NOVEL NEXT Chapter 219: Get up
"Then I'll bring it back again," Damien replied simply. "Over and over if I have to. It's expendable."
He pushed two fingers to his temple and whispered directly to the creature's soul through the threads of death.
"Run fast. Don't get spotted. Don't touch the Orchid, dig underneath. Wrap your little hands around the roots, and if anyone sees you… die quiet."
The rabbit-skull-thing blinked once, then nodded. It turned and darted off into the chaos, skipping between bones and battlefield debris with eerie grace. Its wings gave it tiny, erratic hops like a mangled butterfly.
"I can shield its aura for thirty seconds," Damien murmured. "If it gets close, it has a window."
They watched in silence as the tiny undead zipped along the edge of the plain. No one noticed. They were too busy fighting. Too blood-drunk to notice a little nothing zipping across the battlefield.
The creature paused only once, hiding under a broken jawbone of a Zerg corpse, before darting back out and vanishing into the dust.
It was close now. Just fifty meters from the Orchid.
"Come on…" Damien muttered.
The death energy tethered to the rabbit pulsed in his mind. He could feel what it felt. Hear what it heard.
Voices roared around it, fire and steel, teeth and mana.
But none of it mattered.
The Liferoot Orchid was directly ahead.
And the little creature began to dig.
Damien's breath slowed.
Almost.
If they pulled this off, the Orchid would be his, and the road to Jiang Xiao Yu's resurrection would finally begin.
But they all knew…
It only took one warrior to notice.
One careless glance.
One flicker of divine sense.
And this would turn from theft…
To war.
The rabbit skeleton twitched once, then twice, its little front paws digging furiously as it disappeared into the dirt beneath the Liferoot Orchid.
It had reached the center of the battlefield unnoticed. Somehow. Miraculously.
Damien's grip tightened as he watched through the thin thread of death energy linking his consciousness to the undead creature. He felt every vibration of its tiny claws, every frantic heartbeat of mana in its hollow chest.
"Just a little more," he muttered.
The rabbit chirped. Once. Then again, this time with a victorious squeak.
Its tiny jaw clamped around the thick root of the Liferoot Orchid.
Success.
And then everything went to hell.
The moment the root was disturbed, the air shimmered.
Not with heat.
But with pressure.
Old pressure.
A low groan echoed from the soil itself. The dirt trembled. The roots twitched.
A shape began to rise from the cracked ground, directly beneath the orchid's stem.
It wasn't physical at first.
It was suggested, the impression of a body built from wind, pollen, and memory. Then the mist congealed, twisting into form.
Petals like blades. Eyes like blooming buds. Vines for limbs. Teeth made of thorns.
It had no mouth, yet it shrieked. Not with sound. But with pure emotion.
Rage.
Betrayal.
Violation.
The Liferoot Guardian had awakened.
It turned slowly and precisely, its entire weightless body pulsing with primal life.
And locked eyes with Damien.
"Oh," Damien whispered. "It noticed me."
Blackie straightened beside him. "You've bonded with the rabbit. It's linked to your death energy."
"I know."
"It thinks you're the one stealing it."
"I know."
"Run."
He didn't argue.
The Guardian Spirit launched into the sky with a burst of pollen that blasted a hole through the cloud layer.
Damien bolted down the ridge, cloak snapping behind him. The swamp wind howled. Vines burst from the ground behind him like spears, stabbing where he'd just been.
The creature chased with terrifying grace, gliding, not flying, threading through space with seamless motion.
"YOU HAVE DISTURBED THE LIFEROOT ORCHID!" it thundered, though no mouth moved.
"Yeah," Damien panted. "And I'm about to eat the rest of it, too!"
Just then, a high-pitched, overly excited voice rang out from the battlefield below.
"LOOK! A TREASURE SPIRIT!!"
Every head turned.
The voice belonged to a draconian warrior clad in blinding crimson armor with absurdly bushy eyebrows that arched like twin mountain ranges. He stood atop a shattered beast corpse, one hand extended dramatically like he was delivering the final act of a tragic opera.
He was pointing directly at Damien's rabbit.
More specifically, at the tiny, skeletal undead rabbit that now had the Liferoot Orchid's root tangled around its skull like a royal crown of vines and glowing petals.
The rabbit blinked once, froze like a criminal caught in the spotlight, and then it bolted.
A heartbeat of stunned silence… Then all hell broke loose.
"RARE BEAST!!" screamed a fox-eared archer as she leapt ten feet into the air.
"IT'S CARRYING THE DAMN ORCHID!" shrieked a green-robed mage, his monocle popping off his face and spiraling into the wind.
"IT'S MINE!! I SAW IT FIRST!!" bellowed a six-armed ogre slamming his fists together.
Damien, still running for his life, nearly tripped over his own feet.
He risked a glance back.
The Guardian Spirit was still chasing him.
But now, at least seven Apex Dragon-ranked fighters were chasing the rabbit, screaming like children after a candy cart.
The battlefield erupted.
A golden-armored knight screamed, "IT'S MINE!" and launched a flaming spear the size of a tree.
The rabbit dodged, bounced off a dead Zerg's ribcage, and darted toward a patch of tall grass.
One of the pursuers screamed in anguish as the spear accidentally hit his shoulder. "YOU FOOL, YOU HIT ME!"
"You were in the way, old man!"
A beast-kind general with moose antlers and lightning claws roared, "That looks like a Divine Omen Rabbit! Whoever captures it will gain the lifespan of a dragon, the fertility of a buffalo and the sex drive of a wild stallion!!"
"What the hell does fertility have to do with anything!?" someone shouted.
"I've been trying to have kids for seventy years!!" A white haird old geezer shouted.
"At least you're trying to have kids! I've been trying to get it up for one hundred years!" Wailed an even older man.