After the initial conversation with Morval and Itval, the annoyances spent a full day doing nothing.
Nothing. They didn't talk to each other, barely slept, and ate. Obviously Zenith was being hyperbolic, but it was difficult to get the annoyance out of its mind. Perhaps part of it was anxiety, as well.
If another one of those worms decided it was a good time to try and kill Zenith, it'd likely be forced to reveal itself again.
Their lack of activities lead to Zenith being unable to collect much information on them. Their only real communication with each other was in the form of either indistinct head and hand movements, or the flow of energy to and from Gilbred and his two animal companions. Tamed beasts, supposedly. Zenith had collected as much data from this as it could and found nothing useful. Yet. The exact method of communication was still unknown. Too few samples.
So, on the next morning, when the adventurers all stepped outside their tent, Zenith was... tense. Constant simulations for their next actions refused to reveal with clarity, but almost always depicted a readiness for defense, not an intent to start attacking the Valley Rangers.
There was a short time where they simply stood, observing the Guild's tent-town stretching itself towards the remnants of the wyrm-body's landing position, and the wrecked surroundings.
Now that Zenith was tracking their attention with detail, Zenith noticed some... irregularities. A chunk of stone misplaced, but only by millimeters. Everywhere. Most seemed to follow a pattern of sorts, funneling towards one another, where the stone was formerly placed within the rock formation.
No odd energies that Zenith could detect accompanied this strangeness. Even if it were the stone formations healing themselves, somehow, it would take hundreds of years. Zenith didn't figure it'd be waiting that long. Aside from the worm, and the bloodlight creatures, both of which Zenith identified simply as oddities and not natural nearby predators, there was not much for the humans to hunt for growth, let alone food. It would advise them to begin moving north when the opening became available.
Advise. Was that the best course of action? To advise them? If Morval and companions were cooperative, it could probably lead them towards growth reliably. Assuming it had the information to judge what was best, that is. Which it did not.
Not by a long shot.
The adventurers began to walk through the tent-town. They were still observing everything around them, while at least trying to look as non-hostile as possible. Most of the Valley Rangers ignored them, and the majority of their gawkers were children who rarely if ever saw adventurers walking through their town.
Lan watched them warily. Organized parties weren't rare, but the makeup and size was. Everything seemed to point to one of them being a noble of a notable house, likely the one named Sigmund. He hoped they didn't have enough interest in seeing them gone as most adventurer parties did.
If they did, then Sigmund or that priest would call for a crusade on them, likely. Most adventurer parties didn't like the Valley Rangers Guild, as it was a group established during a period in which what could and could not be signed up as a Guild was... not fleshed out. That's how Itval always described it. The Adventure Management Organization tended to be indifferent to the Valley Rangers; most understood it was kind of their fault. So, if an adventurer party decided to try and wipe them out, there would be bounties set for the inciting party's hands in shackles, or in the rare case, heads in baskets, despite the Valley Rangers not being necessarily an accepted existence.
Nobles and the Priesthood tended to be different. If they found reason enough to wipe out the Valley Rangers, there was nothing short of a peoples' uprising that would stop them from doing so. And that had never happened, not in the history of Nomadic Guilds.
The priest signalled something to Sigmund. Whatever it was became clear enough as the party followed her lead. Headed right in the direction of Zenith's landing. That could be bad.
Lan couldn't really follow them without setting off alarm bells of some kind. Though he really didn't want to let them investigate the golem-thing's landing point, he also didn't want to make it seem like they were hiding something. Best bet would be to leave the following to Mara.
He couldn't see her, but that was kind of the point.
She was walking calmly through the slim crowds, most not even noticing her presence, and none giving it any attention. Most who knew she was even around still thought she was a waste of resources that would be better used training someone with more combat-oriented abilities. However, here she was, proving her worth.
She couldn't really do much other than hide real well and see real far. Even escaping from compromising situations was something she was only decent at. She relied mostly on not being spotted at all. When that wasn't necessary, she helped Lan pick out targets for hunting, Levelling, or both.
She didn't even really have the same advanced senses that Lan had. She didn't have precise senses of her immediate surroundings regardless of vision, or anything like that. The best she could do was see through things, similar to scrying but as a different Skill which couldn't be countered without those like her own, which was what allowed her to flow behind the group of less-than-pleasant adventurers as they walked with purpose to where that creature had burrowed away from roughly a day ago. It was obvious enough that the priest was leading them, though what exactly she sensed was unclear. Lan, Morval, and Cade all said they couldn't really sense the creature's presence or any remnants of it, aside from loose ground near where it had burrowed, but that was something else.
Mara paused in a small group that ignored her, thanks to her Skills. She took the chance to look down, into the ground, as far as she could.
There was the creature, thing, whatever Lan had called it. It was moving again, short bursts towards different spots that Mara couldn't see a pattern to other than being around close-medium range, as though it was cautious of being detected by these adventurers, too. It was always just on the edge of her limit for Solid Object Translucence, and every time she looked at it, she swore she felt it look back, the minor backlash from something breaking through multiple layers of stealth.
Luckily, it never shattered her stealth, exposing her to everyone around them. She wasn't sure if this was an intentional measure, however; she didn't have the talent to see something like that. She decided she wouldn't risk it and simply looked back away every time, the creature's attention shifting away shortly after.
Zenith returned to observing the adventurer party. It was odd that she seemed to go mostly unnoticed, not just in a conscious way but unconsciously, by almost all of the humans in the camp. All signs from the party pointed to them still not noticing her, as well. Perhaps this was her function?
It had observed no real combat capability from her at all, as of yet. She demonstrated the telling qualities of a "loner", which was odd in a community that was nearly one homogeneous family. Not in the genetic sense, though; rather in the actions and treatment.
The party was swiftly approaching its secondary impact point. Zenith really needed to stop slamming vessel into the ground with considerable force, especially if they contained its core, and doubly so when it couldn't ensure a lack of issues on the scale that it simply wasn't capable of examining without temporarily using another, weaker, core, or temporarily shutting down for examination from a dumb AI. Neither were sustainable.
As the group approached, the priestlike woman turned off a small amount, away from Zenith's general crash and closer to its... testing area.
Hm. It hadn't left any real evidence of its being there. Perhaps there were lingering energy effects, on spectrums it wasn't checking for. Now it was triple-checking. Still nothing. But there was something leading the priest there. All things stood to reason, then.
If there were differences in behaviour of the energies Zenith was used to, it was entirely possible there were whole spectrums of energy Zenith couldn't detect, or understand... yet.
In fact, it was almost guaranteed. Maybe Zenith could even upgrade its core again. On that note...
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It had been 52 hours 13 minutes since Zenith had made landfall. It hadn't dumped any major data yet, but it still projected it could only maintain the current rate of storage consumption for 16 more months. It would have to create certain connections and conclude on them quickly to reduce this rate or upgrade its capacity for data storage in the time it had.
An alternative was compressing information, but this would be reserved as a backup method. Compressed information was inaccessible without fully uncompressing past a certain point, and also lost some of its precision.
The priest reached roughly the point where Zenith had laid most of the husk chunks for test-firing and stopped, scanning the ground around her. She slowly turned to the tent-town, which had stopped a good hundred meters behind them. She looked back down, following an invisible trail with her eyes. The stealthy human was nestled in a larger crowd near the end of the tent-town.
Zenith realized it had just reached the final stage of Constructed AI "Grief". It was similar to the way Synthesized AI experienced it, though usually caused for different reasons, and with differing reactions. Zenith shut that thought process down before it took too many resources and distracted from observation. It would come back to that topic later.
The trail seemed to end at almost exactly the point of the husk's resting locations. Whatever she was seeing, it was clearly related to Zenith's tests. Likely not in a good way, if Zenith's fortune was going to carry on as it were. She lowered herself to a crouch, brushing the still-solid ground where the human-scale subspace radiation projector had rested.
There was a minor appearance of temporal energy. Not nearly as much as Zenith had seen in previous occurrences, but Zenith had come to realize that anything supposedly a product of the System would be... much more potent than most things the humans could create on their own.
She stood and walked back to the rest of her party, making a few hand signals to Sigmund. He responded in the similarly cryptic language, likely a question, which she proceeded to respond to before Sigmund simply nodded. They all turned about, returning in the direction of their tent, this time visibly wary.
Zenith stored every movement, every hand motion, slight change in posture, facial expression. All members shared an expression typically associated with forms of disgust or worry. Sigmund, who had already been showing hints of this beforehand, was barely short of scowling now. Gilbred seemed to become a little more anxious, even though he had previously been calming down as Zenith drew its sensors off of his person intentionally, attempting to give truth to Morval's words.
It took a considerable amount of simulations and culled thought processes to maintain that facade. Still, Zenith began to rotate the types of sensors observing him. Looking for oddities was a good idea.
Mara, for her part, was pretty much clueless about what had just transpired. She hoped the priest had only gone out there on a whim, but the location was too convenient. It was roughly where the creature had tested a few different spells. Or so she thought.
She didn't know exactly what spells they were. When the adventurers hopefully left on their own, she would inform Cade of the effects she had seen. She and Kenneth would likely know better than her whether or not one or more of those spells would draw the attention of a priest... more importantly, in a negative manner.
As the party walked swiftly back to their tent, avoiding the larger crowds, they were examining everyone. All of the Guild members' actions, everyone from adult to infant. Their more careful eye was what Mara feared the most, and so she did her best not to draw it.
Her best seemed to be enough. They returned to their tent and began to pack up under Sigmund's order. Lan noticed and approached them, as calmly as he could.
"Hello, Ranger." greeted Sigmund after retrieving the contents of his travel pack. He was much more curt than last night, it seemed.
"I see you're leaving." said Lan. Sigmund didn't respond, just stared at Lan. "The star landed somewhere over there... we think." he said as he pointed to the treeline south. "Through that light forest, there's a large crater. Nothing else, though."
Sigmund just stared at Lan until the surrounding party members finished packing and joined him in the staring, making Lan increasingly uncomfortable.
Lan was about to speak up when Sigmund just nodded his head in the direction Lan had provided. His party started before him, geared for possible combat, and Sigmund followed soon after. Lan didn't stop staring at them, however.
"What... just happened?"
Gilbred's phoenix launched into the sky and his bear began to sniff, searching for traces of other animals. Quickly, Gilbred confirmed to Sigmund.
"It's just as he said. Only a crater. Pretty large as far as falling stars go, I think... but there doesn't seem to be a piece of it left."
"It might have buried itself in rubble." said the one in the lead, wearing their shielded armor. "Maybe a cave underneath."
"It doesn't look like it. Hard to tell, though."
The almost constant stream of energy between Gilbred and the bird was being examined tightly. On a possibility, Zenith was examining the energy and comparing it to the phoenix's estimated visual reference. There was a pattern visible, as when the phoenix quickly changed its angles, so would the energy radiating from it have a sudden and sharp change in composition. In the meanwhile, Gilbred seemed to stumble a little every now and then, seemingly having difficulty focusing on where he was walking.
"It could have been a large enough cave to seemingly cover its own tracks." added the one in heavy armor. "The crater itself could be the result of the rubble, rather than the result of a larger impact."
"That's a pretty good idea. Might be worthwhile to check out the ground composition." said one of the two members wearing some kind of semi-armored combat robe. "Would take an extra hour or two, though."
"If you're thinking we might be able to get a resource information contract out here to make up for the loss, that's unlikely." said Sigmund. "But I will agree it's worth our while." Zenith made for the edge of reliable spybot connection, as far from the group as it was willing to go, balancing its own protection and that of its biological charges. If it was still discovered, well...
Zenith should be able to close the distance if they came to threaten its charges. Otherwise, Zenith would approach slowly, stopping at the Valley Rangers and waiting for them to approach on their own. A gesture of intent, not to harm, but to speak.
Zenith really thought it was getting a reliable pattern with the information from the phoenix and gilbred's interaction. As they closed in on the light forest, the group tensed up, and Gilbred's attention drifted seemingly drifted to the bear, it becoming the dominant source of "senses". Gilbred seemed to have little trouble walking within the vegetation as opposed to the relatively flat plane before, so it was unlikely the sense in "use" was vision.
Smell, or hearing? Maybe both? The bear seemed to focus on a particular tree for a moment before moving on. It did so with a few prints on the ground, places Morval and Lan had walked through to reach the crater in the previous day. Pattern found... partially. It was almost definitely both smell and hearing. Zenith was having difficulty identifying specifics about hearing, however.
As it was, Zenith could see about 11 different energies that seemed to work in concert. Use of Zenith's more powerful active sensors on its wyrm-vessel allowed it to see the separation between what was likely the equivalent of bits in a base-11 system, but it couldn't get any more information past that. Gilbred, the two in armored robes, the priest, and Sigmund all stopped almost immediately, with the last two quickly responding to form a cohesive circular formation and drawing weapons.
Zenith wasn't certain what sensor system had drawn their attention, but it was certain it had already gotten the most useful information it could out of its current interactions with this group. It was finding perhaps the most viable solution to communicating with its biological charges.
There were no tamed beasts of the same kind as Gilbred's among the Valley Rangers. It would have to communicate either through a visual medium in any kind of interim, make a deal with Gilbred or another with tamed beasts for further examination of the energies present, or request Morval to have some of his people take tamed beasts, if possible.
More data was needed. Preferably, audio-based communication could be made possible... with enough examination.
The half of the energy that Zenith observed from the bear as likely relating to sound always began with the ninth identified frequency among the eleven, or so it seemed, with reliable intervals of 25 other bits between. Ping. Insufficient data for reliable recrea- Snip.
Zenith wasn't looking to recreate the patterns yet. Just an adjustable transmitter for the subspatial frequencies. They were all roughly the same, with minute differences, around a quarter of the way between Zenith's notarized fifth and sixth set energies, currently labelled as Physical Force and Chemical Force. Zenith could probably do better, at least insofar as minimizing bleed of transmission so it would be harder to intercept as it was doing right now. And probably on the frequency labels, too.
Willing experimentees would be the more difficult part. If Zenith got something wrong, it could kill them, as far as it was aware. If these experimentees were Morval or its companions, which, as far as Zenith was concerned, currently included the entirety of the Valley Rangers...
Directive 3 unclear. Assuming worst-case scenario. Willing subjects will be required from outside sources.
Additional note; request Morval's advisement on nearby settlements for willing and capable test subjects.
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As the party of adventurers walked through the forest, the tense and deadly quiet atmosphere slowly began to leave them. When they left through the other side, and saw the edge of the crater, they all stopped.
"You felt that, right?" asked Gilbred.
"Yes." was Sigmund's response. The two mages nodded. The priest was silent and unmoving, staring at the crater's edge.
Maps indicated this should've been a roughly flat field. For the crater's edge to be this tall...
"What was that? I don't even know how to describe it..." said the geomancer.
"It's what I've been feeling almost the whole time. But... worst, almost. It felt... it felt..." stuttered Gilbred.
"Invasive." said the priest.
"Yeah."
"We still have a ways to go, and if you still don't know where it was from, let's just stay on guard." said Sigmund.
The heavily-armored man almost whispered. "I... am not so sure this was some kind of cave-in any more."
"It's still possible..." added the geomancer.
The priest just stared, too busy in her own head. Nothing about this crater, this feeling of being watched, the vaguest traces of extremely strange spellwork... especially the extremely irregular history of that area. Like the majority of the spell effects had been forcefully eviscerated with raw mana.
Maybe a mishap during the Blood Moon.
Maybe.