Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree

At this moment, in the vast wilderness, dense forests, ruins, and ancient cities of the first layer of the Elderlands, no matter where one was, as long as someone happened to activate the Divine Revelation Mark to check the leaderboard, they would see the name that had just jumped to the top.

A stone had already been thrown into the calm lake, and ripples were spreading across the entire first layer.

Those who saw the leaderboard understood that the Duke must have obtained something valuable; otherwise, his score wouldn’t have suddenly soared.

However, most people didn’t pay much attention, as the Path of Divine Revelation had just begun, and this score was insignificant.

The Duke didn’t spare another glance at the leaderboard. As the numbers on the light screen stopped fluctuating, he waved his hand to close the interface.

Whether it was over ten thousand points or being at the top of the board, it was all irrelevant to him.

The Path of Divine Revelation had just begun, and what was truly important was never these points, but the resources represented by the points.

And how to maximize the conversion of these resources into his own strength.

He shifted his gaze from the back of his left hand and refocused on the treasure vault before him, which had already been emptied, and began to methodically sweep through the Earl’s other collections accumulated over hundreds of years.

Although a few local weapons gleaming with elemental luster were roughly refined, the materials used were extremely rare and could be disassembled and re-melted into more precise witchcraft artifact components.

In the corner, covered in dust, were several wooden boxes. Upon opening, they were filled with Demon Eye Crystals, ranging from Level 1 to Level 2, with a quality much higher than the few commander eyeballs he had taken from Iron Tree Village.

Although not highly valuable, they could count for some points.

The Duke didn’t hesitate and waved his hand to gather all these pupil crystals and other items into the Light God Court.

His movements were swift, and in a moment, the entire treasure vault was left with only empty black ironwood racks and dark traces resting on the dark red velvet cushioning.

After confirming that nothing of value was left behind in the treasure vault, the Duke turned and wound his way back through the maze, passing through the wooden door he had already unlocked, and climbed back up the dark stone stairs to return to the Earl’s study.

The study was still empty, with the embers in the fireplace completely extinguished, and the night outside the window was pitch-black.

He didn’t linger in the Earl’s Mansion, opened the window, and transformed himself into an almost imperceptible breeze, silently and invisibly sweeping out of the walls of Stone Crown City, heading towards the wilderness beyond the city.

After flying for nearly half an hour, the Duke descended among a series of isolated wilderness hills.

This area had gently rolling terrain, with sparse shrubs gently swaying in the night breeze, and no sign of any villages or roads in sight.

He used his Spiritual Power to meticulously scan the surrounding area for several miles, confirming there was no indigenous activity before a thought crossed his mind, and he vanished from the wilderness, entering the Light God Court.

The Duke walked to the spring and transferred all of the over ten thousand Philosopher’s Stones from the storage area of the Light God Court. The dark red crystal stones were piled into a small mountain on the grassy area beside the spring, each one flowing with a liquid-like blood-red nebula inside, with the dark red glow emitted by tens of thousands gathered together illuminating the surrounding grassland as if it were soaked in blood.

He picked up a stone from the pile, examining it between his fingertips for a moment, before gently tossing it into the spring.

The Philosopher’s Stone silently melted upon touching the water’s surface, with the dark red Life Energy spreading rapidly through the spring like ink dropped in clear water, but before it could pollute the entire spring, it was absorbed by the light cocoon suspended at the center of the springhead.

The awareness of the World Tree Seed transmitted through the Slave Contract a very faint ripple of hunger, a profound, long-suppressed, almost instinctual hunger.

The Duke didn’t throw them one by one. With a wave of his hand, the small mountain of crystals was lifted into the air by an invisible force, transforming into a waterfall of dark red made up of tens of thousands of Philosopher’s Stones, pouring continuously into the Spring of Life.

Each Philosopher’s Stone melted instantly upon hitting the water, releasing the vast Life Energy it contained.

That Life Energy contained innumerable negative emotions—fear, pain, and despair left by the original owners at the last moments of their lives. These emotions were deadly poison to any creature attempting to directly absorb the Philosopher’s Stones, enough to completely pollute a person’s Spiritual Sea in a short time.

Count Cadwell surely didn’t absorb them directly either, most likely using some other method for slow absorption.

Nonetheless, these negative energies acted as chronic poisons, and the Earl’s eventual madness was likely due to his mental state having long deteriorated.

But the World Tree Seed paid no heed to this. It was the World Tree, the source of life, and the ultimate embodiment of order and creation.

Before it, those negative emotions were like grains of sand cast into a furnace, barely having time to spread before being completely crushed, decomposed, and annihilated by the pure Life Rules.

The purified Life Energy transformed into streams of pure emerald light that slowly seeped through the intricate network of veins on the surface of the Light Cocoon.

As more and more Philosopher’s Stones were absorbed, the light cocoon suspended at the center of the springhead began to change.

The glow on the surface of the cocoon grew brighter, shifting from a pale green to a vibrant green brimming with vitality, each pulse causing ripples to spread across the surface of the spring.