"Gyah! It hurts, it hurts! Sa, save me!"
A scream reflexively burst out of Rosalyn's mouth, her mind blank with pain.
"Please, please! Bring me that fruit over there! The one hanging from the World Tree, quick!"
Among the monsters still tied up, a Class B sea serpent monster slid towards the World Tree in an instant.
The monster did as Rosalyn instructed and picked a ripe fruit and handed it to her. She bit into it eagerly.
'The blood flowing from Rosalyn has stopped.'
It seemed that the life force within the fruit could heal wounds.
Odette felt no need to stop Rosalyn's actions, since the fruit happened to have the face of a Count.
'Well, it'll be okay. As long as I don't kill them completely.'
It's not bad to eat moderately. He's such a neat gentleman.
"I don't want to be eaten! Let go of me! Aaaah!"
The Count's howl was heard along with the sound of peaches being chewed.
Odette took him as background music and grabbed a branch. A branch of the World Tree that had become so tainted with black that it now looked like nothing more than a black pillar.
Then Odette's palms began to tingle, and a mountain of corpses appeared before her eyes.
'What's this?'
Odette couldn't help but feel confused. She realized where the stench of rotting corpses was coming from. It was from inside the trunk of the World Tree.
She thought that disasters always vomited out corpses, but that wasn't the case. The disaster swallowed more corpses than it vomited out.
The corpses were piled so tightly that they almost filled the giant world tree. Children, old people, pregnant women, heroes, prophets.
Piles of corpses and ghosts piled high enough to be disgusting.
The World Tree was screaming at the fact that it had become a producer of disaster, a hell where vengeful spirits rotted away.
Just holding the branch conveys a heavy sense of despair.
"Ah... Odette. You've finally come."
The slow, distorted voice sounded like claws scratching at the eardrums. It was a strange voice, as if it had been altered, but she could recognize it. It was the voice that had spoken to Odette during her waking dream.
The World Tree's twisted sobbing continued.
He regards Odette as his only salvation, as if he had been rewarded for the long wait.
'I came to purify you.'
At that moment, when Odette's will connected her with the World Tree, the light-filled waves receded like a huge ebb tide.
The absorption power was so great that the sea of light in Odette's inner world dried up in an instant, revealing the bottom.
Odette felt slightly dizzy due to the rapid depletion of her cleansing power.
'If this much is needed, I can't do it with just my strength...'
It was at that moment that Odette felt like she was reaching her limit.
The purifying water in her inner world sent forth a spring of light through its roots.
In an instant, the purifying power rose again. She realized at that moment that Odette's purifying power would never be exhausted, that the power of purification would rise and rise endlessly.
The World Tree, this deep sea, can completely purify everything. Odette, confident, hugged the World Tree trunk even tighter.
The first things the wave of light reached were the corpses that had been rotting away.
The moment the light reached them, the corpses and spirits disappeared inside the World Tree as if they had attained their peace.
Piles of corpses filled the huge tree. As the last corpse was freed from its shackles of agony, light began to spread through the tree trunk.
From the pillar, up the branches, to the leaves, and to the fruits at the ends.
"How is that possible?"
Rosalyn, who had barely recovered, took a breath as if she were astonished.
The light that was spreading like that even reached the fruits that were crying like newborn babies. The fruits were scattered as if they had never existed.
"Stop it! Stop it! How did I gather all this life force? Eternal life, are you going to take responsibility for my eternal life?"
Rosalyn screamed, but Odette focused on the sound of the World Tree beating instead of her screams.
Thump, thump, thump.
To that sound that is subtle but gradually gets stronger.
And tok tok. Tok.
To the sound of flower buds bursting through the branches of the World Tree.
How long had it been since the purification? When the light reached the ends of the twisted roots, a loud noise began to be heard.
It was a sound that Odette had once heard in her inner world. That was why she could sense what was to happen next.
Swaaaahh...
As expected, water began to pour out from the roots of the World Tree. Transparently clear seawater, laden with light and fragrance, gushed out explosively.
The foul smell in the deep sea gradually disappeared, and the turbid color of the sea became clear. A fragrant scent was felt that was almost ecstatic.
"The scent of peach blossoms... is dizzying.'
Odette, who had completed her purification, finally raised her head and looked up at the World Tree. The sight of the fantastic World Tree in full bloom with pink peach blossoms.
"No. No! Won't you stop right now?"
Rosalyn screamed in agony, but the moment the purified seawater touched her, her voice changed into the hoarse voice of an old woman.
In an instant, wrinkles filled her face, and her body shrank, so much so that she looked more like a tree than an old woman.
Her monsters, who had been rushing at Rosalyn in the clear waters that burst out like a waterfall, approached the purified seawater as if possessed.
They were like melted candle wax, and the moment they touched the seawater, they scattered and disappeared.
Without leaving a single one behind.
"Damn Han Soo-wan! Eternal life was right in front of me! Bam, bam!"
As the Kraken disappeared, the gills disappeared from the screaming old woman, and Rosalyn began to croak in pain.
'It would be painful to die like that, but drowning is not a death that suits Rosalyn.'
Odette, who now felt that the moment had truly come to get rid of Rosalyn, called Karl.
"Karl. Open the prison of time."
***
A giant eyeball appeared in front of Rosalyn's nose.
Rosalyn was terrified even as she choked on the pain of swallowing water endlessly. Her eyes were so hideous that she couldn't help it.
'Hey, what's that? An eyeball?'
The whites of the eyes were lined with bright veins. The dark red iris was in the center of them. It was fixating its gaze on Rosalyn.
"Oh, it's disgusting!"
As those grotesque eyes stared at her, her limbs seemed to stiffen. Rosalyn forgot to even struggle and was overcome by fear.
Immediately afterwards, the center of the crimson iris split open and slowly spread apart to the left and right. Beyond the split iris, an abyss filled with an ominous aura appeared.
It was a pitch-black pit, so black that you could intuitively tell that there was hell on the other side.
It was the moment when Rosalyn swallowed hard. Her eyeballs began to suck in seawater with Incredible force.
Rosalyn, gripped by primal fear, instinctively flailed her frozen limbs, even throwing away the fruit with the Count's face on it.
'No. Go away, go away!!'
Rosalind was good at swimming, having spent a long time polluting the World Tree in the deep sea. However, her body, which had lost all of its muscle and was as dry as a tree, was unable to move forward.
No matter how hard she struggled, she was just pulled backwards.
'Save me. Save me. Save me! Please, save me. I want to live.'
She was in a panic, desperately begging to be saved, the exact same behavior as anyone who has been sucked into a disaster has shown so far.
A pitch-black abyss lies beneath the Iris that has been split in half. Despite Rosalyn's earnest desire, her body is immersed up to her ankles in that eerie abyss.
The moment her head was swallowed by the eyeballs, Rosalyn began to wonder for the first time.
'I wonder if other people who were in a disaster felt this way?'
She killed so many people over the years from disasters, but she never once thought about their feelings.
'Was it this scary, this terrifying?'
While she was thinking, the door of the iris that had been open slowly closed before her eyes. Odette's face appeared through the narrowing gap of the door.
"Enjoy yourselves in hell. This is the eternal life you so desperately wanted."
Odette's cursed greeting, with a smile as bright as a peach blossom.
With those words, the light that had been thinning like a thread through the crack in the door completely stopped. All that was left was Rosalyn, engulfed in darkness.
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