At the End of the Hidden Greenery - Chapter 282

“The roots over there are tangled together. Those white ones belong to our Ellandos.”

Lugarmel pointed toward the brilliant white roots before moving his finger slightly to the side.

“And those belong to another Ellandos.”

Looking more closely, Jiwoo realized they were just as white as their own tree’s roots, but tinged with a faint bluish hue.

“Our roots have become intertwined with another Ellandos. In other words, another tree’s territory has overlapped with ours. It seems they’re both struggling to avoid being pushed back.”

The surrounding environment had changed for the same reason it had underground. The crops had lost their flavor because the tree that normally enriched the land was now devoting much of its strength to this struggle.

“Then can’t we just separate them? You said we can go down there.”

“Mmm…”

For some reason, Lugarmel didn’t answer so readily. Something was clearly bothering him.

“Why not?”

“The ones living down there… have terrible personalities.”

Even worse than the Children of Ellandos on the surface? The question nearly escaped her lips.

Perhaps he saw it on her face, because Lugarmel laughed before answering it himself.

“Much, much worse.”

If they were even more difficult to get along with than the average tribe, that probably meant conflict was inevitable.

“So that’s why Lanceil and Tevon are keeping watch around the area.”

“Exactly.”

Even among the surface-dwelling Children of Ellandos, arguments and squabbles weren’t uncommon. Still, tribes that interacted regularly managed to get along well enough. They never expected kindness from one another in the first place, so their relationships were better described as straightforward exchanges than friendships.

Surely they weren’t completely impossible to reason with…

“If something like this happens, I guess it’s hard for both sides to stay on good terms.”

“Is that so?”

Before Jiwoo could ask exactly what he meant, Lugarmel explained.

“In situations like this, the weaker side gets pushed back. You know that every Ellandos has its own clearly defined territory, don’t you?”

When Jiwoo had crossed the continent before, the impression that remained strongest in her memory was exactly that.

A land like a temple of trees, where countless pillars of light stretched toward the heavens. Which meant the Ellandos all grew while maintaining a certain distance from one another.

“Is it serious?”

“Not really. Their territories are simply being adjusted. That’s why it takes so long.”

Trees could move. If they shifted enough for their territories to overlap, then naturally they would have to negotiate those boundaries.

In other words, this was nothing more than a territorial adjustment between the trees. If they were animals, they could simply relocate in a matter of days.

But trees were rooted to the earth. Even the smallest adjustment took at least half a century.

“…Does this happen often?”

“Not usually so suddenly. Trees normally sense each other’s territories from a distance. In this case, though, something must have become tangled somewhere farther away. Our tree isn’t the one that caused it.”

Jiwoo quietly let out a sigh of relief. She’d secretly worried that perhaps their tree had simply grown too large and expanded too aggressively.

“This kind of phenomenon isn’t unusual. It won’t last forever, of course. If one side gets pushed back too much, an Ellandos can even weaken significantly, though that’s rare even by our standards.”

Lugarmel paused, then added as though the thought had only just occurred to him.

“Hmm, I actually experienced it once when I was young.”

Hearing someone unimaginably old casually mentioned his younger days strangely surreal.

So… even he had a childhood. In any case, he was describing something that sounded perfectly natural.

Yet they’d gone through all this trouble investigating because Jiwoo wanted to resolve it sooner.

This was the real issue.

“To settle it quickly, the children of both trees would have to negotiate, untangle the overlap, and divide the territory between them…”

Lugarmel trailed off.

Jiwoo remembered what he’d said earlier about the underground people having exceptionally awful personalities.

“They refuse to give an inch?”

“Yes.”

Even by human standards, this was essentially a dispute over national borders. If someone invaded what you believed was your own territory, you’d naturally become defensive.

And if you’d already been enjoying that land as your own, who would willingly surrender part of it?

It wasn’t just about land, it was also about pride.

Still, there was one important difference. Human borders were ultimately drawn by human agreement. This situation only resembled that.

“So everyone simply waits for it to pass.”

No one’s health was in any real danger, and eventually the adjustment period would end on its own. It was certainly inconvenient, but preferable to forcing a battle that would leave both sides battered.

“The moment we interfere, it becomes our problem. But if we let things take their course, then it’s simply the will of the trees. The will of nature. When something happens naturally, you can’t really hold anyone responsible, can you?”

Ell Ragneil belonged to the Trees. Because of that, the Children of Ellandos generally chose not to interfere or force matters to suit their own wishes.

“There may be several reasons behind the other changes, but the poor flavor of the crops is definitely because of this.”

“So our tree is pouring its strength into resisting being pushed back…”

In the end, the crops would only regain their flavor once the tree no longer had to waste its strength on this unnecessary struggle.

Which meant the only way to solve it quickly was to seek out a tribe with notoriously terrible tempers and confront them directly.