341 Past
Setting up the ritual wasn’t complicated, or rather, ceremonial magic had never been complicated. The difficult part of any ritual was always how to gather all the elements to reenact the myth.
The components abstracted from Nehe’s reincarnation ritual were very simple—Father, Mother, and the Child as the ritual executor.
They reenacted the two incidents of a child being killed by the father and devoured by the mother to achieve the outcome of rebirth.
Even though the god, the Father of the Wild, was no longer alive, the King of the Holy Tree, who still had its blessings, could barely play the role of a Father. Therefore, in order for the ritual to resonate sufficiently with the myth, the role of a Mother had to be sufficiently restored.
For this reason, Nehe decided to awaken Earth Mother and replace the Holy Tree Matriarch as the new will of the World Tree before descending into Currere.
According to Nehe’s research, the Holy Tree Matriarch the Forest Elves believed in was inextricably linked to the Earth Mother who devoured Her children. Or rather, that Matriarch was very likely a side of love that the Forest Elf ancestors had artificially carved out.
This way, the Holy Tree Matriarch’s inactivity paved the way for the awakening of the true Earth Mother to a certain extent.
This was also the deeper reason why the Earth Mother’s secret sect, which had been dormant in the Oak Council for thousands of years, began to stir after the Moon Realm crisis ended. After the Holy Tree Matriarch lost her life, Earth Mother’s more intrinsic side had a chance to reappear.
Unfortunately, those people chose the wrong time to take action. Before William Kane left Currere, they couldn’t help but carry out some tests. As for the final outcome… Although the people behind the scenes were miraculously not exposed, the foundation they had accumulated for years was destroyed by the god among humans.
After Nehe completely controlled the secret Church, he finally fulfilled the conditions to awaken Earth Mother by studying the primitive information passed down.
After losing his value and at the moment of his execution, the former leader of the Earth Mother’s secret sect, who was the true mastermind behind Nehe’s transformation into a lich, had once claimed that the Forest Elves’ 5,000-year history was a mistake. However, this mistake wasn’t irreparable.
The true Earth Mother had actually accompanied Ravenwood through more than 5,000 years of history in another form. He had once seen another possibility of Ravenwood’s history under the guidance of Earth Mother in an extremely peaceful slumber. His mission was to wait for the return of the chosen one, Nehe, to correct the wrong history.
Although Nehe didn’t believe the person’s crazy words, he discovered that slumbering was indeed the correct medium to communicate with Earth Mother.
Although devouring one’s children was madness in the eyes of a third party, to the devoured children, what they sensed was the eternal darkness and warmth of returning to their mother’s body.
The act closest to that state was slumber.
Nehe used this opportunity to communicate with the lost Earth Mother through the tree spirit’s dream after many failed attempts.
On this basis, Nehe relied on the dream as a medium to awaken a portion of the Earth Mother’s will and guide it to Currere, allowing her to rely on the World Tree to devour his body and soul…
Therefore, the reincarnation ritual with a success rate of less than 1 in 10,000 according to Sibylla’s calculations actually succeeded like a miracle.
A living Nehe was born naked from his mother’s womb after being completely devoured by Earth Mother.
However, the first and only thing Nehe said after his rebirth was—
Nizemar couldn’t help but gasp when she heard that.
She looked in the direction Remides had pointed, as if she was worried that something indescribable would suddenly appear.
Of course, all she could see was the dark tunnel at the end of the root hall that led deeper.
Nizemar retracted her gaze and asked carefully, “Why did Mr. Nehe get you to escape?”
“I don’t know…” Remides also stared at the dark tunnel, but her gaze seemed to drift into the distance. After a while, she retracted her gaze and said, “This place wasn’t like this in the past. The underground root hall used to be a place filled with life. There was no damp mold, and there wouldn’t be so many withered branches and leaves. This was originally an exhibition hall for rare plants in the Vic Continent. Back then, when the Presiding Judge lacked certain materials during alchemy, he would urge Koos to come here to ‘borrow’ some.”
Looking at the distorted roots around her and the rotten soil piled up on the ground, Remides continued,
“After Nehe said ‘run,’ all the plants here began to rot at a visible speed. As for the roots on the four walls, they squirmed as if they were alive and began to automatically attack everyone in the hall. At first, we thought that the previous ‘miniature calamity’ hadn’t been wiped out and planned on working with Nehe to resolve the problem here…
“However, Nehe used Zero Entropy to seal off the core area where he held the ritual… Back then, Sibylla and I were already exhausted from dealing with the proliferation of miniature calamities. After several failed attempts to break through the seal Nehe set up, we could only escape temporarily under the endless attacks of the surrounding roots.
“I remember that was the situation back then… Sibylla.”
Remides suddenly turned to look at the little girl holding Nizemar’s hand.
The girl named Elise Silence who inherited the Eyes of God.
At some point, she was no longer her.
Elise’s consciousness had been taken over by a will that technically didn’t exist in true history.
“How nostalgic… Ms. Ranger. However, it’s only been more than ten years for me. It’s been nearly a thousand years for you, right?”
Upon hearing the girl she had been holding speak in a tone that didn’t sound like her, Nizemar retracted her hand as if she had been electrocuted.
“Ms… Sibylla?” Nizemar stammered as she probed.
Astral Observer Sibylla Silence could use her eyes that transcended time and space to travel to periods that had never happened without affecting cause-and-effect. This was what the Presiding Judge had explained to Nizemar previously, but she couldn’t grasp the concept fully. In the end, she still treated this phenomenon as the Judge having the ability to possess her successor, just like summoning ancestors to possess oneself in undead magic.
“We meet again, the Presiding Judge’s believer… Speaking of which, this title would be asking for a beating by the Presiding Judge in our era.”
Opening her white eyes, Elise looked at Nizemar with interest before turning to Remides.
“You seem to have guessed that I left a record here?” Sibylla asked her with a smile.
“Previously, I heard from the Presiding Judge that you could leave a mark on fake history that didn’t exist through your eyes that transcends the past and future… After all, what happened here is a secret between the two of us,” Remides replied coldly.
She didn’t seem too excited to see her former ally again.
“So why didn’t you explain to the Presiding Judge what happened to Nehe back then? Since you’re here, it means that things are spiraling out of control again, right?” Sibylla retracted her smile and asked.
“I forgot,” Remides replied dryly.
The smile on Sibylla’s face gradually disappeared as she said emotionlessly, “Liar.”
“Then, what do you want me to say? Say that it was because he stopped Nehe’s suicide back then that the Lady of Starvation obtained a second chance at birth? Or tell him that after Nehe regained his body, he turned into a humanoid Moon Realm rift that Camilla could use to break through the World Shell. For this reason, he has no choice but to choose to go out to the Ruins of Orsis a second time and exile himself to World’s End?”
“Or are you afraid of letting the Presiding Judge know…” Sibylla slowly interrupted Remides. She paused and her expression gradually darkened.
Then, her lips moved, and Nizemar felt as if she had heard mosquito talk.
However, to Remides, the other party’s words exploded in her ears like thunder.
“You were the one who revealed Nehe’s last whereabouts to the Tacma Church, allowing them to successfully kill a Judge in the Ruins of Orsis.
“You’re afraid of letting William know that you killed Nehe with the help of outsiders.”
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