"Run! Don't look back and run straight home!" I shouted.
Everyone didn't bother asking and simply followed my words, turning around and starting to run away. Behind us, the sound of crashing and explosions, mixed with the high-pitched cries of dying hatchlings, echoed loudly.
Judging from the amount of damage the initial explosion did, I doubt the big porcupine turtle would die with just that. With my hammer, I can challenge killing it for good, but that would not only place my life on the line but the others too. I can't do that for something that has little chance of success.
"If we get tracked by that thing, we're doomed!" Toki shouted as she ran, firing fireballs on the ground behind us to cover our tracks and erase our scent.
The explosions were enough to gather the attention of other monsters, however, so the way back was full of hardship.
We moved as fast as we could, eliminating monsters that were unavoidable and outrunning those who were too far or too slow. With me and Hailey fighting together, each monster would not last more than ten seconds. Rather, most of them died from a single hit!
Just like that, we finally managed to return to the border. The problem was that by then, the sky was already dark. It was long past sunset and was already full-blown nighttime. Looking at my phone's time, it was already half past seven. That means...
"The gate's closed!" Mina cried in worry, seeing that the gate was shut tight.
Some might think that we can simply jump over the fence and enter, right? However, that's impossible. At night, the barrier would literally create a powerful barrier to surround the entire city. If someone or something jumped over it, they'd turn into dust the moment they did.
Toki pulled out her phone, dialed a certain number, and waited. A few rings later, the other side picked up. Without wasting a moment, she told the other person what happened. "... And so, we're stuck inside Gate A right now. Can you request the military to temporarily disable the defense and let us in?"
"..."
We stayed silent, waiting for good news. However, Toki's face turned grim the moment she finished speaking. A few more seconds later, she sighed and put down her phone. Without asking, I could already guess the result.
"So it was rejected, huh?" I muttered, shrugging my shoulders.
The gates are important contact points for the barrier, so opening them is like turning off a switch, disabling the barrier for the entire border of the city. It was the main reason why those who went hunting were required to return before the gates closed.
I looked up at the edge of the walls, where bluish-pink rays of plasma were rising up to roughly one hundred meters straight. It was set that high to prevent low-flying monsters and giant monsters from entering, but that also prevented us from vaulting over the plasma defense and entering.
Dropping from 100 meters, others say that it's best to go headfirst with the ground. That way, the expenses would be minimized, and you could get a pretty swift end. Other ways are possible, but that could only prolong your suffering from a few seconds to a minute, ultimately ending in death. In other words, it's impossible to enter other than through the gates.
"Well, I already told them to pass the info about the 5th stage monster, so by morning, the military should come," Toki explained while placing her hands on her hips. "For now, we can only rest here, right beside the gates."
As if saying, "Your turn," Toki pointed at me with her chin. I quickly realized her intention and took out a few items from the World Storage; some were things that she forcefully made me carry.
"Too bad there are no tents, but there are blankets at least (materials for crafting)."
I pulled out enough sheets for everyone, passing one to each. The blankets, or rather, the cloth, were thick, as they were to be used as armor materials. Still, as long as it can provide us with some warmth, we've got no problems with it.
After that, I took two poles, a few strings, and a wider cloth as materials to create a simple tent. Seeing that the sky was clear and many stars could be seen, I opted for an envelope-style tent instead. It wasn't hard to do at all, so with a little help from others, we finished it in under ten minutes.
About two meters away from the tent, I placed a pile of wood (and other materials) and created a fire to keep us warm. With that, our preparation for staying the night before the gate was completed.
"The gate's vicinity may be safe, but there's still the chance of a monster attacking. We need to take turns keeping watch," Lily said as she sat down in the tent, taking off her boots and massaging her feet.
"Ah, then I'll take the first shift," Hailey volunteered. "I'm still pretty energetic, after all."
Guarding alone will create a lot of blind spots, so we need at least two. Thinking that, I quickly raised my hand and said, "Then I'll be part of the first shift too."
We have six members, so we can take three shifts in pairs. "Who's the next shift pair?" I asked.
"Then I'll do it," Mina exclaimed as she laid down the tent. "Lily too."
Lily, getting name-called, raised a voice of dissatisfaction. "Ehhh~? Uuuuu, alright..." However, she quickly agreed, realizing that she would need to take a shift anyway.
That finalizes the shift division.
"Then, before all that, here's some food."
I took the emergency rations that were also with Toki's supplies and shared them with everyone. It wasn't anything extravagant, however, just a simple, self-heating military meal. Probably some sort of prototype, I guess. Everyone took a bottle of water with them before eating slowly.
The girls were chatting lightly as they sat side-by-side in the tent, but I was a little distance away, had already finished eating, and was instead reading the description of the main focus of our excursion.
After a while, I could already grasp something from them. "I see... So these fragments, and even the pedestal, are nothing but amplifiers to raise the power level of the World Fragment?"
They were acting similarly to step-up transformers that receive energy from the orb and increase its output. However, the method was a little bit different and hard to decode.
"... The World Fragment's energy isn't electromagnetic, nor is it powered by nanomachines, so..."
This is a dead end. Until I can identify the specific energy that the orb, the World Fragment, produces, I can't create any device to harness it at all.
"Right..." It's better to study the actual thing physically, so I took out both the pedestal and the World Fragment, inspecting them close up.
The pedestal seemed to be made of some sort of metal. It was light and the same color as iron, but extremely hard.
*TINGGGG!*
When I flicked the material with my fingers, a resounding tone echoed, revealing the truth of the metal. "This... isn't metal but a crystal!"
I stared at the World Fragment and the pedestal and tried to ring the pedestal once more. As I did, the World Fragment seemed to vibrate by itself, as if affected by the pedestal's sound.
"Resonant frequency!" I exclaimed in surprise. "So this thing uses sound as a medium to excite the orb's energy?!"
After that, I quickly tried to perform some experiments. One is to try to see if the World Fragment only reacts to the pedestal or if artificial equipment could be used to resonate it. Another is just how powerful a resonance was needed to get some sort of reaction from the World Fragment.
As of now, it was too dangerous to try the second experiment, so I just finished the first one instead. Using my phone, I downloaded a simple app that plays frequency as sound and searched for the frequency of the pedestal. After a few minutes, I managed to find its natural frequency of 919 Hz.
With that out of the way, a design for the device to harness the orb came to mind. I was so excited to try it out that before I noticed, it was already the next shift's turn.
"Sleep!"
That was the only thing Lily said to me before leaving for my previous spot. However, I was so preoccupied with the design that I just thought that I couldn't really get a wink of sleep. To add to that, I was in the middle of sleeping girls, adding a different sort of difficulty to sleeping.
I thought I wouldn't be able to sleep, but I was able to do so in the end. I only woke up due to the sound of loud machinery echoing and vibrating on the ground. When I looked up, I saw two mountains... No, this is Kaede.
I pushed her away and raised my body, staring at the gate a little distance away. The military was there, bringing their full force with a few members of the 4th class. They all looked intimidating and seemed like they were veterans in their field.
It should be a rare sight to see the military sortie with such extravagant gear, but that has nothing to do with us anymore. Rather, I only have one thing in mind. To go and tinker with the new design I just thought of!
"Let's go home!"