Chapter 745 T.D.O.N.B: World Tree

The ship flew constantly for days, piloted by the tireless The Great One. I, in the meantime, was chilling. There was nothing really for me to do, so I focused very hard on wasting time as much as I possibly could.

I slept a lot, and when I couldn't do that, I observed the area around our vessel, usually while snacking on whatever I still had prepared. Those supplies, though, were vanishing quickly.

A few days later, when I really wanted to get the heck out of that damn ship, we began approaching a dark barren world. It was massive. Probably as big as our sun, but don't quote me on that, since the only instrument I used which led me to such a conclusion was my own eyes.

We slowed down before approaching the orbit of that planet. I immediately felt something was different when we reached it. It's very hard to describe. Imagine suddenly knowing that everything you have in your brain about how the world works, you can throw into a garbage bin, because all the rules were suddenly changed.

I have to admit, at first I panicked a little bit, looking around for sudden weirdness, but there was nothing. Everything worked as it was supposed to, but there was this constant feeling in my head, that the rules are different now, and I should expect the unexpected. This anxiousness was on one hand terrible, on the other, it gave me this pleasant, for people like me, feeling of adrenaline rush.

Like that we landed, and stepped out. There was no light, and yet I could see everything. I just felt where everything was, like using the 'Eyes of the void' but my brain was processing that into a real display of the terrain around me like the signal was provided from somewhere else than my eyeballs.

- This way - said The Great One.

His voice was different, and I caught on to that immediately. A moment of contemplation made me figure out why. There was no air, so the sound didn't travel through the vibration. It went directly from his brain to mine, just the movement of his lips stayed.

- What the hell... - I said after that because another thought struck me.

My voice was different too, but what was weirder was the fact that I was breathing, and yet, there was definitely no oxygen around me. A moment later, when I got used to my new environment, I began looking around.

Imagine a barren world with just dark rock everywhere. No sound of nature around you, no wind, no light, and yet everything looked liked like there was some. Just enough for you to notice it all. I saw small hills, like dunes, but made out of solid rock, and crevasses so deep that my eyes, working according to the new rules, were unable to 'see' into them.

On the horizon, there were mountains so tall, that they vanished among the black mist high in the sky. There were no stars, just this blockade over our heads. I had no idea what it was.

My observations made me fall behind The Great One, who didn't wait and just kept walking. Yes, walking. No hovering above the ground, a proper march. I had to accelerate to catch up to him. I had this weird feeling that it would be better if I didn't run, which led me to be quite hesitant about using my skills, so I just walked.

It took a few hours for me to finally see a change in the environment around us. At first, I missed, it, but a few minutes later, I did catch it.

On the side of the path we have taken, there was something emerging from the ground, just di vanish inside it a bit further. A longer look made me believe it was like a tree root. Black, shiny, like covered by a chitinous shell. It was massive like a freaking underground tunnel had an aboveground part.

- These are the roots of the world tree - The Great One explained, as he noticed my attention was just glued to that damn thing.

- How big is that tree? - I asked.

- Bigger than the tallest mountain on your planet - he said.

- Why didn't we see it from space then? - I continued my questioning.

- Because, as you, I'm sure, already know, not everything here works as you are used to. If you have a feeling you shouldn't do something, don't do it. - he warned me. - There is a big chance there will be some consequences to that action. What, I can't tell, because I've never experienced that, but I recommend you not try to find that out on your own.

- Yeah, I had that feeling. Don't worry, I'm not gonna do anything stupid - I assured.

Like that, we continued further, traveling probably for a day or maybe two. We climbed hills and mountains, circled around holes in the ground so big, that you could probably fit a city inside. A tireless march finally brought us to a valley. It wasn't that much below the level of the round we were on, and yet it was able to perfectly hide the content which was filling that valley. Like it was folding the line of the horizon itself.

Just that was so weird, that it bugged my mind to the unpleasant point of being unable to push out the feeling that something there was wrong.

Then I finally noticed it. A ball with creepers all over it. It was so big, that at first, I didn't even recognize what It was.

A massive version of the device, where the sphere wasn't any longer moving, it was connected with the ground itself, not levitating in the air, with the bottom part being just a massive cluster of those roots, bigger the closer they got to the World Tree itself.

- Here we are - said The Great One, as we just stood there, admiring what was in front of us