Chương 199: (194) 3.59. Redacted

Come morning, Vin and Shia sat down with a rather unhappy Naib and grilled him on the specifics regarding his people's ritual. Vin certainly didn't have any plans to shunt all their monsters off to another fragment to deal with, but he still wanted to see if there was any chance of learning how to make a miniaturized version of their impressive barrier, or if Naib couldn't teach them how to make a ritual that ran indefinitely somehow. Unfortunately, both proved to be off the table.

It quickly became evident that as terrible as the neilans were, they truly were utter geniuses when it came to ritual magic. Vin had thought Madam Trebella's rituals were complex, but when Naib tried to run them through the basics of how their ritual magic worked, Vin realized they weren't just in over their heads. They were floundering at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

He supposed it made sense that an entire society of Ritualists that had done nothing but perfect their craft for centuries were slightly more advanced than a town of Witches and Warlocks when it came to rituals. Even if they had been able to master the bare basics of the neilans' ritual, there were drastic consequences to contend with as well. The self-sustaining aspect of the ritual was powered via the ambient magic in the fragment. All, the ambient magic in the fragment.

It was the reason why the neilans' fragment appeared dead and lifeless. Their current ritual had sapped the fragment of life. The Earthers had noticed a while ago that regardless of how much hunting or fishing they did, similar to the monsters, the animal population of their fragment never seemed to diminish.

They'd only suspected something was going on at first, but once the thousand new faces of wave two showed up and the animal population continued to remain entirely unchanged despite the uptick in hunting, that's when they realized magic had to be involved somehow. The neilans' ritual, however, took that magic into itself in order to fuel its own existence.

Naturally, Vin had wondered how in the world they'd managed to survive when they didn't have any animals running around, as it seemed as though they had no crops or farms in place either. The answer was runic objects of sustenance.

"You guys just… don't eat?" Vin asked, absolutely flabbergasted by this revelation.

"The regeneration aspect of our old master ritual removed the need for us to consume food," Naib sniffed, as if even the thought of using his mouth for anything other than talking was beneath him.

"We were lucky enough that the founders of our island had devoted so much of their time to the study and creation of rituals that they commissioned a handful of runic objects to solve the issue of needing to take breaks to resolve the issue of hunger. Once they completed the master ritual, these objects were no longer needed, and they were put away. Until now." Naib hadn't exactly been happy about showing Vin the object that had kept him alive all this time, but he did show it to him eventually.

The runic object was little more than a small bowl that, when infused with mana, would create a rather unpleasant looking grey gruel which supposedly contained all the nutrients required to keep a person alive. For the first time since arriving on Edregon and discovering magic, Vin had finally stumbled upon a spell he had absolutely no interest in learning. He hadn't even managed to bring himself to taste the foul-looking gruel.

Shia was slightly more adventurous than him in that regard, and to his surprise, she'd informed him that it basically tasted like nothing at all. Which was almost worse than it tasting horrible.

"So… You guys what, just spend your days eating magical food that doesn't have any taste or texture? What do you even do with your free time?"

"We continue our study of rituals, or simply ponder life," Naib shrugged.

"Each house has one of these runic objects of sustenance, so there is no real need for us to go outside now that our new ritual is in place."

"Wait, you guys aren't all hiding because of us?" Shia asked, startled by the revelation.

"When was the last time you left your home?"

"I believe it was three months ago," Naib nodded, his gaze bouncing back and forth between their astonished faces.

"What? Even without the threat of monsters, it is dangerous out there now that our master ritual is gone and our lives are at risk. What if we fell into one of the ponds and drowned? Or a branch fell from a tree and hit us on the head? At first, we used terraforming rituals to try and remove these threats, but in the end, we all decided it would simply be safer to remain indoors."" That's why your fragment looks like it does?" Vin asked, utterly floored by Naib's admittance.

"You can't just… baby-proof nature! It doesn't work like that!" The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Obviously you can, if you are skilled enough," Naib sniffed.

"Regardless, as I said, it ended up being a waste of time in the long run. We are content to stay where it is safe. Our recalls give us all the outdoor experience we need."

"Vin said you mentioned something about experiencing a painful recall," Shia said, tapping her chin at the memory.

"Is that your term for dreaming?"

"Dreaming is something primitives do," Naib scoffed.

"When we neilans sleep, we vividly experience our past memories all over again. It is as if we are reliving them in real time. The older we get, the more skilled we become at selecting which memories we wish to recall. Though admittedly, sometimes we are shown… less pleasant memories we would wish to forget."

"So that night we heard you screaming and I broke down your door, you were reliving a bad memory?" Vin asked.

"Yes… One I would rather not discuss with two primitives," Naib drawled. After promising to leave him alone if he helped them, Vin and Shia managed to speak with a few other members of the hamlet with Naib's help. At Naib's assurance that no harm would befall them, a few other neilans actually answered their doors and briefly spoke with the two of them.

Each one they talked to acted just as stuck up and above them as Naib had, and they all corroborated his story regarding the master ritual and how they'd worked together to form this new one. After spending the better part of the day discussing everything with them, Vin and Shia finally bid Naib goodbye, and the huffy neilan slammed the new door Shia had grown and crafted for him in their faces.

"So…" Vin said, watching the logs Shia had grown crack and burn as the fire finally caught on them. The three of them were sitting around the fire once more as the sun finally set, and they'd filled in Alka on their findings over the day.

"…I think this might be the most depressing fragment we've come across. Other than the dead ones, I mean."

"You're telling me," Shia muttered, magically growing a long stick in order to poke the fire with.

"I know this place still has trees and grass, but as far as I'm concerned, they killed the nature within their fragment. I feel like I'm sitting in a graveyard."

"I still can't believe they act like they're better than everyone else, calling you guys primitives and all that," Alka said, her glowing eyes narrowing dangerously in the direction of the hamlet.

"A single warrior that hadn't even hit their first Capstone yet could probably kill all of them without breaking a sweat. It really rubs me the wrong way."

"Their skills when it comes to rituals are no joke, but yeah, other than that they are pretty worthless," Vin admitted.

"At least Madam Trebella weaponized her rituals and was able to defend her town when needed. These guys spend all their time lost in their own memories, or simply blanking out. They rely entirely on their new master ritual for protection." More than a few times throughout the day, Vin and Shia had shared confused looks when the neilans they were talking to simply seemed to forget what they were doing and stare off into space, sometimes for minutes at a time.

None of them acted like this was strange, and Vin didn't know if it was some strange quirk of their biology, or some weird habit they'd developed from being immortal and living life as slowly as they wished.

"So what's the plan?" Alka asked, finally turning to look at the two of them.

"I know you both voted to leave them and their ritual in peace this morning. Either of you change your mind after getting to know them better?"

"They're certainly annoying… But I don't think that's worth killing them over," Vin sighed.

"And I maintain my stance that I don't want to become some roving executioner. The fact that they are responsible for the death of the blue fur clan still makes me angry, but that was months ago, and as much as I hate to admit it, they didn't directly kill them. Maybe my stance would be different if they'd hurled some sort of magical bomb at the blue fur clan with the intention of killing them, but this was more so… hostile indifference, I suppose?"

"I took care of striking fear into them as to what would happen if they ever decided to change where their ritual was depositing monsters," Shia said, the firelight dancing off her eyes as she looked at the hamlet, showing Vin a potential future of what might come to be if they dared go against Shia's warning.

"The Sacred Forest and Lumel's fragment should both be safe. All that's left now is to find the dungeon entrance in this fragment and head out."

"We're seriously just going to leave them like this?" Alka asked.

"From what you two told me, it sounds like these people are barely even living creatures. They don't go anywhere or do anything. Hell, I'd argue I'm more alive than they are!"

"Even if you don't have a flesh and blood body anymore, Alka, you're still alive," Vin said, shooting her a warm smile.

"But yeah, you're not wrong. I suppose I'm kind of viewing this hamlet as though we stumbled upon a dead fragment. I don't think it's even worth trying to set up any sort of formal relations with these people."

"Madam Trebella would still probably kill to get her hands on their knowledge," Shia pointed out.

"Maybe you two could trade in the location of this fragment in exchange for those favors you owe her?"

"But that would mean giving her access to rituals capable of potentially causing the downfall of entire fragments," Vin argued, shivering at the thought of the infernal gaining such power.

"…I think I prefer keeping such knowledge in the heads of people too lazy and scared to actually do anything with it."

"Agreed," Alka nodded.

"We can't tell that Witch about this place. I don't even want to think about the damage she could cause if she got her hands on one of these Ritualists." The three of them sat around the fire for a few minutes, silently watching the flames crackle and dance as the sun finally set and darkness gradually filled in the fragment. Slowly, Vin pulled out his journal.

Rather than jotting down any of his usual notes about what this fragment contained or the people living within, he sketched in the new hexagon, and wrote a single word to describe it. Danger! Sighing, he tucked it away once more. They couldn't risk anyone catching wind of this fragment and what terrible secrets were locked away inside.

There wasn't much he could do about people bypassing the barrier via the dungeon, but he'd have a talk with Forpurt the next time they saw him and make sure he understood why this place had to remain undiscovered. The last thing they needed was someone deciding to use the neilans' knowledge of rituals as a weapon of mass destruction.