Velin slowly opened his eyes. As his hazy vision gradually focused, he looked around and found himself standing beneath a massive brown wall covered in ravines.
He instinctively reached out to touch it. Instead of the rough texture he had imagined, his fingertips encountered unexpected softness, like caressing tender skin.
Tilting back his head and looking up, he realized that this was not a city wall at all.
His gaze climbed endlessly along the towering trunk, only to be swallowed halfway up by surging greenery.
Countless branches and leaves wove into a net high above in the unreachable heavens, filtering the sunlight into scattered flecks of gold. Whenever a breeze passed, the entire canopy rustled like waves rolling across the sea.
Standing beneath the trunk, Velin could only feel his own insignificance.
With a light leap, he landed several thousand meters away. Looking back, his view widened somewhat.
He leaped again, and it widened much more.
After an unknown number of leaps, Velin stood several thousand kilometers away. Only then did he barely manage to see one side of this colossal being.
"Like a pillar of heaven, holding up a world."
As soon as the words fell, a clear piece of information suddenly surfaced in his mind.
"Kraismel World Tree."
Upon learning the name of the towering tree before him, Velin's pupils contracted and his heart gave a violent thump. He found it hard to believe that the Mysterious Orb Duns had given him had brought him here.
But Velin quickly noticed something strange.
Having experienced the worlds constructed by thousands of cycles of reincarnation—Void, he possessed a profound sense for what was real and what was illusory.
This was not where the real World Tree stood. Illusory halos drifted through the surrounding air, and even the ground beneath his