As I progressed further into the Deep Green, more and more major nodes showed up. The total number went down but the nodes I found were rarely below medium in size. That should have made it more difficult to progress but it was somewhat easier. The additional space in between made it simple to find a gap to slip through. Even if I could easily pass by a minor node with my main body, my scout body had to keep away from it just in case the [Node Guardian] was a predator.

That was something interesting I noticed: Every node had a guardian. And I even witnessed several exchanges where a new arrival took out the previous owner. For the minor nodes, that was quite common. They gave too little benefit to truly increase its guardian’s strength. The larger the node and the better its aspects aligned with its guardian, the less wildlife even tried to get close. Most importantly, someone that was a [Node Guardian] would not go out looking for a bigger node. That was in the nature of the Skill and helped even more in protecting the major nodes’ guardians from attackers that could challenge them.

Alongside the increase in major nodes obviously came an increase in evolved animals. It also seemed that sapience was much more common for them. I talked about it with Catori and she suggested a minor enrichment would give fewer Attribute points in Intelligence or Wisdom since it was finished faster. It made sense to me, at least.

With how many sapient animals I spotted thanks to my soul perception, I was slightly overwhelmed trying to decide if I should contact any of them. In the end, I decided to leave it be. Unless I would find someone with a node that had auram or alienis, there was no reason to even consider the time investment of teaching them about society. It would take months to get to a point where they might be of help.

There were a few close calls where I was almost spotted. I avoided using [Hidden Identify] on sapient animals after the first one had shown up at such a high level. It was very much possible some of the others would notice my Skill. Seeing how I found some non-sapient animals at levels around 150 only four days into the forest, I was happy with my decision.

I was running on my fifth scout by the end of the week. It no longer really mattered what kind of animal it was, as long as it was non-sapient. Though, if I was honest, some of the sapients here were juicy targets. Simply for the fact that they had that vis enrichment and the high levels. They would be much better equipped to scout with. Especially when I considered how sapience was primarily just a small difference in Attributes, according to the system. It still felt wrong, for some reason. I knew I was killing no matter what but I was used to hunting non-sapient prey for food. A hang-up, no, a reminder of our previous life.

Nine days after entering the Deep Green, I was piloting another monkey through the branches. It was not an owl monkey, this time. The body was a little smaller and the face more ‘baboon’ than not. It was also very agile. That was the only reason I managed to avoid dropping into a nearly bottomless rift suddenly opening up in the forest floor. I barely caught a vine hanging over the pit and swung to the other side.

After coming to rest on a branch, I tried to calm my racing heart. The pit was very similar to the ruptures I had seen in the mountains to the west. I remembered some kind of bend in the continent from when I was hanging off the bottom of the world. This had to be that same thing extended out even farther.

I checked the sky. The sun was just setting which meant I was able to see it. Was the line really moving straight along the whole continent? That made some sense. If it had cracked from some sort of gravitational pull, or the hungry node, this would be a likely result. I considered for a moment to simply cross the ravine and move deeper into the forest before deciding against it. Instead, I would follow the rupture for a while. I could check on my position with the great tree every once in a while and simultaneously scout this landmark. Maybe something would come up. If not, I was not losing much from following it. And so I did.

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Strangely enough, there were fewer nodes directly around the rift than in the forest. It was almost as if the line was cut through the metaphysical just as much as the physical. The erratic pattern from before simply stopped and, after exploring the other side for a bit, continued past it. That let me move along much faster than before.

I still used the scouting method because frankly, the rift was a little scary. It was filled with thick fog starting a dozen metres deep, or so. Water splashed at the bottom, sometimes more, sometimes less. I even ran into a weird spot where it flowed from both directions and then disappeared into the rocks. At least it sounded like that.

The humid climate in the rift was the perfect breeding ground for all kinds of moss and vines. Some smaller trees also hung on outcroppings of rock and even the occasional flower bloomed in the depths. If it had been warmer, I would call it tropical. But it was more of a temperate climate. The vines were mostly ivy and the flowers were lilies or bugbanes. Even the birds nesting in the walls and moss were very much not tropical. There were starlings, tits, robins, swallows, and the occasional corvids. It was quite the beautiful sight.

Three days of following the ravine led me to a very strange place. There was a crossroads. A ravine crossroads. Something tickled in my mind before I saw the lines were entirely too symmetrical. The ravine I was coming from had the same angle to the two that were splitting off. And both of those had the same angle between each other. I froze completely with the crow body I was using at the moment before quickly moving it to safety and following with my real body.

The observation only got more obvious once ‘I’ arrived. Not only was the crossroads perfectly symmetrical, the three ravines were also perfectly straight. The one leading off to the right, which was south-east-south give or take, seemed to be a little less deep and wider. Almost as if someone had pushed it together at the bottom. I could see the great tree off slightly to the right somewhere beyond the horizon. Even with a straight line that was a perfect gap in the forest, I could not judge the distance.

The ravine going off somewhere around north-east-north looked nearly identical to where I had come from. Only that I could spot hills in the distance. They might have been mountains but it was difficult to tell. It was simply too far away.

I almost thought there was some kind of node at the bottom of the crossroads. How else would it have come to be? But I could not see or feel anything. There had to be something else behind it. For a few seconds, I considered diving into the ravine before I caught myself. I had no business researching the detailed structure of our continent. I was looking for silverwood and for people that might be able to help.

Still, I realized I had been a little… slow. The ravine was a perfectly calm gap in the dangers of the Deep Green. I could easily use it as a base to explore alongside. I could also use it to move much quicker to the huge tree.

For now, I took off and climbed higher and higher. Still in my metal body, I observed the forest from high up, a few kilometres, maybe. I found I was deep enough already that the human plains were but a small slip of lighter green in the distance. The mountains to the west where the ork valleys lay barely peeked through the fog. Having my eyes follow the north-ravine to the hills showed a similar silhouette just barely visible. There were mountains there as well. They were much further away. The great tree really had not gotten much closer. I could at least spot some smaller branches in its crown but the leaves were still nothing more than a green mass so these ‘small’ branches had to be still quite huge.

At least I could easily spot the ravine cutting through the forest, now that I knew what to look for. The gap was truly tiny, not much more of a difference than Stormbringer’s path but being right above it showed it as smooth lines of grey and a lighter green. That meant I could significantly improve my search. Maybe there was silverwood somewhere here. I really hoped so. Where else would I find the rare tree other than in a near-endless forest? The only problem: I was not seeing any of the supposedly blue leaves from all the way up here.