The System Awakens: Rise of the Champion - Chapter 256

Capítulo 256: Chapter 256: The World Tree Core

“My king…” Maria gently called out.

“Hm?” Damian looked at her, and the moment their eyes met, Maria’s face flushed red, her emotions slipping beyond her control.

“M-My king… is she y-your daughter?”

Maria asked hesitantly.

The girl in question, walking beside her father, the emperor, while holding his hand, turned her gaze toward Maria with curiosity.

Her round, crimson eyes blinked slowly.

“Hehe, yes… she is my daughter,” Damian chuckled, observing the silent exchange of stares between his daughter and the others. “You’ve met her before.”

“I-I have?” Maria asked, shocked.

She was certain she would remember meeting the The great King’s daughter, especially one so heavenly and adorable, with such unique features.

Forgetting someone like her would be impossible.

It was already astonishing that their king had a daughter, but realizing she had met her before was even more outrageous.

Still, Maria did not doubt Damian.

If he said they had met, then they truly had.

“I suppose you couldn’t recognize her,” Damian said as he gently patted his daughter’s head, ruffling her short hair messily.

The girl clearly enjoyed it, judging by the bright smile on her face.

“She looked completely different back when you met her.”

“This is my only daughter… Eden,” the emperor of the Empire of Ouroboros, finally introduced the princess for the first time.

“You might know her as the System Administrator,” Damian said with a smile.

The moment those words left his mouth, realization dawned upon everyone.

Maria’s mind suddenly formed an image, one that slowly overlapped with the face of the little girl holding her king’s hand.

“I remember now… but,” Maria murmured.

She remembered the System Administrator clearly.

A towering woman over seven feet tall, exuding an overwhelming presence of absolute power.

Compared to that figure, this small child seemed impossibly different.

“It’s complicated,” Damian said calmly. “But I’ll try to explain it in a way you can understand.”

As the others listened in rapt attention, Damian began his explanation, opening with the subject of the World Trees.

Once, there had been seven World Trees.

Other than Yggdrasil, Isha, Asheve, Reiya, and Thea, there were two more World Trees that once existed.

They were both relatively young, only a few tens of thousands of years older than Reiya and Thea, who were the youngest of the world trees.

Their domains stretched across several worlds and planetary bodies, each hosting developing civilizations of humans and various supernatural races.

At the time, the universe was under constant assault.

Raiders, beings from other universes, invaded relentlessly, placing immense pressure on the universe and its inhabitants.

Their purpose was simple: to plunder and steal resources of every kind, resources impossible for any individual to obtain on their own, and take them back to their native universes.

The universe was vast, hiding countless resources within its fabric.

These resources were essential to the balance of creation and destruction.

While they were not meant for individual beings to exploit, they were vital for the smooth functioning of existence itself.

To awakeners, however, such resources were priceless, even across infinite time.

One of these resources was the World Tree Core.

It could not be found naturally within the universe.

It had to be created.

To create a World Tree Core, a World Tree had to die.

“World Trees, my sisters possess enormous energy. That should be obvious, since they sustain hundreds of worlds with their power. But the raiders who invaded, those who wanted to steal our resources, did the unthinkable. They did the one thing they should never have done.”

Damian spoke quietly, yet everyone present could see the pain carved into his expression.

No matter how hard he tried to hide it, he failed, revealing just how deeply this memory wounded him.

“They went after two of my sisters.”

His voice trembled.

“To create a World Tree Core, the raiders destroyed the worlds governed by my sisters. When a world ruled by a World Tree is destroyed, it releases a unique planetary energy. Those bastards gathered that energy and refined it. But to complete a core, they had to destroy every single world my sisters governed, and that is exactly what they did.”

Damian’s fists clenched tightly as he continued.

The raiders ravaged countless worlds, annihilating hundreds of developing civilizations in the process.

In the end, they succeeded, killing the two World Trees before Damian could reach them.

By the time he arrived, his sisters were already dead.

The worlds they governed had been erased, and the released energy had been refined into two complete World Tree Cores.

Worse still, the raiders managed to reach one of the worlds governed by Reiya.

That world was destroyed as well, along with its civilization, a race closely related to vampires and werewolves, known as creatures of the night.

That was the moment Damian lost himself.

Consumed by rage, he unleashed all of his power and descended into a mindless slaughter.

His rampage lasted for more than a month.

He annihilated every raider he could find, and even then, he did not stop.

In the end, the Primordials themselves were forced to intervene to calm him down.

Unable to accept the deaths of his sisters, Damian fell into a state of obsession.

He sought to bring them back, despite knowing, just as the other World Trees did, that such a thing was impossible.

Still, he refused to stop.

He tried tens of thousands of methods, exhausting every conceivable path.

In the end, all that remained of his sisters were the two damaged World Tree Cores, harmed during his rampage.

At one point, Damian even attempted to use his own soul to recreate theirs.

But that was not how the system of existence worked.

Instead of reviving a World Tree, his soul merged with one of the damaged cores.

From that fusion, a brand new soul was born.

It was not truly a World Tree’s soul, yet it resembled one and carried traits of both the core and Damian’s soul.

That soul later split into two.

From those two souls, Damian’s daughters were born.

Daughters, plural, each carrying a fragment of that impossible miracle.

As with everything connected to Damian, his daughters were special as well.

They were two souls, yet they inhabited the same physical body, a body Damian had created for them using his own essence and purified celestial essence.

The souls were far too great to exist separately, and because they were linked together, they had no choice but to inhabit a single body.

Thus, Eden was born.

Damian’s doting daughter, his precious princess, Eden, came into existence bearing the souls of two daughters, the Big Eden and the Little Eden.

As for the other damaged World Tree Core, it was accidentally transformed into the System Core.

Yes, the great System that traveled from world to world, awakening people’s potential and monitoring and tracking everything that occurred throughout the universe, had been created by Damian himself.

He was the System’s creator and its primary administrator.

When Damian regressed, he entrusted his daughter, Big Eden, with the role of secondary system administrator.

Little Eden, however, was different.

Too dependent on her father to endure being separated from him, she fell into a dormant slumber. Meanwhile, Big Eden remained awake the entire time.

As the secondary administrator, she continued her father’s work in his stead, patiently waiting for his return.

Now that Damian had returned, Big Eden entered a state of hibernation, a long-overdue rest after remaining awake for hundreds of thousands of years.

Little Eden, who had missed her father dearly, returned to his arms, and Damian once again assumed control of the System as its creator and primary administrator.

“My little Eden…” Damian gently hugged his daughter as he sighed. “I’m so happy to be holding my daughters again…”

“Your life… so much has happened to you… my king,” Maria muttered with a sad smile.

Damian gently lifted her chin. “All of it had to happen. That was the path I needed to walk to become who I am now.”

“I have my daughters. I have my wives, including you.” Damian gently pulled her closer and pressed his lips to hers, placing a deep kiss that lasted several seconds.

When he finally let her go, her face was flushed, sweat covered her forehead, and her breathing was ragged.

For a brief moment, Damian’s eyes revealed the distorted obsession he held for her and for his other wives.

Gently, he wiped away their mingled saliva from the corner of her reddened lips.

Everyone else watched with flushed faces, and some of them couldn’t help but twist their legs together in an uncontrollable physical response to the stimulating scene before them.

After all, he was their progenitor, the best possible and most suitable mate for every female of their race.

Seeing him kiss another woman was overwhelmingly stimulating, to the point that they were already wet, even though Damian was actively suppressing his presence to prevent the females around him from being affected.

Even that wasn’t enough, because the scene itself was simply that intoxicating.