Hao Ren led the exploration team across Nibelungen's scorched earth. Along the way, they discovered numerous bottomless rifts and abysses. Even the smallest of those horrifying fissures was over a hundred meters wide, while the deepest ones pierced straight through the continent. Vivian tossed a small bat into one of the fissures, and ten minutes later it came back vomiting violently. The little bat had flown straight across the land of Nibelungen, floating in an alternate dimension, and plunged into the "backside of the world," where gravity was chaotic and horrifying landscapes were everywhere. Vivian, sharing its senses, nearly threw up her New Year's Eve dinner on the spot.
Hao Ren had seen twisted fissures covering the land in other alternate-dimensional ruins, but honestly, Nibelungen's rifts were different from those elsewhere.
The team stopped beside a particularly enormous fissure and began investigating it. The rift was several kilometers wide at its broadest point and stretched thirty kilometers in total, winding across the earth like an ugly scar. Deep within it, they could vaguely see huge cylindrical objects, resembling beams, tangled between the cliffs. Those intertwined things were shrouded in poisonous fog, and from above they appeared only as a hazy mass. Although he couldn't make out the details, Hao Ren knew they were the vines of the Firstborn Yggdrasil.
Galadriel threw two probes into the fissure. A moment later, they transmitted their data, and the Dragon Queen pointed at the readings on her Data Terminal. "The geological data here is clearer. It's just as we predicted."
Anthony came over to take a look and nodded slightly. "The earth wasn't torn apart by an explosion. It was torn apart by these vines. The vines below show severe signs of decay. There are countless friction marks and gaps between them and the