What Elise was trying to do wasn’t easy, even for her. Although the forest had been created by the same being who was the source of the energy she tried to harness, it didn’t mean they were naturally compatible. And while simply giving the energy to the forest wouldn’t be that difficult, making it so that said energy would be used properly was a lot harder.

As previously mentioned, the forest didn’t have a true conscious mind, so it made sense that it wouldn’t know how to fight. So at the same time as Elise was guiding the forest into harnessing the power of the spirit, she also had to help direct it. She could tell that a significant portion of the trees in the village had been destroyed by the bio-weapon, which she could tell was actually a swarm of microscopic bugs.

Thus Elise made use of the forest’s desire to live, guiding it into drawing more and more of the spirit’s power that had accumulated in the area and converting it into life energy, growing new trees and plants at an absurd rate to replace those that had died, but more importantly attempting to heal the plants that were in the process of being eaten by the bugs.

The rampaging life energy that flooded those plants was unwittingly absorbed by the bugs, essentially irradiating them with an uncontrollable power that set their life processes into overdrive, causing them to burn out in only a few seconds. The first task was done.

Next, she focused even more deeply and harnessed her contractor abilities to seek out the presences of the deerkin of the village, specifically the ones that were currently fighting against the enemies who had brought death into the forest. That was the crucial step. She built a connection between that part of the forest and the deerkin based around the fact they were fighting the same enemy, plus the way their magic naturally revolved around nature.

At that point, the deer felt like the forest was calling them, and they could not help but answer. Connection established, she retreated back into the real world. Her task was done, as the deer instinctively called out for power and the forest responded by sharing the spirit’s power with them.

Elise then sent a short message to her partners and then opened her eyes to see that the points of light had multiplied and were spinning around the room like a whirlwind, continually flowing upwards towards the battlefield while more and more spawned to replace them. Helodorne was looking at her and at the state of the room in shock.

“It’s done.” She told him “Let’s go back.”

+0+

The feeling of the power that was springing forth was so intense that it caused the battle to be interrupted as everyone in the battlefield froze in place. Then new trees started to quickly grow all over the places where the bioweapon had killed other plants, and soon after a musical noise resounded as the defending deer closed their eyes and chanted in unison.

Countless sparks of light erupted from the ground and flew through the air like sideways rain, fusing with the bodies of the deerkin. At that moment, a shouted order came from the back of the enemy forces as they recovered their senses, the order telling them to fight. But it was already too late.

As the sparks of power mixed with the deer, their own flagging energies were restored and then multiplied. The power overflowed from their bodies and mixed with the air, their intent manifesting as a feeling of oppression that swept through the traitorous beastkin.

And then they attacked, flawlessly coordinating through the connection with the forest, their roars of anger echoing in the distance. Before, they had been fighting ferociously, going beyond their limits in order to just barely resist the enemy attack. Now each and every one of them was wielding power close to that of Elise’s two partners, so the battle became completely one-sided.

The close-range fighters swung their weapons, each attack already powerful enough to break the enemy’s vanguard. With all of them together it felt more like the traitor forces were being bombarded by powerful artillery. The long-range fighters seemed to turn from archers into humanoid ballistas, as their arrows were tearing through tons of enemies, the sheer shockwaves already enough to kill those that weren’t hit directly.

As for the mages, they were the ones who unleashed the forest’s fury to the most literal extent. The open battlefield was turned into an instant jungle, trees growing into sharpened points that went through armor like it wasn’t there or dropping onto enemies with such force and weight that those hit were turned to paste.

It took less than half a minute for the enemies to break into a rout. In that short period of time 80% of them had been annihilated. Those lucky enough to survive until that point were overcome by terror beyond anything they had ever felt before, and just scattered into every direction away from the deer.

However, fleeing wasn’t so easy. The rage of the deer still hadn’t abated, so they kept on rampaging, chasing down and eliminating every single enemy they could. At the end of it, the number of enemy survivors was barely in the double digits.

When the counter-attack started, Nalia and Nina called over Elise to ask for further instructions and were simply told to observe the situation and wait for her to come back. The duo moved back close to the wall’s opening and watched the carnage, each of them calling Elise and asking for an explanation.

‘It was exactly like I had suspected.’ Elise explained ‘Beneath this village is a place where the power of the spirit sleeping within the forest condenses. I’m still not sure of the exact details, but the Strangers require access to those places for whatever they are trying to do. I managed to harness the power accumulated here to power up our allies by taking advantage of the forest’s desire to live.’

To Nalia she also said ‘I’ll explain things in more detail later.’ While to Nina she had a lot more to say:

‘From what I understand, it is possible to calculate which spots in this forest have a chance to accumulate the spirit’s power, but not every possible spot actually has that happen because of many complicated factors, so the Strangers had to check every possible spot in person to see. That’s the reason why that woman appeared in your village.’

‘… I see. So it was just bad luck.’ Nina replied ‘I don’t like it, but at least I know the reason now.’ She went silent for a bit ‘It doesn’t change the fact that they need to pay.’

‘They will.’ Elise replied naturally.

By the time the girl met back up with her partners, it was all over. There was no more trace of fighting, and the soldiers who were empowered by Elise’s plan no longer had access to the spirit’s power. They had walked back inside the village and simply collapsed, the exhaustion of their earlier fighting combined with the strain of channeling such incredible power being too much for any of them to stay standing.

Some of deer who hadn’t been a part of the battle began to help, either carrying soldiers to medical stations to deal with their injuries or starting to repair the broken parts of the wall. Everything seemed to be winding down, but then Nalia’s eyes went wide.

“They’re coming.” She said.

“Strangers?” Elise asked to make sure.

“Yes. Three of them.” Was the reply “They were the group closest to this location, so I was keeping an eye on them. They weren’t that close, but now they’re moving fast enough to get here in less than two minutes.

They had been speaking aloud (as Nalia thought their allies had the right to know) so the deer who were nearby heard it, including the village chief who had been coordinating the rebuilding efforts.

For a few seconds, at least four deer tried to speak at the same time, the rising panic making them unable to coordinate and leading into an argument as the danger of the situation set in. But then Elise silenced the discussion with a single sentence.

“We’ll deal with them.” She had asked Nalia for a voice amplification.

The others looked at the trio of girl, fairy and armor with complicated expressions.

“That’s our specialty.” Elise said “So just go back to your own tasks.”

Then Nalia gave them the usual movement boost and the three set off, once again heading to intercept the enemy as they had done during the bobcat village battle.

+0+

‘What’s your condition?’ Elise asked both of her partners.

‘I got a bit tired in that battle, but I’m still fine.’ Nina replied.

‘I have a bit of a headache from trying to keep track of everything and help where needed, but it shouldn’t hinder me too much.’ Was Nalia’s answer.

‘Good. If it’s like that, we should be able to intercept the enemies from the front.’ Elise said ‘We’ll figure out what their skills are and then act accordingly.’

Her partners replied in acknowledgment and they continued onward. Soon they had crossed the open area around the village and went back into denser vegetation. And not long after that they had gotten close enough to the enemies that their presence was detected.

The enemies hadn’t reached visual range, but from her radar Nalia was able to see that the three of them suddenly stopped in place. She quickly informed Elise of such and the girl gave her orders:

‘We’ll stop too. If they want us to step into an ambush we’ll just attack from here instead and make them move.’

The fairy understood that this was her role to play, so she took a few moments to build a fitting spell and cast it with a shout of “Stone Storm!”

The earth around them lifted into the air and condensed into the shape of dozens of stone bullets, then a gust of wind manifested itself and blew them through the air at high speed. And Nalia was aware of the exact position of the Strangers, so the barrage of stones was shot towards their position in a wide pattern to make it harder to dodge.

The bullets pierced through the trees in the way almost without slowing down and reached the enemies in seconds. Looking at her radar she could see that they moved closer together in response, but it was difficult to tell how much of an effect her attack had.

Still, that didn’t really matter. Nalia had already been preparing the next round before the first even hit, and so the enemies soon had to contend with a second barrage of stone bullets, and then a third. The main goal of those attacks was to turn the situation around and force the enemies to come to them instead, as Elise had always been of the opinion that doing the opposite of what the opponent wants is usually a good strategy in a fight.

If they also managed to deal some damage it was even better, but that would truly only be a bonus.

It was only after the fifth round that the Strangers decided to change their strategy. They lined up in a single file and began to advance at about two thirds of the speed they had shown previously.

Nalia altered her magic to aim the bullets at a single spot in response and told Elise what had happened. The girl instructed Nalia to give her a sense boost and Nina to ready herself to intercept.

And then the enemies got close enough for Elise to spot them through the trees. With her normal sight she would have barely been able to spot their shape, but the fairy’s spell improved her sight enough she saw the three of them in detail.

The one in front was a man with a large build who was wearing leather armor and holding his sword in front to act as a shield against Nalia’s bullets. That was possible because his sword was abnormally large, looking like a thick tower shield cut into the general shape of a sword, which even had a guard in front of the hilt to protect his hands. It looked absurdly heavy, and probably was.

The one behind him was an elf with the appearance of an old man who wore loose fitting robes on top of factory-made clothing. He had a ring with a small gray stone on his left middle finger but was otherwise unarmed. And behind him was a woman who looked a bit younger than Hiroka and was wearing a violet bodysuit with armor pieces on her torso, shoulders and thighs. She was holding a long, sharp silver-colored whip on her left hand.

‘So I only get one preview. Well, it just means I’ll have to figure the others out the hard way.’ Elise thought to herself as she activated her ability.

‘Elvish Wind Rider. Among all of the magic users among the elves, wind-riders are some of the most important. This is not due to their combat ability, but because their skill with wind magic allows them to transport people and cargo around with great speed and convenience. Some of them also manage to use such skill in battle to great effect, but their role is generally outside of it.’

‘The elf is wind magic user specialized in transportation.’ She talked to her partners ‘He’s probably the one responsible for their mobility.’

‘Understood, I’ll see if I can interfere with his magic.’ Nalia said.

At the same time, Nina spotted the leading Stranger and commented ‘Can that thing even cut?’ upon seeing that the ‘edges’ of his sword were rounded instead of sharpened ‘Is it just a stabbing weapon?’

‘That’s a Yue Swordshield. The edges can’t be sharpened or they would break easily because of the weight of the weapon. But the answer to your first question is yes, because it’s meant as a mage knight weapon with the wielders applying cutting spells to the edges.’

‘Are they also supposed to use strength enhancements to be able to actually swing those things?’ Nina asked.

‘Yep. So this means either that guy has mage knight skills or he just uses it as a blunt weapon.’ Elise replied.

‘Either way, he should be strong. Can I go fight him?’

‘That’s part of the plan.’ Elise replied ‘Get ready.’

Those exchanges had happened faster than normal conversation due to being mental, but they still took enough time that the enemies had reached close enough for Elise to see them in detail without needing help by the time her last two words were spoken.

Nalia had been firing at them constantly while they got closer, but to no avail. She said the wind mage had put a barrier to slow down her bullets, and so they didn’t have enough force to pierce through the swordshield (As the name implied, they were designed as much for defense as for offense, so it made sense that they were tough).

Elise hadn’t ordered Nalia to change her tactics as the stone bullets still served the purpose of forcing the enemies to focus more on defense as they tried to get closer, but now they had gotten close enough for her purposes, so Elise gave the signal for the start of the next phase of the battle by ordering Nalia to ‘Change to a big fireball.’

The fairy let her spell fade away and quickly gathered her strength into another spell, a much more simple one. Like Elise had said, it was pretty much just a big fireball (‘big’ meaning close to Elise’s size), a concentration of volatile energy encased in a magic shell.

She threw it towards the trio of Strangers, who immediately realized the danger of that attack. They stopped in place immediately and the woman swung her whip, which extended beyond what would be natural and slashed down into the fireball, forcing it to explode early.

‘Nalia, attack the woman and keep her busy. Nina, rush the big guy and check how strong he is.’ Elise gave her commands.

Nalia flew forward and cast a version of her stone bullets spell that made the projectiles denser and heavier, trying to force her way through the wind barrier. The frontline ‘knight’ would have tried to intercept, but first he had to deal with the super-strong armored rabbit who ran into him with a punch strong enough to rearrange the scenery.

The knight managed to block with his weapon but didn’t expect the blow would be so powerful, so he lost his balance for a moment. Meanwhile, the other two had to try and deal with Nalia’s spell themselves. The wind rider unleashed more of his magic power to strengthen the wind barrier and managed to shift the projectiles trajectories just enough that the wind-boosted movement of the duo allowed them to dodge.

At the same time the woman swung her whip again, this time sideways. Her weapon extended once more and reached far enough to be able to hit Elise, forcing Nalia to interrupt her attack and conjure a series of barriers to protect her. That worked, but the woman changed her plan in an instant and forced the whip to swing all the way back to attack Nina.

The rabbit girl had been pressing her advantage but hadn’t managed to get a good hit in yet, and the distraction of the whip forcing her to defend gave the knight time to recover his balance and counter-attack with a sword slash (which had an added cutting spell, proving that he was indeed trained in mage knight skills). Nina responded by clashing with the attack from the front, unleashing all her might and managing to knock the swordshield back. But it was at the cost of being forced back herself as well.

‘This guy is really strong. A lot stronger than that moose I fought earlier.’ Nina reported.

The first series of exchanges was over and neither side managed to get an advantage over the other. That set the tone for the next two minutes of battle. The trio of Strangers were obviously experienced in working as a team, and their combination was very hard to deal with.

The elf was the glue that held them together, his wind boost giving the other two extra mobility while his barrier was an all-around defense that took quite a bit of effort to overcome. The whip user was their long range specialist, being able to manipulate her whip to snake around and attack anywhere within a large range, often targeting more than one place at a time or threatening Elise, constantly being a hindrance to whatever they did.

And the knight completed the set by being a direct defender with great strength that could keep up with Nina as well as using his mage knight skills to interfere whenever Nalia tried to do something clever, like using a heat enchantment to counter an attempt to freeze the Strangers in place.

‘If things keep going like this, it would end up becoming a battle of attrition.’ Elise thought ‘But we’re on enemy territory, so we can’t risk having reinforcements come because we delayed for too long, so we really need to finish this decisively.’

The girl had been thinking hard the whole time while giving instructions in battle, so she already had some ideas about how to do it. But at the moment she looked at Nalia floating close to her while Nina was far ahead clashing with the enemies, one of those ideas finally solidified into a plan.

‘Nina, come back here. Nalia, keep them from coming closer.’ She ordered.

The rabbit girl obeyed without missing a beat, transitioning from a punch into a backwards jump and turning around in the air to run forward. Nalia did her part by throwing a barrage of small fireballs at the enemies to force them to defend, still keeping an eye out for any sudden whip attacks.

Nina was fast, so she reached her contractor in barely five seconds, and Elise then gave her a surprising order:

‘Carry me.’ And jumped into Nina’s arms.

The rabbit caught her.

‘Take me away from the whip’s range.’ Came the next order, and Nina took off running while carrying her.

For a moment Nalia thought they might be retreating, but then Elise spoke to her.

‘You’ve been working hard trying to keep me safe, but you don’t need to worry about that right now. You can rely on Nina to protect me, so just go wild and have fun. Show your big sister how cool you are.’

Those words resounded through Nalia’s mind. It was true, she had been under such pressure ever since the first combat against a Stranger, always keeping an eye out and having shields ready to go in case Elise was in danger. But now Nina was strong enough to serve as a reliable partner to share that burden.

It felt freeing.

The fairy smiled almost despite herself ‘So I should just go wild, huh?’, then what about this?

Nalia focused her power, deciding to try out a new magic. It was a spell she had never cast before, which was more of an idea she had never actually developed into something concrete. But with her current state of mind the magic flowed smoothly into place, feeling almost like she just had to will it in order to manifest what she wanted. And the hazy idea was transformed into an actual spell.

“Dual Wing Magic: Earth and Wind.” She declared, and a massive amount of magic energy was released from her body.

The magic condensed on her right and left sides, one of them manifesting a rushing wind that twisted into a funnel while the other sucked up rock from the ground and fused it together into ever denser forms. Then both of those took shapes that were mirrors of each other, a pair of wings bigger than a person with the wind on the left and earth on the right. And they looked more like a bird’s wings than Nalia’s fairy wings.

The casting of the magic hadn’t taken very long, but the enemies reacted fast enough that the woman’s whip was already halfway to the fairy by the time it finished. But that wasn’t nearly fast enough. Nalia’s wind wing flapped, and the air around was forcefully shifted as the fairy exploded into motion faster than she had ever managed with other movement boosts.

She flew towards the Strangers, easily twisting around the whip as it tried to slash into her. In three seconds she was in front of them and her earth wing slammed in the middle of the group, separating the whip-user from the other two, then it swept in the woman’s direction and it was like an instant landslide as only the elf’s movement boost prevented her from being run over by three tons of rock.

Then the wind wing flapped again and Nalia shot straight at the elf, violent winds spinning around her body. The knight tried to block her path but she once more dodged around and through the gaps in his defense. She collided with the enemy’s wind barrier and her own winds struggled against it, but she only needed to make a small gap, so she was only slowed for an instant as she drilled through the barrier and reached the opponent’s chest.

Before he could react in any way, she followed it up by making a fireball and blasting him at point-blank range, the elf flying backwards and falling on his back from the explosive force. That one strike obviously caused heavy injury, but he still tried to get up.

So Nalia slammed her earth wing on top of his body, completely taking him out of the fight.

The whip user had been temporarily distracted by her earlier attack and so her retaliatory strike didn’t come fast enough to prevent Nalia’s actions, but the fairy had to contend with a new strike after dealing with the previous enemy, not to mention that the knight was also rushing her from behind.

That might have been a problem before, but that was why Nalia had taken care of the elf first, the knight was still deceptively fast even without his partner’s boost, but not enough to match with the fairy’s own boosted speed. Her wind wing flapped once more and she launched herself in the direction of the woman, dodging around her striking whip.

Nalia’s previous advance had put her in the middle of the enemy group, and her current target hadn’t been moved too far while dodging the rocks, so the fairy’s movement allowed her to reach touch range faster than the woman could react. So Nalia touched her head and froze it.

Or rather, she cast a frost spell that instantly covered it with a thick layer of ice. The ice wasn’t too strong because the spell prioritized speed, but it was still strong enough the woman would need to use her whip to break it. And if she had reacted instantly she would have been able to do it in time, but suddenly being rendered blind and unable to breathe caused enough of a shock to delay her reaction.

And Nalia used that time to give her a literal shock, hitting her arm with a quick lightning spell that made it twitch uncontrollably and let go of the whip, which the fairy pushed away with a small swipe of her wind wing to render it out of reach.

By that point, the only hope she had of escaping was through the help of the knight who was still trying to catch up, so Nalia turned her attention on him next as he cast the biggest spell he had thus far, wreathing his swordshield in flames that extended further and made it look even bigger than it already was and slashing with all his might, the powerful attack deceptively hiding the goal of trying to melt the ice and free his partner.

It wasn’t to be. Nalia’s earth wing rose up and slammed down onto the sword and forcefully breaking his spell by sheer impact, along with knocking the attack off course, then the wind wing followed up with a swipe and he was barely able to keep hold of his sword when faced with the violent wind.

That knocked him off balance, like Nina’s first attack had done, except now there was no one else to help. Nalia gave herself one last speed boost and let her elemental wings magic fade as she flew to the side of the enemy’s head and thrust her right palm into his jaw along with casting a new spell.

“Mage Strike.” She declared as her blow struck and channeled her power in the form of a violent vibration that hit like a powerful strike that knocked him down, broke his jaw and rendered him unconscious by shaking his brain.

Nalia turned and saw that the previous exchange had knocked the woman down as well, and she was clearly struggling with suffocation, so she decided to spare her the suffering by casting another, more powerful lightning spell and zapping her into unconsciousness before removing the ice to let her breathe.

The Strangers were worth more alive than dead, after all.

+0+

Elise and Nina had gotten far enough away to escape the range of the whip, but were still close enough to see the fighting, so they quickly got back to the fairy once it was done.

“None of them managed to run away this time. Nice.” Elise commented.

“Yeah.” Nalia agreed “But that took more out of me than I expected, so please give me some time to rest before we carry them back.”

Elise obliged by putting Nalia inside her Room in the mindscape.

‘They should stay unconscious for a while, but if that’s not the case just have Nina punch whoever is waking up.’ The fairy spoke before falling asleep.

Elise told Nina what Nalia had said, causing a feeling of amusement to come from her side of the mental bond.

Then the rabbit changed the subject:

“So those mindscape rooms can help recover from tiredness, huh… Sounds very useful.” She commented.

That made Elise remember something “Oh yeah! I had forgotten about it, but I’ve finally finished enough of your Room for you to get inside and help me complete it.”

“My… Room?” Nina was surprised. It should have been obvious that she would get her own Room, but they had been so busy training and doing missions that it had completely slipped her mind.

“Yeah. Do you want to see it now?” Elise asked.

“Y-yes.”

And so the girl pulled her second contract partner into her mindscape for the first time. The place Nina was faced with was quite familiar, it was a forest similar to the one they were in, with several houses on a clearing in the middle of it. Those houses looked similar to the ones in Nina’s home, but bigger, more elaborate and in much better condition.

And at the absolute center was a large tunnel opening going down into the underground. Said opening was surrounded by a beautiful arch made of flawless white stone, while the tunnel itself was brightly lit by dozens of small light crystals dotted around its walls.

‘T-this is…’ Nina tried to speak, but simply couldn’t find the words.

‘I understand how you feel about your home.’ Elise spoke to her kindly ‘You love the place you were born and raised in, but you hate the way your tribe is forced to hide and struggle in the shadows, barely making ends meet.

‘So when making your Room, I decided to make it based on one idea: What would it be like if you didn’t have to hide? What if your tribe could live both above and below ground freely, without ever having to worry about oppression or limited resources? That’s my answer to those questions.’

Nina released a strangled sob and tears fell from her eyes. She couldn’t cry physical tears in the mindscape, but those mental tears were the pure representation of her feelings at that moment.

It took some time for her to control herself, but eventually she managed to speak again.

‘It’s a wonderful dream.’

‘Not just a dream, it’s an aspiration.’ Elise replied.

Nina was momentarily surprised by the implication that they could do such a thing and truly change her tribe’s fate, but after thinking of everything Elise had been able to do up to that point the rabbit girl was convinced.

She could not help but believe that it was possible.