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'Where are you headed?'

Alarmed, Magallan looks around and covers her ears.

Am I hearing things?

She walks out of the Fjal Vetrtonn, and finds the icefield before her eyes.

The blizzard rumbles in the sky. Its roar pierces her body.

The gridlock of jagged frozen earth and the eternal ice sends both tremors and chills up through her feet.

She is now within the blizzard.

She can no longer reject the voice.

'Where are you headed?'

An impossibly heavy gaze lands on the young outlander.

Yet she feels not the oppression of being questioned. Instead, she feels a thirst to confide in this ancient will.

I... will explore the unknown.

'With what will you walk forth?'

Hm...

Curiosity, bravery, knowledge, technology...

And also... the experience of those who've walked before me, and the help of my Sami friends.

Before the joint expedition team set out, we even said in our manifesto that we bear 'the mission of pioneering the future for all mankind.'

—It really satisfies the ego, but I guess it's a bit too lofty for me to say myself, hehe. A wish is just a wish. That's all.

Yep. To me, wishes are important too.

'What do you seek to take away?'

Ecological samples, data, notes, photos...

Knowledge about Sami, the key that leads to the icefield.

And... myself!

My teacher told me that the most, most important thing during an expedition is to survive. That's the only way you'll get to hand what you've collected over to others and pass on your knowledge.

I have a question too.

Are you Sami itself?

Suddenly, the sound of the icefield's winds becomes all the clearer.

The protector has allowed her to walk out of Its embrace.

It has accepted this outlander, seeing her as Its own child.

As such, It pushes the outsider further into the icefield's blizzard, into the frigid cold and toward the fate that the Sami have haughtily and peacefully accepted.

...Actually, I was a little unsure at first. There have been no records of Sami talking to an outsider before.

The Sami also say that you fell asleep, and rarely speak at all anymore.

All-Father... Have you asked anyone else questions like this?

And where did the expeditioners who answered you go afterwards?

The weather gets terrible once you make it through the Fjal Vetrtonn. *sigh* Like now.

You okay, Maggy?

Eh, I'm no stranger to the icefield anymore.

*sigh*... Were you really just spacing out, then?

Huh?! No! I was just thinking about something!

...Like Simone said, it can't be that the Columbians are the only ones who like to explore. That Ursus only likes to expand its territory, and the Sami have no interest in the outside world.

In every era, there are bound to be expeditioners who want to scale the mountains, leave Sami's embrace, and walk toward the endless icefield.

Of course.

Sami's warriors are silent and conservative, but if anyone wishes to do so, Samivilinn will not stop them.

Why, what's wrong?

Hehe, nothing. Let's go.

She doesn't tell her that she might only have found the self-evident answer in a trance. Or that she may have heard tens of thousands of stories over that much span of history.

In an instant, she learned the names of countless men and women who went unrecorded in the history books—The expeditioners who never returned.

The face of the endless icefield does not seem to have gotten much clearer, either.

Even so, will she keep moving forward?

Sami no longer waits for her answer. The mountains gradually disappear into the blizzard behind her.

All there is before her eyes is a vast, silver-white field and a dark shadow stretching on without end.