Chapter 1 The Remnants of the World Tree

In the area covered by ashes and black residue where the World Tree once stood, Morris, Nina, and Talan Eile had successfully located several Knowledge Keepers who had awakened from the illusion.

Just as Morris had predicted, these Knowledge Keepers, experiencing what was akin to a “first dream,” were scattered in random locations throughout the remains of Silindus. Fortunately, most of them hadn't strayed too far, and Nina's fireball had been quite conspicuous. These dispersed Knowledge Keepers had all come to investigate, bringing them together quickly.

Except for the last one.

"Still no sign of Lord Ted Riel," a Knowledge Keeper wearing a short robe and holding a book and a revolver returned to the temporary camp and said to Talan Eile and Morris, who were waiting there. "No sign of the agreed-upon marker, and no response to psionic calls."

"Could it be that he hasn't 'woken' up yet?" Talan Eile frowned subconsciously. "That shouldn't be... the dosage I gave him was quite large, even for a Truth Keeper’s physique, it should have taken effect smoothly..."

Nina looked at the slightly uneasy Knowledge Keeper across from her, then at Talan Eile, who was frowning in thought. After hesitating for a moment, she couldn't help but speak, "Could it be that the dosage was too large...?"

Talan Eile was stunned for a moment, then waved his hands repeatedly after realizing what she meant. "Impossible, impossible! I'm a rigorous scholar, how could I make such a mistake with the dosage? And Lord Ted Riel is proficient in pharmaceutics. He knows his own tolerance for potions..."

His voice grew softer as he spoke, and he hesitantly added, "...probably."

Nina & Morris: "...?"

"How much Blood Raven Elixir did you prepare for Ted Riel?" Morris couldn't help but ask.

Talan Eile thought for a moment, then raised his hand and gestured. "About this tall of a bottle..."

Morris stared blankly. "...You had him down a whole beer bottle of the elixir?! Ordinary people use an eyedropper for that stuff!"

"Please, he's a Truth Keeper," Talan Eile spread his hands. "It's too difficult to induce a 'fake death' with mental dissociation in him. The biggest effect of a dose that would be enough to cause ten sudden deaths in an ordinary person is just to quench his thirst. What could I do? Lord Ted Riel even specially purified the potion once, otherwise he really couldn't have drunk that much..."

Morris listened, dumbfounded, and after a long while, he muttered with a strange expression, "I remember when I was in school, this Truth Keeper wasn't this exaggerated..."

"It’s from teaching graduating classes," Talan Eile waved his hand. "At first, he used alcohol to drown his sorrows, then nerve toxins. Now I don't even dare to think about what he puts in his water glass after class... Anyway, no matter what, it's definitely not a problem with the 'dosage' of the Blood Raven Elixir."

"Lord Ted Riel may be trapped deeper in this dream, in a place that even psionic calls can't reach," a Knowledge Keeper next to him saw that the topic was getting more and more off track, and quickly took the opportunity to speak. "This place feels very strange. We divided into groups to search the nearby ruins and found that as long as we moved a certain distance, we would experience mental disorientation, blank minds, and even brief amnesia. Our psionic connection with each other also became intermittent..."

"That's true," another Knowledge Keeper nodded immediately. "Serani even said that she completely forgot who she was for a few seconds, forgot about the real world, and just felt like she was born here and wanted to stay here forever..."

Nina looked at the two Knowledge Keepers who spoke, thought for a moment, and then said, "Are you sure it's not because the dosage was too large?"

"The dosage I gave was definitely not a problem!" Before the two Keepers could speak, Talan Eile couldn't help but interject first. "Miss, please believe in the value of a Level One Pharmacist license – moreover, I am the inventor of the 'Sudden Death Method,' no one knows more about..."

"Just because you invented this 'Sudden Death Method,' the Truth Academy should take back your pharmacist license," Morris couldn't help but mutter, but after thinking seriously, he shook his head. "It shouldn't be related to the side effects of the potion. The situation mentioned by the two Knowledge Keepers sounds more like the 'Dream of the Nameless Ones' itself is affecting them."

Nina blinked as she listened. "But the two of us have been operating in here for so long and we haven't felt that way..."

Morris thought for a moment, then looked up at the magnificent remains of the tree canopy in the distance, and the phantoms wandering aimlessly among the remains. "Perhaps... because we are ultimately not elves."

Nina instantly understood her teacher's meaning, and Talan Eile and the surrounding elven guardians also showed thoughtful expressions.

After a brief silence, Talan Eile slowly got up, came to a nearby boulder, and looked into the distance with a complex expression.

The continuous charred remains stretched and undulated in his vision. The magnificent canopy collapsed and fell, turning into mountains and valleys on the earth. Ashes covered the land, and dead branches crisscrossed in the ashes.

Like a giant city falling from the sky to the earth, the ruins collapsed and disintegrated. Sad memories still lingered on this land after the destruction, melting into the wind and dust.

Talan Eile tried his best to imagine what this place once looked like.

There was once a forest here, a lush forest under the shade of the World Tree. The valleys and hills here were once full of life, the roots of giant trees undulating on the earth, clear streams flowing through the valleys, and many creatures living here - birds, beasts, elves.

Those were "ancestors" who lived in another era that he had never seen.

The prosperity and vitality of that era far exceeded the imagination of people today, but perhaps even more unimaginable than that vitality was order and tranquility.

It is said that distant Prland and Frostheim have ushered in this kind of tranquility - but that "Captain Duncan" also said that even the current "tranquility" of Prland and Frostheim is not as good as the world before the Great Annihilation.

Talan Eile found that his imagination had hit a bottleneck.

He found that no matter how he tried to imagine, what emerged in his mind was not a vivid picture—cold words seeped into his memory from the books he had once read, and what he could outline in his mind was only a superficial and general impression. He finally learned what a "forest" looked like from the dream, but he couldn't imagine how birds and beasts would live in this boundless ocean of green, and how elves would coexist with such a "forest"...

People say that the ancient elven books and orally transmitted stories have left the most complete inheritance. If one day, archaeologists can really restore the appearance of the world before the Great Annihilation, that appearance must be slumbering in Lightwind Port and Morkoth's libraries.

But now Talan Eile realized - that appearance was gone.

On a certain day a long, long time ago, when the sea swallowed this world, it was gone with the withering of Silindus.

But... what exactly destroyed Silindus? What caused the Great Annihilation to happen?

A gust of hot wind suddenly blew from an unknown source, carrying an unsettling, sharp noise - not the intermittent, disordered breeze in the ruins, but a more intense howling, as if filled with panic and destruction, capable of directly sweeping through the mind.

Talan Eile suddenly woke up from his contemplation.

The fierce howling wind almost swept him away from the ground. He struggled to stand firm in the wind, but found that the surroundings had fallen into a dark chaos at some point. It was as if the light of the entire world had converged in an instant, and the giant tree ruins within sight had all turned into tall, distorted shadows. Huge smoke rose from above those shadows, as if the World Tree had begun to burn again, and the other Knowledge Keepers who had gathered at this camp, as well as Morris and Nina, had disappeared from his sight.

The wind began to howl, and dark dust swept past the burning World Tree. Talan Eile fell from the boulder in a disheveled state, rolled several times before stopping when he crashed into a huge "branch" - a huge branch that was slightly curved like a spine. He crashed into its root, and then subconsciously looked up at the sky.

The sky was "collapsing."

In the chaos, Talan Eile saw an unimaginable scene.

A hazy red light penetrated the clouds, and the dim sky was collapsing downwards as if it was being squeezed by something. The clouds were twisting, and even the light in the clouds was bending, as if some huge, terrifying thing was gradually crushing down, even to "flatten" the entire world. The immense pressure of terror brought about by this scene even suffocated him instantly, and even his thoughts became stagnant. And in this suffocation and fear, he saw a white glimmer.

Specks of white light diffused from the burning ruins of Silindus, gradually gathering into streams of light in the air. The light flowed between the huge branches and scorched earth, and as if sensing something, gradually gathered towards Talan Eile.

Talan Eile's eyes widened. He felt a warm power in the stream of light, but for some reason, immense panic and unease welled up in his heart at the same time - he stared at the light until it gathered into a hazy ball of light in front of him.

The ball of light had no form, but it seemed to have intelligence. It rotated slowly around Talan Eile, as if curiously observing something.

Then, it suddenly stopped.

Talan Eile heard a sharp whistling sound - the whistling seemed to want to drill directly into his brain, to drill a hole in his brain.

The voice was childish, with great fear, and a madness-like rage.

"No! You are not elves!"

(End of Chapter)