Chapter 841 – Remior’s golden century – Second-generation sapling (Patreon)

“Do you know my body better than I do, sis?” Owain groaned while rubbing his knuckles. “As a professional fighter who’s been injured hundreds of times, I’m telling you that they haven’t mended my bones properly!”

Elaine’s brother had been allowed to join his family in the VIP section of the stadium after receiving treatment. Owain was a tall man who had inherited his father’s sharp features and his mother’s unassuming brown hair. He looked like he was in his early twenties, despite being around six times that age. Yellow-borns and Green-borns had always aged slowly on Remior, but even Orange-borns and Red-borns practically froze in early adulthood now, thanks to Percy’s gifts.

“Stop being such a baby,” Elaine said with an exasperated sigh. “Nobody here is new to injuries. The tournament’s healers undergo regular government inspections to ensure that they’re qualified. There’s no way they haven’t fixed your hand properly.”

“And when was the last time you fought in a tournament or had to get a bone mended by amateurs? Sixty-something years ago?” Owain fired back.

“Where’s your girlfriend, kid?” Micky butted in with a teasing grin. “Aren’t you worried that losing the match and crying about your hand is a bad look?”

The corner of Owain’s mouth twitched as he glanced at the Huehuan. “She said she’d watch my fight from home, but I bet she’s spent the whole afternoon watching serials with her friends again.” He sighed, turning back to his sister. “Look, I’m not saying that my hand isn’t functional. I just want to have it checked by somebody more experienced. I can tell that they’ve left behind all sorts of kinks that’ll bother me for years.”

“I think growing up in a family full of life users has spoiled you guys. Back when my House was still around, my father wouldn’t even consider paying for a magical treatment unless it was for a Yellow-born on the verge of death,” Nesha interjected with a wry smile. “But we should all come along if you’re planning to visit your grandfather. It’s rare for everyone to be free on the same day.”

Percy was about to remind his girlfriend that he was only free because they’d dragged him out of the lab. He’d already scanned his cousin’s hand with his sensory domain and confirmed that Owain was overreacting.

But he kept his mouth shut when Nesha tossed him a pointed look.

The stadium had already emptied by the time Percy’s family decided how they would travel. Everyone in the group could fly under their own power, including Ragnelle, who was a double Blue. They could also have taken the teleportation platform back to Bogside City and travelled a much shorter distance from there, but Elaine’s parents had flown their hovercraft to the venue and didn’t want to return for it.

They decided to walk to the parking lot together and have Micky fly them the rest of the way with the vehicle clutched in his talons. Percy’s spatial seal was more than large enough to store the hovercraft, but the spatial enchantments of the two devices would interfere. It wasn’t the fastest way to get to the Camelot province, but they could all afford to spend an hour or two enjoying the scenic journey and pleasant company.

The sky was dark when the jade tree’s vibrant halo appeared on the horizon.

Its crystalline trunk was nearly four hundred metres tall, its vast canopy bathing the entire forest in its soft radiance. Percy caught its minty aroma from several kilometres away, borne towards them on the breeze alongside the gentle song of the pines.

His relatives took a little longer to spot the natural wonder, since their senses weren’t as sharp as Percy’s and they had been too engrossed in their conversation. The howling snowstorm around them and the rhythmic flaps of the crow’s powerful wings hadn’t helped either, though everyone was thankfully strong enough that the cold caused little discomfort during the trip.

“There it is!” Ragnelle drew a sharp breath while peeking at the tree through a gap between Micky’s oversized neck feathers. “Even after all this time, I find it hard to believe that there’s a tree that tall right next to our home. I suppose that the mushrooms on the Fungal Spire aren’t that much smaller, but you said that it’s not even fully grown yet, right?”

Percy nodded. “It’s only about halfway there. But if you think that this is tall, wait until you hear how large a first-generation sapling or a true World Tree can grow.”

Planting one of the trees in the Whistling Woods had been the obvious choice.

The forest had recovered considerably by the end of the war, but its central region had still been barren when Percy’s family had returned to their province. Placing the sapling in the clearing had helped the rest of the forest to expand far beyond its original boundaries and made for the perfect gift for a family of life users.

Finding the seeds had also proven easier than Percy had expected.

He had found plenty of second-generation saplings in his adventures, as the Void Hand had gifted them to many of their member-factions, and the peak factions had also apparently sold or traded away a few to other greater springs. The problem was that every single second-generation tree had been too large to fit inside Percy’s spatial seal and too heavily guarded by its owners.

The obvious solution had been to grow a new one, though that had also seemed problematic at first.

A seed or small piece harvested from a second-generation sapling would only produce a third-generation tree, the leaves of which had no effect on a person’s lifespan. Consequently, Percy had needed the seed or a piece of a first-generation sapling. Only thirteen such plants existed in the entire universe, and all of them were held by peak factions.

Percy had actually set foot inside the trunk of one such tree during his meeting with Ishkuria, but asking the Twentieth-odd Circle titaness for a piece of her home had been out of the question, and he didn’t think that the other twelve saplings would have been any easier to get his hands on.

However, Percy had ultimately found the coveted treasure without facing any resistance whatsoever, on a planet that he had already marked nearly two decades before the end of the war: Zath’maan.

Zath’maan had once been the home of a faction with the same name – the fifth founding member of the Void Hand. After suffering defeat at the hands of a rival world, its people had lost their first-generation sapling. Their allies had betrayed and wiped them out, leaving behind a bunch of uninhabited planets used only for their lingering treasures.

Percy had marked the deserted world while claiming Ningirima’s Decree from the tournament, and had returned to it during his cosmic survey to carefully comb through its entire surface for anything of value.

He hadn’t found any sign of another Decree that he could easily take, but he had found a massive crater surrounded by half a dozen fully grown second-generation saplings.

He had suspected that Zath’maan might have been the very planet where the first-generation sapling had been planted, though he hadn’t been sure because the strongest factions often controlled multiple worlds.

Percy didn’t know exactly what had happened to the remains of the first-generation tree itself. Perhaps the enemies of the Zath’maani had somehow stolen the entire thing, leaving only a hole behind, or they might have simply destroyed it to give their own first-generation sapling a chance to grow.

Either way, the other founding factions hadn’t bothered to remove the second-generation saplings surrounding the crater. Given how closely they monitored visitors to the planet, it would have been impossible for anyone to steal one of the colossal trees without alerting them.

But they clearly hadn’t planned for someone capable of infiltrating the planet without using their teleportation platforms, possessing a random critter, and searching the forest using an army of invisible and intangible sentries.

The fully grown second-generation trees had naturally been too large to fit in Percy’s spatial seal, and he wouldn’t have dared to steal them even if he had been able to. However, the existence of the cluster of trees around the enormous crater obviously wasn’t a coincidence. The first-generation sapling had clearly shed multiple seeds while it had been alive, and possibly prevented them from germinating until its disappearance.

Percy had spent days carefully scanning every patch of dirt near the crater for dormant seeds that might have been suppressed by their siblings. He’d collected dozens of smaller seeds that the second-generation trees had presumably produced, sending them to Remior for future handling or trading, yet his main prize had been the much-larger seeds that could have only come from the missing tree.

And he’d ended up finding five of those.

After estimating that three second-generation saplings would be more than enough for Remior, he had decided to gift the remaining two to Melodia and Gallimus, to further strengthen his ties with his allies.

The trip had naturally proven extremely fruitful for his people, but Percy hadn’t been satisfied with just that. He’d already consumed first-generation tea, brewed from one of the teabags that Ishkuria had given him, so nothing short of the original World Tree could possibly extend Percy’s lifespan further. Unfortunately, while first-generation saplings could potentially evolve into new World Trees under the right circumstances, second-generation saplings held no such potential.

As Percy had continued to expand his Star Atlas and visit dozens of greater springs without finding any other solution to his lifespan problem, he’d grown increasingly convinced that he would have to do something drastic if he wished to attain divinity.