Dungeon (4): The Mouth of the Tree
The Tree of Longing had an overall appearance of something withered and shriveled.
And yet the branches it carried were no ordinary thickness—not for a creature whose size casually rivaled the eighth floor of an apartment building. Looked at from another angle, they almost resembled densely compressed muscle.
Even so, Rena charged out without a trace of fear.
Sssscaaape…!
Like a soccer player sliding into a tackle, she glided forward in a long, low slide. She tilted her shield at an angle and set her stance—and the instant she did, the tree's attack came sweeping in.
It wasn't a swing. A branch lunged, driving its sharpened tip like a spear, and the moment it met Rena's shield, a thunderous clang split the air.
CLANG!
An attack with power that couldn't even be compared to the Chimeras we'd faced on our previous commission!
But I never once thought Rena would be hurt.
"I can hold it!"
"Nice work!"
She held her defensive posture and shouted back, perfectly fine. I'd watched her train steadily all this time, so I had complete faith in her abilities. There are people in this world who are simply born knowing how to use their bodies, aren't there? Rena was exactly that type. To be precise, it seemed she even knew how to handle her mana.
KWAAANG!
The follow-up strike hammered into her shield, but once again Rena absorbed the full impact with nothing more than a slight stagger. To think she'd deliver this kind of performance just from being fitted with decent equipment. Her future growth was looking more and more promising.
Tadadak!
I stuffed my stray thoughts into a corner of my mind and sprinted forward. The branches that had struck Rena were temporarily paralyzed, struggling to absorb the recoil of their own tremendous impact.
Shwk—!
My sword qi sliced smoothly through the tip of a branch, clean as a blade through a radish. Immediately, an unidentified purple liquid geysered up from the cut surface. Between the flowing blood (?), I could see what looked like muscle fiber—so while its appearance imitated a tree, its insides were apparently closer to an animal's.
Uuuoooh—
The Tree of Longing let out a pained cry.
Putting on an act when it still had plenty of branches left. Seriously.
Then again… where exactly was this thing's weak point? As I glared at the tree, Noah spoke in her flat, dry tone.
"According to the encyclopedia, there is a reddish-brown knot on the tree's main body. We are instructed to pierce it deeply."
"Hmm… I don't see it from here. Is it on the back? Rena, let's circle around to the side."
"Yes, sir."
Step, step, step.
Shield raised to cover her entire body with both hands, Rena began to inch sideways. The tree, apparently having been burned once already, wriggled its dozens of remaining branches in the air, as if deliberating over what to do with us.
I whispered quietly to Rena.
"How about Provocation?"
"I'm too far from the main body."
"How much closer would we need to get?"
"At the very least, we'd have to close the gap to less than half of what it is now…"
Our current distance from the tree was roughly 300 meters. Which meant we'd have to close to within a hundred meters or so.
The closer we got, the overwhelmingly greater the number of branches that would come attacking—
And of all times, Noah's magic was half-sealed, making long-range attacks difficult too. As I agonized over what to do, Noah pulled something from her pack, readied it, and addressed us.
"I will act independently."
"You have something in mind?"
"The arrows' raw physical force is still intact… so I will attempt sniping from concealment. It should disperse its attention, at the very least."
"Sounds good. Do it."
Noah, traveling light, moved off in the opposite direction from us. The tree, which had been keeping us under close watch (?), seemed to grow a little more confused.
···
The tactic Rena and I chose was dead simple. Rena tanked at the front while I cut down the branches. It was a strategy we couldn't have used before—but now, things were different.
Ttututung!
As we closed the distance, the branches multiplied and came down on Rena like a rain of whips. Countless attacks arriving at angles impossible to dodge. But Rena simply curled herself up tight and blocked every last one. Even where her shield couldn't cover, her armor—boasting even greater defensive power—held the line.
Shwk, shwk!
Positioned slightly behind her, I diligently hacked away at the outstretched branches. All I could manage was trimming the tips, but repeating the same work over and over visibly shortened them.
Ggudeudeudeuk!
Unable to bear it any longer, the tree used its branches like ropes, binding Rena tightly. It was probably trying to hoist her up. But Rena's full plate armor had an enchantment inscribed for exactly this situation.
Fixation.
"…??"
The tree strained to lift her, but Rena didn't budge an inch. The Fixation enchantment linked the wearer to the ground beneath her feet, rendering her absolutely immovable. To break the spell, the tree would likely need the strength to tear up the entire surrounding earth.
Seogeogeoggeok!
Hududud…
I cleaved through the gathered mass of branches in a single stroke!
The tree groaned in agony and contracted its remaining branches in a tight, shuddering cluster.
"Go!"
"Yes, sir!"
Tadadada.
We seized the gap as the branches that had momentarily filled the clearing all withdrew, and pressed closer to the tree. Advancing while circling sideways like a whirlpool, we finally exposed the hidden rear of the trunk.
"Found it…"
The reddish-brown spot Noah had described stood out prominently against the tree's white surface. Unfortunately, its position left much to be desired. Of all places, the weak point sat at the very top of the tree.
'We have to climb almost eight stories…'
Kkeuaaaaah—!
The tree, apparently displeased that we'd drawn even closer, flung open the mouths sprouting all over its body and shrieked an earsplitting cry before attacking us once more. This time it wasn't the sturdy Rena it targeted—it was me, the one whose offense posed the real threat.
Syusyusyusuk!
But a hail of arrows from somewhere—Noah—drove the branches back into a cower. To be sure, it wasn't a creature that would be hurt by a few slivers of metal… but it seemed reluctant to have its weak point exposed to attack. Advancing steadily under Noah's covering fire, we pressed on—until Rena, her face drained of color, whispered carefully.
"M-mister, my mana's about to run dry…"
"Already?"
"Are you okay? The rate it's draining at right now is no joke…?"
Oh, right. When I belatedly checked my own body, my aura was draining away at an alarming rate as well. The only reason I hadn't noticed was that my Inner Heart was generating aura faster than I was losing it—as if it possessed some instinct devoted to keeping the volume in my body constant.
"I'm fine, but… how much longer do you think you can hold out?"
"Ten minutes or so. But if I fight, it'll drain faster. And if I use Provocation on top of that…"
So realistically, three minutes. I wrestled furiously with the question of whether to retreat at this point. Pulling back was no problem—but what if the thing refused to show itself next time?
'This time, the goblins summoned it for us on their own, and the tree's pretty furious too, so it doesn't seem inclined to run. We're probably the first living things to ever charge at it like this.'
But once its head cooled, there was no telling how it would behave next time. If it buried itself underground and refused to come out, we'd be in serious trouble.
'I need to decide fast—'
Just as I was furiously weighing the pros and cons of retreat, the tree—which had been wriggling about like a petulant child—abruptly stopped attacking.
···
A hush fell over the battlefield, where every sound effect imaginable had been flying back and forth.
"…?"
The tree retracted all of its branches, just as it had when its limbs were first severed. But unlike before, when it had merely been reacting to pain, there was a clear, deliberate purpose behind this movement.
I hesitated, unable to tell whether the creature's behavior was an opening or a trap—and in that instant—
Bwibwureureu…
With a grotesque sound, the tree transformed its entire body in one motion. It withdrew the countless branches that had sprawled outward like an ordinary tree and fused them all into a single colossal limb. Its form had already left the category of "tree" entirely behind. Squint your eyes, and it looked like nothing so much as a giant white earthworm rising from the ground.
"Ugh. Disgusting."
"…Agreed. But it looks dangerous too, doesn't it?"
I stared at the swollen, massively thickened limb. With every branch merged into one, it had grown thicker than the trunk of the tree itself—thick enough now that calling it a tentacle would have been perfectly fair.
'That thing's packed solid with muscle at that size. Do not block it.'
Rena was barely defending against the ordinary branches as it was. Could she really withstand something whose girth had swelled dozens of times over? Even if mana granted superhuman strength… maybe someday, but not yet. I was skeptical.
I pulled Rena back and spoke.
"Fall ba—"
Wooooooooh—!
The tree's bellowing shriek cut my words short. At some point, a long vertical split—a [Mouth]—had opened along the tree's thick tentacle. The oddly humanoid, square-set teeth were unsettling just to look at.
"Retreat!"
Trusting the ominous instinct prickling at the back of my skull, I fell back. What kind of attack was it planning? Don't tell me that [Mouth] was about to spit something out?
Huuuuuuup!!
But my guess was precisely backwards. Far from spitting anything out, the thing was gulping down air. At first I thought it was about to fire some kind of air cannon—
Hwijjeok!
I staggered, struck by a sudden wave of dizziness. To my utter bewilderment, my aura was streaming out of my body at tremendous speed—faster than the Inner Heart could produce!
Thud!
If I was in this state, Rena didn't stand a chance. She collapsed without so much as a squeak. The mana leaving her body and being sucked into the [Mouth] had become so dense it was practically visible!
"Hnnnngh…!"
Straining to hold onto the aura that kept seeping outward like osmosis in reverse, I hurled Rena far behind me. Even that simple motion wrung cold sweat from my whole body.
'It might be absorbing life force too… I don't know its range, but I have to deal with this fast!'
Where in the world did they get "the original is an 8th-rank monster" from this? I'd believe it if someone told me this was Rank 5. Anyway, not a single normal commission in this—no, this was no time to complain.
I calmly took stock of my condition.
'…I still have aura to spare. Think this through.'
I watched my precious aura vaporize and get slurped into the tree's [Mouth]. The tree was drinking in mana with a sound like tens of thousands of people inhaling in unison—but oddly enough, the dirt and dust stayed perfectly still. It seemed to be absorbing only intangible things: life force, mana, and the like.
I kept analyzing.
'…Why is it only using this attack now?'
I realized there was something fundamentally illogical about the tree's behavior. If it had led with this from the start, things would have gone far more smoothly on its end. Unleashing it only after being cornered… was it a technique with a penalty attached?
"…!"
One more strange detail struck me!
Even with us half-crippled, the thick tentacle wasn't making a single physical attack like before. It just kept drinking mana for all it was worth, as if it intended to suck us to death.
'Don't tell me… it can't move?'
Wary of the tentacle, I took a slow, tentative step forward. The distance to the tree shrank bit by bit.
Suuuuuuuuup!!!
The ragged sound of the [Mouth]'s breathing grew louder in proportion to the shrinking distance. But not one other attack came. The creature was unmistakably paralyzed for as long as it used this technique!