“Seems like these children have caused you a little trouble.”

All of the other girls were also left speechless from her beautiful form, and her outstanding features compared to the rest of the spirits.

"They aren't hurting me, so I don't mind." I calmly responded to her, not minding the flying spirits who were right next to me.

That woman giggled a little before speaking once again. "They all seem to be attached to you. If I had to say, they must be curious about you." She said once again with her mature smile on her face.

Even though I was making an assumption, she definitely looked like the queen of these spirits.

“Waaah! She’s so pretty.” Ichika gasped at that spirit’s beauty as she was coming closer to us.

“Thank you for your kind words.” That spirit gently smiled at Ichika’s reaction. “If you don't mind, why don’t we move somewhere more comfortable for you to stay?” She suggested after seeing our sizes.

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In the next minutes, we were led to a much open place where we could sit down more comfortably and stretch our arms if we felt like. But even though there was a lot of space for us, those spirits continued hanging around our heads.

“FIrstly, it would be the right thing to introduce myself.” She looked up at us since she was the only one staying on the ground. “My name is Aurora, the eldest spirit that has been living since the beginning.” She introduced herself as she did a small curtsy.

“So you are like, the queen of spirits?” Akemi rudely asked without a care about her position.

“Yeah, you may also refer to me as that.”

“Hmm, is that so?”

But even though Aurora was treated like that, Aisa, the spirit that was standing on her side as a guard was trying to hold herself back from saying anything unnecessary. Another reason for staying calm was because she knew how powerful Akemi actually was.

“Firstly, I would like to thank you all for bringing this lost spirit back home.” The queen slightly bowed her head to us, making Ichika and Hina a little surprised by the way she was acting as a queen.

“No, you don't really need to thank us. We only did what was right.”

“As she said, there’s no need to thank us. Besides that, we were the ones who asked Alette to bring us here.” Ichika and Chloe respond back.

“Right, I heard that your friend needed energy from the tree of life. We would really like to help him… but unfortunately our tree has been infected by something which now releases poisonous energy…”

“If I may, Isn't there anything we can do about the tree?” Hina asked after seeing that there still may be hope about the tree.

“Yeah there is…” Sadness went through Aurora’s eyes after replying to Hina’s question. “But it's way too dangerous to achieve it…” She continued telling her story about the tree. “Our home has been growing bigger and bigger to the point where you can call this place another whole new world. Of course we were happy at first but as time passed by, we soon saw that the tree of life wasn't providing energy to us anymore.”

I could see that Aurora was going through a lot as she was holding herself back from crying.

“Thanks to the tree’s energy, us spirits manage to live without aging or dying. But now there is no longer any place where we could feed off, a lot of spirits are already dead...”

Even the other girls were really sad hearing this kind of story.

“That's terrible!”

“Why did this happen…” Chloe and Ichika reacted as they continued listening to Aurora’s story.

“As you can see, everyone you are seeing here is barely surviving with what left energy they have..” She also added.

“Then what about you? You said that you were here from the beginning. Doesn't that mean that you need energy as well, since you’ve been living for this long?” This was one of the questions I was wondering after explaining how they've been surviving for this long.

“Gh!!”

“...Hatsuko…”

But Aisa and many other girls looked at me for suddenly asking that kind of question. They were all giving me the eyes of how I shouldn’t have asked that.

“It's okay…” The queen slightly raised her hand in order to calm down the guard beside her. “Even though it pains me to say this, many spirits offer me a bit of their own energy every day so I won’t die.“ The queen explained, then Aisa took a step forward.

“It was our choice as a group to protect this place, especially our mother.” Aisa told me with pride, anger, and fear in her voice.

“Thank you, Aisa.” She gently smiled at that spirit before looking back at us. “Soon, we discovered why the tree of life was infected. After carefully inspecting its roots, we found a gap that led to a dungeon where many monsters were sucking and destroying the tree.”

“Eh?! A dungeon?!” Alette’s scared voice was suddenly heard after hearing about the dungeon.

So even though she denied the fact that this realm had a dungeon, it soon became a real thing after monsters found a way to enter and destroy this place. In this case, the tree of life was greatly affected together with many other spirits which no longer lived.

“Even though this may seem rude to ask of our guests… but please help us.” The queen bowed to us once again, making the other spirits feel bad about their queen and mother acting like that towards us.

The other girls looked at me with a slight surprised, yet eager expression on their faces, waiting for my answer to the queen’s request.

“Our plan was to actually visit this realm so we could conquer its dungeon. So we were going to check it out whether you like it or not.” I told her without a care about our plan of conquering the dungeon.

But another pleased and happy smile appeared on her face as she began flying towards me.

“Thank you for helping my children.” Then in the next moment, she pressed her own lips against mine without a care about the difference in our size.

“If you fail to complete the dungeon, then would you please help me give birth to new spirits?” And in the next moment, such words came out of the queen’s mouth as she was looking at me with her sparkling eyes.

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