POV Swap – Tobias

Sighing to myself, I began pacing around the garden that remained inside this circular prison.

From what I could tell, there were two environments in this place; an underground cave and a garden on the surface. Although I’m not sure ‘garden’ is the right word. It’s more of a… well, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not a forest; there aren’t any trees.

…It’s more like someone threw seeds from various plants randomly around and let them grow without any sort of supervision. There’s no organization to their placement, and there are no two identical plants in the same area. Some of the plants are obviously dangerous or poisonous, but they’re easy to spot and avoid.

Maybe, an unsupervised garden is the best way to describe it?

Regardless, the good news is there isn’t any immediate danger. This entire place seems to be surrounded by some type of barrier, a circular one that goes around the perimeter, and there doesn’t seem to be anything dangerous inside the barrier.

The barrier reflects light in a similar manner to a mirror, thus I could clearly see my reflection in the barrier. Although that also meant I couldn’t see past the barrier to the other side.

As for the bad news… Well, as it turns out, that circular barrier prevents me from leaving. Still, I have an idea.

God-Hunter might be able to break through the barrier (hopefully). After all, she could damage a fully grown world tree.

Reaching into my bag…

Ah… I looked toward my empty back, once again remembering that my bag hadn’t been teleported with me.

Oh, that is definitely not good. That’s the opposite of good. God-hunter is in my bag… meaning she’s still in my room underneath the volcano in the Third Zone.

I wanted to facepalm. I cannot believe I forgot I’d placed her in my bag. It should’ve been the first thing to pop into my head after losing my bag. Instead I only thought about the musket and mana lights.

Breathing deeply, I urged myself to calm down. Wasting time wasn’t a good plan. I couldn’t exactly do anything about losing her at this point; I needed to focus on what I could do.

Summoning various weapons from the wristband, I tried the strength of the barrier only to be disappointed when it didn’t seem to do… anything.

I spent the next couple hours trying anything I could think of to open the barrier. Breathing fire on it, slamming into it, throwing random rocks into the barrier.

All my experiments did was prove that the barrier was extremely tough and goes up into the sky a decent distance. As for whether it also travels underground, that’s something I’m going to have test later.

Whilst I had been preoccupied with testing out the barrier, Gromrit had returned.

“You’re definitely not going to be able to pass through the barrier that way.” Gromrit laughed, apparently he had been watching my attempts. “Even I couldn’t force my way through the barrier. You don’t have the slightest chance.”

Momentarily frowning, I didn’t speak.

The drastic change in the way he acted toward me bothered me. It felt like he was trying to act… friendly.

Reading into his specific wording…. He couldn’t force his way through, so maybe there’s a backdoor or authority that allows him to pass through the barrier. Anything with authority and permission can potentially be hacked? There’s no such thing as a perfect security system.

Closing my eye, I tried sensing the mana in the surrounding hopefully figuring out whether there were any wards.

The massive amount of mana clogged my senses. I had only barely adjusted to the circumstances, attempting to sense the specific flow of mana in the surroundings was completely impossible.

In fact, even trying to sense mana made me feel sick.

Quietly analyzing…. I probably have two-ish months. If I don’t manage to escape and contact Rin with two months to eight months, Stanley will likely meet up with Rin and inform her of my situation.

Without any method of assessing my condition, Rin might reload.

Whilst I had been thinking to myself, Gromrit had disappeared back into the cave. Apparently he didn’t care about my actions of trying to escape.

… I think I’d rather Gromrit forbid me from attempt to escape. At the very least that meant it was possible to escape. His nonchalant attitude bothers me more because it means, in his mind, there’s no way I could possibly escape.

Regardless, I have to find a way. Preferably quickly, there’s no telling when Rin will get the news that I’m missing and reload.

The next few days were spent trying out every conceivable method of passing through the barrier.

I tried everything and anything I could think of… the various things I’ve done ranged from creating random wards to explode and interfere with the barrier to straight up peeing on it.

Nothing worked.

Also, the barrier does go underground. Far as I could tell, at least thirty-feet. Likely the barrier just forms a circular diameter around the middle of this place, which means that the barrier should also go all the way into the sky.

Without any way to escape, days soon turned into week, then months.

Standing inside a small carved out portion of the underground cave that I’d taken as a temporary residence. I looked toward the wall with various tally marks on it, each tally marking a day.

Sighing, I paced around the cave.

To keep sane, I’ve been occasionally diving into the virtual hub or illusionary world… or whatever it’s called from the wristband. Exploring there for a couple hours each day before backing out.

While I managed to adapt to the mana density in this place, sensing wards ended up being too complicated and difficult with the density of corrupted mana in the atmosphere.

Gromrit randomly popped in approximately every week or so, presumably to check I’m still here and alive. There wasn’t much to say about him, he didn’t do anything. I was expecting him to attempt to refine me into a pill or something, but nothings happened. He just occasionally talks about random stuff.

It’s possible he’s just waiting for me to fatten up, metaphorically speaking. Plants obviously make better cultivation resources when they’re older.

So, before that happens, I need to escape… but how am I going to escape from this place?

Basically, I’ve determined I need to use the time shard but I have no idea how to utilize it. It just seems to be a normal gem-like stone from my perspective.

I’ve tried almost everything I could to figure out how to operate it. Well, anything that seemed reasonable.

The main two things I haven’t tried is dripping blood on it like we’re in a Xianxia novel, and eating the time shard.

I haven’t dripped blood on it because I literally cannot get myself to bleed. Honestly, though, I don’t think dripping blood on the time shard will do anything.

As for eating it… Although analyze did clearly state that time shard wasn’t edible. Should I try eating it? It might kill me? But it might not? Nonedible doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll kill you, right? Then again, lava’s also nonedible and eating it would probably would kill me.

Sighing, I dismissed the idea of eating it. I summon a knife from the wristband and added another tally mark cave wall.

It’s been approximately two months and seven days. I say approximately because I’m not exactly confident that a day cycle in this place is twenty-four hours.

Two months… it’s getting into the danger zone of Rin reloading.

Leaning against the wall, I pulled out the time shard and brought it to my eye.

Examining the time shard carefully and flipped the stone around in my hand. Whispered to myself. “What are your secrets…”

Falling deep into thought, an idea popped into my head. I reached into my pocket and touched the world tree seed within. I stared at the seed, maybe…

With an idea in my head, I rushed over toward the barrier.

Previously, I’d always wanted to give the world tree seed to Rin. My mindset had been locked on destroying the barrier, or bypassing the wards… but what if I didn’t need to be the one to do it?

If I’m remembering correctly, a world tree absorbs nearby mana and purifies it. The key point in that sentence is absorbing nearby mana.

Meaning, it should absorb the mana making up the defensive barrier. Unfortunately the mana in the barrier is massive. Otherwise it wouldn’t be able to exist. It would take at least a couple more months before the tree has grown enough to do that.

That’s why I’m praying I might be able to utilize time shard will potentially speed up the process.

Sadly, I still have no idea how to do that.

Digging a small pit several inches deep, I planted the world tree seed beside the barrier.

Gathering up nearby and drinking the remaining water in the Canteen of Spiritual Recovery, I began moving and pouring regular water onto the seed.

Right now, it’s might be the only remaining hope for escape. Especially since I cannot seem to figure out how to utilize the time shard.

Thus, I have to be very careful in taking care of it.

Even if it cannot completely destroy the barrier, it might be able to weaken it enough that I could damage it in other ways.

More days passed by swiftly. Everyday, I checked on the plant and poured water on it. Slowly the plant sprouted from the ground..

I wasn’t sure if it required water to grow, but there’s no way I was going to take any risks. Even if a world tree seed could grow without water, pouring water on it definitely wouldn’t hurt the plant.

The seed took approximately two weeks to grow several inches tall and sprout its first leaf and noticed it starting to absorb the surrounding mana.

Grow little plant. Its leaves were a healthy green. Gently stroke the leaf of the plant, I gradually got excited.

The next few days passed by, and slowly I noticed a problem with the plant. It had begun to wither.

Why? I couldn’t help but pay more attention.

Unfortunately, the plant’s condition continued to get worse. The baby world tree had turned from its health green to an unhealthy yellow and orange color with a crack down its only leaf.

“What the matter little guy?” I nervously gaze at the plant and leaned down over the tiny world tree.

Even though I knew there wasn’t much I could do for it, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling nervous, it was my main plan for escaping this place. If it withered and died, I didn’t have a clue what to do.

Why had it begun to wither?

The only hypothesis I could come up with was that the density of corrupted mana was too high for it to deal with. The mana it had begun to absorb mana was killing it, instead of helping it grow.

I had no idea how to deal with the corrupted mana in its system. The only thing I could think of was occasionally feeding the plant with my own purified mana.

For next week, I gradually nursed it back to health. Supplied it with a portion of my own mana at regular intervals seemed to have a positive effect. The leaves had stopped withering and the plant returned to a health color, although its sole leaf still had a distinct crack on it.

At the same time, I realized that I didn’t need to rely solely on the plant to absorb away the mana from the barrier. I could also try myself. While a grown up world tree would definitely absorb far more than I ever could, it wasn’t grown up yet.

I began making a focused attempt to absorb mana from the surroundings. Although, to be honest, I didn’t like this plan.

The main reason is that I felt like was the pig actively eating the food meant to fatten it up. Gromrit had a motive behind providing such a high-mana environment. I seriously doubt that motive was beneficial to me.

Also, I find it doubtful that I’ll be able to absorb enough mana to have an effect on the barrier.

Regardless, I didn’t feel like I had any other choice. Even if I was a pig provided food to fatten me, I had to eat the food. Otherwise I'd be just stuck here forever.