บท 167: Lavender Coconut!
Willow soared across the hall. She bounced around the room, pushing off the floor and wall alike.
After each jump the face of her hammer collided with the beast and before its trunk could crush her, Willow was back to jumping from wall to wall.
She launched herself into the air, high above the beast. She slammed her feet into the ceiling beside the gaping hole and looked down at the behemoth beneath her.
Utilizing her essence, she collapsed down to smite the creature. The beast raised its trunk and slammed it into the ground, shaking the very structure of Underneath in addition to pushing itself out of harm's way.
The beast flew back and slid along the ground, its nails stuck in the ground as it ripped through the solid stone.
Willow's attack followed. Her hammer hit the ground and, for a moment, nothing seemed to happen, only the awkward silence of a failed attack.
But then the fluctuations in the air shook and a break occurred. The ground instantly shattered, not just the ground that received her attack, but the entire hall's floor caved in.
It shattered in an instant, breaking like glass and crumbling like sand. Unfortunately, they were already considered to be on the ground floor, the ceremony room and the gardens existed below, but they were positioned off to the side.
Instead of falling, the ground a foot beneath them vanished and was replaced with gray granules of sand. Willow kicked the head of her hammer, spinning it around her body before catching it perfectly.
She aimed it towards the beast once more, the battle had reset again. She tried her familiar kick into the ground, but the sand absorbed her impact.
Instead of launching across the hall like a comet, she more aptly lunged a few feet forward.
The beast, of course, watched her diligently and witnessed her pathetic attempt at a strike. Instead of pity, however, the beast grew enraged.
The woman before it must be mocking it!
What else could explain her sudden lackluster jump?!
The beast, being five times larger than Willow, was naturally endowed with a greater surface area between its four legs. Due to that increased surface area the beast didn't sink in the sand as Willow did.
It charged forward, raging across the hall with its head tilted down and its two arched horns pushed forward. Willow panicked and fueled her legs instinctually, attempting the jump a second time only to relive her past failures a second time.
Before Willow and the beast collided, she held her hammer infront of her and used its long, yet sturdy handle to intercept the behemoth's horns.
The two collided and the outcome was as expected; Willow didn't stand a chance against the creature's inhuman strength. The beast continued to charge forward, pushing Willow through the gray sand and heading straight for the wall.
***
Emile hesitantly approached Roy, he didn't know what to tell the star-struck boy. While it's true he's able to infuse his essence into plants and grow them almost instantly, nine times out of ten he considered it a secondary ability.
He thoroughly believed that even in a world with a normal level of vegetation, his Gift's effects on plants wouldn't come in handy too often. Much like the present, he couldn't fathom how a coconut knock-off could contest with the raging monstrosity behind him.
But, Emile had to play the part. If Roy believed in him so readily, maybe there was more to his Gift than meets the eye?
Emile quickly told Roy to drop his scavenging loot and to watch Blood. The boy immediately obliged, dropping a pile of roots and vegetation onto the ground before kneeling beside Blood and checking his pulse.
Emile kneeled over as well and began rummaging through the twisted entangle of roots. For once he felt a familiar frustration he hadn't felt in a long time.
After untangling some of the roots, he began organizing the mess. Pits were kept in one pile, plants with roots in another, flowers another, fruit another.
He momentarily leaned back and gazed at the semi-organized mess.
He separated them, now what?!
Suddenly, cracks erupted beneath his knees as the ground tore apart. A shockwave leveled the hall, the collapsed pieces of stone from the ceiling and bridges dissolved before his eyes.
The shockwave bounced off the walls and sunk deep into the ground, shaking the stone violently as it traveled deeper below. The intense vibrations caused the stone to grind against itself until nothing was left.
Now sitting in a pile of sand, Emile couldn't help but turn around and check on the ongoing confrontation.
Willow stood in the center of the hall, the beast hugged the edge. Willow kicked the sand and immediately her eyes widened.
She momentarily panicked and looked up at the behemoth. The two made eye contact and the beast wildly shook its head before locking in its gaze and stampeding towards Willow.
The two collided and Willow was pushed back. Her golden boots tore through the sand without any resistance and because of the sand, she couldn't push her heels into the ground to hold her.
Without thinking, Emile grabbed the uncomfortably smooth, lavender coconut that had sunk in the sand and hurled it across the hall.
From the moment his finger touched it to the moment he let it go, Emile siphoned his essence into the ball of fruit without reserve. In a matter of moments, half of his total reservoir was depleted.
The lavender coconut momentarily glowed in the air before a washed, orange stem broke free from the hard exterior of the fruit.
The orange stem expanded rapidly, quickly branching out into a net of stems and roots. Then, the stems thickened and hardened.
Instantly, orange arms grew from the coconut and shattered its pristine shell. Still in the air, one stock of orange bamboo exploded into reality, then a second and a third.
But the growth didn't stop there, no, only a minuscule amount of Emile's essence had been utilized so far. As if the lavender coconut was testing the waters, after successfully sprouting and growing three stocks of bamboo, the growth went ballistic.
Hundreds of stems poked out from the sides of the already existing stocks of bamboo, like hair, almost the entire surface of the stocks were covered. And then they germinated.
Spikes of solid orange wood burst forth, one after another without rest. The wood cannibalized itself over and over, tearing apart other stocks as it grew to fruition.
The single lavender coconut quickly devolved into a ball of mass as the stocks of bamboo stretched into every available crevice.
The massive ball of wood slammed into the behemoth beast, crushing it with the sheer weight of hundreds of wooden poles.
The beast crumbled beneath the weight, collapsing onto its knees before finally being crushed into the sand. But the coconut wasn't done.
Without any more room for growth, the coconut had to make a decision in order to use up Emile's essence. If it didn't, the essence would collapse in on itself making the coconut's existence unstable before it exploded with whatever energy was left.
So in order to avoid that, stocks of bamboo exploded out, launched from the center of the ball like artillery. The poles of orange struck with dangerous ferocity, impaling the beast and hall alike.
The rods of bamboo pierced the stone ceiling, they tore through the sand and impaled the ground, they even rammed themselves through the beast's armor and struck at its innards.
With more space available, the ball of mass quickly replaced the stocks that had been launched out. More and more poles of wood grew at light speed, many of them growing directly into the beast's body, piercing it a thousand times over and eviscerating its transparent scales.
Finally, the essence within the heart of the wooden monstrosity faded and its activity subsided.
Emile still stood across the hall, his eyes growing dryer by the second. He looked down at the light blue cone topped with a nut in his hand that he had been considering throwing as well.
Before any sort of thought occupied his mind, the impaled beast shattered into fragments of light leaving behind only a single puddle of black, thick blood.
[Leliurium Mammuthus Slain]
[Relic Obtained]
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