Chương 84: Haze

Perched up in my makeshift sniper nest like an oversized, weaponized squirrel, I leaned over the branch and unleashed a single basic attack right into the dead center of the swirling purple soup. The heavy, unrefined explosive canister rushed down through the thick air, cutting a brief path through the haze before violently detonating the exact millisecond it made contact with the muddy ground below.

The resulting burst of low-yield concussive energy acted like a giant, magical leaf blower, aggressively blasting away a massive chunk of the localized smog and temporarily carving out a pristine circle of clarity right in the middle of the battlefield. The sudden dispersion of the fog provided a perfectly clear line of sight to our fifteen-foot wooden landlord, who was just casually standing his ground in the epicenter of the cleared zone.

I could see that his faceless trunk was oriented directly toward my branch, and even without any actual eyeballs to work with, the dude heavily radiated an unmistakable aura of pure amusement at my deeply chaotic, highly creative piece of tactical problem-solving. It was like he was actively applauding the sheer stupidity of using a miniature artillery piece just to clear a vision blocking mechanic.

Before I could even shout down a witty response to his silent judgment, Dimitri's booming voice tore through the entire corrupted forest like a freight train of pure, unadulterated motivational energy.

"Let us charge forward and confront our great adversary face to face, my splendid companions, for legendary triumphs belong solely to those who possess the courage to strike!" Dimitri screamed into the echoing wilderness, pouring an immense tide of kindness and warrior spirit into the air.

Without a single shred of hesitation or self-preservation, our burly vanguard immediately broke into a full-on, heavy-footed sprint, aggressively rushing straight into the danger zone to collide headfirst with the massive bipedal fortress of Kullervo. Dimitri bellowed at the absolute top of his lungs, his vocal cords vibrating with enough pure warrior energy to shake the remaining leaves off the canopy.

"Iron Vow!" he screamed, unleashing a provocative roar that practically smacked our giant wooden landlord right in his invisible face. The psychological impact of that majestic shout was instant and spectacular. It forced Kullervo to completely drop his previous train of thought, locking his advanced tactical awareness onto our burly Russian vanguard with total, single-minded focus and temporarily short-circuiting his ability to execute any of those flashy, devastating magic spells from his status sheet.

Deprived of his fancy magical arsenal, the fifteen-foot bipedal colossus resorted to the classic, old-school method of settling disputes, aggressively flailing his oversized limbs to launch a barrage of frantic basic attacks.

Even though these were technically classified as standard, non-magical strikes, watching a massive mountain of petrified oak repeatedly slam its heavy wooden club arm and twitchy vine whips directly into a human being was still an incredibly agonizing, deeply painful spectacle to witness from the sidelines. Dimitri was getting absolutely pulverized out there, his makeshift barrel-lid shield splintering wildly under the intense pressure as he took a thoroughly brutal beating to keep the rest of us breathing.

Realizing that my favorite meat shield was rapidly transforming into localized lawn fertilizer, I leaped right out of my tree branch, dropping into the toxic purple sludge below and hitting the ground running. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

As I sprinted forward to close the distance, my bulky Field Lobber hand mortar dissolved out of my hands, immediately replaced by the reassuringly heavy, unpainted metallic frame of my Training Prototype-7 revolver. I extended my arm and squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession, sending a pair of heavy projectiles screaming across the short gap.

Thanks to the absolute magnetic power of Dimitri's taunt locking his massive joints in place, Kullervo possessed zero ability to execute another sleek, high-observation matrix dodge this time around. The two bullets slammed squarely into his thick, rooted torso with a satisfying crunch.

The giant wooden bipedal bunker immediately felt the devastating armor breaking effect of my revolver's weighted impact, sending a network of tiny hairline fractures web-lining straight across his ancient, petrified oak armor plating. Before our giant wooden landlord could flatten Dimitri into a literal pancake, Fiona decided to aggressively escalate her commitment to the green movement.

With a sudden burst of primal magic, she went full apex predator and shifted into her colossal red bear form, bounding through the purple muck like a fuzzy, multi-ton freight train. She lunged forward and clamped her massive, bone-shattering jaws right onto Kullervo's oversized club arm, sinking her teeth deep into the petrified oak and pulling back with all her weight in a desperate, deeply heroic attempt to completely immobilize his main weapon hand.

Seeing the fifteen-foot bipedal colossus temporarily pinned down by our resident teddy bear, Aiko stepped up to the plate, holding her massive black-iron greatsword with two trembling hands.

"I am b-begging you, p-please just stay completely still, Kullervo-san," Aiko squeaked out in her usual ultra-low volume, her stutter vibrating with a mixture of profound terror and polite desperation as she addressed the literal monster trying to end our lives. Despite her psychological breakdown, her inner berserker switch flipped, and she activated Brutal Cleave.

The matte black-iron step-blade of her Spine-Breaker's Reaver instantly ignited with a jagged, glowing crimson aura, pooling raw aggression straight into the heavy metal. She executed a heavy, wide-arcing horizontal slash that ripped through the air, tearing a faint trail of red mist across the fog and violently cracking the muddy ground beneath her boots. The colossal blade collided head-first with Kullervo's thick torso, leaving a deeply satisfying gouge across his bark armor.

The giant wooden bipedal bunker was clearly hurt by the impact, but the overall damage wasn't quite a game-changer just yet, considering his massive, heavily bloated Physical Defense rating naturally acted like a walking brick wall against standard bladed strikes. Realizing we needed to keep the pressure on those fresh cracks, I raised my Training Prototype-7 revolver once more and squeezed the trigger, sending another heavy bullet screaming across the gap to punch right into his splintered torso.

The projectile smacked into his ancient oak plating, and the absolute second the impact registered, Kullervo slowly turned his faceless, hollow-chested head away from the others, locking his terrifying, invisible gaze directly onto my face. June finally decided to stop judging us from the sidelines and actually contribute to our collective survival rating, launching into a hyper-aristocratic, deeply majestic magical chant.

As the sophisticated syllables left her royal lips, a vibrant, crackling aura of pure crimson flame began to dance and swirl around her elegant profile, looking exactly like a high-budget special effect meant to highlight her supreme majesty before she roasted our giant wooden friend. The absolute second Kullervo registered the sudden, alarming spike of intense thermal energy from her direction, his advanced tactical awareness clearly picked up on his primary elemental weakness.

The fifteen-foot bipedal colossus unhinged his massive wooden jaw and unleashed a ground-shaking, sky-ripping roar from the corrupted depths of his chest cavity, a sound so violently loud and angry it sent a visible shudder passing straight through every single root and leaf in the surrounding forest. Instantly abandoning his basic physical strikes, the giant locked his joints and activated his devastating Root Grave ability, aiming the terrifying spell straight at our burly vanguard.

Kullervo violently slammed both of his massive, iron-hard fists deep into the bubbling purple mud, channeling a massive surge of corrupted magical energy directly into the dirt below. Because our favorite well-meaning Russian meat shield was not fast enough to move away, his heavy boots had zero statistical chance of executing a quick, graceful dodge out of the danger zone. The ground beneath his feet instantly erupted into a chaotic mess of jagged, twisting briars.

Thick, thorny roots wrapped aggressively around Dimitri's massive legs like a pack of hyper-aggressive wooden anacondas, violently dragging his heavy frame four feet straight down into the earth and packing the toxic soil incredibly tight to trap him in a living, suffocating tomb.