A realization arose in Claire's heart. The depths underground mentioned by the fragment were at the very bottom of that spiral staircase.
At the faint urging in her heart, the girl instinctively stepped forward and gently reached her right hand toward the fragment.
When her slender fingertips touched the fragment's surface, a strange warmth and sense of fullness rose from deep within her, as though some missing part of herself had suddenly been restored.
The fragment itself had neither temperature nor texture, like a pure phantom. It merely lent a hazy sheen to her fingertips with its dreamlike radiance.
At the same time, new, broken, disjointed pieces of information appeared in her mind.
...In the Laboratory, ancient High Elves clad in white experimental robes held all manner of strange research equipment as they carefully examined the properties of a fragment.
...High in the sky, where the curvature of the earth could be seen, a brilliant light like the sun suddenly flared across the night-shrouded land, illuminating the entire continent.
Yet the shape of that vast continent differed from the shape of Yar Continent on the map she had seen in the Old Mage's Magic Tower.
...And in the final scene of the memory, specks of light from Fragments streaked in every direction like meteors.
As she absorbed the information left behind by the fragment, and as its light gradually sank into her body, the aura of power around the Half-Elf girl steadily rose.
A moment later, once she had completely absorbed the fragment, her strength had broken through a major realm, reaching a level between late Fourth Rank and the peak of Fourth Rank.
When she opened her eyes, Claire suddenly felt a little lost.
In the final instant when the fragment merged with her, a faint yearning to reunite