The Dryad did not wait for further conversation.
Her branches whipped down like spears.
SWISH—SWISH—CRACK
I rolled to the side. The ground where I stood monts ago fractured like cracked shale. If one of those hit my spine — I’d snap in half like a twig.
Roots surged from the ground next — thick as a python, writhing to entangle .
"Movent Arts — burst."
My body blurred to the side as I sprinted at an oblique angle, barely slipping past the snapping tendrils. Even then — the tip of one root grazed my back, ripping fabric and drawing blood.
"Gh—!"
Pain flared. My breath stuttered.
She wasn’t strong — she wasn’t fast —
She was overwhelmingly oppressive.
A field–control monster.
A boss that turned the battlefield into her personal womb.
And the problem?
My stamina and mana were dogshit.
Two minutes of pure evasion already had my lungs burning again.
[ Binding Vines ]
Her voice echoed — and the boss room floor erupted.
thousands of roots crawled like awakened snakes.
This — I couldn’t dodge.
Unless—
I slamd a mana bullet into the chamber — not anti-spore — but piercing type.
I fired downwards.
BOOM—!
The recoil jolted through my shoulders as the blast disrupted the roots directly beneath , sending splinters and dirt flaring upward. The sudden explosion loosened the terrain, breaking the core formation of her binding skill.
I used that split second to dash sideways while she montarily staggered.
She growled — the branches quivered violently.
[... Insolent pest. ]
Then her upper torso — the humanoid part — raised her hand.
Light gathered there — dense, thick, pulsing.
She wasn’t just a brute.
She used magic too.
A sphere of erald energy ford — so dense it made my skin prickle.
[ Nature’s Heart — Lance ]
A beam of condensed mana tore through the air — vaporizing plants, rock, air — everything in a straight line.
PSHHHHHHHHHHH—!
I barely — barely — ducked under it.
If I had been even a fraction slower — I’d be a pile of ash.
"That’s not even funny—!"
My heart hamred hard enough to crack ribs.
This Dryad wasn’t just C–rank. She was borderline B.
I crouched low, panting — then inhaled deeply.
Focus.
I wasn’t going to win by damage.
I couldn’t brute-force her HP bar.
I had to exploit the chanic.
Behind the humanoid torso — embedded in the tree trunk like a beating heart — there was a faint glowing knot of wood. In the ga, that was her internal mana core.
Every Dryad had one.
Break it — instant kill.
I loaded my last trump card.
A Mana–Piercer Slug Round — the single most expensive bullet I bought all week.
I steadied my breathing.
Detection skill sharpened my senses — trajectories, breathing rhythm, branch angles — everything slowed as if subrged underwater.
The Dryad noticed.
Her eyes widened — she lifted both arms — every branch in the chamber aid at at once.
She was going to erase in one all–out volley.
I whispered:
"Not today."
I sprinted toward her — straight into the storm.
THWACK—WHIP—CRACK—PING—
Branches shattered stone around — sliced air — one grazed my left cheek, another clipped my forearm — blood sprayed.
Movent Arts strained every tendon — my vision blurred from speed.
And then —
I jumped.
Midair.
Gun raised.
Straight at her exposed core.
The Dryad scread.
[...NO—!!]
The world narrowed into a single mont.
I pulled the trigger.
BOOM.
The mana slug drilled through bark, through wood, through her central vein of mana — and exploded inside.
The explosion was silent.
Just a pulse of glowing green — like a heart stopping.
The Dryad froze.
Branches halted mid–air.
Her glowing eyes flickered...
and went dark.
Then the entire colossal body collapsed — slow — heavy — the way a dying sequoia would fall after centuries.
THUDDDDDDDDDDD—
Silence.
My knees buckled.
Sweat ran down my neck.
"...holy shit..."
I won.
Barely.
Hell — if she’d had one more minute — I’d have been fertilizer.
The system window popped into view.
━━━━━━━━━━━
[BOSS DEFEATED]
1200 Points
━━━━━━━━━━━
I exhaled shakily... then slowly grinned.
"Barely... but a win is a win."
Now — ti to collect that fruit.
I approached the Dryad’s main body, the entire structure already brittle and grey. Her root–mass had shriveled as soon as I detonated the core. I sifted through the withered trunk and pried aside a cracked layer of bark — and there it was.
A fist–sized crystal embedded deep in the heartwood, gleaming faintly like dew trapped inside polished erald.
The jewel I ca for.
I reached in and plucked it free.
A chid window flickered.
━━━━━━━━━━━
[ Fairy’s Core] — Grade: Rare
A crystallized mana gland ford through centuries of growth.
Consuming it permanently increases Mana capacity.
Effect: Mana 10 (Permanent)
━━━━━━━━━━━
Perfect.
Exactly as the ga’s data said.
Even though this was only a rare grade core — items that gave permanent stat boosts were beyond priceless. Hunters would kill each other over a common rank stat fruit. Sothing like this would sell for tens of thousands of gold even just for research.
But I wasn’t selling it.
This was for — for my pathetic mana stat of 4.
I stored the core inside my pouch. No reason to linger here. Just because the boss was dead didn’t an the dungeon was "safe." Boss rooms were still inside the anomaly bubble — and stray spawns could still occur.
I retraced my steps along the sa path I used for entry.
By the ti I stepped out of the spatial rift, the sky was dark.
"...Seriously. How much ti did I spend in there?"
Ti always moved strangely inside these places. Spatial distortion wasn’t just about space — it twisted temporal flow too. So dungeons doubled ti. So halved it. So fluctuated minute by minute.
Hunters argued endlessly about whether it was rule, or chaos, or so kind of dungeon ecology.
Regardless — today’s disparity wasn’t too bad.
I dusted off my coat, let out a long exhale, and waved down the first carriage I saw.
"City district. South market block."
The coachman flicked the reins, and we rolled off.
I leaned back against the cushion, one hand resting unconsciously over my inner coat pocket... right where the Fairy’s Core lay inside the pouch.
Heh.
One step closer.
Now — I could actually cast magic myself.
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