Chapter 1 - Part 5: The Precarious Cavern Wall

This time, Sanya was the first to notice the person watching them from the forest. Whether that was the same one Allen had spotted earlier was irrelevant. It only spurred the children to leave the Roots of the World Tree as quickly as possible.

Kilian carried the case Sanya had unearthed while Natalee put the bronze cube in her backpack. Despite appearances, they were both relatively light, so it would not slow them down too much. Unwieldy fragments would have made it much harder to escape pursuers.

When they reached the wall under the pipe, they turned around and surveyed the surroundings. By now, the watcher was already aware that their presence had been discovered. The fact that they had not yet attacked was worrying, though. Perhaps they were waiting for their allies, or they had no need to intervene since the children were already heading straight for a trap.

This precarious cavern wall normally required one person to climb all the way up while slowly laying out countless anchors along the way. Then, the others would follow one after the other until the last person removed them as they ascended. But since they were in a hurry, they could not stop every few meters to add security points. Instead, the group of five formed a rope team, with the more experienced four supporting Sanya together. After all, free-climbing a treacherous vertical wall was still far too early for her.

She made a conscious effort to use her gauntlet as much as possible so that she would not slow the others down. But even then, they had to stop every few meters and secure themselves so she could climb up after them. Meanwhile, the shadow of a person remained unmoving at the edge of the forest below.

The paranoia was dangerous. Due to fearing an attack from an unknown direction, they were moving recklessly. But in reality, the cavern wall was the greatest source of danger to them. If they fell, they would be seriously wounded or even killed, at which point they would lose the fragments either way. And Kilian understood that best.

"We're overdoing it," he took a deep breath and stopped to declare. He was undoubtedly the best climber of their group, but even he started to feel more fatigued than he was used to on this wall. The stress had caused him to exert himself more than he would have if he had ascended normally at a similar pace.

"I agree," Allen chimed in while peering down. At this point, they were already high enough that rocks thrown from below no longer reached them, so they did not need to fear an attack from there. And the unknown observer had not moved from their spot since they started climbing.

"So we should slow down?" shaking her head in disbelief at the very thought, Dyanna gave voice to her disagreement, "what if they're setting up a trap ahead of us right now? Every second counts!"

"Better walk into a trap on even ground than fall to our deaths from our own mistakes," Natalee argued and took a deep breath to calm her thumping heart. Free-climbing on this precarious surface with the extra weight from the bronze box had taken more of a toll on her than she had anticipated.

"I'm sorry for dragging you down," apologizing with a dejected look, Sanya could only hold onto the wall as best as she could. Although her gauntlet gave her immense strength in grip and pulling force, its size limited her greatly. She could not hold onto small protrusions in the rock face that a normal human hand would have no problems with. Perhaps she would never be able to climb properly without an existing rope in place.

"No, you're doing great!" Natalee quickly reassured Sanya and looked at the others for help.

"Natalee is right. I can't believe this is your first time climbing," Kilian spoke in a genuinely impressed tone. Her stamina kept up with theirs even though they had many years of experience and training.

"We should get a move on," Dyanna rained on their parade in a brusque tone, "have you forgotten that we're still being watched?"

"I've been thinking about that," said Allen with another look down, "any idea who that could be?"

"I can't make out their features at all," Sanya responded and shook her head. It was impossible to tell since they stayed in the shadows, but it was only one person, and they showed no signs of doing anything.

Whoever it was, they were quite used to observing people without giving away too much about themselves. But at the same time, they were not skilled enough to remain completely hidden since Allen quickly noticed their presence.

That was when Kilian had a horrible thought. Maybe it was not a scout for a hostile group but a dredge vulture. He had heard of the type that intimidated others into rushing to their deaths and taking the spoils from the dead. After all, it was an unpunishable tactic; children dying during dredge work was a relatively common occurrence.

He shook his head. He might have been overthinking things. But whatever the case, they were relatively safe on this cavern wall unless an enemy came from above. In that case, they would simply climb back down and either run for a different exit or confront them then and there.

"What are we doing?" Natalee asked when she saw Kilian deep in thought.

"We'll continue at a more reasonable pace," he responded, barely loud enough for her to hear. She nodded in understanding and passed it down to Dyanna. When everybody on the rope team was on the same page, he resumed the ascent ahead of the others.

Sanya looked down at their observer, squinting to make out any features. But as before, she could not even tell their height or frame, only that there was a person staying incredibly still among the metal and stone trees. With a sigh, she looked back up and waited for the next time they were secured so that she could pull herself up.

"Watch out!" a girl's voice suddenly called out to them from below, causing the group of five to freeze. Kilian quickly jammed a safety nut into the vertical crack they were using as the lead for their ascent before looking down. Their silent watcher had emerged from her hiding place and stood in the open, and it was somebody they knew.

"Yang?!" Sanya cried out her roommate's name in surprise, "why are you here?"

"The crack is closing from above!" instead of answering, Yang pointed a short distance above Kilian. The boy looked up just in time to see the crack, their main foothold, sealing itself back up rapidly. But before he could do anything, it reached the nut he had just placed, squeezing it with such force that it snapped out of the crack and hit his forehead.

Natalee watched in horror as their rope team leader suddenly fell backward. She could only watch in impotence as he flew past her before the rope connecting them yanked her off the cavern wall. Dyanna had reacted quickly and taken out a piton the moment Yang's warning had come in, but she could not even hit it twice before the two older children pulled her down. Then, Allen was hopelessly overwhelmed by their combined weight.

Sanya reacted on pure instinct and stabbed her gauntlet into the crack before her. Using its power, she dug her fingers into the stone as if it were soft as mud and held on for dear life. The four children fell past her, and only a moment later, four snaps jerked on Sanya's entire frame in quick succession.

Pain ran through her arm and shoulder, but she held on. Then, the closing crack reached her gauntlet. Through the pain, she looked at it, expecting to see it get flattened or perhaps squeezed out like Kilian's nut had been. But to her surprise, it closed around the gauntlet without damaging it, anchoring her in place.

She then looked down to see the other four dangling from the rope attached to her harness. Allen was already hammering in pitons left and right while Dyanna bit her lip due to her scraped shoulder but did the same. Natalee had been hurt far worse, and she held her right arm, which was dangling limply. She tried to find purchase with her feet, but she would not be able to secure herself like the others.

And at the very bottom hung Kilian, unmoving and bleeding from his forehead. Luckily, the case strapped to his back took the brunt of the impact when he swung back against the cavern wall. Still, Sanya feared the worst when she saw him like that but could do nothing to help. Her stuck gauntlet was now the anchor for the lifeline keeping all of them alive. All she could do was pray that the crack did not open again.

Yang watched from below with her mouth hanging open, utterly stunned by what had happened. However, it was not because of their precarious situation but because they were still hanging on. Sanya's shabby-looking Power Loader had somehow allowed her to save them from certain death.

"Help us, Yang!" the green-haired girl yelled in desperation, causing her to flinch.

"Don't bother with that, Sanya. She's a dredge vulture," Dyanna spat out the words in disgust while securing herself to the piton she finished hammering in, "she's the reason this happened!"

"No, I'm not! I was just..." Yang tried to defend herself but trailed off. Her actions could indeed be perceived as those of a dredge vulture.

"She's not to blame," but to both Dyanna and Yang's surprise, Sanya stood up for her. The truth was that they would not have rushed their ascent if not for the black-haired girl observing them from the shadows like a dredge vulture. But to the green-haired girl, that did not matter, and she explained why before anybody could speak up, "she came out to warn us before the crack closed. If she wanted us dead, she would have kept quiet."

Yang opened her mouth and closed it again. In reality, Kilian might not have fallen if not for her interference. She saw him place a nut after she called out to them, and that very nut had hit him in the forehead when the crack had closed. So, in hindsight, she felt responsible for causing this whole situation.

"We can't trust her. She's one of them!" but Dyanna did not accept Sanya's argument and shouted up at the green-haired girl. She was clearly referring to Yang as one of the orphanage children who discriminated against their group rather than reiterating her earlier accusation of her being a dredge vulture.

"I believe in her!" Sanya yelled with unwavering confidence, and her voice echoed off the cavern wall across the underground space. Yang wordlessly sprang into action and began to climb toward Kilian.

"Hey, you! Don't you dare do anything to him!" yelled Dyanna, but she was impotent to stop her. The black-haired girl made incredible progress, moving with the speed and instincts of somebody twice her age.

"Take that case if you want, but at least secure him," when she approached the unmoving Kilian, Natalee called out to her through clenched teeth and winced. Her right arm must have been hurting so much that she could barely keep her wits.

Stopping next to Kilian for a moment, Yang looked up with a frown. When she took out her hammer, Natalee and Dyanna's eyes widened in fear, but to their surprise, she began hammering in several pitons with practiced movements. After securing herself to one of them, she checked the dangling boy's condition before latching him onto the others. Another moment of tension arose when she took out a knife, but she used it to cut through the taut rope that still connected him to Sanya.

Everybody breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that Yang was helping them. Only the green-haired girl at the top did it for another reason: The weight of Kilian and the blue case he carried had finally been removed from her harness. She had believed Yang from the start, so she merely smiled warmly.

Allen and Dyanna soon secured themselves to support Natalee's weight and cut the lead rope from Sanya. This allowed her to find a better position and take out her hammer to attach pitons of her own. But it was hard for her to do it all with only one hand, and she fumbled with the tools, nearly dropping them.

"Let me help you," Allen quickly climbed up to her and took over. He stole glances at her embedded gauntlet and the arm attached to it, noting how it looked bruised but otherwise unharmed. A regular human arm's bones would have been shattered from the jolt due to their combined weight when they fell.

"How is he?" Natalee worried more about Kilian than her own right arm. As Dyanna secured the rope between them before climbing down to her, she watched Yang take the blue case off his back and fasten it to an anchor so it would no longer weigh him down.

"He's still breathing, but we need to stop his bleeding," Yang responded in a worried tone. They needed to lower him to the ground to tend to his wounds. If the wall shifted again and expelled their anchors, another miracle would not happen now that they were no longer attached by one rope.

"We're fine up here. You take him down first," Allen yelled down from next to Sanya between hammer blows. First, they had to secure her before they could think about what to do about freeing her gauntlet. The cavern wall was relatively soft, so they could chisel it out, given enough time.

Dyanna and Yang worked together to set up a self-equalizing quad anchor. When the latter produced a compact pulley system from her backpack, Dyanna furrowed her brow and wondered, "why do you have that?"

"I'm a solo dredger," came the curt answer. Groups had the advantage of splitting the load or climbing up one after another. But as a solo dredger, Yang had to carry everything herself and could not afford repeat trips. Therefore, she had been given this pulley system to make transporting the fragments she unearthed from the depths easier.

It was already quite rare for Aspirants to work alone, let alone for children still in the employ of the orphanages. But Dyanna could respect that since her mother had been going solo since the beginning. She saw Yang in a new light, especially after witnessing her climbing skills only moments ago.

With the pulley in place and secured, they began lowering Kilian under Natalee's worried gaze. Their situation had stabilized and was steadily improving.

"So that happened, huh?" Kilian lay on the ground with his head bandaged and said in a resigned tone. He had woken up not long after they tended to his wound, and the color was already returning to his cheeks. He had only sustained a deep cut to his forehead that looked worse than it was, a concussion, and a few bruises from knocking into the wall on his way down. He was young and would be back on his feet in no time.

"I'm glad that was all that happened," Natalee added with a dry laugh, then grimaced when her broken right arm in the sling shifted from that movement. She was the one who would have the most trouble getting back up to the surface now.

"It's all thanks to Sanya," Allen declared with a nod, then turned to Yang, "not to discredit your help."

"It was partially my fault," she shook her head and admitted.

"It's alright. You helped us in the end," argued Dyanna and patted Yang on the shoulder. Her attitude had changed completely.

They then all turned to Sanya, who was overwhelmed by the attention. If not for her quick thinking and that mysterious fragment grafted to her left forearm, Yang would have had one of her regular lonely ascents. She had truly saved them from certain death.

"At this point, there are no doubts that this fragment is something truly special," Allen put a hand on Sanya's gauntlet and declared in an awestruck tone.

"I knew that was not a Power Loader," said Yang with an eyebrow raised under her long bangs. The other children of room twelve gasped, and Dyanna hit Allen over the back of his head. This time, he showed regret at his blunder.

"It's alright to let her know. She helped us," Sanya calmed them down with a chuckle. If Yang were a bad person, they would not be here now.

"You ran away in the first place because you thought I was a scout from an enemy group, coming to steal the fragments you found, right?" the black-haired girl changed the topic.

"Why were you hiding and watching us?" asked Kilian curiously. If not for her doing so, maybe none of this would have happened.

"I was curious about you and that gauntlet," Yang responded with a subdued glance at Sanya. Then she looked at the bronze box and blue case next to Kilian, "I hope those were worth the rush."

As a solo dredger, she encountered hostile groups and survived dredge vultures far more than those working in groups. She had learned the methods to teach their kind that it was not worth their while to target her. That was why these five's response had been amateurish at best and dangerous to their own safety at worst. It was clear that they had no experience dealing with such situations.

"Now that you say it, I do hope so, too," Allen jumped on Yang's words and spoke with glittering eyes, "let's open them up."

"Won't we get yelled at by the dredge leader?" ever the goody-two-shoes, Natalee expressed her concerns. Children had been yelled at for far less than opening up containers of fragments in the past.

"So what? We'll get yelled at for being late today anyway," Dyanna asserted with a careless shrug. Ultimately, that was all the dredge leader could do to them since they were employees of their orphanage rather than the Association. Of course, if the news reached the matron's ears, they could be punished harshly.

Natalee sought help from Kilian, but he only smiled wryly and closed his eyes. With this tacit permission, Dyanna and Allen took the bronze box and the blue case, respectively, to open them. But only a few moments of fiddling later showed that neither knew how they functioned. The perfect cube had no seams, and the case was crusted with hardened clay.

"Here, let me try it," Sanya sat down next to them and extended her left hand toward Dyanna. The younger girl handed the bronze box to her, and she put it down in front of her. Without even trying anything else, she promptly smashed it with her gauntlet, to everybody's horror. The loud noise echoed off the cavern wall beside them, but the box was unharmed. She touched the cube with her right hand to check and felt not even a single scratch, "this box itself might be the fragment."

Certainly, if even her gauntlet could not damage it, it must have been made of the same material. Of course, they could not tell without a thorough material analysis. At that time, it would be out of their hands either way.

"And what about this," the green-haired girl took the blue case and placed it before her. When she raised her gauntlet again, Yang jumped in and stopped her, "don't you think this one might require a little more finesse?"

Taking out her hammer and chisel, she began clearing the case of the hard clay sticking to it. Sanya's eyes widened when she instinctively recognized the locking mechanism as it was exposed by the black-haired girl's precise work. And it would appear that Yang noticed her gaze as she handed it over to Sanya the moment she was done.

"I don't know why, but... I know how," she said as her hands moved on their own and opened the latches. A moment later, the case popped open to reveal a pristine cushioned interior holding a single oversized smoking pipe-looking object covered in beautiful ornamental carvings. The children exchanged a look with each other, and their faces quickly lit up with smiles.

This was doubtlessly a rare and valuable artifact.