Bellona's axe blazed with the heat and power of the sun as she cleaved into another mass of writhing roots and vines. She grimly waded her way forward toward the center of the giant plant creature as her axe rose and fell continuously while resisting the battering blows her shield and armor constantly took. Elemental metal and earth reinforced her physical defenses, while her control over wood helped repel the creature. Fire was channeled to amplify the blessing of her goddess, Amirume, and wherever her axe sliced through plant flesh, steam and a scent akin to overcooked broccoli exploded, and the strange creature screamed.

She was not alone in her assault — Xarlug and Amrydor were slightly behind her, using the longer reach of their polearms to slice at vines that assaulted her, and behind them were Yugo and Taeko acting as backup and hacking back the parts of the creature that were trying to regrow.

The rest of their delving party were either dealing with the swarms of smaller creatures or attacking the main mass of the plant-creature from other directions, dividing its attention.

Mordecai was the only one without a specific role; his job was to be support for everyone else and make sure no one got hurt too badly. Bellona made no attempt to keep track of where he was at any moment; she had far too much to worry about right in front of her.

As Bellona hacked her way deep into the mass, it started shuddering and flailing, its actions becoming more erratic and less controlled. Finally, she cut through what seemed like a primary connection point for the different types of plants that made up this composite creature, and it spasmed one last time, spilling out the overly sweet scent of rotting vegetation, before going still.

Then, a heartbeat later, it began to move again, this time in creepy twitches as it started to gather itself. Amrydor leapt past her with a snarl and thrust his war scythe deep into the remaining tangle. His attack unleashed a pulse of divine energy mixed with death-attuned mana deep into the re-animating monster.

It fell still once more, and after a moment, Amrydor nodded in satisfaction. "It's staying properly dead this time." This was the reason that the young champion-in-training was up front with her for this fight.

The creatures that they had faced since leaving the dryad's grove had been increasing in power and weirdness. Some of them hadn't been too bad, such as the increased number of griffin variants; Moriko was faster than the falcon-cheetah, and Fuyuko could shoot them down. Takehiko, Orchid, and Kazue all had magic and foxfire to wield against any of of the variants, while Kansif, Bellona, or any of the three champion trainees could stop the charge of a terror bird-tiger combo, though not without risk and moderate injuries for a trainee by the time it was downed.

Then there had been the herd of boar-hippos that had come charging out of a river. Bigger than even normal hippos, these beasts came equipped with steel-hard hooves, a coating of thick bristles on top of their already tough hides, and three pairs of giant tusks to gore you with if they missed biting you. Their lone weakness had been their small, poorly focusing eyes that allowed the front line to continually evade the dangerous creatures until they were downed

Running into the gorilla-taurs on the same day had been frustrating, given how banged up her armor had already been. The bottom half of these centaur variants would have been suitable for heavy cavalry, and their upper bodies had modified musculature to enable them to use bows with the same proficiency that normal centaurs are renowned for.

Their arrows had been more like spears.

Those two fights had both resulted in some fairly serious injuries, and it had been clear to Bellona that this had been tough on Mordecai. She was certain he could have prevented most if not all of those injuries, but he had judged the risks acceptable and chosen not to intervene so that people could learn through the experience, whether it was figuring out how to not get hit that way in the future, how to keep moving while injured, or practice healing serious wounds.

This also left him free to make sure he could take care of things that would have otherwise been deadly. Even Bellona had required saving once; her armor had been cracked recently, and there had been a trio of thick arrows loosed her way. She had seen them, but hadn't been able to make herself move in time to react, and there was no way her armor could have stopped all three.

But then Mordecai appeared in front of her, deflecting one arrow with a spell, and swatting a second one aside with his shield. The third he simply let hit him. Even with his powerful spirit and scale-armored flesh, it had sunk into him by several inches, but he had simply pulled it out and thrown it back like it was a proper spear.

The explosion nearly obliterated the gorilla-taur that he hit; Bellona was fairly certain she'd caught a glimpse of him using his own blood that now coated the spear as a channel for a spell. Blood magic was potent stuff, though one had to be careful in its use. Ones own blood was generally the only acceptable source; Mordecai's pain resistance helped here, and was one thing Bellona envied about his avatar.

The day after that, things started getting simply weird.

Plant, insect, animal, and fungus had been combined in near-symmetries that would only make sense to the most twisted and alien of fae creatures. The one Bellona had found the most disturbing had been a gigantic toad creature with compound eyes and a musty scent. It was covered in 'warts' that puffed out infectious spores when fungal-controlled animals and giant insects weren't crawling out instead. Finally, instead of a normal tongue, it had this sap-covered thorny vine it tried to grab people with. The sap was, of course, both toxic and laced with more fungal spores.

Then there was today. The swarm of gibbering, chitin covered primate creatures had not seemed very dangerous at first, but shortly after they died, thorny limbs had burst out of their shoulders and hips, and they had reanimated.

They had been, effectively, undead, though as the post battle discussion covered, they were not true undead. Mordecai and Amrydor had both verified it, though Amrydor had admitted that his instinctive response treated them like undead. It had taken analyzing their auras for him to be able to tell the difference.

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Bellona was only concerned with two points. The first was verification that Dersuta was not harboring an undead infestation that would require purification. The second was the knowledge that each of these false-undead had some sort of core to attach all the appropriate enchantments to, including the modifications of how vitality, void energy, and divine power interacted with the bodies. This core was what animated the bodies, and thus was their main weak point.

It also meant that removed limbs could be safely ignored, given that the limbs did not hold their own cores. With that knowledge safe in hand, Bellona had tuned out all the technical explanations about how the enchantment worked. There was certainly value in the knowledge, but at the same time, Bellona did not have the background or aptitude to truly understand the explanation, so she chose not to waste effort trying.

The rest of the day had been spent working through ever stranger abominations until they had finally reached the boss for this zone. At least, Bellona hoped it was the boss; she did not want to find out what would be next if it was not. Amrydor's affinity for death proved very useful for dealing with these creatures, as he was able to precisely pick out the exact location of the cores once they activated. Even Mordecai couldn't do that.

Or at least, not quickly enough for a battle. Mordecai said he did know some spells that would let him search for hidden auras, but those required close examination and took some time.

As the battle drew to a close, a flash of black lightning announced Moriko's enthusiastic landing. "The skies are clear!" she said before practically skipping over to Mordecai and Kazue to give them each a kiss.

Ever since that first night at the dryad's grove, the woman had been insufferably cheerful.

Xarlug sounded amused as he said, "Kind of makes you wonder just what they were doing that night."

Bellona shook her head and laughed. "I might be a bit curious, but I am pretty sure I don't actually want to know any details. She has been acting like a girl half her age since then." She started to turn away to double check that everyone was alright before she focused on cleaning her gear. But something about her own words bothered her. "Wait a moment."

She frowned and looked back at Moriko. The half-elf had always had a youthful attitude, and at thirty-seven, she'd have looked mid to late twenties anyway, by human standards. But if Bellona ignored what she knew of Moriko and went by her current appearance alone... Bellona found it very difficult to put even a general age to Moriko.

Her mind refused the implication for a moment, but then Mordecai caught her gaze, winked, and put a finger over his lips.

Bellona wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or hit something. This was just unbelievable.

"Uh, is something wrong?" Xarlug asked with concern.

She hesitated a moment, but Mordecai nodded before turning away. Good, she didn't want to keep any secrets from Xarlug, and Mordecai seemed to want to keep this quiet for now. "Come over here, we need a bit of privacy."

Once they were away from everyone, Bellona lowered her voice, "So, this seems to be a secret for now, but Mordecai seemed fine with me telling you. Um, let me put it this way — I can't tell how old Moriko is by her looks, and I don't think that's ever going to change again."

Xarlug took a moment to process the implications, and then he gaped. "She, wait, the timing, this couldn't be just because of a night of intense sex, right?"

Bellona shrugged. "I don't know. She is a disciple of Sakiya, and she's certainly been cultivating her power as well. So, maybe whatever sort of crazy sex those three got up to was the final push she needed?"

"Huh." He considered that for a moment, then gave Bellona a considering look followed by a lecherous leer. "Maybe I should ask what they got up to and see if we can't duplicate that effort."

She laughed and lightly punched his chest. "Cool off, lover boy," she said with a grin, "I think we need to figure out our own way forward. But if you want to start experimenting... Ah, no, not right now! Later, when we have some privacy!"

After she got him to stop playing, they turned back to helping with the post battle clean up and inspections. She didn't let herself think much about Moriko's situation until later that night, after they'd made camp and eaten.

It was hard to believe that Moriko had reached immortality. Oh, she wasn't the same type of immortal as Gil, or even Satsuki, but even simple, endless youth was an impressive step.

Someone like Satsuki could survive an accumulation of wounds that should have been fatal, and might even be able to recover from something normally lethal, like being stabbed in the heart. But Bellona wasn't certain that managing to remove Gil's head would be enough to really kill the man. She didn't think he'd still be on his feet or anything like that, but even destroying his body might just delay how long it took for him to simply show up somewhere else.

True immortals like him really did not die easily.

Hmm.

She wondered if a nexus core could become that type of immortal? Bellona amused herself briefly with the imagery of someone desperately forging their way down to the heart of a nexus and destroying the core, only to not have the nexus's territory start falling apart. It would be terrifying if there was simply stillness and silence in the aftermath, and no way to know what was going to happen next, or when it was going to happen. What do you do with a core you cannot kill?

That made her briefly think about Mordecai's situation, but she was pretty certain he didn't count. He'd survived the destruction of his core only through anchoring himself to Moriko first.

Who had now reached the first stage of immortality. Huh. Well, maybe he and Kazue would become that sort of immortal some day, though how could you tell without it being tested?

While she was musing on the situation, Bellona's attention was drawn back to Moriko, who, aside from her continually chipper mood, had been acting a little oddly since they left the dryad camp. Whenever Moriko happened to be somewhat near Takehiko, she seemed to be unconsciously drawn further in his direction; if she was walking, her path veered toward Takehiko, and if she was standing or sitting still, she started to turn or lean in his direction. It never lasted more than a few moments before Moriko noticed and turned away with an annoyed look.

It was admittedly, rather nice being in Takehiko's vicinity right now. When everyone else stunk of sweat and fighting before cleaning up, Takehiko constantly smelled pleasantly of roses. Specifically, evening roses, just like the dryad queen. For the first day or so, he'd had the queen's scent spilled over his entire person, but it now emanated solely from a living rosewood circlet with tiny roses, which he now wore almost constantly. His perfectly clean, silken hair that now never escaped to get into his eyes.

The dryad queen certainly seemed pleased with Takehiko's company to have given him a gift like that. Bellona briefly considered what sort of 'gift' the kitsune would have received if he had not met the queen's standards, but decided it was better to not have those sorts of ideas stuck in her head.

Bellona shook off her wandering thoughts and finished getting ready to turn in for the evening. She had the early morning watch and needed to get some sleep, and before sleep, she wanted to curl up with Xarlug for a little while. Even if he didn't smell of roses. Hmm. Maybe Bellona could ask Shizoku to make some rose scented perfume for her, and a variant that would work well with Xarlug's scent.

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