Excuse Me
To clear the quest, I needed to find out where the Child of the World Tree was.
Oboni had given me some information, but when it came to the most crucial part — the location — there was nothing to go on. After much deliberation, I decided to ask someone closely involved who knew her very well.
"...How on earth did you arrive at that conclusion?"
"Isn't it obvious? It's the fastest way."
The pillar of the World Tree. A tree so impossibly massive that no eye could take it all in soared upward as if it would pierce the very heavens.
Standing beneath it were the two of us — me with a perfectly plain expression, and a woman sweating buckets. Elisa, the High Elf Oboni had assigned as my guide, swallowed hard and trembled from head to toe.
For the record, Mul and Yul had already returned to their village under an elf escort.
"Th-the World Tree would never tell you..."
"You think so?"
"No one has ever heard it speak. Not once. It's not in any of our histories, either."
Nervousness bled into her tone, but there was a surprising firmness beneath it.
And she was right — the World Tree did not speak. It wasn't a living creature like the ancient monsters so much as a pure will, or perhaps a phenomenon, given form.
Like the spirits, it had begun as something inanimate, but unlike them, no matter how much it grew, it remained closer to an object than a being.
I turned to look at Elisa. Platinum-blonde hair, bright green eyes, and a beauty every bit as graceful as an elf's ought to be.
Thanks to that, the chat window was flooding with compliments about her looks — but I was seeing something a little different.
Elisa's got real potential, actually.
She had only just passed her thirtieth year, yet her skill was remarkable. It was simply that the former Elf Queen's two daughters were so exceptionally talented — Elisa's gift was close enough to touch theirs.
If the Child of the World Tree were chosen right now, odds were very high it would be her.
"You're Elisa... Ersosa, correct?"
"Yes. Elisa Ersosa. I'm also the great-granddaughter of Oboni Ersosa, whom you met earlier."
"Great-granddaughter..."
Hard to say whether that made her family few or many. For thousands of years of history, the number of generations was small — but given where Oboni stood, it seemed about right. In this day and age, Oboni was practically the origin of the elves themselves.
I gently laid a hand on the World Tree.
At once, life mana welled up and resonated with my own, and fragments of bark shifted and slid apart, opening a door. A passage just wide enough for two people to pass through.
"One thing I should say in advance."
"?"
"Even if things look strange or excessive, it's nothing serious — please just bear with it."
"I'm sorry, what is that supposed to—"
Before Elisa could finish her protest, I stepped straight through the door the World Tree had opened for me. The flustered elf hurried in after me, and...
Ku-dudd... KUNG!
The door closed behind us.
I had been inside the World Tree before, in the past. An endless, labyrinthine expanse of space, flooded to the brim with life mana — all of it driven by the heart of it all, the center of the World Tree itself.
To reach that center, I looked up at the ceiling of the layered maze.
It's pretty far, huh.
A maze right from the start, huh
Just smash through all of it, go go go
You're not bringing Leo?
Should've brought Leo along
The elf girl trembling like that is kinda cute lol
Wouldn't burning it down clean things up a bit?
Where are we even supposed to go
Eh, just break stuff. Probably fine.
"Hmm... it is a bit far. Climbing up will take some time."
"Where exactly are you going?"
"The center of the World Tree, of course. The space where one can commune with it directly."
The World Tree was hundreds, even thousands of times larger than the other ancient monsters, which made it mighty — but it could not control its entire body. Or rather, it wasn't that it couldn't; it simply didn't, under normal circumstances.
Think of it like this: to light a room, you have ten lamps, but you only switch on one or two of them. One or two will illuminate most of the room, but the darkness pooled in the corners goes unseen. If you wanted to see those corners, you'd need to turn on six or seven. To light the whole room — all ten.
"The World Tree doesn't govern its entire body itself. The reason it deliberately wove this maze, in fact, is to wear down and kill off any intruder who wanders into a part of it the World Tree does not manage."
Trudge. Trudge.
"The space the World Tree governs directly is its center. Once we arrive there, we should be able to speak with it."
And with high probability, that cursed user would be around there too. Anyone surviving this long under a curse would have to be somewhere with even a little more life mana. Perhaps the curse had even taken root from contact with too much of it in the first place.
Ohh
So that's how it works
You can only commune with the World Tree at its center... noted.
But how does Lily know all this?
"...How do you know that?"
Elisa's eyes narrowed to slits. This was already the strange woman who'd drawn the Holy Sword — and now she knew a secret of the World Tree that left her great-grandfather stumped and the High Elves entirely in the dark.
I answered as if it were nothing at all.
"Oboni told me."
"I'm sorry — he what?"
"When I said I was heading into the World Tree, he filled me in."
In truth, I was the one who had figured it out and told Oboni. Think of it as collecting a return on the investment.
Did that... happen?
Classic Lily lol
Was there ever such a thing?
No. There wasn't. But nobody would find it strange.
Back in the old days, I'd had to hide a certain amount of what I knew about the past. But that had changed during the war with the Empire, when I'd spilled information left and right under the banner of a Class Penalty. It had been quite the hot topic at the time — by now, no one batted an eye at it.
Which meant that anything I declared outright, just like that...
Penalty thing?
She's lost her mind again lol
Wasn't she always a bit off?
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
...could be brushed off exactly like that.
Granted, my relationship with Oboni was something no mere "Penalty" excuse could paper over, which was why I'd kept it hidden.
"In any case, we have to find a way through this maze somehow... Do you happen to know of anything?"
"...I have never been here myself. But I have heard of something. From my mother."
Elisa hesitated, wearing the expression of someone wondering whether she ought to say it at all. But having weighed the relationship between Oboni and me, she drew a deep breath and went on.
"They say the World Tree has three divine spirits in its service."
"Divine spirits?"
"Yes. The spirits, it is said, aid the World Tree in making this land more abundant. If, as you claim, Lady Lily, the World Tree truly does not govern its whole body..."
"Then parts of that body would be managed by the spirits instead?"
"That is my understanding."
Divine spirits, hm. That was a first for me. The World Tree of the past had never had anything of the sort. Like the Child of the World Tree, they were probably something this newly grown Tree had brought forth on its own.
And if they managed parts of its body separately, then they would have to be connected to the World Tree at all times.
"Do you have any information about these spirits?"
"...I don't know them in detail myself. Only that the spirits are not kind to humans or other races."
"Then we'll just have to make them kind."
"Yes... I'm sorry, what?"
"So, where are they?"
Elisa lowered the life mana blooming from her hand down to the floor of the maze. The green mana gathered itself into a ball and went bounding off gleefully, like an overexcited puppy.
The mana ball tore through the maze at speed.
"I sense a strong presence from over that way."
"Then off we go."
To make them kind, that is.
HAHAHAHAHA
Serve 'em right
"Mmmhh... nyaahh... so boooored..."
Somewhere in the lower reaches of the World Tree's pillar, a green deer lay sprawled out in utter laziness, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
Bored. So bored.
The green deer, a divine spirit born long ago by the World Tree's command, had been given two duties of grave importance. The duties were simple.
The first was to manage a portion of the World Tree's illustrious sacred form. The second was to resolve, in advance, any element or circumstance that might threaten the World Tree, and to report it.
In the first years after its birth, it had carried out those duties with real diligence — with genuine passion, even. But...
Thud. Thud.
"Ah. It fell."
There was simply nothing to do. No strange creature with the audacity to threaten the World Tree ever appeared. No one ever tried to intrude upon the sacred form. And even if something did get in, it was only those who had received the World Tree's permission in the first place.
What's more, matters outside were handled by the Child of the World Tree — a mere lesser species — and so the very reason for the spirit's existence grew dimmer by the year.
"Suppose I should go get some more..."
The spirit shuffled along on all fours and pried open a box stacked in layers of gnarled wood. Inside, it was packed to the brim with snacks — food bestowed directly by the World Tree itself, one of the few pleasures to be had in this place.
Snatching up a pawful, the spirit flopped back down onto its side.
Crunch!
"...Maybe I'll go visit someone."
The World Tree had not one spirit, but two more besides this one. Siblings born in the same instant, each assigned to watch over their own domain.
In boredom like this, they used to visit each other now and then — exchange greetings, play a little. But they hadn't met in the last three hundred years.
"...Maybe the door won't stay shut this time either."
It had been three hundred years since it last saw the spirit of the Middle Reaches. They'd been fairly close, once — then that one had gradually turned inward, withdrawn, until it wouldn't set so much as a hoof outside its own domain. The deer had gone to knock on its door time and time again, only ever to be told to go home. The World Tree itself had said nothing on the matter.
The spirit of the Upper Reaches it had seen a handful of times over the years — but once one of them had locked their door, the other had slowly locked theirs too.
Which left one spirit, the deer, all alone.
"Hnnnngh... bored... so bored I could di─"
Sprang!
The deer shot upright. Its stubby ears shot up, and its green antlers flared with bright light.
"An intruder!"
Well — technically whoever it was had come in by a perfectly legitimate route. But regardless, someone was inside the World Tree.
The spirit swiftly called upon the authority the World Tree had granted it and set the green mana in motion. Like a screen, an image etched itself onto the empty air — and within it, figures were moving. An elf, and...
"A human? No... that's not a human."
Something that was not a human. What a curious pairing.
It was the spirit's duty to deal with intruders, but it had been so very long since it had seen another species, and it found itself watching them with genuine interest.
And then.
KWAJIJIK!!!
"...Huh?"
"Excuse me."
The mad human — or whatever it was — punched straight through the barrier and stepped into the chamber.
"AN INTRUDER!!!"
A real one, this time.