Chapter 780: World War and the Snow Plum!

A stream of life energy, like a lance, refracted from Locke's permanent defensive force field and shot toward Wizard Berbel, penetrating into the world where Berbel's Grand Magic was anchored.

Wizard Berbel's pupils contracted sharply, for the flaw in his death energy flood spell model had allowed Locke to seize the opportunity to establish a world channel that directly connected with the world where his Grand Magic resided.

Bypassing his permanent defensive force field.

The permanent defensive force field shell was supposed to function as a Second Circle wizard's isolation barrier, an asset separator. Once bypassed, it became extremely easy for two Grand Magics to come into direct collision.

Wizard Berbel murmured to himself.

"Lilith’s Cottage?"

In his perception, where the reflection of Locke should have appeared, there was now a forest, a forest one could only call magnificent, dense and vibrant, filled with a vast abundance of magical plants.

In the southeastern quadrant, only the Forbidden Forest could surpass this forest in total biomass.

This forest was now descending upon his foundation: the Louis World.

The Louis World. In the distant past, this had been a world of lush greenery and four distinct seasons, where the wood elf kingdoms and human empires coexisted in graceful and peaceful harmony.

Evil monsters from the underground would occasionally crawl up from beneath the earth.

But a thousand years ago, this world had changed. A necromancer had arrived, one who could raise the dead from their graves and drive those dead to work and labor.

He could freely modify those undead, loading the undead skeletons with powerful alchemical equipment.

He felled trees, destroyed forests, seized winter, dominated the cold season, held the winter months hostage with death energy to carry out mass slaughters, and across repeated massacres the population of the entire plane fell from three billion to fewer than ten million today.

And those numbers continued to fall each day.

The necromancer had established a kingdom of the dead. He combined ice and death and drove four dragons, the four guardians of this world, to maintain his dominion.

The wood elves and humans did not even qualify to become his slaves.

For Berbel believed only in the undead.

The undead were his servants. In this world he had initially entertained the idea of enslaving the living, but had quickly discovered that the undead worked far harder, served him far more effectively, were far more loyal, and astonishingly made no demands of him whatsoever.

Such beings had convinced Berbel that gradually converting this world into a full undead plane served his interests far better.

And so the native inhabitants of the Louis World had not seen a single tree for hundreds of years. That long winter had been completely and forcibly merged with death, evil, and the state of being neither alive nor dead.

Beneath the vast ice plains lay countless frozen corpses.

A group of Louis Plane wood elf natives dressed in deerskins were gliding across the ice plain on sleds made from frozen fish.

At this moment they suddenly stopped their busy hunting activity and looked in astonishment at a crack that had appeared in the ice surface. Within that crack, a plant seed was quietly resting.

In the next instant, a sapling pushed its way up through the crevice in the ice.

The wood elf children immediately crowded around it, staring wide-eyed with wonder. "What is that?"

"Father, why is something green growing up out of the ice?"

The older wood elves, those who still carried some lingering memory of what this world's forests had once been, stared wide-eyed at the green sapling on the ice surface. For a moment they could hardly believe what they were seeing.

Since the undead catastrophe had descended upon this world a thousand years ago, forests had been gone for more than five hundred years.

And today, they were actually seeing the forests from their memories?

Had not the great undead necromancer Emperor Berbel issued an edict strictly forbidding any plant from appearing in this world?

One elderly wood elf looked at the ground and at the same time felt a trembling coming from beneath the ice surface.

One crack after another appeared in the ice layer.

The old wood elf murmured to himself.

"The forest... has come back to life."

He seemed to think of something and cried out loudly.

"Run quickly! The forest has come alive, run quickly, the ice is about to crack!"

At this moment, at some unknown point, a full moon had appeared hanging in the Louis World's sky.

That full moon hung low, as though at any moment it might crash into this world's surface.

Beneath the ice layer, countless plant seeds were germinating. The growth of those seeds shook the ice layer, and the force of life was made manifest in these vibrations.

The surface of rivers in the Louis World that had not thawed for ten thousand years began to develop crack after crack. The wood elves fled in a panic while simultaneously filled with soaring joy.

At the same time, on the other side of this world, in the burial ground where the winter season, death, and the concept of ice had been held hostage, where all the world's death energy converged, high-ranking undead creature after high-ranking undead creature sensed the call, raised ice battle axes toward the sky, and let out roars of fury.

At this moment, Wizard Berbel sensed a life-or-death crisis.

For a Second Circle wizard, the most fearsome form of combat was a direct clash between the worlds where the respective Grand Magics were anchored.

That was a world war.

And once a world war began, it was nearly impossible to stop. Neither party dared to ease off first, because the moment one side slowed their assault even slightly, the other could reverse the outcome.

And so unless the gap between the two sides was enormous, a world war between two wizards of comparable magic pressure was equivalent to two Second Circle wizards entering a horrific, difficult-to-stop war of attrition with absolutely no room for maneuver.

The reason Locke had earlier felt that Wizard Berbel's thousand years of research was a waste of time was precisely this.

A wizard was a sage who studied the world, and a sage allowing themselves to be drawn into this kind of difficult-to-stop, impossible-to-maneuver war of attrition was a disaster, a sign of incompetence.

Wizard Berbel was old in years, but far too accustomed to crushing those weaker than himself, always relying on his basic stats to overpower opponents.

And so when finally facing an opponent of comparable level, he had still deployed three spell models in chain combination, forming a sequence of linked attacks, indirectly engaging in a pure war of attrition with Locke.

This was truly foolish.

He was fighting in the worst, laziest possible way for a Second Circle wizard.

That death energy flood exchange, to put it plainly, was using the entire world's death energy to go head-to-head against him.

Locke had only recently become a Second Circle wizard and could not have immediately avoided entering this world exchange with him. But even so, his main body's magic pressure was higher than Berbel's, and his Forest Sanctuary's total magic pressure was somewhat higher than the burial ground's.

Opening a world war was therefore advantageous to him.

Since the lord of the southeastern quadrant's black wizard alliance wanted to play a world war with him, then let them fight.

On the other side, Wizard Berbel immediately realized things had gone somewhat wrong.

'How did I end up in a world war with him? Something is wrong with my spell model...'

Wizard Berbel had not engaged in extended combat with a Second Circle wizard for a very long time.

At this moment he suddenly realized it.

'Was not my spell model just a roundabout way of launching a world war with the enemy? Any slight attempt by the opponent to exploit this would draw them into a world war with me.'

'The fundamental reason why my death energy flood chain attack is powerful is precisely that I utilized the characteristics of a world war.'

A chill ran down Wizard Berbel's spine.

'Once a world war begins, it creates a chain of mutual suspicion. Between two wizards of roughly comparable strength, the moment either side slows their attack even slightly, the other can reverse the outcome. So unless one wins outright, the war cannot be stopped.'

'This is the worst possible fighting method for a Second Circle wizard.'

A deep shock rose within Wizard Berbel's heart.

'This has gone badly. He is younger than me, his magic pressure is higher than mine. By any measure, the odds favor him. Strange. If this is a world war, why has no second type of planar reason descended?'

'Where is the planar gravity clash that should form from a world war?'

Wizard Berbel grew puzzled, because he perceived that Locke's Moon of Evolution had clearly descended, yet he could detect no corresponding medium-scale plane on the other side.

Wizard Berbel's eyes lit up.

"He is still too young after all. Could it be that he has not fully taken control of that world? He has not become the world lord of that world?"

"In that case, in a world war, I have gained an extra advantage out of nowhere."

On the other side, Locke swept a glance at the ongoing battle between Hussein and Wizard Isaac.

Wizard Isaac had clearly diverted a portion of his attention to guard against a sudden attack from Locke.

However, Locke had no intention of helping Hussein.

'Hussein does not fight battles he is not confident in. This person is calculating and precise. There is no need for me to intervene,' Locke reflected.

'Hussein appears mercenary and focused on benefit, but he is personally very proud, otherwise he would not have killed his own teacher over that matter.'

'In dealing with him, failing to respect his ability would actually give offense.'

Locke swept a glance at the situation over there.

'And so there is no need for me to help him. At this moment, I need only focus on defeating the opponent before me.'

Locke turned his attention back. In the Louis Plane, large swaths of forest were now appearing across the ice plain. These were ordinary trees, pioneer species, all of them.

Under the leaping evolution's effect, every one had adapted to the ice plain and undead environment. Past the initial difficulty of establishment, the forest expanded rapidly.

After Locke drew on his three main forest domains on this side to inject life energy into the Louis Plane, in just ten minutes, forests had appeared across one-tenth of the Louis World's total surface area.

As though a thin green garment had been draped over this silver-white world.

In the Louis World, centered on the burial ground, the undead catastrophe began issuing commands layer by layer. From the highest-ranked lich-king of the Louis World, the orders filtered down through nine levels of hierarchy to reach the most ordinary skeleton soldiers.

Those skeleton soldiers had all been modified as well, their bodies outfitted with steel bones and steel axes for hands.

These undead swept toward the newly emerged forest, intending to fell every tree once more.

One tree after another was chopped down by the steel axes in the undead hands.

Locke swept Pinellia, and in that instant the entire sky of the Louis Plane was swept with great winds and churning clouds. Blazing fire clouds appeared in the sky of this plane.

A great many undead across the ice plain ignited in flames.

They screamed and began to collapse.

Within the forest, ordinary tree after ordinary tree transformed into tree-men.

After Locke had departed the Silent Plane earlier, the levels of these tree-men had regressed over time.

After all, there was no longer an entire world's worth of resources supporting them from behind.

If he did not lower their levels, his available liquid resources could not sustain these one hundred thousand ordinary tree-men transformed from ordinary trees.

Across the Louis World, the tree-men used their canopy-formed hands to send skeleton after skeleton flying.

But even more skeleton warriors surged forward without end, leaping onto the tree-men's canopies and continuously hacking away with their steel axes.

Then three bone dragon roars rang out, followed by a fourth.

Evidently Wizard Berbel had realized a world war had begun and urgently called his four bone dragons back to the Louis World.

Locke's response to this was to directly summon the Ancient Life Tree, the core of his Forest Sanctuary, and deploy upon it the Lunar Blessing Curse.

He awakened the Ancient Life Tree into a life tree-man. In an instant that life tree-man's branches became hands and its canopy became a head, forming a hundred-meter tree-man.

Locke rode it using Lone Tree Cannot Form a Forest, driving it like a great wooden stake falling from the sky, impaling it through one of the bone dragons.

The life tree-man then expanded its form, seizing one bone dragon's wings with one hand and grappling with all four bone dragons in the sky above.

The surviving creatures of the Louis World looked up at the battle in the sky, each one frightened yet expectant.

At the same time, Locke's moonlight scattered across this world's surface.

"Because of the Silent Chalice, I actually have a fair amount of experience in direct head-to-head clashes between Grand Magic ecological communities."

"But my Grand Magic is not a forest. Berbel has spent so long crushing weaker opponents that he has completely mistaken the point. My Grand Magic is a moon."

"You are busy felling trees over there. What does that have to do with me? You have aimed at the wrong target entirely."

Locke took out his Second Circle Climbing Fern.

It had snapped in two during the earlier battle. Using it again would likely kill it entirely, so he did not deploy it in combat.

Instead, Locke drew out the moon essence within it and converted it into a drop of Zero Potion.

"All evolution begins from zero."

Locke used the opportunity of the world war to channel a portion of his power into an ordinary tree, then directed that tree-man to walk across land to the shore of the Louis Plane's sea.

Without hesitation, after using the tree branch hands to split open the ice, he walked directly into the crack in the ice and into the sea.

While the Moon of Evolution shed its light upon this world, Locke was simultaneously scanning for whatever plant life remained in this world.

There was very little left, of course.

When the undead catastrophe descended a thousand years ago, it had destroyed virtually all life in this world.

But at the center of this world's sea, the world had gathered its remaining power and nurtured a magical plant whose magic pressure stood at the crystalline phase.

Locke looked at the Snow Plum before him. "This magical plant was created by the world gathering every last remnant of its strength. Berbel, it is you, not I, who has not fully taken control of this world."

"You were careless enough not to notice this world's final counter-strike against you. Originally this counter-strike was too feeble to seriously harm you, only enough to deal you a minor setback at a critical moment."

"But now that I am here..."

Locke channeled the moon essence into the Snow Plum.

"This world, let us together complete this magical plant."

In an instant, Locke sensed the Louis Plane's remaining world force turning its favor toward him.

He entered once more the state of Following the Heart Without Transgressing the Bounds.