My turn. Unleash unlimited growth! Gooooo!!

I was a little too excited for some reason. Treating life like a game wouldn't be such a bad idea.

To maintain their magic barriers, they had to input mana. And the more stress I added to those barriers, the more mana they had to infuse to maintain those barriers. That was the deal, and also the deal breaker. My mana outclassed theirs because I was a fey being. Naturally I had more mana.

Ya'll messed with the wrong gal. I'm the boss around here! Bahaha...

The first barrier, the one that was a fire cage, held onto its form while burning and vaporizing my clone bodies. I didn't care about the form anymore, I just synthesized an ominous growing green mass with the shape of a sphere. And, it just continuously grew and grew.

I couldn't hear any of their shouts or cries. I didn't like noises and outrages.

I was inside this massive green ball monitoring the situation using [conglomerate]. No matter how badly my plant bodies were burnt or scorched, I remained unfazed. I was kind of hopeful |enhanced resistances| would increase its effectiveness and include heat resistance or something. Whether my hope was met or not, I couldn't tell at the moment.

Anyway, to increase the danger level, I added poisons into the massive green plant matter. The more they burned, the worse the air quality became. No matter how much they filtered the air with magic, it wouldn't matter once if all their breathable air in the vicinity was pushed away by toxic fumes. Although their fire barrier originated from a magical phenomenon, the subsequent burning of my plant body was a chemical reaction that used up oxygen in the air. There was no way they could continuously enclose me in airtight barrier. Their mana simple wouldn't last even with their artificial mana cores.  

The sound of a single explosion reached me.

That was the first breakthrough. I was sure of it.  

The second barrier was lightning magic that vaporizes anything that touches it. Vaporization came with myriads of explosions. Within a minute, I broke the second barrier. If they had managed to use lightning magic on me directly, I might have taken some damage. However, there was no way I could die that quickly at my current level, not from a bunch of level 40 humans.

The only way to rid of me was to obliterate me instantly and they already missed their chance. I doubted they could do that even if they tried. In any case, I was now back to my regular body size. My black outfit had grown with me so I didn't go naked, not that there was anything to see... Needless to say, I had [synthesis] to restore my body to health.

Their barriers were no match for my prowess, obviously.

I didn't just wipe out a good chunk of their military force for nothing. Once I had pushed out my cocoon of green mass to a certain point, I felt that I had caught eight of them. There were eight bubbles, faint ones. I applied [absorption] on the outer edges of the barriers. Unlike when I was on the defensive, being on the offensive was easy when I didn't have to worry about my safety.

It's not hard to figure it out, you know? I learn too, you know?

[Absorption] was really a cheat ability. It had probably evolved somewhere without changing its ability name. There really wasn't much I couldn't absorb at this point. Fey core and souls, perhaps not, but mana and all things material could be absorbed with enough time given.

Before I killed them to prevent troubles in the future, I drained their mana and their mana cores while they fiercely struggled in confinements. I kind of wanted to have a chat to know why they had such prejudice against the beastfolks.

Beastfolks were nice people! Sure, I didn't like King Dolan because I just didn't like him, but majority were good people that I could get along with.

I had the eight of them bound in vines and brought before me after I removed the green mass via [absorption]. These humans were all limp and unable to move.

It almost looked like I've been bullying them. The fight was like a great demon lord versus eight heroes, super unfair. I won though. Since I won, I deemed myself the hero and they the demon underlings! Yes, they were underlings because they weren't that strong.

Mm. Fey magic is amazing as always! Super reliable. Would have lost without it.

"Devil, you'll never get anything out of us!"

"Do your worst!"

"Our Hero King shall deliver judgement unto you! Your days are numbered!"

One after another, as if they had rehearsed prior, they spout out those cringe worthy lines. After listening to their boring taunts and grievances, I murmured with a charming smile, "Such fine gentlemen..."

"Your petty tricks won't work on us."

I asked, "Tell me, why do you hate the beastfolks? They are living peacefully, not disturbing you humans."

"We won't be brainwashed by your cunning spells. Just end us already."

Sigh. I hate brainwashing. I'm not wasting time undoing it, not worth my effort and time. Whoever capable of such large scale brainwashing must be super powerful. Such a hassle!

"Oh, is that so? I was going to spare one of you as a messenger to spread fear, but I guess there's no need? Hmm... Thanks for the meal."

One at a time, I made these human soldiers wither and disappear. I took some time to check each of their status before they completely became a part of my resources.

On a side note, I kind of wondered if humans had 'human cores' like us with fey cores.

All of them had quite a few abilities and traits. From what I could tell, humans had varied growth per level. For example, two of the humans here had higher spiritual stats than physical stats. It might have to do with their traits: |enhanced spiritual| and |magician|. One guy also had |elemental manipulator|. He was probably the guy who was able to use those elemental barriers.

The last one remaining shouted, "Curse you!!" before disappearing.

"Bye."

Another one bites the dust. Ehh... No, correction, unfortunately, I was too cheap to give you dust.  

I was kind of melancholic that I wasn't able to steal their fancy traits and abilities. All in all, there was a net loss of resources. To compensate that, my earlier realization came to the rescue.

Hey, let's just use [absorption] on air. There should be mana in air, right? Yay! I'm genius. All clones, initiate [absorption]!

That was just a command to those outside of the tunnels and the city. I wouldn't want to damage the city of Vera's magic formations accidentally or something.

My current status was:

[Level 58 Fey (plant);
Species: Strawberry Phantasm;
Physical: 110/110;
Spiritual: 352/352;
Traits: Bewitching, Devious, Rapid Growth, Parallel Bodies, Hoarder, Reaper, Progenitor, Integrator, Escapist, Tactician, Enhanced Spiritual, Enhanced Resistances;
Abilities: Absorption, Charm, Conglomerate, Strawberry Substitution, Subspace, Synthesis, Transformation;
Description: An elusive plant fey shrouded in mystery.]

I didn't bother checking the detailed physical stats and spiritual stats. Instead, I was kind of happy that my |gourmet| trait had finally disappeared! Or rather, it evolved or changed into |hoarder|, not that I was happy about the naming of it.

On the bright side, I gained a new ability, [subspace]. They probably both had to do with storage. If that was the case, I hoped that everything I had stored away in |gourmet| was smoothly transferred over.

That new ability name has that "oomph" to it. It's giving me heartburns. I'm kidding.

Having already acquired so many abilities and traits compared to others, when it came to battles, I was certainly at a huge advantage. Even if I was up against those with similar levels but without abilities and traits, I should come out with only a few scratches in the worst case scenario.  

Oops, I got to keep moving or I'll be surrounded again.

I hurried up, rushing through the tunnels knocking down scattered soldiers left and right. I didn't really care whether they were healers, doing first aids on injured ones, or simply resting.

My presence alone seemed to generate terror wherever I went. Perhaps it had to do with my appearance, shrouded in pure blackness. It had to be! On top of that, I was super merciful! I was a merciful lord. If they had no will to fight, I left them be.

The tunnel I was currently in was an ascending passage built with a different style, smaller in size, and often branched in many directions. Some were dead ends while others were collapsed seemingly on purpose. Occasionally, I found dead beastfolks here and there slumped by the wall or lying on the ground. There were plenty of dead humans soldiers as well, some crushed under debris caused by partial collapses of tunnels.

I'm not too late right?

I checked [conglomerate] one again to confirm Smoothie's status.

Safe. Alright, alright.

At the end of a tunnel, there was a trapdoor overhead. It was already opened so I quickly exited and examined my surroundings.

I was finally back in the city of Vera, the surface or outer city.