Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

Chapter 509: The Center of the Mist (3)

Our group exchanged nervous glances, before Sallia stepped in front of us.“I’m one of the more resilient people in the group. I’ll go first. Miria, be ready to heal me if something goes wrong,” she said. It didn’t seem like she was addressing me, so much as she was notifying the other members of our group, especially the adults, of her intentions.

After Sallia’s words, the other adults exchanged hesitant looks, before they finally nodded.

Sallia led the way into the misty palace. Upon setting foot on the cloudy steps, I resisted the urge to frown as I looked down at the clouds. The steps had a distinct spongy, sinking feeling to them. Every single time I took a step upwards, it felt as if I were about to plunge through the steps and fall to the ground beneath us. Even though the steps didn’t actually drop us, it was still a very unnerving feeling.

I did my best to ignore it as we continued making our way upward. As unnerving as the feeling of nearly falling to the ground below was, the ground wasn’t actually that far away. With the resilience the System provided us, I doubted a fall of this height would even hurt us much - perhaps just twist some ankles. The was more uncomfortable than dangerous.

Once we reached the top of the steps, I got a better look at the palace itself. While the exterior of the palace was made of mist, the mist was far better at obscuring the interior of the palace than most mist. I could catch faint glimmers of light peeking through the walls as well, which was rather odd. Mist itself didn’t have much of a color to it, so I wasn’t quite sure where the colors were coming from. It made me feel like I was gazing upon a hazy rainbow.

The palace itself was far less distinct than the colors. The walls were decorated with patterns and decorations, but they constantly shifted and warped at the edges, which made it hard to appreciate whatever decorations the wall was supposed to have. Experimentally, I tried touching one of the walls, and found that it had the same spongy, half-solid texture that the stairs had.

“The walls are solid enough that we can’t walk through them,” I said.

“Good to keep in mind. If we need to escape, the walls won’t be a viable escape route,” said Amanda.

“If I use a water manipulation spell, or if we try to blast the mist with enough fire, I bet we could still run through the walls,” said Anise. “It’ll just take us a few seconds to get our spells set up.”

I nodded. Anise’s words made sense to me.

After that, we walked towards the set of doors in front of us. Sallia knocked on one of the doors, before it soundlessly opened to make way for us.

We stepped through the doors and into the mist palace. I squinted in surprise the moment we stepped inside. It looked like we had literally walked into a rainbow. Different threads of lightly constantly wriggled and spun around us, and each color had a faint glow to it. It looked kind of like we had stepped into a room decorated from floor to ceiling with brightly lit neon tapestries.

After a few seconds of squinting, I realized the colors weren’t random. We were standing inside of a painting. The room depicted a young woman with bright green hair, locked in battle with a cloud of mist. The cloud of mist in the painting looked just like the one we had fought yesterday - and just like the cloud from yesterday, it also had small hordes of misty mammals appearing from within its depths. However, there was one key difference. The cloud of mist in the painting had threads extending from something deep inside the cloud to each of the misty mammals. It looked kind of like the threads of a puppeteer, controlling a legion of puppets.

“How interesting,” said Amanada, as she inspected the painting. “The woman in this painting is clearly human. We haven’t seen any humans in this plane yet.”

“Perhaps it’s a record from a planar traveller, of some sort?” said Felix. “Or perhaps there are human settlements here that we haven’t encountered yet.”

Before we could continue remarking on the painting, one of the walls of the palace reshaped itself. A small door appeared on the wall, as if to beckon us further inside of the palace.

We only hesitated for a moment before we walked through the door. We came to another room. This one was much, much larger than the previous one. It was tall enough that if all ten of us had stacked ourselves on top of each other to make a column, we would have just barely reached the ceiling. The width and length of the room were equally ridiculous - they were at least two hundred meters long. The room felt like it was designed for giants rather than people. 

In the center of the room was a massive pillar of light and mist which constantly churned and hissed like an industrial era assembly line. Unlike the rest of the palace, the pillar had a clear, distinct soul - and quite a powerful one. I estimated that the life force in the pillar was somewhere around the equivalent of Grade 50, according to the Market’s System.

“Visitors. You have to my island for an unknown reason. Come. State your purpose.”

I blinked in surprise, as the pillar’s voice echoed throughout the room. It was both deep and ethereal, a contradiction of sounds and noises that brushed against my ears like the wings of a wasp. The creature’s words also had properties similar the words of the plant people - even though we didn’t speak the same language, I could somehow understand the concept behind its words when it spoke.

I only hesitated for a moment.

“We seek to discuss things with you, and come to an understanding with each other,” I said, after a few moments of thought.

“You seek understanding? Why?”

I frowned, and scratched my head. After a few more moments of thought, I decided there wasn’t really a point in hiding our settlement. If this… column turned out to be hostile, I doubted it would miss the existence of our settlement for long.

“We come from a very distant place, to recover from the many losses we have suffered. We seek a new home. We have begun to settle on the shore of the lake which your island also resides in. We wish to establish a friendly relationship as neighbors and possibly allies,” I said.

The pillar stopped speaking for several moments. I tensed as the silence began to stretch to an unnatural degree. Had I said something wrong? Why was it just… sitting there, silently?

After an uncomfortable two minutes of silence, as I was trying to figure out whether I should speak up again, the pillar spoke again.

“I have found the settlement. I did not notice your arrival at first, but I am glad that you have come to speak with me before I noticed you. Otherwise, things may have gotten… messy. I have no objections to the existence of your settlement, provided you can follow a few simple rules. First of all, I am amenable to the coexistence of your settlement with my lands, but you must maintain certain limits on how many people enter my domain at once. I demand that no more than twenty people from your settlement ever enter my domain at once - otherwise, I will consider this a potential initiation of hostilities, and demand an explanation from the intruders. Of course, if we come to another agreement in the future, this rule can be considered null and void - but I think twenty people is more than enough for conducting trade or diplomacy, yes?”

“That’s fine,” I said. The column’s words so far seemed quite reasonable to me.

“Second, I request that no people smaller than the pink-haired boy in your group ever come to the island. I lack the ability to handle all incursions into my domain from the mist horrors, and I do not wish for your young to die within my domain. That tends to lead to more trouble. Not to mention, smaller humans are often annoying.”

I blinked, and looked at Anise, the only pink-haired person we had in our expedition. The creature had referred to Anise as if she were a boy? Clearly, this thing was a lot less familiar with our species than it was trying to let on, if it couldn’t tell the difference between males and females. Anise looked like she was trying to suppress a giggle at the mist column’s words as well.

“You mentioned incursions into your domain from mist horrors,” I said. “Are those the clouds of mist that create large swarms of creatures to attack nearby life forms? Like the one shown in the painting we saw in the previous room?”

“Yes, those are the ones. They drive me mad. Those accursed creatures try to eat my children whenever they get the opportunity, and since my children are often mischievous, it is hard to keep them all safe within my domain. It is tiring and frustrating, and I hate losing my precious children to those mindless monsters,” hissed the column, as twinges of annoyance and sorrow weighed down its words like stones.

I thought about the column’s words. It seemed that there were two different ‘factions’ of mist creatures - the column in front of us, along with its children, were on one side. The ‘mist horrors’ were on the other side.

“Are your children the little sprites that are currently dancing above this palace?”

“Yes. Adorable, aren’t they?” hissed the mist column. For the first time, a twinge of emotion bled into its voice. It sounded pleased and happy. I shrugged. The mist sprites looked odd, but they were quite cute.

“They are indeed,” I said. “I have no objections to your two rules. Is there anything else?”

“Not for now. Hmm… actually, you mentioned a wish to potentially form an alliance with me. I will think on this. For now, however, I am willing to purchase the cores of any of the mist horrors you slay in the future. Given their nature, I doubt it will be long before you come into conflict with them, if you haven’t already done so.”

“Then I look forward to working with you,” I said, before I gave the pillar a courteous nod.

The pillar hissed in agreement.

“Come back in five days. I will finish my considerations by then,” it said. “If you wish to conduct trade, you may also bring any trade goods that you are interested in dealing with. I will let you know which samples I am interested in, and we can discuss prices and further plans from there. So long, human.”

“Then we’ll see you again in five days,” I said. I felt a small thrill as I said the words.

We had confirmed that something powerful lived here… but it was friendly, or at least neutral. My imagined showdown with a dangerous, powerful monster hadn’t come to pass. While a small part of me was disappointed that I wouldn’t get any more Achievement for fighting a powerful threat, most of me was relieved that the danger on this island was far lower than it had appeared to be.

The biggest danger on the island was neutral towards us. Which meant that the settlement we had been building for the past few days had a real future.

I smiled as we walked back out of the mist palace, and began to make our way towards the boat.