The Golden Tree (5)
A short, simple message appeared. Beyond the screen stood the massive Golden Tree and Iver, grown into her adult form — and the elves living around it.
I thought carefully about it. The bow the dwarves had never managed to craft, the one they'd only shrugged their shoulders over. The Greatbow of the Golden Tree. No matter how I looked at it, it had to be connected to the Golden Tree I was seeing now. At the very least, it might serve as a trigger that would let me craft the bow.
I zoomed the camera all the way in and examined the Golden Tree. I pulled in close enough to see the golden veins of its leaves and the wrinkles in its bark, but nothing stood out clearly to the eye.
Just in case, I pressed down on the Golden Tree. If it registered as a building, detailed information ought to appear—
Ping-pong!
A great and noble tree that has endured countless ages and storms, from the mythical era when mystery and miracles flowed freely down to the present day.
"Oh."
It came out roughly the same way building information did in the Holy Land. So it really did treat a "Wonder Architecture" as an actual structure.
I was skimming the abbreviated description when another message appeared.
The Golden Tree was burned by an evil fire and had its divinity consumed, suffering damage from which recovery is impossible. The long journey of the Great Golden Tree is beginning to show its end.
Beginning to show its end? It's a building — and it's dying?
Maybe because it was a building and a tree at the same time.
Keeping the message in mind, I looked more carefully and realized the Golden Tree's light seemed a little fainter than before. No — not a little. It was unmistakably dying.
The golden radiance that had blazed like the midsummer sun had faded to the dim glow of a setting dusk. Its leaves trembled and fell to the earth. The once-lush branches cracked, splintered, and tore apart. Its roots withered to bare husks, rising up from the ground only to twist and break apart.
It's really dying!
This was a disaster. I'd only just found a possible lead that might finally let me craft the bow — I couldn't lose it this easily.
There's a way. There has to be a way.
I needed to think. Broaden the way I approached the problem. I shut my eyes and desperately turned the gears in my head, repeating to myself:
I'm a god… a god who can do anything…
All sorts of methods came to mind. Heal the Golden Tree? I'd already used Sanctuary Declaration. It hadn't worked, and using it again would be the same. Search the shop for a skill that could save a tree? I didn't know if the tree would last that long. Even now, the leaves were falling faster and faster.
Tuk— tutuk—!
Watching those falling leaves, my own heart burned with them. Was this how the girl in that old story felt, staring at the last leaf? Part of me wanted to grab tweezers and glue and stick every single leaf back on one by one. But that wouldn't bring a dying Golden Tree back to life…
Tree, tree… ugh, I'm going crazy!
Anxiety scrambled my thoughts, and no solution came. A situation that could drive anyone up the wall. Something — wasn't there something I could do?
Ding-ring—!
"Roots to the earth, branches and leaves to the sky."
Having accepted its end, the Golden Tree humbly prepares for its final hour. Before it returns, as is proper, to nature, the Golden Tree wishes to carry out one last task.
The Golden Tree wishes to create a successor to carry on after it. To do so, it requires aid.
Will you help? Y / N
A cursor blinked, waiting for my choice. There was only one answer.
"Obviously I have to do this."
I had to try something if I wanted any kind of lead. I reached out and hit YES without hesitation — and a flood of Faith came pouring out of me. All that Faith I'd accumulated was now scraping the bottom of the barrel.
It stung a little, but I could only hope the Faith spent would yield something worthwhile in return. I prayed with everything I had.
…Was this my fault?
Iver, who had been pressed right up against the window, muttered awkwardly to herself and drifted back. All she'd wanted to do was deliver the bracelet that monkey had been looking for. And yet they'd screamed, collapsed, and fainted on the spot. At this rate, didn't that make her the villain?
Mortals are utterly incomprehensible.
In appearance and in behavior alike. To Iver — who prided herself on being a perfect life-form — elves and humans were inefficiency made flesh. Soft hide and fragile bones, organs that crumpled under the slightest external shock, bodies that broke and died from a little heat or a little cold. Their forms, their actions, their thoughts — mortals were simply too difficult to understand.
It was the arrogance born of a dragon's lofty pride. A lifespan that bordered on immortality. Tough, resilient hide and the strongest bones in the world. A little sunlight and starlight were enough that she need not eat, and sleep was nothing more than a choice. For a dragon, death meant nothing beyond the long, long span of life finally ending and returning to nature's embrace. Save for a handful of transcendent beings, no one dared hunt a dragon.
To hunt a dragon is to stand as a dragon's equal.
Prey and hunter. The relationship of the hunt — of eating and being eaten, of chasing and being chased. It was only possible because the hunter possessed power comparable to a dragon's, and for that, dragons paid respect to those who had slain their kin. Praise for the greatness of a frail mortal body that had managed to kill a dragon.
Friga, who already had two successful hunts of Iver on her record, was more than worthy of being recognized as Iver's friend.
"Um… um, excuse me…"
Lost in thought, she noticed two monkeys shuffling around at her feet. They had been circling for quite a while, clearly wanting to say something, and only now found their voices.
What is it, monkeys?
She had no interest in the others, so she didn't bother distinguishing faces. At a glance they all looked more or less the same, so monkeys they were. At Iver's indifferent tone, one of them began to tremble violently.
"Th-th-th-that's—!"
Haa…
Look at that jaw rattling. Iver let out a sigh without meaning to, and the face of the elf who had finally managed to speak went deathly pale. The elf behind him, apparently finding the full-body shaking too pitiful to watch, stepped forward.
"Great Dragon, this humble mortal greets you. I am Alancia, Great Matriarch of the elves."
The deep bow carried a restrained refinement — a rather different impression from the sniveling monkeys before. At last, someone she could actually talk to. Iver nodded and looked the Great Matriarch Alancia straight in the eye.
I am Iver, the Frost Dragon — servant of the great Sixth God.
"It is an immense honor to stand before a dragon graced with mystery and miracles."
Dragon and elf exchanged formal greetings. Alancia had no end of questions for Iver.
"Great Dragon, I mean no disrespect, but may I ask a few things?"
Speak.
"What do you mean by a Sixth God? Are there not five all-powerful, great gods?"
For long ages the elves had sealed themselves away from outside threats. Iver sighed as if she hadn't expected them to be quite this ignorant of the world beyond.
Hah. Eyes that do not see, and long ears worn like ornaments. You monkeys — can you not even see His eye shining in that sky?
"Eye…?"
Matriarch Alancia and the elves behind her exchanged looks as if hearing this for the first time. To think they didn't even know that much. Iver let out a small sigh and covered her eyes. Did these monkeys never look up at the sky?
Look at the heavens. Among the countless stars, can you not see the great eye that shines?
"An eye… in the sky?"
"Uh, hmm. Ah. So that's what the constellation is…"
Following Iver's gesture, Alancia and the elves tipped their heads this way and that, scanning the sky. Eyes closed, Iver waited for the monkeys to erupt in gasps and wonder. Surely they would be struck speechless by His greatness.
"…Huh? Huh?!"
"Th-th-that!! G-Great Dragon!"
Yes, yes. Heh heh. Do you see that shining eye? That is the eye of the Sixth God, all-knowing and filled with endless wisdom—
Iver nodded along with her eyes still shut, cheerfully boasting — until the elves called out to her as if screaming.
"The Golden Tree!! The Golden Tree is—!!"
…What?
They weren't looking at the stars she'd pointed out. What was wrong with the tree?
Only then sensing something amiss, Iver opened her eyes and looked at the Golden Tree. It was still pouring out that dazzling light. Nothing so catastrophic that the elves needed to make this much fuss. As a dragon, Iver felt no particular disturbance.
But the elves, who had lived their entire lives with the Golden Tree, were different.
Rumble.
Elves came pouring out of the hollows in the tree. They leapt and ran from branch to branch in a precarious scramble, every gaze locked on the Golden Tree alone.
"O Golden Tree! O great Golden Tree!!"
"You must not — we are not ready yet!!"
"You cannot leave us behind!! Ah, O Golden Tree!!"
Like rabbits bursting from a burning warren, the elves gathered in an instant and wailed toward the Golden Tree. Some collapsed outright, tears streaming down their faces.
A situation that had erupted without any warning at all.
What on earth is this…
Realizing something was seriously wrong, Iver narrowed her eyes and examined the Golden Tree from top to bottom. Only then did the changes become visible. Bark split and cracked in places. Branches fractured and broken. Torn leaves falling to the ground. The golden light that had blazed like the sun, grown faint.
It's dying.
On top of having its divinity consumed, the years the Golden Tree had lived through were no light burden. Death was bound to life — part of the endless cycle of eating and being eaten. To be born was, by rights, to die. Even without the loss of its divinity, the Golden Tree's allotted lifespan would have been nearing its limit.
If it hadn't lost its divinity… it might have lived another hundred years at most.
Unlike the composed Iver, the elves who had spent their whole lives with the Golden Tree could not so easily accept this sudden farewell. And perhaps the Golden Tree itself felt the same. Its trembling branches swayed with a strangely pitiful motion.
A parting that arrives without warning grants no final greeting — neither to those who remain, nor to the one who leaves. It comes coldly, mercilessly, and all at once.
And yet—
Hwaaaaah—!
A sky full of starlight fell toward the Golden Tree, promising another meeting yet to come.