World Awakening: The Legendary Player-Chapter 115: Life Force

Fena stumbled back, her eyes wide with shock. Her connection to the forest, to the Great Root, was severed.

"What is this? What did you do?"

"Mana-dampening grenade. A little toy from my boss." He tossed the crushed, now useless orb aside. "Lasts for about a minute."

"Now, will you listen?" He asked, dusting off his hands like this was all just a minor inconvenience. "Or do we need to have another time-out?"

’I will kill him,’ she thought, the rage in her chest so hot it felt like it was going to burn her from the inside out. ’I will find his family, I will find his home, and I will burn it all to ash.’

She didn’t say any of that. Her body was trembling, but she forced it still, her eyes locked on his. "You will die for this."

"Yeah, yeah, everyone dies," he said, waving a hand dismissively. He started pacing around the small room, his massive frame making the place feel tiny. "Look, let’s just use our words. The kid, Nox, and the princess, Serian. They were here. I know they were here. The trail was messy but it ended in this village. So where did they go?"

She just glared, her silence a wall of pure hate.

Kenchi sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. "Okay, let’s try this another way. My boss, Gorok, he’s a reasonable guy." That was a lie. Gorok wasn’t reasonable at all. "But he gets really, really pissy when his contracts aren’t fulfilled. And when he gets pissy, he sends people like me to... clean things up."

He gestured vaguely at the massacre outside. "This? This is me being gentle. You don’t want to see what happens when he gets really mad."

He leaned against the broken wall, crossing his arms over his chest. "So, you can either help me find them, and I’ll be on my way, or you can keep giving me the silent treatment. But this grenade’s only got about thirty seconds left on the clock." He tapped his wrist like he had a watch. "And when your magic comes back, I’m gonna have to get a lot less gentle. I really don’t want to do that. It’s a lot of work."

’He’s bluffing,’ she thought. ’I’m stronger than him. He can’t fight me.’

As if reading her mind, Kenchi’s casual smile returned. "Oh, I can’t beat you in a straight fight. For sure. You’re like, a total monster, level-wise. Super impressive." He gave her a thumbs-up. "But I don’t need to beat you. I just need to make a big enough mess that Gorok gets what he wants."

He pushed himself off the wall. "I could burn down this whole forest, for example. It’d take a while, but I’ve got time. And without your magic to stop me, it’d be pretty easy."

Fena’s eyes widened. He wasn’t bluffing. He didn’t care about winning, he just cared about his mission. He was a tool, a walking, talking catastrophe, and he was pointed right at her home.

This truly angered her, the sheer ignorance. The man talked about her slaughtered people like they were bugs he’d scraped off his shoe.

"You speak of my children as if they were a minor inconvenience," her voice was dangerously low, the air in the room crackling with a pressure that had nothing to do with the fading mana-dampener. "I will weave your intestines into a garland and hang them from the dying branches of this forest. I will-"

"Whoa, okay, getting a little dark there, lady," he cut her off, holding up his hands in a mock surrender. "Super creative, 10/10 for imagery, but it’s not really helping me, you know?"

’This bastard,’ she thought, her entire being screaming for vengeance. ’He thinks this is a game.’

"Your boss is a coward who sends his dogs to do his bidding. I will not aid you."

Kenchi just sighed, shaking his head like he was dealing with a stubborn toddler. "Look, I get it. I came in, made a mess, I was rude. My bad. But we’re on a clock here." He tapped his wrist again, a gesture that was starting to get on her last nerve.

"Maybe fifteen seconds left? Then your green-thumb magic comes back online, and you’re gonna try to turn me into a Chia Pet, and I’m gonna have to get real messy and burn everything down."

He shrugged, a simple gesture that carried the weight of an apocalypse. "I don’t wanna do that. It’s a ton of work. So how about you just point me north, and I’ll go bother someone else?"

He watched her, the casual smile still on his face. He’d laid it all out. The threat, the ticking clock. She had to break, it was just a matter of when.

But she didn’t break. She went completely, unnervingly silent. The rage in her eyes didn’t fade, it just... focused. It condensed from a wildfire into the cold point of a needle.

’Okay, here comes the tough-guy act,’ Kenchi thought, ready for another round of insults. ’Then the crying, then the begging. It’s always the same.’

He felt it then, a pressure.

It wasn’t the ambient mana of the forest slowly returning as the grenade faded. This was different. It was sharp, personal, and it was growing right in front of him. A deep, resonant power was building inside the old elf, a thrumming hum that made the hairs on his arms stand up.

’Wait. What? The dampener is still active. How is she doing that?’

Black lines, like the veins of a dying leaf, began to spread across her skin, crawling up her neck from under her tunic. Her knuckles were white, her jaw clenched so tight he heard her teeth grind. fгeewebnovёl.com

"You think my power comes only from the forest, child?" Her voice was a rasp, a dry rustle of dead leaves. "The forest is my domain. But my life... is my own."

The black veins pulsed with a dark, green light. She wasn’t drawing power from the Great Root anymore. She was burning her own life force, converting it directly into raw, destructive mana.

Kenchi’s laid-back posture vanished. He dropped into a low crouch, his hand instinctively going to the massive axe on his back. ’Oh, shit. This is a suicide move. She’s going all in.’

He had seen this before in desperate fighters. It made them predictable, but it also made them terrifyingly powerful for a few short minutes. ’Gorok’s intel is garbage. This job just got way more expensive.’

"For what you have done, I will offer my remaining years to see you undone."

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