177. Chapter 177 – Quirkus.
Chapter 177 – Quirkus
I don’t know how long forward, but Heine felt a relief in her hands, and then a light came on before her eyes.
He came over.
A warm breeze blew through, and the slightly intoxicating sunlight splashed on his face.
Overhead was a clear sky surrounded by black walls, and in the middle of the verdant grass stood a colorless oak tree.
It had an upright trunk and an umbrella-like crown.
But it seemed to have been stripped of its color, left in black, white and grey, out of place with its surroundings.
Heine looked to the small bottle in her hand, which was almost depleted of quicksand, with only a shallow layer remaining.
He slowly stepped forward, stepping on the soft grass and walking under the colorless tree.
It was one thing to see from a distance, and another to walk under the canopy that covered the sky.
Everywhere the senses passed, there was dead silence.
There were no spirits, no living creatures, nothing.
Everything had been dead for hundreds of years, and it was as if there was not even dust in this unsullied land.
But as he pressed his hand against the trunk of the tree, a somewhat weak voice sounded in his head.
“You’re here.”
“Quirkus?”
“It’s me.”
Heine held up the small bottle with only a fine layer of sand left.
“This is what they wanted to say to you, and I brought it all.”
He taped the bottle to the tree.
The fine silver sand bumped off the cork and scrambled into the trunk, but it couldn’t be squeezed in.
“They tried to save me, but there was no need ……”
Quirkus said calmly, “And please take them all back, consider it my request.”
“Good.”
Heine put the quicksand away.
“I believe you’ve met Sabelia, or a friend of his?” Quirkus asked, “I’ve given him the same bottle before, I can feel it on you.”
“It is indeed on me.”
Heine showed the bottle filled with anger.
I didn’t realize that the bottle had been left to Barry by Sabelia.
Quirkus was silent for a moment.
“Well, it looks like he didn’t do much good.”
“What is this bottle made of?” Heine asked.
“Zuki is an oak tree and the bottle comes from her gum.” Quirkus replied, “The elves of the Valley of Mourning Wood believe that the gum is the tears of the tree, so they call it the Wood Teardrop.
“It feels people and carries their emotions, just as the Ancestral Wood connects the hearts of every elf ……”
Heine nodded.
“So what happened here and how did it get like this?”
“If you’re asking at the source then I don’t know, like the birth of the blight, no one can say or know how to fix it ……
“But if you’re asking why this place has deteriorated and why I’ve become like this, then it starts with the appearance of this net above my head ……”
“A magic web?”
“So that’s what it’s called? It’s quite apt.”
Heine: “What do they have to do with those three magical communication stations out there? I mean those three spherical metamagic spells.”
“Spherical …… spells? If that’s the group of active ‘spirits’ you’re talking about, it was there a long time ago.”
“What!?”
Heine was shocked in her heart.
“A long time ago?”
“Yes. I came from one of the blighted lands of the Mercury Forest, and I chose this place because of them. There’s an active ‘spirit’ up there that comforts everyone.”
Heine was secretly amazed.
He didn’t think that Quirkus had stayed here because of those three meta-spirit spells.
“…… Through those little guys, I can connect myself to this forest, as if every tree is my eyes and my roots can extend to every piece of soil.
“But then those people came, and they built the magic web above our heads, and it was from that day on that I was tormented by pain.”
Heine’s heart fluttered, “Pain from the magic web?”
“Yes, I stayed connected to those three spells, and they were also connected to the magic net, so the pain from the magic net was transmitted to me ……
“If it was just a bucket of filth being dumped into a small river, then I could still slowly dissipate it. “But I am neither a creek nor is that filth a bucket.
“That intense pain came to me like rotting sludge, in a steady stream, and with it a great deal of cold, dead stuff.
“It was dead ‘spirits.’
“The friends who lived in me sensed my pain and they decided to share it for me.
“But they could not dissipate this, they felt anger, hatred, despair, and they turned on the innocent.
“The tainted anger was released through the atrocities, but instead of being satisfied, it was met with a stronger backlash and a hunger that could not be quenched ……
“Since then, the sludge that had been borne by me alone has spread to this unsullied forest.
“The pain from the magic web landed on the earth from the sky and spread through my roots.
“It was also at this time that the blight reappeared.”
Heine couldn’t help but ask, “What did the original blight look like?”
“It’s hard to describe …… The trees that should have awakened in winter stayed asleep, the cubs that should have been born failed to break their shells, and the ‘spirits’ that should have been quiet got tired of the place and disappeared, or died.
“The lack of a blade of grass, a flower, or a tree is also vital to the forest, and in order to survive, more predation and parasitism are born.
“This is the nature of blight. I can’t fix it, I can only run away from it, I can only watch it worsen.”
Hearing this, Heine frowned.
“But didn’t …… the blight already exist before that?”
The Magic Web appeared decades ago, and it was clearly incorrect for Quirkus to say that the Blight appeared at that time.
Because the communication station was established at that time to facilitate the elves stationed here to report their observations to the Cuirass Court in the first place.
In other words, the Blight had appeared before that.
Wait a minute……
Heine suddenly realized a serious problem.
The communication station had indeed been established only a few decades ago.
But that didn’t mean that the magic network only appeared a few decades ago ……
One had been misled!
According to Cayenne, Quirkus was already very sick and ready to die when the communication station was established.
But listening to its own words, the Magic Web appeared overhead before it began to feel pain and withering before it appeared ……
Could it be that ……
The magic web appeared long before that?
The so-called communication station was only “open for use” in the Whispering Forest area?
“Do you remember the point in time when the Magic Web appeared?”
Quirkus was silent for a moment.
“After Sabelia saw me for the last time …… I remember that his life flame was dying out at that time.”
Sure enough!
Sabellia was dying of old age before he went to the Eagle’s Nest and stayed thereafter for more than eight hundred years.
And by that time, the Whispering Woods had been taken over by the elves and subsequently changed its name.
That’s early days!
So the Faeries had quietly covered the place with magic nets early on, causing the Whispering Forest to wither.
For more than eight hundred years after that, Quirkus suffered greatly.
However, that wasn’t all, they came back here a few decades ago and built three communication stations, completely killing Quirkus ……
Fuck you Veritas Yard!
“You seem to be in a rage.” Quirkus said, “Your anger is pure, which is good, but I’m afraid I don’t have time to appreciate it.”
“Sorry.”
Heine took a deep breath.
“What happened after that?”
“As you can see, I blocked myself off, preventing my friends from coming to share for me.
“That way the contamination from overhead wouldn’t reach the outside world to the point of spreading throughout the forest, which I hoped would stop the blight from spreading.
“I forged the wall with those dead ‘spirits’, but I could still stay in touch with the outside world by connecting up to those three spells through my well-developed root system.
“It wasn’t until later that those people appeared again, followed by a contamination similar to that of the magic web coming from those three spells ……
“It was then that I realized that alive I could no longer hold on.
“Maybe becoming undead would be the only way to hold on a little longer.
“So I killed myself.”
(End of chapter)