"Did it work?"

Talos didn't even utter a word and shook his head in dismay. Even the 14th plan to get rid of the world tree resulted in failure. They have been at it for two months now but no matter what plan Arnold came up with, nothing worked. It was as if the tree had every immunity that one could have.

Still, as much of a big issue it was, it could be easily tackled. As long as people didn't go wandering around the tree everything should be fine. If worse came to worse, they would simply have to permanently restrict entry in the area and everything would be fine in the paradise. If only it wasn't for the fact that... well, the parasite was expanding.

It seemed like the lack of 'nutrition' had forced the parasite to expand in search of some more. That's when all hell broke loose. Kailash wasn't the only place at risk now. The parasite now had control over almost the entire northern part of India, along with parts of Nepal and China. Thankfully, Arnold's summons managed to evacuate people from the affected region as soon as they could, and thus minimized the loss of human and animal life.

However, there was a limit to how fast and how many people they could evacuate. On top of that, the world tree was growing at a much faster pace than Arnold and Devon could have anticipated. If they didn't do something sooner, then it would be too late to do anything.

Arnold had thrown absolutely everything he had on the tree. But the da.mn tree had so many immunities that it became difficult for them to actually do something. This time he thought maybe poisoning the da.mn thing would help him a bit. But even that failed and they ended up poisoning the land instead and were in the middle of cleaning up that mess.

Arnold had not felt like this in a long time... The taste of defeat had once again found its way to his mouth. It had been a while since he had felt so defeated. Especially, ever since ascending and only now he remembered how bitter it tasted. He didn't like feeling like this at all.

It was almost as if the tree decided to remind him that even if he became the strongest being in the universe, he would still have someone or something stronger than him. He had grown a bit overconfident in his ability to handle no matter what was thrown in front of him, and now that things were getting out of his hands he wasn't ready to accept his defeat. Even though the results were right in front of him.

"Start the Evacuation of the next city..." Arnold mumbled in a calm voice before disconnecting the call, "The fck should I do now!?"

He slammed his fist on the table in rage and half of the room got destroyed. Even in his anger, Arnold was careful enough to control his strength. Still, it wasn't enough and the room that had been designed to take on even a barrage of nukes before fracturing was destroyed within moments.

Hearing the exploding noise, Nina came rushing into the room to find it all messed up. Nina sighed and sat on the arm of his chair to comfort him. She knew Arnold would sooner or later suffer from burnout given the rate he was trying to fix everything that was wrong with the world on his own. He might be the strongest man in the entire world, there were limits to what even he could do. And it was time he realised that.

She let he fingers wander in the forest known as Arnold's hair, while he had buried his face within his hands. To her, Arnold has always been a man with a plan. No matter how many times he failed, he kept on going even if he knew he would fail. That was one of his qualities that attracted her. And now seeing Arnold so frustrated and defeated made her wanna move the world for his sake.

But even she knew, the world tree spelt trouble for everyone who went near it. That was one of the main reasons Arnold had been leading the operation from afar. Because even someone like him wasn't confident whether he would be able to return from the clutches of the world tree or not. However, it was mostly because he was scared of what would happen to Nina, Aiden and Orco once he was... gone.

Arnold was so lost in his thoughts, he didn't even notice Nina. He looked at her and tried his best to smile, but even that failed.

"Sorry... I woke you up." He mumbled before wrapping his hands around her waist.

"No worries. I wasn't sleeping anyway..." Nina gave him a quick peck on the lips, "But you should sleep or at least try to. Overworking when you're sleep deprived would only lead to unnecessary stress. And believe it or not, I'll dump your as.s if you get dark circles."

"I didn't dump you when you had those." Arnold smiled wanly, "I hindsight, I should have. I would probably have a harem by now."

"And here I was thinking that the useless joking phase of yours was over... Please don't teach Aiden or Orco any of your jokes. I don't want the other kids to pick on them because of something you did."

"Hey! My jokes are gold!"

[No no, the lady has a point.]

"You feeling okay now?" Nina asked before getting up, "If you are then don't break any more furniture, could you?"

"I'll try."

"You better... Listen, do what you want to and don't worry about us okay? We'll be fine and I'm not as weak as you remember. We can take care of ourselves."

"I... got it." Arnold smiled back as Nina made her way back, "Looks like I have to take matters into my own hands now."

[Yeah. You weren't involved in the matter before right?]

Arnold ignored system sama as he was used to it by now and called Talos.

"We are evacuating everyone out, master. But it'll take some time-"Talos thought Arnold had called to check the progress but was interrupted by Arnold.

"Get everyone together. I'll be there shortly. Let's see what this tree is really made of."

[Wood. What else do you think?]

"And she thinks my jokes are ridiculous."

[...]