The Great Tree's Corrupted Roots

The cemetery's lower level was filled with foul sewage, and plenty of shambling corpses wandered through it. Whether it was because he was Tarnished or because they bore the same malice toward all living things, they lunged toward him like mad the moment they saw him. Their slow movements and the overwhelming stench of decay made for an utterly unsettling sight.

"These are Those Who Live in Death too? I've got to say, these things are ridiculous." Wielding a golden sword in each hand, the Tarnished cut down the creatures before him as easily as chopping vegetables.

They weren't strong, but as Yura had said, they were creatures who couldn't die even if they wanted to. His attacks merely slowed them down rather than killing them for good. Still, the Tarnished noticed that Those Who Live in Death seemed utterly terrified of holy power.

Although his Golden Straight Sword carried the holy power of gold, it was no longer at its prime. Very little holy power remained within it, and he certainly couldn't waste it by unleashing its full strength against these creatures.

Rather than waste any more time, the Tarnished headed deeper while they were recovering. But just as he turned toward a path to the side, a strange cry for help came from a corner of the chamber behind him. There was something indescribably wrong about the voice. His instincts told him it wasn't a sound any normal living creature could make.

Keeping watch for ambushes, he approached anyway. "Huh?" What he saw left the battle-hardened Tarnished dumbfounded. It was a crooked clay craft modeled after a human head, and the voice seemed to have come from inside it.

"...What the hell is this?" The Tarnished stared at the ugly clay object, speechless. Still, with the attitude that anything was worth trying once, he blew into it. Sure enough, that same cry of "Help me!" rang out again.

"This seems to be a tool made by some creature that isn't good with words, so it can communicate with humans or creatures capable of learning human language." Simple language runes were carved inside the Prattling Pate, and any impact, such as blowing into it or striking it, would make it produce a sound.

"Pretty interesting." The Tarnished blew into it a few more times, then tucked it into his pocket once he'd had his fun. The sound it made could serve as a lure if he ever needed one.

After those minor detours, the Tarnished waded through the sewage, evading the endless stream of Those Who Live in Death, and finally reached the ladder leading upstairs.

At the top of the ladder, he found a lever beneath a Torchlighter statue. Presumably, it opened that great door. What a nuisance. Were they really that afraid of grave robbers?

He pulled the lever, and the heavy rumble of the massive door opening echoed through the cramped cemetery.

"Oh... I was wondering how I'd get back, but judging by the sound, that door seems pretty close. Are these passages connected?" The Tarnished could tell that the sound came from his left. And... there seemed to be another "little darling" waiting around that corner for him.

"Are you coming out yourself, or do I have to come get you?" the Tarnished asked, tilting his head.

Nothing answered him.

Right, why am I talking to a Golem? the Tarnished grumbled inwardly as he slowly approached. I feel like I'm losing my mind. Maybe I'm just so bored that I've started talking to myself. Oh well, at least it'll liven up this dead cemetery a little.

He still hoped to meet more people he could talk to along the way. After all, he hated boredom and could never sit still.

As he reached the corner, the Tarnished grabbed the Imp hiding there, dragged it out, and shattered its head with a slash. "Trying to ambush me? You've got a long way to go." He turned toward a nearby window. Below it lay the great door he'd passed earlier.

"So that's how it is." Without lingering, the Tarnished jumped out of the window. The door stood open, and the aura of death inside washed over him.

Then he saw the Watchdog in the deepest part of the chamber, with the warped roots of the Erdtree behind it.

"Yura wasn't lying. Godwyn's death really did considerable damage to the Erdtree." But that wasn't quite right either. Though Godwyn had been the Golden Dynasty's eldest prince and immensely powerful, it would be giving him too much credit to say his death alone could leave the Erdtree in such a mess.

There was probably something strange about the way he'd died.

The Tarnished wanted to keep pondering it, but the nearby Imps and Watchdog clearly wouldn't allow that. The Erdtree Burial Watchdog turned its rigid body and slowly approached in a bizarre, gliding motion.

"A Watchdog... This is my first time fighting one of these." The Erdtree Burial Watchdog belonged to the same line as the Imps, but unlike them, it had a larger body and three heads, and its movements were mechanically stiff.

As their name suggested, their duty was to guard cemeteries automatically. They were Golems.

The Tarnished wouldn't have thought much of a lone Watchdog, but it was another story with the Imps around it itching to attack. A single Imp was frail, but in a pack, their small bodies and swift movements made them a major nuisance. With the Watchdog in their midst, this looked to be his most challenging battle since arriving in the Lands Between.

"Better than a boring finish." The Tarnished chuckled. Just then, the Watchdog and the Imps surrounded him together.

Time flew by. The Tarnished wiped the blood running from the corner of his mouth, held an Imp's head in one hand, and planted a foot on the wrecked Erdtree Burial Watchdog as he let out a long breath.

"I'm really not what I used to be. Just five or six Imps and a Watchdog left me this battered. Good thing nobody else is here. If that barbarian heard about this, he'd laugh himself sick." Being stripped of Grace hadn't greatly diminished the Tarnished's strength. What had truly robbed him of his power was the war outside the Lands Between. Those Tarnished who had died in the mist had less than a tenth of their former strength remaining.

That was also why the Tarnished still came to the Lands Between: first, to obtain the so-called Grace, and second, to try to become Elden Lord.

But from what he knew of his old companions, most probably wouldn't return to the Lands Between even if they awoke. That power had abandoned them once, after all, and not everyone knew what Marika intended. When they had been exiled, people from two utterly opposed camps had sworn their own oaths.

One camp declared that if they returned to the Lands Between, they would unleash a bloodbath. The other declared that they would never set foot in the Lands Between again.

Thus, the Tarnished figured that those coming to the Lands Between this time were probably descendants of the old warriors, hardliners, and a very small number of people with special circumstances.

Their descendants were probably the largest group. Even those who had no intention of setting foot in the Lands Between would still occasionally tell their children about it. There were likely some hardliners too, but probably only a few, because a great many had died in the War in the Mist. The more unfortunate ones had even had their bones ground to dust and their ashes scattered. Not even Grace could bring them back.

Still, wherever there were survivors, there would be descendants.

Raised on the stories of their surviving elders, those warriors' descendants would surely take a keen interest in the mysterious Lands Between.

But whether they were descendants, hardliners, or people with special circumstances, all of them came to the Lands Between with goals of their own.

Take Istvan, whom he'd met earlier. As one of the old veterans, he was a bit too kind for his own good, but it wasn't hard to see that he had his own purpose as well. Perhaps he sought power, or perhaps he simply missed this place. The Tarnished had no way of knowing the exact answer, but most people probably came here to become Lord.

Even though their ancestors had once been abandoned by this power, there would still be restless souls who came tirelessly in pursuit of it. That was a warrior's instinct, and Marika had seized on that very trait when she exiled them, using them for some plan whose nature remained uncertain.

As for himself... why had he come to the Lands Between? Naturally, because he too belonged to that special minority. He had a promise to fulfill and a new path to follow, and that was why he had returned.

"I wonder how many younger Tarnished I'll meet along the way, and how many old friends..."

"But honestly... these people really don't know how to raise children. Why tell them so much about the Lands Between? After getting burned once, don't they know how deep these waters run? ...Then again, who knows how many generations have passed since those warriors' time? There probably aren't many left who truly know what the Lands Between is like. And the mist isn't much better." The mist beyond the Lands Between had always been a strange place. All he could say was that its waters ran even deeper than those of the Lands Between.

Even though it was his homeland, he wouldn't dare claim to fully understand the powers within it. The most mysterious were undoubtedly the Numen, Marika's people. There was, however, a rumor whose truth couldn't be verified: long ago, the Lands Between and the lands of mist hadn't been divided by such a clear boundary. In other words, the Lands Between seemed to have been split off later. If that legend was true, surely only the Greater Will could have done it.

"Forget it. No point thinking about that now." The Tarnished massaged his shoulders and walked toward the great tree's roots to inspect their decay. A powerful sense of disorder clung to them, something the normally orderly Erdtree had never possessed.

Beneath the roots lay another box of ashes, marked with the words "Demihumans Are Buried Here."

They appeared to be Demi-Human ashes. Demi-Humans were different from Misbegotten. As native inhabitants of the Lands Between, they had, despite being deemed savage, lowly, and base by the Erdtree, still been "mercifully" granted the bare right to return to its roots. Clearly, the intelligent Misbegotten, who could communicate with humans, ranked even lower than Demi-Humans. This further demonstrated the Erdtree's extreme exclusionism: even natives were only grudgingly granted that right.

Although Demi-Humans had the right to return to the Erdtree, the ruined roots before him clearly no longer had that ability. These Demi-Humans would never return to it.

What should I do? Take this box of ashes with me? Forget it. I'm not an ash merchant. What would I do with so many ashes? Let them fight while I sit back and watch? What a joke. I'm a warrior. How could I stay out of the fight? My own fangs are the only thing I can always rely on.

With that, he touched the cemetery's exit nearby without looking back and was instantly transported to its entrance.

"At least I checked the state of the roots. This trip wasn't wasted." The situation was even more complicated than he'd imagined. The entire golden system had fallen into disorder, and all sorts of creatures that hadn't existed before seemed to be appearing one after another.

"Nothing stays the same forever. You're no exception, Golden Order." Wearing a mocking smile, he looked high into the sky, as though provoking the Greater Will beyond the stars.

"Heh. You really know how to keep your temper." The Tarnished had been ready to face the Greater Will's wrath, but it proved even more patient than he'd expected. Of course, it had never truly acknowledged the living beings of the Lands Between.

With that site explored, the Tarnished opened his map again. Thoughtfully enough, a symbol had appeared on it, indicating that he had already visited this place.

"This map really is convenient." They hadn't had anything so novel in his day. He remembered that the Expeditionary Army had dedicated mapmakers who often stayed awake all night to draw the most accurate maps possible.

Returning his attention to the map, he noticed what seemed to be another tower west of his position. Its design differed from the Sorcerer's Tower he'd seen earlier, so it was probably a watchtower. After all, the Weeping Peninsula had Castle Morne as a local power, and naturally needed a tall tower to survey the surroundings.

Speaking of sentries atop towers, they usually carried bows or crossbows, didn't they? He happened to be short a ranged weapon. It would be nice if someone had left one behind.

"Then I'll go take a look." The Tarnished immediately abandoned his plan to rest, stood up, and climbed the slope he'd descended earlier. He reached the high ground where the Sorcerer's Tower stood, then slid down another slope. Before long, he arrived at the foot of the watchtower.

There was no scent of living people inside the tower, nor the foul stench of Those Who Live in Death. The Tarnished was quite confident in his sense of smell; his former comrades had often compared it to a wolf's. With neither the living nor Those Who Live in Death to be smelled, he figured the tower was empty.

Even when the Tarnished reached the top floor, he found no enemies.

"No enemies, but there's a Hand Ballista. Not bad at all." He hefted the Hand Ballista in his hands. It was the simplest kind, but it would do. At least he now had another way to attack at range.

"Come to think of it, I don't seem to... have any talent for learning sorcery." When it came to ranged attacks, incantations and sorcery were impossible to ignore. Incantations... even in the past, he'd never had much faith in the Erdtree. He'd only joined the war to bring about a new age. Unlike the others, he hadn't entrusted everything to the Golden Order, so his incantations hadn't been very effective either.

As for sorcery, the sorcerer in his unit had said he failed to meet every requirement.

"Isn't that just a roundabout way of calling me an idiot?" The Tarnished's mouth twitched as he descended the tower with mixed feelings.

"I think I need some rest." He hadn't seemed to close his eyes once since arriving in the Lands Between. Perhaps it was battlefield stress. Combined with the world's current chaos, it made sleeping peacefully all but impossible.

Still, everyone needed rest. He found a spot by a pool and leaned against a tree. That way, if any land-dwelling creature approached, he could hear the ripples and react, while the tree would obstruct the view of any flying enemies.

"These flowers are pretty." Gazing at the pale purple flowers blooming in the pool, the Tarnished couldn't help feeling a little happier. They really were beautiful, and their calming effect eased his taut nerves considerably.

At last, the Tarnished slowly closed his eyes and soon drifted into a dream.