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“Your father is right, rest well and resume your position as Duchess as soon as possible. Your old father needs to go back to his retirement after all.” Unlike what the others imagined, Kastil agreed with him and backed off, causing a question to appear in Selena’s father’s mind.

“...Yes. I’ll be back.” Selena spoke before saying goodbye to Kastil. After he left and Selena was left alone with her father, she collapsed on the floor and started crying compulsively.

“Daughter, what happened? Are you feeling worse?” His father asked confused, thinking that Kastil’s cure hadn’t completely worked.

“No, it’s not that. Just hug me, please.” Selena threw herself into her father’s arms before he could say anything, crying loudly as shook. Her father thought the trauma had returned and just hugged her silently, holding back his own tears.

Selena cried herself to sleep, finding temporary peace in her father’s arms.

*******

A week later.

Selena finally mustered up the courage to go back to the bud and retake her position as Duchess. Kastil had given her a week’s deadline for her to come back to him and Selena used until the last second to try to think of a way to save herself, but she couldn’t think of anything.

.....

As she walked towards the bud, her footsteps were heavy like a convict walking towards death row, but she knew her fate would be even worse. The guards around the bud, the employees around, everything was working normally.

She greeted the guards and headed towards the throne room, where Kastil was waiting for her. As she was removed from her position due to mental issues, he needed to make sure she was able to return. None of the other dukes questioned that thought, the only thing they questioned was Kastil’s ability to judge someone, but they didn’t express that thought.

Upon entering the throne room, Selena froze for a second to see that there was no one in the room, only Kastil on her throne, but she forced her legs to move anyway. She walked to the front of the throne and knelt down, before speaking in a voice so cold it would be impossible to match with ice magic.

“I came as promised. Take me to him.” Selena didn’t bother to keep up appearances and just demanded that he fulfill his end of the bargain.

Kastil snapped her fingers and the roots in front of Selena split open, revealing her fiancé’s unconscious body. He was a young elf in his 150s, with blond hair and brown eyes. As a member of the army, he naturally had a trained body, but lean like most elves.

Selena used mana vision and realized he was fine, just unconscious and tried to run towards him, but Kastil released a fraction of her aura and forced her to the ground again.

“I told you I would give him a painless death, I never said you could say goodbye.” Kastil didn’t bother rising from his throne as he spoke. With a snap of his fingers, a thin layer of -200°C ice covered his skin, the extreme cold draining all the heat from his body and killing him instantly.

“There, I kept my promise. You’ve already confirmed the death, so now it’s your turn to fulfill your part.” The roots engulfed his body before Selena could start crying over his death. Kastil suppressed her aura again, expecting in anticipation that Selena would fall to the floor in tears, but she boldly stood up and faced him.

“You will pay for this. I swear I will find a way to destroy your life.” Selena glared at him, her surroundings distorting slightly as the fire, dark and earth element in the world energy were drawn into her body.

Before she had time to cry and understand her fiancé’s death, Kastil had already disposed of the body, demanding that she give herself to him. Selena didn’t have time to feel sad, so the anger that followed was twice as strong. She stopped caring what happened to herself, just wishing she could rip that damn tree to shreds.

“It would be fun to see you try, but I’m going to kill a familiar of yours with every attempt, still want to play?” Kastil asked chuckling, her smile widening at the sight of the world’s energy calming down and Selena gritting her teeth in frustration.

“Good. Now let me explain what’s going to happen from now on. You’re going to retake your position as duchess and you’re going to fall in love with me for healing you. You’re going to move into the bud next and then you’re going to be mine. The stupid riffraff will applaud and wish us well, while the slightly smarter ones will just look down and do nothing.”

Kastil didn’t care if Selena agreed with him or not, thinking only of how fun the next few centuries with her would be.

**********

The next few months passed quickly. Selena was forced to follow Kastil’s script, pretending to be in love with him and soon they made their relationship official. A celebration was held across the country as the few who knew the truth felt sorry for Selena. His family was shocked by the news and tried to intervene, but to no avail.

Before Kastil could do anything, Selena personally persuaded them to stop interfering. She didn’t explain the actual situation for fear of getting them involved, but she made it look like she had really fallen in love and intended to use that chance to get closer to him. Her family was surprised by her actions, but Selena was always a passionate person and looking back on what happened to her, it’s actually possible that she fell in love with Kastil.

Most were satisfied with this explanation, but their father was not among them. As the former duke, he knew Kastil’s true personality, so he tried in every way to convince her to give up, but Selena didn’t give in. He had no choice but to sigh and accept, but he kept an eye on the inner workings of the bud.

Selena’s life after moving into the bud wasn’t the hell she imagined. Kastil considered the entire sea of trees to be her domain, so he didn’t care what she did as long as she came back in the end. He still took it at night, but Selena stopped worrying about herself after a while.

She struggled for the first few months, but after a while, it lost its meaning. No matter how hard she fought, Selena was unable to overcome Kastil’s power. Escape was also impossible. There were no teleportation crystals in Evergreen, as Kastil considered them impure things as they did not originate from this world.

The flame of hate in his mind also faded. The impotence and lack of care for her own body made Selena stop caring what happened to her. Selena went into a deep depression and the feeling of emptiness she felt only increased.

She left her position as Duchess, despite numerous problems and the power vacuum her departure would cause. Selena locked herself inside her room in the sprout, robotically eating anything the servants brought her. A few weeks later, Selena started to get sick and nauseous, so Kastil used a simple diagnostic spell, but the result made him freeze.

Selena was pregnant. This should have been almost impossible, but it happened. She was in the third month of pregnancy, with a child from the Yggdrasil bud. This fact had major implications at national levels. Spirits were normally born from magic trees that accumulated mana and gained consciousness, but they could still breed with other species, although the chances of success were incredibly low.

The different biologies would cause miscarriages most of the time, but it was still possible for the fetus to survive, although the cause was still unknown. The baby born between this couple would be of the race of one of the parents, in the case of the spirits, they would be born treants or dryads.

Treants and dryads were born like normal babies with green skin and developed plant characteristics as they grew. They were considered the beginning stages of a spirit and lived on average to be 100 years old, before their body completely turned into a tree and could not move anymore and they learned to project their souls out of the body as an avatar, if becoming true spirits.

But that had never happened to the Yggdrasil sprout before. If the baby was born an elf, he would be immensely powerful, but if he was a treant or dryad, he had the potential to become a god like Kastil.

The thought of having another Sprout of Yggdrasil sent Kastil’s expectations through the roof. His plans for expansion and dominance that had been stalled for the next few hundred years could finally be realized.

Kastil had long worked to take the entire continent for himself and subject all other races to him, so he used the power of Yggdrasil’s sprout to expand the sea of trees to the size it is today, but that came with a price. The land they were on was not able to support the rapid growth of the forest and became poor in nutrients, forcing Kastil to stop so as not to lose everything he had built.