Overpowered Gears

Seraphina had once considered selling her gauntlets and her kakkhara before. Not out of greed of course, she was part of the church after all.

After Father Gabriel, the man who had raised her, died of illness, she had taken upon his duties as his adopted daughter. So despite her young age, Seraphina had people to care for. The money obtained from selling her three pieces of gear would have given her the chance to have a somewhat ordinary childhood.

But she didn't, she did not sell them.

There were two big reasons. The first was simple: others could simply not hold them.

She had once asked a B-ranked adventurer she knew for guidance on how to properly wield her khakkhara. But when she handed it to him, the pewter staff instantly dropped to the ground. His hands which were holding the staff just seconds earlier, showed effectively no resistance as soon as she stopped touching it.

On the ground, the khakkhara was there, stuck and impossible to lift. However, when Seraphina reached down to lift it, she succeeded, effortlessly so.

Watching a child play with something he could not even budge had greatly shaken the adventurer's confidence. He retired not long after... In his resignation letter, he mentioned how he had perhaps chosen the wrong career from the very beginning and that, maybe he was simply not built to do manual work.

The second reason was also very simple: her gear was truly peerless.

Seraphina had never seen anything even remotely close in quality to her gauntlets or her khakkhara.

For starters, they were nearly unbreakable. She had not been exaggerating when she feared that blocking might accidentally damage the Venom tree's roots. When Seraphina used her khakkhara to intercept its strike, the Venomtree's roots had actually been heavily damaged, even though it was the one attacking.

That had made the Venomtree extremely wary, to the point where it resorted to something as roundabout as blinding Seraphina before attacking her.

But the most important thing was this: both the gauntlets and the khakkhara possessed a unique ability, something she had never seen in any other gear.

As an adventurer, Seraphina had already experienced her fair share of near-death situations. From getting beaten up, to poisoned, to nearly drowned, she really had been through a lot.

But she could never explain why, everytime she was on the verge of death, her gauntlets would release a strange blue energy–different from mana, and her body would start to recover almost immediately.

So, when her body had been crushed, she hadn't panicked nor was she scared for her life, as she knew it would be impossible for her to die. She just felt very frustrated and incredibly embarrassed.

Getting humiliated by a plant was a first for her.

Father Gabriel had always said she was a genius, but this...this plant had treated her like this!?

'How dare it!' Seraphina thought, fuming.

Her fists didn't clench under her rage as she was still paralyzed, but they sure would have if she could move.

She had no idea that the Venomtree had, in fact, shown her its highest form of respect by treating her this seriously.

When the blue energy coiled around Seraphina and she got up again, the first thing she did was—

"You B@$#@%, you really thought I'd die to a lowly plant like you!?"

Even though she had promised not to use bad words until she was an adult, this time she really couldn't help it. The words just came out on their own.

Seeing her rise, the Venomtree was momentarily surprised before swiftly launching an attack.

Having learned her lesson, Seraphina gripped her khakkhara tightly and pushed it forward.

*CLANG!*

The sound of the clash rang out across the forest, as plum-colored wood shavings flew in all direction, embedding themselves into nearby vegetations.

The "poisonous" in Poisonous Venomroot meant that, it was in fact poisonous. The clash of wood and metal had a devastating effect on the nearby wildlife as the poison contained within its roots spread across the forest, ending entire ecosystems.

Seraphina didn't want to admit it but she had underestimated the Venomtree. It was much smarter than she had initially assumed.

But even if was smart, it couldn't be compared to a genius like her.

Without access to her mana, she wouldn't be able to keep up against the tree for more than a few exchanges. And she still needed about twenty seconds for her mana to stabilize. So she had to find a way to break free from this entanglement–and quickly. The tree must have guessed it too.

So Seraphina did what anyone would have done when facing an overwhelmingly strong enemy: she ran.

But she didn't run in just any direction.

Sensing the resistance of the girl loosening, the tree immediately guessed her intention–she was trying to escape. It immediately sent its roots forward to prevent her escape.

But to the Venomtree's surprise, its roots actually hit nothing. Because Seraphina had never tried to escape but had ran forward instead, directly towards her enemy.

This was completely out of the tree's scope and he had no roots left to dispatch Seraphina as it had already sent them away.

"Look at you! You really are a brainless tree."