Ch38. Fight vs the Evil Cursed Tree 2

Solution barely managed to stop herself from shaking in rage. This was the first time she couldn't hold aggro! She felt as if she failed her Master when the Tree completely ignored her and attacked him. She didn't want to disappoint him!

Worse yet, it was so abrupt and unexpected for Solution, she, for a moment, froze, giving the Tree more room to attack Rei a few more times. Solution felt like an utter failure because of that. Her feelings quickly morphed to anger, causing her to lash out.

[Celestial Photon Beam] was a somewhat weak ninth-rank holy spell and under normal circumstances, Solution would not cast it. Thankfully, even in her enraged state, she still remembered that Rei wouldn't like it if she destroyed the entirety of the Great Forest of Tob. Only that kept her from casting something more powerful at the damned Tree.

The Beam went through half of the Great Forest of Tob, creating a small stripe of a massive burned trench if one looked at the forest from above. Fortunately, the area of effect of this spell was very limited.

The Tree for the first time released something that was close to a roar, frantically waving its burned-shut stumps, covering them with its black miasma in an attempt to heal itself.

'Calm down.' Rei sent Solution a mental message, causing her to flinch as she realized she lost her cool for a moment. 'Well, this was disappointing.' Rei shook his head, 'Try to heal it. I want to do more experiments.'

'Understood.' Solution listened, casting a holy-based healing spell at the Tree... only to make it release something akin to a shriek as the surface of its bark started releasing smoke.

'Stop!' Rei quickly shouted at Solution who cutely tilted her head. 'The Tree uses cursed magic. Healing it with Holy spell is akin to burning it.' His eye twitched as he noticed the small vindictive smile on Solution's face, realizing she did it on purpose.

Solution cast yet another healing spell, one that belonged to nature magic and was quite powerful. The Tree stopped shrieking and groaning as the stumps regenerated at a visible pace, awing Rei with how the Tree continuously took over the nature magic in the healing spell, converting it into corrupted magic, and then concentrated it on the stumps, healing itself.

Rei doubted the process was a conscious one and chalked it up to the workings of the healing spell itself. The Tree was a plant-based lifeform so naturally, the nature magic would work on it even if it had the tendency of corrupting it.

'Master,' Rei suddenly received a mental message from Solution, 'may I have the first few attacks? I am still somewhat angry and need to calm down.' He could discern she was still pissed at what happened.

Looking at the Tree... Rei realized it was already beaten and they were just playing with it, prolonging its suffering. It wasn't as strong as he thought and if it made Solution feel better...

'Ah, well... go nuts?' He sheepishly sent back to Solution who cracked her knuckles and a very unnerving smile appeared on her face as she slowly advanced towards the Tree, completely ignoring the razor-sharp grass on the ground.

For the following hour, Rei could only helplessly watch as the Tree got a whooping of its lifetime, getting bashed, smashed, and torn apart by Solution's bare hands before she fully healed it and continued.

Unfortunately for the Tree, Solution had [Minerva's Might] that reduced the cost of her spells by fifty percent, and then one of her divine-tier rings had the effect of reducing the cost of all Healing Spells by thirty percent, all the while her maxed out spell trees focusing on healing provided yet another twenty percent passive cost reduction. There was no way she would go out of mana by casting healing spells since they cost her nothing.

It was yet another reason why Solution would face instant delete from the developers if they had found out about it. They added a ring capable of reducing thirty percent of the cost of the healing spells only because there was no way to possibly get the cost reduction above fifty percent no matter how one tried and even then, only specialized healers could have that.

Naturally, Rei was quite smug about how he exploited the game to get past this limitation.

When Solution was finally done with her 'calming down', Rei could only silently curse, not having it in himself to torture the Evil Cursed Tree more. By now, the Tree wasn't even resisting and just waited for its next suffering, surrounded by numerous broken branches, pieces of black bark, and piles of dead leaves that littered the entire clearing because of how rough Solution was.

'Just... finish it.' Rei mentally told Solution who had a very satisfied expression on her face as she yet again tore off a branch from the poor Tree,

"I can always experiment with spells on my own." Rei quietly muttered under his nose and sighed. He wasn't a good person but the way Solution treated the Tree as her personal punching bag made even him decide to grant the Tree the mercy of demise.

...

"I am sorry Master. I failed to keep it from attacking you." Solution apologized as she arrived near Rei and dejectedly lowered her head.

"Silly girl." Rei chuckled, affectionately patting Solution's head, "There's nothing you could have done about that. Don't worry about it. Just remember this fight and expect such a thing to happen the next time."

"Next time I won't let the opponent attack you." Solution said with utmost conviction but Rei put a swift end to that dangerous line of thoughts. He didn't want her to do something stupid or overreact as she did in this fight because someone attacked him.

"That's not something you can prevent. People no longer have aggro mechanics and nobody in their right mind would attack you when I am so much easier target." Rei started, putting his finger on Solution's lips when he saw her opening her mouth to retort, "It's fine. I trust you to protect me. Just accept you can not shield me from everything."

Solution reluctantly nodded, her cheeks slightly pink as she lost herself in Rei's concerned yellow eyes that stared at her with worry. "I will do my best, Master."

Seeing her cute expression, Rei couldn't help but pull her closer to himself and stealing a kiss that slowly deepened, and their tongues entwined in a pleasurable struggle for domination while the two stood in the devastated clearing, seemingly lost in the warm companionship of each other for a moment.

Neither paid any attention to the clearly traumatized Ylven who looked at them as if they were monsters.