Chapter Thirty - Puzzle

I awoke in what I could only describe as a grocery store. I am surrounded by empty shelves. I am also lying on a soft pile of straw bags which I could only describe as being filled with salt or sugar. I see a shopping cart in front of me loaded with modern assault weapons. That must be Seiko’s arsenal. She was talking about a vehicle she could not remember the name of, but that Clover made for her to carry her stuff. I was imagining more of a minecart or dolly. But a shopping cart to carry weapons is wild. That, her weapons, and more stored ammunition is what Seiko told me she had stored in her Bank.

I rolled out of the makeshift bed and saw that my limbs had regrown. Any pain that I used to have is completely gone as I believe any broken or shattered bones have instantly healed as well. I reach into my possessions stored in a bag and rewrap my fists with cloth bandages. This seems to be a safe area, but you never know.

The grocery store’s shelves are adorned with boxes and empty crates surely making it an ineffective shop. I step outside the fake grocery store in which I could describe better as a shack. The outside world outside this building is a forest. Something straight out of a horror movie. There is no sunlight, but there is moonlight. I’m still amazed by the fake celestial bodies that are able to provide light. Perhaps it is a symptom of this world that it must provide light in the only way it knows how.

I find Olive first as she has multiple bags attached to her around her waist and shoulder like grenades. Except that they are a bundle of leaves. She is not able to utilize her magic if there are no leaves in her vicinity. To make up for that deficiency, she carries around piles of leaves loaded with mana. Surely that is her Bank loot. Thinking about loot, most monsters and creatures here do not drop anything here. I’m lucky enough that my magic allows me to gain something out of eating something with a tail.

“How’s it going? How long was I out?” I ask Olive.

She is fully armored with her Green Leaf Magic. The gothic armor reminds me of dark fantasy as the sunless setting around us further amplifies her aura. The leaves on her visor shift revealing her furry anthropomorphic raccoon face.

“Around 12 hours. Give or take.” She tells me.

“Twelve?!”

“Yeah. Seiko told me, you defeated the four-armed greater demon using my sword. Nice work. I was caught off guard when my Absolute magic failed to do anything.”

“Hey, don’t blame yourself. We didn’t know what it was capable of. Towers and climbing are supposed to be trials putting us in difficult situations. What matters is that we keep learning and don’t let the unexpected take us down.”

“Those are wise words. But I should’ve known than to unleash something like that. I now know that I must get stronger.”

“Yes! That’s the right mentality.”

“Did you have many failures or in your old world? Your wisdom seems to be catered to situations like these instead of battles.”

“Oh boy, ouch. Yes, it’s something called job applications.”

“Sounds rough.”

“You wouldn’t believe it.”

The short conversation almost ends when I decide to change the subject, “Where are we?”

“In the fourth stage. The first stage would be the jungle where I saw my old teacher and Seiko saw her brother. The second stage was the four-armed greater demon. The third stage was a puzzle. Something about putting glowing fivgawaco-sized cubes in between empty spaces in a wall.

“Fiv-what?”

“Liquid containers. They last a whole week if filled with water.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t too difficult but I think we have a significant advantage ahead of our two chasers.”

“Yeah, I see. Where is Seiko?”

“She is scouting ahead. She will fire two warning shots if she needs help. She said one shot will light the way, so ignore those.”

As if on cue, I hear one shot. I turn and see a flaring shot light up the area in which Seiko is in. Her location being marked would be bad if enemies also saw it, so I ready a running pose.

“That won’t be necessary.” Olive tells me, “She is carrying a bag of orange leaves that I can track. I can teleport us both to her location when needed. My job was simply to watch as you regenerated and woke up.”

“Speaking of such, you took a heavy hit, are you ok?”

“I’m fine. Nothing some healing potions couldn’t fix up.”

“How many do you have left?”

She made an unpleasant face, “Papaya. Two.”

“They are yours. So use them as you see fit. Did you use one on me?”

“No, Seiko told me you could heal relatively fast.”

“Great!”

We are dealing with limited supplies in this run. Every battle, puzzle, and future strategy will require all our brain and willpower to complete these next few floors almost flawlessly. My team of Ocean Slugs and I have no idea how many more floors we have to climb to complete the Tower of Stars. During our month-long trek, Seiko and I counted fifteen floors, but the actual number might be different due to how space and time work inside these types of structures. Plus this Tower is seemingly corrupted so the actual laws of magic might not be in effect.

“Should we not join Seiko now that I am fully energized?”

“We could, but her cart of weapons would be left behind.”

“We can wheel it over. Wait, hmm. The ground is uneven.” I start thinking, “How long have we been on this floor?”

“Hard to say. Around six hours maybe?”

I could probably tag in for this situation. After all, I have an eel tail and the ability to electrolocate. If there is no enemy on this floor and a puzzle or mechanism towards taking us to the next floor, I should be able to find it. But if Seiko and Olive are already having trouble finding it, there must be more to this room that we don’t know about.

Let’s see. A nightly forest and shack. If I didn’t know any better, I would start searching for eight pages. But this fantasy world is obviously operating on different rules. Blindly searching for something just seems like a bad roundabout solution to stage design. If anything, I would suppose that the trunks might have something written on it. Is this a standard escape room?

“Olive. Where did we emerge from the third stage?”

“Papaya. It’s opposite of where Seiko is, but there was a Library.”

“What type of glow is that navy blue?”

“Royal purple.”

“Ah, got it.”

So the main entrance is next to a Library. They provide information, but if you don’t know what you are looking for, they are entirely time wasters.

“Take me there please.”

“Papaya!”

Olive leads me towards the Library, happily slashing away branches as she marches towards our destination as if she was on a military expedition. We move farther from the shack, losing sight of our rendezvous base. The trees in this forest are leafless as it is either fall or winter in this realm.

We arrived at the bright purple glow similar to the gold one I saw back in the marble temple room. The glow shifts into a rift showing me another aisle like the one in the shack, but this one is filled with books with no titles.

I’ve never been in a place like this, but from what I learned from Seiko, you just need to think of the subject.

“Thanks Olive. I’ll take it from here.”

“Papaya.” She salutes back and runs stealthily back towards the shack.

I take deep breaths not knowing what to expect. I don’t know if entering the room will do something to my mind as it travels through time and space and the room will invade my mind. This could be problematic at worst. But at the same time, everyone in this world uses these rooms and rifts. So I should have nothing to worry about. Leaping into unknown situations is not healthy for my mental state though.

I enter the royal purple rift and into the Library as I start thinking, ‘magic-generated forests’. I see books and scrolls approach my mind with titles ‘Realm Magic’ and ‘Creation of the World”.

While interesting, I don’t think these are the right options. This does not feel like it could be somebody’s magic as it is holding manmade items. The shack where I awoke was clearly built by someone as a resting point for themselves or other travellers. Any reasoning why would be beyond me. ‘Creation of the World’ sounds interesting, but I don’t have time to read the lore of this planet. Perhaps later, but we need to keep climbing if we are to elude our pursuers.

I scroll through more titles and subjects. I think up ‘tree markings’, ‘maze forest’, and ‘Tower of Stars forest’. All these searches yield ineffective findings and empty results. I am stumped over what I may be looking for. My stomach growls as I think back on the grocery store. If anything, there should be some food that these girls might be holding on to if the grocery store is empty. All it had were empty crates and boxes.

Crates and boxes. What was it that Olive said about a box recently?

“Hmm. No, she said glowing cube. A fivga- something something. But that was the size of it. Glowing cubes.”

I thought up, ‘fivga' hoping there was an autocomplete function, but to no avail, it yielded zero results. I instantly thought how lucky that this Library was also auto-translating everything inside my brain to a language I could read. I thought up, ‘glowing cubes’ and got a hit on a scroll titled Paan Keys. As I selected that article, I was brought upon a wall of text.

Paan Keys

Paan Keys are keys that unlock different rooms depending on the position that they are inserted. A Paan Key comes in the form of a medium-sized cube that also glows a bright blue like its door and lock mechanism. A Paan Key therefore can open six different rooms. It’s referred to as storage rooms by those that own Paan rooms and keys, much like a Bank. All rooms exist in the same dimensional plane, but one can exist as a doorway at a time. Two or more individuals can exist in different rooms, but cannot interact. Although rare, a Paan room and key can produce a tunnel into another world location outside the Paan room’s influence. The Paan Key would need to be configured to access a location that is not a Paan room and therefore acts like a gateway for shorter travel or hidden rooms.

“Huh, so we are effectively in a dead-end.”

I step out of the Library and look for the rugged path that Olive had created. I hear one more shot from Seiko signaling a new location for her to explore. The flare fully illuminates the horizon bright as I begin to rush towards the shack.

“Oh hey Gabriela. Did you find anything?”

“I think so, do you have any way of contacting Seiko?”

“I can run towards her and bring her back.”

“Yes, do that please.”

“Papaya!”

I start wandering around the shack looking for the crates and boxes. Without much light, I’m blind and I don’t have good night vision.

Shortly after Olive arrives with Seiko.

“Seiko! Are you alright? Did you find anything?”

“Those are my questions to you.” Seiko said.

“Haha, fair.” I answered back, “Anyways, I think I did. Can you give me some light here?”

Without hesitation, Seiko fires a flare shot inside the room. Luckily, her bullets are not real Earth bullets that would set this wooden shack on fire. It is a culmination of mana and her own magic. The place instantly looks like daytime inside, it’s almost eerie.

I look at the crates and notice markings. They are symbols, perhaps a language of this world. I am puzzled by the hidden meaning.

“The top symbol means forest.” Seiko answers my doubts.

At the very least it is not a lost language.

“The other one I don’t know.”

The two crates have different symbols on each face, but I can now assume that it is a simple code.

“Ok, which face says ‘tunnel’?”