Once the Ouranos upgrades were finished and the Detector MD installed, I began preparing to search for the Sky Island.
「Now then, we will be holding a meeting for the search for the Sky Island.」
When I announcement the start of the meeting in front of everyone, Kaede clapped her hands and hollered.
Our group was gathered in the living room of the Sanctuary mansion to talk about our search for the Sky Island.
「Considering the position of the solitary island where Berkut and her tribe lived, I was thinking we should explore the area surrounding the Demon Continent first.」
「We’re excluding the areas we searched when we found the island, aren’t we?」
Sophia checked the scope of the search on the map.
It was then that Sylph suddenly appeared. As always, I couldn’t help but smiled wryly at the freewilled Great Spirit.
「You still appear so suddenly.」
「Of course I would. Wind is free.」
「So, did you come here to say something?」
「Yeah, Takumi, you’re looking for the Sky Island, right?」
「Yep. Sylph, no way, do you know where it is?」
When I asked Sylph, who was smirking, she sighed a little then answered.
「Isn’t that obvious? I am the Great Wind Spirit. Wind blows regardless of whether it is on the continent or ocean. Here in Mildgard, the only places I do not know are underground and the bottom of the ocean. Ah, and inside dungeons.」
「……I see, then you should have said so.」
「Fufu, even I could only recall it’s general location.」
「Even so, that’s completely different to searching randomly, you know?」
With information coming from unexpected places, the search for the Sky Island might go smoother than I imagined.
「So you don’t know the current location of the Sky Island?」
「Hmm, I didn’t look at it with any particular care. In the first place, that island floating in the sky was created by a country in the ancient era in order to avoid disputes with foreign countries.」
「Hee, an ancient civilization huh?」
Words brimming with romance came up somehow. I, too, am a man, so if I hear about the ruins of an ancient civilization, I’d wanna be like Indiana Jones.
Seeing that my eyes were sparkling, Sylph shook her head as though disappointed.
「Sorry to burst your bubble, but even though I said ruins of an ancient civilization, there are very little decayed ruins remaining and I think the rest had been swallowed by the forest.」
「Isn’t it fun to explore those?」
「……is that so? Well, a Spirit such as myself wouldn’t understand.」
According to Sylph, the Sky Island was a floating island that had a good environment where there was a lake, forest, mountain, and a city the size of a royal capital in the past. The ancient civilization declined, and forgotten for many hundredsー no, thousands of years, it had become an unpopulated island with no inhabitants.
「Do you know the reason for the ancient civilization’s ruin?」
「I don’t remember the rise and fall of each and every civilization, you know.」
「……it’s still only been a few hundred years since the Aligerous Tribe settled in, right?」
So it really was likely that the story of this ancient civilization was thousands of years ago. Sylph said that she doesn’t remember when the Aligerous Tribe began their lives at the Sky Island.
「According to Valkan-san, a large number of monsters lived within the forest, so they would have dug caves along the mountain and lived there.」
「If I remember correctly, Valkan-san and his tribe fled because monsters overflowed.」
When I talked about what I learned from Valkan-san, the chief of the Aligerous Tribe, Sophia chimed in about the reason for their escape to the solitary island.
「The historic ruins of the ancient civilization were engulfed by the forest, and maybe the apparatus which utilizes a dungeon core to keep the island afloat is in it.」
「Then it broke in some way and the dungeon core regained its primary function, didn’t it?」
「Probably. If so, then maybe we will have to repair the device that utilizes that dungeon core.」
From Sylph’s faint memories, the ancient civilization definitely used a dungeon core to control the floating island. And she knew that it hadn’t been that long, time-wise.
「I think it would be fine for 100-200 years, but I think you should hurry if you want to repair the control unit of the core. Maybe, if left at is, at the 300th year, it would no longer be able to support the island and fall.」
「Eh!? That’d be horrible!」
「Takumi-sama please calm down. Sylph-sama said it would be fine for 100-200 years.」
「Ah, ahhh, you’re right. But it would be better if we don’t hang around to find out. There’s a chance that it would take time to repair it.」
We now can’t just look for the Sky Island and thin out the monsters that flooded out from the dungeon. We need to restore control of the core and create an environment the Aligerous Tribe could return to.