The battle shifts.

If before they were pushing me and trying to corner me while paying a modicum of attention to my actual movements. Now, their attempts become frantic and even more frightening. It is such a sharp contrast to their formerly ordered and precise moves that it doesn’t leave my mind. They didn’t expect this level of power.

I break through their new shield over and over. With the reinforcement of the turret on my chest and my increasing familiarity with punching at maximum power, they can only slow me down, not stop me.

Still even while mowing them down, the higher leveled ones wielding those strangely crafted shields don’t die, only their lesser kin. Though I know their reinforcements aren’t infinite, with how many there are and how slowly they fall that’s how it feels like.

Ways for me to screw up keep piling up, as they keep trying to push me further in their territory and away from my reinforcements, but I stuck to my guns slowly making moving sideways. Enough to make it hard for them to pin me down, but without outpacing my support, the most important part of are the avatars around me and the mage group concentrated just thirty meters away.

Then the frantic attempts go to full madness as they become a lot more willing to sacrifice themselves. Though I don’t sense actual suicidal intent. It's like they were told I’m carrying a reusable backpack nuke or rather that I can make such nukes. Damage would be bad now and catastrophic if I reached the center, but worst of all, they don’t want me escaping, because if I escaped now and they lost their only chance to stop me, I would an eternal threat. I can feel that floating in the air, even if I can’t get more specific on how they arrived at that conclusion.

Then their leader approaches. He neither hurries nor stalls, simply coming with a brisk walk straight for me from the direction of their command post.

If I had a little more attention I might try to kill him, he feels even more dangerous than the first elf Archdruid, but for an entirely different reason. Where the first one was a young and talented druid, this is a willy old man.

But going along with most of the remaining Druids, I realize the source of the change in their demeanor.

Nature around them is coming back to their control. I sense something unnatural, and the occasional wisp of black smoke, though their control is not absolute. Still, the strides we were making into their city disappear in seconds.

The implements in their hands sing an off kilter harmony. Plants are mesmerized and they take control.

But I can also reach deeper into my bag of tricks so I call for Pando to help take control of everything around me.

A hundred portals interlinking directly from the sea into the heart of this island allow his will to blanket the area around me without having to fight through several other layers.

Even as the old Arch Druid opens his lips and starts to sing all the nature around with a more intricately carved metal implement in his hands that seems like a much higher level compared to the others. But the air fills with Pando’s will and he won’t be denied.

The plant mass that we didn’t bring ourselves, roots branches, and leaves become ground for the contest, but at least they fail to get an inch into Aspen’s and Pando’s roots.

I look at my root avatar and realize that there is more to this story than I first thought. They have absolutely no problem controlling the roots that are part of their bodies, though anything that they grow beyond seems to follow the same rules that everything else does.

Something to explore there.

My allies manage to stop their takeover, but that is a worse position compared to 20 seconds ago making my job harder.

I think of extending my will to my surroundings, but while it may be another path in the future, that will split my focus. I still dig deep in my stores and let everything out, with an eye for the last one wielding a different implement. A black metal short rod with a stone that resembles cut obsidian at the top, though I know from its composition that is something new.

His eyes shine with purpose.

The new Arch Druid gets within some thirty meters of me. As he closes his eyes with the staff in his hands I can almost feel the natural Aether field forming around the staff. He has no direct control over it, but like anything of any real power, Aether infuses it.

It’s strange. It should be stronger because each second it takes in a stream of Aether that will add up, but compared to how much it is taking, it seems to have been created only a few hours ago.

But even this the very faint Aether already in the air is telling.

This is a real threat.

He is the one carrying the backpack nuke.

And there is only one thing that I can do.

“RUN!!!”

I scream aloud and into the network, for everyone to hear. All thoughts of riding out their attack with my impressive defenses are gone and the simple mental image echoes through the root network and the comms, as I scream for everyone to escape.

The consciousness of all the root avatars goes halfway back into the inner world and the mages and others stop trying to get deeper and closer, but they still don’t fully retreat. Horror screams in my mind as something tries to form inside my body.

I use all my training to maintain control of my body and make it impervious to the system. Somehow that extends to this thing delaying it ever so slightly, not because it was part of th e system, but because I had started to learn how to exclude.

I directly pull from the inner world and let the higher gravity of the planet bends my knees to jump all the while thrusting with steam from the inner world. I don’t bother with fancy equipment, worrying about efficiency or anything of the sort. I just let raw unadulterated power flow through me and push me with as much strength as my constitution stat can support.

But it’s too late.

An invisible hand has already grabbed me. It turns the world into slow motion. Desperation builds and all the portable shields in the inner world come out and I erect a ring of portals to help stop the attacks from their melee soldiers and mages all around me.

I had used this skill very sparingly, even after learning about it and improving my control of the inner world because it felt wrong. Like it would fail me at the worst time imaginable, but now I have no choice. Their streams of fire and lightning cross the portal ravaging the insides of my inner world, a hundred strikes that I could individually ignore, but together add up as soul strain. I feel a spike of pain from allowing so many attacks to cross my inner world boundary layer simultaneously, but I don’t dare stop as the black sphere finally forms just a few centimeters to my side in the very spot my heart was half a second ago. The one spot that I would still be stuck to without hundreds of points in strength and constitution and powerful thrusters under my feet.

The air feels like a pool of thick syrup. Each move is heavy beyond imagination. Or trying to move in a nightmare just before waking up. That invisible barrier that in harsh daylight is simply a wall.

Full blown panic almost overtakes everything, but I won’t let it.

Something crosses the divide in my mind as my other half radiates a hint of hope.

I pull my Aether like it's my last lifeline. It’s my last resort and has saved my life multiple times now when I was way over my head. I madly spin it in and out of my soul while dragging thick streams of soul scruff. The Aether from the depths and from the peaks, Aether of revelation and pure Aether at the same time as I choose to trust my other half.

I am attack while he is defense.

His is the mind turned to stop the enemy and I have to trust his judgment at a moment like this.

So I settle on the simple task of using all my physical stats to the utmost as I burn everything around me in steam that would have propelled a cargo ship in the ocean while lending every single point of my mental stats to my other half keeping only a dozen points to maintain consciousness.

Hundreds of points of Life join the party, even if they are only tangentially helpful for external phenomena like this, I need every edge that I can get. Another thousand points of Qi. The greatest number they managed to full in time an instant even with Pando’s help. Around us pops up a shield that would have made Merlin proud forms between the compressing black sphere and myself.

More runes than ten copies of myself should have been able to produce back the shield.

Your training efforts are bearing fruit.

The densest and most powerful personal shield I saw to this day warps reality itself and then an explosion hits it.

Then everything goes black as I’m taken elsewhere. All my senses are overwhelmed in every imaginable way before I feel the pull from the void and amidst a thousand other forces. But instead of being flung in a random direction forever lost at supersonic speeds, by the very instrument of my predicament holds me still.

The very thing that used to keep me in place and stopped me from avoiding the attack altogether now strangely comes to the rescue.

My body, mind and soul want to shut down. To sleep and let myself recover, but I know that would be death.

Then that tether keeping me in place withdraws.

My mind instinctively reaches for my friends.

I don’t even know what I’m doing, but the soul connections ground me in place.

They are each like thin and long rubber bands, and if they wouldn’t have stopped me with the speed I arrived here, even if they were a hundred times stronger, but if I’m careful I can slowly pull myself in any direction or just keep myself in place.

Plenty of those connections, loop around themselves and attach to the inner world making them as useful as the help of someone inside a wheelbarrow to lift it and carry themselves. Others link to people ‘in the instance’ and are so far away that they might as well not exist. But my root avatars are just outside with a couple of new friends. They are enough to stabilize me.

I try to process this place and though I extract some of my surroundings, my perception field is simply useless like I’m trying to look at a space phenomenon with it. But even through this, as much Aether as I ever actually wielded at a time fills my body and this time no sense of purpose fills me from an external source. Instead, I’m in control.

This state is expensive and I won’t overuse it, but there is a reason my gut isn’t screaming.

Even in this danger, I don’t fear, there is only a weight and an inevitability to my actions.

I look at the largest and most threatening mass of Aether that I have and then at the retreating tendril and core of the instrument that allowed the attack to succeed against me. I can’t make out much more, but this I pay attention to and I know.

Aether has to be used very sparingly not because it was precious, but because it’s dangerous. And that was especially true for the Aetehr that drove the HLZ beasts insane. I let a couple of very brave seeds absorb a little, but otherwise, I had no real use for this enormous ball of Aether reaching some tenfold more than my entire stores ever hold.

But now is the time to make use it this ball of resentment and rage.

My plan might work and after what that instrument had done to me, I don’t even care to try stealing it to study it, so I drag the mass of death and cacophony outside my soul in a thick stream. Like an Aether Dragon, it seems to sense the surroundings and my own negative emotions, feeding on them. It almost gains a life of its own while it descends and eats the tendril. I aim it directly at the core after the tentrils is damaged and trying to move away. The heart of this thing on this other realm. Even intangible as Aetehr is, when the long snake like Aether dragon comes into contact with the core, it explodes just like when I was on the other side.

The explosion almost sends me hurtling as the shock wave hits me a hundred meters away, but at the same time, I transition back to the real world scaping the caustic nature of that place.

I can finally see what happened to my body.

Naked without a squared inch of my body uninjured I begin to fall from hundreds of meters above the ocean. But a fraction of a second later the comforting embrace from my seeds surround me and I no longer need to keep myself awake.

Now, everything will be alright.

============

James’s POV – Thirty seconds previously

“Retreat.”

The bottom drops from my stomach and everyone sees the explosion that prompted my single command after Nash’s warning.

Both sides seemed to have lost the taste for combat even though they just took Nash out of the board. Our troops quickly stream back into the parked flying busses and the seeds inside open portals into their integrated Faux inner worlds as we prepare for a full retreat. Seeds that are a lot weaker and less experienced in directly wielding space strain themselves to open the largest portals they can to save even a few more seconds.

Halfway through our move, from my vantage point, the strange contraption in the hand of our most hated enemy expels a looser concentration of the same thing that attacked Nash and I see him suddenly holding a stump as he loses his hand.

Dozens of other weaker enemies around him are burned by that energy. But moments after whatever all that was I give a sigh of relief. The red symbol representing Nash’s status turns green. There are only three indicators in my helmet hud and I wouldn’t take a simple one from there.

With well practiced and smooth motions we finish our retreat without a single loss. But that has as much to do with our training as with the fact the enemy didn’t contest our retreat with their lesser numbers.

The flying busses take off as I finally stop trying to raise Nash. A dot on my HUD shows me where he is and so I move to his position, asking for seeds to connect both flying buses and allow me to walk to the other craft. Then I realize why he didn’t answer.

Nash has a dozen of mages and medics working frantically to save him.

But I only recognize Nash because of his aura, even if weak. Because there is not a single inch of his old skin visible and he is not wearing anything over his body.

It's like he is only half here. No forearms, no lower legs and even large chunks of his torso are missing, exposing his organs to the air.

Thankfully he is fully asleep, otherwise, he would likely be screaming in pain. Moments later, we land as gently as possible and Pando’s roots nearly break the craft apart getting to him. The grove’s presence becomes so thick in the air that I have trouble breathing for a second. A stream of Life rushes into Nash’s near corpse and slowly his wounds close. His skin even if heavily marred regrows hiding what should never see the light of day. Though as the minutes pass and more of the resource is pumped into him in what a stupid person would call a waste, nothing else changes. His arms and legs are missing and even smaller protrusions on his body like his nose and ears are simply gone.

“Ohh Nash, you are strong, but did you have to get yourself into?”