Chapter 74

Chapter 74. The World Tree

Heimdal had been looking forward to it.

His Apostle God.

The monster who'd smashed through common sense on his way up -- Rag.

He'd been genuinely excited, wondering what absurd, outlandish reason the lad had come to find him.

That had been true right up to the moment the World Tree was mentioned.

'How will he shatter my expectations this time?'

But the actual reason for the visit was.

-To save the divine maidens.

......Utterly, hopelessly trivial.

The creature who'd stolen every Supreme Tier god's attention at the Banquet.

Rag, who Heimdal had believed without question would grow ever stronger and shake this stagnant Tower like a thunderbolt.

Had come to beg for the lives of mortals?

"......"

Heimdal's gaze froze over.

Sympathy.

For a god, that was a luxury -- and the very worst virtue to possess.

A god stands above all, ruling and dominating.

A god who pours emotion into the life and death of every ant-like mortal, who involves himself deeply in their fates -- such a god never meets a good end.

Inevitably, they grow weak, or they collapse from within.

Or was it greed -- wanting to keep those pretty maidens alive permanently as personal playthings?

'That's equally stupid.'

And the creature was a mere lesser god.

At a time when he should be fighting tooth and nail for every drop of Nectar.

No matter how much Heimdal favored Rag as his Apostle God, if he was wallowing in this childish sentimentality, the ending was already written.

'So he wasn't the one after all.'

Heimdal let out a short sigh.

Had I been mistaken?

Had I been blinded, mistaking a lucky, noisy empty cart for a great timber?

Disappointment settled heavy on the throne.

He waved his hand as if shooing away an insect.

He closed his eyes, as though there was nothing more worth hearing.

But.

"How trivial."

Rag didn't back down.

Instead, a flat remark left his mouth and struck Heimdal's ear.

"Trivial?"

"Yes. Trivial. Burning a few divine maidens for a handful of Nectar."

Rag stroked his chin and looked Heimdal dead in the eye.

"I mean it's far too petty and trivial for someone like me."

"......"

Heimdal's closed eyes slowly opened.

"I'm told those children were raised from birth on nothing but World Tree leaves."

Rag's gaze held not a trace of sympathy or compassion.

It was the sharp, calculating look of someone appraising merchandise on a display shelf.

"A body that's supremely pure and clean means, in other words, a blank canvas capable of perfectly absorbing and accepting any form of energy."

"And?"

Heimdal leaned slightly forward.

The corner of Rag's mouth twisted upward.

"Using ingredients of that caliber as mere kindling is too wasteful."

Thick arrogance saturated his voice.

"I'm going to raise them as my soldiers."

"......Soldiers?"

"Yes. I intend to forge the divine maidens into weapons. An absolute force of Personal Soldiers who'll sweep the battlefield in my stead."

Silence fell.

Heimdal's eyes wavered.

Raising divine maidens as weapons?

An idea no one had ever tried.

No -- an idea no god in all of Asgard had ever even attempted.

The reason was simple.

'The efficiency doesn't work out.'

The time and capital needed to feed, clothe, train, and mold divine maidens into soldiers.

It'd be a hundred, a thousand times more profitable to simply burn them in the Fire of Purification for high-purity Nectar.

That vast Nectar could instead recruit more ferocious, more powerful monsters from the Crystal shop, or raise one's own Divinity. The textbook approach.

Above all.

They'd be impossibly difficult to teach and raise.

Could a divine maiden who'd been coddled like a greenhouse flower her entire life wield so much as a single weapon?

And even if she could -- who had the skill to teach her?

A long, labor-intensive undertaking.

But.

'......'

A faint twitch ran across Heimdal's set lips.

A path that ordinary gods would never walk.

In this stagnant Tower obsessed with nothing but efficiency, a contrarian idea no one had conceived.

'Interesting.'

The dying ember of his interest caught fire again.

What if those blank-canvas divine maidens were truly forged into weapons under the hands of a monster like Rag?

They might birth a terrifying variable -- one that couldn't begin to compare with the cookie-cutter monster legions stamped out by Nectar.

"Hmmm."

Heimdal propped his chin and looked down at Rag.

"So it's not sympathy. You intend to use them purely as tools to build your own fighting force."

"Correct."

Rag shrugged.

"Did you think I'd come here dripping with cheap sentiment?"

A perfect answer.

Laughter welled up from deep in Heimdal's chest.

"Kahahahaha!"

That's my Apostle God.

His earlier disappointment in himself felt laughable now -- the lad had once again trampled his expectations in the most delightful way.

"Fine."

Heimdal rose from his seat.

His massive frame radiated a pressure that seemed to blanket the mountains.

"An entertaining idea. I'll lend my support."

But his voice turned grave.

"However, mark my words, Rag."

"Yes."

"Obtaining a World Tree and cultivating it in your territory will not be easy."

Heimdal's gaze bored into Rag as though piercing straight through.

"There is no precedent in the Tower's history of a lesser god successfully growing a World Tree."

It was a miracle on par with creating life itself.

The consumption of vast Divine Power was a given, and one wrong step could see the World Tree's sprout devour its owner's very soul -- a perilously dangerous ritual.

"If you fail, the sprout will gnaw through your Divinity."

Heimdal warned.

"Quite literally, you could wither and die."

"......"

"Will you still attempt it?"

A threat of death.

But Rag didn't hesitate.

"I will."

Rag nodded.

"Failure isn't in my vocabulary."

Certainty dripping with boundless arrogance.

"Follow me."

Heimdal clicked his tongue at that audacious face, but with evident satisfaction.

***

Honestly, I was quite tense.

Following Heimdal deep into the interior of Floor 387's territory, a chill ran down my spine the entire way.

'The scale here is on another level entirely.'

The entrance alone was insane.

Named-class monsters that could swallow a run-of-the-mill lesser god whole roamed everywhere.

Tens of millions of staggering beasts formed a flawless ecosystem.

An overwhelming spectacle that fully deserved to be called a vast empire.

The deeper I followed Heimdal, the more staggering the view became.

'Even the high-ranking gods weren't this impressive.'

Before the Regression, the strike force and I had fought our way through high-ranking gods' territories, coughing blood.

At the time, I'd been proud of what we'd accomplished.

But seeing Heimdal's Floor with my own eyes, those high-ranking gods' territories were less than the grime on a backwater village's toenails.

'So this is the majesty of a Supreme Tier god.'

And it wasn't just Heimdal.

The territories of other Supreme Tier gods -- Aigis, Skadi, and the rest -- would be comparable.

In that case, conquering them by force.

'Is practically impossible.'

A frontal assault would be suicide.

No matter how much Authority I stacked, no matter that I held Abriel -- smashing through this infinite monster legion and the Supreme Tier god's true body alone was out of the question.

And above that.

The Floors belonging to the Twelve Sovereign Gods who ruled above the Supreme Tier -- I couldn't even begin to imagine.

"We're here."

After cleaving through ferocious winds and flying onward.

Heimdal stopped before a colossal pillar that pierced through the clouds.

No -- it wasn't a pillar.

"This is......"

I stared upward, slack-jawed.

Enormous leaves blanketing the entire sky, and a trunk of unfathomable girth with roots plunging deep into the earth.

The World Tree.

"Every World Tree rooted in this Asgard is connected through invisible roots to a shared origin."

Heimdal stroked the World Tree and spoke plainly.

"The land where a World Tree grows becomes incomparably fertile, and it strengthens the owner's Divine Power itself."

He was right.

Just standing near the tree, the concentration of Mana in the air was dense enough to be suffocating.

"Beyond that, it bestows all manner of blessings upon the entire territory. You could call it an absolute icon."

Heimdal smirked.

"But not just anyone can possess a World Tree."

SNAP!

Heimdal reached out and wrenched a thick branch from the World Tree with brute force.

In that instant.

"......!"

I sucked in a sharp breath.

From the broken cross-section of the branch, demonic energy beyond imagination began pouring out like a waterfall.

A revolting stench of blood, and the reek of despair.

"The World Tree is commonly known as a pure, sacred tree of life."

Heimdal approached me, broken branch in hand.

"The truth is the exact opposite."

His eyes sank cold.

"This tree is something like the aggregate of all demonic energy and grudges."

"Grudges......?"

"It feeds on the fragments and refuse of destroyed worlds, growing by devouring them. That's what a World Tree is."

It felt like being struck over the head.

The remnants of ruined worlds.

The resentment, despair, fury, and grief of the countless mortals who perished within them.

The World Tree absorbed all those horrific emotions and demonic energy through its roots, converting them into Asgard's nourishment. A colossal purification tank. A garbage dump.

"Only those who can fully endure and bear the grudges and malice of those countless worlds -- all that monstrous demonic energy -- earn the right to grow a World Tree in their territory."

Heimdal thrust the branch toward me.

"Well? Think you can handle it?"

His voice was testing me.

"If you can, take it."

I swallowed hard.

The churning black miasma before my eyes was far denser and more vicious than anything I'd felt from the Demon Realm or from Mad Gods.

But I couldn't back down.

To save the divine maidens and maximize my territory's fighting power, this branch was essential.

I slowly reached out.

I seized the World Tree's branch.

"......Grkh!"

ZAP!

A spine-crawling pain.

Monstrous demonic energy surged back through my entire body.

My veins darkened and bulged, and it felt as though my brain was screaming.

DING! DING!

[Warning! Exposed to lethal grudges.]

[Debuff 'Resentment of Worlds' applied.]

[Debuff 'Demonic Erosion' applied.]

['World Tree Branch' is consuming your Divine Power!]

My Status Window was plastered with red warnings.

I'd merely gripped a branch, yet my Mana and Divine Power were being sucked out like melting snow.

"Heh heh."

Heimdal grinned at the sight.

"If you want to give up, now's your only chance, Rag."

He clasped his hands behind his back and added with leisure.

"One wrong move and that branch will suck Floor 55 dry of every ounce of energy and turn it to ash."

I clenched my teeth and shook my head.

"I'll take it."

As if I'd fold over a measly debuff.

Heimdal clicked his tongue, but his eyes held a glint of approval.

"Then go ahead and try. If it's really too much, just burn it with that Principality Holy Sword of yours."

Though the branch would become worthless trash the instant he did.

At least it would avert the tragedy of losing all his Divine Power or having his entire Floor obliterated.

For Heimdal, it was an uncharacteristically considerate gesture -- sharing a contingency plan just in case.

"......Yes. Thank you for telling me."

I gave him a brief bow.

Then I hurried back to Floor 55.

***

Floor 55. A sealed chamber in the golden temple.

"Haa, haa......"

I was drenched in sweat, heaving ragged breaths.

The World Tree's branch sat on the table.

That single small branch was flooding the narrow room with a darkness of demonic energy.

'How do I purify this insane miasma?'

I was at a loss.

Just holding it was gnawing at my Divine Power this badly.

If I planted this in the middle of my territory, Floor 55 would be contaminated with grudges and shrivel up, exactly as Heimdal had said.

I couldn't simply sear it with the Holy Sword, either.

The life force within the branch would burn away too, leaving nothing but charcoal.

And that would obviously make growing a World Tree impossible.

At this rate.

'No wonder even most high-ranking gods can't handle this.'

A true impasse.

No solution in sight.

That was when it happened.

KYAAAH.

A bizarre cry came from behind me.

I turned to find the Dragon of Catastrophe, Angragon.

The creature, now roughly the size of a puppy, had apparently nudged the sealed door open and toddled in.

But something was off about it.

"......You."

Angragon's two eyes were locked on the World Tree branch atop the table.

From the gap in its pitch-black snout.

Drip, drip, drip.

Drool was splattering onto the marble floor, forming a puddle.

Like a starving stray faced with a feast, its tail was spinning like a propeller.

'......Could it be?'

A thought flashed through my mind.

"Want to eat it?"

KYAAH!

An affirmative.

I gingerly lifted the World Tree branch from the table and held it toward Angragon.

Then.

WHOOOOOP!

Angragon's jaws gaped wide.

It inhaled the surrounding air like a vacuum cleaner.

And.

WHOOOOSH--!

The horrific mass of demonic energy and grudges pouring from the branch.

......Began streaming out like thread from a spool, spiraling into Angragon's throat like a black hole.