Whoosh!

  Under the guidance of the wishing bottle, Oliver weaves through the dark, chaotic world. In the blink of an eye, more than a decade slips by. The chaotic world is just too vast, and with deities’ lifespans stretching endlessly, time and distance start to feel meaningless.

  Luckily, Oliver has the wishing bottle. Without it, pinpointing specific locations in the chaos would be a nightmare—he’d need several times, maybe even dozens of times, more effort and energy! Over these centuries, he occasionally runs into deities foolish enough to attack him. They’re all laughably weak, though—Oliver swallows them in one go.

  Still, these deities are so feeble they barely benefit him. They’re just snacks, really—better than nothing, but not much more.

  “Finally here…”

  Oliver watches the guiding light from the wishing bottle vanish before his eyes. Inside the gem space, the World Tree Ygg’s voice chimes in, tense with caution. “Master, I sense my natural enemies nearby—they’re dangerous…”

  Ygg knows the aura of Níemogr all too well.

  “This place looks empty on the surface.”

  Oliver scans the space ahead. It’s a void—his soul power stretches out, but he picks up nothing unusual. It feels like there’s nothing here, indistinguishable from the rest of the chaotic void. But the wishing bottle and Ygg can’t both be wrong.

  “Eye of Rules!”

  Silently chanting, Oliver’s massive serpent eyes flash with the primal rune of insight. A light bursts forth, one that could stun even deities. With the Eye of Rules active, his vision shifts dramatically!

  He sees it now: this patch of chaotic void is encased in a void nest, like an eggshell wrapped in a transparent world barrier, blending perfectly with the surrounding chaos. The nest hides within the void, seamless, its surface etched with dense spatial runes. Layers of spatial laws coat every inch like a spiderweb.

  Rough guess? This nest spans millions of kilometers—big as a colossal planet! Without the Eye of Rules, he’d never have spotted it.

  “Impressive,” Oliver mutters, genuinely awed.

  Níemogr, the World Tree’s nemesis, lives up to its name. Their descendants even earned a place in mythology, known to humans of later eras. Among them is a leader skilled in spatial runes, crafting this hidden lair.

  To tuck a nest this massive into the void, nearly invisible to a level 11 deity like Oliver? Incredible. Without the primal rune of insight and the Eye of Rules, even with the wishing bottle’s guidance, he’d have missed it entirely. Spatial runes are something else!

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Master, what’s the plan? Smash the nest?” Ygg asks, curious.

  “No, I’ve got a more fun idea.”

  Oliver smirks, his immense soul power surging.

  In an instant, a small snake made entirely of soul energy slithers out from his colossal body. It’s a near-perfect copy of Oliver’s true form, just scaled down to tens of thousands of kilometers. To humans, that’s still gigantic, but next to this million-kilometer nest and Oliver’s real size, it’s tiny.

  This isn’t a clone—it’s Oliver’s will in control, looking a lot like the soul army he recently tamed. Hmm, more like a ghost, really. It’s a trick he picked up after mastering the death rune: soul projection!

  And he’s not done.

  “Ygg, don’t fight it.”

  Oliver’s soul power ripples again, washing over the World Tree. Seconds later, a shrunken, soul-version of Ygg pops into the chaos.

  “I… I can actually…”

  Ygg stares at itself, stunned. Has its master’s grasp of the death rune gotten this good in so little time?

  With Ygg’s soul in tow, Oliver triggers his stealth skill. The two souls slip effortlessly into the giant nest. It’s got defenses—world laws strong enough to fend off most deities—but Oliver’s Eye of Rules spots the gaps. Dodging the guard monsters, he slides right into the interior.

  “So this is the nest’s inside?”

  A sprawling world unfolds before him. The nest is dotted with odd buildings and small houses for regular Níemogrs to live in. These bugs are smart—this setup’s got the faint makings of a civilization.

  The nest shields weaker Níemogrs from harm, and they’ve split into roles. Like ants, they’ve got workers and soldiers. The ones Oliver fought outside? Soldiers—aggressive as hell. But here, he sees gentler Níemogrs, pale white and radiating a soft energy.

  “These bugs are kinda pretty, like jade,” Oliver muses.

  Not that he’d pity them. Níemogrs hunt him—these “workers” back up the fighters, accomplices to the slaughter.

  What catches him off guard, though, is the decor: weird purple plants everywhere, like ornaments. They give off a unique scent, thickly scattered—if not for the color, they’d remind him of human city parks.

  “Damn Níemogrs,” Ygg growls. “I feel a vibe like mine in these plants.”

  They’ve been gnawing at Ygg forever—their plant-growing skills clearly come from it. These plants might even be bred from Ygg’s own flesh.

  “Look, a big tree over there!”

  Sneaking through in soul form, Oliver and Ygg freeze at the sight ahead. At the nest’s heart stands a massive tree, its trunk nearly 100,000 kilometers wide! It’s puny next to Ygg’s real body now, but for chaos-world plants today, it’s a titan.

  It’s purple, like the others, but special—radiating star power, glowing with brilliant stellar light. Its branches bear star fruits, each like a real star. Thousands of them dot the tree, birthing thousands of stars. They’re small now—not planet-sized—but still thousands of kilometers across.

  From afar, it’s a galaxy in tree form, jaw-dropping, with starlight flickers hinting at fearsome power.

  “I know it,” Ygg says. “It’s Star, a chaos-born plant deity, once my subordinate and friend. I never thought Níemogrs caught it—now they’re using my flesh to raise it…”