Long long ago, when this planet was nothing but a giant empty sphere, the Goddess came step foot and created nine elements as the fundamentals of magic and energy.

It was honestly a good start for the Earth, sadly that was everything the Goddess ever gave to her.

As silent and lonely as it was, the Goddess decided to humor Herself with a presence of a man and created an entity based on Herself as a reference.

Like how he was intended to be, the man fulfilled his duty to accompany her here on the giant empty planet. But, with how handsome She made him, even She grow distracted and forgot about the sole reason why She’s here in the first place.

As time went on, the Goddess become too lazy to do anything and just let the man spoil Her every single day. Therefore to help him serve her better, She blessed gave the power of creation and creativity. With this blessing, he painted all kinds of stuff on this blank earth in order to satisfy the needs of his Goddess.

At the same time, the Elements saw potential in this man and decided to band together to seduce him. They offered him something even greater than being a tool of entertainment for that Woman. A power to rule.

Now with the guidance of the Nine Elements, he began to fill the earth with mountains and oceans, grow forests on the land and under the sea, lives to live on each side.

However, with all these agendas he now has, he became too focused on his work and abandoned the Goddess that he was supposed to serve.

This made Her furious, even prohibited him to create any more creation. The man pleaded with sincerity in his heart, asking for forgiveness from the Goddess for neglecting Her.

However... he did not ask for forgiveness for what he created. He grew too fond of this earth and was completely invested in the idea of making it perfect.

The Goddess is a loving being and gladly accepted his apologies. Although she realized there’s no more place for Her to be on his heart or this planet.

As punishment, She split his soul into ten pieces and took away one of them with her, and left. The rest of the pieces were later known as the [Nine Essences].

Her departure saddened him. Even as a creator he still has the desire to serve Her. The elements tried to cheer him up, then the Element of Nature came up with a suggestion to give him a title to hold even further power on nature itself.

Nature made him their Champion.

Being crowned the Champion of Nature, he was struck with the idea of making other champions for each element. This marked the start of humanoid creation.

With all this inspiration he created eight champions, which are dragonkin for the fire, naiad (freshwater nymph) for the water, human for the ice, elf for the wind, beast folk for the lightning, dwarf for the earth, angel for the light, and demon for the darkness.

All of them came out as a child, and he himself was the one who watched them grow and educated them throughout the beginning of the Humanoid Era.

Although when they were still a couple of days old, he decided that it is unfair for nature to not have their very own signature being, and he can’t use his kind as one, since he’s based on the Goddess herself.

So he created another nymph called a dryad. This first dryad was me, and he named me Isergia (the first spirit). But unlike the rest of the children, I’m not a champion, but I still possess a tremendous power of nature, given by the element themself.

The nine of us later become friends and play along in the first forest of his creation, which is known today as the Fatherwood Forest.

But as time goes, we also grew to adulthood. He then decided that each of us was to become the leader of our own nation.

And so he created more of our races and taught us the idea of growing our numbers.

There are a few changes though. Since both nature and water elements were led by a nymph, he altered the water signature race to be of merfolk. Yet, he kept the Champion of Water to be the same naiad.

However, a huge problem came across his plans. Even with all this power to create he possessed, he is not a god, there are limits on how much he can make since he used his life force as a fuel to create.

To face this, he chose to imbue each piece of his soul with the power of the element. From then, the word essence replaced the naming of his soul pieces.

He used each essence to complete each region for the champions to lead. That includes altering the soil, air, temperature, crops, and so on.

The essence gave him so much power to help him with his creation. Yet it didn’t change his fate to lose his life force each time he used the power.

Years passed and he finally achieved what he called a Completed World. The earth can now run on its own without needing him to create any more stuff to make balance.

And as the creation time came to an end, so does his life. He had used every life force he has, his body couldn’t even be used to do something as simple as breathing.

He has suffered too much to accomplish his dream of perfection. Now is the time for his rest, and he lied down his body at the center tree of the Spirit Grove, with all the champions present to witness his departure.

With him gone, the [Nine Essences] were split among the champions. The eight suggest I took the [Nature Essence], but I humbly refused.

I’m not a champion, nor do I have the power to contain such a powerful thing inside my body.

Since no one was able to claim the [Nature Essence], it quickly created a vessel to contain itself. This vessel was a nymph, based on our creator as a reference.

The vessel then continued to take care of his body, through more than a thousand years. But as she’s just a vessel created without his life force, she’s unable to hold the sheer power the essence had.

Because of this, the vessel died every couple of years then reincarnated herself every time to re-contain the essence. I can’t ever bear myself to watch her as it was almost as painful as seeing the creator suffer throughout his time creating this world.

But now her time as a vessel has finally come to an end. She has fulfilled her duty. She can now continue to live her life without having to endure the pain of having such powerful thing inside her.

“I’m sure you already get who’s the vessel is right, Staas?” Isergia’s question marked the end of her story.

“Gytha? So does that mean!?” Just thinking of the idea left Staas in pure shock.

“That’s right, your real name is Nymfrik, the Champion of Nature, the King of Nymph, the All-father of all things on earth.” Isergia’s voice rose, she had that proud look on her face, yet it’s also painted with worries.

“Then what will happen to Gytha? Will she be alright?” Staas asked. Right now his desire cared more about her well-being than anything else.

“You need to worry not My King, even if she’s killed, her life won’t come to an end,” Isergia replied, with a weak painful smile on her lips. As her words finished, the first elder sat back on her throne, looking a bit tired. “Like all nymphs, Gytha is bound to something, and that something… is you. As long as you persist, and so does the girl.”

“By the way Staa— Uhm, King Nymfrik, I just realized something, a stripe of your white hair has turned green. Is that a sign that you have acquired back your [Nature Essence]?” Asked the third elder as she came back from the Room of Beginning.

Hearing that, Staas quickly pulled the hair on his upper left head, “Ah! You’re right… wait… does that mean I can contain all the remaining essence?” The boy was struck with hope.

“No! Nonono… no!” Isergia’s face turned blue, she knew exactly what Staas thinking right now.

“Is that what came to your mind before? For me to grab the [Fire Essence] and melt the ice that prisoned the nymphs?” He sought answers from the first elder.

“No! Do you know how much suffering you went through in your old days from using all those essences to create life!? I will not let you go through that again!” Isergia went furious, she quickly stood on her feet to scold the boy.

“I need them to restore my family, Elder Isergia…” Staas retorted in a low voice, trying to be understanding with her so she would also understand his intentions.

“Do you know how painful it is to see you in pain!? I can’t! You ca—” Suddenly Isergia stopped. Staas hold her tightly to calm her down, it was a hug filled with warmth and sincerity. It somehow occurred to his mind to do that, something that his body remembered to do.

“Relax, Elder Isergia… no matter what happened… everything will be fine.”

Tears started streaming out of her eyes as soon as she heard the last sentence. It quickly reminded her of the time she spent with the old Nymfrik when she was just a sprout.

To her, he is more than just a father she always loves. He is the one who sent away all her fear and loneliness. He is the sun who always colors and brightens her day. He is… her everything.

“Promise?” With a tiny voice, she requested him. Like a little girl she once was.

“Promise.”