"What the actual fuck is happening?" Nathan said as soon as he saw the leaves flying out of the tree.

"It seems we will have to leave the investigation for another occasion," Travis said as he prepared to fight.

"There isn't going to be another occasion. Destroy the stone before the vegetation grows in numbers enough to defeat us." Jason said as he joined the frontlines of the army.

Seeing the tree releasing large amounts of energy, the army members decided to act against it, creating shields and barriers above them to stop the leaves from reaching the ground and making more vegetation.

But this wasn't a final solution, as the shields only covered a small area around the army, and the green light weakened them little by little, so they had to stop using them after some time.

Seeing the situation in which they were, most of the casters began to focus their attacks on the tree and the stone sphere, hoping to damage them enough to stop the energy release. Sadly, the green energy covered both each time the army attacked them, protecting them this way from any harm they could receive.

Travis even tried to use his corrupted arm over the stone sphere, and even though he used a lot of energy, he only managed to reduce the sphere's shine slightly.

'Come on. There has to be some way to do this. If we had more totems, we could use them to reduce the green light, but we already used five of them. If we continue fighting like this, we will run out of energy before the tree does, so we need to find a way to reduce its energy as fast as we can." Nathan thought.

Revealing the bracelets he was wearing, he used them to gather the energy on his surroundings before using it to throw an energy projectile toward one of the vegetation giants.

And after doing that, he had the idea.

Realizing what he did, he used his bracelets to gather the green light around him before concentring it on a sphere and throwing it toward one of the giants.

The projectile hit his enemy directly on the head, but instead of blowing it off, the giant's body began to shine with intensity as its size increased.

"What the hell just happened here?" Jason shouted from the frontlines.

Realizing what he just did, Nathan began to deny it with his head.

'Am I stupid or what? Of course, a projectile made of the energy they use to become stronger wouldn't damage the giants. I need to find another way to consume all that energy.' Nathan thought as he toward the tree.

Cries of pain and explosions sounded around Nathan while he focused entirely on finding a way to deal with their objectives. The amount of enemies has increased to the point where the casters had to redirect their fire toward them again, leaving Nathan alone to deal with the green light.

"How the hell are so many enemies appearing? There has to be a limit to how much vegetation can make grow, right?" one of the cultivators asked his companions as he threw a fire projectile against a giant.

"It is as if the green light only had the function of growing vegetation and strengthening it." replied another cultivator.

At that moment, Nathan had another idea. If the green light worked so well, making vegetation stronger, it could also work in other things.

Nathan turned toward the tree and tried to place his hands on the stone sphere's surface, but a layer of green light stopped him from doing it.

'That's right, that's what I wanted.' Nathan thought as a smile appeared on his face.

Activating his bracelets again, he stole green light from the stone's surface, but this time, instead of using it to attack, he sent it toward his dantian.

The green light entered his dantian, where the energy lost its nature and characteristics before being distributed to his body.

After the first wave of energy, Nathan felt his cultivation level increase slightly. It wasn't a significant difference, but it was a difference after all.

But after the first wave of energy came the second. And then the third. And the fourth.

As he got used to cultivating with the green light, his speed and cultivation increased.

When he entered the rift, Nathan had just breakthrough to the ninth stage, but because of what he was doing, he had already advanced half of that stage in a few minutes.

Pain ran through all his body as if it were about to break in half, clearly a sign that a person's cultivation level shouldn't advance so fast.

Even with that, things weren't close to slowing.

On the contrary, his cultivation speed was growing with every second.

Suddenly, a group of black clouds formed inside Axel's world above Castelo. Those black clouds traveled through the stone archway and entered the rift before flying in Nathan's direction.

The moment the clouds were above Nathan, his cultivation level reached the peak of the ninth rank, and a mental key appeared inside his head. He didn't know why it was there, but he knew what it was, its purpose and how to use it.

Without doubting for even a second, he concentrated on that key, and the black clouds released the first lightning strike above him.

The tribulation to reach the second rank had begun.