The forest below is filled with millions of trees, mostly spruce and oak trees are what I'd guess. I don't know the difference between trees much. But I do know that trees are freaking everywhere, to the left, to the right, along the huge hills that just barely aren't mountains. And even among all the trees, one stands out. A tree on legs, that seems to be destroying the other trees along its path to get… somewhere.
Even I know what an ent is. Big tree monsters with human shapes. When we were younger, we had to make posters about monsters of our choosing, and I chose an ent because they are cool. Fun fact:Ents can regenerate a limb in 30 seconds. Another fun fact, they are very weak to fire and somewhat weak to ice mana. That is, unless its a Pine ent. Those have pine needles along their barky bodies unlike a Spruce or Oak ent's green leaves. This one seems to be an Oak. Looks like a young one too.
“Um… we should avoid that, right?” Evelyn asks.
“I wanna fight it.” I say. “I think I can win.”
“Doubtf- Actually…” Snowstorm pauses and thinks for a moment. Well, he's always thinking, so the better term is he thinks MORE for a moment. I think that spending even a single second inside his big ol’ brain would drive me completely insane from the sheer amount of the information travelling around and bumping into each other inside that area between his horns. “Come here so I can take Evelyn. With your stats, that shrimpy one won't be too much of a challenge.” I grin. Now this is gonna be a fun little scrap. It's practically night time and my skill is singing to me.
{Shadow warp: Allows the user to traverse the space between 2 shadows. Affect 1:The user can slide into one shadow and exit out of another. At this skill level the range is 50 meters. Affect 2:Plus 50% speed while in a dark area. That bonus increases to 100% if it is night time and full moon. Different types of moons can have varying effects yet to be revealed.}
And I'm off. The moment Evelyn is on Snowstorm's back instead of mine I divebomb the thing. I'm moving faster than I have in my entire life, and its exhilarating! The ent pauses for a moment in the mass murder of its own barky kind to the sound of my approach. Not that it can stop me!
Breath of time!
For the first time since getting the skill officially, I open my jaws and an immense flood of mana moves from my soul core up my arm, through my throat and out my mouth in a beam of dark purple energy that slams into the ent. The ent… vanishes. Like, the moment my breath hits the thing it just vanishes where it was.
“The hells…?” I mutter, narrowing my eyes at it.
“What just happened?” Snowstorm comes down to ask.
“It's gone.” I respond simply. What else am I able to say? I have no other point of reference for this… wait. No, I do. The last time I used my breath on command, when I was little. It disappeared for a sec then-
Wood javelin
My back turned to the position where the ent was, I simply didn’t notice the javelin of wood blasted straight at me.
“Look out!!” Evelyn shouts, the first to notice. That's surprising. Doesn't Snowstorm have a better perception level than her? I wonder if Snowstorm's eyes are mutated. He should get one. Wait, I'm forgetting something. Oh yeah.
WHAM!
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
CRACK!
The javelin slams into my side and I let out a yelp of pain. The javelin is sharp and pointy, but it doesn't break through my scales. It does, however, knock the wind out of me long enough for a series of vines to come up out of the ground and disable one of my wings via entanglement.
Vine grappling
I'm pulled down and slam to the ground with a little oomph. I sit up to see the ent right in front of me, ready to slam its fist down on my head. Is this thing an idiot?
Shadow warp!
One moment I'm entangled in the vines, the next moment I'm behind the ent. Fool, you think you could beat me?! Take my claws to your back, buddy! In a moment of inspiration, I draw on my mana core and coat my claws in mana for a little better penetrating power.
{20 essence consumed to assist formation of technique. You have gained the technique “Magic claw strike” at F grade.}
Like a hot knife through butter, my claws slide straight through the ent with an ungodly level of penetrating power. The vines have already turned to whip back at me. Not fast enough. With glowing talons, I tear into the ent's back. It tries to whip an arm around to strike me, but I just bite the offending limb off. It’s started to regenerate, but I've already accounted for that. It'll be dead before I'm done. Time to rip and tear into this tree until the point that all treehuggers file a restraining order against me!
Sadly, I forgot it has 2 arms, not one, and the other arm elbows me in the jaw, knocking me back. I stumble a bit but regain my footing rather quickly. It'll take more than that to beat me, you damn bush. The ent is not doing good at all. The wounds may be rapidly closing, but it's injured badly. It's missing an arm, and it has a major crater hacked out by my claws. The thing lets out a screech, then raises its good arm to cast another spell. Too slow.
Mana claw strike!
I simply reach into the shadows with one arm, and said arm appears right in front of the ent, cleaving its head off. Oh, how nice the dark is.
{You have defeated a Small Spruce Ent, Level 17. You have gained experience.}
{Level up}
{Level up}
{Level up}
{Level up}
{Level up}
{Level 1->6. You have gained 10 unallocated attribute points. You have gained 1 extra attribute point for every 2 levels gained at once. 12 attribute points obtained total.}
{You can not increase any attributes already at maximum level.}
Well, I'll be damned. This worked out great! Though, I feel disappointed to know it's literally called a SMALL ent. The thing was probably around 10 feet tall, and by all means, that's not small! How big are the tier 2’s? Also I was wrong about it being an oak. I never cared to learn about trees before now. Ents are cool, but unless a tree can fly or walk or has a massive sick demonic eye or something, it's not exactly that interesting to me.
“That was a strong monster.” Snowstorm comments, landing beside me. I'm not even damaged. My scales are smooth as ever. I'm barely visible if I tuck my wings in and pull my membranes into myself. I was also quite lucky to have gathered some essence from flying in the dark. Evelyn seems to be a little sick, draped over Snowstorm's neck like a scarf. Guess she didn't have the calm spell to help.
“It was fun, though not too challenging.” I say. “The think had not battle intelligence. Its movements were predictable, and it couldn't even get past my scales.”
“Are you… Ok?” Evelyn asks wearily as she stumbles off Snowstorm's back. She nearly falls off, so I help her down.
“Yeah, I'm all good.” I tell her and smile. She smiles back, a little nervously.
“I think we are all getting tired. Lets rest the night, alright? We can eat breakfast in the morning.” Snowstorm suggests and I nod.
“I'm taking no part in setting up camp.” I lie down in a big patch of grass just past the destroyed forest, within the not-destroyed forest.
“Good.” Snowstorm says. “I don’t want to imagine what you trying to cook something or start a fire would be like.”
“You know what? Fair enough.” I say, then shrug. Evelyn pats my side then starts gethering up twigs and leaves to start a fire. Snowstorm picks up one of the fallen trees and drags it over to start cutting it. He has the same mana claws skill as I have, but it's way higher in rank since he's just so much better at mana manipulation. I got it only a minute ago and managed to use it to kill a monster 16 levels higher then me in one slash. Though I probably still could have done so even without it sheerly because of my absurd stats.
{Title gained:Adaptable}
Huh? Where'd that come from?
