City of Sin Book 6, Chapter 96

The Secret Of The Evernight Tribe

This was the first time Richard had used Decapitate in actual combat, and it had ripped through the defences a saint-level druid was proud of. The bear's body was cut apart like butter, and even with Fenur not daring to move the aftershocks turned him to pulp from within. The youth frantically mobilised his nature energy to fight the destruction, but it only delayed the inevitable. His upper body was almost completely torn off and entrails were spewing out from both ends.

Unable to maintain his bear form any longer, the druid slowly returned to his normal shape. Seeing him whimpering in pain, the other two elders of the Greenleaf Tribe were stunned and ran away without a word. Neither of them had the ability to deal with Richard, even if they worked together.

Seeing them splitting up and heading in different directions, Richard sighed and followed after the stronger of the two. A minute later, he returned to stand over Fenur's dying form with a freshly butchered head in hand. He had to admit that the youth's tenacity was surprising, but despite the life energy trying to repair the wounds death was inevitable without powerful healing spells.

Richard looked at the opponent with some disappointment. This fellow was a son of the forest, and would likely be very useful for the broodmother's clone to adapt to the Forest Plane. However, this would have to be kept secret. Ending the misery with a swift stroke of his blade, he turned to chase after Melia.

More than a dozen kilometres away, Melia was hiding in the canopy with her bow drawn, keeping an eye on all the movements in the forest. She couldn't tell why she had stopped— waiting in ambush was not a good choice. With the current strength of the Evernight Tribe, it was best to ignore the Greenleaf Tribe's slights even if they were repulsive.

Feeling some movement behind her, she immediately turned around with her bow. However, a hand grasped her own and stopped her from firing, “Careful, it's me!”

“Richard?” she was surprised again, “How did you find me here? Where's the Greenleaf Tribe?”

Richard smiled bitterly, “I don't know why, but all three came running after me. Thankfully, I took a secret path and managed to escape.”

Melia went silent at the mention of another secret path. She was naive and inexperienced, this she knew herself, but she wasn't stupid; she had also seen just how powerful Richard was. Calming her pounding heart, she asked another question, “What do you plan to do next?”

“I'm looking for more trees of life,” Richard answered, “The more I see, the better it is for my growth. I plan to get to level 19 in this plane before leaving for somewhere else.”

These words were only common sense in Norland, but they were anything but that in the Forest Plane that had barely even heard of the concept of the myriad planes. However, Melia didn't seem to find his words strange and instead hesitated before speaking, “Umm… Richard… if I show you our tree of life and let you live on it for a while, can you help my tribe?”

“Of course,” Richard said without hesitation, not even asking what conditions she was talking about. The girl still hesitated for a while, but eventually led him towards her tribe.

……

The road back was quite long, and the two were inevitably intercepted by the hunters of the enemy alliance. However, Richard had stopped holding back; any enemies that came now were killed by sword or magic.

His analysis of the 1,024th fragment of the law of life was completed along the way, immediately boosting the density of his natural aura to the point that Melia even commented about it. Now that he had solved one small section of this enormous jigsaw puzzle, he could decipher his enemies' usage of nature and life energy live. His resistance to such forces was greatly enhanced as well.

Along the way, Richard received news that the broodmother had reached level 4. One more level and she would be able to imbue her drones with the ability to resist the will of the forest. As for now, she continued to choose an increase in production.

……

A small clearing had been opened up in the section of the forest that the broodmother occupied. The few hundred square metres was less than a grain of sand in this sea of trees, but at the thought that most of these trees had wound up in the bellies of the broodmother and her drones one wouldn't think of it as so little anymore.

Hundreds of worker drones were constantly moving around and eating what they could, some others dragging trees over to feed her directly. Slowly moving in a circle around the edge of the woods, she was laying eggs in batches of ten before moving on to eat the trees that had been pulled over until she could lay the next batch. Each batch spawned twenty worker drones who immediately set off to eat themselves, spending a few hours to grow before joining the numerous others feeding her.

The clone was already over ten metres long and two metres tall, too weak to fly for anything outside of short bursts. Workers regularly flew over and spit out a thick honey-like wax for her to enjoy before flying off again.

Phaser was lying on the clone's back, looking at the dark sky with an expression of boredom on her face. Wiping off the dew covering her natural armour, she grumbled, “Can't this place get a little dry? Hey, why don't I start a fire on your back?” 

“My body is not fire resistant, the flame will burn through my carapace,” the clone responded.

Phaser poked a small hole in the shell, “Not bad, it isn't as thin as before. It's still soft though, only a little harder than the wood. You're not going to increase your defences at all?”

“I have you and Master for that. Why don't you try to improve your combat power?”

“I feel a little tired,” Phaser sighed.

“Lying down won't result in anything.”

“But protecting you is my current job, I'm doing it.”

“You can continue to hone your skills. My main body gave you a soul, you can learn and grow.”

“Hmm… What can we do even if we become free?” Phaser asked suddenly.

“That is a distant dream. We should first focus on surviving.”

“Sur…viving?” Phaser asked quietly. A faint sobbing rang in the depths of her soul, craving for the sweet release of death.

The broodmother didn't give it much thought, continuing to eat voraciously. Thunderous footsteps rang through the forest as Tiramisu walked over to give her a divine crystal with ten units of divinity, enough for her to get to level 5, so that was her focus. With the main body having passed on all of her experience, evolution only took a few days instead of months. 

…… 

By this point, Richard and Melia had arrived at the Evernight Tribe. The first thing he noticed was the sheer difference in architecture: their beautiful wooden houses were built not only on, but also around their tree of life. Every building was decorated exquisitely; unlike the crude nature of the other tribes he had visited, these huts oozed history.

Most surprising was the well in the middle of the tribe that extracted moonforce. This well had no preference for any of the seven types of moons, thus drawing a more impure and coarse power, but it was still a shocking thing. He could feel the faint archaic aura radiating from the stones of the well, as well as the familiar energy it condensed.

The sky of the Forest Plane was extremely dark, with no sun nor moon to be seen anywhere. Richard himself could only use the secret swords of Silvermoon because of his pure bloodline, so the moonforce condensed here was very faint. Still, it proved that these elves were true blood descended from the ancient elven empire.

As he was observing the well with a complicated gaze, Richard's eyes fell upon a silver symbol decorating the treehouse that crested the Tree of Life. This was a symbol he recognised all too well, a symbol that he could never forget in his life: that of Silvermoon.

Chapter end