Fate's Choice: Livestream at the Start Summoning Billions of Ravens

Fu Ningna paused for a moment while holding the cream puff.

The names Zhou Ruo mentioned were those of Funina's three relatives.

In the fierce battle to defend Tokyo Bay against the onslaught of 200,000 beasts from the Abyss Black Mud, the giant octopus Lord Uther, the liquid armor seahorse Lady Havisma, and the heavily armored giant crab Miss Shebeleda, exhausted their last bit of strength in order to safely send the seriously injured and unconscious Frynn back to the deck of the real world. Their bodies shrank to the limit and then dissipated into seawater.

Since Funina awoke in Yokosuka, she has never brought up their condition to anyone.

The deathly silence in the lounge lasted for two seconds.

Fu Ningna slowly withdrew her hand and placed it back on her thigh, her tone as indifferent as if she were discussing the weather that afternoon, as if stating something unrelated to herself.

"They gave me their last bit of strength in that battle."

Her gaze shifted from Zhou Ruo's face, through the transparent glass porthole, and out to the unfathomable black ocean.

"They are still sleeping deep in the ocean. Uther's three tentacles are broken, most of Hevima's liquid armor is shattered, and Sheberida's carapace is cracked. They have all shrunk back to their most primitive form and are slowly healing."

She paused, shifting her gaze from Zhou Ruo's face to the dark depths of the sea outside the porthole.

"Whether he can wake up or not, even this water god doesn't know."

Zhou Ruo noticed that when she said the last sentence, the fingers holding the cream puff tightened slightly, and her knuckles turned pale white.

Then she lowered her head and continued eating her cream puff, never mentioning the matter again.

On the other side of the world, time had just shifted into the early morning mist of London.

The sword-in-the-stone force field, with a radius of forty kilometers, has sealed off this once-modern metropolis for ten days.

Arthur Griffin used his calloused hand to unzip his sleeping bag and climbed up from the damp ground next to the obsidian base.

The iron sword, a tourist souvenir priced at £9.99, beside him remained as immovable as a thousand-year-old glacier, embedded in a crack in the granite, its hilt glistening with a fine layer of dew in the cold morning air.

Twelve illusory figures of Knights of the Round Table, each over three meters tall, gripped long lances and tirelessly patrolled the obsidian base, their steps echoing through the gloom before the morning light had penetrated.

Arthur scooped a bowl of cold water from the iron pot next to him and splashed it on his face. He then picked up a burlap sack and wiped his face. Carrying the chipped machete he had picked up from the roadside, he was about to head to the South Market to check his potato quota for the day.

A resident wearing a tattered trench coat came running from the end of the street in the direction of Westminster and collapsed in front of Arthur without even catching his breath.

"Mr. Griffin, that little sapling we found in the crack of the abandoned building the other evening—it's grown like crazy!"

Without saying a word, Arthur shoved the machete into his belt and strode after the resident toward the scene of the incident.

When he stood in front of that cracked cement road, even Arthur, who had become accustomed to seeing electronic components turn to ashes over the past ten days, couldn't help but gasp.

It was no longer possible to describe it using the delicate term "sapling."

Two days ago, it was just a small green leaf a little over a foot tall, but after only one moonless night, it has swelled into a thick tree nearly two meters tall.

The dark brown trunk, with its severe cracks, was larger than the thick forearm of an adult male, and its lush canopy, stretching upwards, formed an umbrella covering at least six square meters above the ruins.

The leaves, a deep, dark green, trembled slightly and eerily in the still morning air, their surfaces covered with a thin layer of morning dew.

What's most unsettling is the tree's root system.

Those thick, dark blue roots, as thick as giant pythons, forcefully penetrated the three-layer high-grade cement floor laid by the London municipal engineering project, ruthlessly plunging into the deepest soil.

The exposed roots intertwined and spread outwards, forming a huge, net-like protrusion with a radius of over four meters, which from a distance looked like a hand pressing on the skin of the city.

The retired teacher who had been following Arthur and keeping records was now squatting on the edge of the huge mesh protrusion, his face a jumble of wrinkles.

The old man stretched out his trembling right hand, gently plucked a dark green leaf, took out half of a magnifying glass with a cracked lens from his pocket, and repeatedly observed the direction of the leaf veins in front of his eyes.

When he first saw the plant two days ago, he was convinced it was just the almost extinct European holly oak.

But now, the once relatively smooth leaf edges have grown extremely deep and sharp serrations, the leathery layer on the leaf surface has shrunk by half, and those net-like veins present a primitive and rugged symmetrical beauty.

The elderly teacher slowly stood up, supporting himself against the nearby cement shards, his voice trembling.

"It's not growing, it's regressing."

He handed the leaf to Arthur, his withered fingers pointing at the sharp serrations.

"This tree is becoming a species that disappeared from the earth 178 years ago; in botanical literature, it is called Celtic oak."

The old teacher swallowed a mouthful of dry saliva, his eyes flashing with fear of the unknown.

"The last documented living Celtic oak died in 1847 during the Great Deforestation of the Industrial Revolution, and even the specimen was burned to ashes in the bombings of World War II."

Arthur stared at the towering ancient tree that exuded a strong, pungent smell of grass and wood, his right thumb, gripping the hilt of the knife, rubbing repeatedly on the rough leather for a long time.

Is this the only one?

The old teacher shook his head, raised his age-spotted fingers, and pointed shakily to the dilapidated neighborhood in the northeast.

"On my way here, at the end of that street, I saw at least three more similar bulges that had cracked the concrete pavement."

Arthur looked up in the direction of the old man's withered finger, and the gray morning mist drifted slowly above the lifeless cluster of buildings.

Even from two blocks away, he could clearly see that three unnaturally large, dark bulges had indeed risen high on the originally smooth asphalt road.