Pieces of bark and wood flew in every direction, blasted away from the tree like sharpnel, but they were too disperse and too few in number to threaten Kurt or Mila. The tree kept standing, steam emanating copiously from its twisted frame, which was missing entire patches of bark.

  And yet, it was still brimming with power.

  Before any of them could even think of doing anything, the tree's mass began twisting, bloating in some areas and contracting in others. For a moment, Kurt thought back to that demon corrupted oak they fought back in Boston. But this was different.

  Whereas that oak had been animated by an unholy mixture of Primeval magic and demonic corruption, this one was charged, or rather supercharged, with pure natural magic of a magnitude beyond what even that oak had achieved.

  The tree's branches began bulging with green power, their bark becoming thicker and darker, and they fused in two massive arms. From the now bare top of its trunk, a misshappen mass of wood with two pulsating spots of green fire on its surface popped out. The trunk itself became wider, while its roots, which were blasting out the ground one by one, began contracting into themselves, and fusing in two stout legs.

  Hulking Dryad

  LV: 37

  The creature turned to face Kurt and Mila. It stood about 10 feet tall. Supporting its weight using both arms and legs, like a gorilla, the creature stood in place, looking at them without any show of hostility.

  "Is that it?" Asked Kurt as his hand insinctively went for his sword. "Is that the creature?"

  "I... don't know." Answered Mila, her eyes still fixed on the dryad. "It feels powerful, but also mindless, like a wild animal. Plus, it doesn't seem aggresive, at least not 'ripping a woman's leg out' aggresive."

  "Maybe the Aura caused it to lose control, like some sort of catnip. Or maybe the warlocks were the ones to start shit with it." Kurt drew his sword with one hand, and tossed his flashlight aside before using the other to conjure his foci, cycling Od through his eyes to compensate for the darkness. "Whatever the case may be, we still have to find whatever panacea it has."

  The guardian seemed agitated at the sight of Kurt's weapons. Its body shook, and strange grunting noises like those a bear might make began emanating from its frame. Kurt stepped forward, putting himself between Mila and the creature, which began stomping its way forward.

  Without missing a beat, Kurt pointed his wand, which was pulsing with light green energy, at the creature, and shoot a Wind Blade at it. The slicing spell blasted forward with great speed before slamming against the creature's right arm, carving a deep gash on it, from which amber sap and green mist began pouring out. The creature broke its stride and bellowed a pained howl, clutching its wounded limb.

  Kurt winced at the display. He had expected expected the construct to be incapable of feeling pain, like the demon dryads had been, and the creature's cries of pain came as a very unwelcome surprise. Was this creature truly sentient, instead of some mindless golem puppetered by the forest's will?

  The creature kept clutching its wounded arm and yelping in a way reminiscent of a small child, a comparassion that Kurt would very much rather not have on his mind. His grip on his sword began to falter slightly,

  What was up with him? Why was he doubting so much? There was an enemy in front of him, a creature he had to slay to save Conrad, a creature that was quite capable of killing him if he doubted like he was doing.

  So why was he stalling? This wasn't like himself at all! He had always been capable of facing whatever stood in front of him without hesitation: Wild beasts, undead creatures, magic constructs, demons...

  And people, came an intrusive thought, because when our blood boils and we have our sword in hand, moral codes become more like moral suggestions, right?

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  He felt his body shudder at this, and before he could try to put an argument up, the stream of thought continued.

  We spent so much time talking about moral lines, and not wanting to become crazed killers, and what did it amount to in the end? When Mila and Conrad laid wounded, perhaps even killed for all we knew, before our feet? When that woman threatened our own lives?

  Nothing. It had amounted to exactly nothing.

  And that had been the problem, Kurt realized. Not so much having killed that woman, which he intellectually knew was purely self-defense, but the mindlessness with which he had acted: He saw his friends griveously wounded, for a moment he thought they were dead, an what had been his reaction? Shutting down his emotions and bringing his blade down at the first acceptable target.

  What had been his reaction at Conrad's maiming? Go on an uncertain quest for a panacea that might not even exist and start a fight with what was, for all appearances, an innocent, or at least not aggresive, creature of nature. One that seemed about as aquaintanced with violence and pain as a five-year old.

  And all those years ago, after his mother had died and before he met Mila, in what he now remembered as the worst five months of his life, what had been his coping mechanism for everything wrong with his life? For his mother's death, and the disconnection he felt with his family, and the fact that he was the only one in the order who didn't have any magical gifts. What had been his reaction to that? Grabbing a sword and learning how to wield it.

  He always did this, he realized as he saw the creature begin to catch its bearings, retorting to his sword and carefully honed ability to inflict violence when he felt distressed and powerless. And this night that coping mechanism of his had caused him to kill a woman without a second thought, and to slash at an innocent creature.

  The treant-like construct blasted towards Kurt, roaring in fury at the one that had wounded it, and slammed both of its wooden fists, each one as big as Kurt's entire upper body, down at him.

  And for the second time that night, Kurt's instincts, drilled deep into his brain and muscles by almost a decade of training and fightning, took control of his body.

  Before the creature's appendages could so much as get close to touch him, the boy darted sideways in a burst of Od-enhanced speed. He felt the wind pushed away by the creature's blow, and heard the ground shattering where the fists landed. As if guided by a will of its own, his wand aimed at the creature's now exposed side and, in a flash of bright red energy, released a flurry of fist sized Fireballs at it.

  The magical assault hit true, and half a dozen spheres of pure thermal energy crashed against

  the guardian's side in a great, singular blast of heat and force, scorching the bark they hit directly and igniting the sections around it. The beast bellowed another cry of pain, but didn't spend any time recreating in its misery this time.

  Instead, it charged at the one responsible for it.

  Using his two fists, which were still burrowed into the ground, as leverage, the guardian pushed its massive frame sideways, charging at Kurt's form shoulder first. It had enough power, Kurt knew, to seriously harm him even if he used his Od flaring at full force, and that was with the rather massive increase his physical stats had received since this quest started. That was, of course, only if he tried to meet the creature's power head on.

  So, he didn't.

  He lunged at the creature's form, just as quick as his foe, but considerably more controlled and capable of steering away than the five tons heavy tree-creature. He darted sideways before the creature's charge could so much as scratch him, weaving around its tree trunk-thick arm, and swiped his leg in a low kick at one of the guardian's stubby feet with all his might, flaring his Od while doing so.

  He both heard and felt the limb crack as his kick went through it, the combined momentum of the guardian's charge and Kurt's kick shattering it in a storm of splinters. With his footing ruined and the momentum of his charge still pushing it forward, the guardiang toppled over, falling face first against the forest ground, carving a trench through it at least twenty feet long, his ruined leg leaving behind a trail of sap.

  For a moment, there was silence, and all Kurt could hear were his own breaths and the beating of his heart on his hears. He turned his head at Mila, who, judging by her still tense expression, was still processing the exchange her eyes had just witnessed. A rather normal reaction given that the whole exchange, from the first Wind Blade to the last kick, had taken just a little over twenty seconds.

  "Is..." She began speaking. "Is it over?"

  It was the groaning of wood, and not Kurt's words, which answered her.

  The guardian pushed its frame off the ground, both of its arms groaning at the stress they were under, reminding Kurt that, magically imbued or not, they had still been formed out the tree's branches, and thus fundamentally not designed to carry that kind of weight. The fact that the right arm had been both slashed halfway through and the set on fire by Kurt certainly didn't help. The ruined limb finally collapsed, the guardian's weight the straw that broke the camel's back, sending the creature toppling sideways, with its back landing on the grass.

  The construct wailed its two remaining limbs helplessly, reminding Kurt of an overturned turtle, and for the second time he found himself incapable of following through, of finishing off the foe he had maimed so griveously already.

  It had happened again. For the second time that night, his battle instincts took over him, shutting down his moral restrictions in favor of simply unleashing untold violence upon his enemies. And a second time was Kurt realizing how capable they were of overriding any moral scrupule he tried to set.

  And for the second time this night, a singular question took over his brain.

  What should he do know?

  "Kurt!" Called Mila. She hadn't moved from her spot away from the fight, and she wouldn't until Kurt told her it was safe. It was one of the precautions that they were taught back at the order, especially to people with magic abilities but regular human level physicalities like Mila, to be very mindful of the distance between yourself and whatever threat you were facing. "Is it safe? Why aren't you moving?"

  "It… it's safe." He told her, and she began approaching him.

  "What's happening?" She asked once she reached his side, looking at the still downed guardian. "Why aren't you… you know, finishing this?"

  "I don't want to," he said, the words escaping from his lips before he could even think of stopping them. "I know we have to but…I really, really don't want to kill it."

  He felt Mila's eyes on him, and wondered what her response to such a claim would be. Even if she was… well, Mila, the kindest person he knew, he still wondered if the sheer childishness and lack of any kind of logic of his statement would be enough to make her berate him.

  As it turned out, her answer was even more surprising.

  "I'll do it myself, then."