Chapter 91: Seed

The ingredients were already prepared, so Ethan got straight to work on the burgers.

Before long, the fragrant smell of sizzling meat filled the cabin, he assembled the patties, layered on vegetables and ketchup, and distributed the finished burgers to Pearl and the others, then he sat down across from them.

"How is it? Did you find anything?"

"I discovered something, meow." Pearl licked its whiskers.

"Planting the World Tree requires more than just World Fragments, meow."

"There are other things?"

"It also requires Fragments of Chaos."

’Fragments of Chaos?’ Ethan paused mid-bite, those were the very things that turned ordinary monsters into nightmares, the Wyrm, the Giant Centipede, the horrors that threatened the balance of the Great Forest.

"Why would planting the World Tree require Fragments of Chaos?" he asked.

Walter set down his burger and wiped his fingers. "Chaos and Order are two sides of the same coin, the World Tree represents a world, and it is impossible for any world to contain only Order, just as it is impossible for it to contain only Chaos."

He paused, letting the words settle.

"If a world possesses only one of those forces, it will sooner or later collapse."

The explanation was dense, but Ethan caught the gist, balance, even a tree that was meant to birth a new world needed a seed of darkness inside it to survive.

Pearl chimed in. "The problem is, where do we find Fragments of Chaos, meow? The books don’t record how to obtain them, meow."

"It’s not in the books?"

"Unfortunately not, it seems we’ll have to figure out another way, meow."

Ethan sighed and pulled the World Tree seed from his backpack, the walnut-sized thing sat in his palm, deceptively ordinary.

’Why did the giant dragon have to give me such a difficult seed to plant?’

"Did you guys discover anything else?"

"No, we still need to continue our research."

"I see... then I’ll leave it to you."

Over the next few days, Ethan and his group continued working through the books in the library, Ethan focused on learning to read, while Pearl, Walter, and Zharok searched for records on the World Tree and the Chaos Curse.

They flipped through every relevant volume, cross-referenced passages, checked footnotes, Pearl climbed across stacks of open texts, Walter read with the steady patience of someone who had lived a thousand years, and Zharok tore through pages at wolf-speed, but in the end, all three shook their heads, they hadn’t found any more useful information.

"Did you find anything about the curse?"

"I found some clues, meow." Pearl’s tail swished.

"It’s said that minions of Chaos can cast curses at the cost of their own lives, meow."

"Like the curse on the female ghost?"

"Exactly! And there’s good news, meow, apparently, there’s a chance to obtain a Fragment of Chaos by slaying a minion of Chaos, meow~"

"That truly is good news."

They had finally found a lead, the question now was where to find minions of Chaos, but that problem could wait.

’One thing at a time.’

"It seems there’s no longer any need for us to stay here," Walter said.

"Right. Let’s head back once Ethan learns to read, meow."

Zharok and Walter each picked a few books and settled into their usual corners, Pearl hopped onto the table beside Ethan and continued drilling him on characters.

Three more days passed, on the last morning, Ethan set down his practice sheet and picked up an actual book, the symbols that had been meaningless squiggles a week ago now resolved into words, he could read them.

[You have acquired the Reading skill.]

[Reading (Lv. 1)]

[You can read text.]

"Phew, finally learned it."

After memorizing every character, Ethan had at last acquired the Reading skill, he flipped the book open and found that he could now understand the contents.

Pearl tilted its head. "You learned really fast, meow, most humans take at least a month, meow."

"If I level up the Reading skill, will I be able to understand the languages of other races?"

What Ethan had learned was the common language of this world, Elvish, Dwarvish, and the scripts of other races remained a mystery, but the common tongue was a solid start.

"Probably, meow."

There was nothing left to keep him here, Ethan stretched, walked over to the blurry figure of the library administrator, and dipped his head. "Thank you for taking care of us during this time."

"You’re welcome, please come again next time."

He turned and left the cabin, fresh air hit his face after days of dusty book-smell, they had been in the library for so long — the Fox Beastmen should have collected enough iron ore by now, right?

’Time to go back.’

"Let’s go."

"Meow-meow, are we going home now, meow?"

"Yeah. It’s time."

"Ah, we can finally go home, meow." Pearl stretched across Ethan’s shoulder.

"It’ll probably be winter by the time we get back, meow."

’There’ll be plenty to do once we return.’ They still had to prepare for winter and build a furnace to smelt the iron ore, but the food supply was already stockpiled, and the greenhouse would keep them fed through the cold months. No major problems.

Ethan glanced at Zharok, who had grabbed the handcart’s handles without being asked, and smiled. "Are you going to stay at my place this winter?"

"We’ll talk about it later. Let’s just get home first."

Zharok was already pulling before he finished the sentence, Eager to return, apparently.

Ethan smiled and climbed onto the cart with Pearl, Walter stepped on after them.

"Meow! It’s snowing, meow!"

Snowflakes had begun drifting from the sky, tiny white flecks spiraled down one by one, silent and unhurried, Ethan reached out and caught one on his palm, it melted in an instant.

The scenery was beautiful, every branch dusted white, every stone blanketed soft, traveling through it, however, was another matter entirely, the temperature was dropping fast, and the flurries were growing thicker by the minute.

"Let’s pick up the pace before the snow gets heavy."

"Looks like a proper storm is coming," Walter said, eyes on the darkening sky.

"Everyone, be prepared."

...

The Fox Beastman village was in full swing preparing for winter.