“What’s this?” Eli stared at the force in his core, like starlight rippling a still pond, then eyed the blue sapling now almost his height.

“You’re the World Tree?” Eli asked, voice a calm breeze over quiet water.

The little tree swayed, a gentle nod, leaves whispering like rain.

“But…” Emotion first—hesitation pricked him like a thorn. He opened his mouth to ask for a root, then stopped. The sapling felt alive, like a deer under moonlight.

He couldn’t bring himself to cut it.

The sapling, reading his thought like wind over grass, shrugged its branches with a helpless rustle.

The roots it had discarded were already taken, stripped like driftwood after a storm.

No stock left.

And it wasn’t in giant-tree form now, couldn’t birth that indestructible trunk people prized as weapons, like iron carved from mountains.

Every visitor came for the same petty thing, a drizzle of demand under a drought of reverence.

The sapling sighed in silence, a tool on a pedestal that wasn’t its own. No crown, no worship—just the source of life treated like a well bucket.

Eli laughed and shook his head, like dust shaken off a cloak. “Forget it. Call it an eye-opener.”

He stood, walked to where he’d appeared, and touched the air, like searching for a hidden door in fog.

No tunnel came to meet him.

Eli blinked, then rubbed his jaw, mood turning cloudy before action. “Don’t tell me… yours truly is trapped here?”

…It felt exactly like that.

He cast a pleading look at the sapling, like a traveler seeking a path in snow. The sapling was lost in its own thoughts, a stone deep under still water.

It felt oddly glum.

This man radiated a familiar warmth, like a hearth remembered—similar to that person of old, yet different as dawn from dusk.

The sapling studied him for a moment, watched Eli wandering through its space like a moth in a lantern, then let him be.

It drifted into the violet qi to think, a fish slipping into deeper currents.

Eli circled this strange realm, a hawk riding endless thermals.

The place stretched without end.

He picked the sapling as his marker, then walked left for tens of thousands of meters, like crossing dunes in a heat haze. No edge appeared. He almost lost himself in the boundless sea of energy, a sailor swallowed by glittering tide.

The World Tree lifted a branch and beckoned, and the current brought him back like a tide returning boats.

Eli stood quiet for a while. Everywhere looked the same.

Violet qi, dusted with gold, drifted like dawn mist. Beyond that, nothing—just the hush of an empty bay.

With nothing to do and nowhere to go, he meditated each day, a rock weathering wind and time.

One day, he noticed the sapling had grown, trunk rising like a spear through cloud.

Its crown had once met his brow; now the whole tree towered over him like a watchtower.

He frowned, then let it go; words with a tree were leaves on the wind. He stroked the trunk, praising it, his voice a warm fire under night.

The tree didn’t answer.

Thought had carried it far, into sleep like winter sealing a lake.

There was no wind here.

Without breath, a tree is a statue—silent, unshakable, like a dry trunk struck by lightning.

Was this all the World Tree could do?

Eli wondered, doubt drifting like smoke.

He’d studied the sapling for ages.

Its structure and its life-breath carried no obvious marvels. Ancient, yes—blue light haloed it like frost under moon—but otherwise it was a withered tree wearing starlight.

He measured it head to toe. Aside from endless energy—every kind, every flavor, a river that never runs dry—

The sapling offered no tricks.

It didn’t even attack, no leaf-blades, no thunder-roots—just a silent reservoir.

In short, a power bank dressed as a legend.

Was this worthy of the name World Tree?

Shouldn’t it be the titan in old tales, each leaf bridged to a world, one body carrying all realms like Atlas with star-borne shoulders?

Eli sighed, a reed bending under wind. Maybe he was ignorant. Maybe he’d read too many stories by firelight.

Maybe he simply didn’t understand the tree’s role. He sighed again and dropped the thought like a pebble into a stream.

One day, the tree stood four Elis high, a blue spire against an invisible sky.

Eli no longer knew how long he’d stayed. Each day he sat on the crown, staring at the endless energy sea like a fisherman lost in horizon.

Wasn’t this place supposed to make him stronger? He felt nothing shift, like iron refusing the hammer.

Time kept flowing, a river carving stone.

The tree rose slowly. Eli’s beard and hair spilled longer, like vines. His hair tie vanished somewhere, swallowed by the tide of days.

His clothes frayed into rags, like sails torn by storms.

He looked like a wild man—bramble hair, salt eyes, star-pricked gaze.

Eli tipped his head back. Blue pupils peered through a thicket of black hair, watching a starry sky like ink sprinkled with silver.

After so long, he saw it: the violet qi was a woven tapestry, threads of energy braided tight.

Holy aura, demonic miasma, mana, Battle Aura—and more currents unnamed, a whole river delta of power.

Woven together, they formed the violet gas before him, gold-lit, dream-thick.

And his work—unconscious yet steady—was to draw Stellar Power from that weave, like picking constellations from night, to keep his body running.

Over time, a light tug pulled a whole swath of energy, like a net full of fish.

Now the World Tree had grown into a blue giant, roughly twenty stories tall, a tower carved from sky. Eli stood at its tip, dazed, staring at the horizons of mist.

The tree finally woke.

It lifted its branches, excitement flickering like birds flushed from a grove.

It understood. The origin wasn’t it—not at any moment on any timeline.

It wouldn’t be the one to pierce the barrier of the future.

The sapling shook with feeling, then shrank—down, down—back to the size from the first day it met Eli, a pebble of a tree.

Eli blinked, puzzlement rising like fog. What was it doing?

The blue tree braced itself, then cut off a small crown shoot—its own living core—and pressed it into Eli’s hands, like gifting a flame from a sacred hearth.

The sapling seemed to smile, a dew-bright grin in leaf-shadow.

Eli blinked again, lost. He weighed the pale-blue miniature, brows knitting like gathering cloud.

Suddenly his mind flashed—thoughts cascading like meteors—schematics, patterns, the analysis of his Stellar Power unfolding like star charts.

Long after, his awareness resurfaced, like a diver breaking waves.

He patted his face, rough as bark, then raked fingers through his hair and beard, a hunter grooming after rain. He fell quiet for a breath.

He lifted his right hand. Pale-blue energy spread over his palm like a misted veil.

His hand moved, calm as moonlight over water.

He shaved his long beard clean, strokes smooth as a blade of wind. He gripped his hair, measured length like string, and cut it back to what it was. He pinched the air; an energy cord twined into being and tied his topknot, neat as a sailor’s knot.

Eli looked at the little tree with a soft smile, eyes holding a thousand rivers of stars.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Who is that human? You walked him through our territory like a lantern in the dark. You think I wouldn’t notice?” The oversized Grashe pointed at the small crab before him, frustration sparking like flint.

“You still playing dumb? You ‘don’t know,’ yet you led him into our grounds?”

“What? He captured you?”

“You—are you trying to kill me with rage? A human captured you? Forced you to charge your own home like a bandit? Pig-brained, are you?”

“Did he say what place he was looking for?”

“…Huh? You ‘don’t know’ again. Then what do you know?”

“His name is Eli? I don’t care what he’s called. Does that matter?”

“Wait for punishment.”

The giant crab clasped his claws behind his back and shuffled into the shadows, legs trembling like reeds.

Grashe squatted and drew circles in the sand, sulking like a stormcloud.

He was weak; what could he do?

That human said he’d steam him—steam, like tossing him into a boiling pot. He’d never seen a human that strong.

What if it was true?

That monster dove into the deep sea without an energy barrier, like a shark in black water. Father, do you really not see how strong that is?

I wasn’t his match.

You spotted it, and still didn’t act. You waited until he vanished to scold me like thunder after clear sky.

How would I know anything? What bad star did I offend this month?

While Grashe stared at nothing, the crab clan’s army arrived, shells lined like shields.

They ringed the place three layers deep, a fortress of claws, waiting to force the human to hand over the treasure the instant he appeared.

If he refused, they’d wipe him out, a tide clearing the shore.

A treasure that could fool a clan Transcender—now that was a prize from the abyss.

They waited year after year, day after day, like barnacles clinging through seasons.

Grashe was thrown into the dungeon by his father, crying daily, reciting house rules stacked higher than his own shell.

Five months passed. Still no movement.

The crab clan loosened their guard, like ropes slackening after storm.

Five months—if heaven and earth flipped, they still hadn’t found him.

Maybe he’d kicked the bucket already, bubbles gone and silence left.

So only a few crabs patrolled now, and a handful of higher-ranked ones stayed outside. No other watchers remained.

Two black-red crabs were bantering, claws clacking like castanets.

Behind them, in the pit they were told to guard, the pale-blue pool bloomed again, a spring opening under moon.

Light poured out, bright enough to paint the whole sea like sunrise.

Soon after, a black-haired human rose from the pool, calm as a swimmer breaking dawn. He waved to it, a farewell like a hand to an old friend.

He smiled and looked around. “Feels good to be back… Huh? Why so many crabs?”

The crabs glanced at each other, silence heavy as silt.

Eli tugged a corner of his mouth, then shrugged, a gull shrugging off spray.

“So—anyone here who knows time? I need to count it out. How long was I inside?”