Henry drew Dawnbringer and lunged straight into the dryads. He knew dealing with these demonic dryads was a pain in the ass without fire magic, so he had gotten Jan to prepare something for him before he left.

  It was a fire elemental Mana Crystal, a mineral made of pure mana that can be found in areas full of mana but with few living creatures to consume it. Since it was a fire element crystal, it was probably found and mined in a hot area like a volcano.

  Henry started absorbing some fire mana from the crystal while barely dodging the vines from the dryads. The dryad queen was strangely quiet, not moving at all, which did make Henry rather anxious though.

  Henry kept absorbing the fire mana into his body. It felt like he was burning from inside, but Henry had developed a high pain tolerance during these past few days.

  Henry kept fighting for about ten minutes or so until he finally had enough fire mana fused with his mana.

  'Finally!'

  Henry's plan had come to fruition.

  "Asura's Wrath Sword Technique, First Form: Cycle of Death!"

  Henry turned into a spinning circle of fire and lightning as he spun into the gathering of dryads. The dryads shrieked as they got burned and electrocuted at the same time.

  Five dryads had survived, but Henry quickly beheaded them.

  'Alright, now this big one.'

  The queen had stayed still all this time, simply watching as her children and servants were slain. However, Henry could sense strange mana fluctuations from her with Mind's Eye. He had hit her when he performed Cycle of Death, but the attack seemed to not affect her.

  'What is this thing even doing? Let's try to take it down anyways.'

  Henry used Asura's Descent, his strongest attack, but the dryad queen still seemed unaffected.

  'What the hell?'

  Henry decided to use Mind's Eye and concentrate, hoping to detect something.

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  He sat in lotus position and concentrated on the mana around him.

  'Hmm....what's that?'

  After meditating for a while, he noticed something down underground.

  He could feel what he assumed were the dryad queen's roots extending deep underground and dumping all their demonic energy into a strange spherical object.

  'It's burning its lifeforce and converting it into demonic energy to dump into this thing, while using the rest of the demonic energy to create a thick shield around itself.'

  Henry decided to wait and see what this thing would do. After all, no attack of his was working.

  Half an hour or so later, he no longer felt any lifeforce from the dryad queen, so he opened his eyes.

  He saw that the once beautiful visage of the dryad queen had now become cold, hard wood.

  'Damn. Lifeforce depletion is no joke. I mean, I've used Overdrive before and it hurt like hell, but this is insane. Anyways, let's dig up that strange object.'

  Henry started digging into the ground. He knew where the object was and it wasn't that deep, so he managed to find it quicky.

  It looked like a peach seed, but it was purple and much larger in size. He felt a huge amount of demonic energy coming from it.

  'Analyze.'

  'So, this is the seed of a Demonic Dryad? Hmm...Well, I'm not going to raise a damned demon, that's for sure. So, it's between the first three options. I'm not returning to the overworld anytime soon, so the third one can be eliminated too. I'll take the second option. I'll keep it as an easy way to stun the Demonic Dryads.'

  Henry put the seed in his inventory and cut down the dead Dryad Queen. He didn't get any Exp, but he at least made sure it wouldn't resurrect somehow. He then started walking eastwards, where he could faintly sense more mana.

  'There's probably a settlement or gathering of demons there.'