"Ang, is the map the dwarves gave us even accurate? We've been searching for days and haven't seen a single trace." Dana grumbled irritably as he pushed aside a hanging vine.
Ang stopped and looked at the winding, spiraling branches of the World Tree before him. His tone remained calm. "The map is at least a hundred years old. Changes in the environment are normal. We can't follow it exactly."
"But I keep feeling... that dwarves understand things differently from us." Linya spoke softly, hesitation in her voice. "Or maybe we're standing too high up, so we see things differently?"
Dana chuckled and half-joked, "Maybe we're too high up. Our perspective differs from a dwarf's."
But his smile quickly faded, replaced by a frown. "But can their range of activity really be this wide? They said the high branches near the trunk, but we've been climbing for ages."
Neither Ang nor Linya replied. They simply continued searching silently for marks in the surroundings.
Seeing this, Dana shrugged. "Fine, I'll shut up."
They made another round and still found nothing. The silence grew so thick that they could almost hear each other's heartbeats.
"How about finding a dwarf and having him lead the way?" Linya suddenly suggested.
"...No." Ang thought for a moment before shaking his head. "Dwarves and elves most likely don't live in the same area. Their relationship... you know it. We should head higher along the trunk instead. If elves really live on this tree, they probably wouldn't choose somewhere too close to the dwarves."
The three continued upward along the trunk.
As they climbed higher, the World Tree's branches gradually became slimmer and denser, no longer as thick and powerful as those below.
Whenever they encountered branches that were not particularly thick, Ang casually cut them down.