Countless Pale Pilgrimages gathered together, their branches glowing with a pure and icy silver light. From afar, it resembled a shimmering silver ocean, flickering faintly in the darkness of the dungeon’s lower depths, presenting an eerie yet sacred beauty.
However, beneath this breathtaking sight lay deadly danger.
At the edges of the silver woodland, piles of monster corpses lay heaped like mountains, and among them, one could occasionally spot the broken remains of a Pale Pilgrimage as well.
“It’s practically like a natural barrier…” Salyan muttered in awe at the scene.
“It is indeed a barrier,” Iros explained calmly from behind him. “It is a defense mechanism of the Divine Tree itself, preventing anything from approaching its core.”
“They don’t seem… to be infected?” Salyan noticed that all the little trees retained their silvery-white trunks, without showing the dark red veins typical of those eroded by “Madness.”
But Iros shook his head slowly. He lifted a hand and pointed toward a broken sapling half-buried in the pile of corpses.
On its withered branch, faint dark red markings were clearly visible!
“It’s not that they cannot be infected, but that any contaminated individuals are eliminated by their own kind.”
“We’re not… supposed to destroy them by force, right?” Salyan asked uneasily.
“Of course not,” the captain of the guards, Eko, interjected. “If we chopped them all down, would you have my Rangers standing guard here day and night afterward?”
At his command, the well-trained elven rangers quickly split into several groups.
They stealthily approached from the flanks, purifying the poisonous mists in the air while provoking the Pale Pilgrimages with arrows and disruptive spells.
Soon enough, some of the Pale Pilgrimages were drawn away, chasing after the sources of disturbance and leaving the collective behind.
Gradually, the silver forest blocking their direct path grew thinner.
But when only a final thin layer remained, no matter how the rangers intensified their provocations, the remaining trees would only pursue briefly before retreating, never straying far from their line of defense.
“What now? Should we break through by force?” Salyan asked.
Iros gazed at the final line of defense and raised his staff. “The inevitable sacrifices… are still within acceptable limits.”
Eko didn’t hesitate in the slightest—he drew his twin elven scimitars with a metallic ring, the blades gleaming with cold light in the dim glow.
Those remaining Pale Pilgrimages, no matter how they spewed poisonous mists or swung their roots in desperate resistance, were no match for the combined assault of Iros’s magic and Eko’s swordsmanship.
Before long, they had been reduced to charred fragments and broken wood strewn across the ground.
Once the path was cleared, Iros did not order the entire group forward. He left several mages behind to cover the perimeter and took only three of his most capable students, together with Eko, deeper inside.
The darkness gradually faded, and the surroundings grew brighter.
Finally, a pure pillar of light descended from directly above, forcing Salyan, who had long since grown accustomed to the dimness, to squint his eyes.
They had reached the very bottom center of this vast underground spiral structure.
But at the heart of the empty soil lay only a single fragile seedling, so small it could hardly even be called a tree!
“Teacher, could that really be…” Salyan asked uncertainly.
Iros confirmed his guess. “That is the Divine Tree.”
One of the accompanying mages couldn’t help clicking his tongue. “I thought… it would be enormous.”
Eko chuckled at that. “That’s what I thought too, the first time I heard of it.”
Though this was his first time seeing the Divine Tree with his own eyes, as captain of the guards, he had long studied the records describing it.
Iros went on, “The Divine Tree is indeed vast beyond imagination. What you see now is merely the smallest fraction of it.”
“The rest… is it all underground?”
As Salyan speculated, he instinctively cast a spatial reconnaissance orb to probe beneath the earth for the Divine Tree’s form.
【Name: Esogar】
【Level: LV99】
【Race: Divine Tree】
【Racial Talent: Mana Harvest】
【Skills: 】
【Status: Dormant】
【Title: Dungeon Administrator No. 5 (Granted maximum authority over this dungeon)】
…
Lin Jun shifted his perspective to the Far North, where Gray["Little Black"] was scratching at a block of ice with its claws, curiously studying whether it counted as something shiny.
He opened its panel.
【Name: Gray】
【Level: LV62】
No problems there.
Which meant this truly was a Level 99 being named Esogar—skills blank, status dormant—and also a Dungeon Administrator?!
Luckily it was dormant. Otherwise, as a fellow Dungeon Administrator, Lin Jun might’ve had to consider whether he should be polite enough to say hello…
While Lin Jun scrutinized the panel, Iros had already stepped up to the frail sapling.
He extended his hand, letting emerald light of natural magic shine from his palm, enveloping the sapling in a gentle glow, as if probing and communicating with it on a deeper level.
Time passed in silence, until even the usually patient Eko could no longer hold his tongue.
“Iros, what’s the situation…”
But before he could finish, sudden change erupted!