Niflheim
Frondier and Belphegor landed on the ground. Frondier let go of Selena, who had been clinging to his back.
“……Hmm.”
They looked around for a moment, their expressions gradually turning strange.
Frondier spoke first.
"That was a bit much, don't you think?"
"A bit much? This is beyond 'a bit much,' Frondier."
Frondier had done something similar at the Tyburn before. To wipe out the monsters in front of the barrier.
Back then it was Excalibur, but this time it was Gram. Perhaps Excalibur was more destructive as a weapon.
However, at the Tyburn, he had only used a handful of Fabric of Penelope, but this time, Frondier had poured all his Mana into it. It was a magic that combined Mana crystals and Dragon Hearts. Not to mention the Obsidian, further evolved with nine Mana.
The result.
“……It's like a cake someone smashed. Like the birthday boy dropped it on the floor at a birthday party.”
"Don't try to be so accurate in your description."
If the attack at the Tyburn had created a crater, this time it seemed to have flipped the ground over.
Belphegor whistled.
“Whew, that was amazing. Frondier, at this rate, we're going to have to redraw the map every time you pass by."
"Don't talk like I do this everywhere I go. More importantly, did you find the roots?”
“Ah, of course I did."
Belphegor held out his palm and raised a finger. As he did so, pieces of the shattered ground floated up into the air.
“With this, you don't have to worry about whether or not we dug all the way to the roots. Let's see……. Yes, I see it there."
Belphegor pointed a finger at a part of the ground. Frondier and Selena's eyes followed his finger.
“……?”
But both of them tilted their heads at the same time.
They couldn't see anything that looked like a tree root. Where Belphegor pointed was the underside of the overturned ground. In other words, it was just a deeper layer of earth. Unlike the ground above, the bottom was white.
“Where are the tree roots?”
“You won't see them if you're looking for roots. Broaden your view.”
“……Broaden my view, you don't mean…”
Frondier frowned.
Belphegor smiled playfully.
“Yes. That ‘stratum’ is the root. Of Yggdrasil.”
This time, Belphegor raised both arms. As his hands, brought together in the center, stretched out to the sides, the shattered ground split left and right along with them.
Beneath it, the white ground that Belphegor had called the root gradually revealed itself.
How much debris had Belphegor cleared away?
“……Oh my God.”
Selena gasped. What she thought was ground, the white, had a clear end. She wasn't sure if it was right to call it a root.
Selena turned her head slightly and scanned from the left end to the right end. It was thick enough to warrant that.
“……That's a tree root?”
“Yes. One of Yggdrasil's many roots. If you look closely, there's a thick side and a thin side. We need to go to the side that gets thicker.”
At those words, Frondier looked at the roots for a moment and then asked.
“……But, the trunk of Yggdrasil I saw was thick, but not this thick. Are the roots of Yggdrasil thicker than its trunk?”
“That's half right and half wrong.”
Belphegor said.
Frondier's eyes narrowed.
If this question was half right and half wrong, then what, were the roots only half thick? This damn braggart.
"If it's half thick, then—"
“What?”
“Think about it. Yggdrasil is a tree that connects worlds. Its trunk is everywhere. How do you think that's possible? Do you think the worlds are all perfectly vertical, so that one trunk runs through them all?”
At his words, Frondier and Selena thought for a moment.
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t that how it was?”
They replied.
Belphegor drew his lips together and said.
“……That would be impressive, but the secret lies in the way Yggdrasil grows.”
“The way it grows?”
“Yggdrasil's roots stretch deep into the ground, and its many trunks grow in different places. Frondier. What you saw was one of the many trunks that sprouted from its roots. The trunk that stretches into your human world. So, some trunks are thinner than the roots, and some are thicker.”
Frondier tilted his head more and more at those words, then spoke as if he understood.
“Aha, like an aspen tree.”
In the case of aspen trees, each tree grows from the roots in the ground. That's how they form a forest. What looks like individual trees above ground are all connected by roots underground.
Even if one tree dies, the roots do not, and the next tree simply grows.
The famous Aspen tree is similar to this, and it is said that the lifespan of the entire forest created in this way is still unknown. Because what sprouted long ago hasn't died yet. They say it's 80,000 years old.
“Yggdrasil is pretty sparsely populated for a tree like that. It's not enough to make a forest.”
"Who knows? Maybe from Yggdrasil's point of view, it's not sparse at all."
“……That's scary.”
From Yggdrasil's point of view, did this mean that it had grown at a sufficiently appropriate frequency? There was one trunk per world.
“Anyway, this way.”
Belphegor stood on the tree root and pointed in the direction the root was stretching.
“The root gets thicker in this direction.”
“……Really?”
Honestly, from Frondier's point of view, the roots were so incredibly thick that he didn't know if they were getting any thicker.
“……It seems so to me as well.”
But Selena seemed to be able to tell the difference. At her words, Frondier nodded.
“Then this must be the way.”
“Why doesn't that kid ever believe me?”
“You're a devil.”
“Yes, so you should trust the words of your own kind.”
“…….”
Frondier suddenly felt a headache coming on.
“But if it grows like that, there's no guarantee that going in the direction it gets thicker will necessarily lead to a trunk. A trunk can sprout from anywhere on the root.”
“Don't worry. There's a little rule.”
“Rule?”
“The trunk of Yggdrasil grows from the thickest root, at least in that world. Since there's only one trunk per world, it sprouts from the place where nutrients are most readily available.”
“……Indeed. I understand.”
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