The night air reeks of fear and trampled earth, thick with an acrid tang and rivers of cries of retreat.
Around them, the Zoastia Tribes flee in disarray, warriors who once roared vows of conquest and war, now reduced to panicked shadows of their former selves, their hooved feet churning mud into a slurry of desperation.
Survival is what makes them move. Fear is their fuel.
The forest echoes with the cacophony of their flight: snapped branches, guttural curses, the keening wails of the wounded dragged behind.
Above this scenery, the moon glows through a shroud of thick clouds, its pale light catching the glint of abandoned weapons strewn across the battlefield like the shed scales of a defeated, dying serpent.
Vijar Rajandala stands at the edge of this chaos, his black panther-like frame rigid, claws flexing at his sides as if to grasp the crumbling remnants of his shattered authority and the pride of the Zoastia.
The title of Demon Claw hangs heavy tonight, its weight no longer a mantle of pride for the Zoastia, but a chain.
His eyes, slit-pupiled and sharp, fixate on the scorched ground where he had stood, where stood the arboreal colossus whose words unraveled two entire tribes in a breath.
"Problems?" Muar Praxua's voice is a rasp, his lynx-like features etched with exhaustion. The ranger's fur, normally sleek and groomed, bristles in clumps, matted with ash and sweat.
Vijar's tail lashes, a whip-crack of frustration. "The Mighty King has been defeated like a colt. It was… terrifying".
The admission claws its way out, raw and unbidden. His gaze drifts to the scattered remnants of his forces, a once-proud horde now fractured into clumps of cowering kin running for their lives. 'My father's legacy… undone by a sigh from a single being' he realizes.
Muar's ears flatten. "Agreed" his voice trembles, betraying the stoicism he's famed for. "Was that… a god of the humans?"
Vijar snarls, not at Muar, but at the void where answers should be. The creature had been wrong. Bipedal, yes. Humanoid, perhaps. But its eyes, glowing fungal orbs that saw through flesh and bone, had pulsed with the primal rhythm of storms and seasons.
Something as ancient as the ground where they walked. Something that they considered... certain, granted.
Its voice had not spoken; it had commanded, the earth itself bending to its will. "Everything in that... being screamed the might of Nature" Vijar mutters, more to the wind than his companion.
Muar's whiskers twitch. "I don't know".
The words linger, swallowed by the groans of the fleeing. Vijar turns, his claws sinking into the bark of a nearby tree. Sap oozes, sticky and pungent, as he grinds his teeth.
'All my work. Years spent uniting the tribes through duels of honor and rapid marches, through whispered alliances under starless skies'.
The Zoastia had been a fractured people, warring over insignificant scraps of meadow territory, until his father and then he, Vijar Rajandala, the Demon Claw, forged them into a blade. Now, that blade lies shattered like a broken glass, its shards scattered to the four winds.
The air feels heavy and the mood is low, Vijar and Muar turn their backs returning to the rest of the Zoastia that remained to Vijar's side.
For the first time since before the death of his father Vijar thinks at something other than his title as Demon Claw, he now has to assure the survival of his people.
"All my work to live up to my title" he hisses, talons raking down the trunk, stripping it to raw, weeping wood. "All my hard-work! Everything went to shambles by just a few words…"
'We got decimated' thinks the panther-like Zoastia. 'Just a few words from... God, and the Zoastia Tribes I united have been dispersed once more'.
Muar watches, silent. He's seen this desperation before, in the eyes of prey cornered by hunters. But Vijar is no prey. He was no prey.
The ranger's mind races, recalling tales from his wanderings beyond the Abelion Hills: human temples where priests spoke of the Six Great Gods who descended in radiance, the Eight Greed Kings who carved empires with fire and avarice, the Evil Deities who slithered from the world's darkest crevices. 'Could that creature be a New God?'. The thought coils in his gut, cold and serpentine.
Around them, the remnants of the Zoastia who are still loyal to Vijar huddle. Mothers clutching cubs, elders murmuring old prayers to forgotten spirits. A young warrior, barely past his first molt, retches into the bushes, his spear discarded. The scent of vomit mingles with blood.
Vijar's shoulders slump, the Demon Claw's famed posture broken. "We've been... completely humbled" he growls, the truth a blade twisted in his ribs. "My tribes… my people… dispersed like leaves in a gale".
Muar steps closer, his voice low. "Now we survive".
The chieftain's gaze snaps to him, feral and sharp. "You think I don't know that!?". But the fire dies as quickly as it flared. He nods, once, the motion heavy with defeat. "Gather the loyal. The ones who still answer to Demon Claw".
As Muar slips into the shadows to obey, Vijar stares at his claws, once symbols of almost total invincibility, now trembling like leaves hit by wind.
—
The camp reeks of blood and burnt timber, the acrid stench of rage made tangible. Buser, Grand King of Destruction, moves like a wildfire given flesh, his horns slicing through the smoke-choked air as he obliterates all in his path.
Tents are reduced to splintered poles and shredded hide under his hooves; supply carts explode into kindling beneath his fists. A Bafolk warrior, too slow, too loyal, stumbles into his path, and Buser's talons close around the fool's skull with a wet crack.
The sound is obscene, a melon dashed against stone, and the body crumples, twitching, as Buser hurls it aside like offal.
"I WILL ERADICATE THAT BASTARD MYSELF!" he bellows, spittle flying from his fanged maw. His voice is a landslide, raw and ruinous, but the Bafolk no longer flinch at his fury.
Instead, they huddle in the periphery, eyes darting, nostrils flaring with a sharper terror: Sprout's voice, still coiled in their minds like a venomous serpent.
'Should I witness thee ravage her beauty again…' an omen from a God, who would be so fool to ignore it?
Buser smashes his hoof into the earth, fissures spiderwebbing outward. "BRING ME THE WAR-DRUMS! WE MARCH AT DAWN!"
None obey.
In the firelight's flicker, the Bafolk exchange glances, silent, searing. Their king, once a lodestone of fear, now festers like a gangrenous limb.
He is a grizzled elder, fur streaked with ash, injuries from the one-sided fight with Sprout still tainting his form.
"The God-Tree warned us" hisses a female shaman, her voice buried beneath the cacophony of Buser's rampage. "The old tales from the scouts… humans offer goats to appease their deities".
Her words slither through the ranks. Buser, deaf to the whispers, seizes a war banner and snaps it across his knee. "COWARDS! YOU'D BOW TO A WALKING THICKET!?"
But the Bafolk are no longer listening, they don't care about Buser's strength anymore. They count the gashes on his arms, the way his chest heaves like a bellows, weakness.
Sacrifice.
However Buser is still miles stronger than every other Bafolk. They couldn't take him down even all of them against just him, alone. For now Buser has to live, he's too big to be taken down in just one night.
'I will bring your head to God, this, I swear' declares to himself a Bafolk, a warrior who puts his life above his honour. With Buser the Bafolk are doomed to the ire of God, but if they bring the heathen in front of him once more he shall meet his punishment.
And he, Ondalk, will become a Holy King. Not a King of Destruction like Buser, but a ruler legitimated by God himself.
—
The night finally comes to an end. The Zoastia and Bafolk have long retreated back to their homeland after witnessing the scolding of God himself.
Dawn breaks in a wash of warm light ta baths the Abelion Hills, spilling across the horizon and gilding the Great Wall's jagged silhouette.
Sprout's bark-like skin drinks in the light, the myriads of plants along his arms dimming as if humbled by the sun's brilliance, drinking the light and invigorating Sprout's body.
'These are the effects of [Photosynthesis]' realizes Ren as he's now feeling stronger after the sunrise. [Photosynthesis] is one of the baseline racial abilities of the [Plant] race, increasing health regen, resistances and total mana of the player.
Behind Sprout, Garm pads silently, his obsidian fur glistening with dew, while Humtoc perches between the wolf's shoulders, tiny hands tangled in the beast's mane.
The goblin's uplifted eyes, once dull with survival's weariness, now sparkle with naive trust as he hums a tuneless melody gazing the lands he would have never even dreamt of even seeing back in his small village.
Ren hesitates, roots, subconsciously, curling into the soil as if the earth could anchor his doubt.
'Should I leave them behind?' he asks himself. His fungal gaze lingers on Garm the wolf's hulking frame, the way his shadow stretches like a stain across the morning-lit grass.
'If I was still human and something like, him, approached my walls, what would I do?'. The memory of Earth's gas-masked rioting mobs flashes in his mind: their screams, the rifles of the police emptying their magazines at unarmed defenseless civilian.
'I'd think Garm is probably some kind of divine retribution came to punish us humans...'.
His attention shifts to the wall. What lies beyond? An entire kingdom? A fortress? Just a city? The uncertainty gnaws at him. 'I don't want to take any risks, especially with Humtoc around. At least me and Garm can defend ourselves'.
Sprout's hand rises, the dawn catching on one of his Legendary Class items, the [Ring of Natural Morphing]. The band coils around his wooden finger like a serpent forged of sturdy gold and precious jade, its jade-green vines so finely etched they seem to writhe under his gaze.
A spoil from a secondary mission acceptable only by druids, its power thrums faintly, a distant echo of the previous YGGDRASIL's NPCs who once wore it. 'Humans are animals' he rationalizes, though the logic feels brittle. 'So... it should work, no? Now I regret not trying to change form into a humanoid race back in YGGDRASIL'.
Inside the game the trade-off has always been clear for heteromorphic races: shed your form, sacrifice your racial skills. That's why most of the users of similar technique were changelings, they didn't have such drawbacks.
'But here?' Ren's human mind recoils. Without his racial gifts, would he be vulnerable? 'Would I risk Garm stopping following me and turning back into an enemy?'.
Garm's muzzle nudges his side, the wolf's breath warm even through the [Fur of the Nemean Lion]. Humtoc chirps a question, his voice small against the vastness of the plains. However Ren doesn't mind them, lost in his thoughts.
'Am I just paranoid?' Ren chides himself, though the word rings hollow. 'Or prudent?'. The line blurs. He twists the ring, its metal against his bark. He sighs inwardly. 'It's just a little too realistic disguise, it won't change who I or Sprout are'.
"M-master?" Humtoc's voice wavers noticing Sprout's fungal eyes furrowing, the wide eyes of the goblin glistening. "What's troubling you?"
Garm's growl cuts through the stillness, low and protective. "Young Master never has doubts!" The wolf's muzzle dips, brushing Sprout's bark-clad leg, a gesture both reverence and rebuke. "Garm is sure of it".
Sprout turns, his bark face softening as they meet Humtoc's trembling gaze. The goblin's lower lip quivers, his form, still so small, so fragile, so childish curling inward as if bracing for a blow. 'He thinks I'm abandoning him... how old is he anyway? Damn... I am feeling like a father going out for milk for fuck sake!' Ren realizes, a pang of guilt sharp as his thorns.
"From this moment forth" Sprout intones, his voice carrying the weight of roots shifting deep underground. "Our paths shall diverge… momentarily". His words, despite being the truth, taste bitter, even if they are couched in Sprout's grandeur. "I alone shall tread the realm of mortal men".
Garm's snarl rips through the air, feral and raw. "Garm refuses!" The wolf's claws gouge the earth, his crimson eyes blazing like hellfire. "Garm refuses to leave young Master alone!"
Humtoc whimpers, tears streaking his green cheeks. "M-master? Y-you won't… abandon me, right?"
'No second thoughts' Ren commands himself, even as Sprout's chest metaphorically tightens. The goblin's terror is palpable, a child's fear of darkness, of being left behind.
'I am just going for a reconnaissance. I can't bring a Raid Boss and a goblin inside a human Kingdom!' pleads Ren, even though Humtoc's can't hear him.
"I shall not forsake thee" Sprout declares, bending to brush a gnarled fingertip against Humtoc's greenish skin. The goblin leans into the touch, hiccuping softly.
"Tis merely prudence that guides my path. Humtoc, you shall survey the bulwark's eastern flank. Garm,guard him as your own pup".
The wolf's ears flatten. "Young Master… asks Garm to abandon duty?"
"Nay" Sprout corrects, firm yet gentle. "I charge thee with a greater one".
Garm's growl dwindles to a whine, his massive head bowing. Humtoc sniffles, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "O-okay, Master. B-but… come back?"
"Swiftly" Sprout promises, the nearby leaves shaking as if moved by Ren's promise.
As Garm turns, Humtoc twists in the wolf's fur, his tiny hand outstretched. "M-master! P-promise!"
Sprout's blossoms tremble. "By Yggdrasil's roots… I, scion of the All-Mother, do solemnly vow to thee, I shall return".
Ren can't help the warmth that blooms in his chest, a flicker of amusement cutting through the weight of his resolve and the urgency of his situation.
'It's like making a promise to a child' he thinks, his human heart softening at Humtoc's earnestness. The goblin's wide eyes, brimming with trust, and his tiny, trembling hand reaching out, it's a scene so pure, so achingly innocent, that it momentarily strips away the layers of Sprout's stoic exterior.
'Oh, I have an idea'.
Sprout's massive hand rises, the bark-like fingers unfurling like the branches of an ancient tree. He extends his pinkie, the digit still longer than Humtoc's entire hand, and bends it slightly in a gesture both awkward and endearing.
"In the realms blessed by the Verdant Grace" Sprout intones, his voice carrying the weight of ritual. "There exists a custom of utmost sanctity. Known as the Pinkie Promise, it is the most solemn of vows that two individuals may exchange".
Humtoc's face lights up, his earlier tears forgotten as a triumphant smile spreads across his features. He scrambles forward, his tiny hand reaching out to circle Sprout's pinkie with his own. The contrast is almost comical, the goblin's delicate finger barely able to wrap around the massive, wooden one of the [Sprout of Yggdrasil].
"Promise!" Humtoc shouts, his voice ringing with a child's unshakable faith.
Sprout's fungal eyes glimmer with something akin to fondness. "Troth" he replies, the word heavy with meaning.
"Garm is jealous" protests the warden of Hel. "Garm too wants to make promise!" he barks giving his paw to Sprout. "With great rapture, I pledge troth unto thee".
After the holy vow of 'Pinkie Promise' the two followers of Sprout depart from their master
obeying his orders, with Humtoc riding on Garm's fur.
'In case of need I can cast [Message] and tell Garm to find a safe location for Humtoc before summoning him. Or, I could teleport away with [Greater Teleportation]'.
—
The crisp morning air carries whispers along the battlements of the Great Wall, where two soldiers lean against weathered stone, their breath fogging in the dawn chill.
"Heard the latest from the Black Report?" The first soldier smirks, picking dirt from his gauntlet. "Zoastia and Bafolk hordes retreat, scamper back to their dung-heap territories like whipped curs".
His companion snorts. "Bullshit. What scares those savages? A thunderclap?"
"Dunno. But last night's patrols don't spot a single claw or hoofprint. Quiet as a graveyard".
Unnoticed, a shadow lingers at the edge of their conversation, Neia Baraja, her slight frame swallowed by a charcoal-gray cape that pools around her like spilled ink.
The fabric, threadbare at the hem, bears the faintest imprint of the Holy Kingdom Army's crest, though none notices. Her sword hangs at her hip, its pommel worn smooth from restless fingers gripping it for courage.
'Dad?' The word hooks into her chest. Her father's name, Pabel Baraja, carries weight here, in the grimy corners of the Northern Army where he patrols the Great Wall. 'The demi-humans…'
Neia steps forward, her boots scuffing stone. The soldiers turn, their smirks faltering as her face catches the light.
She is a storm cloud in human form.
Short, wheat-gold hair frames features sharp enough to cut glass. Her eyes, black as crow feathers, uptilted and unblinking, pierce the men with an intensity that makes them shift uneasily.
The shadows beneath them, deep and bruise-purple, only deepen the illusion of menace, as if she's crawled from some back-alley den of cutthroats.
Yet her posture betrays her: spine rigid with military discipline, chin lifted not in defiance, but in desperate hope they don't see the girl hidden beneath the glare.
"I-I'm sorry to interrupt" she says, voice low and rasping, as though unaccustomed to speech. She bows, the motion stiff, her cape slipping to reveal a tunic patched with the Kingdom's colors, the iconic light blue and white.
"Squire Neia Baraja. I bear a missive from the Paladin Order in Kalinsha".
The soldiers exchange glances. The first snatches the sealed parchment from her hand, his eyes skittering away from hers. "Right. I'll… get this to the duty general".
Neia nods, retreating as the man hurries off. Her fingers brush the crest on her sword, the same emblem that adorns her mother's armor. 'Someday' she vows. 'I'll wear it too'.
But for now, she lingers, her crow-black eyes sweeping the horizon where silence reigns. The wind tugs at her cape, carrying the scent of the woods, instead of the one of blood and iron.
'What happens out there?'
Neia's gaze narrows as a silhouette breaches the horizon, its outline sharpening with each step toward the gate. At first, her hand drifts to her sword, demi-human? But no. This figure moves with a cadence too deliberate, too… human. Yet as it nears, her instincts coil tighter.
The man is a real colossus carved from legends.
Sunlight gilds his hair, a cascade of bright yellow braids threaded with ivy and knotted leather, framing a face so symmetrically perfect it borders on the uncanny.
High cheekbones, a jawline honed like a blade manufactured with utmost care, eyes the color of moss agate, cold, ancient, yet startlingly alive like a bright fire.
His skin seems like the shiniest ivory mixed with marble of a faint pink shade. To Neia's eyes he's the perfect mixture between the pale white skin of a noble and the colour of a commoner who worked under the warm light of the sun all day.
His armor defies common reason: plates of living wood, polished to a deep amber sheen, cling to his frame like a perfect cover for his body.
Symbols pulse faintly along the edges, their glow the same venomous green as forest depths at dusk. Over his shoulders spills a mantle of golden fur, thick and primal, its edges bristling with frost-kissed brambles.
But it's his presence that steals her breath, even from atop of the Great Wall. Every motion is fluid, effortless, the swing of his arms, the roll of his shoulders, as though his very bones are woven from the land itself.
No soldier's gait, no noble's swagger. He walks like a force of nature, the earth parting for him as if in reverence. In the Slane Theocracy there is a saying 'Humans are Masters of Nature', if it was true then this man was its living proof.
Neia's throat tightens, she doesn't trust that figure. 'Too perfect' she immediately declares.
Men aren't sculpted this way, not even the best paladins blessed by the Four Great gods. His beauty is a weapon, edges honed to disarm. And that armor… She's seen enchanted gear before, but this? The wood breathes, veins of sap glimmering beneath the surface like gilded lightning.
The man pauses before the gate, one gauntleted hand resting on a staff of gnarled oak, its apex crowned with flowers and leaves that flutter despite the windless air. His gaze lifts, to them, to the garrison, and for a heartbeat, the world stills.
'What are you?' she thinks, her pulse a drumbeat in her ears. Not a question of race, he was clearly human, but of essence. This man is a paradox, she doesn't trust him.
Neia pivots her head to the side to look at the soldiers' reaction at the man, all of them have a similar response. 'They are looking at him like he is a god-sent warrior!? It's obvious he's dangerous...' she thinks when the man speaks.
—
The Great Wall looms before Ren, its ancient stones steeped in the patina of decades, yet to his eyes, still half-accustomed to Earth's skeletal skyscrapers of cold steels, it thrums with a vitality that steals his breath.
He'd used a simple [Hasten] spell to close the distance, but now, standing here in this borrowed flesh, he feels unmoored.
The [Ring of Natural Morphing] hums against his finger, a constant reminder of the paradox he's become: a human mind inside a divine creature of bark and myth which is crammed into the shape of a man in turn.
'What even is this appearance?' Ren's mind recoils as he studies his hands, broad, calloused palms full of life and physicality, fingers thick with the promise of strength.
In the 22nd century, humanity had been a gallery of withering forms: sallow skin stretched over brittle bones, eyes hollowed by sleepless nights and recycled air.
As a doctor, he'd charted the decline of human health, lungs blackened by smog, muscles atrophied from endless confinement or destroyed by inhumane job conditions, faces gaunt under flickering fluorescent lights. But this body…
He flexes his arm, watching the play of muscle beneath sun-kissed skin. This is a relic to the man's eyes.
A throwback to eras when humans laboured under open skies, their bodies honed by struggle and sustenance, not by chemicals and cyber tech.
The soldiers atop the wall mirror that vigor, their cheeks flushed with blood, not pallor, their frames broad, not starved. One man laughs after hearing a joke from his colleague, the sound booming and unguarded, and Ren's chest tightens.
'When did I last hear laughter like that?'
Yet, when he's visible by them, their awe mirrors his own. As he steps into the shadow of the gate, a hush falls. The guards stiffen, their eyes widening as they drink in the vision before them
Sprout's human guise is like the God of Earth torn from legend. His hair, a cascade of golden braids interwoven with ivy and oak leaves, frames a face perfectly symmetrical, flawless; a sculptor's homage to mortal beauty.
His armor, living wood etched with emerald runes, clings to him like a second skin, its surface shimmering as if drenched in morning dew. The mantle draped over his shoulders, a pelt of gilded fur, ripples with each step, though no wind stirs the air.
But it's his eyes that amaze them. Moss-agate green, they glow faintly, depths swirling with the patience of ancient forests.
"Hail and well met!" Sprout's voice booms, rich and sonorous, every syllable weighted with the authority of roots splitting stone. "I crave pardon for mine unheralded arrival".
'Oh not not again with this manner of speech Sprout!' Ren cringes inwardly. 'I sound like a bad Shakespearean actor'.
They stagger back, hands flying to their hearts or sword hilts, as though his mere voice is a blade pressed to their throats. One young soldier makes a strange sign with his hands, resembling a sign of the cross, another mutters a prayer to the Holy Kingdom's Four Great Gods.
The dissonance is dizzying. 'They see me as a saint? Or, something on the line of that, just like Humtoc sees me as a God. However, I feel like a fraud'.
Ren's old self, a man who'd spent nights in the greasy hospital corridors with countless rooms full of life-support machines, screams at the absurdity.
Yet Sprout's borrowed flesh thrums with power, with health, and for a fleeting moment, Ren understands the guards' reverence.
'This is what humans were meant to be, not the pale walking corpses back on Earth'.
However a voice in Ren's head whispers at him. A fly buzzing near his ears. A mosquito stinging his hand. He doesn't like it, he doesn't like this body of his, Sprout doesn't like this body of his. He doesn't like humans, Sprout doesn't like humans.
Ren shakes his head and enters the Gate opened in front of him.