There in the snow, Saito stared at the black-haired girl in front of him.
After letting out that cry of astonishment, he temporarily lost all power of speech — he’d even forgotten the pain in the sole of his foot completely.
All that remained inside his head was joy and exhilaration.
The black-haired girl was equally dumbstruck.
The memories inside her head were still in chaos, she was freezing half to death, and on top of that, the mental state of the person in front of her didn’t exactly look entirely normal either.
The scene fell into silence for a moment.
In the end, the gazes of both of them came to rest, in unison, on the hands they were still clutching tightly together.
“Oh — sorry about that.”
Saito was the first to come to his senses.
Although the girl in front of him was wearing a face mask, which made her expression hard to read, judging from her flushed cheeks (from the cold), she was probably embarrassed.
He hurriedly let go of the girl’s hand.
And noticing the water droplets clinging to her hand, he tacked on another line.
“Don’t worry, that’s melted snow water — I’m not some pervert, I didn’t lick it.”
Whether you licked it or not, whether you’re a pervert or not, let’s set all of that aside for now.
Do we really have to be holding this conversation right here?
The girl was shivering uncontrollably from the cold.
Several times she tried to open her mouth and speak, but she couldn’t muster the strength.
In the end, beneath Saito’s blank stare, she went thump — straight back down into the snow.
“?”
Wait — how’d you die?!!
Saito’s expression changed in an instant.
This was the very first living member of his own species he’d run into in these past two months — there was absolutely no way he could let anything happen to her now.
And it was right at this point that he caught on as well.
The girl’s body was ice-cold to the touch right now — and combined with the situation in which he’d found her, it was clearly obvious she’d been lying buried in the snow for quite a long stretch of time.
If he kept dragging this out, this girl was very likely going to freeze to death.
Heading all the way back to camp now was already too late — better to find somewhere nearby to settle her in first, and worry about the rest later.
With that in mind, Saito heaved the girl up off the ground and charged straight toward the factory entrance, pushing against the howling snowstorm.
…
…
The crackling sound of flame consuming wood was the first thing to reach her ears, and warmth once again roused the girl from her coma — though the bigger possibility might just have been that she’d been jolted awake by the suffocating weight of the heavy bedding piled on top of her.
With some effort, she sat herself up off the ground.
A few pieces of tattered clothing had been laid out beneath her, and the same went for what was draped on top — probably the doing of that scavenger-looking person from earlier.
“Where…
am I?”
No one answered her bewilderment.
Mr.
Scavenger wasn’t here at the moment, either.
The girl glanced left and right.
By the looks of it, she’d been carried into an abandoned factory of some sort.
The shape of these machines looked somewhat familiar to her.
“Is this a crusher?
What an old model — this one should’ve been phased out ages ago.”
She picked up a piece of tattered clothing from the floor beside her and wiped away the frost and dust caked on the machine, revealing a Double-Headed Eagle emblem on its side, along with some heavily blurred lettering beneath it.
After straining to make them out, the girl managed to read off the rough gist of the characters.
“Ursus…
Frozen Plains…
Mine…?”
“Ursus…”
In this very moment, it was as though something inside her head was on the verge of bursting forth.
The sensation was deeply uncomfortable — right up until she walked a few more steps along the line of crushers and caught sight of the ore piled up in the corner.
Even though the memories inside her head remained blurred and indistinct, the very instant she laid eyes on that raw ore, the girl clearly enunciated two characters from her lips.
“Originium.”
Those stones were like some kind of magical key — instantly throwing open one of the locks that had been sealing away the girl’s past.
Some of her memories were beginning to revive.
Although the girl still couldn’t recall the vast majority of her past, at the very least she had now remembered who she was — and part of her mission.
“I am…
the Administrator of Endfield.”
Now the girl peered once more through a crack in the wall, out at the world beyond.
This frozen wasteland clearly didn’t belong to that planet known as Talos II — and if she wasn’t mistaken, this place ought to be where she — where they — had originally come from.
“Is this…
Terra?”
The girl turned her gaze back to the heap of discarded ore, slowly extended her right hand, and felt the pulse running through them.
The piece of ore right in front of her gradually began to give off a faint glow.
That wisp of light danced along with the movement of the girl’s fingers, then gradually dissipated into the air.
“Originium Arts still work — but why are they this much weaker?”
Her face was full of confusion.
After the contamination of the Originium, her power had certainly suffered a substantial degree of attenuation — but it shouldn’t have weakened to anywhere near this extent.
If the concentration of Originium dust in Terra’s atmosphere weren’t so much greater than that on Talos II, she likely wouldn’t even be able to manage controlling Originium energy at all.
Could it be because of her body?
She really could feel that her body was weaker than it had ever been before — but with the Protocol Originium assisting her casting, by no means should she be this weak.
With that thought, the girl instinctively glanced down at her left hand — and the moment she did, her entire body froze on the spot.
Her pupils gradually dilated, and her body began to tremble without stopping.
This time, quite clearly, it wasn’t because of the cold.
“It’s…
gone?”
Where’s that big chunk of Protocol Originium of mine?
Where’s my Originium?!!!
There on the girl’s left hand, the terminal that ought to have been mounting the Protocol Originium was at this very moment completely empty.
The piece of Originium she’d given the name ‘Origin’ was nowhere to be found.
Even the Administrator of Endfield — well-accustomed though she was to grand-scale situations — was at this very moment somewhat at a loss for what to do.
First, she’d crossed who-knew-how-many distances to come back from Talos II to Terra; and then, immediately afterward, she’d gone and lost that extremely important Protocol Originium.
Although she hadn’t yet remembered the specific function of that particular piece of Originium, it was absolutely far from being merely an ordinary Protocol Originium.
“I have to get that piece of Originium back, and fast.”
Outside the window, the snowstorm raged on as fierce as ever, and the bone-piercing chill had left a deep impression on the girl.
But she couldn’t afford to worry about any of that right now.
After a brief moment of thought, she ran over to the pile of machinery.
This place ought to be an ore processing facility, so there should still be some finished-processed Originium ore left lying around.
That Originium ore could serve as temporary casting material.
Her constitution and her Originium Arts were both extraordinarily unusual, which was why she could pull off this kind of trick.
If an ordinary person had tried to imitate her, they’d more than likely contract Oripathy then and there on the spot.
Just as she’d anticipated, the girl quickly found a batch of processed Originium ore nearby that hadn’t yet been moved out — quite a sizable amount, more than enough to sustain her Originium Arts for a stretch of time.
With the snowstorm raging this hard outside, Mr.
Scavenger surely couldn’t have transported her too far from where he’d found her.
If the Protocol Originium had landed here along with her, she should be able to track it down quickly.
“Sorry, Mr.
Scavenger — I’ll properly thank you later if I get the chance.”
The girl said softly, and then plunged her hand deep into the pile of Originium ore.
An invisible ripple welled up throughout the space.
Originium energy became the tendrils of the girl’s consciousness, spreading outward without pause, searching for any trace of that Protocol Originium.
“Found…
it?”
Luckily, following the resonance she remembered in her mind, she quickly located that Protocol Originium.
But now, a new problem had cropped up.
Would somebody please explain to her why the Protocol Originium had suddenly sprouted legs — and was, on top of that, approaching her at an extremely high rate of speed?