Horizon of Trees

Horizon of Trees

Year 197 (continued)

The Cometworld crumbled, as large chunks that blanked the red sky drifted apart. I spawned my trees quickly, and my roots spread out through the rocks and dirt, and grabbed the earth. There were still meteors that rained from the red skies above, but thanks to this large chunk of rock that drifted overhead thanks to the loss of gravity, it functioned as a meteor-umbrella.

I wasnt even sure whether its just gravity, or just some weird magical forces in this world. I certainly could feel it, as it tried to tear my roots apart.

My trees had spread as far as I could, during the attempts to rescue as many of the Canari people, and I spawned more [Giant Attendant Trees] wherever I could. Still, a stray meteor that I failed to block could single-handedly destroy my Giant Trees. These meteors contained powers that exceeded their size, and it was getting stronger.

The suns redness turned even redder, and it felt larger. The heat was immense, and part of my mana was spent cooling down my entire network of trees as I attempted to reach the exposed core of the cometworld.

There were no monsters left. No one.

Just the pull of some unusual magic tearing the entire world apart. It wasnt godly, either. Magic didnt work anymore. The tearing energies here seemed to interfere with magic, which was why I sent Stella home.

I popped my trees as fast as I could, and it was a race against time, before the chunk of earth I was on would be torn away.

The meteors smashed into one of the floating chunks, and it split in half. A part of it drifted back to the glowing exposed core. I didnt know why, but I felt drawn to it.

A large meteor slammed into the exposed core of the Cometworld, and large chunks were torn out. The parts that glowed flew up and turned into rock almost instantly, and I saw the core shrink in size.

I attempted to reach it.

Too late, child of another world.

I felt a really strong pulling force on the ground, and even as I increased the number of roots, it ripped them apart. I was trying to hold the ground together with flimsy tape during an earthquake.

The path to the core was lost, and I felt a bit weaker. No, my trees in that world felt a bit weaker.

The core was smaller, with most of the bits around it drifting apart. I saw the exposed core glow, and then it exploded into multiple fragments. A strange white fragment flew right towards me.

It was a white ore the size of a tree trunk, and it flew and dropped close to one of my other subsidiary trees. My roots immediately wrapped it, and pulled it to my tree of clones. No time to analyse what it was, because I sent it back.

Once I did, the core seemed to glow again, and then... crumbled. A layer in the sky shattered. It was like a protective dome that once existed over the entire planet faded away, and the entire world was blanketed by a burn. All my lesser trees were destroyed, and the ground burned briefly, and then stopped.

There was nothing to burn. Nothing left.

Yet my main tree of clones survived, the reddish sun continued to batter my tree of clones with searing hot energy, but it did nothing. My tree of clones shared my resistance.

A part of me floated in space, and I watched the red sun glow, and grow. It grew even larger, and took up a larger part of space.

Meteors now flew at me directly, drawn to me by some kind of magic. I felt the air was thick with a kind of mana and magic that I didnt quite understand. It was like star mana, yet different. I couldnt get my magical sensors to check it, they were destroyed too quickly by the perpetual ambient rays. No, more accurately, everything disintegrated... except me.

The red sun grew over the course of the year, and then, in a sudden moment... vanished.

Gone.

My tree of clones drifted alone in space, in seemingly perpetual emptiness and darkness.

The world vanished. Stella looked in horror back from the safety of our home. How?

There was nothing... absolutely nothing at all. All the stars in that world seemed to have disappeared as well.

In the emptiness, back home-

[Youve obtained a title : Witness of a Worlds Death]

[Youve obtained a title : Otherworldly Rescuer]

-

The Canari people got a title. [Otherworld Refugee]. Both Lumoof and Stella all gotten the title [Otherworldly Rescuer] as well. Titles seemed mostly useless to me, but the fact that the system awarded them meant there had to be some use.

Anyway, Lumoof had to break the news to the Canari directly. Your world has died. The Canari howled and wailed. By now, they had relocated to a secret mountainous area in the central continent. Perhaps one day they will be introduced to the wider world, but for now, there are too few of them. There were secret convoys that brought food to them, while they adapted to the new world.

The world sent me a goodbye memo. That sucks. But I was drawn to a sudden increase in my astral map. I saw, for a sudden moment, wide swaths that were revealed to me. This cometworld travelled in a long arc through the void sea, and I understood that these worlds may have moved since then.

I felt like a xianxia protagonist, suddenly realising the existence of the world beyond worlds.

Now I realised how large the multiverse was, it truly narrowed my focus. I didnt think it was possible for me to save the thousands of other worlds out there, and nor do I intend to,

My goal should be this world. Home. I would protect my home, and I would stop the demons from entering my world. The greater world can be a later problem, but my first and main focus should be to save this world.

I may consider reinforcing Threeworlds and the other neighbouring world, as a means to properly protect this world.

The path of the Cometworld through the seas also revealed that it came in close contact with some demon worlds. There are way too many demon worlds.

There was something else in the Shard. A strange mana I didnt understand, and refused to interact with me. Did the Shard leave something else in there?

Ugh.

But the fact that this world could even talk to me told me something very important.

Its possible to talk to the world, and that means it must be possible to talk to my world. If I elected [Will of the World], did that mean I would merge with the thing at the center of this world?

What other kind of power did an entity like that have? From what Ive seen, the core has some way of creating shields, since the core shielded their world from the harmful effects of their dying sun, and also has the power to give skills.

I remembered that some of the elves and treefolks worshipped variants of the nameless mother, and these were likely references to the world itself.

Did every world have a will at the center of it all?

> Lilies. Do you know of the will of the world? <

> Have you ever spoken to it? <

> How do you know of it? <

Huh. What was the relationship of the gods and the will of the world? Is the Will of the World a god? > What is the will? <

Great. If its not a god, then it mustve been a creation of the system itself. I didnt understand why there are gods and demons in the first place. Like, our own world didnt have them, but the ancient people invented them to explain the world.

But the other world called the Canari their children. Did this mean that the will of the world was responsible for the creation of the inhabitants, and thus, all of those who lived here were creations of the will?

Wait. If we extend this train of thought, does this mean that the gods needed otherworldly heroes because the will of the world interfered with their meddling of the natives? Or maybe, only some will of the world interfered, so for those worlds, they needed to use externally sourced heroes.

Looking at it in another way, from what Snek described of how the demons used the energy of the core to create demon kings, this suggested that the demons ultimate goal was to capture the will of the world, in order to create more demon kings.

But why? Why create more demon kings?

What was the end goal for the demons?

What was the end goal for the gods?

Lilies answered frankly.

Was that a jab at Reefy?

Lets assume that Lilies is right. The demons invade other worlds, take control of their world, and then just use it to invade more worlds. If so, they are essentially a virus.

Then the gods? Each god is a sentient, sapient creature with its own intellect. So, each of them would have their own goals, but clearly, each god has a limited sphere of influence. If they are higher levelled versions of me, their ability to touch multiple worlds are clearly constrained but simple practical issues like distance, unless the system allows certain overrides.

Stella was also thinking about it, and she posited a fascinating possibility.

The void sea was expanding, in the same way earths distance between galaxies expanded. A slow expansion of the multiverse, so worlds where the gods could reach were getting less, as each of them drifted further and further apart.

Certain worlds, where they are close enough such that they are clustered and locked together by local magic-gravity, remain reachable to each other, but those further apart were being ripped apart.

The expansion of the universe was an issue over millions, billions of years on Earth. But perhaps here, there is a magical equivalent at play. If so, this implied that each world would eventually be unreachable to the others. Even demons will eventually disappear.