Chapter 47: Chapter 47 – Puzzles

"Hmm~" Rosa hummed at the sight before Scarlett and the others. "It might just be me, but I'm starting to suspect space is a bit weird in this place."

"I think you might be right," Allyssa mumbled, looking up at the giant moon above them.

Scarlett saw a small grin on Rosa's face in her peripheral. "I do have that tendency, don't I?"

Fynn pointed to one of the groups of small humanoid figures that flew past only a few meters away. "Are those also fairies?"

"They are," Scarlett said. "However, there is no need to fear these. They should not be as aggressive as their relatives, assuming you do nothing to provoke them."

You could fight all the fairies in here—they weren't particularly strong either—but it wasn't necessary. It also felt unnecessarily cruel, and would probably clash with her current plans.

That hadn't stopped her from doing it in her second playthrough, though.

She stepped through the open doorway onto the first circular platform inside this 'room'. The floor of the platform consisted of bent and wiry roots that were intertwined over each other. An arching wooden bridge extended out from the platform towards another platform just like it. The small yellow lights that protruded along the side of the bridge reminded her a bit of streetlights.

Scanning across the room, with all the different platforms and bridges floating above the water, there appeared to be no clear way of getting to the large tree at the center of the room without swimming. Several of the platforms looked like dead ends, and there were dozens of them. The main tree was also a decent distance away from their current position.

As she examined the room, one of the fairies—this one glistening with an almost magenta color—approached Scarlett curiously. It floated around her, stopping a few times to get a closer look. It was about the size of her head, and when it stopped she could see that—while it wasn't wearing any clothes—the intangible shine that seeped out from its body looked like a flowing dress, starting from its shoulders and drifting down to the knees. The fairy's hair was long and almost translucent, with its skin being a pale blue with tufts of white strands growing here and there. Its face had slightly alien features, with large round eyes that blinked as they watched her like a child would a new toy.

It stayed like that for a while, simply observing her, before it finally seemed to grow bored and fluttered away to join a passing group of fairies.

A few fairies had approached the others too, and Scarlett saw Allyssa move closer to the edge of the platform, slowly spinning around as she took in their surroundings and two fairies that moved near her head. She let out a small chuckle when two more fairies joined in and they all spun around her in an assemblage of colors. "So what is this place?" she asked, looking towards Scarlett.

"It is no different from the rest of the interstitial space," Scarlett answered as she started moving towards the bridge connecting this platform with the next. "It simply happens to be home to another of the species native to the Wandering Realm, one that is not quite as intrusive."

When she reached the bridge, Shin and Fynn stepped onto it along with her. Rosa and Allyssa followed a couple of steps behind. As they crossed it, Fynn's eyes seemed to be locked onto one of the plants that jutted out of the water not far from them with a group of fairies circling it. It was as if he sensed something special about the plant.

Scarlett wasn't sure if his instincts were just that good, or if it was simply a coincidence.

Stepping onto the next platform, she looked around. There were two other bridges connecting to this platform, but the left one led to an empty platform without any further connections, and though the right one had two more bridges, it too led to a dead-end soon enough. Albeit closer to the center.

"Is that our target?" Shin asked, pointing to the massive tree ahead of them.

"It is."

Fynn tore his eyes away from the plant he'd been staring at, examining the tree and the lack of a path to reach it. "How are we getting there? Are we swimming?"

Scarlett shook her head. "I would advise against diving into the water here," she said, looking down into the lake around them. You couldn't even see past the surface. She tried using her hydromancy, but like the small lake in Temisbrook Woods it didn't budge.

In the game, jumping into the water would bring you to the start of the dungeon. It had been a pain in the game, but here it would be even worse. She did not want to spend all that time walking back here.

She turned to the plant that Fynn had been looking at. After glancing back, ensuring that both Rosa and Allyssa had made it onto their current platform, she raised her hand and snapped her fingers. A small Aqua Mine formed next to the glowing bulb at the top of the plant. When she detonated her magic it blasted into the bulb and a loud, echoing sound—almost like the fracture sounds when skating on an ice lake—rang out as it started swaying back and forth. Slowly, the color of the light changed from yellow to a dull blue.

The others looked at her with slight confusion, but she stayed quiet as she waited. Then, after a while, the bridge to the right of them suddenly withdrew into their platform and disappeared. Another bridge grew out even further to their left, establishing a connection to another platform on that end.

"Wow. That's certainly..unique," Rosa said.

"How did you know it was going to do that?" Allyssa asked.

"I was informed of it beforehand," Scarlett said as she casually started crossing the new bridge to the next platform. "We are not the first people to visit this place."

The next platform had two bridges connecting to it, but Scarlett only looked at where they led for a brief moment before choosing the rightmost one. She then led the way over two more bridges, before eventually stopping at a platform that had three bridges jutting out from it. All of them appeared to lead to dead ends, though.

She frowned as she examined their current location. She was pretty sure this was the correct platform at this point, if you followed the game's designs. And while they weren't entirely trustworthy, they'd almost always been correct when it came to things like this.

She looked out into the water next to the platform. This platform had two plants close to it, instead of just one. Which one was it at this step? She felt like it was the left one. After spending a moment trying to remember, she just shook her head and put her hand into the pouch at her side, bringing out the red leather journal she used to keep notes. She had spent some time trying to memorize this, but it was best to double-check just in case.

She opened it up and flipped through its pages, making sure to turn it away from the others as they looked on with curious gazes. She eventually found the right page, but what she'd written there made her frown even further.

 

'I think the left one is next, but it could be the right too. Good luck'

 

Right...it was this part. That explained why she had a hard time remembering the correct one.

Although she had gone through this place several times in her playthroughs—it took several attempts to get it right—her memory still wasn't perfect for this puzzle, even when she'd originally written it down a month earlier.

She looked up at the two plants.

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Well, she had to assume that the past her was right. But she'd known there was going to be some luck involved in this section. Holding back a sigh, she looked through the rest of the steps she'd written down to refresh her memory before returning the journal to her pouch. Then she raised her fingers—only feeling slightly anxious—and conjured an Aqua Mine next to the left plant.

"That's wrong," Fynn suddenly said.

She paused, turning to him. "What do you mean?"

"That one is wrong." He gestured at the left plant, then towards the fairies that were flying around the room. "They know it too."

Scarlett shifted her gaze to the fairies, and then she saw it. Although their movements seemed to be largely random as they moved around, there was a pattern to them. Or a part of a pattern. She saw as two passing groups of fairies flew by close to both plants, but both groups kept a noticeably larger distance from the left one.

She almost wanted to laugh at the realization. That explained so much. How had she missed this? In the game, she spent ages originally trying to figure out the correct plants through trial and error. She did think it odd at the time that there would be no way to determine which plants were the right ones, but she wasn't one to look up the wikis when she couldn't figure things out by herself. When she had the time to spare she didn't mind bulldozing through things like this. Puzzles weren't always her forte, but stubbornness could be.

She did feel stupid now, though. To think it was something that easy. She remembered having thought it might have something to do with the glowing lines on the surrounding trees, or some nonsense like that.

In her defense, the pattern in the fairies' flight was subtle. Even if that was present in the game, she wasn't entirely certain it'd be something she would notice through the screen.

Well, whatever. This made things a lot easier. Now the only thing she had to remember was the path she needed to take.

She dismissed the Mine she had created and conjured another one next to the glowing bulb of the right plant, and detonated it. The same odd sound from before rang out with the blow as the plant changed colors. She held her breath for a brief moment as she waited for something to happen, but soon the bridges started rearranging themselves.

Thank god Fynn had noticed that before it was too late. Otherwise their platform would have been lowered under the water, and she did not want to restart from the beginning.

Choosing the bridge she knew was the next amongst the steps she'd written down, they crossed a few platforms more before reaching another one with plants. After double-checking she was picking the right one by observing the fairies and asking Fynn, they then continued on again. After proceeding for a while by repeating that procedure, they eventually reached a platform that was at the opposite end of this room from where the entrance was. This platform, like the others, was mostly empty. There were no plants near it nor any bridge connecting to it other than the one they'd used to reach it.

"I thought we were aiming for the center?" Allyssa asked, as Scarlett strode towards the edge of the platform.

"We are," Scarlett confirmed as she bent down. Next to her was what looked like a dirty, army-green leather strap, stuck between two roots that had a small space separating them. The other end of the strap hung over the edge of the platform and was hidden beneath the water's surface. "However, as I mentioned, we are not the first to find this place."

She took hold of the rim of the strap—using just her index finger and thumb, to avoid getting too dirty—and pulled it loose from where it was wedged stuck. She then lifted the rest of it out of the water and held the object up for the others to see.

It was a green satchel. The image of a face—if one could call it that—was sewn into its side in turquoise and red colors, with thick eyebrows and thin white eyes that were partly closed. The turquoise was sewn in a manner where it almost looked like a kind of face paint. It reminded Scarlett somewhat of some Aztec imagery. Or perhaps something that'd come out from Majora's Mask.

[Bag of Juham (Epic)]
{A link to the interstitial space originally birthed by the Idol Juham, dwelling in the inner dell of the Forest of Consciousness}

Scarlett read the small description screen that appeared with the item. The description was a bit fancy, but in the end, it was just a bag of holding. But it was a significant upgrade compared to her current [Pouch of Holding], which was pretty limited in its space as well as what items could fit through its opening.

An item like this bag was something she'd wanted to get her hands on for a while now.

"Someone left that here?" Rosa asked with some disbelief.

"Someone did, yes," Scarlett said.

"Then they're someone you know? The same person that gave you all the information about this place?"

Scarlett glanced at Fynn. "...Not quite," she said after a moment. "I am not aware of who it was that left this here. However, I was informed that it could be here."

She walked over and handed the bag to Rosa, who received it with a slightly addled face. "For now, I will entrust it to you. Its worth is significant, so do be careful not to lose it."

The bard held it by the dry part of the strap and turned it so that the front faced her. "Not exactly my style, but if you say so."

"It's a bit creepy, isn't it?" Allyssa said as she leaned close to Rosa, staring at the stitched face.

Rosa tiled her head as she observed the bag. "Nah, I've seen worse. I think it's cute."

"What? Really?"

"Of course! You learn to appreciate these things after a while."

Allyssa looked up at the older woman with a doubtful expression. "A while of what?"

Rosa smiled. "Oh, you know. Sometimes you just see an odd face or two. You'd be surprised how many people there are out there that look like they're walking around with sticks up their shafts most of the time."

Fynn furrowed his forehead. "People have sticks up their butts?"

"They sure do," Rosa said as she nodded her head.

Scarlett decided to leave them to their conversation as she began walking back over the bridge. Then she started backtracking for a while until they eventually reached an earlier platform they'd already passed, from which she started making her way towards the large tree at the center for real this time. Without her having to worry about whether she would activate the wrong plants or not, it only took them about five minutes from there to reach one of the bridges that connected to the walkway that grew into the root of the tree.

Walking up to the enormous tree's trunk there was an indentation in the tree where it looked like the bark had grown together to cover a hole. Looking back at the group to ensure they were ready, Scarlett walked up to the tree and touched the bark, and it retracted into the sides to open up into a door inside the tree.

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