Chương 68: Chapter 57 – Rooted in Battle

Brahm was still only inches from the edge of Cade's shield when the tortoise moved again. Cade barely registered the shift in its shoulders before a massive, balled fist came hurtling toward him. The impact was explosive. The ash tortoise's knuckles slammed into the shell with a force that rattled Cade's teeth. A deep crack rang out through the hollow. Spiderweb fractures burst outward from the point of impact. Cade's stomach dropped. The shell had withstood the Ashen Emperor's corrosive ash.

It had endured being struck by lightning, defended him from a hoard of leeches, and even withstood direct blasts of violet lightning. It had blocked white fire moments ago without so much as a scorch mark. And now—one punch sent cracks throughout the shell. Brahm drew his arm back again. Cade didn't hesitate this time. He backpedaled hard, bare feet skidding against the scorched earth. The tortoise's second punch tore through the space where Cade had just been, overextending slightly.

Brahm stumbled forward half a step. Cade's mind reeled. The first impact had done more visible damage to the shell than anything since he'd taken it from the Ashen Wastes. That single blow had fractured something he'd come to think was nearly indestructible. He couldn't let this tortoise break his only real defense. Cade kept retreating, angling himself away from the direction Pearl had fled. Every step backward served two purposes: buy space and lead Brahm farther from the mist barrier she'd disappeared into.

But Brahm recovered quickly. Far too quickly. With a snarl, the ash tortoise lunged again, covering the distance in a blur of bulk and muscle. Another fist crashed into the shell. Another sharp crack. More fractures radiated outward.

"You may carry a tortoise's shell," Brahm rumbled, smoke curling from his nostrils, "but it is painfully clear you have no idea how to wield it." The words struck harder than the punches. Brahm was right, Cade didn't know how to use a shield. Two weeks ago he'd been a postdoctoral researcher analyzing protein interactions. His most intense conflict had been arguing over grant funding and trying to get his work published.

Now he was backpedaling from a sapient, flame-spewing tortoise bent on erasing him from existence. He adjusted his grip on the shell, heart pounding. Brahm was faster than he was. That was the real problem. Cade could barely react in time. If the tortoise kept up this relentless pressure, the shield would shatter before Cade ever found an opening to escape. The irony wasn't lost on him. Outpaced by a tortoise. Pre-System, tortoises had been the embodiment of slow and steady.

But this thing moved like a heavyweight boxer crossed with a sprinter. Even after reforging his body in lightning—after pushing his stats higher than any normal human—Cade still wasn't enough to keep up. Brahm feinted left, then drove another punch into the shell. Cade angled it just in time, but the impact still jarred his arms to the shoulder. The fractures widened. If something didn't change, this was going to end quickly. And not in his favor.

His mind latched onto a single possibility: [Hyperfocused Meditation]. He had relied on it to steady himself during the crucible's reforging, but he had never dared to trigger it in the middle of a fight. Would it sharpen him—or slow him down at the wrong moment? Activating it mid-combat carried risk. One misstep and he would be dead. But if he didn't do something soon, the outcome would be the same. Brahm stepped in again, massive fist cocked back.

Cade tightened his grip on the cracked shell and made his decision. He activated [Hyperfocused Meditation]. The shift was immediate. It felt like someone had reached into the world and turned a dial. Sounds around him dulled. The crackling of the burning root pillar softened. The grinding of Brahm's claws stretched into something slower, heavier. Even the tortoise's breath seemed to deepen and lengthen. Time hadn't actually slowed but his perception had sharpened.

The panic that had been creeping along the edges of his thoughts was forced down, flattened beneath a razor-thin line of clarity. His awareness narrowed until the world contained only two things: Him and Brahm. Cade felt every muscle in his body. Every micro-adjustment in his stance. The slight tremor in his left forearm from repeated impacts. The shift of weight in his hips as he pivoted. Brahm's next punch came. In normal time it would have been a blur.

Now, Cade saw the sequence unfold—the tightening of the tortoise's shoulder, the torque in its torso, the way its weight shifted to its rear leg a fraction of a second before the fist drove forward. Cade didn't become any faster, but the skill sharpened his perception, allowing him to process information and respond with far greater precision. He angled the shell a hair earlier. Instead of absorbing the punch head-on, he let it glance off the curved surface.

The impact still reverberated through him, but it didn't produce the violent crack of before. No new fractures spread. Brahm's eyes narrowed as he let loose another strike. Cade pivoted again, adjusting half an inch. The blow slid along the shell's curve instead of detonating against it. So it can help in combat, he thought distantly. Brahm growled and suddenly shifted tactics. Instead of another wild punch, the ash tortoise twisted at the waist and launched a spinning roundhouse kick at Cade's head.

The thick, muscled leg cut through the air with shocking speed. Cade saw it coming. He dropped. The leg passed inches above him, wind from the swing ruffling his hair. And as he crouched, he saw his opening. Brahm's planted foot was momentarily overcommitted. His balance was forward. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Cade surged upward from his crouch, channeling everything he had into one clean motion.

He drove the edge of the shell like a battering ram straight into the back of Brahm's supporting leg. The impact landed squarely against the hamstring. Brahm's eyes widened in surprise. The tortoise's massive body lifted backward from the force. His feet left the ground as momentum carried him over his own center of gravity. Brahm crashed onto his shell with a heavy, earth-shaking thud. For half a heartbeat, the hollow went still. Cade stared in disbelief that his gambit had worked.

Struggling to right themselves had been a major weakness of pre-System tortoises, and Cade was willing to bet Brahm shared that same flaw. His heart kicked hard in his chest. This is it, this is the moment he could escape. He didn't hesitate any further. Instead of pressing the advantage recklessly, Cade backpedaled, keeping the cracked shield raised as he put distance between them. His eyes never left Brahm as he retreated toward a mist barrier. On his back, the ash tortoise writhed.

Clawed limbs scraped at empty air. His heavy body rocked side to side. For a moment, it looked almost pathetic. Cade felt something dangerously close to hope. Even with the skill active, the tension in his mind loosened slightly. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The mist barrier was still far but reachable if he sprinted. He could make it. When he looked back at Brahm, the sight froze his blood. The tortoise's neck had extended far beyond what Cade had thought physically possible.

Thick muscle corded along it as Brahm pressed his face flat against the ground. With a violent, coordinated wriggle, he leveraged his neck like a hydraulic jack. His entire body shifted and in less than a heartbeat he flipped over. It was nothing like the clumsy animals Cade remembered from Earth. Brahm landed on all fours with shocking grace, his ember-like eyes locking onto Cade. The ash tortoise launched forward. Cade managed two backward steps before the distance between them vanished. Brahm was on him.

Cade barely had time to raise the shield as Brahm's fist slammed into it with crushing force. Even with [Hyperfocused Meditation] active, the impact rattled him as he failed to deflect it properly. The world jolted. His arms screamed as the shock traveled through bone and muscle. He felt himself lift off his feet— —and then he was airborne. He crashed onto his back hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. The cracked shell shield came down with him, barely staying between his body and the looming mass above.

Unlike Cade, Brahm didn't hesitate. A second punch detonated against the shield before Cade could roll. Then a third. Each strike was a hammer blow from a living siege engine. The reverberations blurred the edges of Cade's vision. His bones felt like tuning forks, vibrating violently with every impact. Fine splinters shook loose from the fractured shell and rained down onto his face. Another punch landed directly over the origin point of the first crack and the shell gave.

A jagged hole burst through the center, shards snapping inward and clattering across Cade's chest.

"No—" A fifth blow widened the opening, tearing the fracture into a gaping hole large enough to see through. Through it, he saw Brahm. The tortoise lowered his head, eyes burning with savage satisfaction. His face pressed toward the hole. Cade could hear it—the deep inhale through twin nostrils as air was dragged inward. White light began to gather in the tortoise's gaping maw. Cade's pulse thundered. This is it. This was how he died. There was nothing between that bleach-white inferno and his face.

The flames hadn't burned him before—hadn't even felt warm—but that had been at a distance, caught and deflected by the shell. At point-blank range, funneled straight into his face, he had no idea whether his strange resistance would still protect him. For a split second, fear threatened to fracture his focus. But [Hyperfocused Meditation] held his panic back and in its place came awareness. In that moment, Cade felt everything. The tremor in his tricep from absorbing the blows.

The shallow burn in his lungs from heaving breaths. The precise rhythm of his heart pounding in his chest. And beneath it lay something else entirely. A faint tingling stirred low in his abdomen. At first he thought it was just adrenaline, the aftershock of fear—but it spread too deliberately for that. It threaded outward through him along pathways he hadn't consciously mapped before, brushing past muscle and bone, skimming along the deeper currents that powered his movements and thoughts alike.

Something was being gathered. His limbs felt subtly heavier even as his mind sharpened. A whisper of fatigue tugged at the edges of his awareness, accompanied by a thin, hollow ache beneath his ribs. The sensation flowed downward and outward, pulling from everywhere at once. From the strength coiled in his legs. From the steady rhythm in his chest. From the quiet reserve that fueled the sparks of lightning in his mind. It all streamed toward a single point. Down his right shoulder. Through his bicep.

Into his forearm. Pooling into his palm. Right where the thin red line marked the place the Great Tree's parasite had entered him. The tingling intensified—no longer faint, but insistent. Focused. Cade's breath steadied. If I'm going to die, I'm not doing it flat on my back. Brahm finished inhaling. The tortoise's mouth hung wide open, white brilliance building in his throat. Cade locked eyes with Brahm and drove his right palm upward into the hole in the broken shell.

The world narrowed and something inside of him surged outward. Cade felt it leave him, flowing through his palm like a liquid turning solid. His skin burned with a crawling pressure as he felt his flesh ripping itself apart. From between his fingers, he saw dark wood erupt outward. It shot forward in a thick, twisting line and slammed into the open roof of Brahm's mouth just as the white fire reached critical brightness. The impact forced the tortoise's head backward. White flames erupted—but not toward Cade.

The blast spewed sideways as the wooden growth drove Brahm's jaws off angle. The inferno scorched the air outside of the shell instead of pouring directly into Cade's face. For a split second, the hollow was illuminated from below—white fire backlighting the dark wooden growth protruding from Cade's palm. Even through the flames, the wood continued to grow. It thickened, branched, splintered outward. Tiny tendrils shot from its surface, stabbing into the soft flesh of Brahm's upper palate.

Cade could feel resistance through the growth—like pushing into dense clay—but the wood pressed onward. Brahm howled as he cut the flames off abruptly. With a violent snap of his jaws, the tortoise clamped down on the invading growth. The sudden pressure shattered the wood near Cade's palm. The recoil sent splinters flying. Cade felt the break like a snapped tendon—sharp and jarring—but not crippling. Brahm staggered backward off him, clawing frantically at his mouth.

Thick, muscular forelimbs scraped at his gums as he tried to dislodge embedded splinters. Short, explosive bursts of white fire blasted from his mouth in chaotic sprays, as if he were trying to cauterize the intrusion from the inside. Cade rolled to his side and scrambled to his feet. His broken shield clattered beside him, its center destroyed. A System notification pulsed faintly at the edge of his vision but he ignored it. Now was not the time to read whatever it had to say. His right palm still tingled.

When he looked down, the thin red line across it had reopened slightly. It wasn't bleeding, but it did glow faintly beneath the skin. There was no wood protruding from his palm now but the channel it had grown from remained. His heart thundered with exhilaration. He had done that—or rather, the rhizome, his parasite, had surged from his body in response to a command he hadn't even realized he'd issued. Brahm lowered his claws slowly from his mouth.

Burn marks marred the edges of his mouth where he'd tried to purge the wood with fire. Thin splinters still jutted from the edges of his gums. His ember-like eyes locked onto Cade. The earlier smugness was now gone.

"Heartwood," Brahm rumbled, voice thick with fury.

"You carry the Great Tree within you." Cade kept his eyes on Brahm as he flexed his right hand experimentally. He could still feel the pathway. The potential to call more of the parasite inside of him. It hadn't emptied him—but he wasn't untouched either. There was a faint hollowness beneath his ribs, a dull ache in his muscles like he'd pushed through a hard sprint, and a slight thinning in the clarity of his thoughts—as if some quiet reserve had been siphoned away along with his strength.

The growth hadn't come for free. Cade flicked his attention to his status and felt a jolt of confirmation—every pool had dipped. Health, stamina, mana. All lower than they had been moments ago. He didn't linger on exact numbers or percentages, only registered the simple truth: whatever he had just done had drawn from all three resource pools. So this is what the System meant by 'converts personal resources to produce living growth'. Brahm's claws dug into the earth.

"You are not prey," the Destroyer growled.

"You are an infection. Life that must be culled before it grows out of control."