5 Chapter 5 What to do When Someone Tries to Kill You?
Lief snapped out of his thoughts when he noticed the male in the suit of armor drawing his sword and shield. The man shouted something in a strange language and his teammates entered what Lief assumed to be their battle formation.
The knight rushed towards him with a shout and stabbed towards his chest. Instinctively, Lief raised his arm to block the sword, hissing slightly as the blade sliced into it.
The sword's blade was cut in a way that would allow it tear apart flesh instead of simply slicing cleanly through, so the wound it caused hurt like the devil. Through the torn flesh, he could see a pale white surface that was his bones.
To his surprise, the torn section of his arm didn't bleed at all and instead quickly healed, leaving no trace of the injury. A second later, the pain also disappeared, as if it was all just an illusion.
[Dryads can live for a very long time as long as they have enough vitality. As long as you have vitality stored, you can heal from any wounds, even wounds that would normally be fatal to a regular creature, like getting your head chopped off or getting stabbed in the heart.]
Silvester was sitting near a withered tree, watching the ongoings with an amused expression.
Lief was extremely surprised to hear of his newfound immortality, but he quickly had to turn his attention towards the group of humans who seemed to have murderous intentions towards him.
He roared angrily at them.
"You guys are the ones who are intruding, and you still want to attack me?! I haven't even done anything to you!"
He didn't do anything to them, and before this, he had no intentions to. At most, he was planning to scare them enough so that they would run away.
He didn't expect them to immediately attack him upon sight.
Was it because of his appearance?
Lief eventually decided that it was probably so.
If this was a fantasy world like in the novels, with adventurers and such, then the humans like the team in front of him would probably be used to fighting monsters. This would explain why they attacked immediately.
His tail lashed the ground angrily, creating deep slash marks in the earth.
[Just kill them. Or you can take their vitality.]
He ignored the tiger's first suggestion.
Although he looked like a monster now, he was previously a human who was used to following the laws and his own moral code.
He wasn't like those novel protagonists who got transmigrated into a monster body and could easily throw away their previous morals.
The latter suggestion though was worth thinking about. If he took only some of their vitality, it would weaken them without killing them. It might just dissuade them from coming back to his forest.
His tail quickly curled around the knight, preventing the human from moving. He was careful with his movements and retracted the spines on the section of his tail that was wrapped around the knight to avoid creating a human skewer.
Lief also noticed something. The humans were pretty short compared to him, barely reaching his torso.
This meant that unless the humans in this world were much shorter than in his previous world, he should be around 3 meters tall! That was almost double what he previously estimated himself to be!
Once his tail came into contact with the knight's armor, he was able to see how much vitality the human had.
[12/12]
This came as a surprise to Lief. The human had barely double the vitality of the withered trees in his forest.
He didn't want to overdo it, so he carefully drained only two points of vitality from the knight, ignoring the foreign shouts from the other human.
One of them, the female in the mage outfit, tried casting a sphere of solid ice at him, but he barely felt it.
He watched the human held tightly in his tail vigilantly, interested in the effects of draining vitality. Before, he only drained vitality from trees that were already mostly dead.
When he finally released the human, the human immediately collapsed onto his knees, clearly weakened. The man's teammates quickly rushed over to him, helping him stand.
Suddenly, an idea came to Lief. The system was something that only appeared in this world, so it should be able to understand the human language in this world.
"Silvester, can you understand their language? Can you help me translate?"
[I can understand the language, but because others can not hear my voice, I can only guide you on what you want to say.]
The system quickly told him what to say in the humans' language and he repeated the words carefully.
"Leave this forest if you wish to keep your lives intact. Do you understand?"
It seemed that he said the foreign words correctly, as the group of humans all nodded hurriedly nodded before supporting their weakened comrade and running away.
He nodded with satisfaction upon seeing the humans leave and opened the status window to claim his reward for completing the sub mission.
[Unlocked New Skill: Dark Fog]
As he selected the new skill that appeared, a description of the skill appeared beneath the name.
[Allows the user to activate skills on targets that normally require physical contact, as long as the target is in contact with the fog. The range of the fog increases as the skill proficiency increases.]
Lief turned to stare at Silvester again.
"Are you absolutely sure you're a Dryad System?"
[Yes. Skills are selected based on the host.]
He really didn't understand this.
Before, he was just a normal human. He had no evil or malicious thoughts. He was even absolutely terrified of horror movies and hated gore and seeing blood.
Now though, it felt like he was getting closer and closer to becoming a horror movie antagonist.
He sighed internally and finally gave up on thinking to deeply about it. In the end, it wasn't as if he had to kill anyone or anything, he just had to protect the forest.
At least this skill meant that he wouldn't have to walk as much to get vitality to and from the trees. Now he would have time to take up a hobby, though he had no idea what hobbies he could do in a forest.
