The teacher had said that fey were creatures who valued agreements. As long as he fulfilled his end of the bargain, she should honor her promise, right?
"How long have you been locked up?" He Xi asked.
"By your human reckoning, about... two years?" Beilu tilted her head and thought for a moment. "If I stay locked up any longer, I really will go insane!"
He Xi nodded, walked up to the cage, and gripped the vines with both hands, preparing to wrench them apart.
"Wait!" Beilu hurriedly stopped him. "This cage is alive! The harder you pull, the tighter it'll constrict!"
He Xi said, "Then how do I open it?"
She pointed at the enormous mushroom cap overhead. "This mushroom is a symbiotic fungus planted by Granny Ethel. It controls these animated vines."
"She said that to unlock this prison, you need to soak the symbiotic fungus with dew gathered beneath moonlight, then call upon the earth's release with a pure heart."
"Dew beneath moonlight? Where is there any moonlight in the Feywild?"
"That's why that old hag never intended to let me out in the first place!" Beilu said indignantly. "But you can defeat her! As long as you beat her until she's begging for mercy, you can force her to let me out!"
He Xi ignored her suggestion. After all, he was no match for a hag at the moment.
He had agreed to save her because, in his field of vision, tiny blue motes of light were constantly drifting down from beneath the mushroom cap. The moment they landed on the vines, they were immediately absorbed.
He stretched out his hand and gathered some of the motes in his palm.
Spores?
As expected, they were magic power.
So this was how it controlled them.
Watching his