Elijah ripped a blood beast from his chest, throwing it toward the ground with enough force to splatter it within its shell. Even as he did, he wheeled around, catching another with his scythe. The blade bit deep, but it didn’t slice through the thing. Not entirely. The creature burst from the impact, and Elijah paid it no more heed. Instead, he turned his attention to the next few, casting Nature’s Claim while maintaining Eternal Plague. Doing so stretched the limits of his capabilities, but he’d found that dual casting was possible now that he’d upgraded his mind cultivation. The cavern buzzed with mosquitoes, which kamikazed the blood beasts. At the same time, mushrooms burst forth from his target’s back, then exploded into spores that quickly infected the others. It was chaos, but in the center of it all was Elijah, stoically chopping down the frenzied blood beasts. It was not an understatement to say that if he let up for even a second, he would have been overwhelmed. In that same vein, if they’d been just a little more powerful, fighting in melee range would have been impossible. Check latest chapters at 𝗇𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗅✦𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾✦𝗇𝖾𝗍 But due to a confluence of factors, he managed it all the same. Elijah wasn’t certain how long he fought. Hours, at the very least. When he gained enough ethera to support a long bout of Eternal Plague, he threw himself into the air, bounded off of Cloud Step, and leaped to the top of one of the trees. Sometimes, that kept him safe enough, but more times than he could count, he’d found himself immediately under siege. Fortunately, he was extremely mobile, so he stayed ahead of the swarm. Still, the sheer number of creatures he’d killed was horrifying. If he’d been any lower leveled, he would have succumbed. However, even the strongest of the creatures were barely ascended, which meant that they didn’t give him a lick of experience. By all rights, he was risking his life and wasting his time for no reason at all. Except for the spider, which had continued to build her fortress of webs. Plenty of blood beasts had breached her defenses, but Elijah didn’t have the time to directly help her. In addition, he wasn’t certain how his presence would be received. Some guardians were very accepting, but others were so protective of their treasures that they reacted to any incursion into their territory with overt hostility. Elijah couldn’t spare the time or focus to forge a relationship with the spider. So, he left her to her own devices while he attacked the swarm from a different direction. Elijah kept going for a few hours more before the numbers began to thin. Then, an hour or so after that, he killed the last of the blood beasts. Still, he wheeled around, searching for any stragglers. His scythe’s handle was slippery in his hands, and his muscles burned with fatigue. His soul felt oddly stretched, almost numb. And eighty-one twin headaches pierced his mind. The blood beasts were dead. Elijah rolled his shoulders, dismissing the Verdant Fang into his spatial storage. Then, he shook the numbness from his fingers and turned his attention toward the spider in her web. Walking through the carnage-stricken swamp was an odd experience. There was a certain tactile revulsion to striding over dead bodies, even if those creatures had been reduced to little more than shells. Most of their bodies had long since burst, so they barely even squished between his toes. But still, Elijah found it more than a little revolting. He paid it little mind, siphoning those distractions into one of the faceted leaves within his mind as he focused on what was important. Bypassing the web was easier than he expected, largely because the blood beasts had already done most of the work. It wasn’t pleasant, but Elijah still managed to climb their corpses like a ladder before thudding down on the other side. That was when he saw the spider up close. To call her intimidating would have been underselling just how massive she was. Her body was the size of a rhinoceros, with legs extending fifteen feet or more in every direction. She chittered slightly when he stepped forward, but Elijah held up a hand and softly said, “I’m here to help.” She tried to back away, but one of her legs broke. Elijah immediately summoned Blessing of the Grove, and as the sunflower bloomed and the rejuvenating rain began, he cast his other two healing spells. He even opened Grove Conduit, flooding the area with even more vitality. And another of her legs collapsed, crumbling at the joint. It was like watching charcoal flutter away in a non-existent wind. Even before Elijah touched her, he knew what he’d find. Still, he couldn’t stop himself. The second he laid his hand on her head and felt the tremble of pain flowing through her, he knew he couldn’t save her. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. But he couldn’t accept that. He extended his soul, touching her spirit, and for a moment, lost himself in the agony of her continued existence. Flashes of memories raced through his mind, distorted by her alien consciousness, but above it all rose two requests. Demands, really. She wanted him to save the tree. To ensure that her eggs hatched. She wanted his pledge as a Druid. He gave it unconditionally. As he maintained the connection, he pumped ethera into his healing spells. But she was too far gone. If she’d been some low-level creature, he could have probably saved her. But for the first time in long, long time, he found that his heals were insufficient to the task at hand. But at least they eased the burden of her pain. Elijah felt tears tracing tracks through the blood on his face as he felt her slipping away. As her grip on life loosened, more of her body crumbled. Her legs went first. Then her pincers. Her body. And at last, with Elijah cradling her head in his hands, the rest followed suit. The final bit to fade into black ash was her compound eye. Elijah remained kneeling, not even remembering when he’d fallen to his knees. The ash that had once been a powerful living creature covered his arms and legs, mingling with his beard and hair. He’d had no idea she was so close to death. Would it have changed anything, though? He’d acted with all the urgency he could manage. And what’s more, with how far she’d fallen, Elijah suspected that she’d been on the verge of death for quite some time. She had only held on long enough to ensure that the things she cared about – her children as well as the tree – would continue past her death. Elijah gave her that assurance, and at last, she had allowed herself the release of death. It was a noble thing, and yet, Elijah had trouble appreciating it. Because despite his self-assurance that he’d done everything he could – more than anyone had a right to expect – he’d still failed. And he had difficulty not internalizing that harsh reality. For a long time, he knelt in place, unsure what to do. But after a while, he turned his attention to the eggs the spider had been guarding. There were hundreds of them, each one the size of his fist and contained within a collective cocoon of silk. He could feel the life contained within those membranous globes, and he felt a sudden and burning desire to fulfill his promise and ensure that they survived. So, without further thought on the matter, he extended his Mantle of Authority to encompass them. The ambient vitality surged, infusing them with life even as he banished any hints of corruption they might contain. Parasites and other toxins dissolved under the boughs of his soul, ensuring that when they finally hatched, they would be perfectly healthy. Elijah wasn’t sure about guardian spiders, but if its species was anything like Earth’s arachnids, the young would likely be self-sufficient almost from the moment they hatched. So, Elijah only needed to guard them until then. Fortunately, there was nothing in the swamp to threaten them. That would not remain the case for much longer. Soon, predators, prey, and everything in between would return to the swamp, and the ecosystem would once again begin to thrive in the wake of the blood beasts’ tyranny. He could only hope it would be enough to support the spiders. As Elijah flooded the area with his Mantle of Authority – as well as Blessing of the Grove – he bypassed the hollow containing the eggs and approached the tree. From the scars on its trunk, it was obvious that it had been under assault, the same as the spider. None of the blood beasts had survived his purge, but more than a few lay dead at its base. Elijah laid his hand on its bark and extended his soul into the natural treasure. It was easier to read than the spider, though once again, the alien nature made communication difficult. Elijah got bits and pieces of its history – which was fairly mundane until the first blood beasts showed up – but more than anything else, he felt its essence, and in a way he couldn’t quite articulate. The connection he forged gave him insight into what it meant to be a tree as well as what it wanted. Sure, those desires were incredibly simple. It wanted to grow. To thrive. To propagate. But the fact that it had desires at all was a mind-blowing discovery that rocked his entire worldview. Was it possible for an older and more powerful tree to form more coherent thoughts? Could it one day attain sentience? Or even sapience? The possibilities were endless, but it was clear that the touch of the World Tree was more than a simple injection of ethera. Logically, he should have expected as much, but knowing it and feeling it were two very different things. Elijah communed with the tree for a few more hours, and all the while, he continued to support the eggs. They weren’t far from hatching. He could feel that much. But he couldn’t even begin to guess what that meant in terms of a real schedule. He could only wait and see. As he did so, he delved into the tree’s system, and in doing so, he found a model for his core evolution. He’d made some mistakes in his imagery, and he knew he needed to take some time to correct those issues before he grew a flawed core. It was also a good distraction from his grief over the spider. Two more days passed before the first egg hatched. Like most spiders, the eggs were contained in a pouch woven from spider silk, so it took the infant arachnids a few hours to tear their way free. When the first made it, it immediately leaped upon Elijah’s shoulder. At first, he thought it was an attack, but after only a moment, he realized that the creature had no intention of harming him. Instead, it perched on his shoulder like a parrot. He coaxed it onto the palm of his hand, then looked closer. “You’re kind of cute, aren’t you?” And the fuzzy thing was. Thankfully, Elijah had never really been afflicted with arachnophobia, so he didn’t possess an innate aversion to spiders. However, his experiences with the flesh spiders in and around the Chimeric Forge had soured his impression of the many-legged creatures. That dissipated very quickly as he looked into the thing’s glistening eyes. Then, it leaped, covering thirty feet in an instant and climbing onto one of the tree’s branches. Once there, it immediately started spinning a web, coating that entire limb in fine threads of silk. Elijah expected that, had he wanted to make a little money, he could have gathered the silk and sold it to some enterprising Tailor. However, he decided to leave it be, mostly because he didn’t really need the ethereum, but also because he didn’t want to disturb the little spider. After a few more minutes, a second spider joined the first. Then a third. Before long, the tree was absolutely crawling with arachnids. Elijah watched them for a long time before he prepared himself to move on. And then he saw something at the top of the tree that caught his eye and tugged at his attention. Before he knew what he was doing, he found himself climbing the trunk. As he did so, he told himself that he simply wanted a good look, but in the back of his mind, he had recognized a true natural treasure, and it was one he wanted for himself.