Chương 101: (99) 2.52. Talk About a Bad Hair Day

Vin froze, spinning around toward the unfamiliar voice that had called out from behind them. A few hundred feet back, still in the flower-filled fragment, was a rather hairy looking humanoid slowly jogging its way toward them, waving a hand over its head as it tried to get their attention. Shia immediately returned Blossom to staff form and leveled it at the stranger, no doubt ready to send a sharpened tree branch straight through its chest if the stranger proved to be a threat.

Scule quickly coated one of his blades in some black, tar like material, crouching low and preparing to launch himself off Vin's shoulder at the first sign of trouble. For his part, Vin readied himself, reaching over his shoulder and gripping his quarterstaff in the event he'd have to defend himself at a moment's notice. The stranger clearly picked up on their open hostility, as he quickly slowed down to a walk, raising both hands above his head and laughing.

"Calm down there friends!" He chuckled, keeping both hands up as he finally stopped a few dozen feet away, still in the flower fragment.

"I just wanted to introduce myself and ask you all a few questions. But wow, you three are remarkably fast, you know that?" Vin stared at the strange man, trying to detect any hint of malice or sign that he meant them harm. But as far as he could tell, the grinning stranger meant exactly what he said.

Due to the thick layer of dark hair that covered the man from head to toe like a modern-day sasquatch, Vin couldn't really make out any identifying features other than his shining brown eyes located on the one square inch of his body that seemed to be free of hair. He had a worn looking leather satchel that had clearly seen a lot of use slung over his shoulder, but didn't seem to be wearing any sort of clothes. Thankfully his thick hair thoroughly concealed every inch of the man's body.

"Can't say I've seen the three of you out and about before," the stranger grinned, and Vin was just able to make out some rather jagged looking teeth through the forest of hair covering the man's face. Granted they were nothing compared to Shia's, but they were still more than enough to put Vin slightly more on edge.

"We're from a couple of fragments away," Vin said slowly, unsure how to handle this situation. Other than The One That Paints In Red and a handful of dead bodies, they'd never come across any other people that were clearly also traveling between fragments.

"I figured, seeing as this fragment is abandoned," the stranger chuckled.

"Anyway, the names Forpurt. I'm a capillan from a small town over in the arctic fragment back that direction," he said, pointing off toward what Vin viewed as the west.

"What about you guys?" Vin shared a quick, questioning glance with his companions, all of them seeming equally hesitant about giving this stranger too much information about themselves. However, the man had already introduced himself, and he seemed rather harmless. After a few seconds, Shia began.

"I'm Shia… An elf from the Sacred Forest."

"Scule, a petian from the citadel," Scule chimed in, still having yet to put his dagger away.

"Vin, a human from… Well, it's complicated," Vin finished, not wanting to get into the whole thing about being from a world without a System.

"Wow, not often I run across such a diverse group of travelers," Forpurt chuckled.

"Usually most adventuring parties consist of people all from the same fragment."

"Do you come across other people often?" Vin couldn't help but ask, finally letting go of his quarterstaff and letting his hand drop to his side. He could still feel the seconds ticking by as they stood here chatting, but there was a chance they could get some incredibly valuable information out of the wanderer, and that made it worth the slight delay.

"Not as often as I would like," the capillan shrugged, sending a small ripple through his mountain of hair.

"I'd say I might stumble upon another group of travelers once a week or so, but that's me going out of my way to try and find others. Few people are willing to risk venturing beyond what they're familiar with, and for good reason! It's sad to say, but I find myself discovering the remains of hopeful travelers far more frequently than I do living ones. I do my best to bury them when I can, but often there's not much left to bury once the monsters are done with them."

"Have you been to the fragment with the floating library?" Shia butted in, finally lowering her staff and taking a tentative step toward him.

"It's a long story, but we need to get into that library to help our friend."

"Ah, the floating rocks fragment," Forpurt nodded, pointing in the direction they'd been originally heading.

"Another abandoned fragment. I poked my head in there briefly and saw the floating library of course, but can't say I've ever been up myself. Not a big fan of heights!"

"You keep saying 'abandoned fragment,'" Scule pointed out, giving him a curious look.

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"Oh, just a term I've been using to categorize certain fragments," the capillan shrugged.

"As far as I've been able to tell, every fragment used to construct this new world was purposefully selected, most likely because there was once some form of settlement or people living there. But for whatever reason, certain fragments seem to be abandoned. I don't like to travel too far from home, so I've only explored a small handful of fragments in the past few months, but a few of those have been completely without people." The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Like this flower filled fragment," he said, gesturing all around him.

"During my searching, I found evidence of a fairly large camp toward the center. Remains of campfires, hastily dug latrines, flattened flower spots, the usual. However, despite the signs that people clearly lived here at some point, it's now utterly abandoned."

"Just like Alka's fragment," Vin muttered, remembering the Slayer's abandoned town. Why the Gods chose the fragments they did was a question that had been bugging him ever since he'd first arrived on Edregon, and it was definitely going to be one of the first ones on his list if he ever got the chance to commune with them again.

"Anyway, the floating rock fragment you all are heading toward is another example," Forpurt continued.

"I didn't spend too much time in there because it upset my stomach, but from what I could tell it is pretty much empty. Other than the giant floating library of course."

"Is there anything at all you can tell us about the library?" Vin asked.

"Did any of the other travelers you encounter talk about it?"

"There was one… A rather strange looking man with wings for arms," the man covered entirely in thick hair said.

"I asked him about it, and he told me he flew up there to check it out. Said it was the largest collection of books he'd ever seen, but didn't say much else. Apparently he didn't stay very long because the golems gave him the creeps."

"Did he say anything else about the golems?" Vin asked quickly, stepping back into the flower fragment without thinking and wincing as the powerful scents assaulted his nose once more.

"Just that there were two kinds," Forpurt shrugged.

"Large, stationary ones that guard the entrance, and smaller, more agile ones that carry out tasks around the library. The librarian apparently assigns each guest one of the smaller golems as an aid so long as they are within the library, but he said he couldn't shake the feeling that the golem he'd been assigned was waiting for him to break some unknown rule so it could kill him. He left shortly after he arrived. Didn't have much else to say about it." Vin felt his heart leap at the mention of the golems.

One of those small, quick-moving ones sounded like exactly the kind of body Alka would be drawn to, which solved the first of their many problems. The issue now was how to go about acquiring one.

"This… Librarian," Scule said, finally putting his dagger away as he addressed Forpurt.

"You wouldn't happen to know how dangerous they are, would you?" Forpurt clearly understood what Scule was getting at, because he chuckled, shaking his head.

"If you all are planning on trying to do something less than civil in that library, I'd recommend against it. The bird-man mentioned seeing hundreds of golems crawling around the building, taking care of countless tasks. The three of you would be torn to shreds in a heartbeat, even if the librarian didn't lift a finger."

"We need to get one of those golems to save our dying friend's life," Vin admitted, making a snap decision to be honest with the traveler they'd stumbled upon. It wasn't as if he could warn the librarian after all.

"Do you have any information that might help us get one? Anything at all?" Forpurt frowned, his eyes flicking between the three of them. Or at least, Vin thought he frowned based on the subtle movement of the hairs on the bottom of his face. Admittedly, the capillan's expressions were rather hard to read. After a few seconds, the man sighed.

"Can't say I'm a fan of helping you all with your theft… But if it truly is to save a life, there is one other thing that might help. The last thing the bird-man mentioned was witnessing one of the golems that was shelving books start to act strangely. According to him, its fluid and quick movements eventually began to slow down and look more clunky. After a few minutes of this, another golem walked over and did something that caused part of the first one's head to open up, revealing a dimly lit blue stone.

He said the second golem swapped out the stone for a gleaming new one, and once it was in, the first golem perked up immediately, its movements back to normal. Right after the bird-man witnessed this was when he started picking up the weird vibes from the golem watching him, and he left soon after." Powered by some sort of specialized mana battery… Vin paused, giving the problem some thought.

On the one hand, that meant their job of stealing one of the golems might be as easy as popping out the stone and running away with its inert body. On the other hand, their theft just got a bit more complicated. If Alka's new body was powered via a specialized mana battery, they probably needed to steal some of those stones from the library as well to ensure they could keep her up and running at all times, and for backups of course.

There was a chance the mana stones Madam Trebella used in her rituals might work to power the golems, but Vin didn't want to leave Alka's life up to chance. Nor did he want to place themselves further in debt to the Witch than they already were.

"Anyway, that's all I have for you," Forpurt said, clearly still not a fan of their plan based on his tone.

"Even if your friend's life is on the line, I have to say I don't recommend going through with this. You're more likely to get yourselves killed than get out with one of those golems. Do you think they'd want your own deaths on their conscience?"

"No, but we have to try," Shia said, sounding more hopeful than she had even after hearing the news from Madam Trebella.

"If she ends up surviving anyway and we didn't do all we could to help her, we'll be in a world of hurt," Scule chuckled. A loud squeak emanated from Vin's pocket, and Reginald poked his head out, saluting with his tail as he swore to do what he could.

"There you have it," Vin grinned, feeling more confident than ever that they could actually pull this off.

"Thanks for all the help, Forpurt. You may very well have just given us the information we needed to save our friend."

"Don't mention it," the capillan said, squinting at Vin's chest.

"…is that a rat in your pocket?"