He dashed forward towards the heart of the Serevian Plateau. His Seismic Mapping technique picked up unnaturally high and yet fluctuating seismic radiation incoming from the very direction he was headed at the very moment. He shed his squire-level mind mask before adopting his stealth mind mask and activating the Shadow Step technique, becoming incredibly stealthy and hard to register.
It took him some time but eventually, he reached the heart of the Serevian Plateau.
“What the…” Rui’s eyes widened as he beheld the strange sight in front of him. “What in the world is this?”
It was so bizarre he couldn’t even put it into words.
In front of him was an elevated landmass. The landmass extended beyond what the eye could see on both sides. It was as though a piece of the tectonic plate had been elevated by dozens of meters, randomly. It was as though the landmass had been transported over and dropped onto the center of the Serevian Plateau.
“What the fuck is this?” He wondered aloud. “How can such a ridiculous elevation even occur naturally?”
He was no geologist, but he racked his brains, both of them, searching for an answer.
“Earthquake?” He quickly wondered.
Earthquakes were caused due to shifts of tectonic plates bordering each other. The shift led to the release of a massive wave of seismic radiation. On the surface, this seemed to be a logical explanation for why the land was elevated and what the cause for the seismic radiation he was sensing was.
“No, that makes no fucking sense.” He shook his head.
The seismic radiation released by earthquakes was non-uniform and constant over long periods of time. They were destructive, but acute and didn’t last too long. They certainly didn’t last four days without ever once reducing in intensity.
“Furthermore, if it was an earthquake, I refuse to believe that the Ministry of Environment and Ecology is incompetent enough to not recognize an earthquake when they see it.” He shook his head. “That’s not the only problem with that option either. This place is too clean to be the epicenter of an Earthquake.”
Earthquakes were destructive. It was absolutely impossible for the structures atop and around the epicenter to be intact. Yet the surroundings were remarkably unkempt. Although a few trees at the very edge had been uprooted due to the split, the surrounding trees were untouched. Even the nests of birds atop the trees had not fallen off.
“Then what else could it be?” Rui wondered as he turned back to face the elevated landmass.
He began investigating it deeply with Seismic Mapping. The results were illuminating.
His eyes widened in shock as a realization hit him. “The roots… The roots of the trees atop that part of the land have grown so much that they have elevated the landmass above its normal level!”
He could clearly sense that the roots were enormously thick, thicker than those of the other trees around him, and had extended far deeper than even his Seismic Mapping could follow!
Because these roots took up so much space underground, that landmass itself shifted up due to an increasing lack of space!
“What the fuck kind of trees and roots are those?” He wondered as he used Seismic Mapping to investigate the structure of the elevated landmass. Due to being displaced in such a manner, a lot of cracks, breaks, and collapses occurred within its structure. This resulted in the creation of many natural caves throughout the landmass. These caves wound about the internal structure of the elevated section of the landmass, interconnecting with each other and the surface of the landmass as well, forming a vast underground cave network.
He also sensed a vast amount of fauna within.
“What’s the surface look like? What species are those trees?” He wondered curiously. He leaped, launching himself to an extremely high height with the combination of Flame Breathing, and Outer Convergence. He used Tempestuous Ripple to propel him forward by firing it backward.
STEP
He landed on the surface of the elevated landmass, and his eyes widened, startled, once more.
“What…?” He squinted, rubbing his eyes before looking back up.
He shook his head. “No no. This isn’t really possible…”
He took some more measures before he finally gave and accepted his vision wasn’t faulty.
Before him, was a vast sea of trees.
Except they weren’t.
‘They’ were a single tree!
All of the tree trunks rooted into the ground that looked like they were separate, were actually all part of the same tree! Their branches were all connected!
Rui gasped as he walked deeper and deeper. Every single ‘tree’ was connected by a branch. The branches were covered in leaves. The sheer number of branches meant that the leaves covered the entirety of the elevated landmass, forming some resembling a canopy.
Suddenly, Primordial Instinct sensed danger behind him.
WHOOSH
He somersaulted he evaded an attack.
(‘A tree branch?’) His eyes widened as a terrifying thought entered his mind. (‘Is this entire tree a carnivorous species?’)
WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH
He evaded a few branch attacks as he moved forward. He glanced around curiously as he stumbled across something quite interesting.
“Fruit?” He glanced at the strange exotic glowing round objects hanging from branches.
They glowed and vibrated. Rui instinctively felt with Primordial Instinct that these were no ordinary fruits, they were extremely powerful and energetic.
He reached for one when he sensed something to his right. He turned, coming face to face with an Apprentice-level monkey-like creature hanging on the trees.
“AAahh!” The monkey chattered.
Yet, the meaning it wished to convey magically entered his mind.
[Don’t touch those. Those are mine.]
The Fauna Flow technique allowed him to understand the meaning the monkey was trying to convey to him.
Rui snorted. It was merely a high-grade monkey. Rui narrowed his eyes as he activated the Squire-level Mind Mask to scare the monkey off. Yet the very instant he did, he felt a terrifying fear himself through the Primordial instinct technique.𝗈𝗏𝐞xt.𝗇t
DRIP DRIP
Sharp pain spiked through his body.
“Huh?” Rui glanced down, as his eyes widened.
A branch had attacked and impaled him from the back.