The group advanced for hours through the corrupted forest.
The path became exponentially more dangerous as they approached the Mother Tree. The attacks were relentless: corrupted beasts emerged from the gloom one after another in a bloody war of attrition. Some fell before crossing the tree line; others managed to close the distance, but their charges were short-lived.
Lusian barely bothered to raise his arm.
One surgical slash. Then another. One less monster.
And the march continued without stopping.
The elves began watching him in uneasy silence. Whenever a threat burst from the undergrowth, the human seemed to anticipate the exact angle of impact: where to strike, which barrier to avoid, when to advance and when to fall back. He moved with the ease of someone who had already crossed this hell dozens of times.
Grisela was the first to notice the details.
There were too many coincidences for it to be simple instinct.
—Left —Lusian suddenly ordered without slowing down.
A second later, a thick, twisted root erupted from the bed of leaves, slicing through the air exactly where one of the elven warriors would have been standing.
The entire group stopped abruptly.
Grisela narrowed her eyes.
She asked nothing, but committed the detail to memory.
As they advanced, the mana pressure in the air became unbearable. The leaves in the canopy were no longer swaying with the wind. They were convulsing on their own.
Far ahead, between the silhouettes of gigantic branches, the colossal mass of the Mother Tree began to rise above the horizon.
Breathing hurt.
Demonic mana floated through the air like a caustic mist, burning their skin and lungs. The tree's main roots writhed beneath the earth like exposed arteries, pulsing with a dark, living rhythm.
The Mother Tree, which had served for millennia as the mystical lung of the continent and the source of natural balance, was rotting from within.
A metallic, nauseating stench saturated the air. The leaves high in its canopy had taken on a sickly black-and-yellow hue, while demonic runes crawled across the enormous bark like parasites devouring living flesh.
And at the heart of the trunk...
Leaning against the bleeding wood, Bragoz waited.
The demon was embedded up to his torso in the wood, as though the tree had tried to swallow him in an attempt to contain him while the creature, in turn, consumed the plant's vitality from within.
A symbiotic and unnatural nightmare in which neither could overpower the other, both trapped in mutual torment.
Dayana stepped forward.
Her mana exploded through the clearing.
A surge of killing intent shook the air around her.
—YOU...!
Her pupils dilated in an outburst of pure hatred.
She had instantly recognized the executioner of her bloodline.
Her father's killer.
The vampire lunged forward, driven by bloodlust and ready to tear his throat out on the spot.
However, Lusian reappeared in front of her in a fraction of a second and seized her arm with an iron grip.
The ground beneath both their boots cracked from the collision of their strength.
—LET ME GO! —Dayana roared, twisting violently against his grip.
Grisela stared at the scene, her breathing ragged and her legs trembling from the revelation.
—He... he was the cause of all this —she whispered in horror. —He drove us out... He turned the Mother Tree into this abomination.
Emily felt a sharp pain in her chest as she stared at the mutilated trunk.
—The tree wasn't rejecting the elves... —she murmured, her voice trembling. —It was trying to contain the infection to protect them.
A heavy silence settled over the mass of roots.
Grisela clenched her fists until her palms hurt.
Memories of the exodus, the massacres, the children fleeing through smoke and chaos, and her shattered homeland struck her all at once.
All this time, they had believed their ancestral land had betrayed them.
—IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT! —the elf roared, pointing her bow directly at the demon's face.
Bragoz revealed a grotesque smile, embedded like a tumor in the bleeding wood.
—You blame me... —his voice echoed through the cavities of the forest, deep and cavernous—when all I did was guide the tree toward its true evolution.
The gigantic roots began thrashing around the clearing with dull cracks.
—Every forest needs a king —the abomination declared calmly. —And this one has already found its own.
The ground split apart as the roots twisted around them like continental serpents.
Lusian watched the crimson runes climbing across the ancient bark.
He recognized them perfectly.
He remembered the exact framing of the game's opening cinematic for this raid.
But he knew something the others didn't.
Bragoz was not the only threat.
The problem was the entire ecosystem.
The demonic corruption had infected the root network, the soil, the sap, and every creature breathing within the basin. The beasts, the birds, the vegetation... everything was interconnected through the same impure nervous system, and all of it would respond as one to defend its parasitic core.
Lusian tightened his grip around Dainslein until his knuckles turned white.
Perhaps he had miscalculated by rushing here.
In the game's mechanics, defeating Bragoz had been a linear raid.
Here, in the brutal reality of this world, it had never been a simple duel of swords.
Bragoz did not fight alone.
The entire forest had become his defensive system.
—If we don't stop him right now —Lusian said, with such unusual gravity that even Dayana held her breath—then the Mother Tree will stop purifying mana for the continent.
Grisela frowned, enduring the pain of her wounds.
—What are you talking about, human?
Lusian pointed toward the intricate networks of dark arteries strangling the ancient trunk.
—The forest will reverse its nature. It will absorb demonic mana and release corruption instead of pure mana. The plants, the beasts... even the elven population. Everything that breathes in this territory will be corrupted from the roots up.
Grisela stepped toward him, demanding an answer.
—How do you know that?
Emily, pale-faced and gripping her sacred staff tightly, chose to ignore the question and focus on the urgency.
—Lusian... how much time do we have before the process becomes irreversible?
Lusian raised his gaze toward the immense canopy of the Mother Tree, its sky stained with a sickly, blood-red hue.
He didn't know.
In the game, there had been a visible timer on the interface before the mission failed.
But this world no longer followed the parameters of a game.
—I don't know —he admitted coldly.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the group.
The calm lasted barely a breath.
A faint crack broke the air to the left of the clearing.
Slowly, the figure of a crystalline deer emerged from the undergrowth.
Several elven women instinctively sighed in relief at the sight.
It was a sacred spirit of the grove, a peaceful creature that had never attacked the living.
However, when the creature raised its head, the horror was revealed.
Its eyes were empty sockets of extinguished charcoal, and wisps of crimson smoke poured from its jaws.
With a guttural bellow, the deer lunged at the nearest elven warrior.
The infection was continuing to spread in real time.
Every second Bragoz remained fused to the heart of the Mother Tree, another creature fell under the demon's influence.
And every newly corrupted creature drew dozens more into the network.
It was an unstoppable cycle of devastation...
Unless the core was destroyed.
Then the forest roared.
At first came distant bellows that made the roots beneath their feet tremble.
Then hundreds of shadows began cutting through the mist between the vegetation.
And finally, an immeasurable tide of twisted beasts burst into the clearing.
Grisela's eyes widened as she struggled to contain a cry at the sheer size of the horde.
—DEFENSIVE LINE! —she roared, her voice raw. —PROTECT THE TRUNK! DON'T LET ANY MORE CREATURES REACH THE ROOT!
The elves reacted on pure survival instinct.
Arrows imbued with emerald mana streaked through the gloom in continuous volleys. Monsters fell pierced through, but two more immediately took the place of every fallen beast in an endless wave.
They were no longer fighting for strategy or obedience to their leaders.
They were defending their home.
Their bloodline.
The last remnants of their souls.
Thunder burst into the front line like a white bolt of lightning.
The steed charged into a group of beasts, the electricity accumulated in his coat erupting in destructive arcs that hurled charred bodies in every direction.
A few meters away, Elizabeth raised partial magical barriers to protect the wounded archers.
Claws slammed against her shields again and again, making the arcane light tremble while she struggled to contain the demonic pulse surging within her.
Dayana flowed through the shadows like a stream of blades.
In her wake, only trails of warm blood and severed heads rolling through the snow remained.
Emily spread her arms and deployed an imposing field of golden light that enveloped the entire group.
Sweat ran down her temples as she strained to maintain the magical structure against the pressure of the impure mana.
—DON'T LET HIM COMPLETE THE CORRUPTION! —Emily shouted with what little strength she had left.
And at the heart of that nightmare, Bragoz continued merging with the Mother Tree.
The ancient trunk creaked with muffled groans. Black, caustic sap bled from the bark, while the upper branches convulsed as though the wooden giant were shedding tears of fire.
Lusian clenched his jaw as he watched the tide of dark veins devouring the ancient bark.
—He's doing it... —he muttered through clenched teeth. —He's turning the Mother Tree into an Infernal Tree.
Grisela stared at him, horrified.
—What... what is an Infernal Tree?
Lusian did not soften a single syllable.
—It corrupts everything that breathes for thousands of leagues around it.
He paused coldly.
—It turns a sacred forest into an eternal demonic nest.
The color drained from Grisela's face.
She took a step backward, feeling the ground give slightly beneath her boots.
—Then... if he completes the ritual...
Lusian nodded without hesitation.
—The elves' forest will disappear forever.
At the center of the trunk, Bragoz slowly tore his right arm free from the bleeding wood.
A thick strand of black, rotten sap dripped from his skin onto the root bed with a wet sound that made even the most experienced archers shudder.
—Almost finished... —the demon's voice thundered, making the air tremble. —After this, the word "forest" will have no meaning. There will only be my domain.
Lusian slowly raised Dainslein.
Emily positioned herself behind him, unfurling a mantle of golden light that cut through the clearing's caustic mist.
Elizabeth inhaled deeply.
The demonic mana sealed within her churned violently in response to the parasite's presence, but she kept her grip steady on Thunder's reins.
To one side, Dayana licked the blood from the corner of her lips.
Her predatory eyes never left Bragoz's throat.
She was not here to save the elves.
Nor the continent.
She was here to claim the life of the executioner of her bloodline.
Thunder scraped the earth with hooves wrapped in blue lightning.
Grisela raised her bow once more, and the surviving members of her squad followed suit.
The terror had not disappeared.
But there was no turning back anymore.
They had no home left to return to.
Then Lusian broke the silence.
His voice was low, cold, and absolute.
—We kill him here and now... —he tightened his grip around Dainslein as a mass of liquid shadow devoured the steel—...or the world you know disappears with him.