Spines flew past her as Chimera used her tendrils to block the projectiles, coating her tendrils in stone and dropping them off as soon as she heard the sizzling.
It was mostly back and forth ever since this spar started, but Chimera was getting the feel for her opponent. The dryad’s attacks were simple in approach, but every now and then she would throw a curve ball, like a tendril in the ground or a spine bomb that exploded in the air.
As far as the attacks went, Chimera even found herself using her old abilities, things she hadn’t touched since her days fighting on Asta. Super speed returned to her, giving her an edge against the spine bombs, while her clone ability partially returned, allowing her to make a copy, only without the mind attached to it.
As the fight continued, more and more of those abilities she had seemed to awaken once more.
Did the dryad know she was helping me?
The dryad’s face was smiling in a way that made Chimera’s spine crawl.
No, I think she just loves this.
As if to answer her, the dryad screeched, a strange battle cry that made the land tremble in her roar.
“FIGHT!”
“Alright, I heard you the first time you damn battle maniac!”
They both met in the middle of the arena they made from the grove, fists pummeling each other while the tendrils on their backs searched for probing strikes and stabs.
The Dryad’s smile took on a predatory sheen as the tempo began to speed up, and after a few seconds, Chimera felt more than saw the similarities between their fighting strategies.
She’s learning from me, copying my abilities. She doesn’t feel like a copy though, so what is this, and how is she doing it?
Chimera tried to take a sample from the dryad, her tendril teeth searching for a chunk to grab.
The dryad did the same, her own tendrils taking on the look of flytraps as they succeeded in snagging one of her tendrils.
Chimera wrapped around the same tendril and pulled, finally putting the dryad off balance. DNA flooded her body, but just as she succeeded, she felt the dryad do the same, taking a chunk of her own body into her body.
The dryad moved closer, her teeth shining as she took another bite. Chimera flinched at the attack, moving to push off the maniacal plant woman as she tried to figure out how the dryad was mimicking her strikes.
The dryad didn’t let up though, digging in more and more, making it harder and harder for Chimera to try and analyze what this strange technique was.
In a desperate attempt to get the hungry plant off of her, Chimera pulled her head back, and launched it like a cannonball at the dryad’s face.
The dryad finally released her, flying back and catching a few trees before she was stopped.
A few seconds was all it took to finally analyze the dryad, the DNA flowing into her storage with the data she needed.
W-What?
The plant DNA was in a constant state of flux, changing and rearranging itself to match whatever the environment called for. It was in one word an extremophile, but to everything, not just the current environment.
Chimera felt as though this dryad could and would simply dominate whatever place it was sent, as the body it was made up from would simply adapt.
Is this from Iaos’ abilities? The power of terraforming?
Chimera tasted that answer, and found it missing something.
No, it’s something else. What kind of creature needs this type of body?
It was primordial, something that seemed to exist in order to dominate wherever it was.
Like some sort of progenitor, a first of its kind.
Raising her eyes to the dryad, who even now was picking herself up, Chimera flexed her own power, a strange feeling of her own coming over her thoughts.
Even if this is just a spar, I don’t want to lose here. It’s more than pride or survival. I just want to win so badly right now I’m losing it!
Green blood flowed from its head, but the ecstasy on its face made it seem as though she wasn’t in pain.
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She was loving this, the battle, the fight!
“Face me! Make me stronger! Fight me, Terasi!”
The dryad didn’t wait for her to respond, and simply threw herself at Chimera. Untamed, uncontrollable, it was as if the dryad was the primal fury of nature made manifest, and all it wished to do was fight and prove itself the apex predator.
Chimera knew that feeling, because she was feeling it too, at this moment.
“I won’t lose to you!”
“Hah! Come!”
Chimera felt her aura spike, her abilities that she catalogued from the various enemies she fought coming together once more.
It was familiar, the feeling she had now, the power she felt.
W-Wait!
The aura coalesced onto the strange marking she had on her chest, a vibrant golden light began to glow across her chest.
This is bad! I can’t handle that power.
Images of her friends as she had to say goodbye, trapped in a tomb in space as her home disappeared in the distance.
She still had to make it back to them, she couldn’t die here!
The power spiked, continuing to grow and grow inside her.
No! No, I can't die again! Stop!
Even the dryad stopped her assault, watching Chimera with something akin to fascination as Chimera tried her best to contain the bomb within her.
Rather than explode though, the power converged into one part of her symbol. A red marking that Chimera hadn’t truly noticed before.
The roar of her surging energy was siphoned into the marking, trapped in the reservoir in her chest.
All those abilities, all that power that was threatening to overwhelm her, suddenly disappeared.
She took a breath, doing her best to calm herself as the dryad approached her, a fascination plan on her face.
“Teach!”
So much was running through Chimera’s head that she didn’t register what the dryad said at first, but as the dryad shook her repeating the same word, Chimera finally broke out of her stupor.
“Um, not sure how I did that. So i don’t think I can-”
The dryad bit her chest, right where the marking was.
“Ouch, you crazy bitch!”
“MMm!”
“Get off of me!”
After a few seconds, she finally got the damn flesh eating plant off of her. She was about to scold the thing when she saw the dryad’s face.
The piece of flesh she had just eaten was glowing and traveling down her gullet, and once it reached the place Chimera figured its stomach was, it began to glow even more intensely.
The dryad was so happy, so completely ecstatic, that Chimera couldn’t help but wonder what was making her so gleeful.
“Power, deep, rich! Strong!”
Chimera stood back as the dryad began to change, shifting and morphing from the power that was now cascading off of her, reaching the plants and life in waves.
Chimera felt a spike of worry, and shot in the air as the dryad exploded. The dryad’s body blasted off in different directions, parts and pieces of her simply flew off from the epicenter.
But the energy continued to grow, flowing more and more into the center of where that plant girl used to be.
Chimera stayed in the air as she saw the dryad’s head land in the grove, the energy around it pooling into the still smiling head of the dryad.
“What the fu-”
The head then exploded, sending a tree spiking into the air that grew in seconds.
The tree overshadowed the one that used to dominate the center of the island, growing taller and faster than anything Chimera had ever seen.
A hundred feet in the air, and thirty feet across, the tree finally stopped its rapid ascent.
The power still didn’t dissipate though, Chimera could feel it radiating from within the massive tree.
Feeling safe enough to return to the ground, Chimera floated down as she stood at the base of the now massive tree. Its branches bloomed into red spiky leaves, its fruits that grew from its branches looked like round and plump star fruit, and the branches glowed and pulsed from the center of the tree’s trunk.
“What is this?”
Even the DNA she had taken from the dryad didn’t show anything like this, it simply didn’t match with anything Chimera had seen. She certainly heard about dryad’s having a home tree from the dryad’s she had met in her training days back on Steros, but this wasn’t anything like what she heard.
The tree before her felt so similar to her own power, or maybe it was because the dryad girl took some with her. Chimera reached out to touch the tree, wanting so much to understand what she was witnessing.
The moment her hand touched, the tree entered her thoughts, and Chimera felt another room in her mind palace open.
The dryad girl that was once fighting her now rested there, her hair the color of her spiky leaves, her face mature and grown, and her body that of an adult Elfari.
She turned to Chimera, her face still carrying that battle mania in her eyes.
“Mera, yeah? Like this place, it's cozy.”
Chimera felt a bit overwhelmed by the new presence as it picked itself off of the floor in the palace. Its grinning black teeth and toned body seemed to radiate an anticipation that Chimera wasn’t so sure she wanted any part of it.
The dryad pointed to itself, “name is Thorn.”
She then pointed at Chimera, “Mera, me protect, till we can fight again.”
Specifically, she seemed to be pointing at the mark on Chimera’s chest, the one that was just earlier glowing. It now radiated a warm red light, no longer overpowering her body.
“Till that is full.” The dryad smiled, the battle mania so plain in her eyes that Chimera almost took a step back.
Just what the hell is all this?
…