Corrupted Earth [N-Rank Mission] 5/5

Center Path

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If Gryz took a closer look at the digicode, he would read the following words roughly translated.

"I am Gaia, Mother Earth. All who tread on my domain are my children.
With my left hand, I provide my children a place to stand on and live their lives. With my right hand, I provide them with the things they need to survive.
As my children increase in number, I must raise my hand a little higher.
Alas, sometimes I cannot without help.
Only when true balance is obtained will my soul be at peace".

Meanwhile as Oboro looked at the plates, he would see that the left is a little bigger than the right. It is made of hard sandstone like the rest of the statue.



Left Path

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As Kan inspected the table, he would note that there would be bits of silver hair around. Was it a digimon's? Or even a human's? Only it seemed to be quite long. The food, while rotting, was more of the long lasting kind, although not even biscuits could last the length of time that they had been through.

As Kan and Tsukaimon looked through the books, they would see one bound in green that looked newer than the older ruined ones. In fact, it appeared to be a journal of some kind. On the first page, it was written "The Worshippers of Gaia" by S. Sepikmon. The writings of the book appeared to be printed rather than written, so it seemed that this book was not originally from this temple. Most of the other books had rather ruined pages, the handwritten digicode on them largely illegible.

Moving the books to open a secret passageway yielded nothing thus far.


Right Path

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As Ayaka lifted the object with her vines, the object in question appeared to be a book. A diary of sorts, if they looked at the title.

Inside this book was an account of some kind of 'expedition'. The words were handwritten, a little messily, in charcoal. And the writer was simply named "Goblimon". If they chose to do so, they would read the account of what the Goblimon went through. At first glance, given the state of the broken club, it probably didn't go well for him.

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OOC: Sorry for the vague posts, but I'll write down what's actually in the books in the next post if your characters want to read them.

Oboro was off wandering around, uninterested in any of this boring stuff all of a sudden. Meanwhile, Ikkakumon studied the plates. It seemed like they were made of some sort of sandstone, and other than that, it didn't seem like there was anything interesting about them from a preliminary check.

"I'm not sure," Ikkakumon muttered.

Centre Path

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As Ikkakumon touched one of the plates, he would find that they both moved somehow. As the left is pushed down, the right rises a little. When the weight is removed, the plates move to their original positions.

But the same does not work in reverse. The right hand would not move if physically forced.



Left Path

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The contents of the book described the digimon that lived here. The prose was meandering and whimsical at times, unfortunately Sepikmon did not have an editor.

However, key information about this civilization could be discerned. For one thing, the digimon did not respect brute force and aggressive behaviour, but instead respected the ways of healing and caring for the world around them. In the ancient temple's heyday, they believed that healing sick and wounded digimon in front of the statue of Gaia would please her, and reward them by turning the sandy wasteland into a garden of bounty. But if they displeased her with destruction and violence, then she would take them away.

The remainder of the book tells how the original builders of the temple were eventually wiped out by a powerful, aggressive digimon that wanted Gaia's bounty all to himself. And so when he and his followers moved in, the 'blessings of Gaia' ended, and her sadness permeated through the whole temple. Eventually, it was abandoned as a useless ruin. Sepikmon then mentions that the true secret of the temple lays behind the statue of Gaia, but he could not find a way through.

"Whatever the way is, the path forward would possibly be something related to the original intentions of those in the temple" he theorized. "But, perhaps, the artifact within is best left alone?"



Right Path

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The contents of the book were written neatly in the first entry. Apparently the expedition consisted of just 2 digimon - a Goblimon and his Ogremon brother. It would be clear from the entries that the Goblimon, despite being less evolved, didn't think much of his brother's intellect, only respecting his strength. It seemed that Goblimon's main goal here was to reach the inner chamber to find the treasure within.

They were not doing so out of greed, it said. They were doing so because their sister, a Shamamon, had apparently been kidnapped by an unknown entity. And would be returned only if they managed to retrieve the 'artifact', whatever it was.

It would seem that the three obsidian Gotsumon caused them trouble too. Ogremon was wounded in the fight, but Goblimon managed to heal him.

As the pages went on, Goblimon's writing grew less tidy as they tried and failed to get through the obstacle in the path ahead. His language became more angry and frustrated as the way forward eluded him. He deduced it was some kind of balancing puzzle, but nothing they did worked. He tried balancing the plates with stones, he tried standing on them with Ogremon, but the problem was that he had no way to get the 'right plate to lower'.

It seemed that at one point they left the temple and returned to Rustport to find anything that could assist them, and they found a book by Sepikmon, which they stored in the other chamber - also the one where they ate. Goblimon's writing became calmer at this point, with not many entries other than him reading the book, sometimes to complain about Sepikmon's 'blabbering'.

The final entry was somewhat ominous. Goblimon's writing became panicked again. He said the Obsidian Gotsumon were attacking daily now, coming out from the black data. Their clubs had broken from the intensity of the battles. He then claimed that they would make one last attempt at going through the obstacle, then, the pages were blank.

Ikkakumon was thoroughly stumped. How could this thing only be pushed on the one side? He would sit there with a confused look on his face as Gryz attempted to interact with the statue in whatever way he could.

Meanwhile, Oboro looked on, amazed at Tetsu and Gryz's abilities.

Nothing at all. Bitter tasting this sense of uselessness.

A shake of the head and the spirit user turned away from the books; the Tsukaimon seemed oddly quiet but he just passed it off as the creature not wishing to really say anything. Or do anything in that matter. Frowning slightly he'd go over to the right collapsed path; putting a hand to the "barrier". He was curious to see something; if he could phase through these he could just bypass these completely to see where these would lead. But first he'd have to test whether or not he could. Tentatively he'd push his hand forward, trying to phase his hand through the material. He'd of course do the same with the other side, seeing no reason why he shouldn't.

"Might make this whole ordeal easier..."