Ryker felt as though his entire body had been electrocuted… at least for a moment. Soon after, it was like his entire soul had been sapped away.
It wasn’t in terms of stamina, but almost like he was forced into another world where he realized just how small and insignificant he was.
For a long while, he was in a daze. It wasn’t until several long seconds later that he realized that this… was the comparison between the Eldertree’s soul and his own.
He had always thought himself to be a great talent. Even in comparison to his 9th Circle Talent, his Pure Soul was on a level even above that, carrying a weight that surpassed it.
It was often said that it was unprecedented for a 9th Circle Talent to appear. But what was even more exaggerated than that was his soul. There were at least legends of a 9th Circle Talent appearing in the past, but a Pure Soul?
Never.
There was even some controversy about whether “Pure Soul” was actually what it should be called or not.
And yet, all that talent seemed irrelevant now.
The soul of the Eldertree was so unfathomable that Ryker couldn’t tell where it started and ended. And it was so complex that it didn’t even feel like he was looking at a living being at all. It was more like he was staring into the maw of an amalgamation of laws, a force of nature, not a mere seed of life.
Seeing the Eldertree now, Cyrus’ previous arrogance felt so completely and utterly foolish.
Cyrus must have been using slivers of the Dao from whatever bastard had come over from the other side to control the Eldertree. By comparison, he couldn’t even sense the true weight of the Eldertree because he had no ability to convene with it himself.
He thought that he was some great talent with shocking means who was hand-selected to be the carrier of this great Eldertree… when in reality he was a puppet that could be slaughtered like a chicken when he was no longer useful.
The question was… why did they go through so much effort?
The moment Ryker sensed the Eldertree, he felt that he had an answer.
This tree, so filled with life and vitality, was practically a blood-sucking leech. The pressure it was placing on his soul was shocking.
Cyrus couldn’t sense it, but his lifespan must have been cut by decades at the very least. And the only reason Ryker’s estimation was so low was because Cyrus was unlikely to have used the Eldertree frequently given the reactions of everyone around him.
‘What a complete fool.’
Those on the other side likely wanted to find a method of contracting the Eldertree that wouldn’t result in a continuous leech of their life. But Ryker still felt that this was only part of the explanation.
He didn’t believe that those in those small pocket worlds didn’t understand that the Dao was the key to communicating with the Eldertree, or else they would have never been able to activate it in the first place.
If they knew that this was the secret, it was unlikely that they wouldn’t know that the key was to comprehend all 99 Paths of the Dao of Spirit.
That meant one of two things.
Either there was another reason they needed Cyrus as a guinea pig…
Or, they felt that mastering 99 Paths of a Dao was simply too difficult.
Even if the Dao was more common in those hidden worlds, from what Ryker understood, the odds of them mastering all Paths of a Dao were probably incredibly slim.
It was already difficult enough to grasp 33 Paths of a more normal elemental Dao. But the more complex the Dao, the more troublesome it would become.
Without a Dao like the Dao of Chaos that was able to peer into the hidden layers of the laws of the world, grasping more obscure Daos required them to either be passed on through complex inheritances or comprehended serendipitously.
Of course, most of these were just guesses cobbled together by Ryker. He had no certainty.
But what he did know was that if you couldn’t feed the tree the Daos it wanted, it would feed on your soul itself.
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And from what Ryker could tell, it was pretty much unconscious right now. That was to say that if the situation changed and it truly awakened, he might not last more than a few seconds before his soul was sapped away.
The good news was that he could slow it down somewhat with his comprehension of two Dao of Spirit Paths.
The bad news was that this wasn’t nearly enough and he could feel the seconds slowly being lopped off his lifespan.
However, he was calm.
He had already experienced losing his lifespan many times more. No matter how long he lived for, it wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t accomplish what he needed to.
And very soon, he was confident that he wouldn’t need to sacrifice his life to this tree any longer.
At that moment, time began to accelerate around Ryker once again and his strong push of Temporal Weave began to wane.
He saw the situation around him once again. His mother blocking Rail’s advance forward, his father rushing in from the distance…
His mother’s blood made him see red. She had been bedridden for so long. Even if she had successfully broken through to become a Mythic, there was no way her body could take such punishment so soon.
Right then, a looming shadow was suddenly cast over the battlefield. So tall, imposing, and long that one would have thought that night fell.
Ryker looked as though he could teeter over at any moment. His skin barely hung from his body, the muscles beneath seemed to have vanished, leaving nothing but brittle bone, and his eyes seemed to have lost their light.
Not only had he pushed his body too far, but his soul as well. Let alone protecting his parents, it seemed as though he wouldn’t even be able to protect his own life.
However, in the shadow of the Eldertree, he seemed much larger.
He waved a hand that almost looked as though it could be blown away by the wind at any time. In its wake, Nariel appeared.
The Spiritual Pattern genius barely had time to cry out in shock before the sound he made became horror.
A golden branch suddenly speared him through the chest. He couldn’t even react before he was suddenly sucked dry.
A large amount of energy flooded toward Ryker’s soul and the dullness in his eyes receded.
His hand seemed to regrow its flesh right before everyone’s eyes just as another golden branch fell from the Eldertree and slapped into Ryker’s palm.
It felt cool to the touch, but also exceptionally heavy…
‘I’ve been looking for a whip all this time… it seems it came to me.’
Ryker took a step and suddenly appeared before his mother. Space warped and twisted as he cracked his whip, lashing out with a deadly sort of might.
His Chaos Domain flared and his Dao of Spirit thrummed.
Spirit… it was hard to explain what it was.
Spirit Type Energy was more of an umbrella term with many moving parts hidden within.
Spirit Energy… Spirit Beasts…
The name appeared again and again, almost relentlessly as though the world was trying to hint at something.
It was enough to be everything, and yet elusive enough to be nothing.
These were the two paths of the Dao of Spirit that Ryker had comprehended.
But when he connected with the tree, he realized something.
The Dao of Spirit…
Something and nothing…
‘The Dao of Spirit… It’s a guide…’
The more he felt it, the more amorphous the concept became and the more incomprehensible the words. He was certain that no one would even be able to understand his thoughts right now…
But he did…
And that was all that mattered.
Spirit… Spiritual Patterns… Secondary Professions… Laws…
The Dao of Spirit was everything and nothing because it was quite literally everything and nothing.
It didn’t create. It manipulated, warped, and changed. It directed and set rules and guidelines.
It was everything because everything followed its rule of law.
It was nothing because it had no form, no shape, no real substance.
So the question was…
Why did the Dao of Chaos need 36 Circles to complete it while the Dao of Spirit only needed nine?
And the answer to that was that it didn’t…
Ryker was sure that once he completed the 99 Paths of the Dao of Spirit, maybe it too would force a rearrangement of his Circles. However…
He was no longer worried about it.
Because the Dao of Spirit was the one Dao that could fuse with any other.
The bronzed God threw a punch to meet the swing of Ryker’s whip. Shock was written all over his face as he had just seen Ryker do something with the Eldertree that he had never seen anyone else do.
Usually, when such a thing happened, it would be a huge event and it would definitely be reported to those on the other side.
But this… it felt even bigger than normal. Just what had Ryker comprehended?
BANG!
Pain ripped through Rail’s arm and he shuddered as he pulled back.
The whip tore into his gauntlet and split his fist in two.
The pain almost made his eyes water as blood and broken bones flew. But what pained him the most was the next wave of sharp pain through his soul.
His gauntlet…
Rail’s eyes widened as he hurriedly retreated, forming a larger and larger distance between himself and Ryker as fear plagued his face.
Ryker looked down at the golden whip in his hands, a small light of surprise hidden within his indifference.
That definitely wasn’t his strength. And it could be said that the whip didn’t add much power to him at all.
First, that was an enhancement
of his Dao of Chaos by his Dao of Spirit. But that was only secondary. In fact, it was minuscule, the boost was hardly there.
The real reason Rail suffered such damage was the second…
The material the Eldertree was made out of was too shocking to put into words. It cut through the unprepared God’s defenses like butter.
Rail hadn’t thought that much changed and he was still trying to protect himself from the earlier backlash he faced at the hands of Leopold.
He still had a chance to reaffirm his foundation and fix the holes in his soul so long as he didn’t use too much power.
But what he didn’t expect was that his conservative approach would lose him an arm and cause him to suffer an even worse, more permanent blow to his soul.
Mystery Type Contracts were usually far more sturdy than Spirit Beasts because they were made of metals, not flesh and blood. In fact, because they were usually passed down from one generation to the next, they tended to grow more powerful with time.
Suffering such backlash from the loss of a Mystery Type Contract was practically unheard of…
And now he, a mighty God, had actually suffered such a thing.
Rail saw red. “BOY!”
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