Halankuo sat on the bed in her apartment, looking at a virtual screen with an open map of the "Mausoleum of Nature".
"Kyotyoryon is near the coast of the Southern Continent," the girl thought. "What is she doing there?"
Halankuo felt anxious. For the first time since the character's escape, the creator wanted to meet her.
"If something bad happens to her, it will be my fault," Halankuo thought. "After all, I created her."
"Go to her if you're so worried," a voice was heard in the girl's head. "Just don't get too close, so she doesn't notice you."
"But Itinit asked me to wait for him. I already agreed to fly with him. I want to fly on a metal bird so much, but Kyotyoryon worries me more."
"You need to think. You can't make decisions like this just because you're worried about another being. Maybe this feeling will pass quickly."
"This feeling passes, but sometimes it comes back to me. And each time it's stronger."
Halankuo closed the "Mausoleum of Nature" and headed to the kitchen. There she saw a window with cracked glass and remembered how Kyotyoryon had jumped into it. The girl went into the corridor, sat down on the floor near the entrance, and then opened the map of the "Mausoleum of Nature."
"Kyotyoryon is too far away," Halankuo suddenly realized. "I could use the train, but even that would be too far. Kyotyoryon left by train on an abandoned railway. I can't do that."
"Well... You could sit in a train car and control the locomotive with a wrench. But that's not a good option either. I'll run out of energy before I get anywhere. And I'm unlikely to find another abandoned train. Kyotyoryon was just lucky."
"Then fly there."
"I can't ask Itinit for that. He uses the aircraft for important purposes."
***
The metal locomotive detached from the wooden carriage and disappeared under the water. Kyotyoryon managed to jump out of the hatch and landed on the carriage, which was floating on the surface.
"My metal cannot float," Kyotyoryon guessed. "But this thing underneath me can."
Luckily for the character, the waves carried the carriage to the shore. Kyotyoryon immediately ran to the tree ferns that grew near the sandy beach and formed a dense forest with vines and bushes.
"There are so many pillars and ropes here," the spirit of metal noted. "I used to want to cut them if I saw them, but now I don't want to. There are too many. I can't handle it."
Kyotyoryon looked at the sea. There, by the shore, lay a wooden carriage turned on its side and washed by the waves. The energy bridge that had recently passed over the water was gone.
"I feel little metal," Kyotyoryon thought. "The train fell into the water, so I don't feel it. Why?"
The spirit of metal remembered Ayika's words about the connection with the elements.
"I can only feel the metal that is in the air or touches it," Kyotyoryon guessed. "My ability doesn't work underwater."
Kyotyoryon walked along the shore, but found no entrance to the forest. There were simply no paved paths, trails, or anything to move around. A dense fern forest with vines and bushes stretched almost to the horizon, where the mountain peaks were visible. Only a narrow strip of the shore was free of thickets and suitable for movement.
Kyotyoryon reached the mouth of a small river, and was forced to stop. Water turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle for the spirit of metal.
"There are no roads," Kyotyoryon thought. "I can't even feel the rails. There is less metal here than in my fingernail. I can't even call a train to leave here."
Then Kyotyoryon remembered that she could fly in her almost human form. She looked at the bracelet on one arm and waved it. A long blade extended from a hole in it, then opened up and turned into a metal wing.
"It worked," Kyotyoryon's eyes widened in surprise. "Will I really be able to fly again?"
The spirit of metal waved her second hand. A second wing extended from the bracelet. The character's body lifted off the ground and began to rise slowly.
"I saw how birds flap their wings to fly," Kyotyoryon thought. "Maybe I can do it too?"
On one side, there was a view of the endless sea, on the other of equally endless forests that rose up the mountain slopes on the horizon and went somewhere far away, to where the view ended. Only the river broke this monotony. It ran like a thin ribbon through the endless forest massif and got lost in it.
"It's good that the creator and her stupid dinosaur are not here. No one will stop me from destroying the river."
The spirit of metal flew over the river. The thin ribbon of water became even thinner, and the banks higher. The first mountain range appeared, more like hills than mountains. The river flowed from there, and soon left the canyon.
Kyotyoryon began to descend, and flapped her wings to fly further. This helped only for a few moments, after which a forced landing on the edge of a cliff followed.
"These wings are evil," Kyotyoryon looked at the bracelets that the wings folded into. "They are from the creator. She specifically gave me this ability so that I could not fly normally in this form."
Kyotyoryon looked down. A narrow, turbulent river with many rapids was squeezed by high cliffs on which young tree ferns and bushes grew.
"The water flows from top to bottom," Kyotyoryon noted mentally. "If I go higher, I will find the place where it flows from. There I will cut down a large tree, and it will block the water."
Kyotyoryon went upstream along the edge of the cliff and saw a waterfall on the river ahead and high cliffs along the edges of the canyon.
"I won't get through there," the spirit of metal noted. "I can go around this thing, but then I won't know where the water is flowing from. I must see where it is flowing from."
The character's body was engulfed in a bright white glow. Soon Kyotyoryon was already hovering above the ground in battle form.
Behind the waterfall, the river turned into a small lake, into which several springs in the form of small waterfalls flowed from different sides. The reservoir was surrounded by the upper parts of the mountains, covered with forests of tree ferns, but without vines.
Kyotyoryon noticed a dinosaur skull with two horns on the forehead and one above the beak above one of the mountains. The character was immediately interested in it.
The spirit of metal reached the mountain, after which it took its previous form. The skull was the size of Kyotyoryon herself in battle form. It was filled with blue energy, which made its eyes and mouth glow.
In this form, it slowly moved from right to left and up and down at the same time.
Kyotyoryon looked at this thing and could not tear her eyes away from it. The character's limbs stopped moving for a few moments. The spirit of metal froze with her arms spread wide and her leg bent at the knee.
But the paralysis was interrupted after a helmet with bull horns appeared from under the ground in front of the skull. Kyotyoryon sensed danger, instinctively jumped back a step and released short blades from the bracelets on her hands.
The helmet with horns belonged to Kyotyoryon's recent acquaintance. She had fully emerged onto the surface and looked at the spirit of metal with her red glowing eyes.
"I thought you drowned," Ayika admitted. "I'm glad I didn't kill you."
"The train didn't fall by itself?" Kyotyoryon was surprised.
"Yes. I threw the train off so you wouldn't follow me. Changing the properties of objects is a good ability, but it can only be used once a day. I didn't want you to come here. But you came."
"Am I not allowed to come here?"
"Yes. This skull is specially located on the Southern Continent because no civilized beings live here. No one will find it here."
"I just wanted to know what that thing was hanging over the mountain. It looks like a head that has had its clothes taken off."
"This is one of the servers of the "Mausoleum of Nature". It contains data about characters and their creators."
Kyotyoryon's eyes widened in surprise, and then she took a step back. The blades were hidden in bracelets.
"I..." the spirit of metal said. "Was I there?"
"Yes and no," Ayika answered. "You were inside the program, and its data was located on the server."
Kyotyoryon remembered the darkness that surrounded her inside the "Mausoleum of Nature". Then the spirit of metal found her in a hopeless situation, and only a miracle saved her every time.
A short metal spear appeared near Kyotyoryon.
"I want to destroy this thing so that I won't be sent there again!" the spirit of metal felt something begin to move inside her.
The spear flew towards the skull, but met an obstacle on the way in the form of a gray stone column summoned from underground, and fell to the ground.
But Kyotyoryon was not going to give up. The spear tried to rise, but was blocked by stone spikes that suddenly appeared from the ground. Kyotyoryon realized that her attack had failed and tried to free the weapon with her mind, but to no avail. The spikes dragged the spear underground.
"The server is forbidden to attack," Ayika warned. "It contains the data of all characters, including yours. If you destroy one of the servers, the Mausoleum of Nature will work worse and your creator will not be able to help you when needed."
Kyotyoryon remembered how Halankuo had placed her in that terrible place, and then said that she wanted to fix her so much. The spirit of metal felt something growing inside her and trying to break out.
"I don't need help from the creator," Kyotyoryon said. "I need to destroy this head with horns."
The spirit of metal waved her arms. Wings emerged from her bracelets, lifting her to the height of a medium tree.
"Did she guess that it was harder for me to get her from the ground?" Ayika thought. "Or is it just a coincidence?"
Several metal needles appeared in front of Kyotyoryon and flew to the server. Ayika touched the ground with her hand. The previously summoned column rose higher and covered the skull.
The needles hit the column, fell to the ground, and it absorbed them like a spear. Kyotyoryon noticed this and frowned.
"It's too big," the spirit of metal thought. "I need to hit this horned thing from above with something heavy."
Kyotyoryon imagined a large hammer above the skull. The next moment, a large blacksmith's hammer appeared in that place, made entirely of gray metal, hanging blade down.
Ayika noticed the appearance of a new weapon and covered herself in a black elemental aura to better repel the attack.
But the hammer did not attack. It moved slowly above the skull, as if choosing where to strike.
"It seems she can create metal objects out of thin air," Ayika noted. "But that requires a lot of metal. Where does she get it from?"
The hammer stopped and then began to fall. Ayika touched the ground with her hand and summoned four columns from there. A moment before the hammer would have reached the skull; a stone roof appeared above the columns and covered it.
The hammer was thrown upward, after which it fell again and struck the roof. A piece of stone broke off the roof surface, and the hammer fell to the ground and disappeared into it.
Kyotyoryon felt that her wings could no longer support her. The spirit of metal had to take on a combat form in order not to fall to the ground, where the fate of her own weapon awaited her.
A gray metal crossbow the size of the character herself appeared in front of Kyotyoryon.
Ayika carefully watched the enemy and tried to understand where the metal weapon was coming from. And soon the answer was found. From the lower part of the spirit of metal, which was hidden by armor, a long metal arrow the size of a spear flew out. It flew to the crossbow and loaded it.
The preparation for the attack did not end there. Gray particles appeared around Kyotyoryon, which then dissolved into the air. The next moment, a multitude of metal needles appeared in a large radius above the skull.
"She throws out metal particles from her body," Ayika guessed. "They combine with the particles in the air and transform into weapons. Usually it is unnoticeable, but now there are a lot of metal objects."
The needles flew at the skull from all sides at once. Ayika summoned additional columns that completely blocked access to the server, and then walked through them and hid inside the resulting shelter. The needles hit the stone walls and fell to the ground.
"She's bothering me," Ayika thought. "I'll have to finish her off. And she was the only creature in many years with whom I managed to have a normal conversation."
It was the turn of the huge metal crossbow. The thick wire that acted as a bowstring tightened and then pushed forward a long, sharpened crowbar an "arrow".
A loud whistle was heard. The "arrow" sank into the ground near one of the columns.
"It didn't even hit the columns," Ayika thought. "Something's wrong here."
The giant metal crossbow disappeared. Kyotyoryon sank to the ground and took on her original form.
"She spent too much energy creating the weapon," Ayika looked through the gap between the columns. "Now I can attack her."
A crack ran through the column that stood in front of the "arrow." The next moment, it crumbled and opened up space for an attack on the server.
"Did she throw this spear into the ground on purpose?" Ayika realized the enemy's plan too late. "Did she really think of that?"
Kyotyoryon could barely stand on her feet, but she watched the enemy's actions. She saw the column crumble and realized that the right moment for an attack had arrived.
The spirit of metal raised her hand and aimed it at the skull. A sharp crowbar burst out of the ground and flew towards the target.
Ayika immediately understood where this "arrow" was flying.
"I can't let her harm the server," the thought flashed through the head of the character with bull horns. "So I shouldn't run away like I usually do."
... A sharp crowbar froze in the air above Ayika's head, near one of the horns.
Kyotyoryon looked at her opponent and did not understand anything.
"Why?" the spirit of metal thought. "I did everything right."
"If it weren't for my horns, you would have ended up in the server," Ayika admitted. "It's good that you don't know what a magnet is."
"What is a magnet?" Kyotyoryon fell to her knees.
"It's a thing that attracts ordinary metal. My horns are made of a special magnetic metal. If you knew that, you could shoot an arrow at me and I wouldn't have time to defend myself."
"I want to destroy that head without clothes. I don't want to be there again."
"Even if you destroy this server, there will still be a few left." But you won't be able to find them."
A short blade extended from the bracelet on Kyotyoryon's arm, but after a moment it went back.
"I'm out of charge," the spirit of metal guessed.
Kyotyoryon tried to get to her feet, but instead fell on her back.
"I must find my metal," Kyotyoryon decided. "It will be able to charge me. But there is almost none here. I only feel the horns of this horned one." Kyotyoryon turned her head and saw Ayika in front of her, who was kneeling on one knee and holding her hand on the surface of the earth.
The spirit of metal realized that the enemy was using some kind of skill and imagined a short metal blade in the air. A moment later, it materialized, but then just as suddenly disappeared.
Kyotyoryon felt the ground beneath her begin to move. Stone walls rose above the character, and then began to move towards each other. The spirit of metal realized that she was about to be crushed…
… Kyotyoryon let out a scream that echoed throughout the surrounding area. The stone walls pinned her arms to her body and slowly moved on….
… On another continent, in Yenekit, Halankuo heard a loud squeak that made her wake up. She knew what the sound was, but she didn't think she would ever hear it.
The girl opened the "Mausoleum of Nature". The background on which the model of Kyotyoryon stood was flickering with a red glow, and the screen was vibrating.