Chapter 101 - Back to Elyndor

Chapter 101: 101 - Back to Elyndor

Amelia and Adrien both stared at Lucien after his question, long enough for him to realize neither of them found it funny.

Adrien answered first. "Sure you did. You hit it with one arrow, it twisted in pain, and then it dropped dead."

Lucien blinked at him. "Seriously? I don’t remember any of that."

"That’s because none of it happened," Amelia said. "It hit you hard enough to nearly kill you. You’ve been unconscious ever since."

Lucien’s expression changed slowly while he looked around properly for the first time. The chamber barely resembled the place they had entered. The frozen ground was beginning to thaw now that [Winter’s Reach] was gone, and meltwater ran through the cracks in the ancient stone. Huge sections of the root network had been torn apart, ruined structures had collapsed under the fighting, and the Ancient Tree’s enormous body lay broken across the garden with a massive hole punched through its center. Lucien stared at it for several seconds.

"How did this place end up like this?"

Adrien pushed himself to his feet. "Everything’s fine now. We can collect the crystals and leave. You’re still weak, so stay there and rest. And don’t make us repeat ourselves this time. I really don’t feel like carrying you back if you pass out again."

He nodded toward the route they had entered through. "We’ll leave you here if we have to."

Lucien immediately turned to Amelia. "He’s lying, right? You wouldn’t actually leave me here?"

Amelia took her time answering, which answered him well enough, and Lucien closed his mouth. After coming that close to dying, he apparently decided that listening was the better option, and he stayed where he was, propped against the stone while Amelia checked him one final time before standing.

Adrien gave himself a few more minutes as well. His mana had recovered slightly, but his body still felt heavy after everything he had forced through it. Once he felt steady enough, he extended Absolute Mana Sense through the chamber.

The Heartroot Crystals were easy to pick out from the dead roots around them, their mana dense and stable, concentrated inside the yellow brown material instead of moving through it as it had while the Ancient Tree was alive.

"There are more under the debris," Adrien said.

Amelia followed him toward the corpse. Some pieces sat exposed along the broken torso, while others had grown inside the main roots and were half buried beneath shattered wood and stone. The smallest chunks they uncovered were still larger than a clenched fist, and several were far bigger, thick formations grown deep inside the Ancient Tree over what had probably been years.

Adrien crouched beside the opening his attack had created and looked deeper inside. There was far more crystal than he had expected, lining the inner walls.

"It was growing through the whole body."

Amelia moved closer and examined the exposed interior. "And the main roots too."

They spent the next while prying loose what they could without ruining the larger formations. Some pieces came away easily now that the surrounding wood had died, while others had to be worked free from dense layers of bark.

Amelia weighed the growing pile beside them. "This is a lot. Are we actually going to be able to take all of it?"

"Not all of it." Adrien lifted one of the smaller chunks and placed it into the heavy bag they had brought. "Your grandfather told me he could send people back when the barrier weakens again. This was always going to be something they collected more than once."

He compared the corpse against the two bags they had carried down. "Although I doubt he’ll send us again."

They filled them with the best pieces they could carry and left the larger formations inside the corpse for Elyndor to recover later. Adrien was about to move toward another cluster when Absolute Mana Sense caught something different and he stopped.

A small concentration of mana remained deeper inside the remains of the miniature Ancient Tree he had destroyed with [Lightning Bolt]. It was not moving, and it did not feel alive either, but the mana packed inside it was far denser than the Heartroot Crystal around it.

"There’s something else."

Amelia followed as Adrien climbed over the shattered section of the corpse. He cleared away several pieces of blackened wood until a small object appeared beneath them.

It looked similar to Heartroot Crystal at first glance, but the structure was different. The material was darker, denser, and shaped almost like a compact core, with faint golden lines running through its surface that pulsed weakly with the mana trapped inside.

Amelia crouched beside him. "That’s from the real body?"

"The smaller one, yeah."

She studied it for a moment before recognition appeared on her face. "It should be the core material from the Ancient Tree. Monsters like this can sometimes leave something behind when their mana has been concentrated for long enough."

Adrien carefully picked it up. "Useful?"

"Very. Materials like this are used when making or improving Items, depending on what they’re compatible with."

Adrien turned the dark core over in his palm. "Could it be added to Umbral Root?"

Amelia considered it. "I think so. I can’t tell you exactly what it would do, but the material is strong enough that an artificer should be able to work with it. It might improve the Item if the properties match."

That made the discovery more interesting, and Adrien stowed the core away with far more care than the rest of the haul.

By the time they finished collecting everything they could reasonably carry, Lucien was able to stand without swaying. They left the ruined garden behind, crossed back through the buried city and eventually reached the surface. The journey back to Elyndor was quiet, since none of them had energy for unnecessary stops, and Adrien avoided using mana unless he needed Absolute Mana Sense to check the road ahead.

When the settlement finally appeared through the trees, all three of them looked as though they had spent considerably longer underground than they actually had. Adrien’s clothes were torn and filthy, Amelia was running on the last of her patience, and dried blood still covered large parts of Lucien’s clothing despite the injuries beneath it already being healed.

Vael was waiting near one of the paths leading deeper into Elyndor. He checked Adrien, then Amelia, and stopped on the blood Lucien was still wearing, and whatever greeting he had ready went nowhere.

"What the hell happened to you three?"