Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 10 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue: After the Storm, and Before the Storm 
April 6th, 2045, Quartierlatin Country, ruins 
“Ughh...” Rising Sun’s Blue Screen was moaning in front of the plant’s console. 
He was doing official work investigating the ruins. 
Thanks to Ray and Barbaroy’s help, he’d received a very lucrative quest. He was very thankful for that. 
For a clan as insignificant as theirs, this was a true stroke of luck that he probably hadn’t deserved, what with the bad karma on him from the incident at Torne. 
Regardless, it was a very good quest, and he’d feel indebted to Ray and Barbaroy for a while. 
The only problem was that he was the only Master who’d received this quest. 
There were other people who wanted it. Some had gone through introductions that didn’t involve Ray and Barbaroy. 
The reward was very good, so of course there were many who would have liked to work alongside him. 
However, the quest had the condition of having high-level engineer or mechanic grouping jobs, and those were rare even among Masters who’d moved from Dryfe to Altar. 
No one else fit the conditions as well as Blue Screen did. 
As a result, he was facing the ruins’ computers all on his own. 
“Shit... I’m playing Dendro, but it feels like I’m working IRL,” he grumbled as he typed away on the console. 
Despite his complaining, he did excellent work, easily unlocking many systems that had left tian scholars stumped. 
“Ohh, another cyclic code security program. Dream of Electric Sheep — Gremlin.” 
He used his Embryo to dull certain functions of the systems while scanning the data for anything significant. 
“Heeey, how’s work?! I got ya somethin’ to eat!” Dum-Dum entered the plant and called out to Blue Screen. “Makin’ any progress?” 
“I’d say so. But man, is it just me, or is what we’re doing right now really far from what a usual PK clan does?” 
“Well, we lost Vermin, so now we’re a clan of just us two. We don’t have a lot of options, so we should be thankful for good jobs like this.” 
“True,” Blue Screen nodded as he ate some of what Dum-Dum had brought. “Any changes in town?” 
“Nope, wouldn’t say so. You’ve still got tons of repair and search quests. Lookin’ for lost items is basically all I’m doin’ right now. Speakin’ of which, I found a small engine in one of the hidden rooms in here.” 
Dum-Dum’s Embryo, Mary, was specialized in tracking, and with it, looking for lost items or people. 
This side of his Embryo didn’t see much use back in Torne, but it was actually the Embryo’s main feature. 
He led a PK clan, but many would say that he was better suited for something else. 
“An engine, eh...? What’s the name?” Blue Screen asked. 
“Identification wasn’t enough for it, so all I got was ‘Reactor.’ I handed it over to the Altarian research group stationed here in town. We’ll see what they find out. Oh! By the way! This old man in the plaza had this fancy-lookin’ orchestra. They were playin’ Engelberg’s music, and they were so goddamn good!” 
“Oh, that’s the composer you like, right?” 
“Hell yeah. He’s not releasing anything new at the moment, though. Well, he’s old, so maybe he retired?” 
Blue Screen continued working even as he chatted with Dum-Dum. 
“Hm?” he said suddenly, coming across an interesting set of data. 
It was design data that had to be inputted into the plant’s production line, and the monitor displayed some sort machine’s blueprint along with the corrupted name, “Crystal ?????.” 
“The data’s corrupt?” Blue Screen muttered. “Now that’s something not even Gremlin can... Wait, there’s something more.” 
There was more data. The folder had another, completely undamaged machine blueprint. 
It displayed what clearly looked like a mechanical horse and had the name “Mass-Production Prism Steed, Second Model.” 
It was a gift from the past. 
The ruins containing a warped hope were now showing a light of hope untainted. 

 
April 6th, 2045, Prism Rider, Ray Starling 
Thursday. 
My few, yet long, days in Quartierlatin had come to an end, and it was time for us to leave. 
Azurite was going back to the capital, and we were accompanying her. 
We were planning to go all the way to Altea today, then make our way back to Gideon. 
It was basically my Dendro hometown, and it felt like I hadn’t been there in ages. 
The entrance to Quartierlatin was growing ever more distant, and I saw all the people seeing us off. 
Azurite was here unofficially, so the only ones there were the people we’d met here. 
There was Shirley and all the other people from the inn we stayed in, Countess Quartierlatin, and Veldorbell. 
Tom had already returned to Gideon. Veldorbell had stayed behind, but I hadn’t gotten to see him much, due to differences in online times. 
Still, every now and then, I could hear Veldorbell’s music echoing through the town. 
He claimed he would stay here a bit longer, saying that, “I have something I wish to do, but the people of this town need the consolation my music provides.” 
I’d also met the two Rising Sun guys here, but they hadn’t been able to see us off because of all the work they had going on in the ruins. 
Apparently, they’d found a way to mass-produce Prism Steed replicas and were now extremely busy producing and deploying units to the knights. 
For a moment, I worried that I’d accidentally pushed too much work on them, but B3 said, “They’re getting something from this, so don’t worry about it too much.” 
Anyway, with that warm goodbye, we left the town, but the inside of our carriage, drawn by Silver, was so cold that I could feel it here on the coachman’s seat. 
We were in B3’s extremely luxurious, comfy carriage, and that seemed to have upset Azurite a bit. 
It seemed to bother her that B3 was riding something this fancy after doing significant damage to the kingdom, and B3 seemed to be worried that Azurite would take it away as compensation. 
“And I was pretty sure they’d hit it off,” I sighed. 
“Their personalities may be a match, but human relations aren’t so simple,” Nemesis commented. 
“That’s true...” 
That also meant that there wasn’t any fundamental incompatibilities between them, so I could still hope that they’d eventually get along. 
“Phew...” 
Anyway, if you ignored the confrontation at the end, my time here after the incident at the ruins had been very peaceful. 
I’d felt the same after Franklin’s Game. The contrast between the chaos during major incidents and the peace after them was really staggering. 
I really hope we don’t get anything that could cost irreversible losses anytime soon, I thought. 
“I’m not certain if you can hope for that,” said Nemesis. “The problems between Altar and Dryfe are still unsolved, and let’s not forget that this is Infinite Dendrogram. Even if nothing happens here, there could be major incidents happening in a distant land right this very moment. This world is vast, after all.” 
“True...” 
In that way, it was just like in real life. Something was always happening in a place you couldn’t see or reach. 
“And that is why you cannot stop yourself from reaching out and preventing any tragedies you encounter, no?” Nemesis said. 
“Maybe,” I admitted. 
I just disliked things that could leave a bad taste in my mouth, but it felt like I’d been constantly running into such events ever since I’d started Dendro. 
Perhaps that was what made these peaceful, uneventful days so dear and precious, like the clear sky after a violent storm. 
Even if another storm was inevitable, the fact that none of them continued forever was what allowed human hearts and minds to carry on without breaking. 
“After the storm, and before the storm” seemed like the best way to describe these past few days.

To be Continued in the Next Episode