Anxious about running into another Fernleg Scorpion, Chihaya keeps checking all her monitors repeatedly as she runs the Allrounder.
The vigilance pays off — she does a double take at the camera footage and stops the Allrounder’s legs.
The snow had caved in unnaturally. Not an animal — there’s probably a hollow under the snow.
“a crevasse, maybe……”
Give me a break, was her honest reaction.
A crevasse — a crack in the ground sealed over by snow. Step through it and the Actanoid sustains damage; deep enough and you lose the connection entirely.
The problem is she can’t tell how wide or how far it extends. Going around it in a wide arc is an option, but that means more chances of running into wildlife like Fernleg Scorpions, which is its own kind of scary.
Chihaya fires the assault rifle Breakthrough at the crevasse. After a few shots the balance tips past some threshold and the snow starts pouring down into the crack like it’s being swallowed. It takes the surrounding snow down with it in a collapsing rush, and the full shape of the crevasse is revealed.
Not as large as she’d feared. The thick-packed snow along the rim fell in too, exposing bare rock.
“looks like I can just walk past……wait?”
A red highlight had appeared on the main monitor showing the crevasse.
That highlight is the resource exploration app. She’d been so caught up in the fight with the Fernleg Scorpion after finishing the Secondi Apple search, she’d forgotten to turn the app off.
But if it’s highlighting the ground itself, the chances of it being a plant or animal are low. Moss at most.
Moving carefully so as not to slip, Chihaya eases the Allrounder forward and peers into the crevasse.
It’s a very deep crack. Whether it was originally a cliff face or worn away by snowmelt she can’t say, but if something fell in, even an Actanoid with a metal body would be stuck.
She uses the light mounted on the head to illuminate the bottom, and the resource exploration app’s response intensifies.
“r-rare metals……?”
She’d need to bring back a sample to know for sure, but apparently there’s some kind of rare metal deposit here.
Sure enough, there’s something that looks like pale rock exposed down there, but Chihaya has no idea what it actually is.
“oh no, what do I do……heheh”
According to the rules, she should report the discovery to the New Frontier Resource Agency.
Which means she has to interact with other people.
A tall order for the socially anxious Chihaya.
“email is fine, right. it’s fine, right?”
She mutters to no one in particular and sends an email to the New Frontier Resource Agency from her computer.
The reply to her image-attached email comes back quickly.
“let’s see, whether to make the coordinates public?”
Apparently she can have the deposit’s coordinates listed on the New Frontier Resource Agency’s website, publicly advertising it as her discovery and building her reputation.
If she keeps the coordinates private, the New Frontier Resource Agency will auction off the location data on the condition that Chihaya keeps it confidential, and after taking a handling fee they’ll pass the proceeds to her.
Reputation or money — her call.
Not wanting attention, Chihaya immediately chooses money.
The rest of the paperwork will apparently be handled by the New Frontier Resource Agency. More relieving than the easy process itself was the fact that the whole thing was settled over email.
She pulls out a folding ice axe to chip off a sample from the crevasse rim. She’d packed it thinking it was probably necessary for a snowy mountain even if she’s not in her own body — hadn’t expected to use it for something like this.
Whether from being frozen or something else, the ground is surprisingly hard. She chips away at it with the ice axe and runs it past the resource exploration app. No response — but without knowing how the signal is down there, there’s no way she’s descending into the crevasse.
She gives up and moves the Allrounder away.
The actual job was always just harvesting and delivering the Secondi Apples. Ore deposits are none of her business.
She manages to get down the Wakagawa Upper Mountain Range without any more wildlife encounters, and docks the Allrounder at the base of a suitable tree.
The sky has gone fully dark, and moving carelessly is out of the question. The loaner Allrounder has no night-vision scope of any kind, and navigating by moonlight alone feels unreliable. It does have lights, but fighting wildlife at night is something to avoid.
She strings wire between the surrounding trees to set up a basic perimeter, raises the assault rifle, and puts her back to a trunk.
Bracing herself for an all-nighter, she reaches for her coffee.
“so bored”
A day in the New Frontier isn’t too different from Earth. About an hour’s difference, and that gap would probably grow larger the deeper into the New Frontier you go.
Either way, waiting for sunrise in the New Frontier means spending a solid ten hours like this.
If she were out here in person, she’d need to build a fire for warmth, prepare food, keep alert. The situation would carry its own kind of tension.
But it’s an Actanoid in the New Frontier. No need for warmth or food. External threats — insects, snakes — aren’t much of a problem.
Being able to wait for sunrise with somewhat less tension was another advantage of Actanoids. Meant more boredom to kill, too.
She pours coffee from a bottle into a paper cup and listens closely to the sounds coming through the Allrounder.
She turns up the speaker volume and sets her computer to analyze the audio, ready to catch the sound of an animal’s footsteps or breathing. The Allrounder’s sound pickup is low quality so it’s mostly just peace of mind, but better than nothing.
“oh, that’s a nice sound……”
The calls of New Frontier insects. The sound of a fish leaping somewhere in the clear current of the Wakagawa. The soft rustle of leaves and grass swaying in the breeze.
The ambient sounds of a distant otherworld play out in the basement, sounds her own skin can’t feel from where she sits behind the controls — something almost frustrating about that.
Lost in a strangely wistful feeling, Chihaya lets her attention drift, and tips over the cup of coffee in a spectacular spill.
“ah! I did it……”