CHAPTER 166 - The One Dealt With on Earth

They returned to the tower. The state of the tower was a mess. It had already been broken, but after being hit by Neldym's rain, it was now in a half-melted state.
"By the way, where's Garta?"
Jinwoo looked around. He couldn't sense Garta's presence. If he were alive, the flame of his soul should have been visible, but there was nothing nearby.
"Uh, um? Garta?"
Larna's eyes darted around as she avoided his gaze. She clearly had something to hide.
"I told you to watch him. Did you lose him by any chance?"
"No! I didn't lose him!"
"Then where is he?"
"I, I don't know..."
"But you're sure you didn't lose him?"
"Yeah!"
He had definitely left Larna in charge of watching Garta. He had no intention of reprimanding her for abandoning her post. She hadn't just slacked off; she had come to help him.
But her answer was strange. She asserted with certainty that she hadn't lost him. There seemed to be no lie in her words.
But to feign ignorance about where he went was...
Jinwoo let out a small sigh and let his shoulders slump.
"Alright. You worked hard. Thanks for coming to help."
"Heehee."
In any case, Larna's expression brightened, happy that it ended with praise. Jinwoo stopped probing any further. He felt like he already knew without having to ask.
After offering a moment of condolence for Garta, who had likely met an unwilling end, Jinwoo entered the tower.
"There's no reason to stay here any longer. Didn't you get her flower?"
Terham, floating along behind him, said as much. Jinwoo took the flower out from his clothes. A slender branch with a single flower blooming on it. The flower of the Blue Flame, dug up from beneath the roots of the dead World Tree.
Its soul was flickering. Was it saying to leave this place? No, the opposite. It wanted to protect this place. It was a place that couldn't be abandoned.
‘The tower was originally a passage to the lower world.’
Before it was broken, this white tower was a passage to the lower world. To be precise, it was a tower that existed simultaneously in the Spirit Realm and the world below. Thanks to that, Jinwoo had been able to reach the tower through both the kingdom and the Spirit Realm to meet the priestess, Permu.
To give up such a tower would be a waste. Though it was broken, the tower's foundation wasn't damaged. If he purified the surroundings and repaired the formulas, it could regain its original function.
But that wasn't the only reason.
This tower was steeped in history. The history of the World Tree, which had ruled the kingdom alongside the priestesses born in each generation.
He called it history because of the immense length of time, but for the World Tree, which had lived for just as long, it could also be called a memory.
Or perhaps, a cherished one.
"Should I plant it around here?"
In the end, Jinwoo decided to plant the flower. Inside the tower, in a place with the least damage and contamination.
The newly grown World Tree would purify and restore the tower, eventually covering the surrounding area. With this small soul at its center, a new natural environment would be born, and through a proper cycle, it would return to how it was meant to be.
Jinwoo decided to watch for a while. Until the small soul, still just a sapling, could sustain itself and begin to purify its surroundings.
Watching over it until then was something even Jinwoo could do.

Jinwoo stayed in the tower for a while with Terham and Larna. Although the place was contaminated by Neldym's rain, it wasn't impossible to stay. Since the one who had spread the poison was now dead, all they had to do was avoid the remaining toxins.
Terham focused on mixing the earth to neutralize the poison.
The giant's secret art he possessed was based on the entire land. He dispersed and scattered the contamination covering the surface of the ground as much as possible to minimize the damage.
The purification of the poison itself was a job for the grown World Tree, but he could buy enough time until then.
Larna didn't do much of anything.
She always acted as she pleased, sometimes basking in the warm sunlight, other times curling up to sleep in a small patch of shade. Considering her origin as an insect, it was a bit strange, but if you thought of her as a cat, she was rather cute.
Jinwoo tended to the flower every day.
When it needed water, he brought it water, and when it needed sunlight, he opened the ceiling to let the light in. On days with heavy rain, he would even seal the tower itself so the flower wouldn't be washed away.
The things he did were all minor. Things that, even if absent, wouldn't have been a problem for its survival.
An ordinary plant might be different, but the World Tree could survive on its own. That Soul Tree, which uses souls as nutrients, could survive even with no water or sunlight, as long as there were small souls. As long as insects and microorganisms weren't completely wiped out, it could endure somehow.

However, it was true that with care and attention, it grew more and more vigorously. While absorbing souls as nutrients was its own job, providing a pleasant environment allowed the World Tree to focus even more on its task.

Seeing the tree grow so well with just a little care, Jinwoo felt an unknowable sense of pride. It was a slightly different feeling from simply tending a garden at home. It was more like the rewarding feeling of raising a child.

'My past self must have felt this way.'

He remembered now. The days he had spent cultivating a single tree he found on a planet that was nothing but a desolate desert.

He wondered if his past self had felt similar to how he did now. Of course, back then, the feeling must have been far more desperate, and the sense of accomplishment far greater.

What was once a single blossom was now in full bloom. As if to show how healthily it was growing, Jinwoo’s touch lingered on each and every brilliantly blooming flower.

And then, the very first blossom fell and settled in Jinwoo’s hand.

“For me?”

As if answering his question, the tree swayed in the wind. A soft rustling sound came from its leaves and branches brushing against each other.

• The first blossom. A part of the Blue Flame it possessed from the very beginning. To grant this to Jinwoo was an act of anointing. It was no different from formally appointing Jinwoo as a priestess—no, a priest—who tended to the World Tree. The only difference was that his work was gardening, not prayer.

“Right… Permu’s role has come back to me.”

Come back. The words held a strange resonance. It felt as though it meant more than a simple transfer of duties, but a reversion to its original form.

Strangely, he felt a greater sense of relief than he had when recovering the Seeds one by one. Reclaiming the Seeds was driven by a sense of duty or mission—the kind of obligation that said he had to clean up the disaster he had unleashed.

But with this anointing, he felt as if he had finally found his true self again. A memory from a distant past. As if he had recovered a memory of a day he longed to return to.

Kwoong!

Just then, he felt a strange presence.

Jinwoo, who had been lost in sentiment while holding the flower petal, snapped his head up. Something was surrounding the tower. Yet, he couldn't sense any flames.

“Enemy attack! It’s an enemy attack!”

Terham rushed to inform him, his expression urgent as if something terrible had happened.

Following him, Jinwoo sprinted up to a window on the tower's upper floor and looked outside.

'It's dark.'

That was his first impression.

Even though it was the time of day when the sun should be setting and the evening glow should be in full bloom, the world was dark. A pitch-black legion filled the horizon where the sun should have been.

And yet, the contradiction was that he felt no flames. That meant they were beings that moved without souls. Either machines, or…

“Undead.”

The immortal race.

“Perhaps they’ve come for a cup of tea…”

Terham spoke, breaking out in a cold sweat. At that moment, a two-headed ogre hoisted a massive boulder and threw it. The rock flew with ferocious speed, as if ignoring the laws of physics, and slammed into the tower’s wall.

Kwajik!

A part of the tower wall, which was being covered by the newly growing branches of the World Tree, shattered. Bricks crumbled and branches were crushed, releasing the smell of ruptured life.

“I guess not.”

Of course not. Jinwoo clicked his tongue at Terham’s remark and drew his sword.

It seemed he was still a long way from reclaiming the tower’s peace.

The undead swarmed in. Most were low-level skeletons, mere cannon fodder to boost their numbers, but there were some fairly strong individuals mixed in.

There was the two-headed ogre zombie that had thrown the rock earlier, knights clad in black armor, and so many liches flinging ice and fire that you could trip over them.

“Come forth.”

Jinwoo released the Disciples of Rain he had absorbed before. Most of them were soldiers who had already lost their egos, those who had blindly followed Neldym and were now subservient to Jinwoo.

Just as they had blocked Jinwoo’s path in the past, the disciples stood before the undead without any regard for their own bodies. Their swords and magic cut down the soulless soldiers. Sometimes they were struck down in return, but the disciples didn't just die. They would detonate their own bodies, dying in a spray of poisonous bone fragments and blood.

Ordinary poison didn't work on the undead, but corrosive poison did. The souls of the disciples who sacrificed their bodies in this way would return to Jinwoo and request new forms.

'There's no such thing as a free lunch.'

Jinwoo swallowed a sigh and shared a portion of his energy with them. Fortunately, the energy required to reconstruct their bodies was minimal, thanks to Neldym having optimized their physical forms over the thousand years he had led them.

Thus, the Disciples of Rain that Jinwoo commanded were endless. But the encroaching undead were an equally endless legion.

“Sir Jinwoo! Are you alright?”

“Yes. How is Larna?”

“She’s slaughtering the undead on the opposite side. It seems she’s mainly targeting the liches.”

Larna was running rampant on the complete opposite side. Her sword cut down everything, soul or no soul, but she was said to be particularly obsessed with liches, rushing at the slightest hint of magic.

Perhaps she instinctively knew that magic was the biggest threat on a battlefield of this scale. Or did she have a grudge against mages? It was possible that among the creatures she had devoured in the past, there had been a mage who gave her an upset stomach.

“Any Lord can handle a few undead… but to command a legion of this size, it must be him.”

“Who?”

“The Lord of Eternity.”

The Lord of Eternity and Horizon. Commonly known as the Lord of Eternity, he was a being who primarily dealt with the dead.

When it came to death, Belkarim was the Lord who ruled over the dead, but the Lord of Eternity was slightly different. He didn't govern death itself, but rather what came after death.

It didn't matter if you were living or dead. As long as you could obtain eternity.

And so, he was the one who had created the endless army of the undying.

'Undead, huh.'

Jinwoo’s expression hardened. It was a thought he’d had while exploring the 2nd Floor, but his abilities and the undead were not a good match.

His power was to see through and sever souls. It wasn't a particularly effective ability against the soulless undead.

Of course, he could overwhelm shabby undead like these with pure swordsmanship, but if stronger ones appeared…

“S-Sir Jinwoo! Look over there!”

Just then, as he had feared, a truly powerful entity appeared. A strong undead meant it was born from a strong corpse.

Where Terham pointed, an iron woman with countless wings appeared. Seeing it, Jinwoo’s eyes widened.

“Prycia…”

The Lord of Light. Prycia, the Goddess of the Afterglow, was floating there.

Moreover, that wasn't the only reason for Jinwoo's surprise. If it were merely the corpse of a Lord, he wouldn't have been this shocked. The reason for his astonishment lay elsewhere.

It was because Prycia was a Lord he had disposed of on Earth.