Reincarnated as a Son of the Sword Saint and the Sage

Chapter 460: World Treant

"So this is where they live..."

When Big Sis and I passed through Aesfen's Arboreal Bound, our eyes widened in awe upon finally seeing the place where the tree spirits lived. This place was so enchanted that we thought we were in a completely different world.

When I turned around, I found out that the portal was at the end of a chasm of a canyon-like structure. The walls at both sides were high, around tens of meters tall, but the height of the wall decreased from the location of the portal.

In contrast, the portal sat on the narrowest point of the chasm, thought it was meters wide, and the path got wider and wider the farther away from the portal. But I found it strange that the whole place was completely shaded even though the sun was up.

"Wait a second—"

If it were not for my radar, I would have thought that this place was just a normal path. But when I looked up above, I finally realized how our size deceived our perception.

"Look up and see this, Sis."

"What the—?! Is that thing...the World Treant?"

"It's so big."

"It's definitely more than a kilometer tall."

Looking up, we were beholding the majestic presence of the World Treant, the largest and most powerful entity in the Great Forest of Darkness, as well as the creator of the tree spirits in the forest.

Since we were directly under it, my sister and I could not see what it really looked like. But from far away, its appearance was like that of a banyan tree, thick and woody due to its numerous aerial roots.

In terms of size, the tree was stupendously gigantic. It was around two kilometers tall with a broad canopy that expanded up to five kilometers across. And the thing that I thought a canyon was actually its massive buttress roots.

However, this thing was not a tree but a living monster. On its trunk, I could see a wide horizontal crevice; it was its mouth. It could not move anymore due to its size, but it could still use its aerial roots to grab things.

Since it could not chase its food anymore, it decided to burrow its roots and absorb nutrients in the soil and intake mana from the air instead, like all trees did. It then utilized the mana it collected to create the tree spirits that would take care of and protect the tree.

According to Aesfen, the World Treant had been immobile as far as she could remember. Even when Aesfen was born, its roots had spread out widely and deeply in the forest, making it challenging to determine how long it had been staying still, let alone guessing how ancient it was. When I asked Czarina about it, she just said that it had been there throughout her lifetime.

"Wow, I never thought it was this huge up close," I muttered. "It is as big as mountains."

"Welcome to our abode, Your Highness Louise and Raphael." Aesfen welcomed our first arrival here. "As you can see, that is the World Treant, our creator."

"Oh, I apologize that I lost in thought. I just can't help it but mesmerize how majestic the World Treant is."

"I am glad that you appreciate her, Your Highness Raphael. Shall I give a tour around?"

"Yes, please."

"Very well." Aesfen then turned to her sisters. "Fyr, Gron, please inform the others that we have arrived with visitors."

"We understand, Sister."

With that, Fyr and Gron summoned an Arboreal Bound portal on the wall of the World Treant's buttress root before they departed.

"Please follow me."

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Afterwards, my sister and I followed Aesfen.

??????

We had been walking for a few hundred meters, and my sister and I were amazed by what we saw. Currently, we were at something like a residential area of the tree spirits.

From what we could see, this place still had those tall and thick trees, naturally. But unlike in the forest, the trees here were not as many and were individually separated by a few meters from one another. It felt like they cut down to add space for something like urban planning.

Almost half of the tree had been converted to tree houses for the tree spirits to live in. The design of each house was very primitive due to the lack of resources other than wood, stones, and a few metals. But they were still pleasing to a human perspective, naturecore aesthetic.

Scanning the surroundings, we could sense and see hundreds of tree spirits other than Aesfen and the other two. They were kinds of them: Alraunes, Dryads, Nerieds, and Meliads. It seemed like Aesfen was the only Spirit Pillar after all. As always, invisible pixies were heavily concentrated here.

In terms of appearances, Nerieds and Meliads were almost completely humanlike. While Dryads still looked like humans, their hair were literally vines, thorny or not, and they had leaves growing like scales on their chests, lower legs, and forearms.

Meanwhile, Alraunes might be having the physical traits of dryads, but it only applied to their upper half. An alraune's lower half was actually a giant flower with thick vines or roots as their means of treading. They were basically half human and half plant.

One thing I had noticed was that my Purity Sensor could not get anything from them at all. Not a green nor red light was radiated from any of them. Even Aesfen the Spirit Pillar, the most humanlike of them all, did not emit any light.

One possible explanation for this was that tree spirits did not actually have biological identification. Since they were born from the World Treant, they had no need for a reproductive system.

In short, tree spirits, and probably other spirits as well, were sexless, and they were only considered as feminine in appearance. Also, those mountains on their chest were just lumps of fat with no mammary glands or nipples protruding.

Well, going back to the current situation, some of the tree spirits were glancing at the only two humans here. I did not know how to say it, but we felt they did not seem to be welcoming us.