Both Tyler and Kaeya walked side by side toward the distant silhouette of the city. The sky above was stained with smoke and faint embers drifting like dying stars. For a long while, only the crunch of gravel beneath their boots filled the silence.
Kaeya finally exhaled sharply.
"So... you’re all from another world. Your souls were sent here as a trial. You complete the tasks assigned to you, and in doing so, you subconsciously gather the scattered ’Orion Cubes’ hidden in this reality." She paused, brows furrowed. "That’s what you’re saying, right?"
Tyler scratched the back of his head. "That’s... roughly it."
"And not just this world," she added before he could continue. "Many worlds. Different realities."
"Yeah," Tyler admitted. "Different worlds. Different civilizations. Different laws of nature."
She glanced sideways at him. "So this is just one stop in a larger ga."
He hesitated. "It’s not a ga."
"It sounds like one."
Tyler inhaled slowly. "The tilines are the complicated part. This world might still exist in my original tiline... or it might not even be born yet. Ti doesn’t flow the sa across realities."
Kaeya’s steps slowed.
"For example," Tyler continued carefully, "that spider demon general we fought? In my world, he was a cultivator who lived a million years ago. A historical figure. Yet here, we’re taking this trial at the sa ’ti.’"
Kaeya stopped walking entirely.
"So we might... or might not exist?" Her voice thinned. "What does that even an? Are we real?"
Tyler grimaced. "The multiverse isn’t linear. I can’t definitively say whether this world is an independent reality or if the Orion Tesseract reconstructed fragnts of a specific era to create a trial environnt—"
Her expression shifted.
Not anger. Not confusion.
Horror.
Tyler imdiately backtracked. "I an—no! That doesn’t an you’re fake. It doesn’t an anything like that."
Kaeya stared at him, hollow-eyed.
"I don’t exist?" she whispered. "Then what am I fighting for? What are all these people suffering for? If this reality collapses the mont you leave... then what is any of this worth?"
Her voice cracked, but she didn’t cry. That made it worse.
"Stop," Tyler said quickly. "That’s an existential spiral. You’re overthinking it."
"Answer ."
He ran a hand through his hair. "From your perspective, everything is real. Your mories are real. Your pain is real. Your people are real. Even if this is a reconstructed tiline, that doesn’t invalidate your existence."
"That’s not an answer."
"It’s the only honest one I have," he snapped, then softened. "Look... from your world’s point of view, I might not even exist. Maybe in your planet’s grand tiline, Tyler White never appears again after this war. Maybe I’m the anomaly."
Kaeya looked away.
"So after you beco king here," she asked quietly, "you’ll return to your ’real’ world?"
"That’s the task."
"And we?"
He didn’t reply imdiately.
"All my people," she murmured. "My kingdom. My childhood. My parents. All of it might just be fragnts stitched together for your trial?"
Tyler clenched his jaw. He was beginning to regret ever ntioning the Orion Tesseract.
"I don’t believe that," he said firmly. "Even if this reality was assembled, it doesn’t make it disposable. Consciousness defines existence. You think. You feel. You choose. That’s real."
She gave a bitter laugh. "You’re not even sure of that yourself."
"No," he admitted. "I’m not."
"But there is also a chance that this is not an assembled reality." He says.
Silence fell between them again.
Ahead, the city’s outer frontier ca into view. The once-bustling roads were abandoned. Market stalls overturned. Barricades erected in haste. Smoke curled from shattered towers.
All civilians had been evacuated.
In the open plains before the gates, the battlefield raged.
Warriors clashed with towering orcs and grotesque ogres. Blades flashed. Spells erupted in bursts of blue and gold. The ground trembled beneath the stomping of giant monsters attempting to breach the reinforced walls.
And there were spiders.
Dozens of them. Massive, chitinous beasts with glistening black limbs and venom-dripping fangs. Their many eyes reflected the firelight like clusters of malicious stars.
Yet sothing was off.
"Do you see that?" Tyler muttered.
Kaeya narrowed her gaze. "The spiders."
"They’re pulling back."
Indeed, while the orcs and ogres continued their relentless assault, the spiders’ movents were becoming less aggressive. So retreated into the shadows. Others hesitated before striking.
"They’re losing coordination," Tyler observed. "The demon general Gailo must have disrupted their command structure."
Kaeya tightened her grip on her sword. "So he already turned into our side."
Tyler glanced at her. "yeah."
She didn’t respond.
A roar erupted as a massive ogre smashed into a defensive formation, scattering soldiers like leaves in a storm. Flas arced through the air, incinerating three spiders mid-leap.
The war was far from over.
But it was shifting.
Kaeya stepped forward, her earlier despair buried beneath hardened resolve.
"Whether this world is a fragnt or a full reality," she said quietly, "I will think about it later."
Tyler looked at her.
"For my people," she continued. "For my kingdom. Even if it vanishes tomorrow... today it exists. So I will protect it."
A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"That’s more real than most worlds I’ve seen."
She shot him a side glance. "You better not disappear in the middle of all this. I still have sothings in my mind that needs clarification."
"No promises."
She scoffed, then drew her blade fully.
The city gates creaked open under the strain of impact, the massive iron hinges shrieking as another wave of reinforcents poured out to et the enemy. Soldiers in battered armor rushed forward, shields raised, spears braced, magic circles flaring beneath their boots. The ground trembled again as a towering ogre slamd its crude club against the outer wall.
A deep crack split through the stone.
Chunks of masonry broke loose and crashed down, dust and debris erupting in choking clouds. The once-proud city wall—layered with decades of enchantnts and reinforced by generations of craftsn—was finally reaching its limit.
"It’s going to collapse!" soone shouted.
The central section of the wall sagged inward, fractures spiderwebbing rapidly across its surface. Another impact like that, and the entire gate structure would give way.
Tyler did not panic.
Instead, he calmly reached into his storage ring and retrieved a small pouch. From it, he poured several dull-brown seeds into his palm. They looked ordinary— hardly different from common forest seeds one might overlook on a roadside.
Kaeya recognized them instantly.
Those were the royal Verdant Bastion seeds—an ergency resource of her kingdom. Rare. Difficult to cultivate. Normally requiring two full days of nurturing with earth-elent mana and specific growth incantations before they matured into structural-grade timber. They were primarily used for rapid fortification construction in warti.
But even "rapid" ant preparation.
Not this.
Tyler scattered the seeds across the cracked earth before the crumbling wall.
Then he lifted a small vial.
Inside was water tinged crimson, his blood diluted within it. Nope more like water is diluted in his blood.
Kaeya’s eyes narrowed. She knew his blood carried his growth type skill.
Tyler flicked his wrist.
The blood-mixed water splashed across the scattered seeds.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the ground trembled—not from the monsters, but from beneath.
Green light pulsed faintly through the soil. The earth split open as thick sprouts burst upward violently, as if ti itself had been forced into acceleration. Vines whipped outward, thick as a man’s torso. Bark ford rapidly, hardening and darkening in seconds.
Soldiers nearby staggered back in shock.
"What in the—?!"
The sprouts didn’t stop. They grew, twisted, expanded. Branches elongated with unnatural speed, interlocking with one another like woven steel cables. Leaves unfurled in dense clusters, erald and luminous, humming faintly with life-force energy.
Normally, Verdant Bastion trees required careful guidance to avoid structural weakness.
Under Tyler’s command, they obeyed flawlessly.
"Anchor," he muttered.
The trees responded instantly.
Massive trunks curved inward, pressing firmly against the fractured wall. Thick roots tunneled deep beneath the city’s foundation, binding with stone and soil alike. Branches wrapped around the collapsing gate structure, reinforcing iron with living wood.
Another ogre’s club crashed down.
This ti, instead of crumbling, the wall absorbed the impact.
Wood groaned—but held.
The interwoven trees tightened, redistributing the force through their root network. Leaves shook violently, shedding a rain of green fragnts, but the structure remained standing.
Within seconds, what had been a fractured stone barrier transford into a hybrid fortress—stone and living timber fused into a single defensive organism.
The gate, monts from collapse, was now wrapped in thick bark plating. Vines coiled like serpents along its edges, reinforcing hinges and beams.
Even the cracks in the wall were filled as roots snaked through them, hardening like natural rebar.
Kaeya stared.
"This... normally takes two days," she whispered.
Tyler exhaled slowly, lowering his hand.
"Two days is a luxury in war."
The trees continued to shift subtly, responding to his intent. When a section of stone threatened to dislodge, branches reinforced it. When debris fell, roots absorbed the shock.
From a distance, it looked as if the city itself had grown claws and refused to fall.
The attacking monsters hesitated.
Even the spiders, already retreating, recoiled further from the sudden surge of vibrant life energy. Their chitin shimred uneasily under the erald glow.
A soldier near Tyler dropped to one knee, awestruck. "Is... is that ancient druid magic?"
Kaeya shook her head slowly.
"No," she said quietly. "He is better than druid."
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