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He knew that Nehe had returned to Ravenwood Forest after his departure, only to be rejected from rejoining the ranks of the forest druids. The last trace of Nehe was found at Greenwater Port where he purchased a sailboat and set sail into the Mist Sea, never to be seen again.

But according to Steelheart Widow Aiur and the Tacma Church member, Nehe didn’t disappear at sea. Instead, he journeyed to the Ruins of Orsis in the west where he was involved in a deadly confrontation with the Tacma Church. Outnumbered and overpowered, Nehe lost his life and not even his body was recovered. With Nehe’s death, Judgment 3 fell into the hands of the Tacma Church, becoming a powerful bargaining tool in their alliance with Steelheart Widow.

If the information was accurate, Nehe was likely the first Judge to pass, aside from William. However, due to the Astral Council’s book-burning campaign, there were no records left of Nehe’s story.

William’s attempts to extract information from the captive Tacma Church member were fruitless. The final battle at the Ruins of Orsis happened a hundred years before the member joined the Tacma Church and he only knew the outcome from the Church’s control of intelligence.

William was cautious not to jump to conclusions, as he didn’t want to make the same mistake as the Jackdaw Coles incident.

Now that he thought about it, would Nehe, who always claimed to be a sinner and only hoped to sprinkle his ashes around the World Tree, return to Ravenwood Forest in vain because he hoped to become a forest druid again?

He couldn’t shake the questions from his mind—why did Nehe go to the Ruins of Orsis alone? Why did he have such a hostile confrontation with the Tacma Church? And most importantly, why did the phylactery William had thrown into the sea follow the underground river and appear here?

Placing his hand on the enchantment strengthened by Inverse Entropy, William took a deep breath. No matter how many questions he had, he needed to retrieve the phylactery first.

…

Ebony sprinted to the tree hole, and his heart almost stopped at the sight before him. The impossible barrier was shattered, broken apart by the chanting of a mysterious man.

The fragments of the barrier didn’t magically reassemble, instead they vanished into thin air. And in their place, a bone-chilling wind whipped through the tree hole, with a force so great that Ebony instinctively lifted his arm to shield himself. He lowered his hand only when he felt the wind weaken.

“You should have told me,” the man’s voice, tight with suppressed emotion, echoed in the tree hole.

Ebony seemed to hear his teeth chattering.

Ebony’s teeth chattered, not from the cold.

“How did you do it?” he stuttered after a long pause. He was in shock and disbelief.

The outer two barriers were a warning system, added after Ebony chose this location as the base for the Resistance.

The innermost barrier, however, was the true protective system that had been in place for over a thousand years, only opened by the previous Matriarch Listeners.

But the man didn’t answer his question, he only glanced at Ebony before walking deeper into the tree hole without a backward look.

Ebony immediately followed, fully aware that the tree hole was more than just a storage place. It protected something, something precious…

The man is the Chosen One, the one who would save the Forest Elves as predicted by the Matriarch, he wouldn’t hurt it, right?

Ebony suddenly felt an indescribable fear in his heart as he comforted himself.

But now, as Ebony realized what he had done, letting an outsider into this sacred place, he was filled with an indescribable fear.

He arrived at the core of the World Tree.

The conflict between him and the Holy Tree Duke or the Forest Elves and the empire was insignificant compared to the importance of this place.

Only a Matriarch Listener could pass, and he was overconfident that no one could break it.

It was an absolute wall that no one in Currere could break through—the third barrier imposed by Frost Lich Nehe as redemption for his sins.

But today, the impossible happened. The barrier was broken. Who is this man? Could it be Nehe himself?

Yes, this seems to be the only possibility. Only he can break his seal. That also explains his excitement after knowing that his phylactery is here…

But according to the records, wasn’t Nehe a Forest Elf?

Can a lich change his body without a phylactery?

Ebony walked to the deepest part of the tree hole and saw the man standing in front of the shrine, picking up the black box filled with corrosion marks. The box was one of the rewards Ebony had promised him—Frost Lich Nehe’s phylactery.

But the man’s eyes weren’t on the box. They were fixed on the shrine. In the Forest Elf culture, they didn’t designate spots to worship gods because they could see the World Tree everywhere they looked.

In the reflection of the man’s eyes, the ordinary acorn was propped up by two spiral-shaped branches, one tender green and the other dry and withered.

“I should’ve remembered exactly where I was,” William muttered, turning to face Ebony who was standing behind him.

“This is where the World Tree’s core is located, right?” William asked.

“You… you know what that is?” Ebony asked, his voice shaking with nervousness.

If the other party was indeed Nehe, a blasphemous lich, bringing a lich to this sacred place was a crime punishable by death.

“That’s not all I know… Do you see the withered one?”

William ignored the fearful expression on his face and pointed at the withered branch holding the acorn.

Ebony nodded unconsciously.

“Well, I killed it,” William replied.

“Huh?” Ebony uttered in disbelief, unsure if he had heard wrongly.

“It all started with the Growing Calamity, created by the Holy Spirit, Mother. It first emerged from the World Tree in Ravenwood. I was the one who put an end to it, wielding the poisonous blade of the Lady of Starvation and striking the very manifestation of the Calamity, the personality of the Matriarch you worship. The Holy Spirits Church refers to Her as the Mother. It was only then that the Calamity was finally contained. But the cost was high—one of the cores of the World Tree withered away.”

William continued explaining despite seeing how stunned the other party was.

Ebony’s mind was racing, struggling to keep up with the deluge of information. He stumbled back, grasping onto a nearby root wall to steady himself.

The silence hung in the air for a few moments, until Ebony finally found his strained voice.

“Your name is…?”

On the way, Ebony had asked the other party’s name many times, but the other party only replied that he would only tell him after he confirmed that the remuneration was real.

And now, the other party had kept his promise.

“William Kane. The man who will both save and destroy Ravenwood Forest twice, as your prophecy dictates.”