Chapter 989: Open The Path

Chapter 989 – Open The Path

"You enter my kin’s grave," she said, voice still quiet but now threaded with terrible pressure. "You bring demons, a dragon, hunger, pride, sloth, and a devil who smelled like bad decisions with abs and pheromones. You disturb the spring. You break the guardian. You come before me and call my will stolen."

Lux deadpanned.

There were many things he expected to be called in his life. Demon. Greed’s heir. Walking calculator.

But this one was disturbingly specific.

Sira’s lips twitched hard. She almost laughed, shoulders trembling once before she strangled the sound in her throat.

"I like her," Sira whispered.

Lullaby nodded innocently from beside her, eyes half-lidded. "I agree with her."

Yue didn’t even look at them. "Focus."

Lux looked at the tree.

At the body trapped inside it.

At the barrier that called itself preservation.

Then back at the first elf.

"Yes."

The shrine roared.

Roots burst from the floor.

Vines snapped toward them.

Lux grabbed Ely and pulled her back as the first root slammed into the stone where she had stood. Yue’s spear flashed up, intercepting a vine before it wrapped around Gula. Sira’s claws ignited, cutting through a root lashing toward Lullaby. Gula jumped back, fork-spear raised. Lullaby lifted her pillow-hammer, eyes finally fully open.

The first elf’s hologram glowed brighter, fury and fear tangled together in her ancient face.

The entire shrine trembled.

Ely stared at the moving roots.

Then at Lux.

"Okay..."

A vine cracked against the floor like a whip.

"This is bad..."

The shrine had turned against them.

Not completely.

That was the annoying part.

If it had been simple hostility, Lux could have cut, burned, absorbed, bullied, financially threatened, or spiritually repossessed it with a clean conscience and a better posture. But the shrine did not attack like an enemy. It attacked like a wounded body rejecting surgery.

Roots rose from the floor in thick silver-green coils, their surfaces glowing with ancient elven script. Vines uncurled from the ceiling, pale thorns shining like carved moonbone. The water channels on the floor surged, not with ordinary water, but with memory-light that hissed whenever it touched Lux’s demonic aura.

Ely stood behind him, face pale, eyes locked on the tree.

Inside that pale trunk, her ancestor remained rooted.

The hologram of the first elf hovered before them, no longer serene, no longer only sad. She looked furious in the way old forests were furious.

Sira slashed through one vine as it snapped toward her shoulder. "We can just pull her by force."

The severed vine fell, writhing on the floor like a pale snake.

Gula ducked under another one, then jabbed her fork-spear upward, pinning it to a root above her head. "Just use your goddamn Absorb or whatever it is, Greed!"

Lux didn’t answer immediately.

His eyes were fixed on the barrier around the tree.

The way it pulsed through the bark. The way it wrapped around the first elf’s body not like chains around wrists, but like veins through flesh.

His jaw tightened. "It’s not that simple."

Sira threw him a look while cutting another vine. "It never is with ancient suicidal ancestors."

Lux’s voice dropped. "I don’t know how badly it could affect her."

A root slammed toward him.

He stepped aside, grabbed Ely by the waist, and moved her with him before the root shattered stone where her feet had been. His hand lingered only long enough to make sure she had balance, then released.

"If something goes wrong..."

He stopped.

No one needed him to finish.

The shrine roared around them, but that silence between his words carried louder.

Lux had just upgraded Absorb. But new power was dangerous precisely because it felt like a solution before it had boundaries.

He did not know how far the barrier had entered the first elf.

He did not know if the Root-Oath Preservation Seal was wrapped around her body, her soul, her memory, her debt, or all of them layered together into one ugly knot.

The first elf had not merely been placed in a tree.

She had rooted herself.

Or had been rooted so thoroughly that choice and prison had become indistinguishable.

It was like pulling out a plant down to its roots.

Some plants survived that.

Some could be replanted.

Some died in your hands no matter how gently you tried.

Lux hated uncertainty.

He hated it more when the uncertainty had someone’s life inside it.

Then Ely stepped close to him and kissed his cheek.

Soft.

Warm.

Completely unfair in the middle of a hostile ancient shrine.

Lux froze.

Just for a second.

He turned his head toward her.

Ely’s face was red, but her eyes did not shake. "Do it."

Lux stared at her. "You aren’t mad?" His voice was quieter than before. "She is your ancestor."

Ely looked past him.

At the tree.

At the woman inside the bark.

At the hologram that looked ready to turn them into fertilizer out of ancient conviction.

Then she shook her head. "No." The word was small, but it held. "We need to do what we need to do."

Lux’s expression changed.

Only slightly.

The manic Greed from earlier did not return immediately. Neither did the polished CFO mask. Something softer moved beneath both, something almost painful.

Trust was such an annoying thing.

Lux nodded once.

Ely lifted her palms. "I’ll back you up."

The healing mana flowed from her fingers and wrapped around Lux first. It settled over his shoulder, his ribs, the bruised parts beneath torn fabric.

Most of his wounds had already healed through regeneration, but the healing still felt different. Cleaner. Warmer. Less like recovery and more like being told by the forest itself that he was allowed to stand.

[HP Recovery: Minor]

[Status: Sacred Rebuff Residue Cleansed]

Lux exhaled. "Thanks."

Ely nodded, then spread her healing light wider, ready to patch them as soon as the shrine started collecting blood.

Yue stepped forward, spear in both hands. "We will try opening the path for you."

Gula looked at the roots and vines now moving with increasing violence. "Yeah. Trying." She tightened her grip on her fork-spear. "We don’t promise anything."