The Rise Of A Tribal Deadbeat - Chapter 45

Zok entered the second cave through the large fracture that was on the wall, closely followed by Cero and Kaira. Shira was tightly hugging Kaira’s furry coat as they walked into the unknown. Zok brought Shira along not to make her participate in the fight, but because he felt, she would have been safer with them.

If he was to leave her behind, she might not be able to protect herself from external danger. On the other hand, if she was with the three of them, she could be easily protected. Although doing so would be a chore, but Zok didn’t mind. After all, she was an ally. Cero was more than enough to help him defeat whatever that was occupying the cave, and Kaira could protect her.

The cave was silent, not a single soul, beast or otherwise, was visible there. However, as soon as they stepped foot in there, Zok could feel the air change. The air was no longer fresh and inviting as it had been before, but musty. The smell itself made Cero snort in anger. He was suffering the most due to his heightened sense of smell.

‘Shush!’ Zok scolded the beast before making sure everyone was alright.

Once he had confirmed everyone was okay, he focused his attention on the interior of the cave. Judging from the smell, one would have thought the cave would be all cramped and constricted, however, the insides were awfully spacious. It was even bigger than the last cave he had been in.

On top of that, there was a gigantic hole at the top of the cave which allowed light inside the cave. But that wasn’t all, suddenly the air felt a lot fresher and the coldness disappeared as well. Cero was no longer complaining and even Kaira and Shira looked happy.

But Zok couldn’t help but feel that something was terribly wrong there. It felt as if he was being forced to see all this and none of it was real. After all, how could the environment inside the cave suddenly turn all cheery from being so dark and depressing?

‘Something is seriously off here… but what?’ Zok thought to himself before turning towards his familiars, ‘Cero, Kaira, do you feel something weird here?’

Zok’s words seemed to have snapped them out of a trance-like state, and as they did, the cheery environment disappeared and turned into all gloom and doom. The cave finally revealed its true self to the visitors.

It was wet and damp. The smell around the cave wasn’t as bad as it was before… it was worse. Cero almost lost his crap due to the smell. Zok had to focus all of his attention on calming the beast down while Kaira looked around the dark cave, vigilant for any dangers. Even Shira had brought out her stone knife. She was scared worse than any of them, but being around Kaira had given her enough strength that she was willing to fight for them.

All of a sudden several vines rose from the ground and started waving themselves around crazily. Each vine was as big as Zok and had a thickness comparable to that of his arm. However, that wasn’t all, soon the real beast appeared in front of him.

It was a tree, or at least looked like one with a face drawn in its bark. Several branches had been merged together to form its hands, while the lower half trunk was divided into two parts, and constituted its leg. A thick canopy could be seen over the creature’s head as a continuous barage of weird spores were shooting out of it. All in all, the creature was almost thrice as big as Zok was and had the thickness that would put even Cero’s armour to shame.

Zok had no idea what this creature was, but it did not look like something he should be messing with. For the first time since coming to the Wilderness, Zok was thinking about fleeing from a battle, it was just a gut feeling. This tree or whatever it was, was in a league of its own, he doubted he could do much harm to the tree itself.

His familiars seemed to be in agreement with him. Cero was already acting out and now even Kaira was on the edge of losing her composure. None of them was in a state to fight something as strong as the tree.

‘Kaira… take Shira and run outside. You too Cero.’ Zok instructed his familiars, ‘Go, I’ll cover you while you retreat.’

Both of them nodded and raced towards the exit, however, before they could reach there, several vines covered the exit. They had nowhere to go now.

“Damn it!” Zok cursed under his breath before turning towards the tree, “Looks like we’ll have to fight our way out after all.”

He took out the spear from his inventory, but as he did he heard a voice. Not only him, everyone inside the cave did. The tree was speaking to them.

“Please… don’t leave…”

“What the hell?” Zok blurted out when he saw the giant mouth of the tree moving.

“Don’t be afraid of me… I am… the Guardian of this humble glade… Sofina, the treant spirit..” All of a sudden, the ugly looking tree turned into the most beautiful lady Zok had ever seen, “I need your help, O great tamer of the beasts.”