Chapter 232: 232. Sound
Apparently, whatever that vapor was, it most probably listened to my rambling. It stirred, as if my words had rippled through it, and then it stopped engulfing the five-legged beasts entirely.
It hesitated. Its form shivered, wavered, and then just like that it turned and fled.
"It actually ran away?" I muttered, blinking in disbelief. "Even this vapor ran away? What kind of presence exists here that makes them feel such an overwhelming sense of danger?"
That question dug into me like a thorn. For beings with no physical bodies what could possibly pose a threat? What could force something incorporeal to recoil in instinctive fear?
The thought left me uneasy, yet strangely thrilled.
"I should look around too... maybe I’ll find the reason," I murmured to myself. "Perhaps I’ll even stumble upon a way to get back. Or well, maybe staying here wouldn’t be so bad either. If there’s a civilization somewhere in this strange land, I could try to live among them. Yeah... yeah, that might work. Let’s find a civilization first, then decide."
Having given myself a concrete task, I finally started moving.
The land stretched out endlessly in every direction, a plain of tall grasses, tall enough to brush my waist, and though they seemed normal at first glance, there was something uncanny in their uniformity.
Just a great expanse of grass, that was what existed here entirely.
I picked a direction at random, south, and began walking.
Hours must have passed, yet the world refused to change. The same endless grass. The same breath of wind brushing past. The same blazing heat pressing against my skin. But that was the strangest part—the heat.
It finally struck me that the intensity of the light hadn’t shifted at all. The brightness was the same as when I had first begun walking. The warmth pressing on my body hadn’t softened, hadn’t dimmed.
Normally, the sun should have begun to slide across the horizon. But nothing had changed.
That was when I noticed it.
There was no sun.
And yet, somehow, the land was illuminated as though it were noon. The air burned faintly on my skin as though the sun hung directly overhead.
"...There’s no sun," I whispered, my voice catching. "Yet the light and heat permeate the land without pause. That means there’s some kind of mechanism sustaining it... or someone."
The more I thought about it, the more fascinating this place became.
But fascination did not erase the emptiness gnawing at me. Despite walking for so long, I had yet to see the faintest trace of real life. Except that lizard, and those five-legged horrors, and the tall grass that stretched on and on.
"Could it be that trees haven’t evolved here yet?" I speculated aloud. "If this is some kind of primordial land, maybe it’s still in an age before forests. But... without trees, how could the cycle of life exist?"
It was a reasonable line of thought if I compared it to Earth’s biology. Trees provided oxygen, shelter, sustenance—without them, higher lifeforms shouldn’t exist. But then again, who said this place followed Earth’s rules at all?
The soil, the grasses, the beasts I’d seen—everything might function on principles entirely alien to me. Maybe their bodies didn’t need oxygen. Maybe "photosynthesis" didn’t even exist here. Maybe light and life had another source altogether.
I couldn’t say. My knowledge faltered, leaving me with only questions.
And then, at last, something broke the monotony.
I froze in my tracks.
It was impossible to miss. A massive structure loomed ahead, a crystalline shard rising from the flat plain. At least thirty meters tall, maybe more, its shape jagged and sharp.
But what held me spellbound was not its sheer size. It was the light.
The entire shard pulsed with a green radiance. Not simply glowing, but breathing. The light coursed in waves, flowing downward into the earth beneath it, spilling outward in faint streams that disappeared beneath the plains. And when I followed the glow with my eyes, I realized something staggering.
The grasses.
All of them, every blade swaying around me, was bathed in that light. It was being fed by it, sustained by it, nourished like a child tethered to its mother.
"Could it be..." I whispered, a spark of awe creeping into my tone. "Is this shard the reason? The reason this land has grasses, the reason life even exists here at all?"
I didn’t know why, but the thought lodged itself firmly in my mind. The green reminded me of healing mana, that soothing radiance meant for restoration. Healing meant life. Life meant growth. And this shard was giving its essence to the entire plain.
I found myself straightening my posture, placing my hands behind my back, as I approached the shard. The crystal loomed taller and taller the closer I came, its emerald light reflecting in my eyes.
When I finally reached it, I raised a hand without hesitation, almost compelled.
My palm just inches away from its surface.
"Hey!! Stop!!"
The shout cracked through the silence, snapping my attention away. My fingers froze, just inches from curling around the shard. Slowly, I turned my head toward the source of the interruption.
Standing behind me was... well, something that shouldn’t exist. Nothing new, of course.
Its body was human—at least from the neck down, with arms, legs, a torso. But instead of a head, it had a bulky, old-fashioned speaker. The sheer absurdity of it pulled a laugh out of me.
’A speaker?’ I thought, brows furrowed. ’Even if by some deranged, improbable, evolutionary accident you could graft a speaker into flesh... how the hell does that explain a human torso attached to it? No, this isn’t evolution. This isn’t even possible.’
My suspicions spiked immediately. My instincts told me not to take this thing lightly. Narrowing my eyes, I addressed it directly.
"Who the hell are you? And why did you stop me? Is this shard dangerous or something?"
The speaker crackled once, then gave a long, distorted sigh, like static. "Ahhh, finally you listened. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been shouting at you to stop? You really don’t, do you? Hushhh..."
The sound of that artificial exhale was... Something.
I tilted my head, my tone sharp. "For a long time? Don’t mess with me. This is the first time I’ve heard your voice."
The speaker-head actually scratched at its own mesh, like a man scratching his scalp. "Ah, about that... you couldn’t hear me before. The decibels of my voice didn’t match the frequency range of your hearing. I’ve been trying for a while now—adjusting, shifting, recalibrating. It takes time to find the exact wave that resonates with someone."
That meant it had been there all along, whispering, screaming, shrieking, while I stood oblivious. The thought made me suspicious of the entity even more.
I narrowed my eyes further. "Did you read my mind? Or my memories? Is that how you figured out how to communicate with me? Matching sound frequencies and language are two different thing."
The speaker shook side to side in what looked like a very human gesture. "No! No, no. I could, yes. I can. But I usually don’t. My acquaintances—they get... really, really angry when I pry like that. I learned my lesson." The voice fuzzed, dipped, then snapped back. "But forget that! What you were about to do—don’t try it again! Ever!"
I ignored its frantic, almost desperate tone. My voice stayed flat, casual. "What about it?"
The speaker let out another drawn-out sigh, but this time its posture shifted. The intensity drained, replaced by something that almost felt... tired.
"That shard," it said, voice now deeper, resonant, serious. "That shard is the source of ether for this ground. For this very land you’re standing on. If you touch it, the ether within will assimilate into your body. And in doing so... you’ll destroy the very source of life here. Everything will wither. Everything will die."
A faint smirk tugged at my lips. I had suspected something along those lines already. And I was right. But knowing the shard was a "source of life" only made the questions pile higher in my head.
I pressed further. "And if I do assimilate with ether? What happens to me?"
The speaker paused, then gave an unsettling shrug of its human shoulders. "I’m not too sure. It ranges. Maybe you die instantly. Maybe you survive but twist into something else. A mindless beast, a shell driven only by instinct, running from place to place, devouring or being devoured. A nomad, cursed to wander endlessly. Believe me—it’s not a good existence."
My mind immediately flashed to the abominations I’d seen before—the lizard-like monster, the five-legged freaks. Were those the results of touching shards like this one? Did they all begin as people or something else that fell to assimilation?
That raised another thought. A darker one.
"Wait..." I muttered under my breath. "Does that mean existence itself was created from these shards? Are they the origin points of life? If so... then who created them?"
I turned my eyes sharply back on the Entity. "And more importantly... what is ether? Exactly. Not vague nonsense. What is it?"
The speaker crackled, the static flaring briefly before fading. It buzzed, then took a slow step closer to me, closing the distance. Its hand flesh and blood, disturbingly normal, reached out and patted my shoulder.
"You ask too many questions," it said, voice dipping into a lower, almost chiding register. "Just because I’ve humored you with answers doesn’t mean I’ll continue doing so. You shouldn’t expect that."
Then, after a pause, its tone shifted, oddly casual, almost mischievous. "Aren’t you from the future? Why don’t you tell me something about it, instead?"
So it knew.
Well, it wasn’t exactly rocket science. It had copied my language perfectly, after all, molding itself to communicate with me. Of course it would pick up on where I came from. Still, the casualness with which it said it sent a strange chill through me.
I exhaled slowly, narrowing my eyes. "Then I’ll ask you again. Who are you?"
This time, the reply came without hesitation.
"Sound."