Following this, they began to confront themselves fairly face to face. Lera was swinging both swords expertedly, blocking and parrying tendrils while the leaf storms was raging and forcing the creature to use the remaining tendrils to block. He was destroying the leaves little by little but the amount never diminished. It would not. After all, leaves weren't very lacking around here.

If a leaf was detroyed, a new one fell from the trees to take its place.

As they engaged in their fierce duel, they began to destroy the verdant surroundings. Trees fell, bushes uprooted and the ground leveled. There were slashing marks covering their paths. And it was attracting attention. The very few people still alive knew where the fight was going on. Though going there and entering was a different thing altogether.

They either had two things in mind. One was to wait for the fight to end and killing what would be left and two was to survive themselves. Which meant that the duel was going to end with either Lera or Der dying. Unfortunately, Tempest and Atem were unable to provide her with real support. The mist and shadow arms not doing anything.

And so, here she was, forced into a melee fight with this monster. It was becoming harder and harder on her. Both her mental state was crumbling as she needed to maintain an extreme vigilance and concentration and her physical state as magical exhaustion was beginning to appear. From the moment the melee began, she had to spend a far greater amount of it so as not to be utterly overpowered.

She knew the creature was far from going all-out as it seemed to be smart. Smart enough to recognize that he did not need to and that he had to keep as much as he could because there were more opponents. She was also enable to escape again. He wasn't giving her enough time to prepare for it as every block forced her many steps back.

And so, they traded slashes with intense speed and focus. Slowly but surely, she began to be cut. At first, small cuts but it became larger cuts and then, she began to be pierced by tendrils one after another. The grinning creature turned her into a beehive considering the dozens of holes he putthrough her entire body. She began to cough blood while he suspended her into the air from the tendrils pierced through her. She was at the end.

The magic left her. The blades she held reverted back to leaves and drifted in the wind, going further down towards their resting place on the ground. Meanwhile, she was smiling at the creature. Der wasn't very pleased to see his prey looking at him this way, as if he was the one who lost. He had not.

They both knew that there were no reinforcements coming to her rescue.

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As he was opening his mouth, ready to start devouring her alive, her body exploded in red powder. He ended up covered in it.

Corrosion. Again.

Did she suicide to sprinkle this meager poison onto his body? No... He could see some different colored powder drifting in many different directions. She had blown up her entire body but not her consciousness. Right, she was a plant-type.

She indeed used her last resort. A spell that enabled her to escape certain death. At the price of her body. She would have to regrow it back... It would take some time. This particular spell exploded her body and turned her consciousness into a pollen. Pollen that she could direct. She sent it far away from the creature obviously and sent some here and there randomly to hide her tracks.

If he found her Pollen of Consciousness, she was dead for good.

She had survived the betrayal years ago thanks to this spell and she would survive this ordeal once more thanks to it. This was the real ability of plants. They could die but they would grow back again. They only required time and energy. And she would get both. She only hoped she had managed to buy enough time...

Meanwhile Der used a fire spell to set himself on fire, completely erasing all pollen and forcing the corrosion to a stop.

'Der??: She was a smart one. To think she would be ready to detonate her own body to survive... She lost the fight yet won in the end. She didn't die and managed to force me to deplete quite a bit of my Magic. I should still have enough depending on how strong they are but now... Yeah, she will likely pass them intel on my abilities and my real form. I guess it is pointless to wear a disguise now...

'Der??: Now, where should I go? I can see one far underground and unmoving and one that has been moving non-stop...But not the third one... Mhm... It is quite likely that the one underground is the one maintaining those irritating spells. I will take care of him first.

As the living ball began to move back towards where he met Lera and where Atem was hiding, Lera had reached a flower on the leftmost side of the island... It was a pink rose as big as a carriage. The small golden pollen floated down gently onto it. And the rose closed upon itself.

In seconds, it began to wither. To wither completely until nothing but a shrunken dead plant was left. And out of it, a small figure extracted itself. It was a female humanoid no taller than twenty centimeters... It was a mini version of Lera. She had a new body though it was small and weak.

She had been given time to prepare before the battle and she knew what might be needed. She had planted a single flower and focused on growing it in all this time. She couldn't get it bigger but it was enough that she managed to do this much.

In general, she would have to drop on a random flower and accumulate Magic into it until it grew to a similar size before it could make her a body. Such an endeavor would take a very long time, years, as she would be dependant on the surrounding Magic and not her own as she would have had no body.

The fact that she used her own Magic beforehand to grow it saved her very precious time. She needed to warn the others now. She went to a root that was out of the ground not far from where the rose had been. The root was a contraption she placed beforehand too.

She whispered into it...