The phantasmal kitsune was less fortunate than Lucy, and the spray of acorns ripped through it. Lucy flew further away from the ent, but couldn’t return to the party without revealing their location to the huge monster.

“Damn it!” Ed cursed before resummoning the kitsune. “I didn’t expect that thing to have a ranged attack.”

“If Lucy was here, she’d tell you how the Labyrinth hates it when you try to cheat,” Ingrid joked.

“Probably. At least she got out of range before it could attack her again.”

“Yeah, but we still need a way to fight this thing.”

“I think we should drop tree in hole,” Katya joined in. “Have dwarf dig big hole, and then Lucy can lure timber over until it falls, and we can attack it from out of hole.”

“It’ll still fire those acorns at us from the hole,” Ingrid argued.

“Is why you have big slab of metal strapped to arm, no?”

“It’s worth a try, at least,” Ed decided. “Can you let Lucy in on the plan, Katya? She’ll need to keep the ent busy until we’re ready.”

“I will let her know,” Katya agreed, and continued talking, though her voice wasn’t reaching Ed any more.

He instructed the dvergr to start digging a large hole, but to leave a thin ceiling above it, so that the ent wouldn’t notice.

It took half an hour for the phantasm to dig a hole large enough, and Ed could see that Lucy’s mount was starting to tire towards the end. The party quickly hid away with the hole between them and the ent, and Lucy stopped circling around the monster and flew straight towards them, with the boss following behind her.

The ent was faster than Ed would have expected, and he quickly realized that trying to attack it on the ground would have been even worse than he expected. The monster’s speed, however, worked against it when it stepped on the thin layer of earth above the dvergr’s hole, and it toppled into the trap when the ground broke beneath it.

Ingrid quickly ran to the edge of the hole, and planted her shield in the ground to provide cover for the phantasmal kitsune, who cast its chromatic storm and then huddled behind the shield. Ed could hear the enraged bellows of the ent, as well as the rapid clanging sounds of its acorns hitting the shield, and as soon as Lucy landed, he joined Ingrid with a shield of his own, and Lucy’s storm joined the kitsune’s.

The gigantic tree held on for long minutes, and the party had to move backwards when its thrashing started to crumble the edges of the hole, but eventually even the great ent succumbed to the chromatic storms, enhanced as they were by the Channeler class both of the sorcerers ranked up into, and the Empower Skillshard Lucy picked up when Channeler reached level three.

Channeler

Tier 1

Level 5

Sealed

Some sorcerers focus on the flow of magic through their own body and the world around them, learning to modify their spells by directly altering their flow

Channel: double the mana cost of a spell to increase one of its characteristics by 50%. Decrease the cost of a spell by 25% to reduce one characteristic by 50%

+1 Shard slot, useable for a magic related skill

+2 intelligence

+2 wisdom

Empower

Tier 2

Level 3

0/30000

Increase the damage of all spells by 15% per level

“This was far too much effort for what we gained from this run,” Lucy mentioned after Ingrid finished cutting out the boss’s heartwood. “We could have done two runs in the time this floor took us.”

“You are one who refuses to retreat when we hit bad biome,” Katya answered. “I was all for getting out when we saw first ent.”

“Actually, we’re getting a decent haul from this run,” Ingrid interjected before Lucy could answer. “We’re low on essence gains today, but these heartwoods would get us a more than decent amount of credits back home. Granddad can use them for his machines, and they’re good for some of Uncle Olav’s high-end potions.”

“Either way, it’s time we had out,” Lucy said. “I’m exhausted, and could really do with a day of rest at this point.”

The door out of the Labyrinth was located in the clearing previously occupied by the boss ent, and the party actually had to walk into the tunnel dug by the monster’s roots before they could reach it. The four passed eagerly through the door, expecting to find themselves on the stairway back in the bazaar.

Instead, they found themselves stepping on a light grey cloudscape. To their left, tall mountains made of the darker grey of storm clouds loomed in the distance, and to their right the cloudscape rolled for kilometers, ending in a dense forest filled with strange, grey trees.

Directly in front of the party, however, rose a very familiar castle, sitting behind a moat that was nothing more, nor less, then a break in the cloudscape, leaving a long and ultimately fatal drop to the ground below. The party’s arrival caused a commotion among the guards manning the castle, and before long a group of knights riding winged horses left the fortress. Their leader, a tall and slender knight clad in dark grey armor and carrying a long lance with a jagged, lightning-like tip dismounted in front of the party and removed their helmet, revealing a woman with hair like a white summer cloud and light grey eyes.

“Your arrival is timely as ever, Sir Fergusson. My father will be delighted to hear that you have arrived to assist us.”