Creaking of wood. Wet snaps of branches. Wailing wind behind the swing of red salira. The oras forest attacked from all sides in a symphony of movement.

  The party stood around Synexus who was still recovering on the forest floor and had taken up their defensive positions. Vorin’s scythes bit into bark with beautiful patterns of swirled blues producing a blue sap. Zuls’ summoned her bonded and sprayed a jet of flames from her own mouth at the encroaching oras. Prith’s sword sprayed the blue sap everywhere as he cut whole limbs off at a time. Shell went for the salira the forest was using like clubs and using her water to remove them from combat. Gene sat on Synexus telling him that he needed to get up. Kumo stood in defiance against the whole forest and smirked.

  She loved chaos. Especially the angry chaos of battle. Battles that let her become the tempest unleashed even more so. An intense gale was summoned to keep the flames from Zuls away from the party and blow embers further into the forest. Then the creeping fog spilled from her into the surrounding forest to start eating away at the wood. Dark thunder clouds formed overhead, and her slowing rain started to fall. Normally, she would unleash a torrent of tempest blades to fall dozens of oras at a time, but she needed more practice with the skill she got at level thirty. Wield Lightning.

  Wield Lightning: You’ve become a living tempest, and now you must learn how to master lightning. Using your mana, bend the super-heated plasma to your will. Mana expenditure is determined by the amount of lightning wielded and how it is formed.

  She quickly looked at her status screen to check where her levels were sitting and how much mana she had in reserve before taking her next action.

  Name: Kumo

  Race: Human

  Class: Cloud Tempest

  Level: 30

  Health Points: 1925/1925

  Mana: 3147/4325

  Stamina: 1875/1875

  Stats

  Intelligence: 350 (+70)

  Strength: 140 (+28)

  Endurance: 145 (+30)

  Vitality: 150 (+30)

  Agility: 200 (+40)

  Perception: 350 (+70)

  Skills

  Race: Increased Stats, Ancestor's Experience, Efficient Mana

  Class: Tempest Blade LV 34, Gale LV 33, Summon Fog LV 32, Tempest Surge LV 31, Cloud Cover LV 31, Stormcloud LV 32, Force of the Tempest LV 33, Cloud Walking LV 34, Chain Lightning LV 30, Wield Lightning LV 14

  Achievements

  Knowledge of Tongues: Pick up languages much faster due to your heritage

  Slayer of Monsters: You will now be able to see the remnant magical material of slain monsters.

  Ullashtt Hunter: You bested one of these massive, fabled beasts taking some of their vast power for yourself. +20% to all stats.

  Evolved: All resources have risen by 100.

  Triumph of Oneself: You have completed a trial dungeon and triumphed over what was weighing down your soul. Through knowing yourself better and cleansing your soul, your resources have benefited. Stamina and Mana will now regenerate at double the rate.

  Her status closed and she stood in the air with Cloud Walking right above her friend. She raised her hand towards her storm cloud and lightning came flashing down. Without hesitation, she caught the bolt and bent it to her will. A two-meter-long axe formed in her hands. Pure energy and power solidified into a destructive tool.

  A powerful burst of wind launched her forward as she took off sprinting with Cloud Walking towards the edge of the oras offensive line. Her glowing axe swept through the air causing thunder to trail behind it. There was no resistance. It cut clean through the wood and continued to the next oras in the swing’s arc. Fire erupted from the axe’s victims as the wood heated up from the plasma. Kumo didn’t even stop.

  Synexus watched Kumo shoot off creating a path of destruction from the middle of the party. The boom of the voice in his head and sensory overload had taken nearly half his health points. Thanks to Vorin and his own health regeneration he started feeling normal again after a few minutes. Normal enough to know how sad it was to see nature burning around him. He hadn’t realized the forest was sentient when he connected to it and the forest was clearly just protecting itself. They had come into its home and immediately taken hostile action. Air started to vibrate around him and his voice exploded out in the language of nature.

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  “This was a misunderstanding. Please there is no need for hostility!”

  “You food like others.”

  Before Synexus could respond the ground rumbled beneath him and roots shot out. He evaded the attack by pushing off the ground into the back of Zuls. The hardened roots started to stab towards them, and they found themselves being attacked from all directions.

  “We are just passing through. We only need to get to the stairs. Let us pass and no more destruction to your home will come. I give you, my word!”

  “FOOD TO GROW!”

  Synexus stumbled as a realization hit him. They had been in this strange place for a whole day and hadn’t seen a single living thing other than the grass and the oras forest. Not a single monster or animal.

  “You ate them. You ate them all?”

  “MUST GROW!”

  Nature could be vicious. This world gave birth to an apex predator. The sentience of a single oras tree with the one natural drive; to grow. All other living beings in the world had become fertilizer for the roots of the oras forest.

  Optional Objective Available: Slay the Floor Guardian.

  Mana surged from Synexus as he activated Progress Garden and summoned his Razor Hydra Plants. After the Skinwalkers, after the snakes, and all their fights along the mountain path. The one plant he had created ages ago had multiplied into a staggering 108. He gave them one mental order with Branching Intelligence. Consume the forest to grow.

  A dozen of the plants circled the roots in the middle of the party and started feeding on their nutrients like they were straws and the forest was a glass of lemonade. All others made their way towards the oras trees to find other ways to sap the forests energy while fending off saliras and sharp branches. None of them followed Kumo’s path of destruction.

  Shell saw the army of hydra plants spawn and used her water to put out the forest fires. She watched on in amazement as the plants ferociously attacked the oras. A blanket feeling of hunger hung in the air. One after one, the odd trees were sucked dry and the plants grew bigger. She could see the original plant standing nearly three meters over the rest taking on several trees at one time. Nature versus Nature. Still, she and others didn’t stop their assault.

  Kumo used her Tempest Surge to explode a group of trees into splinters before looking back at her path of destruction. Fires and broken oras carved a clear path through the forest. With her perception, she was able to see her friends being protected by Synexus’ plants. She had, of course, taken off in the direction of the center of the forest and she had been moving fast. Her Wield Lightning axe was cutting through the forest at an unprecedented rate. She dropped her gale that was surrounding her friends when she had gotten too far away, but her fog followed her through the forest eating away at the surrounding oras. The storm cloud overhead had dissipated, and she reactivated it to do random damage here and there. She could see forest fires spreading in the distance from the lightning strikes. When she had gotten the notification about the optional objective, she had thought about how impossible it would be to wipe out the entire forest, but standing above the trees now on a cloud, she could see that it wasn’t.

  Forest fires continually consumed whole sections of the forest. Her path had leveled a small portion of it. Synexus’ plant army was leaving dried husks of oras in their path, and they were ever multiplying from the blows that the oras did land on them. Vorin was clearly working on something since the others were now standing around him in defensive positions. Prith had taken out his own small section with massive mana blades and Zuls’ bonded were turning the forest into their own biomes. Snowfall had brought winter to the forest early and trees were dying left and right from the frost. Siz took his own path and ash followed in his wake. The endless oras forest was becoming much less endless.

  Kumo felt her resources tick back up to a reasonable level before rejoining the fight and cutting them a clear path towards the center. Towards the original oras.

  Vorin was in his own mind focusing on a plague that could travel through the roots of the oras to kill the sentient forest in one go. Even with the plant army, all Zuls’ bonded, and the rest of the party, it would take them days to eradicate every single tree. He had never come up with a plague for trees before and it felt much different, but nothing was impossible. He scoured his plague collection picking out any that could be useful for such an enemy. Its vitality was clearly through the roof, so he needed a plague that targeted vitality and turned it against the massive organism. It also needed to target plant cells instead of humanoid cells which was the biggest hurdle. Still, nothing would discourage him from protecting the party. They were inside their enemy and that was his domain.

  Shell focused on keeping the fires from Kumo, Siz, and Zuls off the plant hydras. When they got too far away, she simply let nature take its course and pulled out her ocarina to start buffing the party as much as she could. Vorin was working on something big to end the fight quickly and they needed to give him the time to do that. With her songs, and Zuls’ aura, they should be able to outlast the seamlessly endless opponent. Her notes echoed through the dead forest and played an almost horrific contrast to the destruction.

  Zuls watched Snowfall basically ice skating through the forest delivering a freezing cold to the warm climate trees. The fox was dodging attacks before freezing the trees with her ice claws or subzero beams of mana. On the other side of her, Siz was melting his way through the forest in a happy waddle. Ash and snow mixed in the air. She walked under it doing a mix of both tactics depending on the oras in front of her. Gliya was still on her way to the center with Kumo. Sovereign and Hyren were ripping soliras off. Blight had a mini swamp going a distance away. Whimper was doing what he could though his attacks weren’t too effective. Element was cutting through wood with water, blowing away limbs with air, and splintering trunks with chunks of the ground. Claw was slinging blue sap everywhere with her claws. Fort was back using his shields to protect Vorin as much as possible.

  Prith smiled while dodging several limbs at once and retaliating with a perfect parry to utterly destroy several oras. Lumber scattered around him as he danced through the forest as if it was his natural habitat. Mana blades would cut down dozens of oras at a time and create a new clearing for him to retreat to if needed.

  Synexus used Elemental Modification to harden the soil underneath Shell, Vorin, Fort, and himself to prevent any more surprise attacks from roots. He then used Branching Intelligence with some metal to form defensive walls. He didn’t want to summon anymore plants in fear that the roots would suck them dry like his hydra plants were doing to the forest. Whenever a branch or root got close to the wall, he would use Progress to cut through it with ease. Then he would use Progress Garden to store any lumber that fell to the ground. Their months practicing team tactics was proving useful in the fight. No one panicked. Everyone defaulted to the best way they could help.

  Vorin finally stood from his trance and walked over to the middle of the hardened soil before nodding Synexus. Soil disappeared revealing writhing roots taking the place of the dead ones that the hydra plants had sucked dry. When they saw Vorin, they all sprung out to attack. He simply grabbed them and used his skill to deliver his newest plague. A plague designed for larger organisms. He made it decay plant cells and use the energy in those cells to sustain itself. It would target the greatest source of energy in an organism and decay all in its path on the way there.

  Synexus recalled his hydras and told them to stop feeding on the forest to prevent any of them perishing from the virus which he realized he did just in time. Trees started to wither as it travelled through the roots towards the center of the forest. The biggest cluster of mana in the entire forest.

  Kumo watched from above as the forest decayed in real time toward the center even overtaking her speed. Soon the decay was beyond her sight and minutes after that they all got the same notification.

  Optional Objective Complete! Reward Earned!

  Complete Trial to Receive Rewards.

  Main Objective: Find the Stairs.