Several large shared carriages were parked at the carriage terminal.
These were sturdy carriages hitched to powerful horses clad in metal barding. Gathered around each carriage were rough-looking individuals whom you'd never want to approach under normal circumstances.
Their clothing, their facial features, and their aura—all of it screamed that these people were no ordinary civilians.
Among them were some with gentle-looking faces, but I knew that those types could be the most terrifying of all. Fortunately, despite the dangerous atmosphere radiating from this crowd, they were quiet and not a single person was causing a disturbance. Last night's incident really had been an irregularity.
I'd been on edge when Kaiser suddenly suggested we split up and enter Code, but if we were traveling by carriage, there didn't seem to be any problem.
I showed my card and joined one of the lines. Saya and Kaiser were already queued up at separate carriages.
Thankfully, the guys who'd hassled me yesterday didn't seem to be around. I let out a sigh of relief and, following the flow of the line, boarded the carriage.
When the scheduled time arrived, the carriage set off.
Despite its rugged appearance, the carriage barely swayed at all. Only a select few were permitted to enter Code in the first place, so naturally they'd put thought into the comfort.
The atmosphere inside the carriage was tense. I didn't know anyone here, and getting entangled with anyone would be a hassle.
I crossed my arms, closed my eyes, and meditated—until a voice suddenly called out to me.
"Hey, hey! We've arrived! You can actually fall asleep on a carriage headed for Code? You've got some nerve."
"Wha—!? I… I wasn't sleeping! I just had my eyes closed!"
"Don't give me that obvious lie! You were totally out!"
At those words, I frantically looked around.
Everyone else who'd been in the same carriage had already gotten off at some point. I'd only meant to close my eyes for a moment, but apparently I'd lost consciousness entirely.
The one who'd woken me was the carriage driver. I thanked him, straightened my back with a big stretch, and stepped outside, at which point the driver pointed me in a direction.
"See that line over there? Get in it. You can enter right away."
"!! Oh… this is… incredible."
The words of admiration slipped out before I could stop them. What the driver had pointed me toward was a pillar.
Several pillars, each several meters wide. There were doors set into their surfaces, and lines of people extended from each one.
Shadows were being cast. I craned my neck upward, gazing at the sky.
—And then I encountered it.
The driver stood beside me, looking up at the same sight, and explained.
"Yeah, that's Code. The only time it descends this far down is when they're letting people in from the surface."
It was—a colossal structure.
A structure that completely blotted out the sunlight and filled the entire sky. Part island, part ark.
The pillars extended upward and connected to the structure. But they weren't supporting it—there was no way they could be.
It was far too massive to be held up by just a handful of pillars.
The High-Mobility Fortress City Code. An elevated physical-civilization city reigning in the sky.
Were the pillars the entrance to Code? I had experience with cities that flew through the sky at the Maze Inn, but Code was clearly built on a fundamentally different civilization from what I could see.
Had the people of old possessed technology advanced enough to create a city like this?
If I hadn't fallen asleep on the carriage, I could have confirmed Code's shape as it floated in the sky. What a waste of such a rare experience.
But… the scale was bigger than I'd expected.
Among the most famous Treasure Weapons from the era of advanced physical civilization, there was one called a floating fortress—but this was obviously on a completely different level from any fortress.
Infiltrating a city like this to protect royalty… could this quest actually be a big deal? (Only realizing that now?)
No wonder they'd sent three Level 8s.
Only now did I desperately want to go back, but I couldn't even return on my own.
The saving grace was that the other two with me were extremely capable. The most I could do was cheer them on, maybe. At the very least, I had to make sure I didn't get in their way…
I bid farewell to the driver and joined the line.
Near the tower entrance, humanoid figures in bizarre full-body armor stood motionless.
Those were… the famous mechanized soldiers.
Omnipotent soldiers created by the advanced physical civilization. In the Treasure Hall of the advanced physical civilization, they appeared either as Treasure Weapons or as Phantoms—the very essence of advanced physical civilization.
And there were over ten of them visible alone.
Could Code actually manufacture mechanized soldiers?
They said that a mechanized soldier's abilities varied by generation, but the stronger ones boasted combat能力 that could rival high-Level Hunters.
If Code could field multiple mechanized soldiers with power on par with the high-Level Hunters—a rarity even in Zebuldia, the holy land of Hunters—then perhaps it wasn't entirely wrong to call Code the strongest nation in the world.
But if everyone who'd arrived on those carriages was entering Code, that meant dozens of people had been invited in this time alone.
According to the intelligence Kaiser had gathered, they seemed to be trying to build an army—but with this many mechanized soldiers already on hand, what did they need flesh-and-blood humans for?
The line moved more smoothly than expected, and my turn came quickly.
The door slid open without a sound, and I stepped inside.
The interior of the pillar was a room constructed entirely of walls and floor made from a white metal with an inexplicable sheen.
Along the walls stood even more mechanized soldiers—there had been plenty outside, but there were even more in here. They stood over two meters tall. They weren't looking in my direction, but seeing them up close was overwhelmingly intimidating.
The room was divided in two by a counter and a glass partition, with a metal gate at the center. At first glance, it looked like a reception desk at the Explorer's Guild. Simpler in structure than I'd expected.
The people who'd entered ahead of me were nowhere in sight. Beyond the gate stood two men in black uniforms.
Were they Code residents? The cards affixed to their chests bore names and four star markings.
It went without saying, but the residents of Code were just ordinary people too.
While I was mulling that over, one of the two spoke in a flat, expressionless voice.
"We will now begin the entry inspection. Hold your card in your hand and proceed through."
"…Understood."
I was starting to feel a bit nervous.
I took a deep breath, pulled out the card I'd received from the Explorer's Guild, and passed through the gate.
The metal gate had strange decorations inscribed on its inner side.
Was this advanced physical-civilization technology? Was it scanning me? Was it verifying the authenticity of my card too? A Treasure Weapon, maybe?
Nothing particularly dramatic happened as I finished passing through the gate.
—And that was when the man who'd given me instructions furrowed his brow and spoke.
"Stop… Pass through the gate one more time."
"Huh? Okay."
Had something gone wrong?
Following his instructions, I passed through the gate again. But his puzzled expression didn't change.
Did I do something wrong?
The official pressed his ear and murmured something in a low voice, then looked at me—my eyes wide with confusion—and said: "…I have one question. Are you confident in combat?"
What was that all of a sudden…
"…Not particularly."
"Is that so… I suppose so. I have no idea what a man with your abilities was thinking, coming here… but well, you do have a pass card."
My abilities…? Wait—did this gate have some kind of function that measured a person's capabilities?
I'd love to have that function at the Explorer's Guild too. If they could quantify people's abilities, then tragedies like mine—where someone with no real talent accidentally ends up classified as high-Level—would never happen.
Come to think of it, when I'd worn the Evolving Demon Mask, there had been an ability evaluation of sorts too.
Maybe civilizations of all eras ended up thinking along similar lines.
"One more question… Do you harbor any hostile intentions toward Code?"
"Um… no."
The official pressed his ear again and murmured in a low voice. Perhaps he was communicating with someone far away. This was, after all, the civilization that had given rise to smartphones—something like that should be well within their reach.
The official soon looked up at me and, just as before, said in a flat tone—in a voice that, if you wanted to be unkind, sounded somewhat bothered: "…Understood. Inspection complete, authenticity verification passed. Proceed forward and move on to the processing. Welcome to Code."
§ Code, Immigration Bureau. In the room where officials scrutinized information sent from the gates, they were discussing the young man who had just entered.
"A comprehensive score of 4—now that's something. How on earth did a man like that get his hands on a pass card? Even with mass recruitment, they were supposed to be gathering people with outstanding abilities, weren't they?"
"Who knows? He had a genuine pass card, so there was nothing we could do. If we'd turned him away here and it turned out the higher-ups had approved him, who'd take responsibility?"
The gates that people passed through upon entering Code were equipped with numerous functions.
The ability to display a passerby's capabilities as numerical values was one of the few functions still in use in modern Code.
From physical attributes like strength and explosive power, to the five senses, magic power, and even latent potential—everything was analyzed to produce a comprehensive evaluation. The underlying principles were a mystery, but there was no room for doubt about the results.
Yet the information that gate had transmitted when the young man passed through was so unusual that even the officials—who had managed entries for a considerable number of people—couldn't help but question the gate's performance.
Having someone pass through the gate twice was practically unheard of.
"I've never seen a 4. Even lowborn commoners with no talent score around 10… Latent potential and mental fortitude are both included in the evaluation criteria, so a number that low shouldn't be possible."
"He's below lowborn, then. Abnormal, to be sure, but that's exactly why we checked for hostile intentions and ran the authenticity scan. Results were all green—no hostile intent from the man toward Code. The scan also detected no hazardous materials. On paper, there's no problem at all. If it were a 0, maybe we'd suspect a malfunction, but…"
"…Well, fair enough. He's not strong—just weak, huh…"
Currently, what immigration officials needed to be most vigilant about was the infiltration of Hunters.
The Hunters expected to infiltrate this time numbered at most three. Using one of those precious slots to send in a man this weak defied all common sense.
Even if that man were an infiltrator, there was nothing he could do once inside.
While certain weapons like long-range cannons couldn't be used within Code, the mechanized soldiers could be deployed. And even if they couldn't be, any ordinary resident of Code could apparently subdue him easily.
And then, at that moment, an official who had been communicating with one of the gates raised his voice.
"It's come through. Comprehensive score—over ten thousand."
"Ten thousand!? Five digits—is that even possible!?"
"I don't know. But this one is definitely a Hunter. Let him through and deploy the mechanized soldiers. Follow orders and capture him."
The room tensed up at this long-unseen anomaly. By that point, the young man with the comprehensive score of 4 had been completely erased from the officials' minds.