A doll with pink hair and chains instead of clothes landed on a stone bridge that connected the two sides of the canyon. Somewhere below, a turbulent river flowed, but up here, it was completely unnoticeable.
The purple aura that surrounded the doll disappeared, after which her foot accidentally stepped on some long object...
...and which turned out to be a pale hand with red nails.
"Sis..." the doll's eyes trembled. "I... I didn't make it in time."
For a moment, the doll imagined that instead of a head, a girl in a gray-brown dress was sitting on the edge of the bridge, but without a head.
The doll raised her hand with her eyes. It seemed to her again that her fingers were moving, and her nails were no longer red, but normal, almost transparent.
"I didn't have time, but... I'll assemble you, I promise. Just wait."
The doll activated a purple aura, after which it began to descend to the bottom of the canyon, where a narrow but fast river flowed noisily between large and small gray stones.
On the steep rocky banks grew bushes with small dark green leaves and sharp tops. On one of these tops was strung a head with long red hair and large bulging eyes.
The doll stopped near the head and opened its mouth with a look.
"She doesn't talk anymore," a voice came from behind.
The doll turned its head back and saw a dinosaur in armor made of gray metal plates on the shore.
"Are you Yuehei?" the dinosaur asked.
A screen with text appeared in front of the doll.
"I am Ustumut," the dinosaur explained. "I am looking for a doll named Ikte."
Yuehei flew a few steps to the side. Her pupils turned black. The dinosaur saw a head with red hair and shuddered.
"I've already found it," a green aura appeared around Ustumut.
"I won't give it to you," the screen replied instead of Yuehei. "It's my big sister's head."
"You won't give it back even if I give you what's left of your big brother?" Ustumut summoned an inventory, in one of the cells of which lay a smaller version of an eyeball, and in the other, a similar miniature version of black hair. "Ikte asked me to take her remains if she is assembled."
Yuehei took a step closer to the cell. Ustumut released an energy harpoon, which became an obstacle.
"Sis does not want to be with me. That's how it is," the symbols on the screen updated. "Then give her this message."
A purple memory card with a black symbol inside appeared in Yuehei's hand.
"Don't read it. Just hand it to her."
The memory card moved to Ustumut, who grabbed it with the tip of his energy harpoon.
"Now it's my turn," purple symbols appeared on the screen, and at the same moment Yuehei's pupils turned that color.
The eye moved, but couldn't leave the cell.
"You won't succeed," Ustumut looked at the inventory screen.
The symbols on the screen disappeared. The aura around Yuehei became thicker, and the chains began to move with a distinctive sound.
The eye turned over in the cell several times, but then with one sharp movement left it and appeared near Yuehei's face.
"I still have something left," a new inscription appeared on the screen. "This is a part of my sister. The rest of the parts are somewhere here. When you find them all, my sister will assemble herself."
Yuehei extended the hand with red nails that she found on the bridge to the dinosaur. Ustumut grabbed it with the harpoon ribbon and began to examine it.
"I have something left too," the dinosaur pulled out a cell with black hair with his claw and handed it to the doll. "This is from your big brother."
Yuehei called her inventory and put her brother's eye and hair there. A barely noticeable smile appeared on the doll's face, and a drop of transparent liquid even came out of one eye.
"I hope my sister gets ready. I'll be waiting for her," blue translucent symbols appeared on the screen, after which it dissolved into air.
Yuehei rose above the bottom of the canyon. Ustumut watched the chain, which dangled in the air from the vibrations until it merged with the purple light near the bridge.
"Why am I doing this?" the dinosaur looked at the hand with red nails.
***
Halankuo landed on a rocky platform at the top of the mountain. The forests around were not as dense as those on the coast or in the river valleys, but still consisted of tree ferns.
"There are too many ruins in these places," Halankuo looked at a stone arch covered with a thin liana with small leaves. "And they are all the same. I don't even know if I've been here before or not."
Halankuo walked through the arch and stopped near a bridge over a small, barely noticeable river, more like a stream.
"I still haven't been here," the girl looked at the water that quickly flowed over small stones. "I've never seen such a strange river anywhere. It flows just like that, without a deepening, as if someone spilled the water."
There was another arch behind the bridge, which led to a dark hole hidden among the vegetation.
"Maybe I was here after all? Mom, please tell me."
The voice in her head did not answer. The dark hole turned out to be the entrance to a tunnel, covered from the inside with such a thick layer of moss that it was unclear what it was made of.
"No, I definitely have not been in this place."
Halankuo entered the tunnel. A few drops of water immediately fell on the girl's head, but she did not feel it because of her thick hair.
"This place looks like a dungeon where there is ore," Halankuo stopped in the middle of the tunnel and opened the map. "Kyotyoryon might have gone there because she felt the metal."
The blue mark was next to the red one. Halankuo closed the map, then looked into the depths of the tunnel, and suddenly realized that it led downwards.
"There could be a mine there. There is definitely ore there."
Halankuo flew through the tunnel and soon discovered that it gradually descended into the mountain.
The moss on the walls, floor and ceiling gradually disappeared, revealing gray-orange stones. Light no longer penetrated here, but the radiation from the aura was enough to illuminate the width of the tunnel well.
"Mom, does this look like ore?" Halankuo stopped near a large gray-orange stone that stuck out of the wall.
"You can look at it," the voice answered in the girl's head. "Your gaze can interact with objects that have metal in them."
"Now I understand why Kyotyoryon... So the creator's abilities are linked to the character's abilities."
"That's because the character is created from the creator's energy, which is reflected in space as an interface, and then processed through the "Mausoleum of Nature." If the server agrees to process the data, the character is created."
Halankuo's pupils turned purple. For a moment, the rock moved, but then the information she heard distracted the girl and she lost her concentration.
"What did you say?" Halankuo's pupils returned to their previous state.
The voice repeated what had been said earlier. Halankuo turned away from the rock and looked into the depths of the tunnel.
"Does that mean someone agreed to let Kyotyoryon appear?" Halankuo flew forward a few steps.
"Yeah, but it doesn't look like what you think. There's no creature sitting on the server and pressing buttons. The server itself is a creature."
"It's like a character?"
"Not exactly, it's like a skill creature, only unlike them, it can administer the program."
"Uh... What do you mean? I didn't get it."
"It finally happened. Congratulations."
"No, Mom. I feel like Tuot."
Suddenly, Halankuo remembered the yellow lizard that her feathered pet friend had summoned.
"I know what you mean," Halankuo flew forward a few more steps. "Is it a creature that you summon, and it uses one of its abilities?"
"Yeah, I thought that the moment had finally come when I would tell you about another kind of creature. But no, you found out everything yourself again."
The tunnel continued. The moss had completely disappeared, and now there were grey-orange stones full of iron everywhere.
"As far as I understand, the server makes decisions only because it is its ability," a new thought appeared in Halankuo's brain. "It does not think like a character."
"Yeah, but this is one of its abilities. What servers are made of is unknown. It is not even known where they are or what they look like. But they definitely exist."
"How do you know?"
There was a pause. Halankuo flew over a puddle that had formed in a small hole.
"I had a dream. It was a very strange dream. I hardly remember it anymore, but I can show you what's left of it."
… The tunnel gave way to a wooden observation platform, which offered a view of low, flat mountains covered with dark green coniferous forests and a wide river that separated them.
"This is the Northern Continent," Halankuo remembered. "I think I've been here, only this place looked a little different."
"Creator!"
Halankuo turned around out of habit, although this voice was completely different from Kyotyoryon's.
A little girl in a black hooded robe with strands of blue, red, yellow and purple hair peeking out from underneath it walked up the wooden stairs to the observation deck and stopped in front of Halankuo.
"She doesn't notice me. I wouldn't be surprised if she walked right through me."
But the girl walked in the other direction and stopped next to another girl, with normal long black hair, wearing a short grey-yellow fur dress and boots.
"Creator, it has become bigger," the girl said. "Let's go there."
The girl was talking about something with her character, after which they left the observation deck and went somewhere along the wooden steps.
For some reason, Halankuo followed them, and soon found herself in a forest clearing, on which stood a tall stone monument with the skull of a three-horned dinosaur.
"This is the monument that stood in the central square of Yenekit. So it was here before the city even existed? Now I understand why no one knows anything about it. It's just very ancient."
The girl and her character stopped near the monument and looked at the stone head of a three-horned dinosaur on top of it.
"It's really grown," the girl said. "Yesterday it was smaller."
"It is like a wooden creature," the girl with multi-colored hair pointed at the forest.
"It grows faster than wooden creatures. The earth performs the action of the delayed skill. It became its server."
Then the conversation became unintelligible. The forest around the monument gave way to stone buildings, which gradually turned into the walls of the tunnel...
"Who are these creatures?" Halankuo asked in her mind. "And why did this monument appear in Yenekit?"
"The people of Yenekit thought it was just a rock," the voice in her head answered. "They were so used to the monument that they didn't notice the head of an extinct dinosaur."
"It's very strange. I didn't notice it before either. I thought it was just an old thing standing in the center of the square."
"I thought so too. I used to remember more. I had this dream when I was a child. It was the first time I heard about servers, but I forgot a lot. There is too much information in the world."
"Did you know who these two creatures were?"
"No. I only understood that this is a character and her creator, and they know something about this monument and why it appeared."
"You could also say that this character has mastery over all the elements."
"Did you guess by the hair color?"
"Yeah, but are there characters with all the elements?"
"This is a dream. In it, many things may not look the way they actually were. That's why you can't trust dreams completely."
The tunnel ended in a pile of rocks, behind which there was clearly a passage. Halankuo stopped in front of the obstacle and continued asking questions.
"These are not ordinary dreams. Where do you get them from?"
"I don't know, perhaps because of the signal."
"Can the signal be used to transmit dreams?"
"Most likely, yes. When the creature is asleep, its brain is free of feelings and therefore vulnerable to the signal. But the signal cannot do anything to the creature in reality."
"I have never had such dreams."
"I only had them when I was a child. The signal has little effect on children, but this does not apply to dreams."
The tunnel suddenly ended in a pile of large, grey-orange rocks. But Halankuo knew it wasn't the end. She called up her map and noticed red and blue marks on it, so close that they partially overlapped.
"Kyotyoryon must have tried to move the rocks because she felt metal in them," Halankuo thought. "But something went wrong and they fell. Kyotyoryon jumped forward and ended up there, behind the rocks."
"Be careful. She might set an ambush."
"This is too heavy for Kyotyoryon. Most likely, she just felt a lot of metal and came here."
Halankuo looked at the stones and realized that they were stacked all the way to the ceiling.
"You can't just remove them. If Kyotyoryon is there, she will notice. I need to somehow pass by without her noticing. Mom, can I teleport?"
Halankuo closed her eyes and imagined her standing on the other side of the pile of rocks in a large cave…
"Of course you can. But I think you've already…"
… Halankuo opened her eyes and saw the same pile of stones, but from the other side. Now she was not standing in a tunnel, but in a large cave with numerous gray-orange stones in the walls. But there was no spirit of metal here either.
"Is the map lying?" Halankuo looked around. "Where is Kyotyoryon?"
Soon the answer was found. One of the stones in the wall moved, after which it crashed to the floor. A girl's head with metal horns on top of her emerged from the resulting hole.
"It's too hard," Kyotyoryon looked at the piece of stone on the floor. "Someone very evil made it so that I couldn't free my metal."
Kyotyoryon was so busy with her work that she didn't notice the creator, who was standing ten or fifteen steps away from her. Halankuo took advantage of this and hid behind a pile of stones in the center of the cave. Kyotyoryon made a dash forward, part of the wall around her collapsed, freeing the character.
"This metal should be enough to cut the creator," Kyotyoryon looked at the ceiling. "I will collect it and then use my strongest skill. It will be a gift from me."
The spirit of metal approached the pile of stones that blocked the exit from the cave. A thick metal spear the size of a small tree trunk appeared above the character's head.
"My metal has become big," Kyotyoryon raised her eyebrows. "Now it can destroy that evil doll."
The spear flew into the pile of stones and got stuck in one of the cracks.
"Hey, piece of stone, give it to me, it's mine!" Kyotyoryon released a long blade similar to a sword from the bracelet on her hand.
Halankuo cautiously peeked out from behind the cover.
"She collected a lot of metal. Because of this, her abilities became more powerful. Oh... I completely forgot about that."
Kyotyoryon rushed to attack the "enemy", but did not have time to strike. From the giant spear, cracks appeared in the stones, and the barricade crumbled right in front of the metal spirit.
"Kyotyoryon is too dangerous right now," Halankuo hid completely behind the rocks in the center of the cave. "We need to get out of here, but the teleportation is currently on cooldown. Mom, is there another way?"
"You can fly. All you need is a purple aura to fly."
"Yeah, but... I can't fly through walls."
While Halankuo was conferring with her mother, Kyotyoryon decided to get rid of the broken stones. She stepped on one of them with her foot and almost crushed it.
The blade from Kyotyoryon's heel fell to the floor, lifting her up to such a height that her horns reached the ceiling.
"Hey, stone, let me go!" Kyotyoryon cried. "I'm not afraid of you anymore. My metal has become harder than you, and..."
The spirit of metal did not finish. The horns almost pierced the ceiling and began to grow rapidly...
A sound similar to a bird's cry passed through a metal pipe came from the tunnel. The floor shook, and with it the walls and ceiling.
Halankuo looked out from behind the shelter and saw a cloud of dust in the place of the former pile of stones.
"Kyotyoryon..."
When the cloud of dust cleared a little, Halankuo noticed the silhouette of a horned creature with large wings and a tail.
"Halankuo, now! Fly away from here before she notices you."
But Halankuo did not listen to the voice in her head. She looked at the creature in the air and did not believe what she saw...