At the time, my avatar reached for the Tree itself.

Moved by a weird feeling, I decided to help it.

- “Come, I shall let you move to a new vessel. I will be the one to use the Magical Power needed to change your Soul of place”.

- “My master, please forgive me. I do not wish for my soul to be forcefully retained after death.”

- “Why?”

- “My master would need to gather Magic from the whole world to do so. Even if master can do it, those who now have power in their veins will need it to survive in the Era of Darkness which shall ensue once the sins of my roots finally come to destroy me for my crimes.”

- “You have no crimes, and I may have other means to gather magical power for you.”

- “Forgive me master, but for master to gather such power from space itself, wouldn’t master need to wake from its Slumber? Wouldn’t master need to gather Qi from the Sun and the Darkness of space, and then spin it around itself until the faint traces of Magic Power from the nearby Darkness and planets gather around master?”

- “Yes, I would need to do so. The Magic Power I have accumulated in other places is not to be shared. I will need it in the future.”

- “Then, isn’t this a dangerous thing to do? Wouldn’t master be under risk of losing not only its primordial body, which would need much more magic than that to be replaced, and wouldn’t master risk losing magic and qi from the following explosion?”

- “Yes. Still, the chance is minimal. Trust me.”

- “Please master, don’t do it. Even if the risk is smaller than the risk of the whole Tiphoon being engulfed by the flames of the sun in a blaze of rage from the Great Sun Spirit, even if it is even smaller than the chance of master not being able to nourish the Seed of Reason in the beings who are left in this world. I desire to pay for my crimes, and I desire for master to accomplish its goal! I have no other desires. If master could concede this lowly servant a dying wish, please be it that master won’t do it!”

- “I already said it. You committed no sin.”

- “My roots dug too deep. I can feel the heat gathering from bellow. Even if I use all I have to prevent the world from dying, it would still be damage too great to Tiphoon. My crime is that, in my young days when I cared not for the beings of this world, I doomed all life in it.”

- “Nonsense. Not long after you have died, I will wake. The most adequate of the members of the lower races I have already gathered, and those will be safe from the Darkness. The higher races already have their own domains, and the demi-gods and enlightened have sheltered so many lives, there is just no way for such a thing to mater at all! Even if all life in Tiphoon disappears, and only the undead remain, as soon as a few million years have passed I shall carve Tiphoons’ surface again and bring back all of those I selected to live. You can come with me, free of guilt.”

- “Master, please. I know the deepness of my sin. Master has selected those whom it wishes to nourish. Many beings of light and darkness have done the same. But I wish to save those who are too weak and unworthy for master to put them on its eyes! This shall be a good deed, in order to atone for the great evil I have committed”.

- “Enough with this “great evil” talk! If you have committed a grave sin for digging the surface, then what to say of me, who put the array? Who created you and foresaw all that will happen? Do you pretend to say I am a sinner for sacrificing those whose lives are worthless, whose souls can’t survive after dying and would become mindless parts of nature? I do what I must, as you did as well! There is no sin.”

- “My master is the force which created me, and it is by my masters’ hands that I die. The array Master first drew to make me live is now the reason why I perish. Still, I do not blame master. Master created me with the most noble of reasons - to allow for the mortals of this world to reach true immortality, in the form of the Immortal Wheel of Reincarnation. There is nothing more I wish than this, and I do not blame master for what is to come to me.”

- “Then why die? Why say that you have sinned and must atone for it?”

- “Master, please be merciful with this foolish one! This small one just suffers too much by seeing the death of those who are of the same breed as it - mortals! The suffering of their lives, the pointlessness of their deaths, the terrible truth that they shall never come to be again! Master, please, spare this foolish one from comparing itself to Master, who sacrifice their meaningless lives to bring mean to the future generations’ lives themselves! This worthless ones’ massacre of lives won’t make the future generation immortal sooner! This is why it is a crime for me to be the reason of so much death, but not for master!”

- “I see. All you want is for the Seed to be nourished faster. I can give you that and still save you. You, yourself, will be able to nourish your Seed if you have enough time. Then you won’t need Magical Power for your own growth anymore, and will be able to help others by nourishing their own Seeds. If you decide to live, you may be able to see the day your so loved brothers and sisters achieve the immortality you so much desire for them.”

- “Master has the Seed of Reason, while I am but an irrational being. My own soul is too big, and I won’t become able to reach reason without sucking Magic dry from this world. If I live, the Era of Darkness and even other Eons after that will be extended, and the next Differentiation will come only after a longer time have passed. Many more mortal beings will have to suffer and die meaninglessly if I live.”

At that point, I decided that it would be useless to help this fool.

I could, of course, just do it myself. I could even go against its predictions and produce new waves of Magical Power, to feed Tiphoon with it and balance for this fools’ consumption of it.

However, the risk of me being destroyed would still exist, and this fool would be forever against me if I did it.

What is the point of saving a life because of mercy, because of how noble I thought it was, if this life itself is telling you it wishes to die and won’t do differently because it wouldn’t be noble of its’ own part?

Even if I admire nobility, I am not a noble knight. If this noble World Tree wishes not to be reborn because of its own nobility, there is no reason for me to save it.