A huge fist crashed through the window, taking down a section of the wall as well.
Nina thrust her hands toward it, launching a fireball. The magical projectile exploded on impact with the monster’s hand covered with tree bark but didn’t do any visible damage to it. The huge fist thrashed around inside the house, knocking over and shattering all the furniture. Nina, Kirk, and Kwan managed to avoid being hit by it, but Michael wasn’t so lucky. He wasn’t as fast and agile as his three friends, and at some point, the monster’s fist hit him with the force of a freight train, sending him flying across the room. He hit the wall on the opposite side and collapsed to the floor with a thud.
“Michael, are you okay?” Kirk shouted to him with worry in his voice.
“I'm fine,” the big guy replied as he slowly got to his feet. “More or less, that is.”
“Catch,” Kwan said, tossing him a health potion.
“Much obliged,” Michael replied, catching the bottle out of the air and immediately drinking the contents.
At that moment, the monster swung his fist across the room once more, but this time, all four of them managed to get out of the way in time.
“We can’t fight the golem here,” Kwan yelled. “Let’s get back outside.”
The tree golem they’d encountered in the forest had followed them all the way to their camp. Since they still hadn’t finished building one of the walls, the enormous tree monster had no trouble getting into their camp. The four of them had been fighting the golem for a few minutes but had hardly done any damage to it. They’d decided to hide from it in one of their houses, but as they’d just learned it hadn’t been such a good idea.
“Get out of the building,” Kirk shouted to his friends, and they ran out of the house.
They continued to attack the tree golem with everything they had. As they’d already learned, the monster wouldn’t leave them alone no matter what. It would follow them everywhere, and the only way to get rid of it was to defeat it. The tree monster was so tall Kirk, Kwan, and Michael who were armed with melee weapons could attack only its two huge legs covered with thick bark. Nina was a mage, so she launched fireballs at different parts of its body, trying to find a weak spot, but no dice so far. They had no idea how to defeat the powerful forest monster, but they had no other choice than to fight it. Nina had a feeling the tree golem could be defeated somehow—they just needed to find some kind of vulnerable spot.
She stepped back for a moment to drink a stamina potion. Casting spells consumed a lot of energy. While Nina was an experienced mage by that point, using magic non-stop for such a long period of time was taking a toll on her. She was getting tired and therefore needed to restore her energy in order to be able to continue to fight.
She drank a potion and debated whether it was enough or if she should drink another one. At that moment, she heard Kwan yell to her, “Nina, watch out!”
She looked up in time to see thorny vines shoot from the tree golem in her direction. She attempted to dash out of the way, but she was too late. The long snake-like plants wrapped around her slender body, and she yelped in pain when some of the thorns tore through the fabric of her robe and pierced her skin. Kirk and Michael wasted no time coming to her aid, but before they could reach her, the vines lifted her off the ground well out of their reach.
Nina wiggled and jerked her body, exerting all her strength, but no matter what she did, she just couldn’t free herself. Every movement she made caused the thorns to dig deeper into her flesh, hurting her and causing her eyes to tear up from the pain.
The vines continued to bring her closer and closer to the tree golem.
What is the monster planning to do with me?
Nina couldn’t even use magic right now. To cast a spell, she needed to think of it and simultaneously make a special motion with her hands. For instance, to launch a fireball she needed to hold her hand toward the target. Or if she wanted to heal herself, she needed to raise one hand and clench it into a fist. But right now her arms were pressed to her sides by the vines tightly wrapped around her body.
The vines brought her so close to the tree golem its body filled her vision almost entirely. In the middle of its body opened a vertical tear. The vines hovered Nina just in front of it. The tear kept expanding, opening like an enormous mouth. Nina looked into it and saw what looked like a human heart inside the tree golem—only it was the size of a basketball. The heart was beating constantly, and Nina realized she’d just found the monster’s vulnerable spot. The question was whether she would live through this to tell her friends about her discovery. When the maw opened wide enough to swallow her whole, the vines resumed bringing her toward it. The tree golem was apparently planning to eat her. Nina screamed in horror.
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When Kwan saw the vines wrap around Nina’s body and lift her off the ground, he’d wasted no time dashing toward the building closest to the tree golem. Out of the four of them, he was the fastest and the most agile. Once he got on the building’s roof, he spun around toward the tree golem in time to see it open its mouth to swallow Nina. Yelling in rage, he ran to the edge of the roof and jumped, raising his sword above his head, holding the grip with both hands. Still airborne, he swung the sword down, severing the vines holding Nina.
Kirk and Michael caught her, breaking her fall. Kwan dropped to the ground nearby, curling into a roll to cushion his fall.
“Are you okay?” Kirk asked Nina.
Instead of answering the question, she pointed upward and said, “Guys, look!”
They looked up and saw the tree golem’s heart Nina had first seen a minute before.
“What the heck is that?” Kirk muttered.
“Looks like a heart,” Michael said.
“It sure does.”
The tree golem began to close its maw, and Nina held her hands out toward it, launching a fireball. Before the monster could fully close its mouth, the magical projectile flew inside and hit the heart. The resultant explosion made the tree golem shudder.
“You hurt him, Nina,” Kirk yelled excitedly. “It’s in pain!”
The monster continued to attack them, but the battle didn’t last long after that. Now that they knew where its vulnerable spot was, they knew what they needed to do. While Kwan, Kirk, and Michael distracted the monster, Nina launched fireballs at the exact spot on its body where moments ago they’d seen its heart. After a few hits, she finally managed to punch a hole in its body through which could be seen the monster’s beating heart. The tree golem realized Nina posed the biggest threat to it, so it tried to get to her, but she always stayed a safe distance from the monster while her friends did their best to distract the golem from her.
After Nina hit the monster’s heart a few times with fireballs, the tree golem’s enormous body shuddered for the last time and began to fall. The gigantic monster collapsed onto the building that was already damaged, crashing through the roof and partly obliterating two of the walls.
“Is it dead?” One of them asked.
They got the answer a second later when all of them received lots of Essence points for killing the monster, with Nina getting the most XP for having dealt the most damage to it.
After that, they spent a few hours chopping the tree golem into pieces and getting rid of them. They then brought the rest of the logs from the trees they’d felled earlier on back to the camp. They used the wood to build the final wall and a gate. The perimeter of their camp was now secured. The walls were made of thick sharp-tipped wooden stakes. Nobody and nothing would be able to get into their camp without breaking one of the walls first.
This long day was coming to an end. They’d spent the first half of the day chopping down trees and carrying logs to the camp. Then they’d been busy dealing with the tree golem and building the last wall and the gate. By the time the sun began to set, all of them were exhausted. They decided to call it a day. They ate together and then just sat around the campfire, discussing the recent battle against the tree golem.
After they talked about it for a bit, they came to the conclusion that that monster had probably been some kind of a guardian of the forest. In the past several days, they’d chopped down a lot of trees in order to get enough wood to build the walls as well as houses for Kwan and Michael. So they must’ve made the forest mad with them, and it’d turned one of the trees into a golem to deal with them. It was as good an explanation as any.
The house that had been partly destroyed during the battle belonged to Kwan, but they didn’t have enough wood left to restore it. Since they didn’t want to wake up another tree golem, they decided not to chop down any trees for a few days. It left a question of where Kwan would live now. He stole a glance at Nina, hoping she would invite him to live with her even though he knew very well that it wasn’t going to happen. It was just wishful thinking on his part.
“You could live with me,” Michael said. “If you want, that is.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Before meeting Kirk and Nina, Kwan and Michael had spent a lot of time together, so they were getting along very well.
They exchanged goodnights and began to walk to their respective houses. When Kwan and Michael were nearing Michael’s house, they heard fast footsteps behind them.
“Wait please,” Kwan heard Nina’s voice behind him. He stopped and turned around.
Nina caught up with them and stood before Kwan. “I still haven’t thanked you.”
“What for?”
“You saved my life.”
“Ugh—That’s fine. You don’t have to thank me,” Kwan mumbled, suddenly feeling shy. He wanted to add something else, but he was feeling too embarrassed for some reason.
Nina took a step toward him, a serious look on his face. “If it wasn’t for you, the golem would’ve killed me.”
Kwan blushed when Nina took another step toward him. Now she was so close to him her chest almost touched his.
“What are you—”
She stood on tiptoes and pecked him on the cheek. “Thank you for saving me.”
“You’re welcome,” he managed to say.
Nina smiled at him and began to walk back toward her house. Kwan watched her go until he realized Michael was staring at him intently. Kwan looked at him briefly and said, “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
Without waiting for the answer, he turned toward Michael’s house and began to walk toward it, hoping he looked casual and relaxed when in fact he was so excited that his heart hammered in his chest.
At some point when they walked toward the building, he noticed that Michael was casting glances at him. It was then that Kwan realized he had a stupid smile plastered on his face. He immediately wiped it off.
“What?” He asked his friend looking at him.
“Nothing,” Michael replied, his eyes sparkling with amusement.