Gray's party passed by a lot of different guardians, but without being found by any. Add guided them to a separate zone, guarded by 5 stationary guardians, meaning they couldn't rely on the stealth that got them this far. Latio makes a bone parabolic antenna so Ptolomy can shoot false data into the guardians' sensors. Past them, there was a pitch-black room where all the bookshelves were dead. Ptolemy asked how did Add know the way, but Gray couldn't comment about a Logos React replica in front of an Atlas alchemist. By the way, Gray already pieced together by this point that Rhongomyniad Mythos wasn't any miracle, it was her Logos React creating a function that Rhongomyniad didn't have before. Using Ptolemy as a weak makeshift flashlight, they see that the wall paintings depicted 5 Divine Bodies, and the pod used to store Ergo until volume 1. 3 Divine Bodies were surrounding Ergo's pod, so that part was easy to interpret as the 3 gods Ergo ate. The fourth Divine Body was far below it next to the ground, and the fifth was in the opposite wall. Latio tries to read all paintings at once with
bone cables on a gauntlet, but the pictures were partially encrypted by Cipher. No one has any guess what the wall could mean yet, but Waver motivates Latio to inspect the walls harder by telling her that Cipher solved the mystery. While she's feeling the room with her bone cables, Ptolemy notices a flock of guardians coming in their direction.
After 3 hours of mapping, Karmaglyph's group noticed that the distance they walked is theoretically bigger than the size of the third layer. They haven't run into any guardians yet because Tika was using the night vision binocular ability of her glasses to see their patrol routes before the group was any close to them. And now she noticed a bunch of guardians leaving their routes. The crystalline lens of the eyes is part of the body's outer layer, so Quart can use Moleculeface there to double-check. The guardians were indeed in a stampede, crushing the crystals along the way even though their mission was to protect them.
Back to Gray's perspective, she confirms the 10+ guardians rushing to her, trampling even the other guardians who tried to defend the crystals from the metaphorical locust swarm. Waver suggests retreating, but Latio refuses to move an inch before she learns about Cipher. In volume 1, Latio reinforced her whole ship and commanded a huge amount of familiars, but that was something that took years to make, so she can't do it again now. Gray and Tangere have to hold back the approaching stampede on their own. Latio deciphers the fourth god. It's a god brought to cancel the experiment if necessary. A god that can return Ergo's three gods to nature. The fighting situation is somewhat dire. Tangere can kill three guardians with one bear hug, but that takes a decent while and he's supposed to just tank the rest of the swarm while he does it. Not a viable long-term strategy. Gray also can't shoot Rhon underwater because that would just drown them all. Latio overloads her Accelerated Thoughts to get the processing done faster. Gray can hear the rupturing noises coming from her skull, and also see her tears of blood and the cracks opening in her gauntlet. Before things get out of hand, Waver orients Latio to reallocate Thought Partitions into self-preservation. Now that she's not dying, the inspection picks up its rhythm again and Latio unlocks a hologram of Ergo wearing an ancient outfit. Ptolomy reacts with shock to learning what Ergo looks like.
Originally Posted by Comun
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