Chapter 251: The Bloodthirsty Forest
"Grandpa, what in the world did the elves do to make you this angry?"
Olaf couldn't understand it. His grandfather's sudden fury had flared like a forge set ablaze. Though he was a little frightened by Tobey's current state, his intuition told him that he had to get to the bottom of it.
"It's none of your concern. Just focus on your own responsibilities. We'll handle the rest," Tobey growled, not even turning his head as he barked the words. "Get ready to begin. We're not altering a thing just because a bunch of pointy-ears came with some ultimatum. Unless they can rip the Tree of Life's roots out of the ground themselves—and if they could, they wouldn't be here bothering us with threats."
From beneath his thick, unkempt hair, Tobey cast a sidelong glance at his grandson. He made his intent clear: stay out of this. The work was about to begin.
"But—"
Olaf hesitated, still wanting to say more.
"You're operating the mechanical arm. Do it right. If you mess up and drop something important, I'll string you up on that machine for seven days straight."
Tobey knew his grandson all too well. A stern threat was the only language Olaf respected.
"All right! Heh, even if I did get strung up, I wouldn't mind!"
Sure enough, Olaf let the matter drop instantly. His eyes gleamed with anticipation; he nearly drooled with excitement. Curiosity and worry were swept away in the tidal wave of expectation.
"Go on, then. Do your job—and don't bring shame to the Bronzebeard clan."
Tobey punched his grandson lightly in the back and watched as Olaf dashed off toward the control console of the mechanical arm. With a sigh, Tobey turned back to face Jenkins Ironaxe, one of the site's lead overseers.
"Got any ideas for how we deal with this?"
Jenkins scratched at his wild mane of hair and addressed Tobey with a frown.
"We stick to the plan," Tobey said firmly. "No delays. I'll negotiate with the elves myself. I'd like to see just what made them suddenly demand us to halt all construction. It makes no sense."
The rage that had boiled up in him moments ago was now tucked away, leaving behind a cold, collected calm. Tobey, one of the dwarves' most respected sages, had been behind many key aspects of the Deep Delve. This was why Jenkins had come to him.
"Let's hope those pointy-ears have a bit of sense left," Tobey muttered. "But if they're truly serious about what their little ultimatum says—if they want to play rough—then it's time they remembered why Ironforge was built here on the frontier."
He stepped into a chamber nestled in the side of the excavated cavern, unlatched a reinforced chest, and drew forth a mighty warhammer. The weapon gleamed with a bright silvery sheen, its surface layered with several inches of enchanted mithril.
"Easy now," Jenkins warned, brow twitching at the sight. "You're really pulling that thing out? Don't let a confrontation get out of hand."
The warhammer, named Shatter, was a relic of battle. Its body, forged from enchanted iron and filled with a dense core of adamantium, bore the spell-breaking power of mithril. In the hands of a strong wielder, it could crush anything in its path.
"It's been a long time since I took her out. She could use a stretch," Tobey said offhandedly, hefting the hammer over his shoulder with practiced ease. "And it wasn't us who took things too far this time. If it comes to a fight, when have we dwarves ever been afraid?"
With the elves' ultimatum in hand, Tobey made his way toward the train waiting outside the cavern, ready to meet the elven envoy face to face.
Meanwhile, by the outskirts of Liaheim, within the Forest of Origin, a squad of elven rangers darted through the interwoven branches, bounding swiftly toward a disturbance deeper within the woods.
"How far?!"
"We'll get there within five minutes!"
"I don't know if we'll make it in time... It happened so suddenly. The war-trees are already showing signs of agitation, and not even the vitality infused by the Tree of Life's branches can soothe them now. Hurry! We need to provide support immediately.
"Fortunately, that other squad has experience with the war-trees, but they don't have much manpower. Things could get ugly."
The rangers rapidly pieced together the unfolding crisis as they rushed toward their destination.
A deafening blast tore through the forest. In the distance, several towering trees were hurled skyward. Plumes of dust and soil surged like waves, swallowing a wide swath of land and veiling everything within.
The rangers grimaced at the magnitude of the explosion. They sped up as much as they could.
"Watch out!"
The swiftest elf sprang nimbly from a branch, rebounding off the trunk to redirect his path toward the blast's origin.
But in that instant, with his foot still pressing against a particularly large and ancient tree, a voice rang out in alarm behind him.
There was a sharp tear of air. Something had sliced through the sky overhead. A jolt of dread struck his heart. Instantly, he chanted a verse of the words of nature. Green light flared across his arm as he drew a curved blade from his back and hurled it upward.
Flesh parted—the blade had cut something. Two writhing thorned vines, severed by his blade, whipped past his sides. From the sheared ends oozed a green fluid, viscous and blood-like.
A heavier, duller impact followed—the sound of a blade embedding into wood. Whatever had ambushed him from above had been hit, but it wasn't finished. The whistling air still howled in his ears.
He looked up just in time to see a massive, gaping maw filled with jagged teeth descend toward him, accompanied by a fetid stench and the splash of spittle.
The attacker was grotesque. Its head was a bloated flower, eyeless, with a mouth split wide at its core and crammed with fangs. A barbed tongue lashed wildly inside. Saliva spilled from its jaws in sheets, pelting the elf's face like a sudden rain.
Its body was vaguely humanoid, but composed of thick, knotted vines wound together like sinew. Its limbs were flailing tendrils of thorns. The creature's "arms" had already been severed by the elf's blade. Now it lunged, aiming to crush the elf's skull in its maw.
The elf's fist, sheathed in green light, slammed upward, straight into the creature's mouth. Razor fangs and barbed tongue flayed his arm with a hundred shallow cuts, but the moment the maw clamped down fully—the green light erupted. A burst of tangled vines and wild grass exploded from within the monster's gullet, forcing its jaws wide open—Words of Nature: Wild Growth.
Before the creature could recover, arrows whistled through the air. His fellow rangers had already drawn their bows and were now releasing arrow after arrow charged with power.
Each shaft glowed faintly green as it pierced the creature's vine-bound torso. The light spread like fire through the seams of its body. The more radiant the glow became, the more withered the monster appeared.
The arrows weren't solely imbued with magic—their raw force sent the beast flying. As it tumbled back, the elf wrenched his arm free, aided by the growth he had conjured.
"Stay alert! There's more than one! They're converging on us—and they're masked by the forest's aura! Don't let them catch you off guard. Their bodies are tough!"
The elf who had first been attacked leapt back into the formation, eyes sweeping the surroundings with renewed wariness.
He had fought one up close, so he knew these creatures better than anyone else present. They cloaked themselves in the very scent of the forest to hide in plain sight. They were everywhere—surrounding them from all directions.
With the creeping sounds came the stench of blood. The wardens formed a tight circle, backs together, senses sharpened to the limit. One by one, they began to sense the encroaching host.
Monsters with blooming flower-heads emerged from every shadow—from the canopy, from the soil, from the crevices of stone. Most bore stains of gore that clung to their barbed limbs and maws. They had only just finished killing unwary foes.
Some dragged half-devoured carcasses—deer, wolves—with them, still dripping with blood.
Others were still feeding. A bound animal, not yet dead, thrashed weakly as thorny tendrils held it fast and the creature tore flesh from its bones, piece by living piece.
"These plant-creatures—we've never seen them before."
"They weren't here before. This must be the result of the recent corruption."
"This forest feels foreign now. It's turning bloodthirsty. This is bad..."
Voices low and grave, the elves spoke as they stared down the closing ring of monsters. The forest they had once trusted now felt alien, as if something ancient and malevolent had taken root.
"There's no way we can reinforce the war-trees now," one of them muttered. "Send a messenger back. Warn the other rangers. Tell them to be alert—and send aid here if they can."
The elf responsible for communications nodded and uncorked a small vial at his waist. From within fluttered a tiny bird, its wings folded tight.
He whispered the message into the vial. The bird stirred, then burst skyward in a blur.
But before it could clear the treetops, fine branches lashed out from the canopy. In a blink, they skewered the bird mid-flight and dragged its lifeless body into the undergrowth.
"Damn it..."
One of the elves swore through clenched teeth. Things had just worsened. These were no mere beasts—something else lurked in the trees, silent and unseen.
With grim resolve, they drew their curved blades. Their bows, all but useless against these vine-bound foes, were slung away. There would be no retreat—only battle to the bitter end.
THUNK!
Elsewhere, a colossal fist slammed down with a thunderous crash. Shattered stone and the resulting shockwave flung an elven girl aside, her body tumbling helplessly before crashing against the trunk of a nearby tree.
The impact wracked her body. A mouthful of blood, tainted with fragments of her own viscera, burst from her lips and spattered across the earth. The iron tang flooded her throat and nostrils, leaving her gasping, half-blinded by dizziness.
"Move, Sif! Get up!"
Her sister's frantic voice called out from nearby. Accompanying it was the relentless, earth-shaking thunder of fists hammering the ground. The berserk war-tree was pursuing her sister now—the only other member of their two-woman team assigned to quell the unrest in the forest.
Unlike other squads made up of five members, the sisters had ample experience in pacifying raging war-trees. They were efficient. Two had always been enough.
This was supposed to be a routine mission—a standard procedure for calming a rampaging war-tree.
And yet, when Sif loosed a branch of the Tree of Life toward the heart of the twisted war-tree—which had gone mad and was starting to slaughter the wildlife of the Forest of Origin—it wasn't pacified.
Instead, it struck with a second blow, fiercer and faster than the first.
Caught off guard, a shard of stone from the explosion struck Sif's leg, snapping the bone. The fracture rendered her movements sluggish, and she failed to dodge the aftermath of the next devastating strike.
They had already been locked in a desperate standoff with this war-tree for far too long. It was different from any other—more frenzied, more agile, and terrifyingly intelligent. They had long since called for reinforcements, but none had yet arrived.
Sif struggled to rise. Agony throbbed through her body from her shattered leg and bruised torso. Clutching the tree beside her, she forced herself upright, her gaze snapping toward her sister—who was still doing everything in her power to draw the war-tree's fury away.
And then her pupils shrank to pinpricks. Her sister had been weaving nimbly through the forest, dodging blow after blow with practiced grace. But in one moment, one terrible moment, she faltered.
From the war-tree's crown, a sudden eruption of vines burst forth in a storm of motion. It was perfectly timed.
As her sister vaulted from one of the war-tree's descending fists, the vines surged out to snare her, as if waiting for that precise instant to strike.
The vines wrapped around her in mid-air.
"Ah—no! Let go of me!"
Sif's older sister thrashed, furious and desperate. Though she was an intermediate knight, her ranger specialization had shunted a significant part of her strength into agility. She simply wasn't strong enough to tear free from the vines' grip.
Meanwhile, the war-tree reached out. Its vast, five-fingered hand opened and grasped her sister, locking her tightly within its wooden fist.
"No—don't—!"
Sif screamed, her face twisted in horror. She raised her bow with trembling hands, loosing a green-glowing arrow straight at the giant fist.
The shaft struck true—but it was like a splinter against a mountain. The arrow embedded itself in the wood, unnoticed by the monster.
The hand began to close. Tighter. Tighter still.
A raw, soul-rending scream was ripped from her sister's throat, only to cut off suddenly, horribly. It was the last sound she would ever make.
A surge of bright blood burst between the monster's fingers, cascading to the ground below. The sheer volume of it shattered any hope in Sif's heart. Her sister... was gone.
Sif clutched her head, a wail of madness tearing from her throat. It was as though she felt her sister's death herself, every bone crushed, every breath stolen. Her bow dropped from numb fingers. Her broken body and shattered spirit offered no resistance anymore. Neither her mind nor her flesh were willing to fight on.
The war-tree raised its bloodied fist high above, letting the crimson flow stain its canopy, savoring the vitality it had consumed.
The humanoid face etched into its trunk—once calm, almost gentle—was now painted in red, transformed into something monstrous and grotesque by the rivulets of blood.
Its thick, root-formed legs pounded the earth as it advanced, the forest trembling beneath each thunderous step. Its oppressive presence suffocated all life around it.
It sensed Sif's collapse. She no longer posed a threat. Its pace slowed, measured and deliberate, as it approached the elf slumped against the tree, her eyes empty, her sobs meaningless.
And then those unnatural vines, the ones that should never have existed atop any war-tree, lashed out once more. They extended with terrifying speed, wrapped around Sif's limp body, and hoisted her into the air. Bound tightly, she was dragged toward the monster.
Once more, the war-tree opened its massive hand, ready to crush her as it had her sister.
But just before the giant hand could close, a boulder shot out from the forest's edge, whistling through the air. It slammed into the war-tree's arm with devastating force, its core of earth magic exploding inward with a roar—the third-tier Crushing Boulder.
The monster staggered. In that instant, a blade of pure light swept through the air, slicing through every vine ensnaring Sif and severing them with surgical precision.
She fell free. A blurred figure followed close behind the blade. A hand reached out, seized Sif's collar, and whisked her away in a flash.
They vanished into the forest before the war-tree could react. By the time it turned, they were already gone.