“We’re recording.” Amelia said.
Rose gave her a nod, then turned her attention towards the facility. Being properly unbound was almost intoxicating, in a way; she had never felt such raw power as she did when unbound, and if this was how Amelia had always felt before, Rose could understand how she had gotten her ego.
Rose held out a hand, commanding the plants beneath the facility to twist and grow together, turning into a wooden substance not dissimilar from the bark of Rose’s tree. As the plants grew, she forced the complex up out of the ground, taking the former subterranean facility and exposing it to the world before hiding it from sight once again as she enclosed it in the wood.
Amelia teleported up towards the top, and Rose took a moment to survey the facility for the life signs before deciding where she would make her entrance. Up near the entrance there were five people Rose assumed to be max level given the strength of their life sign, and a quick glance through the facility confirmed that there was another similar group of five down below, likely protecting the important people that were there.
Before teleporting, Rose took a moment to cast a powerful spell that would ward the inhabitants of the facility from death; if they would hit zero HP, they would instead be given a powerful heal and be knocked unconscious. It was a spell that could only be described as miraculous, but with the immense power being unbound provided her and Amelia’s help creating and optimizing the spell, Rose was confident she could keep it up and do her part of the fighting as well. She had no doubt that there would be attempted suicides or even murders to prevent conversion, and she wasn’t going to let that happen.
With that taken care of, Rose grew a small tendril of wood into the room where she felt the group of five, using it as a sort of anchor to make teleporting there easier. To the inhabitants of the room, it must have looked like Rose grew out of the ground in front of them, the terrified looks of the noncombatants revealing just what they thought of the situation.
Amelia was talking in a voice that was being broadcast throughout the facility, but no one in the room paid her much mind. Instead, there was a moment of silence as the combatants sized each other up. Rose recognized all of them; she had made a point of learning the names, faces, and Jobs of each of the max level people in the world, but even beyond that, she had known two of them in her past life.
“Miki, Niles.” Rose said. “Please, analyze my status and look at my Titles, it’s me. I’d love to settle this without fighting you two, but if I have to, I will. So, I’ll ask before we begin; will you join me once again?” She held out her hand, and to her satisfaction both Miki and Niles hesitated as the other three edged away from them.
“But…you’re one of them now.” Miki said, a conflicted look on her face. “We can’t trust you anymore.”
Rose smiled. “Hard as it may be to believe, I’m under no form of mental alteration whatsoever, not even the standard stuff given to swarm members. I’m too strong for it, and it didn’t take.”
“What about your wife and daughter?” Niles asked. “You would never abandon them, yet here you are, apparently married to another woman.”
Rose’s face fell a little. “They’re both here as well, in a sense. My daughter, light of my life and my greatest source of happiness, is thriving as our scoutmaster. My old wife…she left us first, choosing to reincarnate over a minor squabble. She became Amelia. And, now…well, I can say for sure that we love each other more than either of us ever did before.”
Amelia finished her speech, and Rose held up a finger, broadcasting her voice to add a quick addendum that Amelia had forgotten. “Sorry about that.” She said when she had finished. “We’re going to be sending video of this to the world like we did when we announced the swarm. The people need to know what the people who rule them are willing do, and how we will treat them better than their rulers ever will.”
Rose calmly raised her other hand, and a spike of wood speared out of the ground and intercepted a spell that the other three max level people had been working on together while she was talking. “What, did you think I’d just monologue and ignore you? I’m not stupid, you know.” Rose said, raising an eyebrow as she turned to face them. “Now, give me a second while I have a moment with my pupils, we can fight properly afterwards. If you can’t wait, then I’ll be forced to get a bit rougher with you than I want to.”
She turned back to her pupils, giving them a smile. “I know I’m acting differently than I used to, but this is the real me. The me you knew was bound by my station as Hero, forced into acting in a way I despised. The world needed a strong and untouchable ruler, and as Hero, I needed to oblige. Give me a chance, I think you’ll find that this me is far better than the one you knew.”
Miki looked between Rose and Niles, face a mixture of conflicting emotions. “I…but you…how can I know…”
“I swear it on the names of the gods.” Rose said. “And if you think about it, you’d realize my status can’t be fake. I have the Blessing of the God of War, and if I faked that, or used it to legitimize other fake Titles, then I’d be struck down where I stand. Please, don’t make me fight you; I don’t want to hurt you.”
Miki wavered, but Niles took action, slamming a hand against Miki’s skull and knocking her unconscious. “Rule number one, stay firm in your convictions.” He said, giving Rose a defiant look. “Rule number two, if you suspect your allies are being manipulated, act. If you were wrong, you were wrong, if you were right, you’ve prevented a disaster.”
Rose sighed. “At least you remember my lessons.” She said, parrying yet another spell from the other group then turning to face them. “Fine, I’ll be a little rough.” She said. She took out her weapon, transforming it into a halberd and rushing in towards the other group.
“As for the rest of you…lesson one, you can’t try the same thing twice like this.” She instructed. “The concept behind it was good, and it’d work in some cases, but when facing an enemy like me, it won’t. If they dismiss your first attempt with little effort, chances are the second isn’t going to fare much better.”
“Shut up!” One of the three, a Fire Sage named Iris growled, conjuring a wall of fire between herself and Rose. “We don’t need your advice!”
“You may think that way now, but you won’t in the future.” Rose replied calmly. “I was called the best there ever was for a reason, you know. You’re just unhappy that it’s coming from your opponent.”
She sliced through the wall of fire with little effort, poking her halberd lightly into Iris’s chest and leaving a small glob of modeling wax. “Dead.”
“We’d be fools to listen to the advice of our opponent.” Another of the group, an Animist named Payton, said. “And you’re a fool to be wasting your breath on it.” He conjured up the ultimate Skill of his Job, a semi-autonomous carnivorous plant that viciously attacked nearby enemies, siphoning their Mana and using it to unleash devastating attacks against them.
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Rose sighed. “Lesson two, when dueling against a mage who specializes in the same attribute as you, make absolutely sure that you’ll be able to keep control of your spells. Case in point…” Rose strode towards the plant, stroking it gently as she wrested control of it from Payton, “I’m the Personification of the World Tree, plant life is my domain, and you’re not doing anything but giving me a free minion.”
She let the plant snap at Payton, then cocooned it and poked Payton with her halberd, spreading some modeling wax onto him as she did. “Dead.”
“As if.” Iris said, conjuring up her own capstone Skill, a lance of fire that made those hit by it burn until the caster canceled the Skill. “People don’t go down in one hit at this level, and you know it!”
Rose sighed. “Lesson three.” She said, purposefully doing nothing as Iris finished the lance and instead letting her stats do the work for her, walking straight through the lance so she could stab Iris in the forehead. “Sometimes, stats are king. You’ll note that, at this point, my Magic Defense is approaching one hundred and thirty thousand, and my Strength and Magic are nearly ninety thousand. Though standard logic dictates that battles between high-leveled people cannot be settled in one or two blows, that does not hold true when one side has an overwhelming stat advantage.”
Iris crumpled, Rose’s death ward preventing her from dying outright but leaving her unconscious. “Extraordinarily dead. She’s only alive right now because my spell is preventing anyone in here from dying at this point.” She cocooned Iris and put her into her storage, then grew a thin layer of wood out from her body. She waited a moment to make sure the fire burning her was now burning the wood, then shed it along with the flames of Iris’s Skill.
“That’s not possible!” The remaining member of the group, a Healer named Olaf shouted. “That sort of magic doesn’t exist!”
“Didn’t exist.” Rose corrected. “I wield Primal Life Magic, and I don’t have to play by the normal rules. I just will something to happen and it does. Same with nature magic.”
She moved as quickly as she could, sprinting next to Olaf in a movement that must have seemed nearly instantaneous to most onlookers. “For example, it would be very convenient to have life magic that can deal damage and make a debuff, so I made some.” She grabbed Olaf’s arm, shoving a burst of life magic into it and watching as it bloated, twisting and contorting as malignant growths formed at an incredible rate.
“For those watching, what I have done here is stimulate his body into regenerating at such a rapid rate that it grows to the point of uselessness. Left unchecked, this would spread to the rest of his body and likely kill him over the course of a few days. It’s hard to cure, too, most normal life magic wouldn’t see anything wrong and pass it by.”
Olaf grit his teeth and used his capstone Skill, sending out a pulsing wave of healing that fully restored his allies and cleansed their debuffs. His arm stopped growing, shrinking back to its normal size as he glared at Rose. “Is this some sort of sick game to you?” He spat. “You’re behaving like a psychopath.”
“No.” Rose said. “This is simply the most optimal way for me to fight. Whenever you use your Skills while I’m teaching you, you get tripled experience gains, and I gain a tenth of the experience you would have. You all are currently in a life-or-death battle against an entity the power of which dwarfs anything this plane has seen except for Amelia, and you’re gaining an absurd amount of experience, which means I am too. Look, I can use the Fire Sage’s capstone Skill now!”
She shot the lance of fire back at Niles, who was attempting to sneak up behind her. “Dead.” She said, not looking back at him as she let the flames that were burning him dissipate. “That one blow would have killed you if I wasn’t holding back. And, if you were wondering, yes, I can use both the Healer and Animist capstone Skills now too, but I could already replicate their functions with my magic anyway, so it’s not that big of a gain for me, really.”
She cocooned Olaf and put him into her storage. “Now, for today’s final lesson; sometimes, there is valor in running away.” She got in close with Payton, grabbing his head as he futilely struggled in her grip. “You should have run the moment you realized I can take control of whatever you do and make it my own.” She said, cocooning him and putting him into storage before turning to Niles.
Niles hurriedly activated the capstone Skill of the Monk, which quintupled his physical stats and all of his defenses. He tried to get in close to attack her, but, even with his buffs, Rose was leagues above him in terms of stats.
“You should have run when you saw my stats.” Rose said, sidestepping his lunge and growing several thorns that pierced him and began applying modeling wax. “You’re not dealing any significant damage to me, and you probably won’t be inflicting any status effects either.”
She put his cocoon in storage, then turned to the noncombatants, who were huddled up in the corner, terror evident on their faces. Or, rather, those who were conscious were in a terrified huddle; it appeared that more than one had been “killed”, and after a point the rest had probably realized attempting to die wasn’t going to work. “And you all should have run the moment you saw a chance. Of course, I’m blocking all the exits, but you could have made an attempt. I’ll deal with you in a moment, though.”
She turned to Miki, who had been brought back to consciousness by Olaf’s Skill. “Would you like to have a go at me?” Rose asked.
Miki was silent for a long moment. “I’m going to come with you willingly, but…I’d like you to come at me with full force, just like in old times.”
Rose gave her a huge smile. “Of course. When I’m done, I’ll cocoon you for the purposes of getting you back home, but I’ll release you when we’re there so we can discuss your conversion. Now, get ready, I’ll be coming in three…two…one…”
Miki activated the capstone Skill of the Boundary Witch, a Skill which completely isolated a space from the outside world. She had chosen to isolate herself inside, no doubt intending to apply all her buffs before expanding the space to include Rose. Before, Rose might not have been able to interact with this, but the her of now was different; in the past few months she’d been teaching a great many people, not the least of whom was Amelia.
Rose took a deep breath, pulling on one of the Skills Amelia had granted her, one that allowed her to physically interact with Mana. It wasn’t one that saw much use, but here, it was perfect. She grabbed the crack in space, then tugged, pulling it open to reveal a flabbergasted Miki. Rose strolled right in and poked Miki’s forehead. “Dead.” She said, tousling Miki’s hair affectionately. I’m going to cocoon you now, okay?”
Miki nodded dumbly, not resisting as Rose cocooned her. Once Miki was safely in storage, Rose stepped out and turned to the people she had left behind, some of whom were futilely clawing at the door out. “Good, you listened!” Rose said brightly. “Struggle until the end, it’s better to go out kicking and screaming than it is to just accept your fate. For, now, however, I’ll need you to sleep; I need to wrap this up.”
Rose exploded into a torrent of thorns, each spearing out from her and impacting one of the people who hadn’t yet been cocooned. She cocooned them all, put them in storage, then withdrew the wood she had been using to block the door.
Judging by the signs of life she was seeing, Amelia had dealt with her group, so now it was just cleanup. She cast a haste spell on herself and ran through the halls, a rushing wave of wood behind her bursting into rooms to cover whatever was inside with modeling wax and put the resulting cocoons in Rose’s storage.
She then teleported to near the top of the structure, beginning to clear the floors from top to bottom. It was more optimal to meet Amelia in the middle, but…she wasn’t Reuben, not anymore. This wasn’t as optimal, but it was more fun to pretend she was racing Amelia, leapfrogging between floors as they cleared them in their sprint to the bottom.
In the end, Amelia was faster than Rose, reaching the captives when Rose still had an entire floor to go. A minute or two later, Rose got to the captives herself, catching the very tail-end of their story. “Well, you’re safe now.” She said, walking into the room.” Everyone else here has been cocooned.”
Amelia snapped her fingers, and the group was back at Rose’s tree. Amelia and Rose quickly explained the living situation to them and sent them off, then set off to go see Lia, spirits light. They had dealt an enormous blow to their foes, and Rose felt good knowing that she had made those she loved just that little bit safer. It wasn’t a feeling she had had the luxury of having before, but now…now it just made it all worth it.