RD 3 Ch 29

Chapter 29

The next week and a half passed agonizingly slowly. The sun continued to shrink in the sky above and the days grew darker by the hour.

I turned to Merlin, who had finished constructing our newest castle using everything we had learned from the Mul Branova and our own explorations of the vault.

Many of my assumptions were correct. This place indeed operated on a sliding scale of difficulty. The stronger monsters were to the west, and the stronger the monster, the more spread out they were. To the east the monsters were easier and fruits were far closer together.

I could only assume that those fruits would be less valuable.

The initiated seemed to be scattered similarly. The weaker individuals kept to their areas, while the stronger ones were sent all the way into the jaws of beasts like the T-Rex.

As for our group, we had been heavily clearing the area around us.

Antonio's guild, along with Simone and Gloria, cleared the western half, while Antonio, Merlin, and I easily cleared the eastern half. The monsters weren't yet difficult for the three of us together. However, going any further east would put the weaker members of our group in terrible danger, something I was unwilling to do. 

"Now hide it," Merlin said, having finished her work. I bit my thumb and took out a chisel, etching inscriptions into the side of her castle rather than using trees to form a perimeter. I was directly marking Merlin's stone buildings, which were like miniature castles with four or five rooms. I keyed all of the inscriptions to talismans that I could distribute to the rest of the group, enabling them to see the castles. I made the inscriptions for stopping vibration, smells, and sounds universal. Allowing other people to penetrate those barriers would only weaken them. 

Over the last several days, we had established a network of 78 of these buildings, covering a vast distance within the trial. Our perimeter spanned from monsters that had a little less than 2,000 in each stat, all the way to monsters that had over 6,000. More than a few groups had crossed our perimeter, and I was continually adding inscriptions throughout this territory to monitor it for safety. 

In all honesty, it was a fairly complex set of inscriptions placed over a large area. There was one larger central building that Merlin had constructed, and I had taken up nearly half of its space to create a room for monitoring. Inside, I created more complex inscriptions that would receive information, allowing us to monitor our entire territory.

It was all probably overkill, but I wasn’t leaving anything up to chance for the second phase of this trial. 

Two other groups had tried to join us, mostly because they recognized Merlin. 

However, they were rebuffed by the cold woman. She insisted she wouldn't work with anyone, causing those groups to stare at me quizzically.

I even responded to one who had tried to inspect me, saying, "I'm not anyone." 

Neither Merlin nor they found it funny. Gloria loved it though.

"What do you think is going to happen when the time is up?" Merlin asked, not using her sunglasses to glance at the sun. To anyone, it was blatantly obvious that it was partially eclipsed now. There were likely only two or three more days before it would become night in the vault. 

"That’s a good question," I said, rubbing a bloodied thumb into the grooves of the inscription I had chiseled. "Night can mean a number of things. Though in a trial that's going to test us, night usually goes along with hunting."

"Are we the ones doing the hunting, or the ones being hunted?" Merlin asked. 

"If I had to guess, a bit of both. Once the fruits become active, all of the other people in here are going to get aggressive. Right now, the only thing stopping those other groups from declaring outright war against us is that we only have what's already in our spatial rings. The idea that we might also be carrying 500 or 1,000 free stats for them would make anyone insatiably greedy."

"So, that was obvious. But what about more?" Merlin asked. "Do you think there will be more monsters?" 

I started to deny the concept, but paused. "That's a distinct possibility. I would go as far as to say it feels like it will be too easy to simply rush around and harvest the fruit. They'll very well be monsters, making it more difficult. However, the question will be, how will they approach us? Will they come from the north? The south? The east or the west?" I shrugged. "Or who knows? They could come from the sky." 

Merlin glanced up at the sun. "They could come from the sun," she said, sounding ridiculous. 

"They could," I agreed. "However, I think that's a lot of guessing or something we don't know.”

“I thought given your wide range of experience, you might know," Merlin eyed me. 

I rolled my eyes, moving on to the next inscription. "You just won't drop that, will you?" 

"Not until I get a good answer." She smirked. "I am the curious type. And you certainly are hiding something." 

"Don't say that too loud or Simone will hide things in her bedroll and tell you about them until she can lure you into our place at night." I told her.

Merlin's face fell into an unreadable mask. "That woman couldn't be more obvious." 

I shrugged. "Just the way she is.” Simone had her eyes set on dragging Merlin more permanently into our group and it was obvious even to me.

“Of course you wouldn't mind." Merlin, seeming bored, began to wave her hand and make the castle look a little more presentable rather than giant slabs of stone slapped together. It now sported tiled roofs and palisades that would be entirely useless.

There as absolutely no reason to make these look nicer or more like a castle, yet she insisted. 

"The aesthetic has a certain appeal," Merlin said defensively, seeing my face. "I come from a different time, a time when castles were the greatest sign of strength and wealth." 

I held my hands up in surrender. "I didn't say anything." 

"You didn't have to." She pursed her lips before her mind flit back to the conversation we'd just been having. "That damned Simone," Merlin cursed her.

"I told her to ease up. As I promised. She, however, is not my woman to command. Trust me, she's made that abundantly clear. She is her own woman and she's just doing what she wants."

"What she wants doesn't seem to bother you," Merlin said, squinting at me.

"Simone has a certain vivaciousness," I agreed. "I certainly won't hold it against her."

Merlin rolled her eyes. "Men. Sometimes, I swear."

"You swear what?" I said, not letting the matter drop.

"I swear all of you are the same." Merlin grumbled.

I put a hand to my chest. "Now that's just offensive, Merlin. You would compare me to Antonio?"

"Oh, I would," Merlin said sharply. "Antonio is a much more upstanding man than you."

I grabbed my chest, staggering back as if I had been wounded.

Merlin looked at me. "Just because Simone plays freely around you doesn't mean you get to be so nonchalant about everything."

"I'm hardly nonchalant." I waved to all the talismans I had been etching into the castle. "If I were, we would not have built nearly as many of these as we have. I'm simply concerned with a different set of challenges than you," I said. Everything here was within my expectations and I was just working the problem. Meanwhile Merlin and so many of them were still trying to define the problem.

Merlin looked away and muttered something under her breath before her expression changed. "Is this place real?" she asked.

I tilted my head, giving her a funny look. "Is it real? Of course it's real." I poked at my own chest. "It feels real to me."

"We both know that's not what I meant," Merlin's expression grew serious.

"Well, then you're going to have to be a little more explicit with me, Merlin. Your comment had too many meanings... Otherwise, how am I supposed to take, 'is it real?'" I air-quoted, only making the woman roll her eyes at me.

"Sometimes I wonder about you, Bran," she shook her head.

"You worry about me?" I shot back just as quickly. "That's awfully sincere of you."

"Bran, what I mean is that this isn't like an instance. This is almost man-made. This trial comes with conditions that cause things to happen in sequences of events," she rambled on.

I shrugged. She was so close and I couldn’t tell her exactly what the Vault was, but I could give her an inkling. "The vault that we entered looked fairly... looked like it was made by someone's hands," I didn’t beat around the bush. "This isn't as if we stepped into a random instance portal. No, where we're at right now, Merlin, is clearly manufactured. By who, is the real question."

My words only caused her to narrow her eyes further. "Or by what," she said, filling in what I had left unsaid.

"Or by what," I echoed. "If it's something that can make a place as complex as this, not to mention offer the rewards we see before us..." I gestured around. "And I think whatever it is, at least deserves our respect. No?" This time, I wasn't being mysterious. I locked eyes with her, leaving much unsaid. And putting faith that Merlin was smart enough to pick up on the clues.

The woman watched my eyes closely.

"Something grand enough to make this place certainly would be intimidating," she said slowly. "And if they have the resources to make fruits like this," I nodded along with her, "then one can only imagine just how terrifyingly powerful the people who might have made it are or would be."

I let that thought sink in before I posed a very serious question to her, "Are the people who made this place still alive? Because if they were, well, the whole situation inside of here would be vastly different. After all, if you could make fruits that increase stats by 50 or 100, was that a limitless thing? Or was that something they could extend to others, including themselves?" Summoning a fruit in my hand from my spatial ring, I gave Merlin a pointed look. I was fairly certain she now understood our current predicament.

Though, I was fairly certain I knew what these fruits were made from. They were the harvested stats of other creatures, possibly beasts or humans. But very likely, demonic souls.

Demons were brutal in their collection of strength, even devouring each other to grow.

"I see," Merlin said slowly.

"I'm glad you do. Hopefully it's not too late. I certainly don't want to offend anyone that could make a place like this." I gave her a serious expression. It was up to her to put together that there might be something alive and controlling all of this. That obviously then prompted the question of what were we doing in here? Why let us in and grow stronger on their resources?

"Nor I," Merlin said. And once again, we shared a glance. She was confirming she understood what I knew to be true. There was someone who made this place. There was someone here with that sort of power. We probably shouldn't antagonize them.

"I see. Well, if there are people here, especially those that might have some form of control of this, then what's the purpose?" Merlin said, frowning.

"I like to think it's about making us stronger. I almost feel like this vault is preparing us for something coming." I offered and teased her further into the real answer.

Merlin narrowed her eyes. The look was becoming a fairly familiar expression. But then she nodded. "Of course, someone who's better at inscription than even Da Vinci. You think everything through quite thoroughly, Bran."

I gave her a big smile in response. She understood, we were being prepared for something. Something that was unlikely to be in our best interests.

"Now, if only I could fully understand Simone." I changed the subject, tired of being so serious.

Merlin broke into laughter and I finished up the inscriptions on the castle while she brought herself back under control.