Chapter 13 – First Day in the Forest

After Lucca decided to join the corps group till Muno fort city, they steadily moved through the forest, they avoided normal monsters if they choose to retreat, but all the plant monsters in the path were fiercely hunted by the group.

Lucca didn’t participate in any battle, since he wasn’t even an apprentice. He watched the team fighting and understood that individually, each of those could rank at least on the top part of the best adventurers he saw in those four years, furthermore when they fought as a group, it was several times better as any party of adventurers he ever saw.

(Those guys are strong, even the worst of them could easily live as adventurer near the capital… Once more I’m forced to see why Ann said I knew nothing)

Thought Lucca while seeing that within this group there were some existences that were on a whole another level. Most of these were wearing armor with different patterns, such as crosses, and the others were the magicians, who killed multiples monsters with one attack, but what he awed him the most was Cecil Syren.

Lucca couldn’t help but admire, she was such a beauty, with her flaming hair, possessing blue eyes clear as the skies and a delicate face, which was the contrary of what you would expect from her tall body with D cup bust. She had been friendly and joking with him before, but now she was completely concentrated on the hunt.

Every battle she would take the vanguard and storm the monsters. Without thinking twice she would be in the middle of them and attract their attention, easily dodge their attack and create chances for the rest of the group to easily exterminate them, but that didn’t happen, since she would finish the monsters by herself without breaking a sweat.

(You don’t need group work when you are that strong?)

At this moment, while Cecil was holding six plant monsters, new monsters appeared. They were large ants and goblins who had weird pale flowers in their heads. A whole group of twelve, all of them rushed towards Cecil. Lucca saw that she was getting caught in this huge amount of monsters and started moving, but his arm was grabbed by Captain Windser.

“What are you going to do there?”

“I’m going to help her!”

“You’re only going to disturb her going there, just stay quiet and watch” – reprimanded while releasing his arm.

Lucca quietly watched Cecil, she easily dodged the attacks from the nearby floras, but when the ants and goblins attacked, she couldn’t dodge. Therefore she moved her sword to intercept the attack, her blue eyes glistened as is she was having fun and a little smile showed on her face, moments before the collision her sword started shinning like the color of her hair, a colorful red.

When the coated blade met the ant jaws, the jaws were hacked off, and the thrust continued until decapitated that ant. This scene repeated itself with every attack of those monsters with flowers in their heads. After cleaning the most nearby monsters, she lowered down, took down a goblin head and threw it to the captain.

Lucca was puzzled why she would do that, but in the next moment the mana coating her blade started surging like crazy, she jumped backwards in the air, escaping the monster encirclement, and swung her sword in the air.

“[Fire Pillar]”

The energy stored in her sword attacked violently the ground and formed a pillar of fire, right where she was moments ago. This pillar expanded a few meters and burned the monsters down in a compact form without touching the trees.

When the fire vanished there was nothing there, aside the scorched ground. The captain was looking the flower on the top of the head when Lucca couldn’t help but blurt.

“Incredible”

“Do you really think those little guys could even get her? They would need at least ten times more monsters to scratch her” – Said the captain while looking at Cecil waving her hands and making a victory pose to them – “She’s just messing around.”

(This strong and she is just messing around?) – Lucca was watching Cecil who already moved towards them and was talking with the captain about the flower – (What’s more, this guy didn’t even move once)

Lucca was astonished, Cecil was this strong and she was the subordinate of this guy, he couldn’t even imagine how strong he should be.

“What do you think captain?”

“This is worse than I thought, the Moon Dryad already started using parasitic skill”

“Parasitic skill?”

“She captures other monsters and put a seed inside their brains, see?” – Pointed to the flower – “It still looks lively despite being just a head, it’s this thing that was controlling the body” – Said the captain while releasing the head.

After a few seconds on the grounds, the flower started moving slowly to the ground, but before she could bury her roots, she was mercilessly stomped by the captain.

“Monster Plants usually take some time before they could mature, after all they are mutations of normal plants and not inborn aberration, such as demons, but this dryad use the seed to easily grow new plants, even if you kill the host, they are already monsters at this point and could keep growing.”

“What a troublesome ability”

“That’s right, the first time she appeared we lost multiples lives for not knowing she could keep increasing their number like that, therefore ever since we knew, it’s the priority to root her before she raises an army of plant monsters.”

The hunt of the plant monsters continued the whole day except for the breaks to eat. When the day was almost ending the captain found clearing and stopped there for camping and rest. He knew from Lucca information and stories that the monsters acting wildly when the moon was out, therefore he choose a wide place to see how they would react.

There was barely any movement until midnight, but when the moon was at its peak, they started hearing weird noises.

Minutes after they were attacked by a large group of plant monsters, there were floras, Venus flytraps, carnivorous plants and lots of normal monsters, such as goblins and wolves, who had weird flowers in their head, also there were some dryads here and there.

That was the first time Lucca was seeing them, the upper part of their body looked like the beast race, which were human like body with animal traits, but with plant parts, the only major difference is that instead of legs, they had brown structures coming out of their waits that looked more like the trunk of a young tree.

The monsters kept going and going, but neither of them attacked, they just kept starting at the corps, like they were waiting their companions came. Minutes after there was already a much larger quantity that could outnumber three to four times the number of members in the corps, yet the sound of monsters coming didn’t stopped.