Chapter 570: The Judgment of Yggdrasil
Kael let out a long sigh.
It wasn’t a sigh of physical exhaustion, though his body was already carrying wounds, spiritual pressure, and an amount of primordial mana that no human should be able to endure. It was another kind of weariness. The kind that arises when a person finally realizes that the situation before them has surpassed all reasonable logic and that continuing to react on the enemy’s terms was merely accepting a lie.
The elders advanced. The armies came after them. Creatures made of wood, light, crystal, and mana filled the horizon once more. The entire dimension seemed poised to crush him under the weight of its own existence, as if numbers, scale, and authority were enough to end that journey. Kael stared at it for a few seconds, the Chaos Fire still flickering around the blade, and a simple idea arose in his mind.
It made no difference.
Would killing them all make a difference?
Would it really?
If he burned every guardian, every elder, every creature that appeared before him, would the result change anything? If he cut down that entire army until nothing remained, would that bring him closer to Sylphie or would it only confirm the role Yggdrasil had been trying to impose on him from the beginning? An invader. A threat. A foreign anomaly that needed to be contained before it contaminated the heart of the world.
Kael took a deep breath and let his arm fall slowly.
The flames lingered there for a moment, but lost intensity. His sword remained in his hand, still marked by heat and mana, but he stopped pointing it at the approaching army. There was no surrender in the gesture. There was no fear either. It was simply a refusal to continue acting within the charade they had prepared for him.
The first elders arrived.
A spear pierced his chest.
Then a sword entered his shoulder.
An axe struck his side.
Hundreds of arrows pierced his body simultaneously, followed by streams of roots that wrapped around his arms, legs, and neck. Mana attacks descended from the heavens and exploded directly against him. The air was filled with light, impact, shattered wood, and condensed primordial energy.
Kael didn’t move.
Thousands of weapons pierced his body.
And nothing happened.
There was no real pain. There was no real blood. There was no rupture, death, or collapse. The body that was supposedly being pierced trembled like a reflection in the water, distorting under each blow before returning to normal. The spears that pierced him found no flesh. The arrows that should have killed him produced no wound. The roots that should have held him could not support any weight.
Kael slowly opened his eyes.
The illusion had already begun to fail.
Not because it was poorly made. On the contrary. It was too perfect. Too grand. Too organized. Each stage had been constructed to lead him to a specific emotional conclusion. Test. Resistance. War. Fury. Threat. Massacre. The entire path served not only to impede his passage but to make him reveal what kind of choice he would make when he believed himself surrounded by the entire world.
He finally understood.
Would Yggdrasil let those people die?
No.
Would it allow him to burn the World Tree?
Of course not.
Would it place millions of true inhabitants before the Chaos Fire and risk the entire structure of existence just to test his patience?
Never.
Kael looked at the army that continued attacking his empty body and let out another sigh, this time colder and more controlled.
"I didn’t come to kill anyone, so stop this."
The phrase fell upon the battlefield with more weight than any previous blow.
For a moment, nothing responded.
Then the world shattered.
Not like a dimension crumbling, nor like a magical barrier being destroyed by brute force. The space around him cracked like glass. Thin lines spread across the sky, the branches, the armies, and the ancient figures. The cracks grew in every direction, revealing white light behind the constructed reality. The elders froze mid-movement. The creatures stopped, weapons raised. The woman who was the Door watched him for one more second, and then she too shattered into countless luminous fragments.
The sound was dry.
Simple.
Final.
Everything disappeared.
Kael blinked.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in a clearing.
There was no army. No sky full of continental leaves. No rivers of mana cutting branches larger than kingdoms, nor millions of awakened inhabitants to judge him. The place was small compared to everything that had come before. A circular space surrounded by white trees, whose trunks were smooth and silent. The grass beneath their feet was short, light, and impeccably manicured. The air smelled of hot tea, clean wood, and newly opened flowers.
In the center of the clearing was a small table.
It was made of white wood.
Beside it, two chairs of the same material.
A woman sat in one of them.
She didn’t resemble the colossal entity that had shaken the Central Kingdom. She didn’t seem like a consciousness capable of sustaining entire worlds. She looked like a dryad wearing a dress made of leaves, flowers, and vines, with her red hair falling over her shoulders in long, tranquil waves. She held a teacup in her hand, and the steam rose slowly as she observed Kael with a calmness that seemed too ancient to be mere patience.
Kael walked to the table without haste.
His steps were firm, though his body still felt the weight of the runes and the primordial energy circulating within. Part of him still hoped that the clearing was also an illusion within another illusion. Perhaps it was. Perhaps, in that place, that difference no longer mattered. He pulled out the empty chair and sat down opposite her.
The two stood face to face.
The red of Kael’s hair seemed darker, etched by the residual heat of the Chaos Fire. The red of her hair was different, more vibrant, closer to the color of leaves just before they fall in autumn. For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Yggdrasil brought the cup to her lips and took a sip of tea.
"You passed the illusion."
Kael kept his eyes on her.
"It took longer than I expected," she added, carefully setting the cup down on the saucer.
Kael completely ignored the remark.
"Is Nidhogg alright?"
Yggdrasil looked up at him.
For a moment, they just stared at each other. There was no surprise on her face, but a kind of silent assessment. He didn’t ask about her own condition. He didn’t ask where she was. He didn’t ask if she had passed the test. His first concern was someone else.
"I sent her back to the Realm below the roots," Yggdrasil replied. "She must be in her little house, probably complaining, eating my roots and calling it cooking."
Kael nodded once.
The gesture was small, but some of the tension in his shoulders lessened.
"Great."
Yggdrasil watched silently.
"Aren’t you going to ask if she tried to resist?"
"She tried."
"She tried."
"And you sent her away anyway."
"Yes."
"Then there was no reason to ask."
The dryad smiled slightly, though the smile didn’t fully reach her eyes. She picked up the cup again, twirling it between her fingers with an almost domestic tranquility. The clearing remained too quiet, as if the whole world was waiting for the next topic to arise.
Kael didn’t take long.
"I want to see my Sylphie."
Yggdrasil set down the cup once more.
"I presume this isn’t as simple as you’d like."
"I’m not asking," Kael said.
The temperature around the table dropped slightly, not from ice, but from the change in his tone.
Yggdrasil remained motionless.
Kael continued, his voice low and direct.
"I’m going to see her. Even if I have to kill you in the process. And we both know that, currently, I can do it if I really want to."
The silence that followed wasn’t explosive.
It was worse.
The entire clearing seemed to lose color for a moment. The white trees remained still. The steam from the tea rose more slowly. Yggdrasil’s gaze, once serene, gained a weight that hadn’t been there before.
"You’ve become arrogant."
"No."
Kael rested his forearms on the table.
"I’ve lost my patience."
She watched him.
He held her gaze without looking away.
"I was away from her for years because you asked me for that time. I agreed. I waited. I did what you wanted. I didn’t invade this place before. I didn’t force my way in. I didn’t extract answers. I didn’t go after her against her will."
His voice remained controlled, but each word had a firmness that left no room for doubt.
"But that’s enough."
Yggdrasil didn’t respond immediately.
Kael continued.
"You can call me reincarnated. A stranger. Someone from another world. You can say I don’t belong here, that I’m a variable you can’t predict, that I’m too dangerous to be near her. Maybe all of that is true on some level."
He paused briefly.
"But that doesn’t change the fact that I chose this world. I chose this life. I chose her."
Yggdrasil’s eyes narrowed slightly.
"Choice doesn’t erase origin."
"No."
Kael agreed without hesitation.
"But origin doesn’t define everything either."
She fell silent.
"You know this better than anyone," he continued. "You’re always talking about roots. About cycles. About growth. A seed can sprout in one place and take root in another. You can try to pretend that doesn’t apply to me because it’s convenient, but it does."
Yggdrasil lowered her gaze to the tea.
For a moment, she seemed almost weary.
"You speak as if you understand the weight of sustaining a world."
"I don’t understand."
The response was immediate.
This seemed to surprise her slightly.
Kael didn’t try to feign wisdom he didn’t possess. "I don’t know what it’s like to be you. I don’t know what it’s like to feel every root, every flow of mana, every world hanging on the structure you keep alive. I don’t know what it’s like to carry all of that for ages."
He leaned forward slightly.
"But you also don’t know what it’s like to be me."
Yggdrasil raised his eyes.
"I saw your soul."
"Then you saw pieces."
"I saw enough."
"No. You saw what you wanted to use against me."
The sentence hung between them.
Yggdrasil didn’t retort.
Kael continued speaking, unhurried now.
"You saw my death. You saw that I came from somewhere else. You saw that I started again. But you didn’t see enough to understand what that means. For you, that makes me a threat. For me, it means I know exactly the value of a second life."
He lightly pressed his fingers on the white table.
"I didn’t come here to take anything from Sylphie. I didn’t come to benefit from her. I didn’t come to use what she is. I came because she is who she is."
Yggdrasil’s expression remained difficult to read.
"Do you believe that?"
"I live for it."
For a few seconds, the clearing was quiet.
Then Yggdrasil breathed slowly.
"Do you understand what she will be?"
"Yes."
"No. You understand the name. You don’t understand the existence."
"Then explain."
Yggdrasil looked at him with something close to contained frustration.
"One day she will cease to be just Sylphie."
Kael didn’t move.
"She will become root. Structure. Consciousness. World. She will cease to belong only to herself."
"That’s a horrible sentence."
"It’s a function."
"Functions can be horrible too."
Yggdrasil remained silent.
Kael held her gaze.
"You’ve become so accustomed to calling sacrifice a rule that you’ve forgotten it’s still sacrifice."
The cup on the table cracked slightly.
Not from physical force.
Just from pressure.
Yggdrasil looked at the crack, then back at him.
"Careful."
"I am being careful."
"It doesn’t seem so."
"If I weren’t, this conversation would already be over."
The air grew heavier.
For a moment, the red glint in Kael’s eyes returned discreetly, not as an open threat, but as a reminder. The Chaos Fire wasn’t active. Still, Yggdrasil knew it existed within him, waiting for a decision.
She remained silent long enough for the tea to cool slightly.
"Would you really kill for her?"
"Yes."
"Even if it meant hurting this world?"
Kael didn’t answer immediately.
This time, he thought.
Not out of simple moral hesitation, but because the answer mattered.
"I don’t want to hurt this world."
"That’s not what I asked."
"I know."
He took a deep breath.
"If this world tries to destroy the person I love in the name of a function she never chose, then this world is wrong."
Yggdrasil observed his face.
"And you would place yourself above it?"
"No."
Kael shook his head.
"I would stand with her against it."
The clearing seemed to shift with that sentence.
Not physically.
But something in the tension lost its shape for a moment.
Yggdrasil looked at the white horizon between the trees, as if seeing far beyond the clearing. Perhaps it saw Sylphie. Perhaps it saw all possible futures. Perhaps she only saw a line she could no longer keep straight.
"You’re dangerous."
"Yes."
"Unstable."
"Sometimes."
"Arrogant."
"Today, perhaps."
"Stubborn."
"Definitely."
For the first time, the corner of Yggdrasil’s lips moved almost as if she were going to smile.
Almost.
"Elion raised you too well."
"She would disagree."
"She always disagrees."
Kael leaned back slowly in his chair.
"Is the test over?"
Yggdrasil picked up the cracked cup and observed the dark liquid inside.
"You think that was a test?"
"It was a judgment illusion."
"Then your answer is yes."
"My answer is that I’m tired of games."
She took the last sip of tea, despite the crack in the porcelain.
"You passed through an army without realizing the truth for too long."
Kael didn’t argue.
"Yes."
"You almost used Chaos Fire."
"Yes."
"You almost got lost."
"Yes."
Yggdrasil put the cup down.
"And yet you stopped."
Kael didn’t answer.
She finally raised her eyes.
"That’s what I needed to see."
Silence returned.
Kael stared at her for several seconds.
Then his voice came out low, but laden with sincere threat.
"If this is another layer of the illusion, I’ll truly lose my patience."
"It isn’t."
"Great."
He stood up.
The white chair scraped gently against the grass.
"Then take me to her."
Yggdrasil remained seated for a few moments.
Then she also stood up.
The dress of leaves, flowers, and vines moved around her as if it were alive. Her red hair fell over her shoulders as she turned toward the white trees.
"You still don’t have my trust."
Kael walked beside her.
"I don’t need it to love Sylphie."
"But you’ll need it to stay close to what she’ll become."
He glanced at her sideways.
"Then keep watching."
Yggdrasil didn’t respond immediately. The clearing began to open before them.
The white trees parted silently, revealing a narrow path made of pale roots. At its end, there was a soft light, different from the golden light of the Central Kingdom. It was warmer. More personal. Less divine.
Kael felt his chest tighten.
For the first time since entering that place, his control almost failed for another reason.
Not anger.
Not exhaustion.
Anxiety.
Yggdrasil noticed.
"She waited too."
Kael didn’t look at her.
He just kept staring at the light ahead.
"I know."
"More than you imagine."
He closed his hand slowly.
"Then you know why it’s enough."
Yggdrasil remained silent.
This time, it didn’t try to answer.
And the two followed the white path, towards the place where Sylphie was.
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