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A small village straight out of a fairytale—the Seedling Village—sat around a giant Cranbul Tree which presented the residents with benevolent fragrance throughout the whole year. There were traces of life everywhere. Under the leaves, along the tree trunk, among the branches...

The entire village showed brilliant craftsmanship. Every house was built using mortise and tenon joints, without using any metal or nails. Every single tile and brick was carefully carved with delicate decorations, including small corners under roof hinges which couldn’t be seen usually.

Houses on different heights were connected by a number of exquisite “elevators” that were powered by wind generators made from giant tree leaves. Here, the Krakoks had shown the most perfect side of their construction talent.

It was high noon, and each of the houses was had smoke coming out of its chimney.

A small green figure dashed down the mountainside and entered the village, leaving only a brief moment for potential onlookers to see.

“A little late, Papaya!” An old Krakok, who was smoking from a pipe, greeted the girl with a smile. Another heavy-looking woman appeared from the house while dusting her flour-covered hands.

“Dear Papaya’s going to join the Grand Ceremony in Hippocrotee tomorrow. Of course she needs her practice, silly!”

After scolding her husband, the woman smiled gently at the girl. “Hello, my dear, I made some Granbul cakes today. You can try some.”

Papaya forced a smile on her pale face. “No thanks, I really need to pack my luggage for the travel now.”

The old woman nodded.

As Papaya traveled through the village, many villagers came to pay her their regards.

“As the only choir singer in this place, do make us proud, girl!”

Unfortunately, Papaya was too panicked to answer them with her own politeness now.

...

Her grandmother already prepared lunch at home.

“Ah, you’re back? Come. I’ve made an exception by making you Cranbul cheese bread today. Just this once though!”

Despite feeling joyful at being able to eat sweet food, Papaya still rushed into her grandmother’s chest while crying.

“I’m so scared, grand...”

“Papaya? Whatever’s the matter?”

“When I was practicing singing on the hill, I saw intru—”

She suddenly stopped and looked up, only to see her loving grandmother speaking in a male voice.

“What did you see?”

The gentle and clear voice sounded nice to her last time. Here, however, Papaya immediately found it cold like the worst winter frost.

She took another careful look and saw the wrinkled and kind face of her grandmother had become that of a young man... Angor’s.

When she backed away in fear and sat on the ground, she heard her grandmother’s voice again. “What is it, Papaya? Are you tired?”

Papaya’s eyes lost focus for a while. Then, she saw her grandmother again.

Hallucination?

The old woman quickly helped Papaya up and dusted her clothes while giving her gentle lectures as she had always been giving in the past decades.

These kind words couldn’t possibly come from anyone else.

Papaya tried again. “Granny, I just saw—”

Again, her words were interrupted by a series of strange laughter. She turned around and saw her own shadow shifting.

A terrible, grinning maw suddenly emerged from it.

Papaya backed away against a wall, sweating.

“Papaya dear? What happened to you today?” Her grandmother asked again.

Papaya no longer dared to answer. She knew that those pair of giants would never give her a chance.

...

Meanwhile, on a hill slope not for from Seedling Village, two concealed individuals were looking at the giant Granbul Tree in the distance.

“She stayed awake? She got a strong heart, that girl,” Shadow’s voice came.

“Stronger than you expected, no doubt. Even such a small soul knows how to act strong in front of supernaturals,” Angor’s compliment was sincere.

Despite their topic, Angor was more interested in the Krakok village in front of them.

He only heard about the perfect craftsmanship of these creatures from legends. And now, he got to witness the work of true geniuses for real.

“Their small bodies possess some really amazing intelligence... frightening, even,” Angor mumbled to himself.

“Let’s go already. Guess we already convinced her not to speak about something that she isn’t supposed to,” Shadow called.

Angor nodded and turned away, leaving the “toy village” behind.

The experience was something like a child’s dream, in which “bigger” people stumbled into the lands of “smaller” people, and it depended on the story’s reader to find out who was the main character.

“This is quite fun.”

Angor began to realize why so many wizards loved to write down all kinds of travel diaries and fantasies; it was because this world was full of fun things that were worth noting down.

Seeing more meant seeing things with more perspectives and broadening one’s mind. Such was the point of traveling.

...

They had learned about the location of Hippocrotee from Papaya. The city sat in the middle of all floating islands.

Shadow was heading to Hippocrotee to travel to the Otherworld by going through a tunnel that was activated during the Grand Ceremony, while Angor was planning to learn about the “law” of the Sorcerer’s Garden they were in.

According to what he already knew, the rule of a Sorcerer’s Garden should exist everywhere in the garden as long as it wasn’t exhausted. However, he never sensed anything like that ever since he came here.

And even if the power of the law was fully spent, the core of it should still exist, which would give birth to more power again given enough time. No wizard would ever try to exhaust the core of a Sorcerer’s Garden because it wasn’t renewable.

Usually, such a core should lay in the center of a Sorcerer’s Garden, which meant where Hippocrotee was.

Since Angor and Shadow had the same destination, they decided to travel together for a while.

Along the way, Shadow kept trying to strike up conversations with the intention of pressing for Angor’s information. He tried by asking all sorts of daily topics.

Shadow was very interested in Angor’s Nightmare Domain, which was mostly what he had been asking about.

And when Angor did not entertain him much, Shadow suddenly changed his topic.

“By the way, about that Akesolya... I’ve heard something about it from a wizard.”

“What, wizards are interested in mortal history?” Angor replied.

Shadow grinned when he successfully drew Angor’s response. “Well, the story of a mortal nation isn’t necessarily intended for mortals only. So, you want to learn about this Akesolya?”

“Well, it won’t hurt to know,” Angor said. He didn’t want to reveal too much of his mind to Shadow.

“There are many books that talked about it,” Shadow continued, “but they’re all ambiguous and all. But that wizard I mentioned did tell me something solid... Have you heard about the Originers?”

“Originers? Some kind of humanoid creatures?” Angor was puzzled.

Shadow carefully watched Angor’s emotions and was disappointed to find no changes, which meant Angor knew nothing about the rumor.

“Not humanoid. They’re seen as humans. A special and rare human race.”

In the wizarding world, the major race of “human” was divided into several more genera like animals. Unlike humanoids, these genera were still considered human.

Angor, as well as most people he encountered before, were Homo Sapiens, who dominated the southern wizarding region. There were other human genera who lived here, such as the curious Karabits, and the rough-natured, shorter-bodied Subterrians, who mainly dwelt underground.

But Angor never heard about anything called “Originers”.

“The Originers fell under the index of the human race about 20 thousand years ago. They weren’t found in many places. Primitive highland areas only. Their abilities, intelligence, and general looks were all similar to Homo Sapiens. However, they possessed a gift, which allowed some of their sages to receive really important prophecies from the world’s consciousness.

“And yes, a gifted race always draws enviousness and hate. Because of their talent, they met with a similar disaster as the Krakoks. After undergoing forced slavery and researches, they were officially declared to be extinct about 10 thousand years ago.

“But the wizard I just said told me that, a small number of Originers lived on in the ‘lands of serpents’ Akesolya, some thousands of years ago. They never showed up ever since Zeal Dominion took over the place. Maybe some wizards managed to seize them, or they all died during the war.”

Shadow sighed as he explained the sorrowful fate of an entire race. Who knew whether Homo Sapiens themselves were another race who survived such a calamity?

Angor, however, quickly thought about Dodoro after hearing those words.

All the corpses he saw in Pocratee were certainly Homo Sapiens, but he still couldn’t be sure of Dodoro’s race. Dodoro held too many secrets; both unseen ones and visible ones, such as that “small tail bump” on his back.

Was Dodoro actually an “Originer”? That would be quite a coincidence.