At the End of the Hidden Greenery - Chapter 296

Even so, Lanceil had never fussed this much when Jiwoo left on her usual trips. There was a particular reason he was behaving this way now.

“Is the underground that dangerous?”

“The underground itself isn’t especially dangerous. People live there too, after all. And considering who will be accompanying you, there shouldn’t be much cause for concern.”

Helka’s overzealous summarizing had created that strange vote, but Lanceil more or less agreed that it would be better for Jiwoo to travel with people who had stronger personalities.

“It’s just that they said a dimensional fracture has appeared there. We have no way of knowing what might happen.”

The underground clan, the overlapping territories, and even the tangled roots were all things that could occur naturally, so none of those alone would have made the situation especially serious.

The real concern was something else.

“Something similar happened a long time ago.”

“Something similar?”

“Yes.”

When Jiwoo leaned closer, wanting to hear more, Lanceil glanced around before guiding her somewhere quieter.

* * *

Jiwoo’s clan consisted of a small number of elders and a large group of younger brothers who were less than half their age. There were almost no members between six hundred and nine hundred years old, neither particularly young nor among the very oldest.

The eldest and the youngest were separated by nearly a thousand years.

Jiwoo had always assumed it simply took an exceptionally long time for a new brother to be born, but apparently that was not normally the case. Usually, siblings were born one after another with only modest gaps between them, so their ages did not differ so drastically.

“There was an accident long ago.”

It had happened before they ever crossed into Caranazion, and even by their standards, it was a very distant event.

“It was similar to what’s happening now. Reed will probably explain it to you again before you leave, but would you like to hear about it first?”

The reason an entire age group among the brothers was missing.

Jiwoo had the feeling this would be a heavy story.

“If a dimensional void has formed there, then I have a general idea of what’s happening. We would need to investigate to know the details, but simply put, the land itself begins to change in unnatural ways. For example, a sea the size of a pond might suddenly appear in the middle of an ordinary plain.”

A sea the size of a pond? Wasn’t that simply a pool of water that had never been there before?

“You mean a pond or a puddle?”

Lanceil shook his head.

“No. A sea. It isn’t a logical space.”

Sometimes the heart of a volcano appeared in the middle of the land. At other times, they encountered spaces that could not be understood simply by looking at them, unfamiliar buildings built in unknown styles, or plants that even El Ragneil, a paradise of vegetation, could not identify.

And anyone lured into one of those visions from another world could never return.

“We say they were devoured by the other side of the dimension.”

In other words, they were treated as dead.

“That is probably why Helka decided we needed to hear their side. Not because the place is underground, and not because the roots are tangled. They said a void had formed there, didn’t they? If it expands beyond what we can predict, it could become dangerous.”

Wasn’t that far more serious than Jiwoo had realized? When her eyes wavered and she fell silent, Lanceil quickly waved his hands.

“Ah, don’t worry. That usually happens to clans without an incarnation. We have you, so it shouldn’t become a serious problem.”

That was also why the underground clan had swallowed their pride and asked Jiwoo’s side for help. They had Jiwoo, who was far more approachable than an incarnation.

Even so, the possibility was serious enough that their own clan needed to investigate, observe the area, and make some attempt to predict what might happen.

After saying that much, Lanceil hesitated before giving her a somewhat sheepish smile.

“Because it’s a place where dimensions have become entangled, there can also be a great deal to gain from it if you’re fortunate. Younger clans, or those with too much confidence in themselves, sometimes try to approach those places even without an incarnation.”

“Why did our clan have an accident?”

“I don’t know. I was guarding the village at the time.”

Perhaps those who had not personally experienced the event rarely spoke about it. It certainly was not a pleasant memory.

But Jiwoo was an Akarna who had crossed dimensions and survived intact. More than that, she could protect others while doing so.

It was impossible not to feel at least a little hopeful.

“…Then the brothers from back then really died? They didn’t just go missing?”

“…”

Lanceil lowered his gaze. Then, in a voice stripped of confidence, he answered as though letting out a sigh.

“If they were still alive… then new brothers probably would not have been born.”

That was why the birth of a new brother could be both joyful and sorrowful.

Jiwoo had never expected to hear anything like this.

Their tree had once fallen ill, the village had been devastated, and rebuilding had taken a very long time. Even so, traces of the past had not vanished completely. A few paintings of earlier brothers remained, along with some of the things they had once used.

Yet Jiwoo had never once heard about brothers who had existed before and were now gone.

This was truly the first time she had learned of them. There had been no way for her even to guess.

Would it be rude to ask about them? Or was it simply something she had no need to know?

Her husbands never refused to answer Jiwoo’s questions.

But Jiwoo did not want to force them to speak about something painful merely because she was curious.