Cass and Alyx backtracked to the hidden room once Alyx was done eating. Neither had spent much time looking around previously, both badly injured and more focused on putting one foot in front of the other than looting ancient books. Ancient books did seem to be all there was though. Maybe if Salos was awake, he might have been able to find something in the mess of decayed paper and leather, but as it was, they didn’t find anything still legible.
“A shame,” Alyx said, poking through yet another dusty shelf. “I doubt a (…) would (ever be willing?) to come out here. They might have been able to make something of these.”
“A what?” Cass asked, her translation skill faltering on what Cass assumed was a particular profession.
“A (…)?” Alyx repeated the word.
Cass shook her head, it was no clearer the second time.
“Someone who looks at old stuff? (…)? Relics? Old books like these,” Alyx gestured at the books.
“An archaeologist?” Cass tried guessing. The word came out in English. “Someone who studies dead cultures?”
“That sounds right,” Alyx nodded.
Jothi Language Comprehension has increased to level 4.
Cass smiled to herself at the pop-up. Perhaps this would fill in the holes in her understanding of the language.
“An (archaeologist?) might have been able to make something of these,” Alyx repeated.
Cass sighed. Or maybe a single level wasn’t going to make an appreciable difference…
She focused back on the books. They were more dust than paper at this point. “Even in this state?”
Alyx shrugged. “I’m not an (expert?), this may be all too far gone for even a (professional?). But if they could, we might learn something. This looks like this is from the era of the Gods.” She pointed to the mural on the wall. “This appears to (show?) the Goddess of Alacrity and her servants, Shadow and Might.”
Cass squinted at the figures in the painting. They only roughly looked like people to her. “How can you tell?”
Alyx raised an eyebrow but pointed to the central figure’s head. “See how she wears a (monster?) crown?”
Cass squinted harder at the headdress of the figure. It looked roughly like a crown, but also like it could have been devil horns or lightning. And what made it specifically a monster crown? Was it that they looked like devil horns?
Alyx looked so emphatic though, Cass decided she’d just nod.
“Then on either side, we see the gold eyes of Shadow here,” Alyx pointed to a black smudge of a figure etched with swirling gold lines. Cass supposed the gold swirls looked a bit like eyes there on the head. “And the hammer of Might here.” She pointed to a larger figure with a very Thor-ish-looking hammer held up in one hand.
“And who are these people again?” Cass asked.
Alyx looked at Cass, a strange expression on her face. “You don’t know the Goddess of Alacrity?”
“Alacrity is one of the Stats,” Cass said slowly.
Alyx nodded, but the confused concern on her face didn’t change. “She’s one of the Nine.”
Cass’s blank look didn’t budge.
“One of the Nine Gods?”
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“Oh, you have nine of them?” Cass knew it was a dumb sentence the minute it left her mouth, but what else was she supposed to say to that?
Alyx just stared blankly at Cass, mouth open, brow furrowed. “You don’t know the Gods?”
Cass shrugged. “I don’t know your gods, no.”
“My Gods?”
Cass nodded. “Sorry, is that disrespectful? But you don’t really expect the gods where I’m from to be the same as the ones you worship? Do you?”
“The Gods that (rule?) the System?”
Cass scratched her head. “Sorry, I don’t want to get into a theological debate.”
Alyx’s head was all but spinning. Had Cass broken her? Was it possible this world only had one religion? Or maybe this region was isolated enough that other belief systems were uncommon enough to be unthinkable?
She wasn’t yelling about Cass being a heretic, so there was that at least.
“I’d like to know more about them though,” Cass said finally.
Alyx shook her head. “What do you mean you don’t know about the Gods?”
“I’m not exactly from here,” Cass said slowly.
“Where are you from that you don’t have the Gods?”
“Earth?” Cass tried.
“I’ve never heard of that Continent,” Alyx said, “And I refuse to believe that it somehow (runs?) under different rules and a different System.”
“I’m not sure what the system has to do with anything,” Cass said.
“Who else runs the System, besides the Gods? Why do you think there are nine of them?”
Cass blinked. She didn’t mean… “They’re real?”
Alyx and Cass stared at one another for another long minute.
Again, Cass realized it was a dumb question. Of course, Alyx believed her gods were real. But, also, this was a fantasy world with magic and nonsense. Could there be real gods here? Gods people had actual, tangible contact with? No. That seemed a bridge too far. She hadn’t seen anything to suggest divine intervention was a thing. Best to respectfully listen for now and not make any assumptions.
“What kind of question is that?” Alyx yelled.
Cass shrugged. “It’s an open question where I’m from.”
Alyx opened her mouth to shout again but stopped before the words formed. She shook her head. “I don’t know what kind of backward place you’re from where you doubt the Gods, or what kind of (ignored?) place it might be, but yes, we have nine Gods, one for each Stat. The Goddess of Alacrity is particularly important to this Trial.
“This Trial is managed by two of the Nine: Alacrity and Dexterity. Alacrity manages everything above ground, the Pass and the Forest while the Demon God controls the Deep.”
There was that title again, ‘Demon God’. Salos had paused over it before and it stuck out as odd to her. “The God of Dexterity is the Demon God?” Cass asked. “Isn’t that weird to tie a stat to being evil? Doesn’t everyone have Dexterity?”
“Who said anything about ‘evil’?” Alyx asked. She looked like she was about to jump into another round of yelling but she stopped herself, shaking her head and visibly deflating. “You don’t know any of this?”
Cass shook her head. “Been too focused on surviving to spend any time on religion.”
“Entering this trial really shouldn’t have been the first time you heard of this.”
Cass shrugged. “They don’t teach this kind of thing where I’m from.”
“Where was that again?” Alyx asked.
“Earth.”
“And is that a Continent or a country?”
“Neither?”
“An Island?”
Cass shook her head.
“A (…)?”
Cass just raised an eyebrow at that. Her skill didn’t recognize that word. Actually, both Continent and Island carried a strange weight to them too. She couldn’t say exactly what was different about them, just she was sure there was context to the words that she was missing. She felt it deep in her bones.
Alyx shook her head, giving up. “Anyway, my (first?) point is that this would have been quite a historic find if an (archaeologist?) could get here. But I doubt any ever will.”
“Why not?” Cass asked.
“The level cap. No non-combatants would want to fight their way through that Caretaker without a team that can guarantee their life. And no one under 27 is going to even think about guaranteeing against an enemy that we can’t report the level on. Besides, it's not like your air pocket trick is something just any mage can (copy?).”
“Sorry, what’s the level cap?” Cass asked.
“The max level allowed into the Valley? Level 27?”
“How are high-level people kept out?” The picture Salos had painted of this world was that the higher one’s level the more tyrannical people became.
“The Gods?”
So even higher leveled people feared the gods then? A really devoted lot they were, huh? Cass didn’t think that would work for long on Earth, not when being here had tangible benefits. Still, Cass wasn’t about to open that argument again so soon.