The First Great Game (A Litrpg/Harem Series)

Chapter 207: The crazy tree

Little hairs rose on Mason's neck. Then the increasingly familiar smell of arcane power being channeled hit his nostrils.

"Becky, help Phuong."

He couldn't see the shaman but felt somehow he was ahead and not above. He couldn't shoot what he couldn't see, nor did he have time to explain to Seamus. So he stepped back and dropped his bow, activated Aspect of the Cheetah, and ran straight for the broken ice wall.

Time seemed to slow.

The awaiting gnolls braced themselves and readied claws, surprised but not unhappy as Mason rushed to meet them. Then he leapt and soared above them, only one of the creatures acting fast enough to rake upwards, though still miss terribly.

Mason saw the shaman from the air. A gnoll at the back was covered in dangling bones, fur stained and colored with plants and maybe blood. Mason smashed a knee into the face of a wide-eyed gnoll just waiting for its turn at the ramp. The sound of bone crunching was fortunately not his, and the creature bounced away like a limp doll as Mason rose and summoned his blades.

Gnolls leapt from multiple angles but he just slashed and ran. A claw raked down his shoulder but he didn't care. He sliced the last gnoll between him and his target, finding the shaman with arms held wide, a sizzling power building between them, locked in concentration. He glanced up with utter confusion. Then Mason cut off his hands.

Things got a little wild after that.

First, the power spiraled out of control. It was like a top that crashed on its side, blue and white energy previously in a tight, growing spiral, not unleashed in messy threads all over the room. Mason saw a huge wave of text in the corner of his eye.

[Nature Affinity: Spell Effect partially resisted.]

[Apex predator activated: Elemental affinity gained.]

[Elemental affinity: Spell Effect partially resisted.]

[Apex Predator activated: enemy's affinity resist removed x12]

Crackling energy and blistering cold erupted with enough force it blasted Mason two steps back. He covered his face until it ended, then stood and saw the shaman sprawled on the floor against the wall, his face half bone, his fur seared away.

The air rang with a high pitched whine that Mason expected was just his ears expressing concern. All around him gnolls were trying to stand, looking like they'd been hit with a mortar round.

Mason didn't seem particularly hurt, and a piece of him felt pity in that moment. The rest of him told that piece to shut the fuck up.

He raced across the room slashing anything in reach, spraying blood as the disoriented creatures desperately tried to recover enough to fight back. He had six killed or crippled before the first charged into him, swiping feebly as Mason growled and smashed his forehead into its face.

It reeled back in shock, canine-like mouth mashed and broken against Mason's skull. He cut its throat and ran past.

"Mason!"

Becky's voice pierced the whine in his ears, and he kept slashing his way towards her. He tossed deadly traps in random directions just to make chaos, spinning as something clawed his back, but dropping low to cut off a foot before spinning away again.

A gnoll leapt on his side and bit his face. He roared and unsummoned his swords, grabbed its jaw with both hands and pried until he'd pulled it entirely apart with a terrible cracking, then tossed the creature away.

He roared and spun on the others as he re-summoned his blades.

"Not in a tutorial now, are we?" he yelled, spinning his blades. "Come on, then. Come on!"

Another gnoll charged, and Mason hacked off an arm before caving its chest with a front kick, knocking it flying away. The others turned and fled.

Mason ran back towards his friends, finding Rebecca staring at him from the ramp, clearly trying to get to him. Phuong and Seamus remained on the platform, the wizard yelling insults as the gnolls fled from him, the swordsman kicking a few corpses off the ramp.

"Are you OK?" Rebecca was staring with a strange expression as Mason came forward. She cringed slightly as he stepped towards her, and he realized, she was afraid.

"I’m OK," he said unsummoning his blades. "Are you guys alright?"

She nodded, clearly still disturbed, but he didn't have the time or inclination then to comfort her. No doubt Transformation and Duality of Strength were making him...interesting to look at. But she was a player, just like the others, and she had to get used to seeing him in battle.

He looked around, heightened senses detecting gnolls everywhere still, moving up and down the ramps and crawling through other walls.

"Good, because there's a lot more," he said, then ignored her.

Something was bothering him about the creatures. He was trying to comprehend how they seemed so...at home in this tree. Feeling almost natural to it. It wasn't like the others, and he had the feeling he wasn't understanding something important.

He walked to a crystalline fragment of the wall, holding his nymph charm as he activated Speak with Nature. It was time to see what the hell was going in.

* * *

Cold. Nightmarish cold. Mason felt like he stood on a mountaintop, naked as a gale pierced his flesh and stripped his bones. He shivered and almost pulled away his hand, but fought the urge as he closed his eyes. It got a little easier.

[I'm here to help] Mason 'spoke' with his mind and not out loud. Probably. [What's hurting you? How do I protect you?]

A guttural scream of horror pierced Mason's ears, and maybe his heart. He shivered at the suffering in the sound. Then images flashed before his eyes of a tiny sapling growing on a frozen tundra. Time sped up, days turning to months then years as the tree grew and changed the world around it.

Life and warmth radiated everywhere as the Great Tree grew. Other trees sprung up around it, expanding and expanding until they joined the forest to the south. When the land faced drought, it lowered the earth and turned it into a valley, carving a path for rivers to flow from the mountains.

It saw constant birth and death, the images flashing so fast Mason couldn't keep up. He saw humanoids warring to live near it, to use pieces of it, to worship it. Predators and prey lived and died in an endless procession in its branches and shadow.

Then came the endless frost.

Time slowed as the tree showed Mason some kind of cabal of wizards. They were all humanoid, but not necessarily human. They wore dark cloaks and carried staffs or rods, and seemed to draw life and magic from the tree.

As Mason watched he realized he saw symbols on the men he recognized from the Devourer's lair. From the Maker's vault. Were these wizards 'Makers'?

Their spell grew in power, and though Mason didn't know what they were doing, he knew it was harming the tree. Suddenly the snow erupted all around them—defenders with white fur and claws and fangs, roaring as they charged to protect the tree. Mason blinked.

They were gnolls.

The wizards flashed with shields, chanting and swirling with energy as they held back the gnolls or ripped them apart with magic as they continued. For a moment it seemed a completely one sided battle, the wizards all but ignoring the creatures. Then the tree shook and flared with green light, and the wizard's shields popped and flickered.

The gnolls renewed their attack, fearless and relentless, leaping over the splashes of their own blood, staining the snow. Still the wizards blasted them apart, but Mason could hear the panic in their voices as they shouted commands. Then one screamed as a gnoll's claws raked his face.

What happened next reminded Mason of interrupting the gnoll shaman's spell. But multiplied a thousand times.

Arcane energy exploded outward in a sphere, ripping the wizards and the gnolls apart as it projected. The power struck the tree, spraying bark and cracking wood, cutting off branches and moving further and further as it blasted the surrounding forest apart.

Time increased again.

The area was forever changed, some kind of perpetual winter forming from the failed spell that re-shaped the landscape and trapped the season in arcane energy. But the Great Tree survived, maintaining life as best it could, adapting to the land and giving shelter to life as before. The gnolls were invited inside. Mason saw them bring their young, vanishing inside the trunk just as players did.

Mason felt...appreciation, warmth, respect. Then anger. It echoed and filled his mind as time froze until he realized....it was for him.

There was more to the story, more images, Mason knew, but they flashed forward until he saw himself entering the tree, killing gnolls in a murderous frenzy.

Then his vision filled with two white eyes rimmed with red, pulsing with blue and green energy like a heart beating.

[I didn't know] he tried to say, feeling the energy building with malicious intent, creeping towards him. He tried to apologize, to explain, but the tree was injured, inarticulate, nothing like the great tree he'd spoken to before. He yanked his hand and mind away, seeing Apex Predator trigger to sever the connection.

"Mason? Is everything OK?"

Mason blinked back to reality and found Rebecca's concerned eyes watching him. He tried to smile a little for her, then rubbed some of the cold out of his hands. He looked to Phuong and Seamus, too, trying not to think about being buried alive.

"Well. The tree is maybe crazy. And we need to somehow avoid killing all those hundreds of gnolls that want us dead while we go down to that tunnel. Any questions?"

Phuong and Becky shook their heads. Seamus just sort of slumped.