Before dawn, the Elven Forest was shrouded in an eerie silence. Raine stood at the entrance of the Mother Tree's cavern. Through his Emerald Sight, what he saw was no longer streams of vibrant emerald light, but large patches of dark red—like mold spreading across rotting fruit—expanding outward from the Mother Tree's roots into the forest.
"The degree of mechanization has deepened again," Ravenna's voice came from behind. Her newly grown right hand brushed against the cavern wall; the purple-gold patterns flashed where she touched, briefly resonating with the metallic veins inside the wall. "The Mother Tree's pain is transmitting even more strongly than last night."
Gamma squatted beside the unconscious Nisthya, her silver-blue cybernetic eye constantly adjusting its focus. "Vital signs are stable, but her consciousness remains trapped deep within the Emerald Dream," she said. Gently pushing aside the silver hair on the Elf Guardian's forehead, she revealed a leaf-shaped brand. "This mark is slowly fading…"
Raine's fingertips unconsciously traced the golden crystal on his chest. After the Dragonheart returned, the balance of the four powers was more fragile than he had imagined. Whenever his emotions fluctuated, emerald patterns or golden dragon scales alternately appeared under his skin. At this moment, he stared toward the forest's edge—the once verdant trees were visibly losing color, their leaf edges curling into what looked like thin metal sheets.
"The Council has changed tactics," Frosttongue quivered slightly at his waist. "They're no longer assaulting directly; instead, they continuously inject corruption through the ley lines."
Ironbeard's gruff voice suddenly echoed from deep within the cavern. "Little girl! Come take a look at this!" The dwarf, gray-haired and mud-streaked, emerged from the excavation site at the Mother Tree's roots. Steam from his war hammer coated in glistening metallic slime. "Something incredible is growing under the roots!"
The group followed him into the makeshift tunnel. Under illumination from Gamma's cybernetic eye, Raine saw countless pearl-sized metallic nodules attached to the Mother Tree's main roots. Each nodule pulsed rhythmically, like some kind of mechanical heart. Even more disturbing, the nodules were connected by glowing red lines, forming a blood-like network covering the entire root system.
"[Leyline Parasites]," Ravenna said, her purple-gold energy condensing into a scalpel in her palm as she carefully cut off a nodule. The cross-section immediately oozed dark red slime, the mechanical structures inside writhing frantically like disturbed spiders. "They're converting the Mother Tree into an energy transducer."
Gamma's cybernetic eye suddenly blared a warning. "High-energy reaction detected! Everyone, fall back!"
The severed nodule instantly expanded, the red-line network flashing violently. Raine immediately deployed his emerald shield, enveloping the team. In the next second, shards of metal from the nodule's explosion rained down like a storm, sending dense ripples across the shield. Even more terrifying, the splattered slime began self-reassembling upon hitting the ground, growing within minutes into palm-sized mechanical spiders.
"Damn their proliferating ability!" Ironbeard's war hammer hissed steam, smashing five spiders with a single blow. But more spiders poured out from the shadows; all eight of their legs were miniature drills, capable of piercing rock with ease.
Ravenna's purple-gold energy transformed into a net of flames covering the ground; the scorched spiders emitted a pungent metallic burning smell. Yet with each nodule's explosion, the red-line network would redistribute energy among the other nodules, accelerating their division.
"We must cut off the energy supply!" Raine's Frosttongue blade ignited with emerald flames, yet he hesitated to strike—the Emerald Sight clearly showed that the red lines had become fully entangled with the Mother Tree's vascular system.
Gamma suddenly tugged at his sleeve. "Big Brother Raine, the Mother Tree is transmitting information through its roots…" Her silver-blue cybernetic eye projected a blurry image: dark red energy was continuously flowing through five of the twelve main ley lines, with the sources of three strikingly coming from the Dwarven Furnace City, the Orcish Ancestral Plains, and the ruins of the Aurora Tower.
Ironbeard's beard trembled with anger. "Those tin-skinned bastards even polluted the Heart of the Furnace?!"
"Not just that," Ravenna's mechanical eye analyzed the image. "Look at the energy flow patterns—the Council is simultaneously spreading corruption in multiple sacred sites, but their main forces are concentrating here." She pointed to the dense red dots flickering at the image's edge. "They're afraid of something."
Raine suddenly dropped to one knee, pressing his palm against the Mother Tree's roots. Emerald energy flowed along the roots, engaging in a microscopic contest with the red lines. The moment his consciousness sank into the ley lines, he saw a broader view: the twelve main lines stretched like branches of the World Tree across the continent. Five were completely dark red; the silver-blue branch corresponding to the Aurora Tower, though damaged, was still resisting; and most terrifying of all was the main line deep within the Elven Forest—there, a gigantic consciousness lay dormant, slowly awakening as the red lines spread…
"The Mother Tree isn't being parasitized," he suddenly opened his eyes. "It's actively accepting the corruption!"
This statement struck everyone like a bomb. Ironbeard nearly dropped his war hammer. "You've lost your mind, boy! How could the Mother Tree—"
"To trap the 'Gate'," Gamma suddenly interjected. Her cybernetic eye flickered with an unusual emerald light. "Before her sacrifice, Lady Nisthya injected part of the Watchers' consciousness into the Mother Tree network. Now the Mother Tree is imitating the Gate's energy signature, luring the Council's main forces here…"
Ravenna's purple-gold patterns suddenly blazed brightly. "Lure the tiger away from the mountain? And the other sacred sites—"
"Are preparing a counterattack," Gamma's voice suddenly carried a hint of Lady Nisthya's tone. "The dwarven artificers of the Heart of the Furnace have already created ley line purification devices; the orc shamans have awakened all ancestral totems; and the survivors of the Aurora Tower…" Her projected image switched to the tower's underground chamber, showing seven mages in silver-blue robes seated around a complex instrument. "They are rebooting the 'Astro-Interference Device.'"
Ironbeard gently pressed his large hand on Gamma's shoulder. "Little girl, who exactly are you—"
"A temporary communication node," Gamma's gaze cleared, blinking in confusion. "What just happened? I feel like Lady Nisthya…"
A deafening explosion interrupted her question. The entire cavern shook violently, rubble falling like raindrops. Raine's Emerald Sight pierced the rock layers, seeing twelve dark red mushroom clouds rising at the forest's edge—the Council's main legion had arrived.
"All units, battle stations!" Elondir's voice echoed from the cave entrance. The old elf's white robe was streaked with smoke. "The first wave of [Corruption Titans] has already broken through the eastern defenses!"
As everyone rushed out of the cavern, the sky above the Elven Forest had turned dark red. The Gear Moon hung lower than usual, black ooze continuously dripping from the cracks on its surface; this ooze condensed in midair into various twisted creatures. Massive fires erupted in the eastern forest. Three towering shadows, each over a hundred meters tall, advanced—monsters resembling a fusion of humanoids and siege hammers. Every step made the ground tremble, and the dark red crystals embedded in their chests constantly shot corrosive energy beams.
"[Demon-devouring Mayfly] swarms spotted on the west side!" an elf scout leapt down from the treetops to report. "Our magical barriers won't hold for more than ten minutes!"
Raine's Frosttongue sword sensed the danger and drew itself automatically, emerald flames flowing along its blade. But when he attempted to channel ley line energy, a tearing pain suddenly struck his chest—the Dragonheart and the Seed of Life clashed briefly. Ravenna immediately sensed the anomaly, her purple-gold energy flowing as fine streams into his back.
"Don't act recklessly," she warned softly. "Focus on the eastern Titans first. Gamma said their bodies contain central nodes controlling the parasites."
Ironbeard had already assembled a massive shoulder cannon. "Dwarven new toy, the [Core Crusher]! Who's coming up to be my spotter?"
Gamma volunteered, climbing onto the dwarf's shoulder, her cybernetic eye switching to targeting mode. Elondir directed the elf archers to spread out, using a rain of emerald arrows to disrupt the Titans' vision. Raine took a deep breath, suppressing the conflicting energy in his body for the moment, and pointed Frosttongue at the lead Corruption Titan:
"I'll handle the main attack; Ravenna, find a chance to destroy the central node!"
The battle unfolded in the burning forest. Raine leapt across fallen giant trees, and the emerald phoenix of his [Spirit Phoenix Slash] struck toward the Titan's knees. But the monster was far more agile than expected; its enormous palms slammed down with a rushing sound, and the center of the palm suddenly split open, revealing spinning saw blades! Raine quickly changed direction. Emerald energy formed a temporary platform beneath his feet, allowing a second jump to evade the deadly strike.
"Watch out! They can learn your combat patterns!" Gamma's voice came through the speaking flower. "The energy readings from the Titan on the right are abnormal!"
Before the words finished, the crystal on the right Titan's chest suddenly turned, no longer firing energy beams, but striking with an emerald slash identical to Raine's own! This counterfeit [Spirit Phoenix Slash] grazed Raine's left arm, tearing away flesh. Worse, the wound immediately began metallizing, silver patterns creeping up along his veins.
"Raine!" Ravenna's purple-gold chains wrapped around his waist, pulling him to safety. Her right hand transformed into a precise surgical tool, quickly excising the corrupted tissue. "The Council has refined the corruption formula; it can now mimic our energy characteristics!"
Ironbeard's shoulder cannon finally finished charging. "Take this!" the dwarf roared, pulling the trigger. Gamma's cybernetic eye simultaneously corrected the trajectory. The special round, trailing white smoke, struck the crystal in the left Titan's chest and penetrated before detonating—not with ordinary fire, but with acidic steam infused with the Elves' Life Spring!
The Titan emitted a screeching metallic wail, the crystal on its chest forming web-like cracks. But before anyone could cheer, the cracks healed on their own. Even more terrifying, it began mimicking dwarven steam technology attacks, its arms transforming into cannon-like barrels!
"Damn adaptive ability!" Ironbeard scrambled to reload. "Little girl, find its weak point!"
Gamma's cybernetic eye flickered frantically. "Analyzing… wait! Something's coming from underground!"
The ground suddenly bulged, and dozens of metallic tentacles burst from the soil! These tentacles were covered with nodules identical to those on the Mother Tree's roots, and their tips were sharp syringes. The nearest elf warriors had no time to dodge; the moment they were pierced, their bodies turned metallic, stiffening into statues.
"A defensive mechanism of the parasites!" Ravenna's purple-gold energy formed a circular shield. "They've corrupted the Mother Tree's immune system!"
The battle took a sudden, dangerous turn. The three Corruption Titans continuously evolved new attack modes, while the underground metallic tentacles specifically targeted spellcasters. Elondir led the elves in a fighting retreat, but their emerald magic weakened with each passing moment—the Mother Tree's corruption was cutting off their connection to natural energy.
Raine half-kneeling behind a charred tree trunk, looked at the gold dragon scales intermittently appearing on his arm. The balance of power within him had reached the brink of collapse, but there was no time to hesitate. He bit his tongue, forcing his mind to focus through the pain, then made a desperate decision—he would actively release his draconic bloodline!
"Cover me for ten seconds," he said to Ravenna. "I'm taking a gamble."
Purple-gold energy formed a defensive matrix around him. "Don't do anything reckless!"
Raine closed his eyes. His consciousness sank into the battlefield within, no longer suppressing the conflicting energies. Instead, he deliberately guided the clash between the draconic bloodline and the Seed of Life! The agony nearly tore his soul apart, but within this destructive conflict, a new possibility emerged—at the critical point where emerald and golden light converged on his chest, a silver-blue energy suddenly appeared, like a mediator, temporarily separating the two forces.
"This… is the energy of the Aurora Tower?" Raine suddenly remembered Alfred's final gift—the master had embedded a mark within him before crystallizing.
In the real world, ten seconds passed in the blink of an eye. When Raine opened his eyes again, his pupils had become a strange vertical slit, interwoven with emerald and gold. He slowly raised Frosttongue, the blade now flowing with three energies simultaneously: emerald Life Force, golden Dragon Breath, and silver-blue Aurora.
"[Tri-Phase Slash]!"
As the blade left his hand, space seemed to tear open in three parallel rifts. The emerald slash severed the Titan's energy supply, the golden Dragon Breath incinerated its internal structure, and the silver-blue Aurora froze its evolution. The leading Corruption Titan froze in place, then shattered like a glass sculpture struck by an invisible hammer.
"Effective!" Gamma shouted excitedly. "But the other two are starting targeted evolution!"
Indeed, the remaining Titans' surfaces immediately displayed runes granting resistance to the three energies. Yet a cold smile curled Raine's lips—this was exactly what he wanted. While the Titans focused all their defenses on countering the tri-phase energy, he suddenly switched back to the basic [Spirit Phoenix Slash]. Pure emerald light effortlessly pierced through the gaps in their defenses!
"Divide their attention! Beautiful!" Ravenna immediately grasped the tactic. Her purple-gold energy formed hundreds of illusions, attacking from multiple angles to distract the Titans.
With the two of them working in tandem, the second Titan quickly followed the fate of the first. But just as they turned toward the final one, Gamma suddenly let out a heart-wrenching warning:
"Underground! Massive reaction! Dodge—"
The ground exploded with the force of a meteor strike. Everyone was hurled into the air by the shockwave. At the last possible moment, Raine wrapped Gamma and Ironbeard in an emerald shield, but he himself was struck head-on by some colossal entity. The brittle crack of his bones was drowned in the ringing in his ears as he flew through a dozen trees like a ragdoll before finally coming to a halt.
Through his blurred vision, he saw a monster unlike anything before rising from the earth. It was a nightmare fusion of the Corruption Titans and the Mother Tree's roots. Its trunk was a tangle of metallicized roots, and atop it were twelve elf heads, each chanting a different corrosive spell. Most horrifying of all was its base—where the half-melted emblem of the Holy Alliance writhed, proving that this creature had once been human.
"[Root Devourer]…" Elondir's voice was full of despair. "They've turned the remains of the former Watcher into…"
The monster gave them no time to react. Twelve beams of curse energy, each of a different attribute, shot forth from the elf heads, withering everything they touched. Ironbeard's steam warhammer was grazed by a beam and instantly rusted to scrap. Ravenna's purple-gold shield began to crack under the third strike. Gamma's silver-blue cyber-eye started smoking from overload.
Raine struggled to get up, each breath spitting blood. At least three ribs were broken, and his left arm hung uselessly. But the physical injuries were nothing compared to the energy backlash—using the Tri-Phase Slash again had thrown his inner balance into chaos, and now emerald and golden light clashed violently within his veins.
"Raine! Look at the sky!" Ravenna suddenly shouted.
He looked up. The cracks in the Gear Moon had inexplicably doubled in size, and black sludge poured down like waterfalls. In midair, the sludge coalesced into a familiar form—twelve pairs of jointed limbs, humanoid torsos, heads crowned with halos… a miniaturized incarnation of the "Mother"!
"The Council's gone mad…" Elondir murmured. "They actually sent the incarnation directly…"
Suddenly, the chanting from the monster's heads grew synchronized:
"Key… … …"
All twelve heads turned in unison toward Raine—or more precisely, toward the Dragon Heart embedded in his chest.
"Return… … …"
Raine suddenly understood. The Council's reckless assault on the Elf Forest was not only for the Mother Tree, but to retrieve the Dragon Heart—the first of the three keys to the "Gate"!
"Over my dead body!" Ravenna's purple-gold energy erupted in full, forming countless spiked thorns aimed at the monster. But the attack was like an ant shaking a tree—the creature merely quivered its roots and shattered all the purple-gold thorns.
Gamma struggled to crawl to Raine's side. "The Mother Tree network just sent a message… Orcs and Dwarves have begun purifying the ley lines…" Her cyber-eye suddenly projected the image of Nisseya. "Hold on… the Mother Tree is about to…"
The phantom projection was violently interrupted by a surge of energy. Suddenly, the red-line network on the ground flared to life—but it wasn't the usual dark crimson. Instead, it glowed a piercing scarlet, as if reflecting its own intensity. From the direction of the Mother Tree came a nauseating metallic warping sound, followed immediately by a soul-shaking, world-rending wail—the Mother Tree was undergoing its final mechanized transformation!
"No…" Elondir fell to his knees. "The last creation of the ancient god of life…"
Through the scarlet glow, Raine's emerald vision caught an even more horrifying sight: deep in the Mother Tree's caverns, the temporarily sealed "Gate" was resonating! While the base remained stable, the Gate itself was riddled with countless cracks, as if something on the other side was violently pounding against it.
"Gamma," he coughed blood as he asked, "how much longer for the Stellar Interference Device?"
The girl's cyber-eye flickered as it calculated: "At most… five minutes…"
Raine looked toward the approaching Root Devourer, then to the "Mother" incarnation forming in the sky. Five minutes—for the current battlefield—it felt like an eternity. He had to make a choice: protect the Dragon Heart… or…
"Ravenna." He called out calmly. "Do you remember what Alfred said about the locksmith?"
The purple-gold girl spun around sharply: "You wouldn't—"
Raine was already standing. He snapped the shard of bone lodged between his ribs and used emerald energy to temporarily stabilize the wound. Then he did something that shocked everyone—he reversed Frost Whisper, pointing its tip directly at the Dragon Heart in his own chest!
"Stop!" Ravenna screamed, and Gamma cried out in unison.
But Raine's eyes were resolutely calm. He knew exactly what he was doing. Alfred's hints, Nisseya's sacrifice, the Mother Tree's anomaly… all clues pointed to the same truth: the Dragon Heart was never just a key—it was the locksmith's tool!
The instant the blade pierced the golden crystal, time seemed to freeze. No blood spurted, only countless beams of golden light erupted from the wound. The lights wove themselves into complex three-dimensional runes, resonating strangely with the Mother Tree's red-line network, the black sludge dripping from the Gear Moon, and even the silhouette of the "Mother" incarnation.
"I see now…" Raine smiled through the agony. "The true function of the Dragon Heart is… reprogramming."
The golden runes suddenly accelerated, spinning like a key fitting perfectly into a lock, piercing the red-line network with precision. The Mother Tree, already 80% mechanized, convulsed violently. All remaining emerald leaves on its crown fell, forming a massive three-dimensional magic array in the air. This array aligned perfectly with Raine's golden runes, beginning to reverse-engineer the Council's corruption code!
The Root Devourer let out twelve layers of agonized screams as its elf heads exploded one by one. The "Mother" incarnation in the sky twisted violently; the black sludge dissipated into mist as if evaporated. And the most astonishing change occurred at the ley-line level—those corrupted red-line networks gradually transformed into silver-blue, just like the energy of the Aurora Tower!
"He's rewriting the corruption protocol!" Gamma's cyber-eye frantically recorded the data streams. "He's turning the Council's weapons into our defenses!"
But the cost was enormous. Raine's skin began crystallizing—first his fingers, then his arms, and finally even his cheeks glowed with golden light. Ravenna dashed toward him, throwing her purple-gold energy in a desperate attempt to stop it—but it was pushed away.
"That's enough! It's already enough!" she pounded futilely against the golden barrier. "You'll become the second Aurora Tower!"
Raine no longer heard her. His consciousness sank into a dimension beyond words, where the twelve main ley lines shimmered like luminous strings, and the Dragon Heart was the only plectrum. Every "pluck" triggered chain reactions—the Dwarven Forge City's core flames surged, incinerating all corrupted devices; the Orcish Plains' ancestral totems glowed collectively, purifying tainted soil; atop the ruined Aurora Tower, the seven mages' Stellar Interference Devices finally activated, silver-blue beams piercing the sky, colliding head-on with the fractures in the Gear Moon!
When the last bit of corruption code was rewritten, Raine felt himself dissipating. Crystallization had spread across his chest, and breathing became excruciatingly difficult. In a hazy vision, he saw Ravenna's face pressed against the golden light barrier, her purple-gold patterns subtly resonating with his golden crystal; Gamma knelt in tears, her silver-blue cyber-eye projecting real-time visuals of the Mother Tree network—the dark red faded, emerald life returned; and Ironbeard and Elondir led the remaining warriors in a counterattack…
"It was worth it," he whispered, then fully surrendered to the light.