155 Guardian of Oymyakon

"The Kolyma Highway." The old man sighed. "It is also known as the Road of Bones. It was built during the gold rush under Stalin." He paused to take a long sip of tea before continuing. "The lives of many prisoners were sacrificed to build the road atop the permafrost. It is said that a man died for every meter of road built, and the entire road stretches 2,500 kilometers. Their bodies were left behind, not even buried, and thus they became part of the road. All of the villages originally built along the road were prison labor camps. If the prisoners weren't building the road then they were digging for gold." He shook his head. "It is now treated as a memorial for those that died to create it, but it was also a long time ago. Most of the villages have since disappeared, but we still remain."

"I see..." Ed nodded. 'So, is the golden faith energy the souls of those who died digging the road?' He frowned while rubbing his chin. 'If that's true... then what implications does that have on the world and those within it? Golden faith energy should be a recent phenomenon that appeared at the same time as mana when the Mana Apocalypse started. If my theory is right, then souls and golden faith energy were already around beforehand... But someone would have noticed it. Especially in the age of the internet where it was apparently easy to become famous..." He sighed as he stood up from the table and chugged down the last of his tea. "Thanks for the info." He turned to Haru. "Ready to go?"

"What?" Haru replied in confusion, not understanding what he said.

'Ah, accidently asked in Russian.' Ed shook his head while smiling. "Ready to go?" He asked again in English.

"Mm." Haru nodded.

"WAIT!" The old man stretched out his hand to stop them.

"Hmm?" Ed looked at him while raising an eyebrow.

"The outside world." The old man's voice trembled. "Please, no matter what happened, tell me about it."

Ed hesitated a moment before sitting back down. Ultimately, telling the old man wasn't a big deal, as he would be unable to do anything with the information. Besides, he had time to kill before the war started anyways. Hunting a mutant wouldn't take him too long.

The old man hurriedly poured Ed another cup of tea as he eagerly listened.

"The first apocalypse..." Ed explained the basics of the first apocalypse, the current Mana Apocalypse, mana, mutants, nightmares, and the current state of the world. He even created some flames on his hand to add authenticity to his story. When he finished, he sat in silence while drinking his tea.

The old man seemed to be in shock. After he slowly recovered, he sighed. "I see. I see." He nodded. "It all makes sense now. Why our men didn't return to the village. They likely ran into one of those monsters you described." He glanced up, a hesitant look in his eyes. "If it's alright with you, I'd like to show you something and get your opinion on it."

"Sure." Ed agreed, deciding to humor the old man.

The old man hobbled towards the door and opened it, letting the freezing air rush inside. He, Ed, and Haru hurried outside into the icy tundra. On his way out, the old man reached up towards his roof and broke off a long ice stalagmite. He carried it like one would carry a dagger.

The group walked towards the opposite edge of the village towards the wilderness. However, they did not stop there and continued going north outside of the town. They crossed a river using a crude bridge and continued towards a more mountainous terrain. The entire journey took them nearly two hours with the old man's slow pace within the darkness. Only Ed's light from his arms allowed them to force their way forward.

"Were here." The old man stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Ed frowned as he looked around. As far as he could tell, they were still in ordinary wilderness. The permafrost covered ground was still the same. The mountain was just a mountain. Everything was perfectly normal.

The old man took his ice stalagmite he carried with him and leaned against the ground. He scraped it across the permafrost with his trembling glove-covered hands. He breathed heavily as he started digging out the ground. "Learned the hard way." He huffed as he dug. "Gotta use ice or you'll upset it. It doesn't like human tools."

"Oh?" Ed's curiosity grew as he listened. He activated his path of blue water, creating two ice stalagmites. He passed one to Haru and then joined in on the digging.

Three men, one old and two young, digging permafrost in the middle of the Russian Wilderness in the dark of night would make for a bizarre sight if anyone spotted them. The digging was taking long enough that Ed had to occasionally use fire to warm up the old man.

"Haha, usually doesn't take this long." The old man grinned. "It's easier during the day or near the end of winter." He explained.

As Ed scraped the permafrost, he finally saw what could only be described as a blue glow. When his ice stalagmite scraped against it, the icy tip vanished. "What the hell is this thing, old man?" He questioned as he poked the blue object. It felt squishy to the touch, like a jelly fish of some sort. The skin was transparent, showing it full of what he assumed to be water.

"If I knew that then I wouldn't have brought you along to ask." The old man laughed as he kept digging.

His curiosity growing, Ed created two stalagmites and dug with both hands, slowly enlarging the portion he exposed.

Hours passed as the trio continued to dig, and the sun was now beginning to rise in the sky. The rays of morning light were momentarily blinding as it reflected off the icy surface, but they quickly grew used to it. Shortly into the morning, they finished digging out the surface for nearly a hundred meters in all directions. Such a large job was only finished so quickly since they didn't dig deep and because of Ed and Haru's strong bodies.

The entire surface matched the blue glow Ed had dug up earlier. He tried to step onto the surface of it with his boot, but the blue object shook and trembled, as if it was displeased by the action. Remembering the ice tools, he covered his boots in ice and tried again. This time, he had no problem walking on the surface. However, he needed to continually reapply the ice on his boots as the strange object constantly absorbed the ice. As he walked across it, he felt like he was walking atop a trampoline or waterbed. The object sank with each step he took, sending odd waves out throughout the surface.

'What in the world is this?' He wondered as he stepped off of it. Flames surrounded his body and carried him into the sky, allowing him to look down upon it with a bird's-eye view. As he looked, his eyes widened in shock, and his entire body trembled. "How is this even possible?!" He shouted in surprise.

"What is it, Sensei?" Haru called from the ground.

Now that he saw it from above, Ed almost couldn't believe he hadn't recognized it before. He had truly just been walking along the tightrope of death. Perhaps not even his fight with Mr. Sai in the past had been quite as suicidal as what he had just done. He slowly lowered himself back to the ground near the edge of the object. He grabbed the back of the old man and Haru's jackets and dragged them back away from the edge.

Haru and the old man looked confused, but they didn't fight Ed's efforts to pull them away.

Ed didn't stop moving. Each step he took was carefully placed as he tried to be as quiet as possible. He only stopped after getting several hundred meters away. When he let go of the old man and Haru's jackets, he was covered in cold sweat. He looked far more exhausted now than he did from an entire night of permafrost pit digging.

"Sensei?" Haru asked in a concerned voice, worry evident on his face.

Ed took several deep breaths as he calmed himself down. 'I might not have recognized it if I hadn't fought it so closely before.' He chuckled nervously to himself. He looked towards the other two. "That was the Water Nightmare." He said in a serious voice.

"What?!" Haru yelled in shock.

The old man's eyes widened in surprise, but he didn't seem to panic. He had only heard of the nightmares recently and didn't seem to understand their true terror.

Ed glared at the old man. "How did you find it? How long has it been there for?" He asked.

The old man reached his gloved hands towards his face and breathed into them, seemingly trying to warm himself. "I reckon it was about 20 years ago... A boy in the village snuck away to play on his own. The entire village went out to search for him. Someone else ended up finding him, but I saw a hint of that strange glowing object instead. I returned later with tools, but the ground quaked each time I tried digging with them. Eventually, I figured out I could use ice to dig." His body trembled as he lowered his hands and placed them in his jacket pockets. "It seems to come and go. It's gone more often in the summer, though it's always vanishing at random intervals."

Ed remained silent after hearing the answer. 'To think I found the resting place of a nightmare, even if for only part of the year... As far as I know, there's never been such a discovery before. Espers don't know where the nightmares go after the battles.' He frowned as he glanced back at the glowing blue blob in the distance. 'What should I do with this information? I could pass it to the Hunter Association... They might be able to organize well enough to slay it once they actually know where it is. One of the hardest parts of nightmare battles if the usual lack of preparation, the random terrain, and the random location.' He glanced back at the old man. '20 years? Well, I guess there's no rush to tell others if it's been staying here that long. I wonder if that's what protected the village? I thought it was strange for there to be no mutants near the area even if this is a freezing wasteland. Mutants are extremely adaptable, but the aura of a nightmare would almost definitely keep them at bay.' He rubbed his chin. 'Along those lines of thought, can I find the other nightmare's resting places like this? We can assume they prefer resting areas similar to their own elements. In most cases, they probably rest far from any human civilizations. But if they do happen to be near one like here, then there are probably no mutants in the area at all. I should keep my eyes open for anything similar in the future. They also might change resting places throughout the year like the Water Nightmare... Maybe it goes to Antarctica in the summer when it's warmer here?'

"Sensei." Haru called, shaking Ed from his thoughts.

"Hmm?" He glanced at him. "What is it?"

"Sensei, can we use the Water Nightmare's flesh for our chimera upgrades?" Haru curiously asked.

Ed blanked for a moment, not sure of how to reply to such a ludicrous idea. When he finally responded, he shook his head. "I don't know. But we'd be courting death if we tried."

"Eh, I don't think it would hurt anybody." The old man shrugged as he interrupted. "I went to town on it with all sorts of tools in the past and it never did anything other than cause the ground to quake."

"That..." Ed hesitated. "It may be resting in a deep sleep of some sort? Or maybe it just doesn't bother since we're practically ants compared to it..."

"Sensei, let's give it a try!" Haru insisted excitedly. "Think about it. We'll be Water Nightmare chimeras! Who could possibly hurt us after that?!"

Ed frowned. 'Is it even possible? The flesh is mostly water based and has an extremely high concentration of mana. Once I remove the mana to properly integrate the flesh, won't only water remain? Or is the water special in some way? The human body is roughly 70 percent water, so it is theoretically possible... But what will happen once an esper's mana fills the nightmare water integrated into the flesh?' He thought back on what he knew about the Water Nightmare. As far as the nightmares went, it wasn't the strongest defensively. In fact, it was pretty easy to explode portions of its body with attacks, though it always quickly healed afterwards. Would the flesh even be useful if it acted like that? He really wasn't sure how to classify such a monster, as it clearly wasn't some simple mutant. This was an entire new realm of experimentation he had never come close to dealing with before.

"Sensei?" Haru asked once again, hope visible in his eyes. He was acting far more childish than was usual for him with the prospect of such a gift right before his eyes.

"We'll give it a try." Ed sighed while shaking his head. "But we'll test it first. We need to catch a mutant to use as an experimental base." He glanced back towards the glowing blue light. "Also, we'll need to be prepared to run if things go south."

"Alright!" Haru's eyes gleamed with joy at the answer. "Let's go hunting!"