Chapter 39: The Awakening of ORT
Inside the flying craft above Snowfield City, Francesca and Francois both fell into silence.
Compared to ordinary humans and practitioners of magecraft, the two of them better understood what exactly this thing was.
They had also keenly caught the momentary ripple produced when the world was pruned.
Francesca sat cross-legged on the carpet, four screens of light hovering in front of her.
One displayed the East Asia Fantasy Tree, one displayed South America, one displayed Europe, and the last showed the chaotic street scenes within Snowfield City.
She rested her chin in her hands, staring unblinkingly at the screens.
Francois sighed emotionlessly:
"Wow, this is quite a major incident.
That guy Faldeus really did something unbelievable."
Francesca's tone, however, suddenly turned cold. "What the hell is this?"
Francois: "Hmm?"
"I said, what the hell is this?" Francesca repeated, her speaking pace accelerating.
"What I wanted was chaos, madness, to watch those self-proclaimed heroes roll around in the mud, torn beyond recognition by their desires and obsessions.
I wanted to watch them slaughter each other for a broken Holy Grail, watch them get played like fools by the lies I casually spun, watch them suddenly realize the chessboard beneath their feet had long been flipped by me just when they thought they were in control of everything, sinking into pain and despair."
"That is the joy I wanted."
"But now?"
Francesca reached out and pointed at the Fantasy Tree on the screen.
"Now you tell me the world is going to end."
She tilted her head.
"What is this supposed to be?"
"I only just finished half my script, the actors just entered the stage, the lighting and props were just set up, and suddenly someone rushes up and says, 'Sorry, the theater is collapsing, everyone run'."
"Are you kidding me?"
Francois looked at her, drawing out his voice,
"Oh?"
"Do you really think so?"
Francesca didn't say a word. Kneeling on the bed, she abruptly bent over backwards, tilting her face upside down to look at Francois. There wasn't a hint of dissatisfaction; it was clearly a highly twisted smile.
"Ahahahahahaha! Ahahahahahahahaha—!"
"Interesting! Super interesting! So damn interesting!"
Francesca sat up, her eyes shining frighteningly bright. "The world is going to end! And it's all because one idiot killed another idiot! This plot, this development, this level of absurdity—ahhhh, why didn't I think of it!"
She scrambled up and threw herself in front of the screen, her fingers sliding over the image of the East Asia Fantasy Tree.
"Look at this tree! So beautiful! So spectacular! And it's still growing! Once it's fully grown, this world will turn into something else! When that time comes, all the current rules, all common sense, everything taken for granted, will all be overturned!"
She turned around and opened her arms.
"This is the ultimate chaos! The ultimate subversion!"
Francois looked at her incredibly hyped-up state. "Then why were you acting so profound just now?"
"Foreshadowing~" Francesca said with a grin. She skipped over to the window, looking down at the brightly lit Snowfield City below.
The streets had already descended into chaos.
Vehicles were jammed in long lines, honking deafeningly. Crowds were running; some running home, some running out of the city, and others standing in place, looking up at the trees like a swarm of headless flies.
Further away, several fires could be seen, likely caused by car accidents or riots. Police sirens blared from all directions, but the sound was drowned out in the greater clamor.
"Look~" Francesca said softly, her voice sickeningly sweet. "What a beautiful sight. The collapse of order, the disintegration of common sense, everyone forced to wake up from their cozy dreams to face this crazy world, and this time it's really going to go all the way!"
"However, I'm also genuinely displeased about this!"
"After all, I don't want to see the destruction of the world and the extinction of humanity just yet."
"So, I'll help them out when necessary~"
However, just as all sides were reeling in shock, Olga Marie was also preparing to forcefully uproot these three Fantasy Trees by martial means.
She extended her right hand, spreading her five fingers, and aimed at the sky outside the window.
Magical Energy began to gather.
It wasn't the playful Magical Energy from before, but a more restrained, heavier power that felt as though it could grasp the entire sky in the palm of her hand.
The air in the private room suddenly became viscous.
Ayaka Sajyou subconsciously gripped the fabric over her chest.
The aura beneath Zealot's black robes experienced a momentary disorder.
Olga Marie's movements paused, her gaze snapping toward the Fantasy Tree in South America.
Her line of sight pierced through continents and oceans, locking onto the position of the Fantasy Tree above South America.
She sensed something approaching there! Something very dangerous!
"What is..." she murmured aloud.
Flat noticed something was wrong: "Miss Olga Marie? What's the matter?"
Olga Marie didn't answer.
She stared in the direction of South America, her expression turning solemn, then morphing into disgust, settling into an irritation that screamed 'this is a huge problem' and 'why is it you again?'.
The next moment, as if to validate her premonition—
High above South America, that Fantasy Tree, which should have been suspended high like the ones in Europe and East Asia, suddenly swayed.
At the base of the tree, right where the main trunk connected to the ground, a rift tore open.
That rift was small at first, then rapidly expanded and spread, becoming an irregular crevice with edges glowing in a silver-blue light.
The interior of the crevice was profound darkness. Nothing could be seen, yet one could sense some indescribable entity crawling out from within.
"Crack."
The sound of space shattering.
And then, that thing climbed out of the crevice.
The lower half of its body was an arthropod structure similar to a spider.
The torso portion supported by its walking legs was covered in an exoskeleton resembling a carapace, its surface flowing with fluorescent veins that looked like both electrical circuits and blood vessels.
Its upper body was humanoid.
It had a trunk, two arms, a neck, and a head.
But the proportions and structures of those parts completely defied any known biology.
Behind it hovered a linked, silver-blue disc.
The disc rotated slowly, and with every revolution, a silver-blue storm of Magical Energy would erupt from its edges. Those storms spread as if they were alive; wherever they passed, space was torn apart, the atmosphere was ionized, and even light itself was distorted.
Once it completely crawled out of the crevice, its upper body leaned slightly forward.
Then, it moved.
With no warning, no charging up, not even any Magical Energy Fluctuations, it merely raised one of its forelimbs and swiped at the Fantasy Tree.
"Boom—!!!"
The entire Fantasy Tree was forcefully torn in two right down the middle.
The erased fragments of the Fantasy Tree, drawn in by that suction, transformed into a silver-white torrent that surged toward the monster and was absorbed by it.
The monster's body lit up.
The brightness of those fluorescent veins on its surface increased by at least thirty percent. The silver-blue disc behind it accelerated its rotation, erupting with stronger Magical Energy storms over a wider range.
It was feeding.
And its food was the Fantasy Tree.
Snowfield City, KTV private room.
Olga Marie lowered her hand that had been aimed at the sky and sighed.
"Really..."
She said in a low voice, laced with thick helplessness, "One after another, it just never ends, does it?"
"Couldn't this guy just obediently continue sleeping? It just had to run out and cause trouble now!"
And that monster seemed to have also noticed Olga Marie's gaze; it looked over and began to advance toward Snowfield City at an extremely fast speed.
In just a few short seconds, looking out from the KTV window, one could see its figure appearing on the horizon.
Flat followed her gaze out the window. The phantom image of that Fantasy Tree in South America had disappeared, replaced by something even more twisted.
"Miss Olga Marie, what... what is that?"
"A troublesome fellow," Olga Marie said. "A visitor from the Starry Sky, a cleaner prepared by the consciousness of this planet for after its own death, responsible for eliminating any life that still survives on the surface after the planet dies."
"You can call it ORT. It's an entity that the beings on this planet can neither comprehend nor deal with.
Of course, this isn't its true name, just a codename forcibly given to it by the beings on this planet."
"ORT?" Flat blinked. "Sounds like an abbreviation?"
"Because they say it's a lifeform that drifted over from the Oort cloud," Olga Marie explained casually. "Though this name is completely incorrect."
Flat took three seconds to digest this information.
"So it's... a good guy?"
"Understand it however you like. It's just that it arrived too early," Olga Marie continued. "This planet is still alive, so it entered a deep slumber to wait."
"But now it's woken up early, and at the wrong time, just happening to clash with the manifestation of the Fantasy Trees."
Olga Marie gazed at the increasingly bright blue light and shadows on the horizon, along with the aurora-like colors reflecting in the sky.
That was because after ORT devoured the Fantasy Tree, its passive skill [Crystal Valley] had been strengthened. In a world that was only supposed to be crystallized under its influence, massive amounts of Fantasy Trees had begun to grow.
Although the quality was far inferior to the initial three, they were indeed genuine Fantasy Trees.
(Not feeling well, updating this much for now.)