199 Evlin's niece

She used the ability of the holy metal to harden her skin in order to avoid getting her body torn apart from having herself constantly knocking against the ground with so much intensity.

"Ugh!! Let me go!!" she shouted while trying to form a blade to slice the claw into pieces but wasn't able to get a good position in her current situation.

She finally reached the top of the mountain only to get slammed against the terrain.

"Huuff!!"

She tried to put herself together and finally gazed at her kidnapper.

"So you must be the forest..." she mumbled while finally managing to get herself free from the claw.

Ellie observed as the wooden hand crawled back to its owner, a young-looking girl sitting with her bare-footed legs crossed on top of a massive shiny red orb covered in moss located at the bottom of a gigantic tree in the middle of the top of the mountain.

The tree had roots that moved like tentacles and raised themselves from the ground while taking the form of several massive hands that protected the orb.

There were also several carnivorous plants wriggling all over the place just acting like they were waiting for some kind of command to swallow Ellie in one bite.

The orb itself just radiated some kind of red smoke as if it was feeding all plant life with its materials.

As for the girl, she looked nothing like the previous incarnations of the spirit of the forest that Ellie had seen. She didn't look like any of the memory warriors or with Detra's deceased daughter.

For one thing, she seemed like a girl in her early teens but she was big as a house. Ellie felt like she would need to try hard to search for a ladder tall enough that would allow them to speak face-to-face.

Both her skin and hair were made of different tones of green, and her clothing consisted of several vines tangling themselves around her body.

The most disturbing thing about the girl were her blood-red eyes that just kept glaring at Ellie as if asking 'why aren't you dead yet?'

"And you must be the reason I got such annoying invaders inside my house lately..." the giant girl replied.

Elie tried to remember what Detra taught her about demons. She was not expecting to meet the forest so soon, but now that she was here, she would need to show that her training paid off.

These creatures like to feed on negative emotions like suffering, anger, fear. If Ellie ever was to deal with them, she needed to try her absolute best to keep her cool. She wondered if that is why her aunt always liked to goof around so much, some kind of defense mechanism against demons to keep her relaxed.

"I'm going to kill you..."

"... Ok then... You don't like small talk... Good to know..."

The giant girl just continued to glare while raising her plants and wooden limbs to intimidate Ellie.

"Look... I know we started off on the wrong foot... But I think if we take some time to get to know each other, I'm sure we could get along juuuuust fiiine..." Ellie suggested while slowly backing away from the plants.

"Oh, you think so? You know what I think??"

"... That green and red somehow look really good together?"

One of the plants tried to swallow Ellie but the girl just leaped to the side to avoid getting her leg chopped.

"I think... That you guys think you can just barge into my domain and do whatever the hell you want... And, I also think, that as long as I don't send a clear message to the people from the outside, one saying that I DON'T LIKE BEING DISTURBED, others will just keep coming here one after another and continue to bother my peace..." The girl explained, "so maybe I should use you and your group of morons to try and make my message as crystal clear as possible!!"

Ellie was starting to get nervous. She needed to think of a way to get rid of her uncertainty or she would just end up making the demon even stronger.

"I'm sorry... I didn't catch your name..." Ellie commented.

"Demons don't have names... we reject the concept of names to show we don't need anyone..."

"I see... but it feels kinda weird to just refer to you as 'the forest'... can I call you Flora?"

"I couldn't care less..."

"Flora it is then..."

"..."

"So anyway Flora... I feel like we already formed a very good connection, and made a lot of progress with our bonding process..." Ellie mentioned while slowly trying to get closer to the core, "so if you could be a good pal and just let me touch that giant Christmas tree decoration that you are sitting on real quick, I would be more than glad to leave your lovely home and just be on my merry way..."

Several of the carnivorous plants moved to stand in between Ellie and the core while showing that they had actual fangs inside their 'mouths'.

"You must think I'm pretty stupid, don't you...?" Flora asked.

"Well... That depends, are you one of those 'the Earth was actually flat this whole time!' kind of people?" Ellie whispered while quickly backing away.

"I know what you're trying to do... You're trying to touch my core to get a taste of my cursed energy with your annoying mirror magic... You can't hide anything from me... My soil sees everything!"

"Well..."

"Here is what's going to happen..." Flora explained while getting out of her red orb, "first I'm going to feed on your skin... Very, very slowly, so I can get a good taste of your suffering as I crunch all your bones... After all... Your whole gang came here to help your little quest, so I'm starting with you..."

"... Well... First of all, I'm flattered... Second, eww, gross..."

Flora just ignored her comment and continued, "next... Your little friends will come here and try to rescue you, and when they see your skeleton, their rage will feed me with so much power that they will never be able to even scratch me! And once I kill the blind woman and the silver-haired kid, I'll have that dumb ice mage for last so that she can witness all her hopes of survival vanishing into thin air, and feeding me her despair!!"

"...A little over-dramatic, but I like your enthusiasm..." Ellie commented. She honestly wanted to just smack that green girl in the face for even joking about harming her friends, but she still wanted to try and do this right and keep herself from losing her temper.

"And then... I think I'll finally teach the rest of your kind a lesson by spreading my roots... I'm sick of just sitting around and waiting for more idiots to try and invade my area... From now on, I'm the one who will be doing the invasion and going after your worthless race!!" Flora declared while grinning intensely.

"..." Ellie just stared at her without moving for a few seconds.

"What...?" Flora asked while raising an eyebrow.

"You just made a bad guy speech... I'm waiting for the evil laugh..."

"... The what...?"

"You know... The evil laugh! Where you go all 'muahaha!!' and all..." Ellie described while raising her arms and trying to make an evil face.

"... ... ... Screw it... I'm just gonna kill you now..."

"Wait, wait, wait!!"

"Just die..." Flora said as she began to launch all her plants at Ellie one after another.

Ellie just kept trying to remain composed without showing any fear of doubt and turned on her future sight to see the attack pattern of the plants.

She gave a few backflips, something she had managed to master during her month in the ring of time, and successfully avoided the wild weeds.

"I'm starting to think you have something against visitors!!" Ellie shouted.

"Oh, would you just stop talking already!!??" Flora yelled back.

She sent out her wooden claws next to try and grab Ellie, who responded by creating a pair of blades with her arms and slashing all of them with several fast movements.

Ellie began to feel more confident, "ok, I'm ready for the next one! Hit me!"

"Oh, you little..."

Anger could be seen boiling up from Flora's eyes, leading her to try being more aggressive with her attacks and throwing her plants and claws at the same time with even greater speed and force.

Ellie saw she had no means of escape and that there were too many of them to cut, so instead, she opted for defense and used her signature spell.

The girl stomped on the ground and several pillars of blue diamonds began to surround her and producing an absolute defense from the attacks.

"Come on Flora... Is that all you got?" Ellie shouted from inside her diamond protection, and right after that, one of her pillars began to lean down to aim at Flora and simply burst out of the ground towards the giant demon like a rocket and piercing her green shoulder.

"Aaaarghhhh!!!" Flora screamed, "how did you!!!????"

She then looked at the diamond that stabbed her and noticed that it was also somehow infused with holy metal inside of it.

Ellie had learned how to mix her spells.

She came out of her shell and smiled at Flora, "this is probably the part where you realize you messed with the wrong girl!"