Chapter 55: Chapter 51: Target Locked

Lia looked up at the beast in front of her. It was coiled around the statue of the moon like it had been when it was a boss, and it had retained most if not all of its size. That was about where the similarities to its old self ended, however; as opposed to its previous mottled green color, it had taken on a deep black hue, interspersed with streaks of purple and dots of white. It was like someone had taken the night sky and cloaked the snake in it, and it was breathtaking.

It shifted, opening eyes the color of the night sky during a full moon. Even though she knew that the snake was her subordinate, Lia couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated at the sheer…presence it had.

It blinked, readjusting its head slightly in a way that Lia somehow felt was questioning. Deep in the back of her mind, in a place she had unconsciously filtered from her awareness, she could feel its thoughts, simple and animalistic as they were, wondering if she finally had a task for it.

“Um, sorry about that.” Lia mumbled lamely. “I…got busy.”

Rose gave her a surprised look. “It can talk?”

Lia shook her head. “No, I’m like…connected to all of the swarm in a way, but I usually try to ignore that unless I’m specifically looking for it, since it’s kind of distracting. I must have unintentionally gone looking for this guy when it opened its eyes. So, I can kinda sorta feel what it’s thinking, and it’s wondering why we hadn’t come to see it yet.”

Rose frowned. “Has it just been here this whole time? What has it been eating?”

There was another brief flash of emotions. “The…air, I think?” Lia said. “The race description did say it could eat “base elements”, whatever that means, so it’s sort of been…filter feeding? I guess if you were traveling through the stars you would need to be able to store food for a while, so that…kind of makes sense, I think?”

“I suppose so.” Rose said. “But the real question here is…how do we get it out of this room? It’s much too big for the doors.”

“I think we just have to bust down the walls.” Lia replied. “Though, the walls of all the buildings on this campus are reinforced, so…I’m not sure we can do that, come to think of it.”

The snake uncoiled itself from around the moon, shooting a questioning glance at the doorway from which Lia and Rose came.

“Go ahead and try.” Lia said. “If you can, then great, problem solved.”

Lia and Rose got out of the way of the snake as it slithered up to the doors. Contrary to Lia’s expectations, it didn’t attempt to slam itself into the walls, instead opting to carefully open its mouth and place its fangs against the wall.

To Lia’s shock, there was a rush of air and a bright flash of light as the wards on the building’s walls flickered, then powered off. The moment they were down, the area next to the snake’s mouth sort of…stretched, elongating as it rushed into the snake. And then the snake shut its mouth and it was done, a hole in the wall just big enough to fit the snake left in place of the parts of the building that had been there before.

“Oh.” Lia said. “That…works. Go ahead and do the same to the outer wall and wait outside, we’ll take you back to our base when we finish here.”

The snake dutifully slithered through the hall and began to make a hole to the outside.

“Alright, while it’s doing that, let’s go look for those star charts.” Lia said. “Speaking of…do you know how to read them and figure out our position from them?”

“No, sorry.” Rose replied. “But I’m sure Dahlia or Camellia will. They might need tools, though, perhaps there’s a sextant or something around here?”

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“Probably.” Lia said. “We’ll have to look through one of the storage closets and see what they have.”

The two ended up sort of meandering through the building, Lia showing Rose some of the advancements in astronomy that had been made since Rose was alive. Which, yes, there weren’t exactly a lot of, but they had discovered a few new planets and received a few clearer pictures of the surrounding galaxies, so there were a few things, at least.

But they both knew that it was really just a pretense to spend more time together doing something that wasn’t “work”. It wasn’t the most relaxing time, sure, since they did need to keep an eye out for monsters just in case, but it was better than nothing.

As it turned out, they were being a bit more cautious than necessary, only encountering one monster the entire time they were looking through the place, and one that was easily dispatched at that, but it was better to err on the side of caution.

All too soon, they had gathered a huge number of star charts, as well as a sextant and a few stacks of paper and pens. The paper and pens had been something of a whim, they had been stored next to a series of charts, and Lia figured she’d pick them up to keep supplies back at their base topped up. They probably didn’t need them, but thanks to Dimensional Storage they weren’t annoying to carry around, so Lia grabbed them anyway.

So, all that was left was to bring the snake back to the base, figure out where they were going to keep it, then sit back and wait for the scout teams to do their work. Still…Lia had had enough of sitting around doing nothing. She wanted to be active, and she was getting close to being done with her…study material.

“Rose, do you think I could join in on your lessons to my siblings?”

“Huh?” Rose asked. “Of course you can. Why the sudden interest, though?”

Lia shrugged. “Well, I’m running out of study material, I want to be moving my body, and to be completely honest with you, I’m not as confident in my skills as I’d like to be. I’d prefer to be able to win fights on my own merits rather than solely relying on some of my unfair advantages. Then, when it comes time to actually fight, I’ll be that much more effective.”

“An admirable mindset.” Rose said. “Very well, then, I’ll add you to our little curriculum.”

“Thanks, Rose.”

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Owen carefully circled the monster, shield raised. He hated going anywhere close to the Spine for exactly this reason, but it had been a direct order from the king, so what could he do about it?

The monster snarled, its baleful eyes tracking Owen’s every movement. It was a nasty-looking thing, short, squat, and seemingly built entirely out of muscle. It was some sort of…bear with two large pseudopods, which it was waving about threateningly.

It reared back up on its hind legs, showing the spiked bottoms of the pseudopods to Owen. After a brief pause the spikes slid out slightly, then launched themselves at Owen, who calmly blocked each of them with either his shield or a dismissive slash of his spear.

Seeing his opportunity, Owen activated his Skills, then lunged in for what he hoped would be a killing blow.

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