Shades of the New World

Chapter 153: The Pale World

...

Evin sat silently on one of the Giant tree's roots, pondering how to burn it down to the ground.

Almost half a day had passed inside the Pale World (temporarily named so by Evin), with Evin entering every building of the decaying Ekhri Tribe, searching for things that he could use as some kind of a fire source. Sadly, there weren't any unique objects inside the buildings, except for Nasst's mansion and the places that Evin frequented: The cafeteria, some of the shops that Evin went to, Zorrik's room, etc.

All the other places and buildings were completely empty, except for some few things that Evin would expect in a house. A bed, a chair, a light source, and a table. All of them in the same shape and size. It was a very haunting and traumatizing experience to say the least. 

Evin half expected some spots in the city to not have any buildings, or anything, but thankfully, the same thing as the furniture seemed to happen. The parts of the buildings never seen by Evin were seemingly constructed in accordance to his imagination.

At this point, it was obvious that the whole city was based on Evin's own memories. Plus of course, the added decay.

This meant that the only things that could burn were the wood and burnable materials that were used to build the buildings But Evin wasn't sure if they would be useful at all.

After finishing this little tour, Evin realized a few things. 

First of all, the white ashes, as Evin decided to call them, were a definite no-no. After Evin sat on the white ash like thing and got up, he found that the spots where his pants touched the ash had become more worn out and pale after he tried to pat the white ash off.

Moreover, Evin's hands that touched the white ash had also become drier and more lifeless as well. Evin plucked his hair out and put it on the white ash, to see it becoming white and shriveled at a very alarming pace.

In hindsight, Evin was just glad he didn't sprawl on it like an idiot. 

One more thing he noticed, was that Evin didn't feel neither tired, nor hungry in this place. He ran about for half a day, going through every little house and building, but he never felt the need to sit down and rest for even a second. But his mind did feel tired after it all, slightly. This greatly reminded him of the time he spent as a spirit. 

In fact, it was exactly the same as the time he spent as a spirit, except for the fact that he could touch and move things. He also felt more powerful, compared to his state on Earth. Perhaps it was because he was a mage now and had mana, or perhaps it was because of this place, but one thing was certain. The glowing blue spores, or whatever they were that the tree spewed out, they were very helpful to Evin. 

At first Evin was quite wary of the tree and anything that had to do with it, especially with the human face shaped flowers, but he could feel that his body as a spirit was being strengthened gradually with prolonged contact with the blue vine-like tree and the spores of the flowers.

There was also the blue ring around his vision, but he had gotten used to it at this point.

Upon closer inspection, the flowers could be described like dark blue colored sunflowers, but instead of the brown head there was a literal human face on it. As far as Evin could tell, there was no two flowers with identical human faces. There were females, children, old people, you name it. But as much as he was weirded out by the stuff, he was sure of one thing.

"I really don't think I should burn this tree if I want to survive here"

Evin wasn't 100 % sure, but he was very confident that burning down this tree was tantamount to suicide. Without it, he would be exposed to the corrosive decaying features of the white ash, and would just slowly die out. But his only hint at leaving this place were Twelve's words. 

"Perhaps Twelve was lying to me? And what is wrong with Twelve in the first place?" 

Evin thought deeply about Twelve's behavior. When he had first entered the World of Time when he was a toddler, he was scared away by a high-pitched grating voice that he heard when he was leaving. Evin was now sure that it was Twelve. He just wasn't sure which Twelve was it. 

'Probably Psycho Twelve'

The next time he saw her was when the Authorities were meeting and Twelve was sitting next to Two Tales with a cheshire smile. Evin didn't see her talking to the other Authorities during the meeting, but she did talk with him a bit afterwards, when Evin was asking stuff from Helain.

At that time, Twelve acted relatively normally. Her tone sounded slightly lazy and annoyed, with a slight smile on her face.

But when Helain and Veidrakar left, her slight smile turned into a much wider one and she started to stare at Evin a bit differently. Evin didn't mind it that much at the time, but there was a clear difference to how she acted. 

The problem became even more apparent when Evin met her the last time. 

She first came in a frilly dress that was widely used in the Western Kingdom, but she immediately changed it to simpler clothes from Earth. Her way of speaking was also similar to how she talked when she was with Helain and Veidrakar. 

But after her silver hand touched Evin's head, her personality changed drastically and her tone of voice was different as well. 

'Then everything went to shit and now I'm stuck in this situation'

But Evin was sure that the voice Evin heard at the edge of the city was normal Twelve. This was the reason why he was willing to trust Twelve's words and try to burn the tree down. But the tree was essential to his survival here, so Evin was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

"Perhaps I have to burn it down in one go But it's not like the tree is easy to burn as well," Evin thought with despair. 

Evin was used to calling it a tree, but the thing really wasn't a tree. He cut open one of the vines, and found that it was more like a vein that pumped whatever this thick, dark-blue liquid was.

If he had to make an educated guess, the seaweed-like vines should be composed of at least 95% water by volume. This meant that they were even more watery than watermelons. 

But it was still shaped like a tree and acted like a tree with its flowers and roots and everything, so it was quite confusing. But Evin was sure of one thing:

'At this point, if I try to set fire to the thing, it would more likely boil, rather than burn' 

So Evin had to find out a way to heat up the atmosphere in hopes to get the water percentage inside the 'tree' to die out. Perhaps it would be able to burn when it becomes 70% or close to it. Normal trees usually had a water percentage of 50% after all.

One way to do that was to increase the heat of the surroundings. A hot place would have a ton of molecules and air particles running amok, creating heat through movement. But if Evin was able to control molecules, he would probably be god at this point. When he used the World of Fire to burn things, it mostly involved willpower.

The other option that Evin had was to clear up this perpetually grey sky and shine some fucking sunlight on this wretched land. He knew that there was a sun, or something similar that shone light around here, since Twelve told him to beware the night and also he could notice that as time passed, the shinier parts of the grey sky moved about normally.

When Evin first came to this place, the sky shined brightest right on top of Evin, but as time passed, it slowly moved westward, or at least what Evin thought was the West. And now, it was almost beyond the horizon. 

And if Evin could clear up the clouds somehow, it would help him greatly in drying up the tree. There was a reason why most plants couldn't grow in the desert. 

But that was a problem for later. Now, Evin was most worried about what would happen at night. His plan was to hole up in Nasst's mansion and maybe peek outside to see what was happening.

He had also spent some time, trying to access any of the Worlds, but his hope to use magic for the time being was destined to be destroyed. As long as he didn't somehow learn how to use raw mana, then there really wasn't much hope for him to fight his way out of a desperate situation.