Alabaster after attacking and killing the monster's soul was about to take a step forward when a piercing pain suddenly assaulted him.
His head started to pain and he felt like his head was tearing up. His breathing became stiff and he spurted blood and fell to his knees as his body became limp.
He knew he has to pay the price for using his bloodline ability. Though their family bloodline ability was quite strong and killing an enemy without being able to notice the enemy, the repercussion that came with the ability was quite hard to endure.
Moreover, he used the attack on a wide scale. Normally these types of attacks were done on a single opponent but he used them on hundreds of these monsters at the same time.
The knights of Aler ran towards their lord without baiting an eye on the monsters. They just slashed around and sliced anyone that stood between their path.
Babak reached Alabaster and gave him a potion. After drinking the potion Alabaster returned to his senses.
The potion can alleviate the pain temporarily and suppress his external injuries but it can't heal his soul which a suffering a little damage at the moment and it needed time to heal.
After Lord Alabaster cast the soul attack, the hard-fought battle already tilted to their side.
Now the knights just have to clear the remaining ones and it would be done for now.
As the number of monsters decreased significantly and when everything seemed to be over, everyone heard the rustling and crinkling sounds of leaves of twigs.
Everyone looked around to see what was happening and surveyed around to find the source of the sound.
Lucas who was standing on a mountain of corpses shivered on hearing the sound. His senses were screaming and warning him about the danger and screaming him to go back.
The group of knights have already advanced far away from the fortress and were very close to the forest.
As Lucas pondered about the threat, he looked around the forest and felt small vibration.
The ground beneath him was shaking feebly which was not enough to notice when one was in motion.
Lucas sensing the danger, jumped back in fright.
The ground where he stood cracked and small dark branches started to sprout from the ground.
Lucas didn't spare a thought and started retreating and running towards the fortress.
He didn't forget to warn others that he moved back.
The ground started to shake louder and small tremors began as the ground began to crack.
Everyone was shocked unable to conclude what was going on as the shaking of the ground threw them unbalanced.
Hugo looked around to see small dark branches wriggling their way through the ground and emerging from it.
His pupil shrank as a big hand of branch emerged from the ground and attacked him.
Without any hesitation, he brandished his sword and sliced the branches. As he cut off the hand, the branch fell on the ground with a thud and jerked off violently before returning to the dried twig.
Hugo cutting one hand noticed that many hands started to appear and the ground cracked.
A huge tree appeared before him and converged into a human shape. It didn't distinguish its opponent and tried to kill anything that was before it.
As the tree made its way its branches killed the monsters and squeezed them bursting into a puddle of blood.
The knights were still in a daze and panicked.
Claws of the tree clutched some of the knights and dragged them towards the emerging bundle of dark trees.
Hugo clenched his sword and disappear from the spot and appeared before the tree and with its swing, it cut the tree into two halves.
As he killed it, more and more trees like this appear. Seeing this unfamiliar type of monster, he thought it was better to retreat now.
A branch shaped like a spear shot toward a knight and pierced its chest making a huge bloody hole and pulling the whole body back.
"Noooooooo."
Many screamed in horror as they saw knights falling one after another.
The knights stepped facing the wriggling branches and slicing the ones that were shot at them.
All the knights and the students gathered at one spot as they looked at the dreary scene before them.
For the first time in their lives, they were seeing something like this.
Even the knights of Warren who were veterans in dealing with monsters and beasts were shocked to see these unfamiliar monsters.
Most of the time, they fought with monsters or go on an expedition, they always have proper information about the type of monster, they would encounter and their characters along with their strength and weakness which increase their chances of winning by several margins but what they are facing now was something they have never heard.
Even they wouldn't believe that there were these types of monsters if someone tell them and would just laugh it off thinking of it as a joke but now seeing them before their own eyes, they don't know what to do.
"What are these ugly rotten trees doing here?"
"How did these trees convert into monsters."
"Did someone experiment with them? "
Everyone asked each other looking for answers with no one to answer them, they ceased their useless talks and focused on the problem before them.
Just a few minutes ago they thought everything would be over and they can take some rest but who knows these God damn trees would tune into monsters.
They have been fighting throughout the night and in a few minutes, the sun would rise. The battle had been quite hard for them.
They fought with a huge number of monsters with no casualties but the sudden emergence of these damned trees and their sneak attack took many of them at once.
Even when a battle is fought between the army there are moments when one can take some rest but fighting with these monsters you don't get any leeway.
The trees monsters descended on the group and shooter their claw-like branches before the group of humans.
Swisshhhh...Swish.
Like a swift breeze wind blowing over them, the branches arrived at the group of knights in nit of the moment.
Some dodged the attack by jumping to the side while some slashed their sword to defend themselves.
BOOM!
Few figures flew off the ground as they were hit by the branches like a whip. They tried to deflect and cut the one branch when another one came towards them and hit them hard.
"Try to dodge those branches.No matter what don't let them cut them or leave a wound on you. Even a single cut is quite fatal from them." Lucas shouted to bring out everyone from the stupor.
Alabaster frowned on hearing Lucas's advice and asked raising his brows" Why?"
Lucas bit his lips thinking for a moment and spoke: "Just now one of their branches flew past my thigh leaving a cut and the cut didn't close nor bleed rather it seems to be infected and the flesh started to rotten."
"Whattttt!!!"
Everyone shrieked and jumped back in fear as they listened to Lucas's words.
'On being cut flesh slowly started to rote. What the hell?'
'Are you kidding me?'
Those who listened to Lucas's words couldn't believe it and thought they heard something wrong and looked at him curiously, thinking as if he was joking.
Lucas knew it was worthless to argue with them and cut the clothing on this thigh and saw it to others.
Everyone's eyes widened with horror with their mouth dropped wide open as they looked at the circular patches of dead tissue which seemed to fall off across the wound which had turned into grey.
The reason Lucas was able to sustain till now is that he was constantly taking potions and he had cut a major part of the flesh in his thigh, which prevented the infection is spreading faster.
No healer can cure it and it requires special treatment from the Church to heal others that contain the holy powers. The wound needs to be purified.
Not only the wound, but the entire goddamned forest also needs to purify.
The only way to stop the seed of darkness is to absorb it or purify it until then everything is meaningless.
Seeing Lucas's wound, everyone felt the gravity of the situation, they knew that they can't be careless now when dealing with these damned trees.
Charles looked at Lucas's wound and was able to tell where he got it. Charles looking at the wound thought about Lucas's endurance to be able to go on and sustain the pain even with such a wound.
If it was him who got it, then he would have thrown a tantrum taking over the whole household still Lucas just silently kept on suffering without telling anyone about and if not for the situation at hand, no one would have none about it.
These tree type monsters are a thousand times more dangerous than other types of monsters.
Moreover, unlike other monsters, everyone was not able to gauge their strength.
Lucas gritted his teeth as he squeezed all the strength he had left and swung his sword left and right. He didn't know how long he had been fighting and lost the count of monsters he had killed, his arms were already started to get sore while his legs were on the verge of collapsing.
Previously with his strong will, he was able to ignore the pain in his legs but as he is tired now, he could feel the burning sensation from his wounds. His speed had decreased by several folds and he was limping around to fight the monsters.
Lucas's eyes became lifeless as he gazed at the sea of monsters in the vast plains who seemed to have no end in sight. Since there are an infinite number of trees in the forest that stretched far and wide, he finally realized how deadly the battle can be when your side had an absolute disadvantage in terms of number.
