Chapter 76: The Abble Tree Root Cellar 2 – The Elder Abble Tree-nity

  The ground churned. It rose and fell like waves in a stormy ocean, and not a square inch of the once-calm floor was safe. While the whipping, gripping vines and roots were nowhere to be seen, the hard ground was now as alive as they had been. Spouts of dirt burst from the ground like a volcano with dysentery. Theo clambered onto the remaining rocks and roots revealed under the surface of the roiling land, but he could scarcely hold on for long.

  “Grace! Take them down quick!”

  Rather than three separate entities, the Elder Abble Tree-nity seemed to be two entities, in which one comprised two individual trees. Despite their combined size, though, the single entity didn’t so much encompass the room as it was the room. As the ground moved, so did its head, the swirling pool atop its head seeming bottomless as it swished and spilled tons of water per second. The walls crashed together, grinding with every motion, with every breath.

  Only the Elder’s face revealed itself, black as the shadows hiding it, though its eyes were taller than they were wide, with a hint of an angry red glow. Its face stuck out from the ground like the reverse of burying one’s head in the sand—but the sand, in this case, was also its body.

  “Taking that one down might take some—”

  A cluster of overripe abbles splattered across the area Grace stood. The joined-together matriarch and patriarch readied themselves again on the far end of the cavern, then launched another salvo of expired fruit like a catapult made for feeding an orphanage struck by plague. The green-speckled bundle of crimson spheres crossed the cavern in an instant, sending smelly juice exploding from their target location.

  Grace had dodged the first, then blinked away from the second, but remained in their sights as she ran towards them, lest they’d start targeting Theo if the bosses lost track of her.

  “I’ll deal with those two first,” she corrected, having planned to leave them for last. If they now preferred range, however, that changed things.

  “You got this!” Theo said, doing all he could to motivate. It was the only thing of note he could do down here, after all.

  Grace was too far away for him to hear her mumbled response.

  “This might actually not go our way.”

  Durian’s first trip through the dungeon, under the watchful eye of the cleric, was forced upon him so Grace could see if he had what it took to solo it without issue. He’d gone down alone every two days ever since, so he certainly passed the test. Grace now gnawed her teeth at the fact that he wasn’t down here with her. His axe would’ve come in handy right about now.

  Another salvo flew, this one with a wider spread than the previous ones. It seemed the tree-nity adapted to Grace’s manoeuvres, but if they never knew where she’d blink to, it wouldn’t be a problem. Grace had misjudged how quick on the uptake the matriarch had been earlier, and blinked right in front of her face the moment she’d been in range. For her bravado, the female tree swatted her away like a fly.

  Grace wasn’t invulnerable; she had more physical stats than vital, and any blunt force trauma she survived from bosses was only because of her lean muscles and otherwise high stats. The healing glyph carved into her lower back drained her, so she could never rely on that alone—and it wouldn’t work if the hit had killed her outright. Avoiding heavy hits was her forte, so she’d just have to suck it up and take this fight as it was: a challenge.

  Waves of dirt spread out all across the cavern in a futile attempt at stopping her. She was light on her feet, though, and something as simple as moving ground wouldn’t faze her. She reached the underground Elder, noticing it lowered its head in fear of her and made a note of that before she blinked away again. Rather than appearing in the dual-trees’ single face like a one-trick ponny, her body emerged from thin air below their four feet.

  They turned to search for her even as the ground beneath them rolled. Grace lit up as she crouched down, an angry orange energy radiating from her. Her fist aimed upward. She jumped, expending all the energy collected in her powerful legs and burst towards their…groins? The orange flash was blinding even at Theo’s range, as the sound of the impact reached him. In one singular explosion, Grace powered herself through their bodies, her fist clearing the path for the rest of her to follow. She drilled through their trunks and burst out of their neck, just below the crown, as they had already started shifting to the side.

  The orange flash escaped them like a rocket leaving orbit, almost reaching the high ceiling before its gradual slowing turned to reverse thrust. It gained speed faster than simple gravity could account for—a faint, red glow at its tail end the likely culprit—and then it locked onto its wooden, defenceless target. In unison, the two trees and the explosion from the orange flash sent sound, air, dirt, and leaves throughout the cavern. Theo, still holding on to the ground for dear life, felt a sharp stick slamming into his forehead even from all the way across.

  When the earthen mist caused by the explosion settled back onto the ground where it was supposed to be, the shattered corpse of two trees lay on the ground, their compound faces split in half. In between the two severed and broken trunks stood Grace, her shirt ripped and filthy, and her skirt the same. Her hair had paled with the light layer of dirt mixed into it. She stood tall, defying her ragged breathing and bruised legs. Even from the other side of the enormous cavern, Theo could see the red colouring of her visible leg and arms.

  The ground didn’t stop churning like a violent ocean, though. A surfable wave of moving earth flew past Theo just as his part of the ocean dipped below the normal ground level, and he couldn’t see her anymore. When the earth pushed him back up from below, his arms nearly tearing from the force, she was no longer standing amid the pile of broken wood. He shifted his gaze to find out where she blinked to, but a quick survey revealed nothing except the menacing eyes of the Elder still pointed in her previous direction. Theo looked back there and saw her on her knees.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He couldn’t see the details of her face, but he knew from her position that she couldn’t carry on for long. One or more of her spells must’ve taken a lot out of her, but this seemed to be more than simple lack of mana. Theo couldn’t help but think that the healing she’d done earlier was only surface level, but he couldn’t be sure. Pummelling herself through the boss seemed to have affected her almost as much as them. Maybe she didn’t have enough mana to heal again.

  If she died, or even just lost consciousness, Theo was sure to die. He had no chance against the Treens, much less against these bosses, with their difficulty turned up to eleven…million.

  Theo shifted his focus, observing the ground, hoping to see a pattern. If he could anticipate how the waves moved, maybe he could find a way to cross the cavern to help her? There were too many layers, too many individual waves moving without a set speed for him to see much of an opening. If only he’d been as strong and graceful as Grace was—she made moving across the waves look like a children’s game of hopping.

  Congratulations! Your tenacity has earned you a 0.1x multiplier to Physical stats. Current Physical multiplier: 1.1x.

  ‘Yes!’

  Theo’s strength surged, rising almost twenty points. That would certainly help matters, but even with those extra points, his tired arms could barely hold on to the root that his body weight almost tore from the ground. If he were to let go, though, and cross the cave, then he had to let go either way.

  He waited, knowing that every second counted. Every time the waves brought him to their peak, he glanced at Grace, taking comfort in her still being alive. And then…he let go.

  Theo slid down the mound, his left arm wide for balance while his right hand acted as both steering and brakes as it brushed against the surface behind him. He could feel his skin peeling off as he gained speed, and the rough stones and roots tore at him. He reached the bottom, temporary though it was, as the ground soon started rising as the mound he’d come from fell. The man sprinted, running as fast as he could through the winding pathways, flitting between the breathing mounds rather than atop them.

  Haphazard stones flew about between the waves, but he managed not to get hit. Roots and vines served as random traps as he almost tripped on several, but somehow he got through them. He kept running, hoping Grace would still be alright when he found her. If he found her. The constant turning did nothing to help him orient himself, and all he had to judge his current location by was the rumbling ceiling.

  For now, all he could do was head towards the other side of the cavern. How hard could that be? He just had to travel towards that dark, jagged spot above, and he’d find her. Or was it that one? That one?

  He ran for minutes, though the full speed with which he started had slowed to a great extent as he eluded stony projectiles and fibrous tripwires along with the rising and falling walls that wanted nothing more than to fling him around the room. Then, finally, in front of him seemed to be the edge of the cavern, and he dashed for it with increased fervour. Two more layers of waves, and he seemed safe, as the dirt never crashed into the walls as far as he’d seen. He might make his way around by hugging the walls, though he still had to watch out for their slithering and churning as well.

  He crossed another hallway between mounds and then leapt across the next. He landed on solid, unmoving ground, but rather than calm, the stillness of the area awoke a sudden dizziness within him, and he spun half-around as the cavern seemed to shift. Theo fell onto his butt, sensing the ground staying still while his brain didn’t believe in such an abrupt change. In a few moments, his senses swayed his brain, and it stopped sending mixed signals. Finally, he could lift his head…only to find the gigantic Elder’s face gazing longingly into the distance.

  He gasped in terror, then raised his hands to cover his mouth in haste, careful not to make a sound. He’d already been sitting there for a short while, after all—if the Elder hadn’t noticed him being there, he could take advantage of that.

  Theo’s mana was full. Sitting at a comfortable 193, Theo had just below 180 loops of a ‘Create’ combination. But there was only one element capable of doing any damage, which was fire. He’d promised himself never to use that for that purpose again, but did he have a choice in the matter? To save Grace, if she were even still alive…it was worth it, wasn’t it? But would it work?

  Even now, so close to the woodland titan, all Theo could see behind the pitch black was its eyes. He couldn’t know what it comprised; was it all wood, or was it made of both the cavern walls and stone hiding beneath the surface? Maybe both stone and wood? Would fire be as effective against it as it had been against the pure-wooden Treens?

  But what other spell could he cast? His water bullet wouldn’t work, and the fireball? A hundred-and-eighty ‘Create’ ‘Fire’ with a targeting thread stuck to its eye would do much more damage. So…what?

  Water wouldn’t work. The ground was damp from the titan’s spillage of the pool atop its head already—further moistening the area would get him nowhere. Earth? That might even help the earthen boss. Wind? What boss the size of a mountain would take damage from a gust of wind? Even blinding it could cause it to panic, and who knew what havoc that could cause? If Theo’s theory of the boss being everything around him was correct, then it might fling the walls around and those waves he’d darted around? A wild flailing from the boss was certain to bring much larger waves about.

  Darkness, then, was his only other option to fire, and that wouldn’t do much, either. It would blind the boss in a less harmful way, if only for a short time, but the darkness spread wide as more loops kept sprouting more of it—could Theo even outrun it and find Grace before the loop ended?

  No, fire was the only way. To find Grace, he’d have to defeat the boss himself, and fast. If he couldn’t defeat it, at least he’d earn its attention, giving Grace some time to recover and save Theo instead. Yeah, that seemed more likely to be the outcome.

  Even as he decided, his body had acted, having already weaved the first two sigils needed in the air in front of him. With ears aglow, he drew ‘Fire’, then flicked a thread of mana towards the boss’ tall eye, hitting it dead in the middle, though to the side of its true centre. If he moved further, it might spot him after all.

  He inhaled—exhaled—inhaled again. He then finished the sigil combination, feeling a small part of his humanity tear itself from him as he did. It floated away, not willing to be part of a man capable of inflicting the kind of torture he’d seen this do earlier willingly. If that was the price to pay to leave this place with Grace safe and sound, it was a price he was willing to pay. He’d do it for Wen. For Willam. For all his friends and companions in Sigil Lake. But Grace had revealed who she truly was to him just hours ago—for her, he’d do this and more. He’d become less of the man he aspired to be.