Chương 86: (84) 2.37. Fellow Explorers!

Once each of them were at least able to hold their own against Alka for a few minutes, Alka awarded them with her highest honor of, 'good enough,' and declared them ready to take on the divine swordsman. While the training had been particularly hellish, and the insects unnecessarily large, Vin had actually enjoyed camping in the woods for the past few days. After spending so much time in the infernals' village, he'd already begun feeling a little bit cramped.

Getting the chance to sleep out under the treetops was a welcome change of pace. After they'd packed up their bedrolls and Scule made sure he'd snatched up all of his new stinger-ammunition he'd been practicing with, Vin pulled out their charm Madam Trebella had given them to track down the divine warrior.

He'd checked it a few times over the past few days just to ensure the warrior wasn't running off somewhere, and sure enough, the red-tipped rock was still pointing in the same direction as it had been when they first left the infernals' village.

"Hard to tell for sure, but it looks like he's currently in the fragment bordering this one and the swamp," Vin surmised, carefully peering at the charm.

"Or you know, an even further one. For all we know he could be ten fragments away or something."

"Definitely not the most helpful way of tracking someone," Shia agreed, peering over his shoulder at the charm.

"Not much we can do about it now," Scule shrugged, scampering onto Vin's shoulder and pointing toward the next fragment.

"Mush!" He shouted, kicking his heel into Vin's flesh. Rolling his eyes, Vin briefly debated picking up the petian and throwing him in the direction they were heading before deciding against it. One of these days he was going to figure out how to build a hamster ball and shove Scule inside it as payback. The thought of the rogue cursing him out while rolling around uncontrollably put a large grin on his face as they began walking. Maybe Myers knew how to make one?

Vin was so busy daydreaming about what other things he could do as a practical joke to his small companion, such as building a tiny maze for the petian and placing a single gold coin at the end, that he didn't even see Shia's staff until he walked straight into it. Startled out of his thoughts, Vin glanced at Shia, surprised to find the elf's face unusually serious as she stared at something up ahead. Following her gaze, Vin's eyes widened as he took in the bodies.

Barely a few dozen feet ahead of them were three bodies lying close to one another, all very much dead by the looks of things. Vin couldn't tell exactly what had befallen them from here, but based on the sheer amount of blood and monster corpses everywhere, it wasn't hard to make a guess. Making sure the coast was clear, Vin raced over to the bodies, looking at them more carefully in the small chance that maybe one of them still lived.

The first two were both men that looked similar enough to one another that either they were closely related, or all the members of their race just happened to share extremely similar features. They weren't a sentient race he had met so far, which meant either option was entirely plausible. Both had a short, stocky body that looked thick and powerful, but neither were much taller than around four feet in height. More curious was the fact that they each had somewhat hardened skin.

Vin had met plenty of folks during his travels back on Earth that spent too much time in the sun and had skin like leather, but these two had skin like concrete. The men he'd begun thinking of as brothers each had large, bulging packs strapped to their backs, and terrifying weapons in hand that looked like a cross between a pickaxe and a hammer.

And based on the sheer number of spiders and other no longer recognizable monsters surrounding them that now had their bodies crushed in, it seemed safe to assume the two had known how to use them. The final member of the party was much stranger looking. They had a long, thin body that looked more fragile than anything, and four spindly arms.

The creature didn't have any hair that Vin could make out, though they did have two small antennae jutting out of their forehead, each with hundreds of tiny little feelers that reminded Vin of some sort of insect. Unlike the two stocky brothers this third member didn't have anything on them besides some very basic brown clothing that appeared to be splattered randomly with some sort of paint, and their form was androgynous enough that Vin couldn't tell if they were male or female.

Despite Vin's hopes, all three of the strangers clearly weren't breathing, and no amount of Renewal was going to change that. Most surprising however was the fact that it appeared as though they'd died rather recently; within the past few days at most if Vin had to guess based on the state of their bodies.

The naturally hardened bodies of the brothers seemed to have made for a tough meal for the local insects, and oddly enough the body of the long, thin one looked as though it had been completely untouched after the monsters had finished them off. While Vin was trying to figure out why the insects hadn't even tried eating the thin one, Scule's voice interrupted him.

"Hey, check this thing out!" Vin looked over to see Scule rifling through the brothers' packs, having already tossed a few sets of clothes and wrapped food all over the forest floor. Instead, he held up some sort of metal instrument just as large as he was, giving it a curious look. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Is this some sort of artifact?"

"No, not an artifact," Vin said, recognizing it almost immediately. While it looked more squarish and a bit different than the pictures he'd been shown back in school, it had to be the same thing.

"It looks like a sextant. I remember learning about them way back in like middle school. Can't say I paid all that much attention in school, but whenever my teachers talked about all the different ways explorers used to navigate the world, you better believe I was invested."

"So they were Explorers too?" Shia asked, picking up one of the discarded bundles of food and sniffing it.

"That would explain what they were doing in the infernals' fragment at least."

"Not very good ones seeing as all they discovered was a big swarm of monster spiders," Scule chuckled, peering through the sextant.

"How does this even work anyway? Whenever anyone needed to tell where they were in my world they just asked the nearest divine classer or took one with them in the first place. Much faster than whatever this is."

"I don't know the specifics, but you use it to measure the stars somehow," Vin explained, glancing up at the sky.

"... though I don't think it would have been all that useful here on Edregon. I'm not much of an astronomer, but seeing as each fragment looks like it has a different sun, I have a feeling each one has a different night sky as well. Navigating via the stars probably isn't possible anymore."

"Then I suppose it's a good thing you picked up Cartography after all," Scule said, tossing the sextant aside and digging deeper into the packs.

"If maps are pretty much the only way to get around these days, you can probably start selling them for some serious coin."

"I guess… Not like currency is really worth anything anymore," Vin muttered, peering more closely at the strange, untouched body. The third member of the group had been covered in monster blood and bits just as much as the other two so he hadn't noticed it at first, but upon closer inspection, it didn't look like they had any wounds at all. As far as he could tell, the weird, thin person looked to be in perfect health. Other than the fact that they weren't breathing.

"Hey Alka… What do you make of this?" He asked, gesturing toward the three possible Explorers.

"Obviously spider monsters did them in based on the monster corpses everywhere, but why weren't they eaten? And why doesn't this one have any injuries?" Alka had been echoing him since they'd finished training, but in response to his question she drifted out of him, manifesting in a crouched position over the dead bodies as she examined them.

"Hard to say…" she admitted, squinting more closely at the thin corpse.

"If I had to guess, I think this swarm of spiders may be the very same one that attacked us a few days back. Maybe the spider swarms in this fragment are roamers and when you guys walked past that giant web you alerted them to your presence."

"Hold up, what do you mean 'roamers'?"

"Hmm?" She said, busy investigating the strange body.

"Oh, roamers. One of the three monster classifications."

"Alka, are you serious?" Vin asked, staring at the ghost that had been sharing his body for the past few weeks.

"What the hell are the three monster classifications and why haven't you told me about them until now?"

"Didn't seem important," she shrugged.

"Doesn't really change anything. Monsters are monsters regardless of their classification."

"This is news to me as well," Shia frowned, tucking the still good food away in her bag.

"We didn't have any sort of distinction in the Sacred Forest beside 'regular' monsters and 'elite' monsters."

"Not all that surprising seeing as you'd never left your forest before," Alka said, finally standing up and facing them.

"The Slayer Guild had a few classifications it used to help better inform its members of what they were being sent to hunt down. Elite monsters are a whole 'nother thing entirely, but regular monsters are still broken down into three types. Stable, hidden, and roamer."

"Stable monsters are pretty much what you imagine when you think of a monster. They manifest into the world, attack people on sight regardless of what they were doing beforehand, and don't generally venture out much farther than where they first manifested. Often their hunting ground is only about a few miles around where they first appear."

"Hidden monsters are similar, but a bit trickier and far more dangerous. They still don't really venture out all that far from where they first manifest, but rather than attack people on sight, hidden monsters wait for you to fall into some sort of trap they've laid before they attack. These guys are a lot scarier seeing as you could be mere inches from one without even knowing."

"And lastly, you have roaming monsters." Alka said, gesturing to all the dead spiders surrounding them.

"They're pretty much the same as stable monsters in that they attack on sight. If it wasn't obvious from the name, the only difference is that these monsters don't stick around wherever they first manifest. They'll pick a direction and roam, sometimes in a straight line for hundreds of miles, sometimes in a particularly large area. If the latter, they often have some sort of method of determining when new prey has wandered into their zone, such as the spiders and their web."

"So you think the spiders killed off these guys, and then before they could get the chance to eat them, they detected us wandering into their turf and rushed off to kill us?" Vin summed up.

"That'd be my guess," Alka nodded.

"Monsters seem driven to kill over all else for whatever reason. It's why they won't stop to feast on any of their victims until an entire party has been slaughtered."

"So where do elite monsters fall into your classification, like the Trunkback?" Shia asked, fully invested at this point.

"Elite monsters are their own classification entirely," Alka shook her head.

"It goes without saying they're big and strong, but that's not what makes them so scary. Unlike regular monsters, elite monsters aren't driven by a mindless need to kill. They actually have some semblance of thought and reasoning, which makes them terrifying predators."

"I know what you mean," Vin said, shuddering as he thought back to his battle with the giant snake. He swore he'd seen intelligence in those slitted eyes, as if the snake was enjoying the chaos it was causing, so he was glad to hear he was right.

"This is all very well and interesting…" Scule said, poking his head out from one of the packs.

"... but I may have something even more interesting for us to look at." Based on the wide assortment of clothes, tools, and what looked like random handfuls of iron chips scattered everywhere, the petian had finally managed to go through the entirety of the packs. Walking out of the pack like it was a small cave, he dragged his find out behind him. Revealing a rather worn looking journal.