CHAPTER 162
162 — The More They Can Talk...**

Garta sat, tightly bound. Normally, he wouldn't be immobilized just by being tied up, but strangely, he couldn't move at all. The thread binding him was one spun from the tip of Larna's finger.

'Ugh... this kind of thread...'

He, too, was an expert when it came to threads. He prided himself on his silk-like threads, which were strong, uncuttable, and highly elastic. But Larna's thread was several times superior. Even though it was binding him, he was so overcome with greed that he started to drool.

"You said your name is Garta. I am Kang Jinwoo."

"..."

"..."

At Jinwoo's words, Garta clamped his mouth shut.

He knew his opponent was no ordinary human. It was also a fact that he was a captive. But if he truly groveled just because he was caught, he would only be used and discarded.

To prove his own worth, a certain amount of bluffing was important. Even as a prisoner.

As he made that judgment and glared defiantly...

"Hey. Spider."

Larna kicked him lightly in the ankle. It was just a light kick, but with a CRACK!, his ankle was severely broken. The joint was bent in the complete opposite direction.

"Gyaaaah!"

"Jinwoo... this person... this man... um, don't you be insolent to this mister."

"Y-Yes, ma'am!"

For some reason, her choice of address wasn't quite settled. Was it because the power of the Seed had grown stronger?

In any case, Garta's bluff, born of his own judgment, completely vanished with a single warning from Larna. With tears and snot streaming down his face, Garta prostrated himself and crawled before Jinwoo.

"Please, ask me anything! I will answer everything I know! So please, just spare my life...!"

"If you show proper sincerity, we can show sincerity in return."

"Thank you!"

Thanks to Larna stepping in, things were sorted out quickly. Of course, Jinwoo could have captured and interrogated him even without her, but that would have been a hassle.

"What were you doing in this tower?"

"Sir! I found an empty tower in a pretty good location, so I was thinking of setting up shop!"

"A good location?"

"A rather significant spirit vein flows here! It's so good that I was wondering why no one had claimed this land!"

Jinwoo wore a puzzled expression, just as Garta had described. But his question was about something else.

'An empty tower? No one claimed it?'

The tower he remembered was where the World Tree was located. But it was empty?

"Did you not see a Spirit Tree here?"

"A Spirit Tree? There was nothing like that."

Jinwoo's face hardened. He ran towards the place where Permu's room had been. He heard Terham calling him from behind, but confirmation was more important than an answer right now.

He remembered Permu's room clearly. The ritual tools she used for prayers and ceremonies, and the root of the World Tree visible on one side—he remembered it all.

When he reached the entrance, it was completely blocked by the collapsed tower ceiling. Jinwoo drew his sword and sliced the rocks blocking the entrance to pieces. When he went inside, the interior was not in a normal state either.

It was a complete ruin. It was full of dust and cobwebs, but not because it hadn't been used for a long time. The dust was rock powder from the collapsed ceiling, and the cobwebs belonged to Garta.

It didn't feel lived-in, but it didn't feel like it had been abandoned for a long time either. The place where the World Tree's root had been was, just as Garta had said, completely empty.

'What's going on...?'

He had come here because the World Tree had called him. He had thought that perhaps a completely Eroded World Tree remained, and that monsters drawn to the Erosion were swarming the place.

But when he arrived, it was completely different. The World Tree he was looking for was nowhere to be seen, and the being that had made its nest here wasn't drawn by Erosion, but was just a wanderer looking for empty land.

"Hm?"

Just then, Jinwoo discovered something.

In the place where the World Tree's root had been, where it should have been, was a single, small, hidden flower. It was a very small and faint flower, in which a blue soul, like that of a newborn, flickered.

"I really don't know anything! It was like this from the beginning when I arrived!"

He interrogated Garta a little more after that, but there was no useful information. No information came out, not from Jinwoo's questions, nor from Larna's threatening inquiries.

Eventually, the sun set, and the party lit a campfire inside the collapsed tower.

They tossed the bound Garta to one side and sat around the fire. Terham was on the opposite side of Jinwoo, enjoying the warm heat of the campfire, and Larna, despite there being plenty of room, sat with her hip right next to Jinwoo's.

"You're not scared anymore?"

"Scared? Of what?"

Jinwoo asked while fiddling with his sword to maintain it, but Larna just tilted her head as if she didn't know what he was talking about. She used to cringe and move away whenever he even touched his sword, so something had definitely changed.

Had they built up some trust in the fairies' cave by the lake? Or perhaps the connection with Larna had grown stronger as he absorbed Terham's Seed. After all, her very existence was now no different from a Seed.

'If I count her, that makes six.'

If he considered Larna a full-fledged ally, he had already obtained half of the Seeds. Now, he wouldn't lose against any Lord.

It wasn't a matter of confidence; the gap was already that large. In fact, a divine spirit who had reached the celestial world through their own enlightenment would be trickier to deal with than a Lord consumed by the power of a Seed.

'Six left. I need to find the Seeds, and I need to find the World Tree.'

At first, he had come to investigate the Erosion phenomenon that had also appeared on Earth's World Tree. But somehow, he had gotten involved with the Lords and ended up collecting their Seeds.

The twelve Seeds were originally one, so even though they were divided into twelve, they had a power that attracted each other. No, it might be more correct to call it a bond (緣) that guided them to each other.

The fact that six of those Seeds were here meant that the remaining six Seeds were also naturally heading this way.

Jinwoo took a single flower from his pocket. The small flowering plant he had found in Permu's room. The blue flame budding there was a familiar one.

It was definitely something he was seeing for the first time, yet it was familiar.

Feeling the heat of the campfire, Jinwoo's consciousness gradually sank, and soon, a dream played out before him.

It was a desert without a single drop of water. Red hills and black rocks were visible. The sand underfoot was sometimes red, sometimes yellowish-brown, and sometimes ash-gray.

There was no sense of uniformity. The only thing in common was that the presence of life could not be felt anywhere.

Living in such a place, life was tedious. There was no fear of death. He was a body that did not die even without eating, and likewise, he did not die without drinking. He didn't need to sleep, and if necessary, he didn't even need to breathe.

He could stay alive without making any effort to live.

To such a being, the world seemed to be made of a clump of indifference. The same desert landscape wherever he went. An eternal, immortal hell with no change, except for the slight variations in the color of the sand.

?

It was after an eternity had passed that he discovered a tree with a single flower blooming on it.

He saw a life other than his own for the first time. He doubted his eyes at the impossible sight, but it was certain. It was the first life he had seen on this barren star.

He felt an emotion for the first time from the flower bud, where the blue flame signifying life, the soul, was blossoming.

What he had to do next was decided. He spent all day next to the tree with the bud, doing his best to care for it.

To keep the tree from dying, water was needed, but on this star, water did not exist except for the occasional rain. So he dug into the ground to make water flow and pool. Where it flowed became a river, and where it pooled became a sea.

He carved down sand mountains that he would have normally paid no mind to, for the reason that they spoiled the scenery, and conversely, he piled up mountains in other places. For him, who needed no physiological effort to live, this work was no different from the effort to survive.

Tending to the tree, tending to the surrounding landscape, and creating a more beautiful and diverse world. That had now become the reason for his life.

Still, it was a long way from becoming a world that could truly be called a garden. For now, it was still a desert. A place full of stuffy, unpleasant sand.

At that time, in the world, only the man and the tree with the flower...

Only the two of us existed.

"Mister."

Jinwoo opened his eyes at the feeling of someone shaking his shoulder. He was reluctant to wake from the dream, but he couldn't stay dreaming forever. That was a dream that had already passed; what was important was the reality of now.

"Yeah."

"It's raining outside."

In response to his unspoken question of why she woke him, Larna pointed outside. Through the tower window, a torrential downpour was visible. The noise of the falling water alone seemed like it could drown out the sound of a bomb.

Terham was by the window, his expression quite serious.

"What's wrong? You look worried."

"This isn't just rain. It's laced with poison."

Terham took a white fruit from his sub-space. He didn't know its name, but he remembered it was a sweet fruit that the fairies were very fond of.

When he threw it out the window, it was consumed by the downpour and quickly turned into rags. No matter how heavy the rain, it made no sense for it to do this to a fruit. The fruit, touched by the rainwater, had rapidly rotted and decayed, falling apart.

"This is no small matter."

Jinwoo's expression grew serious as well. Looking outside again, the natural environment around the tower was also completely ruined. The trees were rotting, and the soil was terribly contaminated. The river was overflowing and sweeping everything around it, and that river water also contained a strong toxin, turning every place it passed into dead land.

This downpour was mass-producing dead earth in a different sense than Erosion.

"It seems... the Whale has appeared."

"A whale?"

"It's quite a famous one in the Spirit Realm. A terribly troublesome fellow that goes around sucking up perfectly good seawater and scattering it as poison-filled rain. A few fed-up divine spirits left to subjugate it, but none returned successfully. On the contrary, all news of them was lost, and the rumors of the Whale only grew."

Terham looked towards a corner of the sky. Jinwoo's gaze also turned that way. Far beyond the sky, a leisurely being was swimming this way. And...

"..."

"...It's a Lord."

A Black Flame was visible.

"The Lord of Rain, Neldym. A being whose very existence is a nuisance, but I understand him to be a rational being you can reason with."

Terham glanced at Larna. Larna had been clinging to Jinwoo's arm for a while now, but she seemed to have no interest in the conversation, just staring blankly at the falling rain.

"You mean he's different from Larna, who was impossible to reason with?"

"Ahem."

He hadn't wanted to say it so openly, but Jinwoo just said it. Still, Larna showed no sign of caring in the slightest. Terham felt a little embarrassed, wondering if he had made a fuss for nothing.

"Yes. So, it might be possible to resolve this through dialogue."

Terham proposed a peaceful solution. Jinwoo sympathized with his sentiment. If it could be resolved without fighting, that would be for the best.

But his intuition told him otherwise.

"On the contrary, the fact that he's someone you can talk to might make a fight more likely."

Rather, it was because Larna was a being who lived solely by instinct that she had assimilated to him more quickly. That was what Jinwoo thought.