"No! NO! No! I swear I didn't do anything!"
Sylvan silently stared at Evan, his face expressionless.
"You saw it with your own old eyes. I was just following you and didn't even use any skill or anything!"
Still, there was only silence.
Evan's expression darkened when he saw Sylvan saying nothing. Afraid that the old man might really throw him out before he could see the core of the World Tree, he took a deep breath and began walking ahead without waiting for Sylvan.
"What was that light?"
Seeing Evan heading toward the area of the Core, Sylvan didn't stop him and instead asked in a low voice.
"As I said, I don't know..." Evan replied without looking back. "But we might be able to find out once we step inside that open space."
Sylvan thought for a mont before following Evan.
Of course, as a Rank Six Core Evolver, he also understood that what had happened earlier had nothing to do with Evan.
The reason he had stared at him in silence was simply because he was speechless—this troublemaker hadn't even seen the core of the World Tree yet, and already sothing unexpected had occurred.
'Let's hope it wasn't sothing bad...' Sylvan sighed inwardly.
While walking toward the open space where the core of the World Tree was located, Evan checked his body, but found no traces of the light that had rged with him earlier.
He frowned, wondering what that strange energy had been.
Suddenly, a thought struck him and instead of inspecting his body again, he focused his attention on his soul.
The mont he did, he imdiately noticed that one of the soul seals placed on his soul had loosened and was on the verge of breaking apart.
'So that light loosened one of my soul seals...'
When Evan had reached Rank Four, he had checked his soul seals. Unfortunately, even though the power of his soul had increased significantly at the ti, it still hadn't been enough to break any of the seals.
But now, after being struck by the mysterious light, one of those seals had weakened to the point that he could break it at any mont.
'Last ti when I broke a soul seal, I received the Primordial Rune of Sealing and the Primordial Rune of Absorption, along with knowledge of many other basic runes,' Evan's eyes glimred with a thoughtful light.
'I wonder if I'll gain anything this ti as well.'
Although Evan was tempted to break the soul seal imdiately to find out, he knew now wasn't the right ti.
Soon, Evan and Sylvan reached the entrance of the open space, and as they stepped inside, Evan felt the pressure of World Essence increase by at least twofold.
His chest tightened, and his internal organs began to show signs of injury.
"If a normal Rank Four Core Evolver ca here, they would really explode into at paste from this pressure..." Evan muttered quietly, pausing to let his body adapt.
Unlike Evan, Sylvan could handle the pressure with ease. He walked ahead and stopped in front of a stone platform.
The platform was inscribed with various high-level runes, and about a ter above it, a small multicolored diamond hovered in the air. Inside the diamond was a miniature tree.
Sylvan gazed at the tiny diamond and bowed his head in silent gratitude.
Though the World Tree had never spoken to anyone, Sylvan and the other high-ranking Dryads knew that the World Tree possessed its own consciousness.
If not for the hidden world it had created, it would have been nearly impossible for the Dryads to survive in their current state.
Around half an hour later, Evan's body finally adapted to the pressure, and he walked up to Sylvan, his eyes filled with wonder as he looked at the multicolored diamond.
"To think that all the World Essence in this realm is being produced by sothing so small..." He murmured under his breath, staring at the tiny tree within the gem.
Sylvan said nothing and simply nodded.
'It's strange... I was clearly feeling a strong attraction when I was outside. But now, even though I'm standing right in front of the core of the World Tree, I'm not feeling anything.'
Evan thought for a mont before turning to Sylvan.
"Can I touch it?"
Sylvan raised an eyebrow at the request, and after a brief mont of hesitation, he nodded.
'I've touched the core of the World Tree many tis before and nothing's ever happened... so it should be fine,' He reasoned silently and watched as Evan extended a finger toward the core.
Evan felt the cold texture of the gem but didn't notice anything unusual.
However, just as he was about to pull his finger back, the multicolored diamond suddenly glowed brightly, and a strange suction force burst out from the core.
Both Evan and Sylvan's expressions changed instantly.
But before either of them could react, Evan's vision went black for a second— And the next mont, he found himself standing in the middle of a vast, starry sky.
Stars sparkled all around him, illuminating distant galaxies. And in the center of it all, a towering celestial tree stood tall and proud.
Its roots extended across the entire starry sky, reaching into the stars and even into the void itself.
"Universal Tree..." Evan muttered, his face full of shock.
But after a mont of observation, he noticed that the tree before him was slightly different from the Universal Tree destroyed by Azroth in his mories.
"It's not the Universal Tree... it's the World Tree."
As Evan spoke, his gaze focused on the leaves of the colossal tree—and he noticed sothing extraordinary.
The World Tree had tens of millions of leaves, and each one was surrounded by a hazy, silver-colored bubble.
Looking closely, Evan realized that each bubble enclosing a leaf contained a separate world of its own.
"Just how many worlds are there...?" He whispered in awe, staring at the imnse tree whose countless leaves stretched endlessly across the cosmos.
As his gaze road over the leaves, Evan's eyes locked onto two particular ones that hung side by side and his eyes widened in disbelief.
"The worlds in those two leaves... aren't they Earth and Arora World?!"
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