"Can that tree absorb Time Curses? Shouldn't we retreat a little farther? It won't attack you on its own, will it?"
Shade asked worriedly. What the Sorceress had described was clearly the nature of the "Curse-Eroded Great Tree" Adele had told him about—not the most dangerous tree after the apocalypse, but an evil entity that was still difficult to call ordinary.
"It's fine. I can sense that the tree is only absorbing things; it probably cannot move on its own. My reaction just now was because the curse inside me resonated with the tree's power."
She closed her eyes, then unexpectedly threw herself into his arms. Shade hurriedly caught her. The Water Aversion Spell failed again, and rainwater streamed down from the hair beside her ears onto Shade's shoulder. He quickly carried her back to the start of the path.
It took her quite a while before she opened her eyes again:
"After we met just now, you told me that you had found the local 'Paradox Worm breeding factory.' You have always been focused on Paradox Worms, but you overlooked something else."
"What did I overlook?"
"Time Curse Users. Paradox Worms are not equivalent to Time Curses. Even if the Paradox Worms are stripped away, the Time Curse still remains."
Shade leaned against the great tree while she rested against his chest. Though the posture seemed intimate, neither of them wished to let go.
"Shade, if the worms accumulated in Vesta Woodland over tens of thousands of years could become a disaster, then why haven't the Time Curse Users from all those years affected this land?"
She seemed to have understood many things all at once:
"The instant I saw that great tree, it was as though I saw the entire story of this place across eighteen hundred years