By Zephyria Signe’s words that it would take three hours to walk were realized after trying various methods to shorten the time. In this area, using flying magic or Teleport would lead to a different place than the caster intended. If you used Teleport targeting a place with dense fog, you would suddenly find a lake at your feet.
The phenomenon of moving to a different place if you kept using magic was similar to the characteristics of Celestia, a floating city. Since the compass didn’t work either, the two regions might have similar characteristics. They might have a different magnetic field flow.
The problem was that even considering the size of the lake and walking around it, it was difficult to get out of its vicinity. It was clearly an open plain, but it felt like he was trapped in a maze, circling around the same spot. No matter what method he used, the result was the same.
“Ah, I can’t go any further—. Let’s rest for a bit.”
About an hour and a half after wandering around the lake. Signe, who had been shouting about her soldier’s spirit, collapsed next to a stone slab.
In fact, this was her third break already, so Leonardo looked at her with disapproval rather than concern.
“Rest again?”
“Let’s really rest for just 5 minutes, just 5 minutes.”
Signe, who was covered in sweat, wiped her face with her forearm and tried to catch her increasingly unstable breath. It seemed like she had become a baggage 3 position, following the two guys he had met in the peninsula, rather than a guide.
The stone slab next to her was serving as a signpost, and it was so small that an adult’s open palms would cover most of its area. Its height was much lower than Signe’s upper body, which was rising and falling based on the ground.
In a field full of wildflowers, it was a size that could only be found by looking at the ground until your eyes fell out. These stone slabs were located throughout the land, and the intervals between them were irregular, and there were sentences engraved on them. They were worn out and difficult to recognize, but they were mostly in Ancient Language. If Signe hadn’t told him, he would have recognized them as just ordinary stones.
The sign that she claimed only she and her sister knew was also on this stone slab. The star-shaped mark made by scratching the blue-gray surface remained as a trace of the young sisters enjoying adventures disguised as games in the wide field.
Leonardo, who was carefully examining the stone slab that had appeared again, took his hands out of his pockets and bent his legs in front of it.
‘This is not a Boulder that can be found around here.’
After checking the cross-section of the broken edge, the Boulder making up the stone slab was schist. In addition, if you turned your eyes a little, you could easily see rocks or stone fragments made of schist rolling around on the field or in the stream. Schist is a type of metamorphic rock that has been subjected to heat and pressure for a long time, and it is not easy to find in a wide plain that is not a mountainous area.
Leonardo, who was scanning the terrain, turned his head to Signe, who was still sprawled out. Then, he muttered in a pathetic tone.
“You’re a guy who applied to the military, would you be doing this in a minefield too?”
Seeing her panting in her military uniform, he involuntarily spoke in the stern voice he used to train Nero in the past. Signe, startled, propped herself up on the ground and slowly raised her upper body. But it seemed impossible to stand on two feet, so she sat down with her butt on the ground and held her trembling knees with her hands.
“Hey—, aren’t you tired?”
“What’s so tiring?”
“My legs are too heavy. It feels like the ground is pulling me down.”
Signe, who was unusually whining, showed signs of reaching her physical limit, saying that her legs were getting more and more stuck. She had terrible endurance for a guy who had passed the military test. Seeing her about to lie down on the grass again, Leonardo raised one eyebrow.
“The ground is pulling you down?”
Then, he tapped the grass with the soles of his feet for no reason. He wondered if the rumor that corpses were disappearing was related to her statement.
‘Is it really related to gravity or magnetism?’
But Leonardo, who couldn’t understand her physical exhaustion, didn’t feel anything different.
“Signe. Have you ever felt heavy when you came here before?”
“Uh? I don’t know… It was harder to run around than usual, but not this much. Ah… I’m enlisting tomorrow, what if I get sick like this?”
She didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving at all, and she was already sprawled out again, using the stone slab next to her as a pillow.
“Ah… I feel better now that I’m lying down. But now that you mention it, I remembered something, my dad said that metal gets heavier every time he comes here. He was very sensitive to that kind of thing because he was a blacksmith.”
“Metal gets heavier?”
“Yeah. This area is especially like that. When I was little, I found out when he was fixing the axe blade used in a store near the station because it was bent…”
Metals were representative substances that were affected by the flow of magnetism. Leonardo intuitively felt that some of the hypotheses he had been subtly formulating were gradually falling into place. Then, narrowing his eyes, he listened to Signe’s story and created a lightning spear that sparked and grabbed it in his hand.
Suddenly, a crackling, threatening sound flickered, and Signe, who had been blankly looking at the sky and muttering, glanced at him. Before she could even show a surprised reaction. Leonardo threw the lightning in his hand straight into the sky.
The lightning spear, which had been soaring vertically into the sky, wavered in shape and soon split into several strands in the air, scattering in different directions. It was impossible to identify with the naked eye, but it was not difficult for a Mage to detect the flow of current created by his own Magic Power.
‘That is….’
The current flowed somewhere as if it were curving through a distorted space-time. The end of it mostly reached the middle of the lake or areas with dense fog. Leonardo, who was watching the phenomenon, twisted his lips and chuckled softly.
“I understand a little better now.”
Judging from the results of the experiment, this area, although it looked like a wide field, was actually a jumbled mess of space. As evidence of this, there was an unstable magnetic field flow, a road that never ended no matter how far you went, and the strange phenomenon that Teleport did not work properly.
In other words, it meant that what was in front of him was not everything, but that each space was fragmented and connected like irregular Portals. He couldn’t know the specific reason why this phenomenon occurred, but one thing he could guess was that it was due to the stronger gravity than in other regions.
If gravity was strong, it was somewhat understandable that the magnetic field was affected and bent, and that space-time was distorted. It was the opposite result of Celestia, where antigravity was formed, but the grain was similar. The principle of Pentagon casting that he had vaguely recalled earlier would also be appropriate. If distortion occurred due to the action of gravity, it was theoretically understandable that time flowed differently only in this place.
“You, you knew how to do that too?”
Signe, who had been sprawled out, widened her eyes. Since he had already supported her and used Teleport, her reaction was quite intense every time he showed her a new magic. Leonardo shrugged his shoulders in response and held out his hand to Signe as if telling her to grab it.
“Your father said that metal got heavier whenever he came here, right? It’s probably because of the magnetic field and gravity. In this area, space is distorted, so the flow of the magnetic field is also tangled. Maybe the rumor that corpses suddenly disappeared is related to that.”
“…What? Magnetic field? Space is distorted? What are you talking about?”
Signe frowned and asked back as soon as she heard the unfamiliar story. Leonardo explained the hypothesis he had been thinking about in a slightly easier way. He didn’t know if he could make the other person understand, since he hadn’t even organized it himself yet.
“…So, the reason my legs are so heavy is because gravity is strong.”
“In my estimation.”
“Then, is that also a real possibility, not just a rumor? That dead people go missing?”
“There’s Teleport, there’s Portal. And even Bermuda, where children sprout up in the middle of the wasteland, so it’s nothing to lose one corpse.”
Signe, who had raised her upper body halfway, barely grabbed Leonardo’s hand while gaping. Soon, she was pulled up at once by his strength. The other person seemed indifferent to the point that she was embarrassed by her appearance, which had been struggling until just now. It was as if he was the only being who was not affected by that gravity at all.
“So, in fact, this place is a maze that is not blocked in front of you. In reality, it’s more complicated than a maze blocked by walls. You think you’re going the right way, but you don’t know where you’re going, and all you can rely on is this stone slab, but it’s not arranged regularly. The reason you and your sister were able to go that far a few years ago may have just been luck.”
Leonardo pointed to the foggy area, which didn’t feel too far away, with his chin.
Signe and her sister had left marks on the stone slabs as children, gradually approaching the old castle in the mist, and eventually succeeded in reaching their destination. The marks they were following now were the traces of that time, but now that he thought about it, he wondered if the path the sisters had ventured on back then was still valid.
If even a small change had occurred in this space-time distortion, their pioneering path would have quickly become useless.
Without putting it into words, Signe seemed to understand what he was trying to convey, and she blankly turned her gaze towards where the old castle should be. Leonardo looked at her and added calmly.
“Anyway, it’s clear we’re lost now. If we keep going this way, we’ll only go deeper into the maze, and there’s no guarantee we’ll reach there. We should go back first.”
“…….”
“Your stamina is almost gone, and you have less than 30 hours left until you enlist. You know what happens if you don’t get there on time, right?”
Leonardo said, looking down at the military watch on her wrist. It was a dangerous space even for him alone, but it wasn’t a path to venture with baggage 3 that he had to take back within the allotted time.
Signe, who had been uncharacteristically silent, suddenly looked down at the stone slab at her feet. As she retraced her memories, she tossed out something as if she had remembered something.
“We didn’t get there just by luck.”
She raised her head with a serious face.
“My sister said the same thing to you. That this place is like a maze. We went there knowing the way. My sister could read the contents of the stone slabs.”