Chapter 75: The Abble Tree Root Cellar 2: The Challenge

  Grace and Theo shuffled past the saluting Treens of various sizes, both on guard in case it was all an act. They reached the gate without issue, though Theo could see even Grace was tense, her head shifting every few moments. There was no sound except that of rumbling wood, like breathing. So close to so many of the trees, the air smelled of musty bark with a twang of earthy leaves—the slightest difference from the dungeon itself.

  “Look.”

  Grace slid her hand across the dusty wooden gate, revealing three indentations. They were roughly acorn-shaped. In a shocking twist, it seemed Theo had to surrender his dungeon seeds. He had got used to the idea of having his own dungeon-orchard in town. What a shame.

  Grace pushed on the gate, finding it reacting to her touch. She looked at him with a questioning stare.

  “So why the acorns, then?”

  Theo stepped closer as she withdrew her hands so she wouldn’t get pulled inside. He magicked out one acorn and held it up against the rightmost indent. As he thought, it proved a perfect fit.

  “Maybe we have a choice?”

  “A tiered challenge boss? That’s surprising in a young dungeon such as this. Completing this run on the highest difficulty is sure to tier the dungeon up. But it’s still far quicker than just what that Effigy-provided mana regen could do. It isn’t even within the town border yet, so if anything, it should just be a trickle.”

  “How confident are you that you can defeat the boss on the highest difficulty, then? What would a higher tier even do down here?”

  “Pretty sure I can take it, but you never know. I’ve been down here enough that it knows my general capabilities, so it could’ve created a challenge boss for me specifically. Would’ve been a mismatch against Durian, though. As for what we stand to gain…more and higher quality abbles, for one. The dungeon would likely grow larger, with more floors or simply a longer path like we’ve had this run. Those green abbles might be harvestable on normal runs, given that the difficulty would increase—but honestly, it’s impossible to tell.”

  Grace shrugged.

  In a snap decision, Theo pushed the acorn into the snug hollow of the gate. The large gate shook, and sounds of bars locking it in place echoed throughout the tunnel. Had Theo held anything else, the sudden shifting of the gate would’ve caused him to drop it as he lurched back to protect his hand. Grace stepped back as well, forgetting the looming trees still standing on guard beside them.

  Moments later, the gate calmed, and in a few more seconds, the dust that had stirred from the top of the gate had finished showering the two humans, allowing them to breathe once more.

  Grace pushed on the gate once more, finding it still reacting to her touch. She could still enter the boss room, but again, she withdrew. Their eyes met, and she nodded.

  Theo conjured the last two acorns from his storage and handed them to the dungeoneer-cleric. In a flash, she pushed them both into their own little holes in the wooden gate, and the gate once more locked in place. It shook more violently now, and for almost a minute. No more dust came falling from the top of it, but the walls reverberated in kind and loosened a bunch of dirt all over the place.

  Coughing, Theo covered his mouth and nose until the event ended, then brushed his shirt and trousers with his hands to clean himself from the worst of it. Brown clouds of dirt and dust fell off him as Grace waited for him to finish the unnecessary cleaning.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Theo nodded, then placed his hand over hers as they touched the gate. Theo sensed the flow of intelligence, for lack of a better word, pouring into him from the door. It vanished, and this time, Theo didn’t stumble forward in response to the sudden lack of resistance. Like last time, he was now somewhere else; the tunnel behind him, with Treens abound, was gone.

  Theo recognised the cavern they found themselves in. He’d been there twice before, though both times the boss Tree-men-dous Abble Patriarch had been wandering around when they entered. He still was—but alongside another boss Theo hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t new, but Theo’s limited runs hadn’t involved the second boss. Grace recognised both.

  Danger! Deadly Tree-men-dous Abble Patriarch!!!

  Danger! Deadly In-tree-pid Abble Matriarch!!!

  “What’s her name?” Grace asked. She’d been wondering that since learning the name of the patriarch tree. She was enjoying the stupid naming scheme the dungeon swore by.

  The matriarch tree wasn’t as large or as menacing as the patriarch, but what she lacked in size, she gained in speed. Her trunk was lean, and her bark smooth, though her legs were powerful and positively slithering with rooty muscles. Her crown seemed trimmed when comparing the patriarch’s bushier hat and was perhaps a little greener.

  The cavern shook in their wake as their enormous mass landed with heavy steps. More dust and rock fell from the walls and ceiling, crumbling upon impacting the ground. The small pond rippled from stones and tremors both, and the only thing that seemed unbothered by the constant footfalls of the giant trees was the resolute stone standing in the centre of the cavern, complete with furry green moss.

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  “I expected more than just…both,” Grace complained. Then she grinned and closed her fists in anticipation. “We’ll be out of here in just a few minutes.”

  As if hearing her words and finding them distasteful, both mature trees turned. Their feet tore through a layer of thick moss on the ground, sending green and brown clumps blasting away. A resounding rumble shook the cavern, or at least the very air inside it. Theo felt his muscles vibrate and his bones shaking.

  Grace blasted off, sprinting towards the grandest of the trees despite him standing furthest away. After crossing half the cavern, evading living roots as she did, she blink stepped away and appeared in front of the tree-man’s wooden face. He tilted back at the surprise, but not enough to avoid a meteoric slam of Grace’s fist.

  As splinters flew and a hollow howl echoed throughout the cavern, Grace landed atop the falling tree. Even as it neared the ground, Grace seemed to explode, digging deep into its trunk with a powerful blast of orange light. Theo didn’t even see her move.

  As the dust settled from the three explosions—her fist in its face, her leg in its chest, and its eventual collision with the ground—Grace was already gone, having engaged the woman-tree. The patriarch still moved about as much as a chopped-down tree could, so he wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t a danger either.

  A resounding crack sounded, and Theo turned to observe the second battle involving Grace, though he found the much smaller woman flying and crashing into the mossy cavern wall. He expected a tremble of the cave structure, as was common in this battle with titans, but Grace’s crash could barely be heard.

  He darted towards her, jumping over and between tentacled roots that whipped against him. Grace was stuck in the wall high over the floor, and she lay limp, one leg pendent.

  “Grace!” he shouted, and her hanging leg stirred.

  Before long, she pulled herself out of the hole in the wall she’d made and jumped down, landing crooked. She tumbled to her knees. He heard her rough swearing despite her whispers but couldn’t approach as more vines attacked him. One ropey growth caught his wrist, wrapping around it and tying itself into a knot, leaving him struggling against the whip, which had the ground on its side. He didn’t know how strong it was or how sturdy it would be, but the vines seemed to move along the mossy ground as if they were just another part of the same body.

  Another vine caught his leg and did the same, though it wrapped itself around him tighter. A third one gripped his other arm and pulled it away from the clutches of the first, stopping his futile attempts at breaking himself free. A fourth, a fifth, then another fifth, as the fifth one split into two, wrapping around his neck from both sides!

  Grace stood up, shaking her head. She stumbled again, then found Theo bound and wheezing. Her eyes shot up just as a droplet of blood ran down her face from her hairline. She twitched as it reached her eye, the blood splashing as she blinked furiously. Her mind caught up to what her eyes had latched onto, and her body lit up in a bright green light. Hungry vines threw themselves at her, but crackling flashes of power knocked them all away. The trail of blood running down her upper face vanished, then a particularly red spot in her hair turned back to a calm brown.

  She corrected her stance and stood taller and surer, then sprinted the short distance between herself and Theo. With flat palms she cut one vine, then another. She grabbed a third and crushed it in her hands, sending muddy water squirting out of it. Before the green hue emanating from her skin and hair stopped, she grabbed hold of the splitting vine and tore the thing to shreds without a second thought. As pieces of it spread along the ground, Theo found the grip around his throat loosening, and he hurried to untie it, catching his breath again.

  “Thanks,” he gasped. His eyes then grew wide as he looked behind Grace. The matriarch had reached them.

  Grace shoved Theo away before she took a hefty downward slam with both of the matriarch’s sizeable arms. The ground gave way, sending green debris flying along with solid rock. The gale-force winds from the impact sent Theo flying further than Grace’s push ever could, but somehow the cleric still stood underneath the load.

  Wood creaked as one of the tree’s arms shattered, sending every woodcutter’s favourite sound echoing across the cavern. Heavy logs of roots and branches clattered onto the cave floor, dampened by the thick green, and then another resounding boom added to the symphony. Theo looked up, bending his neck from his restful position on the thick mattress engulfing his body. The matriarch’s chest—like the patriarch’s before her—contained a deep crater, and she reeled backward.

  Grace dashed over to Theo, helping him sit up before she checked on him with a scrutinous eye, then she helped him stand up.

  “You were hurt,” he said.

  She flung her arms around his back, underneath his arms, and supported him as she pushed him towards the cavern wall. “I healed,” she replied.

  “What kind of magic is that?”

  Grace’s head turned as she stopped walking and looked up at him with a deadpan expression. “Really? Now?”

  He shrugged. “We’re done, right?”

  Then his system triggered a warning message. While he couldn’t see what it triggered from, even after shifting his head back and forth to look around in a slight panic, the message kept triggering.

  “What?” Grace asked, finding it difficult to support him with all the sudden flailing about.

  “Maybe we’re not done?”

  “Is that a question?”

  The moss covering the ground vibrated, then moved, seemingly of its own accord. The walls turned bare, covered only by naked roots as the green fur retreated. Theo’s and Grace’s feet rumbled along with the cavern, a common occurrence already, but one they didn’t see coming without a moving boss or an active fight around. Grace turned them both around by force, and they found both bosses entangled in vines that pulled their bodies towards each other, and the moss from the entire cavern racing towards either of them.

  “The system keeps triggering,” Theo said with bated breath, eyes still flitting this way and that. “It’s everywhere.”

  “What is?”

  The patriarch’s body collided with that of the matriarch, and with a groan of wood once more causing the air to wobble, they started growing together, his rough bark blending into, over, and under her thin bark. His canopy, like ruffled feathers in a storm, mixed with her finer, maintained bush.

  Then there was their size. Moss covered their grand form from feet to crown, and they stood twice as tall as the patriarch did by himself. They were larger in every sense of the word, with more powerful arms and no longer two, but four massive legs to support their sheer monstrosity.

  But Theo’s system didn’t trigger based on these two-now-one bosses. They were only a part of the whole—a small part, even.

  The tree-couple howled, and the ground responded in kind. Theo felt his brain jump around inside his head, his bones trying to detach from their joints, and his lungs shivering from the shuddering air contained within them. The lake lifted. The stone—once thought the only immovable object within the cavern—shook and rose along with the shivering water. A face, or rather, just eyes stared at Theo and Grace from underneath the pool, the stone serving as a lone shoulder pad on the titanic creature.

  Danger! Excessively dangerous Elder Abble Tree-nity!!!!!

  Danger! Excessively dangerous Elder Abble Tree-nity!!!!!

  Danger! Excessively dangerous Elder Abble Tree-nity!!!!!

  Danger! Excessively dangerous Elder Abble Tree-nity!!!!!