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Silvarna.
She is the sacred tree that rules the Pristine Forest.
Its master and mother of the elves.
I had come here to meet her, but there was something more urgent now.
‘I need to check the Bible of the Nameless God.’
The line in the Bible that had foretold Murak’s ambush.
It was real.
I said to the Elves.
“Wait a moment. It won’t take long.”
“Understood.”
The Elves stood at attention, and I picked up the Bible of the Nameless God.
At that moment, I entered the subspace.
The Bible of the Nameless God seemed to have been waiting for me as well.
A pure white space without even a shadow.
Looking around, I saw a figure standing there, staring at me.
A man with long hair shining gold.
He wore a robe the same color as his hair,
and his gaze toward me shone like stars.
When I looked at him, he spoke.
“I’ve been waiting, Damian.”
“How do you… know me?”
He answered with a strange smile.
“There are many ways. Because even here, there’s someone connected to me.”
“Eliastra, I suppose.”
The man smiled in affirmation.
Seeing that smile, which contained not even a speck of darkness, I could easily guess his identity.
“You’re Kallios.”
“Close.”
The man added as he slowly approached.
“I am his trace.”
I understood immediately.
If Kallios had been alive even here, the Theocracy would not have fallen in that way.
I stared at him, now only a step away, and asked,
“Why did you want to meet me?”
Kallios replied, still wearing that faint smile.
“Because of the rules.”
“Rules?”
“The rules when testing the one who would follow after me.”
“Follow after you?”
The moment I asked that back, I dimly understood what he meant.
‘Could he possibly be talking about the trial to obtain the fifth Mana Ring?’
“That’s right. You must have heard it that way from Equinox. It would be easier for you to accept it that way.”
Surprisingly, this guy could read my thoughts exactly as they were.
Maybe it was because I had entered the subspace he created.
I looked at him and asked,
“Wait. Before that, there’s something I want to know. I heard from Eliastra before that you need certain conditions in order to use your power?”
“Right. I need to gather power for fifteen years. Only then can I project the image recorded here into the world.”
“Then how are you appearing now?”
In my memory, the Bible of the Nameless God had activated once when it opened the Ethereal Gate.
And yet, being able to use power like this was a little strange.
“You’re very meticulous. I like that.”
Kallios’s trace continued with a faint smile.
“Right. That was why I agonized over it. To conduct this trial fairly, I had to meet you myself, but I had no power left at the time. So I moved.”
There was a strange lingering resonance in his last words.
I asked about what came to mind.
“Don’t tell me you moved Illinas?”
“In a sense, yes.”
How could that be possible.The Bible of the Nameless God where he resided was kept beneath the Grand Temple.
Illinas, on the other hand, was in the Ethereal Realm.
The distance between the two was not short.
No matter how strong my mana was, it couldn’t influence the Ethereal Realm.
As I was thinking this far, Kallios opened his mouth.
“A valid inference. The reason I can influence Illinas is because he uses my world. Everything in the Ethereal Realm is connected to me.”
“That makes sense.”
If I recalled that Kallios was the god who created this world, it was easy to understand.
There were similar mechanisms in the Ethereal Gate as well.
With that premise, I could infer the process by which Kallios had come to meet me.
“You dispatched Murak and used that guy’s energy.”
Kallios’s smile deepened.
He looked me over with brilliantly shining eyes and answered.
“I’d heard about you from Equinox, but you’re beyond my expectations. Perhaps you really might be able to do it.”
“Were there others besides me?”
“Quite a few have taken this trial. Of course, none passed.”
“Maybe that’s why you’ve become what you are now.”
I tried to needle him, but he nodded readily.
“Now that I think about it, I suppose you’re right.”
Kallios’s gaze remained fixed on me.
As if seeing through everything about me, he soon spoke.
“Now, let’s get to the main point.”
“Fine.”
“To the one who passes this trial, the power of eternity is granted. It is the power to rule this world. It is the very power that the Demons who betrayed me coveted. When I created this world, I had already foreseen my own death and built this trial. Since it is a trial to decide who will follow after me, I thought strict supervision was necessary.”
His story continued.
It was a story about the world’s history and his own values, but the gist was simple.
-To conduct this trial, supervisors are needed, and there are two supervisors.
-They are the traces of Light and Darkness: Equinox is the supervisor of Darkness, and I am the supervisor of Light.
-I had heard enough from Equinox so far, but not from him, so he called me to tell me what I needed to hear.
Having said this much, Kallios paused and looked at me.
His brilliant eyes seemed to scan through everything about me.
After examining me for a long while, he soon spoke.
“You can’t rule this world with only death and darkness.”
It was not something easy to understand.
It was different in tone from everything he had said so far.
“What does that have to do with the trial?”
This was what I had heard about the trial from Equinox.
Until now, I had thought this sacrifice, as my master had said, was a ‘fatal sacrifice worthy of regretting one’s entire life.’
But I had no such sacrifice, so I found Emma and tried to eliminate her at the necessary time.
However, Kallios was speaking about something that had little to do with my calculations.
That you can’t rule this world with only death and darkness.
That this was the advice from the supervisor of Light given to me, who was undergoing this trial.
Kallios smiled faintly and said to me,
“You must have many questions. Those are fair questions. But ask yourself in return whether things will truly go as you think.”
“Explain more clearly. Is Emma nothing to you? Are you saying that even if I sacrifice that girl, I won’t gain anything?”
At my question, Kallios’s smile deepened.
It was the look of someone gazing at a child who knew nothing.
I found that look displeasing.
Kallios said quietly to me.
“You already know. Whether killing that child would truly be a sacrifice for you. How much it means to you. Because you already knew, you’ve kept her alive until now.”
I was at a loss for words.
The reason I couldn’t kill Emma even with her right before my eyes.
I still didn’t know that reason.
Something inside me seemed to have stopped it, but I couldn’t grasp what its essence was.
“It’s instinct. You possess that instinct. Very good. I understand why Equinox chose you. I’m looking forward to you as well. Many have taken this trial so far. But even though they all understood its essence, in the end they couldn’t solve it.”
“What happens in the end if you can’t solve the problem?”
At my question, the smile disappeared from Kallios’s lips.
At the same time, his bearing changed drastically.
If before he had felt like a benevolent father, now it was as if I were looking at a terrifying monster.
With a murderous expression as if he might swallow me whole at any moment, he said in a chilling voice.
“If you solve this problem wrong, if you make the wrong sacrifice required by this problem… you will pay the price. Many who have solved this problem wrong until now all went mad or killed themselves. So choose carefully.”
Kallios came right up close and asked,
“Are you afraid?”
“…I don’t know yet.”
“That’s a good attitude. You’re almost there. You’ll find out what this is soon enough. That’s all the advice I have for you.”
When he finished speaking, he stepped back, and at the same time I was able to leave his subspace.
‘Where am I?’
The Pristine Forest.
It was the scene immediately after the barrier had been released.
The Elves were standing at attention on one side, and Sanchez and William were standing beside them.
And in my hand was the Bible of the Nameless God.
The Bible flashed brightly once, then vanished with a whoosh.
‘You can’t rule this world with only death and darkness.’
The hint given by Kallios’s trace remained in my heart.
The direction it pointed to was clear, but I couldn’t tell how to connect it to the problem before me.
In the middle of the Pristine Forest.
There stood a World Tree, as if holding up the sky.
Silvarna, mother of all elves.
Though its trunk was a smooth gray-brown, silver veins flowed faintly beneath the bark,
so whenever the wind blew, those silver channels came into view.
The leaves hanging from the trunk had a blue-green base with a faint silver dusting.
When the leaves shook, that silver dust scattered into the air, as if stardust were falling.
Balthazar, inhabiting Sanchez, stared blankly at Damian’s back as he walked toward Silvarna.
‘To think Damian had grown so much.’
He was very different from the appearance he had seen in his previous life.
His appearance was similar, but the aura emanating from him belonged to a completely different person.
Overwhelming mana that seemed capable of squeezing the whole world dry.
The skill to easily subdue the Shadow Assassin Murak and even steal his power.
Sharp eyes that seemed capable of seeing into every hidden side of the world.
And that expression, careful yet sincere.
‘I saw the man correctly.’
He remembered the time he first met Damian at the orphanage.
He was a lame, frail, unremarkable young man, but his eyes were alive.
One could clearly feel his resolve that if he left this place, he would surely achieve his dream.
Damian’s eyes, now encountered across time and space, were very much like those eyes from then.
They were the eyes of a ruler, too.
One could plainly feel the spirit of someone who would not be intimidated by anyone and could overpower anyone.
‘In the end, the plan succeeded.’
Balthazar clenched his fist tightly.
Damian had clearly become a necromancer.
He had heard it from Equinox before, but had been anxious because he couldn’t see Damian.
But now that he saw him, he felt relieved.
Damian had grown far beyond what Balthazar had imagined, and had become unimaginably strong.
Now all that remained was the trial.
Balthazar, who in his previous life had paid a dreadful sacrifice to obtain the fifth Mana Ring, made a resolve.
‘Damian. I won’t let you follow the same path I did.’
He resolved it over and over again.
In fact, Balthazar had already devised a plan for Damian to pass the trial.
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