As Deacon stood out in the open in nothing but his briefs, he took sluggish, staggering steps toward the large pine in front of him that had large patches of bright green moss growing on its trunk and bottom branches, while ropes of vine decorated the bottom branches by hanging up shriveled tongues as though they were Christmas ornaments.
Just a few meters before reaching the base of the pine's trunk and just passing under the crown of the pine, Deacon deliberately stepped on a slowly moving, raised root, and promptly rolled forward and fell onto his ass, slumping over with his head hanging low.
He stayed like that for a full seven minutes, muttering nonsense on and off, unmoving except for a small twitch of his nose as he caught a certain scent. Seconds after Deacon's nose twitched, visible flakes of bioluminescent green pollen drifted down from the pine branches above him.
By the time his hair was matted with the pollen and his bare skin had begun to take on a rogue pink tint, a thin fissure finally split open across the trunk. Two bark-covered hands reached through and began prying the opening wider.
Deacon's tongue rolled over the dark blue pill he held in between his teeth, and he slowly raised his head at the faint sound of dry leaves being crunched towards him.
With a drowsy gaze and flushed cheeks, Deacon clumsily pushed himself up from where he'd fallen and staggered toward the human-shaped figure in front of him — a being that looked almost like a female human, if not for its faint green skin and the patches of bark and leaves growing along its body and atop its hair.
With a harsh stagger atop a dew-slick rock, Deacon crushed the pill between his teeth and swallowed its contents quickly, ridding his body of the aphrodisiac properties of the pollen that he had willingly let sink into his skin.
In the same stride, Deacon kept staggering forward until he found himself face to face with the elite dryad he'd tracked down and followed through with his act by placing both of his hands onto the dryad's leaf-covered shoulders.
Seeing that the aphrodisiac was working as Deacon's skin was still tinged pink, the dryad placed her hands onto Deacon's shoulders and brought her face closer to his own, intending to silence any attempt he might make to shout and begin the absorption process. Deacon smashed his forehead into the dryad's face, the impact sending a dull shock through his skull as her bark-hard features cracked against bone.
Surprised by the sudden attack, her head snapped backward while her bark-like fingers grew thorns that barely dug into his shoulders. In that same moment, Deacon's right hand clamped around her throat, forcing her head farther away from him, unwilling to even risk getting a mouthful of the concoction of drugs that made up her saliva, while his left reached behind her and found the thick, pulsing vine buried in the center of her spine — the fleshy umbilical cord that tied her to the pine itself.
He gripped it and cast Ignis the moment his fingers locked, the heat flaring under his palm and burning through bark-flesh as she spasmed and clawed wildly at his chest.
The pine shuddered with her panic, roots grinding against the soil beneath his feet, and the branches above shuddered.
Before he could finish severing the connection between the dryad and the pine, a sharp yelp cut through the clearing from the opposite side of the tree, and Deacon's eyes snapped toward the sound.
The yelp came from a voice he recognized.
"Fuck," he muttered at the same time he felt a large spike of mana gather beneath him. Leaping into the air, dragging the dryad along with him, Deacon dodged the tens of sharpened tree root spears that shot out of the place where he'd been two seconds before.
He needed to reach Sam fast. With that thought, Deacon supercharged Ignis while yanking his arm back.
A resounding snap echoed just after as the tethering vine attached to the dryad snapped as they were both mid-air.
The vine charred through with a violent crack, and the Dryad screamed as her bond to the pine was severed.
Moving on rage-fueled instinct as the two of them were falling, the dryad in his grasp manipulated her neck to extend as though it were a snake and clamped her mouth down onto Deacon's neck, biting into his neck with sharp green teeth that punched into his skin and dug into the muscle beneath.
However, her sharpened teeth couldn't sink deeper than half an inch into his neck despite the amount of force she was putting into her bite.
The moment they hit the boulder, Deacon tightened his hold on the dryad's neck and kept her in place before slamming his knee into her stomach, forcing the dryad to bowl over. With his other hand, he yanked the sharpened stone blade from the back waistband of his briefs and drove it into her throat.
He stabbed again, then again, punching the edge through bark and the plant-like flesh that made up the dryad's body until her bite loosened and green blood poured down his shoulder in thick streaks as it was splurting out of the dryad's neck.
She clawed weakly at his arm, but Deacon didn't stop. Shifting his grip to the back of the dryad's elongated neck, Deacon crushed the lingering vertebra that remained within the dryad from when she previously was human, and with the free fingers in his other hand, he tore her head free from the rest of her body, which dropped to the grass lifelessly.
*[Dryad – Elite Lv 17] has been slain – XP has been given.*
Without another wasted second, Deacon vaulted off the boulder and sprinted around the pine, activating Blood Sense as he ran.
Doing so through the pine, he was able to see a red silhouette of a humanoid pinned to the ground — arms forced wide, legs trapped and struggling. Sam was being pinned to the ground by the dryad.
Please not again, please just let it be some other reason, Deacon thought, chest tightening as memory tried to overlay reality. My eyes can't take that kind of abuse again.
He quickened his pace as he pushed harder, dodging low-hanging branches and raised roots until the scene came into full, unobstructed view.
Rounding the tree, Deacon found Sam on the ground with his lips locked against the Dryad's, her body pressed flush against him, wasting no time attempting to drain him and completely unbothered by the scream her pine sister had let out moments earlier.
For fuck's sake, Deacon grumbled as he dropped the severed head mid-stride. Not this shit again.
He closed the distance in seconds, grabbed hold of the tethering vine at her back, and with the stone dagger already in his left hand, tore straight through the cord that connected her to the pine. The Dryad ripped her mouth, revealing a long and slightly barbed neon green tongue, away from Sam and arched back with a shrill scream as her body convulsed violently, and Sam's bodily fluid spilling from the severed vine on both ends.
Sam gagged and let out a strangled yell of disgust and disappointment, but Deacon pushed past his own irritation and moved in before the dryad could recover. He hurriedly dropped to a knee beside her, grabbed her jaw as her head whipped backward, and held her in place long enough to drive the stone blade into the side of her neck and rip it outward in a long, jagged line that split her throat wide and sent more of that thick green blood splurting into the air and pouring down her chest.
Her eyes rolled, but she remained on top of Sam, twitching and spasming, still locked in the parasitic absorption reflex of her species.
"Get out from under her," Deacon said flatly, still holding her severed neck open as sap gushed over his hand, "before her last nerve signals lock down and you become a pin cushion."
Deacon couldn't move her himself – at least not in that state.
Dryads in nutrient-absorption mode would sprout spikes through their torso if pulled or forced off — a last-ditch reaction designed to kill the host if someone tried to save them. For the host to escape, they had to push the dryad off from beneath while it was absorbing their bodily fluids, because during extraction, the dryad processed the victim beneath them as part of itself, using those fluids to nurture and sustain its body.
Sam grimaced and shoved hard, pushing her body aside and rolling free, immediately scrambling back with a look of complete mortification. Once Sam was clear, Deacon released her chin and finished the job, severing her head cleanly before letting the body collapse into the grass.
*[Dryad – Elite Lv 19] has been slain – XP has been given.*
*Your Class has reached Lv 17 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
Deacon exhaled through his nose and gave Sam a long, tired stare.
"Man… fuck your bullshit ass looks."
"She caught me by surprise," Sam muttered, already defensive, as he hurried after Deacon, who bent to retrieve the other severed head he had dropped. They headed back toward the tree where they had stashed their gear to make themselves look less threatening—and in Sam's case, too enticing.
"Sure," Deacon said, voice dry. As they approached the burrow hollow at the base of a split-trunk oak, he reached in and pulled out their gear. "I'm sure the first one 'caught you by surprise' too. You're just as down bad as Bonehead, despite your pretty-boy looks."
"…Man, fuck you," Sam sputtered as he pulled on his leather under-armor and began tying his robe clasps. "Excuse me for having a moment of weakness."
"Two moments," Deacon corrected, smirking as he slung his Spatial Sling Bag back onto his waist.
Sam shot him a glare. "Fuck you."
"Yeah, I bet you'd like that, huh?" Deacon added, stepping back just in time for Sam's staff to swish through the air where his ribs had been a second earlier. Deacon chuckled and started walking, eyes forward toward the treeline. "Anyways. For me, we've got the two emerald-like seeds from the Elite Dryads' right eyes. I still need a Satyr head, one Swamp Hag tongue, and an Earth Elemental core."
"With the Dryad heart I got from the ones we killed before," Sam replied as he caught up, "I'm missing a Kobold's left horn, a Wind Elemental core, an Earth Elemental core, and a Nixie core."
"So, we go east," Deacon said, adjusting their heading as the forest began to thin toward a more mountainous horizon. "Satyrs and kobolds nest closer to rocky areas – Esmerelda, Jass, and Bonehead said they would take care of the elementals for us, so after we finish up with the satyrs and kobolds, we can head south of the mountains and enter the swamps to hunt down swamp hags and nixies."
"Sounds good," Sam nodded, gripping his staff a little tighter with his right hand while popping another dark blue pill into his mouth to neutralize the concoction of aphrodisiacs the dryad had dumped into it. The pill he'd held between his teeth earlier had slipped out when he was caught off guard — surprised by the elite dryad suddenly emerging from one of the tree roots beside him instead of from the pine's trunk.
"So," Sam intoned as he hurried forward to keep up to pace with Deacon, and gave him a side glance.
"You ate the Apple of Iðunn right? There's no way you didn't with how much your body has changed," Sam said, recalling when the both of them stripped their gear the first time in order to bait the two dryads they hunted prior. "'Cause you weren't this buff before, nor were you two inches taller than me – we were the same height not two days ago."
"Should I be concerned with how much you've been paying attention to my body?" Deacon jeered with a wide smirk. Dodging another swipe of Sam's staff, he let out a chuckle and answered Sam, "Yes, I ate the Apple of Iðunn… It truly was an S-tier Elixir."
Item Name: Apple of Iðunn
Type: Consumable
Rarity: Epic
Description:
A golden apple plucked from a young, Tier 1 Iðunn Tree, one of the rarest living sources of purified vitality. These trees produce only a handful of apples each century, making them exceptionally coveted by all within the expanse of the Multiverse due to their inherent properties. The fruit's essence reinforces both body and spirit, granting immense and lasting growth. Its power resonates especially strongly with Jötnar, amplifying its effects when consumed by their kind.
Effect: Permanently increases all attributes by +10. If consumed by a Jötunn, the bonus is doubled to +20 to all attributes. A maximum of four Apples of Iðunn may be consumed per Tier; additional apples beyond that limit provide no further effect.
Duration: Permanent