The wave of corruption crashed down on them.

"DEFEND!" Jonah roared, the command loud sound in the sudden chaos.

There was no time for a plan. There was only instinct. Draven and Maul moved as one, a twin wall of muscle and steel meeting the wave of screaming monsters.

CRUNCH!

Maul, a being of pure rage, smashed into the first line of Thorned Horrors. The creatures were torn apart like wet paper, but more climbed over their fallen brethren. The brute roared, a deep sound of pure anger and held its ground.

Beside him, Draven was a blur of motion. His greatsword, glowing with the golden light of an Ultra Awakened, was a whirlwind of destruction. Where Maul was a sledgehammer, Draven was a scalpel, each swing slicing through a monster with deadly precision.

SLICE! SHUNK!

Behind them, the real battle began.

"Shields!" Vanessa yelled, slamming her hands on the ground. A web of glowing, hexagonal force fields erupted around their small group, forming a protective dome. A split second later, a volley of needle-sharp thorns, fired from the Blight-Heart Tree itself, rained down on their position.

PING! PING! PING! PING!

The thorns shattered harmlessly against the magical barrier, but the impacts sent cracks spiderwebbing across the shields.

"They won't hold for long!" Vanessa grunted, sweat beading on her forehead as she poured more mana into the defense. "Master Fen, whatever you're doing, do it fast!"

"Genius cannot be rushed!" the old alchemist yelled over the noise of battle. He had unpacked a small, foldable table and was quickly arranging beakers and vials. It looked less like a field laboratory and more like a madman's tea party. "But I'm trying!"

He peered into a microscope at a slide containing one of Thorne's spores, his wild hair seeming to frizz with concentration. "Aha! I see it! The man's a villian, but a clever villian!"

Lira knelt beside him, her hands glowing with a soft green light as she kept a small patch of ground around them free from the approaching blight. "What is it? What have you found?"

"A lock!" Fen declared, holding up a finger for emphasis. "He's put a magical lock on the spore's genetic code! A failsafe! I can create a counter-agent to dissolve the blight, but with that lock in place, it would be like trying to kick down a reinforced steel door. It's inefficient and likely to fail!"

His wild eyes met hers. "I need the key, my dear Druid! A key to unlock the very essence of this corruption so I can politely ask it to fall apart!"

Lira's expression sharpened with understanding. A key. Not a weapon of destruction, but something to unlock. She closed her eyes, ignoring the roars of Maul and the clang of Draven's sword. She shut out the chaos and listened.

She listened to the scream of the forest. It was a loud roar of pain, but beneath it, she could feel a whisper. A faint note of defiance. The last bit of pure life in this corrupted place.

Her eyes snapped open. "There."

On the far edge of the clearing was a small flower. It was a Veridian Sunpetal, its petals glowing with a struggling light, somehow resisting the corruption all around it. It was the last pure thing in this place.

"Cover me!" Lira shouted.

Without hesitation, Jonah positioned himself in front of her, summoning Nyx to move through the air and intercept a swooping, bird-like horror. "Go!"

Lira ran, her movements swift. She knelt before the tiny flower, the battle raging just feet away from her. She ignored it all. Her world narrowed to the fragile life in front of her. She placed her hands over it, not touching, and began to hum, a melody that resonated with the very soil.

The Sunpetal responded. Its faint light brightened, pulsing in time with her song. It unfurled its petals, and in its heart, a tiny drop of liquid began to form. It glowed with all the colors she could imagine, a perfect sphere of pure life.

ROOOOAR!

A huge Thorned Horror, bigger than the rest, smashed through Draven's guard, its huge claws swiping at him. Draven met the blow with his sword, but the force of it sent him sliding back several feet.

"Jonah!" he yelled, struggling under the monster's powerful strength.

Maul, seeing his comrade in trouble, let out a furious roar. Its stone-hide skin began to glow faintly as its Unstoppable Fury skill activated. It abandoned its post and charged, slamming into the huge monster's side like a cannonball.

The small gap in their defense was all the other horrors needed. They surged forward.

"I have it!" Lira cried, carefully capturing the drop of liquid in a tiny crystal vial. She sprinted back to the safety of Vanessa's shields just as they glowed violently.

"Fen, now!"

Master Fen snatched the vial from her hand. His usual grumpiness was gone, replaced by the sharp focus of a master at work. His hands moved very fast. He uncorked a vial of smoking, green liquid with his teeth, poured it into a beaker, added a pinch of shiny silver dust, and then, he let the glowing drop of liquid from the crystal vial fall into the mixture.

FZZZZZZZ!

The concoction erupted in a fizzing foam. It cycled through a dozen colors in a second before finally settling into a glowing, liquid gold. The light it gave off was warm and clean, very different from the purple gloom of the Blight-Heart.

Master Fen held the small vial up in triumph, his face split by a wild smile.

"BEHOLD!" he roared, his voice cutting through the noise of the battle. "The Purifying Catalyst! A potion designed to reverse the mutation and sever Thorne's control!"

A moment of hope surged through the team. Jonah looked at the vial, then back at the front line, where Draven and Maul were wrestling with a sea of monsters.

"That's great, Professor!" Draven grunted, shoving a horror back with his shoulder. He pointed his sword at the Blight-Heart Tree, which was still protected by a swirling vortex of thorny vines and an army of its children.

"Now," he yelled, "how in the world are we supposed to get that little drop of sunshine into that giant tree?"