“That would depend on what exactly is it that you want our help with, of course.” Elise replied to the elf girl.

“Ah, of course.” Yura shook her head as if to clear it and then continued “The city of Danmin is currently under threat by the magical guardians of the Erithos temple, which is located underground a few kilometers northwest of the city.”

“I have heard about the city of Danmin, but not this temple.” Elise said “What type is it?”

“And why are the guardians of the temple threatening the city?” Nina asked “Did they do anything wrong?”

“The people of the city? No, they are blameless in this.” Yura sighed “And about your other question, from what I’ve been able to gather, that temple belongs to the ancient Laguna civilization. It seems to have been part of an old magical defense network.”

‘I heard about the Laguna civilization from one of my sisters, Astra.’ Elise spoke mentally to her partners ‘They were a pretty big deal during her time, to the point where they even had colonies in every continent.’

‘Makes sense that they’d be advanced enough to create an advanced magical network, then.’ Nalia replied.

Yura, who hadn’t heard the exchange, simply continued talking “And it isn’t unusual that you don’t know about it.” She said to Elise “The temple has been discovered fairly recently and it didn’t seem to be a big deal at first. Some adventurers explored the shallower levels but didn’t find anything of much value nor any passages deeper inside, so they thought that was all.

“There weren’t any special defenses in the shallower levels either, so there was nothing to hint that there may be something more to that place, so it ended up being considered as just a ruin with nothing more than archaeological value.” Yura stopped for a moment “It was only earlier this year that archaeologists managed to find a passage to the deeper levels and discovered that there were dangerous traps and guardians within them.”

“Which the archaeologists couldn’t deal with.” Nina surmised.

“Yeah. So they hired some adventurers to go down and try to find out more about the place.” Yura grimaced “But despite them trying to keep things quiet to prevent unsavory types like tomb robbers from wrecking the place, the news still leaked and a group invaded the temple, stole a really important artifact from the heart of the place and ran away with it.”

“And the guardians are trying to recover that artifact.” Elise stated “So why are they attacking the city? You seemed to be very sure that the people of Danmin weren’t to blame for anything, so why have they become targets?”

“Mostly bad luck.” Yura replied “As it happens, the city was established in that location because the founders discovered a powerful magical artifact there that they used to allow Danmin to quickly develop.”

Hearing that, Nalia immediately thought of something “Could it be that the artifact they found was the same type as the one from the temple and had been intended as a ‘spare’, this being the reason why it happened to be in a place so close to it?”

Yura nodded “That’s what the archaeologists thought. And some mages took readings from the city’s artifact and tried to track down the stolen one, but couldn’t find any other similar readings anywhere in the city, which makes it really likely that it was taken somewhere else.”

“I see. It really does seem like the city isn’t at fault for this.” Elise said “Then my next question would be what do you want our help for? I presume you must have some idea about how to deal with the situation.”

“Yes. But it is actually something one of the archaeologists came up with.” Yura replied “Basically the idea is to go inside the temple and reach the core, where we can input a command to put the systems into ‘sleep mode’. Other similar magical network nodes were found in the past, and enough research was done that specialists understand these systems enough to input commands, and that particular command is one of those, which was something used when they needed to do large scale maintenance on the temples.”

“And that one archaeologist is able to do it, I gather?” Nina asked.

“Yeah. But it isn’t easy because he would need to be taken to the core and protected for long enough to actually perform his task.” Yura replied “So that’s what I need help with. I need allies that can help me take the archaeologist to the core and protect him.”

“I see.” Elise said “And I imagine you already saw what the temple’s defenses are like, so you believe our skills would be enough to help with it. But there’s one last thing I wanted to know.”

“What is it?”

“What is your connection to all of this? From the way you’ve been speaking, it’s clear you’re not a native of Danmin. Were you one of the mercenaries hired initially, simply a good Samaritan passing by or do you have some sort of personal reason to help?” She asked.

“Ah.” Yura was surprised “Well… Actually, I was hunting down the group that stole the artifact.” She sighed “This is far from being the only crime they’ve committed, so I was after them… I’m just gonna say that I was after them for personal reasons.” She shook her head “However, I couldn’t simply look the other way when people were suffering from their actions, so I decided to help.”

“I see.” Elise replied “Give us a minute to discuss.” She said out loud before speaking only to her partners ‘What do you think?’

‘As long as she’s on the up and up I have no problems with helping.’ Was Nalia’s opinion ‘And seeing some ancient magical technology sounds like it would be pretty interesting.’

‘I imagine that protecting someone who apparently doesn’t have a lot of personal strength would be difficult, but it would be nice to have some experience in that just in case, so I have no problem with it.’ Nina said.

‘But don’t you already have experience in protecting me?’ Elise asked.

‘It’s different. Your mentality is very strong, so I don’t have to worry you’re going to panic and do something stupid, for example.’ Nina explained.

‘… I guess you’re right.’ The contractor admitted ‘As for my opinion… It’s difficult to be sure, but it didn’t seem like she was trying to trick us. There’s things she didn’t want to talk about, but that’s perfectly reasonable, so unless anyone has any last minute objections, I think I’m gonna say yes.’

Neither of the other two had anything else to say, so Elise nodded at Yura and answered “Okay. We are willing to help you out with that.”

“Ah, thank you, thank you very much!” The elf said effusively.

“I imagine it would be best for us to get there as soon as possible, so could you take us along?” Elise asked “We don’t really have great methods for traveling long distances.”

“Of course. I was going to offer that anyway.” Yura replied “I can easily carry a few extra passengers, and if I push myself just a little bit we should get there in about three days.”

“Awesome. Then just wait a little bit for us to eat and we’ll get going. Also, I’m going to keep Nina inside my mindscape for the journey. She doesn’t weight that much but it’s still better like that, right?”

“You can do that? Err, I mean okay…? Thank you for the consideration.”

And so the girls sat down to eat and rest for a bit (Yura had her own food, of course), Elise also explaining to their new companion about how the Rooms worked, which was actually something the contractors of that continent were able to use, but it wasn’t widespread knowledge. Then she brought Nina into her room as promised and walked up to the elf girl while Nalia settled down on her shoulder.

Yura once more manipulated the earth under her feet, this time increasing the range of her manipulation in order to bring Elise along for the ride as well. She also started moving slowly and accelerated steadily, given that the human girl beside her did not have the same connection to the manipulated earth that gave Yura the stability needed not to be thrown away by high speed movements.

They went back through the tunnel that the earthshaper had dug while heading there, though said tunnel came to a dead end only a little bit after the start of their journey, which really didn’t hinder their travel at all, since Yura’s earth manipulation was proficient enough to dig open a new passage as they went without even slowing down, and while they had been accelerating slowly, by that point they were already going quite fast.

“Unless you really put in some extra magic in order to make them last, these sorts of tunnels collapse by themselves very quickly after going through them.” The elf explained “That’s just as well, since opening up a lot of permanent tunnels around would weaken the stability of the surrounding land, which could cause all sorts of problems.”

“I see. That makes sense.” Elise replied.

And so they went. A major advantage of such underground traveling was that they could move on a straight line toward their destination without having to worry about whatever the terrain above ground was (mostly), that was specially nice for the beginning of their journey, as the mountains that would have been a great hindrance for Elise and her partners to move over simply ceased to be a factor thanks to Yura’s skills. It wasn’t for nothing that she had said it would take only three days to arrive at their destination.

The elf actually mentioned it once they had left the area below the Liminari Mountains, which caused Nina to pipe up from within her room:

‘Please thank Yura for me. It’s really nice to be freed from all those mountains so easily.’

‘You’re still on about that?’ Nalia replied incredulously, causing the two to start a minor argument.

“Nina wanted me to thank you for getting us out of the mountains.” Elise relayed the message while smiling at her partners’ byplay “We’ve been there for a while, so she was getting pretty sick of them.”

“You’re welcome.” Yura replied in an amused tone.

“Also, I was staying silent since you seemed to be focusing, but is it fine to talk to you or would you prefer we gave you peace?” Elise asked.

“It’s totally fine.” The other girl replied “Doing this doesn’t take that much concentration.”

“Then there’s something I was curious about. How are we breathing despite being underground for so long?”

“That’s a very good question. First, we can easily get new air while moving through this region because there are many air pockets underground, but in places where that isn’t the case, I have to do some extra work to shift the earth above and create small tunnels to suck in air from the surface.” Yura explained while easily continuing to do her magic “The second part is that we don’t stay in place long enough for the bad air we expire to accumulate to a point where it becomes an issue. Staying in place for a prolonged period while underground is a bigger issue, but that can be solved via using earth magic to create a sort of filtration tunnel to expel the bad air to the outside.

“… Or in the case of long term habitations, simply cultivating plants that don’t need light, but I was talking more about ways for travelers to deal with it.” She finished.

‘Yeah, those sorts of plants were how my tribe was able to live underground.’ Nina mentioned.

“That makes sense. Thank you for the explanation.” Elise replied, inwardly noting that Yura probably didn’t have a fixed residence, considering it had taken her a moment to think of the latter part. It made sense, as there was likely to be some story behind why a young girl (Elise judged her to be no more than sixteen or thereabouts) was traveling by herself.

The contractor was curious, but there was no particular reason to pry as of yet. While she was thinking of that, Nalia decided to ask a question of her own:

“I noticed you’re using the same material for the platform that’s carrying us, but how do you deal with the dislocation creep? If I keep moving the same piece of earth, eventually the material deforms to the point where I’d need to use a ton of magic to prevent it from locking in place.” And of course, it was a very technical magic question.

“Oh, now that’s something quite interesting. There’s a bunch of things involved, but the main method I use has to do with moving vacancies around the inner structure of the earth and rock, but that is only possible by making use of several different properties of the different types of rock. One of the most important aspects is that I need to constantly adjust the temperature of the sections of the material in order to perform some controlled diffusion.” And Yura’s answer matched that by also being incredibly technical, to the point where even Elise struggled to follow it.

And from there began a complicated discussion involving terms such as anisotropy, grain boundary and dislocation climb. Nina was left completely behind as the duo of magic users spoke at length about such concepts and Elise did her best to get a grasp on the subject, as it was necessary to help Nalia with her own magic development.

+0+

Time passed quickly as they went, stopping only for eating and sleeping. Yura impressed Elise with her sheer endurance of being able to keep working her earth magic to maintain their high speed of movement for several hours at a time, without ever looking tired.

That also impressed Nina as well, to the point where, during one of the times they had stopped to eat, she asked the elf whether her physical endurance had something to do with her earth magic skill.

“A bit.” Was the answer “I can tap into the toughness of the earth to enhance my own body, and I sorta do some of that automatically out of habit, but mostly I’m just used to staying on my feet for long periods of time while I’m traveling.”

“That makes me want to test myself against your earth enhancements, but I know this isn’t the right time.” Nina sighed “Maybe later.”

“Maybe.” Yura replied ambiguously.

And of course, Nalia was also pretty impressed with the elf’s mastery over her chosen branch of magic, often asking questions about it that led the two into more long technical discussions over the subject. The sentiment seemed to be mutual, as Yura also sometimes asked questions of the fairy:

“So you use different methods for channeling magic throughout different materials? How do you choose which method to use?”

“Honestly, it mostly depends on what I’m trying to do at the time. For manipulation of materials, I treat their particles as a conductor through which I can spread my magic as a current, while for manifestation I send a pulse of magic as a wave to define the area of effect, for example.” Nalia smiled “But I could also use the pulse method for manipulation, which can be useful for accelerated spells, so everything is on a case by case basis, really.”

“I see… My usual method is a combination of current channeling and effect propagation, but maybe I should try to learn to use magic pulses so I have more options.” Yura was thoughtful.

Yes, it could easily be said that the trio thought well of Yura’s skills, which was a good thing considering they would have to fight together soon. And speaking of which, their journey was quite uneventful, owing to the fact that they spent most of it traveling underground without coming close to any other people.

The only thing of note was when, two days after they had set off, Yura said that they were going to slow down a bit because they were going into a swamp area.

“Are you slowing down because it’s harder to manipulate earth that’s mixed with so much water?” Elise asked.

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s like the earth is heavier than usual, so I can’t move it with as much ease.” Yura confirmed.

“Are there other types of terrain that give you trouble?”

“A few.” She replied “Really old forests with really big trees result in really thick and dense root systems that hold the earth together pretty tightly, so it can be even harder to move. There’s also contaminated terrain, mostly because I can’t really connect with the earth as easily without getting sick.”

“I see. But since you already knew the route, I guess we’re still gonna arrive at our destination a day from now?”

“Yes, no problem. Hopefully things are still alright over there.” Yura replied.

And that was that. When they stopped to sleep a few hours after that, the elf girl said that it wouldn’t take much longer to arrive after they set off on the next morning.

The city of Danmin was close by. Soon enough the group would be able to start their mission.