The forest became a battlefield in the purest sense of the word. The moment Elyonari summoned her Nature Divinity, the ground answered. Stone tore itself free beneath Acidia's feet as an earth arrow formed in Elyonari's bow.
The arrow struck the soil just short of Acidia and exploded downward instead of outward. A crater formed instantly, swallowing acid, roots and trees alike, crushing everything within it. Acidia vanished inside it. For half a second, Elyonari thought she had misjudged.
Then the crater boiled.
Luminous green acid erupted upward in a geyser, shredding stone into sludge as Acidia surged out of it. Her arm elongated unnaturally. Her fingers melted into tendril blades that lashed across the space Elyonari had occupied a fraction of a second earlier. A tree melted behind Elyonari as she appeared thirty meters to the left.
Her boots hit the ground hard but she didn't slow down.
A fire arrow formed instantly, surrounded by spiraling embers dense enough to warp the air. She fired three of them with each arrow splitting mid-flight into smaller fragments. Firestorms consumed corrupted foliage and untainted alike. Acidia was engulfed completely with her her silhouette flickering violently within the inferno.
Lightning followed.
A literal dozen lightning arrows struck through the flames, converging on the same point, detonating in overlapping bursts of lightning bolts. Thunder cracked so violently the ground fractured in branching lines. The explosion flattened everything within a hundred meter radius.
Elyonari skidded backward. Her boots carved trenches into the soil as the shockwave slammed into her. She raised her arm too late.
Acid coated her shoulder.
Pain exploded through her nerves as armor hissed and dissolved. Elyonari grit her teeth hard enough to draw blood, ripping the armor free before the acid could spread further. Her skin was blistered and blackened. Her Nature Energy covered her injury to slow the damage. The healing was nowhere near instant like that of the Aeterium but it worked.
Acidia emerged from the firestorm, laughing softly.
Her body was missing chunks. Her torso was partially melted and one leg reformed mid-step but regeneration restored her body with obscene speed. Where Elyonari bled and burned, Acidia simply recovered.
"You hit harder than I expected. Most Sixth Enlightenments would be incinerated by now."
"Your regeneration is annoying."
"And you're not?"
The ground beneath Elyonari shook. Acid surged upward in a spike, impaling through her side before she could fully evade. The impact hurled her through two trees and into a stone outcrop hard enough to crack it. She hit the ground coughing with blood staining her lips. Her healing kicked in but slowly.
A blade of condensed acid swept toward Elyonari's head. Elyonari twisted, releasing an earth arrow point-blank into the ground. The blast launched her upward as stone rose up, lifting her up. The acid blade carved through empty space where her neck had been. She kept releasing arrows without even looking.
Each arrow struck Acidia from a different angle, forcing her to regenerate repeatedly. The reactions stacked violently, turning the forest into a wasteland of craters, scorching earth and burning debris. Elyonari's breathing grew heavier. Acidia's regeneration continued but even hers lagged slightly now.
Neither of them were going all out. Both of them knew it and that made the fight worse.
Acidia wiped acid from her cheek, where lightning had carved a glowing scar that refused to close immediately. Her smile faded, replaced by an irritated expression.
"You're troublesome. I was told Elves were fragile."
Elyonari planted her feet into the ground as she drew back another arrow, this one layered with all three elements.
"Guess they were wrong."
The arrow flew. Acidia lunged forward at the same time with her acid surging outward in a wave meant to drown the battlefield entirely. Fire ignited the acid vapor, lightning tore through the inferno and earth shattered beneath the pressure. The explosion tore a hole through the forest so wide the sky was visible as the canopy was destroyed. When the dust settled, both figures remained standing.
Elyonari's armor was shattered with burns tracing her limbs and blood dripping steadily onto ruined soil. Acidia's human form was cracked and warped. Her regeneration was still working but visibly taxed. They stared at each other across the devastation.
"Tell me something, dear 'Elf'. Why are you doing all of this?"
"You are the one who came hunting us."
"That is not what I mean. You could have left. You could have hidden deeper. You could have let me swallow everything and focused on yourself. Instead, you stand here, bleeding, fighting a Forgotten Rank Krepsuna, all for them."
She gestured vaguely toward the deeper forest, toward Elyonari's unseen Dynasty.
"You are the High Priestess of the World Tree. You are one step away from becoming a full Verdarite. Do you have any idea how absurd this looks from the outside?"
"A what?"
Acidia laughed as acid evaporated off her skin in thin, toxic wisps. She wiped at her eye as if brushing away tears.
"Oh, this is even better than I thought. You do not even know? You truly do not know."
Elyonari's grip tightened on her bow. "Watch your words."
"You are wasting your potential on protecting people who are holding you back. Fragile, transient things are clinging to you because you are strong and useful."
"They are my people."
"And that's exactly the problem. You anchor yourself to them when you should be growing past them."
"You keep saying Verdarite. I am a High Elf. The World Tree chose me."
"Yes. It chose you because it could."
She took a step closer. Her regeneration fixed the last of the damage from the earlier clash.
"Your origin is painfully obvious to me. You are not just an elf. You were never just an elf."
Elyonari felt a chill crawl up her spine.
"What are you talking about?"
"You were born from a corpse. Or rather, from the remains of a Verdarite."
"..."
"Don't believe me? You are saturated with nature authority. Your resonance aligns with the World Tree on a structural level, not a devotional one. Elemental Krepsunas like me see these things. We feel the mismatch."
"Mis... match?"
"Your soul does not belong in your body. It is like crude necromancy polished into something elegant. Your soul is compatible yes, but not native. Think of it like a key forged to fit a lock it was never meant for."
"You're lying."
"If I were lying, your existence would not hurt but it does, does it not? That constant sense of wrongness. The feeling that you are always a step behind what you should be capable of. You possess power that refuses to flow the way it should."
Elyonari said nothing.
"Your creator must have been desperate. Or insane. Or both. Imagine wanting a daughter so badly that you take a corpse, stitch an artificial soul into it, and pray the World Tree accepts the offering and it did out of mercy. Or... curiosity?"
Elyonari's hands trembled despite her cold expression.
"The World Tree does not make mistakes."
She leaned in just enough for Elyonari to feel the acidic heat radiating from her.
"No, but it does make compromises. You are not supposed to exist and yet here you are, pretending you are whole, protecting people who will never understand what you are becoming."
"I do not need to know my origin to know who I am."
"When you finally awaken as a Verdarite, when your body stops pretending, you will have to choose. The World Tree does not tolerate hesitation forever."
"And you think telling me this will make me abandon them?"
Acidia's smile faded into something almost solemn.
"No. I think it will make you suffer."