Chapter 40: The Abble Tree Root Cellar, Finale

  After the initial water bullet, Theo managed to get another one in during the fight that ensued. Grace protected him like a stalwart barrier, letting none of the rooty fellows past her, abble or no abble. The second casting was far less accurate, both in terms of the grade of the glyph and Theo’s aim at the flailing targets, but he hit the same treen as earlier in the cluster of gathered branches that was its arm as it pounded down against Grace. Splinters flew, but the wooden enemy seemed otherwise unharmed and undeterred.

  It wasn’t too surprising; their weakness was fire, not water. Most of the damage he dealt was the relatively weak physical impact with little bonus damage added from the elemental effects. Why a drop of water would cause any particular effect other than wetness, Theo didn’t bother with, but Grace had explained this before he chose the spell.

  Fire usually burned, though some spells focused more on the heat than the flames themselves. Wind usually had razor-sharp edges, though oftentimes often focused on pushing and pulling as well or in place of cutting. Water was often high-impact damage, but was generally the most versatile of the four basic elements; it expanded, pushed, cut or even drowned its targets if it was cast as a bubble spell. Earth was mostly high-impact, be it piercing or blunt damage, which was somehow additive to the otherwise piercing and physical damage done by the more physical aspects of the manipulated earth of the spell effect. It was a bit of an anthill of different interactions, Theo figured, and decided to focus on that some other time. It certainly seemed that magic truly was a rather complicated beast to tame properly.

  Theo had another water bullet’s worth of mana remaining, even two if he decided to go all out, but he would rather save it for the boss fight that awaited them behind those large, closed doors. The moment Grace noticed him taking a more relaxing stance behind her, she increased her own ferocity and quickly took the two of them down with a single strike that hit nothing but the air in front of her. Theo could swear he saw the space in front of her crack apart in a somewhat conical shape towards the two aggravated treens. An orange light tore them both apart in an instant, shattering them into thousands of splinters. The odd thing about it, if everything else that was odd was excluded, was that the shrapnel and sawdust they had become didn’t fly off as if a powerful force had impacted them. It just… fell.

  Theo assisted with picking the crimson fruits this time, most of which was somehow absolutely fine despite the rest of the trees, leaves included, had been split apart. He still didn’t know where she was putting everything as what she’d picked almost instantly vanished from her hands, but in the case of it being some sort of spell she had engraved on her body somewhere, he decided to let it slide.

  She wasn’t so closed a book that Theo couldn’t read her. In fact, she was rather open, and not just to flirt or tease; Theo found no lies in her words nor feigned attention. She’d answered mostly anything he’d asked, both generalist questions of how the world worked to her past as a cleric and adventurer. The only thing he’d stumbled upon that she was hiding from him were the spells, and she hadn’t specifically turned him down, just shied away from it, claiming Theo didn’t know what it would mean. He sure didn’t, he admitted, so it must mean something to her as either a person, a priestess or an adventurer. It could be either or all of them as far as he could tell. So he decided to wait.

  With the abble-picking out of the way, the pair soon stood in front of the ancient doors. They could all but hear it creak even before placing their hands on it. Theo was ready to push in sync with Grace seeing as the doors seemed quite heavy, but the instant he pushed against the rough, brown wood of the door, it disappeared. Theo fell forward, hitting the ground hands first, then face. He was lucky they were already in front of his face.

  He got up quickly, looking behind him to find a dense moss wall. Hints of bulges of thick roots could be seen behind the verdant growth, though not a single piece of wood poked out of the lush green. He turned, finding the door all but gone. Where it had stood resolutely in front of him was now empty space, littered with humming flies and insects flying around. A large cavern, mossy like the walls, though with a large boulder in its centre, also mossy, by the way, though only on top. There was a tiny pool of water, a transparent grey that clashed with all the green around it but fit well against the dull colour of the bottom of the boulder. A small band of fireflies flew around, their glow pulsing in beat with each other, their colour a soft red mixing in with the ambient greenery.

  It was pretty hard not to notice the thick tree that stood on the other end of the cavern, even before it moved. It started walking in no particular direction, and it sounded like an entire forest was collapsing in on itself, its trees falling, their branches straining and breaking and the leaves rustling loudly like a thousand tearing paper sheets. Then came the loud rumble as its thick and powerful rooty leg thumped into the moss-softened ground. Then fell the dirt and small stones from the ceiling above, showering Theo and Grace with dust.

  “That thing is huge,” Theo commented when his breath returned to him after spotting the giant tree.

  Danger! Deadly Tree-men-dous Abble Patriarch!!!

  Theo eyed the system notification. A triple exclamation mark… Interesting. He was for sure more interested in that than the once-again awful naming of the boss monster itself. Whatever could take his attention away from that, he’d take. ‘Hey, is that a little brook?’

  “It’s bigger than last time,” Grace said. “I could’ve sworn I fought one that was a bit more feminine.”

  “This is a patriarch, so I’m guessing there might also be a matriarch?” Theo guessed in response.

  “What’s its full name?” Grace asked as if she was teasing him for his thoughts. It didn’t seem like it, though.

  “Uh… Abble Patriarch?” he lied.

  “Just that?”

  “Sure.”

  “No word-play?”

  Theo sighed, giving in. It was clear she knew he was lying, though she likely didn’t know the real name. “It’s a Tree-men-dous Abble Patriarch…”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Right. Because it’s a tree and a ma-”

  “You don’t have to partake in the dungeon’s horrible naming scheme. Just ignore it,” Theo groaned.

  “I wonder what the other boss is called,” Grace teased. Seeing Theo’s eyes roll to the back of his head, she continued: “Maybe… Woak Abble Matriarch?”

  Theo sighed loudly, all the steam his body had built after seeing the grand cave releasing through his mouth in an instant. He shrunk. Grace laughed.

  “Anyway… My water bullet won’t do anything here,” he said, if nothing else than to just change the topic. “But I’m guessing you’ve got this?”

  He wasn’t quite sure he’d believe that until he saw it. Supposedly, Grace had finished this dungeon earlier. She was pretty strong and had some powerful magic or techniques in her arsenal, but a tree as huge as this one? It would crush her if it stepped on her, even by accident. It wasn’t as large as the effigy, but it was certainly more than half, maybe fifteen metres tall. It was more than seven times the young woman’s size, likely with strength fitting its size considering it could even move.

  The giant tree-man changed its course, heading towards Theo and Grace in an arching turn around the large boulder. Its motions weren’t directly hostile, though it was so large that Theo couldn’t help but feel its entire existence was confrontational. Looming wasn’t a terrifying enough word to describe its presence. Menacing.

  Grace ran toward its oncoming form with confident strides. The tree-giant saw her and must’ve found the tiny plague intruding on its land a malevolent invader. A gesture of bad faith. It leaned back, twisting and rotating its right shoulder. Vines and thick branches moved and slithered like muscles without the cover of skin. The giant slammed its tightened, wooden fist down hard right on top of Grace, who merely bowed down low into her signature battle-stance.

  There was little Theo could do from this distance, and it was little Grace could do against the absolutely massive fist of churning, twitching branches. The boulder, which was close by, shook, shaking off a few patches of loose moss. The still lake that had only gently rippled by the giant’s heavy footfalls now splashed a pillar of water from near its centre in response to the entire cavern cracking and breaking. Theo nearly lost his footing even as he stood firmly on the mossy ground. Dust, dirt and green debris rose from the impact site along with large, crumbling rocks from beneath the moss-covered ground.

  The tree-giant stirred, groaning woodenly as it looked down at the crash site. Its arm cracked, bright orange flashes rising along its various lumbering parts like climbing mice. The tree-arm split apart, turning into loose tendrils of limp-hanging bark and soft wood. The lights reached its shoulder and stopped their ascent. A full second later, as the bottom part of its arm had crumbled from the magic affecting it, the shoulder exploded into sharp splinters and bark, shattering whilst the giant tumbled away from the blast site. The arm didn’t follow, instead thumping onto the ground below in a violent rain of forest spikes.

  From the clouds of dirt and sawdust spread widely across the ground of the cavern rose a glowing person; Grace. The tree crashed into the cavern wall with its canopy first, falling over and struggling to get back on its rooty feet with just its one arm. Strong it may be, but it was also heavy and difficult to balance. Grace wouldn’t let it get back up.

  Theo saw a rogue bulge in the moss approaching him, reminding him that there were supposedly hidden roots or vines that would attempt to grab hold of him to assist the master of the grove. He looked around and found another a bit further away, though approaching from a different angle. He ran the opposite direction where he saw none come closer. A resounding bang filled the cavern just as he passed the first one by, and the clump flattened in an instant. Theo looked ahead at the tree-men-dous boss, finding its fat, hard trunk splitting apart into several key logs. Atop its quickly crumbling form was Grace, low to the bark with her fist tightly pressed against the dead abble patriarch’s body.

  Her hazel hair and her long and loose skirt flowed gracefully in the wind echoing throughout the cavern from the explosive force she must’ve impacted the tree-men-dously broken tree-man with to cause such an effect on its body. More dust filled the open room, gathering in a funnel that moved close to the pond of uneasy water. The wind forces collided with the boulder and dissipated, spreading this way and that; a shower of dirt that spread all across the cave.

  Theo was even hit with a cloud of dry dust spitting as some of it entered his mouth, tasting of earth and sawdust. After the worst had passed, he looked at himself and found his clothes fully smudged in a thick layer of filth. Grace blinked in front of him, appearing in an instant and ruffled his hair playfully. A waterfall of fine particles rushed down from his head and to his shoulders and face, causing him to sputter some more after breathing it in.

  “Easy as that, the dungeon is complete,” she beamed.

  None of that seemed easy,” Theo spat from a completely dry mouth.

  The woman turned, pulling Theo along with her by his hand. “Let’s find our loot!”

  Theo suspected this was just an assistance call for gathering more fruit from the broken tree’s crown, though that wasn’t it. There were several times more crimson fruits than there had been on the treens, and these were bigger, meatier and juicier than their adolescent-borne brethren, so of course they gathered them as well. How many of the abbles Grace had whisked away, Theo had no clue of, but it was probably nearing a hundred or so. If that was the case, and she could run this dungeon every two days, they would barely need anything else to sustain them, though variety was a luxury; one of the only ones they currently had.

  What she really alluded to wasn’t that, though. She led him all the way over to the giant copse, or, uh, corpse of the tree and guided Theo’s hand to touch its hard, thick bark. It was oddly warm to the touch, Theo thought before Grace’s hand joined next to his. The tremendous tree grew brighter, blindingly so, and vanished. It left only dark spots in Theo’s vision, he thought at first, but then Grace pulled him down in a crouch. He noticed an ornate box made of smooth, polished wood. It was about half as long as a treen, but had thrice their width. Grace opened the lid of the box, revealing a hollow inside filled with a variety of things.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed and faced Theo. “Maybe your system can tell what all this is! Saves me from a trip to the nearest city to have it inspected properly!” she screamed in joy.

  As if it heard her, the System flashed a message.

  Congratulations! You have earned the Level One skill Dungeoneering.

  Dungeoneering (Level One): Usually earned after a few Dungeon runs, this is a bit rushed. Try not to die. All stats +5.

  “Not too likely,” Theo said honestly. He usually didn’t even get a basic description of normal stuff. She pushed a clean, soft shirt with a quality much more like her own silk shirt into his arms. It was roughly his size, he figured as he held it in front of him. It was a deep reddish brown in colour, thicker and somewhat leathery along the forearm and on top of the shoulders as well as below the collar, on the chest. It had no buttons, but the V-shaped collar had strings of a thin, fancy rope running through it to tighten the neck. Finally a change of clothes!

  Item: Abble-leather Shirt

  As he expected, it was just-

  Dungeoneering (Level One) has triggered an additional bonus effect.

  “Huh.”