Chương 59: (58) 2.11. A Small Truth

"I have to say Vin, I'm a little confused. I swore I said, 'this isn't what it looks like,' but clearly you must have heard, 'lock away the tiny man and throw away the key.' Might want to get your ears checked." Vin rolled his eyes at the petian's remark as they walked into the small jail, but he couldn't wipe the grin off his face at finding his new friend unharmed and waiting impatiently for them. The elder dismissed the guards, asking them to wait outside as the rest of Vin's companions flooded into the room.

"Would you believe the elder asked us if we wanted to come see you an hour ago and we told her to let you sweat a little?" Alka grinned, floating over to the Rogue and poking him with an ethereal finger half the size of his body.

"Hey, stop that!" Scule yelped, jumping up and doing his best to dodge Alka's incessant poking.

"It's super cold!"

"Glad to see you're in such high spirits," Shia snorted, crossing her arms.

"Guess we were worried for nothing."

"Oh, you know me," Scule grinned, finally giving up on dodging Alka's attacks and shivering as her hand phased right through him.

"Never one to let the man break me down. Or decrepit old woman in this case." Wincing, Vin turned to glance at the elder, finding her watching their reunion with a gentle smile. For once, he was glad she couldn't understand what Scule was saying.

"Scule, what the hell happened?" He asked, cutting right to the chase. The elder made it sound like they were on a timer after all, so no sense beating around the bush.

"Oh I see, now they want my statement," Scule said, huffing and turning away from the elder in defiance.

"Why should I help them now?"

"Well, a large chunk of the village wants you executed," Alka pointed out helpfully.

"Damn, woman really knows how to motivate a guy." Sighing, Scule sat down, glancing at his blood-stained hands.

"Before that though… Just tell me. Did the guy end up making it?"

"The dude you were found next to?" Vin asked, blinking in surprise.

"No, he was pronounced dead."

"Killed by poison," Shia added, leaving the second half of her statement unsaid.

"Like a Rogue knifed him," Alka added, immediately saying the unsaid part anyway.

"Yeah, yeah, you don't have to tell me how bad this looks," Scule said, rolling his eyes.

"And I know it was poison that killed him, I was there. The whole reason I'm covered in blood is because I was trying to save him."

"Maybe start from the beginning?" Vin offered, motioning the elder to come closer.

"I'll translate for the elder." Nodding, Scule shifted slightly on the stone floor, trying and failing to get comfortable. Scowling, he gave up after a few seconds, deciding to just get on with the story anyways.

"So there I was. Wandering around the outskirts of the village for… no real reason in particular," he coughed, glancing away from the three sets of unsurprised looks.

"The reason doesn't matter! Anyway, while scoping- wandering around, Reginald and I heard a faint thud come from inside one of the stone houses. Those hide coverings don't really do a great job at insulating noise, and I know the sound of a body collapsing to the floor when I hear one." Vin decided not to translate that last part for the elder, and quickly motioned for Scule to continue.

"Naturally, I wanted to make sure whoever had fallen over was okay. You know, maybe receive a reward or something for helping an elderly person out. Old people always have the best heirlooms after all. But when Reginald and I went in to check it out…" Scule paused, his eyes flickering to his blood stained hands yet again as he searched for the right words.

"I'd never seen anything quite like it… Inside I saw a man lying there on the ground, spasming and struggling for air as if dying to some sort of fast acting poison. And next to him, ransacking the place and throwing as much food in a sack as possible was some sort of monster." Scule jumped up, throwing his tiny arms as wide as he physically could.

"Nearly three times my size, with grey, bubbly skin and green tipped claws, the monster spotted me the moment I walked in. Its large, crooked smile took up half its face, and it hissed at me before darting straight for us. Before I even knew what was happening Reginald leapt out of the way, and the monster took off into the night. I decided to stay and try to help the man, but I ordered Reginald to follow the monster and try to stop it. Or barring that, at least figure out where it came from."

"That explains why we haven't seen Reginald in awhile," Shia muttered, looking concerned.

"I hope the poor guy's okay."

"What, Reginald? That rat has a demon's luck," Scule snorted, waving a hand dismissively.

"If he still hasn't come back yet, that just means the monster came from pretty far off."

"If you were trying to help the guy, how did you get covered in blood?" Vin asked, trying to make sense of everything.

"Wouldn't you try feeding him an antidote or something to counteract the poison?"

"Ah, a common misconception," Scule said, shaking his head.

"If the poison spreads through blood, it's faster for the antidote to do the same; preferably through the same introduction point as the poison. It was a long shot, but as a connoisseur of poisons myself, I keep a few general antidotes with me that can slow or even fully stop some weaker stuff. I was in the middle of shoving one of my antidotes as deeply into the man's wound as I could when his wife found me." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"No wonder they arrested you," Alka snorted.

"Talk about unfortunate timing."

"Yeah, I get why they did it," Scule sighed, scratching his head.

"Without Reginald, I didn't really stand any chance of running away, so I figured it was safest to give myself up and wait for them to bring you over to help me explain what really happened."

"Well I'm glad you didn't try and fight off the warriors," Vin said, giving Scule a reassuring smile before turning to face the elder.

"So there you have it. Not only did Scule not kill the man, he was trying to save him." For her part, the elder had stood through Vin's translation of the story silently, nodding along with Scule's sequence of events. Her expression had darkened at Scule's description of the monster, and she leaned heavily on her cane, a contemplative look on her face.

"If what your friend says is true, the village may be in serious trouble," she finally said, giving Vin a weary look that seemed to carry the weight of her years spent as village elder.

"I almost pray your friend is indeed lying. Otherwise we have a deadly monster that's shown remarkable intelligence and has already proven it's capable of slipping in and out of our village undetected."

"It's worse than that actually. Much worse, in fact," Alka said, drifting over to hover before the elder.

"We're not dealing with a monster at all."

"What do you mean?" The elder asked, her frown deepening.

"Are you claiming that because of its intelligence?"

"Oh no, there are definitely intelligent monsters out there," Alka said, shaking her head.

"Some of them are even smart enough to learn how to set traps or speak our language. But there's one thing that all monsters share across the board, and at least according to what I've witnessed so far across the handful of fragments we've explored, this rule remains ironclad."

"Their appetite." The room went silent as everyone stared at Alka, the Slayer hovering just a few inches off the ground as she continued.

"Unlike people or animals, monsters are made of magic. Because of this, they are driven to consume mana in place of anything you or I could eat. The simplest method of course, being taking a nice, juicy bite out of any regular old person."

"Wait, if monsters are made of mana, how can people eat them afterwards?" Vin asked, trying to wrap his head around this sudden revelation. He knew from his conversation with the Goddess that monsters were a byproduct of magic, but he hadn't really stopped to think about what that meant.

"And if it's mana they want, why would they attack the people from my world? Everyone from Earth starts off with a magic attribute of zero!"

"They are made by magic, not of magic," Shia corrected him, none of Alka's words seeming to come as a surprise to her.

"When they are formed, they are given flesh and blood bodies, albeit ones with a bit more mana density than regular living animals. Enough to poison someone if they consume too much of their flesh too quickly. Their bodies are actually closer to yours or mine than an actual magical beast, like Erik. As to why your people were attacked, that was almost certainly magical residue." Seeing Vin's blank face, Shia rolled her eyes.

"Vin, your people were part of a magical ritual on a scale that dwarfs anything I could even dream of. Transferring hundreds, or thousands, of people between worlds all at once?" She shook her head, letting out a sharp laugh.

"I can't even begin to imagine the sheer amount of mana required to do something like that. No doubt anyone who was a part of the ritual still has some of that mana lingering on them, and will for some time."

"Okay, so monsters eat people, or the mana inside people," he summed up, earning a nod from Shia.

"So the fact that whatever Scule saw was gathering food from the man's house rather than chowing down on him…"

"We're dealing with a sentient race," Alka nodded, tilting her head.

"Or at least, semi-sentient. You sure you didn't hear it say anything that sounded like words, Scule?"

"Unless its language is entirely constructed of harsh hissing, no," Scule frowned, looking at Vin.

"I know I joked about this earlier, but I'm starting to think we need to move the whole 'getting Scule a method of understanding languages' task up on your to do list."

"I'll get on that right after we finish clearing your name," Vin drawled, glancing at the elder.

"I'm assuming these creatures aren't from your old world. Did your warriors explore any of your other surrounding fragments besides the one Samtha's team went in?"

"No, definitely not from our world," she confirmed, looking pensive.

"And other than a quick look, we dared not head deeper into any of the other fragments after what happened with Samtha's team. Not before regaining more of our lost levels."

"Any bit helps," Vin encouraged her, excited to hear about more unexplored fragments.

"Even if they only glanced in, what did they see?"

"Adjacent to Samtha's fragment was one filled with a strange, freezing powder," the elder explained.

"Apparently the environment was cold, colder than anything my people had ever experienced before."

"Alright, some sort of arctic tundra I guess," Vin muttered, gesturing for her to keep going. Scule hadn't said the creature was covered in fur or even wearing anything remotely similar to clothes, so it probably wouldn't live in freezing temperatures.

"Next to that was one far more hospitable. The land seemed to be one giant, flat rock, stretching as far as the eye could see. We briefly contemplated exploring further into this one, but one of the scouts with a Dangersense passive began sweating almost immediately, refusing to go further than a few feet beyond the border. He couldn't explain what was setting it off, but something about that fragment is inherently dangerous."

"Great, mysterious flat rock face of death, good to know," Vin nodded, curious about this scout's passive. It sounded similar to his own Threat Detection, so he wondered what the difference was between the two.

"After that is an unpleasant one, filled with wet, sopping ground almost impossible to walk on and pungent, unpleasant smells filling the air," the elder said, wrinkling her nose at the thought.

"One of the scouts stepped poorly and went from dry land to submerged in an instant, nearly drowning as the ground seemed to come alive and suck her in. I still remember the stench on her clothes after all this time."

"Some sort of swamp then," Alka said, looking thoughtful.

"That would track for the creature having an innate poison ability on its claws. Its small size would help it stay atop the marshy land as well without getting sucked in."

"Damn, can't say I'm a huge fan of swamps," Vin groaned, already imagining the smell and humidity in the air. He'd spent a few days checking out the Everglades back on Earth, and that had been plenty of time for him to come to the conclusion that swamps weren't for him.

"The only other adjacent fragments are the one your people are in, and the citadel," Shia pointed out.

"It has to be the swamp."

"I know... Doesn't mean I have to like it," Vin grumbled.

"Well, we know what actually killed Toby, and where it most likely came from," Shia said, looking at the elder.

"Is that enough to get Scule released and calm the apprentices down?"

"It will be hard without proof…" the elder said, hesitating.

"I hate to ask this of you Vin, but perhaps-""Elder," one of the guards interrupted, poking his head inside the hide covering and doing an excellent job of keeping his eyes on the elder rather than Vin's strange party.

"Raulfa is asking for you."

"Tell her to wait. I'm a tad busy at the moment," the elder said, frowning.

"Apologies elder, but I think it's important," the guard said, glancing over his shoulder as if listening to someone.

"Something about a rat with a saddle showing up on the edge of town."

"... dragging a dead body behind it?"