The flight over to the elves goes smoothly, though this time everyone’s nerves are somehow both more and less anxious. A decent number has crossed blades with the enemy but this won’t be like our usual fights, either encountering a group on equal terms or defending a base, this is something else entirely. A few thousand green troops are accompanying us and even if they are clad in the best armor we have available and a month diligently training, they hadn’t seen real fighting. So how they will react is still an open question, when a single wrong move could cost them their lives in a fight against higher level opponents.

Worse yet, we are attacking a well prepared and fortified enemy.

As we get within a few kilometers of our destination, I set down and keep walking as all our preparations go into full effect. In the inner world, the troops get up from their positions and assemble in neat formations ready for the last step.

I reach the edge of a beach and into the ocean, as our strategy comes to mind. Ordinarily crossing a few kilometers of open sea would be a nightmare, if we had to rely on swimming, especially for the heavy armor types, but we had plenty of ways to mitigate that.

We discussed long and hard, the most effective method to travel without giving ourselves away. Popping in with my inner world’s help would probably be the most overpowered option, but I didn’t just want to give up all our secrets in our second meeting. It wouldn’t do to keep it like a hidden ace forever given how convenient it was, but meanwhile, it cost little to hide its capabilities and might allow me to take them by surprise.

And so I take control of a stream of Qi and weave it through the small runic construct that until now was hiding just myself and I expand it. Throughout the inner world, nearly a hundred seeds start their own works of magic then they open portals spaced along the horizon and meld their ow magic with mine, creating a huge illusion field. A simple, but effective layer that would hide anyone or anything visually from the enemy. Reaching for my connection with the nearest roots, my perception field uses up half of my attention as I try to determine when they notice our advance.

As I take off in the sky, I limit myself to the pace of a relatively slow flying bicycle, trying to avoid giving away all our secrets on our ‘first date’. Let them think we only had repulsion and propulsion runes, instead of the cheat worthy faux inner world rockets.

Even at the relatively slow speeds, the whole trip would take only a couple minutes, but 2 kilometers away from their island, I see a commotion and a moment later an elf blows a horn in the middle of their encampment. Not a scout with his keen eyes on the horizon, but a magic user, seemingly connected to life sensors spread out and with greater range than I imagined.

Still, it is not all bad news. They should still be confused about why only a single person is flying in their direction. I keep my speed locked at 180 kilometers an hour precisely, as the last few preparations in the inner world come, and when I’m nearly a kilometer away the time comes.

Nearly 200 flying buses each carrying about 50 people hurtle towards the enemy slightly faster than me, breaking through the illusion weaved in the sky. I let it hang for a moment longer before letting it fade away.

The slow and coordinated moves of the enemy quickly give way to an almost panicky response.

They don’t know how we had hidden so many people, not even the monitors with the help of their magic instruments in the middle of their camp noticed anything. But even if I did use the inner world, they would not guess what I had done any time soon, not unless they had good information from the goblins in the instance.

It wasn’t a card that I could play indefinitely, eventually, they would make the right guess, but it was still worth the bother to keep one more small trump card up my sleeve.

Seeing their well trained troops running around like I just kicked an anthill is worth it. They aren’t all-knowing with so much experience that any move we made was like the strategy of children trying to take down a war veteran, we can surprise them.

I find the Arch Druid and his commands are relayed with perfect precision and in such a short order that even if I didn’t know where he was I could have quickly followed the stream of orders back to him. The very air seems to radiate visible calming waves as he takes charge of the situation in a melodic language.

An expanding circle quiets down and the jittery and anxiousness all fade away.

Even across our racial and language barriers, the sentiments plastered on his face to someone with the perception field captures what even his own soldiers miss.

He is bewildered but doesn’t let that stop him. He not only takes control of the situation, but he also manages to mitigate the surprise with a pair of orders. His reaction convinces me that I managed to catch him off guard and that he is very, very good.

As the island comes into a close-up view the busses land on their pre designated spots simultaneously and then a fraction of a second later, streaming soldiers step out in unison.

We consume all the available space at the tip of the island, some 500 meters from the walls of the enemy. And though they do have turrets and other magic formations that might manage to attack us from far away, this is way too far for them.

Still, portable mana shields are deployed out of the flying busses, neatly arranged in the formation, as I recharge their mana batteries. Though they do rely on wheels given how easy they were to include for a massive mana economy when deployed on the ground. We cover the tip of the island and then start our slow march, trying to find the limits of the enemy’s defenses.

400 meters.

300 meters.

200 meters.

As soon as we cross that distance, the attacks rain down from their defenses. Firebolts, firespears, lightning chains and even the occasional earth boulder arcing through the air at unbelievable speeds.

It all batters harmlessly against our shields much further away than anything we could do without large turrets or focusing runes made of Mithril, though we weren't too far away if we use gold for that. Still, they have the advantage with large mana batteries of their own that dwarf our reserves in the flying vehicles. I could provide nearly unlimited juice, in both regeneration from the horde of Rabbits inside the inner world coupled with the truly humungous storage I had there for high intensity shorter term operations.

That isn’t an advantage I want to display to the enemy just yet, so I only feed a thin stream back into the batteries, hidden in the much larger chaotic pull from everywhere. All around, teams of mages trained for this exact purpose wield and concentrate their powers around lone figures, each of these magic wielders in the center with skill over level 100 and magical staffs made for long-range bombardment.

Then we return the elve’s favor.

The most common and in many ways most effective magic hits the enemy or rather their own shields, most of which were powered by runes engraved in stone and roots and backed by their will.

There were other most focused defenses, in the proper form and made in such a way that I could feel the touch of the system in the metal, but overlaid were a thousand runes to reinforce and provide more capabilities to us.

I look at the twisted nature made to suit their purposes. I take a minute to connect with the branches and trunks with the occasional leaves that made their primary physical defense.

From a visual standpoint, I could see beautiful patterns flowing and entangling, but the horror of their creations sinks in as each second passes.

Something in my mind clicks. I hadn’t seen anything quite like this before, but now that I see it in person, I can feel the signs even in the remnants left near Pando's original grove. Tiny things that at the time didn’t have any meaning only tangentially bothering me, now all make sense.

That isn’t to say that I never caused pain to the nature that I touched and controlled, but wielding mana to make an intricate dead piece of wood, artificially dried and incapable of feeling pain was an entirely different prospect to this eternal state of warping.

They can’t be fully unaware of how plants feel when they shape them.

But as I look at the defenses now, I see something else altogether.

Partially dried wood mixed with green and supple branches. Twisted brambles that I could almost feel screaming in pain and other dead parts in the same plants. Looking at a few of our own mages through that lens, I see the contrast. They don’t instinctively know nature like me, nor do they have that same direct connection that years with Pando taught me, but they directly or indirectly trained under me and I must have influenced them somehow to avoid making the branches and roots suffer.

Sure, like moving a comatose patient around, they need to take care, and once in a while when they miss the mark try to bend the branches and roots naturally, but there is always a faint feedback which they seem well tuned to and used to circumventing.

It seems slower, but however temperamental and methodical my method is, none of our nature mages had to fight the natural inclinations of the plant.

Then in the distance proof of the differences in our methods show up. A druid atop the wall sends a fraction of a mana point out and straightens one of the branches just below him. It had been loosening and without maintenance, in a few months it might switch to a more comfortable position.

I had never consciously thought about avoiding hurting nature as I moved it around beyond the obvious, like by respecting the limits of the strength, but their actions just grate on my nerves.

And so my entire attention and power head to the enemy’s works.

Qi streams into my body as dozens of tiny needle hole sized portals connect me with it. Pando sees what I’m doing and he passes through my body using inner world portals to directly touch the walls.

Before the very system seemed to be excluding him from this place, but after we got here he seemed to have gained a little leeway.

For a few seconds, we just spread our attention until we come across resistance as they realize what we are doing, and with a yank we let the natural flow of the wood take hold. It is a minuscule edge and we don’t rely on it, but it seems like the icing on the cake, as whole sections of the enemy’s walls start to lose shape under our might.

Unlike a full stone wall only covered by roots, here they hold it together, so it starts to crumble.

I won’t allow this travesty to go on any longer. With each second that passes, in the middle of a long-range battle magical, all of their defenses crumble crushing unlucky elves and distorting a significant number of the enemy’s runes diminishing their options.

Leather and steel clad slender warriors almost unnaturally tall fight against my control in any way that they can, trying to give breathing room to their druids to push me out, but I don’t allow it. What would normally be a tug pull with two teams of similar weight, becomes a bunch of children fighting against an armored adult.

The only exception is the space a few meters around their leader: the young looking Arch Druid. He still manages to keep me out of his personal space.

He looks in my general direction and I sense that he somehow knows roughly where I’m. A grim that he can’t possibly see from this angle, pops in my face.

“This time you are not quite as lucky as last time around you invade a new planet. Isn’t that right? Are you pissed? Too bad, I’m just getting started.”

Still, I can feel something is different. There isn’t just hatred in his face as I had seen on the other druids. I dare to wield nature better than they can and rub their faces in it, but there is also confusion as if he didn’t expect me to be nearly as effective as I’m.

Was there something that should have stopped me, a defense that failed and now I’m wrecking everything?

That’s neat, I don’t care for the limitations of the system and it was about time that I managed to achieve something against you. A real blow.