Chapter 144: Chapter 144
The next day at noon, Yvette went to her study and saw Lant’s message on the communicator. She froze for a moment—missing for over a hundred years? That number felt a bit too large, almost on par with her own century-long slumber.
But the good news was Ice Rain was only missing; by some method of the Machinist Sanctum they’d confirmed she was still alive—an ill fortune with a silver lining.
Yvette then read carefully the follow-up intelligence Lant had sent about that mysterious legend.
The legend’s origin also dated back over a century. A Machinist explorer, risking a trek across the polar ice, discovered deep in the polar wastes an unbelievable garden—vast enough to resemble a great city, filled with strange artificial structures that utterly contradicted other explorers’ accounts of the region as desolate and empty.
After sending the discovery to friends, that explorer, driven by curiosity, entered the Mysterious Polar Garden—and was never heard from again.
Thereafter the eerie tale acted like a magnet, drawing many expeditions. Teams formed in curiosity to uncover the garden’s secrets, but regardless of scale, every party that entered vanished like a stone into the sea—no one returned.
Ice Rain had been among the earliest of those explorers.
After the Sanctum’s Gracebearers were sent and likewise did not return, the area was officially designated a “high risk zone” by the Sanctum, with strict orders forbidding all Machinists of the Marionette Kingdoms from approaching.
Reading Lant’s message, Yvette’s brow lifted; curiosity stirred.
The Machinists’ collective disappearances there—were they related to the King of the Sky-Sea? Was that mysterious polar garden the lord’s lair?
And how could the Sanctum be so sure the missing were still alive? Could that place communicate outward, or had the Machinist deity had some contact with the Sky-Sea King?
Whatever the truth, Ice Rain was one of the few friends Yvette still had, and a garden that swallowed whole expeditions certainly had exploratory value.
Three days later Abella returned riding a Magitech Vehicle. After briefly explaining the situation, Yvette immediately set about modifying the vehicle so it could better withstand polar conditions.
Having secured the supplies and gear they might need, she took Abella and drove into the depths of the Abyssal Current North Sea, plunging into that white, frozen world built of endless ice and snow.
An endless polar night cloaked the frozen land; the wind whipped up snow-dust, howling across the wastes.
Above them, emerald auroras writhed like great cyan serpents, painting the hard, cold plain in a hazy, ghostly green.
“Master, there are so many auroras here,” Abella said from the passenger seat, peering through the frosted window at the scene outside.
“Pity—they’re all true auroras,” Yvette replied with a regretful sigh.
At first, on entering the polar region, she was delighted by the occasional northern lights, but she quickly realized these auroras contained no Remnant Abyss—they were entirely different from the auroras she sought, and thus far less meaningful.
The Magitech Vehicle skimmed over the hard ice.
In the boundless dark the metal hull was like a giant ice mirror, reflecting the constantly shifting blue-green lights of the sky.
Occasionally snowbound aberrations appeared—frozen wights or white-furred brutes, humanoid or beast—but most that crawled out of the drifts were immediately crushed by the Magitech Vehicle.
Days passed , the two of them wandering the vast ice plain without purpose and finding no clues. On the seventh day, at the bottom of a deep crevassed gorge, Yvette noticed an anomaly.
It was a heavily damaged Magitech Automaton wreck, lying alone in the gorge’s shadow, almost fused with the ice and snow.
Yvette climbed down from the vehicle at once. The wreck might belong to one of the Gracebearers who’d gone missing in the polar region—perhaps it held a clue to the Mysterious Polar Garden.
After clearing ice and discarded parts, Yvette recognized a somewhat familiar bionic face among the wreckage.
She vaguely remembered that both she and Abella had seen the unconscious Gracebearer inside this very automaton before—his name was something like Elliot White Dove, nicknamed “Detective White Dove.” Back in the Towered Water Kingdom, Elliot had investigated Yvette because her harvesting of aberrations had been gruesome and bloody; he’d even dubbed her the “Blood Demon.”
Over the subsequent twenty years of travels she had met Detective White Dove several times—always at scenes related to the Blood Demon case. He had never suspected the three of them and had always sworn he would find and crush that terrible Blood Demon in its cradle.
She hadn’t expected to meet him again here a century later.
Yvette dragged the unconscious Elliot from the wreckage. After confirming his critical components weren’t destroyed, she found his charge port and injected a little mana.
Minutes later, with magic flowing again through the magitech conduits, Elliot’s body shuddered; his closed bionic eyelids fluttered open to reveal a bewildered expression. Staring at Yvette, he mumbled blankly, “Wh—what—what happened—?”
“We were just about to ask you what happened,” Abella said, arms crossed, her noble coldness on display.
Yvette asked as well, “We passed by and found you—how did you end up here?”
Elliot’s gaze wandered between the two of them in confusion. After a moment, as if a memory switch had been triggered, he suddenly sat upright and said, “I—I remember! I escaped from ‘that place’! But White Blaze and I ran almost out of power; we were attacked by aberrations on the way and finally collapsed here.” He turned to look at the Magitech Automaton wreck with a mournful expression—White Blaze was clearly the name of his fighting companion.
“‘That garden’? The Mysterious Polar Garden? Do you know where it is?” Yvette asked. “What kind of place is it? Why does everyone who goes there disappear?”
Elliot’s face twisted; it was like he was recalling a terrifying nightmare. He said in a daze, “That place—I’ve never seen anything so beautiful, but I’ve never seen anything more dangerous—there are strange rules there, and all things related to magic are restricted; you can’t use them freely, yet terrifying magical creatures attack you—” Newest update provıded by novelꜰire.net
He paused, then warned, “If your destination is there, I advise you not to go. Even top Gracebearers can’t exert their powers there—you must stay away!”
Yvette’s brows rose slightly. From his description the garden truly was uncanny—capable of suppressing magic itself; even Gracebearers had to obey its rules.
How did it sound? Like some oversized, multi-dimensional spellcast—akin to the no-fly zones over the Fursjiang.
Could it be a super-structure left by the Origin Civilization? Were the so-called magical creatures and rules simply the relic’s automatic defenses?
There were many more questions, but he had just recovered and deserved time to rest and clear his head.
Confirming that White Blaze’s cognitive core was damaged, Yvette helped the sorrowful Elliot into the vehicle, then changed topics. “Elliot, long time no see. What did you find about that Blood Demon?”
Elliot had just hooked up a line to recharge from the Magitech Vehicle. At her words he blinked and said, “How did you know I was secretly investigating the Blood Demon?”
Yvette was a little speechless—she’d only chatted casually to cheer him up, and after a hundred years he was still chasing the case?
“You investigated the Blood Demon before; we met a few times,” Yvette reminded him. “The first time was in the Towered Water Kingdom.”
“Oh—so it was you two—huh, what were your names again? Sorry, some memory sectors are corrupted; that part may be damaged,” Elliot said awkwardly.
“Master, this guy wants to catch you—shall we finish it here?” Abella leaned close to Yvette’s ear and made a throat-slitting gesture with a wicked smile.
Yvette shot Abella a look, thinking she was a little extreme—and where had she even learned that gesture?
Then Yvette gave Elliot a brief introduction to the two of them.
“So it’s you, Miss Yvette, Miss Abella.” Elliot said. “That Blood Demon—ah, how to put it—it’s far craftier than I imagined. It must have discovered I was searching for it. For the past hundred years it’s been silent; it’s remarkably patient.”
No, she was just sleeping,
“But it may have used more secretive means to erase traces, deliberately testing my deductive skills, trying to provoke me. ”
“But rest assured, compatriots, I’ll keep investigating until I drag it out!” Elliot said, resolute.
This truly is a lifelong project, Yvette thought, offering a perfunctory nod of respect, then steered the conversation to the point. “Mr. Elliot, can you tell me what you witnessed inside that Mysterious Polar Garden?”