Chapter 1 Part 7(2/2)
Shin wondered, however, if it was okay for the children of the two different caretaker clans to marry.
“When I was cursed the marriage plan was dispelled just like that, but now that the curse is gone he acts like nothing happened! It’s just horrible!”
Tiera recalled the proposal and her temper flared up again. She was now utterly furious.
“Calm down, Tiera. Your anger is definitely justified, but this is not the time to cause a ruckus.”
“Y, yes..I’m sorry, master.”
Schnee’s words calmed Tiera instantly, as expected of her mentor.
“Ehm, sister Tiera..what exactly is your relationship with lady Yuki?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you about it, did I. When I was banished from the village, master rescued me. She took care of me until the curse was gone. She taught me not only skills, but also new ways of thinking, ways of looking at things, many things I didn’t know.”
“W-wow! Amazing!”
Lymliss, who had great respect for Tiera, looked at Schnee, Tiera’s master, with sparkles in her eyes. Her shyness seems to disappear when she turns like this.
“By the way, is it okay for miss Lymliss to be here?”
In order to help Schnee, who was feeling awkward because of the young elf’s burning stare, Shin asked about something he wondered since his arrival. Lymliss addressed Tiera with the same respect as the Luderia retainers who planned for the Lucent’s revival, after all.
Lymliss called Tiera “sister”, but from her behavior everyone would think that Tiera was of higher standing. Regardless of Lymliss’ feelings, the Luderia clan surely did not view the situation positively.
“It normally wouldn’t be okay, but since we are purifying the World Tree together, she comes here with the pretext that it wouldn’t be bad for us to strengthen our relationship.”
“Sister Tiera taught me how a priestess should act and use my abilities, so..”
All her enthusiasm when looking at Schnee vanished: in front of Shin, Lymliss lost all of her momentum. She seemed to act differently when talking with elves and other species, or maybe she wasn’t used to talking with men.
“I see, she’s your senior as priestess then.”
“I didn’t teach her anything special, though. The way a priestess should act, manners and such are different in the Lucent and Luderia clans, and a priestess’ abilities are learned more through practice than theory.”
“That’s not true!! Your teaching is very easy to understand!!”
“R-really? Well, I’m glad then.”
Tiera succumbed against Lymliss’ momentum, even stronger now than how it was with Schnee.
“Anyway, won’t it be bad if you don’t go back by now? They’re not very happy with your presence here, right?”
“But..”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be able to meet again soon.”
Pushed by Tiera’s smile, Lymliss returned to the Luderia clan’s main house. Her escort was waiting in another room.
“It’s a fine mess, more than I expected.”
“Right..it was too much to write by letter, I didn’t know when to start..”
Less tense now that Lymliss was gone, Tiera looked quite tired.
“At first, I was just worried if I could visit my mother’s grave or not. But the aura of the World Tree was totally different from before, so I couldn’t leave it alone. Poor Lymliss was really emaciated when I arrived.”
The World Tree is always protected by elven warriors, so normally it isn’t possible to get close to it. Thanks to Shibaid’s skills and equipment, however, they managed to get close enough to inspect it. Since Shibaid did not know many concealment skills, it had taken considerable time to do it, though.
When they finally managed to slip inside, they found Lymliss, on the brink of collapsing for using too much strength to purify the World Tree.
“We carried Lymliss back and asked her what was going on. She remembered me, so we weren’t treated as intruders. I then revealed who I was officially, and here we are.”
“Here you are, admired as priestess and turning into the trigger for a feud..”
“Don’t say it like that, please. As soon as the World Tree is healed, I plan on leaving this place.”
Lanapacea was Tiera’s hometown, but she had no intention of staying there.
“Okay, now I know how you feel. Next is the World Tree, is its condition that bad?”
“I think that if I didn’t come back, it was a matter of time until it dried up completely. I’ve never seen it in such a sorry state.”
Part of the trunk had lost all gloss, as if it was dry, and had started changing color. Tiera said that during the time she was a priestess, it had never turned like that.
“It’s really strange. I learned about the World Tree from the previous generation’s priestess, but no one ever said anything about such a phenomenon. If something happened to the World Tree, they would surely record it for future generations..I asked Lymliss too, but she said she never learned about anything like that. It probably never happened before.”
Tiera said that according to elven knowledge, the only countermeasure available was purifying the World Tree.
“Part of the World Tree had dried up and fell on the ground, so we recovered it.”
Shibaid then took out two item cards and materialized them. One was an orichalcum plate, the other the World Tree fragment he mentioned.
It was probably part of the World Tree’s bark. Laid on the orichalcum plate, it had a sickly dull color.
“This is seriously bad..”
Shin was almost speechless. In the game there was a rescue quest that involved healing sick World Trees, but he remembered that they never turned in such a horrible state.
“This is miasma..? No, it feels like a devil’s aura, but it’s also different.”
In the game era, the affected World Trees were enveloped in a dark aura visual effect, but now that the game had become reality he could feel the aura from the fragment. It was an aura similar to the many kinds of “noxious presence” Shin had felt in this world, but it was also different from each of them. It could only be defined as impurity.
“Does it return to normal after you purify it?”
“It depends on the state. If it gets like this, we can only cut off the contaminated part. Maybe you would be okay, but an average elf will be confined to bed for days after just touching this a little. Some even become paralyzed or confused.”
Tiera said that whoever touched it was affected by serious status effects. The fragment had been recovered by elven warriors, under the priestess’ supervision. During the process, one of them had touched it by mistake.
Even trained warriors, with levels much higher than regular elves, could not withstand its effects.
There weren’t Chosen Ones among those affected, so they didn’t know if the impurity would affect Chosen Ones as well.
“They just touched it and couldn’t move anymore..is it any different from paralysis?”
“The paralysis is the same as the normal one, they just can’t move. But they also lose all their energy. I asked Shibaid to check, and it looks like, what do you call them? HP and MP? They were both in the red.”
“Indeed, I believe it either robbed them of their life force or absorbed it.”
Shibaid added his hypothesis to complement Tiera’s words.
“We can try solving the problem with skills then. The World Tree bark is treated as a material, so it might tell us something.”
All creation-type jobs had a skill in common, 【Analyze Material】, which could tell all creation-related information of the analyzed material. If used, the item explanation window listed when that material was used in the creation process and what effects it would have on the finished product.
For example, if used on medicinal herb it listed that it was better to cut them into small pieces and that they boosted the finished product’s effects. Such information was often vague, however, so an extensive process of trial and error was still necessary. Nonetheless, they were helpful hints for effective item crafting.
Shin was thinking that he would have no use of that World Tree bark as material as he activated the skill. The information was displayed to him on a semi-transparent window.
“Ah, no good.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s bugging..I mean, it’s a jumbled mess. The information was probably ruined by the impurity.”
Shin looked at the displayed information, then raised his arms in surrender. There were letters, numbers, and unrelated symbols mixed in it, making it unreadable. The barely readable parts seemed to describe the original World Tree bark.
“Nothing to see here. I suppose that even if it was used to craft something, it wouldn’t even work.”
“I hoped we could find out something, but I suppose it will not go so easily.”
“Can’t be helped, we would have been lucky if it worked.”
Just in case, Shin tried using all sorts of status healing items and skills on the World Tree bark fragment. As he did, the discolored part gradually regained their original color. When Shin and Tiera purified it, the effects were clearly visible. As they might have expected, Tiera’s had a greater effect.
“This is strange..I tried purifying it when we recovered it, but it didn’t have this much effect.”
“Maybe it’s because it’s separated from the World Tree now. I guess the World Tree was acting as a source of impurity.”
Impurity from the whole world gathered in the World Trees. Shin thus thought that it would be difficult to purify it entirely.
“I see..no wonder. Me and Lymliss would never be able to purify the whole world after all.”
“...can it be that..we can’t do anything?”
“No, wait, I’m just listing possibilities. As far as I know, it’s not possible to completely annihilate impurity. But it should be possible to erase enough impurity so that the World Tree can purify it by itself or to increase its purification abilities.”
In a past event, Shin had set purification boosting devices and created nutrients specific for the World Trees. The problem was how different the increase in impurity was between the game era and now. He could think of possible countermeasures, but there were many unknown factors in the game, so he couldn’t guarantee they would be effective.
“We can’t just do nothing, though. First of all, I will get permission so that you can enter the World Tree area to inspect it.”
They wouldn’t be let through simply because they were a priestess’ acquaintances.
“If it turns out to be necessary, we can use my real name. I’m an elf too and I’m pretty well known, after all.”
“In that case, I will do so too.”
“No, Shibaid, you used to be the monarch of another country after all. They might become needlessly suspicious. I will go by myself first.”
“Hmm, indeed you are right.”
Shibaid nodded to Schnee. At present, he was simply an adventurer, but he was still widely known as emperor Shibaid of the dragon empire of Kilmont.
Even if he was not related to Kilmont anymore, if his identity became known not only the Luderia clan, but also Lanapacea’s king would be forced to make a move.
“Not that the news of your real identity wouldn’t cause a stir, master.”
“Right. I bet that there’s not an elf that doesn’t know Schnee, after all.”
Shibaid nodded, but Tiera and Shin remarked that Schnee’s fame was not to be underestimated either. She was well known among the royals of several countries, so it was an understatement to define her as just “pretty well known”.
“I do not belong to a specific country, though, so we could just say that I came out of concern for the World Tree.”
“I doubt they would refuse, but the current clan head is a really stubborn person.”
Tiera expressed her concern and Shin couldn’t help but wonder if such a person was fit to be the clan’s leader.