"Why does the countryside of Rim Billiton look only slightly better than the wastes of Kazdel?"
As evening descended upon their campsite, Hong Meiling squatted by the edge of the trail, casually capturing a passing Originium Slug with two fingers before poking at its squishy, translucent shell with a small twig.
"Because beneath these barren plains lies the single largest Originium vein network on the entire continent of Terra," Clever explained, stepping over to watch the maid. "Due to the sheer density of active mineral deposits concentrated in the soil, the local environment here is far more unstable than in other territories, and the statistical probability of triggering a Catastrophe is infinitely higher."
Flandre, who was leaning against the wheel of the carriage, tilted her head as she observed the librarian. "Why do you look so remarkably nervous all of a sudden?"
She noticed that as their distance to the mobile landship of Rhodes Island steadily decreased, Clever's frame seemed to grow increasingly rigid with every passing mile.
"I... I am not nervous," Clever stammered, her voice wavering slightly. "I am just... it is just..." She trailed off, entirely unable to put the complex, churning emotions within her chest into coherent words.
"Hmm... Are you experiencing that peculiar feeling of being anxious about returning home?" Flandre asked, stroking her chin thoughtfully like a little scholar.
Clever shook her head in uncertainty.
Seeing her hesitation, Flandre offered a cheerful, unbothered wave of her hand, declaring that there was zero reason to worry about the future anyway; given that their party had already successfully journeyed across half the continent to reach this exact sector, it was physically impossible to back out now.
Clever drew in a long, deep breath. "You are completely right! Since we are already here..."
Throughout the duration of their long journey together, Clever had been thoroughly brainwashed by Flandre's signature philosophy. No matter what terrifying situation or lawless territory they found themselves in, the young vampire's logic invariably boiled down to a serene: "Since we are already here."
Surprisingly, the sheer simplicity of the phrase served to instantly release the tight knot of anxiety gripping Clever's chest.
However, the exact second she turned around to offer Flandre a sincere expression of gratitude, her eyes caught sight of the child squatting flat on the dirt alongside Hong Meiling, both of them enthusiastically poking at the helpless Originium Slug together.
Clever found herself entirely speechless at the display. What on earth was so inherently entertaining about a giant, crawling active bug?
"Do you not agree that such a massive, squishy creature is utterly amazing?" Flandre looked up, her red eyes sparkling with pure, childish excitement.
"Have these exact organisms not been crawling across every single stretch of road we traversed since leaving the border?" Clever asked, rubbing her brow in bewilderment. "I certainly did not observe you playing with them so joyfully back in the previous towns."
Hearing her logic, Flandre fixed her with a look that clearly communicated: 'Are you remarkably silly, or am I missing something obvious?'
"Back in the previous towns, there were plenty of other interesting things to play with," Flandre explained matter-of-factly. "But after arriving in this empty wasteland, this is the only thing left to poke... Oh, except for the delicious crabs, of course!"
"Those are Needle Fleas!" Clever rubbed her temples in exasperation.
Ever since she had tasted Sakuya's charcoal-grilled Needle Flea legs a couple of nights prior, Flandre had developed an absolute obsession with the local delicacy. Every single evening when the carriage brought itself to a halt, the child would immediately scout the surrounding perimeter, eagerly hunting for any fortunate, wandering Needle Fleas that might earn the glorious privilege of entering her stomach.
"Needle Fleas are just crabs anyway, so why are you shouting so loudly!"
Flandre's snappy retort gave Clever an intense, unprecedented urge to playfully smack the little blonde girl's bottom for the very first time.
Time passed rapidly amidst their lighthearted banter, and the deep, ink-black shadow of night swiftly blanketed the wasteland.
"By the way, I have read in historical texts that the overwhelming majority of the civilian population in Rim Billiton belongs to the Cautus race, and that they possess an extraordinary talent for digging subterranean tunnels, correct?" Flandre suddenly inquired, looking up from her bug.
"That is indeed an accurate statement," Clever affirmed, taking a seat on a smooth stone near the hearth. "While Rim Billiton holds the vastest mineral wealth across the continent, it is fundamentally an industrial nation structured around the extraction and export of raw minerals. The baseline demographic living within these borders is overwhelmingly Cautus."
She pointed a finger directly toward the dry earth beneath their boots. "And because of the hyper-volatile geological environment—combined with the extreme likelihood of localized Originium veins triggering catastrophic weather patterns—the civilian populations outside the primary mobile cities do not construct their permanent settlements upon the surface. Instead, entire rural villages are established deep underground."
"Living entirely underground!" Meiling smiled warmly. "Speaking of which, there are many youkai back home in Gensokyo who construct their homes within deep caverns simply because they prefer the ambient darkness of subterranean life."
Of course, observing the brutal reality of Terra, Clever knew full well that these Cautus villagers certainly didn't choose to construct subterranean burrows out of preference; it was merely that nature had forced this singular method of survival upon them, leaving them zero alternative options.
While they were engaged in quiet conversation, the sky overhead suddenly darkened to an unnatural, suffocating degree, and the ambient atmospheric pressure around the campsite rapidly plummeted, casting an eerie, heavy weight upon their lungs.
"Oh no... it is a Catastrophe!"
Clever was all too intimately familiar with this distinct, dread-inducing shift in atmospheric density; her face instantly turned ghost-white as sheer panic seized her heart.
Night had just officially fallen, and their small camp was positioned right in the middle of an open, featureless wasteland with zero natural landforms or rock formations to offer structural shelter. A sudden Catastrophe manifesting directly overhead at this exact moment was a scenario that practically guaranteed a total, inescapable death sentence for any surface traveler.
Yet, as Clever's eyes darted frantically around the campsite, she was stunned to discover that every single member of the Scarlet Devil Mansion appeared completely, impeccably calm.
Unable to maintain her composure, Clever bolted straight toward the carriage where Remilia was sitting, urgently reporting the catastrophic meteorological shift unfolding above them.
"Eldest Miss, we must abandon the heavy equipment and evacuate this sector immediately!" she pleaded, her voice trembling with panic. "If we delay our retreat by even a few minutes, every single one of us will be utterly consumed!"
To her absolute bewilderment, Remilia merely raised her porcelain cup of black tea to her lips, taking a smooth, unhurried sip before replying casually, "There is zero reason for you to work yourself into such a frenzy."
The vampire master set her cup down upon the small saucer with a soft click. "So long as you remain within the immediate perimeter of this carriage, no natural disaster upon this earth possesses the capacity to inflict harm upon you."
???
When massive question marks materialized inside Clever's mind, it wasn't that her own cognitive faculties were failing her, but rather that she felt the entire household of the Scarlet Devil Mansion—including their aristocratic master—possessed a severe, fundamental disconnect from reality.
She readily acknowledged that Remilia and her companions possessed terrifying individual martial prowess, but what was currently brewing above their heads was an actual Terran Catastrophe!
A Catastrophe wasn't a physical enemy that could be punched into submission or sliced apart with a blade; it was a pervasive, continent-shaping natural disaster of apocalyptic proportions. Coupled with the astronomical concentration of airborne Originium particles surging through the storm, simply taking a single unprotected breath during the event was more than enough to instantly contract terminal Oripathy or trigger a fatal flare-up of existing infection.
When facing an environmental phenomenon of this scale, relying on standard Magic or Arts would only accelerate one's demise by drawing the ambient shockwaves directly to the caster!
Yet, seeing that no one made the slightest move to break camp, Clever realized with a sinking heart that with her own limited physical capabilities, she could never hope to escape the expanding radius of the storm on foot before the strike hit.
'Am I... truly destined to perish within these barren wastes tonight?' Clever thought, a deep wave of bitter reluctance washing over her spirit.
At that exact microsecond, she noticed Patchouli, who was sitting gracefully on the step of the carriage, calmly open the thick leather-bound tome resting within her lap.
Without a single chant or flashy array, a thin, beautifully transparent curtain of pale blue light smoothly expanded outward, seamlessly enveloping the carriage, the campfire, and the immediate perimeter of their camp in a silent, domed sanctuary.
"This is...!" Clever stared at the razor-thin, crystalline barrier in pure astonishment, her hand subconsciously reaching out as if to touch the glowing surface.
"Do not touch it!" Flandre's ominous, dramatic voice suddenly echoed right behind her ear, startling the librarian so severely that she nearly jumped out of her skin.
"W-What happens if I make physical contact with it?" Clever asked, her heart hammering against her ribs with lingering fear.
Flandre leaned in close, her expression turning terrifyingly grave. "If you touch it..."
The child paused for maximum dramatic effect before breaking into a wide, mischievous grin. "...then you have touched it, of course!"
"Hee-hee-hee-hee!"
Flandre maintained her deadpan, serious facade right until the very end, whereupon she couldn't contain her amusement any longer, bursting into high-pitched laughter as she skipped back toward the safety of the carriage.
Clever knew rationally that Flandre was simply teasing her panicked state, yet she found herself completely incapable of sharing in the laughter.
After all, a full-scale Terran Catastrophe was currently raging directly overhead. When the sky inevitably tore open and the apocalyptic payload rained down, could a single, paper-thin layer of glowing light truly hope to shield them from total annihilation?
Clever wasn't certain, nor did her trembling mind possess the courage to investigate the magical physics involved.
While she wallowed in a spiral of helpless self-pity, the sky above turned an absolute, terrifying pitch-black. With the apocalyptic pressure of the Catastrophe merging seamlessly with the ink of the night, every single trace of ambient illumination across the horizon was swallowed whole, leaving their solitary campfire as the only remaining speck of light in a suffocating sea of absolute darkness.
This boundless, abyssal shadow was more than enough to completely crush the self-proclaimed iron will of any veteran survivor on Terra.
A fine, whispering drizzle began to descend from the swirling vortex above. Yet, the falling moisture offered zero sense of refreshing coolness or environmental clarity to the landscape.
Because looking out past the boundary of their camp, Clever watched in horror as fine, glistening Originium crystals instantly began to seed and sprout along the rocky ground the exact microsecond the raindrops made contact with the earth.
This was the terrifying reality of a Catastrophe. It appeared superficially similar to a standard meteorological event, yet every single drop of rain carried nothing but absolute despair, systemic infection, and immediate death.
Suddenly, Clever picked up on a mind-boggling detail.
Even though the apocalyptic rain was actively lashing the earth within her direct line of sight, not a single drop of water was landing upon her skin or clothes. She slowly raised her head, observing that every falling droplet and crystalline particle was being smoothly deflected and slid away by the paper-thin curtain of pale blue light overhead.
Yet, even that visual miracle failed to bring her a sense of relief.
Because the falling rainwater was far from the primary lethal threat of a Catastrophe—the true horror lay in the staggering, exponential surge in ambient Originium particle concentration that saturated the entire local atmosphere during the storm.
Noticing her lingering, paralyzed terror, Flandre casually stepped up beside her, offering a reassuring, surprisingly gentle pat against the librarian's shoulder.
"Do not worry yourself so much," the little vampire murmured, her red eyes reflecting the soft glow of the barrier. "I comprehend exactly what you are terrified of, but I promise you... not a single problem will touch us tonight."