Chapter 41 – Wings Over an Unknown Sky
The first thing I noticed wasn't the sound.
It was the air.
The rush of wind sliding beneath my feathers, the sharp bite of pressure pushing against my wings, the faint tremor that ran through every tendon when I beat them once—twice—and rose higher.
It wasn't the hollow, pre-rendered wind of Yggdrasil.
It was alive. Thick. Heavy with scent and texture.
The sky opened above me, vast and blindingly blue. Not the endless darkness of Helheim's artificial void, nor the aurora-threaded simulation of Yggdrasil's upper realms.
This was a sky of pure light, unfiltered and endless, scattered with drifting white clouds that looked close enough to touch.
For a long, wordless moment, I forgot everything else.
Every wingbeat felt natural—fluid, instinctive. My new body knew how to fly, even if my mind was still catching up. I adjusted my feathers against the wind current and felt resistance shift, the airflow curling along my back like a second heartbeat.
When I dove slightly, gravity gripped me; when I angled upward, my muscles burned just enough to remind me that this form wasn't illusion anymore.
"So this is what it's like," I murmured aloud, voice half-lost to the rushing wind. "To actually be a birdman."
I tilted my wings and soared higher.
Below me stretched a land I didn't recognize.
And I'd memorized every region of Yggdrasil.
There was no mistaking it—this wasn't the world I had known for eleven years.
Gone were the floating realms, the magical hex grids, the border transitions between world biomes.
What sprawled beneath me was something organic, untamed, and impossibly vast.
Green forests swayed like waves in the wind.
Rivers carved silver ribbons through valleys dotted with lakes.
Mountains stretched far into the distance, capped with snow that glittered under sunlight.
No loading seams. No visual limits.
Just horizon upon horizon—alive, breathing, perfect.
And above all, no signs of the digital grid that once wrapped every inch of Yggdrasil's environment.
"…This looks like something from the old world," I whispered.
The words came unbidden.
The old world—the one from videos and fragments I'd watched growing up.
The world before radiation, before domes, before everything turned gray and toxic.
A world I'd never seen except through filtered screens.
Yet here it was, stretched out before me like the Earth that humanity lost centuries ago.
---
I closed my eyes briefly and let the wind carry me, balancing the currents with small adjustments of my wings. My body responded smoothly, like I'd flown all my life. There was rhythm in every movement, a language written in air pressure and instinct.
Maybe it was my Birdman physiology.
Maybe it was this world's physics.
Or maybe I had simply become what I had once only simulated—a creature born to the sky.
It felt… liberating.
Not the kind of freedom found in a game.
The real kind.
The kind that made your chest hurt because it was too vast, too beautiful, too real.
For a moment, I almost forgot that I didn't know where I was.
---
But curiosity never sleeps.
I banked left and slowed my ascent, hovering with slow wingbeats. Then I focused.
The magic of the Birdman template thrummed through me—tracing circuits of mana in perfect, living synchronization with this new reality. I murmured the words to an old detection spell I'd customized in Yggdrasil, layering it with my Reconciliation and Tracking Magic class skills.
A circle of faint light expanded beneath me, spreading outward in glowing rings across the land.
My vision shifted—mana outlines appeared across the landscape like tiny motes of starlight, each representing life force or magical density.
At first, the map was empty.
Then—
Flashes.
Far to the southwest, clustered signals—dense, rhythmic, numerous.
A city.
Not just a settlement—an actual, functioning population center.
I expanded the range. Thousands of kilometers of airspace lit up in faint blue lines, and yet only that one region glowed strong. The rest were wild lands, untouched.
The spell's results faded after a minute, leaving me with a single certainty.
"There," I said to myself. "Roughly eighty kilometers southwest. Large mana cluster. Civilization, maybe."
If there were people here—humanoids, NPCs, or whatever this world's equivalent of sentient life was—I needed to see them.
I needed to know if anyone else from Yggdrasil had come through.
---
A familiar voice entered my mind then—soft, clear, transmitted through Message.
> "Ren-sama, are you airborne?"
I smiled. "Still am. Altitude around two thousand meters. You following?"
> "Yes. I am advancing along the ground, southwest bearing, as per your flight path. I estimate I will maintain visual contact within twenty minutes."
I glanced down. Sure enough, far below the tree canopy, a faint glimmer moved between shadows—HIME's automaton body, still gleaming faintly under the sunlight as she traversed the terrain.
> "You could just ride along," I said through the link. "Would save effort."
> "You have wings, Ren-sama. I do not," she replied, her tone clipped but amused. "However, I must ask—why head toward an unknown population instead of exploring Nazarick while we are near?"
The question was fair.
Nazarick had been the first thing I saw when the world didn't end—a structure I knew intimately by reputation and data. And yet…
"I want to know where we are first," I said. "Coordinates, people, climate—everything. If this isn't Yggdrasil, Nazarick can wait. Exploration without context is suicide."
> "A rational choice," she admitted. "Then I will proceed by land. I will relay environmental readings if I encounter anomalies."
"Good. Stay hidden, though. We don't know what counts as normal here."
> "Understood."
The link faded, leaving behind the faint echo of her presence in my mind.
---
The world below shifted as I flew closer to the southwest.
The dense forests began to thin, giving way to open plains streaked with rivers.
From this altitude, I could see faint patterns—roads, irrigation lines, smoke trails—signs of settlement.
And beyond them, something extraordinary.
Walls.
Massive, high walls of stone, arranged in circular layers, with towers glinting in sunlight. Inside, patches of color—rooftops, gardens, streets, all arranged in a pattern that looked organic, not procedural.
A city.
And not one built with the same architectural rules as Yggdrasil. No glowing sigils, no floating platforms—just honest, solid construction.
I could almost imagine people walking those streets.
"Looks medieval," I murmured. "Human scale, maybe mixed race. Definitely structured."
A flicker of movement caught my eye—a flock of actual birds.
They darted past, squawking in surprise at my presence, and for once, I didn't feel like I was part of their program.
They were real.
I couldn't suppress the laugh that slipped out. "This is insane. It's too detailed for code, too random for design… so what are you, world?"
The wind didn't answer, but it pushed me onward.
---
As I neared the outskirts, I adjusted my descent.
The forests thickened again around the city's perimeter, forming a natural border between civilization and wilderness.
Perfect.
A good place to rest and prepare.
I slowed my flight and circled above a particularly dense cluster of trees. The shadows below were deep, concealing a wide clearing that looked ideal for concealment.
> "HIME," I sent through Message, "I'm landing about five kilometers east of the city perimeter. Lots of tree cover—should be safe to open a gate there."
Her response came quickly.
> "Acknowledged. I will rendezvous shortly."
I folded my wings and dove, the forest rising fast to meet me. Leaves rushed past in blurs of green, branches slicing the air beside me. I spread my wings at the last moment, braking hard before landing in a soft gust of wind that sent dust and petals swirling.
My feet—actual feet—touched soil that felt cool and damp beneath my talons.
For a few seconds, I just stood there, catching my breath, surrounded by the smell of earth and life.
Real air.
Real ground.
Every nerve screamed that this was reality, not simulation.
And if that was true, then I wasn't a gamer anymore.
I was a living being in an unknown world.
I exhaled slowly, then reached into my inventory—
—or rather, the space where it should have been.
The old Yggdrasil interface didn't appear, but something else responded: a faint pulse in my mind. I reached into it instinctively and pulled.
A flicker of light burst before me—an item manifesting physically rather than through a window.
The small, ornate staff of Aeternum Sanctum.
The portable guild base.
I smiled. "Still works."
> "Ren-sama," HIME's voice echoed faintly through Message, "I am less than two kilometers away. Shall I prepare defensive perimeter protocols?"
"Yes," I said. "Let's open the base here."
The staff shimmered as I held it up, faint blue light swirling around its edges. The air warped, and the familiar runes of the Aeternum Sanctum activation ritual began to glow across the clearing.
This place would be our anchor.
Our refuge.
Our foothold in this unknown world.
"Let's see what you've turned into, Yggdrasil," I murmured. "Or… whatever you've become."
The staff's runes flared brighter, casting long shadows through the forest as the gateway began to form.
---
End of Chapter 41 – Wings Over an Unknown Sky