"What the heck, I thought I could have a fight by following along, but it turned out to be a simple search for something. There's no living thing to speak of in this place at all."
Complained Executioner as she looked at the various silicides that filled her vision.
"Hmph, I've already said that this quest is nothing fun, and you lot still have to drag me into it! What an unmitigated disaster!"
Not far away from each other, Intruder, while picking at the silicide debris with her hands, controlled the power armor as she walked forward with slow steps.
She didn't want to come out this time. Who would have thought that Executioner would actually report her name in order to increase her winning rate at the draws?
As a result, Executioner herself was drawn in, not to mention that even she, someone who didn't want to move at all, was also drawn into it.
"Hey, you just came out of your room in the first place. Anyway, you guys have been growing mushrooms in the airship for a long time without moving. Coming out for a walk isn't a bad thing!".
"How is it not a bad thing? And even if you want to take a walk, it shouldn't be in this bleak scene where the sky and land is filled with pitch-black silicon towers! Not to mention a beautiful scenery, at least it should be a city, right?"
While Executioner and Intruder were arguing, NZ75 also looked around somewhat strangely.
From the point where they had just landed, this area had been completely traversed by them, and from beginning to end, they didn't see the appearance of any airplane wreckage. Even the fragments of the airplane were not seen. There was no sign of the mission objective at all in the area of the coordinates given by their employer.
"Commander, we've already searched this area. Is it possible that the coordinates given by the client are wrong?"
"Yes, yes, there must be a problem with the coordinates! Otherwise, how could we not even see a single piece of the airplane?" CF05 also chimed in at this time.
The scenery in this heavily polluted area was really too depressing. If she stayed here for a long time, she estimated that she would have a mental shadow.
HK416 didn't feel anything. This kind of thing has been encountered many times in the middle of her time in Griffin, hasn't it?
The mission target didn't appear on the predetermined coordinates as expected. As early as when she hadn't run out from Griffin, she had already encountered this kind of thing an unknown number of times.
And...
"Commander, are you sure AR15 is okay in her current state? The bionic skin on her body is completely silicified now, and she looks almost like a Heavy ELID infected."
Raising her eyes to look at AR15, who was sulking over there and whose movements were starting to become sluggish, HK416 opened her mouth and spoke towards Renault who was walking in front of all of them.
"AR15, what's your current state?" Hearing HK416's words, Renault also turned his head to look at the uncomfortable AR15 and asked.
The bionic skin on her face had all siliconized, and now it was like a layer of mask with a shiny black light snapping onto AR15's face. The bionic skin on her body, on the other hand, had mostly fallen off between walking and moving around. If it wasn't for the clothes in the way, AK47 and the girls might have been able to see the original appearance of AR15's bionic body by now.
"Fortunately, other than the surface bionic skin having been completely damaged, the metallic frame is in good condition and the internal engine is functioning normally," AR15 replied in an emotionless voice after lowering her head and checking her condition.
"Uh, commander, AR15 seems to have gotten angry? Should we go back and fix her first? How long is your stability test actually going to last?"
Looking at AR15's siliconized 'face' that was completely unable to put on any expression, Nagan Revolver couldn't help but ask Renault with some worry.
"Soon. We'll go back when we find something. Isn't there still a small area over there that hasn't been searched?" Renault spoke as he took two steps towards the hill littered with silicides, then pointed at a small piece of ice not far away and opened his mouth.
Ever since this area had turned into a heavily contaminated zone, the temperature changes here had also become bizarre and unpredictable.
Just like just now, when they came down from the gunboat, it was clearly still chilly. However, now that they had just arrived not far from the lake, the temperature over here had suddenly risen.
And that piece of ice that Renault was pointing at looked like it was gradually melting as well.
Before, no matter if it was Simonov or the other dolls, most of them had already seen that small piece of lake not far away at the bottom of the hillside.
But that piece of lake was frozen and the ice looked very thick. If the cargo plane had smashed down from the sky, it was impossible that there was no trace of it at all, so they naturally ignored that piece of lake area.
Renault pointed to the ground under his feet with the steel pipe he picked up casually.
A few very irregular looking drag marks were left over there, and some of the silicon compounds on the ground had even been crushed into powder form.
Obviously, in this area, there wa something very heavy being dragged from here to the lake below.
"Hiss! It looks so scary! This trace... looks like it should be the airplane that crashed or was forced to land. But what on earth dragged that airplane down to the water?"
An entire airplane of this size, if there was no external force dragging it, that plane would have come to a steady stop on this small hill at their feet.
But apparently, some unknown thing moved and dragged that airplane right into the water!
"Ah yes! I have read a legend somewhere before that there is actually a mysterious and incomparable water monster in the middle of this lake! Maybe it was that water monster that dragged the cargo of the Universal Everything along with the airplane into the water!"
Simonov in the cockpit of the gunship and really couldn't find anything to do, so she immediately joined the conversation.
"Huh? That's just a legend, isn't it? No one really knows if it's real or not." Executioner obviously didn't care much about such a nebulous thing. Even if there really was one, so what? Is it hard to fight it?
"Nagant Revolver, fire a few incendiary rounds into the ice."
"Hey? Ohhh, Commander, you've determined where that freighter is?" While replacing the incendiary rounds for the grenade launcher on her power armor, Nagant Revolver asked curiously towards Renault.
"Of course not."
Renault was only testing something. After all, it didn't cost any money to try, and if there were really any unknown creatures in the middle of this lake area, they might be enraged by Nagant Revolver's direct attack and then rush out.
Most importantly, he saw the ice surface.
There seemed to be some not so eye-catching reflections, and those silica reflection are not the same as the others near the area. Although the brightness is the same lack of brightness in other ice, the appearance of those reflections looks a little like some kind of metal.
Although Renault's answer made Nagant Revolver shrug her shoulders helplessly, she still raised her hand after changing the type of ammo and hit a series of incendiary bombs on the ice of that lake.