Chapter 48 - There’s a baroness on your lawn
The inside of the tree was large. Weaves of glowing twines dangled from somewhere above them, coating the space in a light violet light. They created an interesting crisscrossing tapestry, some coiling together in large luminescent tangles. Only hints of the tree's hollow nature could be seen through them even further up.
Scarlett turned her head down and focused on the middle of this 'room'. There, on top of a multi-leveled circular dais of roots and wood that grew from the floor and covered nearly half of the free space, was a gathering of large leaves that arched up in the air like the petals on a flower. They were a bright green and had a clear luster to them, but the edges of all the leaves had started to fade into a more lifeless brown color.
Between the leaves was an empty space, like an altar or a throne, lined by crowns, where a lean figure with blue-green skin waited. Its features were vague and androgynous, with bark growing in spots across its body, along with tufts of pale hair that glimmered slightly. Thin, long ears pointed up in the air, and the hair on its head was more akin to thin filaments of translucent grass than anything else. The lower half of its body was also soft bark that grew into the wood itself beneath it.
The being watched them as they entered its abode, one of its eyes nothing but a large golden iris that had an almost childlike gleam to it. The other eye, however, was sickly and colorless.
This was the last boss of this dungeon. [Eupherbia Wildshimmer].
Scarlett wasn't sure if that had been its name in the game, or simply the type of creature that it was. But that didn't matter.
She looked back at the others. "Leave the handling of these matters to me, and do not act unless absolutely necessary," she said. After seeing that they all understood, she looked back at the center of the room and cautiously began walking forward, gauging the figure's reactions as its gaze repeatedly shifted between her and the other members of her group behind her. Thankfully it didn't seem to find any reason to take any hostile action towards them yet.
This had been an annoying fight in the game.
Eventually stopping a few meters away from the flower-like throne the being was part of, Scarlett glanced down at the floor. Several roots, the size of even some tree trunks, began just a foot or so ahead of her and grew around the throne in a circle. This was probably the point she didn't want to cross past.
The Eupherbia's head tilted to the side in a strangely fluid motion, its single eye focused on Scarlett now. "Human?"
"Human"
"Hum—"