The SSS class adventurer is a divine cleric-Chapter 61: Ascension tree trial [1]

The world beyond the portal was... quiet.

No wind. No sky. No sun. Just an endless white void—flat, empty, and infinite. In the center stood a towering, ancient tree that made them all stop in their tracks.

It stretched into the heavens—at least a few thousand meters high, its trunk wide enough to house a castle within. Its roots dug deep into the earth, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. No leaves rustled. No fruit shimmered. It was still. Silent.

And yet...

Kaelen felt his soul react.

Alira took a step back, her hand drifting to her dagger by instinct. "What... is that?"

Derek’s breath hitched in his throat. His eyes—wide, disbelieving—locked onto the tree before him, as if the very sight might unravel his sanity.

His lips parted slowly, trembling with the weight of revelation, as though speaking its name aloud would shatter some sacred silence.

"This... this can’t be real. My eyes must be playing tricks," he whispered, the words barely more than a breath, raw with awe.

The others turned to him, their expressions shifting from curiosity to sharpened focus. Neal frowned, stepping closer. "What do you mean?"

Kaelen’s gaze darkened, his voice edged with suspicion. "You recognize it?"

Derek didn’t answer at first. Instead, he moved forward as if drawn by an unseen force, his fingers hovering just shy of the tree’s colorless bark—pale as bleached bone, yet shimmering faintly with an otherworldly sheen. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with reverence.

"This... is the Ascension Tree." The name itself seemed to hum in the air between them, charged with ancient power.

"It’s spoken of in our family’s oldest records—discovered by the First Ancestor himself during his transcendence to Epic. A tree that doesn’t belong to this world, but to the higher planes. They say it judges the worthy... rewards only those with the potential to rise beyond mortal limits."

A heavy silence followed. The air itself seemed to thicken, as if the tree were listening—waiting.

Alira blinked. "How can a tree judge us?"

"It doesn’t use mana," Derek said softly. "It responds to any kind of energy—life, shadow, divine, elemental, martial. Even soulforce. When one strikes the Ascension Tree with everything they have... the tree reflects back their value. Their worth. In fruit."

Kaelen arched a skeptical brow, his lips quirking in amusement. "So... what, it’s like one of those rigged carnival games where you swing a mallet and ring a bell?"

Neal barked a laugh, rolling his shoulders as if warming up for a brawl. "So what’s the play, then? Do we punch it?"

Derek’s gaze snapped to them, his voice a blade of warning. "Don’t mock it."

The air around him seemed to tighten, charged with something deeper than irritation—something like dread. "There are beings in this world who would drown entire nations in blood just to stand where we are right now."

A whisper, neither voice nor wind but something in between, brushed against their senses.

"Touch the bark... and you will see."

Neal hesitated for only a heartbeat before stretching his hand forward, fingers trembling slightly as they grazed the tree’s colorless bark. The moment his skin made contact—

The world held its breath.

Then—

They gasped.

The tree transformed before their eyes.

The ashen bark rippled like liquid gold, veins of light racing up its trunk. The leaves, once pale and lifeless, now shimmered with a warm, radiant hue, the entire canopy glowing as if kissed by dawn.

Light pulsed through the branches, trembling like a living thing, casting shifting patterns across the forest floor.

Kaelen’s voice was hushed, almost reverent. "Does it... react to rank?" His eyes flicked between his companions. "Well Neal is Gold-rank. That’s why it turned gold?"*

"Yes,".Derek murmured, his own reflection flickering in the tree’s luminous surface. "You’re on point. And from the looks of it, it seems the trial has now somewhat begun."

As if summoned by his words, the earth beneath their feet trembled. Ancient runes—carved not into stone but into the very fabric of reality—ignited in a circle around the tree, it glowed in an eerie blue against the gold.

Then, a voice—not a sound, but a vibration in their bones, a pressure behind their eyes—pressed into their minds:

Prove your worth.

You have 30 minutes. One chance. One strike. Rewards will be given accordingly.

Derek clenched his fists. "One chance..."

The tree granted Neal thirty minutes—an eternity and yet no time at all.

Derek’s voice cut through the tension like a blade. "Use everything you have. By everything, I mean everything. Don’t hold back."

Neal didn’t hesitate.

Potions clinked as he downed them in rapid succession—stamina boosters, muscle enhancers, nerve accelerants—each one flooding his veins with raw, surging power. Then, with a grimace, he uncorked the final vial, it was crimson, thick as blood, swirling with violent energy.

The Berserk Elixir.

He threw it back in one burning gulp.

Fire erupted in his chest. His body screamed as his muscles swelled, veins bulging like rivers of molten power beneath his skin.

His aura detonated outward— solar flames clashing with scarlet rage, a storm of gold and crimson swirling around him. His eyes blazed like twin suns, his breath coming in ragged, furnace-hot heaves.

He cracked his knuckles. The sound was like splitting stone.

But he wasn’t done.

"Kaelen."

"Of course."

Kaelen’s hands moved in a blur, layering buffs upon buffs— <Crusader’s Resilience>, <Divine Favor>, <Fortitude of the Martyr>—each skill stacking, compounding, until Neal’s very presence warped the air around him.

Then—

<Cosmic Punch>

A skill he had never used before. A unique class ability, granted by the System itself upon reaching Gold Rank. A strike that grew with him, absorbing every ounce of his strength, his solar energy, his momentum, and condensing it into *lone devastating blow.

Neal launched forward.

His fist shone—not just with light, but with something beyond it. A swirling, prismatic force, beautiful and terrifying, like a comet hurtling through the void. The air itself ripped apart in its wake.

"RRRAAAAHHHHH—!!!"

BOOM.

The impact was cataclysmic.

His fist slammed into the trunk, and the world shook. The ground beneath him shattered, fissures spider webbing outward in an instant. The tree’s bark splintered, golden light erupting from the point of impact, surging up through the branches in a radiant shockwave.

And then—

The fruits fell.

One. Five. Dozens.

They tumbled from the canopy like falling stars, glowing, pulsating with condensed energy.

Eighty-seven in total.

He let out a long breath, dropping to his knees.

Kaelen gave a slow clap. "Show-off."

And in the next second the whole landscape recovered and the tree turned back to its colourless form.

Derek commanded "Ok next."

The source of this c𝓸ntent is fr(e)𝒆novelkiss