Chapter 302: Prince Eros - Part One
Kir had grown too used to not being hit in any significant capacity.
For one thing, he had the instincts to dodge thoroughly drilled into him by his mom’s training. But even Darlae couldn’t have anticipated that Kir would wind up battling a tree the size of a half-dozen skyscrapers put together.
After the first strike broke through his neglected defenses, those instincts saved him from the second and the third as he put distance between himself and the trunk.
Branch after branch had been growing in his direction, but they stopped as he got further away from the trunk, firing off magic-induced particle beams to sever the long growths that had tried to snare him.
Unfortunately, that meant he also lost sight of the suitcase.
Swearing, he dove faster, and had just managed to reacquire a visual on the suitcase when he saw a kilometer-long branch growing right out of the tree’s root coming up to meet him.
Cutting it with lances of magic did not stop new branches from twisting their way out from under the wound, and he realized that the new growths were twisting themselves into a massive hand as they tried to grab him.
Switching tactics, Kir readied Kangetsu, drawing heat away from the blade to harden it as he cut off the forefinger of the hand with a spell before severing the thumb on his way past.
With a footclaw he barely managed to catch the suitcase, but wound up tossing it into the air above himself as he was tugged back by the wing, a thin branch managing to loop snag him right at the primary joint.
This forced him to prioritize storing his wings to escape, which meant the suitcase went plummeting the final distance below as Kir battled branch after branch on his way down, flaring out his wings and his magic only at the last possible moment so that he could pull away from the grasping wood.
Okay Kir... think. The tree knows you’re the one that burned it... but at least it can’t reach you very well...