"Urginok-!"

"I know!" Urginok's shout briefly interrupted his taunt, letting the vines go after Rydr once more.

Rydr cursed and left the recovered cocoon on the ground, a short distance away from where Urginok continued his distraction.

As Urginok regained aggro- the monster's active aggression- Rydr crossed the chamber. The giant came up with a new plan on the fly.

One by one, the Titan went around the underground space and wrestled the cocoons free of the wall. In total, nearly twenty cocoons rested on a bed of vines in front of Rydr.

By the time the giant finished his task, the plant-beast had managed to trap them within a giant cocoon completely. Once the last bits of light began to disappear, Rydr activated [Aetheric Eye] to better see.

In an instant, the vine trap lit up in a brilliant display of red Aether. Every Rydr looked Aether weaved itself around them in endless bands.

As the giant whipped his head around, he caught sight of an enormous bundle of Aether, of life energy, just beneath the bed of vines.

A light went off in Rydr's head.

The core is under this space! Its goal was to bleed the NPC's into the dirt and drink them dry to level up!

While that answered his immediate question of how he might kill the beast, there were more pressing problems.

Rydr looked back at the small field of cocoons. A faint, hoarse voice came from within one of the green bundles.

"Let me out! I'm a guard! I can fight!"

In response to the guard's call, four other voices shouted from within their prisons.

"We can fight!"

"I'm a guard!"

"I can help!"

"Let me at them!"

Rydr crossed to the first cocoon and planted his foot in the center. With two fistfuls of thorny vines, Rydr ripped the sides off the first cocoon.

The giant singled out each of the guard's cocoons in quick succession and repeated the maneuver, bringing his health bar back down to eighty percent. Finished, the giant stepped back, allowing the guards to rip themselves free from their constraints.

Each wore the same uniform, soaked through with blood where the plant monster was drinking them dry.

However, one of them was familiar to Rydr.

"Amos? What are you doing here?" Rydr grabbed the guard's shoulder, surprised to see the sardonic man in this pit.

"Rydr? Is that the intrepid adventure I knew as a little pup, all grown up into a legend now?" Amos flashed a grin at the giant through the mask of blood on his face.

Rydr huffed and shook his head, relieved to find the guard alive, even if he wished the man weren't here at all.

The giant shook his head to focus, "The creature has us trapped in this cavern with hostages. I plan to tear a hole in the roof and jump the hostages out one at a time."

Amos held his hand up to stop him, "Say no more, we'll protect the civilians while you get them out. Pull us out last." The other guards stepped up behind Amos and performed a salute in perfect unison.

Rydr looked them over and realized none of them had their weapons.

"You're unarmed-"

"Does that somehow change our profession?" Amos lifted one eyebrow, staring up at the giant.

"Go. Stop wasting time. We will guard them. It's a hero's job to save the day."

Rydr swallowed his words and dashed to the center of the cavern. Underneath the giant, [Aetheric Eye] revealed the beating heart of the monster, but Rydr would deal with it later.

The giant turned his gaze to the ceiling above his head, glaring a hole in it as if he could already see the sunlight above it.

Thanks to Rydr's stamina regeneration, he was able to keep [Berserker's Rage] active for an absurdly long time. At present, the twenty-four percent buff from the ability set Rydr's strength score at 197.

The Titan sensed that wouldn't be enough. Above the soil, beyond where the other's could see, a mass of vines gathered over their heads.

Ever since the battle began, the plant monster started to reinforce the outside of the cavern. By now, there was nearly a meter-thick barrier of vines between the giant and the outside world.

As Rydr crouched down, he cast his mind into the mana around him and activated his three spells in quick succession.

[Consume] fed into the mana cost of [Reinforcement], before finally, Rydr pumped the spell to its maximum effect with [Empower].

When Rydr finished applying his static buffs, the Titan's new strength score sat at 287.

Before Rydr commenced his attack, the giant flexed one of his arms to test how his joints felt. He watched the muscles bulge beneath his skin but only felt a faint tightness in his joints.

This time around, the giant wouldn't destroy himself with his simple movements. Although he couldn't risk [Peerless Physique], the Titan believed he wouldn't need it for this battle.

Rydr glared at the ceiling one more time before he crouched lower and launched himself at the vines above him. The giant's avatar crossed the scant few meters in a blur, a ripple traveling from his jump point in the vines.

Fortunately, Rydr prepared himself for the crazy speed and stuck his hand out, twisting his legs and body around as the giant forced his mind through the same combination of spells once more.

However, this time the Titan targeted the air next to his body. In a flash, Rydr's mana pool shrank to seventy percent of its max.

Roughly ten percent of the giant's mana disappeared into the stunt, but Rydr managed to create another one of his condensed "airballs."

Unlike in the mine shaft, Rydr managed to focus on the spell this time and maintained the condensed air long enough to flip himself around.

An instant later, Rydr feet met the vines and sunk in. Not satisfied to rebound off the ceiling once, Rydr lept back to the ground, using the roof as his platform.

If someone were walking through the forest outside the pit, a massive upheaval appeared in the earth, vines tearing and writhing like snakes where they were forced above ground.

One, two, three, four times Rydr ping-ponged himself between the roof and the floor. Each time the diver's massive body met the vines, they deformed around his body.

Slowly, the meter of vines above their heads was torn apart as dirt rained on their heads.

To the side of the chamber, the guards threw themselves around, deflecting falling chunks of earth.

Somehow, Urginok kept up with his taunt and forced the monster's attention on himself. The tank's health bar hovered around thirty percent of his max, but he was a safe distance away from low-health delirium.

Although the tank never knew what Rydr's plan turned into, the giant's sudden attack on the ceiling was taken in stride. Even the best plans went to crap after contact with the enemy, and Rydr's plan wasn't a good one to start with.

More chunks of the earth continued to rain from the ceiling, falling between the cracks in the vines as they shifted. In the center of the roof, sunlight began to stream in through gaps in the dirt and plants as Rydr managed to tear a hole through them.

Just as Rydr's enormous mana pool was about to run dry from his repeated use of the "airball" trick, the diver's feet went straight through the dome of vines as he exploded outward into the light.

*-5 HP*

*-5 HP*

*-5 HP*

*-5 HP*

*-5 HP*

In the behemoth's efforts to tear a hole in the roof, over half of his health had drained away. However great his initial health pool was, Rydr's constant impacts against the thorny vines chewed through his health bar.

The only resource Rydr truly kept an eye on was stamina. The giant couldn't risk running out of stamina anytime during the fight. Otherwise, the plant beast would rebuild the roof.

Rydr sailed through the air upside down, a curtain of plant matter and blood droplets surrounding him. The Titan used the break in the action to look around as he traveled through the air, but the scenery was unfamiliar.

After the brief moment of peace, Rydr began to descend back towards the hole he'd torn in the writhing mass of vines. Cracked earth ringed the cavern's edge from the surface, most of it having sloughed off into the pit below.

Rydr whipped his legs around to right himself, something he was getting better at the more he practiced.

Just in time, the Titan righted himself before descending into the hole.

As soon as Rydr's feet touched the vines again, the Titan lept into action. He dashed over to the guards and their green bundles and grabbed two of the smaller ones.

Back in the center of the cavern, Rydr jumped up at an angle, carrying both cocoons under his arms. The angled jump took Rydr up and safely away from the edge of the pit.

On Rydr's next trip, the giant unceremoniously grabbed Amos, despite the guard's squawks, and threw the man over his shoulder.

In the next instant, Amos nearly puked all over Ryd's wolf pelt when the Titan's shoulder dug into the guard's stomach like a piston.

The next thing Amos knew, the two of them were above ground next to the rescued cocoons.

"Protect them!" Rydr shouted at the guard as he jumped back into the pit.

While Rydr grabbed more cocoons and took them outside, the plant beast was busy trying to repair the hole in the ceiling.

Each time the diver's giant avatar passed through his artificial hole, he ripped through new vines as they tried to bridge the gap.

Before too long, only a handful of cocoons remained in the chamber. Rydr used one of his trips to take another two guards to the surface, where they recuperated from the violent method of travel.

As the number of cocoons within the chamber shrank, the guards dragged the remainder into the chamber's center while Urginok ran interference. The tank's stamina bar was about to run out when Rydr leaped out of the pit with the last of the cocoons.

By this time, Rydr's health bar dropped to forty percent from his constant bull-rushes through the vines. While the [Alpha's Pelt] managed to block some of the thorns, it didn't account for the grasping vines that tried to grab Rydr as he passed them.

The Titan's legs were beginning to look like a horror show. If it weren't for the pain dilution within the game, the agony would've made the giant useless.

Rydr's last trip into the pit brought the remaining two guards to the surface. Amos and the other two were already working to distance the hostages from the pit, lest they be dragged back in. Around the pit, most of the vines which blanketed the forest floor had retreated into the ground to reinforce the plant's cage.

After a hectic couple of minutes, only Rydr and Urginok stood in the huge cocoon of vines.

Urginok watched the hole over their heads begin to close with concern, "Get us out of here, dude!"

Rydr shook his head, "Not yet. The monster's core is under the center of the chamber. I need you to distract it for a few more moments while I rip it out of the ground."

Truthfully, Rydr wished they could set the stupid thing on fire and be done with it. He might have done it in the heat of the moment, but Lynn forewarned them before they left his shop.

"Plant beasts such as this one are tricky. You can't set them on fire because Grotto will burn down with the rest of the forest." The elf explained that a sufficiently strong shaman, druid, or similar class could tame the giant vine monster, but there weren't any within Grotto.

The elf's warnings actually gave Rydr his idea to seek out the plant's core. Anything that could be tamed by a specific class had to have a main body of some kind.

Despite the hiccups finding it, Rydr finally stood on top of the monster's core. [Aetheric Eye] revealed pulses of life energy passing into the center from the innumerable "roots" around them.

Throughout the forest around them, over a square kilometer in diameter, small animals and critters lost their lives, and the vines bled them dry to feed the enormous appetite of the plant beast.

Rydr buried his arms in the floor of vines beneath him, shoving them as deep as they could go while still keeping his footing. Although the pain wasn't crippling, it still felt as if Rydr shoved his arms into a gravel pit full of sharp rocks.

Eventually, the Titan practically hugged the floor to his chest, having gathered as many vines as he could in his arms. From what Rydr saw, most of the vines in his arms linked directly to the heart beneath him.

Urginok nearly laughed out loud and ended his taunt when he saw his ally's position, but he managed to retain his focus. Rydr looked just like a frog about to leap off the ground, straight forward instead of up.

The Titan's health bar shrank to twenty-five percent as he watched his own blood turn into energy and be absorbed into the core beneath him. At the last second, the giant [Inspected] the core.

[(Rare) Young Plant Elemental Level 11]

HP: 4,816/4,816

MP: 1,500/1,500

Passives: [Feeding Frenzy], [Fast Regeneration]

Abilities: [Elemental Majesty]

The more we bleed, the stronger it gets. Rydr realized that the plant beneath them grew at a much faster pace compared to the other beasts in the forest. Since the creature had an alternate and effective means of hunting, it increased its level at an astounding rate.

Even as Rydr watched, the monster's health and mana continued to increase. The Titan suspected the creature would level up again soon if he couldn't stop it.

Urgency pushed more adrenaline through Rydr's body as he heaved against the mass of vines in his arms.

Nothing happened.

Come on! Rydr screamed inside his head as he rocked side to side, trying to rip the core out of the ground. No matter how he pulled, Rydr couldn't get the core to budge.

With no other choice and the last of the sunlight vanishing above him, Rydr activated [Peerless Physique]. The buff settled on Rydr's body as his avatar swelled. In a hindbrain maneuver, Rydr calculated his new strength score.

430. The score began to weigh on Rydr's body, his joints and muscles screaming at him. Even though he improved his Constitution score, Rydr's avatar still couldn't bear the strain of his full power.

In the corner of the Titan's HUD, his health bar began to tick down of its own accord.

Time's up! I'll tear you out, root and stem!

Cognizant of the virtual guillotine over his head, Rydr redoubled his efforts to rip the monster core out.

Slowly at first, then faster, the Titan began to drag the core out of the ground. All around them, the cavern's wall shrank as the vines closed in on the pair, ignoring Urginok's taunt.