Terrarium Adventure - Chapter 52

Our opponent did not reveal himself even after he had us captured. I switched my main dryad to Elder so that he could hold on for a little longer. I asked him to go into the artifact, but he refused.

If he went into the artifact now, the degree of damage done by the poison could be reduced and he would have time to recover with the power of the World Tree. However, he refused because the absence of a healer would put our party in greater danger.

Even though he was dying, he persistently insisted on fulfilling his duty.

This is driving me crazy. I can’t even use a potion for him since it’s not a traumatic injury. Wait a minute. Potion?

I searched my pocket to find a bottle of panacea given by Dandelion and a piece of her staff. I had forgotten that these were in there for a while.

Ah, the foresight of the king! She told me that the panacea could cure almost all diseases! Maybe she gave it to us for this specific occasion…?

“Quick, drink this!”

I opened the lid and handed it over to Elder. However, he refused.

Ugh, why are you refusing it? I’ll only know if it will treat you after you drink it. It will go to waste if we don’t use it! I don’t need to save it for later when my dryad is dying right next to me…

“I can still hold on.”

“But why? Why are you being so stupid?”

Elder sighed at my question.

“I’m trying to see how much longer I can go. I’m waiting for the right time to give up and use it. So far, my power is dominant over the poison, but I need to know when I can’t hold on any longer. We need a strategy in case Mesquite and Daisy get poisoned as well.”

Then he pushed the bottle into my mouth.

“And I don’t have to drink this, you can instead. Wait until the last minute and drink it when both Mesquite and Daisy are poisoned. How simple do you think the soul connection is? You are our little World Tree. The power of medicine flowing through you will also flow into us.”

At his words, I became dumbfounded. I was reconfirmed about the connection between me and my dryads, who were more closely connected to me than I thought. In addition, Elder’s appearance felt different at that moment.

I couldn’t say anything back because of a strange and awkward feeling that made my whole body numb. What is this feeling?

However, the urgent reality made me forget about this feeling.

I closed the cap of the panacea and hugged it tightly. I will make sure to drink it at the last minute! I didn’t know if it was going to work or not, but this was the only ray of hope for us.

Mesquite easily blocked the black liquid irregularly spewing out in front of us. We must get rid of at least one debuff first.

“Daisy, attack the place where these lights are coming from!”

The enemy had a very dumb and simple movement in that it was attacking from a single place without moving. It was as if he was telling us that he was there.

If my child, Daisy, had only been able to attack melee, it would have been impossible for her to give this a shot. Luckily, she had become the king of the forest and absorbed the other Daisy’s abilities. It was only a single shot, but a long-range attack was now possible.

At my words, Daisy joined her two daggers. Then, she threw the boomerang after Mesquite made a slight gap by moving her shield. Surrounded by a sparkling transparent light, the boomerang flew toward the target at high speed.

We heard a strange scream and the attack on us ceased.

Was that a person? A young boy’s voice was heard across the swamp. Daisy, who was holding her recovered boomerang, and Mesquite, who was glaring at the place from the beginning, had a strange expression on.

Mesquite’s expression gradually became distorted with anger, and soon her eyes became sharp as if they were about to spew out fire.

“How dare you…”

Her anger seemed like one towards those who did what they should have never done.

“Mesquite…?”

It felt like an even deeper anger than the one towards the fire.

“No way… it’s a dryad! I didn’t think it could be.”

“Oh my god! A dryad? Could it be a wild dryad?”

“I can’t feel the energy of another druid here, so it is wild. But what’s important is that even though it was a dryad, it attacked Jay, a little World Tree. How dare you…!”

I remembered Dandelion, who treated me hospitably even though it was my first time meeting her.

It was said that all druids in the world were the hopes and little gods of dryads. Despite being in a high position as king, she had shown me a humble attitude.

Dandelion was also a wild, naturally occurring dryad. However, she acted as if she was taught to honor and show respect to a druid from the time she was born.

According to how Dandelion treated me and Mesquite’s anger… even the wild dryad, who has not shown his appearance, should have stopped attacking if he knew I was a druid.

“Maybe he was attacking because of the fires that approached us a while ago. Don’t you think so?”

“At this distance, he should have instinctively noticed Jay’s existence. The size of Jay’s soul is not small anymore. Even from a further distance, it has a strong energy that any dryad can recognize.”

“There can never be a dryad without a master attacking a druid with his will!”

Daisy nodded at Mesquite’s words, squeezed her boomerang, and turned again. It seemed like she wanted to attack him once again after realizing the dryad’s rude attitude.

At that time, I heard a sniffling noise. Who’s crying? It’s not one of my dryads. … Is it the dryad hiding there?

Just as Daisy was about to throw her boomerang again, the attacks that had stopped began to pour out again.

A multitude of moth-shaped lights came over to us like a tsunami. Even though they were not really moths, the sheer number of them made me imagine the sound of flapping wings.

Mesquite screamed to stop him immediately and threw her lance out right after her sand wall popped up from the ground. Her power, which was fully switched from defense to attack at that moment, could blow away all the flying lights simply by the wind pressure created by her attack.

However, Mesquite was a melee fighter after all, and she couldn’t directly harm the enemy. Even if she was a special dryad, she could not do anything if the opponent was attacking from a distance.

That bastard. Is he hiding there knowing that I’m a druid?

Hello! There’s a druid here! 

I was still unfamiliar with receiving excessive treatment from dryads simply because of the title of druid, but I had to use it to my advantage now.

“Hey! You know what the World Tree is? I am that! I’m a druid! You’ll die if you keep attacking the small World Tree!”

I screamed at him, but the attacks became even more intense. The more we counterattack, the worse it seems. What do we do?

Daisy looked at Elder for a while, then suddenly turned to me.

“It still seems possible that we can get out of here… we are just at a disadvantage because he is attacking from a distance! I’ll pull him out of there!”

I unconsciously nodded at her convincing eyes. It reminded me of the time when she ran out alone to draw the attention of the giant worm fire.

Daisy quickly raised a stem from her arm, which attached itself to a branch of a dead tree that had fallen and was forming an arched ceiling. She floated up while holding onto the stem.

“No matter how high your vitality is if you get a fatal hit…!”

Elder urgently reached out to Daisy. He gave a luck buff to her, who was grabbing onto her stem and moving in a parabola like the hands of a clock. Daisy quickly avoided the pouring black liquid, moving away from us at a rapid pace.

When she reached high enough to get close to the ceiling of trees, she shot the stem with her other hand through a gap of the opponent’s attacks. From a distance, I could hear another scream like a duck crying.

The speed of Daisy falling was as fast as when she was advancing towards the enemy. When she came back again, the stem she had sent was pulled tightly with her loot. However, the weight of it made it become thrown into the swamps.

The blue-purple lights in the air eventually harmed her when she was returning. Weakened by the attack, Daisy missed the stem she was holding on to. Mesquite quickly caught her.

“Daisy!”

The underneath of her eyes was now pale purple like Elder’s as if she were poisoned. Elder urgently tried to fill her escaping vitality.

However, he seemed to be having a hard time healing Daisy after being poisoned a while ago. The intensity of the light healing her was fading.

“Is this the time?”

There was no need for me to wait for Elder to answer. I opened the lid of the panacea bottle and drank it. With bitter taste, the smell of grass of the dandelion colony filled my mouth. As the liquid in the bottle decreased, my head became clear and my whole body radiated with energy.

The bottle was maybe half empty by the time I decided to stop. A refreshing energy had spread around my soul and I felt very relieved. It felt as if I could breathe again.

A brilliant pearlescent light fluttered around my dryads as well. Small, yellow dandelion petals circulated around them like Saturn’s rings, giving off a faint floral scent.

The purple energy that was sitting around Elder and Daisy’s eyes quickly disappeared. Their face soon returned to normal.

Mesquite looked at the petals around me and spoke.

“The effects of the panacea will continue until these dandelion petals disappear. We will be able to ignore the effects of the poison with the power of the panacea.”

Mesquite raised her lance as if she thought to take this opportunity to put an end to all this.

The dryad, who had been dragged by Daisy and buried in the swamp, slowly raised his head. I saw a face wearing a hood with a blunt tip and an elongated top, like a fairy’s hat. Blackwater dropped from his large, round glasses.

Through the water, I could see dark, blue-purple eyes. Both of his eyes were shaking like crazy with confusion.

“Wait a minute. It’s a little kid.”

“A seedling?”

I was taken aback to see a young-looking face like that of Daisy’s. Liquid continued to flow down from the eyes of the young male dryad, making it hard to realize if they were swamp water or tears.

We’ve been struggling with a kid like that? Somehow, this pissed me off very much.