Tree of Death

John had studied enough patterns in his time to recognize the way the hollowed-out roots had ‘grown’. Of course, they hadn’t actually grown, being as much a spawn of Gaia’s design as everything else inside the Instant Dungeon… well, that was arguably true beyond the Instant Dungeon as well, but the rest of (what John understood to be) reality wasn’t this obviously made as a game.

The point was that Gaia liked using environmental clues to reward the observant. Mapping out which tunnels were created by tree roots thus created a pattern that could be traced up the branch and to the stem.

Very easily said in theory, but like almost everything else, it was the practice that was the issue. In this case, it was just the scale of the Dungeon that made it time consuming. Like the combat encounters, it was not difficult, it just needed doing.

Their party continued on through the Demon Dungeon, slaying monsters, bantering, and stopping occasionally for quickies. That was their life for two hours, until they reached the boss room.

A massive, double-sided door made from black stone barred them a view of what was inside.

“Once we enter, we’ll get sealed in,” John reminded all of them. “We have no idea about the mechanics, but also this will be balanced with that in mind. We’ll have leeway for mistakes, unlike Raids, so don’t be too worried about performing. Don’t ragequit if someone makes a mistake.”

“Rage- what?” Moira asked.

“It’s his MMO trauma,” Jane said.

“So many morons that can’t stand a 4 minute setback…” John shook his head. “Point being that we can expect mechanics with either gracious wind-up times or recovery windows. As long as we don’t do anything idiotic, we’ll get our win. Hailey – you are on Forbidden Fluid duty. When I give you the signal, run and press it on one of the faces. If there are no faces or if you aren’t up for the task, we’ll improvise.”

“Got it,” the country gal responded. “What’s the signal?”

John acted out his hurried voice. “’Hailey, there is your opening! Get in there!’”

The sexy grease monkey laughed, making the Gamer’s soul sing from the resonance. “That works,” she said.

“Fantastic. Ehtra, if you would?”

“Affirmative.” The First of Hatred stepped up to the door and gave both halves a shove. They moved in unison, swinging inwards with an ease that belied the weight such stones should have had.

The boss room was a truly gargantuan dome over a hundred metres across and several dozen high. The ceiling was held up by the branches of the massive tree in its centre, the multitude of gnarled branches twisting and turning in unnatural ways, forming a thicket of the greyish-brown wood that resembled petrified entrails.

The trunk of the tree was oddly thick and short, a stubby bridge between those disgusting branches and the enormous roots that drilled into the floor. They looked like the tendrils of a dead, eldritch entity, sinking into the stone mercilessly, cracking the matte floor around them.

The five of them stepped into the boss room. They were greeted by a wailing triad of voices, a male, female and childlike one all overlapping. “Youuuuuuuuuu…!” On the short stretch of trunk, bark pulsed and wiggled, as if worms were crawling beneath the surface. The motions coalesced into three faces, each befitting one of the voices. “First you kill my saplings, then you kill me, then you banish me from heaven, and now you even follow me to hell!”

“I would feel really bad if you were real,” John confessed.

“If I kill you, I will be!”

The stone gates fell shut with an echoing slam. Around the edges of the room, four tree roots burst from the ground. Simultaneously, a curtain of blood red energy descended from the branches like the leaves of a willow.

“Same old, same old,” John declared while each of the roots brought forth a fully corrupted Miner, more tree than flesh. “Take out the adds, I will destroy the roots.”

“Understood!” Moira raised her shield and charged across the room, slamming into the nearest of the Miners with the force of a battering ram. Hailey, Ehtra and Jane followed her example, scattering out so each of them faced one of the adds.

John arranged his fingers carefully. With an excess regeneration of 269 and no elementals in this Dungeon to otherwise draw from his mana, he could fire up a 3-laser Arcana Ray and sustain it for a very long time. The activation cost 3000, the sustaining 300 – his Mana Pool of 51718 could absolutely stomach that.

Three silver lights became one. A slicing stream of mana rapidly advanced through the air, meeting the elevated root and slicing into the undead bark. Tiny movements of the Gamer’s thumb translated to the laser zig-zagging as he moved his arm down. Within moments, the root broke apart, then turned to dust. John redirected his attention to the next root.

Jane, Ehtra and Moira were all crushing their opponents. An add spawned and was nearly immediately obliterated by fist, sword or hammer. Hailey struggled twice over, lacking combat experience and having to keep a hold of the sphere of Forbidden Fluid. She relied heavily on the protection offered to her by the ice plate while swinging a frozen mace at her opponent. It wasn’t the most effective, but it was sufficient. A crack to the head and the add collapsed into dust.

Swiftly, John dispatched the remaining three tree roots. The Tree of Death wailed in frustration, its defence curtain disappearing. “Now, Hailey!” he shouted.

“I got it!” The country gal was already moving. The faces on the bark stared with black eyes at the approaching woman. Red embers lit up in all of them. Hailey leapt to the side, executing a Dark Souls-worthy roll as a trio of infernal lights left a scorch mark where she had just been. Her charge continued. She jumped atop one of the roots, then further up, pressing the orb against the child face midair.

The Forbidden Fluid streamed into the gaps of mouth and eyes. “OHHHHH, DO YOU HAVE NO SHAME!” the remaining two faces wailed, while the energy beneath the bark was drawn out as golden worms, to be rapidly devoured by the sphere.

The process concluded in less time than gravity needed to pull Hailey back down. A simple fall was not in the cards, as a shockwave of red energy cleared the area around the tree trunk before the protective layer re-established itself. The enigma engineer was flung across the room. A painful impact would have awaited her, had John not Magus Stepped into the trajectory, catching her with his arms.

“One down, two to go,” he said.

“I will kill you! I will! I will! I will!” the petulant duality of voices screamed out. Five tree roots now rose along the edge of the room. The damage to the floor spread wide, shards of rock collapsing into an ocean of shadow. Tortured souls reached up from the liquid black, collapsing helplessly back into the abyss. About 20% of the floor was now untraversable.

It was an annoyance, but not really a hindrance, especially not for Ehtra. The grey angel took to the air, diving down on one of the newly spawned Miners and sawing the creature in two with a descending plunge. The crouch of her impact immediately turned into the starting point of the next leap.

John simply repeated what he had done before, using his Arcana Ray to slice each of the five spawning points into pieces. It took him about ten seconds per spawner and each spawner brought forth an additional enemy every fifteen seconds. The three expert combatants he had tore through them at an adequate peace, leaving the room effectively void of additional enemies.

Knowing her part in this, Hailey stayed clear of the adds, instead waiting at the edge of the red curtain. The second it went down again, she was leaping back in. She lingered for a moment at the foot of the tree roots, waiting for the infernal lasers. Once she had dodged them, she trusted in her video game intuition and lingered a second time. John smirked when she dodged the second set of lasers as well, then pressed the orb on the female face.

“Why! Oh, youuuuuuuuuu!” the last remaining face screamed with a comical amount of rage. Again, Hailey was flung back and again John caught her.

Six roots rose. More of the floor crumbled. Crystal spires dropped down from the ceiling, introducing visual barriers of indestructible terrain. John had seen all of this before. Though it did increase the difficulty, it was all manageable.

Jane was zapping from platform to platform, at times running, at times turning into a streak of light. She worked double time, snapping back and forth between two of the roots to take out the adds on both.

John had to reposition several times with Magus Step to reach all of the spawners, but the ultimate outcome was the same. After about two minutes, the last of the roots went down and Hailey once more closed in on the tree trunk. Confidently, she dodged the first, the second, and then the third laser impact, before leaping upwards and pressing the Forbidden Fluid into the final face.

“OOOOH, THE HUMANITY!” the Tree of Death screamed his last scream. The golden worms were all absorbed into the sphere, now itself more gold than it was red and black. Starting where the faces had been, the tree began to disintegrate. The pillars of crystal crumbled. The seas of shadow seeped away, leaving regular stone at the bottom of the gaps.

‘YES! Thank you, Gaia,’ John thought and turned to Moira with a lecherous grin.

The redhead returned his stare with a highly sceptical amount of side-eye. “What schemes are boiling within that lust-addled mind of yours?”

Rather than answer, he gave the finale of the Quest a tap so that the window flew Moira’s way. She read over the text, blushed, wiggled uncomfortably and crossed her arms. “To have one’s purity mocked by one’s own deity…” the Shield Warden mumbled.

“Face it, Moi-Moi, your Lady is a perv too,” Jane threw in.

“That I cannot entirely refute,” Moira sighed. “At least her chosen avatar has… clearly demonstrated a streak of delight in sexual activities. Still!” The Warden raised herself by the heels, then came back down. “If the Lady wished debauchery to be the baseline of our conduct, she would have made a world in which such indulgences are rewarded with prosperous societies.”

“A fair point,” John said. “Counterpoint: we are not advertising debauchery to the masses.”

“No… you are not…” Moira just sighed, surrendering to the outcome of a dialogue tree played through a hundred times. “Fine! If the Lady wishes to put me in a bodysuit, then I will at least test the bloody thing.”

For the second time during this Dungeon dive, Moira stripped out of her armour. This time, not even her undergarments remained. The group was salivating at her naked body, something the Warden was very aware of. Partially showing off, partially embarrassed, she grabbed the Forbidden Fluid from Hailey and pressed it against her chest.

“Lady, I wish to fulfil your will. If this is what your guiding Quest has chosen for me, then I shall oblige,” she prayed.

The Forbidden Fluid lost its spherical shape. Red, gold and black streamed over Moira's body, stopping where her neck transitioned to her head at the top and with her toes at the bottom. The uneven sea of latex-like glisten shifted on top of her, making the Warden sigh in obvious signs of stimulation. Her breathing evened as the bodysuit took its shape.

Black and red formed the base. The colour of wine covered her inner thighs, her abs, and clung to her breasts with such acuity that they mildly sagged, as if naked. The perky points of her nipples were suggested by the material, but remained covered under the uniform coat. Black framed it all, going up her sides, her legs and her arms. On her back, the black divided the deliciously emphasized twin globes of her butt from her less but still firmly erotic back muscles.

It was a fairly basic look, though that changed when the gold surfaced.

Impossibly flexible metal formed sheets on the outside of her legs first, then appeared beneath her breasts, where it formed an underline that followed the black to her back, where it made for a decorative trim. The true mass of gold appeared above that, covering her neck, her shoulders and especially her arms. Reinforced, clawed gauntlets protected her forearms, a single part of this outfit that resembled a proper plate armour.

Once the gold had surfaced in all the places it wanted to be, Moira’s Blessing carved a multitude of lines into the resplendent surface. They formed a carpet of rose symbols, beautiful and stylish. A holy armament atop a sinful bodysuit.

The last touch of gold was the glow of the womb tattoo, echoed atop the wine red material in its original shape. Beneath it, the bodysuit was beyond suggestively tight, hinting at the shape of her womanhood. All in all, it certainly nailed the fusion of demonic origin with a paladin’s garb.

[Moira New Bodysuit AI: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/da0adb882ece.png ]

It was ‘only’ an Epic item, but it was all the same a perfect fit for Moira’s fighting style and dealt with the drawbacks of her Blessing nicely. There were also some obvious inspirations taken from Illuminare, but downturned for a lesser item. “I suppose you will have to wear it for the Stats,” John remarked.

Moira was blushing fiercely, inspecting her own suggestive form. “I can’t fight in this! I am bloody naked!” She turned around and John did have to agree that her ass wobbled as if there was nothing at all covering it. With the Second Skin enchantment, she actually felt naked too. “It doesn’t matter how good it is, this-“ She looked at the Attribute windows that John pushed in front of her. “Tarnation,” she cussed.

“Wooooow, strong words!” Jane mocked.

“You… you are prancing around feeling this unclad all the time?”

“Ja! Ain’t it the greatest?”

“It is humiliating!” Moira glanced again at the Attribute windows. “I will have to throw a tabard on top at least…”

Aclysia: I would like to inform all of you that dinner will be ready within 30 minutes. Please return in time to take a shower before eating.

“Well, that’s our signal,” John said. “This was fun enough.”

Even blushing, all agreed.