Chapter 224
Chapter 224: Liberator!
After passing through a dense forest, a dark rocky landscape appeared before Viktor.
The surroundings were pitch-black, yet behind the layers of stone lay a pool of glowing azure-blue water.
Countless fireflies drifted as though unable to distinguish day from night, flickering with green light.
"We've arrived. This is the Moon Sacred Spring."
As Vinia's words fell, Viktor turned his calm gaze toward it.
The lake's surface was utterly still—even as a gentle breeze stirred the surrounding grass, the water remained as smooth as a mirror.
A blue luminescence glowed from deep within the lake, like wandering souls drifting endlessly.
Silver-white waterfalls crashed down into the pool in great cascading sheets, yet the two ends of the lake existed like 2 separate worlds.
One side was perfectly tranquil, while the other was battered by the constant rush of the falls, churning into chaos.
A silver-white crescent moon, tinged with a faint yellow glow, seemed to hang in the pitch-black sky above—its single beam of moonlight falling silently into the water below.
That moon looked as though it had been nailed in place.
This land existed in absolute night, always.
No dawn would ever come.
Vinia observed the scene and began to explain:
"The Moon Sacred Spring absorbs the essence of the moon year-round to sustain its own pure energy."
"Each day, Elves assigned to the task collect water from the Moon Sacred Spring to nourish the divine tree—and from that, the Divine Tree Yadh creates new Elves."
"However..."
At this, Vinia glanced over at Cocotte, who sat atop her cloud.
"With the Queen absent, no matter how much of the Moon Sacred Spring's water is used, the divine tree can no longer produce new Elves."
Cocotte turned her face away with a slightly guilty expression, avoiding Vinia's gaze.
Even so, she spoke with full conviction:
"You just saw it yourself—the divine tree is no good thing."
"If I'd kept staying there, I'd probably have been wrung completely dry long ago."
But Viktor's next words left both of them stunned:
"No. The divine tree is a good thing."
Hearing this, Cocotte and Vinia both froze in place, utterly bewildered.
Viktor continued at an unhurried pace:
"I'm not referring to the Divine Tree Yadh."
"I mean a divine tree in its pure form."
From the perspective of a tool, a divine tree was still very much necessary.
It could gather the Elves' Natural Energy and, nourished by the Moon Sacred Spring, convert that Natural Energy into new Elves.
Without it, producing an Elf through nature alone would be nearly impossible.
And so the Nature Spirit had created 2 tools within the natural world to allow the Elven race to reproduce freely.
One was the divine tree, and the other was the Moon Sacred Spring.
But the one thing the divine tree should never, under any circumstances, have done as a tool—was develop its own will.
It gave itself a name: "Yadh."
What name it chose, in truth, didn't matter.
What mattered was that with that name, the divine tree gained consciousness.
It began to grow dissatisfied with its current state, unwilling to remain a mere production tool.
And so it forcibly locked down the Elves.
What had originally been a method by which any Elf could use Natural Energy to produce new Elves was transformed into something only the Elven Queen could do.
Over centuries upon centuries, it refined and filtered through layers of selection, always seeking the most powerful Elf of any given moment.
Using her gifts as the blueprint, it would create all Elves thereafter—to produce for it a purer, more concentrated Natural Energy.
It had nearly succeeded. It had even completed its ideological control over the entire Elven race.
But unfortunately, things often collapse at the moment of completion.
Because Viktor had arrived.
"Aside from a few rather unusual methods of reproduction, using the divine tree to bring forth new Elves is the most common approach."
In the future, Cocotte would work alongside the Players to kill the Divine Tree Yadh, and use Natural Energy to reshape a new divine tree from scratch.
And a divine tree stripped of its own consciousness would be nothing more than a pure production tool.
Which meant...
"As long as the Elves wished it, they wouldn't need an Elven Queen at all to reproduce."
The Elven Queen was nothing more than a forced creation of the Divine Tree Yadh—a construct invented solely to make its own behavior appear more reasonable.
The moment those words landed, Vinia was completely struck silent.
"You mean...?"
Viktor slipped both hands into his pockets and took in Vinia's shock with an expression of calm.
"That's right. Even you could do it."
"Use your own Natural Energy to create new Elves."
As long as nature existed, the Elves would never face extinction.
The fear the Elves had long harbored—that Cocotte's failure to return would doom their race—had never been Cocotte's fault to begin with.
It was the Divine Tree Yadh.
Because the Divine Tree Yadh had forcibly locked reproduction to the Elven Queen, the Elves had come to believe that only the Elven Queen could give birth to new Elves.
Over centuries, that belief had become completely fixed in their minds.
At this point, Viktor lowered his gaze to check his status panel.
Weija's power had recovered to nearly half.
"That's about right."
The instant the words left his mouth, a green stripe climbed up along Viktor's Coat.
In that moment, Vinia's body shuddered violently.
Once again, she felt it radiating from Viktor—a force that could only be called a Calamity.
And yet this force was entirely different from Gulton's.
Was this... Wood?
She stared at Viktor in disbelief.
Had Viktor not told her not to kneel, she likely would have already fallen to her knees before this man.
Then, a surge of pure energy bloomed into a green glow.
As though drawn in and filled by that force—
The Moon Sacred Spring slowly began to rise.
The azure lake water drifted upward into the sky in great sweeping currents, pulling a shimmering silver stream along with it, flowing through the forest and soaring toward the heavens.
Vinia watched the scene unfold, struck by both awe and deep curiosity.
"This is..."
What was he trying to do?
Witnessing this, Cocotte's eyes lit up—she seemed to already have a guess forming in her mind.
Viktor kept both hands in his pockets and spoke with easy composure:
"We can head back now."
"What's about to happen will change the fixed thinking your Elven race has held for centuries."
***
Leon sat atop a massive, scorched tree root.
She had stayed behind to watch over the Elves.
Should any of them attempt to do something extreme, Leon could produce the weapon Leah had given her to keep these unfortunate Elves in line.
And while she was at it, she also had to look after Viktor's peculiar One-eyed Crow.
One of her hands rested on her leg, gently grooming the feathers of the Crow that had collapsed across her thigh.
Weija lay sprawled across Leon's leg, motionless—only the small body rising and falling with each slow breath.
Leon lifted her head and looked at the sky.
The calamity-level catastrophe triggered by that beast which could only be called a Calamity had finally ceased.
And yet the Natural Energy continued to pour outward in an endless stream, offering itself to this land.
The Elves were a mix of joy and sorrow—some rejoicing, some grieving.
They were still lost in the return of the Natural Energy.
Among everyone present, only 1 Elf stood apart from the rest.
That was Leon.
She felt nothing at all about the divine tree's fate—alive or dead, it made no difference to her.
Even after the divine tree had fallen, the surge of Natural Energy that burst forth from it had held no share for her.
She could not generate Natural Energy, nor could she absorb it.
She could only sit quietly, watching the remaining Elves express their various emotions of grief and joy.
At the bottom of her heart, still as the Moon Sacred Spring itself, calm as standing water.
The hatred she had once carried toward the Elves seemed to have faded away too.
She supposed she'd finally seen it clearly—
These Elves had no autonomous will of their own. They were simply pure, fanatical believers in the divine tree.
Under the divine tree's influence, it was only natural they would reject her, the nameless "aberration."
But it no longer mattered.
Beyond sharing the same Elven features, Leon had never truly thought of herself as a real Elf.
More than that, she had a far more important identity.
She was Leah's subordinate—a Retainer of the Clavena Family.
Now, she bore the name Clavena.
At that moment, the Crow lying across her leg turned over.
"Quite the wild ride, that was."
"First time I've ever felt squeezed that dry."
Leon suddenly stiffened. She lowered her head—as though she'd just witnessed something utterly shocking.
Her emerald-green pupils trembled without stopping, locked onto the Crow on her leg.
The Crow... spoke?
The Crow slowly rose from her leg, pecked at its own feathers, then lifted its head. Its single eye fixed on Leon, locking gazes with her.
"Little one, you look curious."
Weija suddenly let a wicked smile curl across its face and laughed, hehe:
"An Elf incapable of drawing Natural Energy."
"You've had my interest for quite some time."
Leon sat frozen in place, her expression utterly serious.
"What... exactly are you?"
"Want to know the reason behind what you are?"
The Crow's beguiling voice gradually rose to fill Leon's ears.
Leon sat atop the tree root. Hearing those words, even her breathing quickened slightly.
"Are you saying... you know why I..."
"Shh."
Weija looked at Leon with a serene smile and said lightly:
"If you want to know more, we'll talk later."
"For now, let's watch a good show."
As if to confirm the Crow's words right on cue, a streak of silver-white sacred spring water spiraled down from the sky, carried along by green energy.
It cut through the still yet restless air, tracing an extraordinarily mysterious arc through the heavens.
Like a gentle, winding dragon taking form, it slowly descended.
The Elves stared at the silver-white spring water that had appeared from nowhere, unable to help but feel both awe and bewilderment.
"Is that the Moon Sacred Spring!?"
"How can this be—how could the Moon Sacred Spring just appear here out of thin air?"
The sacred spring wound past their heads and gradually fell toward the scorched earth, seeping deep into the rich soil below.
Quickly, a tiny green sprout pushed through the ground once more, unfurling its fragile yet vibrant form.
Before the wide eyes of countless Elves, the sprout shot upward at a rapid pace.
Countless thick vines burst from the earth all at once, swallowing that tender green whole and lifting it high into the clouds.
The instant the young sprout was hoisted aloft, it transformed into a towering canopy.
Sturdy wooden branches extended outward, slowly fusing with the vines below.
The Elves were completely dumbstruck:
"The divine tree—it's been resurrected!?"
Leon was equally frozen in place.
But the thing that shocked her was entirely different from what shocked the other Elves.
In the very instant the great tree grew into being, a black Magic Formation—invisible to the naked eye—was constructed from the ground, rose upward, and adhered itself to the divine tree.
All of this was detected by Leon.
As though it had been made for her to detect, deliberately.
She lowered her head and looked at the pitch-black Crow.
Likewise, a flash of pitch-black passed through the Crow's single eye.
That spectral voice rose again beside her ear:
"Did you see it?"
Hehehehehehe—
An exceptionally wicked laugh echoed through her ears.
In that moment, a sharp, piercing pupil flashed through Leon's mind.
As though it had gazed into her very soul entirely.
Leaving only a single voice, slowly resonating in the depths of her heart.
"Keep this secret for me."
"This story—it's time for it to welcome a brand new ending."