Chapter 625 A Xenobotanist's Wet Dream

A month passed and the red mana shield around Proxima Centauri b was still present, just as strong as it had been when it was first raised, if not stronger. The TFS Proxima had been in a high polar orbit practically the entire time, and it seemed like the shield had detected her sensors and strengthened itself as a result.

But if they had been able to see through the obscuring shield, the members of Task Force Proxima would likely have been rather surprised. Who wouldn’t be surprised if they saw continents springing up seemingly out of nowhere?

That said, the continents hadn’t been created out of nothing. Rather, it was more like the roots occupying the ocean floor had mostly withdrawn, lowering the water level and exposing continents that had already been there, but flooded by the water. And following the law of unintended consequences, the withdrawn roots had taken most of the mana with them from the water. But as energy, including mana, could neither be created nor destroyed—barring certain types of conceptual and esoteric mana that specialized in delivering hearty fuck yous to the laws of physics—that mana had somehow been redistributed across the new continents, balancing the density between land and water. It was at a slightly lower level, of course, but still significantly higher than the mana density of Earth.

Another surprise was waiting for the task force on the new continents. One would think that any land mass submerged in the hostile environment of any saltwater ocean would be scoured of all but the hardiest archaebacterial life, and in most cases, they would be correct. However, on Proxima Centauri b, the newly revealed continents were undergoing an extreme cycle of vegetation growth, to the point that in but a few more short months there would be no difference between them and New Australia.

The growth was enormous, both in size and scale. Lush violet forests were springing up, blending kilometers-tall oaks, squat crabapples, tall and slender cypress trees, dank and murky mangroves, and straight birch trees into a cohesive whole that would never be seen anywhere on Earth. And all of them were dozens of times the size of their more prosaic counterparts on humanity’s homeworld.

(Ed note: The trees and other plants mentioned in this chapter aren’t the *actual* trees and plants found on Earth. Instead, they’re lookalikes. Agent and I decided to go with using actual plant species to make it easier to visualize them instead of making y’all keep track of things that’re obviously alien. Like “the zeepflorp plant looked like a branching fractal crystal”. That would quickly become too much to keep track of, so using more “Earthly” forests just made sense.)

Xenobotanists would have an absolute field day when they discovered the mixed forests. And in the middle of what used to be a much bigger ocean was a singular “tree” made up of woven roots twisted together whose crown brushed against the mana shield over a hundred kilometers from the water’s surface. It was practically a supercontinent itself, and each of the five main branches grew a specific type of tree and its accompanying symbiotic vegetation on a mass of twisted roots and soil from the bottom of the ocean that would put most of Earth’s continents to shame, if they were to be compared in size.

The lowest of the main branches was home to vast groves of crabapple trees. The forest floor was covered in moss, and surrounding the crabapples were dogwood, serviceberry, and hazel shrubs, each of which had their own attendants. Great, broad ferns of all kinds surrounded them and an enormous rocky mountain range split the continent-sized branch practically in half, running from northwest to southeast.

The next-highest branch was covered in rolling, grassy hills and knolls, all of which were home to oak trees that grew in groves to the height of two or three kilometers. Each grove had between twenty and a hundred oak trees surrounded by witch hazel, dogwood, mountain laurel, and rhododendron shrubs. Interspersed between and around the oak groves were vast meadows of wildflowers, lilypad- and duckweed-covered lakes, and rivers lined with cattails and goldenrods. The oaks themselves were home to lush curtains of ivy and honeysuckle, and the rocky areas of the hills were covered in mosses and lichens.

Above the oak-forested branch was a wetland surrounding a single vast mountain peak that reached eight kilometers into the air, practically brushing the bottom of the branch above it. From that mountaintop ran great, rushing rivers in all directions that split and meandered through the wetlands surrounding the foot of the mountain until they poured themselves off the edge of the branch itself, falling to the ocean surface as a fine mist. On that particular branch grew tall, slender cypress trees surrounded in mist and rainbows, albeit muted ones. Alongside them were wax myrtle, alder, and buttonbush shrubs that surrounded meadows filled with moss and grass, from which sprouted mushrooms in scattered rings here and there.

Still higher was a branch covered in dank, dark swamps, from which grew great and twisted, gnarled mangrove trees. Accompanying them was a low ground cover comprised mostly of marsh grass, sea purslane, glasswort, and seawort with marsh ferns scattered here and there peeking out of the low fog and swirling mists that covered the ground. This continent-sized branch had very little solid ground, most of which were sand dunes and sandbars that rose a few feet above the algae-covered swamp waters, stabilized by sea oat plants that prevented them from being washed away by the shifting swamps. And riddled throughout the mass was a deep, dark network of tunnels and caves.

And on the highest branch of them all was a vast forest of graceful birch trees, rising so near to the mana shield that, if one were to stand atop the tallest of the birch trees, they would be able to reach up and touch the shield itself without stretching or straining. Surrounding the birch trees like attendants were alders, dogwoods, and weeping willow shrubs, and carpeting the ground itself were grasses, sedges, and wildflowers of all kinds, occasionally giving way to meadows filled with bluebells. The birches themselves were organized into groves where the trees grew so close that their branches intertwined on multiple levels, creating broad paths above the ground.

From each tree on every level of the enormous “world tree” grew giant, eggplant-shaped fruits. The fruits pulsed with a rhythmic red light, almost like a metronome, or perhaps a heartbeat. They ranged in size from the 4-5 foot long fruits on the crabapple trees to enormous 16-20 foot long fruits on the great oak trees. The cypress trees had irregular fruits, some of which were as small as four feet long, while others were nine or ten feet long and almost as wide in diameter. The birch and mangrove trees were home to fruits in the 6-7 foot long range.

The explorers of Task Force Proxima would be in for quite the surprise, if and when they ever made it back to the surface of the planet.