Chapter 23: Return to the surface

Narrator's Pov

"Do you want some juice, Mr.Ryan?"

Ryan opened his eyes looking slightly up at Clara, he was currently sitting on his knees, his meditation cut off by Clara that offered him a small box or juice with a straw, he shook his head lightly.

"No Clara, thank you" he spoke making the little girl nod her head. "Are you sure you don't want to go sleep now that you finished fixing Svarog?"

"I'm sure Mr.Ryan...I want to say goodbye to Mr.Svarog and I also want to wait for him to come back" she explained.

"I see...then I won't force you" he nodded his head a bit.

"I've been informed that the outsiders are approaching this place, accompanied by the member of Wildfire, Seele" Svarog spoke approaching both of them.

"I see...it has already been 3 hours since Bronya left, I thought they'd rest more" Ryan slowly stood up from the ground. "Are you ready, Svarog?"

"Yes, I'll accompany you...to save Jarilo-VI" the robot spoke making Ryan nod his head.

"Thank you again, Svarog" he bowed how both lightly.

They waited for a few minutes before the three Trailblazers and the member of Wildfire entered through the gate with Sampo leading the group, Stelle and her fellow trailblazers quickly approached Ryan, Svarog and Clara, being followed by Seele and Sampo.

"Why did we give you a phone if you won't answer our messages?" Stelle asked crossing her arms above her chest.

"...what?" Ryan blinked a bit before taking his phone out looking at it. "Ah...It turned off..."

"When was the last time you charged it?" March asked.

"...." Ryan simply kept himself silent.

"That explains it" Dan Heng sighed lightly. "No matter, we are all here, Seele already told us what happened with Bronya...I suppose you're also aware?"

"Yes, I am" Ryan nodded with his head. "Are all of you ready?"

"You bet" Seele drove her hands to her hips. "we can't lose time"

"Why is he here?" Ryan asked pointing at Sampo.

The man drove a hand to his chest, as if he was hurt. "My friend Ryan! Aren't you happy of seeing me?-"

"No"

"I of course came to help out of the goodness of my heart, I'll be leading you to the surface" Sampo declared with a smile.

"I see...Why don't we just use the path we used to get here?" Ryan crossed his arms above his chest.

"Ah! My friend Ryan, we agreed on not talking about that path, right? Unless you want to forget about the favor I owe you?" Sampo looked slightly nervous.

"Favor? Did you do a deal with this blue devil?" March asked looking at Ryan.

"We used a secret path to get here the first time...I agreed on not show it to anyone, and he'll owe me a favor" he let out a short sigh.

"Uh? Sounds like you got him on a leash" Seele smiled a bit.

"That doesn't matter! The path through the furnace core is opened." Sampo smiled nervously. "Let's take the easier path to the surface! Let's go, I'll lead the way."

As Sampo started to slowly walk away, Clara softly sighed but looked towards Svarog with a little smile, gently holding the robot's hand, Svarog kneeled and put one of his hands on top of Clara's head.

"Please return, Mr.Svarog"

"I will Clara, no matter what variables I might discover...my chances of returning will always be 100% if it's to come back to you" the robot spoke and the little girl smiled.

"Thank you, Mr.Svarog, I'll be waiting here"

"Wait...Svarog is coming with us?" Stelle asked a bit confused.

"Oh yeah...I forgot to tell you about that hehe...I managed to convince Svarog to help us stop Cocolia " Ryan explained making the others look at him a bit surprised. "I know I'm bad with words...Clara helped too" he sighed before starting to follow Sampo.

"It's good that he will help, but how will we cover him? I don't think that he could just walk around the surface without being noticed by someone." Dan Heng spoke but Ryan quickly responded.

"I have that covered, no need to worry" he smiled a bit before driving his hands inside of his kimono taking out a few papers with glyphs. "Also I made these."

"Oh nice, consumables" Stelle smiled trying to grab the four papers but Ryan pulled his hand away.

"It's one for each of you" he deadpanned at the girl and gave her one of the papers.

"What are these for?" March asked as Stelle grabbed the paper.

"The ones I'm giving you are healing glyphs, they heal your entire body, but can only be activated once." He explained as he offered one of them to March.

"Uh...convenient." the girl smiled accepting the glyph.

"Dan Heng, here, you also have this one...honestly you seem like the one that will use it better" he offered two glyphs to Dan Heng.

"Uh...this one seems different than the others..." He grabbed both, seeing how the additional glyph was different than the others.

"Yes, that one is a firestorm glyph, throw it at something and say 'Teine', that'll activate it." He explained and then looked at the other two trailblazers. "The healing ones are also activated by voice, just saying 'leighis' while putting it close to you should be enough to activate them"

"Yay~ we got some Hp potions" Stelle smiled and walked.

"Won't I get one?" Seele asked crossing her arms across her chest.

"Sorry Seele, I only managed to make a few, I planned on making more but these are very hard to make...the drawing has to be very precise or it won't work." He smiled slightly nervous at the look Seele was giving to him.

"Don't worry...not like if I needed one in the first place" she smirked.

"That's a death flag, Seele" Stelle looked to the girl that quickly reacted.

"W-what's a death flag?" She asked a bit confused and nervous.

"No matter~ let's go"

...

"Ah~ fresh air! How I missed you" March smiled opening her arms widely.

"Aren't we...missing something?" Stelle asked looking around them.

"No" Dan Heng quickly replied.

"Where's Sampo?..." Seele also looked around.

"I don't know who that Sampo is, let's go" Ryan spoke.

"Where should we go?" March asked.

"Bronya said that we could trust the Landau Siblings..." Dan Heng rubbed his chin a bit.

"We could maybe talk with Serval? Avoiding Gepard could be a good idea...after all, every single Silvermane Guard is probably still looking for us" Stelle reasoned making the others nod.

"Yes, let's go to the Neverwinter Workshop." Dan Heng spoke before looking towards Svarog. "Ryan, you said you had a way of covering him, right?"

"Yes, it'll also help us move around Belobog easier, everyone stay close to me"

The group got close to Ryan and he breathed in slowly closing his eyes, a magic circle appeared under them, slowly, all of them changed their appearance.

Ryan yet again had short brown hair and a slightly darker skin tone, black eyes and wore a simply black shirt, with a blue pair of pants and a black overcoat.

Dan Heng had longer red hair, deep blue eyes and wore a long sleeved blue shirt, with an orange jacket and a pair of black pants.

March had now white hair with blue eyes, she wore a white dress with a cherry blossom pattern alongside it, under the dress she had a black pair of shorts and black leggings.

Stelle had longer brown hair reaching her waist, her eyes were now black and her skin was slightly darker like Ryan's, she wore a white short-sleeved shirt, with a black jacket and a black skirt with black leggings underneath.

Seele's hair was now lighter in colour and her eyes were green, she wore a white sleeveless jacket with a pattern of purple butterflies, over that she wore a black jacket and on the lower half she wore a pair of black jeans.

Svarog now looked completely human, he looked shorter now, being a bit taller than Dan Heng, he had blue hair and red eyes, he had a fair skin tone and wore a black shirt, over that he had a dak blue overcoat with a pair of black jeans.

"Wooow~ I didn't know you could do this Ryan" March smiled a bit looking at her own clothing.

"This will be enough for us to walk around Belobog without worrying about the Silvermane Guards..." Ryan let out a short sigh. "Try to stay close, if you wander too far away it'll be hard for me to maintain the illusion."

"He~" Stelle smiled looking at Ryan and then looked at herself "you really want to keep the 'siblings' dynamic uh?"

"It'll come in handy from time to time" Ryan spoke before starting to walk.

"For how long can you keep this illusion?" Dan Heng asked as the others also started to walk.

"If you stay close...I should be able to hold it for 4 hours before I run out of magic"

...

"Ohhhh~ that trashcan is shiny" Stelle smiled starting to walk away but Dan Heng quickly grabbed her by the jacket.

"Uh...the illusion is solid..." Dan Heng pulled on Stelle's jacket making her get closer.

"Yes, using purely visual illusions became inefficient because certain species were able to look past them...in Svarog's case I have to also use a visual illusion to dissimulate how tall he-" Ryan explained but then stopped as they reached the administrative district. "There're...a lot more guards"

"Isn't it normally like this?" Seele asked a bit confused. "Last time I came here I was just a child...I don't remember any of this..."

"They're probably looking for us... let's go to the Neverwinter Workshop, The Supreme Guardian could already know about us" Dan Heng started to walk.

They quickly walked across the district, seeing the multiple Silvermane Guards patroling around the area, getting to the door of the workshop, Dan Heng knocked on it a few times.

"Who is it? shop is closed today, come back tomorrow!" The voice of Serval was heard from the other side.

"It's a group of big costumers with even bigger pockets!" Stelle spoke smiling.

"I remember that voice...the outsiders? Wait! Lemme-" the woman opened the door looking at the group. "Wait, you're not-"

"Yes it's us, excuse us"

Stelle quickly pushed Serval into the workshop going inside alongside the rest of the group, Seele entered last and closed the door letting out a small sigh.

The illusions disappeared around them, returning them back to their usual appearances.

"Wait, how did you-" she quickly shook her head. "No matter... you'll be safe here, the workshop is quite soundproof and it's closed today so no one will come here...what crime did you commit? They recalled a lot of guards from the front line"

"Oh well, actually-" March tries to explain but Dan Heng quickly cut her off.

"Not yet March...Bronya said we could trust you completely." He spoke crossing his arms above his chest.

"You mean you don't trust me completely?" She asked making Dan Heng nod. "That's quite smart, don't worry though, Cocolia and I are not in speaking terms...after some situations and discussions, I refuse to stand with her." She let out a short sigh walking to the counter. "I don't think you would do something bad, the Architects would need publicly available evidence for me to think otherwise...and if they had any, they would've released it by now....this is Cocolia's style, people who are in a frenzy don't ponder in the details."

"I... suppose we can trust her, then?" Seele shrugged a bit looking at the group.

"What do we tell, long story or short story?" Stelle asked looking at her friends.

"We shouldn't lose too much time, let's give her a summary." Ryan let out a short sigh.

"Well...after we ran away we entered the underworld, we had to help a bit there, we met this really cool group called 'Wildfire', Seele right here is a member of them" March smiled a bit presenting Seele who waved lightly. "We helped them taking this big, scary and strong robot...down..."

March did a small pause looking towards Svarog who looked back at her, his red eye glowed lightly making the girl look again at Serval clearly nervous.

"But he was actually kinda gentle! He told us a lot of stuff about the Stellaron, which is the reason why the Fragmentum and the Eternal Freeze are striking this planet, all the Supreme Guardians knew about the Stellaron but decided to keep it a secret from the people...Bronya was with us all the time, she came here very early today and told us that we could trust you and Gepard to help us." The girl finished explaining and handed Bronya's letter to Serval that read it and rubbed her chin a bit.

"I see...so that's why I hadn't heard anything from Bronya, I trust you, I don't think you could make all that up, this is Bronya's handwritting and Miss Seele here is proof alongside...him, I suppose, that he is the big, scary and strong robot?" She asked with a little smirk looking up at Svarog.

"I'm the Prototype number 3, monitoring automaton designated as 'Svarog' " the robot presented himself making the woman smiled.

"A pleasure Svarog...I would very much like to investigate you later, and regarding the Stellaron... It's good that you came to me, when I was part of the Architects before they kicked me I actually choose the Stellaron as my research subject" she crossed her arms over her chest.

"You knew about the Stellaron?" Ryan asked rising an eyebrow.

"Very few people know about the Stellaron, those who know would never associate it with the Eternal Freeze or the Fragmentum...but I get it now, whoever tried to uncover the truth got taken care of..." Serval let out a short sigh. "I should thank Cocolia...all she did was kick me out of the Architects, she could've taken a more... permanent option."

"Do you know where the Stellaron is?" Seele asked and the woman nodded.

"I never saw it directly but I ran various lab simulations and outbound surveys to stablish a rough location." She rubbed her chin a bit before replying. "Based on the results, it should be somewhere around the north of Belobog...in the vast snow plains."

"Ugh! Finally a clue" March threw her arms upwards. "Okay! Then let's go before the old hag Cocolia takes action."

"I don't think going on your own will be smart" Serval looked a trhe group a bit nervous. "You'd be entering an area swallowed up by the Fragmentum...not to mention that to get there you would need to go past the Silvermane Guard Restricted Zone."

"Restricted Zone?"

"The frontlines, most Silvermane Guards are there to stop the Fragmentum monsters from entering...Gepard spends a lot of time there" she sighed lightly.

"Do you think we could make Gepard help?" Dan Heng asked but the woman shook her head.

"Gepard is an Okay guy...but for him orders are everything, I don't think he'd let you through even if you rubbed Bronya's letter against his face" she sighed deeply but then smiled a bit. "Besides, you'll need someone who knows the place, I met the soldiers and the area while I worked there as a field researchers, and if my brother gets in the way, I can always try and persuade him myself...but I'd need a strategy"

"Are you sure you want to help us, Serval?" Stelle asked and the woman nodded.

"I always wanted to see the Stellaron...and if Cocolia knows about it, then she's letting all of this happen, we have to stop her." She frowned a bit.

"It's settled then, having a guide would be great! Let's go" March smiled and walked towards the door, ready to open it.

The door was knocked from the other side, all of them kept themselves silent for a few seconds but then a voice came out from the outside of the workshop.

"Serval! Are you inside? It's me, Gepard"

The group looked directly towards Serval who just kept herself silent before speaking.

"Fuck"

★ ★ ★

A/N: Okay I'm back, I would have a lot of excuses ready but in reality I was just very sick and that took away all my energy and motivation.

Anyways, here's the chapter, hope you enjoyed.