Ethan began to exit the cavern, glad that he had gained many things from this chance encounter, but even then, everything was going to get so much harder from now on.
"Oh yeah! There's something that I've been confused about when I first arrived on this planet.."
"Confused?"
Ethan wandered to the lake full of strange sea creatures once again, and stared inside.
"Can't you see that glowing thingy that's at the bottom?" It was glowing even brighter than before, and it was like it was pulsating.
"Huh.. I would've never have thought that I would see that here.."
"What is it?"
"What the..! A root of the Illusory Tree?! One of the many creations of the Devourer of Knowledge and Light, and the very thing that holds together reality itself.."
"The Illusory Tree.." Ethan felt his body tingle at just the mention of the name.
"I can't get into much detail, but a long time ago, reality itself was on the verge of breaking apart, but that one guy was able to invent a solution that could hold it together."
"But, since one of its roots appeared here, it seems like it's not gonna last for much longer, maybe even the universe could dissipate and eventually collapse on itself and become absolute nothingness because of this."
"However.. we don't need to worry about that for now, it's best if we just keep an eye on it though if it grows any further, since this could be the direct cause of a major disaster occurring in the future."
Ethan nodded his head, then began his venture into the forest once more.
"..What's that sound I hear?" After a few hours of exploring, Ethan turned around as he heard the sound of marching swiftly approach him.
Coming from deeper inside the forest, he saw a group of people that were chained up emerge, and soon after, what looked like soldiers walked behind them.
They carried around guns, and they were wearing futuristic, mechanical suits which made them seem more like otherworldly beings who had conquered this planet instead of actual, real-life humans.
Ethan ducked into one of the bushes surrounding him and observed them, as he wasn't sure of their intentions yet.
"The Great Guardian Protector shall decide whether you fugitives shall live, or die." One of them said, "You're pretty lucky that we didn't have it our way, or else, you'd all have been executed by now."
They all actually looked quite strong from the looks of it, and Ethan could feel some type of powerful aura coming from them.
"It would be great if I could get some useful information from them.."
"Hmph. I still can't believe that they were the ones who ruined our experiments, now, we won't be able to find out anything else from the cursed demons that we captured, now that they've destroyed nearly everything."
"Yeah, but still, at least we'll be able to get some more information out of them in our hidden base."
In an instant, one of them jolted their head in Ethan's direction, they've managed to detect him even though he was making little to no sound at all.
"Who are you?" One of them said, this startled Ethan greatly, and he started to run away, but they were quick to catch on, and they chased after him, firing their guns at him at each and every opportunity they could.
"What the fuck!? Why are they so fast??"
"There is one more of them, I repeat, there is one more of those traitors from the other side. Catch him at all costs." He heard a voice ring out from behind.
"Hm.. you look like you know your stuff," A voice sounded from above, and he felt something pierce his shoulder, making him shout in agony, "Unluckily for you, you got hit by an enhanced bullet."
"Hm, he doesn't seem to be very agile, but he able to narrowly evade us, he's definitely a strange case." Another one of them said, he narrowly avoided a second bullet, but he tripped, seemingly on nothing, "You should've been more careful of your surroundings if you wanted to get out of here alive."
He had tripped on a wire that he couldn't see at all while he was hurriedly trying to running away.
"Shut up!" He was only focused on getting out of there alive, he had just gotten a second chance, so he wasn't going to screw it up.
He got back up, but it was too late, as he had already been surrounded by these very stealthy soldiers.
"Jeez.. for someone who inherited my power, you're pretty weak." The Celestial fragment said.
Ethan was chained up like the rest of them who had been chained up with restraints that were pretty weird, and he was forced to go along with them to their base.
"What the.."
When they made it to their base, it came as a surprise to Ethan that it was actually a facility hidden deep in the ground, and it was quite large at that, big enough to be comparable to an entire city, there were thousands upon thousands of rooms, and each one of them were different from the last.
"Psst!" Someone besides him said, "Who are you? I've never seen anyone like you before, but they chained you up too."
"I'm.." He contemplated a bit, before deciding to make up a fake identity, "I'm.. Trevor."
They were all shoved into they individual rooms, and even though he didn't know the rest of them, he felt bad for them because of how they were treated so cruelly, however he wasn't in the position to feel sorry for them, as he was also in the same position.
"Ugh.." He said to himself, "How did I end up in this situation.. I thought I'd be like one of those overpowered gods like in some of the novels that I've read before when I first discovered that I was half a celestial being.."
"Well, there's only one person to blame, and that's you."
"..Why are you so annoying?"
"Huh?! I'm not annoying in the slightest! If I am annoying, that's probably because I developed a personality similar to the one that I possess!" He said, obviously pointing at Ethan.
"What? That's definitely not true because I'm not that annoying at all!" As they bickered with each other, other things started to happen, and it seemed like from now on, Ethan was going to be the very thing that would connect everything together.