Lint Town, just right outside a roofless building, Professor Atkinson exchanged a cart full of “bread” using a small piece of rough stone gifted to them by Lun Wang, Jianmen’s avatar who was aiding them in their research when they were back at the Grant Academy.
“Thank you, Profess-Ah.” said the merchant, who was an earth elemental who took the form of a beetle, “Hope you have a nice-Ah day.”
“Thank you, you too.” Professor Atkinson took over the cart and pushed the cart into the building: “Dolores, let’s take a break, and have some food.”
“Good idea. I’m kinda starving.” Dolores carefully laid down a heavy and fragile looking book made of thin slightly elastic clay plates to a wooden table in front of them. But when she came over and lifted the cloth covering on the cart, she could not help but frown: “This is - bread? Or are they dumplings or rice balls?”
“Well, it’s bread. At least according to Praxa, this is the same recipe they used to serve the human travelling scholars and traders back in the old days.” Professor Atkinson sighed and sat down by the cart. Then he picked up a dirt-colored, roughly round ball made of some kind of flour/rice powder with tiny grains of grass still sticking out from inside. He hesitated as he examined it, but he could not bring it to himself to actually take the first bite.
“You say Praxa?” Dolores frowned and picked up another piece of the “bread”: “I don’t know how I feel about taking a round dirt-like ball made by a brown beetle as food.”
“Mm.” Professor Atkinson took a small piece from the “bread” and took a small bite, then he nodded: “You know what - it’s okay. It tastes like rough steamed wheat bread with some really big grains. But it’s not as bad as it looks - and it has a sweet aftertaste.”
“Really?” Dolores also took a bite, and she nodded at Professor Atkinson: “Yeah you’re right, not that bad indeed. The grass is a weird touch though. How long can they last?”
“According to Praxa, thirty Earth days. But they taste best if kept for less than five days.” Professor Atkinson started taking bigger and bigger bites: “So, anything interesting?”
“Nothing that interesting, unfortunately.” Dolores shook her head with a mouthful: “I think we came really underprepared - the records we could read thanks to Xyn were all extremely old and most of the information seemed not to be the case any more. And since we have very limited abilities to read more recent records, I could only tell what some of the records were about and I sorted out some of them. How about you Professor?”
“I talked to the librarian, she told me that she would track down some dictionaries left by the past scholars and merchants for us, apparently they were mostly written on paper, so they might have disintegrated already. And even if they were still readable and mostly intact, there’s no guarantee that they were written in any language that we can read.” Professor Atkinson sighed and took out a small and broken book from his coat pocket: “I got this though - it’s a half finished codex, for the use translating from and to ancient Fog Dweller texts.”
“Fog Dwellers? THE Fog Dwellers?” Dolores’ eyes widened: “That’s interesting - how do their texts look compared to the old voidborn language used by Xyn?”
“They share some similarities. But I think we will need to read carefully to see how useful they are.” Professor Atkinson said.
Just this moment, Lin’Er, the half human and half deer elemental made of blue flames and lightning came down from the sky and landed just outside of the roofless building. Professor Atkinson and Dolores immediately came out to greet her.
“Hello, Lin’Er, nice to see you again.” Dolores gently bowed along with Professor Atkinson.
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“And nice to see you.” Lin’Er bowed back, then she extended both her arms forward, a spinning ball of flames and lightning appeared in the space above their hands and palms, and in around five seconds, a transparent cuboid piece of light blue crystal appeared and slowly floated towards Professor Atkinson and Dolores: “Here - courtesy of Lord Paulo Chang, this is a copy of the historical records of our realm, which also had some information about the original void. It is also enchanted with the translation spell from Lord Paulo Chang himself, so you should be able to read it perfectly.”
“Thank you very much. This is a life saver.” Professor Atkinson held the crystal with two hands and nodded: “We’ve been having quite a lot of trouble trying to decipher the records from the library and archive. This could just be the break we need.”
“I have also contacted some of the merchants and asked them for the materials you requested. But for that, you will need to come to the Bastion of Gwai-Mon, they have a trading space there. With your passes you should be able to enter the market.” Lin’Er said: “I think you might also want to visit one of the temples there as well - since you’ve mentioned that you have to prepare yourself for some weighted knowledge. Our temple of knowledge could help lighten the weight of knowledge - it works differently on different kinds of knowledge, but it should be able to help. Not to mention, we have some other records stored in the temple - I don’t know why it was easier for you to read ancient texts than more recent texts of ours, but you can try visiting there first if you have trouble with the documents from our library and archive.”
“That’s wonderful!” Dolores almost jumped: “Yes! I think that’s exactly what we need! Thank you!”
“No problem.” Lin’Er smiled: “Lord Paulo Chang said that your mission is of great importance to the elemental realms, so I am fully dedicated to assisting you. If you want, we can be on our way right now.”
“Ah, okay!” Professor Atkinson exchanged looks with Dolores, and headed back into the building: “Hang on, let us pack some food for the road.”
“Wait, what kind of food are you bringing with you?” when Dolores and Professor Atkinson finished packing, Lin’Er asked.
“This - ” Dolores showed Lin’Er the “bread” she and Professor Atkinson were eating earlier.
Lin’Er’s facial expressions shifted a few times like a real human’s, then she disappeared from where she was in a flash of lightning.
A lousy feeling arose from Dolores and Professor Atkinson’s stomach.
Shortly, Lin’Er appeared again, dragging Praxa, the beetle earth elemental with her. Then she threw the beetle down on the ground and said with a stern and echoey voice with lightning shooting out of her body: “You’d better give them a full refund and serve them REAL food right now! How, DARE, YOU!?”
“We - we didn’t eat sh - I mean garbage, did we?” Dolores felt like she was about to puke.
“No.” Lin’Er said: “They’re just swill for livestock.”
“That - that’s not that much better.”