“Alright Children, settle down let's continue!” Grigori called the hysterical occupants of the hall back into order and nodded her head toward the Palantir – prompting Naur to begin the next record.
<Chapter 312: Night (2)>
A drop of the black liquid fell to the ground. The ground was about to turn black. A tree trunk pierced into the spot. The originally brown trunk turned black while the ground returned to its original colour.
Mouths gaped in shock – these expressions of disbelief were mirrored by many people throughout the Palantír Hall.
“…This, just what is this?!” One of the Empire’s knights subconsciously shouted out before his body started to shake. He raised his head after feeling an odd sensation.
“Aaaaaah!”
A large black trunk brushed past above his head as leaves fluttered.
“Crazy. The trees have gone crazy.”
He plopped down on the ground. He could see all of Section 7 as he sat there and looked out. It was alive and moving.
It really was a nightmarish sight – the Palantír showed an aerial view of Section 7 of the Jungle, and it really did look like something was alive and moving in the light-dappled darkness.
This large area called Section 7 was roaring and moving. It was all because of the large tree trunks that suddenly started to grow.
The vines that they could see where mottled with patches of shadows, but even the parts of them that were visible and lit up by the lights around the Section 7 were soon turning black too as more dead mana was absorbed.
The Empire’s forces could not run toward the airship even as the dead mana bombs were going off. They could not do so even if they wanted to run. Their bodies curled up in fear every time they heard the leaves rustling. There were trees that were darker than the night by their feet and above their heads.
TCF!Litana smiled fondly, however TBOAH!Litana and TBOAH!Toonka were both smiling manically – their smiles were vicious and full of unsatisfied anger that it frightened a few of the other humans in the hall.
They wanted to run, but the trees were faster than them. These trees that should be staying in one spot were freely running wild all over Section 7.
“W, what kind of tree is that?!”
The alchemist in charge looked pale as he held onto the railing of the airship. All he could see were the tree trunks following the red-haired commander’s hands in order to gobble up the dead mana bombs.
“Well that's too bad! You shouldn’t have messed with Young Master Cale-nim's allies!” TCF!Tasha sneered at the cowering and fearful expressions on the Empire’s Alchemists' faces.
“That's right! You bastards overplayed your hand!” TCF!Hannah voiced agreement with a vicious smile of her own. TCF!Jack nodded along with his sister – agreeing with her despite her crude and uncouth language.
It seemed TCF!Jack had become immune to his sister's potty mouth, meanwhile that was not the case for TBOAH!Jack who was trying innocently to keep TBOAH!Hannah from jumping out of her seat and enthusiastically punching the air in her excitement every time one of the Empire's alchemists or their subordinates landed on their behinds in terror of the vines which Cale was controlling.
“I, I must inform the superiors!” He gave an order to one of his subordinates next to him. “I, immediately contact the Tower Master-nim and his highness! A, and, and!”
He started to think as his lips were shaking. However, he could not think properly after seeing this unexpected variable. Trees that ate up dead mana had appeared. There were no areas of Section 7 that were becoming desolate. In fact, black tree trunks were appearing by all residential buildings in order to protect the homes from the explosions.
“Incredible!” TBOAH!Rei whispered, his eyes wide as he clutched the forearm of the arm which was missing a hand. It was the hand that he had lost back when he had been scratched by that child that the alchemists of the tower were experimenting on. The phantom ache and pain from back then seemed to prickle and burn up and down his arm and it only alleviated when he massaged his forearm. However, on bad days that was not enough.
Right now, seeing what was happening on the Palantír it made his heart race with hope that something could be done to hold the Empire and the crooked alchemists of the Empire responsible for all this. All his interactions with his counterpart from the TCF!World had told him one thing with absolute certainty – Cale Henituse is a man of his word.
The alchemist turned his head after hearing a noise. He looked to the South. The golem at that entrance was falling down. He could see someone looking at him from that area at the same time. He couldn’t see the gaze to be specific. However, he could tell that the person there was looking in his direction when he saw the black robe facing toward him. That was Mary, the famous Roan Kingdom’s necromancer. She was the only necromancer on the Western continent, the last of her kind.
Cheers were heard, the loudest leading those voices were from the children averaging ten.
“It's Good Girl Mary! That’s Good Girl Mary!!” Raon clamoured excitedly.
"That's right! Get them Mary! Catch them all!!” TCF!Ohn meowed along with her brother – they weren't the only ones clamouring happy encouragements at TCF!Mary’s amazing awesomeness.
The Palantír went on and thr records revealed what the Black Mage who was also an alchemist felt when he saw TCF!Mary. It also showed his scorn for her – he deemed TCF!Mary to be weaker than the Tower Master after seeing her sway once she'd done her job with the golem that fell, and that's why he gave his next order so confidently - you know like a truly blind fool.
He turned away and looked forward as he gave the order.
“Detonate the bombs as quickly as possible!”
The subordinate’s gaze became serious. Detonating the bombs faster meant that the airship would depart faster as well. The alchemist nodded his head at his subordinate’s gaze and continued to speak.
“And-”
The person at the center of this change. He pointed to the person that the tree trunks had gathered around to protect.
“…And attack Cale Henituse as much as possible! No, get in his way!”
The mages and knights quickly started to move after hearing his order.
Sinister smiles appeared across the faces of the most vicious people from the TCF!World.
“Ho, Young Master, this Ron is very sad that you never mentioned this!” TCF!Ron calls out. Poor Cale, in the front row, frowned for a few seconds trying to understand why TCF!Ron was saying nonsense again. At the same time he thought that if he had mentioned it to TCF!Ron, these guys would have had help meeting the God of Death ten times over, as a special Molan courtesy.
“Prepare to attack! Cast fire-attribute spells!”
The mages on top of the airship started to draw large magic circles in order to launch fire spells. It was because they had determined that smaller scale spells would be useless against those black tree trunks. The knights charged toward Cale who was at the center of Section 7 at the same time.
“You think you can stop all of us on your own?!”
Cale sighed after hearing that from one of the knights.
‘He’s using such a stereotypical expression.’
Rok Soo smiled and placed his hand over his mouth to hide this amusing feeling he had swelling up with him. He understood what Cale, with his personality, would feel and do with this kind of cliché that was happening righr in front of him right now.
It was exactly the type of thing the bad guys fighting against the main character said in fantasy or martial arts novels. Cale felt like he understood how those main characters must have felt experiencing the same thing.
This is exactly what Rok Soo thought would happen, and he waited for the opportune moment to throw his jab, and as predicted, Cale did not disappoint him.
“I’m alone because I can handle all of you.”
‘Can’t you even think that far?’
Cale ignored the corners of his lips going up as he leisurely started to move his hands.
Rok Soo let out a bark of laughter and turned to grin widely at Cale.
“Wow! Cale, spoken like a true protagonist!”
“What?!” Cale spluttered and choked, coughing violently, he hurried to try and compose himself in order to make a comeback. However by the time he calmed down everyone was already supportively commenting all about how wonderful Cale is as their hero, and their saviour, and the one who helped them and lent them a hand when no one else had done. Cale looked like his soul was right about ready to leave his body at all their compliments and vows never to forget his good deeds.
He heard Raon’s voice in his mind as well.
– Our human is not alone! I, the great and mighty Raon Miru, am here!
But Raon had more things to say.
– But human, you look scary right now!
Cale’s smile became thicker.
‘I know. I know how I look right now.’
Raon's words on the Palantír drew everyone's attention back to the record and they all naturally calmed down allowing Cale the chance to fan his face, brush his hair back and then sat straight and fix his gaze upon the Palantír. He was planning to pretend that everything was alright as if he'd not been affected by Rok Soo's teasing. Meanwhile internally he's reciting the phrase: “I am not a protagonist, I am not a protagonist!”
He kept repeating it even while watching the rest of the record like everyone else.
It wasn’t hard for Cale to imagine how vicious he looked as he smiled while being surrounded by these black tree trunks that were moving like snakes. He moved a couple of these snake-like trunks. He then thought about what the glutton priestess had said to him earlier.
‘She can only defend? I don’t know about that.’
Cale was thinking that the glutton actually had a stronger weapon than the fire. That weapon headed toward the enemies who were approaching from all directions.
Grigori seemed to be really showing off the Glutton's powers. She also seemed very invested in allowing everyone to see ‘the other side’ of Cale – the side of him that made him terrifying to their enemies, but strong and reliable to all his allies.
“Amazing…” TBOAH!Litana whispered – she was in awe. Part of her thought she must have been dreaming.
“Hahaha, I felt the same way… Still do, in fact, but now the trees in Section 7 are beautiful and safe and everytime we see them, we remember…” TCF!Litana reassured her counterpart, even while tears were in her eyes and laugh of disbelief and delight lingered in her tone.
“Dodge! That tree has eaten dead mana! Dodge it!” The knight heard the explosion of another dead mana bomb and the sound of a tree trunk that was probably gobbling it up, however, he made himself ignore it as he shouted toward his subordinate knights.
“Cut them using your aura smokes! It should be fine as long as you don’t touch them! Move in groups of twos!” The knight raised his sword and slashed down. The black tree trunk that was heading toward him was easily sliced.
“It's a good effort, a nice attempt, but it's not enough…” TCF!Mary said kindly in her monotone voice.
“That's right…” TCF!Obante agreed with a firm nod.
“However, your target is our Young Master-nim. He is someone who has gone toe to toe with that White Radish!” TCF!Tasha added with a viciously wicked grin of deviousness and delight upon her face – she seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this whole thing. Cale felt like more and more time spent here in the realm of the Goddess Grigori's domain was going to create more crazy people like Clopeh – dread and concern for his future Slacker Life seeped into his whole body and he felt like someone had poured something cold down his back.
The sliced tree branch dried up and fell to the ground. The knight’s eyes sparkled after seeing this and he quickly shouted to inform the others.
“They are easily cut! They are normal branches other than the fact that they have dead mana in them! They do not have that much attacking strength!”
The size of the large tree trunks alone could be used to attack, however, there were almost a hundred knights surrounding Cale right now.
“Tsk… look at these bastards, making a mess of things as always!” TCF!Alberu clicked his tongue thinking about all the damages that those fallen branches would have caused and how moving them would be such a pain, but then he recalled that Cale and the others had handled everything pretty well back then, so he quietened down and shook his head, while laughing to himself.
“Nevermind, this was already cleaned up nicely!” he reminded himself and ignored TBOAH!Alberu and TBOAH!Zed who were staring at him, hoping for some kind of response or answer to all their confusion.
“Cut them! Cut and cut again as you move forward!”
The knight sneered at Cale who was surrounded by the black tree trunks and continued to advance. The other knights followed his lead and slowly advanced as well. Cale looked like a rat caught in a jar. He had looked scary while commanding the black trees from the darkness, however, it was not as scary as the knights had originally thought.
“We will pay you back for what happened during the battle with the Whipper Kingdom!”
The morale of all of the knights was going up.
“Ahhh… there they go… getting all over-confident again! Cale, you really gotta stop scamming the enemies with that innocent face of yours!”
“Are you fishing for compliments?” Cale asked Rok Soo with an expression of disbelief.
“I mean…” Rok Soo shrugged mischievously, stroking his jaw consideringly.
“This was your face before it was mine… so shouldn't you already know my face makes everything look good!”
Gasps were heard from all around the room, and TCF!Rosalyn clutched her chest with one hand while wiping fake tears from her eyes with the other.
“Would you look at that? Our darling Young Master is growing up so well!” she cooed playfully.
They were even able to cut through multiple branches using a sword covered in aura smoke. These trees really were regular trees. There was no need to be afraid. The knight in charge started to smile.
“…my!”
‘Hmm?’
The Empire’s knights suddenly heard some soldiers shouting at that moment. The shouts became louder and louder until the knight was able to hear it clearly.
“It’s the enemy! The Jungle has invaded!”
“Is it our turn now?” TBOAH!Litana asked, her eyes bright with hope and anticipation.
“That's right… it's our turn.” TCF!Litana’s expression was telling everyone they were about to see a really good show. The law of her Jungle, the same law that dictated that they repaid their enemies multiple times back – it was something that the Empire had definitely faced that night. It was a night that no one in the Jungle would ever forget.