Chapter 568
Two bright green eyes, larger than the islands themselves, look down at me from the sky.
They're in the far corners of my perception, so it's hard to see the entire picture, but it looks as if an enormous serpent floats high in the sky, unmoving and unblinking.
Its body trails off higher than I can perceive, and the part that I can see stretches for kilometers and looks to be semi-transparent, made entirely out of green tendrils of divine energy.
It looks like I'm staring up at a massive hologram of a monster, but the extreme pressure and heat that radiate off of it tell me this is certainly not an illusion.
Seconds pass, turning into minutes as I continue to stare upward, and the massive green eyes just curiously watch back.
I assume whatever this is, it's always been here; just now, my perception has grown enough to see it. Ember stares up at it too, then speaks up.
"It won't attack. Higher life forms with green cores awakened don't fear beings with physical bodies. We can climb to get a closer view, but don't expect it to even interact with us at our current strength."
The longer I stare up at its unmoving gaze, Ember's words make more and more sense.
I eventually reply while we both fly up to the next island to continue our lizard farming to collect as many cores and fruits as we can on our way up, even though now we aren't eating any more as our yellow cores are fully saturated.
"Even if it won't reply, I still want to get a closer look..."
We continue upward, killing hundreds more lizards, hopping island to island over the next few hours.
Some of the black forests on nearby islands finally stop growing into the sky, and we can see their tops.
Taking this into account, I come to realize the black forests were actually absorbing stray red, orange, and yellow divine threads, filtering the air and making it far easier to combat the growing pressure.
The air gets thicker and hotter, packed far more densely with yellow threads of divine energy. More and more green threads fill the air too, but no matter what I do, whenever I try to reach out to touch one, it just phases through my fingers.
As I fly through the air, any green threads that touch me just flow through me as well, not showing any signs of being manipulated by my aura.
The sheer number of islands thins out more and more too as we get higher until eventually there is only a single one left.
It stands high in the sky above all the others, and its obsidian forest is the thickest and densest of them all. With no other trees on nearby islands to compete for energy, this forest has bloomed and grown the highest into the sky.
All of the lizards on this island are glowing bright yellow; it's as if they're saturated with far more energy, and their auras stretch out much further than the monsters on the islands below.
Even so, we cut them down all the same and continue the climb upward.
Continuing to consume fragments isn't necessary at all now, as my saturated core continuously collects yellow threads from the air inside my aura to regenerate anything it's lost, but every few kills up at this height, I still swallow a fragment whenever I get the chance.
It gives me a slight surge of power that counteracts the pressure and heat that are starting to take a toll on my body and mind.
It feels like the gravity up here has increased by a noticeable amount. The heat feels like it could easily boil water too.
More and more threads of green divine energy fill the air as we climb higher and higher.
It feels like an intimidation skill is being sent out from the creature in the sky at a constant rate, and there's nothing I can do but push forward and bear it.
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Even though since the first time I saw its bright green eyes, we've traveled upward over a hundred kilometers higher into the sky, it feels like we've gotten even further away because of the intense mental and physical pressure it's pushing on us now. Even if we've physically cleared half the distance between us, it feels as though we've hardly even taken the first step.
Finally, the end of the final black forest approaches, and both Ember and I float in the air in our Greater and Dragon forms above the blooming branch that absorbs all of the energy in the atmosphere around it and slowly grows a new leaf before my eyes while slowly reaching higher into the sky at a rate of a few centimeters per minute.
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My yellow aura is exceptionally dense from oversaturating my core with extra stones, so even though I float about a dozen meters away from the top of the tree, it begins to absorb some of the residual yellow threads that leak off of me.
Instead of the plain stray threads, the tree gets an energy-packed dose of air.
Its speed of growth increases for a moment, and out from the new leaves that grow in seconds before my eyes, a tiny golden fruit starts to form.
I notice it immediately but don't move away, letting it absorb more of my aura's residue out of curiosity.
The longer I wait, the more the tree grows higher into the sky and the larger the golden fruit becomes.
Once a full minute has passed and the tree grows multiple meters higher into the sky, I airstep back while I come to the conclusion that a large amount of the energy that I just lost is stored inside the golden fruit that continues to grow even now while I think about it.
It only grew to about the size of my real body's palm, but if I made close-up contact with the black leaves or branch that grows higher now, I'm sure it would take my energy at a much faster rate.
These black trees are like parasites, leeching off the energy in their environment and luring new things nearby with a large percentage of the energy captured from their previous prey.
The lizards that lurk within them seem to have a hunting relationship, allowing the trees to siphon some of their energy while using the fruits created to lure the orange-cored insects nearby to feed on them. They can catch hundreds of insects while eating their own fruits in the process, gaining large amounts of divine energy and only sacrificing some of the net gains to the trees they use as cover.
It's an interesting system, but even so, my enhanced senses, using my all-seeing eye intertwined with the energy of an oversaturated yellow core, can't even look into the depths of these trees.
There's still an unknown factor of how it all works that makes me shudder at the thought of touching it again.
Ember comments on the trees as we fly higher into the sky together.
"I've never seen an organism quite like it. Unlike the monsters and regular matter in this construct, I don't think this one is native... While it may be dangerous, it would be quite useful to have one of those back in the human world... You know divine energy is everywhere; it's just very hard to gather it all in one place."
Gears begin spinning in my head as we fly off into the open, empty sky above toward the mountain-sized snake head staring down at us.
I nod and reply as I realize what he means.
"You want to take a tree back with us...?"
He laughs as we soar further upward.
"If we get the chance after meeting the overseer, it wouldn't be the worst idea."
Without any of the natural air filtering perks of flying by the dense pockets of forest, the aura of the green snake in the sky hits us with its full force, getting hotter and thicker at a much faster rate than before.
It feels as if the gravity and heat are doubling every additional kilometer we move into the sky.
My airsteps are getting less powerful, and my breathing gets heavy.
I channel all of the yellow threads in my aura into my greater form and buffs, but the pressure that feels like a constant wave of green divine intimidation is more powerful than anything I've ever felt or believed was possible for a monster to produce.
It's like I'm fighting against a reversed magnet, and the pressure is on not only my body but my mind.
It feels like a fire is being lit in my psyche the closer I push.
It can be calmed by eating extra yellow fragments for a few seconds at a time, but the distance between myself and the serpent in the sky is still extremely vast.
The monstrosity doesn't react at all to my futile struggles.
It just looks down at me with curious eyes, unchanged from the first time I perceived it.
I have a mental battle with myself for another hour, barely making it through another kilometer into the sky, staring up at the beast until its unchanging expression is all I see in my mind whether my own eyes are closed or not.
I'm able to continue moving higher with Ember flapping his wings at the same rate by my side, but our speed has slowed significantly. We slow even more with every passing second.
I even try to send out pulses of my own intimidation aura and crescents of soul energy into the thick air to carve pathways through the atmosphere, but they also travel far slower in this immense pressure and heat.
None of my attempts at piercing through this suffocating aura make it even another kilometer into the air. They all disappear and fade into the thick aura of green divine energy that surrounds us.
It nullifies all of my futile attempts, and any physical contact I make with the threads don't register in my senses. Other than the intense gravity, heat, and mental pressure; this is seemingly all just an illusion.
Now that I've made it this far and closed the gap between us even further, the small distance I still have to travel seems like it is going to be nearly impossible. The difficulty of this last leg of the journey upward has become far more difficult than I first assumed.
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