Broken Lands

Chapter 345 – A Choice Link-Gate

The old guide was happy to dispense his wisdom about the fish in exchange for the nettlefish meat. It was apparently theirs, since they were the “plumbers” who killed the fish. Once they’d finished packing up the valuable small bits of the nettlefish and sparkfish, the guide paid them and led them to “the sewer exit.” It was, of course, another link-gate portal.

Sophia had to wonder if anyone had ever tried robbing the guide. It seemed kind of pointless to her, since it wouldn’t actually complete the zone and if you robbed him, you wouldn’t get either the nettlefish bits or the guidance to the next area, but it still seemed likely someone had tried it. She was curious how the Maze handled things like that; did the guide even have the aurichalc for their payment before they completed the extermination? 

In most dungeons back home, the answer was no. The major exception was branching scenario-based dungeons; many of those dungeons liked to give all sorts of options for how to proceed. Sophia had once done one out in California where talking to the right person at the beginning of the scenario let you into a casino and nightlife area that simply wasn’t available in the main storyline, which mostly had to do with tracking down horse thieves, if she remembered correctly. That was a fun dungeon.

Sophia made certain to sketch the portal before they exited into the link. It did not have any inhabitants, which gave them a choice: did they want to spend the night there or move into the next zone? It was after noon, but it was still early afternoon, roughly an hour or two past midday. If the next zone was quick like the previous two, they could easily knock it out that afternoon. If it was a long zone, something like the festival protection from the expedition, they’d be in trouble, but that was true of any zone they started after dawn.

The gates in the link didn’t have any writing, but the exit they used in the storm sewer system had three phrases that seemed to match the three other gates: Library of Monsters, Storm Winds, and Ant Farm. Interestingly, the Library of Monsters link-gate had a slot for a token but seemed to be unlocked already. Maybe it could be overridden or somehow modified with a token?

Jax was in favor of Storm Winds. It would lead them farther into the Maze, which they wanted, but they had more than enough time to get deeper. They could choose one of the other options if they wanted to. Everyone else disliked the idea; sure, it was deeper into the Maze, but they’d either end up fighting wind monsters or having to fight monsters in very bad weather, and neither sounded like any fun at all.

Ci’an thought the Ant Farm was probably the better choice. It sounded like an area full of ant monsters, so it ought to be good for Wisp collection. Any that were on the surface would be vulnerable since monstrous ants usually couldn’t fly, but odds were that they’d mostly be underground. Taika also wanted to see the ants, but he was hoping that they’d have to help ants that were farming, rather than hunt them. He wanted to see what ants farmed (and find out if it was yummy).

Xin’ri and Cliff wanted to see the Library of Monsters. It was one of the few times Cliff actually spoke up, but it was obvious that he hoped it would be a bunch of different monsters he could collect. Xin’ri, on the other hand, thought it might be a library with information on monsters, which could be really helpful. Maybe they’d have to defend it or maybe it would be another of the strange challenges the Maze liked to set people. Those were often worth more than the others anyway, even the ones with a lot of monsters.

Sophia found that pretty convincing and said so. Fighting a lot of monsters would be fun, but learning about them would be even more useful in the future. 

“And here I was going to say the Ant Farm,” Dav said with a grin that clearly said he wasn’t serious. “No, really, let’s move into the Monster Library. I can’t wait to see what it is either. If nothing else, it sounds like there’s a good chance that it won’t have surprise encounters; if it takes too long, we can rest for the night.”

The other side of the link-gate was a dark stone room with two archways. Both arches had glowing letters. The one on the left seemed to lead to a library, while the one on the right led to a room filled with displays that reminded Sophia of the displays under Mazehold, even though each had its own base station rather than being projected from the wall. The glowing displays did not have words; instead, they had sketches of what Sophia could only assume were monsters. There were a few books and what looked like a scroll lying on the floor.

For once, both archways were easy to read, as long as you knew Bridge. The library archway said Seek, Read, Learn, with pure decoration (at least as far as Sophia could tell) on the sides below the arch itself. The monster display was both longer and more informative, with an upper set of letters around the archway like the library and an inner set carved above the entrance. The upper arch said Fight Your Errors, while the lower legs said Choose One or Many and Define Your Choices. 

At least, Sophia thought those were the best translations. There were a few other ways she could translate the phrases; Define could just as easily be Defend or Explain, while Fight had an odd modifier that might have made it Pursue instead.

“So, we get to do both?” Sophia wondered out loud. Naturally, she then had to tell everyone what the words meant. Despite the fact that Dav’s Borrow and Extend Understanding Abilities worked on ancient Kestii, they didn’t seem to work properly on Bridge. It was weird; they’d work on Suras or Lyka, which were both also languages Sophia knew from her home universe, but they wouldn’t work on Bridge. It was like the Guide specifically prohibited the knowledge from spreading through Dav’s Abilities.

That was exactly what Bai thought was happening. He could learn from her, and he had, but he could not find any innate reason the language wouldn’t translate using any of the Guide’s Abilities.

Sophia couldn’t argue with his logic, even though it didn’t make any sense. What was the point in both labeling everything and not helping people read the labels? Wasn’t that the whole point of labeling things, so that people would know what the label meant? It wasn’t like the labels were even that useful; they were pretty generic in a lot of ways.

“Looks like it,” Dav agreed. “I think this is worth the trip on its own. Do you think those books will come with us if you stick them in your pack?”

All thoughts of the Guide’s weirdnesses vanished like mist compared to the idea of carrying around an entire library full of monster information … if that was what all of those books were. “My pack won’t hold that much. Not for long, at least, and I’m not sure it’ll even go in. Let’s find out what the books say before we try.”

With that, the trip to the Maze turned into a trip to a library. Any thought of heading deeper into the Maze was discarded; they’d spend as long in the library as they could. It seemed to be safe, after all, which meant that it was fine if they spent the next five days here, then left early on their sixth day in the Maze. That would get them back in plenty of time for the end of the dyleda tournament and the rendezvous with the Blade. 

It should also make it far easier to figure out what monsters in the Maze were. If that worked out, it would make future trips into the Maze even easier. If they could manage to salvage many or all of the books, it would help even more. If they couldn’t, they’d just have to try to come back when there was time, hopefully before a mazestorm cut off the route.

One of the five monsters displayed in the room to the right was detailed in the books left in the room; Xin’ri started there and was able to identify that the books gathered together were all about the same creature and that it matched one of the monsters shown on the screens. It was a collection of different works, from the scroll, which held a dry description of the monster, to stories about what it could and did do, including both where it could be found and actual stories of people who had seen it. One of the books seemed to talk about all of the creatures in an area, but the monster in question was one of the ones it contained. It was a lot more information that Sophia thought they needed about a single monster, though she had to admit that a lot of the behavioral stuff was useful if you found yourself in a place where the monster lived.

That meant they only had to find the information about four more monsters, hidden somewhere in the rest of the books. The place to start as far as Sophia was concerned was finding the index; there had to be one or you’d never find anything.

It wasn’t in an obvious location. It wasn’t in a book near the entrance and it wasn’t in any of the furniture, either, even though there was a cabinet with a bunch of drawers that held small cards; all of the cards were blank.

When they checked out the books, they didn’t seem to be in any sort of order, either. There was a book of stories about monsters in the Hicaru Uplands next to a scholarly dissertation on the Fanged Lightning Swamp Snake of Uvvt next to a book of tales that seemed to be about encounters with something that sounded an awful lot like a giraffe to Sophia. At the minimum, it was a plant-eater with a very long neck that posed little danger to the writer.

That one might even be relevant to the monsters shown in the other room, but Sophia wasn’t certain. They’d need to find more to be sure what they were looking at. 

They spent a while looking, but eventually there was no way around it: if they wanted to finish the task in five days, they were going to have to go through every single book in the library, determine if they were relevant or not, and find the relevant ones again. Sophia needed something where she could quickly document what each book held in the way of monsters. She was going to have to create the index herself, and that was going to suck. Even with all of them working on it, she didn’t think they’d finish in the five days they had, even if that was in addition to the hours they’d spent on it that day.

Sophia needed something to record the index on. She had paper, but only a limited amount; most of her backpack’s capacity was filled with travel supplies and feathers. On the other hand, there were those blank cards in the cabinet that looked like it ought to be for an index. That might be a clue in its own right.

Sophia grabbed the first card and noted down the details of the first book. Lower, Case 1, Shelf 1, Book 1. Monsters of the Hicaru Uplands. The book had an index for the monsters it contained, so she added that information as well; they’d probably want to reorganize the books eventually, but that had to wait until they knew what the options really were. She put the book on the shelf, grabbed the next one, and tucked the card back in the drawer. Before she could pull the next card out, a message from the Guide appeared.

It had been quite a while since she saw anything from the Guide other than her Status.