Chapter 97: Miloria

Kai was already standing at the foot of the Elder Tree when the full size of it finally defeated every mental image he had brought with him.

"Whoa," he muttered.

The word felt small and in appropriate to describe the magnanimity of what was before him...The Elder tree was huge.

The lower stems alone were wider than towers, dark-veined and ancient, rising in such massive columns that he could not catch the furthest upper edge no matter how far back he tipped his head. Green-gold light filtered down through the layered canopy in broken sheets, and the air around the roots was thicker than anywhere else in Eldoria, dense with old mana and the quiet pressure of something that had been alive longer than most kingdoms kept records.

Then he noticed the people.

There were walkways wound around the stems and bridges stretched between root platforms and lanterns hung in careful spirals through the lower branches. Figures moved through that vertical space with easy familiarity, some luminous at the edges, some winged in the faint way of fairy-blood, some barefoot on wood as if the tree itself were ordinary flooring.

This was a settlement that had grown into the body of the tree and stayed there.

The System spoke as he stared.

[Elder Tree. In original game lore, this structure was classified as a pre-kingdom world anchor, one of the oldest surviving natural formations tied to early stabilization magic. Developer notes described it as a residual support left behind after the first ordering of the map, too large and too old to be treated as ordinary environment.]

[However, present accuracy is uncertain. World history has become spontaneous since Host’s arrival, and multiple fixed records no longer match current conditions.]

Kai caught on one word hard enough that the rest of the explanation almost slid past him.

Developers.

He kept his eyes on the tree and asked the question before he could talk himself out of it.

Are the developers of this world aware of my existence in the game?

The answer came more quickly than he expected.

[Yes.]

Kai actually gasped.

"Then why the hell aren’t they fixing things?"

[Question revoked. Host authority is insufficient for further disclosure.]

Of course it was. He let out a short frustrated breath and forced his attention back outward because if he stayed on that answer too long he was going to start shouting at empty air. Even with the refusal sitting cold in his chest, the sight before him still impressed itself deeply. People had made a home under and around this fortress of a tree. They had built paths and dens and gathering spaces into a living giant the palace preferred to treat as scenery, and the longer he looked the more complete the arrangement appeared.

Now where was the fairy?

As if on cue, a voice went off directly behind his ear.

"Boo."

Kai jolted so hard he nearly lost his footing on the root stone and spun around with his pulse spiking. Milo Faust was floating there with the brightest mischievous grin on his face, clearly delighted by the success of the jump scare.

"You prick!"

"Do not be too salty," Milo said, already laughing. "It is just a prank."

"A prank that will end you in an early grave if you try it next time."

Milo laughed harder at that, and after a second of failed resistance Kai felt the absurdity of being startled at the base of a mythical tree catch up to him. He laughed too, short and unwilling at first, then more honestly, until both of them had to sigh their way back down into composure.

Kai glanced past him at the settlement again.

"So aren’t you going to welcome me to your home?"

Milo straightened in the air with exaggerated dignity and spread both hands like a stage host accepting overdue recognition.

"Do not mind if I do. Welcome, my humble visitor, to the abode of the littles."

Kai squinted.

"The littles?"

Milo rolled his eyes.

"Yes, but listen." He turned slightly and gestured up into the living network wrapped through the tree. "This is the settlement of Mini Eldoria, or for the sake of my patience and your memory, Miloria. These platforms, routes, halls, and dwellings belong to those who live with the Elder Tree rather than around the palace districts. I present myself as the reigning leader of the settlement."

Before Kai could answer, the System filled in the term with unusual thoroughness.

[Littles: a classification used for smaller-concept races rather than merely smaller-bodied ones. Known examples include fairies, nymphs, sprites, brownie-kin, flower sentients, dewborn, mossfolk, glimmer imps, reed singers, and lantern wights. In original taxonomy the label marks communities whose existence is tightly bound to local anchors such as sacred trees, springs, or old formation sites.]

Kai absorbed that, then looked back at Milo with fresh disbelief.

"You are the leader of Miloria and you spend your time playing tourist in the streets?"

"Just a hobby," Milo said.

"Annoying tourists in the streets is a hobby?"

"Precisely."

Kai sighed and pressed two fingers to his brow.

"Of course it is."

Milo floated a little higher as if the entire canopy were a stage built for him and continued with theatrical delight.

"We have root markets, current gardens, teaching platformsand more hidden walks than the palace maps bother to record. The Elder Tree shelters all of it. The palace calls this a preserve when it remembers to call it anything at all. We call it home."

Kai watched a pair of nymphs cross a bridge overhead with baskets of faintly glowing fruit and felt the last of his doubt about the settlement’s permanence fade. These people were not hiding in the temporary sense. They were established.

Milo finally floated back down and stopped in front of him with one hand stretched out, palm up, expectant.

"Shall we go see the city?"

Kai looked from his face to the offered hand.

"The city?"

"Yes. My city."

"Oh." Kai kept staring at the outstretched hand. "What are you doing?"

"We are going for a flight, silly."

Kai rolled his eyes.

"No thanks."

Internally he turned toward the System with clean intent.

Borrow Hover from Caelum.

[Understood.]

[Temporary Skill Borrowing initiated.]

[Skill acquired: Hover.]

[Duration limited.]

The lightness entered his body at once, familiar now in the way a useful secret becomes familiar. Kai rose off the root stone without touching Milo’s hand at all and slid past him through the air with a sly knowing smile already forming.

"Well come on. We do not have all day."

Milo remained frozen for a beat with his offered hand still extended and his expression caught between offense and open interest as he watched Kai take flight under his own power. Then he whistled low and alluring, the sound sliding out of him like the start of a different kind of conversation.

"Fuck."

The word was soft and appreciative and entirely too honest. He shot upward after him at once.

"Hey! Wait for me!"

Kai was already angling toward the higher routes that wound up around the enormous stems, not straight into the unseen crown of the tree but high enough that the lower platforms began to look like a careful map of living geometry beneath them. Wind moved cooler through the mid layers and Light broke itself into greener fragments.

Everywhere he looked there was more tree and more settlement tucked into the body of it, dens and gardens and vertical paths stitched through bark and branch like the place had never once considered growing in only one direction.

Milo caught up on a fast current of air and fell into pace beside him with ash hair streaming and eyes bright.

"You could have just said you fly."

"And miss that look on your face?" Kai said. "Not a chance."

"Cruel."

"Effective."

Milo laughed and banked closer so they were moving side by side between two of the great stems. From this height Kai could see how wide the settlement truly ran. It was not only a few pretty platforms near the roots. There were whole tiers of life wrapped around the tree, some open to the filtered sun and some half-hidden in denser leaf cover. A cluster of lantern wights drifted around a suspended garden. Fairies traded cloth on a bridge market. ANymph was guiding water along root channels into basin pools that shone as if lit from within.

Everyone was doing Thier thing.

"This is insane," Kai said.

"This is Miloria," Milo answered, and for once there was more pride than mischief in it.

Kai glanced over.

"And you run all of it."

"I keep it from being crushed under other people’s definitions," Milo said. "That requires leadership often enough to count."

They passed a supposed teaching platform where children practiced flying in short hops while an older sprite corrected their posture and form.

One of the children waved wildly at Milo and nearly dropped out of the air doing it. Milo waved back and shouted something encouraging before turning to Kai again.

"Still think my tourist hobby is strange?"

"Yes," Kai said. "But I understand it better than I did five minutes ago."

"yes!"

Milo grinned and led him across a broader current toward a massive stem so wide that flying beside it felt like traveling along a cliff wall. There were door scars in the bark where dens had been shaped and sealed with living resin. Marks of old growth and new repair sat over one another in layered history. Kai reached out as they passed and let his fingers skim the air near the surface without quite touching it.

"How long have your people been here?"

"Long enough that the tree stopped treating us like guests," Milo said. "Not everyone outside likes that. Some prefer their sacred landmarks empty, quiet, and convenient. We disappointed them by surviving in public."

Kai thought of the royal district’s polished beauty and the way even Lucien had described this place through restricted paths and preservation language. The difference between a protected site and a living community suddenly looked political rather than accidental.

They rose higher still until the lower settlement became a constellation of platforms and bridges beneath them. The top of the tree remained out of reach, endlessly further, as if the Elder Tree were less an object in the city and more a vertical world that only loaned its lower layers to visibility. Kai hovered there a moment and let the sheer scale press against him.

Milo floated in a lazy circle around him, watching his face with open satisfaction.

"You get it now."

"I get that I underestimated the phrase elder tree," Kai said.

"Did you just say something humble? Colour me surprised...Humility looks decent on you."

Kai shot him a look, but there was no real heat in it. The wind up here was clean and cool, and for a short stretch of time the palace and its proposals and bruised apologies felt far enough away to breathe around. He could still sense all of those problems waiting. He simply was not standing inside them for this exact minute.

Milo drifted closer again, expression playful and a little more intent than before.

"You know, if you keep surprising me like this, I am going to assume you enjoy my attention."

"Assume less."

"Impossible. I am gifted at assumption."

Kai shook his head and pushed higher along the stem route, leaving Milo to follow. The fairy did follow, of course, laughing under his breath and muttering something. The tone was good ..good enough that Kai chose not to ask for a repeat.

The System chose that moment to speak with clean precision.

[Affinity with Candidate 006 has increased.]

[Current affinity: 30%.]

Kai did not look over immediately. He only continued rising through the green-gold light with Milo behind him and the impossible body of the Elder Tree opening wider around them both. He had come looking for a man under a landmark. Instead he had found a leader, a hidden city, and the uncomfortable knowledge that even the developers of this world knew he was inside it and still were not coming to fix a single thing.

Milo called up after him again, voice bright and chasing.

"Hey! If you reach the crown before me, I am changing the settlement laws out of spite!"

Kai actually smiled at that and flew faster.