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Chapter 231 – The city of trees (2)
writer:Fei Yan      update:2022-07-25 14:23
  The World Tree’s wide tree crown extended in all directions, seemingly unmoving against the wind, while its dense leaves made one think that it was over a hundred years old. Sunlight pierced through the gaps between the branches and leaves like golden swords. The solitary tree was grown in an empty clearing surrounded by the forest’s trees, and it gave a feeling of tranquility.

  Brendel gazed at the leaves and found green Runic patterns on each leaf, as though they were veins spread throughout the tree crown.

  An ancient tree was quietly sitting in the center of a mystical Magic Formation.

  Romaine’s eyes were crossed with her jaws slack. It was as though she was uttering a silent ‘whoa~~~’. Scarlett opened her eyes so large that her round irises could be seen clearly, but she less affected when compared to Romaine. There was indeed surprise in her eyes, but she did not show any other emotions beyond it. After all, the things that she had encountered after following Brendel in the Dark Forest were always unusual

  Medissa completely kept her composure as a citizen of the Silver Lineage, though her eyes glinted once.

  The only person who maintained a true poker face was the older Wild Elf sister, Felaern. Rather than say that it was her personality, she was someone who had been part of the Planewalker’s system and Laws for a far longer time compared to Medissa who only recently became a ‘Knight’. Compared to a World Tree growing in front of her eyes, perhaps having ‘immortality’ was something more incredulous.

  “B-Brendel, that thing that you threw down to the hole was a seed!?” Romaine was the first to speak out.

  She was showing exuberant curiosity instead of having confusion on her face, perhaps feeling that Brendel had once again done something remarkable.

  “How did this tree pop out, it grew so quickly! Am I dreaming, Brendel, pinch me now!” She hit Brendel’s arm.

  The youth came back to his senses and stared at her with narrowed eyes for a few seconds. Her thoughts were not something a normal person could understand. Despite encountering Madara’s undead for a few times in Bucce, she seemed to be fearless and asked whether the undead was interested in eating them. Expressing her curiosity was added with ‘wow, this is amazing, Brendel!’.

  “My Lord,” Medissa asked with a certain hint of intelligence glinting in her eyes, not directly making a conclusion, “this is the World Tree in the Loop of Trade Winds?”


  “No, rather than say it’s that World Tree……” Brendel looked up at the tree that could be described as ‘huge’ and shook his head.

  [Indeed, it resembles that World Tree in Valhalla, having branches that intersect with each other and a similarly large tree crown, and I can say that it’s a mini version. But the shape of this…… fortress. It looks like there’s a large platform formed with branches and covered by the leaves above it, complete with a courtyard surrounded with wall-like offshoot twigs. There are handles to climb up to the top of the walls. If I look at it with military eyes, the walls even have parapets along with guard rails.]

  In other words, it’s a natural fortress.

  “This looks like a small castle, how pretty……” Scarlett muttered as she was lost in her thoughts. She thought of fairy tales where a princess was sleeping in a castle within the deep forest. This place had a lush green color that could only be found in a dream. She went into battle from a young age with her hair tied up like a true Highlander’s daughter, but she would sometimes think back on the stories in her childhood.

  [Instead of going out there to fight, I would rather be an ordinary girl with the right to dream. Though, if my Lord is willing to allow me to have a castle like a princess……]

  The red-haired girl could not help but fall into a lull.

  Romaine, on the other hand, was starting to circle around the tree. It was clear that she wanted to climb it. Suddenly, she exclaimed adorably as though she had discovered a chest full of treasure: “There’s a staircase here, Brendel!”


  Indeed, there was an obscure spiraling ladder that seemed to invite guests— or perhaps the owner of the tree. The staircase was formed naturally from the vines hanging from the tree, but they did not look crude and instead made one think that it was formed by human hands. The spacing between each step was made just right and it was pretty and refined. Brendel cast a glance at the steps and knew that it would not require much effort for one to move up the steps. It even gave out a warm and inviting air about it, and it did not make one feel like it was a trap.

  “Can we go up?” Romaine blinked her eyes and asked with a tilted head, her alluring fringe falling sideways to reveal her smooth forehead.

  The youth cast his eyes back out to the people behind him of reflex. It was a habit in the game where he would ask for a consensus from the other gamers, though he immediately remembered he was the only ‘player’ here. A quiet princess of the Silver Elves, a ‘very annoying but would not disobey his orders Wild Elf Secretary’ or ‘maid who shadows him all the time’, and Scarlett who would always follow him. Romaine would also adhere to his orders if he really meant them as well.

  [I definitely need some time to change this habit.]

  He could not help but shake his head with a smile.

  But Medissa misunderstood his intentions and put on a faint smile: “The Silver Elves are very sensitive towards the scent of nature. This tree gives me the feeling of warmth, not one of friendliness but more of a ‘home. It seems to be inviting us.”


  “Yes. To tell the truth, I feel the same.” Brendel nodded, but he hid his true feelings about it. The tree was more of a subordinate as the city’s core was bound to him. He was certain like he could control what the tree could do; he even felt he could command the spiral staircase.

  [Pull back.]

  There was a light rustling sound as he ordered in his mind. A miracle happened. The hanging vines were pulled back to the branches as though they were alive, and they now appeared to be plants growing on the branches instead.

  “Ack!” Romaine got a fright and hurriedly hid behind Brendel’s back.

  “You can order it to move?” Medissa asked in surprise.

  The youth nodded. He was also very curious what the tree city had, and this curiosity had prediction mixed into it. If he was right about it, then the entire situation would be outrageous. He quickly responded.

  “Let’s take a look.”


  The others were more or less curious about the tree, and even the stoic Felaern could not help but observe the vine staircase that was forming again. The steps were sturdy and as predicted, it did not require much effort to climb them. It was almost as if the tree was lifting them up and everyone quickly reached the end of the steps.

  What greeted their eyes was a circular courtyard shrouded under the packed leaves. It was about a hundred paces wide and slightly more spacious than Brendel thought. What surprised the group of people was a layer of flagstones in the center. They thought they would only be wood-related materials, but there was a small fountain erected on top of the flagstones and glittering cobblestones in the pool of water. At one side of the courtyard was a hall; its design resembled the Elven architecture. It was made out of only wooden materials with slender beams that supported the high roof to form a structure full of elegance.

  “An Elven Great Hall.” Medissa showed a look of disbelief as she recognized the building’s purpose: “This tree is actually a Mana Conflux Town?”


  “I’m afraid you are completely right……” Brendel felt like he was struck by an iron ball.

  At first he was just suspicious, but he was certain when he saw the great hall. Valhalla was actually a living city growing on a tree, and this city grew naturally on its own and did not require anyone to build on it. The leaves could provide shelter from the weather and the design of the city allowed it to be defended easily.

  [This is too freaking cool!]

  This was a fief that Brendel desired. Even though Valhalla was still small and probably less than thirty meters wide, it already had the initial shape of a magic city.

  When the youth entered the hall, he quickly discovered a crystal embedded in a pillar that was grown out from a branch, and it projected the entire structure of the city. The courtyard was empty, but there were additional steps leading to a hollow section of the tree, distributed into naturally formed rooms where citizens could live in, as well as warehouses.

  The Great Hall also had a passage leading to three rooms below it, and these rooms contained natural Mana Pools. These pools were connected to the ancient tree’s roots, and thus they were creating an endless supply of Mana. They were also called Mana Nests, as Nests could be safely installed there, or these Mana pools could be converted to create Mana Crystals or an alchemist’s laboratory.

  “There are three Mana Pools? Surely the size of this Conflux Town should only be an elementary Arcadian Grade fief!?” Medissa exclaimed in shock.

  “Arc-adian Grade?” Several of the girls repeated her words and looked at the Elven princess with incomprehension: “Mana something town?”


  volume 2 - 135

  TL: Get ready for the longest translator’s notes in the history of Wolfietranslation.

  I’ll move the notes to another page in a few days, but you can skip to the story and ignore my notes entirely if you want to.

  Let me break it down into sections.

  1) The editing process of TAS

  2) What’s my recent update?

  3) Selecting the new web host

  1) The editing process of TAS

  Oh boy, where do I start……

  The goal of telling you how I edit TAS is because I want the readers to decide on how they want to deal with the protagonist’s name (again) as I re-edit the chapters.

  Long explanation ahead.

  I generally edit TAS with 2 concepts in my mind, “Character design” and “storyboarding”. These two elements are what I learned in school and generally built on the “Three Act Structure“, and also the reasons why editing time has gone way up.

  While my edits are generally done with broad strokes based on the concepts, I do believe the outcome of my process is actually quite close to a formal editing, or at least how I understand editing to be for a novel.

  There are variations on the different types of editing but I will specify the four general types that relates to my process.

  A) Developmental Editing

  B) Substantive Editing

  C) Copy Editing

  D) Proofreading

  A) Developmental Editing (DE)

  As a thumb of rule for DE, the basic ideas are to enhance and refine the story, kill off inconsistencies and unrealistic things if there are any. The easiest example is the blind girl mentioned in TAS. She basically ‘cannot’ see, but the author chooses “She looks at Brendel” and I correct that.

  I create general character sheets and stick to them as much as possible for consistency. There are descriptive text written in to develop or change the characters’ motivations / behavior to make it consistent and less cliche (if applicable).

  I also research various elements that are related to medieval stuff for proofreading. An example would be Freya enrolling in that academy/school (which I actually am not sure if something like a knights’ school actually existed?). Medieval knights basically transit something like this.

  Page (6-13 years old) > Squire (14-21 years old) > Knight (can be ranked earlier than 21 years old)

  Basically one can be made a knight or inducted into a knighthood. Since Freya is under Princess Gryphine’s forces, she can be made into one. Female knights does exist in medieval times, by the way.

  In case anyone is still wondering, no, I have not changed any significant plotlines at all. Not the job of an editor.

  B) Substantive Editing

  The idea of [] as “thought lines” did not exist in the original raws.

  The raws’ dialogues will be split up across really long passages as the author creates his exposition, and it is generally confusing and has a 4th wall narration to it. Ultimately I chose to [] it and clarify various things to make it easier for the audience.

  The ======= XXX POV ======== also does not exist in the raws, and is requested by the majority of the readers.

  There’s quite a bit of reordering to the passages whenever applicable in order to maintain a coherent flow to the text.

  Other additions include

  – Related terms of addressing like, My lord, Your Highness, etc, and falls under this category.

  – Names. I gave a few of the more important names a lot of thinking. Trentheim is a recent example. Brownie points for anyone who actually manages to guess what it means.

  – Reduction on word padding. Please Brendel. You have to stop turning your head around 720 degrees. It’s like a horror movie. And stop looking up so many times too, you’re going to break it.

  C) Copy Editing

  This typically falls under smooth Engrish operation. Basically, I need a real copyeditor who has an A grade in English because I’m admittedly not good enough, but lol there’s no possible way to afford anyone like that.

  Copy editing is supposed to ensure proper word usage, fix awkward grammar English, clean up even more redundancies, improve the prose and natural feel on how the plot is conveyed. I’ll stick characters’ word choice consistency into this section instead of DE.

  D) Proofreading

  Finally, prooreading is just spelling corrections to be done.

  You guys still with me?

  When it comes to translation, I don’t exactly follow the above ABCD in a specific order. My process immediately applies mostly A and B during my first draft TL, then my 2nd TL edit will apply ABCD again as a clean up.

  This initial first draft takes me approximately 3-4 hours. The second read through and editing takes me another 1-2 hours. Generally I want to be done in this time frame so I can take a break on this.

  If you think that’s good enough, nope, it actually isn’t. To be honest, there should be one more round of BCD editing again to ensure I don’t commit inaccuracies.

  I have to balance speed and quality at the end of the day, because I don’t have enough time or financial backup on this (yet, I’ll see how it goes when I get a proper job). I also assume that you took the warning seriously in my TAS sections that I edit extensively.

  Going forward I want to address the name Su Fei/Sophie again. After all the long read about my editing processes, I have 3 polls for you. Basically if question 1 gets a negative respond, I will ignore question 2 and not edit the protagonist’s name.

  The reason why I’m asking this is because I have seen a particular bit of spoiler about the protagonist after the book was finally finished by the author. Therefore I can roughly say that the Sophie/Su Fei name isn’t so important (at least for the start of the FreeWebNovel), and wouldn’t change the overall plot for the chapters that I have translated so far even if I take it out.

  Su Fei/Sophie’s identity is generally isolated in the beginning and I will probably write ‘the youth’ (doesn’t it sound like there’s an air of mystery ~_~) as a general replacement and even bring forward Brendel as a name change, then reveal his real name when he does it in-text to the people around him.

  Please carefully think on answering these few questions, I’ll be leaving the power in the readers’ hands.

  Do you think Sophie is a terrible name for the protagonist?

  Yes.

  No.

  Vote

  View ResultsPolldaddy.com

  Do you want me to edit out the name Sophie for the start of the FreeWebNovel?

  Yes.

  No.

  Vote

  View ResultsPolldaddy.com

  Extra poll: If you answered to both questions with a yes, do you want to change Sophie’s name to Soufflé?

  Yes.

  No.

  What?

  Vote

  View ResultsPolldaddy.com

  Finally, there is one more thing that I will do when I re-edit everything. I’ll create a list of changes for all the chapters and a lexicon detailing my information on TAS’, which will come much, much later.

  2) What’s my recent update?

  You know…… I don’t remember how I started up my translation at all. I guess it must be some kind of “meh, lemme just get straight into translating”. I translated on notepad which is kind of disastrous because I lose content from time to time by not saving the drafts, and worse off, I don’t save it in my computer.

  Everything is in wolfietranslations, lol. If one day there’s some crash or hack into my website, that’s probably game over. Buttt I finally managed to, sigh, get all 291 chapters saved into txt files and stored in my local computer. Such horrible inefficiency by wasting a whole day.

  I also downloaded wordpress manager and local PC hosting software to test out development, and I’m going to start looking into 3 things.

  – Design new website and CSS for reading accessibility.

  – Auto-linkage whenever I publish a chapter, back/next button.

  – The plugins available.

  CSS plans

  – Font type. I’ll check out verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif as the initial reading font.

  – Day/Night background. I might need to rely on the readers’ expertise, if any, on this.

  – Adjustable Font size. Let’s see how it goes.

  Auto linkage

  – Back/next buttons, easily explained.

  – TOC for the series

  Plugins

  – Disqus maybe?

  – Various useful plugins if any, I guess.

  3) Selecting the new web host.

  Technically there are two webhosts that I’m looking at, DreamHost and A2 Hosting. I’m choosing something slightly more expensive so there wouldn’t be any downtime and hopefully it’s going to be faster in page loading.

  I don’t have any intentions to put in ads for now, so you guys can enjoy the ad-free experience lol (coming in May, I hope).