The darkness that had felt eternal came to an abrupt end the instant a violent impact struck.
When I opened my eyes, the place before me was... probably the inside of the whale's viscera. I couldn't tell the exact location, since I had no idea what structure a whale's organs had.
As I looked around, the first thing I saw was Ms. Ishmael, who seemed to be in a precarious state.
"Ha... haa... huhk..."
"Hey, Ms. Ishmael? Are you all right?"
"You... when did... you get here?"
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"......"
Uh... she looked really bad. She wasn't answering me at all, and from her expression... was she seeing hallucinations or something?
Just in case, I even tapped her shoulder a few times, but she didn't react. Hitting her... didn't sit right with me, so let's skip that.
For now, figuring out where we were was more important.
By ordinary common sense, this would probably be the stomach, but I'd never heard of whales doing that sort of thing.
While I was the first to sweep my eyes over the surroundings, the prisoners who had closed their eyes from the earlier shock began opening them one by one.
"Where... are we?"
"Hmm, there's something like a river stretching out long and thin. If we go upstream... maybe something will come out?"
"Mr. Hong Lu... how can you always stay so calm?"
Seeing Hong Lu calmly assess the situation without the slightest change in expression, Sinclair asked.
The answer, oddly enough, came from Mr. Gregor instead.
"Really...? Well. I guess that kid always did have that sort of vibe."
"No... that's not what I mean. Everyone... what do you think this place is? We're clearly..."
"I know. We came inside its belly. Ourselves."
That's right. We had entered the belly of the pale whale directly.
Using Ms. Ishmael's... rather insane plan.
Let me review it for a moment. The background that made this lunatic plan possible was Dante. More precisely, Dante's Golden Bough ability... let's just call it white-flower suppression for convenience.
Based on that suppression, the plan was for us to go inside the whale ourselves and retrieve the Bough.
It was a gamble, and even then it couldn't fully suppress the white-flower phenomenon, so we needed to get the job done as quickly as possible. On top of that, there was a real time limit from Vergilius: if we failed to finish within six hours, the LCA team would come looking for us after we were eaten. So the difficulty was extremely high. Still, there was no other choice, or perhaps because he trusted Ms. Ishmael, Dante accepted the proposal.
"...As expected, I feel that what isn't in the plan is more planned than anything else. It has only strengthened my newly established theory."
I'm not exactly happy about getting beaten into a bloody pulp by the little brother who barged in because of that lack of planning.
Though this was less about the lack of planning and more about Mr. Heathcliff being the problem. Come to think of it, that pisses me off. Should I hit him once?
"Where... where did the boat go?"
Ah, right. I forgot to say it. Do you remember when I said the darkness ended with that huge impact?
If that sentence made you think of one hypothesis, I'll confirm it. Yes, the boat had been blown to pieces on the way into this place. I never once closed my eyes, so I saw it clearly. It should be over there somewhere.
As soon as the boat's absence was confirmed, Ms. Otis shouted at the prisoners. It was quickly rendered meaningless by Mr. Meursault, though.
"Everyone! Keep your eyes wide open and focus on finding the boat."
"No, there is no need to keep your eyes wide open. To the right, about 400 meters away, I can see it. The ship we rode here on..."
"Not a bad observation. We should move at once."
"You must hear me to the end. More than 75% of the boat is destroyed, scattered, and buried in the ground."
"......"
After hearing Mr. Meursault's words, Hong Lu pointed at one of the fragments rolling around on the floor and said,
"Wow~ Then I guess this is a piece from the boat."
"...It was a boat built with reuse in mind, too."
That fragment was a propeller part that must once have been the boat's engine.
The way it had come to a rattling stop was... pitiable beyond words.
"So it has finally breathed its last... If Mika and Rain had seen this scene, they would have been deeply distressed."
"......"
"We're the ones most distressed here, though..."
As the prisoners fell into thought over the awkward situation, Sinclair's already pale face went even whiter.
"What are we supposed to do now...?"
Tap, tap, tap.
Only the sound of something being tapped irritably drifted among the prisoners. Without the boat, getting out would be impossible. Telling us to swim out of here would be insane, so...
Our radio contact with Vergilius... seemed to be dead, judging from Faust's expression. This is really a problem, isn't it?
As time quietly dragged on with the prisoners' worries, the one who shattered that atmosphere of helplessness and anxiety was Ms. Ishmael.
...When did she come to her senses?
"Manager, you can still sense the Golden Bough's location, can't you?"
"Yeah. It's different from the last branch we went to. It's definitely somewhere 'inside' this thing. But it's far. I can't tell the exact direction..."
"...And you're prepared to turn the clock?"
"Why are you suddenly asking about the clock...? Ah."
Come to think of it, this was the belly of a whale. Naturally, it was a place crawling with mermaids.
Ms. Ishmael's words made sense.
And just then, over there, pale, white-covered mermaids were advancing toward us.
Ah, damn it. We really never get a break.
*
The method for dealing with the mermaids turned white had already been established long ago. At least the framework of it.
Since I could see all the countless possibilities they might take, all I had to do was observe and analyze them appropriately. It was easier than it sounded. It was also what I'd been doing all this time.
The finer points were adjusted by instinct as things happened, so it felt awkward to explain to others. It was awkward to put into words, too.
If I had any talent for tactics or command, maybe it'd be different, but I didn't really have that either. I only ever slipped a word or two to Dante now and then.
Unlike me, who was somehow managing to take down the enemy relatively comfortably, Mr. Gregor, after barely shaking off the mermaids clinging to him, said while gasping for breath,
"Haa... we need to get out of here before more mermaids swarm in."
"We're already trapped inside the whale's belly, though. Is there anywhere to get out to...?"
"Aren't we... going to end up like that too? We were... eaten, after all."
When Ms. Rodion said something ominous, Faust corrected her. The corrected version was no less ominous, though.
"For the moment, thanks to the Golden Bough in Dante's head, I believe the prisoners' white-flower phenomenon can be suppressed. However, there is no telling how long that will last."
In short, we couldn't afford to drag this out.
If this weren't the whale's unidentified viscera, I'd have tried to do something immediately.
"But... which way are we supposed to go? I don't even know where this place is."
Then, seeing droplets of water falling one by one, Hong Lu looked at his shoulder and said,
...Ah. No way?
"How strange... does it rain inside a whale's belly too?"
"...What are you talking about?"
"Oh, a few drops of water just fell on my shoulder."
I immediately checked Hong Lu's shoulder. ...And then I realized that the hypothesis that had just flashed through my mind was true.
No, it wasn't just me. The other prisoners seemed to be gradually catching on as well.
First was Mr. Heathcliff.
"...Hey, wait a second. We got eaten by this thing, and then we fell straight down and crashed here."
"That's right..."
"I sometimes get confused about the obvious, so let me ask. Normally, when you eat food... where does it go first?"
"Why, the stomach, of course. My poor stomach has been crying out in hunger since earlier..."
Let's ignore Ms. Rodion, who was clutching her own belly. Just how much money had she eaten... ugh.
The point was something else. To think I'd miss such a possibility because I was bound by common sense and reason.
Right... for a whale of the Great Lake's scale, it could probably digest things without any need for defecation. It could even absorb everything as nutrition outright, or turn it into mermaids.
"...I have understood the intention behind Mr. Heathcliff's question. In the stomach, gastric acid is continuously secreted to digest food efficiently."
"I think I learned that at school. It's some kind of strong acid... that breaks down... things it touches..."
As Sinclair interpreted Faust's words, his face gradually turned pale.
...It feels strange to say this, but he's getting awfully white. The kid really is timid by nature.
"So... the clothes melted where the water dropped. It stung, too."
Right, Hong Lu's shoulder that I'd checked earlier had a hole burned through it.
But what kind of person has their shoulder melting away and still keeps such a calm face? A wealthy young master... I suppose that might be possible. Most rich people in the City don't have anything resembling a normal way of thinking.
"So we... are going to turn to mush... the moment we arrive?"
"One positive finding I can report is that it seems to possess a mechanism somewhat similar to the biological organs of ordinary living creatures."
"Just stay intact in any form you can..."
And so, after entering the pale whale's interior, we met our first ordeal.
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