Magic High School.

"However, this curse is absorbed and blocked by layer upon layer of tree roots, so it has little effect on the fairies living above."

"And the so-called royal family is actually the family of you, little imp. Your real mission is to guard the entrance to this abyss. That's why your ancestors built the royal palace directly at this entrance."

She spoke slowly, "So stand tall and be proud, because your royal status is not due to your bloodline, but to the fact that your ancestors chose this most difficult responsibility and persevered to your generation. Whoever knew the truth, they all chose to stay here... to become the guardians of this place..."

"Even in the end, between becoming a bloodthirsty fairy and death, she chose death without any hesitation."

The senior student said.

"Mother, did you say anything at the end..." Daphne asked with difficulty.

This time, the senior student paused for a moment before speaking, "She said she can't watch you grow up anymore."

In an instant, Daphne's psychological defenses seemed to be breached again, but she held back and did not cry, leaving only a slight dampness on the tip of her nose.

"Just like that Golden Emperor..."

The senior student spoke the last sentence very softly, in a tone that seemed to be reminiscing.

However, Li Ge and the others understood the deeper meaning behind their senior's words.

Golden Emperor...

He was the key figure in the fallout of the entire hero team, but it's not his fault, because he had already done his best. In his final moments, he chose to believe in the school founded by his old friend and the students of who knows how many generations.

Perhaps, for the Golden Emperor, no matter how unreliable the plans of the senior members of the Hero Squad were, and how many of them messed things up, they still managed to complete his final mission, right?

Chapter 253 I'm a student, can you give us the ring?

Senior Sister Naya continued leading the group toward the heart.

Li Ge felt as if they were inside a giant tortoise. The tortoise's shell formed the land of the Fairy City, and the dense tree roots were like the tortoise's blood vessels and nerves.

Now, they are heading to the heart of this giant tortoise to end its life.

This was a strange sense of déjà vu that Li Ge had, and he even had the thought that perhaps a giant fist was needed to smash the giant turtle's leg before proceeding to the next step.

The déjà vu came and went quickly. Li Ge and the others soon arrived in front of the heart, where they saw a giant tree that was growing dead and parasitically on the heart.

The giant tree, like an octopus, pierced its heart with its tentacles, and like the most vicious parasite, relentlessly and unrestrainedly extracted all the nutrients from the heart.

Visibly, crimson liquid was flowing wildly on the tree roots. After being absorbed by the giant tree, this liquid was indiscriminately transported to the dense network of other tree roots underground, like a relay race, completing this transformation.

The heart could only reluctantly accumulate its meager strength time and time again, but this accumulated strength was completely drained away by the giant tree as soon as it was born.

Beneath the giant tree are two wooden statues, one male and one female.

No, not statues, but two people who have been completely woodenized.

They seemed to be at the eye of the giant tree's formation, their hands forming hand seals to maintain the spell. However, they had become completely woody, and their feet and legs had gradually turned into dense, tentacle-like tree roots, taking root in this fleshy earth.

Without needing Naya Li's explanation, they already knew who these two were.

Senior Naya herself, and Senior Herman...

This is their final resting place. In the end, before any historical records were available, the star-crossed lovers arrived here with the Sea God's sealing ring. In the end, they were assimilated and became two humanoid trees in the heart of this place.

This was their final fate.

"That prophet unleashed his divine blood, but instead of transforming into a bloodthirsty fairy, he became another kind of deity, one with deep ties to our school—the World Tree..." Senior Sister Naya began slowly.

"That World Tree, which we could only see from afar behind our dormitory and was tens of kilometers tall, should still be there, right?" The senior student asked the group with a nostalgic look on her face.

“It’s still there. Every time we see it, we can only see that tall, giant tree, but even after running more than ten kilometers in that direction, its size hasn’t changed at all.” Valerie even recounted her experience of running while looking at the World Tree.

"Yes, that World Tree, but the fairies are still far inferior. Even if that prophet actively triggered his divine blood to erupt, the tree he could transform into would at most be the smallest branch on the World Tree."

"But even so, he still accomplished the feat of taking root in the heart of the sea god, and from this he eternally drew life from it, making the sea god a complete blood bag for the entire world."

The senior student looked up at the constantly pulsating creature, whose life force was always being swallowed up by the giant tree, and said, "He did it. As long as he is there, every bit of power that the Sea God recovers will be absorbed and used as nourishment for the entire continent."

"The only problem is that the prophet can't stop the sea god's curse."

"The ocean was polluted, and the sea god's resentment completely enveloped the entire ocean. The rich marine life communities that were originally native to this world and had evolved over time became sacrifices to that catastrophe..."

"The sea god's curse not only targeted the sea, but also the fairies who directly betrayed him. After the vast majority of the male fairies of that generation turned into trees that parasitized the sea god, the entire fairy race was unable to reproduce males in the new generation..."

"This is the most vicious curse of the sea god."

Li Ge then spoke up, saying, "So, isn't this problem still unresolved?"

"Yes, that's right..." The senior seemed a little embarrassed. This was the first time they had seen such a clear human characteristic appear in this senior, who seemed almost devoid of humanity. Even when asked about the school's World Tree before, she had remained extremely calm.

"We were still not capable enough. At that time, the curse had penetrated deep into the bones of the fairies, so we came up with a new method: to strip the sea god of his reproductive authority. We cut and dismembered the sea god, placing his head and limbs in the five directions of the ecosystem, and placing his heart in the very center, which is right here where we are standing now."

Finally, his soul was extracted and sealed forever in the ring.

Li Ge and his group: "..."

What grudge could there be...?

Well, given the beastly and monstrous things the Sea God did while enslaving the fairies, there's nothing to sympathize with about his fate. Even Li Ge, if he were to imprison the Sea God, would be thrown into a cesspool for eternity.

Or perhaps let him be the protagonist of the ultimate insult for all eternity.

Doesn't he enjoy enslaving others and humiliating them in the most depraved ways? Then let him be the ultimate humiliation protagonist for all eternity, awakening the femininity within him.

After a brief pause, the senior student seemed to have no reservations and continued to recount what they had done in the past.

"After dismantling the Sea God, we obtained an artifact called 'Divine Blood' by connecting the great trees of these fairy ancestors. Any fairy who consumes Divine Blood can have their own offspring," the senior student said.

"Not only that, the children of the fairy race can also openly seek lovers from other races. Under this curse of reproduction, their children will definitely be fairies. Although they still cannot return to the state of the fairy race before they were enslaved by the sea god, this may have been the best solution they could think of at the time."

At this moment, the group, especially Li Ge, was completely stunned when they learned that the Divine Blood was initially only used for such a situation. He looked at his senior sister and at the dense cluster of tree roots that covered the ground.

Everything makes sense now. The skeleton of the continent is the ecosystem of the fairies, but the flesh and blood of the continent were built bit by bit by the fairy ancestors using their own corpses, creating this fertile and abundant paradise.

The source of the entire paradise is the heart of the sea god. The sea god is doing good with bad intentions. His heart is desperately trying to be revived, and he may be shouting something like, "When I awaken, all the traitors will die."

But every bit of life force he regained became the energy that supplied all the tree roots, all the fairy trees, and this fairy paradise.

As the fairies age, they activate the "divine blood" within their bodies at the end of their lives. This bloodline, which shares the same origin as the World Tree in the academy, transforms them into rapidly growing, expanding trees.

They will gain immortality, perhaps even eternal life, which will become the foundation for expanding the continent inhabited by their future fairy descendants and provide the newborn fairies with a more expansive home.

The trees that the ancestors transformed into would continuously draw life force from the sea god and supply all the trees to grow strong.

Therefore, the divine blood that once caused immense pollution and distortion in other worlds, and the distorted labels associated with that divine blood, actually had the original purpose of being... so pure and fervent.

All the information has been coordinated. This power is neither good nor bad; it's just a matter of what the person using it ultimately turns it into.

The prophet named Xerxes made it the power to kill the sea god for eternity and to nourish the next generation of fairies, while some people used this divine blood as a vessel for their own ambitions and power.

Furthermore, they did it extremely discreetly, so much so that the school may only have discovered the relationship between the divine blood and the fairy race now.

After all, perhaps only one fairy ever lived and knew this secret, and that was the current Fairy Queen.

She is the only guardian of the tomb at the entrance to this abyss, and the only fairy who knows all these secrets.

The power of royalty does not come from bloodline or strength, but from the responsibility of bearing the secrets of the abyss.

At this point, they might understand why Daphne's mother suffered from long-term depression and, after this mental breakdown, gradually lost control of the divine blood within her.

That divine blood was both a gift from the fairy race and a curse upon them.

“Hermann, aren’t you going to come out and say hello to our juniors? They happen to have another ring just like the ones we have,” Senior Sister Nayali said slowly, tapping the wooden man.

As she spoke, a branch slowly extended from the feet of the wooden male human.

As the branches grew visibly, a tree with a human face gradually appeared before them.

Seemingly having not spoken for too long, the tree with the human face stammered in its hoarse, wooden voice, "You...you...hello..."

Li Ge and his group: "..."

Senior, your entrance was absolutely terrifying! If this were a scene from a horror movie, it would be at least a monster on par with the Black Mountain Demon.

"Um, hello senior..." The group greeted each other in return.

Then, the air immediately became very silent.

Herman seemed to be the type who wasn't good with words; after greeting him, he didn't know what to say next.

Li Ge and the others didn't know how to start a conversation, and the atmosphere became awkward for a moment.

Li Ge even felt that his pride level was decreasing.

“Hermann, just state our purpose,” Senior Nyarli said directly.

Li Ge and the others immediately became serious.

"Well, juniors, give us the ring." The tree with the long face opened its mouth, and this time it spoke much more fluently, as if this senior had gradually found the feeling of speaking again.

"Huh?" Li Ge instantly became alert.

"Give us the ring, we'll keep it safe and seal it." The senior continued, his speech gradually approaching that of a normal person. "We will complete this seal, and we can also give you our and Naya's Noble Phantasms, as well as some magical artifacts we've collected. Give us that ring..."

The face on the tree revealed an extremely ugly smile: "After all, you still have a future, and this responsibility can be borne by us adults."

At that moment, apart from Daphne, Li Ge and the others became even more silent.

Their task was to retrieve the ring, but now, the senior students wanted Li Ge and Xiao Ye to hand over the ring of the God of Love and Beauty to them so that they could complete the seal.

"This is our idea: we adults will bear the suffering, and the children only need to be happy." Senior Sister Naya smiled, even though she wasn't using her own body—her original body was still that woody shell—but at this moment, their purpose was clear.

The ring of the goddess of love and beauty.

Sure enough, that resonance was the result of them sensing the ring of the god of love and beauty, and the vibration stopped simply because they had found their target.

Senior Sister Naya reached out her hand, and the tree with the human face stretched out its branches. They clasped hands, seemingly a rare and precious moment of contact.

The world is full of suffering...

This land of suffering, this cursed people...

And countless worlds, one after another...

You could say they hate the Church of Order, but in many ways, they actually hope for its arrival.

Because, at the very least, the mainstream of the Order God Cult consists of a group of people who are stubborn and inflexible.

As long as you follow the absolute order, you will no longer suffer. On those lands of suffering, if they knew that as long as they could call upon the God of Order, they could obtain the most basic and guaranteed protection, they thought that countless civilizations and groups would surely call upon the God of Order.

"So, we should at least do better than the Church of Order, and at the very least, let our descendants have a freer and happier tomorrow than under the rule of the God of Order." This was the grand ambition shared by the members of their hero squad.

"If suffering in the world has an end, then if some people suffer more, will others suffer less?" On that day, under the starry sky, a member named Karl uttered this thought.