The World Tree was a big secert. But even with Maria's knowledge, at least a hundred people she personally knew were aware of it.
However, they rarely tried to transverse the World Tree when climbing the tower. It's not that they weren't confident in their strength, on the contrary, they were afraid their incredible strength would draw out equally incredible guardian elves.
One thing that became obvious about the World Tree over the years was that there's no way you could win it. You could fight a bunch of elves, kill them all and then go into hiding. Or you could escape from the start and never start a fight with them. But no one ever could continue fighting the elves.
Even the peak rank 6s, on the verge of advancing to rank 7, couldn't achieve such a feat.
There were just too many elves. Even the documented rank 6 elves exceeded 10,000. It made absolute sense for anyone to never get into a prolonged confrontation.
Even if they're confident of killing the elves pursuing them and escaping, the team, no matter how experienced or strong, would still be anxious, watching out for any potential mistakes.
But the companion she unexpectedly dragged all the way here was different. Despite all his eccentricities, she thought he'd at least show some 'normal' side.
So wrong she was~
"Ahahahah! Come! Fight, fight, and fight!" Varian's figure blasted through hordes of elves, his fists covered by blood, guts, and bones.
— — — — —
Of the million elves that descended on them, more than 900,000 were rank 1s, 90,000 rank 2s, 9,000 rank 3s, 900 rank 4s, 90 rank 5s, and 9 rank 6s.
Interestingly, there was a single sovereign elf at the back of the horde, with a flower crown and leafy clothes. Unlike the enraged crown, she was chillingly calm.
Almost 90% of the forces, including all rank 6s, were focused on Maria who broke out with astonishing strength and game-changing treasures.
The remaining 10%—90,000 rank 1s, 9000 rank 2s, 900 rank 3s, 90 rank 4s and 9 rank 5s fought Varian.
Luckily, there was only one peak rank 5. The remaining eight were high rank 5s.
The rank 1s had the power of elements, blasting Varian with apocalyptic winds and fires. It didn't end there. The fire and wind worked together to form blazing tornados that enveloped the enemy to burn him to a crisp.
Varian didn't collide with the attack head-on. No matter how weak, it was still the product of 90,000 rank 1s.
He could fight it and barely overpower it. But doing so would leave him open to sneak attacks from the rank 5s. These guys haven't moved from the start and calmly waited to tire him out.
'Human wave tactics, huh.'
It would've been dangerous for anyone else but Varian had plenty of aura reserves and a disgustingly quick aura recovery rate.
So, he landed in the middle of the rank 1s and began rampaging against the elementals.
They attacked him without worrying about the attacks killing their own.
"Die!" Varian's body blurred and he shot through the crowd of rank 1 elves in a straight line. More than a thousand elves had their guts blown through and died a gruesome death.
The price for doing so was a large burn on Varian's chest by the reckless attacks of the elves and the uncontrollable shockwaves of wind that drilled into his body and blasted his lungs.
The injuries would've hindered him when he was still a rank 3 but his current strength allowed Varian to be much more reckless.
"Taste some death." He laughed and put his hand up. A black sphere appeared on his palm and expanded into the size of a house.
Then it split into hundreds of smaller spheres and reached the rank 1 elves.
The tornados and fire rains kept coming as the elves focused on attacking him even at the expense of their own lives.
Even though his healing disturbed them a little, they didn't care. Killing 90,000 elves would drain at least half of his reserves. Then it wouldn't take long for him to fall.
Unfortunately, their calculations—all based on common sense—were bound to fail because they were fighting an entity that defied that very common sense.
The black spheres drained a thousand elves to death and the elves put up walls of fire and wind to guard against his physical and vitality attacks.
But what came was a spiritual explosion right at the center of the crowd. The elves sensed it at the last moment and wanted to sacrifice themselves to save the majority.
Unfortunately, their time flow distorted and their movements slowed down by half a second.
Half a second was too late.
Like puppets whose strings were cut, ten thousand elves dropped dead. It was the single most destructive attack since the start and even Varian was surprised by how well it turned out.
The higher-ranking elves looked at each other and hesitated. The reason they followed this tactic was to prevent the loss of high-ranking elves.
All these dead rank 1s would be recycled to give birth to new rank 1s at near negligible cost. But things changed from rank 2. A single rank 2 would cost the world tree more than a thousand rank 1s.
The World Tree was strong, not omnipotent. Even it couldn't be reckless in these issues lest its overflowing vitality takes a hit and its rank risks regressing.
Knowing all that, the higher-ranking elves still hesitated. Varian didn't look any tired compared to earlier. He looked more invigorated, even though it made little sense.
'Do not break the rules.' A voice appeared in their minds and they all looked back at the elf girl wearing the floral crown.
The madness in their eyes was replaced by respect and awe.
'He is a bit different from the rest. But I can't tell for certain.' The elf lady narrowed her eyes at Varian and fell into deep thought.
Varian was aware of her gaze but didn't have any interest to stop the battle to check on her.
Chunks of his muscles burnt to horrifying degrees, dropped out of his body as new muscles replaced them.
But even his discarded flesh carried an incredible vitality suction and killed the elves upon contact.
Even after the death of nearly 50,000 elves, there wasn't a single corpse on the ground. Whenever an elf died, the space around them would crack and a black sphere would suck their vitality until the corpse would disintegrate.
The vitality was fed back to Varian. Despite the transmission being highly inefficient, it allowed Varian to fight without any lasting injury and at his peak condition.
The elves were hoping his aura reserves would dwindle after the fight even if his body remained perfect. But that didn't happen as the recovery rate of his aura increased greatly thanks to his artifacts.
Varian was regenerating as much aura as he was spending every second. His aura
reserves remained full.
And for reasons he didn't know, the artifacts were working better than anytime before. Their output was at least twice as much as before.
'Artifacts…and the world tree, what the hell is happening?'
