The eyes blazed as the glared at the intrepid group of humans.  He unleashed a that gathered the nearby who were still alive.  It also summoned an , but the raging flames of the village had already started combusting it.  The other treants and near the town that served the already died due to their weakness to flames.

Before the fight even started Jude and his group leveled up.  Jude reached level 25, and the rest were not far behind.  Krinn also hit 25, but Wen reached 26, still proud to be in the lead.

The wailed in rage, “You will all die!”

“You think we would just sit idly by while you ate us?!” Jude exploded back.

But there was no use talking to the , they yelled out their fury and charged towards the group.

The regular were at level 25, but the leader and elder treant were both at level 27 and classified as Elite.  An elite was similar to a boss or miniboss in a spawn area, but there was no direct correlation in power.  The would have been much stronger than the but was severely weakened due to the fires and was caught ablaze.

When they reached the firewall created by Jude, the flames surged, but ultimately couldn’t stop them from entering.  It did severely weaken the regular and further weaken the elder treant.

Krinn bashed his shield with his axe and bellowed a .  The focused the hate of the towards Krinn as he then unleashed a large .  The attacked arched out with an energy wave that hit twice as far as the axe could alone.  The strike hit all the enemies in one go but was not enough to end their lives.  But Cairfay had already followed up with her attack as Krinn was doing his.

Six streaks of , each one hitting a single target.  These targets were blasted back into the firewall which quickly consumed their lives.

The was like a beast as he crawled forward, legs disjointed, so they worked backward to a human knee.  His stinger tail was hovering over his back as it flashed leaving only shadow images.  Krinn managed to block two strikes with his shield, but surprisingly there were still two bloody holes on him, one near his shoulder and another on his thigh.  The stinger strikes weren’t very accurate, but they were incredibly fast, dealing out multiple attacks in the time it takes to make one.

The poison of the tail was setting into Krinn as Nellie began chanting her spell with antidote reagents in hand.  A flash of light passed over her, and the salve in her hand disappeared.   Krinn’s wounds quickly stopped bleeding, and the poison effect slowed down.

Wen was set to off-tanking the tree, and she used the long reach of her halberd to land strikes.  Her quick movement and large attack range kept her from being hit by the slow yet very powerful blows of the .  When the treant would strike out, she would jump back and then back in with her weapon.  This along with the fires on the treant, let her manage it alone.

Jude kept working the last scroll he activated.  The flames of the town were only getting hotter and hotter, if he let go of this spell scroll, it would deactivate and they would all likely die.   Instead, he was manipulating the scroll to trap the regular outside of the spell by moving its boundaries.  The moment they found themselves outside of the spell area effect was the time of their death.  Even if they didn’t die, getting back through the firewall would ensure they did.

Ellie and Cairfray continued to attack the .  Since he was only an Elite, he didn’t have any unique moves that he hadn’t already shown.  The fight ended quickly and soon after the also died.

All that was left were Jude and his group inside a town that was more flames than anything else.

“That was oddly easy,” Krinn said.

Then the ground started rumbling and cracking.  Out of the cracks, spouts of fire rose up.

“What the cosh Krinn!” Wen yelled at her brother, “You always have to open your big mouth, and then something like this happens!”

“!” a crackled and old voice sounded from underneath the ground.  Then from the largest crack burst forth a growing tree.  Its trunk shot straight up, and branches quickly sprouted out of its sides.  Roots from below unfurled and slammed on the ground.  Then leaves of flame grew out of the branches as bark formed like across its body that looked like burning coal.  After which, cracks appeared on its surface as two eyes and a mouth opened up.

Jude noticed that its name transformed from to .  This treant used an obscure ability that rarely shows up in Elder Treants, it caused it to be reborn from a ‘dead tree’ like existence into a fiery one.  This made Jude wonder if treants took on a form of life depending on their environment.  The Arkess Aquifers was a place of death, hence were born here.  But in an environment of fire, a was born.  But he could only imagine the rarity of something like this.  Even if a treant had a skill, it would have to be a big gamble.  To successfully be born a the chance of it working must have been around 1%.

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The orange and red fire eyes were glaring at Jude’s group.  It opened its mouth and roared causing a fire to spew forth.  

Waves of fire started to roll off the transformed treant, and everyone started attacking.  Hammers were flying, magic was blasting about, axe was swinging, and halberd joined in too.  Jude did his best to maintain the scroll.  It was primarily designed to reduce fire damage, and even with fire attacks happening inside the barrier it was working great.  But even still Nellie was very busy working her healing magic.

Wen’s halberd was now doing significantly more damage as it had a water attribute.  She danced about the treant, dodging, slashing and charging.  Even with Krinn keeping its attention, it had multiple limbs and which attacked everywhere.  But the group as a whole worked in excellent harmony.  And even with the of this treant, it was slowly losing ground.

But this treant was currently in its favored environment.  All it had to do when it got weak was to step out of Jude’s barrier and replenish its health from the fires of the village.  Unfortunately for it, the attack patterns that it used were quickly identified, and the party was also beginning to be injured less.

However, a new problem was cropping up.

Jude spoke out, “Guys we need to run!”

“What, why?” Krinn asked, they were all tired, but they were sure that they could outlast the treant.

“This scroll isn’t going to last much longer,” Jude replied, “If we don’t leave now, the fires of the town will kill us, not to mention the treant who is at home in these fires.”

“What?!” Wen shouted, “Then let's run!  Jude lead the way!”

Wen was a veteran of these kinds of adventures, and she knew immediatly when to run.

“Everyone, stick close to me,” he said, “Once we start moving the area effect of this scroll will diminish.”

Seeing that everyone gathered, Jude grabbed the scroll.  Immediately, the diameter of the firewall halved, and the treant unleashed another attack.  Krinn used a protective ability and blocked the wave of fire and branch with a muffled grunt.

Jude proceeded north, leading his friends through the fiery mess of the village.  He had an idea of where to go.  Currently, they didn't know where they were in Arkess Aquifers, and they would need to find their bearing and possibly a way out of this underground world.

The treant followed and continued attacking.  Normally it would be easy to outrun a treant; they are much slower than humans who had proper legs.  But this treant was in an environment that boosted all of its stats and was much harder for people to navigate.  Because of that, they were not able to escape the treant as it continued to attack.  Krinn kept blocking the blows and Nellie continuously chanted out healing spells.  But it wasn’t enough to heal everyone while they were moving. 

Jude silently cursed, but there was no other option.  If they stayed and fought, they would only win by outlasting the fires of the huts.  But the shield that was keeping them alive through the fire was not going to last until then.  Even now the runes on the page were already growing dim.  There just wasn’t enough time!

Just when things got bad, the treant unleashed an ability that it had been holding back.  At first, they thought the treant had given up as it stopped and rooted itself into the ground.  But they were wrong. Roots burst up in front of them forming walls and blocking off all the paths.  The walls were spiked on top and radiated immense heat.  The exterior was the same charcoal look of the treant itself.  A thought hit Jude, and he realized that this was a much more powerful version of his firewall, it was not only hotter, but it also had physical substance.

They kept trying to go around these walls, but they kept springing up between the burning huts.

“Through there!” Jude pointed to a burning hut.

They went into the hut with Krinn following in the rear, “Where to now?”

In most games back in Jude’s world, structures and walls were indestructible, even going through something like a hut wall was impossible without cheating.  But this world was a mixture of real and unreal from the perspective of his world.  And Jude could sense something in the eyes of his friends and even that treant.  He could sense that they thought this was a trap, a dead end.

But Jude pointed to the opposite wall and told Cairfray, “Make me a door!”

“What?” She asked surprised.

“Just blast it!” He said.

Cairfray chanted something that Jude was unfamiliar with but recognized that it was from the Tree.  After the chanting, she said the command words, “.”

Jude was surprised, was a Rank VII .  Evidently, Cairfray had been working hard on her magic practice.  But even as he was impressed, he thought it was a little bit of an overkill.

The orb formed with a high density of magic power and consumed the majority of Cairfrays magic.  And when it fully developed, it was the size of a basketball radiating power.  The orb did not stand idle but rushed to the wall that Jude had indicated.

Even though the huts were made out of grass, wood, and human bones, they were still quite resilient.  Even now the majority of the burning huts remained intact, which just went to show how much HP that these buildings had.  Perhaps everyone had been right about the resiliency of these walls.  

The slammed into the wall.  Upon impact, the sphere ruptured, and a massive explosion rocked the ground.

In the wall, there was barely a big enough hole for a person to exit.  Jude had dramatically underestimated the strength of these walls.  He wasn’t sure if it was the structure itself or because the area was at a higher level.  But it left a deep impression on him.

Jude and the rest didn’t waste much time gawking at the hole.  They pushed through it as fast as they could.  The treant could not even make it through the hut, much less than the hole on the backside of it. It tried to go around, but it was blocked by its own walls.  Even in this environment, there was no way for it to catch up now.

Jude and his friends exited the burning village a little while later.  Soon after the scroll that had been protecting them from the flames turned to dust as it was fully expended.

Others might see his use of scrolls a waste as it took a lot of time and resources to create such objects.  But as long as Jude could get another brush, he would be ok.  One of the most valuable skills he had gotten in