Chapter 617

Chapter 617.

Nina had never imagined this scene would happen. She had pictured changes after Mr. Morris touched the curtain of light, something rushing out of it, or the world around them turning upside down. She had even imagined a loud crack as Uncle Duncan and the entire Vanished fell from the sky. But she had never imagined it would be like this.

That curtain of light, which was likely the Wall of Silence, simply burst like a soap bubble, silent and weightless.

The grand wall of light that formed the barrier cracked into fragments in an instant. The structure that had once seemed to hold up heaven and earth scattered into motes of light in the blink of an eye.

At the moment the barrier shattered and vanished, the whole forest seemed to fall into a brief stillness. A second later, the mist that filled the woods began to flow again. Nina finally came back to her senses and ran over to her teacher in a few quick steps.

“Mr. Morris!” she cried. “Are you alright? How did that thing suddenly…”

“I don’t know…” Morris was clearly dazed as well. The old scholar, who usually seemed steady, reliable, and cultured, actually looked a bit at a loss. The corner of his mouth twitched, and for no reason he recalled the seven rules of archaeology that Teacher Rune had taught him years ago when he was studying at the Truth Academy:

“First, don’t touch things at random; second, handle the surroundings with care; third, don’t touch things at random; fourth, don’t jump to conclusions; fifth, don’t touch things at random; sixth, respect the traces of civilization; seventh, for heaven’s sake, don’t touch things at random…”

The old man lowered his head and looked blankly at his own hand. After so many years, he finally felt that familiar thought again: this absolutely must not reach his teacher’s ears.

But soon those jumbled thoughts were cut off by Nina’s sudden gasp beside him.

“Ah…” Nina could not hold back a small cry. At the edge where the shattered curtain of light had been, in the mist that continued to pour out of the forest, she stared wide?eyed into the distance, at the place that had once been hidden under the Wall of Silence.

Morris instinctively lifted his head and followed Nina’s gaze.

There, the daylight was dim and the sky was murky. Chaotic mist shrouded everything. It was the end of the forest, where wide chains of mountains and hills stretched on. In that endless fog, something vast slowly began to take shape.

At first, Morris thought it was a mountain, a jagged, twisted mountain of strange shape.

Then he realized it was a tree. A giant tree almost torn to pieces, its remains coiled and twisted as they covered the land, leaving its original form nearly impossible to imagine.

The crown that had once been enough to cover an entire plain had collapsed. The trunk had broken and fallen apart. All lush green had long faded from it, as if burned away by fierce fire. Only twisted branches like savage bones remained, jutting strangely toward the sky.

There, the huge branches rose like towers and the broken roots loomed like cities. The dreadful remains formed a wasteland like Doomsday itself. Ash the color of bone and fine dust filled every crack in the ground, spreading a pale, savage field around the giant tree. Morris and Nina stood at the edge of this dead kingdom, as if they stood on the border of the world’s Doomsday, gazing at an ancient Day of Ruin.

A light wind blew from above that land of ash, lifting a fine pale dust. It mixed with the thin mist drifting out of the forest and coiled around Morris and Nina.

In the chaotic wind, Nina seemed to hear someone whispering beside her, and the voice sounded a little familiar:

“…Because she knew from the very beginning that the Wall of Silence could not save anyone. She was only a little sapling. When that day came, the only thing she could give them was a beautiful bubble…”

Nina’s eyes opened a little wider, and she turned at once toward the direction of the voice.

But there was no one there, only a small tree.

A thin little tree stood there, rooted quietly in dust and ash. Its trunk and branches grew upward in crooked lines, while the outermost twigs drooped and swayed left and right in the breeze. It looked… just like the tree Shirley had mentioned, the one Celine finally turned into.

Every tree in the Nameless One’s dream was taller and stronger than this one.

Nina slowly walked over to the little tree. She hesitated for a long moment, then stepped closer, placed her hand on its trunk, and asked softly, testing the words: “Celine?”

The small tree did not speak. Only the drooping branches at the edge of its crown swayed in the wind.

The whisper that had reached her ears just now felt like a mere illusion. At her fingertips there was only the rough, hard texture of bark.

Even so, Nina could not help imagining how that elf maiden, who had led her and Mr. Morris on such a long journey and had been so excited to “go home” in the mists of the Wall of Silence, had walked all the way across the edge of the forest and through that curtain of light. She pictured Celine coming to the border of this land of ash, to this place where she could gaze upon Atlantis’s remains, and quietly becoming a tree.

“Nina, look over here.”

Morris’s voice suddenly came from not far away, breaking off her wandering thoughts.

Nina snapped back to herself at once. She hurried to Morris’s side and looked in the direction her teacher was pointing.

More small trees came into her view. At the edge of the giant tree’s remains, along the line between the land of ash and dust and the forest, on this border of Doomsday, one little tree after another stood in rows, as if they were guarding that field of ash and ruin.

Or perhaps they were guarding the lush forest the dream had drawn beyond the ruins.

The whole area around the ruins was filled with countless nameless little trees.

A breeze blew. The small trees swung their branches and made a very faint sound that left one unsure whether it was the wind or the trees themselves.

Nina stared blankly at the scene. After who knew how long, she could not help murmuring to herself: “So many… Are all of these Celine…”

Morris did not speak. The old scholar only watched quietly as the small trees ringed Atlantis’s remains. Then, as if something had occurred to him, he walked up a nearby rise of earth and looked back toward the direction he and Nina had come from, toward the vast forest in the distance.

Mist drifted out of the dense forest and mixed with the ash and dust over the plain, sketching out a hazy “border”.

He came down from the rise with a thoughtful look on his face and walked over to Nina.

Nina noticed the expression on her teacher’s face. “Mr. Morris, did you find something?”

“…I have a bold guess, ‘Celine’ is the Wall of Silence.” Morris spoke in a low voice.

Nina stared, a little stunned.

“Atlantis created the Wall of Silence and gave it the mission of sheltering the elves. But that was an impossible task. And it seems that from the very beginning Atlantis, as the Creator, knew this. Even so, the Wall of Silence has been carrying out that order all along,” Morris said, his expression serious. “I just observed the edge of the forest and confirmed that those ‘nameless little trees’ are all arranged along the line between the forest and the ruins. There is a faint pattern in how they are placed, like some kind of array, not a random natural spread. That is the mark of careful design.”

“Then…” Nina hesitated, then could not help asking, “But we are not elves…”

“But this is not the real Atlantis or the ‘primordial dream’, either,” Morris said, shaking his head. “Don’t forget, this is only the Nameless One’s dream.”

Nina froze for a moment at his words, then quickly understood the deeper meaning behind them.

This was only the Nameless One’s dream.

The era the elves’ Elder Gods had described, the time of the Great Demon God Saslokar who created worlds in the dream, and the World Tree Atlantis that sheltered the elves in that dream, had truly existed long before the era of the Deep Sea.

That age had long since ended, in the Great Annihilation.

What now appeared in Lightwind Harbor was only a massive series of manifestations caused by the Sun’s malfunction and the approach of “dusk”, an “echo” that seemed to be left in the racial memory of the elves.

Within this “echo”, Atlantis and the Wall of Silence would treat every individual who entered this forest with goodwill as an “elf”.

Because the elves had died many, many years ago, long before any sapient races other than elves appeared in this world.

“So what do we do next?” Nina asked.

Morris did not answer right away. Instead he calmed himself and reached out to the Captain in the depths of his mind. He reported everything that had happened here and then waited patiently.

…

Duncan was a little stunned.

He was still with Agatha in the hold of the “Vanished in the dream”, studying that massive Elder God spine. He hoped to find more useful information there related to the Great Demon God Saslokar, or to dig out more secrets about the Vanished itself.

He had not expected that, in the short time when he was not paying attention, Morris and Nina’s team would pull off something this earthshaking.

They had pierced the Wall of Silence, seen the truth inside it, and even seen Atlantis, which had already become a field of remains.

Duncan felt a strange unreality in his daze.

The “Witch” and the illiterate squad were still wandering around in the forest. The Athlete was still struggling alone in the desert. The Historian had already taken his Student to the middle of the map and dug up an Elder God’s grave.

It felt like sending out two investigators at the start of a game and then, three turns later, finding Cthulhu already lying dead on the doorstep.

Duncan shook his head and pushed these sudden wild thoughts aside for the moment.

Morris was still waiting for his instructions.

He lifted his head and looked at the space around him, filled with dark mist.

Saslokar’s spine stretched out beneath his feet. This shattered Elder God seemed to be using it to send him some kind of message. Even the Vanished, built atop that Elder God spine, seemed to be doing its best to show him its “memories”.

Duncan let out a slow breath.

“Approach that ‘ruin’,” he said in his heart. “Investigate Atlantis.”