“Kalla, my friend, you spoke too soon.” Lith said with a smirk “Now this is what I call interesting. No one has dared to stop us until we’ve almost reached our destination. Either Erlik has gone insane or he is afraid that we might discover something.
“Otherwise his goons would have never bothered us.”
Most of the plant folk who were grinning at the idea of turning the unwanted guests into fertilizer flinched at those words. Their amused expressions were replaced by anger and suspicion as their gazes moved from the humans to Illum the Treantling.
“Shameless mammal! You are the one who associates himself with an undead. How dare you accuse me of being one of them?” The Treantling’s outrage and words were enough to shift the tide in his favor again.
Illum tried to push Lith back, but the small human kept his relaxed stance as if the steel beam thick arms of the Treantling were just a gentle spring rain hitting a mountain.
“How? Easy enough. Your skin, bark, or whatever you call it, shows signs of withering and so do your leaves. Yet even famished infected display an enhanced physique, hence you’re not one of them.
“Plus, you can’t be an undead either. If you were one of them, it would take days of starvation to reduce you to such a state. With such a hunger, you wouldn’t be able to restrain yourself in front of so much food. Do you know what this means?” Lith asked.
“That you are accusing an innocent to cover your friend’s ass!” A Thorn said. Judging from her forms and voice, she was supposed to be a female, or at least she wanted to appear as such.
Her whole body was a mass of vines and foliage that resembled a woman as tall as Phloria, with blue hair and eyes. She was quivering in indignation, making her humanoid appearance falter from time to time.
“He’s probably a victim of some undead scum. They must have fed upon him just like they did on me and my siblings! Many of us died to sate your bellies.” She pointed her finger at Kalla.
“And yet you perfectly recovered, like all plant folk do.” Lith’s voice was calm, he had dealt with more victims and angry mobs than he had ever wanted to. Yet it had taught him how to manipulate their fury.
“Of course I…” The Thorn stopped the moment she realized Lith’s words. She placed one of her hands on the Treantling, making her vines seep under his bark.
“You’re right. He’s not an undead nor an infected. Yet his life force is impure.” She said while taking several steps back while her form shapeshifted into her battle form, resembling a green wave of barbed vines.
“Of course it’s impure. He’s a thrall, and a powerful one at that.” Lith said. “The only question is who sired him.”
A thrall was a living creature in the process of being turned into an undead. To make it happen, the sire had to feed upon the thrall and the thrall upon the sire. The exchange of life force allowed the blood core to form and slowly grow in power without it being rejected by the body while the mana core became weaker.
At the end of the process, the mana core would be swallowed by the blood core, allowing the thrall to become an undead without losing any of their memories, since they would never be completely dead.
They would turn from living into undead. Lith had been able to recognize the Treantling for what he really was only thanks to Solus. Her mana sense allowed her to see the Treantling’s twin cores that were just a few centimeters away from each other.
They both had the same energy signature, which meant the creature wasn’t an infected, just like the presence of the mana core was proof of the Treantling being alive.
The Treantling’s blood core filled to the brim with the energy of his sire was also proof that he wasn’t just a pet, but a precious asset. Once again, Lith’s Sherlock acting left his audience flabbergasted, yet to keep Solus’s existence a secret, he had to “reveal” his trick.
“The next time, don’t shove away a Healer. Most of our spells need physical contact to work, you know?” He said.
The Treantling snarled at the crowd ready to lynch him, emitting sounds that no living being was supposed to. He shapeshifted his arm into a wooden spear as thick as a tree and as fast as an arrow, aiming at Lith’s heart.
If he dodged, the spear would impale the Wight that was currently blinded by her own companion, making the sucker punch a sure kill attack, the only variable was its victim.
Or so Illum thought. Lith’s left hand pushed the spear down so that it harmlessly sunk into the ground while his right hand formed a fist infused with darkness magic, hitting the paralyzed Treantling where his heart was supposed to be.
The left side of Illum’s body shattered as Lith’s fist pierced through the wood and opened a hole so big that the thrall’s left arm was now hanging by a thread. The creature yelped in pain and surprise.
Not even his sire had ever hit him so hard. Yet even a damage of that entity was just a mere inconvenience for a plant folk. The stumpy legs of the Treantling sprouted roots that penetrated the soil, extracting all the nutrients he needed to mend his body.
Countless small wood tendrils collected the shattered pieces from the ground and in the blink of an eye, it was as if nothing had happened. Much to Phloria’s and Solus’s surprise, Lith had remained still the entire time, yet they trusted him enough to not ask questions and played along.
“Do you care to explain how come you just healed such a big wound even though it was made with darkness magic without a scratch, yet your bark and leaves still look like you’re about to die?” Lith asked.
The Treantling ignored the human and focused on the other plant folks who were approaching him with a dangerous look on their faces. Lith remained still, checking the reactions of the undead who pretended to be bystanders.
He didn’t think that Erlik could have been so stupid that he would leave something important in his hideout, nor that Leannan’s guards were so incompetent that they would miss any relevant clue after forcing their enemy to escape.
Yet that unwarranted provocation had to be part of a bigger scheme. A thrall wouldn’t move without their sire’s permission, nor would they make such a clumsy attempt to kill them.
It had to be a diversion. The question was: to cover what? After noticing the Treantling’s attempt to rile up the crowd, Lith had decided to use it to his own advantage.
If the undead wanted a diversion, they had got it, but he was free to mess with whatever their plan was. What he hadn’t predicted was the savage fury that the plant folks demonstrated the moment they realized who their real enemy was.
Treantlings, Dryads, Thorns, and even the moss creatures surrounded the thrall after shapeshifting into their combat form. They ripped him apart so fast and with such fury that even though Illum’s roots were still planted in the ground, his regenerative abilities weren’t capable of keeping up with them.
Yet no one stepped forward to help him.
