Chapter 1101 - The Controller of the Forest (2/2)

Iron Axe surveyed the General Staff after everything regarding the retreat was settled and then said, “Now, let me hear your opinions on this matter.”

…

Leaf was perched on the top of a giant cedar, watching the thick, churning smoke in the distance.

Within an hour, the fire had gotten worse. The air was saturated with ashes and crumbs, and she could see red flickers peeping through the smog.

For a moment, she could hear the trees sob as they were being burned. Although the area on fire was beyond her control, she could sense the tremor of the Heart of Forest.

Because the Heart of Forest was a part of her.

Leaf did not tell Wendy that she was afraid.

After merging with the forest for over a year, Leaf had gradually understood the nature of her ability.

In a way, she could become immortal when every plant encompassed by the Heart of Forest became a part of her. In other words, the bigger the area she had control over, the harder it was to wipe her off the face of the earth.

It was easy to remove a patch of grass, but it would be a lot more difficult to wipe out an entire forest or meadow.

It would be almost impossible to kill all vegetation on this planet.

Leaf remembered His Majesty had once said that plants were the foundation of nature. They would always be the earliest and the most resilient lifeform that appeared on the earth after an utter destruction of the world.

However, the problem was, the reborn Leaf would never be the same old Leaf again.

To merge with the forest, she had to memorize tons of information, including underground streams, wriggly worms beneath the ground, beehives hiding in tree trunks, and twittering birds. If this information swarmed into her head all at once, she would lose her sanity, which was exactly the reason why she had to take things slow.

Yet she knew that she could not take in so much information just on her own.

The reason she had yet to go crazy was that the Heart of Forest screened information for her. Numerous vines and roots intertwined with each other and wove themselves into a massive organic system that integrated both her magic power and memories into the forest.

This meant once the forest was destroyed, she would lose a part of her memories. Even if she did regenerate new plants, she would never be able to retrieve what had been lost.

Those could be the memory of her first acquaintance with Wendy and Scroll, of her experience at the Witch Cooperation Association with Nightingale, Mystery Moon and Lily, of her initial epic meeting with Roland, or even of the mundane routine of her everyday life in Neverwinter… She did not want to abandon any of her memories, not even the bad ones, such as the temerity and prejudice of Cara, and the haunting search and persecution of the church.

Because this was the experience that only belonged to her. They were the evidence of her existence in this world.

She was afraid of losing them.

Her heart ached uncontrollably when she thought that the fire might spread to the fused Misty Forest.

But she could not retreat.

Because everything they had done so far was to defeat the demons and win the Battle of Divine Will.

She could not abandon her companions out of selfishness, because everybody was doing their part. She would not allow herself to fail the other fellow witches.

At these thoughts, Leaf took a deep breath. She looked up at the sky awash with sheets of pink and orange light, her arms outstretched.

In a split second, a jet of dazzling green light erupted from her chest.

“Please respond to my summon!”

At that moment, the whole forest, like an awakened giant, rose tremulously.

Numberless trees bent backward and prostrated to the ground. The earth and patches of grass underneath curled up like a carpet, producing an earth-shattering roar!

As the ground continued to shake violently, the whole Misty Forest split in half. The part controlled by the Heart of Forest gradually shrank, separating itself from the forest in the north and thereby creating a forest fire belt that stretched several hundred meters.