"Do you know why you grew taller?" Ang stared at Drumil, his gaze probing.
Drumil shook his head slightly, his ancient voice like the low rustle of leaves in the wind. "I don't know either."
Hearing that, Ang sighed with slight regret and did not press further.
After a pause, he suddenly changed the subject. "By the way, those guardians of yours... the Druids. Have they really all perished?"
Drumil's voice was calm. "They all died in battle."
There was no sorrow, no anger, as though he were merely stating something insignificant.
Ang's heart trembled slightly. Looking at the ancient World Tree before him, he silently thought, For a tree, emotions probably were never necessary, were they?
Yet Drumil seemed to see through his thoughts and slowly said, "Were you wondering what kind of beings Druids are?"
Ang froze for a moment, then nodded.
"Druids are transformed from beings who believed in me, whose souls merged into my body after death." Drumil's voice carried the weight of ages. "Their souls are nurtured within my laws of life, gradually taking shape until they become beings who protect me."
Ang raised an eyebrow. "So in the past thousand years, not a single new Druid has appeared?"
"No." Drumil shook his branches, the motion seeming to stir with a breeze.
"Why? Don't the elves call themselves the World Tree's guardians? Are their souls unsuitable for transformation?" Ang pressed.
"Too few of them die, and the souls that occasionally return have already decayed. Decayed souls cannot bear the reshaping of life, much less transform into new Druids." Drumil's tone remained flat, yet it conveyed an undeniable fact.
Ang pondered this, then asked after a moment, "What about the first Druids? What race were their souls transformed from?"
Drumil fell silent for a while, as