Chapter 51. Chains and Blades

"Sis, wake up."

A bright blue light "broke" through the darkness.

"Sis, you need to change your head."

"What?"

Halankuo opened her eyes and realized she was lying in a coffin. The light was coming from the eyes in the head of a doll that stood next to her.

"You're finally awake, little sister," Sitihi said. "It's good that I'm a doll, so I can stand as long as I want and not sleep."

"Why am I here?" Halankuo asked.

"You fell in the corridor. I carried you to this coffin. This is your place, so I decided that this would be your bed."

"It's a good bed," Halankuo thought. "I wish I had a lid on it."

"You've been lying here for a month," Sitihi said.

These words made Halankuo jump out of the coffin in one leap. The girl did not even feel the cold floor, because she was thinking about one thing: about the character she never got to meet.

***

Dense forests of tree ferns, vines and shrubs littered with fallen tree trunks covered the endless mountain ranges. There were no roads, pillars, or clearings here. It was a primeval world with no room for civilization.

But this did not stop the girl with metal horns on her head in a strange metal suit. She cut the plants with blades from the bracelets on her hands, moved through the thickets and screamed.

"Creator! Do not hide from me! I will find you and cut you!"

No one answered. Only the waterfall roared somewhere behind the huge leaves of an unknown plant.

The heads of two lizards poked out of the lake. The girl noticed them and frowned.

Two metal darts immediately flew at the animals, appearing above the horns of the strange creature. But instead of hitting at least the water, they changed their trajectory and disappeared into the forest.

"Hey, my metal, what did you fly there? Come back!"

The unlucky lizard hunter jumped off the cliff and landed on the opposite, lower bank. Several small trees immediately fell to the ground so as not to interfere, but there was still a whole forest ahead, full of vegetation.

Soon the sense of metal led the spirit to one of the waterfalls, where a girl with long pink hair sat. Instead of clothes, her body was entangled in many chains that intertwined with each other and created a kind of costume.

One of the chains passed between her legs and ended in the water. This interested the horned creature.

"There you are my metal. You were stolen, but I will return you to where you belong. She does you badly in the water, but I will not do that. She put you on herself to become like me. But she will not become like me. Only I can be the spirit of metal."

The spirit of metal pointed her hand at the chain that was in the water and tried to get it out of there. At first, the chain really did start moving up, but soon it stopped.

"Why doesn't my metal obey me?" the horned girl's pupils widened. "Maybe she deceived it? She said that I was evil, and that's why my metal didn't want to come to me. But I'm not evil. She's the one who's evil."

Soon the spirit of metal noticed that the girl with pink hair was looking at the end of the chain that was in the water, and decided to approach her.

It was a mistake. Eyes with purple luminous pupils focused on the horned creature and lifted her above the shore.

Morning has come. Yueret was sitting in his room, playing a game on a virtual screen.

"It's good that Unana is still sleeping," a girl in a black fur dress with two horns on her head jumped from the cliff onto the meadow and hit a gray fur rhinoceros with a spear. "At least I'll play calmly."

But Yueret's hopes were in vain. After the rhinoceros disappeared from the screen, the door opened and a girl with shoulder-length brown hair, very similar to Yueret, burst into the room. A short purple T-shirt almost completely covered her protruding breast, and barely noticeable shorts were held up only by thick thighs. Despite such a light suit, her head was still adorned with headphones with short antennas.

"Why did you wake up so early?" Yueret asked.

"I wanted to show you how I drew my puppy!" Unana said happily. "I finally finished drawing, and I couldn't sleep until I showed it to you."

"I hope that at least Kimchan's head will be in place," Yueret thought.

Unana moved her index finger in front of her, causing a virtual screen to appear in front of her. On it, in a blue frame, a large dog, like a grown-up bear, was lying on the porch.

"Why is it so big?" Yueret asked.

Unana turned away to hide her fear.

"I accidentally drew Kimchan in a big form, in which I rode on her back," the girl thought fearfully. "I need to answer something before Yueret guesses."

Unana turned to her brother. The fear instantly "left" her face. The girl puffed out her cheeks to hide her feelings.

"Do you want Kimchan to grow up?" Yueret asked. "I think you could ride on such a big dog."

"Yes, she's big enough to ride on," Unana deflated her cheeks. "Why do you need a dog if you can't ride it?"

"Unana is still small," Yueret thought. "At eighteen people still go to school."

Suddenly Yueret realized something important.

"Why don't you go to school?" the guy asked.

"Why should I go to school?" the girl was surprised. "I can read and write, but they don't teach anything else at school."

"They also teach cooking there," Yueret said.

"I have an older brother to cook."

"They also teach children how to eat at school so as not to get fat."

Unana touched the headphones on her head to make sure they were in place. Meanwhile, her chest was still unsteady.

"We live in an abandoned village," the girl said. "There are no schools here."

"I offered you to leave here, but you refused," Yueret looked out the window, where the view of the gray sky opened up.

"There are many girls in the city who can cut Yueret or bite off his nose," Unana thought, but she did not dare to say it.

The girl went to another window, which overlooked a snowy courtyard with numerous coniferous and deciduous trees. The sight of snow made her remember about clothes.

"You have to wear a school uniform at school," Unana adjusted her headphones. "It's too tight."

To prove her point, the girl turned to her brother and accidentally moved her chest with her hands.

"Yeah, my sister has grown up, but only in appearance," Yueret looked at the headphones.

***

A metal flying machine, shaped like a bird, landed on the sandy shore of the sea. The leaves of the nearby tree ferns, which formed endless dark green forests, swayed in the air current.

The door of the flying machine opened. A girl with long brown hair jumped onto the sand, among which sharp dog ears were visible. The chest, which miraculously fit inside the brown fur top, had not yet recovered from the jump and was moving a little. A brown dog tail was peeking out from behind fur shorts of the same color.

"Noru, don't stand by the door," a human voice came from the flying machine. "I need to go out too."

But the dog girl did not notice these words. She looked around the space with curiosity and did not know where to go. Everything around seemed too interesting to her...

A leg in a black boot appeared from the flying machine and stepped on the dog girl's tail. Noru whined, but she could not activate the fire aura, because for this the body must be free.

"Sorry, Noru," the foot let go of the poor creature's tail, but then the second foot stepped on it. "I didn't want to. You were just standing here."

"Itinit, stop mocking your character," a bird's voice came from the flying machine.

The second leg was forced to let go of the dog girl's tail. Noru felt free, activated her fiery aura and quickly disappeared into the forest.

A dinosaur covered in white feathers with a long tail jumped onto the sand. On his back lay an arctic fox girl with her eyes closed. Her arms, hidden in the grey-violet sleeves of her fur top, were wrapped around her neck, her head was comfortably nestled on the dinosaur's shoulder, and her thick bare legs and black tail hung from its wings.

"Etinnei, we have already arrived," the dinosaur said. "Get off me."

"Minniges, I don't want ice cream..." the Arctic fox girl answered with her mouth almost closed.

"I'm not Minniges," the dinosaur answered. "I am Tuot."

"Tuot…" Etinnei asked sleepily. "What are you doing here?"

"I carry you on my back," Tuot admitted.

The arctic fox girl finally opened her eyes and saw the back of her feathered friend's head, covered, like almost his entire body, with white feathers. Then she turned her head to the side and discovered a forest of tree ferns.

"Eeeh?" Etinnei's eyes widened and she jumped onto the sand. "It's them!"

"What?" Tuot asked.

"Trees that grew on the Southern Continent," the Arctic fox girl explained.

"What are they doing here?"

"Because we're on the Southern Continent," a voice said from behind Etinnei.

The arctic fox girl released icicles from each of her sleeves, and then turned sharply to hit her opponent...

... The end of one of the icicles almost reached the neck of the man with brown hair, and the second icicle began to be covered in an electric aura.

"Sorry, Itinit," Etinnei said. "I didn't know it was you."

"It's okay. I understand that this is just a passive skill," Itinit smiled and mentally continued:

"This passive could have hurt me. I can't tell the animal girls about this."

The icicles disappeared into the character's sleeves. Etinnei jumped onto the sand and sniffed it.

"This is the Southern Continent," the Arctic fox girl said. "It smells like where I was. How did we end up here?"

"We flew in that thing," Itinit pointed at the flying machine. "Don't you remember?"

Etinnei approached the "metal bird" and sniffed it. "It's a birdie, but not a birdie," the Arctic fox girl tilted her head to the side. "It's not real."

Itinit walked up to the vehicle and swiped his finger down. A blue window with stats opened between him and the craft.

"These are symbols from the game!" Etinnei jumped back a step.

"What are they doing here?"

Itinit smiled, but the Arctic fox girl did not see it. She looked at the screen in fear. Her tail rose up.

"These are just the stats of this thing," the bird's voice intervened.

Etinnei turned towards the source of the voice and saw her feathered friend slowly walking towards the flying machine.

"Tuot is right," Itinit said. "It's just a flying machine made in the shape of a bird."

Etinnei fell to her knees. Her tail dropped. The arctic fox girl looked at the sand and breathed heavily.

"What is it, little animal?" Itinit asked.

"I thought she was a creature," Etinnei answered. "On the mushroom island I met a lifeless girl, a doll. I thought this thing was some kind of creature."

"It's a robot," Itinit explained. "This thing can fly on its own, but you better control it, otherwise it'll go somewhere it shouldn't."

"I played against robots," Etinnei rose to her feet and looked at the flying machine. "They're very thick."

"Yes, they have a lot of defense and health," Tuot agreed.

Etinnei approached her feathered friend and continued her conversation with him. Itinit closed the window with the characteristics, went behind the back of the flying machine, and then opened the map of the "Mausoleum of Nature".

The red dot that showed the character's location was in the mountains quite far from the coast.

"This comet flies too far. Maybe I shouldn't have given it this skill?"

Itinit closed the window of the "Mausoleum of Nature", took a black handle from his inventory and thought:

"This is the case when you don't have a sword, but you really need something long that can cut. I hope the "metal bird" will have time to charge while I'm looking for Noru."

Itinit looked out the window of the flying machine and saw that his friends were too busy talking to notice him. So he walked cautiously into the forest and soon disappeared behind the trees.

"I didn't want to bring Noru here at first," Itinit looked at the tree fern branch in front of him. "But she asked too much. Noru has never been outside of Island of Energy Mushrooms, but it's gone, so I have no choice."

The dense forest of tree ferns and shrubs seemed endless: thick vines, reminiscent of the branches of large trees, twined around the low trees, which Itinit, as a resident of the Northern Continent, did not consider full-fledged.

"It's good that I'm not afraid of wild animals anymore," Itinit stopped at a thicket of bushes and raised his homemade "sword" to clear the way. "As a child, when I had no fighting skills, I was very afraid to even go into the forests near Yenekit."

The energy blade cut several bush trunks, and they slowly dissolved into the air...

... Many years have passed since the boy stopped having nightmares. But the mysterious island with energy mushrooms also stopped appearing in his dreams. The boy became a teenager, but did not forget the spirit of the mushrooms he met in childhood. He still dreamed of meeting her in reality, but did not know how to do it.

"Sanachan must have forgotten me," Itinit thought during a lesson at school. "She helped me when I was little and was afraid of everything. Now I am afraid only of dogs that take my food on the way to school."

Of course, there were no dog gangs in Yenekit. There were a few stray animals that walked the streets and asked for food, but Itinit did not understand this and therefore was afraid of them.

In the evening, when it became dark, the boy remembered more and more about the spirit of the mushrooms and about that island.

"Even if she forgot me, I have not forgotten," Itinit hugged the pillow. "Before, I was afraid to sleep, but now I am afraid to fall asleep and not see her."

The dream was approaching. Itinit closed his eyes and imagined himself on the shore of a lake, and next to him was a girl in a purple hat with black horns.

"Don't be afraid," a familiar voice said from behind.

Itinit turned around and saw the same girl he had just imagined. In the background, the slopes of the crater were visible, covered with coniferous forests and sparse woodlands.

"Am I in a dream again?" Itinit asked.

"What do you think?" Sanachan smiled. "I'm sorry I didn't come to you for so long. The signal does not always go in the right direction."

Itinit noticed a blue translucent energy mushroom that was growing under the nearest coniferous tree, then looked at the other trees and saw something glowing under them too.

"Nothing has changed here," Itinit said. "There are so many mushrooms here, and no one eats them. There are no animals here?"

"It's just me and my character here," Sanachan pointed with her hand at the wooden fence that was visible from behind the trees. "But you can come here too. Myuryuri doesn't mind."

"I would like to live here. There are no animals here that take my food."

"Is someone taking your food?"

Itinit told the mushroom spirit about his problem. Sanachan adjusted her hat, and it swayed a few times, as if it were rubber.

"Animals often ask for food," the mushroom girl explained. "In the cities, they can only hunt people and other creatures that live there. Those dogs could bite you if they wanted to. If they just ask for food, you don't have to be afraid of them."

"For some reason I can't believe it," Itinit answered. "The dogs look like they want to eat you. They also scream loudly."

Sanachan smiled, and then ran her sleeve through the air. A program window opened in front of the spirit of mushrooms with a silhouette of a character and buttons next to it.

"I think you need to get to know the animals better," Sanachan said. "I'll give you this program. In it, you can get a puppy. They are small and not at all scary."

... Itinit woke up and saw a screen in front of him with an image of a girl with brown hair, ears and a tail.