Chapter 263: Maddy vs. Promeather Former Leader.

Maddy’s blade whistled through the air, vibrating with enough kinetic force to cleave through solid iron. She had him. A fraction of a second more, and the silver steel would have severed the Wizard’s connection to the forest archive.

But the Wood Wizard did not panic. Even as the explosion from the Golem’s remains rocked the clearing, he didn’t even raise his arms. He simply shifted his weight, his eyes calm and calculating.

With a flick of his staff, the earth responded instantly: a massive, dense oak tree erupted from the soil directly in front of him, its grain thick and enchanted with reinforced mana.

Thunk. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Maddy’s sword buried itself inches deep into the heart of the wood, stopping mere millimeters from the Wizard’s sternum. Before she could reclaim her weapon or drive it through, the soil beneath her boots turned liquid, violently surging upward to shove her backward.

She was thrown through the air, tumbling through the debris of the battlefield until she regained her footing on a jagged piece of bedrock.

She landed, her chest heaving, and ripped her sword free from the splintered oak. She looked at the Wizard, who was already repositioning his staff, his movements devoid of wasted energy.

"Damn," Maddy hissed, wiping a smudge of grey dirt from her cheek.

She stared at him, not with the predatory hunger from moments ago, but with a sudden, sharpened respect.

"You’re a real leader, aren’t you? You don’t just throw minions at me—you use them as literal extensions of your own reaction time. You keep your distance, you control the terrain, and you force me to fight the battlefield instead of the mage."

It was a nightmare of a combat scenario. Fighting a high rank adventurer was dangerous enough, but fighting one who had essentially become the terrain itself was on an entirely different level. Every time she closed the distance, the forest recalculated, throwing up defenses before she could even formulate an attack.

"It’s like fighting a veteran commander," she muttered to herself, her eyes darting across the plain as the Wizard summoned a new barrier of brambles.

"But he never tires, never hesitates, and he’s using the entire ecosystem as his personal shield. This isn’t just magic—it’s tactical warfare."

The Wood Wizard’s expression, previously as unreadable as polished stone, fractured at the word "minions." His grip on his staff tightened until the wood groaned, and a storm of raw, verdant energy swirled around his robes.

"Minions?" he echoed, his voice vibrating with a sudden, icy disdain. "Yes... they are... minions. They are... my army. They are... my legacy. And you... shall join them."

He raised his staff, the white wood pulsing with an unnatural, sickly sweet rhythm. He began a sequence of complex, sweeping gestures, his movements cutting through the air with a precision that bordered on perfection.

"Active Forest Art: Blooming Life..!"

A brilliant, blinding light erupted from the grey soil. It wasn’t the harsh, golden light of Maddy’s constructs, but a soft, pulsating green that smelled of damp earth and rot. Maddy felt a sudden, miraculous surge of vitality behind her—a power so immense it made her skin crawl.

She spun around, her Acute Predator Awareness screaming, and her jaw literally dropped.

The mangled, lifeless corpse of the Wood Witch, which Maddy had left shattered and inert moments ago, was rising. The severed limbs were knitting back together with unnatural speed, fueled by the Wizard’s weaving magic.

Roots acted as sutures, pulling muscle and bark into alignment, and the hollow, empty eyes of the Witch flared with a renewed, predatory intelligence.

"No way,"

Maddy breathed, the professional detachment slipping away. She backed up a step, her blade feeling suddenly heavy in her hand.

"You’ve got to be kidding me! That’s a corpse reanimation technique coupled with a restorative field?"

The Wood Witch stood fully upright, her staff reforming from the nearby debris, and fell into a perfect combat stance beside the Wizard. They stood as a pair—the Alpha Mage and his resurrected counterpart—the sync between them absolute.

"F*ck it!" Maddy cursed, her eyes darting between the two figures. "I was just complaining about how complicated it was fighting one of you! Now I’ve got to deal with a dual caster setup?"

She spat a saliva full of dirt to the side, her eyes flashing with a suppressed, ancient power.

"You two are lucky," she hissed under her breath, her knuckles whitening as she gripped her blade. "If I dropped this act and let my true magic loose, I’d turn this entire forest into DEFORESTATION in a heartbeat."

She glanced back toward the direction of the camp, thinking of Johnn sleeping safely within her light shield.

"But I have a role to play. I’m just a simple adventurer. And a ’simple’ adventurer doesn’t erase A rank threats with a snap of her fingers."

She didn’t have more time for internal monologues. The air grew heavy with the scent of ozone and wet cedar as the two mages synchronized their assault.

"Crush... the blight!"

The Wood Wizard intoned. He slammed his staff down, and the Earth Golem—now reinforced with jagged granite spikes, roared with a hollow, grinding sound. It lunged forward, its massive fists coming down like falling meteors, while the soil beneath Maddy’s feet surged upward to bind her ankles.

Simultaneously, The Wood Witch, lacking the Wizard’s ability to create matter from nothing, turned her malice toward the environment Maddy had already decimated.

With a jagged shriek, she slammed her staff into the ground, and the graveyard of shattered timber began to twitch with a gruesome second life.

The hundreds of severed Mandrake roots and splintered Elder Ent branches scattered across the plain didn’t just move; they knit together into massive, undulating whips of deadwood. These grave vines surged toward Maddy from her blind spots, their thorns dripping with a paralytic sap.

While the Golem provided the crushing, vertical pressure, the Witch focused on horizontal entanglement. She channeled her mana into the very air, crystallizing the spores of the fallen Walking Mushrooms into a dense, toxic fog that swirled around Maddy’s head.