I approach carefully, being very cautious of everything around me, I throw a few stones at the tree but nothing happens.
'I think it's safe...' I walk up to the tree and climb onto one of the roots, although I'm short, luckily the height of the fruits is not too high. After a few hops, I manage to grab one and pull it.
"This is... an apple?" Now that I've got it, I can't say this fruit is an apple, it looks different although it's very similar, its color is a vibrant red.
I take a small bite of the fruit, in case it's poisonous at least I haven't ingested much of it.
"Hummm" the flavor is delicious, with a slightly tart but sweet taste, but it's very different from the taste of an apple.
'I think it's a fruit similar to an orange...' I continue eating, the flavor is great, and I can replenish magic by eating it, not that I need to, since with my high magic, casting healing barely made a difference.
'It's gone...' I start trying to grab another one, after 1 minute of trying I manage to grab one.
I start eating a little faster, but I start to notice something strange.
'Strange...this scent...it's not from the fruit'
Sniff Sniff
This fruit doesn't have the sweet scent that attracted me here, it comes from the tree, but the fruits have no real scent, in fact they have a faint metallic smell, but it's almost imperceptible to the point of saying they basically have no scent.
'True, I can use evaluation, why didn't I think of that?'
"Evaluate" I use evaluation on the fruit.
[Heart of the Forest] a fruit that is born from the [Carnivorous Tree] this fruit is made from the flesh of the beings the tree devours, usually the tree emits a sweet scent to attract prey.
[Carnivorous Tree] a tree that feeds on the flesh of everything it kills, it crushes its targets on the ground and leaves them to be decomposed by the soil, thus feeding on the corpses.
"Hun?...blerg" I start to feel sick and vomit what I ate. I feel disgusted now that I know what the fruit is made of.
"!!! I need to get out of here now" the situation hits me soon, this thing will attack me at any moment, I try to run but I trip on the root and fall to the ground, but I quickly force myself to get up and start running again.
I move away only a little until something knocks me down.
"Kyaa" something is holding my ankle, when I look I see that a vine from the tree is holding me.
"N-No, let me go, let me go" I try to kick the vine but it is firmly gripped on my ankle. It starts to slowly drag me.
"B-Big brother, please get me out of here" I ask Valac for help, my fear after reading that description has hit me hard. Unfortunately, Valac doesn't care about my plea as he doesn't show up to help me, I can only curse him for being a damned sadist who is just watching.
"Haaaaa" it lifts me up and starts to spin my body.
"HAaaaahHHH" it's getting faster and faster, then at one point it changes the direction of the spin from up to down and slams my body against the ground.
"ARRRRRGG" I feel my organs being crushed by gravity, my bones breaking, I feel my ribs piercing my lungs, filling them with blood.
"I-It hurts..." I can barely speak, blood fills my mouth, the ground is covered in blood, while I feel the pain that is easily the most painful I have ever experienced.
Normally someone who has suffered this kind of damage would pass out, but I'm not someone normal, I can't pass out, I just feel pain, only pain throughout my whole body, my bones piercing my flesh and organs not being enough for me to pass out.
'It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, h-help, it hurts' I can only think about how much it hurts, it's hell, the pain I feel is all over my body but I can't pass out, I feel my bones and flesh slowly regenerating.
However, my regeneration doesn't do much to alleviate my pain.
"H-...blerg" I try to use healing but only blood comes out of my mouth, the taste of iron in my mouth makes me nauseous.
After long 2 minutes of suffering, my body is restored, but this is not necessarily a good thing, the tree has noticed that I didn't die just from that.
"N-no, W-Wait, don't do this...h-help...s-someone help me" I speak desperately with tears in my eyes as the tree is soon preparing to spin me around one more time.
'I'm scared, someone get me out of here, it hurts, I don't want to go through this' of course there's no one here to save me as the tree soon resumes the spin.
"Haaaah"
"HHHAAAAAHHHH" it seems to be spinning even faster, the speed is so much that I feel my leg bone dislocate, if it were stronger it might have torn off my leg and thrown me far from this tree, but I'm not that lucky.
It soon changes the direction to make me hit the ground, this time my head will be the area that hits the ground, I see everything slowly as the ground approaches.
CRASH!
I can't even scream, my body hits so hard that my head explodes, unfortunately I manage to stay conscious somehow. Even though my head has been shattered, I still feel an infernal pain that doesn't stop.
I am fully aware of each separated piece of my body. I feel as my bones are crushed by the impact, I feel as my internal organs are scattered on the ground, I feel as my gray matter spreads on the grass.
I am fully aware of everything, I am unable to speak, or make any sound, but I still feel it all, I can even see everything somehow, it's as if each lost part is still connected and operating to maintain my normal functions.
At this moment I really wish I had died, the pain this time was worse than the first, the state of my body on the grass is like a deformed mass of flesh and blood.
I feel as my body slowly reconnects and restores itself, the process is even faster than the first time, now in less than 30 seconds my body is intact again.
'No...let me die...' I feel desperate, the adrenaline and fear run through my mind, soon the tree notices that my body is back, it slowly tries to lift me up again.
But my desperate mind makes one of the stupidest decisions I could. I quickly grab the 3 mana stones and overload them with an abnormal amount of magic. My desperation made me put an amount of magic that I shouldn't have.
Normally overloading something that clearly can't handle it is just stupid, and in this case it's no different, when they are overloaded with a ridiculously high amount of magic, they explode instantly in my hands.
BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM
The tree and I are shattered in the same instant. I feel my body burning from the heat of the explosion, my flesh melting causes an infernal pain, pieces of my body fly in all directions.
Even with this explosion, I am forced to remain conscious, feeling as my body is charred even after being shattered, the pain of being burned and shattered is worse than the pain of being crushed.
But I know that if I let that tree crush me, it would just keep doing it, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, without stopping for who knows how many days until I passed out.
Since my scattered pieces flew everywhere, as my body starts to regenerate, instead of trying to reconnect, it is simply regenerating what is not there, so the parts that were thrown away will just disappear in a puff of smoke.
My immortality quickly works and in less than 15 seconds I'm whole again. My first reaction is...
"Hick Ahhhh" to throw myself on the ground and cry, that infernal pain is etched in my mind, even though my body is completely fine now, I still feel how my body was crushed and shattered. I feel the pain of being charred, and I feel the pain of having my body shattered by an explosion.
No living being should be able to experience these pains, but my immortality forces me to have this pain as a life experience. I can't hold back my tears, as I hold my body and hug myself tightly.
And different from just feeling hopelessness, I feel like I just want to disappear from the world to never feel this pain again, I can't know how Ayla from the game could endure this pain and still move forward.
I spend the next 20 minutes crying, luckily the loud sound of the explosion scared away any predators in the area, during this time I discovered how Ayla from the game could bear this pain and move on.
In the moments when I just thought I wanted to disappear, Aetheris and Uriel would always appear in my mind, showing that Ayla only moves forward with the hope of being able to get out of this castle and find those who are important to her.
After this time, I get up to start walking, staying too long in this place can be dangerous, sooner or later predators will come here to check the situation, and now I don't have any [Mana Stones] to defend myself.
My walk is a bit shaky, almost as if anything extra would make me fall, I really don't want to walk, but I force myself to do it, I don't even have the strength to beg Valac to get me out of here.
After what happened here it's more than obvious that he won't help me in any way. I thought he seemed nice, but in the end appearances are deceiving, he's still just a damned monster who doesn't care how much pain I feel.
I walk through the forest trying to make as little noise as possible, strangely, although my clothes were completely charred and didn't regenerate, the bracelet returned to my hand and withstood the explosion.
The bracelet seems to be an incredibly resistant item, in addition to the fact that it has some magic that makes it come back to me. Although I don't like walking through the forest without clothes, there's not much I can do.
My regeneration is not like those in anime where the character's clothes come back too, only my body is regenerated, the bracelet only came back because it has some magic to always come back to me.
I keep walking, the ground hurts my feet while the branches tear my skin, but the pain I felt before makes these small wounds something painless, I can still feel that pain. This is something I will never forget in my life.
My walk through the forest is no different from a zombie dragging itself, I feel tired, I just want to throw myself on the ground and sleep...but I know that if I do, something will find me and drag me into a pit of pain.
This time I won't have mana stones to save me.