Chapter 423 - 359: Plant woman
Mash said nothing. She was watching a figure coming out of the forest with scrutiny and all three became alert.
Then the alert bells began ringing all of them at once, from every tower in, which meant something had come out of the forest and it wasn’t a human being.
"What the hell is that monster?" someone shouted from the tower behind them.
Walking up the long road toward the gate was a plant woman.
"All of you, get the high-level adventurers. That monster is at the level of an arch-human." Coco yelled to the soldiers who rushed immediately and picked up their communication crystals. They had just finished a battle now a stronger one has arrived.
"Shit, arch-human level? We don’t have anyone for an arch-human. We only have high humans." Meru gritted her teeth.
"We have fifty high humans." A soldier stated.
"That is not enough," Coco said quietly. "She might be stronger than that."
Mash raised her head and looked up. "Multiple blasts of energy coming from above."
Five giant balls of flame hung in the sky over the city, and they were getting bigger, which meant they were getting closer.
"Everyone deploy your shields, now!" the captain screamed.
Every captain on the wall screamed the same thing at their own people, and the mages raised their wands, and each of them threw up their own shield, and the shields ran into each other and fused and spread until one enormous dome of light sat over the city.
Soon an explosion sounded in the shield causing the whole city to tremble.
Even though the dome held up and the mages beneath it started coughing, and several of them went down on their knees coughing blood onto the stone from the sheer pressure of pouring magic into it.
"My, my," the plant woman said her voice vibrating through the whole city. She had crossed most of the road while everyone was looking up. "To kill all of my babies."
Her hand came up toward the shield and halfway there it changed. The fingers thickened and the forearm swelled into a muscular form, and she punched through the shield like it was glass.
The shield came apart in pieces of light that faded before they hit the ground.
"Why did you attack the city?" Coco asked, glaring down at her. She had jumped down from here she was and stood before the city.
"Well, my master said I should attack the city." The woman tilted her head. "But why did I do it? Because mortals are such vile filth. Creatures like you should be embarrassed to exist. And once all of you are eradicated, the plants will finally breathe."
"If you want, attack with the full extent of your might." The woman spread her arms wide and smiled up at them. "I’ll wait."
"Everyone on the border sides of the city stay where you are and defend," Coco called out. "There may be more of them coming. Do not come here."
Coco then rushed forward and drove a kick straight at the plant woman’s face.
The plant woman caught her foot without looking.
She held it there for a second, almost thoughtfully, and then punched Coco once in the ribs and body slammed her into the road hard enough to crack the stone in a circle. Coco coughed up blood, rolled sideways off the impact, and got up.
"Coco, out of the way," Meru said.
Meru’s arms came apart and reformed into a bow, one long piece of her from wrist to shoulder, and she pulled arrows from the quiver on her back and put six of them into the plant woman in a few seconds.
Each one detonated on the plant woman causing a chain of explosions that took the woman’s chest and left shoulder off with it.
However they watched as they watched as the plant woman easily regenerated her body.
"Well," Meru said. "This fight is going to suck as hell."
The plant woman stepped out of her own smoke, walked to the base of the wall, and swung her arm at it.
She sliced through forty feet of stone the way a knife goes through butter.
The wall took a few seconds to fall and the screaming started after.
"Get the rescue teams into the rubble, now!" Coco shouted. "Get everyone out from under it!"
"Meru, Mash, with me. We’re the first line of defence."
"Well, that’s obvious," Meru said, already firing. "I mean, we’re basically technically kind of the second line. Fourth strongest people in the city, probably."
"Then it’s better we help defend it."
The plant woman’s arms went hard and spiked, and she swung them in a wide arc that would have made all of them into mush if hit by it.
Coco got her sword up and blocked it.
The sword held for about a heartbeat. Then the woman’s arm coiled around the blade like a rope, and she swung Coco off her feet by it and threw her through the broken wall.
Coco came out of the wreckage with her sword in pieces, dropped the hilt, and pulled another one off her back.
"Damn."
However this didn’t stop Coco she moved again towards the plant woman as Meru was still shooting at it.
The woman swung her hand once more and Coco ducked it, came up inside her guard, and her whole right arm started to burn with bright flames once she got close enough to the plant woman she put her flaming fist into the woman’s side and the plant woman entire body begun to burn brightly.
"My, if you weren’t so vile I’d almost like you. But it is my duty to make sure a majority of you die, so unfortunately I can’t spend much time playing." The plant woman chuckled.
Coco was panting hard and bleeding from three places, and Meru noticed all three places were already closing.
The plant woman’s arms then lashed out towards Mash.
However Mash didn’t move. As the plant tentacles came within a foot of her body they all of a sudden snapped backwards, and the plant woman was flung several meters down the road before she caught herself with her heels and stopped.
She stared at Mash and was genuinely confused. "What did you do?"
Mash snapped her fingers and several mirrors appeared in the air around the plant woman. Dozens of them, hanging at every angle, all of them showing her back to herself from a slightly wrong direction.
"Oh," the plant woman said. "Now it makes sense. Your power has something to do with mirrors probably reflection magic."
"You talk too much for a plant," Mash said.
"Wow," Meru said. "This plant monster’s actually smart. I can barely tell if she’s a demi-human or an actual monster."
"Does it matter?" Coco asked
"It matters to me. I like to know what I’m shooting."
Meru then charged towards the plant woman and the plant woman swung at her with her extended tentacle plant hands and none of it landed, every strike bending away from Meru at the last inch, and the more it happened the more irritated the plant woman became.
Her arms split into eight. Her teeth got longer and kept getting longer. She swung wildly in every direction at once, slashing through the city walls and surrounding land and the houses and at Coco and at Meru, and Coco dodged clean and Meru dodged as well and so did Mash.
"Enough of this," the woman said, and pulled her eight arms together.
The light gathering between them was very bright. Bright enough that people were going to see it from the whole city and then she shot it at Mash.
It crossed the distance instantly, and it did not touch her, because a mirror was there, and then it was gone.
"Meru," Mash said. "Down."
The attack came back out of the mirror at a hundred times the size it went in.
It hit the plant woman and it did not stop at the plant woman. It went through her, and through the road, and through the forest behind the plant woman.
The blast rolled outward and flattened everything left standing in its path.
When the light went out there was nothing on the road but scorch and a fine drifting ash.
"Oh hell," Meru said from the ground looking at the destruction before them.
In the ash on the road, something moved. The plant woman’s body was still disintegrating, most of her already gone, and what was left of her had stopped trying to hold together however she was sniffing the air.
She sniffed once, and again, and her pupils contracted to points.
Then the ash pulled back into her, all of it, and she was whole again in under a few second causing all three girls to frown.
"How dare you," she said. "How dare you carry the scent of my master?!!!"
"What?" Coco said in confusion.
"You have her scent on you. All three of you." The plant woman’s head turned between them and her voice climbed with every word. "Where is she. Where is she. WHERE IS SHE?"
She came at them in a frenzy, and there was no technique in it at all this time.
Coco got both arms up and blocked, and the impact took her arms apart at the elbows and threw the rest of her down the road. However the plant woman regenerated once more and all three girls exchanged blows with her.
Then it was hundreds of blows, too fast to count, the three of them and the plant woman thrown around each other and through the ruins while the ground came apart underneath them all.