Elemental Cats

Toz was slightly disoriented as he hadn't quite gotten used to being surrounded by the dark trees and roots, and he felt lost as he opened his eyes. Though as soon as Lucy pounced on him, he remembered what had happened the last time he was awake and what had happened before he lost consciousness.

During his sleep, Toz had recovered enough to sit up and lean against a tree as he listened to what Lucy and Scrael found out. Unlike Nil and Mindle, he had been asleep when they returned and didn't know how quickly they had explored the island of trees.

But when he heard their report, Toz realized they were in an awfully sticky situation. Even if they hadn't ended up floating through the Void directly and were protected by the small island of trees woven together and the atmosphere it provided, their situation was barely a notch above floating through the Void without the trees.

The island of trees was, aside from Toz and the cats, empty. The island had about the same surface as a couple of ordinary residential houses. And during their trip around it, Lucy and Scrael hadn't found any signs of other beasts or plants other than the trees. Considering the trees were from the part of Treblor Forest that grew in the Void, something not a lot of other plants could do, it wasn't weird that were no other plants on the island of trees that Toz and the cats had ended up on.

Other kinds of plants might not even grow if the island had been big enough to accommodate other beasts.

But the island being tiny and without any kind of food wasn't the worst of it. There were no signs of Roaring Skies or Solid Ground, where the third part of Treblor Grew, anywhere. There weren't any signs of other remnants of the forest or either plane for that matter. Somehow, the tiny island of trees that had scooped up Toz had drifted far away from other trees and debris.

Although the island had saved Toz from dying from suffocation in the Void, as it was currently, it was nothing more than delaying the inevitable.

Mages at a high enough level could replace food and air with mana and wouldn't die from traveling through the Void without any help. But Toz and the cats were far from reaching that level of power.

As they were now, the most they could do was swim around for a few moments in the Void and, if they were lucky, manage to get back to the island of trees without help.

Toz couldn't but sigh after Lucy and Scrael finished their report. They were stuck in the Void with no food and no chance of getting out.

The mood grew somber in the tiny camp that Nil had set up.

While the Void might not have much else, considering how much empty space there was, it did have a lot of mana. Unlike the mana on a plane, where it was evenly distributed and the elements were clearly separate, the mana in the Void was a chaotic mix of various elements that had grouped up or spread out.

And thankfully, the Void Trees that were sheltering Toz and the cats grew by absorbing the mana in the Void. If the group only relied on their own abilities to gather mana, they would only be able to do that when they encountered an area with dense mana. But with the trees drawing the Void's mana to them, the group only needed to focus on absorbing the mana that came to them.

Even without food, Toz and the cats would still be able to last for some time.

Even if they are in trouble, doing nothing won't solve it. And the only thing they can do is train or read grimoires. The group, although dissatisfied with their fate, decided to conserve their energy while practically waiting for death as they trained.

Toz was on the verge of reaching the next level with several of his attributes, and doing that might strengthen his body and lower his need for food, making sure he could last as long as possible.

There wasn't much focus on reading the grimoires and learning the spells within since what good would learning a spell do when there wouldn't be an opportunity to use it before they died? At least training their mana could prolong their lives and give them some smidge of hope.

However, the group's peaceful training was interrupted after only a couple of days by a rumble and a crack. All of them were startled and surveyed their surroundings for the source of the sound. Maybe the drifting island of trees had collided with something.

But after carefully investigating the island's surroundings, they realized their hope was wrong. Instead of something joining their island, a tree that had suffered damage during the cataclysmic strike that had sent Treblor into the Void couldn't hold on any longer and separated from the rest of the island.

Seeing a piece of their temporary home drift away like that had Toz worrying that the rest of the trees might also be suffering from strain or damage the group couldn't notice and would break away, leaving Toz and the cats in the Void without protection.

Although none of them had the wood attribute and could heal or reinforce the trees themselves, Nil and Toz had an attribute very suited for creating.

To prevent more trees from separating from the island of Void Trees, Toz and Nil started filling in the gaps between the roots with metal and basically creating a layer of metal on the edge of the island to keep all the trees tied together.

Although it would hinder the trees' ability to absorb mana a tiny bit, it would at least stop the island from splitting apart.

Toz and Nil would occasionally have to reinforce their construct and refill it with mana, but since the island was so tiny, they wouldn't have to waste a lot of time and mana once it was finally completed.