Callie’s PoV

“Ready to continue?” I asked my companions as I looked them over. Raya was looking untouched and unruffled, although Azalea's magic gave Raya a slight purple glimmer over her body. The little fairy was looking a little worse for wear after she’d dive bombed the ground, but thanks to Raya, her health was fully topped up as well.

“Yes, ma’am.” Azalea made some strange gesture by touching her forehead with one hand. I just ignored it, I figured that was the healthier option for my sanity.

Raya nodded, then cast [Healing Seed] on me, her familiar magic washing over me, soothing my worries.

“Alright, let’s keep going,” I ordered, as I turned around and made my way up the ramp and to the next level.

≿--------༺❀༻--------≾

I was panting by the time we had reached the top floor. Azalea had just blown the final enemy off of the edge, while watching it drop with disturbing glee before it dissolved into blue light. We had fought our way through nine levels of almost constant enemies spawning. Thankfully most had been the flora devils, and while they didn’t all use the same methods of attacking, they were fairly easily dispatched. The danger was in being overrun.

At least I finally levelled from it. That was always nice. I didn’t get time to check out my new stats though, as, with a loud creaking sound, the door to the boss room started opening the second the final devil died, splitting down the middle.

A loud boom echoed across the entire floor as the doors crashed against the walls on either side, revealing a very large, forest filled room. How we are walking into a forest, that’s inside of a room that’s larger than the tree that we’re within, I have no idea. I gave up trying to understand stuff like this years ago, after all the stories I had read growing up.

“Wowee! This is soooo cool! Definitely a Tardis tree.” Azalea sighed happily. I had no idea who, or what, a Tardis tree was- maybe some kind of fairy thing. I probably would’ve asked, if we hadn’t heard a deep rumbling voice call out to us.

“Welcome, younglings. Please, do not make me wait. The more impatient I am, the more violent I’ll become.”

I shuddered at the menacing, yet somehow still polite threat that the boss had uttered.

“Sheesh, I think I would’ve peed my pants a little, if I had been wearing any,” Azalea muttered with a nervous sounding humorous tone in her voice. I turned to look at her with an exacerbated look, and she just winked and giggled at me. I turned back around, fighting with myself to not roll my eyes at the fairy.

“In we go, keep an eye out for any funny business. Unfortunately our guide didn’t have much information on the final boss.”

“Got it, watch out for tricksy people and shenanigans.”

“Yes,” I replied to Azalea.

“Will do.” Raya affirmed. I knew she would automatically be, but it’s good to know anyway. Having gotten acknowledgements from both of my party members, I made sure to refresh [Fighter’s Courage] on myself, before I moved forward and into the room with Azalea and Raya following close behind me. I checked to make sure that Raya’s buff [Nature’s Bounty] didn’t need to be recast, thankfully it still had 37 minutes left.

Raya’s ears were constantly flicking as she looked around for any threats, Azalea was twirling around in glee, trying to see everything at once. If she’s going to be travelling with us, she’ll have to learn how to properly check for threats.

I couldn’t see the boss at first, the indoors forest seemed to be too thick, that was, until the boss shifted, and revealed him to be a large humanoid tree. It was a treant, a giant, walking, talking tree. Normally treants had beautiful leaves on branches covering their shoulders and head, this treant looked sickly and a pale shadow of its normal self. What leaves it had left were dangly and greyish, leaving most of its branches bare; they looked like spikes upon its back and shoulders.

Balam

Demon Possessed Treant (Epic)

Power Level: 535

Treants are normally peaceful spirits of nature, unless angered or possessed by a possessor demon. They are hardy creatures, with a ferocity and deadliness to match when riled up.

The large possessed treant stepped closer and looked at all three of us, his eyes stopping on Azalea, “Well, well, well, what do we have here? A little Daemon and her living pets? My, my, that’s unusual for your kind. So you’ve come to play? Very well, I could use some good humour,” He said, cracking his knuckles.

I had just shifted my swords, preparing to attack or defend, when I heard Azalea snort and then begin giggling.

“I am Groot!” She crowed, giggling harder. Balam, Raya, and I all turned to look at the giggling fairy, who had keeled over and almost fallen out of the air, she was laughing so hard.

The creaking of wood, like stepping on a rickety step, was the only warning I got. I spun back around, and something smashed into my raised swords, sending me flying backwards past my team members, with a crash and a “oof” as my breath was knocked out of me.

“My Callie!” I heard Raya yell out as she sprinted over to me. My health bar had flashed into yellow from just a single blow. Thankfully Raya’s [Healing Seed] was already on me, so my health started increasing fairly quickly, before she even reached me.

“Raya, look out!” I warned a moment too late, as the boss shot his arm, which grew incredibly fast, towards Raya, only to be blocked by a purple shimmer as Azalea placed her shield in its path.

“He is Groot!” She cackled.

“My name is Balam! You insufferable little insect!” The demon bellowed, stomping his foot angrily, causing large spikes made from plants to shoot out of the ground at the fairy. Azalea flashed purple and suddenly zoomed up and well away from danger. She flickered back into her normal glowing self, still giggling.

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“Too slow~” she said with a sing-song voice, before firing off some of her purple attacks that she called her pulses at his face. Balam lifted up an arm to block the attack, and with the exception of some bark falling off, seemed to barely do any damage.

“Aww! Rude!”

“Here, I’ll help you up,” Raya said, letting me lean on her to stand up quicker. Raya had done a quick heal on me while our little fairy ally had kept the boss distracted. The situation was serious enough that not even Raya’s presence so close could distract me.

“Thanks, Raya! Can you put your fire totem down? Even if we’re facing a demon, his body is still currently a walking tree.”

“I can do that!” Raya replied, throwing a small object onto the ground. It appeared to be in the shape of a flame, carved out of wood and painted a mix of orange and red. As soon as it landed, it blazed into life, crackling merrily where it sat. The little cat girl lifted her staff up into the air, humming a strange melody, then slowly lowered it, before placing one tip in the burning fire and somehow scooping up a little bit on the end of her staff. Raya twirled her staff in her hands very quickly, forming a blazing orange ring then slamming one end into the ground, immediately my swords burst into flames as her spell took effect.

“I love watching you do that every time,” I said warmly, with a soft smile on my face.

Raya blushed a bright red. “Thanks,” she mumbled shyly.

I smiled briefly once more, before turning to fully focus on the boss.

“Come back here you pest!” The treant bellowed angrily at Azalea, firing what appeared to be large thorns the size of a fairy at the actual fairy.

“Nur, nur!” She replied, poking her tongue out at the enraged boss as she effortlessly dodged his attacks. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one that Azalea was good at annoying.

I rushed forward while Balam was focused on Azalea, and sliced both swords on his leg as I ran past. Dark green sap burst out from the cut, and flame started burning his tough bark as he yelled out in what seemed like more anger than genuine pain. The treant patted his wound roughly, putting the flames out, but they still smouldered and didn’t heal quickly like treant wounds tend to do. Thankfully, this wasn’t the first time that Raya and I had faced an enraged treant. It was our first demon though.

I was watching the boss, so I saw the moment that he turned to face me. My heart pounded in my chest as I rolled out of the way of several Azalea sized thorns that he had launched at me. I heard an enraged bellow, as I stood back up and saw Azalea had flown past him, whacking him on the head with her flaming sword. He was furiously patting his head to put the fires out, and while he was distracted, I charged again.

This time, I aimed for a joint on his arm. Jumping as high as I could go, I launched myself at the treant, activating [Powered Attack] and brought both swords down on the thinnest part of his arm. My swords sunk a decent way into his arm before I lost momentum and dangled off of the side of the boss.

“Arrrgh! Get off me, vermin!”

My blood went cold as I saw him lift up the huge fist on his uninjured arm and violently punch at me before I could let go. Moments before impact, a purple shimmer slammed between the fist and myself. With the sound of breaking glass, the shield shattered, but not before taking the blunt of the punch. I was knocked flying once again, the force of the impact dislodging them along with me. I landed on my back, and slid backwards several yards, before I stopped. I quickly rolled to the side and jumped to my feet, hoping to avoid any more attacks until I was ready. I let out a sigh, as with a loud thump, Balam’s injured arm hit the ground, the combination of my own attack, plus the fire and then the swords getting dislodged, severing it from his body.

I shivered as the boss glared murderously at me. “You’ll pay for that, youngling.”

“Whatcha gonna do? Throw your stump at her?” Azalea giggled.

He glowered at Azalea next, before his whole body sprouted large thorns that seemed to be dripping with some kind of poison.

“Okay, new tactic. Azalea, distract him the best you can, aim for his eyes. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t do much damage, it’ll slow him down.”

“You got it, boss!” Immediately, Azalea began flinging purple light directly into his eyes, causing him to flinch and lift up his remaining arm to protect them. I sheathed my swords, pulled out my Magitech Rifle, and got down on one knee to give myself better balance. Thankfully Raya’s fire buff worked on ranged weapons as well, the tip of the rifle merrily burning away with a gentle fire.

Aiming down its iron sights, I lined them up on Balam’s remaining arm joint, and pulled the lever to load a bullet. I activated [Powered Shot], holding it to charge for a moment, before I fired as soon as I had a clear shot.

Boom!

The recoil nearly knocked me onto my backside as flame burst out of the end of the gun. The bullet raced across the distance between Balam and I, and exploded onto his arm, instantly severing it just like the other one.

With a pained roar, the treant fell onto his knees, ducking his head down to avoid Azalea’s attacks on his face. The thorns covering his body rapidly withered and began falling off as whatever magic had been sustaining them vanished.

With Azalea keeping up her barrage, I put away my rifle, pulled out my swords once again, and walked up to the kneeling boss. I raised my swords to put him out of his misery, when he glanced up at me with red glowing eyes, full of hate and murderous intent.

A thrill of fear shot through me as I took a step back automatically. Before I could step forward again to take the killing blow, the body of the treant seemed to collapse, fading a dull gray colour then exploding into ash as Azalea’s attack hit it. As the ash billowed outwards, I couldn’t help but cough as I breathed some in.

“Huh, well that was easy!” Azalea exclaimed happily.

“Hmm,” I looked around warily, still coughing, it felt like it had given up too easily somehow. Especially that look in its eyes. I shuddered again as I remembered. All of a sudden, a dark fog poured out of the pile of leftover ash. A vague figure formed out of the cloud, with glowing red eyes, glaring balefully at me. I used inspect to see what we were dealing with.

Balam

Possessor Demon {True Form} (Epic)

Power Level: 585

“Behold my true form, mortals, and weep in despair.”

Despite not having a mouth, he somehow still spoke. It seemed to have been projected to us directly into our minds. I shuddered, so creepy.

Azalea snorted and started giggling. “Did he really just say that?”

“QUIET, PEST!” The voice bellowed, before a red and black fireball shot out of his suddenly outstretched hand and hit Azalea directly in the chest, I gasped as I watched her get flung backwards and far away.

“Azalea!” Raya yelled out in fear and panic as she raced to check on the little fairy girl.

I hoped that Azalea was alright, she was a pain and a brat, but she was growing on me already. I heard a creak as I squeezed the handles of my swords tightly. Tensing my jaw, I glared at the smokey figure.

“You’ll pay for that.” I hissed, before charging at him, swords raised to strike. Balam threw a red and black fireball at me, I dropped to my knees and slid several feet, narrowly dodging underneath it. Jumping back up, I rushed the boss and swung my swords through his body, and nearly tripped as they passed through without any resistance whatsoever.

“Uh, that’s not good,” I mumbled to myself.

“No, it is not.”

I turned quickly, my body already attempting to dodge whatever it was that the boss was doing. As pain erupted all over my body, I screamed from the red and black lightning arcing over my body, somehow picking my convulsing body and pulling me close to the demon.

Balam had his arms outstretched, red and black lightning pouring out of his left hand and into me, his right hand crackling with violet lightning. All of my muscles continued to spasm, preventing me from breaking his grip.

“Goodbye, foolish youngling.”

His right hand touched my forehead, violet lightning snapping eagerly into me upon contact. I hoped Azalea was okay, and could take care of Raya for me.

“I’m sorry, my Raya,” I whispered, despondently.

The last thing I heard before everything went blank was Raya screaming out with pure terror in her voice.