I pressed my right palm over Medusa's on the throttle, and R1's tires slowed, its engine's roar dying out completely in moments.
Pulling my left hand away from our makeshift wire, I glanced toward the terminal on my table ahead.
It had reformed into a tablet of silver threads, more compact and slimmer than the earlier terminal. Light bled from its frame, those threads shifting into different words across its surface.
On my laptop screen, a new window of intersecting red and green code popped up on its own. At the upper edge of that window, a miniature Einzbern woman with long white hair and red eyes sat perched on a corner, legs hanging over its frame, hands folded in her lap.
"Irisviel online." A short pause. "...What would you like to know?"
A new voice echoed through the laptop's speakers, and Medusa tilted her head with an eyebrow raised.
"Can you hear me?" I asked, walking over to stand just before the laptop screen, my eyes on that miniature avatar.
"Yes," she replied without a change in tone. "Would you like me to interact with you through a different medium? Like text or a projected display?"
"No, it's unneeded." My hands dropped to the keypad, fingers hovering above its keys. "Do you know where we are?"
"Negative. There is snow. I can infer cold from the readings this terminal is receiving, but I don't have enough information to pinpoint our exact location from environmental readings alone." Her avatar leaned back, legs swinging wider as a digital flake of snow drifted onto her head.
"You should have access to the Einzbern database and directions to their resource storages. Lead me to them."
Irisviel went silent at my words, then shook her head once.
"I cannot. You lack admin access, and I only follow an admin's commands regarding anything related to the Einzberns."
The sound of keys being hit echoed through the area as my fingers blurred. Those lines of code in Irisviel's window cascaded down even faster now, their red entirely overpowered by green.
Then, I hit Enter.
The terminal twitched, then went still once more.
Irisviel's avatar glitched across the screen and then dissolved into spirals of code, vanishing like an illusion. Those green code from underneath rose in response, winding around each other in that corner, and a new Irisviel took shape where the previous one had been.
"Now, do I have access?" My gaze flicked to Medusa, who now stood beside R1, her fingers still wrapped around its handlebars, ears perked up.
"You do, Administrator." She continued as if nothing had happened. "What should I refer to you as? You can call me Irisviel."
"Refer to me as Izuru or Kamukura, whichever you prefer," I said, turning back to her.
"Affirmative. Izuru it is." Irisviel nodded, then waved her hand. A new window opened beneath her, displaying a 3D human body diagram with illuminated neural pathways tracing across its surface.
"I can offer a neural linkage, if you would prefer it over spoken instructions." She made a pulling gesture, and thousands of silver threads erupted from around that diagram, climbing along those illuminated neural pathways and superimposing over them.
My eyes shifted to the terminal lying still nearby, composed of those same silver threads.
"Explain yourself."
"I can link myself directly to your neural pathways and scan our surroundings through you, simultaneously uploading directions into your mind." Irisviel waved her hand again, and the diagram closed.
"Instructions will do for now." I leaned forward slightly. "If you can link yourself to my nervous system, then linking yourself to this laptop should be possible as well. Do that."
"Acknowledged."
That terminal broke down into threads that crawled across to my laptop, slipping inside its framework and tracing over its internal structure.
The laptop's screen went black, rebooting an instant later.
Irisviel's window didn't open this time. Instead, her avatar sat perched on a bench within the wallpaper itself.
"Shall I lead you now, Izuru?"
I looked back and exchanged a glance with Medusa.
"Let's go."
...
Snowflakes landed on our shoulders. R1's engine hummed beneath us in a low tone, the speedometer barely pushing past fifty.
Shattered stones, melted components, and scorched earth flanked us on either side. Medusa sat ahead of me, hands on R1's handlebars. I sat on the rear seat, laptop open in my arms.
Threads stretched from it, down our bike, and across ruined surroundings in a hundred-meter radius, scanning the area in real time for directions.
"Turn left at a mound of debris eighty meters ahead," Irisviel's voice guided from the laptop.
Medusa followed that instruction, banking left around the mound. Wind ruffled my hair, and the mound was already shrinking behind us moments later.
"Hold the bike straight. A tunnel of molten metal and bricks is forty meters ahead."
Its heat had hit me before she spoke, a subtle rise in the surrounding temperature.
Medusa pulled the throttle forward. Snow evaporated in a trail of vapor behind us as the mouth of that tunnel expanded ahead.
Black markings flashed across my face as I swiped a finger forward without glancing up.
That tunnel split in a straight line from edge to edge, and R1 surged onward, unimpeded.
"A bunker buried deep underground should be eighty meters down this same path."
Medusa held steady for the next four seconds before pulling the brakes. R1's tires screeched against soil, coming to a halt beside a heap of wreckage.
I dismounted from behind her and walked over to a patch of frosted soil sunk from a broken pillar planted atop it.
The silver strings stretching out from my laptop spread across the ground beneath us, threading downward into soil.
Faster still were my footsteps. Each one struck the ground in a precise rhythm, vibrations traveling down into soil, colliding with objects buried below and racing back to my ankles, their echoes outlining a three dimensional map in my mind.
"Here?" I asked after halting some distance away from that pillar.
Irisviel went silent for a second.
"Yes."
"Twenty seven meters deep?"
Silence for two seconds now.
"Yes."
I closed the laptop and tucked it under my arm. Medusa's footsteps crunched through frost, stopping just beside me.
"I'll open a path," I said.
She took one step closer without a word, our shoulders nearly touching now.
Black markings crawled across my face, rushing down my neck and along my right arm in branching tattoos. I raised that hand, fingers extended toward the ground, and swiped downward.
Air split with a sound of tearing cloth. A fissure ripped through earth from my fingertips, cutting a clean vertical line through shattered stone and that broken pillar alike. The ground groaned, then parted, two massive slabs of earth sliding away from each other.
The cut kept going, revealing layers of sediment, tangled roots, and old pipework shearing apart as the divide deepened.
Finally, at twenty-seven meters, the fissure stopped. There, embedded in a wall of exposed earth sat a gate of an unnamed material I had no information on.
I dropped my hand, those markings receding from my skin.
Medusa stepped to the edge of that divide and peered down, her hair stirring from wind flow. I followed a breath later, and together we dropped into it.
She landed first, boots striking a surface before the gate with a thud, and I touched down beside her half a second later. Snowflakes drifted down from above us, disappearing before they reached our depth.
We stood side by side before that gate.
Silver threads extended from the edges of my laptop, already spread across the gate's face. They writhed across its surface, probing its material by sliding into hairline seams, tracing the shape of its frame.
Irisviel's voice came from the laptop, blank as usual.
"Tensile strength is... considerable. This is Orichalcum, a material designed to withstand tremendous force. Thermal resistance is high, molecular density far exceeds standard reinforced steel."
A crack rang out as I rolled my wrist twice.
"Breaking through is not an option. The structural integrity of this gate would hold against most methods of destruction."
The threads continued their exploration, pooling around that gate's locking mechanism.
"I will attempt to grant you access through its locking system." Irisviel concluded.
I glanced to my side. Medusa's eyes were darting between me and the gate.
I gave her a slight nod.
She turned toward the gate and stepped forward.
Her right leg came up, muscles coiled back, and she drove her heel into Orichalcum.
A shriek tore into my ears, and that gate burst inward, hinges disintegrating into shrapnel, fragments of the special metal embedding themselves into earth around us.
Medusa lowered her leg, turned back to me, and said nothing.
A low, static buzzing resounded from the laptop in my arm, its threads hanging limp in air.
I let her be and stepped over the threshold, boots passing over dust and Orichalcum shards.
Everything was dark inside.
Irisviel's strings stirred after five seconds, sliding into the darkness ahead.
Click.
Horizontal ceiling lights buzzed to life in a sequence, throwing light over a vast underground hall that stretched far beyond what its exterior suggested.
The space was enormous, its vaulted ceiling disappearing into shadows thirty meters above. Rows of industrial shelving ran from wall to wall in perfect alignment, each unit standing four meters tall, stacked with crates of varying sizes.
Some were half-open. Others bore shipping labels in German, Japanese, and fifty other languages.
Magecraft materials. Rare metals. Racks filled with weapons from across the world. A single shelf full of summoning relics.
I walked forward, Medusa a step behind me.
Her fingers came up to pinch the sleeve of my coat.
I glanced back.
"We can't take... all of it." She said while sweeping her gaze around.
"We can't," I nodded at her words.
"But we will."
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[10 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
Loot! Where is my loot!? Take all of that loot! All of it! Don't you dare leave a single penny behind. Let anyone else who comes after taste dry air! Muhahahaha!
Alright everyone! Have a productive day!