Editing BlazBlue:Spiral Shift - Hyokujin no Eiyu (section)

===Part 3===

The clouds that had covered the sky had gone away and the white moonlight was faintly illuminating the ground.

Before they knew it, the reddish-brown soil under their feet had changed into a grayish pebbly soil.

He walked down the gentle slope, then up, then down again. After repeating this process several times, Jin stopped for the first time in a while at the destination he had reached.

“This is it.”

Grimwood stepped forward from behind Jin. One of the soldiers illuminated it with a light from his equipment.

As Jin and Grimwood looked at each other, they saw a cave in the rocky wall, a mixture of rock and earth. It was not a natural cave. The entrance was chained, and the dark passage was reinforced with wood.

“It has the air of a mine... Do you think it’s a coal mine?"

The soldier with the light said and another soldier gave him a difficult look.

“Coal mines, who uses coal nowadays?”

“Who knows?”

“No, it doesn't look like a coal mine."

It was Jin who said this to the soldiers who were tilting their heads. He walked up to the entrance of the cave and picked up a small, black ore lying there.

Only about the size of a thumbnail. It had a tough texture and was much lighter than it looked. When he put pressure on his fingertips, it cracked and crumbled like dry clay.

A blue light flashed momentarily on the small section. Jin raised an eyebrow slightly.

“It's the same as the crystallized seithr that the Titan used back then.”

The rock giant that ran amok in the forest when Jin first went out with the 9th squad. Come to think of it, they still didn't know who on either side of the camp had summoned that Titan.

“It was probably made here."

Grimwood muttered bitterly as he stared into the cave.

“Our enemies have ties to the Librarium, the Ikaruga Federation and even Sector Seven. Coming along with all their distributing weapons.”

He took out a light from his equipment and led the way, illuminating the area as he went.

(Again...)

The entrance to the not-so-narrow cave was filled with huge bodies, and as he followed Grimwood's back, Jin's mind dripped with disquiet. Grimwood said that it was not a prediction, but a fact that the "enemy" was distributing weapons in various directions. Perhaps it is true.

But then, where did he find out? How did a mercenary who was running around the battlefield day in and day out know so much? Grimwood was the one who connected all the dots, wasn’t he?

(Oh well. If he's an “enemy”... Then I'll cut him down.)

Jin warned himself to not be too eager in trusting him as he leaned toward the man walking in front of him as the captain. When the time comes, he won’t let his cutting edge wander.

The cave soon turned into a long staircase. The stairs seemed to go on and on, downward with no end in sight.

"Hmm......"

After more than ten minutes of descent, Grimwood stopped and groaned quizzically.

It was a dead end. There was a landing slightly wider than the width of the stairs and the landing was cut off by a flat wall of earth.

But something didn't feel right.

“Grimwood, step aside.”

Pushing his body forward, Jin slowly pushed the tip of his Yukianesa against the earthen wall. The tip of the scabbard touched the wall and then dug in. The space was filled with ripples that can described as plunges into water, shaking the view of the earth wall.

He dug his sheath further into the ground and eventually buried himself in the earthen wall.

Then the view Jin looked at changed. The stairs, which had been a dead end, turned into a passageway and continued onward.

“Camouflage Ars Magus.”

When Jin said it out loud, it seemed to convey the understanding to the rest of the group. After Jin slipped through the wall and entered the back, Grimwood and the others followed him inside.

He wondered if the air had changed a little. It was hotter and more humid than before.

He had the chilling feeling that he had entered the body of a reptile. It was not a good feeling.

“Stay sharp.”

Muttering quietly, Grimwood turned off the light. Following suit, the soldiers who had their lights on also turned them off.
　
Then it was pitch black, he couldn't see a thing around him, not even the faintest bit.

It was not so easy to stand out in the dark with lights on. Now that they had passed through the camouflage Ars Magus, they should consider this to be enemy territory. Jin also pulled himself together and moved forward, keeping an eye on his surroundings.

As long as they were careful, the darkness was not a problem if they just wanted to keep going. They put their hands on the wall and walked forward, using each other's breathing as a guide to the distance.

“It's going downhill...”

One of the soldiers behind them said. The road was indeed gently descending.

After descending so many stairs, were they still going down? Growing more cautious with each step, Jin carefully pumped his saliva into his thirsty throat.

There was one more thing that grew on them as they went on. The smell.

It was a stinking smell that Jin, Grimwood and the other soldiers remembered. Rather, they were familiar with it for some time now

It was the smell of death. Naturally, they all remembered the incident with the ghouls in the basement. Come to think of it, the lift had gone down a long way that time too.

"Oh, light."

Jin, who was walking in the lead, took a small breath and sharpened his voice in alarm.

He saw a pale blue light down below. Once they reached the bottom of the hill, they arrived at the place where the light had been. It was a room with a domed ceiling. At least it was much larger than the two-connected tents of the ninth squad. The walls did not seem to be bare earth, unlike the passageways they had come through. The area was dark and the color and texture were visibly not clear, but it was seamless.

There was nothing that looked like lighting anywhere in the room. The blue light that Jin saw was actually water that was shallowly soaking the floor of the room.

There was water all over the floor, almost to the level of Jin's ankles. The water glistened with a blue light, illuminating the area around his feet.

When he stepped on it, it felt a little heavier than water. Still, it was not so heavy as to interfere with his walking.

“...Liquid seithr?”

As he said this, Grimwood walked past Jin, who stopped to look around, and dragged the sound of water to the center of the room.

The light was the same as the momentary glow of the section of mineral Jin picked up at the entrance. But he didn’t know where it was coming from.

“Captain, up there.”

One of the soldiers pointed at the ceiling. Jin looked up with Grimwood. The ceiling was inscribed with what looked like ancient letters, spreading out in a circle around the apex of the dome. In the center of the circle of letters was a coffin-like object.

“Jin, can you read?"

Grimwood asked, looking up at the letters with his eyes. Jin was also looking up at the strings of letters on the ceiling, looking for something to help him decipher them.

"No, I've never even seen them before..."

"Oh, yeah. Ancient ruins or something?"

Such is the look of the place. Giving up on deciphering the words on the ceiling, Grimwood turned his head around. He stopped his gaze at a point on the wall.

"This may be a hit"

As Grimwood said this, there was what looked like a door in the corner of his eye. The border of the wall, not found anywhere else, was made up of squares. There was more to it in the back.

Grimwood made his way to the door, making a sound of the water. He folded the handle of his great axe on his back so that he could remove it at any time and placed one hand on the handle of his back weapon.

The soldiers followed, guns ready. After some delay, Jin also started walking. But... Suddenly.

He could hear a voice.

— Niisama.

A young girls voice, stuttering. Jin could not immediately remember whose voice it was. But he knew it was a voice he should remember. It was a voice he had heard before.

At the same time, a feeling of discomfort like mud rose up in him.

He reflexively reached out and summoned Yukianesa, then turned around and positioned himself low.

“Jin, what's wrong?"

As he opened the door, Grimwood turned and asked. Without looking in his direction, Jin replied sharply.

“Go ahead.”

“But-."

On the verge of saying something, Grimwood bottomed out his words.

He felt a presence from somewhere. Something was there. It was an overwhelming and bizarre presence that grabbed up every instinctive fear in Grimwood. Even though he couldn't see it yet, his throat slumped and he heard the sound of air escaping.

The water at his feet, the walls and ceiling right there, and the empty space in front of him all seemed to be coming at him with mass and pressure, and he felt frightened. The fear of not knowing the reason or identity of such a thing led to more threads of fear that sewed Grimwood's spirit.

"Jin... This is..."

“Go! You're in the way."

He spat lowly. Grimwood understood what was unreasonable in that harsh but overwrought voice.

He pushed the soldiers, who were already hunched over and trying to escape to the next room, into the door and turned around.

“Finish up quickly!"

"I know, I know. I’ll catch up soon."

With Jin's reply, Grimwood and the nineth squadron left the room.

At that moment, the door slammed shut behind Grimwood with a sound like scratching metal.

With no time to interrupt anything, the doorway was blocked, and Grimwood and his soldiers held on to it, pulling and pushing with all their might, but it did not budge.

"Damn it!"

Unable to bear it, Grimwood slammed his fist against the door. The impact was oddly dull.

There was no sound from the other side of the door. Jin must have heard the door close, but he didn't see any reaction to it.

"What should we do, Captain...?"

One of the soldiers asked anxiously.

Beyond the door was another passage. It stretched without side passages into the unseen depths of darkness.

“...Jin said he would catch up. Let's just trust him now and move on."

If anything, at least a Nox Nyctores would be able to destroy this door.

He was very curious about the presence he had felt in that room, but there was nothing he could do standing here. Grimwood began to walk down the corridor with his men behind him.