Chapter 490 – Cloudtrees

Towards the end of the Event, Sophia found herself helping others locate caches that were near them more than she was finding ones near herself. They’d done entirely too well at clearing out the area and there simply wasn’t much left to find. Unlike most of the people around her, Sophia knew that, just like she knew the areas they were exploring now had been searched because the monsters were dead. There were still caches others had missed, but they were far less common than before.

At the end of the Event, Rivexy told Sophia and Dav to wait by the entrance to the Reward Cloud. The reason for that was soon obvious: as other teams arrived and entered, they stopped just long enough to hand Sophia a tithe of Cache Reward Chips. Sophia was fairly certain it was a small fraction of what she’d helped find, but that small fraction of many teams’ findings still came to over three hundred Chips. It was far less than they’d collected early in the Event, but it more than doubled the amount they found in the last four hours. 

It was hard to say if they’d come out ahead of choosing to run faster while Sophia searched; Sophia suspected they hadn’t. Despite that, she was fine with the result. To move faster, Dav would have had to carry Sophia, and Sophia was just fine with skipping that.

When they finally stepped into the solid white cloudbank that served as the entrance to the final rewards section for the Forest in the Clouds Event, Sophia looked around and decided it was similar to and yet completely different from the Meteor Pillars Event.

They were surrounded by other teams in a space with a solid cloud for a floor dotted with pedestals that looked like miniature trees with clouds for leaves. The rewards sat directly on the cloud-covered boughs as if they were pillows, each with a clear note that said what the material was and how many Cache Reward Chips they would cost. The air blurred into indistinguishability with fog in all directions, but each of the cloudtree pedestals seemed to glow softly, which made it easy to see the rewards and the people close to them.

The rewards themselves were different, as well. Instead of being mostly usable items, the rewards from the Forest in the Clouds Event were mostly the raw materials that would be used to make those items. Sophia was certain that it was directly out of Xin’ri’s dreams, but it meant very little to her.

While they still couldn’t take anything out of their Event Inventories, they could spend the Cache Reward Chips they’d collected, whether or not they were stored. The very first thing they looked for was the Event Completion reward. It was necessary to qualify to move to the next Branch of the Moonlit Branches and reach Archon of Stone Issvako, so they both made certain to pick it up before they looked at anything else. 

After that, Sophia and Dav went from cloudtree to cloudtree looking for anything interesting or worthwhile. The highlight of the rewards was definitely the fourth upgrade feathers. Sophia had burned through most of the ones she’d managed to source on the third branch and was thrilled that she could pick up as many as she had the Chips to buy. If they put all of the Chips they’d earned towards feathers, she could get well over a thousand fourth upgrade feathers in forty-two different types.

Sophia spent one Chip on each feather type, which gave her between three and eight feathers for each purchase. That was a good investment for the future, so she could justify spending that much without looking at everything else first. She couldn’t just blow everything on the first thing that caught her eye.

Dav was the one who found the surprisingly large section of enhanced food. Most of it was fruit, vegetables, and grain that would promote health and recovery, especially in people at lower upgrades and required either no or minimal processing, but there were a number of oddball items, from a metal that could be eaten to strengthen the bones to a plant whose smoke would reveal spirits and illusions.

At the back of that section sat a crystalline orb labeled “Tower Scenario Coordinator: 2500 Cache Reward Chips 1/1 Available.”

Sophia didn’t have to read the description to know that she was looking at a dungeon core. It was extremely similar to the ones Leo grew in the Roots. 2500 Cache Reward Chips was more than they had, but Sophia marked its location in her mind. She wasn’t sure how she’d manage it, but if no one else bought it, she might have to. Leaving a dungeon core sitting in a treasure vault was … well, it wasn’t nearly as bad as if it was a human. The dungeon core could just go to sleep. It wasn’t really good for the core, but it wasn’t the end of the road for it either.

She was just about to move on when a young woman stopped in front of the display, read the description, and called over her entire team of six people. They all reached out and touched the pedestal for a moment, then the woman scooped up her prize. As they left, Sophia heard one of the others complimenting the woman on her amazing find. It might have cost the team nearly everything they gained from the Event, but it was completely worth it. They’d heard of the new controllers and were certain they could sell this one enough to more than double what they’d expected to make from the Event.

Sophia guessed she could let it play out on its own. It sounded like the core was going to have a home as soon as the team could find a buyer and she knew that was what the core would want. It might not be a perfect match, but it would be close enough, and the core could limit what it allowed others to see once it was slotted in place. Hail proved that.

“We’re not asking enough for the dungeon cores, are we?” Dav observed.

Sophia shook her head. “Guess not.”

After about an hour of searching through rewards, Sophia and Dav hunted down Notii and Revexy for recommendations. What they were told wasn’t what they expected; apparently even though these were raw materials, it was best to buy things that would be useful rather than things that would sell well. There would be enough stuff available for several weeks after the Event that was collected rather than bought that it simply wasn’t worth much. Only the few items that were available in limited quantities would retain their value.

Revexy was able to lead them to a few things that fit the bill of “things they could use.” As far as she was concerned, everyone should have a good stock of Energetic Rice, False Mandragora Root, Firebreath Peppers, and half a dozen different plants that could be burned as incense for different effects. They were each relatively cheap at one or two Cache Reward Chips.

The real expense came when Dav noticed a pedestal that was empty and stopped to read the card anyway. 

Cloudseed

1000 Cache Reward Chips

Native to the Inchoate Mountains, Cloudtrees form the basis for Arcatiz’s iconic floating islands. These trees require heavy year-round fog to germinate but will generate their own preferred conditions once they are sufficiently mature. In poor conditions, a cloudtree will anchor itself to a large amount of soil and lift itself into the sky. A single island may be created by one or more cloudtrees and islands that jostle each other can join if conditions are right. So long as a single cloudtree lives on a floating island, it will not fall.

It didn’t have a limited number next to it, so Sophia took another look at the pedestal. It wasn’t empty after all; instead, the clouds that cushioned the top of the pedestal to hold the reward held a small lump of cloud no more than an inch long. It was especially hard to see with the slight mist that seemed to surround it. 

The existence of a tree species that could make islands float explained both the fact that there were floating islands and the fact that they all seemed to have trees. “If there’s a cloudtree on every floating island, why is it so expensive? Also, why don’t the trees on the islands look like they’re covered in clouds? They all look different.” 

“Any kind of tree can be a cloudtree,” Notii answered immediately. “And they are covered in clouds or fog, that’s why there are always clouds near the islands.”

Revexy chuckled. “There’s a bit more to it than that. Cloudtrees can’t be moved from one island to another. Once they’re in the sky, any tree seed that roots itself in the island is a cloudtree, at least to keep the island in the air, but that’s only true if it sprouts from seed; if it’s brought in as a sapling or grafted, it’s not a cloudtree. Even then, only the first generation cloudtrees actually cover themselves in fog like the forest we were just in. That’s how you tell if an island’s really new or if it just drifted in from somewhere else.”

That sounded an awful lot like saying that it wasn’t actually the trees themselves that kept the islands in the air but something that lived in the trees, probably something that was added to the island by the original cloudtrees. Sophia wondered why they didn’t breed true; were they really just other trees that were more heavily influenced by whatever made them gather fog around themselves or was there more to it?

It was magic, and that made it hard to know unless you looked into it. She was certain that someone had; Notii and Revexy’s answers both sounded like the sort of thing you learned as a child. Of course, Sophia’s questions also sounded like the sort of thing a child would ask, didn’t they?

“That’s why the cloudseed is so expensive,” Revexy added. “It’s a real cloudseed. It could lift a new island if you planted it and let it grow and got it to take to the sky. There’s no reason to do that, there are lots of open islands with only a single tree, but you could.”

“Cloudseeds are used for a lot of other things.” Notii tapped the pedestal near the cloudseed, careful to avoid actually touching the seed itself. “They’re one of the few real sources of cloud mana and that’s used for a bunch of things, like padding. I’m not sure why it works well as padding when water mana doesn’t, but that’s what I’m told. It’s probably not worth that many Chips unless you’re going to use it yourself; I think I remember something about them not staying good for all that long. I’m pretty sure they’re usually bought by hiring someone to do an Event. A lot of stuff is bought that way, if there’s time. It means it’s fresh.”

Sophia shook her head. That made entirely too much sense and also explained part of why Xin’ri mentioned waiting for someone to get things a couple of times. It wasn’t something she’d paid much attention to.

“Why don’t people get them from the source, then?” That was what people did back home when things were expensive enough, and tree seeds sounded like they were something that shouldn’t be hard to find. “Or raise them? Well, I guess maybe there just isn’t enough demand?”

Sophia wasn’t sure about that. Something that could be used “for padding” sounded an awful lot like it would be used all over the place. Bedding that was “like sleeping on a cloud” sounded good, after all, even if she wasn’t sure what that would actually feel like. 

“The Inchoate Mountains are gone,” Revexy emphasized. “They were destroyed in the War of Two Mimirs. That’s why there are so many islands in the sky, the trees tried to escape the destruction. There are no natural cloudtrees anymore!”

That must have been quite a disaster. Even so, Sophia couldn’t help but remember the ghostly images they’d seen on the river on the second branch of the World Tree; they were picking through the remains of one of the Mimirs’ cities after the war. She was pretty sure that the river was in the Inchoate Mountains, which didn’t line up with Revexy’s statement.

Still, this was Revexy’s world. Surely she’d know better than Sophia did?

“I want to get the cloudseed,” Dav stated firmly, ignoring whether or not the mountains that once birthed them were still in existence. “It feels almost like an Embodiment and I want to know why.”

A thousand Chips was a significant portion of what they had, but if it would help Dav, there was every reason to spend them. “Go for it. Is there anything else we need or should I just buy more feathers with the rest?”