After spending what seemed like forever, the Ouroboros took a quick break at the Namba Mound Camp to clean their clothes and enjoy some of Manana’s cooking. Night was beginning to fall across the desert, which meant it was the perfect time to debrief themselves about the mission they were given. Lanz and Sena got to work setting up the fire for tonight, while Eunie and Taoin got their sleeping arrangements ready.

“So first thing in the morning, we need to find out where Colony µ is and answer their distress call.” Noah was the first to speak up, already having pulled up a chair and enjoying the warmth of the twigs beginning to incinerate.

“I still don’t get it. I thought Colony Mu was somewhere completely different.” Eunie spoke up, playing with her feathers on her head, still not entirely sure just what exactly they were doing, or even why.

“That’s the new Colony Mu. Apparently, this one we’re looking for disappeared a long time ago and thought to have been completely wiped out.” Taion explained, pushing his glasses up as he joined the rest of the group, all now gathered around the campfire.

“But if we’re getting a call from them on our Iris’, that means they’re still out there somewhere. And the records from then showed that around this area was where that colony once was.” Mio chimed in, delivering cups of tea for everyone to sip on as they listened.

“But what if it’s a trap set up by Moebius?” Sena asked worryingly, taking a sip of that tea to calm her nerves.

“Then we go in and beat the snuff out of them like we always do!” Lanz answered confidently without even skipping a beat.

“Riku agree. Is win-win case no matter what happen.” Riku nodded, fully trusting the Ouroboros power to stand up to anything in their way.

“Manana will help too! Just say the word and Manana will give anyone a bad bitey-bitey.” Manana cheerfully added, boosting the morale of the whole group. Everyone laughed, relishing in the company of one another. As the night went on, the group shared other anecdotal stories about each other, having a merry time before the group had finally decided it was time to get some shut-eye.

When morning came around, the crew packed up their belongings and gathered around in a circle one more time to discuss the plan for today.

“The desert is a pretty large place, and we still don’t know what this colony actually looks like. For now, I believe our best course of action is to split up into pairs and cover more ground. If you get into trouble, don’t fight. Contact us and we’ll all come over to you.” Noah delivered the speech to the group. With no one having any complaints, they all broke off, forming groups on their own. Noah and Lanz would search to the north. Eunie, Taion, and Riku would check to the east. That left Mio, Sena, and Manana to search the southside. Their teamwork was flawless at this stage, almost as if they could read each other’s minds. But there was a lot of work ahead for all of them. The desert is a vast and punishing landscape, cruel to anyone who came unprepared.

“If no one finds anything, let’s all meet back up at camp at 16:00. The sun will start to set by then, and it’s too dangerous for us to explore at night.” Taion noted on to the group’s expedition. Waving each other off, everyone got into their respective groups and parted ways for the time being, hoping someone would at least find a clue to this mysterious colony.

Noah and Lanz had the most ground to cover out of the rest of the groups, but with their physical prowess, they could still overlook more area than the rest of the group - especially compared to Mio, who hated the heat more than anyone else. Without the rest of the team to provide support, the two of them had no choice but to avoid the aspars and kapibas loitering the area. For the time being, the duo decided to stay close to the cliffs, hopping up rocks and taking longer routes just to avoid any confrontation. Even though the two of them knew they could take those creatures on by themselves, causing a commotion could alert and nearby Keves or Agnes troops nearby, which would be the worst case scenario. Only about half a mile from where they started did Lanz finally spot something interesting sitting beside a cactus.

“Whoa, got a rare doo-dah right here!” Lanz exclaimed, bending over to pick up the mysterious object. His face quickly turned to confusion as he had never seen anything like it before. Noah noticed Lanz just standing there not saying a word now, and quickly rushed over to his side to inspect this thing as well. The object in question is a blue sphere, about the size of a baseball, with a big indigo X in the middle. Other than that, there are no other unique characteristics about this foreign object.

“You think someone from Colony 4 lost this?” Lanz asked, turning his face towards Noah.

“It’s possible. For now, let’s hold onto it. We still need to be on lookout for Colony µ.” Noah responded. But after he spoke, the X symbol on the weird item began to glow. A small humming noise emitted from it, and also started to rumble in the muscleman’s hand. “Lanz, toss it now!” Noah cried out, but it was too late. Before Lanz could do anything, that bright purple light enveloped their bodies. The two of them let out a haughty scream as the power of the mysterious ball completely overtook them without even giving them a fighting chance.

When Noah and Lanz eventually came to, the two of them looked at each other, surprised to see that both of them were unharmed. But looking around the new area they appeared in so suddenly, it was like entering a desolate world, even more barren than the desert the two of them were just in. Surrounding them on all sides are walls of green that seem to expand for several miles. The floor beneath them was solid and jagged, and large, beige boulders scattered around them as well.

“Noah mate…where the snuff are we?” Lanz shouted, feeling a bit panicked from this sudden strange method of teleportation the two of them had gone through.

“No idea. But keep your guard up. I’ll try contacting the others.” Noah responded as calmly as ever, keeping up his appearance as a leader. He tapped his head, activating his Iris to try and get a response from any of the other members of his team. The ponytailed hero stood there for a few moments in silence before eventually setting his arm back down, turning his attention over to his friend. “I can’t get hold of them for some reason. For now, let’s search the place and see if we can find any clues.” Noah commanded, deeming that the best course of action. Lanz looked down at the mysterious object, still in his hand, with a scowl on his face.

“This is all your fault.” He whispered to the strange device before tucking it away in his pocket.

With nothing better to do, and no help arriving anytime soon, the two men pushed forward to see if they could find anything helpful to their current situation. But as time marched on, the scenery never changed. The green walls never left their field of view, and the boulders they kept passing along the way looked so identical it was hard to tell if they were even going in circles. But there was one ray of hope - an actual ray of light shining down on them. They were thankful the sun was still out at least, but they did need to figure out a way out of here to rendezvous back with the rest of the team at sunset.

“Ugh, just where the spark are we? We haven’t even seen any monsters either. It’s like some bizarro land we’re in right now.” Lanz complained, following a few steps behind Noah during their journey. But Noah stayed silent, piecing things together in his head. It was weird that neither of them have even spotted a bunnit, one of the most common creatures in the land. A sudden noise stopped his train of thought, his attention turning to his right. The swordsman pulled out his weapon, his partner doing the same a few seconds later, catching on that a threat may be approaching. The sounds grew closer, creeping up on them. From the shadows of one of those tall, green pillars, a mysterious man emerged. His hair was silver and slicked back, with a scar on his left cheek. His chest was buff and had visible muscle across his arms showing this man was incredibly strong. The symbol on the side of his neck showed that he was pretty late into his tenth term. But the most notable feature on his body was the Agnes military clothes he had on.

“So, you’re the Ouroboros. Well, some of them it seems. Sheathe your weapons, I’m not here to fight.” His voice was gruff and rigid, as if he was used to this kind of thing happening. Noah and Lanz once again glanced at each other, nodding silently before doing as instructed. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. But I’ll answer two of them for you right now. My name is Leeda, the commander for Colony µ. Follow me, I’ll take you there.” Not saying any more, the commander turned around, expecting the two others to follow behind. Noah and Lanz, figuring they would get the answers they had been looking for this whole time, took Leeda up on his offer and followed him into the darkness he had emerged from. Slowly in the horizon, the two came across an actual Agnes camp, larger than any of the others they had encountered before. The three men approached the gate, Leeda saluting his soldiers before stepping foot inside.

“I suppose I should start with our history.” Leeda announced, still striding forward. The place was like any other camp, really. Some soldiers were practicing their drills out in the yard, some were having some show at the canteen, everything felt very ordinary. “We were once the strongest colony in all of Aionios, even securing the highly coveted Gold rank. But the day after we reached what we’ve been working so hard for…Moebius attacked. However, instead of destroying us, it let out a purple light, just like the one you two went through.” Leeda proudly proclaimed. He then stopped in the middle of his tracks and turned around to face the two following him.

“Do you know what µ stands for? It’s a unit of measurement for a micrometer. That Moebius must have thought it was pretty clever, and decided to make our colony more fitting to that name. And now we stand at Dirt rank. And what’s worse, our entire colony only takes up one micrometer in square area…” Leeda looked down, a bit disappointed by all that had happened.

“So what you’re saying is Colony µ never vanished, but got shrunk? Well if I weren’t standing right now I’d never believe you.” Lanz exclaimed, feeling a bit bewildered by all this.

“If the camp is that small, then that means…” Noah spoke up, quickly getting interrupted.

“We’re smaller than that. Each of us here is about a hundredth of a micrometer.” Leeda cut him off. “But enough about that, I bet you’re wondering why I contacted you. Right now we’re going through a bit of a food shortage. All we’ve had for the past few days are cooked fragments of grass we had to chop with our axes to get. If you can get us a berry, we’ll let you get back to normal. A fair trade, is it not?” Leeda crossed his arms, looking smug as he looked down on the two of them.

“Are you out of your mind?!” Lanz yelled out of anger. “We’re stuck like this and you’re holding us hostage because you want some dumb fruit?”

“Lanz.” Noah held his arm out in front of his friend, preventing him from doing anything stupid. “We agreed to help Colony µ no matter what. And if they can help us out, all the more reason to continue what we came here to do.”

Lanz balled his hand into a fist, ready to let loose his anger on something. But after hearing what Noah had to say, he loosened his fingers up, exhaling to let out the rest of his steam. “Right then. Guess we don’t have much of a choice.” He admitted. Once all that was settled, the three men continued walking for a short while, gathering at the canteen to sit down so they can continue their conversation.

 Leeda sat at the table across from the other two. He crossed his arms across the tabletop, ready to speak again. “I’m sure you two saw that cactus before you joined us. But to us, we call that the World Tree. It protects us from any monsters and any other forces of nature. If it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.” Leeda let out a hearty laugh, enjoying talking about all this. It’s rather rare to get any visitors, so it feels nice to share the history of his colony to those willing to listen. Noah looked up, trying to spot this cactus. But it was impossible. He couldn’t even see the tops of the blades of grass, and everything beyond that is a complete blur. He turned his head back to Leeda, as he noticed something peculiar about the colony.

“So what happened to the Flame Clock? How are you all still able to fight?” Noah asked, which was quickly followed by another chuckle from the commander.

“You’re holding it, musclehead.” He turned his attention to Lanz. Confused, he pulled out that strange object from before and set it on the table. “This used to be our Flame Clock before one of the thorns from the World Tree fell off and broke it clean off. One of our engineers took the parts from it and constructed it into this thing here. We call it the Mini-X, and with this anyone can enter our colony.”

“So how were we able to get a hold of it? Shouldn’t this be at your scale?” Noah questioned even more, curious to learn about the forgotten colony.

“We tossed it into the transporter. Another device our engineer developed to let anyone or anything back into the normal world.” Leeda answered.

“So if you got the technology for all this stuff, why don’t you all grow back to normal?” Lanz blurted out.

 “Because we’re proud of our colony. Sure, we may be small, but we’ll never abandon it.” Leeda kept his proud expression on his form. But before they could continue their conversation, the ground began to shake and rumble, growing heavier every second. The sky grew dark in an instant, and a siren sounded across the colony. The soldiers of the colony got into formation, ready to defend their home against whatever was going to threaten them.