"Haa, haa… cough!?"
Falling onto his knee, Elysium gasped for breath.
He had managed to escape to 'Saint's Hideaway' using a movement Magic Art, but never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that they would grow so powerful.
No, to put it more accurately, he still couldn't understand how they did.
"How could they have surpassed me…"
Elysium had obtained the powers of the gods. That was an undeniable fact.
It was no exaggeration to say that their powers governed every aspect of the world. With those powers in his hand, he should have been the strongest in this world.
Yet, he was defeated by a lowly human man alongside his women who possessed the trifling rare skills and those lowly dregs.
"How…"
Biting his lip, Elysium's face twisted in fury.
He knew that man had a monstrous growth rate.
His being 'immortal' was probably one of the factors behind it.
But at the end of the day, he was still just a human.
An insignificant existence who had received only a fragment of the gods' powers.
Just how… just how could he have surpassed him, who had become the one and only 'Perfect God'—it was completely incomprehensible to Elysium.
He wondered if it was as the man had said, that it was due to the power of 'bonds' that he and his women shared.
"Nonsense… Bonds… comrades… they are merely utter nonsense…
"But," Elysium mumbled to himself as he clenched his fist so tightly that it bled. "It's true I lost because I was outnumbered… Yes, I just need to use the same tactic and overwhelm them with numbers…"
But monsters wouldn't do, as they would be powerless against the man's purifying power regardless of how many he threw at him.
The same went for demons.
Not to mention the fact that Elysium neither had the time nor power to create new demons, in the first place.
In which case, the best option available to him would be to absorb all existing monsters.
Once he did, he should be strong enough to absorb even the Savior and his women.
Yes, the Savior burned 'filth' like the sun casting away the darkness, but what if the darkness was one that spanned across the whole universe? Then he would be nothing more than a small speck of light.
"Just you wait, Savior… I will show you how powerless the power of 'bonds' you always preach truly is…"
◇
Thus, Elysium headed towards a great tree with lush green leaves swaying in the wind.
The tree absorbed and purified the 'filth' contaminating the earth.
Yes, it was the 'World Tree'—Terra's object representative.
Elysium had been thinking.
How could he avoid the Savior's pursuit while at the same time absorbing the monsters from all over the world?
This was the answer he'd reached.
"Chuckle, what a great parting gift…" Elysium smiled faintly, looking up at the World Tree.
This great tree absorbed and purified 'filth' through energy flows—or commonly known as 'earth veins' that stretched all over the world.
Earth veins were like capillaries that wrapped around the world, one might even call them roots of the World Tree.
Even at the bottom of the deepest sea beyond human knowledge earth veins existed.
The World Tree—it was literally the tree that controlled the world.
"I thank you, Goddess Terra… for your foolish compassion for humans—will allow me to kill the Savior and bring despair to the world!"
Stab! Elysium thrust his hand deep into the trunk of the World Tree.
Then, his body was slowly absorbed into the World Tree.
No, not 'absorbed'.
—'Fused', was a more accurate way to put it.
Elysium did so in order to become the World Tree itself and absorb all monsters through the earth veins.
RUMBLE! The ground rumbled thunderously, and the trunk of the World Tree went on to stretch further into the sky.
But the World Tree no longer appeared overflowing with vitality as it had been a while ago.
The reason being, its lush green leaves all shed away as its trunk continued growing taller and thicker, making it barren.
—Rip, crack!
The trunk then proceeded to take the shape of the upper body of a person.
It had two horns growing out of its forehead and eight wings on its back.
"—Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!"
It was now the 'Genesis Tree' – 'Hades Elysium'.