Zealth stared.
Then looked at Cinderbrand.
Then back at the tree.
An awkward laugh slipped from him.
Weak.
Dry.
Completely wrong for the situation.
"Not boss yet."
His voice echoed across the hollow.
The skulls kept swaying.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
Zealth immediately regretted speaking.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then one skull stopped moving.
High above, near the lowest branch.
Its hollow sockets turned toward him.
Green light appeared inside both eyes.
Zealth froze.
Another skull stopped.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Hundreds.
Small green flames opened across the hanging skulls, one pair of eyes after another, until the tree looked like a dead night sky full of watching stars.
Zealth swallowed.
"…Okay," he whispered. "Maybe the dungeon boss is also terrible."
The first beam fired.
A thin green line of mana shot from the lowest skull's eye sockets and struck the ground beside his boot.
Stone hissed.
Moss burned black.
Zealth looked at the smoking mark.
Then another skull fired.
This beam cut across the air at shoulder height.
He dropped.
The beam passed over him and carved a glowing scar into a pillar behind him.
"Ah," he said from the floor. "The fruit shoots lasers."
Then the tree truly noticed him.
Not fully awake.
But awake enough.
Every skull turned.
Green mana gathered in thousands of hollow eyes.
Zealth's face went still.
"Oh, that's unfair."
The barrage came.
Green beams rained across the hollow, firing from every direction above him. Some stabbed straight down. Others swept sideways in burning lines. A few crossed paths, cutting the air into glowing cages. The chamber erupted with hissing stone, burning moss, and fragments of broken ruin.
Zealth ran.
A beam struck where his head had been.
Another sliced toward his legs.
He jumped, twisted midair, and raised his buckler as three beams converged. The impact threw him backward. His arm went numb. The shield smoked, its edge glowing faint green.
Buckler Integrity: Reduced 80/100
"Yeah, I noticed!"
He landed badly, rolled over broken stone, and came up near a collapsed wall. A beam pierced straight through the upper half of it, showering him with hot fragments.
He ducked lower.
Another line of mana scraped across his shoulder plate.
Armor Integrity: Reduced 55/100
Zealth clenched his teeth.
There were too many beams.
Too precise.
They did not fire like arrows or spells from one enemy. They came from every skull, every branch, every impossible angle. Dodging one meant stepping into another. Blocking one meant losing the position to dodge the next.
He raised Cinderbrand and deflected a beam by instinct.
The flame blade caught the mana line with a shriek.
It worked.
Barely.
The force pushed his wrist aside and burned a green mark along the sword's edge.
Cinderbrand Durability: 57/100
"Oh, don't you start breaking too."
Another cluster fired.
Zealth dove behind a root as thick as a wagon. Three beams struck the root and sank into it, leaving smoking wounds in the black bark. The root twitched.
Zealth stared.
The tree could hurt itself.
Interesting.
Not useful enough.
The skulls adjusted.
Mana gathered again.
He opened the map with a sharp motion, using the panel for half a second only. His red dot blinked near the edge of the hollow. The black blot covered almost everything. No clear route appeared. No objective marker. No helpful path.
Nothing.
I need a better cover.
What he did know was simple.
Then he saw a gap under the tree.
That's perfect.
Outside the roots, the skulls could see him.
Under the tree, maybe they could not.
Maybe.
That was not a plan.
That was desperation wearing boots.
"Fine," he muttered. "Hide under the nightmare tree. Great."
A beam struck the stone beside him.
He moved.
Zealth sprinted toward the base of the tree.
The skulls followed.
Green light cut the hollow apart around him. He slid under one beam, jumped over another, then spun behind a broken pillar as five more blasted through the space ahead. The pillar cracked but held for two seconds.
Enough.
He pushed off.
A group of undead wandered into the hollow from the passage behind him—three skeletons and several husks, drawn by the light and noise.
They immediately became targets too.
Beams ripped through them.
Bones scattered. Undead collapsed. Dark mist burned under green mana.
Zealth noticed while running.
"Tree hates everyone. Good to know."
A skeleton staggered into his path.
He kicked it forward.
A beam punched through its skull and chest, reducing it to smoking fragments.
"Thank you for your service!"
The skulls fired again.
He raised his buckler.
Two beams hit.
His whole arm jolted. The impact drove him to one knee.
Buckler Integrity: Critical
"Not now—"
A third beam came for his face.
Zealth twisted and caught it with Cinderbrand.
The sword screamed.
Flame and green mana clashed, bursting sparks across his vision. The force numbed his hand. He angled the blade at the last possible instant, sending the beam into the floor.
Stone exploded.
He stumbled forward.
A root rose ahead.
He grabbed it with his free hand and hauled himself over. The bark felt cold and wet beneath his glove, pulsing faintly like something alive beneath dead wood.
The moment he crossed into the shadow beneath the lower branches, the beams changed.
Not stopped.
Changed.
The skulls above kept firing, but their lines could not angle cleanly under the thick mass of roots and hanging branches. Beams struck the ground behind him, carved into outer stones, and burned across the roots above. Some still slipped through gaps, but the storm had weakened.
Zealth pushed deeper beneath the tree.
The air under it was worse.
Rotten sap.
Dust.
Old bone.
The smell of a grave opened after rain.
He crouched beneath a twisted root, breathing hard.
A beam slipped between two hanging roots and shot toward his chest.
He blocked with the buckler.
The buckler shattered.
Fragments of metal were scattered across the dirt.
Zealth stared at his empty forearm.
"Damn. My two thousand Callis."
Another beam burned past his ear.
He dropped flat and crawled forward.
Not dignified.
Not heroic.
Effective.
The space beneath the Rotbound Tree of Death was a maze of roots, skull cords, and broken stone. Some roots hung low enough to force him onto his hands. Others formed archways big enough to run through. Skulls dangled even here, closer now, some brushing his shoulder as he passed.
One skull turned toward him.
Green light gathered.
Zealth grabbed it by the jaw and twisted it away just as it fired. The beam shot into another root, making the whole tree shudder.
He froze.
The trunk gave a low groan.
A deep sound.
Ancient.
Angry.
Zealth released the skull slowly.
"…Sorry."
More skulls began turning beneath the branches.
Not as many as outside.
But enough.
Zealth kept moving, half-crouched, sometimes crawling, sometimes sliding beneath roots while beams stabbed through narrow openings behind him. Each shot made the air hiss. Each miss burned the ground near his hands.
He did not know what was under the tree.
He had only chosen the one place the barrage could not fully reach.
That was all.
A desperate hiding place beneath a supreme undead that could probably crush him if it decided to wake fully.
Very Zedric.
Very bad.
The system panel flickered above him again.
Rotbound Tree of Death
Status: Stirring
Then, for one brief second—
Status: Agitated
Zealth's breath caught.
"No, no, no. Go back to sleep, you creep wood."
The tree groaned again.
A larger root shifted somewhere ahead, dragging across stone with the weight of a moving wall. Dust fell from above. Skulls clacked together in growing rhythm.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack-clack-clack.
The beams outside slowed.
Inside, the roots moved.
Zealth stared into the dark maze beneath the trunk.
He had escaped the barrage.
Maybe.
But now he was inside the thing's reach.
He swallowed, tightened his grip on Cinderbrand, and forced himself forward.
"Hide under the death tree," he whispered bitterly. "Brilliant idea, Zealth. No notes."