Chapter 80: Time to Garden
Night fell fast in the borderlands.
One moment the sky was orange with sunset, the next it was black, studded with more stars than Holden had ever seen in the city. The trees became a thick barrier of darkness, with nothing but the light of their small campfire in the center of the camp to see by.
Emric had placed the temporary wards in a precise hexagonal pattern, maximizing coverage while minimizing energy expenditure. The blue glow of the barriers created a safe zone about thirty feet across. Tents were set up at the corners, leaving the fire in the middle.
Renna was already passed out in her tent, snoring softly. The day’s excitement had drained her faster than she’d expected.
Emric followed soon after, carefully folding his uniform before crawling into his sleeping bag with a manual still clutched in his hand.
That left Holden and Lyra by the fire.
She sat close to him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. The flames cast shadows across her face, softening her features.
"It’s beautiful out here," she said quietly.
Holden looked up. She was right. The stars were incredible. No city lights to wash them out. Just thousands of pinpricks burning in the infinite dark.
"I’ve never really looked at the sky before," he admitted. "In the village quarter, you don’t bother. Too many other things to worry about."
Lyra shifted closer. "What about now?"
"Now I’m noticing."
She smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. Her hair smelled faintly of frost and something floral, probably from her bathing soap.
Holden didn’t move. He didn’t want to.
For a while, they just sat there. The fire crackled. The forest murmured with distant sounds. An owl called somewhere far away.
"You know," Lyra said softly, "when I got that letter about the marriage, I thought my life was over. I thought I’d never see any of you again. Never see you again."
"I know the feeling."
"But then you crashed a royal banquet and paralyzed a sadistic prince."
"I thought it was a good idea at the time," he said.
She laughed quietly. "You’re really something else, you know that?."
"You’re stuck with me anyway."
"Apparently."
The fire burned lower.
"Get some sleep," Holden said eventually. "I’ve got the watch."
Lyra lifted her head and looked at him. "Are you sure?"
"I’m sure. Go rest."
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Then she stood, collected her spear, and disappeared into her tent.
Holden sat alone by the fire.
He waited.
An hour passed. Then another.
The flames died to embers. The wards hummed steadily.
The camp was silent.
Holden stood up and activated his 1,000x multiplier.
His senses suddenly got much stronger. Sounds that were hard to hear before were now very clear. He heard leaves rustling fifty feet away as if they were in his ear. He could hear a small animal’s heart beating nearby. The air moving around him gave him clues about where everyone was.
He reached out with his enhanced senses, pushing past the immediate camp, past the nearby trees, into the deeper forest.
Then he found it.
Miles away, buried under the sounds of the wilderness, he picked up a faint energy signature. It felt ancient and heavy, completely different from anything natural. It pulsed with a frequency that matched the description Vespera had given him.
The ruin.
Holden moved quietly to Emric’s tent and placed a small trigger-ward beside the entrance. If anything crossed the threshold while he was gone, it would create a sharp noise and flash of light. Not enough to stop a serious threat, but enough to wake them up.
Then he slipped through the ward boundary and vanished into the dark forest.
The journey took forty minutes at a ground-eating pace.
Holden followed the energy signature, moving through trees so thick they blocked out even the starlight. His 1,000x processing kept him from tripping, from making noise, from leaving any trace of him behind.
The forest changed as he got closer. The trees grew older, their bark darker, their branches more twisted. Strange fungi glowed faintly on fallen logs. The air itself felt heavier, charged with something old.
Then he saw it.
A cliff face rose from the floor, a wall of black stone covered in moss and creeping vines. Built into the cliff was a door.
The door was easily twenty feet tall and fifteen feet wide, carved with symbols that had worn smooth with age. It had been overgrown so completely that it looked like part of the cliff itself. Without the energy signature pulsing from behind it, Holden would have walked right past.
But something was blocking the entrance.
The Corrupted Treant stood twelve feet tall.
It was a nightmare made of wood and darkness. Its trunk was black as pitch, the bark cracked and oozing with something that glowed faintly purple. Its branches were like skeletal arms, ending in clusters of thorns sharp enough to pierce armor.
Rank 2, 3-Star. Corrupted by dark magic. Old beyond measure.
It had been guarding this door for centuries.
Holden reached into his inventory and summoned his Star-Forged sword.
"Time to do some gardening."
He activated Asura’s Ignition.
Red-gold energy erupted along the blade, turning the metal into a line of pure fire. Heat washed out in waves, scorching the nearby vegetation. The Treant’s green eyes flickered with something like recognition.
It knew what was coming.
It lunged.
The branches swept down like scythes, fast enough to decapitate a normal fighter. Holden sidestepped with Gale-Step enhanced speed, already moving, already striking.
Swish!
His blade caught the first branch and cut through it easily. Black wood sprayed in all directions, already starting to burn.
The Treant roared. Its remaining branches whipped toward him from multiple angles.
Holden flowed through them.
His Transcendent-tier sword art turned him into a whirlwind of cutting edges. Every time he swung, he hit the creature. He chopped off its limbs, and his Asura energy ensured the wounds burned, preventing any regeneration.
The Treant staggered, half its branches gone, trunk scored with deep burning gashes.
Holden didn’t let up.
He stepped inside its guard and struck upward, carving a line through its core. Then sideways. Then diagonal.
The Treant’s eyes flickered.
It tried to regenerate. Dark magic pulsed through its wounded trunk, attempting to knit the wood back together.
Holden’s blade came down one final time.
Swish!
The cut split the trunk from crown to roots. The fire did the rest. The Corrupted Treant collapsed into a pile of burning wood, its dark magic dissipating into smoke.
[Ding!]
[Rank 2 (3-Star) Corrupted Treant Defeated!]
[Base Reward: 1,000 KP]
[Ancient Guardian Bonus: +500 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[Total: +3,000 KP]
[Current Balance: 36,790 KP]
Holden dismissed the notification and watched the burning remains settle into ash.
Behind the smoldering pile, the ancient door groaned.
Crack.
Dust fell from the symbols carved into its surface. The moss crumbled. The vines snapped as the massive slabs began to swing inward, revealing darkness beyond.
The ruin was open.