Chapter 247: Life Siphoning

The night was fated to be restless. Many elves awoke suddenly from their dreams, their senses—far keener than any human's—alerted to an invisible gaze pressing in from the darkness.

But when they sat upright and turned toward the source of that uncanny feeling, they saw nothing beyond the open windows but the clear, star-strewn sky above.

Drowsiness dulled their caution. Most simply turned over and returned to sleep.

A few veterans of the forest patrols stepped outside their homes and circled their cottages, cautious and silent. Yet even they found nothing and eventually returned to bed, faintly puzzled.

All the while, the twisted woodling drifted through the outskirts of the elven settlement unseen. Occasionally it paused, its malformed head turning toward some elf that had drawn its attention, but it took no further action. It did not attack, nor did it speak. It simply... watched.

The bristling roots trailing beneath its misshapen head scraped softly against the ground as it floated onward, leaving the elven dwellings behind. It flitted from platform to platform in the treetop city, silent as a specter, moving with unknown purpose.

No one noticed the wooden head gliding through the air.

Its roots touched down once more, rustling gently as it arrived at a different quarter of the settlement—a collection of lodgings built for outsiders by the elves of Liaheim.

It made no effort to conceal its movements as it glid past the stationed sentries and slipped between the houses.

Then, it paused. Something had piqued its interest.

The woodling turned its head and veered toward a single wooden cottage, not unlike where Wang Yu and his companions lived. The windows were shuttered from within, but the woodling could sense a vibrant pulse of life despite the physical barrier.

As it had done before, the floating head drifted toward the window—then lunged, slamming itself against the glass with a loud crack. The pane did not shatter, but the noise was far louder than any it had made earlier.

"Eh? Who's there?!" a deep, gruff voice boomed from inside. The floor thudded and bedclothes rustled as someone stirred.

Footsteps approached the window. The cottage's owner, clearly angered and confused, came to investigate the source of the noise. The grotesque head pressed harder against the glass, causing it to creak ominously.

A green, furred hand pulled back the curtain. Behind it stood a towering orc, broad-shouldered and muscular. Scars were laced across his bare chest. This was a warrior, through and through.

"What in the—?!"

The orc's gruff voice cracked with surprise. Even a seasoned fighter like him recoiled at the sight before him: the abominable face of the woodling, pressed grotesquely against the window.

With a sickening snap, the pressure from the head finally shattered the glass. The thing lunged inside, straight toward the orc.

The orc reacted instantly. Brow furrowed, he thrust out a hand and caught the charging wooden head in mid-air. Fighting spirit surged through him. Though he was formally only a low-ranking knight, the orc's raw physique made the woodling seem sluggish in comparison.

"Does Liaheim breed this kind of filth? Disgusting."

He brought the snarling head closer, inspecting its warped features. Even the orc, no stranger to gore, felt revulsion stir in his gut.

Tap. Rustle. Tap.

The root tendrils beneath the head lashed at his wrist, creeping up his arm like vines seeking soil.

"What the—?"

The orc's expression darkened. With his free hand, he grabbed the slithering roots and yanked, tearing them away from his flesh.

A strange liquid trickled down his arm, pattering to the floor. The scent of something pungent and faintly metallic filled the room.

"Blood?" The orc sniffed. His kind were attuned to the scent of battle. "Sap mixed with blood...?"

He frowned. What was this thing? A beast-plant hybrid? He'd come to Liaheim to trade, not to be stalked by some eldritch abomination. There was no way the elves had made this thing—at least, not on purpose.

The more he studied it, the more uneasy he grew. It had intruded into his cottage uninvited and watched him from the shadows... There was certainly hostility.

"Do I kill it? Or tie it up for the elves to examine in the morning?"

He hesitated. The creature struggled weakly in his grip, but its strength was negligible. He doubted it could pose a threat to someone like him.

Perhaps it was just a failed druidic experiment? He had seen young elven druids botch the creation of their nature companions before, growing plants that were stunted or bizarre in shape.

But nothing he'd ever seen had been this grotesque.

"Bah. I've nowhere to keep it. If this is some elf druid's pet, tough luck. Shouldn't have let your little freak run loose."

The orc shook his head. His grip tightened. The wooden head began to crack and warp under the pressure as it emitted a series of grating creaks.

At first, the sound was just that of splintering wood.

Then, as the entire head was crushed, there was a sharp, shrill sound like a dying wail. It wasn't loud, but it was piercing. It stabbed at his mind like invisible needles, making him grimace in discomfort.

"Disgusting."

With a final burst of strength, the orc crushed the head in one motion. Rotten splinters rained to the floor, and a viscous mix of sap and blood oozed between his fingers.

"..."

He looked down at the mess clinging to his hand with disgust. Flicking it away, he wiped his palm on the floor and returned to bed, wholly unbothered. A little grime didn't trouble a veteran of the battlefield. He'd slept in worse.

As he drifted back to sleep, he paid no attention to the faint change that had taken place in his body.

When he crushed the wooden head, a faint, green shimmer had been absorbed through his palm and into his flesh. It was a quiet, subtle energy: life force.

Life force, in and of itself, lacked any direct destructive capability—so most lifeforms hadn't evolved to perceive it in any meaningful way. Only druids and certain magical beasts were capable of noticing that elusive, abstract essence.

Naturally, the orc remained oblivious to the life force seeping into its body. It had sensed no magic from the woodling, nor any traces of fighting spirit or void energy. As such, it had let down its guard—but danger had already taken root.

The slumbering orc began to breathe erratically—like a beast worn out from violent exertion, panting heavily in an attempt to draw in enough air to sustain its massive frame.

A fit of coughing followed. A thick, phlegm-like sound echoed from its throat, hinting that something viscous was lodged within.

Then a ghastly wheeze filled the chamber. Mere breathing became a desperate struggle. The orc's face twisted into a grimace of pain; its breaths grew labored, veins bulged across its green forehead, and a flush of red crept beneath its skin.

Its limbs flailed involuntarily, as though trying to grasp something. One hand clawed weakly at its chest, fingers curling and uncurling without strength. The moment they brushed its own body, they slipped away, limp and useless.

The orc was weakening rapidly. Yet even in such distress, its brows remained furrowed, its mind never surfacing from sleep. Not once did it awaken.

A wooden groan, like bark twisting and splintering, rose from within the orc's body. Something was moving within it, squirming against its muscles and skin. Beneath its flesh, a few protrusions shifted grotesquely as they roamed.

The sound continued, but it no longer came from the orc itself. It echoed from the floor—from the shattered remains of the woodling's head, strewn there like broken bark.

Though it had been lifeless mere moments ago, the shattered remains now began to stir again. Bits of fragmented wood twitched and crawled across the floor, inching toward one another. Slowly, they joined—sticking together, realigning, rebuilding what had been broken.

And as this macabre reassembly took place, the orc's tormented body began to calm down. The coughing ceased. Its harsh breathing softened, and its twisted features relaxed.

Its eyelids drooped, slack from the withering of the muscle beneath. Dull, shrunken eyes stared out, bloodshot and glazed. And with the cessation of breath came the silence of a stilled heart.

The orc was dead.

The faint rustle of roots came from within the corpse. The body shrank, its moisture and muscle devoured from the inside out.

The orc's once-mighty frame shriveled away, until only its skeleton and a loose sheath of skin remained.

From its gaping mouth, thin, blood-slicked tendrils crept forth, twitching in the air like probing antennae. But on closer inspection, one would notice that they weren't composed of flesh.

They were roots—the same fibrous growths that had once connected the woodling's head to its body. But now, they had grown thicker and were stained red with blood, giving the impression of organic tendrils.

These roots slithered out from the orc's mouth. Without the web of roots that had filled its hollow shell, the corpse collapsed entirely, a crumpled husk of horror.

The thickened roots writhed together, twining and weaving together into a humanoid form. Though small—no larger than a child—it was unmistakably shaped like a person. Yet it lacked a head.

The headless wooden figure stepped down from the bed where the orc had once reclined. It crossed the room, squatted, and gathered something from the floor—something it gently placed upon its headless shoulders.

The twisted woodling's head, which had been crushed by the orc, had since reformed in full. Though it remained warped, its features were now more human and less monstrous. Its grotesque eyes and crushed nose had rearranged themselves in a more familiar fashion.

Whatever had allowed the head to restore itself was unknown. Yet when one looked upon the withered corpse of the orc, it was hard not to suspect that the head had devoured its life force whole.

The head's wooden lips moved, emitting a dry, rasping sound. Speech, or merely the friction of wood rubbing against wood?

A few roots uncoiled from its body and secured the head to its shoulders, locking it in place.

Then the head turned slowly, peering through the window. It had sensed something—others it needed. Wooden feet struck the floor with soft taps as it stepped toward the door.

It wandered among the clustered dwellings of the foreign races. As it had done before, when it was only a head, it passed unnoticed by detection arrays meant to monitor small creatures. Even the overgrown roots of the Tree of Life ignored its presence. Despite being a killer, this thing, whatever it was, moved freely through elven territory.

It meandered as though perusing wares at a market. Whether by intent or instinct, it avoided houses still lit by lanterns and those belonging to nocturnal species. It seemed to know innately which races lived within.

At last, it stopped beside a modest dwelling. Inside, a small figure lay curled in bed—fragile but radiating with potent life force. The creature of wood stood still as it stared at the wall.

Its root-woven hands caressed the wooden walls of the home. As it moved, something stirred beneath the house—the branches of the great tree upon which this whole platform rested. For some reason, these branches responded to the thing's will.

Slowly, they shifted, pushing aside the earth beneath the house to reveal a pit—a tunnel that led directly inside. The twisted woodling bent forward and moved to enter the passage.

But in the very next instant, rifts tore through the air around it, rents in space itself. From these cracks emerged the gleaming tips of countless blades, poised to strike.

Then, they shot forth all at once. A cacophony of clashing metal filled the night. Blades, axes, spears, sabers—dozens, hundreds of weapons erupted from the void, impaling the creature with ruthless precision before embedding deep into the ground.

The air shuddered with each impact. Again and again, spatial rifts opened, flinging new weapons through the air in an unrelenting assault.

In mere seconds, the ground was cratered and shattered, and the twisted woodling's body—head and all—was reduced to mangled fragments.

At some point, a sleek black cat had appeared atop the roof—Ahn, master of the wooden house the woodling had tried to enter, and a being with formidable spatial magic.

It gazed indifferently at the pulverized remains of the woodling below, then lazily flicked its paw twice. Two flaming enchanted longswords burst forth from another spatial rift and embedded themselves deep into the earth.

In the blink of an eye, a great fire roared to life, engulfing a vast swath of the surroundings—and consuming the shredded remnants of the woodling within it.

The commotion shook the entire district and roused the elven guards. One by one, lights flickered on in the neighboring houses as their inhabitants poured into the streets, alarmed as they searched for the source of the commotion.

The towering flames served as a beacon for the approaching elven guards, who quickly converged on the scene. When they spotted the black cat perched calmly upon the rooftop, its bright eyes gleaming in the firelight and fixed in a certain direction, they paused in recognition. It was Ahn, a creature of some renown.

Raising a paw, Ahn silently gestured toward a certain direction. The guards exchanged glances, then bolted off in unison toward the orc's dwelling.

They burst into the house, only to halt in grim silence. The orc lay there, hollowed out, nothing remaining but skin and bones. A dark expression clouded the guards' faces.

"Life siphoning..."