Chương 511: B8—Chapter 18: Inconclusive

Mahya and I were chopping down trees when a horn sounded. The people closest to us stopped mid-swing and ran toward it. We exchanged a glance. Mahya gave the tree two more axe strikes to finish cutting it, stored it, and we followed the rest of the lumberjacks. About half a kilometer from where we'd set up, a large group of lumberjacks fought strange root monsters that poured out of the forest. There were dozens of them, maybe close to a hundred, and they looked strange.

The closest comparison was a tangled mass of tree roots, like a ball of yarn after a cat had gone to war with it. Thick and thin strands twisted together in chaotic knots; dirt still clinging to them. But they weren't just piles. Several thicker roots stabbed into the ground and lifted the whole mass up, then skittered like spiders with far too many legs.

They scuttled forward in uneven bursts, root-legs clacking and stabbing into the soil, while other extensions snapped at the fighters like whips or shot forward in sharp jabs. I shot a group of the tree creatures with lightning. Nothing. Not even a twitch. Yeah, wood and lightning don't mix all that well. Mahya Jumped into the middle of the fray with her sword and ran into the same problem.

Despite her strength, the blade carved only shallow cuts into the tangled roots, barely more than scratches across the surface. I joined her with the axe in my hand and had better luck. The weight and bite split the thinner roots instead of just slicing them. Once I coated the edge with mana, it bit deeper and sheared the thicker roots that resisted plain steel. Mahya shot me a look, stored her sword, and switched to an axe. After that, two or three solid hits demolished a monster.

I wasn't as efficient and needed five or six strikes to bring one down, even with the mana edge, but I still dealt real damage. After we cleared the first cluster, she Jumped toward the next one. I flew in the same arc to make it look as if I jumped too, and we went after the next group. The monsters kept pouring out of the forest. By then, the others had cut down more than fifty, on top of the ten we took care of, but even more were still coming. Fortunately, more lumberjacks rushed in, axes raised.

Some mages joined the fray, using mostly cold spells that slowed the creatures. For a moment, I considered buying a spell similar to Al's area freeze spell, but I shook my head and kept chopping roots. Spells useful in one specific situation would just clog my profile with things I'd never use otherwise. Al showed up toward the end of the fight. He slowed a few monsters so Mahya and I could chop them more easily, but didn't do much beyond that.

Rue came with him, lunged at a root creature, and got whipped by five snapping extensions at once. He yelped and retreated. I cast a ranged healing spell on him and kept chopping. All told, it took more than an hour to wipe out the wave. I killed over fifty monsters and cast the harvesting spell here and there when no one paid attention, keeping my movements casual like I was catching my breath. Mahya finished at least double that. I didn't know how many the others killed.

Many monsters had already dissipated by the time the fighting ended, their twisted root bodies collapsing into loose strands and then breaking into mana. But the lumberjacks handled them with such efficiency that I estimated the wave had at least five hundred monsters, maybe more. Once the fighting ended, Mahya dropped to the ground and leaned against a tree, breathing hard. I moved through the aftermath to check who needed help. Quite a few people were hurt, mostly from the stabbing roots.

Five healers had already arrived and worked their way from one injured lumberjack to the next. I stepped in where I could, mostly with the ranged version of Life Weaving. It sped things up a little, but didn't make a real difference. I dropped to the ground beside the gang and wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my arm.

"Finished healing everybody?" Mahya asked, tipping her head back for another drink.

"No." I rolled my shoulders and flexed my fingers.

"Healed a few who looked rough, but that's it. The other healers are handling the rest."

"What happened?" Al asked.

"Monsters came out of the forest." Mahya lowered the bottle and gestured with it toward the tree line.

"I am aware of that. Do you have additional information?" Mahya shook her head and took another long swig.

"No," I said.

"What's there to know? Monsters came out. Everybody killed them. The end." Al studied the dark forest for a moment, then looked back at us.

"Do you wish to explore the forest today as we planned?" Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Mahya and I exchanged a look and made identical disgusted faces.

"No." She pushed herself up a little straighter against the tree.

"We'll finish the chopping, but let's postpone the exploration for a day or two. I want to ask around and find out what's going on. Monsters are normal, but not that many at once." I got an idea and connected to the wind. Since this was a new world and I hadn't worked with this particular wind before, it took a minute or two to explain what I wanted using emotions and mental images. The answer confused me. I got a clear, concrete negative about the portal of doom.

I asked again to be sure and received the same firm negative. But when I managed to convey the general idea of a dungeon, the response shifted. There was hesitation, or maybe uncertainty. No matter how I tried to narrow it down or ask for details, that was the clearest answer I could get. No portal of doom. Inconclusive about a dungeon. I told Mahya and Al about it, but their guess was as good as mine. After talking it through, we agreed that something was going on in there, just not a dungeon.

A mana portal didn't make sense either. This world was missing ten mana levels to even have portals. For the next two days, Mahya did her sleuthing while I explored the city with Rue. Since I'd finished my shopping, he agreed to join me again without too much grumbling. To make him happy about joining me, we sampled more food. It was hearty but plain, mostly meat and vegetables in different combinations. This world's cooking was filling and practical, but seriously lacked spices or ingenuity.

The one thing I genuinely loved in this world was the fruit juice. They had an insane selection. There were berries in every taste imaginable, from so sweet my teeth hurt to sour, lightly bitter, and every other taste; pale yellow fruits that tasted like a mix of orange and pear; and deep purple fruits that resembled an eggplant, stained the tongue, and had a sharp aftertaste that left a mildly stinging feeling on the tongue that somehow made the juice better.

I tasted over fifty different juices, and every single one was delicious. What surprised me were the govermental establishments. Some of them felt like something you'd expect in a high-tech world, and honestly, they did it better here than on Earth. The first sign had been the school we passed on the first day, but it wasn't an exception. There were schools for all ages, from small children to young adults in their twenties.

After a chat with a bookstore owner, I learned that education was free from age three through qualifying for an administrative profession. They also ran an apprenticeship system. It was free too, more or less, with a catch. Once an apprentice reached the required level, they owed a season of work for every year spent learning.

"Why would someone take apprentices under those conditions?" I asked, genuinely surprised. He gave me the classic you-should-know-that look and said, "Nobody wants to pay double taxes." They also had hospitals called Healing Homes, which were free. Museums, or rather "History Halls," free. Libraries. Free again. Public transportation ran through the city free of charge as well.

They used wanderboxes, the same wooden mana-powered carts, but linked together like a small train, with the driver seated in the first one and channeling mana for the whole line. Other city amenities included garbage collection, an extensive sewer system, river water cleaned and purified with magic, street lighting after dark using the same enchanted lights as in the inn, and musical performances in the parks in the evenings. All of it, again, free of charge.

"How much tax do you pay to cover all this?" He slid another book into place before answering.

"A season of our earnings…" I translated that in my head to twenty-five percent. Not bad, considering everything they were getting.

"… and of course our labor." I straightened.

"What kind of labor?" He crossed his arms over his chest.

"Every man from the age of fifteen winters to the age of Vitality minus twenty must cut down twenty-five trees a season. Or pay someone to do it for him."

"What's the age of Vitality?" This time, I got the look and the words.

"How do you not know that?" I spread my hands with a helpless shrug.

"I grew up on a secluded farm on the continent of Ashi-Noor. The reason I'm traveling and talking to people is to learn everything I don't know." He studied me for a moment, something like pity passing across his face, then nodded.

"The number of the Vitality trait on the personal information, times twelve winters." Every three- to five-kilometer stretch of the long, snake-like city had its own management center, called the District Hub. The buildings were easy to spot. They were the largest in each section and usually guarded. Each hub housed the local guard headquarters and handled legal matters.

I didn't get the full list of responsibilities, but from conversations with a shopkeeper and a clerk willing to talk, I learned they registered births and deaths, oversaw land sales for homes and businesses, managed all the free amenities offered by the city, and collected taxes for both the city and the kingdom, twenty percent for the kingdom and five percent for the city.

"Is five percent enough to cover all the city services?" I asked the clerk who'd agreed to chat with me. He looked at me like I was an idiot.

"Of course not. The city also sells the trees all over the continent." Quite an advanced system in my opinion. I did ask about the monster wave we fought, but I got almost the same answer every time.

"It happens sometimes. Better like this." When I asked what the worst version looked like, the reply usually followed the same pattern.

"Fewer monsters in a wave, but many more small waves." No one knew why the waves came, and no one seemed overly concerned about it either. It happens, and that's that. I couldn't really wrap my head around their indifference to something like this. But after thinking it through, I had to admit that if I'd grown up with it, if it had always been part of life, I probably would've ended up just as apathetic about the whole thing.

Mahya spent two days in the city asking questions and got basically the same reaction everywhere. It happens. It always happened. It will continue to happen. That's life. The only new piece of information she uncovered, something I hadn't even thought to ask about, was that people weren't allowed to cut trees beyond the first two rings. They also weren't allowed to go deeper into the forest for foraging or herb collection past the first barrier, which, according to everyone, was very obvious.

After two days of questions and no real answers, we sat down and talked it through. We decided to head into the forest the next day. And since the first barrier might be guarded, we'd go in invisible.