Chapter 37: Three Fantasy Trees
At this moment, every living being on the planet endowed with vision—be they humans, animals, or mysterious existences lurking in the shadows—saw it.
The sky had changed.
Something transcending common sense had forcibly squeezed itself into the imagery of this world.
Three gargantuan phantoms, nearly piercing through heaven and earth, slowly emerged above different continents.
They looked like trees, but only just.
The one above South America had a trunk of cold silvery-white, its surface covered in patterns resembling circuit boards. Pale blue data streams flowed within those patterns, as if silently calculating something.
Its branches were not woody but composed of countless tiny points of light that constantly combined, dismantled, and reorganized into complex geometric patterns.
The one above Europe was closer to the traditional perception of a 'World Tree'.
The main trunk was deep brown, its surface covered in rough bark textures, yet within those textures, one could faintly see the carvings of ancient scripts—an interweaving of various mystic characters, some long lost and others still in use.
Hanging from its branches were not leaves, but miniature stars that rotated slowly, emitting a faint but eternal light.
In East Asia, within the borders of Zhonghuajia.
The last one was also the most abnormal of the three.
Its main trunk was nearly bone-straight, extending from the ground toward the end of the sky, but at approximately two-thirds of its height, cracks began to appear on the trunk.
Those cracks were not signs of damage but rather marks of growth. The higher it went, the more numerous and dense the cracks became, until finally, the entire upper structure burst apart, transforming into countless fragments.
Those fragments did not fall.
They hovered in mid-air, with a starry, magical radiance flowing between them.
That radiance was not static; it flowed and rotated, drawn by an invisible vortex, spiraling upward to form a magnificent structure covering half the sky, resembling a tree canopy.
The structure was too beautiful, and too eerie.
So beautiful one could not look away; so eerie it made one feel a chill from the very marrow of their bones.
Fantasy Trees.
Devices that manifest worlds already pruned once again—now, they were taking root on the surface of this planet, declaring their existence to all life.
Snowfield City, Kuruoka KTV box.
The sky outside the window was mostly occupied by the phantom of the Fantasy Tree over East Asia. The flowing starry radiance passed through the glass windows, casting shifting spots of light on the floor, walls, and ceiling of the box.
Olga Marie stood by the window, head tilted back, her amber pupils reflecting that magnificent starry sea.
Her expression was calm—calm to the point of near indifference.
She could feel a sense of incongruity that was hard to describe; it wasn't a fluctuation of magical energy or a change in aura, but more like the center of gravity of the world had suddenly shifted.
Olga Marie did not look back.
Her gaze remained fixed on the phantom in the sky, but the focus of her pupils was no longer there.
Fragments of memory, like a jumbled puzzle, suddenly clicked together at this moment.
Mission. Fantasy Tree Seeds. Recovery. Prevent growth. Unpredictable impact.
"Ah."
Olga Marie softly uttered a syllable.
Then, she revealed a helpless smile that was a mix of the absurd and self-deprecation.
"I remember now."
She spoke, her voice very light. "Everything."
Her purpose in coming to this world: to recover the three Fantasy Tree Seeds that had drifted into this world, and to prevent them from growing and causing unpredictable impacts.
She looked up at the dazzling Fantasy Tree outside the window.
"It seems the mission has failed."
"By all rights, given the magical energy density and the mystic foundation of this world, they shouldn't have—and couldn't have—grown to this extent."
"Then why..."
Olga Marie's gaze shifted to the other side of the box.
"As I thought, is it because the world was pruned?"
There, Lord El-Melloi II lay on the sofa, eyes tightly closed, his face pale.
The wound on his chest had been repaired, but the bloodstains remained, a large dark red smear across his white shirt.
Gray knelt by the sofa, hands clasped over El-Melloi II's chest, magical energy slowly pouring from her palms. Her slightly trembling fingertips betrayed her inner unease.
Flat stood at the other end of the sofa, holding his phone and speaking to Tohsaka Rin in a hushed voice:
"Yes, the Professor is hurt... the injury is severe, his heart was punctured... but he's stable now... yeah, we're at a KTV near the airport called 'Starry Melody'... get here as soon as you can, bring magecraft materials for treatment and Bounded Field deployment tools... yes, the more the better."
He hung up and looked at Olga Marie, his eyes filled with silent inquiry.
Olga Marie didn't explain, she just walked to the sofa and looked down at El-Melloi II.
"He's still alive."
Gray's body shuddered violently.
"In fact, he died," Olga Marie continued. "At the moment of his death, this world line was judged an abnormality by the Counter Force and underwent pruning."
"Although I retrieved his soul immediately and treated his physical injuries—putting him in a state of resurrection in every sense—it seems that cannot reverse the established fact of the world being pruned. Theoretically, this world and all existences within it, including us, should no longer exist right now."
She raised her hand, tracing a line in the air.
"The reason we can still stand here chatting, and those three great trees can still hang in the sky, is because they have forcibly anchored this world. Like a nail, they have pinned this world line, which should have been pruned, onto the surface of reality."
Flat opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but found his mind a bit muddled.
The information density was too high.
World pruning. Counter Force. Anchoring. Fantasy Tree.
Every term taken individually was enough for him to ponder for ages; now they were all piled together like a burnt stew, impossible to distinguish.
"So..." Flat tried to organize his thoughts. "The Professor died, the world was pruned, but because of the Fantasy Trees, the world didn't disappear?"
"Basically correct," Olga Marie nodded. "The growth of a Fantasy Tree requires many conditions that are impossible to fulfill in a normally functioning world. Lord El-Melloi II's death happened to satisfy them all."
"As for why he died..."
Olga Marie's eyes narrowed slightly.
She saw the line that had pierced El-Melloi II's heart—the line that traced back from the moment of death to the perpetrator.
At the other end of that line was a man.
Faldeus.
"Heh."
Olga Marie let out a short, cold laugh.
"Has he gone mad?"
"To make such a decision while under my shadow... should I call it admirable courage, or utter stupidity?"
Flat didn't hear clearly: "What?"
"Nothing," Olga Marie shook her head. "I just confirmed the identity of the killer."
She turned and walked back toward the window, her silvery-white hair rising behind her.
"But there's no point in dwelling on that now. The priority is to deal with those three trees."
Olga Marie looked up, her amber pupils locking onto the phantoms in the sky once more.
Her expression became solemn.
"Once the Fantasy Trees have fully taken root, they will begin to erode reality, rewriting this world into the likeness of the pruned worlds they record. By then, what this world will become is something even I cannot predict."