“Alright, listen up.” I said as we got out of the Factory and began to prepare for a fight with an … immortal tree creature that might share some resemblance with an outer god.

“While we know what the cthulhu looking creature could do, we don’t really have an idea on what our Shub-Niggurath wannabe can do. So I’m setting five generically good defensive cards on each of us.” I began. “As for our battle plan. Cailie, Lua. You two are on miasma purification. Since these things were made by someone who had complete mastery over miasma, the creatures likely have that too. So we need to make sure it gets as little of it as possible.” I gave my first orders.

“Second, it sounded like it is feeding off of the materials its spawn is bringing to it, so we need to stop that. Wilma, you take care of that. Make Earth Walls, just kill the creatures, take what they are carrying into Storage. Whatever you can do, try to stop them.”

“Third. Alice, Unika. You two are going to mop up the spawn. Also try to make sure they can’t attack anyone. We didn’t get a map of the area, so I’ll let out drones as soon as we get there. But if there are cities or villages nearby, try to defend them while defeating everything. Maybe get a barrier around them if you can. And no need to hold back unless there are people around. Go all out with large AoE spells to deal with them quickly. Any damage we do can be fixed later.”

“Janina and I will attack the main tree creature. Any questions or suggestions?” I asked.

“These plans are for after you try mass destruction, right?” Alice asked. “If that works, what then?”

“Yes. I’ll be running Raigekis and maybe even a Dark Hole or Grand Convergence. But I’ll be honest, in all likelihood, they won’t do much. I do also have other ideas, but I really need an idea on how strong the spawn are.” I told her. “And if they work, we’ll just all focus on the main body.”

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“Are we safe to use our cards?” Unika asked. “I could try controlling some of the spawn with my Charmers.” She suggested.

“You can try, but it probably won’t work.” I told her. “First, they likely don’t have an attribute, so that already limits it. And second, they likely cannot be mind controlled. But for destructive power, go for it.”

“Are the Star series safe to use?” Wilma asked. “Is there a chance the creature can take control of them?”

“Of course there is a chance, but they should be safe.” I said. “I already asked HomeBase to prepare them, I’ll teleport them over once we get there. Do you want all twelve or ..?”

“I’ll take all twelve, please. And my own hammer as well.”

“Yes, I assumed you’d want it.”

“Anything else?” I asked, and with no responses, I decided we were ready to go. “Alright. I’m setting the cards. Armor up, we are teleporting as soon as everyone has their gear on.”

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As soon as we teleported in, I got to work. I was going to be busy for the first few seconds, so I had accelerated my own perception of time, just so that I could do everything quickly enough.

I began by taking in our surroundings. The coordinates the Divine Lord gave us made us appear in the air, a few kilometers from both the immortal tree, and about two in the air. Luckily all of us, except Wilma, can fly. Or walk on air. For Wilma, I was using the Numeron Code to allow her to fly. I can use the Numeron Code flight on someone else, and they temporarily gain the ability to fly using it.

I began by taking in the mana and miasma levels of the area. Both were low, as the monster seemed to actively suck in huge amounts of both. But more miasma than mana, so my idea of purifying the miasma seemed correct.

The area we were in looked like it used to be a forest, but a huge portion of it had already been stripped of all the trees and left flattened by a countless number of hooves. The cutdown part of the forest was a nearly perfect circle, and at the center of it stood a massive … not a tree. More like a tower made of dark mystery matter with hundreds of tentacles.

I suppose you could compare it to a tree. A dark tree with no leaves, and the tentacles are the branches. But it just felt so wrong to call it a tree.

Around the … okay, I’ll call it a tree. Around the tree, four-legged creatures were walking back and forth, to the edge of the cleared area and then back to the mother tree. They were large, but not enormous. Sizewise, they seemed to just exceed A-rank monsters like the Sword-Horn Bull, as they stood just under 10 meters tall.

That was ignoring the dozen tentacles that came out of each of them. The creatures used those tentacles as their arms, ripping trees straight from the ground with their roots, or just scooping up the ground itself, and carrying their spoils to their master. Some even carried corpses of monsters they’d defeated, but those were the minority. I honestly wish they had six legs instead of four so I could compare them to ants working around the colony.

Well, I just did, but whatever.

I released a handful of surveillance drones from Storage. Our System Supports can pilot them from the Factory, and that will update our mental maps. Luckily I didn’t spot any villages, towns or cities, so we might be safe for now.

Before we headed into the fray, I tested my cards. Starting with a combo of Raigeki and Lightning Vortex. The two cards combined their power to produce a massive number of lightning strikes. Each struck one of the spawn with a deafening crack of thunder.

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Our eyes recovered quickly from the blinding light, and we saw what was left after the thunder. And to say I was disappointed would be an understatement.

The spawn were still moving around, as if nothing had happened. Well, the ones that had been on a return trip seemed disappointed, as what they’d been carrying had been fried by the lightning, so they had to turn back and return to the edge of their clearing.

As for the tree itself, which had also taken multiple lightning bolts. It seemed to be focusing some of its tentacles towards us. One of them opened, began to glow with a purple light and shot a high intensity laser towards us.

Luckily I had seen it coming and I was still viewing everything much faster than usually, so I had all the time I needed to get Magic Cylinder out of the Collection and activate the trap.

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Two massive wooden cylinders appeared next to me. One took in the laser blast, and the other shot it back at the tree. The laser hit the tree, but it seemingly didn’t do anything. But I might just not see the char since the bark is already nearly pitch black.

“Okay. That didn’t work. Let’s hope this thing isn’t as immortal as it might sound like.” I told everyone as I teleported the entire Star series of living weapons here, as well as Wilma’s living hammer. The hammer found its place in Wilma’s hand, as the others took their orbits around her.

The first to leave our group was Alice and Unika. They both flashed towards the ground, both preparing a large scale Fire spell. Alice activated her Dark-Fire Inferno, burning the spawn with her black flames, while Unika used Kitsune’s Flame Dance, a spell that sent out flower pedals made of fire. And as those pedals made contact with the spawn, they attached themselves to it and caused the spawn to be engulfed in flames.

I wish I could have stayed and watched, but we had a tree to fell. So Janina and I shot towards it at speeds the others couldn’t follow. Admittedly I wouldn’t be able to follow Janina without the combination of Space, Time and Gravity Magic I was using on myself, but I kept up with her, and that is all that matters.

While we were moving, I pulled Errelitea out of Storage and filled it with a good amount of mana. And with the speed we were flying at the tree with, I let out a massive Spacial Rend, using my sword to cast the spell so the Absolute Penetration would be applied to the spell.

The flying slash that tore apart space hit the tree, leaving a deep crevasse in the bark, which oozed out a black liquid.

But the wound didn’t stay there for long, as the black liquid soon reformed the bark and the tree was back to full health. The leftover black ooze fell to the ground, where it formed into two more of the spawn. Luckily the new spawn seemed to be after us, instead of continuing the resource gathering like all the others. Maybe the tree has to give them an order when they leave, or otherwise they focus on whatever happens to be nearest.

Following my strike, Janina let out a massive dragon’s breath. Not a fiery one, but one that shot out a laser. The laser carved out the bark, causing more of the black liquid to seep out, which again began both healing the tree as well as spawning more of the creatures.

So it heals and spawns more things when we injure it. Good to know. The real question is, can it keep doing it forever?

Janina and I kept pelting it with attacks, while I also did my best to turn any attack it launched back at it. Meanwhile, I was getting reports from the other girls.

Alice and Unika had some trouble with the spawn, as they were quite durable and would also regenerate, but high level spells were enough to deal with them. Wilma was also able to use the living weapons to take them down, but it took many strikes. Wilma also reported that the tree had not sent out any new spawn during the time she’d been watching it, so it likely didn’t have unlimited resources.

Lua and Cailie had also been able to stop it from gathering any more miasma, so while Cailie kept on purification duty, Lua began to test Corrupted Healing on the main tree.

And lucky for us, Corrupted Healing seemed extremely effective. To the point where both Lua and I decided to activate a copy of Bad Reaction to Simochi.

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And that gave us some super effective results. Because from then on, every strike Janina and I laid on the tree, the tree tried to heal, but instead harmed itself more. Which caused it to try to heal more, which just damaged it more.

This cycle quickly caused the tree to wither, and it began to fall. Wilma was in the direction it was falling towards, so I teleported her and her weapons to my side with the Numeron Code, and once again gave her the ability to fly.

The dark tree hit the ground with a massive thud before it completely broke apart into the dark liquid. The liquid then gathered into more of the spawn, and those spawn seemed to be extremely angry at us.

They began charging purple light into their tentacles, and were about to fire on us, but I noticed that it was likely a trick. Because in their midst, I spotted one that wasn’t glowing. Instead, it seemed to be hurrying away from us, carrying what looked like a large sapling.

Likely the core of the tree. It was planning on running away and re-establishing the mother tree in a different location.

Too bad it would never make it.

“Gravity Well!” I called out to cast a Gravity Magic spell that would draw the spawn into a single location. This spell was a more controllable version of a different spell, Black Hole. Black Hole is just what you think it is, but I’ve only used it a few times in the Factory, because it is legitimately difficult to control, and if I used it here, Wilma or Cailie might get sucked in.

The Gravity Well was powerful enough that it lifted the spawn off of the ground, collecting them all in a sphere, where they began to liquefy back into the black goop. But before they had the chance to start forming a new shape, my destructive trio was ready to attack.

Alice began with the Black-Flame Advent, a massive combination spell of Dark and Fire attributes. It made a big ball of black flames that shot into the black goop, burned inside of it and eventually exploded, sending the black goop flying. Only until the goop was once again captured by the artificial gravity of my Gravity Well, and gathered back into a ball.

Unika went next. Using her own combination spell, Cruel Sun, burned away even more of the black goop. And yes, she did base it on an anime attack. Yes, we watch anime in the Memory Palace. It is a great way of getting inspiration for new spells.

After the small sun had burned up the goop, only a tiny part of it remained. But that wasn’t good enough. All of it should be gone.

And Janina took care of that. She once again gathered power in her mouth, before letting out a rainbow laser which annihilated what remained of a creature that bore resemblance to an outer god.

We looked around the battlefield, and there were still some of the spawn walking around, carrying trees and other matter towards where the mother tree had been. But with it no longer there, as they got there they got confused and seemingly didn’t know what to do.

We ran a few experiments on them, trying to tame them, Lua tried to turn them into her thralls, and we tried to kill them in the traditional sense.

But none of those worked. They just turned into the black goop. And no, I couldn’t take the goop into Storage either.

Wilma appraised the goop and it was called ‘Essence of the Immortal Tree’. It only had one goal. To form Immortal Trees and spread itself all across the world. And even just a drop could theoretically be enough for it to start again.

So Alice erased every last drop with Erasure Magic, and I used cards to search for more until we really had cleared all of it.

I then went around collecting the drones I’d sent out at the start of the fight. They had gotten me some data on the surrounding area, but I didn’t really care about that anymore. Not my home continent, not my problem. I also had the Mabuki leave the Star series, as well as having Ilmari leave Wilma’s hammer. The Mabuki went into Tamer’s Paradise while the weapons I placed into Storage.

Our System Supports confirmed with the two Gods that this really was over, and once we got the confirmation, we teleported back home. Well, to the Dragon’s coast. Where we stayed for the night, sleeping on top of Janina.

Most of us had used a ton of mana in the fight, so we were out like a light. And I even forgot to give my special gift to Janina. You know which one. … well, tomorrow…