from one to the other as if each were picking up the thread the other had left behind, they told the story together.

"So, um, it was with Sota and the Crocodile Squad monsters~"

"They were doing combat training."

"And Gramps was fighting against Sota and the others, and~"

"It seems like that's when he broke through."

Apparently, he had been sparring with Sota and the others during his breaks from work, and had crossed the threshold in the process.

Ishtar listened to this and, for some reason, wore the look of someone recalling a fond memory.

"Oh? That sounds rather similar to my own experience."

"Is that so, Ishtar?"

"Indeed. In my case, my mother was the one who fought me. More than that, in our country it is quite common for parents to fight their children in order to give them that one final push. It was quite painful at the time, but the rush of exhilaration when I broke through was something else entirely."

"That sounds kind of like having your mom pull out a wobbly baby tooth for you."

"It might well be. Rather aggressive as methods go, though..."

While that conversation was still going on, they finished gathering every last scrap of the shield magical beast's remains without missing a single piece, then turned to a brief discussion about what to do next.

First on the agenda: what to do with this underground facility.

"Honestly, I think we should destroy it. Leaving it unattended with no one to manage it would be far too dangerous."

"That might be for the best. In that case, we should probably take everything worth taking with us."

"Agreed. That magical liquid generator in particular - if something like that were to surface in the outside world, it could spark a war over it at worst. I would want it myself, after all."

"That's... a fair point. If it were just dropped into the open as-is, researchers who are still struggling with the four compound attribute types of magic might need anywhere from several hundred years to potentially a thousand years just to decipher it. If other nations caught wind of its existence, they would want it badly enough to take it by any means necessary."

Even back on Earth, if a machine that could generate infinite energy resources existed - and it was irreplicable, one of a kind in the world - any aggressive nation would surely move to seize it without a moment's hesitation. There was also brief discussion about whether Leah could simply build copies and sell them to each country, since they were already making use of it to help consume World Force - but in that case, it would only draw attention to the developer. Either way, the likelihood of trouble arising was high.

"So with that settled, we'll recover it for ourselves alone and put it to use. It's secondhand, but it saves us the trouble of building one from scratch, which is economical."

"Classic Tatsuro, always pinching pennies~"

"I prefer the term 'resourceful.' Now then, next"

Next was the matter of what to tell the Emperor and the Prime Minister about the incident.

None of the parties directly involved remained, the imperial bloodline had died out ages ago, and the current symbolic ruler was a descendant of a former orphan - that was the sort of bombshell Tatsuro and the others had no desire to drop on anyone. Since things were running smoothly enough without anyone knowing, they decided to keep it buried in their hearts.

There was no longer any way to verify the truth, and for all they knew, that story itself might have been a lie - so saying nothing was for everyone's benefit. Getting tangled up in the resulting chaos would be a headache they could do without.

Then there was the question of whether to name Belkerp as the mastermind.

He was a Clear Elf of such extraordinary fame that stories about him appeared in fairy tales. If it came out that such a person had committed crimes of this magnitude, there was a real possibility it could shift how people viewed Clear Elves as a whole. Since he was already dead, they decided to stay silent on that front as well, for the sake of his fellow Clear Elves.

Something beyond the ordinary had been abducting and killing people.

That was the kind of vague account they collectively worked out together - enough to explain things without getting caught in the details.

After hammering out a number of other fine points, they set their plan into motion.

"Hey. Aito, Aika. Wake up~"

"...Mm?"

The conversation had apparently been too dull to hold their interest. Tatsuro roused the two of them - who had dozed off leaning against Mameda, whom he had summoned earlier - and the group moved first to the room containing the computational devices.

"Ha!"

The magical tool components were packed away by Tatsuro into his Infinite Item Field as research materials, while the Magic Brain was carefully extracted and retrieved. The remaining cores fashioned from brains were then destroyed one by one, led by Leah, freeing the people whose consciousness alone had been held captive.

"There appear to be more rooms beyond this one. What sort of rooms are they?"

"Let's go take a look for now. If there's anything dangerous, we'll need to destroy it or recover it."

Though there had been no doors up to this point, the room that appeared to be the deepest part of the facility - given the scale of the place - was sealed by a heavy, imposing door built from materials with considerable resistance to both magic and physical force. The likelihood of something important being inside was high.

They carefully examined the door, checking for traps using All-Seeing Eye and Dispel Magic as they went.

"There are locks on both the magic and physical sides. It's a bother - shall we just break it?"

"Please be careful, brother. We don't know what's inside."

"Right, I know."

Tatsuro raised Amaterasu and pressed the tip of the staff against the edge of the door.

He conjured a high-powered orb of fire and light and dragged it along the seam, burning through it in a slow, deliberate line.

"Peewee!"

"Poison?! - Nana!"

"Understood!"

The moment a small hole opened in the door, Cardina sensed the reaction of a potent, highly dangerous poison capable of causing severe nerve paralysis - though not an immediately lethal one. Nana immediately moved to neutralize it with Antidote Magic, and as a precaution - in case any traces remained - she bestowed an antidote against that specific poison on every member of the group using Curse Magic.

"That should keep us safe for now. Let's press on."

Proceeding carefully and checking with Dispel Magic as they went, they resumed burning through the door. Despite being constructed from materials with high magic resistance, it could not withstand Tatsuro's magic - it melted like butter, the groove deepening with each pass. Once the final stretch along the lower right corner was fully melted through and the other side was breached, it was no longer a door at all, merely a rectangular solid.

At that point, the locks were irrelevant. Tatsuro stored it away in his Infinite Item Field and cleared it out of the way.

"Let's go."

Every member of the group nodded at Tatsuro's word and moved forward through the short corridor beyond the door - and there, they found a small room with a Transfer Magic Circle carved into the floor.

The nerve toxin had been emanating from magical tools installed throughout the small room, and they quickly moved to shut down those devices.

"This magic circle appears to be a receiving formation rather than a sending one."

"In that case - could it be that this is where the abducted individuals were sent?"

"I believe so, Ishtar. And yet"

As she said it, Leah cast her gaze upward at the ceiling, where countless small holes had been bored, like the soundproofing panels of a music room.

"To think there was even a way to construct a magic circle like this..."

"What do you mean?"

Nana gave Leah a puzzled look - it was one thing to say that while looking at the magic circle on the floor, but to murmur it while staring at a plain perforated ceiling seemed strange.

"Ah, well - it turns out that beyond those holes, there is a three-dimensional magic circle."

"A three-dimensional magic circle? What's that, Leah?"

"Well, you see, older sister-"

What Leah explained was this: the room was apparently positioned right in the heart of Adorarim's capital city, Maron, and from the far ends of those small holes, pipes extended upward in what appeared to be a tangled mess all the way up to near the surface - and the arrangement of those pipes formed a three-dimensional magic circle.

Magic circles are, by nature, inscribed on flat surfaces. The idea of making one three-dimensional - let alone actually attempting it - had apparently never crossed anyone's mind. That was simply the state of the art for engineers of this era: containing everything within a flat plane was already pushing the limits of what they could do.

But for a craftsman of Belkerp's caliber, the desire had arisen to inscribe into a single magic circle a volume of information too vast to be contained on a plane.

Leah herself had been feeling the limits of the current two-dimensional magic circles and had been searching for some better approach - so being shown the idea of extending into three-dimensional space had been nothing short of a revelation, like scales falling from her eyes.

"I'm almost frustrated with myself for not arriving at that possibility sooner. Though the fact that such magnificent technology was applied to build a kidnapping Transfer device - one loaded with all manner of fine-tuned conditions, camouflage, illusions, and suggestion techniques, specifically designed so no one would notice or see through it - does put a rather sour taste in one's mouth..."

"It does... I find myself thinking as well what might have been, if only his passion had been directed somewhere else..."

Leela felt a twinge of something bleak as she wondered what wonderful things he might have accomplished, had he channeled it in a positive direction.

"Then Leah can use it for good instead. Isn't that precisely why we took all of his research materials?"

"...You're right. You're absolutely right, Nana. Now that you put it that way, I want to run experiments with this as soon as possible!"

"Hehe, then we'd better wrap this up and get home."

"Yes!"

The group watched Leah's energetic nod with warm smiles, then Tatsuro and the others cut out and retrieved the magic circle. The poison magical tools were recovered as well. The upper magic circle was tabled for the time being, as they intended to demolish the facility along with everything in it. After that, they collected the remaining items of note, then retrieved the body of the young girl that had been left in the room where Belkerp had feigned captivity, restoring her as carefully as they could before taking her with them. The magical liquid generator and various other items - things it would be a genuine waste to simply erase - were recovered by Tatsuro, who muttered "Oh, what a waste, what a waste," the whole time.

With that done, rather than retracing their steps, they punched holes through the walls and bored through the earth with Earth Magic, driving straight through to the small forest above where the entrance had been, and at last emerged back into the open air.

It had been the Day of Light, so even midday had been swathed in darkness - but by now the hour was one where nightfall would have come naturally regardless.

In the quiet stillness of the small forest, Tatsuro worked alongside Cardina and Athena, applying Earth Magic at full force in order to minimize any surface impact. They crushed the facility under the weight of the earth, compacted the wreckage into a mangled mass, and then drew it up to the surface bit by bit, cutting it apart and storing the pieces in the Infinite Item Field. Since even the rubble would serve as material, the plan was to leave behind not a single trace of technology so far beyond this era's finest achievements - clearing the evidence entirely as they claimed it all.

After tens of minutes of work, they finished hauling up every last scrap of the vast underground facility.

"Right, that should make it so no one can tell there was ever a facility here."

"Then let's go see the Emperor. He's probably beside himself by now."

A considerable amount of time had passed since they had parted on the roof of the Imperial Palace. On top of that, they hadn't sent a single word about what had happened or where they were - the people waiting on the other side had to be on pins and needles.

Ai's words drew wry smiles from the group, and they wasted no time taking to the air and heading straight for the Imperial Palace.