Me, Alex and Mark dismantled the bird. Mark said we need to take every single thing from it from a single feather to tiny bones. We then neatly store it in a storage Mark brought and put it in the large bag.
I sat near the campfire when its all done. Evelyn and Jean were in the tent sleeping, Alex was preparing to sleep while Mark was writing something in his notebook near the campfire. Me and Mark will be the first for the night watch and then the girls. Alex will not do the night watch but he will do it the next day.
We take turns like this so that at least one person can has full rest for if something unexpected happen the next day.
"Mark"
"Hmm?"
"You realize right?"
"Yeah. I know. Usually this type of monster was found deeper in ruins."
"I am thinking about if we actually need to stop this exploration or not."
"Well. You are the one who has the final say in this team. If you say we stop then we stop, if you want to move on then we can move on with the expedition."
"Yeah I know. That's why this is so hard for me to decide right now. I have somehow calculate that this variable might appear. Right now this exploration is more dangerous than all the explorations we did before."
"Then? Do you want my opinion? Or do you have something on your mind?"
"I want your opinion. I'm worried about Alex. This is his first exploration. If this is an exploration of a small or medium ruins then I might not be this worried but this is a super large one. His mind was already shaken by the incident earlier. Do you think his mind can last?"
"I am not so sure about that. That depend on the willpower of the kid. I am not someone who can value other people willpower or mentality but I can say that he need this experience. He need it to make up his mind. Right now he is at the fork of two road. One path bring him to a life where he can and will do more explorations later on. The other one is where he doesn't has any thought of doing any explorations ever."
"So you said he need to at least know what it feels to do ruin exploration?"
"Yes. Something like that. If you want to stop the exploration to me is ok too. We already found a new variant. From the constant news I got we are the first one to found it. It is already fruitful for all of us."
"Hmmm.....We will continue the exploration. But. We will venture not to deep."
"Anything you say boss."
After that we didn't said anything. Mark was writing his finds in his notebook. I was checking all the items in the big bag and the amount of rations we have left. The black bell can't be used again for about 15 hours. This Artifact is good but has a long cooldown.
I think I need to start use the three small bell tomorrow. The detection bells. I usually bring them out late into the exploration unless something like this happen. A very rare and dangerous variable appear.
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The next day.
Morning.
I woke up to the smell of Mark's cooking.
I was worried about Alex but seeing him mowing down the food in the morning clear my worries away.
After each of us finish our own morning routine, I told my decision about the exploration.
"We will be continuing this exploration. This might sound unreasonable but I think this exploration will be a good experience for our porter. But, but there is an exception. We will not follow what we plan initially. The initial plan is to venture 10 kilometers of area but we will cut it to 6 maybe 5 if it become more dangerous. Any objection?"
"No"
"Nope"
"I'm good"
"No~"
"Alright then. Stay more vigilant than yesterday. Let's go"
After about two hours of walking, we found a ruin of a somewhat large building. I turn towards Jean.
"Is this building some sort of landmark or something? This building seem wide and large. What do you think this place use to be?"
"It depends. It can be a mall, shopping complex, a parking lot, a some sort of attraction, a school or maybe a station- an airplanes station. We need to look around first. If there is some sort of like what used to be huge road or remnants of airplanes than we can narrow it down to just an airplanes station. Anyway, we'll have to explore this building first"
"Alright. Hmm. We will explore together then when we found a good place we will set up our tent. We will look around first and after the tents are set up we can do our own things."
After looking around we found, a large space behind the building.
Jean crouch down and looked at the surrounding place.
"This might be a field. School field. There are some field grass patches here and there. And look here. One of the spotlight. Some parts are already broken but this is really a spotlight."
"So this a school. You sure?"
"Yeah this is a district school. There traces of wall like around the building and there is some metal wire use as a metal fence. There-"
Jean point her finger next to the field not too far away from it.
"That might be a store for the sports equipment. And there-"
Jean point to another place. A building but not too far from here and not too large.
"That is a gymnasium. If this is a mall or a shopping complex it will be singular large building with partition and compartment here and there but there are multiple buildings surrounding the large one. And-"
Jean lead us to a some sort of a broken large pit with weed and trees growing in the pit.
"Here is the swimming pool. This school has a swimming pool. An open swimming pool."
Jean touched the broken tiles.
"This design, colour, shape and material of the tile was commonly used in the past for public and education purposes swimming pool."
"A school in an industrial place? Is this a school for rich people?"
"Maybe. I don't know but I think so. A school in a place like this surrounded by skyscrapers is most likely a private school for wealthy children. The school ground itself is quite big for a normal school."
"This is quite a historical find isn't it Jean."
"Yeah. I'll report it to the Archive. You guys can find a place to set up the tent first. I'll be here for awhile."