Alright. Game day. Not a bunny in sight.
The party stood on the edge of the meadow, laser focused on the three large trees in the distance. Hadn’t there been two the day before? No, there were three, surely. They had just gotten distracted by the murder bunnies that always seemed to be everywhere. Was there a realm with nice, soft, cuddly bunnies? Probably not.
Putting the thought of razor-toothed fluffballs aside, Billy pointed to the two trees closer to the center of the meadow. Weren’t they… Nevermind. “Those two. We hit them hard and fast. Then, we take our time with the third if it attacks.”
Roland looked confused. “Would it not be advantageous to attack the solitary tree first? Numerical superiority is advantageous, after all.”
“No. Not when we’ve only got a single vial of your fancy boom boom piss powder. We blow 'em to smithereens first, we deal with what’s left after. No sense in wasting the surprise on a single target when AoE is our strength.”
Roland had, quite fortunately, been able to produce another vial of flammable liquid in the morning. He wasn’t completely topped up on mana since then, but his increase in core size the day before had somewhat insulated him against the loss of a chunk of his mana from gaining a new ability. The resulting liquid wasn’t as potent as the others were since he couldn’t dump as much mana into it. It was still, however, very dangerous and very explodey.
Rhinus scratched the back of his head, steam almost coming out of his ears at how hard he looked like he was thinking. “Shouldn’t we just group them all up, then? Take out all three in one go? I can taunt them and keep them busy long enough to get them all…”
Billy rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. “Alright, how’s about this: we go between both groups of trees. If all three approach us to attack, we slam ‘em all at once. If not, we circle back to the other side and take on the first two.”
After hashing out the details, the three adventurers entered the meadow, heading directly between both trees. They had read, in the guild’s report, that the trees would uproot and attack anyone who threatened their territory. As they were unsure of how broad that territory was, they had to go play chicken with aggro radiuses.
When they were still around eighty feet from their stopping point, all three trees burst from the ground. The trees each had two legs ending in crude approximations of feet. Around each knee was a skirt of sorts of roots. When they would plant themselves in the ground, it seemed like the skirt would spread out and mimic a partially above-ground root system.
They looked like nothing special, aside from the fact that they were walking magical trees. They didn’t have runic markings or glowing lines flowing down their branches. They just looked like ordinary oak trees going for a walk.
Instead of rushing forwards or running away, the party calmly strafed to the right a bit so that all three trees would get to them at the same time. When the bipedal greenery approached to within twenty feet, Rhinus struck the ground with his hammer, shouting his skill: “Sacred Wall of Protection!”
As expected, a wall of dirt rose from the… Dirt. As the three dirty trees and a turd tried passing by, the flowing yellow script on the wall flashed. They turned as one and started slamming down on the barrier.
Roland and Billy rushed forward as Rhinus sank to one knee. Each blow to the wall drained him of mana. The more damage to the wall, the more mana was sucked from his core to keep the skill going. The tank felt as if each branch slamming into the wall was a strike directly to his own core.
Roland wasted no time in using his new skill. As Billy stood further back from the one-sided pummel of the wall, the Alchemist got to work. He uncorked a vial of dragon’s piss and shoved mana into his skill. “Diffuse!”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
You didn’t technically need to yell the name of the skill. As one became more proficient in a skill, the mana cost lowered and the effect could increase. Naturally, yelling the name of the skill was a terrible move against an opponent who could understand what you were saying. Still, the decrease in mana cost (or increase in effect) was generally worth it until true mastery of the skill was achieved.
Orange globs of liquid rained down upon all three trees, partially coating each of them. They ignored it as they kept slamming against the wall. As Roland ran back towards Rhinus, the wall poofed out of existence. A little on the early side, but Billy really couldn’t blame the tank. He looked awful. Clearly, they had underestimated the amount of damage three curb stomping trees could bring.
Billy hunkered behind his shield, bracing for impact. He sent mana into its enchantment, hoping to not be blown back too far. Roland’s new batch was weaker than the last, but that didn’t mean much. With his new skill, he had been able to multiply how much of it he had several times over. Not wanting to give the trees the chance to come any closer, he channeled a beam of fire, then swiped his wand across all three trees. The explosion was fantastic. It sent Billy rolling, ass over tea kettle, at least a dozen feet away. Roland and Rhinus seemed to fare a lot better, but were also pushed back.
Billy took a hit to his mana pool trying to keep his shield’s enchantment strong as he got slammed by the blast. He took deep breaths and focused on making the world stop spinning. Then, he pumped even more mana into his boots and rocketed forwards. The entire area where the trees had been was now a small crater. There was absolutely no chance of any of the trees surviving the blast. However, Billy wasn’t rushing in for a killing blow.
He sped into the crater as fast as he could, colliding with the biggest piece of wood that he could find. One of the trees had evidently perished, but hadn’t been blown into kindling like the other two. Billy reached out with one hand and emulated something he had seen Farmer Tim do to the dire wolf: he sent a steady trickle of mana into the corpse. The ten-foot slab of light brown wood stayed still as the remnants of the other two trees dispersed into multicolored motes of light.
Billy had asked the old man one night, frustrated that he hadn’t been able to skin a particularly tough boar for its hide before the corpse despawned. The old goat had explained that, in order for a body to stay in the world for a prolonged period of time, mana had to be fed into it. It was, unfortunately, the same for beast, humans and pretty much every other form of life. Their bodies despawned into a form of energy that returned to the world in many forms. It rewarded adventurers, gave life to new growth, fueled monster and portal spawns, changed weather patterns. Often, when older, lower ranked family members disappeared, diviners were called in to make sure they had passed on instead of wandering off, lost somewhere. Something about that gnawed at the back of Billy’s mind, but he wasn’t sure what.
Anyway, there was no way that Billy was going to let this tree despawn in its entirety only for it to drop half a plank’s worth of wood as loot. He held the wood firmly, leaning against it to let himself rest. An onrush of energy entered his core. Not as much as the day before, but more than he was expecting, given how easily they had handled their foes. He heard Roland call out the other two piles of loot: three planks, five rough logs, some acorns and a few straight branches.
While Roland sorted the loot, Rhinus took out the axe they had been loaned and started splitting pieces of what they were now calling magical oak, tossing them to Roland to put in his spatial bag.
Once Rhinus had split off what he could without cutting Billy’s fingers off, Billy finally stopped trickling his mana into the wood. Without so much as a poof, the remnants despawned, leaving a small pile of branches and a silver coin on the ground. Billy smiled savagely at the increase to his core size. More power. MOOOOAR!
Roland inspected his party members for damage and administered the appropriate doses from his bag. Billy noted that the alchemist seemed to be listing to one side, off balance from the weight of his spatial satchel. It apparently didn’t reduce the weight enough of the items inside or it was reaching its maximum capacity. Either way, it was time to head back to the outpost and turn in their loot.
Montgomery gladly accepted all of the wood that the party offered, planks, logs and splinters alike. Apparently, as it was an official Guild building, she could transform even the wood scraps into planks, though whatever was traded lost some value in the conversion process.
Without a concrete plan, they decided to turn in all of the loot, aside from a few bits and bobbles, and split the profits equally. They even handed in the elk’s monster core. Billy decided to let the Guild keep a tab of his credit instead of lugging around the money. It wouldn’t do to hoard cash only to get robbed and lose it all.
With the contract completed, the party officially dissolved. Roland planned to spend the day experimenting with his Gift. Rhinus was a little more dodgy about his plans for the day. Some sort of training. Billy, for his part, decided to start his time off with a nap.