Wraithwood Botanist

B2 - Chapter 28 - Mosh Pit

"What did you tell them?" I screamed as I rode Kline’s ethereal body back to the camp. My stomach still felt sick, but there was no choice. The forest was alive and teeming with the vengeful cries of strong beasts that shook the canopies as their hooves or paws—or whatever the fuck they had—trampled on the ground near the roots.

Kline yowled a regretful yowl and sped up, warp-stepping three times before I wretched again. Kline said sorry in his own catty way but flew on, moving through trees until I got to the barrier.

He skidded to a halt as we reached it, and I put my hands on the barrier weakly, calling the chant and falling through.

I turned. "Come on… Kline."

Kline turned to me and shook his head, turning to the forest as if to fight them alone.

"What’s going on?" Aiden suddenly cried, rushing over to pick me up.

"Nothing…"

"What do you mean nothing?" he cried as the wild cries of primitive beasts rattled my mind. "Kline just challenged the entire forest!"

"Wait… what?"

"That freakish roar… that was Kline wasn’t it."

"How can you…"

"Listen, Mira," Aiden yelled. "I don’t think you understand what just happened. I don’t think he knows what just happened. But your little kitty cat just released an open contract on this forest. We can’t run—he has to fight."

"He… fuck." I unclipped my backpack and drank some of the DIktyo River water to ease my body and stomach. Then I closed my eyes and activated Mental Shielding to get my mind together. Ten seconds later, I was strong enough to stand and think.

"Kline!" I yelled. "I can fight, right?"

Kline turned back to me with eyes that said, "Stay out of this. It’s too dangerous!" and a knot popped in the back of my brain. "Oh, boy… you just wait…" I slapped my cheeks, annoyed that my orders to Aiden and Kline were bringing both to the brink of death.

I sucked at this.

Suddenly, the trees around us swayed as if a vicious wind blew through them, and I heard the stomp of feet crashing through the area.

"Drink this!" I pulled out a bright red Illydra elixir, created a domain, and knelt, opening the sealed tube and pouring it into Kline’s mouth, keeping oxygen out of his mouth until he swallowed. Then, I did it for myself.

The feeling was absolutely disturbing. It was like liquid plastic hit my stomach and then webbed through my muscles and veins, leaving me disoriented. Yet that feeling turned to relief when my muscles started rapidly healing from the micro rips they experienced from normal physical exercise, making me feel like I had gotten ten hours of rest.

It made me feel good.

I cracked my neck and pulled out my machete, and turned to Aiden. I thought of something to say to him, but my mind went blank, and I realized that nothing would rationally explain what was about to happen, so I just turned back to the stampeding horde, activating the enchanted machete and then stacking it with additional mana sharpening. It was time to fight.

2.

Aiden watched Mira turn back at him in a state of horror. The look in her eyes wasn’t one you’d find in a soldier’s eyes right before a battle, the type that included a plea to a message to their loved one in case they died.

Her eyes said, How the hell am I supposed to explain this? Then, she walked out of the barrier as hundreds of growls and snorts and shaking trees permeated the forest’s soundscape.

Aiden’s heart pounded when he saw a herd of beasts a mile upriver kicking up a sandstorm on the river’s shore as they approached. He couldn’t see them, but he bought a book with pictures, so its image popped up.

The beasts were gray with bodies shaped like horses but the skin of rhinos, each with short snouts and foreheads like beluga whales. Since Aiden was surrounded by a barrier, he looked up and said, "Elle. Give me the weaknesses!"

A delightful explosion of colorful sparkles exploded, and a pixie flew out of his chest, circling and landing on his shoulder with a tiny microphone.

"First up for tonight’s sponsored event, we got glarhans! These ugly hunky headers are dumber than they look—which is a profound sentiment! Far from tactical, they surround their prey and charge at them from all angles, bashing into their target and each other like a bloody game of pinball. They rely on their thick hides and sturdy bodies not to kill each other. So if you’re thinkin’ of cutting them, you better bring a serious weapon! But if you wanna hurt ’em, take out their legs. One injury, and they’re basically worthless!"

Aiden looked up and saw the beasts, which were now almost to camp, charging at Mira—who was holding a machete. "Mira! You can’t cut them! They have—"

His mind slowed when the beasts reached her. She was too late to dodge, so he imagined her mangled corpse flying into the barrier. But when he blinked, the headless corpse of the glarhan trying to gore her flew into the barrier instead.

"What the hell… ah!"

He screamed as glarhans charged into the barrier at full power, crashing into each other like waves against rocks—and that power was everywhere. If Mira wasn’t dead after the first strike, she certainly died after. It was a sandy mosh pit outside, with beasts goring each other from all directions. No human could’ve survived.

Mira… he thought. It all happened so fast.

Suddenly, something happened—and whatever it was, it was terrible—because blood splashed onto the barrier ten feet high, and glarhan limbs flew everywhere.

"What’s this, folks?" Elle cried. "In a stunning reversal, the should-be-deaders have risen up!"

Kline’s tiny body shot out of the mosh pit to Aiden’s right like a salmon hoping out of the water, and he landed on a glarhan’s back, biting into its spinal cord. With one motion, he ripped part of the vertebrae out, and the beast collapsed.

"What a movement! Kline’s going crazy out there, cutting, clawing, and crushin’ the competition! Absolutely incredible. You’d never know this killer calico was a house pet three months ago!"

A guttural roar blasted through the forest, making Elle change her tone. The glarhans stopped their stampede and looked back, witnessing a bear the size of a house enter the fray, grabbing four-hundred-pound glarhans and throwing them around.

"Uh oh…" Elle said nervously. "We’ve got trouble. That’s not a second ev."

Aiden was dead. He was really dead. This barrier was strong, but it would crack eventually.

Kline, Mira… he was useless to save them, and things were too loud for him to tell Kline the beast’s weaknesses. But what he could do was save himself and also maintain the barrier, so Mira and Kline could enter it.

So he rushed over to the ward stick, where there was a small container of green cores. He grabbed a handful, opened up the core chamber, and froze. Half of the stones had already turned to dust—and there were twenty greens in there.

They severely overestimated the power of the ward.

The bear roared again, and the beasts kept slamming into the barrier around him.

Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!

He added the rest of the container, about twenty green cores, into the ward like he was shoveling coal.

"Hey Aid~ee," Elle said. "Not sure I’m supposed to tell you this, but she did scream it at you, so I think it’s okay…"

"What?" he asked as he shut the container.

"Shield your eyes."

"Shut my—" Aiden shut his eyes at the exact moment a violent flash filled the area. It was like a nuclear bomb, so bright he could see his bones in his hands through shut eyelids—and it really fucking hurt.

Aiden screamed and hit the ground as the burnt side of the forest experienced a catastrophic explosion that knocked down dozens of trees. He cried out, crawling into the Diktyo River.

3.

Let’s back up a moment. Less than a minute ago, a wild pack of mindless beasts crashed into us from all directions, goring the shit out of each other, and I almost died from the sheer absurdity of the attack. I can essentially slow time, but it’s not helpful when you have some Indiana Jones, all-walls-closing-in bullshit crashing down on you.

Luckily, Kline teleported into my shadow and dragged me into a portal, throwing me to the outskirts of the mosh pit, allowing me to chop through stragglers with mana sharpening (which was now amplified by the sharpening enhancements on the machete) while he went to town on the main herd.

It was hard, but it was doable—until the bear showed up.

Yeah, a bear. It wasn’t even trying to look like some alien creature. It was just a normal ass bear that just so happened to be twenty feet standing, a perfect model for a "Vote No On Alaska" commercial, and it was pissed. It picked up glarhans like toy cars and threw them around as it tried to get to Kline.

Like. Toy. Cars.

The bear was casually throwing around 400-pound creatures like they were minor nuisances—and it was doing so with a speed and ferocity that crippled me with fear. It was a third evolution—there was no doubt about that.

In a fit of desperation, I slowed time and pulled Nymbral from my chest, screaming, "Shield your eyes, Aiden!" at the top of my lungs. Not that it mattered. Between the roaring and snorting and stomping, I couldn’t hear a damn thing, so I had to make a split-second decision: save Kline with Nymbral and risk frying Aiden’s corneas, or prioritize Aiden’s eyesight.

The second that Kline teleported into my shadow, I didn’t even deliberate. The moment the bear turned to me—

—I fired the shot.

This bear was proof that we weren’t ready for the bramble. Even with my world slowed and my acceleration cranked to the max, the bear managed to doge with ghostly speed, leaving the massive laser beam to plow through ten glarhans before cutting across the river and felling trees in an explosion of charcoal and black dust.

That said, it left the bear blinded. Kline seized upon that, attacking the beast from all sides with a rapid combination of Warp Step, Ethereal Bridge, and Phantom Claws, attacking from the skies, ground, and shadows. He did serious damage to the bear—but one skilled swipe sent Kline crashing into a tree with enough power to crack a spine.

"Kline!"

I thought he was dead, but Kline’s bloody body suddenly spilled out black ooze that covered his fur like he would grow a latex suit, and his body started healing.

The bear rushed forward at that time, and something amazing happened. Right as the bear reached him, Kline’s body split in half, with one being visible and the other under the guise of active camouflage (something I could see now that I could see soul force). The bear, half-blind, stomped the clone, giving me time to reach Kline.

I threw Diktyo Water onto Kline’s limping body. He healed in a moment, licking water off his fur.

The bear roared as it looked at the ground and then searched for him. His eyes landed on me, and I shivered. One attack and I was dead.

It roared and tried to charge, but Kline beat it to the punch. He flew through a portal into the bear’s shadow and jumped right onto its spine.

The bear screamed and flew around in a blind rage, knocking down trees as Kline rode it like a bronco. The mindless herd of beasts could see the bear’s weakness and turned from the barrier, which they were beating and cracking with their heads, and charged at the bear.

I was between them.

Fuck! I screamed as they charged. They flew forward, and I cranked my world to a halt again, rushing between them, swinging my machete with two hands into their limbs, chopping off four before my head started to split. I jumped, activated mental shielding, and released the technique.

Four beasts cried out and collapsed on the ground while the rest continued charging, ramming into the bear.

What followed was a bloody mosh pit. The bear mauled the beasts, swiping and stomping them as Kline worked on its spine. And soon, the bear had taken enough damage from the front to hit the ground.

Kline gave it one last go, putting everything into a Sharp Bite that ripped out the bear’s core with a stringy rip of muscle. The bear dropped as if it had been unplugged, hitting the ground. Kline’s body went limp, and he fell off its back.

"Kline!"

I rushed forward, chopping through the skull of one of the stupid gray beasts on my way to grab Kline. My body was weak and giving out, and I had mana-deprivation chills. My head was splitting from a headache, but I didn’t care. I picked up my little warrior and ran, using Moxle Dilation in short spurts to dodge attacks on the way to the ward. Then I melted into it a split second before ten beasts slammed into the barrier.

I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be long before they broke through, but I couldn’t even think. My mind was swimming, and my world was blurring. I closed my eyes and activated Mental Shielding, praying it would help.