LOCATION - SIGNAL TOWER 5

|Location: TREE|

-ZERO-

The signal tower is a lot different from what I imagine, but I was still thankful to Dia for bringing me here.

I sighed as I looked through the place, far ahead and surrounded by the black forest is a huge crater that looks approximately to be a kilometer wide dent to the land. Sitting in the middle is a humongous tree.

The huge tree had a shade of autumn in its leaves and its trunk is dark as the soil that surrounds it. But the rays of sunlight made the leaves of the tree look like golden flakes that reflected a thousand shades. The view was breathtaking on its own.

The tree's branches seem to be dancing around from where I stand, yet the air surrounding the place was far from dancing. It's cold and still. Things that don't really make sense are present and they coexist in this place.

"Whoa!" I can't help myself but fall captive the longer I look at it.

The more I stare, the more it glistens in my eyes and the more it feels that I'm drawn to it. Even more, it pulls my curiosity closer. That's when I suddenly heard a similar voice from before and unlike back then this time instead of a soft gentle whisper, what I heard was a loud voice of screaming baffling words.

It hit me strongly that my head is filled with echoes and ringings. I placed my hand over my ears but it did nothing to help, I could still hear the loud voices. I desperately tried to shake it off but whatever I did it did nothing.

"Zero are you okay?" Dia said to me as she caressed my back.

Then suddenly it stopped and a voice called out for me [come].

As if it was instinct that I knew the voices I heard were coming from that tree and just like that, I immediately rushed forwards leaving Dia behind and down into the crater I went. My fall wasn't that high, just a few meters deep. It is enough to land safely on my own two feet without a hitch.

But I never accounted that something would suddenly change the moment I stepped over the border. Something changed in my surroundings. The moment I ran past the edge of the crater, the air suddenly became denser and the soil turned from soft to a steel like composition, it even reproduced a loud sound every time I walked over it, similarly if I wacked a metal rod with another metal rod.

The sound continued to echo even if I stood still. I knocked on the ground multiple times and it was clear that it's hard and cold as steel. But my mind was still focused on that tree.

What I felt was similar to when I left the desert for the first time, the feeling of rapid changes in my environment. It was unprecedented and new.

I continued to walk towards the tree and as I got closer to it I realized that I missed something extraordinary. When standing from afar it might be seen as the light is raining down to the tree alone but I made a wrong assumption. The light didn't rain down on the tree but it was in fact the tree that gave off a strong bright light that pierced through the wasteland's sky.

The thousand leaves that hang around the hundred branches, each have a unique glow and each has a shade different from the rest. Similar to the lamp Dia carries and the lamp back in the camp, each piece of leaf emitted a very specific wavelength of radioactive energy and with all of it concentrated in one location, the energy emitted from it made my skin feel irritating.

But it didn't stop me from getting closer.

And here I am standing in front of this magnificent tree, unable to reject its beauty. I tried leaning my head forward and placing my ears to the tree, hoping I would hear a voice but nothing came out. But something else caught my attention when I leaned closer. I saw how every leaf attached to the tree has this long stroke of dark line extending down into the tree's roots and from what I could see there's something tiny like golden dots in each one of it, as it moves upwards into the leaves. It seems to be carrying something or better yet, extracting something from this land might be the better word.

"This tree, the leaves and this streak of lines." My jaw dropped for a moment after realizing how amazing this is. Right in front of me is a tree that represents a huge compilation of codes that are run by some kind of program. "This tree is a system itself. A massive brain."

Like a brain, this tree seems to be responsible for how the wasteland came to be. The way I see it, this tree is gathering energy and information. Information? Right, I came here to get information from the signal tower.

I looked at it and can't help but feel baffled as to how I could extract what I need from it.

The thoughts came short when suddenly I felt a cold breath on my back, it managed to escape my sensitive senses and appeared right behind me, when I turned around she was there. Dia was standing behind still. "Close but not that close."

She said under her breath.

I looked at her for a moment before wondering, how in the world she managed to sneak her way behind me. She didn't make a sound, unlike me who created loud wacking noises just from walking. She even walked around me right now but I still can't hear a thing.

What she did became a wonder to me. I somehow felt warry. "How?!"

Before I could even ask her properly she immediately cut me off and smiled widely towards my face. She said in a playful tone. "So what do you think of this?"

The way she said it made me remember the time when we first met and decided to let my worries go for now.

Wait, I was cautious just now, but why? Strange thought suddenly appeared in my head a while ago and just like how fast it appeared it left just as quick. I immediately arrange my thought and reply back to Dia

"This tree?" I said as I continued to examine the tree. "It's amazing."

"You said it's a system." Dia approached me and started to walk around the tree. "But for me, it's a memory."

Dia slowly disappeared from my sight as she continued to walk around the huge tree and at that time I tried to extract information from the tree. And SAI is my only option.

(SAI do the extraction!)

I immediately gave SAI the command and was waiting but then a sudden error screen flashes bright red in front of me. I got flustered at this moment.

[error] [error]

(What? Do the information extracting that you said.)

[error] [error]

From that moment, I felt like one reason why I'm living disappeared. It's hard to say how or why but that's what I felt as my knees wobbled and my emotions got jumbled.

Error? Why, just what am I going to do now? For a moment I got my hopes up because it said to go here and now this! Just what am I expecting from this monotonous voice? Answers? I doubt that.

Wait a sec if it told me it's having an error does that mean there's something wrong with me or this 'tree'.

I began pondering when I came into this realization.

How can I even be sure this is the signal tower in the first place? From what I have in the data a signal tower would look a little different from this but no matter where I look I see nothing alike. Checking the very unreliable map showed the scope of the search but not the exact location which made me even more frustrated.

Without anything I could do at the moment I sat down beside the tree and stared blankly at the endless stretch of dark trees far ahead. I looked down as I curled myself, wrapping my arms around my knees. I sigh in disappointment.

What should I do now? Is there any point in doing this? I should have just forced Nuk to give me the map back then and left this place, and go to the big city that Dia mentioned. Or should I just kill them all back then. But maybe I could just go now and look for the map myself then kill that Fred guy. What if I'll go back and twist the neck of that uncle since he slapped Nuk, yeah that could work and Nuk will feel grateful to me and give me that map.

Ah! What am I thinking? Maybe I have not seen the sun for so long that's why I'm going crazy right now.

Dia's feet suddenly appeared right in front of me, I looked up and saw her face directly above mine.

"You might be wondering how to use this." She said, tapping the trunk. I nodded. She chuckled and with a warm smile she directed how. "Well you only need to have to use your blood to activate synchronization and to touch it directly."

Without second thought I did what she told me it was as if I was immediately convinced by how confident she sounded and at that movement I felt my stale blood get warmer. I stood up and placed my arm over the tree's roots. "You know how to do this all along?"

She only smiled back at me.

Without hesitation I ripped the skin from my arm and touched the tree with it and as my blood flowed down into the roots the tree began to change its color to match my blood. It felt warmer than before.

My skin started to heal up very quickly at this point. However something began to happen outside of what I expected and before I could even act right away, the tree had already sucked both of my arms in it. I tried to squirm my way out of the tree but now matter how strong I was, my attempt to escape still failed.

The tree turned to a muddy substance and slowly wrapped itself around my body. I tried to turn around and run from it, but it was quick and caught me right away.

I saw Dia just standing behind with a smile stretching from one ear to another. "Zero, you know you're smart. But you also act like a child easily tempted and easily tricked. It made us wonder if you truly are his works. HAHAHAHA this is just plain stupid."

"Hey, Dia, what are you saying? Help me." No matter how much I struggle, the tree will always wrap itself back the moment I tear it apart, making all of my attempts all futile against this thing.

And as I further got sucked in it the more I felt this disgusting feeling filling me up from the inside.

Dia suddenly grabbed my face and made me see how offended she was. "Hey now, didn't you want the signal tower? I'm giving it you know."

At that moment I felt my body shuddering from what I just witnessed. It was also the moment where for the first time I understood the feeling of fear, not helplessness like before but real fear.

"Dia this is." At this moment I started to lose the sensation on my legs along with the energy I have, it wasn't hard to think that this tree is sucking me dry.

"Right if there's a next time, don't get swindled into things like this again." She said aggressively.

She finally let go of my face.

"D-D-Di-a?" Similar to my body, I could feel that my mind is slowly drifting away.

"Right, almost forgot, let this be a lesson for you Zero. didn't you even wonder how I knew you wanted to see the signal tower when you didn't even mention any of it." Dia looked at me one last time before turning around and leaving me alone.

Everything she said was like a solid slap in the face for me and the way she said it, why did I not find any of that suspicious. She was a threat from the beginning.

Before my mind could have completely drifted away I saw a silhouette, a familiar figure, and a slight hope that he'll manage to save me. "H-huh?"

"Look who showed up." Dia said as she walked away.

"Dia what's going on? What did you do to Zero?" That was the last memory, I heard Nuk's voice before my body finally drifted away along to my consciousness.

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