Tomura Shigaraki gritted through the pain as he saw the monstrous tree hacking a chunk of flesh from him, its spindly branch drenched in his blood.
"Kurogiri!" he shouted, hoping the man on the other side would hear him.
Using the Warp Gate didn't let Kurogiri just see or hear things on the other side, unless he was the one teleporting over.
However, despite calling for help and the blood oozing out from his sides, both the itch and the maniacal grin on Shigaraki were intensifying.
To be ambushed… Tomura scratched his neck as he looked at the roaring tree… why was it so thrilling?!
Suddenly, not seeing Shigaraki using the Warp Gate to come over, Kurogiri let his peek out from the black vortex.
What he saw instantly raised an alarm in his head.
"Shigaraki!"
Another black vortex instantly appeared behind Shigaraki.
However, just as he jumped back to fall inside the vortex, the tree roared, the longest branch it possessed lashing out like a whip.
Crack!
Shigaraki dodged the branch by the width of a hair.
"Change of plans, Kurogiri!" he shouted. "I am going to obliterate this tree, first!"
"No… You need to…"
Ignoring Kurogiri's words, Shigaraki charged toward the massive tree.
Branches after branches lashed out, but failed to land on Shigaraki this time.
Some of them he dodged, despite being injured. But, in the case of most of them, black vortices appeared, directing those branches right at the tree itself.
"Arghhhhhhhhhh!!!"
The tree roared again as chunks of its bark fell off from its attacks.
In a mad rage, it flicked one of its branches like a spear at the incoming Shigaraki.
A black vortex instantly materialized between the branch and him, another black vortex appearing right next to Shigaraki.
The spear-like branch entered one vortex and came out of the other.
Grinning wildly, and feeling the itch, Shigaraki grabbed the branch next to him.
Cr-ac-kkk!
In a fraction of a second, the entire branch began gaining cracks, decaying.
The decay didn't stop at the black vortex, but spread like a virus across the entire branch, reaching the tree.
Dramatically, the tree cut off that branch before the decay could reach the trunk.
"I...… AM...…" The tree opened its gaping mouth like a maw. "… TREE!!!"
"Just who was…" Shigaraki slid through the onslaught, dodging the branches. "… stupid enough…" Black Vortices directed the dozens of spear-like branches right back at the tree. "… to put a tree against me… Haha!"
Laughing like a maniac, Shigaraki put his entire right hand on the tree's trunk, right under its mouth.
And then his hand slipped.
Silence.
The wild thrashing of the tree stopped.
The mad, deafening roars stopped.
The raging attacks calmed down.
One of the tree branches blurred, grabbing Shigaraki's wrist.
"… Just because I screamed I AM TREE two times…" The tree with Intelligence Quirk of Moderate Complexity said, smiling slyly, "… did you really think I was a dumb monster?!"
Between Shigaraki's palm and the tree's trunk, a layer of oil had appeared.
For things like water, sand, oil, etc. Shigaraki's Decay Quirk didn't work as intended.
His Quirk was actively trying to decay the oil, but the Tree's Oil Secretion Quirk, also of Moderate Complexity, kept secreting oil, never letting Shigaraki's fingers touch the trunk.
That's why Luke had granted it an Intelligence Quirk.
The more the number of Quirks, the more the tendency of a lifeform to lose control even before the Quirks natural time limit would run out.
This tree was massive, having lots of Spirit Points.
However, with only two Moderate Quirks, its fate was already decided.
Without an Intelligence Quirk, it would have wildly used both the Flexibility and Oil Secretion Quirk, instead of goading Shigaraki to come closer believing that he could decay the entire tree in one go.
"Shigaraki!" Kurogiri hissed, seeing the tree's ominous tone.
Suddenly, its head disappeared and the entire black vortex, through which he had been peeking out, expanded enormously.
From the vortex, a massive creature's leg came out, its skin black.
Upper-Tier Nomu — designed to take on All Might!
Far away from the scene of the battle, but within 100 meters, Luke saw the Topaz Pendulum revolving anticlockwise with an extremely high frequency and frowned.
This was the second time he had divined if he would be successful in killing Tomura Shigaraki.
But the result was the same.
A touch graver the second time, it seemed.
The only way for the Pendulum's negative response to gain even more frequency was the possibility of All For One descending to save Tomura, Luke guessed.
This meant, killing Shigaraki would be a grave mistake… if he managed to kill him.
Still, there were many ways to accomplish the goal of pushing All For One's coming further into the future.
As Luke saw the Nomu stepping out from the black vortex, he lifted his right hand.
He didn't need to divine to know that Kurogiri would send the Nomu to help out Shigaraki.
So, along with the red-circled tree, Luke had bestowed another Quirk to a different tree that was the closest to the already mutated one.
Luke could maintain Bioalchemy in three distinct lifeforms at a time.
However, as long as he didn't care about the lifeform's ultimate fate, he didn't need to hold back on the Complexities of the Quirks.
With a snap of his fingers, the Super Complexity Quirk activated.
…
[
Quirk Bestowal Successful
…
Quirk: Space Lock
Complexity: S
Consumption:
— Spirit 120
— Stamina 30
Contact Time: 12 seconds
Activation Time: 5 minutes
]
…
Luke's vision blackened as the total number of bestowed Spirit Points went over his Stats.
With a thud, his knees struck the earth, his eyes rolling back into his head.
However, it did do the trick as he had intended.
A pulse of formless power originated from another tree, enveloping a 10-meter radius' spherical region around it.
The black vortex, through which the Nomu had half stepped out, stopped churning.
Not only this black vortex, but all the black vortices hung midair like blobs of blackness.
The Nomu tried to pull its body out, but no matter how much it or Kurogiri tried, the black vortex didn't let him go out at all.
This?!
On the other hand, the intelligent tree grinned like a true monster for the first time.
"Thank you for the assistance, Master," it said, shocking even Luke, who was trying to get up. "I will finish the job for you."
With a sickening crunch, the tree crushed Shigaraki's right wrist.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Tomura screamed, his right hand becoming mincemeat.
"SHIGARAKI!" Kurogiri screamed, pushing his Quirk beyond the limits.
Though slowly, the black vortices were gaining momentum, causing the tree with the Space Lock Quirk to gain cracks as it began mutating because of the Quirk's high Complexity.
The intelligent, huge tree wasn't done, though.
As Kurogiri pushed his Quirk even more, and as the Nomu growled, tearing its muscles to go out, the tree lifted Shigaraki.
Despite the pain making him almost pass out, Shigaraki was still lashing out with his left hand.
However, no matter where his left hand landed, it only met layers of oil.
The massive tree brought Shigaraki to the level of its two darkness-filled eyes. "For master…"
A thin branch traced a blurry path and tore a hole through Shigaraki's stomach, blood squirting out everywhere.
"NOOOOOOOO!" Kurogiri screamed.
The tree using the Space Lock exploded.
Growling like a mad beast, the Nomu grabbed Shigaraki's unconscious body and punched.
A shockwave pulverized everything in one direction down the hill with a deafening boom.
Within the chaos, getting torn apart limb by limb, the massive tree let out a last, smiling breath.
**************
AN: Original Image of the Tree fighting Shigaraki is available
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