Chapter 865 — An Endpoint
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
When the first rest day of summer arrived, the Sorin region had seen a night of rain, and the unbroken gloom lingered on until the next day.
The towering Sorin Great Tree stood proudly upon this land that had come back to life, its colossal, fortress-like canopy stretching out to blot the sky and sun, covering a third of distant Sorin Castle and the vast plains beyond its walls. The giant tree had shielded the region from the night's rainfall, but several streams formed after the rain flowed in from beyond the canopy's reach, winding through the low-lying ground between the various research, storage, and industrial facilities to gather beside the newly built Druid Research Institute at the base of the trunk. There they pooled into a small pond, then flowed on into the gaps among the nearby roots leading deep underground, becoming part of the subterranean river.
Streetlamps linked in unbroken rows stood along both sides of the road, while a great many high-output lighting devices still hung from the lowest reaches of the giant tree's canopy. These artificial lights dispelled the vast "nightfall" cast by the immense plant. Margarita came from the sunlit plains outside into this region shrouded by the canopy, and she saw soldiers posted beneath the streetlamps, many people peering out from the paths between the buildings.
Margarita paid them no mind. She passed through the sentry posts and walked past the guards who saluted her, coming to the vicinity of the giant tree's roots—where a great mass of tangled vines and woody structures splitting off from the trunk had cunningly "grown" into a small hut. The flowered vines attached to its roof squirmed faintly in the air like blood vessels, and two tall tree-folk with deep green eye sockets stood before the hut, nearly taller than its pointed roof. Their thick, powerful hands gripped squad-support rail accelerator cannons known as "Gorgon Guns," while long steel spikes fixed mana-net devices to their torsos, which were covered in heavy bark and woody knots, to power the weapons.
—This small rail cannon, named for the Empire's most vital river of life, the "Gorgon River," was a variant of the Persuader-type rail cannon, typically mounted on light mobile vehicles, but with slight modifications it could arm large summoned creatures of tremendous strength. At present such refits were used only on a small scale; should the technical experts one day solve the spell-model problem of summoned creatures, these armaments would surely prove invaluable.
The tree-folk showed little reaction to Margarita's arrival; they merely shifted a small step to the side, a rustle of wood and leaves running through their bodies. Margarita stepped past their beam-thick legs, and the door of the little wooden hut before her had already opened before she drew near.
A writhing mass of flowered vines "walked" out from within, and Beiyila appeared before Margarita.
"How is Minister Norris?" the young female knight stepped forward at once to ask.
"He was unconscious for a while, and has just now come to, but it won't be for long," said Beiyila Pingxi. "...Today, Miss Margarita."
A layer of dark cloud spread across Margarita's brow, and her voice dropped unconsciously: "Is there truly no way?"
"We have already moved him here—I have done all I can to sustain his life with the power of the Sorin Great Tree, but aging itself is the hardest law of nature to defy—and Norris's case is more than simple aging," Beiyila said slowly. "Over the past decades, his body has been on a road of overdraft—this is the common lot of the poor, but his overdraft has been so severe that magic and miracles can no longer redeem it. In truth, it is already a miracle that he has lived to this day—he should have died last winter."
Margarita fell silent for a moment, then drew a soft breath: "I want to go in and see him."