"This kind of feels like a scene from an RPG, Aoko," Touko held the map and whistle in her hands, examining them carefully. "Receiving a quest to investigate mysterious ruins or something like that?"
Not bad, Touko, your intuition is quite sharp.
"I'm so surprised," Aoko feigned an exaggerated look of shock as she glanced at her sister. "I never expected that an old relic like you, who used to care only about magic research, would know about RPGs?"
"That's so rude!" Touko put her hands on her hips and glared at Aoko. Her curvaceous figure made her look somewhat adorable. "I've played plenty of board games and video games with Arcueid!"
"Hahaha~ Sorry, sorry. Looks like after becoming a Magician, you've let go of a lot of things," Aoko chuckled as she apologized to Touko. "Back in the day, you were way too obsessed with magic. You've become much more interesting now."
"Tch, unlike someone who can just lay back and inherit magic effortlessly!" Touko rolled her eyes at Aoko before saying, "But you're right. Taking this trip to another world with you made me realize that magic is just... well, this."
"Honestly, even I was pretty surprised," Aoko chatted with Touok as they walked along the road. She glanced back at the gradually fading silhouette of the Cathedral and said, "Priest Ymir is truly something else."
"Yeah, he was able to perceive the essence of our magic to some extent," Toukjo nodded. "Or maybe I should say, does this land have beings similar to Magicians? The so-called Demigod he mentioned?"
"I'm sure there's some fundamental difference," Aoko thought for a moment before replying. "Remember that Malenia I mentioned to you? Her Law is really strange—it feels more like a deity has parasitized her body rather than her controlling the Law herself. That's different from the other Demigod."
"So demigods are similar beings, but not the same," Touko gazed into the distance. "Their common trait is that the Law exists within them, regardless of whether they control it or not."
"It's hard to say," Aoko responded. "As far as I know, among all the Demigods, including those enigmatic ones, only Malenia's Law has its own will and is difficult to control. That could be because the God of Rot's Law arrived in the Lands Between before Malenia was even born. It's just sealed away for now."
"So… there's a chance that Malenia isn't a God?" Touko asked. "Could she just be a vessel—the body that the sealed God of Rot's Law is using to reincarnate?"
"That's very possible," Aoko nodded in agreement. "But for now, it's impossible to verify. I have a feeling that Priest Ymir hasn't told us everything about the demigod, the gods, and these ruins. We should wait until we see the ruins for ourselves before drawing any conclusions."
—Scene Transition—
From the map, the location Priest Ymir had marked for Aoko and Touko stood out due to its peculiar terrain—something that wasn't naturally formed. It was undoubtedly man-made.
However, judging by the map's scale, the sheer size of this structure was overwhelming. If it had been built with ancient Earth-level engineering, this wouldn't just be a matter of draining resources—it would be an architectural feat beyond comprehension.
Looking at the map, Aoko felt an odd sense of familiarity with the structure. It was as if she and Touko had seen something like this before, but they couldn't quite put their finger on it. Since Ymir hadn't given them any spoilers, they would have to wait until they saw it in person to confirm their suspicions.
The reason Aoko found the ruins' scale so daunting was because they covered the entire northeastern corner of the Shadowland Continent. In other words, an entire peninsula-sized landmass was encompassed by these ruins.
The bell's location, as marked by Ymir, was in the southeastern region of the peninsula, near the coastline, at the center of a semicircular formation.
And this structure looked oddly familiar...
"I finally understand why this terrain looked so strange," Aoko said as she and Touko landed from the sky, scanning their surroundings. "The patterns on the map's ruins are fingerprints!"
"So these are Fingercreeper?" Touko enhanced her vision with a far-seeing magic spell and looked toward the plains, where swarms of Fingercreeper roamed. She murmured, "I used to think I was well-traveled among magi, but these things..."
"They're pretty eerie, huh?" Aoko glanced at Touko. "Look at that large Fingercreeper over there—it's even wearing a gemstone ring! I wonder if those rings were put on by someone, or if they naturally grew that way?"
"There's no way a living creature could naturally grow rings, right?" Touko gave Aoko a weird look, noticing that her sister's thought process was getting stranger. "If the Fingercreeper are connected to the Two Fingers, then maybe human followers put those rings on them?"
"Not necessarily," Aoko pointed at the nearest large Fingercreeper's ring. "Look at the patterns on its ring. They're also fingerprints. Normally, human-made jewelry wouldn't have that kind of design, right?"
Touko examined it closely and fell silent. This peninsula was far too bizarre—endless Fingercreepers, twisted humanoid Seven-Eyed Lampreys, and massive stone-carved fingers sprouting from the earth—all of it continuously shattered her sense of reality.
Currently, the Aozaki sisters were at the northernmost tip of the peninsula. According to the map, there was a meteorite crater further north. Deciding it was worth investigating, they made their way toward it.
"The gravity field around here is abnormal," Touko said after landing again, using a detection spell to assess the area. "The gravitational distortions are centered inside that crater. Something's there..."
"Do you need magic to sense that?" Aoko immediately activated her Mystic Code, lighting up her Magic Crest, while preparing her Zoo Set of enchantments. She smirked. "It's coming. This is a real alien lifeform for this universe."
As Aoko finished speaking, something emerged from the white-purple energy sphere at the center of the crater.
It looked like a bull made of solid mineral, but its head lacked facial features—only massive, pincer-like mandibles made of the same mineral. Meanwhile, its tail resembled a long, segmented stinger, more akin to an arthropod than a bovine.
From Aoko and Touko's perspective, this extraterrestrial being looked like a bizarre fusion of a crab and a bull sculpted entirely out of stone.
"A Fallingstar Beast," Aoko said seriously. "These things have some interesting gravity magic. I wonder if we can learn something from them?"
Before she even finished speaking, the stone beast charged at them like a real bull, its massive body shaking the ground with each thunderous step.