Fallen Leaves
The hero’s party made their preparations the next day and set off toward the God of Stillness. Before long, something came into view that filled everyone’s hearts with awe.
It was a massive tree. Its trunk soared so high into the sky that even the clouds could not contain it. And yet, at a glance, the tree was clearly in a terrible state. Withered leaves and skeletal branches swayed weakly, as though they were already on the verge of death. From far away, one could see that the trunk had dried out completely, as if not a drop of moisture remained within it, proof that the tree’s life was almost exhausted.
Seeing the colossal tree that had lived on only in legends and oral tales, the hero’s party could not help but gasp in admiration. Irene widened her eyes and lifted a hand, trying to measure its size.
"Wow. It’s really huge. I can’t believe there’d be a tree like that in a place filled with nothing but miasma."
"It’s been mentioned now and then in reports from the previous hero party, but even seeing it with my own eyes, I still can’t believe it."
Edan cast a virtual hologram spell and searched through records from the past. If information had been entered with input-output functions, this kind of magic made it easy to find what he needed with its organized search feature. The hologram, powered by photon magic, riffled and scrambled before Edan’s eyes at dizzying speed until it found the target. It was a brief record with no publication date listed. After skimming it, Edan frowned.
"On the hero party’s 247th day of exploration in the Makyeong: completed reconnaissance of the deepest region of the Makyeong. Special note: sighted the entity commonly known as the World Tree, said to support the continent. However, lost the hero to the God of Stillness’s relentless attacks and barely escaped."
At Edan’s muttered words, Lee Yu-seong looked dumbfounded. The God of Stillness they had met last time looked like a man in his twenties, far too young to have lived that long.
"I guess high-ranking demons don’t age, either."
"Perhaps. The oldest record of the God of Stillness is more than five thousand years old."
At the saintess’s reply, Lee Yu-seong made a face as though he’d eaten something rotten. What had seemed like nothing more than a game character had suddenly acquired the weight of deep history, and that made it feel strangely alive.
Hilde noticed that the concentration of miasma in the air was steadily thinning. Everyone except Hilde had already grown used to an environment where miasma was all but absent, and none of them could detect the subtle difference. At this level, it would hardly be any different from being outside the Makyeong at all.
Sure enough, looking at this phenomenon, Black Snake has been preparing his trump card since a few days ago. But why?
Black Snake’s finishing move was a straightforward attack: draw in the miasma in the air, condense it, and fire off a massive mana cannon. But the bigger the energy, the harder it was to alter its trajectory; if one managed to evade it just once, all the time and focus spent gathering power would be wasted. For someone with a schemer’s nature like Black Snake, such a method seemed strangely out of character. There had to be some other intention behind it.
Not long after, while they were moving, the saintess suddenly stopped and drew both hands together.
"I can sense something eerie. It’s the God of Stillness’s power, but something about it is different."
At her words, everyone nodded in agreement. Even though nothing was visible yet, a cold pressure was surging up explosively all around them. Edan checked his detection spell, and deep tension crept onto his face.
"It’s coming fast! Everyone, prepare for battle!"
A torrent of vile miasma was racing toward them from the direction of the great tree, enough to blot out the whole area. The saintess cast a sanctified domain and a blessing of struggle over the party. The miasma soon slammed into her barrier and vanished, but beyond it lay only darkness. In the instant that red eyes flashed inside that darkness, the God of Stillness charged at them even faster than he had when they met in the north. He was already at Irene’s throat before anyone could react.
Hilde, who had been nearby, had already read the God of Stillness’s approach and rushed in. In a split second, she met the attack at full speed with Outer Gravity Shift and divine power pushed to their limit. To keep herself from being driven back, she invoked the blessing of the earth and managed to halt the dagger in place.
The God of Stillness had not been the only one prepared for this battle. Even so, the hero party felt as though their hearts had stopped at his opening strike. If not for the earth’s protection preventing knockback, and the hard-won experience they had gained fighting in the Makyeong, Irene might have lost her life right there. The saintess’s eyes went wide, and she swallowed hard.
The God of Stillness clicked his tongue and shoved Hilde’s sword aside before retreating. His body was overflowing with dense miasma, black static crackling and blooming over him in bursts.
"Tch. What a shame. This could’ve been easy. You’re still a thorn in my side."
"I’ll see your crimes end here."
Edan poured a massive amount of mana into a layered Gravity spell and locked onto the God of Stillness as his target. He couldn’t combine it with other spells through multitasking, but it was powerful enough to pin down even high-tier monsters. The saintess, anticipating the God of Stillness’s ambush, brought Edan within the scope of her own unique barrier and activated it. That meant Edan could no longer support them with projectile magic, but as long as his mana held out, he could keep the Gravity spell active.
"Not bad for humans. But if you think that’s enough to win, you’re badly mistaken."
The God of Stillness withdrew his aura and fastened the dagger into the holder at his thigh. Close combat was impossible under the crushing weight pressing down on his entire body.
Miasma took the shape of a bow in his hand. When the saintess saw the bow appear out of nowhere, she widened her eyes.
"That’s Divine Bow Rebeche! How can a mythical weapon said to have vanished be in the hands of a high-ranking demon?"
"So you know what this is. You can be proud of yourself. It’s a weapon I haven’t taken out in a very long time."
In the blink of an eye, the God of Stillness formed an arrow and aimed it at Lee Yu-seong. He was at a level where arrows alone should have been easy to avoid. Lee Yu-seong focused every nerve in his body, ready to knock the shot aside and close the distance at the same time.
"Ghk!"
"Hero!"
The saintess screamed in shock. A long arrow had already half-penetrated Lee Yu-seong’s left arm. Grimacing through the pain, he forced himself to pull it free. Irene sent healing toward him through the unique barrier. The wound was healing far more slowly than usual.
"What a pity. If you’d tried to block it, it would’ve pierced your heart."
As the God of Stillness mocked him, Lee Yu-seong recalled the earlier attack and broke out in a cold sweat. He had thought it was too late to deflect the arrow that had come at him and closed the gap at the same time, so he had instinctively dodged his body aside and barely avoided a fatal wound.
When the God of Stillness aimed the bow at Lee Yu-seong again, Hilde cut through the wind and rushed in. Just before her sword reached him, the God of Stillness blocked with the bow itself, then used the force of the impact to flip backward once in midair. Hanging upside down, he quickly sighted Hilde and loosed another arrow.
The moment he let the string go, Hilde was startled to see the arrow vanish.
She managed, with a hair’s breadth to spare, to twist away from the shot that had appeared right in front of her.
Now she understood why Lee Yu-seong had been hit.
The effect of Divine Bow Rebeche was simple. The arrow, once released, crossed into another dimension for an instant before being summoned directly in front of the target to pierce them. If Hilde’s specialization had not been activated, she would not have survived it.
The God of Stillness was stunned to see Hilde even block Rebeche’s arrows. He had used the bow only a handful of times in his life, but not once had anyone ever defended against it.
Looks like I need to switch to Plan B. That monster of a woman.
For about an hour, the God of Stillness kept retreating while firing arrows in between. Lee Yu-seong twisted his whole body to barely avoid fatal wounds, but his injuries only piled up. His mind was growing foggy from wounds that even the saintess’s healing couldn’t close, and he looked ready to collapse at any moment. The saintess’s divine power was nearly exhausted as well.
In a moment of faltering focus, Hilde barely managed to twist her body, but an arrow still buried itself in her left shoulder. She nearly cried out at the searing pain but forced it down. In a situation where healing was hard to receive, she chose not to pull it out; instead, she chased after the God of Stillness and sliced the embedded arrow in half with her sword.
As Hilde deflected and evaded the arrows, she analyzed the timing of when they appeared and the distance between herself and the arrow when it materialized. Before long, Rebeche’s ability became familiar to her.
In the midst of the desperate struggle, Hilde knocked aside another incoming arrow and used Outer Gravity Shift in midair to change direction, closing in on the God of Stillness before slashing horizontally with her sword.
The God of Stillness barely managed to block with the bow and, as planned, created a wide gap in an instant.
Then he was startled by a strange sound.
There was a sharp cracking noise coming from Divine Bow Rebeche.
A crack, slight but unmistakable, had appeared in the bow woven from the trunk of the Life Tree.
The bow the goddess gifted is being pushed past its limits by the attack.
The sacred weapon Divine Bow Rebeche, bestowed in celebration of the birth of the first elves whom the goddess loved, was being broken by nothing more than a holy knight of the human race.
He had failed to reach the checkpoint quickly because of the mage’s interference.
Damn it. And I really did want to see one of my own kind again after so long...
The God of Stillness shut his eyes tightly, his heart heavy with regret.
The miasma he had been suppressing began to thicken even further.
His whole body trembled in great pain, and his skin started to split in places. The miasma surged into his brain, trying to numb his reason.
His outward beauty vanished, and he began to resemble a monster.
If this ended here, his body would collapse and be destroyed.
At this point, I can throw my life away without hesitation.
Now more thoroughly consumed by miasma, she began to flee at a speed unlike before. Fearing that if they lost her everything would have been for nothing, the hero party gave chase with all their strength. Before they knew it, they had reached a place very close to the enormous tree.
The God of Stillness looked back at the hero party. Such a formidable enemy was the first she had met in a very long time. Her entire body had begun to break apart, and even greater pain hammered through her being. She could have escaped, but she did not. She had lived, unable even to die, for this day alone.
Seeing the God of Stillness drop to one knee, the hero party let out a breath.
For some reason, had she collapsed from trying to flee and failed to escape the situation?
The hero party’s resources were depleted and their bodies were at their limit, exhaustion rolling over them all at once. Lee Yu-seong, in particular, was on the verge of blacking out from excessive blood loss.
The saintess lifted her unique barrier, rushed to Lee Yu-seong’s side, and poured high-grade healing into him, barely managing to stop the bleeding.
Looking at the God of Stillness kneeling there, Edan walked up to Hilde and said,
"We’ve finally got him. If you hadn’t driven him into a corner, we might have lost."
Once again, Edan found himself stunned by Hilde’s prowess. The miraculous way she had deflected arrows appearing right in front of her was still hard to believe even after seeing it. When Rebeche struck Lee Yu-seong, he had felt real despair.
"No. I didn’t do this alone. This victory was won because everyone worked together."
Hilde shook her head. Without the saintess’s buffs, Edan’s debuff, and Lee Yu-seong’s close-range support, she could not have guaranteed this outcome.
"I’m going to lie down for a bit. I really thought I was going to die today."
Lee Yu-seong flopped onto the ground and closed his eyes. If even one more arrow had been aimed at him, he would surely have died. After fighting with everything he had, the tension finally left his body, and he went limp with exhaustion.
"Hah... ha, foolish humans. Do you really think you’ve won?"
The God of Stillness coughed up blood. At that very moment, an enormous mass of miasma was whirling not far away. On the hill, a hooded figure condensed a tremendous amount of miasma between both hands.
Black Snake. So you really were here too. I’ll take you down here as well.
Hilde rose and gave Edan a glance. As she had expected, Edan was stunned by the appearance of this new variable. Who could possibly foresee a situation like this? He pushed the thought aside for a moment and checked the mana remaining within him. After the battle with the God of Stillness, he had barely retained about one-third of his mana.
Realizing that his life was nearly at its end, the God of Stillness shouted,
"Black Snake! Just as promised, wipe them all out!"
Edan and Hilde had already prepared for Black Snake’s magic. His attack was a linear projectile spell. If Edan poured all his remaining power into spatial distortion, they would have enough time to evacuate the party. Black Snake, silent, turned away from the hero party.
He aimed his spell toward the Life Tree.
Even as he prepared his finishing move, miasma burst violently and the terrain began to shake. The devastating power packed into a sphere containing most of the Makyeong’s miasma was about to explode outward.
Now... why is that bastard aiming at the Life Tree?
The God of Stillness could not understand what was happening. Unable to move, she could only stare blankly at Black Snake as he prepared his spell.
"Heh-heh. You think this will be enough to kill the hero party?"
As he heard Black Snake’s sneering voice, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind. The God of Stillness’s teeth clenched so hard they ground together.
"You son of a bitch! So your real target was the Life Tree from the start! You rotten bastard!"
"Your brain still works pretty well for someone already dying. I’ll make your mother, the Life Tree, your companion in death."
Tears welled up in the God of Stillness’s eyes. She had never imagined her life would end like this after nearly twenty thousand years. Even if she had to die bearing the weight of countless sins, the comrades she had wanted to save would now never see the light again because of her own foolishness.
At last, Black Snake’s finishing spell was about to fire.
Then Hilde’s mind flashed, and she understood something at once. Once again, she felt it throughout her body: this was not a game.
The Life Tree was one of the objects that could never be allowed to fall.
The Life Tree absorbed the miasma generated in the western region of the continent and prevented it from spreading across the entire land. If Black Snake had discovered this fact, then eliminating the Life Tree would have become his primary goal in seizing the continent.
Black Snake’s finishing move was incredibly powerful, but easy to evade and took a very long time to prepare. If the God of Stillness had not fought the hero party and remained in proper condition, he would never have stood by and watched a plan to destroy the Life Tree unfold. Black Snake had intended to use the hero party as part of his scheme.
Hilde tightened her grip on her sword.
"Edan. You remember what I told you yesterday, right?"
Edan checked the mana within himself once more and nodded. Barely one-third remained.
Edan felt a chill run down his spine.
He had found it odd enough that Hilde asked him to use only the Gravity spell and no other debuffs, but he had followed her lead without complaint. Had Hilde really predicted not only Black Snake’s appearance, but even that he would use his finishing move?
Edan almost had the absurd impression that Hilde knew every trait of demons and monsters alike.