I Can Multiply My Daily Gacha by 100x

Dante looked at her. The corner of his mouth moved. He smiled, and stepped close. He put a hand on her shoulder and patted it once.

”It’s a good plan,” he said. Then, to the others: ”Everyone. Do what she says.”

Esabella went rigid. Her face turned red, and the red spread. It crept down her neck and across her ears and out to her wrists. Her knees wobbled. Her mouth opened and closed, and a small, squeaky sound came out.

”He touched me,” she whispered. ”He said it’s good. He said I’m good.”

”You’re blocking the path, and You’re vibrating” Yenna said.

”I’m fine.” She pressed both hands against her face and turned away. Kaia looked at her, then at Dante, and her mouth twitched.

”Is she...”

”Yes, you are guessing it right ” Yenna said .

The roots surged again. The branches bent lower. The Hollow groaned, and its trunk swelled until it blocked half the sky.

Dante drew both daggers and stepped forward.

”Now...let’s finish this.”

They all moved. Kaia’s team broke left, five people with swords and spears and torn coats. Miso hit the right with a roar. Yenna rose into the air. Dante ran straight at the Hollow.

Fifty roots came at him at once.bHe closed his eyes for half a heartbeat.

’Law of Stillness.’

Every root stopped.

[Stamina: 78%.]

The others stopped too, stunned. Kaia’s team stared. Tobin gasped. Miso froze mid-leap and fell in a heap.

”What was...” Kaia began.

”Don’t stop!” Esabella shouted. ”Cut!”

Three seconds. Esabella’s whip wrapped a root and burned through it in a line of thin fire. Kaia’s sword flashed, quick and precise, and a root fell in two. Yenna dragged her claws down a silver thread, and a mass of wood the size of a house dropped like a stone.

[Two cuts remaining.]

Miso tore a root in half. Two of Kaia’s people took another down with spears.

The stillness broke.

The roots fell, slack. A wall of them still came on, but there were gaps now. Dante went through the gap.

He moved faster , ’Void Step’. A blur across the ground. A dagger flashed, and a root fell in halves. Another. A third. He didn’t stop. He ran between them, and his daggers drew bright lines in the air.

The deeper he got, the more roots rose.

They came up out of the ground in clumps, thin and thick, from every side. He ducked one and cut another. A third caught his shoulder and tore his sleeve. He ripped free and kept running.

Behind him, Kaia’s team shouted and cut. Yenna’s voices come loud, ”Left! Left! Another thread!” Miso roared.

”My king!”

Esabella was suddenly at his side. She ran with her whip in both hands and her hair streaming behind her. Fire lashed from her wrist in thin, controlled lines, and every root in front of them fell. She didn’t look at him. She stared straight ahead, and her face was focused.

”Down there!” she shouted.

He saw it. At the base of the Hollow’s split, beneath a mass of tangled roots, a faint light shone.

”I see it.”

”I’ll hold the edge!” She planted her feet and swung her whip in a wide arc. A fan of flame cut the roots in front of the split, and for a moment the path was clear.

Dante leapt. He dropped through the gap between two roots and fell. Green light slid past his face. The climbers’ bodies, the walls of the Hollow, all of it blurred. The air turned cold. The glow grew.

And then He landed on his feet.

The floor was made of roots. They lay in smooth coils, packed tight, like a bed. The space around him was round and wide, like the inside of a seed. Roots hung from the ceiling in knots and cables. Every one of them ran toward the center.

In the center, something glowed. It was a small light, a little like candlelight. Roots covered it completely. They wrapped it in layer, and they all pulsed together like a heartbeat.

Dante started toward it. The roots stirred. They lifted from the floor in a wave, and a dozen came at him at once. He cut them every time, A root took his leg, and he tore it off with his hands. He stumbled, regained his balance, and kept moving.

More came. They rose from the floor and the ceiling and the walls. He cut and dodged and cut. A root hit into his chest and drove him back a step. He grunted. Black sap ran down his arm.

He was ten steps from the glow.

”Law of Stillness”

The world stoped again. Every root in the chamber stopped, hanging in the air like threads of black glass. The light in the center stood still. Even the sap on his arm stopped dripping.

[Stamina: 44%.]

He ran towards it. He cut through the frozen roots in a straight line, and the daggers rang against wood. He reached the layered mass in the center and sank both blades into it and pulled. The roots tore apart.

Light spilled out. And He stopped.

At the heart of the glow, in a bed of green moss, a child lay curled on her side with her knees pulled up to her chest. She wore a white dress, much too small. Her hair was long and black. Her face was young, no more than ten, and perfectly calm.

She was asleep, sleeping tightly, with both hands pressed against her chest.

Roots ran from her fingers and her hair and her bare feet, out into the walls, into the dark, up into the whole of the Hollow.

The stillness broke.Dante stood there with his daggers at his sides and didn’t move. The roots behind him fell, slack and silent.

In the quiet, the child’s breath rose and fell. Dante knelt and laid two fingers on the girl’s forehead. It was warm.

Suddenly the light went out. And everything changed.

He was in a cellar now. It was dark, and the walls were wet stone. A line of light showed under the door. He was small, and his hands were thin, with dirt under the nails. He sat on the floor with his knees pulled up.

Above him, people were whispering. The door opened. A man stood there with a lantern, and behind him a woman, and behind her more, all with the same stiff faces.

”It’s time,” the man said.

”Please –Please-no,” the girl whispered. ”I didn’t do anything.”

”The trees talk to you. We’ve all seen it.” The woman’s voice shook. ”You look at the forest, and it looks back.”

”I only heard a voice. I–I don’t do anything else”

”Shit up, That’s enough.” They dragged her up the steps by her arms. The yard was full of people, and nobody looked at her face. A boy her age threw a stone. It hit her shoulder. Another hit her cheek. Someone spat. A woman she had called Aunt turned her back.

She didn’t cry. She had learned that crying made it worse. They tied her to an old oak at the edge of the forest. The rope cut her wrists. The man with the lantern said something about feeding the woods. Then they all went home and shut their doors.

The sun went down. The wind came up. Something growled far off in the trees. She sat against the bark and shook.

”Please,” she whispered to nobody. ”Is anyone there?”