Jin's lecture continued.
At the moment, barriers could be formed into geometric shapes like spheres, hemispheres, or rods, but they hadn't yet reached the point where they could be shaped freely.
However, if the skin of an Ancient Dragon possessed properties that allowed free ether and mana to pass through easily while preventing them from leaking out...
"…I see. I understand what you're getting at, Jin."
Saki's eyes sparkled as she stared at the scrap in her hand.
"Let's test it."
Jin took one of the scraps and channeled mana into it.
"Oh!?"
The wrinkled scrap suddenly snapped taut and straight, transforming into something resembling a thin plate of steel. When he flicked it with a fingernail, it let out a sharp metallic clink. It felt exactly like flicking a thin sheet of iron.
"This is incredible."
Watching from the side, Elsa and Saki were equally wide-eyed.
"Yeah, I didn't expect it to be this effective…"
"Mhm, I agree. I can see why they'd call this the ultimate material."
"…We definitely need to secure a large shed skin, no matter what."
Jin reaffirmed their objective once again.
"Jin! Come here for a second!"
At that moment, Sion called out to him.
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Um… you see, I feel like there's something over there."
Sion pointed about fifteen degrees to the right of their current heading.
"Something?"
"It's just… something. I don't know how else to describe it."
"Hmm…"
Sion was a member of the demon race who had been born and raised in this northern land, even if she was young. Jin decided that she might possess a unique intuition.
"Alright. Land 1, change course."
"Roger."
"Jin, you believe me?"
Sion looked surprised, even though she was the one who had brought it up.
"Yeah. There's no way to know which way is the right one, anyway. For now, I'll trust your intuition, Sion."
"A-Ah, thank you…"
Sion looked down, her face turning a faint shade of red.
After another thirty minutes of travel, Mount Giirutse loomed close. Suddenly, Sion spoke up again.
"Jin! L-Look at that…"
She pointed out the window. There, right in front of the rising rock walls of the mountain.
"Whoa…"
There stood a massive, ivory-colored mountain… no, it was a dragon, crouching low.
"It's… it's huge…"
Unlike the dragons of Japanese or Chinese myth, terrestrial dragons had a physique closer to the Western concept. It looked like a Komodo dragon with a bloated belly, built so it could stand upright.
"It looks like a monster from a tokusatsu movie…"
The honest impression escaped Jin's lips.
"Tokusatsu movie?" Sion asked, catching the unfamiliar term.
"Oh, no, I just meant it's incredibly massive."
"It really is. This is the first time I've seen one, too."
The dragon wasn't pure white but a warm ivory color. It remained as still and quiet as if it were sleeping.
"…Is it about to molt?" Elsa asked, stepping up beside them to offer her guess.
"Because, look."
There were visible cracks along the ridge of its back.
Jin didn't know the specifics of a reptile's molting process, nor was he certain that an Ancient Dragon even belonged to that family, but he watched the scene with fascination.
The cracks on its back slowly expanded. Because the dragon's body was over forty meters long, the process seemed to happen in slow motion.
"We're in luck. It looks like we'll be able to get a freshly shed skin."
Jin had Land 1 move Capricorn 1 closer, though he decided to maintain a distance of about five hundred meters.
After thirty minutes, the cracks that had started on its back reached the base of its tail. Beneath the old skin, a glossy, moist-looking pink-ivory surface began to peek through.
"…Maybe it molts during breaks in the blizzard," Elsa hypothesized. Her intuition seemed to hit the mark.
There were still many blue patches in the sky—about sixty percent clouds and forty percent blue sky. The weather should hold for a few more hours. The Ancient Dragon continued to slowly, deliberately shed its skin.
"Master, I have detected approaching targets," Reiko reported.
"What?"
"Likely Frost Dragons. There appear to be multiple."
"They've come to eat the fresh skin, haven't they? I'm going to make sure we secure this skin, at the very least."
Jin didn't know how many Ancient Dragons lived in this region, but he was determined to secure at least this one shed skin.
"Father, shall I go out?"
For Reiko, this was the material they had come to collect for her sake.
"Alright, I'm counting on you. You'll use the transporter guns, right?"
"Yes, I understand."
Jin also handed over his own gun.
"There are multiple Frost Dragons. With this, you can fire four shots in total. Be careful out there."
"Yes, thank you very much."
Reiko gave a single nod and exited through the airlock. Since she would have sunk into the deep snow otherwise, she used her force generator to hover and flew toward the incoming Frost Dragons.
"R-Reiko-chan can fly too?"
Seeing this, Sion's face was filled with shock. However, she soon composed herself and muttered with a small sigh, "As expected of Jin…"
Reiko deployed her Invisible magic as she flew over the Ancient Dragon to intercept the scavengers. They were still several kilometers away, but she chose to repel them early so as not to startle the molting dragon.
"Four of them… I see."
One large individual, two medium ones, and one smaller dragon were approaching at about twenty kilometers per hour. The way they kicked up the deep snow made them look like organic snowplows.
"For Father and for myself… I won't let you get any closer!"
The transporter guns were prepared for this very purpose. They were designed to teleport even large dragons and utilized a cartridge-based system.
First, Reiko aimed at the medium-sized dragon leading the pack.
"Fire!"
With its twenty-five-meter body moving at only twenty kilometers per hour, it was impossible for her to miss. The lead Frost Dragon vanished as if erased from the world.
She had set the teleportation destination fifty kilometers to the east. That would buy them about two and a half hours.
The remaining three Frost Dragons stopped abruptly in surprise as their companion suddenly vanished. Taking advantage of that opening, Reiko fired another shot. The smallest individual disappeared.
The transporter gun held two rounds. After two shots, the cartridge had to be replaced. However, since Reiko had two guns, she immediately switched to the second one.
But these were still dragons. Even though she was invisible, the largest one exhaled a breath of extreme cold toward Reiko's general direction—a chill capable of freezing everything in its path.
"…So this is the Frost Dragon's weapon!"
Reiko dodged. However, the evasive maneuver threw off her aim.
"One more!"
She used the second gun to teleport the other medium-sized individual. Only the largest dragon remained, its body measuring roughly thirty meters.
Reiko flew higher to gain sufficient distance while she replaced the gun's cartridge. At that moment, the cold breath exhaled by the Frost Dragon actually reached the high altitude where she was hovering.
"Eh…!"
In her haste to swap the cartridge, her guard had momentarily dropped, and the dragon had exploited that opening. It probably hadn't known her exact position, but it had likely detected her mana; regardless, the extreme cold was exhaled toward her general vicinity.
The freezing mist grazed the left side of Reiko's body.
"…Is this cold breath magical in nature!?"
Because she was using the transporter guns, she couldn't deploy a magic barrier. She had been relying on a solid barrier instead, but it had failed to stop the magical cold.
The clothes, skin, and even the internal framework of her left side froze solid. It was a chill that likely reached minus 250 degrees Celsius.
Reiko's movements became sluggish. Her internal systems were insulated against mana, so the control core in her deepest part was safe, but her magical muscles on that side wouldn't move at all.
"Thawing… can come later…"
Since she could fire with just her right hand, Reiko aimed the transporter gun she had just finished reloading. She aimed carefully and pulled the trigger.
The target was too large to miss. The final Frost Dragon vanished.
"…'Heat'."
The internal heat-generating mechanism alone wasn't enough, so Reiko used Craft Magic to warm her frozen left side. It took several dozen seconds for the thawing process to complete.
"That should ensure no more interference for a while."
After looking around and confirming there were no more Frost Dragons in the area, Reiko slowly returned to Capricorn 1, taking care not to startle the Ancient Dragon.