Once the bell inside the Goddess temple started ringing, all the elves inside the side temple stopped talking.

At each side of the gate, one female elf in a temple robe walked inside.

One of them bowed, “Everyone, follow me!”

The elves knew what this was about, so they quickly lined themselves up according to their hierarchy. Abel was put at the very front under the arrangement of Queen Luisa and the other big druids.

As they walked into the temple’s main hall, Abel saw that ten elves standing beneath the altar. At the side, there was a band. One of the elves played the harp. The sound stretched to all the walls and ceilings. The sound of the organ, drum, and other instruments were there to harmonize with the harp. It was truly a soul-wrenching melody that made the experience that much more sacred.

Of course, this place wasn’t just sacred on the surface. Abel could feel that the shadow contained divine power, and this divine power was sent to every corner for everyone to feel the greatness of the spirit that was the host.

Abel stood with the other elves. There was a 5-meter wide pathway between the lines. Then, just when he thought that there wouldn’t be coming, more and more elves came in from the main hall’s door. These were the lower-ranking elves. Soon, there were about several hundred elves that made up for the elite class of the entire elven race.

Abel could spot the three elven potion masters and a few very famous advanced potion masters. He also saw some other important members of the family, but he didn’t recognize anyone else. Anyways, once everyone stood still, the harp changed into another tune. Ten big druids came in by the gate. They were accompanying Lady Sainte, who was wearing her golden robe.

Lorraine had a light golden gown on her head. She had a scepter in her hand. Her entire body was overflowing with a sacred presence. As she slowly took a step in, all the elves lowered themselves. Abel was slower than the other ones, and since he didn’t want to stand out too much, he caught onto the cue and lowered his body as well.

Lorraine started singing to the tune of the band. She was singing a sacred hymn that the high elves knew for their whole history. Its lyrics were about the bravery, sympathetic love, grace, and virtue of the Moon Goddess. Everything was dedicated to praising her for her existence. What surprised Abel was that the worship power was starting to dance as Lorraine continued to sing. Usually, the regular elves wouldn’t see this, but the worship power was starting to take form in all kinds of colors and shapes as they were in the air.

The main temple, for a second there, was like the world of a spirit. All the elves indulged themselves, enjoying the light and the music. Lorraine kept singing until she stepped on the altar. When she did, she became silent and left the big druids that were with her. She was walked alone, and she knelt alone in front of the Moon Goddess statue. The light emitted out of the statue shone on her face, making her look even more sacred than she normally seemed.

At one side, three female elves in their special robes came over, each carrying a plate.

Druid Joseph whispered, “They, Master Bennett, are the three elders of the temple. I almost didn’t recognize them for a second there, but they seemed to have gotten a lot younger.”

Abel could see, too. The three elders looked like they were female elves who just reached early adulthood. If it weren’t for the presence they were emitting, he would’ve just thought that they were not that much older than Lorraine. He also thought the same of the ten big druids. They all had a young face, but he knew that there they were many years older.

Abel thought to himself, “Did Lorraine buy the whole temple with my potions?”

Honestly, apart from the “beauty potion” Abel synthesized with his Horadric Cube, Abel never thought that there was anything else that would’ve won any influence inside the temple. But, well, he wasn’t sure, so he wasn’t going to guess.

The three elders had three types of fruits on the three plates. They were all spirit fruits grown under mana-dense environments. The threads of natural essence would spread outward constantly, indicating that they were as ripe as they could get.

After being placed on the platform in front of the statue, the three elders bowed to pay tribute. Two of them backed away, and that’s when Abel noticed something. Lorraine’s presence was almost merging with the presence of the statue. Her entire body was already surrounded by worship power.

The grand elder announced, “Under the protection of our great Moon Goddess, we elves have defended ourselves against the evil spirits. We have paid a heavy price, yes, but the Moon Goddess will remember the names of all those who fought for our kind. Their spirits will be brought to heaven for eternal rest!”

Many of the elves here, Abel imagined, had participated in the great war. Some of them had their families were killed. Some of them fought for their tribes. Some lost their homes. It was a very traumatic thing for most of them. After hearing the announcement of the grand elder, many began to cry. For the past millennium, this was the first time that so up to a thousand druids had been lost in a single war.

The grand elder began to speak the names of the ones that were lost. Every time a new name was announced, it would feel like their spirits were truly sent to heaven.

“On the holy birthday, we praise the Moon Goddess and devote our faith to her. The Moon Goddess will become stronger, and may her protection be always with us!”

The elves responded, “May the Moon Goddess protect us!”

The grand elder nodded towards the harp band, “Let us all sing the holy hymn!”

Followed by the sound of the harp, all the elves began to sing. Abel was the most embarrassed one among all of them. This was the first time he’s been here, and he’s never taught how to sing this hymn. So all he could do was to pretend that he was singing along without making a sound. But, of course, the big druids would still try to sense him where he was at. He was just too important to ignore.

Druid Joseph and Druid Poly were ashamed of themselves for not telling their master early enough. Honestly, however, they were not the ones to blame. It wasn’t even Butler Meyer’s fault. The elves were known to worship the Moon Goddess, so the holy hymn was more of something ingrained into their culture from an early age. None of them had any idea that Abel was a fake elf, so no one ever thought it was necessary to teach Abel how to sing along.

While the elves were singing, a divine power from the statue was sent towards Lorraine. While kneeling in front of the statue, Lorraine had the scepter in her hand shining a green light right from the tip containing a green gemstone. When the light stone reached the top of the hall, it exploded. Abel knew that this would happen, but his instincts told him not to react. In fact, the elves beside him all had a cheerful look on their faces rather than being concerned.

This divine power contained enough energy to launch a deadly attack, even to Abel. Abel thought that he should still have his guard up, but that idea turned out to be unnecessary. When the green light shone across the room, it eventually was turned into a single seed that was growing rapidly midair. The roots would grow downward while the bark and branches would extend themselves upward. In just a few minutes, only energy appeared. Then, the leaves started to shake, and energy started to flow downward with them.

As though some precise calculation was done, these leaves matched the number of elves that were inside. More miraculously, each one of them fell on each of the elves’ foreheads. A leaf was starting to fall on Abel’s head as well. The leaf turned itself into a life force when it made contact with him, and he was very quick to tell that it was meant to increase his lifespan by one year.

“That’s so many years this spirit is giving!” he thought to himself. There were about several elves here, and all of them had their lifespan extended. That was a true miracle right there. For some of the elves here, it wasn’t just able to live longer. Some of them also had their sickness removed.

Abel didn’t know about something, actually. Not all holy birthdays would feature a divine blessing. Today was just his lucky day, and he happened to be here to have the privilege to have a leaf dropping on his head.

He realized that the energy tree was nothing but a pile of the purest of natural energy. Most regular elves would be petrified to see this. From their view, it would look like a massive tree that was standing above them, and everything on it was falling. The truth, however, was that energy was descending on them and into their souls. Like Abel, once the energy made its way into his body, it went straight towards his druid spirit and was purified instantly. Actually, the energy was just so pure that the druid spirit didn’t bother doing any filtering process. Soon, Abel’s druid rank was pushed to the peak of rank 21. This was unheard of, as there was supposed to be a massive gap between level 21 and level 22 druids.

A promotion qi began to rise out of Abel. He didn’t even have to absorb any natural energy from outside his system this time. There was just so much inside of him that he could promote himself just by not moving. Of course, no elves watching could understand this. To most of them, promotion was always a lot more tedious. What they didn’t understand, however, was that Master Bennett took all the tree except its leaves. The leaves were just for the guests, while he was free to take the bark, the branches, roots, and pretty much all the other parts.

Now, the big druids were just wondering something else. Why was it like Master Bennett, someone who couldn’t sing the hymn properly, could receive enough divine blessing to rank up like this? Was it to do with his connection with Lorraine, or was it something else? This was a 21 to 22 promotion, and most of them remembered how recent it was when Abel just became a big druid. Most of them were rank 21 themselves, and they were many centuries old already.

Anyways, Abel just felt a promotion of his druid spirit. He was a rank 22 dragon druid now. This would also bring out the promotion of his main spirit. However, since he hadn’t yet brought out the peak strength of his lightning, freezing, and fire element spell capabilities, the progress he was making was not yet sufficient in boosting his law-defying wizard ranking.