Chapter 195 - The Descent Into His Wonderland (2/2)
Some prince he was, Reed thought himself as he and Isca descended into the bowels of the undersea structure where his workplace was located.
Strangely enough, the entire place was without any form of security, which warranted suspicion from Isca. Then again, Reed's home was miles below the sea in a place that few people would ever dare to visit, let alone even care about.
A lonely, oppressive, deep pit of darkness in a dead part of the ocean — it suddenly made sense why Reed did not need any locks in his home. No one in the right mind would ever bother visiting...
”This is the bottommost layer of my home, the place where I come to work on my pet projects. I call it the Nursery for... obvious reasons as you'll soon find out,” said Reed.
Nursery? Him? That's not what I expected of him. He can barely take care of himself...
But today was full of surprises, as Isca would soon come to realize. Though she was initially skeptical, the Nursery had proven itself far beyond her imagination.
In fact, when she first passed through into the Nursery, she thought that she had been whisked away into another world. Despite her education, she found herself unable to describe it as anything other than a wonderland at the bottom of the sea.
It was a private conservatory of impossible proportions, for the physical dimensions of the Nursery did not conform with reality. There was no denying it.
To put it bluntly... it was an entirely different world.
”Oh my Goddess....” said Isca as she dumbly stood in total shock. She couldn't even make out the edge of the horizon from where they stood, even though they were atop of what seemed to be a mountain.
”This is the Nursery; one of my greatest achievements to date, if I may be so impertinent,” said Reed.
”A breakthrough I had with manipulating spacetime geometry and the information limits of Anima allowed me to create this sub-space pocket. It's roughly the size of the South for scale.”
Though his words were entering Isca's ears, they simply passed out the other end of her head.
How could a normal person even begin to feasibly process what she had just been told? Hell, not even the likes of Haydn, Velvund, or even Lu'um would've been able to handle it any better than her. There was a clear limit to the absurdity anyone reasonable person could tolerate and Reed had gone a thousand miles past that.
One did not just create a world, no matter how big or small, and simply call it a ”pet project”.
Absolutely not.
Mortals create homes for their families; kings create kingdoms for the citizens, and...
Gods create worlds for their creations.
A vast swath of an untamed rainforest teemed the sound of life below the reinforced glass balcony underneath their feet. The sight of exotic, never-before-seen creatures roaming the canopy above the tree line was a marvel that defied imagination.
There bird-like creatures of an alien world not known to her, from a star system in a remote galaxy a thousand light-years away from Mu, idling about as they searched for prey. These fellows had whip-like strands on their wings that shone with Anima and crackled like lightning whenever they swooped into each other.
”Those are razor-light ravens,” said Reed as he pointed at them. ”Fiesty bunch, the whole lot of them. They'll fight over mates, food, hunting grounds, even shiny rocks! The wh.i.p.s on the ends of their feathers pack quite the jolt, more than enough to paralyze their prey and anyone foolish enough to piss them off. Sharp claws too, sharp enough to tear through ordinary steel like butter.”
And they were just one species in the grand wilderness of the Nursery.
Truth be told, Reed himself had already started having difficulties remembering every species present in his care. It had already become a job too large for him to handle alone, which is why he had enlisted the assistance of automated drones to do the grunt work — recording and indexing into a massive compendium.
”As you can see, it's quite the show but I digress. The Nursery is but a small conservatory for all the many species that once existed across the cosmos on a thousand worlds. And once I have finished assembling a compendium of all the species here, I plan to open this place to the public.”
”You... what?” blurted Isca in confusion. ”This is all for the public? For what purpose?”
Reed simply replied, ”To educate, of course. I want them to see the wonders that once existed up in the night sky, on distant worlds. For them to appreciate the beauty of life and foster a sense of responsibility in them — to protect what little we have left... and to mourn what we have lost.”
It was then and there that Isca realized that she still knew next to nothing about the man called Reed Evergreen.
At one moment, a terrifying madman with issues, and in the next moment, a noble spirit of all that was good and right in the world.
He really was an enigma to her. Isca doubted whether anyone could truly understand another person's heart, even more so for someone like Reed. And deep in her heart, she realized that this would be the work of her life.
That is would be the job that would put her in the history books, for better or worse.
There was so much to reflect on, note down, and write about. Even now, a profound urge to return to her home and begin writing a rough draft had begun to grow inside her mind. She wanted to put it all down into text before the spark in her mind vanished into the dark.
But above all else, she had found herself irrevocably drawn to him like a moth to a flame. He was the Sun and she was foolish his Icarus, drawn to the magnetic pull of his unique existence.
And that scared her, but she could stop herself. She was already in too deep to escape...