Bell's impulsive step didn't trigger anything strange. Duncan let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Bell seemed extremely confident in the knowledge stored in his head. It was odd—he had excellent physical ability, yet he often acted timid in the Tree Sea. But when faced with a place this obviously abnormal, he became strangely assured. Thinking of the densely packed shelves of books in Zeus's room—and in Bell's—Duncan could understand why.
Books were precious in a pseudo–medieval Western Lower World. Even a well-off household might struggle to produce more than a handful. That was one reason wandering bards could still earn their bread.
Yet Zeus had several tall bookcases stuffed full—and they weren't the accumulated holdings of a familia over generations. Zeus had written many of them himself: picture books, heroic tales, everything. Most recorded the Lower World's history, legends, and myths.
Coming from a god who had descended a thousand years ago, "history" might not even be the right word. It was closer to a primary source.
Normally, Zeus insisted the two of them read. It was one of Duncan's few windows into this world—alongside whatever knowledge he picked up from Zeus and the others directly. But time was short, and just surviving Chardo and Alfia's training had taken everything Duncan had. He couldn't absorb information the way Bell could.
The clearing's ground was barren and hard—different from the Tree Sea's soil. Most nutrients seemed to have vanished. A grey-white powder coated the weathered surface, and their footsteps made faint cracking sounds. When the wind blew, it lifted that powder into a thin, fog-like veil.
At the center of the ruins stood several broken stone pillars, their surfaces webbed with cracks and wrapped in dead vines. Shattered blocks lay scattered around them, still faintly outlining what the structure had once been. Beyond the clearing, the surrounding trees were tall and dense, yet their branches and leaves seemed to avoid this place, forming a natural barrier.
Duncan followed behind Bell cautiously, spear in hand like a hired muscle. Bell, meanwhile, turned into a tiny archaeologist, circling the ruins again and again.
If anyone had been watching, the scene would've looked absurd: a seven-year-old carefully inspecting carvings and weathered patterns, while a ten-year-old stood guard with a long spear like a veteran escort. But there was no one here to mock them.
And no one to reassure them either.
The most striking feature of this place was its silence.
The Tree Sea could be quiet at times, sure—but there was always something: wind whispering through leaves, the subtle movement of animals or monsters, the restless noises of living things.
Here, it was different.
Apart from the faint crackle of their boots grinding that white powder, there was not a single sound.
It was the kind of quiet that made your skin crawl.
"So?" Duncan asked, rubbing his spearhead with his thumb. "Do you know what kind of ruin this is?"
"It should be a shrine—some god's ritual temple," Bell said, looking a little ashamed. "But the weathering is so severe I can't tell which god it was dedicated to. Grandpa never really talked to me about gods. He said they're just a bunch of people with nothing better to do."
"If it's a god's temple… why would it be abandoned?" Duncan tilted his head. "Because the real god exists, so praying at stones became pointless?"
It sounded reasonable. Prayer was about being heard by the deity in your heart—if the deity had descended to the Lower World, why pray at an altar when you could join their familia?
But then Duncan's mind snagged on something.
No divinity in the Lower World…
"Wait," he said sharply. "Bell—earlier you said this land is barren because it was saturated with divine power, right?"
"Not just divine power," Bell said, swallowing. His face had gone pale as the implication caught up to him. "Divine power alone can't do this. Judging from the style, this place is from a thousand years ago—maybe even older. To keep the land like this for that long, it wouldn't be enough to use divinity. You'd need… divine blood."
"And not just a drop or two," he added grimly. "A lot of it."
Duncan felt his throat tighten too.
"So… a god used divine power to protect this shrine for a thousand years… and spilled a huge amount of divine blood…" He forced a weak joke through the heaviness. "All to… keep weeds from growing?"
"Maybe the god this shrine belonged to is dead," Bell replied flatly, utterly unimpressed. He was still seven—brilliant in some ways, hopeless in others, and reading the room was not his strong suit.
Duncan knew "weeding" was a joke. A god had paid an enormous price, and in the end the temple still lay abandoned in the heart of the Tree Sea. The old prosperity and civilization had been scoured into a blur by time. Only that lingering divinity remained—like the world itself still whispering: a god once existed here.
Hidden beneath the Tree Sea's canopy, the ruined shrine looked less like a building and more like a tomb.
A god's tomb.
"Let's go, Bell," Duncan said, tapping his shoulder. "There's nothing worth seeing."
If it were merely a god without divinity, Duncan wouldn't be afraid. Their own "old man" was Zeus—king of the gods, a figure who could command storms in heaven… and yet down here, he tried peeping at Alfia bathing and still got blasted straight out of the cabin by a "blessing" shot. Duncan and Bell had been the ones to patch the wall afterward.
Duncan strongly suspected Zeus had some kind of magical item—something like "damage immunity against children" or the like—because a grown man flying out like a cannonball and walking away with only superficial bruises made zero sense. Even a first-class adventurer would be humbled by that kind of durability.
That had been Alfia's Lv.7 furious strike. Even Chardo wouldn't claim he could tank it cleanly.
And Zeus had done it—then looked like he'd do it again.
Duncan didn't believe that wasn't cheating.
A god without divinity could still be troublesome—but if they weren't an evil god type, they were usually just mischievous troublemakers. Even when they did bad things, it was still within a "humanly comprehensible" frame—schemes, manipulation, games.
But a god who ignored the Lower World's rules, used divinity, and poured out divine blood?
That meant the god was serious.
And a serious god—who knew what kind of contingency they might have left behind?
The gap between gods and mortals wasn't merely vast. It was a chasm with no bottom.
Duncan couldn't even imagine a mundane equivalent to "land barren for a thousand years" except spreading radioactive material across the earth. The thought made his face darken.
Even if it was unintentional, the aftermath could still be catastrophic. By the logic of don't stand under a collapsing wall, Duncan decided he'd had enough.
For the first time since this adventure began, he regretted letting curiosity drag them here.
He didn't care about odds. One-in-ten-thousand was still too high.
Who knew whether adventurers could resist radiation, divine residue, or whatever else this place represented?
Seeing Duncan's resolve, Bell—though clearly reluctant—finally stopped trying to observe more and followed, hurrying away from the clearing.
A breeze moved through the treetops again, stirring the soft shhh of leaves. The wind lifted the white powder once more, curling it into thin mist that slowly veiled the broken ruin.
In the heart of the Tree Sea, it was as if the relic had never existed at all.
Only the forest's sound remained—hard to interpret, like a low murmur…
Or a sigh.
....
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