In this less mundane life, I was about to get a painful reminder of why I shouldn’t treat wild creatures, even some as slow as these fuckers, the same way I treated glitch artefacts: the live versions learned.
And they adapted faster than my overconfident ass.
By the time I worked my sword free, five tree fathers were already on me. Reaching. Grasping. Scratching. I had just enough time to bring the blade around before one of them wrapped a fist around my face and squeezed.
I saw stars exploding as pain flared in my skull. A wild swing of the sword up, adrenaline-fuelled, lopped the creature’s arm at the elbow, sap spouting all over me, cold and thick.
The hand did not come loose until I yanked it off, earning myself fresh, stinging cuts across my face. Blood welled out from the wounds.
Where a bunch of glitch artefacts would’ve tried to maul me directly, because brainless, these things quietly surrounded me and began crowding forward, tightening the noose and not caring at all about my desperate flailing.
Like any other tree, swinging a sword at tree fathers did just about as much to impress them as would swinging my dick. Tree fathers only died to fire, or to having their throats—invisible under the bark—severed. When they all lowered their heads and pushed their leafy crowns my way, that last part became impossible to pull off.
[Adrenaline surge] bought me time to think and plan a way out. All that I could see around me, in the distant light of Crystal’s lamp, were leaves and branches. Grasping gnarled hands reached out through that thicket, each aimed for some part of me. Legs. Arms. My neck. Hair. It was all I could do to keep away from that constricting circle of death.
Panic stretched the surge and my thoughts accelerated. Unfortunately, they offered no solution, only lessons that I may not survive to appreciate.
Lesson one of the night: always have light. Methol had basically warned me about this one all the way back in the dungeon, but of course I went into battle half-cocked again, without having addressed any of my weaknesses.
Lesson two of the night: higher numbers on my stat sheet do not actually make me a better fighter, just a cockier moron. Someone with a little bit of sense would’ve seen this kind of obvious trap before it sprung itself at me.
Lesson three of the night: when you’re facing the prospect of being torn limb from limb, you kinda forget all those pesky self-imposed limitations you’ve reasoned for yourself.
Between the aforementioned possibility of dismemberment and possibly being eaten while still alive, and causing a forest fire…
Well, ash does feed the soil and aids in plant regrowth. Right?
Poked and prodded from all sides, I turned the sword on myself, slid the edge on my hand, then pumped all my MP into the Ignis.
The night lit up like a German rave.
Lesson four of the night, and probably the most important: never stare at the fucking Ignis rune when it ignites! When fuelled by an unfiltered, panic-driven full bar of MP, Melenith’s fire is nothing short of thermite going off.
The heat instantly evaporated my sweat and all the hair on my arms, frizzled my scalp, and seared my lungs.
With the surge speeding up my reactions, I hadn’t expected the activation to be so so incredibly violent. I barely had time to blink and turn my head aside before the flame overwhelmed the blade’s physical shape. It burst upward like a column of blood-red fire, searing hot, too violent to even hold, licking at the silver canopy above.
With an effort of will I brought it down in an arc, panic lending me clarity and strength. They had their hands on me, gripping the fabric of my shirt, trying to drag me down. Those arms disappeared in a flash of red flames, puffed away to ash and smoke.
I distantly recognized the counterattack skill giving me precision and purpose for my strikes. Disarm. Follow-up. Behead.
Given that the follow-up was me spinning in place and holding the blade out and away from my head as far as I could, I probably didn’t need the skill guiding my hands.
My mind went into that funny place where I wonder about stupid shit at the stupidest moment. This time, as tree fathers burst to ash around me, I wondered why I’d never gotten a skill for beheading enemies. I mean, I’d chopped off plenty of heads by now, but somehow it never resulted into a skill the way that stabbing the bear in the heart had produced [Heart seeker].
Seconds to end the fight before my MP disappeared. I’d used far too much in that initial flash. Ignis drank it all down greedily and spat out the anger of an enchained goddess.
I’d expected ignition all around me as I moved through my enemies, their already slow motion made even slower by the surge. Instead, the blade burned so hot that I couldn’t breathe for it, and its trail through the air singed itself into my retinas. Tree fathers dropped like flies in my wake, whole parts of them utterly destroyed as I clung desperately to consciousness, the air unbreathable with overheated ash and thick, black smoke.
The chaos swirled in a cloud around me as I spun for the last time. Smoking, lifeless wooden bodies toppled around me. Leaves fell charred off their crowns, puffing to ash in the intense heat.
I stumbled away, MP drained, head light, skin burning, eyes too cooked to see properly. Fuck, it all hurt and I couldn’t breathe! Thoughts of verdant hearts fled my mind. Screw all that, I just needed to be away from that carnage, away from the heat, somewhere where I could draw in a breath that didn’t feel like molten glass in my throat.
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I made it less than ten paces before I stumbled and fell, face hitting the cool dirt before the rest of me did. Fuck, I still couldn’t breathe and struggled to focus.
Something got hold of my foot and yanked me away. I tried to dig my fingers into the earth but couldn’t manage it.
Fuck! Is that you, Tusk? I tried to press down on my hands and call for help. Crystal was still somewhere around. Why wasn’t she hel—
I got thrown. Felt the ground disappear from under me, a short moment of weightlessness, then splashed face-first into water. The cold shocked me back to myself with a gasp that drew in more mud than anything else. I forced myself to my hands and knees, coughing and sputtering, stomach in full revolt.
Once above the shallow water, I finally, finally managed a lungful of air. It tasted gritty and dirty, but was the sweetest air I’d ever inhaled.
“Stupid human almost got dead.”
I heard the words a fraction of a moment before Crystal’s well-known knobbly staff smacked me in the crown. I fell on my face again, seeing stars for the second time that night.
“Fucking ow!” I sputtered as I tried to rise, groping blindly for the little fucker. “I’m gonna wring your neck.” I even managed to get up to a knee, then on shaky feet, trying to blink the silt away.
Crystal, to my everlasting chagrin, whacked me again. Straight. In the fucking. Nuts. I dropped back on my knees with a wheeze and whimper.
“Human no more fighting until human smart again. Where smart human go? Where?”
“Futu-?i-a? mor?ii—”
Then she whacked me again. In the head. It shook the mud from my eyes and sent me falling on my ass in the stream.
Alright, I actually deserved that. Eternity landed on my shoulder as I tried to get my breathing back under control.
“I do learn,” it cooed right in my ear. “Less than a day, Klaus, and proven wrong twice.”
“It’s been more than a day,” I protested, rubbing vigorously at what was going to be a huge lump in a day’s time.
“Barely.”
Mud covered and with my dignity in tatters, all I had left was petty stubbornness. And my sword, which still kinda sizzled in the nearby mud.
Learn better MP control. I should probably get it tattooed on my forehead.
Not that it’d help much, seeing as I had no idea what I even looked like anymore. I hadn’t actually checked a mirror since arriving. Should probably do that too at some point.
[Congratulation]
[You have defeated: Tree father adult x9]
[You have defeated: Tree father sapling x14]
Oh goody, I’d killed a whopping fourteen of their kids. That wouldn’t come back to haunt me in the middle of the night, oh no. Not at all.
“Please tell me I didn’t turn all of them to ash and there’s still something that can be picked off the bodies.” I rose and shook the mud off my clothes. At least both shirt and jeans were still in one piece, even if now more stretched where I’d been grabbed.
Crystal was a few paces away, holding the lamp in one hand, and her stick in the other. She waggled the latter at me.
“Forest fire bad, human. Control fire. No swing giant fire around.” Veins bulged across her face and I think this was the very first time I’d seen her genuinely angry.
Tusk was by her side in his large form, growling and bearing his fangs at me. More than Crystal’s anger, his gave me pause for thought.
It took a moment before I figured what their damn issue was. Once I did, I realised I deserved the whacking, and probably a few more: the forest was their actual home, not just a place to pass through. My recklessness had almost caused a catastrophe for them.
“Noted,” I huffed, still trying not to double over in pain from that excellent golf swing to my crotch. I stumbled forward, blinking away the afterimages seared into my retina, wheezing with each in-drawn breath. “Let’s see what we’ve gained.”
I’d killed over twenty enemies and got diddly squat from the interface for my effort. No skill upgrade. No level up. If we wouldn’t get any verdant hearts either, I’d probably scream.
What remained of the grove was wreathed in smoke, with ashes still swirling on eddies of overheated air. Thankfully, the grove was set in a rather wet area on the spring’s bank, with no dead vegetation on the mossy ground.
The Bestiary blinked as I observed this. A note was added to the tree father entry, namely that changes in the forest floor could indicate a monster den or a brewing ambush. Tree father groves would often not have any dead vegetation as it got trampled in their coming and going.
Neat.
Thankfully, the heat had been so intense that it hadn’t had a chance to actually set a lot of stuff on fire. Most of the corpses lay in smoking ruins, the stumps blackened with soot, charred directly to coal.
I had to get my hands dirty for the next part as I set about hacking apart some of the saplings, or what was left of them. It was part splitting wood for winter, part butcher work. It did yield, after a lot of sweat, cursing, and getting pissed off, seven large crystals, and three smaller ones that were already shattered. Each had a different scent when dragged out from the creatures’ chests.
I felt disgusting by the end. Especially as Crystal insistent we also check all those branches for fruit. Those that we found were something like cross between a persimmon and a pear, about the size of a grapefruit. Smelled good. We split them equally, though Crystal had done jack shit to help, aside from holding the lamp.
But hey, quest complete.
[Congratulations]
[Objective completed: “Collect five verdant hearts for gnark princess Crystal”]
[You have reached level 10!]
Fuck, yeah! I may not have dealt with the fight in the most efficient way possible, but a level up was still a level up. And a full charge of MP felt damn good. Not to mention the healing.
God, it felt good to breathe without pain. I’d never take it for granted ever again.
Instead of dropping the constitution point immediately, I chose to wait until we camped again. Not for nothing, but whatever the bonus would be, I wanted to make sure I could pay attention to it for once.
We ended up not camping for the rest of the night. At all. Crystal pocketed her share of the verdant hearts, then got us marching through the dark at nearly breakneck pace. I thought we’d head back to the lake and river. But no, she took us all the way around Harriet’s Heap, down the steep hills, and back towards her burrow.
I think she was just eager to go home. The walk cleared my head and got me finally burning off the excess energy.
Met a few more of those freaky Cthulhu-headed deer and they scared the crap out of me each time. Some shamblers, but we avoided those easily. And had to deal with a cluster of headcrabs that thought it the height of humour to drop on my head three at a time.
One got a good bite in, right atop the crown of my head. I torched it for its trouble.
Morning broke before we were back at the little burrow. A chilly, wet sunrise met us and brought with it dew and birdsong. Once Areestra appeared over the horizon’s edge, and the sun peeked right behind the alien planet, the forest seemed to come alive with noise and life. Whether the quiet before was something natural or just the Nobody passing through, in daylight the place looked far more inviting and pleasant.
Crystal’s home was exactly as we’d left it, serene in its clearing. Tusk headed to his little paddock behind the burrow, while Crystal and I went inside.
I didn’t care for food or for more conversation. Didn’t care to see what Crystal got up to as she banged pots and pans. I sat on the steps leading down to the cauldron, set my backpack in front of me to prop myself up, laid my head atop it, and was asleep in moments.
I woke up when Crystal’s cauldron exploded.