Chapter 97 Geralt's Sad Past
"Are you really a Treant?"
Faiv lifted her flower-like face and asked blankly.
The Treant nodded slightly, and everyone immediately felt a brief downpour.
"It's really a Treant!"
The Dryad shrieked, ignoring the water droplets on her face, and twisted her slender waist, climbing up the Treant's arm.
When she reappeared, she was already on his shoulder.
Faiv pressed her cheek against the Treant's shield-hard cheek, like a kitten nuzzling its owner.
"Why is this girl so excited?"
Zoltan scratched his bald head, a little puzzled.
"Because it's been seventy years since the last Dryad fell on the border of Verden."
No one expected an answer, but Geralt said it anyway, his voice filled with endless melancholy.
"I hear nostalgia, sorrow, and regret in your voice, like you're reminiscing about an ex-girlfriend—did you and a Dryad have a past?"
Dandelion's fingers played a romantic melody on his lute, his face full of poetic gossip.
Geralt shook his head:
"I just happened to witness that battle."
His voice was strange, clearly an attempt to cover up the past with a lie.
But the Treant didn't understand such things and spoke directly:
"Seventy years ago, the armies of Verden and Brugge invaded Brokilon. The future Dryad Queen, Morien, chose to confront them, but due to a flawed strategy, she was ultimately defeated and killed.
"This battle crippled the Dryads' frontal combat capabilities. Since then, they could only rely on the forest's cover, using ambushes and brutal tactics to barely slow the retreat of their borders."
The Treant's words were devoid of emotion, but Geralt's body trembled uncontrollably, seemingly lost in painful memories.
A neat and gentle thought tapped at Arthur's mind. A quick probe revealed it came from all the trees in the Forest of Giant Trees.
He accepted this thought and then found himself standing on unfamiliar land, with hundreds of armored knights charging towards him.
He instinctively raised his hands to cast a spell but found no magic here, realizing he had immersed himself in the memories of the Forest of Giant Trees.
Swish, swish, swish
Long-feathered arrows flew overhead, sparsely meeting the charging knights. They seemed to lack deterrence but directly caused dozens of people to fall from their horses.
They only tumbled a few times before their brightly colored armor disappeared into the rising dust.
"Lower visors, charge!"
The tragic losses did not faze the remaining knights in the slightest. They lowered their iron visors, tucked their massive lances under their armpits, raised their shields to cover their heads and necks, and their warhorses suddenly accelerated.
Was this the battle from seventy years ago?
Arthur subconsciously looked behind him, only to see over thirty scattered Dryads.
The thudding of hooves on the ground reached the Dryads' feet, turning their skin from emerald green to withered yellow.
The Dryads' expressions were tense, and they continuously fired arrows, almost every one aimed at the enemy's head or neck.
"We can't pierce their armor!"
A Dryad cried out in despair. Her arrow whistled as it flew, but it only sparked off a knight's helmet before disappearing.
"Long live Verden! Long live King Eks!"
This feat boosted the knights' morale. They shouted the name of the previous King of Verden, their voices muffled thunder through their helmets.
Just then, a knight in the middle-left suddenly arched his back and fell from his horse into the dust.
Amidst the flying warhorses and banners, even with Arthur's eyesight, he only managed to see an arrow shaft embedded in the knight's visor.
"Aim for the gaps in their armor!"
This time, the Dryad's shout came from a height similar to his. Arthur turned his head to see a Dryad standing on the shoulder of a seven-meter-tall Treant, trying to encourage her companions with her shouts.
Arthur noticed that her hair, like Eithné's, was silver.
The Dryads were greatly encouraged, and the accuracy of their arrows improved significantly.
But the bone arrowheads were powerless against steel armor. Even as the knights charged within fifty meters, the Dryads still hadn't turned the tide.
At this distance, even the Dryads only had time for three more arrows.
"Tree Spear, now!"
The silver-haired Dryad kicked the Treant's shoulder hard. The Treant raised his right shoulder, and further forward, his arm was gone, replaced by dozens of sharp wooden Tree Spears.
With a 'whirring' sound, the Tree Spears shrieked as they flew towards the cavalry opposite.
Armor forged from fine steel might resist arrows, but it was full of vulnerabilities in the face of the heavy Tree Spears. According to Arthur's estimation, the force of these Tree Spears was enough to pin the knights, men and horses alike, to the ground.
He seemed to already see the knights falling from their horses one after another, their formation instantly disintegrating.
But none of this happened. Just as the Tree Spears flew out, a barrier suddenly appeared in the open ground in the middle. The Tree Spears were like being tugged by a mischievous child, twisting and flying off in unknown directions.
What happened next was without suspense. The knights surged in like a tide, and the surroundings instantly became a world of swords and torches.
"Morien, hurry and go!"
Below Arthur, a Dryad shouted, trying to escape into the forest behind them. But she just happened to see a volley of arrows fall into the middle of the forest, and the flames instantly dyed the sky red.
"Oh my god!"
The Dryad let out a sharp cry, despairingly dropped her longbow, and was then cut in the back by a knight.
The earth was soaked with the Dryads' blood, but the smell that entered his nostrils was not fishy smell, but rather like a freshly mowed lawn.
Morien shouted that she would never retreat, controlling the Treant beneath her to raise his left arm and crush a knight who couldn't dodge in time into a bloody pulp.
Several horses were terrified by this bloody scene, desperately kicking and running into the distance, dragging the knights on their backs, their heads bleeding. The entire battlefield was in chaos.
If there were a few more Treants, perhaps the outcome of this battle would have been rewritten.
But just as Morien had been dead for many years, the outcome of the battle would not change according to anyone's wishes.
After successfully causing a small commotion, Morien and her Treant finally met their end.
The Treant was impaled by several spears with torches attached during the melee. Dragging his half-burning body, he broke through the encirclement, carrying Arthur's perspective and Morien westward, finally collapsing by the river.
Morien fell from the Treant's wide palm. The Dryad Queen, who never ascended to the throne, wanted to pull the spears out for the Treant. But she couldn't even pull out one before the rapid sound of hooves echoed behind her again.
In the memory, Arthur could not know the content of the communication between the Treant and Morien. He only saw them look at each other for a moment before the Treant, with his last strength, transformed into a Tree Spear and then sadly perished.
Morien picked up the Tree Spear and stood to fight, but before she could even shed a tear, she was knocked down by an armored warhorse.
The view abruptly plunged into darkness amidst the rapidly enlarging hooves, and then, the Forest of Giant Trees reappeared. Geralt, with his back to Arthur, knelt before the Treant, sobbing uncontrollably.
.............
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