Tuot woke up with pain in the back of his body. The dinosaur looked up and found Kyotyoryon on the bed, pulling a feather from its tail.
"Stop it," Tuot asked. "Do not do that."
"If I hadn't done that, you wouldn't have woken up," Kyotyoryon explained.
"I don't sleep as soundly as your creator. By the way, where is she?"
"She left somewhere. She said that we are going to the park today."
Kyotyoryon stopped pulling the feather, and then turned her back. Her clothes were gone. A back with a very prominent spine opened up in front of Tuot, which turned into thick buttocks and thick, albeit "inedible" legs.
At the sight of these body parts, the dinosaur should have felt hungry, but this did not happen. When Tuot found out what Kyotyoryon's body was made of, he lost gastronomic interest in it.
The character ran her finger along her spine. Cracks appeared in those places, and soon the skin on her back burst. Kyotyoryon pulled out a metal spring from there and then fell face down on the floor.
Tuot stood with his feet on the bed and looked at the character with a slack jaw.
"This thing holds the things that hold me," Kyotyoryon explained. "It needs to be lubricated so that I can walk without falling."
Tuot closed his mouth and looked at the door so as not to look at Kyotyoryon.
"This spring is its spine," the dinosaur guessed. "She's the spirit of metal. I shouldn't be surprised."
"Why don't you ask your creator about this?" the dinosaur asked.
"She disappeared somewhere," Kyotyoryon answered. "That's why I'm asking you. I want to walk and not fall."
"Some people have to fall all their lives," Tuot felt sad from this thought.
At this time, Halankuo was sitting at a table in a cafe with Itinit and drinking green liquid from a straw in a glass.
"So you still managed to transfer the character into the real world," Itinit said.
"I don't even understand how I did this," Halankuo admitted.
"When I gave you 'Mausoleum of Nature', I didn't think that you would succeed. I thought it would be like a game for you. You will create a character in the editor and stop doing it."
Halankuo summoned the virtual screen and entered the "Mausoleum of Nature". In one of the program windows there was a full-length figure of Kyotyoryon in human form.
"She's cute," Itinit smiled.
"Yes," Halankuo agreed. "She looks a little like a bird, especially in her combat form."
Halankuo pressed one of the buttons. Kyotyoryon's human form was replaced by a sharp helmet with a beak that hovered above a metal torso with blades instead of arms.
"I'm so glad that I finally created a metal bird," Halankuo smiled. "But it's very difficult with her. She perceives everything differently from living beings and does strange things."
"It would be amazing if a character who was summoned from another world did what humans or dinosaurs do."
"She's too strange. She wants to cut or stab something. She doesn't understand what her actions can lead to."
"She is the spirit of metal. You yourself chose this type of character. It was necessary to choose the spirit of wind or lightning. Creators can give characters their own abilities."
Halankuo finished the liquid, and then left the table to the bar counters and put the glass on it.
"You haven't dressed again," Itinit noted.
Halankuo looked down and noticed that she was only wearing a long gray T-shirt that covered her buttocks and a little of her thighs. The girl summoned her interface and clicked on the gray oval icon. The screen became a mirror, in which Halankuo saw a girl with disheveled hair.
"It's okay," Halankuo smiled. "There are no more people in the city. No one will laugh at me if I walk around the city like this."
"Almost all the local residents have disappeared," Itinit said. "I, you, your character and Tuot are left in the city, maybe someone else."
Halankuo returned to her original place.
"I want to talk about Taikuron," said the girl. "What do you know about him?"
"Something," Itinit looked at the ceiling. "Taikuron was most likely created in the 'Mausoleum of Nature".
"In the 'Mausoleum of Nature"? Who created it?"
"Unknown. Information about him periodically appears in various sources. They say that Taikuron attacks living beings and extracts their data. Then eight years ago, Taikuron appeared in your village. Do you remember this?"
"Yes. That day I woke up and found that my parents were gone. I woke up Tuot, and we went to look for them. But instead of our parents, we saw a penguin in the distance with antennas on its head. He was floating in the air above the village. This continued for a few moments and then the penguin disappeared. I thought I imagined it. Tuot got scared and wanted to run away. We left the village and ended up in this town."
"It looks like Taikuron extracted your parents' data, which is why you didn't find them. Taikuron wants to find his second personality, so he uses signals to attract other beings to him. If Taikuron doesn't find what he was looking for, he simply gets rid of the data."
"How do you know so much about him?"
During one of the expeditions, I met a creature with antennas. From this creature I learned a lot about signals. Every creature has signals. Usually the signals are not transmitted outside the creature's body. But if you insert an antenna into the body, the signals will be transmitted over distances. That creature had antennas in the form of horns. They were made from an alloy of metals.
Halankuo's heart began to beat faster. The girl turned away so that Itinit would not notice anything.
"Kyotyoryon's horns are also made of metal," Halankuo was frightened. "But it's not transmitting a signal yet." I'm afraid she'll become like Taikuron."
"The creature with horns told me about transferring a character from the virtual world to the real one and gave me the "Mausoleum of Nature," Itinit continued.
"Why did it do this?" Halankuo was surprised. "This is weird."
"I dreamed about this creature, and I decided to find it. It turned out that it was sending signals to my brain while I was sleeping. The signals caused dreams in which Taikuron and this creature were. When we met, it said that it was hiding in a secret place because its antennas were transmitting signals to other creatures, and that was why it was lonely. The creature simply wanted to talk to those to whom it sent signals."
Halankuo sat down at a table near Itinit.
"Is it possible to restore my parents using the data?" the girl asked.
"It's possible, if the data turns out to be valid," Itinit answered. "About eight years have passed since then. Data can be stored for up to 15-20 years, sometimes more. You can try to get your parents back if you want. You still have time for this. You need to find the place where the data is stored and extract it from the storage medium. Typically the data is stored in energy memory cards."
"You didn't tell me about this before."
"You were too small for this. You recently turned twenty. I could try to search for the data myself, but I don't want to. These people are your parents, not mine. So you can do it yourself if you want."
"Of course, I want to find the data. I want to meet mom and dad again! Do you know where to look for data?"
"In the places where Taikuron was. He doesn't have enough space in his inventory to store memory cards. Often he throws them away after the data has been copied to his memory card, which is built into his brain. You can try looking for memory cards in your village."
***
Yueret and Unana left the station and walked along the stone paved road along the river bank. A dense mixed forest began. The road led down. A small river appeared, noisily flowing through numerous rapids.
A virtual frame appeared above one of the coastal stones, with an inscription of red glowing symbols inside and an arrow that pointed to a large coniferous tree between the stones.
"We're almost there," Yueret said. "There should be a boat parking area here. We will take a boat and sail to the railway station, where trains leave from."
Yueret was right. Behind a large tree on the river bank there were several boats. Near one of them, on a stump, sat two girls dressed identically: a metal corset worn over a black T-shirt, a metal skirt that reached mid-thigh and dark blue boots. The only difference was the color of the hair on their heads - one was purple, the other was green. The lower parts of their faces were covered with masks that matched their hair color.
"These are dolls," Yueret guessed.
"Why do you think so?" Unana asked.
"Look at their hair. People don't have hair colors like that. Also, they are in armor. People don't wear armor."
The dolls were arguing among themselves about something.
"You couldn't," the doll with purple hair said.
"It's not I who couldn't, but you who couldn't," the doll with green hair answered.
"You couldn't do it at all."
"And you couldn't do it even more than at all."
Unana fell to her knees laughing. The dolls looked at her, tilted their heads to one side, then to the other.
"It's someone!" the doll with green hair said.
"Yes, it's someone," the doll with purple hair confirmed.
"And someone else," the doll with green hair said.
Unana got down on all fours and began to laugh even more.
"What's happened?" Yueret asked. "Why are you laughing?"
Unana couldn't answer. She was too busy laughing.
"Someone talking," the purple-haired doll said.
"And someone is unknown, speaking or not," the doll with green hair said. "But someone is the first to laugh."
Yueret moved a little closer to the dolls, and they froze in place.
"Who you are?" Yueret asked.
"I have a name," the doll with purple hair answered.
"And I have a name," the doll with green hair answered.
"That's good," Yueret covered his mouth with his hand. "But what exactly are your names?"
"Good," the doll with green hair answered.
"Cute," the doll with purple hair replied.
Yueret turned away and laughed.
"What are your names?" Yueret asked after he stopped laughing.
"Suturu," the doll with purple hair answered.
"Aibi," the doll with green hair answered.
Unana approached the dolls. She tried to hold back her laughter, so she smiled.
"My sister and I want to sail to the same place, but we cannot control the boat," Suturu said. "Someone and someone, do you also want to sail somewhere?"
"Yes," Yueret replied. "I can control the boat. Maybe…"
Yueret approached the boat and then touched its bow. A yellow virtual control panel with many buttons appeared in front of him. Yueret clicked on some of them. The boat moved and reached the water.
"I hope I can figure out the controls," Yueret said. "Unana must not find out that this is my first time operating a boat."
Suturu, Aibi and Unana approached the boat.
"Someone and someone, let's get on the boat," suggested Suturu.
Yueret climbed into the boat and sat near the bow, where the virtual control panel was located. Unana sat down next to her brother. The dolls were located on the opposite side of the vessel.
The boat pushed off from the shore and floated downstream. The dense mixed forest on both sides of the river gave way to swamps on one side and a high bank with coniferous forest on the other. The river became wider and the flow slowed down greatly.
For a moment, part of the body of a gray creature appeared from the water. Unana noticed him, pushed her brother a little and pointed to the place where the creature appeared.
"Did you see it?" Unana asked.
Yueret looked at the water. The head and back of a lizard, covered with gray scales, emerged from the water.
"It's a cold lizard," Yueret explained. "These animals are rare. They are small and not dangerous to people."
The cold lizard swam closer to the boat. Unana began to closely examine the animal.
"Can I pet him?" Unana asked.
"It's better not," Yueret replied. "He won't bite you, but he'll get scared and might tip over the boat."
The cold lizard dived into the water and never reappeared on the surface. Unana frowned and turned away.
Gray-green swamps with low vegetation opposite the low shore gave way to lakes with dark blue water. The river widened even more.
On the high bank a large gray stone house with two wooden towers and round windows appeared.
"I want to go there," Suturu pointed at the house.
"I want to go there too," Aibi repeated. "I want more than Suturu."
"No, I want even more," Suturu looked at her sister.
"It could be dangerous there," Yueret warned. "Why do you want to go there?"
"What's inside me wants to go there," Suturu said. "Very. It wants to go there as much as my stomach once wanted to eat."
Unana took the headphones off her head and hung them around her neck, after which she laid her head on her brother's lap. Yueret stroked his sister on the top of her head.
"I want to eat," Unana said. "I only ate this morning."
Yueret used the control panel to make the boat stop on a high bank. The opposite low bank was cut by channels that connected the river with the lakes. The ground there was wet, and there was no place suitable for accommodation.
The dolls ran along the path that led through the pine forest to a house with towers. Yueret summoned a robot buyer from his inventory, opened its shell and took out food from the store. Unana opened one of the bags and began to devour its contents with a loud slurp.
Yueret didn't pay attention to how loudly his sister was slurping. He was used to his little sister eating with the sound of a very large animal.
The guy was more interested in the forest that adjoined the shore. It consisted of old coniferous trees, under which ferns grew. The lower parts of the tree trunks were covered with dark green mosses. Low tree ferns grew near the water.
But I didn't have to look at the forest for long. The dolls came running to the shore and grabbed Yueret by the hands.
"There's someone scary there," Aibi said.
"Like you, only scary," Suturu added.
"I told you it could be dangerous there," Yueret said. "And you went there."
"I didn't want to go there," Suturu said. "But something inside made me want to go there."
"We have to leave here," Yueret thought. "Until someone really scary came out of that house."
"Get in the boat," Yueret suggested.
"Why?" Suturu asked. "It's fine here."
"But you saw someone scary in the house," Yueret objected.
"Yes, there was someone scary there," Suturu confirmed.
"Come with us," added Aibi. "Otherwise he will come here."
"It seems it's better not to argue with the dolls," Yueret decided. "They don't understand anything. I'll have to go into the house."
A path led to the entrance to the house, which abruptly turned into a road consisting of gray-pink stones. On the porch there were two stone columns that once supported a canopy.
The wooden door was open. Yueret and the dolls entered the house and found themselves in a large room with a high ceiling, which was covered with cobwebs. The floor was stone and very hard, but broken in some places. Light entered the room through small round windows on the walls. This was enough to see a little of the interior.
There were doll heads with bulging eyes hanging on the walls. A stone staircase at the end of the room led to the second floor.
The dolls reached the middle of the room, stopped and held hands. Yueret summoned his shield and moved closer to the stairs.
There was silence. The house seemed to be completely abandoned. But as soon as Yueret took a few more steps in the direction of the stairs, the sound of some metal object was heard on the second floor. Yueret retreated to the dolls. Heavy footsteps were heard on the stairs, which gradually became louder...
... A man with a gray metal carrot instead of a nose came down the stairs. He was wearing black pants, boots and gloves, a black metal vest over some dark clothing with a hood with strands of black hair sticking out from under it. His eyes stared motionlessly at one point, like those of a doll. A long purple tongue hung from the open mouth.