Knowing that they would be seeing action soon, Elise asked Yura to wait a bit rather than setting off immediately when they woke up the next day.

“We should take some time to warm up first.” She explained.

The group had spent the night inside a mini-cave Yura made in the middle of a grassland that was close enough to the city of Danmin for there to be quite a lot of signs spread around indicating the path to it. That particular grassland was a significant enough feature that it was clearly marked on the maps of the area that the group had gotten from the tribes of Theremis, and it was right next to the city of Danmin on all of them.

The grassland was called “Green Path of Venusios”, apparently named after a famous poet who had spent years there working on his craft. However, that wasn’t because of a particular poem of his (the quality of his works was considered only “good” within literary circles, and they weren’t super popular with average people wither), but instead because Venusios was also an incredibly strong warrior, who had once defeated two entire armies that had bothered him by choosing to fight in the area.

“At least that was the story I was told by that archaeologist.” Had been what Yura said when they stopped to sleep in the previous night.

“Wow. This guy sounds like he was super strong.” Was Nina’s comment upon hearing that.

“I agree. But it’s hard to say how strong he actually was from the story. We don’t know how large the armies were, or how strong their members were on average.” Elise said.

‘Did any of your sisters fight armies before?’ Nalia asked mentally.

‘Yeah, quite a few times.’ Elise replied ‘The first thing that comes to mind was big sister Larina’s first fight, when she exterminated an entire thousand man legion of an army.’

‘That was her first fight?!’ Nina was shocked ‘… The more I hear about Larina, the more it feels… I don’t even know.’

‘Don’t worry. You’re not alone in that.’ Elise replied, which was echoed by Nalia.

Going back to present time, Yura agreed to wait for a bit and then looked around, seemingly surprised.

“When I came through here a few days ago there were a ton of carriages and other vehicles going back and forth, but now I can barely see anyone at all.” She explained.

“It seems likely that the situation in the city is the cause.” Elise said.

“Yeah. I agree.”

“Then we shouldn’t waste time.” Elise said, before turning to her partners “Let’s have just a quick spar as warm up. First one to hit wins.”

“Okay.” Nina said, before doing a few hops side to side to get rid of the stiffness on her muscles.

“Understood.” Nalia agreed as well, before floating to the side, to an area which was clear of any big rocks or shrubs.

Nina followed her soon after and the two faced each other, trying to focus as much as possible. They didn’t have that much time, as their contractor only waited for about a second after they were in position to signal the start of the spar:

“Three, two, one, go!” She said.

The distance between the two was only about ten meters, so Nina took the initiative with an instant movement step that crossed the gap in an instant and was followed with a hook powerful enough to disrupt the air around the fairy, which would delay any sort of wind magic Nalia could try to use in order to dodge.

The delay would make it impossible to avoid such a fast attack, so it was a good thing that Nalia wasn’t planning on dodging. She shot a heavy stone bullet at instant speed directly onto Nina’s fist. The bullet was instantly blown to pieces on contact, but the weight and force behind it slowed down the rabbits punch just a little bit.

After that, a strange phenomenon occurred, as the fairy did not move from her spot and yet Nina’s fist met only air, never managing to reach its target even after she extended her arm to the limit. That was because Nalia had controlled the earth below her opponent’s feet to move her backwards with such subtlety even Nina was unable to perceive it.

“Drat!” Nina exclaimed, leaping forward and unleashing an uppercut toward Nalia.

She knew that the best chance to win had passed, but that desperate attack was her only option to avoid instantly losing.

“Wingbeat.” Nalia declared, bring her right hand down like a conductor.

A huge downwards blast of wind suddenly manifested like she had flapped a giant wing, slowing down Nina’s uppercut slightly but more importantly forcing herself up and out of its reach. She followed up with a big fireball that Nina dodged with a leap into the air, still trying to reach the fairy, but the fireball exploded in contact with the ground, releasing a shockwave that disturbed her flight, causing her route to drift to the left.

Yet Nina wasn’t out of tricks. She was not going straight toward Nalia anymore, but was still close, so she twisted her body and stretched her leg to deliver a powerful kick. Yet her attack hit nothing, as Nalia seemed to just disappear the moment before being hit.

Then Nina felt a presence at her back and tried in vain to reach it with an elbow, but Nalia was just slightly out of range, and the fairy mercilessly struck with a stone bullet right to the back.

“That’s it!” Elise declared the end of the spar, so the duo returned to the ground, Nina landing heavily but on her feet.

“Ow.” She deadpanned, looking at Nalia with a moody expression “What was that?” She demanded.

“Teleportation.” The fairy replied “It’s still a work in progress. It’s too easy to disrupt, the distance is really limited and it takes too long to trigger.”

“I can understand that last one, since you’d have been hit if I had attacked even slightly faster. But if this spell is still so far from completion, then why did you decide to use it?” Nina asked.

“Big sister wanted the spar to be quick.” Nalia replied “The fight would have probably dragged if I just used reliable spells, so I had to take a gamble.”

“That’s really like you.” Nina shook her head and then the two of them walked back to their contractor.

“That was a good warm-up, but you need to sharpen your situational awareness, Nina,” Elise said before turning to Nalia “And you took too long to calculate the spatial vectors needed to reach your destination. That’s the main issue preventing you from teleporting fast enough to really make use of it in battles, so we’ll have to work more on that.”

“Understood.” Nalia replied.

“Kay.” Nina replied.

Yura looked at them with an expression like she didn’t know what to say “… Doesn’t that hurt?” She finally managed to let out a sentence, looking at Nina.

“My back? Nah.” The rabbit assured her “That was a pretty weak spell. Nalia only needed to hit me, so there was no need to make it strong enough to get through by defenses. Look.” She then turned her back to Yura and lifted up her shirt enough for the elf to see that the stone bullet hadn’t even left a mark on her skin.

“I see. The hit sounded ugly, but I guess I underestimated your toughness.”

“Yeah.” Elise said “Nalia wasn’t exactly holding back, but Nina can’t really be hurt that easily. Neither of my little sisters can, so they do some pretty intense sparring without worry.”

“Little sisters?” Yura asked.

“Oh, I guess this is the first time I call them that in front of you, huh.” Elise smiled “That’s part of our contract. They have to consider me their big sister and in turn they are my little sisters.”

“Yeah. We’re pretty much family.” Nina confirmed.

“Family…” Yura seemed like she wanted to say something for a moment, but then turned away and formed the transport platform once again.

“… We should not waste too much time here. Let’s keep going.” She finally said.

The others didn’t know what that was about (though Elise had some suspicions), but they all felt that it wasn’t the right time to ask, so they simply agreed and Elise walked up onto the platform, Nalia on her shoulder and Nina in her mindscape. Yura manipulated the earth to open up a hole for them to go underground (as she had done whenever they resumed their journey after a pause) and then the group was off

The mood was a bit heavy, and the last leg of the journey was short, so there ended up being no conversation at all until the elf said that they were almost there and brought the group up to the surface again.

“Is that the city?” Elise asked, surprised.

Her doubt was understandable. The only large, artificial structure in sight was an immense metal dome located about one kilometers in front of them.

“Yes.” Yura confirmed “That’s the Dome City, Danmin. It’s a pretty unusual place in many aspects.”

+0+

The elf had taken them close to a specific part of the dome that had makings in the shape of an immense door and then pulled out a card from her clothes and held it above her head until a person-sized door opened up close to them, allowing the group to go inside.

She had explained that the card was a sort of proof of identity she had received from the archaeologist in order to get inside the town without needing to go through the usual bothersome requirements.

Beneath the dome looked a lot more like an actual city, but it was still far different from anywhere Elise and her partners had ever actually been.

The ceiling that covered everything gave off a gentle light that made everything visible but did not hurt the eyes of any who looked up. The houses and other buildings were separated into several different levels which were connected by either paths that floated midair and curved around the complicated surroundings or large tubes that acted like high-speed elevators that allowed for horizontal movement as well as vertical.

Plus there were also quite a lot of people riding small flying machines to go around without using said paths. The buildings were a strange mix of styles and forms, like a mansion that seemed to be made of pure wood and marble, but a closer glance revealed it to be a facade for an advanced metal construction. Their use of space was also exceedingly unusual, with buildings sometimes growing right through others, or lodged precariously in small gaps between two constructions, their size and shape corresponding to the available space exactly.

And some of them even moved around, switching between positions regularly in order to open up passage through those areas. Overall the whole city gave off a feeling of restless activity and life, like it was itself a living thing and the constructions were its myriad of organs, each of which with their own functions. The most normal thing there were the people, mostly consisting of humans, who wore clothing that did seem to be factory-made rather than handcrafted, but which looked fairly normal otherwise, with no excessively unusual colors or styles.

After giving them a few moments to take in that new environment, Yura spoke:

“Come on, the museum is close by.” And began to walk with a purpose, quickly followed by the others.

She took them up a moving ramp and into one of the smaller tubes, upon which she raised her voice to say “Idratas Museum of Ancient History.” then the floor disappeared and they were quickly moved to the right and then down by what seemed to be some sort of gravity manipulation effect, but true to her words the tube stopped after barely half a minute, leaving no time for them to try and figure out how exactly it worked.

The floor appeared again and allowed them to land before the tube opened up in front of a multi floor building that was shaped sort of like a series of flights of stairs, spiraling upwards, with the space in between being occupied by several other buildings as well as transport connections. Besides that, the building looked quite normal, both in color as well as the materials it was apparently made of. That included having a set of double doors as the entrance that stood before them. Above those doors was a plaque that identified the building with the same name that Yura had said to take them there. The Idratas Museum of Ancient History.

The group went inside and Yura immediately went to the counter on the side and talked to the man sitting there, telling him to “Call Professor Whitmoore and tell her Yura is here.” While they waited for the message to be conveyed the group took a look around (minus Yura, who just sat at a bench nearby since she was already familiar with the place), Elise even let Nina out to take a look as well.

It was a pretty interesting place with exhibitions everywhere one looked. One section of the floor was cordoned off because it contained an arrangement of tiles said to be from the palace of the old king Navamonte, whose reign had been so far in the past scholars weren’t even able to agree on what the name of his kingdom was. Suspended in midair by an unseen force was the skeleton of an extinct animal called Lecadontes, a flying reptile with three pairs of limbs and wickedly long curved claws. Fixed to a wall was a weird-looking oceanic map that included illustrations of different types of monsters as well as an island formation that didn’t seem to exist anymore, at least as far as the researchers had managed to figure out.

And so on and so forth. There was a very large amount of things to see even without needing to go too far away from where Yura was waiting, so the group didn’t need to worry about becoming bored. And after looking around just a little bit, Elise made a surprising find.

‘Ah, that’s something sister Dilira made!’

‘Really, what?’ Nalia asked, moving over to Elise in interest, soon joined by Nina.

‘… I have no idea what this is.’ The fairy said after taking a long look at the object, which was laid down on a stand.

Her confusion was understandable. The sign next to it only said that the ‘object’ had been excavated from beneath a dried lake at the Allunbras region, and said object looked like nothing more than a trio of pipes welded together, except that the pipes were made of an immensely complex network of small gears, wires, barrels and more, all of which were also carved with unusual patterns.

It was definitely a very elaborate creation, specially considering that it didn’t seem to have any sort of wear from the time spent buried, but it was very difficult to tell what exactly it was meant to do.

‘That’s a water purifier. Sister doesn’t usually make things to last for so long without decay, but apparently the lake it was meant to purify was so toxic that she needed to ensure this thing kept working for literal ages in order to complete the job.’ Elise explained.

‘Ah, that makes sense. Do you understand how exactly it works?’ Nina asked.

‘Not in the slightest.’ Elise said ‘This is definitely in the realm of advanced alchemy. I only know what it is because there’s a picture of her holding one of those back home and I asked about it.’

Nalia was about to make her own comment, but she noticed Yura standing up from the corner of her eye and turned to see the elf talking with the man on the counter and gesturing for them to follow her.

“Looks like it’s time to go.” She said.

The others agreed and went after the elf, who took them into a small staff door and up a flight of stairs to reach a door with a sign denoting that it belonged to Professor Whitmoore. Yura barely had to knock on it once before a voice from inside told them to enter.

That voice belonged to a tall red-haired woman who was wearing clothing that was clearly meant for the field: Thick and durable pants and boots, a long-sleeved yellow shirt with a coat over it, a wide-brimmed hat and a few holsters holding things like a water bottle, knives and a first aid-kit, not to mention having a bag sitting on the side that likely held more of the same.

Her office was fairly disorganized, with papers and books scattered around, but a large table on the corner that seemed to be her main work area was completely different, the documents, writing utensils and research objects there were meticulously organized and the whole area was spotless.

“Yura, it’s nice to see you.” The woman greeted her “Please tell me those three are the help you were after.”

“Yes. They are strong enough for me to be confident of taking you to the core of the temple. And they’ve agreed to help.” Yura replied.

Sensing their cue, Elise stepped forward and introduced herself, followed by Nalia and Nina “I’m a Contractor and those two are my partners. Nalia specialized in magic while Nina specializes in physical combat.” She explained briefly.

“Okay. I have to thank you for the help in advance.” The professor said “But we should leave soon. Things have gotten a lot worse since you left, so we can’t waste any more time.”

“Okay, then let’s-” Yura was interrupted by a loud siren that suddenly sounded, which was quickly followed by a robotic sounding message:

“Warning. Warning. The city is under magical attack. All citizens please head to your designated emergency shelters and wait for further instruction.”

“Damnit! Of all the times…” Professor Whitmoore swore at the situation.

Yura looked at her and then at Elise, who understood the unsaid question:

“Let’s go help with this situation. It will be good to take a measure of those magical guardians before heading to the temple.” She decided.

“Okay.” Yura agreed, then turned to address the professor “We’ll go to exit E after we’re done, so please head there once everything is settled.”

The woman agreed, and so the four ran out of the room, readying themselves for combat.