Chapter 61 – The Time Has Come to Ask.

The hurried business of the deputy captain selection concluded, Milea and Letaria made their way back to Milea's private lab at Syn-Fibra.

Through the large reinforced glass window, Arden sat in a corner of the vast shared hangar, undergoing repairs. Under normal circumstances, Letaria's machine would have had its dedicated mechanics and the full repair crew on it - but nearly every available resource had been redirected to analyzing the recovered wreckage of Restful and its unmanned units. As a result, Arden's restoration had been entrusted entirely to a small team of automated repair bots, whose arms were moving in slow, careful arcs, scanning the severed joint where the right arm had been.

The Noble Lotus had come to its own limit as well, she remembered. Not just the machine. The custom pilot suit had reached complete structural failure under the extreme stress of that battle. When Sora had examined the ruined fabric and cracked outer casing after their return, she hadn't been angry - she'd been moved to tears. "It protected Letaria-san perfectly, right to the very end!" A deep, satisfied nod. And a fierce declaration that once this whole ordeal was fully resolved, she would pour everything she had into producing a further-improved version incorporating what the damage data had shown.

Some things simply had an order of priority that couldn't be moved.

Letaria had learned that in an unpleasant and thorough way over the past few days. She was impatient - she wanted Arden back in perfect condition as soon as possible - but right now, Seldia's security and the analysis of those ruins had to come first. She understood that.

"...Hm."

Milea sank deep into her chair and exhaled a long breath - the kind that releases days of accumulated fatigue in one go - and brought her freshly brewed coffee to her lips. Letaria was handed a warm cup of herbal tea.

"You look tired, Milea. Though your color is better than it was."

Letaria said it with quiet concern. Milea looked at her cup and gave a small smile.

"I suppose. I think it's because I can finally feel like this particular matter has been dealt with."

Letaria took a sip of the herbal tea and let the scent of it settle around her, and then carefully drew back the last memories she held of that battlefield.

"'Lunect Protocol' - the voice did say that, quite clearly. That all stages had been fulfilled."

At Letaria's words, Milea opened a holographic display and expanded a complex series of log data, apparently turning something over in her mind.

"There was data remaining inside Restful - a fragment only. The same phrase was there."

She paused, glanced away for a moment as though deciding whether to say the next thing - then steeled herself and read it aloud.

"A log entry for the Lunect Protocol's resonance unit 'Arden' and... subject - core unit - 'Letaria'."

"That matches what I heard when I destroyed the colossus."

Letaria said it simply. Despite her own name appearing in the data, her expression showed very little alarm. Milea observed that with quiet relief.

"The individual designation 'Letaria' in this log was registered several days ago - when you rescued Blang's group. Or more precisely, it had been rewritten from 'Unknown' to 'Letaria.' And the original 'Unknown' entry was registered on the day you and the others first encountered the unmanned machines."

Milea let her gaze drop briefly.

"This is conjecture - "

She set her coffee down and looked at Letaria directly.

"The AI inside Restful had an obligation to carry the Lunect Protocol to completion. 'Arden' was, in a sense, the finished product of that project. And you, Letaria, were selected as its compatible subject."

She paused. Took a sip of coffee.

"What happens to someone selected for this 'project'? I have no sense of having consented to anything, and I cannot think of Arden as a harmful machine."

"That's right - what is created carries no moral quality of its own. I think Restful - the AI - wanted to see 'Arden' brought to completion. Or rather, to witness that completion. Your being chosen by Arden was most likely chance."

In the deeper layers of the restored log data, Milea had found a record relating to the machine Blang had once piloted - the string of text: *Resonance-type unit: Zodan.* Cross-referencing everything they had recovered, she was nearly certain that this "Zodan" was the true designation of the machine Blang had found in the debris field - the one they had known as Dien.

In other words, the AI had been pursuing the project's completion through a different approach, a different method, alongside Arden. There had probably been many other experimental units before Arden and Zodan - a long chain of attempts.

"Restful had been repeating this test for a long time, trying to bring it to an end. You were the one who brought it to that end by piloting Arden. Destroying Restful was itself the conclusion of the project."

Milea's eyes, as she said it, were full of a quiet, genuine warmth toward Letaria.

But Letaria couldn't quite let go of the faint wrongness that still sat in her chest, and she tilted her head slightly.

"...I'm not entirely sure I understand. I felt it as something malevolent."

The wicked god of destruction. The red-black colossus. Restful. What her instinct had told her in that moment - the sense of something cursed, something dangerous - had been real. And yet, strangely, in the instant her final blow had shattered it, the last words to come from Restful had carried something unmistakably like genuine gratitude.

Had she, in the end, been lending her strength to achieve that terrible colossus's purpose?

Milea watched Letaria frown in deep thought - and let out a small, releasing laugh.

"You don't have to understand that part. It's all right."

Then Milea drew a long breath in, and let it out slowly.

It was the kind of pause that cut through the easy conversation they had been having, changing the density of the air in the space of a moment. A pause that held within it a clear, deliberate resolve.

Milea's eyes met Letaria's directly.

"The time has come to ask."

"...?"

"Who you are."

In the silence of the lab, the question that could no longer be avoided was placed in front of Letaria.