Only after Angel questioned him in detail did he understand what had happened.
Unexpectedly, while he had been studying the magic array, Nis and the others had gone through quite a lot.
Hunting Sequence, mechanical puppets. It sounded pretty good, didn't it? Unfortunately, it had already been destroyed, leaving no way to study it further.
Angel looked at Dangros. "When did the Mind Tether go silent? Before it did, did they say what they were going to do or where they were going?"
Dangros said, "No one's spoken for an hour. Before that, the soul called Reynolds seemed to be leading them to..."
Dangros sank into recollection. Since it could not understand some of the topics discussed through the Mind Tether, its attention had been somewhat scattered at the time.
Just then, Toby suddenly chirped.
Angel looked at Toby. "You mean, the second level?"
Toby nodded. At the same time, Dangros suddenly remembered. "Right, right! The second level! I remember that gray-haired old man was still muttering before the voices stopped, saying something about the route to the second level being strange."
"What was strange about it?" Angel asked.
Dangros froze. It could not remember either...
Angel sighed. He had originally thought that Dangros would be more reliable because it could speak. Now it seemed that he would still have to rely on Toby.
Angel turned his gaze toward Toby. Toby raised his head rather proudly, shot Dangros a sidelong glance with his tiny eyes, then began chirping in a lilting, rhythmically varied tone.
Dangros was utterly baffled, but Angel, who was fluent in bird language, nodded repeatedly.
"I understand."
From Toby's message, Angel learned what Nis had said before entering the second level: "This route is strange. We actually have to walk back and forth over it twice. It's