Jake thought they’d be out of there after he ported the acid into his Inventory, but Will grabbed his arm and stopped him.

Will bobbed his head towards the thorn sentinel. “He wants to give you something too.”

The thorn sentinel lifted its palm and made the same spear it had used when fighting the wolves sprout from it. The spear grew until it was ten feet long and once it reached its full length its thorns unfolded, swift like switchblades.

Jake swiped his finger along one of the thorns. For the first time within an instance, his blood had been drawn.

New Status Effect!

BLEEDING! [Temporary]

The effect only lasted for a second and he only lost one point of health from it, but still it was a first.

“I’m not sure if I can use it,” Jake said. There wasn’t a point on the thing that looked like it would be safe to grab.

In response, the thorn sentinel made the thorns fold themselves back around the spear. He grabbed the spear and lifted his hand along it half an arm’s length.

With a flick of the wrist, the thorns unfolded on the spear above his hand, but not below. The sentinel flicked his wrist back and the thorns above its hand folded around on the spear again.

“He says he needs you to cut it off of him,” Will told Jake.

“Are you sure you want me to do that to you?” Jake asked the sentinel. The thorn warriors weren’t exactly the most expressive, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t feel pain.

The sentinel sent another message Will chose to forward it to Jake this time.

Branch That Moves Stone: This branch of mine will have the chance to regrow. Those who have passed shall get no such chance.

The limb would regrow, but the friends he had lost would never come back.

“I understand,” Jake said. He was feeling a bit more respect for the generated warriors than he had just a minute ago.

He took out his chainsaw from his Inventory and brought the whirling blade to the base of the spear on the Sentinel’s palm. It only took Jake a couple seconds to remove it.

Stoic as always, the sentinel kept its neutral expression. Still, it shed a tear. The tear was made of sap, however, so perhaps it was closer to a tear of blood than a tear of water.

After porting his chainsaw away, Jake tested his new spear. It worked just as had been demonstrated, thorns unfolding and refolding above his hand, leaving him completely unharmed.

“I’ll make good use of it,” Jake told the Branch That Moves the Stone before making the spear disappear into his Inventory.

Will raised his hand. “Can I get one too or…”

“Will, it’s ten-feet long. What are you going to do, have Thorn of My Vine carry it over the hedge for you?”

“You could put it in your Inventory for me.”

“At that point, I might as well keep yours as a spare then.”

“Ha.” Jake heard a breath of laughter behind him.

He turned back to Branch That Move Stone. For the first time, he saw amusement on one of these mannequin children’s faces.

Jake smiled back. “Come on, let’s go,” he told Will.

There were no more delays after that. Jake and Will set off with Thorn of My Vine wrapped around Will’s camping bag.

With the Mother’s Trees guidance, it was not long before they came upon another group of plant children in need of saving from the invaders. There were just ten wolves, this time, led by two goblins.

Other than some pepper spray, Jake and Will saved their consumable resources. They could handle these kinds of numbers with Thorn and the couple thorn warriors present without them.

Things went well for them. Jake gave Will a challenge to slay three of the wolves without getting bitten and with help of the thorn sentry on his back, he was able to stay undamaged.

Unlike before, the trio moved on swiftly after the battle, hoping to make the most of their time. The Mother Tree guided them to the next group of enemies and the fight played out much the same. Pepper spray and good aim were just too good of a combination against enemies that relied heavily on sight and smell and it didn’t hurt that they had a ton of it.

The combination of Jake and Will’s high mobility, crowd control, and range shored up the weaknesses of the immobile thorn warriors’ they encountered and led to devastating defeats for the enemies they ended up facing.

Mother Tree’s Defense Integrity: 59%

After four consecutive decisive victories against the invaders since entering the instance for Will, Jake, and Thorn, the Mother Tree led them to an empty square intersection in the garden.

“Which way next?” Jake asked with three paths before him.

“She says to wait,” Will said, letting Thorn of My Vine down from his back.

“Wait for what?”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Will pointed to a group of about a dozen murder wasps flying over the hedge. From the way they were moving around in the air, it looked like they were following something.

As they grew closer, Jake could hear the snickering sound of goblins, the sound of wolves feet hitting a paved path, and the scraping of something against the ground.

Jake revved his chainsaw in anticipation and ported it back into his Inventory. Thorn stood off to the side in the blindspot of the path that the invaders were approaching from with his vines out. Will got out a couple cans of wasp spray and Jake got out a couple cans of more general bug spray.

With weapons in hand, the trio stood ready for whatever threat came down the path into the clearing.

There was a howling laughter that could have only come from a goblin. As the pair of goblins and their mounts came round the last corner of their path, Jake’s group spotted them first.

Goblin Wolf Rider - Level 8

Tunnel Wolf - Level 6

Goblin Wasp Whisperer - Level 7

Tunnel Wolf - Level 6

The goblin in the lead, let’s call him Grub, was busy joking with the second goblin and had his head turned back instead of forward. The second goblin, let’s call him Snout, had to point past him towards Jake’s trio for the goblin in the lead to see.

Grub smiled upon sight of them. He shouted something, then kicked his wolf’s side. Without a second’s delay, they came barreling down the path towards Jake’s group.

Snout wasn’t so quick to follow. Instead, he kept his current leisurely riding pace and pulled out a flute. With a few notes played, he had seven of the wasps flying forward past his comrade.

The wasps were nothing Jake and Will couldn’t handle. With Jake’s weaponization skill and Will’s Target Reticle skill, they were practically marksmen when it came to shooting these wasps out of the sky.

They shot the two wasps in the lead out of the sky without a sweat. The only problem was that the wasps weren’t exactly aiming to stay up in the sky.

Far more suicidal than a bee protecting its hive, the wasps flew low and straight at them.

Thorn of My Vine lashed out with twin whips, but the wasps were fast. He managed to hit one, but missed the other. That left four wasps charging at Jake and Will, two for each of them.

Jake dodged the first wasp and summoned the emptied container he used to bulk stuff his Inventory over the second. He turned around and finished the first before the second could wrestle the container off of itself. He took the second one down just as quick as he did the first after it got the container off of its head.

“Ah!” Will grunted. He had killed one of the wasps, but Thorn had to kill the second after it stung him.

Jake didn’t have time to check up on him, though. Grub the Wolf Rider was already halfway across the garden square charging at him with its mount.

Jake hadn’t been able to tell the difference between the level 2 and 3 wolves, but he could definitely see the difference levels did with the one this goblin was riding. The wolf was bigger, broader, and meaner than any of the wolves he had seen in or out of the instance. Two of them, maybe even one of them, would probably be enough to take down a horse.

He summoned his last can of bear spray to his hand. This wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted to be gambling on whether or not pepper spray would be enough to stop.

An orange mist of chemicals filled the air in front of him and the wolf bucked to the side with its rider barely holding on.

“Look out!” Will shouted.

Before Jake could think of doing anything more to the wolf or its rider, two more wasps came flying towards his head. Reacting more than thinking, he fired the bear spray instead of the bug spray in his off hand.

It worked in the end, sending the wasps crashing to the ground in pain.

Damn, Jake thought. Yes, the bear spray had worked, but he couldn’t be wasting it on bugs.

He clicked his tongue and ported his dwindling supply bear spray back into his Inventory. He finished the wasps twitching on the ground off with the bug spray.

“Jake!” Will shouted again as Grub’s wolf came blindly slamming into Jake’s side. It managed to knock him straight to the ground.

Grub tried to get it to pounce, but it bounded off towards the hedge wall. Stopping just short of it, the wolf knelt down and started trying to rub its eyes clean of the caustic chemicals burning its eyes, mouth, and nose.

As the beast sat against its belly Jake spotted the heads of two thorn warriors tied to its side as trophies. He decided that he’d make sure the goblin rider would lose his head as well.

Grub shouted something that was probably a swear in whatever tongue goblins spoke as Jake got back onto his feet.

He threw a small sack at the ground next to Jake’s feet. As soon as the sack hit the paved tile, spores started flooding out of it.

Jake backed away at first, but dived forward when he saw Grub throw something that looked like a match.

With his hand raised, Jake fell onto the ground next to the spore sack. When the thrown match came down, it touched the edge of Jake’s Inventory range and got sucked into his pocket dimension. The lighter for the bomb had disappeared.

“Huh?!” Grub definitely sounded like he’d been shocked by the magic trick, but Jake wasn’t done surprising him.

Holding his breath, he picked up the spore sack from the ground next to him and threw it back at the goblin. Porting the spores in the air around him into his Inventory for his own safety, Jake summoned his flare gun and fired it at the goblin.

An explosion rang out. Grub, his mount, and the surrounding hedge were all engulfed in a ball of fire after the goblin’s spore sack ignited.

Jake could feel the burning heat as the tips of the fire tried reaching out to kiss his skin. He heard Snout shout some reaction to what he’d done and looked back to see how Will and Thorn were doing.

The pair had managed to kill the last of the wasp whisperers flying pest and were keeping the coward at a distance.

A kill notification appeared before Jake’s eyes as he got up.

You have blown up a Goblin Wolf Rider!

Enemy: Level 8

You have blown up a Tunnel Wolf!

Enemy: Level 6

Level Up!

Thorn stuck the distracted Snout’s mount while the goblin was distracted and Will hit it with what was left of his wasp spray.

Snout struck out with its own whip and had his mount reel back. They fled towards the northern path out of the square intersection.

Mother Tree: Please, stop them!

Jake could almost hear the Mother Tree’s desperation in the message. He aimed his flare gun at the sacks tied to the goblin’s mount, but the flare missed and flew into the hedge beyond.

He ran over to the mouth of the path hoping to get another shot at the spores, but before he could even aim an explosion erupted before his eyes. The goblin had laid a bomb to cover its escape.

Jake clicked his tongue. “Will, you okay?”

“Yeah, we’re okay,” Will said for both Thorn and himself. “Got lucky that I didn’t get paralyzed. Thorn must have knocked the wasp away before it could get all the poison in.”

“Anything we can do about the fires?” Jake asked the Mother Tree.

Mother Tree: It is within my power to handle this much.

“Right, where to next then?” Jake asked. Before he could get a reply, a howl rang out through the garden loud enough for Jake to feel it in his bones.

“You gonna tell us what that was?” he asked after a brief silence.

Mother Tree: The invader’s biggest threat and perhaps, the harbinger of my doom.