Explorer of Edregon

Vin watched closely as the top half of Dancing Leaf sliced through the shimmering barrier with little resistance, cutting a neat line straight down to the ground. The wall of grey energy seemed to react almost like molasses, slowly churning and flowing back together to repair the damage Shia had caused. Within seconds, the cut was completely healed, and the wall appeared good as new.

Glad they wouldn't be permanently damaging the barrier, Vin encouraged Shia to do it again. This time, Shia cut hard and fast, and before the energy could seal up once more, Vin cast two quick Stone Walls, forming a slight opening for them to squeeze through. Yet even as he watched, the churning energy rapidly began breaking down the stone, as if it were barely even an obstacle.

"Through! Now!" Vin called. Trusting in her body's incredible durability, Alka dove through the opening first, giving them a thumbs up as soon as she was through and waving them toward her. Shia quickly followed suit without hesitation, and Vin lunged in right behind her, barely making it through before his pillars were destroyed and the barrier sealed up once more. Working to catch his breath, Vin shook his head at the close call.

"Alright, let's not do that again if we can help it."

New second ring fragment discovered! 1,000 exp gained.

Brushing himself off, Vin turned to take in the fragment, surprised to find that it looked rather… normal.

Other than the gigantic barrier that clearly encompassed the entire fragment while somehow still letting light through, the fragment was pretty standard. Fields of grass, clumps of trees here and there, the occasional patch of flowers. All in all, nothing out of the ordinary.

At least, at first glance.

"Something's off about this place," Shia said immediately, frowning as her eyes darted back and forth between the nearby trees and flowers. "Come on."

Curious what had unnerved their resident Druid, Vin followed after Shia as she approached the closest mass of trees. Her frown deepened as she laid a hand on the bark of the seemingly ordinary tree, yet try as he might, Vin couldn't tell what was bothering her.

"What's wrong?" he tried, peering at the tree and trying to see if it differed from the ones surrounding it. "The tree looks just like the others."

"That's the problem," Shia said, finally letting her hand drop as she pointed Blossom at the surrounding trees. "This isn't natural. It's manufactured."

"So someone planted these trees?" Alka asked, her sword already out and at the ready as she kept her head on a literal swivel, searching for monsters. "That's not so weird, right?"

"No, not just planted. These are all the same tree," Shia said, scowling as she tried to explain. "These trees are all identical copies of one another, forced to grow this way via magic somehow. I don't know why someone would even do such a thing, but it's like… like they took the life right out of the forest."

Taking a few steps back, Vin peered up at the tiny grove of trees, quickly seeing what Shia meant. While the direction the trees grew in changed, even the location of the many branches were identical between the different trees. He probably never would have noticed it without Shia pointing it out, but now that she had, it was impossible to unsee.

"Okay. I'll admit that's a bit strange," he agreed. "So what does that mean? This fragment has its own Druid?"

"Doubtful. At least, no Druid I've ever met would do something like this," Shia all but snarled, causing Vin to take a step back. In all his time spent with her, Vin had never once seen Shia get so upset about something.

"Well, once we find whoever did this, we can ask them all about it," he offered, praying Shia wouldn't snap and just kill the person outright.

"In that case, shall we make our way to the center?" Alka asked, her head finally snapping back toward them. "I'm pretty curious about whoever pulled off this barrier. If we could replicate it, defenses like this would make worrying about surprise monster attacks a thing of the past."

"I do like the sound of that," Vin admitted, imagining Spur deploying a giant dome over the town the moment the next wave of monsters spawned, preventing them from getting close. "You hear that, Shia? Sounds like a good idea, right?"

"Calm down, I'm not going to gut anyone without hearing them out first," she said, transforming Blossom into cat form and jumping on. "…But they better hope they talk fast."

Realizing that was probably the closest to a promise he was going to get, Vin sighed as they took off toward the center of the fragment. As they ran, the oddness of the fragment just kept coming.

They passed the occasional pond, but the water was always in the form of a perfect circle. Whenever they hit a hill, they noticed that each one shared an identical slope and stopped at the same height. Even the flower patches were shaped like perfect squares, and Vin couldn't shake the feeling that if he stopped to count the individual flowers, he'd end up getting the exact same number for all the different patches.

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Yet strangest of all, was the complete lack of wildlife.

There were no small forest critters. No grazing bovine. No chirping birds flying overhead. Hell, there weren't even any monsters.

The fragment was completely and utterly silent.

"Okay, this fragment is starting to freak me out," Vin finally said as they passed the seventh perfectly circular pond without so much as a single fish or speck of algae in it. "Shia put it best. Despite all the plants, it's like this place is lifeless or something."

"I'm with you, I don't like it one bit," Alka nodded.

"This entire land was carefully curated," Shia said, her anger abating somewhat now that they were on board with her original assessment. "I'm pretty certain this whole area was constructed by mages to be their version of a perfect world, or something. I can't think of any other way a place like this came to be."

"What kind of perfect world doesn't have any animals? Or insects?" Vin asked, scanning another square field of flowers and confirming this one didn't have any bees either. "It's just so… bland."

"I don't like the place either, but I will say we haven't encountered fang or claw of any monsters either," Alka pointed out. "Maybe whatever they did worked for animals and monsters alike."

"It's too high a cost to pay," Shia argued, pushing Blossom onward and directing them further into the fragment. Finally, after covering almost four miles of the same boring, repeating landscape, and receiving a welcome notification that his running had finally hit level 17, they spotted something out of the ordinary.

Off in the distance was a tiny village, more of a hamlet than anything. Vin could just make out what looked like a few dozen beautifully constructed houses that formed a giant ring with one large grey area centered between all of them. The colorful and unique houses looked distinctly out of place surrounded by the same plain landscape that filled the rest of the fragment. He tried to look for any of the hamlet's inhabitants, but he didn't see anyone out and about.

"Alright. We found the people. Or at least their houses," he added, after glancing at Alka and remembering her hometown. "I don't see any sort of wall or guard so… Guess we just go up and knock on someone's door?"

"Seems like as good a plan as any," Alka shrugged, leading the way forward.

Nobody appeared as they approached the cluster of homes, and Vin couldn't shake the feeling that the place had been utterly deserted. It wasn't until they got closer that he finally realized what was going on in the center of the hamlet, and he gasped.

Directly in between all the houses was a ritual larger than anything he'd ever seen before. The pale, glowing grey runes stretched out across the open circle, easily four or five times larger than any ritual he'd seen Madam Trebella create. There was an almost impossibly thin column of grey mana stretching from the center of the ritual up toward the sky that they hadn't even noticed until they got closer, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that had to be how they were creating the giant barrier covering the whole fragment.

"Shia, are you seeing this?" Vin asked, unable to take his eyes off the ritual. He knew without a shadow of a doubt Madam Trebella would probably gut any one of her apprentices to feast her eyes on a ritual as complex as this.

"How are they even powering this?" she answered, her eyes glued to the same runes that his were. "This is… well, I would say this was impossible, if it wasn't staring me right in the face."

"So it's a big fancy magic thingy, whoopie," Alka said, her attention more so on the different houses than the gigantic ritual. "I just saw movement in one of the windows. Some race we've never seen before, by the looks of it. No idea why, but they looked scared for whatever reason."

"I mean, we did break through their fancy barrier. Clearly they don't want to talk to people," Vin pointed out, a sudden thought striking him. "Shia… the Goddess said that monsters were a direct result of magic, but that you had to use magic on a truly astronomical scale to noticeably impact their spawn rates. Would a twelve-mile-wide barrier be large enough?"

"I can't say for sure, but I would think so," she nodded, her look of awe turning into one of confusion. "But if that's the case, where are all the monsters? Forget extra, we didn't see a single one."

"Why don't we try asking one of the locals?" Alka offered, already standing beside one of the front doors and gesturing for Vin to try his luck. "Door's locked. I already checked."

"Thank you for not breaking it down," Vin drawled, walking up to the front door and admiring the house for a moment. Each of the houses looked like a rich man's interpretation of a hunting cabin out in the wilderness. The wooden beams were intricately carved to show off a number of animals Vin had never seen before, and the windows were thick with colorful panes of glass. The front door itself appeared to be rather solid, and Vin wrapped his knuckles against it, calling out to whoever lived within.

"Hello! We're travelers from another fragment! Apologies for slipping past your barrier, but we were hoping to ask you a few questions!"

Vin paused, waiting to see if anyone was going to answer. He counted to twenty before deciding to try again. Raising his hand to knock, he paused, grimacing.

"What's wrong?" Alka asked. "Contact poison on the door?"

"What? No," Vin shook his head. "I just realized I'm basically these people's version of a door-to-door salesmen. I mean, nothing says 'keep out' more than this giant barrier, yet we just waltzed right on in, and now I'm pounding on their door. Just feels a bit wrong. I love exploring, but back on my world, I always stayed away from people. I never came anywhere near anyone's house like this."

"As annoyed as I am by what they did to this land, I admit I'm not the biggest fan of breaking into a person's house either," Shia frowned, her eyes flicking between the ring of houses. "These people must be terrified of outsiders for some reason. Learning the secrets of their barrier magic would be huge, but maybe we should just wait for someone to come talk to us instead of barging our way in."

"Fine," Alka sighed, lowering the warpick she'd been raising in preparation for breaking down the door. "I guess we can wait for someone to come to us. At least for a little while. But I'm going to get bored pretty fast without anything to fight, so they better not keep us waiting too long."

"Let's just wait and see what the day brings," Vin nodded, clapping Alka on the back and leading the murder-machine away from the terrified people hiding within their houses.

"I've got a good feeling about this fragment!"