"White is the fragrance of the Ailan grass."
"Green is the taste of the curtain vine..."
This was a secluded path.
A gaunt old man walked alone, murmuring the nursery rhyme from his childhood.
No, more precisely, there was no path here—only an endless desert.
Without the Death Storm to drive it onward, the desert had begun to sprout scattered vegetation, nourished by the steady, moist air within the calm eye of the storm.
But these plants were nothing like the "gentle" plants from decades ago, the kind that had served only as food for animals.
On this apocalyptic wasteland,
radiation pollution was causing mutations throughout the entire ecosystem. Even approaching these plants was extremely dangerous. Animals and plants were mutating ever faster in this environment of aberrant evolution, and ordinary humans could no longer survive here.
Only the most outstanding scholars could adapt to this perilous ecosystem through their knowledge.
He seemed to have grown tired.
The old man gazed toward the horizon. After a while, he seemed to sense something. He took a step and sprang lightly into the air. A flash of azure light flickered beneath his feet, and he vanished into the distance like a sword's shadow, leaving no trace.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
An explosion of energy came from the distant dunes.
The old man narrowed his eyes and looked into the distance. He saw three youthful children struggling to surround a mutated creature. Having only just returned after spending many years away from Starveil Land, he could not even name the creature, whose fur resembled emerald flames and which looked like a winged little rabbit.
However,
although he could not name the creature, he recognized from the children's scholar uniforms that they were students from the Grand Natural Sciences Academy.
"Are these the wasteland scholars