After Snowdrift’s elders left, Jayce subconsciously tensed up as he watched the formerly serious atmosphere turn sour. Those left at the border could be divided into three camps. There was Verne’s group with Jayce and Vorona, Marin by herself, and Egan who brought his son Leon. The village head had obviously decided to fix this problem by throwing all of Snowdrift’s refining talent at it, but Jayce wondered if things might go more smoothly if either Egan or Marin had not been called.
Egan seemed to share Jayce’s sentiments because he broke the silence by saying, “Everyone else should check on the rest of the towers. I’ll work on this one.” He didn’t bother to look and see if anyone complied with his order and started walking towards the sentinel tower.
“No, that’s a terrible idea,” Marin countered, flicking her bristling tail.
Egan swiveled his head back and narrowed his eyes. “Because you can do a better job?”
Jayce took a good look at the village’s best refiner for the first time since he’d been kicked out of the man’s shop. Dressed in a thin black jacket, a green turtleneck and pressed beige pants, Egan’s style was different than the majority of villagers and his clothes seemed more expensive. Sadly, even those clothes couldn’t distract from the unattractive contrast between his thin build and wide nose. His sapphire hair was short and bristly and there were two spade-shaped ears resting atop his head. Jayce guessed his animal features came from a boar, but it was hard to tell. Egan didn’t have any excess hair on his limbs and aside from his ears, he looked like a regular, surly old man.
Faced with the full force of his stink eye, Marin met his glare and slowly shook her head. “That’s not the issue. Think about why the village head called us all of us here. If he just wanted the tower to be fixed, any one of us three could do it. Our real task is to figure out how the tower was sabotaged and see if it can be prevented in the future. For this kind of speculative work, it’s better to have several different perspectives.”
Blinking, Jayce realized he might have underestimated the village head.
“There’s no need to argue about this,” Verne interjected. “Fixing the tower, understanding how it was sabotaged, and checking the other towers…The head gave us three tasks and the order in which they must be completed.”
Before Egan or Marin could reply, Vorona stepped forward. “I don’t believe I’m providing any value here. The village’s conductor hasn’t given me any orders, so I’ll leave.”
“There’s always some chance that monsters or bandits might appear,” Marin said. To Jayce’s surprise, it sounded like she didn’t want Vorona to go. “You could stay and guard us.”
“There were no orders, so I’ll return to my own work.”
With that, Vorona turned around and left.
There was a little more bickering, but in the end, all three parties decided to examine the tower together before repairing it. Notably, the only two people who hadn’t spoken yet were the apprentices, Jayce and Leon. Jayce glanced at the feathered youth, wondering when he should bring up their bet, and noticed that Leon’s eyes were firmly affixed to the ground. It seemed like he hadn’t raised his head once since everyone was assembled. When Jayce looked more carefully, he noticed that Leon’s hands were trembling faintly.
‘He’s afraid of something?’ Jayce guessed. Immediately, he wondered if Leon knew something about the tower’s sabotage or even participated in it, but he quickly discarded that thought. Leon had no motive and if someone tried to bribe him, Jayce doubted that Leon would accept. The people of Snowdrift didn’t care too much about amassing personal wealth and even if someone did, selling out their village would be putting the cart before the horse.
“Hey Jayce, come over here,” Verne called out, breaking Jayce’s train of thought.
“Yea, it’s better if everyone takes a look,” Marin agreed, flashing Jayce an encouraging smile.
Egan also called Leon over, and when he did, Leon briefly glanced at Jayce and then raised his chin a bit higher.
‘So, you were worried about being the least experienced person here, but then you remembered I existed?’ Jayce thought, inwardly rolling his eyes. Normally, an apprentice would be content to be a background character in this situation, but one of the main characters was Marin, who was only a few years older than Leon. Jayce decided to put Leon out of his mind and focus on the tower.
The sentinel tower before him was only about 2.5 meters tall, even shorter than most jotun. It was constructed from wide, flat stones that were piled on top of each other, with the stones at the base being twice the size of the stones at the tip of the tower. The tower’s various segments spun slowly in different directions and at different speeds. Some parts jerked forward like clock hands while others glided smoothly at a constant speed. Overall, the expensive sentinel tower looked like a primitive idol or totem, but that impression couldn’t be further from the truth. The moment Jayce placed his hand on the tower and concentrated, he immediately realized that this was the most sophisticated piece of technology that he’d encountered since coming to the Upper Bound—with the possible exception of his storage device.
The complex flow of mana in these rocks sent Jayce’s head spinning. The only other time Jayce had felt like this was when he tried to peek into an information console. Both then and now, Jayce was reminded that the three parts of artifact refining—shaping, purifying and engraving—were each full-time jobs in their own right.
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Still, Jayce was not completely lost. His meagre knowledge of runes and engraving held him back, but there was more than one way to examine an artifact.
“Jayce, how does it look to you?” Leon asked after a couple minutes. His voice carried a subtle mocking tone. “If you’re going to win our bet, then something like this should be—”
“87.5%, 90%, 88.6%, 93%, 9.1%...” Jayce interrupted him by rattling off a list of percentages. He had no desire to get into a pissing match with Leon, especially when everyone was supposed to be solving this problem together.
Hearing these numbers, Marin, Egan and Leon’s expressions revealed varying degrees of confusion while Verne cried out in shock. Marin and Egan glanced at Verne before touching the tower again. Soon, they opened their eyes wide and stared at Jayce. Marin in particular was looking at him as though she was seeing him for the first time. Leon was the only one left in the dark, prompting Egan to lean towards him.
“He listed the harmony percentages for every aspect in this tower,” Egan quietly explained.
Staring at his father and then at Jayce, Leon opened his mouth, but he ended up closing it without saying anything.
Inspecting a material’s aspects was a learned skill that every refiner needed to master. As they improved their technique, refiners would be able to peer into higher grade materials with greater precision. A sentinel tower was mostly made from grade 3 materials, which was the same grade as the core of Jayce’s Bands of Freedom. More importantly, this tower contained a large number of different aspects to support its various functions and the delicate balance between them was even more complicated than the runework. Even an experienced refiner wouldn’t be able to list these percentages as quickly as Jayce had, which was why Marin and Egan were initially just as confused as Leon.
Of course, Jayce had never learned any investigative techniques and was relying on his Sense Aspects ability. At Jayce’s current level, he still needed several minutes to sense all of the different aspects in this tower, but it was still much faster than a standard technique.
Things progressed quickly after that. After everyone finished examining the sabotaged tower, they discussed what happened and easily reached a consensus regarding which function had actually been sabotaged.
The village’s sentinel towers were a comprehensive system of artifacts that were connected to each other and the library’s main tower. They guarded against monsters by causing lifeforms born from mana to feel repulsed by their presence. They could connect to form barriers and retaliate with a very limited set of attacks. They also collected information about nearby lifeforms with a function similar to Essence Appraisal. This last ability was the one that had been tampered with.
The only mystery now was how the sabotage occurred.
“An exile couldn’t have done this,” Marin concluded. “The tower should sound an alarm whenever one of them approaches it. If the exile tries to get close, it will automatically form a barrier.”
Jayce cupped his chin, asking, “When do you think it was damaged? Does the village perform maintenance on these things?”
“Rarely,” Verne replied. “They mostly manage themselves. I don’t think anyone’s given them a thorough check in over a year.”
“This was done by those jotun. The ones led by that woman who caused a scene one month ago,” Egan stated confidently through gritted teeth. He contained his rising fury and explained, “The person who sabotaged this tower is an amateur. They must know a little about artifacts to target the right place, but their method was very forceful. They only avoided triggering the tower’s alarm through sheer luck.”
“Or sheer audaciousness,” Marin added. “Sentinel towers are designed to guard against designated enemies like monsters and exiles. Unless they’re paired with living guards, anyone can approach them easily.”
Jayce thought of Weiss, the jotun who led that team, and frowned. She was over level 60 and wasn’t afraid of Snowdrift’s elders. With her Assassin abilities, she could get away even if the alarm were sounded.
Egan folded his arms. “Then it’s settled. If they dare show their faces here again, we’ll punish them severely. The head might want to send people to patrol the border, at least during the festival, but that’s up to him.”
Marin also crossed her arms and nodded her head. “You should report to him immediately and everyone else can start inspecting the other towers. I’ll fix this one up myself.”
“I’ll repair it. Leon, you go report to the head. Everyone else can inspect the other towers.”
The ends of Marin’s lips rose in a smile that wasn’t a smile while Egan’s frown grew deeper. Verne was waiting patiently for them to finish, and Leon hadn’t spoken since his last attempt to taunt Jayce. Jayce stifled a sigh. Things had gone smoothly up until now, but the bad blood between these two couldn’t be concealed forever. He predicted this would be the start of a lengthy argument.
But reality didn’t follow his expectations.
“I’m also a member of this village and I specialize in repairing artifacts,” Marin argued. “What? Are you going to tell me that I’m not qualified to do this?”
“You aren’t,” Egan stated flatly. “Neither is that weaver or the black-haired kid. These towers are Snowdrift’s main source of protection. I won’t allow them to be modified by outsiders.”
“O-Outsiders?” Marin repeated. Her tail and ears stood erect and she practically snarled like a beast. Jayce had heard Soest make a similar sound when the wolfman couldn’t hold back his anger. “Who are you calling an outsider? I was born here!”
“Even so, you are not qualified,” a relaxed voice drifted across the area like low-flying clouds.
Everyone looked around frantically until they saw a metallic dove pop out of the snow beside the malfunctioning tower. Jayce recognized this dove as the village head’s puppet and mouthpiece.
“There’s no need to send a report,” the dove continued. “I’ll be patrolling the border intermittently until I believe that this exile threat has subsided.”
“Who cares about that!?” Marin yelled. “Why am I not qualified to repair this tower?”
“Marin, the blue-furred race is the weakest race on Caelum. We don’t own any territory of our own, don’t have any powerful organizations and we’re second-class citizens wherever we go. You’ve learned that in school but because you’ve lived here your entire life, you don’t fully understand how valuable this supposedly abandoned piece of land is for us. Even if you did, that value doesn’t exist for you. Not for a stray that can be welcomed into White Forest at any time. Similarly, a weaver can always return to the Collective and an otherworlder can eventually return to their planet. All of you can live here, but none of you are qualified to touch this tower.”
Slowly, Marin’s ears and tail drooped. She failed to respond, and that was the end of the argument.