At the End of the Hidden Greenery - Chapter 264
The reason manifestations hold overwhelming power in El Ragneil isn’t because they’re rare or useful, but simply because they possess strength equal to their status.
“The collision of dimensions is an accident, a natural disaster. That’s why your body gets so thoroughly torn apart.”
In other words, it’s utterly unfair.
“Did you ever feel angry at that unfairness, wanting to break it apart?”
“N, no…?”
“Then did you think about just adapting to it?”
‘How did I really feel, back then?’
When Jiwoo first arrived in this world, even knowing she’d fallen into a strange new place, she instinctively started looking for familiar things.
Though everyone was a stranger, instead of treating them as enemies, she wanted to communicate, and she learned to understand their words.
When she saw someone hurt, she thought of them as just like herself, and felt sorry for them.
Even when faced with cruel things.
She wanted to love this world, and in the end, survived by loving it.
“That’s why you went where you did.”
It was like what the unnamed manifestation had told her long ago.
Akarna doesn’t go to the tree’s continent, they seek out what’s familiar to them.
It’s the desire to find their people and belong.
But there was one thing that couldn’t be explained by that logic alone.
“Then why… didn’t I die? The tree didn’t grant me a body, right?”
“You didn’t need one.”
“Huh?”
“You did it yourself.”
Because Akarna has, not overwhelming force, but the power to heal.
“So… this is my real power?”
The choice to wield unstoppable power that nothing can threaten, or to have healing that nothing can hurt.
Both are forms of self-preservation, but they aren’t exactly the same.
“…I see.”
Akarna was already prepared to love the world before the world ever demanded it. And Caranazion had, in effect, thrown those people away.
But with this new understanding, Jiwoo felt something inside her chest. Something that had always weighed her down, started to loosen. She felt lighter.
She asked one more question.
“But why me? Couldn’t you have just asked the tree?”
“…I tried that. It didn’t work.”
Jiwoo remembered once asking Enci if she could return home and come back again.
But the answer was negative.
Trying to move between dimensions again is like tampering with the immune system of the world, it can only be done once.
Seel had tried to force it and ended up like this.
“You’re like a tree, but you’re not actually a tree, right?”
“So it’s thanks to me, then? That’s why you kept trying to reach out to me?”
Nod, nod. Seel nodded vigorously.
Seeing that, all of Jiwoo’s tension faded, and she playfully asked.
“Shouldn’t you at least say thank you?”
The manifestation who had introduced herself as Seel looked at Jiwoo with wide eyes, staring intently. Then, after some hesitation, she spoke.
“I sincerely hope that those who would become your enemies, in the past or the future, are utterly destroyed.”
“…”
“They will be my enemies as well.”
It wasn’t exactly a thank you, but… Jiwoo could feel the sentiment behind it.
She smiled.
“Alright. I’ll take that as a thank you.”
Seel was a little different from everyone Jiwoo had met before.
The unnamed manifestation she’d met in a daze had tried to teach her, Lofrel had come because she worried about Jiwoo’s ignorance.
But Seel’s attitude toward Jiwoo was not that of a guide, but of an equal.
There was clearly some misunderstanding, but Jiwoo continued.
“But, you know… I was never someone with the power to destroy this place.”
Seo Jiwoo had always been an ordinary person.
She wasn’t someone the tree would go out of its way to grant a body to fit this world.
She wasn’t a being so massive or fundamental that she could fill this immense space with black smoke and gaping holes.
“They said the central area of El Ragneil is the most badly damaged. Only a place capable of handling a force like yours could handle you.”
In Carnazion, there were fewer rifts, and they weren’t so large that the trees had to intervene. Of course, even small tears could let in frightening beings, but they never reached the level of catastrophe a person couldn’t hope to defeat.
“And it’s said that only an incredibly mature tree can manage something like that.”
Now Jiwoo understood why manifestations appeared only from fully-grown trees.
Maybe that’s why her husbands kept wanting to go to the capital. That place could handle the force of someone crossing dimensions.
“Maybe I only became ‘tree-like’ after living here, not from the beginning. Someone like you gets to choose, but for me, there wasn’t really any choice.”
Jiwoo was almost always swept up in events, rarely choosing them herself.
“That’s why I don’t like situations I don’t understand, or being forced into things. Maybe it was a small favor to you, but for me, it was dangerous and a big deal.”
If before, Jiwoo had wondered whether she should be grateful to Seel, now she was asking if Seel owed her an apology.
Seel didn’t say the words, but she reached into the darkness, grabbed something, and revealed it.
“…You found it?”
It was the bag Jiwoo and her group had lost in the rift between dimensions.
Apparently, Seel had secured it during her attempts to reach out.
Jiwoo let out a breath.
“Alright. This is enough.”
rivier
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