When we got back to the inn, a note from Al was waiting for us.

“I have relocated to the Alchemists’ Hub and secured rooms at the Dreamy Bloom Inn.”

It took a while to find the building, and the inside was very different from the Adventurers’ Hub.

For starters, it was quiet.

Not the kind of quiet you get when people are sleeping, or the town’s shut down for the night. This was a carefully arranged quiet. The kind that came from hundreds of people not making noise, because someone would absolutely murder them if they did.

The hub opened into a vast, spacious area. It just kept going. Neatly arranged square fields stretched out in perfect rows, each one about five meters across. Rows of herbs—some familiar, most not—grew in precise patterns, like they’d been planted with a ruler.

People moved between the fields in orderly lines, wearing soft shoes and speaking in whispers, if at all. Most of them looked like assistants or apprentices. Carrying baskets, trimming stems, or casting spells over the plants. Every now and then, a robed alchemist would stroll past, chin lifted, hands tucked behind their back like they were touring their domain. Most of them wore some kind of insignia on their belts. All of them had the same look: self-important, vaguely constipated, and very proud of whatever was growing under their supervision.

I didn’t see a single riding lizard. Not one.

That alone made the place feel strange. No clattering claws, no crashing barrels, no shouted arguments over whose mount bit whose again. Compared to the Adventurers’ Hub, with its chaos, sparring duels, salesmen yelling over each other, and someone always bleeding somewhere, this place felt like stepping into a monastery.

Even the air smelled different. Cleaner. Wet soil and crushed leaves, flowers, and manure, with a faint chemical tang hiding underneath it all. The kind of scent that made you feel like something was about to bloom.

Rue got a few dirty looks and some curious ones, but no one approached us with complaints. I slowed my pace without even thinking, lowered my voice when I asked for directions, and felt like I should be walking on tiptoe just to avoid disturbing the ambiance.

Eventually, someone pointed me toward the Dreamy Bloom Inn, tucked to the edge of the hub behind a cluster of glowing blue moss. I had no idea what kind of alchemical nonsense made the moss shine and break the light like facets of a diamond, but the effect was pretty. Also weird.

The front room was quiet, all soft lighting and polished wood, with that faint herbal smell that clung to everything in the Alchemists’ Hub.

The clerk barely looked up from her ledger. “Name?” she asked, then, hearing it, nodded and sent a girl in soft shoes and a pale green apron scurrying up the stairs.

A minute later, Al appeared at the top landing. He didn’t say a word. Just raised a hand and waved for us to follow.

As we followed him down a quiet hallway, I asked, “So… why’d you move here?”

Al didn’t break stride. “You took your house, and I needed a brewing room.”

I winced and rubbed the back of my neck. “Right. Sorry.”

Mahya stepped lightly beside me. “Did you find anything?”

Al gave her a long, mildly exasperated look. “That is why I needed a brewing room.”

Mahya stiffened for a second, then let it go with a breath. No eye-roll or snark, just a flicker of tension that passed quickly. Progress. At least she didn’t lose her cool this time. Maybe she'd even come around on the affinity stone.

The next morning, we went to register for the dungeon, again.

I stood there, rubbing my face, and couldn’t believe that I was paying another mithril coin and going through all that bureaucracy for that stupid dungeon. Of course, I couldn’t let them go alone, it was too dangerous, but still. I huffed in irritation and followed them to the next counter.

I can’t believe I’m here again. Deep sigh. The things I do for friends. Anotherdeep sigh.

Rue was the smartest of all of us and stayed at the inn. In his words, “Stupid plant monsters are stupid. Rue not like stupid.”

What could I say? My dog’s a genius.

Next day, bright and early, we got back to the dungeon. Again, the first section was a breeze, and Al didn’t even bother collecting any more flowers from that part. For the next section, we adjusted our modus operandi slightly. We cautiously approached the area, paintball guns drawn and ready. The minute we got close, all the vine creatures and the trees stirred and got ready to attack us. We didn’t let them. A barrage of potion-balls hit them in rapid succession until we emptied the first guns. We had more in Storage.

The result was unexpected, to put it mildly.

At first, I thought they were circling us again. The vine-creatures had formed that same crescent formation, shoulders hunched, thorns twitching, their bark-covered limbs drawn tight like bowstrings. But then something shifted. One of them lashed out. Not at us, but at the one beside it.

A sharp, thorned limb cracked across the other's bark-plated chest, leaving a trail of smoking sap. The second creature jerked back, recoiled, and retaliated. Its roots tore from the ground with a snapping sound as it lunged and drove both fists into its attacker, bark cracking against bark.

"What...?" I started, blinking.

Then two more turned on each other. A tangled mass of limbs erupted in the middle of the pack as they slammed and slashed, ripping vines and splintering each other’s bark. One tried to back away, but was tackled to the ground by another. Black sap sprayed in wide arcs as claws and thorns ripped into bark. They didn’t scream or howl, just moved faster, more violently, every blow landing with unnatural force.

The ones still rooted hesitated. Several stood motionless, heads tilting at odd angles. One snapped upright as if alarmed, then pivoted sharply and stabbed its arm into the nearest figure like it had found an intruder. The victim convulsed, tried to counter, but another creature joined in and ripped its chest open with a wet, splitting sound.

I glanced at Al, keeping my voice low. “Where did you find the recipe for this awesome potion?”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, fingers drumming nervously against his leg as he avoided my eyes.

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Mahya narrowed hers. “Why are you squirming?”

Al’s ears turned pink. He fidgeted again, then cleared his throat and straightened slightly, as if trying to reclaim some dignity. “This effect was… not anticipated. The potion was intended to cause decay in plant tissue and suppress their regenerative properties.”

His eyes flicked toward the chaos unfolding ahead—vine-creatures tearing into one another with manic intensity—and he quickly looked away again.

I reached over and gave Al a reassuring pat on the back. “The intention doesn’t matter. What matters is the result. And this result is amazing.”

His ears lost some of their flush, but he still kept his eyes fixed on the ground, lips pressed in a thin line.

Mahya stepped forward, arms folded, as she watched the ongoing brawl of bark and vines. “It might be that the plants are too high level for this potion."

I facepalmed. It was embarrassing. This was my third dive into this particular dungeon, and I still didn’t identify any of them. Usually, I skipped it because the stupid names the Guidance gave the monsters never told me anything useful. But in this case, with the dungeon having beaten us twice already, their level would've been useful to know.

Ouch.

Thorned Creeper of Despair

Level 50

Barkwalker Alpha

Level 35

The names were certainly dramatic. And how the hell was every tree an “Alpha”? Shouldn’t there be some betas thrown in for variety?

While I was pondering those important questions, the plants continued to fight. Roots tangled and tore, creatures dragging one another to the ground, bark warping and folding over wounds that hadn’t been inflicted by us. One of them exploded into a nest of smaller vines, which leapt onto the nearest group and constricted around them like furious snakes. Another reared back and hurled a jagged root like a spear, hitting a tree. The tree responded by slamming its branches down in a frenzy, joining the chaos.

I’d never seen anything like it. Creatures who had fought like a single organism were now locked in an all-out frenzy, as if each one had suddenly decided all the others were the real enemy. No coordination. Just raw, directionless violence.

Al lifted his hand, like he was about to cast something, but Mahya stepped in and pressed her palm gently against his wrist.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice firm but quiet. “They might switch to us. It’s better if they keep killing each other.”

I watched as one of the vine-creatures slammed a root through another’s chest, bark splintering. “It doesn’t look like their regeneration’s going to run out anytime soon.”

Mahya gave a casual shrug, eyes still on the chaos. “We have a few liters of potion.”

Al lowered his hand slowly. I exchanged a glance with him, then we both nodded.

I kept watching as a particularly massive creature tore off its own limb and used it to bludgeon a smaller one into pulp. Another had wrapped itself entirely in its own vines and was thrashing violently, like it had decided to strangle itself. The pulped one didn’t get back up. So… there was a limit to their regeneration after all.

We stayed where we were, watching from a safe distance. When the frenzy started to fade, we hit them again with more potion-balls to stir it back up. Eventually, only a few injured trees remained. The vine-creatures had been torn to shreds a while ago. When it was down to the last stragglers, we moved in and finished them off with Wind Blades.

Lightning was still grounding harmlessly, and with no overgrowing bark left to smother the flames, we didn’t want to risk a fire. Wind was the safest option. It took a while, but finally, the last tree collapsed. Unfortunately, I only managed to turn the last one into a crystal. The rest had already dissipated by the time we got to them.

It took Al over a day to harvest the entire area. The place was massive and packed with plants. Al danced from patch to patch, humming softly, eyes bright as he muttered ingredients under his breath. Mahya and I tried to help at first, but every plant required a different harvesting method and a different part to collect, and it quickly became apparent that it was easier to just let Al do his thing.

So, while he happily bounced from patch to patch, Mahya worked on some plans she’d gotten from the guild in exchange for a few translated engine designs from Earth, and I baked crab cakes and searched the books for more interesting crab recipes.

The following section was even stranger.

It also had two aggressive plant monsters, but their shapes were just… wrong. One type looked like very long carrots. Very, very, very long carrots. The shortest was about three meters, the longest stretched over ten, and they slithered across the mossy floor with surprising speed. The bushy greenery on top of their heads bristled as they went, launching volleys of green needles that stuck into bark and stone like darts. When they closed in, they pushed themselves off the ground with their "tails" to jump at the enemy, and used those leafy tops like clubs, whipping and bludgeoning anything in their path.

The other monster type was even more ridiculous. They looked like giant cacti reimagined as oversized lollipops. The stems were tall and spindly, between three to five meters long, but only about thirty centimeters wide, and held up a wide, flat disc of spiked flesh, some as big as twelve meters across. The tops wobbled with every movement, flinging brown needles in all directions and trying to swat their enemies. They fought like angry grannies with frying pans—except the frying pans had spikes.

Once we sprayed them, one carrot monster coiled like a spring and launched itself through the air, slamming headfirst into the base of a cactus stem. The cactus reeled, swayed, and responded by whipping its disc top sideways, smacking the carrot into a nearby rock with a wet thunk. That would’ve been it, but another carrot launched from the opposite side, wrapping around the stem and squeezing tight. The cactus flailed, showering the area with brown needles as it spun wildly. One disc caught another cactus in the chaos, which clearly took offense and began swatting back, igniting a full cactus-on-cactus brawl.

Carrots flew like spears, crashing into spinning discs, whipping around stems, trying to throttle them like overgrown garden snakes. Cacti retaliated with slaps and clouds of needles that turned the air brown and sharp.

I just stood there, stared, and was so happy we had the potion to make them fight each other; I had no words.

Just the thought of being shot with hundreds of needles, then swatted like a fly and strangled by a carrot, sent a shiver down my spine. I would never look at a carrot cake the same way again.

Again, we finished off the stragglers with Wind Blades and collected five crystals this time. The rest had already dissipated while the fight was still going on.

It took Al a whole day to collect an obscene amount of herbs while cooing at patches of moss and leafy ferns like at a baby. There were a lot of plants, and he looked like a cat that ate the cream, the canary, and some other tasty stuff for dessert. We then made our way toward the boss area and met our first safe zone. It was also a long stretch of grass, and the other side was invisible.

Mahya was about to step across the boundary into the safe zone, but I caught her shoulder and gently pulled her back.

She frowned and turned toward me. “What?”

“In the other dungeon, we couldn't go back,” I said, my hand lingering a moment before I dropped it. “We should first check that we have enough potions for the rest of the way.”

“This dungeon differs," Al said. "The final guardian’s area lies directly beyond the safe zone, and one may return. That restriction exists only in the Lord of Lightning.”

I studied him, narrowing my eyes. “You sure?”

He gave a short nod. “Yes. I have verified it.”

The moment we exited the safe zone, the boss was visible, despite being hundreds of meters away. It was humongous. Easily over three hundred meters tall, and loomed in the distance like a living mountain. Its trunk was so wide it could’ve housed a small village, and thick, gnarled branches twisted upward, casting long shadows over the surrounding forest. It didn’t sway or rustle like the other trees.

Instead, it watched. Because it had eyes. Dozens of them.

Because, of course, why shouldn’t a tree have eyes?

I just shook my head and kept quiet. I didn’t want them laughing at me again.

Scattered all over the trunk and main limbs, some of the eyes were closed, some blinking slowly, and a few staring straight in our direction, even from half a kilometer away.

We all stopped in our tracks the moment we saw it. There wasn’t even a conversation.

Mahya’s whole body went rigid.

“What happened?” I asked, lowering my voice without thinking.

She didn’t answer right away, just pointed ahead. “Identify it.”

Forest Lord

Level 89

My breath caught in my throat. I gulped and took one slow, instinctive step back.

Al mirrored the move exactly, his face unreadable, but the tension in his jaw said plenty. Our eyes met. No words.

We turned and walked away. No debate or testing the waters.

That boss was waaaaay over our heads.