Game of the World Tree

Evé quickly put her plan into action.

She began to continually absorb Azazel’s divine power, carefully controlling the amount siphoned to avoid draining him completely while closely monitoring his condition.

So as Evé siphoned more of Azazel’s power, his divine energy rapidly declined to a dangerously low level.

However, just as his power was about to drop below the threshold needed to sustain his consciousness, something unexpected happened that brought Evé a spark of delight.

She clearly sensed an extraneous energy bursting forth from within Azazel, which had never been there before. Evé then carefully observed as this energy replenished the Seventh Demon Lord’s divine power reserves to the minimum level required to maintain his consciousness.

After examining this external energy, she was certain that this deep, frenzied, chaotic, and malevolent force was undeniably the power of the Abyss.

Eve’s eyes lit up in jubilation.

Her idea really worked!

However, she also noticed that although the rate at which this energy was being replenished was stable, it wasn’t really that fast.

She then performed a few experiments, but regardless of whether Evé slowed down or sped up her absorption, Azazel’s recovery rate constantly remained unchanged.

Moreover, once his power reserves reached the bare minimum level needed to sustain his consciousness, his passive replenishment ability would immediately stop.

Hence, after conducting these experiments, Evé finally gained a rough understanding of the mechanism behind Azazel’s passive energy restoration.

To summarize her findings, Azazel does indeed have the passive ability to get external power from Hell to stabilize his dying condition, but it isn’t perfect and had its own set of limitations.

If Evé absorbed too much of it too quickly, even a slight misstep could potentially result in his death.

In other words, if she wanted to continually draw power from Hell in this manner, she had to control the rate of absorption and avoid going too fast.

Alas, this brings some unfortunate news for Azazel, as it would mean that he would be forced to hover on the brink of death continously for her whole idea to become feasible.

With this in mind, Evé began to devise a plan for dealing with Azazel from this point forward.

“Using his passive ability to augment my divine power is a slow but steady long-term endeavor. But as long as I suppress his strength, I’m confident that I can continue this whole operation for almost an indefinite amount of time…”

“Nonetheless, my devouring ability is just too powerful. If I do it myself, that means I’ll have to constantly monitor Azazel’s condition to ensure that I don’t accidentally kill him…”

“However, I really don’t want to devote much of my time to this whole operation, considering his recovery rate is very slow. It just isn’t worth it, and I might as well focus on finding more evil gods instead.”

“Additionally, directly absorbing Azazel’s power myself feels like an overall waste of my time. Furthermore, simply treating him as a mere perpetual power generator seems like not using him effectively.”

Evé eyes narrowed as she crossed her arms and rhythmically tapped her fingers.

“Hmm, perhaps I don’t need to do it myself and I could just delegate this task to the players instead…”

Her fingers then paused, before resting it thoughtfully beneath her chin, while a glimmer of inspiration danced upon her eyes.

“Maybe I could use Azazel as a conduit to create a dungeon for the players to grind their levels on!”

“Each of these players have the skill [War Sacrifice] which is essentially an extension of my absorption ability.”

“And with the players’ limited strength, they are unlikely to fully bring Azazel to his death.”

“In this manner, I no longer had to do all the work of directly absorbing his power myself since I could delegate it through the players instead. At the same time, it could boost their strength and improve their teamwork and combat skills, while also enhancing their overall gaming experience!”

With this sudden brilliant idea of hers, which was like hitting three birds with one stone, Evé happily glanced at Azazel.

Seeing how her lips curved in a sinister fashion, Azazel shuddered under her subtly glowing gaze and angrily exclaimed:

“Y-Yggdrasill! If you’re going to seal me, then just do it! I’ll wholeheartedly accept it, just give me a quick death!”

Looking at the enraged Seventh Demon Lord and sensing the humiliation and despair within his emotions, Evé fell into further contemplation:

“Hmm…”

“I need to find a way to prevent him from committing suicide.”

“Hmm, maybe I should use the Withering Heart to apply a deep seal on him.”

“Come to think of it… While the World Tree’s inheritance contains plenty of sealing techniques, I don’t have much hands-on experience with any of them.”

“Perfect! This is the best opportunity to hone my sealing spells!”

“Hmm, oh right. To make Azazel the perfect dungeon boss, I need to silence him completely. I can’t be too cautious since his ability to corrupt minds makes him far too dangerous otherwise.”

“Alright, now that’s settled. I’ll carefully plan this out and create a new dungeon!”

It didn’t take long for Evé to envision a bright future for Azazel, as the final boss of her new dungeon.

With a wave of her hand, she put the imprisoned Azazel away and turned her attention to checking her own status screen:

【Name: Evé Yggdrasill】

【Race: World Tree (Ancient God)】

【Level: 150 (Mythical)】

【Status: Meager Divine Power】

【Divinity: Nature, Life, Elvenkind】

【Titles: Goddess of Life, Mother of Nature, Matriarch of Elves】

【Divine Power: 6532/10000】

【Number of Followers: 2175 (1 Saint, 108 Zealots, 649 Devout Believers, 1387 Shallow Believers)】

【Abilities: Absorption, Communication, Bestowal, Enlighten, Heal, Summon, Divine Descent, Celestial Domain…】

【Divine Artifacts: Withering Heart (Incomplete), Scepter of Life (Incomplete)】

Using her [Absorption] ability to devour the power of other mythical beings is indeed the fastest way to accumulate divine power.

Absorbing both the powers of the Shadow Dragon, Darkness, and the Seventh Demon Lord, Azazel, brought Evé quite a few surprises.

The former provided nearly 300 points of divine power, while the latter gave her over 2,000 points in one go!

Surely, considering he had just awoken, attaining such strength was no easy feat for Azazel to recover to this level of power.

Who knows how many blood sacrifices he had secretly accepted from his believers over the years to gain such a thing.

Now, it will be the other way around, as the players will gradually harvest his power from now on.

Feeling the abundant divine power within her, Evé felt quite pleased with herself.

In addition to the sudden increase of nearly one-third of her overall divine power, the number of believers she has now also changed significantly.

Thanks to the activities the Oakhand Group have been doing all around the Holy Maniya Empire, Evé had been constantly receiving new power of faith for almost every day over the past few months.

Among them, most, as expected, came from elves, while a few were from half-elves. However, what surprised Evé the most was that even some humans that’s supporting the Oakhand organization held some semblance of faith towards her.

Of course, it was partly due to the fact that Evé had now created a new public persona for herself.

Nowadays, people no longer think of the World Tree when they think of her, but rather the Goddess of Life instead.

Only those believers who return to the Elven Forest will have a chance to learn the actual truth.

While this is overall a good thing, Evé also sees a new potential downside to it:

“The sudden increase in my believers is certainly a good thing, but it also means that the chances of my real identity being exposed are now much higher than it was before…”

“Especially now that I’ve made quite a stir here in the Underground under the persona of the Goddess of Life. Chances are, my name will likely spread throughout the land of Seigües.”

“With the steady increase in my new believers lately, it’s only a matter of time before many other mythical beings become curious about me. Sigh, I’ll need to be even more cautious in keeping my secrets from now on.”

“I’ve decided, only the elves who decided to return to the Elven Forest and settle there for a considerable amount of time shall be granted the chance to learn about the real truth regarding the World Tree from now on.”

“As for the elves who plan to leave after returning, they must first swear a soul-binding oath to keep the secret of the World Tree before I let them.”

“Hmm, I’ll leave this task to Alice. Given the elves’ devotion, they’ll surely cooperate without question.”

— 396 —

【 AZAZEL THE PERPETUAL POWER GENERATOR 】

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