I Was Reborn in Another World, But I Awoke Inside a Corpse

Chapter 158: Return from the Abyss

The Abyss didn't roar as they left.

It sighed.

The bridge of dreamroot gently lowered them to the platform beneath Yggdrasil's lower roots, where the surrounding aura had already changed. What once pulsed with lethargy and ancient slumber now shimmered with a sleepy sort of peace—a silence that was no longer heavy but restful. The stillness no longer threatened to consume. It simply… allowed them to breathe.

Isaac took the first step out of the final dream-layer and adjusted his collar as if stepping out of a dusty tavern, not a god's nap-den.

"That went better than expected."

Sylvalen walked beside him, arms folded behind her back, though her sharp gaze flicked constantly at every shift of wind or rustle of bark.

"He was absurd."

"He fixed the world with a twitch," Isaac said flatly. "Honestly, if I could solve problems that easily, I'd sleep through politics too."

Behind them, Lira emerged last, stretching her arms as if the atmosphere itself had been weighing her down. She looked less exhausted now—and a lot more suspicious of anything resembling pillows.

"We didn't defeat the Great Demon of Sloth," she muttered. "We negotiated with a divine couch potato who accidentally started an apocalypse by dreaming too hard."

"That's an achievement in this world," Isaac said. "Especially because no one had to die."

They reached the first carved stair of Yggdrasil's internal passage, and the moment Isaac touched it, a surge of natural magic pulsed upward, like the tree was acknowledging him.

Or thanking him.

He paused. Placed a hand on the bark.

"You felt it, didn't you?" he murmured to the World Tree. "The pulse when he fixed it."

The bark shimmered faintly under his palm.

Yggdrasil never spoke. But the feeling was clear.

Yes.

When they emerged from the underground—back into the daylight of the Elven capital—the world had already changed.

The air smelled cleaner. The skies were bluer. The ambient magic, once thin and tired, now rippled like a gentle current. And standing at the edge of the plaza, waiting with various degrees of tension and formality, was the Elven High Council.

Sylvalen tensed. Lira stopped walking entirely.

Isaac didn't.

He walked forward like someone returning from an afternoon stroll, hands in his pockets, shoulders relaxed.

The Council—twelve elders, robed in gold and green—stood with stern expressions and proud postures.

But as Isaac approached, their confidence began to crack.

One by one, their system interfaces had already updated. The public world notification had confirmed it:

[The Slumbering One Has Stirred. World Tree Rootline Stabilized.][Belphegor — Great Demon of Sloth — has awakened briefly.][The source of reactivation: unknown anomaly.][Detected correlation: Isaac – Soulbound Host.]

They had read it.

They knew.

He didn't just survive the Abyss.

He changed it.

Aelira, the most skeptical of the council, was the first to speak.

"You returned."

Isaac raised an eyebrow. "That was the plan."

"The… World Tree has stabilized. The dream saturation has vanished. The pulse has ceased."

Isaac looked at her evenly. "You're welcome."

Silence.

Another councilor stepped forward—Eilodan, the more diplomatic of the elders.

"We… owe you an apology."

Sylvalen narrowed her eyes. "You nearly detained him."

"We believed he was connected to the root decay."

"He was," Isaac said. "By fixing it."

No one had a response to that.

Aelira opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Lira, unable to help herself, leaned toward Sylvalen and whispered, "This is better than a tribunal. They all look like they swallowed a cactus."

Sylvalen didn't smile, but her ears twitched slightly in amusement.

Isaac stepped forward until he stood at the base of the platform. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't glow with power. He didn't summon a magical aura or quote divine mandates.

He just stood there.

And the Council looked away.

"I'm not your threat," he said simply. "But if you treat me like one again, next time I won't bother fixing your mistakes before I leave."

And then he turned away.

They walked past the stunned council like ghosts through an open hall. No guards blocked them. No words stopped them. Sylvalen's steps were quiet but proud. Lira looked back once, grinning like someone who knew every smug elf in that chamber was going to have indigestion for a week.

Isaac didn't say anything more.

He didn't need to.

He had returned from the Abyss.

And left it better than he found it.