Truly, outnumbering your enemy was a bliss that Ash had fallen in love with.
Compared to before, when he fought his enemies alone with his bare fists and feet, he had a much easier time.
His foot didn't even move an inch as his three doppelgangers made the Verdant Stag a barely functioning vine creature.
The poor thing wasn't able to give any meaningful counterattack with the tree doppelgangers constantly on its back.
When it tried to attack Crimsy, Woody would protect its brother with the titanroot vine, while Viney would just use the chance to launch an attack of his own.
Forcing the stag to abandon the attack altogether.
The doppelgangers were slowly but surely whittling down the last ruler of the forest that they needed to defeat.
They would succeed over time, but Ash didn't plan to wait for that long.
Still with his feet rooted on the spot, Ash activated his abilities.
Even without getting close and personal, Ash had several options now.
He threw up, sending modified acid bile towards the stag. Something that it couldn't afford to get hit by.
Allowing Crimsy to wither more and more of the stag's vines. Chipping away at its 8-meter-tall body to just barely 7 meters tall after a full minute.
But Ash didn't just stop there.
Just like how the Titanbark was forcefully drugged, the stag also received the same treatment.
Even with more care than the Titanbark due to Ash's loving history with it.
Waves of thorny vines surged from the ground, crashing over the stag's body.
Phantom bloom, the spliced hallucinogenic poison from the spore wolf and the black mushroom, hit the stag continuously.
Despite the stag creating its own walls of vines, roots, and weeds, a lot of the thorny vines still made their way to the stag's body.
The doppelgangers' movement became more erratic, chaotic.
They seem to be here in the first second, then disappear there in the next, while the actual attacks came from somewhere else entirely.
The more phantom bloom poison entered the stag's system, the more it failed to defend itself.
Even Woody started joining Viney's effort to pin the huge thing down.
Viney's and Woody's vines finally did their job, pinning the stag onto the ground.
With the stag still under the effects of phantom bloom, the poor thing didn't even register properly what had happened to its body.
The stag was only confused.
Why do I not move forward when I kick my feet? Why does my body hurt when nothing is hitting me?
Ash recognized the look in the stag's eyes.
It was the same distant, vacant look that he had when he ingested the hallucinogenic mushroom for the first time.
Everything seemed not to make any sense. Why would he try to think at all?
He knew this was his chance.
Ash stopped with the phantom bloom. His new skill, acid thorn, came into play next.
Along with the acid bile, the acid thorn would release an explosion of acid into whatever its sharp points stabbed into.
Helping Crimsy's efforts, the large body of the Verdant Stag, the only creature that had made Ash barely survive twice, had been reduced to half its berserked state.
There were only stumps on its feet.
Its branch-like antlers lay discarded on the ground.
Its neck was no more.
But somehow, the stag was still alive.
Despite being incredibly slow, the super regeneration the stag had still tried its best to recover the melted and withered vines.
Alas, nothing a modified acid bile that could even eat through Titanbark couldn't solve.
Ash intentionally aimed towards the middle of the stag's body, the place where the vines seemed to be the densest.
And the exact place where he felt something foreign in the stag's body.
Something that didn't feel like it belonged to a plant creature.
Acid spewed from his mouth.
The dense, braided vines ceased to exist.
Finally revealing the answer to Ash's question.
Deep inside the viney stag, right in the dead center of its body made out of vines, was actually a deer.
The same mutated deer with plants on its back. The same one as the other deer the Verdant Stag was with and protected before.
But different from the other deer, this deer's plant seemed to be filled with energy.
The same silvery green glow it used all this time, the same one the banyan tree gave Ash, was pulsing strongly on the back of the deer.
It felt familiar before when Ash felt the stag activate its skills to control the forest.
But now, when he saw the pulsing viney plant on the deer's back, Ash was 100% sure that the silvery green glow the stag had was the exact same one he had.
The one the banyan tree gave him.
'Then it could only mean the banyan tree had also chosen it…'
It would absolutely make sense if such a cheat-like creature's existence were explained by the presence of the banyan tree's power.
First, the Verdant Stag avoided the clearing where the banyan tree stood.
Second, the viney stag had the power to control parts of the forest.
And Ash would bet his nonexistent money that the banyan tree was the actual ruler of the forest. Giving the stag a part of its blessing as the ruler of the forest would explain that ability.
Even Ash could just yoink any DNA, whether ordinary DNA or magical ones, to add to himself or anyone he desired.
If the banyan tree were capable of giving Ash such power, it could easily explain the stag's ability.
One thing had become clear now. The stag was also the creation of the banyan tree.
But another one popped up.
The banyan tree never told him to defeat or even kill the three rulers of the forest.
It just told him to get their DNA into his body.
It might be justified to kill one slug out of the hundreds that existed in the forest.
Or kill a cursed overgrown tree that will surely have a replacement in the future.
But there was only one Verdant Stag in the whole Verdant Necropolis.
One that was only capable of existing in the first place due to the banyan tree's blessing.
'I shouldn't kill this thing, should I…?'