“Nngh…”

Quest completed: You have escaped the Black Serpent’s bind.

Conrad ignored the message window and glanced around.

‘How did I get out? Did someone from Lorvall come here?’

Conrad shook his head. If that was the case, he would’ve been notified.

“Then, who is it?”

He then realized there were millions of dead snakes around. It was surely an Alpha from the sealed Levara tribe. It was only at stage 1, but to destroy it at this level was beyond believable.

He then felt a strong energy radiance coming out from above and ran out.

“Hmph.”

Sian punched the core and the infested area reduced each time. He couldn’t smack it too hard as it would destroy the core, but this Kikero was able to withstand the weakened punch. It was also absorbing the tree’s lifeforce so Sian was having a hard time.

‘There’re some weird races here.’

It seemed like this black smog was also a weird race. After a while of continuous smacking, the infestation diminished and so did Kikero’s power.

The smog was still smiling.

“What’s so funny?”

“Huh?”

At that moment, the smog boiled up instantly and evaporated. The place was now left with the core that had used all of its energy. The mysterious smog destroyed the core before it completely died out.

“Ugh… it even self-explodes.”

Sian was frustrated but he realized it wasn’t his fault that the tree was destroyed since it was going to be destroyed anyway if he didn’t do anything. The person who watched from behind thought differently.

Conrad was dumbfounded when he found Sian punching the core. And there it was, the destroyed core.

“What have you… did you just destroy Ciculus?”

“NO!”

, the Ciculus Tree of the Karltonheim Estate, was now in an entirely different state from any other day. Its sky-covering leaves were dried out and all the branches were damaged by the fight between Conrad and Kartonheim. The tree trunk and its roots seemed to be intact, but they were not. The core that allowed the tree to grow was destroyed, so the roots were losing its power and the trunk that was full of Akra energy from the environment was now empty.

Above the roots were the nobles and the commoners regaining their strength as they plopped down at random places. Their Akras were taken out of their bodies forcefully so a lot of people almost fainted and they needed time to recover.

There were four people watching over this.

Duke Karltonheim, Duke Conrad, Sian, and Stiel. They were gathered at the top of the tree.

‘I’ve seen her somewhere…’

Sian knew the girl from before, but it was an entirely different being now. He decided to ask later and concentrated on Karltonheim and Conrad’s discussion.

“What happened…”

“Duke Karltonheim, are you okay?” Conrad asked. He had heard about the banished race, Gerna, for the past five years, but it was his first time actually seeing an infested one. The status window showed that the infestation was lifted but Karltonheim didn’t seem too well.

“I… I’m okay. But I’m not sure what happened.”

Karltonheim was dumbfounded. He didn’t know there was a race that could control a noble. It was shocking. If this race controlled a Duke, then that meant it could control the whole human race.

Conrad smiled bitterly.

“You’ll get to know about it as time goes on, but this is a special case. I think all of you here have the right to hear, so I’ll explain.”

Conrad glanced at Sian and Stiel, but he figured it’d going to be okay. They didn’t seem like the type to go away anyway.

“The race that controlled you… is called Gerna.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Of course. Lorvall hid their existence.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s complicated… but they were holding them back well,” Conrad continued.

The continent was full of interesting species 3000 years ago. There were a lot of species like Murakans, Swarms, Graans, or Barkhans. Humans did not care about the other species back then so there was a various number of species.

But Gerna was a special one.

They did not have a body. They traveled around in a black smog-like state. But they hated roaming in the air so they always found somewhere to settle down and control a species. It didn’t matter what species it was. They always invaded and controlled one when something was available.

A Gerna invasion wasn’t all that bad as it made the host to grow in power quickly. Gerna guided the host to become stronger as it was good to have a strong host, but Gerna had full control over the host.

They were all over the place on the continent, but it was not widely known. This species didn’t do much even after taking control, so nobody noticed them. They just continued to increase their numbers.

The strangest part about this species was that as their host became stronger, they also became stronger. They could not invade and control others who were stronger than them so they started out with the weak and grew stronger to control stronger targets as time went on.

That was when the Lorvall family realized that the Gerna had spread among many humans. Upon closer examination, they found these Gerna were everywhere throughout the continent.

Lorvall did not want them. They weren’t doing much now, but these were parasites that devoured the living soul and controlled it. Lorvall wanted the human race to be strongest so the Gerna was a bad sign.

That was when Lorvall decided to drive them out. However, it wasn’t easy as it was spread out too wide through the land. So they decided to do two things.

Eradicate parasites or drive them out before being infected.

Never allow them to invade the human bodies again.

Lorvall then gathered all who weren’t infested and began executing their plan. It was a new .