“Two tents, you mean...”
Miss Felianna looked at her two students; her expression became rich in this moment, no longer that terrifying numbness.
Shad looked at Miss Felianna's face. Even though her lips were pale and her complexion was poor, she possessed a unique charm that ordinary people could never have.
“In my era, I paid a bottle of Merman's Elixir of Immortality to find the Order of Light-Guiding Hermits, and subsequently obtained incomplete ritual data. This is an exceptionally dangerous god-summoning ritual. You have forgotten one thing: in reality, the ritual has already begun.”
The firelight illuminated the faces of the four "people," and Shad's slow, low voice continued to question. The crackling bonfire caused everyone's shadows to flicker; the four people stood in four directions, three pitch-black shadows extending into the distance, while only the shadow of the Giant Tree Witch beneath the tree was projected onto the trunk of the towering ancient tree.
“Miss Felianna, you said you lost a large batch of ritual materials. Can you confirm whether the materials were lost, or if they were already consumed?”
The witch could not answer; her memories here had also begun to become chaotic.
“Miss Felianna, you said the ritual requires the participation of witches possessing the powers of Nature, Time, and Space. You prepared powerful relics to substitute for the witches, but the power of the relics was absorbed by the forest. May I ask, are you certain the power of the relics was absorbed, or that the ritual has already begun?”
They still could not answer.
“Who is it?”
Miss Felianna's lips trembled.
“It certainly isn't you; you are a real person, that is beyond doubt. I once suspected this lady.”
Shad pointed toward the Moon Witch, who looked at him with slight confusion.
It was as if Shad's arrival had brought new strength to the witches; following his words, their numb souls were regaining vitality.
“I suspected you because the ritual requires a witch of Nature, and the existence of the Giant Tree Witch is logical. But later I asked a question, and she told me that the original position of the Librarian was, like us, the Moon. From your era to ours, most Librarians have been the Moon.”
Shad looked toward the Giant Tree Witch. She sat beneath the trunk, looking at Shad with a serene smile.
Shad bowed his head slightly in respect.
“The ritual is divided into two parts. The first part accounts for eighty percent: using the ritual to summon the god. If one only wishes to meet a deity without any other purpose, the ritual stops here, and the god is then sent away.”
Miss Felianna and the Moon Witch looked together at the "witch" beneath the tree. She gently removed her hood. Pale green long hair fluttered slightly in the forest's night breeze. There were some golden scars upon her hair, marks that were exceptionally brilliant.
“The ritual—Contacting the [Gate of Flare]—is a direct summons of a deity and does not require preparing a human body as a vessel for a Saint. This leads to a terrible outcome if one forgets to send the deity away to end the first step, yet does not proceed to the second step of the ritual.”
It was not that the deity was unable to leave on its own, but rather the specificity of this ritual. When a mortal summons a Great One, they must send the Great One away; this is the most basic contract of the ritual. Only by proceeding to the second stage can the entire ritual be completed, allowing the deity to stay or leave at will.
He nodded again toward the "Giant Tree Witch."
“Good evening, Giant Tree Witch. Or should I say, Princess Tavelle... or perhaps, the Old God—the Gate of Flare.”
Her current form of existence was very special. The reason she had not harmed the mortals upon her appearance was that the true god was not the image of the witch before them, but the giant tree behind her, or perhaps within that tree.
This could be understood from *The Kiss of the Tree*.
Miss Felianna's party actually consisted of only her and the Moon Witch. They had broken into the Forest of a Thousand Trees and performed the ritual, but after summoning the deity, they forgot what they had done because of the nature of this forest.
The god had accompanied them beneath this tree, beside this bonfire, using its body to carve out this clearing in the forest. It had not reminded them of what had happened, but silently helped them survive in a dangerous place. Perhaps this was simply how a god should be, or... it just wanted some amusement.
If the human form the deity assumed wasn't so beautiful, this would actually be a horror story.
But this also explained Shad's other doubts—for instance, how the Giant Tree Witch almost never spoke and rarely participated in conversations. Also, before he left last time, the three witches had used chanting to tell him the story of the deity, allowing him to directly obtain the spell [Key of the Gate].
This was completely illogical. No matter how powerful witches were, they were still just witches; even with relics in hand, there was no reason they could directly grant Shad power. Shad had originally thought he was just lucky and sensitive to the power of the [Gate of Flare]. Now that he thought about it, the real reason was that the deity had personally narrated its own story.
This was just like the [Innocent Creator] of the past, who allowed Shad to obtain the spell [False Undead] by telling its own story.
“Good evening, man from the future.”
The deity responded softly. As golden light-traces appeared on the pale green hair, Shad found himself unable to look directly at Her.
However, he was glad that this time he was not called the "child from the future."
“So everything is clear now. Miss Felianna, you have completed the first part of the ritual; you are now missing the second part.”
Shad waved the *Complete Collection of Ancient Draerion Fairy Tales* in his hand.
“*The Kiss of the Tree*. The second step of the ritual is this.”
The Moon Witch felt terror at the realization that a god was sitting opposite her, freezing in place, unsure of what to do. Miss Felianna, like Shad, greeted the deity respectfully, then quietly leaned closer to her student.
Shad opened the book to the chapter on *The Kiss of the Tree*.
“My version of the story is very interesting. Princess Tavelle coexisted with the ancient tree and eventually entered the gate upon the trunk, obtaining the power of the ancient tree. The ritual is very clear: we need to let the Princess enter this great tree to complete the final god-summoning ritual.”
“Yes, that's right,” Miss Felianna said hesitantly; she seemed to recall something.
“But I am curious. My apologies, Old God, but is the story of *The Kiss of the Tree* a ritual, and is it also a story you experienced? Was the ancient tree that gave Princess Tavelle power the Father of Infinite Trees?”
Shad maintained an expression of curiosity. The deity looked at him with a smile. The wind blew across the clearing, and the canopy rustled overhead. It was so peaceful here that when the "witch" beneath the tree spoke, that tranquil voice almost merged into the quiet night.
“Your real question should be: whether I am a mortal who became a god.”
She looked at him, he looked at her, she looked at her, and she looked at him.
The Moon Witch looked at Shad in shock, and Miss Felianna shook her head and closed her eyes. Shad did not find the answer in the expression of the academy's founder, while the deity watched it all.
The song of the witches seemed to still echo here.
【Please softly call our names, please ask your doubts~】
It was she, singing softly in his ear.