Reigns’ face crunched up hard, and the expression alone was enough to make the man shudder slightly.

Nyx’s gaze also turned cold as if she was already tired of this joke.

"Woah... Woah... Kids... Calm down a bit... I am not lying."

Gunther slowly raised both hands while speaking.

"In fact, I also came here with the same objective as you. Look what I have become."

Nyx and Reigns turned to look at one another, clearly confused by the revelation.

"Can you explain more?"

"Of course I can. After all, it’s one of my favourite jobs."

"That is?"

"Guiding lost lambs," he said with a strange smile.

"....."

Ignoring the silence between them, he continued.

"First let me greet you properly. I am Gunther. Just like you, I came to this Tier 0 zone to level up, but before I could reach Lv10 and go out, a dungeon appeared."

His eyes slowly drifted upward as if recalling old memories.

"And of course, we were all greedy for rewards, so we entered the dungeon. My team and I cleared the floors one after another until we reached here..."

Gunther spoke with excitement at first, but then his expression slowly turned sombre.

"The moment we landed here, there was no notification about fighting a boss monster. We searched around and found weird monsters, but we couldn’t get our hands on the boss monster. We searched for an option to go out."

His smile widened slowly, but his eyes carried something completely different.

"Apparently, until we defeat the boss monster, we can’t go up. And in the dungeon, you can only step forward but not retreat. And now we are stuck here for eternity... Hehehe... Isn’t that sad..."

Reigns’ steps faltered slightly as he stared at Gunther.

The man’s lips were curved into a pearly smile, but his eyes...

Those eyes were filled with regret, madness, and sadness. It looked as if he was cursing himself for being greedy and stepping into this shit.

Reigns didn’t even get the time to console him because he himself was completely stupefied by the sudden lore drop.

’Now what in the name of seven hells is this shit?’

’Wasn’t this some litrpg level trope? So where did this sudden lore drop come out of nowhere?’

Nyxara thought for a moment before asking calmly,

"So how many are there? You and your team?"

Gunther didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he gave them a mysterious smile.

"You guess."

...

"ARGHHHHHHHH!"

Reigns gasped in horror while looking at the scene ahead.

After crossing a small patch of forest, they arrived near a narrow hill passage, and inside it stood a huge tree.

The very tree they had seen from afar.But the view from afar was a sharp contrast to the real thing.

It was humongous, and its branches seemed to rise endlessly as if they were touching the very sky of the dungeon. The branches were gargantuan and spread across the entire area.It was dark, decayed, and rotten.

The most noticeable feature was the broken part in the middle.

The tree was bifurcated in the center as if a mighty axe from heaven had chopped it down, separating it into two massive branches that extended in opposite directions.

And just as much as it spread above, it spread equally below.

Huge roots emerged from the ground and extended everywhere while covering the surrounding hills.

And over those massive branches, Reigns spotted several thatched houses.

At a glance, he could already tell there were around a hundred of them.

"Hahahaha!"

Gunther’s sudden laughter broke the silence.

He was walking ahead while carrying the monster he had slain earlier with a spear throw.

"Now welcome to the Village of Shattered Canopy!"

"What a fitting name..." Reigns clicked his lips and turned toward Nyx.

"What should we do?"

"Let’s follow his lead," Nyx muttered softly.

Then she extended her hand and grabbed Reigns gently.

"With me here, no one can harm you, darling."

"That’s quite a show of love, but please tone it down. We have tons of single men there who might go crazy."

Hearing the warning hidden inside his joke, Gunther simply laughed and led them further ahead.

As they approached the entrance, Reigns spotted two humans standing guard.

Lv11.

Both of them looked at Gunther and then at Reigns and Nyx.

"Do we have new inhabitants?"

"Yes. I found them in the outer zone."

"Damn... I thought we wouldn’t be seeing anyone here after no one came last year."

"It seems we still haven’t been abandoned."

Reigns immediately locked onto the keywords and asked,

"Last year...? Just how many years have you been here?!"

The question made the three men freeze.

They scratched their chins and tried to think deeply.

"I don’t think I can remember properly."

"Me too... You see, the passage of time is quite crude."

Reigns and Nyxara were slightly frightened by this response. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"Ahh... Leave that aside and follow me inside..."

"Don’t worry... You are perfectly safe here..."

"That’s not reassuring at all."Reigns muttered underneath.

The two followed Gunther inside.

A pathway had been carved by chiseling through the thick roots of the Shattered Canopy.

Some houses stood on the ground while others were built high above on the giant branches.The deeper they went, the more people Reigns noticed.

Eventually, they arrived at a clear open area where many people had gathered around a thick root near the trunk.

There was a bloodied hole in the middle of the root that led downward into darkness.

Reigns immediately assessed their levels.

Lv13... Lv14... Lv15...

There were only a few around Lv15 while the rest were below.

As his gaze moved ahead, it stopped on a thick bulky man with long black hair standing at the center.

Lv18.

"That man you are seeing... He is the village chief."

Nyx had just opened her lips to speak, but the chief’s sudden voice silenced everyone.

The giant man slowly fell onto his knees and intertwined his hands together respectfully.

"The Great Lord of Shattered Canopy!"

"Your blessings have protected us from this cruel unknown world. You reinforced our will to live and survive. Without you covering the land above and the ground below, countless abominations would have harvested our lives."

His voice echoed loudly throughout the village.

"For all this, I am here once again to offer the meagre things we had hunted."

Saying this, he swayed his hand.

A man standing at the back slammed a drum loudly as a signal.

BOOM!

"Offer the sacrifices..."