Chapter 39: Wayward Lance

Chapter 39:
Wayward Lance

 

Perpetual earthquakes shook the once-green plateaus of Mongolia, now laid bare by locusts. Quakes shook the very structure of the Earth, and not just figuratively. Complex terrain, like eroded rivers, which would have taken tens of thousands of years to form, had been carved into the globe over the last few months. This place was close to the cold plume of the Earth’s mantle, and it pulled all the plates to it. Tectonic movement had intensified ever since the Longinus had wrapped itself around the world. No one knew what had happened to the fallen nations situated above the ditch of the mantle.

But today, the quakes had gone silent. They’d gone silent ever since the tree appeared in the sky.

And then, the ground rumbled again as new mountain peaks were born in the distance.

That was what most people thought, anyway.

In fact, it wasn’t the Earth that shook, but the roots.

The rumbling reverberated through all the corners of the sky.

The Longinus had been aiming toward piercing Eva-01 Final Model when it plunged into the roots of the World Tree. It had formed a ring with itself while in orbit, but the tunnel network took all thirty thousand kilometers of its length.

And still it continued to grow.