Regression of the Tower's Final Survivor-Chapter 60: The Guardian of the Grove

The courtyard behind the temple was a perfect circle of white stone, cracked and overgrown but still recognizable as something deliberately designed. Columns ringed the perimeter like silent sentries, and in the center, a fountain that didn’t flow in millennia sat dry and covered in moss.

It looked peaceful, but Dante knew better.

"Something feels wrong," Ravenna whispered, her demon eyes scanning the vegetation that pressed against the courtyard’s edges. "The hunger here is different. Deeper. It’s not hunting, it’s..."

"Waiting," Dante finished. "Yeah. I know."

The ground shook, starting as a barely noticeable tremor that quickly intensified into a deliberate rhythm, like footsteps.

"Defensive formation!" Dante barked, and the team snapped into position without hesitation, weeks of drilling overriding their fear as they oriented around him with weapons ready.

The trees at the far end of the courtyard exploded outward.

What emerged wasn’t a monster in the traditional sense, but a thing of living wood and green fury—a humanoid shape that towered twenty feet tall with limbs like oak trunks and vines like steel cables coiled around its frame. Its face was less a face and more a mask of bark twisted into something that conveyed rage without needing eyes or a mouth.

[Guardian Treant - Level ???]

[Designation: Temple Protector]

[Status: HOSTILE]

"That thing is huge!" Leon scrambled backward, already charging a spell between his palms. "What level is it? Why can’t I see the level?"

"Because it’s too high for your current abilities to analyze," Dante said, drawing his sword. "It’s probably in the low 40s. This is the temple’s last line of defense, designed to kill anything that makes it this far without authorization."

"We’re not authorized!"

"Obviously not."

The Treant roared, and it was a sound like a forest screaming, branches snapping and leaves rustling in a discordant chorus of natural fury. It charged with the ground cracking under its massive feet, one arm already swinging in a horizontal arc that would have taken out the entire front line.

"Scatter!"

The team dove in different directions as the arm passed through the space they’d occupied, the wind from its passage strong enough to stagger them even as they dodged. Astrid recovered first, launching herself at the creature’s leg with an axe strike that should have severed wood.

The blade bounced off with a metallic clang.

"What the hell?" Astrid stared at her axe in disbelief. "It’s wood! Why won’t it cut?"

"Petrified heartwood reinforced with centuries of ambient mana absorption," Dante explained, ducking under a vine that whipped toward his head. "Physical attacks won’t work unless you can hit harder than a siege engine."

"So what DO we do?"

"Keep it busy!"

He needed to think. In his previous life, he encountered Treants on several floors, but never one this old or this powerful. Normal tactics involved fire, which the creature would be vulnerable to, but Leon’s flames were barely strong enough to light a campfire and nothing else in their arsenal generated that kind of heat.

Which left other options.

"Ren, draw its attention!" Dante shouted. "Get between it and the fountain. Astrid, Leon, harry its flanks. Sera, stay back and be ready to heal. Ravenna, with me."

The team moved without questioning, trust built through blood and danger overriding the terror that wanted to freeze them in place. Ren’s new shield glowed as he sprinted toward the Treant’s front, slamming its surface with his fist to activate the barrier.

"Hey ugly! Over here!"

The Treant turned toward the noise, and Ren planted himself like a mountain as the creature’s fist descended with enough force to pulverize stone.

The impact shook the entire courtyard.

But Ren held.

The Aegis of Iron blazed with golden light as it absorbed the kinetic energy, the runes along its surface flaring bright enough to blind, and Ren’s feet carved trenches in the stone as he was pushed back but not broken.

"That’s two!" Ren shouted through gritted teeth. "Gonna need you to hurry, Dante!"

The Treant raised its other fist.

"Working on it!"

Dante grabbed Ravenna and pulled her behind a toppled column as he watched the creature’s movements, looking for patterns, weaknesses, anything he could exploit.

"What are we doing?" Ravenna asked.

"I can’t kill it with steel," Dante said. "Physical attacks won’t penetrate its defenses, and we don’t have the firepower to burn through the reinforcement."

"Then what’s the plan?"

Dante looked at her, then at the Ancient Core burning in his chest, and made a decision.

"Something stupid," he admitted.

He stepped out from behind the column and started walking toward the Treant.

"Dante?" Ravenna’s voice rose in alarm. "What are you doing?"

He didn’t answer. He was too busy listening to the thing coiled around his soul as it stirred with sudden interest, responding to his intent like a dog catching a scent.

’You remember this place,’ he thought at it. ’You remember these guardians. They were yours once, weren’t they?’

The warmth intensified, spreading through his veins until his very blood felt like molten gold.

’Help me.’

The Treant noticed him. It turned from where Ren was barely holding its attention, those bark-masked features orienting on the small figure walking calmly across the courtyard like he wasn’t facing something that could crush him with a pinky.

It raised one massive foot to stomp him flat, and in response, Dante raised his hand.

The Ancient Core exploded with power.

Green-gold light erupted from his palm, not as an attack but as a wave of pure presence, energy that wasn’t destructive but communicative. It slammed into the Treant like a physical force, and the creature actually staggered, its movements becoming uncertain for the first time since it emerged.

"What?" The word tore from its mouth, shaped by the creaking of ancient wood. "What are you?"

It could talk. Of course it could talk. It was a Sylvani construct, built by beings who valued communication above almost everything else.

"I’m the one giving you orders," Dante said, and pushed harder.

The Core’s energy pressed against the Treant’s consciousness, not attacking but overwriting, forcing the creature to recognize an authority that superseded its original programming. It was like hacking a computer with administrator access, bypassing security by having credentials that predated the security itself.

The Treant fought him.

For a creature of wood and ancient magic, it had a surprisingly strong will. It pushed back against Dante’s intrusion with centuries of ingrained purpose, trying to reject the foreign command like antibodies attacking an infection.

Dante’s muscles locked, every nerve in his body screaming as the mental battle manifested physically. Blood dripped from his nose, then his ears, and he felt something in his chest strain like a rope pulled too tight.

"Dante!" Ravenna was at his side, her hands on his shoulders. "You’re hurting yourself!"

"Not finished," he ground out through clenched teeth.

The Treant took a step toward him, then stopped. Its fist raised, trembled, and lowered. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"You... are not... Sylvani..."

"No," Dante agreed. "I’m something worse. I’m what happened after."

He pushed one final time, putting everything he had into the command, and the resistance shattered like glass.

"Kneel," he commanded.

The command hit like a hammer, and the Treant’s legs buckled.

Twenty feet of living wood and ancient fury collapsed to its knees before him, the impact sending cracks spider-webbing across the courtyard stones. Its head bowed, bark-mask facing the ground in a posture of absolute submission.

"Impossible," Leon whispered from somewhere behind him. "He just... it just..."

Dante walked forward until he stood directly in front of the kneeling guardian, close enough to touch it if he wanted to. His vision blurred at the edges, and the Core felt like it was trying to burn its way out of his chest, but he had won.

"Guard this place for centuries," Dante said quietly, looking up at the bowed head. "Protect it from anything that might threaten the secrets inside. That was your purpose, wasn’t it?"

The Treant didn’t respond. It couldn’t, not while the command held.

"I’m sorry."

He drew his sword.

"But I can’t leave something this powerful behind me."

The blade came down in a single, clean arc that severed the creature’s head from its shoulders. The wood resisted the cut, but only barely, the Core’s resonance having weakened its defenses just enough for steel to do what steel couldn’t do before.

The head hit the ground with a hollow thunk, and the body followed a moment later, collapsing into a pile of ancient lumber that cracked and split as the animating force drained away.

[Guardian Treant defeated]

[Reward: Ancient Seed (Legendary)]

[Reward: Memory Fragment (Sylvani)]

Dante caught the items as they materialized, pocketing them without examining them. There would be time for that later.

Right now, he needed to not pass out.

"Dante!" Sera was beside him suddenly, her healing magic already washing over his body in warm waves. "You’re bleeding from everywhere. What did you do?"

"Mental override," he said, or tried to say. His voice came out as more of a croak. "Forced my authority over its original programming. The Core recognized the guardian’s origin and gave me the leverage to command it."

"That looked like it almost killed you."

"Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."

"What?"

"Old world expression. Don’t worry about it."

He let Sera’s magic work on the worst of the damage while the rest of the team gathered around, their expressions a mix of awe and concern.

"You made it kneel," Astrid said, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. "A Level 40+ boss monster, and you made it kneel with your brain."

"With the Core," Dante corrected. "I just pointed it in the right direction."

"Same difference." She looked at the pile of wood that used to be a living creature, a guardian that probably defended this temple for longer than human civilization existed. "You could have let it go. After it submitted."

"No, I couldn’t."

"Why not?"

Dante thought about how to explain it, the calculus of power that he’d learned through eight years of watching mercy become weakness.

"Because everything you spare becomes a factor you have to account for later," he said finally. "The guardian submitted today because I had enough power to force it. What happens in a month when we’re on Floor 20 and it decides to come looking for the thing that humiliated it? What happens when an enemy faction finds the temple and breaks its conditioning, turning it into a weapon against us?"

"So you killed it just in case?"

"I killed it because leaving it alive created risks I couldn’t control." He met Astrid’s eyes without flinching. "I’m not cruel, Astrid. But I’m also not stupid. Cold mathematics keeps people alive when warm feelings get them killed."

She held his gaze for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind her grey eyes.

"That’s terrifying," she said eventually. "And I’m starting to understand why you’re still alive after eight years of this."

"Now you’re getting it."

Dante stood up straighter as Sera’s healing finished knitting together the worst of the internal damage, taking a deep breath that didn’t taste of blood for the first time in several minutes.

The temple was secured. The guardian was dead. And somewhere in his pocket, a memory fragment from a dead civilization waited to tell him secrets that humans were never meant to know.

Progress—cold, bloody, methodical progress. Floor 12 wasn’t done with them yet, but Dante was starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, they were ready for whatever came next. The Ancient Core pulsed in agreement, and this time it felt almost like approval.