Silence followed.
John opened his eyes to find himself standing at the base of the Root's colossal tree again. The light was softer now, its authority subdued. The void had transformed into a plain of shimmering petals, each one drifting upward like fragments of dawn.
He exhaled slowly, and the breath became wind. Wherever it passed, new growth unfurled—grass, trees, even small motes of sentient light. Yet none of it felt forced; the world simply continued what he began.
"So this is… the first breath of the world," he murmured.
For a moment, he simply stood there, listening. The Root no longer pulsed with judgment. It hummed like a heartbeat beside his own.
Finally as the gold lines fused back into his body, the world stoped obeying him. Still respectful of him and resonating, but the dominion receded back into his potential.
Then, far in the distance, he saw seven faint flames hovering in the void, each one pulsing with a color of sin. Three were flowing around the four orderly flames.
John's gaze hardened. "The last of the sins."
The trial was not over. The silence between worlds trembled, and the ground beneath his feet rippled like liquid light, drawing him toward the next descent.
He closed his eyes and stepped forward, his voice low and resolute. "Tessa… just a little longer." He clenched his fist as pride flowed out of his form freely. His aura claimed, no matter the trial, no matter the struggle he would live on and see Tessa.
The Root responded not with words, but with the faintest echo of approval—like the rustle of leaves in the wind of creation.
And then the world inverted once more, pulling him into the next trial—the crucible where his soul would face itself, and the sins that even gods feared to master.
The light of creation folded inward until it devoured itself.
In its wake came silence a pure, eternal silence that stretched beyond all comprehension. John felt weightless, drifting in the void. His body was gone, making it easy to tell the only his consciousness was dragged into the next trial.
Then the dark began to shift.
Waves rippled outward, forming fragments of glass that floated like dying stars. They turned slowly, and within each one shimmered a world—brief, incomplete, and familiar. One showed Tessa alive and whole, her laughter echoing beneath a crimson sky. Another showed himself enthroned upon a mountain of kneeling gods. In yet another, he saw himself dead, but the world flourishing in his absence.
Each fragment pulsed with life, they demanded attention and promised meaning.
He felt his soul lean toward them before he even realized it.
"Curious, isn't it?"
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, melodic yet heavy, like honey poured into stone. "You could have been any of these, John of the Azure Harvest. Hero. God. Lover. Martyr. But you chose… this path. The slow, uncertain one."
John turned slowly, though turning was meaningless here. The darkness itself reshaped around him, forming a figure that looked almost like him—taller, sharper, radiating a silver-green aura that hummed with power. His own face, perfected.
Envy smiled. "You've always wondered what it would be like to have enough," it said. "Enough strength to heal her. Enough insight to rewrite the heavens. Enough faith to never doubt. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
John said nothing. The illusions trembled, and one shard drifted closer—a world where he stood beside Tessa, her light restored, their dominion united. The sight ached like an open wound.
"I could give you that," Envy murmured. "I could make this truth. You only need to let go of the weight you call struggle. Let go of balance. Why walk the line when you could stand above it?"
John's hand twitched. The warmth of that world bled into him—Tessa's laugh, the touch of her fingers against his. It was perfect. It was too perfect.
He closed his eyes and exhaled. "This kind of perfection is nothing but a cage."
Envy tilted its head. "Is that what you tell yourself when you fail?"
The shards began to orbit faster, their glow intensifying. Within them, he saw every version of himself that had succeeded. The John who had ascended to godhood and restored Tessa with a single breath. The John who conquered the realms. The John who never faltered, never doubted, never loved too much or too little.
Each one looked at him with a pity that cut deeper than any blade.
The void pulsed. Envy's voice softened, threading itself into the rhythm of his heartbeat. "You've suffered so much. You've given everything. Would it really be wrong to envy the you who did it right?"
John's breath hitched. The illusions were too vivid now. He could feel their triumphs as if they were his own. He felt the satisfaction of omnipotence, the joy of an unbroken love. It seeped into him like nectar and poison both.
For a moment—just a moment—he wanted to stay.
But the mark of creation on his chest flared, searing through the illusion. The false warmth evaporated, leaving behind the cold taste of truth.
He spoke quietly, each word steady despite the tremor in his chest. "You're not offering peace. You're offering paralysis. I'll never bow before anyone, my life is mine to determine"
The figure frowned, its smile cracking like porcelain. "Peace is paralysis only to those who need the fight to feel alive."
John's eyes sharpened. "Maybe. But struggle defines meaning. Without it, we stagnate. Without it, Tessa wouldn't have become who she is."
The illusionary godhood faltered, the shards flickering with distortion. Within one, he glimpsed the truth behind them. Nothing, but hollow projections feeding on his yearning. The perfection they offered was sustained by the erasure of choice.
Envy's expression twisted. Its aura darkened, bleeding emerald into black. "You envy them still. I can taste it. You hide it under noble words, but you crave what they have. You want to win."
John didn't deny it. "Of course I do."
The confession rang through the void like a bell. For an instant, everything froze—the illusions, the figure, even the sound of thought.
He took a step forward. "Envy isn't wrong for wanting more. It's wrong for forgetting why we want it. You're not my enemy. You're my mirror."
The figure snarled, its voice breaking into a chorus of his own tones rage, grief, pride, and longing. All layered into a single shriek. The shards shattered outward, forming a cyclone of refracted light. The copies of him within them began to move, hundreds of Johns emerging from the glass storm, each wielding a fragment of his Daos.
They charged with reckless abandon.!John stood still merely watching their charge with amusement m. His aura dimmed, shrinking to a soft blue glow. He didn't draw on any source of power, he remembered it. Every lesson, every sacrifice, every heartbeat Tessa had shared with him. The memory became a gravity that the illusions couldn't approach without unraveling.
When the first reflection reached him, its blade met empty air. He touched its chest gently. The illusion dissolved into motes of pale green light.
"I don't reject you," he said, eyes soft. "I accept you."
The storm wavered. Dozens of reflections hesitated. The voice of Envy fractured again, uncertain. "Acceptance… is stagnation."
John shook his head. "Acceptance is evolution."
One by one, he walked among them, touching the reflections, embracing them as they dissolved. Each time, their power flowed into him—not as strength, but as understanding. The storm thinned until only one figure remained: the first Envy, the perfected version of himself.
It watched him warily, eyes flickering between resentment and longing. "If you accept me, then you accept weakness. You'll never ascend if you keep carrying this… humanity."
John stepped closer until they stood face to face, mirror to mirror. "You're wrong. Humanity isn't weakness. It's what makes ascension worth it."
He reached forward. His hand passed through the figure's chest like light through smoke.
For a heartbeat, they merged. Every emotion Envy had embodied his resentment , longing, despair, admiration flooded into him. It hurt. It burned. But beneath the pain was release.
The void brightened. The fragments of glass melted into threads of pure white essence, weaving themselves around him.
Envy's final whisper echoed through him, soft, almost relieved. "Then carry me… without chains." The light swallowed the realm whole.
The white threads of essence recoiled from his skin, then breathed as one living thing. They wrapped around John's heart, flowed into his veins, and began to carve runes of acceptance on the inside of his soul. The void around him held its breath.
He felt every possibility he had ever envied, a power beyond reckoning, a flawless dominion, a love never tested now fold into him. Not as trophies, but as memories tempered by the will to live.
The shard in his chest pulsed. Tessa's light. His purpose. They remained intact.
"You carry more than I could give," the voice of Envy echoed, faint now. "But you will never have what I had…"
John's voice was soft. "I never wanted what you had. I wanted what we could become."
A flicker of envy and respect mingled in those words as the final coil of essence dissolved into the runes.
The void exhaled. The figure of Envy blinked, then bowed its head. "Then you are worthy." Light gathered, its meaning prevailed. As every shard of the illusionary realm collapsed into a single point. A mark bloomed on John's forehead, shimmering gold and emerald.
He raised his hand, and the mark spread outward, across the void, folding space, healing it. The shards became still, the worlds they contained stopped shifting, and for a moment, this place was still.
John exhaled deeply, for the first time truly alone in the silence. And then, a pulse echoed through the field of emptiness.
The system voice rang out smoothly.
[Trial Complete: Mastery of Envy achieved. Dao of Envy 2nd rank (sovereign) achieved]
John's aura expanded like a ripple in a lake. Green fire dismantled and merged with the violet flames making the color darknen more, violet still present, but flickers of black began spreading from the base. The mark on his chest and forehead glowed in harmony. His Daos re-aligned, the power of envy no longer an ungoverned desire. Rather it transformed into a channel of honest reflection, charity, and kindness. Enhancing the love he felt for Tessa even more as he recognized all the experiences they had started to share.
From the breakfast together in the mornings, to her watching while he trained. Eating her cooking, cuddling, farming, and fishing. She had transformed his life from a lonely and bleak existence burdened by the weight of the seven deadly sins. To a life of prosperity, harmony, and connection.
He felt lighter. Not because he had less, but because he carried his emotions with a more refined clarity.
He rose onto one of the glass-shards that still floated nearby. From there he surveyed the void realm of illusion. The shards hovered like constellations in a sky of nothing, their worlds paused in mid-promise.
An emptiness remained, but it was not hollow. It was gaining more clarity though as he unconsciously shifted into the mindset of a sovereign more and more.
"Onward," he said to the silence, then stepped from the shard.
The ground beneath him shifted. The shards dissolved into threads that wove into a door of dim light. As he crossed it, the next chamber revealed. He sensed the weight of the last two sins gathering ahead Greed and Sloth.
They entwined not only as adversaries but as partners in corruption.
He did not hesitate and with one last look back, he saw the faint reflection of Envy bowing to him. He nodded once and then the door closed, holding no more promise of rewards.
The realm re-formed as he stood on a plateau of dark glass, sky above like molten mercury. Shadows gathered on the horizon, long and patient.
In that sky, two flames emerged—one yellow as gold, the other deep blue-black as the void before existence.
Greed and Sloth.
John inhaled. The mark on his forehead glowed. "I will not crave without purpose. I will not rest without reason."
The blue-black flame stretched forth tendrils of nothingness, inviting him to lie down and forget the war.
The gold flame beckoned with voices of promise—limitless worlds, endless Tessa restored, the burden of his sacrifices erased.They whispered tantalizing ideas as he listened.
As he stepped forward, the space around him transformed again into the boundless void of illusion—but now layered with the memory of everything he had defeated so far, the energy of his Daos, the hum of creation and destruction newly aligned.
He knew this stage would decide if his weapon the backbone of his power and his authority would truly awaken.
He placed his hand into his chest directly over the mark. Flames of life and destruction intertwined beneath his skin, solidifying. A weapon took shape: his will, sharpened by his trials, ready to be forged into action.
The ground cracked, as a roar resonated from the gold flame of Greed, from the blue-black flame of Sloth and from every fragment of his past felt.
John stood still, as the void watched waiting for him to let his guard down, and when he did the first of the tendrils struck.