“What?”
A list of four words, thrown out abruptly.
- Vanilla, mint chocolate, squid, cheese.
Loxy couldn't help but ask back at the sudden combination of words, for which she could find no common ground other than the fact that they were all food.
She didn't understand what it ant right away.
And it didn't connect contextually with the current situation at all.
However, despite Loxy's reaction, U-jin didn't offer any further explanation.
As if telling her to figure it out for herself, he just remained silent in the darkness.
If she could at least see him, she would have questioned him about what on earth he ant.
But in the Dark Cavern, where not a single ray of light entered, it was awkward to argue with thin air.
In the first place, the darkness was so complete she couldn't even see what was right in front of her, so it was difficult to be sure of U-jin's location.
Having no choice but to swallow her question, Loxy thought for a mont about the intention behind the four words U-jin had ntioned.
Just like before.
This was probably a kind of ‘hint’.
Vanilla, mint chocolate, squid, cheese.
Vanilla, mint chocolate, squid, cheese.
As Loxy repeated the words a few tis and racked her brain, she suddenly caught a clue.
Sniff, sniff-
It wasn't intentional, but.
Among the nurous slls in the air stimulating her sense of sll after her Scout Trait was activated, the scent of mint chocolate was detected.
‘…Huh.’
And as she sniffed and focused more on the slls, all the scents U-jin had ntioned were faintly wafting towards her.
And from different directions, with different concentrations.
“This is……”
It was the first ti she had encountered sothing like this, so it was hard to be certain, but.
‘…Coordinates?’
It seed that the four words U-jin had given were a combination of words pointing to a specific location.
Now that she thought about it, it surprisingly made sense.
After all, they couldn't just starve the Saintess to death in prison, so The Order would need to find her, and unless they turned off the Interference Magic shrouding the area in darkness, they had to have a way to specify her location.
And the nurous scents brushing past the tip of her nose.
The fact that there was no reason for such a variety of slls to exist in a prison was in itself a clue.
Above all.
The fact that U-jin's ntion of the four words 'Vanilla, mint chocolate, squid, cheese' had co up in the context of finding the Saintess's location was the biggest clue of all.
Sure enough.
“By any chance, are those pointing to coordinates?”
To Loxy's organized question, U-jin gave a brief affirmation.
“That's right.”
“……”
“It specifies the coordinates where the Saintess is located.”
However, that short answer didn't resolve all her questions.
If it simply ant a position on a Plane Coordinate System, two would have been enough; four coordinates weren't necessary.
Since U-jin, who had provided the information, said they were coordinates, there was no need to doubt it, but she had no idea how to find her way.
And the explanation for that was contained in U-jin's following words.
“You just have to head to the space where those four slls have the sa density. You could call it a type of Concentration Coordinates.”
“……!”
Co to think of it, there were no nurical values for it to be coordinates ford by two perpendicular lines on a plane.
He had only ntioned the directions the slls were coming from.
In that case, more than two coordinates were definitely necessary.
If only two lines were given without any distinction of level, it would only specify a direction rather than clear coordinates.
What she had to do next was simple.
They ca to find the Saintess, and the Concentration Coordinates pointed to her location.
In that case.
Sniff, sniff-
She just had to move towards the space where the four slls ford the sa concentration, just as U-jin had said.
* * *
Following the exact blend ratio of the slls was much more difficult than she thought.
It was partly because this was Loxy's first ti encountering the 'Concentration Coordinates' format.
And in the first place, sll wasn't sothing whose concentration was easy to asure without precise instrunts.
It was only because she had the Scout Trait, which enhanced the sensitivity of her sense of sll, that she could fumble her way forward.
For a normal person's sense of sll, it would have been utterly impossible.
The alignnt of molecules spreading through a dium tends to beco disordered as you go from solid to liquid to gas, and on top of that, this place was disrupted by countless other slls.
Well.
It was probably because of such difficulties that they had installed such a device in the prison holding a big shot like the Saintess.
For Loxy, however, this was the real obstacle.
Until now, she had been able to crush and overco The Order's Interference Magic with her 'Demon's Singularity' Trait.
But this was a different kind of difficulty.
If U-jin hadn't known the coordinates, it would have been impossible to pinpoint the Saintess's location in this dark space.
‘…….’
Another obstacle was the enormous size of the cavern itself.
When she first ca up, she couldn't tell because of the darkness, but despite having moved a much greater distance inside the cavern than the distance she had traveled in the sewer pipe to enter the castle, the Saintess was nowhere to be seen.
Well, she wasn't sure if that was the right expression, given she had her eyes closed to focus on her sense of sll.
But the fact that she was still moving her feet ant it was true she hadn't yet arrived at the Saintess's location.
For a space larger than the entire castle to be located underground, the sheer size of the area didn't make sense.
Even by Loxy's rough comparison, she had walked about twice the number of steps it took to get from outside the castle to this cavern.
If what Loxy was thinking was correct, it seed that Space Expansion Magic had been cast on this dark underground cavern itself.
It seed they had thrown in every kind of Interference Magic possible.
‘…….’
Honestly, she wanted to ask how much further they had to go.
But since she was the one leading the way, and she was the one who knew best, it was awkward to ask such a question.
All she could do was swallow the sense of hopelessness she felt from the slls and fumble her feet forward.
Thud, thud-
Trudge, trudge-
How long had she been walking in the darkness where she couldn't see an inch ahead?
‘…Now for the last one.’
She had succeeded in roughly matching the concentrations of the three scents listed earlier: 'vanilla, mint choco, squid'.
At first, it was difficult to get her bearings because they all honestly seed the sa.
But it seed the knack of adaptation applied here too, as she gradually beca able to distinguish the scent concentrations down to a finer level.
Now, all she had to do was move in the direction of the cheese scent.
“…I think we're almost there.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I've matched three of them, at least. We just need to keep heading in this direction.”
With those words, Loxy began to lead the way.
Thud, thud-
Thud, thud-
The sound of footsteps echoing in the silence was a bit awkward.
But there wasn't really anything to talk about.
Although it had gotten a little better than before, it was also true that she still felt fear from the unknown aura emanating from U-jin.
It was just difficult.
She was sohow suppressing the different feeling from before, but that didn't an the fundantal feeling U-jin gave her had changed.
Since the incident at the Guild House, Loxy had also been trying to find her own way to go back to how things were.
But so far, no particular thod had co to mind.
A person's heart doesn't always do what they want it to.
‘…Huh.’
As Loxy walked silently with her mouth shut.
She suddenly had a question.
‘…How do we determine when we've arrived?’
It was a question about the Saintess's exact location.
She could roughly track the Concentration Coordinates U-jin had ntioned through .
But that was only in the 'rough' category; it didn't have the clarity to pinpoint an exact location.
It was a limitation of using her sense of sll, and no matter how precisely she tried to sll, there was always a limit.
She didn't know for sure, but in a space this large, the 'rough' coordinates Loxy had found could have a larger margin of error than she thought.
She thought that even if they reached the desired location, they might have to wander in the darkness for a long ti.
However.
“…We've arrived.”
Loxy's thought was nothing more than a groundless fear.
Because even though Loxy hadn't declared their arrival yet, U-jin had noticed first that they had reached the coordinates where the Saintess was located.
“…Huh?”
From Loxy's perspective, it was sothing she couldn't understand.
Loxy had also inwardly noticed that the concentrations were almost the sa.
But the fact that U-jin had noticed without her uttering a single word was certainly strange.
For a mont, she wondered if he had made her go through all this trouble on purpose even though there was another way.
U-jin's next words proved that was not the case.
“Open your eyes.”
At U-jin's words, Loxy slowly opened her eyes, and only then did she realize that precise coordinates weren't necessary.
“That is……”
In the distance.
A faint Halo was shining from where the Saintess was located.
* * *
In that case, the Concentration Coordinates did have a aning.
To express an exact location, it would have been better to be given nurical values on a Plane Coordinate System rather than sothing like Concentration Coordinates.
But with this format, it was enough to just arrive in the vicinity without needing to specify the Saintess's exact location.
Of course, not everything was understandable.
No matter how huge the Dark Cavern was, it didn't make sense for the light to be completely blocked just because of the distance.
However, the principle of how that was possible was just a minor detail.
The important thing was that U-jin and Loxy had co to find the Saintess, and a Halo was shining from her.
That fact was enough.
Since they had snuck in anyway, there was no need to understand or grasp all the various kinds of Interference Magic.
“……”
A low cross, a little over twice a person's height.
A blindfolded Saintess was hanging there.
Unlike the crucifixions Loxy knew of, there were no stakes driven through her hands and feet, but the very fact that soone who had worked as the so-called representative of God was hanging on a cross evoked an emotion difficult to describe in words.
The recognition of their presence wasn't one-sided.
Thud, thud-
“…Has the ti co?”
Did she recognize their presence from the footsteps?
Because as soon as they arrived near the cross, the Saintess spoke to U-jin and Loxy first.
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