"Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Several hours into their watch—right around the time evening was approaching—a shout suddenly erupted from the excavation site.
When Rei first heard it, he wondered if the enemy... if Dragonias had appeared. But upon noticing that the emotions in the voice were not fear or anger, but joy and surprise, he immediately understood the cause of the shout.
"Did they find it?"
That shout—or perhaps battle cry—meant they had likely unearthed the existence beneath the excavation site: the cause of the abnormally dense Earth Spirit, and the very thing the Dragonias sought.
"I'm going to check it out! Since something related to the Earth Spirit has been excavated, Dragonias might be drawn to it and come here. Stay alert!"
Calling out to the Centaurs stationed a short distance away, Rei headed toward the excavation site.
Naturally, Vihera, Anastasia, and Fana were also heading toward the dig site from their respective watch positions.
"Figured you'd all come."
"Of course. Something related to the Earth Spirit was unearthed, wasn't it? How could I not come see it?"
Anastasia told him with an air of complete confidence.
As she herself had pointed out, the fact that the only Spirit Magic user—in other words, the only spirit expert among those present—was Anastasia was undeniable.
Because of that, Rei could understand why it was necessary for her to clearly confirm what had been discovered.
But when it came to whether the intensely curious—no, excessively curious—Anastasia would calmly examine something this fascinating, Rei couldn't honestly say yes.
(Well, even so, I guess I have no choice but to leave it to Anastasia.)
There was a possibility that she might do something strange and cause whatever they had found to go out of control. But since Rei's knowledge of spirits amounted to nothing more than casually hearing a little about Spirit Magic from Marina, he couldn't do anything about it himself.
At worst, if the object turned out to be inanimate, he could store it in his Misty Ring and shelve the problem for later...
But that would ultimately just be putting the problem off, and since he had no idea what might happen if he did, there was nothing for it but to leave things to Anastasia.
Upon arriving at the excavation site, the Centaurs cleared a path as soon as they saw Rei and his group approaching.
They likely wanted to show what they had excavated to Rei's group as quickly as possible.
When Rei and the others stepped forward, what they saw was...
"What is this...? A black gemstone?"
Yes, it was something that could fittingly be called a black gemstone.
Rei was no expert on gemstones, so he didn't know what kinds of black gemstones existed.
But from what he could see, it was round—so perfectly spherical, so to speak—yes, it could be described as a black pearl.
However, if a pearl was only about fingertip-sized, the giant black sphere before Rei's eyes exceeded one meter in diameter.
Even for Rei, who was no expert on gemstones, he could at least tell that a pearl of such size did not exist.
"This is... amazing," Anastasia said from beside him.
However, her voice carried a tremor.
For Anastasia—who possessed such great curiosity that describing her as a mass of curiosity would be fitting—to have such a reaction upon seeing material that would let her exercise that curiosity to her heart's content... was completely unexpected for Rei.
Still, considering the situation, perhaps it couldn't be helped.
Rei looked once more at the giant black gemstone before his eyes.
(A gemstone... is it really a gemstone? Well, there's no doubt it looks like one, but...)
The black sphere seemed to absorb light itself.
To anyone looking at it, there was no doubt it could only be seen as a gemstone. There was no mistake about that—but seeing Anastasia, who could be said to be made of curiosity, in this state, there was no doubt it was no ordinary gemstone.
(Or rather, gemstones are normally excavated as raw stones, then cut and polished by hand to become gemstones, right? For such a giant perfect sphere to have been buried underground as-is... thinking about it normally, that's impossible.)
Near where Rei had lived in Japan, there was a river.
In the summer, it was a place where you could catch river fish like ayu, yamame, and iwana... and among the stones there, some had their edges worn away and become rounded as they tumbled downstream, rubbing against other stones along the way.
That said, they remained flat in shape, so they never became perfect spheres like the one currently before Rei's eyes.
After gazing at the jet-black sphere for several minutes, Rei decided it was about time and called out to Anastasia.
"So, Anastasia. Do you know what this is?"
"...Huh? Right, well. I can't say for certain, but... I think it's probably a spirit egg or something."
"A spirit egg? Are spirits born from eggs?"
That was something Rei was hearing for the very first time.
Marina was a highly skilled Spirit Mage, and Rei had heard various things from her, but even so, this was completely unexpected.
Anastasia's statement that spirits were born from eggs painted surprise not only on Rei's face but on Vihera's as well, who had been listening nearby.
"No, strictly speaking, spirits aren't born from eggs. A spirit egg is... well, it's a convenient expression, so to speak."
"Convenient? In that case, is this egg not a spirit egg in the literal sense?"
"That's right. To be precise, a spirit that has extremely exhausted its power for some reason—and not just any spirit, but a fairly high-ranking one—is sleeping to recover its strength. That's what this is. This spirit egg is an Earth Spirit, so it was underground, but other spirits sleep in places that match their attributes... apparently."
As a Spirit Mage, Anastasia was fairly skilled herself.
But that didn't mean she possessed detailed information about spirits.
Even so, she had a fair amount of knowledge regarding this egg, so she understood the general circumstances.
For example, a Fire Spirit would sleep in the magma of an active volcano, a Water Spirit at the bottom of a sea or lake, a Wind Spirit in a place with strong winds... and so on.
"So, the fact that the Earth Spirit's power is this dense around here... does that mean this egg is going to hatch?"
"Not immediately, but considering how it looks, it will probably hatch before too long. Though, if there were a settlement here, that would have been a problem, but... this settlement is already unusable, isn't it? In that case, I don't think we need to worry about that."
At those words, Rei wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or concerned that some effect might befall this settlement in the near future, and found himself unsure how to react.
"I'll ask just in case, but... is it possible to move this spirit egg somewhere, or do anything like that?"
"Impossible."
It was Vihera who spoke after listening to their conversation, but Anastasia's response was simple, clear, and immediate in its denial.
Judging by Anastasia's attitude, she was making it abundantly clear that such a thing was impossible.
"If you carelessly did something like that, there's no telling what might happen."
"...Wait, then does that mean excavating it was pointless?"
"There is a point. Thanks to this egg, we now understand what kind of situation this place is in... and the difficulty of moving it only applies to those who aren't Spirit Mages. ...Though, even for me, doing it would be quite difficult."
"Specifically?"
"I need to concentrate on this egg, so for the time being, I won't be able to participate in combat against the Dragonias."
"That's... well, it's a problem, but not a fatal one."
Vihera nodded in agreement with Rei's words.
As a Spirit Mage, Anastasia's power was effective when fighting Dragonias.
Since they were driven by hunger, most Dragonias could only take simple actions, with the exception of special cases like Commanders.
In that case, Anastasia's Spirit Magic would exert tremendous power.
In fact, when Rei had found Anastasia, she had been using magic to hold back the pursuing Dragonias, sending them tumbling down in an avalanche.
Thanks to that, Rei's attacks had been able to wipe out the Dragonias in one fell swoop.
If the Centaurs had to fight Dragonias on their own, Anastasia's Spirit Magic would have been a great asset.
But here, there was someone who could fight multiple Dragonias alone and overwhelm them.
And not just Rei—there were two people and one beast in total, including Vihera and Set.
With people of such strength present, Anastasia's Spirit Magic being unavailable was not a problem.
...Though it was an undeniable fact that with Anastasia present, they could easily deal with any Dragonias attack.
"Then, I'll focus on this spirit egg."
Even as she said that, a smile floated on Anastasia's lips.
She was still tense because a dense spirit power continued to emanate from the spirit egg, but at the same time, her eyes held a light of intense curiosity just as strong as her tension.
For Anastasia, investigating the spirit egg was probably the most curiosity-stimulating thing she could imagine.
Rei understood that too, but even considering the current situation, there was no denying that Anastasia was the only person who could be entrusted with the spirit egg.
(If only Marina were here.)
He thought that, but since Marina was in Elgin, there was nothing he could do.
If he had known the situation would turn out like this, he would have made sure to bring her along... but that was moot at this point.
In that case, they just had to manage with the combat power they had.
"Still... it's a good thing I was here when the spirit egg was excavated. If I hadn't been, you wouldn't have known what this was, right? In that case, there's a possibility you might have destroyed it in the worst case."
"...I can't deny that."
In fact, Rei considered what he would have done if, in a situation without Anastasia, he had dug up the settlement ground and a spirit egg had emerged from it, and what course of action he would have taken.
The first option to be rejected would be leaving it alone.
Even Rei could sense that the spirit egg possessed some kind of power—though he couldn't identify it as spirit power, he could at least understand that it held some form of power.
If he had found such an existence without knowing anything, what would he have done?
As for possible courses of action... not knowing it was an egg, he might have tried storing it in his Misty Ring.
But if it turned out he couldn't do that—whether to consider a spirit as a life form was debatable—and he judged the situation dangerous as things stood, there was a very real possibility he would have tried to destroy it.
That was why Rei couldn't deny Anastasia's words.
"You're right. I don't think I would have tried to break it immediately, but if things came to a dead end, I can't deny the possibility that I might have destroyed it."
"See? If you had done something like that, who knows what would have happened. In the worst case, this entire area might have been annihilated. In that sense, don't you think it was lucky for you that I came here?"
It was a fact that because Anastasia had been present, it hadn't turned into a major problem.
Rei knew that too, so he nodded honestly.
"You're right."
"So with that said... anyway, first we'll move the spirit egg to the surface following my instructions. Alright? I'll use my spirit power to calm the egg, so make absolutely sure you follow my instructions."
At Anastasia's words, the Centaurs looked at Rei.
To Rei, Anastasia was a trustworthy—though her curiosity occasionally ran wild—comrade, but that was only because he knew her well.
For the Centaurs from settlements other than Damran's, Anastasia was someone they had only met for the first time today, so being told to trust her outright was an unreasonable demand.
But... seeing Rei, whom the Centaurs trusted, nod in approval, they decided to follow Anastasia's lead for now and began to act.