Chapter 6 - The Magical Tree

Chisel shaped rocks the size of Mill’s arm plummeted from the sky like missiles heading directly to the tree and everywhere around it.

The student panicked below the rain of rocks, some ran away from the tree, some went to it. Their shouts uniformed, all full of fear.

Those on the fringe were hit first. Their screams silenced as countless chisel rocks punchered their bodies.

It was like a wave, hitting first the outside ring then onwards to the tree in the middle.

Mill felt his world slowed. He felt death coming to him. He knew wherever he went or evaded, he would not be able to escape those rocks.

It was also very sudden. He was still thinking of a quick solution to his predicament when the rocks had already reached him. He was only able to take a step back and the rocks were already a feet away from his face.

He thought this was it. The time that he would die.

Time slowed down even more that he could even see the details of the chisel rocks, its imperfect edges and sharp points. Being hit with it would definitely blow his head into pieces. But a second passed by and nothing happened.

The sound of chaos was still raging around him but the chisel rocks were held into place, floating midair a few feet from him, as if time stopped for them.

Little by little the stone disintegrated into brown lights, dispersed into little lights, and flowed to the branches of leaves above.

He looked up and stared dumbstruck at a piece of a tree branch just above him. Without him knowing, he had just entered the shade area of the tree and somehow it stopped those chisel stones from entering inside its area.

The students who were also able to enter under the tree at the last seconds all reacted with relief.

Most of the Tree Club members, as Mill named them conveniently, were all scrambling to the huge trunk of the tree, trying to get as much space from outside.

They had now stopped pushing away the surviving, outsider student. Almost half of their members were already dead and seeing those bodies should have brought a reality check on them. That they were also as vulnerable as anyone.

A lot of bodies, some whole but mostly in parts, were scattered around the whole eerie park. Green grasses had now turned red and the flower beds that dotted the whole park were now replaced with bloodied body parts.

That was when they noticed it.

Silent whimpers immediately haunted the whole park.

Gazes full of fear, disbelief and shock stared at the now darkened sky.

No one dared to talk. No one made an intentional sound. It was as if something came over with everyone that made them go as quiet as they could, below the tree, where they were safe, for the meantime.

Those from the outer perimeter of the tree slowly backed away. The tree was magical, no one could deny it. But there was something more dangerous outside. And it was not coming from the rock killer with its rain of rocks. It was something more sinister than they expected.

Mill thought it was just a dark cloud before. He was so caught up with the rock monster that he did not have much chance to inspect the then darkening sky.

He thought that the dread he was feeling before came from the rock monster. He did not consider that there was an even more terrifying creature than it. But what he was looking at now was straight out from a nightmare.

It was gigantic.

Imagining colossal creatures from books of both myth and fiction was one thing, seeing it in real life was something a human brain was not prepared to see.

Mill’s brain tried to process the image in front of him. It looked like an octopus, a giant one. It had dozens of arms that looked like tentacles and it was so huge that it made a whipping sound just from moving around.

How could a creature exist like this? Mill felt like an ant compared to it. One stomp of its tentacles and it would crush him into a pulp.

Mill didn’t know what to do. How could he outrun this creature? How could he escape? He could not even move from the sheer mental pressure the creature was giving off. He looked around and saw everyone was as helpless as him.

But while they were huddling there, lost of what to do, a certain rock monster was not.

Without them knowing, the rock monster was summoning more rocks out of thin air and shooting it to the tree like bullets. But no matter how much rock was thrown, it would only dematerialize into tiny lights after a short moment.

This gave Mill a tiny sense of relief, but the dread in him was still growing. Right on time, the rock being made a scoffing noise and a single rock started to materialize in front of it, it grew bigger by the seconds till it reached the size of a two storey house.

Then it fell.

Mill blanched at the sight.

There was no way the tree could take this direct hit.

Just as he thought it was his last moment, the rock, which was falling straight above the tree, changed its falling trajectory for some reason. It was supposed to hit head on on the tree but it hit only half of it.

The force of the collision echoed throughout the whole tree. But the giant rock was stuck floating above the tree similar to what happened to the smaller ones before.

The parts of the rocks touching the tree dematerialize into tiny lights and disperse little by little by the tree. It was like something was eating and digesting the rock at the same time. Five seconds later, only half of the rock was left and after another five seconds, the last part of the rock was dematerialized into nothing.

Before Mill could breathe for relief another gigantic rock materialized again and shot to the tree. The rock had not yet hit the tree when another two gigantic rocks followed it.

The impact caused another explosive sound as the tree swayed to the side and held off the rocks one by one. It creaked from the strain, cracks forming all over its trunk. Another batch of rocks hit it and it bent to the side more, while the tree’s roots started uprooting from the ground.

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Broken branches and leaves fell to the ground as Mill jumped to the side as a root whipped from the ground below him.

Rocks were still hitting the top of the tree but as seconds went by, instead of being uprooted, the tree gained its posture little by little.

Brown lights lit up the top of the tree as rocks dematerialized one after the other. The degree of their dematerialization also increased. It was like looking at a piece of crumpled paper being burned by fire.

At the same time, the cracks from the tree were mended and the space where the broken branches were then replaced with new and bigger ones. More roots appeared from the bottom trunk while the trunk itself was getting thicker.

The symbol painted on the tree was also getting bigger till Mill could even see the details of the little circles of islands in it.

The tree was sucking up the rocks and using it to strengthen itself. Mill suspected it had to do with the symbol.

He surmised immediately that he had to go there. There might be a solution to his situation in that symbol.

But the rock monster above him had another plan. Seeing that its attack only made the tree stronger, it stopped its barrage of rocks and propelled itself to the tree.

Mill was running towards the trunk when he saw the rock monster falling from the sky. Mill knew it was the rock monster and not just any rock. He could somehow differentiate the rock monster from the normal rocks it threw before. Unlike the other rocks, the rock monster gave off a distinct feeling of pressure.

Still running, he braced himself from the potential impact of the rock, fully expecting the tree would block it and gave him some time to reach and inspect the tree.

But instead of being warded off like those rocks before, the rock monster went straight through the tree.

It created a tunnel amongst the tree branches as it fell and landed to the ground, crushing a student in half who was unfortunate to be in its way.

Mill stopped running at the sight of the rock monster now in between him and the tree.

The rock monster rolled itself from the small crater it made while the nearby students ran away from it.

It ignored all them and slowly rolled towards Mill’s direction.

Mill knew for sure that it was aiming for him. Everything seemed to point that it was targeting him.

The letter. The voice in his head. His birthday. Especially a forgotten memory from when he was twelve that he had just remembered now.

It was one of her mother’s drunken episodes. He just came home from school when he found her mother crying miserably in their small apartment.

His mother then took his hand upon seeing him and looked at him with remorse.

“Poor child — stop growing. Stay being a child forever. They would come for you. They would kill you… eighteen… Gilbort! How could you leave your poor child here?! How could you leave us?”

He regarded it back then as one of his mother’s delusions. But it now made sense.

She was always afraid of his birthday. She would not buy him any new clothes, insisting he could still fit on his old clothes. She would intentionally forget his birthday even when he had just secretly heard her say her greetings to his twin.

Coupled with his grandfather’s letters, Mill had no choice but to take the possibility that someone was hunting him.

His mother was afraid of him growing up. She was afraid of his eighteenth birthday.

He did not know the reason why but this creature was out to get him.

He did not waste any second and ran to his right, around the tree.

The rock followed him behind, still rolling on the ground. Mill passed a huge protruding root and jumped on it. He took the risk and looked back to check the rock monster.

The rock monster was still following him but when it reached and rolled into an incline of soil and roots that Mill had just jumped, its speed decreased then totally stopped when it almost reached the peak, then rolled backwards where it just came from.

Mill was confused about what the rock monster was doing. He knew it could fly.

He then saw the rock slowly levitated a few feet from the ground and flew over the incline, it had only just passed the peak when it fell to the ground heavily.

The rock grunted as if something was bothering it.

Ball size rocks materialized around it but just as it materialized fully, the rocks then turned into brown lights and then were sucked to the roots of the tree below it.

Mill was glad by this. Even if the rock monster was able to enter under the tree, it was still restricted by it.

He ran away from it with more confidence than he had but as he looked back, the rock was now floating and heading his way, in its head was a glowing… box?

“Do you think you can run away from me?” it said. Mill felt something coming from his back and he immediately dove to the ground just in time for the rock to pass above him.

The rock monster continued shooting itself for a few meters till it stopped. It rotated and flew again towards Mill with a speed similar to a car.

Mill ran as much as he could but he knew he could not outrun it. He could not go outside the tree as it might be able to use its powers again. He could also do nothing under the tree. He was out of options.

He thought the rock would have reached him, but then he heard a sound of a crash behind him and when he looked back, the rock was now in the ground. The glowing box above it beamed a little, then it snuffed off and fell to the ground.

Another box came out of nowhere and then the rock was floating again and shooting towards Mill.

“Why are you trying to kill me?” Mill shouted at it as he ran. “Can you please stop and let’s talk this out? I did nothing to you!” He begged to it.

“Shut up! Die!”

The box above the rock monster glowed more and the lights in it flowed inside the rock. Like being injected with fuel, the rock monster’s speed increased dramatically.

Mill had no choice but to change his direction to the side. He hoped it would still shot itself in a straight line, incapable of turning into a different direction midway its flight.

The rock monster was meters behind Mill when he executed his plans and changed direction to his right. He only had taken a few steps when a blue light ball came whistling towards his side in the distance.

“Little light, don’t get in the way,” the rock shouted behind him.

“I’ll push him to your way,” a tiny voice replied, it came from a light ball.

The small light ball flashed and Mill felt something crashed to his side, pushing him back towards the rock being’s way.

“I will not let the red-haired woman kill you,” the rock monster shouted as he was about to crash into Mill. “It should be my master’s glory to kill the Firstborn,”

But contrary to the rock monster’s expectation, Mill continued to be pushed back by the blue light way past the rock monster’s trajectory. At the same time, a tiny voice then screeched, “I caaannn’tttt stttoooppp.”

As Mill was continuously being pushed midair by the blue light, his head knocked up and faced towards the sky. At that moment, he was able to see a huge expanse of a black liquid falling from the sky, and It was coming from the giant creature.

Before Mill processed what it was, he was then slammed to the tree’s trunk behind him, knocking his breath away.

At the same time, Mill’s surroundings darkened as if the night just came. He looked above him and saw the huge black liquid had now reached halfway above the school.

It looked like the whole sky was falling at them.

It had just reached the tree, when a white light glowed behind Mill, getting brighter and brighter till all Mill could see was white.

Behind him the symbol of the Thousand Island rotated and Mill felt a dizzying feeling come on him. He felt something was sucking him. Without any choice, he let himself be pulled and everything went black.

*****

Madam Shiela watched with intrigued as a huge portion of her ink was sucked to a tree. A white light flashed from that portion of school and then the light was gone, replaced by her remaining ink. The ink then completely obliterated the tree as well as everything around it, just like what it did to the whole school.

After a minute, she ordered the Ink Octopus above her to sucked up the ramaining ink below, and the once beautiful school was now a giant crater of soil.

She wondered what that light was for but she shrugged her shoulders and reviewed the Film Bar in her hands.

A square screen full of video footage of the once Oxygen High appeared before her.

She chose the best angles of her and picked a valiant kid helping his comrades get out from the school gates that was then drenched into an acid ink leaving nothing behind, as the subject for the Firstborn.

She turned to the light constructs who were not beside her and asked, “Was the Last Firstborn dead then?”

“Yes, Madam Shiela. The Last Firstborn was now gone. My master could not feel his existence anymore.”

“Good,” she said laughing.

But the light construct was not happy at all. He couldn't care less about the Last Firstborn, it had nothing to do with him.

He was sad as the rock construct, that had been his company since he was little, was now gone, as well as a little light construct he was cultivating.

He had asked his master about their status, and like with the Last Firstborn, they were also gone.