Chương 509: Chapter 510: Return to Town

As we boarded the boat and started the journey back to town, I felt the urge to get up and dance with joy. I had expected to walk into a monster's lair and engage in some kind of fight to the death. I had been prepared for it - after all, the experiences we'd had over the past few years showed that this dimensional cluster was far from safe. Furthermore, there were plenty of situations we'd encountered the past few worlds that just couldn't be resolved without fighting. But for once, things had ended peacefully.

The pillar of mist seemed somewhere between neutral and friendly, and seemed open to establishing trade and a possible alliance in the future. It had even offered to pay us for the corpses of the other faction of mist creatures - and while I wasn't quite sure what it wanted to do with those corpses, or whether we would find some other use for them, it was good to know that the mist column wasn't allied with the mist creatures, at least. After all, they had attacked us the moment we made contact with them.

Very little happened during the return journey to town. That night, Veritum, one of the other elite combatants who specialized in fire magic had been showing more and more interest in the administration of the town, called us all to a meeting. This time, I noticed that not every adult attended, though.

"Why are some people missing?" I asked my neighbor, a kindly-looking old lady with white hair and a few missing teeth.

"We're about to start, and we're still missing twenty people." I felt a surge of worry. Was someone hurt? I could use my healing magic again, so if someone was hurt, I absolutely wanted to know. Or were they protesting against Veritum's gradually increasing influence over town affairs? I really hoped we weren't about to get bogged down in frustrating politics.

I didn't have any strong feelings about who should or shouldn't act as mayor of our newly established town, and at least so far Veritum hadn't done anything outrageous or problematic.

"Nobody is hurt, don't worry. This morning, after you and the others left, we noticed a few of the mist monsters we fought yesterday moving around the edge of town. One of them started summoning a big horde of monsters to attack one of the woodcutters, and we barely managed to reinforce him before he got surrounded. So we all decided it was a bad idea not to have at least a few people watching the edge of town at all times. That's where the twenty missing people are - keeping an eye on the mist.

They'll start yelling up a storm if they see anything we should know about." I frowned. The mist monsters wandering closer to town wasn't a good sign. It meant that we would really need to find a way to deal with the mist, either in a more permanent manner, or at the very least, we would need to erect some defenses. My thoughts drifted back to the mist column's words earlier. It had mentioned that if we hadn't already come into conflict with the mist monsters, we probably would soon.

I had thought it was simply referring to their hostility towards other life forms, but it seemed like it had meant more than that. Would the mist monsters organize some kind of attack against us, or initiate hostilities in some other way? The thought made me uneasy, but there wasn't much I could do about it at the moment. The best thing I could do was raise my concerns once the meeting started. As I pondered the old lady's words, the final stragglers drifted in and settled down for the meeting.

Veritum quickly ushered the ten of us who had explored the misty island into the center of the meeting. I detailed our encounter with the mist sprites and the pillar of mist, with the others occasionally interjecting to add details I had forgotten. I also discussed the geography of the island in the center of the lake, as well as what little we had learned about the different 'factions' of mist monsters. Finally, I mentioned the mist column's warning that we would likely be in conflict with the mist monsters soon.

"Are you certain that this pillar of mist can be trusted?" asked one of the other adults.

"We're not sure, but we think that there is no need for it to deceive us. My {Strength Analysis} feat was quite clear that the ten of us were no match for it in a raw battle," said Amanda.

"If it's that much stronger than us, it could have initiated hostilities and wiped us out anytime it wanted to. The fact that it didn't, as well as its interest in communicating with us, indicates that it is probably not hostile."

"Based on your interactions, I suspect the column of mist may not be very mobile," said one of the other adults.

"You mentioned that the mist column seemed greatly annoyed with the fact that hostile mist monsters kept entering its domain and killing its children. If it is as powerful as you say, then it should have had little difficulty protecting its children on its own, unless something stops it from doing so. Limited mobility would certainly do that. Furthermore, it doesn't sound like it moved its location during its meeting with you at all." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author.

Report any sightings. I paused, and then nodded. That was a good point, and one that I hadn't thought of. If the adult's speculation was correct, it meant that the pillar, while powerful, was constrained. On one hand, this was mostly a good thing for us - it meant that if we intended to keep trading with it, it had fewer opportunities to renege on deals and harm us.

If the mist column ever decided to wipe us out for some reason, we would have ample time to flee if its mobility was constrained, and if it was outright immobile, it might be literally incapable of directly attacking us. On the other hand, it also meant that the pillar had weaknesses - so if it became a proper ally in the future, it may not be as helpful as I had been hoping for.

"If it's immobile, it might have had more reason to deceive us than we thought," said Sallia, after a few moments.

"I was originally thinking that such a powerful creature had no real reason to lie to us, since wiping out our town would be easy for it. However, if it has some kind of restriction it is unable to overcome, it actually has reason to resort to trickery." A few other adults nodded. I frowned. I hadn't thought of that either.

"For now, we should still extend some goodwill. Falling out with a potential ally over vague suspicions is a poor choice. Let's just keep an eye on it and be prepared for potential malice, if it does breach our trust in the future," said the old lady sitting next to me. I relaxed at her words. She was right. So far, all we had were speculations. At the end of the day, we just needed to act in good faith and keep an eye out for signs of betrayal. Just like if we made a powerful human ally, really.

The meeting went in circles for several more minutes, as people questioned us about other details we had missed during the meeting, discussed the potential for trade or hostilities with the mist column, and generally discussed what we needed to do about our neighbor. For now, most of the town decided to adopt a 'be polite and see if the column reciprocates' approach.

They also tentatively agreed that we would send over some wooden crafts to the mist column five days from now, especially sculptures and other artistic goods. After all, the first room our group had seen upon entering the mist palace was a giant, room sized painting - which implied that the column valued art.

"Now, on to the other topic that I wanted to discuss today," said Veritum.

"The hostile mist faction is becoming a potential problem. One of them has already attacked one of our woodcutters today, as many of you already know. The density of the mist clouds around our town is slowly increasing, and I suspect that if a certain threshold is reached, they might just attack our town as a giant horde. Even if they don't, their actions are gradually strangling our access to resources we need, such as lumber. Soon, they'll probably choke off our access to our own farmland.

We cannot let this continue if we wish for our settlement to survive. We need to find a countermeasure - either by thinning out their population and keeping their numbers under control, or finding some way to drive them away from our town."

"We could try using fire to constrain their presence around our town?" said Felix.

"I can think of a few ways to create fires that don't need much fuel, especially if some [Fire Mages] work to maintain it. We have speculated that the mist monsters might be weak to fire, and this could be a good chance to test that theory. We could also try a bunch of other forms of magic and see if any of them are unusually effective. We have plenty of people with weird Sparks that can try weird and crazy tactics until we figure out something that consistently works."

"I vote that we should create several hunting squads, to try attacking the mist monsters nearest to our town. Nobody got any sparks last time, and based on Miria's observations using her soul sight, as well as the words of the mist column, it seems that we didn't manage to inflict any real harm on the monster that attacked us. We need to figure out how to actually kill these monsters, or they will always be a threat." said one of the other adults.

I heard a few people chime in in support, and I rubbed my chin in thought. Until the speaker mentioned it, I hadn't thought much about it… but killing monsters was actually quite important. If our settlement wanted to maintain some degree of combat readiness, we needed a source of levels. This world wasn't like previous worlds, where training was the biggest source of combat prowess.

In this world, killing monsters directly impacted someone's levels - which meant that monsters were an essential resource to maintain power. Previously, clans from our first dimension had a nearly endless supply of monsters to fight, so sources of levels were never in short supply. Now, on this island, we were far more limited in our access to monsters - we had the mist monsters, and whatever horrors may mor may not lurk in the ocean, along with the magic deer that had only been sighted a few times so far.

"I think we should do both," said Veritum, after a few minutes of debate and chatter from the other members of the meeting.

"We could get some of the [Fire Mages] to set up a wall of flames and keep it up, perhaps in conjunction with some [Enchanters] to make a more permanent source of flames. In the meantime, we should assemble a big squad of at least twenty people to go and attack one of the mist monsters. Miria, if you don't mind, I really want you to be there with them as a healer. It would make the whole fight much safer. I'd also really like if everyone else who is confident in their fighting abilities to join in.

The more people we have in that group, the easier it will be to win if the mist monster has some kind of backup trump card that we aren't prepared for. After the battle, you should bring whatever remains it has, so that we can assess it for material value. Then we'll check with the mist column and see whether it offers a better price, or whether we want to keep the corpses for ourselves. Any objections?"

Most of the adults seemed on board with the idea, so after a few more rounds of discussion, we agreed with Veritum's plan. Tomorrow, we would hunt one of the mist monsters.