There was a gap. A gap so big that it made him think of what a meteorite might leave when impacting on the ground.

Fucking unbelievable… Gabe thought.

The still on guard Bastards-

Mmh, maybe I should stop calling them that… I mean, whatever happened to them. They are proper sentients now. They are walking the Earth… well, Alter.

The not-as-easy-on-the-eyes-Yggdrasilians, pointed to the gap.

They had come through it.

The gap in Yggdrasil was vast; however, a massive branch, no, a root, connected it to the other immense withered Tree standing in front of it.

It was climbable.

I guess I need to see where this gets me, however… Gabriel looked out, down the giant root. War still raged down there. He would be able to evade it by passing over them, but that did not mean he could be saved if a couple of those warriors decided to jump over and move their battle on the gigantic root.

Gabriel sighed.

Let’s just go; whatever happens, happens. We might even try our new abilities out.

Feeling that, Lizzy brightened up, and her head began to shine.

“No, no, no! Put that lighthouse away. I said, whatever happens, happens, not let’s just kill ourselves!”

With puppy eyes, Liz made the crown disappear.

“You can summon it whenever you want, once this story ends, okay? My queen?”

Happy yaps.

“Let’s go then.”

Gabriel and Liz jumped on the gigantic roots and ran all the way down toward the withered Tree. It seemed to be waiting for them.

Although their speed was constantly buffed by their Warp Speed Skill, the trip to the field took its time.

Gabriel wanted to keep his Fusion time for an emergency situation. A sure to be coming emergency situation.

The more they descended, the more powerful the shouts of the battle. He had long since grown used to that; war did not scare him. What did was the fact that he was still too weak to take part in it. And yet, he did not wish to. As weird as it sounded, what hit him at that moment, was the time he spent at the restaurant. Living a normal life with his mother and Raina.

He did not expect to find himself back into a war when he had barely left another, albeit an imaginary one.

And there I thought I just wanted to spend the rest of my life here…

The prospect of leading his restaurant once again alighted in his heart, but there was still one thing missing, the most important of them all; his mother. He needed to find her.

Gabriel tightened his grip.

I will find you, mom. I’ll do whatever it takes.

The root-looking branch finished on the middle height of the Tree, and Gabriel soon was left with no place to go, if not on the inside of an opening in the withered trunk.

Withered, yes, but still, his Spirit Sight could see Spirit Energy trickling and moving about inside of it.

This massive Tree is not really dead. Just extremely weakened.

The Spirit headed both down and up, feeding the body of the Tree with its energy.

He could head up, but that meant having to climb on the outside of the Tree, where people could easily spot him.

The other option, much safer, was to go down. The passage through it seemed to have been paved exactly for that.

It was deserted. He had seen other Yggdrasilians on the grounds, but they seemed to keep away from the battle; they were too weak to fight in there, just like him.

Gabriel and Liz jumped down; they bounced from walls to walls. It was not safe enough to use Built to Fly and remain motionless in mid-air while inside a tree that could hide hundreds of enemies. Not with Gorgi in his arms anyway.

Soon, they reached a huge hole; it was almost as big as the Cradle, taking into consideration the difference in the two massive trees. The withered one being less than two-thirds of Yggdrasil.

What is this place?

It looked like a gigantic hall. Big enough to house the entirety of Wallcity.

There were Yggdrasilians moving about, hiding, or moving in the shadows; he could both feel them and see them.

Gabriel Analyzed some, but once again, their levels did not reach the thirty. And more importantly, they felt… entirely out of place- no. As if they had really no idea of what was going on.

“Liz, you can light the place up if you want. We are looking for clues.”

Yapping happily, the newly gained crown of starlight appeared, bright as day on top of Liz’s head. Her frills consequently burst open, radiating light.

Her scales were glowing shinier and shinier. Golden was the right term. The light was strong enough that he felt Gorgi shift.

He would make a tantrum if he woke up and would probably have all the rights to.

Hope he sleeps a little more, Gabriel thought.

When they started moving again, however. They felt someone coming toward them.

The figure was hurt, limping.

“The Herald,” his voice said, “It took the end of the world to talk with you.”

Gabriel could see that he was a Yggdrasilian, one of the dry ones. Hey, that’s a good one.

Gabe had no idea how to recognize them, but this one. He knew this one.

“You are the one I’ve fought, are you not?”

The Yggdrasilian smiled. “Yes. I’m Phreviel.”

“And you speak my language. Can you tell me what’s going on, please?”

“A lot. A lot is going, but I don’t understand all of it. The Reverse Tree does not have the power to speak with me anymore. But if I bring you to it, maybe it will talk with you,” he said.

“And how would I know this isn’t another trap?”

Well, as you’ve seen, we wouldn’t have the power to detain you now. We are not Dungeon spawns anymore. Also, some of the druids have survived the massive Spirit overload. You should know them.”

Prisha, Fred? It might be.

“Okay, I’ll take that chance. But let’s hurry. If this little guy wakes up, he will be trouble to keep at bay.”

Phreviel nodded, “Come.”

As Gabriel and Liz followed him, he could not bear the sight of the Yggdrasilian limping, so he cast Helping Hand on him.

“Thank you, Herald. That was unexpected.”

“It will take time all the same. So keep yourself in hiding once we’ve done here. Your people are too weak.”

Phreviel nodded. It took him a couple of minutes of silence before he opened up to him. “I do not know why we lost our newly gained Ranks. But I know that sentients on Alter cannot Rank-up, and now we are people of Alter. Exactly like we wanted. And yet, the price we had to pay was… too much to bear.”

“Why? I can see and feel a lot of you around. I know there weren’t many of you, but I’m guessing a lot more have left or are in hiding somewhere. You didn’t seem to have paid a huge price in life,” Gabriel commented.

“No, in fact, we didn’t. When the Spirit overloading hit us, what made us survive was our ranking up. Then when the Dungeon imploded, the Reverse Tree forcefully pulled us all inside of him, sheltering us. We weren’t all as lucky, but what we lost was more important than our lives,” he took a deep breath, “the Reverse Tree is dying. I don’t think anything could save it now.”

“You did know a lot of things then,” Gabriel said, smirking, “I’m sorry for what happened. Just as I’m sorry that I could not help you. You see, I was already offered a deal from another Boss. But I- I don’t know how to save you. We don’t know. We don’t have the meaning nor the knowledge to do it. If I let you take me or exchanged my place with you, the result would have been that you would not have believed me, and I would have most probably died a meaningless death for trying to convince you that I’m not what you are looking for.”

Phreviel stopped in his tracks.

“Why did the Reverse Tree feel you were the Herald then?”

“I don’t know. In the same way in which I don’t know why the two previous Dungeon Bosses looked for my help,” Gabriel admitted.

“Let’s go to your Boss; maybe he will be able to explain it to us,” Gabe suggested to a defeat looking Phreviel.

The entrance to what Phreviel called the Inner Sanctum was nothing else but a part of the hall, the Sanctum, hidden behind a curtain of hanging plants.

Gabriel moved them away from his face as he entered, while Liz was still small enough to pass through without having the plants rubbing on her face.

“I’ll wait here. I cannot stand to hear its death rattles more than I already have,” said Phreviel.

The Inner Sanctum was dark at first, but as Gabriel walked toward its center, the world slightly grew brighter.

Illuminated by a dim silver light, peculiar of Spirit, the chamber showed in its full splendor.

There was a gigantic mushroom in the middle of it, a mushroom pulsing with life.

All around it, there were bodies entrapped into cocoons made of branches.

The cocoons hang from the ceiling, and they were sustained from below by roots tying them up like wrapped up candies.

People were enveloped in these cocoons.

There were many of them. And as Gabriel got near one of them, he understood what they contained.

People. The cocoons contained people.

“What the- Liz, help me free them!” Gabriel said, summoning his spear.

“ Wait ,” said a deep voice, coming from everywhere at the same time.

Gabriel slowly turned around and looked toward the mushroom, pointing his spear at it.

“You are the Reverse Tree, are you not?”

“ Yes, Herald. I am it. ”

“Then free them now, or I will destroy that thing that looks suspiciously like your heart.”

“ Don’t worry, they are alive. They would have died if I hadn’t pulled them inside with of me when the Lay energy hit us… but aside from the original ones we kidnapped. The others were in a critical state. I could not take the time to transform them, so I had to pull them through the ground and through my body with brute power. So, grant them a little more time for healing before you unplug them. ”

“I see. I’m not following entirely, but I guess you saved these people from what you are saying. Thank you.”

He couldn’t say if that was a chuckle, but Gabriel heard the voice laugh.

“ You came too late, oh Herald. I did not want our situation to end this way. But when I saw the chance, I took it, although I had to sacrifice my life for it, I would do it over and over again to grant life and dignity back to my people. ”

“You mean that you accepted the Priests’ ploy because you knew it would result in this?”

“ Yes. I bet no one expected this to happen, not even the mighty Tree. But being as old as Yggdrasil itself, yet having been subjected to the entrapment, I’ve had time to plan ahead, I’ve had millennia to do it. ”

“To do this?” Gabriel said, moving his armed hands around, the other arm busy in holding the sleeping Gnome, “And the entrapment? You mean getting sealed inside the Dungeon?”

“ Yes... I feel you know of this, Herald. What do you know? ”

“What do I know? I don’t know if it’s real, or just the fantasies of a Goblin matriarch too old to not have lost her sanity, but I know that N’arr sealed her and her peo-”

“ N’ARR! ” Thundered the Reverse Tree. The whole of the Inner Sanctum shaking at his words.

Gabriel could feel the very heart tremble beneath his feet.

“ Yes. It was N’arr. The damn Druid. ”

“I guess, it might not be only the fantasies of an old Goblin then…”

“ I know of the Goblin Dungeon. I was barely a sapling when they were trapped by the Druid for their… greed, ” said the Tree, with as much emphasis on being sarcastic as he could put in it.

“ Goblins were a young race. They had yet to flourish, and N’arr eradicated them in the name of the Empire. Because they, in their ignorance and juvenile ardor, had dared defy their ruling. They were eradicated, Herald. Nothing of them remained. It was a purge. Exactly like what was done to me and my less easy on the eyes than their cousins, children. ”

Gabriel couldn’t help but gulp for having had the same thought as the one responsible for such a tragedy.

“ N’arr sealed us, me! In a Dungeon. He unleashed the Singularity on us! Because my children did not meet their standards! Such was the Empire! Or at least that was the perfunctory reason. The truth was that the Empire was scared of our singular Perks. Life Control. Something that nobody had. The Golden people couldn’t stand that someone else had been born with something that could threaten their ruling. So they decided to eradicate us to our very core. In the meanest possible way, sealing us to be an eternal experience farm. ”

Gabriel couldn’t hide his disgust.

“I’m really sorry… it strikes really close to home, believe me. However, where do I fit in all this? What could I have done to help you? How can I really help anyone else in your situation? Nobody says to me what it is that I should do, although I did never really ask. I’ve always been too scared to take such a responsibility on my shoulders… Until a few weeks ago, all I wanted to do was just get back to my restaurant, really.”

“ Now, that I can feel you up close, oh Herald. I know that you are way too weak to free us. I believe you should at least reach Tier six before you have the strength of directly challenging our Tethers. However… there is something else I feel in you. Something that is sincerely making me think of… of the damned N’arr. But I can point out what it is… ”

“Well, I did join Alter through the Den of N’arr. The Stele that welcomed me said as much.”

“ No, it’s not that. All of you Druids are sons of N’arr, but that doesn’t justify the feeling I get. What I smell from you is different. You emanate something that reminds me of N’arr, the Great Spirit bestowed upon you is right, it is what it should be, it’s just you being different from what you should be. ”

Gabriel couldn’t help but ask.

“What is the Great Spirit, all that I know about it is that they watch over Temples, like the Temple of Life inside of Yggdrasil.”

“ The Great Spirit. It is a Spirit without boundaries like you are the Untethered, the Great Spirit must not be bound by the rules that normally bound the other… ”

The voice cut out, echoing in the Inner Sanctum; the same could be said about the Spirit and the lights illuminating the place.

“ I’m sorry, oh Herald… I’m fading out. You should start plucking out your people. However, just let me tell you this… Take care of my people. Those souls, many of them belong to a different era. An era that --------- has forgotten. Just as it has forgotten their language, it has forgotten them as well. ”

Gabriel nodded, “I understand, Boss. Thank you for having done so much for them, and I’m sorry it had to go this way.”

The tree simulated laughter. “ The Druids that have been first under my care. They are different now. Another offspring of humankind. Their Spirits too… I made sure they would forever change into… more. They shall upset the balance given time. You shall find that what they are now, too… was part… of my… of my… ”

Gabe nodded as the lights turned off. “Thank you, and I’m sincerely sorry I wasn’t able to help your kind.”

“You still can,” said a Yggdrasilian from behind him. Phreviel.

“Tell me what I can do, and I won’t promise you that I can help you before I don’t have the strength, but I will at least try,” he said.

“Take us somewhere safe. When the war finishes, we will be eradicated; the Yggdrasilians from Yggdrasil will never accept us.”

“But you are their cousins; they have to!”

Phreviel shook his head. “They won’t.”

“I know the Princess; they will help you!”

“Nobody will, Herald. They shall eradicate us.”

Silence fell in the now dark Inner Sanctum with that last word. Gabriel could feel the truth behind it.

“Alright. But it will be hard. And I can’t promise you will all make it.”

“It’s not important. What is important is that this…” Phreviel said, going toward the giant mushroom, which was slowly deflating.

He placed his hand on it, and the mushroom alighted with life until something shining came out of it.

“This is the Seed of the Sacred Mother. The only one produced by the Reversed Tree. The only one he could ever produce. Even if you saved only this, you would have saved us all. Nothing else matters.”

“I won’t leave you here; just try to be as invisible as you can. Because we need to move all the way inside of the warzone. Inside of Yggdrasil.”

Phreviel laughed, “An already lost cause.”

“We shall make it, now help me free these people. We shall need cover if we want to get there in one piece.”

Damn, what am I doing… this is going to be a bloodshed.