Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

Heroes & Champions

Eleven heroes. They run, leaving destruction in their wake. Explosions, deflected by barriers. Fires, blocked by magical shields.

The heroes, they try. Magical thunderbolt here, lightning blast there, and the lesser demons fall like flies.

Yet, there are easily tens of thousands of them, and only eleven heroes to stand against it.

The fan lady twirls, and she mutters a kind of chant. The demons attempt to disrupt her, but the other heroes cover her.

Swoosh. A blast from the sky, and hundreds of the demons, crushed instantly.

And a blue giant fireball streaks through the demon swarm, roasts all in its path, then explodes, killing a few hundred more

The giant tortoise demon stomps its feet, and the earth shakes tremendously, and a few dozen massive boulders fly at high speeds towards the heroes.

A wall of light emerges, disintegrating the boulders and also the the lesser demons in its path. An ability that both Hendry and Max use together, a holy wall of some kind.

The tortoise stomps its feet, and a few dozen more boulder fly towards the wall.

“Ugh.” Hendry and Max both winces, “Its using up quite a lot of mana. Alexis!”

The heroes retreat closer, and Meela runs up to me.

“Tree Spirit, please aid us in battle!”

“What if I refuse?”

“Then the demons will kill you too.”

“So, do you have a plan?”

“Yes.”

The heroes retreat into a formation behind me, and start some kind of chant.

The horde of demons charge in, the thousands flood the fields. My insects and Jura together with my roots, form a protective layer, drive the demons away from the heroes.

The three demon champions seem particularly disturbed by the chanting, and so they join the battle. The centipede, the fastest of the three, is unable to tunnel too near, due to my dense subterranean root network, and so it chooses to attack us directly, trying to ram the heroes.

My wooden shields appear to block the centipede’s strikes, and they shatter on impact. But it is sufficient to deflect it away, as I land a few holy-enchanted root strikes on its side, and it knocks it back a little.

I have its attention, and it tries to ram me instead.

*wham*

That hurt, a few barks crack, I had all my defenses up, but not fatal.

Another root strike, this time to its body, and a big chunk of stone chips off.

It rams me again.

*wham*

It shatters the three layers of wooden shields I create in its way. Whatever the heroes are planning, it better work. The giant centipede rams me again, while smaller centipedes try to attack the heroes.

A white dome appears over the heroes.

They protected themselves with a magical barrier, great!

The smaller centipedes ram into it, but nothing happens. It’s ideal subterranean attack nullified by the root network, it can resort to ramming and swiping the dome with its stone thorns.

The larger champion centipede is still focused on me. It’s bigger than the centipede before, but so am I. My larger form flows into additional power for most of my abilities, so Jura and the heroes are right that I can hold my own against these creatures… for a while.

The golem champion is now in range, and it tries to punch the white dome.

[Constrict]

My roots shoot out of the ground and grab hold onto the golem champion, and the tangles hold his punch back.

I activate [constrict] on the giant demon centipede too, and it retaliates to it by twirling its body around my trunk. It coils around me, my branches, roots and vines also wrap themselves around the giant centipede, so we are both stuck. Or more like, the centipede is stuck.

It feels like a snake is wrestling with a stick.

Some of my roots pierce through its stone structure, after all it is made of earth and my roots are good at going through such surfaces. Elemental advantage, I suppose.

Still, the golem and centipede are still mostly unharmed, even though are trapped in a thicket of roots and branches, and the giant centipede all coiled around my trunk. The centipede took a few blows, and its struggling and trying to crush me with its stone body and gore through the trunk with the horns.

But the trunk and bark holds, with all the defense buffs that I have passively and the effects of the demon damage reduction.

The tortoise is the only “free” one, and it then bites through the vines that tangles the golem.

*chomp*

*chomp*

Sharp bites cut through the vines and roots, and one of the golem’s arms is free. And it punches. The punch slams into the dome, hard.

*wham*

The white dome cracks.

Crap. That’s bad. I need to protect them for a bit more.

A few root strikes pop up, hitting the underbelly of the tortoise, and knocks it back a little. However, it did not topple.

The golem raises its fists and readies its next full power punch.

Ugh, I use a [super antidemon rootstrike] together with the essence-edge, and it slams right into the golems chests. It explodes in a flash of starlight, and a huge hole appear in the golem’s chest.

It still lives!

It punches again, and I create multiple massive [woodshields] to block its strike. Its punch crushes the shields easily, and still manages to hit the dome. But, the shield did its job, the dome’s only lightly cracked.

The giant tortoise rams me instead, and tries to bite me with its beak.

*scratch*

I could feel a gash near my trunk, but it quickly heals.

The centipede tries to crush me even more, but my roots are also sucking out energy from its body.

The golem’s other arms are free, and it throws a few more punches at the dome. Once again I create wood shields and try to reduce the impact.

But only the first punch is weakened. The other few punches land squarely on the doom and it cracks even more.

The dome glows.

It seems, I have done enough. Now the heroes need to show what their plan is.

The dome pulses somemore, then it the glow becomes brighter.

Then, woosh.

A blinding light.

The dome explodes, and a massive energy wave sweeps outwards, like a nuclear shockwave. The wave disintegrates all the demons in its path, the lesser demons all vaporised, and in an instant, only demons surviving in the entire battlefield are the champions.

That’s just too overpowered.

The 3 champions though did not escape unscathed. The giant tortoise’s shell is half destroyed, revealing its charred in body, the golem’s arms and half its head that faces the dome is destroyed, and the giant centipede’s body is half gone too.

Yet somehow, the rest of us are safe. It seems like a special ability tuned to demons.

The heroes, they emerge from the dome, wielding shining weapons, and covered with an armor of light. They dash towards the demon champions, and in just a few flashes of light, all the demon champions are killed.

At that moment, the only thing that went through my mind is, “What the hell was that?”

Did I just tank three demon champions so the heroes can activate some kind of ougi power of friendship OP ability?

Indeed, the heroes in their light armor form make such quick work of the champions that I found it hard to believe they are even demon champions in the first place.

The heroes, having destroyed all the demons, regroup.

“Thanks for covering us. We gained quite a few levels from that.”

Seriously.

Now that they are not jumping or flying from place to place, we get a better look at them, and the heroes new outfit actually reminds me of power rangers. Or maybe kamen rider.

“Meela… Did you guys unlock some special ability recently?”

“Yes we did! We got this special uh… [Heavenly Form], and a few special skills. That big boom thing is our [Starlight Nova].”

Whoah. How do I get that kind of power?

“Meela… may I ask you dip into the pod again?”

“Yea sure!” Meela says happily.

At this point, Alexis and Hendry grabs Meela. “No. Its our power, we cannot reveal it. Don’t do this.”

Meela shakes her head. “Both of you are being unreasonable. TreeTree just helped cover our butts because this skill activation has a ridiculously long chant time, and now you want to deny it?”

Hendry and Alexis pauses, “Let’s decide, collectively. As a group.”