Meanwhile, out of their contested zone, Wyle scopes their battle from afar. He is worried that Alinel might be in trouble.

“Oh no. This is bad.” he worries while he observes the fight through his pocket monocular. “With no trap left, she is in disadvantage.”

He then immediately opens his bag to make something that could help her.

“I have to help her. My bag. I need to make something.”

Back to the contested zone, the fight between Alinel and the tree monster is getting more intense. The tree monster is relentlessly launching vines attacks at Alinel even though it is in a painful state. Alinel, in the other hand, keeps evading and blocking its attacks, but she is having difficulties to get closer to the tree monster.

“This is troublesome. I can’t get any closer.” She thought.

Unable to have her turn to attack, Alinel decides to gather all her shields and form a dome around her. Without knowing what is going on beyond the unmovable dome of shields, and sounds of bumping veins can be heard from outside, she decides to take a short break and thinks for a new strategy.

“Oh dear. All fire traps have been destroyed. I have to kill it quickly before the brunt effect is worn out. Should I just attack it from above? But I might accidently destroy its trees and Wyle is looking forward to harvest those herbs. Maybe I’ll just let it keeps chasing me until it gets tired. No, I shouldn’t let it go rampage around the forest. What if I asked it to surrender? Hmm, that would be impossible. What should I do? If only Veist was here, things would be done swiftly.”

Suddenly, the bumping sounds have stopped.

“Oh. The sounds stop.”

One of her shields provides her an opening like a window, allowing her to look outside.

“I wonder what it’s doing now.”

From fair distance, she sees the tree monster rams furiously toward her.

“Oh my. Going up.”

With the help of Alinel’s armaments, she manages to escape from its charge attack in time.

“Another charge attack? It was faster than before.”

Annoyingly, the tree monster still doesn’t want to give up. It sprouts all its vines up into the air to reach Alinel’s feet.

“I have to get away.”

Although she dodges them, the length of its vines keeps expending endlessly. The tree monster is immobile, concentrating all its attack power to kill Alinel during aerial combat.

“This is no good.”

The Starforge armaments are loyally doing their best defend her. But, as she is getting out of focus, one of the vines has successfully hit her from above. She falls onto the ground, but thankfully, the shields have protected her before the fall impact.

“Phew. Good thing these shields saved me.”

While she is slow to react, the slithering-moving vines quickly encircles her, stacking up together, forming into a cage of thorn.

“Uh-Oh. I’m trapped.” She thought with no worries.

She commands the Starforge armaments to cut through the vines, but they instantly rewrapped themselves to make a new layer.

“Well, then. I guess I’ll be stuck in here for a while.”

Unable to break free, Alinel calmly stays on guard as the tree monster is about to use its lethal attack.

“It seems the tree monster really hates me.”

Without being aware, Wyle comes in to help her. He sneakily throws a flask of red liquid at the tree monster’s face, chemically causes an explosion that later burns its body. He tries to be careful to not throw another flask to its back because the trees which are rooted on are valuable.

“Wyle!?” Alinel is a bit surprised.

“Hold on, Alinel. I’ll get you out of there.”

“Be careful. You’re going to get crushed.”

He throws few more fire-chemical flasks to negate its regeneration ability completely. Once it is crippled down, he pours his last flask at the vined cage, burning it into ashes and later cut it free from her confinement.

“Thanks, Wyle.”

“The tree monster is fainted. This is your chance.”

“You’re right.”

For her last moves, Alinel commands her armaments to cut its singed, wooden rib open, and found its life core that is beating slowly. She walks closer to the tree monster, addressing her prayer while her sword is pointing at its core.

“You may rest in peace on the palm of Mother Earth.”

With a finishing touch, the sword pierces through the other side of the tree monster’s core. It breaks into shatters, leading the tree monster to its last breath. At the end, what is left is the silence of the lifeless tree monster lying down on the breezy plain of tall grass.

“I think that is it for now.” Said Alinel.

“You did it!” Wyle celebrated.

“You did well too, Wyle. Those fire traps were very useful.”

“It wasn’t that much. You did all the work though.”

“This one was tougher than any plant monster we usually fought. But it is worth for experience.”

“Yeah. But, Veist was looking forward to fight this monster.”

“It’s pity that he missed his chance. Anyway, let’s loot those herbs and other raw materials it has, then we’ll go find Veist.”

“You called?” Said Veist who just got back harmlessly from the spot where he was thrown at. He carries his weapons and camping equipment wrapped up above his head, with taints of dirt and leaves sticking on its clothes. “Where is the tree monster? Is it still here?”

With pity, Alinel and Wyle point him at the dead tree monster. Veist stares at it with eyes showing his expression of disappointment. “Oh.”

Few hours later, after a couple of sacks of looted purple herbs and materials loaded on the trailer, Alinel and Wyle are cheering up Veist who sits gloomily on the side car.

“My dearest, please don’t be sad.” Alinel convinced.

“Sigh. That monster seemed strong. You guys had a lot of fun.” Said Veist who is making a long face.

“We didn’t have other choice. The tree monster was on rampage so we had to kill it quickly.” Wyle explained briefly.

“I’ll make it up to you. So please cheer up.”

“Yeah. I’m sure one day there are more quests of slaying stronger monster than this one.”

After making lot of effort to persuade him, they all are hopping on the steam motorbike and ready to head back to the city. But, suddenly, Wyle notices something that can be seen from afar.

“Hey. There is something over there.”

“What is it? Monster?”

“No. That’s…”

As everyone points their eyes to the opposite direction, they see pillars of black smokes coming out from slope of the forestry mountain, which doesn’t seemed to be a good sign.

“Black smokes? What is happening over there?” Alinel worried.

Veist stares at the those smokes with uncertainty, but he senses that something isn’t right.