The Circuit of the Sacred Tree
From the roots of the sacred tree, a colossal flow rose upward, and atop it she overlaid the most outrageous design she had learned in her previous life.
The very structure she had seized hold of while erasing the outdated circuits just moments ago.
The Cartein-style Magic System.
Luiana had already made her decision.
What remained now was not thought, but the act of actually etching that insane blueprint into reality.
The darkness within her mind opened.
First, a shadow shaped like her own body rose into view.
Behind it appeared the shadow of a colossal tree that seemed to hold up the sky itself.
And between them, countless threads connecting her shadow to the sacred tree’s shadow.
They were too thick to be called threads, yet too delicate to be called roots—streams of power.
Within those streams, the sacred tree and she were essentially one and the same.
They were linked by spirit and bound by mana.
The only limitation was that their physical forms could not stray too far from each other.
But she felt no regret.
For now, that very connection could serve as the canvas upon which her design would be drawn.
The intricate mana circuits of the magic system.
A magic system.
In her previous world, the term did not simply refer to a single circuit that stored and channeled mana.
It described an organic structure in which multiple organs worked together to create a single, unified flow for the efficient handling of mana.
A storage organ that held mana.
A circulation organ that created the flow of mana.
A conversion organ that transformed mana into phenomena.
An emission organ that released the transformed power outward.
A calculation organ that controlled all manifestation and activation.
And a safety organ that stabilized the entire system and maintained homeostasis.
Each of these organs was itself composed of mana circuits.
Therefore, a magic system was ultimately no different from one enormous mana circuit.
A mana circuit was a combination of mana lines through which power flowed and control units that regulated that flow.
Simple, unpaired components linked together to produce a single function—that was a mana circuit.
In other words, performance varied wildly depending on how one designed that combination.
Could it hold more mana?
Could it circulate it faster?
Could it convert it more precisely?
Could it emit it more stably?
Could it withstand more complex commands?
All those differences originated from the circuit design.
And to raise performance, more circuits were required.
More complex connections were needed, and more delicate calculations were necessary.
That was why even the most refined mana system inside a human body inevitably reached its limits.
There simply wasn’t enough space.
There was a limit to how much one could overlap, twist, and compress circuits.
Conversely, mana systems built into massive industrial facilities or city-scale installations were bound to perform exceptionally well.
They had ample space.
Space meant room for circuits, and room for circuits translated directly into performance.
Among them, the one universally acknowledged as the pinnacle was the Cartein-style Magic System.
When it was first unveiled, opinions had been sharply divided.
Some had called it overengineering.
It was a system with such excessive performance that it was no wonder it had been ridiculed.
It was excessively delicate, excessively precise, and demanded far too much.
It was overkill for small facilities.
Its mana efficiency was astonishing, yet the minimum activation energy required was far too high.
The power needed to awaken the circuits exceeded what ordinary facilities could handle.
As a result, the Cartein-style system itself saw little use for quite some time.
Others, however, had called it something else.
A culmination of structural innovation.
The design principles contained within it were on another level.
The storage organ’s backflow prevention structure.
The circulation organ’s multi-parallel flow design.
The conversion organ’s loss-reduction method.
The revolutionary choice not to separate the calculation and safety organs but to have them monitor each other.
Those small fragments had driven the advancement of every other mana system.
Yet even that had not been enough to make people actually adopt the Cartein-style system.
In short, it had been little more than an experimental product that served as fertilizer for the academic development of mana circuit theory.
But as magecraft advanced and people began designing city-scale magic systems, the situation changed.
The circuits that had been overly delicate for small facilities became far easier to handle on enormous blueprints.
As the physical size of the circuits grew, their difficulty actually decreased.
As the scale of the system expanded, the minimum activation energy requirement became manageable.
The principle was simple.
In a two-dimensional circuit diagram, the minimum activation energy requirement increases proportionally to the square of the scale.
However, the actual driving energy required to affect three-dimensional space increases proportionally to the cube.
And as technology progressed, those two lines eventually met somewhere.
The moment one crossed that point, the Cartein-style Magic System transformed from an inefficient monster into the most efficient giant.
A colossal mana system that surpassed human cognitive limits obeyed human commands.
The circuits of an entire city breathed as one, and large-scale phenomena shook heaven and earth.
The sight was closer to a surreal ritual than to magecraft.
Luiana had witnessed it once.
On the day monsters poured down from the collapsing tower in North Korea, the sky had split open in black fissures and the city had screamed.
Glass windows in the buildings rattled all at once, and the hunters’ defensive line had been pushed back like a wave.
The instant that line reached its effective range, the Cartein-style system installed in Seoul awakened.
It had looked like a scene from myth.
The entire city had glowed as if it were one massive circuit.
Mana surging up from underground raced along roads and between buildings, forming a single muzzle in the sky.
A colossal mana cannon. The moment it fired, night turned to day.
And in the next instant, every monster pouring from the tower was erased at once.
They were not cut. They were not burned.
They simply ceased to exist, as if pushed out of reality itself.
That day, Luiana had understood.
That system was incredible.
Even without a sword, it was a pinnacle in its own right.
That was why she had wanted to use it herself when the chance came.
A system on the scale of at least a city. One large enough to encompass an entire country.
Luiana intended to etch that very thing into the sacred tree and her own body.
Of course, even though a Dryad’s body possessed vast amounts of mana, containing the entire Cartein-style Magic System was impossible.
So she would simply split the design.
Within her mind, Luiana gazed back and forth between her body and the sacred tree.
After careful consideration, she decided to inscribe the calculation organ into her own body.
The brain that would regulate manifestation and activation, calculating flows in the instant of swordplay.
She judged that anything more would be too much.
Therefore, the rest would be drawn on the sacred tree.
On the vast canvas that was the sacred tree, Luiana overlaid the storage organ, circulation organ, conversion organ, emission organ, and safety organ.
This… should be doable.
Finally, she would use the enormous connection flowing between herself and the sacred tree to link the entire system into one.
It looked entirely feasible.
The sacred tree was enormous.
Of course, it still fell far short of a modern city’s scale.
Compared to the blueprint that had been carved beneath Seoul’s streets, through its high-rises, plazas, and roads, it was laughably small.
That meant it had to be even more precise.
Even more meticulous.
A single mistake could twist the entire circuit.
Yet Luiana did not hesitate.
Just as when she had first grasped a sword.
She knew that hesitation here would be poison.
She immediately began drawing the first circuit.
The instant the first line touched the sacred tree’s shadow, the flow twisted slightly.
Once a path was created, the natural mana that normally circulated through the tree tried to rush inward along the unfamiliar groove.
Luiana instantly severed the line and redirected the circuit’s starting point outward.
It had been a dizzying moment.
Had it been a human body, the circuit would have exploded on the spot.
Dangerous.
As expected, carving unfamiliar circuits into her own body was no easy task.
But Luiana smiled.
There’s no way I could let go now.
After that, her sense of time blurred.
Drawing a single line required dozens of auxiliary circuits.
Stabilizing one auxiliary circuit meant it had to mesh perfectly with another organ’s backflow prevention device.
If the storage organ was too strong, the sacred tree would overfeed on mana.
If the circulation organ was excessive, the entire village would be swept into a mana vortex.
If the conversion organ overperformed, natural mana would twist into razor-sharp blades.
If the emission organ opened first, it would all be over.
Luiana had to strengthen every organ little by little, simultaneously.
This was not the act of carving circuits into a body.
It was the act of dividing the circuits that an entire city should bear between a single sacred tree and her own flesh.
Before long, the sun began to set.
Pale red sunset stretched long between the trees.
The elves who had been building the village gradually stopped working.
At first they thought the wind had changed.
Then they realized the ground was humming faintly.
Mana was moving with the sacred tree at its center.
Normally, a deep and gentle circulation of mana existed within the sacred tree.
But the flow now was different.
Someone was drawing lines atop it.
The natural mana that had drifted without direction was aligning itself along an invisible blueprint.
The elves looked at one another.
No one spoke first.
Yet before long, every person in the village had gathered in the clearing before the sacred tree.
At the center sat Luiana.
A Dryad with her eyes closed, perfectly still.
A pale green light spread from the tips of her hair, pulsing like a heartbeat through the bark of the sacred tree.
The elves did not know exactly what was happening.
But they sensed it instinctively.
Something incredibly important was taking place for Luiana.
The elders gathered at once.
It was too urgent to be called a meeting.
The oldest elder looked up at the sacred tree.
The pale green light seeped into the wrinkles around his eyes.
“Does anyone know what kind of ritual this is?”
No one answered.
A brief silence fell.
The one who broke it was the elf who had first draped a coat over Luiana’s shoulders.
“Could Mother… be in pain?”
“If she were in pain, she could not possibly be this calm,” another elder said quietly.
“Still, this is no ordinary meditation. The sacred tree’s flow is changing. This is not something we can interfere with.”
“If we cannot interfere, does that mean we should simply step back?” a young elf asked, unable to hold back.
His voice held more impatience than fear.
The oldest elder shook his head.
“Stepping back and standing guard are two different things.”
At those words, the elders’ gazes gathered one by one.
“If Mother is doing something important, there is only one thing we can do. We must ensure nothing disturbs her.”
“Whether it be beasts, enemies from beyond the forest, or turmoil within ourselves.”
The elf who had given her the coat looked toward Luiana and added softly,
“Mother told us, ‘You’ve worked hard.’”
The awkward words Luiana had offered them.
Yet within the kindness, affection, and tenderness they contained, he had received a reward beyond compare.
Validation.
This time, he wanted only to repay Mother.
He closed his lips for a moment, then spoke carefully.
“I wish to help.”
He took a breath and continued.
“If I can be of use to Mother, I want to step forward.”
The oldest elder gazed at him for a moment, then slowly exhaled.
“Very well. We will post night watch around the sacred tree.”
Night watch was grueling work.
They had to stand guard through the night, ready to fend off beasts or outside intruders.
In a village that had not yet properly built a single fence, it was no easy task.
Yet the moment the decision was made, it was not only the elf who had given her the coat who stepped forward.
Every young elf volunteered eagerly.
Because it was not just one elf who had received her reward from Luiana’s single sentence.
Luiana had embraced them.
With an awkward but warm touch, she had told them they had worked hard.
Then it was their turn to protect her.
One day passed like that.
The light of the sacred tree did not fade.
Two days passed.
Luiana remained completely motionless.
When one of the elves standing watch could no longer fight off drowsiness and his head drooped, the elf beside him silently supported his shoulder.
Someone brought water. Someone else wove vines into a makeshift barrier in place of the unfinished fence.
The young children were kept from approaching the clearing, but they peeked out from behind trees, wanting at least to see Luiana from afar.
The elders did not scold them.
They simply gestured quietly.
Do not make noise until Mother awakens.
On the third day, the elves began placing stones and flowers around her like a small altar.
No one had ordered them to.
They simply did not want her to feel lonely while sitting there so long.
On the fourth night.
The mana of the forest changed.
The natural flow that had wandered aimlessly was sucked into the vast circulation between Luiana and the sacred tree.
It was as if scattered streams had aligned into a single great river.
And then.
Thump.
A low pulse spread outward.
The elves held their breath.
Shaken by the vibration, the leaves of the sacred tree all glowed at once.
The soil beneath the roots trembled softly, and a circular line of mana swept across the entire clearing.
And Luiana opened her eyes.
The shock she had felt upon first realizing she had reincarnated had been immense.
The lightness of her new body and the richness of its mana had certainly been wondrous.
But what she felt now surpassed even that.
Ecstasy.
It was joy so intense she wondered whether such a sensation should even be permitted to a living being.
A colossal flow of mana coursed through her body.
The word “coursed” was not enough.
It surged.
The storage organ created deep within the sacred tree accepted the mana, and the circulation organ pushed it upward.
The conversion organ altered the nature of the flow, and the safety organ prevented overload.
All of it was linked to the calculation organ she had inscribed in her own body.
It was vast.
Overwhelmingly vast.
Yet it was also precise.
This enormous flow was strong enough to shake an entire mountain.
At the same time, it was delicate enough to push away a single dewdrop on a fingertip without bursting it.
Luiana knew this fact as instinctively as breathing.
Output and precision.
A system that possessed both at once gave Luiana a sensation close to omnipotence.
At the same time, one intense, almost craving thought flashed through her mind.
What if I swung a sword in this state?
She wanted to hold a sword.
She wanted to pour in maximum output and swing it right now.
It felt as if she could split trees, boulders, mountains—perhaps even the sky itself.
She only needed to open the emission organ the tiniest bit.
Just the width of a fingertip.
Just enough to rest on the edge of a blade.
The temptation lingered on her tongue like sweetness.
Yet once the ecstasy subsided a little, Luiana noticed the gazes watching her.
They were the elves.
When she looked around, she saw it was deep night.
Even so, the clearing was bright.
Spirits floated small lights here and there, and elves awakened by the recent pulse were gathering one by one before the sacred tree.
Their faces were filled with worry.
Only then did Luiana remember.
She had entered meditation without saying a word.
And then she had immediately begun carving the Cartein-style Magic System.
There was no way only a little time had passed.
From the elves’ perspective, their Mother had suddenly fallen into silent meditation and remained utterly motionless for days.
Of course they would be worried.
Luiana rose slowly to her feet.
Worried eyes followed her movement.
She smiled awkwardly.
“I’m fine.”
The elves could not answer right away.
Among them, the elf who had given her the coat spoke cautiously.
“Are you truly alright?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t move for several days.”
Luiana remained silent for a moment.
“Did I?”
At that answer, the elves’ expressions grew even more anxious.
In the end, Luiana hugged them one by one.
She told them she was fine.
That they didn’t need to worry.
That they had worked hard.
She spoke, patted their shoulders, and stroked their hair.
When she comforted one, two more approached. When she sent two away, three waited.
Only after a long while did the elves return to their homes.
Luiana let out a small sigh.
It felt like she had taken in a whole group of rather dependent children.
She didn’t dislike it.
It was simply difficult.
More difficult than swordsmanship, which she had devoted her entire life to and still had not seen the end of.
To Luiana, who had climbed the tower alone, repeating only sword training and combat, caring for others was like reading a thesis written in a language she had never seen before.
“What a shame…”
The thought that came to her after the elves left was regret.
The fullness that made her feel she could split the sky and overturn the earth with a mere stretch of her hand.
Her hands, itching to leave an intense mark upon this world, twitched, but she had no intention of swinging a sword in the middle of the night and tearing the forest apart.
Obviously she could not destroy the village they had spent days building with such effort.
The image of the village collapsing and the elves standing before the ruins in despair rose in her mind.
Even though she had not actually done anything, Luiana felt an involuntary pang of guilt in her chest.
“Can’t be helped.”
In the end, instead of a sword, Luiana climbed the sacred tree.
When she lay down on a branch, the night sky appeared between the leaves.
It was different from the moon of her previous life.
One was blue, the other red.
A pair of enormous moons hung above the forest.
Beneath their light, Luiana imagined herself swinging a sword.
The vast circulation created by the Cartein-style Magic System, the body of a Dryad, and the swordsmanship of her previous life.
When those three things meshed together as one, how far could her blade reach?
Luiana closed her eyes.
A faint smile lingered at the corners of her lips.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would definitely swing it.
