There was a lot of shouting and swearing going on in this neck of the woods. The source was an incredibly angry rock.

It had moved from being panicked to being pissed off. Luckily, the rock had an excess amount of time spent being angry. It could be productive and angry at the same time if it really wanted to.

‘Right, so mister root monster took away the mob of pretty-much-zombies for whatever reasons it had. Emmeth, being the brave and noble soul he truly is, valiantly fought back against the monster in order to save his comrades. 

‘Who the fuck am I kidding, if he lost the ‘meatshields’ we’d be back to square one. Though, being back to square one would have been better than being captured by a fucking tree.’

Peak thought about what its options were.

‘So, I’ve got a few choices here. I can go save Emmeth, I can train a bit and save Emmeth later, or just leave and never return. That last option is looking really fucking good, not gonna lie. Don’t have to deal with zombies and revenge quests ever again.

‘... On the other hand, he did carry me around and answer all of the questions that must have been mind numbingly boring for him to answer. But what the fuck am I, a rock, supposed to do?’

Peak was able to answer this quite quickly. 

‘I can do some earthbe-- earth manipulation now. That could help, if I could figure out how to make it useful. It did jack shit against rooty mcrootface. Probably because the skill is level one and I was using it against a monster that specializes in moving through the earth.

‘Back to the important part. Going after Emmeth. Should I do it now, or should I train a while?’

After running through some logic in its head, Peak decided that it was best to go now, rather than later.

‘I could easily lose track of Emmeth, and for all I know, he could be devoured by the time I find him. I doubt he’d suffocate, he is a corpse, but if I can’t save him later if I don’t know where he is! The only real problem is finding the tree and then having it attack me.’

Peak considered the problem and decided to follow anyway. Whatever that root monster was, it ignored Peak before and it probably wouldn’t bother trying to eat the rock either. Hopefully. Peak didn’t know shit about tree biology, let alone monster tree biology.

The problem of how to follow Emmeth wasn’t much of a problem at all. While Peak had been unable to do any damage to the tree, earth manipulation was earth manipulation. Peak was a small rock and it wouldn’t take much to move itself. Though, how much earth could Peak manipulate?

Turns out, not that much. Peak could only manipulate a pile of dirt about the size of itself. Manipulating it was literally just pushing it across the ground. No hovering spear of stone for Peak to stab enemies with. It wasn’t sure what it had been thinking when it had been trying to attack the tree monster with just that, though Peak had been a bit panicked. It was some of the stupidest shit Peak had ever tried, and it had once tried shouting at the ground to get it to move. 

But, although it was only a small lump of dirt, Peak could work with that. After all, for now, all it had to do was move. 

Peak moved a small clump of dirt behind itself, slowly building up a pile. Then, Peak slowly shifted the pile so that Peak was up against the slope.

And Peak moved forward a little. 

Just an inch.

It was PROGRESS!

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

‘Branch. Fuck.’

Peak was beginning to rethink its choice of going after Emmeth.

‘... Leaves. Fuck.’

Not long after it had begun rolling forward, it stopped and couldn’t understand why. Turns out that just because you can sense the earth doesn’t mean you can sense everything on it. It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for Peak to figure out what was happening and then roll around it.

‘... Root. Fuck.’

But then it kept happening. Bushes, Peak could avoid, as they had root structures in the ground and Peak could sense the lack of earth, but there were countless patches of leaves, twigs, and other obstacles that Peak had to travel around.

‘... I… I don’t even know what the fuck you’re supposed to be.’

It was incredibly frustrating for Peak, as most things seemed to be recently for the rock. Not that it had any idea how frustrated it had been before it had become a rock. That was still out of its mind.

Unfortunately, not knowing its own past was not helping Peak’s mood.

Luckily, the venture was raising its earth manipulation skill to level three. Small clump of dirt no longer, now Peak could move a much larger chunk of dirt, about four times the size of itself, reliably. This allowed Peak to move faster and ignore some smaller obstacles, as it could build up the momentum needed to plow through them or go over them.

Then things had gotten even better when Peak had made a new improvement.  

Now, Peak wasn’t sure why exactly the name of the technique was multi-focus or what the fuck techniques were, but it had been trying to move more than one lump of dirt at the same time in order to smooth out the path in front of itself while pushing itself forward.

That had gone stupidly. Apparently, Peak wasn’t able to force more than one clump to move at a time because the stone had to keep focused on the dirt the entire time. Trying to focus on more than one thing was way too challenging.

So instead, Peak was just switching back and forth really fast. It had worked, but apparently that was how most people multitasked and it was enough for Peak to gain a technique out of it and actually move multiple clumps of dirt at the same time. Much more useful than the stupid shit it had been trying before.

After travelling in the direction of the roots for a half an hour, the tree found Peak. Peak had backtracked a couple times, getting lost while doing so, but must have been getting closer as a root reached up to grab at it, but let go after realizing it was only grabbing a rock. 

Peak began following the root back, every once in a while being groped by another root. 

‘Eugh, no, stop touching me… Why?’ 

It was kind of disturbing. Peak had no idea what the tendril actually looked like, but feeling something like a tentacle wrap and unwrap around you is extremely uncomfortable. Luckily, the monster didn’t appear to be too smart. Eventually, Peak found the source of all this uncomfortable touching. 

It was, as expected, a tree. 

The top part of the tree Peak couldn’t speak for, as it was unable to sense anything above ground, but the root system of the tree was bizarre, without considering that many of the roots were moving on their own. The roots were long and thick and didn’t branch out at all, like a normal tree root would. Wrapped within many of them, Peak could sense the souls of many undead, still struggling. Within the root network were four large egg shaped lumps of some kind, each several times the size of a human.

And within the center of the tree itself was a soul that had connections reaching down into the roots. Trees and other plants didn’t appear to have souls, not any that Peak could sense, but this one didn’t appear to be a tree either. At least, Peak doubted it was an actual tree, most likely imitating one.

Now that Peak had found the kidnapper, the stone wasn’t sure what it should do. It wasn’t able to move the roots around to try and free the zombies, as that would be a bit much for its skills at the moment. It wasn’t going to be able to attack the tree with any kind of accuracy or deadly force at all either.

‘Alright. Killing the tree seems like a challenge, but I doubt I could get Emmeth or any of the other undead away unless I manage to do so.’

So Peak decided to try fucking with those four large lumps it sensed underground, hoping they were some form of external organ or weakpoint. Maybe they were gigantic testicles. Maybe they weren’t. Peak had no clue.

Pressing down on them with some earth seemed to cause the monster a certain amount of distress, as it brought in its roots to wrap around the lumps until the pressure went away. Unfortunately, it had so many tendrils that it was pointless to try and get the tree to let go of the undead by pressuring the lumps. What it did show was that Peak was on the right track. 

The next step, Peak determined, was to try and stab the lumps. Unfortunately, Peak had no idea how it would do that. Dirt isn’t pointy or sharp, and while it would be super badass to make spears out of dirt to stab your enemies, Peak doubted that they would be very strong. Peak would have to get creative.

So, sensing through the earth around itself, Peak attempted to find a small but sharp stone it could use as a makeshift knife. Not a particularly difficult venture. Upon finding one, Peak moved it through the earth towards the tree.

Unfortunately for Peak, the tree-monster seemed to be able to sense something moving towards it and sent out a root to grab at it. 

‘Bob and weave, duck and dodge, rocks can’t do any of that, just let me let me stab you a little!’ 

While Peak was able to get the sharp rock through the tendrils, it slowed down progress to move the stone around the roots and get pushed around by them.

And then the part of stabbing the lump.

That went a bit… chaotically.

As Peak brought the stone closer and closer to the lumps, tendrils returned to protect them. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to stop Peak. There was a gap it was able to shove the stone through.

When that happened, many of the tendrils started flexing and twisting within the earth. The outline of the soul within the tree was trembling. With anger, pain, or fear, Peak wasn’t able to determine as the earth erupted around it.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH” Peak screamed out as the stone was tossed high into the air.

The roots around the tree were whipping out and around, attempting to find the one that harmed it. Unfortunately, it still had no idea Peak was the one who hurt it, so it avoided the rock.

What it did do, however, was start dragging around the other creatures that could have harmed it, namely, the undead it had captured. It began tossing them around in the air, some of them escaping in the monster’s struggle, others ending up with broken limbs.

Emmeth was noticeably absent from both groups, but there was a not insignificant number of zombies still stuck beneath the earth.

“HA! Suck it!” Peak projected. “I’ll do it again, you tentacle tree bastard!”

Peak decided that it obviously hadn’t done enough damage yet, and pushed itself back towards the monster. The tree-monster was still flipping out, just less crazily. It didn’t seem to know if it succeeded in killing whatever stabbed it or not, but was still in pain, so it wasn’t forgetting something hurt it.

While tendrils were making mincemeat out of the ground, Peak started working on pushing another sharp rock down. Sensing this, the tree attacked the spot with great gusto, forcing Peak to stop, as it was unable to get the new stone through the swirling shifting mess that was the ground. 

“Come on, just get through the fucking-- Get, get through the-- Get the, GET THE FUCK IN THERE! PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING TREE FUCK I’LL KILL YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

After futilely trying to get the rock through anyways, Peak gave up. It was going to have to distract it or try something different.

A distraction should be doable, Peak thought to itself.

During the kerfuffle, Peak’s earth manipulation skill had leveled up again. So had its earth sense, but that was less useful than being able to move bigger lumps of dirt around, even if moving large chunks of dirt were very useful.

But if Peak could move multiple lumps of dirt at the same time, why, would the tree be able to tell which one had a sharp stone? Or maybe all of them would. Peak wasn’t sure on the exact logistics, but it should work.

Probably. 

Here was hoping.

Sure enough, as Peak tried to move multiple small clumps of dirt towards the tree, the tendrils started separating to attack the other clumps, making it easier for Peak to sneak the rock through.

Or it would have, if Peak didn’t have to focus so much on all the other clumps as well. Turns out, trying to do a lot of things at once decreases one’s ability to do each individual thing. Who would have thought? Not Peak.

‘...’ Peak was concentrating too hard to have an internal monologue of any kind.

It didn’t look like that would change either, until Peak managed to just about get one of the stones past the roots. Then, dropping concentration on the other clumps, Peak drove it into another one of the lumps as hard as it could.

The tree monster writhed once more, and Peak continued driving it in before the tree monster attempted to pull out the stone. However, Peak had appeared to have done some real damage. Tons of liquid was pouring out of the sac and into the earth where Peak could sense it.

“YES! HA! Take it, you shitty tree!” Peak projected, ever a master of insults. 

While it was distracted, Peak capitalized on the opportunity and proceeded to stab the other lumps as well. The tree monster continued to flail around as whatever liquid it had been holding drained into the ground.

Eventually, the roots began to slow. The writhing grew weaker and weaker until it was barely moving at all. 

The monster was dead. Peak had won.

Now, the rock just had to figure out how to get all the zombies out of the ground.