<div>


    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    The rest of the week was more of the same. I stockpiled another fifty six wishes, but decided against using them. I’d had a MASSIVE shift in stats, more than my current total, and while I wasn’t exactly out of control in the Acheron, where I was able to spar with an S-ranker in an S-rank environment I couldn’t break, my precision wasn’t exactly what I was comfortable with.


    Of course, that was functionally irrelevant to my grandfather. It was the final day of approach toward the Divine Tree Temple and we were getting in one last sparring session. I’d been refining Extinction Event, learning to use it in combination with my Waltz more smoothly, and I was landing it pretty solidly these days, though of course it still did nothing.


    “Am I even ruffling your hair?” I demanded. “Like, I know you’re stronger than me, but your clothes don’t even look wrinkled. Are they S-rank too?”


    “A-rank, actually,” he laughed. “And no, not even a slight tousle. Kid, I have roughly five times the amount of Impact that you do, you get that right? I’m a demigod. Even beyond the impossibility of you harming a normal S-ranker, the idea of you being able to affect me at your rank is ludicrous. I could kneel in front of you and hold open my eye socket while you stabbed me in the eye and you wouldn’t even scratch my cornea.”


    Which was…fair. More than five hundred Impact (I didn’t even know how MUCH more) was bound to be an impassable gap, but I’d gotten so used to dealing with people who were NEARLY my rank where there was wiggle room that I’d forgotten how invincible the higher ranks were to me.


    “Don’t look so down,” he laughed. “Being able to punch up at low D-rank, even using gear and tricks, is pretty impressive. You’re on track to be a terrifying monster when you get older. Now, we should go get ready. We’re landing on Verdenloft in a few hours, and I’ll be introducing you to the Divine Tree Temple’s elders, one of which is an old friend of mine. I think you’re going to like her, she’s a really compassionate person. We’ve known each other for years.”


    I could tell he had nothing but genuine fondness for her, but some part of my subconscious, presumably the Fatewalker part, got a twinge that my grandmother didn’t like his “old friend” nearly as much as he did, and that she wasn’t JUST coming out here to show her support. I briefly worried at how contentious their relationship must be for my fucking FATE sense to consider it relevant, but decided I couldn’t really meddle in the affairs of S-rankers anyway so I’d do my best to stay out of it.


    Considering how stupidly in love my grandfather was with his wife, I doubted it would be anything serious, just a little tension between Celine and whoever this mysterious elder was, at worst.


    “So, Verdenloft huh? That’s the planet name?” I asked my grandfather as we packed up all of our training gear. I’d gone through a few C-rank staves over the course of the week, the repeated corrosive energy channeling too much for the poor quality barely C-rank materials over a long period of time. “What rank?”


    He beamed. “B, A-rank planets are rare. But it’s a beautiful place. The Primordial Tree Sea covers most of the landmass, and it’s been tended by the Temple for ten thousand years.” His enthusiasm for the place was evident. “Every generation, each seed for the council journeys out into the universe to collect a tree seed from a new kind of tree. The quality of the seed decides their placement in the Temple upon their return. Tasha and I met on her tree journey, and I was the one who helped her find a seed for an S-rank Wandering Soul Pine. It’s her bound tree now!”


    I followed him down the hall, intrigued by the terminology. “Bound tree? Do the Temple all use the same ability?” While not as effective as bloodlines at maintaining a cohesive power system, I knew lots of factions had specific synergy routes and Skills they merged into their abilities to stay relatively uniform.


    “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” He said with a pause. “The Temple is made up entirely of dryads. Tasha was born a dryad, but there are plenty of members who use a catalyst to switch to the Dryad racial trait. The faction is ENORMOUS, with multiple sub temples all over Verdenloft, which is widely considered to be the Dryad homeworld. We’re technically in the Fairieland already, which works out well since we were heading here to talk to your friend’s clans.”


    That actually sounded fascinating. I’d been wondering about Dryad’s back on Rackham, and now I was going to a planet full of them. Of course, knowing the whole planet was one gigantic forest made me a bit less excited, but I’d MOSTLY gotten over my hatred of the woods after creating the Heart. The feeling of the place was just so magical I couldn’t hold onto my grudge.


    But hearing where we were made me wonder something else. “How is grandma getting here anyway?” I wasn’t sure how they usually traveled, but I knew the Acheron was her personal ship. Seemed like crossing galaxies without it might be tough.


    “She’ll probably just borrow your wife’s Starpluck Bangle.” He said with a shrug. “She has techniques for placing anchor points long distance. It is a relatively Path aligned artifact that she had for a long time. They can just teleport over together and Celia can recharge the bangle after to make sure Calliope isn’t left without her escape measures.”The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    That sounded pretty damned convenient. We finally finished our trip, making it to the control room, where Sorana was standing in as Captain again. I nodded to the Saintess, who returned the gesture solemnly, and to her second Kristoff, who winked at me, otherwise maintaining a stoic demeanor. “Alright people, we should be on approach soon,” my grandfather said casually. “Do we have sensors on Verdenloft yet?”


    “Of course, your Holiness,” said Sorana serenely. “Would you like us to put up a visual?”


    “Sure, might as well let the kid see where we’re headed,” he waved carelessly and the ship, which I knew he was controlling, overrode the controls and manifested a floating green sphere in the air in front of us. “Bear witness,” he said grandly. “To the Primordial Tree Sea. The whole planet of Verdenloft is covered in trees. Not just the land, but the ocean floors have all been planted with nautical forests, and even the clouds hold some tree variants.”


    I blinked at the orb of what was probably about sixty forty green and blue, whistling at the revelation. “But how do they…do anything. Like how do you build a town when there’s trees every ten feet?”


    “Most of the settlements are built in the eldest trees, the mother trees that were planted during the Dryad’s first landing on Verdenloft.” He pointed out a few dark spots, zooming in so I could see the shapes of MASSIVE trees whose canopies covered miles. With the sensors as good as they were, he was able to shift the angle to show me the upper reaches of the trees, where huge flat platforms bridged the gap between branches, creating miles of space for buildings.


    Even as we watched, the others arrived, and Bella, who had taken to carrying Archie around, spotted the diagram and squealed with excitement. “Oh wow, that’s amazing! That’s the biggest tree I’ve ever seen, man, if you cut that thing down it would crush half a continent.”


    “It would take a Demigod to cut down one of those trees,” my grandfather said with a laugh. “And probably one with a Path specifically aimed at cutting. I don’t think I could do it. They’re A-rank, but peak A-rank, and the sheer size of them makes them pretty much impervious to most kinds of damage.”


    I wondered exactly what the dimensions were. I also wondered how the Dryads could live up there. “Isn’t it freezing at that height?” I pointed out. “Like, the air must be insanely thin, and the windchill is probably insane.”


    “The canopy protects them. Those leaves generate sunshine from the underside, to prevent the other trees below from dying of malnutrition.” He pointed at the forests below the massive mother trees. “They also generate oxygen, because, you know…trees. The cities under their branches are the lushest and most opulent on Verdenloft. The trees themselves form the Temple branches, pun intended, and each Divine Tree Temple is a unique and beautiful work of natural art, still living as it supports its caretakers.”


    Zooming in, he showed us the central area at the top of one of the mother trees, where the densely packed branches above the trunk and below the canopy wove together seemingly naturally into a towering hall of living wood, golden vines and leaves artfully covering the outside.


    “Jessie is going to lose her shit over this,” I laughed. “Is this the one we’re headed for?”


    “Yup,” he beamed. “This is Prime Pine, the lifebound tree of the very first Dryad elder of the Divine Tree Temple. It’s the largest domain of the Temple, and over ten million Dryads live in its branches. That’s pretty dense for Dryads, they mostly like to spread out.”


    Ten million people in a tree city seemed like a lot for anyone, until I remembered some of the cities I’d seen already. With spatial expansion, it wasn’t unusual to see some cities on higher ranked planets with people approaching the trillions. I hadn’t actually seen any of those myself, but I knew with more Impact space was more stable, so spatial expansion could be pushed further. Actually, the Tricorn might have housed a trillion people, it had certainly been huge.


    “So what’s this ceremony we’re here for?” I asked bluntly. “It’s not the seed search thing right? Because then we’d have to leave to search the universe, and that seems counterproductive.”


    He shook his head. “It’s the lifebonding ceremony. Dryads don’t bond with their trees until D-rank. Up to that point, they have a temporary bond with a mother tree until they pass the watershed. Once a sufficient number of born Dryads and Dryad hopefuls reach the proper rank, a ceremony is held, sending the Dryads out into the Primordial Tree Sea to find a tree to bond with from among the ocean of greenery planted by generations of Dryads before. Bonding requires not just Impact, but suitability with a tree, so it can be quite an ordeal finding a good one.”


    That sounded like a huge event. I wondered how it would work for me. I only needed a staff, so I’d need like…one branch. I wouldn’t need to find my own tree. But presumably I wanted to find a branch from one suitable for me personally.


    Zagan was probably the closest I came to being able to commune with trees, assuming Dantalion couldn’t find me something. I had a vague idea for how to refine that search, something maybe Jessie could help me with, since her lifeforce was one of the foundations of that form. I’d have to ask her about it.


    For now, our time to chat was coming to an end. Outside the viewing portal behind the holographic image, I could see a green and blue orb approaching. We had officially arrived at Verdenloft. Fascinating Dryad stuff aside, I knew what I was most excited about. The chance to hold my wife again for real after months without her was causing my heart to pound like a war drum. I’d missed her and all my other friends, and I couldn’t wait to be back with my people.


    Whatever was coming, be it the war of succession or this recruitment tour, it wouldn’t matter as long as I had them at my back. I’d proven to myself that I could handle things on my own, but I vastly preferred when I didn’t have to. Despite heading to a location I’d never visited before, I was so glad to be going home.