Strongest Among the Heavens
Chapter 511: The Learned One

Chapter 511: The Learned One

Back-straight, candles lit, Dasha sat in the center of the room and read.

The life of Igor the Skilled was long, detailed, and unique. He learned so much that he actually forgot about some aspects. Like, for example, a special type of sensing he learned from a blind group of monks who lived above the clouds.

"This man was a Voyager. Incredible."

Down south of the Underground was the Nyx Port and the river that led to the Current of Darkness. Only the strongest dared to voyage through the dark currents. Only the strongest ever returned. Only ships made from the hardest materials in the universe could traverse the darkness. The gravity was so dense that flight was nearly impossible, Igor recorded. He once witnessed feathers ripping from the wings of an angel who dared to do as such.

Igor went on a Voyage three decades ago, when he was 151 years old at what he considered his prime. He joined the Voyage under the tutelage of three Justice Sect Elders and two hundred men. They spent two decades constructing a ship powerful enough to traverse it.

By the end of the trip, only one Justice Sect Elder and four men returned, including Igor himself. Dasha, as always, completed the book in an instant. However, he decided to go back and reread the illustrations and details of Igor’s Voyage.

"Date: Day 97 OR 108 of the Voyage,

We see it! In the distance, the World Tree has arrived! Finally! With us is a centaur who previously went on a Voyage a hundred years ago. Centaurs are beautiful things with minds even more beautiful. Fast too, unparalleled in a head-on race.

The World Tree will require everything we have. On any market, black or not, even a small branch can go up to hundreds of millions. A hundred have already died. I suspect many of us will continue to die as we traverse closer.

Vamos, says the Centaur!"

"Date: Day 100 OR 111 of the Voyage,

Hrm. Days have passed and we can now see the World Tree more clearly. It is not as the centaur or Giovanni Bruno described. I have read Giovanni Bruno’s journal a million times, he described the World Tree as possessing red petals. The centaur said they were pink, which I presumed was because our visions were different.

But he sees it as blue too. The shape too is rather...strange. Like a pillar with a moustache with long, ocean-like branches.

Is it possible the World Tree changes in appearance?"

Igor drew the illustration of what he say, clipped in a drawing of Giovanni Bruno’s sighting of the World Tree, and a labelled World Tree of pink as described by the centaur on Igor’s ship.

There didn’t seem to be much content after this. It followed the ten lengthy days of combat and willpower as they traversed the waters and came closer. The World Tree, Igor claimed, was larger than the whole of the Underground and the heavens. Larger than even the planet Earth.

The ships of the Voyage were said to traverse at speeds beyond logic, even sound and perhaps even light. In other words...

"The distance between realms in the Current of Darkness is not in kilometers but light years...?"

Igor didn’t realize it, not being a man of science. Nobody on the ship was. However, if the implications were as Dasha saw it, then it had to be the case. The Current of Darkness was like outer space in terms of its vastness.

"The question is whether each realm is akin to that of the planets in the solar system or the distance between galaxies...?"

The journal of Igor at age 150 was over. Igor and the ship docked close to the World Tree after the Justice Sect Elders slayed eight dragons. Next was 151.

Which...

"It’s not here."

A year was missing. Dasha’s eyes narrowed. He went to 152 and...

Igor was back in the Current of Darkness.

"Date: Day 500????

We’re back on the ship. It was a miracle we found this. I write this after stuffing myself with food and praying we do not immediately die.

I do not want to fight. I do not want to protect myself. My instincts are drained. If I die here, I die. I take my soul and my wits and whatever I am and whatever I took with me.

To the Underground. To the Nyx Port. It cannot be worse than this."

"Blood," Dasha noted. Igor’s writing was gentle, even now, as though he found peace in writing out his life. Even now, there was no chaos in his lettering, only in his words. "His hands were bleeding when he wrote this. Tears of blood, I see that. Perhaps a curse?"

Quickly, he fetched another book and read it.

Ah.

"He was cursed. Following his return to the Underground, he discovered his left side was cursed to become a ghost."

Another book. Another year. No solution. Year 154, Year 155, nope, nope. It took him five years to locate an individual that could cure him of his curse. Dasha returned to Year 152, to the bloodied writing after returning from the World Tree.

"These streaks of blood...the angles are too unnatural. Is he gripping something with his other hand?"

He stopped to think of all the possibilities. One phrase rang several times in his head, ricocheting and forcing his fingers to touch his forehead..

"I take my soul and my wits and whatever I am and whatever I took with me."

"’Whatever I took with me’...? Gripping it so slightly he bled, even while having no will to live. Why would a man do that? By following the logic to its conclusion, it means he held something that meant more than his life. For a man like Igor, a mercenary who valued his own life above all else, what could be more valuable? Money, perhaps? No, it can’t be. Igor abandoned missions in favour of his own life."

Supposedly, he was told to assassinate a concubine of the previous Caliph, Şehzade Suleimanthe, and fled when encountering an eunuch guard. He recognized his limits.

So what was more valuable than a life?

"Another life, perhaps...?"

His Qi Sense roared to life. Igor’s corpse was being carried out and burned. Yet...

’My intuition is telling me something is wrong. Logic dictates something is wrong. I killed him. I have his heart and farmed his organs. His body should be...’

The body.

Not the soul.

"Is it possible...? Is whatever he held—or rather—what he took from the World Tree a granter of reincarnation?"

Silence. There was no one to answer his questions. All he had was his paranoia. There were tens of thousands of items capable of fitting in one’s palm. It could have been a simple tree branch or...or...

Dasha flipped back to the illustrations of the World Trees: one depiction by Igor as he saw it, one by the centaur in his previous travels, and the last by Giovanni Bruno.

"I’ve read Giovanni’s works. He never mentioned being a Voyager."

The House of Wisdom either censored it or they simply didn’t acquire the journal Igor did. Dasha leaned toward the latter. Point was, each World Tree was too different to be mistaken for the other. Igor’s was a pillar with blue wisps, the Centaur’s was like a Japanese Cherry Blossom tree, and Giovanni’s clipping alluded to the Flaming Tree or the Delonix regia.

"Rather than changing appearances, given the immeasurable size of the Current of Darkness, it seemed more likely that these are different World Trees. Different World Trees...what would that mean? Is it possible these World Trees act as anchors to the world? If that’s the case then why isn’t there more study on it? More mentions of it? Throughout my time here, I always try to squeeze in several books to read. To understand the locations and political aspects of this new world. So how have I never even heard a mention of this? The House of Wisdom’s books have mentioned the Current of Darkness here and there. From the start, I’ve hypothesized they are censoring information in order to stop certain conclusions from being reached."

The significance of more than one World Tree, what could it mean?

It wasn’t just this World Tree business, the House of Wisdom did the same in regards to the creators of Heavenly Tower like the Administrators and Admins. No detailed academia allowed on the topic, only children’s picture books and the like. The library was very subtle with details like this. Athena or whoever was causing the censorship was very thorough. Only scholars and men like Dasha likely noticed the strange bits and pieces that were either edited or taken out.

Dasha’s fingers tapped on his knee. Suddenly, he was agitated. "I have so many plans and now I have this distraction. The Current of Darkness, is it worth traversing? No, no, later, later. I have to act as Myth. Myth and Xander, those are my first priorities. Daily meditations too. My battle against the goddesses will happen soon. Very soon."

A knock tapped at his door. His agitation was exhaled and he got up. It was the boy. Dasha opened it, red tengu mask donned.

"Yes?"

"Here is your Teleportation Badge." The boy handed over what was a flat skull, perfectly fit in his palm. "To activate it, fill your blood and chant your name. As long as you are in the Underground, you will be teleported back here. You may also use it to return to the first floor."

Hence the teleportation circles down there.

"So it will not work if I am in the heavens?"

A glance. "The heavens? Oh, no. No, no. Never."

"Fascinating..."

When Dr. Thorntone arrived, he would have her analyze this little device thoroughly. ’I suspect it’s more of a signal rather than a device that actually causes teleportation.’

"One last question," Dasha said. "Igor’s corpse...you burned it, correct?"

"..." A curious look. "I believe so. Why? Did you wish to take an item?"

"Is that allowed?"

"No. If you wished to take something, it should have happened in the battle. Otherwise, all personnel is kept by us."

His Qi Sense tried to find where they took it but couldn’t. Was it on the upper floors?

Suspicions aside, he thanked the boy and closed the door.