Chapter 272: Wood Spirits

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

Those who had visited Port Victoria before would definitely fail to recognize it as the same flourishing city from the past.

The dimensional overlap turned it into a one-of-a-kind location that couldn’t be found anywhere else in Eich. This place was both part of the Undead Plane as well as part of the mortal plane, but, at the same time, it also belonged to neither.

Judging by Undead Emperor Aso’s personal arrival, the specific Undead Plane that was overlapped here was likely to be the famous Desecration Plane—a frightening thought. It was obvious that countless undead armies would pour into the mortal plane if the Dimensional Descent was successfully completed.

However, the undead weren’t able to reach their goal. The original will of the Undead Emperors was to transform this entire place into a Land of Death that would be able to support a large number of undead from the Undead Planes. They would then slowly invade the surrounding mortal plane, transforming it into their own domain. At the very least, the natural laws of the Undead Planes would transform Port Victoria into a new undead capital, with innumerable dead crawling out of their graves. The dark, sunless Undead Plane was akin to a heaven for the undead, and a complete Dimensional Descent would finally enable the strongest high-level undead to enter the mortal plane.

The newly born undead armies might not be able to leave this area for a while after being born, but they would have enough combat strength backing them up and would fear nothing when multiple Undead Emperors take over. That would herald the arrival of a new Undead Calamity. And it was precisely because they feared this that the Holy Church unhesitatingly declared a Holy War against Orloss. Unfortunately, for the undead, there was a little hitch in their plan.

The current Port Victoria and its surroundings were now divided into two obviously different areas. One was a dark-seeming area filled with shadowy winds, which was the influence of the Undead Plane. The other was filled with bright sunshine and verdant green forests where trees grew at a furious pace. The foliage that covered the skies represented endless amounts of life force, and that mysterious sun caused the undead so much grief, hatred, and pain.

The powers of life and death clashed against each other here, and in the air, the forest released light green clouds that fought with the gray clouds of death. The Dimensional Door to the Undead Planes, which should have opened up wide, had somehow gotten stuck, as this abnormal area began to remove itself from the control of both the Undead and the mortal plane. The undead army’s vanguard continuously arrived here from the Undead Plane, but this magical forest was actually evolving and growing as well.

Near the entrance of the forest, there were two armies cruelly slaughtering each other. One of the armies was, of course, the undead army, while the other was no longer a simply group of magical plants that didn’t know how to move. These “native residents” resembled descendants of some uncontacted tribe.

From their outer appearances, one could tell that they were a life form that had never before existed in this world. They were, for the most part, humanoid, but their seemingly slender limbs possessed an inconceivably immense amount of strength, capable of lifting heavy objects multiple times heavier than their weight.

They had different heights and body shapes. Some of them were less than half a meter tall, while others were giants that towered over ten meters. What they all had in common, however, was their leafy green hair made of leaves and the tree bark armor embedded into their skin. With thorns and magical vines tangled around their bodies in a way that resembled clothing, they all had obvious plant characteristics.

When looking at them from a distance, their elegant body shapes, rather nice-appearing faces, as well as their slender figures among the forest made them closely resemble forest elves. However, if one got closer and observed their behavior in battle, nobody would mistake them for an elf species, as elves were known for being delicate and sensitive.

They had no combat techniques whatsoever and relied only on pure instinct. Every one of their attacks were not only more vicious than that of the barbarians but also ridiculously strong and shameless.

Yes—shameless. The undead had to worry about their soulfires being put out or their limbs being severely injured. While severe injuries to their limbs wouldn’t kill them, it would render them useless in combat. However, these plant lifeforms’ attacking methods solely consisted of techniques to perish together with the enemy.

In addition, these plant lifeforms mostly fought together in groups. One of the tallest and strongest would stand in front as the vanguard, and they had tremendous strength in melee combat. The vines on their bodies were as nimble as arms, and they could twist their body parts freely in battle. Another side of their lack of combat techniques was that their attacks were completely unpredictable. Melee combat units that had such tremendous strength and couldn’t feel pain were difficult to deal with as it was, but they had a more ridiculous undying nature than even the undead.

Cut off its head? They just had to retreat for a few seconds and a new one would grow in its place. Some of the tall tree warriors even got so excited in battle that they directly ripped off one of their arms and tossed them out, which then exploded, killing large numbers of undead. But this wasn’t the only part.

Under a green light, the shards from these explosions would transform into a new wave of smaller tree warriors and begin a new wave of attacks. What made the high-level undead the most afraid of all was that after spending so much effort to truly destroy one of these abnormal plant life forms, there would be a sudden patch of green fire that escaped from somewhere which would flit into a nearby skyscraper-level tree, and a little while later, a brand-new tree warrior would emerge from the tall tree and enter battle yet again.

And this wasn’t simply an undying quality. The newly-born plant warriors were even stronger than the previous ones, with even better combat techniques. They were even capable of learning combat techniques from the death knights and skeleton generals that they were facing, which increased their combat strength by an additional 20% each time. This didn’t seem like much, but with a repeated cycle of revival several tens of or several hundreds of times, it probably wouldn’t take long for these plant warriors to reach the level of Sword Saints.

Due to the limits of the Elemental Tide and the mortal plane’s dimensional will, the high-level undead were still unable to enter the mortal plane. And, the basic foundational strength of the low-level undead, swarm tactics, was losing out to these plant warriors that had even more ridiculous undying properties.

However, these new creatures of wood possessed more than just warriors that didn’t fear death.

The smaller ones among them didn’t seem like they had much Strength but were actually even more difficult to deal with. Either they were able to control nature and cast all sorts of nature magic and use various natural talents, or they were able to control the forest’s magical plants in targeted attacks. Just like their fellow species members that were skilled at melee combat, they were also undying.

The leader of the undead army was nearing the point of despair. At the beginning, these tiny green-haired things were as weak as gnomes and were only capable of trembling in fear under the forest’s protection. They blindly ran about everywhere, trying to escape the undead’s slaughter, but now, in less than a week, these abnormal lives had evolved to the point of being able to directly face the undead armies.

Yes, these plant lifeforms were all individuals, with their own thoughts and emotions, rather than being a part of Amelia. In fact, under the nurturing of Amelia’s forest, they even evolved to the point of having their own language. And not long after, in the future, they would be named the “wood spirits” (named by Roland Mist) and enter history as a brand-new species.

“…If we aren’t able to eliminate this entire forest, we’ll never be able to win this battle.”

The death knight Kakarot came to the same conclusion as his companions. Without being able to eliminate this forest, these strange abnormal wood spirits would never die. However, in order to safely enter this forest, they would first have to kill off all these wood spirits and magical plants that were in the way. They were stuck in a vicious cycle.

“This is basically unsolvable! It’s as if we’re fighting against a dimensional will! They’re supported by the power of fate and luck and have endless replenishment for their combat strength, while we keep decreasing in number. See! Even our luck is becoming worse and worse.”

From far away, an exploding durian bomb was tossed randomly in the sky. While they were being tossed randomly, the wood spirits didn’t have to worry about harming their own at all. There was a death knight engaged in fierce battle against a wood spirit, but the explosive shrapnel from the durian bomb just happened to explode the death knight into many little pieces, and even though there was less than two meters between them, the wood spirit was completely uninjured.

If this was intentional, then this type of blind aiming and scattershot control far surpassed that of any top-level elven archer. And if it was all coincidental, the lucky wood spirit survivors deserved to go play the lottery. However, there was an endless amount of luck like this for the wood spirits, while the undead were forever on the unlucky side. Even idiots were able to tell that something was going on.

The lich known as Rod had far more experience than any great lich. Rod was an old subordinate of Aso’s while Aso had still been human, and he experienced so many countless battles. Rod also had battle experience across and between dimensions, so the analyses he made of any combat situation were considered trustworthy by all.

Although Rod had never been able to progress in power level due to his body’s nature and was still stuck at only the top of Gold rank, his wisdom from accumulated experience and long service helped him to be one of Undead Emperor Aso’s most trusted subordinates. Precisely because he was so trusted, Aso, who had already returned to the Desecration Plane, sent Rod out to see what was going on with the combat situation since things had reached a stalemate.

“Dimensional will? How is this possible?”

The dimensional will of Eich had long since sunk into a deep slumber. How could it possibly be present here, making things difficult for them? If this truly was caused by the fury of the Eich mortal plane’s dimensional will, this Dimensional Door probably would have been fully sealed off long ago.

An undead named Andro didn’t respond to Rod’s query, simply looking at the forest filled with the energy of life instead. What Andro imagined was an invisible hand that was covering him, with a demonic-seeming shadowy figure secretly laughing maniacally at them, deriding the uselessness of the undead army.

“Damn it! How is this possible!”

Andro finally noticed what was wrong. A high-level undead that had just collapsed didn’t have his soulfire extinguished. Instead, the high-level undead was covered by a green light from the surrounding grass and began transforming from a pale ghostly white into green. The next moment, it tossed itself into a tree. Judging from the shape of the tree’s bulge, it was in the process of giving birth to a new wood spirit.

All the undead’s corpses were devoured by this forest and became its nutrients. Meanwhile, the dead undead’s souls were absorbed by the forest’s soul and transformed into newly-born wood spirits… the undead that excelled at attrition and long-term battles had met their most troublesome match of all, a similar species that did the same thing but even better.

“There’s no mistake! It’s currently stealing and absorbing souls. This basically contains its own Cycle of Reincarnation. This forest is a newly-born dimensional will! Damn it, this is going to be so much trouble for us.”

…

Addendum: The below is an excerpt from one of archmage Victor’s lectures (in the year AD 1541) regarding his research on the origin of wood spirits.

…It’s very difficult to believe that in the midst of a fiercely ongoing Holy War, a cursed Undead Plane performed a Dimensional Descent and stole away more than a million lives while also simultaneously causing the creation of a brand-new species—the wood spirits.

Perhaps humanity has gotten used to the wood spirits’ warm welcoming manner, sincerity, friendliness, as well as hard-working and peace-loving attitudes. Wood spirits are typically regarded as a textbook example of magnanimity and kindness, and very few dislike this species.

However, very few actually know that from the moment this species was born, they were destined to face a continuous amount of battle, and they had to evolve through all this constant violence. In fact, for quite a long while after they were born and recognized as a new species, people viewed them as emotionless combat marionettes.

The most unbelievable part of all was that their creator wasn’t any God, nor was their creator some undying existence from another dimension, nor was their creator a member of the elf species, who view themselves as the best at using magic. Their creator was only an ordinary human female mage.

Yes, there’s no need to doubt me. Amelia Milan was the same as any one of you listening to my lecture or even me, who’s giving it. She was an ordinary human who took slow steps progressing past the Legend and Myth ranks in the mage job class.

Although there are many mysteries regarding how she was able to perform the act of creation, which is on the scale of a Divine Miracle, far too much time has passed since then and all theories are impossible to prove now. The theory I shall teach you all today is the one that sounds the likeliest, and it’s also the most widely accepted one by contemporary academics.

First of all, I should mention that in the Mage Country’s records, her personality was considered slightly crazy—er—a bit too aggressive. What can be one hundred percent confirmed is that long ago, she transformed her physical body into an entire magical forest filled with magical plants. Through this process, her soul also transformed into the will of the forest.

Of course, it’s impossible for any of us to know why archmage Amelia from over one thousand years ago did such a thing. However, it’s obvious that there’s always a soul connection between a creator and what she creates. Judging by how cute her children were, the descriptions of the “Holy Mother of the Forest” in legends about how insane she was, or how many incredible criminal actions she did were obviously just artistic embellishments and attempts to stain her honor by her enemies.

Alright, I won’t mention those legends about her as everyone knows them already. We can easily tell that she received an elite’s education from the Bardi royalty since young, and we all know about how she became the back candidate for Holy Maiden for the Earth Church (this part is in the lecturer Victor’s day and age.) From these facts, we can infer that Amelia Milan must have been a gentle and agreeable female who had a saint’s personality… I’m definitely not saying this because I have a wood spirit wife, nor is it because I’m worried that if I don’t praise this Mother of all Wood Spirits that I’ll be sleeping on a tree when I return home, with my two human/wood spirit half-blood sons refusing to even call me dad. (Chuckling from his students.)

Cough, getting back to the main topic, I shall begin from the tragedy that occurred that night. Ah, that was a truly large-scale tragedy of rare proportions. No wonder SemiGod level undead were always viewed as forbidden taboos, as they’re truly vicious. They prepared for thirty years and took only one second to activate the next step of their plan, which caused the entire flourishing merchant city of Port Victoria to transform into a city of death with not a single living human in just an instant.

When the “Dimensional Descent” occurred at Port Victoria, over one million lives were instantly lost, and their grudges from their sudden deaths transformed into a physical curse. Simultaneously, due to the unique properties of this location which now had traits from both the mortal and Undead Planes, these grudges and hatred had no place to go and could only cycle around in that sealed unique dimensional space.

What the Undead Emperors had been planning at the time was that this entire area would become just like the Undead Plane, and that those grudge-holding ghosts and curses would become the undead, transforming into the foundational requirements for a new Land of Death. But, no matter how much one plans, one can never overcome the power of pure coincidence. Perhaps the only part that they didn’t plan for was that on that day, Amelia Milan just happened to be in Port Victoria.

Although Amelia Milan had SemiGod-ranked strength, she still had zero power to resist the dimensional natural laws. In that instant, she also experienced the transformation from the living into the dead. However, archmages typically have many ace cards up their sleeve, such as a magic spell to instantly transform into a lich after dying. And just as I mentioned earlier, Amelia had previously transformed her entire body into a magical forest. When she transformed from the living into the dead, this process only changed her into a magical forest that had lost its sense of self.

The specific Undead Plane that came into contact with the mortal plane didn’t possess any plants within it. No such things as undead plants exist according to natural laws either. So, in that instant, Amelia became a bug-like existence in the natural laws. She was both a living gathering of plants, as well as an existence that was technically dead due to the Undead Plane’s Dimensional Descent. After a short moment, she became the only living existence as well as only existence who approached the divine in this tiny new dimension, so she managed to obtain the power to control this newly-born dimension—just like that—without realizing it.

Yes, it was a new and independent dimension, not the overlapping point of the two dimensions.

The result of Port Victoria getting stuck between the Undead Plane and the mortal plane was that it became an independent dimension of its own. Once this independent dimension chose a dimensional will of its own, the process of the Dimensional Descent was forcibly halted. The newly-born dimension followed its instincts and searched for a powerful enough will that had the capacity to run a dimension. And, the first will that was born in this dimension became its only candidate. Add on to the fact that this will came from a soul who had SemiGod-ranked strength, and Amelia’s will naturally became the best choice possible.

As for information regarding the study of dimensions, and why my peers and I came to this conclusion, you all can study the textbooks written by archmages from Amelia’s generation: archmage Harloys”Theoretical Discussions Regarding Time and Space’ and archmage Roland Mist’s ‘Eighteen Rules of Dimensional Travel (28th Revised Edition, this is probably the final edition)’. Oh, right, Roland Mist wrote many academic works, but at least half of them are just tales about legends and modern stories from that time period. Obviously, they’re fakes done by someone else, and the real ones typically have more than twenty revised editions. Make sure that you don’t make a mistake finding one of Roland Mist’s real works.

Anyways, getting back to the topic, when this newly-born little world chose archmage Amelia as the master of this dimension, especially in a situation where Amelia had lost her own sense of self, her physical body, which was now a magical forest, began to instinctively evolve. And countless grudge-holding ghosts now had a refuge they could seek.

Dimensional wills have absolute power and control over the dimension’s resident’s souls. This is also one of the basic natural laws of dimensions that archmage Roland Mist had determined, and, coincidentally, the Holy Mother of the Forest, Amelia, who had a motherly nature to begin with, accepted these souls and began searching for a way to help them come back to life.

Dimensional wills have the ability to create lifeforms within their own dimension, and only dimensional wills have the ability to approach the Divine Domain of Creation that belongs to the Goddess of Creation. This is also one of the natural laws of dimensions that archmage Roland proposed. And so, coincidentally, the Holy Mother of the Forest used a combination of humans and elves as the base model in addition to treants that she was familiar with and used her magical plants as the basic blueprint for evolution, which helped her to naturally produce the first generation of wood spirits – the original wood spirits.

Dimensional wills are constructed from a mix of Order and Chaos. The most basic power of Order is to control time and space, while the most basic power of Chaos is evolution. This is the third natural law of archmage Roland. In front of the power of Order that a dimensional will would possess, distorting time and space isn’t difficult at all. Performing evolution, which would take other lifeforms millions of years, is also possible.

The threat of the Undead Plane caused the Holy Mother of the Forest to instinctively sense danger and increase the speed of evolution of her newly-born children. After receiving blessings from both Time and Evolution, these wood spirits that were the favored children of their new world evolved at a rapid pace in this new dimension, receiving their own history, culture, and inheritance. They also battled against the undead armies for a long, long time, which helped temper this newly-born species’ ability to survive and will to live on. This is how we arrived at modern-da y wood spirits, this species which seems to contradict itself with how skilled at battle they are despite how kind and friendly they are as a species…

As for why all the wood spirits have the habit of addressing archmage Roland as “Father”—eh? It’s time for class to be over? Alright then, if you would like to hear this gossip, please wait for the next lesson.

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