Valhalla had long since changed beyond recognition. Under the meticulous care of the light spirits, this emerald tree-city grew larger and more luxuriant by the day, its branches and leaves flourishing. The towering tree could be seen in many places across Mintai, Fir Territory, and even the entire eastern border of Tonigell. Yet to the locals, the difference from four months ago was that ever since those "mysterious mages from above the sky" had moved in, the changes atop the giant tree had grown increasingly dramatic.
Under the puzzled, even fearful gazes of the world, horizontal branches sprouted from the giant tree's jade-green crown. They curled downward into shapes resembling gates, while the Silver Robe Mages covered the trunk with densely packed runes. At night, the multicolored radiance emitted by those magic-infused letters could even be seen from more than a dozen miles away.
Before people could figure out what was happening up there, an even more astonishing sight descended upon the land.
Airships.
Those vessels that truly floated in the sky—airborne ships that the locals had heard of only in legends—came laden with personnel and supplies, their sails billowing as they approached from the north. At first, they came one or two at a time, scattered and sparse. Then came dense fleets of them. Some arrived only to leave again, while others docked beside the giant tree. In barely half a month, Valhalla had taken on the rudimentary shape of an air harbor. Only then did everyone realize what those mysterious mages had really been doing.
The air harbor's bridges, formed from Valhalla's trunk, clearly possessed natural advantages over the high towers of human air harbors built on the ground. They resembled the shipyards the Buga people had built on the Floating City, so the mages of the Silver