Chapter 856 – One punch sprite (Patreon)

Kirmira’s body dug a trench through the forest, uprooting dozens of trees and shattering just as many underground boulders in its path. Everything hurt, though he was just glad he’d thought to raise his arms at the last second to soften the blow.

‘What the hell is that thing?!’ he asked himself as he struggled to climb back to his feet.

The sprite’s body was clearly made of Orange mana – the same grade coursing through the remaining trees in the forest. Even if the Yaksha hadn’t been on the verge of death, it shouldn’t have been capable of such power.

Alas, Kirmira’s opponent had no intention of waiting for him to come to terms with his predicament. Lifting his eyes, the injured demigod spotted the same grey sprite flying leisurely toward him. The flickering avatar looked like it wasn’t done venting yet.

“Where did you come from, you freak?!” Kirmira demanded while pouring a quarter of his earth mana and every last drop of willpower into the ground beneath his feet.

The entire region shook as a series of deep and narrow chasms formed across the forest, splitting the ground into a vast, grid-shaped pattern. The sprite nearly collapsed into grey motes as the connections between the trees were severed, though enough interlocked roots seemed to remain on the other side of the Yaksha for the karmic avatar to barely retain its form.

Not waiting for a reply, Kirmira willed the blocks of dirt and diced wood to rise, launching a barrage of cube-shaped projectiles at his opponent. Each block was over fifty metres across, picking up speed as it flew toward the sprite.

The tiny creature looked entirely unconcerned.

Pulling its fists back again, it unleashed a flurry of punches at the incoming projectiles. The sprite’s transparent skin never so much as touched the spinning blocks, yet the destruction it unleashed was undeniable.

Whenever the sprite’s right fist struck, the world itself seemed to lose its colour for just a moment before one of the artificial meteors shattered into fine dust. Whenever it struck with its left, the same thing happened, except that the world’s colours briefly grew more vibrant instead.

A hundred projectiles later, Kirmira found himself floating above a massive crater, a veil of brown clouds churning a few hundred metres above his head. The demigod’s attacks had already uprooted enough dirt to bury a mountain, while the sprite’s punches had scattered every last grain into the air.

It was clear that Kirmira was hopelessly outmatched, but he didn’t really need to face the karmic avatar in a fair fight to win. The Yaksha had already sustained too much damage, so Kirmira merely had to wait for the destruction to catch up to the sentient forest and its strange envoy.

Just as the demigod was trying to estimate how much longer he would need to stall, the brown clouds parted to reveal the grey figure. Much to Kirmira’s horror, the avatar’s tiny body had regained some of its colour, and its shape wasn’t wobbling nearly as much.

“Would you look at that?” the sprite cheerfully asked. “It seems like even this sort of performance has its audience!”

Kirmira’s eyes widened as he glanced at the low-borns in the distance. The adults were hiding behind the foliage, timidly watching the apocalyptic battle while trying to shield themselves from the debris. The cubs, however, were a lot more open about their support for the Yaksha, their excited exclamations clearly feeding new power into the dying forest.

Kirmira poured his remaining mana into the ground, trying to send a tidal wave of dirt and stone at the surviving trees and the Jambavanti supporting them. Unfortunately for him, his opponent never gave him the chance.

A booming shockwave pushed the remaining brown clouds aside as the sprite shot toward Kirmira like an arrow, its grey figure turning into a blur as the air cried shrilly in its wake.

Kirmira was forced to abort his attack, enveloping himself with the enchanted ground instead. Countless sheets of condensed stone slid over one another like the petals of a giant rose, forming a colossal, spherical barrier over two hundred metres thick between the demigod and the incoming sprite.

It didn’t matter.

Kirmira felt the giant construct split open like an egg, a narrow fracture racing towards him. Struggling to hold the stone together with every fibre of his being, the demigod wrapped his body in willpower to minimize the damage, though he knew that he wouldn’t be escaping this attack unscathed.

A tall plume of scattered dirt rose for hundreds of metres as Kirmira was driven into the ground below.

When his surroundings finally calmed, the demigod found himself lying on his back atop a mound of soft sand. There were very few bones in his body that weren’t broken, and he could barely twitch a muscle as a mountain of pressure pinned his limbs down.

The grey sprite was squatting atop Kirmira’s snout, staring into the demigod’s eyes with amusement.

“You... you’re not a Yaksha... are you? You’re... not from Jambavan either... You can’t be!” Kirmira groaned in pain as he stated the obvious, his voice tinged with bitterness and accusation. “You’re an outsider!”

“Not a bad guess,” the grey sprite admitted.

“Then why? Why get involved over a Jambavanti child? Whatever it is that you want from our planet should have nothing to do with me or these villagers.”

The karmic avatar shrugged. “My friends care a lot more about the well-being of their fans than their own self-preservation. Besides, I won’t remain an outsider for long. Something tells me that you and I are going to become compatriots soon enough.”

Kirmira had a million other questions, but his tiny opponent seemed entirely uninterested in answering them.

***

Percy dropped the defeated mage next to one of the surviving trees, using his domain to help his host lift one of its roots above the ground. Poking the so-called Venerable with the tip of the root, he drew a sliver of his own soul out of the wood and used it to bind the demigod with a spectral contract. It would forbid him from harming any other Yaksha or low-born bearfolk for the rest of his life. It would also prevent the Venerable from speaking a word about what had happened in the forest that day. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if the local deities learned about Percy, but there was no reason to advertise his presence.

After ensuring that the Clear mage was no longer a threat, Percy turned his attention towards the villagers. The adults still looked too scared to approach, but Vihaan, Anika, and a few other cubs showed no such qualms.

The children sobbed as they carried the other six sprites on their palms, bringing them to Percy. The karmic avatars had started flickering into and out of existence again. The short-lived burst of energy their audience had granted them during Percy’s battle with the demigod had already faded away.

“You don’t have to worry about us, kids,” Pav consoled the children. “This isn’t even a true goodbye. Percy has assured us that we will have the chance to perform for you again, one day.”

The cubs looked at Percy with hope in their eyes.

He nodded at them with an encouraging smile. “It may be a while, but I promise I’ll figure out a way to bring these guys back to Jambavan as soon as I can.”

The remaining villagers summoned the courage to approach the dying sprites before long, and the two sides exchanged a few more words. Eventually, the forest’s wounds forced Percy to envelop a chunk of the Yaksha’s soul with his own wisp and drag it out of its home world.

“Are you sure about this?” Micky asked as they travelled through the soul plane. “Turning them into a familiar, I mean.”

Percy sighed through their connection. “What choice do we have? The leaf of a true World Tree might be the only thing that can extend our lifespans, and the Yaksha’s soul might be our best chance at getting the seed to sprout. Besides, I don’t think that inviting the Yaksha into our soul will be bad for us. They are the most innocent creatures I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not us I’m worried about,” the Huehuan clarified. “Our life is one of constant strife, and we have more enemies than I can count. Are we really going to involve Pav and the others in our nonsense?”

“You make us sound like a bunch of degenerates,” Nephthys protested. “Look at all the good things we’ve done for the people of Remior over the past century. Helping others will always be a part of who we are. We’ll just have to make sure to shield the Yaksha from the worst of it.”

Nobody spoke after that. They returned to Remior in silence and stored the forest’s soul inside Nephthys’ carapace. Percy’s friends had given him a lot to think about, but his plan to revive the World Tree hadn’t changed.

He finally had both a first-generation seed saturated with spiritual blood and a suitable soul to place inside it. The only thing left was to pick the right location to plant it – and he already had a pretty good idea where that would be.