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Last Embryo Volume 5 Prologue Part 4

The black-heired girl looked at Alma and sighed deeply, but when her gaze moved on to Suzuka, she gasped shortly as if she just remembered something that she has forgotten about before.

「Ah, I just remembered that I have yet to introduce myself properly! Would you mind if I did that right now?」

「Y-Yes, of course! By all means, go right ahead!」

Suzuka replied nervously as she got of the ground and stretched her back. Knowing Izayoi, who has been a problem child since as long as Suzuka could remember and probably way before that, and his ultimately selfish, hedonistic lifestyle, she thought to herself that this girl definitely has to be one of the people who has been inconvenienced by him, probably in the same way Shirayuki-hime was, and so she was expecting to be flooded with a never-ending river of complaints about him and his inexcusable behavior.

However, there was one crucial thing that Suzuka had absolutely no way of knowing. A fact that this girl in front of her was never a victim of Sakamaki Izayoi’s moods and pranks. She was one of his accomplices in toying with others, and also a problem child who got summoned to Little Garden five years ago along with him and Kasukabe You.

Lifting up the hems of her long skirt in a courtly bow and with a mischievous smile on her face, the black-haired girl gave her name to her newly-found playmate.

「Nice to meet you. My name is Kudou Asuka. I am one of the residents of the Outer World who has been summoned to Little Garden from the Showa era, shortly after the war was over.」

* * *

Once they were done with their introductions, Ayazato Suzuka, Kudou Asuka and Almathea began to walk towards their destination. In the meantime, Asuka was asking Suzuka all kinds of questions about Izayoi, and what was he currently up to.

「Going back and forth between the Outer World and Little Garden, huh? So essentially, Izayoi has been doing exactly the same thing as us.」

「「Same thing as us」? So you have been travelling to the modern-day Outer World as well, Miss Asuka?」

「Fufu, no, not I your times. The business that I had to do was in the Heian period, and I also done some more travelling between the 11th and 12th century Japan.」

「You mean around the time of the Genpei War?! Uwaaah, now that makes me super curious!」

Hitting it off with each other almost immediately, Suzuka and Asuka arrived at the cape at the western end of the continent. The rocky ground, covered only by a thin layer of short grass, was uplifted and uneven, most likely due to the continuous diastrophic movements, making it exceedingly hard to move around on. When they looked forward from where they were standing, they saw that the carpet of grass just suddenly cut off at one point, revealing underneath a steep cliff that looked as if it has been forcibly smashed into its current shape by a gigantic axe. The walls of the cliff looked like they have been at the mercy of the elements, mainly raging winds and the waves of the ocean that have shaved a significant portion of it away already, for quite some time. It was a place where no human could possibly hope to set foot, and the only things that could ever hope to find a place to live in between the narrow crags and on the small rocky protrusions were the seabirds who could have reach anywhere they wanted on this desolate rock formation as long as they kept their wings spread out widely and allowed the wind currents to carry them along with them.

「I have to say. . . . . . . . this looks like one helluva precipitous cliff. And it is hidden in a side hole near the edge. Taking that into account, would it not be pretty difficult to find this place purely by chance?」

「It should have been exactly like you said, but unfortunately, that is not always the case anymore. You see, even if they failed to properly solve the mystery, many people will come to the 「Heracles’s Stone Pillars」in the first place, simply because of how famous of a landmark they are and find it by pure coincidence, but if you are aware that The Lost Continent of Atlantis was once a part of Ancient Grece, you would have come here without the need for guessing and relying on blind luck to help you.」

The keywords related to Atlantis listed on the map are Santorini, Orichalcum, and Cowman. Are they an attempt at misleading the participating Players, or are they actually an indication of a specific order of where they should be going? But even if that was the case, the Players who did not manage to properly decipher the riddle placed in the Victory Conditions of the Gift Game and possessed only the smattering knowledge of Atlantis and its supposed location would still try coming to 「Heracles’s Stone Pillars」first because out of all the landmarks listed on the map, that location was the most recognizable of them all.

「That being said, even when people do come here, not that many of them are eager to start looking for the right entrance when they realize that they would have to search every nook, hole and cranny of a cliff such as this one. And in the case that they do start looking, the chances of them finding the right one are like one quarter, and that is when they know what they are looking for. But if they do not have the certainty and are unsure of where they should be looking, then the probability of them finding the right hole drops from a quarter to the quarter of that quarter.」

「Fufu, if all goes well, then we should be the first ones to arrive here out of all the Players. Also, your presence here is truly a blessing for us, Miss Suzuka. Thanks to your figuring out of the mistranslation in the Victory Conditions, we will not have to waste time searching all of the holes in the cliff one by one, not that it would not have been a child’s play with your Teleportation ability. Also, I might be wearing a pretty long skirt, but there is no way that I would ever risk jumping around in it with all that wind.」

「Y-You wanted me to start teleporting in such extreme conditions?! There is no way that I would have been able to do something like that!」

Suzuka argued while frantically waving her hands in front of her face. The cliff itself was pretty steep and full of sharp-looking rocks, and the gusts of wind were so strong in here that there was a real danger that Suzuka might have been swept away and either tossed into the water below of get squashed against the cliff’s surface in the middle of her spacial jumps. And above all things, just as Miss Asuka said, jumping around while wearing a long skirt would definitely lead to a bunch of pretty awkward situations. Thankfully though, since Miss Asuka’s female companion seemed to have been delighted with how Suzuka tackled the matter of figuring out the contradictions written on the Geass Roll’s Victory Conditions, it would seem that she would be the one who would guide them straight to their destination, which mase Suzuka breathe a quiet sigh of relief.

Being the first one to go through one of the holes in the side of the cliff, Alma then asked Suzuka while tilting her head with a curious expression:

「I have to say though. . . . . . I was pretty surprised when I saw you teleporting around when you were running away from the monster back then. The Gift that enables you to do that must be a pretty rare and powerful one. If I may ask, where did you obtain it?」

「I did not obtain it anywhere, I was born with it. Initially I was pretty confused by it, but once I started using it, I got the hang of it pretty soon.」

「Hou? Is that so?」

Alma muttered, looking even more interested in Suzuka than before.

「A Natural Blessing then. . . . . . . . a type of innate psychic power granted only to those who hail from the Outer World? How exceedingly interesting. During my times, Gifts have always been handed to the chosen ones by the Gods, Spirits and Dragonkin, or as a result of overcoming a difficult trial.」

「D-Difficult trials. . . . . given by Gods, Spirits and Dragons?! Who would have wanted to go through something as dangerous and crazy just to obtain a Gift?! Were there many such cases in the past?」