Before I take more than five steps forward, the sky, which a few hours earlier had been almost clear, droops heavily with the weight of the clouds. But we are no longer in the instance and this doesn’t feel like it has any special meaning, though I could probably figure out something interesting to do with it. To harness the cycle of water, as it evaporates it has to come down. No, that is not it. So it goes in the back of my mind for me to ruminate on.

The one thousand and six hundred dead try to weigh on my conscience and though they are not furry little creatures minding their own business, they made themselves my enemies, OUR enemies. They chose to be here. Their circumstances, their culture, the orders of their superiors or whatever else were all excuses they may try to hide behind, but they still chose to invade and I could not show mercy even if it stained my soul.

As ready as I can be, I march.

Less than 80 meters from the others I follow a straight line to the central ‘cathedral’. Reaching from the inner world for my power while roots feign to be the source of my power. Still, I do tap into the hundreds of batteries powering our flying buses to power shields engraved into nearly pure gold runes. Qi and mana meld with the will of thousand creatures paying full attention to my actions, though I had yet to see that same disruptive power from these Elves that I saw with the Goblins. Pando for his part lends a lot of strength to us, his mere presence a blanket of serenity and control, taking over the domain.

As I’m nearing the enemy, just twenty paces away they can no longer take it.

Their ranged attacks, from lightning and nature control to powerful arrow shots and even thrown javelins become interspersed with spears and swords in melee range.

My mana shield takes the brunt of the attacks with little strain for the few seconds that it comes and even the near absolute control that the Druid had for any plant touching him doesn’t bother me as Pando takes care of everything in a small circle around me.

Using the narrow spaces in the street to my advantage and without a split second of hesitation, lethal shots rain on the enemy, like I’m a wet acid hound shaking every which way and burning all the enemies in range. Qi empowered Magma balls get smaller and more concentrated as reality is shaped by my will and I grow used to the chaos of battle. I see thousands of tiny flaws with each of my spells and I lean into their creation, improving them with each cycle. But even if I act like a rabid dog, what gives bite to my movements are the floating turrets, connected by roots to both me and the flying busses making their way through the village with a retinue to protect them. Each turret uses shields of its own and mine working in concert. Experienced ‘remote’ control personnel and my seeds add a lot of damage of their own, with unfocussed but powerful shots completely ravaging any unprepared Elf.

I lean into the cacophony, sowing as much chaos as possible by using my high agility and dexterity to weave through the enemy learning in practice what I had simulated so many times and coming to understand the real limits rather than working only with my imagination and meager experience. A foolish endeavor if I had exposed allies, but I don’t have to worry about it when they are either in the inner world or a hundred meters away.

With no one to protect or pay attention to, I let loose messing up their tempo. Their mana capabilities are insufficient to overcome me and even if their primary mode of engagement inhibits my own use of nature, by the same token I tie up the best tool in their arsenal.

Heedless of friendly fire, I concentrate only on the most lethal of magic while shooting loads of decoys. And with my real resource being Qi, only a higher level magic user paying very close attention could distinguish the real ones, vs the ones that would only singe after going through armor. My high degree of mana control and Qi empowering spells to unheard-of levels, so they don’t even know which to dodge, which to block and which to tank.

I grow more used to my stats at an unprecedented rate compared to slowly training them up. At about 900 perception points with Pando’s support, I can easily make sense of the patterns of battle even if I rarely entered the fray amidst such chaotic conditions and each moment I grow at an unbelievable pace.

Even after making mistakes, I don’t have to curse myself for having killed someone I might have had a chance to capture, I just keep going.

Pent up aggression, that I never let out shines for the whole world to see. Not for me to indulge in it, but to push me beyond what is supposed to be possible.

Rage about the position the council placed us under, the Elf’s glib approach to our lives and so much more that I would need a century to just write the index in my book of injustices. But I won’t waste my time with that, I have a thousand other more important things to do.

I look at their leader while trying to not make preconceived notions stronger, but to find out why he is here in truth. He uses all his might with plant control to try and overwhelm Pando again and again, but each time he fails.

I lock eyes with him.

He is inexplicably drawn to me, failing to break eye contact. Then the world stops even as my body continues to move by itself with my arms imitating a mad dancer, wielder of all the elements and shaper of a deeper and more concentrated resource: Qi.

But I let the seconds build, even if I risk myself in doing so.

“How?” “Why you came?”

Even amidst the slaughter, I can’t let go of those two questions. Though he is only one, and the hint of an answer that I get is charged with the meaning of the moment and tainted by his emotions and outlook on my crazy actions, the answer lifts the weight on my shoulders as his entire stance swifts.

“I dominate.”

He wasn’t doing this to protect. Not even in the misguided attempt to save nature from miscreant nonelves wielding it. Those thoughts seem to swim in the back of his mind.

No, his gaze is filled with indifference for our lives. At best we are the unlucky sods coming into the system as they once had and it's our turn to pay the price if we wanted to live.

It’s our turn to roll out the red carpet even before they ask, otherwise they would kill the breeding monkeys taking up the world’s resources.

And they would continue the senseless killing until we submitted in the most absolute sense.

A scream tores through my throat:

“No. The world will not be made in your image. It will be made in ours.”

I break off the connection. Almost thirty seconds since the initial confrontation, in the narrow street, just as a few stone singers were starting to mold the terrain at my back and destroy my cover. They try to dimmish any advantage by limiting their maneuvering options. Still, even if this is their village, a few dozen of my seeds had already broken off and started to reinforce the building's structural integrity all around me. Now, they can’t simply drop all the buildings on top of me. Even if such attempts would fail, it would drain my shields and maybe even force me to reveal my trump cards.

Still even as my seeds kicking and screaming hold the buildings up, the enemy mages are a lot more experienced and have access to the system. The paiting is onteh wall, my seeds can only stall them. Then new roots form up from the ground to physically reinforce the buildings. Fire beams blacken the roots all around me, even dozens of meters away as mages that can’t get line sight on me take up the job of torching the roots.

Instinctively I know that they don’t burn right through like my roots are dry a crumpled paper because of the intense research that Pando did along with my insight. But even as unprecedented as it is compared to all but the best fire retardants before the system, this was no ordinary fire. After all, a strong enough fireball might burn a hole clean through someone with the system and they don’t let up with just a few attacks.

Thousands of thin layers forming with the very material are left behind by the fire. Then the inflated foam flakes off, similar to an ablative shield trying to protect the core of the branches with the next wave of fire. They even start to directly regenerate this blackened carbon foam protection using up mana but that is a nearly futile effort. But that’s why nearly a hundred seeds gather their forces, each growing a few roots spread throughout the surroundings. If the enemy attacks and burn out a dozen branches, just grow another two dozen behind their backs.

Powerful as my dozen shields are, they are still limited in mana if I don’t want to expose my inner world explicitly. So they intermittently break them with new ones forming almost instantly. I even selectively allow their melee fighters inside to diminish the strain on my shields and dwindle their numbers

Grabbing their weapons with nearly bare hands and punching heads in with the strength of a truck concentrated into a fist is too much and I eliminate even more by this method. Trapped between layers of shielding with no chance to retreat or heal. Their numbers dwindle even as their strategies slowly adapt and my chaotic movements become less effective.

But I can’t just retreat like this. I look the Arch Druid one last time in the eye. He may be low level for now, but that feels like an artificial constraint of the system. He is experienced and his real level is way higher. Eventually, that keen, if hateful mind, would come up with more plans than we could counter costing us lives. Especially considering that as our numbers doubled or tripled, theirs would go up tenfold even while they increased in level.

No, he is definitely not underling but someone near the top.

If I let him live he would be an eternal pain.

Another sword fighter enters my domain as the runic work underground a few meters away is nearly finished. He is stronger and more coordinated than most others. With careful steps, he only exposes his chest covered by a deep steel breastplate, so I do the unexpected. I punch with all my might straight in the middle of his chest.

The skin on my knuckles breaks, but with him already staggering, I punch with my other hand and this time I gather even more power.

The blow drives him back as the crunched metal stabs his chest. I can almost feel his labored breath coming, but with a bubble shield that only covers my body and a hundred points of Qi to make it resilient to any shenanigans that he or the others might pull.

Then the time comes.

The Arch Druid takes a step forward seemingly to protect one of his strongest figthers. But that is his last mistake. He steps right in the middle of my trap and then I turn up the freezing formation underground into overdrive. Dozens of attacks come, some in the normal rhythm, but a few notice their leader and frantically try to eliminate me, but the Arch Druid is fully in my grasp. If he has stepped a few inches to his left it would have been perfect, but I don’t need perfect, all I need is him with his center of mass within a 12 inch circle.

The almost telekinetic power overwhelms both his strength stat and control of mana for the split second I need.

A thousand Qi points and more mana that I bothered to measure stream down from a hidden turret that I surreptitiously placed just behind one of the buildings still standing right behind him.

The turret looks to be only made of roots with a hint of metals embedded, but I didn’t have the time for that, nor could I have done it undetected if I tried to do this before causing all this ruckus. But if they see the remains later they won’t know how I actually did it. The pure gold and silver runic turret that I took from the inner world sends a concentrated stream of fire as wide as a spear. The relatively slow stream of fire crosses the 3 meters in two or three tenths of a second and then it hits the Arch Druid’s shield and armor cutting a hole like they are paper. It passes through his spine as and out of his ribcage.

The hole isn’t some metaphysical phenomenon, and with eh right angle I could see what is behind him simply going straight through where his heart used to be. Every plant in the vicinity is instantly in my control. I can feel the other Druids fighting me, but their efforts feel like children fighting for control. I surround a few of them as they attempt to burn the roots that a moment before were protecting them while inside the Arch Druid’s domain. A few manage to escape, as the others explode themselves with fireballs.

Barely 5 seconds later and only a few common guards are left. Everyone else is hiding in the large building in the middle of their village.

I take a few seconds to gather myself, taking a few deep breaths, refilling my pools and powering up my defenses to the maximum before laughing.

A moment before I was ready to flee and if they continued attacking I might still be forced to go that route. But they didn’t feel that my death was worth the price with their strongest magic user out of commission.

Damn, how good is it to be a Wielder of Qi and Aether and have others simply fleeing before your might? To put the cherry on top, cultivating this aura of invincibility might even lead to a lot less killing in the long run.

Though as I step forward like a monster out of their nightmares, deliberately and seemly without a care in the world, the pressure on the village, the pressure that the very system seemed to impose on us is not only back, it got stronger. With each step, the weight grows faster and faster. This growth is not linear, but exponential or at the very least quadratic.

I take my time with a smile planted on my face as if amused at the entire situation like I’m simply letting out what is in my heart.

Which in a roundabout way is the truth.

I look to the sky, thinking and doing the math.

My inner world extends well over a kilometer, so I couldn’t quite reach the clouds, but there is potential there and even if not directly, I think I can tap into its potential.… Runes start to form several times farther than I have any right to be capable of. I do that with much more ease than even I expected through the inner world, almost like I’m simply claiming my domain.

Power that I wouldn’t have believed that I could have acquired before the system and even beyond what I expected to be within my fingertips so easily a moment ago comes to me.

Then lightning strikes their ‘cathedral’ like the hammer of god.

The wood and stone of their largest building hide most of their remaining people. My domain feels clearly the contraction immediately after my attack. I can feel the difference in the size of their territory with my ever present perception field.

So ten thousand mana rushes out once again and a continuous lighting strike sucks down all of the potential in the sky. Lightning the world builds momentum as I feed the storm power and it returns tenfold.

Every smidge of potential, seemingly by itself is sucked for miles and miles around with only a fraction of the mana needed to directly produce it. But that seems like an afterthought as the system directly protects anyone inside the cathedral.

A dozen, a hundred, a thousand strikes. I couldn’t tell which without looking at my logs, but then it's over.

As the boundaries reach 48 meters in diameter, it stops shrinking and the system’s gaze washes over me in a warning. I strike one more time, just to make sure, but they don’t even lose an inch more of territory. Then a hand comes down on my shoulder and I nearly sever it.

“That is all right mate. I don’t think we are gonna get further with the very system protecting them now.”

I look back and reality comes to me as paul’s kind face smiles at me grounding me back in reality.

“You are right. It is time to go back.”