The rooftop of Ryugu Palace was the closest place to the "sky" on all of Fish-Man Island.
That "sky" was really just the dome inside the bubble membrane, lit by Sunlight Tree Eve and glowing a pale fluorescent blue.
But looking up from here, enormous, luminous roots hung from the dome like rivers of stars suspended upside down, channeling sunlight from the surface into the deep sea.
Between the roots, tiny specks of light drifted slowly down, like snowflakes, like fireflies, like the last breath left behind by the kingdom that had vanished eight hundred years ago.
Boer stood at the edge of the rooftop, his short, silvery-white hair stirring gently in the breeze brought by the ocean currents. He raised his head, his azure eyes reflecting the crisscrossing network of roots overhead. An electric arc flashed deep within his pupils.
He released a faint current that silently climbed the nearest root and seeped inward along the grain of its bark. The current was so weak that it did not even scorch the symbiotic moss on the root's surface, but its frequency had been precisely tuned to the resonant frequency of Sunlight Tree Eve's latex-bearing cell layer.
The current passed through the bark, through the phloem, through the cambium, and reached the resin-storing latex cells with precision.
Stimulated by the current, the cell walls contracted slightly, like gently squeezed sponges.
A mass of thick, golden resin seeped out of the cell layer, gathering into a glowing droplet between the gaps in the cell walls.
Boer curled his fingers slightly. A magnetic field spun in his palm and, like an invisible hand, "plucked" the resin from deep within the root.
Wrapped in the magnetic field, the resin moved in an instant and floated quietly above Boer's open palm.
Golden, like starlight