Chapter 1: Towards the New Land

The land underneath the tree of life is full of life.

The trees stand tall with a lively color of green. Healthy plants grow on the ground which is eaten by the different living beings. When living beings die, they are absorbed into the tree of life, giving it life force to make plants grow again. To balance this out, there are beasts that eats other living beings so they won’t be able to overpopulate.

In the middle of this land, sticking to the bark of the great tree, is a house.

The house is made up of wood and is two stories tall. It has a chimney and of course, a fireplace underneath it.

The fireplace is lit and warmed up the already warm surroundings.

Facing the fireplace is a boy with dark green hair of the age that looks like he’s several steps away from adulthood. He wears a white shirt and brown long pants and is barefooted because he left his boots on the doorway.

The boy is crouching down with both of his hands opened towards the fireplace with a calm expression and is watching the firewood burn.

This boy’s name is Leaf.

“Ah, so comfortable.”

The boy spoke in a blissful calm tone as he closed his eyes to further more feel the warmth of the flame.

“Leaf, have you rested enough? I’ve finished cooking, let’s eat!”

A girl spoke as she came out of the doorway connected to the kitchen. The girl has a cheerful bright expression, has light green straight hair, and is several steps from adulthood. She is wearing an apron over her simple green dress.

“I’m fine Vine. Let’s go, Vyu.”

“Pyu!”

Beside Leaf is a little being which could be mistaken for a ball of grass. The little ball of grass has two eyes and is a small mouth. Its name is Vyu, the pet of the siblings.

Vyu hopped to the shoulders of Leaf as he stood up and walked to the kitchen.

“Boo! Why does Vyu only stay in your shoulders? What about me!? In addition to cooking, I do chores, collect vegetables, and even hunt beasts!”

Usually, Leaf would be the one to hunt beasts for food and Vine would do the chores.

Vine is responsible for collecting vegetables, but when she encounters a beast, she would hunt it for extra food. Vine could be considered equal to Leaf when it comes to hunting which is unusual seeing that Leaf has more practice in hunting than her.

“It’s because you always squeeze him too tight that it hurts him, I’m even surprised that he even approaches you… If you’d stop doing that, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

“How can you keep yourself from doing that? It’s so cute!”

Leaf ignored his overly cheerful elder sister and sat down on the table with Vyu dropping to the ground and faced his feeding bowl that was already filled with vegetables put by Vine.

Vine reached for Vyu as he eats, but seeing him eat made Vine fawn and just left him then headed for the dining table.

On the dining table was served different kinds of food, both meat and vegetables. The amount of food is too much for two people, but the siblings have great appetite and are physically active so this is just normal for them.

As the two of them ate, the surroundings started to shake.

“W-What’s happening!? Leaf, come here, I’ll protect you!”

“Vine, calm down. We’ll revive by that giant tree, there’s nothing to worry about. Though, I don’t want to experience that feeling of dying again…”

“You’re right! We should just protect Vyu!”

“I’ll take care of him. Vine, you should first find out the cause of that earthquake, can you sense it?”

“Hmmm… Hmmm… I can feel a disturbance…”

Vine has the ability to feel what is happening on this land. Vine closed her eyes and concentrated on her connection to the great tree.

Though, this connection to the giant tree is unknown to Vine herself.

The earthquake stopped while Vine was concentrating. Leaf calmly waited for the results.

“…What is this? Something had just crashed into the southwest part of the land!”

○

The siblings are just outside the house, wearing the clothes they wear outside.

Leaf wears a white shirt, brown pants, black leather boots, and a green sleeveless hooded vest.

Vine wears a green knee-length dress with a shawl of a lighter green color, is wearing thin leather boots, and on her hands, she has green colored gloves.

Leaf stared at Vine with narrowed eyes. Vine noticed this then puffed her cheeks and placed her hands on her waist.

“You’re going to complain about my clothes again, aren’t you!? You’re going to say that they’re impractical for moving outside aren’t you!? For your information, I care more about fashion more than practicality!”

Leaf gave off a resigning sigh and knows that it’ll be futile to have her change as she always wears these kinds of attire even when going outside.

Actually, she already compromised with these clothes as Leaf always told her to wear shades of green so that the colors would blend in with nature.

Changing the topic to remove Vine’s somewhat cute face with puffed cheeks that is somewhat annoying to him, Leaf asked with a serious but calm tone.

“Well, can you do it?”

Vine knelt and touched the ground with her hands. After making a few cute short “Hmpf!”, she shook her head.

“Nope… For some reason, I can’t transfer us there using the travely flower!”

“Then… let’s go to the maximum range of where you can go with it and let’s walk from there.”

“Okay!”

One of Vine’s ability is to travel underneath the roots, the branches of the great tree, underneath the land via a giant flower on which Vine calls “Travely Flower”.

Vine’s hand that was already placed on the ground slightly glowed even when covered by the gloves. In a few seconds, a large flower rose from the ground and bloomed after a few seconds.

The siblings and their pet stepped into the flower.

Vine pointed to the southwest and shouted:

“Well then, depart!”

The bloomed flower enclosed them and burrowed underground. The flower crept on the roots until the edge of the land.

Upon reaching the destination, the flower popped up of the ground and opened. The siblings stepped out of the flower.

Upon looking in front of them, their eyes widened with a feeling of awe. They could not speak as the sight took their breath away.

It was a giant body of land.

The land has less plant life compared to the land of the great tree of life. The soil is of different color and the trees are smaller.

But what amazed the siblings was something else…

It was a quite a distance from where they were standing, but they could definitely see it…

It’s a town filled with different unique races.

Vine heard the Travely Flower growing back into the land and she waved her hands as if to say goodbye.

While she was waving goodbye, Leaf looked far into the new land and narrowed his eyes to see more clearly.

“That is…”

“Leaf! Leaf! Look at that! That is what you would call a town, right!? Wait… why do I know what a town is?”

“…Isn’t that just the usual?”

What Leaf meant by “the usual” is both of them gaining knowledge about something that they shouldn’t know. Even though the great tree of life has put knowledge into them, the siblings has no idea where it came from.

From this knowledge is where they got their knowledge on how to do things such as make clothing, cook, hunt, etc.

“…I can also feel an unusual urge… can you feel it Vine?”

“You can feel it too, Leaf? For some reason, I’m somehow drawn to going further into that land! …W-Woah! The ground is shaking again!”

The ground started to shake. The two crouched down to maintain their balance. As the ground shook, giant roots started to come out from the edges of the ground of the great tree’s land.

The roots started weaving the two lands together.

Vine felt something unusual. She felt as if she’s also getting a feeling of familiarity with the new land as the roots weaved.

“I-I’m starting to get a feel from that land too! … Wait, something is wrong… The roots cannot pour lifeforce into the land!”

The feeling of familiarity disappeared and the roots weren’t able to pour anything into the new land.

“…”

Leaf went into deep thought. Vine didn’t notice it but Leaf definitely did…

(Why do we feel that it’s the most natural thing that these roots wanted to give life into this new land? Why is there a need to do that?)

Leaf ignored his usual curiosity and continued to follow his instincts.

“Let’s find the reason why the land rejects the life force being given by the roots.”

“Let’s go!”

The two walked on one of the connected roots and started walking towards the unknown.