Chapter 717: War?

A tree giant appeared, formed by the intertwining of several massive trees.

When the Druid riding atop the giant activated a spell, a bright light flashed from the giant’s right arm, and dozens of chains sprouted from it.

Clink clank…!

At the ends of the chains drifting in the air were spirits of various elements—air, earth, ice, fire, lightning—tied up.

Even the spirits’ level and appearance varied, but that wasn’t the true function of the chains.

Binding the spirits was secondary. The chains’ real power was forcing the spirits to act.

As if to prove it, when the chains glowed, the once beautiful spirits twisted grotesquely and cried out in horrible agony.

“……!!”

“……………!”

“……?!”

The distorted spirits screamed and were twisted together like pieces of a puzzle, wrapping around the giant’s arm. They looked like tools, expendable ones at that.

It was a sight far removed from the sacred creations that God made to protect nature.

It was a scene twisted and full of blasphemy.

Oliver silently watched the disturbing sight, while the tree giant, now covered in spirit-bound chains, pulled back its arm and swung.

━━━━━━!!!

As the tree giant’s fist crashed forward, a thunderous sound exploded, breaking all the windows in the vicinity.

The fist slammed into the Defense Force Headquarters, reducing the outer wall to dust.

The same wall that could withstand artillery bombardment… but that was as far as it went.

“……!!”

The tree giant’s spirit-clad fist destroyed only the outer wall, failing to cause any more damage.

That’s because Oliver, standing beyond the wall, had reached out his arm and blocked the fist head-on.

“No……”

The Druid, wearing moose antlers and sitting atop the tree giant, muttered under his breath.

It was, as he said, misleading to call it simply ‘blocking.’ It was closer to neutralizing the attack.

It wasn’t strength countering strength, but the fist’s power itself was erased.

As proof, when Oliver’s hand met the tree giant’s punch, there was no sound or impact.

He didn’t block it with greater force, but rather neutralized the giant’s punch entirely.

The spirit-wrapped punch, to be precise.

Crrrr….

The Druids on the giant’s shoulder and head felt a cold, visceral chill run down their spines.

The fact that someone could block these spirits—beings created by God to manage nature—so easily, living right here in the human world, was utterly terrifying.

But not all the news was bad.

“It touched him…”

The moose-antlered Druid muttered, looking at Oliver’s hand touching the giant’s fist.

As he said, Oliver’s hand had indeed touched the tree giant’s hand.

The force that could destroy people, withstand gunfire, lightning strikes, and close-range blows… had finally touched Oliver.

The Druid, filled with hope from this, gave the command.

“Seize him!!”

His order was directed at none other than the spirits entwined around the giant’s arm.

Bound by the chains, the spirits extended their hands toward Oliver, capturing him against their will.

It was like being grasped by the desperate hands of vengeful souls. Each spirit attacked Oliver according to their element—freezing, burning, and electrocuting him.

“We got him! Charge! Attack!!”

Seeing this, the Druid with moose antlers shouted, and the waiting Reformist Druids on the giant moved into action.

This faction of Druids believed that nature should be controlled and used for humanity’s sake. They allied with the Royal Family and took control over the direction of the entire Druid order.

Using the spirit-covered arm of the tree giant as a platform, they charged at Oliver.

“I’ve heard of the Reformist Druids… but you’re still Druids, right? Is this how Druids should treat spirits?”

“Times are changing! We no longer worship; we use them!!”

In this time of calamity, the Druids proclaimed their new stance.

It was their true intention, filled with complex emotions.

Frustration at being forced into becoming Druids, bitterness from being bound by rules, and even resentment that after all their hardships to become Druids, now the world was ending.

Oliver had thought the Reformist Druids were born from the industrialization of the times, but it seemed that wasn’t the only reason.

“Die, monster!!”

The Reformist Druids who had reached Oliver called forth the spirits, wrapping their claws, fists, teeth, and wooden clubs with the spirits, shouting.

They seemed to believe using spirits—beings from beyond the mortal world—could deal significant blows to Oliver.

It wasn’t a bad idea; after all, Oliver was bound by the spirits right now.

But they had overlooked one thing.

Snap!

The difference in power between Oliver and the spirits.

As if to demonstrate, Oliver swung his arm, and all the spirits’ hands were ripped away from him.

He had regained his bodily freedom in an instant. The Reformist Druids’ eyes widened in shock.

“Aaaarghhh!!!”

Even so, they didn’t hesitate and only increased their speed.

After all, it was far too late to stop now.

As the Druids’ fists, teeth, and clubs were about to make contact with Oliver—

Thud!!

From Oliver’s shadow erupted a swarm of creatures that descended upon the charging Druids.

“Yahohoho!!”

Clown creatures used their large scythes to hook onto the Druids’ clubs and bodies, dragging them to the ground.

“Squeeealing!!”

Wendigo, a giant with a stag’s head, thrust his enormous ice fist into the Druids’ fists.

“Crack! Crack!”

“Tat-tat-tat! Crack! Crack! Tat-tat-tat! Crack! Crack!”

Toy soldiers, commanded by the Nutcracker Doll, moved in droves, deploying their sharp teeth and claws to hold back the Druids.

In addition to these, there were the Sack Man, the Chick Soldiers, the Rooster General, the Jolly Chimp, and the Man-faced Bird. Many creatures Oliver had taken from Fen poured out like ants, swarming over the attacking Druids and the tree giant.

As these creatures clustered together like an ant colony, the massive tree giant wobbled and took a few steps back.

Thump! Thump!

With every movement of the tree giant, the earth trembled as if struck by an earthquake.

Meanwhile, Oliver looked at a huddled soldier frozen in terror.

The soldier had witnessed the tree giant swinging its fist at Oliver from up close and was in shock from the sheer dominance of the giant and the recklessness of the battle-serving Druids.

Indeed, the attack by the battle-serving Druids was far beyond the realm of collateral damage.

“You may as well evacuate.”

Oliver spoke to the soldier who had narrowly escaped death.

Realizing that staying here meant dying a pointless death, the soldier immediately stood, gathered his frozen comrades, and hurried out of the building.

Before descending the stairs, he offered a word of thanks to Oliver.

And then—

“Roooooooaaaaarrrrr!!”

The tree giant, now covered in creatures like a swarm of ants, unleashed a storm of lightning, fire, ice, and wind, burning and blowing all the creatures off its body.

Indeed, the power of the spirits was truly formidable; the creatures dissolved into dust.

As the giant regained its footing, the Druids leapt up to create a giant tree to swing at the building, while the giant clenched its fist behind its shoulder again.

“………..!!!”

With even louder screams from the spirits and more terrifying power than before,

The giant readied to hurl its fist once more.

“Shadow.”

Oliver called upon his shadow.

Responding to his call, the shadow expanded, forming numerous tendrils that lashed out, destroying the tree the Druids were shifting toward and grabbing them in the process.

But that wasn’t all; the tendrils shot toward the tree giant’s fist.

“Down.”

Just before the tendrils made contact with the giant’s fist, Oliver gave another command.

In an instant, the tendrils veered downward, targeting the giant’s legs.

Crrraaaack!

With a noise like an avalanche, the giant’s legs crumbled, and under the weight of its own body, the giant began collapsing from the bottom up.

Like a building collapsing, the tree giant crumbled.

Thanks to this, the spirits bound to the giant’s body were freed from their chains and began trying to return to their original places.

“Where do you think you’re going?!”

Just as the giant was on the verge of complete collapse, the moose-antlered Druid leaped into the air, twisting the Power of Nature to summon more chains and shouted.

The chains once again bound the spirits, and the moose-antlered Druid prepared to turn them into armor, shields, swords, and spears.

“Hold them.”

In response, Oliver gave his shadow a command.

The shadow quickly stretched out its tendrils, while the moose-antlered Druid attempted to use the newly captured spirits to deflect the shadow.

But it was useless. The overwhelming gap in strength was so massive that the spirits barely resisted before succumbing, and the Druid was caught by the tendrils.

Crrraaaack…!

The shadow tightly constricted the moose-antlered Druid’s body, leaving no chance for resistance, but the Druid forced a grin and shouted.

“Arrrgh… how generous! Instead of just killing me, you go through all this trouble…!”

He was lying. Based on advice from Puppet and the fact that Oliver was here, the Druid had a sense that Oliver wouldn’t kill him outright.

Yet he spoke this way to buy time.

Oliver responded,

“I have someone to meet. Until I see him, I’d rather not kill if I can help it… Plus, it’s interesting.”

Oliver looked at the other Druids apart from the moose-antlered one.

The Reformist Druids.

He recalled seeing them two or three times in the past, but back then, he still hadn’t fully opened his eyes, so he’d thought they were just Druids.

Classic Druids, more conservative than even Enjoyment.

But looking at them now, that wasn’t the case at all. In some ways, the Reformist Druids were even more grotesque than Enjoyment.

In prioritizing their own desires over nature, they were worse than Enjoyment.

After all, while Enjoyment exploited nature too, they never treated spirits in such a brazen way.

“You look at me like I’m some criminal…”

“Well… You are.”

Oliver lazily admitted. Because they truly were criminals after all.

They had violated the core principle of Druids—the worship and protection of nature and spirits— but even putting that aside, these Druids committed other sins too.

Murder for personal gain, deceit, and even participation in rituals that required tremendous sacrifices.

Of course, it wasn’t just the Druids’ problem.

As mentioned before, everyone was guilty of something.

There were the soldiers he just sent off, the soldiers he had met before, even innocent civilians he passed on the way here. And of course, Marie, Forest, and Joe, those close to Oliver.

That truth exhausted him.

“How ridiculous. You speak as if you’re clean.”

The Druid, filled more with bitterness and spite than fear, shot back.

“No. I’m a sinner too. A sinner who has sinned.”

Oliver said as he thought back to the mirror he had just turned away from earlier.

He had turned it away because he saw his sins reflected in it.

The sin of willingly killing people to learn Dark Magic, and the sin of becoming a Contractor for the sake of comfort and research.

“It’s laughable! That stance of ‘neither here nor there.’ How could someone like you be the Prince of Hell, the one to bring about the end…!”

The moose-antlered Druid, displeased by Oliver’s weary demeanor, voiced great frustration and disappointment.

Oliver also somewhat agreed. It was indeed laughable that he was supposedly the Prince of Hell.

“As Puppet said, I can’t accept it. To entrust the world’s end to someone like this… I didn’t go through all that torment for this… Has the time not come yet?!”

The moose-antlered Druid screamed at the sky.

Boom━!!

As if in response, a direct artillery shell struck the Defense Force Headquarters.

The building shook, and a massive cloud of dust rose, obscuring the area.

The artillery bombardment continued, and just as the building seemed about to collapse, a vibration of a different nature was felt.

Rrrumble…!

This was not the shallow tremors caused by the shelling but a deep, earthquake-like rumble from within the ground.

Moments later, the ground beneath the massive building and the paved road split open, and something even larger than the structure emerged.

It was a spirit formed of dirt, rock, cement, and bricks, atop whose head sat a crown and dozens of Druids.

These Druids used a unique cooperative spell to generate thick chains, forcibly shackling the spirit’s neck and wrists, controlling its movements.

“The King of the Earth below! The titan that governs the land… Surely, not even you can—”

Crack!

In the middle of the moose-antlered Druid’s bold proclamation, Oliver snapped his bandaged right hand.

A small spark ignited on the chains binding the great spirit’s neck and wrists, and in an instant, the chains were reduced to ashes.

The Earth Titan, which had been forcibly summoned to the surface, was now free, and the giant spirit expressed its emotions through its massive shadow-casting arms.

And that emotion was rage.