The next day, Victoria and her cohort stayed indoors trying to treat Cyrus. The trauma from the attacks he received in the mist had sent him into a comatose state. This was much harder to heal than a simple injury.
Even Rody, who had his leg cut off, had started to slowly heal with the bleeding completely halted. However, try as they did, they could not wake Cyrus up. The second day came and went and there was still no improvement.
They couldn’t leave him there though so Victoria decided that they would stay a bit longer. However, that particular night something horrific happened.
The fog came into the outpost for the first time.
They barricaded the doors and kept absolutely still for the fear of attracting what was in the fog. It was a strange and overwhelming night, fortunately, it passed.
The next morning,
"Quinn, pick your brother up. We can’t afford to stay here anymore," Victoria said quite sternly. The fog entering the outpost was a telltale sign that something was horribly wrong.
They couldn’t go out because of the strange fog coming out during the day and couldn’t stay in because it would come to them instead.
There was only one way they could survive now, and it was to pass through the tunnel and arrive in the keep up ahead.
"Okay," Quinn nodded, using several items of leather he strapped Cyrus onto his back and followed behind Victoria and her men.
"What a mess" right at the door of the right wing, Barthold gasped in shock at the scene in front of him.
What lay in front was truly a mess. The only few plant folk that remained were the ones extremely close to the mythic tree.
The rest were brutally destroyed.
"No time to waste, we’ll attack the tree from two sides, Guilliman can now serve as a pseudo tank so he and Jemie will lead the left flank with Morgan and two others, the rest will be with me" Victoria expressed her plan.
They would need to destroy this thing with a surgical strike. Unlike the other one they fought before, this one was not only more fierce, it was also unknown. Yes, they didn’t know what it could do or how strong it was, and they still needed to kill it at once.
"Sure," Guilliman stretched his hand out, summoning a lump of vine tissue which then slowly turned into a round mushy shield.
"Hmm!!" Jemie also nodded and summoned a grand sword and walked forward as they made their way to the left flank.
A few minutes later, they were in the right position, each having their eyes trained on the mythic tree.
"That thing is stronger than what we faced in the left gate….you said it’s injured?" Beside Guilliman, Morgan asked, looking a bit surprised and skeptical. If this thing was injured yet still stronger than what was in the second gate…..
"Could it be a knight code?" Morgan asked.
"No, it’s not a knight, in fact I’m not sure if it’s a king….something stronger if there’s anything like that" Guilliman quickly responded, fully focused on the beast tree in front of him.
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Its aura reminded him of that of the creatures in the fog; their aura surpassed that of kings, so maybe something stronger? He wasn’t sure.
"All in all, it’s going to be a hard battle. That’s all," Jemie commented.
They were now waiting for Victoria’s command, that was all. Fighting it was inevitable.
"Sure," Guilliman smiled bitterly, pulling out his sword.
Seconds felt like minutes, beads of sweat rolled down their foreheads as they waited patiently for the signal of attack.
She said they would know it when they saw it, gave them a pretty good idea of what it would be…and without surprise the signal came in the form of a burning flame that enveloped a beast in front.
Immediately after, the beasts sprang into action, attacking everything that moved as if by muscle memory.
The siege from the night before had left a scar in their very essence.
This actually served to help the cohorts as they dashed forward.
With his shield forward, Guilliman ran towards a grand beast quickly and swiped down with his blade.
His strength and speed had taken several morphing steps towards becoming strong, to think that a few months ago he wouldn’t even dare fight against a sacred king. Now he was slaying grand beasts like they were nothing.
Finishing off one of the beasts, a spiky vine breezed past him, narrowly taking his head.
"Hmp!!" Guilliman sneered and activated his rabbit braces, blasting towards the beast in an instant and slashing at its stalk.
He did this over and over again, slowly pushing back the beasts as he took point guard.
However, the more he fought, the more fatigued he became, to the point where it felt unnatural.
"Wait a minute, that thing hasn’t attacked yet," Guilliman looked up at the mythic tree at the very back of the crowd and frowned.
Its range was wide and he had seen it attack projectiles before; however, for some reason, it wasn’t attacking. Was it because of the fight against the fog? Was it too weak to fight?
Guilliman thought in his mind.
However, he soon snapped out of it.
’No, something is wrong here’
All of a sudden, a string attached itself to his clothes and pulled him all the way back to where Morgan stood.
"What’s going on with you guys? Can’t you see you’ve not killed anything? Victoria is taking all the heat," Morgan barked at Guilliman, a look of stress on his face.
It wasn’t like they weren’t fighting, in fact they had slashed many beasts until they were unrecognizable. However, they always fell short of actually taking their lives. And for some reason the creatures were healing extremely fast.
"What?" Guilliman was confused. He quickly looked around and saw the beasts he had supposedly killed were somehow still alive and healing fast.
"That doesn’t make sense," he frowned.
He remembered killing them….slash slash….wait? No, he didn’t kill any of them.
The surefire way to know you have ended an opponent was to listen for a system notification.
[Updating stats
Name: Guilliman Naldir
Rank: Level 7
Gene: 20/6,000 (Yellow)
Class: Soul king
Affinity: Wind, Ice, Arcane
Agility: 300 Power: 400 Stamina: 460]
He summoned the status window and scanned the gene points, only to find out that they hadn’t increased at all.
"That’s…" Guilliman quickly turned to where Jemie was and frowned. He could see it now, Jemie wasn’t killing anything, just crippling and moving to a random beast.
It was like they were walking in circles.
"It’s that damn tree, isn’t it?" Guilliman muttered, his gaze falling onto the giant tree at the back.
It just stood there, relaxed before it knew….that they were just dancing clowns.
"Bring back Jemie and the rest," Guilliman gritted his teeth and commanded, his eyes drifting to where Victoria was.
She had noticed what was going on already and was using her flames to consume everything she attacked. She left no room for healing.
"Is that what’s happening?" Jemie and the other two from Cyrus’s cohort frowned. It really was the case, how embarrassing!
"What are we going to do now?" One of them asked, looking at Guilliman and Jemie.
Their leader was comatosed, and these two were at level 7, the decision-making obviously fell to them.
"We’ll resume fighting as usual, I will send my beast souls after each kill to help you finish them off," Guilliman said. "Once you’ve cleared the main line I will head directly for the tree."
He added, causing even Jemie to frown.
"You can’t kill that thing all by yourself," Jemie said rather adamantly. He knew the kid was a fighting prodigy and all, but whatever this thing was….it couldn’t be killed so easily.
"Well duh, of course I can’t kill it myself….Victoria is already making her way there," Guilliman pointed out at the silver-haired beauty consumed by flames, tearing a path through the crowd of grand plant folk.
"We’re behind guys, let’s make it quick," Guilliman snapped his fingers and fell into a cross-legged position.
Out of nowhere, 15 swordfish apparitions appeared and shadowed them from behind.
All three nodded and rushed back onto the battlefield, their blades blazing.
As they fought, Guilliman systematically eliminated what they ’forgot’ to kill. However, that wasn’t the main purpose of him doing this. No, he wanted to know if the tree’s powers had an effect on his shaman abilities.
That was why he sent his beast souls.
Thankfully, it didn’t have an effect, causing Guilliman to smile. He stood up and donned his tortie shroud.
"Maximum effort," his gaze became incredibly focused as he pushed himself into the air with his rabbit braces. The creature down below couldn’t help but feel the presence of something special as they all seemed to sense him flying overhead.
Forgetting the opponents in front, they all attacked him uniformly