Rise Online: Return of the Legendary Player

The monstrous tree in the middle of the clearing was as wide as a bus and as tall as Harry Potter's fighting willow. Thanks to its slightly flexible trunk, the tree could sway from side to side, as well as freely control each of its branches. Like the serpent hairs of the jellyfish, it seemed that each branch had its own autonomy and struck out in different directions.

It was not easy for Kaizen to advance even using his three sword control technique. The more branches his blades cut and froze, it seemed that more branches appeared.

At the roots of the monster tree, there was a man trapped between them, and this man's luck was that the tree had not yet felt threatened enough to start moving, otherwise he would have been crushed easily by now.

Since the Snowy Limb was a slow and large sword compared to the lightness of the Eye of Storm and the Næġling Falske, Kaizen used it to defend himself for most of the time of the fight.

'I have to move forward!' Stubbornly, the Psyker persisted.

At some point, he saw, literally, a wave of twigs coming to his right. So Kaizen clicked his tongue, grumpily, and used all three swords to chop through that dozen thick twigs.

His swords proved to be very sharp, easily cutting through each of these twigs to the point that they were no bigger than small dice from a board game.

Frightened by the strength of the man it was now facing, the tree planned a less condensed attack, in order not to make the same mistake as before.

As it continued to fight the Descragons, the tree prepared dozens of branches to hit Kaizen from various directions. This time, the creature was sure that the Psyker could not cut off all of his attacks, and it would only take one to hit him for it to be enough to kill him, going through his chest or belly, as it did with Heprax.

When Kaizen looked ahead and saw the dozens of pointed branches aiming at him, he instantly remembered a movie he had watched as a child.

In this particular movie, a noble knight faces a nest of giant snakes. However, as much as Kaizen's vision was similar to the one in the movie, there was no way to draw a parallel between the hero and the Psyker, after all Kaizen would never be considered a hero, and would not even die from poison at the end of the movie, as did the reckless and idiotic hero of the movie.

Contemplating the same vision as Kaizen, the Descragon warriors were very frightened. They were already having trouble dealing with one or two branches, which seemed indestructible with their swords, so logically they thought Kaizen would have no chance against more than thirty branches attacking him from different directions and angles.

"Not that one... He's going to die." One of them spoke aloud what they were all thinking.

Kaizen was not an idiotic man. Before he even started the battle against this monster-tree, he already knew how he would resolve it if things didn't turn out the way he wanted. So when those dozens of branches started trying to attack him, Kaizen masterfully dodged the first ones and created a fireball with a snap of his fingers.

Flames appeared in the air and quickly gained enormous volume, becoming a huge fireball. Then Kaizen snapped his fingers again with his right hand, and the fireball split into several particles in mid-air as they flew towards the tree.

Wisely, the Psyker's intention was not to char the tree in an instant with fire, for he didn't even have enough mana for that, nor did he want to char the Descendragon trapped in the roots. All Kaizen aimed for was to make the tree believe that he had too much power and thus go into defense mode.

'I can only create four or five large fireballs before my mana runs out. Therefore, I have to condense my firepower to annoy it. Making this monster angry and defending itself will be the only way I can think of to beat this huge thing.' Kaizen concluded.

Like a machine gun of fireballs, Kaizen snapped his fingers one time after another, and the tree was hit by dozens of very small fireballs.

Although the damage was not maximum or critical, it was certainly not comfortable for the tree to take damage from a counter element. As such, it retreated most of its branches to defend its face, which was no more than three holes in the trunk.

Some branches were still in aggressive mode and tried to hit Kaizen, but these sporadic attacks were too predictable to hit the Psyker.

When the monster tree went into defensive mode, the Descendants were finally free to advance. They couldn't believe what was happening. The strange man had not only spared them before, but was helping them now, for no apparent reason. This was unbelievable.

"Let's move forward!"

"Move forward! Don't stop!"

"AAAAHHH! Let's avenge Heprax!"

The Descragons were excited, roaring as if they were going into the fight of their lives. Soon, they managed to get to the roots of the tree and to cut them some of them imbued their swords with a magical energy of a blue tone, almost transparent.

After this, the roots were cut with three or four blows, and they managed to free their companion, Boris, a descragon with a gray beard.

However, all was not flowers. Unfortunately, these men were blinded by the opportunity to avenge Heprax and continued to blindly attack the roots of the tree, which might be bearing this, but was also too proud to ignore.

"Idiots, get out of there!" Kaizen shouted.

Some of the men obeyed Kaizen and some did not. Less than five seconds later, Kaizen's mana supply for throwing fireballs practically ran out and his attacks had to be ceased so as not to deplete it.

That was all the monster-tree wanted most, for when the fire hitting it stopped, it came out of defense mode and tried to crush the descragons, which to it had the same value as an insect.

By the time the men realized it, the creature's giant shadow covered them and it was too late to run.

Luckily for them, Kaizen was too much of a perfectionist to let them die after being saved by him, so he stopped the tree's movements using <Telekinesis>.

Kaizen's stubbornness and pride were two things that knew no limit. He knew that holding back the movements of the Possessed Tree of the Woods just to help the Descragons would be something that would consume all the rest of his MP. However, it is obvious that the Psyker would not let this impromptu move not be something for his own benefit, as every single action he took in his life had this focus.

Determined to take an advantage of this situation, he used <Giant's Lungs> to exponentiate his amount of attributes while continuing to use <Telekinesis>. His MP bar zeroed out as quickly as the HP bar of any living being when decapitated.

Evidently, after this he fell to his knees on the ground, completely exhausted.

A moment later, a loud bang accompanied a small earthquake. A lot of dust was kicked up, the ground of the whole clearing cracked, the leaves of the trees in the whole forest were thrown back by the violent wind, and the birds, which were resting there, flew away in despair.

Why did all this happen? Well, somehow Kaizen not only managed to save the Descendants, preventing them from being crushed, but also knocked back the gigantic Possessed Tree of the Woods.

The giant monster's roots, which were also its legs, swayed in the air, but the creature couldn't reach the ground, couldn't return to its normal position. Like an overturned turtle with its hoof up, all the tree-monster could feel was despair.

Gasping for breath, Kaizen looked at the descragons and said:

"What... are you... waiting for? Go... and avenge your fellow man." He gasped, searching for breath.

The horned men were still a little stunned by what had happened. Just a few seconds ago, they were about to be killed. Still, even in the midst of such a confused feeling, they were prepared warriors and quickly climbed the tree to start striking it. There was even one of them who jumped inside the mouth of the Possessed Tree of the Woods and began to tear it apart from the inside.

After a few minutes of intense attack, the monster-tree finally exploded into black particles and shattered in the air.

[You have killed a Possessed Tree of the Woods and gained +5000 XP].

[You gained 'Possessed Tree of the Woods bark' (22x).]

[You gained 'Charcoal Plant' (7x).]

[You gained 'Tough Sticks' (10x).]

[You gained 'Protector's Staff' (1x).]

+

[Creature: Possessed Tree of the Woods

Level: 25 | Attribute: Plant | Nature: Mutant

HP: 1200 | MP: 15

Attack: 400 | Defense: 290 | Speed: 90

Strength: 350 | Wisdom: 20 | Resistance: 157

Resistance to the spells of: Stun and Water].

...

Edited by: DrHitsuji

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