The ground near the bark seemed to quiver, moving up and down as if something was trying to emerge. To Kai's disgust, an ugly, slimy worm crawled out. It seemed to be excited or crazed as it let out a low-pitched scream and started crawling in the right direction with a flurry.
Kai was ready to swim away from the creature, as it was too big for his current form, and its slimy appearance made his whole body shudder.
But then something happened, and he froze in shock...
And horror.
The maple-like leaves of the trees started to tremble and change their color, from red to orange to green, and when they turned green, each leaf somehow divided itself into sharp needles. They elongated and shot towards the ugly creature.
Thousands of needles from all the trees pierced its body. It struggled and let out a sharp, pained screech, but this seemed to excite the appendages as they started to pull the pitiful creature towards the trees.
The issue was that there were many trees, so...
With a plop, its slimy body burst apart, blood and some disgusting liquid splattering around.
'What the fuck.'
The needle-like leaves attacked the blood and seemed to drink all of it.
'Blood-devouring conifers? These goddamn fuckers should be called devils!'
Kai imagined himself swimming as fast as he could and rushed away.
Maybe the trees didn't treat him like a living organism, which is why they didn't attack him, so he had to get out of this place as fast as he could before his time limit was over.
[Time Remaining: 00:36:16]
Soon after, he found himself confused, agitated and cursed the various insects and weird creatures popping out of the ground, each of them near the bark of a tree, as if confirming the saying that it's safest near the most dangerous place.
'The hell with these idiots.'
At least they were safe below the ground, but the moment they popped out, they became a meal or subject to the carnage of the devilish trees.
Kai noticed that each of them was trying to move towards the eastern direction, and so he rushed towards the west, but seeing the state of their bodies, the bloody slaughter in front of him scared the hell out of him.
It was a disturbing sight.
Worse was that even at his highest speed, he was too slow; his current form was too slow.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck.'
He suddenly stopped and closed his eyes.
The cries of pain from various creatures, the whooshing sound of the vicious tree leaves—he tried to filter them out and tried to calm down.
But he couldn't.
Because at this rate, he wouldn't be able to leave the place, and worse was that he didn't even know if he was going deeper into the forest or towards the exit.
'Fuck, calm down, Kai. There has to be something that you can do.'
What did he have right now? What was his biggest asset?
'Oh.'
The ash devil wanted to face palm himself.
'System... yeah, system, can I extend the ash devil time? I mean, like the moment it's over, I immediately use the skill again? The gap of these few seconds, will the trees fuck me up in that limited time? Heck, will I even be able to immediately reuse the skill?'
[The trees won't attack you.]
'See, like I sa... What? They won't attack me?'
[The trees ignore a fire-type creature like you, as your blood will burn them from the inside out.]
'...'
After a brief silence, Kai shouted in frustration, 'Why the hell didn't you tell me about this before?'
[You had told the system to wait.]
Its reply was simple and emotionless, leaving the ash devil stupefied.
'Ar-are you stupid...? No, never mind, I am stupid.' The ash form seemed to splatter as Kai opened his eyes, and his focus changed to the sky.
Well, most of the sky was covered by the twisted canopies that were happily attacking the pitiful creatures.
The ash devil wanted to laugh, but he couldn't.
'Man, I made such a stupid mistake.'
Kai closed his eyes again and thought, 'It was a communication issue. Next time, I should make sure to shut my mouth when the system is giving new information.'
Everything had happened too fast, so Kai wasn't really at fault, but still, he would try to remain calm in situations like this from now on.
The ash devil opened his bead-like eyes and started moving towards the west, this time not in a hurry.
The slaughter happening around him was stomach-turning, but he couldn't do anything about it.
Instead, at this point, a sense of twisted pleasure filled him.
The reason was simple.
The trees had mass-murdered many creatures, drinking away their blood.
But their corpses were still there, though in messed-up states, but they were still there.
This basically meant that he'd get an amazing number of skill points.
'If I am able to devour the corpses that is... Eh, I'll just close my eyes and use devouring mark movement.'
Thinking of this, his mood lightened further.
Who wouldn't want a free meal?
Ahem, he meant skill points.