Chapter 14: THE WORLD TREE
→ 20 REVIEWS= 2 BONUS CHAPTER
→ 150 POWER STONES= 1 BONUS CHAPTER
→ 300 POWER STONES= 2nd BONUS CHAPTER
CURRENT PROGRESS:↓
– FIRST OBJECTIVE:- 6/20 REVIEWS
– SECOND OBJECTIVE- 104/150 P.S
– THIRD OBJECTIVE- / 300 P.S
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Warmth. That was the first thing Nova felt — a soothing, all-encompassing warmth that cradled him in perfect stillness. It was strange, like drifting in thick, heated silk. His body felt weightless, his mind pleasantly hazy. Slowly, awareness stirred, and he realized he was floating, fully submerged in something smooth and viscous, a golden liquid that shimmered faintly even behind his closed eyelids. Yet somehow, he wasn't choking, wasn't suffocating. It felt… safe. Comfortable, even. A lazy thought floated through his mind. What a weird dream… fighting a Thunder Dragon? Yeah, right. But as the haziness cleared, a sharp jolt of clarity struck him.
His eyes snapped open.
Golden light surrounded him in every direction. Liquid, not air. He could see the way it rippled around him, his limbs moving freely as if suspended in honeyed light. Panic flared in his chest. Wait — why the hell am I underwater? Why am I breathing? Nova thrashed for a moment, instinctively reaching for the surface, but there was none. And yet… his lungs drew in the liquid like air, no suffocation, no burning in his chest. The initial panic dulled into bewildered disbelief.
Then he felt it — a faint, rhythmic pulse through the liquid, through his skin, deep into his bones. His body felt… stronger. His core hummed softly, energy seeping into every fiber of his being, his reserves gently expanding with every second. Nova's senses sharpened further as realization dawned.
Outside, it would take me a whole day to gain a single point of energy. But here… here it's one stat every hour.
He went still, wide-eyed as the enormity of it sank in. What the hell is this place?
Despite his confusion, Nova quickly sat cross legged and focused on absorbing this golden liquid.
After a few hours Nova opened his eyes, when he felt that his body is full and he cannot take in anymore.
He looked around and saw light on he top and started swimming upwards.
Soon, with a final kick of his legs, Nova breached the surface of the golden liquid — and what he saw stole the breath from his lungs.
A vast, endless expanse stretched out before him, unlike anything he'd ever imagined in his wildest, magic-soaked dreams. Towering above and around him was an impossibly colossal tree, its trunk extending beyond sight in both directions, as though it connected the heavens and the underworld themselves. Its leaves shimmered not with the green of ordinary foliage, but with a strange, colorless translucence, like glass or crystal. And within those translucent leaves flowed rivers of color — streaks of brilliant blue, emerald green, crimson, amethyst, and gold — pure elemental energies coursing through the veins of the World Tree.
For a long, silent moment, Nova could only stare, his mind trying and failing to grasp the sheer immensity of what he was seeing. He pulled himself out of the pool with effort, mana-soaked droplets clinging to his skin before dissipating into light. His feet landed softly on the surface of what he initially thought was solid ground — only to realize it was a branch. Or rather, a portion of a branch.
Nova's gaze swept across the surface he stood upon, and cold realization dawned. The branch stretched farther than a city, maybe even a kingdom. It was massive beyond comprehension, its texture resembling ancient wood laced with veins of shimmering light. Compared to this single branch, Nova was nothing more than a speck of dust. An ant upon a mountain. A drop of water in an infinite ocean.
A heavy, humbling sensation pressed against his heart. He had faced dragons, braved dungeons, and challenged corrupted beasts, but never — not even in the presence of gods' relics or ancient ruins — had he felt so utterly small and insignificant. The sheer scale of it made him realize how narrow his world had been, how limited his understanding of existence was.
This… this is something beyond mortals.
The silence was profound, but not empty. It was the kind of silence that hummed with a living presence, the entire realm seemingly breathing in slow, eternal rhythms. Energy saturated the air, the ground, the leaves overhead. Even the golden pool behind him rippled in time with a pulse he could feel, but not hear.
Nova swallowed, his throat dry despite the rich mana in the air.
"Where the hell am I?"
The thought barely passed through Nova's mind before a beam of golden light descended from above, engulfing him completely. In an instant, his body fell back into the pool of liquid mana, while his consciousness was pulled away, weightless and unanchored, into a new space.
When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't on the branch anymore.
He stood in a vast, endless realm bathed in golden light. The air felt thick with power, yet strangely calm. All around him, invisible currents passed by — not wind, but something deeper. He didn't need to see them to sense the presence of countless elemental forces. Without any spells, names, or incantations, he could instinctively feel them. Life, Death, Fire, Water, Wind, Thunder, Space, Time, Light, Darkness, Destruction, Fate, and more.
He didn't know how he recognized them, but being here made those forces clearer in his mind. It was like standing at the center of the world where everything, every concept he'd only read about in dusty grimoires or half-believed legends, truly existed.
Then, without warning, a piece of information slid into his thoughts like a sharp, undeniable fact:
[You may remain here for one week.]
Nova's breath caught, his pulse quickening. A week. Only a week in this place. He had no idea what this realm was or why he'd been brought here, but instinct screamed that even a few moments here were priceless. Every second spent inside this space made his senses sharper, his understanding clearer.
He forced down the unease and quickly sat cross-legged on the golden surface beneath him. His four-leaf grimoire appeared above his head unknownigly, its pages slowly turning in the still air.
Without wasting another moment, Nova activated Soul-Sight. The realm immediately shifted in his perception. Streams of invisible forces turned visible, lines and rivers of energy threading through the space like strands of silk. Some felt soft and soothing, others oppressive and sharp. He could now clearly see the difference between the basic elements and those far rarer, harder to touch. His focus narrowed.
He ignored the familiar ones — fire, water, wind, earth, lightning — and instead locked onto the rarities: Life, Death, Fate, Destruction, Space, Time, and most of all, Reality, his core affinity.
He knew it was reckless. A sane person would focus on one or two. But Nova had no plans to master them here. That wasn't his goal.
What he wanted was simple — entry-level comprehension. A foothold. A spark of understanding for each, just enough to make future growth possible. Later, he could chase down tomes, artifacts, or even trade for insights in the multiverse markets. He was a trader, after all. A rookie one, sure, but a trader nonetheless.
And if this place was giving him a once-in-a-lifetime chance, Nova sure as hell wasn't going to waste it playing it safe.
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From afar, a colossal tree stretched into the heavens — so vast, so impossibly immense, that it seemed to hold the entire world aloft upon its ancient, towering form. Its trunk alone spanned distances greater than entire continents, and even though it was countless kilometers away, its crown remained unseen, lost in the endless skies above, as though it reached into realms beyond mortal sight.
The realm surrounding it was filled with mana so dense, so overwhelmingly concentrated, that it had long since shed its gaseous form and turned into shimmering, golden liquid. Vast seas and rivers of pure mana drifted in silence, their surfaces undisturbed in the timeless expanse. The very air shimmered with power, thick with the scent of old magic.
But the strangest, most unsettling thing was the presence of countless gigantic, black chains. They excuded foul and intense negative aura. Towering above oceans of liquid mana, these chains stretched across the realm, binding themselves around the impossibly huge trunk of the World Tree.
Some wrapped around its lower branches, others pierced into the trunk itself, as if the entire tree was shackled by a force ancient and malevolent, sealing it in place. The eerie creak of those chains carried across the mana-soaked air, a sound filled with both menace and sorrow.
Meanwhile, in a distant part of that liquid mana sea, a familiar figure stirred.
A gigantic Thunder Dragon, its scales shimmering like storm-forged steel, slowly opened its eyes. A thunderous pulse rippled through the liquid around it as the beast's gaze sharpened, its pupils flashing with the essence of pure destruction. Arcs of lightning crackled in the depths of its eyes, the air around it thick with the scent of scorched mana.
It stretched its wings, vast enough to blot out the golden light above, and clapped them once, sending a rolling wave of power through the golden liquid as it rose to the surface. Drops of liquid mana cascaded from its wings like falling stars.
The Thunder Dragon's gaze turned toward the towering World Tree. There was no arrogance in its eyes now, no fury, no corruption — only deep remorse. Lowering its massive head, the beast spoke in a voice that rumbled like a thousand storms across the realm.
"Please forgive me, World Tree… for failing in my duty. For not being vigilant enough… for letting the devils slip through the cracks… and sealing you in this prison."
The words hung in the air, carried by the endless mana currents, as the bound, silent tree stood in mournful witness.
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