The Martial Unity

DRIP DRIP DRIP

Blood started spurting out of his guts as the branches extricated themselves from his body. He coughed blood as fell to the ground. The shock had initially left him frozen, but he immediately activated Final Breathing which immediately accelerated the clotting process, slowing down the profuse bleeding. He weakly reached for his pouch, pulling out a healing potion.

He gasped as the healing potion diffused into his lungs in gas form and dissolved into his blood, aided by the Final Breathing technique. It quickly reached his wounds, healing them at a remarkable pace.

He gasped in relief as the pain disappeared along with the wound, before getting up abruptly stressing Primordial Instinct to the absolute limit on his immediate surroundings. He eyed the branch with his blood on it.

('What the fuck was that?') He narrowed his eyes.

A branch of the tree randomly attacked him and then went back without doing anything else? At the very least, if it was a carnivorous plant that attacked him in order to consume him, that would make more sense. But why attack him without doing anything else other than injuring him?

Rui immediately dashed out of the forest at a high speed, leaping off of the elevated landmass and landing back in the ordinary forest. The branch that attacked him wasn't visibly different from any of the other branches in the forest, it was just the closest.

Yet it landed an extremely fast and potent attack that allowed it wound him critically. If he didn't have Final Breathing or the healing potion, he would have died on the spot. The fact that it wasn't visibly different from the other branches likely meant that it simply wasn't. This led to the scary conclusion that every branch in the forest was likely capable of the same feat.

"If that's the case, that makes the forest, or the tree itself, extremely dangerous." He noted.

He had no doubt by now that the forest-tree was probably responsible for the environmental and ecological anomalies of the Serevian Plateau. But he wasn't satisfied with just that.

"Why did it attack me?" Rui wondered. "If it was going to attack me, why didn't attack me the second I entered the forest?"

If it was a carnivore tree species, then would it really need to wait that long to attack him?

"It's not impossible, but what are the other possibilities?" He pondered.

It could be that his initial presumption of the branch that attacked him was no different from any other was wrong. Perhaps there were certain parts of the tree that were capable of attacking and hunting prey to consume them.

"But that still runs into the problem of it leaving me after attacking me."

That seemed to indicate that it likely wasn't trying to consume him. Then there was likely another reason why the tree attacked him in the first place.

"It attacked me after I saw the monkey." He recalled as realization dawned upon him. "It attacked me the instant I used the Mind Mask technique."

If that was the trigger, then there was a logical explanation as to why the tree reacted so adversely to him.

"The mind mask I had used back then was the Squire-level mind mask. If that was the trigger then I likely triggered its sense of danger." Rui realized.

Fortunately, there was a way to verify it. He could do it again, except this time under less dangerous circumstances.

He stood at a good distance away from the branches of the tree on the elevated landmass, before taking a deep breath and heightening his alertness and Primordial instinct with the help of the Mindirror secondary brain.

('Here goes nothing.') Rui inhaled deeply.

He activated the Mind Mask technique as a Squire-level aura descended upon the surroundings.

RUMBLE

The very ground, both the plateau and the elevated landmass, shook violently.

Rui's eyes widened in excitement and fear as waves of branches lashed out from atop elevated landmass, stretching unnaturally as they attacked him at a frightening speed.

Yet this time, he was prepared.

WHOOSH

WHOOSH

WHOOSH

Rui weaved away from the attacks as he began retreating at a swift pace. The branches kept following him down at a rapid pace unperturbed. Rui was surprised at the ridiculous amount of range these branches had. They continued following him despite him moving further and further away from the elevated landmass.

The branches weren't originally that long, which meant they were likely being extended further by the tree.

('Which means the wood mass of the tree is not fixed and can be shifted and moved.')

WHOOSH

BAM!

The branches crashed into the ground where Rui was just a moment prior. The leaves and stems got shredded in the process, yet the branch continued attacking him unperturbed.

('This defense mechanism, if that is what it is, is quite self-destructive.') Rui noted. These branches were doing more damage to themselves than they were going so to him.

He continued evading them, getting better and better at it as time went by. He had already begun forming predictive models for the branch attacks with each passing move. The tree quite likely lacked consciousness for its movements were as static and unchanging as a robot. It took Rui just a brief period of time to develop predictive models for all of them.

Suddenly the branches froze as Rui retreated once more.

"Hm? Not coming?" He tilted his head in confusion. The branches simply froze in front of him.

However, when he shifted to the right, they shifted to the right. The same was true regardless of what direction he moved in.

"Ah, range limits perhaps?"

He released the Mind Mask technique as the danger he plummeted from the Squire Realm. The branches swiftly retreated. He stepped forward a few meters before reactivating the technique. The branches immediately returned, lashing out against him.

WHOOSH

He stepped out of their range once more, before releasing the technique and watching those branches retreat once more.