By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 3

Chapter 4 Episode 3: Forest Search 2

The next way, we went hunting for treants once again. If anything distinguished this excursion from the previous ones, it was that we were now so used to fighting treants that we could take them down efficiently. At first, we thought that collecting the treant wood could take up to two weeks, but considering the rate we’d been progressing at thus far, we’d be able to finish the job either today or tomorrow, and could return to Gimul soon after.

I split a treant’s face in half from its forehead to its jaw. Another treant was to its right, but I slashed diagonally upward from the bottom left of its face, besting it as well. Then I dodged a third treant’s branches and chopped its face off from the side. Every time I did that, it felt like knocking a mask off a person’s face. With those three treants dead, I looked around to confirm that no others were present.

“You’ve gotten pretty good at this, Ryoma,” said Welanna.

“Your skills with a sword were always impeccable, so you’re quick to adapt to your opponents, I suppose,” said Asagi.

“Every move you make is flawless,” said Miya.

“Thank you, everyone. My grandfather thoroughly trained me in combat, so I’m fairly confident in my abilities.”

This was technically a dangerous place, but we were safe enough to have a casual conversation. It would’ve been a bad idea to let our guard down entirely, but we didn’t want to be too tense either. When we proceeded further into the forest, however, there was a sudden change in our surroundings. I detected magical energy.

“Leipin, do you feel that?” I asked.

“Yes, There’s quite a number of them. Unfortunately, I can’t get an accurate reading from here. Asagi?”

“We are most likely headed towards the elder treant,” Asagi said. “I’ll ensure that we have an escape route, and if we find that this battle is impossible, we’ll return to town and inform the guild about it.”

We remained wary of our surroundings as we proceeded, then encountered another group of treants.

“Hah!”

“Meow!”

“...!”

“Hiyah!”

“Wind Cutter!”

The ones that noticed us slowly crawled over to attack. Their numbers were overwhelming, so we had to fight as a team. The women targeted their faces with axes and hatchets, Asagi split a treant in half with his sword from the face down, and Leipin provided support with magic. I took down the treants that tried to get behind us, so we wouldn’t end up being surrounded.

More and more treants crept out of the depths of the forest, with no end in sight. Thankfully, individual treants weren’t that strong. The treants we killed didn’t have their roots firmly in the ground because they were moving around, so they collapsed upon defeat and didn’t block our vision.

“I’m not having any trouble yet, but they just keep coming!” said Cilia. Nobody responded, but I got the feeling that we all felt the same way.

“From what magical energy I’m able to sense, most of the trees around here are actually treants!” said Leipin. “Assume that we’ll be chopping down all of them!”

“Don’t overdo it, everyone!” said Asagi. “No shame in retreating!”

“I know!” said Mizelia.

“Live to fight another day, as they say!” said Welanna.

Despite the subject of this conversation, nobody sounded terribly serious. We just affirmed our plans, then moved right on to more treants. This was nothing to a party of A- and B-Ranks, apparently.

I kept focused on my own job. The number of treants heading toward me had increased a bit. I sheathed my katana and instead had the big metal slime which was acting as a katana split apart.

“Hm?! What are you doing?” Leipin asked.

“Just picking up the pace a little!”

I was surrounded by a hundred metal slimes. I picked up two of them and ordered them to transform into throwing axes. Then I powered myself up with qi, and threw them with wild abandon. Two treants groaned as the axes hit them cleanly in the face, and then they fell over. I wasted no time in transforming two more metal slimes into axes and tossing them as well, repeating the process to unleash a storm of axes.

Over the past couple of days, I came to notice that the magical energy in treants wasn’t evenly distributed. It seemed to be that way at first, but one part of them had more magical energy than the rest. That part happened to be their face-like weak point. The face seemed to be the pivotal point from which magical energy was delivered to the rest of the body. It was like the heart was to humans. And by wounding the face, magical energy gushed out and killed the treant instantly.

If you looked at the face like a heart and the magical energy like blood, they were just like humans. Unlike blood, however, the flow of magical energy could be followed by using magic detection. Put another way, anyone who had the power to use magic detection could instantly locate a treant’s weak point.

With the axes, I attacked those points from outside their range of attack and killed them with a single blow. This didn’t require the use of magic, so I would never run out of magical energy, and physically enhancing myself made me slow to get tired. To be honest, this made the fight extremely simple. If these were normal throwing weapons, I wouldn’t be able to attack anymore once I ran out. But since these were my metal slimes, they just came right back to me. As such, I didn’t have to worry about running out of ammo, plus I didn’t even need to go and pick the axes back up myself. The treants tried to attack the slimes as they came back, but they were too slow, and their attempts only made them easier to hit. It was more like tedious busywork than a battle at this point.

All of the metal slimes that got attacked made it out unharmed. A wooden stick couldn’t do much to a ball of metal, whether it hit or not. I massacred any treant that tried to get behind us, as the rest of the group trampled the treants to our front. Their number rapidly dwindled, covering the ground in treant corpses. All that remained standing were a few sparse trees.

“Well, we did it. But something seems off,” Leipin muttered.

“What is?” I asked.

“First of all, this is way too many treants. I’ve never seen so many at once. Secondly, this is an odd location. Treants are trees who became monsters due to magical energy, but I’ve never heard of trees becoming treants over such a wide area. And last but not least, have a look at that,” Leipin said, pointing to a gigantic tree in the distance. I sensed great magical energy from it.

“Is that the elder treant?”

“I imagine so. I have seen a few elder treants myself, but never one this large and with so much energy. I also have to wonder why the elder treant isn’t coming after us.”

“Maybe it just hasn’t noticed us,” Miya said before I could say anything.

“Well, we have been killing its fellow treants, so that can’t be it. Maybe it knows it can’t win, but if that’s the case, it would make more sense for it to run away than to stay right there.”

“Could there be some reason that it can’t leave that spot?” I asked.

“That would make sense, but I’ve never heard of such a thing happening before. As far as I know, elder treants would always try to either fight or flee.”

“We could leave it be, but that might be a bit dangerous,” Asagi said. “Either we slay it, or we return to the guild with the information. Leipin, Ryoma, how is your magical energy?”

“Fine,” said Leipin.

“I’ve hardly used any energy myself,” I said.

“Now that you mention it, I never would have come up with the idea of using slimes as throwing axes. Right, we’ll take a short break, then go after the elder treant.”

With that settled, I asked about the special traits of this enemy. As I had previously heard about higher classes of treant, it sounded like we would have to watch out for its wood magic.

After that discussion, we took our break. During the break, everyone expressed interest in my slime axes. Cilia used a bow as her main weapon, and she was especially curious.

“Ryoma, that weapon is made of slimes, right?” she asked.

“Right. I think I showed you guys a huge scavenger slime on our last job, but this katana and the sheath are pretty much that, just made of metal slimes and iron slimes. I’m better with a katana than any other weapon, but they’re unfortunately hard for me to acquire at the moment, so this was my solution to that problem.”

“I’m glad you were able to come up with a solution,” Asagi said. “But those metal slimes turned into axes?”

“Yes. This weapon takes advantage of the amorphous physique inherent to all slimes, in addition to the metallic nature of metal and iron slimes. By using those two features, I created a weapon that can transform. When I went to purchase equipment maintenance goods the other day, I talked to Tigger, the weapon dealer, about it.”

As a weapon shop owner, Tigger was curious about the idea, so we talked about it extensively. We discussed the possibility of morphing the weapon into entirely different weapons, of freely changing that weapon to match any enemy or situation, but also of the potential danger of the slimes not being a material of a high enough quality to imitate certain weapons correctly. Ultimately, with Tigger’s cooperation, I taught the slimes to transform into a variety of weapons.

“He agreed that they’d work as katana and knives from the start, but I don’t typically use axes, so we worked together to teach the slimes about that.”

“And these are the results?” Leipin asked. “Was it difficult to teach so many slimes?”

“They seem to share their experiences. After they’ve learned something in their big form, they retain that information even once they’ve separated, so it wasn’t too much trouble.”

Not only would my slimes return to me after they were thrown, but they had the ability to shrink or grow when in big form, so I could transform my one-handed sword into a broadsword at will. The slimes could also automatically repair any damage to the blade, making for an excellent weapon.

“I guess slimes are pretty nuts when you use them as weapons,” said Welanna.

“You never have to buy new equipment, either, so it saves money,” said Mizelia.

“And the fact that you can use this one weapon indefinitely gives you less to worry about, too,” said Cilia.

“You’ll never even run out of ammo with a ranged weapon. It’s almost like cheating,” said Miya.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said, taking a rope out of my Item Box. “This rope looks extremely durable, right? I made it from the toughest thread my sticky slimes could produce.”

“It does look pretty sturdy, for how thin it is,” said Miya.

“Try cutting it with this axe, Mizelia.”

“Fine. Wait, I can’t seem to cut it,” said Mizelia.

“Pretty tough, right? I told Tigger about this thread, and he said he’d try making some armor with it.”

“One of these days, I feel like you’re gonna be totally covered in slimes,” said Miya.

Once we were done chatting and resting, we got moving again. But when we began to walk toward the elder treant, my metal slimes suddenly started to act strange.

“Hold on a second,” I said.

“What is it?”

“Something’s wrong with my metal slimes. They seem to be afraid of something.”

The contract let me know how my slimes were feeling, and it told me that they wanted nothing more than to run away. Maybe there was something here that they couldn’t deal with.

“Are they alright?” Miya asked.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think my metal slimes can fight like this.”

“Best not to try and force them,” Asagi suggested.

I took Asagi’s advice and put the metal slimes in my Dimension Home. I was still curious, though. The terror that my metal slimes felt was abnormal. It was as if they were confronted with a natural predator, but all I could see was the elder treant.

“Are elder treants and slimes naturally opposed?” I asked Leipin.

“If they are, I certainly haven’t heard of it.”

It did seem that only the metal slimes were afraid. The Iron slimes were unaffected, so I didn’t understand what the problem was. Thankfully I could still use the iron slimes in the fight, though. I had spare equipment on hand too, but the iron slime katana was the best weapon available to me.

We carefully proceeded onward until we noticed something strange about our surroundings.

“Look, the tree to the left!”

“Meow!”

My magic detection had told me that this was an ordinary tree, and it was probably the same for Leipin. But when we passed by it, the tree suddenly transformed into a treant and attacked. Thankfully, Leipin noticed it immediately, and Miya made quick work of it.

“What could this mean?” Leipin wondered aloud. “This tree was not a treant a moment ago; it just turned into one. This shouldn’t be possible.”

Trees could become monsters by possessing magical energy, but not instantaneously. The transformation was normally a slow process. Despite that, I sensed the other trees in the area transform into treants.

“Leipin,” I said.

“Yes, I’m afraid more and more treants are being created.”

“Well, this is unexpected,” said Mizelia.

“Who could have seen that coming?” asked Asagi.

There were still a lot less treants than we had fought a few minutes ago, so it was no big deal, but it was hard not to wonder about this unusual incident. I focused on using magic detection to combat the surrounding treants, then noticed an energy reading from underground.

“Something’s underground!” I announced, then cast Break Rock to make the ground crumble, followed by Breeze to blow the dirt away. There were tree roots underneath, and I sensed magical energy flowing through them.

“Those are elder treant roots!” Leipin shouted. “Could the elder treant be sending energy through these roots to transform the trees into treants? That would explain why so many treants have spawned since the elder treant first appeared. But I’m surprised that one has used this ability for a surprise attack. This is a shocking discovery!”

“Can we try and deal with them before thinking about that?!” Cilia cried.

“In any case, will we have to defeat the elder treant to solve this dilemma?” Mizelia asked.

“Most likely,” said Leipin. “Otherwise, it may just produce even more treants.”

“We’re still about five hundred meters from the elder treant,” said Asagi. “Let’s get over there and kill it quick as we can. Ryoma, watch our backs. We’ll take on the elder treant while you hold the other treants back!”

“Got it!”

We quickly got into action. Welanna, Miya, Mizelia, and Asagi chopped down the treants in our path. Leipin, Cilia, and I followed behind them. Thankfully, the treants were slow and did little to obstruct us. But as we got closer to the elder treant, it began to attack us directly. It was still too far away to strike with its branches, but its roots rose from the ground to attack. Not only that, but it seemed to be using its wood magic to extend its roots in an attempt to capture us. Leipin cast Wind Cutter while the rest of us fought back with our weapons, but there were a lot of roots, and it was especially hard to dodge the ones that attacked from right below us.

Then, I had an idea. I cast Pavement, the spell I used when creating pavement for my store. By solidifying the ground this way, I could buy us some time.

“I’ll help!”

“Thanks!”

Thus, we charged straight at the elder treant.