The monster burst into flames, and it burnt at an unnatural speed. Like at the point that by the next 30 seconds, it was reduced to charred, black charcoal. All of us were taken aback. All of us looked at Aden.
"Welp, I guess I awakened, huh? This really is turning into some kind of a fictional world isn't it?", Aden said, shaking at the power he discovered he had.
"How.. how.. how did you do that?? ", one of the students asked.
"I honestly don't know. I just.. I don't know."
"Well, you have a fire like ability right? That changes everything. Let's burn the tree.", I said.
"No, you idiot. Why are you risking your life for something we don't need to risk our lives for?? We don't need to burn the tree, do we? Let's just escape the school grounds.", Li Jie said.
"No, we are destroying the tree. Going outside would not help, after all we called the police station right? They have their own problems. We just got an opportunity, and let's take the opportunity.", Artana said.
"Let's go down.", I said.
"No.", Li Jie said, "It is still too dangerous. The apple tree can throw an apple so hard, that well..", he said pointing towards the body of the student who got hit by the 100 kilometre per hour apple, "And to add to that, Aden's little embers would not burn the tree fast enough. The apple tree seems pretty big and the fire would not be as effective as the tree still has a lot of water in it."
With most of Li Jie's monologue, it seems almost everyone was convinced. Then Artana said, "Right, so no one is going to factor in the fact that the tree monsters can get to us now?"
I started to get up. I hurt but I decided to go out again. I told Aden. "There are a group of trees downstairs, let's burn them."
Aden at this point was in a tough spot. The seven students were dived into two groups, the ones who did not want to go (all most everyone) and the ones who wanted to go (Artana and me).
Aden decided to go. That would be a blessing and a curse.
I took him to the area where I saw the group. There were a lot more tree monsters than before. He ran to the group and threw the powder at them. The embers burst into flames, burning the monsters.
We kept on doing it. It was to the point that the embers were now able to burn the monsters in 5 seconds. Then, like a Pokémon, he learnt a new move! Aden has now learnt flame thrower!
That told us a few things. With practice, the proficiency of your moves will improve and your capacity to do supernatural stuff will increase. Then you can do new stuff. The hallway was getting hotter and hotter. We returned to the stairway we came by and sat on the stairs.
Aden seemed pretty tired, and so we sat down.
"Wow Aden you are now a superhero!", I said.
"I know right, this is so coo-"
I got stabbed. From the back. A few monsters came to our back and stabbed me from the behind. Now I had reached my limit. The pain knocked me unconscious.
I woke up, on the stairway, with Aden going on a massacre, burning every tree monster on sight. At this point he could summon small balls of fire, burning everything in a radius of I don't know of how much.
I got up. Although the original plan was to burn the apple tree, I thought to myself, "Why didn't Aden already burn the tree?". I looked at Aden and he looked extremely unhappy. I noticed there was a monster with leaves on it. And it wasn't burning.
Aden kept on flaming the monster, but although it was sustaining damage, it kept on walking. Many, many flames later, it's leaves fell off and it burnt. Aden was exhausted. Apart from that, it was clear we were screwed.
There was a monster that was resistant to fire, and although beatable, needed a lot of energy to be expanded. If there were more of them, it would be a severe problem.
I told Aden, "Let's go back to class, we will talk there."
"Ok"
We went to class, and Aden immediately collapsed, not fainting, just laying down. Me on the other hand, I went to the first aid kit and attempted to bandage myself.
Then, Aden dropped the bomb.
"So, the main apple tree, is well, resistant to fire. Like I burnt it, and nothing. A few apples burnt and a few leaves burnt but nothing else"
"Well, sh*t.", I thought to myself. "So that is why he was still in the hallway! He did try to burn the tree, but failed."
"Well so beating the tree is not an option right?", Li Jie said, triumphantly.
"Worth a try?", I said.
"Well, we still need to do something, after all, we cannot stay here forever, right? We will starve to death. We need to either escape, or beat the tree. Assuming more problems don't arise", Aden pointed out.
"Escape is not an option, the outside situation is the same as ours, if not worse.", Artana said.
"Nice, so in conclusion, we are screwed?", I said, sarcastically.
"We are quite literally screwed.", Linda said.
"So, what are we doing now?", I asked.
"Well first we need to get some food supplies. Who is volunteering?"
No one raised their hands. I said, "Once I am relatively patched up, I will go.". The real reason I wanted to go was obvious, I wanted to get superpowers, and I thought being in high pressure situations will help me "awaken" (Don't look at me like that, that's what cartoons and comics have taught me).
Aden also decided to volunteer. It was the same group of people as before, me and Aden.
"What a bunch of cowards.", I thought to myself
The next approximately 2 hours was just boredom, it was boring, and I decided to eat my lunch (At our school, you had two options, to eat from the school cafeteria, or to bring your own food. I brought my own food).
It was 3:00 pm and I thought I was ready to go to the cafeteria. Me and Aden went downstairs. The normal tree monsters were a breeze. It didn't take long for us to reach the cafeteria.
I went in the cafeteria and started "looting" the place. I found a kitchen knife with a weird, I do not know how to describe it, "aura" to it. I grabbed it. The knife was worn down, the metal was cracked, and it looked pretty useless, but I still took it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I filled the I found. Then I went back up, put the sack in front of the class, and went back down.
Rinse and repeat. Aden kept accompanying me. I told him, "Chill my guy, go back. I'll handle it myself.".
"Dude it is dangerous, cannot do that buddy."
"There aren't even tree monsters nearby."
"Still, just in case."
"Dude there is more than 1 stairway, if they block one, I will go through the 3 more!"
Some convincing later, he left me.
The real reason I wanted him to go is to fight a tree guy with my new toy, the cracked, knife. On my way up and down, I had found a stray tree guy. I had a suspicion that the knife was a weapon tailor made for this world, with superpowers and such (I have read enough stories to know this.)
I went to the stray tree guy and went ham on it. The weapon was as effective as cutting onions with chopsticks, that is to say, horrible. I got a punch to the face. Now here is where I screwed myself. I should not have challenged the monster in the first place, as if I decided to flee, it would follow me.
I was now locked in a death match with the tree guy. I kept on trying to cut him up, but it was ineffective. Like very ineffective. Meanwhile, the monster kept on either punching me or slashing me. Weirdly, it never stabbed at me, almost like as if it was playing around with me.
Then it punched me really hard. I got knocked back about 5 metres back. In an act of desperation, I threw my knife at him. Somehow, it accelerated so fast, that it went directly through. I didn't realize it but I had aimed for the head, and the monster was history.
Unfortunately, the knife was, well, now completely broken. I went back to putting stuff in the sack.
I kept on filling the sack, and it was pretty boring. I went back to class, emptied the bag and went back. The sacks were heavy. Aden decided to accompany me again.
I kept on filling the sack and a branch attached itself beside me, connecting to the wall. It came at such high velocity, that if my head were there, my head would have been lobbed off.
I turned around, and saw Aden fighting a monster which was much larger than the ones before, it had leaves, and it was resistant to fire. It also had an apple. The fight was a brutal one. There wasn't even a competition of who was going to win. Aden was getting hit around like a baseball.
The fight kept on going and I just sat there, not knowing what to do. I noticed the trees that didn't have leaves easily burnt. The tree's that did though, were resistance to fire. And like with the previous leaf tree monster, if the leaves are removed, it turns into a normal, flammable tree.
Well, I still didn't know what the apple did, but I knew it was really important. Then, the worst possible thing happened. The evolved tree monster saw me. And went for me. It extended one of its creepy wood limbs at really high velocity, and it just missed me.
That wasn't the biggest problem here. The biggest problem, which I just realized, was that it could SEE us. All other tree monsters could not see us. They didn't have the ability of sight.
Then the tree extended its arms again. And this time, it hit their mark. It went clean through my solar plexus (The area in between the abdomen and the chest). It retracted its limbs and went back to fighting Aden.
The wound was clearly a fatal wound. I fell to the ground. I felt a lot of air just seep into my wound. The air felt less like air and more like a lot of honey seeping into my wound. I felt charged up all of a sudden, and I looked down at my wound, and there was a wound no more. I got up.
The tree monster, realizing I had somehow healed up, went for another extending of arm.
I just attempted to punch, and a beam of light shone from my fist, going to the tree monster, destroying a part of its body.