Chapter 260: The Phantasmal Tree's Root
If its output were not capped at a top tier planetary class, the Alien God, drawing endless power from the Sea of Stars, would not have appeared so hastily.
For it, Surtr was not a threat.
Ivan the Terrible was not.
The First Emperor and Arjuna were not.
Even Chaos was not.
Not because they lacked power, but because they could not directly draw energy from the Sea of Stars.
Their nature was wrong. Fundamental mismatch. They could not even locate their own true existence in the deepest layer of that domain.
No matter how strong they became, they would never threaten the Alien God's foundation.
So it guided them here.
Let them devour this world. Let them grow. It would not matter.
But the one standing before it now, and the world behind that one, were different.
The growth of this world would inevitably reshape the Sea of Stars. Countless other Earths across other worldlines would be covered by the starlight of the Throne it emitted, as if fenced in, reduced to subordinate branch worlds.
Expansion without end.
Until it became the core.
Until it reclaimed what had been stolen.
The infinite energy the Alien God had treated as its own.
That was intolerable.
Beyond the atmosphere, the Sea of Stars was visible. Not with mundane eyes, but as something every mind could sense when it looked up.
In the deepest part of the starry sky, the pale giant tree slowly unfurled its canopy.
Its silhouette resembled the World Tree Rowe had seen in Northern Europe, cultivated by Odin from the remnants of a Star Hunter avatar. Both were alien creations. Both took the shape of a tree. Both fed on worlds.
The resemblance ended at the outline.
Their essence was nothing alike.
"It really is a Phantasmal Tree." Rowe narrowed his eyes.
From the swaying trunk, the Alien God's voice emerged.
"It seems your understanding of us is not shallow."
"Of course." Rowe smiled. Until now it had been deduction. This was confirmation.
There was only one kind of existence that could take root in the Sea of Stars and drain power from Pan Human History. Rowe had known it long before his transmigration, as a future crisis on a certain worldline.
Perhaps that crisis was only one branch.
Perhaps the root was the thing before him.
"Your world is very special," the Alien God said. "If I absorb it, perhaps I can become more complete."
"Let this tree become the Spirit Origin that can carry me."
"Then let us try."
Rowe grinned. He did not fear death. There was no room in him for that kind of hesitation.
But before death, there were still things to do.
He would cut down the tree.
He would cut down the true crisis that devoured worlds.
"You stopped the other calamities," the Alien God continued. "Now it is only you and me."
Rowe raised Vanity in his hand, the merged seven deadly sins.
The Sword of Vanity had no fixed form. In his palm it was only shifting light and shadow, a weapon still deciding what it wished to be.
He faced the Sea of Stars, and the Phantasmal Tree that stood at its deepest point.
As his voice fell, the pale canopy extended.
A vast shadow dropped over his head, like an unseen hand descending.
In that instant, Rowe closed his grip.
The formless light solidified, becoming the greatsword of Gluttony.
He raised it, bent his knees, and surged upward. A long narrow rainbow trail trembled through the void.
No technique. No flourish.
Just a clean, brutal cut.
The descending branch split.
A dark fissure opened, spread, and burst apart. Debris scattered like dead bark.
Rowe hung in the air for a heartbeat, then turned his gaze aside.
More branches swung in, shadows overlapping like a net.
The blade in his hand shifted.
Gluttony became Wrath, the heavy horse slayer saber blazing with molten fire.
Rowe stepped down onto the severed branch, using it as footing, and dropped into the web of shadows.
He did not retreat.
He plunged in like a fish swimming into a trap.
The result was predictable.
The net tore.
Wrath and Gluttony had already been truly activated by devouring their corresponding calamities. At this moment, the fire that rose from the blade was not a decorative glow. It was a volcanic eruption.
Pale branches took on a crimson sheen as they burned.
Rowe moved through them, his figure stained in twin flames, wings of fire unfurling in the darkness.
He shattered the first net.
And then he stepped into the larger one.
"Useless."
The Alien God's voice finally carried weight. It came from the trunk, and from within it, a pair of crimson eyes opened, laced with hazy bloodshot threads.
"As you said, my output is only top tier planetary."
"But the computing power accumulated over time is enough to suppress you and your world."
Output was not computation.
Yet computation could make output terrifyingly efficient.
Rowe felt it the moment the first layer closed.
The blade in his hands became a blur, Wrath, Gluttony, Arrogance, switching in a constant rhythm. Fire, darkness, judgment, poured out like different currents from the same river.
He cut down one branch.
Another arrived before the severed fragments finished drifting.
He avoided from the left, split from the right, pivoted on a broken limb as if it were stepping stones, turning the battlefield into a ladder built from the enemy's body.
One on one, the branches could not match him.
But this was not one on one.
He approached the trunk, and the branches unfolded around him into a dense lattice, compressing the intervals until it felt like he faced a dozen blades at once.
Rowe exhaled.
The Alien God's output was limited, but its computation compressed each maximum strike into the shortest possible sequence. The result was not more power, but more inevitability.
It posed no immediate threat.
But it drained him.
Rowe's movements slowed by a fraction. Not from fear, but from workload. Even a Star Creating God had a ceiling to how much perfect calculation could be done in a single continuous stream.
"Your movements are slowing," the Alien God mocked. "Your brain has limits. Your power drains."
"You are a lofty Star Creating God, but this is not your planet."
It was right.
This was not Earth.
Rowe could not draw on the planet's support here.
Fire surged along his blade as he forced a path forward.
For an instant, his back was open.
"It is time for this to end," the Alien God said, indifferent as a crowned ruler speaking down to a failed assassin.
Rowe threw the greatsword.
He hurled it into the sky.
Then he clenched his fist and struck backward.
Bare handed, the storm that once severed primordial chaos manifested. It collided with the pale edge that tried to take his spine.
The Alien God's crimson eye lifted.
Above, the thrown sword burned like a small sun.
Then the light spread, rolling outward like dark clouds, and within it, a single point shone as bright as the moon.
An eye.
At the core, it appeared in a flash.
Looking outward, it was vast.
It traced mountains and rivers, seas and continents, forming a circle.
Outlining Earth.
The Alien God's voice tightened.
"Is that… human order?"
"Exactly." Rowe withdrew his fist, feeling power return like breath returning to lungs. He grinned.
The seven deadly sins had been woven from Mooncell as a core, linked to the planet, linked to human order.
When seven became one, it could summon Earth's shadow and the human order that clung to it like a mantle.
"I told you already."
"This is a world war."
Rowe shifted, facing the trunk.
Now he could see the eye at the core clearly.
And within that eye, seated as if on a throne, the being itself.
A pale figure.
An extraterrestrial supreme lifeform.
Golden eyes observing the cosmos, then meeting Rowe's gaze.
Before, it had home field advantage.
Now, Earth descended, human order manifested, and the advantage became symmetrical.
Rowe had a home field too.
"But you still will not be my opponent," the pale figure said. Calm. Superior. "Your planet and your world hold infinite possibilities, but they are fragile."
"I will not deny it." Rowe chuckled. "But you are wary, aren't you?"
Around them, the branches had stopped moving.
The throne figure stared at the Mooncell light.
It was wary.
Of that brilliance.
Of that eye.
"So what?" it replied. "I have stellar level reserves. I can draw from worlds already rooted by this tree."
"In a standoff, only you will be worn down."
Endless fuel.
Endless supply.
What did Rowe have?
Rowe's smile widened.
"We are close enough."
"Playing tricks," the Alien God said, narrowing its eyes.
Then it froze.
A realization, sharp as pain, surged through it.
Around the Phantasmal Tree, countless Earths floated.
They began to flicker with a faint light.
Worlds it had influenced.
Worlds it had rooted.
Worlds it had treated as batteries.
They were breaking free.
"What did you do?"
The calm finally cracked. The confidence dissolved into anger.
Rowe spread his hands, delighted.
"So confident, and you did not see it?"
"I already said it."
"This battle is not mine alone."
The Alien God understood.
Its gaze snapped to the Mooncell light behind Rowe.
Mooncell.
An ancient crystal on the moon, a spiritual particle supercomputer that recorded the information of the entire solar system, capable of deducing endless futures.
Computation was not reality.
A spiritual particle world was not the actual universe.
On its own, Mooncell was not a threat.
But Rowe had changed the condition.
He had linked Mooncell to Earth.
He had fused it with human order.
Mooncell lacked the raw energy to manifest everything it knew into reality.
Yet it did not need to.
It only needed a port.
A physical anchor.
A cable.
Earth, linked to human order, was the port.
And the cable.
Rowe pointed downward, at the severed branches, at the drifting debris, at the invisible connections still pulsing through them.
"Your Phantasmal Tree."
He smiled.
"If this world followed a normal development, it might take an age to truly grow, to influence so many worlds."
"But you brought the wires to my doorstep."
"And now the timing is perfect."
The Sea of Stars trembled.
A storm rose in the domain that was supposed to be eternal calm.
The Alien God tried to act.
But the worlds around it were already being taken.
Its own network was being rewritten.
Humans.
Despicable.
It could only watch.
Rowe lifted his hand.
Brilliance answered.
On Earth, countless people fell into a trance, glimpsing other worldlines, other versions of themselves.
Infants.
Children.
Teenagers.
Adults.
The elderly.
Ordinary people.
Heroic Spirits.
"AHAHAHA. It is finally this King's turn to show off."
In the Tokyo venue, Gilgamesh's laughter erupted first.
He spread his arms and integrated countless other versions of himself.
The sky filled with the Gate of Babylon.
Then the ancient city of Uruk rose.
Not a city.
A star.
In a future that should have been impossible, a king ruled the most fertile planet at the center of the universe, becoming an overlord of the cosmos.
"Cosmic Emperor, Gilgamesh."
The oldest became the beginning.
After him came more.
Enkidu.
Artoria.
Heroes and gods taking the step of embracing their infinite futures, integrating countless selves.
This was the true purpose of the Proof of a Heroic Spirit.
Without the Throne covering this world, it would have been melted away the moment it touched the countless other worldlines.
Without heroic spirits anchoring it, ordinary people would have vanished under the pressure of infinite possibility.
But there were no ifs.
All conditions were satisfied.
The foundation was complete.
Rowe stood in the Sea of Stars, facing the Phantasmal Tree, facing the Alien God whose golden eyes had gone cold.
He spread his hands.
A smile, calm and merciless.
"Oh, people who stand upon the earth."
"Embrace your endless future."
Sevenfold radiance lit the firmament.
Mooncell shone.
Human order finally illuminated the vast universe.
And what the Alien God now faced was no longer Rowe alone.
It was Earth's countless heroes, stepping forward from history and possibility alike.
It was a righteous group assault.
And it was the prelude to humanity's cosmic chapter.