Now, the question became, what was the actual origin of the Emerald Ghost Tree?
Well, Petra had a few clues…
Petra knew that the Emerald Ghost Tree should be relatively famous, as well as appear in at least a few history books. She tried to follow that line of thought, but she was incapable of finding anything that stood out when she looked into it…
That could either mean that it was too old, or it had a 'deceptive appearance'.
That was very irritating…
The next clue was the blue pool that had formed beside the Emerald Ghost Tree.
This pool was created by the decomposition of some creature that had mixed with the sap (blood) of the Emerald Ghost Tree. There were only a small number of creatures whose remains could combine with the tree's sap, not to mention produce the effects that the pool provided, so Petra methodically followed this direction and almost drove herself mad in the process.
Again, it was a dead end…
There was basically no information at all!
Eventually, she gave up on this idea as well.
The final clue she had came from the west.
To be specific, it came from the 'secret stash' of the old ant.
Petra had gained a number of things from that stash, including the strange Leviathan Blood, Beast King Blood, and the Plant Saint Samples.
Finally, she found a match…
Not just one match, but two!
Petra knew absolutely nothing about the Beast Kings and the Plant Saints, only that they all seemed to be dead or sealed and divided.
To her surprise, the blue pool seemed to be created from the body of the Beast King, whose blood matched the vial labeled 'Cochleomen', and the core sample of the Plant Saint labeled 'Porey'.
That meant that not only had a Beast King died here, but—
Petra's eyes scanned the Emerald Ghost Tree.
—This tree was in a state of death, no, perhaps… half-death? Petra wasn't sure what to call it. The tree was alive, but the plant spirit, presumably, the plant spirit of one of the nine plant saints, had died. Could this still be considered a living thing?
She didn't know.
For some reason, Petra felt a bit sad...
-
Mm, anyways… Petra was presented with a few options!
She could try to 'revive' the Emerald Ghost Tree, but this wasn't as straightforward as one might think.
To revive a plant spirit, many things could go wrong.
First of all, reviving a plant spirit was an extremely expensive thing. Fortunately, Petra had one of the few known materials that could do it, and that was the 'black twig' that Failllith had used as payment a while back when shopping from her back in Solarin Castle.
As for what would happen after using it, it depended.
If she revived the old plant spirit, again, presumably the Plant Saint's plant spirit, it could result in reviving a demigod and destroying Petra's home…
That was bad.
Very bad!
So, the next option was naturally to 'birth' a new plant spirit!
That sounded safer in theory, but Petra didn't know enough about the Plant Saints, so any uniqueness or strange quirks they carried might cause the effects to reverse, distort, or fail entirely. Also, if she birthed a new plant spirit while the old plant spirit was still alive, just dormant, it was possible to wake both of them up and cause the tree to destroy itself from the inside out.
That was also, very very very bad!
This was almost as bad as letting a random guy destroy her house just for the sake of it…
Petra wasn't that greedy.
She didn't want to risk it if she didn't have to…
The final option was to create an 'artificial plant spirit', something that she cultivated from another plant and then implanted into the Emerald Ghost Tree. This was the safest option, because she could basically make it a living bomb, so Petra naturally planned to go with it.
Her shoulders relaxed a little as she finally settled on that thought.
But! Just at that moment—
Poya appeared from nowhere and started to pull on Petra's sleeve.
Petra looked down at the bug-eyed baby, and for some reason… She almost felt as if Poya wanted her to revive the old plant spirit.
What an odd feeling…
Why would she think that?
Petra had only just realized that she hadn't seen Poya since they returned to the Emerald Ghost Trees domain. It was odd, too odd… but, why was it so odd…?
Petra just stared down into her big black eyes…
One small child looked down into the eyes of another small child. Starlight seemed to flicker in their gaze. There were no words exchanged, but something seemed to somehow be conveyed, an oddity that was only possible between these to [?] who would eventually awaken the 'Study of [?]'.
Poya stared back, unblinkingly, her expression blank and unchanging, as if waiting for Petra to understand something that she couldn't put into words.
Time passed like that…
A minute… maybe longer, it was unknown. The breeze rustled the leaves above them while neither of them moved. It was an inhumanly long pause, but… after what seemed like an eternity, Poya looked away, then waddled off like a derby mushroom shape penguin.
She didn't need to say anything, after all—
Petra understood.
Petra watched the mushroom baby leave. Something in her eyes stirred, a small shift, a realization, or perhaps a form of resolve. Levy just watched from the side, silent, her expression unreadable. Curiosity flickered behind her playful eyes.
After a moment, Petra nodded and spoke to the void.
"Ok, so it's like that… then, I'll do my best." The words dissipated on the wind.
* * *
One hour later…
Levy finished patching up the 'old wound' on the side of the Emerald Ghost Tree, while Petra carefully collected the last of the 'blue pond' and stored it for later use.
She wiped her forehead with her tiny hand, leaving a faint streak of blue residue across her cheek.
Petra turned to look at Levy.
Levy was here to help Petra with two things…
First, Petra intended to 'lift up' the Emerald Ghost Tree.
Yes, that's right...
She intended to raise the Emerald Ghost Tree about thirty meters into the air. After that, she needed Levy's help to 'mold' the roots of the Emerald Ghost Tree. This didn't just extend to the immediate roots, she also wanted to reshape all the roots that extended out into the unknown depths of the earth and retract them back into the barrier, then reshape them into a more efficient and convenient structure. This was important for what she planned to do later.
After that, she also needed Levy, this 'reliable' big sister, to help her with her 'Grafting Project'.
The grafting project was something Petra had wanted to do for a long time. This was a procedure performed through a technique she had mastered back on Earth. In fact, she was particularly skilled in this aspect, far surpassing her peers at the time. Most of this technique came from her research on combining poisonous plants to breed more deadly plants, but the technique itself applied to normal plants as well.
Over the past few months, Petra had collected a ridiculous number of very high-level 'unique' plants throughout her journey, so before she reawakened the plant spirit of the Emerald Ghost Tree, she planned to give it a 'big upgrade'.
This was done by fusing them all together through Earth's grafting techniques.
She had Levy do an appraisal on what she didn't understand—
And Petra's inventory was the following…
-
The Black Twig—
The black twig she received from Failllith was the twig of a powerful plant spirit that possessed the ability to reawaken any plant spirit. This was a well-known treasure, but its source was veiled in mystery.
If it were given a grade from one to nine, this small black twig would undoubtedly be an eighth, or ninth, order item, so Petra couldn't help but think—
That stupid corpse definitely got scammed!
"Nyahahaha!"
-
A Branch of the World Tree—
Next was the branch of the world tree she had nicked when passing.
While everybody else was dying like idiots during the end phase of the second calamity, Petra had climbed up and sawed off a massive branch of the World Tree. She had literally taken as many pieces as her ant army could fly back, and her overall hull was enormous.
Despite not being able to make a second trip before everything collapsed, she still had a lot of gains!
This wasn't enough to build her entire mansion, no, perhaps it was, she didn't know, but it would definitely be sufficient for remodeling the main towers.
-
Plant Saint Cores—
The Nine Plant Saint Cores, or at least the parts she had managed to collect, were next…
These were each an equally precious treasure, and combining them together and fusing them into the Emerald Ghost Tree would be no small task. Petra would definitely need Levy's help for this part, too, but after it was done, regardless of what the Emerald Ghost Tree, or 'Porey', would become, it would definitely take a step further in its evolution.
Petra was looking forward to it…
-
Time Seed—
The Time Seed was a strange white seed she had taken along with a pocket full of lint, after that weirdo had shooed her away from the shiny mountain monolith.
Petra had a strong 'spatial sense', but her 'chrono sense', her ability to feel the flow of time, was somehow worse than an average person's! In fact, it was so bad that she sometimes almost forgot the flow of time completely.
It was a bit embarrassing…
But Petra just assumed it was a 'trait' of all 'salted fish'.
Regardless of her incompetence, the small seed was, according to Professor Levy, something called the 'Time Weavers Net'. The 'Time Weavers Net' was a vine-like plant that could sink into the 'River of Time' and catch weaker existences that passed you.
In simpler terms, some 'special creatures' weren't born in 'three-dimensional space', they were born as 'different-dimensional' lifeforms.
This wasn't a 'higher-dimensional being', which we will get into far later, it was simply a different type of life, and had no direct effect on things in normal space. In the same way you were born into the physical world, they were born in the River of Time, Soul Sea, Void, etc...
To catch a creature that 'passes you in the river of time', you can imagine sailing downstream, this represents your normal time, and a fish behind you suddenly passes in front of you, allowing you to scoop it out of the water. The act of 'scooping' means pulling whatever attempted to pass you into the three-dimensional space of the present, or in this example, into your boat.
This was how people who studied the field of time often caught otherworldly creatures with a time element, it was basically just fishing.
At least, that was Levy's explanation…
Petra was a bit of an airhead when she didn't care, especially when it was related to 'time', so Levy might have given her a simplified example.
Anyways…
The Time Weaver's Net was a plant that could do exactly that!
-
A branch of the Chaos Heart—
Finally, Petra also wanted to add a branch of the 'Chaos Heart', this little loach, that had grown in her sea of consciousness, or more specifically, in the center of her inner library to the mix. She figured, if it didn't want to do anything for her, she might as well see if it did something for someone else!
Hump!
This tree came from the seed that allowed Petra to first open her Inner Library, but she still had no idea what it did or how to grow it.
It simply floated there, doing absolutely nothing.
Like a squatter…
It was really frustrating!
When she snapped a branch, she had the Ethereal Echo Silverwing pull it out of her sea of consciousness, because that was something it could do, and brought it to Levy.
When she showed it to Levy, Petra saw genuine confusion cross her face for the first time.
And by 'first time', she meant in either of her lives…
Petra asked why, but Levy didn't answer.
This all happened before Levy agreed to help with the Grafting Project and raising the Emerald Ghost Tree, so Petra suspected that the reason she agreed to help had something to do with it.
Anyways…
-
Those were all the pieces…
Petra had no idea what they would create, but Levy was 'sure' that they could fuse together perfectly, so Petra was rearing to go!
* * *
Before ending the day, there was one more thing Petra wanted to take a look at…