As more and more of the people of his side were dying, Der had kept walking towards his destination. And he finally reached it. At first glance, it did not seem different at all from any other place in the island. Soil, Bushes and trees randomly placed. Or were they randomly placed? He wasn't quite sure.

He stopped walking and his entire body turned towards a tree branch on his right side. With his weird voice, he spoke:

Der??: Come out, Titan. I know you are here.

He was right. On that very same branch, there was someone. Lera was there. Fortunately, the man had not noticed Atem under the ground yet and only her. As her job was protecting him while he made sure the whole group was in disarray, enough for Tempest to clean up, she had to deal with this one.

Obviously, she wasn't weak. She was a Titan. The Guardian of this world. She lost a lot of power in order to keep this world alive when its seed was stolen but she was still strong. She showed herself, brimming with confidence, to her opponent. She could see that neither the mist nor the hands coming from all over the place were doing anything to him.

Lera: Congratulations on reaching here alive. Don't expect to leave though~

Der??: Interesting. A plant-type Titan. Now the geography makes more sense. Are you with them or are they using your territory?

Lera: That doesn't matter, now, does it?

Der??: *chuckle* You're right. I will devour you either way.

As those words finished, both began to attack. From up, branches began to come down ferociously towards Der, from under, there were roots, and from the surroundings, bushes were sending out their own parts as if arrows and needles. As for Der, thin tentacles clad in a metal of some kind with many randomly distributed pointy ends erupted from his sleeves. There were dozens of those tentacle-strands things.

The tentacles and vegetations began to encounter each other and with deafening noises from the incredible speed, Der began to counter all projectiles. There were many but he was not in any difficulty to take this on. His tentacles seemed to be tougher and since he was swinging them faster, the sheer velocity added strength to it. All the projectiles sent by Lera were uneffective.

She didn't stop though. More and more was erupting from all around. It did nothing. Der noticed quite easily what her goal was thanks to his bountiful experience. While the traps made from the wolves, mist and arms were nothing to him, they would likely be deadly to the others...And there were still at least three opponents whose locations remained unknown.

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If those three had started moving to eliminate the few who survived the early traps...She was trying to buy time. Did she think he planned to regroup with others? Or did she know she was weaker? In both cases, it only meant one thing to him. He shouldn't play longer than necessary.

As such thoughts began to appear in his head, he noticed that whenever he began to destroy the greeneries, some kind of pollen exploded from it. It became obvious what this pollen was doing.

Der??: Paralysing pollen...Ingenious. I know that you wish for a battle of attrition but I am not very enclined to such a thing. Forgive my rudness.

Then, before she could react, he propulsed himself towards her at an extreme speed destroying anything that was on his path. There had been absolulety no movements from either helmet or the cloak before he moved. How was it possible? There was a requirement for at least some muscles to move in order to move. But there was no indications that such a thing happened there.

Lera was still perplexed about this as she managed to dodge by having herself taken away by a liana. She had prepared beforehand to escape the position. A liana was rolled around her middle-section and ready to extract her. This liana was originally not connected to anything, it was Lera's magic that made it move and connect to different places. She had had it linked to a tree from a different branch beforehand.

Now that she had used it to dodge, as she was still moving away, she had the liana go towards a different branch. Meanwhile, Der reached the branch and instead of destroying it and going right through, he lightly stuck to it, horizontally. Once more, there were no movements at all indicating a flexion of muscles. Nor anythign else to explain how could be standing parallel to the ground in such way.

He was grinning. Facing Titans was always the kind of battles that gave him excitement. The adrenaline from facing strong beings was always welcome. He lived solely for such moments nowadays. He looked towards the female Titan. Considering her speed, she was probably grandly weakened. As the intel provided stated. She remained strong. A titan weakened is still a Titan.

As he was thinking about the next move, the branch he was one began to turn on himself trying to enroll itself upon him. Too bad for the branch, he had already moved. Once more without a single indication he did to be gleamed from his appearance. It forced Lera to escape again. This time, he wasn't going to stop the chase. And she was not going to simply watch him do so.

From the trees, hundreds of leaves began to descend upon him at frightening speed. He did not even bother dodging them as he kept advancing, bouncing from branch to branch in pursuit of Lera. The leaves contained so little magic that it couldn't harm in at all. However, they could slash at his cloak. And that was Lera's goal.

As she reached the next tree branch, she was forced to admit that her opponent was not a weakling. He had reached her too. She decided to bait him.

As he was just a few meters away from her, standing on that same branch and rushing at her, new branches erupted from the very branch they were standing on while a torrent of leaves erupted between them. Lera planned to use it to make her escape while trapping him.