Chapter 105 : Tree of All Forms

Chapter 105: Tree of All Forms

The great Naelund Lake could not be distinguished from the sea until one actually scooped up its cool water to drink.

Waves surged along the shore, and the endless horizon leaned side by side with the blue sky.

Except for the absence of salt, it was unmistakably a sea.

I steered a small boat out to the middle of the vast lake.

I passed by the deserted island I had once traveled through in time and pushed farther onward.

“This should be about it?”

I wasn’t sure. I had only seen Olomnima from afar. The tree was so enormous that I could not even judge how far away it had been.

I fashioned a lighting artifact into a necklace and hung it around my neck.

“I’ll only know if I go in.”

Splash.

I plunged into the lake.

White spray blurred my vision, and soon after, a crystal-clear underwater world revealed itself. Tiny, colorful fish scattered in surprise at the wake I created.

‘Oh. This feels nice.’

I had only come in search of Olomnima, but unexpectedly, I found myself enjoying it.

Sunlight sparkled on the surface above, schools of dazzling fish swam past, and the cool water wrapped around my body in pleasant embrace.

Everything around me grew endlessly quiet, and my heart calmed on its own.

‘And the mana… it’s so vivid.’

Naelund Lake was also called the Miracle Lake.

The cause had never been explained, but for some reason, the lake as a whole contained incredibly powerful mana.

It was precisely because of this that the Ailun White Horses could be so exceptional.

Those special-blooded steeds grew up drinking the waters of Naelund Lake, and by embodying its mana, were known to awaken unique abilities.

For a while, I swam, feeling the dense mana of Naelund Lake coil around my body.

Perhaps because I had already stepped onto the path of a Grandmaster, the mana of the lake stirred my senses even more vividly.

After enjoying the water for some time, I lowered my gaze toward the bottom of the lake.

‘That’s unbelievably deep.’

Below lay a gulf like a bottomless pit.

Though the water was so clear, it grew darker and darker until, at last, it was as though a starless night sky stretched beneath my feet.

Cutting through the cool current, I descended deeper—ever deeper—into the darkness.

‘Heavy.’

How far had I gone? The pressure weighing down on my body had grown menacing.

The sheer weight of the water pulled me downward, even if I tried to stay still.

Relying on the light cast by the artifact, I peered into the depths of the lake, but still, the bottom remained unseen.

‘Not going to be easy...’

By that time, I was already feeling rather stifled and uncomfortable.

The crushing weight of the water on my body was a problem, but worse than that was the mana that grew denser the deeper I went, tormenting me.

The pressure pushed against me with such a tangible force that it even made my chest feel suffocated.

It was merely mana, not aura—yet the sheer magnitude of the mana within this lake bore down on me so heavily that even a Swordmaster’s aura could barely withstand it.

Perhaps this was what they called the greatness of nature.

As the struggle wore on, my mind wandered with all sorts of thoughts.

Would what I sought truly lie in this endless darkness?

It had been ten thousand years since that tree had existed—would it not have already rotted away?

The oppression was overwhelming. The descent felt endless.

Still, there was no helping it.

I had yet to even glimpse the lakebed.

This was the very tree said to have been planted by the Goddess Mivabar. I had to believe it had not yet disappeared.

I cleared my mind.

I thought of it as training and endured. Training had always been meant to be painful.

At first, I released aura to resist the mana pressing in from all directions.

But after wrestling with it for some time, I began to grasp a method.

‘...Becoming a Grandmaster would surely make this easier.’

A Grandmaster was one who could freely command not only the mana within their body but also that outside of it.

I was still far from that level, yet I had already begun to interfere with external mana, if only slightly.

Tremor, tremor.

The mana of the lake quivered faintly. My aura seized upon those tiny gaps and pried them open, allowing me to push back the lake’s mana more easily.

As I continued, I grew increasingly absorbed.

In the pitch-black, silent depths of the lake, focusing wholly on mana and aura, I found myself sinking inward as though in meditation.

My realm did not rise immediately, but without meaning to, I was awakening yet another sense required to walk the path toward Grandmaster.

‘...Ah.’

My immersion was broken when, in that unending darkness where nothing had existed before, I finally caught sight of a faint outline.

‘Olomnima...!’

A massive shadow spread beneath my feet.

Up close, it was even more astounding. How could this possibly be a tree?

It looked instead like a giant—or rather, like some monster out of myth. Even its outermost branches, the thinnest and smallest, were as tall and thick as lofty trees on land.

‘It really exists!’

The very tree I had seen ten thousand years ago truly lay sunken within the lake.

A strange swell of emotion brushed my chest.

Countless thoughts ran through my mind.

‘Could there also be the Fruit of Longevity? Or Soul Herb?’

Had not Holy Knight Louis said so? That the Fruit of Longevity was an ingredient for elixirs, and the Soul Herb had the power to awaken the soul?

They were treasures of the ages.

If such things could be gathered in large amounts? Then magic pharmacology might see tremendous progress.

Even if not a true elixir, producing just a degraded version of such a potion would be nothing short of a miracle in the modern age.

The Tree of All Forms, Olomnima—enduring for ten thousand years.

The countless treasures hidden within that mythical tree were waiting for me!

But there were none.

Truly, none at all.

‘What is this?’

Up close, Olomnima looked bare and withered, as though it were a dead tree.

It resembled charcoal more than wood, and stone more than charcoal.

To make it worse—

Tap! Tap!

Knocking it with my fist, it felt as if I were striking flint, not wood.

‘Dead?’

That’s how it looked, no matter how I examined it. No leaves, strange color, lifeless texture.

Emptiness filled me.

Could even a great tree planted by the hands of a god not withstand the span of ten thousand years? Perhaps it was only natural....

Bzzz—

Just then, my Subspace Necklace quivered faintly.

There was only one reason for it to respond.

I reflexively drew out the Book of Fate. A normal book would have soaked through in water, but the Book of Fate, with its metallic-like composition, could never be damaged so.

‘It’s glowing.’

The Book of Fate shimmered in a pale green glow.

Following that light, Olomnima’s branches pulsed and radiated in waves.

‘Is it reviving? Still alive?’

Yet the glow did not last. Like a final blaze before fading, the tree flared once and then returned to its stony silence.

The pale-green radiance scattered, empty and forlorn.

‘Ah....’

Hope. Disappointment. Hope again. Disappointment once more.

I could not hide the weight of despair from the repeated swings of emotion.

Fwaaah—

A faint light seeped into the darkness.

I turned without thought. It was a branch.

One of the smallest branches at the outermost edge of colossal Olomnima.

Though called small, it was still larger than most great trees on land—yet this one still shone with pale-green light.

‘It’s alive!’

I swam toward it in haste. There it was. Though the rest had died, four branches still lived.

Even here, at the bottom of the lake, they swayed with countless leaves and blossoms.

And then—

The Silflower that Seah had begged me to retrieve came into view.

Alongside it bloomed red flowers, others of many hues, and even elongated fruits shaped like sweet potatoes dangling in clusters.

The closer I drew, the brighter the Book of Fate I held flared.

In response, the four living branches seemed to tear themselves away from the massive trunk, writhing as if to approach me.

Their tips extended like roots, trailing beard-like tendrils.

I hurriedly untied the sack I had brought.

Originally, I had planned to collect only the seeds in the sack, but I changed my mind. The branches had torn themselves away as if begging me to take them, so I intended to bring them all.

I cut the sack into long straps and bound the massive branches tightly together. With two in each hand, I swam upward toward the surface.

‘So heavy....’

The weight of the water and the crushing mana pressed down, and the heft of the branches dragged me as though trying to pull my entire body back to the lake’s bottom.

Each kick of my legs toward the surface demanded every ounce of strength I had.

Even the body of a Swordmaster, capable of holding breath for hours without issue, wheezed under such labor.

‘Still... I’ll bring them all!’

Clenching my teeth, I finally broke the surface, but the struggle was far from over. My body was already spent, yet the branches of Olomnima kept trying to sink, and my little rowboat could never tow them. I had no choice but to grip them with both hands and swim all the way to the shore.

Splash—splash—

At last, I broke through the waves and collapsed onto the sandy beach, utterly drained.

“Huff... haah.”

Sprawled on the sand, I gazed at the blue sky and let out a bitter laugh.

Who would have thought that simply diving to the lake’s bottom to bring back a few branches could be this exhausting?

Since obtaining the Magical Armor, I had felt fearless, my confidence soaring sky-high. But now, I had been given a sobering reminder.

Against the vastness of nature and myth, I was still so very fragile.

“You did well.”

Was she waiting for me all along?

Seah had come near at some point, shading me with a canopy.

Still panting, I scolded her.

“Why are you out here? You should’ve rested.”

So much had happened today. Hadn’t she absorbed Dracium just this very morning? She must have been exhausted, yet instead of sleeping, she had waited for me....

“Rest? While Oppa is working?”

With that, she opened the book in her hands and began examining the branches I had brought.

“Hm... so this is it? Good.”

Seeing her act knowledgeable about plants she had surely never seen before, I asked, puzzled:

“You actually know what these are?”

“Yeah.”

Seah shook the book in her hands.

“While Oppa was working, I did some work too. I organized the offerings kept in the Temple of the Saint.”

“You already finished that?”

“It wasn’t hard. Anyway, I found this book there. Among the offerings, there were a lot of plants, right? This book listed their names and uses one by one.”

At that, I sat up, eyes gleaming.

“Then... among what I brought, could there be things like the Fruit of Longevity or the Soul Herb?”

Could it be?

The treasures I had mournfully resigned myself to never possessing—could they have come into my hands like this?

“No.”

Of course.

When my expression cooled, Seah shook her head.

“But these are still more than good enough. No—given our current situation, they might even be better. Besides, the Fruit of Longevity and Soul Herb were among the offerings at the Temple of the Saint.”

“They were there?”

“Yeah. Not much, but enough for some research and small-scale use.”

“Oooh.”

“Anyway, let’s set that aside for later. Right now, these branches come first.”

Seah looked down at the four branches I had brought back.

She glanced from the book to the branches again, her eyes lighting up.

“No doubt. Silflower, Bright-petal Flower, Blood Blossom, and Manna. They’re all excellent finds.”

“...Never even heard of them. Are they really that good? Well, aside from the Silflower....”

“Yeah. They’re good.”

She showed me the book as she explained.

“Bright-petal Flower was used as a dye in the ancient days. With this, the dyeing industry of Rundna could leap forward. If word spread that it was an ancient dye, people would clamor to buy it from even the farthest corners of the continent.”

Her words brought to mind the radiant, vividly colored garments I had once seen in the ancient era.

Indeed... the brilliance of those clothes was on a whole different level from what we wore today.

“Blood Blossom was a material for all sorts of medicine. It was also used in potions. With it, we could spark a revolution in pharmaceuticals.”

Medicine was indispensable everywhere, East or West. If these were proper medicines, even the barren South Continent would surely covet them.

They were indeed valuable.

“And lastly, Manna was one of the ancient staples. Just look at its weight. If we could harvest this steadily... Roberland could be freed entirely from chronic food shortages!”

Even my ears perked up at that.

It was no wonder Seah had set textiles as her first goal instead of food.

The food industry was the most fundamental matter to be solved, yet it had seemed impossible.

Roberland’s land was narrow, and unlike Gloryland or Oldland, its farming and seed technologies had never advanced. Magic could not easily compensate for that.

But now, unexpectedly, the solution had come to us.

“If we can successfully grow and spread these here... we could truly transform Norberju.”

Seah and I met each other’s eyes.

Within her gaze, blue flames blazed.

No doubt, mine did the same.