CH 254

Aled’s incessant chattering continued for a long while, before it eventually paused to look down at its hand. A sore pain emanated from it—as a spirit, it was a soul entity and the shadow of the Elf King. Aled was dull to most pain, yet its hand was throbbing to an awful degree. The spirit’s continuous prattling was actually a cover to appear dignified and strong. In fact, it was on the verge of tearing up. The World Tree had definitely been serious in trying to whip Cecile and Estian.

While Aled was staring at its sore hand, Ayura was prostrating beside the spirit and crying out, “I have nothing to do with that spirit, great World Tree!” Turning to glare at Aled, Ayura yelled, “Are you mad? What’re you doing? Get down on your knees this instant and beg with me! Do you even know what you did to the great World Tree?”

Aled puffed out its chest and proudly replied, “What I now know is that I’m strong enough to block the World Tree’s attack!”

“You lunatic!”

Ignoring Ayura’s wails, Aled turned to gaze at Estian, who was hugging Cecile,

And thought about everything that had led up to this moment.

* * *

When Aled and Ayura leaped from the end of the world, the spirit soon understood why the latter had been so frightened. The end of the world truly was a dangerous place. It was a place beyond the boundary of the unknown that lay between the gap of space, where things that could not be comprehended by the laws of the world existed. They encountered things that were alive, dead and those that were in neither state from the beginning. What’s more, the space itself was hostile towards the two spirits.

‘Treating us like foreign bodies, eh?’ What shouldn’t have entered had come in, so it naturally tried to spit them back out. Even so, Aled managed to find the World Tree. ‘Not that it was difficult,’ Aled thought. The spirit had guessed that the biggest and most powerful existence would be the World Tree, so following its presence wasn’t hard. Rather, the difficulty lay on the path to the tree. As they were making their way, Aled and Ayura sensed a huge collision of force somewhere far away.

‘Huh? Someone else is here?’ Did another ‘foreign entity’ make its way here aside from them? Aled was contemplating whether to avoid the source of disturbance, when it sensed familiarity from one of the powers.

“The Emperor? I mean, why is he here?” Aled cried in surprise.

Eyeing the spirit suspiciously, Ayura asked, “Are you acquainted with that madman? He seems to be a human, so how is he alive in this place? And what is that power of his?”

Aled broke into a cold sweat at Ayura’s question. ‘I can’t let Ayura find out that the emperor has Eugendiph’s blood.’ If the existence of the power that had once laid devastation on the spirit realm became known, all of spirit-kind would rise up and attempt to kill the emperor.

Not to mention, thanks to the emperor, Aled had become the owner of the Forest of Tetin, as well as the Emerald of Aled and Tania’s brooch. These jewelry pieces were the equivalent of one super luxurious mansion and two villas. However, if the emperor died, all of it would be lost. ‘My house! My loan reimbursement!’ Faster than it had ever flown before, Aled rushed to Estian’s side and aided the emperor in thrashing the unknown opponent.

“Are you going to pay my loaaan?!” Aled screamed. The punch thrown by an elder-class spirit with all their might packed quite the power.