Chương 103: Chapter 89 – What May Take Root

Cade remained silent for several long seconds after Sildraxa finished speaking. The chamber pulsed faintly around them as corruption spread deeper through the Great Tree in slow glowing veins. The portal behind him shimmered softly while violet lightning crawled intermittently across the walls and ceiling overhead. And all the while— The sphere of compressed desolation inside Cade's chest continued growing denser. White fire churned behind his ribs while he steadily siphoned more essence into it from his channels.

The pressure building inside him had become immense and unstable. But Cade kept feeding it anyway.

"How do you know all this?" he finally asked. Rowana's ruined smile widened slightly.

"I am old," Sildraxa whispered.

"Older than you can comprehend. I see the flaws in your body clearly." Her burning violet gaze fixed directly onto him again.

"And if you accepted my guidance…" Her voice softened.

"If you let me inside, then you could see them too." The Law Seed of Inviolable Self immediately vibrated inside Cade's soul. Warning him as Sildraxa's influence pressed harder against his mind. Not enough to control his thoughts directly, but enough to push him. To make her offer seem more reasonable than it should. Part of Cade wanted to believe her. A proper Core with stable channels. A clear Path forward instead of stumbling blindly through powers he barely understood.

The temptation lingered unpleasantly in the back of his mind. Before the System, he probably would have accepted the offer. Back then, he would have taken the easy way out if it offered certainty. He had followed the path everyone expected of him—high school, college, then what was supposed to be his dream job—only for it to become dull, exhausting, and painfully empty. But Cynthia's Legacy had changed him.

Every fight, every near-death experience, every brutal lesson beaten into him since entering this realm had forged something harder inside him. Cade trusted himself now far more than he trusted some ancient entity offering convenient answers. And the moment he imagined giving up control of himself, even for a second— Every instinct he now possessed revolted. The white sphere of desolation inside his chest churned harder as irritation flared through him.

Cade almost released the flames right there, but he forced himself to remain calm. He knew he probably should have attacked already. Instead, he had gambled on trying to extract more information from the corrupted entity before killing her. And while he had learned some things, he didn't know how much of it he could actually trust. Sildraxa had been manipulating him from the very beginning while searching for an opening to strike. Of course she had.

Ancient evil entity offers answers and cooperation before immediately betraying you the second your guard drops. Cade was not about to walk straight into one of the oldest tropes imaginable. At least he had been smart enough to keep pumping essence into his [Flames of Desolation] throughout the entire conversation instead of blindly trusting her. And if she tried to push deeper into his mind again, he would let loose those flames.

"Stop trying to influence me," Cade said flatly.

"If you actually want to help, then fine. Maybe we can work together." Sildraxa's expression brightened slightly.

"But you are not getting inside my head or my soul," Cade continued immediately.

"You can guide me perfectly fine from outside my being." The entity wearing Rowana's skin faltered.

"That is not how this works," she whispered.

"It's how it works with me."

"No no no." Sildraxa shook Rowana's ruined head weakly against the wood behind her.

"You do not understand. Proper guidance requires control. Direct influence. I must be able to shape your development." Cade's jaw tightened.

"No." The sphere of Desolation rose slightly higher inside his chest as he compressed it further. Heat spread upward through his throat while white fire crackled through his channels beneath his skin. This time, Sildraxa noticed.

"Please," she whispered again.

"You are wasting potential you cannot even comprehend."

"No," Cade said more firmly. Something shifted in Sildraxa's expression then. The softness vanished. The pleading disappeared. And for the first time since the conversation began, genuine irritation surfaced beneath the dead frog's face.

"You are young," she rasped.

"Incomplete. You do not know what is best for yourself." Cade's eyes narrowed.

"And you do?"" YES." The word cracked through the chamber and violet lightning flared through the walls.

"I have existed longer than the miserable world you crawled out of," Sildraxa hissed.

"You will SUBMIT to your elders. I know the Path best suited for you." The sphere of Desolation reached Cade's throat. White fire leaked from the corners of his mouth as the compressed sphere churned violently inside him.

"Not happening," he said as he released the [Flames of Desolation]. White fire erupted from his mouth in a roaring torrent just as Sildraxa twitched. Just before the flames reached her, Rowana's corpse exploded. Her upper body burst apart in a wave of dark violet effluent, shredded frog flesh, and pulsing masses of corrupted plant matter that blasted outward across the chamber alongside crackling streams of violet essence.

At the same instant, Cade's [Mantle of Dissolution] surged upward around him in spiraling ash. The collision erupted across the chamber in a violent storm of white fire, pearlescent ash, and violet corruption. Cade's flames burned through the expanding wave of sludge while spiraling currents of ash tore through the airborne corruption, dissolving flesh, essence, and writhing plant matter into drifting particulate streams before they could splatter across the interior of the Great Tree.

But amidst the explosion of corruption and flames, something small punched through. A single bead of dark violet corruption burst through the chaos faster than Cade could react. It slipped between spiraling ash currents, barreled straight through the white flames, and splashed directly across his eyes. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Pain detonated inside his skull. Cade screamed as the corruption ate through his eyes instantly.

Flesh bubbled and dissolved while molten agony tore through his face and deep into his channels like liquid fire being poured directly into his brain. His vision vanished beneath the burning blackness as the impact nearly ripped him off his feet. And then everything went black as pain consumed Cade's consciousness. What the fuck is with these old monsters going for my eyes?! Cade staggered blindly across the chamber while white fire exploded from his mouth in barely controlled torrents.

The [Mantle of Dissolution] whipped violently around him in spiraling currents of ash as he clawed at his face with both hands. His eyes— His fucking eyes were melting. The violet sludge burned through flesh and channels alike. Every instinct screamed at him to tear his own face apart just to make the agony stop. The chamber roared as the [Flames of Desolation] flooded outward in all directions. White flames consumed walls, roots, corruption, and wood alike. Somewhere nearby he heard Sildraxa scream.

But the noise seemed distant through the agony ripping through his skull. Cade wiped burning sludge from his ruined eyes and screamed in pain again as strips of damaged flesh came away with it. Then his thoughts started feeling… wrong. His consciousness was growing fuzzy. His mind was heavy and exhausted. Like something crawled beneath the pain and began spreading deeper through his skull. Cade froze.

Beneath the agony in his eyes, Cade felt something foreign worming through the channels connected to his face and mind. Tiny needle-like sensations burrowed deeper with every passing second while wrongness spread through his body in slow invasive pulses. His breathing sharpened, but beyond the agony his body continued functioning automatically. Pure essence flooded into him with every breath.

His [Essence Manipulation] cycled the incoming power through his channels while the [Flames of Desolation] consumed massive quantities of corruption and wood, converting them into more ash and liberated essence. The [Mantle of Dissolution] fed upon the chaos as well, breaking down everything caught within the storm of ash and flame before returning even more essence back into his circulation. But Cade barely focused on any of it. His mind dove inward instead. Fight it.

The thought became absolute as he pushed his will directly against the spreading corruption while trying to halt its advance through his channels. His eyes burned hotter as the invasive essence resisted him. Then the rhizome pulsed. Cade felt it instinctively begin drawing essence from his circulation. No. Leave the essence. The rhizome shifted toward his blood instead. Cade immediately denied that as well. His body was already too damaged.

He could not afford to let the rhizome drain away what little vitality remained. The rhizome hesitated but Cade forced his will around it. Draw from somewhere else. For one terrible moment, nothing happened. Then something answered. A strange sensation spread through him. Deeper than flesh or channels. Tiny points all across Cade's body suddenly tightened beneath his skin, as though invisible threads buried deep within him had gone taut all at once.

An unfamiliar current of pure essence trickled from every pinprick into the rhizome, feeding it as multicolored lightning flickered violently through his skull and crashed into the invading corruption. Cade grit his teeth nearly hard enough to crack them while the battle inside him intensified. He could not see, but behind the darkness colors exploded into existence within his mind.

Every shade he had ever seen and thousands more beyond human comprehension twisted together in vast shifting currents of impossible light. At the center of the chaos floated two small seeds. Cade's breathing slowed as realization struck him. His Law Seeds. Then this place—the swirling explosion of colors surrounding him—had to be within his soul. Vorduun had said that Law Seeds took root within the soul itself.

One seed floated farther away as a cracked white shell tethered to a thin filament of pale essence that disappeared somewhere into the shifting chaos beyond. Cade immediately recognized the Law Seed of Dissolution. The second hovered much closer. At first glance it looked kaleidoscopic. Ever-shifting colors danced endlessly across its surface. But the more Cade stared, the more he realized that was not actually true. The seed was not generating colors of its own. It reflected everything around it.

Every shifting current. Every flicker of light. Every impossible color spiraling through his soul reflected perfectly across the seed's mirrored surface. His Law Seed of Inviolable Self. And as Cade focused on it, the mirrored seed pulsed. Every moment of pain. Every choice he had made. Every person he had met. Every lesson beaten into him had left marks behind. Tiny reflections layered over one another until they formed the person standing here now. Then Cade understood. Who he was… what he was…

hadn't formed in isolation. He was the final authority within himself but he had still let others influence who he was. Upon that realization, the reflections across the seed began to shift and congeal. Cade saw flashes of his life before the System. His father Henry standing in the garage with grease on his hands. Caylee and Cassandra arguing loudly over something stupid while trying to drag him into it. Sofia smiling at him across a cluttered table in their first apartment.

Nadean and Sasesh hunched over equipment in the lab while Professor Sanders lectured them about contamination protocols. The reflections shifted again. Endless hours beneath sterile laboratory lights. The quiet hum of the centrifuge. Stacks of paperwork and repetitive testing procedures blurring together day after day while exhaustion settled deeper into his bones. Even the colors in those memories looked muted and washed out, drained of vibrancy beneath the dull routine his life had become.

Then the reflections brightened sharply. Sneering looks from the people in his old Tutorial group. Pity and scorn twisting across their faces. Then came the massive black-scaled body of N'zhal coiling down the banyan tree, obsidian scales scraping brown bark. Tegziran bleeding out among crushed flowers stained red as life slowly drained from his eyes. Aquelion's vibrant aquamarine eyes staring into his own the moment after he hatched. The memories continued flowing past one another.

The old Ashen Emperor standing atop the corpse of the ash worm with sagging skin hanging from his skeletal frame. He and Pearl fighting back to back, fending off a horde of leeches in the swamp. Brahm slamming into him during their brutal clash beneath the Great Tree. Vorduun speaking quietly as ash rolled endlessly across the plains. Every moment. Every creature. Every victory, failure, loss, fear, and connection layered together within him. All of it reflected within him. All of them had changed him.

Everything around him left reflections behind. As the realization settled into place, a sharp crack split across the surface of the Law Seed of Inviolable Self. Cade watched intently, the physical pain of his body left far behind. He expected light to spill outward from the fracture. Instead, the seed absorbed the swirling multicolored phenomenon surrounding him. The colors around it bent inward and were drawn into the growing cracks like water spiraling down a drain.

Cade stilled as another realization struck, deeper this time. Yes, I reflect the world around me. But the reflection alone does not define me. I choose what remains. Another crack spread through the mirrored surface and the Law Seed drank in more of the shifting colors around it. Cade stared deeper into the fractures as understanding unfolded inside his mind. He could not control everything that entered his life. Pain. Influence. Loss. Power. People. Others would always leave marks behind.

But he alone decided what stayed. He decided what mattered. And he would be the one that decided what to reject. No outside force would ever decide who he became or what Path he followed. Not the System. Not Sildraxa. No one and nothing else could decide. The Law Seed split fully, revealing a tiny black hole that rotated slowly at its center.

The colors spiraling around him bent inward and were sucked into its event horizon before reemerging moments later as two concentrated streams of multicolored light erupting outward perpendicular to the spinning singularity. Cade stared at it and understanding crashed into him. He was not merely shaped by what entered his life. He processed it, filtered it. He took in what strengthened him while discarding what did not belong. That was who he was. Not passive reflection. Choice. The black hole spun faster.

The cracks splitting the Law Seed widened until the entire mirrored shell shattered apart. Void-black tendrils unfurled downward into twisting roots while a dark stalk pushed upward from the remains of the broken seed. The tiny singularity settled at the center of the growing structure like a heart as the newborn plant absorbed the swirling colors around it. Then a single leaf sprouted from its stalk. Millions of tiny multicolored pinpricks shimmered across its surface like distant stars.

Cade felt the plant continue to draw in the surrounding chaos— Then it exhaled only what it chose through the leaf. Cade's breath caught. Somewhere deeper in the shifting chaos beyond his newly sprouted Law, beyond the Law Seed of Dissolution, he felt another presence stir faintly. This one was small and warm but not fully formed. The sensation vanished almost immediately before Cade could focus on it properly as a sharp chime rang through the chaos of his soul. Ding! Congratulations!

Your Law Seed has sprouted into a Law Sprout! Law Seed: [Inviolable Self]. Previously Established Principle: You are the final authority within yourself. +15 Willpower +5 Wisdom Law Sprout: [Inviolable Self] (seedling). Principle Deepened: You alone decide what may take root within your mind, body, and soul. +30 Willpower +20 Wisdom +10 Intelligence Your understanding of your Inviolable Self has deepened. The sprout reflects, filters, and rejects external influence according to your will.

External influence no longer takes root within you without resistance. Essence, intent, and foreign will are instinctively processed through the Law Sprout of Inviolable Self before they may take root within your body, mind, or soul.