Chapter 1233: Children Of The Root

Jake froze at the offer. He’d expected something along those lines, at least in theory... but not for the proposal to come willingly from the Celestial himself.

Just minutes ago they had been nothing more than strangers standing on opposite ends of a battlefield. Worse than strangers—open enemies.

Faced with the young man’s glacial reserve and that unsettling, almost inexplicable charisma that seemed to bend the air around him, the old warrior’s thick brown brows drew together. The wrinkles carved by decades of command deepened, and something heavy—something almost mournful—flickered through his steel-gray eyes before he spoke again, his voice weighed down by more than just age.

"What do you truly know about what became of the fragments of the Chalice of Lumyst after it was destroyed? The version the Soulmancer King told you? A Spirit Artefact that slept for entire eras, only awakening out of pure survival instinct on the brink of extinction? Come on..."

He didn’t even try to hide the disdain in his tone. It hung there, blunt and unfiltered. And yet, it was that same so-called weakened and comatose spirit who had managed, in barely a few years, to unite the fractured tribes of the Duskwight Lands against the Radiant Conclave after centuries of blood-soaked stalemates and endless vendettas.

Fortunately for Jake, the Claire being slighted remained silent. More precisely, she wasn’t in a position to hear the insult. The true relic lay thousands of kilometers away, in the company of "someone else."

That was one of the inherent limits of Soul Clones. Each avatar of the Spirit Artefact was formed from a fragment of her soul and energy, and while the original could dissolve and reabsorb them at any time, during their separation their existence could be considered functionally independent. They weren’t puppets on strings. They were splintered lives running in parallel.

Claire’s abilities didn’t stop at creating unique avatars; she could duplicate her consciousness to a certain extent. In other words, this "Jake" could easily have been accompanied by a fully aware "Claire."

But for pressing, non-negotiable reasons, the Claire beside him was incapable of lending him her attention. She was conserving every shred of Spirit Lumyst by remaining tucked away inside a low-grade replica of her own relic.

The existence of two "Jakes" in distant locations at the same time was already a minor miracle bordering on the absurd, something that could only happen when a chain of normally impossible conditions aligned just right.

Among those conditions was access to an almost immeasurable reserve of spiritual energy—something only the Spirit Artefact and the Chalice of Nethershade could provide. Even so, Claire had burned through nearly all the Spirit Lumyst she had accumulated since her awakening.

The vast majority of her avatars had been dispersed or forced into dormancy. The few that remained were either asleep like this one, or barely more alert than an ordinary human, left wondering why an inexplicable exhaustion had suddenly crushed down on them.

For a fleeting instant, Jake considered forcefully waking the "Claire" at his side. He dismissed the idea almost as soon as it formed. He knew her state. Pushing her now would be reckless.

Instead, he answered calmly.

"Enough to know that one or several fragments of the original Chalice of Lumyst awakened their own individuality—enough to refuse reforming a whole, and to be willing to absorb the other fragments, along with the surviving Spirit Artefact, for their own preservation.

"Of course, if you’re asking me that question, then this version of events is apparently incomplete. Inaccurate. Maybe completely off the mark. The Soulmancer King deduced the reasons behind this war and the Radiant Conclave’s relentless attempt to capture her and her soul fragments, but at the end of the day, it’s still just her hypothesis. If things hadn’t spiraled the way they have, I might still believe Anthace was nothing more than a malicious Titan Tree.

"I have my own theory now. But go ahead. I want to hear yours."

This time, it was the Celestial who seemed unsettled.

His eyes widened just slightly, not theatrically but in genuine surprise. While the entire world trudged along in inherited grooves without ever questioning them, a mere Player had clawed closer to the rotten core of reality than entire dynasties of Celestials had managed over millennia. The realization was not flattering.

Drawing a short breath to steady himself, the old sage dropped any remaining pretense.

"Very well. I’ll be blunt. Listen carefully..."

At first, Jake remained indifferent as the Celestial began enumerating his darker revelations. His expression was neutral, almost bored. But that indifference didn’t last long.

His features tightened. Then hardened. Then twisted into something far less composed. The situation was even more fucked—and far less salvageable—than he had feared.

From the least surprising to the most disturbing, or from mildly inconvenient to catastrophically problematic, depending on one’s taste for disaster:

"First of all, whether we’re talking about Goblets of Ethershine replicas, or any weapon, armor, or item carved from Anthace’s body, they all function as antennas for the Titan Tree. Those Goblets are not blessed relics. They are sensors... and more than that."

That, at least, confirmed suspicions Jake had harbored for a long time. The omnipresence of Anthace’s materials across the Lustra Plains had always felt too convenient, too neatly integrated into every aspect of life. So far, nothing truly horrifying. Just validation.

But it was only the opening act.

"Which brings me to the next point," the Celestial continued without pause. "The Chalice of Etherlife—the fragment of the original Chalice of Lumyst that supposedly regenerated through its vitality and developed its own consciousness—never truly existed. Or if it did, its existence as a sentient entity was brief. Anthace absorbed that fragment long ago, along with every other fragment we managed to recover afterward.

"My hypothesis is that, at some point, one of its roots accidentally absorbed a fragment, and that contact accelerated its evolution exponentially. At that stage, the tree was not malicious in itself. But something must have occurred afterward that changed it—or perhaps its will to power simply expressed itself naturally as its abilities grew..."

The will to power, in Nietzschean terms, was the drive of every living being to actualize its nature. For a plant, that meant growth—relentless, indifferent growth, like a weed cracking through asphalt in its tireless pursuit of sunlight.

Jake didn’t know whether the Celestial meant it in exactly that philosophical sense. What he did know, however, was something the old man did not: Anthace’s roots had also brushed against something far more "life-changing" than a fragment of a chalice—the Blade Spirit born from the shattered scythe of a World Eater. Bathed in the devouring ambitions and destructive energy of something so grotesque, it would be naïve to assume that this so-called will to power had remained untouched.

Still, that wasn’t the point that truly mattered.

The real issue lay in the consequences.

"Anthace doesn’t merely integrate the fragments of the Chalice of Lumyst into its body to passively absorb their near-limitless Life Lumyst," the old warrior went on, his face as grim as a cemetery keeper standing over freshly dug graves. "It digests them."

He did not elaborate further.

He didn’t need to.

Between intelligent men, some implications spoke loudly enough on their own. The fragments absorbed by Anthace no longer existed. In other words...

The difficulty of reforging the Chalice of Lumyst from even a single fragment had just skyrocketed. It was more than likely that every fragment scattered across Twyluxia had long since been assimilated.

Without fragments, reconstructing the Chalice in its original form was no longer a matter of difficulty—it bordered on impossibility. Jake was staring at a wall that didn’t just block his path, but erased it.

’Can I reforge it myself using different materials? Or would the forging of the Chalice of Lumyst still be considered valid if certain objective conditions are met?’ he theorized inwardly, his expression tightening with restrained pessimism. If it was truly impossible, he would have to pivot—fast.

Then he remembered something.

The Celestial had offered, not long ago, to help him restore the original artefact.

There had to be a loophole. A hack. Something.

Unfortunately, that fragile flicker of hope was extinguished almost immediately by what came next...

"Many Celestials of the past—my distant ancestors—attempted countless reforges free from Anthace’s influence. That desperate ambition is most likely what triggered the Ordeals between Players that ended up reshaping our world. As if our frantic struggles were nothing more than entertainment for omnipotent beings watching us from beyond our perception..." The native trailed off, a bitter, self-lacerating chuckle escaping him as though he found the entire tragedy grotesquely ironic.

Jake was willing to believe that stakes this extreme—forces capable of plunging two civilizations into an endless, dichotomous war—might have justified such Ordeals. Under normal circumstances.

A duel to the death between a World Eater and an Evolver who had severed himself from his original Mirror Universe would surely hold a very particular status in the grander scheme of things. Even so, the thought made him grimace, jaw tightening as irritation flared. Why did every one of his Ordeals have a habit of turning sour and dragging Digestors into the picture, whether by "accident" or design?

He couldn’t entirely blame himself for that blind spot. It wasn’t as though he made a habit of studying other Players’ Ordeals. If he had, he might have realized that his case wasn’t nearly as unique as he liked to think.

"It was a naive desire," the Celestial resumed, pulling him back with a voice roughened by fatigue and something deeper. "None of those Players accomplished anything meaningful for either side. Most of them simply slaughtered one another and preserved the status quo. According to the few records we managed to preserve, that outcome is common among Fifth Ordeals. Not one of them brought back the original Spirit Artefact. At best, they recovered inferior replicas of the Chalice of Nethershade, containing little more than a trace of spirituality."

He inhaled slowly, as if the next admission tasted bitter. "Sadly, awakening the spirituality of a freshly forged artefact to the level required to counter Anthace takes far too long. And nothing remains hidden from that cursed tree for long. We were discovered. Every single time. Every chalice we forged in secret, gathering fragments piece by piece on our own, ended up in the tree’s stomach before it could serve any purpose. Some of our ancestors even suspected it allowed us to proceed intentionally—nudging us down a dead-end path it knew would lead nowhere."

Without warning, the leader of the Radiant Conclave’s face contorted in pain. The muscles along his jaw and neck trembled ever so slightly, a subtle spasm that would have escaped anyone not watching closely.

Jake saw it. Only him. The next instant, the old warrior’s expression smoothed out as if nothing had happened, but a bleak resignation lingered in the depths of his gray eyes.

"That is what I mean," he continued, quieter now. "Even shielded behind a barrier, I am constantly resisting its commands. I told you the Goblets of Ethershine serve as antennas for Anthace. It goes far beyond mere surveillance." After a heavy silence, he stated flatly, "Anyone who has spent sufficient time around something derived from Anthace belongs to it in every possible sense. At any moment, it holds the power of life and death over us. And if it so chooses, it can control us."

Jake’s pupils narrowed sharply at that final truth, suspicion toward the old native spiking to a new high. His voice, when he spoke, was calm—almost detached—but carried the cold edge of a headsman delivering sentence.

"Are you under Anthace’s control right now?"

The Celestial did not flinch.

"All Celestials are," he replied solemnly.

"The Radiant Conclave, this nation—my very identity—was cultivated by that tree. We exist for it. Anthace predates every civilization of the Lustra Plains, and those civilizations prosper only to make its designs more convenient to accomplish."

Jake couldn’t help pushing back.

"Celestial isn’t just a title. It’s a cultivation realm. Are you implying that reaching a certain level of mastery over Lumyst automatically places you under its control?"

If that were true, the implications would be beyond catastrophic—far worse than anything he had modeled in his worst-case projections. Fortunately, reality wasn’t quite that absurd.

"No," the head of the Radiant Conclave answered, a faint shake of his head accompanying the word. Then he added, more quietly, "But the end result—for my predecessors and for myself—is nearly the same."

He went on to explain, in stark terms, how each leader of the Radiant Conclave—each future Celestial of the Lustra Plains—was selected and prepared. There were two methods. The first was unspeakably cruel. The second was worse.

The first method began at birth. Every year, millions of infants—orphans, abandoned children, the missing, the kidnapped—were thrown into the Lumyst River. No preparation. No training. No mercy.

Half died immediately.

Those who survived earned nothing but the right to be thrown in again for another round. And another. After roughly twenty-five cycles, the rare survivors—drawn from more than thirty-three million infants cast into those waters—were groomed as Celestial Seeds.

The term was no metaphor. A literal seed of Anthace was implanted in their brains from an early age. Combined with systematic indoctrination and a religious fanaticism cultivated with surgical precision, the future Celestial became a perfectly obedient instrument. These Celestials had no independent thoughts to betray. The very concept of treason against Anthace could not even take root in their minds.

It followed, then, that the second type of Celestial was the one responsible for resisting Anthace—and for triggering those Ordeals. These were individuals who had clawed their way up through cultivation alone, earning the realm through sweat, blood, and willpower.

So how were they ensnared?

Because Anthace’s reputation within the Lustra Plains had been crafted so flawlessly that suspicion felt almost irrational. From architecture to everyday furniture, materials derived from the Titan Tree saturated their culture. Roots, bark, sap, leaves—every part had a purpose.

Sick? A bit of diluted sap from the Tree of Life in a cup of hot water would do the trick. Libido faltering? Grate a pinch of Anthace root and everything returned to form. And of course, anyone seeking to accelerate cultivation, reinforce their body, enhance recovery—there was no better resource than the tree itself.

It was convenient. Multifunctional. Miraculous.

A panacea embedded in civilization itself.

Who could resist something like that?

Not the Celestials of the past. And certainly not Valandar, the current Celestial.

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