Editing Amaryllis in the Ice Country:Chapter 10 (section)

===Part O===

We continue on wordlessly in the dark tunnel.

Rsst, rsst. What we step on isn’t snow, but the corpses of the work robots. It’s one thing if they are metal plates shattered due to frostbite, it’s eerie if they still had their limbs or heads intact. However, if we want to advance, we have to step over them.

“It’s long…”

EIsbahn grumbles behind me. “Yeah…” I too mutter back. The little conversations we have ends here, and all that’s left are some little mumblings.

And this heavy atmosphere lasts for an hour.

“Hey, aren’t we there yet?”

I ask Viscaria.

“Ahh, it’s near. Just a minute more and we’ll reach.”

She answers as she looks at the portable terminal. There are more than a hundred lights lined up in a row on the screen (These are us), and there are ten lights before us.

—Now we’ll finally meet up.

We lost contact with no more than forty due to the earthquake. Given the directive, they’ll continue to move up towards the surface, and this will be the first time we will be meeting other squads. Fifty meters, forty, thirty, we naturally increase our pace as we approach. If we reunite, these isolated villagers, and our team will all be livened uo.

“Eh…?”

We arrive there, and what we see is the hill of rubble.

—An aftershock…!?

Aftershocks keep coming till this point, and a few times, we’re rattled by the collapsing dirt. This particular instance is really dire.

“Move the rubble aside!”

I instruct, and everyone get down to work, digging out this place where our friends may be buried under.

But,

As we keep digging them out one after another, we’re all left speechless.

“Uuu…”

We find our comrades amidst the rubble, each of them hugging the Cradle firmly. It’s obvious that they immediately protected their masters the moment they got buried.

“They’re all dead…” Viscaria checks them all, and reports to me with regret, “Their Mind Circuits are all cracked due to frostbite.”

The bodies look utterly mangled, due to the damage caused by the weight of the rubble and the cessation of electrical supply. The Mind Circuits in the center of the chest are completely shattered beyond shape.

“They, cut these off themselves…”

Eisbahn takes out a cable, and notes silently,

Looking closely, the cables are draped from the Cradles like an umbilical cord. Looking at how the cable remains undamaged, it’s obvious the villagers took them off voluntarily.

—They offer their hopes of life to the Cradles.

If they had just obtained some electricity from the Cradles, they could have survived, but they never did so, not even for a minute, or a second. They shut off all possibility of living, and chose the path of letting our masters live.

—This is our mission, our raison d’etre. But…

“These fools…”

Eisbahn sadly mutters,

All ten villagers look peaceful, giving the expression of those who died after accomplishing their missions. The reason why their communicators are cut off is because they cut off the charging cables.

“Ahh…”

I let out a little sigh.

There are ten Cradles that manage to survive, and ten robots who sacrificed their bodies. All the other villagers can only stand still as they watch this.

“…Let’s move them away.”

I assign the salvaged Cradles to the villagers. The Cradles have exceeded the villagers in numbers, so some villagers, led by Götz, will carry multiple Cradles.

The villagers bury the corpses. Considering how little battery power is left, there’s no other choice here.

A hundred villagers clasp their hands together as they stand in front of this little grave made of ice.

—Ugh…

I feel the anguish over the lost friends, and curse at my own helplessness as I lift my face, saying,

“Okay, let’s go.”

After a short funeral, we head off again.