My dad took longer than we expected, so I assumed he was searching for a good spot for us to view the town or whatever. He returned to us a little out of breath, but full of smiles. "It's even better than I expected," he told Mum. "I think it'll even surprise you."

She raised an eyebrow and gave him a small smile. "All right, I'll raise my expectations just a tiny little bit then."

They disappeared, and Dad soon returned to fetch Masa and Tsume before it was finally my turn. I couldn't help blinking, and suddenly the scenery changed.

I wasn't sure what I had been expecting. Maybe some sort of medieval town with a castle? Or a delicate and ornate fairy palace? Or even some sort of natural elven town made of tree houses. It was certainly not what I saw before me.

There was something like a huge artificial tree in the centre of the plain, but there were no houses, whether made of wood or stone. Instead, the tree had plenty of round fruit-like structures with windows from which light was being emitted. The overall structure reminded me of the supertrees in Singapore, but on a far larger scale and with those fruit-houses dangling from it like glass baubles on a Christmas tree. It gave me a futuristic impression and yet somehow it fit perfectly with the natural environment at the same time. Well, I had asked for a fantasy and this was a fantastic sight indeed!

More and more of the fruit-houses were lighting up and I sighed in appreciation at the beautiful sight. The sun must have set before I realised, and it now appeared to be evening. Wait, that wasn't right, there should be several more hours of daylight left…unless we had travelled to another time zone. Huh. Was this world even round?

I shook of my head to get rid of my stray thoughts and joined my mum and Masa in staring open-mouthed at the spectacle before us. Ok, so I was actually the only one doing that, but the two of them did look surprised at the sight as well. My dad was looking annoyingly proud of himself.

"See? I told you you'd be amazed," he boasted, puffing out his chest.

"Yeah, you're right, it's beautiful," said my mum with a genuine smile as she leaned on my dad's shoulder. "Good job finding us a vantage point to admire the sight too."

"Ah, yeah. I had to climb up quite a bit to get to this hill. Sorry for taking so long," he admitted, scratching his cheek. "Well, it's getting late, so why don't we head on in and find an inn?"

We nodded and followed him down the hill towards the enormous tree-city. I briefly wondered how people travelled along the tree. Did they have lifts to go up the trunk? Or did they have to climb lots of stairs? Hopefully not. Maybe we could ask Dad to teleport us to the inn instead of climbing up all the way. Were we relying too much on him for transport? Hmm. But he didn't seem to be running low on mana even after transporting us here and there, so I assumed he was fine.

As we approached the tree-city, I noticed that there was actually a defensive wall surrounding the tree. Being dwarfed by the tree's trunk, it had looked like some sort of decoration from a distance, but was actually a proper wall around five metres thick. Two guards were standing at the entrance to the city in smart green military uniforms rather than full plate armour as I had expected. Well, how was I to know this wasn't a typical medieval fantasy world? Oh, yeah, the futuristic tree should have clued me in, huh. Oh well.

My dad and mum showed them their mercenary licences and we were allowed in. Masa and I exchanged glances, but didn't question a good thing. Tsume was quiet and hiding in Masa's bag since we weren't sure whether he was considered a dangerous animal.

Once we entered the city proper, it turned out that the "tree" was a hollow structure, kinda like a gigantic skyscraper. People were walking to and fro down the main street, which was wide enough for about four cars to travel alongside each other, but there were no signs of wagons or any other means of transport. At most some people were pulling what resembled trolley-bags or suitcases around. Not everyone had the Conjuration affinity after all.

Stalls lined up on either side of the main street, with vendors loudly hawking their wares. Either they were all speaking English or I could suddenly understand Shyi'eldian. Speaking of which, I should probably ask Mum or Dad about the language later. It was improbable that the whole world spoke the same language, wasn't it?

Above us were many other streets branching out and criss-crossing like, well, branches. It was a little weird to see branches inside a tree, but I reckoned they served a second purpose of being supports for the whole tree building. Looking up, I tried to count how many floors there were, but gave up after estimating at least fifty. The tree was so tall I couldn't even see the ceiling from here.

As for how people went to the upper levels, I caught sight of some people stepping on a familiar-looking hexagonal plate at the end of an alley and disappearing, only to walk out from a similar alley on the second floor. Ooh! So they used teleports instead of elevators! That was certainly convenient and made much more sense. I couldn't even imagine the logistics involved in constructing stairs or lifts all the way to the top of the tree.

Mum and I were itching to browse the street stalls, but Dad insisted that looking for an inn was more important since they could be fully booked if we were too late. Ah well, we could shop all we wanted after that, I suppose.