The Deep Forest

[A lethal enemy has been defeated]

[4 essence has been awarded]

"Oh, am I just a fucking god or something? What the hell was that?" 

Connor sat there at the edge of the forest dumbfounded at his luck. The spear should not have hit that hard or gone that fast, in fact hitting the boar that hard was never even the plan. He had been aiming for one of the legs in order to bleed the creature out over the course of a few hours until it was weak enough to be killed.

But apparently something strange happened and the spear shifted off the course he sent it towards and ended up going towards the boars body piercing deep into its flesh. the added aspect of the ice breaking just sealed the deal really. 

But to Connors dismay he discovered something concerning once he went to retrieve the boars body from the water.

It was completely gone, there was no trace of it. 

Connor slowly backed away from the pond and made his way into the forest again and decided to watch the lake for a while. There was no movement he could see but that didn't mean that there wasn't anything nearby lurking waiting for an opportunity to strike.

The scene was actually rather peaceful all things considered, soft rays of light filtered into the small clearing in the dense forest as bits of snow fell from the sky. The mountains could still be seen in the distance though they looked massive now that Connor had gotten closer.

'what could have taken such a huge body away in just the time it took for me to get the death message though? It should have at least made a small commotion in the lake.' 

After 15 minutes Connor decided to move on from the mystery, mainly due to the slowly growing bad feeling he felt while in the area. However as he was leaving he noticed something, a root from a tree he was standing near had moved towards him slightly. 

Immediately that startled him and made him reassess is surroundings. The tree limbs near him were all pointed towards him the edges of them had morphed into sharp points with newly made cellulose visible.

 Though thankfully his obvious reaction didn't actually change the situation for the worse. Whatever was controlling the trees must have been either blind or not able to see him currently. 

'Or is it the trees themselves that want to attack me? if that's the case they wouldn't be able to see or hear me but they could feel the vibrations of the ground with their roots. if I move too much something will probably happen then.'

to test it out Connor took out one of the basic wolf fangs that had been worn down fairly bad and tossed it a few feet away from him. And immediately the trees in the vicinity seemed to drop the act of an inanimate object and accelerated in speed into an attack faster than Connor could see impaling the area around the wolf fang from both the ground and above before a root wrapped around the fang dragging it into the ground.

'Oh hell no.' Connor felt cold sweat drip down his forehead despite the weather.

'I need to get out of here as soon as possible.' He knew that he only really had two options now, either go back into the clearing and try and search for a breakthrough point. Or use the items on his body to put up a seismic smoke screen and run like hell and hope that the entire forest isn't like this.

Trying to think about it rationally he ruled out going into the clearing, even in the middle towards the lake the Boar had been taken away by something meaning that the roots probably extended deep into the lake. 

Taking his chances with the other option would also be risky but it wasn't the worst choice. The main thing he had to look out for was the roots in the ground that could grab onto his legs and stop him from moving long enough to get impaled and dragged into the ground to be fertilizer.

Slowly and carefully he grabbed all of the non critical items he had stored on him, basically everything except some water and his best wolf fang. He looked towards to least dense area of trees and then threw some of his items onto the snow in the surrounding area As he leaped forwards over a great distance. 

Instantly The illusion of peace was broken as the ground was erupted with swirling roots and the trees above shot spike like tree limbs down. The wood was strangely disconnected with a sort of stretchy pulsing vein running through the middle allowing it to move unnaturally.

For the first few seconds Connor was doing fairly good, there was only a few Tree limbs and roots trying to kill him because the rest were busy with the random items he had thrown out but as most of the items were taken the pressure grew at an exponential rate but by then Connor was at least 50 feet away from the clearing and the roots and limbs had started moving slower.

So he sent out another batch of items into the air above him as a particularly fast branch shot out and impaled itself into his shoulder sending waves of pain into his mind. Thankfully he managed to tear it out fairly fast because when it was pulled out he could see the wood growing small hook like grooves.

Throughout all of this though Connor just focused on escaping sending all of his power into his legs with each step leaving deep prints in the snow. He could tell the trees were getting weaker, he just needed to keep running and he would make it out.

But would that faint hope really be rewarded? Well you could just ask that to the root that managed to trip Connor just as he was about to escape. as he fell to the ground his back was immediately pierced through by over five tree limbs. Resisting the urge to scream he grabbed his wolf fang and tried to cut away the root that was gripping his foot but it was just too strong.

just by moving his back he could feel that he was at the very edge of the zone of trees the tree limbs were pulled tight as they were in his back and they didn't pierce him with as much force earlier.

They were still far stronger than what he could resist and he could feel them growing inside of him trying to dig even deeper. So in a last ditch effort he cut his ankle open and used his own blood as lubricant and dragged himself forward with all of his strength feeling his ankle break and get crushed by the struggling root. 

The tree limbs in his back were trying to drag him backwards deeper into the forest and they grew hooks that bore into his flesh and were incredibly painful. He was just a few inch's from escaping but he didn't know if he had the strength to keep moving his body. 

His ankle was already fucked and even if he escaped he might just bleed to death. the muscles in his arms were burning as he gripped his fingers into the ice cold ground to drag himself further.

'FUCK FUCK FUCK' He was breathing heavily and it felt like with each breath his lungs almost pushed themselves into the pointed ends of wood. 

But no matter what he kept pushing and pushing until all together he tore himself away taking out chunks of flesh in his back and leaving his ankle only connected to his leg by a few pieces of destroyed muscle. 

And he didn't stop he kept dragging his body forward like a man possessed, he didn't even know for how long he kept moving but he didn't stop until he was gone.

He crawled into a small hole in the ground and collapsed, he had left a blood trail in the snow to his location. 

 his consciousness faded to black as it seemed like the absolute end had come for him. 

'...at least I didn't let... that god damn tree take me....'