Groaning, Michael healed his cracked ribs before he charged back into the fight, dodging around the animated roots that reached out from the earth to grab at him. Gripping his brass knuckles tight, Michael flooded mana into the weapon as he threw an uppercut, shattering a root that threatened to impale him.

He couldn't help but flash back to the sparring match their team had with Jun and her cat all those months ago. This fight felt similar to that one, though much had changed since then.

Dodging around roots that sought to crush and stab him, he sent out counterblows, flooding his healing magic into the roots to disrupt the biological matter and make it easier to crush.

A trick he hadn't known all those months ago, instead relying on technique and pure physical strength to fight. Arwen certainly hadn't taught him this, or much of anything for that matter. Good riddance to that psychotic bastard. Dodging another incoming blow, Michael spit at his enemy, ridding his mouth of the unspoken name of a hated foe that was now dead.

Much had definitely changed since he last fought a foe that relied on snares or tendrils. That fight with Jun had been one Arwen forced upon them as a test for Jun to prove her place on the team. One they hadn't agreed with even as they fought their hardest. After all, nobody wanted to piss off the unstable elf at the time. They hadn't expected Jun to win, but between the unpredictable nature of her snares and her unusual cat, their purple-haired teammate won.

Then the Winter Expedition happened and Michael witnessed as Jun grew even stronger, her snares and barriers becoming more powerful. Though she hadn't been able to kill, her powerful barriers and snares helped control the battlefield, making all of their jobs easier.

But things were different now. Whatever reasons Jun had for avoiding lethal spells, she'd gotten over it. Watching her hunt and kill a Mage Hunter alone made that clear enough. As for her cat that she'd relied on in the past, Michael hadn't seen the fuzzy creature since the Winter Expedition. He couldn't help but worry about the creature, but Jun didn't seem to mention her at all. If Jun wasn't worried, Michael couldn't waste the effort to be worried for her.

Besides, there were weirder things afoot. Like the catkin he could feel watching his every move, even if he couldn't see or sense the mana of anyone besides the grove of Corrupted Ents he fought.

Michael dove under a grasping vine, transitioning the roll into a downward heel strike as he brained a squat ent that could've been mistaken as a simple tree stump. If tree stumps could bleed. The Corrupted Ent wailed as it died, but Michael couldn't celebrate his victory just yet. There were more of them.

Channeling mana into his arms and legs, he transitioned through the [FIghter's Forms], striking blow after blow in a technique meant to be equal parts brutal to feel and beautiful to watch. A straight punch blew away a questing vine before he transitioned into a sweeping roundhouse kick that severed a pair of roots. The kick became a step that took him forward into the guard of another Ent which he finished with a hooking punch. The Ent itself became a weapon as he grabbed its flailing vines and whirled about, sending the dying monster into another of its kind.

The fighting was mindless for him, his body moving on instinct beaten into him by long days training in the hot sun of a sandy arena. With nothing better to do, his mind continued to turn to the changes of the past few months.

Jun's cat was missing, or perhaps she left it in her room now, realizing how dangerous their chosen profession truly was. After all, if a Peak Gold could die on what should've been a training mission, any one of them could die. Even if that Peak Gold was a useless, psychotic elf. Michael spit again, cursing Arwen's name with his thoughts as he did.

No, his teammate was no longer quite so naive about the world and had steadily blossomed into a competent fighter under their most recent tutors. A strange pair of beastkin that included a catkin who shared the name of Jun's cat, and called herself Jun's mother. Jun seemed accepting of her, but the quiet girl hadn't elaborated, nor had they found the time and privacy to interrogate her over the strange developments.

Stolen story; please report.

He knew that Aya meant to ask her, but there'd been an air of awkwardness between them since Aya's outburst the other day.

He, Cian, and Keira spoke of it in hushed voices the other night when they were meant to be sleeping in preparation for their turns on watch. They got where Aya was coming from. After all, two women or two men together was just unnatural. Without children, who would become the next generation?

But, did it really matter who Jun wanted to spend time with? He'd seen many pairings growing up. Men with women. Men with men. Women with women. All of it seemed strange to him. Even if women were necessary to bear the next generation, there was more to life than children. Besides, it's not like any of them were nobles who had to follow insane rules about blood and lineage.

Michael was shaken from his musings as a trio of Corrupted Ents penned him in, their blows timed so that he couldn't defend himself against all of them. Shattering the thinner vines that were flexible enough to grasp him, Michael accepted a heavy swipe to his side that knocked him back with the sound of cracking bone towards a massive Ent. The Grove Keeper, Michael thought as the massive Ent's maw opened wide to catch him. Curling himself into a ball, Michael let himself fall into the Grove Keeper's maw as he cycled his restorative spell throughout his body, the aches and pains of his wounds healing under the influence of his magic.

Hitting the Grove Keeper's tongue, Michael bounced and rolled, narrowly avoiding the monster's sharp fangs to roll down the Ent's throat like he was a giant pill. Woody flesh crushed in around him, and he smiled to himself as he lashed out with his magic using one of the tricks he'd learned from the fearsome foxkin Inari. Healing magic was the realm of restoration, of putting flesh back together and breathing life into it. From sealing wounds and mending bones to restoring lost limbs and even reviving the recently deceased with enough power. Most thought healing magic only good for support, but Inari had shown them another trick. Healing was also destruction. Destruction of foreign objects and poisons in the body, destruction of cancerous cells to replace them with healthy new ones, destruction of parasites and the microbes that caused diseases. Destruction was a part of every healing spell, but it was usually contained and limited. Dissolving a bone shard here, burning away an infection there, cutting away cancerous tumors and replacing them with clean flesh. And a healer with the right knowledge could amplify those aspects while minimizing the beneficial ones, turning their healing magic into a potent, if expensive, weapon.

Michael used that skill now. Reaching out with his magic, Michael felt for the connections between the Grove Keeper's cells, the patterns that gave its body structure, and he disrupted them. Muscle and bone that had been crushing in around him, trying to force him into the Ent's stomach, instead became a slop of unidentifiable goo around him. The creature roared in pain as Michael carved a a bloody path through the Ent's chest until he arrived at the inner layer of the Ent's barklike skin.

One blow after another thudded into the fatty layer beneath the bark, and slowly, Michael tore a gaping wound through the Ent, emerging from the barklike skin as Merinthia's largest, and deadliest, pimple. A flood of blood, pus, and denatured flesh gushed out after him as the Grove Keeper whimpered and died.. As the dead Ent deflated behind him, Michael stumbled and caught himself, his head woozy from draining his mana.

The healer dropped into a fighting stance as the remaining Ents screeched and lashed out. Hemmed in, Michael resorted to a slow, defensive strategy, taking blows on his forearms and shins with his back to the dead King of the Grove. It was a painful affair as the Ent's whipping blows left gashes in his flesh and shattered bone. His slowly recovering mana was barely enough to heal the worst of his wounds, just enough to keep his limbs intact enough to fight and launch the occasional counterattack.

It took nearly an hour for him to break the rest of the Grove's vines and roots so that the Ents could no longer reach him, and another half hour of careful meditation as the remaining monsters impotently glared at him to recover enough to begin his assault anew. The remaining fight was a simple matter of pruning the Grove Ent by Ent until all that remained was several dozen shattered corpses and a panting healer.

A subtle flare of mana was all the warning Michael got that something was sneaking up on him from behind. Michael stiffened in surprise and turned around while dropping into a fighting stance, only to relax as he saw his latest teacher nod approvingly at him.

"Good reflexes and senses Michael. Well done," Shiori the catkin said, tossing him a scroll as the rest of his team emerged from the woods to join them.

"Silver Bounty: Corrupted Ent Grove

A Grove of Corrupted Ents has rapidly multiplied and pushed other plant based monsters closer to the edge of the Forest. It is critical that the Grove be eliminated before the end of Winter to reduce the likelihood of explosive population growth during the Spring Season.

Eliminate Corrupted Ent Grove and return with Corrupted Grove Keeper Heart as proof of elimination.

Recommended Party: 5 Peak Iron

Reward: 35 gold"

Reading the bounty scroll, Michael could only grimace as he looked back at the deflated Grove Keeper.

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