Chapter 44: The King of Trees
South: This is the direction you came from. There are some food items by the edge of the dark current—good things left behind by someone, though you don’t know who. You might be able to pick up a lucky find there.
West: 1,500 meters ahead, there’s a cave rich in iron and stone ore. If you need various minerals to upgrade your treehouse, this is a good place to go.
P.S.: The cave’s man-eaters have temporarily left to hold some mysterious ritual. Now might be the perfect chance to sneak in!
North: 1,500 meters ahead lies a treasure chest, but that’s the territory of the Mighty Gorilla. If you’re confident in yourself, you can try your luck and challenge it.
“Another treasure chest! My luck is really something today!”
Now, whenever Ye Da saw the word ‘treasure chest’ pop up in the prompts, he felt as if he’d just scratched a winning lottery ticket—utterly exhilarating.
Unfortunately, the chest was a bit far, and this wasn’t the time to go searching for treasure. The rain was too heavy; Ye Da had to find a place to set up his treehouse first. The giant tree 280 meters away was much closer than the treasure chest a kilometer off.
Being drenched for so long, his body heat was steadily seeping away. If he didn’t find somewhere to dry his clothes soon, Ye Da feared he’d catch a cold.
Catching a cold in this godforsaken place was no small matter—it wasn’t just a couple of days in bed.
First, the newbie protection period was about to end.
Second, the newcomers’ ranking was about to be revealed.
If Ye Da didn’t want to be left behind, he had to focus on leveling up.
“Little White, Little Grey, let’s move.”
Seeing the two wolf pups finish eating, Ye Da immediately called them and headed east.
Although he was eager to find a place to settle, Ye Da was puzzled by the prompt’s content...
The prompt said there was a tree-eating beast inside the giant tree, and if you could catch a few, you might reap a good harvest of vegetables.
Catch tree-eating beasts to get vegetables?
The prompt was odd.
Could the analysis glasses actually have made a mistake?
With this strange thought in mind, Ye Da quickly reached the spot 280 meters to the east.
Before he even arrived at the base of the towering tree, he spotted it from afar—a colossal tree, just one of whose roots was thicker than any other tree in the forest.
What’s more, the tree had hundreds, even thousands of such roots. Wherever Ye Da looked, all he saw were the tree’s massive root systems. He even had to crane his neck to see the enormous trunk looming above him.
Rather than a tree, Ye Da thought it resembled an island.
And...
Around the giant tree, various smaller trees grew, with branches overhead forming a canopy that made it nearly impossible for Ye Da to see the whole tree.
But the fact that it had created a rainless zone within the forest was enough to make Ye Da realize just how massive it was!
He had entered the rainless zone five minutes earlier, yet he still hadn’t reached the tree’s base or touched its roots. That spoke volumes about its sheer scale!
“Uh…”
When Ye Da finally reached the tree, he discovered that even if he threw the treehouse sphere with all his might, he could only reach the roots, never the trunk itself.
And the roots were only two to three meters in diameter—far too narrow to set up the treehouse.
This gave Ye Da a headache.
But for now, he had no choice but to try anyway.
He took out the treehouse sphere and threw it as hard as he could toward the thickest root he could find.
With a soft “pop!”, as soon as the sphere touched the root, several options appeared before Ye Da’s eyes.
[Deployment Successful!]
[Due to the immense size of this tree, please choose the level at which the treehouse should be deployed.]
[1. Ground level (1–50 meters)]
[2. Lower mid-level (51–100 meters)]
[3. Mid-level (locked—upgrade treehouse to level 5 to unlock)]
[4. Upper mid-level (locked—upgrade treehouse to level 10 to unlock)]
[5. Upper level (locked—upgrade treehouse to level 20 to unlock)]
[……]
This tree was actually over a hundred meters tall?
A hundred meters was the height of a thirty-story building, yet here, it was merely the lower mid-level of this tree.
How tall was its uppermost level?
Unfortunately, Ye Da’s treehouse wasn’t yet eligible for the mid-levels. He could only choose between ground or lower mid-level.
But here came another problem.
If the door to the treehouse opened at the lower mid-level, say at the lowest point of 51 meters, how was Ye Da supposed to get up there?
He couldn’t possibly climb fifty meters up a tree with two little wolf pups in tow, then open the door and enter.
Though the roots overlapped and there were places to climb, even with a staircase, going up thirty stories would be exhausting, let alone climbing a tree that high.
Just thinking about it made Ye Da’s hands go weak, and he’d just been soaked in rain.
Now, as the wind blew, he couldn’t stop shivering.
Climbing a tree thirty stories high in this state—
He might as well dig a hole and bury himself then and there; at least that’d be more comfortable.
[Choose ground level!]
After brief consideration, Ye Da decisively picked ground level.
The treehouse sphere flashed and sank into the root.
The sphere vanished, but the door didn’t appear.
Ye Da craned his neck, searching for the door above the roots, perhaps on the trunk itself.
But after searching for some time, he saw nothing but tangled, overlapping roots—no sign of the treehouse door.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Ye Da wailed in frustration. “Are you really going to make me climb the tree, searching layer by layer?”
He had only climbed a short way—not even reached the trunk—when he heard the wolf pups barking under the tree.
“Woof! Woof!”
“Woof! Woof! Woof!!”
Worried the pups were in danger, Ye Da hurriedly looked down.
But just as he looked, he saw something green poking out from between the roots—a lush, leafy mass that looked a lot like a giant cabbage!
But Ye Da was almost certain—
That thing was definitely not a cabbage!
It was a creature—a being that looked like a vegetable!