Deep in the forest, the blood trail led Grey and Harlon to a massive, hollowed-out tree that looked like a screaming face frozen in wood.

The "thudding" sound was louder here—it was the heartbeat of the forest.

Suspended from the branches by thick, translucent vines were three cocoons.

Elena, Lenore, and Princess Erowen were visible inside, their eyes closed, their faces pale as the vines slowly pulsed, draining their mana and blood.

The blood trail on the ground hadn't been from a wound; it was a lure, a deliberate leak from the cocoons to bring the "strongest" prey to the center.

"Grey, wait!" Harlon caught Grey's shoulder as he prepared to lung forward. "Look at the ground."

The earth around the tree wasn't dirt. It was a carpet of Fine Gray Dust—the remains of thousands of victims.

As they watched, the ground began to ripple. The "Guardian Spirit" wasn't a protector; it was a massive, sedentary Parasitic eclipse beast that had made a deal with the villagers: their lives for its protection.

A voice hissed from the hollow of the tree, a voice that sounded like a thousand whispering leaves. "The Sun-kissed girl... her blood is gold. I will drink until I am a God."

Grey's red aura exploded outward, his eyes glowing with a feral intensity. The partial gigantification began to ripple through his arms again.

"Harlon," Grey whispered, his voice dangerously calm. "Cut the cocoons. I'll handle the 'God'."

The air around the Great Root was so thick with spores that Grey and Harlon had to keep their mana skins vibrating at high frequencies just to keep the mist from settling on their skin.

Before them, the massive, weeping willow-like entity pulsed with a nauseating violet light.

"Harlon, the cocoons are connected to the central nervous system of the tree!" Grey shouted, dodging a massive, spear-like root that erupted from the gray dust at his feet. "If we just rip them down, the shock might kill them!"

Harlon moved like a streak of black ink, his obsidian sword carving through the smaller tendrils that tried to ensnare his ankles.

"I see it! The vines are pumping their blood out and feeding them back the parasite's bile. We need to sever the connection at the 'node'—those glowing bulbs above the cocoons!"

The Great Root was not a mindless beast. It sensed their intent. Thousands of thin, whip-like branches lashed out, each tipped with a paralytic thorn.

"HAHAHAHA!!! Die vermins! Puny obstacles in my path...I'll suck you all too!"

The root bellowed with loud laughter.

Grey roared, his arms swelling in Partial Gigantification. He couldn't use his "Gatling Destruction"—the shockwaves would shatter the fragile cocoons.

Instead, he used his massive hands to catch the incoming roots, twisting and snapping them with raw physical strength.

"HEAVENLY PRESS!" Grey slammed his palms together, catching a dozen lunging vines and crushing them into pulp, but he winced as he felt the thorns pierce his aura.

DING!

[New skill obtained: Heavenly press (A+)(active)]

Grey had been training new moves all this time, and finally his traing yeilded results as the familiar notification popped up.

Also reliving him of the worry regarding the system's silence.

Harlon, meanwhile, was the scalpel. He used Shadow Step to blink through the air, appearing momentarily above Princess Erowen's cocoon.

He swung his sword, aiming for the glowing violet node, but the tree reacted instantly. A wall of hardened, iron-like bark grew in a split second, blocking his strike.

"Tch! It's protecting the nodes more than its own trunk!" Harlon cursed, landing back beside Grey. "It knows we're trying to extract them!"

Suddenly, the violet light in the cocoons flared. Inside, Elena's brow furrowed in pain. The vines began to pulse faster, the "Great Root" sensing the threat and deciding to finish its meal early.

"It's accelerating the drainage!" Grey's eyes turned a predatory red. "Harlon, I'm going to draw all its attention. I'll let it entangle me. When its 'defensive bark' shifts to trap me, you take all three nodes out in one strike. Can you do it?"

"One strike for three targets?" Harlon gripped his hilt, his shadow aura swirling violently.

"It'll cost me my entire aura pool for a Triple Eclipse Slash. You'll be defenseless for a few seconds."

"Triple eclipse slash? But...does the system not show everything in the character panel?" The new skill name got Grey thinking since he didn't see anything like that in the character panel of Harlon, but it was not the time to dwell as he immediately discarded the thoughts.

"Do it!" Grey yelled.

Grey dropped his defensive stance and charged directly into the maw of the tree. He didn't dodge. He let the barbed vines wrap around his giant arms and torso.

He groaned as the thorns sank in, but he grabbed the main trunk and began to pull with everything he had.

"COME ON, YOU OVERGROWN WEED! LOOK AT ME!" Grey bellowed, his red aura burning like a bonfire, forcing the tree to redirect every vine and bark-shield toward him to suppress his explosive strength.

"Puny bastard!!" The great root eclipse beast roared in fury making the nodes above the girls were suddenly exposed.

"SHADOW ART: TRIPLE ECLIPSE!"

Harlon vanished. Three black lines of absolute darkness sliced through the air simultaneously.

The darkness of the forest screamed as Harlon's Triple Eclipse sliced through the air. The black lines of aura found their marks, severing the violet nodes.

The cocoons dropped, but before they could hit the ground, the Great Root let out a high-pitched, subsonic screech that shook the very marrow of Grey's bones.

"It's not letting go!" Harlon yelled, lunging to catch Lenore's falling cocoon.

Instead of collapsing, the tree's trunk split open like a vertical mouth, vomiting a dense, neon-green Poisonous Gas.

The vapor was acidic, hissing as it met Grey's red aura. At the same time, thousands of small, pulsating pods fell from the willow-like branches, hitting the gray dust below.

Within seconds, the pods didn't sprout roots—they sprouted limbs.

From the dust rose the Wood Warriors. They were horrific, humanoid mockeries made of knotted black timber.

They had no eyes or noses—only a jagged, circular maw filled with dagger-like wooden teeth. Their arms ended in elongated, obsidian-sharp claws that dripped with the same acidic poison filling the air.

"Harlon, get the girls behind the tree line! NOW!" Grey roared.

He lunged forward, his gigantified arms swinging like battering rams. He smashed through the first line of Wood Warriors, their brittle bodies shattering under his raw power, but for every one he crushed, three more rose from the pods.

Harlon skidded across the dust, grabbing Elena and Erowen's cocoons. "Grey, the gas is eating through my aura film! If we stay in this cloud, our lungs will turn to mush!"

"I'll clear a path!" Grey's eyes burned with a ferocious light. He realized the Great Root was pouring its very life force into these warriors. It was no longer trying to feed; it was trying to kill them to protect its core.

Grey took a deep breath of the filtered air inside his aura and stepped into the center of the Faceless Legion.

"GATLING DESTRUCTION!"

His giant fists became a blur of red-hot kinetic energy. Each punch sent a shockwave that didn't just break the wood warriors but vaporized the poison gas in a localized area through sheer heat and pressure.

CRACK! SHATTER! BOOM!

Wood splinters flew like shrapnel. Grey was a titan in the mist, a wall of red force standing between the nightmare and his friends.

But the Great Root wasn't finished. As Grey fought the warriors, the main trunk began to pull back, dragging the "Heart" deep into the earth to escape with its remaining nutrients.

"It's retreating!" Harlon shouted, laying the girls safely behind a rock outcropping. "If it sinks into the soil, we'll never be able to retrieve the lost blood essence of the girls!"

"Shit!" Grey cursed as he immediately lunges towards the root beast.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.