Chapter 341: Aim
Arwin hadn’t actually been to the basement yet. Lillia had told him that she’d placed her garden below the Devil’s Den, but the mental image he’d made had turned out to be completely and utterly wrong.
It wasn’t really his fault. When someone said they had a garden in the basement, it was only natural to picture a dingy little box with some half-dead plants in desperate need of sunlight. Arwin had been a bit more optimistic.
He had full faith in Lillia’s abilities, so he was expecting to find some glowing moss and mushroom-adjacent herbage. She’d told him she’d planted the Ashleaf Tree’s seed as well, which he’d been picturing as a small sprout that had just barely pushed a foot above the ground.
Instead, when he got to the basement with Art and Vix in tow, he found a short, black-trunked tree with glistening crimson red leaves. A trill of warning raced down Arwin’s back as soon as they stepped into the room.
The tree was already six feet tall. It loomed over the bunches of multicolored herbs in the garden around it, its razor-sharp leaves primed to carve through flesh.
Arwin’s hand was halfway to calling his hammer from within [Arsenal] before he reminded himself that this wasn’t the same monster that the Menagerie had fought in a dungeon.
It helped that Lillia and Kien were just a few paces away from it. An imp stood beside them, apparently having brought a chair in from the tavern above for Kien to sit on. The two of them glanced in the direction of the stairs.
Lillia didn’t look even slightly surprised about the fact that Art and Vix were back. That wasn’t much of a surprise. She knew everything about who came and left the tavern. Arwin wouldn’t have been surprised if she also knew exactly how their conversation had gone.
“I was under the impression that I was to be avoiding extra attention,” Kien said. He hunched forward in his chair, his ragged hair hanging around his face and casting it into shadow to conceal it from view. “Is something the matter?”