A Stealth Mission? Surely Not!

Eidiri slowly crept deeper and deeper into the forest, crawling through the verdant leaves.

Slowly but surely, he followed the footsteps, hoping that it would lead him to something significant.

From time to time he would catch sight of some sort of minor creature.

Whenever this happened, Eidiri crept from behind them before going for assassination kills.

At times, the creature struggled, but some swift cuts to the throat always made sure that they didn't make noise to alert any others.

There were other problems though, Eidiri making rookie mistakes at times.

Sometimes, he would step on some dry, brittle branches, leading to an audible crack.

When he was lucky, the troll's enormous body would pay him no mind, simply standing there motionless, idly scratching itself.

However, when he wasn't, Eidiri had to burst out from where he had been creeping up on them, trying to make the most of a sudden charge.

Typically, this would be enough to take them out of the fight before finishing them off, but there were several times that Eidiri suffered injuries.

At times, he got slammed into the dirt by a sudden punch or hammered into a tree.

But Eidiri always made sure to come out of the fight victorious, using the terrain around him to his advantage.

After the fight, he would chill and calm down for a bit, resting up and recovering before setting out once again.

Just now, he was stalking yet another victim, an all too familiar sight, the Boruta facing away from him.

Its earthy body was hard to spot amidst all the foliage, but Eidiri managed to catch the slightest movement of its chest rising up and down, intaking air to breathe.

Its massive figure was tucked away into the leaves, covered in mud and soil.

Its body was composed of vegetation as if a human had laid still within a valley, and the surrounding nature had just taken over it.

Walking in the grass, as if the Boruta had felt Eidiri's presence it turned around, lifting its arms to attack.

Seeing that the ever-faithful method of sneaking up on them had now failed, Eidiri tried to rush the Boruta.

Charging forwards, Eidiri was getting tantalizingly close to hitting the Boruta, but suddenly a wall of earth erupted from the dirt, blocking Eidiri from approaching the Boruta.

This wall of dirt then morphed into 2 birds, flying above Eidiri and harassing him, their beaks and claws formed out of stone.

While Eidiri was distracted trying to bat the birds away from him, the Boruta stepped forward and used its vine-like arms to lash against Eidiri's chest, leaving a shallow scar.

'If only I brought some goddamn fire,' Eidiri cursed to himself while getting pelted with attacks.

He immediately recognized that these like earthen creations were more like summons, not to mention that they were made of literal dirt, rock, and vegetation.

Destroying them would do nothing besides tiring out himself.

Sure, the Boruta probably had some limits in regards to its energy and how much it can produce, but Eidiri judged that it was far more likely for him to perish long before the Boruta did, especially with him having to endure the brunt of the harassment.

So he leaped towards the Boruta, his Steel Song outstretched in 1 hand, Saxum Gladius in the other.

Wildly, he slashed at the Boruta, carving into the earthen body of the Boruta.

But it had no visible effect, the dirt splitting apart before reforming.

Leaping to the side, Eidiri leaped to the side avoiding the attacks of the 2 birds that circled back around to dive-bomb him.

As he kept dodging the attacks, Eidiri couldn't help but wonder to himself, 'How the hell am I going to kill this guy?'

As he kept dodging the attacks, Eidiri couldn't help but notice something, he was absolutely screwed, and that he should not have taken this fight.

All around him, there was dirt, dirt, and more dirt for miles.

No body of water to exploit, no cliffs to shove the guy off of.

Damn, perhaps attacking the Earth guy around a completely earthen environment was a bad idea.

'Welp, hindsight is 20/20 I guess' Eidiri mused.

As kept leaping and weaving through the trees, the Boruta eagerly followed him, rushing behind to catch up to him, the birds flying on overhead.

This much sound and activity obviously alerted more of the nearby mobs, drawing the attention over.

Thankfully, not all of them were like the Boruta, some of them being simple to deal with goblins, some screwed up avian creatures that had human faces, and the occasional troll.

Eidiri's legs were burning with exhaustion, the lactic acid having long since been built up in his muscles.

Trying to catch a small breather, he desperately scampered up a tree, hoping that getting to a higher elevation would spare him but a moment.

However, this sort of thinking wasn't the best, and honestly, in Eidiri's defense, done in a moment of panic.

The birds dive-bombed him, the talons raking across his face, the bird's human faces spewing out curses of death and destruction.

To add misfortune to the already bountiful amount of curses Eidiri was currently suffering, the ogre and goblins started to shake the tree, trying to knock Eidiri off.

Clinging to dear life, Eidiri knuckles went white with the effort he was expending to him himself attached to the branch he was latched onto.

Then, to put the final nail in the coffin, the Boruta blurred into this one large entity of plant matter, diving towards the tree and scaling up it like a snake.

Eidiri didn't notice this though, and his body was currently being shaken up, much like the tree he was currently on.

Then in a burst of plants, the Boruta sprouted out from the branch Eidiri was clinging onto, its plant-like body gazing down at him.

Startled by the sudden appearance of the Boruta, Eidiri could only remain in shock as the Boruta nailed him with stone hands, shoving him down to the ground where he was swept up in the mass of monsters and devoured.