Chapter 38: Chapter 37: The hummingbird

With roots that dig towards the heart of the world, the stoic giant that is known as the world-tree, sits. Its boughs rise up so high as to scratch the clouds above. Its roots reach from the western edge of the continent, all the way to the shores of the eastern one.

And all around its massive base, a trunk, which acts as a pillar strong enough to hold the heavens themselves up into the air, sits a city that thrives like no other.

The world-tree was given to us by the gods, during the season of their departure from our mortal-coil, all of those generations ago.

Nourished and sustained by the ashes and the bones that were left behind after a world-shattering, one-hundred year crisis, a simple sprout grew to become this magnificent icon of our peoples.

At the very base of the world-tree is the central-beginners dungeon. An ancient dungeon that, despite its expertise and central location and floor span of well over one-hundred floors, is still to this day of the very lowest level and difficulty of any known dungeons in the world. It appears to have adopted a unusual strategy of simply never growing too powerful to be a nuisance.

As such, it remains one of the oldest and most sacred dungeons of our nation.

The core has never been communicated with, despite the attempts of the high magical scholars of every generation since.

— Perhaps, like the tree itself, it is simply a generous gift, left to us by our progenitors.