Chapter 1283 — Salvaging the Haul

"That pitiful jailer is still trapped in the sanctuary; give her another hundred thousand years and she still won't break the deadlock, I can feel it..." Ferna said through the mental link the two shared. She raised her head again, gazing at the boundless wasteland in the distance. "Perhaps it is only a few crawling things, who by some mischance set foot where they should not have..."

"Leave them be?" Relna frowned.

"...The cost is too great. The mortal bodies we now use are far too weak, and cannot yet sustain a further 'connection,'" Ferna said after a moment's thought, shaking her head. "But there is no need for worry. Ship Three has sent no further warning. Those weak intruders... even if they set foot in the main control room, they are utterly powerless to affect anything, and if they truly dare to do something... the automatic sentry system will naturally correct their 'mistake.'"

"...Perhaps. But this is a variable all the same," Relna said. She looked at the wasteland plain not far off, where the treants and mutated giants busying themselves on the open ground caught her eye, and where a deep-blue rift already formed in the air lay quietly in the pit hollowed out of the earth. "I do not like things outside the plan... Perhaps we should speed up the process, and make these dull-witted creatures give full play to whatever value remains in them."

"If these dull-witted creatures were even a tiny bit useful, we would not have been dawdling on this wasteland for so long," Ferna said coldly, her eyes fixed on the mutated giants and treant priests busy across the open plain, as though watching a swarm of squirming insects and loathsome rotting wood. "Not only is their efficiency abysmal—even the rune stones they produce... keep going wrong again and again."

Relna narrowed her eyes slightly. Her "sister's" words brought to mind the mishaps of late: "The rune stones... Several times recently, rune stones have gone unresponsive. Stones manufactured at great expense of effort, manpower, and material are cast into the deep-blue current and vanish without a trace before long, and Bolken cannot investigate the cause at all—his answer is always that they are analyzing, still researching!"

"Perhaps we expected too much of these cultists. Their crude skills are not yet sufficient to master the knowledge we imparted to them—even if it is only the crafting of some polarization controllers with the most basic functions."

"But they are all we have to work with at the moment," Relna said, shaking her head. "Since quality has become a problem, make up for it with quantity. They do not tire, after all, and for the sake of their imagined 'great cause,' they are willing to forgo sleep and rest. Increase the number of rune stones deployed, accelerate the adjustment of the deep-blue network... Variables have already appeared, and the plan must be completed as soon as possible."

The conversation in the mental link ended. The twin elves still stood in silence atop the boulder, overlooking the "work site" nearby. Their exchange had been conducted entirely in thought from beginning to end, and in the eyes of the treant priests wandering nearby, the two elves had done nothing beyond occasionally lifting their heads to glance at the sky and the distance.

And out on the wasteland not far away, the now-stabilized deep-blue rift lay quietly in the pit in the earth. Two mutated giants strode with heavy steps, one after another, toward that pit; on their shoulders, a black stele bearing a complex rune structure glimmered faintly, ready to be cast into the rift.

...

The Elemental Plane of Water, deep within the Boundless Sea.

A current radiating azure brilliance flowed in the depths of the sea, and a layer of indeterminate "interface," neither wholly real nor wholly illusory, wrapped about its exterior, dividing the stream of light from the seawater outside. This river flowing through the sea was a spectacle indeed, yet the elemental creatures living in the Boundless Sea kept their distance from these beautiful rivers—the native water elementals did not care for the pure magic that filled the deep-blue network, for it harmed their health.

Elemental creatures from elsewhere, however, suffered no such trouble. Not only did they know how to appreciate the beauty of this magic current, but sometimes they even wanted to dive right in.

Two siren sentinels hovered in the seawater very close to one of the deep-blue currents; one had long pale-violet hair, the other blue hair draped down her back.

They gripped their trident lightblade weapons tightly, particle pulse rifles at their waists, staring fixedly at the surging blue "river" before them while every muscle in their bodies stayed taut.

The two Royal Guards, dispatched here as sentinels to monitor the deep-blue network, were utterly focused at this moment.

Suddenly, the siren with the pale-violet hair seemed to sense something ahead of time, and the trident in her hand lifted slightly. The very next second, a swift dark shape appeared within the surging blue stream of light—an unidentified entity darting at great speed through the torrent of energy. It was incredibly fast—but it could not escape the reflexes of well-trained Royal Guards.

The trident thrust out swiftly, the lightblade slicing effortlessly through that incorporeal torrent of energy, and then a crisp "ding" rang out and spread through the seawater—the violet-haired siren flicked her hand, and a "large cube," black on the outside with its surface glinting with bright light, was flipped out of the deep-blue current, tumbling away through the Boundless Sea into the distance.

"Hey! Got it, got it! Vera, hurry up and fetch that thing—use your big tail!"

"You don't need to tell me!" The blue-haired siren called Vera spun swiftly, her long serpentine tail stretching out through the seawater, lengthening several times over in the blink of an eye, and in one motion she coiled it around the black cube that looked so very heavy. The cube's weight dragged her down sharply, but the next second she manipulated the surrounding seawater to anchor herself firmly, then hauled the cube back before her.

"Done, Coraline," Vera said, lifting her head to look at her comrade before her. "Let's head back to the outpost."

Coraline, the purple-haired siren, wore a cheerful smile as she shouldered her trident, extended her tail to coil about the edge of the black cube, and together with her companion hauled the heavy prize along, swimming toward the vast shadow that hovered faintly above the sea not far away.

With a splash of water, two siren sentries surfaced from the Boundless Sea, where the eternal torrential rain still poured down without pause across that immense expanse of water.

A small platform descended automatically at the edge of the outpost. The two sirens set their heavy "cargo" upon it, then nimbly leaped from the water and sprang aboard themselves. The platform rose steadily and slid sideways, and moments later Coraline and Vera had returned with their prize to the outpost's rest area.

One before the other, one pushing and one pulling, they shoved the heavy black cube onto an open patch of ground.

Beside it, three identical black cubes already sat in a neat row.

Each cube bore a huge breach, damage dealt by a single powerful strike of a light-wave blade. Under such an impact the cubes' intricate internal structures had been utterly destroyed, and they had naturally lost their intended function.

Vera gave a thrust of her tail and pushed the fourth cube into its designated place. The last glimmer of runes on its surface faded away as its internal systems collapsed, until at last only four pitch-black cubes remained, arranged in a row and looking quite orderly.