NOVEL SIMPLE A Discovery Of Great Worth – Chapter 258
With Ace back in town, Jim didn’t waste any time gathering together a team to check out the kobold monument. Not his usual team, though. Since the goal isn’t to dive deep, but rather to just check out something on the fifth floor, he grabs those best suited to check it out.
That results in a team composed of him, Doctor, both Barrais, Kelly, and Billy Brown. The last guy was one of the two core members who came from overseas. As for why he was joining this expedition? Simple enough, he enjoyed languages to the extreme.
In fact, he enjoyed them so much, even the system recognized it. Not that anyone else knew this, but he had received the skill polyglot. It wasn’t quite as overpowered as some of the pre-system RPGs made, but having it still meant Billy could analyze new languages and break them down like never before. Of course, since Jim didn’t know that, why did he get Billy to join the team?
Well, Billy has one side passion outside of learning normal languages. He loved learning conlangs. Stuff like the made up elf language a popular author made and the various tweaks the audience did to them so they felt more natural. So while he was “only” proficient in seven different major languages, the guy was passing in at least seven more fantasy languages.
Languages which, except for a couple more out there ones, were confirmed to bear at least passing resemblance to major languages spoken out in the wider universe. In fact, the elf one turned out to be eerily similar to the major elf trade language. So suffice it to say, Billy was going to be the best bet at understanding any writing they might find.
And so, with the team gathered, they quickly make their way through the first four floors and arrive on the fifth. Not that beating the boss was in question or anything. While none of them are at the point that they could solo the floor or anything. With just Jim and the Barrais, it was almost guaranteed. No, that wasn’t what stopped them.
Instead, the Barrais were going to do some scouting. The previous teams that had seen the monument had all done so after beating the floor and so didn’t really get to see how the kobolds were treating the thing. So now was the time for stealth.
In fact, after they confirmed the entrance was clear of kobolds, everyone else retreated to the previous floor so they wouldn’t give away the Barrais. A move that proves itself as moments after they leave, a patrol passes by.
Jeremy and Susan both manage to go unnoticed, but the rest of the team certainly wouldn’t have managed it. Though after that near miss, the two manage to infiltrate into the kobold town relatively easily. Not like the kobolds, we’re necessarily ready for this kind of thing in the first place. Sure, a few teams would send out a scout, but that was always to find where the patrol was and would generally get caught.
Susan, in particular managed to find a really nice spot on top of one of the buildings that surrounded the center space. Jeremy, on the other hand, ended up with a less than stellar position underneath some scrap wood. He could still see into the center where the boss and monument were, just from foot level.
Still, they both managed to see more than enough. Most importantly, the kobolds were not worshiping the monument. Don’t get me wrong, they clearly revered the thing, but it wasn’t a matter of faith and deities. A thing which both of them had trained themselves to recognize after the incident with the announcement of Moota and the crazed being that Ace had banished from town.
While the Wolf’s Rest still operated on the ideal of religious freedom, some would even say more so than the pre-system country did, they weren’t lenient with people because of it. The idea of being able to get away with things because of one’s religion was a thing of the past. So while the town doesn’t care if you worship a devil or fae; you can’t go around sacrificing people, setting up fairy rings, or not paying your taxes. Though, of course, if it was revealed that you were worshiping something like that, the people of the town might not be too happy with you.
This and more flitted through Susan’s mind as she watched, especially when she recognized the capstone of the monument as being representations of various kobold deities. Not that she recognized which deities, Susan wasn’t exactly knowledgeable of such things. However, her recent training did allow her to recognize depictions of the divine and their pretenders.
Down below, Jeremy was able to spot some things of his own. In particular, was the fact that while the number and type of kobold around the thing stayed the same. The actual kobolds were cycling through. Susan didn’t particularly notice this one as they did mostly look the same from above and she was paying attention to other things. Jeremy, on the other hand could see much above the knees and so noticed a difference of how dirty the feet were and in what way.
In the end, though, there wasn’t really much for the two to see. While the boss and her closest minions seemed to talk, the Barrais didn’t understand them. As for the other kobolds? Sure, they didn’t move around like robots or anything, but it felt like something you might see attached to a really fancy model train setup. Like clockwork, the normal kobolds and animals cycled through their lives.
Upon hearing this report, Jim was both happy and a good bit worried. Sure, the boss going off script, as it were, was normal enough. However, there shouldn’t be other monsters acting like that. The only problem was that he didn’t know if this was a new thing or how they always were.
Jim sighed and got the team moving. While interesting, they weren’t going to find out more until after they could examine the monument a little closer. And then they won.
Sure, it wasn’t quite a walk in the park. The near stampede, not an actual one as far as the system was concerned, of all the animals hurt. Yes, the kobolds managed to put up a spectacular fight. In the end, though; Jim, Kelly, and the Barrais outranged them in a deadly manner. That and Doctor to keep them in top shape after any stray hits meant even the boss was quickly dealt with and the threat of death shockingly low.
The only thing of interest in the entire fight was the fact that the Barrais had upgraded their ranged options. They had always been good with the classic hidden weapons, but rarely used them at range so as to not risk losing their weapons. Plus, throwing knives and needles aren’t exactly being produced at the moment so it was all pre-system gear and thus even on the fifth floor their usefulness had begun to drop off.
Their answer? Stone weapons supplied by Kelly through the magic of magic. The two hadn’t yet really clicked with any kind of magic yet so the option was limited, but at some point Kelly had figured out the perfect spell to handle things. She would create a simple ritual circle of some sort and by supplying it with magic, the circle would suck up stone from beneath it and turn it into throwing needles.
Doyle could only imagine any future enemies of the town that tried to siege them. That spell combined with some wood and stone would be able to create basic arrows like nothing else. Sure, handcrafted arrows by anyone besides the newest of beginners would likely out damage them. That wasn’t the point, though. Special arrows are good for taking care of special enemies. These arrows, on the other hand, would be usable with most archer skills and could be spammed out without worry.
Which is, of course why Doyle hadn’t seen anyone else use it. Ace and Jim had both agreed that the spell was a little too troublesome to spread around quite yet and so only the inner circle knew it. Though speaking of inner circles, Jim and his party just finished cleaning up from the boss fight and were in the inner circle of the kobold town, looking up at the monument.
In particular, both Kelly and Billy were grinning like fools as they began to canvas the structure. Each carving taken note of and even the negative space was analyzed. Of the two, Billy was the first to get results. More because he was focused on one aspect as well as there being some vague connections between the runes and some of the languages he had passing familiarity with.
Now Ally had assumed most of the knowledge on the monument was going to be basically useless since it came from a different dimension and so would follow different rules. An assumption which wouldn’t be wrong if it had involved any sort of advanced knowledge. However, that wasn’t what the monument was about.
Instead of some sort of record of how to advance up the tech ladder, it laid out a foundation. A storage of knowledge on how to start being civilized, not for after becoming a civilization. Sure, even the most simple of things wouldn’t work in every dimension, but the kobolds who made the monument had something to work with. It was for kobolds and so only needed to account for dimensions where they could exist naturally.
That meant it was full of all kinds of stuff like the six simple machines. More important for Wolf’s Rest though, was that it contained some basic knowledge which involved supernatural energies. As while kobolds technically don’t require any of the stuff to work, a majority require it to develop and survive.
The knowledge itself was vague, of course. Whoever made the monument must have realized it wouldn’t be limited to just their home dimension. What it described though was worth more than all the materials and items retrieved from the dungeon so far.
How to identify if an illness was in some way supernatural. Simple solutions for when a local pest becomes more than just an animal and threatens the crops. Ways to test the local powers to get a feel for what kind of dangers might be lurking. There were even methodologies for how to saturate food crops with power and then figure out if the resulting crop was a good thing or not.
All of it was generic as well. Whether it was mana, qi, or something more obscure, like prana; the monument had a number of ways to test how it all worked, the best way to handle it, and some warnings on when not to handle it. This monument basically had everything a small group of sapients would need to explore a dangerous and magical world. So, while the town wasn’t exactly in unfamiliar territory with the whole “being sapient” thing, the stuff about exploring the magical side of life would be of great importance.
The only problem was that the farther up the monument Billy got, the harder it was to read. It was the same language and writing system in theory. However, what it discussed became more profound and the meanings of what he read began to slip through his mind and right back out. It got so bad that he had to give up after the middle step.
Not that he wanted to, but whoever had carved the words, while okay with others reading the earlier bit, must have been highly against anyone that wasn’t a kobold figuring out the upper steps of the pyramid, to say nothing of the obelisk.
Though as Billy lost steam, Kelly was finally coming into her own. She had observed the entire structure and was now dissecting the various meanings behind it.
