The Martial Unity

He wasn't kidding when he said the name was fitting. The Valley of Prisms was a region where the optical density of the air was not consistent, causing light to bend midair, turning in different directions.

Almost as though the atmosphere was a collection of prisms.

Hence the name of the region.

"Man…" Kane murmured. "Just looking at this place is giving me a headache."

"So this is where the Divine Doctor entered the Beast Domain," Rui remarked, turning back as he glanced towards the Human Domain in the distance. He could see that as the alien-like flora began to grow scarce and peter out into barren land, traces of the touch of humanity could be seen at the horizon.

He turned back and faced the Valley of Prisms with a deep breath. "Let's get going. I'm sure that we'll find some clues."

Rui surged forward intently. Yet it was hard to hide his nervousness. This was the first juncture in searching for clues for the Divine Doctor. The outcome of this particular investigation would drastically alter Rui's evaluation of the likelihood of success. Thus, he was particularly anxious to find something that could point him in a definitive direction.

The Valley of Prisms was definitely most defined by its eye-drawing characteristic and its highly uneven distribution of optical density. However, it wasn't the only aspect of the region that mattered. The valley was quite large, surrounded by the Hroul Mountain Range.

It had lush greenery with a wide stretch of grass and shrubs and other flora thriving in the fertile soils of the valley, which was glowing vividly in myriad colors. Its fauna seemed surprisingly normal and sane, in a way. He saw herds of herbivorous monsters peacefully grazing on the grass.

It was weird and out of place for a region like the Beast Domain.

Rui immediately jumped into surveying mode. With his many powerful sensory techniques like Seismic Mapping, Tempestuous Feel, and Riemannian Echo, he was able to sense a large amount of area and simultaneously ignore the vision distortion caused by the refraction of the atmosphere. He immediately began scanning the entire region with a zig-zag grid-mapping system, ensuring that he would have covered every inch of the entire valley in time.

Even before his initial survey was complete, he had already begun to note oddities in the region half a day ago. The fauna surprised Rui even more, for it struck him as imbalanced, as though there were links missing in the food chains of the entire environment.

Namely, there were no predators.

At least none that he could detect.

"Mmm…" Rui narrowed his eyes. "No wonder they're so relaxed."

He glanced at the various herds of catoblepas, a cow-like monster species, grazing on grass openly and intrepidly. It was an odd sight in a domain that was characterized by harsh conditions and elevated difficulty of survival due to human expansion and encroachment.

They looked semi-intelligent. They clearly were cognizant of him, sizing him up and steering away from him every time he got too close in his scanning endeavors.

There were a variety of other monsters that seemed to coexist in the region in peace.

"Oh, never mind, not all the predators, clearly," Rui finally arrived at an enormous freshwater lake in the middle of the valley from which a variety of streams and rivers flowed into and out.

Within its depths, Rui could clearly sense powerful predatory fish-like monsters the size of small buildings within its depths. These were definitely predators that were on a particularly high grade in the Apprentice Realm.

"Huh," Rui frowned. "So, the only predators are in water while…"

He turned out to inspect the rest of the valley. "…most of the region is comprised of land and land-dwelling animals."

Could a water-dwelling predator unable to set foot on land truly regulate the population of herbivorous species?

Rui narrowed its eyes. "Unlikely."

He ran simple projections and models with safe estimates for variables such as reproduction and hunting rates, and in most cases, unless these monsters were extremely aggressive, it was not feasible for the populations of the herbivorous animals to be kept in check by the water predators alone.

"On top of that, the lake is brimming with other fish life," Rui noted. "It begs the question of whether these monsters even hunt land animals that assuage their thirst at the lake."

Additionally, with the many streams and rivers running around, Rui found it rather hard to believe that herbivores necessarily even relied on the lake.

All of these ecological and environmental oddities were strange and pointed to an incomplete food chain and ecosystem that would eventually overload the environment.

Unfortunately, while he made numerous observations, there were none that could directly elucidate anything about the Divine Doctor.

Of course, this was to be expected.

It wasn't as though the Divine Doctor had visited this region yesterday such that his footprints might still be visibly indented in the ground. He had visited years ago according to the data from the Beggar Sage. Any direct clues that Rui could possibly extract from the region were undoubtedly long eroded by time.

Naturally, he was prepared for this.

What he did hope to find was a more concrete insight into the 'disruption' that the Divine Doctor had caused so that he would have more accurate and precise data that he could systematically compare to all known disruptions in the region over many years; data that he had acquired from the Adventurer's Guild. Those with the highest match would have the highest probability of correlating with the Divine Doctor.

"I dunno, man. Doesn't seem like there's anything worth looking at here," Kane yawned, bored. "It's too chill."

Rui smiled. "Exactly."

"What?"

"Around the same time that the Beggar Sage says the Divine Doctor entered the Valley of Prisms, the Adventurer Guild's data records mass emigration from this region around the same time…" Rui reiterated as he closed his eyes as his powerful mind furiously processed all the data at hand.

He considered a variety of factors. "Missing predators in the food chain. A return of the population. There is no environmental evidence that points to an environmental crisis that caused mass emigration. Considering that the Valley of Prisms is brimming with a biosphere again, it can be assumed that the cause of the emigration was acute."

He opened his eyes. "In that case, somehow, the Divine Doctor must have personally caused the mass emigration."

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