Tree of Aeons (An isekai story)

by spaizzzer

The Tree's first years

Death and reincarnation

I am Matt, an indie game developer. I died in a bus accident on my way home.

"You died." An old man said. He reminded me of Santa Claus, a little bit anyway.

"Oh, I did." It is a plain white space. It reminds me of the scene where Morgan Freeman acted as a god, so I looked at him and asked. "Are you God, and is this the pearly white gates?"

"Yes. I am a god. My name is Mozart, and I’m the administrator of the soul transmission system."

Mozart. What a name.

"Uh soul transmission? Wait. Reincarnation?"

"Yes. Like all the isekai stories you’ve been reading." Oh! That’s a good way to explain it. I thought about all the other reincarnation stories I read, and I could not help but feel a little excited. Would I get to build a harem? I would like a harem.

"Oh nice. So, what am I reincarnated as? What special powers do I get?"

Mozart just shrugged.

"Roll this." A big disc appears with weird characters on them. It is like a giant wheel of fortune, complete with colors. I couldn't make out what the weird characters mean. He wasn't very interested in elaborating.

"Huh? What is this?" I tried my luck to get more information.

"This is the "Race" wheel. The result of your roll, will tell you what you get to be in your next life. You could be a mosquito, or a dragon, or even a minor deity."

"Hmm, why not a human? That’s how it normally is for isekai stories."

"You did not qualify." He glanced at something. He frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"Based on the kind of life you led, you do not qualify to be reincarnated as a human."

"So…." Oh that sucks. "But why?" I could be a deity, right?

"That's just how the rules are. Just roll the wheel. You will be reincarnated based on the results of the race wheel."

I could not comprehend what are the words on the wheel, so I looked at Mozart. More accurately, I stared at him "Seriously? Is this a trick?"

"Just roll the wheel. Or you can choose to be at the very bottom of the pyramid, which is to be a mosquito. That’s permissible. Or a small wall lizard or gecko. The kind that everyone kills daily."

"Fuck that. I will roll the wheel." I mean, isekai wall lizard isn't exactly interesting.

Just as I am about to roll the wheel, I stared at him again. I do recall dying in a bus accident on my way home, so there’s quite a few other guys on the bus. Am I being singled out here?

"Erm.. how are the other guys in the bus?"

"Dead. They are going to be reincarnated as well. After you."

"Oh. So, do they need to roll the wheel as well, like me?"

"Nope. They will be reincarnated as humans or elves."

Hey, I am being singled out! That’s quite unfair! "What. How come?"

"They have been chosen by the gods, and those who pray for heroes. Selected as champions of the world they are going into, so they get special powers and stuff, to fight a big bad guy."

"How about me?" I want to be a hero too!

"You are not a champion. You just happen to get on the same bus as the kids." Mozart looked irritated. "Roll. The. Wheel."

Wait. I am collateral damage? That reminds me that there are quite a few teenagers on that bus. It’s a route that passes by a mall, and it's late so they probably are on their way home after an outing.

"Why them? Why do they get to be champions?"

"Because they are young, courageous, good hearted and have a desire to do good. Not yet tainted by the evils of society. Quite unlike... you."

"Wait. So you chose kids to bear the burdens of the world?"

"That's the criteria the gods and the people look for, so that's what they get."

"Damn." I roll the wheel. There's not much of a choice. This guy isn't buying it.

And it stops at some random word that I did not understand… Wait. The word transformed.

"A tree." The words transformed into something I coudd read.

"What?!?!" Hey this is not going the way I thought it would. I am supposed to get super powers and get reincarnated. This isn't how I envisioned my reincarnation to be.

"Yeah, trees have souls too." Mozart seems rather nonchalant about it. "Trees are not that bad, actually."

"How about grass?" What kind of tree?

"Oh grasses of a critical mass have souls. Before that they don’t. For trees it is their age. Once the trees reach about a certain size they get a soul. There are world or species specific exceptions of course."

"Uh."

"Anyway. Tree it is, for you. Goodbye-"

Blackness. Darkness. Kind of like a TV screen gets turned off in the old CRT days.

And then a menu. What is a reincarnation story without a menu, right? It shines against the dark backdrop, and reminds me of old DOS interfaces.

Oh a clock.

Year 1 Month 0

[Skills : [Hibernate], [Germinate], [Autopilot]]

[Species : Normal Tree]

[Level : 1]

Oh wait. Skills and levels. Ah yes I get to do awesome shit!

At first I thought it would take some loading time. Maybe this dark space is like a loading screen. But then a good two hours later I am still in this darkness. And I do not feel a damn thing. No sensation, no vision, no sound either.

It's still dark. Am I supposed to do something? I try to open my eyes but it is still dark.

I kept waiting. I don’t seem to tire physically, but I felt mentally exhausted.

An Hour. A day. Two days. Three days. Four days. Five days. Six days. A week. The clock just keeps ticking and nothing freaking happens.

Darkness.

Black.

Black.

Black.

Frustrated I tried using my skills. [Germinate]

*Not the right season.* A pop up appears.

What is the season then? Once I had that thought, next to the clock a seasonal calendar appears. Another DOS like menu, but with a slowly moving indicator that says "winter".

Curious, I click [autopilot], and suddenly a popup appears.

[Autopilot engaged. You have activated [hibernate].

And I recall falling into a sleep like state.

And when I woke up, a good four months passed on the clock. But still darkness. At least the season menu says [spring].

[Autopilot has activated [germinate]].

Nothing happens. It is still darkness to me.

And with autopilot active, time passes quickly. At first I thought I misunderstood the clock, but it soon became quite obvious that 1 second is actually 1 hour.

Which is really convenient because there is absolutely nothing to do. And so time passes.

A year passes.

Another year passes.

And another year.

Year 4

In the fourth year, a string of notification appears, instantly kicking me out of autopilot.

[Amber Lee has died. You received a fragment.]

[Samantha Chandran has died. You received a fragment.]

[Peter Varoufakis has died. You received a fragment.]

[Hyuna Park has died. You received a fragment.]

[Reed Constance has died. You received a fragment.]

[Shah Rasul has died. You received a fragment.]

[Mai has died. You received a fragment.]

[Lee Kang Ho has died. You received a fragment.]

[Shane Andrew Fillon has died. You received a fragment.]

[Pink Fong has died. You received a fragment.]

[The Demon King Asmodai has been defeated and sealed back to the demonic realm]

Oh wow. At first, I do not recognise these names at all. But when the demon king’s notification popped up, that is when I realise that the kids won.

And nothing. Again.

Darkness. I thought something would happen, perhaps it would prompt me that our mission is complete and we would move on to the next reincarnation, but nothing.

A year passed.

Another year.

And another year.

Year 8

A notification appeared. Similar to the others previously, it just says Saita Maru died.

Year 9

Mark Antoinette died.

Year 11

Samantha Charleston died.

Year 14

Kim Possibru died.

Year 15

A demon king appeared. [Demon King Astaroth has spawned.]

Frankly I think I should panic, but somehow being trapped in this darkness I can do absolutely nothing.

Year 17

A string of notifications again. Azares Fox, Sarah Cole, Pamela Seis, Lucy Braveheart, Winston Chow, Donald Stump all died. Cumulatively, a total of twenty fragments now.

It seems to suggest that they have been defeated by the Demon King.

Year 20

An interesting message appeared.

[The Gods has summoned twenty new heroes from beyond to answer to the threat of Demon King Astaroth.]

Oh god. More kids?

Year 25

Indeed, 5 years after they were summoned, Demon King Astaroth is defeated. But in the process, another eleven kids died, and now I have all these 31 fragments with their names sitting in my menu.

I get the feeling that this circle never quite ends. Demon Kings appear, and the gods summon heroes from beyond to answer them.

In the next 10 years, another five died, and their death seems to be spread out, suggesting either they somehow fought and killed each other, or someone or something killed them.

Year 45

Another demon king appeared. Demon King Dantalion. Somewhat predictably, on the 47th year, another four names died, and that brings my total to 40 fragments.

Year 47

The gods summoned another fifteen heroes to this world.

Year 50

Demon King Dantalion, and of the fifteen, ten of them died. And I have a total of 50 fragments. Thankfully it seems my menu has changed such that the fragments now have their own dedicated menu.

It seems like if the world had another demon king attack, the gods will always summon heroes to answer them.

Year 52

I am jolted out of the darkness by a spirit. A spirit that I can actually see. It is like he is a light in a sea of darkness.

"Hello." A young boy, no older than ten.

"Hi."

"Oh my god, did you just talk?!!!!" He shouts and then runs in circles for a while. "Wait I think everyone else will think I am crazy if I say a tree can talk."

"Yes of course."

Frankly I can only see his spirit, shining against the dark background.

"Erm.. do you have a name, o tree spirit?"

At that point I wonder whether he sees me as a tree or as a person. "My name is Matt. What is yours?"

"Indra. I am ten this year, and I am a druid."

"Hello Indra." He seems quite willing to talk.

"I see. How come you can see me?"

"Hmm… I think that is because I have a unique skill. It is called [Soul Communion]."

"Sounds really special."

"It does not do much actually. Just allows me to see and talk to ghosts and stuff. Oh my, I think I better go back." Looking at the time it is quite late at night.

"Well, drop by if you feel like it. It is nice to talk to someone."

"Okay." Indra nods, and walks off.

Indra would later come by every week, and we would talk.

"Can I ask for a favor?" He asks one day, after a few months talking.

"Hmm?"

"Would you mind being my magical companion?"

"How does that work?"

"I get to summon you to aid me in battle."

"I would love to, but I think I do not do much. I am not sure if I have any combat powers."

"Its okay, nobody I know have a tree familiar. I think it should be quite cool."

"Fine then."

Indra starts mumbling some things, and that is when I have a popup.

[Indra has requests to enter into a familiar contract. Do you accept?]

A menu to click yes or no appears, and I mentally choose yes.

Indra smiles. "Yay! I have a tree familiar. This is so awesome. I bet nobody else has a nature-aspect familiar."

Later that week he returns, and sits next to me. "My teachers took a look at my tree familiar form and so I might be going away for a long time. It seems the druid council wants to see more of my tree familiar abilities, as it is fairly rare in the world."

"Oh. Good luck then. Is it that special?"

"Yes. It is quite different from other forms as it has mostly defensive and healing skills."

Hmm I didn't even realise he use my skills. Seems like once I agree to the familiar contract, I don’t really need to do anything. At which point I wonder whether I could see what my tree familiar skills look like.

*pop*

A menu appears.

[Tree Familiar]

[Level 1]

[Skills : Ironbark skin, Healing fruit, Minor Regeneration]

Seems my familiar contracts skills are quite different from my own, or maybe the familiar form has its own skill tree?

"It is my first time going so far away from home."

"Are you scared?"

"Yes. But I think it is also an adventure! My mom tells me not to worry though. I will be going with the town’s lead druid to the capitol."

"Sounds like fun. Spend more time with your parents before you go, okay? Never know when you will see them again." Since the day I died, the people I miss the most are my parents, and then followed by my friends.

"You’re right, I should spend more time with my family. I should go." Indra nods, and gives me a small bow.

"Bye. Good luck with your trip. Stay safe."

Unfortunately, that is the last time I ever saw Indra.

About three years later (Year 55), I got a notification.

[Indra Sinahalia has died. All the experience accumulated by Indra when using your familiar form. You have gained 13 levels. A fragment of Indra’s unique skill has been bequeathed to you in accordance with the familiar contract. You have obtained unique skill : Lesser Spirit Vision]

You have also received the skill [Limited Telepathic Communication]

For the first time in forever, I can see.

It is not the kind of sight that humans normally have, but I can now see spirits of people if they are really nearby, and the pitch black background is now replaced with a black background with faint outlines.

So that’s how I come to the realisation that I am in some kind of park. Or a garden.

And people.

They are all a distance away but every now and then they would pass me by. At a distance, they are all a blob, kind of like a wisp, but as they walk nearer, the details improve. It’s kind of like shortsightedness, but for spirits.

I attempt to communicate, but so far all just run away. It felt like they all thought they are being disturbed by ghosts. Disappointed at how the people around refuse to communicate, I went back and examine my levels.

A tree with a skills, As a result of those levels, I gained skills that upgrade the effects of my familiars, boosting my telepathic powers, gaining some other skills and some healing skills.

I should have used my skills first before attempting to communicate but hey, its hard to hide my excitement when I suddenly receive the ability to see and talk. But thanks to the higher levels in skills my visual range improved.

Sadly, very few people actually walk near enough for me to communicate with them. It seems I’m placed quite deep in the park or garden so everyone seems to be quite a distance away. Even with some additional skills, they pretty much need to be next to me to hear anything.

So…. nothing happens for quite some time again.

Year 56.

A fight breaks out. I could vaguely see lots of spirits in the distance fighting some soulless creatures (they appear as a rough moving shadow). The battle seems intense, as many of the spirits get extinguished, and the battle spills over into the park as well.

One of the human fighters stands next to me, and excited, I took the chance to communicate. Maybe he needs help, and I can get him to agree to a familiar contract.

"Ugh damned demons…" At this distance, I could hear what he says, and I could tell from my [inspect] skill that he is wounded.

"Need some help?"

"Huh?" He looks around, one hand still clutching his wounds. He then looks at the tree. "Talking tree?"

"You need help?"

"Ah. Yes."

[Healing fruit] As a result of my skills I now have the skill to create a small fruit that gives some healing affect.

[Familiar Contract]. The battle is still ongoing, so i figure that they do not have much time.

"Oh." He accepts, and munches down the fruit. His wound heals somewhat, and he nods. "Thanks. I should go and help the rest now."

I did not see that guy again after that, and ten days later I got a notification

[Semara Falk has died. You gained 1 level] [Level 15]

Oh that's it eh.

The soulless monsters appear every now and then since that day, and the people repeatedly try to fight them off. Some days I could see those monsters everywhere, even around me.

Thankfully they did not indiscriminately destroy everything, so they did not attack me. I wonder what happens if they attacked me then, perhaps I would die.

Then a few days later the humans or whatever would come back and chase them away. This lasted for a good two months, as the battles ebb and flow, and then eventually the humans won.

A lull.

And then a person approaches me.

"Is this the tree?"

Hmm. "Yes?"

"Ah. It is! I am Starric, Semara’s squad leader, and he asks me on his death to thank you. Thanks to the power of your familiar he became quite the hero."

"I see."

"I don’t have much, but he also asks me to bury his trusty sword next to you."

Starric digs a hole and then places the sword inside.

"Would you like a familiar?" I ask.

"It is okay. I already have a familiar spirit of my own."

Ah damn.

After he leaves, a few days later, a spirit appears next to me.

"Hi." It’s that Semara guy.

"Huh? Why are you here?"

"Oh. I am just a part of Semara that is embedded in the sword. The real me died and passed on."

"Huh?"

"It’s complicated, but the sword has been by my side since my youth for the past thirty years. So a fragment of me is in it."

"Oh."

"So… how long will you be here?"

"Maybe a few more months. I will eventually fade away with time.."

With Semara next to me, we end up talking. A lot. Semara is a lot more knowledgeable about the world compared to Indra, so he had more to share. That is how I learn a bit more about the world I am in.

This world has many gods and religions, and magic is commonplace. Demons and monsters appear frequently, as a result of the world’s proximity to the demonic realm. And due to stellar movements and astronomical forces, the barrier that protects the world from the demons occasionally weakens, and that results in stronger demons entering the world. That sometimes leads to the entrance of Demon Kings.

Gods and kings of the world, respond to this by summoning heroes from another world. The heroes rise to defeat the demons, and usually they do succeed, at great cost.

The world today has five remaining heroes. Arsene Emir, Valerian, Roana, Ashley Cole, and David Becks, and it seems after the defeat of Demon King Dantalion 5 years ago, they have since fallen out with each other, and are now fighting to be the most powerful ruler in the world.

Demons and monsters still appear frequently, even if the demon king has fallen, demons and monsters are still a huge threat to the world. And demon kings are not the sole threat, though they are extremely powerful and seek to destroy the world and remake it in their homeworld, so in a way they are the most dangerous of them.

Those 6 months pass a little easier with Semara to share his knowledge, but good times do not last very long, and so Semara fades away after those 6 months, disappearing back into his sword.

Year 57, Month 1

On the first day of the year, a young elf kneels before me.

"Oh tree, I, Salada Stoppu of the elvish tribe, humbly request for the blessing of the tree spirit."

How did this random elf know of my existence? And his name is Salad?

"How did you know about me?"

"Oh… erm.." He seems a little embarrassed, but then kneels. "You have been listed in the register of benign spirits by the local council, following the reports of Captain Starric to the town council."

I am in a register of the town council. Seriously. I feel like a botanic garden exhibit.

"Fine. Familiar contract?"

Thinking about how Semara’s spirit accompanied me for 6 months, I add a condition.

"You must leave an item with strong personal connection to yourself with me, and on your death, your weapon should be buried near me."

He nods, and buries a small wooden chain next to my roots. "This is a small chain I made when I was a kid. Is this fine?"

"Yes." I frankly do not know what is the criteria to recreate Semara’s case but I say yes. And then, I offer him the familiar contract. Maybe I’ll gain a skill that lets me tell someday.

He kneels and he leaves, feeling happy.

I sigh, and I go back into my autopilot mode.

Year 57, Month 8

Another elf comes to find me. Another boy by the name Croissanta Fillings. Same deal with Salada I offer a familiar contract and he buries a small metal ring. Happy, he then walks away.

I wonder how long do I have to live as a tree. Would I live longer than them?

A popup appears. *Trees are eternal if they do not get killed.*

No shit.

Year 57, Month 11.

I gain a level [Level 16]. But nobody died. Strange.

Year 57, Month 12

Somebody visits. He does not respond to me but he seems to be trimming some of my branches. But since I do not feel any damage I let him be. He also then collects the trimmed branches, and leaves.

Year 58, Month 1

I gain one level [Level 17]. And I acquire a skill called [self awareness]. Unlike what it says, for a tree, it means being able to look at myself.

That is the first time I can see all my branches and my roots. I am actually pretty big, about the size of a small house. Being able to see myself, I also realise that guy trimming my branches are crushing them to make some kind of tea.

Maybe that is why I am gaining levels?

Year 58 Month 2

Another elf named Corna Corrola comes and ask to be my familiar. Turns out elves have a thing for tree spirits (which is quite rare) and on discovery of a tree spirit in the town of Moton, quite a few migrate to live near me.

Anyway, I agree to let Corna Corrola have a familiar, so I give her the usual terms, but I also made a special request, which is I want her to come back every 6 months and tell me what happens.

Year 58 month 6

I gained another level. Nothing in particular happened. [Level 18]

Year 58 Month 7

A human kneels. He asks for blessing to heal his child of his disease.

"I am not sure whether I can, but I can try. Bring him to me."

A small baby, probably 8 months. He looks really sick. I create a magical healing fruit with all the nutrients I can gather.

The man feeds it to his child. The child still is sick, and the man leaves with the child.

Three days later he comes back with the child. The child’s spirit looks better. Turns out due to the war against the demons, there are no more healers in this small town. Most of them died some time ago, and those that survive now serve in the royal army, in the King’s army.

Child is actually just having a very bad fever.

I gain a level. [Level 19]

The man returns a few days later again with poop. Cow poop, and he mixes it into the dirt. Fertiliser? I feel nothing, and I thank my lucky stars I cannot smell cow poop.

Year 58 Month 12

Winter. During this time I cannot create fruits. A man kneels and begs for help for his wife, but I cannot do it no matter how much I want to.

I tell him to hang in there and return when spring comes around.

Year 59 Month 1

The man returns and curses me. I guess she did not make it, so I do not respond.

And after the exchange, I gain a level and a skill.

[Level 20]

[Minor winter-resistance]

Yeah, that man is going to hate me.

Year 59 Month 2

A young lady drops by, and begs me to protect her husband. Her husband will be going to war soon, to defend the country from a demonic rift that appeared somewhere. Her voice sounds like she wants to cry, but I am a tree, so in my mind I can only empathise, and explain that I am not a god, I do not have the power to provide blessings. I am just a tree living here.

"Is there really nothing you can do?"

"Does he want a familiar?"

"Oh. I’ll ask him."

The next day a young man comes, along with the young lady. "Is this the tree you’ve been visiting?" He glances up, and shrugs. "Doesn’t look very impressive."

"Please Andy, a familiar might protect you."

He shakes his head. "Do you have no confidence in me?"

"It’s not that, but if something can give you a bit more protection, will you not take it?"

Andy sighs, and walks really near to me. "This is so weird, talking to a tree, but hey, if you hear me, can I get a familiar? Just so that my wife feels safer?"

I wonder whether having a familiar would offer any protection, as they might overestimate their own abilities and end up taking more risk, but I offer a familiar contract anyway.

Andy seems a bit surprised, "Oh wow. There really is a spirit here."

The wife smiles, "Please come back to me, Andy."

"Yes yes." He accepts, and the couple leaves.

Year 59 Month 3

The man with the sick wife returns. With something in his hand.

He scolds and shouts for a while, and starts hacking at me. I don’t feel any pain however, and it is then I realise that my trunk is really really hard. After some time, he gives up and leaves.

It is about that time I wonder how did that other guy manage to trim my branches.

Year 59 Month 4

Corna Corolla returns, and when she touches me I actually get the experience accumulated so far on the familiar.

[I gain 3 levels. I am now level 23.]

She tells me that there is some heavy fighting going on at the moment, and that the town of Moton may not last for very long, as the town is located near the border with the wastelands.

Year 59 Month 9

A bad month, really. The month started with 3 deaths, the 3 elves all died within days of each other.

[Corna Corolla has died]

[Salada Stoppu has died]

[Croissonta Fillings has died]

I gained 12 levels. I am now level 35, and my species transform from normal tree to spiritual tree.

At this point my skills are still mostly things like healing, and defense, but I also gained a skill that is a sort of "insurance", called, [tree-rebirth].

Year 59 Month 10.

Death comes to the town of Moton.

I see monsters attacking the town every day, and as much as I want to help, nobody got near enough for me to grant a familiar contract.

I see some fighting in the distance, but it looks like the defenders are losing. On the last day of the month, it seems the war is getting really bad. [Arsene Emir has died. You gain a fragment.]

Oh. One of the reincarnators has fallen.

Year 59 Month 11.

[Demon King Baal has entered the world!]

9 years after the fall of Demon King Dantalion, another Demon King enters the battlefield. Is it me, or it seems to be getting more frequent?

Moton at this point is deserted. There’s absolutely not a single soul that I can see from my [spirit vision]. I hope it’s more of a case of people fleeing, rather than killed, but the past month’s battle makes that seem rather unlikely.

Year 60 Month 2.

My surrounding is absolutely barren. Monsters now wander everywhere, and a few tried to cut me down, but thankfully my bark is really strong, and these monsters give up once they realise it’s pointless.

Year 60 Month 9.

The town of Moton is no more. The destruction of the past few days has been massive.

And I think I see the Demon King. Oh shit.

He’s huge. A massive, massive presence, he looks like he is the height of a 3 story building. Even at a distance I could see his burning presence, and I could see a soul, but unlike human souls which normally appear faint white in color, the demon king’s presence is a bright red one, and is surrounded by a reddish fire.

[The Demon King Baal]

A red name hovers right above his soul. Oh damn it really is him.

He turns, notices me, and he walks towards me.

"Tree?!" He roars, and the earth shakes.

Oh shit. I felt myself shiver and tingle, and I do not even know how I can feel the tingle when I got no sense other than vision!

He raises his arm, and slashes.

"Ughhhhhhh!" I yelp in pain.

For someone who is a tree, I am amazed and frightened that I can feel pain. It felt like I got hit by a car, or a truck.

The top has been chopped off. For a brief moment, I thought I see his burning soul smile, and then he walks off.

I am in immense pain, feeling like I am being pulled in multiple directions, but a short while later, I am just thankful that I lived.

I'm still alive! I am just a tree stump now, but trees do not die so easily!

He disappeared into the distance, and once he is out of sight, I fall into some kind of sleep.

Year 65 Month 2

Oh shit I’ve been sleeping for the past 4 years?! I am still mostly a stump, but now a few small shoots emerge from the sides.

There’s a notification menu that thankfully records all the string of messages I missed. The four remaining reincarnators has been killed, but amazingly, they manage to slay the Demon King Baal as well.

Also, I gain a level [Level 36]. And an achievement.

[Demon King Survivor]

Moving house

Year 65 Month 8

The shoots are not growing very well. In fact, they survive for no longer than a week, and then die off. And because the shoots as a result of a lack of nutrients or sunlight (frankly I'm not sure what my body needs) my ability to stay conscious is really poor. Still, a random elven druid visits.

"Oh tree, are you still there?" He touches the stump, carefully inspecting the damage from the demon king’s claws.

"Yes I am." I reply, but he doesn’t seem to understand me.

"Ah… the damage must have really weakened you." He touches the stump, and seems to be using some kind of druid magic.

I feel invigorated, but only temporarily. It seems that energy is quickly drained away.

"The demon king’s presence has tainted these grounds, that is why you are unable to recover. To survive when the fire still burns and the grounds corrupted shows you must be a strong tree!"

I do not sense the demon king’s presence, but maybe my ability to see is impaired as well. As I still could not really keep myself awake for very long, I didn't dwell on it.

"I will help you, and that will include moving you out of these tainted lands." He says, and leaves.

I wonder how he plans to move me.

Year 65 Month 9

A few men arrive, all of them appear quite old. Oh, and that druid from last month.

"This is the tree I mentioned. It is amazing that is survives an attack by a demon king."

"Indeed. I believe the druid council would like to examine it further." Another man speaks, he seems to be holding some kind of wooden staff, and he kneels over me. "These fires are interesting."

"Should we move it back to the druid council garden?"

"Hmm, I rather not. I rather not have the others discover this. Druidhome already has another tree spirit. I would rather we keep this for ourselves."

"True. Would be troublesome if the other group finds it. Where do you propose?"

"Am thinking either Solaza’s mansion or the Adventurer Guild’s garden, or Temple of Gaya’s garden."

"The adventurer’s guild. I think that won’t be a place they will expect."

"I prefer the Temple of Gaya. Easier to explain why we are moving trees, especially with the reconstruction happening there. The Caretaker would want to have a look at this as well." They vote, and eventually decide on the Temple of Gaya. I feel a little headache from following their conversation.

The five of them spread out in a circle, surrounding me. And they start mumbling something, and then I feel the entire ground shake, and crack. Then, the entirety of the earth around e floats and one of the guys take out some kind of sack.

And then it is just all black for me. Maybe they somehow suck me into the sack or some kind of druid-tree moving magic, I'm not sure. Turns out once my roots no longer touch any land, I just lose consciousness.

Year 65 Month 10

"How is it reacting to the transplanting?"

"Better than expected. Color seems to be returning somewhat and the taint of the Demon King is fading. But the fires remain."

"Did I say I am amazed it can resist the demon king’s fire and attack and also its corruption?"

"Yes you did. But I think most druids would be."

"That's what makes it worth studying."

The guys are talking, and I could still hear them faintly. But I find my consciousness fade every now and then, so I could not catch everything. They come over every other day to check on me, but some days I just cannot keep myself awake, though I do seem to be gradually recovering.

Year 66 Month 2

I feel much better now and I can actually keep myself awake. Those guys still come over regularly and now I notice they have been casting some kind of spell on me. I think it sounds like some kind of [appraisal]. On top of that, they seem to be poking me with weird contraptions, and they seem very interested on my stump, mumbling about fires of hell and stuff like that.

Still, I'm too sleepy to think too much, and everytime I do I get a headache.

Year 66 Month 3

"Is this the tree?" An old man comes to visit. Seriously, I'm really popular with old men. Is it a thing in fantasy worlds for old men to constantly poke at interesting things?

"Yes."

He touches the stump, and seems to be rather deep in thought. "From Moton, you say?"

"Yes. It survived a demon king’s claws, the scars on the stump still char a little with the demon’s fires."

"A fascinating sight. To see the demon king's fires still burn on the stump"

Wait, the demon king’s fire is still burning my stump? I took a good hard look at myself, and that's when suddenly I feel a surge of pain. It seems [autopilot] cut off a portion of my senses, so I did not notice that I am still being burned.

[Status : The Fire of Baal]

Whoah. And oww. Oww oww oww. It feels like touching a hot kettle, for a long time. Pain. PAIN.

[Autopilot].

[Autopilot] is suppressing the sensations from the burning surface.

"These fires… we should learn more about them." The old man says, seemingly touching the fire with a small stick.

The younger man scratches his chin.

"The demon king will return someday. We can better defeat them if we know what we face."

"What do you have in mind, Caretaker?"

"Can we defeat demons with their own power?" The Caretaker muses, twirling the stick in the fire.

The question stuns the younger man.

"It must be possible, for demon kings must demand the obedience of their minions, so they must have a power to control or punish their minions. So the fires of a demon must be able to damage any other demon, or else they would have no way to keep order."

"Caretaker, to channel the demon’s powers, that… that may be seen as witchcraft and perhaps blasphemy. Best not to repeat it." The younger man shakes his head.

"Perhaps you are right." The Caretaker sighs. "Good reminder, Acolyte."

"To stay the path of Gaya, is my duty, Caretaker."

Year 66 Month 9

The past months is filled with people all investigating the endlessly burning fire on my stump. Usually it's the same few old men with different contraptions or spells. The investigators and researchers would try things like dousing me on holy water, or trying to extract my stump surface.

Still, the conclusion they seem to draw is that I am strong enough not to die from it, and not let it burn the rest of me, but not strong enough to extinguish the fire.

The Fire of Baal also interfere with all my attempts to telepathically communicate. I suspect they seem to hear something, but they could not make out any details.

The stump is actually constantly regenerating a sheet of fire-resistant layer, and that layer gets replaced by another layer once the fires completely consume the upper layer."

Ah, so it's kind of like a zerg rush and a wall of turrets. Maybe that analogy doesn't quite work.

Year 67 Month 1

It happened in the middle of the night. A group of masked men sneaks into the temple grounds, they dress like typical cults, in dark hoodies and masks, and carry weird religious-like items.

"This is it. The tree that carries the Fires of Baal." One points.

"So the rumours are true. The Temple of Gaya is really experimenting with demonfire."

"To find demonfire, the master will be pleased."

He takes out a kind of vase. I think it is a vase, because it looks like a vase from the outline. The cultists seem to mumble some kind of weird chant, as the one holding the vase leans close to me. He opens the cork on top of the vase, and it seems to suck up all the fires into it. It has a cork, does it make it a whiskey bottle instead? I wish I could see properly.

"Harvest the fires and lets go."

"Yes yes."

About ten minutes later he is done, and strangely, at that point someone shouts.

"Stop! What are you doing!"

Oh come on, why do guards always spot them only when they are done.

"Let's split!" The cultists shout.

And they all flee in different directions, and then into the distance.

[The Fire of Baal removed. Negative effects on some of your passive recovery, skills, spells and abilities removed]

Oh thank you cultists, and I hope I do not meet a demon king again.

The next day.

"Who is behind this?"

"The fires are gone!"

"Did you hear me? Who is behind this!"

"Anyone able to collect the fires of Baal must be affiliated to the demons. Perhaps the demon cults."

No shit, genius,

"Ugh. No one spotted them?"

"The guards did. They are dead now. We found a few of them killed in the alleys."

"Ugh."

With the fires gone, I am not very interesting anymore. Nobody even comes over to visit, and quiet returns.

I'm not hot anymore.

Year 67 Month 3

A small boy sits on me. I offer a familiar contract, and he rejects.

Damn.

Year 67 Month 5

Without the Fires of baal, I am able to now regrow a proper trunk in the past 5 months, right next to my stump. With this, I feel a bit more energetic than before.

Year 67 Month 8

"This is the tree that has a seat!"

With a the trunk growing rapidly, I am now like a small tree, with a stump stuck at the side. In a way I look like a chair. Or maybe a stump + stick combo.

It seems quite a few people do come over and sit on me, but most seems to ignore all my familiar contracts. I wonder why, and then a popup explains 'Believers of Gaya cannot accept familiars of nature, and are naturally resistant to telepathy.' Ah that explains why everyone rejects me.

An old man approaches me one day, on the last few days of the month.

"Hi tree."

He looks a little crazy. His soul looks really messed up.

"I am dying. And I am looking for a place to be buried. Can I bury myself here?"

I have no idea how to respond to such a question. Seriously. Should I say, yes, please bury yourself here, or should I say, no, don't bury yourself here?

He touches my growing trunk.

"Yes. I will bury myself here."

Uh. Okay. You made the decision, so I'm not saying a thing. Hey, maybe you'll end up a spirit next to me like Semara.

Year 67 Month 9

That same death-wish old man sits on me, and then falls asleep. He did not wake up, and I could see his soul fading. He is discovered later in the evening by the temple guys.

"Oh dear. This crazy old man really died here." A young temple initiate complains.

"He been telling the Caretaker he wants to be buried here."

"Call the Caretaker." I am guessing the Caretaker is some kind of position in the Temple of Gaya, but no one answers me.

The Caretaker from before returns and kneels over the old man’s corpse. "Old friend, I will bury you here as you asked."

The two initiates complain. "But Caretaker, he is not a believer. What gives him the right to be buried in the temple grounds?"

"He was a believer. His three sons fought valiantly against the Demons, a part of the warriors of Gaya. But their death made him curse us, curse the temple, for bringing doom to his family, so he stopped believing. In his dying days I believe he has come around."

"Ah.. if you say so, Caretaker."

They dig a hole next to my roots a day later, and buried him next to me. Strangely enough, it is not in a coffin. Perhaps they do not have such culture here. Come to think of it, I do not recall ever seeing coffins. I feel relieved that I won't get chopped up to be made into coffins.

I wonder whether he will end up being a spirit.

Year 67 Month 10

"Hello tree spirit."

"Oh. Hello old man." The old man really did become a spirit, even though it did take him a few weeks. I wonder why it takes him so long to transform from dead man to spirit. Is there like some kind of incubation period?

"Have you been here for long?"

"No. I just appeared today. I think your roots are in my body now, so now you can see me." Hmm, my roots?

"Oh. Did you know I am here?"

"No. I just liked the look of the tree and the location. It seems like a nice place to be buried."

"Uhuh. What a thing to think about. That sort of thought never crossed my mind."

"You are a tree. Death must be a strange thing for you."

"Hmm. Never mind. Why are you here and why are you not moving on?"

"I want to. But I have a lot of regrets. So much.. anger and hatred. Frustration for the temple of gaya. Anger at the gods and demons. Anger at how weak I was to let my children die."

"Huh."

"Must be a foreign concept for trees with no family."

I understand it quite well, but I choose not to interject.

"Life and death. To lose your children to monsters, to flee when your children are fighting. Do you know how much I regret it?"

"No. Why did you flee?" He wants to vent, so I let him.

"To protect my younger children. I ran with them. I ran with their wives, their kids, my grandchildren."

"Then you did your part, no?"

"No. I felt I should have been the one fighting, while they fled. An old man like me, choosing to run instead of fighting. That torment, it burns me."

"Is that called running? Sounds pretty honorable to me, and if you did stay and fight, would it have made a difference?"

"Maybe. I am much older, but when the demons attacked many years ago I still could hold a sword very well. I could have. I am much higher level and I have better skills. It is wrong for them to entrust the protection of their wives to me. I, the dying old man should have been the one fighting and holding off the demons while they make their way out."

"They must have believed you can protect their wives and kids better than them. They wanted to stay back?"

Hey I didn't sign up for spirit-counselling. Is this guy going to vent at me for the next few months, because if he is, I am going to [hibernate]

"So what. I should have knocked some sense into them."

Ugh. I have to cut this guy off.

"You are dead. Let it go and move on."

"No! I cannot. I must not. I spent the last fewyears thinking back to that day when we parted in Olbast. I should have stayed and they should have left. Thirteen years, every night I think about it. If I made a different choice. If."

"You are dead."

"I am a spirit. There must be something I can still do. Something I can still change. That is why I am still here and not in the underworld."

"What would that be?"

"I don't know!"

"Uh."

The old man, his name is Gewa, and he spends a lot of time being upset over the death of his three sons. I occasionally humor him, but I mostly ignore him and go into hibernation.

Year 67 Month 11

[Andy Schulon has died. You gained 9 levels.] [You are now level 45]

Oh. I totally forgot about that guy. The guy who’s wife came and beg for protection. He lived really long!

"Have you heard? Lieutenant Commander Schulon of the South Army died in battle against the demons." Some initiates chatter in the garden, and with the levels my vision and range of hearing improves. Ah, wow that boy became quite high ranking.

"The demon must be really strong."

"Indeed, and he is back at his peak with his power returning. This seems to suggest the demons gather strength out there, and they will only get more ferocious."

"You seem to be interested in the conversation." Gewa's spirit sits next to me.

"Yeah I am. Have you heard of Andy Schulon?"

"Hmm.. Sounds familiar! Oh wait, I remember now. He got a bit famous a few years ago. He led the defense of Parsala pass against a large demon attack."

"What's that?"

"A battle where the demons attacked one of the many passes that connects the humanlands to the rift, and are successfully repelled, despite being outnumbered. It is human battle history, not surprised you never heard of it."

"Oh."

"He is known for his defensive skills, but his abilities somehow weakened a few years ago for some unknown reason, it returned recently, and he contributed quite significantly to a few battles with his healing and defensive skills. His front line combat support has saved many many lives and won many battles."

"Don't armies have mages and healers? What's so special about him?" Seems strange that a familiar can make such a difference.

"Mainly because he is in the front line, providing active support and healing. Healers and mages can provide support but they do so from the back and there is always a delay. Mages and healers can be in front too of course, but their lack of close combat abilities make them really vulnerable. Schulon is like a fighter with some mage and healer's abilities, so that makes him very versatile."

"Oh. You seem to know how to fight." I'm actually quite impressed by this Gewa's analysis.

"Every generation has to fight multiple demon kings and lords throughout their lives. Combat ability is a necessity."

True, I seem to forget that multiple demon kings have appeared since I came into this world. What a cruel, harsh world.

"Hmm."

"A mage can cast shield that provides a half reduction in damage as a passive enchantment, but someone like Schulon can create a wood barrier to counter specific attacks that reduces the damage by much higher amount."

"Makes a lot of sense."

"So… why are you interested in Andy Schulon again?"

"Hmm. We used to have a familiar contract. I mean, I gave him a familiar a long time ago before he became famous."

"Huh?!"

Gewa’s spirit paces around me, seems to be thinking. It seems that statement triggered some kind of eureka moment.

"So you and him have a familiar contract, are you the source of his defensive powers?" He looks at me with some hopeful, curious eyes. He never looked at me like that before, so it freaks me out a little.

"I… am not sure. But if it is some wood based ability, I believe that is most likely from my familiar."

"I see I see." Gewa walks in circles around my trunk, and it makes me a little dizzy. He stops. "Can you give your familiar contracts to more people?"

That’s a strange question. "Where are you going with this?"

Gewa gives me a kind of stare. Its weird for a spirit to stare.

"What?"

He stares somemore.

"Seriously, what?"

"You. You have some power to reduce casualties in battle. Imagine if the world had hundreds of warriors with incredible defensive powers, we would see less death, and we would have higher leveled warriors all round because they all survive longer."

"Hmm."

"What ‘hmm?’ Am I wrong?"

No, Gewa does have a point, so I mentally wonder how many familiar contracts can I give.

*You can presently grant 12 familiar contracts. There are no familiar contracts utilised at the moment.*

"What are your concerns, tree spirit? Or do you not care about human lives?" Gewa pushes. "Grant more familiar contracts, let those with your powers protect more people!"

"Hmm…." Why should I? Okay, I guess giving familiar contracts make sense because I gain experience from it, but…

Frankly I do not know why I am hesitating, so I end up looking at Gewa. Feeling a little headache at having to make a decision, I decide to take a nap.

Year 68 Month 1

"Your naps are really long."

"Time moves differently for trees like me." I respond instinctively, but then I wonder why I did. Maybe reincarnation means an entirely new set of experiences in this world.

"So, familiars?" Gewa kept pushing and I ignore him. I still wanted to think, and he mumbles something about me and my absurd timeframes.

A druid drops by. "Ah, you are doing well." The new part of my tree has reaches a reasonable size now, right next to the stump. The surface of the stump is still charred black, but it is healing.

"Hi." I reach out telepathically.

The druid startles, and he looks around. "Is.. is anybody there?"

"No one. Only me, the tree."

"Huh?!" He stares at me. "You… talk?"

"Yes. Do you want a familiar contract?" I am blunt like that.

"Uh… no." Okay I am a little too blunt. "Are you a tree spirit?"

"Yes."

The druid walks in circles. "So, what kind of tree spirit are you?"

What… what kind of question is that?

"Uh..."

The druid looks puzzled. "Ah. I mean like are you looking for help with breeding or spreading your seeds, or the type that wants special nutrients or fertilizer, or like… you want help with pests? Tree spirits are usually not chatty. And they only give familiars to those who has done a great deal of service for them, like after helping them through a difficult winter or battle a horrible disease."

Oh.

"So… do you need help with something? That's why you are offering familiars?"

Hmm.

The druid walks in circles a few more times. "I heard you survived a demon king’s attack, maybe you need help with your wound, is that it?"

It seems he is caught in some kind of monologue with his own mind, and presuming that I need help. Why is this guy asking and presuming I need help?

He kneels, hovering over the stump. "Your wounds are fully healed though. Ah tree spirits, always being so vague and need us druids to guess what you need."

"Wait. WAIT!"

"I know, I will give you some time and I will come back next month, okay? Trees need time to think, right?" The druid bows and walks off.

"WAIT!" Oh come on I am literally shouting and he just walks away.

"Are druids normally so dense?" I look at Gewa, a little frustrated.

Gewa shrugs. "Mages tend to be stuck in their own world. Magic is everything and it consumes them."

"But for them to ignore me like that…"

Another move?

Year 68 Month 2

The temple is abuzz with activity, but the mood is tense. Injuries and wounds, by the cartloads, as people keep getting carried into the temple. Me, in the garden, I can somehow picture the image of blood everywhere, and the stench of it.

Or maybe it is just the newer initiates saying how strong the smell is.

"How many more do we have?"

"A lot more, Caretaker." The Caretaker is like the lead priest of the Gaya temple, and he handles most of the administrative matters.

"Demons?" The Caretaker perch over one injured man, using some kind of healing.

"Yes, caretaker. Beast-type demons, about a hundred, from the rift." An initiate explains, while assisting the others in carrying a few of the wounded soldiers into the temple grounds. Another initiate nearby helps to support a few that can walk.

Some initiates start putting up tents in the garden, and classifying the wounded by the severity of the injuries. Those needing less immediate attention are relegated to the garden. And so quite a lot of the wounded and their carers are within my range.

"I did not lose a llimb." One injured soldier vents at the guy next to him. "I had a scare when the beast lunged for my arm. It is thanks to the other guys."

"First battle?"

He nods. "I.. I just froze when that beast roared like that. I did not expect that."

"Their roar has a fear effect. You should not have stood so far away. You are lucky to get just a few cuts."

"Yea. Just a gash, probably will heal and be a manly scar later on. Maybe you can get girls with it." Another soldier tries to lighten the mood.

"Girls do not like scars." One of them said.

"Says who? I met girls who like scars. They say it looks really tough and they feel safe when they see it."

"No way."

"You guys are disgusting." A female soldier comments, she turns to another side and face another sleeping female soldier.

"Hey, we did not die facing those beastdemons. Cut me some slack, I am just happy to live another day."

"Yeah yeah."

"Did you kill any of those beasts?" One soldier turns to ask another. There are about thirty of them in the courtyard, resting in makeshift tents. Most of them here are not very serious, light scratches or some gashes, and won't die if so quickly. But they do need some medical attention to prevent disease.

"No. Their hides are so thick. If I had one of those magic swords, maybe I would have gotten a kill or two."

"Your skills, did they not work?"

"It did, but it is not enough."

"When do you think the healers will come for us?" One of the soldiers that can walk asks, he sits next to another soldier.

"Once the heavily injured ones are dealt with." An initiate interrupts, handing out water and some light food.

"Yeah. We understand." The soldier nods. "How is in there?"

"Bad. Quite a few will not live through the night."

The soldiers glance at each other. They sigh, but most are secretly relieves they got out of it mostly fine.

The initiate looks at the tree. "I think that tree produces fruits every now and then. It is edible, so feel free to take it, because we are short, do not have enough proper food."

"Ah."

Based on my current pattern, I produce two or three small peach like fruits per week, but if I want to I can trigger a small bloom to produce more overnight. I felt like helping these guys, and hopefully lead to some familiar contracts.

The next day, I have about ten small fruits, all containing mild healing effect. The soldiers did not hesitate to take and consume them.

"Tastes kind of bland."

"Feels like I am eating some kind of disgusting forest herb."

"If you don’t like it, you can starve your ass instead." One grateful soldier smiles.

I felt a bit slighted at the comments, and at that point, I realise I did not select any skills that enhance the taste of my fruits. Such human aspects should be considered after all.

"I feel a bit better though. I think the fruit has some mild healing. [Appraise]" One soldier holds up his half eaten fruit, looking at it inquisitively. There are skills like [appraisal] too, and I wonder what is the difference with my [inspection] skills.

A loud horn blares. It is so loud that my trunk vibrates, and my leaves rustle.

"Oh. That is not good..." A few of the soldiers look at each other. "Another attack?"

"Looks like it." Some of the soldiers stand and walks, "We should go."

An initiate runs out. "No. You guys must rest. Going there injured will be bad."

"I am fully healed." A few of the men with light injuries have recovered as a result of the fruits.

The initiate looks at them, "Let me.. let me get the caretaker to verify before we let you out. I can't sign you out without his approval."

The soldier nods, "Yes yes. Normal tracking procedure. Please hurry and get the caretaker. The army needs our help, if it is anything like the previous attack."

The initiate runs in, calling the caretaker. The soldiers look at the rest of the recovering soldiers.

"You guys better eat more of that fruit then. Need you people back on field once you are fine."

"Yeah." One of the soldiers shrug. "Stay safe, and don't get killed."

"We won’t."

At that point, one of the soldiers walk close to me. "Hey, thanks for the fruit."

Since he is just next to me, I pounce on the opportunity and immediately offer a familiar contract.

The popup probably startle the soldier, as he stares for a while. "Oh. Okay." He accepts, and then he looks at the other soldiers. "Hey, go and say thanks. You might get something."

Some of them laugh and walk away, but two others walk over and give me a pat on the trunk. Similarly I offer both of them a familiar contract, and they accept.

"Hey… did the tree just..." One soldier look at the other.

"Yes." The other nods.

"What happened?" Those who are still injured seem a bit curious, because they seem a little startled by the weird expressions on the three soldiers faces.

"I think this tree, it.. it gave three of us familiar contracts?"

"Really?"

"What does it do?"

[Ironbark skin] One of the soldier’s skin glisten in a brownish shade. "Some defensive skills and healing skills. It is a tree familiar."

"Hey, this is useful." The soldier right next to me taps my trunk lightly. "Thanks."

"Yeah. Don’t let it get your head though." One of the injured soldiers say.

"Let me check, everyone please come over." The caretaker arrives and starts looking at the soldiers that say that they have recovered.

A while later, he nods.

"Hmm. It seems you guys are fine. Free to go."

"Thanks Caretaker."

The recovered soldiers go off, and the remaining soldiers, about twenty of them look at each other. After a while, they start talking again.

"You think this tree can give us a familiar contract?" One of the injured soldier approaches.

"I still can give a few more, if you guys are not believers of Gaya." I reply to him telepathically.

"Ah!" The injured soldier loses his balance and falls. "It… It talked!"

"It did? I did not hear a thing."

"It.. it talked into my head!"

"What did it say?"

"Uhm. I think… I think it said it can give a few more if we are not followers of Gaya."

"Huh, but we are in a Temple of Gaya?! Is this tree not a Gaya's spirit?"

"I’ll go call the Caretaker again."

The Caretaker approaches me, and then looks at the injured soldier. "You said this tree can give you familiar contracts if we do not believe in Gaya?"

"Uh… yes." I attempt to reply on behalf but somehow is repulsed by some kind of telepathic barrier.

The Caretaker looks at me, and then touches my trunk.

[Detect Evil] and [Detect Spirit]

His eyes widen. "It really is a spirit." He looks at me, and then he calls an initiate to bring some materials over. He then seems to chew on some kind of leaf.

After a short while of chewing, he then looks at me.

[Ethereal vision]

"Hello tree spirit." The Caretaker looks at me, and then he notices Gewa next to me. "And… you too, old friend."

"Hey." Gewa smiles.

"Hi."

"Who are you, and what are you."

"I am a tree."

"But you have a spirit. That is rare."

That contradicts the statement I receive from Mozart. I thought he said trees of a certain size has spirits….

"Yes. I do have a spirit. I do not know whether I am rare."

"You told the soldiers you can’t give them familiars if they are believers of Gaya?"

"Yes. Your believers will reject a nature familiar."

The Caretaker thinks for a while, and he says. "Hmmm… I do recall one of blessings of our god is we can only use familiars of god, but I must confirm that later."

He then looks at the soldiers. "Any of you not believers?"

"I’m not." A soldier walks over. "Not yet, at least."

"Can you give him a familiar contract?" The Caretaker asks me. "Will help me assess what I should do?"

I offer him a familiar contract. The Caretaker bites a different kind of leaf.

"Accept the contract, and open your menu. Eat this leaf."

The soldier nods, accepts the familiar contract and munches on a kind of leaf. Seriously, do they have weird drug-like leaves in this world? Wait, they must have, it’s a fantasy world.

Then his menu appears for all to see. It is far more complicated than the menu I have. I wonder how I could see it, but.. I just do.

[Tree Familiar Level 1]

[Element : Earth and Wood]

[Rank : Nature Aspect]

[Alignment : Neutral]

[Active Skills : Ironbark skin, Healing Fruit, Minor Regeneration, Wood Shield]

[Passive : Damage resistance, Improved Healing, Earth Magic and Wood Magic enhancement]

Hey, there are more skills than I used to remember.

"So… is the tree evil, Caretaker? Should we revoke the contract?"

"No. Probably not. But it is just not aligned to Gaya."

"Trees have alignment as well?"

The Caretaker shrugs. "No idea. Still, you soldiers can accept the familiar if you want to, I think it will be helpful for the battle ahead. As for me, I need to go talk to some druids…."

Year 68 Month 3

"Move it somewhere else." The Caretaker sighs.

"Yes Caretaker. This is really necessary?"

"Yes. I brought this up to the temple counselors, and the conclusion is that we are a temple cannot accept a spirit that does not accept Gaya in our compound. It woukd be perceived negatively by the common folk if a tree tells people not to believe in Gaya to receive a familiar."

"It is a tree."

"I would have chopped it down if it’s just a tree. But it has been helpful and I do not see a need to destroy it. So moving it to more... neutral location would be better."

The druid nods. "Understood." Inside his head he scrambles to think where to mvoe the tree.

Still, did not take long for them to decide, I see a few druids come over, surround me, and once again they move me.

"Caretaker says you’re a spirit, so we got to move you." The druid says apologetically. "We will be gentle, and you will not come to any harm."

Before I could respond, he casts some kind of magic, and the earth shakes. And once again, I lose consciousness.

Seriously, being moved around is annoying.

Freeka, Elf Village

Year 68 Month 4

Freeka. A small village with less than fifty souls, out of town. Elves. All of them.

It seems that the presence of a spirit tree does not go well with a lot of people in the city, so the druids decide to move me out of the city. It seems a spirit that is not aligned to the religions of the world are seen as heretical to some of the believers, and so I think I am quite lucky that there are druids who look after tree spirits.

The elves are happy to have a tree spirit in their small village, and I could tell from their conversations. The leader of the village requests I be put in the center of the village, apparently for the protection a tree spirit can give.

The elves are quite chatty, and from that, I learn that the leader of the village is a middle aged man, Ricola.

"A tree spirit is good fortune to our small village."

Somehow, he gives me a very pleasant feeling, so I immediately offer him a familiar contract the moment I could.

"An honour, o tree spirit."

"If anyone else wants a tree familiar please let me know." I telepathically speak.

"Certainly."

Of the village’s warriors, I give out all my remaining familiar slots to 8 more of the men and women. It helps them in protecting the village, from the frequent monster attacks.

Year 68 Month 5

Ricola’s wife, Laufen is pregnant. They come over and ask for my blessing, I reply I can’t give blessings, but if they fall sick they can come to me for some healing fruits.

Year 68 Month 6

The elven kids decorate me for a festival to the earth. The elves in this world are a little animistic, they believe in spirits of nature, and their god is the nameless great spirit of nature.

"Trees are spirit of nature, so this festival is also dedicated to you." An older female elf, Cashern leads the ceremony. She seem to play the role of the master of ceremonies, and also a living record of the elvish traditions.

They eat fruits, vegetables, and some hunted meat, and pray to the earth for good harvest, a good hunt, and protection from demons, monsters and humans.

They too serve some kind of fermented sap, which sends some of the men in some kind of high and dance throughout the night.

Year 68 Month 8

The tax collectors visit the elves.

Ricola pays them with what little gold or silver coins they have. Some of the elves in the village sell their excess foods in the city for coin, just for the purpose of paying taxes.

After the tax collectors leave, Ricola sits next to me and sigh. "These tax collectors are bloodsucking leeches. We get no protection from the army, yet we are forced to pay taxes, lest we suffer the wrath of the Kingdom’s tax enforcement force."

"Ah."

"Do you have demons here?" I suddenly wonder how do elves deal with demons.

"Oh tree spirit, we do face demons. But demons are usually drawn to places with lot of souls for them to kill. Sparsely populated places like our village is usually spared of their wrath. It is only when the Demon King descends, when the elves throughout the continent gather to fight it."

"I see."

One of the elf kids run over and knock on my trunk. "Hey tree. Do you think you can give me a familiar?"

Ricola pats him on the head. "Brislach, please don’t disturb the tree spirit. He has given all his familiars to the adults."

Brislach pouts and walks away.

"How’s Laufen doing?" I asks, but actually I could see from my spirit vision that she is well. Spirit vision is good at telling the overall health of a person.

"She is doing well. It's been a few years since the last birth in our village. Everyone looks forward to it, especially Brislach and Wahlen. They cannot wait for someone younger than them to appear."

Year 68 Month 10

Harvest season before winter. Harvest is better than last year, and Ricola says it is because of me.

I can’t tell because I do not see a skill that boosts harvest, but apparently as village head, he has a skill that lets him know what effects are affecting the area.

Maybe it is race passive for spiritual trees or something, that things grow better around it.

Year 68 Month 11

Being at the center of the village, the elven villagers frequently come over to chat under the shade. I am growing quickly, and am quite close to my size before I got chopped by the demon king.

The ladies now start to do some of their leisure activity under the shade. This means things like sorting or cutting through their harvest, or occasionally, processing hunted animals.

Some of the elderly also use the shade to teach their kids. It seems elves believe that the tree spirit improves learning, but I suspect that might be a placebo.

Year 68 Month 12

Winters are mild. I can produce some healing fruits, but their effectiveness is rather poor.

The men fight some monsters during this time, it seems winter comes with its own set of monsters. Nobody gets seriously hurt, so the mood is fine. It seems one of the guys, Jura, is the village’s best fighter. He's really good with a sword, and says he is going to be level 40 soon.

Laufen and the ladies would collect whatever winter fruits I produce to make some kind of tea.

Year 69 Month 2

Another festival to mark to end of winter. The elves are preparing some kind of fruit cocktail.

The elves come over to vent their frustrations, mainly about how things are done by other elves. Elves are people after all, and at times they come into conflict with each other over rather petty things.

I generally just listen. I'm not going to play counselor.

Year 69 Month 3

Laufen gives birth safely, its a baby girl, and is named Lausanne. . The elves throw a small party, and apparently tradition has it that elvish babies are supposed to be given the juice of a spirit tree, if there is one. I make her a healing fruit with all the healing abilities I can gather.

Year 69 Month 4

One of the elves sat next to me and tells me dire news. He just returned from the city from their weekly market visit, and the demon attacks are increasing. Rumor is that the demon king will descend very soon, and based on past trend, that does seem likely.

More worryingly, for some human cults have also emerged. Some of them profess to be able to control demons and have taken control of some distance villages, and some are religious puritanical zealot who cannot accept other races.

Still, the focus seems to be on the demons. A time for human unity, they say, as the demon king will rise once again.

To some extent, I wonder why do these humans bother when the gods summon heroes to defeat the demon king. It is not humans of this world who defeat them.

"Will the gods summon heroes to defeat the demon king?"

The elf sigh, "Probably."

"Why do you sigh?"

"Every time heroes descend into this world, we trade the methodical destruction of the demon king, for the reckless destruction of the otherworldly heroes."

"Eh, elves don’t look at them as heroes too?"

"The elves are in two minds about it. A faction believes the god’s heroes, some of which appear as elves, are god’s blessings to the elves. Another faction believes that the gods do not want to summon the heroes, but because the destruction wrought by the demon king is too great, they had to. So heroes are a desperate response from the gods."

"What do you believe?"

"The heroes. They are a blessing."

Hmm.

"Has the demon king fallen to a hero from this world before?"

The elf stares at me.

"Legends has it that the demon kings of the past… all defeated by the summoned heroes."

"Oh."

I suppose summoned heroes must have some special thing about them that allows them to slay demon kings.

Year 69 Month 6

A small group of soldiers arrive, the villagers are tense.

Ricola talks to the captain, and it seems the city is trying to gather the numbers to fight in the demon pass.

No one goes with the captain, captain is not happy, but they leave after a while, having many other places to go.

Year 69 Month 9

Baby Lausanne starts mumbling. She’s really cute, I can’t help but remember my own nephew back on earth.

Ah, home. I wonder how things are back there.

The elves live hard lives, but generally are happy, and many of the ladies enjoy spending their time playing with the baby.

Year 69 Month 10

I gain two level when the men return from their hunt. [Level 47] The men tell me they had to fight a giant beast and thanks to my familiar’s skills, they succeed.

I also gained two rather strange skills one morning. [Nourish] and [Secret hideout]. The secret hideout creates a small room right beneath my roots, probably can fit 2 adults.

I wonder whether it is because the kids, Brislach and Wahlen frequently play hide and seek with my roots and trunk. Maybe they should play a bit more if that leads to skills.

Harvest this year is better than last year, and it seems when I am around, the soil replenishes its nutrients a little bit faster.

Year 69 Month 11

Lausanne is feverish. I grow a small fruit of healing, for the Laufen and Ricola to feed the juice within.

Ricola has an argument with the tax collectors over higher taxes this year, but eventually pays it.

Year 70 Month 1

The men report seeing more human armies on the move. And the frequent movement is disturbing animal movement. They say it's rare for armies to move about when winter has not cleared, so the demons attack must be really intense.

I gain a level [Level 48].

I have my first attack skill. [Root strike].

In the distance, a demon king

Year 70 Month 2

There is great unrest in the human cities, and the elves too. They look up into the sky every night, and Casshern, the old lady explains that it is an ominous sign. Six stars align in a hexagonal shape, is the mark of the warp. The warp, signifies a weakening, a breach in the rift that separates us and the demon world. In other words, the demon king, is returning.

If I could sigh, I would, but all I could is sway my branches. Or shake. It probably looks like a shake.

"Worry not, the gods will look after us." Casshern nods, sipping a hot cup of tea. It’s still cold this time of the year, and I get a new menu. It’s a temperature bar, and it reminds me of weather widgets on my android phone.

"How do you know for sure?"

"They always have, tree spirit. Legends have it that we have been invaded by demon kings since time immemorial, and every time our world triumphed."

"..." As a financial advisor once said, past performance is not indicative of future returns, but I let Casshern continue.

"The stars. Despite the warp, in the distance there is hope."

I wonder how the stars look in this world.

Year 70 Month 3

Baby Lausanne tries to crawl around and over my roots, and I get nervous every time she looks like she is going to have a fall. This feeling really reminds me of my babysitting days. I wonder how my nephew is, maybe he has grandkids by now. After all 70 years has passed.

On a more serious note, the men fought a few lesser demons while hunting, and the presence of demons so near their home worries them, so they made some changes to their hunting practices.

"The summit of the elves will not be long from now."

"Summit of the elves?"

"When the demon king is about to descend, the elven nations summon warriors from all over to take up arms, and defend the elvish lands from the demon."

"We are not in the elven nation, are we?" I vaguely remember not being in the elven nation, but since being relocated to Freeka, I have no idea whether that statement is still valid.

"We are not, tree spirit. But some of the men still feel a desire to answer the calling, to test whether they can be the shield of the elves."

"Jura, perhaps?"

"Maybe. But while we are happy with our sons and daughters who answer the call, the village has to figure out its defenses without their best fighters."

"Ah. That is indeed a problem. When demons roam about, villages are without their best defense."

"Yes, yes." She sips her tea, and her wrinkly arms touch my protuding roots. I can vaguely feel her touch, but my sense of touch is hardly accurate.

"How old are you, Casshern?" I suddenly realised I do not know her age, but then again, age is just a number. In fact, I ask that question, then realise how disconnected that question is with the previous topic.

"Ah. I am old, tree spirit, I do not remember the exact year anymore. But elves live up to 500 years. Humans, if they have magic in them, can live similarly long. "

"So magic extends one's lives." Our conversations tend to drift, I would ask about things that I spot along the way, and Casshern generally lets me go off tangent. Perhaps she just thinks it is how spirits think and talk. Or maybe my mind is jumbled up by being a tree.

"Indeed. It is a blessing, and a curse. Live long enough to see so many demon kings come and go, and they are as natural to this world as a typhoon, or a massive earthquake. Long enough, to see tree spirits die."

"Have you ever met other… tree spirits?"

Casshern looks up to the night sky again, looking at stars I cannot see. "Once. But when demon king Astaroth descends on my town then, the tree spirit died."

"Ah."

"Tree spirits play an important role in a proper elven society. An elven village or town without a tree spirit within is nothing more than a temporary gathering of elves."

"Can you explain more?"

"The elves, we believe that the tree spirit is the guide after death. A birth under the tree spirits blessing is stronger than one without, and on our death we believe that our souls would be guided by the tree spirit, and through it, return back to our nameless mother. Our warriors are stronger, our druids wiser, our walls sturdier. Our inbuilt potential is best expressed when a tree spirit is present to channel and guide us."

If I could gulp, I would. In fact I feel like going for a nap then. I do not think I can play such an important role that elves demand of me.

"How are other tree spirits?"

"The one I met is imposing. Its presence dominates the town, and its protection allows the town to resist years of human attacks. A powerful tree spirit, like a strong fortress, its roots seep into the walls, healing it from damage."

"Still it fell."

"Yes. But not to any threat. It fell to a powerful demon lord of Astaroth. A monstrous being shaped like a corrupted demonic dragon. It burned the tree and the entire town…"

"Oh." I survived demon king Baal, does that make me super impressive? Or maybe I got lucky? I think I got lucky because the demon king did not press its attack and left with one strike. It just figured cutting me off and leaving that fire on me is sufficient to kill me.

So, any high level demon should actually be able to kill me fairly easily. After all I am immobile so dodging is out of the question. It is either I have a powerful offense, a powerful defense, or at best, both.

Or if I am lucky, I won’t have to fight demons.

Year 70 Month 4

Humans come around again. This time a smaller group of four, led by one captain.

"The King decrees that each village is to despatch 5 able bodied man to join the King's Royal Demon Slaying Army."

"We cannot spare 5 men. 5 men means we will lose our ability to defend ourselves or hunt for food."

"This is not open for negotiation, villager. The King commands, and its people answer." The Captain is stern, his face looks like he has heard this a thousand times.

"We cannot give 5 men."

"Then I shall mark your village as disobeying the King’s orders."

"How about 2."

"No negotiations, villager." The captain turns to leave.

"Let me discuss with my people."

The Captain nods. "An hour. That is all you have."

The villagers huddle and words fly. They speak and argue, but eventually Ricola meets the captain again.

"We will send 5 men." Ricola answers. "But not today."

"Not today, villager. Send your 5 men to report at Hammerhold Fort in two month." The captain nods, pass them a letter, and the small group leaves on horses. "Bring that letter along, without it, your village is deemed not to have provided your men."

After the captain leaves, Ricola and the men kneel before me. It seems the decision bothers them greatly, and now they seek my counsel.

"Oh wise tree spirit, do you some words for us?"

Oh damn. I am no wise great tree spirit, I do not know what to do at this time! Uh wait, so what should I do?

"I don’t know, Ricola. When do the men need to leave?"

"Hammerhold Fort is a month away, so a month from today?"

I took a nap.

And I had a dream. A nightmare, actually. I rarely get that in this world.

A demon. A large demon. Lots of them. In my dreams I could see them in color, in detail, and they remind me of monsters out of Diablo. Huge, I see dead people all around them. Their path, one of destruction. Dead people. Dead bodies, all scattered all over the floor, burning forests, and a tree. A tree on fire, with corpses pinned on its branches. A large monstrous demon walks through the corpses, it's steps crush every corpse in its way into pulp.

I feel afraid. I shiver.

Is it coming for me?

It's head turns, it's red eyes look at me.

And a notification pop out.

[Demon King Andras awakes.]

Fire. Death. Destruction. A thousand and one screams. It's as if the world screamed as one, and it's deafening. I feel my ears hurt, even though a tree should not have ears.

And then I snap out of it.

I snap out of my dream and I see Casshern touching my trunk, looking worried.

"You were shaking, tree spirit, after you went to the dreamworld the past few days. What ill news you bring?"

"Demon King is here."

"Oh.. oh…" Casshern’s old wrinkly hands shake, and she shouts a call. The villagers all react in shock, and they rush out of their houses and surround me.

Ricola looks at me and leans in. "Is there something you wish to tell us, tree spirit?"

"Demon King is here."

Ricola sat, he then asks the children to go back home, and only the adults remain. He then faces the rest of the villagers, explaning what I told him. The villagers look at each other. Jura is the first to speak. "Then we should join the King’s army, crush the demon king before it gets too strong."

Another man shakes his head. "Only heroes can kill the demon king. The best the army can do is clear a path, and take out the rest of the demon king’s champions."

"Ah yes. But… but all the heroes died in their battle against Demon King Baal. Until the gods summon new heroes to this world, there is no way of defeating the demon king."

"So this army is doomed."

"Indeed. So we should not join the army..."

"Would you rather face demons, or what's left of a destroyed army? If we stay at our village, maybe a hero might emerge before we are attacked. "

The villagers stand and start to argue, but a decision comes out of it soon enough. "Thank you for your guidance tree spirit. We stay."

I didn’t really say anything, but hey, it seems that is what they wanted anyway.

Year 70 Month 5

The men are hard at work, creating fortifications around the village. Hunting will soon be difficult, as the demons will spawn more regularly. The demon king's presence is always accompanied by a surge in demons entering the world. It is just the way demon kings are, with their corrupting powers.

"Many will die."

"Indeed."

"Every demon king has led to death. Countless deaths."

"Why?"

"Because it is so."

"Why is there no angel king?" I sometimes wonder why the enemies are always demon kings.

"That would be… heroes?" Casshern looks at me, thinking I probably asked a stupid question.

Year 70 Month 6

An injured group of adventurers arrives at the village. The group of four fighters are all bleeding heavily, and two lost their arm to what appears to be a huge monster bite.

Ricola immediately brings them to me.

"Ugh…" Their spirit is weak, what is normally a white spirit fades on and off, like a flickering light bulb.

[Healing Fruit] I create four fruits, Ricola and another elf assists to feed them.

Their wounds stabilise somewhat, but the lost arm cannot be undone.

"What did this?" Ricola sits next to one of the adventurers, helping him eat the fruit.

"Demons."

It looks like peace is going away very, very soon.

A Fiery Destruction

Year 70 Month 6, continued.

The adventurers. They speak of a new breed of demons, large, ferocious, and with teeth able to chew out any creature.

Giant, walking on two feet, massive, magically reinforced jaws, and armored with thick skin. Some have horns along their backs.

Ah, demons.

"Are all demon kings the same?" I ask Casshern, to which she shakes her head.

The adventurers are stable, physically. The two of them who lost their arms are emotionally unstable, lamenting about their lost future as adventurers, and they would be nothing more than beggars now. It is so bad, that Ricola separates the two one-armed adventurers in a room, so that their negativity don’t spread.

"Have we met any demons described by these adventurers?"

"I think the description is pretty standard. Fangs, claws, scales, horns."

Year 70 Month 7

The adventurers eventually come around and they leave. The King’s demon slaying army starts their march for one of the heavily contested passes for the rift.

No worry about the demon king so far. Strange, maybe they did not get the message.

Year 70 Month 8

A raid. A demon raid. It starts in the morning, a small trickle,. One of the elves spot a group. Thirty demons, led by an elder demon.

This, will not end well.

The elves quickly assemble for battle, whilst the young, men and women without combat skills quickly retreat to the fortified village hall.

The demons, these group is different from the earlier ones described by the adventurers. These are winged, mild fire wielders, using axes forged of dirty metals.

The two forces clash, and the elves throw everything they have at them. Every skill, all their familiar powers they have unlocked.

And the demons fall.

But so does the elves. The demons are tough, and they have three times the toughness. Even with the advantages provided by the fortifications, familiar blessings and other tactical, for every four demons killed, one of the elves still get a fatal blow.

The dying elves, they still try their best, everything they have. And I try to help, by the battle is fought mostly outside of my very limited range.

I see their fading spirit, and I try to reach out to it. Hey, don’t die on me.

They walk closer, their spirits turning deathly pale, the wound on their body too deep, too serious.

The tide turns, the elves now outnumber the demons, and with numbers, the deaths stop.

And the elves win.

"Four. Four of us too many." Ricola kneels of their dying bodies. All of them placed next to me, right next to my roots. I try to help, with every single healing ability in my disposal.

I sigh, if I could. Maybe my branches droop a little. The wounds too serious, the damage too great, the bleeding too much.

Casshern leans and holds onto one of the dying fighters. "Death comes to us all, but for some earlier than others. Death, may come, but your spirits will never die. Oh tree spirit, take good care of them."

I gulp if I could.

The four soon pass on. I see their spirit fade to darkness, and a brief flicker of light at the end, like the last hurrah of a match. And they fade, their spirits drift into the ground below.

The mood turn grim since then.

The men focus on repairs, and sharpening their weapons. The women focus on their children. The loss of four men is too much for some, and the only way they could cope is to hold it in.

But at night, when the house is quiet, some of the women and some of the men come to talk to me.

"How do I move on? I have known him all my life. Things just cannot be the same, can they?"

I have no answer. I am just a tree spirit, but I have no words who can calm the hearts of those who lost someone. I nod, and I try employ some empathy, but I know it is no cure for the hole in one’s hearts.

[Level up! Level 50! You gain the following skills, [calming voice] and [haunted tree]]

Year 70 Month 10

More demon attacks. But mostly small groups, so no biggie.

Year 70 Month 11

Death comes. But not from demons.

"Village of Freeka!" A roar breaks the morning quiet. "You have failed to send what your King required of you. 5 soldiers, and you failed."

Ricola and the villagers, those who wake up early, quickly wake everyone up.

"Elves. The King should have known that elven villages have no loyalty to the King. Only humans know what it means to live under his majesty’s protection. "

A small platoon of the army. About four hundred, comprising a mix of knights, archers and other fighters. They carry insignias, and wear standard issue armor.

The army surrounds Freeka. There is no retreat, with their large numbers. Ricola sighs, they must have taken out their sentry.

Ricola offers to talk, to explain, "The Demon King has come. Without heroes, the army is doomed!"

"Hush, villager. No. Let me correct that, traitor!" Laughter from the human army. They are confident, as they should be. They outnumber the fighting force almost twenty times. "I will not listen to your excuses. Those who dare defy the King will be punished."

The army has not tried to make its move yet, so the women and children quickly hide. Lausanne, Brislach, Wahlen, Laufen and two other younger ladies squeeze into the secret hideout beneath my roots. The rest, even the older women grab whatever weapons they could.

"Are you ready, elvish scum? We are going to kill all of you now."

Fire. Fire arrows.

"The humans… they do not plan to fight us!"

The burning arrows fly, and explode mid air in a fireball. The fire torches the roofs, the houses, the furniture.

More arrows, and the elves try deflect the arrows.

"We must break through! That is our only chance!" Jura yells. The rest of the elves follow, creating a wedge, and all of them head for it. Their only chance of survival, rather than being trapped in the inferno created by all the burning arrows, and burning homes.

They could dodge the arrows, but as the fire spreads, it is either make a break for it or be cooked alive.

The elves and the human army fight, and it seems some manage to escape. But I also see many die.

Unlike demons, humans have levels and skills, with actual military training. This is a force that has done these sort of "rebel suppression" many times.

As for me, I could only watch in horror, as the humans remain firmly outside my [root strike] range. The fire spreads, and I think a part of me is on fire. But such mild fires cannot kill me, even if they do burn my branches and leaves.

More fire arrows, and the surrounding is just a blaze. I check in on the three children and two women now squeezed into my [secret hideout].

Shaken but still safe. It seems my roots and bark protects them. Good.

The fighting intensifies, and I see Ricola. He staggers towards me, bleeding. His spirit is weak, and an arrow pierces him.

"Oh dear tree spirit…. I will soon leave this world."

I try to heal him, but with multiple arrows through his body it is not working. And it seems the fact that my branches are burning also weakens the power of my healing.

"Please. Take care of my children and my wife. Protect them from the demons… and these monsters too."

"Yes.. Yes. Don’t die." I respond telepathically.

From the blaze an armored knight emerges, he holds up a sword. "Why won’t you die!" He stabs.

And stabs. And stabs again. The blood splatters, all over my trunk.

I feel anger. What is this stupid human doing fighting each other when there is a demon king out there.

[Root strike].

A root surges from beneath, impaling the knight, and he dies.

There is still fighting in the distance, as some of the elvens run for their lives, as Freeka burns in a swirl of fire.

Hot. But not enough to kill me.Somewhere along the way, I gained [Fire Resistance - 80%], and mortal, normal fires cannot kill me.

One of the elves fight, but she takes a few hits. And deciding she cannot make it, she retreats, and she soon stands next to me.

"Casshern!" I mentally yell

"Oh tree spirit." She is wounded, two daggers still in her chest. "I thought of choosing my place of death. Let me die beside you, spirit." She coughs. I think blood came out.

This is madness. Man against elves! When there is a demon king around!

Two human knights with spears close in on Casshern, they attempt to lunge at her.

[Root strike]. I strike at both of the knights, killing them. But not before one of them used a skill and drive a spear through Casshern.

"We will meet again, tree spirits. Elves who die with their tree guardians never truly die."

And she collapses, a spear through her chest.

The fire rages on, and the battles soon come to a conclusion. The humans win, overwhelmingly. One by one the elven fighters die, and once the battle is over, the humans drag the corpses of the elves, towards me.

"Hang them on this tree." A commander of human army says. I count, about twenty five bodies. Maybe fifteen or so made it, and manage to flee. "Then burn it."

"How about those that got away, commander. Should we give chase?"

"Let them. Let them spread the word, disobey the King, and face dire consequences."

The commander surveys the corpses, and walks well within range of my root strike. I have three root strikes left for the day.

And in my anger, I attack. Two root strikes right at the commander. The roots shoot out of the ground, and though he sees it, he is not fast enough to dodge.

He activates some kind of shield and barrier, but it is not much use. My roots struggle a little, but eventually crack the barrier. It pierces him right through the heart, and the other through his pelvis.

"A druid! Fan out, there must be a druid that is still hiding." The vice commander shouts, and he runs. Lucky he did not suspect the tree.

Argh, he goes out of my range.

One root strike remaining.

I see a bloody soldier, "We should totally do this more often. Y'know, killing elves. Always hated these long eared dudes."

"Rather than talk shit, why don’t you find where is the druid?"

"Chill the fuck out dude, the druid probably used the last of his magic to take out the commander. If he is still around, he is defenseless now."

Huh these people seem really apathetic to the loss of their commander. Or maybe death is just a common thing for them.

"True. Still some of them manage to run."

The village is now totally no more, replaced with burnt ash.

"This tree is pretty sturdy, even though its all black."

"We should just impale the elves on the tree. Teach these long ears the power of humans."

"Thats a little too much, man."

"You killed elves too. I am merely enjoying the process. Seriously, elves on a stick, like a barbeque."

I agree with the other human, and in my anger I strike him with my last root strike for suggesting such an abhorrent idea.

In a flash, it kills him, as it went right through his armor and his heart.

"Fuck! The druid is still around." The soldiers look around, and they spread out.

An hour later they all return.

"What should we do with the bodies?"

"Pile them up with the tree and burn them. Don’t want them turning into undead or zombies, or food for the demons."

Fire. The humans stack and pile the elves around me, and then start a fire.

I feel helpless. So very helpless.

The fire did not hurt me much, even though I look like I am charred. And more importantly, the six in my secret hideout is still safe and alive.

Fire. The humans left after three hours, deciding their raid is over.

The elven corpses, the heat and fire cook and roast them, and slowly they turn into ash.

The fire rages. The elves in the hideout shivers. They are afraid, I can sense it. Their body weak, so I use [nourish], restoring their body strength.

So many dead.

Is is my fault? Why did I not ask them to send the 5 men to the army anyway? No. I may have a part, but they decided it. Maybe I have a role, my lack of knowledge of the tensions between humans and elves, and weakness and inability to protect those who give me a place in their lives.

So many, dead.

The fire burns into the night. Though intense, my trunk and branches are fine, the surface blackened. This pain pales in comparison to what I felt before.

Death.

The death that I see stirs something, a desire, a fury, a need.

I, must change. I have wasted my last 70 years in this world, taking things as they come. As a result, everywhere I go, I am a bystander, with too little power to intervene meaningfully.

I, must be a whole lot stronger.

Else these deaths, of those around me will never end.

[Ricola Searwind and six others died]

[You gain a total of 13 levels]

[You are now level 63]

[You have unlocked the next species change, upgraded from spiritual tree to magical tree]

[Secret hideout upgraded]

[Camouflage &amp; illusions upgraded]

[Spirit Collection upgraded]

[Essence harvesting obtained]

Recovery

Year 70 month 11

A day after the human raid

The bodies are now a mix of ash and charred flesh. Freeka destroyed, the inferno engulfed all the wooden houses and halls. The six crawl out of the secret hideout after the fire burns out. Tears. Laufen is crying. So is Lausanne, Brislach, Wahlen. The two younger ladies also squeezed into my secret hideout, Emile and Bellerive (fondly referred to as Belle) also cry.

Death. The air stinks of it. The charred smell of burnt bodies. The girls seem to gag whenver they get too close to a burnt body, and holding back their urge to vomit.

"What are we to do now…" Laufen looks at Emile and Belle, who are in their teens. Their eyes are wet, their faces dirty from all the ash and soot. Everyone is covered in ash and soot. Well, everything is coated in a layer of ash and soot.

"Keep Lausanne in the hideout. It is too dirty and dusty." Laufen sighs, her hand still holding on to what looks to be a burnt momento, Ricola’s personal belongings.

Emile carries her, and once the hideout door opens, she gasps. "Uh.. Laufen… the.. the hideout looks different."

Laufen shakes her head. "Not now."

Belle goes over and she too gasps. "The hideout changed. It is not like that when we came out."

Brislach and Wahlen jumps and walks over. "Yeah it changed."

A proper room. Still too small for all of them, but more comfortable than the space earlier that is about the size of a cellar.

"I just gained a skill upgrade for [secret hideout]. I think all of you had to come out for it to reset and change into the new one."

A magical space, a creation of the tree spirit’s ability. 10 feet wide, long and tall, it is a lot more comfortable than the 5ft by 5ft space earlier. In the center of the ceiling, is a glowing fruit, that provides a faint light. With more space, at least the elves have a place to stay for the night. The elves nod and say a prayer of some kind. Lausanne is now one and a half years old, and can walk by herself, Brislach and Wahlen babysit her, while the 3 older elves go around, surveying what's not lost.

The three ladies are trying to recover whatever usable items they can find, perhaps some manage to survive the blaze, somehow protected by other rubble above them.

But most important is food.

"We… we are gonna starve?" Emile asks. "All our food is gone."

Laufen sighs. She is the oldest, so in a way she is in charge. She kneels before my black trunk, "Oh tree spirit, are you there? Can you make some fruits?"

"Yes." I respond, my body recovering from the damage. "I hear Emile’s concerns, and you may eat my fruits. I will make some."

From a few of the black branches, a burst of life. Fruits. May not be satisfying or tasty, but fruits to deal with their hunger.

Later on, the elves recover one of the hidden chests buried beneath the houses, a place where elves store their most personal items. Multiple chests survived, as the fire tend to range above group, so only the floor is burnt. In it, some clothes, some weapons, and some personal items. All go into the hideout.

"Don’t go too far, girls. We don't know how far the humans went." Laufen warns, still cautious.

They nod, and mostly walk about the remains of their village. I could sense their sorrow, every now and then they would cry, perhaps they stil have not come to terms with the destruction.

Brislach, the little girl asks "Tree spirit, are you okay? You are all black..." She's playing with Lausanne, and Wahlen with some sticks and stones.

"I am recovering, Brislach. Rain will wash off these black stains."

"Uhmmm. why are the humans so evil? They killed us." Brislach looks at me, and ask. "Why did they do this to us?"

Ah, a question about the nature of man. If I could answer this maybe I could win a Nobel Peace Prize or something.

"I don’t know, Brislach. But you must be stronger. All of us, must be stronger."

Laufen, Emile and Belle spends their time sorting through the rubble, and at the end of the day, everything usable is now in the hideout. It didn't take long for them to sleep, exhausted.

As for me, once asleep, I look at each of my skills and abilities, and test out each and every one of them.

[Essence Harvest]

From the ashes, from the burnt wood, faint energies emerge and they join together into a ball.

[Obtained Essence of lesser courage x 1, Essence of the sword (minor) x 1, Essence of the spear (minor) x 1, Essence of lesser fire x2, essence of death x 1]

Oh? What does these do?

Essences are a type of material, used to permanently create and teach skills, enchant or imbue creatures and items, or combine them to create stronger essences.

The next day,

A small pack of demons appear. Without the walls and the fighters, and with the smell of death lingering in the air, certain demons naturally gravitate to such places. Just four demon hounds,, a tiny pack really but with only Laufen having any knowledge of combat, they decide to run into the hideout. Laufen had no confidence in taking them all on her own.

"Run!"

Laufen stands at the hideout’s entrance, with her only weapon, a dagger. She grips in hard.

"Hide, Laufen."

She nods, and but stands next to the entrance. Her survival instincts are kicking in.

[Root Strike x 4]

The roots surge out of the ground, spearing the lesser demons who are trying to find the hidden elves. With my extra levels, I can use Root Strike a total of 10 times. Three of them die instantly. One, still barely alive, maybe I missed a critical bodypart. The root still impales the hound though, and it growls, dying.

Laufen emerges from the hideout, and she lands a killing blow. A stick to the head. The events from the day before drive her into a state of rage, and she bashes the hound’s head repeatedly with the stick until it broke.

"Arghhhhhh!!"

"ARGHH!!" She shouts. The hound is dead, but she kept smashing.

"ARGHHHHH! Die DIE DIE DIE DIE!" She shouts.

"Laufen… sis. Calm down." Emile emerge from behind. She's frightened.

Laufen pants, her breathing ragged.

"I.. I am sorry Emile. I… I just need to vent my anger, my frustration and my sorrow at something."

Emile nods. She too walks up to the dead hound, and kicks it. "Damn you demons."

Anger. Maybe this is how they are coping with grief.

[You gain a level. Level 64]

Grief. We all have it. Yet if I am to protect these elves, and help these elves protect themselves, I need to get them to gain a lot of levels. In short, some assisted powerleveling is required.

Year 70 Month 12

Rain and winter. With no food supply.

"Fruits." Laufen sighs. I think she is getting a little sick of fruits. The earliest she can start planting crops is in early spring. "And it is freaking cold outside." Her winter wear is all destroyed in the fire and raid, so they can only step out in short bursts of time.

"At least it is warm here." Emile nods, thinking positively. The secret hideout is temperature controlled, and comes with a small tap on a corner which supplies water, which is drawn from the roots below.

Freeka, is nothing more than a flat area now. The dust and soot is gone, and the constant rain had washed it all away.

All of them, except baby Lausanne, have a familiar contract with me, and they attempt to hunt whatever animals that emerge during this time. But these girls, and one young boy, are inexperienced at hunting and so the animals all manage to run away.

So no meat. Only fruits for today, just like yesterday.

In the meantime, I get them to make a spear, to test the essence I harvested earlier.

"I think it is ready, tree spirit." Laufen and Belle hold up a spear, a repaired one. A wood stick, a large metal tip.

[Essence of spear (minor)] I use one of the essence, and a small ball of light emerge from the lamp-fruit on the ceiling, and then lands on the spear. The spear shakes a little, and absorbs the ball of light.

"Laufen, how is it?"

"[Equipment inspect]." Laufen apparently helps with maintaining the weapons the men use, so she has this skill which reveals more equipment specific details than my general [inspect].

"Eh tree spirit, I think it absorbed it partially. Compatibility stat is at 50%, but it grants a +2 to spear combat, so it is pretty good. "

"Huh." That sounds like gibberish. It reminds of when one of the pure technical guys sit down next to me and start explaining about their database infrastructure. "Try using it?"

Laufen shakes her head. "I think Emile should use it instead. I have a thing with spears."

"Thing with spears…?"

Emile nods. "She means she accidentally hurt someone a long time ago and now she has a phobia when using spears."

"Oh. Emile, would you?"

"Yes tree spirit." Emile grabs the spear and swings it around, and she seems rather skilled with it, or at least her movements look really fluid. But then again, flashiness is not always a sign of skill.

"How is it?"

"Wonderful. I need some time to build affinity with it, but once I do I should be good."

"What’s affinity?" Thats a new term, I had to ask.

"Oh.. erm.. it is the familiarity of a person with a weapon, so with low affinity, your reaction time, energy use and overall ability is weakened. At full affinity you could use it like an extra limb. We get extra damage, speed and parry with high affinity weapons, so getting new stronger equipment does not mean it should be used immediately." Laufen explains.

"How do you know this?" It still baffles me.

"Its… combat basics. Everyone knows it when learning how to use a weapon. I think the only exception to this are the summoned heroes. The legends say Weapon King Valerian has 200% affinity with any weapon he touches instantly."

"Oh. What does that do?"

"I don’t really know, but I think the stories say the weapons are able to exceed their own limits and in his hands, the weapons often do things normally not possible."

"Huh." Oh ya, reincarnators have cheat-like abilities. I wonder whether I could get one for myself.

"Which of the summoned heroes were elves?"

"Our last eleven champion is the Roana the Druid."

"Let me guess, she controls nature like a druid?"

"Yes yes. She is like the most powerful druid ever, her power over the forests and tree spirits is incredible. It is said that every tree spirit that meets her will instantly like her and will obey her. In the battle against the demons she transformed an entire forest into an army of super-treants!"

"Huh." I somehow feel a strange pain in my head.

I also need to learn more about this world’s powers and creatures. There clearly is a gap in my knowledge.

"Anyway, please practice with it."

Emile nods, but her face seems a bit sullen. "Okay."

Laufen gives her a hug. "It’s just us now. I know you always thought you did not have to fight, the guys would protect us…" The thought of having to defend herself kind of saddens her.

"Yeah… we all miss them."

"Yes. Yes we do. But we must live on. Else their deaths is wasted on us."

Emile nods, and both of the girls cry a little.

Year 71 Month 1

Now it is really cold. The elves frequently hide within the hideout, as cold winds now frequently sweep through the place. According to Laufen, Freeka is located on one side of a mountain range, and so occasionally when the winds get strong enough to cross the range, it tends to get really cold. Previously, the village buildings create a kind of a bubble from the cold winds.

A large bear appears. It looks curious at the disappeared village.

"Oh. There is a bear." I telepathically notify Laufen. She is playing with Lausanne, and she shakes her head.

"It’s too cold. We cannot catch it now…"

"Oh."

The bear walks really close, and it rubs its fur against my trunk. I could kill it now. But me killing it would not be the point.

[Root strike] x 4. Using 4 root strikes out of my daily 10 is quite overkill, as a good well placed hit through the chest would have killed it.

But the point is to disable it, and get the elves to kill it. If they gain some levels they get to be more useful, and I can save up on the mana used to generate the fruits daily.

The bear screams in pain, but the four strikes means all it could do is flail its head now.

"Emile, can you come out with the spear?"

She nods, and once she opens the latch that leads out of the hideout she yells.

"Oh my god its a brown bear."

At that point I wonder whether it is possible to use [Essence Harvest] on a bear, so I did.

[Fragment of bear essence obtained. Collect 20 to form 1 bear essence!] Ah the whole RPG grinding mechanics.

The bear struggles, immobile, and Emile stab it right through the head.

"Wow." Emile’s hands shake. Perhaps a mix of adrenaline and fear? "We.. we have bear meat!"

Laufen and Belle comes out to assist her in cleaning up and processing the bear meat. More importantly they cut out the pelt and fur, which would help them in this winter.

"Did you gain any levels, Emile?"

"Nope. But I did get a skill [Spear thrust]."

Hmmm.. They do not seem to be gaining levels that easily.

Year 71 Month 2

The elves are happier, with the bear meat as another type of food in their diet. Spring is coming soon, and thankfully some of the crop seeds should be good for replanting.

I take every opportunity during this time, to let the elves land the killing blow on any stray demon or monster that pops up. Still, their leveling is slow. I wonder whether I am leeching off all the experience, and so I decide to change the manner of my training.

Instead of injuring the monsters, I use [constrict], a new ability I gain after disabling so many beasts. I suppose there is some sentience in this system that tries to make things easier over time. But because [constrict] required multiple roots to act, I can only use it twice a day.

The first time I use it, Emile, Laufen and Belle end up spending a good half hour trying to kill the trapped lesser hellhound. It seems a full strength and health hellhound can take a bit of damage, especially from these unexperienced elves.

But I could sense the hellhound weaken considerably once Emile use her [spear thrust].

After killing it, the three elves do in fact gain a level and skills.

"This is hard." Belle said, recognising that between Laufen, Emile and herself, she seems to least adept at using a spear or sword, or a stick.

Still, I had to do it. Powerleveing is slow in this world.

Year 71 Month 2 Week 4

"Is there is a village here?"

"Must be a mistake."

A human merchant group passes by.

"The map says there is an elven village." An old man turns his map around a few times, thinking that he read it wrong. "Come have a look at it."

Another guy goes over and looks at the map, and nods. "Yeah this is the place. Freeka."

"There is just a tree in this place."

"It looks creepy."

The merchant group, about eight of them. They look defenseless.

At this point I telepathically ask the elves. "What happens if you attack innocents?"

"Nothing much if you did it once or twice. Do it often you might get a [criminal] title, which makes it hard for anyone to go to town or cities where they have a [detect criminal]."

"Should I kill these human merchants?"

Laufen pauses. "Uh… uh.."

I could sense she is conflicted over her hate on that humans that killed her husband, but at the same time, these merchants have nothing to do with it.

"Never… never mind." She shakes her hand, but I could see her squeeze her staff a bit. Maybe she really wants to, but a moral, just part of her still is holding on. As for me, if these elves want, I would let them have the last kill.

"Its a really creepy tree." One of the merchants shake his head. "We should not get near, I feel its dangerous."

"So what do we do, we are supposed to rest a day at the village before we go on."

"We make camp here? It is a nice open space."

"Preferably some distance from that tree."

The merchants at least have the sense of set up camp a little further up from where Freeka is, and that night, one of the merchants actually walks up to me, and stands really close to me.

"Why does this tree feel different?"

He is one of the older ones, probably in his late 50s. He has some arms and looks like he can fight.

"Are you some kind of rare wood?" He touches my trunk, but then pulls back instantly.

He touches his hand, then he tries again.

"Eh? It’s a normal tree?"

One of the effects of [camouflage], so I appear as a regular tree. Else even animals with any sense of danger would not dare come close.

"Hmm.. I feel spirits…"

"Danton! Get your ass back here and stop masturbating at the creepy ass tree."

"Hey fuck you I ain’t masturbating."

The old man sighs, and then he unzips his pants. And he pees on my root.

At that moment I am tempted to kill him.

He walks away and back to the group.

Year 71 Month 3

[You gain a level. Level 65]

[You obtained Learning Aura]

Boosts exp gain by 20% for those lower level than you.

All that "guided" powerleveling led to a new skill. Still, Laufen is only level 27, Emile and Belle Level 18. Wahlen and Brislach are level 6 because they are still too young to be fighting. Despite their levels, their skills are actually mostly unrelated to combat, and only their recent levels and skills led to more survival and combat abilities.

Now that winter is over, they start to plant crops around me. It almost feels like things are getting into a new routine.

Year 71 Month 4

I see an elf. A familiar one, walking through the woods. Alone. It’s Jura, and he looks like he’s been through hell. One of his left arm is gone, and his body is covered in scars and cuts of all kind.

He walks up to me. "Tree spirit, you’re still here…"

I tell Laufen to wait, even she wants to run out and hug him the moment they saw him. I just want to be sure this is not a trap. "Yes. How are the rest? Did any get away?"

Jura kneels, his face looks really defeated and sad. "I only manage to safely send ten of them to the elven kingdom. Demons, monsters, and humans. There are too many…"

"You have done what you could."

Jura clutches his left arm, the one that is lost. "I wish I could do more. Is everyone, dead?"

"No." Laufen says, she could not hold back so she ran out, and gives him a hug. "Glad to see you, old friend!"

"Laufen! You all are alive?!" Jura weeps, he is overjoyed to see survivors.

"Yes. Yes. We live, it’s been really tough, but the tree spirit watches over us."

Jura enters the secret hideout with the rest of them, and he gives everyone a hug.

"I cannot believe it. To think some of you still live."

"The rest died … horribly."

Jura shakes his head. "Things have not been well for us either. Or anyone, even the humans."

Laufen sits, "Huh?"

"The demon king emerged during the depths of winter, and his swarm of demons crushed the King’s army. A few human cities near to the west rift has been destroyed, its people slaughtered. That made our escape difficult..."

Laufen shakes her head. "Serves the humans right."

"So the demons and the death that followed made our travel to the elven kingdom really challenging. With little belongings and no money, and plenty of other refugees, we were attacked, robbed... A few of us died to robbers and bandits who think we have money."

Emile and Belle both nod. "Oh..…"

Jura munches on a healing fruit. "So.. so we had to fight other people, and demons..."

About this time, a few riders emerge from the woods. I instantly let Jura and Laufen know, cutting short their conversation .

"Oh no, I was followed!"

Six of them, they look like bandits, their attire is messy and seem like they did not carry any armor. "The tracks of the elf leads here."

"I like his sword. I want it. Find him." One of the older bandits gallop around on his horse.

"Where could he have gone?"

"I thought there is a hidden village of elves we could raid. Should have strike him when we had the chance."

They are at the edge of my range, but then I ask Jura to come out.

"Huh?" Jura did, holding his sword.

"Taunt them." I whisper into his mind. "Stand next to me."

"Hey you scums. You want a piece of me?"

The bandits laugh. "So there you are. I wanted that sword. Give it to me, and I might let you live."

"Dream on. Come and get it you foul smelling scoundrels."

The bandits charge. All of them.

Great, they are really comfortably within range now.

[Root strike] x 6. Six roots shoot out of the ground, stabs each and every one of them. The leader though had some kind of magic armor, and the root merely knocks him off his horse.

"Ahcks!" He coughs, as he lands on the ground. The armor bent a little. "Oh you are some kind of druid, eh?"

Jura is visibly surprised as well, but then he smiles. "Yes. Come and get me."

"Can you win?" I ask telepathically.

"Maybe. With one hand I am not as good as before."

The bandit leader slashes. Jura dodges and counterattacks. But the bandit dodges his attack. They trade a few more strikes, but they seem even.

Jura coughs. "Ugh, you’re pretty good. If I still had my arm I would have won this easily."

"But you don’t." The bandit smiles, and activates some kind of skill. His body radiates a kind of aura. "Now you die."

Jura struggles to fight back, and he gets a cut.

"Aghhh."

I decide to step in. With all my remaining [root strike].

My roots impale the bandit leader, his armor did not protect every part of him. Two roots through the thighs, one through the gap between his armor, and another punched through the dent made earlier.

"Ugh… To think you still had a trump card…"

"That was not me." Jura stands, and taps the trunk.

And the bandit leader dies.

[Level up! Level 66]

[Root strike range extended]

"Jura." Laufen asks him to sit. "You.. you would have beaten guy easily."

Jura shakes his head. "Not anymore. I have a curse. [Tormented fighter.]. It weakens all my abilities and skills."

"Huh?" A curse?

Jura sighs. "At first the effect is mild, but as time goes on I have nightmares every day, and now I cannot even wield my weapon properly."

Emile then asks, "Jura… can it be healed?"

"Maybe. Curses can go away in time. Or if something breaks the curse."

Indeed, Jura later demonstrates that curse affects how his skills are now cut short, and combos he easily pulled off in the past, can no longer be performed.

"Tell me what you’ve seen out there." I ask Jura. "Maybe fighting is not something we should be doing now."

Year 71 Month 4 Week 3

Jura’s daily routine is talking with me, playing and helping with the crops. I suspect the curse is something like mental pain, and wonder whether my [calming voice] can help resolve it.

It seems the curse is so bad it actually interferes with his ability to use familiars.

Still, an extra hand around to help do things, and he seems to really really enjoy having the kids around.

He is kind of like Lausanne’s uncle and spends time playing with them.

The first batch of crops are ready for harvesting even though they were just planted 2 weeks ago. I do in fact have a lot of levels, so perhaps they do have an effect on the crops.

"I am trying to train these girls in combat. What is the best way to do it?"

"Well, actual combat experience is the best. Otherwise will be mock battles."

"Why are they gaining levels so slowly?" I ask Jura, even though I asked the others before.

"I don’t think they are slow. Based on what they have been doing, it seems they are gaining levels quite fast already!"

"Huh. No way to speed it up?"

"If there is a [tutor] or a master, you could… or if they somehow get hold of any of the artifacts of the heroes."

"Artifact of the heroes?"

"Uh.. ya. I once heard Casshern talk about how the heroes artifacts can cause explosive leveling and skills."

"Why?"

"No idea."

Year 71 Month 5

Demons. A sudden surge in demons.

I see them enter my field of view, in the thousands. At this point, Jura and the elves are hiding inside the hideout. That is their only chance.

Thousands, they sweep through, killing everything in its path. They look like hounds, and thousands of them.

"So many of them."

They approach, but their claws and teeth fail to damage my bark. And even as more demons sweep through, all I could do is just watch. A large demon, one wielding a fiery axe. It looks like a demon lord from Dota. It swings its axe at me, yet it bounces off.

No damage.

Annoyed, the demon lord hacks at me multiple times, but every time the axe just bounces off. Eventually, it gets tired and it too continues the march.

The army, the swarm of thousands of hounds and other kinds of lesser demons continue passing through for a week.

I only have a limited number of root strikes, so with no means of killing a massive army, I thought pretending I am harmless is the best way to protect the elves. The elves never felt so afraid in their entire life, yet are simultaneously amazed at how these lesser demons are unable to damage me. Hiding inside, whilst the demon marches overhead is probably the most scary thing they ever had. Every moment they wonder whether a demon will burst through the door.

"The demons.. a week. That's easily an army of twenty thousand!" Jura calculates, for me I did not bother. It seems I am the only surviving tree as far as the eye can see.

"The humans won’t make it." Laufen sighs.

"If Freeka is still here, it won’t either." Jura nods. "Thankfully I only saw a few mid tier demons. It seems to be a massive army of low tier hounds, something an army of half the size can handle."

Later that month, one bigger demon appears, taking the same path as the hounds earlier. A large, lizard like creature. It resembles a gigantic komodo dragon, but has red horns and eyes.

"That’s a giant redhorn demon." Again all the elves are hiding, and I secretly thank my lucky stars that we have [secret hideout].

It sees me, and it stares. Then it opens its mouth, and breath fire. It feels kind of warm. But with 80% fire resistance, it can’t kill me. Its monstrous. About the size of a three story building. Bigger than me and it tries to bite me. But its fangs could not get through the bark of my trunk.

Then it uses its claws, again no damage. Infuriated, it slashes and swipes with its claws, and then mixed with a bit of bites. Still, the bark holds. I'm amazed at my bark, there must be some kind of anti-demon buff.

Annoyed, I use four [root strikes] at it. It pierces its thick hide, and it roars in anger, biting and swiping at my trunk repeatedly. But once again it's attacks does nothing.

"Tree spirit.. how do you withstand such fearsome strikes?"

"I… don’t know?" I am starting to suspect my [demon king survivor] have a thing to do with it. Maybe it grants me resistance to demon attacks?

Its injured from my root strike, and its angry. It breathes fire again.

Nothing.

And this time when it attempts to bite me, I send 2 [root strikes] to the mouth, probably what is its upper mouth. And it pierces through, a root strike up from the mouth and through the head. Kind of like how a stick goes through the brain. The giant redhorn demon starts to burn in a strange fire, and after the fire is done, all that is left is its fangs, and horns.

"Hey why does it do that?" I ask Jura and Laufen, both ecstatic to survive.

"So it is demon king’s summoning, not a natural demonspawn. A creature mostly made of the demon king’s mana, when slain it reverts into its mana form."

"I see…."

[You gained 5 level. Level 71]

[You unlocked the following skills]

[Rooting field]

[Local rootnet access]

[Poison field]

Whoahhhh! More offensive abilities, except that [local rootnet access]...

Demon Boss Battle I (assisted)

Year 71 Month 6

[Attempting Local Rootnet Access. GrassNet found. Connecting.]

[Sunsunsunsunsunsunsunsunstepstepssunsunnightnightnightnightnightsunsunsunsunsunsun…]

What the fuck is this.

[sunsunsunsunsunsun…] ad infinitum

Oh. After a while it reminds of a pinging. A constant pinging where the grassnet transmits what it currently feels.

Damn.

[Disconnect from GrassNet].

[You unlocked a new skill. [Create Rootnet Node]].

The elves spend a lot of time hiding, as more demons pass through, this time from the other direction. Once the demon king appears, the number one activity worldwide is fighting demons. There is no peace until the demon king is slain, because his very presence triggers demons to appear.

For our little group, we would attack if the size of the party is small, and get the elves to help take a few down or land the killing blows. If it is too big we would hide, since the lesser demons cannot hurt me. I checked my skills, and it seems that I get various defense buffs from all the levels.

Year 71 Month 7

The huge army of demons travelling through from last 2 months are retreating. So I take the opportunity to test out my new skills [poison field] and [rooting field], which effectively create a field with tiny roots that attempt to tangle and dislodge any passing monster, and then the same roots also has tiny thorns with poisons.

The hounds generally pass through unharmed, as their small size, flexible and nimble paws and more importantly, they appear to have some poison immunity.

The mid tier demons though, generally are larger and unable to avoid the tiny thorns, so quite a bit gets hit, and the poison causes a few to collapse onto the ground. The root field then slowly cuts at the collapsed demons, eventually killing it. All this happens over a period of a few hours.

About a week after the demonic swarm retreats, an army of humans now appears, which I believe to be chasing after the swarm.

"A tree..." An old warrior speaks, he rides on an armored horse. He rides up next to me, and look at my trunk. "Even when thousands of demons pass through here, nature survives."

Two other warriors ride up to him. "Yes, Lord Rajjiv. Amazing that a tree can live, when so few trees survive the hound swarm." They look at the barren field around them, all the trees has been either burnt or destroyed by the demons, though signs of recovery is seen.

"We make camp here then. It is a good omen from the gods. Perhaps this tree is blessed."

A superstitious bunch, but it reminds me of the founding mythos of many ancient cities.

"Yes, milord."

The Lord and his trusted lieutenants all camp within my striking range, and the remainder of the army beyond it. My [root field] and [poison field] expired a few days ago and still is on cooldown.

"What should we do?" The elves are slightly panicking, because a large group of humans somehow trigger a bit of fear.

"Hide! We have enough food." Laufen insists, not wanting to face the humans.

Lord Rajjiv sits next to me with a drink. "Oh tree, I suspect you must not be an ordinary tree to survive. Perhaps you are a tree spirit, like the guardian trees of the elven capitals?"

Perceptive!

"Ah wait, if you truly are a tree spirit, proper introductions are necessary. I am Rajjiv Nung II, of the Kingdom of Nung. I am a minor lord, I come in peace, and I am here to push back the demon army that is brought tremendous destruction to the world. Perhaps with some deeds the King would elevate my status."

Hmm, I guess I should reply. "Hello."

He jolts in shock, his drink almost spills. "Ah. You are indeed a tree spirit! Well met! The demons, they passed through?"

Directly asking a question on military intel.

"Yes, a week ago."

"Hmm.. A week. We are still too slow after all."

"Why so?"

"We are trying to catch up to them, but if they are still a week away, means we have not gained on them. How many of them, would you know?"

"No idea. Maybe ten thousand?"

Ten thousand. Hmmm.. we can still take that."

He takes out a map, and though I can’t see the writings on it, I could still notice him pointing here and there. Things are all just a lot of outlines to me after all.

Maybe I can learn a skill to see normally.

The demon king is very far away, but he has multiple champions that lead his campaigns against the world. It seems after the champions are slain their armies tend to scatter and weaken in coordination, so taking out the demon champions are a good way to reduce the threat of demons.

The champions are then given multiple lieutenants, such as giant demon lords or just massive demon beasts.

"What if you meet the demon king?"

Lord Rajjiv laughs. "Then we run. We run as fast as we can."

"Is fighting him that scary?"

"Unless you happen to have the weapon of the gods, or are a summoned hero, there is no chance. Why fight a doomed battle?"

"Good point."

Well, Rajjiv and the army departs a day later, marching towards the demons.

Year 71 Month 8

Lord Rajjiv returns. He is injured, and so is his army. And a demon swarm is on his tail.

"Set up camp. Defensive structures!"

The army set up a makeshift trench and wall, by digging into the ground. They would have added spikes, but all the trees are gone, except the small trees growing nearer to me.

"Scouts. Where are the demons?"

"Should be here in 3 days."

The army spend most of their time setting up the trenches, hoping to trap the hounds so that they can stab them easily with spears. Those with higher levels and skills will be deployed against the mid tier demons.

In a way, a defensive battle against demons is advantageous. But, the trenches will overflow with bodies, and soon that defensive advantage will dwindle.

"I don’t know whether we can survive this." Rajjiv sighs, polishing his sword. "The men must be ready to fight to their last. We beat them here, or the towns behind us will die."

"Fear not, Lord Rajjiv. The reinforcement army is on their way." One of the lieutenants assure him.

Rajjiv, and a few lieutenants stand underneath me, the only natural shade in the now empty plains. Once it is a forest, but the demons destroyed all of it.

"Rajjiv, do you need a familiar?"

He turn, looks at me. "Uh… yes. That would help. It would really help."

I also grow a few healing fruits, which the humans happily consume. Meanwhile, the elves continue hiding.

"What should we do?" Laufen ask, one hand carrying Lausanne.

Jura sips a cup of water. "With such a large human army, we should just hide. Its safer here, if the size of the demon army is like what we seen before."

"Yeah. Just feels like all we have been doing is hide." Laufen sighs. "Should we fight for a change?"

"No." I intervene. "Hide. I will protect you."

Seriously, just hide.

3 days later.

A black line emerges in the horizon. Hounds. A lot of them. They charge at the human army, like a tsunami approaching the shore.

[Ironbark skin] Lord Rajjiv shouts, enchanting his nearby lieutenants. His lieutenants then joins the line, barking their commands.

"Spears, ready!" The defenders raise their spears, creating a spear wall.

The swarm of hounds close in, and enter the firing range of archers. Archers unleash a volley of arrows at the swarm, and quite a few die. But not enough.

"Spears! [Defensive line]" Lord Rajjiv shouts, and the soldiers feels a surge in strength, a hardening in their skin.

Some lieutenants and sergeants activate their skills, the swarm smashes right into the line of humans. Death. Some hounds skewered.

The battle continues. Hounds, in the thousands.

They bite, swipe and growl at the humans. The defenders switch to short swords, and cut the hounds that are close.

Still, the momentum of the hound's charge is intense. The first line breaks. The swarm is just too much, and now smacks into the line behind it.

[Tactical reorganisation], [Morale Boost]. Rajjiv shouts, as the line around him breaks. The second line of humans step in, reinforcing the line that just broke.

More fighting, more blood. More death.

The hounds outnumber the army, so they seem to be winning, but it could go either way. The second line falls back to the third, another wall of spears.

Rajjiv waits for the moment to activate his skill. Timing is crucial.

But help came, and the odds shift rapidly.

A horn. And a stream of charging knights on horseback, 5,000 strong. They descend from behind the hounds, crushing them with their heavy lances. Rajjiv looks like he has tears of joy when he hears the horn.

"Hold it together, men!"

Lord Rajjiv lifts his sword overhead, it glows in a bright flash. The flash stuns the army of demons briefly, allowing the defenders to regain some ground.

The charging knights lose their charge momentum, and a vanguard group is holding back the hounds. A pack retreats, but then turns back, with speed.

Lord Rajjiv lifts his sword again. "Men! Advance and attack now."

Another flash of light, and he stuns the hounds that glance at it. The demons, sensing defeat, start to flee.

And the knights chase after the laggards, before reuniting with the main army.

"Glad to see you, Lord Rajjiv." A heavily decorated rider rides up to him.

"Me too, Captain. You came just right on time."

"My pleasure. You seem to have them in your hands anyway."

"Perhaps, but I rather not gamble with my soldiers lives. Your charge helped alot."

"Let's burn the dead before they start transforming into zombies."

The humans gather their dead into a mountain, and set fire to it. It seems that is one of the ways to prevent the demons or the undead from defiling the dead.

As the fires burn, a huge creature appears on the horizon. A large demon, perhaps drawn by the sight of the smoke.

The sight of it instantly sends the army into a panic.

"A demon champion." Lord Rajjiv pales.

The hounds appear beside it, but unlike before, they did not charge at the human army. They wait, perhaps for a signal.

The demon champion is massive, the size of large building. It looks like it is a giant earth golem, but reddish in color, and has spikes and horns throughout its body. It is like a grotesque mix of a golem, a hedgehog and a demon.

It steps closer, and the earth shakes. Every step, the earth shakes from its massive steps.

"Oh shit." I feel a shiver down my spine. Like a demon king. Okay, that understates the presence of a demon king. Maybe a lot less than a demon king, maybe 1% of a demon king.

The champion, a giant demonic earth golem, walks closer. Each step leaves a deep scar in the ground, like godzilla’s massive steps.

It feels like I am face to face with a kaiju.

It roars, and it sounds like an exploding volcano.

"Get the general force to retreat. All our top fighters and mages gather to me. This will be a battle of champions." Rajjiv commands. "Send a courier to inform HQ now. Tell HQ to gather heroes and champions if they do not hear from us in two days."

The regular soldiers are more than happy to retreat far away, there is no shame is running from a giant monster that can crush you underfoot.

"Together, with me." I telepathically inform Rajjiv. Together, I think we have a chance. I think that's instinct?

Rajjiv nods, "Protect us, tree spirit."

The captain dismounts, and his force of riders mostly retreats as well. Gathering around him, is his highest leveled warriors, healers and mages. I offer him a familiar contract too. In fact I offer everyone I can a familiar contract, maxing out my limit.

The captain leans in. "Tree spirit, do you have [Empower Allies]?"

"No."

The captain then takes out a scroll. "[Loan skill] [Empower Allies]."

You have been loaned [empower allies] for 24 hours.

Oh. The golem approaches.

The human fighters and lieutenants stack themselves with all the buffs and healing they have.

The earth shakes. Little pebbles jump at every step. Jura climbs out of the hideout, deciding this battle is one he should take part in.

"Huh?" The humans are surprised to see an elf appear from nowhere, but there is no time for that argument.

The golem roars, it is within range, and it throws its fists at the humans.

woosh

They dodge, but the punch has such force that it creates a small shockwave, catching some of the umprepared lieutenants. The captain activates [Quick step], allowing those too near to run away.

The captain and the lieutenants attack, but it barely scratches it. Normal sword attacks or arrows do no damage against its large and horn covered bodies.

Slash. The humans attack its feet, and those with leap attempt a few slashes at its body.

Punch. The golem punches the ground, the earth shakes and rocks fly everywhere.

Slash. One brave lieutenant tries to climb up its back, but a rock arm appears and punches him off.

Punch. The flying rocks is like a scattershot. Some smaller rocks and stones still land a hit, and it hurts.

About fifteen hits in, the humans realise the folly of using regular weapons and attacks on the golem.

"Don’t swing at it blindly, reserve your strength for magical attacks!" Lord Rajjiv yells, and he knows some of these lieutenants have never faced a high-defense and regenerating golem. Maybe he should have said that earlier, but he panicked when it starts to punch.

It tries to punch the fighters, yet its bulky size gives up its intent, so they manage to avoid its punches directly. They had to just account for the shockwave and the flying debris as well, which is harder to dodge.

[Holy strike] Lord Rajjiv lands a cut, and with the holy damage it leaves a small tear. But only a small one.

[Energy Lance] The captain lunches at the demon with a magically enhanced charge, and it leaves a small hole. The golem does not dodge very much, mainly because its thick rock hide is just incredibly tough and it regenerates.

The golem swings its large arms, and two lieutenants are caught.

"Arghhh!" They cough, probably blood.

[Empower], [Defense], [Ironbark], [Wood shield] I activate all the defensive abilities I have, and the golem’s arm lands on some kind of barrier.

The golem now is almost next to me, and so, it then punches at me. Ouch. I really felt that. A dent in my trunk.

A punch.

I feel myself groan and twist.

And it punches at me again. I activate wood shield, and the wood shield shatters instantly. But no direct hit.

The humans keep using their skills, and it scratches the golem. But nothing too deep.

It manages to grab one of the lieutenants, and crushes him. "Argggggghhhhhh!"

The captain charges with another magical attack. Again, like all the previous attacks, just a small dent.

"Its too tough. None of our attacks can break through it."

"I have a special holy charge skill, but I think it is not powerful enough to kill it." Rajjiv pants, dodging a swipe of the demon’s large arm.

The demon stomps the ground and the earth shakes. Some of the fighters lose balance. It then throws a few loose boulders.

"It can do that?!" One of the fighters yell, frustrated that after dodging rubble, they now have to dodge boulders.

I activate [wood shield], and I manage to shield a few from the boulders, but three of the lieutenants still get a boulder right in their face, and the boulder crushed them instantly.

"Ugh. We are losing!" The captain screams, assessing that the damage dealt to the golem is less than what it is dishing out. If it keeps picking them off, they would lose eventually, they can only harn it with skills, but the demon's regular punch could knock any of them out.

A battle for attrition or endurance is a losing one. The humans need special skills.

The Golem stomps the ground, everything shakes, me included. It roars and a burst of flame emerge around it.

A few lieutenants catch fire, but one of the mages then puts it away. The mages attack with some fireballs, but it seems to be resistant to fire.

Rajjiv stands next to me. "Tree spirit, do you have any strong attack?"

Well, I only have one attack, so I use [root strike].

It strikes at the demon, breaking maybe a rock or two from the golem’s massive body. Though it chips a bit of rock out, it does not really hurt it.

The golem retaliates, punches me right in the trunk again. My entire body shakes and another dent in my trunk.

"Ughhhh." That really hurt. I felt like somebody just punched my gut, and some. I feel a little drowsy and dizzy.

Pain. Pain. I suddenly recall that feeling of being chopped by demon king Baal.

The golem has smaller appendages on its back that swipe at any attackers, and though Rajjiv and the rest try to take to chance to attack, its mostly does nothing.

The human fighters throws a few more magic attacks at the golem, but mostly just a scratch, or a small dent.

"I have a crazy idea." Rajjiv looks at me. "Everyone, cast all your support and boosts on the tree!"

"Huh?"

"Trust me!" Rajjiv shouts, he dodges and then runs next to me.

[Holy Power X], [Blessed strike V], [Demon slayer III], [Energy burst V], [Fatal strike], [Heaven’s Punishment], [Holy Blessing]. Rajjiv use a string of powerups on me, and I feel a strange surge of power and magic in my roots. He chants and mumbles it out, while dodging the giant golem's attempt to interfere with it.

"The tree spirit’s root strike on its own, can damage the demon. With enough magic enchantments, it can deal a strong hit!" He shouts, and continues channelling some kind of holy magic.

[Imbue Holy Power].

I feel really light-headed.

The captain nods, "Ah! Makes sense!" He dodges, and he too runs next to me.

[Energy boost], [Piercing strike], [Magic damage III], [Attack boost III]

A few of the other human fighters run up to me as well, using their support boosts, [Power strike], [Dodgeless strike].

All that enchantments makes me feel really quite engorged, like my roots are about to blow up. The earth shakes.

The golem punches me again, ugh... If I am human I would cough blood now. And another punch. I feel my barks bend and buckle. Pain.

But here goes, I honestly feel like exploding, and I’m not sure whether its from all the magic or the punches.

"That’s it, tree spirit. Give it everything you got!" Rajjiv shouts.

I let it all out, [Root strike] x 9.

All my remaining [root strike], all at the same time, and it appears like nine flashes of light. Nine flashes that shoots into the sky, piercing through the demon golem.

Nine magically overcharged root strikes.

It tears 9 massive holes through the golem, and it stops.

And then it crumbles. The massive golem shatters into multiple pieces and crumbles into rubble. All the rocks that form the golem fall like a puppet whose strings were cut.

"The golem falls!" Rajjiv shouts. "Woooooooaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!"

The human army roars in joy. The hounds disappear from the horizon, perhaps taking queue from their defeated champion. Rajjiv, the captain and the remaining lieutenants gather next to me, but I just could not respond.

But I felt really dizzy. Its as if everything just went blank. And I fall into a kind of sleep……...

[Level up! You gained 15 levels! Level 86!]

[You unlocked the following skills!

Dream tutor

Wood magic &amp; creation

Rhizofiltration

The following skills have been upgraded :

Secret hideout

Root strike range and quantity

Local rootness access

Waking and more reincarnators?

A dream. A dream that contains visions of what looks like my home world.

It begins, in a vast sea of stars, like the milky way and more. A galaxy, and a nebula in the distance. From the vastness of space, it zooms in on a solar system, then a planet. Earth. Or is it? The dream does not linger, and it moves a bit too fast. The scene zooms in on a hospital or a clinic A doctor, a nurse, a child and probably the child’s family. The child smiles and nods. A few around him cry.

And the child sleeps, and those around him give him a hug, crying.

Then it zooms out again, back to the view from space. Stars. Thirteen streaks of light, all from the planet. They shoot up, and then the view speeds up, like a warp, or a slipstream.

A white layer emerges around all the streak of lights, and just as it exists the slipstream, a black barrier appears. It shatters, like glass.

And a green planet is seen. Thirteen streaks of light, they fly towards a point, but one’s brightness starts to flicker, and move a little slower. And that one streak of light loses speed, and starts to drift apart from the rest of the group.

And it crashes into the planet. A little while later, the twelve streaks of light crash on the planet as well.

[Twelve reincarnators have arrived!]

Year 71 Month 10

2 Months. I’ve been asleep for 2 months? The elves! What happened to the elves?

Oh. I still feel them here. The elves are alive, thankfully. I had a scare whether my fruits or [secret hideout] or [nourish] would be disabled when I woke up, but everything seems to be… alright?

"Jura, Laufen… what happened?"

"Oh?!" The elves jump, surprised. "Tree Spirit, you are awake!"

"Ah. Yes.. I’ve been sleeping for two.. Months?"

"Yes. All of us are really surprised that you did not respond earlier, and one of the captains mentioned it could be a kind of mana-sickness."

"Then?"

"Oh, erm… The humans left after the battle 2 months ago. They want to talk to you but they all left after waiting for a few days. After the demon champion is defeated, it’s quiet around here for a moment. The demon hordes in this region are in disarray and their behavior is erratic. Other than that, nothing much, we mostly continue hiding here, your fruits and [nourish] ability is still working… so we knew you are merely sleeping. So, we've been keeping ourselves busy since. We gained a few levels too!"

Jura did participate in the battle against the demon champion, so, it makes sense for him to gain levels. "Ah. how many levels did you gain, Jura?"

"Oh levels. Erm.. I think I gained 4 levels, and a skill?" Well, that's a big difference. Is it because I landed the finishing blow?

Jura smiles and nods. "Thank you, most importantly, battling such a huge golem helped with my worries and boosts my confidence, and my [tormented warrior] has improved to [tormented warrior (mild)]. I think if this keeps up, I will lose the penalty soon enough!"

Laufen and the rest shake their head, no levels for them. All they did is just hide after all, if you didn’t participate, you don’t get levels. Sounds fair. In fact, this whole fuzzy logic behind leveling incentivizes hard work and participation. It’s probably designed by a school teacher somewhere to reward kids, no? Laze off, don’t take risks, and you get nothing!

Year 71 Month 10

A few days after I wake up

Ah, that reminds me, I have new skills. Kind of forgot about them in the daze of waking up. It feels like a bad hangover really.

[Wood Magic]

A wheel pops up in my mind, at the center of it a leaf shape. There is a lot of greyed out skills and menus that grow out of that wheel.

Ah, I unlocked the magic type, and I have under it two skills. [Bind] and [Bloom]

[Rhizofiltration]

This is a passive skill. Will extract minerals and other items via roots, and automatically filter out negative effects in the ground.

[Dream Tutor]

May use dreams to learn, and to teach. Requires a collection of spirits, memories and objects to unlock more "Dreams". Essences can be used to bestow certain skills via dreams. Target must be sleeping for the ability to kick in. If sleep is interrupted, learning may not be effective.

I immediately test it out on the elves, once they go to sleep at night.

Year 71 Month 11

The effects of dream tutor seems quite varied. It works very well in the case of Jura, as he gains a new attack skill. For Laufen and Emile, they seem to be feeling a little lost, the dream felt more disorienting and confusing than enlightening. But they seem to say they are learning something. For the youngest Lausanne, it seems to cause her nightmares, so I choose not to use it on her until she is much older.

Perhaps dreams are just scary when you're 2 to 3 years old.

Nothing much happened this month. It is really cold again, and the elves spend time mostly resting in the expanded hideout which now has an additional room.

Occasionally, they would pop out to kill whatever creature that comes too close. Powerlevelling. I should get a skill like that.

Year 71 Month 12

[Melur Marin has died. You received a fragment. You have 56 fragments.]

What. That is way too fast for one of the reincarnators to die. It is only slightly more than a month since they arrived!

Are they in danger? Or maybe a conflict broke out? I ask Jura to gather more information, but he wants to be here, with the rest of the elves.

"I don't think its good for me to leave, tree spirit. It's better if we stay in this hideout. It's really the safest place with you around."

Oh well, the nearest town is a human one, and maybe the elves won't be so well received anyway....

[Your root has harvested some materials. Raw Iron x 5. Do you want to disable all similar notifications?]

Oh. Okay.

Materials, like essences, are used for making stuff, and its part of my [wood creation], so the iron and essences get absorbed into the wood, and the wood then forms itself into the item I want to make. It’s a slow process.

Year 72 Month 1 Week 1

I create a wooden ring, with iron and essence of lesser fire. It’s more like its been growing within a branch, and once its finished growing the outer layers peel off to reveal the inner "product".

A popup appears.

[Material compatibility is low. Effects are reduced by 50%].

Ah. Laufen, being the resident inspector, then advises on its effects. Honestly it felt like I am at a masterchef competition waiting for Laufen’s judgement.

"Boosts fire magic (minor), and attack stats increase." Ah. Not bad. Maybe I won’t get disqualified this round.

The rest of the time, its a lot of resting and the occasional monsters.

[Woodcrafting upgraded] Oh that’s easy.

Week 4

Demons. A group of hounds. I kill them, and let the elves kill a few.

Obtained new skill : [Powerleveling I]

Ah! Finally. The elves, other than Jura, gain a level.

Year 72 Month 2

Quiet month. More demons, more killing. More levels for the elves. Other than that, the elves can’t wait for spring. Winter is finally ending.

[Essence of winter (minor) x 1 obtained]

[Essence of cold (minor) x 1 obtained].

Ah, auto-mode [essence harvesting].

My new discovery that most of my harvesting/material type skills have an [auto] mode. I mean, I am a tree, and the cells of the tree extracts mineral without the need of my conscious interference. Its kinda like breathing.

Year 72 Month 3

Near me, a few small bushes and trees start to grow. The remains of the previously destroyed trees, now regenerating. The recovering bushes and trees start to add some texture and features back to the previously empty field.

This is also the season when the elves start to plant their crops, so that they have a better variety of diets on top of my fruits and [nourish]. Surviving on fruits alone is possible, but not the most tasty way to do things.

Demons, or more accurately the hounds appear like locusts. Swarms of them, here and there. I kill those that I can, and ignore those clever enough not to come too close. I mean, it's not like I can chase them. KInda like a venus flytrap. Gotta wait for my stupid prey to come near. Maybe I can get a "lure" skill some day in the future.

[Level up. Level 87!]

[Healing fruit upgraded] [Healing vines upgraded]

Obtained a new skill: [Solar-healing]

Oh. I feel like a bulb shaped monster now.

Year 72 Month 4

A horseman passes through. He rests a while under the tree.

He sleeps under the shade, right on my trunk.

I drop a fruit on his head.

"Ouch."

He grabs it, examines it for a while, and then eats it.

"Thanks, tree." He rides off after his nap.

[Skill : Fruit-attack obtained]

Oh.

Year 72 Month 5

More demons.

Seriously, these things never end. How do these guys deal with so many demons?

"The demons appear on average twice a week, that’s pretty okay. When demons are actually terrorising us a few years ago, they appear daily."

Ah wait, I keep forgetting my sense of time is different from the elves. Killing all the demons though gives me a new skill.

[Obtained skill : Root surge]

[Obtained skill : Lesser demon suppression aura]

Year 72 Month 6

Big harvest! The elves have crops, and some of the trees around me are growing larger. Its quite unnatural to see them grow so quickly, but apparently a common occurrence if there are tree spirits around. Apparently I've grown taller as well, and I am now about the height of a four story building.

Excess mana harvested by tree spirits (who usually do not spend their mana) is dumped into the land around it, and that turbocharges all other plant growth.

Also, thanks to [wood creation], all the elves are now equipped with weapons and armor I made, which also gave that skill an upgrade.

Year 72 Month 7

One thing being a tree, I am mostly immobile. So in a way, I really spend a lot of time doing mostly nothing. It's really a waiting game, hoping for things to happen. Do trees always feel like this, just waiting? Or maybe a rock? So I usually try to use my plentiful idle time to help the eleves, by using my skills [dream tutor], [powerlevelling] and [wood creation].

Right now, Jura is level 54, Laufen Level 31, Emile is 26, Belle is 25, Brislach and Wahlen Level 11 and Lausanne is still unknown.

Lausanne, the now 3+ baby can talk quite well but still does not know how to access her menu. Maybe in a few more months she will tell me what level she is.

"Tree-tree." Lausanne would walk around, her steps now quite stable, and crawl up and down the roots.

Laufen would then pet her daughter's head. "Now now, that's not how to refer to a tree spirit."

"Tree-tree." Lausanne mumbles. "tree-tree?"

I kinda like that name, I should call myself that.

Discovery & Adventurers?

Year 72 Month 8

A small group of young adventurers appear, six of them, on horses. Heavily armed, their horses exhausted, they made camp next to me. It seems like being the only large tree in this vast field does seem to draw attention.

"I think that tree in the middle of the field looks nice."

"I think so too. Lets go have a look."

These six adventurers, they stand next to me, examine my trunk and the leaves, and the trees that now flourish around me. At this distance, I make out that there are four girls and two boys.

One of them look around, and she sits down on one of my protruding roots, then admires the view of the fields. "Its a nice view, even though it's probably one made by the demons."

"Yea, good place to take a nap. Our journey to the rifts is still a few days to go, and we best enjoy this peace and quiet while we can."

"True." So they then set up camps next to me, and rest that night.

The next morning, a group of fifteen demons appear in the distance, and I learn from Jura that these large winged creatures are known as manticores. They make their presence known with a loud roar, and that wakes the adventurers. Silly, these manticores. They should just keep their mouth shut and attack the adventurers while they sleep. The adventurers though seem unshaken, as if its a normal occurrence for them. In fact, it seems the adventurers already set up some kind of magical defense, and a huge thunderbolt zaps the manticore that intrudes into the area marked.

A long haired girl shout some kind of chant, and an orb of red lightning float between her two palms. The red lightning leaps out of her two palms in a flash, and it zaps three of the flying manticores, and fries them instantly. They fall onto the ground, charred.

The leader of the adventurers, a guy wielding some kind of warstaff, he raises it and creates a forcefield that blocks all the manticore's acidic spits. And after that another chant, which cause all the manticores to move sluggishly. The other guy of the adventurers then takes out some kind of contraption that resembles a very long rifle, and fires a high speed orb. It explodes mid air and blasts a few of the slow moving manticores caught in the explosion into pieces.

A short haired one wearing a thin armor, flicks something that looks like a fan, and a huge gust of wind appears. The force of the wind pushes all of the manticores, and they fall onto the ground in a smack. The two remaining girls,, both pull out a pair of shortswords, and they slash the remaining grounded manticores to death.

One of the twinsword girls smile. "I gain a level. I get a skill!" She jumps around, happy.

"Oh what did you get?" The other twinsword girl taps her on the shoulder

"[Flawless Dodge]."

"Oh cool. I didn’t get any." The guy that cast the forcefield sigh, and he sits on one of my roots. He takes out some kind of cloth and starts to clean his warstaff.

"Stop whining, you’re Level 75! I am just level 63!" The twinsword girl shouts.

Meanwhile, the mage girl is harvesting the remains of the manticore corpses alone with a small dagger and a bag. After going through a few of the manticores, she notices she's doing it alone and then glances over at the rest of her teammates, and asks. "You peeps not helping to collect them loot?"

The rest of them unanimously shakes ther head. "You do it. We’ll just ruin it."

The mage girl rolls her eyes. "Ugh. You know my ability works as long as I am around!"

"Ain’t taking that risk!"

They banter for a while, and rest. After cleaning up their camp, they soon set out towards the demonic rift.

Year 72 Month 8, two days later.

Five demon knights, on hellhounds arrive. It seems they are following the scent of the adventurers. These demon knights are previously human, but their body has been corrupted by the demonic forces and then transformed. As they are once human, they still speak normally to each other, with the only difference is their voice.

"They were here." One of the riders pat his hellhound, tracking their scent. "They are headed for the southern rift."

Another rider examines the dirt, and some of the little remains from the battle. "Six of them, still on horses. Probably rested here for a day."

"No sign of any injury. Looks like the manticores are unable to hurt them. Will need more powerful monsters." The rest of the demon knights nod.

Two of the demon knights start chanting some kind of spell. It looks like some kind of communication spell.

At this point, I wonder whether I can beat these demon knights. "You think we can take them on, Jura?"

Jura shakes his head. "They have abilities and skills like a normal human, so I am not sure of our chances. They could be very strong, or just like a normal human. I've never fought one, so... I honestly can't say."

Somehow, I decide to let them go.

Year 72 Month 9

A huge explosion in the distance. Then another.

And another.

The earth shakes constantly, even though the explosion is so far away. The sky above is filled with streaks of colors. It’s not a pleasant sign, one of fighting.... perhaps monsters.

"TreeTree, these explosions… They are starting to get nearer."

More explosions.The vibration and shaking gets stronger. In the distance, a huge rupture, as rocks shoot up.

And Jura sees it. Two large flying creatures, each breathing some kind of elemental attack at a small group.

Its the six adventurers!

The earth shakes so badly, my roots increases its grip on the earth, reducing the shaking. More explosions and spells criss cross the skies. The explosions and destruction sends huge plumes of dust into the air, and it creates a minor dust storm, blocking some of the sunlight.

More explosions, and I could sense the adventurers fall back.

The adventurer group retreats, while retaliating with ranged attacks. The two large demonic wyverns are also accompanied by a huge swarm of hellhounds and lesser demons, but they keep their distance. It seems the wyvern's elemental breaths deal a whole lot of collateral damage.

Bam! An explosion right at one of the demonic wyvern's chest.

And it falls onto the ground, and the earth shakes from the impact.

"Ugh yes!" The adventurers take the opportunity to run, and three of them are heavily injured. The remaining wyvern try to chase, and a nicely placed fireball from the magegirl manage to tear one of its wings. Unable to fly, it chases after the adventurers on its two large foot. Luckily, it's a lot slower this way.

They run towards me, and at this time they notice a large group of demons appearing on the other direction. The demons have the adventurers surrounded with hellhounds.

"The tree. Let's fight there." The fan girl points at me, and they try to run as fast as they can. Well, any cover is better than no cover.

As the adventurers reposition themselves around me, I can now sense that the gunner man , and twinsword girls are injured. Their spirits is wavering, flickering, and one of the twinsword girls' spirit seems engulfed in some kind of demonic fire, or rot. I'm not sure.

Around me, it's hordes of hounds, and lesser demons. Only the now lumbering demonic wyvern approaches, but this is after a moment of hesitation.

"They… the rest don’t seem to be approaching?"

"Huh?! Great!" One of the mage girls seem really surprised, and she scrambles over to help her injured compatriots. "You guys deal with it. I need to look after them."

The wyvern roars, and then it charges at me and the adventurers. It’s already injured from all the ranged attacks, so the moment I feel like I can get a good shot.

[Root strike]

It stabs it right in the abdomen. Some of its inner matter splurt out, but nothing too serious... yet.

Its not dead yet, but the stab slows it down.

[Root strike] x 2 I hit the abdomen of the wyvern again, and this time one of the roots manage to pierces through, and stabs the wyvern right through the chest. And it falls. The death of the wyvern scares the rest of the hounds and the lesser demons, and causes them to be afraid to approach.

"Oh wow." The forcefield man touches my trunk. "A tree spirit! We're saved!"

The mage girl shakes her head, still trying to look at her friends. "They are dying!"

"Bring them to me, I mentally tell the mage girl, and she uses a kind of magic to levitate all 3 of the injured adventurers next to me, and a small branch reaches out, touching them.

[Solar Healing]

[Healing fruit]

[Nourish]

The wounds start to close a little, and I could sense their spirit start to stabilise. Two of them recover quickly, their wounds and cuts heal, except the twin sword girl, who took a deep stab into her chest. She's the one who I seem to see some kind of demonic presence in her body, gnawing away at her. She yelps in pain.

"Don’t die." The mage girl holds her hand.

The twinsword girl smiles weakly. I keep trying to heal her, but that demonic energy is interfering with the healing. Or more like, it's just undoing whatever healing we apply.

"No." The mage girl holds her hand tightly. "No, no, no."

The demons keep trying to get close, but without the giant demon, the rest of them are just small fries, easily defeated by the forcefield dude, and the other wind-wielding girl.

I extend of my thinner feeler-like branches, touch the wounded girl on the head, and activate my healing abilities. The wounds recover a bit, but it lasts only for a short moment, before it somehow opens again.

"The demons. Damn them! They used some kind of special demonic rot attack, and the effects are still in her body… it will keep burning away at her body, despite our attempts to heal her. To really heal her, we need to remove that demonic rot, and in the meantime, all we can do it keep her alive." The mage girl curses, and then glances up at the tree. "We need to coordinate our healing. We cast healing alternately, so that her body does not deteriorate too much."

With the other twinsword girl and gunner healed, the remaining 4 adventurers unleash their fury, and slaughter the remaining demon swarm. The huge numbers of the hellhounds mean very little for this group of powerful adventurers, now fueled by anger and desperation. The demon’s numbers fall quickly, as the 4 healed adventurers unleash wave after wave of attacks. The hellhounds start to flee, it seems they too are frightened of the adventurers.

And about two hours later, there's not a single living demon in sight. They have all either fled, or died.

That then shifts the focus to the injured twinsword girl, still battling against the demonic rot inside her.

"Its not getting any better." Mage girl sighs. "We been trying to heal her…."

"We have to take her somewhere, to the town."

"No." Magegirl shakes her head. "I don’t have enough mana to keep healing her... We won't make it back to the town in time. If I stop healing her, the demonic rot will kill her within three to four hours. We can maintain it now because the tree spirit's healing abilities is gives me room to recover my mana."

"Huh…" The fangirl holds the injured girl's hand. She's asleep at this point.

I can use a mix of healing and regeneration abilities I have as a tree to keep the injured girl alive, but I am unable to remove the demonic presence gnawing away at her body. So its a constant battle between the healing forces and the demonic rot.

"Hmm. So here’s the plan. The three of us will stay. And the three of you find the rest, and find a cure for demonic rot or anyone who has any inkling of what sort of cursed power that demon champion used. The three of us will be here because she needs healing, and working with the tree spirit, we can keep her alive. I will stay back for protection."

The three, one twinhair girl, the fan girl and the gunner guy nod. "Hmmm.. best chance we have then. Let’s go, no time to waste."

At that point, it occurs to me that they never asked whether I agree to the plan, but fine. Since these adventurers will be here for some time, I ask Jura and Laufen to come out.

"Huh. Elves."

"We live here. Tree spirit says we should meet you." Jura and Laufen introduce themselves. "We heard your plan to stay with the tree spirit."

"Ah. We mean no harm. We need the tree spirits help to keep my friend alive." The mage girl explains. "I can't do this on my own..."

Jura and Laufen look around, and nod. "Then please come in."

"Come in?"

The elves bring them into the secret hideout, and the injured girl is placed on the floor of one of the rooms.

At that point, a popup appears [Do you want to initiate Life Support protocol?]

Oh. Okay.

At that moment, the room shakes a little, and multiple branches appear around the injured girl, attaching itself to her.

"What’s happening?" The forcefield dude asks, he seems worried and reaches for his warstaff. "Explain!"

The magegirl stops him, "The tree spirit is doing something. I think it's putting some kind of magical ‘support’ mechanism."

The branches all form into like a hospital bed like shape, and a few little wooden feelers attach itself throughout her body. The feelers, supply a mix of condensed healing fruit juice, and whatever regeneration ability I have. It also gives a minor version of whatever passive healing ability I have.

"It’s like a…" The forcefield dude and the mage girl look at each other. "A hospital bed."

"Thank you for help us."

Jura and Laufen shrugs, "It seems the tree spirit agreed to help you, so we'll be okay. We just hope you're not like the other humans."

"Ah. We promise we won't bring you any harm. We just want to save our friend's life and I pray we won’t take too much of your time or space." The forcefield guy nods, and sits down. Mage girl looks at her injured friend, and after a while, she too rests next to her injured friend..

"She’s stable. The tree spirit is using some kind of constant healing, channeled through the branches connected to her." The magegirl observes, using some kind of spell.

Laufen passes them some fruits to clear the tension. "What's your name? I am Laufen."

"Hendry." Forcefield dude then munches on the healing fruit.

"Alexis." Mage girl too takes a bite, and she then points at the injured girl. "She’s Meela."

"Ah."

"This place… its a magical pocket dimension inside the tree spirit, right?" Alexis asks. She's into the whole theoretical basis behind magic and finds it really fascinating on how magic works and interacts,

"Uh…" Laufen scratches her head. Laufen had never thought about such things.

"It's bigger inside than the tree itself, yet not underground. It has to be." Alexis explains, and to be honest, that is the first time it occurred to me as well.

Meela's asleep, as I use a mix of liquid healing fruit extract that I feed into her body via the branches, and occasionally [solar healing] via a leaf that is right above her head. Alive, and asleep. With the healing powers between myself and Alexis, we could heal her completely, but the demonic rot would just reopen the wounds again. Whatever it is, this demonic rot is pretty nasty.

Exhausted, both Alexis and Hendry soon fall asleep, but not before casting a wide range of precautionary spells. They are careful, and prepared.

[You gain two levels] [Level 89]

[Nourish upgraded. Life support unlocked. Suspended animation unlocked]

The next few days

They wait. Their three friends will take some time to come back to them with any kind of cure.

Alexis would peep at Meela, who is still asleep, every few hours to check on her. Hendry seems restless, paces about and takes long walks around, and seems to be talking to himself about demons and monsters. He would go on long 'walks', where he slaughters any lesser demon he comes across.

"Worried?"

"Yes." Alexis munches on a bread that she pulls out nowhere. "I don’t want to lose her. We, don’t want to lose her. It would be unbearable to me."

Laufen nods, and tries to reassure her. "Your friends will be back with a cure."

"I hope so."

"What did you fight, that caused such a bad wound?"

"A demon champion. Some kind of earth snake that seems to be corrupted by huge amounts of demonic energy. It had a special weapon, a kind of venom…"

"A demon champion?!" Laufen gasps, her hands to her mouth.

"Yes. We killed it, but not before another hidden assassin demon retrieved that special venom and stabbed Meela with it."

"Wow... Must have been a big expedition into the rift."

Alexis pauses. "Ah.. yes."

"Demons. On the horizon." Hendry comes back into the hideout. "A lot of them. Hounds and a lot of mid tier creatures. Maybe they will hide some powerful demons inside as well, so we should be careful."

"Huh? Demons can do that?" Jura seems surprised that demons are capable of such sophisticated tactics.

"Uh.. yes." Hendry nods.

Jura shrugs, and then looks at the two adventurers. "I think we should hide. Normally they will ignore us. Our tree spirit has all sorts of defensive buffs, and the demons can't scratch him."

"Treetree." Lausanne interjects, and Laufen catches her. "Its Treetree."

"Yes. Treetree has all sorts of defensive buffs."

"Hmm… very well." Hendry retreats inside, and the demon swarm approaches. They fan out, covering most of the area, destroying the regrowing shrubbery.

Some come close to me, but they mostly walk past me. A few attempt to attack my now thick and large trunk, but not a scratch. Hendry seems surprised when the swarm eventually leaves.

"It's really neat, right? That's how we survive so long out here." Emile smiles, her words a little hint of bragging. "The demons just pass by us like… we are not there. And even when they do notice the tree, they can't hurt us."

"That is so strange." Hendry sits, he rubs his chin, and then his head.

Later on, Laufen eventually tries to make some conversation. "So… how long you think it’ll take?"

"For?"

"Your friends. To find a cure."

Hendry and Alexis shake their head. Alexis rubs her chin and explains. "Not sure. None of us have any specific anti-demon abilities. We don’t even know the specific magical nature, or the mechanics of the disease or demonic rot that Meela is having… We'll just have to try whatever they bring back."

"Ah…." Laufen felt like she just asked a question that led to a technical question way out of her depth.

‘AHHHHHHHHHHHH!’

Meela screams in pain, and all of them rush over.

"Meela, are you okay?" Hendry and Alexis grab her arms, Alexis quickly using some kind of diagnostic spell.

As it turns out, the constant heal-destroy cycle actually results in a surge in pain, as the body regains the sense of the healed area, and then gets damaged again. And that sensation accumulates, abruptly jolting her into an intense pain every now and then.

"I.. I don't have any kind of pain reduction spells." Alexis sighs. "If only we had a pill or something."

Hendry shakes his head. "Meela… you got to hang in there."

Meela collapses, unconscious. The demonic rot is also weakening her spirit, ao I suspect that also contributes to her inability to remain conscious.

"Tree spirit, do you have any pain reduction spells?"

"Hmm.. no."

But I wonder I can produce saps or materials that can suppress the pain. I recall quite a few medical products that are derived from plants.

[Tree’s natural abilities unlocked : Tree extracts &amp; saps ]

Oh. Wow. A menu pops up and shows me a huge list. Rubber, oils, poisons, fragrances, saps…

Wait. Found it.

"Pick some leaves and make tea." I mentally tell Laufen.

A small branch with odd colored leaves appear right next to the wall.

"Huh? Oh okay Tree-Tree." Laufen runs to get hot water, quickly snap a few leaves off the branch, and quickly mashes it.

The process of making the herbal tea takes about an hour, but eventually the fragrance of the tea starts to come out , and they feed Meela the tea.

She yelps from the hot tea, but as the tea flows into her body, it releases a pain-suppression effect. Alexis grabs the remainder and examines it, just to make sure its nothing dangerous.

"Ah…"

Meela falls back into slumber.

They make the tea for Meela every 6 to 7 hours, as the pain would pop up every now and then, and a few more days pass by.

Year 72 Month 10

Meela’s still in a state of assisted living, her body still affected by the demonic rot.

[Tree saps &amp; extracts upgraded]

Thanks to constant use of the leaves for the pain-numbing tea, it levels up, and it’s more potent and longer lasting. Thanks to it, she could stay awake for about 30 minutes to an hour per day to talk, which helps Hendry and Alexis’s mood greatly.

"Don’t worry, I won’t die." Meela smiles, looking around the room. "This feels like a hospital. It’s a familiar place."

Alexis shakes her head. "No. We’ll get you fixed up again, okay?"

Hendry frequently spends his time climbing up my branches, and sometimes just sitting out in the sky. This is probably his way of coping with being trapped here, his friend wounded in this manner.

Apparently the stars are beautiful, and there are more moons here.

Later that month, we had demonic visitors again.

"The demon knights." Hendry grips his warstaff.

Riding on the hellhounds, eight of them. They wield a mix of weapons, three with swords, two with spears, two with bows and arrows, and one with a staff. Alexis holds him back, "No. You can win, but we must hide. We do not want the entire demon swarm coming down on us. The demon knights are looking for us, you know it. Hide. Not fight. Not with Meela injured."

Hendry sighs, but agrees. The demon knights ride up to me.

"Hmm, their scent fades here."

"Some went that way… but not all of them."

"Two.. maybe three is here."

They look at me, and three of the demon knights raise their sword. Their sword flashes, into a burning sword, and the three of them slash my trunk repeatedly.

And… it feels like an itch.

"Huh." The demon knights pause, as their slashes do not seem to work. "Strange…"

To be honest, I’ve always found my defense against demons extremely strange too. But hey, not complaining. They slash a few more times, before the demon knight with a staff walks close and cast some kind of spell.

[Detect resistance]

Oh. There’s such a spell.

The demon knight pauses. "Oh. Oh no."

The other demon knights turn and look, "What?"

"This tree…. It has [Demon immunity : Midtier] and [Elder demon damage reduction - 84%]"

I’m shocked too.

"How?!" One of the demon knights ask, their attacks now stopped. They probably realise it’s futile in face of that sort of resistances. "It looks just like any other large tree."

At this point, I realise I probably should not let these knights run, and a few [root strike] surges out of the ground, right through the hellhound and into the demon knights. One manage to leap, but still the root crushes through his demonic armor.

Turns out these demon knights are just pretty much humans in armor, so in an instant, all of them are dead, skewered by roots. They probably are tougher than regular humans by a bit, but against my root strike it's still just paper.

After the battle, Hendry and Jura asks. "Tree-Tree, how did you get your demonic damage reduction?"

"Uh…" I don’t know.

"Is it an item you have?" Alexis asks. "Some items reduce damage from demons. [Wards]"

At this point, I can only think of my fragments. I attempt to take out one fragment, but an error pops up.

*Fragments cannot be separated. It’s fused to your body.*

Oh, but I can move where they all are.

"Alexis, Laufen, I’m going to show you something, help me examine and inspect it."

They both nod, and the roof shakes a little. And the wooden roof move in a circular fashion, , revealing a lantern-like object made of intricately shaped wood, with dozens of little lights floating inside. It pulses in a regular fashion, with tiny flashes within.

"Oh it’s beautiful."

[Inspect equipment] Laufen uses her only inspection ability, and then shakes her head. "I can’t see a thing. It’s just filled with unknowns and question marks."

[Thorough Examination] Alexis has a far superior identification spell, and after she uses it she loses her strength and sits on the floor.

"You okay?" Hendry tries to hold her.

"I.. I am." Alexis points at it. "I’m just stunned. That.. that thing is your heart, isn’t it?"

"Oh. I think so." It kinda does feel like it is my ‘center’. They are right now inside me, anyway.

"[The Tree’s Heart and Spirit-Lantern], this is the heart of the tree, adorned with the fragments of 56 heroes, it gives the tree 2800% increase in experience gain, 560% extra damage against midtier demons, 280% extra damage against elder demons, partial demon armor-negation, immunity to lesser demons, damage reduction against elder demons and significantly reduce damage from fire."

So all the fragments do have a function after all.

Hendry pauses. "Alexis, are you sure?"

She nods.

"We must tell the others. We must revisit how and where the battles with the demons is fought. This ability transforms this location into a favorable battlefield for us. We can save lives!"

Jura and Laufen sit, "Tree-Tree, I didn’t know you’re so amazing."

Alexis then looks at Meela, who’s still asleep. "TreeTree, can you please move your heart closer to Meela?"

It is right next to her now. A prompt appears. "Do you want to absorb "Meela Adams"?"

I shake off the prompt, answering no.

Alexis looks at Meela’s condition. "Hmmm.. no effect. The rot is still there. It seems the resistance is not shared by the glow. Oh well."

I keep my heart back, suddenly realise it’s probably very dangerous for me to reveal it that way. Perhaps if it is destroyed, I would die? I think so. Now that I know the source of my past effectiveness is due to the fragments, that means against non-demon enemies, I’m actually significantly weaker, and someone of incredible power like Hendry or the humans could probably easily destroy me.

[You gained 3 levels. You are now level 92.]

[Skills upgraded : Secret hideout - healing chamber adaptation]

[Obtained skill : Summon insect warriors]

[Obtained skill : Super anti-demon root-strike]

[Obtained skill : Customisable branches]

An army passes by, again

Year 72 month 10 last few days.

A delegation approaches from the distance. It’s the beginning of winter, and yet it is warmer than usual, so warm that I could feel something is in the air. My leaves, the warmth confuses them, and so they shrivel up a little. Somehow, this warm air is ‘rough’, and my trunk and bark feels a bit rougher as a result.

A delegation of soldiers, a hundred strong, carrying all sorts of materials and goods. An expeditionary force?

Friend, or foe?

"Tree spirit." A voice calls out, one I vaguely recognise, but once he got closer, I soon identify the voice as Lord Rajjiv Nung. "Hmm.. is it still asleep….Jura? Jura?"

He seems to be better condition than the last time we met, maybe he gained some levels.

The elves are hiding, a little intimidated by the presence of so many men. I too somehow share that emotion, and am on my guard as well.

"Should I go out, tree spirit?" Jura asks, while that Rajjiv calls for him.

"Hmmm…"

It is best I respond. Perhaps letting Jura hide is a better idea, but then I turn to Hendry and Alexis, "Do you guys want to go out? Its a bunch of humans, maybe they can help you."

Hendry shakes his head, "We don’t know them, so we’ll watch how this plays out, but we will help if needed. Our priority is still Meela, and by extension, your ability to continue to support Meela."

Seems quite reasonable.

"Yes? What brings you here with a small army?" I telepathically speak to Rajjiv.

Lord Rajjiv smiles, "Ah you are awake! Great! We have much to discuss." He dismounts from his warhorse and walks closer, gesturing to my roots. "May I?"

"Yes." He sits on the flat surface of the few protruding roots.

"So, since our last battle, the defeat of the demon champion at our hands greatly improved our King’s opinion of natural spirits are a means to fight demons."

He pauses.

"And so, we are wondering whether you are open to relocating yourself outside of our capital city."

"No." I hate moving, I have to be decisive in rejecting this.

"Ah… I suspected as much. Well, are tree spirits able to produce offsprings or saplings which we can cultivate into a tree spirit? Would a branch of yours grow into a split version of yourself?"

Eh. That, is a good question. I recall producing fruits and they do have seeds, but they only seem to grow into normal plants. If they did somehow grow into their own tree spirits I sure did not detect their presence.

"Rest assured we will take good care of your offspring or saplings, we only ask it comes to our aid in battle."

But Rajjiv is asking a very good point. Could I "procreate" in a sense that allows me to create other tree spirits? Or my "offsprings" do not inherit any of my abilities or qualities?

"I am afraid I am unable to produce any spirit-offspring. So far my offsprings and seeds are just normal… trees.."

Yet? Or maybe I do not yet know how?

"Ah… that would be a disappointment. But not unexpected."

Rajjiv stands and looks around the area.

"But that is not why I came all this way..."

Rajjiv takes out a small map, and points. I can’t actually see the map, though.

"The demon champions, three of them. They seem to be gathering somewhere in the region near here. We will set up a base of operations here, and then attack the demons."

Huh? "No." A large army, here? That would be bad.

"Not a choice, tree spirit. I am just informing you. The King has decreed this land and its surroundings to be the staging ground for the military operations against the demonic champions. We have the heroes themselves, and they are on their way. We, are just the advance party, to prepare this place for the upcoming campaign."

This, news is unpleasant, but then again, what choice do I have? If indeed a large army will be here, what chance do I have to protect the elves? Can I fight off an army? I feel the answer to that is no, so it looks like I have to put up with it.

"Heroes?" Ah, the reincarnators!

"Yes, the ones with gods’ gifts. Not sure when they will get here as the King said, as they are visiting all the kingdoms along the way, but they are headed here and then towards to demon champions. Slay them, heroes gain power and levels, and weaken the demon king."

"Ah…" Reincarnators. I would like to see what sort of cheat like abilities they have.

Oh wait. That means the days ahead will be a whole lot of death and war. Well, from what I learnt about this world, its always been filled with death and war, so I should not complain.

The elves too shake their head. From within the hideout, they can actually eavesdrop on any conversation next to me. Hendry peers out through a small peephole. "That man is from the Kingdom?"

"Yes, Rajjiv Nung of the Kingdom of Nung."

Hendry shakes his head, "Don’t know him. Do you, Alexis?" Alexis shakes her head too. "Ah, I guess we will keep hiding. No need to draw attention unnecessarily."

Laufen gives Lausanne a hug, and she looks at the rest. "Hmmm.. it sounds like there will be a lot of fighting. This place is going to be a battlefield again. It’s just not too long ago we had so much… death."

"If I can keep you elves safe, I will." I assure her, even if I do know what's going to happen is going to be very unpleasant.

Rajjiv, oblivious to the conversation within the hideout, then motions his men to start work.

"Tree spirit, may we meet again under far better circumstances. Some of my men will remain to start setting up the area for the coming battles." After the men rest for an hour or so, about 70 men follow Rajjiv’s lead, and ride towards the demonic rifts. The plan is to spread out, monitor the demons’ movements, setup magical markers, and be on the lookout for any large demon armies.

The remaining 30 or so men start to build a campsite, featuring multiple large tents. Further out, they build a low fence, making where this future army is going to be. These men, appear to be builders and mages. A few of them use magic, mainly to manipulate the ground and dirt into a makeshift dirt wall and trench.

Alexis and Hendry looks out of the peephole. "Heroes are coming?"

"Yes, that's what he said."

"Oh wow. I can’t wait to meet the heroes. I wonder what they are like?" Emile and Belle both seem quite excited to meet heroes, and that excitement cause both Alexis and Hendry sigh.

"Have you guys met them?" Emile ask.

Alexis and Hendry glance at each other. "Ah.. yes. yes we have."

"They must be handsome and dashing… oh wait don't tell me don’t tell me." Emile seems somewhat infatuated with the concept of heroes. Hendry and Alexis smiles.

"I think fairy tales and reality usually differ quite a bit."

Meanwhile, I activate my [summon insect warriors] skill, and a few beetles appears on my branch, hidden from the soldiers. They seem rather tough, and they are mostly mind-less creatures mentally linked to me. Will need to test them in actual combat to know how they fare in reality.

[Customisable branches] A popup appears, you currently have 3 slots for customisable branches. The branches can be customised for specific functions, such as producing certain materials or essences, host certain insects or animals, or become some kind of accommodation (if the branch if sufficiently large).

Ah. There’s actually a long list of materials extracted and essences harvested, hidden inside a separate notification menu. I think I recall asking to hide those notifications, else I’d be overwhelmed by them all the time.

Hendry chooses to mostly stay inside, wondering when his friends will return. Meela’s still surviving, her body in a constant battle with the demonic rot within. Alexis spends time talking to Meela and playing with the younger elves, Brislach, Wahlen and Lausanne.

The older elves are still apprehensive of the humans, but the younger ones do not hold such prejudices. Perhaps, not yet.

A week later, Year 72 Month 11 Week 1

Twenty thousand strong, an army passes by. Half of them set up camp here, but from the chatter it seems they are meant to leave very soon. The other half march on, nearer to the rift where they will set up smaller camps closer to the rift.

With the numbers, comes traffic. The traffic in this area is much higher now, as messengers are needed for certain types of communication. There is also a small group of dedicated mages, and it seems their role is to facilitate long distance secure communication spells.

And winter is delayed this year. It's still warm. Something strange is happening to the weather.

Alexis suspects its the demons.

And refugees start popping up, an outcome of more demon raids, destroying villages that are closer to the rift. The rift, as Alexis elaborates, is a flux, a rip in "space", and it joins our world with that of the demons, and it expands and moves, usually slowly but under certain circumstances, quickly. The longer the demon king remains in the world, the rifts will remain open and expand, and after their death, the rifts will shrink and eventually close. So, a world cannot wait forever for the heroes to slay the demon king, else the rift would expand so large and appear all over the world.

Year 72 Month 11 Week 3

From the bits and pieces of information I gather via eavesdropping the refugees and the soldiers, it seems no one knows I am a tree spirit. They presumed I am a normal tree that somehow survived this location, and that is… interesting.

At this point I realise perhaps Lord Rajjiv has reasons not to share that information, and my assessment of him in my mind change accordingly. Him and his platoon took credit for the demon champion defeat earlier, ignoring my contribution. Well, though I do feel slighted, after dwelling on the idea for a while, I think keeping myself unknown is better.

"Should I reveal my presence to the soldiers?" I ask this of the elves and the three adventurers.

"Hmm, but what would revealing your presence achieve, TreeTree?" Belle asks, still peering outside. Emile’s been talking about the heroes for some time now, and she is wondering where in the world are they.

"True. I stand to lose more than gain." Given that I can’t really move… I can’t exactly run away, can I?

"If you have powers, its best to keep it a secret." Alexis said, holding Meela’s hand. "People will seek you for your power, and you become a tool, not a person. Your power will define who you are to the masses."

"Fair point." She sounds really sad when she said that. "Sounds like personal experience."

"It is." Alexis holds Meela’s hand a little longer.

Year 72 Month 11 Week 4

Another ten thousand or so soldiers arrive, they do not stop here for long, and they continue marching towards the rift.

At this point this surrounding area is pretty much a makeshift fort. The humans with earth magic mold a two layer wall complete with towers and ramparts, and staff them with soldiers.

Traffic is still high, and refugees seem to be constantly streaming in. The refugees don’t stay for long, as the food available is meant for the army, and is barely sufficient, so they move on to safer, and hopefully more prosperous lands. There are minor demon attacks, small packs of hellhounds easily disposed by the army encamped in this place.

From the chatter, I gather new types of demons are appearing near the rift. Larger, more earthlike versions of hellhounds, and a half-golem, half-demon variant. Perhaps the demon king has some earth-elemental powers, since his minions does display earth-like features.

I wonder whether this has something to do with the mild shakes and tremors we have been feeling occasionally.

"Where are they?" Hendry is frustrated, though Meela is stable. It seems he is raring to get a shot of the demons, but is also torn with Meela’s present condition.

"Our friends will come back for us." Alexis assures him, "Its.. It's fine like this. A bit of a break from all this… killing. And maybe the hero’s power can help Meela."

Hendry scowls, but then he pauses to think.

"You might be right, Alexis. The hero’s sem-divine holy powers may be able to counteract the demonic rot."

Heroes and a surprise attack

Year 72 Month 12

The heroes arrive. Accompanied by an army of adventurers of three hundred. It is normal for heroes to have a huge group of tag-alongs, these people seek the glory and glamour of being associated with the heroes, but will probably be the first to flee should shit get out of hand.

The heroes themselves, five of them, are three boys and two girls, and they look no older than twenty. Or maybe slightly over twenty. The gods chose young teens for their demon killing tasks this time, and in a way, thats better than choosing high schoolers.

They ride into the makeshift camp, and one of them stops and stares in my direction. Though I cannot meet his eye, I could sense his probing gaze...

"Hmmm… I feel a familiar presence." One of the heroes mutter, and rides his horse closer.

"You were here before, hero?" An adventurer accompanies him, and asks.

"No." The armored hero places his hand on my bark, and I feel my body shiver a little. "Just... someone familiar... Hmmm…"

[Hero's sense]

The hideout shakes a little, and everyone freaks out. It seems this hero has some kind of magical touch, and my body reacts to it defensively.

The shaking causes Hendry to sigh, and he decides to goes out to talk to the hero.

"Hey hero."

The hero’s eye widen and stares at Hendry. "Hendry!"

The adventurer next to the hero raise his sword at Hendry. "Eh? Who goes there."

"It is fine. Lay down your arms. He is one of us." The hero stares at Hendry. "Hendry. It’s been a while…"

"Yes it has. Anyway, take your hands off the tree, and I.. I might need your help."

The hero takes his hand off. "Well, nice to see you, again."

Hendry pauses. And sighs. "Nice to see me? I take that means you stopped blaming us for her death?"

The hero shakes his head. "I’d like to think we have come to terms with it."

"Really?" Hendry takes a step back.

"We were all too eager. Too excited to be given this opportunity, this chance to make something of ourselves." The hero walks closer to Hendry.

Hendry pauses. "Really? Just like that?"

The hero puts his hand on his shoulder. "Yes."

And the hero punches him in the gut. Thud.

"Ugh! I knew it." Hendry groans in pain, but he recovers, and throws a punch back at him. The hero dodges.

The adventurers stare, "Uh, hero, should we do something?"

The hero, yells. "No. This is between me and him." They punch each other a few times, then it escalates, and they start throwing high speed punches into flashes, as both attack each other with their abilities. This cause the adventurers to stare at the high speed exchange of blows.

A few more heroes come over. "Max! Stop this."

Two female heroines shout, and Max, the hero jumps a few steps back, and that ends the barrage of punches.

"Hendry!" One of the heroines seems to cry a little.

"Hey." Hendry stops, and sits on one of my roots. The heroines runs over and gives Hendry a hug. "Been a while."

"We’ve been looking for you guys..." The heroine smacks Hendry on his shoulder. "Running off like that..."

At this point the adventurers ask, "Uh… who is he?"

Max laughs, "Ah yes, please ignore us. He is a friend. You guys go ahead, We’ll need to talk privately with our friend here and so, we’ll be fine."

Max started by elaborating... "You guys should not have left like that. We're angry, and we’re still sad. It still is a lump in our hearts. But we are willing to let it go, for on hindsight, we had a part to play too. We failed as well. We all did. I think a part of the way we acted is because we were angry at ourselves."

At this point, I'm confused at what their conversation is about, perhaps there is some historical bad blood.

Hendry nods, his eyes a little teary. "Heh... Water under the bridge now. Well, Max, like I was saying, I need your help. Do you still have anti demonic powers?"

Max thinks for a while, "Huh? I still do, why?"

Alexis, right on cue, comes out with Meela, she’s asleep and supported by Alexis’s levitation. "It's actually for Meela. She’s received some kind of demonic rot or maybe demonic poison. She’s weak and battling that demonic rot internally, and currently supported by a whole lot of healing magic. It.. it seems to be some kind of magic meant for... us."

The heroes gasp. "Meela..." Max runs over, looks at her, and holds her hand. He then proceeds to use some kind of magical ability on her, then their two bodies start to glow faintly.

The hero chants and mumbles a little, his palm glows like a monk trying to use some kind of mantra.

[Divine Touch]

The ability causes Meela’s body to glow in a faint light.

"Hmm.. I can’t remove it completely. It contains a strong taint of the demon king…. You are right. This is made to kill us, and this... this makes this demon king more dangerous than ever." He sighs, and everyone else follows.

Alexis holds Meela’s hand, who’s gradually opening her eyes.

"But I can suppress and weaken the effect of the demon king's poison, such that it will stop hurting her."

"Thank you." Meela opens her eyes, and speaks.

Max smiles. "Nice to see you too, Meela."

Reincarnators. These adventurers are reincarnators as well. Now that they are right next to me, I feel strange. Are these people from earth too? The kids, those few when I came so many years ago they have all died. These people, a similar fate probably awaits them.

What should I do?

Should I reveal myself as a reincarnator? But what good does that do, other than unnecessarily involving myself in the demon war.

There is also the question about the [Fires of Baal] that I had before, and how I can recover from it yet Meela fails to. Why? Is it because the fires are just generic demonking fires, whereas Meela's demonrot is a customised superweapon for reincarnators?

I have no answer to that, unfortunately.

At this point, I decide to wait and see. I mentally ping Alexis.

"So... may I ask what is happening? Are you going to leave with them?"

"Ah.. er.. right now there’s still three of us that is out there looking for a cure. 3 of us out there. Or maybe, there is no cure, and only killing the demon king will wipe away all traces of it. Oh, anyway, I think Meela’s in no condition to fight yet. Her demonic rot is still present but now weakened by a counteracting holy power that Max has, but until we know what that means in combat, we do not want to risk it. Meela's body seems to be fine, with no observable negative effects so far, but I think there is a high chance that whatever demon king magic it is, it will probably interfere with our divine gifts. So, attempting to assault the demons without being at full strength is folly, so we plan to stay back and attempt to regroup with our other 3 friends first."

"Uh…" Alexis is a lot more technical when it comes to magic. "Sorry can you repeat that in simpler terms?"

"So I think me and Meela will stay back. We will wait for the remaining 3, and then we will join up with Max and group. The fact that the demon king has a special weapon designed for us is... worrying."

The next week

Year 72 Month 12 Week 2

News and reports of the demon champions come in. The heroes, adventurers and the soldiers move out, towards the rift.

Meela and Alexis remain, Alexis is playing the role of Meela’a observer, and monitors her body’s condition.

Meela would try use her abilities and they discover that with the demonic rot still present, her abilities are weakened by about 20% to 30%. Alexis's hypothesis is right after all.

The camp is now a lot quieter, about 1,000 soldiers remain. These are the communication mages, the logistics coordinators, and just some guards to keep the stray demonhounds at bay.

Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

IThe heroes defeat one of the champions.

And then the next day, the camp is attacked.

Six large demons, part golem, part demon, lesser versions of the golem demon champion, accompanied by tens of thousands of the new rock hybrid hellhounds. The six demons, their bodies made of a mix of rock, lava, stone and flesh, their synchronised steps shake the ground.

How did they appear so suddenly?

Three at the front, three at the back, they have the camp cornered on both sides, and their sudden appearance sends the camp into a panic. Mages quickly send out requests for help. But any request will be too late, reinforcements will take some time to get to us.

Alexis and Meela look at each other. "How’d they get behind us?" In fact, that's on the mind of the thousand or so soldiers now trapped in the camp. But at this point, there are more urgent questions to be answered.

The two demon forces march on the camp. Their footsteps cause the earth to rumble. How did all the shaking go unnoticed?

I summon [Insect warriors].

My insect warriors appear, crawling out of my branches. Three of them, they will deal with the hellhound hybrids, and hopefully not die too easily. The humans scream when they see my giant insects, but did not attack it.

I try to survey the field of demons. I need to save my [super antidemon root strike] for the lesser champions.

The guards try get ready, as the demons close in.

The mages in the camp blast, magic spells at the golems, and the camp soon descends into a chaotic battlefield. The six giant demons are exceptionally resilient, enduring volleys of spells and weapons from the mages, and escaping with minor wounds and damage. Alexis and Meela both join the battle, using their special abilities to wipe through the hellhounds with ease. Once it get messier, Jura too joins in.

But there are probably tens of thousands of them, even with Alexis’s numerous AoE spells killing hundreds per shot. And it is from this battle I see the sheer OP-ness of these reincarnators.

Alexis could blast waves and waves of magical explosions, almost constantly. Meela, even with her weakened form, could swirl and twirl and her slashes somehow go through all the monsters like they had absolutely no armor and is made of chiffon.

It's rather ridiculous how they can sweep through hordes of demons like nothing.

One large golem is destroyed, a pointblank fireball from Alexis destroys its body.

One large golem passes me, and I take the chance to use my new [super antidemon rootstrike]. It shoots out of the earth and slices the golem in half. Whoah, I felt a little pleased with myself.

Alexis blows up another large golem. Throughout the camp, soldiers and mages battle with the hybrid hounds, and though they could beat them easily one on one, even one on two, the hounds have far larger numbers, easily ten times the number. So, mages and soldiers are dying. Even with Meela and Alexis providing tremendous support to the battlefield.

Meela cuts down one of the large demons with some kind of flashy slashing move.

My insect warriors seem to be perform as expected, they are able to take down about twenty or so hellhounds, before they get torn apart by the hounds.

Alexis manage to blow up another golem. And another fireball from Alexis blows up the last golem, she really is the true MVP in this battle.

"We did it!" Now, Alexis turn her attention to the regular hybrid hounds, and joins Meela and the soldiers in exterminating them.

Then the earth shakes, and sparks of lightning shoot out from the rubble of the destroyed giant demons. The lightning connects to all the other remains, and the remains of the destroyed golems float into the air and join together. Alexis sends a few fireballs instinctively, and it knocks some of the rocks off. But something is still pulling it together.

The remains of all the fallen golems and hounds merge into a giant six story tall centipede made of earth, rock and stone, covered in sharp jagged rocks and stone throughout its body. In a way, its part centipede, part porcupine. It then charges into the battlefield, crushing both allies and enemies alike in its charge.

Once it loses momentum, it tunnels underground.

"Shit." Alexis and Meela run, waiting. "It can appear anywhere!" They look around, but mostly at the ground, waiting.

The earth shakes, and it shoots out of the ground, killing more soldiers and also hounds. But the death of the hounds is beneficial to the giant rock centipede, as the debris and corpse of the fallen hounds would then merge into it.

It’s a scene reminiscent of giant spice producing sandworms.

Yet, it does not approach me. In fact, the moment it heads underground, I know exactly where it is, and it seems that my roots create a kind of hard rock that it is unable to tunnel into.

I could sense it, tunnelling from one side to another, trying to get through the ‘wall’. My roots is able to detect its motion, and predict it.

And I think I can beat it, I instinctively seem to realise that my root strike is more powerful underground. But it moves really quickly underground, shaking up the dirt above ground as well. Its speed is something I cannot deal with, but if I could just get it to slow down I think I can take it.

"Gather around the tree! The monster is unable to tunnel close to it." Alexis yells, seemingly coming to similar conclusion as me. She activates a weird console like magic, and calls all the surviving mages to her.

The demonic centipede surges out of the ground again, and Alexis yells.

"Now." The mages all coordinate a magical blast on the demonic centipede, and a few large chunks gets blasted off.

The demonic giant centipede tunnels again, and I try to follow its movement. Its really fast, but it slows down for a moment before it surge upwards. Thats the best time for me to hit it.

And it shoots out of the ground again, killing more soldiers and also hounds. I strike it with two [Root strike]s, and manage to knock a few chunks off.

The centipede regenerates from our attacks, rocks that we knock off would get pulled back, but I could feel that its magical energy balance dwindles each time. Defeating it means getting its magical power down to zero by blasting its chunks off.

It attacks a few more times, as I try to figure out the timing.

At this point, almost 70% of the humans are dead, and almost all the demon hounds are destroyed or absorbed by the demonic giant centipede.

Its between us and the centipede, now. The centipede splits itself in two along its length, and then both tunnel underground. Underground, the split centipede reconnects itself, become one very long and lean centipede.

And this time, it pops up out of the ground, and uses its now longer body length like a whip. Slamming into the soldiers, mages, and also into my trunk. It can't tunnel near me, but it can whip its body to attack the humans around me.

I feel my trunk shake when the body of the centipede slams into me, and some of the mages quickly let out a blast. Once again knocking some of the rocks off this demonic rock centipede. It pulls back, curling itself like a snake, and using its longer body as a spring to attack the mages and soldiers.

[Grand fireball]. Alexis activates her signature superpower, a blue fireball, and it blasts right into the demonic centipede.

It breaks and burns from the fire, but the momentum of the centipede’s attack still pushes through, and stabs Alexis right in the chest, and pushes her back, slamming into my trunk.

"Arghhhhhhhhhhhh---" Alexis screams in pain as her body is stabbed by multiple sharp rocks. Those same rocks are burning from her Grand Fireball, and it spreads throughout the Centipede’s body.

It flails, but still pins Alexis to the trunk.

Alexis, somehow still manages to cast another [grand fireball], creating a huge explosion right in front of it. It blasts almost all of the rocks at the head of the centipede away, but a skeleton of super hard rock remains, and it pierces Alexis's chests.

It flails, but does not want to let go of Alexis, so it pushes, and pins her body into the ground.

I use [constrict], holding onto the centipede so that my root strike can catch it, and then all my remaining [super anti demonic rootstrike]. They pierce through the centipede, and this time, together with a 3rd grand fireball, it successfully depletes its magical energy, and it crumbles, turning into ordinary rock.

Alexis explodes into a huge fireball, and then suddenly, a vacuum like effect appears, as all the fires swirls back and merge into a human shape, revealing Alexis whole and unharmed.

"Ugh." She groans, unharmed but very visibly drained. "I always hate using [Body of Fire]."

Meela smacks her on the back. "Thats why you're always the bait! Everyone aims for the mage!"

Reincarnators...

[You gained 8 levels. You are now level 100]

[You have evolved into an Ancient Soul Tree. The next evolution rank up is at Leve 130, if conditions and materials are met. You can still gain levels without ranking up.]

[Your following skills have been upgraded : Life support chamber]

[Healing powers upgraded]

[Secret hideout upgraded. Extra rooms, special purpose rooms and hideouts unlocked. Customisable branches option now has "External room"]

[Soul absorption upgraded. Soul realm unlocked]

[Symbiotic extension unlocked]

[Essence collection upgraded. Essence mastery and generation obtained. Customisable branch options now include "Essence generator"]

[Materials Obtained]

[Essence of giants x 1, Essence of starlight x 1, Essence of sword x 4, Essence of knights x 1, Essence of fire magic x 1]

Interlude - Level 100 & Soul realm

Level 100 and the rank up brings change, and a lot of benefits. One of the key changes is a UI change, as my interfaces become much more organised, and menus expanded. There are more tooltips as well, and information about my skills improved.

Size wise, the rank up brought about greater size and range. Twice as large, almost eight stories high, and my roots extend wider. And deeper roots, which leads to my discovery of how the demons appeared.

Deep tunnels. The rock centipedes dug tunnels deep beneath the ground, and used them to move their forces without beig detected. They covered the entrances, but these tunnels, their reach is well beyond my range, and perhaps even into the demon lands as well.

Valuable information, perhaps I can trade something for it.

The sudden increase in size overnight scares the humans, but they are too preoccupied with the dead to do anything. It seems to [camouflage] and [illusion] confuses them. With this new size, I have eight large branches, and the new skills allows me to set some of them as an [essence generator], creating essences of the moon, the sun, and nature. These can later be used as part of the forming process of the items and things I want to create as weapons. From the little I gather of the heroes and warriors, demons are generally weak against stellar materials, like metals of an asteroid.

My healing room too changed, and now it has something like a pod, where a body can be fully submerged within. Rebuilding bodies some day in the future. Attached is also a lab-like area, a small underground room filled with roots, pods, and other things, like a spawning pool.

I activate [soul realm]. I feel my consciousness shift, and I appear in a vast space filled with little floating lights. These, little wisps, they float and swirl around, and… they seem to whisper and chatter endlessly in a language I do not understand.

"What is this place?"

"This is your soul realm, and this is one of the strongest powers of a spirit tree." A wisp floats before me, it is different from the other wisps in that it is green, while the others are white. "Here, are all the souls of those who have died in your vicinity. Here, they lay dormant, resting, waiting..."

"For?"

"For their onward travel to the afterlife. Tree spirits, as the elves once advised you, are the beacons of souls, attracting those who died. You, also function as a pitstop, refreshing the souls, and souls who are stronger are more likely to make the travel to the afterlife, where will they reenter the cycle of life. Your very existence here prevents the presence of regular stray ghosts, but in turn, the ghosts exists all in and within you."

I pause and I look at this green wisp explaining all this to me. "And... you are?"

"I am Wisp, a creation made of the combined souls who did not make the cut for the journey to the afterlife, and my role is to support and guide the newly dead. I have existed within you, from the very moment you transformed into a spiritual tree. You have many questions, and I will answer them."

He first guides us to a tree filled with little lights, like fireflies in a swamp. "These are souls of the recently dead. The faint white ones are humans, and as you can see, its currently mostly humans, but we can also see that there are little souls with different colors, and these are the mixed race humans."

Wisp floats over to one black tree branch, with tiny little lights there, these lights are smaller than the other souls. They look like little blinking sparks on a dark tree.

"These are the leftover souls, fragments and souls that have degraded, or some that just do not want to be reincarnated. At their current state, they have lost their identity and awareness, so they become just a shell. So, they can be used to create things, custom familiars, infused into weapons, merged together… quite versatile, all in."

And after that, Wisp led me to another black branch that’s split in half.

"This is the [soul forge], where you can make even more things with the remnants, but it’s inactive at the moment, as you need to either connect to a magical leyline, or gain more levels such that you can power it yourself. It connects to the pod in your secret hideout."

I pause, and I ask, "Why is the soul realm a powerful ability?"

The wisp twirls. "The soul is at the core of power in this world. It is souls that gain experience and levels, and the body expresses that extra experience and levels."

"But why do people train their bodies then?"

"Because the body changes the soul. It is a feedback loop. A strong healthy body nourishes the soul, and vice versa."

"Okay. You said this is a strong ability. Why?"

"..." The Wisp pauses. And twirls around.

And it twirls and spins a while more, before it pauses.

"...because to change a soul, is to amend destiny."

Interlude 2 : Alexis

Perspective of Alexis.

The demon king is out for their heads.

She knew it. She felt it. Every battle with the demons, their eyes seemed to contain a deep, feral rage, all directed at them. Is it just how they always look?

Even when they are not fighting, it feels like she could sense where the demon king is. It’s as if there is always a cold wind that blows from that direction, but there’s no actual wind.

After the constant ambushes and attacks, she now also suspects, so can the demons. It's the only plausible reason why incredibly powerful demons appear where they are, and somehow, can always strike when they are apart.

"Its a coincidence, Alexis." Max waves off the idea. "They have hunter-demons and demon knights constantly tracking where we are. That's why they know where we are."

Maybe.

But is it?

As a mage, there is a logic to everything. This system, even if it does not fit anything from where she came from, has its own rules and laws. And those rules means all power must have some kind of feature or law which it obeys, including that of the gods’ blessings.

The blessings of the gods. The blessings, they offer some degree of protection from demons, they enhance stats growth, boosts experience gain for easier levelling. These are common knowledge, that heroes get perks like this, to make it easier to defeat the demon king. For them to gain the power necessary to destroy the demon.

Lately, she had occasional moments of clarity, and she now suspects the blessings do more than they say they do.

Her friends, those who came together with them. They all were headed for a cafe when the truck lost control and the huge container came undone, and slammed into all of them.

Their friends. After a brief meeting with the gods, they all woke up in this world, and her friends, herself even, went all in on this divine quest to slay the demon.

Heroes, her friends, and even herself. So engrossed with that goal. Such that all the death, pain, suffering, all just a side note. A number. The vast destruction around her, all they seem to do is enhance their resolve to destroy the demon king.

Its as if all of them heroes have been mentally altered, made immune to the destruction, and all that negative energy and emotions is funnelled into achieving their goal of defeating the demon king. Meela, even with her near death, went back to the battlefield happily, as if her brush with death never really matter.

Alexis did not realise this before, but lately, that brief clarity of mind. It’s only when she reread her daily journal, that she realised her own strange mental processes, the strange way she is reacting to all these senseless death all these time.

"We’re on the way back, Alexis." A communication mage walks up to her and passes the message.

Alexis nods. The heroes, all of the summoned, they will converge soon, back here, at the tree.

Alexis scribbles on her journal.

For the moment, destroying the demon king aligns to her and her group’s interest. After all, they are hunted. That sense, that ominous feeling that ‘the demons are coming’ still permeates her.

Wait. If her suspicions are true, the demon king will look for them, even before they are ready.

What would she do? What should they do? Can they keep running?

She glances up at looks at the tree. It’s larger, far larger now. And she feels… safe. If they had to fight, this is the best place for it. If the plan is up to her, they would fall back, and fight here.

Still, can the demons find them?

She sits, and closes her eyes. Stilling her mind, she concentrates on her breathing, the prickling senses on her skin, the beating of her heart.

And she searches. For a subtle signal, a presence of their own. Are they leaking some signals behind? Are they, like a nuclear bomb, leaking radiation which the demons can pick up?

If the gods had a hand in this, where would they do it?

If they could hide their presence, maybe, just maybe, they could deal a surprise attack-

"Alexis, are you busy?" Meela asks, she looks like ran.

"Ah." Alexis snaps out of her concentration. "Uh.. yes. I would like some time."

Meela nods, "Oh… Okay." She sighs, and walks away.

Alexis closes her eyes, and tries again.

Demons. Anger. Destruction. Fire. Death. Fields of dead men. The voices of all the grieving humans, saying the Demon King must be slain.

Alexis shakes her head. Not again. All of them, all the heroes get this every now and then.

As if the world reminds them of their duty.

She walks closer to the tree, and lifts a small wooden teapot. She pours herself a cup, and sips on it.

Tea.

And the voices go away.

The lab

Tree 9-3

Year 73, Month 1

Jura steps out of the green liquid pod in the lab. He’s been submerged in it daily, and undergoing… experimentation.

"How do you feel?"

"Fine, TreeTree. Did you do anything, my status is unchanged…"

"No."

In truth, all I do is look, at his body, in great detail. The first time he steps in, and submerge himself, the pod floods me with data and details. And it's fascinating. It’s like looking at the body of the person with an electron microscope and some kind of radio wave imaging machine.

It’s incredible, to see every strand of fibre, the organs, the bones. In a way, this is also the first time I have an actual idea how Jura looks like, outside of my somewhat pixelated spirit vision. The details, the effects of all the parts on his body, and how it influences his fighting abilities and magic.

Another thing I spend a lot of time on, on his soul, and how it interacts with his body. It is like the source of a river, higher levels result in a bigger source, and the water from this source flows into each body part, which then gives each body part toughness, and awakens magical properties.

And, in his body, as if there is a polluted drainage pipe, releasing dirty water into that river, and so each body part is not getting clean water.

I reach out to it, and then I knew.

It can be fixed. But I will need the right materials.

…

Later that evening I ask Meela for her help. If I could see Jura’s body in such great detail, I wonder what I would find from the heroes.

This request however seems to make Alexis a little suspicious, so she insists to be around as well.

Ah, there’s no helping it, so Jura guides both of them to the new laboratory underground.

"This… this looks like..." Both of them had a stunned look, as if they did not expect to see something like this… not in this world. A lab.

I recall only the elves been to this new room, different from the medical ward-like area that Meela once rested in.

Jura nods, and points to an open pod. "Please, if you don’t mind…"

Meela glances at Alexis, but then, "Okay."

Jura smiles, and then leaves the two heroes alone. Meela undresses and then steps into the warm green liquid, and then the pod slowly closes in.

Alexis stares on, cautious, but she looks like she is thinking.

And a torrent of data washes over me, and it stuns me for a moment.

"How long will this take?" Alexis asks.

"About two hours." I snap out of my shock, and start my investigation into Meela’s body, wondering what makes her tick.

First, physique. Her body starts of as that of a normal human, but as she gains levels, her body changes with it. Already I could tell she is about three to four times physically stronger than Jura, before any magic spells that would further push her into crazy strong territory.

Her skeletal structure tougher than steel. It’s as if she has an adamantite frame, and her muscles all store tremendous amounts of physical energy.

Then, the soul. Her soul is like a massive spring, with a two waterfalls from the aether pouring even more water into that lake, and it flows downwards like a raging river.

Yet, it is not fully clear. Right next to that spring, a small whirlpool, sucking some water away. It is now barricaded with some kind of energy, so only a small portion water is drained away by that whirlpool.

"This is taking too long." Alexis mumbles, and uses some kind of magic. "Is she alright?"

"Yes. She’s fine. A bit more." I could analyse and revisit the data later.

I reach out to sense that black whirlpool… and I feel an ominous presence. Demonic. It attempts to burn me.

Ugh.

I investigate the waterfalls instead, and I sense a kind of unknown power… perhaps divine? Or is it astral?

These reincarnators… their souls must have been modified by the gods that summoned them here. Their size and capacity far exceeds that of a normal human, if compared to Jura. But I would need more samples.

Alexis looks nervous, she does not seem to like seeing Meela in the pod.

"Ah. I am done." The pod’s doors opens, like a reverse venus flytrap, and Meela’s eyes open.

Alexis immediately grabs her. "Are you okay?"

Meela rubs her eyes a while and say, "I feel pretty nice, actually. It’s like a massage."

[Secret hideout - Biolab upgraded]

Oh.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I do. You should try it."

Alexis shakes her head. "Uh… never mind."

"Why are you worried? The tree saved my life, if it wants us to just dip into a pool…"

"No." Alexis turns. "If we are done, lets go out."

The two reincarnators leave, and I then telepathically reach out to Laufen, for her turn to dip into the pod.

And then I task Jura with a request.

"Capture a demon hound."

"Capture?"

"Yes. I want it.. alive."

"Really? Its teeth can chew through any rope or net we have…"

And a net appears next to him. "Woven from my bark and fibre. Should last a bit. Use this as well." I hand him a wooden container containing paralyzing sap.

Jura nods, and set out.

Around this time, some message spells bounced back and forth between the heroes, and both Alexis and Meela leave, together with the remaining army. It seems one of the nearby cities are under attack from a demonic army, so the rest of the heroes change their plans and head straight there instead.

And this is great, because the elves finally get to have their space again.

…

Year 73 Month 1 Week 3

Jura finally caught one. Its tough trying to find a hellhound that is in a manageable small pack, but he got it.

The hellhound lost four limbs, but is still barely alive.

"So… what do I do with it?" Jura looks at me quizzically.

"Bring in down into the lab."

Jura pauses. "Inside?"

"Yes."

He gulps, but carries it in. The rest of the elves look curiously, Laufen, Emile and Belle all ready for battle, just in case the hound tries something funny.

And Jura throws the hellhound into the pod.

My branches and roots, they move to wrap and attach itself to the paralysed hound, and its struggling stops. One of the roots administer a dose of sedation, knocking it out.

Then, I peer into its body. The body of a hybrid hellhound.

The first thing that I notice is the unusual nature of its body. A mix of normal flesh, but with a smattering of earth. Its made of a layer of flesh, mixed with a latticework of interconnected rocks, and this mixture is present throughout its body. Some parts, near its skull and its teeths, the rocks are much more present, and the type of rock appears to be some kind of compressed stone, that is magically augmented.

A thick layer of sap coats its major vessel, and this is how the paralysing sap disables this hound.

Then, the soul.

If the magic from Jura’s soul is that of a water tap, and Meela’s mana is a fire hose, this hellhound would be best described as a dried watering hole. Parched, dry, its body devoid of the natural mana.

Instead, there is a small red fire that hovers right above where the spring would be, and it emits a kind of heat that powers all the magical augmentation throughout its body. As I reach out to touch it…

Demon.

A pushback from that tiny fire. A… wall?

I keep pushing. The wall bends, its not strong enough to resist me.

And for a moment, I see a glimpse of a faraway place…

A red planet, a surface filled with fire and brimstone, a large glowing red stone.

And then the fire disappears. At that moment, any sign of life in the hound disappears, its like somebody pressed an off button.

Hmm..

Yet the hound is still there, as if its turned off, it’s body is floating, its four limbs still severed.

[You gained a level. You are now level 101]

[Secret hideout - biolab, upgraded. Additional pods now available.]

Two additional pods pop up next to the one with the floating hound.

It’s dead? Yet its body remain, perhaps the pod interferes with its natural decay into mana.

Jura steps in, wondering what is the sound he heard. It’s actually the two new pods that popped out.

"Its fine. The hound’s… dead."

"Huh."

"Anyway, good that you are here. Dip in."

Jura pauses. "Uh… okay."

Two days later, a horde of hellhounds appear, together with about fifty or so larger demons, their target is not me. But based on the strength of these demons shown to me so far, I can defeat this horde.

And so I did. A mix of [root surge], [super antidemon root strike] and [root strike], and Jura too participate in the battle.

A few of the demons survive, and Jura assists to capture them for my… experiments.

Year 73 Month 2 Week 1

[Rajjiv Nung has died. You gain 3 levels, you are now Level 104]

[Obtained skill : Lesser Holy Enchantment]

Huh. He died. That's strange, he is with the heroes, I would have thought he should be quite safe. Must be a rather fierce battle.

This actually also reminds me of the familiars I grant, and so I pull up a menu that shows all the granted familiars.

And it seems I have been neglecting them, so I call Jura and Laufen over, and have both of them show me their familiar forms.

A familiar allows access to the spells and abilities of that familiar, which is by and large based on their grantor. They’ve gained levels, Jura’s familiar is level 30, and Laufen’s familiar is Level 13. They manifest in many ways, usually depending on the user.

When they did, a prompt appears before me.

Jura’s tree familiar has reached the limit of Level 30. Do you wish to elevate the familiar to the next phase?

Huh.

"How long did it stay at Level 30?"

"Oh.. for quite some time already. My familiar reached level 30 during the last attack by the demon centipede."

"Uh… why did you not tell me?"

"I thought you knew?" Jura rubs his head.

Ah dammit. Communication breakdown. I need to get these elves to tell me more about themselves.

I mentally say yes to the prompt.

And Jura pauses, his eyes wide open. "Uh.. I did not even know a familiar can rank up! Wow I get to choose its next form!"

Huh. I know too little about familiars…

One of my branches has been converted using [customisable branches] into a room, but it serves its function as a jail cell, for all the captured hellhounds. On top of the "dead" hybrid in one pod, I subject the remaining hellhounds onto more investigation, and if I do not attempt to sense the "fire", it’ll stay "alive".

Year 73 Month 2 Week 2

Shake. The ground buckles, and bits of rock fly.

My roots, they attempt to hold on, but the shockwave that causes this is way too strong, so throughout the plains, the ground buckles.

Shake

Jura rushes out in the direction of the shake, I ordered him to look out for what causes it and retreat immediately. A part of me feels… afraid.

Shake, shake.

The earth keeps shaking, and as the day goes on, explosions get louder. Something is coming. Or a battle is coming.

The shockwaves propagating through the earth gets even stronger, and my rootnet is flooded with pain.

The rumbling continues even at night, and Jura runs to us in the darkness of night.

"No good! Three demon champions appeared. The heroes are engaging them in battle, but they seem to be retreating this way."

"Three?" That is far too many! Fighting one almost killed me, and knocked me out for weeks.

But can’t the heroes beat them?

"Did you see the heroes?"

"Yes yes. They are retreating here!"

"Why?"

"I don’t know. Maybe they are trying to lure them away from the cities!"

The explosions and rumblings continue. They seem to be fighting even when retreating, so whatever they are fighting can keep up with them.

"How far?"

"A day!"

Shit.

"What should we do? If three demon champions are here, can you hold them back TreeTree?"

"No. If they are anywhere like the giant golem earlier, I may not last very long. I can take a few hits… but it will be a matter of time before it kills me."

"But you are stronger than last time." Jura pauses. "Maybe you can take one. And.. maybe thats why they are coming this way. They need your help to even up the odds."

"Don’t they have an army of adventurers?"

Jura shakes his head. "I think they are either dead or they have fled. I don’t think any sane adventurer would want to battle three demon champions together. It's foolish, and only the bravest of adventurers would attempt it."

"And the world expects the heroes to?"

"Heroes have special powers! They are different!"

"This does not make sense. I thought they killed some of the demon champions already. How is there three appearing out of nowhere…"

Jura pauses. "Uh… I don’t know. I am guessing the heroes don’t either."

The earth shakes. More rumblings. I could feel it. They are going to be here in a while. Maybe less.

"What’s our plan?" Jura paces the room.

"If I remember correctly, a few of them can take one demon champion with no problems. So… there must be more to it. How many heroes did you see?"

"I couldn’t get a good look at them. Its too chaotic."

"Ah."

Three demon champions, if they are of a similar strength as the golem, its going to be a real challenge. They are going to be here maybe in about two hours, so the heroes must have something in mind.

Are they wounded?

How do I defeat these demons?

I look at the hounds in the lab, strapped to the pod.

"Jura, what’s known to be effective against demons?"

I actually asked this before, I recall the answer that there are weapons created by the heroes that have special effectiveness against demons. There's also natural weapons like the usual holy magic, or star weapons like metal swords made from asteroids.

Do demons have an off switch like the hounds?

If I could extinguish the fire in their body, they would shut down. Okay, following that metaphor, if their source of power really is that fire, would water therefore destroy them?

And so I test out on a hound, pouring my mana in through the connected roots. It enters its blank soul realm, and some of the mana evaporates in the process. Is it the heat of the soul?

But after the initial evaporation, I could see the fire shrink, and eventually its extinguished.

It works, for one. But from this I realise its slow, and not as effective as a simple strike. A strike would have destroyed that hound for far less mana. And if a demon champion is larger and more powerful I would not be able to do it.

The "dead" hound’s body cracks, the rocks on its body falling off like its shedding skin. And then, it convulses, or vibrates. It twists against the vines, and it starts to suck in mana.

My mana.

It twitches.

And it… stops. And I see… its body regenerate, the wounds heal, and its limbs and fangs regrow. The rocks that once decorated its fur is replaced with a strange, woodlike texture.

A shiver runs through me.

"Jura. Lab. Now!" Jura immediately jumps, and runs for the lab, armed.

He sees one of the hound. "Which one?"

And the hound opens its eyes. And… its green.

[Hellhound forcefully adapted into your subordinate minion with your natural mana, and has transformed into woodhound]

"Wait."

Jura eyes the hound, his arms grip his weapon. A hound should be an easy battle, but never could be sure.

The pod opens, and the healed hound crawls out. It looks at Jura.

I mentally command it to sit.

And it does.

It feeds on my mana to survive, and I could sense that mana link between me and this.. woodhound. Its a similar link to my summoned insects.

Fascinating.

[Skill obtained : Natural Mana Overwhelming]

But, no time to waste. I still don’t have an answer for the three demon champions coming my way. The earth still rumbles and shake, and the explosions can now be seen in the sky.

Think!

I have, familiars, essences, souls, soul realm, a few root attack variants, saps, leaves that can function as tea, wood magic and forming abilities, healing powers, spirit vision, a secret hideout wih a lab and healing chamber, insect warriors, rootnet, barkskins, defense, wood-shields, some other lesser defense items, and a whole list of passive stats buff.

Can souls and essences be made into a weapon?

Soul forge required to form high efficiency weapons.

Ugh. Not that. How about essences? Can I convert them into a weapon?

Currently, the essence of fire, essence of death and essence of starlight can be converted into a single use weapon.

Fine. Combine them.

Vessel required.

I would want to use it together with my [super antidemon rootstrike], so I quickly form a sharp pointy piece that will serve as the piercing edge of my root. With the piece of wood, the essences are then added to it, forming a sharp, three pointed wood.

The earth rumbles. And streaks of light can be seen in a distance.

"They are here."

Streaks of light in the distance now become explosions, and the heroes zoom toward me from the distance. Using some kind of speed burst, they retreat and dodge the explosions.

Three demon champions appear, a large golem, a huge horned stone centipede, and some kind of stone turtle with spikes. They stand in the distance, surrounded by a horde of lesser demons, minor golems, and a few other lesser centipedes.

The True Power of Heroes

Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

Heroes &amp; Champions

Eleven heroes. They run, leaving destruction in their wake. Explosions, deflected by barriers. Fires, blocked by magical shields.

The heroes, they try. Magical thunderbolt here, lightning blast there, and the lesser demons fall like flies.

Yet, there are easily tens of thousands of them, and only eleven heroes to stand against it.

The fan lady twirls, and she mutters a kind of chant. The demons attempt to disrupt her, but the other heroes cover her.

Swoosh. A blast from the sky, and hundreds of the demons, crushed instantly.

And a blue giant fireball streaks through the demon swarm, roasts all in its path, then explodes, killing a few hundred more

The giant tortoise demon stomps its feet, and the earth shakes tremendously, and a few dozen massive boulders fly at high speeds towards the heroes.

A wall of light emerges, disintegrating the boulders and also the the lesser demons in its path. An ability that both Hendry and Max use together, a holy wall of some kind.

The tortoise stomps its feet, and a few dozen more boulder fly towards the wall.

"Ugh." Hendry and Max both winces, "Its using up quite a lot of mana. Alexis!"

The heroes retreat closer, and Meela runs up to me.

"Tree Spirit, please aid us in battle!"

"What if I refuse?"

"Then the demons will kill you too."

"So, do you have a plan?"

"Yes."

The heroes retreat into a formation behind me, and start some kind of chant.

The horde of demons charge in, the thousands flood the fields. My insects and Jura together with my roots, form a protective layer, drive the demons away from the heroes.

The three demon champions seem particularly disturbed by the chanting, and so they join the battle. The centipede, the fastest of the three, is unable to tunnel too near, due to my dense subterranean root network, and so it chooses to attack us directly, trying to ram the heroes.

My wooden shields appear to block the centipede’s strikes, and they shatter on impact. But it is sufficient to deflect it away, as I land a few holy-enchanted root strikes on its side, and it knocks it back a little.

I have its attention, and it tries to ram me instead.

*wham*

That hurt, a few barks crack, I had all my defenses up, but not fatal.

Another root strike, this time to its body, and a big chunk of stone chips off.

It rams me again.

*wham*

It shatters the three layers of wooden shields I create in its way. Whatever the heroes are planning, it better work. The giant centipede rams me again, while smaller centipedes try to attack the heroes.

A white dome appears over the heroes.

They protected themselves with a magical barrier, great!

The smaller centipedes ram into it, but nothing happens. It’s ideal subterranean attack nullified by the root network, it can resort to ramming and swiping the dome with its stone thorns.

The larger champion centipede is still focused on me. It’s bigger than the centipede before, but so am I. My larger form flows into additional power for most of my abilities, so Jura and the heroes are right that I can hold my own against these creatures… for a while.

The golem champion is now in range, and it tries to punch the white dome.

[Constrict]

My roots shoot out of the ground and grab hold onto the golem champion, and the tangles hold his punch back.

I activate [constrict] on the giant demon centipede too, and it retaliates to it by twirling its body around my trunk. It coils around me, my branches, roots and vines also wrap themselves around the giant centipede, so we are both stuck. Or more like, the centipede is stuck.

It feels like a snake is wrestling with a stick.

Some of my roots pierce through its stone structure, after all it is made of earth and my roots are good at going through such surfaces. Elemental advantage, I suppose.

Still, the golem and centipede are still mostly unharmed, even though are trapped in a thicket of roots and branches, and the giant centipede all coiled around my trunk. The centipede took a few blows, and its struggling and trying to crush me with its stone body and gore through the trunk with the horns.

But the trunk and bark holds, with all the defense buffs that I have passively and the effects of the demon damage reduction.

The tortoise is the only "free" one, and it then bites through the vines that tangles the golem.

*chomp*

*chomp*

Sharp bites cut through the vines and roots, and one of the golem’s arms is free. And it punches. The punch slams into the dome, hard.

*wham*

The white dome cracks.

Crap. That’s bad. I need to protect them for a bit more.

A few root strikes pop up, hitting the underbelly of the tortoise, and knocks it back a little. However, it did not topple.

The golem raises its fists and readies its next full power punch.

Ugh, I use a [super antidemon rootstrike] together with the essence-edge, and it slams right into the golems chests. It explodes in a flash of starlight, and a huge hole appear in the golem’s chest.

It still lives!

It punches again, and I create multiple massive [woodshields] to block its strike. Its punch crushes the shields easily, and still manages to hit the dome. But, the shield did its job, the dome’s only lightly cracked.

The giant tortoise rams me instead, and tries to bite me with its beak.

*scratch*

I could feel a gash near my trunk, but it quickly heals.

The centipede tries to crush me even more, but my roots are also sucking out energy from its body.

The golem’s other arms are free, and it throws a few more punches at the dome. Once again I create wood shields and try to reduce the impact.

But only the first punch is weakened. The other few punches land squarely on the doom and it cracks even more.

The dome glows.

It seems, I have done enough. Now the heroes need to show what their plan is.

The dome pulses somemore, then it the glow becomes brighter.

Then, woosh.

A blinding light.

The dome explodes, and a massive energy wave sweeps outwards, like a nuclear shockwave. The wave disintegrates all the demons in its path, the lesser demons all vaporised, and in an instant, only demons surviving in the entire battlefield are the champions.

That’s just too overpowered.

The 3 champions though did not escape unscathed. The giant tortoise’s shell is half destroyed, revealing its charred in body, the golem’s arms and half its head that faces the dome is destroyed, and the giant centipede’s body is half gone too.

Yet somehow, the rest of us are safe. It seems like a special ability tuned to demons.

The heroes, they emerge from the dome, wielding shining weapons, and covered with an armor of light. They dash towards the demon champions, and in just a few flashes of light, all the demon champions are killed.

At that moment, the only thing that went through my mind is, "What the hell was that?"

Did I just tank three demon champions so the heroes can activate some kind of ougi power of friendship OP ability?

Indeed, the heroes in their light armor form make such quick work of the champions that I found it hard to believe they are even demon champions in the first place.

The heroes, having destroyed all the demons, regroup.

"Thanks for covering us. We gained quite a few levels from that."

Seriously.

Now that they are not jumping or flying from place to place, we get a better look at them, and the heroes new outfit actually reminds me of power rangers. Or maybe kamen rider.

"Meela… Did you guys unlock some special ability recently?"

"Yes we did! We got this special uh… [Heavenly Form], and a few special skills. That big boom thing is our [Starlight Nova]."

Whoah. How do I get that kind of power?

"Meela… may I ask you dip into the pod again?"

"Yea sure!" Meela says happily.

At this point, Alexis and Hendry grabs Meela. "No. Its our power, we cannot reveal it. Don’t do this."

Meela shakes her head. "Both of you are being unreasonable. TreeTree just helped cover our butts because this skill activation has a ridiculously long chant time, and now you want to deny it?"

Hendry and Alexis pauses, "Let’s decide, collectively. As a group."

Seeing heroes, and interlude 3 : Demon King Battle

Eventually, the heroes came to a compromise. Meela’s argument sort of won.

"Here goes." Meela dips in. The rest of the heroes look on, some with a rather concerned expression.

Alexis and the fan lady activate some kind of magical ability, and Meela glows somewhat.

"Insurance. Anything unnatural, we go in." The mage explains, and I deduce it’s some kind of magical short-range teleportation ability.

Max shakes his head, "If this Tree saved Meela’s life, and Meela has done this before, I really do not see why such precautions are necessary."

Hendry puts his hand on Max. "Yes. Yes he did. But our gift, our burden must be carefully guarded, and not put under the knife, or risk getting stolen. Precautions are necessary."

I sigh… These reincarnators are a pain, but whatever. "I’m not stealing it. I’m just having a look at it."

Meela shakes her head. "You guys, stop being paranoid. I want to do this, and we voted. I’ll be fine. I can dip in a pool."

One of the heroes poke in. "I don’t see the issue too. Our ability comes from the gods, and I highly doubt it can be easily stolen or copied or whatever. Just because you can see the schematics does not mean you have the tools and materials to create a machine."

Well, he has a very good point.

Meela’s fully submerged, and the roots and vines attach itself to her. And I could sense the data flowing into me, so I start to peek into her body.

What is most immediately obvious, is that the two waterfalls from the aether that once pour normal clear water into the lake of her soul, is now pouring a sparkly liquid, and it sparkles with starlight. I think this is what they refer to as, "star mana".

The black whirlpool also disappeared, and so the water that flows down into the rest of her body is strong, thick like that of a raging river. That starlight water pours and feeds every part of her body, and enhances her body’s strength even more than before. It’s kinda like those athletes taking performance enhancing drugs, really, only the change in muscle strength and texture is permanent.

The star-mana is the fuel that powers their tremendous destructive ability, and their exceptionally large and powerful soul is the engine, and the body is the vehicle.

Comparing Jura, Laufen to Meela, it is obvious to me that in every where, Meela’s soul is just huge, and as a result, their displayed potential is just absurd.

"Is it done yet?" Hendry asks, it’s about an hour in. They seem really anxious, but perhaps they are unaware how long medical procedures actually take. But I think it’s enough for me to gather all the data I need.

"Yes." The hatch opens, and Meela steps out. She shakes her body abit, and yawns.

"That was a very pleasant nap. I felt like your healing energies were all inside me!" Meela laughs, and she looks at her worried teammates, "See. I am fine!"

Alexis and Max both casts some kind of spell and then nod. "Yeah, she’s fine."

Max then looks up to the Tree, "Apologies for our reservations. Hope you keep whatever you discovered a secret."

"Honestly, all I discovered is your souls are exceptionally large, you have huge amounts of star mana pouring into your body, and the huge natural mana from your soul and the star mana changes your body into anti-demon superhumans."

All the heroes pause.

"Really, that’s it."

"Star mana?" Alexis pauses, and then she blinks. "Hmm… that makes sense."

"What?" The others turn and look at Alexis, the group’s wizard.

"I mean, it explains why we have such success against demons. Star mana is rare, known to be naturally effective against demons who are extraterrestrial in nature and yet our body overflows with it. It, it never occured to me that the special mana that we all get access to is just star mana. it should have been obvious, how our recent abilities have star-like names."

Alexis then sits in one of the many root-benches in the lab.

"Did you see our… gifts?"

"Hmm, I can’t identify which one is a gift without comparing to another body. It’s from your differences that I know what is what, else I have to assume all that is the same is the norm for everyone."

"Hmm. That is true. You need a control or reference to interpret the results." Alexis rubs her chin.

"Alexis?" Hendry walks over.

"Hmm.. nothing." Alexis then walks out of the lab, and eventually all the heroes follow.

Once they are out, I turn my attention towards digesting the new data I possess, now stored like a medical record.

Indeed, I am not lying when I do not know where the divine gift is, and comparing two reincarnators with different gifts would be one of the easier ways to find them, since one would naturally expect different gifts to appear and manifest differently in one’s soul.

The heroes, went back to their camp. Using some kind of magic they create a magical transportable inn that allows them to live in comfort, even whilst travelling. Ah, such a magic would put hotels and inns everywhere out of business, but the hospitality business can count on their lucky stars, as such magic is so far exclusive to heroes.

Later that night, Meela came over again.

"Hey Tree Spirit. I, I just want to apologise for my team’s behavior. We, we tend to behave like that, it’s all about us, and not anyone else. Everything just to further our own aims of beating the demons."

If I could nod I would. On hindsight, the heroes are pretty asshole-ish.

"You saved my life, our lives, and helped us alot. So I think we owe it to you, and I am really unhappy with what my team did. Even Hendry and Alexis are suspicious, and I.. I don’t know why."

Meela pauses and sits on one of my many roots. Some of them are flat on top now, to serve as tables and benches.

"Can I make a deal with you? Once we beat the demon king, I’ll come back and help you, even if I am not as magically clever as Alexis."

Hmmm, I’m not sure whether that sort of help is useful, but if I had to ask...

"Tree Spirit, do you have any requests?"

Hmm, "Accept my familiar." I gain experience if they die, so in many ways that helps me. "In fact, ask everyone to take a familiar, that’ll be enough." These heroes are going to fight more demons in the days after this, might as well profit out of it.

Meela nods, "Oh that is fine. Give me one first, and I can ask the rest."

I activate the familiar contract, and Meela accepts. She grins. "Ooh it's like a summon."

The next morning, Meela shows off her new familiar abilities to the heroes, and about half of them do end up accepting a familiar from me. The other half have their reservations, though. Oh well, better than nothing. Six heroes with familiars, and five without.

They left that afternoon. Perhaps it is better that way.

Experience from the demon champion battle

[You are now level 110. (+6 levels)]

[Secret hideout : biolab upgraded.]

[Wood shield upgraded. Steelwood barrier obtained]

[Constrict significantly upgraded]

[Absorption significantly upgraded]

[Obtained Tree ability : Subsidiary Tree]

[Customisable branches options expanded]

---

The Heroes’ POV. (Alexis)

After the defeat of the 3 demon champions, we were feeling quite good about ourselves. We gained on average 10 levels each, and all of us now at least level 100. We felt we are ready for the demon king.

[Heavenly Form]. We got that power when all of us hit level 90, and now after the demon champion, it leveled up, and we gain variants of that power. Max for example has [Heavenly Barrier Armor], and does not require that stupidly long chant time anymore.

And even that chant time is somewhat irrelevant, now that Freyas, our resident lady with a fan, gains a power called [Accelerated chanting - Heavenly form], which allows all of us to enter into the form within a minute.

The gods plan on winning. And we are accordingly equipped with powerful abilities and skills.

Yet, why did so many heroes die in the past?

Meela sits next to me. "Still thinking about it?"

We left the tree spirit a day ago, and Meela seems fine despite our initial disagreements on what we should do with the Tree’s request. After all, we do have a common enemy, the big bad that is the demon king.

"Yeah. Still bothers me."

"It bothers Max too."

We’re closer to the rift now, and it almost feels as if we can sense it.

The next demon champion is last spotted guarding one of the rifts, and our goal is to destroy all the demon champions.

Meela usually rides next to me. "Maybe it’s hidden in plain sight. Something… obvious."

Possible!

Some demons attack, we dispose them off easily. We are a group of 11 level 100+ heroes after all.

The journey towards the rift brings us to more demons, and in a way it’s good. THe more demons they throw at us, the higher level we get.

Two days later, we arrive at the rift.

It’s like a glitch in the system, like a damaged LCD monitor. What’s a beautiful view is jarringly broken by a large black gash floating midair, and demons are pouring out of that gap like water. Thankfully, just lesser hounds.

The demon champion here is a giant cyclops with multiple arms, and it plays a function more than just a guard. It’s also a guide for the new demons. It would point, and the hounds would go off in a direction.

We attack, and with our newfound powers we crush the demon champion easily. Max’s star-mana powered [Starlight Smite] skill weakened it significantly in a single blow, and a few hits later it collapsed.

The rest of the lesser hounds didn’t last very long. A few AoE spells, and these fragile hounds die.

The rift is still pouring demons out.

"Can we do something about it?"

Meela nods. "I’ll need help, but I think so." Meela starts dancing in a rhythmic fashion, and her body starts to glow in a myriad of colors.

"Meela?" I sense the presence of her mana, that special mana, and.. .something.

"I had a dream." She points both her swords at the rift, and two beams of light shoot out towards the rift. "When I was in the pod."

The light hits the rift, and it looks like the rift’s energies start to battle the light.

"In the dream, I see a rift close when some heroes channel their power into it."

The rest of us try, and indeed, together, our combined powers start to overwhelm the rift’s energies, and it shrinks, and eventually vanishes in a spark of light. The deserted, destroyed valley suddenly becomes quiet, and… normal again.

Demon King.

A sensation in our body, like an ice cube just rolled down our back. We feel it, the demon king. It’s coming for us.

All of us share a few glances. "It’s going to happen soon."

"How long, you think?"

I felt it again, that presence. I know it knows where we are. And I think I know where it is, too.

Max and Hendry both sit. "I have a feeling… maybe two weeks." Strange, I had the same number in my head as well. We all can feel it.

"Strategy?"

"Hit it with all we got. At range."

"It’s going to come to us with everything it got, too."

"Then I suppose we should intercept it, take it off guard."

"I could do that." Indeed, for a long range homing attack, I think I might have just the spell.

It took a day’s preparation, but we got into position. We could sense it, and if we can sense it, we can attack it.

Eleven of us concentrated our energies into a glowing white energy ball above us, this is our "opening act".

[Neutron Comet] A large building sized ball of light, containing our daily charged energy.

It zooms towards the demon king, flying at high speed, perhaps a few thousand miles per hour. The demon king is far, perhaps a thousand miles away, but this is tuned to that "sense" of him, and I believe I can hit it.

Impact, and we could feel as if the air shakes a moment.

And then, a retaliation. A wave of boulders fly towards us. We deflect them easily.

Still, it shows we can hit each other, so we resume our daily comet.

And the two weeks is over, every day we attack with a comet, and it retaliates with the boulders. There are lesser demons too, but we crush the, easily. And then, we have visual contact.

The demon king Andraas takes the form of a large flying fortress with multiple spider-like legs, multiple tentacle-covered buildings as its body, and has multiple spires with eyes. It’s as if a tentacle monster merged with a fortress to become this… monstrosity.

It’s angry. And it attacks.

[Demon King Andraas]

It’s unleashes a wave of rocks at close range, and these rocks are magically enchanted with demonic energy. And it’s spires and eyes shoot beams of energy at us.

"This is it." Hendry puts up a magical barrier, and yet it cracks when the beams hit it.

And we descend into battle.

It’s faster, stronger, and tougher.

The heroes and demon king is now in close battle, and the deserted valley is instantly filled with beams of light, flying rocks, and our counter-magics.

A jagged rock flies right past me. I duck.

I felt a shiver.

The jagged rock breaks up into a million tiny needle like shrapnels next to me.

[Fireform]

My body of fire burns up the tiny rock needles. And a few other rocks that fly my way.

The other heroes have their own ways of protecting themselves. Freyas with her wind magic is able to surround herself with a constant layer of magically enchanted high-speed winds that shred the needles.

"Help!" I turn to look at our gunner. A massive tentacle is trying to crush him.

[Holy Thunderstrike] A thunder zaps the tentacle, paralysing it for a split second, but enough to let him escape.

Max’s sword glows with holy magic, and he slashes the tentacle. It explodes, and the demon king’s blood get everywhere.

"I thought they normally look like… demons."

"Well, that’s what the record says. But this demon king has been doing strange things from the start, it has elemental hybrids!"

Hendry creates a huge barrier, and we take this moment to enter our [starlight armor] form.

The demon king roars, it’s tentacles and legs flail repeatedly at the barrier. It cracks, and it cracks quickly.

Will we make it? I wonder as we chant, the cracks appearing throughout the barrier.

Hendry nods.

A flash of light. The armor is done, and the barrier explodes, and a white flame burns the tentacles close to the barrier. But still, the demon king looks relatively unharmed.

The demon king’s spider-leg stab Max in the stomach. "UGH!"

"MAX!" Meela’s light sword cuts the spider-leg off, but a stab is a stab. He’s hurt.

Max’s blood drips onto his sword, and he enters a frenzy. He climbs onto the demon king’s spider leg and rushes forward.

"WE should get on the body!"

"Good point. There might be a heart somewhere we can destroy!"

The fan lady calls the rest of us to her, and she sweeps a fan. And a tunnel of wind appears, carrying us to the body of the demon king. The castle itself.

And the fortress is like a disneyland turned into a demonic playhouse. Tentacles everywhere, each house covered with eyes, and giant spiders roam the fortress.

"Should we just blow up this entire structure?"

"We could."

And we start attacking everything. The floor, the buildings, everything we see. The tentacles and giant spiders try to attack us, but it doesn’t do much.

We eventually bore a hole right into the fortress itself, and we found what we wanted. One of the many hearts of the demon king. Max, in his fury, slashes it, and it blows up, and tonnes of it’s black blood splash everywhere.

"One."

An army of human-sized demon knight appears as we look for the next heart, easily a thousand of them, accompanied by spiders. They are strong, but in our starlight form we crush them easily.

We found the next heart in a tall spire, and it is our gunner who blows it up.

The third heart is hidden in one of the many buildings. The fourth in a corrupted church, and the fifth in a barracks.

Each time, more and more demons try to stop us.

"How many hearts are there?"

"Nine?"

We found the sixth and seventh hidden in another set of buildings.

The demon king starts to lose ability to fly, and starts to crash onto the ground. More demon knights and demon champions try to stop us, but we destroy them easily.

The eighth heart is in what looks like a market, and then, the ninth heart is in what appears to be a corrupted garden.

"That’s it?"

At this point, we are all drenched in blood and whatever gunk the demon king is made of.

The fortress crashes onto the ground, yet the tentacles are still attacking us. But unlike before, their attacks seems to be blind flailing.

Then, the entire thing starts to shake. All the remnants of the demon king’s hearts start to float out of their remains to pool together into a black ball midair.

Meela laughs. "This is like a video game. It’s not even it’s final form!"

The tentacles, the eyes, the legs, they all melt into a black liquid that merges with the black ball. We throw every ranged attack at it, and we manage to incinerate some of the black liquid away.

And then… an eyeball appears on a black ball. An evil eye?

The next form is a massive eye. And it lets out a wave-ray of destruction.

Max and Hendry join together to put up a barrier, but that ray destroys it instantly. And then starts to burn us. Unlike before, it’s not a focused beam, but more of a shining light, and everything that is lit by that light burns.

"Ahhhh." We attack it, and cuts appear in its body. Yet it seems to be a partial liquid form that seems to nullify our attacks.

Meela uses a special ability and manages to jump onto it. And she stabs it repeatedly with her two swords.

The eye closes, and tries to turn and twirl repeatedly, but the Meela’s magical swords are deeply embedded into its’ body, and sticks even with it’s liquid forms. Still, it tries to shake her off, Meela flings around like a ragdoll.

She’s fine though, and she shouts.

"There’s something hard deep inside. I think we need to get it!"

That is the cue we needed, and our gunner takes out a special harpoon like weapon. It shoots a chained-harpoon and stabs into the eye. I wince a little at the imagery.

And he channels a kind of energy through the chain into the eye, and it blows up. Meela thankfully manages to jump away in time.

A round red crystal.

And it pulses.

And pulses.

And it starts to glow.

"Oh fuck it’s going to explode."

All of us huddle together, and activate all the defensive and barrier spells we have at our disposal.

It then blows up with the strength of a huge hydrogen bomb.

[Demon King Andraas has been slain]

Next generation

Year 73 Month 2

A few days after the heroes leave

The [subsidiary tree] unlocks 30 additional trees, and with that, using my natural tree spirit powers to "stimulate" plant growth, a small forest now grows out around me, and though all these new smaller trees look separate, but they are actually part of me. They are linked underground via rootnet, and they serve a few functions.

Each separate tree is actually one [customisable branch], and they collect a few things, such as solar energy, essences.

The immediate impact is of course, happier elves! Well, Jura’s happy for a few reasons. After his involvement in the battle with the 3 demon champions, though it’s mainly dealing with the lesser demons, he gained a level and successfully removed his curse. It seems growth can naturally overcome such curses.

But the elves are happy because the additional trees remind the elves of this place, before the humans, and before demonic stampedes that razed this place to the ground. Freeka, is once surrounded by forests, and the forests was once home to many natural creatures that the elves hunted, and many herbs that the elves used extensively in their cooking,

I have been trying to regrow the surrounding area multiple times, but each time a demon attacks, these regular trees do not stand a chance. These subsidiary trees, they inherit my resistances and defenses, and so, I think they will last a lot longer.

The 30 extra trees form two circles around me, 6 in the inner circle, 24 on the outer circle.

"It feels like a wall." Jura looks around.

"It is meant to be a wall." Indeed, a layer of demon-resistant trees is my idea of defense.

"These trees, do they do something?" Laufen asks, and Lausanne walks next to her.

Looking at Lausanne, Brislach and Wahlen, I decide to convert one of the inner trees into a playroom. The secret hideout did not have much space, given that it mostly living quarters, the food store, the lab and the medical area. Oh, and there is a small pool.

These elven kids have seen too much, and maybe a proper play area will bring a greater sense of normalcy into their lives.

The playroom has a small wooden slide, a few different wooden toys, some racks and small chairs made using my wood forming magic.

Ah children, what innocent souls.

Eh.

I wonder how a child’s soul would look like, and Lausanne is too small, so Brislach volunteers for the dip.

And a child’s soul, is the same as Jura’s, with one notable exception. The earth, or the body, is… soft. And the spring which pours out, seems inconsistent. Brislach’s soul at time surges, and then it shrinks.

"When do children start practicing magic?"

"Oh.. it differs by culture…" Laufen and Jura sits around and explain. "Some cultures believe it is best to let the body mature before attempting to draw out mana, and so the exposure to magic is late, like their mid teens. Some cultures believe it is better to be exposed early and let mana flow more freely in the body."

"And different societies expose them differently, its not as if there is one standard way of doing it, as the bodies of different people are very different. People may learn the same spell, but the body’s elemental preference, stats can change how that translates. In fact, the only so far somewhat uniformly agreed skill that appears the same way is the most basic of spells… spark. And from what I hear, that does not apply to heroes!"

Hmm.. I suppose the shape of body, the way that water flows from the soul to the body makes that difference.

Wahlen’s next, and indeed, once he dips in, I get a notification.

[Obtained passive skill : soul grading]

And indeed, it is a skill that sort the souls into general grades, and what I see is the both Wahlen and Brislach are graded as a range of rank 2 to 4, where Laufen, Emile, Bell is rank 3, Jura is rank 6. The grade range for the 2 children seems to imply that children’s souls are still flexible and subject to influence.

Actually, looking at all this I now wonder what am I?

I am a tree spirit, but I do have a soul, and I wonder whether it is possible to look at myself, the way I peek into others?

Nope.

I can’t see myself. Though, I do have a wide array of menus and measurements. Oh well, maybe someday I will get some kind of reflection-ish ability. But menus are supposed to be a lot more accurate, after all they quantify everything into a number or a "status". But this recent experience does draw some limitations of menus. Numbers are rigid, and yet the vision of one’s soul, and that notion of a flowing water, it explains how everything is linked, and how the body feeds back into the kind of energy produced.

Anyway, back to the children, and my new found tree-mates.

With 30 extra [customisable-branch], and the new options for them, the innermost trees are reserved for elves, so for the inner 6 trees, 1 is a playpen for the kids, 2 is some extra rooms for the elves, and perhaps future visitors, such that they don’t get inside me, and I left 3 empty for now, since the process of changing one occupied customisable branch to another type takes a good month, even though the first change from blank takes… a day.

As for the other 24, I set one as a kennel for the woodhound, 10 for essence extraction, 4 as mineral processors, 5 as housing for insect warriors, which as a result, spawns an additional 15 insect warriors in my service, and 4 unused. Perhaps I’ll get some kind of defensive option, which the remaining 4 can be used for.

I set a lot of the customisable branches for essence extraction, because wisp claims that essence is one of the key materials for the [soul forge]. Still, even now it’s not operational, the soul forge needs a power source.

The elves now walk about their expanded "safe area" protected by the 2 layers of trees. Jura takes one of the extra rooms, and the two young elves, Emile and Belle takes the other room. Laufen and the children continue to stay in the secret hideout. An unfortunately, the toilet and washroom is still in the secret hideout. Perhaps a common public bath can be made later on.

"TreeTree, will these rooms grow?"

"Maybe? I don’t really know." Perhaps these trees can level up and I can give them more options. But I think it is quite unlikely as they are connected to me.

"Ah oh well." Belle shakes her leg on her new mattress. In the room the 2 girls share, there’s 3 single beds, and a few cabinets. It’s fairly large, and there’s windows out to the main tree. In a away, these rooms look like they are carved out of the trees themselves.

Emile too checks out her new cabinets. For once she can move her clothes out of her chest in the hideout, into proper cabinets.

"You think the heroes will defeat the demon king?" Emile sits on the other mattress.

"Yea, of course they would. They are heroes!"

"Not as good looking as I hoped though."

"Well, I guess history paints heroes with a whole lot of makeup!" Belle laughs and rolls on her new bed. The mattress is made of old clothes stuffed inside.

Emile stands and looks out one of the windows, to see a few of the new subsidiary trees. It’s home to the giant beetles, and a few of them are resting. The home of the giant beetles, these giant trees are hollow within, and contained inside are nectar which these beetles feed on.

She felt a little tingle, perhaps an instinctual fear. It’s weird to be so near these giant beetles, but they are minions, creations of the Tree Spirit.

Jura walks in. "Ah, the design is the same."

"Oh Jura."

"Settling in already?"

"Yeah. Finally a space outside!"

"Yeah, tree spirits are amazing." There are other tree spirits around the world with similar powers, and some of these very ancient tree spirits managed to elude the wrath of the demons by ‘escaping’, by creating mystical forests that are able to disappear temporarily. The methods the denizens of the world used to survive and outlast the demons are varied, some choose to disappear, some choose to constantly move.

Year 73 Month 3 Week 2

[Demon King Andraas has been defeated]

[Maximilian Powell has died]

[Meela Adams has died]

[Hendrick Mathers has died]

[Freyasian has died]

[Gunnar Forrest has died]

[Peters Schmiel has died]

[Fang Wei has died]

[Omar West has died]

[Sally Ann Courtlass has died]

[Reese Witherfork has died]

[You received 10 fragments. You now have a total of 66 fragments]

[You gained 4 levels. You are now level 114.]

[Tree Familiar abilities upgraded]

[Skill : Defensive dome obtained]

[Customisable branch option unlocked : Shield Generator]

[Soul Tree range greatly expanded]

It started with a set of popups, and then I had a very, very bad feeling, and I asked all the elves to hide. They didn’t know why, but they trusted me commands. I activated all the defensive measures that came with the higher levels, and indeed, there is something.

There is a small delay, about an hour, but then it happened. A very strong wind swept across the entire area. It’s like a shockwave from a faraway explosion, and with it, searing, hot air. Thankfully, it seems to have weakened considerably by the time it came here.

"What the hell was that!" Jura exclaims, and looks at the other elves.

"The demon king died. And… I think some kind of massive explosion happened."

"OH!" The elves clap their hand. "That’s great news!"

"And the heroes died as well."

"Oh. That’s sad, but that’s great news too!" Jura frowns, and then laughs.

"What? Why?" THe other elves look at Jura.

"Surviving heroes tend to create political chaos after the demon threat is nullified. Actually, quite a few of the human kingdoms and empires we see today are descended from heroes. So… heroes, while necessary, do create a whole lot of wars and fighting."

So what next?

"What would you do to prepare for the next demon king?"

The elves pause.

"Uh…"

Wait. I thought elves being long lived tend to plan things out.

Jura and Laufen glance at each other. "Well, we’re concentrated on our day to day lives, training, or looking after the kids, that we don’t think much about the next demon king. Kings and emperors, heads of priests worry about such stuff."

That somehow reminds me of regular people stuck in dead end jobs, unable to see the bigger picture because it’s deadlines after deadlines at work.

"And even if we thought about it, the demon king is so powerful that whatever we thought isn’t going to work."

Well, fair. If it’s not something you have the ability to change, you don’t worry about it.

At this point its the children that speak up. Brislach and Wahlen laugh and say, "if we could be heroes, then we can beat the demon king!" That’s actually the ideal. If we could beat the demon king, then we need not worry about the problems that it creates.

And if I want to try that idea, I’ll need to get my [soul forge] online.

Year 73 Month 3 Week 3

The death of the demon king takes a while to get out, not everyone gets a nice notification in their menus like I do. It seems that the place where the demon king perish, is warped by the mixture of his demonic magic and the natural magic in the area, and creates special mana crystals known as "Daemolite".

Daemolite is a valuable mineral, for it only exists at the places where the demon kings has died, and the amount of such mana crystals created is finite. But, it’s valuable for it’s ability to store mana in large quantities, and is therefore valuable in high-mana requirement spells, rituals and generally as a source of power for large, long range weapons. Even adventurers also use them as a sort of a reusable mana potion, as they lack of pains of potion-sickness, as these crystals merely store their own mana, which they can withdraw later on.

And so, the period immediately after the demon king’s death is usually a mad rush to the demon king’s site, to harvest these minerals. It is for these reasons that some adventurers have a secondary mission given by their countries, which is to observe and inform their benefactors the location of the demon king’s demise.

Yet, mining such minerals, which usually appear as crystalline structures on the surface, is fraught with challenges as well. The dense mana pool tend to attract leftover demons, and also large monsters.

Daemolite is valuable, but what gets kings and countries to send large armies to seize control of the area, is for a very rare thing, the last remains of the demon king, is a small finger sized horn, known as the Horn Of Eternity. Ground into powder and consumed, it restores one’s youth, extends one’s life significantly, and depending on compatibility, gains access to a special type of magic, known as chaos magic.

In an age where one’s life is finite, agelessness and youth is very much desired.

And, we have our first human encounter again.

"Airship!"

Oh, a magical airship. It seems those exists in this world after all. It’s a small one, and it zooms ahead quickly.

At this point, Jura looks up. "That airship…"

"Huh?"

"They belong to the Salah kingdom that attacked us."

Ah. That’s a kingdom I don’t want to benefit from this entire adventure. Hmmm, but I can’t attack it at range, my root strike doesn’t fly so high. If only I have some kind of lasso, but I’ll work on that next time. Perhaps flying insects too.

But for now, I think my fruits can hit it, if I shoot them with it. Perhaps I can create explosive fruits next time, like explosive mangrove seeds. Maybe next time, this system has a way of creating things I think about somehow.

I create a bunch of corrosive fruits, and right when it fly overhead, I unleash a huge barrage of them. They hit it underneath, and it shakes midair, and starts to crash.

The airship shakes, and somehow manages to perform a controlled landing, and about six men pop out.

"Huh what the hell happened?" One of them came out, he seems like a fairly experienced adventurer.

"We are attacked. Something hit us with these things." Another guy points at the remains of the corrosion fruits stuck at it’s bottom. The hull is riddled with holes.

"There’s only that bunch of trees. Something is in there?"

"Yea."

"Let’s go check it out." The six men draw their weapons and approach the outer trees. And as they come a bit closer, my roots pop out, and wrap around their bodies like multiple pythons.

They scream.

But my roots and vines are able to hold back a demon champion.

They struggle.

Still, my beetles pop out and bite off their weapons.

Weaponless, and restrained by vines, I wonder what do I do with them. Kill them?

At that point, I wonder whether are all men of the kingdom of Salah the same. Maybe these men are unaware of the atrocities their fellow men committed.

"Tie them up and interrogate them. Find out what they want." I mentally speak to Jura.

Jura takes a bit of my extra-strong paralysing sap and makes all but one of them drink it, and it causes the five men who had a taste of the bitter sap to shake and convulse like they are electrocuted.

The last man, the oldest and the one who looks to be in charge, stare at Jura. "What the fuck are you doing!"

"You belong to the Salah Kingdom, and they destroyed this village some time ago. I’m just taking revenge."

The man’s eye widen. "I have nothing to do with it."

"Really?" Jura shrugs. "That’s what everyone says. But the sins of the nation are shared by every citizen and follower of the nations. I might spare your life is you’re cooperative, but otherwise I’ll kill you."

The beetle carry the remaining five men into a wooden cell, one of the extra [customisable branches]. Essentially it’s a room, but with no windows and a door that only can be opened from the outside, and vines inside that holds onto their bodies.

"So.... do you want to cooperate?"

"Fine. What do you want?"

"Good."

The group of beetles then transport the damaged airship into the area between my main tree and the sub-trees. I’ll have to take a look at them later, the idea of having my own airship is appealing, even if I can’t use it.

Year 73 Month 3 Week 4

The adventurers are alive, and my routine involves putting them under the microscope. There are certain differences in the human body compared to elves, and this is most apparent in the nature of their "water". The elves have a very slight greenish tinge to them, and this it seems leans toward a nature-based magics, and makes it harder for them to use magics that contradict this natural disposition, whereas the humans generally have pure, clear, colorless water.

After a week of going into the pod they’ve gone slightly crazy, and it seems they are hallucinating. Perhaps it’s the sleep-inducing elements that I inject into them via the nourishing branches.

"Are we going to keep them here forever?" The younger elves are complain, but put up with it because they are monitored by beetles and restrained by the vines.

Well, I plan to dispose them, eventually. But for now, they are useful. If the soul forge is that powerful, understanding this is key.

Jura grins. "I would like to fight them one on one."

Hmm, maybe I could set up a match between Jura and them, and let them fight for their fate. But what if he loses?

No, if he loses, I have a problem.

"Fine. IF they win, they go free."

Jura gulps, but he is the best fighter the elf village has, with all the additional levels from the recent battles.

"Let them know, one on one, if they win, they go free, they lose, they die."

The adventurers are more than happy with such challenges, and so they agree. So, the next day, the captain faces Jura, outside the ring of trees. I’ll still be able to easily kill them with a root strike, so I’m not too concerned.

The battle starts with a staredown, the captain and Jura stares at each other, and readies their weapons.

"Start." Laufen, flanked by about six beetles, start of the match. She shakes her head, this is a silly men thing.

The two men starts trading swords, but it’s easily clear that Jura’s a lot stronger. I figured as much, as my investigations into his body doesn’t suggest anything special.

The adventurer tries a few dodgy tricks. A poison dagger, a random hidden weapon, and it fails. Jura as an elven warrior has fought adventurers many times in the past, so such tricks are not new.

And a slash, the battle ends. All in, it’s mostly posturing and sensing for a good 3 to 5 minutes, the actual fighting is like for 5 minutes and that’s it.

So, the adventurers will die.

Year 73 Month 4 Week 2

Some peace and quiet. It’s lovely. Rather than killing them with a root strike, I felt like trying something different so I used [absorption] on them, and drain them into nothing but a husk.

With the new weapons and items collected from the adventurers, the elves can now practice different kinds of fighting, which they will need to do eventually.

My multiple essence generators are producing well, but I think I’ll need new skills and abilities soon. And one alternative to the [soul forge] is to power it myself, but that would require a tremendous amount of energy, and so I’m exploring how to store energy, the solution came in the form of a potato.

[Tree ability : create tuberous storage]

A potato that stores energy.

Customisation and crops

Year 73 Month 4 Week 3

One tuber for every [customisable branch]. So for a total of 40 potatoes, given that my main body grown and has 10 customisable branches now, and 30 for each of the subsidiary trees. These standard sized potatoes is also now my standard unit for energy.

The "energy cost" of my [soul forge] activities will be measured in "potato units" (PU).

And we see a group of… returning refugees.

Dislocated by the demonic invasion, these men and women seek to return to their old home, to rebuild, and to see what’s left. Their expression a mix of fear, excitement, relief, and worry, to return, there is a lot to think about. They probably lost a lot to the demons, and yet they still want to return. They however did not get too near, and mostly just went on their journey.

"I wonder how are the rest of our village?" Laufen sits at one of the flat roots that link the main tree to the other tree. Jura’s opposite her.

"They are in the elven kingdom, I’d like to think they will be fine." Jura nods, but he probably is being optimistic. Not many survived the journey, and to restart in a foreign land is hard.

"Do you think they will come back?"

"If they know what we have, yes." Jura pats the flat top of the wood. It’s like a table now.

There’s a lot of things to do, though, and one of it is for me to make contact with other… spirits.

To further extend the range of my [local area rootnet], I would need to engage in some infrastructure ‘projects’. But of course, it is a difficult exercise, so it’s important to locate other spirits first, and then attempt to link up.

The elves unfortunately do not remember where is the nearest tree spirit, and it is possible not all tree spirits are "known", though it seems that those attuned to nature can generally sense it, and so, I wonder whether I can sense it.

And I get pulled into the soul realm.

It’s the Wisp. It seems it can pull me in here whenever it wants to.

"Hello." The wisp floats, surrounded by multiple other floating souls… They glow like little balls of white light, orbiting the wisp.

"Oh. Hi Wisp."

One of the little balls stop and float right in front of me. "Tree Spirit."

"Huh?" Oh, is this like Gewa? I take a better look, and this ball is.. different. It’s glow pulses, and the color is bluish.

"One of your heroes. Unlike the others, there’s something holding it back from returning to the gods."

"So, you are?" Heroes? Ah well, heroes are supposed to be special, their spirits belonging to the gods.

"Meela. Died."

How?

"Her soul’s in pretty bad shape, whatever caused the death is… really bad. Souls, even those of the gods also naturally decay unprotected, and it’s actually amazing it made the journey here." The wisp floats. "You’ll need your soul forge to repair her back to normal."

"Why?" I ask Meela’s ball of light.

"Promise. Help. Tree Spirit."

"My guess is it followed the path of the familiars attached to it, else it would have given up and return to the gods… She holds rather strong emotions of ‘debt’ to you, so she returns."

Ah. It’s a bit like Gewa’s case, but in this case it’s due to her promise. I’ll need to figure out how this works better.

"Okay… will it decay further?"

"Nope. Now that it’s in your soul realm, the decay stops. But to repair whatever caused the damage to her soul, you’ll need your [soul forge]."

"I see." It seems everything related to souls must start with having a functional soul forge. "Can I ask what happened?"

"Demon King. Explode. Die." Meela’s soul bobs up and down.

Oh okay.

"I think that’s all it can manage for now." The wisp stops me from going further. "You can talk to her again tomorrow. Her soul need to get ‘recharged’ now."

The wisp then moves away, and the other souls follow.

"The rest are the other reincarnators?" I ask, noticing the other souls, but they do not look like Meela’s. They look ordinary.

"No. Just random souls that died within your range. You get a lot of these." Kind of like a magnet that pulls souls towards me. Or is it gravitational field?

"Doesn’t these souls have information I can use?" I mean, if they can talk like Gewa, that means I get a constant stream of information as long as people die!

"Maybe, but you need a soul forge to squeeze it out of them."

Seriously! Must everything be dependent on a [soul forge]?

"No, you can also get a skill, but you’re not there yet. Spend more time in the soul realm, you might learn something." The Wisp bobs, and then wooshes off.

Year 73 Month 4 Week 4

Refugees! And adventurers. They have somewhat aligned interests, refugees want to return to their old homes, while adventurers want to check out what’s left behind. Perhaps from the many demon battles, those who perished leave valuable items behind, useless to demons, and they need the refugee’s knowledge of their areas. Perhaps they are here to raid any abandoned castles or stuff.

There are about four batches of refugee humans, and then one odd lizardman. Too bad the lizardman didn’t get close, I would love to put him under the scope. And they mostly avoid me. It seem a gigantic tree surrounded by two rings of trees is scary!

I did some thinking and I came up with three threats which I need to prepare for.

The first threat are the nearby kingdoms, their adventurers and armies will seek to restore their rule over the land, and that will include coming back here and claiming this place. I will therefore need to prepare for an army, easily larger than before. And this will include their adventurers as well, that may see myself as a prize, or a bounty.

The second threat are the non-demon monsters. I had it easy with my various buffs against demons, but now that the demons are gone, we are back to the regular monsters. I recall I can handle most of the regular ones, but if there are greater monsters, of which the abilities are unclear. There may be dragons, or monsters of that level, which may now be attracted to my larger size.

The last threat is obviously the returning demon king. From the past trend, it looks to be a ten year cycle, and I’m not sure whether ten years is enough to prepare, so I’ll also want to know whether I can somehow influence the return of the demon king, perhaps the rift sizes influences the demon king’s return, or something. If I can figure out how to push the time back even a year or two, that may allow more options, maybe even push it back indefinitely.

The kingdoms are the immediate threat, of course, and I would like to get back at the Salah kingdom for what they did to the elves. So, dealing with a conventional army, I would need a large amount of area effect abilities, a standing army, perhaps in the form of a large beetle army, or some converted "woodhounds", and some camouflage or ambush-like abilities to take out unprepared forces.

It seems the political situation for most nations is held together by the big bad guy, the demon king, and once it’s dead, the cracks in most nations tend to emerge, so the period after the demon king is usually followed by all sorts of rebellions, coups, power grabs and so on. I could offer protection from demons that these kingdoms cannot, and that’s a strategy to gather "supporters" and rebuild Freeka.

For non-demons, it’ll be on the elves. I’ll need to get them to the point where they can handle monsters, but dragons or other powerful flying beasts, if I ever encounter them, would bel a headache. My anti-air options are limited, my fire resistances may or may not apply against dragonfire, and I hope I don’t have to find out.

For demon kings, I honestly don’t know where to start, but first of all, I need data. What has been written about demon kings in the past, and that means finding libraries, scribes, historians, other tree of knowledges, if there are such things.

"TreeTree." Emile snaps me out of my thoughts. They can call out to me anywhere around my main tree, and somehow I can receive it.

"Yes?"

"Can you put your smaller trees anywhere, or must they be next to you?"

"Good question." I didn’t think about it, the moment I got the ability I just instinctively put them around me.

At this point a popup appears on my menu.

Subsidiary trees can be placed anywhere within your root network. Each subsidiary tree also extends your root network.

It’s like a build-range thing strategy games have. I should have pylons.

"Why did you ask, Emile?"

"Oh, I thought it’ll be cool if we could like… have a room to stay at the end of every day’s journey. If we were on a journey. I’m just daydreaming. Haha." Emile laughs and rolls on her bed. "Or maybe the trees can become a wall or something…"

Hmmm, spacing out the trees like a electrical pylons is interesting, since my vision is shared by my trees after all.

"Or maybe they’ll be like the magical twin-trees of the old Ellara. There’s this two spiritual trees that are apparently twins, and they have a connected portal that allows a person to move between the trees."

Well, thanks for the idea Emile!

Year 73 Month 5 Week 1

I’m trying to find out whether my leaves can act as some kind of energy generator since I discovered the potato storage. In a way, a solar-panel - battery combination. I mean, in a game-sense, I think it’s possible, but I’m not sure what I’m missing to upgrade them. There should be a more "efficient" and higher output design and construction.

Leaves after all generate "food" via photosynthesis, and the tubers act as storage of the food, and if the leaves can produce more, it’ll be faster to refill the tubers.

Maybe I’m missing certain kind of minerals.

I’m also stuck with the soul forge, but at least I know what I’m missing.

"To fire it up for the first time, 1000 potato units (PU). Subsequent use depends on the type of forging or change you are making." The Wisp floats. I like that he uses my terminology. From what I calculate so far, I have 40 potatoes underground, and each of my leaves and trees generate 1 PU as well, so if I use my existing production and release my stored energy I can hit 80 PU.

920PU to go. I need to figure out how to close that gap. The elves, using their mana can each produce about 1 to 3 PU worth of energy, so their contribution is relatively negligible.

And now that I have the potatoes, I’d like to compare against the storage capacity of this daemolite that everyone’s looking to get.

"There’s a fair bit of souls coming." The Wisp bobs and floats. My soul realm lately looks like a firefly park. I wonder whether there’s a capacity. "No. There’s no limit."

"If I kill someone, do I get their soul?"

"If they are strong and hold strong emotions against you, no. Otherwise, there’s a chance you will. Most souls lose their worldly bindings and don’t really care which spirit tree or spirit being captures them."

"Why don’t all the souls float back for my familiars?" I wonder whether he knows, but I suspect it’s a chance thing. "Like Semara?"

"There’s quite a bit of… randomness involved. Proximity, luck, the manner of death, whether there are other soul trees nearby… a lot of things influences it. The ideal situation to absorb a soul is to repeat Gewa, ie, for them to die right next to you, on their own, next to you. Killing them, or a painful death reduces that odds. In their case, their actual soul still needs to go on to their next life, but that "waiting time" is spent with you…"

"So will Meela move on to the next life too?"

"She should, as it is the way of the world, but… otherworlders are special. I am not aware of whether their rules are different. In any case, the damage her soul received prevents her from moving on, so you have time to."

Ah… so there are plenty of souls that are damaged, and unable to move on. A gruesome death tends to damage the soul, and releases dark energies that may create hauntings or manifest as evil spirits, but the presence of spiritual intermediaries, such as tree spirits, exorcists, evokers, spiritualists or certain types of places of worship is able to contain said energies and manage the souls.

Year 73 Month 5 Week 2

It’s getting hot.

The small patch of crop the elves plant around the trees are doing well, augmented by my presence. Using some wood magic to fashion a set of wooden pots, there are multiple pots hanging around all the branches, and also on the floor, and they contain things like chillies, herbs. There’s also a small patch that grows edible potatoes, and corn.

Harvest should be soon, at least for this batch.

Jura’s practicing his tree-jumping thing. It seems elven archers used to jump from tree to tree to get into position, and previously with only one tree, he didn’t have anywhere to jump.

The kids want to follow what he’s doing, so Laufen keeps them in them in the playpen. Lausanne’s at that mimicry stage after all, and even with her tininess she’s trying to climb up the trees.

And I acquire a new skill.

[Customisable branches : Harvestable Products obtained. Options are : Cotton, Maple Syrup, Oranges, Olives. Expanded options will be available with higher levels, or when new types of fruits are studied in the biolab]

Ah man. I don’t feel like using the inner ring trees or the main tree’s available branches for this though. So that leaves all the 4 outer ring trees for these functions.

"For us, we’d like cotton. We’ll get to make new mattresses, new clothes and new pillows. We already have rather tasty fruits."

"If we’ll see more travellers, maybe there will be merchants too! Olives and syrups should sell quite well, we can get money!"

"Ah… money." Hmmm… That would be interesting.

I wanted to still leave some of the outer trees available, so I choose 1 for cotton and 1 for olives. The two chosen trees enter a sort of hibernation stage, and I could sense it’s inner body changing. In fact, as I reach out to it, a popup appears in my head. Transforming to produce chosen products, please wait 3 days.

Ah well, that’s not long.

That money and merchant thing though… I think I’ll scare them if I talk directly into their head.

"We’ll do it." The three ladies, Laufen, Emile and Belle. "We used to buy and sell stuff with merchants, so I think we can handle it."

Alright then, olives for sale.

Year 73 Month 5 Week 4

The two trees are ready, and it seems each tree products one cartload of olives, and one bale of cotton, per week. The elves though need a storeroom, so for now they put in within the [secret hideout]. The cotton is in rather raw form, so the elves and the kids help with processing them into more usable form, which will take quite a while. In some places of the world, magic is used to process these raw cottons.

As for the olives, they are harvested in their fruit form and will be pressed into olive oil later. It seems these oils are rather expensive, since they don’t grow everywhere.

The quality of these 2 produces are average, and I suppose that’s because I just acquired the skill to make them. Perhaps I’ll get the ability to produce higher quality produces later.

With the additional crops, the elves are now a lot busier, and somehow it cheers them up. It seems to remind them of a proper village life where everyone’s got some kind of work to do. Even if it is tiring to work on the cotton, or to press the olives with the wooden press I’ve made with some wood magic, these elves find some kind of comfort and pleasure in doing such chores.

Occasionally, there are still some stray packs of hellhounds and other monsters appearing, but they are easily disposed by the beetle group.

And then there’s an odd bunch. They’re like adventurers, but not.

"Ah, bless the nameless mother!" The druids, they seem extremely interested and so they move closer. "These trees! They look untouched by the demon’s destruction."

"Ah, indeed. The gods are kind, for some lands are preserved!"

The elves hide. Laufen shakes her head.

"Who are these people?" I ask the elves, now all hidden.

"It looks like there are people living here!" One of them mutter, as the rest catch up.

A man that wears a strange wig, with a necklace of multiple tiny bones, claws and feathers look at it and point at my main tree. He reminds me of those shamans or witchdoctors and he carries a wooden staff decorated with small skulls and bones.

"Spirit sign."

"Oh?" Another man comes up next to him. He’s got a long flowing white cloak, and hood. A bit like priest, but… not. "That explains it."

"Leave?" The shaman asks, and the others nod.

"Yes, yes. This place don’t need our help."

"Wait. Wait." The super excited first guy interjects. "I think there are elves here."

"Yes. So?"

"Isn’t there a bounty on elves?"

"No." The shaman shakes his head. "No elf hunting."

"Don’t let the King hear that." Another of his companions chime in, and rides up next to him.

"He no king."

"Okay, okay. We’re not having this conversation. Let’s go, let’s go." One of them gets in between the shaman and the other over enthusiastic guy, and tries to break up their conversation. "We’ve got plenty more to do."

The shaman guy nods, and they move on.

Year 73 Month 6 Week 2

Shrubs and small trees grow around my circle of trees now. They’ve been growing since spring began, and now they form a layer outside. Throughout the valley, weeds and small shrubs pop up, and so it is now a layer of green.

My presence contributes to this burst of nature and vegetation, of course.

And roads.

Yes, actual roads are being built. A group of 40 men, using a mix of earth magic and fire magic are building a road across the valley. They’re accompanied by cartographers, and some guards.

"Let’s mark this in the map."

"It’s Freeka isn’t it?"

"Yeah, what’s left of it. But it looks like other than the destroyed forests, the general area is unchanged."

"At least that’s a piece of the map we don’t have much to change."

"Yea." One of the men scribbles on what looks to be a very large floating book.

The earth mages keep on forming bricks and the fire mages blast them, cooking the bricks, and then it is magically arranged on the floor by the other mages. It’s a continuous, ongoing process, that builds tiled bricks for faster travel by merchant wagons.

"But we do need to note down that giant tree. It’ll be a landmark."

"Giant trees. Probably magical. To be investigated further."

And that’s the end of it. They moved on.

In this world, the devastation caused by magic is incredible. Towns flattened, hills destroyed, forests razed. But similarly, the nature’s magics also restore the hills, and forests at a speed far faster than my own.

And despite the really huge deaths from every demon attack, it seems the world’s population is still growing rather steadily. Not all continents are affected by the demon king, though the demon king’s move and rotate its appearance between the continents. So, the destruction is localised, and gradually spreads, as the demonic rifts open in more and more places, until the demon king is killed.

To some extent, the presence of reincarnators and heroes made the natural denizens of the world… lazy. Lazy. And selfish. Because its not their problem. The heroes will deal with it.

The armies from those nearest to the demons are there just to buy time and reduce the destruction, but kingdoms across the other continents would not send armies to aid. I find my thoughts constantly coming back to how the demon king is a regular "disaster". It’s like a hurricane that happens every 10 to 15 years, and if what Meela briefly suggested, slightly stronger each time.

And that brings me to the next question. What if no heroes come the next time? I hope I don’t jinx it, but, what if? Ah, maybe I should ask the gods. Can I talk to gods in this world?

Maybe I should not think so much. I am a tree, right?

Next day

"TreeTree…." Lausanne sits on my roots. Ah, yes. I got distracted. Baby duties. When the adults are busy with the olive press or splitting the cotton fibres, Laufen asks me to keep Lausanne entertained. Brislach and Wahlen are old enough to be given some tasks, but Lausanne at 3 is still too small.

"Yes?"

"Play time. Please make a wood ball?"

"Oh okay. Sure." A wood ball appears, and she grabs it. She has many wood balls, but she seems to enjoy the newly made wood balls the most. She says the surface is smooth.

"Ball."

"Yes. Ball."

"Balls are like round fruits. Like oranges. But smoother."

"Yes." Lausanne hops around carrying her wood ball. She walks out of the hideout to the inner circle courtyard. The other elves are working with the wooden press.

"Can you make a big ball?"

"Yes, how big?"

"Bigger than the tree? Bigger than.. the world?"

"Well, no. I can’t make a ball that big."

"Oh." Lausanne looks down.

"Can you make a treehouse? So I can throw balls further?" Well, I could make a mini treehouse in her playroom. But she’s 3.

"Ah. Yes, I can."

No. Wait. I don’t have the skill? But I could create a treehouse like structure, but its not secured to the tree…

"Can you make one now?"

"Uh… no."

"Why?"

"I need to prepare."

"Can you make stairs?"

"Yes." Where is Lausanne going with this?

"Can you make stairs between trees?" That’s like bridges, no? Should be possible, even though the trees are not linked.

"Mommy says I am growing. Are you growing too? You are a lot bigger now."

"I.. I think so."

"I think I am growing. I can reach for things on the table now."

"Yes. Yes you are."

"How much taller and stronger can I grow? Will I be a hero someday?" Lausanne kicks the wooden ball. It’s hollow and smooth, so it doesn’t hurt so bad. The ball rolls onto another bunch of roots.

"Maybe like your mommy."

"Can I be strong instead, so I can protect mummy and everyone?"

"Why not. If you work for it."

"Uncle Jura says not everyone has the ability to be heroes. Needs to be born with the talent."

Man, Jura’s a bit too realist there.

"I’m just telling her to not pursue the impossible. People are born with a ceiling to their ability. Everyone gets there and they plateau off."

Really? Maybe his understanding is incorrect. But then again, I’m not sure either. Is this world so fatalistic that everyone settles at a certain level? Do the mechanism of levels actually form a cap?

"I can, right?" Lausanne looks at me, hopeful. She wants to be a hero, and, I think she can.

"Yes. Of course."

She smiles, pick up one of the small sticks and starts swinging it around like she’s fighting. She’s a bit too young for that, honestly.

Laufen shakes her head, but doesn’t stop her daughter. She then goes back to work, sorting through the cotton threads. They have some kind of basic loom invented, but needs quite a bit of manual assistance to make basic cotton cloth.

New habitants

Year 73 Month 6 Week 3

A large caravan passes by. They go along the road made by the earlier bunch.

"I hope they are sure."

"No one’s sure, but if we manage to get there we will be one of the first groups to reopen the old trade routes. And that, will make us rich. The price differentials is huge!"

There’s easily 200 men in this group, with about a hundred horses carrying goods.

"Wonder why they did not just send airships."

"You know how expensive the power crystals are? And they take so long to charge!"

At about this time, their conversation is interrupted.

"Hello merchants! Would you like to buy some oils and cloth?"

They turn and see two female elves. Laufen and Belle, with two baskets next to them, one containing olive oils stored in small wooden bottles, and the other containing the processed cotton cloth they worked on for the past few weeks.

Of course, hidden a distance away is the armored beetles. Thanks to the tall natural weeds, they can easily hide.

And they both picked a location well within my [root strike] such that I can quickly intervene if anything happens.

"Elf?"

"Kill them. We’ll get bounty." One merchant says.

Laufen and Belle’s face turn pale.

"Shut up. The bounty is worth a lot less than our trade rights to the elven kingdom! Apologies ma'am, please ignore my guildmate." He shouts out, and smacks the merchant on the back.

One of the riders, a guard ride up to them two. He signals to the merchants.

Two of the merchants then ride up to the elves, dismount and look at the wares.

"Hmm. I am surprised you have olive oils in this area. I don’t see any olive farms or groves."

Laufen smiles, and did not answer.

"Hmm. condition is average, and storing them in wooden bottles is not good." The merchant takes the hint and focuses on the goods.

"Yes, we would like to also buy some glass bottles, if you have them." Belle adds. Olive oils are usually stored in vases, away from sunlight and kept sealed.

Another of the merchants ride up to the two. "Oils?"

"Your field of expertise." The merchants glance at each other, and it seems this one is one that trades in all kinds of oils.

The merchant takes out a small glass bottle. "May I?"

"If you buy them."

The merchant laughs. "Fine. I have six large amphoras empty. I’ll pay for that much." He takes out some coin and pass them to Laufen.

Laufen carefully inspects the coin she receive. "Would you sell us a few of your large amphoras?"

The merchant shakes his head. "I have no extra today. But I will arrange for one of my men to ship some. You can pay my men then. How many do you want to buy?"

Laufen looks at her coins again. "I think this can afford me… ten?"

The merchant laughs. "Yes. Ten is about right, once you include the cost of transport. I will get my men to deliver ten then. To this location?"

He looks around, and jots some notes onto a book. Its probably his order or transaction book.

The amphoras, pottery used to ship goods, usually liquids between large distances. There’s also wooden barrels, or metal containers, but these amphoras made of clay are cheap and quite durable, so are popularly used.

Laufen nods. The merchant pours the olive oil from the wooden bottle, into his glass one. He inspects the color, smell, and stirs it a little.

"Hmm. It’s average, but still rather fresh. I can sell them." The merchants make some kind of signal.

Some of the men, the merchant’s assistants come and assist to pour the olive oil from the wooden bottles into the large empty amphoras that hang by the side of the horses.

"How often do you make olive oils?"

Laufen pause. "Maybe once every 3 months? Except winter."

"Ah. You will have available supply in 3 months? I know some nobles will prefer fresher olives oils, rather than those imported from further out."

Laufen and Belle huddle and discuss a bit, and then she nods. "Yes. I think we can have two or three amphoras by that time."

"Great."

The cloth however, had no buyers. Superior quality cloth is available around the area, so the one they made won’t sell for much. So it’s not worth the effort of buying and them attempting to resell these average quality cloth.

But, strangely enough, one of them asked about the wooden bottles themselves.

"These wooden bottles are beautiful. The surface is really smooth. Do you have a master woodsmith with you?"

Well, they are made with my woodforming magic, and not carved.

"That’s a secret." Belle smiles.

"Alright we should get going."

"One more… do you have any vinegar stock for sale?"

"Ah yes. One small bottle?"

And that is the last of it. The merchants continue on their journey, and the elves have some coin and a small bottle of vinegar stock. It seems that Laufen and the girls are planning to make fruit vinegar with the extra healing fruits I make.

"Ah. Next time I want to ask for flour!" Belle sighs. "Too bad we had to buy the amphoras first."

"Bread?"

"Yeah. I want bread."

Jura laughs, and eats some potato chips. The inner courtyard is full of potatoes. It’s the elven staple apparently, since they don’t the vast farmlands the humans maintain.

"I’m fine with potatoes. They taste pretty good when fried with olive oil." Jura shrugs.

"Bread." Belle rolls on her bed.

Emile laughs. "We can trade for that next time. If we can get better quality stuff."

The elves kept all the money at first, I wanted some, so after some discussion the elves gave me a fifth of the coin, which I keep in my inventory.

"Did not realise Tree spirits wanted money." The elves collectively asked, it seems it never occurred to them that a tree would ever want money, even though I, a tree, am conscious, sentient, and I supplied the raw materials.

"I may need to purchase certain items so I want to start saving some money for it. Especially for the advancement of my… powers."

"Oh…"

Well, I will need money someday, so might as well start saving. I would like to be able to trade, somehow. There will be goods or materials I’ll need to buy, since I can’t possibly make everything myself.

"So yea, can I have a fifth of all the coins received?"

The elves huddle and discuss, to be honest I can hear everything they are saying, but they agree. It’s really mostly about what they want to buy, and why a tree needs money, though in the end, their gratitude to me wins out.

Year 73 Month 7 Week 1

The elves are hard at work, mostly doing the olive press. The cloth they made is used to make new mattresses and clothing, but since it doesn’t sell, the elves now focus their efforts on the olives instead. So, a bit of this week’s cotton is left unharvested.

A small merchant convoy also drop by to deliver the amphoras as agreed. It seems the merchants have a means of long range communication.

It’s on one hot day, a small group of fleeing men and women, riding horses, six of them. Heavily injured, they all have multiple arrows in their backs, and even the horses are injured.

And a group, about ten men in cloaks chase after them. They seem injured as well, but less than the earlier group.

"Head for the trees!" The group of six gallop with all their remaining might.

The cloaked men chase, a few trying to slow them down with more arrows.

At this point, I wanted to kill all of them, but the six looks so heavily injured they would probably die of bleeding soon. And I would like horses…

"Who goes there!" Jura, perched on a tree call out.

The six yell out some gibberish I do not understand. Jura, though, does. And he shouts.

"Tree Tree, target the cloaked men!"

And he throws wooden spears at the cloaked men.

[Root Strike] x 8

Eight roots strike at the riders, faster than they could ever react, killing them instantly.

The remaining 2 jerk, trying to pull back, but they are too close.

[constrict] Roots pop out and tangle the remaining 2, and deliver a strong dose of sleeping poison.

The six riders earlier did not look back, and they ride next to the outer ring. The heavily injured six walk in, and it seems they all suffer heavy wounds.

It is then, one of them reveals a young baby.

Jura pauses.

"Huh?"

"Hold him. Please." His blood soaks the cloth wrapping the baby, and Jura reluctantly holds the baby. The six wounded men and women dismount.

"Is this Freeka?"

Jura pauses. "Uh… I suppose."

"Huh." The wounded start to treat each other, and they pull out the arrows from each others back, and start pouring healing potion over it. Of the six, two male humans, one female human, two male elves and one female elf.

It is the female elf who shouted the gibberish earlier, and she looks at Jura, her armor drenched in blood.

"I am Eriz, an aide and guardian of Yvon."

"Who is that?" Jura scratches his head. "And why do you know our passphrase."

Passphrase? Ah, it seems Jura and the men developed a passphrase to identify friendly people before this.

"Ah. Yvon, our mistress, she.. she says her brother is the village head here." Her wounds are recovering, the potions are working.

"Brother? Ricola?"

"Ah… yes. I believe she mentioned his name is Ricola. Is he around?"

"He’s dead." Jura’s still awkwardly holding the baby. He looks to be less than 6 months old. "And.. take this child back."

"Ah." Eriz pauses, and turns back to face the other riders. "Do you have clean clothes that we can change him? All of ours is bloody…"

Laufen, who’s eavesdropping from inside the hideout, walks out with some clean cloth from the extra clothes she made with cotton earlier, a bowl filled with paste and some clean water. She takes the baby from Jura and starts to clean the blood-covered baby up. He’s alive, but weak and exhausted.

"Does Ricola have a sister?"

"Yes. I met her when we were wedded, but have not seen her since." Laufen nods, her hands cleaning the weak baby. "Is she well, in the human kingdoms?"

Eriz smiles. "The mistress is alive. But it is a challenging period now, with the King suspecting the elves for treason. And the other Princes finding every chance to remove us."

"Who is this child…"

"Uh… It is the mistress’s baby."

"What?"

Eriz nod. "It’s inevitable. With the tension in the capitol, the mistress requests that her brother assist to look after her child."

One of the humans walk up next to Eriz. "Please, raise the child as your own. We will return to the capitol."

Laufen shakes her head. "I cannot. We cannot."

Eriz pause, and the other human female come up. "Perhaps the 2 of us stay back with the child? The guys can head back..."

She looks around.

"Will you guys accept us? As a refuge?"

The other men nod. "That is a good idea. The child is most attached to you, Eriz. This place feels safe, and magical."

Eriz looks around, at the trees and then at me. She stares for a while.

"...The mistress has many good people around her. She would want some of them to ensure her child’s safety." One of the men say. "I will stay too, if you want."

"Can we stay, with the baby?"

Laufen pauses, and they both go back into the hideout to discuss with the rest. They agreed, eventually. Laufen felt particularly conflicted, because if this baby is indeed her nephew, then she felt bad to turn him away.

"Yes."

Eriz, the human woman, Safran, and a human man, Pock, stay back.

As for the two unconscious human attackers, they are kept in the jail, where the adventurers once were.

[Level up! Level 115]

[Skill upgraded - Subsidiary Tree amount increased to 40.]

[Skill upgraded - secret hideout has unlocked - Tree-asury]

Ah. Treasury. And more trees! So convenient, this levelling system.

Year 73 Month 7 Week 2

The 2 humans, under the influence of strong hallucinogens, quickly reveal that they serve one of the Prince of the Salah Kingdom, Prince Wargo, the first prince, and the King is aging, dying. So, all the Princes are positioning themselves to seize the throne.

Eriz and the mistress Yvon serve another Prince, Prince Galan, the third prince. It seems Prince Wargo is a humanist, meaning he is against non-human citizens of the kingdom, and he is recently a target of a botched assassination attempt by elves.

Prince Galan, who is surrounded by elvish and other non-human minders, are under tremendous scrutiny from the rest of the Prince, eager to eliminate the competition.

Yvon, is apparently a highly skilled administrator, in the inner circle of Prince Galan, and so having a baby is huge vulnerability. The men wanted to capture the baby and force Yvon to defect to Prince Wargo’s side. There’s also suspicions whether the baby is one of Prince Galan’s many illegitimate children.

And after extracting everything from the 2 men, I use [absorption] on them and drain their life away. It’s a slow, painless death, with the effect of strong sedatives. And one which leaves no remains, as their body turns into nutrients.

The elves are not comfortable letting the new people so near, so for the first day, the humans lived in tents, while Roma and Eriz stay with Emile and Belle.

The next day, I decide to spawn two of my new trees outside the 2nd circle, and so there is two new rooms for the new people. This surprised the new people greatly, especially Eriz. But the distance is necessary, because the elves are not comfortable with new people, yet.

"This… A spirit tree?"

"Yes." Jura nods.

They also react strongly to the beetles. All of them jump and almost wet their pants went a group of beetles crawl down some of the trees while they are walking.

The beetles have been busy. Non-demon monsters multiplied and so I frequently send a group of them to kill these monsters.

Year 73 Month 8 Week 1

The newbies are here for a month, and out of boredom, they are now helping with the olive press. The merchants are supposed to be here the next month, so the olives are now stored in the amphoras.

The beetles have been very busy too. Every day some monster would appear and they would be sent on missions to kill them, and bring back their bodies.

So many monsters, that my beetle skill upgraded. Still, the beetles are equivalent to about six or seven hellhounds at their upgraded strength.

[Armored beetles upgraded to warbeetles]

Anyway, the elves are right to suspect these new people. Eriz has been communicating with somebody magically, and perhaps she forgot that tree spirits have vision of everything in the trees. Perhaps her mistress, but otherwise its coded and in an unknown language.

As for the remaining 8 subsidiary trees, I place them like pylons, in a circular fashion. Each of them as far away as possible, in one of the either directions.

With this, I can extend my vision to cover the entire valley.

And strangely, this led to another upgrade.

[Subsidiary tree upgraded. You can place a total of 60 trees.]

The increase in [subsidiary tree] means an equivalent increase in [tuberous storage] amount, so at 60 trees, plus ten with my main tree, I have a total of 140PU. Still very far away from that 1,000 PU.

There must be a way to do this.

Year 73 Month 8 Week 3

"No good. We must go back. We must help." Eriz shouts, startling everyone.

"What happened?"

"The King, and the Prince, they start ordering mass execution of the non-humans."

"What?!" Safran and Pock both seem surprised.

"How… how do you know?" Jura asks, his hand on a knife.

Eriz pauses. She rubs her head and then sighs. "I.. I have been magically communicating with Mistress Yvon. And now that the news is out there is a massive uprising in the kingdom by the non-humans."

Pock shakes his head. "The King is mad."

"Prince Galan and Mistress Yvon has not seen the King for weeks." Eriz shakes her head. "It may be the Prince using his name…"

"What is the mistress planning."

"Escape. The army is too strong and organised, and fighting back is meaningless. She had been making arrangements for the rest of the civilian non-humans to flee to the sympathising cities, or to the other kingdoms, but it seems the other kingdoms have closed their borders."

Safran nods. "We can go and help with the refugee traffic."

Eriz, Safran and Pock turn to face Laufen. "Please, take care of Roma. For us. We must go. We will return."

"No. One of you stay." Laufen insists, Roma still asleep on the bed.

"People are getting slaughtered. They need help."

"And a baby child needs her guardian."

Safran and Pock nod. "She has a point, and both of us will be able to disappear easier as humans. Eriz, please stay. We will come back."

Eriz sighs. "Very well."

And, a few skills of mine upgraded after using it all this while.

[Secret hideout : Biolab upgraded. Pods increased to 5.]

[Essence collection upgraded. Extraction rate and speed improved.]

[Mineral extraction upgraded.]

[Mineral augmentation obtained. You may use the metals obtained to strengthen your [subsidiary trees], and [insect warriors]]

Ah, I do have a large stockpile of essences and irons from the automated harvesting.

More refugees and a baby

Year 73 Month 9 Week 1

Eriz has been updating everyone what’s happening, almost daily. She just could not keep her anxiety to herself.

I kinda stop following after a week. I mean, its just people fighting and dying far away. And, running, of course. Its kinda like me switching on my television, and watching world news about some bombing or fighting in some distant land. It gets tiring, and shit like this happens all the time in this world. I suppose I should feel somehow for them, since they are elves, but I personally feel obligated to the 7 elves under my care, and… that’s it I suppose?

"Wisp. Any idea how do I speed up this uh.. powering the soul forge? Isn’t 1000PUs too much?"

"I thought its quite little. A small forest would have more than a 1,000 trees, easy."

"But that implies I have all the trees as a subsidiary tree!"

"Do you have to?"

"Uh. What?"

"I said too much." The Wisp floats. "I cannot give you that answer."

"Oh come on."

"There are some things a Tree Spirit must learn on their own."

"Tree. Smart!" Meela bobs in. "Tree. Good."

"Yes, yes."

Okay, so there must be a trick to this. So if I did not have to have all of them as my subsidiary tree?

Is it via rootnet?

Let me try it on a shrubs and trees that now spawn throughout the valley.

[Local Rootnet Access connecting to nearby trees…]

[Connected.]

And I hear spam again. Spam. So much. Spam.

Spam…. [Filtration activated]

But can I extract power out of them?

[Attempting to connect. Energy drain initiated. Rootnet function obtained : Tre-energy.net.]

[Connecting to 64,5XX grasses, 367 shrubs and 141 normal trees, producing an estimated 18.4 PUs. Normal trees produce 0.1PU, shrubs 0.01PU, and grasses 0.00001 PU.]

Ah, I need ten thousand normal trees to hit 1,000PU.

But!

It’s very doable. The entire valley is within my rootnet! All I need to do is to actively use my tree spirit mojo and grow this entire valley into a forest like it once was.

I feel like dancing. Weeeeeeeee…

Now I need to work on my mojo.

Year 73 Month 9 Week 3

Massive! Massive burst in tree growth in the valley. The number of normal trees surged by 300 in two weeks! If I keep this up, I can hit 10,000 normal trees by Year 75.

The elves are especially surprised to see the sudden surge in tree growth, and what is sparsely covered valley is starting to look dense again.

But there is a trade-off, though. In using this ability, my essence and material extraction slow tremendously. It seems essence and materials are not extracted and instead used in the creation of these trees.

But no matter, I have been hoarding essences and irons since I had the auto-extraction function.

Oh, and the olive oil merchant actually came. And I get me some of that coin, too. It seems an ongoing non-human genocide does not stop merchants from doing business.

Ah, those who worship the coin are probably the most devoted of devotees. So I leave a path of some kind for the merchants, and an area where the trading can happen.

There is a small hut, made using wood magic, at the side of the path. Jura and Laufen helps to make a wooden panel that says, "Freeka trading post".

Eriz is still on about the chaos in the kingdom, and there’s some sparse resistance, as most choose to flee. Anyway, distant matters.

Year 73 Month 10 Week 1

More trees! Another 300 plus trees spawn, bringing the valley’s normal tree count to 762. This is the single indicator I follow for the next 1 year until this damn [soul forge] comes online.

Animals appear now. It's actually a curiosity how animals appear when they were not here before, but according to the elves, there is a god that "creates" animals in the lands where trees appear, in the same manner as how monsters appear out of nowhere.

Well, it is logically consistent. If monsters are just magical versions of animals, and monsters can "spawn" out of nowhere, it should be the same for animals.

Maybe they are both creations of the same gods.

But can sentients spawn out of nowhere?

Ah anyway, Jura’s out hunting. Apparently spotted one of his favourite food, a deer or something like that.

There is a new mild annoyance.

Birds.

I mean, birds. They make nests on your branches, and they poop everywhere.

And some of them are brazen enough to attack my iron-reinforced warbeetles.

But they are just irritants.

"TreeTree using magic?"

"Yes Lausanne. It will be a forest once more." Lausanne likes trees. She likes flowers too, and some of the shrubs have flowers. She likes the yellow flowers the most. She says it looks like the sun.

"Wow. Teach me, please?"

"I can’t. I just… feel it. It’s like a primal urge I just have to let out, and it happens."

Its true. That spawning trees this is kinda like something I do naturally, and its only suppressed by the materials and essence extraction. Once I activate it, it just… happens. Weird tree spirit mojo.

Lausanne shakes her tiny toddler head. "No no. Do you know druid magic?"

"No I do not."

"But best druids learn from Tree Spirits!"

"I… I can’t. Maybe someday."

Did I say she’s too young? She’s too young. I don’t think she should be learning magic at 3 to 4 years old.

But I frankly do not know how to teach my kind of magic. Ironic, considering I have [learning aura] and [dream tutor].

This valley regrowth boom led to my subsidiary tree leveling up. I think the subsidiary tree ability is just linked to me doing tree-like things.

[Subsidiary tree leveled up. Limit increased to 90 trees.]

[Some of your stored iron materials and essence of nature has been consumed. Six inner circle subsidiary trees upgraded. They are now able to support 3 external rooms each.]

Progress!

The elves gained some skills in [olive oil making], Laufen apparently already has [trading] and [coin management] from her past experience, so she’s the elves primary treasurer at this point, assisted by Belle.

Progress for the elves!

Sadly, bad news from Eriz. The resistance spreads and the country descends into a civil war of some kind, with the humans overwhelming on one side, and the non-humans, outnumbered and outgunned.

Prince Galan, their benefactor is killed in an assassination, which is quickly framed on their mistress.

So, the non-humans are fleeing in large numbers.

Year 73 Month 10 Week 3

[Rootnet is now connected to 1,000 normal trees. Local rootnet access upgraded, range extended]

The valley now looks like a forest, and I am no longer easily visible from afar. On hindsight, I should have done this a long time ago. The tree cover this forest of normal trees help hide my presence.

With the increased [subsidiary tree] amount, I scatter about twenty of them across this new forest, and have them as home for my [insect warriors].

This brings up my total warbeetle population to 78, so I have a small army of beetles in my hands. I mean, it seems like my abilities are derivatives of what a tree does in my real life, doesn’t it, so I wonder whether I can get an air force of some kind, perhaps these birds or some kind of bees.

The beetles occasionally get attacked by the animals, but they are tough enough to shrug it off.

Anyway, air force. How do I lure new creatures? Why can’t they just give it to me like the beetles?

Year 73 Month 10 Week 4

Elves, dwarves, halflings, treefolk, gnolls, minotaurs, centaurs, lizardmen. A lot.

Maybe two thousand.

"How long do we have to keep moving?"

"As long as we need to. The armies are still after us."

The only thing uniting this ragtag bunch of nonhumans is the humans. Once things settle down they will all split up.

"After this is the old demon king territories…"

"Safer than being hunted by an army. Lesser demons remain now, so it should be safe..."

"Should."

One discussion came up with the elves recently. About accepting these refugees, if it ever comes to it.

The view amongst the 7 elves is that they are not comfortable with them being too near, and that is defined as the two rings of subsidiary trees. That space, to them, is still "their" space.

But, they understand the need of these people, so they are open, and willing to share the valley with them. Perhaps these refugees could base themselves at another part of this large valley, after all, with trees now popping out everywhere, it won’t be a problem in terms of cover or protection.

"There’s a path."

"We should take it?"

"Yes."

"No."

In the end, some take the path, some decide to wade through the forest. It took them a few days, but eventually, of the 2,000, about 300 or so elves, treefolk and centaurs decide to stay in the forest. Being different races, they split up and start to make some housing in their own part of the valley.

For the others, a forest is not their ideal "place" and so they decide to move even further. Perhaps the army is still a bit too close for comfort.

Thanks to the cover of the forest, they don’t know about me or the elves presence, yet. And that’s fine. Some of them saw the Freeka Trading Post sign, though, and probably wonder whether its still used. After all, the merchants only come by quarterly, and its going to be winter. To some, it is better to gather food and shelter before winter.

"Oh.. there are treefolk, elves and centaurs in the valley?"

"Yup. The treefolk is near the small pond, the centaur near the valley’s slopes, and the elves at the far end."

"Whoah."

Treefolks. They are part tree, part humans, part insect, apparently a creation of the nameless mother to give trees some variety. Looking at them using my vision of the valley, they resemble insects that disguise themselves as tree branches and leaves.

And for them, when they sleep, their legs must touch the floor, so they often sleep upright, or slightly tilted, leaning against the wall. Living in multiple stories is a strange and uncomfortable concept for them.

And in a way, they are the first to detect my presence.

When they sleep, their feet would extend small feelers into the ground, and this would exchange their bodily waste for nutrients. This leads to contact…

[Foreign entities attempted to connect. Treefolk presence detected. Isolating…]

[Treefolk successfully isolated.]

"Huh." They jolt from their first night of proper rest. "This place… the ground…"

A group of beetles appear outside their makeshift settlement. The few warriors quickly take up arms, but there’s too many. Easily 40 of these beetles.

"Hello, treefolk." It’s nighttime, and treefolk’s vision is rather poor, but an elven voice is strangely welcome.

"Who goes there." There is a de facto chief among the treefolk, he steps forth.

"I have been instructed to visit you. Welcome to Freeka, and this is our valley."

The treefolk look at each other, "We see no Freeka, no settlement."

"Ah yes, razed by the Salah kingdom. But some of us survive, protected by our guardian spirit."

"Guardian spirit?" The treefolk instantly connect the dots. "A tree spirit, here?"

"Yes. He’s been watching all of you. This valley is under his domain."

A few of them gasp, but the leader then asks. "Does he want us to move away?"

"No. At least, not yet. We are just a greeting party. If there’s no unpleasant events, our tree spirit will not take any hostile actions…"

The leader breath a sigh of relief. "Ah. As treefolks, we would be greatly honored to live in a land watched over by our ancestors."

"We hope so. Try not to chop too many trees down, and if you encounter any beetles, please do not attack them. They are the minions of the tree spirit."

The leader nods. "Certain.. certainly."

The beetles and Jura disappear back into the night, and the treefolks quickly huddle together to discuss this revelation.

Back home, Jura looks at me. "Was that necessary?"

"Yes. It is important they know who they are dealing with, and treefolks seem like the ideal candidates to make that first exposure. And I won’t want them randomly attacking my beetles."

Treefolk and elves have an awkward relationship, and are often tense with each other. This is because though they share the forests, they have different ideas of what an ideal settlement is like. Elves, especially the high and sun elf variants prefer to build tall structures, carved from the trees, whereas the treefolk prefer to have vast sprawling settlements that allow contact to the earth at all times. Elves also have good night vision, whereas treefolk vision is generally poor, and they depend on a wide range of other senses like touch, gravity, vibrations.

The elven group are quick to start working, tying their cloth and whatever vines they find to form a kind of makeshift shelter, while a few of them use some kind of magic to bend and shape the normal trees into a house. It’s a slow process, whatever wood-forming magic these elves use, and from my observation, it reduces that tree’s energy output, in exchange for greater structural integrity.

The centaur group live near the sloped areas of the valley, where there is a mix of shrubs and trees. Unlike treefolk and elves, they erect large tents, and they prefer to be out of the woods. Any trees in their vicinity is used to anchor the massive tents, and one of the taller normal trees become the center core of their chief’s tent. The tents themselves are made of their leftover hair, mane and fur, cloth and whatever animal fur or skin they can find.

"So what do we do with the elves and centaur?"

"Watch them. I’ve instructed my beetles to stay away from them, and since both elves and centaur are at the forest's edge, its still fine… for now. But once they grow, I will need to make myself known."

"It would be easier to let them know now, though?" Laufen thinks. "If we wait too long, they might feel defensive."

"Hmmm.. true. True. Let’s be proactive then. Jura, can you visit the elves?"

"Certainly."

And so Jura goes close to the elven settlement.

Everyone is so busy working on their new place that they did not notice Jura walk right through their makeshift gates.

"Hi everyone." He shouts, and everyone turns. They quickly panic and grab their arms.

"Who are you!" Their posture is poor. These are not warriors. They are exhausted from their long walk that they just want to rebuild.

"I am from the village of Freeka. Its a really really small village, but thought I’d still let you know we exist."

"Village? Freeka?"

"That unused trading post?"

"Its.. rarely used." Jura laughs, and opens his hands. "I come in peace and, know this, that a tree spirit watches over this valley. It is for his presence that a forest is now here, so quickly after the fall of the demon king."

"What do you want?" A young elf quickly shout. Even amongst elves, the youth can be rude

"Nothing much." Jura smiles, and thirty warbeetles appear next to him. The elves all feel a shiver of fear. "Just know that this valley is protected, and behave accordingly. Something elves should already know, in the presence of a tree spirit."

An elderly elf appears. "Ah… I did not know Freeka has a tree spirit. That is a pleasant discovery."

A younger man appears, he looks like a warrior and he glances at Jura. "Are you the chieftain of Freeka?"

Jura laughs. "We are so few, so small, we have no need for a chieftain. But our tree spirit guides us, and speaks to us. Our tree spirit sent me to greet you."

The elderly elf pats the younger man on the shoulder. "This is our chief."

"Well met."

"How do we find you?"

Jura pauses. He did not want to answer that.

"How many are you?"

"Less than ten."

"Then you should stick with us. We have more. Help us. Your warbeetles too."

Jura shakes his head. "These warbeetles, they belong to our tree spirit, and they do not listen to me. Our tree spirit, is our guide."

The young chief shakes his head. "I have never heard of elves who obey tree spirits. Tree spirits are our guardian spirits, but we, elves, are the true masters of the forests. Tree spirits will follow the will of great elves!"

Jura smiles, and he want to ask why is he running, but then decide that would ruin the relationship a bit too much.

"Ah, you are free to believe what you please. I am here to greet, and welcome you to the valley of Freeka. And warn, that the forests you see, is under the protection of our tree spirit. You are free to test our tree spirit’s patience and kindness, if you feel that is a hollow threat."

The young chief winces. "Ugh."

Jura smiles, turns around and leaves with the warbeetles.

Tense. But I have more free [subsidiary trees] now. If necessary I can place more of them facing both the elves and centaur, so that there is always a beetle group ready to respond to any…. uprising. But lets see how the centaurs are…

"An elf?"

The centaurs spot Jura the moment he peeks out of the forest.

"Hi. I wish to speak to your leader."

Two centaurs appear, one male and one female.

"We are the leaders. Speak, elf." The female one speaks first.

"I am here at the request of the tree spirit of the valley, to welcome you to Freeka."

The male one then speaks. "Are you here to threaten us?"

"Yes, and no." Jura smiles, such negotiations are getting easier. "The tree spirit has reasonable expectations of proper conduct from the valley’s inhabitants."

The female centaur looks at the male and whisper to it. The male centaur nods, and then turns to face Jura.

"A tree spirit, you say?"

"Yes."

The male centaur nods. "May we meet the Tree Spirit?"

"Yes. We will arrange a day for the chiefs to meet."

"Chiefs?" Both centaur ask simultaneously.

"Chief of the elves and treefolk too."

"Ah.. so there are other refugees that seek to make this valley their home. Greenery in what we thought is demon-wrecked lands is a pleasant development." The male centaur turns to look at the female.

"If we meet the tree spirit, we will decide whether to comply."

Jura nods.

Eriz, during this time is still on about the fighting happening in the kingdom. Her mistress is trying to flee too, as her protector, the prince is dead. But it is difficult to flee when she is the main suspect, and the target of widespread human propaganda.

Anyway, I’m more focused on the new valley-mates, and also wonder how to best use my additional [subsidiary tree] slots. If there is going to be tension, I will want more beetles to fight off their numbers, and I have no indication of how strong the leaders and warriors are. Maybe they are as strong as Jura, or maybe more.

Year 73 Month 11 Week 1

Normal tree counts grow to about 1,400, the elves and centaur did eventually cut a few trees to build their homes and other structures, but otherwise the growth rate is stable. The new trees mainly grow nearer to me, increasing the density in the middle of the valley, and I didn’t want to take away the kind of sloped spaces that the centaur enjoy.

Eriz is upset.

She’s been crying for days.

Her mistress stopped communicating with her magically, and she fears for the worst.

Laufen on the other hand feels sorry for Roma, the baby who’s away from his mother. And his body is rather weak, probably lacking nutrients as he is apart from the mother, so, Laufen brings him into the biolab, into the pod, where I can nourish his body and channel nutrients in via the vines and feelers in the pod.

Roma’s small baby body is frail, and needs to be constantly comforted by one of the ladies, and Eriz is too attached to the conflict back home to properly care for him.

"Can you do something, Tree spirit?"

"I’ll try…" Hmmm… I suppose what hospital have is some kind of incubation facility.. perhaps my medical room or the biolab pods can be modified…

[Secret hideout upgraded : Childcare corner obtained]

[Childcare corner produces a special infant friendly syrup, similar to baby and milk formula. Infant-syrup can be further upgraded with various kinds of materials and minerals, if available]

Ah! The system to the rescue!

A meet, a gift, and a root

Year 73 Month 11 Week 2

The chiefs finally meet. It’s their first time in Freeka. Three from each of the three camps.

The treefolk instantly prostrate themselves before me, and sing some kind of song, from the moment they see me. It sounds a bit like aboriginal songs, if that makes any sense.

"What are they doing?" I mentally ask Jura.

"Some treefolks worship tree spirits. They are like a crazy version of elven tree huggers." Jura chuckles at that. "They are everywhere after all."

The young elf chief glance at the treefolk and shakes his head. "It’s just a tree spirit..."

The elder elf next to him ribs him with his elbow, and whispers. "Shh. Not so loud."

"What? It's pathetic. It's just a very large tree with magic, and absorb our elvish souls. It can’t even protect itself, and needs us elves to fight for it." He speaks back to the elder, his voice is a little bit softer, despite his defiant words.

The treefolk though ignore his words, and continue to sing their songs and hymns. It's rather pleasing, actually, once I got used to it.

The centaurs, the two chiefs and one older centaur that seems to be the shaman or mage of the tribe are unperturbed by the acts of the treefolk or the elves.

"Hello." I speak directly to their mind. "And please stand."

The treefolks stand. It feels like they jumped, at how fast they moved. I think their limbs have some kind of spring action in it. Not exactly.. trees.

"I’m TreeTree, tree spirit of Freeka. All of you are here because I’d like to set some norms and processes, on conduct between us, to minimise conflict with me, the elves, and each other."

I spent the whole night thinking what to say, without coming off as too asshole-ish. I thought of starting it by saying I am Lord TreeTree of Freeka, but then again, I'm not a lord.

The centaurs nod, "So, the purpose of this meeting…"

"Is to just tell you all, I exist, and as the entire valley and forest is within my influence, I hope we can all coexist peacefully. I have no intention meddling in your respective affairs, if all of you do not meddle in mine."

The young elf chief shakes his head. "My priority as chief is the safety and survival of my people. If it suits us, but no promises."

"What are your ‘affairs’, Tree Spirit? Would it not be better to set certain boundaries of each of our territories?" The centaur male instantly, with a wooden stick, starts drawing on the ground. I can’t see it, my vision is after all a spiritual/magical one, but Jura helps to explain. In short, the Centaur claims the entire left slope, the Elf claims the far side of the forest and a big piece of the lands after, and Treefolk a circle around the pond. Anything not covered is mine.

At this point, I feel like a host that suddenly has guests, and now the guests are demanding a room. Their boundaries will still cross with my roots, after the last expansion of the eight subsidiary trees. And I can extend even further. So carving up 'my' territory feels not really nice.

"That boundary drawn is nothing more than a 'designated area' for each of you, such that you don't unnecessarily create conflict. But this entire valley, remains under my care, as my roots extend everywhere. And no chopping of trees."

"Uh....."

The elf chieftain shakes his head.

Well, I want to grow the trees in the valley… It won’t help if all these new people are chopping down trees, right?

"That, is not reasonable. You, are a tree spirit. Nothing more. What gives you the right to dictate what we do?" The elf chief stands forward. "We may need to chop some trees to survive, and we will need to hunt. Restricting us, you may as well chase us away."

I pause. So do the centaur and treefolk. Strong words.

The elf chieftain turns to face the other chieftains. "Look. We are just dealing with a few elves and a tree spirit. I say, our needs are more important. There’s a few hundred of us! Why should this tree spirit and a few elves be allowed to say what we can or cannot do. I say we do what we want, regardless of what this tree spirit wants. It's just a foggy old tree."

We just started the conversation and the elf is already so hostile. Why?

The centaur look back at the elf, and then look at Jura and myself.

They want to see my response.

It feels like the elf's words is intentional. He means to provke me, to test me, and pretty much force me, so, a display of power is necessary. If I back down now, I will look weak, and I will not be able to protect the elves and my home from their ransacking. I cannot allow that.

Sigh. Although I know force is right, but I still feel a bit reluctant. I wish these elves did not force me. Refugees, after all.

I felt like being nice. I mean, these elves, centaurs and treefolk, they are all refugees, fleeing from the non-human slaughter in their home kingdoms. But this sort of entitled behavior is unwarranted, unreasonable.

This is my home and these are my people.

No. I say no.

A [root strike] shoots out of the groynd, and it flies just next to the elf chieftain’s head. The force of it root creates a loud swoosh, and the elf chieftain falls down onto the ground.

"Huh." The elves react in shock. They probably did not expect that, seeing how the elf chieftain's reaction is a mix of shock, horror, and probably fear, a sudden realisation that I could kill him. I think.

If that is meant to be a test of strength, I think I passed. The root strike made all of them sweat.

Jura, though, smiles. He stands, and opens his two hands. "Our tree spirit here has survived many creatures, including demon champions. If you think you could just walk in and do what you want, in this valley, you are wrong."

The centaurs share an awkward, uncomfortable glance. The three treefolk instantly prostrate themselves.

The elf chieftain stands again. "How dare you!" He feigns arrogance, defiance, but from my vision, his spirit is uncertain, his body shaking.

"Should I hit the head, this time?" I mentally transmit into all of them.

He gulps. Everyone also gulps. The centaurs take two steps back.

The elder stands in front of him, trying to cover for him. "No." He holds up what looks to be a wooden buckler, as if that would stop my roots.

"The roots can come from anywhere. You can’t protect him. In fact, I can hit anyone in this valley."

They both gulp. Everyone probably realise that if they make enemies, they won’t leave this valley alive.

Jura then stands up and walk to the elf. "We understand that you are refugees, and there are many of you. We want to help, and we want to share. But you cannot just march in and demand things from the caretaker of these lands. We can let you stay, but on our terms."

The elf chieftain grunts. "Ugh!" And he walks off.

The elder nods. "I apologise, he is young and only wants the best for our people. I think I will convince our chieftain to obey your rules and I will try to convice him that as the tree spirit here, this is your home and we are... guests. We.. we can decide on the rest of the details later. For now we will stop any chopping of trees. We will speak again when everyone cools down. As you know, winter is soon to be on us, and travelling now is a hazard. May we stay through the winter at least?"

Jura smiles and nod. He then turns to me. "Is that okay?"

"Fine. You all can stay, as refugees, but if I see any unpleasant behavior or actions from your people, I will not hesitate to take what I deem necessary."

The centaurs nod, and I can see their body language is nervous. "We believe that is a good suggestion. We will meet again."

The treefolk rise from their kneeling position, and walk backwards, their heads still bowing. "As you wish."

And they leave for their respective areas.

"That did not go very well." I mentally sigh.

"I thought it went wonderfully." Jura shakes his head. "Power is sometimes a great way to enforce peace. I think the chiefs, all of them got the message, that we are not one to be messed with."

"For a peaceful coexistence, to be forged by power and fear?"

"The people need a uniting force. ‘Force’."

Year 73 Month 11 Week 4

No news from the other camps or further out, but that's fine. Trees are growing even more, and I just crossed 1,600 normal trees within my rootnet. It seems my growth rate slows down in winter.

The winter cold is starting to bite, and all the elves, centaur and treefolk are hard at work, gather food, hunting, and for the treefolk, collecting fruits. The animals are spawning, even in winter, and apparently some smaller forest foxes and small bears has reappeared again. The refugees try their best to hunt, with some success.

Still, they lack proper storage facilities, and so the food may not last them that long. Perhaps some of them have food preservation skills and abilities, and if so, their chances of surviving winter would be better.

Jura too, occasionally hunts animal for food, and thanks to everyone’s efforts, we are going into winter with a surplus in our food store, and new warm clothing.

Anyway, the presence of these newly spawned animals, I wonder how are they just "created"? And whether they have a soul.

So, out of curiosity, Jura captures a few of the new animals for my [biolab]. In fact, I would really love to see how centaurs and treefolk look in the biolab. But.. next time.

Eriz stopped crying, finally. Her mistress is still not contacting her. But, she got tired of crying, or maybe she just had enough of venting. Roma is responding well to the infant formula, so much so ,the elves are also giving it to Lausanne. Adding olives into the child-syrup maker produces a kind of nutrient infused syrup, so I think this machine just creates "baby-friendly" food, with whatever given to it. In fact, Roma’s weight stabilised and is starting to regain some of his lost weight.

Now that its cold, Emile, Laufen and Belle got down to preparing some warm clothing using a mix of cotton and animal wool, kind of like a basic jacket, first for the kids, and later for the adults.

They spent so much time at it that they got [Tailor] as a skill. Laufen cried when she got the skill, as it reminds her of another lady in the village that used to make all the clothes.

So, the start of winter is probably pretty pleasant. The production of the cotton and olives reduced substantially in the last week, but quite a lot of cloth and olive has been made, and for cottons some of them are left unharvested.

Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

Tree growth is really slow this week. I think only 50 trees sprouted in this cold weather. In fact, it’s pretty awesome that they still sprout despite the biting cold. It’s not freezing or snowing, yet, but I think a bit more it will. At this slow tree-growth rate, I think my estimated time to reach the [soul forge] is going to be delayed.

On the last day of the week, it starts to rain. Cold, cold rain. It rained the whole day, pouring water into every corner of the valley, and some parts of the valley start to flood.

And with it, cold winds, so everyone stays indoors during this time. For the area immediately around me, my roots are able to quickly absorb the excess water and so there’s no flooding, but still, it’s an unpleasant environment, so everyone gathers in the main [secret hideout].

Because the main tree is the safest, in a way. But I have confidence in my subsidiary trees, they are all large, thick, solid trees, and they share my buffs.

"I wonder how the others are doing…" Eriz sits about. "I mean… the centaurs and all… they just got here and it's already winter. It’s probably tough."

She’s the most sympathetic to the refugees, being one who assists her mistress on such matters prior to this. And perhaps helping refugees is how she wants to repay her mistress.

Jura suddenly snap his fingers. "Did we just harm them by stopping them from chopping wood? They… they might need it for firewood!"

These elves have it good. The [secret hideout] and [customisable branches : external rooms] are temperature controlled and contain natural ventilation, and even water drawn from the roots, and so they are quite comfortable and warm all year round. As a result, they have little need for firewood. Any cooking they need to do, is with collecting dried branches, which regularly drop from trees, and they have a healthy stock of that.

Elven and treefolk societies generally try to avoid using firewood, except when really necessary. When they do, its usually via a farming method where only branches are cut off. As a result, their conventional sources of warmth is either energy crystal, heating metals or oils from the trees, either peanut, cashew, palm or olive oils. Furthermore, thick, mature trees, are able to retain heat quite well, so the homes built within them need minimal heating.

"Ah." I pause.

Oh.

I mentally check on the three camps.

The treefolk seem fine, their bodies naturally able to withstand rain or winters without much additional heating. From what I can observe, they used their natural abilities to shape the trees into a hut-like structure, and smaller shrubs into fences, and that seems to be adequate, for now. They don’t seem to really fear the rain, and are quite fine with being outdoors. Of the three camps, the treefolk seem to think rain is normal, in fact, some of the treefolk are still walking around in the rain.

The elves, also use a kind of wood-magic to bend the trees into housing, but their constructions are structured differently from the treefolk. They also try to shape trees of the forest, into their dwellings. As the forest is relatively young, the size of the trees, and their trunks are small, unlike my [subsidiary trees] which spawn naturally large that they can fit a dwelling, or multiple beetles.

As a result, the elves are not well protected from the rain. So they huddle together in the largest of their mixed tree-houses and tents. Using whatever fur and water-resistant clothing to cover themselves, some rain and wind still gets into those shelters, and they look uncomfortable.

The centaurs, their massive tents are able to provide shelter from the rain, and similarly, they are also a little cold. From my tree-vision, some of them are running inside those tents, in circles, to keep themselves warm. The location they picked to perch their massive tents seem to have little issue with the deluge, as the slopes means water run downwards, not into their tents.

"Do you think they need food?"

"Hmmm. I don’t know." I look at the camps, and see their spiritual presence fluctuating. Maybe that’s a sign of weakness? But then, everyone’s presence fluctuates.

"Doubt it, they’ve just moved here for a month, If anything, what they have is barely enough to get by, and they probably have not built any cold cellars or chambers." Eriz muses. "Refugees may have some skilled builders but they need resources and tools, and time."

"Should we help, if they need it?" I pose this question to the 8 elves now gathered. Of course, the manner of aid should also be carefully considered, but to be fair, we only have a surplus of dried branches, fruits, cloth, oil and potatoes. The meat supply is relatively short, as the animals are relatively recent appearances.

Lausanne, is the first to answer. "Yes! Heroes help people. And I would like to help!"

Ah, this child got her head in the right places.

Eriz too, while rocking Roma to sleep, "They are refugees, and my mistress would have helped."

Emile and Belle both nod as well, "I suppose a bit of support will help smooth things out between us and them? I mean... we do have quite a bit of surplus, with the cotton clothes and all..."

Jura and Laufen nod. "Very well. A bit of generosity is also a show of strength."

"Then it is decided. We help, a bit."

"How do we deliver all these things there in this rain…" Emile points to the cloth and food. It is a concern if these things get wet.

I think I can do something about that… a bit of wood-forming magic will do. Using [Wood shield] but point them upwards, it acts as a massive umbrella, and so the elves can then load some of the extra cloth, small bottles of olive oil and food onto the cloth bags at the side of the beetles. There are 3 beetles assigned for transport and utility duty, equipped with cloth bags and compartment at the side.

And that, is how my first aid convoy went out. Beetles carrying cloth, olive oil, some potatoes and fruits, covered by wood shields acting like a massive umbrella.

"Hello chieftains." Jura arrives at the edge of the centaur tents. They seem surprised to see Jura pop out of the forest.

"Yes?"

"We would like to offer a gift, to help your people tide through this first difficult winter."

The two centaurs, the leaders ride out and see the beetles.

"These are…"

"Cloth, some food, some dried wood branches, and olive oil, which you can use to maintain a small fire for lighting."

The centaurs pause.

Jura starts unloading them, placing them at the side of the tent. "It’s a gift."

The two centaurs share a few whispers, before nodding.

Jura departs once all the goods are unloaded, then returns to the main tree, the beetles’ cargo reloaded, and once again, set out for the elves.

The elves instantly draw their weapons the moment they see Jura and the beetles.

"What do you want!" The elf chief shouts, defensive. He brandishes a big sword, and wears armor.

Jura smiles, his sword sheathed at the side. "I’m not here to fight. We have some gifts for you."

He didn’t want to argue with the other elves, or talk, really. The elf chieftain’s probably going to argue and shout, so he just unload all the cargo, place them at the side, say what they are, and then leave.

The elf chieftain looks shocked, but then the other elves shamelessly start to grab the items. Survival comes first, pride, can be decided later on.

Lastly, Jura made a similar trip to the treefolk. The treefolk nod, and smile. "I believe we have little need for such items, we are well used to rain and cold weather, due to our heritage."

Jura nods. "I see, but it is only fair that we leave some for you as well."

"Actually… Actually we have a request to make, but it didn’t seem appropriate to request it in our meeting previously."

"Which is?"

"A few of our children are sick from the long journey, and we’d like to know if the tree spirit has any healing items. We are willing to trade what we have for it."

Jura pauses, "I.. I need to check."

"Oh, healing fruits? Sure sure." Thanks to [winter resistance], I can make fruits all year long.

Later on, Jura returns with a basket of healing fruits, and the treefolk promptly administers them to the young treefolk.

It seems the long journey causes the younger treefolk to suffer from some kind of "movement-sickness", a problem that goes away naturally for the more mature treefolk. It’s nothing fatal, but it causes a bit of vomiting and slows down their natural growth. Still, as parents, it still saddens them to see their child being weak, so a simple healing fruit is all that is needed to fix it.

As a gesture of thanks, the treefolk elder passes a small wooden box.

"This is?"

Inside the wooden box is a root.

"It’s a medicine. Helps boost a person’s strength. But only take it if you’ve never taken it before, else it’s not so useful."

"Ah...."

Jura returns to the main tree, with the box of… medicine.

"Have you seen this before?" He shows it to everyone else.

"It’s… a root?"

"How do we eat it?"

"Yes… That’s what the elder says, but we’ve never eaten it before."

Eriz looks at it curiously. "Ah.. it’s looks like a some kind of herb."

"Oh?" Herb? I would like to make that!

At that point, the root goes into the [biolab] pod for analysis. And after an hour, I gain a level.

[You’ve gained a level. Level 116]

[Essence collection upgraded]

[Essence infusion unlocked. Essence-infused fruits, leaves and barks now available. Essence-infused subsidiary trees now available]

[Biolab : Analysis of specimen completed]

[Specimen is Low-grade ginseng root, 2 years of age. No special enhancements. Provides small permanent boost to disease-resistance and stats]

[New unique tree ability obtained]

[Limited-series Tree-type unlocked]

[Magical ginseng plant]

[Ginseng plant is limited to 3 growing plants at any one time (can be increased with level). The qualities of the ginseng depends on the age of the root, overall health throughout it’s life, essences infused, mana infused, materials infused, the environment, astronomical conditions etc. Ginseng roots, when consumed, give permanent boosts to various stats, resistances, skills, mana or abilities. Permanent Effect diminishes with subsequent use.]

[Warnings]

[Cultivating ginseng will slightly increase monster spawn rate]

[Ginseng plant does not share any defensive or support buffs of the main tree.]

[Ginseng does not work on Trees]

Snow, Wolf and Lab work

Year 74

Month 1, Week 1

Cold. Compared to last year’s warmth, it is much more cold this year. Perhaps it is the demon king’s influence that led to last year’s warmth, but whatever it is, this year is cold.

And so, the rain gives way to snow.

Only three normal trees are added to the valley in this snowy weather. Three. And I could sense everything is less active in this snowing weather. The energy I receive from my subsidiary trees is half a PU, the energy generated by normal trees drop to a fraction of what they were. I suppose myself and the subsidiary trees are considered evergreen trees, therefore we can maintain a portion of our energy output. In this cold weather, it jusy doesn’t seem like a nice time to test out my new [ginseng tree].

Of the three camps, the treefolk are best suited for the snow. They seem to have a kind of quasi-hibernation state where their bodies slow down tremendously and in exchange they gain a wide range of defensive buffs. In fact, I would really, really like to look under the bark of those treefolks.

The elves and centaurs group and gather together at their biggest camps, and burn branches for warmth. The centaur elder seems to have some kind of ability that allows him to fully extract energy out of the branches, such that their fires burn longer. The one of the elven men uses some kind of ability to keep warm air circulating within their temporary building. Among the refugees, some possess other cold resistance abilities, and this allow the elves and centaur to tide through the difficult weather, especially the biting cold at night.

"I am sure some of them will trade their goods to stay in this warm, cosy rooms." Eriz said, while reminiscing her time in the city. In palaces and cities, there are dedicated butlers and maids who possess the ability manage room conditions, to the comfort of their lords. Some mayors and lords too have a kind of [soften weather] effects which reduces their city’s heating and ventilation requirements.

"Well, they had to piss treetree off, so that’s not happening." Jura said. "It’s already very generous of TreeTree to send gifts and let the elves stay."

"Are we chasing them away?" Lausanne asks.

I pause. Well, I think they should go. The elves, at least. The elven chief is probably not happy that I attacked him, and I have no clue whether the rest of the elves harbor the same sort of aggression, still, I have to be wary.

"They tried to threaten us, Lausanne. If they are bad people, they should go."

"To prison?"

"No. Go away."

The cold brings about new creatures, from further away. White wolves, and horned deers, perhaps antlers. The white wolves, seeking food in the cold and snow, a pack of them, about ten of them. They are large, slightly smaller or about the same size as my already rhino-sized warbeetles, and equipped with similarly huge fangs and claws.

I try to command my beetles to intercept, and a warning pops up.

Beetles suffer significant movement and attributes penalty in snowy weather. Insects are not adept at winter combat. Half of your beetles are in a dormant state and cannot be woken up.

Oh man. Previously it was just rain, but if it snows, this happens? Oh well, at least I learn about this now.

At least I’m producing essences of winter and snow.

Back to the white wolves, it seems they spawn in the wild, beyond the valley.

And they spot the centaurs. Food.

Watching through my various subsidiary trees placed throughout the valley, I feel like I’m witnessing a documentary, of a pack of wolves fighting with centaurs. The centaurs, their leaders fight their best, but these wolves are huge, and some of the centaurs fall from their ferocious swipes.

It occurs to me that maybe I should help. And I think I want the experience. And a specimen for the biolab.

[Root strike]

[Root strike]

Two root strikes fly out of the ground, through the snow, and into the belly of the largest of the wolves. The pack leader.

It growls in pain, the root strike clearly hit, and shatters a few bones and punctures a few of it’s organs. The second root strike hits a part, and this second hit actually penetrates the wolf’s rib cage and instantly kills it.

The sudden death of the wolf leader sends the pack into a panic, and they flee.

As the remaining white wolves flee, I notice one particular wolf falling behind, suffering from injuries. Great. For the [biolab]!

[Constrict]

My roots successfully capture the injured wolf, and a paralysing jab knocks it out. And I send a few of my active beetles to collect that paralysed wolf.

Experience gains come from killing, but also from learning. Although less, I would not be surprised if there are bookworms out there that are reasonably high leveled. One way nobles have an edge over the poor, I suppose, as their means of gaining levels is wider, through literacy, and learning through books.

Other than that, each of the camps keep to themselves.

Week 2

It’s still snowing heavily, so I turn my focus onto more… academic matters.

The white wolf in my biolab.

This white wolf does have "mana spring" in its soul, but it is smaller than any of the humans or elves, though still larger than the smaller foxes or other animals captured.

Relatively, Meela is like the Niagara Falls, a regular human is like a small waterfall, a normal animal is like a pipe of water. This white wolf, is like a water from a fire hydrant.

Next is the body. The soul and the body is a symbiotic relationship, a feedback loop. So, a strong soul usually leads to a strong body, and vice versa. But, in the case of the wolves, their bodies are strong, robust, and full of natural energy, yet a small, almost non-existent soul lives in it. It’s a common theme, I think, perhaps a feature of non-intelligence, or their designated status as "animals" or "monsters"?

Strong. A lattice of magic protects its bones, and claws. And then, some little sparks of energy in its muscles and joints. A kind of… residual mana? I recall seeing something similar in Jura’s hands, and also Meela’s hands, but theirs is almost negligible.

I zoom in on it.

Nothing. Maybe I don’t have the right tools or ability to identify it, because I feel magic of some kind. As I look at the jaws and their teeth, I get a similar feeling. There is something here that I have not yet figured out.

Ah well. After going through every part of the wolf, I decide to leave it inside the biolab under sedation.

And put Jura under the lab.

Jura’s body now no longer has the lingering effects of his trauma, but he says he hit a limit. A plateau, and all the monsters he is fighting etc is no longer giving him any new levels, so to speak. Under the soul grading, Jura is rank 6, and he is currently level 65, his familiar level 35, after the familiar’s upgrade.

His body is strong, and his soul too. At first, nothing seems wrong. The body, the muscles and bones all look strong, healthy. Well, except the left hand.

But as I continue to watch how the energy from the soul spring instantly gets drained by the body, I believe Jura’s intuition is right.

The soul, is capped out. The amount of soul energy it produces is just enough for it to be at the current level, but no further. Like a country with an electrical power shortage, the country needs to find ways to have more efficient use of energy, or produce more power.

"How do we change this?"

The wisp twirls around. "The elf can have an awakening, and find his soul ranked up."

"That, can happen?"

"Of course. He can consider going to a quest out of his league, struggle and emerge triumphant. Such acts of heroism and pushing against limits are rewarded. The ranking system you possess is just an estimate, after all, but reality is an exponential curve, and it is possible to climb up that curve."

Huh. Still, that implies nothing much I can do at this time.

"With his strength, it will be quite a long time before you can do anything to his soul."

Meela butts in. "Upgrade. Body?"

Hmm.. That means I get ahead of the soul - body feedback loop, and try to first upgrade the body, hoping that somehow drags the soul along.

Hmmm.. How do I upgrade the body? Stimulants? Surgery? Or maybe I should try fixing his left hand first. I wonder whether the natives of this world have techniques to upgrade to body, and actually, how does the ginseng interact with the soul &amp; body?

Week 3

Less snow. Yay!

Some of my beetles wake up from their dormant state, so only a quarter is still dormant.

More trees! From a low of 3, I am now back to about 10 additional normal trees per week. I should make preparations for spring, and so I ask the elves to help by collecting any seeds they see, and use the beetles to help spread the seeds around.

The elves, with not much to do in the cold, spend most of their time working on some of the cotton.

Jura, spends his time tinkering with the damaged airship from the Salah kingdom adventurers, and by some fluke, accidentally dismantle what appears to be the power source of the airship. A basketball-sized crystal, the demon-residue… daemolite.

It’s the first time I see it, so, naturally, into the [biolab].

Magical barrier exists. Analysis unable to proceed.

Eh.

The rest of the small airship is made with mostly simple metals and wood. It’s really this magical crystal, and a network of enchantments and runes throughout the structure that gives it flight.

Perhaps by damaging its enchantments, it therefore loses the ability to fly?

The runes and enchantments are incomprehensible to me, sadly.

Enchantment familiarity missing. Language not understood. Understanding of runic markings required.

Ah man. The biolab’s ability to analyse non-biological items is rather crap. Maybe I can develop a material lab someday.

The three camps still keep to themselves. Some of the hunters from both the elves and centaur do continue looking for food, foraging and hunting the rabbits, or small rat-like creatures that now also live here.

This creation of animals is interesting, and I’ve been trying to catch it happening, bt so far I failed. Every time I try to take in the granular view of the entire valley, so that I can watch how these animals appear throughout the forests, through the "vision" from all subsidiary trees, I get a massive headache. If I keep it up, I’ll accidentally lose consciousness, and wake up a day later.

The closest I got is a rabbit that somehow crawl out of the snow. So, even if I could see, perhaps the system that spawns these animals have ways to avoid "notice".

Week 4

A freak snowstorm on day one, and after that, sunny! Snow is melting.

"My mistress is still alive!" Eriz shouts and jumps happily. "Your mommy is alive!" She hugs Roma and jumps. The baby cries.

"Oh?"

"She’s managed to escape with the rest of them and are headed here. They slipped past the last of the human settlements and the Kingdom’s hunters! So maybe a week or so!"

Laufen smiles. "That’s good."

"So… where would you go after this?"

Eriz pauses. "What do you mean?"

"I mean… since once your mistress comes here, you all should have some plans, right?"

"Uh… I think we plan on staying here." Eriz rubs her head. "Can we? I’ll let the mistress know that we have to obey your rules, and you are in charge. Maybe.. maybe a spot somewhere in the valley?"

Jura rubs his head. "No no. TreeTree is in charge."

Emile and Belle nod. "Maybe this is like… rebuilding Freeka?"

"How many of them?"

"Uh… she did not say…"

Ah. More.. refugees to deal with. Okay, fine, I’ll have to handle this better than the earlier elves.

Y74 M2 W1

The tail end of winter. Tree growth is recovering, and this is the focus from now on. I want to hit 10,000 trees by the end of the year. I mean, it sounds like a big number, but if there are one tree for every 5 meters, an area the size of one square kilometer would have 40,000 trees. And the world of Earth have somewhere around 3 trillion trees.

So. 10,000 trees. The beetles are busy spreading seeds or spare branches they can find, and then I channel all my mojo to boost the growth rate.

It’s actually an urge, and I get better at it. It even feels easier as the winter lets up.

"What are you doing, TreeTree?" Lausanne is the one who asks, all dolled and wrapped up in thick clothing. Laufen’s not letting her go out without winter protection.

"Growing trees. A lot of them."

"Oh. I like trees."

"Why?"

"I like fruits. They are yummy. And I like leaves. They give shade."

"Ah."

I don’t recall telling the elves about the [soul forge] but oh well. I suppose they suspect something.

The refugees and the mistress should be on their way, soon.

[Your Subsidiary Tree skill have leveled up. Subsidiary tree limit increased to 120]

[Secret hideout - biolab upgraded. Autopsy table and precision tools obtained. Pods increased to 10]

Mistress and the kingdom

Year 74 Month 2 Week 2

The mistress and her band of refugees arrive. About 400 strong, half warriors, half escapees, comprising a mix of humans, elves, dwarves and centaurs.

Eriz, quickly stepped in to mediate. I think she probably saw the early scuffle with the elves and want to other elf group and want to avoid a similar conflict.

In fact, once they are right outside, she ran out to meet them, before they enter the forest.

I think she knows I can observe them, once they enter the forest. They spoke at length, and of course she took Roma with her.

"Think they have good intentions?" I ask the elves.

"Nah. I don’t think they got good intentions." Jura shakes his head. "They just want some cover for a while, and probably cover them from their enemies."

"But they know your secret password."

"So? When we designed it, it’s not meant to give free access to few hundred people."

"True."

In the end, the rest of the refugees wait at the forest’s edge, and only Eriz, Roma and five other come in.

Two elves, two humans, and a dwarf.

One of the elves is a lady, and I do sense something… different about her.

She approaches the edges of the trees, and she is the one who speaks first.

"I am the leader of this band of unfortunate refugees, here to seek the protection of the guardian of this valley."

"And why should I?"

"We offer you our services, our goods, our knowledge, those that we can give. And we will keep our distance from you and your affairs."

"And?"

"We just seek safe passage, and protection from the kingdom that seeks to hunt us down."

"I want no part in your conflict."

The mistress Yvon sighs. "I understand, but please, help us, Tree Spirit. There is no where we can turn to, and if you push us away, we may as well die. An army is coming our way, and we’re too weak to outrun them."

"You lure an army here?"

She gulps. "No. When we realised, we were already almost here..."

"And you still come here?"

"We had no choice. There is no where we can go…"

"Why should I not leave you to die?"

Yvon takes a deep breath. "Because…"

"Enough. Eriz. You lured them here, so you have blame in this."

She pauses and she kneels. "I’m sorry. I felt they.. It’s their best chance of surviving. The humans are slaughtering elves by the thousands, and… there’s no openly-nonhuman friendly territory in anywhere near the Salah Kingdom… except.. Except here."

I sigh.

It feels like I’ve been led into this conflict.

"How many is coming?"

"Six hundred or so, mix of knights and archers, on horseback."

Hmm.. if I leave these refugees out there, will they let us go? Fact is, I do have three groups of non-humans already living in the valley, and if they are really hunting down all non-humans, they may very well just set the entire forest on fire.

Maybe something I can handle, if they don’t have someone at the level of the heroes.

I mentally reach out to Jura, and he’s been listening in.

"It’s not much of a choice. I think we can punish Eriz, this leader of the refugees and whoever lured them here later, but the fact remains that a small army trailed the refugees all the way here and would highly suspect that this forest is the non-human base of operations. As we already have other refugees."

"If we defeat this army, what’s stopping a larger army from coming here?"

"That’s true. If we can somehow pull of a feint, like… distract the army and lead them to somewhere else…"

"These refugees can’t outrun this horseback-army."

"True. And, the army may not be a conventional force. They may have mages or specialists amongst them, since they are chasing after this group. Can you see them, TreeTree?" Jura pauses, sits down and tries to think.

I try to reach out to the furthest of my trees, and my roots. I put one [subsidiary tree] in that direction, and it extends my vision slightly.

And another [subsidiary tree].

"Spotted." Six hundred horseback men. I couldn’t tell much though, but if a conflict is necessary, I could drag them into difficult ground. They probably are not aware of my abilities as a high level tree spirit, and would march past trees without suspecting anything.

So, I plant about twenty additional [subsidiary trees], all of them with [warbeetles], spaced and spread out in that direction, such that it maximises my root coverage.

The army pass the trees. No action as expected.

"The moment we accepted the first group of refugees, I guess we already have taken a stand in this conflict." Jura sighs. "Let me march to the three refugee groups, and ask them to participate in combat."

He’s not exactly right. The moment I taken on the promise to protect these elves, when Freeka is destroyed, I have made the choice, to protect this valley. An army marching on us, is therefore an enemy, especially a human army that’s going to be burn up this area.

"Offer them."

"Huh?" Jura turns. "Offer?"

"If they are willing to participate in this battle, I will consider lifting restrictions and conditions on their stay here. This is their opportunity to show their worth to me in this valley, and earn their right to stay."

Jura laughs. "Hah! A tree spirit truly is wise. To make these refugees fight!" Jura nods and then goes off.

I then turn to Eriz and Yvon.

"Get your men ready for combat. I have, very reluctantly, decided to join this conflict. Eriz, Yvon, and whoever suggested all of you to come into combat, your punishment will be decided after this battle."

Yvon pause, and she nods. "Very well, if we live to see tomorrow’s sun, I’ll take the punishment."

The three camps, the elves refuse to participate. It seems they’ve already decided to leave once the weather improves. The treefolk and centaurs both agree, and send about twenty men each. Jura himself, and also about a hundred or so men from Yvon’s group is also getting ready. The rest, the woman, children all hide in the forest.

The army approaches.

"Those stinking rebels, is that their hideout?"

"Forest. Hah! Its so predictable that it is a forest! Elves!"

"They should choose a cave or something."

Chatter. They past by a few of my subsidiary trees. I’m watching them, looking for… special individuals.

"I don’t feel so good."

"What, you feel like pooping? You can poop on the elves later."

"Did Lord Rovas say we can take prisoners? Elven ladies are hot."

"No. He said kill everyone. No survivors. Can’t leave any of these rebel scums to breed."

"Ah man."

"I hate this armor. Why’d they insist we wear military uniform anyway?"

"We’re legit now. Deal with it." A burly man comes around and smacks a few of them with a cane. "We closing in. Mages, get ready."

A woman rides next to him. "Our target is Yvon, Prince Galan’s corruptor. It is she who led him into this foolish non-human love affair."

"She’s hot?"

"She’s got a way with words."

"Really?"

"Shut it. We can’t let this group escape. If this is their base, let's take it all out."

"Okay boss."

Hmmm… They just passed the second layer of trees.

"They will try to fight in the forest, though."

"No. We burn the forest. Anti-elf tactics 101. Why go into the forest and fight on their terms? Set the forest on fire, and we attack whoever comes out."

Funny, they just walked past a few trees. They should have attacked the trees, then.

"They have centaurs and dwarves, right? And they can run to the other side?"

"A handful. Not enough to make a difference. Another group has already went ahead, the other side of the valley."

"Ah! Such genius!"

"Mages, gather up, and cast a few fireballs into the forest. Let’s burn this forest to the ground."

Great. That’s the cue I’m waiting for.

Of the six hundred, about twenty step forth, and they start to channel some kind of fireball. And right when they start to channel,

[Poison Field]

[Root field]

Roots surge out of the ground and release a kind of toxic fume into the air. It’s not fast acting, but would work.

Then, twenty root strikes. All at the mages.

I hit 18. Killing them instantly. Their armors, though metal, didn’t hold up very well. Two remaining had some magical instinct, and manage to break their fireball-chant in time, to dodge the surge.

"Druids?"

Their horses panic, as the roots and the poison is uncomfortable. They want to run.

[Root surge]

I only have two use of this ability per day, but it’s very useful as an area attack. Sharp roots emerge in the area around four subsidiary trees, and so there are roots attacking about half of the enemy force.

"What!" The root surge though lacks the punch each individual [root strike] have. I reckon they are about a quarter as strong.

Some of the men activate their defensive abilities, successfully blocking off the surge. But as an area attack, about a hundred or so died, so that’s pretty good.

"Run guys! We’ll need to come back with a bigger army!" One the surviving mage shouts, using some kind of magic to boost his escape. "Whoever is protecting them is a very powerful druid. Perhaps one of the great elven archdruids!"

That actually need not be said. Some of them are already running, when the [poison field] and [root field] popped up.

Well, I can’t let mages run, though. So I shoot a few more rounds of [root strikes], and I kill one. The last surviving mage uses a string of magical nullification spells. He’s hurt, but not dead.

"That cursed elf woman! She’s got a backer! Must be one of the elven nations secretly meddling in our country’s politics!"

"Retreat!"

I try a root strike at the leader. It hits a magical barrier, breaks through it, but then a metal shield blocks the root strike.

"You won’t get my head that easily!" He shouts, and he activates a few magical and physical defensive abilities, then as he is about to turn back, a shout came from the forest.

"Charge!"

Yvon and the refugees charge out of the forest.

Honestly, if you ask me, that is a stupid decision. Why’d she and the refugees charge out of the forest?

Well, since she’s charging, I activate all the warbeetles hiding in the twenty subsidiary trees. Sixty warbeetles appear and charge into the chaotic mess that is the Kingdom’s army. The beetles kill a few, but with the stronger, more experienced soldiers, it’s an even matchup. After all, these soldiers have skills, abilities, and probably some enchanted equipment.

The leader though, smiles and shouts at Yvon. "Ah, you succubus! Decided to appear and fight eh?!"

Yvon pulls out a sword, uses some kind of ability, and she vanishes. Only to reappear a second later, right in front of the army leader and attempt a stab.

He blocks, and his magical barrier is broken. "Hah! Not so easy!" He pulls out a sword as well, and leaps out of his horse.

Both Yvon and the army leader enter into a sword-fighting match as they trade blows.

Meanwhile, the rest of the refugees and the warbeetles fight.

At this point, I stop attacking and observe the battle.

"She’s pretty good." Jura laughs, still sitting at the side, not joining the battle.

"Aren’t you going?"

"Soon. I’m just waiting for the trigger."

"Which is?"

"That woman. She’s going to try something."

She charges up some kind of ability as Yvon and the leader are fighting. Well, sorry, I’m gonna have to ruin the surprise. Two root strikes impale through her body. She yells in pain.

"AGHHHH…."

Both Yvon and the army leader turn to see the woman with one root through her chest, and another through her tummy.

The army leader looks at Yvon furiously. "Which country is helping you. You treasonous beast."

Yvon shakes her head. "None."

"Then explain this root magic."

Yvon pause. "I can’t. I didn’t know of it either."

"Lies. Again."

The army leader activates some kind of ability, and starts slashing at Yvon at high speed. She, in response, activates some kind of ability as well, and they are back at a stalemate. Him slashing, and she parrying, dodging successfully.

She pants, her breathing heavy.

"You can’t beat me. You know it."

"I can try. Vengeance demands it."

He laughs. "I didn’t land the killing blow, mind you. It is not I, who killed Prince Galan."

"But you were there. And so you must die." Yvon’s sword glow in a greenish hue.

"Oh?" The army leader laughs.

I thought I saw a few chances for me to throw a [root strike], but eavesdropping the conversation is a lot more interesting.

Yvon disappears into a whirl of greenish light, some kind of sword-dance ability. The army leader laughs, glows in purple and he too disappears in a purple-glow, and the two appear as sparks for a good few minutes.

And when they both reappear, the army leader look unscratched, whereas Yvon has cuts all over her body.

"See? You can’t beat me, and I will make you join that Prince Galan soon."

Yvon shakes her head, and forces herself to stand.

"Where’s that druid of yours anyway? Ran out of [root attacks]?"

Well, I still have about fifty to spare. But I’m interested in watching. My beetles and the rest of the refugees, still fighting, few of the beetles killed, and they manage to hunt down the last mage. So, with the mage out of the picture, I’m actually letting the rest of this play out.

About this time, 40 additional refugees join the battle. The treefolk and the centaur. They waited for a chance, as they did not want to join the fight until Jura did.

"Oh, treefolk. That explains the [root attacks]." The army leader laughs. "I’ll slaughter them after I kill you."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Jura steps in front. "Jura."

The army leader laughs. "Oh? I’m Waysorious Moffard. Also known as the Purple Blade."

Jura bows, "Pleased. Allow me to join this battle, as I’ve been robbed of my prey." Well, I killed the lady Jura wanted to fight, so…

"Well, come."

Jura grins, and activates some kind of ability, covering his body in a layer of wood.

They trade a few blows, and Jura jumps backward. His wooden armor had multiple scratches, but he lives.

"Ah, I’m weaker with the sword. But thankfully my defense is a lot stronger." The wooden armor regenerates, and the scratches disappear.

Waysorious laughs. "That armor of yours is strong, but if that’s all you got, you won’t last."

At that point, Yvon steps up, her body fully healed. "Well, what if it’s both of us?"

Waysorious pauses. "Ah…" Jura activated a healing ability before they started fighting.

He looks around, and sees the rest of his men dying, or fleeing. He then starts laughing maniacally.

"I see. I see. I’ll be back, you cursed witch."

Yvon quickly attempts to stab him, but in a flash of light, he disappeared.

"AGH! Should have known he carries a ring of escape with him!"

Huh. There’s item like that, eh?

And once the captain leaves, the rest of the soldiers did not last very long. It seems without his presence, some buffing effects that he had fade away. Whoever’s still fighting is quickly killed by the remaining warbeetles, Yvon, Jura and the rest of the refugees.

So, the battle ends.

The refugees strip whatever equipment or items from the soldiers, and pile the bodies up to burn. Yvon’s bunch of 200+ refugees lost about thirty or so men, whereas the 40 treefolk and centaurs lost none. All thanks to a great element of surprise, rootstrikes, and warbeetles.

Warbeetles have a [taunt] ability with tends to cause nearby enemies to attach them first, and that tanking effect help minimise casualties. Add to the confusion from the rootstrikes and root surge, the army seem to be concentrated on fleeing more than fighting.

"Centaurs and treefolk, thank you for your participation in this battle. With this, I’m willing to offer you full rights to your designated areas, and also such that each person may chop 1 tree, per year. Ration your wood accordingly. Treefolk may trade your wood-rights, if you do not need them, with centaurs, but notify me beforehand."

The centaurs and treefolk nod, and return to their homes. They’re glad that no casualties in their bunch, but they join the battle late. . I later overhear that the sight of roots surging out of the ground is rather scary. From afar, it looks like the earth itself decided to fight them. Which reminds me, maybe I should have a giant-worm of my own, like the demons. A subordinate giant worm or centipede would be nice.

As for Yvon’s group, they quickly bury their dead, and heal their wounded. Yvon’s frustrated though, not that I care. Her punishment is due and Jura delivers the message.

"You survived. Now face punishment." Jura speaks, in a small gathering.

Yvon sighs. "... no way out of this?"

"Speak to the Tree spirit."

Later that day, after all is done, Eriz, Yvon both stand right outside the main tree.

"So… what punishment are we facing?"

"Eriz. Did you know you’re putting everyone at risk by luring them here?"

"Yes. But it is the best decision, I think."

"You. You intentionally wanted to get me involved in this."

Yvon shakes her head. "Uh… to be honest, I didn’t fully believe Eriz when she said there’s a Tree Spirit able to protect us. And from my point of view, we had to escape the human-lands. Wherever we go, we are going to be hunted, so, since my son is here… I thought coming here made sense."

She looks at Jura, and Jura shakes his head. "Go on."

"Erm.. whatever it is, I didn’t realise there is a forest here, and I didn’t think that they would suspect this forest is a hideout for rebels. On hindsight it is obvious, but when we are just trying to successfully escape, we.. we didn’t think that far ahead. So… we decided to take a chance on whatever Eriz said.."

I sigh. How should I punish these people? She’s trying to feign innocence, and that annoys me even more.

How?

At this point, the wisp appears in my mental realm.

"Take her soul."

"What?!" I mean, what? Like.. how does one do that?

"I mean, make her surrender her soul to you when she dies."

"I can do that?"

"Yeah. You can mark her soul, with a special process. She has to consent to it, of course, and recite a long phrase and agreement to mark that wills her soul to you."

That… that somehow feels a bit extreme. And, I didn’t know I have that kind of ability?

"That sounds like what a demon does, I mean, take one’s soul on death?"

"Well. It’s actually the same thing. The contracts in essence are the same, but demons took the ideas to the extreme of course."

"Why would I want her soul, anyway?"

"Well, all the souls you see are marked for their onward reincarnation or whatever the gods have planned for their next phase, and stay in the realm at most for a year, usually six months. But if a soul agrees, they drop out of that process and belong to you… for a thousand years. And during that thousand years, you may use the soul as you see fit."

"Like?"

"Well.. anything."

I shake my head. Sounds exactly like what a demon or devil does. Not exactly what I thought a "soul tree" or "Spirit tree" should be doing. I mean, how does it work?

"What else are you not telling me?"

"Or if you think taking away her soul is too.. much, tell her to give you a few of her levels or her skills."

"What." Another bombshell from the wisp. This.. wisp, is hiding things from me.

"Ah, well, its actually a fairly common ability amongst the ancients, high nobles, blue blooded royalty, and high level magic smiths, artificers and crafters."

"Huh?"

"There are restriction by the origin of your power, of course, and in your case, the person surrendering the levels must be at least level 20, and they can surrender no more than 20% of their levels, and no more than 20% of all skills."

Okay, wisp. Infodump here, but this sounds pretty important. I turn to Eriz and Yvon.

"Rest. I will decide your punishment in a few days. If you attempt to flee, I will kill you. And the refugees."

They gulp, but they nod. Having seen the roots, they probably realise I could kill them. Once they leave, I go back to my [soul realm] to the Wisp.

"You and I, are going to have a long conversation on what else you have not been telling me."

"Oh, I have plenty of others, but the information I can release to you is dependent on the progress you make on the [soul forge], and if you want know everything I know, you need an active soul forge."

"Can you tell me more about these soul contracts and surrendering of levels and skills."

The wisp bobs around and then pauses.

"Making a deal for the soul is common throughout history. When a desperate man sacrifices everything to protect his family, he is making a request to the heavens or hell, or whatever natural aspects watching at the time, in exchange for his soul. It is then up to the nature aspect to decide whether they want the soul, and balance the costs of assisting versus the benefits."

Huh. "Simplify?"

"Granting souls is super common, and not forever. As a soul or spirit tree, having souls that won’t move on is very useful. Just think of it as an employment contract."

"Can’t I just make her work for me?"

"Well, that’s harder to enforce than having a contract carved into her soul, no?"

"Oh." True, it's like having a slave that cannot defy you. Well, that is nice, but is that a "good" punishment?

Death feels too... cheap.

Punishment & Soul Forge.

Year 74 Month 2 Week 3

Spring begins. Beetles are out spreading seeds.

I’ve finally decided on the punishment for Eriz and Yvon.

"Thanks to your selfishness, Eriz, you’ve permanently dragged us into this conflict. This is despite our hospitality to you these past months. Your punishment is that you are to surrender your soul to me, and to serve us for the rest of your life."

"My… my soul?"

"Yes, your soul. You put us at risk, even when we helped take care of Roma. For putting our lives at risk."

She pause, and she’s too stunned to respond.

Then it is Yvon’s turn. "Your punishment is that you will now have to protect this forest for the rest of your life. And I’ll enforce that by not having you leave this forest. If you do try, I’ll kill your people. In exchange, I’ll allow your people to share and stay in this valley with me, though, as you’re probably aware, I have rules that I want followed."

She stops.

"I did not think taking your soul is necessary at this point, and I am of the opinion that your combat and management abilities will be useful to manage the coming refugees. But, I will be watching you closely."

Yvon pauses, thinking. After about five minutes, she sighs, and she then nods. "I can accept that." I guess she figured to have me as a protector of the refugees is worth the cost.

She dragged me into this conflict, I may as well make the most of it. If this is going to end up into a war, I’d better have more bodies to throw at the enemy.

I do want to fight the Salah Kingdom, so this accelerates this entire process. But I was hoping for more clandestine, stealthy methods, by way of sneaky subsidiaries trees, but, oh well.

"How.. how are you going to take my soul?" Eriz looks puzzled.

A magic ring appears around her, an ability I didn’t know I had until recently.

[Spiritual Contract - Judgement]. It’s essentially a soul contract, but in the form of a judgement. Demons, devils and the dark gods get a lopsided version known as [Unfair Contracts], which is… unfair, but, less robust as a result. It has also sneaky abilities like concealing terms and conditions, but all of these result a reduction of the ability grade to a lower-tier (relative, of course).

"Accept."

She shakes. She looks at her mistress, and then back at Jura, who’s watching her. "I.. I.."

"Are you testing my patience, Eriz?"

I wonder whether there is undue influence in this world.

She gulps. "I...I’m sorry. Is there any other way?"

"No. For the fact that you’ve dragged me into this conflict, and the kingdom knows of this forest, you’ve made life difficult for me. Therefore, this is an adequate punishment for you. You could have told your mistress to meet you elsewhere, but here we are."

Yvon tries to defend her subordinate. "Her soul… it’s too much isn’t it? Can’t she protect this forest like I do?"

"No. Her soul, or everyone dies." I probably would not actually kill everyone, but an ultimatum it is.

Eriz cries. And she cries for a while.

She glances at Jura, but Jura shrugs.

After she finished, she accepts the punishment, and the magic ring around her glows, expands, spins around awhile, and then enters her body.

It is done.

[Eriz Maforlas’s soul is now leased to you for 1,000 years. Soul lease will commence on death]

Lease? Isn’t that like renting?

"Uh…" She looks around. I think she’s preparing for something more gruesome and painful.

And after a while, she looks at Yvon.

"Am I still here?" Eriz seems to think she will die instantly. "

"Yes." Yvon nods, and she too looks puzzled

"That’s it? I don’t feel anything different. Have you taken my soul, yet?"

"Oh, not now. When you die, Eriz." I wanted to say, so don’t die, but then, I’m sure she knows that.

Now that her sobbing stops, she looks at her mistress. "Oh. OH! That’s all?"

Y'know... I’m starting to think "on-death" is not that great a term, after all it still means this person gets to act out her life, for the remainder of her days, (which is by no means shorter). It’s a painless punishment, nothing's changed, unless they care about their soul.

Oh well, I guess I’ll take levels next time. Though having seen Yvon’s combat abilities, having her around would be useful against the fighters this Salah Kingdom may deploy.

"For the soul part, yes. Also, from now on, you serve me."

Year 74 Month 3 Week 1

I love spring.

Thanks to the hard work of the beetles and the regrowing bounty mojo, the normal tree count in the valley surged to 3,800. That’s a huge climb, but I am guessing the season of spring counts to that. If this continues I might hit 10,000 a bit faster than expected.

Other than that, nothing of particular concern happened. The Kingdom does not seem to be sending anyone at us, yet.

As for the refugees, Yvon’s group of refugees set up camp along the right side of the slopes. All the refugee camps start building more permanent structures now that winter is over.

The centaurs, now given a certain allotment of trees that they can chop down, start to construct basic houses, which resemble stables. Some of them engage in wide scale planting, of a plant known as "shrub of the fours". Largely inedible to anyone but centaurs, minotaurs, satyrs and their kind, its their staple food. It seems centaurs can survive on this plant alone, and once the plants start to grow significantly, I would like to analyse them.

The treefolk are incredibly fascinating to observe. Their abilities resemble an inferior version of mine in many ways. They enjoy being in the sun, and clearly their abilities are affected by the season, their steps faster, their skin and body more… vibrant. Their feet has some ability to connect to the earth, drawing energy, nutrition, and even mana. The treefolk use their innate affinity to trees to weave the branches of trees into more structures, and it seems this is their preferred way of construction, bending trees into shape. It’s like large scale bonsai sculpting. I suspect they have the ability to boost tree growth as well, but I will ask them someday.

Yvon’s elves, being the most exposed of the bunch, start with building a mix of houses and fortification from the earth. Stone walls, stone houses, I am quite amazed at the speed which they manage to build with the rocks and dirt. They had to cut some of the trees down for the rest of the materials, but with outburst of trees in spring, the loss is acceptable.

The last group of elves, are split. A group, about three quarters, are leaving. They only want to stay through winter. The remaining quarter are going to join Yvon’s group.

No matter.

Year 74 Month 3 Week 3

No movement from the Salah Kingdom. We initially wonder why, but the olive oil traders came. For olives, of course.

"War breaks out. Kingdom of Nung, Kingdom of Takde have declared war on the Kingdom of Salah. The civil war and slaughter is an opportunity, a weakness, so both of them are trying to take a bite out of the Salah kingdom’s territory."

Well, that’s a wonderful coincidence.

Some cash change hands, and olive oils, sold.

"The merchants guild would be trying to sell information about me, no?" Yvon pops out at the trading post.

"Ah… the mistress herself." The merchants grin. "Well, the kingdom is occupied now, but they are offering good money to find out who is backing your rebellion."

"Oh, any leads?" Yvon laughs.

"The merchants guild have our own theories, but if you mean to share…"

Yvon shakes her head. "How is the guildmaster doing?"

"Ah, he is fine. No one would dare touch the guildmaster of the merchants guild, even if he is half-minotaur, if that's what you are asking."

Yvon nods. "That is good." She then hands the merchant multiple letters. "I take the merchants still offer delivery services, even to me?"

The merchant smile, grab the letters, and shove it into a box of some kind. And some coin changes hands.

"I take you know the terms."

"No worries, its to the other kingdoms."

"Ah."

"Sorry…" Laufen butts in. "Do you mind… helping us buy some things?"

"Like?"

"Oh, one of my friends want exotic fruits and books about trees. Can you help us procure some, we’ll pay you."

"Ah, I’ll look out for it."

Year 74 Month 4 Week 1

The young chieftain and the elves left. I am at 5,300 normal trees. The surge is down to an awesome combination, the hard work of the beetles, this wonderful season of spring, and better mastery of this "bounty" ability I have.

Within the inner circle of subsidiary trees, I finally felt confident enough to start growing my first [ginseng tree].

Life for the refugees are starting to stabilise. With homes built, their focus turns to defense, and preparing for winter. Potatoes, and all the other plants.

[Subsidiary tree leveled up. You can now have 180 subsidiary trees]

Year 74 Month 4 Week 3

I spread more subsidiary trees, further out, as a form of surveillance. And this is when I notice my increasing inability to manage such a vast area of [subsidiary trees]. It’s too far.

So, although the [subsidiary trees] are giving me vision, it’s not functioning as an early warning system, and I can’t camp there to watch over it personally. There’s a hill a distance away, and I would like to somehow get my hands more unique minerals and materials.

The essence production at this point is still slow, because most of my energy is focused on growing trees, which now touches 6,000 trees.

Other than that, there are more refugees, more non-humans, and they all join Yvon’s camp. I think about 200 of them. It seems Yvon knew they were coming, and have prepared extra houses and buildings to house them, so Yvon’s side is becoming quite lively. There were some centaurs among the new batch, which went on to join the existing centaur group instead, but it’s a small bunch, only about 20-30.

Year 74 Month 5 Week 1

Spring is almost ending, and it seems the growth of new trees start to slow down again. It is now about 500, per two weeks, so I stand at 6,500 now.

To support the elves, centaurs and treefolk, I’ve created subsidiary trees that produce cotton. The deal is that they shall pay me 20% of the proceeds, should they be sold to traders. But if they make it for personal consumption, no tax.

Yes.

I am taxing the refugees. I call it, the cotton tax.

In addition, treefolk, centaur camps commit to provide 30 warriors each to the valley’s defense. Yvon’s group naturally commit the most, being the largest. They put 200 of their people for the valley’s defense. They mostly focus on the small monsters and creatures that spawn naturally in the region.

And Jura, being the chief coordinator and communicator of the valley, gains a new class.

[Envoy] (working title)

Year 74 Month 5 Week 2

More refugees. Seriously. The invasion by the two kingdoms seems to have displaced even more people, and more death. I know of the death, because with my wider reach, I’m collecting more souls. My soul realm is filled with little sparks of light, of humans, of non-humans, all these souls making the journey to the other world. They will stay, for about 6 months to a year, before moving on, so the constant death is currently adding a lot of little lights to the soul realm.

"It is good that you are approaching an active [soul forge] soon." The wisp bobs around.

"Tell me about.. Other soul-manipulating creatures." I get to the point, I have questions, I ask.

"When you get a soul forge."

"Ah…" I’d like to sigh in frustration, but I can’t. "So, do I have a limit on how many souls I can store?"

"Nope. Soul realm can store as many souls as you can possibly have."

"How’s that even possible, doesn’t that break some rules or something?"

"It… it just does." The wisp can’t answer, but oh well. Magic. Like how the [secret hideout] is far bigger than my actual tree.

Year 74 Month 5 Week 3

More refugees. After 2 weeks of more refugees, Yvon’s group is touching almost 800, and they are accepting some humans as well. At first, my initial response is to reject, but then their location, at the edge of the valley, and the assurance of Yvon and her group, I’ve relented. More bodies to throw back at the Kingdom is good.

So, Yvon, and a lot of the earlier elves and humans now take the role of enforcer, and they seem to have come up with some kind of norms.

They also have an unofficial name for their growing part of town, which is located a bit further from where Freeka is.

New Freeka.

At first, they wanted to name it after their benefactor, Prince Galan, so the name floated about was Galansburg, but I rejected that idea, as it steps on the history of this place, of Freeka.

So it’s fine then. That new settlement they are working on can be the new town, and the area my main tree is will be the old-town of Freeka.

And I gain a random level, after almost 6 months of not gaining a level.

[Level 117]

[Timber-farm]

[Produce average quality timber, at a much faster speed]

"Ah."

Year 74 Month 6

A small scouting party from the Salah kingdom spotted. Their enmity with Yvon has not ended after all. The skirmishes with the Nung and the Takde are just minor distractions, Salah is one of the larger states in the region, and they have sufficient resources to hold both fronts, and still pursue their… vengeance.

For Yvon, this came as a disappointment. Their earlier hopes of making peace in this land, is not going to be as easy as they initially hoped.

Anyway, I decide to let Yvon deal with it. If they are to make a life in this valley, they gotta show they are up for the challenges, so they captured the scouts, interrogated them, and then killed them.

I suppose they’ll be suspecting when the scouts don’t return anyway.

Later in the month, the traders came along, trade some oil, and brought us some exotic fruits. It seems the olive oil prices went up slightly during the wars, so we were paid a little more, though the merchant’s share is obviously higher.

It seems the Salah’s claim over our valley and a few other territories, is disputed by the Nung, that abandonment during the demonic wars renders the Salah’s claim moot. The past few months consists of a mix of skirmishes, and high level diplomatic meetings, and so the dispute areas has been declared a temporary no-go zone.

But that’s ending, as neither is budging from their claim, so Salah is coming. And so is the Nung.

Ah, peace is but a temporary lie, the outcome of two nations bickering with words.

[Harvestable products upgraded. Papaya and grapes obtained].

Normal tree count : 7,800

Year 74 Month 6 Week 4

More refugees. Yvon’s group is expanding their walls, a second layer of walls is being built to protect the additional houses now. With the help of timber, some of their earlier buildings are being rebuilt taller, more… dense.

Yvon’s group is actually fairly talented. One of them, was actually a [Mayor], has taken the role of mayor of New Freeka, and he is in charge of construction and absorbing the refugee influx. With him are few [Councillors], and [Paperworkers], experts at setting up and managing paperwork. It seems they even got started on making some paper from all the branches and leaves.

Another of Yvon’s men is a [Military Trainer], and she’s in charge of managing the defensive aspects.

I suspect the whole conflict stems from prince Galan’s skilled retinue, and this somehow threatened the elder prince.

[Skill obtained : Growth surge]

[Creates patches of normal trees, shrubs and grasses. Affected by weather and seasons]

Year 74 Month 7 Week 2

There’s a fair bit of movement at Yvon’s side. People moving in and out. Other than that, everyone’s getting ready for another round of winter.

The elves, Laufen and all do drop by each of the camps, though I keep watch whenever they do. Last thing I want is a kidnapping.

Though they are "new" and are strangers, it makes them happy. They are in a society after all, and elves who stay alone for too long lose that social connection.

Especially the kids. There are more kids to play with, kids, their age. Lausanne in particular found another girl her age, and they play catch in the small town of New Freeka. In New Freeka, multiple [subsidiary trees] keep watch. These are so that I am can look and keep myself aware what's happening.

But, I am struggling to keep track of so many things happening at once. Especially now that it grows to almost 1,200 people, not counting the treefolk and centaurs.

Year 74 Month 7 Week 4

Army spotted, 10,000 strong. They bear the flags of Salah. A proper army, swords, armors, knights. And mages.

They march towards New Freeka, and as they approach, one man on horseback yells. "We demand you surrender!"

"No!"

I have insufficient root strikes to kill that many people. At best, I can take out about… 1,000? And that leaves 9,000 men.

The refugees are worried, of course. Its a large force. They talk about running, but Yvon somehow convinces them to stay. The past months they have built a wall to act as a defensive fortification, preparing for this day.

10,000 is a lot, but not all need to die. If I can get a hit on the leaders, and deliver a visible smacking to their morale, perhaps they can be convinced into fleeing.

"I think the core group of about 400 are professionals. The rest look like conscripts."

"Mages?"

I had in mind, similar strategy, to the earlier fight. Take out the mages first, but they did see how we fought the first time, so they might know that we would go for that.

And indeed, there’s no obviously visible mages, all of them wear armor,so, the suspected mages are those wielding staffs or sticks. They will probably show themselves once the battle gets into close range.

The army closes in. There’s not many horses this time.

The refugees field about 800 fighters in total, 700 from the camp itself, and 100 from centaurs and treefolk.

Arrows start to fly, and the enemy leader activates a shield barrier, deflecting the arrows. Some of the arrows though, are from actual archers, with shield-penetrating abilities, so some still go through. The treefolk use their ability to throw rocks and boulders at the army, and their size and energy us able to pierce the shield.

10,000, mostly soldiers? Something is not right.

They enter into some kind of turtle-ish formation to reduce the impact of the projectiles.

And they get nearer.

Around the walls are my [subsidiary trees], and they are walking past them now. I take this chance to take a closer look.

Mages. I know some of them are, but with the bodies flanking and blocking, I can’t seem them very well.

A few of the refugees are mages, and two fireballs fly towards the army, smacks right into a magic barrier.

Its at this time, a long range projectile smashes into the refugee mage, killing him instantly.

And I quickly turn my attention to them.

Far away there’s 3 men, one holding a long barrel gun, a sniper? But its a lot more crude, made of forged crystal, and it fires magic bullets. Another look like a mage, with the whole wizard gear. And the last man, is an old man in knight armor. He looks somewhat like a lord.

"Did you spot any archdruid?"

"No."

"10,000 men is overkill. Its probably those treefolk."

The old man nods. "I wouldn’t count Yvon out just yet. She’s probably got something in her sleeves. The fact that she so brazenly set up a physical camp here, suggests she has some kind of backing."

The sniper shakes his head. "Seriously, no unusual mana signatures."

The wizard shrugs. "Maybe she’s just overconfident. Or just tired of running."

"Maybe."

Sniper turns his barrel around. "All these trees are… annoyingly tough." He fires, and the projectile pierces through one of my subsidiary trees. But it slows the crystalline projectile down significantly, and softens the blow.

The wizard pauses, seemingly realising something. "[Detect Presence]".

He pauses, and turns to the Lord. "We should… leave."

The Lord looks dumbfounded. "Huh, why? Don’t we have good odds?"

"I sense an ominous presence that stretches this entire valley… not something… not something an archdruid can do. The trees… they are looking back at us." The wizard points at the trees. "I feel them watching us."

The Lord stares. "How sure are you?"

"These trees… has a faint killing intent. This is no ordinary forest."

"Hmmm.. that explains why the refugees are stuck. They dare not venture through the valley. So they may as well make a stand here."

"We might still be able to defeat Yvon and her band of rebels. But whatever else its here… its not going to fall to us, not to what we have here. If Yvon is somehow working with or trying to control whatever lurks in this forest, we may not stand a chance. Its a trap, milord."

The Lord pauses, and looks at the sniper. "What do you think?"

"I trust his judgement. If he says we should leave, we should." He fires another shot, this time intentionally hitting one of my subsidiary trees. It punctures a whole through the subsidiary tree, and sends a jolt of pain through me. "Normal trees would explode on impact. I agree that this forest… has secrets. I’ll need explosive weaponry."

The wizard nods to the sniper.

"It is best I report this to the wizard’s guild. A deployment of a much larger group of wizards may be necessary."

The Lord nods. "Very well. There is no shame in retreating to fight another day. Call the army back. If this is a trap, we will not fall for it. We would be better placed if we can tap some rangers and shamans for the next fight."

And so, the army of 10,000 halts its advance, and retreats.

It is surreal for the refugees, who thought they would be goners, or lose most of their people. The casualties on both sides are relatively small, about twenty to thirty, and for Yvon and group, this was a huge victory.

[Skill : Haunted tree upgraded to haunted forests.]

Ah. Did I just scare away an army? I am pretty sure the army cannot kill me, but I probably won’t be able to kill all of them too.

Still, it looks like they will be back with a vengeance. So I need additional countermeasures.

Year 74 Month 8 Week 3

10,000 normal trees reached!

Firing up [soul forge].

All of the trees in the valley, abruptly emit a faint glow, and it scares the refugees.

And I feel power surging into me, my roots, all of them overflowing with power, energy gathered.

And then a huge thunderbolt from above lands on me, like a constant electrical connection. It causes everyone to jump, and the secret hideout shakes like it is experiencing an earthquake.

The ground shakes. My entire body of tree glows in a bluish light, the thunder, like a chain linked to the sky above, shakes, and flickers.

"What the hell is going on?" Jura asks. "Tree Spirit are you okay?"

They don’t know.

The treefolk seems afraid. "Is the tree suffering through a magical crisis?"

The centaurs wonder whether this is some kind of divine punishment.

The normal trees push more energy through the roots, and all of that energy flows into the once-inactive [soul forge].

A spark, a small blue flame pops out and dances in the middle of the soul forge. The soul forge actually looks like a massive circular jar, and now there is this blue light emitting from within.

And then, a shockwave. The outer barks of my body is shredded by the bolts of lightning, as they hop in and out of my body, like a short circuited set of electronics.

[You gained 4 levels.] [Level 121]

[Skill obtained : Magic suppression : All hostile magic abilities below tier 3 are absorbed]

[Skill upgraded : Root surge. Covers a wider area and use limit increased]

[Skill upgraded : Subsidiary tree increased to 250]

[Soul forge : Blue] is active.

[Soul forge : ForgeTree.

The physical realm’s link to the soul forge]

[Soul forge abilities unlocked]

[The power to repair, mend souls. To strip souls apart, and put them back together. The ability to add souls to your abilities, familiars, items, trees. The ability to push souls to their limits, and beyond. The ability to rank up a soul. The ability to fuse soul fragments whole, and create artificial sub-souls from ordinary soul fragments]

The wisp shakes, and he splits into three wisps.

Two then circle around the soul forge, orbiting it.

"You’ve done it. An active soul forge."

"Where do I start?"

"I suggest, given your now expanding reach, is to have… assistants."

"Okay, lead the way."

Not all souls are suited to make the journey to the afterlife, the aether dimension whether all souls return.

Souls, though extremely durable, do fracture and crack, and decay from the presence of the outside world. Some souls are torn by the magic of men, between life and death. Some souls are stuck, lingering, seeking vengeance or salvation. Whatever it is, some souls cannot make the journey. And for these souls, they decay into fragments.

But it is not the end. Eventually, in the eternity of time, enough of these fragments will pool together and form a soul-body able to make the journey into the afterlife, where the administrator of souls can restore them, and send them onwards, to continue the eternal duty of souls. To reincarnate into the next life.

A soul forge assists in this repairing and renewal process. It fuses the fragments of ordinary decayed souls, into a soul body, and the soul body then makes the journey to the afterlife. But, it leaves behind a "frame".

An artificial thing, not possessing the limitless, self sustaining life force of a soul, but yet, close enough.

To use an analogy, the soul comprise of a car (an outer layer) and a driver (an inner layer). The decayed souls are broken cars, unable to continue its journey to the other side. The soul forge, forges the broken parts of multiple broken cars together, such that together they can make that journey. But, once that journey is made, the inner layer disappears, but the outer layer remains.

This outer layer, is the "artificial-soul". Like a person without heart, it is close, but not the same.

And with this artificial soul, we, upgraded one of my very first abilities.

[Soul-forge is fusing autopilot with an artificial soul].

[Autopilot has transformed into Forest Mind, Level 1]

[You may now name Forest Mind.]

"Trevor." I wanted Treevor, but never mind.

"I am Trevor, Level 1 Forest-Mind. Greetings Master TreeTree."

It speaks!

"I can handle the administrative, defensive and organisation aspects of the valley on your behalf, and as I gain levels, you may select the skills and abilities I gain. Please assign me a duty."

Bear and Beetle

Year 74 Month 9

It is as if I am playing a strategy game, and now I unlocked the radar and now have minimaps, live indicators, numerical representation of all the things going on before, with much better details.

An example would be normal trees, previously I have a data indicating how many trees is connect to me via rootnet, but now that data is a lot more granular, like how many of those trees are producing seeds and fruits, the average age of trees, the estimated fertility of the ground, and estimates of how many trees will be added.

"The merchants are spotted southwest, sir." Yes, I think I prefer sire over master.

And my alarm system.

"Good."

"The elves are on their way. With the olives."

There are certain things innate to Trevor, things that do not need to be taught, because they come naturally. Things like tree management, boosting growth rate, checking for new "foreign" objects, managing mining and essence extractions.

"Master, I gained a level."

"Yes good." And he is level 5 now. Here’s a limitation with artificial souls, though.

Artificial souls start off with a level limit of 20 and to break that, I need to upgrade the artificial soul, or fulfill certain set criteria.

As they get upgraded, their abilities grow, but according to wisps, so will their tendency to… misbehave. So, in a way, artificial souls generally become less stable as they grow. But, this is also influenced by various factors, such as the skill of the soul forger, the power of the soul forge, and various other unknowns.

Another, is that Trevor, leeches off on my knowledge, and fuses it with its innate knowledge of tree-stuff. So, while it can handle forest related matters superbly, it struggles to even talk about… communicating with its inhabitants. In fact, that communication it has with me, is due to the fact that it is synchronised to me, and therefore can relay its message to me specifically.

So… in a way, an assistant no one knows about. Well, doesn’t matter to the elves, does it?

"How about me?" Meela pops by. Her soul is damaged by the journey, but I have used the soul forge to repair her back. Still, it is not a complete repair. It seems I will need to find additional upgrades for the [soul forge], to fully get back her power.

"I… I haven’t thought of how to best use you. And you are due for reincarnation, no?"

"Oh I spoke to Nobuo last night. He said I can stay for 1,000 years before I return."

"Who’s Nobuo?"

"Oh.. the reincarnation god."

"Huh." I thought his name is Mozart? Or are there multiple reincarnation gods? "Why?"

"Oh… he assumed my soul was destroyed by the demons, and would take a longer time to get back into the system, so he didn’t arrange a subsequent reincarnation for me yet, so he says I can hang around for a 1,000 years."

"That’s awfully long for him."

"Oh, time flows differently in the aether realm, its like super fast there." Meela’s soul bobs around.

"Really." Well, I suppose its like saying flies have short lives, and perhaps to these gods, our lives are like flies.

"Trevor, any suggestions?"

"No sir. Souls are not my area of expertise."

"Would you like a combat role?"

Meela’s soul spins. "No. I did a lot of fighting with the stupid demons, so… I can help with defenses if you need it, but… something more… domestic?"

"What do you like?"

"I like dancing, I like… kids. I used to volunteer as a kindergarten assistant, and maybe playing games and stuff."

"Ah… anything else?"

Meela seems slightly annoyed. "Why can’t you just pick something. Can’t I change if I don’t like it?"

Hmm.

"Wisp, is the soul forge fusion reversible?"

"For artificial souls, no. The disentangling process will shred to soul-frame (outer layer). For normal souls, yes, but the normal souls have a "cooldown" period."

"You are right Meela, looks like you can change if you don’t like it. I was afraid that its an irreversible effect, in which case a mistake would be… terrible."

"Aaaahh. I see I see. Well, I do like exploring places, eating food, talking to people. You know, like, be a tourist. I think that would be nice."

"A tourist eh." I can’t create human bodies, so too bad. At most I can make a wooden puppet… wait. A wooden puppet might be a good idea.

"Is that it?"

"Hmmm… I also like to draw, and paint. And hang out with my siblings."

"Sorry, I suddenly thought of it.. don’t you miss your family or whoever where you came from?" I suddenly miss my nephew too.

Meela pauses, "I do. But like I said, time moves differently for different places.. Relativity, interdimensional timespace and all that mumbo jumbo. This 1,000 years is not going to be a 1,000 years in my home. Nobuo say he can send me back, without my memories, to the exact moment before we had the bus accident, and that accident didn’t happen. According to him, the only thing I will get from this world once I return… is strange, unusual dreams."

"Ah."

"Yeah. Things will be back to the way they were, and all I get is a dream."

"Like primary school essays eh. Where you wake up and realise it's all been a dream."

"Exactly."

…

…

"Do you like doing… research?"

"No."

"Hmmm… How about you pick something?"

"...I don’t know."

"...seriously?"

"Yea."

"Any ideas?" I look at the actual Wisp, and he turns around. I take that as a no.

"Ah. Can you just be my secretary then?"

"Sounds lewd. No."

Year 74 Month 9 Week 3

There are patches of [subsidiary tree], with grapes and papaya in all the different refugees groups, as a form of dietary supplement.

The refugees of new Freeka swelled to 2,000, boosted by the "victory" over the large army. So, New Freeka is bustling with activity, as they try to cater to the needs of a growing town, with Yvon and her group of advisors as the unelected leader. Most of the new refugees are mostly escapees, as the war with the Nung and Takde continues to devastate that region of land.

"I bring… troublesome news, Tree spirit." Jura nods, and sits in one of the tables in the inner circle of trees. He sips on the tea made with tea leaves, and then continues. "Yvon’s group is planning to send a delegation to Salah. To negotiate a truce, for coexistence."

"Oh." How is that troublesome? Is it not worth trying?

"The refugees themselves though, do not think that is a good idea. Many lost friends, family to the brutality of the Salah kingdom, like us, enmity is not going to accept a truce. Personally, I think Yvon still wants to coexist peacefully with humans."

Hmm.

"So… the mood amongst the refugees is a bit conflicted. They are aware their options for revenge is limited, but feels injustice and dissatisfaction at "peace"."

And?

"Some of them think you should decide. Whether truce is a good idea."

"Yes. And besides, do you think Salah kingdom is going to hold on and honor a truce?"

"Well…"

"So a truce is a good idea, because it buys time. It gives us just cause to retaliate."

Jura pauses, and then nods. "Yeah. Maybe."

Now that its decided, I turn my attention to artificial souls.

"Thinking of making another?" The wisp asks, clearly knowing my thoughts.

"Yes. But I have much to think about… considering I have only sufficient fragmented souls to make… 4 more, for now."

"People die, and over the eternities you will gather thousands, maybe millions of souls. Life in this world is so fragile after all."

"Ah true. Do these artificial souls die?"

"Yes, if they get destroyed."

Kinda like computers then.

It is then we direct our attention to the [forge tree], a large tree located on the outer ring of my circle. Black in color, as if the tree itself has been scorched, its split into five from top through the middle of the trunk. At the bottom, there's a big black hole into a pitch black screen.

And Jura gulps, he steps in.

[Soul Forge activating…]

[Merging artificial soul, tree familiar and essences of earth and 50 essences of bear]

[Familiar has transformed into a Bear-shaped Tree Eidolon, Level 1. You may name it.]

"Bamboo."

Jura walks out of the soul forge feeling a bit dazed, wondering what happened. It is then that a smoke like thing start to appear, out of his skin. And it then accumulates, spins and swirls, then transforms into a bear made of branches twirled and spun together.

"Hi." A loud, hoarse voice breaks the soft rustling of the forest.

Jura jumps. "What?!"

The bear takes a few step and stands on two legs, like a grizzly. "I was once your familiar. With the blessings of the tree spirit, I have now transformed into an eidolon."

"Eidolon?"

Well, I’ll let Jura figure it out.

Next, is a large giant warbeetle. The soul forge took a whole day to merge a warbeetle with an artificial soul, but when it is finally complete, a large warbeetle emerges.

[Warbeetle has transformed into Beetleknight, Level 1. You many name it.]

"Horns."

"Master." It speaks to me telepathically.

"Great. Horns, you shall lead the beetles."

"As you command."

[To assign more artificial souls, additional trees needed]

Ah. It seems each of these artificial souls derive some form of control and energy from me indirectly.

[You obtained a beetle commander, each tree with [insect warriors] has expanded to 5 beetles per tree.]

[You leveled up. Level 122!]

[Poison field upgraded]

Ah man, I was hoping for some greater AoE abilities. Between all the other boosts and support I get, I have probably sufficient root strikes and root surge to probably kill 2,000 men if all die at a single root strike, and the remainder will depend on the beetle army I have.

But if a large army of 10,000 comes along again, the citizens of the valley are done for.

Year 74 Month 10

Traders came by, and bring news and money.

Salah is winning the war against both Nung and Takde, so they may soon turn their attention back to us again.

Traders came by for another load of olive oil. It seems it's a rather popular product, that they ask the elves whether the olive oil production could be expanded, and they only say, "Maybe."

New Freeka is growing, and a big inflow of refugees resulted in a growth to almost 3,000. Food is a problem, and so they engage in widespread hunting, but Yvon directed them towards the open fields and shrubs, where some animals spawn.

"We need food. Winter is here soon."

Jura pauses, "Food?"

"Can the tree spirit help?"

"Tree spirit is not the solution to everything." Jura shakes his head.

Yvon and another of the senior New Freeka leaders look at each other. "Surely he can do… some things?"

Jura pauses…. "Hmmm…"

"Perhaps help with some… fruits?"

"Fruits don't grow in winter." Lie, some fruits do grow in winter. Especially with my [winter resistance]. Perhaps some day I will even get some [Greenhouse] like ability. Sounds like a farming game then. Perhaps sprinklers too.

Would I be a farmtree then?

"Hmm.. I will speak to the tree spirit."

Yvon nods, "Please. If the refugee situation grows even further we will have a food crisis over winter."

"Then why are you still accepting more?"

"I can’t. I made an oath to the gods when we started this fight, before this, to accept the non-human refugees, to offer safe haven to those who seek us out."

"Ah.. a god’s oath?" Jura asks.

"Yes. To Morya."

"Ah. Not Gaya?"

Yvon didn’t answer. And Jura takes the hint.

"Hmm…"

"So, please ask the tree spirit for help."

"I will ask." Just as Jura is about to walk away, Yvon stops him.

"Also… can the Tree Spirit create a tree in New Freeka? We can cater an area where a quite sanctuary can be made."

"Oh. Why?"

"The refugees have… spiritual needs. A place for prayer, ceremony, and faith."

Jura nods. "Ah I see. I will speak to the Tree Spirit."

It seems Yvon and team still cannot identify which tree are actually my [subsidiary trees]. [Camouflage]?

Oh well.

"Can you let us know the tree spirits decision tomorrow?"

"I will try."

Later, once they left, Jura sits on a wooden stump right outside the secret hideout.

"What do you think, you heard what they say?"

I pause.

I suppose if we do assist, they may soon expect it annually. There must be a cost to it, so they must bear some kind of price for assistance. Power and abilities should not be given freely, as there are consequences.

"Potatoes. Offer them potatoes. But it comes at a price. I demand a magical item in exchange."

Jura pauses… "Ah… what sort of magical item."

"The amount of potatoes I will nourish, depends on what magical items they offer me."

"Oh."

"As for the tree for New Freeka, I am fine."

"Ah."

"How’s the eidolon coming?"

Jura stands and then suddenly, a wooden armor surrounds him, and that armor looks like a grizzly bear, his arms with claws made of wood.

He takes a few steps, and his posture and gait that of a giant bear.

"This is my new form. [Ursa Mode]."

"Ah, so how is it?"

"Not bad,I feel stronger, faster. But without a real opponent I will not really know how well it performs."

"Get Yvon."

Jura pauses. "You want to show this to her?"

"It is fine. Not as if she can do anything about it."

Jura nods, leaves for New Freeka and inform Yvon of the decision. Later that evening, a clearing is made in New Freeka, that has been designated as space for a subsidiary tree.

And indeed, overnight, a tree appeared in the middle of that space.

Year 74 Month 11

The artifacts offered were… uninteresting. Rings, daggers all with mild enchantments. The possessions of the refugees are… not spectacular.

Or perhaps they are not hungry enough to offer what is truly valuable.

But they did offer quite a few, about thirty, so as a result, they received about 3,000 large potatoes, which spawned right next to their town.

This level of precision, is made possible by Trevor.

Other than that, this month is… quiet. The cold is coming again. Winter is starting.

Lausanne, now almost 6, is starting actual combat training since she really still is holding on to that hero idea, and Brislach, Wahlen respectively are old enough and yearn for social contact that they demand to move to New Freeka, even though Laufen has been a great caretaker.

I guess even elves go through that teenage rebellious phases.

Belle and Emile though, seem to remember the destruction a lot more vividly than the younger kids, so they are staying put.

Maybe they want to do work other than doing olives.

Jura shrugs, and lets them go. I give both Brislach and Wahlen a regular tree familiar, just for protection, and Trevor will help me monitor them.

Elsewhere, my beetles explore a bit further, just to get a sense of what's out there beyond the valley. Once again, made possible by Trevor and Horns.

Beyond the valley, further down south is the ruins of Moton. Where I once stayed. It seems after the demonic wars it never actually rebuild.

Even further south, is a region under the Nung kingdom, known as Rufas, and it is where the region’s temple of Gaya lies. Rufas is also a border city with Salah, and Moton in times past has frequently changed hands between Nung and Salah. A small town with little defenses, they often just surrender when threatened. I suspect the temple of Gaya I once was, is here, but I can’t be sure. Perhaps there are many, and I wonder whether the caretaker and Gewa’s body is still there. Rufas is large, heavily fortified, and I have little insight to its interior, beyond a spying beetle.

To the east and west are large fields, now populated with wild buffalos, goats and some animals. There are also monsters, but they do not attack the regular animals.

On the eastern side, as we go further, there is the ruins of multiple different forts. Some are being rebuilt, but most remain ruins. The damage and ruins looks fairly new, and the fields are littered with the dead.

After that, the eastern terrain deforms even more, and it looks as if the area has seen some really serious demonic battles.

At that point, the beetle return. It seems that's as far as they would go from home. It seems there is a range in which beetles would go, even with Horns extended range support.

On the western side is first the fields, then some regrowing forests, and then some more ruins. And then, mountains. Some hot springs, then some lakes, and after that, a chain of active volcanoes.

On the northern side is where the demonic rift used to be. Its still mostly barren and the beetles are frequently attacked by rather fearsome monsters that appear here.

Horns advised a larger squad of beetles, should I intend to actually explore the areas closer to the demons.

Year 74 Month 12

Winter. Potatoes. Beetles sleep, even Horns is operating at half strength.

Winter is even colder than last year, but thankfully most of the refugees are well prepared now. With some decent housing, heat retention from thicker walls and a good stockpile of firewood, all the refugees are having a much more comfortable winter.

The centaurs, over this whole year has constructed multiple large tents, with multiple layers of cloth and skin that helps slow down heat loss, and also built, with the aid of the treefolk, some drainages to help manage the rain that occurs frequently during the winter months. Potatoes, of course, as a reserve food.

The treefolk apparently also have a habit of storing food underground, apparently they have a kind of magic that makes a kind of fermented vegetable. Its their version of the winter cache, using cabbages mixed with all kinds of chilli and vinegar.

Oh, and during this month I gained an additional food variety.

[Harvestable crops : Apples]

[Winter resistance upgraded.]

The essence generators extract all sorts of essences, from the surroundings. So now that my roots extend the entire valley, it seems it extracts from all the deaths in the valley.

Essence generator produces, in varying quantities :

Essences of seasons (Summer, Spring, Autumn and Winter)

Essences of the animals that die in the valley (Bears, foxes, Deers, Birds, Insects, Spiders, Rabbits, Squirrels) (This type of essence is the most abundant)

Essences of elements &amp; weather

Essences of events, of fighting

As for the material extraction from the roots, as with the various upgrades and dedicated subsidiary tree for material and mineral extraction

Iron

Copper

Small quantities of gold and silver

Year 75 Month 1

Snow. Cold, cold snow.

Jura had a few sparring matches with Yvon. Yvon is stronger in pure swordfighting, due to her past experience as the right hand of Prince.

But then, once Jura activates the [Ursa Form], his speed, strength and natural defenses shoots up, and Yvon is no match.

"Bear form? A summoner’s ability? Or perhaps a beastmaster?"

"Ah… I have no clue." Jura’s being honest. I doubt Bamboo knows that much about his abilities, too?

"Hmmm."

Other than this, the delegation from Salah has returned. One of them.

And the leaders all rush to meet him.

"Milady, the Kingdom has agreed to a truce."

Everyone is happy, but then this is too easy, so they ask further.

"What.. what are the terms?"

"We are to take in all of the non-humans in the Kingdom. We have to pay a compensation of 10,000 gold coins a year for the next ten years."

Yvon pauses… "All?"

"Ten thousand gold coins?"

"They are extorting us, these terms."

Yvon pauses, "Any more?"

"Your life, madam. They want your head."

A leyline and wines.

Year 75 month 2

Yvon agrees to the truce, with a few modifications. Her death comes after two years of peace. She did not see herself as being that valuable, that her life mattered more than the security and safety of the non-humans she swore an oath to protect. In fact, she felt it is a fitting way to die, a martyr's sacrifice, a trade of her life for 2 years of truce.

The second modification they proposed, is to have the gold payment reduced, paid quarterly, and the first payment commencing after a year of peace.

The Salah Kingdom accepts the modified terms.

Why?

One, is that they still manage to get rid of all the non-humans under this truce plan, and giving this space for Yvon to integrate the non-humans is ideal. In fact, it is probably their main goal, to create a human-only environment. There is racial tension, and getting rid of these "troublesome" elements is worth it for Salah, from a unity perspective. If they want to create a united kingdom, this may be one way to do so. The loyalties of these non-humans are always suspect, even though there is no evidence showing nonhumans as more disloyal than humans.

Money is hardly an issue for a wealthy nation like Salah, and perhaps there are factions within Salah who sees additional benefits of getting rid of the non humans. Salah no longer has to maintain multiple prisons, detention camps, armies and soldiers to patrol their lands. In fact, to be able to reduce their logistics load and manpowrr needs is probably what they want, so they can direct this resources to their currently ongoing conflict with the Nung and Takde. Its a concession they agree to make, to deal with what they see as a "larger" enemy.

As for Yvon, the very fact that they still get to kill her, even if after 2 years, without having to resort to a war, is a net save for their military. They get to focus on other fronts, and gives them just cause. In fact, the fact that she agrees either way, is as good as an admission of guilt. So, even if this New Freeka decides to wage war someday, Salah is the one that is right, the neighbouring kingdoms less likely to come to Salah’s aid, and they will be able to use overwhelming force, and even underhanded methods, without losing support of the humans

Thinking it through, Yvon may have signed herself and New Freeka for a tough truce deal. But, this is a positive outcome for her, as she gets peace, and she can better ensure the safety of the nonhumans.

Anyway, it is a decision Yvon makes for New Freeka, and it is probably a good decision. For me, I am initially a little peeved, but then as I ponder the issue, perhaps this will allow me the better investigate the culprits of Freeka's destruction, and focus my vengeance. After all, if they have less reason to suspect and enter into battle with us, I can keep my abilities hidden, unknown, and I can use that as a surprise attack. If they realise someone is constantly using roots to attack, they may well chop all trees down as a defensive measure.

Also, the traders also bring news of the demon king’s corpse. The location has been discovered, but approaching the daemolite has proven to be exceptionally challenging, as the location’s gravitational field has been disrupted, and so the entire area is floating in the sky. Add to that, the place is crawling with fire elementals.

But most importantly, the traders brought something I have been trying to find for a long time. A register of recorded spirits and magical places in the region. And a rudimentary map where the nearest magical leyline is located.

Leyline!

I want one.

The nearest one is actually near the ruins of Moton, so Horns investigates, as Jura refuses to leave the valley. The beetlesquad took about three days to get there, and to discover that it is actually… a small dungeon.

Dungeon eh.

Conventional thinking, I’ll need to break the dungeon core to get to the leyline. But I wonder whether it's possible to hijack the leyline without having to mount an assault on the dungeon… In either case, having confirmed the location, I start spawning [subsidiary trees], in a line. This process took 60 [subsidiary trees], as the gap between each tree is about one and a half kilometer, and now I have a string of subsidiary trees that form a link all the way up to the dungeon.

Somehow, this reminds me of those strategy games where I sent a scout in a straight line, cutting through the fog of war...

The dungeon is pouring out a tonne of monsters, mostly low level ghouls, zombies and skeletons. The beetles and Horns have to constantly fend off the group of marauding skeletons and zombies, but with a subsidiary tree nearby they are able to regenerate and hold back the horde.

This is where I discover I have... a problem. My warbeetles are big, the size of rhinos, but the dungeon entrance is big enough of for only three of them side by side. And having so little space also means the beetles lose a few of their combat advantages, ie their charge attacks. They do have very strong armor, but if there are stronger monsters in the dungeon, these beetles are… kinda sitting ducks.

"Sire, suggest we stay put and control the area for now." Horns telepathically communicates. As an artificial soul linked to me, he can transmit his message to me directly, though he lacks any mouth that is capable of speech. So, even though he understands language… he can only speak to me.. and the other artificial souls.

"We can set up defensive positions?" Trevor asks, also interested in this new expansion.

"It’s a dungeon…" Meela pokes her head in, seeing what I see. It seems she is able to share my vision… not sure how she is able to do that.

Outside, in the open, the beetles can crush and ram the undead easily, and render them… useless.

But as an experiment, I sent a few beetles into the dungeon anyway, and as expected they die once they are trapped. Dungeons with their narrow passages are not the best places for oversized beetles.

So… I need a different strategy.

[Achieved long distance connected roots. Unlocked new skill : Far-reaching roots]

[Subsidiary tree has leveled up! Limit expanded to 400]

Year 75 Month 3

The truce between Salah and New Freeka signed. Refugees. Expelled.

More than 3,000 new refugees came this month, and New Freeka soars to 7,000 in population. Massive construction happening, but thankfully its spring, so a huge surge in new tree growth by myself and Trevor, and also the dedicated timber farms (which produce no energy, as all of its energy is used to create more wood mass) means ample supply of wood.

The new people are a mix of elves, centaurs, dwarves, and some humans, as there are some families where the humans intermarried with non-humans. Mostly humanoids, as they are the most "acceptable" to the humans, but still not enough. Yvon and her team are busy, and they build additional town expansion right next to the valley.

The forest, is off limits to the new comers, as there are monsters appearing. Insect types, but they generally hunt are animals. It's also to prevent the newbies from… offending the rules that has been set up, but of course, there are those that try anyway, so… that's when the warbeetles scare the shit out of them.

Anyway, back to the undead dungeon. Stalemate still ongoing. I can’t get into the dungeon, but they can’t get out either. Using additional [subsidiary trees], I created a defensive line outside the dungeon, and any of the undead that appear is instantly killed by Horns and team.

Horns hit his level limit of 20, and I am sad. His combat and support skills are quite interesting, but nothing useful in tiny.. dungeons.

"How do I upgrade their level limits?"

"For who? Different unit types have different.. things." Wisp bobs around.

"Let's say Trevor? Trevor also has hit his limit."

"A forest mind would require a "brain"."

"Huh."

[Unlocked special tree type. Root-Brain Complex. Requires special minerals to grow. Special minerals required are 10 x Blood Crystals, and 50 x fresh animal heads]

The… wha?

"Guys. I got a task for you." I tell the elves.

"As you wish." Jura found some of his skills upgraded recently, and strangely, it makes his behavior.. a little weird.

"How about me? Can I help too?" Lausanne asks, she follows Jura everywhere these days, he is her combat mentor after all.

"Uh… depends whether you’ll be in danger."

It later emerges that the blood crystals can be bought, and isn’t exactly overly expensive. But Jura will have to raise some money for it, so we need to either earn it or get it via other means. The olives sold is a good sum of money but insufficient to afford blood crystals.

"Is there any loot from the dungeon you found?"

"Loot?"

"Things that are dropped by the monsters or creatures."

"I… I don’t know. I can’t actually see it that well. Trevor, Horns, is there?" My vision is mostly on things, living, things, or creatures and items made of mana. Inanimate, manaless objects appear as outlines, and… frankly there’s so many of these objects I can’t tell if they are any different.

"Yes, sire. There’s some of the items dropped by the zombies and skeletons. We didn’t pick them up, as… we don’t have hands. But they look like ordinary items, sire." Horns! Tell me next time!

Well, I later sent Emile and Belle, with a protective group of beetles to pick up the loot. It turns out zombies, skeletons do drop some low quality loot, but, loot is still loot, and they can be sold for cash.

And then I realised I asked the wrong question of the Wisp.

"Uh.. how do I upgrade Horns?" I mean, if I do want to do more things around the valley and the region, Horns is the best candidate…

The wisp pauses…. "Hmmm. I don’t know actually."

Stumped, I think this is a deliberate challenge. The system wants me to figure it out myself, so, when Horns returns to the valley, he goes into the [biolab].

Under the microscope, the warbeetle knight’s body is unlike any other.

The body is dry, flaky, and there is a tiny spring of mana in the middle, which I think is from artificial soul. Unlike normal souls who pour out clear mana, the mana from this spring is light blue, as if somebody mixed a flour and blue colouring into it.

The body, the vessel of said blue mana is dry, and… cold?

[Body - mana type compatibility is low. Body absorption ratio is low]

Ah, the biolab has tooltips and indicators.

I focus on the spring, and another set of tootips emerge.

[Mana generation ratio hampered by low synchronisation with external environment]

Ah.. looks like a lot of work needed. I don’t recall seeing so many tooltips, or is it because of the upgrades? Or soul forge? I think I could use a lab assistant, so i wonder whether I could fuse the biolab and an artificial soul?

Ah. Maybe I should do that next…

Anyway, back to the body, I recall there is a freshness, a softness when I look at Meela’s body. It seemed like the mana pours out of the spring, and the body laps it up. Even all the other bodies I have seen, the body laps up and absorbs all the mana it produces.

Is this because I forced this creation? That the body does not absorb this foreign soul suddenly thrust into it?

Ah… if that's the case, do I need to introduce a phase of introducing the artificial soul’s mana to the vessel before performing the merge?

[Soul forge annex added : Mana soaking facility, and compatibility tester.]

[Biolab upgraded. Additional lab tools obtained]

Ah.

Sounds like the answer is yes.

Still, I have a problem now. Horns, the body and mana has low compatibility, so how do I fix it after the fact? Is there some kind of medicine I can make? Or maybe I need to find some way to modify the body so that it absorbs and becomes more compatible with the artificial soul it houses?

Ah. Never mind. At the way things are going, I will find out.

I want artificial souls, and assistants. And that leyline.

"Trevor, how many trees are we growing this month?"

"On track for almost 2,000, sire." At the current normal tree count stands at about 13,850, at the end of the month.

If 10,000 can support 3 artificial souls, would 20,000 support 6?

"Sire… we require some precious gems. Like emerald or topaz or diamonds."

"Huh… why?"

"The rootnet will hit max load at 20,000, and needs to be upgraded. There is an energy transmission capacity, and these precious gems can be used to upgrade the roots."

Ah. Like power cables?

Damn. I have so many competing priorities! Can I mine these minerals somewhere?

"Are there any mines? Or locations where this is available?"

"The map says there are some abandoned mines nearer to the demon rift. No data available on the resources available or whether anyone lives there."

Hmmm.

"How much of these gems do you need?"

"10kg worth, in any mixture, sire. It is sufficient to upgrade the main 8-directional roots that form the backbone of the root net. We are already consuming copper to upgrade the existing root networks."

"Fine… lets send Horns and the beetles there."

"But how about the dungeon?"

Ah true. Damn it. Can I get the refugees to do it?

"Hey, I am still trying to get money for the blood crystals, so… I am busy." Jura shakes his head, and he’s not keen on the dungeon, or the mines, either. He’s just planning to sell all the loot.

Laufen, Belle and Emile are not fighters, so they are out too.

"But try to buy them, like blood crystals?"

"If we produce more olive oils, maybe we can buy them?"

"I think it won’t make a dent. Such gems are expensive, no?"

As they discuss, "Hey, Trevor, what’s considered a precious gem?"

"Emeralds, diamonds, topaz, rubies, pearls, aquamarine, garnet, almost anything crystalline."

"Ah." I wonder how Trevor knows such things, sometimes.

"I leech off your knowledge, sire. When we are created, we take a snapshot of what the [soul forge] thinks is relevant to our roles, and periodically we get additional knowledge from you, and the Wisp."

"Wait, are you saying the soul forge is… sentient?"

The wisp suddenly pops up. "No. The soul forge, has a certain categorisation of information that it needs for the each kind of role, ie, combat, support, administrative, magical, social. Your memories and knowledge is also classified into such categories, and the forge will match those roles to the knowledge."

"How about you?" I mean, the wisp knows shit I don’t, so it must come from somewhere.

"I have inherited knowledge, granted to all wisps of soul trees. From the nameless mother herself."

The nameless mother.

I wonder whether I can meet her.

Maybe I should dig really deep, maybe she’s hiding deep underground in the heart of the planet.

Year 75 Month 4

Yvon and the leaders of New Freeka came to beg for aid. Their population now boomed to 10,000, and they have a problem feeding and housing, even with the massive building they are doing. There seems to be some observers from Salah, to ensure the truce terms are complied with.

Well, their problem is multifold really. Housing, food, how to make money for their truce obligations, and how to control such a large, restless and unhappy population.

As they live on the periphery of the forest, building, farming on the lands that is not yet forested, I leave it to them. As long as they do not encroach on the forest, I can allow space for Yvon’s group.

"I offer my soul." Yvon kneels, begs, really. "Anything, tree spirit. At this point, you are the only one that can offer us hope."

"No." I mean, one soul, to aid so many refugees? What does she take me for, a charity?

Then, her entire council of fifteen men kneels. "We offer our souls as well. We have fought long and hard together, for the dream of Prince Galan and Lady Yvon’s non-human state. Here we have a great chance to achieve it, and with the powers of a great tree spirit, we can achieve it."

"16 of your souls, for more than 10,000 refugees?"

"Yes."

"Is that a good trade?" I ask the wisp.

"No idea."

The sixteen kneels. "Everything we have to offer, and our remaining lives. Please, to house, to feed, to protect a fledging city, a great tree spirit can do more than we can."

Uh… well, that is cause your levels are low? If one is high level enough one would get tremendously OP abilities, do they not?

"No. Not good enough."

They look at each other, and decide to go back to New Freeka. New Freeka, at 10,000 sprawls the entire southern valley, essentially blocking off access to the forests which I live in.

Ah, no matter.

As the [Ginseng] grows, it seems, stranger, more powerful monsters spawn in the forests. Things harder for the Beetles to defeat, on some days, larger groups of monsters.

[Ginseng has reach stage 1 maturity. You may direct its next stage of growth.]

Stage 2 growth choices are :

Mana growth and mana pool size (Your mana will reduce by 1% for the entirety of the stage 2 growth period)

physical stat growth (Tree growth reduced by 5% during the entire growth period)

Grant unique skills (Stronger monsters will appear during the entire stage 2 period)

(Environmental choice) Grants title [Survivor of the valley]. Title provides high-tier natural regeneration, and increased defense.

[There are twenty stages to the ginseng. Each successive stage increases monster spawn, and stronger monster types, who will try to consume or destroy the ginseng tree.]

Uh.

Uh….

Is this a [protect the tree] minigame?

I picked [unique skills], because why the fuck not.

Year 75 Month 4 Week 3

The stalemate continues. There is a dungeon I want to invade, and yet I suck. And repeatedly attempting to charge into the dungeon seems to have created stronger zombies and undead, so if I want to get to it, I better attack with a strong force able to wipe it in one go.

Meanwhile, [Far-reaching roots] increase the distance between the [subsidiary trees] further, essentially doubling it. I am now trying to explore alternative means of locating the stuff that I need to.. grow.

Back at the ginseng tree, a couple of strong monsters appeared this month, they killed a few beetles before they are defeated, so I increase the beetle defending it to 50 beetles.

The treefolk and centaur are relatively content, being like suburbs to the booming New Freeka.

Yvon and group returns again for another round of begging, and once more, I turn them away.

And yet, in New Freeka, it seems quite a few people, elves or humans or dwarves, pray to my [subsidiary tree]. And talk about their issues. Some of these refugees has taken on the role of a "priest", limiting and controlling the sessions each one has to talk to that subsidiary tree. Even though I do not respond.

Strange, but I suppose faith is needed even when one’s a refugee.

Some of these humans and dwarves have a culture of praying to the deity that controls the land they live in, even though they may not be a devout believer. Its an animistic kind of approach, to worship the land, but it is charming.

[Special tree unlocked : Tree of Prayers]

[Tree of Prayers has a calming, relaxing effect on its surroundings. Has the ability to passively soothe and comfort. Comes with a naturally calming background music of rustling leaves and wind]

Oh. This is like that time when Brislach and Wahlen play hide and seek.

Year 75 Month 5

A massive tiger attacked my [ginseng tree]. It killed 30 beetles, and managed to pull the ginseng tree out of the ground.

Then Trevor alerted me to the sudden attack.

And I killed it with multiple root strikes.

[Ginseng tree has been killed]

Dammit.

Well the ginseng tree is still lying on the ground, but its dead. This, fragile little thing.

Well, I later had Laufen brew it into a soup, using tiger meat and ginseng. Kind of like traditional asian herbal soups.

And had all Jura, Laufen, Emile and Belle eat and drink the soup. Tastes like roots.

They reported feeling strange, but nothing else.

Maybe not so quickly? Or the ginseng is too young?

Year 75 Month 5 Week 2

Yvon comes and beg for something again. This time, for us to create grapes. The [Harvestable crops : grapes], and the idea is that they will make wine with it, to raise enough money to pay the terms of the truce.

Good idea, really. So what's the offer?

"My soul. I am marked for death anyway, so take my soul."

Soul for a farm of grapes? It's quite a good deal.

"50 grapes trees."

"Only?"

"50 confirmed grape trees, and I will use my abilities to boost a dedicated patch of land of 4 acres for grapes for the next 10 years."

"Hmmmmmm…."

"Your soul for a grape farm."

One of her advisors shake her head. "No. Its too little."

"How about 10 acres."

"12 acres then. But I get 10% cut of all wine sales."

"Okay.

The deal is done. [Spiritual contract - barter] completed. The denizens of New Freeka builds the necessary grape trellis for the grapes to grow.

As agreed, 50 [subsidiary trees] designated under [harvestable crops] to produce grapes, in an area 10ac wide, the rest of it just ordinary grape vines, boosted by me and Trevor’s growth mojo.

A wine industry in New Freeka. Fairly innovative of them, wanting to make high value items for sale.

[Level up! You are now level 123]

[Skill : Reinforce defensive structures obtained]

Huh. How is that supposed to be a skill I learn at level 123? Sounds like crappy.

Year 75 Month 6

The New Freeka peeps work fast, using the grapes produced from the [subsidiary trees]. The first batch of wines has been made, and undergoing testing and tasting. One of the senior leaders, an old man is apparently a wine connoisseur and he has skills in [winemaking], [wine-ageing] and so on. With his abilities, wines age three times as fast, and more resistant to spoilage. The [timber farm] produces a few variety of fragrant wood types, which are usable as wine kegs, and apparently can imbue additional texture and taste to the wine.

Huh. I kinda feel sad that I am a tree now. When I was a programmer I did drink occasionally, to feel better about my stagnant career.

Maybe I should get them to pour some on my roots. I might still taste some…

Though I doubt alcohol has any effect on trees?

Year 75 Month 6 Week 3

Thanks to the booming New Freeka now at almost 15,000 nonhumans, and more expected, there’s now a constant flow of merchants, and so, the first set of the wines are given to them free as "samples", for them to bring back to their hometowns and cities, hopefully entice some nobles or wealthy merchants to support the products.

In either case, this burst in growth, means Jura can sell the loot collected, and the olive oil can be sold once ready. Benefits of an active market.

But, we still don’t have enough money for the crystals. To create the [root brain complex].

How does a Tree game or manipulate the economic system of this world anyway?

A line to the leyline

Year 75 Month 7

With additional 2,000 normal trees added to the valley per month, I hit 20,000 normal trees this month. Thanks to this, it also triggers Trevor to gain a skill called [Explosive Regeneration], that he can use once a month. It allows for a sudden regrowth of an entire forest area, from damage. The valley’s trees are getting denser, and wider, but really, Trevor providing oversight allows me to focus on big picture stuff. It’s kinda like that moment where you can delegate menial tasks that one don’t like to a robot.

The higher tree count also grants 2 additional artificial souls. But I have yet to think of what to do with it. I do have the biolab assistant idea, and going by the way how Forest Mind helped tremendously in research, I suspect a biolab assistant may end up being an automated testing system, which is cool. It’s like having a science officer reporting back with new stuff every now and then, kind of like those RTS games, where we select something to research, pass a few turns… and ping!

"How about me?" Oh. Meela. I sometimes forget she exists, since she goes to sleep very often. Apparently non-physical souls like herself has the option to put herself into "stasis", or a "sleep mode".

"You actively reject every idea I put to you, and you still ask me for opinions…" I could use a secretary, but Trevor might get jealous. Or do they? I frankly have not understood the degree of sentience these "artificial souls" display.

"Because I really, really just like lazing around. I have done a whole lot of thinking and this whole hero thing is bonkers. Maybe Max would be a hero, but me, no."

"You do have a sense of good and evil, do you not?" The gods selected her, so… she had to. Or maybe the hero power kind of messed with her mind a bit. Not beyond the god’s ability to cause her to feel a strong compulsion to fight evil...

"That's cause of my upbringing. I have great parents But driving myself into doing hero things, all this fighting demons and monsters… no. I rather be a bartender or an artists. Alexis would have been a teacher, or a scientist."

"Too bad she’s dead. Too bad they are all dead."

"Ah yea." Meela makes some kind of noise that sounds like frowning. "I wonder whether the rest of them… where are they."

"If they had a similar experience like you, maybe their souls are still drifting around."

Meela pauses. "What."

"I mean, your soul got shredded and damaged so bad that you can’t even move to the next world. And somehow you followed the familiars here… Your friends are there with you, so it’s not strange if their souls got shredded too, don’t you think so? So, because they have no real attachment to this world, maybe they end up just.. Floating around or something..."

Though, this poses some interesting thoughts about the nature of the fragments that I receive when these heroes die. What exactly am I getting, when I get the fragments? Their soul, or something of an "attachment" or "extension" of their soul?

"Hmmm…" Meela’s spirit bobs around in the soul realm. She does that when she is bothered and has something.

"What are you thinking?"

"Can you make an altar?"

"An altar?"

"Yes, yes. Altar."

"Uh… okay." I later had the elves do it, since my ability to manipulate stone and rock is fairly limited.

It is a simple one, created next to the site of the Tree of Prayer. Essentially it’s just a flat rock like a prayer or offering table, and a few rocks stacked on top of each other into a… totem?

"Is there a priest amongst the refugees?"

"Huh. Where are you going with this?"

"I met a priest once, who said that its possible to offer a prayer to the souls of those still wandering, to lighten their load, to send them… away. I’m hoping to pray to my friends’ souls, so they find solace and peace, so they…. They go peacefully."

"Huh."

I relay the request to Jura, and Jura then asks Yvon for it. They need some time though, as there are a lot of new refugees and they do not have a register of their respective jobs.

"You want to pray so they can move on, eh?"

"Yeah. That’s the least I can do, to help them along, no? They are my friends, I wouldn’t want to see their souls stuck wandering this stupid war-crazy world anyway."

"War crazy, eh?"

"You don’t think so?" Meela sighs. Somehow I heard that, even though she’s a floating light. "I didn’t realise it when I’m alive, but… this world is obsessed with fighting."

"An output of the world they live in. Demons, monsters, if your world had creatures like this, you would invent weapons to kill them too."

"I wish it isn’t."

"Bet plenty of people do too."

Other than that, the refugees are doing surprisingly well. With the first crates of wine sent out for deliveries, it seems they are making good progress on winemaking. I got to give them credit for their entrepreneurial spirit, making such goods.

The stalemate with the dungeon continues, but if the refugees ask for help again, I’m gonna ask them to help raid the damn dungeon. They can keep the loot, for the money, but I want the core. I’ve actually yet to decide what to do if I get it, but I want it.

Lausanne follows Jura everywhere these days, and even though Jura is initially reluctant to take her as his apprentice, her persistent and cuteness somehow won through his old man’s heart. He is ageing, after all, and I suppose people mellow down as they age.

"TreeTree…"

"Huh, yes." Jura jolts me out of my overhead valley vision. "Yes…"

"It’s Lausanne."

"Oh. What about her."

"She’s… she’s not talented. But she keeps trying."

"That's good." I like hard work.

"No. Its bad."

"Eh? Why?"

Jura pauses, and walks a few steps around my main tree, takes a deep breath, and then sits. "Combat, or fighting requires talent. It's the way of the world, learn to fight to your strength, not pursue an idol whom you can never match."

He sits.

"Think about. If you are good in fighting with a sword, you learn to fight with a sword. If you have talent to be a mage, you learn magic."

"Hmmm…"

"So, what I am trying to say is… Lausanne’s wasting her time, by doing what she isn’t naturally disposed to doing. But, I don’t know what else to teach her."

"That seems kind of fatalistic." Meela pops out, she says to me. "Do people of this world believe that they should only hone their talents?"

Jura continues, unaware of Meela’s comment. "Maybe I can test her for other things, and teach her for self defense, but perhaps she is best suited for… more non-combat chores, like her mother..."

"Ewwww." Meela groans.

"So TreeTree, can you talk her out of her silly dream of becoming a hero? She may lose her life pointless pursuing a dream that is… erm. . futile."

"..."

"Isn’t she too young? How does one know of talent?" I retort.

"In most societies, by age of 6 it is already possible to identify what one is talented in. And Lausanne’s case, she’s displaying a total lack of talent in fighting."

I didn’t like this conversation. At all.

"Please TreeTree. I’m trying to look out for her, so I think she needs to find something else to do. Something with a better use of her time. One does not teach a fish to fly, or a bird to swim. Lausanne’s trying, and I too admire that hard work, but it’ll set her on a path she is not meant to walk."

Really.

"I’ll… I’ll think about it.

I feel terrible even saying it, but I want to speak to Lausanne first, even though she’s just a child. I want to hear her thoughts, and I think it’s not right, just because one isn’t talented, doesn’t mean one cannot pursue their dreams. But I do recognise Jura’s comment, that if she is classed in a way that does not fit her natural abilities, that is a bad thing as well.

"What do you think, Meela?"

"No. The girl has the right to do whatever she wants."

"Even if she can do better elsewhere?"

"Yes. And can’t you help her along?"

When Lausanne returns home later that evening, I speak to her, as she laze on her bed. She gets her own bed now, now that Brislach and Wahlen has moved to New Freeka, where they found work.

"Lausanne?"

"AH TreeTree!" She rolls, and squeezes a bolster.

"How’s your training with uncle Jura?"

"It’s hard! But I like it!"

"Really? Do you ever wonder you should be doing something else?"

"You’re really asking her?" Meela pokes in.

"I like it. I want to be a hero, that can save everybody! A hero must know how to fight so I can protect everyone!" Did Lausanne’s experience with how the reincarnated heroes create this sort of desire? Is it because she still does not fully comprehend the nature of the heroes divine gift?

"I see…" I chickened out. To tell her to stop, I just don’t have it in me.

Is this my idealism, that will somehow cross with the reality and cruelty of this world?

"Good. Encourage her!"

"Ah…. Is that not making it worse? Maybe she will realise as she grows older.. this is perhaps a phase."

Meela stops… "You.. you’re kicking this problem down the road."

"Look, we don’t know what the future holds. Maybe Jura is right, but maybe he is not." I think it is too early to tell.

"He’s wrong."

"Maybe. I hope so. But what if he isn’t?" This world can be… brutal. And mistakes are costly.

"She’s six. I didn’t know what I wanted when I was six."

Lausanne leans back. "You know, Uncle Jura says I should learn how to do other things. And I think he is also right. Do you think there’s a way I can learn everything? But mommy say I should not be greedy."

I pause.

Meela pauses, and after a brief moment, laughs.

"She’s right. Do you have any skill?"

"If… hmm.. maybe my [dream tutor] then?"

"Then its settled!"

The little episode I had with dream tutor also led me to wonder whether I could fuse an "artificial soul" and "dream tutor", creating a "teacher" character. Of course, I only have 2 slots, and if anything, I have to think about them carefully, since I’m unlikely to be able to upgrade the [rootnet] so quickly to support the higher normal tree energy transfer, even though I can still grow the trees without any inhibitions.

So much to think about.

I wonder whether trees losing their leaves is a result of overthinking.

Year 75 Month 8

"A dungeon raid."

"Yeah." Yvon explains, the group gathered is about 150 strong, comprising the best fighters, mages and healers the entirety of the valley has to offer, even Jura, who after some convincing, finally agree to participate.

Even adventurers are not spared from the whole non-human eviction notice. Salah is not taking chances, all non-humans, no buts, no exceptions.

In a way, adventurers have it better than the other refugees, since their skills are needed everywhere, and some neighbouring nations are willing to accept non-human adventurers into their lands. They are skilled, mobile, usually self-sufficient, and are already somewhat nomadic, so this eviction hardly stung. If there’s one less country, there’s still many others.

"Are you our employer, mistress Yvon?"

Yvon pauses… "I guess you can say so. Our goal is simple, grab the dungeon core, and if we can’t, destroy it. The dungeon core, whether whole or broken, as you know, is worth a fair bit of money, and will help us with our truce obligations."

The gathered fighters chatter, prepping themselves for the raid, and then off they went, into the dungeon.

I had no idea what happened the moment they went inside, but I waited, my beetles outside in case anything happened.

To be fair, I could not do anything if shit went down inside, but hey, I could cover them externally. Dungeons, from what I can sense, have similar "space distortion" abilities like I do, so just because I have them "surrounded", does not actually mean they are surrounded.

So, in a way, all I could do is pray?

A full day and a half later, I get a ping. Through Bamboo.

"Master, the dungeon core has been obtained, but the dungeon-space is crumbling." It seems that after the dungeon core has been dislodged from the dungeon itself, the barrier that shields the dungeon from the space beyond disappears, so Bamboo is able to then telepathically communicate with me.

"How much time do you guys have?"

"No idea. We might be trapped in here."

"Oh no you’re not."

The entrance to the dungeon starts to vibrate, shake, like an earthquake is happening.

"Are they going to die inside?" Meela seems worried, starts to butt herself in.

"How far are you guys?"

"It’s a lot deeper than expected. It’ll take us at least 3 hours to get out of the main chamber."

No. This isn’t going to work. At the rate the dungeon is crumbling, they won’t make it. Hmm.. what can I do, what can I do?

Ah.

[Rootnet attempting to connect to dungeon-space]

"Trevor, help me out here."

"Yes sire. Synchronising roots into the walls…."

With the dungeon core out of the way, the invisible barrier preventing me from spawning [subsidiary tree] within the dungeon’s area of influence and entrance is also gone, so I spawn a few trees next to the entrance, and on top of it, and guide my roots into the dungeon.

It sort of works.

As the roots mix in with the walls that is crumbling, it seems the roots are taking over the distorted spaces, giving it the stability it needs.

[Energy draining. Passageways reinforced] It seems some of the energy generated by my normal trees and subsidiary trees is used to support this additional dungeon-space. It feels like a magically supported structure, centered around the dungeon core, which draws additional energy from the space and also the leyline beneath it. Now that centerpiece suddenly disappeared, so it’s as if an electrical circuit is without electricity, and oddly enough, I am coming in as the "backup" power source.

"The vibration is stopping." Bamboo pings, and as my roots reach deeper and deeper into the dungeon, I soon cross paths with the escaping adventurers.

"The walls…" Yvon says, now I can hear her, as my roots now cover the entirety of the labyrinth.

Dead. There’s dead bodies. Adventurers, not all survived. As they stream pass, I see some carrying some injured, some carrying the dead.

"My roots can now extend into the labyrinth. You guys can calm down now." I speak to Jura directly, as he comes into range. He’s fine, bleeding in some places, but relatively speaking, unscathed.

He immediately slows down and tells everyone that the Tree spirit’s roots are now stabilising the dungeon and so it’ll not collapse.

And with that, they took the chance to turn back, and retrieve the dead bodies for a proper burial.

Yvon too, has gotten her hand on the dungeon core, which she will let me examine in my [biolab] first, before she arrange for a sale on the magical artifacts market.

[New structure obtained : Root Dungeon]
[Root dungeon, leftovers of a dungeon that happens to be stabilised by the roots of a tree spirit. Does not spawn monsters or loot.]

[New skill obtained : Root-tunnels]
[Root tunnels, as what the name says, are tunnels made out of roots. Good for smuggling, transporting, and various tunnel things.]

Sadly, the dungeon core is unscannable by my [biolab]. It’s a bio-lab. Not a everything-lab, so dungeon cores don’t register. So, oh well.

But anyway, that’s not the purpose of me getting the dungeon core. That’s the prize for Yvon’s group, as they get to sell it, of course the agreement is such that some of the proceeds go to the Treefolk, Centaurs and Jura who also contributed to the expedition.

The objective for me, is the leyline.

And so, with a few subsidiary trees now above the leyline, I extend my roots, attempting to reach for that leyline. Well, it’s my first exposure to a leyline, so I don’t really know what to expect, but according to the Wisp, it’s like some kind of 4th dimensional thing, so it pops up in some places, disappears, and then pops up somewhere else, but still all part of the same "line". Every time it pops up, the things in its way would then be influenced by it, and thus forming things like dungeon cores, and the dungeon cores then "anchor" the aetherline, such that they don’t move elsewhere, though what’s more likely to happen, is that a new dungeon core would often re-appear nearby.

Leyline connection initiated

And I felt dizzy instantly. It’s as if I drank a whole keg of alcohol and the entirety of it’s punch just hit me in one go. Is this magic-intoxication?

"Yes." The wisp pops in. "At least you didn’t knock yourself out yet, but you are quite high leveled, so this is to be expected."

Leyline connected. The subsidiary trees above the leyline is merging… The three subsidiary trees has merged into a Special Structure - [ThreeTrees Of Mana]

[ThreeTrees of Mana]
[Created when one subsidiary tree couldn’t handle to energy of a leyline, so three of them merged. An artifact of the leyline, this structure serves as the "conduit" of the leyline, so protect it, as it is your connection to the leyline, in place of the dungeon core. Serves no other function]

ThreeTrees. Did the skill just did what I think? And seriously, why did they make that tree so… visible. It’s like, a big blue tree growing out of nowhere, telling everyone of it’s presence.

Come on, first the ginseng tree, now this. The system is trying to paint me as a target. Or is this some kind of subliminal messaging the system is saying, that trees are always targets, and we should always protect our trees?

"Uh…" I feel the dizziness slowly drain away from me, and my mind starting to regain its senses. Then, even more updates!

Leylines are awesome after all.

Due to the additional energy types supplied, [Soul Forge - Black unlocked].
[Soul Forge - Black allows for the conversion of undead spirits back into regular soul, reversing the effects of necromancy, and the removal of the dark energies of a soul]
[Additional repairs of damaged souls now possible]
[Creation of Soul Harvesters now possible]

[Soul Harvesters]
[Some call them the grim reaper, some refer to them as valkyries, these are travelling collectors of souls. They extend your soul harvesting reach, and can be directed to specific places, such as battlefields, graveyards to collect souls. Souls collected are of a higher chance to contain "transferable experience"]

Due to the presence of two colors, the following fused abilities are now available.

[Nightmare collectors]
[A special ghost type that steals nightmares]

[Memory collection]
[Using the dark arts, a small % of memories of the dead will be converted into skill essences]

I’m already losing the leaves on my branches thinking about so many things, so now I have more to think about. First of all, the soul forge has different color types, which supply different types of abilities. I have blue and now black, and that’s like pure control deck archetype, isn’t it? But I’m a tree.. So does that make me… a blue-black-green deck?

Anyway, lets ignore that little snippet about trading cards.

How many colors are there, and if I am to hazard a guess, the black comes from the fact that this is specifically an undead dungeon, so there’s probably some linkage. If I go to the volcano, do I get red? And a magical glades or something, do I get green?

Adds to to-do list.

Next, is to further repair Meela’s soul. This second repair didn’t do much, other than allow her to stay awake and active more often. Also, I’m really tempted to fuse her soul and a soul harvester. She’d be a valkyrie! Or a ghost! But she said nope, I’ll think about it.

She should be a nightmare collector then. Kinda of the saw guy, no? Or is that the guy with the spiky nails. Once again, she vehemently rejects the idea.

"I’m a cute little girl. I ain’t becoming your haunted ghost."

"But cute little girls make the best scary ghosts!"

ThreeTree Defense Initiative

y75 m9

The month starts with rain. Rather heavy rain, though nothing damaging, as there is natural drainage within the valley itself. As the clouds dump water into the valley, the roots rejoice, the trees, all crave water, so, the roots lap it all up, absorbed by the growing number of normal trees and subsidiary trees, and it sated, for a moment, the valley’s ever increasing demand for water.

For New Freeka, they had to work harder. Yvon and team had to quickly repair and setup additional drainages. They expanded so quickly to accommodate the large quantities of housing, that the existing drainage is just not adequate. Flooding occurred in a few spots, but with some construction type magic, temporary drainages could be built rather quickly.

The centaurs had some tents run off in the sudden downpour. Again, because one lives on hills and slopes, they are trading off flooding for mudslides and rockslides.

Still a few of the refugees drowned at the sudden flash floods. Nothing like a bit of death and destruction to teach a lesson about infrastructure planning, as morbid as it sounds. And after the event, there’s usually some kind of death ceremony, a burial or cremation, or for the first time, I witnessed a real oddity, the death ceremony of a treefolk, where the treefolk is cut up into many pieces… and served as a kind of soup, for the kin to consume.

"For our loved ones live forever in us, and as a part of us. We are treefolk, and we carry the memories and lives of those who passed away before us."

Strange, but I suppose the ceremonial, ritualistic aspect of life is very much well preserved.

Lately, I have been getting more… "prayers." It's a bit like the conversations I used to have in Freeka, with the elves, where they would come and sit next to me and talk. It’s got to do with the [tree of prayer], and their belief that [soul trees] are a way of communion with their ancestors, or gods, or whoever they worship.

So, in some societies, a [soul tree], a [shamanic totem], or a [spiritual rock] has a similar function as a church, or a temple. Like some kind of merger between druid beliefs, and conventional religion.

"Oh tree, oh tree, make me rich, and make me free."

Huh, a refugee praying for money. As if the trees have the power to grant fortune. "Actually, you do have some limited power to do so." The wisp interjects, and I brush him off. I’m not going to make somebody rich. Else I’d have people praying to me for winning lottery tickets.

"Oh tree, oh tree, let me be free of my stupid husband."

Ah… one of those. Do I have powers over domestic happiness? "In some ways, if you are creative, you do!"

Damn it, Wisp.

"Oh tree oh tree, make us safe and stop all of this running. Let us find a home, where we can live in peace of the rest of our lives."

The common prayer of refugees, sick of running away, and finally finding a place to stay. I totally sympathise, I recall being evicted as a tenant and that’s a horrible experience.

"Oh tree oh tree kill the humans. Kill those who make us go through this suffering."

Ah, the vengeful too. Such is the anger, from those who lost their families, or friends. Vengeance is a common prayer topic, after all, refugees all have plenty of grievances from the experience they go through.

And, my [Tree of Prayer] responds to such energy, absorbing some of it and converting it into [Essence of Mercy], [Essence of Hope], [Essences of Anger] and [Essences of Vengeance], and in doing so, it also helps to reduce that anger and emotion in those who pray. That said, the rate of conversion is really low. Perhaps as it is just a prayer, the energy within that prayer is minimal.

Or maybe the absorption ratio improves as I level up this skill. Who knows. Maybe I should consider merging a [Tree of Prayer] with an [Artificial soul], maybe that’ll create a [Tree-priest].

This month, ths traders also bring in slightly concerning news about Salah, their ongoing wars with the Nung and Takde Kingdoms.

Salah is winning, and so Nung and Takde now form a coalition, with possibly other nations that have historical grievances with Salah. Of course, in Salah’s eyes, this is treated as an escalation, and Salah is now trying to get its own allies in, so there are hints of a bigger regional conflict brewing. If additional nations join into the war, New Freeka may end up being smack right into the middle of the war, instead of being on the other end of the battlefield.

This is of little concern to me, if Salah gets owned in a battle, that’s not my problem. Bit, this worries Yvon, so Yvon and her council scrambles to send people to all the nearby nations to declare some kind of neutrality to this conflict. New Freeka, as a young nation, still trying to comply with it’s truce terms and safeguard it’s new citizens, is deeply concerned with any disruption to its growing trade, and food supply.

Personally, my ideal outcome is for the battles to be fought around me, without affecting me, such that I gain the souls from all this… conflict.

But this conflict also exposes the [ThreeTrees of Mana], as its a big blue "shoot me" sign in the area. Its huge, its obvious, and it does nothing else. Its also quite far from me, as that is where the leyline is…

At this moment, I am uncertain whether anyone will react to the presence of the [ThreeTrees of Mana], perhaps the nearby nations will ignore it, perhaps they will think it’s some kind of strategic asset and seize it… or anything, really.

So, if a conflict does happen, protecting the ThreeTree will also be something I need to do. If the nations turn hostile, defending it is my priority.

I mean, theoretically speaking, the location of the ThreeTrees of Mana is already contested territory. Abandoned during the previous demonic battles, it’s last owner is the kingdom of Salah, but historically that plot of land has changed owners a few times. Unlike the valley of Freeka, which is somewhat-legally, under the truce arrangement, a part of this new nation of "New Freeka".

Even if Yvon manages to get some kind of neutrality declared for the valley, that neutrality would likely not extend to this newly claimed area of mine. In fact, it may even be seen as a hostile act from New Freeka for claiming that dungeon. So, I may have invalidated the truce already!

But! I would not part with the leyline. That’s fact, so if a battle does pop up, I will defend it, and unfortunately for the New Freekans, I’ll have to drag them into the battle if I have to.

Ah, so many moving variables though… so many "ifs". If only i have eyes and ears into all the nearby nations...

Hah.

"You’re overthinking." Meela pops up, poking her head into my thoughts.

"Why? I’ll end up dragging the refugees into battle… which is a bit too bad for them. So I should be thinking about what to do next carefully, no?"

"It didn’t happen yet, right?"

"That’s not how I see it." Not planning for things is how I got into trouble the last time, I should do better, right?

"I think you’re getting a bit too into that whole long termist tree thinking."

"Uh, and that’s wrong because?"

"Uh… how about the here and now?" Oh come on, don’t tell me that.

"It’s reality that I have to plan a bit more into the future. I’m a tree, I can’t just wing it."

I also discover that Meela did experience some change from the additional repair from the [soul forge - black]. She gains a bit more "awareness" of my thoughts, and to some extent, knows what I think. It’s unnerving, as I don’t enjoy having my mind read. But she denies it, she just says she has a very good innate sense of what my thoughts are, but she’s not reading my mind.

But all souls do get their minds read.. A little. According to the wisp, a soul tree can very well read and rummage through the memories of the souls that pass through it, if certain conditions and abilities are met, and this exchange is… mutual. Of course, for most souls, this doesn’t really matter because when they reincarnate, they forget them. Heroes however… retain their memories, and if they carry knowledge of a soul tree into their next life, that makes them rather… dangerous. Frankly, the mechanism is still confusing. Apparently some reincarnation gods will wipe the memories clean, but some don’t.

Someday if I meet Mozart again, I need to ask him about this memory wipe thing. How does it even work...

Ah.

"Meela, so, what would you do? If this war happens, my leyline is under threat."

"Fight them off then."

"So you agree with me."

"No. How does anyone know that bunch of trees is anyway related to New Freeka anyway. Most people can’t even tell two trees apart!"

Meela’s spirit bobs around and twirls.

"So, act as if the two sides are separate unrelated camps. So find a way to delink the two, visually. If they look different, nobody’s gonna suspect the two tree groups are related. Don’t you have some kind of ability to make it as if they look different… or you don’t? Some [camouflage] or [illusion] skill? And do you have a way to remove the straight line of [subsidiary trees] that, so that it’s not so.. Erm.. obvious?"

I pause. That’s a good idea. "When were you this smart? You’ve always given me the happy but slightly mentally retarded hero girl."

"Uh. I’m a designated reincarnated "hero". I get like super-boosts to my intelligence stats."

"Really!

"Yes! Apparently all of us heroes get like "tactical genius" as a perk."

Really, that sounds like rubbish. I don’t recall them being tactically smart at all, and in fact, often rely on their cheat ability to get out of tough situations.

"You sure don’t act like it all the time."

Meela pouts, "Okay I lied, there’s no such perk! But I mean, I can think if I want to. We’re not exactly idiots."

"Then?"

"That’s me rejecting the need to work hard, and refuse to think too hard through my solutions. I live life with the pareto theory. If 20% effort is sufficient to get an 80% score, I’ll do it, and leave the 80% effort for fun stuff. Anything that pops up, I wing it with my natural talent and ability."

Mental slap please.

"I mean, that’s the best you can do. Cut the connection, and if they are under attack, defend it. They might not even pay attention, and the location of battle may not even be there, and you’ve just prepared for nothing... So, do what you can, and then not worry about it."

"Fair, fair. Are you still considering my offer as a secretary?"

"No."

"Trevor, did you catch Meela’s suggestion? Are you able to alter the look of the forests around the ThreeTree of Mana?"

"Yes sire. The energy and mana from the ThreeTrees of Mana contain certain specific aesthetic variations, courtesy of the [soul forge - black], that we can apply to the florae in that locality."

"Good, next is, how about that… hiding the line of trees that link this valley to the leyline?"

"We can create [subsidiary trees] that are mostly hidden underground, like a kind of small tuberous plant, with only a small shrub appearing above. That way, while there is still a portion of trees that is above ground that can be spotted, they would not stick out as obviously, and can be easily disguised by a thick overgrowth of other shrubs and weeds. But the trade off is that they lose their [customisable branches] function, and our line of sight in that area is significantly reduced."

"Well, it’s worth it, I think, so do it." Ah things are going smoothly!

"Yes sire. As you command."

"Wisp, your turn. Are we able to merge an artificial soul with the [ThreeTrees of Mana]?" The logic of me doing this is simple. If it can level up, it’ll be stronger, and with some sentience, that ThreeTrees can defend itself better.

"No. That is actually a connection with your [soul forge - black], so you cannot merge it. It’s like a forge trying to forge itself."

That makes sense. "Fine, so I need some kind of defensive unit at that location then…"

And I turn to Meela.

"Since you have so much to say… mind being some kind of defender?"

"I like talking with you. No thanks. I like being here a lot more."

"Come on, you’re the best! Besides, you can still talk to me-"

"Master." Trevor and Horns both butt in.

"Yes?"

"Riders spotted on the horizon, heading towards us at speed. They will probably close in on the Treefolk village soon. They all have rather significant magical presence."

Ah, how strange. It’s as if they are advertising they are powerful mages to everyone, so, I hover over to check it out, as they pass by some of the [subsidiary trees].

"How far is it?" I hear them say, riding. It’s a group of 5, all on horses.

"No idea, but its ahead."

"The horses are exhausted. And I am out of [vitality restoration]."

"We’ll arrive by nightfall. Hang in there, horses." One of them pats the horse, trying to encourage them to keep riding.

"Should we interfere?" Trevor asks.

"Wait. Watch." I think they are not hostile, at least, not yet.

They soon arrive at the forest, but the treefolk was not their focus. They head straight to New Freeka, and demand to meet the leaders. Are they some kind of magical emissary?

Thanks to a [subsidiary tree] right next to the meeting place, I could somewhat eavesdrop on the conversation.

"Hi, who are you people?" A man asks, one of Yvon’s inner circle, and one of those involved in the dungeon raid, he is armed and stands in front of the rest of them. He’s the first to appear from the leader’s house.

"We are representatives of the King of Baroosh. We come in seek of a great healer, wizard and magician, to aid our ailing princess."

"Oh. There’s no-" The man was about to respond.

Yvon steps ahead, signalling the man to let them keep talking.

The Baroosh man, the leader of the five of them, continue. "The Princess, is gravely ill, and we seek the aid of the great healer, to come to our capital and heal our Princess."

"Yes we heard that. But why would the great Baroosh come to our town in search of such a great healer? Surely the great cities have far more talented mages, wizards and priests…"

"Ah… I am afraid the disease our Princess has is… unique. Our great oracle, has a vision, that here lies the cure, the solution to that disease."

"I am afraid there are no such… great healer here." Yvon shakes her head. "You may ask every one of us, if you do not take our word. You may walk and explore our town, and knock from door to door, but we know not of any great healer or cure."

The man pauses, perhaps thinking of some kind of retort. "Hmmm… Is that so… never mind. May we rest in your town for a few days or weeks? Perhaps, among the refugees are some hidden genius in the art of healing."

Yvon smiles, "Certainly, please do feel free to make use of our guesthouse."

Later in the guesthouse, the Baroosh men talk. Once again, courtesy to a conveniently placed [subsidiary tree], I can catch some of the conversation.

"Is she lying?"

"No. My [truth detection] did not trigger, nor did my [detect false statements]. They are being honest if they say there are no great healers here."

"Hmmm. Maybe they don’t know."

"Exactly. This place is a hive of refugees, so many that run here, a few thousand of them. Some of them may be hiding their talents, and the leaders know not of their talent."

"But Salah never had a great healer either…"

"Indeed… it is strange that the oracle guides us here."

"You know how oracles are, they will answer your question, but it may be because our question is not correct." One of the men speak, while munching on some potato salad. "Maybe it’s a trick answer, and we need to look for something else."

"Whatever it is, we can’t go back without the healer. We’ll get our heads chopped. We start our search for the healer after we rest tonight."

Year 75 Month 10

My ginseng tree got attacked by a flying creature. It pulled it out of the ground before a root strike struck its head. So once again, I had to restart my ginseng tree. My constant failure to cultivate and protect my ginseng tree reminds me I still have a problem with airborne monsters. Maybe I can get flying leaves as a weapon, kinda like Pokemon.

Right?

Or shoot seeds as a projectile, like a rapid fire machine gun in PvZ. I already have fruit bombs, so launchable fruits would turn them into fruit-artillery and fruit-flak cannons? Come on system, give me something similar or a skill like that?

A fruit cannon. A seed cannon is fine too. Something to shoot at all these flying stuff that’s starting to really bug me.

System? Give me a skill, please?

[Insect warrior variation unlocked : Web-trap Spiders]

[New customisable branch option : Web-trap spider nests. Home to 3 web-building spiders.]

[Web-building spiders have little direct combat abilities except for their poisonous fangs, but are able to build webbings between your trees, laced with paralysing poisons and build trapping cocoons]

Uh.

Not exactly what I wanted, but, I suppose a spider able to build traps is still better than nothing, so I designate one.

A spider crawls out, and it’s really rather tiny, about the size of a small dog. Each of the spider can build and maintain three sets of webs, so, one branch, has three spiders, and so, nine webs.

The first spider quickly demonstrates it’s ability, building a massive web between the branches and trees, about 10 meters across and wide, and it counts as "one" web. For anti-air, it’s not exactly ideal, after all, if a dragon or something came up, a trap like this isn’t going to work, is it?

Ah, a tree can’t pick the insects to decide to live in it, so fine, webs and spiders.

"There’s a spider!" Jura shouts, and pulls out his sword. He just came out of the hideout and is surprised to see a spider so near the main tree. I guess having a bunch of webbings right above his head kinda shocked him too.

"No. Stop. It’s my minion."

"...really?"

"Yes."

"The girls are not going to like it. At least the beetles kind of look like a giant armor, but this spider looks like a fuzzy… monster. And it’s dark brown and black."

"I frankly did not realise it’s creepy."

"EEP!!!" Belle screams when she too steps out of the hideout, and spots the spider.

"It’s my new… minions. They are… my anti-air defense."

"Can we not have them near here, at least?" Laufen too, comes out, after hearing Belle screams.

Hmmm… I mentally command the spiders to build their webs higher up, perhaps between the canopy layer of trees. That way they don’t come across the refugees or elves so often, except for the ginseng tree area, which I will cover in multiple layer of webs. Just to prevent airborne monsters from pulling the tiny ginseng tree out of the ground again.

With that, the spiders hide away on the tree tops, and the elves go about their way. Except Jura.

"Bamboo has been rather talkative lately, since he hit level 20 and capped out."

"Oh, how is he?" A bear made of wood appears next to Jura.

"I am fine, master. I recently acquired this wood-form summon, which allows me to take this rather weak form, but at least I can act independently."

"Yeah, he’s been telling me about having to ‘upgrade’ as a eidolon, to unlock more powers..."

"Yes, master TreeTree." Bamboo walk up, and stands next to the [Forge Tree], and as he does, a prompt appears.

Bamboo, Woodbear Eidolon has reached his level cap. To upgrade (ie to Level 30), the following options are available :

Blue - Armor path - 50 small copper ingots &amp; 5 medium red rubies needed

Black - Claw path - 50 small iron ingots &amp; 5 medium onyx needed.

Ah.

For artificial souls, they start off at level 20 cap, and if I have a single color soul forge, I can unlock one upgrade, ie, level 30. Each extra color increases the upgrade by one, so, if I have all the necessary resources, I can upgrade twice, to level 40.

It seems, the colors of the soul forge represent something lacking in the artificial souls. Each color adds an affect, and makes a more "robust" artificial soul.

"TreeTree?"

"I’m afraid we need to acquire some resources, can you get 5 medium red rubies and 5 medium onyx, and a lot of copper ingots?"

Jura pauses, "Is this like the blood crystal thing?"

"Yes. Where are you on that, anyway?" Ah yes, Trevor too, needs an upgrade. All 3 of my first artificial souls have reached level cap.

"It’s being shipped here. After the dungeon raid I’ve gotten enough money to buy it, but the trader says the supplier is really far away, so it’ll take some time. Maybe next month we’ll get it."

"Fine then. Are the visitors bothering you?"

"Yeah. They seem to be looking for some great healer or some great magical cure, but we don’t know of any. But they are still here, claiming that their oracle never lies."

"Should we be afraid of them?" Lausanne then pops out, asking the question to Jura.

"Well, not really. But Baroosh is one of the larger kingdoms around, at the same level as Salah, so they are a respectable force. Making allies of them would be ideal for Yvon and gang, but we really do not have healers to offer." Jura’s response is actually meant for the elves, but It’s also an education for me, because the names of all these nations kind of slip past me.

Tree uses Heal

Year 75 Month 11 Week 2

A great battle broke out in the conflict between Takde, Nung and Salah, and a great, cursed spell was cast. One that sacrificed the lives of 25,000 soldiers, and with it, created an exceptionally harsh winter in that area… and beyond.

So powerful, that spell that summons a vortex, a magical vortex of ice and frost, and then, the region transforms into a snow covered land, one of blizzards, snowstorms, and strong gusts of wind.

That spell, extends to the entirety of the valley, overnight, from what is normally a light rain, into to snow and ice. Thick snow, a terrible cold snap. A few of the smaller streams froze.

This stunts the growth of the regions crops, already reeling in the earlier mild winter.

Everyone’s prepared for winter, so a huge stockpile is already there. Even New Freeka, their efforts to vastly expand their farmlands and crop cultivation meant they are facing this intense cold with at least a few warehouses and silos full of harvested, preserved vegetables and grain. What was meant to be their solution to a migrant surge, becomes a solution for exceptionally bad winter, though I wonder how long this stockpile will last.

Since it is great battle, I figured that there must be a lot of death, a lot of souls still lingering in the battlefield, so I decide to send my many [soul harvesters] there. They are like faint ghosts, and so they can travel really far, but it’ll take a while for them to come back. I think, with the soul harvesters, they expand the range of my soul absorption to almost the entire continent. Which is massive.

Massive!

Also, the group from Baroosh expanded, after about 2 weeks.

"I am disappointed, apprentice." A wizard steps through the portal, escorting the sick princess, and followed by a healer and a paladin. They are surprised by the sudden cold, but they come well prepared and put on thick jackets and shawls. I suppose their princess waited a bit too long.

"My sincere apologies, teacher. We have tried to ask every single one, and yet we could not find one that we think, has potential. That’s why we asked the oracle whether the healer had moved or went away."

"Excuses." The wizard is old, he has flowing white, wrinkly hair, and a typical wizard’s hat, with a pointing tip.

The man bows, and doesn’t respond.

The princess follows behind. She’s got a very faint presence, and her steps soft, light, and the healer supports her every step and movement. I also notice the healer using some kind of potion on her, at regular intervals, especially when she starts shivering.

The wizard talks with the existing group for a while, and then he stops.

"Well, let’s find that healer." He casts some kind of strange magical spell, and then from a small metal case, a magical arrow appears, and it starts spinning in circles. And it keeps spinning. It even points downwards at times.

The wizard then pauses, and looks at the man. The man looks equally dumbfounded.

"This…" The wizard seems stumped, and the paladin, steps up next to him.

"Wizard, what’s the meaning of this."

"This artifact is the [compass of oracles], it links and augments the oracles ability, so that we can locate whoever or whatever the oracle learns…"

"Get to the point, wizard. Why is it flying everywhere?"

"I… I don’t know." Yet, the wizard’s initial confusion turns into a strange smile. The earlier group look puzzled.

"Whatever. It’s cold. Let’s continue this conversation indoors. The princess cannot take this weather for very long." The healer insists, and they retreat to the warmth of their guesthouse.

"So… What’s with this cold?" The healer asks, as he tends to the frail princess in the guesthouse.

"Aftermath of the Salah wars. Someone used a great blizzard vortex spell, with blood sacrifice…"

The wizard though, seems laser focused, analysing the compass of oracles. It spins everywhere, and it might as well be absolutely confused.

"Any ideas, wizard?" One of the men finally dares to ask the wizard.

"Maybe, maybe the land is a nourishing factor. I will need to test it out."

"The land? This freezing place?"

The wizard ignores the man.

And the wizard runs outside, and then starts casting a few spells, spells which I could not quite identify or observe. He did that for a good half a day, constantly casting spell after spell, though, nothing in particular seems to be happening. At this point, I’m feeling a little bit… defensive. A wizard comes to New Freeka, and starts using a whole bunch of spells… that feels a little too close for comfort, so I keep watch.

A group of high powered people in search of something, and casting weird spells? That is just ringing all the bells.

"That’s really odd."

"What’s odd." One of the men, who seems to be the wizard’s apprentice of some sort, comes out to accompany his master.

"The readings, and compass, it all points through this entire valley, and yet I don’t detect any kind of magical presence from the earth, or is it muffled? Or suppressed somehow because of this stupid blizzard effect on the weather of this entire place?"

The apprentice shrugs, and shakes his head. "I did tell you this place is… rather unusual."

"That cannot be. Magic still flows in this entire valley, and yet there is something that also envelopes this valley, like a large piece of cloth hiding furniture…"

"If it is so, then the healer picked the best place to hide."

"No. I doubt the healer knows. There is more to this. Tell me, any magical structures? Is there a holy relic of artifact here?"

"You know, if you say it’s the entire valley, that kind of reminds me. Some of the people here worship a tree, you know. You want to go and see it?"

The wizard nods, "At this moment, there are few other leads. Let’s go."

So they brave the snowstorm, that’s actually almost perpetual now, to go to the [Tree of Prayer], the courtyard now coated in a layer of white snow. Which, actually isn’t the only color of snow, surprisingly. In some parts of the world, there’s a kind of magical aberration which turns snow into different colors, like green, or blue, or yellow, or purple, anyway, I digressed.

"So, this is a tree they pray too." The apprentice said.

The wizard then casts a spell. [Detect Magic].

And nothing happens.

"Hmmm…"

And then, the wizard pauses, and casts [Firespark] at the Prayer Tree.

And it nothing happens.

"There’s a hostile magic suppression aura here. It’s present throughout the entirety of the valley, that’s why a few of my spells seem to be not responding, particularly those of the probing type." The wizard explains to the apprentice.

"But it is no denser here, so I doubt this tree is the source of it."

"Huh, maybe that’s because the tree is everywhere." The apprentice shrugs. "I hear the locals say the entire forest belongs to the tree that rules this valley, and entry is at our own risk."

The wizard smacks the apprentice. "So, that sounds exactly like where a healer would hide. Did you check out the forest?"

"Yes we have, master. There’s just a whole load of trees and a lot of monsters."

Oh. Wait. At this point, their earlier conversation about the magic suppression rings a bell.

Is that me? When I leveled up and unlocked the soul forge, I did get an ability called [Low Tier Magic suppression]

The wizard looks at the apprentice, shaking his head. "Anyway, lets do more tests on the type of suppression here, whether it is tier-restricted…"

He then casts, [Fire]. One again, nothing happens.

Then, he casts [Blue-fire], and this time, a blue flameball appears in his hands. "Hmm… tier 4 spells are not suppressed."

"So… does this mean we can find the healer?"

"I think we already have a good clue. Whoever powerful enough to create a tier 3 suppression aura throughout this entire city is probably the one able to heal the princess, or would at least know the person that can heal the princess."

Yup.

These guys are looking for me! Ah, so this is interesting, if that is indeed the case, I think I could use this as a bargaining chip, and so, I quickly summon Jura to explain the plan.

And the next day morning, despite the snow outside, Jura and Yvon went to the guesthouse.

"Oh, Lady Yvon, what brings you here?"

"Ah, I have good news for you all. I think we finally discovered who the healer you were looking for."

"Really? Have you been lying to us the past few weeks?" The apprentice is not happy.

Yvon shakes her head. "I thought you were referring to a person."

"What?!"

The wizard though cuts the apprentice out.

"Never mind that. The princess comes first. Bring us to the healer."

"Not so fast." Jura pauses. "There are a few things the healer wants to know, and wants from you, before the healer is willing to have a look at your princess’s condition."

"Name them. Quickly." The paladin and healer insists. "The Princess’s condition worsens by the day."

Jura hands a list I had him write, and he passes it to them. The paladin and healer look at it, and then passes to the wizard. "This is extortion, isn’t it?"

Jura smiles. I could tell he is enjoying it. "It’s the terms the healer propose, in exchange for his aid. You can choose not to. And he did say, if he can’t improve the princess’s condition, he won’t take payment."

"Fine. We’ll give these things. Great powers do not come cheap, after all." The wizard says. "Bring the healer here."

"Good. But I am afraid you have to go to him."

All of the Barooshians look at each other, but then, they nod. It’s not as if they have a choice. So, together with the princess, all of them venture out into the snow, and make the slow walk through New Freeka, into the forests.

"Where are we going?" They did not like walking in the snow.

"We’ll reach there soon. Anyway, what’s the princess’s diseases?"

"I am afraid… even I don’t know. All we can do is keep supporting her body so she doesn’t die." The healer shakes his head. "It’s almost as if her body wants to kill itself."

And then they arrive at the main tree, where the beetles and spiders are sleeping, dormant.

"Eh…"

"Wait." The wizard turns to Jura. "A spirit tree?" It’s as if he struck a realisation.

"Yes. This spirit tree rules over the entire valley."

The wizard nods, "That explains why the compass is confused… I am guessing this massive spirit tree extends its roots everywhere."

"Bring the princess inside." Jura says.

The healer carries the princess, and Jura then stops the rest of them. "I’m afraid I can only allow the healer into the tree from here. The rest of you must wait outside. The tree’s rules."

The wizard pauses, looks at the paladin, and the rest of them nod. "Fine. I can trust a spirit tree." And so, the frail princess is escorted into the [biolab].

Once I start examining the princess using the biolab, it’s immediately apparent what her problem was.

As with all living beings with mana, there is a spring in their body, and in the princess’s case, that spring, is almost entirely destroyed. That spring appears like a regular fountain to most, but the princess’s spring is charred, dark and the structure around it has somehow turned into rubble. There’s still some mana flowing out, but it’s irregular, inconsistent, and at times, corrupted. And when the corrupted mana flows out, it interacts with the body and creates a rotting effect.

It’s as if the tap that supplies water to a body is broken, and because of that, while there is water flowing out, it is polluted water, and that polluted water "poisons" the body.

The body tries to fight back that corrupted mana, and as a result her body turns blue, kind of like a mana-gangrene.

So, I look deeper. My biolab is of a higher level now, so I get more visibility, tools, and even popups to explain what I am looking at.

"She did something forbidden, or perhaps, not her level to do." The Wisp somehow pops up. "All this points to an attempt to summon a higher power."

"Oh?"

As I look into the spring, a small indicator appears. [Outer-shell destroyed]

"Huh. Outer shell destroyed?" This seems to mean she is like the reverse of an artificial soul, or perhaps, similar to Meela previously. A regular soul comprises of an inner and outer layer, an artificial soul only the outer layer. So, she had somehow managed to do destroy her entire outer layer?

Hmmm… This is really strange, and I ask Jura to ask the men what did the Princess do.

"The Spirit Tree wants to know what the Princess do. She has somehow destroyed a large part of her soul…"

The wizard and healer seems really shocked, and they turn to each other. The healer starts first. "The Princess was last spotted in the wizard’s tower, what was she doing?"

The wizard stares back. "I.. I don’t know. She was going through the ancient tomes and then…"

At the same time, I kept looking into the Princess’s body, and then I discover another thing. [Exposed to void mana]

"What the hell is void mana?"

"Oh, I can answer that one. It’s raw mana form. Primordial mana, so to speak. It’s the most powerful of mana types, but… the most dangerous. The normal body of mortals is not fit to handle void mana. Even heroes can handle it in small degrees, that’s why they only get the second tier form, star mana. If one distils and processes star mana further, one would then get the normal kinds of mana."

Heh, this sound like the big bang, and then the formation of stars, and then the heavier elements? If mana is an element that exists in the birth of the universe, it’s akin to primordial quarks, and then they would form protons, neutrons, and electrons, and those would then fuse into regular atoms.

"This surely begs the question, why would this Princess somehow be exposed to void mana?"

"Ask them what was the tome that the princess was studying?" I mentally speak to Jura.

The wizard pauses. "I think she was looking into a tome on…"

He stops.

"I don’t think it’s relevant. Can the tree heal her or not?"

The healer and paladin turn to face the wizard. "I think it is relevant. What was the Princess actually trying to do?"

"She might be looking at a tome about otherworld heroes… and theories on how to summon them. It’s one of the crazy tomes left by the Mad-Hero, Arsene Emir..."

The paladin then grabs the wizards hand. "What? Why is the Princess allowed to be anywhere near to a tome by the mad-hero?"

"I was doing research on it, and I didn’t realise the Princess snuck in."

"Excuses! So all this was your fault, wizard!" The paladin is rather mad.

Well, I let the Barooshians continue their argument, as I turn my attention into figuring out what can I do about this Princess’s damaged soul.

The soul forge would be able to fix most of destroyed outer layer, but the exposure to void mana is going to be harder to remove. In a way, it’s like Meela’s [demon poison], but, only from another source, a more… raw source.

It took about another hour, but I’ve looked at all I could, so, Jura and the healer helps to carry the Princess to the Forge Tree. She rests inside a platform inside the forge tree, and once ready, both Jura and the healer had to go out.

As I attempt to repair her damaged soul, I got a prompt that some items of the Princess needs to be sacrificed.

"Does the Princess have any… items or personal belongings that she cherishes?"

The Paladin takes out a small hairpin, and passes to Jura, and Jura throws it into the Forge Tree.

Not enough.

"Another one."

The paladin checks his backpack, and the healer checks a bag that contains the princess’s belongings, and pulls out a small comb. "Her mother, the Queen, gave her the comb."

And into the forge tree it goes.

The logic of it is essentially, to repair a soul, especially one still in a bodily form, one would need to "harvest" remnants of the person’s souls, that are sometimes residing in their cherished items, to then use it and patch the soul. It’s like soul-organ-transplant surgery, but with personal belongings. Unlike Meela’s case, who’s not constrained by a body any longer.

So, the quality and relationship one has with the item, determines the value for the repair. And the comb qualifies. In fact, the comb itself is sufficient, so the hairpin flies back out.

"The comb itself will do."

And it’s melted by the [soul forge], and it then fuses into the princess’s body. And while a snowstorm blows outside, in the immediate vicinity of the [forge tree], multiple lightning bolts rain down on the forge tree itself, each creating a connection of lightning to a branch.

"This is rather scary."

"I’ve never seen anything like it." The men,, waiting in the snow, watching lightning strike the forge tree multiple times, whilst their princess is inside.

And about an hour later, Jura and the healer goes inside the forge tree to retrieve the princess, and put her back into the [biolab] for monitoring.

Under the [biolab], the spring itself has been repaired. But, an indicator still exists on top, still saying [exposed to void mana]. I’m unable to remove this status, as I don’t have enough power to do so. It seems that I need access to a few more soul forge color types before I can.

At least I actually get to see an explanation of what it does.

[Exposed to void mana - will have occasional nightmares of otherworldly horrors. Overuse of mana will result in fainting. Cannot use mana potions, as will result in a void-mana flaring, and will cause hallucinations and seizures]

And indeed, it seems this is as far as I could go, so the Princess comes out of the biolab, and back to the worried Barooshians.

"The Spirit Tree says this is all it can do. THe princess’s body should not be killing itself anymore, but she will still have nightmares, and do not give her mana potions. Overuse of mana also will cause fainting."

The princess’s hands, and legs, once blue in color, now gradually regains some color, and she no longer feels an intense weakness and pain through her body, so much so she is actually able to talk.

"...food." That’s the first word she said.

The healer and paladin quickly take out, from their pouches some kind of bread for her to eat. They seem happy, because she is visibly recovering, and so, rather than eat in the snowstorm, they walk back to the guesthouse to rest.

"What did you do back in the tower?"

"I… I tried to summon a hero." It seems the princess had not been able to hold a proper conversation, or even explain what happened because of the intense pain she was in.

"WHY?"

"I… I… I wanted a hero to be my husband. Rather than that stupid old duke."

Ah, at this point I stop eavesdropping.

Their conversation went on about Barooshian court politics, international relations, political marriages and power balance stuff, which frankly is not my cup of tea at all.

Later on, they all used some kind of portal magic to return to Baroosh. They say they will find some way to deliver the promised goods.

[You leveled up! Level 124!]

[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 700]

[Biolab leveled up] [External Biolab unlocked. Customisable Branches can now create biolabs!]

[Winter resistance upgraded]

[You learned a new skill : Winter-adapted crops]

Ah, so I gain crops that can grow in this stupid snowstorm.

Year 75 Month 11 Week 4

Despite this horrible cold weather, the traders delivered the blood crystals. And once they did, I quickly got to it. Ah, thanks to the new leyline and soul-forge color, I also discover there’s a new upgrade choice for Trevor as well.

[Trevor, Forest Mind Level 20]

Upgrade choices -

[Blue - Root-Brain Complex. Requires special minerals to grow. Special minerals required are 10 x Blood Crystals, and 50 x fresh animal heads.]

[Black - Skull Shell - Requires special minerals to upgrade. 10 x Bone of a wyvern, 1 x heart of a lion and 50 x Bones of a lizard]

Huh. Oh well, let’s go with the immediate upgrade. The blood crystals and the heads of the animals were put together in a pile, and then, I trigger this upgrade. A few dozen roots appear, and drill into each of the heads and then the blood crystals, creating a rather messy haze of blood in the area. They twist, they turn, they tangle, and sparks fly. It’s a bit like watching a dozen snakes mate, with fireworks.

And when it’s done, a brainlike jumble of roots is formed. It’s really just roots folded and twisted many many times until it looks like a brain.

[Trevor’s level limit has been increased to 30]

[Trevor has gained a unique passive ability - Hive’s Guardian]

[Hive’s guardian - gains limited control over the lower tier monsters and beasts that spawn in the valley. Does not override their natural instincts]

Ah, fairly useful then. But then, as I turn back to my usual view of the valley, I noticed some changes. The interface is now more… game-like? And the minimap extends further, and there’s more layers to the views available. The granularity of the view is also much better, and I can see more colors.

"If you desire, master, I can customise the views for your viewing pleasure. Each of the trees in the valley send back a ton of data through their roots, and it’s a matter of processing them into usable information. With this upgrade, my processing capacity has increased! I will be able to provide better alerts and better forecasting ability!"

Sadly, the area of effect is centered around that new [Root-Brain complex], so the further I go, the data available shrinks. But it is still sufficient to cover the entirety of the valley. When I go as far as the ThreeTrees of Mana, the data available in that region is close to none. And still lacking in terms of defenders.

Therefore, it is time to create my 2nd forest mind, one for the ThreeTree of Mana’s area, which I will call the Southwest Forest.

[In order to house your new forest mind, three subsidiary trees will be merged]

[New Forest mind has been created, do you want to name it?]

"Dimitree."

"Greetings, master." Dimitree responds, with an accent. Is that intentional? Well, if it is, please continue. Russian/Ukrainian voice presets please.

"You’re tasked to defend my connection to the leyline, and the vicinity of the Southwest Forest. Ask for help if you foresee difficulties."

"Acknowledged."

Afterwards, I set up a few dozen subsidiary trees in the area, all with warbeetles, and place them under Dimitree’s command. Still, because of the freaking unnatural cold, there’s practically no army movement in the region. Instead, this harsh winter brings a lot of deaths to the region. Even in New Freeka where there’s housing, it’s insufficient protection, and the Treefolk had to construct additional barriers, and actually start a fire indoors to keep themselves comfortable.

So cold. I feel like my branches are getting frostbites.

"It's just your imagination, master."

Year 75 Month 12

The cold just gotten… colder. Some parts of the terrain turn almost ice-like, as if it’s an eternal winter. If such a spell is possible, and I think it is, this feels very much like it.

I suppose this is how Arendelle feels when Elsa did her winter thing. I think Elsa would be a rather fascinating reincarnating hero.

Nothing much happens this month, because everyone’s just really trying to wait out the cold. The effect of the spell, added to the natural turn of the seasons make this so crazy cold, the elves all end up hiding in the [secret hideout], where it’s warm and temperature controlled.

The New Freekans, attempt to build underground structures at this time, as a way to get a bit more comfort out of this ridiculous weather.

Year 76 Month 1

Well, I thought last month was cold. This month, it somehow proved me wrong, as it got even colder. There were days where all that happens was ice flying in the air, as any water freezes instantly.

It even causes my tree barks, that are normally winter resistant, to feel brittle, and flaky.

Since last month, myself, Trevor and Dimitree use our abilities to support the rest of the normal trees, so that the cold don’t kill off the trees in the forest. They are already in some kind of "winter-hibernation" mode, but this excessive cold would normally kill them. Even in this magical world, death by cold is still possible.

It’ll be bad if I lose my normal trees, so this is when that energy is consumed, from [tuberous storage], to create a warm flow of nutrients and energy, supplied to the normal trees, prevents freezing, and kept them alive.

This little episode with high-tier magic also reminds me of my vulnerability to such powerful magics. If say somebody cast a [meteor] or a magic of that calibre, what countermeasures do I have? I mean, a way of saying is, if I am a tree stuck in the blast radius of the Tsar Bomba, what do I do?

[Winter resistance upgraded]

[Winter-resistance aura obtained. All trees connected via rootnet are more resistant to the effects of cold and ice. Beetles and webspiders also gain some winter resistance]

[Warm Winter Fruit obtained. A fruit that helps to keep the body warm]

Uhh… that helps a bit, I suppose. With the winter. But not the tsar bomba. Or wait. Is the system saying this is the magical equivalent of a nuclear winter?

"This winter is unbearable. We need to do something." The villagers are now trying to get Yvon to do something about the winter, but, what can they do?

Good news is, there’s absolutely no fighting in this sort of weather. Sort of bad news is, people are still dying. (Bad for them, not me) So, my soul realm is packed with souls, souls that are due for their reincarnation within the next 6 months, from the returned soul harvesters, and just generally, from all the death in the vicinity.

And from the fragments of the souls harvested, I obtain quite a fair of interesting essences, and my first [Experience Seed], a product of the [Soul harvester]’s ability. The experience seed is used to create a [Level Fruit], each seed, to create one fruit. The effect is to increase one’s level by one, up to the level cap of said person.

Yes. A fruit equivalent of rare candy.

BUT! The creator of said level fruit (me), cannot use it. Again, it is similar to that soul contract where I take a person’s level away, or where they surrender their experience to me. It’ll get converted into [transferable experience], which can then be processed into [experience seeds] and [skill seeds]. In fact, even [skill essences] can be further processed into [skill seeds].

A single level isn’t much, for those the lower levels. But I would imagine such an item being more useful and valuable to those at high levels, since it’s harder for them to level.

Year 76 Month 2 Week 1

The cold is letting up. By a tiny bit.

It’s still snowing every day, with some days having ice storms. Not fun. Again, I am burning through my [tuberous storage], trying to feed and support the forest such that it doesn’t freeze to death.

I’ve actually gotten a little positive out of this. I mean, at least it’s just ice, right? I can still keep the trees alive by giving them warm energy by consuming the stored energy. It’s kind of like winter and summer, you can constantly add layers of clothing to keep yourself warm, but it’s kinda hard to strip down to cool yourself down, when the air itself is cooking you.

If say the entire air is cursed from a massive heatwave, I would need to find ways to cool down the forest, and I think the only way I know at the moment is to pull up cool water from deep beneath the ground. And there’s not much of that. THere’s a fair bit of thermal energy coming from deep beneath as well.

This is despite I’m being fire-resistant, but, drought or prolonged heatwave? I’m not sure.

Maybe I need to find some kind of "cold-water" source, from far away. A massive root then supplies that cold water from there, to regulate the temperature of the valley’s trees.

And the opposite would be, to find a hot water source?

Maybe that volcano that Horns surveyed a while might be able to supply that.

"All this talk about the cold…"

"What."

"I don’t feel it."

"That’s cause you are blob? A floating soul with no ability to sense temperature?"

"But some of the souls were telling me about how cold they felt. Or maybe that’s just their final moments, carried over…"

"Wait. You can talk to the souls?" I didn’t know why I had the impression that only hero-grade souls can talk, but I suppose I’m wrong.

"Uh… only some of them. There seems to be a few that still retain their ability to talk… but all they do is repeat the same thing. Kinda like machines."

Oh. This soul thing can be… confusing. Why can some talk, some can’t?

Anyway, New Freeka is in a state of emergency. Food supplies are running low, as they did not expect such severe weather, and much higher consumption of their stockpiles. That, led to rather ingenious solutions, as some of their farmers actually have rather interesting skills. One such ability is indoor farming, and that led to multiple greenhouse being built, and a few attempts at underground homes.

Speaking of underground…

"Dimitree, have you taken over the labyrinth?" The leftover labyrinth of the dungeon, now supported by roots, located in the Southwest forest.

"Yes. The inner labyrinth remains warm, though the entrances are covered in snow."

I think I could propose that as an alternative location for the refugees to live, protected from the cold. But it is too far, the journey there takes at least 2 days, maybe more in this snow.

Then, there is the old tunnel, left by the giant demonic centipede. Its located quite deep underground, so as to minimise tremors and detection, but because of its relative depth, I have found little use of it. But now that I have the [root tunnels] ability, I can think about creating more feeder tunnels to connect to that big underground tunnel.

"Suggestion."

"Speak, Trevor."

"There are certain kinds of vegetation that grow in tunnels. We can grow those there, would provide additional energy output. Variants of [Subsidiary trees].

"There’s no sunlight in there, can the [subsidiary trees] survive?"

"Not trees… more of… fungi."

"My powers extend to that of fungi?"

"Uh.. no. But if we extend our roots into the underground cave, we can create an environment for symbiotic fungus to grow, which can produce energy."

"Hmm… is the output worth it?"

"No. Fungus produce miniscule amounts of energy, but it has the effect of creating the base of a ecological system that supports certain kind of farmer ants and insects."

Hmm. Underground fungus.

But I do want ants. I think ants would be interesting warriors.

"Are beetles insufficient?" Horns then poke in.

"Ah… that is not my point."

"There are many kinds of beetles. I am sure you could have some kind of facility to research beetles that would help."

[Biolab - Beetle unit research tree obtained] [This massive tree allows research and development of various beetle types, such as flying beetles, armored beetles, poison beetles, firebeetles, waterbeetles…]

Uh.

"Yes. I think beetles are better than ants."

I get the point, Horns. But I still want ants.

"No. Beetles are the best. We are already sharing the space with spiders. Please do not neglect us beetles."

Ants?

"Beetles. We have dungbeetles. We have dancing beetles. We have colorful beetles. Beetles are superior."

I sigh. Okay.

T-ree-search

Year 76 Month 2 Week 3

"How long is this stupid blizzard going to last?"

"Forever, until someone manages to disable or dispel the vortex?"

"Not forever, such magics have a natural decay to them. Over time it will go away, but we are talking about years…"

Troubling news, from Yvon’s informants and diplomats. None, not Salah, not Nung, not Takde has claimed responsibility for using a blood sacrifice spell, and in fact, all of them are now not-so-secretly launching their own internal investigation into the cause of this catastrophe that brought severe blizzards to an area the size of a country. All three nations are affected by this massive spell, and all three capitals within range, though, Salah, being the largest of the three nations, are least affected.

Well, to be honest, if that was all there is to it, its not really that troubling. I mean, a hurricane is a country sized disaster, no? Nobody jumps when a hurricane or a massive earthquake rattles the world, right? (Though I may be wrong… a perpetual hurricane would be equally horrible).

The troubling thing, is some of the more sophisticated intelligence claims that it is a secret demon cult at work. A cult that aims to summon, and to control the demon king. They call themselves the Circlebreakers. A demon cult, that, as the rumours start to emerge, manipulated the nations and took advantage of the massive battle to somehow sacrifice at least 25,000, to test out some kind of blood magic.

I mean, it sounds bonkers. I mean, which nation would want to publicly admit it used such a drastic measure, one that involves blood sacrifice? So naturally all of them will deny involvement, even if they did do it. Besides, I presume everyone in that battlefield is dead, and any evidence they can gather by magic, is being corrupted and distorted by the presence of that blizzard magic vortex, and with each passing day, the evidence vanishes. Perhaps if some of the souls and spirits can talk, I can find out a bit more, but until then, this theory sounds absurd.

So. I still think of the countries did it. Or maybe a mix. One of the countries collaborated with the cults to activate such a spell.

Anyway, those are distant affairs, that unfortunately affects me. Goes to show that turtling strategy doesn’t work when there are large area of effect spells and abilities.

The merchants are quick to adapt, though. Money really has ways of making the world go round, even in magical worlds.

This month we had the first visit of the "cold-resistant caravan". Essentially, they are a delegation of about a 100, with dedicated mages and special carriages that are magically reinforced to provide protection from the cold and snow weathers.

Of course, the goods are expensive. They need a markup on such special services after all.

Oh well.

The Barooshians though, the wizard at least, came back to New Freeka. With the agreed rewards, most of them the upgrade materials I need for the root system, and also for Horns, Paws.

Apparently, the wizard’s punishment, for exposing the princess to forbidden magics… is exile. And the delivery to New Freeka is his last task by the King.

Surely, the wizard cannot take responsibility for the princess’s recklessness? But such are feudal societies, you get your ass handed to you even if you don’t have anything to do with it.

"Surely we would welcome a wizard like yourself to our town…" Yvon is quick, to bring him over to her side.

He sighs, nods, reluctantly accepts Yvon’s offer of hospitality. "I guess I will stay for a while."

And they soon get him to work on some kind of anti-cold weather spell.

Meanwhile, I am expanding my territory towards the volcano that Horns surveyed. Most of the beetles are inactive in this weather, and that's a weakness with having insects.

But as we approach the volcano, my subsidiary trees are slowly dying, so I could not extend them further. This is despite my own heat resistance, but the death is not due heat alone.

The surroundings of the active volcano is filled with sulphur, and there are active lava flows, forming rivers in the area. And, at every eruption, a blast of energy sweeps out from the caldera, and the shockwave creates a gust of wind. All this, cumulatively, create a hostile environment for the trees.

One of the external biolabs (only one so far), next to inner ring, had a menu prompt. Kind of like those alerts when I unlocked a secret mission.

[Biolab research option unlocked : Volcanic adaptation. Estimated time required, 3 months. Materials needed to start research, 100 pieces of sulphur]

Uh. Okay! Now I’d like to check all the other kinds of environmental adaptations...

That kind of put my plans to use trees to crawl into the volcank on hold. Thankfully though, the area around the volcano is still relatively warm, such that I can still deploy my beetles, and task them to venture into the volcano area to harvest the sulphurous minerals.

At about the same time, I created two beetle research tree, to research winter adaptation. It’s annoying to have so many of my beetles going into hibernation in this weather, and I was hoping to have some beetles which have ability to function in the cold.

It is really hard to do much when my beetles spend so much time hibernating in their cosy trees.

Year 76 Month 3

The nations are now starting their work on dispelling or weakening the blizzard vortex, with spring returning, the intensity of the blizzard is reducing slightly.

Slightly. Because it is still snowing.

And that means crops are not growing. Luckily for the New Freekans, their indoor farming experiments are working, so they now intensify their efforts to build additional indoor farms, in an effort to combat food shortages. But, the cold also means my timber farms are not as productive, so they very quickly used up the entirety of the timber farm...

"We’ve got a problem. Food supply is low, we probably have enough for another month, and the indoor farms are not producing enough food."

"Hunt. We hunt for the foxes and winter creatures."

"Okay. Let's do that, but we are talking about almost 25,000 people in New Freeka, are there sufficient meat to feed that many?"

"Maybe not, but better to have meat than not."

"Some of our watchtowers spotted a large group of yaks, that spawned… that would be ideal for us, their furs can serve as warm clothing for the men."

Yvon pauses, nods. "Fine. Take a 50 men and go hunt."

The warrior nods.

"Still, we need other food sources, meat is good, and we still have storage… perhaps the truce is suspended?"

"Huh. The hell with the truce, Lady Yvon. Salah won’t be able to retaliate in such circumstances."

"Salah may well figure out how to dispel this magic." Another of Yvon’s advisors chime in. "Though, depending on how we word it, we can perhaps get some leeway…"

Yvon ponders that for a while, "Can you arrange someone to visit them to convey our intentions to suspend the truce requirements, given this… disaster?"

"Certainly."

"Back to topic. Food. Food and warm shelter. We had 68 of us die of cold last month. We need to get a solution, or something to stave this cold off until summer, hopefully we have some plants growing then."

The discussion is held in one of the large halls in New Freeka, all the leaders are invited. It comprises mostly of Yvon’s comrades back when they were with Salah, but they have also gradually brought in the refugees to join the leadership team. After all, with 25,000, voices of rebellion and dissent will rise quickly, especially when it is cold and, people are hungry.

"Can we buy them?"

"The merchants do sell food, but their prices are… extortionary. They know we need it."

"Still, if we have to…"

"Then we will. But let that day come only when we have exhausted other means… our coin is our hard earned money."

"We should set up our own merchant corps, get out there and buy food from the unaffected nations."

Yvon nods, "That is a good idea, though the merchant guilds won’t like it that we bypass them, but they’ll come around. Anyone willing to volunteer to lead this task?"

A few men and women raise their hands, and Yvon nods.

This level of eavesdropping is partly facilitated by Trevor’s upgrade, which allows him to process the data coming from within the valley and New Freeka in greater detail.

"So, one group to hunt food, one group to buy food. Anything else? Magic?"

"Would Baroosh be able to send help using that portal magic?"

"Uh… that is worth exploring." Yvon nods, and assigns Eriz to the task.

"Alternatively, is there no magic spell that create a warm barrier to keep out such cold?"

"Hmmm… as far as I know, we don’t have wizards at the level of entire towns here. We have been doing them at the building level… but the spells expire relatively quickly." Indeed, there are mages, using their spells to create fire, or generally warm up certain places. But spells like this last short periods, sustained by mana, and they do run out.

The warming effects of certain skills, such as [Comfortable house] or [Slow burning fire] that some of the refugees have, last abit longer, but that does not work on a large scale and cannot house everyone.

"Does… does the will of the forest have any way to aid us?"

Ah yes, "Will of the Forest". It’s one of the ways the refugees have come to refer to me, after the recent assistance of the potatoes. Apparently, those who visit the [Tree of Prayer] are those that would end up using this particular phrase. They have been seeing my presence in their sleep, of a tree that somehow appears in their nightmares, and eats them.

Yvon did not respond.

"I mean, the Will of the Forest is the one that somehow manage to heal the princess, perhaps it has some way to aid us?"

Yvon sighs. "As you all have known, and I said this that day… The Tree Spirit does not give its aid freely. There is a cost to borrowing its aid, and is there anyone willing to sacrifice their souls for it?"

"Ask the elves. The will protects them, perhaps they can figure out a way to sway his views?" One suggests, referring to Jura, Laufen and the elves.

"Or Miss Eriz? Eriz was protected by it?"

Eriz shakes her head then. "The tree has punished me for bring all of you here, back then. I doubt it would listen to me now."

"If enough of us prayed to it, perhaps it might? That is what the churches tell their believers to do in times of hardship."

Ooooo… the religious kind.

To be honest, my ability to support the valley is also relatively limited. First of all, there is just too many of them. 25,000 New Freekans, and even with my new [winter resistant crops], I can grow about 2,500 winter-resistant potatoes a day, and that is enough to make maybe 1,300 meals per day. That still leaves a huge 23,700 guys without food. I mean, I think I am already pretty awesome to produce 2,500 potatoes per day.

And add to that, fruits. I have the warming fruits and the winter resistant healing fruits, which only my main tree can produce, and I can produce about 100 each for the two kinds of fruits. That is maybe another 100.

If I had the entire valley’s trees, then yes, I can then tap on the normal trees to create food but now, the normal trees in the forest are consuming energy, not creating them.

So yeah.

This weather is horrible.

"Perhaps they can make use of the tunnels." Trevor suggested. "Maybe they can grow mushrooms in there."

"If they have the right kind of mushrooms. And don’t they need time?"

"True. Mushroom as fungi, they benefit less from your "bountiful growth" effect."

Well, looks like the New Freekans are on their own. Too bad for them.

Beetles near the volcano report they have collected sufficient sulphur to start the research into [volcanic adaptation], which, I do. Immediately.

Thankfully research still functions under such cold.

"Trevor. Are there ways to research winter resistance?"

"As your forest minds, we are able to perform research with the aid of [external biolabs]. Though, our research functions are relatively limited, and a dedicated research-focused artificial soul will be needed for high-tier research."

"Oh?"

"So if I assign you to do so, does it come at the expense of anything?"

"Yes, if you assign us to perform research on any of the external biolabs, our ability to support the valley’s growth will be impaired by 10 to 20% per research topic. As you have already selected [volcanic adaptation], I am already using 15% of my available energy."

I see. What other research options do you have?

"Well… you’ll have to tell me. There’s no list to choose from."

Hey, that's not how I expect games to work. There should be clear tech trees, not I think of something and the biolabs figure it out…

"Uh that's how it works in real life. Inventors do that." Meela chimes in.

"You want to volunteer? Can I fuse you to a biolab?" I actually know the answer already.

"Fine, why not you work on winter adaptation as well."

"Sure…"

Oh.

My [ginseng tree] died from a pile of snow that somehow fell onto it and crushed it.

Dammit.

Beetle winter adaptation stage I - 2 months remain

Tree volcanic adaptation stage I - 3 months remain

Tree winter adaptation aura - 3 months remain

Year 76 Month 3 Week 4

I had a visitor. An uninvited one.

"Hmm." A strange man appeared in my inner courtyard one day, right in front of my original main tree.

How did this guy get here? Right in front of me?

"Strange." He holds a strange stick in his hand, and it bends towards me in a certain way. It looks like some kind of prospector’s stick, or a diviner’s item. Perhaps similar to the compass that the Barooshians have.

He looks up, and I see he is alone, but he has a big cloak and hoody kind of set up, like an assassin. Somehow, if I had skin, I would get goosebumps, something about his presence just… scares me.

I get a feeling that he is perhaps a Level 100 assassin or something of that nature.

I wake Jura, who’s asleep at the time, and he comes out, armed and ready. "Hello?"

The assassin dude glances at Jura, and shrugs. "Sorry. I think I got lost. Do you know where New Freeka is?"

"No, you didn’t." Jura says. "No one stumbles into this inner courtyard from being ‘lost’." This inner courtyard is actually specially guarded and protected, with the effect of my [illusion] and [camouflage] ability. So, walking here from being lost is close to nil, so by way of elimination, that means he is deliberately here.

The inner courtyard has the [forge tree], the [root-brain complex] and the other large upgraded subsidiary trees, that is converted into housing. He glances around, looking, his eyes trying to find something. Perhaps someone other than Jura?

The assassin dude smiles. "Yes, you are right. I happen to be looking for… heroes. Do you know of any?"

Jura laughs, and decide to joke to lighten up the mood. "None here. They’re all dead. You gotta wait till the gods summon them again."

"Well, that's what the gods want the public to think." The assassin looks at me, and the stick keeps bending in a strange way. He keeps the stick into some kind of magic pouch and takes out a different kind of item, a metal divining ball.

"Eh?" Jura exclaims, he is alert, but he too, can sense the tremendous pressure from the man before him.

The metal ball doesn’t react. "Hmmm.. no heavenly blessing, so you certainly are not a hero…"

"Uh of course-"

The assassin turns, and suddenly Jura falls to the ground. Alive, but it's as if his leg suddenly lost strength.

Two very tiny needles almost instantly pierced his legs, and it is laced with some kind of poison. But before Jura could scream, or I could do anything, the assassin is right in front of him, and taps a strange golden metal rod into his head.

"Sorry, this won’t kill you, but it’ll make you forget all about me, and this entire thing."

And Jura falls to the ground, unconscious, but I detect that he is still very much alive.

I calculate my chances, and speculate that my chances of killing this person is slim.

I feel this assassin probably could dodge my root strikes easily, so, even if I tried, I think it would take multiple shots for it to work. I would need an AoE ability to get him, or some way of slowing him down, if I want to hit him on my very first strike.

The assassin then looks and walks around my main tree. "Hmmm… The otherworlder locator points here though… meh. Too many false positives with all the things the heroes leave behind."

I continue watching, I suppose he might try something on Jura, but, my instincts tell me to wait. Jura’s unconscious body shakes a bit, and the assassin walks over.

"Ah yes, it’s still freezing cold." He covers Jura in a thick blanket that he pulls out from his pouch. "Sorry."

He looks around. Then he gives a big sigh.

"Guess he did not come here then. Dammit."

He lifts his fist against the sky and shakes it.

And the assassin vanishes. Just like that. Without a trace, and despite me and my roots covering this entire valley, I did not pick up his presence since then. I still wonder how he just slipped in and out of the entire valley like that.

"Apologises master, I have no idea how he slipped past all our detection and patrols." Trevor apologise, but I can’t blame him. He could walk in a straight line at me and I still won’t see him coming. That's just how absurdly powerful his ability is.

"A skill, obviously. Very, very high leveled stealth and camouflage. But add that to our list of weaknesses." I somehow suspect my own [camouflage] and [illusions] also worked on him, so he didn’t suspect much.

"He feels like a friend, though." Meela speaks.

"Really?"

Year 76 Month 4

"All good over here." Dimitree reports explaining the status of trees in the Southwest Forest. The cold is less severe there this month, benefiting from a strong warm current.

New Freeka managed to buy some food from neutral nations, so they staved off a bit of the hunger situation. And as the seasons change, a bit of the cold and snow from the bloodspell is counteracted by the natural warmth of the spring.

Still snowing, so the crops are still not growing.

I also, learned that actually I overestimated the refugees dietary requirements, as they actually have skills which make them better able to withstand cold and hunger. Some of them have skills like [Minimal Diet] or [High efficiency body] or [Endure hunger] which allowed them to make the most of what little food they have. Their experience being on the move, frequently with little food as well, given the survivors these skills which made them tougher.

Some of the most impressive of such abilities, possessed by a refugee, [Ascetic diet], survives on one meal per week without looking worse than a normal person.

In fact, if the refugees possess such abilities, my potatoes actually would be able to feed a lot more than I initially calculated. Perhaps by a multiple of 5 times.

"Its hard out there…" Belle sits, all snuggly in her bed. "TreeTree, is there not much we can do to help them?"

"Well, there is, but let them figure it out themselves."

"I think some of the refugees are jealous." Emile explains. "They wonder how we can still be so comfortable here and not extend a hand to them. They think we are being selfish…"

"Wahlen told me they have been getting weird stares, and some of the men actually cursed them openly…"

"Huh." Well, I’ll let it slide, but if any of them make a move, I will not hesitate to punish them. I mentally make a note to Trevor to put increased surveillance on Brislach and Wahlen, who now live in New Freeka.

"It is the way of the world." Laufen sits with Lausanne, working on some cotton clothes. "Our luck, that TreeTree watches over us."

"Well, some of them were driven out of their homes too, so they feel that they have suffered much." Belle responds, she’s really cozy with a thick blanket wrapped around her. Its actually warm in the room, as the main hideout and the nearby subsidiary trees have temperature controlled spaces.

Lausanne then pouts. "Treetree, maybe you should help them. Give them potatoes? I think they will like potatoes."

"Hmmm…. I don’t want to assist them so easily. Aid breeds complacency…"

"But they are in need. Heroes help people, no?"

Hmmm… Well, how do I tell Lausanne that I honestly do not care about the New Freekans all that much. Sure, they are useful, but… thats about it.

"How is your practice coming, Lausanne?" I try to change the topic, after all she has been receiving [dream tutor] from me for quite some time.

"Oh it's okay. I have been learning a lot, and those dreams where I learn strange skills is really really cool."

"Why can’t we get those dreams…" Emile and Belle complain.

"Because Lausanne’s young mind is surprisingly receptive to it."

"We are not old!"

"Uh… I mean her mind is still growing, so the skill-dreams seem to work better."

Then Lausanne nods, and she runs around for a while.

"TreeTree… are you going to help the refugees?" Ah dammit. I thought children easily forget the topic? Why does she recall it so well.

"Uhmmm, Lausanne, I cannot use my powers so easily, and there is always a cost for any other ability that I use. If the refugees ask for help, then, depends on what they offer, then I will consider it."

Lausanne pauses, and somehow she nods. She seems to accept that power is not something used so freely. "Maybe you are right. Uncle Jura likes to say that power needs to wait for the right time."

Heh, that is surprisingly insightful from Jura. Perhaps that new [diplomat] job has given him new mental perspectives.

"They must first, help themselves."

A few days later,

"Tree spirit." Meela speaks to me, her voice is serious. The Wisp is next to her, and we are in the soul realm.

"Hmm."

"I have a strange dream, or… well, maybe its not really a dream. But like some kind of mental whisper. But I think it means something. Something… important."

Important? What could be important. Oh well, let's go with it. "So tell me."

"I… I saw Alexis."

"Okay. What about her?"

"She’s not dead."

Oh. That is good I suppose.

"She… somehow my prayers to the heroes reached her."

Hmm, then again, that doesn’t sound good.

"Her body is currently consumed by demonfire, after she used [Fireform] to avoid the destruction of the demon king’s core… She is battling it every moment now. It seems the demonfire, when there is sufficient amounts of it, it gains some kind of consciousness.. or some kind of innate instincts "

"Oh okay." Doesn’t sound good, but so? She’s really far away right.

"And... erm… I think the demonfire that consumes her body thinks that a hero is still around, and so… It thinks the source of the prayer is… a hero."

Oh no. I mean, I kind of figured that is what Meela meant. It is just, just so typical of communications to lead to such actions. "She’s headed this way."

I mean, how does a demon know where to go, but I guess there are ways for that to happen.

"...yeah."

"When will she get here?"

"I don’t know."

Uh. "What else did she say?"

"Not much… She mumbled about how she is a fire elemental, since her she’s stuck in her fire-body form and that firebody is controlled by the will of the demonfire"

Well. Shit?

Hmm, lets see what measures can I take against a fire-crazy demon.

A valley burns

Year 76 Month 4 Week 4

Fire elemental and a perpetual blizzard. Not exactly what I imagined to face, but here I am.

The demon-fire Alexis arrived a lot later than expected, I initially thought she would arrive perhaps within two to three days, given the heroes overwhelming cheat powers, so I scrambled to prepare myself to face a hero, but then again, her body is controlled by demonfire, and that demonfire isn’t exactly… intelligent.

But yes, her arrival is easy to spot, as the demonfire is a lot more flashy. Despite a snowstorm that engulfs everywhere we can see, her glowing, flaming body just shines through all that snow like a lighthouse in a storm. Her body is a huge glowing fireball shaped like a woman, she reminds me of a female version of the human torch, or perhaps phoenix, but there under all that fire is something that looks like a solid core.

And, she arrives with a bang, shooting fireballs and firing beams of fire throughout the entire valley.

"This is the monster the tree spirit warned us about?" Yvon’s immediate reaction is… well, shock.

After Meela had the revelation, I quickly cascaded the alert down to the people, that a probably powerful monster is coming our way, so that they can prepare. But I would realise all my preparation was for naught.

Jura nods. "Yeah. Some kind of… fire-creature."

"That is a whole lot more than just "fire-beast"."

Alexis floats in the sky, surrounded by a dark, maroonish fire that rages violently. The remnants of the demon king’s fire, it looks unaffected by the effects of this magical blizzard, or even if it did, whatever effect it had is probably miniscule.

Yvon looks back at Jura and shakes her head. "Whatever that is, it is flying. There’s very few ways to engage that thing, unless it comes down to the ground. Our arrows are not going hurt it, and I doubt fireballs from our mages will either!"

As Yvon and Jura discusses, Alexis clearly does not consider them threats, instead she still continues to shoot fireballs at the forest and blast up a whole bit of the valley, one fireball at a time. The first impact vaporises any snow or ice that is built up, and the second impact instantly sets the normal trees on fire.

Indeed, given the monster is... A fire elemental, the best option is to use opposing elemental weapons, or some destroy the elemental’s core.

"So?" Jura looks at Yvon, he enters into the bear-armor mode, a black-colored wood wraps his entire body, and it makes him look at a giant bear, and he leaps into combat, charges in the general direction of Alexis.

The fire elemental notices, and directs the fireballs at Jura. And each time, he activates a wooden shield to parry those fireballs, the shields, are only able to absorb two fireballs, so Jura had to constantly re-activate the wood shields.

"Well, how are you going to hit it?" Yvon wonders, and activates a magical arrow. The fact that it’s a fire elemental meant Yvon quickly reorganised the team she prepared for this. Not everyone is suitable to face a high-tier monster of this sort, so some of the guys retreat back to New Freeka, and set up defensive positions.

Jura’s bear-shaped legs contort, the wood armor twirl into a spring-like structure and propel him high into the air, close enough to come into contact with the fire elemental…

And he gets blasted with a point blank inferno, it exploded right in front of him, and he gets chucked super far away into the ground, the wooden armor, already black, but now charred and smoking. The impact is enough to knock Jura out, but thankfully, not kill him, as the armor took the most of the damage, as I sense Bamboo going offline. But I think he’ll probably need to be in bed for a few days.

"Jura!" Yvon shouts, but she quickly turns back to face Alexis, who now notices the rest of the men, and retaliates with a few more fireballs. I activate my [wood shield] to protect them from the fireballs.

"Well, that went horribly well." I think to myself, as I activated multiple wood shields to block the fireballs. Their effectiveness is pretty good, blocking multiple hits before getting destroyed.

"Master, they won’t be able to harm that monster." Trevor quickly summarises our problem. True, with enough wood shields I can significantly reduce the damage Alexis deals, but we can’t hit or hurt it that much.

And this is when I notice Horns, charge towards the monster. "For the master!"

Uh. What?

"I shall defeat the foe!"

I think he somehow forgot that he can’t fly, so I am not sure what possessed him to attempt such a move, and what is he attempting to do.

"What’s he doing?"

"I think he may have some skills, master."

"Really. Let’s see it, but I think he’s gonna lose." Alexis is a hero, and that fire is from the demon king itself...

Horns charges towards Alexis, his beetle shell coated with some kind of resin, which is actually pretty good at absorbing the fireballs. And then when he finally gets beneath her, he digs into the ground, and shoots spikes at Alexis, from his shell.

[Spike-attack]

"Oh. I didn’t know he can do that."

But, it’s too-low-tier a skill, and the spikes burn up before they even actually harm her body. And so, Alexis lobs a few fireballs at Horns.

And he would have been crispy fried beetles if not for a few [Wood shield].

"Retreat, Horns. Not your match-"

Alexis waves her hand and shoots out a continuous jet of blue fire, and it incinerates everything it is path, including the wood shield. I instantly try to activate a few more shields to protect Horns, but it’s not good enough, the blue flame burns through the wood shields rather quickly, and also burns half of Horn’s back body before he manages to run out of range.

"Master- I failed-" And I sense Horns going offline. He’s… probably not dead yet, but I’ll need to repair him after this.

"It’s fine. Hibernate mod."

Yvon, very smartly, chooses to retreat all the way to me. I guess the fact that she survived so long out in politics is no fluke.

"We’re no match for this monster."

At this point, I know. Alexis has a fire aura that burns any lesser object that gets near her, and she almost limitless quantities of fire-type magic, and that blue flame is really powerful.

"Any suggestions?"

"No sire. I think our chances against is quite slim." Even now, her very presence is melting all the snow into water, then steam, and then the trees are catching fire. It’s ridiculous how she can be a one-person weather changer.

"Is there really no way we can reach her?" Meela sighs, she feels upset that Alexis is burning up the forest, and she has created a path of destruction that leads her right to me.

[Root strike]. A root flies up to her, and it hits her. The damage is low, as the fire aura incinerates the root partially, and so reduces the impact.

I thought I could do a repeat of my earlier strategy by using multiple root strikes, but then I notice that fire soon regenerates the damage. The root strike barrage would need to deliver a fatal strike, or I may just be wasting time.

Meela, tries the friendship route, and so she prays, and attempts to mentally communicate with Alexis. To convince her to stop attacking it

I try a few more [root strikes], just to be sure, and like the earlier ones, it does hit, but the damage I deal is not much. I throw a few fruits at her just to be sure, but they burn up midair, without achieving a thing.

"Yvon, can you evacuate the elves? And stay out of this." This is not going to be easy, and I suspect the mages will be useless.

"Ah… yes. Certainly." Yvon quickly take the elves and run. A few fireballs go their way, but I block it with the [wood shields]. The [shield generator] trees also have been trying to block the fireballs, but not as the shield generators are independent of me, their strength is inferior, and can only block 2-3 fireballs.

"She’s in there, and she says she’s in great pain." Meela actually manages to communicate.

"How?"

"It’s a thing heroes of the same generation can do. A kind of… telepathic link in short distances... Anyway… she can’t help us, the demonfire is too strong, and her soul is too weak to resist or take back her body."

"Okay, no friendship-no-jutsu route."

Alexis burns up a few more of subsidiary trees, and sends a few fireballs direct at my main tree, and it explodes right on my trunk

My historical experiences with fire has made me very resistant to them, so the fireballs don’t even leave a scratch on my main body. My main body, unlike the skill extensions, enjoy the full benefit of my [Tree Heart], and this prompts Alexis to aim blue flames at me.

And they don’t hurt. The blue flames can’t burn me either.

This seems to be a stalemate. She can burn up the entire forest and I will still be standing. And I can’t hurt her.

This outcome is not what I want, so I need to find a different strategy.

Irritated, Alexis sends out a wave of fire from her body, and pretty much burns almost all the normal trees immediately around my main tree. The subsidiary trees, forge tree and root-brain complex share quite a bit of my fire-resistance abilities, but the flame is strong enough to let Trevor experience pain.

"Master… I don’t feel so good." Trevor is housed in the root-brain complex and the blue fire is slowly getting to it. It inherits a smaller % of my godly fire resistance, and would be invulnerable to most fires. Except one from a hero, or a demon king.

"Shut down and hibernate. Horns, you too!"

"Acknowledged." Rather than lose Trevor and Horns from the constant barrage of fire, it’s better to pull their artificials souls back from their bodies, and house and hibernate their souls within me.

"This isn’t ideal." I shake my head, Alexis is still blasting the forest, and I’m doing my best to block as much of the fireballs as I can. Which works, and as a results, irritates the demonfire Alexis more.

Meela shakes her head. "Alexis’s trying to take back control, but it’s not working. The demonfire’s will is too powerful."

At this point, the elves have managed to evacuate to the "relative" safety of New Freeka, and it’s just me, the spirits, and Alexis. Yvon managed to haul Jura away from the battlefield as well.

It’s strange, to be feeling so hot when just a bit further away, it’s the cold blizzard. Too bad I can’t channel the blizzard’s power and direct it all at Alexis.

"We can’t defeat her." Meela sighs. "All you can go is stall her, but she’s free to run elsewhere."

I pause and I try to think.

If I can’t defeat her, then, I will attempt to contain her. The logic to me is simple, she can’t hurt me, so if I contain her such that she can’t hurt anyone else, that’s a win too!

Alexis lobs a few more fireballs and releases multiple fire-waves, and what is once a green valley turns into a blazing inferno, with me, the sole untouched tree in the middle, as the blue flame is strong enough to burn even those with higher fire resistances.

"What’s your plan?" Meela asks.

"Well, remember my extremely crazy demon and fire resistance? I am going to exploit it."

"How?"

"I am going to eat her."

[Constrict] x 30. 60 roots and vines shoot out from my main body, and attempt to reach out to Alexis’ firey body. Thanks a bit to her target being me. which I suppose is due to her sensing the presence of Meela, or perhaps those fragments of heroes, she is now really close to me, trying to burn me.

I’m not sure whether Alexis gets the point that it’s not working, but hey, if all it wants to do is keep trying, go ahead.

The fjre work to a limited degree on the roots and vines. Her fire aura burns up a few strands of roots and vines, but there is enough of the constricting vines and roots to form a thick net. I had taken inspiration from Horn’s body to coat the roots and vines with a layer of fire-resistant resin, and as they touch her fireform body, some of them burn.

With the resin-coated fire resistant net around her, I begin to pull, and manage to grab her flame body, and pull her towards me, into me.

"You actually going to…" Meela looks surprised.

"Eat her ..." Yes. I am.

Alexis’s body seems to panic, and so released a continuous stream of blue fire, and even stronger black fires, but closer to my main body, the root and vine’s fire resistance increase, so, she’s trapped. Fireballs after fireballs explode as I pull her ever closer.

Alexis’s body now almost touches my trunk, and she releases a huge chain of fire-waves, the acts of a drowning man, flailing, in an attempt to escape, but she still could not break through her vines. However, that fire scorched the surroundings, the forge-tree and the root-brain complex burned, the ground charred black.

Then, as she closed in on the trunk, the main body of my trunk open up, reveals a biolab pod. And the vines push her inside into the biolab. The demonfire attacks the biolab, and now, I feel like I’m in a sauna. Or like an arctic monkey sitting inside a hot spring in winter.

That doesn’t stop Alexis. She keeps trying, releasing wave after wave of fire. Perhaps she thinks my resistance is due to an extreme regeneration and so I will run out of mana, or somehow she hoped that the fire will eventually get through.

But it doesn’t.

I am kinda thankful that it’s only power is fire, and so it’s only response to any threat is to burn the shit out of it. I mean, if it had Alexis’s brains, she’d probably try lightning, or perhaps ice. So yeah, when you’re a hammer, all you can do is hammer.

"This is insane." Meela says, clearly rather amazed to see Alexis dragged into me.

"Well, it works."

And I begin the next step, trying to battle the demonfire’s presence. It’s strangely… familiar. Like the [Fires of Baal] that used to burn on top of my trunk, the fire even feels rather pleasant. This time, I’m not the same tree I used to be, and so I will defeat the demonfire myself.

My mana, and I draw on all the mana I have, from the leyline, from the normal trees, from the storage, from… everything, and with it, I flood Alexis’s body with my mana, and, drive out the demonfire and the demonic mana that now runs through her body.

It is like attempting to do a blood transfusion, to drive out the dirty demon blood and replace it with my clean blood.

Unbeknownst to me at this time, from New Freeka, by putting Alexis’s body into me, it seems like the entire valley’s trees appear to be on fire. The heat generated from the trapped demonfire, is released through my roots, my branches, like how a kettle vents out hot steam, and throughout the valley, my branches and roots would periodically spit out the trapped demonfire.

And, from afar, my main trunk is like a furnace, there’s reddish glow from within, that trapped demonfire, a fire inside a paper lantern, and this lasts for weeks as I battled.

Single-mindedly focused on beating the demonfire, I had no idea what happened other than my long, laborious battle for control of Alexis’s body

I kept at it, and continuously flooded her with my mana, and gradually, I made progress. Like my experience with the hellhounds, on how they, after I overwhelmed it’s body with my mana, it transforms into a woodhound.

Everything I had, I poured into Alexis’s body. Though I doubt I can take "control" of Alexis, my theory is that it’s all I need to drive out the demonfire.

After a week, I gained ground, and pushed the demonfire, perhaps by half. The demonfire tried, and gave it’s all, releasing all the fire it could and tried to destroy me from within.

After the second week, even more progress, the fire-elemental form is starting subside, like a body that’s finally stopped burning. And in my biolab, I begin to see something resembling a soul again. It’s black color body, a "charred" body, is starting to emerge from what was once a body almost wholly made of fire.

But that doesn’t look good for Alexis, as it means she is probably going to die anyway.

So, as I fought the demonfire, I also now begin to look into her body, and see a spring that’s tainted red, burning. A body that’s parched, cracked like a baked dirt, like a lake that is drained of water. A bloody red mana that flows out from everywhere, and my mana flowing into it, slowly pushing it out into the beyond.

And after the third week, I finally drowned the demonfire with all the mana I had.

I won.

Year 76 Month 5 Week 3

"You did it…" Meela nods.

The demonfire is gone. Finally, and Alexis’s got her body back. Well… what’s left of it. Could not have happened soon enough, as all the ejected heat from the demonfire meant the entire valley is literally like a minefield. Any second a tree would emit fire or hot steam, so all the inhabitants of the valley tried to stay as far away from trees as possible.

But this meant the treefolk had to go out in the open, to New Freeka.

Anyway , Alexis’s body has been in the fireform for too long, and her physical body is completed burnt, and now it is crumbles right before our eyes, like a collapsing sandcastle. It is evidently not an ability that is meant to be used for so long...

"Help me, connect to me."

"What…?"

"Please. Just do so." Alexis coughs, her body, even though there’s no demonfire anymore, is no use.

To be honest, something strange about that request. But I did, my roots and vines enter her body and attempt to provide her with nutrients, the way a feeding tube would. But her body is a goner, unable to receive nutrients anymore.

And then Alexis mumbles something… a spell that I couldn’t quite understand. It causes her body to crumble, then turns into a paste, and then, it… mixes into the vines and roots in her body. And that vines and roots mixes with the rest of the biolab, and that pod transforms into a chrysalis of some kind.

"What…"

[New subordinate consciousness, hamadryad Alexis detected]

[Integrating…]

[Integration failed]

[Soul condition is in extreme damage. Extensive repairs required]

[Attempting to repair using soul forge]

[Soul forge is offline. Expected downtime 2 weeks.]

[Subordinate consciousness will be put into stasis]

[Alexis has died]

[You gained a fragment. You have 67 fragments!]

[You have gained 4 levels. You are now level 128!]

[Biolab upgraded three times! Biolab resistance to attack increased. Biolab modification options increased! Soul-forge-linked abilities increased!]

[Constrict upgraded! Vines now are able to drain mana and lifeforce! Vines now able to ensnare magical creatures]

[Natural Mana Overwhelming upgraded!]

[New tree variant obtained : Carnivorous plants]

[New ability obtained : Heat transmission root systems]

Year 76 Month 5 Week 3, a day later

With Alexis defeated, I can finally take stock of the damage. And it’s quite bad.

From all the fireballs, and the inferno that raged afterwards, the valley lost about 7,600 normal trees, and about 100 of my subsidiary trees. Both the forge tree and the root tree complex is damaged by the blue flame, and need about two weeks to regenerate their damage. Horns is also in a kind of ‘repair’ mode, and is holed up in one of the beetle subsidiary trees, recuperating from the damage.

Trevor is also offline, and it’ll be two weeks before he’s back on, so my range and detection ability is back to what it once was.

The elves, and New Freeka, and most of the refugees stayed far away from the forest, and so when it finally stopped, everyone looks incredibly cautious. Of course, I went and check on the elves first, and find Laufen, Jura and gang resting in one of the rest houses.

"It’s finally stopped." Laufen looks out the window, noting that the fires had stopped for a full day. And with it, that means the snowstorm is going to return as well. From snowstorm to blazing inferno, and now back to a snowstorm again.

"Yeah." Jura’s awake, but his entire body is suffering from burns. He’s recovering though, as the healers tend to his wounds. "Wonder how TreeTree is doing…"

"The monster is inside TreeTree?" Belle nods, "If so, do we still want to go back and stay there, if TreeTree is still there?"

Laufen nods. "I trust that TreeTree will take care of us, and keep the monster separated from us."

"Hi." I mentally speak to the elves.

"OH!" They all shout in delight!

"What I missed?"

Laufen paused, and then soon elaborate how the entire valley is on fire for a good three weeks. The heat from the burning forest helps warm the entire area, but also makes it dangerous for anyone to get near the forest as there’s all the periodic firebursts from my roots and trees.

But other than that, all else is normal, as the refugees are still hungry and cold, so I turn my focus back to the forest.

"I’m still around, boss." Dimitree speaks, reminding me that he’s spared from the damage because he is just so far away.

"Ah yes. Great! All well in your part of the world?"

"Yes boss. You’ve been draining a lot of mana for the past three weeks, so we’re on low-activity mode. Now we can get back to our usual routine again."

Well, that’s good, so I then turn to the research trees. A few of the biolabs were damaged during the entire battle, and with me draining all the mana, and Trevor being out of commission, the research on the volcanic and winter adaptation is all suspended.

Beetle winter adaptation stage I - 2 months remain

Tree volcanic adaptation stage I - 3 months remain

Tree winter adaptation aura - 3 months remain

"Dimitree, can you continue the research?" I mean, I do have another forest mind, so he can continue the research, right?

"Certainly. Please create a few biolabs in the Southwest Forest?" Ah yes, that makes sense, as the lab should be near to the Forest Mind for it to conduct research.

Once Trevor wakes up, I wonder whether it's possible to get both of them to do research. Does that speed things up?

Hot water

Year 76 Month 6

The past 2 weeks kinda zoomed by, as I focused on restoring the damage from my battle with Alexis. The valley’s damage is severe, some of the blue flames continue to burn, so I had to find ways to put them out, such as throwing a pile of dirt at it. The residual fires did end up burning a few more trees, but eventually I got to them, thanks to snow.

"Ah, good to be awake. I’m back, seems like I’ve slept…"

"Yes Trevor. Time to fix our valley." Indeed, our valley’s heavily damaged by the fires, and Trevor’s restoration abilities will be much needed.

Trevor’s presence sends an update to my entire point of view and interface, and more data floods in. He is clearly getting into it, I could sense him checking on various trees and quickly using his abilities to regenerate some of them. Well, this fixing thing will take some time, since the cold weather is making it hard for us to do much.

Next, I checked on the elves. They are back now, living inside the [secret hideout] once more. I think they actually just miss the warmth of my [secret hideout], where the temperature is always constant, and there is always some fruits or potatoes to eat, and they were delighted when I told them they could return to the [secret hideout].

The girls are exceptionally happy to get their beds back, and quickly snuggled in.

"Ah I am so tired of this cold." Belle jumps on her bed. "So glad that my bed’s still here!"

"The blizzards gonna just get stronger after this. I wouldn’t want to be out there." Emile sighs, "I hope the rest of them are doing okay. I feel kinda bad hiding in comfort here."

"That sucks. But… oh well?" Belle shrugs. "It’s kinda amazing that all this is undamaged despite how crazy the fighting was."

That’s partly because the [secret hideout] is pretty much fire resistant?

Meanwhile...

New Freeka’s new hunter corps and merchant arms, they successfully acquired food, in exchange for furs, and wines. The underground and covered farms are also in full swing, as more and more of the refugees acquire skills necessary to manage their underground and indoor farms.

But politically, things are not going so well for New Freeka. The three nations resume their mudslinging, as talks break down on who is responsible for the blood sacrifice blizzard spell.

So, Salah has came up with a strange ultimatum to New Freeka. Side with the kingdom of Salah, and the truce conditions are waived. Choose not to, and bear their wrath.

"This is an insult." The advisors say.

"I know, but what choice do we have? We have no military power to stand up to Salah." Yvon sighs.

"But they expect us to forget that we were expelled from them? That we were massacred, our long escape from Salah, and the countless lives lost as they go about their bloodthirsty ways?"

"..."

"Our people will insist we have a bit more spine." The advisor shakes his head, and try to convince the rest of the advisors. They too feel really mixed about this.

"Is the lives of our people less important than some principles?"

"How do we know? Salah may well be the one that cast the spell, then if we side with them, we would be wrong too!"

"If so, the answer must be to insist that Salah prove their innocence, then we stand on their side?" One of the advisors suggest, and it’s quickly attacked by the other advisors.

"That still won’t go down well with the people. Remember, we are expelled from Salah, many of us. Now they demand us to stand on their side? Even if they are truly innocent in terms of this accursed spell, I, and I speak for many others, cannot accept it. We’d rather go to war with Salah."

"But war, leads us to a lot more death, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. We shouldn’t go to war and put our people’s lives on the line?" Another advisor says. "Our people are tired, and are finally starting to rebuild their lives here. Do we want to throw them into the fire again?"

Tough choices, for the New Freekans, so they could not come to a decision.

Year 76 Month 7

"Meela!"

"Alexis!"

The two girls jump happily when Alexis’s damaged soul is finally received its first layer of repairs. I had to wait for the forge tree to recover, and some of my energies to return, before I could get to fixing her and knocking her out of stasis. Like Meela, the damage her soul has taken is enormous, and it speaks of the incredible resilience of souls that after a layer of repairs, she is already able to speak. The kinds of damage is a mix between Meela’s and that princess who experimented with void magic, so I am more than able to repair quite a bit of the damage her soul suffered, but there’s still some which needs different colored soul forges to fix.

"I’ll hug you if I could." Alexis shrugs, her soul now appearing in my soul realm after the repairs.

Meela laughs, "I don’t think ethereal spirits can have hugs."

"Yeah… I feel a lot better after the tree fixed me. None of that crazy demon voice anymore."

Meela’s soul bobs.

"The demons have been reading my mind."

Well, that’s a bombshell that came from nowhere.

"That means they know what I know. Of gods, of our technology, of… home."

"Oh." Nothing worse than the magics of this world has to offer.

"I doubt it’s their first time." Meela shrugs. "Heroes has been summoned to this world time and time again, pretty sure a few times demons have captured heroes before."

Alexis sighs, "Well, that’s out. Feels good to finally say it." Seems to be a sigh of relief, of a weight finally released from her shoulders. "Having my brain read all the time isn’t a pleasant feeling."

"Well, you’re… sort of dead, so I doubt that’s any better?"

"I’d rather be dead, honestly. I’m really relieved that the tree spirit is able to defeat me, I initially fear being the vehicle for more of the demon’s destruction."

"Well, luckily, I have just the set of abilities to counter you." I jump in.

"Yes. Interesting set of… operations you’re starting here." Alexis muses.

"You like it?"

"It’s… not bad." Alexis’s spirit bobs around.

"See, someone appreciates it for a change."

Meela shrugs.

"Anyway, what spell did you use in the end?"

"Oh… It’s a reduction-to-spiritual-form spell, something I learn from being stuck in the fireform for too long, since my body is disintegrating, and then a merge-self spell."

"Merge?" That’s when I realised Alexis might have tried to hijack my body.

"Yeah. I tried to merge with you, but your soul is far too strong, and instead I got absorbed..."

"Don’t do that ever again."

"Ah… I’m sorry. I just wanted to still somehow live…"

Anyway, I still have to figure out so alternatives, so I speak to the wisp, separately. "Wisp, any way I can control what the souls do against me?"

"Well, in their soul form they have no ability to harm you, at least directly. They are after all souls that exist with your soul realm, and the soul realm is a contained ‘other’ space. Once confined and merged into a vessel, their ability to harm you depends on the vessel."

Hmmm… lots to think about there.

"But, there are safeguards you can perform, such as entering into a soul contract. Such act will constrain their actions for the next 1,000 years." Ah yes, I am an idiot, but I suppose I have to, if I ever want to give them a vessel.

"There’s a vessel already developing inside the pod, which the lady Alexis used. It seems to be a woman made out of wood, but will be some time before it is ready."

"How?" I mean, how’d Alexis do that?

"Her spell managed to only take control of the pod, and so she used it to become a cocoon to grow herself a new body. But because her magic is decayed, the new body that is growing is now under your control." I therefore take a chance to have a look at the body she’s growing, it’s essentially a body made of wood. But the limps, and the joints are all made of some kind of soft vines.

[Hamadryad Body - Developing]. The body is made from the nimble wood of a soul tree, and the soul that lives in this body derives energy and life support from the soul tree. So, the body will die when the soul tree does.

Hmm, but at least this body aligns hers and mine, as she dies when I do. But then, she could just hop bodies, and she might still try to take over me, rather than become attached to me. For now though, she’s still in my [soul realm], so I need to think of some precautions. She failed previously, but that’s because her body and soul is in terrible shape. If she’s in her best shape, might she succeed?

"Alexis." I return to the two ladies, who are happily chatting away.

"Yes, tree spirit?"

"Do you plan to stay in this world? Or do you plan to move on." The soul realm is where souls prepare for their onward reincarnation after all. If she leaves, then my fears will be less.

"Ah… if what Meela tells me is right, I might see Nobuo in the next few weeks. They’re a bit slow to catch up on such matters. I’ll see what he says first, but I think I’ll stay."

Oh. That’s a disappointment.

"Because the price of my failed attempt to merge with your body… is that my soul is now subordinated and shackled to you for a thousand years."

And just to be sure, I checked.

[Alexis]

[Status : Soul-contracted to TreeTree]

Ah, so the variant of her attempt to merge with me, ends up backfiring and turning it into a soul contract. That’s… rather weird.

So I go back and ask the wisp more questions.

"Can a body have two souls?"

"Maybe, but one is always the ‘master’. In your case, you’re the soul tree, and you’re the undisputed master of your own soul. The lady is reckless to have attempted to take over as ‘master’ of your body, after all, there is nothing in the world that can remove a soul tree able to manipulate the souls of others, from its own body."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. Even a god can’t touch a soul tree’s soul, until the soul tree dies, in which your soul then becomes any other soul. Think about it, how can a being able to repair, create, and upgrade souls, lose control over their own body to another soul? The power to manipulate souls comes from the soul tree’s innate structure, and to kick you out involves tampering with that innate structure."

Hmmm. "But you said early she could harm me?"

"Well, yes. She can cast spells at you, and physically attack you if they desire to. Both Meela and Alexis, if they are combined into a vessel, are their own persons, and they can attack you if they choose to. But chase you out of your own body is not one of the things they can ever do."

Ah, I misunderstood a bit. I suppose that changes the types of precautions I have to take.

Hmmm...

Year 76 Month 7 Week 2

Everyone is busy doing farming, especially of the underground or indoor type. Those that can’t are busy hunting. It’s going to enter into the really cold months soon, and if the magic behind this snowstorm does not weaken, it’ll just mean colder days ahead. So, although there is the threat of a re-escalation of the war between the three kingdoms, the people of New Freeka are just single-mindedly focused on preparing for more harsh winters.

It’s really the only thing on most of the people’s minds.

On my side, I do my part by growing potatoes. I mean, I can grow a lot of potatoes, so that’s what I do. And those fruits of healing and warming fruits as well, which I get the elves to store in the secret hideout.

The elves, purchased vinegar from the traders, and use them to create pickled fruits, so these pickled fruits, kept in large wooden containers, are what they store for winter. It seems the effectiveness of thea healing and warming reduce by half, but in exchange we get much more longer-lasting fruits that don’t rot so quickly.

By now, the valley’s damage from the fires are gone, but of the many trees destroyed, only 20% rejuvenated. After all, the weather is too cold for trees to grow.

It seems that there is actually a few groups of wizards attempting to dispel and weaken the blizzard, after all, for some wizards, this is a chance to level up, try to do something that few other wizards have done before, at the same time earn some good brownie points with the rulers of the three kingdoms.

I hope they are successful, this stupid winter has gone on for far too long.

"Fear not, master. The winter research is going on well, and once that is done we will be able to regrow even more trees." Trevor and Dimitree both try to comfort me, but I still feel a bit annoyed.

Aside from that, my soul harvesters return! I get a lot more souls, it seems the winter is really killing a lot of people, so I have enough to create one more artificial soul. The only problem is, I don’t have enough power for it.

Year 76 Month 8

Beetle winter adaptation stage I - completed!

Tree volcanic adaptation stage I - 1 months remain

Tree winter adaptation aura - 1 months remain

Ah yes. My beetles can move now. With the first stage beetle winter adaptation, I notice the beetles now have some kind of internal-warming system, where there is a some kind of warm sap which gets pumped to their joints and limbs to keep it warm. However, the sap is produced only in the [subsidiary trees - beetlenests], so they have to periodically return to the trees to restock on the saps.

This gives them an effective operation time in winter of about 2 hours, which isn’t that great, but, at least they can move and function in winter, which is a whole lot better than them sleeping in their nests!

I wonder if this gets taken to the extreme, would the beetles actually gain functional hot blood pumping hearts?

"Interesting stuff you have there." Alexis is a lot more nosy than I expected, she’s extremely interested in the kinds of research and actions I’m taking, and thanks to the repairs she’s gotten, she and Meela can both be nosy.

Still, the fact that she tried to merge with me makes me a little defensive around her.

"You’re feeling suspicious of me because of what I did before I died. And I can understand that, and I would like to apologise again. But, let me be useful to you, after all, there are still many ways you can use me."

Well, in this respect, Alexis actually wants to be useful, but Meela just… seems rather happy loitering around. But you know, this little incident does make me wonder how… loyal Meela would be. "Paranoid." Meela chimes in.

"Yes."

"But so long as we are in our soul form, we are stuck. Here, as souls, we have no ability to take action. But, if we are to earn your trust, you need to first invest that first leap, to let us be of assistance to you."

Well… Alexis is right there. Ah, it’s a risk I have to take, all I can do is task my artificial souls to keep an eye on them, and use the existing spells and contracts to keep them under control. But for now, I will put that idea off.

The weather is experiencing some oddities. On one day, the weather suddenly got better, but then it got a lot worse the next day. I suspect it’s the wizards trying to meddle with the magic of this snowstorm.

The New Freekas are still busy digging in, building large storage facilities to store the hunt, and they have even started curing meats so that they can be stored for longer. To be honest, I think this blizzard’s proving to be a boon for them, because they are developing more unique food storage abilities, which would last them through future hardships.

Politically, they have yet to decide who to side with on the whole Salah ultimatum, and that’s gotten them a rather stern warning letter from Salah, who insists that they pick a side, and do so soon. Or else.

Anyway, as I turn my attention back on the elves.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better." I started work on Jura’s wounds after the elves returned to the secret hideout, his wounds are mostly a whole lot of broken bones, and a bit of burn marks. Bamboo, being wooden armor that protected his body, absorbed most of the damage from the explosion, but that meant Jura still had to deal with the fall damage.

"Good." His burns are now fully healed, but what is left is the broken bones. The bones have fused together, but are no in the healing process and will take some time before they regain their past strength.

I foresee Jura should not join in any combat related activities for at least 2 months, or those repairs may break.

Year 76 Month 9

Tree volcanic adaptation stage I - complete!

Tree winter adaptation aura - complete!

Hell yeah. My trees are growing in the muthafooking winter. With the completion of the winter adaptation aura, trees near me all gain some resistance to winter, and are now able to grow in it.

This means a return of growth!

This feeling of finally being able to grow after not growing for so long, kinda feels like being able to taste food after losing your taste buds for weeks. Ah, how glorious it is, to be able to grow after being stunted for so damned long.

At this point I do realise that I am somewhat a growth addict. I really enjoy watching another patch of snow covered dirt have a bunch of green shoots, which then transforms into proper trees. And the central trees, those closer to me, are even able to feed energy back to me.

Its kinda like being for sick for so long, that you kinda forgot how being healthy felt like, and now, woosh. Hell ya.

Grow grow growwwww!!!

"Is the tree always like this?" Alexis asks.

"I think he’s gone a little crazy." Meela shrugs.

Also, there is still the volcano thing. The first stage of the upgrades means my trees can now approach the volcanic area without dying, but I am still a distance away from the volcano itself. There are however,, a lake that is being warmed by the volcano’s magma, and since the valley does need some hot water, I place a few subsidiary trees next to it, and activate my heat transmission system. It’s essentially a kind of root system which pushes the hot water from the heated lake to the valley.

[Secret hideout upgraded! Hot water now available]

[Hot volcanic bath obtained!]

Oh. Did I really have to go that cliched route of getting a damned onsen inside my own secret hideout?

Although there is some transmission loss. It’s good enough such that I could get the valley’s trees a bit warmer too, so there’s a bit of steam and mist now emerging in the valley, as the hot water interacts with the cold weather above it.

[You’ve acquired the skill : Mist]

Oh.

"I like hot springs." Alexis shrugs. "Now I want a physical body."

"Me too. I haven’t had one in ages." Meela also comments.

"Which one, the hot springs, or the body?"

"Why not both?"

Are these two ladies going to commentate on all my actions and achievements?

"I find their banter amusing, master." Horns too finally recovered from his injuries, and he too shares a bit of the winter upgrades, so like the other beetles, he has a sap in his body that acts as a heater. "Will they be useful?"

Anyway, the main volcano itself is still further in, and to get there I need to work on my next stage of the volcanic adaptation research, which also involves getting more materials from the volcano.

Beetle winter adaptation stage II - 6 Months remaining

Volcanic adaptation stage II - 8 months remaining. Requires 200 x sulphur.

Tree winter adaptation stage II - 8 months remaining

Ugh, I think the higher stages are going to take more time, or so I’ll need to increase the number of biolabs working on them in the future.

"Assign me." Alexis volunteers. "I volunteer to do research."

Her dryad body is fully developed by now, and if I’m not mistaken, is designed with herself as the template, and so it’s going to be making her a dryad, which then undertakes research in the biolab. "I’ll think about it."

"Oh come on. You can cast spells on me if you want to keep watch. I won’t do strange stuff, I swear!" Alexis pleads.

Hmm…

Year 76 Month 10

Oh, more growth. I love growth.

This resurgence in growth is most keenly felt by the New Freekans, who are amazed to see the bigger trees sprout even in this snow, and it applies to the potatoes as well. Thanks to my newfound powers, the potatoes produced daily increased to 2,000! Double! All because of winter resistance!

And I hide all my potatoes, using beetles as my carriers. There is really no need to let the New Freekas know there is a huge stockpile of potatoes underground.

This makes me think of the poor chap so many years ago, that ask me for a healing fruit but I could not give him one, because I still didn’t have winter adaptation back then.

Ah, well.

Speaking of which, when did the demon king die again? About 3 years ago? Is there going to be a 10 year gap this time?

"Generally 10 years."

"Was not asking you?"

"I know, but I want to answer it." I think she’s a bit of a smart alec, and maybe a bit chunni. "And I think its important. When I was researching the ancient text, it seems the 10 year cycle is just a rule of thumb. There has been occasions where the demons choose to delay their invasion although the supposed time is up."

That’s a whole lot more long winded than I thought it would be. But I suppose it would be useful to know, somehow.

"I still don’t know why though, and what exactly does the otherwordly demons want."

Huh. What do the demons want? Don’t they just behave on instinct and act out their directive to kill all lives?

"I mean, so far the demons from the other worlds can’t be reasoned with, so we don’t actually know what they want… unlike the local demons." Oh there are factions in the demons too, well, when I think about it, it figures, creatures of evil are not equally evil or evil in the same way.

Anyway, back to the growth thing, with the warm waters from the volcano, areas where the hot water is released turns into a bit of an oasis in the cold, and the area there is a bit more fertile. The hot water is also mineral rich, so I notice the potatoes I cultivate are a little bit larger and different in color.

"Actually, master, if we use the minerals extracted by our roots, and infuse them into the potatoes, we can achieve a similar effect."

Yes, thanks for reminding me that I have a huge pile of minerals I did not use and indirectly hinting I am a dumbass. At the same time, maybe this is why I need all these assistants, I clearly am not making the most of my resources and abilities.

Research Trees

Year 76 Month 10 Continued

So.

Now that things are returning back to normal for me, somewhat, is to focus on the volcano. The volcano clearly is a point of great interest to me, as it generates so much heat and energy, something I would need for my valley.

But, the next phase involves defeating the magma monsters that spawn near the volcano, and protecting my trees. And from the initial skirmishes between the beetles and the magma monsters, they didn’t do well at all. It takes about 5 beetles to beat 1 magma monster, because the magma monsters are able to burn the beetles when they get near, and the beetles attack by ramming the magma monsters with their horns.

So, bad matchup, really. And that’s one problem I need to fix. I can’t manually go in and use root strike on the magma monsters. Okay, actually I can, but it’s just that, if I do that personally then I don’t have time to do other stuff, so I need the beetles or whatever solution I come up with, to be able to act somewhat autonomously.

"Horns, any ideas?"

"Research fire resistant protective shells, and magical horns, for more power!"

"That’ll take 3 and 6 months, master." Trevor giving the numbers, "But that’ll delay our other research on further enhancements to the tree’s resistances."

"Ugh." I want all the research. This feels like playing those games with huge tech trees and you just want to choose all of them available options, because in some ways, you do need them all. "Recommendations?"

"We could spread out our time on both of them." Trevor and Dimitree said in unison. "But it’ll be a 2 month delay for the other 2 projects."

"No. I want them too."

So, the next step is more forest minds, but clearly I am limited in this aspect.

"Are you willing to consider my help, now?" Alexis speaks up.

"..." I’ll think about it.

Year 76 Month 11

Winter! Well, its rather comfortable this winter, thanks to the hot water piped from the lake, and my new winter resistance aura.

The New Freekans are doing well, fortifying themselves and they did manage to build up a large stockpile of food. It seems their indecision led to Salah denouncing the truce, and now they even accuse the New Freekas of collaborating with the enemies. So, the truce is off!

But, even though the truce is off, it did not descend into war directly. After all, Salah is still tied up in their conflict with Nung and Takde, and the winter also severely impairs their ability to wage any assault on New Freeka. Its actually a norm in the world, that war is declared but actual fighting does not happen until some time later, and for certain human nations, there are even rules of engagements that the rulers follow, or they find themselves having awarded cursed titles, for falling out of favor of the human war gods.

Gaya, apparently, is one such god that demand certain rules of engagement. That battles are fought on open fields, each battle starts with a commander leading the charge, there is clear publicly declared casus belli behind the conflict, and that a large prayer is held before each large war.

Strangely enough, despite how restrictive it sounds, Gaya as a god, participates rather directly in terms of larger conflicts, often granting commanders tremendous gifts. It is said that if heroes, the singular most powerful humans in the world failed, they would turn to the commanders of Gaya to defend the world, though, in reality, there is still a huge gap in their power. Gods in the world interact with it in a few ways, one through gifts, and there are rules around such gifts, that all gods follow, even the dark gods native to the world.

Well, I partly learned this from Alexis, because Alexis’s first acts when coming to this world, is actually to figure out how to go back, so she went on head on diving into books on gods, magic and all that. But of course, there are restrictions on going back, and one of those restrictions, placed by the million-headed hydra that watches over earth, is that the souls return clean. In short, they return without their powers or memories, though they may still experience dreams which reminds them of their past lives.

So back to war. The New Freekas are of course annoyed by the development, but knowing that Salah’s engagement won’t happen so soon, they decide to fortify themselves, to prepare for the coming conflict. Despite the cold winters, New Freeka’s population is a respectable 35,000, and so, they have the ability to field close to 13,000 fighters to the battle, which is a decent fighting force.

Salah may easily sent 50,000, or perhaps 100,000, but they are a far larger state with more competing priorities, and an ongoing war with the Nung and Takde. So unless Salah really provokes them, they may just let this little conflict carry on for a bit more.

Yvon though, is still trying to avoid war, so her negotiators now are instead focusing on who’s the real culprit of the Blood Blizzard, which, increasingly, is pointing towards the acts of a terrorist group that infiltrated the senior army leadership of all three nations, in order to carry out such a large sacrifice.

In short, even if they did find who was behind this, the emerging fact still points to all three nations contributing to the blood blizzard, and none of the three nations will want to implicate themselves in the spell, so… the war’s just going to go on.

So… too bad.

This week, I converted one of the large [subsidiary trees] into a training room at Lausanne’s requests. The weather outside is now far too cold for combat practice, so their swordfighting practice goes indoors.

She’s going to turn 8 soon, and despite her earlier lack of talents, she somehow managed to pick it up. Perhaps through a combination of [dream tutor] and [powerlevelling], she did acquire sufficient swordfighting skills to have simple spars with Jura.

And she has also started to gain levels. There seems to be some kind of barrier from gaining levels for very young children, but this level barrier is inconsistent, and varies across races. Out of curiosity I had her dip into one of the biolabs, just to check on her. I had a theory previously that young children, where their "spring" that connects their body to the soul, and vice versa, is not yet fully mature, then that person is unable to gain levels. I mean, prior to this I could not even have an assessment of Lausanne’s estimated soul rank, but now I could.

And my intuition is right. Indeed, her ‘spring’, the fountain which produces mana now has a consistent shape. This raises a big set of questions, as in, what exactly influences the size and shape of the fountain? I also have a few thoughts about this, one is whether all souls are the same, but there is some other thing which acts as the link between the soul and the body, and that then influences a person’s full ‘potential’, or, if the souls are different, then there should be a way to manipulate and change the qualities a soul have.

"Master, your using my root-brain to augment your theories again…" Trevor grumbles. Ah yes, it seems I sometimes unknowingly tap into the processing power of the trees to think. But this has the effect of taking away processing power from Trevor, which then impairs his performance. Think of the root-brain complex as a computer processor, and if I’m using it, Trevor can’t.

"I should have more root-brains." It’s logical, no? I come from a world of quad cores and more. It would be fascinating if I somehow stitch all these root brains together into some kind of collective super-brain, no?

[Special project unlocked]

[The Grand Mind Tree - significantly boosts tree-related research output, and grants wider understanding of soul magics. Gains additional psychic-type magical abilities]

[Requires 10 x root brain complexes, and 1 ton of gold and 1 ton of quartz crystals. Once all prerequisites are complete, construction will take 1.5 years]

Ah. My own supercomputer. Well, kind of.

"Alexis, you’re redundant if I get this."

"Noooooooooooooooooooo." Alexis sighs, but then she pauses, "But you’re not going to get it so quickly. It’ll still take time. So, assign me to a biolab, please? You’re going to have to wait probably 2 to 3 years before you achieve it. Maybe more."

She’s right though. It’s going to take a while. Construction of the root-brain complex itself requires 10 x Blood Crystals, and 50 x fresh animal heads, and so 10 root brains means a whole lot of blood crystals, and that means money, which we probably do not have.

"You’re right, Alexis. But I still don’t really trust you, so, I’ve decided that I will merge you with a biolab someday, but you will be watched and observed."

"That’s okay. I rather tinker in the biological structure of trees and beetles than being stuck in this dark and dreary place. Can’t you do something about how gloomy your soul realm is? A biolab it is then."

"It’s a transit lounge for souls to reincarnate. Not helpful for it to be a pleasant place to be. I can’t have too many souls not wanting to move on." Well, to be fair, the souls only linger around for 6 months to a year, and after that they will move on. The soul realm, whether pleasant or not has no influence on this.

I got side tracked again. I mumble to myself and resume watching Lausanne. Her body’s really young, after all she’s only 7 turning 8. All the dream tutor has given her a rather varied set of skills, and so she’s actually pretty versatile as a person.

She still wants to be a hero, but lately she’s starting to understand that there’s a gap between herself and the true heroes that could change the world with their power, though somedays, she still believes she can stand up there. She’ll have to gain a lot more levels if she wants to. Only with levels, can she even think of standing up to a hero, who’s blessed by the heavens.

"TreeTree, do you have powers to you know… make me stronger?"

I do. The ginseng tree, and it grants a permanent boost. But the problem is that they just keep dying, usually after their first unlock. If I grow a ginseng tree inside me, maybe that’ll work. And it doesn’t help that they die within two to three month’s in this cold weather, so I’ll have to wait till the wizards actually manage to weaken or dispel this cold weather, before resuming my replanting of my 3 ginseng trees.

"I do, but you’ll have to wait."

"Okay! I’ll need all the help I can get!" Lausanne raises her hand, like hurrah. "Uncle Jura says heroes are super super strong, and I’ll need all the blessings the world can give me to be as strong as them."

Hmmm…

That’s actually possible. Perhaps throughout the world there are various ‘permanent’ blessings, similar to ginseng trees. If a person could gather enough of them, they could be as strong as heroes.

"I think I should go on a journey someday, with Uncle Jura and mom. To get those blessings."

"That’s a good idea Lausanne…"

Jura’s healed, but his bones still need to fully recover. So he’s just doing simple exercises, and relying on Bamboo to provide training to Lausanne. Bamboo and Jura actually manage to achieve some kind of bond, and Bamboo now manifests itself as a flexible wooden arm for Jura, so Jura’s back to being two-handed.

Kinda like a prosthetic, but with a summon. Quite a cool outcome actually, I frankly didn’t think of that. It’s not as good as a real arm, of course, but as workarounds go, it’s pretty good since Bamboo and Jura as a familiar has a mental link.

"Bamboo is due for upgrade too." Yes, So is Horns.

"I think i’ll go on a journey when I turn 15. That’s when they say we’re old enough to start travelling. Then Uncle Jura can go with me."

I nod. Lausanne talks to me a lot and that means she listens to my thoughts about the future. Strangely, I think this means I’ve influenced here to think about what she wants to do, unlike the rest of them who tends to look at things at a shorter time frame.

"How’s Brislach and Wahlen doing?"

"They’re working in New Freeka. I think Brislach’s working in a shop selling potato breads."

"Ah…" Wasn’t she doing something else. Ah well. Not everyone has ambitions of the grand kind, and that’s not a fault.

"Wahlen’s working in the treasurer’s office as a administrator. He’s learning how to read and write too."

Literacy. It’s a mix and match in this world, most of them time it is taught by a village elder in the small villages, and to some extent it is a valuable skill, useful in government matters and trade. Some cultures have stronger emphasis on reading, some less. Elves surprisingly do not have much emphasis on writing and reading, as their long lives tend to mean they will pick it up over the years. They also seem to favor oral traditions, having an appointed old one in every village to remember the traditions and ceremonies. Certain subtleties that the written word cannot capture.

"I should learn to read and write too. A hero must be smart!"

"Knowing how to read does not make you smart, Lausanne."

"Is it? But at least I’m not stupid!"

"Not knowing how to read does not make you stupid."

"Less stupid." She mumbles. "I can work if I know to how to read and write. Good for travelling."

"Good point." Writers are useful, they are often paid to write letters and messages. Some writers double up as messengers, and sort of mailmen, and this is usually a relatively good way to gain admission into a merchant association or guild. "Ever thought of being a merchant? That’s a good way to travel the world without involving yourself in too much fighting."

"A hero as a merchant?" Lausanne slumps, but then she is actually thinking about it.

"Yeah. Why can’t heroes be merchants?"

She’s seriously thinking about it.

To be fair, I haven’t heard of a merchant hero before. Their neutrality kinds of make it hard for them to play the role of a ‘hero’, which has to take a side.

"Lausanne, rest time’s up. Practice." Jura calls, and he picks up a wooden practice sword and shield. Thanks to Bamboo’s augmented limb, he can now teach Lausanne the standard sword and shield method of fighting.

"A hero as a merchant…" It’s still on her mind, but then she stands and rejoins Jura in the middle of the training-tree. Essentially, it’s a large empty room in a tree.

As Jura and Lausanne resume their regular practice, I then turn my attention to the volcanic area once more. Some of the magma monsters are getting a little bit aggressive and I have to periodically kill them to protect the subsidiary trees there.

The volcano is an active volcano, it’s caldera partly blown apart, so there’s a part where there is liquid lava flowing out of it. As is the norm in the world, this leads to magma monsters spawning, and from what the beetles have seen further inside, there are larger magma monsters closer to the caldera.

So far, they are territorial, so they don’t seem to attack us if we do not approach.

"Master, it is time I get an upgrade." Horns suggests. He’s fully recovered now, so he is due for an upgrade, since he capped out at level 20 earlier. Bamboo too, so I took the chance to review their upgrade requirements.

[Horns, Level 20 Beetle Knight]

Upgrade options available :

Blue - Baron Beetle - 5 x blue crystals, 30 x almost-complete skeleton of a large animal
Gains commander effects, which grants nearby beetle increased abilities

Black - Beetle Dark Knight - 10 x obsidian rocks, 20 x large claws
Gains combat skills

[Bamboo, Level 20 Woodbear Eidolon]

Upgrade options available :

Blue - Armor path - 50 small copper ingots &amp; 5 medium red rubies needed
Gains defensive abilities

Black - Claw path - 50 small iron ingots &amp; 5 medium onyx needed.

Gains offensive abilities

[Trevor, Level 27 Forest MInd]

[Will be unlocked at level 30]

Black - Skull Shell - 10 x Bone of a wyvern, 1 x heart of a lion and 50 x Bones of a lizard

Gains a ghostly projection

All these upgrades impose a lot of resource requirements. So I’ll need more resources.

‘You require more minerals.’ Dimitree chimes in, with a russian accent. It reminds me of a wraith. Or is that a terran goliath?

Ah yes. "You’ve been taking in a bit too much of my game references."

"Ah whatever. If I want these resources, I’ll get them from New Freeka."

---

"The tree spirit demands what?"

The advisors look concerned, when Yvon shares my resource demands with the rest of her council.

"Blood crystals, gold, quartz crystals, copper and iron ingots, rubies, onyx, blue crystals." Yvon repeats, but she clearly understands their concern.

One of Yvon’s closest advisors then clarifies, "it’s more of a… request than a demand, right?"

Yvon shrugs, "I’m not too sure if I understand the tree spirit correctly, but I think it sounds more like a demand than a… request."

"Should we?" One of the advisors look really worried. "It feels a bit like extortion."

"I believe most of you have seen the Tree Spirits combat abilities, and it’s incredible abilities throughout this valley… The recent hot water spring around the tree of prayer is a recent addition."

"It’s hard though, those goods are not regular stuff. They are jewels or crystals…. I mean, even the cheapest of those are the blood crystals and the quartz. The tree’s asking for a lot."

"Well, the recent burst in natural growth, and the hot water in the valley helped us alot too."

And it quickly seems clear that it’s divided into two camps, one who thinks that my demands are reasonable given my assistance to their survival, and there’s a bunch who thinks it’s excessive and they should only give what they can manage.

Yvon mostly stayed out of it, asking the council to decide, as her soul is contracted to me, she says she is not a ‘neutral’ party to the decision.

Of course, from my point of view, I know that these people need a bit of… encouragement.

So I decide to withdraw all the hot water piping into the New Freeka, and so in this cold month, they had a really cold week.After that week, they met up again and agreed that it is best not to offend me, so decided to support my demands. I think between Salah and me, they’ve decided to be on my good side.

Year 76 Month 12

[Monsters slain. You’ve gained a level. Level 129!]

[You’ve gained a new skill : Training Treehouse]

[Training treehouse improves experience gain, skill gain chances, and reduces injuries significantly]

Uh. This sounds like an extension of my training room. Seriously, this system leans heavily of the nurturing, growing side of things, but really sparingly, grants me offensive abilities.

I suppose if I want to work around the tree, I need to think like the system. If I was designing a system for a tree, what would I think about?

My suspicions is that a system in which a soul tree is at the center of, focuses on a few core principles. Again, this is just a theory that I have, based on what I experience so far.

‘Grow, nurture and endure’

This is the first, core principle with any tree. The logical driver behind any tree is to grow, to expand, and so, I should get a wide range of abilities that promote growth, and allow me to endure wide variety of damage, and still recover. And with it, the ability to ‘support’ young things, and also build an ecosystem with the tree as the foundation.

‘Enhance and adapt’

A tree that expands would need to adapt to various environments, and react to the challenges that are unique to this world. This is the evolutionary, research side of what I suspect is a natural inclination. If trees are unable to react in a world where magic is native, then trees would quickly go extinct. So, I believe the trees in this magical world have natural adaptation abilities superior to that of our world, and the system supports them.

Then, there’s the ‘Soul abilities’ which arise as a ‘soul tree’. These are not natural tree abilities, but exist because I am a soul-related kind of entity, and so the system has to grant me abilities that are natural for a soul-tree to have.

Thinking along these lines, if I intend to get more offensive abilities, it would grow as a result of working towards more ‘enhancement’ and ‘adaptation’, as a result of a tree being forced to defend itself.

In other words, to ‘game’ the system to give me offensive abilities, I must put myself into a situation where self-defense is a required adaptation.

Now how do I go about doing that…

…

…

Never mind, I quickly upgrade that empty training room into this "training treehouse", so that Lausanne can benefit from it.

Oh, and I begin to test out those carnivorous plants that I got.

They function more like traps, really, and they spring out to eat anything about the size of wolves. Which is pretty good. But, the drawback is the digestive period is quite long, so essentially, if a huge swarm of demon hounds come along, they’ll be full very quickly.

So, useful under certain circumstances, but it’s use in a large scale combat is probably limited.

If anything, what I would need is a firebreathing tree. I mean, imagine it, if a tree can breath fire, or even poison, that would be pretty useful. And such options are indeed available on my research options.

Being frustrated at how slow my research it, I eventually decide to take a chance on Alexis.

"If you try anything funny, I will kill you."

"Understood, but I am soul-contracted to you, so don’t worry about it. We’re aligned, trust me."

"I can’t. But I’ll give you the opportunity to prove me wrong."

I initially would have preferred Meela, but the soul-contract is an additional layer of protection I have, so after some thinking, it’s actually better to use Alexis first. If Meela gone rogue, I may find that I have less means of retaliating.

[Initiating soul forge]

[Combining Alexis with an external biolab]

[Combining…]

A bolt of thunder strikes the forge tree, and from it, emerges a glowing blue seed, it’s as large as a dog, and it floats over to the external biolab that I’ve chosen, and that blue seed embeds itself in it.

[Alexis has successfully merged with an external biolab!]

[Alexis is now a laboratory spirit, level 1]

Huh.

"Oh wow." She mumbles, she manifests herself as a glowing blue ghost inside the laboratory. "There’s so much data… so much… data."

"Uh."

"I’m fine. I’m fine! This is amazing." She seems to be looking at some kind of interface, tapping into my stored records of all the biolab scans I have done in the past, including herself. "Even my own records are here. I’ve never realised what you’ve been looking at!"

At this point, I decide to just observe her for a while.

"This is amazing."

The external biolab which she now possesses, and is part of her, is actually a tree with a hollow interior, filled with pods, and various equipments for testing. It has a ‘transportation’ system, in which a beetle delivers any of its required materials, for research.

"Your visual way of representing the soul and the body-mind connection is incredible. I’ve read books on the theoretical basis of magic, and how the souls interact with the body, but this… this is mindblowing. It’s amazing how intuitive it is, representing it as a spring and a field which that spring nourishes. All those magical theory books make life difficult by overcomplicating the terminology and using difficult to understand words. This. This is concise!"

Oh. Okay. She’s really dived into the deep end. I honestly didn’t think of it as that… unique, but I suppose humans with no access to the [biolab] would find it that way.

"Alexis, are you okay?" Meela asks, sounding a bit concerned.

"Oh more than okay. This is amazing. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to find when I was trying to research magic! You should see this."

"You know I don’t like that kind of stuff." Meela shrugs.

"Ah yes, but I’m fine. I’m really fine."

Meela sighs, "I sometimes forget how much of a nerd you can be."

"Hey!" Alexis floats and looks at other stuff. "The representation of the demon’s presence as a parched fire with a dried field is also fascinating. It seems to imply the demonic energies is antithesis to our own, and opens up so many options on how we can counteract their presence. What’s this, a data set on our star mana and those floating vases pouring out star mana? Holy cow, this is like… mindblowing too! What else do you have!!!" Alexis is constantly floating about the biolab, looking at more and more interfaces.

Meela turns to me. "When she reads a great book, she can’t stop talking about it. I think she’s in that phase again."

"Meela! Seriously! This information can advance magic research by decades!"

At this point, I decide to cut in. "Alexis, your task is to research the beetles, and the countermeasures necessary to conquer the volcano. Don’t get side tracked."

"Ah yes, yes. But can you give me a week, let me just have a look at this huge pile of data you have. I’m sure there’s some other amazing stuff in here."

"No. I will not tolerate disobedience on your first day of as a biolab spirit. Get to work."

She sighs, and then she nods. "Okay okay. I’ll do it, but give me daily free time alright. I work 8 hours a day, alright. The remaining hours are mine for rest and my own activities. I really want to look at all these data!"

"12 hours. And you will be monitored."

"Ah fine. I know." And she gained a level. Although her god’s blessing is lost when she died, she still retains quite a fair bit of perks, one of which, is the experience perks.

Beetle winter adaptation stage II - 4 Months remaining

Volcanic adaptation stage II - 6 months remaining.

Tree winter adaptation stage II - 6 months remaining

Beetle volcanic battleform - 3 months remaining (may complete earlier)

Beetle volcanic defensive armors- 2 months remaining (may complete earlier)

On the New Freeka front, they had an envoy from Nung and Takde. It seems that Nung and Takde now wants to aid New Freeka in their ‘resistance’ against Salah, but the person sent by Nung is slimy beyond belief, so Yvon and the advisors found it hard to agree with them.

There are no ‘good guys’ in this war between the 3 nations. All of them have their own goals, and all three wants a piece of each other, though Nung and Takde are now ‘allies’ as a result of their mutual enemies.

Under other circumstances, they would probably attack each other.

So, once again, New Freeka’s council cannot decide. They don’t really want to turn down their aid, but at the same time, these 2 nations aren’t the most upstanding and honest of nations. Well, one of the key skills a leader needs to have, is to decide. Sometimes picking a choice is more important than evaluating which one is right. But Yvon’s style seems to be more concerned on what’s right. She has a need to be ‘morally’ correct, at least from her perspective, and that clouds her ability to sometimes make tough, probably cruel decisions.

Ah well.

Volcano Expeditions I

Year 77 Month 1

A new year begins. Still as cold as ever though, not like the wizards gotten to the point of weakening it yet. There is still a fluctuation in the coldness, so I suppose whoever they sent to undo that cursed spell is still tinkering with it.

That little moment with Alexis and the whole database of my past research brought up a point about my data access rules. As a tree, I share the information freely with my artificial souls, and all the biolabs, so it initially seemed natural for me to do the same. In fact, I did not even think about this data security issue until Alexis did what she did.

But I guess its a bit too late now. Oh well. She’s doing alright as a research spirit though.

"I think I’m near a breakthrough." Alexis mumbles. "I think I’ve figured this thing whole lab work thing out. All I got to do is press some buttons and the lab itself will just keep trying different combinations of materials to change stuff."

She’s already level 10 as a lab spirit. It’s rather unfair how these hero-reincarnators still retain some of their perks, even after death.

Alexis floats over few beetles, each in one clear pod with a light green liquid, kind of like how most people imagine large glass preservation cylinders to look like. The lab itself does most of the work, as in, doing changes to the beetles which it experiments on, and then producing the results for Alexis to then interpret. The length of the research essentially is an automated number crunching exercise, derived from an estimate of x% likelihood of a favorable outcome divided by time taken per ‘test’ per biolab.

In a way, since we’re on the security topic, it’s really like a machine trying to break a password by trying to key in a combination.

Therefore, by adding Alexis, a sentient mind of the mix, Alexis can look at the data and make educated guesses, which narrows down the options the biolab has to crunch to, so we’re more likely to make progress on a research topic.

So, when a biolab is tasked to research ‘volcanic’ endurance, it’ll try different combination of trees, and then see what works. As such, my own guess is that providing the correct environment, and sufficient resources would actually enhance the research output of the external biolabs.

"It’s a lot more mechanical than I thought it would be, it’s really all about looking at all the output and datasets and just deciding where to go as a next step, and the biolab just does it for you… most of the time." Alexis frowns. Now that she’s a spirit confined in the biolab and it’s immediate surroundings, people can see her, and they see her as a blue apparition which haunts the biolab.

"What are some of those words…" Meela frowns.

"Mumbo jumbo." Alexis laughs. "Really, just talking about research results and choosing what’s more likely to work based on the testing results. I know you understand it, don’t act dumb."

"No no." Meela sighs.

"You’re just trying to avoid my fate of being made into a research spirit, aren’t ya? It isn’t so bad, actually. I get to float around and look outside of the tree. Have you noticed how starry it gets at night?"

Meela didn’t answer.

"The moons are gorgeous at night, and one of them never truly turns dark. And I think the other one’s on some kind of 3 month cycle, instead of the 1 month we’re so used to."

Well… the moons are different after all.

"Meela, seriously. Take a leap, do something, see the world with me. Again. Don’t just hide there in the comfort of TreeTree’s soul realm..."

"No..."

Alexis pauses, and she floats up to the top of the biolab tree. She sits on one of the branches, and she looks out. "Well, the sunrise’s going to be gorgeous." There are some things I cannot see, given the limitations of my tree vision. And what I cannot see, those in my soul realm cannot see either.

I too wish to see how the sun rise truly looks, instead of an augmented version pieced together by the collective data formed through Trevor and Dimitree’s gathered sensors and receptors throughout the valley.

Maybe I should actually have… eyes.

[Eye-Tree Stage I research option unlocked - 24 months needed]

Whoah. I mean, the word itself kinds of scare me, and I try to image myself a tree with eyes. No matter how it still comes out as a little freaky, probably the kind of stuff that belongs in a lovecraftian epic.

Heh. Why don’t just give me the eye tree, but I suppose certain kinds of abilities now go through research. I mean, I’m a bit confused actually, does the system actually have a way of saying what I can research, or what I can get through my skills.

There’s discussions that say leveling grants skills on a random basis. Essentially there’s a big pool with skills in it, where skills you are more likely to get have a higher probability, and then you essentially draw. Research, is what happens when you fail to draw the skill you want, and as a consolation, you could still work towards the skill?

Anyway. Mysteries of the system. For all you know, it’s just one person up dare deciding what to give me, and what not to, and just rolls a die every now and then for the fun of it.

Year 77 Month 2

Strangely, I think the wizards succeeded. On the eve of the 2nd month, a strange lack of cold sweeps through the land, and the cold didn’t come back.

"It’s probably just a reduction, not a complete removal." Trevor spoke. "We can still faintly detect the presence of the spell, just… in much lesser amounts."

"Huh."

"Probably a reduction in the power of the spell’s effects, so the valley being so far away experience a significant improvement."

"You know, if you have some lab that focuses on magic, you could find out…" Alexis butts herself in.

"It’s a biolab, with magical sensors that focuses on living things. Its not a magic lab."

"Okay, but why not make a magic lab? It will help, since there are so many magical unknowns out there."

"Its not as if I desire for a magic lab, then I will get a magic lab."

"Research?" Alexis taps a few screens in the biolab.

Alexis floats onto the middle of the lab, and uses a skill, [Research Planner].

"We'll need to first unlock material testing, then materials lab, then into magic-attunement, and then into magic-sensitive equipment, and then a basic magic lab. Probably about 1.5 years worth of research. But you'll get material lab within 6 months!"

I'm thinking.

"What do you say? I think it's a good idea!"

I'm thinking.

"After your volcano research. I want to be able to secure the volcano first."

"Aww man, come on. I think magic can help you fix the volcano problem too."

"No. Biological solutions first. I have Horns to help me manage the beetles if I can get those upgrades."

Alexis sighs. "Okay…" She pouts and she goes back into her biolab-tree. Somewhat-unnervingly, this biolab-tree derives its energy from Alexis, not me, and so it gains new equipment and abilities as and when Alexis levels.

Alexis is now level 14, and her most recent skill is [Probability charts], which produces an estimated likelihood of outcomes for a test, before actually going for it. In short, her skill simulates testing, a bit.

Her biolab-tree has a small chamber which functions as her personal room, where there's a bed that actually interacts with her spiritual form, so she can sleep. Actually, the entire biolab-tree seems to be able to react to her as if she of a solid, real person, and at the same time, she can switch it off, and then pass through things.

Alexis goes back to her room, and decides to take a nap instead. Maybe she’s not that happy with my decision.

Anyway, now that the snow stopping, its a great chance for me to boost my growth!

GROW!

Expand!

I think my tree instincts are driving me a little crazy.

EXPAND!!!

Yeah.

So we have more trees. After losing close to 7,000 trees to Alexis, thanks to this month’s returning warmth, and my newfound winter resistance, we’re back up by 3,500 trees. So yes, more trees. MORE. TREES.

The trees are also now starting to feed energy and resources back to the [tuberous storage].

[Tuberous storage upgraded.]

[High density tubers unlocked. Tubers will be naturally upgraded]

Oh. Yay? They store 2 units of energy now.

Back to expanding, and food!

And so, I decide to try my luck with the damned [ginseng tree], again.

"Alexis, can you also keep watch?" The ginseng tree’s right next to the biolab, with a lot of beetles and web spiders protecting them.

She covers her head in a pillow. "Didn’t hear you."

I know she did, and I know she will. Because her soul-contract compels her to.

Anyway, New Freekans are happy. Warmth means a return to regular farming, stockpiling, and less burning through their stockpiles.

Yet, it’s also bittersweet, because the opportunity for Salah to now attack them is returning. The winter sort of gives New Freeka a natural ‘terrain deterrent’ from war. Even in a world of magic, not everything runs on magic, and so terrain still has huge influence on logistics, resources, and even petty things like warm clothing and all.

The council decides to reject the Nung and Takde offer, as they’ve decide to state that they have no claim in this war, and would prefer to stay out of it. It’s a way of not pissing Salah too much, as this gesture would suggest that New Freeka is genuine in not participating in any conflict.

---

"If Baroosh were to endorse New Freeka’s independence, do you think that’ll go well?" One of Yvon’s councillor speaks to the exiled wizard of Baroosh, they seem to be rather close acquaintances, perhaps, even friends.

"Knowing my king, I doubt that’ll ever happen. He has never endorsed or supported any allied nations, what more one as far away as New Freeka. He is not a man of many friends, and believes each nation should stand on their own strength."

"Ah…"

"But I suppose you could convince some of the lords to lend some assistance from their private armies. The fiefdoms themselves act mostly independently of the king, anyway…"

The councillor nods, "Ah. I’ll need to get this message to the trading corps, let’s start with a trade."

"That’s a good idea. By the way, I heard about the Tree spirits demands…"

"Yeah. It’s kind of extortion, isn’t it?"

"I don’t see it that way. Strangely enough, I now come to view the Tree Spirit as the guardian ‘beast’ of this valley, and supporting it is probably the best insurance you can get against Salah."

"Really? You think the Tree spirit is willing to step in? From what I hear from Lady Yvon, the tree spirit is flighty, inconsistent, and acts rather irrationally at times."

"Such are beings of another plane, their minds are… different."

"True. Can’t expect it to think like we do."

"And I doubt it ever will. It’s concerns are different, and my view is, New Freeka best aligns itself to the tree spirit’s desires. I think from the fire-demon encounter alone, the tree spirit demonstrates far greater destructive power than it usually lets on."

"Hmmm. Some of the councillors will find that a hard pill to swallow, since we are supposed to be an independent state, not a puppet of a tree-spirit."

"Convince them not to see it that way. Think of the tree-spirit as a potentially friendly dragon. It has it’s own thing going, generally lets you do what you want, and if you make it happy enough, it can sometimes help you. Perhaps get the treefolk chieftains to speak to them, they revere the tree spirit after all, as their deity or somekind."

"It’ll just sound like preaching. The other councillors will hate it. Maybe you should speak to them."

"You know well enough, that they look at me with the same eyes of suspicion. I am an exiled wizard from another country, what weight does my words carry?"

The councillor sighs. "There must be another way."

"Maybe you don’t actually need to give the tree spirit actual jewels, you know."

"Huh?"

"It’s a tree spirit right… perhaps all it wants is a nearby location that contains those jewels, even if it’s hidden or buried under mountains of dirt and rock. Or, maybe, it doesn’t even need it in the processed, polished form we are so familiar with. I highly doubt it wants it for the same reason as our nobles and royalties do. Maybe it just wants raw… jewels. So be it if it’s mixed with rocks and whatnot."

The councillor rubs her chin. "That’s actually a good point, and worth clarifying with the tree spirit. We’ve gotten so used to Noble's expectations to have jewels in a certain condition, that I didn’t think that a tree may not need it in a similar… state."

Certainly, raw unprocessed gems are worth far less than processed ones, which need special equipment and skilled gem craftsmen.

"Yes. Tell Lady Yvon, we would require more information. If we can glean an understanding of the tree spirit’s intent, we can act accordingly."

Year 77 Month 3

"This room is awesome." Lausanne jumps. Apparently she levelled up.

"Indeed." Jura nods, holding a set of wooden weapons. "The passives to your training reminds me of the effects of a skilled military drillmaster. Such rooms would be useful in any preparation for war."

Lausanne blocks the wooden sword, she’s gradually getting better at all the combat skills that Jura is passing on to her, and Jura’s complaints has been getting less. It seems the term, ‘late bloomer’ is real, or perhaps it’s just the influence of [dream tutor], constantly feeding the combat-skills to her.

They practice for about two hours. "Alright, enough for now. How are you feeling?"

"Sore!" Lausanne talks about her muscles aching from all the blocking. Jura’s pulling his punches, after all Lausanne’s only just turned 8, so her physique isn’t comparable to Jura, who had years and years of training, and has a body of an adult. Lausanne’s at least 10 years away before her body could stand up to Jura at full strength.

Jura passes her an ointment, made of preserved healing fruits. Laufen’s experiments in preserving the healing fruits granted her some basic [ointment-making] skills, as it seems the juice from the healing fruits mix with the vinegar to form some kind of basic pain-relieving liquid. It’s not a potion, though.

Lausanne sits on one of the chairs in the training room, and applies the ointment to her sore joints.

"I expected to find you here." Laufen walks through the door.

"Hi mom. Just finished practice…"

"I spoke to some of the merchants in town, and found out there’s a proper [teacher] for Elvish writing. Do you want to?"

Lausanne nods, "Oh really. Good. Can he come here? This training room has training boosts, maybe I learn better here."

"I’ll ask the teacher about it. Anyway, come, we need to go work on the olives, now that we’re finally getting some fresh batches."

"Aww man…" Lausanne pouts.

Jura pushes her along, making hand motions, chasing her away.

-

Next stop, volcania. Okay I came up with that name, but the volcano area is a mouthful, so I decided on Volcania.

Volcano research is complete, so I task Alexis to research more volcano-related countermeasures.

Beetle winter adaptation stage II - 1 Months remaining

Volcanic adaptation stage II - 3 months remaining.

Tree winter adaptation stage II - 3 months remaining

Beetle volcanic battleform - complete!

Beetle volcanic defensive armors- complete!

Beetle - anti-magma weaponry - 3 months remaining

Beetle - basic magical lances - 6 months remaining

With the completed research, the beetles near Volcania gained a special armor and their head changed significantly, such that it’s enveloped in the new special armor. With these changes, 3 beetles could take on one magma monster.

So, with the improved status, the beetles attempt to head further, closer to the volcano, and find a bit more information about the inner volcano…

Failed.

Too many magma monsters.

Undeterred, I create more subsidiary trees, all designed as beetlenests. Each beetle-nest houses 5 beetles, and with an additional 30 subsidiary trees, I send the larger beetle army into the volcano.

And still failed, because there’s just way too many of those magma monsters inside.

Fine. If it’s a game of numbers, I am a tree-spirit with the ability to spawn multiple subsidiary trees.

So I spawn another 70 subsidiary trees.

[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 1,500]

Hell yeah. Power to the tree swarm. I’m an invasive species of trees about to take over this volcano!

"Horns, you take command of the beetles and do some recon, alright?"

"Got it boss."

The next few days, Horns mounts several expeditions into the inner volcano area, only to encounter stiff resistance from large swarms of magma monsters. It seems, the inner volcano area is crawling with giant magma monsters, large enough to be buildings on their own. Magma golems.

If not for their rather lack of horns, they would actually look somewhat demonic.

"We can’t get past the magma golems, they are far too powerful."

"I see." It seems the upgrades are still insufficient to take on the larger monsters. So I will have to wait for more upgrades.

"If Alexis could do some research…"

"I am already doing them."

"Ah yes."

"It'll take time, even with my skills." Well, she's not lying, and I foresee materials to be my next bottleneck, as higher tier research requires exotic materials, which will be harder to get.

An expansionary approach is necessary, at least to secure additional materials that I will need. My current [root extraction], [mineral refining], [essence harvesters], reactivated now that I no longer have to be in "winter" mode, are producing iron, copper, and a few other commonly found materials, and for essences, the common ones. The nightmare and soul harvesters brought me two [experience seeds], so I have a total of 3 now. It seems this is an incredible rarity, a gift that even kings desire. A fruit that guaranteed a level? That's worth a ton, and I think it is something I should use to make a trade some day, for something of equally great value.

"I wonder whether I can detect the demon king's coming…" Alexis muses, tinkering with the lab. "You sure you don't want magic labs? And sensors?"

"You still hung up about it?"

"Yes! There's so many things I want to know. Can we reliably predict the demon king's arrival? Is there a magical fluctuation in the world that we can pin on? What are the kinds of magic that create the demon rifts? Don't you ask yourself those questions?"

"I do, but my priority is the volcano."

"Why?"

"Because it is a volcano. I want to expand there, I want to gain the volcano's powers. My instinct tells me a volcano, as a natural force of nature, is similar to a leyline."

"...okay that makes sense." Alexis pauses and then floats onto some branches. Her biolab grew over the month. It added another branch which houses more pods, smaller ones, which is used to run smaller experiments, which then helps to speed up the entire research process.

"I mean, that's what I think. My gut feel is there are natural energies in the leyline, magic of the world, and perhaps I need to find ways to tap it. Gain new research. Perhaps its raw form is not so easily accessed as a leyline, but it is a kind of 'native' leyline. So I want it, happy? Help?"

"Huh." Alexis pauses, and I think she buys my explanation. "So you want some kind of permanent establishment on the volcano, which allows you to tap on its strength like some geothermal power plant?"

"Yes." Well, yeah.

"At least I now understand your obsession with the volcano. And I see why it takes priority over magic… sensors."

"Good." I am a tree spirit, and gaining more powers for my soul forge is logical, I could even say its something that drives me.

[Research planning]

"Ah."

"I checked. Its not clear yet, I can't see a clear path to it, but it seems having [magma tolerant roots], [tremor resistance] and [natural energy harvesters] seem like the few basic precursors to collecting energy from volcanoes. What else you need… its still unclear."

"That's a good start, we can start work on that after we are able to reliably expand and hold a position on the volcano. We are in this for the long haul."

"Still, you're not worried a demon king pops up and ruin your project? I think he's about… 5, or 6 years away? The first of the rifts should open within the next few years."

"I am betting on the chance that he spawns on some other continent. Demon kings don't always appear in the same place."

"Then?"

"The heroes will come along and save the day. As they always do. I hope."

Alexis sighs. "I guess you have a point. Even heroes just gears in this system. That just keeps churning. So much for… heroes."

"I think heroes are a stopgap measure, to solve the demon king problem." Well, that's how I see it. Maybe the gods hoped some heroes become so powerful that they could beat multiple generation of demon kings, but so far, that has not happened. The best is a generation of heroes surviving 3 demon kings, according to Yvon's knowledge of history.

"Has it always been this way.?"

"Ask the gods." I mean, thats really the way, right?

"They don't say shit. The reincarnation gods know nothing about the history of this world. All they know is the gods of this world ask for reincarnators, their job is to give it to them."

"What's in it for the gods. What's their stake in keeping the world this way. Can't gods just snap a finger and make things back?" My personal guess is, they can't. Perhaps their abilities of intervention are… limited. So they resort to heroes.

"I have no idea."

Year 77 Month 4

I am Level 129 a few months ago. When am I getting the next one?

So, I decide to go to the volcano and [root strike] on a lot of magma monsters. And it proves to be less effective than I thought it would be.

I mean, they still destroy the magma monsters in a single hit, but near a golem, it still took like easily 15 shots of the root strike to kill it.

And thats way too much.

I wonder whether its because my super effectiveness against demons, so I previously did not feel my root strikes were that weak, or is it these magma golems have special defenses against root strikes. Might just be a passive that goes, 'reduce damage from nature or tree based sources by 50%'

Or perhaps its some 'pierce damage reduction'.

Or perhaps I am really so weak.

"You know… rather than constantly theorise what exactly is the problem, you could just consider to use [inspect]?" Meela suggested. "That's what Alexis would do."

I pause.

I feel like an idiot.

Idiotree.

I mean, its seriously basic, no? Use inspect on monsters. I even have the inspect skill.

Have I been a tree for too long that I forgot such basic monster hunting… basics?

Did I lose common sense somewhere along the way?

Starsoul

Year 77 Month 4 (continued)

[Inspect]

Dammit.

The magma golems have pierce resistance, nature element reduction, and physical damage reduction. So, all those skills together mean my root strike is less effective as it would be on any other monster.

Less effective, but still, 15 root strikes.

Okay, actually any other monster of a similar 'tier' would have skills and passives that provide a similar level of resistance. It's how higher tier monsters, just like how higher level people, are exponentially stronger because the cumulative effects of stacking different abilities.

So any other monster of such tier would be as difficult, in their own ways.

"So..."

"Research more weapons of course."

"May I suggest killing the golems anyway?" Horns butts in. "You know, because they killed so many beetles, I would like to see them die."

Ah.

"I would like to have vengeance, master."

When did he learn the concept of vengeance anyway.

"You know what, yes. Let's go hunt golem. I need the damn level."

And off I went. I spent the next few days attacking every golem I see with root strikes, and then crawl up to another golem to continue.

Its kinda like how a zerg base uses creep colonies to get close to the enemy, and then attacks them with then sunken colonies. And I did that, many, many times.

Spawn subsidiary tree near golems, unleash a rain of root strikes, kill golems, repeat.

And I see Horns crying in joy. Seriously. I think he gets enjoyment from having a bigger badass kick the butt of the badass that kicked his butt. Actually, I have no idea whether that is a cry or a shout because it just sounds really… insecty.

Anyway, kill golems.

And after maybe about 50 golems, I level up!

[You gained a level! You are now level 130]

[Upgrade initiated...]

The entire valley shakes, as a thunderstorm suddenly appears out of nowhere. Lightning hits each and every subsidiary tree, and each and every branch on my main tree.

Is this like the starting sequence of some superhero transformation?

A whole opens in the sky, and from that darkness, massive black lightning strikes my main tree.

"What… what is happening?" The elves seem afraid, as that massive black lightning continues to strike my main tree.

"I suggest all of you leave, for a while."

Indeed, they all ran as fast as they could to the town of New Freeka, and well, it seems they too can see what's happening from their distance, because there seems to be a massive hole in the sky.

"Any idea what's going on?" I ask the rest of the souls and the wisp.

"Not a clue." Alexis shakes her head. But she looks rather amazed by it. "And how are you still talking when that black thing is striking you like that?"

"Uh. Good point." Am I supposed to feel pain or heat, or… I don't know… anything?

Lightning after lightning strikes down on the trees, but yet they don't do any damage. It's as if they are just making a connection.

Is this the fate of trees in the storm?

"Are you evolving or something?" Alexis asks.

"Yeah. I think."

"Ah man. Level 100?"

"Ah… secret." I think some things should be a secret, no?

The lightning continues, and then, all of them stop. The hole in the sky widen a bit further to reveal something that looks like a rift, a small fissure in space.

And a black lightning emerges, larger than any other, and it zaps my main body.

[Void energy collection completed]

Oh.

Oh now I feel pain. It feels like every single part of my body is cracking, like a snake trying to change its skin, or a sea creature replacing its shell.

The branches, barks, trunks start to swell, and the leaves all drop from my main tree, leaving me looking like a bare but bloated looking tree, all the bark expanding to reveal cracks and seams, like, stretchmarks.

[Upgrading…]

And then those cracks expand, as a new layer of skin emerges from underneath, a glossy dark colored bark. This cracking, expanding, and then the older layer falling off happened throughout my main body, and it took about 2 hours.

The hole in the sky is gone, but the ground is still constantly rumbling as my body expands. I believe the same is also happening to my roots, and that causes the ground to constantly shake for those two hours.

And then I'm done!

[You have now transformed into the starsoul tree.]

Starsoul tree

able to tap and access to the wisdom of the past, from exposure to ancient bones and fossils

gains access to a special type of leaf able to collect starlight and produce star mana in small quantities (maximum amount of leaves capped), also gains access to a star mana storing organ and special star-mana abilities

stats improved, various collection, various skills upgraded

Soul management and access rights and restrictions unlocked

Ah yay?

Star mana.

As I read that update, coming across that word, I just had to pause, and take a moment to realise what just happened. Star mana, the supercharged fuel of the heroes. And I can make them.

In small quantities, perhaps incomparable to that of the heroes, like that massive amounts that Alexis used to have, a gift she now lost, since she died. An odd thing, of course, since I thought heroes can ‘resurrect’ with the right spells, but as it turns out, it’s only a gift that unlocks under certain conditions, and it expires when the demon king dies.

Anyway, star mana. I can make them… I can make them.

What does this mean? Have I taken a small step towards being a hero? One chosen by the gods to do battle with the demon king?

I… I can't wrap my head around that. I am a tree, and if a demon king, if Alexis's description of its power level is true, I am still very far away.

Just because I have star mana does not make me a chosen hero.

So no. I don’t think so. And somehow, a part of me rejects the idea of fighting the demon king... so that is also not the path I want to go. It goes against my natural strengths as a tree.

I am a tree. And a tree is a nurturing, protective force.

So how do I use star mana? Do the other great spirit trees have star mana too? I think so, maybe with star mana they manage great escape feats like an entire vanishing forests.

Star mana. A great power. And a secret.

Year 77 Month 5

A small branch grows above me, at the very top. A few leaves of them, almost black in color, the star-leaves. They are even shaped like stars . A secret experiment in star mana gathering, and I’m excited to see what I can find at the end of that path.

Then, I move my attention to the research happening through the biolabs throughout the valley.

"Well, beetle winter adaptation is complete, but it’s not cold anymore. Maybe I should direct my attention to volcano research as well, together with Alexis?"

Right now, with Alexis, Trevor and Dimitree, we can do about 6 research topics concurrently.

"Hmmm… indeed, volcano is the biggest priority at the moment."

"The resistance the volcano’s inner area is indeed much higher than expected, so we do need stronger, or at least, more specialised beetles to counter the stronger magma golems."

"Giant beetles."

"Thanks, Horns."

"Golems are big. If beetles are big, beetles can win."

"That’s a good idea, sire. Our small size is a weakness, a large beetle may be a good solution."

"Trevor, you’re agreeing with that idea? Giant beetles?"

"I do believe Horns is right to suggest that, and he has the combat experience to support that sort of view."

"How… giant are we talking about."

"As big as the golems."

"Are there some biological rules in this world on the size of insects?" I mean, there should be a limit, right? Though I kinda felt stupid, even my current warbeetles are the size of rhinos. So actually, I think there’s probably no rules on that.

"Uh… probably if we had the right materials and components, a massive beetle would be possible."

"Alexis, any input?"

"Sure." Once again she uses her [research planner], and I think I see her smirking at the corner of her face. A short moment later, she nods and she comes over to join the conversation.

"Presently, there are no obvious paths to beetles the size of golems."

"Giant beetles, maybe half the size of the golems?" Horns sound a little sad.

"Ah, I wasn’t finished. But beetles about half the size of golems is possible. We would need to research enhanced exoskeletons, and enhanced interior structures, and then we would be then able to research a large-beetle-pod, and then a large beetle."

"Large beetle."

"Not giant, but bigger than what it is now. So large’s a good word."

Horns nods furiously.

"Seems like everyone’s keen on the idea?"

"I still think magic is better."

"Giant beetle."

"Yes, sire. Giant beetle is a good path. I believe massive warbeetles can do a great deal of damage on the battlefield."

"Very well then. Let’s go with it."

Beetle winter adaptation stage II - complete

Volcanic adaptation stage II - 1 months remaining.

Tree winter adaptation stage II - 1 months remaining

Beetle - anti-magma weaponry - 1 months remaining

Beetle - basic magical lances - 4 months remaining

Eye-Tree Stage I research option unlocked - 22 months remaining

Enhanced exoskeletons - 4 months remaining

Enhanced interior structures - not started

Large beetle pods - not started

Well, I already have 6 concurrent research topics, but next month I can add enhanced interior structures to it once the volcanic adaptation and anti-magma weaponry complete.

Anyway, with that, I then return my attention to the elves and the New Freekas. The evolution I underwent last month, that one day of a great black lightning storm fade from memory of the elves, after all, to them, it’s just one of those scary days, and to them, I do not appear any different than I did before.

That’s because of [camouflage]. My true appearance is unseen by anyone, except the artificial souls, and Alexis.

A sense of gradual normalcy is returning, now that the effect of the blood blizzard is slowly fading from the air itself. Crops massively growing throughout the farmlands, and the valley’s trees are surging in number, surpassing the number of trees destroyed. For New Freeka, it is war preparation time, as Salah issued a formal war declaration, and they consider New Freeka as an enemy nation, as a result, all direct trade routes between Salah and New Freeka is cut, legally.

And then posturing, nasty letters threatening, demanding the surrender of Salah.

Which are all ignored.

Although that is the collective decision of the senior leaders, the councillors, leaders of the standing army and the higher ranked mages, it still a stressful, highly worrying for them. The town is now fully gearing up for war, their magic builders working overtime, building massive walls and other defensive positions.

Guards, on full alert, and all visitors of New Freeka thoroughly screened, as there are also fears of assassinations.

"Jura, its not a good time." Jura stands in the middle of the council room, Yvon and the rest of the councillors around the table.

"The tree spirit wants an update on the demanded jewels, which was agreed earlier."

"We are in a state of war, Jura." A councillor stands.

"And the tree spirit is your best chance of defending New Freeka successfully." Jura glares back at the councillor.

"And what exactly would a tree spirit bring to the table if Salah invades with a large army?" The councillor responds. "Some trees? Potatoes? Hot water?"

Yvon almost intervenes, but another councillor next to her stops her.

"Fact it, the tree spirit has been making demands, and where we believe it is a mutually beneficial trade, if the circumstances allow it, we will support those demands."

The councilwoman next to Yvon leans in, and whispers. "The tree spirit needs to know where we stand. Its about time we make it clear our position to its representative."

Yvon sighs.

"But, these are tough times. Resources, whatever we have, is all focused on our existential threat, the Salah Kingdom, who recently threatened to wipe us off the map. We need all our resources into more men, more weapons. Not the whims of a tree spirit who claims ownership over the entire valley."

Jura listens and then laugh. And he laughed like a maniac.

I think Jura laughed for a good three minutes before all of the councillors, all of them staring at him like he is some kind of a madman.

When he stops, he looks at Yvon. "Ah Yvon, are the councillors aware of the extent of the tree spirits powers?"

She paused, before responding. "I did tell them."

"What did you tell them? Perhaps your knowledge too is incomplete."

"Uh, tree spirit has the powers of an archdruid, many very powerful healing powers, some ability to repair soul damage, abilities to absorb fire, abilities to control beetles, abilities to create hot water, spawn various trees and use root attacks, ability to boost growth rates and spawn different types of trees."

Jura nods, "Not bad, but let me ask you. How many beetles does the tree spirit control?"

"300? Maybe 400?" Yvon answers.

"Any other guesses?"

"700?" A councillor decides to humor, and says as a joke.

"As more recently advised, the actual number is about 3,000. Lead by beetleknight."

The councillors all stare at each other.

"Tell me, if 3,000 beetles go to war, how many men would Salah need to field?"

One of the army leaders, a captain, sitting in the councilroom does some mental math. "12,000, perhaps 15,000."

"Do you all believe for a moment, that New Freeka can protect itself from the tree spirit's wrath? Should those 3,000 beetles turn against you?"

The councillors look at each other.

"Would 3,000 beetles be an existential threat, I wonder…"

One of the councillors stand, "Are you threatening us?"

"No. I believe from the Tree Spirit's point of view, you all, are threatening him, by challenging his dominion over the valley. So councillor, you better retract such words, and pray the tree spirit does not hear it directly."

The councillor pales, and sits.

"Yvon, I believe you recall the agreement when the tree spirit consented to your new settlement in New Freeka."

One of the older councillor stands, "That our presence is at the tree spirit's grace and mercy, and we are to acknowledge the tree spirit as the rightful master of the valley. We are not to encroach on the forests more than the tree spirit allows."

"It is but a phrase, no?" Another councillor, a younger one from the refugees, stands, "...such phrases exists in the founding documents of many nations. A… formality to acknowledge a benefactor."

"Not when the phrase refers to that of a Tree Spirit, an actual magical being who resides and controls the valley."

A silence in the room as everyone stares at each other.

"Back to the jewels. I have been authorised by the tree spirits, to let the council and everyone else in the room know, the jewels, are meant to fulfill the evolutionary requirements of the beetle champions, and various other beasts that live in the depths of the valley's forests. Obtaining them will further enhance the combat abilities of the beetles."

"If we get it. Can the tree spirit lend us his aid? With those 3,000 beetles?"

"Yes. He is prepared to summon the 3,000 beetles, deploy whatever other beasts he can gather from the valley to do battle, and various other abilities at his disposal. But, only in a defensive battle against Salah or any other attackers, and not an offensive attack."

That's simply because it's easier to control beetles when they are nearby, as Dimitree and Trevor can both assist in coordinating the beetles movements.

"We… we need some time to discuss this."

"You've been given a week to talk it out, but the tree spirit expects a positive response."

"...acknowledged."

Jura walks back to the valley with an air, a kind of smugness around him. I think he is rather pleased how that went.

Also, Jura understated the number. I told him 3,000, but actually, with my most recent evolution to a starsoul tree, the maximum subsidiary trees I have increased to a mind boggling 4,000. So, with 5 beetles per subsidiary tree, the actual maximum beetles I can deploy, in a 100% beetle allocation would be… 20,000.

But of course, I am not going to have them all beetle-trees, since I do need essence harvesters, material processors, crop producers, biolabs, homes from the elves, surveillance trees and so forth, so the actual number of 'free' trees is about 2,500, so that still represents a massive army of 12,500 beetles.

There are already about 2,000 beetles full time defending the volcanic area from the magma monsters, another 2,000 in the south forest around Dimitree and the leyline, and another 2,000 hidden throughout the valley and its forest, the actual deployable beetle force is… 6,500.

And I like to have some unused subsidiary tree capacity, to spawn additional subsidiary trees as and when I need to, as am emergency response to any possible changes, or to reinforce new areas when necessary, so that would mean setting aside about 400 trees.

So, 4,500 beetles is the actual end number. 900 subsidiary trees.

"How did the discussions go?"

"I believe it will be positive, TreeTree."

"Glad to hear that."

"Bamboo is asking for an upgrade."

"I am aware, but it needs those jewels."

"Ah. Yes. I guess I have personal interest in wanting those jewels too." Jura laughs, I think he is rather happy.

-

Back at the meeting room...

"Do you think he is lying?"

"I think not."

"3,000 beetles. That's a massive number."

"Indeed, my initial projections factored in 400 beetles in any defensive fight against Salah." Two army advisor's turn to take the stand, captains, both of them.

"How does this change the battle?" A councilman asks.

"A warbeetle, as Jura refers to them, is actually equal to 2 elite soldiers. Salah would have to deploy specialised forces to deal with the warbeetles, as their thick armor and massive horns make them difficult to kill using regular weapons. Its possible to swarm one of the warbeetles and then attack its weakness, their joints and the gaps between their armor, if they are scattered throughout the battlefield, but at 3,000, there is a very low chance of catching any of those beetles alone."

"Captain, I understand none of the technicalities of combat. What I want to know, is what does that mean in a war for us, and would the price of the jewels be worth it?"

"I believe, if the numbers are true, it is our number one chance of beating Salah, multiple times. 3,000 warbeetles essentially means Salah must field at least 30,000 men, just to even hope to have a good chance of winning against the warbeetles alone."

"You said 12,000-15,000 in the earlier meeting with Jura, and 2 elite soldiers in your earlier sentence."

"I fudged the numbers with Jura to understate the value of the warbeetles."

"Then the 2 elites?"

"Salah's conventional army composition comprises of 1 elite for every 10 regulars. 30,000 men is then reflecting 3,000 elite soldiers and 27,000 regular. Its what I would need to deploy if I am asked to defeat warbeetles of that number. And mages. At least 100 mages."

Yvon pause, "Remember our first battle here against Salah? The one lead by Waysorious Moffard, the Purple Blade?"

"Ah… why?"

"The beetles back then hides underground or in the trees. They then spring up behind enemy lines."

The captains nods. "If so, that makes their defensive value even higher, and I believe there isn't much to discuss. I strongly request the council fulfill the demands, and get assurances from Jura, and the tree spirit that those 3,000 beetles will assist us. I would pay 10 times the demanded amount to get the defensive services of 3,000 warbeetles."

The councillor look at each other, before they eventually nod. The wizard of Baroosh nudges the lady next to him. "As I predicted, the Tree Spirit is truly the guardian beast of the valley."

The councilwoman turns and shake her head. "Certainly, even I underestimated the number. You're right, I should have brought it up earlier."

The wizard smiles smugly. "Glad to be proven right."

The councilwoman shrugs, "Ugh."

Year 77 Month 6

Tree - Volcanic adaptation stage II - complete

Tree - winter adaptation stage II - complete

Beetle - anti-magma weaponry - complete

Beetle - basic magical lances - 3 months remaining

Eye-Tree Stage I research option unlocked - 21 months remaining

Enhanced exoskeletons - 3 months remaining

Enhanced interior structures - 4 months remaining

Large beetle pods - 6 months remaining

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 2 - 12 months remaining

It’s time for more volcano-smash. With the volcanic adaptation and anti magma weaponry, the odds of beetle vs magma monster is now 3 to 2. So, with the 2,000 beetles in the area, I attempt another round of volcano invasion.

And yes, I’m a little bit closer. With upgraded weaponry, we can easily take on the regular magma monsters and claim additional territory, since less beetles is needed to successfully defend one area, but I still can’t hold the areas with the massive magma golems, so I have to avoid those areas, but that’s about it. I’m a step closer, and the trees in the volcanic area are black, reddish in hue, reflecting their adapted trunks and roots, which are highly heat resistant, and able to extract their resources from the dried magma that forms the earth around the volcano.

Progress, but now consistently holding position against the magma golems will be the next hurdle for an actual ‘volcano’ base, and then to move on to finding ways to extract the energies from the lava beneath it.

A part of me realises, that’s probably the point I do need a magic lab of some kind, since extracting magic from lava is probably out of the scope of the biolab. Oh well. Alexis will be happy then.

And, the first batch of the jewels from New Freeka arrives. And a request for a demonstration of my 3,000 beetles? Hmmm.

I guess seeing is believing.

3rd skirmish of New Freeka

Year 77 Month 7

"I got to level 20 yesterday."

Jura pauses, and looks at Lausanne. Laufen's next to him, and the little girl then says.

"I got a passive ability, its called [Blessed by a Soul Tree]."

The two adults glance at each other. In a way, they are now like her father and mother, and there's a mix of pride, worry, and confusion when Lausanne says she hit level 20.

Most children never level so fast, at most around level 5 to 10 at age 8, and it is most likely due to the presence of my continuing involvement, the constant essence infused [dream tutors], [powerlevelling], and most recently the upgraded [training tree].

"Well, what does it do?"

"Erm… it doesn't say much, it just says I'll get certain… blessings?"

"TreeTree, any idea?"

Well, the first thing that is clear when she gained that ability, now I can see her much more obviously than everyone else. It's as if she glows in my vision, she's got a constant tooltip hovering on her, that just screams, 'look at me'.

"Well, rather than conjecture, would you mind going into the biolab and we can all find out?"

"Yeah. Good idea."

As Lausanne walks to the biolab inside the secret hideout, Laufen and Jura both look at each other.

"She's growing very quickly." Jura said with a sigh. "I fear for her."

"Me too. But I feel I should be proud. It is what Ricola would have wanted for his daughter, to be strong."

Jura pauses and then he nods. "I suppose so. Ricola would want his daughter to be competent, even though he himself wasn't much."

Laufen ribs Jura. "Hey."

"I mean, his talents were in being a village chieftain. Combat was never his strong point."

"I suppose it's TreeTree's influence then."

Well, I have been giving Lausanne every single combat related essence I generated through [dream tutor], so, it did, over a long period of time, give the necessary improvements in her understanding of combat tactics.

Lausanne walks into the pod and the vines wrap around her body, she goes in, and I take a look.

"May I?" Alexis asks, and I shake my head.

"Sorry, let me have a look at it first."

Alexis sulks. "Okay…"

And well, frankly Lausanne's body is normal. She is a regular elf after all, though I could see right next to her usual soul spring, there's a small flower.

[Blessed by a Soul Tree]

[Due to long term exposure to Soul Tree's abilities the body is naturally accepting of its influence. Grants additional compatibility with various Soul Tree abilities, spells, and skills, and so they last longer, and has stronger effects]

"Oh. Sounds okay." At this point I think this isn't much, and I can't see anything else being different, so I let Alexis in on the view.

"Hmm." She too, looks at Lausanne's young body. Her soul spring is normal, and the water coming out of it is clear, and smooth, her body is well, normal, the shores covered in a thin layer of grass nourished by the mana from her soul spring. It looks like there is still some ways to go.

"It's generally normal." I say, "The skill isn't much."

"I think its not a bad skill."

"How so?"

"I think her growth rate will be even faster, since it means your training room, dream tutor and powerleveling will be more effective on her."

"Oh. That's a good point."

"You have plans for her, don't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you have been investing a lot of your essences into her, more than any other elf. It feels like you want her to be something. Or are you preparing her for something?"

"Huh…" Well, frankly, I didn't know why either. Somehow I got sucked into the narrative that Lausanne wanted to be a hero that I just went along with it. But thinking about it, I think… I think its worth trying.

"Maybe a hero will be too hard, to stand at our level she would need access to a lot of star mana, gain the various divine blessings and unlock a cheat ability."

Well, yeah, duh, that's way too high a wall. Its like trying to climb Mount K2 after a successful hike up a gentle hill. I am not a fool to send Lausanne up such unreasonable… walls.

"But… I think creating a champion is a good idea. Reach the level of the demon champions, I think that's a realistic target. Perhaps she can get there when she's… 30? I think she needs to learn magic next, a magic lab will do so."

Ah, Alexis trying to sell the magic lab idea again. To be fair I do appreciate the need for one, once we make progress with the volcano. But I'll keep that to myself for now. "You want to be her tutor?"

"I don't mind. I think I'll gain different skills, compared to all these research linked abilities I have now. It will help that I regain my magical abilities somewhat."

And I feel a little threatened by the idea of giving Alexis magic… again. She did, though it is not her, burn down slightly less than half of the valley.

Oh.

Volcano occupation is at a stalemate. I will attempt again, once we unlock the large beetles, twice the size of rhinos, hopefully then the odds are better. At present, it takes about 200 beetles to kill one single magma golem, and I only have 2,000 in that area. 200! And there are a lot more than 10 golems. I am hoping the odds change to about 10 or so large beetles versus 1 golem, then the chances of a successful occupation of the volcano increases.

Also, back to New Freeka.

They asked for a demonstration in exchange for the jewels. And well, lets just say they have never seen 3,000 beetles march out of the forest before.

Year 77 Month 8

"Salah is coming. With a force of 50,000 men!"

"Huh."

"That is quick." Jura mused, but to be honest, I think I know why that happened, and it id also why I held my cards back.

I suspect there is a mole within Yvon's council. Or maybe close to them, there is a Salah informant.

I don't know who exactly, but among the 25 of the senior leaders, all of them are talking about the beetles. Apparently none of them could keep their mouth shut after seeing 3,000 beetles, and somehow this news got to Salah, who obviously feel highly threatened by 3,000 beetles. Maybe they now saw me as a threat they needed to crush, and crush me before I got even stronger.

"Well, it could be there is just some kind of surveillance magic happening." Alexis though posits a different theory. "As far as I can tell there are no scrying countermeasures or spell barriers in New Freeka, except the forest itself which gets some scrying protection your massive [camouflage] and [mist] ability."

Jura on the other hand thinks that, "I think they just wanted to fight New Freeka and this is a convenient time, since they are still in the stalemate with Nung and Takde. I doubt they know about the beetles. The traders and merchants I speak to, seem to says Salah has been itching for a fight for some time, since the blood blizzard is significantly weakened. They just want find aomeone to suffer for the punishment and misery of the blood blizzard."

"50,000 men. What are our odds?"

"I think we can win." Jura shrugged. "But it will be a hard fight. And it also depends on who is the general."

Well, during this time Trevor pings me personally. He is my surveillance officer anyway.

"I see the enemy army in the outermost tree rings. I don't think they are suspicious, as they left the outer trees untouched. Also they have siege weapons, master."

"Are you sure no suspicions? Or are they just playing the part?"

"Any mages?"

"Yes, sire. I counted a mage corps of at least 1,000. There are multiple individuals exhibiting a rather strong presence as well."

"Okay, bring me there."

"Certainly."

With that, my vision zooms to the incoming army. Thanks to my wider coverage of subsidiary trees, I have trees really far away now, and Trevor even went through the process of decorating each tree such that they look like natural growths in the area.

And indeed, a large army is marching, comprising mostly foot soldiers of about 40,000, some cavalry, about 2,000, and the rest being a mix of the mages, healers, siege weapon operators, and their elite forces.

"New Freeka has spotted us." One commander rides up to the man that looks like the chief of this army, thanks to his elaborate armor and uniform, and a long flowing magical cape.

"Good. It seems we can go with our initial plans for now. Bombard the town with our siege machines, mages, and force them out of the town, into the open where we can slaughter them." Another man rides up to the general, and the general just smiles.

Heh. I have the countermeasure for that.

"We spotted the beetles that Waysorious fought during the last battle."

"How many?"

"500, perhaps? They are really well hidden within the trees and only our rangers can spot them with any accuracy."

"I recall Waysorious suspects the presence of an elvish archdruid."

"You agree with that assessment, General?"

Ah, the chief is a general.

"Lord Rosul's earlier expedition claims the presence of a living forest. His wizard, says there is a presence that stretches the entire valley."

"I… I never heard of that." The men around the general seem surprised.

"Its something Lord Rosul shared only with our senior leaders, and it is why we have been treating Salah with such caution. And why there are 1,000 mages."

A realisation appears on all the senior leaders around the general. Perhaps they suspected 50,000 is overkill.

"Yes, now that the battle is near, it is time I tell you the actual strategy of this army."

"The King and the high council suspects the presence of a magical beast, something like a great earth tiger, or a king grandbeetle, that Yvon has somehow managed to convince into an alliance. It is likely to be a defensive pact, else Yvon would be more… offensive in her dealings with us. The recently observed magical phenomena in New Freeka from our spies support this. A firestorm, then countless black lightning, all points to magical beasts, of a very high tier, that likely to have experienced a high level evolution recently."

A gulp.

"Now now, we're going to try to talk to it. First."

It is then a ranger appears, he looks really old.

"This is Master Ranger, Falklay. He's very good with magical beasts, he has the ability [commune with magical beasts], [locate magical creatures], [beast talk-no-jutsu] and [charm magical beasts]. He'll sneak into the forest first, and find the magical beast. Our invasion of New Freeka is only after he gives us the signal, if he can convince the magical beasts to withheld or ignore their defensive pact. Else, one of the alternatives is that we will have to bomb the shit out of the forest as well, then fight the beast. But we will weigh our chances when that happens."

"Siege weapons against magical beasts?" A captain asks.

"Not ideal, but if we have to fight it, we best weaken it first. High tier magical beasts are powerful, but siege weapons and magic will still hurt."

"Now that we are near, what do you think, master Falklay? Confident that you will succeed?"

"I think our chances are good. There are magical creatures, I sense a few in the forests, my senses tell me of a fairy of some kind or a forest sprite. Charming fairies will be a huge challenge, but I think I can succeed in convincing it to break the pact."

Ooh. Ranger. Interesting…

"How will we know?"

"Falklay will fire a flare. Green flare for go, red flare for bomb, blue flare for run."

"Run?"

"If the magical beast is a lot more powerful than we currently suspect, we better retreat than attempt an invasion. No point wasting our lives, right?"

"What if there's no flare?"

"Then we wait. We wait for a week if we have to. Communion with magical beasts is going to take time, and we will give master Falklay the time to talk. But after 10 days, and Master Falklay is alive, we will expect a flare. If Master Falklay is dead, we will run. But that's unlikely, right?"

Master Falklay grins. His face is really wrinkly.

"Run?" One of the younger captain asks.

"Of course. We must know exactly what we are facing. I will take calculated risks, but magical beasts are a category of monsters that is best dealt with… by powerful adventurers." The rest of the men nod, the general is a highly conservative man.

-

Falklay made his way towards to valley, under the cover of various stealthing abilities, such as [hidden amongst trees], and other such effects, which makes him close to invisible to other men trying to spot him… except the tree itself.

So, yeah, I see him sprinting, alone, into the valley, despite his age, he is still clearly a high level ranger and has the stats and abilities to back it up. And as he got closer, I noticed he would stop every now and then to use some of his abilities.

"Strange… the reading is confused." He touches the trees, some of which are subsidiary trees.

As he makes his way into the valley, he comes across a few beetles. The beetles, though they spot him and attempt to attack him, he has a skill, where when he just lightly touches them, they fall into a kind of ‘sleep’. I think that’s a kind of ‘disabling’ ability he has.

"He has an ability to make us ‘docile’." Horns is shouting in my mind. "We must kill him! Kill him! He is a threat! Threat!!!"

On the other hand, I’m very curious about this Falklay, and I want to see exactly what he’s got.

"Horns, go hibernate. Beetles, retreat as well."

With that, the beetles quickly hide and stay out of his way… which the ranger noticed.

"Huh. The beetles are gone. It’s watching me, eh? A Kingbeetle with some kind of ‘domain’ abilities? Or a fairy with 'gladewatch'?" He says loudly. I think he wants us to know.

He walks closer, his senses are sharp, and as he follows, it leads him right up to the main tree.

"Huh." He looks around, wondering what he is seeing. "The beast is asleep?"

And he then turns his eyes on Alexis's biolab. He glances up and down, and then he uses an ability, [Identify]

"A forest spirit… of the academic kind?" His face pales somewhat. "Something's not right…"

[Eye of the Ranger]

He looks around, and looks puzzled.

Then he looks at my main tree.

"It's not a magical beast…" He withdraws his arrows. "Now, this is a lot more complicated."

At that moment, I too use [inspect] on him, and it gets… repelled. It seems he has some kind of skill protection.

He lifts his bow and arrow, and aims it at the sky. It's going to be a flare. I wonder whether he is going to bomb the forest, but then again, I have countermeasures so I wait and see.

"I won't fire that yet if I were you." Jura steps out of the main tree, ready for combat.

"Oh." The ranger looks like he is about to shoot, but then decides not to.

"So, who are you, and why are you here?"

"Hmm." The ranger pauses. "May we settle this over a cup of tea, instead?"

"Oh, tea?"

A set of 4 chairs and table magically appear before the ranger, and he sits down. Then he starts to brew a pot of tea. "Yes, tea. Clearly the proper way to speak to magical beasts is invite them to tea, no?"

"Magical beasts?" Jura's turn to be confused, but somehow, he sits down on the chair.

"Worry not, elf. The tea is laced with a fragrance that magical beasts will enjoy, but does nothing to us. I mean you no harm, so here, I'll drink it. You can use [identify] and [detect poison] too, I won't feel offended." He swaps teacups with Jura, and takes a sip.

Jura laughs, "So, ranger. What magical beasts are you speaking of?"

"The forest spirit there, and the beetle lord hiding somewhere in that tree." The ranger points. "And these trees right around me." He then points to the [root brain complex], and then my main tree.

He then pauses and he shouts.

"I know you are watching. You can join me for tea if you want! They're good stuff, made with the tender young tea leaves collected from the Sifar mountains."

"He's dangerous, sire. We should kill him." Horns shout in my mind. "We should!"

"I agree. But I have my curiosity piqued, so I will humor him and watch what happens."

"I feel a bit of a headache." Alexis complains. "I think he used some kind of skill on me. Sucks when I lose some of my magic resistance…"

Hey, you retained your overpowered ability to level, that counts right?

Anyway, we focus back on the little tea party between Jura and the old ranger.

Jura, actually decides to take a drink.

"So, old man, what do you want?"

"I work for Salah. And I am here to help with General Akbar's destruction of New Freeka."

Jura, strangely, didn't react to the news. I think his diplomat levels has been rising and such news just doesn't faze him anymore. "Oh. Why?"

"Well, Salah and New Freeka is at war. I, am a servant of the King, a soldier of Salah, so I am here to help Salah win."

"I see. And so how does that lead you to this little forest?"

"Well, can you not interfere if we attack New Freeka?"

"Unfortunately, no. We have an agreement with them, and they are under our protection."

"Why? Perhaps there is something we, Salah, can offer you."

Jura grins, "Ah… well, do you know the tale of the original village of Freeka? I still remember the day, almost 7 years ago."

"Hmm, has Salah transgressed Freeka in some way?"

"Well, yes. Salah's army burnt this village, killed a whole lot of elves living here, and if I remember correctly, the soldiers skewered the bodies of the dead onto this tree behind me. Those who survived fled far and wide."

He pauses. "...ah. I see that's how it is. Surely it is time for bygones to be bygones…"

Jura's face contorts. "I still remember the faces of those burnt the death. The screams, the shouts. The loss of the village scarred me, haunted me for years, and it is only with great blessing that I stepped out of that shadow."

He sips a bit of the tea.

"So I believe I am not wrong to say my grudge, rightly, runs deep."

The old ranger sighs. "The acts of a vast nation like Salah cannot all be attributed to the nation. There are many actors in any country, and not all are aligned in terms of our values and principles."

"You're an old man, I'm sure you have seen many battles, and know very well, such statements does nothing to my grudge. A grudge, anger, and hatred is not something a talk can relieve. And now you, and that large army of yours are here to destroy New Freeka, does that not sound like Salah intends to repeat of that incident?"

The old man pauses, and nods. "Well you are right. But, in war, there are no good sides, only victory matters."

"It is as you say, only victory matters. This is not the first time Salah has tried this, and we won the previous 2 battles. Do you think you can win this one?"

The old ranger nods. "Indeed, that is why 50,000 warriors are here."

"Well, you've made your intentions clear, so, you may leave now."

The old ranger grins. "Well, I am deep within enemy territory, do you think I will leave without taking out all of you?"

[Root strike]

That's the moment a few root strikes surge from the ground. He dodges, and shoots a few explosive arrows, but a few wood shields block them.

I follow up with a few more, as Jura, transforming into his Bamboo-armor form, gives chase. Trevor releases a poison field that covers the entire forest, and frankly, there's no chance of him running.

Unlike the assassin from before, I know exactly where he is, because his [hidden by trees] ability don't protect him from… a tree.

He runs, and simultaneously fire numerous magical arrows at Jura.

"General. This is Falklay. Please arrange bombing of the forest. Bomb the forest. I repeat, bomb the forest now, I am engaging with the inhabitants."

He runs into some spiderwebs.

"Ah dammit…" It seems the spiders' [hidden presence] natural ability is a bit harder for him to detect.

He cuts through the webs, but it slows him down enough for a root strike to hit him, which is parried by a small buckler shield. I suppose its magical since it actually manages to absorb the impact.

"Ah, roots." He ducks from the arrows Jura shoots at him, but that gap allows Jura to catch up.

"So, why not stand and fight?"

"I reckon we are about the same level, but given my skill mix, I will lose." The old ranger shrugs, "So no."

He smashes a potion of some kind on the floor, and it releases a bright light and then a thick smoke. A flashbang, essentially, and it stuns Jura briefly.

A few arrows hit Jura's wood armor, and the old ranger resumes fleeing. "General, where are the bombs?" He messages. "No. You do not have to worry about me. I'll find a way out."

And so the siege machines and the mages get in position, and they start to hurl rocks and spells at the forest.

"They started the bombardment..." Yvon looks from the new walls they built, but as they brace for it, they notice the curvature of the projectiles drive the boulders and fireballs toward the forest.

"Uh…"

"The forest…"

Right before the projectiles are about to make impact with the forests, my [subsidiary trees], of the hundred or so designated as [shield generators], kick in to action.

Massive wood shields surround the trees, so the boulders and ordinary fireballs just collide against the shields, and leave some scratches and burns on the shields. I mean, compared the demonfire powered fireballs of Alexis, these fireballs and boulders are really basic, so, some damage is taken, but well within our limits.

The army tries again, and the second, third volley of attacks similarly left only some damage on the shields.

"What do you mean the bombardment is not working?" The ranger shouts through his message, as he flees. He seems to be getting caught in more spiderwebs as his concentration strays, but he is much faster than Jura, so Jura struggles to catch up.

The old ranger is halfway out of the forest now, and frankly, I don't plan to let him live. So, the moment he slows down, as a bit of spiderweb catches him, I would unleash a few root strikes at him.

And it would be blocked by that small buckler, or some other leg guards that he has, or the magical chainmail he has under his shirt.

Nothing fatal, but its wearing him down. Each of my root strikes are filled with paralysis and poison, and the entire forest is releasing a kind of poison, a mix of Trevor's abilities and my [poison field]. Its nothing lethal, especially over such short periods, but every little bit of the poison and paralysis is slowing the ranger down.

And he takes in some antidotes, which rejuvenates him momentarily

Another volley from the siege and mages. No effect, thanks to shield generators.

"General, its not working. Strong wooden barriers are blocking our attacks around the forests and those shields can take hell of a beating.."

"Ahhhhh!" A slight panic in the camp, as a group of beetles, about 300, emerge behind, attacking the siege machines and mages. They manage to destroy a few siege machines, but it is a trained army, some soldiers are already onsite to protect them and so they quickly reorganise. The mages redirect their attacks on the beetles instead. Each beetle, with their thick armor and the recent volcanic adaptation (which grants tiny amounts of fire resistance) can endure 1 fireball, so the mages need 2 shots to kill them.

Additional fighters rush to protect the mages and siege machines, and the numbers are sufficient to overwhelm the 300 beetles. However it is enough, as that delayed and distracted those ranged attacks, and gives Trevor and me some breathing room to regenerate some of the weaker [shield generators]. There are some variation in the enemy, siege machines operated by higher levels men, and some stronger mages, who accordingly deal more damage.

Back to the old ranger, Falklay, I send more spiders after him, and he demonstrates his competence as a forest ranger, cutting through the spiders as if they were nothing. But he is increasingly exhausted, and he realises it, knows what the plan is.

Every time he slows down, a root strike would appear somewhere, and I know I am gradually wearing him down.

"Going somewhere so soon, old man?" Jura finally catches up again.

"Tell me, those root strikes, from you?"

"Ah. No." Jura attempts to slash his head off. He ducks.

"That's a shame." He somehow dodges and put some distance between himself and Jura, and throws some small knives. It hits the wooden barriers around Jura, and then explodes. "They're not going to stop, are they?"

It knocks Jura back a little. "I really hate explosive attacks. Keep getting them." He jumps and tries to close the gap with the old ranger, but the old man is still too fast. "And no, you'd be a fool to assume those root strikes will run out."

He shoots a few arrows, but Jura gave me the opening I needed, two root strikes fly towards him as he tries to aim midair. He manages to react in time, but the root strikes breaks his shield buckler and armlets.

"...oh dear." The old man flinches from the impact of the root strikes, and he smashes into a tree. Before he manages to recover from the impact, I quickly activate [constrict].

Vines emerge from tree he's on and entangles his legs, and then injects a poison through his skin.

"Oh no." He then realises he is done for, as the vines quickly wrap around his entire body.

Jura lands right in front of him. "Well, looks like the bombardment stopped. I think they are busy now."

"Kill me." The old man said, "As a soldier, this day will come eventually."

"Oh? That's not for me to decide."

He stares at Jura. "You… deny me this right?"

"Oh come on. Your country burnt my village and you want to play honorable? Please, did you somehow think I am in charge?"

"Then who is?"

Jura thinks for a while. "I almost answered you there, but, that... is a secret."

A root appears, with the strongest paralysis and sleep poisons I have, and stabs him right above his heart, through the damaged chainmail. With that, the poisons spread quickly, and he loses consciousness within a few seconds.

-

The mages and soldiers, after a long 2 hour battle, defeat the group of 300 beetles but with quite a few casualties.

"General Akbar, Falklay lost consciousness." An adjutant reviews the magical artifact linked to Falklay's arm.

"What." The general is deep in thought.

"Should we resume bombing?" Another of the general's assistants ask.

"My gut feels tell me it is no point. You saw those shields, they take just a little damage from regular attacks and ordinary fireballs. We'll just wear ourselves down doing the same thing. Get the mages to group together for a [grand fireball], and fling some oil barrels into the forest."

Well, that's no good.

So before that happens, I activate my attack. Multiple tunnels appear throughout their camp. It's a function of my [root tunnel] ability, and from them, thousands of beetles stream out, horns blazing, charging into the soldiers.

From above, they appear like a horde of ants that just got triggered, and a black tide sweeps out of those holes.

Then, [root field], [poison field] and then [root surge]. The field of roots slow down the soldiers, the field of poison weakens them, and the sudden surge of a wide area skewering of sharp roots from beneath the ground kills hundreds of unprepared regular soldiers, while harming some of the elites.

"General, we are under attack! By a massive beetle force!"

"How many?"

"Maybe three thousand? It's throughout our position and I have not gotten a good count, even our lookouts are under attack and they've not responded-"

Before he finished the sentence a root strike emerges from underneath the camp the pierces the man through the chest, splashing some of his blood onto the general's face.

The general is armored with enchanted gear and probably has numerous abilities to protect himself, so I decide to first pick off the rest of his men. It's probably too much effort to kill the general now.

He draws his sword and lifts it up, and it glows with lightning. And he then pierces the ground with it, and I feel some electrical zaps. It stings a little, maybe like a small numbness. But no matter, I have plenty more to go.

Another adjutant runs over, "General, the siege machines are under heavy attack from the roots emerging from the ground, and almost all of them has been destroyed."

Together with Trevor and Dimitree, we unleash multiple root strikes on various positions of the enemy army, picking on the mid-tier 'elite' forces, who are stronger than regular soldiers, but has limited defensive abilities against multiple root strikes.

"Retreat and stay away from trees!" The general shouts, with some kind of skill, carries his message to his entire army.

"General, our elites are falling-" Another root strikes pierce this assistant's legs, but fail to deliver a lethal blow.

"I know, the enemy's targeting those stronger than the beetles. This is a trap, and the longer we stay the more we are going to lose." He shouts, and activates some kind of skill.

The skill spreads out to the entire army, all the soldiers, those lightly wounded and even the heavily wounded, experience a sudden rejuvenation in their energy, their bleeding stopped temporarily although the wound remains, and their steps turn into large, quick strides, unhindered by the [rooting field] or the [poison field].

They retreat.

Our kills, mine, and those of the beetles combined, is probably about 3 to 4 thousand, though many, many more are injured. The beetles got most of the kills, and also suffered the most casualties, as I focused on the mid tier forces, and I think I got about 400 or so kills.

Frankly if the battle went on, it'll probably result in heavy casualties on both sides. The beetles are less effective than I expected, and that's due to the general's passive buffs for his entire army.

They flee for as long as the general's ability lasted, and that brought them quite far from New Freeka.

And for now, the battle is over. I think the general will return with more firepower, but that is a worry for another day.

[2 levels gained! You are now level 132!]

[You gained a new skill : Serpentine Rootstrike]

[Poison field and rooting field upgraded]

[Shield generators upgraded]

Oh. Best part of any battle.

Extending vines

Year 77 Month 8

Few days after the battle

First things first, loot. Since the beetles did most of the fighting, New Freeka had no right to any of the loot and remains, so, the beetles collected all of the remaining armor, weapons and stuff, which is stored in my [tree-asury]. I’ll trade them for something someday, though, there seem to be some magical items in there…

Next, is my prisoner. Frankly, I didn’t think he’s going to talk, and actually, I personally didn’t really feel like interrogating him, which I feel is a waste of time. After all, Salah is an enemy and we’re playing defense. The things he can tell me, my prediction is, will be quite worthless.

So, I didn't waste time interrogating Falklay, as my interest in him was more… academic in nature. After stripping him of his remaining magical items and storing them in my [tree-asury], I turn to my main objective.

Drugged with all kinds of paralysis and sleep, I put him inside a biolab where I can investigate him, and eventually, I will suck him dry with my vines and feelers. I liked to see how a high level person looked under the hood, just to compare. I have seen the heroes, Jura, Yvon, and now I have this ranger, and I wasted no time, to have a look under the hood.

And there are some notable differences, mainly in where the mana and life force is strongest. The eyes, nose and ears are more pronounced than others, probably due to his need to be sensitive to his surroundings, and his soul spring, with all the stones around it, combined to create a nice fountain. Taking a good look at the fountain, there's a kind of wooden frame around the fountain, in between the stones, and as I reach out to touch the stones, little tooltips come up, telling me what skills he has.

And I try to yank the wood and stones that has this. I mean, its just something I always wanted to try, but did not do with people whom I consider my allies. I had always wondered what could happen if I took one of those rocks out.

So I yank it. And it doesn't move. Ah well. I keep trying, but instead it just hurts the ranger. It seems its magically "tied" and "intertwined" with the soul, via some kind of force.

So I stop, and rest of a while. Maybe I just need more power.

And after drawing a bit more mana and energy from the trees around me, I try to yank a rock on the fountain, again. It shakes, and I could tell that sense a huge amount of pain, but he remains unconscious and strapped in. Thank goodness of paralysis.

The rock shakes, but then something pulls it back again. It’s as if I’m trying to pull a piece of metal away from a very powerful magnet. I could, a bit, but then the magnet pulls it back once my strength lets up.

Uh….

Not working. Borrowing the root-brains for some processing power, I calculate that the amount of energy I need to break that ‘magnetic’ pull of the soul spring seems really really really high, so I decide it’s probably not going to work no matter how many times I try. Maybe this is like the atomic bond of souls, that’s why I need shit amount of energy to break it.

"It’s only if you’re trying to break things. Fixing things is a lot easier, since those same forces work with you." The wisp, whispering his wisdom. Thanks dude.

Well, I let the ranger sleep a day inside the biolab, and then I resume testing the next day.

There’s been quite a few other things I wanted to test, and it so happens I have a high level person who’s body is suitable for it.

Once again I enter the person’s inner realm, and this time, I flooded the body with my mana. It’s been something I’m curious about since I did it with the hellhounds, and then with Alexis’s body when she’s contained within me. What if I did it with a living ‘normal’ person, what happens then?

His body vibrates intensely, struggling in the biolab, as my mana, like a green tide, washes into the inner realm.

[Specimen’s compatibility with injected mana is low. Specimen body is resisting. Prolonged exposure may result in mana poisoning]

Ah. Did this happen before?

Anyway, I keep it up, I still want to see what happens. The body flails inside the pod, kinda like a fish struggling to escape from an octopus.

[Specimen body is experiencing mana poisoning]

Okay, let’s see what happens when I heal him.

[Mana poisoning reduces magic and ability effectiveness]

Really? I try injecting his body with the healing liquids from my [healing fruit], and also the [paralysis poison]. A conundrum, I suppose, but the healing just repairs damage, but does not cure the status ailment.

[Mana poison is still in effect. Specimen body’s organs are starting to suffer damage].

Heal? But I notice the healing is slower.

Two full days passed, as I constantly drown the ranger’s body with my mana. He’s not dead yet, because one of the vines continue to supply his body with nutrients and air to stay alive, so I can continue to observe what’s happening.

I’m actually curious, does the body actually gain compatibility over time? Or does the body continue to naturally reject my mana?

[Specimen body’s organs are failing.]

Ah. Heal?

[Healing effectiveness is significantly reduced due to high levels of mana poisoning in the physical body. Specimen’s body is dying.]

Oh.

I couldn’t stop it. The decay in the body is surprisingly quick, as the mana poisoning somehow makes to body turn on itself. It’s as if the body is rejecting itself, and strangely, I kept watching. A part of me was like, this is a rare opportunity to witness death under a microscope, and some.

And where I paid attention to most… was the soul spring.

I see the land surrounding the river and lake that forms the person’s mana start to break apart, as if a great earthquake is shattering them into small pieces, then the ‘water’ in that river and lake start to leak out into the nothingness, and it reveals a crumbling ‘riverbed’ of some kind, filled with unusual marks. I couldn’t see much, as the crumbling went on rather quickly.

I wonder is it because he is dying too quickly.

But I didn’t wonder long, because i had to focus. I want to see what happens to the soul spring then.

As the crumbling ‘riverbed’ closes in on the soul spring, the spring starts to dry up, the height of the spring falling and eventually, stopped. Then, the rocks and the structure surrounding the soul spring start to break up too.

This is something I waited for, so I reached out to it, and tried to grab hold of the rocks. As I touch them, they… vanish, and poof-ed into dust. All of the rocks did.

And all that’s left is a bare, empty hole floating in the nothingness, as all the land and ‘riverbed’ has crumbled away, the background changed into that of a bare… emptiness. In a way, it’s like a black hole sitting solitary in space. Perhaps at that empty whole, there was once a star, a ‘soul’ here once.

"The soul has gone." The wisp whispers to my imaginary ears again.

"I see."

[You’ve managed to salvage some of the decaying skills! Due to the decay of death, the salvaged skills are of a lower quality than the original skills possessed]

[You’ve received the following, which can be used to create [seed-infused skill fruits]!]

[class seed - ranger] x 3

[class seed - beast tamer] x 2

[skill seed - archery] x 2

[passive seed - spark of brilliance] x 1

Oh man. All these skill fruits are useless to me. But I guess I’ll find use for them somewhere. Maybe Lausanne.

[You’ve witnessed death as it happens in the inner realm]

[Familiar contracts upgraded - skill salvaging chance increase!]

[Biolab upgraded - post-mortem equipments, death sensors, death-delaying equipment and body preservation added!]

Hey. That’s something good. Finally. The physical body of the ranger stops flailing, like a puppet with their strings cut off. Lifeless, the body is pale, greenish from the damage of the mana poisoning over the past few days of experimentation. I later arranged for the corpse to be burnt.

Meanwhile, the victory over the Salah army had made a lot of New Freekan devotees. A few days after the victory, they held some kind of feast in the courtyard of the [tree of prayer], where the leaders of the New Freeka thanked their lucky stars and the protection of the valley’s spirit for their victory.

It has free food, drinks, dances and performance, some kind of prayer and worship led by the treefolk, things like that.

I mean, well, I feel somewhat flattered, that the citizens think that way, but the words of the leaders do feel quite hollow. Despite all the praise of their guardian and the so called will of the valley, they somehow manage to worm in a word or two on their supposed contributions.

Perhaps its a thing with politicians, even in this world.

Year 77 Month 9

"Tree Spirit." Yvon speaks, it is rare for her to come alone to the main tree's courtyard, but the fact that she did, means, probably there are changes in the way things are organised in the New Freeka council.

She presents jewels, and other items I had previously requested, stored in some kind of a magical bag.

"As you requested."

"What is it, that you want?" Jura sneers. "For Lady Yvon herself to deliver the jewels, surely there is more to just… delivery."

"The freeloader!" Horns shout in my mind. Only to me, of course.

Even I know that.

She sighs, and nods. "It is as you say, Jura. After the victory over the Salah force, we have been receiving letters, messages, and… envoys."

She then shows a few of such letters, and passes them to Jura.

"Some of the smaller nations nearby are greatly… impressed, by our successful defense. And would like to form some ties."

"Freeloader!!! And now they take credit for the beetle's sacrifice!!!" Horns shout. He's not too happy that beetles were the one who suffered the most casualties, as it will take a month or two to regenerate their numbers.

Jura somehow seems to be synchronised with Horns, and he sneers, "Such opportunistic behavior. Only after such a grand display of power that you get offers."

Yvon nods, "That's how anyone would see it, but look from their perspective. They wouldn't dare anger a country the size of Salah, so naturally, they would avoid any association with us. But that changes when that 50,000 army retreated. Now, we are like a new power in the region, a force able to stand up to Salah, and so, these smaller nations now view us more positively."

"Us? Us? They had no casualties in combat? Put your men in combat, then you can say us!" Horns is rather grumpy I think. He's not too fond of the New Freekans, mainly because he feels some of the dead beetles did not have to die if New Freeka lent some help.

I mean, I personally think the beetles are just a self-replenishing mob, but Horns clearly cares for his hive.

Jura sneers again, also somehow synchronised. "I don't appreciate the 'we' and 'us' being thrown around. New Freeka did absolutely nothing. We only assisted once we found out they were first targeting the valley."

Well, Jura's hiding some details about our own chequered history with Salah there, but hey, he's the guy with the [diplomat] job.

Yvon gives out a long sigh. "...indeed. And that is why I'm here. We are in an awkward position, as New Freeka is clearly relying on TreeTree's ability for defenses to hold Salah off, and yet to the outside world, our neighbouring nations and Salah don't know that. They are under the impression that New Freeka is the one controlling all the… forces."

"Master. They are freeloaders!" Horns, I think you need to stop shouting. I get it.

"Then clarify. Tell them New Freeka did nothing, and it is the valley's protector who did." Jura retorts. "You do not want to overstate your military prowess and face the consequences later."

Yvon sighs, "I wish it was so simple. But the people of New Freeka too, wants to believe that the tree spirit is on our side."

"Yvon, you, of all people, should know that TreeTree cares very little of New Freeka. It's a transactional arrangement, one out of favor. It is about time you let the people of New Freeka know as well."

"I.. I can't. I can't snuff out their hopes like that. The tree spirit, is their newfound pride, their source of stability in this world. If I tell them that, I… I am afraid a riot may break out."

"Then crush it."

"Permission to let them run riot. Then we may have beetles running riot too!" Horns interjects in my mind.

"Even the councillors want to believe it, and they want to believe that TreeTree will protect them. It seems it is my mistake, for being vague and unclear about the real relationship of New Freeka and TreeTree."

"So?"

"I… erm… can TreeTree officially be our guardian and protector?"

"Shameless!" Horns commentates "Freeloaders and these beggars want to demand our masters protection?!"

Oh shush now. I'll think about it.

"What do I get in exchange?" I spoke into both their minds, and Yvon pauses.

"Uh… our loyalty?"

"Rejected. I care not for that, and you have no way of ensuring loyalty. I demand servitude. I have need of minions to carry out my demands."

"Uh…"

"Make Jura and the elves royalty of New Freeka. Jura and Laufen will be my two spokespersons, they will play the role of as the new joint rulers of New Freeka, and the rest of you as advisors. From henceforth, the one who rules will be Jura and Laufen. All citizens of New Freeka is so acknowledge their position as your new joint monarchs. They will be the voice of my will, my elven avatars."

Jura seems surprised by that, "TreeTree, that…" I think he didn't expect that, but seriously, I have been wanting to give Jura direct ruling powers for some time. The arguments and issues we had with New Freeka over the past few years, especially the last few months really solidified that view, that Jura deserves a seat at the council, such that my demands are heard and known, my needs are respected and complied by these people. Unlike the treefolk, who seem perfectly content living in their small villages, or the centaurs who are similarly happy to have their hillside slopes, these New Freekans have been creating the most problems.

Yvon herself too seems shocked, and her mouth just gasps, a little too dumbfounded to respond, and she takes a few deep breaths will just staring at Jura and my main tree before she finally manages to respond.

"Ah… we… we are founded to be a council, a collective rulership, such that everyone has a say. To… to return to a monarchy would be against… against our founding principles. It… the council and the people will not accept it."

"Then be gone. New Freeka stands alone." I respond, not like I really needed them. Its really more of a mutual coexistence since they have the ability to partake in trade to acquire materials that are not available locally.

"Ah. Please wait, Tree Spirit. Let me have some time to discuss this with the wider council. Such a crucial decision, I alone cannot make this decision. I will summon a meeting immediately."

Jura too seems to be taken aback, "...ah, TreeTree we may need to discuss this."

"Later." And then I turn to Yvon. "Go, gather your council."

Ah… and so Yvon runs back, leaving the jewels behind.

"Horns, we got the jewels already, lets break your first level cap."

"TreeTree, wait. About that proposal earlier, to make us king, are… are you serious?"

"Yes." Well, not really, but if New Freeka agrees to it, I don’t mind at all.

"Please reconsider." Jura shakes his head. "It is a position I’m not willing to bear, a weight I cannot carry."

"I must have my position heard and respected on New Freeka. Let’s see what they are willing to give."

Jura gulps. "Surely there is room to compromise with them, something that does not involve usurping the entire ruling council? Even I think that sounds a bit too much, although they’ve been absolutely deadweights in the past two battles with Salah."

"Well, I am willing to compromise, but let’s see how sincere they are in their counter-proposal."

-

Meanwhile, Yvon quickly gathers her council for an urgent meeting.

"The Tree Spirit wants to make Jura and Laufen monarchs? Kings?"

Yvon gulps and nods.

"No absolute monarchs and kings!" Quite unanimous, the decision from the councillors, none of them want to have a king over their head, and New Freeka models itself after the elvish republics.

"Then we lose our protection. We’re all on the walls when the battle happened. You’ve seen the fury and damage the Tree Spirit can bring."

"I still can’t help but think this sounds a lot like a criminal gang’s extortion." One of them says.

"The tree spirit has no reason to help us, so quash that thought." Yvon glares at the rest of them. "But at the same time, I too, disagree with having a king over our new nation. It is not something our people wanted, and I believe most of them are happy with the way things are."

New Freeka organises itself into multiple districts, and each district elects 3 councilmen to the high council. So, in a way, there is a fair bit of representation by the people, which does help in making the locals feel somewhat connected to their rulers. It’s a partly-democratic structure, though the title of councilmen does often seem to pass from father to son, due to the family’s influence, even in such a young state.

"Then…"

"So, what are we willing to give?" Yvon.

"Give?"

"Look, if we are to negotiate this with the Tree spirit, we better be prepared to offer some meaningful concessions, or give some rights away. Without the Tree Spirit’s protection, New Freeka’s chances of survival is rather slim. The Tree Spirit’s annoyance at us was very clear in that previous meeting, I frankly do not want to have that annoyance turn into outright hostility. I hope everyone now understands why this meeting is so urgent."

All the councillors glance uncomfortably at each other.

"Unfortunately, I agree with Lady Yvon’s assessment, and so…"

"King is totally out of the picture, the people like the leaders the way it is now. Even if the tree spirit turns against us, I think none of our people will agree to having a king."

"If we tell them this is to secure the Tree Spirit’s protection…"

"No. I know our chances are slim without the Tree Spirit, but we are a sovereign nation. If we agree to have someone else rule over our heads, that’s against what we have fought for all this while."

"Oh cut the political bullshit. We didn’t fight a bit." One councillor says. "All the fighting so far has been done by the Tree Spirit’s minions."

"I meant the fighting figuratively, as in.. our struggle so far. Anyway, are you on our side or the Tree Spirit’s side? You really want a king to rule over us?"

"That’s not what I meant. We must know what exactly we are dealing with here, and to do so, we must recognise we are very vulnerable." The other councillor rebukes. It’s a messy argument, with a lot of side conversations.

"So, so, can we have some consensus? I believe it's clear we will refuse having a king. But are we willing to give Jura and Laufen a seat, and accordingly, authority?" Yvon tries to steer the conversation back to the topic. These councilmen tend to go off tangent sometimes.

There is an awkward look among everyone, as they shrug. It took one of the more daring councillors to finally say, "Yes.", then all the others started agreeing.

"Fine, now that we agree to give them a seat, what will be their authority? Remember, it must be something concrete, with actual powers, else the Tree Spirit will not agree."

"Then what are we willing to give?"

"Administrator of the valley? Forest master?"

"The tree spirit won't accept that. It's no fool. It’s already master of the valley, and does not need us to grant it that sort of authority. It must come from something only we can give. Our men. Our money. Ability to directly intervene in our affairs. "

"Fine, lets go about giving Jura and Laufen combined voting rights over the military, diplomatic affairs, they also get a share of our tax collection as 'tribute', and smaller voting rights on domestic, trade, and policing."

The councillors went about debating the finer points of the proposed rights and powers of Jura and Laufen, as politicians are often inclined to do.

"Okay, so… those are their rights and powers, but how do we give it to them without making the rest of the population feel that this is something arbitrary and without basis? As it is, some districts are already uneasy over their representation, and are demanding for more councilmen."

One of the rare centaur councillors then speak up. "I believe, the treefolk worship the Tree Spirit, do they not?"

The councillors, turn, mostly out of surprise.

"If so, we can follow how some elven kingdoms have special positions for the senior members of the church."

"Are you suggesting elevating the tree spirit to a god?"

"In principle, yes. From the powers we have seen, he is might as well be a local deity. So, a spokesperson of a local deity surely can be given a formal position in the ruling council, with special rights reflecting the local deity's influence in the area."

"...ah"

"There is precedent. The Dwarven Nation of Prummash far north gives the Great Forge Serpent's chosen a special position in their advisors council."

"What matters is then how we convey this decision to the people…"

"If the tree spirit accepts it."

"If it doesn't?"

"...we'll have to figure it out."

And with that, Yvon's meeting is over, and Yvon returns to meet us, this time with 6 other councillors.

"So, have you agreed?" My voice speaks into their mind.

The 7 exchange glances before Yvon takes a gulp, and she steps forth. "Tree Spirit, we… we are truly humbled that you've assisted us during the defense of New Freeka, and our words cannot describe the gratitude we have for sparing us from the bloodshed of battle."

"Ah the freeloader has finally learnt gratitude, eh?" Horns seem to be happy.

"Spare me the flowery words. I take you've decided not to accept my proposal." I’ve been in enough meetings to know that what starts flowery often ends in a refusal.

They pause. I wonder how I sound in their minds sometime.

"Ah… we… we have a counterproposal. Something that would be more aligned to our own founding ideals. We would propose to create a special religious role for both Jura and Laufen, whereby the Tree Spirit is elevated to that of a local deity."

Jura pauses, he seems to be thinking.

"In this way, Jura and Laufen gains a position as the Voice of the Tree Spirit, which will have similar rights and authority to that of a religious leader. As the Voice, they will have significant authority, in areas of the military, diplomacy, and external trade. We also commit that our military will be split into a few divisions, with one third of it will be under the command and rule of the Voice, and to enforce the demands of the Tree Spirit, within the framework of authority that the Voice has."

Ah, hmmm, a third of New Freeka’s forces.

"They will be given a special name of your choosing, such to differentiate them for the regular military."

There’s a silence, perhaps for a few seconds, before Yvon continues.

"And… we will formally now set up a new institution under the Voice, and we will contribute a sizeable portion of our tax collection to this institution, which will also fund the force."

Oh, and tax revenues too. "A third. Of all tax revenues and collections." I speak into their minds, and they freeze. The 7 councillors exchange glances, and then they nod.

"Yes. A third."

"Anything else?" At this point, New Freeka is willing to offer a third of their military, and their tax money to me, so, I’m actually quite satisfied with the offer.

"Uh…" Yvon shakes her head. "That’s all we could give?"

Well, in terms of land, I do control the valley, and that’s been my right since day one. New Freeka only controls the un-forested areas further south, the large farmlands, and the town itself.

"Never mind."

An awkward silence. Perhaps they are waiting. Even Jura, he looks a bit worried.

"I agree to it it, in exchange for my participation in New Freeka’s defense." My thoughts behind this is fairly simple, I do intend to somehow rule over New Freeka eventually, but at the same time, I do realise that putting Jura, as King over New Freeka is extremely sudden, and most likely, the New Freekans themselves, the 50,000 o non-humans are going to resist it, and I would have a rebellion on hand.

Not that crushing it won’t be an issue, but that would delay my ability to gain the necessary resources to further upgrade the rest of my artificial souls and research.

So this sort of transitory arrangement helps, and I think it will give Jura and Laufen the necessary experience needed, let them learn about managing a town, before ultimately usurping the entire New Freeka. It’ll be easier to boil the frogs of New Freeka gradually, so let them get used to having Jura as a member of their ruling class, before, one day, taking over them entirely. Ruling the New Freekans by proxy isn’t a bad idea anyway, at least the nitty gritty of people-management is left to the appointed proxy, and the world would look at the town, not at me directly.

And really, the tax revenue will help. I can buy more jewels. And weird artifacts. I’m really eager to test out that ability I gotten when I evolved to a [starsoul tree].

-

A few days later

Beetle - basic magical lances - complete

Eye-Tree Stage I research option unlocked - 18 months remaining

Enhanced exoskeletons -complete

Enhanced interior structures - 1 months remaining

Large beetle pods - 3 months remaining

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 2 - 9 months remaining

Fruit bombs - increased range and power - 3 months remaining

Tree - volcanic adaptation stage 3 - 18 months remaining

I’ll need to start working on the volcano again. The enhanced exoskeletons grants the beetles stronger, faster bodies, but at the expense of consuming some of my harvested metals and some essences, and also longer regeneration time if they die, while the beetle magical lances, even though I completed the research, is not immediately usable as I need to obtain some kind of mines, before they can be infused into the beetles themselves.

Ah.

So I do need a mine, preferably with one that will supply me with non-ordinary resources, such that I can further upgrade the beetles. There is a natural limit on how I can keep upgrading them with ordinary items, without giving them the ability to level via an artificial soul. Also, at the rate of my mineral harvesting from the earth, I have sufficient metals to support only 4,000 beetles with the enhanced exoskeleton.

So let’s recap.

"Guys, what are our priorities?" I call on my artificial souls for a meeting.

"Take over the volcano! Kill all the golems!" Horns say. He’s just had his upgrade as a [Baron Beetle], increasing his level cap to 30. The upgrade grants the beetles around him extra strength, armor and speed. Still, it’s not sufficient to take on the golems. They are just far too large and tough.

"And?"

"Locate additional minerals, resources and leylines." Trevor’s turn. "We’re actively sending some beetles to scout on the faraway locations."

"Upgrade? Spiders, fruits, healing. All require upgrades."

Thanks for the reminder, Dimitree. We do need anti-air. That reminds me, where the hell did I leave that airship from Salah?

"Were you not working on it the last time then you broke it apart and then dumped it into your treasury? I think you got stuck when the biolab couldn’t look into the materials or decipher the runes." That’s Trevor, digging through my memories faster than I can remember it myself.

"Really?" Was it that long ago?" I try to dig through my own mind… Oh god, it’s already 3 years ago. I think I’m also getting more forgetful.

"Trevor, can you do me a favor and help me track all my outstanding tasks."

"Certainly. I’ll create a task manager in your interface."

"And a calendar."

"...will do so."

"Then mark when the date of the 10 year anniversary from the demon king’s death. I want a countdown timer in my interface. I fear I may forget, as I move onto all these lesser missions."

Side stories - Alexis & Meela

Side stories - Alexis and Meela

Sometime around Year 77, Month 9.

"Looking at the skies again?" Meela’s soul pops up in Alexis’s mind. It seems there’s a kind of shared network that exists for all the souls and artificial souls under TreeTree’s care. Perhaps it’s the [rootnet]’s ability.

"I always do." Alexis sits on the branch of her biolab, from the outside it looks like a very large tree, but inside it’s filled with all sorts of unusual equipments. "I really like the sky. It’s orangey today."

"I can somewhat imagine it. Isn’t it nice, not having to run here and there, fighting all the time, just to gain levels?"

"...it’s not a bad change in pace." But her face is a bit sulky.

"But it’s not enough for you, isn’t it?"

Alexis looks up, there’s a small orange cloud floating overhead. "...yeah."

"Why?"

Alexis shakes her spiritual legs. For those not attuned to magic, she’ll appear as a wisp, a faint blob of blue light on top of a branch, for those with the right affinity to spiritual magic, she appears as a young girl, but ethereal, that is bonded and lives in that ‘biolab’. She is, in a way, the biolab, and this ‘ethereal body’ is just a ‘form’, a ‘projection’ from that biolab.

"I always thought we’d survive. Like heroes in all those stories. A happy ending for all of us."

"Eh? You’re the one doing the most research and saying we’d all most likely die. The rest of us were just winging it."

"I mean, I had the data staring at me, telling me otherwise, but a part of me still, truly, believed in that fantasy, that all things will end well."

"You’re just like all of us after all." Perhaps there’s a smile somewhere in there.

"...yeah."

Alexis looks up again, the sun is gradually setting, and there’s just a few clouds. One of the moons is already visible, it’s glow is faint, but as the sky darkens, it’ll get clearer, and clearer.

"I… I thought of what I’d do after the war. After the demon king."

"Oh?"

"I’d go on a holiday. A world tour, properly, this time. Not our rushed city-to-city killing big monsters kind of tour. Take the time to hike the highest mountains, and see the uncharted lands, explore the world…"

"That sounds like being an adventurer."

Alexis pauses, and blushes. "Ah.. yeah. I guess it does. But here I am, stuck here serving the tree spirit as a research assistant."

"Hey, that’s what all of us end up doing, if we’re still at home. Working in dead end jobs."

They both laugh. "Well, that’s a good point. This is a dead end job, isn’t it?"

"One that you have to work for 1,000 years."

"Man, that’s depressing to think about. And look at me, I’m this… tree."

"You should ask for a holiday. Ask for normal employment terms, leave days and sick leave."

"Uh… I highly doubt soul contracts has allowances for leave days and sick leaves." Alexis laughs.

"Eh, I think everything can be negotiated. Perhaps some kind of arrangement can be made. Look at Yvon, she’s still out and about even though there’s a soul contract in her."

"That’s cause she’s not dead yet!"

"Ahhhh…" Meela’s probably making an embarrassed face. She doesn’t comprehend soul magic all that well.

"Anyway. I’m stuck here. And TreeTree doesn’t trust me."

"Of course he doesn’t. You tried to take over his body. Now that I think of it, he’s being generous to give you this ‘dead-end’ job you’re complaining about."

"It’s my survival instincts!"

"Yeah yeah."

An awkward silence.

"We probably should talk about something less… touchy."

"Yeah."

"What were you thinking of doing after the war, Meela?"

"Me? I didn’t think about much, but I thought I’d be a princess. Have high-tea in some fancy palace, eat dessert, walk in pretty gardens and stuff."

"Doesn’t that mean you have to marry some prince?"

"Uh… I suppose so. I’ll have first choice, won’t I? I’m a hero after all."

"And doesn’t that mean you have to.. You know… sleep with them?"

Meela pauses, "I didn’t think of that. I’d pick a handsome one with no body odor then. But yeah, I’d like to be a princess. This is another world, and being a princess like those fairytales would be something I’d like to do."

"But it’ll be you that’s rescuing the prince, because you’re the hero, and he’s not. He’ll be the dude in distress!"

"What’s wrong with that?"

"Uh… nothing, but it’s strange I guess."

"You’re kooky, Alexis."

"Uh. You too, Meela."

"You know, I still really like one of the princess’s gowns. It’s so pretty. Remember Princess Alainas of the Faroah isles? I really liked her sea-shell dress during the reception they threw for us. It really captured the essence of a mermaid."

"All I remember is her trying to hit on Max so hard. She was really trying to give herself to him."

"Oh I remember that. What, were you jealous? Wait. You liked Max?"

"No I didn’t! But I just remembered how ridiculous the princess was." Alexis shakes her head. "All the touching, and flirting… it’s just so horrifying to watch. It’s like a train crash in slow motion happening."

"But she’s really pretty. And if Max doesn’t have [immunity to charms], he’d fall for her."

"I don’t think its the charms though." Alexis shrugs. "Notice how none of us ever eyed any of the good looking men or women we meet throughout our journey? I think it’s the effect of the [hero] title. Until our quest is done, we won’t be sidetracked by such stuff."

"Oh man." Meela sighs. "Did that mean I missed all the good men that could have been in my life too?"

"Maybe. You could’ve been a princess, if you’re not a hero."

"Oh well."

"It's not fair…" Alexis sulks

"Huh?"

"We spent years fighting demons, hunting them throughout the world and we killed the demon king. And what did we get? No special reincarnation from the gods. No post-battle reward, to thank us for our sacrifice, those years of constant gruesome fighting. Isn't the gods just using child soldiers in a way?"

"Uh. I never thought it like that. I thought it a privilege, a responsibility for those with our gifts. And we are no longer the teens we once were."

"Just a few years, Meela."

"..."

"But we have a second chance here. We’re still in this world. We can still reap the rewards of our sacrifice."

Meela’s spirit bobs. "I don’t like the sound of that."

"No. No no no. I mean… I don’t have to be trapped in this dead end job forever."

"The soul contract’s on you…"

"Maybe TreeTree can release me from it. Then we can travel the world."

"Uh…we can travel the world if we wait 1,000 years. We could just go and sleep in the [soul realm], and wake up 1,000 years later."

"You can do that, I can’t. So these 1,000 years will be a lot longer for me. If I have to keep doing research for the next 1,000 years I might go mad."

"Well, talk to TreeTree? A bit of honesty, and maybe you can achieve something big for him. Then he can free you from your contract."

"Huh. I certainly don’t plan to serve-" Alexis winces in pain, its an intense one and sends Alexis into a kind of fidgeting shock.

"Oh dear. You triggered it."

The pain lasted for a good 10 minutes, Meela, a floating soul, could only watch as her friend is in intense pain.

"Ugh man that was a bad headache. What was I saying? Where was I? What were we talking about?" Alexis finally recovers from the pain, and seems to be having some kind of amnesia.

Meela pauses, before deciding not to remind Alexis of the discussion. "Oh nothing, we were just talking about dresses. Remember Lady Alice's silver bling dress..."

Side stories 2 - Lausanne

Side stories

"Relax, and be focused." TreeTree whispers into my mind.

A small wolf. That’s my real opponent today, and I felt a bit intimidated by idea of fighting a small wolf, as my first non-sparring opponent. But it’s a monster that appears all the time in the forest, so TreeTree says, it’s probably the easiest one around.

Still, not easy for me. Its still bigger than me!

It growls, baring its fangs

At the back of my mind, I know TreeTree’s watching. So is Horns, the giant fighting beetle, and maybe Jura somewhere. So I try to relax, but, it’s different.

There’s real ‘anger’ in the wolf, a real 'presence' of true hostility. Perhaps it’s hungry. It growls again, and it changes its’ posture, and it looks at me with those angry eyes.

I look at the spear in my right hand, and the dagger in my left. I practiced for this. I practiced a long time for this, and so, I believe I can do it. I have in engraved in my mind thanks to so many dreams of me just swinging the spear and the dagger.

No, I must do it.

A hero must do, what a hero musts.

The wolf charges, our eyes meet. My grip on the spear tightens, and I wait for the moment. It feels instinctive, I’m one with the spear, it’s a small one, so I can’t use a full sized spear yet, but it’s enough.

The wolf enters range.

And it pounces.

I duck and instantly activate my ability [Powerstrike], it feels natural, like the times I practiced with Horns and Jura. The spear’s tip pierces through the wolf’s hide, and it whimpers in pain.

Our eyes meet, as the wolf tries to take a look at the stab wound, blood splattering out. And I see the pain in the wolf’s eyes. This might be the moment it dies. And it whimpers, one of sorrow.

Like a dog.

A part of me wavered that instant, and my spear’s direction shifted slightly. It’s enough to change it from a fatal strike, into one that will only leave a deep cut.

The wolf falls behind me, but because it’s not fatal, it manages to get up, and then run away, leaving a trail of blood dripping onto the dirt floor as it flees.

And yet, I didn’t give chase.

I froze.

My mind somehow replays that real pain in the wolf’s eyes. The whimpering voice, that almost dog like sound.

"You’re okay?" TreeTree whispers.

"I… I couldn’t do it."

A part of me curses myself then. Is this how my dreams of being a hero ends?

Am I not meant to be a hero? Heroes kill monsters!

"The first time you draw blood says a lot." Jura walks over, still holding his bow and arrow, ready if the battle went bad. "How do you feel?"

"I… I’m disappointed. I’m angry. Why couldn’t I do it?" I look at Jura, and he smiles. His big hands holds me on my shoulders, and gives me a shake.

"Why are you disappointed?"

"Because heroes are supposed to slay monsters! But… I failed. Didn’t you tell me that some heroes started fighting monsters when they were 6 or 7? Does that mean I can’t be a hero?"

Jura shakes me again.

"Are heroes mindless fighting golems?"

"No…" I mean, heroes are supposed to be like gods in the battlefield, no. The power of the heavens made flesh, the fury of a hurricane made into human form.

"So, why are you disappointed? Is it really the right thing to feel?"

"Uh…"

"The question is this, why did you have to kill the wolf?"

"Because it’s a monster?"

"Why do you have to kill monsters?"

"Because monsters hurt people?"

"Did it hurt you?"

"Well, not yet."

"So why do you have to kill it?"

"Because it could hurt me?"

"Then you’ll be killing everyone."

"It’s very likely to hurt me and shows aggression? If I didn’t, I would be hurt."

"Good point, but in this case, you’ve wounded it and chased it away. Is that sufficient?"

"Uncle Jura, you're giving me the moral answer again. I can sense it when you’re lying and don't believe what you say." I’m young, but I know it when I hear it. Uncle Jura will kill anyone that even scratches us, maybe only TreeTree can stop him.

Jura shrugs, and rubs his head. "Heh. Well… it’s actually comes with experience, young Lausanne. When you meet more people, and meet more monsters, you will be able to better judge who do you spare, and who do you kill."

"So that was the morally correct answer?" I think the standard education that all elves, all ‘parents’ try to give, is to be morally just. But I live in a world of wars, even 8 year old children like myself know the morally correct is just words. I live, in a world where might makes right. Where heroes can order nations, because their powers give them that right. Where demons can crush nations overnight, because their might is stronger.

Jura pauses, kneels next to me and rubs me on the head. "Yes. I have to tell you what is morally correct to do. When you deviate from them, you must be able to answer to yourself, why did you deviate from what is morally correct. I may not truly believe in them, but that is because I know what is important to me."

"Well, a hero should do what is morally just." Do they? Maybe there are other ways of thinking. Or I am trying to take the easy way out?

I sometimes think being a hero is really hard. All these types of justice, fairness, how do they think about these kind of things in the heat of battle?

--

A week later, I asked TreeTree to let me fight the forest monsters again.

I thought long about it. I mean, it’s hard to think about it. I’m only 8, and I get headaches when I think for too long, and when I do, I feel like going to the playroom and just play with my wooden toys again.

"So, why do you want to fight again?" Jura asks. Maybe a part of him wishes I stop this hero dream of mine, I sometimes still hear Uncle Jura say that when he talks with mom.

"I don't know. I just want to. Maybe I will get better."

"That's not a good reason."

"I just want to." I insist.

"Just because you want, does not mean you can get." Uncle Jura frowns, and gives me that look when I am being a bit… difficult.

"Okay. But I still want to fight monsters. I want to level up, gain experience."

Jura sighs, and he probably knows I'll run to the forest myself anyway, since TreeTree's always there looking out for us. "Fine, be careful."

So I found another small wolf to fight. There are lesser animals, like those giant rats or big squirrel like stuff that live in the forest, eating whatever fruits and leaves that grow here.

This time, I want to beat it, but, maybe I don't have to kill it. Do I still get experience that way?

We spot each other, and the wolf sizes me up. I think thats what its doing when it eyes seem to roam.

"Hello wolf. I'd like to fight you."

The wolf growls. Well, I growl back. Naturally my growl isn't really threatening.

It enters into a combat stance, so do I, my spear and dagger ready.

It charges, again, same movement like the earlier wolf. Somehow the animals have movesets that we can learn.

I duck.

[Powerstrike].

But this time, I aim somewhere in the side. It won't kill it instantly, but it'll do some harm.

The wolf winces in pain, and my dagger on my left hand swings in, and lands a few cuts.

It swipes, and its claws manage to scratch me.

"Owwwwwww!" That really, really hurt. I'm bleeding, a gash right on my left arm, from my wrist up till my elbow, and its bleeding.

Pain. I feel like my entire left hand stings. Mom won't like that. I better get back and hope it doesn't fester.

The wolf is injured too, the cuts and the stab from the spear is causing it to bleed. I think it did to me.

"Lausanne, are you alright?" TreeTree speaks into my head.

"Fine, bleeding. Can you help me later?"

"Okay."

The wolf charges, trying to take advantage of the time I am still talking to TreeTree. But my instincts, born from years of dreams, and constant practice, manage to react in time, and so, I duck, and stab the wolf again in the abdomen with my short spear.

It whimpers, as it falls onto the dirt floor. And it's voice weakens. It’s defenseless, the 2nd stab drained it’s strength, and it could only limp.

It still looks at me. This time, it’s eyes a mix of anger, and fear.

"Should I kill it?" I wonder to myself.

My left hand is bleeding, blood’s dripping, and yet, my grip on the dagger remains. The wolf takes two steps back, limping.

"Should I? It hurt me."

What would a hero do? Depends on which hero, isn’t it? Some would kill this wounded wolf, some would spare it, if it shows no further hostility.

If I were a hero, what would I do?

My eyes meet with the wolf again. It growls at me as it steps back.

I think I’ll take it’s life.

I thrust my spear at the wolf.

A loud clang.

My spear, blocked by Jura’s sword. He pushes my spear back, turns, and then shoos the wolf away, and lets the wolf slowly limp off.

"Lausanne." He turns, and notices the bleeding on my left arm.

"Why’d you stop me, uncle Jura?" Why did he block my spear?

"I think you’re not ready to take a life yet."

"Is it? Why?"

"Because you are not. Now don’t argue with me and let’s go back to TreeTree and get that gash patched up, before your mommy nags me for not looking after you."

I sigh. Oh well.

-

Stats page

Lausanne Ricola, Level 20 (cumulative)

Elf girl, aged 8

Elf warrior (Level 11)

Skills

Powerstrike

Basic evasive steps

Spear experience- medium

Dagger experience - low

Basic pain endurance

Improved reaction - basic

Shadow Stab

Villager (4 levels)

Skills

Disease resistance - basic

Cottonwork - basic

Olivework - advanced

Generic/non-job specific (5 levels)

Skills

Basic endurance

Advanced reading and writing - common tongue

Blessed by a soul tree (special)

A New Order

Year 77 Month 10

Laufen, Jura, Belle, Emile, Lausanne, even Wahlen, Brislach came back. They meet in the main room in the secret hideout, seated in a circle.

"I called everyone here to discuss the announcement from the High Council." Jura starts their meeting, the high council announced the arrangement a day ago, after formalising the necessary amendments to their rules and laws, to incorporate the existence of the new positions and institutions.

"How could we not?" Wahlen shrugs. "Everyone in my workplace is talking about it, and asking me whether I get anything…"

Jura sighs, "First of all, you might have heard the story, but let's just go through why this is happening. TreeTree, has decided that he wants a larger role in the affairs of New Freeka, since TreeTree has been tangled in multiple battles due to New Freeka’s hostile relationship with Salah, and providing free protection without compensation or representation isn’t what TreeTree considers to be an ideal arrangement. This will give TreeTree the greater ability to choose the battles it fights, and avoids those it doesn't want to participate in."

"But isn't that what… tree spirits do?" Brislach asks. "Tree spirits raised by elves protect their cities and capitals? Are they not benevolent spirits of the earth that protects the inhabitants and their surroundings?"

"That’s a story often passed down, but the truth is not so… simple. We do not know what price does the elven nations pay to their tree spirits, in order to obtain their assistance. If there are, I would think they are secrets of the kings and the royal court. Perhaps the Tree spirits of those nations owe the elves some kind of favor too. We cannot use the charity of other tree spirits as an expectation of TreeTree’s demands and conduct."

The other elves nod, prompting Jura to continue.

"A healthy ecosystem must have everyone playing their part. A New Freeka that does not contribute back to the system is not productive to the entire valley."

"Ecosystem?"

"Yeah, a word from TreeTree. It means the system of how each individual and creature in the valley interacts with each other."

An awkward pause.

"Ah. Back to the announcement. TreeTree decided to appoint me Supreme Counsel, and Laufen as Vice Counsel, of the newly set up Valtrian order. Now, what this means is that, both of us are now part of the high council of New Freeka."

"Some of them say its a power grab." Wahlen voices out the rumors from the ground. There’s plenty other such thoughts and rumors passing around...

"In some ways, it is." Jura nods. "Fact is, a third of all tax collected are now under our control, and so is a third of the militia. A skeleton group of administrative staff and treasury has been assigned to assist the Valtrian order as well. And that is a heavy burden we now have to bear, to fulfill TreeTree's will…"

Another moment of silence, as everyone digests the meaning of this change. Its big, since the 7 of them are named as the 'Selected', special individuals that TreeTree has commanded to be specially protected. In time, this may mean having guards assigned to each of them.

"Any… thoughts?"

Wahlen grumbles, "Uncle Jura, to be honest, I… I don’t really care what TreeTree wants to do. I am trying to move on, actually. We lived years under the TreeTree's care and protection, like refugees, like war victims, and now, there is a town that springs up next to Freeka, one of nonhumans like us, that we can return and now live a life as regular people again. A life, similar to the past, before all this destruction. I even have a job now… and friends!"

Jura pauses, and he looks at Wahlen. "TreeTree…"

But before Jura could continue his response, Wahlen already continued. " I understand that all this is actually possible because TreeTree’s presence and protection of New Freeka. But this pronouncement does make our life a little bit more complicated."

"I understand. After living so long in the shadows of war, all of us would really cherish these moments of normalcy and calm…"

"I would like to continue having anormal, like everyone else. Live a life in a town, work… Being a part of the ruling elite is something that… never crossed my mind." Wahlen and Brislach moved to New Freeka to work and live some time ago, and frankly, I can see why.

"It’s disruptive for the life you’ve tried to rebuild in New Freeka, but please, bear with us. There’s bigger things at play here." Jura nods. "I’ll try not to disrupt your life as much as we can., so you can still live some of that normal life. But things will change, and not everything will remain normal."

Wahlen sighs. "I suppose that will be all I can ask."

It’s Brislach's turn to speak. "We’re going to be special, isn’t it."

Laufen nods. "Yes. A strange twist of fate, but we are now a special group in this valley..."

Well, with some reluctance, the 7 elves accepted their fate.

The announcement was rather confusing to the populace of New Freeka, but to most of them, it’s something they soon forgot, since, reorganisations at the top happen frequently, and for refugees who lived through changes of power, such things are common. Every time a King changes, there’s bound to be some restructuring.

So, the new organisation of the season, is the Valtrian Order.

That's the name I came up with, just a combination of the words 'Valley' and 'Tree'.

A few days later,

"Greetings." The exiled wizard of Baroosh visits the inner courtyard of my main tree, surprising Jura who’s taking a rest, a little overwhelmed from the sudden influx of matters requiring his attention.

"Ah, wizard Madeus."

"I hear that you are hiring, Supreme Counsel." The wizard smiles, and bows.

Jura coughs at the title and the bow, perhaps the wizard is mocking him. "Ah… yes."

"Well, good. Allow me to get to the point. I would like to offer my services to the Tree Spirit."

Jura coughs quite hard, and I think he's choking. After a few coughs he recovers, and looks into the wizard's eyes. "Surely, you jest."

"No. I mean it. I would like to offer my services to the Tree Spirit and the Valtrian order, and it’s something I’ve been thinking for days since I found about the whole Valtrian order’s setup."

Jura could not answer, so he just pauses.

"Accepted." I didn’t let Jura say more.

I do have need for a mage's services, so the fact that he comes and offers it, is very much welcome. Whether he has the right motives, that can be sorted out later. As it is, I needed someone as a counterpoint to Alexis, to share knowledge of the magicks from a different source, and Alexis, as a ‘foreign’ hero, lacks the nuts and bolts of magick, since her power over magic is likely to be innate, something of a gift arising from her cheat power. A regular mage like Madeus, would likely have a more robust understanding of basic magic, as he has to explore it in bits and pieces since young.

The wizard staggers back, not spoken to me telepathically before. "Ah… Apologies. It is just a surprise to hear the voice in my head… so this is what Yvon and the councillors hear when they speak of the Tree Spirit."

"Welcome wizard. We have much to speak about. Jura, can you please summon the captains of the existing Valtrian order. I wish to speak to them later."

Jura nods, and leaves, his cape fluttering as he walks. He has a special uniform made for him, one that identify him as Supreme Counsel, and everywhere he goes, a few of the Valtrian guards would accompany him. There would be plans for a new set of uniforms for the Valtrian guards, but that is a lesser priority, so for now, their uniform remain as it was.

"So, wizard. I believe your name is Madeus?"

He nods.

"Alright. Madeus, welcome to the team, and first of all, as a tree who doesn’t get to go out much, my knowledge about the wider world is really limited. So tell me, what do you know about… the wider world? And heroes. And of that void magic the Princess encountered."

He pauses, and stops. "That’s a lot to go through, but… are you referring to my research back in Baroosh?"

"That, would be a good place to start." I lead him, using the vines, to one of the subsidiary trees' external rooms. Since some of the elves moved out, it has been repurposed into more of a study for Lausanne. She’s out now, so we can use it. I’m hoping to make a library here someday.

"Back then, I am researching on the magics of the heroes… so I collected various books and writings left by the heroes of the past. One of such items is the Mad-Hero, Arsene Emir, which… obsessed on summoning more of his friends."

"May I ask why?"

"The King’s curious about the origins of their power. By discovering how they are summoned, perhaps we could gleam a hint."

"Oh?"

"Kings, in the case of the High King of Baroosh, is a very old man, he is close to a 100 this year. So, he has met many generations of heroes, who went on to slay the demon kings. When he was only a teenager, he met a hero who appeared in the Baroosh, freshly summoned by the gods. Our king offered him shelter, and spoke to him at length, and came to understand that the heroes all come from another world way unlike our own. But, at the back of his mind, he really wanted to know where the heroes’ power comes from, and whether, just whether, there’s a way to gain that power for himself."

Well, okay. The High King of Baroosh just kind of went up in the list of threats, but somehow the wizard still talks of him rather reverentially.

"Well, the hero didn't know much, only knew that each of the gods give a few heroes their blessing, and as such, that generation, there were ten of them, scattered throughout the world. Anyway, the point is, the King seen the heroes when they are freshly summoned. The hero he met then, his name is Andrei, had the power of bending earth, such that everything was drawn to him, or away from him. He could make things heavy, or light."

Uh… Madeus, are you going off tangent?

"When the King met the last generation of heroes, he was… rather disappointed. Their powers are still amazing by most measure, but yet, compared to Andrei the Earthbreaker, there was just too large a gap. So, the King wondered whether there’s a mistake in the summoning of heroes."

"Well, the heroes still beat the demon king, did they not?" I think heroes should be judged on whether they beat the demon king. That’s their purpose, right?

"The point I tried to make to my King, is there’s just too many different types of heroes. Consider the story from 220 years ago, there was only a single hero summoned. And a single hero, became Emperor Taksa Moor Nungsari. That hero later is the founder of the Darmoon dynasty, which later splintered into the Takde, Nung, Salah, the now destroyed Moras and Fikris kingdoms."

I think you didn’t answer the question isn’t it? "Sounds like there’s nothing much, other than history." I mean, so what if? If my own experience serves as a guide, it could be their attempted ‘extraction’ of souls didn’t work that well, maybe the truck that supposed to hit the bus missed and the rest of the passengers survived.

"Well, yes." Madeus slouches, his head downcast. "My research got nowhere. It seems a lot of it is on the individuals, and some strange stroke of luck. And it’s not as if the lesser number of heroes is always stronger than when more heroes are summoned. For every theory I came up with, there’s always some other incident that proves otherwise."

"Okay. So heroes are random." Actually, does he know about star mana?

"Yes. If there’s anything that I actually did find, is that heroes are getting younger. And I have no idea why."

"Huh?"

Okay that’s absolutely a letdown. I was hoping to gain some insights into heroes and the demon king, but looks like I’ll have to try elsewhere. Never mind, since he seems rather knowledgeable of history, let’s try a different question. "Anyway, since we are also talking a bit about history…. is there a time before heroes?"

The wizard sips his tea and thinks. "Uh… there is supposed to be a time before heroes and demon king… but it is millenniums ago and we don’t have any records."

"When is the first documented demon king?"

"We also don't know. There was a demon king, Demon King Amadeus, that destroyed close to 80% of the world, and with it most of the world's written records. So the information predating Demon King Amadeus is scarce… and the word of mouth stories are not reliable."

"Fine, tell me about Demon King Amadeus, how did the world defeat it from such a horrible state?"

"Uh… the legends of that era is not very consistent, it did happen about many thousands of years ago… There are a few theories… the most believed one is that a group of heroes were summoned in the scattered islands, and they later defeated the Demon King."

"Has any other demon king come close to that level of destruction?"

"Not many, but a few notable demon kings did destroy at least a few continents each. That we know of, Amadeus is successful enough to destroy all the continents…"

Hmmm… "Why didn't the heroes stop them?"

"Again, we have very little knowledge. My own understanding is, its a case of the heroes being summoned too late, and needed time to get stronger. In quite a few cases with other demon kings, overconfident heroes tried when they are not ready and got killed."

"How’d the world recover from something like Demon King Amadeus?"

"Uh… I’d think there’s survivors, just a lot of them in hiding. And the heroes that defeated Amadeus went out to defeat two more demon kings, so the legend goes, so that gave the world some time to recover from the extensive damage… But all this is really word of mouth, since written records during the era is really really rare. We don't really even know whether the destruction is really that extensive, since the records from that time of reconstruction is very rare."

"Has there ever been instances where… heroes were summoned twice?"

"...not that I know of, but… possible?" Madeus seems totally clueless on this. Fine.

"Fine. Tell me about this… 10 year demon king cycle." I mean, that’s something that I wonder about. Why 10 years?

"Oh. We have no idea why. Perhaps its some quirk in the stars. It’s not a rule though, there’s been exceptions a lot of times, and we have no idea why either."

Okay, not helping. Let’s try other kinds of questions. "Why did the world leave all the fighting to heroes? Why not the locals? Are there nobody at the level of the heroes?"

"Uh… its… its just the way it always has been…"

"Really?"

"But I would think it's really really hard. Even slaying a demon champion needs very high level fighters and mages."

Once again, not helping. Is there some level wall or ceiling that exists for the locals, that the world must rely on external powers? "Hmmm…. never mind then. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, I will borrow your knowledge of history more."

"You are welcome, consider it a proof of my sincerity." Madeus nods and takes a sip from the wooden cup.

"Anyway, why do you want to serve me?"

"When you managed to undo the damage suffered by the princess, I realised that you must be a great and powerful being. To serve a great being is a privilege, an honor, and I hope to be part of that greatness. Maybe, the greatness would rub off a bit on me." Ah, a glory chaser. Hmmm.. I’ll need to watch him a bit more carefully.

"Hmmm, greatness may not be something I can offer. I can offer you fruits."

Madeus laughs, as a bowl of fruits appeared before him. He smiles, grabs one, and bites.

Year 77 Month 11

An envoy from Salah came, bearing strange news. One of… unconditional ceasefire. A truce. Surely, such an offer soon riled up the entire high council, who are outraged, happy, greedy. Pretty much everything.

It is the first time Jura seats on the high council, with his 33% voting rights on such matters, and a right to veto certain decisions.

"We have the advantage, we should demand reparations from Salah!" One of the councillors said. "They are afraid, now they want a truce!"

"I grow tired of war." Another councillor asks, "Perhaps we should just take it."

"No! Salah has caused us a great deal of harm, we should not take it without compensation!"

As they argue, they eventually settled into two camps, a group demanding extra compensation, another saying to accept.

So, Yvon, as the chair of the high council, turns to Jura. "Supreme Counsel, as representative of the Tree Spirit, would you have any words to add?"

"Tree Spirit is of the view we should accept it. Ongoing combat is not productive for the valley, there are bigger concerns…"

My first concern, is the demonic rifts. Those should start appearing very soon, as those happen well in advance of the demon king’s arrival.

"But Salah’s not exactly a trustworthy country to deal with? We could accept the truce and they’ll break it!"

"So? We do not have any offensive capability at the moment. A truce is good for us, since it allows to trade with Salah."

With that, the truce is accepted, since Jura’s voting rights meant almost all of the councillors have to oppose Jura to get anything through. Of course, this is rather shocking to Salah’s envoy as well, who expected a rejection, and was rather prepared to die.

Year 77 Month 12

"Here’s the man you asked me to find, tree spirit. I’ll leave the room now." Jura bows, and leaves the old man standing alone in the small room, right next to the [Tree of Prayers]. It’s a ‘special room’, as it’s more of a courtyard, with one tree in the middle, with sunlight coming in from above. It’s winter, so there’s some snow coming in.

The old man, a half elf, looks around and shrugs. "What’s this…"

And I speak into his head. "Hello, Wesley."

He pauses, and tries to see whether there’s anyone else in the room. "Is this some trick? Or magic?"

I give him some time, and after a while he stops.

"Fine. Who’re you?"

"I’m TreeTree, the Tree Spirit of the valley."

He rubs his chin. "Huh, so there really is a tree spirit. So, what can I do for you?"

"I’d like you to help conduct some… ceremonies for me. Something a person like yourself, a former priest, can do."

"What kind… of ceremonies?"

"Simple ones. I have a few in mind, for the dying, for death, and for births. Laufen will assist you, but she is not fit for the role of a master of ceremonies. Are you keen?"

The man pauses, "What’d I get?"

"A fair pay, accommodation. And some tea to help with the aches you have. Additional things can be discussed."

The man paces, and walks around the courtyard a few times, clearly this is something he’s thinking much about, until he pauses and asks. "Which god am I praying to?"

"None."

His face is that of shock… "So… what rituals are we actually doing?"

"I’ll let you know, but first, are you keen?"

The first of the ceremonies happened a few days later, one of the older folk in New Freeka passed away. In New Freeka, the population comprises a mix of elves, dwarves, centaurs, treefolk, half-elfs, some lizardmen and quite a few more others, though elves form the bulk of them.

So, there’s many ways of going about the corpse, such as cremation, burial, magical deconstruction, petrification or transformation into a statue. The presence of magic adds a large variety of possible ways a corpse can be ‘sent off’.

Anyway, that’s just how things are elsewhere.

"What’s this?" An elderly woman, the deceased’s wife asks, as the corpse of the old man is brought in by some of the guards on stretchers.

Wesley smiles, a calm, reassuring smile from years of training as a priest, and he warmly greets the elderly woman, "New Freeka’s welcomed the Tree Spirit into its fold, and, this, is one of the many ways the great tree has given us his gifts."

It’s a large open space, and there’s a curved, bent tree, as if the tree grew up, then sideways. Along it’s trunk, there is a large opening in it, filled with greenish liquid. Multiple flowers dot the side of that trunk.

Wesley nods to the guards, and a few of the men assist to place the corpse of the old man slowly into the opening.

"With this, the dead will be one with the Tree Spirit, his soul on their journey to the world beyond."

The corpse slowly sinks into the thick greenish liquid, and for effect, the flowers around the trunk start to bloom a bit bigger, and a pleasant, calming, soothing scent is released into the room. There’s even some wind and rustling sounds, to add to the moment. And when the corpse fully sinks and disappears into the green liquid, the flowers glow slightly.

The family cries for a good hour, as Wesley speaks to each of the family, giving them a blessing. He then picks the flowers from the side of the trunk, and passes one to each of the family members.

"What happens to the body?"

"It is now with the Tree Spirit, and has found peace, at last." Wesley says, and somehow, it’s probably due to his past [priest] levels, it’s really convincing. "These flowers contain the essences of your deceased father, and they will last longer than normal flowers, but they will too fade after a year. Think it as a reminder, of he who has now left us."

The elderly woman nods, "Is there… something more permanent, perhaps a marker that we can get? To remind us of our beloved?"

Wesley smiles, and he touches the trunk. And from the greenish liquid, a small bone floats up. He carefully picks it up with a special spoon, and places it in a ceremonial wooden bowl.

"Ah yes. This, is the condensed bones of your father. Keep it as you wish, or make it into something." The elderly woman accepts with tears in her eyes, and after a bit more small talk, the entire family leaves.

Wesley breathes a huge sigh of relief.

It’s the first time this ceremony is shown to the citizens of New Freeka, and even the guards themselves have not seen it.

"How’d it go?" Wesley asks, and only Laufen remains inside the courtyard of death. There’s some proposed names on the courtyard, perhaps to call it the Garden of Return, to signify one’s return to the Tree Spirit. I quite like it, but I’m still pondering for other names before finalising it with Wesley and Laufen, since Laufen’s going to play a larger role in the ‘rituals’ and ‘religious’ aspects of the Valtrian order.

"Good."

"Is that really the bone of the deceased?"

"Yes."

"Ah, good. I’ve not lied then."

"What’d both of you think of the ceremony?"

Wesley sits and smokes some kind of rolled leaves, and he nods. "It’s… easy. I believe the tale will spread soon, and more families will ask for this ceremony."

"Any views on how to improve it?"

Laufen shakes her head. "I like it, but let me sleep on it a little. Maybe I’ll get some ideas later."

"Me too. I’m so nervous doing it for the first time, all I want to do is just get a hang of it first."

"Very well, it’s a good first time. Go get some rest." The both nod and leave the courtyard, and I return into my soul realm to have a look at the results of the ceremony.

"The dead’s soul is in good condition and a state of calm. Reincarnation to the next world is going to be quite a breeze. It’s actually an interesting modification of the elven tradition of burying the dead next to the soul trees, and instead go for the route of direct absorption."

Well, that’s fine, but my focus is on… collection, so I check my log.

"Ah man, no ‘seeds’. Well, at least there’s some essences…"

This ceremony, is actually derived from that little experience I had with both Alexis and later Falklay, and that exposed tree trunk, is really a modified biolab ‘pod’. The idea I had, is really rather simple. I want more of the ‘seeds’ that came with Falklay’s death, and I’m really keen to try and get more of such ‘seeds’ by way of ‘absorbing’ the corpses of the dead, and the dying.

By giving the citizens, the families a pleasant experience, I’m hoping to get fresher ‘dead’, and with that, a higher chance of harvesting whatever I can get. A part of me feels a little tiny bit bad for desecrating the dead, but the bulk of me feels it’s totally fine, since, I’m playing the religious role here! And besides, they’ll just end up burning the body, so that’s not exactly any better than what I’m doing.

Well, the next ceremony is something where Laufen plays a bigger role. A birth, and babies. In some worlds, there are rituals like baptisms, or flower baths, or special chants, to bless a newborn.

Children is our future. And my future.

"Congratulations on the baby." Laufen bows and shakes the hand of the young mother, the father next to her watches. The little infant cradled in the mother's arms cry a little, and the mother quickly shakes and tries to soothe the baby.

"Ah… what can we do for you?"

"As the Vice Counsel of the Valtrian Order, I'd like to present a small present for the family, for the newborn."

Laufen hands over a basket, containing a few bottles.

"That bottle contains a special liquid made from the sap of the Tree Spirit, it will boost the infants strength and vitality. It’ll also help with the cold weather." Made using the [Childcare corner]'s special syrup, mixed with some essences, some minerals, it should give a good boost to any weak baby, and gives a shot of ‘warmth’ to help the baby tide through winter.

"That other bottle is something for the sick babies, if they have a fever or a cold, or just don't look too well." Well, I had something given to Roma back when he was a tiny baby, so this is the same thing, bottled up. Made from [healing juice] condensed into a thick gooey sweet syrup.

"That last one, is if the baby's hungry but the mommy's out of milk." It's a thick preserved juice containing a mix of nutrients, meant to temporarily tide over the child's hunger. Again, made from the [childcare corner].

"Ah…" The father and mother seem rather surprised, but the father seems afraid to receive, as is normal for gifts. Perhaps there’s some expectation of payment, or some kind of subtle extortion, as refugees often encounter in their journeys.

"It's free, a gift with no strings, its something the Valtrian order wants to do for the children born of the valley." Laufen bows, and then she starts to walk out, she flashes a warm, motherly smile before she walks out. "Please let me know if you have any challenges with the child."

Well, although Laufen's official title is now Vice Counsel, she's not exactly keen to participate in the political kind of activities, so, as with all quasi-religious, militant organisations, there should be someone to spearhead the public service, charitable, social elements of the organisation.

Laufen's duties are to organise the gifts for the newly born, set up a creche for young children and babies within the Valtrian Order’s space, an orphanage for the orphans, and a kindergarten and combat oriented school for the older kids. Charity and such social services "soften" the image of the Valtrian order, and cultivate have a generation with favorable views of the Order.

There’s a lot of births, on average, about 5 to 7 per day, so Laufen’s got many homes to visit. In time, Emile, Belle and the workers will also play the role of delivering these gifts, but for now, the 2 younger ladies are helping out as her assistants.

Some of the parents would outright refuse the gifts, and that’s fine. It’s given at no compulsion, and Laufen herself would not push, after all, parents have the right to choose what they give to their infants. Gradually, though, this is helping to build a positive reputation for the Valtrian order, and build public support for this ‘new’ entity that suddenly emerged.

As part of the transition to the newly setup Valtrian order, a large patch of land around the Tree of Prayer has been transferred over, so a bit of construction work is going on to build all the facilities required, though we had to prioritise of the burial services first, which is fairly easy since it’s mostly just setting up the space for the tree.

Also, I’d also like to have the Valtrian order earn some income independent of the tax collections, in order to fund all the other ideas I have in my head for my gradual takeover of New Freeka.

One of these ideas is to set up a clinic, or a healing chamber of some kind, using the biolab, and the medical juices. With this, I could charge adventurers, soldiers and whatnot a fee for using my healing services, similar to how it is for other healers all around the world. This won’t be much, but it’ll help subsidise the cost of staff.

Next, would be to sell some special products. I’ve got some in mind, perhaps the ginseng, if I could make them of an acceptable quality, they would probably sell for a good price. And higher quality crops, directly to the market. But that would involve dedicating some of the [subsidiary trees] for that purposes. Or a special series of olive oils for ceremonial use and sale. I think that could sell, since people love ‘enchanted’ stuff.

The processed, preserved healing fruits is also a potential product, but whether it’s a worthwhile venture may depend on the price.

I also have my ability to make wood products using my wood-shaping magic, but I think that’s probably not a good use of my time unless I can make them automatically.

Additionally, the beetles could go and kill monsters and bring back some loot for sale.

Oh wait. My large beetle-pods are ready too.

Large beetle pods - completed

Enhanced interior structures - completed

Fruit bombs - increased range and power - completed

Eye-Tree Stage I research option unlocked - 15 months remaining

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 2 - 6 months remaining

Tree - volcanic adaptation stage 3 - 15 months remaining

Roots - Volcanic mineral harvesting - stage 1 - 5 months remaining

I had an epiphany one day, which is, there’s sulfur in the volcano, shouldn’t that allow me to make sulfuric acid? Would I be able to have fruits with highly corrosive acid in it? Or beetles that spit acid? A ranged unit?

As a result, I just had to conduct research on the ability of my volcano-adapted subsidiary tree’s roots to safely absorb sulfur through their roots. I think that would be the first step in acquiring any sort of ranged unit. So, I’m going to have larger beetles, hopefully ranged beetles, and also flying beetles, acidic corrosive beetles.

Plenty of variation in the beetle family. Of course, this makes Horns rather happy. I still haven’t figured out how to get that step from Sulfur to acid, but I’ll figure it out once we get there. Perhaps it’ll be some kind of large segregated tank where the sulfur is processed.

Oh well.

I think I’m starting to have a bit more things going on than I can handle.

Ah.

I think I need help.

Time to create another artificial soul.

Tree wants more trees

Year 78 Month 1.

An eruption.

A fine way to start the new year, really.

The damned volcano erupted and destroyed every single thing near it. Close to half of my beetles failed to escape, so they died, all buried under debris, dust, lava, rocks and well, all the other things that volcanoes tend to spit out.

I mean, I sorta figured that volcanoes, especially one still pumping out lava would be somewhat dangerous, but I guess after not seeing any major eruption, I thought it’s one of those ‘stable’ volcanoes. To some extent, I guess I’m a little complacent there…

But still, why didn’t my roots sense anything? Don’t volcanoes have tremors or minor quakes before going off like that? Or does the magic in this world messes with such processes?

Oh well, this is a minor setback, a bit of delay to my volcano expansion plans. If life went too easy, I’d probably think something bad is gonna happen real soon. Probably pushes the plans back by a couple of months, to let the environment settle down and also rebuild my forces, since I do need to regenerate the beetles before attempting my assault on the magma golems, that spawn closer to the now partly exposed caldera. I’m rather eager to test out the new large beetles in combat, since they are bigger, and have bigger legs and horns, to see how they perform against those golems.

So, I turn my attention to the next few things I have in mind.

In New Freeka, there’s a massive hall with a few [external biolabs], and Jura is helping to guide the Valtrian soldiers. The hall itself is filled with animals… and plants, gathered from the region, an exercise we started last month.

The men were sitting idle, so, we sent them out on missions to collect different kinds of plants and animals. As many as they could find, whatever they’ve not seen before, or whatever they notice that’s different from New Freeka, and bring it back. Thanks to this exercise, I’m now going through all the plants and animals they’ve brought back. 5 biolabs, side by side, and the soldiers, under Jura’s supervision, help to put all the specimens in.

After the analysis, some soldiers are tasked to bring them to a patch of empty land and pass them to a different group, those with [farming] or [planting] skills, for them to plant.

The intention is fairly simple, there’s a lack of plant diversity in the valley, and that needs to be addressed. Secondly, I’m hoping to somehow unlock more [unique trees], like the [ginseng trees], such that I can produce new items. Third, new species of crops would lead to me having more [subsidiary tree - crops] variety.

And now, I have the manpower to push these guys out on a regional ‘harvesting’ mission.

The process of analysing the plants took 5 days, and the animals another 4 days. The reason I asked for the animals, is actually just to throw off whoever’s watching us, but it’s a waste to not analyse the animals after collecting them, so after the animals were ‘scanned’ by the biolabs, they’re placed in an area that’s meant to be a menagerie.

[New crop species unlocked - Wheat, Jackfruit, Light Corn, Blackpotato, Rye, Red hops, Blueberry, Fireberry]

[New Tree type unlocked : Common herbal bushes. Bushes containing a wide variety of herbs. Herb varieties appear at random]

"How’s the register coming along?"

"It’ll take some time, Supreme Counsel." The young man, a junior [herbalist] bows when responding to Jura’s question.

"It’s something the Tree Spirit wants done as soon as possible. This is a big task."

Well, actually Trevor and Dimitree already built a compilation of the plants we now have in the valley, and their characteristics that they can identify using the data from the biolabs. But, I had Jura hire a herbalist to start work on a physical copy of a register. Just to compare the kind of information a herbalist would normally take down, and one prepared by my tree-minds.

The young man bows. "I’m honored, and I can tell it is an important exercise."

The herbalist, together with the ‘gardeners’ and other farmhands, will be the ones managing the ‘garden’ in the compound of the Valtrian order. It’s one of those odd jobs.

As for the animals, I’ve left them to some of the rangers to care for. In the town of New Freeka, there are some rangers, and some [flock tenders] or [herders] that have some skills with animals, so they are the ones looking after the collection of animals.

It’s not a perfect match in terms of skill and job class, but oh well. Maybe they’ll gain the class someday.

Year 78 Month 2

The Valtrian Order separation exercise this month. The military force that’s transferred to us is a little too large to my liking, and their competencies a bit lacking, so, like what companies do when their staff size is not optimal… we have… retrenchments!

I kinda feel like walking up to guys and tell them, "You’re fired!"

But that’s not exactly a nice way to do things.

Jura and the captains identified those who are not so good at their jobs, based on their performance during the collection exercise, spoke these non-performing soldiers whether they have other secondary talents they want to share, whether they want to take part in the other roles happening in the Order, or take the money and go find another job.

I mean, if I’m going to be hiring herbalists and all those other ‘specialists’, I need money, and money isn’t free, so, gotta reshuffle them around. Priorities!

One must cut away the rotting branch for a new one to grow. Of course, there is plenty of crying, plenty of anger, and plenty of cussing.

Maybe some retaliation.

"Ivy."

"Yes, master."

"Monitor those we have fired. See whether they do anything unusual. Let me know if there are any attempted retaliation, but do not interfere unless I instruct you to."

"As you command."

My new tree mind, and unlike Trevor or Dimitree who has responsibility to watch the valley and the forest, Ivy's task is focused on the Valtrian Order, observing the citizens and reporting any unusual matters. I also task her to play a hidden watcher, on all financial transactions and trade transactions.

Watching the movements of some 3,000 to 4,000 employees of the Valtrian Order is a laborious affair, even if there are trees everywhere, and Ivy pretty much has little capacity to do anything else

A part of me feels like I have become that which I hated in my past life, the "big brother" who intrudes in on everyone's privacy, that overly micromanaging boss that looks through everything I do with a fine-toothed comb, but… this is a magical world, and I have to pick the bigger baddy here.

Curbing corruption, finding traitors take priority here.

Even in their somewhat-perilous situation, people will find ways to cheat, or steal, to take a little more for themselves. So, I thought I would be ready, since I know about it and know it exists. Nobody’s innocent. But Ivy's report still stunned me. The extent of it.

All of the employees engage in at least one minor misconduct.

It's usually relatively small, like a coin or two per transaction, or a little slip of coin to move up the queue in the burial services. Some soldiers would steal utensils from the mess hall, and bring home for their family. Or intentionally tearing a piece of uniform so that they can use the cloth for something else. Or administrative staff stealing paper or writing equipment.

I sigh. When Ivy first reported the extent of such things, I just froze. But before I could lash out in anger and kill all these people.

"Were you expecting saints from these former refugees? The fact that they adapted to a new way of life so quickly is already admirable." Meela sometimes dispenses a bit of wisdom.

Well, true. This world has no proper regimented education system to teach a sense of ‘morals’, and parents trying to survive probably have a different set of ‘morals’ than me. If there is, there isn’t enough time or stability for it to really sink in, since the world gets hammered by the demon king every now and then. If there’s anywhere with a proper education system, it’s probably in those cloud cities, or the moving giant-turtle islands, or the walking towers of the great deserts.

I wonder how many years of formal education to the citizens of New Freeka have? Ah, some other day’s worries.

Ultimately, I decided to just have the worst offenders retrenched, and decide to just put up with the minor ‘infractions’ among the rest. Perhaps some day I would get a group of morally upright employees, but for now, this is the cards I have.

"Should I continue monitoring them, Master?" Ivy’s not fond of the task, but she still obeys me.

"Well… yes."

"It’s taking up most of my processing ability, master. Filtering through all the language and smalltalk is really challenging."

Ah. Well…

"Fine, will it help if you restrict the scope to within our compounds and just the area around them?"

"A lesser area would mean less to monitor, yes it will help a bit. But I estimate it’ll still use up 70% of my available processing power."

"Unfortunately I’ll need someone to watch these guys… please bear with it. Maybe it’ll get easier once you gain some levels."

"As you command, master."

Year 78 Month 2 Week 3

The first large beetles emerge from their pods. The volcano kind of started to stabilise, so I send the large-volcano-adapted beetles on their first missions. This is why they are created, after all. They easily dispatch any of the lesser monsters that appear, but their first encounter with the massive magma golems is disappointing.

Though they now have the size, they still lack the necessary firepower to take out the golems. At least they can take three punches from the large golems before dying, unlike regular beetles, who just get squashed underfoot.

According to Jura and the data gathered from the adventurers guild in New Freeka, magma golems are considered monsters for adventurers around the level 50-60, and with suitable gear. A person with suitable skills could possibly take one out at level 40.

Given that my regular beetles are a match of soldiers around level 20-30, I guess the large beetles still need a lot more upgrades to give those magma golems a good fight.

Ah. Back to the research queue.

Eye-Tree Stage I research option unlocked - 13 months remaining

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 2 - 4 months remaining

Tree - volcanic adaptation stage 3 - 13 months remaining

Roots - Volcanic mineral harvesting - stage 1 - 3 months remaining

Following the acquisition of the various new plant species, I had both Dimitree and Trevor attempt to use their abilities to improve the plant diversity in the valley. To some extent, the valley in both sides is largely dominated with my type of tree, though at least the ThreeTree of mana grants some visual varieties.

I may need to look up some pollens and bees, and flowering plants as well.

Oh well.

Well, at least with the improved inflow of gems and rare crystals, I’ve managed to upgrade the [rootnet] to support a larger capacity of tree-energy. The upgraded rootnet will take up to 100,000 normal trees, which also means more artificial souls. I’d probably like to make some more tree-minds, to take some load off Ivy, since the task of monitoring so many people is a monumental task.

"TreeTree. I’ve got a proposal."

Huh. A proposal from Alexis. "Well, let’s hear it."

"I’ve been talking to Meela, and I’m thinking of using the biolab to make a body. Not a full flesh and blood kind of body since it’s clearly not at that level, but, I’m thinking of experimenting with Treefolk corpses, as a transition between regular sentient species, and well… trees."

Huh.

"Well, my theory is that Treefolk exists as some kind of magical evolutionary-in between, between a tree, and regular humans. So, looking at treefolk is a good starting point to figure out what are the magical mechanics within their body which allows them to do what they do…"

"So you’re asking for my permission to do this experiment?"

"Yes. The goal is to be able to create flexible wooden… uhm… armors, as a vessel for souls." I think she meant robots. Huh, she wants to create a body for herself, well, there is still that dryad body that's formed from her corpse… Maybe she forgot about that already?

"I am rather fond of the treefolk. They give me no trouble, have shown willingness to defend the valley when instructed, and have been polite and respectful whenever contacted."

"Ah… so that's a no?"

"I will ask the treefolks for their permission. Conducting autopsies on the dead should be approved by their kin."

"...that makes sense." Well, Alexis seems to understand that, at least. "Ah, there is also one other thing…"

"Huh?"

"I am thinking of expanding. I'll need space… and materials… and some of your beetles."

"What do you mean?"

"Ah, I reached level 30, and I have this new skill called [Locational Survey Tools]. It… allows me to take control of a few beetles and place research equipment on them, and this will speed up research on environment-resistances. Kind of making a… a research-oriented scout out of the beetle. I can operate 2 at any one time."

Hmm. Actually I think that sounds a bit like the Moon Buggy, but an actual bug! Or perhaps the Mars Rover. Fascinating. She's going into the whole science route, which makes sense as a spirit haunting a massive research biolab. Would a flying bug with this be essentially a flying science vessel?

"Fine, you get 2 beetles. Let me know of the materials."

Alexis claps her ghostly hands in joy. "Thank you."

-

The treefolk chiefs visit a few days later. Three of them, one from before, and two I have not met. It seems their number has increased over the years, as immigration brings more and more treefolks to the valley.

"It is an honor to be summoned by the tree spirit..." The three treefolks prostrate before me… I had forgotten that treefolks revere tree spirits. "Your presence bathes the entire valley in a warm energy, that fuels our health and gives us strength."

Wait, do my powers work on treefolk? Why does he talk like it does?

Holy cow, if it does that opens up a big, no, giant can of worms I need to explore.

"You feel my presence?"

The oldest of the treefolk, the one I met before, still prostrating on the floor, is the one to speak. "We always have, the energy and radiance through the roots, each step we take, we feel your growing dominion. Even in the depths of winter, we feel and share in the warmth through our rooted feets."

Wait, is he trying to just suck up to me? Hmm… Anyway, let's get down to it.

"Ah… the reason I wish to speak to you, is to talk about the dead and the deceased. I'd like to first understand about cultural norm, where the body of the deceased treefolk is normally split into many parts, some as tools, some as fertiliser, and some as ornaments… is this, an unbreakable rule, and is there any taboo around giving it to me for my… studies?"

The treefolk chieftains all share a glance, and then it is the same elder treefolk, he raises his head to respond. "It’s a cultural practice, most families will want to keep their deceased family members’ bodies, to assimilate into their own. If you want a body… we would have to provide one without any family members, as I doubt any of our own would part with it. Every bit of a treefolk should be recycled."

I see. Interesting. "Very well then,, that will have to do. And you can stand up now, you’ve prostrated long enough."

"I’m not sure whether Vice Counsel Laufen has relayed our message previously…" One of the other treefolk chiefs speak.

"Oh, what is this about?"

"It’s regarding the recent gifts to the young children. While the rest of the population do benefit from it, we, the treefolk, do not really benefit from them."

"Ah." So, is this a complaint?

"We’re wondering whether we… we can get something more suited for our young saplings."

Oh. Customer feedback. Now why didn’t Laufen tell me about it. "When was this message delivered to Vice Counsel Laufen?"

The three chieftains look at each other, "Uh… last week perhaps? When she came to deliver a gift for our newest sapling."

Speaking of Treefolk mating and childbirth, they’re actually really interesting and different from the rest of the humanoid races, although they also have humanoid like appearances. There’s actually a few ways treefolk mate, and it depends on the male, female, or whether the treefolk is a hermaphrodite, ie contains the mating organs of both. In short, treefolk retains their own plant-like mating systems, yet, also incorporate the mating systems of humanoids.

Their available ways of mating include actually having intercourse, a form of pollen-fertilisation where the female organs open up for the male organs to fertile, or oddly, and perhaps unique to treefolk, is via third parties, usually an insect or a ‘carrier’, like a bee or a butterfly that carries the fertilised pollens from the male organs to the female, who then, if he/she judges the pollens to be suitable, then allows it to fertilise him/her. Apparently it’s taboo for a treefolk to self-fertilise, for the hermaphrodites, but in times of great disaster, it is permitted to keep up the treefolk numbers.

There’s also another external variant of mating, in which the female organ produces ‘empty seeds’, something like an unfertilised egg, which, she can leave in a specified location for any interested male treefolk to then leave their seed. Most sub-species of treefolk are able to produce large quantities of such unfertilised eggs, and the decision to either go for an external or internal mating variant is a choice of the treefolk, whether the female wants quantity, or quality, because internally-carried treefolk will emerge much stronger, bigger, and longer lived. If the male or female is strongly magically attuned, internal mating and carrying the baby within the female also has a higher likelihood of passing off the magical talent to the child.

The only plant-like reproduction system not retained by the treefolk… is the grafting or cutting methods, since the soul cannot be severed in two. Only one part of the body will retain the soul, and the part without the soul will wither away without the sustenance of the soul’s presence.

So, given their huge variety of ways in which a baby is carried or the condition of which a new ‘sapling’ is created, I could see why the humanoid ‘childcare’ center is not suitable.

I mean, I would have to figure out how to adapt-

*ding*

[New subsidiary tree type unlocked : Treefolk Incubation Pods. A subsidiary tree filled with multiple pods, used to incubate and nourish fertilised and germinating external seeds]

[New subsidiary tree type unlocked : Treefolk Nursery. Makes sapling-friendly nutrient rich foods. Can also make special sap for pregnant treefolk mothers or females to boost quality and health of their fetus or eggs]

Uh. Dammit.

I keep forgetting how much the system likes these kind of stuff. I’m even betting there’s extra points because they are treefolk. Maybe I’ll also get new biolab equipments when I put the treefolk under the biolab.

At least I have something. "Chieftains, I’ll have something for you soon."

Three names too many

Year 78 Month 3

"This volcano thing is going to take a lot longer if you don't find some other kind of powerup."

"Huh."

Alexis's modified drone-beetle made the journey to the volcano. Her research tree has a root that transformed into some kind of garage like structure where the beetles are stored and modified. So, that's the first of many bombshells.

"Although your large beetles can take a few punches, the magma golems are way way stronger than your large beetles. I estimate you need at least 10 upgrades before you get anywhere near defeating then with 3 large golems. The gap is just too large. If I estimate the golems as level 60 threats, your large beetles right now are about level 35, and if each research upgrade gives 2 levels worth of strength, you would need easily 10-15 upgrades, just to be at equal rank, not considering elemental and type weaknesses."

I'm sad. A tree conquering a volcano. Say it again. A tree conquers a volcano. Man, that just sounds absurd.

"I recommend finding alternatives. Something to breach the weaknesses. Find an elemental type that allows a good counter. Water or cold type? Or even wind."

I totally didn't hear that. I am just too wrapped up in sadness. Maybe my approach is wrong.

What if I am not looking to conquer the volcano, but… absorb it?

Can I terraform the volcano? Alter the surroundings?

"So, as I was saying, magic would help. Think about it, a magic-casting beetles."

"Huh." Oh wait, Alexis was talking. "Sorry could you repeat, I did not pay attention."

She sighs. "I mean, you need magic. Or water. Acid's not going to work on the magma golems. Its… its just uh… you know, science? Water. Spells."

Okaaaaay. But damn, there must be other ways about it. Or would it be better to just focus on one area of the volcano, like a ‘safe zone’? "Ah. Any other observations from your probe?" The information I have is from what I can see via my subsidiary trees and maybe she sees something else.

"Uh… The mana density is quite high… but I can't seem to figure out what's wrong with it. Its not a pleasant kind of mana…" Ah yes, mana, the weird thing that everyone's soul produces and also produced by things like leylines and certain objects. From the bodies I have examined, there are certain 'colors' to each mana, and it seems mine is primarily blue, which is why its the first color I unlocked.

The colors, type of mana, and the quality of it have tremendous influence on the way it feels and behaves. In a way, the description by most common mages is that mana is like air. There is stale air, good air, bad air, smelly air, dry air, wet air.

I wonder in this world, does mana take the form of some kind of special atom? Don't you ever wonder what is mana at its smallest unit? And why does the soul produce it? Does the soul maintain some kind of law of energy conservation?

"Hey, hey, if you want to have theoretical discussions you can do it with me." Alexis vents. "I like those kind of topics too. And seriously, do you have a problem staying focused on any particular topic? Stop hopping to other trains of thought all the time."

But they all deserve to grow? These thoughts, they are worth exploring. So I do.

"Focus. Back to the volcano. You need magic, and the right elements. Do you have anything? The spiders and the beetles are not ideal, obviously since they are weak to fire."

Well, other than myself, I can't think of any.

"So, magic! Doesn't have to be pure magic, but imagine beetles with a magical cannon that shoots water. Or spiders that create a freezing field. Flying beetles that releases water like the fire rescue planes. Oh wait. You might not know what that is. But you get the picture?"

"Hmmm…"

"Oh come on, you want this volcano or not. You do it your way it's gonna take a lot longer."

Ah. Alexis is pushing her magic agenda again. "Let me think about it."

Year 78 Month 4

The treefolk-specific saps and nutrient foods are super popular, indeed it augments some of the key challenges treefolk face during pregnancy. The main thing is, treefolks, as the pregnancy gets more mature, ideally should stay put, their feet firmly rooted to the earth. This allows them to draw nutrients, mana from the earth to feed the growing fetus within their wooden bodies.

But, being stationary for months is not feasible in an environment where non-humans, like treefolk, are consistently hunted by others, so to be safe, they had to constantly migrate and move around to evade their hunters. This leads to nutrient shortage, their bodies compensate through consuming the parent's nutrients to feed the fetud, and so, weakens the parent.

Their children are generally weaker, though the most recent few children are in much better shape. No longer having to run, and have a relatively stable valley to stay in helps a lot in the quality and overall health of the treefolk children. Perhaps more than any other race, they need stability, and a familiar environment to mature properly.

"The treefolk's loyalty is probably the highest amongst all the nonhuman races, followed by the Centaurs. If we are to admit members into the Valtrian order, we can create a special group for them."

"Isn't that species-ism? That is the root of future discord though, the other races will dislike their special privileges."

"Is it not a waste to make the most of their abilities?"

"If we go down the path of making the races compete with each other, that will not go well. Right now New Freeka is dominated by elves, followed by the centaurs, if they start competing, that will further entrench the existing rifts among the races."

"Why do you care, master? They are disposable, are they not?" Ivy retorts, and I wonder where she gets that angry persona from. Is it from observing people for too long? "All of them are slimy, at least, the treefolks no so slimy because their material demands are different." Ivy hit level 10 a few days ago, and amusingly, her skill at level 10 is [Citizen File], using her constant monitoring of the citizens to build a "dossier" on the people. It takes effort, and a few months to do it, but Ivy's got time.

I gulp, if I could. Ivy's right, they are disposable. In the larger scheme of things, loyal servants are more valuable anyway. I should get more loyal servants. Better a loyal servant than 100 fighters who would stab me in the back.

The Valtrian order is stabilising, as the processes around the birth and death, and the quasi-military force regains some semblance of structure after my earlier retrenchment exercise. l

..

The new leadership team meet in Jura's new office in the center courtyard of Valtrian Order HQ. All rooms are covered with vines and trees, such that I can always monitor them, even the toilets.

Jura, Laufen, Madeus, three captains, two herbalists, two administrators and a master of ceremonies.

Three captains of the Order, the military arm shrunk to only 900 strong, each captain a leader of a group of 300. Two herbalists, they lead about 100 workers to cultivate and maintain the various herbal gardens and farms around the Valtrian order, and produce herbal medicines and ointments. Two administrators, responsible for treasury and purchases, funds, and payment of salaries, managing an administrative staff of 50.

The master of ceremonies, a position I wanted to give Wesley, but he declined, claiming he isn't interested in paperwork, so instead another priest was roped in to take the role. Somebody had to sort out the planning of the deaths, and all the paperwork around them. Almost all of them, except one administrator, are elves. I had hoped for a bit more variety in the Valtrian leadership.

It's a weekly meeting, for everyone to get updates on the plans, and matters, this is where everyone speaks to… me.

"The councillors are not too happy with the retrenchment exercise, Tree Spirit. Many of them complained to the councillors and demand their positions be reinstated."

"Tell them that they are free to let Jura know that they can challenge a beetle to a fight. If they prove they will be more useful in battle than any of my beetles, I will give them their position back, and a small reward."

The three captains glance at each other awkwardly.

"In fact, please put up a notice. Let this be known."

The captain that brought it up shrugs and nods. I think he regrets it. "Ah…."

"The acquisition of more herbs and plant varieties is ongoing, and the peace accords with Salah is recently finalised. That means we will see more movement of non-combatants, especially from the various magic councils of Salah."

"Watch them carefully. They will be spies. Salah will take this 'peace' to gather information on our true depth." Well, the truth is, I would probably get Ivy to watch them too. She's getting better at spying on people throughout New Freeka.

"Would it not be New Freeka's military to do so? They may think we are taking unnecessary action that may provoke Salah."

"New Freeka's unreliable, and the leaders are… compromised. And if getting caught spying would provoke Salah, I prefer to think of if as a warning."

"Compromised? Really? Who?" One of the captains ask.

Jura jumped in. "Secret. But the logic is simple enough, once the leaders saw the beetles, Salah attacked..."

"Ah…" Separately I turn to Ivy, "Do you have a file on the captains? I feel they are suspicious as well."

"Yes I already have some observations... They've not done anything big so far, but they do have some… suspicious activities One of them, from conversations gathered, have human relatives in Salah, and all three do write letters, delivered via the merchants to other countries."

One drawback, the written word is a bit harder to spy on as our visual quality is a bit low-resolution. One of the reasons I wanted the Tree-Eye ability. "Can we get a copy of the letters?"

"Difficult. Will need Jura to do so, but we do not have trusted agents in the merchants group, so it will be rather tough to do so discreetly." Ah, that is something we need to fix, and the fact that Ivy exists as a tree-mind means she's my eyes and ears, but not my hands and legs.

Meanwhile, the leadership continue with their discussion. Typical leadership mumbo jumbo. Funny how people in positions of power always end up having discussions about structure, and plans.

"Okay, updates." Jura steers the conversation back to regular matters like finances, hiring, what's the plan for the next week, updates from the New Freeka High Council ("NFHC").

"There is a travelling group of druids, they seek permission to go through our lands, the NFHC has agreed to grant them the right of passage and to go about their restoration work."

"Huh, didn't those nomads come here before?"

"A different group. Just keep a lookout for them."

"Travelling to barren lands and returning greenery, surely there are better uses of their talents." One of the captain jokes, the mood is a little bit more cordial. The earlier banter between the leaders are getting better, Jura's diplomat class really helps putting others at ease.

"All you think about is fighting, everything else is pointless to you. Maybe it's part of their class requirement. Some jobs have certain accomplishment barriers, perhaps druids are like that." Another captain pokes his colleague.

"Do mages have accomplishment quests, Madeus?"

"My mage class doesn't. Or perhaps, not yet."

Jura looks at the few pieces of paper before him. "Ah I think we are straying off the agenda again. Anything else?"

"We have some responses to our request to hire adventurers to bring back exotic plants, from the faraway continents. The message we got is that they will arrive in a month, and demand that their payment be ready."

"Yay." I like that.

The captains frown. "Is this the best use of money?"

Jura grins, "Fun fact, the tree spirit gets more powerful with every new type of plant he encounters. So, it's worth it."

"Anything else?"

The master of ceremonies raises his hand and nod, "I have a proposal. The Tree Spirit should have a divine title."

"A divine title?" Almost everyone asks in unison.

"Ah, in various sects and religions, there are often special titles to refer to the minor deities and heroes, something that cements that person as a divine being. Currently, referring to the Tree Spirit as the Tree Spirit is… clunky and awkward, and makes the prayers and ceremonies a bit less… proper as religions tend to be. A divine title is a gesture to recognise Tree Spirit's special position in our society. Like how some refer to god as God."

Jura scratches his chin, "Are you asking the Tree Spirit for a name or title?"

"Ah, I am thinking... of having the senior leaders group together and do a study, on the proper ways to venerate the Tree Spirit. A few of the faithfuls shared their troubles, that the Tree Spirit as the Tree Spirit does not differentiate it from the many other tree spirits in the world. The masses, those who pray, must know and be assured that their prayers are going to the correct and true Tree Spirit."

"Ah… That's the kind of thing only a priest will think about."

"So… perhaps we can spend some time to think of a name-"

"Aeon."

The master of ceremonies immediately kneels before the small tree in the center of the room..

"Ah, truly the Tree Spirit is divine, Tree Spirit already has a divine name. Kneel before Aeon, everyone, for we are the first to be graced by Aeon, with his divine title."

The rest of them look at each other, probably wondering what the hell is this guy trying to do, but decides to go with the flow that the Master of Ceremonies created and so, kneels. Even Jura and Laufen join in.

"Oh, to the great and mighty, protector and watcher of the valley, we offer our prayers and thanks to thee, o mighty and powerful, Aeon."

If I could rub my head I would. But I really liked the name Aeon. I think Aeon as a name deserves to be much more than just the name of a chain of supermarkets.

One of the captain rub his head, "Is it pronounced like.. Aye-on? Or Aye-yon?"

"I accept both pronunciations."

-

[Hidden Conditions checks met]

[Special skill obtained - Possession of the devoted]

[A special familiar contract with a chosen devoted believer. Limited to 5 at any time]

Year 78 Month 5

Things are rather quiet in New Freeka and the valley, and I think that is a good thing.

Alexis is right. I need a different approach if I need to hold the volcano. The inner volcano is filled with giant golems, who are clearly still leagues ahead of the large beetles. If the location is bad, the golems could easily hold off my beetle horde like a wall made of lava. So, while the various research continue, I’m thinking of other methods. She's right that beetles are a bad matchup, even if this will annoy Horns.

Anyway, let’s talk about New Freeka. This month I received a magical cactus, some kind of coconut variant, and a gourd shaped fruit which is often used to store foods due to its magical preservation qualities, so that goes into the biolab.

[Skills acquired]

[Cactus defense system]

[New crop type acquired]

[Milk coconut and brownwood gourds]

[Subsidiary tree limit increased]

Other than that, for the Valtrian order, things are pretty much the same. Training, scouting, purchasing and trading, and the birth &amp; death rituals continue. The populace of New Freeka adapts to the new routine, and a new set of uniformed group in the town. Jura and the team decided on a dark brown color, like the tree barks, as the Valtrian Order's "color", New Freeka uses blue.

The druids came. They didn't seem too interested in the valley, it seems the druids got some kind of messiah complex that drives them to seek out sick trees and damaged environments, so their stop in New Freeka is a really brief one, just to resupply.

It's peaceful. I even manage to successfully protect my ginseng tree and make it last past their first year. And that's nice for a change.

Year 78 Month 7

"Practice." Lausanne grumbles. As Jura now has responsibilities in Valtrian Order, the time he has for Lausanne is significantly reduced, and she often seeks him out for practice sessions, even in the quarters itself.

In his place, the captains and men of the Valtrian order often become Lausanne's sparring partners, and in a way, its good for her.

Lausanne, now level 25, is actually better at the sword than a regular soldier, who's usually only about level 20-30, but having their levels dispersed over various skills.

"For a 9 year old she's pretty much a genius." The captains lavish their praise on Lausanne, though Lausanne just shrugs. Of course, the captains don't know is I've easily used 400 to 500 essences collected throughout the years, to build up her combat sense through [dream tutor], [powerlevelling], [learning aura], and most recently [training room].

"Perhaps that's the other thing you should be doing." Alexis's really bored these days, when she's not using her 2 probe-beetles, she tries to make conversation with me, or everyone else. "Maybe you can train an army of super-warriors."

"Heh. It's too early to tell how far Lausanne will go. She's currently my test subject, to see how effective the abilities are. But if it works, I’ll consider it."

"You should train more than just Lausanne. You can then compare the differences, perhaps each of the different individuals as your test subjects. Vary them a bit, then you can see what influences their growth and whether there is an actual… limit."

"You’ve been thinking about this kind of thing, haven’t you?"

"I’m a research spirit floating around, stuck to my tree. What’s there to do other than tinker with my lab equipment, and think about such things? Is it wrong?"

"Ah… not, that’s not what I meant…"

"Then what do you mean?"

"You know what, I think you have a point. I agree that I should have a few test subjects, to see how the training thing works, and fully explore the limits of these people."

Of course, that means I’ll need to find ways to consolidate and upgrade all my training related skills, such that I can distribute the resources to more people, other than Lausanne alone. Part of the reason why I focused only on Lausanne, is because I have no idea how effective my abilities are, and how it actually affects Lausanne’s growth, so I just went all in. The problem with [dream tutor], and [learning aura], is that the effects are really small, but they do accumulate over a long period of time. It isn’t as if Lausanne becomes super amazing the next day, and I’ve been using [dream tutor] on her since she’s… 5? Maybe 4. I forgot.

"Since she’s got that special skill, well, use your seeds as well. I’m really eager to know what they do."

"Huh, I’m confused now. Should I focus on Lausanne, or train more people?"

"Both! You can focus on Lausanne since she’s got that unique skill, but you do need other people as a ‘base case’. It’s really basic, you can’t draw conclusions on a sample of one. More samples, more robust conclusions! So diversify! Expand your sample size!"

"You know, the validity of your methods are distorted by ‘skills’ and ‘abilities’."

"Those are outliers and variables that we can adjust for. That’s normal!" I think Alexis is talking a lot like a scientist, and I think it’s part of the job.

"Meela, do you think she’s talking like a scientist?"

"She talks like that all the time. It’s normal."

"Hey!"

"But I’m not disputing the essence of your argument, and I agree with the idea of having more… test subjects. Well, it’s time for me to get Laufen to work on the orphanage."

"Wait. You’re experimenting with orphans?" Alexis didn't like that though.

"Who else do I experiment on? Do you see any other young children I can run some tests on? You think the rest of the New Freekans willing to give me young children to test on?"

"I’d like to say that it’s ethically wrong to use your abilities on young children who are unable to decide and give consent. You know what, testing on young children now feels eerily similar to trying to train orphans into war machines, so I take back my earlier statement. Please don't test on young children."

"This is a magical world, and frankly, I am not doing them any harm. When you feed a child a supplement, you want them to grow strong, but did the child give consent? When you force him to eat his bitter medicine, did he give consent? As long as your intent is to help them, I think it’s fine. And with orphans, as the Valtrian order is the caretaker and guardian, we are empowered to make decisions on their behalf."

Meela tries to break up the argument by butting in. "Alex think positively! Maybe TreeTree can make Batman! That’ll be cool. I think a lot of superheroes are orphans or lost their parents. Superman too! So I think it’s a good idea. You won’t abuse them, right? Right?"

Alexis pretty much facepalms, "I don’t think TreeTree knows what Batman is."

Uh, I do, but I keep my mouth shut. "Well, no permanent pain, I suppose…" Frankly I don’t know, there’s no progress without pain.

"Hmm…"

Naming deficiency

Year 78 Month 8

Valtrian Order’s Orphanage for young children is up and running, all we needed was a building where we could build rooms, and then employ people to take care of the kids. As a rule, I insisted that the children we take in are less than 12 years old, such that. Those older are able to find work and can live on their own, in this world, for humans, 13 is quite a normal age to start holding some kind of semi-permanent job, either as an apprentice, or some kind of live-in worker, and this norm is also seen in the other non-humans.

In New Freeka, connected to the orphanage large building is a few subsidiary trees, two of which are [training rooms], for teaching and sparring. There would be quite a lot of young orphans in this world, after all, with so much war and slaughter going on, it is only a norm that families are often broken. Anyway, my intention is to train these orphans, those willing, into warriors for the Valtrian Order, and so the remaining Valtrian Order soldiers are regularly coming to give the young kids some simple lessons. In a way, it acts as a ‘feeder’ into the future Valtrian order guards.

For monitoring and tracking, one of the subsidiary trees is a biolab, with multiple pods. The decor is intentionally bare, and I had the herbalist use it as a ‘medicinal’ room, to mask the true intent of the pods, which is… to take magical snapshots of these orphan’s progress over the years.

Feedback in terms of the orphanage is mixed, and even from the orphans themselves. Many of them are living in empty, abandoned homes, some taken in by the people of New Freeka. Some orphans themselves resist the structure and rules that an orphanage have, and prefer to continue living on their own.

Well, my view to Laufen is, don’t force the kids. If they want to live on their own and think they can and know better, go ahead. Either the world will teach them a lesson, or they will truly show their mettle.

Out of the town’s population of 50,000 or so elves, dwarves and centaurs, about 500-1,000 or young orphan children, but not all want to stay in this new set of quarters, so it’s often the really young ones. There are also families who cannot or are unable to raise their children, so they surrender their children to the orphanage.

Oh well. I’m not going to be the moral police, so whatever men and women choose to do with their lives, that’s their problem. I’ll take the kids, and I’ll use them.

The good thing is, it puts some jobs on the table, as the orphanage hires a lot of workers, to cook, to care for the orphans, to teach, and some retired, elderly men also help out as trainers.

The thing about old people in a world with great and frequent destruction, is often they are quite high leveled. Being on the run for decades must have given them a lot of survival related skills and actual [skills], either they are good at fighting, good at running and hiding, or good as improvising and making the most of what little they have.

Ah well, I guess there has to be some truth to the old people being awesome trope after all.

-

"Eat this." Lausanne stares at the green fruit right in front of her. She picks it up with her tiny hands, and she shakes it.

"It does not look ripe."

"It’s not meant to be ripe. Eat it." It’s a green fruit, made out of the passive seed, [spark of brilliance]. It’s small, the size of a grape. It’s lime green, and from my point of view, it has a faint green glow to it. It’s my first time creating a fruit out of the seeds.

"Uh… okay." She starts to chew on the small fruit.

She walks a few steps, her mouth chewing.

"Okay I ate it. It tastes sour, but it’s not horrible. Is this some kind of new fruit you want us to sell, TreeTree?"

"No. It’s a special fruit. Just for you."

"Huh. If it’s a special fruit, shouldn’t it be sweet and really yummy? It’s quite sour, and I can still taste the sourness on my tongue..." Lausanne downs a cup of water, probably hoping to wash off the taste.

"Not all things in life are meant to be sweet, my dear Lausanne."

"Is that some kind of word of wisdom I should remember?"

"Perhaps."

"Is this why you called me here, TreeTree?"

"Not just this…" If I could smile, I would. "Lausanne, would you like a special familiar contract?"

Lausanne immediately nods, "Yeah sure. Special in a good way, right?"

"Yes."

[Lausanne has accepted the special familiar contract. 50 star mana consumed. 1 star mana will be consumed per month].

Star mana. I have 300 star mana at the moment, that’s the maximum number of star-mana storage organs I have, and with the current maximum number of star-leaves, I produce 30 star mana a month.

"Oh wow. Is this like Uncle Jura’s Bamboo?" She activates the familiar, and then two large twisting roots emerge from her body, and they transform into a wooden sword and shield, Lausanne’s current favourite fighting combination. "Whoah it responded to me! Can you hear it TreeTree?"

"I can’t." Well, the familiar doesn’t have an artificial soul, but it probably has a kind of ‘programming’ to it, like an… animal?"

"Well, it just says, sword and shield mode." Lausanne grins. "But it’s cool. I can tell it things in my head!" The wooden sword starts transforming into a whip.

Huh. That is pretty cool.

"And it can change shape!" Lausanne tries out the whip, and it works like a rope too, allowing Lausanne to pull herself forward. "I can use this to swing from branch to branch too! Like the monkeys!"

"Don’t let your mom see that." The idea of a young little girl swinging around like Tarzan is probably going to make Laufen have a headache.

"Ah yes ah yes. Sorry I got excited." The two roots can transform into various shapes, but there are certain limits to the size and length. "It’s kinda cool that they don’t drain my mana as much as the normal familiar too!"

Ah, I suppose that’s the benefit, stronger, more flexible, but cost less. I suppose the star mana that I give it is supports it?

"Thank you, TreeTree. This is nice."

"Good. Let me know if you get any skill notifications tomorrow."

"Okay!" Well, the next day, "Erm… I didn’t get a new skill, but one of my skills transformed."

"Oh, which one?"

"It’s the [Blessed by a soul tree]. It’s now [Blessed by a soul tree - advanced]."

"Huh…" Well, that’s amusing. Now she’s even more compatible with my abilities… I hope she doesn’t eventually transform into a tree.

"Well, the cool thing is, the roots are a bit longer and bigger now. I think it makes my familiar stronger!" I see, so the special familiar’s effects are going to be less impressive on the other guys. Now I want to know whether I can fuse this special familiar with an artificial soul.

Lausanne shows off her slightly bigger sword and shield, it’s wood, of course.

"I’m gonna go practice. Don’t tell mom I’m in the forest."

Well, Lausanne did try to be a monkey, and she’s using two roots like vines, to swing herself from tree to tree. But only with the bigger trees, since the smaller trees don’t have enough clearance.

Oh dear, what have I done.

Year 78 Month 10

Demon king preparation status check.

The demon king appeared Year 70, Month 4.

The demon king died about 5 years ago, around Year 73 Month 3 Week 2

Going by the 10 year gap between demon kings, that means I should have at least about 5 years left. 5 years is a good amount of time, but halfway there, it’s time to discuss the matter again.

"So, the next demon king should be about 5 years away, we won’t know for certain, but that’s the approximate time range. What should we do?" Well, the audience is myself, my treeminds, Horns, Alexis and Meela. I’ll have another discussion with the Valtrian peeps next time.

"It depends on the type of power the demon king has."

"We won’t know until he appears, and we’d be running out of time if that’s the case. What are the normal, common powers a demon king would have?"

"Extensive destruction abilities, and demonic hordes?"

"So okay, how do we prepare for that?"

"Hide? There’s really no way we can fight back unless we have the powers of the heroes, and running is out of the option."

"Agree, hide. So that means we need to figure out a way to make use of the tunnels and the abandoned dungeon as some kind of shelter, and build barricades and strong gates."

"Uh, I think that’s missing the point. TreeTree, you’re massive, you can’t hide."

"That’s fine, but it’s more for everyone else around me. I think I can take whatever the demon king’s horde can throw at me… except the demon king himself."

"So what are you going to do if the Demon King himself comes for you."

"We’ll think about it then. For now, let’s work on the plan to hide."

"How about the [ThreeTree of Mana]? We can’t hide that." It’s DImitree who brings up his part of the world. "If necessary, we need to build a massive wall around it, one that even the demon king can’t destroy?"

"That’s impossible, if there’s one thing the demon king doesn’t lack, it’s destructive firepower."

"The elves say there are other trees who manage to somehow make their forests disappear. How do we do that?"

"That’s hiding. And well, that’s a good point. If there’s an ability to temporarily warp the valley into pocketspace, that’ll help."

I’ve got no skills anywhere near that level, though I suppose [secret hideout] is like a slow step on that path? Perhaps someday, I’ll get the ability to create a massive secret hideout that includes myself in it. Though that’s probably going to make my mind melt, because the secret hideout is inside me, but I’m inside the secret hideout. So what’s inside what?

"Can’t the demon king detect such abilities? Seems kinda odd that an incredibly powerful monster like itself would allow such things to happen…"

"...Are demon kings… sentient?"

"I have no idea. It has a certain kind of intelligence, but sentient… no one has ever communicated with it."

-

Year 78 Month 12

Winter.

With volcano project hitting a slow spot, I decide to try other projects.

Tapping on the Valtrian Order's growing network of contacts, I am now aware of three faraway sites that I want to explore.

Further up north, some movements of the ground revealed a previously covered massive hole, that goes really, really deep. It's as if somebody dug a hole vertically down. It’s currently spitting out many different kinds of snake-monsters and snake like creatures, which is why I suspect it is likely to contain some kind of magical source. That said, my data is quite lacking. Currently being extensively attacked by adventurers, as the snakehide seem to fetch good money, and also its a new large dungeon, so plenty of adventurers are trying to make their way down. Travel time by beetle is 3 days.

2nd, in one of the regions near the Nung-Salah border, there’s a few dungeon-like areas. There’s no detected leyline, but there are still a lot of monsters appearing in that area. As the area is rather sparsely populated and heavily damaged from all the battles, there's not much adventurer attention compared to the snake-hole, but the presence of multiple dungeon entrances and unusual monster do hint at a dungeon. If so, I want the core. Travel time by beetles, 3 days.

3rd site, is a deep into one of the nearby kingdom’s territories. A lake with seems to be inhabited by magical beasts and strange, unusual plants. Rumoredly, magical. 5 days away.

My first choice is the one with the potential leyline, but that means I have to deal with the adventurers. Still, leyline is too good to miss out, so I’m going to start my subsidiary-tree-expansion to that location.

The dungeon-like areas, if I do attempt those, would be for the cores. It’s a good reward financially, and I’d like to study cores in much more detail, perhaps there are variations to cores between dungeons. If a core is sentient, or has the potential to be, I would like to attempt using an artificial-soul on one. My suspicions are they would work similar to a root-brain complex, and that would be something fun to test out.

The drawback is… the active warzone. Salah and New Freeka is at ‘peace’, the Nung-Takde &amp; Salah War is still ongoing, with the situation at a stalemate. It seems they are periodically still fighting battles on a few fronts, though both sides are not trying anything bold to end the war. It’s an odd state, skirmishes here and there, even though trade routes have been strangely re-opened. I’d like to scout out the location, so I plan to have some beetles in the location, just to find out where these ‘dungeons’ are.

As for the lake, it doesn't seem to be that much of a problem, just far away. New types of plants is always welcome, if magical and potentially rare plants, even more, ans this seems more appropriate for a small strike force. Send the guys in, get the strange plants, and get out. Simple, suitable for a covert strike team of beetles.

"I want to go."

"Huh?"

"Take my probe-etle there."

"Is that a name you came up with?" Sounds like something you stick up an arse. Who do they call that again… is it endoscopy? Oh wait. It sounds like probiotics! The kind of weird bacteria shit those multi level marketers try to sell!

"It sounds better than scout beetle, doesn’t it?"

"Which one?"

"I have two probe-etles, I want to see the lake. And the giant hole in the ground."

"Fine."

"Yay. Meela~ Do you wanna go? You should totally consider fusing with one of the beetles, then we both can still go travel. You can be my probe's bodyguard!"

"Wait, you can see through the probes?"

"Uh, yeah. It’s called a probe, right? Of course I can see through the probe."

"I don't want to be a beetle. That's disgusting." Meela probably is frowning. "I'd rather be a tree."

"I take offense to that statement." Horns chimes in.

"Aww come on. We finally get to do some travelling!"

"I rather like the relative peace and safety here. I might get attacked as a beetle, and people will hate me, I can't cope with that!"

"Meela that's a lie and you know it."

The two girls seem to be arguing, but it's rather friendly kind. So I ignore them.

-

One of the merchants brought garlic and ginger today, apparently really popular with nobility for cooking.

[Crop variety - Garlic] added. You can now produce essences of garlic and garlic flavored woods, fruits and saps.

[Crop variety - Ginger] added. You can now produce essences of ginger and ginger flavored woods, fruits and saps

Ooh that's gonna stink some people. I wonder whether they have stinky fruits in this world… like… durians? They should, right?

But you know, this recent about garlic and ginger gave me an idea. I have the ability to produce fruits, vegetables and herbs. What if I set up a market, and sell my produce? Or even better, set up a restaurant? I'm not sure how many restaurants they have in New Freeka, but certainly, if I have the ability to procure and produce unique types of vegetables and fruits, that would give me a unique selling point!

I could make special ginger-ginseng soup. Or fried potatoes with garlic, herbs and spices

"A restaurant? You need cooks though. A chef!"

"But it could work!"

"You girls know any recipes from where you are from?" All I know is how to cook instant noodles with eggs.

"Uh… I might. But honestly…"

"If I get an ability to create a [Tree-kitchen] or [Res-Treerant] I'll fuse you to it."

"Does that mean I'll be stuck in a cooking game forever?" Meela seems frightened by the prospect. Oh wait, did they not know I can reassign them, because their souls are stronger than the artificial souls?

"I think a beetle is still better."

"But a cooking tree sounds like an appealing idea at least. It could even end up a case where I could be the spirit that runs a hotel and restaurant. It's like those cooking simulator games!" Meela laughs.

Alexis looks a bit concerned. "Meela, are you sure you want to be a…" Her dreams of travelling with a beetle bodyguard fading away...

"A hotelier! And master chef!"

"Wait. You're not serious." Alexis facepalms, only, she's a spirit so all she could do was soundlessly smack herself with her ethereal hands.

"Maybe one of your [subsidiary tree] with a room. I can probably acquire the job as [chef] and [innkeeper]."

Alexis looks horrified. "Meela, if you fuse with a tree you can't get job levels, job levels are for humanoids only! My skills so far are all because my creature-type is research tree spirit. So no!"

"Eh. TreeTree, can you make a tree decorated with multiple hotel like rooms, kitchen, dining and cafe area?"

"I… I can try." Huh, true, forcefully decorating a tree such that I get a different tree type. That's like the playroom and training room, it might just work.

"Okay TreeTree, I, Meela Adams have decided on my career path! If you can make one where I get the right type, then I'll fuse with it."

"Meela, you serious?" Alexis's flying up and down. "You won't even know if there are tourists? We have no data on tourism and travel traffic! How do you know it'll work out? How many people even eat out?"

"What's the worst that can happen? I'm a tree! It's not like I'll starve to death if the hotel and restaurant fails."

"Meela!" Alexis shouts.

"It'll be fine, Alexis. Of all the options offered to me, this actually seems like fun! Chef and hotelier! That's a whole lot more interesting than looking at a lab all day. I could even open branches! Hotel-tree branches! Getit? I could be a moving tree hotel. Or a popup store! The wandering treehotel-restaurant! Maybe even add a convenience store!"

Alexis slams her head into the trunk of her biolab. It doesn't really hurt.

"If trees can move, then I could be a coconut hotel &amp; restaurant tree by the beach!"

Hey, that's an interesting idea. Giant treants, but is actually a walking hotel.

"TreeTree, can I name my hotel and restaurant? I can, right?"

"Uh, sure." Hey, Meela wants to be useful, if naming rights is all she wants...

"I'm gonna call the hotel, the Meela! And the restaurant, the Fried Mee! And if there's a Cafe, it's gonna be the Cafe Meelatte. Oh TreeTree, you should totally get coffee beans."

Alexis smacks her face into the trunk, multiple times. She's not feeling any pain, I think she's just doing it to vent her frustration with Meela's inane choice.

"Alexis, you can name your lab too. I'll give you an idea. You can name it, A-Lab-is. It's like your name, but with a lab in it. Or Labalex. That's cool too."

---

New Businesses

Year 79 Month 1

Roots, the subterranean network of trees. Through it, I am connected to the tens of thousands of trees within my valley, and beyond.

These roots, they cover vast lands, serving as the forest’s backbone, carrying information, minerals, essences, and mana. These roots, they go through many kinds of soil, so they pick up the subtle shifts of the mineral composition, and, a feature of my various subsidiary trees, act like little sensors, collecting measurements.

When it rains, when it snows, when the earth shakes a little, when there’s a bit of shaking, through [rootnet], the roots and the subsidiary trees all collect data. Data, which my root-brains, Trevor, Dimitree, and Ivy feed on. Vibrations, humidity, magic. Together, all these sensors form a vast array, and so, we can now triangulate the sources of tremors, and unusual magics, to determine direction.

Some trees in the distance would feel it first, a tug, a pull. Then later more trees pick up on the tremor.

An earthquake. A minor one. Even the volcano gives out little warning signs, the small tremors before it starts to erupt, when some part of the volcano starts to spit out lava. This ability could have saved more beetles, if we had it a bit earlier.

It’s Trevor’s newest skill addition.

[Tree-iangulation]

Crunching all the data, to tell me what’s happening in a distant location, without having to actually be there.

"If we had magic sensors…" Alexis is about to start with her usual marketing of magic labs.

"Let’s start material labs first. I understand that’s a prerequisite to the development of magic labs?"

"Ah.. erm.. Yes. We would need to have the ability to analyse materials, and develop mana-sensitive materials, then only magical labs."

"So let’s do it. What do I need to get to material labs? Once we have that I’d like to analyse that dismantled airship, again."

"What? Really?"

"Yes. I’ve decided to get magic sensors. I imagine that would be very useful if we had another case of that super-blizzard."

Alexis nods, "Ah… yes…. So, material research first?"

"Yes. Get to it."

"Sure." Alexis looks awkward, she floats around, a part of her happy, yet a part of her quite confused. "...What made you change your mind?"

"Was I changing my mind? I thought I just wanted more time to mull over whether that’s the right direction for us."

Alexis seems like she is about to bark some kind of retort, before she seems to realise "...do tree spirits normally take so long to think?"

"Hmmm. No?"

"Well, it makes sense, that is a common kind of myth associated with tree-people that they tend to be sluggish and take forever to decide." Alexis is talking to herself now. "It's like that council of trees in LoTR. Took them forever to decide, didn't they."

Huh. Is she complaining that I took too long to decide? But at least I did decide, no?

"Ah never mind. Starting material testing and tree-lab varieties."

Eye-Tree Stage I research option unlocked - 2 months remaining

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 2 - completed

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 3 - 3 months remaining

Tree - volcanic adaptation stage 3 - 2 months remaining

Roots - Volcanic mineral harvesting - stage 1 - completed

Roots - Volcanic mineral harvesting - stage 2 - completed

Roots - Volcanic mineral processing - stage 1 - 5 months remaining

Materials testing - stage 1 - 3 months

Tree-lab varieties - stage 1 - 12 months

Research is taking longer, as earlier predicted. Magic is going to be necessary, and though I have to take precautions on who and what gets access to magic, I'm starting to lean on the side that it's an eventual step I have to take, one way or another, I cannot face the threats this world has with one hand behind my back.

A necessary risk.

I will have a long conversation with both Meela and Alexis, on magic, on the sorts of magic I will give them access too, though with Meela, I have less ability to control her. My hope is, they would be able to give some contribution to the defense against the next demon king, as they have more experience in magic as heroes.

Meanwhile, New Freeka’s having a small boom in terms of growth. The era of peace, and the reputation of stable, secure food supplies attracts more refugees, even from the other nations, not just Salah. A busy time for the council of New Freeka, and they’ve been hard at work, to expand their town premises, prepare new farmlands. More people, more food, more homes, public services need to be expanded. Of course, there's usually a need for refugees to 'buy' their way to 'public' services, such as the right to use some of the new housing.

At the same time, there’s been more focus on security and screening, so the NFHC hired some of the laid off soldiers to work as guards. Ivy says some of the councilmen feel a need to bolster their forces, now that they are actively ‘threatened’ by the presence of the Valtrian order as a ‘competing’ political power, what more, with Jura and the Valtrian order’s secure, legally protected position.

A faction in the council emerged which wants to assert 'independence' from the Order’s growing influence, and this faction somehow managed to coerce Yvon, such that she voluntarily resigned from her position as the chairperson of the council. Her position has been tenuous and under scrutiny for some time, as it's an open secret by now, that her soul is contracted to me, and that leads to a whole lot of corridor whispering and rumors about Yvon being 'compromised'.

But to the layperson unfamiliar to the nuances of New Freeka politics, her statement to the public at large sounded voluntary enough.

‘I’m resigning from my post as chairperson of the New Freeka council, with immediate effect. I’ve led and held this position since New Freeka’s founding, and finally, after almost 5 years, I believe this fledgling nation is in safe hands, and I can finally hand the reins over to someone else, and spend time with my son."

How sweet. Spend time with Roma, who’s now almost 6 years old.

The pressure to ‘counterbalance’ Jura’s growing influence meant the person holding New Freeka’s chairperson role had to more than independent. In other words, against the Order, against me.

Frankly, it’s just silly political struggles. A large faction within the councilmen themselves understand this, after all, they know I can crush them. So they are left in this uncomfortable situation where they yearn for to be the ruling group, but acknowledge that without me, they have nothing to rule.

Anyway, silly silly things, these jostling for 'authority', as long as nothing ‘unreasonable’ happens, I’ll let them be. Ivy’s got all of them monitored, and retaliation won’t take much time at all.

"Lady Yvon." Jura was one of the few she met after her voluntary withdrawal. "I heard the news, frankly, it’s disappointing, but the Tree Spirit expected it."

She laughs, "Hah, well, that’s life."

Jura shrugs. "So, really, retirement as a mother?"

"Why, do I not look like I have motherly desires?"

Jura’s turn to laugh, and he takes a small alcoholic beverage and offers it to Yvon. "Frankly, no. You’re the warrior-queen type."

Yvon sips on her little drink. "Well, to be fair, it has some truth, I admit feeling a little jealous that Roma’s a lot more attached to Eriz than me. For all these time I’ve been trying to get this town in order, Eriz has been more like his mother, more than I ever have. So yes, a bit of it is a desire to make up for what I have failed to do."

"Really? I really didn't see you as the actual mother type, though most of New Freeka regard you as the 'mother' of this city." Jura laughs, he offers his small cup of alcohol and the two cups meet softly. They both take a sip.

"Anyway, my time’s up. And time management has never been my strong suit. There's never enough time to do right by New Freeka, or by Roma."

"Time’s never enough. It comes with the job. Look at me, or Laufen. Both of us are so busy these days, we only have a bit of time to spend with Lausanne and the kids. I try to make dinner happen, at least we still meet up… Lausanne’s been bugging me for combat practice every time we meet."

"Oh yes I have heard a few captains sing praise of her talent. She’s really good for her age. My son's not showing any interest yet, though."

"Well, may not be a bad thing. Laufen constantly worries she’ll injure herself. At least Roma’s just playing chase, or spending time with wooden toys. I just hope Lausanne doesn’t find someone who doesn’t know how to hold back and injure herself from practice."

"You know, I could offer to spar with Lausanne." Yvon nods. "Now that I have free time."

Jura smiles, "I would appreciate that. It will be good for her growth, that she fights someone with a different style."

"So I take that as a yes?"

"Yes, yes. Please tell Lausanne you’re her new sparring partner."

Yvon nods, "Great!" Their cups are both empty.

Jura leans forward. "Ah, all of you, can you leave?" The guards nod to Jura’s instruction, and so they leave, leaving Jura and Yvon alone in the room.

"Huh. Something important?"

"Yes. I’ll cut to the chase, really. It’s about Roma. Is he related to the royalty?"

"Damn. The Tree Spirit saw through that too?" Yvon’s fist smack her other palm, and Jura just shrugs at her statement.

"Does the Kingdom of Salah know about it?"

"I sure hope not. We forged a fake marriage arrangement with one of Galen’s knights, one of the other elves. It also helps that Roma does not manifest any of the human traits yet, so no one will know whether he’s part-human until he’s much older."

"But he will, it's only a matter of time before he asks of his own heritage. How many know of this?"

"Maybe 10?"

"That is too many. Where are the 10?"

"I… I don’t know."

"In which case, you better start preparing Roma. If you’re lucky, he gets forgotten by the Kingdom, as just one of the many bastards royalties have. If you’re not, there’s going to be a group out for his head."

"Well, now that I have some free time, looks like I should get started on his practice."

Jura nods. "You should. He needs the ability to protect himself. You’re good, but you won’t be able to stop all of them."

"Can I count on you to protect him?"

Jura pauses, and shrugs. "Maybe."

Yvon smiles weakly. "Ah well."

"If you’re going to start preparing him, then have him practice with Lausanne. I can permit access to the Training Rooms, or use the one near the Main Tree."

"I will. Thank you."

"Take care, Lady Yvon."

Yvon nods, and she leaves.

The room’s empty, and so Jura leans back and he speaks out loud. It’s quite obvious he’s talking to me.

"Royalty. As you predicted."

"It’s obvious, isn’t it? She sent her baby so far away with protectors. If it’s not royalty, I doubt she’d take such precautions. It’s such a… cliche."

"I thought it’s just a motherly thing to do, to keep your child out of harm’s way. But I’m happy that she offered to practice with Lausanne. That’ll really help me and Lausanne. If only the others show any interest in learning how to defend and protect themselves."

"They’ll be fine. So long as they remain in the valley, the beetles will look out for them. What do you think about her replacement?"

"Smart, but a little greedy. The position he takes isn’t one he truly believes in, he’s only taking it because it allows him to be in a greater role. I believe he’s just saying what everyone else wants to say, but don’t have the guts to say. A mouthpiece for the anti-Order faction, so he’s going to try to stonewall a few of our initiatives."

"Well, it is normal in politics. The opposing party will try their best to stop us. As long as it’s not too annoying, let it be. If you run into trouble, let me know, I’ll crush them."

Jura nods. "I figured you would say that. Oh yeah, my [diplomat] and [warrior] classes merged yesterday night. It’s now [Warlord]."

"Sounds like an upgrade."

"It is. I feel stronger already. Cumulatively I’m level 80! I think it’s due to your influence"

"Great." Well, it’s good that Jura’s getting even more powerful. All that [powerleveling] and [learning aura] helped, after all.

He sighs, and it’s a loud, long sigh. "TreeTree. I think… I think this is my limit."

"Huh?"

"I can feel it. Even though my classes merged, I have a sense, a feeling in my chest. That this… this is as far as I can go. My body and soul is at its limit of growth."

"Strange words. Do people not grow, gain levels, as long as they push themselves, fight monsters and gain experience?"

"Well, in theory, yes. But other than heroes, most of us plateau at some point. For those who are not so gifted, we would experience multiple plateaus. That’s why I’m worried for Lausanne, too. She might be doing well now, gaining levels and all, but there is a point where our body, our souls reach a ‘plateau’."

Well, I think Jura did mention something similar in the past, but it didn’t register as something significant in my head.

"We are not born heroes, and so, we have a limit. They say…"

I cut him off then. "Rubbish. Are you sure you’re not just feeling tired and start mumbling? Rather than talk about limits, take a dip in the biolab and let me have a look at what’s going on. Come back to the main tree."

"Ah…"

Jura somewhat reluctantly put himself for examination.

And first things first, I notice the arrangement of stones near and around his mana spring. The core of the soul is different from last time, I recall it looking like a few scattered mounds of rocks around the mana spring, but this time, those mounds are shaped like a proper wall around the spring, a bit more like the ranger. There’s a better structure and organisation to the rocks and stones. I suppose this is what the class merger did to the layout of the rocks.

Next, I looked at the mana generation, it is healthy, and quite good, doesn’t look like there’s any blockage or ‘dark spots’ that suck up his mana. The spring’s spewing out mana very well, the supply of ‘mana’ or ‘life force’ is good. Not as much as the heroes, of course, but it’s healthy for someone like Jura.

Then, I look at the body, the body’s healthy too. Jura’s not a young man anymore, by elven years he’s a middle aged man. Despite that, the body’s in good shape, he’s strong, he’s fit. The shores on the body is taking up all the mana the body can offer, and there are no blockage to the mana flow to any part of the body.

Hmm, so why would he feel like this is his limit? Is this something not on the mana? I draw on the power of my [soul forge], and channel it to my main tree’s biolab pod, hoping to have a look at a bit more.

With the [soul forge]’s power, more data appears. First, the rate of production of mana from the spring, and then the passive mana consumed to sustain each level and skill. It’s denoted as two bars, mana produced and mana consumed.

"Is this the mana we’re familiar with, or another kind of mana?" Alexis asks, she’s also looking Jura’s body.

Well, as it turns out, it sort of is, the normal kind of mana. Each person produces a certain amount of mana, but it is ‘allocated’ into two pools, ‘active’ and ‘passive’. Active goes into the person’s actual mana pool that is used to cast spells and activate skills, Passive is directly consumed to sustain the body’s stats, power and all the other ‘passives’. The passive, is commonly referred to as the body’s vitality or life force.

It is the data finally answers the question.

Jura’s vitality is maxed out. And his body’s consumption of that vitality is also maxed out. Though nothing is ‘wrong’ with him, he is right to say something is wrong. It’s like a car that’s already pushed to the limit, and can go no further. A car that hit it’s speed limit.

"Sounds simple enough, can you tweak the soul such that it produces more vitality and less mana? It sounds like he doesn’t really need that much mana as a warrior. Maybe some of his skills and abilities consume them, but I think a higher level would be better. Or maybe, you could just give him an upgrade? I wonder whether you could upgrade souls."

"It’s something I want to think about. There may be other ways to go about it."

Tweaking the soul, well, I could, but I need to be very sure it works. The soul forge, if used incorrectly, can cause great damage.

Year 79 Month 2

I finally got the skill. We needed to decorate a [subsidiary tree]’s customisable rooms with beds, complete with partitions, segregated washrooms, a reception area and a dining area.

[Tree Lodge]

[A tree with a whole lot more space than it looks! Each tree lodge has 10 rooms, a restaurant, a cozy lounge, a reception, and a kitchen, all while looking no bigger than any other tree! Needs to hire workers to work]

[Limited to 5, and each lodge must be a distance away from the other nearest lodge]

Uh. Odd, it's the first time a tree skill has a minimum distance requirement. I can’t cram all the tree lodges in one place?

"Meela, I got the skill. I can make you a tree lodge already." Well, once it’s fused with Meela, the slot would free up again. Meela’s her own person and she doesn’t use my tree lodge slot. It’s like Alexis’s own independent biolab-thing, which is now a weird crazy looking tree with lots of vials, tubes and other contraptions, and strange blobs flowing up and down its side. It's so weird that I have to use beetles to guard it.

"Awesome. I had ideas for names again. Want to hear it?"

"What?"

"Hotel Treevago." Hey, I know that joke. Do they all come from the same generation? Is there a kind of speed difference in time between this world and ours?

Alexis facepalms. "Meela, that’s lame. And it sounds kind of wrong. Like a bad reproductive disease."

Meela laughs. "I know, it’s a joke. I’m probably going to call it something a bit more proper. Perhaps, the Faraway Home-e."

"That’s not much better!"

"The palms, then? I think there’s a luxury hotel by that name, isn’t it?"

"The palms… but we’re not at the beach!"

"How about the Pinewood?"

"Oh, okay, the Pinewood sounds better." Alexis puts her spiritual fingers on her chin. She's thinking rather seriously.

"Or the Oakwood. I think that sounds quite classy as a hotel."

"Meela, you sure you want to be a hotel?"

"Hell yeah. Alexis, stops questioning my decisions, I know what I want to do."

"Ah, I know you won't change your mind. Fine, fine. You'll need to hire workers and you will need money. And where can you get it?"

"TreeTree, can I get a loan? You're rich, right? I'll pay you back when I start to make money."

"Okay. 30 gold for now. Consider it my investment."

Alexis smacks her head. "TreeTree, you're being awfully generous."

"Great, thanks TreeTree! Let’s totally do this. Uh.. but wait. If the soul forge merges me with the [Tree lodge], does that mean I take the position of the current Tree Lodge? That’s not a great location, I would prefer one right in New Freeka!"

"Ah… hmm...." I mentally connect to the soul forge, and then, a little prompt appears. Alexis and the Tree-minds didn’t have this issue since they are located right next to me, so after the merging is complete I can just ‘spawn’ them there. But New Freeka outside the range of the soul forge so I have to use the Carrier Drone.

[Carrier Drone. After a soul is merged with an object, skill or person, it can choose to become a "deployable egg". The carrier drone will then carry the egg within it to the desired location, where it will spawn into the merged structure! But beware, the carrier drone is vulnerable, and destruction means death to the cargo as well.]

"Once again, the system to the rescue." A little too convenient, but hey, that's life.

And so, I initiate the soul forge. Meela’s soul leaves my [soul realm], and into the forge, together with the [Tree Lodge], which melts into a greenish like liquid, and the soul forge then spins the two together. Meela's soul takes the form of a white light, and together with the greenish liquid, it mixes into a mild green light.

Lightning strikes at the branches of the [Forge Tree], making an electrical connection to the heavens above, and it periodical pulses, and the thickness of the lightning increases.

And the spinning within the forge speeds up intensely, as more power and mana are drawn through the roots. Activating a soul forge result in a lot of mana and energy flowing through the roots, especially from the leyline, it feels like having a whole lot of water flowing, spinning around me, like I am stuck in a whirlpool.

Zap! One large lightning strikes the [forge tree], and then, it’s complete. The merging is done.

A small greenish egg appears from the forge tree, containing a sleeping Meela as a hotel-spirit-tree.

A drone beetle appears, it’s body’s hard shell open to reveal something resembling a small but very long limb, it lifts up that small egg, the size of a dog (it’s relative), and places it in a compartment on its body, then the shell closes.

"Wow. It even has a little storage space."

I command a dozen beetles to quickly escort the drone to the marked place in New Freeka, a place Meela chose beforehand, where she wanted the ‘hotel’ to be. It's nighttime, and Jura has already made arrangements for the beetles to enter the town premise. Once the carrier drone arrives safely, the drone beetle starts to dig itself into the ground and it starts to… melt?

It’s melting? The body of the carrier and the egg liquefies into a greenish goo and it seeps into the ground.

"Whoah." Alexis is quite amused by it. "Magic?"

"I.. I think so?" Well, I have no idea. I don't know how the deployment works either.

It’s actually an empty plot of land, owned by the Order, and now, a wall starts to appear around that plot of land. The ground starts to expand, actually, inflate upwards, but still entirely covered in earth.

It’s still inflating, and the inflating earth starts to take the shape of a cuboid block made of dirt and roots. It’s like somebody took a hardened cube of earth filled with roots and placed it where the empty spot once was.

Then suddenly, a sign appears on that large mound of earth, on the frontage that faces the town’s streets.

"Under construction. Grand Opening in soon!"

"Meela, you there?" Alexis asks, a little worried. Meela's her only friend.

"Yes, but I’m very busy!" Meela replies back, "I’ll let you know when I’m done! I got tonnes of options before this thing opens!"

And Meela vanishes, merges into the wooden block, and she didn’t speak a word for the rest of the month.

The odd mound of earth, that strangely manages to remain ‘cube-shaped’ draws a whole lot of curious onlookers, but most people didn’t think about it too deeply. Just one of those strange things that happen in a world with magic, ‘oh look at that strange earth-block.’. Must be some magical shit happening in the Valtrian Order, again. Compared to trees that spit fire, relatively mild as weird things go.

"She’s busy in there." There's some kind of noise come from that wooden block. I think it sounds a bit like construction work, but it's a tree-structure, there would not be actual construction going on. Maybe it's just some kind of sound effect.

"Running a hotel isn’t going to be easy, and after lazing around for so long, it’ll take some time before she gets the hang of it." Awww, Alexis is worried. "Hey, take your time, alright? Yell if you need help, I'll try to help out."

Meela did not reply. The noise is getting louder.

Alexis sulks. "Meela, you're okay, right?"

"She's in there. I can feel it. Just give her space."

"Okay… Meela, let me know if you need anything alright."

Meela didn’t respond. But I think the message got through, she said it so many times, she's almost nagging.

--

"Is it something you’re working on, TreeTree?" Well, I told Jura to set aside that plot of land for me, but I didn’t really tell him what exactly it’ll be, so now that there’s a cube of dirt there, he had to ask.

"Sort of. It’s going to be a project by Meela."

"Meela? Is that the hero?" Oh wait, Jura didn’t know about Meela’s soul. Even when he’s in front of Alexis’s biolab, all he sees is a glowing blob, and not Alexis’s ethereal form. So, he’s not spoken to them at all.

Come to think of it, nobody knows about Alexis and Meela's second life as a soul.

Now I hope they don't accidentally expose themselves as former heroes.

Looking out

Year 79 Month 4

Oakwood hotel is finally ready to open for business!

Meela’s block of wood revealed itself to be a mountain wooden-lodge-like structure, the logs that usually make up the lodge still part of a large living tree that forms Meela’s combined body. She’s the lodge itself, a living structure, and her present appearance, which Meela says it’s a cosmetic choice. She described it as playing in a sandbox, a ‘game’ where she could choose the decor of everything... I can’t help feel like it’s some kind of mobile game that commuters love to play, to earn points, unlock decors...

"Inside, fifteen rooms!" Meela beamed, she takes the form of a treefolk-ish creature within the hotel, her legs constantly melding and merging with the floor itself. This treefolk-ish form somewhat resembles her human self, but her skin color and texture is that of walnut-colored wooden bark.

"You’ve got a physical body!" Alexis’s most impressed, probably because she unfortunately takes the form of a floating spiritual ghost who’s surrounded by levitating vials, tiny petri dishes and other similar sort of lab equipment.

"Cool, right? I’m like a treefolk, only…. well I can’t step more than 10 feet away from the hotel.." Unlike Alexis, she’s been flying around the entire valley, occasionally scaring some of the townspeople, who sees a glowing blob flying around.

"Ah, don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s a level thing, like me. I’m stuck to the biolab at lower levels, but now that I’m level 34, I can travel quite far ! Or ask TreeTree to help! The range limitation doesn’t work if you tap into TreeTree’s [soul realm]. But I’m not sure whether that’s because I’m soul-contracted to him though..."

It’s then the wisp pulls me into the soul realm. "Ah, I may have forgotten to explain this…. A tree spirit has the ability to ‘share’ and ‘connect’ souls together, and it’s this ability that allows all the souls a platform to speak and interact, and through it, they can see what you see. The [soul realm] is that platform, and it’s independent of where their physical ‘locations’ are. I believe the locals would refer to it like being in a ‘mailing group’.

Well, I know they can see what I can see, but I suppose it didn't occur to me to wonder why Alexis, Horns or Bamboo are able to share their thoughts, while they are out there travelling. I suppose it’s like a video conference facility for souls.

"Or do you still have the skill? The ‘[heroic meld]’? Did you see your status?" Alexis’s spiritual body floats over Meela’s little wooden lodge, exploring the rooms. Meela spent a lot of time arranging the decor. It’s rather... cozy?

"Nah, almost all my skills are gone and no longer have the [hero] job. I’m level 1 all over again. All I have left is [Goddess’s Blessings]." Meela shrugs, she's got a wooden body to properly shrug now.

"I was wondering whether our circumstances would be different, but looks like Death removes all our skills."

"Well, I really don’t mind starting over. I’ll get a tonne of skills running this hotel. I’m gonna be awesome!" Meela smiles and walks around. "Besides, now that I’m restarting, I’m better able to think through my levels and skills.."

"Good luck, Meela. Hope you don’t get strange skills like [Compendium of research failures], and [emergency shutdown]."

"What were you looking at that the system made you get a skill like [emergency shutdown], were you trying to clone dinosaurs?"

"...a biolab of giant dinosaurs." Alexis’s not insulted, rather, she’s rubbing her spiritual chin.

Meela’s turn to shake her new tree-head. "I gave you an idea, oh no."

"We have giant beetles. Dinosaurs are just giant lizards, or giant birds."

"I like that idea." I chip into the conversation.

"You know what dinosaurs are?"

"Uh… didn’t you say giant lizards or giant birds?"

"Oh, yes. Yes I did say that. Never mind me, Meela, how's the hotel?"

"It's a 'lodge' at the moment. I think there's going to be an upgrade at level 30. Strangely, I seem to be able to see what sort of upgrades to the lodge are available between now until level 30."

"How come?"

"I have no idea." Meela shrugs. "But I need to start recruiting workers to man the kitchen, the reception and the restaurant. I’m planning to hire all treefolks, to complete the ‘feel’ of the lodge. An inn by the treefolk. TreeTree, is that something you can help me with? Ask perhaps Jura or Laufen to put out a recruitment notice?"

"Sure. You’ll need to give a lot more details though, like.. What’s your pay and working hours like?"

"Oh. Can I talk to someone? Maybe some of the locals?"

"I’ll ask Jura to come see you. Also, are you still going to call yourself Meela, or you’re going with another name?"

Meela pauses, and she makes a thinking pose. "Good point. Should I still call myself Meela, and would that get me in trouble?"

"Depends what you want to achieve, Meela. Do you want people to know you were once a hero? That said, I doubt everyone will associate your name to you, because well, it’s really quite common to name their children after heroes. If me, I’m not going to call myself Alexis, I’ll go with a different name, maybe... Ritz, or Ambrose."

Meela claps her two wooden palms. "I’ve got an idea! I will call myself… M. Lady M."

Alexis smacks her head. "Meela."

"I will be referred to as… M, Alexis. You can call yourself A."

"Ugh."

"Don’t you think Lady MA is a classy name? I think it is, and it fits my role as the Lady of the Hotel. Aaaaaaaaaaanyway, TreeTree, I need your help! Can I speak to Jura or the rest of the Valtrian Order? And are there any permits or permissions I need to get?"

If I had a head to shake, I would, but I could only lightly sway my branches to indicate my lack of knowledge about New Freeka’s bureaucracy. But I can give a hand, I do want to see her succeed. "I’ll arrange someone to meet you."

"Great. I’d like to know before I accidentally commit a crime or infraction, or have to pay… unnecessary bribes."

"Bribes?"

"Uh, it’s actually common. The nobles throughout this world ask for bribes all the time. Even enforcement agents regularly ask for money. I heard from so many innkeepers and blacksmiths throughout our journey…"

At this point I turn to Ivy, "Any idea if it happens?" Well, given Ivy’s earlier bombshell that everyone commits some kind of crime, I’m thinking, of course bribery happens.

"Paying small sums of coin, to avoid complete, thorough legal enforcement? Yes. One of the more common transactions to occur is intentional understatement of tax collections, in exchange, the enforcers get paid."

"Ah. Does that happen to our people?"

"Yes. I’ve ignored it as the coins exchanged is minimal." I’m not shocked. I’m not shocked. People here do what they got to do. That’s just how it is.

"Uh...." I did recall telling Ivy to ignore most of the petty crimes, so I guess she classified this as ‘petty’.

"It lubricates commerce, and my calculations indicates most traders would be bankrupt if they had to comply with the actual tax rates and the full extent of the law."

"That’s a problem with the New Freekan Law, is it not?"

"Perhaps, it’s heavily inspired by wherever the lawmakers are from, so the mismash of laws give rise to a whole lot of loopholes and possibilities for abuse, and is compounded by the fact that the justice system refers most rulings to the high council, of which the lawmakers themselves are the ‘judge’."

"Ivy, has New Freeka’s justice system always been so screwed up?"

"I think it functions rather well. There’s a clear acknowledgement of authority that flows up to the councillors, and the people understand that, so they obey the councillor’s demands and whatever the city tells the people to do. The councillor’s role as the adjudicator and arbitrator of peace is incredibly important to allay the citizen’s fears and address their needs, even if it often lacks ‘justice’, it is a kind of ‘order’ which the people here come to accept and respect."

"Really?"

"Indeed."

"Isn’t there a written document? A constitution? What were they updating when they revised it to include the Valtrian order"

"Constitutional documents only list down the major items. The ‘key’ issues and matters which the High Council want to have formally documents. But outside of that, the Councillors issue proclamations all the time, and their decisions over time get stitched together into an informal ‘law’. Furthermore, punishments for non-compliance is not specified, so that’s left to the jurisdiction of councillors."

Ah. Whatever, I’ve gotten a little sidetracked.

Now to get Jura to send some people over...

Year 79 Month 5

Meela eventually hired some treefolks, paid some taxes for all the necessary permits, and got started with business. I just kinda let her do her own thing then. There’s really no need for me to interrupt and watch over her all the time. I feel I can trust Meela, so I’m gonna let her play her sim-hotel while I do my shit.

So, I turn my attention on my own priorities, my big 3 threats. Demon king, other nations, and monsters. In dealing with demons, I can fairly be confident in my own abilities. With other nations, I’ll need the assistance of the people around me, so Jura’s levelling challenges is something I need to find out how to help him, and with monsters… well, I’ll just let that be.

Actually, looking at it, I’ve reduced the relative threat level of monsters generally. So far, I’ve not yet faced any truly difficult monsters, though we do have golems who are territorial, but as a ‘threat’, I think their territorial, "camping" nature makes them less of a ‘threat’ than I initially expected.

It’s demon king and the other nations that are the most immediate threats.

Looking at the ‘other nations’, I’m relatively comfortable with where things are at the moment. I have a large army of beetles, and that should be able to deter the threat of any small armies.

For the demon king... he’s about 4 years away, and I’ve asked Madeus to do more research on when the ‘rifts’ will start to appear. He says it’s usually 2-3 years before the demon king itself, so I might have only another 1-2 years of ‘peace’ before we’re back to war with the demons.

-

"Master, we’re at the north sinkhole." Horns’ delegation of beetles, Alexis’s probe finally arrived. I’ll soon start deploying [subsidiary trees] to the location, once they’ve surveyed the area and find where exactly I need to go. The sinkhole is massive, and I really wonder how no one found it all these while, but then again, it’s probably just magic. There’s multiple entrances that lead down into the sinkhole, and the area around the entrance are now filled with camps. One of the larger entrances even has a small town that caters to the adventurers’ needs, clearly run by opportunistic merchants trying to purchase the collected materials. Apparently, snake-skin and snake-bile has various uses, some of which can be sold for a huge amount of money.

"Which location should we pick? All the entrances are taken by the adventurers, and honestly, we’ll attract unnecessary attention. We are after all, a delegation of beetles, and the adventurers will immediately assume we are hostile."

"Horns, suggestions?"

"Somewhere further away. We’re beetles, we don’t need to use the ledges, we can climb down the vertical walls just fine."

"Good point." Alexis nods.

If needed, I could use my roots to form new ‘ledges’ for the beetles to crawl down, or even the roots and vines as a kind of ‘rope’ for the beetles to climb down. So, after a bit of scouting, we pick one side of the hole where there’s already some shrubs and trees. That way the beetles and trees blend in naturally.

"Could you spawn a biolab this far away? The sensors the probe has isn’t as good as the ones on the biolab."

"Oh, why?"

"The probe-etle can connect to it to amplify the sensors"

"Fine, the trees are some distance away. Just hold position for a day or so, spawning the roots to reach such distances takes time. So, what kind of monsters?"

"Snakes? I see snakes. And spiders. A lot of snake-like slithering monsters. There’s a lot of them down there. A lot of big ones too. And colorful ones." Horns, once again, with not exactly helpful descriptions.

Alexis looks at them, "I wonder what’s attracting the adventurers..."

"The usual, I suppose? Money, glory, power. Looks like money? Anyway, I’m here for power. Once I get the trees there, then we’ll start exploring the sinkhole too."

-

Meanwhile, in New Freeka...

[Class seed obtained - Dark Knight x 1]

[Experience seed obtained x 1]

Huh! It’s a joyous thing, to find an unusual seed from a death ceremony. Since this ceremony started, I’ve ‘processed’ about 300 dead bodies, half of it from plain old age, the other half from injuries, fatal work accidents, murders and fights. Most of them do not produce any of such seeds, but so far, about 6 bodies, or about 0.5% seems to produce something, either a skill seed, which is the most common, or a class seed.

The rarest seed, is the Experience seeds. It makes sense, since they give a level.

Essences though, are a whole lot more common. Almost all dead bodies, when ‘absorbed’ produce a few essences. Usually simple essences, like essences of knife, or essences of lesser courage, or essence of water, but unlike seeds, essences are mainly used for ‘infusions’, their effects mild.

"Who’s this half-elf man?" I ask the priest handling the ceremony, after all, for this dead man to give me a [dark knight] class seed, he can’t be ordinary. There’s a young boy, looks to be a half elf, and an old grandma next to him, attending the rites, and strangely, they don’t feel like family. The man who died looks to be relatively middle aged, in his 40s, and the cause of death is a stab to the heart.

"A recent refugee from Nung. Got into a scuffle with some of the guards and one of the guards stabbed him to death. Came with the boy and the grandma, in the same caravan, so the old grandma and the kid came to pay respects. Apparently the kid and the man shared some kind of connection, so the kid insisted to come... That’s all I know, sadly."

"I see."

The priest picks up the compressed bones, and passed it to the young boy. "Here, something from that man, for you."

The boy nods, and keeps it. "Thank you. I’ll take good care of uncle’s remains."

"Is anyone looking after you, kid?" The priest smiles at the boy.

"Ah, I’m living with that granny there... we’re working for a bakery now."

"Ivy, can I ask you to start surveillance on this young boy and the grandma? He’s ticking quite a bit of the ‘potential hero’ tropes."

"I’m a bit overwhelmed at this point. There’s too many newcomers to the town... I’m struggling with 6,000-7,000 people simultaneously." Ivy’s got a massive list of people to watch, at this point, all the politicians, all the guards, and then the Valtrian Order’s people.

Well, I’m out of artificial souls. I’ve collected quite a bit of soul fragments but not enough, not yet. "Ah well... drop monitoring some of the Order’s people then, those who do not appear to be undertaking any high risk or suspicious"

"Okay."

Ah, I got quite a bit of class seeds. Ranger, archer, soldier, merchant, trader, and various other trades. So dark knight’s a rather... unique class type. Classes are available only to the humanoid races, monsters or the monster-like creatures usually don’t have ‘classes’ instead they have racial or type levels. A person can gain as many classes as they want, but depending on the race, only some of the benefits from the active few classes manifest.

So... dark knight.

"What’s a dark knight?"

"Oh, knights who tap on the power of darkness? Knights who fight at night? Night knights?" Jura shrugs and laughs. "Sorry TreeTree, I’ve never heard of it."

-

Research status :

Eye-Tree Stage I - completed

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 3 - completed

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 4 - 24 months

Tree - volcanic adaptation stage 3 - completed

Roots - Volcanic mineral harvesting - stage 2 - completed

Roots - Volcanic mineral processing - stage 1 - 1 month remaining

Materials testing - stage 1 - completed

Tree-lab varieties - stage 1 - 8 months

Magically attuned materials Stage 1 - 6 months

[Basic Tree-Eyes obtained. Limited to 10 ‘selected’ trees. Place on trees to obtain multidirectional vision. Can actively look through two sets of eyes at any one time, view limit can be increased with root-brain complexes.]

Oh, I have Tree-Eyes, and obviously, I put one on my main tree, and save the rest. I’ll need to think where to put the trees properly, since it’s limited.

In terms of research I’ve decided to relieve Trevor from active research duties, so that brings my concurrent research topics down to 4. That’s because the valley’s growing, and Trevor’s energy and focus is needed to manage the larger valley. The forests now extend far beyond the valley itself, and there are now multiple patches. Total number, 94,000 normal trees, some 480,000 shrubs and bushes, about 5,000 subsidiary trees, so he needs his full processing power to handle such a large valley, even with his higher levels.

Next, I cycle through my domain. The volcano’s activity subsided, but we’re not attempting any invasion into the inner volcano for the moment. Although the beetles are tougher, thanks to more anti-magma armors, it doesn’t resolve the golem problem. The golems are still too powerful, and deeper still, we spotted a larger golem. They’re not ‘aggressive’ until we encroach on their area, and so, for now things remain as status quo. I do intend to have more research completed, a different army type and have more ‘tools’ at my disposal before attempting my next invasion of the volcano.

Then, the ginseng plant. I’m on a good streak, it’s the longest continuous time I’ve protected the ginseng plant, and so it’s starting to attract stranger monsters. Together with a large army of beetles, both Dimitree and Trevor playing the role of the alarm and surveillance system, we’ve held off many greedy, ginseng-stealing monsters. I hope I’ll get something for Jura to use, since ginseng, like herbs, are supposed to be good for supplementing vitality. Between Level Seeds and Ginseng, I think I’ll be able to push Jura up to the next level, but first, I need to make sure the Ginseng works. I fear that giving Jura the levels, without the vitality to support it may weaken him instead.

Emile and Belle, as part of the Order’s many business ventures, run the various crop factories and processors, such as the olive press, the cotton factory, the herbal juicemakers, the fermented or dried fruits and healing fruits. A plot of land near my main tree, and another near the outskirts of New Freeka’s town has been converted to grow all the different kinds of crops that the Order needs to operate these business ventures. I was hoping Brislach or Wahlen can participate, but they seem content with their lives as ordinary elves living in New Freeka.

Speaking of business ventures, the New Freekans for now still make the wines for export, one of their most successful ventures so far, that even Salah buys from them. Their master winemaker’s apparently gained quite a few levels from this project, and is even famous regionally. It helps they have the right kind of levels and skills, since there’s a farmer with skills focused on growing high quality fruits, and also infusing them with a certain kind of flavor, so together, they made wines that have interesting taste profiles.

I still wonder whether Yvon thinks it’s worth it to trade her soul for grapes, but hey, she’s got lucky with Salah calling off the truce terms and instead offered an unconditional truce.

She’s supposed to die and then I can use her soul for my own schemes! Oh well. She’ll die eventually. Wars, demons, diseases. Something will eventually get to all of us, and I think she’ll get killed somehow. Eriz too! Eriz is still working as a ‘maid’ and ‘minder’ for Yvon, even though she’s so free now that she doesn’t need a ‘minder’.

Yvon’s routine now mostly consist of practicing, teaching Roma various things, and then sparring with Lausanne. Other than that, she’s at her home in New Freeka, idle, receiving visitors, mingling in public spaces with an adoring populace, she is to some, the ‘mother’ of the nation, the de facto ‘Queen’.

"TreeTree, can I ask for something?" Lausanne drops by after her usual combat practice. Thankfully, she’s gotten over her Tarzan phase, and she’s not swinging from tree to tree all that often, except for ‘practice’.

"Hmm?"

"This special familiar... is there a price I have to pay? Like... mom used to tell me, few things in the world are free... so... I’m just wondering whether there’s a catch."

"Huh, why?" Surely it’s not a statement like that, that prompts this sort of question.

"I see it in my dreams when I sleep these days. There are days I forget that we’re separate... things. It’s like... it’s like it’s me. Part of me. And it’s strange. Some days, I know what the vines are touching, I feel it, I feel like the vines are like my fingers. It’s... really really strange and a bit scary."

"Uh..." Is that supposed to happen? I have no idea, I think it might be an ability that the special familiar has. Do familiars meld with their hosts? "Don’t worry about it Lausanne. The familiar means you no harm." I lied. I’m not sure, but I think the familiar should not have such side effects.

Alexis butts in during the conversation. "And what’s that familiar powered on? It feels familiar. Like... a kind of familiar mana signature..."

"Magic. My magic."

Alexis shrugs. "Is it?"

"Okay, I believe you TreeTree... but if someday I want to remove the familiar, is that possible? Can the familiar contracts be cancelled?" Lausanne, of course, can’t hear Alexis’s voice.

"Yes, yes. I can take the familiar back, so don’t worry. How’s practice? Is Yvon a good coach?"

Lausanne pauses, and then she flashes her usual big chubby smile. "Okay TreeTree. Oh, Lady Yvon, she’s good, but I think Uncle Jura’s a better fighter." Well, Jura did gain more levels, and his recent class-merger makes him really formidable.

"Oh. You don’t like fighting her?"

"No, not that. I like her. I just have not gotten used to how she fights. It’s... a different style. But I mean, Uncle Jura’s a better fighter in a... erm.. A bigger way."

"Well, you should get used to different styles of fighting. Heroes need to fight all sorts of monsters."

Lausanne nods. "Oh yeah. I didn’t think of that. You’re right TreeTree, I should adapt to different styles!"

She walks into the playroom now turned study room, and she grabs a small bag of wooden toys, some small kid-sized wooden swords. I think she intends to distribute them for the kids in the orphanage, now her friends. "I’m going to train my friends, is that okay?"

"Sure, don’t go easy on them."

Lausanne frowns, her lips pout. "Uhm, I can’t. They’re really weak, so I need to train them slowly. TreeTree, do you think one day you can use your powers on them too?"

Well, Alexis did suggest a larger sample size. "Maybe?" I’ve been monitoring the orphans for some time, and all of them, so far, do not show anything... extraordinary. The regular checks using the biolab in the orphanage didn’t indicate whether any of them would be special, but then again, Lausanne’s not special either.

So I’m in a bit of a dilemma. Lausanne’s where she is now, a ‘genius’ because of years of consuming essence, dream tutor and powerlevelling such that she gained knowledge. If Lausanne is ordinary, then what if the others are special? But my dilemma isn’t really potential, but... maybe, I think what’s really stopping me from trying is ‘trust’.

For Lausanne, she has been with me since she was a baby, and that strong bond, is why I have invested in her, and she is my guinea pig. Maybe someday she’ll betray me, when she finally goes and see the world. But still, it’s a mutual benefit. I learn something, and Lausanne gets stronger.

So, for these other kids... If I start young, and mold these children, maybe I will build such a bond with them too.

Most of them. Maybe, just maybe, I could link it to the ‘familiar’ , such that all of them must take the familiar contract, and the familiars would then also help to monitor them? Act as my eyes and ears, such that I can learn more about these children, and in turn, build a stronger bond?

[Skill upgraded : Symbiotic extension]

[Skill learned : Minder-Familiars. Maximum Minders, 20]

[Special tree type obtained : Dreamer’s Treehouses]

"Lausanne, would you have any of your friends who would like to... have a familiar?"

Seedlings

Year 79 Month 6

I chose five.

5 young girls, around age 6 to 8 from the orphanage for the first batch of the minder-familiars. I've decided to use the minders in batches, so I can spread out my sample size over time. Why girls? No real reason for girls, it just so happens that Lausanne's friends or playmates are mostly, mostly girls.

Their reaction to having a minder-familiar contract is mostly shock, to them, all they can see is 'familiar'. The status as a 'minder' is hidden, duh, else they probably won't accept it. Amazing, they said. But these are young girls, their magic just starting to bubble out of their tiny souls.

I had conditions, of course, things that Laufen helped me explain.

Regular dips into pod. Twice a week, so I can track changes to their body, and their soul.

They have to stay in a subsidiary tree I placed next to orphanage quarters. It's got room and beds for 20 children, though they are all densely packed together like a dorm. This is because my [dream tutor] only works when they sleep either next to me, or inside 'me'.

Practice. Once they accept the familiar, they will go on a structured education and training programme, so that they become competent soldiers.

I have 20 slots, so I plan to split them into 4 batches, using the first 5 as a guinea pig and refine the process as I go along. There are things I want to identify, such as how does the essence use influence the creation of 'skill' blocks in the soul realm. By looking at them frequently, I hope to gain some idea about how effective are essences, and how much do I actually need to use for it to start having an effect.

For the education programme, I task Jura to appoint some of the Order’s militia, to start these girls on simple exercises and drills. This world does not shy away from sending young children to fight wars, I think it's better to train them before they get sent to their deaths.

The girls take to training and education with much enthusiasm. Showing up promptly and listening to the various trainings and teachers intently. It's a small, focused class. One teacher to five girls, and its drawn out of my personal budget. The Order's budget allocates a discretionary sum to me, that I can do whatever I want.

Anyway, the girls are really enjoying the structure, which is I find that quite strange, as I remember being a rebellious young child in my youth, but for orphans who never had structure, a welcome change of pace.

-

Next, following up on the hole. Further down, there’s a bit of a ‘space-warping’ present, similar to almost all dungeons and to some extent, my own [secret hideout].

"Dungeon?" Horns suggests, as the small squad of beetles venture down the hole.

"Magical presence is fluctuating, seems rather consistent with the presence of a dungeon core of some kind."

"Not a leyline?" I ask.

"Doesn’t seem like there’s magical energies of a leyline, do you detect any?"

Well, sadly I know the answer is no. When we conquered the earlier dungeon, the presence of the leyline is clear. My roots, as magically insensitive as they are, could pick it up, because of how overwhelming the leyline’s presence was, once you go underground. None of that overwhelming magical presence here... unless it’s somehow magically concentrated and hidden.

"A core, then."

"It’s deep, I think." Alexis’s probe walks down the cliff walls. Some snakes and flying creatures start to engage the group of beetles, which the beetles fight off successfully.

"Master, are you able to place your trees on the cliffs?"

"Further up, yes. But once the dungeon’s influence touches the cliff, no. There’s a ‘barrier’, in which my subsidiary trees cannot pierce." I can use roots though, to create a path.

"At this point?"

"I’m afraid that’s in the dungeon, already." Good thing is, I can see into the dungeon, because unlike the earlier dungeon, it’s not blocked. Perhaps this dungeon didn’t learn that sort of ability? Or not all dungeon cores have the same kind of power?

"Ah, could you put a tree right at the very edge, and then lower a bunch of vines down? Something for us to grab on if we need to jump and fight."

"Ah."

The beetles have no problems walking on the cliff walls that lead deep into the darkness below. The darkness itself doesn’t scare them either, their vision is naturally adapted to all light levels. But fighting while trying to grip onto the walls is not so easy.

"...your presence is getting faint, master." Horns say.

"Hmm... I’m still connecting to my probe. Looks like my connection is stronger than yours. It’s just really crazy dark down here."

"Tell master I’ll talk through you." Horns say to Alexis’s probe, Horns’ communication is also a kind of ‘telepathy’.

"I know. I can still communicate, but that means you’ve got to protect me."

Snakes. These snakes have rough scales, perhaps it helps them move and hold onto the jagged cliffs. Some of these snakes are like nagas, part-humanoid, with four or six arms, and a long slithering body that helps them navigate the cliffs. The nagas are tough opponents to fight, and easily they can take on five or six of the beetles before dying.

"TreeTree, your beetles are not suited for dungeon battles. They are tough, and their bodies strong, but their way of charging and fighting is not really appropriate in this environment. I would say only Horns with his skills is suited."

"What are you telling master?"

"Nothing."

After another 2-3 hours of descending into the abyss, they’ve decided to stop and retreat, as the attacks from the snakes become relentless.

"Master, I suggest a full scale invasion of the hole. Maybe 5,000 beetles, and 50 of the large beetles, all of us go into the abyss and attack everything we see. The dungeon’s structure is deep, and wavy further down, and there are a lot of monsters, but unlike the earlier dungeon, it’s still big enough for a large amount of beetles. A large attack force will work a lot better than a small elite squad."

"I agree with the assessment. This dungeon seems to favor large, wide caverns and hallways. Ideal situation for a large force to just march in."

"Very well. Let's do it. Horns, you're in charge."

"Ayy! This beetle army is gonna kick some dungeon core backside! Beetles will be the very best!"

A week later, the adventurers nearby are treated to the view of a massive army of beetles descending into the abyss. It caused a massive panic, but as the beetles did not attempt to engage the adventurers, cleverly, the adventurers took the hint and left the army of beetles alone.

And Horns’s suggestion is working like a charm.

Within three days of the invasion, like an unstoppable tide of destruction, the beetles charge in and flood the dungeon, the army of beetles slaughter all the snakes that has the misfortune of being in its path, and cleared most of the dungeon and most importantly, reached the core.

The wide layout meant a large force could penetrate all the way in, even if we were outmatched one to one. And the space allowed our superior numbers to gang up on the individually stronger snakes.

The core is trying it’s best to defend itself, spawning and summoning as many snake monsters as it can, but with 3,000 beetles left, and despite 2,000 beetles died fighting all the snakes and snake-like monsters, it’s unable to muster an army large enough to fight back the tide of beetles.

"Bring it back." Horns and the army arrive at the core room, and with a strong nudge from the giant beetle, the dungeon core rolls off its pedestal.

And that, is how we beat the dungeon.

I found it quite funny, because actually what the dungeon core needed to do, to successfully defend against our invasion, is to choke us off, but strangely, this dungeon core’s design choice was wide open spaces, large openings, big walkways. Big spaces, big walls, all allows for a large force to rush in and clear everything. Perhaps it’s an architect with a thing for big spaces.

And why snakes?

Ah, perhaps the dungeon core rolled the dice and got snakes.

With that, the army of beetles return with a dungeon core, taken from its home. Strangely, without the dungeon core, the deep hole continues to spawn snakes, although to a lesser frequency.

"Dungeon core." A large circular crystal like structure, about the size of a basketball. I recall the earlier one being larger though. Or are there many variants? Perhaps it’s not something with a standard size.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I would like to study it of course. But between now and when I get that magic lab, it’s going to sit in my [treeasury]."

"...fair enough."

Other than that, the beetles also brought back some interesting abyss vegetation.

[Tree-type obtained : Cave Trees]

[Plant-type obtained : Deep Moss]

[Special Tree-type obtained : Cliff Bonsai]

No levels for me, sadly. Horns and Alexis did get some levels. Sucks being a bystander.

Year 79 Month 7

"Tree Spirit, an audience please." Yvon came marching to my main tree, alone. She didn't seem very happy.

"Yes?"

"What’s your plans with the orphans? I heard from Lausanne that you’ve given them familiars and started them on some kind of training."

"It is as you heard, training. I intend to train them into warriors."

"Warriors? Is that all there is to it? Surely there is more going on, what with the strange things you have been asking them about?"

Hmm, she's being rather aggressive. "What are you alluding to? If you have something to say, get to it."

Yvon takes a step back, but then, she quickly adjusts her posture, such that she faces me head on, her eyes stare at my tree trunk. "What I hear is, there’s constant dipping into your... pool. That healing pod thing, with all of your feelers. So, I want to know, it’s not just training, are you also meddling with their bodies? Are you... altering them? And are your meddling with their minds as well?"

"Meddling, yes. Altering, maybe." Well, yeah. I do plan to meddle. That's the whole point.

Yvon shakes her head. "That... that’s not right. These are children."

"You see to think there is a reason not to select children. Wrong. It is because they are children. Children can be easily molded, shaped. Their minds are flexible, receptive to change. And seriously, why now, Lady Yvon?"

Yvon pauses. Maybe when Lausanne starts to tell her what I’ve been doing with the 5 girls, it just flicks a switch. "Why? What do you mean why? Is it not something wrong to start using children for some kind of war plot? As your future war potential?"

"Many nations do so, choose young children and prepare them for war, in some cases from the day they were born. What I want to do, is similar. If you ask me why, ask all the nations before, and present, why. Fighting, war. Destruction. It’s a way of life in this world. Preparing these children for that way of life, so they, we, have a better chance of survival as a whole, is there a fault?"

Yvon nods, "It it your altering of their bodies and minds. Would it be something that would be irreversible? Such that they may lose their ability to have children?"

"As I currently plan it, no. And seriously, you would know better that the whole matters more than the individuals. Some must be sacrificed, and experience pain, for the whole to succeed. It is, as I said, strange, coming from you, Lady Yvon."

Yvon's face is complicated, a mix of worry, perhaps disgust, and fear. "Would you deprive them of a childhood, of friends? Would you isolate them, make them... inhuman? Would this sacrifice that you ask of these young girls, would it be too much for them?"

"Maybe. Maybe this burden is too much for them. To sacrifice their childhood to be my warriors, too much. But there is no one else, Yvon. These orphans yearn for a purpose in life, and I give them one. To answer a greater calling, to fight for me. For the valley. For all of us."

"That..."

"I suddenly find it strange, that you are concerned for these young girls. I don’t recall you being so caring of orphans, when you were in a position of power, so these words coming from you.... Sounds... hollow. "

Yvon's eyes are a bit watery, is she trying to pull the crying lady trick? Sadly, I am a tree and such crying antics do not trigger a protective urge within me. "Yes, I didn’t do what I could. I had the power, yet, I was too crippled by politics, too confused by all the competing priorities. But now, I still had to speak up, I heard what Lausanne said these girls will go through, and I fear for these young souls. You send them into a life of only war."

"And so what? This is how the world is. Why do you want to speak up? Are you doing so to satisfy some kind of conscience that you suddenly discover you have?"

"Uhm. No. I am trying to care for these young orphans. They deserve a life better than war, now that we are at peace." I think she lied. And that's hogwash, really.

"Peace? You mean this peace that we have because our overwhelming might suddenly scared the shit out of our opponents? This is no true peace, Lady Yvon. It is a peace built on fear. A fear our power. And if you know better, this peace is maintained by power. Lady Yvon, if you truly care, and want to care, I would like to suggest you participate in their molding as warriors. Be their support, then. These young girls, they will need a matron to watch over them, to guide and advise them where I cannot. To be a ‘wise elder’ to these sheep, our future warriors."

She froze, and her eyes twitched. "Again? You... you want me to be a part of it?"

"Yes. Since you suddenly have a conscience, come, join the training. Join me in shaping our future warriors. Our... future generals, our future knights. Perhaps you can then see for yourself, what I am trying to do."

"Ahh...."

"So? Or was your earlier words just... something you wanted to get off your chest?"

Yvon finally nods. "I’ll do it. I’ll help you with these girls."

"Good. Make them strong, we will need their strength one day."

----

"Alexis, do you have any results from the treefolks study?"

"Ah yes. I got the dead treefolk and I’m starting my investigations... so far nothing, but I’m mainly interested in the kind of flexible muscle-wood that they have on their joints. Their body is fascinating under scrutiny, its both plant-like yet they also form muscle-like structures. It's like somebody just blended a tree and a person together to create a treefolk. Replicating that muscle like structure would mean we could make stronger creatures overall."

"How long so you need?"

"According to [research planner], probably 12 months just to understand the treefolk's bodily structures. There's a lot to unpack. The treefolk's brain is also interesting and worth another 12 to 24 months of study, and I reckon would have a benefit to your [root-brain complex]."

"Are they not a communal mind structure, like forests are?" It is said that forests form an intelligence through the interconnected roots, each tree a neuron. In this world, large, ancient forests often appear to have a will of its own, and over time, this will often pools together, and creates a [spirit tree] or [soul tree]. One of the many ways tree spirits are said to come to existence, naturally.

"Not exactly. Though treefolk have a head, their brains are actually distributed throughout their body, kind of like jellyfish. It's like a neural network, but with a few large hubs in the head, the heart..."

"They have a heart, yes?'

"Yes. Well, their heart is actually more like this main vessel through their body that runs from their leg to their head. In a way, its like a large muscled pipe..."

"Ermmm... never mind the details."

---

News for a distant land, as Nung, Takde and Salah eventually settle on a peace treaty. Though culprit of the massive blizzard still at large, the blizzard itself has been successfully dispelled, and the weather returns to normal.

That said, ground zero of that spell is now a quasi-dungeon area, the presence of such blood sacrifice distorted the area such that it spawns zombies and monsters. It will take some time for the remains of such magic to decay.

So, trade gets rerouted around the now cursed land, and the three nations reach a kind of awkward truce. Still, that means less [essence] for me from this battlefield.

Further out, my travelling [soul harvesters] continue to bring back more souls, more [essences of death], more skill type [essences], throughout the entirety of this continent, death remains a constant thing. Many small battles, many little monster attacks, little rebellions here and there. More death, more essences. And that is good for me.

One good thing about this peace, is now I get more knowledge about our neighbours. And as more and more such little snippets filter through the grapevine, I learn interesting things, like, there is a vast sacred forest on the edge of Salah's capital, where the kings hunt. Or near one of the large cities of Nung, there is a large mountain where people claim ancient giants wander.

Well, personally, I think it's time to take the war to Salah. They may be at peace, but I still have a small score to settle.

The Salah kingdom's capital is really far away, so I have to undo my subsidiary trees that stretch to the abyss. It's the furthest I'm going, if I measure the distance in beetle, its about 2 and a half weeks away, so I am going to need a lot of subsidiary trees to create a line that connects the entire distance.

It's a process that takes about 1,500 subsidiary trees, to create a line to bends with the terrain and eventually, the capital. I make it a point to hide the presence of the trees from plain slight, such that they appear "natural", and this endeavour took me the whole month, every day, putting a tree, altering its appearance, and then moving on.

And there it is, the capital.

[Skill upgraded : Local rootnet access upgraded. Longer distance between subsidiary trees unlocked]

[Special trees type obtained : Root Relay Trees]

[Max Quantity of Relay is Level x 5]

[Root Relay are special trees with the dedicated purpose of expanding your root network. A single root Relay can create a simple root network that extends 10 x the diameter of a regular subsidiary tree. Does not have other functions. Looks like any other tree. Appearance is customisable]

Year 79 Month 8

Salah's capital. It goes by many names throughout its history, many kings have changed its name. The most recent name of the capital is Ransalah, after the King's beloved but deceased wife, Queen Rani.

Next to the capital, is a forest, Salah's Royal Grove. In fact, most large kingdoms maintain a grove or a forest, for the purpose of having some supply of highly valuable herbs or plants, for the manufacture unique potions or medicines. Some temples, such as the temple of Gaya's headquarters also has a large forest which it cultivates for its own use.

Now that my chain of subsidiary tree has finally made the long connection needed to arrive here, I pause for a moment to take in the view.

It's a large capital, not as populous as it used to be after the non-human exodus, but still, there's a lot of humans in this city, perhaps 400,000 to 500,000, maybe more and the city sprawls to accommodate its large population. There are two rivers that run through the river, and it merges further down, and this splits the capital into three parts.

The central southern chunk, where the palace, priesthood, mages and wealthy mostly live. Infrastructure is good, the roads paved, security is top notch and patrols are regular, staffed with the best behaved men. It's a place where, to be frank, people behaved nicely, because of the overwhelming presence of the royal guards, and the Archmagus. It's home to the official trader's market, though in reality it's more of a hipster market catering to the needs of the wealthy and elite.

Then there's the east side, where the army's main quarters are, the river ports, and the warehouses. This is also where the Royal Grove is. There's not that many dwellings here, as space is few and far between, the Royal Grove off limits.

Then the west side, a large flatland where most of the citizens reside. Sprawling, messy, and infrastructure spotty, its the definition of a large city where the plans failed to keep up with the population growth. As a result, its a space where citizens often take things into their own hands, so there are multiple enclaves where there's some form of 'local rule'. Vibrant, energetic, and a space of constant change, the supervision from local authorities minimal, so long as the tax monies continue to flow into the right pockets. Half of the merchant corps exist here, and the true trader's market, where the trade volumes are high, and the shouting constant.

How do I know this? Well, it was not hard for Jura to ask a Salah merchant to speak of their capital at length. Apparently, the merchants are incredibly proud of the peon's market, one of the largest markets found on in the region.

It's a nice city.

A shame, really.

Side Story - Lausanne 3

Side Story - Lausanne 2

Some time after the orphanage started...

"Where’s the captain? We want the captain." The boys shout.

"They’re busy today. I’m here to be your practice partner."

"You’re not a soldier, you're just a little girl, no, worse, you're a noble." The young boy accused. "You’re one of the nobles, and we don’t want to practice with you."

"I’m not. And what’s wrong with practicing with me?" She didn’t understand it, she’d never been a noble. Her father may have been the village chief, but he passed away and the village was destroyed. Growing up relatively sheltered from kingdoms and their societies, she’s not too aware about the negative emotions associated with nobility, even though Jura and Laufen did tell her about what nobles usually did in other nations.

"I know you! You’re a noble, and we don’t want to practice with you. " The young boys shouted, some of them really unhappy. The rest of the boys didn’t like her too, they all looked at her with a look of disgust, which made her feel a little sad.

She didn’t expect this. Laufen and Jura asked her to help out at the orphanage, to help teach the other children, those about her age, be their sparring partner for a while. The captains are out on a mission. Why are they so nasty to me? I’m just trying to help. She wondered, but she didn’t understand their hostility. "Uh…"

"Don’t come here acting all high and mighty because of your mother!"

What? Where did that come from? Why? She just couldn’t answer. Isn’t mom the one who sets up this orphanage? The boys start going out of the hall. Lausanne started to feel that her presence is unwanted by these boys.

All she wanted to do is just practice some sword fighting, since uncle Jura’s busy. He said, help out at the orphanage, practice some basic moves with the kids in the orphanage, good heroes do that sort of work all the time. And I agree, I want to be a good hero.

But why do these fellow children, who are just around my age, treat me with such hostility? I didn’t even say much, all I did was walk in, say I’m helping out with the sword practice, and then this huge tirade of insults.

One of the caretakers at the orphanage, notices the insults and rushes into the training room, the caretaker, an elderly lady walks to Lausanne and pulls her to one side of the room before it escalates into a fistfight. "Forgive them, Miss Lausanne. A lot of them have a lot of animosity, a lot of anger, so when they see a young girl their age coming in to teach them, they… they can’t deal with it. Please, come this way with me."

"They’re really angry at me." Lausanne nods, her eyes look at the wrinkled face of the elderly lady. She holds Lausanne’s arms, and leans in to speak to her with a warm, grandmotherly voice.

"It’s a complicated feeling, these boys, they’ve got things to deal with inside them, and so these boys want, no, they have a need for respect and recognition, a yearning to learn 'real' skills. So when adult soldiers come and practice with them, they feel they… they are respected."

"Hmmm... so they don’t want to practice with me because I’m a young girl? Even if I have real skills?" Lausanne sighs. There’s nothing much she could do with those kids who are bigger, if they don’t like her. I’ll have to tell uncle Jura and mom about it later.

She looks at the caretakers, most of them elderly women that mom hired to help run the orphanage. There’s about 200 kids in this place, of various ages, and many of them are here because they lost both their parents, mostly during their earlier escape from the slaughter of Salah. The group earlier is around aged 9-12.

She’s sad, but she did promise Jura to help, so she asks for something else to do. Maybe if there are other girls? "Uhm… well, Uncle Jura did ask me to help out. Maybe I can play with the younger children? Any girls I can play with?"

"Ah… yes, okay. Girls... girls..." The lady smiles, and she leads Lausanne to another room where there’s about 10 to 15 young girls, probably 4 to 6 years old playing catch. It’s a relatively empty room, they don’t have many toys, so they mostly play with each other. "Maybe you can join this group?"

"Hi." Lausanne smiles, they’re all younger than her, and a part of her feels happy. It’s nice that I’m not the youngest for a change.

They smile back at her, and they welcome her into the game, ah, this group’s a lot more pleasant, she thought to herself. Maybe they’re too young to feel much animosity, or perhaps these group is a little sheltered. It’s a simple room, a few chairs, but it’s well lit by natural lighting, thanks to multiple large windows, thin streaks of sunlight filter through the leaves outside. There’s a few wooden blocks here and there, but that’s about all the toys they have.

A small girl with a short bob-cut walks up to Lausanne, "Hello, elder sister. I’m Jien." She’s shorter than her. Lausanne smiles and give her a hug.

"I’m Lausanne. Can I play?"

"Okay. What do you want to play? We usually play catch. Or we throw the blocks back and forth."

"Okay, let’s do that."

They played together for the rest of that afternoon, until it was about evening, and she learnt their names. The biggest girl there is Sammy, she’s about six. She doesn’t know when her birthday is because her parents both passed away when she was still a baby, and that’s actually fairly common among those who live there. Because the girls don’t know who’s the eldest, thus, they go with the biggest.

Jien is probably a year younger, like the rest of the girls, their parents died. Or maybe somehow got separated. Most of them aren’t very sure whether their parents died or somehow got lost, but this detail doesn’t bother them much.

Lausanne felt happy after an afternoon of playtime, and felt, maybe she should help them out. I should ask TreeTree for some more wooden toys. I remember we have a lot in the playroom.

-

"Did you practice with the other kids?"

"No mom. They didn’t want to fight with a girl. They wanted the captains."

"Oh." Laufen nods, she puts down the reports that the other employees prepared. She’s got a lot of assistants these days, as the head of the public services. She honestly didn’t like paperwork all that much, but there still needed to be reports, to tabulate spending, income and these are still made by actual administrators, or the priests. "Why?" Laufen squats to look at Lausanne eye-to-eye.

"One of the ladies said it’s because they want to fight with an adult." Lausanne sulks. "Maybe it’s because I’m not good enough."

Laufen gives Lausanne a hug and then starts to pat her daughter on her head. "No, no. I’m sure it’s not like that."

"The ladies told me so. The boys said they want the captains."

"Lausanne, my dear, they don't mean it. I am sure they like you."

Lausanne shakes her head. "Mom... They don't."

"Really?"

"Really." Lausanne's face is serious, and a bit sad.

"Well, they will like you someday."

Lausanne shakes her head. "Hmph." She leans in and gives her mom a kiss on the cheeks. "Good night, mom."

"Sleep well, don't let it bother you."

Lausanne shakes her head. Maybe it will bother her that night.

-

Some time later...

"Thank you for practising with me, Lady Yvon."

"Welcome. I always look forward to sparring with such a talented young girl."

They both give each other a quick bow, and they start their practice spars. Simple swings and strokes, moves meant to warm the body and ready for the real thing. Yvon is still leagues ahead of Lausanne in terms of skill, but Lausanne's growth is outstanding as she is almost level 30.

"How's things?" Yvon asks casually, ducking a horizontal slash, and then parrying a follow-up horizontal slash.

"TreeTree's starting a small class of students. He calls them his chosen warriors."

"Huh?"

"Yeah... he says he plans to train them, and maybe give them special powers like mine some day, but before that he needs to prepare them."

Yvon blocks a flurry of slashes, and retaliates with a body slam. Lausanne though activates [Evasive steps], and manages to avoid it.

"He says maybe he'll have to fix them if they're not compatible later on. Like how he uses his powers to cure Uncle Jura's curse..."

"Really, why does TreeTree want to do something like that?"

"Hmmm... he didn't tell me a lot, but maybe, maybe he just likes us to grow? He says he wants to watch our growth closely, though, as he'll be using some kind of 'essence' on us though."

"Essence? Isn't that like condensed energies?"

"I don't know, Lady Yvon. But TreeTree says he has a lot of essences and some other things like his minerals and mana that he wants to use."

"On the girls?"

"Yeah. He told me it'll be good for them."

"Did you get those as well?"

"Uh... I think so? I frequently have dreams where I am training, or where there's someone teaching me things. And TreeTree tells me to dip into the pod every week too."

"And your mom is fine with it?"

"Mom thinks TreeTree knows what it's doing. She says its how I get so good at fighting."

"Wait. You are not naturally talented at fighting?"

Lausanne smiles. "If you ask Uncle Jura, he'll tell you I was absolutely horrible at it when I started. But TreeTree's been helping me by giving me these... dreams."

Lausanne blocks a few more slashes from Yvon, and tries to land a kick.

"Dreams?"

"Yah. It's like I'll take a nap at home, and TreeTree's feelers will somehow touch my forehead, and I get the dreams."

"Tell me... more." Yvon charges, and unleashes a flurry of slashes. Lausanne tries to parry them, but fails to parry a few, so she takes a hit from the wooden blade.

Lausanne staggers back from the impact. It hurts but she has pain resistance. "Oh... it's different every time. Sometimes, it's like there's a voice in my head, and we would talk. About things, about a topic. Sometimes its language, like I'll get a lesson on it. Sometimes it'll tell me about people, about places..."

Yvon listens intently, they take a break.

"Some dreams are really really fun. It's like all these colors, and all these images, of really strange things, weird monsters-like things and shapes, but they don't attack me. It's like I'm on top of a mountain and fell down."

"That's like a vision. A.. hmm. A hallucination."

"A what?"

"Never mind, continue."

"Oh, then like last week, I had a dream where I was fighting a giant demon. I had really strong powers, and I had to use those powers to fight the giant demon."

"Fighting demons doesn't sound like a fun dream." Yvon shakes her head, and takes a drink from her bag of water. "Anyway, continue?"

Lausanne nods, and they both step back into the ring. "Well, I think TreeTree's trying to teach me something."

"Sounds like he's making elite warriors."

Lausanne smiles. "Well, he's just helping me be a hero."

Yvon frowns, Lausanne ducks, and jumps sideways to avoid a bunch of slashes. "Is it? I'm not aware he did so much to you."

"Oh, he's been fixing my body too, like repairing a bone here, a bone there. And he's got like this thing which can help strengthen the bones and muscles too. It's all in the green pod."

"I am starting to think the green pod isn't all that it seems..."

"That pod is amazing, Lady Yvon. It sustained a hero suffering from a demonic curse."

"It did?"

"Did Uncle Jura not tell you? One of the previous generations of heroes was afflicted with some kind of curse, and TreeTree kept her alive until a cure was found."

"Before we came..."

"Yeah, yeah! I was still a tiny toddler then. But I do vaguely remember a lady constantly being in the pod."

"Alright, let's stop." They had some more basic exercises just to cool their bodies down. "How are the girls receiving this news?"

"They're excited. It's the first time they get chosen for anything, so they are thrilled when they got the familiar contract. They'll need to sleep in a special tree, and have regular dips in the pod. It's like they're going to be transformed into something amazing, so all of them really, really want it."

"They should be careful. Tree Spirit probably has his own plans for them, and may not be what they think it is."

Lausanne smiles, "We believe in TreeTree. He'll help us."

Yvon sighs. "I... I'll need to speak to TreeTree."

Dreams, physical alterations. Hallucinations. Need to consume strange liquids. It all sounds a bit like what tribal shamans give to their warriors to whip them into a war frenzy, or the work of some alchemist testing out strange potions. She had heard rumors of creatures that give strange mind-altering substances to enslave minions, though it didn't seem like TreeTree is doing it, she needed to be sure.

Yvon's one of the modernist elves, who have a rather defensive, cautious view of Tree Spirits, that Tree Spirits aren't exactly domestic animals that can be tamed, unless one happened to be a hero who focused on spirit control.

The modernist elves believe the benign, friendly myth of the tree spirit is actually a unique characteristic of the Great Tree Spirits of the Elf cities, and one should not assume all wild tree spirits to be similarly benevolent. Like the dryads, faeries and other forest spirits, these avatars of nature share a common trait, that they are occasionally ephemeral, flighty, fickle, and manipulative. Though often their goals are aligned to what most elves desire, they should also be treated with caution, for the fury of a tree spirit is often not apparent, subtle.

Lausanne though, didn't think that way. To her, TreeTree is friendly and all he is trying to do, is help.

In their own ways, both of them are right.

Treetalks

Year 79 Month 9

"Did you hear? One of the mage guild's private gardens near the Royal Grove, was robbed last night! A lot of valuable herbs and plants were lost."

"Oh? Any idea who are the culprits?"

"The mages suspect a mage, so the royal guard has been deployed. But there were no traces. It's as if the plants all just... vanished into the ground."

"Can't it be just some thief with a magical bag? Or some kind of plant-manipulation artifact?"

"I think it's just an unhappy mage taking revenge. There's a lot of politics going on in the mage guilds. This is just a reaction to the mage's council votes!"

Ransalah.

It's a large city, and there are a lot of high leveled people around. Strong adventurers, powerful generals and mages. Their very presence permeates the air, and I occasionally pick up the effects of their skills, despite me being mostly magically-insensitive.

A direct confrontation is not ideal, not with the distance penalty I suffer at long distances.

This might be the first time I have 'seen' a city, Moton and New Freeka can't compare to the scale and sprawl of a capitol city.

It's also the first time I encounter 'enchanted' roads. Around the capitol, these road has some kind of 'anti-vegetation' effect, and as a result I cannot spawn my subsidiary trees near them. Even underground, the capital has a sprawling network of sewers and tunnels, and they are strangely, also, 'enchanted'. I suspect its the effect of some masonry skill, or builder's skill which prevents decay and damage to these structures, because logically, using magic on sewers just didn't seem to make much sense. These enchanted sewers prevent my roots from spreading that deeply, and so that greatly limits the extent of my spread.

In the city, multiple structures, such as the army's fort on the riverbank, are enchanted with strong defensive magic, which I am yet able to identify, but I presume to be a kind of 'warding' magic. The magic on the fort walls create a forcefield that repels my presence, and prevents me from placing subsidiary trees and also stops my roots from approaching.

I frankly don't know all of these, whether its skill or magic, either. Or whether its the powers of a local Lord or King which grants such passive benefits to the city which he or she rules.

These protections, magic or from skills, are clustered mostly around the old Castle, the palaces, the eight forts around the city, the mage's main towers, the old cathedrals and temples to the gods. The usual 'places of interest'.

All of these, together with the layout of the river, meant I have very little access to the inner city, where all the royals are.

Still, there must be something I can do.

First, is the Royal Grove, which, despite its royal status lacks magical protection. I guessed that unlike the places where the royals live, the Royal grove isn't worth much protection. So, I extend a few subsidiary trees into the forests, and soon discover that it's earth does have some magic. There's also a lot of new herbs and plants that I have not seen.

The royal guards and rangers, are always on the lookout, for monsters, or for thieves, but when they spot a new tree, they just go, eh. All I need to do is disguise my tree look like a small shrub, and I can slip through the patrols like nothing.

The best reaction I got from a ranger, "Oh, when did this tree pop up?" And then promptly proceeds to ignore that tree. Like, not even an investigation?

In fact, the most legit confrontation I gotten, is from a woodcutter. I had attempted to expand into the new part of the city, where all the regular citizens live. But the presence of a tree just stuck out like a sore thumb in the messy, dense mess that is the west side of Ransalah. So, a woodcutter came up to my tree that popped up at the edge of town, without any hesitation, chopped me down.

Chop. Chop. Chop. And timberrrrr.

My subsidiary tree fell just like that. I bet that woodcutter had like special [woodcutting] abilities that makes my tree's defenses absolutely useless. Those poor subsidiary trees didn't stand a chance.

Maybe that axe is enchanted to be super effective against trees. But honestly, other than the woodcutters, no one really notices an unusual tree in a forest. I mean, I am discounting the fact that anything green just sticks out in a place filled with houses, roads and shops.

Does this world not have tree-monsters? Nobody disguises themselves as a tree trunk? Does this world not have ninjas?

Anyway, the Royal Grove, and, as my [subsidiary tree] connects to the other trees and the earth, I get a notification.

[Gained a passive buff. Connected to an enchanted forest. Herb effectiveness increased by 50%.]

Oh. Funky. Enchanted it is.

"What's your plan?" Alexis asks, she's obviously a huge fan of seeing new places. "I've been there, that city. But we've only stayed a few days. It's nice, looking at the city from your point of view."

"Hmmm... I plan to first gradually infiltrate the capital, have trees and vines throughout the city... then, I need to find the culprits. I want to know whether the commanders that ordered the burning of the village, are they still alive?"

"That's it? If they are alive, do you plan to kill them?"

"Hmmm... I guess so. I should kill them."

"Is this for revenge? I mean, they burnt down the village, so its revenge, right?"

"Revenge, yeah, I think so."

Actually, that's a good question.

Why am I doing this? Am I just carrying the fury of the burning of the village of Freeka in my heart? Kind of silly that I am asking myself this now that I have made the entire journey here. I even invested all these subsidiary trees to establish a connection, a chain of trees that span a country.

So, that question prompted me to think about what exactly I want to achieve, and because I could not answer the question myself, I turn to the elves. My fellow survivors, the 7 elves that suffered the consequences of the army's brutality.

"Lausanne, what would you do if you found the one responsible for killing your father?"

"Slap him. A few times."

"That's it?"

"That bad person, he made me grow up without a father. It is a bad thing, bad people do such bad things, to me. But, it is so long ago, I was still just a small baby, I do not know what happened. So.. somehow, I'm not really, really angry. Maybe angry, but, it's not really, really, burn me up kind of angry, you know? I should be angry at these bad guys, because they did a bad thing, but, but it's not in here, you know?" Lausanne points to her heart, or is it her gut?

She has a point, she’s a baby, she’s not seen it happen, though she suffers the consequences of it. But that’s been her life since.

"So are you angry?"

"I think I am. But not much, really. Maybe mom will be really angry. Wait. I should be angry. I am angry."

"You... don't sound that angry."

"I am angry because a group of bad person did bad things to us. But, that's it, I guess, I am angry because I should be, but not angry because I feel it like a fire in my heart."

Okay, confusing.

Laufen.

"Laufen, what would you do if you find the man that ordered the burning of the village?"

Laufen sat, and she just kept quiet for a while.

"Laufen?"

"I heard you, TreeTree. I... I need to think. I just did not expect such a question from you, suddenly."

Oh. Laufen kept quiet for a good 15 minutes, maybe an hour? Just alone, thinking. I honestly didn't notice the time.

"Honestly, TreeTree? I don't know what I would do. Maybe I will kill him? Or maybe not. But me... I... I think I probably won't be able to do anything. It's been so long, TreeTree... I. I don't know."

Laufen looks really uncomfortable, and she sits down on the large chair in her office.

"They took my friends, my husband, my home, from me."

"So you will retaliate?"

"Yes. Maybe yes. But, but I myself, I tell Lausanne not to let it cloud and consume us, that this is a cycle, of how the world renew itself... The world is full of this, you know, killing. People always kill each other, they always find excuses to. If it’s not humans, it’ll be royalty, or money, or territory. We have always been killing, or getting killed. I sometimes wonder whether maybe it would be demons that got us instead, if its not the army."

"I'm confused, Laufen. Why are you talking about that?"

"Me too. I don't really know what I will do. What I should do? I like to think we have all moved on, we succeeded in rebuilding our lives. A part of me takes the stand that living a good life is the best revenge. That not to be consumed by vengeance is the way to move forward with life."

Laufen pauses, and takes a deep breath.

"But the loss, somewhere, it still hurts. When I look at Lausanne sparring, I wonder what Ricola would have said. When we celebrate her birthdays, I wish Ricola and all others to be here."

She looks really sad then.

"But does my sorrow, my sadness, allow me to seek vengeance? I know, Casshern once told me that when you've lived through so many years of death, you learn to accept it. But I can't. So what should I do, TreeTree? What's the right thing to do?"

She stretches.

"Like I said, a part of me thinks the right thing to do, is to forgive and forget. But I don't want them to entirely get away scott-free either. I feel like a statement needs to be made. I'm so torn between those two feelings! TreeTree? I want both. I want to let go. Only with letting go I will have inner peace. But I also want to have vengeance, a statement, some way of slapping these idiots for fighting us when their attention should be demons."

Well, I can actually share that emotion. I too thought I knew, but now that I am at the point where I am able to retaliate, I actually don't really know what I want to do with Salah.

Do I proceed to slaughter the Salah Kingdom? Many of whom are similarly unaware of the evil their military commits? Or should I just focus my goal on the true culprits? But let's say I do find the true culprits, is death the right punishment for them?

"Jura, what would you do if you find the culprits behind the burning and slaughter of Freeka?"

Jura leans back on his chair. "I would have the true culprit stripped naked, hung upside down in a public market, and starved, whipped and burned for a few days, but without dying, without sleep."

"Huh, why?"

"Because he deserves shame, and pain. For someone who crossed me personally, I feel to just let the person die is too lenient, too light. He should experience my terrible days, when I was hiding, running, my skin still scorched by the flames that engulfed the village, my feet bruised, the bottom of my skin bleeding but I had to keep running, all of us ran like crazy for days. So yeah, he should have a taste of that."

"Okay..."

"But you know, now that I'm the Counsel of the Valtrian Order, I can understand how it got to that point, why the military did what it did. The burning. Even if I disagree with it."

"Jura?"

"I mean, look, a King exercises his authority through his institutions, and his subjects. What good is a King if there are no subjects that obey his command? So, when a King gives an order, there must be a weight to it, that citizens learn to obey them. We clearly disobeyed the order, so we were punished. Sure, the punishment on us is really extreme, but then, I sometimes wonder, if the punishment is light, who would put their lives on the line and fight for the King? I have heard of death for traitors, death for those who desert the battlefield. What we did is similar, no? We refused to fight when we were clearly asked to."

I think there’s more to it, so I let Jura continue.

"Eh, it’s just some things I think about, sometimes to rationalise why such a tragedy happened. It’s... it’s a way of coping, to try and understand why it happened. A part of me learns to come to terms with that reality, by accepting that we deserved it."

Well, dissecting and rationalising is a way of coping?

"Sometimes, maybe that’s just fate. The way the gods of this world continue to play their games, and we are just puppets."

Jura stretches on his nice comfy seat. It’s custom made, after all, he is the Counsel of the Order. He kicks his legs a bit, and then swings his two arms around. There’s no one else in the room, Jura doesn’t actually like having other people in the room when he’s working. Besides, he’s a Level 80 [Warlord], if somebody can kill him, the guards probably won’t stand a chance anyway.

"But you know, despite all of that, I saw my friends die, so I think I really would skewer the guy. Cut him up, and hang him for all to see. But then, I’ll probably look like a vengeful person, and public vengeance isn’t something other elves appreciate."

"So... will you kill him or not?"

"Oh yes, I will kill him, throw him in the gutter. Let no one remember him. And be done with it."

Heh. Well, I somewhat like that, but then again, I feel death is too cheap. "Doesn’t death feel too cheap?"

"Life is cheap, so death should be cheap. Always has been. But I just want to settle those loose ends, and be done with it. We’ve got the living to worry about, future enemies to think of, rather than enemies of our past..."

"You... sure?"

"No. I think I will only know what I will do when I hold the executioner's blade, and the culprit's head on the chopping block. Maybe those deep emotions will come back."

Hmmm... somehow those answers didn’t satisfy me all that much, so I end up speaking to Belle and Emile. I too ask both the girls the same question, about what they would do if they find the person who asked for the burning of New Freeka.

"Honestly, I kind of got over it, and accepted that the gods let it happen. Been what, 9 years?" Belle scratches her head.

Emile similarly looks confused. "I think those humans are evil, but they’re mostly dead, right? Have you been thinking about it, TreeTree?"

"Eh... come on, none of you care about it anymore?"

"Uhm... Salah’s so far away, and we’re just regular elves, looking to lead regular elven lives. For me, I’ve not thought of vengeance at all, the only thing on my mind is to return to normalcy, which we have!" Belle smiles, it’s nighttime, and she sits on her bed. "And now we have you to protect us, so that won’t happen ever again. So, I won't do a thing."

Ah...

"I agree with Belle, I think after the first 3 years or so I stopped thinking about the slaughter. Having a job and a new town like New Freeka, we feel normal again. Well, our actions will not bring back the dead."

Seriously, these two girls can be a little too happy-go-lucky, even with the destruction. Well, there’s Brislach and Wahlen.

Wahlen sits, "Erm... I would kick the guy in the groin. And publicly cane him."

Brislach scratches her cheeks for a while, she’s a young adult now, "I’d have him apologise. For ordering such a hateful, horrible thing. I want a sincere, heartfelt apology. And then I will slap all of them. And yes I like Wahlen's idea. Cane, cane them. Cane them! Use the biggest whip and cane their butts until it bleeds."

Ah an apology, that’s a good point. An apology, a remorseful one would be good. But if I find the guy, how do I even get an apology out of them?

"What would you do, TreeTree?" Brislach turns the question around. "You were there when it happened too, you watched the village burn, you saw the rest of them die to the swords and fires, while we hid inside you."

"I, I actually don’t really know. I’m still thinking what I should do." I am confused now. It seems because these elves lived actual 9 years while the past few years didn't feel all that long to me. They seem to have mostly moved on, which, I suppose makes me happy. But then...

The two girls laughs, "Even the wise tree spirits can feel anger and know not what to do, eh! TreeTree, what do you feel they deserve?"

"I..."

I think I must have vengeance. But what kind of vengeance?

What would satisfy this itch? This little scar in my heart?

I look at Ransalah. My vision is incomplete, as my [subsidiary trees] can only see so far. The location of my trees isn't very strategic, unlike how New Freeka is a town built around and with trees, so what I can see and hear is limited.

It’s been so many years, if I want to be specific about my vengeance, can I even find the person responsible?

What if the guy’s dead?

What if, something already killed them?

Where should my vengeance go, then?

Feeling stumped, I focus on my usual activities. Which is, finding more types of trees to investigate. It really wasn’t really hard for some beetles to sneak in using the [root tunnels], especially in poorly defended places like the mage’s garden. It isn’t even the garden with the most valuable herbs.

The real prize, I think, are those within the usual suspects, the multiple large garden within the palace compounds, a few other gardens in the three large temple complexes, and those gardens that are actually in the mage’s guild.

It’s not easy to infiltrate a city as a tree, what more with it’s generally enchanted paved or tiled roads, and there’s really very little vegetation in the town area, except for little spots, little gardens here and there. Doesn’t help that because it’s a city, demand for wood is high, so there’s frequently a lot of workers going around the city to harvest trees.

That meant, I have to frequently regenerate my [subsidiary trees], else I’d lose a connection to the trees I have inside the Royal Grove.

"Strategies, anyone? For both the vengeance, and for the maintenance of trees." I ask my artificial minds

"Obtain military records. Commands to burn a village should be recorded somewhere? Unless their recordkeeping is horrible." Ivy's the first to suggest the obvious.

"How do we do that, none of us can read, so if we do, it’ll be with the help of the elves. And I predict the records will be kept in the main military installations, which are magically protected. Sending beetles there is unfeasible as well. The beetles won't be able to beat the high level individuals in these installations."

"Ask?" Dimitree's views are more... direct.

"How, and who? We have no allies in Salah."

"The New Freekans are formerly from Salah, they must have allies. They are all migrants after all. Perhaps they even know the structure of the army, and bureaucracy inside out." Ivy responds, she does know their background quite well.

"If so, would they not be able to know who would have ordered such an action?"

"The fact that they don't means its not common knowledge."

Feeling like I’m getting stonewalled, I speak to Jura again. Perhaps he has some ideas about the ways to proceed.

Jura muses. "I have an idea. Let’s just ask Salah to surrender the officer responsible for the burning, We are an independent nation now, and if they see why we’re not exactly favorable to them, they will appreciate that this is something they can do to repair that relationship."

Did his [diplomat] levels make him think of such an idea?

"Don't worry about it. Let me handle it, we will send out the request, TreeTree. I’ve been wanting to give the New Freeka High Council a jolt for some time"

Year 79 Month 10

The request came from the Valtrian Order, directly from the Counsel. The letter, with the Valtrian Order's official seal, went out to Salah's envoys, and then to their King.

The letter, which is written with unnecessary legalese and noblesse verbose, can be roughly summarised to :

Dear King of Salah,

On year so-and-so, one rogue platoon of the Salah's army murdered the villagers of Freeka, and set the entire village on fire. We humbly request for the assistance of the Salah Kingdom to investigate this gruesome slaughter and turn those responsible over to New Freeka, such that these criminals may face justice for the murder.

Jura, Counsel

Laufen, Vice Counsel

Signed and marked with their personal seal, along with the Valtrian Order’s.

The informal networks abuzz with chatter, trying to figure out what this letter really meant.

How many people know of the burning and slaughter of Freeka? Certainly not much, evidenced by the sheer cluelessness displayed by so many.

With so many deaths in the world, such things are just a footnote, not worth a mention. Why should a village be any different?

Why did the Order bring this up? Is this request really something to remediate an offense of the past? Is the Order testing Salah's resolve and sincerity for peace? Or will Salah's refusal to assist be the precursor of future war?

It is the task of various envoys and diplomats to sieve out the true intent behind a request, to separate fact from propaganda.

Even among the councillors of New Freeka, there’s a whole lot of guessing, and subtle questions, trying to figure out what Jura and Laufen wants. Laufen just shakes her head, smiles and says, "Oh, please redirect any of your questions to Jura."

Jura himself just smiles as he responds to the questions from the other councillors "Its something close to our hearts, we lost so many friends and family then. With justice served, we can then face the dead with peace of mind."

---

Anyway, I leave that aside for now. Justice should be precise, after all.

I turn to my 5 new recruits, the 5 girls, a coincidence, I swear. I gave them a special title, the Valthorn Initiates, because they will be the thorns. It's kind of inspired by the old saying, rose among the thorns, only, these roses are going to be the thorns. A part of me feels like I have unintentionally made this into an equivalent to those game of training little shipgirls.

Anyway, I am digressing. Their training is... slow. Firstly, these girls have a lot on their minds, as they have to get used to me speaking to them every now and then.

The dreams via [dream tutor] that I have been giving them also made them a bit unsettled, even though its just dreams made from [essences of sword] or [essences of spear], regular common essences that I frequently collect from my [essence generators], or from [soul harvesters] and [memory collection] of the dead. It seems these 5, they see different things despite getting the same kind of essences, and their 'trainers' are somebody they don't know. The dreams' lengths are also different, one girl says it felt like she's been practicing for hours, another says hers felt like just minutes of talking.

Then, is the routine. They are all excited, and eager, wholeheartedly embracing the change, but it still takes some time to get used to it, and their young bodies can't take the sudden change, even with my biopods feeding them nutrients. The extent of the workouts and education pretty much overwhelmed them.

Even stepping into the biopods is scary, their first time dipping usually accompanied with struggling against the vines and feelers.

So, slow progress it is. Maybe it takes a while, like a small sapling, I cannot rush their growth. Strength comes from true understanding, and a strong foundation. It is like planting, the amount of nutrients, sunlight and water must be just right, else you would kill the plant.

So maybe I need to adjust my expectations.

...

Wasteland

Year 79 Month 11

A group of druids recently applied to New Freeka, they would like to open a Druid's House in the town. From what I understand, they were invited by the councillors, perhaps in an attempt to use the druids to counter my presence.

Indeed, using the druids' power over nature is a good strategy. If I were faced with a Tree Monster, I would find ways to weaken the opponent or find a hard weakness.

But it's been a long time since I faced a druid, and my levels are much higher now. So, I really look forward to my future interaction with druids, I too want to know where I stand.

The elves once spoke of a reincarnated hero, Roana, who controlled tree spirits and nature like the back of her hands. I wonder whether I would bend to her will, if a hero like that comes around. These druids, they would be a fascinating entry level test case.

"Wouldn't that mean druids are using some kind of mind control on trees?" Alexis wonders aloud. "I didn't think of it before, but it is a kind of mind control, isn't it? The taming of beasts by a beastmaster is similarly a kind of mind control if beasts are sentient, intelligent creatures."

"Well, I wouldn't know, but they can try using it on you, since your physical body is that of biolab, which is a tree. Then you can be a test subject, and we can find out exactly how it works."

"Eek. You are right, they might! They totally could." Alexis gasps, her hands to her spiritual face. "I need to gain more levels!"

I suspect I would have some resistance to such mind control or tree control, perhaps as a function of my levels. I would think mind control has a level modifier.

Ah well, still, I let the druids settle in, order both Ivy and Trevor to keep watch, and watch each other. My fear is that they may notice Ivy or Trevor's presence, and then attempt to control them instead. These 2 are of a lower level than me, so I would think the chances of druid skills working would be higher.

Other than that, Meela's hotel seems to be doing okay. She's gotten customers and she's spending money on decorations and materials. A few of her hired treefolks act as her runners, they do all the buying and collecting for her. I think she mentioned she plans to add an extra wing to her lodge.

Then, the Salah issue.

Salah Kingdom responded with a 'holding' letter, saying they will look into the matter, and provide an update when they have more info. Essentially, the diplomatic equivalent of 'I have no idea what you are talking about so I need time to find out.'

Which is fine, I doubt people remember things like that, especially so far away, so I focus on gathering more intelligence on the Salah Kingdom. I too need to know a bit more about Salah, its people, its structure and its defenses, should I choose to attack them.

[Inspection], as a skill, doesn't seem to reveal much of the enchanted tiles and roads, other than they have been enchanted. It seems its more tailored to monsters, so perhaps I would need either higher tier of inspection, or a more specialised inspection skill to discern the true nature of these roads.

Stumped, I turn to experimentation, I found one of these enchanted roads in a quiet, less travelled part of the capitol, far from the city itself, where I could place a few subsidiary trees near the road.

And I did my experiments on the road. No matter how I tried to make something grow on these tiles or rocks, the plants just wouldn’t grow.

I then attacked it with my roots, and, it’s much, much tougher than any regular rock. It took a few hits, then it starts to crack and break.

So, conclusion one, its resistant to most kinds of attack, but not indestructible. Either that or these roads have some kind of plant-source damage reduction.

I would like to meet the person who build all these roads and structures.

"Perhaps we could talk to the locals in New Freeka. I believe one of Yvon’s confidantes is a builder, of the magical kind." Ah yes, the group that uses magic to build houses, perhaps they might know a bit more about these kind of enchanted roads. Maybe all these builders know one another, like some kind of builder’s guild? Or perhaps, contractor’s association?

"Must be my luck, Counsel Jura." One of Yvon’s followers, now also one of the councillors of New Freeka. "So, what do I owe the honor of being before the few true natives of the valley?"

Jura grins and taps on the chair, "Ah, nothing too serious, I asked for you to borrow some of your... knowledge. I’ve got some questions, tell me about... construction-related skills and abilities."

The room’s empty save for the 2 of them, both seated on a chair. Jura has a pot of tea, made from my younger, tender leaves. It’s still steaming, there’s a small firestone under it, used to keep food warm. The councillor moves, adjusts his body slightly. He’s a man of average height, but his build is bulky, stoic, but since his election to the council, he changed a builder’s attire for something more formal.

"How strange, may I know why?" The councillor leans forward, he didn’t touch the tea.

"I’m thinking of building a new building, so I thought I ask an expert on what kind of crazy skills would a builder have. It would help me in assessing what I can build, and how long it takes. So, tell me about the great builders of our world."

The councillor pauses, smiles a little to himself then shakes his head. "Surely there's more to it, Counsel. Well, there were no builder-heroes."

Jura sips on his tea. "Oh, that's something I didn't realise, I thought there were heroes from almost all the classes. But then that's another conversation, I want to know about builder type job classes today."

"Firstly, there are all kinds of builder-related job classes. There are the entry level versions of the job such as the draftspersons, the regular workman, and there are the stronger variants, the architects, the foreman, the master-builders. Their passives run the gamut from weak, to incredible. A true master-builder could turn build a house out of hay that can withstand a typhoon, a house out of wood that would never rot or spoil, a wall that can withstand a dragon’s flame, and roads that could speed up the domains trade."

"Am I right to assume the materials are the same, or do these master-builders use their skills to change the materials?"

"Yes, and no. A builder, a farmer, a blacksmith, they all have skills, and these skills influences the materials they work with, and it persists until the materials are unmade. A plank of wood processed by a master-builder, can be many times stronger than one made by a regular builder, just like a blacksmith can work with metal to make a sword multiple times stronger than the work of a regular apprentice."

"But then what happens when the maker dies? Do these skills disappear?"

"You really are a warrior, Counsel Jura. It is basic knowledge that non-combat skills have longevity. The effect of a non-combat skill persists longer, than the burst-one off nature of active, combat skills. The great castles of yore, made by the master artisans, the effects of their skills on the shine of their walls, the foundations and strength of their ramparts, they remain till this day, with little decay, even after the death of their makers."

Jura rubs his chin and hair, looking a little embarrassed that the councillor called him out on his cluelessness on such things. "True, else they wouldn’t be handing down enchanted artifacts and heirlooms. Ah, but let's say I want to know about roads and walls. What kind of skills you’ve seen that work on walls and roads?"

"Thinking about building walls around the Order, Counsel Jura? Where do I start? Think about it, there are Kings with powers to create temporarily nigh-impervious, indestructible fortresses and walls. Kings who amplify the effect of roads on travel in their domain. Or mages who can enchant walls with defensive buffs. Highway markers that speed up travel on those who travel along them..."

"Ah fine, I’m asking about builders?"

"We would have many kinds, most builders worthy of building anything more than a wooden house would gain some variant of the skills [Enduring construct] or [Low-maintenance structures], so that they last longer, and need less upkeep and repairs. I would think walls and roads would gain the effects of such skills."

"Are there dedicated road-builders in the world? What kind of skills would they have?"

"Yes, of course there are, the world's skills are as vast as the stars in the sky, but... I don’t know their skills? I’m a magic-augmented builder, I construct things using earth magic, and sadly I have not met a true road-builder."

And well, that was all the councillor was willing to share and Alexis had a post mortem.

"A metaphor I would use, is that these passive skills are like... paint. They stay on the object until they are removed." Well, Alexis is willing to share her views on such things. "Usually, the benefits of such skills is that they are close to perpetual, they usually can interact and stack with other such ‘passive’ skills, and the drawbacks is that, they’re not that strong."

"So, what’s your take on what’s happening. Why the roads resist me?"

"You’re a pest, I suppose. I doubt the road knows how to differentiate between a tree and a weed, so it just repels all of them. Have you seen roads destroyed by roots that grow underneath them? Roots destroy buildings and roads, so, I would expect any good builder would want to prevent his things from getting destroyed.."

"Fine, let’s say what you’re saying is true, then how about New Freeka? Why don’t the roads that are built now, in this area, ‘reject me’, if such passives are so common?"

"Maybe because you're part of the native ecology, so the buildings built here are used to your overarching influence and do not regard you as an invader. Or maybe your main body is so overwhelmingly powerful in this area that such skills don’t work in close vicinity to you. Or maybe you have some kind of ability invalidating all these skills. Frankly, could be a million things."

"I learnt nothing from that conversation."

Alexis chuckles, "I am glad to have wasted your time."

Ah well, I turn my attention to the herbal varieties found in Salah, there’s little spots of greenery throughout the city, the issue is clearly, getting there, because of all the roads and buildings that impede my progress.

The Royal Grove’s actually rather boring, other than being ‘enchanted’. The herb varieties are mostly common, but they are more ‘effective’. There’s some herbalists and druids that regularly tend to the grove, mostly just healing sick trees and stuff like that.

So, back to New Freeka.

Year 79 Month 12

New Freeka’s population is close to 60,000. A wave of new migrants, apparently coming from the north.

There’s another conflict emerging there, between two countries, and it’s a plain old war, apparently over a lady. Turns out, princes from both countries fell in love with the same lady, and now they’re fighting some kind of war over her. I mean, seriously. Can’t they just have a duel or something?

And it’s winter! Why’d they pick winter to fight a war anyway?

"It’s warmer in their part of the world, a strong warm current and breeze keeps their two shore countries warm, so their winters are... pretty much feels like fall. So they can still fight."

"Ngeh." Well, food supplies are doing well. The Order’s ‘rituals’ for births and deaths are becoming something of a ‘tradition’, which makes me happy, because more deaths means more essence for me to feed the 6 young girls that are now in my training regine. According to data provided by Laufen, about 2 in every 5 deaths are now taking the Order’s ‘melt-in-a-pod’ method of disposing the corpse. Of course, the actual name that goes out to public is more... pleasant. Euphemisms, euphemisms.

The population boom comes with it’s own challenges.

Clean water. Sewage. Public health.

Previously, the Council’s workers dug wells, and with some magical help and blacksmith tools, made pulleys and pumps that brings out water from the ground. At 60,000, even with close to 100 wells throughout the entire city, there are still long lines, and the water levels in the wells are running low, so newer wells have to be deeper.

And that exposes one huge flaw in choosing this valley as a spot for a town. Water. Unlike a place with a large river, or a large lake, there are a few small streams through the valley, and unless the council is willing to dig really deep, providing clean water to 60,000 is going to be a challenge.

The local builders constructed deeper and deeper wells, and also larger, deeper latrine pits. Apparently, one of the ways poop and sewage is processed in this world is via magic, and strangely, the temples of the world usually play a big part in water and sewage.

One of the abilities the priesthoods and nuns learn, is an ability called [Purify] and [Cleanse], which works on people, and also works on sewage and water. So, the city actually pays priests and nuns, or those with the relevant [cleanse] skills to regularly "process" the latrine pits.

The poop gets converted, via magic, into regular dirt. Magic is amazing.

The process of cleansing the latrine needs to be done quite regularly, else the poop will start to contaminate the groundwater. Again, the priests then use [cleanse] on the wells to ‘sanitise’ the water.

So, there really is a thing like [purified] and [cleansed] ‘holy water’. I wonder whether they feel like a quack when they sell such things to regular citizens.

In larger city, there are high level [cleaners] or [mages] who can do similar functions, or in some cases, meaning the wealthy, powerful cities, use artifacts that process or decompose sewers. In certain elven cities, their poop is usually processed by a kind of poop-eating worm, which, apparently, enjoys poop and pee as it’s main food source. Centaurs and lizardmen tribes tend to spray a kind of ‘yeast’ or ‘powder’, that converts these poop and pee into fertiliser, which leads to an odd behavior of them having multiple outhouses in their farms, but strangely, these centaurs here don't have such habits.

Treefolk don’t have the issue of poop or peeing, it seems their bodily wastes just... evaporates from their body, or gets discharged via their legs into the earth.

The fact that magic and magical monsters exists gives a wide range of options on how to process such issues. I wonder how do large dragons deal with their poop? And do they poop midair like birds do?

Anyway, enough of my constant off tangent ponderings. Population consumes resources, and also produces waste, both needs to be managed. Assimilating this growth, and managing it as part of the valley's overall population while balancing and caring for the health of the valley's florae is my personal duty as the Tree Guardian of the valley.

With Trevor's constant replenishment of the valley's resources, and my powers of growth, the valley's treecount is growing steadily. Lately, though, the growth rate is slowing again, partly because of consumption, from a larger population.

I have [Timber farms], which, the Valtrian Order sells to the local businesses, who then make furniture, build houses, and other products. Increasingly, demand is starting to catch up to supply. The speed in which these timber grows is easily 10x, maybe more than that of a regular tree, as a regular seedling reaches maturity within two months, yet, there is a size limit to the farm.

The idea of stone beds, or stone furniture is unappealing to the citizens, even centaurs prefer wooden furniture to stone. Perhaps there is something unappealing about purely-stone homes. Centaurs, for example, cultivate small patches of a certain grass, which, when dried, are woven into rugs and paddings, for them to lie on, and these woven rugs and carpets are a must have for any centaur dwelling.

At first, I was unaware of this, but it seems as New Freeka's "economy" and "safety" stabilised, the centaurs started yearning for little luxuries, and mixed cotton rugs and carpets start to proliferate. Which meant, a market for the [Cotton]. Sadly, Laufen says its a breakeven business, as the selling price barely covers the cost of processing and paying workers to work on the cotton, and then making the carpets. I think this cotton business needs industrialisation.

There's probably a better way to process the cotton, and I vaguely recall studies and visits to the textile museum. So, even though a machine like that must exist, and should exist, I'm no master of mechanical objects.

So, I can't recreate it. Maybe there's some magical solution someday.

Oh yes, where was I?

Poop. And water.

The reason I am also rambling about poop, is some of the ordinary, normal trees 'feel' sick. My main tree, roots, and subsidiary trees are almost-immune, due to the effects of my skill, [rhizofiltration], so it doesn't absorb all the other shit, literally, that gets dumped into the ground that contamonated the groundwater.

But, my fellow normal trees, normal as they may be, are sick! And, sick trees grow slower. And some may eventually die. That is bad.

Dead trees, is a big no no. I feel for my fellow trees.

Year 80 Month 1

With data from the root sensors on subsidiary trees spread out throughout the valley, and also the city area, Trevor helped to map out an overlay indicating the pollution problem.

I firstly need to know how bad is the poop situation.

The source, is of course the city.

There are multiple latrine pits, which the frequency of sanitisation by those responsible has been a bit lacking. The priests and workers are supposed to cleanse the pits once every three days, but it is an incredibly unpleasant task, so they only do it once every two weeks.

That meant some of these sewage accumulated, and the extra period for it to stew in the pit meant quite a bit managed to contaminate the ground. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the [cleanse] spell is range-limited, so it didn't cure the sewage accumulated deeper in those pits.

The first issue is like I said, the priests are not doing their jobs. They generally view this duty as demeaning for these self-proclaimed servants of god, to literally [cleanse] the filth of others. Even the priests, those in the Order's employ, abhor the task.

"I hate that part of the job." A priest would routinely say.

So, usually the most junior of priests, those who possess the skill, would be sent on the toilet duty.

That meant the strength of the [cleanse] skills are poor, because skills scale with le els, and because of how deep and massive the latrines are, to accommodate 60,000 citizens, the skills of these low level [cleanse] just won't do. At most, it just creates a superficial clean and dry layer on top of the rest of the sewage, deluding the priests that the job is done.

But I have no cleaning skills myself, even if I do have the ability to filter such toxins and other unfavorables out.

"Huh, the most senior priests on toilet duty? No, no amount of money will make that happen. We are servants of god, not the city's sewage cleaners. The fact that we send our most junior priests to do it is good enough!"

The task is seen as dirty, disgusting, and demeaning. Money won't fix it.

"Can we import the worms? Or the cleaning artifacts?"

"Artifacts are ridiculously expensive. As for the worms, I will reach out to the Elven kingdoms whether they are for sale. Transporting those worms will need special arrangements, as they rarely survive outside their sewage-environment." Jura's rather amused by the sanitation issue, he didn't really feel it. In fact, most of the citizens are not even aware of the contamination of the groundwater, since these things reach deep, not float up above.

Trevor's map of subterranean water flow indicates the groundwater flows toward the valley, so as the latrine pits tend to be close to the forests edge, the New Freekans are lucky that their own drinking water is clean.

Perhaps if somehow it stinks up the entirety of the town, then it would make them realise the gravity of the situation. Or maybe I should somehow reverse the flow of groundwater such that their wells get contaminated with poopwater?

Ah, maybe I shoudn't be so nasty.

Solutions, solutions. Relying on the priests to constantly use [cleanse] on poop and sewage is not exactly what I consider a scalable and reliable solution. These priests are going to hold the skill as some kind of "ransom", eventually, if they discover what it means to the regular trees. And the idea of having an army of priests going around town sanitising all the latrine pits in a big city just feels...lame.

So, I need some kind of natural solution, something I can manage. Something that I can 'create'.

"Jura, are you familiar with plants that survive in sewers or other such wastelands?"

"Uhmmm... no. But let me get the herbalist?"

"We do not have any plants that are capable of surviving in sewers." The herbalist responds to Jura's question. "Most plants have a natural state, and while these differs slightly, I am not aware of any plants that survive in entirely sewers. We do have plants that can somewhat tolerate sewer waters, though."

Hmmm. How about algae? Fungi? There must be something that lives in sewers. I recall trees destroying sewer pipes back home because the roots are drawn to them, so the trees must have some tolerance for wastewater.

I find it strange that the normal trees here are unable to process the sewage. They are native, they should be adapted to native waste from the native population. Is it because the type of toxins or minerals in the sewage?

"What do large cities with their waste?"

"Other than what I told you, no clue. Honestly, sewers are not something I pay attention to, and our village is so small a few pits is sufficient." Jura shrugs. He's really quite amused by my recent fascination and questions around waste and he doesn't really get my frustration with dying trees. Trees die all the time, they say, can never heal all of them.

Which is true.

But I am a tree, and it offends me that I let a fellow tree, to die from something as stupid as sewage intolerance.

"Are you even sure its sewage?" Alexis shrugs. "Not a bug? Or sickness?"

And that is how I ordered the beetles to gather multiple wastewater samples from all the different latrine pits.

[New beetle species unlocked. Dungbeetle]

"No, fuck you, TreeTree. I am not analysing poop." Alexis absolutely resist letting the poop anywhere near her. "I am. Not. Touching. Poop."

"TreeTree, why are the beetles carrying poop?" The elves ask.

Analysis, duh.

"Can the poop not drip everywhere in the hideout?"

Uh.

Despite much resistance, I eventually got the poop into the biolabs, for analysis. I do feel disgusted, but only mildly. I think saving the rest of the trees to be a far larger and more important goal.

I doubt my feelers and vines feel a thing when they prod and dig into the poop. Well, they do feel kinda moist and sticky.

But it's just poop. I'm pretty sure the dirt all around me was poop some point in their long, ever changing lives.

[Testing in progress]

I suppose faeces and poop are considered biological matter, as the biolabs run through a range of tests. It took some time to actually know what's happening since there are so many tests to run, for so many different samples.

I need a 'control' group.

"You want our poop now?" Jura, Laufen and the elves are all appalled by my request.

"Yes. Fresh samples. Just to measure change in fecal composition versus that of the latrine. All of you are healthy, clearly, so your fecal matter should be, too."

"Uh... how do we give it to you? Poop inside those pods?"

Hmm. The pods aren't meant for pooping.

[Biolab upgraded. Biolab now has multiple extra rooms, functioning as a 'toilet', 'bathroom' and others for collection and harvesting of biological wastes]

"Well, you poop in this place, that looks kind of like an outhouse, and the biolab will do the rest."

"Ewww." The elves are generally quite disgusted, but still, they eventually did proceed to do their business in the special poophouse, designed for collection of their poop.

"Why are you so disgusted? Don't some societies use cow manure as fertiliser?"

"Uh... its still poop."

Anyway, poop or not, the tests must go on.

And speaking of fertiliser, would minotaur poop be fertiliser too? Since they are like part cow? Or do I need some kind of bacteria to degrade the poop first? Have I seen a minotaur?

Tests. We need more tests. The culprits are still unclear, of what exactly in poop that causes the trees to feel sick. Could it be some kind of disease transmitted via poop? Is it some kind of metal? Some kind of mineral, or some kind of bug?

I need to get to the root of the problem.

So, more tests. One of the other things I started Alexis on, since she refuses to look at poop, is to look at the filtering nature of roots instead.

My body, due to [rhizofiltration] that I learned long ago, is able to filter out all these bad things, whatever they are.

There should be some membrane like structure to the roots, either that, or the skill creates some kind of filtering/extracting effect.

If I can do it, maybe there is some way to filter the poop, and ring-fence the latrine pits such that their contamination is contained, and perhaps in the future I would find some ways to convert these waste into something more usable, like fertiliser.

As of now, the contamination is spreading, ongoing, as people continue to poop and pee every day, so the first step is of course, containment. The source of these pollutants need to be restricted.

Research status :

Roots - Volcanic mineral processing - stage 1 - completed

Tree-lab varieties - stage 1 - completed

Magically attuned materials Stage 1 - completed

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 4 - 17 months

Material labs - stage 1 - 6 months

Magical sensors - 6 months

Normal Tree - Root filters stage 1 - 6 months

Year 80 Month 2

"Did somebody plant all these trees around all the outhouses? It makes it feel like I’m doing my business out in the jungle or something."

"Must be the druids."

"I think it’s the tree spirit. He’s a bit fond of meddling after all."

"It’s kinda creepy if you say it that way, is the tree spirit watching us take a shit?"

"Uh... I doubt tree spirits are interested in us taking our shits, though. I mean, only perverts like that kind of stuff, and we aren’t exactly the most attractive old men around."

"It’s a fetish for some people? A fetish for trees?"

"Ewww."

"Ewww."

Anyway, I had to implement a stopgap measure. I couldn’t get the priests to do their jobs, and I’m not inclined to threaten them, because it reveals a weakness about me.

So, I decide to surround the most of the larger latrine pits and outhouses in New Freeka with [subsidiary trees], and use my roots to then form a subterranean wall, to block the fecal matter from leaking into the wider valley’s groundwater.

I can’t process the shit, but I have to deal with the shit. So, blocking the shit is my temporary measure. The findings from my first round of analysis of the collected samples reveal that there’s no particular culprit.

The problem is, well, there’s just a whole damn load of shit. There’s a lot of minerals that are generally not-well accepted by trees, there’s also a whole mix of fungi, bacteria, and other stuff, all of which the normal trees normally can tolerate in small quantities.

Small quantities. Normally.

It’s not a result I wanted.

"Well, I suppose you could have some kind of waste-treatment plant, before it’s discharged? Like, you know, split the sewage into components and treat them separately? I can’t seem to recall the water treatment process though..." Alexis rubs her head.

"Never mind, focus on researching the roots. That’s probably going to help minimise the damage."

I’m guessing it’s going to be something like filtering, sedimentation, adding chemicals to kill bacteria or take out certain types of metals. I also can’t remember the details, its been so many years since school, and honestly, I wish I could google ‘wastewater treatment’, and find the answer. But then, even if I did, I’d have to find ways to develop actual skills or tools, suitable for the growing city.

For now, the poop is contained by the roots of my subsidiary trees, and because there is just a whole load of poop, even my subsidiary tree's root filters occasionally fail and it absorbs some of the poop, and it makes the subsidiary tree weak and sickly, which Trevor or myself have to step in and use some of our tree-healing powers.

Important lesson. Skills can fail.

And because the roots kind of stop the poop from escaping the pits, the pits get filled up faster, so the city has to build more of these pits.

Ugh.

Not. Sustainable. They can't constantly be digging new pits all the time.

I need to figure out a way to decompose the poop.

"You could maybe erm... separate their components? Then store them separately? I think some plants can consume or extract certain kinds of elements in the wastewater sludge."

Thus, I ordered some beetles to bring back some of the trees near the sewers of on the outskirts o Salah. Salah's got a vast network of underground sewers, some of which pipes their waste for disposal somewhere further, far from the city.

There, the beetles bring back different types of plant samples, collected from near the sewer outlets, and the sewers itself.

For my biolab's analysis.

I wonder whether I can make a plant able to eat poop.

-

Meanwhile...

"I... I want to drop out." One of the girls say, she's tired and frustrated, even if she is making progress. "It's too hard. So much fighting and some much studying. I... I can't. I can't do this."

"But what will you do, then?" Another of the girls ask. "We don't get chances like this, we're just orphans..."

"Er..." The young girl doesn't know. She only knows she didn't actually want it as much as she did.

Lausanne nods, "It's intense. If you really want to drop out, please let Tree Spirit know. It's fairer for everyone, so that someone else who wants it can try it out. Let's not force yourself, I think now you know what you truly want."

The young girl cries and covers her face with her palms. She doesn't know what to do, actually. Yvon sits next to her. "I spoke with the Tree Spirit, if you drop out, you will return to being a regular orphan, so you can still stay. But you will lose the benefits you have, like the stipends you get."

The girls, get some pocket money for their participation. I thought its fairer that way, since this is like an apprenticeship or internship. I thought of it as being a reward for their hard work, since their routine is literally a whole lot of combat and studies, some eat, sleep, poop and repeat. Rest days are few and far between, perhaps a day in a month.

Honestly, my expectations were not very high, but I wanted dedication, and a display of effort from the girls. They need to at least, try.

"Are you sure?" Yvon's sort of their counselor. I think she's probably suspicious of my activities, and doesn't trust my intentions, but because of that, she's taken a personal interest in the girls and is now quite close to the girls, acting like their mother.

Or maybe Yvon's just bored.

"I... I don't know. This is so hard. My body hurts everywhere, and I feel overwhelmed. I'm tired. I thought being a warrior, a fighter would be nice, and I'll be those super cool adventurers who defeat monsters and all. I just didn't expect the work to be so... so... much. I don't even have much time to play anymore."

Yvon taps her on her shoulder. "I understand, this programme is rough. I told Tree Spirit as well, that its extremely intense, but he insists on it being this way."

The young girl sobs. Her friends give her a hug.

"If you are sure you want to drop out, we'll go and see the Tree Spirit."

She nods.

The next day, I cancel her familiar contract, and she loses her status as one of the Valthorn Initiates. I am down to 4 girls.

Though she cries, I think she'll be happier just as a regular person.

Ah well. Not everyone makes the cut.

This is a good thing, the future batches, the girls will now do some self-selection and only those who truly want it will participate.

Year 80 Month 3

Salah has yet to provide an update on our request, though from the intel sources Jura has, it seems they are discussing it in great detail.

According to the grapevine, it seems that they want to find a scapegoat for the incident, someone related but junior they can throw under the bus. If that really happens, I would be very disappointed, but for now, more intel gathering.

After that string of conversations with the elves, I feel a bit magnanimous. I wonder whether I should look past this incident, and maybe, what I do next should not be out of vengeance.

But I should still send a message that such actions have consequences. Even if the consequence is 10 years later.

"Please. Take care of my children and my wife. Protect them from the demons… and these monsters too."

I recall feeling angry, these humans, killing the elves, when there are demons out there. Something as scary and overwhelmingly powerful like a demon king, and yet the Freeka villagers all, slaughtered and burnt alive.

If I descend into a war with the Salah again, would I be doing what they did to me? Fighting amongst ourselves while a demon threat awaits?

It's not going to be long. This month, I begin to feel strange fluctuations in the star manas, and they make my leaves tingle. It's a familiar feeling, like that strange dream I had before the previous demon king. I can feel it, the looming presence of the demons.

The first of the many demonic rifts will soon open.

Druidic Conflicts

Year 80 Month 4

I have my first material lab. It 'deconstructs' what I insert, into its underlying components, and the level of deconstruction is proportional to the energy supply and the level of the material lab

I insert a wooden plank.

First, it strips any skills out of it, and there are many skills. They appear as little blobs of light, and most of these 'skills' appear as 'unidentified'. I know the blobs represent skills because one of those blobs is actually readable [Fine-cut wood], and so, I draw the conclusion that all the blobs are skills. Besides, what else could those formless blobs be?

After that, what is left, is raw 'unskilled' wood in the shape of an ordinary plank. The lab's energies, slowly, breaks the wood apart, strand by strand, strip by strip. The plank peeled off, layer by layer, along the grooves of the plank.

Then, the separated layers, or strips, gets further broken down, into smaller pieces, almost little specks. After that, it splits up into its constituent components, like bubbles of air, blobs of water, blobs of... unidentified things, it appears like a piece of plank is flash-dried and drained of all fluids and air bubbles, and then, one of the last components is... mana? Or maybe that life-force thing that the souls generate.

First revelation of the day, unlike our world, mana actually exists as part of things, even things as simple as wood. Maybe mana replaces one of the primary fundamental forces? Or does it become an additional fundamental force?

Somehow, I think I should’ve known this.

Anyway, the remaining strips of dried, airless, manaless specks can be further broken down. But, I need material labs of a higher level...

"Well, do you want to further develop materials labs, or work towards magic labs?"

"I don't know. It's kind of cool that it break things down to these components. And actually, I can use it to analyse the poop samples."

"Ugh." Alexis rolls her eyes at the mention of poop, and she floats away, back to doing her own thing. She's busy anyway.

The materials lab takes the form of a single tree outside my inner circle of subsidiary trees, its appearance like any other, but its internal structure contains multiple little bubbles which store the separated materials. It's power-intensive, draining quite a bit of energy from the normal trees, with each 'separation' process. I suppose it’s kinda like those labs where they spin stuff until they split apart.

Anyway, back to the poop samples.

I use the materials lab to test out the poop samples, and... well, the first thing that surprises me is that there’s also some blobs of skills. Unidentified of course, but, seriously, who uses skills on their poop, either that, or it’s... some kind of passive that gets applied? Rhetorical question.

Moving on, I run the tests through few more different samples of poop, and then seriously, quite a few of them have skills. All unidentified. At this point, I’m wondering whether it’s unidentified because I don’t know them, or whether because the amount of it is so small that I can’t tell it apart. Maybe the ability to identify it because the quantity of skill is too small?

The poop splits apart to more components, like water, air, and the type of ‘materials’ that make up the poop... and also... mana? Oh great. There’s mana in poop too.

Now that the poop has been drained, dried, and it starts to break apart and easily separate into different kinds of metals, without requiring much energy. What's left is a collection of mostly unfamiliar metals, and some of the usual iron, copper and stuff.

Is this normal?

Deciding that I probably need a bit more of each type of metals to be identified, I break down more of the poop, including some fresh samples from the elves, and once I got about a handful of each ‘unidentified’ metal type, at different ratios.

Next, I ask Jura for any professionals that may be able to assist on such samples.

"I’ll probably need help identifying these metals..." There’s about thirty small plates of different metal types on top of Jura’s desks, all from splitting up the poop samples.

A blacksmith, and a merchant came along. It’s rather easy for Jura to ask for help, these people are here to curry favor anyway, he's the Counsel, he could give them big deals someday.

The two quickly went through the samples, easily identifying them. All of them are just some kind of local metal mineral, our world’s equivalent of sand, or tin, or iron, and stuff like that. This world’s metal types don’t exactly match ours, since they do have iron-like things that are stronger, and also some that are weaker. Variants, but different metal types.

Maybe they are alloys?

"Metals and elements in this world exist in a spectrum, rather than distinct types in my world... or I think they have a larger, more granular version of the periodic table?" Alexis is nerding out, she’s paying attention to the descriptions given by the merchants and smiths, and then ask. "You should buy some books, then I can explain this better."

"You can read?"

"Uh. Yeah? Why won't I know how to read?" Wait. Did I know she can read? "Ask the merchant whether anyone published any guide or summary on the metals and minerals of the world."

I placed an order for three different tomes on materials and resources found in the world. I wouldn't want to make basic research from scratch, there should be some body of knowledge already in tomes and books.

Back to the poop analysis, that material-breakdown of knowing what the metals are kind of did... nothing? Though the merchants are able to identify the metals, it still doesn't give me an idea whether those metals are harmful, or beneficial to the plants, since their knowledge is more of use for trade, and metalworking. Also, I can't rule out that there’s most likely an ‘optimal’ level of each metal, and exceeding that would result in some kind of poisoning, and a deficiency may result in stunted growth and other kinds of problrm.

So, there’s to be more studies. More tests. I ordered the beetles to take samples of the dirt throughout the valley, around healthy trees, and around sick trees, to compare the composition of the dirt in the ground. Maybe there’s some minerals appearing in different ratios which may lead to something more conclusive.

"Frustrating isn’t it? There’s no skill that just tells you what’s wrong, other than something’s wrong."

"On the contrary, I feel happy that at least I need to use my head. And because of it, I’m getting you, Trevor and Dimitree to run more tests."

"Ugh, I was just thinking, wouldn’t the druids know the answer?"

"Asking the druids..." Hmm... that’s a good point. Let’s use this chance to test out the druid’s abilities.

So, with a bit of backhanded string-pulling, Jura managed to get the newly settled in druids to pay a visit to a small patch of sick trees, somewhere on the edges of New Freeka. "What do you think? I was told something’s wrong with these trees, but I can’t tell what."

There’s four of them, all of them look middle-aged, dressed in robes and they kneel over the ground. They all have a wooden staff of some kind.

[Natural diagnosis] A druid calls out, and his wooden stick glows. A spirit-like wisp appears and enters the ground, and then after a while it comes back out.

"Hmmm... the wisp tells me there seems to be groundwater contamination. The ground’s concentration of metals are all too high. Particularly Whitetin and Green Iron."

Oh I know that- Eh?!

Another of the druid touches the ground, picks up a bit of dirt and tastes it. I think he used some kind of skill there, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. He looks a bit puzzled, and then he spits. "Agreed. Groundwater contamination, likely to be from the city. Counsel Jura, I suggest we move all the trees somewhere a bit further away."

"Can’t you heal the trees or the ground?"

"We could, but usually the sickness will come back after about a month, unless you find a way to stop the groundwater contamination. The earth itself is contaminated, due to exposure to the city, healing the trees is just a temporary fix."

"What do you normally do in such cases?"

"We move the trees. There’s usually no way of convincing the populace from changing how they live, just for the sake of some trees." The druids shrug. "Trees are just... resources to most normal people."

Jura just nods, looking around. The druids continue to touch a few of the normal trees.

"So... do you want us to move the trees, Counsel?"

"I don’t think it’s necessary, though." Another druid speaks up. "They are just mildly sick. At least, they look better than they did a few months ago."

Jura shakes his head, "Well, leave them here for the time being. We’ll know if things get worse if they start dying. Thanks for your time, druids." Jura passes the 4 druids a bit of coin to thank them for their time.

As the druids and Jura walks back to New Freeka, one of them asks, "Counsel, may we have an audience with the Tree Spirit? I understand you speak to it often."

"Oh, why?"

"Erm... well, we are druids, we make it a point to meet and greet with the tree spirits of the land. Kinda comes with the job-class."

"Ah... that is a druid thing, no?"

The druids grin, "Yeah, kind of."

"I see, I’ll have a word with the Tree Spirit."

In the meantime, I am still trying to process what I just saw, ie, the druids actually have skills able to diagnose the problem, without the need for experimentation. And why do I not have a similar skill?

I have a few theories on this, but I think I want to see what they are up to.

As for the waste situation, its sort of under control. With my subsidiary trees' roots acting as a barrier and filter, the sewage's leakage to the greater valley is now limited.

The druids clearly can identify the problem, though their solution was meh. Moving the trees is a solution, but. I don't like being moved, and I think the trees won't like it too.

Personally, I think it’s not really an issue about meeting the druids, but I had to prepare, so I called Madeus and the Order’s top guys back in for explanations on the druids. "I’ll get straight to the point, I’ve met druids, many times in fact, but I don't know much about them. So let’s start from the beginning, what do they do, what are their powers?"

The leaders stare at each other, and they shift a little uncomfortably.

One of the priests goes first, "They’re tree-lovers? They tend to go around healing the land after the destruction left behind by the demon king. The druids are famous as the major supporter of the Restorers."

"They can summon trees and animals, use wood magic, earth magic, and water magic. They also usually have some animal companions as well." The captain’s pretty much reciting the norm, sounds like the usual myth around druids. Did the makers of this world somehow started off as dungeon masters?

"Anyone know the specifics of their jobs? Like... what do they do?"

"When I was a young child, a druid came and gave simple tips on farming. He tried to teach us the power to "boost fertility" and "speed growth", but none of us picked it up..."

"Fine, clearly they have some ability to have earth and restoring powers. Are they like some kind of generic mage but with more of a focus on earth, wood and water?" I ask.

Madeus nods, "Close, though pure mages like myself think druids are... erm... a bit of a hack, since druids mostly borrow powers from their surroundings and neglect their own physical and mental training. So, druids pick their battlefields, such that they have more power and things to tap on, but that’s kind of predictable."

"Okay, they have some kind of connection to the surroundings too. Anyone knows the history of druids?"

Everyone shakes their head. "Some say they learnt it from trees. Some say they learnt it from treefolk."

"Fine, how many types and groups of druids are there? Who exactly are the druids in my valley?"

"They’re from the far southeast, and they are under the Hutan, one of the three largest groups of druids. The other two are the Tarimba and the Mulfic. The three druidic councils are just... well, kind of like guilds. They are separate but work together for common goals, like, restoring the land, and focused on training. The councils themselves are neutral, but their druids are free to work with any kingdom they want, though they generally speaking, most druids will avoid participating in the kingdom-wars."

Okay. "What do they want?"

"I don’t know, really."

"I think they’re just interested in you, Tree Spirit."

"What do they want with me?"

Everyone shakes their head.

"Trevor, Ivy, what’ve you got?"

After my discussion with them, I consented to the meeting a day later.

Next day,

The four druids, they came without their apprentices and assistants. They came fully in their druid-ish attire, that include some kind of headwear that resembles an antler’s horns, or a wolf headdress, elaborate and fancy carved woodstaffs, armor and all the rings they can wear.

"Dressed for combat, druids?" Jura chuckles, well, Jura himself is dressed up for the purpose. Sword in hand, armor.

"It is but a tradition of druids, to show our best to the tree spirits, especially when we face the tree spirit’s true body." One of the druids say, but he looks nervous. My see-ing eye notices the subtle shaking in his hands.

The four stand in the inner circle of subsidiary trees, before my main body. Jura on one side, I have Horns hidden in the corner, but I think they can sense his presence.

They look around, and they sweat. They whisper a bit, so softly, or perhaps a skill, that I couldn’t make out what they are saying.

"State your business, druids." Jura prompts the guests to start.

The four gave a small bow, "We are druids of Hutan, one of the many caretakers of the land and those who live on it, protectors of the forests and trees, and we... em... humbly, seek an audience with the great... Tree Spirit of the valley, as we... come to seek an understanding of the needs, and wishes of the Valley and it’s true guardian."

"Flowery greeting." I chuckle, they sound like they practiced it.

"They sound nervous." Alexis whispers into my mind.

"Their body is tense. They might be up to something." Ivy advises.

The four druid’s eyes start to have a green glow, and I felt my defensive instincts kick in. "Tree Spirit, we come in seek of your name and hope to gain your blessing." Oh well, my roots are ready to strike at any time.

"Oh? I’m TreeTree." What kind of blessing?

The four druids glance at each other. I think they gulped, but I’m not sure.

"Is that all you’re here for, druids?" Jura sounds a bit amused.

"No... we’d like to acquire the Tree Spirit’s blessing."

"Uh... What blessing."

The four druids share a glance. "Surely the Tree Spirit is testing us, we mean THE blessing."

"Well, I’ve got no idea what you are talking about, so explain what this blessing is." I really don’t know what blessing means, yet the four druids seem to take the question a bit... negatively? They don’t seem particularly keen on answering the question.

One of the druids step forth, he looks to be the youngest, but his staff and headgear the most flamboyant. "O great Tree Spirit, the aspect which we ask, we will give our share in return. We offer our services, and that of the druid council of Hutan which we represent. Our oath, as druidsmen, as guardians, to come to your aid, should you ever find yourself in peril."

"Okay, but what’s an aspect?" I wondered then. So you introduced the concept of blessing and aspect, can you explain?

The first one kneels, both knees on the ground, his staff embedded in the ground. I felt a bit of magic swirl around me, it feels kind of pleasant, so I didn’t feel a need to react. I later would realise this was when I made a mistake, I should have stopped them there and then.

The second druid steps forth, standing next to the first. "O great Tree Spirit, behold the oath of mortals and the true mother, a promise as ancient as the world. Give us your aspect, and we shall give you ours." Green glowing lines start appearing throughout his entire body, and then he kneels. The green glowing lines then flows into the ground, and forms a greenish glowing circle around the four druids. It still feels rather pleasant, and then I noticed I’m starting to get a little sluggish, like I’m drunk.

"Ivy, Trevor?" I try to prompt my tree-minds to help, but then I notice all of them, including Alexis are in a daze. They’re struggling to fight off whatever the druids are doing.

"What are you doing?" Jura and Horns notice, so they quickly jump in, attempting to break the ritual or spell, whatever that is. They’re both unaffected by the effects of the ritual. Maybe because it only work on trees?

They charge in, but a barrier of some kind repels them, pushing both of them far back.

Despite feeling like I had too much alcohol, like a happy drunkard, I managed to collect my will together to activate my anti-magic aura, which sadly doesn’t really work on that barrier or the ‘ritual’ that they are using.

Still feeling dizzy, I pull my mind together and I used root strikes on the two druids. A glowing wooden shield magically appears and blocks the root strike. The third druid steps forth.

"O great Tree Spirit, for the land requires us, requires all of us, all of our worship and care." The third and fourth druid are both covered in green lines, and this time, I notice that their familiars are out. Two massive wolves, also covered in similar green lines and a small wood-like bear appears.

I’m starting to shake off that drunk-feeling, just a minute into the ritual, and so I unleash more root strikes. One of the druids calls up a large half-wooden totem with a beetle-head, and it creates a shield that blocks my root strikes. Each strike, puts a crack on the totem, instead of the shield, and the totem needs about 5 to 7 hits to crack.

Meanwhile, Jura’s easily stronger than the two wolves, yet despite how much pain or damage they receive, they just keep getting in his way, the two wolves really determined to stop Jura from interfering with the rituals. "DRUIDS! What is the meaning of this?!" He shouts, while trying to shake off the two wolves.

The druids focus on their ritual.

Two minutes into the ritual.

"O great tree spirit, we seek your power, to complete our oath to the true mother." The fourth druid steps forth, and both of them enter into a kneeling position as well, just as the earlier two did. To protect the four druids, more familiars and creatures appear, two tiger-like creatures, a cat, and the owl. They are all large, easily the size of an elephant, their bodies covered in the green lines, and their job is to block Horns from entering the circle.

The two wounded wolves, now gets backup from the tiger and the cat. Jura then unleashes some kind of sword-skill I’ve not seen before, and it instantly dices up all the four animals.

Yet, the druid’s not done. Another wooden staff appears, this one has the head of a tortoise, and it glows. The glow restores the diced up animals, and makes them whole almost instantly.

Three minutes in.

The four druids are mumbling, singing some kind of hymn. Whatever ritual this is, it’s really quite fast. They certainly prepared for this.

The totem cracks and breaks apart, as my root strikes land a few hits.

‘TING’

It’s then, I got a notification.

[Four druids have each entered into a non-cancellable Druidic Aspect contract with you]

[New familiar contract type obtained : Druidic Aspect Contract.

Druidic Aspect contracts allow druids to use lesser versions of the master’s abilities]

[You’ve received 8 Druid Class seeds]

EH?

The glowing green lines on the four druids fade, and along with it, so does the barrier. The four kneeling druids stop kneeling, and one of them almost jumping, "We did it!"

"It’s not over yet. We still need to run!" The one druid clearly realise their not out of the woods just yet, and so they quickly start to run.

You four are not going anywhere! A wall of roots appear around them, and the four druids attempt to use their druid powers to interfere with the roots... but it didn’t work. Not this time.

But the root strikes got to the familiars and skewers all of them.

Jura, charges in, He’s furious, and the druids attempt to dodge.

"Don’t kill them, yet." I mentally ping him.

Oh, I am gonna interrogate them before I do.

Maybe I should torture them.

Hang them on trees in the city for attacking me.

The tip of Jura's sword close in, now on one druid’s neck. "Take a step and I’ll cut it off."

"All you four wanted was this... druid-style familiar contract?" I ask aloud.

I think I have a massive communication problem with the natives. Why do so many of my encounters with the natives end up like this? Why didn’t the druids just ask nicely?

Seriously. I like to think I am a reasonable person, I can be negotiated with!

Right?

Do I have a sticker somewhere that says, ‘Pushover. Just take whatever you want.’ written on me?

Jura, his sword still at the druid’s neck. "Answer the Tree Spirit’s question."

One of the druid nods. "Yes. We made a contract for the Tree Spirit’s power. It-"

Sigh.

"I honestly didn’t know what you mean by blessing. Why didn’t you just have a bit more patience and explain? All of you wanted this familiar contract-like thing? This is the blessing?"

One of the druids mumble. "...yes?"

Ugh!

I’m annoyed. I'm sad. I'm angry.

The roots form a cage, trapping them all, thorns and barbs close in. They attempt to use their druid powers to move the roots, but its not working.

The four druids, realise how much deep shit they are in, immediately all four of them kneel, no, they literally prostrate themselves on the ground. "Our sincerest apologies O Great Tree Spirit! We... we thought we’d never get a chance to get this close to a Tree Spirit of your level of strength! We apologies for our... recklessness. Please don’t kill us!"

"What sort of stupid assumption is that?"

"Access to the true body of all the great tree spirits are heavily restricted and controlled, and here we are, four mid-ranked druids getting the chance to meet a great tree spirit, we had to jump on the chance!" One of them, started to justify what they did. His hands and head was on the ground, prostrating. "We thought we would never get a chance!"

"Fools!" If I could yell like a villain, or an evil angry emperor, I would. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill all the four of you right now."

The cage's roots closes in, the thorns on the roots make little cuts, but nothing lethal.

I mean, how’d they think they’d get away with it? Come up to me, use this ritual-style spell, which gives them some level of protection, but do they think they can run away from me? Seriously. My roots span the valley, even if they succeed, I’d still be able to kill them.

They would have to knock me down for at least an hour, or two for them to even give themselves a chance.

"We... we really mean no harm. We really mean what we said during the ritual, we will come to your aid should you see it, us and the Hutan."

Rubbish, I can protect myself as it is.

"We... we offer you our services. We’ll revoke whatever arrangements we had with the councillors! Anything!"

"I still plan to kill all of you. Not good enough." One of the roots pretty much pokes the druid’s skin.

"I... We... we can arrange the archdruids to provide you with unique items. We can arrange for you to be in contact with other spirits!"

Oh.

Other spirits.

The druids pick up on my pause. "There are other great tree spirits too. We... the druid council of Hutan, our senior archdruid is in contact Guardian Tree of the Elf Capital, and also the Giant Lilypod City’s Spirit. If we tell them about you, we can make some arrangements for the spirits to commune."

Well, meeting other similar tree spirits is something I always wanted.

"Please, please spare our lives and forgive us."

"I recall the four of you say you are but ordinary druids. How can you arrange for us to meet with the other spirits?"

"We can’t, but our archdruids can. I... I’ll do my best, no, I’ll give everything to arrange for it. Please, don’t kill us."

Hmmm... Fine.

"I suspend your punishment. On a few conditions!

"All of you will remain under house arrest in New Freeka and the valley. Make any attempt to leave, and all of you will die. If you need to, call for more druids to come assist you with all the necessary arrangements for me to communicate with the other tree spirits. If any of you try anything funny, all of you die. You all will remain in Freeka as my guarantee, until contact with the other spirits are established. If I don’t have contact with the other tree spirits within a reasonable amount of time, of perhaps 3 years, all of you will die. And I want you to cooperate with me fully, and you will revoke your arrangements with the councillors. Doublecross me or attempt to use any kind of ritual or spell on me ever again, and I will not hesitate to put my roots through all of your skulls."

The four druids breathe a sigh of relief. "Certainly, certainly."

"Go."

After I let the druids go, I called for a meeting again. I wanted to know what’s causing all these people to react so recklessly in front of me.

"Why did the meeting unfold in that manner?" I complained to the audience, the senior leaders of the Order, and when Jura explained how it went, Madeus pretty much facepalmed.

"To be fair, your main tree is really intimidating and scary. Even walking in the woods feels intimidating." The priest seems able to relate to the feeling.

"Lausanne walks in and out without a problem."

"Lausanne’s not a good example."

It’s the Order’s Captain that offered a bit of honesty. "Counsel Jura, Lady Laufen and Lausanne are natives, and so they are oblivious to its appearance, but for the rest of us, being before your main tree is like standing before a council of monsters. The presence of the various ghosts and wisps around your main body, the crackle of magic radiating from every root, branch and leaf, how the surrounding trees feel like a prison... those strange trees around you, or that few trees that look like they’ve been burnt and charred by thunder... Seeing it for the first time, had nightmares. It’s a place for monsters, for... gods. The druids probably panicked, overthink, and probably did what they thought they wanted to do."

Oh.

Well, the layout of my main body is surrounded by the two tree-minds and their [root-brain complex], the soul-forge and all its extensions, the labs and pods, and then a ring of subsidiary trees, home to the beetles and spiders. The canopy is covered in webs and vines, and because of the effects of [soul forge : black], there are all the [soul collectors] floating around. And maybe Alexis’s body as well, which appears like a deformed mutant tree.

"Fine. Next time, all meetings will be held here. Only those truly deemed worthy will face my main body." I guess that’s why access to a tree spirit’s main body is restricted, if they are all similarly high leveled, their presence is going to be incredibly intimidating.

Now I’m really curious what the other tree spirits are like.

Year 80 Month 5

Back to the sewage issue. Containment by way of subsidiary tree works, for now. Long term solution is still in progress. Broadly, the idea we have, is to use plants and algae to digest the sewage. I can’t help but feel that I’m a tree, so all solutions I develop must involve trees, kinda like how everything looks like a nail when I’m a hammer.

So, I let Alexis take the lead on the plant samples, so she conducts research on all the different kinds of collected plant samples. The hope is to develop some kind of poop-processing hybrid plant. There are some plants with slight tolerance, so the idea is whether that tolerance level can be amplified such that the plants are able to obtain some kind of resistance.

There’s promising results from algae and trees, but as with all research, more time and more samples needed. Well, it’s just time. I have plenty now.

Meanwhile, Trevor’s in charge of the materials lab, with a focus on creating filtration systems, whereby the different ‘elements’ of the sewage is separated. Different plants have different tolerance of elements, and if there is no single sewer-eating miracle plant, then it’ll have to be multiple plants working together. To do so, splitting the toxins is critical!

At the same time, Jura and the Order lobbies the Council to actually build a proper sewage system. The sewage system will then connect to a sewage tunnel, and that tunnel will move all the sewage to a designated spot out of town. That spot will be where my future ‘sewage-processing’ plant be located.

Jura phrased the argument to the council using ‘pride’ as the main emotional hook. I admire that.

How can any self-respecting capital city still rely on primitive poopholes? Can you call yourself a developed nation? If New Freeka wants to be respected as a kingdom, it got to have a proper sewer. Think about all the adventurers it will train, all the secret passageways it will create!

Sewers are a source of revenue! A source of jobs and experience for newbie adventurers! No more poopholes! More time for priests! Less regular [cleansing] needed because the poop can pile up out of town!

And so the Council debates the New Freeka Subterranean Sewage Project.

Year 80 Month 6

Demons.

News of their presence spreads, through the merchants, through communication spells, through artifacts.

Demons, humanoid demons. They are humanoid, and yet have appendages that resemble weapons. Some in the form of spears, some in the form of swords or axes. They also seem to have particularly strange behaviors, building ‘fortresses’ and ‘camps’, which, never done in recorded demon king history.

"The news of the multiple rifts sends all the nations into high alert. When did the rifts appear so quickly?

Unlike all other occasions, the number of rifts are significantly more.

"TreeTree, you’ll protect us, right?" Lausanne asks.

"Yes, Lausanne. But if you had to fight them, will you?"

Lausanne pauses. She’s 11 now, and it’ll be another 9 years before she’s mature physically. If I can, I’d like her to stay out of it. "Yes. I’m not as strong as I’d like to be, but yes, I will protect my family and friends."

"Good." I don’t think she’s ready yet. But sometimes, you’ve got to throw them into the water.

Skillsets

Year 80 Month 7

"We need to talk about defenses." The council gathered in the large meeting room, some of the councillors sigh. "First up, we need walls, and more soldiers."

"We already have walls."

"Not enough. The news coming from those near the rifts are quite concerning." The meeting is led by Yvon’s replacement, a guy called Arza. He’s been in the job for some time now, but really, he's just a very clever coordinator and spokesperson for his faction of councillors.

The other councillors look at him quizzically. "Is there something that’s on your mind, council leader Arza?" Council-leader’s an informal title, since all in the council is theoretically equal, but there’s always one taking a chairing role.

"Yes. Demons. Our defenses are inadequate for demons, with their numbers and their strength. We need to urgently improve our defense."

"Walls don’t work against demons. They’ve got crazy numbers, and they’ve got those large monsters."

"Not this time. The news coming out from the nations facing the demons is that they are like..." Arza pauses, and then he takes a deep breath. "They are like us. They’re using our tactics and strategies."

"That’s absolutely crazy. Are we talking about demons?" One of the councillors. "In recorded history, demons have never adopted our tactics."

Arza nods. "I think it’s crazy too, but, but... it’s our chance to bolster our military. We needed this excuse."

"You mean..."

Arza pauses, and whispers. "We’ve lost the druids. We’ve got to find something else, and this is it."

"Ah. Then we must!"

"We’ll take this excuse to raise taxes, and train more soldiers and mages. We need the Order’s money, and this is a good excuse to force them to collaborate. If they don’t, we’ll shame them publicly for being selfish!"

"I see!"

"But doesn’t... wait. Why would that work, Council Leader Azra? The Order’s strength is the Tree Spirit, no? The tiny militia and force they maintain is just nothing compared to the amount of warbeetles they can deploy."

"Indeed, so we have more to gain! We need to use this excuse to adjust the revenue rate that the Order gets, so here’s the message I want everyone to spread. ‘The Order’s not spending enough on defense! We need the money to defend the city!’."

"AH! So the idea is to make the Order seem like they are spending money on frivolous things like collecting plants and animals, gifts for babies and doing unnecessary rituals!"

One of the councillors object, "I wouldn’t talk about the rituals. They’re quite popular among my electorate, and many find them meaningful. Stick to the collection of plants."

"Agree, wouldn't this move backfire?"

"Maybe, but we must be subtle about it then. First, we need to expose how the Order spends their tax money, and then tie it to our defense needs. Show the people that they are not doing what they can to defend the city."

"Uh... they have beetles, Councillor Azra."

"I know, then we must explain to the people that beetles are not trustworthy! We need our own strength! The strength of our people! Inspire them not to rely on a secretive power, like a tree spirit. We don't even know whether it will protect us when it really matters, or will it only choose those it cares about!"

"Ahhhh!"

"Think about it. We embed a belief innour people that we must rely on our own mortal strength, with powers within our control, ideally, with us, the councillors in charge. We represent them, whereas the Tree Spirit is unelected, and it is a magical being, not mortal, not one of us! Now we suffer the whims of a magical creature! Where is our dignity?"

A murmur around the councillors, mostly in agreement.

"So, we must have more walls, more soldiers, more mages. We may not be stronger than the army of beetles, but I'll be damned if we are beggars, begging for mercy and protection from a magical creature!"

"Our founding documents say they would protect us..."

"Myths! Tell the tale of when the great cities who suffered the wrath of dragons who no longer wanted to protect them, tell the tale of the city who fell when the sacred beast turned on the royal family!"

"Isn't the message of that story about doing good because the royal family was evil?"

"Doesn't matter! It's about self-reliance, strength! We were refugees, and if we fled Salah to be subservient to a magical beast, what good is there?"

"Councillor Azra, is this something your faction thought up?" One centaur councillor speaks, an independent in the sense that he is unaffiliated to either the Order or the 'independence' faction. That's partly because his voting district also comprises the slopes of the valley, where the 'rural' centaurs live rather happily.

Azra pause, "Well, yes."

"I agree on the need to bolster the city's own strength, with more soldiers. I also agree on the need for more defensive walls. Yet, among the centaurs, treefolk, and even the lizardmen, Aeon's presence a reassuring force. So, tone down the rhetoric, it will backfire on your faction's election chances."

"Hmph. We'll see about that. But more importantly, glad to see you agree with our need to improve our own military prowess."

The centaur shrugs.

---

Meanwhile, the druids...

The [Druidic Aspect] familiar is clearly a double-edged sword for the druids. On one hand, they get to store about 3-5% of my power, depending on their own level, for their own use, but, because of the link and how its magically entangled with me, I can see them clearly, wherever they go in New Freeka, kind of like how Lausanne glows like a lightbulb in my overview of the valley. In other words, I can observe them through the Aspect.

The Aspect steals their experience and mana too. I did recall that the familiars take a portion of the experience too, which is why I level up when the contracted warriors die, but in the Aspect's case, the ratio is even more skewed. I can also see their skills, and also mark 2 skills of my choice as "targeted" for collection on death. Oddly, there's a time counter on those marked skills. I think it means it takes some time to 'mark' the skills?

So much for 'blessing'. Are the other tree spirits also secretly taking skills from their believers? After all, how would they know that their blessing is actually not free? But if so, why do the tree spirits not give it freely?

[Aspect contracts are limited to Level divided by 10. You are allowed up to 13 Aspects]

Ah. Limited again. Just like familiars, which I can give out about 132, since I am level 132, or the [Possession of the devoted], which I can give 5. I suppose there is an mana-maintenance cost to it, which is why these are limited.

These 4 druids just used up 4 valuable slots. But they are called druidic aspects, so only druids can use them?

[Druidic Aspects can be awarded to druids, herbalists, farmers and gardeners (and variants). Can also be awarded to Treefolks, with no job class requirements.]

Confusing! System, you need a massive cleanup!

Anyway, I did somewhat regret letting the druids go, and I do realise I am not very good at making high quality decisions when I am in a spot. The druids could read my interest in meeting the other spirits and managed to therefore save themselves.

So what do I need to do?

Being able to make good, high quality decisions? That's something I need to try to do, but if I fail, what should I do then?

"Honestly, I wanted to help you but their spell made me feel so drowsy and weak that I couldn't."

But hey, should I kill and drain the druids? Ah, well. I thought of looking, studying and learning from them first, since I have them under my custody.

"Pods." The druids gulp. "Go in."

"Are... are you planning to drown us?"

"You are not making much progress on arranging the meeting. It's almost 3 months. IN."

"The archdruid is coming, he... he needs to assess the situation. Please don't do this!"

"IN."

The vines and roots pull the druids inside, and all four of them are now in the biolab pods. They struggle a lot for adults, compared to my four girls, who are getting rather good and used to the biolab. One of them even say it's quite relaxing.

Under the scope, the druids body is actually rather ordinary. They have a spring like any other, and a collection of stones around the lifespring, which are the skills and levels of the druid. What's quite unique, are the animal-head shaped stones, which are the 'link' between the druid and their animal followers.

Then, the Druidic Aspect. The Aspect takes the form of a vine-like plant, it grows and makes a space around the Spring, and its vines and roots spread around the stones, growing into the gaps between them, like a well that's partly abandoned and now reclaimed by plants.

Some of the stones around the spring have more vines around it, but most of them just have little roots at the sides, like little climber plants.

The Aspect's main body, a large central flexible 'trunk', is like a parasitic plant living on the wellspring of his soul. On the aspect's plant body, there are three large gourd-shaped organs, and from a little prodding it reads.

Aspect's storage organ. Stores energy from the main body.

Strange.

I think back to Lausanne and Jura's souls. In Lausanne's case, the familiar appears like a separate plant in the shape of a sunflower, growing at the side of the well, but it doesn't have vines or feelers growing like crawlers on the well. Instead, her special familiar has a strange swirling portal.

In Jura's case, the eidolon Bamboo doesn't even appear as a plant in Jura's soulspring. Instead, there's something in the shape of a Bear Statue that has a small waterspout on its mouth, and it's located outside the Soulspring. It seems the relationship of the druid's familiars would be similar to Bamboo, since they too appear as statues or stones?

I would later discover, from the druids mouth, the druid's familiars actually not familiars, but actual animal spirits, which have agreed to become their companions. These animal "spirits" are actually somewhat similar to artificial souls. They form from the collective energies of many animals of their kind, the remnant outer shells of animals' souls. Druids, and beastmasters have an ability to 'separate' the outer shells of their slain animals, through a ceremony of some kind, where the inner soul is sent forth to reincarnate, leaving the outer shell in their service.

That said, it is also possible for druids, beastmasters to form lifelong bonds, a kind of 'soul contract' whereby the animal serves them for as long as they live. These sorts of bonds are rare, but also way more powerful.

It's also why the animal companions of druids and beast trainers are usually able to independently gain levels, due to them retaining a part of their 'souls'.

Back to the 4 druids, I decide to let them be. The Aspect's presence in their soulspring is fascinating, and is something I want to watch.

So, rather than let them do as they please, I task them with training my 4 Initiates and Lausanne.

The 4 young girls are doing well, though I should be looking for 5 more new 'recruits' soon. They are now about level 10, and have gained basic proficiency in the usual sword, dagger, staff and shields.

They are just 6 to 8 though, so they practice with wooden weapons, and with wooden dummies in the [training room]. That forms the bulk of their combat practice, on top of spars against each other.

Still, a very long way before they can enter battle. I would reckon they need to be at least 12 before they would fight any real battle.

The [minder] familiar keeps me updated on their levels, the moment I focus on them, a game-like panel appears, and shows me all the skills and levels their mental state of mind, whether they are happy or sad or stressed, and also their health, whether they are hurt, or healthy.

It's helpful, and allows me to tailor my [dream tutor] and the nutrition I am feeding them, like when they are stressed or frustrated, I would have a bit of that calming fruit tea on the menu.

Lately, my control of [dream tutor] improved. I still can't control the exact specifics, but I can use the [essence of summer] in dream tutor so that they get rather pleasant ones, like beaches, warm suns. Things to help them unwind

I also regularly talk to the girls, but they are young, so its usually silly things, like how far does a tree see, or how high do I go.

Year 80 Month 8

More rifts spotted.

Apparently there's a few rifts near Salah but they are on the other side, so it'll be some time before they get near me. Their army has been dispatched to deal with the demons coming out from the rifts.

So far, only heroes have the power to close rifts, so, the rifts remain open, and the army stations a garrison force near the rifts to fight the demons that come out.

"If only we have our star mana powers again, then we could close the rifts." Meela pops by after so long.

"Do you want to go back into battle?"

"Ugh, true." Meals shrugs, she's gained a lot of levels since her hotel started operations one and a half years ago, so like Alexis predicted, her mobility increased, though she still mostly stays back in her hotel.

"But maybe we can help, somehow..."

"We are stuck here, what do you have in mind?" Meela's body is like a treefolk, and frankly, it takes quite a bit of effort to figure out she's not a treefolk. She has a dress that's formed from wood, and for her, changing attires meant changing how the wood's shape around her body.

"Hmmm... maybe we should try to help the next generation, perhaps research? The materials lab should count for something, right?"

As they discuss, I turn my attention to research.

Research status :

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 4 - 10 months

Material labs - stage 1 - completed

Magical sensors - completed

Normal Tree - Root filters stage 1 - completed

Metal hyperaccumulator trees - Stage 1 - 12 months

Phytoremediation process - basic - 12 months

Dedicated Filtering Blackwater-Plant - stage 1 - 6 months

Looking at research, we had some normal trees gain filtering abilities, and this allows them to reduce the effects of the poop-contamination.

But the materials lab is more of a properties kind of lab, which identifies the components, the qualities of materials and also in 'distilling' the different types of materials. It looks like there are further upgrades, which allows me to design specific materials and forge special alloys, but that's a whole lot further down the road.

Next, is the magical sensors.

The magical sensors are instantly installed on my material labs and gives me a reading of the mana flowing through the air, and the composition. Mana has many types after all. It also detects spells and area of effect skills. Together, with sensors in multiple material labs, they form an array able to triangulate sources of unusual activity, like sudden surges of energy in the air.

At first, there's a whole load of false positives. Spells are being cast daily, in eemany battles throughout the world, some not very far away. Adventurers of New Freeka constantly travel the region, slaying rogue monsters and bandits. Or priests and healers a in Madeus' academy for the junior students.

All of these false 'positives' had to be removed.

So, we had to set a very high threshold, to remove all the lesser spells from detection. My assumption is they probably won't be much of a threat.

"TreeTree, can we help the next generation of summoned heroes?" Meela asks, "Alexis has some ideas, and she thought, well, we need your help."

"Hmm, honestly, I'm not sure why I should help the next group of heroes... From what I hear, heroes are pretty dangerous. They have a whole.lot of magical power and are extremely idealistic."

"But isn't protecting the world from demons aligned with yours? Protecting the valley means also protecting it from demons?"

"They certainly overlap, but what are the benefits of helping the heroes?"

"Uh... Protecting the valley?"

"Honestly, if it's just demons, I don't need heroes."

Alexis pauses, "True... But would you permit me and Meela to aide them?"

"Hmmm..." I can't control Meela, since she is her own independent soul, so... Frankly if she did, and its not against me, I won't stop her. "Fine."

"Great!"

Year 80 Month 9

An uneventful month in the valley.

Training, practice, observing the druids and citizens. Eavesdropping on conversations about battles from far away, against the demons.

The humanoid demons are appearing everywhere, and the battles are getting more and more intense.

Unlike all recorded history of demons, this time, the demons have brought a special item that spawns demons, and it takes the form of a camp. Larger variants have been spotted in places where towns and villages used to be.

And so, it could be said that overnight, all mortal wars ended, as the focus turns to face this new era of demons.

Demons used to be a 'continental' affair. Only a few rifts would open, and when they did, it's usually not far from each other, at least, until the demon king comes.

Not anymore.

And for me, the big question is, why?

Why did the demons, after what seems to be years of taking the same strategies, finally trying this sort of carpet-bombing technique?

Year 80 Month 10

I chose another 5 children, this time, 2 boys. Overall, due to the relative peace in New Freeka, the number of new orphans is trending downwards. Still, accidents, fights, and death is inevitable, and there's also migrant orphans.

In certain communities where there is no capacity to support another orphan, it is better to send them off to a place where they will be cared for.

Anyway, the first four girls are around level 12, the highest level is level 15, with 8 levels in [soldier]. This job class thing is fascinating, and more for me to learn.

As for Jura, he’s still at level 80, and stuck.

Well, which is why today, I harvested a 3 year old [ginseng plant], leaving 2 others to continue maturing.

[3-year old magical ginseng root]

[Permanently improves lifeforce (faster mana, stamina and health regeneration]

"So... how do we use this?" Jura holds the ginseng root, even though it’s 3 year old, it actually looks like it’s a 100 year old ginseng root from my old world. I think it’s a mana, and probably my influence and bounty.

"Do you want me to cook it?" Meela offers, there’s a cookhouse in her lodge.

"No." I’m trying something more direct. "Please step into the soul forge."

"Uh, okay." Jura looks at the lightning-burnt tree, and then steps in.

I thought about it for some time, and essentially, what I want to do, is try to inject the ginseng into his ‘soulspring’. It sounds like some kind of cultivation novel when I describe it like that.

And so, I attempt to start up the soul forge, and start the merging process...

I got an error message when I put the ginseng roots in.

Ginseng roots needs to be further refined before can be used in the soul forge. Refining requires access to an essence concentrator.

Essence concentrator?

At the same time, the soul forge is still active, Jura’s still inside, his body ‘sleeping’ in a special ‘altar’ within the forge-tree. And a prompt appears.

Do you want to remove some of Jura’s skills or job-classes? Doing so will free up lifeforce to learn other skills, or gain levels. Removed skills have a chance to be converted into skill seeds. Skill seeds made this way cannot be re-used on donor.

Eh.

I suddenly recalled the day, some 6 years ago, when the Wisp told me about surrendering of levels and skills.

"Why didn’t it work when I captured the ranger?"

"It’s called surrendering. If Jura’s willing, you will be able to remove skills he don’t want. And as I recall, you partially succeeded since you received a few skill seeds and class seeds. The conversion odds are higher if it’s a voluntary surrender of the skills."

"Huh, so surrendering skills isn’t exactly all bad either." Is this like pocket monster game again, where you unlearn a move, and somehow there’s a chance the move you unlearned gets transformed into a TM? In a way, the soul’s ability to support the person’s level and skills is limited, and this ability technically... technically allows minmaxing. "Can a hero surrender his hero class or blessing?"

"What comes from the gods, can only be removed by the gods."

NOT A CHAPTER - NOTIFICATIONS COMPILATION - SKILLS AND LEVEL

Skill Category
Skill Name and effects
Dates skill learned or upgraded
Notes

Alexis's Hamadryad Body
[Hamadryad Body - Developing]. The body is made from the nimble wood of a soul tree, and the soul that lives in this body derives energy and life support from the soul tree. So, the body will die when the soul tree does.
Year 76 Month 7

ARTIFICIAL SOUL UPGRADES
[Unlocked special tree type. Root-Brain Complex. Requires special minerals to grow. Special minerals required are 10 x Blood Crystals, and 50 x fresh animal heads]
Year 75 Month 3

AURA - DEMONSUPPRESSION
[Obtained skill : Lesser demon suppression aura]
Year 72 Month 5

AURA - MAGIC SUPPRESSION
[Skill obtained : Magic suppression : All hostile magic abilities below tier 3 are absorbed]
Year 74 Month 8 Week 3

Autopilot
Autopilot
Year 1 Month 0

BIOLAB
[Secret hideout - biolab upgraded. Autopsy table and precision tools obtained. Pods increased to 10]
Year 74 Month 2 Week 1

BIOLAB
[Biolab leveled up] [External Biolab unlocked. Customisable Branches can now create biolabs!]
Year 75 Month 11 Week 2

BIOLAB
[Biolab upgraded. Additional lab tools obtained]
Year 75 Month 3

BIOLAB
[Biolab upgraded three times! Biolab resistance to attack increased. Biolab modification options increased! Soul-forge-linked abilities increased!]
Year 76 Month 4 Week 4

BIOLAB
[Biolab upgraded - post-mortem equipments, death sensors, death-delaying equipment and body preservation added!]
Year 77 Month 8

BIOLAB
[Biolab upgraded. Biolab now has multiple extra rooms, functioning as a 'toilet', 'bathroom' and others for collection and harvesting of biological wastes]
Year 80 Month 1

Biolab / Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout - Biolab upgraded]
Year 73 Month 1

Biolab / Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout - biolab, upgraded. Additional pods now available.]
Year 73 Month 1 Week 3

Biolab / Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout - Biolab upgraded]
Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

Biolab / Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout : Biolab upgraded. Pods increased to 5.]
Year 73 Month 8 Week 3

Communication / Visual
[Limited Telepathic Communication]
Year 55
From Indra

Communication / Visual
[spirit vision]
Year 55
From Indra

Communication / Visual
self awareness
Year 58, Month 1

Communication / Visual
[calming voice] and
Year 70 Month 8

Communication / Visual
[Local rootnet access]
Year 71 Month 5

Communication / Visual
[Create Rootnet Node]].
Year 71 Month 6

Communication / Visual
Local rootness access upgraded
Year 71 Month 8

Communication / Visual
[Symbiotic extension unlocked]
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

Communication / Visual
[Basic Tree-Eyes obtained. Limited to 10 ‘selected’ trees. Place on trees to obtain multidirectional vision. Can actively look through two sets of eyes at any one time, view limit can be increased with root-brain complexes.]
Year 79 Month 5
RESEARCH SKILL

Communication / Visual
[Skill upgraded : Symbiotic extension]
Year 79 Month 5

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[Customisable branches : Harvestable Products obtained. Options are : Cotton, Maple Syrup, Oranges, Olives. Expanded options will be available with higher levels, or when new types of fruits are studied in the biolab]
Year 73 Month 5 Week 2

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[Harvestable crops : Apples]
Year 74 Month 12

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[Timber-farm] [Produce average quality timber, at a much faster speed]
Year 74 Month 5 Week 3

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[Harvestable products upgraded. Papaya and grapes obtained].
Year 74 Month 6

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[winter resistant crops]
Year 75 Month 11 Week 2

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[Warm Winter Fruit obtained. A fruit that helps to keep the body warm]
Year 76 Month 1

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[New crop species unlocked - Wheat, Jackfruit, Light Corn, Blackpotato, Rye, Red hops, Blueberry, Fireberry]
Year 78 month 1

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[New Tree type unlocked : Common herbal bushes. Bushes containing a wide variety of herbs. Herb varieties appear at random]
Year 78 month 1

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[Crop variety - Garlic] added. You can now produce essences of garlic and garlic flavored woods, fruits and saps.
Year 78 Month 12

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[Crop variety - Ginger] added. You can now produce essences of ginger and ginger flavored woods, fruits and saps
Year 78 Month 12

CROPS &amp; PRODUCE
[Milk coconut and brownwood gourds]
Year 78 Month 5

CUSTOMISABLE BRANCH
[Obtained skill : Customisable branches]
Year 72 Month 10

CUSTOMISABLE BRANCH
[Customisable branches options expanded]
Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

CUSTOMISABLE BRANCH
[Customisable branch option unlocked : Shield Generator]
Year 73 Month 3 Week 2

CUSTOMISABLE BRANCH
[New customisable branch option : Web-trap spider nests. Home to 3 web-building spiders.]
Year 75 Month 10

DEFENSIVE
[Ironbark],
Year 55 (estimate)
not specifically mentioned, but familiars have similar skills

DEFENSIVE
[Defense],
Year 55 (estimate)
not specifically mentioned, but familiars have similar skills

DEFENSIVE
[Wood shield]
Year 55 (estimate)
not specifically mentioned, but familiars have similar skills

DEFENSIVE
[Wood shield upgraded.
Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

DEFENSIVE
Steelwood barrier obtained]
Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

DEFENSIVE
[Skill : Defensive dome obtained]
Year 73 Month 3 Week 2

DEFENSIVE
[Skill : Reinforce defensive structures obtained]
Year 75 Month 5

DEFENSIVE
[Shield generators upgraded]
Year 77 Month 8

DEFENSIVE
[Cactus defense system]
Year 78 Month 5

ENCHANTMENT - HOLY
[Obtained skill : Lesser Holy Enchantment]
Year 73 Month 2 Week 1
From RAJJIV NUNG

ENERGY STORAGE
[Tree ability : create tuberous storage] One tuber for every [customisable branch]. So for a total of 40 potatoes, given that my main body grown and has 10 customisable branches now, and 30 for each of the subsidiary trees. These standard sized potatoes is also now my standard unit for energy.
Year 73 Month 4 Week 2

ENERGY STORAGE
[High density tubers unlocked. Tubers will be naturally upgraded]
Year 77 Month 1

ENERGY STORAGE
[Tuberous storage upgraded.]
Year 77 Month 1

ESSENCE
[Essence harvesting obtained]
Year 70 Month 11

ESSENCE
[Essence collection upgraded. Essence mastery and generation obtained. Customisable branch options now include "Essence generator"]
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

ESSENCE
[Essence collection upgraded]
Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

ESSENCE
[Essence infusion unlocked. Essence-infused fruits, leaves and barks now available. Essence-infused subsidiary trees now available]
Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

ESSENCE
[Essence collection upgraded. Extraction rate and speed improved.]
Year 73 Month 8 Week 3

ESSENCE
[Memory collection] [from Soul Forge - Black] [Using the dark arts, a small % of memories of the dead will be converted into skill essences]
Year 75 Month 8

FAMILIAR
[Familiar Contract].
Year 52

FAMILIAR
[Tree Familiar abilities upgraded]
Year 73 Month 3 Week 2

FAMILIAR
[Familiar contracts upgraded - skill salvaging chance increase!] [You’ve witnessed death as it happens in the inner realm]
Year 77 Month 8

FAMILIAR
[Special skill obtained - Possession of the devoted] [A special familiar contract with a chosen devoted believer. Limited to 5 at any time] [Lausanne has accepted the special familiar contract. 50 star mana consumed. 1 star mana will be consumed per month].
Year 78 MOnth 4

FAMILIAR
[Skill learned : Minder-Familiars. Maximum Minders, 20]
Year 79 Month 5

FAMILIAR
[Aspect contracts are limited to Level divided by 10. You are allowed up to 13 Aspects]
Year 80 Month 4

FAMILIAR
[Druidic Aspects can be awarded to druids, herbalists, farmers and gardeners (and variants). Can also be awarded to Treefolks, with no job class requirements.]
Year 80 Month 4

FAMILIAR
[Four druids have each entered into a non-cancellable Druidic Aspect contract with you]
Year 80 Month 4

FAMILIAR
[New familiar contract type obtained : Druidic Aspect Contract.
Year 80 Month 4

Germinate
Germinate
Year 1 Month 0

Haunted Tree
[haunted tree]]
Year 70 Month 8

Haunted Tree
[Skill : Haunted tree upgraded to haunted forests.]
Year 74 Month 7 Week 4

Healing
[Healing fruit]
Year 56

Healing
[Nourish]
Year 69 Month 10

Healing
[Healing powers upgraded]
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

Healing
[Healing fruit upgraded]
Year 72 Month 3

Healing
[Healing vines upgraded]
Year 72 Month 3

Healing
[Solar-healing]
Year 72 Month 3

Healing
[Nourish upgraded.
Year 72 Month 9

Healing
Life support unlocked.
Year 72 Month 9

Healing
Suspended animation unlocked]
Year 72 Month 9

Hibernate
Hibernate
Year 1 Month 0

Illusion
[Camouflage &amp; illusions upgraded]
Year 70 Month 11

Illusion / Defensive
[Mist]
Year 76 Month 9

Inspection
[inspect]
Year 56

LEVELS
Level 14 (+13 level) (From Indra's death)
Year 55

LEVELS
Level 15 (+1 level)
Year 56

LEVELS
Level 16 (+1 level)
Year 57 Month 11

LEVELS
Level 17 (+1 levels)
Year 58 Month 1

LEVELS
Level 18 (+1 level)
Year 58 Month 6

LEVELS
Level 19 (+1 level)
Year 58 Month 7

LEVELS
Level 20 (+1 levels)
Year 59 Month 1

LEVELS
Level 23 (+3 levels)
Year 59 Month 4

LEVELS
Level 35 (+12 levels) (from death of 3 familiar-contractees)
Year 59 Month 9

LEVELS
Level 36 (+1 level)
Year 65 Month 2

LEVELS
Level 45 (+9 levels) (from death of Andy Schulon)
Year 67 Month 11

LEVELS
Level 47 (+2 levels)
Year 69 Month 10

LEVELS
Level 48 (+1 level)
Year 70 Month 1

LEVELS
Level 63 (+13 levels) - Destruction of Freeka Village
Year 70 Month 11

LEVELS
Level 64 (+1 level)
Year 70 Month 11 (next few days)

LEVELS
Level 50 (+2 level)
Year 70 Month 8

LEVELS
Level 65 (+1 level)
Year 71 Month 3

LEVELS
Level 66 (+1 level)
Year 71 Month 4

LEVELS
Level 71 (+5 level)
Year 71 Month 5

LEVELS
Level 86 (+15 levels) - Defeat of Demon Champion (assisted)
Year 71 Month 8

LEVELS
Level 92 (+3 level)
Year 72 Month 10

LEVELS
Level 100 (+8 levels) - defeating the demon giant centipede
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

LEVELS
Level 87 (+1 level)
Year 72 Month 3

LEVELS
Level 89 (+2 level)
Year 72 Month 9

LEVELS
Level 101 (+1 level)
Year 73 Month 1 Week 3

LEVELS
Level 116 (+1 level)
Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

LEVELS
Level 104 (+3 level) Rajjiv Nung's death
Year 73 Month 2 Week 1

LEVELS
Level 110 (+6 levels) vs 3 Demon Champion
Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

LEVELS
Level 114 (+4 levels) Death of Demon King Andraas + Familiar EXP of heroes
Year 73 Month 3 Week 2

LEVELS
Level 115 (+1 level)
Year 73 Month 7 Week 1

LEVELS
Level 117
Year 74 Month 5 Week 3

LEVELS
Level 121 (+4 levels) (soul forge unlock)
Year 74 Month 8 Week 3

LEVELS
Level 122 (+1 level)
Year 74 Month 9 Week 3

LEVELS
Level 124 (+1 level)
Year 75 Month 11 Week 2

LEVELS
Level 123 (+1 level)
Year 75 Month 5

LEVELS
Level 129 (+1 level)
Year 76 Month 12

LEVELS
Level 128 (+4 level) (slaying Alexis's demon form)
Year 76 Month 4 Week 4

LEVELS
Level 130 (+1 level)
Year 77 Month 4

LEVELS
Level 132 (+2 level)
Year 77 Month 8

MAGIC - WOOD
[Bind]
Year 71 Month 10

MAGIC - WOOD
[Bloom]
Year 71 Month 10

MAGIC - WOOD
Wood magic &amp; creation - A wheel pops up in my mind, at the center of it a leaf shape. There is a lot of greyed out skills and menus that grow out of that wheel.
Year 71 Month 8

Materials
Roots - Volcanic mineral harvesting - stage 2 -
Year 79 Month 5
RESEARCH SKILL

Materials
Roots - Volcanic mineral processing - stage 1 -
Year 79 Month 5
RESEARCH SKILL

Materials
Materials testing - stage 1
Year 79 Month 5
RESEARCH SKILL

MINERAL EXTRACTION
[Mineral extraction upgraded.]
Year 73 Month 8 Week 3

Offensive
[Root strike].
Year 70 Month 1

Offensive
[constrict]
Year 71 Month 2

Offensive
[Root strike range extended]
Year 71 Month 4

Offensive
[Poison field]
Year 71 Month 5

Offensive
[Rooting field]
Year 71 Month 5

Offensive
Root strike range and quantity upgraded
Year 71 Month 8

Offensive
[Obtained skill : Super anti-demon root-strike]
Year 72 Month 10

Offensive
[Fruit-attack]
Year 72 Month 4

Offensive
[Root Surge]
Year 72 Month 5

Offensive
[Constrict significantly upgraded]
Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

Offensive
[Absorption significantly upgraded] - via vines/biolabs etc
Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

Offensive
Corrosive Fruits
Year 73 Month 3 Week 3

Offensive
[Skill upgraded : Root surge. Covers a wider area and use limit increased]
Year 74 Month 8 Week 3

Offensive
[Poison field upgraded]
Year 74 Month 9 Week 3

Offensive
[Constrict upgraded! Vines now are able to drain mana and lifeforce! Vines now able to ensnare magical creatures]
Year 76 Month 4 Week 4

OFFENSIVE
Fruit bombs - increased range and power - completed
Year 77 Month 12
RESEARCH SKILL

Offensive
[Poison field and rooting field upgraded]
Year 77 Month 8

Offensive
[You gained a new skill : Serpentine Rootstrike]
Year 77 Month 8

Passive
[Mineral augmentation obtained. You may use the metals obtained to strengthen your [subsidiary trees], and [insect warriors]]
Year 73 Month 8 Week 3

Passive - Environment
Tree - volcanic adaptation stage 3 -
Year 79 Month 5
RESEARCH SKILL

Passive - Tree
[Minor winter-resistance]
Year 59 Month 1

Passive - Tree
Rhizofiltration - This is a passive skill. Will extract minerals and other items via roots, and automatically filter out negative effects in the ground.
Year 71 Month 8

Passive - Tree
[Winter resistance upgraded]
Year 74 Month 12

Passive - Tree
[Winter resistance upgraded]
Year 75 Month 11 Week 2

Passive - Tree
[Winter resistance upgraded]
Year 76 Month 1

Passive - Tree
[Winter-resistance aura obtained. All trees connected via rootnet are more resistant to the effects of cold and ice. Beetles and webspiders also gain some winter resistance]
Year 76 Month 1

Passive - Tree / CONNECTION BASED
[Gained a passive buff. Connected to an enchanted forest. Herb effectiveness increased by 50%.]
Year 80
Connected to enchanted forest in Ransalah

ROOTS
[Achieved long distance connected roots. Unlocked new skill : Far-reaching roots]
Year 75 Month 2

ROOTS
[New ability obtained : Heat transmission root systems]
Year 76 Month 4 Week 4

ROOTS
[Skill upgraded : Local rootnet access upgraded. Longer distance between subsidiary trees unlocked]
Year 79 Month 7

ROOTS / SPECIAL TREE - ROOT RELAY
[Special trees type obtained : Root Relay Trees] [Max Quantity of Relay is Level x 5] [Root Relay are special trees with the dedicated purpose of expanding your root network. A single root Relay can create a simple root network that extends 10 x the diameter of a regular subsidiary tree. Does not have other functions. Looks like any other tree. Appearance is customisable]
Year 79 Month 7

Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout]
Year 69 Month 10

Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout upgraded]
Year 70 Month 11

Secret Hideout
Secret hideout upgraded
Year 71 Month 8

Secret Hideout
[Skills upgraded : Secret hideout - healing chamber adaptation]
Year 72 Month 10

Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout upgraded. Extra rooms, special purpose rooms and hideouts unlocked. Customisable branches option now has "External room"]
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

Secret Hideout
[Your following skills have been upgraded : Life support chamber]
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout upgraded : Childcare corner obtained]

[Childcare corner produces a special infant friendly syrup, similar to baby and milk formula. Infant-syrup can be further upgraded with various kinds of materials and minerals, if available]
Year 73 Month 11 Week 1

Secret Hideout
[Skill upgraded - secret hideout has unlocked - Tree-asury]
Year 73 Month 7 Week 1

Secret Hideout
[Secret hideout upgraded! Hot water now available]
Year 76 Month 9

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Spirit Collection upgraded]
Year 70 Month 11

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Soul absorption upgraded. Soul realm unlocked]
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Obtained passive skill : soul grading]
Year 73 Month 2

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Soul Tree range greatly expanded]
Year 73 Month 3 Week 2

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Soul forge : Blue] is active. [The power to repair, mend souls. To strip souls apart, and put them back together. The ability to add souls to your abilities, familiars, items, trees. The ability to push souls to their limits, and beyond. The ability to rank up a soul. The ability to fuse soul fragments whole, and create artificial sub-souls from ordinary soul fragments]
Year 74 Month 8 Week 3

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Soul forge : ForgeTree. The physical realm’s link to the soul forge]
Year 74 Month 8 Week 3

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Soul forge annex added : Mana soaking facility, and compatibility tester.]
Year 75 Month 3

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Additional repairs of damaged souls now possible]
Year 75 Month 8

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Creation of Soul Harvesters now possible]
Year 75 Month 8

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Nightmare collectors] [A special ghost type that steals nightmares] Due to the presence of two colors, the following fused abilities are now available.
Year 75 Month 8

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Soul Forge - Black allows for the conversion of undead spirits back into regular soul, reversing the effects of necromancy, and the removal of the dark energies of a soul]
Year 75 Month 8

Soul &amp; Spirit Collection
[Soul Harvesters] [Some call them the grim reaper, some refer to them as valkyries, these are travelling collectors of souls. They extend your soul harvesting reach, and can be directed to specific places, such as battlefields, graveyards to collect souls. Souls collected are of a higher chance to contain "transferable experience"]
Year 75 Month 8

SOUL CONTRACTS
[Spiritual Contract - Judgement]. It’s essentially a soul contract, but in the form of a judgement. Demons, devils and the dark gods get a lopsided version known as [Unfair Contracts], which is… unfair, but, less robust as a result. It has also sneaky abilities like concealing terms and conditions, but all of these result a reduction of the ability grade to a lower-tier (relative, of course).
Comes with Soul Forge

SPECIAL - MANA
[Natural Mana Overwhelming]
Year 73 Month 2 Week 2
used to capture woodhound

SPECIAL - MANA
[Natural Mana Overwhelming upgraded!]
Year 76 Month 4 Week 4

SPECIAL BUILDINGS - ROOT DUNGEON
[New structure obtained : Root Dungeon]
Year 75 Month 8

SPECIAL BUILDINGS - ROOT DUNGEON
[Root dungeon, leftovers of a dungeon that happens to be stabilised by the roots of a tree spirit. Does not spawn monsters or loot.]
Year 75 Month 8

SPECIAL PROJECTS - OUTSTANDING
[The Grand Mind Tree - significantly boosts tree-related research output, and grants wider understanding of soul magics. Gains additional psychic-type magical abilities] [Requires 10 x root brain complexes, and 1 ton of gold and 1 ton of quartz crystals. Once all prerequisites are complete, construction will take 1.5 years]
Year 76 Month 11
OUTSTANDING

SPECIAL TREE - CLIFF BONSAI
[Special Tree-type obtained : Cliff Bonsai]
Year 79 Month 6

SPECIAL TREE - DREAMER'S TREEHOUSE
[Special tree type obtained : Dreamer’s Treehouses]
Year 79 Month 5

SPECIAL TREE - GINSENG PLANT
[Cultivating ginseng will slightly increase monster spawn rate]
Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

SPECIAL TREE - GINSENG PLANT
[Ginseng does not work on Trees]
Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

SPECIAL TREE - GINSENG PLANT
[Ginseng plant does not share any defensive or support buffs of the main tree.]
Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

SPECIAL TREE - GINSENG PLANT
[Magical ginseng plant] [Ginseng plant is limited to 3 growing plants at any one time (can be increased with level). The qualities of the ginseng depends on the age of the root, overall health throughout it’s life, essences infused, mana infused, materials infused, the environment, astronomical conditions etc. Ginseng roots, when consumed, give permanent boosts to various stats, resistances, skills, mana or abilities. Permanent Effect diminishes with subsequent use.]
Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

SPECIAL TREE - GINSENG PLANT
[Specimen is Low-grade ginseng root, 2 years of age. No special enhancements. Provides small permanent boost to disease-resistance and stats]
Year 73 Month 12 Week 1

SPECIAL TREE - TREE OF PRAYER
[Special tree unlocked : Tree of Prayers] [Tree of Prayers has a calming, relaxing effect on its surroundings. Has the ability to passively soothe and comfort. Comes with a naturally calming background music of rustling leaves and wind]
Year 75 Month 4

SPECIAL TREE - VOLCANIC BATH
[Hot volcanic bath obtained!]
Year 76 Month 9

SPECIAL TREES - THREETREE OF MANA
[ThreeTrees of Mana] [Created when one subsidiary tree couldn’t handle to energy of a leyline, so three of them merged. An artifact of the leyline, this structure serves as the "conduit" of the leyline, so protect it, as it is your connection to the leyline, in place of the dungeon core. Serves no other function]
Year 75 Month 8

SPECIES UPGRADE - ANCIENT SOUL TREE
[You have evolved into an Ancient Soul Tree. The next evolution rank up is at Leve 130, if conditions and materials are met. You can still gain levels without ranking up.]
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

SPECIES UPGRADE - ANCIENT SOUL TREE
Level 100 and the rank up brings change, and a lot of benefits. One of the key changes is a UI change, as my interfaces become much more organised, and menus expanded. There are more tooltips as well, and information about my skills improved.
Year 72 Month 12 Week 4

SPECIES UPGRADE - MAGICAL TREE
[You have unlocked the next species change, upgraded from spiritual tree to magical tree]
Year 70 Month 11

SPECIES UPGRADE - SPIRITUAL TREE
Evolved from normal tree to Spiritual Tree
Year 59 Month 9

SPECIES UPGRADE - STARSOUL
[You have now transformed into the starsoul tree.] able to tap and access to the wisdom of the past, from exposure to ancient bones and fossils
Year 77 Month 4

SPECIES UPGRADE - STARSOUL
gains access to a special type of leaf able to collect starlight and produce star mana in small quantities (maximum amount of leaves capped), also gains access to a star mana storing organ and special star-mana abilities
Year 77 Month 4

SPECIES UPGRADE - STARSOUL
Soul management and access rights and restrictions unlocked
Year 77 Month 4

SPECIES UPGRADE - STARSOUL
stats improved, various collection, various skills upgraded
Year 77 Month 4

STAR MANA
Star mana. I have 300 star mana at the moment, that’s the maximum number of star-mana storage organs I have, and with the current maximum number of star-leaves, I produce 30 star mana a month.
Year 77 Month 4

SUBORDINATE
[Obtained skill : Summon insect warriors]
Year 72 Month 10

SUBORDINATE
[Armored beetles upgraded to warbeetles]
Year 73 Month 8 Week 1

SUBORDINATE
[You obtained a beetle commander, each tree with [insect warriors] has expanded to 5 beetles per tree.]
Year 74 Month 9 Week 3

SUBORDINATE
[Insect warrior variation unlocked : Web-trap Spiders] [Web-building spiders have little direct combat abilities except for their poisonous fangs, but are able to build webbings between your trees, laced with paralysing poisons and build trapping cocoons]
Year 75 Month 10

SUBORDINATE
Beetle winter adaptation stage I - completed!
Year 76 Month 8
RESEARCH SKILL

SUBORDINATE
Large beetle pods - completed
Year 77 Month 12
RESEARCH SKILL

SUBORDINATE
Enhanced interior structures - completed
Year 77 Month 12
RESEARCH SKILL

SUBORDINATE
Beetle volcanic battleform - complete!
Year 77 Month 3
RESEARCH SKILL

SUBORDINATE
Beetle volcanic defensive armors- complete!
Year 77 Month 3
RESEARCH SKILL

SUBORDINATE
Beetle - basic magical lances
Year 77 Month 9
RESEARCH SKILL

SUBORDINATE
Enhanced exoskeletons
Year 77 Month 9
RESEARCH SKILL

SUBORDINATE
[Carrier Drone. After a soul is merged with an object, skill or person, it can choose to become a "deployable egg". The carrier drone will then carry the egg within it to the desired location, where it will spawn into the merged structure! But beware, the carrier drone is vulnerable, and destruction means death to the cargo as well.]
Year 79 Month 2

SUBORDINATE
Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 3
Year 79 Month 5
RESEARCH SKILL

SUBORDINATE
[New beetle species unlocked. Dungbeetle]
Year 80 Month 1

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 90]
Year 73 Month 10 Week 1

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Some of your stored iron materials and essence of nature has been consumed. Six inner circle subsidiary trees upgraded. They are now able to support 3 external rooms each.]
Year 73 Month 10 Week 1

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Obtained Tree ability : Subsidiary Tree] (30 trees)
Year 73 Month 2 Week 4

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 40]
Year 73 Month 7 Week 1

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 60]
Year 73 Month 8 Week 1

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 120]
Year 74 Month 2 Week 1

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree leveled up. You can now have 180 subsidiary trees]
Year 74 Month 4 Week 1

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Skill upgraded : Subsidiary tree increased to 250]
Year 74 Month 8 Week 3

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 700]
Year 75 Month 11 Week 2

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 400]
Year 75 Month 2

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 1,500]
Year 77 Month 3

SUBSIDIARY TREE
Subsidiary Tree limit increased to 4,000 (During Starsoul evolution change)
Year 77 Month 5

SUBSIDIARY TREE
[Subsidiary tree limit increased to 6,000
Year 78 Month 5

TRAINING TREE TYPES
Training Treehouse - Training treehouse improves experience gain, skill gain chances, and reduces injuries significantly
Year 76 Month 12

TRAINING/LEVELLING/TEACHING
[You obtained Learning Aura]
Year 71 Month 3

TRAINING/LEVELLING/TEACHING
Dream tutor - May use dreams to learn, and to teach. Requires a collection of spirits, memories and objects to unlock more "Dreams". Essences can be used to bestow certain skills via dreams. Target must be sleeping for the ability to kick in. If sleep is interrupted, learning may not be effective.
Year 71 Month 8

TRAINING/LEVELLING/TEACHING
: [Powerleveling I]
Year 72 Month 1 Week 4

TREE ABILITIES
[tree-rebirth].
Year 59 Month 9

TREE ABILITIES
[Growth surge] [Creates patches of normal trees, shrubs and grasses. Affected by weather and seasons]
Year 74 Month 6 Week 4

TREE ABILITIES / HEALING
[Tree saps &amp; extracts upgraded]
Year 72 Month 10

TREE ABILITIES / HEALING
[Tree extracts &amp; saps ]
Year 72 Month 9

TREE TYPE - LABS
[Biolab - Beetle unit research tree obtained] [This massive tree allows research and development of various beetle types, such as flying beetles, armored beetles, poison beetles, firebeetles, waterbeetles…]
Year 76 Month 2 Week 1

TREE TYPE - LABS
Magically attuned materials Stage 1
Year 79 Month 11
RESEARCH SKILL

TREE TYPE - LABS
Tree-lab varieties - stage 1
Year 80 Month 3
RESEARCH SKILL

TREE TYPES
[New tree variant obtained : Carnivorous plants]
Year 76 Month 4 Week 4

TREE TYPES
[New subsidiary tree type unlocked : Treefolk Incubation Pods. A subsidiary tree filled with multiple pods, used to incubate and nourish fertilised and germinating external seeds]
Year 78 Month 2 Week 3

TREE TYPES
[New subsidiary tree type unlocked : Treefolk Nursery. Makes sapling-friendly nutrient rich foods. Can also make special sap for pregnant treefolk mothers or females to boost quality and health of their fetus or eggs]
Year 78 Month 2 Week 3

TREE TYPES
[Tree Lodge] [A tree with a whole lot more space than it looks! Each tree lodge has 10 rooms, a restaurant, a cozy lounge, a reception, and a kitchen, all while looking no bigger than any other tree! Needs to hire workers to work] [Limited to 5, and each lodge must be a distance away from the other nearest lodge]
Year 79 Month 2

TREE TYPES
[Tree-type obtained : Cave Trees]
Year 79 Month 6

TREE TYPES
[Plant-type obtained : Deep Moss]
Year 79 Month 6

Tree Types - Root Tunnels
[New skill obtained : Root-tunnels]
Year 75 Month 8

Tree Types - Root Tunnels
[Root tunnels, as what the name says, are tunnels made out of roots. Good for smuggling, transporting, and various tunnel things.]
Year 75 Month 8

TREE-HEART
"[The Tree’s Heart and Spirit-Lantern], this is the heart of the tree, adorned with the fragments of 67 heroes, it gives the tree 3350% increase in experience gain, 670% extra damage against midtier demons, 335% extra damage against elder demons, partial demon armor-negation, immunity to lesser demons, damage reduction against elder demons and significantly reduce damage from fire."
Year 72 Month 10
gets stronger when there are more fragments

WOODCRAFTING
Wood creation
Year 71 Month 8

WOODCRAFTING
[Woodcrafting upgraded]
Year 72 Month 1 Week 1

Side Story - Akbar & the Demons

INTERLUDES - AKBAR

Sometime around Year 80, Month 9 (TreeTree-time)

Every demon king is slightly different, every generation of demons, usually a variation of the previous. Scholars, inquisitors, demon-hunters have often wondered why it is so, but since these invading demons don’t seem to be able to communicate, no one knows for sure.

Still, the inhabitants facing the demons could still observe and make a note of how subtle differences exist. The first demon rifts reveal little hints about the characteristics of the demon king they face, and the sort of battles they will have to prepare for. Usually this meant elemental and/or monster variants, like how Andraas had earth-golems, earth centipedes and fire hounds, and as time went by, its more, larger versions of such monsters.

Spotting a demon rift is something every warrior learns by experience. Seen it, and you will remember it for life. The way reality itself warps and break, a tear in reality that links to another world, it is an unforgettable sight. The portal to the demon world.

...

"General Akbar." A human knight rides up to central camp, there's about 5,000 soldiers here.

"Commander Akbar." The older man emphasises. "I’ve been demoted, and you need to remember that. Had it been in the city, you can get in trouble."

The knight shrugs. "You’re still my General. Anyway-"

Commander Akbar frowns, and gives the knight a stern look. "Get to it, what's the status? How many demons did you spot?"

"1,200. Surprisingly easy to get a count, now that they look like humans. They made something that resembles a large house or camp. Still no sight of the rift yet, I’m waiting for the other scout to report back."

"Demons, making camp." Commander Akbar scratches his chin. "What has the world come to, I must see this."

The force of 5,000 men marches towards the site of the reported demon camp, and indeed, what they saw is indeed a demon camp.

"There it is, Commander."

The demon camp's surface resembles a dark reddish hue, its existence as if magic itself was forced to form the fabric.

"What's it doing?"

Akbar starts counting, his eyes looking through his portable telescope, right at the demon camp. He watches intently for about 30 minutes, and then it got

"It’s making more demons soldiers. Get the mages, I want a magical reading on this area right now."

Akbar’s hunch was right. The camp's location had slightly stronger natural mana and energies. There’s only one decision to make. The camp had to be destroyed before they spawned more demons.

They crushed the 1,200 or so demons easily.

A few days later, back at the camp.

"The news is unsettling." Akbar pored over the news coming in from all the other continents and kingdoms. Demonic news didn’t have the usual diplomatic embargo and political filters, and frankly, Akbar enjoyed fighting demons. It’s just plain fighting, without the bullshit of politics, or the worries over the unnecessary death of others. It allowed him to be a true military man, the only thing he had to focus on, is to crush this faceless demonic enemy.

"There are so many..." Both of his aides nodded, and they looked over a rough map of the world. It’s one of Akbar’s personal collections as a General. Akbar places a small red flag wherever they receive reports on rift sightings.

There are multiple rifts in every large continent, and even in smaller continents. In earlier demon kings, the rifts were concentrated, most of the time, a single continent. Maybe two, at most, and even those, the bulk of it usually formed on one continent.

It didn’t take much for Akbar to conclude the obvious. "This demon is planning to overwhelm the world with sheer numbers, by attacking everywhere simultaneously."

One of the aides shakes his head. "But, does it matter? If they come with us with that tiny force, scattered throughout the world, they won't be a threat! And the heroes will come around and save the world when the demon king arrives" Akbar frowns a little at the aide's statement.

Two knights and a mage walked into the war planning room.

Akbar looked at his aides. "True. But between now and the Demon King, is at least a few years. This tactic may potentially destroy the world before the heroes even appear."

"So what, we can stop them. The quantity from the rifts reported so far has been small."

Akbar paused and remembers the demon champions. No reported sighting of the champions yet, though they often arrive before the King.

The other aides answered before Akbar got to it. "If the demons can build camps that generate more demons, their quantity won’t be small for very long. How many rifts do we know nothing about? How sure are we, all these are the only rifts out there? If the rift and camp was made in a secluded area we know nothing about, they could suddenly surprise us with a large force!"

"True, true."

"How’s the analysis on the camp and the demons?" Akbar asks.

The mage shifts uncomfortably.

A soldier ran into the camp. "Gene-, sorry, Commander! The mages, they... uh... they turned into demons. We had to kill one of them."

Akbar's eyes widen and he stares, "When did this happen, and why did I not know about it?"

"It just happened, General." The soldier shouts trying to catch his breath, been running. "The mages, they were just meddling with the demonic staff, and suddenly it started to absorb one of the mages! So we had to destroy the staff, and we couldn't save the mage."

Akbar stops, "You know about this?"

"No, sir." The mage in the room shakes his head, but then he walks over to the soldier to talk.

Before Akbar could ask more, another person comes in. He's a mage too and he looks younger than the other mages. "General."

"Commander."

"We have the report you wanted."

Akbar glares at the young mage, he's unfazed. "What happened?"

"Accident. It is quite unfortunate that I could not save him. But we now know that the staff seeks magic and consumes it to create demons."

The two aides pause.

"So, my guess is should probably seek out major magical locations and dungeons, and seek to take over them."

"But how does the demons expect to beat the dungeons with their tiny force?" Dungeon, generally, have a respectable defense force, and multiple boss level creatures within their base.

"Maybe not immediately, but over time their force will grow."

"We must let the world know." Akbar acknowledges. "This fact, may be helpful for the other nations."

"Commander, we must first report this to high command. The King will want to know before this is shared." One of the aide says.

Akbar nods, but inside he just feels annoyed. Politics. He could see it coming, the King probably wanted to sell this information for money. The awkward truce with the Nung and Takde wasn't something the King enjoyed, especially since he wanted his reign to be one of glory.

-

And so Akbar and his retinue, returns to the capital, Ransalah, leaving the rest of the force behind. The rest would continue to hunt demons, and look for the rift.

The journey took them a few days, and soon Ransalah enters their view. The massive sprawl of the city, the faint stench of human activity, the smell of the forges and factories, it’s a sign they were getting close. Even at night, one could see the dispersed glow from the city’s lights.

The aide cheered. "Civilization! I can't wait for a hot bath!" The captains are relieved, one of them is from the capital, so his family is here.

Akbar just sighed. As a military man, he never felt like he has a place in Ransalah. Earlier in his career, he lived fortresses and camps, and till this day, that is where he feels where he belonged. Ransalah just reminds him of all the politics of the court, unnecessary reports to various nobles who wanted to build ‘rapport’, and bureaucracy.

"Don't look so glum, Commander. Let's have some good food. And good wine! I hear there's quite a good vintage coming from New Freeka, something we've never managed to try before!"

One captain nudged the aide, signalling him not to mention New Freeka.

Akbar just shrugged, well, perhaps he shouldn't be so upset. The capital does have a whole load of good eateries. "Well, let's do that. I do miss having properly cooked food from a good chef."

The group passed a damaged set of roads, some trees and shrubs. "Ah, I notified the city that we are arriving soon." The aide messaged the city using some kind of [message] spell. At this distance, the spell doesn't cost much mana, and the message decay isn't bad.

Akbar's mind is still occupied, occupied with the strategies of this generation’s demons. What will the champions bring this time? Is the demon’s plan to split the heroes?

He distracts himself and looks at two rings on his fingers. One made of a greenish gold, another just regular silver. "Anyone coming to greet us?"

The aide shake his head.

Akbar smiled. "Best news I heard all day, then." He hated the whole greeting and welcoming ceremony, frankly, the best thing since his demotion from General. Even his aides know how much he hated it. "Let’s eat some good food!"

Since they didn't have a welcoming ceremony, that meant he also didn't have to immediately go and face the King or the senior ministers. Not that the King is eager to see him.

So, the group went for one of the many famous eateries in Ransalah, this one located on the commoner's district. Despite being the commoners' district, there are many such eateries, serving adventurers, or wealthy merchants, or just some young men looking to impress a woman.

They had a spread of grilled meats and roasted meats, mostly from the nearby farms and also some of the edible monster meats, and a few different dishes of potatoes and yam, accompanied by wine. They have wine in regular wooden cups, though glass is available as a material, it's far too expensive for restaurants to use regularly, given how often these glass things break when an adventurer brawl happens.

Akbar, his aides and the two accompanying captains took their time and dined, their conversation began with demons, because, well, that’s their job, and it was an easy thing to talk about in a dinner with colleagues.

Most of them wonder when the demon champions will start appearing, demon champions are still the single-highest risk outside of the demon king, and there’s usually multiple champions. In terms of actual destruction, the champions are probably ahead of the demon king. The captains joke about running if they ever seen one, and Akbar just nods, "I would run too, if I see a demon champion."

And they all laugh. Demon champions are difficult, even a general like Akbar would need a strong mage and healer team to defeat one.

But once all of them were progressively more drunk, the conversation turned to less serious topics, like how’s everyone’s love life, and whether Commander Akbar will ever remarry. Or other silly things, like what some of the soldiers are doing when in camp, or stupid manliness challenges.

One of the aides talked about his failed dates with the local girls whenever they go on expeditions, and the rest of them just laughed, but they all also admire his guts for trying to date girls from all the various villages.

As they were about to leave, two men approached Commander Akbar. "Are you Commander Akbar?"

Akbar’s a little tipsy, but he still manages to turn and face the two men. The two look like plain ordinary villagers, their presence honestly didn’t seem anything special.

One of Akbar’s aides, probably more drunk than Akbar, tried to step in. "Why are you bothering our Commander?" The aide’s usually a little more timid, maybe it’s a alcohol-fueled machismo.

"May we talk to the Commander, just for a while?" One of the men smiled, he’s polite.

Commander Akbar looked at them, quickly glanced through them from top to bottom. If they wanted to rob or kidnap him, they did not need to ask. Though, even while drunk, Akbar could easily fight off two men, and his [alert] passive did not trigger, so he’s got a good hunch that these two men didn’t mean to harm him. Besides, he's got a [General] class, and that meant he could hold two men down, easy.

The aide's attempt to respond on Akbar’s behalf, was stopped by Akbar's hand.

"Yes, let’s talk. Back inside?" Akbar pointed back to the eatery.

The two men nodded and they walked back, "Yes, inside is fine, but without your aides, please? Just something we want to ask you personally."

Akbar smiled, "Let's use one of the private dining rooms then. They can wait outside."

"Commander, no... General Akbar." The two men sat, it's a small room, with one round table and chairs for 6. Akbar sat opposite them. "What do you think of the demons?"

Akbar chuckles, "They are bad, of course." What kind of question is that, anyway? Demons, causes tremendous destruction and death, can’t be negotiated with, and doesn’t have any useful functions. The only possibly positive thing about them is the daemolite, left behind when the demon kings die.

"Do you think the heroes are doing a good job of fighting demons?"

"...not as well as I think they should." Akbar spoke his mind, he had a hunch they were leading him somewhere, but he’ll see.

The two men grinned, "Great. Do you enjoy fighting demons?"

Akbar paused, and stared at the two men. Enjoy fighting demons? In what sense? "I'm sorry?"

"Have you ever thought of joining a cause dedicated to fighting demons?."

Akbar's stern eyes meet with two others, the room felt heavy then. "I’m afraid I need a bit more than that. What exactly is your cause?"

At that time, a third man appears in that small private room, he materialised from the two's shadows.

Akbar though, still didn't react and just took a sip out of the wooden cup of water. "I was wondering when you would come out."

"As expected of a [general]. Proper introductions, now. I am from the Laenza Alliance, a secret society. Allow me to do the full explanation. The Laenza Alliance’s main purpose is to support the heroes in their quest to defeat the demon king, and we would like you to join us in that quest."

Akbar didn’t react, he just took a good look at the man. "Have we met?"

"Yes. But that matters little. Our issue is the coming demonic conflict. We believe you've realised the gravity of the issue, and so we'd like to invite you to join us." He felt familiar, but Akbar couldn't pin it down.

Akbar sipped from the cup of water, and said. "When you say, support the heroes in the quest to defeat the demon king, what does that actually mean? You want me to put my life on the line and fight the demon king myself, together with the heroes?"

"Well, no. You won’t be the one’s actually fighting the demon king. Ultimately, the heroes received the gods blessing, and only with the blessing, can the heroes hope to stand toe to toe with the demon king. Our presence in that fight would be unnecessary, we may even be a hindrance. I would say, we would be throwing our lives away."

"So what do you do?"

"We, the Laenza aims to support the heroes, by, spotting them early, guide them, remove the barriers to their growth, and give them what they need to progress."

"Barriers..." Akbar looks at the three Laenza men.

"Politics. Bureaucracy. Think about it, these otherworldly heroes, they arrive in the world with very minimal guidance from the gods. They are lost, despite their gifts, and when they meet the locals, they need time to find their way. If it so happens they come under a nation’s protection, kings and rulers often have their own political agenda. Every step of the way, they face resistance and unnecessary barriers, from locals who have no idea whether they really are heroes, to politicians and rulers who seek to manipulate them."

The man paused to catch his breath, and then continued.

"Our role, the Laenza is to offset those resistance, help them discreetly, and where we can, take them away from politics. We try to be the first, or among the first to find and contact the heroes, and to offer them assistance, guidance, training. And if the heroes need any special equipment or items, or need to get somewhere, we try our best to help them along."

Akbar sighed, it suddenly occurred to him that the heroes have it rough. They start off weak at first, thrown into a world they know nothing about, they are still young and naive, and that usually makes them gullible, and nobles usually try to manipulate them. It suddenly made sense how things usually did work out for the heroes, especially if there is a secret organisation that supported them in the shadows.

"So, would you be interested?"

"I have the feeling that you already know I would be."

The shadow man offered his hand, "We must hear it from you."

Akbar nodded, and they shake hands. "Yes. Let me be a part of it."

The shadow man took out a ring with a single red stone surrounded by various smaller red stones, and passed it to him. "Drop you blood in the ring's inner stone."

Akbar gently pricked his finger and a single drop of blood touched the inner stone. It glowed gently, a soft reddish hue, and then, the shadow man walked over and he too pricked his finger. A drop of his blood in the same ring. The two bloods mixed and the ring released a red flash.

"The ring, its invisible to all but the rest of us who also have it. It marks the Laenza, and is how we communicate."

Akbar put the ring on, and he could feel its magic mix with those of his own. The ring fitted nicely. "Intricate carvings."

"Made by our magesmiths, from where we are from, Rhongo."

Akbar nodded, "That is far."

"The demons' rift are everywhere. And we follow."

"True."

"Welcome to the Laenza. We have taken too much of your time, Commander Akbar. We will not keep your aides waiting any longer." The three give a gentle bow, and the shadow man vanished into the shadows, again.

[SUSPENDED] Records of the Demon Castle Wars - Year 80 Month 8

Northern Isles

Western Theatre (TreeTree is here)

Eastern Theatre

The eastern theatre comprises of a northern large ‘continent’, and a southern continent, which is smaller, but richer in minerals. The two are ‘linked’ by three loose chains of islands, and in certain seasons, the ice freezes over and these islands form a long walkable path from north to south.

South Continents

The southern parts of the world comprises three large continents, connected by a series of narrow landbridges, or isthmuses, and these serve as key chokepoints, and also key ports and canals built in these spots. Large cities have appeared on these landbridges, as the nations who controlled these chokepoints gain power to dictate trade and commerce flowing from its two neighbouring continental landmasses.

Others throughout the world

Tree Uses Heal, Round 2

Year 80 Month 9

"The fact that I’m here, means it’s not good news for the four of you." A lady arrived in New Freeka, and quickly found the 4 druids. There’s many other ladies looking like her, and she didn’t emit any visible presence or magical energy, so her arrival didn’t even trigger any of my sensors.

A mature looking lady, in human terms, she’d look like she’s in her 50s, though I suspect she’s probably older. Despite her diminutive size, she’s petite, her very presence sends the 4 druids into a tense combat stance.

"The enforcer..." The four fumble over their staff and call out their familiars. They are right in the middle of town, and the citizens clear a space. It’s common for brawls and fights to break out in town, and citizens generally know to just give way. When there are fights among adventurers or people of that level, everyone would just let them fight.

"I’ve been busy, and I wish I could’ve come sooner. But you know how it is, investigations take time... A crime would be committed months ago, and only now the sentence is meted out. Such is the speed of justice, always lacking." The lady shrugs, she’s dressed in a loose fitting shirt and pants, but it’s clearly woven with high quality materials. When she takes out a scythe from nowhere, all my alarm bells start to ring.

She’s not exactly tall, she’s petite and well, probably on the older side, but the way the massive scythe swings around her, I knew she’s trouble.

An intense aura spreads around her. It even makes the subsidiary trees around New Freeka feel heavy. It’s some kind of suppression aura.

"On what crimes?" The druids put on a brave face, they attempt to feign ignorance in the face of the lady.

"Oh, this trick has been done many times. But fair, the one carrying out the punishment must repeat it, just so that the offender may drill it into their souls, for their next life."

The lady, steps forward, one small step. Her legs are small, after all.

"For lying to the council, jail time. For forcing a high-tier spirit tree to a spiritual contract, the four of you have contravened one of the core tenets of the Hutan Council. And for that offense, the Hutan council has empowered me to bestow your punishment. Death."

The four men summon their wolves, armor and whatnot, and whatever they have, all the familiars charges at the lady.

But the battle is awfully short.

The lady swings her scythe, and it glows in a dark-greenish color. "[Druidhunter]."

A dark wave spreads out, and the familiars of the druids all just turn into dust. Then, from the earth, four black roots emerge and stab them each in the heart, killing them instantly.

She then walks up to the four impaled bodies of the druids.

"Children, everyone, please don’t watch." It is in the middle of town, and the announcement of the execution sends a lot of younger children and their parents running away.

And her scythe beheads all four of them, their heads fall easily, like it’s harvesting hay. She chucks their head into a gunny sack, and then into her magical pocketspace.

"Should we do something?" I wonder, and ask my tree-minds.

"She’s scary, I suggest not." Ivy said. "She’s got the ability to sneak in and find the druids, and then kill them. She might use it on us."

Well, the lady quickly went and meet Jura.

"Supreme Counsel Jura, I apologise for my sudden, unannounced presence. My name is Leithia, a conducts enforcer of the Hutan Council. I’ve been informed that I may be able to seek a meeting with the Tree Spirit through you?"

No? I don’t feel like I should meet her, because she's dangerous! Jura seems unfazed though, he even manages to sit comfortably in his chair, and takes a sip from his tea. He’s really into tea these days.

"I understand that the Spirit is probably apprehensive to meeting another druid, and that is fine. I would like, on behalf of the Hutan Council, to apologise for the acts of our rogue druids. It is a great disappointment to us as well, that our druids act in such manner in the face of a chance to get power."

Jura nods, and offers her tea. "Well, glad to know that laws are being enforced after all."

"Indeed, I would like to assure the Spirit that we will still fulfill it’s wishes to commune with the other great tree spirits, and we are in the process of arranging that. It’s not easy to convince other tree spirits to participate, and we will need specialised items to allow the tree spirit’s thoughts to be transmitted. In the meantime, the council will send someone over as compensation."

Eh? Wait. Is there really a need for such things? Can’t I just erm... chain my subsidiary trees all the way to wherever the other spirits are? Or this ‘subsidiary tree’ skill is more rare than I think?

"So please assist us, and manage the spirit’s expectations."

Jura nods, "I think the Tree Spirit will... give some concessions on this. Though, I’m not sure for how long, I will try my best to convince him."

Leithia smiles back at Jura and nods a little. "That’s the most we can ask, for the offense the council’s poorly trained druids have caused."

They both sip on the tea. It’s an awkward silence, but Jura looks more comfortable than the lady. "Would there be anything else?"

"That’s all we wish to say, Counsel. I’ll take my leave, and will leave your town in a few days."

"Enjoy your stay."

[Druidic Aspects failed to collect the chosen skills as the period of the contract is too short]

[Received 24 x Essences of Druid]

[Received 4 x druid class seeds

[Received 1 x experience seeds]

Aiks. Oh well, I will have to use the essences to teach the girls then, but 24 essences might not even lead to a single skill. Sighs.

-

Anyway, I’m happy that the druid enforcer didn’t push to see me, and so I turn my attention elsewhere. Ivy’s still keeping tabs on her though, and as she said, she spent her time in town. Thankfully, she left after two days of eating and meeting.

I’ve decided to reward one of the girls, the one who reached level 15, by giving her a choice of the class seeds to take, and one skill seed for [archery].

The choice is actually just between [Druid] and [Ranger], since I’d like to keep [Dark Knight] for later. I also have some random jobs, from the deceased, like [farmer], [merchant], [scribe] and stuff like that, but since the Valthorn Initiates is meant to be a combat unit, it’ll be combat skills and jobs. They also already have [soldier], which I found quite strange, but I suppose that’s the result of being trained by soldiers?

The problem about the [druid] class seeds, is that, the trainers are now dead.

"Can’t we learn from you?" The girls ask. Good question. If I was playing a game, I would think going to the 'source' is a good way to truly learn a skill.

But no. Druids and tree spirits understand the same kind of abilities differently.

The way I sense and command trees, is different, because I am a Tree, and I have access to certain kind of senses that elves or centaurs, like these girls, do not have. So, even if our powers look and feel similar, the mechanics of how our powers work, at its core, is different. The way I command and use [Root Strike], is different from how a druid would. I can move my roots as if they were... a button I can press.

For the druids, they have an incantation to call on the earth and trees to obey they commands. It's like I am the wheels itself, whereas the druids move the wheels through a steering, that goes through the transmission.

"I am afraid it would be very challenging for me to directly teach you druid magic, though I can use the [essences] I have to give you lessons, through [dream tutor]."

And, the druids magic actually cover a wider scope, their field extends into earth magic, water magic, some air magic, and also some animal-mastery. Whereas mine so far is rather wood-focused, and a mix of tree abilities. In a way, they are generalists.

"But you are a tree, are you not superior to druids?"

"Superior’s not a fair way to say things... our nature is different."

"Why?" The young girls ask, perhaps to them, everyone can be placed on a spectrum from weak to strong, and that may be true from a strictly combat perspective. But there is a nuance to abilities that extend beyond pure direct combat. "But why, you’re a giant tree with strange powers, shouldn’t you be better than them?"

These young girls can be strangely naive.

"Well, there’s some things you can do when you have hands, and there’s some things you can do when you have roots."

They have job classes. I don't.

Year 80 Month 10

The Hutan Council sent a strange person to serve me. "Compensation", they said. Accompanied by a beautifully written letter.

An [Arborist], by the name of Zhiga.

"Uh... why did the council send you?" Jura looks, a bit puzzled.

"I am here to make the Tree Spirit feel better, of course!" Zhiga smiles, he's an old man, but there's plenty of spring in his step. He comes with a bag of tools, like little scissors, small shovels and multiple bottles of dirt.

"Uh... after the recent incident, I am afraid that the Tree Spirit is a bit reluctant to meet new people."

"Nonono, totally understand. I shall remain in the city and care of the trees here." The [arborist] remains in the city, with Ivy watching his every move. The city is open to visitors, it is peacetime after all, so long as he obeys the rules, he can stay in the city.

-

Jura had a lot of time to think. When I offered to remove some of his skills, especially those from his earlier days that he may no longer need, he... he needed some time to think about it.

His levels and skills, experience as a villager, and also a fighter. Some of those, held certain memories to him, and may have saved his life, back in the day. Some skills made the difference between victory, or death, and although they seem weak now, they have special meaning.

"I’m not sure whether I want to remove my [villager] skills... I have like.. 15 levels in them." Well, Jura’s overall level is 80, and it comprised of 60 levels in warlord, being a combination of 40 levels in fighting and 20 levels in diplomacy and administration. "What if there’s a way for it to merge with Warlord? Maybe I will be Village Warlord?"

Hmmm...

If such merging is possible it would improve the organisation and presentation of his soulspring, but I’m not sure whether that frees up lifeforce to support new skills and levels.

Is there a way to assign a ‘lifeforce consumption/drain’ value to skills and levels, because perhaps there’s some skills that use up more lifeforce than others? I would imagine these skills have a ‘slot-value’?

"What if some day, I’ll need those villager's skills again? When I grow older, and I can no longer fight?" Isn't that a long way to go?

"Uh..."

"You said, I won’t be able to relearn the skills?"

"No, I mean, I can’t use the skillseeds on you, but I suppose you could learn it on your own again?"

Jura paused, and sipped his ginger-tinged tea. "Hmm. I think I’m fine. TreeTree... I appreciate you trying to push me past level 80, but... I think I value my existing skills, they have meaning to me, and I’m not willing to let go of them."

Inwardly, I feel like sighing. I guess skills are like scars, they punctuate certain moments in a person’s life. Jura knows what it means to be higher level. It means he can fight stronger monsters, do more, but he’s somewhat decided there are certain things he won't do, to get there.

"I can respect that, but if you ever change your mind..."

Jura nodded, "I think rather than that, maybe let's get back to basics, and erm.. figure out how to restore my hand?"

He flexes his wooden hand, its made using his mental link with Bamboo, his 'eidolon'/familiar. It's been wonderful since Bamboo obtained the skill, [Extended Self], which sort of functions like a power armor, and because how frequently Jura uses it, it's really like having a hand again.

The challenge about lost limbs is that, well, the soul itself loses the blueprint and memory of the limb. Essentially, when healing magic attempts to heal a person's body, it accesses the soul's, for a blueprint. That blueprint is then used as the basis for 'restoring' the body.

When a limb is cut off, there is a crucial period, during which the limb must be healed. After that, the soul loses the 'blueprint' relating to that limb, and then, healing the limb becomes impossible, and what's left is a stump.

In my earlier days, I didn't have the soul forge, when I saw Jura, he had already lost his hand. I didn't have any ability to heal the lost arm.

But, I've changed, and altering his soul to recreate the 'blueprint', that's certainly something I am now willing to try.

At least, I will first need to do some... experiments.

-

Animals.

If all souls are reincarnated, sometimes as animals, I probably should not be doing this. These poor animals could be me, in my next life.

Alexis and Meela clearly felt disturbed by what I was doing, even if they understood the rationale of what I was planning to do.

I had the Order gather stray animals in New Freeka, and those further out. Dogs, cats, deer, wolves, cows. Any of these stray animals that are injured, amputated, limbless.

If I am to alter and recreate the limb, I need some practice.

And then, I went to do my testing on these animals, using the soul forge to 'repair' their souls.

The first animal died from the magic overload instantly. A gruesome death, best not to be described.

"What you are trying to do, seems to require precise tools, beyond just what the soul forge normally does." Alexis is curious, of course. I think she's attracted to such gory things, even if she is disturbed.

"I healed the princess many years ago, her soul spring wrecked. Why do you think is this different?"

"The fact that you are doing experiments, tells me you know it is different. The princess's spring is wrecked but the body is still there. It's like her house collapsed, but the components are just a mess. I think Jura's case, the component is lost, and you are trying to rebuild it. You need to do something in the soul, so that the left arm can regrow."

"...okay." To rebuild that 'soul blueprint', I will have to alter the form of the outer shell of the soul.

"Maybe something like a massive mold? Like those casts people make?"

A mold, eh? But let's see.

For the second animal, I plan to put the animal inside the mana soaking facility, wait for a day, and then start up the soul forge. I put two subsidiary trees with biolabs right next to the [Forge tree], and attempt to use the vine-tools from the [Biolab] to make the changes.

The [Soul Forge] does have some default tools, but unlike the biolab pods, the array and precision of the tools are lacking. At least for the augmentation I am thinking of.

During the test run, the vines from the [biolab] burns once they enter the forge tree. It's more like... they start to darken and turn to ash. Details are a little lacking, when it comes to the [Forge Tree].

I think it looks like I have to get something with more mana resistance. Something that does not burn from mana, or allows the mana to flow around it.

I have some ideas there. But I will need to buy some jewels.

At the same time, I asked Jura for his oldest belongings, ideally something before he lost his hand.

Like the Princess, maybe his belongings have a remnant, a shard of his soul that I can somewhat work with

"I think they all burnt down during the burning... except my sword."

"Your sword it is then. Give it to me."

"Uh..." It's precious.

"I'll make you a new one."

The sword went into the [forge tree], and there is some 'shards' of his being, but because he's been using it even after the incident, the shards and fragments in there are all without his hands.

"Sorry, I really have nothing else."

Perhaps these items are like loose memory cards, and contact refreshes their memory to the latest version? Or do they merge?

"So... my sword is gone?" Well, the sword's still there, but in order to analyse the shard I had to break it down, and unlike people or souls, the soul forge isn't designed to put them back together. It's quite strange how the soul forge knows what to keep, and what to break. I mean, why is it that a person inside can survive, but a steel sword gets broken?

"Uh... kind of." It's not that great a sword anyway. It's really just a basic steel sword, despite the fancy design.

"Ah..." Jura sighs. But he understood why I did it. Even now, I have an inkling of how to do it, but I still need to test it out on animals.

Year 80 Month 11

The merchants delivered a bunch of ores, containing various unprocessed jewels and metals.

The idea is simple, really.

Some of these metals should be able to strengthen the biolabs and their tools, via [mineral augmentation], and together with [woodshaping], I can make the tools necessary to perform more precise adjustments in the soul forge.

Should.

Or maybe... can I use [star mana]?

Anyway, that's also worth testing. First, the ore and jewels test.

Before the second animal test, I fire up the soul forge, put the ores in, and measure how long each of the ores last before the melt into a puddle. Some will last longer, and if so... some of them should last?

Nope.

All of them melt, some a little bit slower than others, but all melt into a puddle. Its as if they were stripped apart, bit by bit. Or maybe I just don't have the right kind of ore.

Maybe I should use my main body? Wouldn't that work? My main body should be more resilient than using it via subsidiary trees.

But I would have to move things around.

"Can I have a forge tree inside my main body?" I ask the Wisp. The [forge tree] is created to minimise the pain of using the soul forge, thats why its... outside.

"You certainly could, but you will feel quite an intense pain when you use it." The forge tree receives lightning and vibrates like mad when the mana spins. "It will feel a bit like when you were evolving. And you will feel like mana-poisoned, but then again you are an evolved tree... maybe you can."

"Let's try it anyway."

So, in my body, within the secret hideout I set aside a space and made it into a forge tree. It comes easily, after all, I already have the tree, and this is just internalising it. [Secret hideout modified : Internal Soulforge Chamber]

And I fired the internal soul forge up.

*whooooooooommmmmm*

It spins.

It's kinda like a really bad stomach ache, the mana spinning in my metaphorical tummy. But not as bad as I thought.

"Uh... you okay in there?" Alexis asks. She can't see this part, inside here, deep inside the secret hideout.

"Yeah."

Using [woodcrafting], I created layers of wooden walls around the chamber, which forms a barrier, to protect myself from the swirling mana. The space here is flexible sized after all.

And I fire up the soul forge, again.

These protective walls, they are in a state of constant regeneration. The gathered mana, swirling, and it speeds up. As it does so, it expands and burns the protective wooden walls.

At higher speeds, and at full power, it feels like I am surrounded by fire. Like I am in a sauna.

But my initial theory is correct, my main body, vines and feelers are more resistant to the mana-burn, and they do last longer. Not only that, thanks to [Self-awareness], I am far more aware of what is happening.

*zaaaaappppppppp*

A lightning bolt strikes my main tree. Followed by a loud thunder.

Ugh. I feel it travel down from the branch to the trunk, leaving a streak. It burns a little while, my fire resistance and healing power quickly kicks in and puts it out.

The mana in the forge spins, and it speeds up. As it speeds up, it quickly takes the shape of a spinning ball. Time for another test, so I put an ore in with a feeler. The ore, starts to disintegrate into a puddle, levitating in the middle. My soft green viney feeler starts to disintegrate as well, as the swirling mana bombards it.

Hmm. There must be something. Maybe just starting up the soul forge isn't the complete process.

I need to see how the [Soul Forge] does it, normally.

I decide... to test it out on an animal.

The animal is one of the many stray ones, a small hamster like animal. It lost its tail. This time, I observe it intently, instead of letting the 'skill' do what it needs to do. And partly, being inside me also allows me to truly 'see' it, perhaps through my skill [Self-awareness], since my vision of the separate [Forge Tree] isn't as 'holistic'.

And I saw it. The mana-dispensing feeler in the soul forge.

The moment the animal steps into the soul forge, a small layer of mana is applied to the creature by a tiny feeler, and as the soul forge starts to spin, the body is protected by the mana, funneled by two vertical magical connections, and then... the soul is pulled out of the body.

Even the tiny hamster has a soul.

Were you possibly human in some previous reincarnation?

Sorry I have to do this, its for... science. May your soul move to a better place, reincarnated into some other form.

The soul, is in the shape of a hamster, too, it.... it doesn't have a tail. I could see the soul, it has multiple layers, and the soul forge starts to split those up. One layer representing the spirit-body, and one multi-sub layered spirit representing the skills and outer soul.

Seems like all these details are omitted when looking at the [forge tree]. With the Princess or the artificial souls.

The body, is moved aside, and the two spirit layers move to the center of the soul forge.

What do I do at this point? How do I recreate the 'tail'? I try to look back at all the other animals that the Order gathered, and yes, there were a few samples of this animal. Some of those animals had tails.

I pull up the data, stored in my biolab, and cross-checked to the body.

Ugh. Firstly, the data from my biolab is in a different format, presented in the form of the soul spring, and its extensions.

This means my biolab isn't collecting data suitable for the [soul forge]. The way things are presented and the information is different. It's like one is an X-Ray photo, and another is a 3D MRI scan. The information is different, even if the body is the same.

Still, the creature is in. No point stopping. I tried to use the data I have to 'recreate' a tail. Using soul fragments which I have plenty of, I form it into a rudimentary shape of a tail. Ugh. My difficulty in the shaping the soul fragment into the tail is partly because my feelers only last a short while before the swirling mana burns their tip up.

The soul forge spins, and another lightning falls. It feels like when I touched a light switch after a shower, only stronger, more intense, and it travels to my belly, where the soul forge is.

The tail, slowly, clunkily, merges with the spirit-body, my burning feeler clumsily trying to adjust its position, and then it merges with the layered spirit. The real body, now comes back and rejoins the spirit, and then the hamster-creature is whole again.

The forging complete, I put the hamster-creature back into a healing pod.

And I use a healing ability.

The creature's bottom starts to heal, indeed, there is a small dot that is regenerating, and it resembles the shape of what I made. It's somewhat mispositioned, like... the root of the tail starts a little too low.

A rough tail shape appears, like an engorged balloon stuck on the creature’s bottom.

Then the tail expands... and explode in a massive splatter of blood. The hamster-creature died instantly.

I’m sorry, hamster-creature.

Looking at the remains of the splattered body, the cause was simple, the tail lacked all the details of the blood vessels, muscles, bones that was needed in a real tail. All it had was a layer of skin in the shape of a tail, as a result of my poor drawing of a tail.

So the healing accelerated the blood flow into that tail and so when the skin could no longer take the pressure from the blood inflow, it exploded, and the creature died of blood loss.

Ugh.

Looks like it’s not going to be easy to ‘rebuild’ a limb, when the soul has forgotten what the limb is like. And I wouldn’t want Jura to go through that sort of miserable death.

The barriers?

The first challenge will be to get a good soul forge level imagery of what a hand should be. I would think I can fix this by taking a good scan of Jura, again, this time in a biolab pod inside my body, using the soul forge's power. Something of a similar resolution and detail as what I have now seen, preferably more. Maybe, create some kind of soul-forge-biopod hybrid. Maybe, if I could somehow flip the image of his existing hand, then I wouldn’t have to start from scratch.

Next barrier, a way to recreate that image in the soul forge, using soul forge. My expectation is that a full ‘soul-copy’ of the limb will be extremely detailed, and would need a lot of work to recreate such a thing with soul fragments. Even if I have a lot of soul fragments, my concern here is whether I have the correct tools and means to recreate it, and how long will it take?

And lastly, even if I could recreate the hand in a ‘soul form’ using the soul fragments, I would need to figure out a way of accurately joining it all together, and then heal it in such a way that he would have a functional arm. I still don’t know even if I created the hand correctly, whether healing would somehow ‘regenerate’ a hand with all the necessary bones, muscles, blood vessels and stuff. I have taken the assumption that magic will handle it, but I do want to minimise that risk.

Lastly, what if there are things I don't know, maybe there are other details that I can't see because I am not using the right equipment.

[Skill upgraded : Biolab healing pod]

Jura thinks healing his hand is going to be easier than breaking level 80, but I think both of these challenges are equally difficult.

Savepoints

Year 80 Month 12

The news of demons from the distant lands trickled in. More rifts have been spotted, but the military remains fully in control and have been suppressing the demons from the rifts, though, perhaps the military is greatly downplaying the threat of the demons. So, for now, our part of the world remained safe.

The reason we’re all generally suspicious of the good news, is because the kingdoms are stockpiling resources, whether this is due to habit as a precaution from all prior demonic wars, or a sign of true distress, we still do not know. In past instances, trade lines get disrupted, and sources of food become unreliable, so it could be that there’s really nothing, and some of these kingdoms are just being prudent, preparing for the worst.

Still, it’s infectious, so New Freeka’s also in a mood for preparations, the council hired more soldiers, conducted extensive training for their militia and also stockpiled food. They also tried to run a campaign to smear the Order’s name, especially on the way we spend money, and to some extent, it did convince the regular citizens.

But, we didn’t part with the Order’s money. Instead, we decided to spend the money on new walls and defensive towers.

This is partly because I have a good range of defensive skills, and I wanted to make use of them. We build an outer wall a short distance away from New Freeka, and it’s filled with trees on both sides of the wall. The skill [Reinforce Defensive Structure] created a vine-based structural reinforcement with sharp thorns on the outside of the wall, and [carnivorous plants] and [cactus defense system] as traps.

The walls are separated into segments by defensive watchtowers. Next to that, I would have [subsidiary trees] filled with beetles, and they function as ‘watchposts’ and the beetles patrolled the walls. In front of that, we placed some subsidiary trees with [shield generators], to block large projectiles.

This whole thing was Trevor and Ivy’s suggestion. Ivy listened in on military defensive strategies from other nations, and collated the information and put forth this suggestion.

Which I think works for the large hordes. If it’s going to be a large army of hounds, the wall will work swimmingly well.

Still, the core issue with demons are their demonic champions. Like the massive golems, or the large centipedes, with opponents like that, these reinforced walls are not going to last very long.

On that front, the plan will be anti-demon weapons. It’s been something I’ve been hatching since the previous battle with the champion.

Magical wooden spears, filled with all the anti-demon abilities I have, also made with damage boosting essences, and all the holy-enchantments I can get from the priests and mages in New Freeka. And I will use to cap my [super anti-demon root strike]. I even managed to weave a bit of [star mana] into it, and hopefully that’ll make the difference. It worked before, so, I think it’ll work again.

This time, I’m going to stockpile a whole load of these anti-demon weapons, and store them. If the heroes are going to come around, they’ll probably do crazy tricks like that again.

"You could make a sword like that?"

"Huh?"

"The anti-demon weapons you are making. Could I get one? You did take my sword... you know."

"Oh." Ah yes. I need to make a weapon for Jura. "But these are wooden... spears?" I show him one of the spears, and well, it’s massive, after all, it’s made for me. They are bigger than a lance, and so it’s really heavy. It works for me, because their wooden nature means my roots merge with their other end, and this is the largest size my roots can handle. The size helps, because you could fit more spells into bigger things, without having to increase the complexity of the spell or use more magically-compatible materials, which may not work with my roots.

He touches them, and he looks quite impressed. "So this is what Madeus and the group of priests been doing for the past week... enchanting this?"

"Yeah. I can make a wooden sword, but I doubt it can carry the same quantity of enchantments as these large multi-layered wooden uh.. Bolts."

"I’ll take it. I would like it to have anti-demon effects too. I might need it."

Well true. Maybe I should outfit Horns, Lausanne and the rest with anti-demon weapons as well.

So, I went and made wooden weapons for them.

"Ooooooo this is new, you didn’t show me this before." Meela pokes her head when I was growing wooden weapons using [woodcrafting].

"I didn’t?"

"You didn’t use it much, or if you did, I wasn’t there."

"I used it to make toys and furniture. I made Lausanne’s toys with this, and the playpen is made using this."

"Oh. True, come to think of it, that explains where a lot of your tools come from." Meela stares a bit too closely at the little growing sword, and she pokes it. Now that she’s got a physical body, she’s frequently walking around New Freeka.

So, I made more wooden weapons, swords, spears and stuff. The process of making wood-weapons is actually quite time consuming, because for them to have a comparable strength to a regular metal weapon, I actually cheat, meaning, I use irons and other metals harvested via my roots, and infuse them into the wood itself, the wood using them to form a kind of metallic ‘frame’ in their structure.

But that’s not enough, so I would then infuse [essences]. I have elemental essences, strength essences, life essences, and adding essences strengthens the overall weapon. The best part of essences is that they can coexist with magical enchantments, for small weapons like a sword or a spear (relatively speaking), they can take one or two enchantments, more if I embed jewels in them.

But since I don’t have many magical enchantments, I use the only one I have, [lesser holy enchantment].

"Cool weapon." Meela nods, looking at my completed wooden sword. It’s almost black in color because of the essences used, in terms of sharpness and strength it’s above a regular steel sword. It’s no super-sword, but eh.

Jura tries to swing it around, and nods. "Hmmm... the weight distribution feels a little weird. Probably need a bit of getting used to. But I suppose it’s good enough."

He still likes his own steel sword.

Meela’s also examining Jura’s new dark-wood sword, now that it’s done.

"Mika, you like swords?" Jura asks, Mika is Meela’s name in New Freeka, and Jura thinks Meela’s one of my artificial souls, like Horns. Meela didn’t want to be known as a former hero. There’s just too much baggage, so a new name. Alexis’s new name is Alix, but for now, nobody can see her except myself and Meela.

"A bit. I think they’re quite cool. I generally like things made of wood."

Jura nods, "I see. It makes sense, treefolks like wood stuff too. But don’t you find it weird, in a way. It’s like an elf admiring a weapon made of elf-bones. I would be somewhat creeped out."

"Eh, I don’t see it like that. If your entire life you were brought up that this is what your species does, you wouldn’t think it’s strange."

Jura pauses, nods. "I see."

The two chatted for a while, mostly talking about swords.

"TreeTree, you should fuse an artificial soul into a sword. You could make a talking-sword!" Meela casually said, she also takes a swing out of the new sword. It’s a little too heavy for her, so after a swing or two, she gave it back to Jura.

Eh.

I feel like I’ve had a stump rammed into me.

That’s... that’s.... actually quite a good idea. But then the poor artificial soul is stuck in a sword, and what if he doesn’t want to be in there? What if the sword breaks?

But those are minor challenges. It’s an idea worth exploring. It’s been 2 years since I made Ivy, so I already have enough fragments for more artificial souls, just need to check whether I have enough potatopower...

[59,400 normal trees. 5,630 subsidiary trees. One leyline. Currently have enough power to support a total of 11 artificial souls]

Oh. There’s really a lot of trees now, since... well.. It’s peaceful.

Now let me think...

-

Back to Jura’s arm. Well, I had Jura sit down and go for a full scan in the biolab again, this time, specifically the one inside my body. And then, when he did, I pulled the power from the soul forge and used it to get a scan.

Now that I have some idea what I need, based on my experience with the hamster-monster, I’m trying to recreate that sort of data.

And well, it works. But it’s a far longer scan that the usual biolab, which takes about 2 hours. I had to sedate Jura and put him in sleep, since the mana from the soulforge had to ‘scan’ the arm.

To use my earlier analogy, the biolab is an X-ray, and the soul-forge is an MRI, and now, the mana from the soul forge is ‘entering’ the hand to collect ‘data’ on how Jura’s existing body looks like. And because it goes section by section, it took Jura the whole day.

When he woke up, he was not too pleased.

"I was asleep for a day!"

"Sorry, didn’t expect it to last so long..."

"I mean... you should tell me first, I had work back in the Order!"

"Uhm..."

Laufen, who came to check on Jura, smiled. "No worries I postponed all your meetings and briefings to tomorrow. I figured they understand that you’ve got a personal life, and that involves seeing your healers. Honestly, some of those issues, I told them to deal with it themselves..."

"It’s just a day." I thought to myself, I sleep for weeks sometimes. and I have my 3 lovely artificial minds running things on my behalf. Looks like the Order needs to delegate more.

Jura nodded, "Fine, fine."

"Let me look through the results, I’ll let you know."

The scan is a lot more detailed than the ones from the biolab pods, but it’s missing something.

Maybe this too is incomplete.

So I tried putting my two scans together, the one from the biolab pods and from this soul-forge powered scan. I needed some additional processing power from the root-brain complexes, so I had to temporarily tap on their root-brains for a bit more mental juice.

Suddenly, a string of notifications appeared in my head. It seems there’s a whole load of upgrades available for the internal soulforge chamber, but will require me to build or grow certain things.

[Secret hideout : Internal Soulforge Chamber upgrades]

[Upgrade - Dedicated root-brain complex - to support higher resolution data-analysis of souls &amp; storage of scan output]

Wait. This reminds me of something I didn’t finish...

----

"A ton of gold and a ton of quartz? And all these crystals and stuff?" The men looked amazed at the order.

"That’ll cost us quite a bit of our revenue." One of the treasurers said. "We’ll need to dig into our reserves, then..."

The Master of Ceremonies opened his arms wide, "Our reserves are meant for moments like this, when Aeon calls on us to meet his demands, do you not answer?"

The men gulped. The treasurer shook her head, and nodded. "Certainly."

"Go, before Aeon finds us lacking."

Year 81 Month 1

"How’s the preparations?"

"Shouldn’t you not care about this anymore?" Jura asked, he parried a vertical slash from Lausanne and then ducked, to dodge another Initiate’s horizontal slash.

"I can’t. You know I care." Yvon answered, she’s sitting on a bench, watching Jura spar with Lausanne and the Initiates.

"Didn’t see the walls?" Jura jumped, and he elbowed the young initiate on the chest. The initiate wore a wooden breastplate, all of them did. It makes them look a bit like a wooden knight. It cracked. The initiate is out.

"I did, but you know walls alone do nothing."

"Haven’t visited them?" Jura ducked, Lausanne momentarily vanished and emerged behind him.

But Jura blocked it anyway.

"Good move, [Shadow stab]. But you tend to appear right behind me, it’s predictable."

Lausanne’s sword bent, and it curved towards Jura’s head. He grabbed it with a reinforced wooden hand, and with a strong yank, pulled the sword out of Lausanne’s hand. Lausanne protested. "It’s a spar!"

"You used two skills, so I retaliated."

"It’s a handicapped spar!"

"Rest. We can continue later." Lausanne’s still a bit upset, but she did as she was told. She’s close to the initiates now.

Jura walked to Yvon, and grabbed a drink from a wooden flask.

"Where were we? Oh yes, the walls. I thought you would have visited them. Didn’t you?"

"I did." Yvon looked at the girls. All of them are young, Lausanne’s the oldest at 11. The rest is between 6 to 9.

"Not enough?"

"Yeah. My own sources tell me nasty things. About massive armies in the southern continent popping out of the hills, ravaging cities and setting up camps. I fear for us, whether we can survive that."

"I wouldn’t worry too much. The Order’s making preparations, and so is TreeTree. He’s making a whole load of preparations. Even the council’s busy preparing for the demons. As a whole, we’re doing fine."

Yvon paused, breathed a long sigh. "Is there something underground?"

"Oh? Is there?"

"You don’t know about it?" Yvon looks puzzled. "Then... is TreeTree... doing something? All these tremors and shaking. Is it not him?"

"Doesn’t sound like it’s related to what I know, though." Jura shrugged. He motioned to the initiates. "Anyway, times up! Three initiates this time. Lausanne, you sit out and watch!"

Lausanne raised a fist.

More spars. The girls and Jura would spar a few times that day. The initiates benefited the most, since they lack combat experience. Lausanne, on the other hand, is starting to plateau. I’m not sure how it works, but it sure seems like there is a limit how much one can gain experience from fighting the same person over and over, even if the gap is huge.

Yvon asked during one of the other breaks. "Do you think we can beat a demon champion?"

"What?"

"You, and me." Yvon pointed to herself.

"Hmm... No." Jura shook his head.

"Why not?"

"Have you ever faced one in battle, Yvon?"

"...no."

"I have. We’re quite good. Both of us. But a demon champion... I don’t think we are there yet. Not without TreeTree’s powers."

"How is it that TreeTree is able to defeat demons anyway? I’ve never heard of a Tree Spirit that’s able to defeat demons. It’s... unlike their nature."

Jura paused. "That’s a question I do not ask."

"You should. There’s something, isn’t it? Maybe he’s some kind of unique anti-demon variant sent down by the gods?"

"This is a conversation that I don’t want to have, Yvon."

Yvon hmphed. "Fine. But you are his spokesperson, you should know."

"I am fine with other people having secrets, Yvon. I am not a young teenage elf who's obsessed with everything anymore."

"It's not the same. You could lose your life."

"Lives have been lost for far pettier things, Yvon. Let's’s leave it at that."

Yvon sulked.

-

Research Status:

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 4 - 4 months

Metal hyperaccumulator trees - Stage 1 - 6 months

Phytoremediation process - basic - 16 months

Dedicated Filtering Blackwater-Plant - stage 1 - completed

WIth the blackwater filtering plant research complete, I now have a specialised tree type, derived from the trees near the sewers of Ransalah.

New Freeka’s sewer project is still under construction, so this tree is a bit early. Thanks to the budget reallocation to the military, the New Freeka Sewer Project is now crawling, with less than half the original workforce and artisans.

Meh. But I didn’t want the Order to fund the project, so I deployed some of these new [Filtering Trees] near the present latrines. These trees help segregate the contaminated water, such that only filtered water passes through.

Poop is generated daily. Daily. It grows. And it must have some way of being recycled or processed. Reluctant to use the Order's funds, I decided to get the newly obtained [Dungbeetles] to dig a subterranean tunnel, to act as a 'wastetunnel' for a designated spot, where the poop is aired and sun-dried. My hope is, the sun and air could kill or allow natural microbes to partially process the poop, and my future poop-processor trees will be able to do the rest.

The [Dungbeetles] rolled the poop into balls, and over the month, they pushed massive balls of rolled-up poop to a field outside town, where they remain. It kinda resembles a futuristic art installation, a field of round balls of poop.

Thankfully the rain didn't break it up. Seems like the poopballs have some water-resistance.

Or maybe I could use them as a weapon. Roll these balls of poop into the enemy, like a bowling ball.

Oh well, this is a temporary measure, while research continues.

-

"Okay, we decided on helping the heroes... but what are we going to do? I am already eavesdropping on my guests, and it seems like the heroes are not here yet." Meela frowned, she sat on the bar in her hotel-tree, Alexis appeared as a ghost on the other seat. There's no one else in the bar.

"I’ve got magic sensors, so that’s going to help a bit when they do appear. I’ve used what I remember of our own magic to calibrate the sensors, but they keep having false alarm, so I’m still trying to tweak it..."

"But seriously, even if we do locate the next batch of heroes, then what? I’m a hotel, and you are a tree-lab. What can we do? Without TreeTree, at least. He’s got subsidiary trees!"

"Can’t you get subsidiary trees like TreeTree? Like.. Hotel Chains?"

"Yes I can, but it’s like a level 80 upgrade. I’m only level 41! And even then I’m limited to 2 branches initially."

"That’s pretty fast, considering you just started... but yeah. It is a bit risky... if the demon king pops out in another year or so, and the heroes 3 to 6 months after that... We’ve only got like... 2 years to gain that 39 levels." Alexis twirls a drink. It seems Meela’s bar is ghost-friendly.

"I can make drinks and foods that makes my guests stronger. And as part of a hotel’s hospitality services, I do have some healing abilities. I have a [VIP escort] unlock at level 50, but I’m not sure whether that’s any help to the heroes." Meela looks at her upgrades. It seems she has visibility of what skills she will gain, up till level 100. Something which I have yet to figure out why, but I’m guessing its part of the hero-blessings.

"Hmmm... fine. Let’s do a recap, maybe we can figure something out. In terms of potentially useful abilities, I have [probe beetles], [magical sensors], [decipher runes], [copy biological ability], [life-scan], multiple versions of [heal]." Alexis said. "We have a lot of healing."

"Our physical forms are both derived from TreeTree, and TreeTree’s got incredible healing powers."

"Ngeh... You should’ve taken the beetle. Or the wooden body." Alexis frowned.

"But that [copy biological ability]... what does that do?"

"Pretty much transplant an ability native to a living thing, to another entity. But, copying is one thing, after copying I get a [ability seed]. Then I need to create a [fruit] with the [ability seed]."

"So... what can you copy?"

"Native racial abilities. Like the beetles, that would be [armored body], elves, [nature-affinity], centaurs, [centaurion endurance]."

"Cool! You can give that to the heroes!"

"You could be right, but then I just realised, the heroes don’t lack overpowered abilities. They lack..."

"Experience. Knowledge. Other people to take the heat off them. True friends, not scheming nobles and greedy adventurers. People... that won’t backstab them." Meela sipped from her wooden cup.

Alexis paused, and she looked up at the chandelier. It’s weird having a magical chandelier on top of the bar, but it’s one of the aesthetic options Meela has to decorate her hotel. The chandelier comprises of almost 20 little glowing lights, and multiple merchants have inquired about it, to buy it from her.

Meela waited. There’s no one else in the bar, but a few autonomous Tree-servants, cleaning the rest of the tables and adjusting the chairs. It’s quiet, the bar’s quite soundproof.

"You’re right. They don’t need more power or abilities. They need friends."

"Doesn’t have to be us, though. And they won’t trust us just because we come from Earth, and frankly, I don’t think I want to tell them that we are from Earth. Maybe... we need to narrow our scope, as it is, helping the heroes is probably out of our league."

Alexis tapped on the bar countertop. It’s ghost-friendly. "True. But we do need to find them. They will be most vulnerable at the start. It’ll be horrible if..."

"Don’t say it." Meela glared.

Alexis nodded, "I know."

"Your probes, can they communicate?"

"I’ll find a way."

"But if they don’t spawn in this continent..."

"Then it’s out of our control. They won’t be the last batch of heroes, this plan can be used for all subsequent generations, if it works."

Meela nodded. "Ah, true. I would have more branches by then. If I have branches on different continents, they could be like assassin safe houses, like you know, that John Wick film. I'd be a brand name, like the Continental..."

"That, wasn't something I would expect you to reference, Meela."

"But heroes do need a safe house of some kind. A place to keep their stuff. I've got a niche I can fill!"

Alexis frowned. "How... how about me?"

"You... you could make weapons? Or be like those skill-editing NPCs in the safe areas?"

-

The path to hell

Year 81 Month 2

Spring began. A strange structure, spotted emerging from one of the rifts in our continent. Massive, it resembles a giant walking tortoise with a castle on its back.

Any attempts to approach has been met with stiff resistance from new types of humanoid demons.

"Uh... what do you think?" Jura read the circular from the merchants guild. It advised alternative routes of trade. Somehow, the merchants guild's trade routes circular is one of the best updates on the demonic invasion.

"Sounds like a champion." Meela said.

"A large walking castle."

"If TreeTree could walk, we'd have a Walking Tree versus Walking Castle fight."

"Ugh no." I groaned. "Not keen on that." Besides, I lose a lot of power and my consciousness the moment I am no longer connected to the earth, so, not exactly keen. "But it does sound like a... champion?"

"How far is it?" Meela asked.

"Not far enough." Jura smiled.

"According to the circular, they predict... maybe 4 months?" The merchant guild circular came with a map, and it has a shaded heatmap, resembling a hurricane path kind of map. The merchants use this information for trade-route planning, and there's a small disclaimer saying the information is not guaranteed and demonic movements are unpredictable. The merchants guild bears no responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of these maps.

"Should we do anything?" I asked the group present.

"Against demon champions..." Madeus paused. "We would need to get the temples' aide. Else we stand no chance."

"The Gaya temple and the other large temples are already mobilising their best priests and paladins to the capitols. I doubt we would get much aid from them, their resources are limited." Wesley, the senior priest responded. "And for them to aid another... uh... faith, is weird."

Yeah, we're kinda like a faith now, with me as the 'deity'. I still found it weird, but apparently that is what the temples say, since I have rituals, priests, and a focal point. I hope I don't get classified as a cult, though for now the temples classify the Order as a 'folk-faith.' A kind of animistic 'religion'.

"So we are on our own."

"Oh well, nothing different then." I have been making my own preparations for demon champions, I just did not expect it to be... a walking castle.

Madeus then went off tangent, "Ermm... if I may, Aeon? I would like to request we offer refuge."

"To who?"

"Uh... somebody from Baroosh got in touch with me yesterday. The demonic forces are very close to where they are, and although the army is trying their best to hold back the demons, it seemed the presence of this monster has tipped the scales in the demons' favour."

Ah Baroosh. That's where Madeus is from. They exiled him, didn't they? Looks like he still has some positive feelings for his former state.

"Many of them are still friends. And they want a backup plan, if the Barooshian army can't hold them back."

"Jura?" I wanted to add some conditions, but I thought of asking for views.

"We could accommodate, but they are guests, so they would be expected to behave themselves and follow our rules." Hmm, looks like Jura has sinilar thoughts.

"Certainly, I will relay the message." Madeus nodded.

"Back to us, what should we do?"

"The walls are not going to hold if a massive monster like that can just... walk through it."

"TreeTree, that... dungeon we attacked. Is it still there?"

"Yeah."

"Can we convert it into a shelter? And I recall there was a deep tunnel from the giant demonic centipede?"

"The tunnel is now home to beetles and fungus, but I can make some space. The former dungeon is empty. I think there's rats, but that shouldn’t be a problem?"

"Then it is decided. We need to start convert these 2 locations into fortified shelters. If we can't fight, we need to hide."

There’s an uncomfortable look around the group. A realisation that this is going to be it. Demons are real.

"Should we tell the people?"

Vice Counsel Laufen nodded. "Yes. If this is going to be hideout, it’s best if everyone knows about it."

"Even those outside the order?"

"Yes. We’re not going to pick survivors when demons come around." Laufen insisted, before anyone could respond. "Whoever gets to the shelters deserve a chance."

The group discussed other matters, usual administrative, trade and training stuff, and they left when the sun was starting to set.

"TreeTree. The... [secret hideout], you’re not willing to let anyone go in."

"Yes. As I said before, it’s only for all of you. The most I’m willing to accommodate is in the outer [subsidiary trees], and those for the people I trust." It’s a risk, and frankly, after what happened with the druids, I feel I should be more careful with whoever gets to come near me, what more inside me.

It is unfortunate that some lives will be lost this way, but I think my own self-preservation trumps that. I can't save everyone, and I don't plan on trying.

Laufen sighed. I’m not sure whether she’s happy or sad. "Your [secret hideout] is probably one of the safest places this valley has, though."

"If I still stand. But I believe the 2 options are pretty good. The tunnels don’t require me, and the dungeon’s been reinforced." The root networks should last for at least a few months before the spatial magic starts to collapse on itself. It’s probably a good idea to get the builders working on it.

-

One of the things when disaster happens, is that people pray. It’s not my first time to receive prayers, but there is something about impending death that causes more people to pray. Some of these citizens pray to every god, even if they only profess to one, some, even pray to me.

Not all behave this way, of course. Some become more devout in times of crisis, putting in a bit more offerings, going for more blessings and masses.

But, this... behavior, lead to something that’s new to me. Throughout New Freeka and the valley there are about 7 tree of prayers. One in the Treefolks’ village, One up on the slopes of the Centaur camps, and the remaining 5 in New Freeka itself, mostly in the Order’s compounds, thess function as mini-shrines.

[Tree of prayer upgraded]

[Tree of prayer’s calming presence significantly improved. Those around more likely to express their grievances. Tree of prayer gains ability to extract some negative emotions and converts them into essence]

I mostly listen, after all there’s no real need to interact. I think to a certain extent, most of these citizens know what they want to do with their lives, but anxiety, fear, and worries just cloud their minds, so... they need a place to vent, to relax, to just think in peace. So, if I could talk back, that’s not exactly something pleasing.

Instead, the Tree of Prayer just bobs it’s branches, the leaves shakes, and occasionally a small fruit will down on right on the person’s lap, kinda like, hey-I-heard-you-have-a-fruit. The fruit’s just a regular fruit, it’s sweet, though, so... most of them eat it, some of them actually display it in their homes. Which is creepy.

Anyway, the amount of too-much-information when people are poured their hearts out in their prayers and whispers is... well, immeasurable. Seriously. Elves, centaurs, treefolks, all still have their emotional problems, their professional challenges, financial and money issues. It may be a magical world, but problems are persistent across worlds.

The [Tree of Prayers] have an odd side effect, which is... it remembers the prayers. Especially those who pray often, regularly over the same thing.

It’s an annoying side effect. Because I’d suddenly remember who-and-who cheated on who-and-who and I don’t need that sort of telenovella in my tree life.

I tell myself that it’s a public service, and it helps to keep the citizens pacified. Like my other services, the birth and death services-

"We should have more." Ivy suggested.

"Huh?"

"They’re good intel, it helps me with my dossier." Ivy’s like a real spymaster now. "If you could create one in Ransalah, that would be ideal."

"...that’s a great idea."

On the Salah side of things, they’ve finally responded to Jura’s letter. There was a follow up letter sent two months ago, just lightly reminding the kingdom of the official letter sent a year ago.

So, it seems they picked someone to be the scapegoat.

An unfortunate administrator and some of his subordinates was identified as the mastermind of the massacre, and he will be transported to New Freeka.

"A scapegoat."

"Could really be him, we have to interview him to know for sure. The prisoner convoy will be escorted, and they will arrive in a month." Jura shrugged. "Well, let’s see what comes out of this."

"Perhaps he has a passing involvement."

"I would think so, Salah isn’t that stupid to surrender someone with totally no involvement. The point is to sacrifice the tail to spare the head, so the real mastermind of such slaughter is spared."

"It could be it’s just some Prince up there, who just goes, ‘burn the rebels’, and everyone down there just carries it out." Madeus chimed in. "It’s very common for royalties to say things without actually thinking about the lives lost."

"You say that like it’s... an everyday thing." Meela/Mika frowned.

"Yes, Mika. That is indeed how the kings and royalties are. Our role as their servants and subordinates is to understand our liege, and guess what they truly desire. We cannot always take the words of our King for what it is."

At that point, I think to myself, that sounds like insubordination or treason.

"After all, our King has a wish, a desire, and sometimes, the words he has cannot communicate that will, though some kings have [skills] that help with that."

Jura raised a hand and everyone quiet down. "Let us not speculate, we will wait for whoever they sent. TreeTree, I must trouble you to help us in our interrogation. Would you happen to have those... tree saps from long ago? The ones that makes them... delirious."

"Of course. I’ll make some." It wasn’t hard to make different kinds of tree saps, regular plants make poisons and allergy-triggering saps all the time, so its easy peasy for a magic tree. In fact, I should totally infuse more magic into it.

Anyway, back to Ivy.

"Ivy, you suggested to have a [tree of prayer] in Ransalah?"

"Yes master. These people seem to confess their challenges to the Tree so easily. Why go through all the trouble of spying when they are more than willing to tell a tree? There's nothing to lose, and if anything, we gain insights into the human mind."

"...fine. But where and how should we do it?"

"New Freeka can make a goodwill gift, since they gave this scapegoat to us. Then manipulate the officials to plant the sapling in a public park, which we can then replace with the [tree of prayer]. Call it the [New Freeka - Salah friendship tree]."

That sounded like something politicians do back on Earth, but I think it could work.

"I could make a sapling-sized [tree of prayer]."

And so, Jura arranged for a small sapling of a [tree of prayer], to be sent as a gift. It’s sent, planted in a large vase so that the [tree of prayer] doesn’t die, escorted by the [arborist]. Since Hutan sent a tree-caretaker, it made sense to call on his services for such transportation duties.

-

The merchants completed their big deal, and the demanded goods finally delivered.

"Good job. Now leave them here." Wesley and the Master of Ceremonies pointed to a place. The workers start to unload.

"Just... leave them here?" The merchants stuttered. The Master of Ceremonies nodded, the jewels and gold unloaded.

"Yes." Beetles start to emerge from the woods, and some start to tug at the shipment. The merchant wanted to say something and pointed to the beetles, and the Master of Ceremonies smiled. "The shipment is for the Tree Spirit, and it is time for us to leave."

The Master of Ceremonies and a few of the Order’s men start to walk. The merchants, still a bit shocked by the beetles that are pulling the shipments into the tunnels that suddenly appeared. "Uhh... uhh... this is fine?"

"Have you not done business for tree spirits before?" Wesley grinned.

"Aaaa... of.. Of course I have." The merchant tried to straighten himself up. Procuring the gold and hiring a large escort, only to put them in an empty spot for beetles... It’s a first, for sure.

After everyone leaves, the beetles continue unpacking the goods in the network of tunnels underneath my trees. I created these tunnels recently, because realising how vulnerable I am, I wanted some of the structures to be underground, and that is.. The 10 new root-brain complexes, and the Grand Mind Tree project.

[Grand Mind Tree’s construction has begun. 18 months to completion]

Year 81 Month 3

The updates from the merchant network increases in frequency, especially from the Western Theatre head office. Two towns were lost in a month, a large army of demons escorted the walking demon castle wherever it went, and throughout the continent, the demons have been spotted in more locations.

"One of our merchants were attacked. Half his convoy was destroyed, but luckily a party of riders managed to come to their aid!"

"Are we not far away?"

"Well... it seems the demons now have small raiding parties, targeting weak spots and gaps in the nations defenses. It's a very... uh... kingdomish tactic."

The raiding parties are 100 to 200 demons strong, populated by mounted humanoid demons on hellhounds.

"Don't Kings and many generals have some kind of [Watcher] ability?" Jura asked. "I had the impression Kings have ways of watching over their territories."

"Well, yes, but such skills are not exactly... detailed."

The Council deployed multiple 200 strong militia patrols, to help protect the trade routes, but honestly, I would know. My [subsidiary trees] function like my watchtowers, failing that, there's the [rootnet] so if there is anything, I would like to think that I am the first to know the presence of demons near New Freeka.

But with demons, one can never be too careful, so I spread out my beetles to a few locations around, as an additional protection force.

This month, I added more to my anti-demon bolts and more weapons for the elves and the Order. In fact, this occupied most of my time, my preparations to face the demon champions. And made a whole load more bolts and weapons.

[Woodcrafting upgraded]

[Skill learned : Wooden Anti-demon equipment-crafting]

[Essence infusion upgraded]

More! More bolts. Spears. Shields. More!

"What if it's the demon king?" Jura asked.

"Then we die." If I could shrug, the demon king is as close to a death sentence, isn't it? If the heroes can die, how can we face it? I don't think some anti-demon shield is going to survive a nuclear explosion.

Anyway, demon king not here yet. So that's not something to worry about.

"Heh. I guess we will all run."

"Yes. On that front, maybe we should be preparing like Madeus's friends. Tell the Hutan council druids to grant you safe passage, as compensation. Just in case."

Jura paused. "Okay."

"I will be fine. I want you to take everyone as far as you can if a demon king comes our way. Arrange for some kind of teleportation..."

"I'll speak to Madeus about it..." Jura sat on his chair. "This feels... morbid."

"Why? Staring death in the face sounds morbid?"

"Not that. We villagers used to live and let live. Things happen, and then we react to it. For me, having to predict what might happen and then try to prevent or prepare for it..."

"Unusual."

"Yes. It's a strange thing to do. Plotting and planning. The most we plan for, was when to plant our crops, and when to build houses. And even then, we defer to the wisdom of our elders or tree spirits."

"It is the burden of those who lead, to see what lies ahead, and to guide them. Know that your actions will determine whether your friends and family lives, or dies." Is that me? Where did such TreeTree wisdom come from?

Jura slumped on his chair. "That is a mindset I am still coming to terms with. Truly, only when faced with demons I realise how heavy this burden is."

"Everyone prepares for it. This is just on a larger scale, with more players. It was once about how much stronger you can be, but now, it is about how much stronger the Order is."

Jura paced the room and had a sip of ginger flavored tea. I think he prefers ginger tea over the other flavors. Meela's been experimenting on tea flavors as a specialty drink for her morning and lunch crowds, so she has funky flavors like Garlic Tea, Herbal Mint Tea, Grape-Ginger tea.

"Ahhhh." Jura stretched. It's tiring.

A knock and then a voice from outside the door. "Counsel, the suspect is awake." There is a small prison in the Order's compound, located beneath one of the buildings. It's lightly guarded, there's just two beetles there.

The Salah's scapegoat.

"Yes. I ordered the burning. I was the officer in charge of the military draft for that region." He said, when interrogated. He tried to put up a brave face, but it seemed like he's hiding something.

Jura looked. So did everyone else, behind the bars. The elves shared a glance, and one of them, Emile started to cry. Somehow it brought out a strange emotion in her heart.

A vine administered the hallucinatory sap I've prepared.

Jura sat, facing the officer. "I ask you again, did you order the burning of Freeka."

"Yes... yes I did." He said. Something isn't right.

So he went into the biolab pod, for testing. Hmmm...

His soulspring looked fine. The skills are okay... If he is lying, or being forced to, there should be something to hint at the truth. I would have to go deeper, and call on the powers of the soul forge.

Knocked unconscious, a few beetles help to transport his body into the main pod in my main body. With it, I use the soul forge's power to pry into the outer soul shell.

What I saw was the usual human soul, semi-translucent, but in that soul's head, there was a small bluish blob.

As I attempted to alter or touch it, a strong force repelled me.

[Blocked by Oath]

Huh?

It seems there's no progress here either, and it looks like he's not under the influence of magic.

"Is he lying?" Jura asked.

"I have no clue." The oath could have nothing to do with the burning. Or it could be key.

It looks like I have to use other means of interrogation, so I subject him to some more hallucinogens and relaxants.

With my vines wrapped around him, I use an authoritative version of my telepathic voice.

"You died." I spoke to the prisoner, now in a daze because of the crazy cocktail of hallucinogens, relaxants and other stuff.

"I... I have? How?" He asked, he flailed his arms.

"Poison. Died in your sleep."

"Ah... so that's what they were feeding me. Why am I looking at a scary looking Tree? Is this hell?"

"Yes. This is the entrance to hell. You died near a Tree Spirit, so this is where you will depart to hell."

He paused, and looked confused. "I still feel... a pulse?"

"What made you think hell would not have a pulse?"

"Ah... so I might not be dead?"

"It's a common mistake. When you die, your soul goes to this other [soul realm], awaiting reincarnation. During that waiting time, life goes on normally."

He paused. "Uh... okay."

"So, please wait. There's a long queue to enter hell, so it will take some time. Make yourself feel comfortable here." I don't know how successful this will be, but I am going to overload his body with so much of these saps that he's going to lose his grasp with reality.

"Heh... there's a queue to hell?"

"Everyone's a sinner. So it's naturally the path to hell is extremely crowded, and why we have demons so often. Since we are on this topic, would you like to confess your sins?" That was a whole load of bullshit but he bought it.

He paused, and he starts to break down, shouting and weeping. I am not sure whether he realised it, but I increase the dosage a bit more.

He started talking about how many people he killed, the people he betrayed, the families he lost. It's kind of like we're having a session of [Tree of Prayer] confessions.

He talked for a good one hour, alternating between breaking down, crying, and anger.

But then I got what I wanted. "I... It is just fair that I died this way. I sent the army to burn the village. I mean, the Commander said that dissenters should be punished... but maybe I did go overboard. I gained levels in [Authoritarian] when I ordered all those villages burnt. I... I was drowning in joy when I gained levels. The skills were powerful too! I got a skill like [Submission], which worked so wonderfully with the commoner ladies!"

Oh. I expected a scapegoat... but, color me impressed, Salah actually sent the right guy. And a scum, too.

"But could you fault me? The Commander himself burned many villages to the ground when they rebelled against the King. All of us did. We did what we had to, to enforce order. Fear is key to maintaining control. It was either that or we would be chopped for punishing the villages too lightly."

Hmmm... looks like maybe not. Its an institutional failure.

"We burnt many villages. When there was a plague, we culled. When there was a suspected demonologist, we culled the villages. There is no time for proper justice, we lack the resources, manpower, and even if we did, there was no way of ensuring justice was properly conducted. Every kingdom did what it felt was right!"

Uh...

"Maybe... maybe all of us should just burn to the ground, you know?"

He sat, surrounded by the vines and roots.

"I... All of us are sinners. Maybe the Demon King should just crush all of us."

Did I overdo the tree saps?

Uh...

"Say, would I be able to meet the Commander here? Or is he already on the other side? How long a backlog are we talking about?"

I definitely overdid the tree saps.

[Skill upgraded : Tree saps]

[Skill obtained : Condensed Tree Psychedelics]

[Dream tutor variant obtained. Skill: Psychedelic dreams]

[Dream tutor variant obtained. Skill: Mystical dreams]

Escalation

Year 81 Month 4

The war in the Barooshian territories deteriorated. The presence of the walking demon castle greatly hindered all attempted progress, and even with high level individuals, the demons have now deployed 'knights'.

These demons have been described as elites, capable of standing up to a level 40 elite soldier toe to toe, and are described as humanoid horned demons, usually with one large unnaturally crimson wing. They have been seen wielding spears, swords, axes and many other types of melee weapons.

"No rifts near our location yet." The captain elaborated. It's a once every other day meeting, to gather data on the demons. They are coming, and well, everyone's feeling a little tense.

"That's of no comfort. We are just waiting." Jura sighed.

"One of the merchants want to meet, Counsel."

"Huh. Sure."

A merchant walked into Jura’s office chambers. "Salutations Counsel. I’ll get to the point. The merchant guilds’ is trying to build a coalition force to protect key trade routes, especially those that cut through the kingdoms nearest to the spotted giant demon walker. In exchange for the various nations’ contributions to the force, led by a group of senior military men, the merchants guild will offer preferential prices on goods well below market rates, and also the rights of first purchases on goods passing through these routes."

"You sure didn’t mince words there." Jura sat and thought for a moment. "How many men are you talking about? Have you spoken to the high council?"

"Yes I have. They are keen, but only if the Order also participates. They will match every person you put in."

"Heh, clever of them. If the Order doesn’t participate then we look like scums." Jura sat and twirled a wooden pen. "Back to my question, how many men does the guild want?"

"Ideally, we want high level individuals. Elites, if possible. Numbers, while it does have its own quality, is not the most suitable countermeasure against a demonic force-of-nature like the giant demon walker."

"I... I need to have some discussions. Come back in two days." The merchant bowed and left.

Jura turned and called in the management team. "Madeus, would you be keen? I’m also planning to talk to Yvon. If anything, I would like both of you to participate..."

Madeus shook his head. "I’m having fun teaching the kids in the Orphanage."

Well, turns out Yvon also had a similar idea. "The Valthorn kids need me. I’m not leaving them alone with TreeTree, not without my supervision."

---

Also, now that we know quite certainly the Salah guy is the ‘right’ guy, I’m a bit stuck with what to do.

"Y’know, if he wasn’t the right person, it’s not cool to drug him and make him think he died. How did you plan on integrating or undoing the effects of such a powerful hallucination?"

"Hmmm, I had a hunch that he’s hiding something."

"He could be hiding other things."

"Too bad, I’ll just make him think it’s all a dream. You know, like those exceedingly vivid dreams that you wake up from, wondering what in the world just happened."

"That sounds like the kind of essays I used to write for school." Meela grinned.

When I delivered the message to the elves, that he is the right guy, Laufen stormed up and went to one of the Tree of Prayers to gather her thoughts. Somehow the reality that she faced the person who indirectly caused the death of her husband made her... angry.

"I want to slap him many, many times."

"Okay." So the drugged delirious prisoner is ‘freed’ from his biopod prison, and Laufen slapped him many times. In fact, the other elves joined when they saw Laufen started to slap the man.

"You! You evil man! Our lives lost just because you felt like it!" Laufen slapped. "I had thought that maybe you had a vendetta, but no." She slapped again. "We are just." Another slap. "Another village to burn." Another slap. The guy’s delirious. The overdose of hallucinogens massively distorted his sense of reality.

"Is this like purgatory? Where I meet those I have sinned and answer for them?" He asked.

Which only made Laufen even more mad. "Hell yeah it is." She slapped him some more. THe other elves, like Emile and Belle, both just gave him one slap. One, big fat slap. And that’s it.

They walked away. Because although they are angry, watching Laufen’s ugly chain of slaps made them feel like they needed to be above this.

"All because of some stupid levels! Are our lives all so meaningless and insignificant to these nobles and lords?" Laufen slapped.

The guy just laughed. He’s lost it really. "Yes, my dear. Yes. Actually, even lords and nobles are meaningless. We all die in the end. Everyone’s just out for themselves and we make life difficult for everyone that is not us."

Laufen slapped him in between those words, so it’s actually not so coherent. "AGGGHHHH." She slapped him a few more times, until she stopped and just sat on the ground, and she started to weep.

Lausanne watched and gave her mom a hug. "Mommy... it’s okay... it’s okay..."

The guy’s face is red and blue from all the slaps, and I think it’s time to end it. So, some vines pull the guy back into the pod. "I’ll keep him for now."

Laufen still cried, so she didn’t respond to my statement. Jura just watched, and he walked away.

"TreeTree... just kill him already. Him being insane and mocking us with that insanity just makes us feel worse."

Hmm. Well, I kinda figured he’s gonna die anyway, but to kill him would be a waste of valuable ‘mortals’. He would join the other criminals on death row that I’ve reserved for my soul-related experiments.

I mean, if the justice system says who and who is to die, might as well contribute to science while dying. It’s not as if the manner of death makes a difference. It’s a position opposed by Meela and Alexis, of course, but they can’t stop me.

If I’m going to figure out how to fix Jura’s arms, I need more experience with all the sophisticated meddling in the [soulforge].

In the past month, in between creating more of those anti-demon bolts and weapons, I’ve been experimenting with creating an ‘arm’, and indeed, the first thing I needed was to reverse-engineer the thing that ‘protects’ a body while undergoing the forge process.

It seems there is a ‘specific’ frequency to the mana, kind of like a ‘state’ in which the mana is able to hold its form despite the maelstrom within the [soul forge], and mastering this process will allow my feelers to ‘interact’ with the exposed soul fragments in the soul forge.

So, firstly, the process required the creation of more ‘mana-tuning’ organs. It took quite a few tries, but it’s a whole lot easier once I used some of the jewels as regulators. I know this because it’s part of why jewels are so commonly used in magic items, because precious gems and jewels have a kind of mana-storage, mana-stabilising quality to them.

Essentially, it’s like a ball of roots organised along a few jewels as nodes, with two feeler ends. Kind of like a large tuning fork, and the length-width of that fork determines the ‘frequency’ and ‘spin’.

With it, I’m then able to coat my feelers with an ‘tuned mana’ which protects it from the effects of the [soul forge] by about 90-95%. Pretty good, I think.

Next, was to make simple ‘organs’. Using animals as my test case, I tried to make small tails, whiskers, repair ears, repair skin.

Most of them failed, but I’m getting better at the smaller stuff. Relatively speaking.

I judge my performance by the size of the little animals’ explosion when ‘healed’.

Year 81 Month 5

My first encounter with this generations’ demons. A pack of humanoid demon riders spotted passing through one chain of [subsidiary tree] that stretched up to the previous dungeon hole. The chain of subsidiary trees, with New Freeka Valley as the center, is kind of like a ‘spider net’.

They didn’t attack my trees. But I moved some beetles to the area, as I watched their actions.

These demonoids are clearly more intelligent than before. There’s a visible ‘leader’, giving some kind of instruction, in a language I can’t fathom. They are setting up an ambush.

I watched them camp there for 5 days, until a trader caravan approached the area.

Well, their ambush was countered by an ambush from my beetles. IT went well. Despite their intelligence, their ability to fight is just about... average. A regular demonoid is at the same strength as a regular hellhound. Which isn’t much.

Their leader’s much better, it took two beetles to take him down.

"The merchants are struggling to keep certain trade routes with the demons employing such guerilla tactics."

"I’m impressed that demons have the concept of attacking supply chains."

"Impressed? This is horrifying. We could spot demons a mile a way thanks to their unfettered destruction! Now we can’t! That’s not a good thing!"

"Hmm... I think we shouldn’t overreact. It seems the precautions needed will be similar to bandits, if their raiding parties are so small. A small group of adventurers would’ve been able to defeat that raiding party."

"The threat of the raiding party is small, but the thought that there’s potentially sophisticated intelligence behind the demons..."

"TreeTree, you said your trees spotted them?"

"Yeah."

Jura paused and sat. The captain then asked... "Can we have a perimeter of trees? Would it be possible?"

"Uh... no. I can’t make that many trees." Four lines as it is, is almost maxed out my [subsidiary tree] quota. Unless I gain levels or the skill gets an upgrade, I don’t think I can spam more [subsidiary trees].

I do have my basic tree-eye, but there’s only 10 of those.. And I want to keep those for special places where I want to see things for myself-

Trevor interrupted.

Demons.

"There’s more of them." Trevor said to me.

"What?"

"A pack of 300 demons appeared. North." Mostly regular demonoids, but this pack has about 10 of the ‘captain’ grade demons and 1 mounted ‘knight.

"Beetles?" I look at the map, and Trevor points me to the nearest group of 50 or so beetles. There’s another group of 30 beetles further away. "Okay, let’s group them together."

"They won’t make it in time to save that convoy if they do." What? A convoy?

Trevor changed my vision to see a convoy of 8 carriages, and about 20 merchants. "Recommend we send the 50 beetles now, and hopefully the 30 beetles can join the battle midway. Or if you want to intervene directly... with root strikes."

"Heh," Well, I’m itching for a fight.

[Rooting field].

Roots emerge from a field of grass, and they quickly entangled the group of 300 demonoids. The leaders of the group were able to cut the roots off, and then my squad of 50 beetles arrived. Watching them fight, the beetles’ charge easily destroy quite a bit of the regular demonoids.

Except the Knight, it had a black sword and in a single slash, it cut one of the beetles in half.

"Nooooooooooooo." Horns was upset. "Kill that enemy."

The demon knight cut down a few more beetles. I recall seeing demon knights during the previous war, the ‘demonised’ humans. But this knight is pure demon, and I would say he’s about level... 40? I’m not too sure.

Heh. No point delaying.

[Serpentine Rootstrike].

Multiple roots appeared and pierced through the demons, like a multi-headed hydra. The knight dodged and cut through some of the roots, but the roots, when cut down, it instead splits into more roots, which attack the knight.

The knight cuts down more roots, but it kept breaking up into more roots. And then one root speared through the knight from the back.

And it turns into ash.

"Huh." If the demons can create more knights at that level, the kingdoms are going to have a whole lot of problems.

-

Turns out, shit’s already pretty bad. News from the Southern Continent came, and it ain’t pretty down south. Another walking castle has been spotted, and they’ve overran a few kingdoms. The Southern continent is essentially in a pure-war mode, every nation in the region combining their forces, where they can, to delay the demon’s advance.

"These numbers..."

The captain started to read out the merchants’ guilds report. "Are they trying to ask for help?" The report had a whole load of numbers on the size of the demon armies. In the southern continent, they’ve spotted six different armies with at least 50,000 demons.

"Sounds like it. The merchants’ guild can’t formally request for aid, without the consent of the local kingdoms. At best, they will try to build a coalition, with the local kingdoms, but it’s something they are already doing..."

"Is it normally this bad?" I ask the captains. They shrug.

"I don’t know, but... it’s sure messier this time around."

"How many have been displaced?" Jura wondered. "Are we going to get more refugees?"

"A lot. With all continents facing some demon issues, the refugees don’t really have a lot of choices on where to go."

"What about the islands?"

"Hmmm... sounds like they won’t be able to run away from the south that easily. So if anything we’re still going to get Baroosh-ian refugees..."

"The elven kingdoms are up north, right?" Laufen suddenly asked.

"Yeah. Why’d you ask?"

"If Baroosh is in trouble, how about the other elves?"

Madeus paused. "I... I believe they would not be in any better shape. The demon walker’s massive size and the army’s not been defeated yet."

"We need to figure out how to hide." Jura pondered. It’s only 6 months into the beginning of the demons, and things are already not great.

And that’s how I spent more time on the underground tunnels. The farmers did already have ‘warmed’ farmhouses and underground chambers, but I didn’t, and I think I may be able to do things... differently.

The underground tunnels are humid, but no sunlight. Any plants that need to survive here would have to have long roots, and somehow have ‘tubers’ that store their food in the tunnels, which the refugees can use.

Using [root tunnels], we built a network of tunnels, with rooms, and with some wood magic and [woodcrafting], made wooden furniture and flooring to make the rooms somewhat habitable. In the event the demons overrun the surface, though, they would need a source of food and water. It’s fairly easy to create roots that store some water and food as emergency rations, since I have the [tuberous storage], which, when not storing ‘energy’, can be converted into a massive edible potato, and a high-water content potato.

"Preparing for the apocalypse?" Meela seemed quite interested in all the preparations. I think she recently added a few underground chambers to her hotel, so I think we’re aligned on that part.

"Yeah. This demon king feels different"

"I doubt it’ll be that different. Maybe it’s just a change in the minions. The previous demon king we faced was a floating castle."

Alexis then butted in. "I like all these preparations. Reminds me of the kind of nuclear bunkers we have, preparing for eventual doomsday."

"I should add something like that to the basement of my hotel, huh?"

"Of course, if a disaster happens, a hotel must have a safe space for it’s guests! It should be reinforced, and close to impenetrable." Alexis laughed, and Meela nodded.

"True... I guess if I wanted to make a hotel like the Continental, it better be a battle-ready hotel."

"You can start by adding a vault, a strong room, an armory..." Alexis rattled on a list of things to add.

"Uh... I think we’re getting sidetracked. I’m trying to make habitable hideouts for the citizens, in case things deteriorate." I had to bring the conversation back on track. "And if both of you want to help, help me with it."

Alexis stopped and thought for a moment. "Hmmm... it’ll need some artificial sunlight. Perhaps mana-powered lights, and then with it, grow some kind of vegetables under those lights?"

"Oh." That’s kinda like the greenhouse idea again, but indoors.

So, we tried it out. I got Trevor and Dimitree to help, since I’m really kind of tired of doing things on my own, there’s just so much to do, so many things to manage.

We upgraded the tunnels into canister-like compartments, each canister a self-sufficient setup, with a water storage plant, fungi and plant growing area, food storage, and wooden beds. It's has metal-reinforced wooden pillars and walls, for additional strength and toughness.

It's kind of like segments and sections in buildings.

[New skill acquired : Customisable Roots]

[Customisable Roots function like the underground equivalents of your customisable branches. Each subsidiary tree now can support one customisable branch and one customisable root. Choosing the customisable roots will shrink the [Tuberous Storage] of that subsidiary tree]

Oh. Cool?

"How does it look?"

Jura and the elves looked around at the new network of underground housing cum hideouts.

"Just needs some more lights for additional brightness, but for a war-time hideout, absolutely luxurious."

"The food supply may be insufficient though, since these things depend on you growing your own vegetables. But at least there is water and the potatoes on the wall are still growing..." The potatoes on a segment of the wall is still linked to the roots. It's like the 'seed' of the potato, so the refugees can pluck the potato and a new one will grow.

"Good enough. I suppose next will be fortification and security."

Alexis and Meela added. "How about air? Is there sufficient oxygen down there? Ventilation is super important in underground spaces! People could die from choking and smoke!"

"Good point..." I had thought of using the plants, but the plants probably don't produce enough oxygen.

"Could you use mana to create oxygen?"

"Uh... is there a spell like that?"

[Natural Tree Ability : Water, oxygen, carbon cycle - converts water to air, or air to water. Uses mana]. Oh. That’s easy. Turns out I had that ability all the while.

But it doesn’t solve the problem if I’m not there. How do the refugees get air?

"Do you have plants that create air?"

"No..." Maybe there are, but I’ll need to find them.

It’s Madeus that gave the solution. "We’ll get some ‘Gems of breathing’. Those gems can produce air at a mana cost, and with that we can breath. It doesn’t require much mana, that ordinary folks with some magic should be able to operate."

"That’s quite expensive." Jura nodded after the Treasurer told him the expected cost. "But we’ll get a dozen. And the ‘gems of sunlight’ as well, if we plan to grow these plants underground."

Ah, turns out, there are some off-the-shelf solutions already.

Alexis paused, "Can you ask for some of those gems? Ask Jura to buy a bit more?"

"Our coffers are a bit low after my recent spend on the gold and jewels for the Grand Mind-Tree, so..."

Alexis frowned. "I could use some of those for research..."

-

Year 81 Month 6

The magical sensors went crazy, across my many subsidiary trees and biolabs, the array picked up multiple large surges of energy.

"Something’s happening." Alexis is the first to be disturbed by the sensor readings. The air seemed tense, and a sudden gust of wind followed. A while later, my network of roots start to detect tremors from afar, the sign of a massive explosion.

"Jura, any idea what’s going on?" Jura’s oblivious to it, because, well, unless you have a built in magical sensor in your body, you won’t notice it.

"Uh..."

It’s Madeus, who ran in, along with Yvon, to the Jura’s Counsel Chambers. "A massive magical explosion has been detected. The demon walker was attacked with some kind of projectile weapon."

"Oh, isn’t that good news? Who did it?" Jura asked.

"The Barooshian court gathered their mages and the voluntary sacrifices of a few young men and women. It’s... forbidden blood magic. And it didn’t work. Instead of destroying it, the magical projectile heavily injured the demon walker, and now it marched for the Barooshian capital."

"Blood magic." Jura looked at Madeus suspiciously. "Baroosh has blood magic? And sacrifices?"

"...there is a hidden faction in the wizarding academy studying blood magic. Secretly. But the King gave his consent to do this."

"The blizzard may have links to Baroosh..." Meela said. "What's Baroosh's relationship with Nung, Takde and Salah."

Madeus shrugged, a little bit ashamed.

"Okay, I don't know. But whatever it is, that magical disturbance came from Baroosh."

The magical sensors went off again. But this time, it wasn't from Baroosh's general vicinity. It came from further north, from the coast.

"Uh... any idea what's going on?"

We didn't know. Until news came about a week later, that the same Blood Magic Ritual was repeated, in another kingdom south of Salah... with more sacrifice.

And the worse part? The second projectile missed the demon walker, and left a crater filled with an unpleasant miasma.

"Madeus... is there a cult practicing blood magic throughout the continent?"

"Uh... There are all sorts of cults out there, practicing all kinds of obscure magics... No one really knows, but I would say... yes?"

"The Demon walker changed direction. It... It's now heading south."

"...what."

Another magical disturbance. My sensors are starting to become quite attuned to this. It's the same country, and they did the ritual. Again.

"How many times can this ritual be repeated?"

"I... I don't know?"

This time, we all saw it. Because the dark purple &amp; red magical projectile flew overhead. Even with my spiritual vision I could see it, it's a missile made of condensed magics, sacrificed lives and just a whole load of unknown energies.

"It's from a country called Gila." The array of magical sensors could now track the movement of the magical energy. A kingdom lead by a new King? There's little I know of them, that's not outdated.

This third blood ritual bullet exploded at the edges of Barooshian border, apparently scrying revealed half of the castle on the demon walker' back was destroyed. The regular demons died. But it didn't stop the Walker.

Oh no, it didn't. "Uh... It's still headed south."

"Are they planning to use this against the Demon King?"

Well, it turns out Gila and Baroosh were not alone. In the Southern Continent, a few similar spells were used, to great success. They destroyed a demon walker.

The Demon Walker though, now moved as fast as it could towards Gila. Devouring every single town or village in its path, and with it, a growing army of demons.

"Uh... its coming here."

"This is insane." Alexis screamed, she used the readings from the magical sensors, and her own sensors. "It's pretty much a magical nuclear weapon, tuned to cause immense destruction in a narrow area."

News indeed speaks of the location of the missed shot turned into a corrupted, haunted, poisoned place, where everything died and strange alien monsters emerged from it.

But, despite the costs, the fact that there is a reliable weapon against these demonic walker-giants gave great hope to many kingdoms. A weapon that can fight back! So, it seems there's widespread propaganda that the magus have discovered a potent magical spell able to defeat the demons. No longer do they have to fear the champions.

"TreeTree, I hate you." Alexis said one evening, as the news that more such rituals are being used throughout the world.

"Why?"

"You were preparing for underground hideouts. Did you have a spirit vision or epiphany, that you somehow see this coming? Hex Bombs?" Alexis called them hex bombs, because they leave a hex on the land.

"Honestly no. I was preparing for the possibility that a demon champion defeats me. But this feels too coordinated, who's teaching the process of this rituals to all the different kingdoms? The speed this ritual spread is unreal."

"The Kings won't hear naysayers now. They all bought the story that this spell can defeat the walkers, and they have two success cases now." One in the Southern Continent, and one in the Eastern Theatre. People celebrated, ignoring the reality that there are sacrifices needed for each shot, which numbered between hundreds to thousands, less if the person is of a high magical power and level.

"But one is still walking our way." After Gila's two shots, they stopped. The Demon Walker's wounded, with a strong hex on its body, but it is still headed this way.

Deep inside, I just know that it is going to come through here. I didn't need a messenger running inside the room, shouting.

"Demon walker is headed for New Freeka... expected to be two to three weeks away. With an army of 40,000 demonoids."

It's just how it is. I am a magical tree, and somehow, I will always end up fighting demons.

Which is fine. Demons are my natural enemies.

I just don't appreciate being potentially in the line of fire of a Hexbomb.

TreeTree Vs Demon Walker

Year 81 Month 6

The demonoids came over the hills, the giant walker, with the body of something resembling a mutant giant tortoise, with a castle on top. The castle consists of multiple reddish spires, with jagged edges, resembling the teeth of a monster.

It wasn’t hard to tell that it is approaching. The demonic army would cut down the trees in it’s path, and I could feel the walker’s energy, with each step, a bit more of it’s energy pushed back on my 'bubble', and cause the effective radius of my [lesser demonic suppression aura] to shrink.

But whatever that was, it only worked on the outer area. At this distance, in this valley, the aura from my main body is strong, and here, it overlapped against whatever that demon walker emitted.

Together, with the walker, the 50,000 or so demonoids crossed the rolling hills. By the scouts count, the army increased by 10,000, and this is due to the ‘bases; and the ‘walker’ itself, being a mobile demon production factory.

Or as Alexis called it, a "hive". Like a beehive that made more bees.

The past 3 weeks, along the expected path of the demon army, we built a few more layers of walls, filled with traps, and places for the soldiers to retreat. And tunnels for the beetles to spring a surprise attack.

Honestly, I felt confident. A defensive battle is pretty much how I can fight, and it’s something that I’m good at. And we have been preparing for this fight.

And when the demon walker emerged, I felt ready.

The demon walker’s spires somewhat recovered, the damage from the blood hex magic is no longer noticeable, so we presume they have some self-healing ability. Until we saw the other side of the giant walker, where a large chunk of it’s body glowed purple, as if it oozed a magical rot. This massive giant tortoise, with a big castle on it’s shell stomped, and the earth shook. Luckily, the walls held. The roots and plants helped to absorb the shockwave.

"A zaratan." Alexis’s being the one with a wide general knowledge. "A walking zaratan, instead of an island on it’s back-"

*ROOOOOAAAAAAARRRR* A loud, but deep roar shook the entire valley.

"Trivia will have to wait."

The demon walker roared, and that signalled the beginning of this battle. The army of demonoids charge towards the first layer of walls, into the [carnivorous plants] and [cactus defense systems].

And the sound of wood and demon colliding became the background chorus. The demons chopped the defenses down, but not before the Carnivorous Plants devoured some of the demonoids, and in doing so, gradually, but sure, reduced the number of demonoids. I reckon about 1,000 to 2,000 demonoids fell before the outermost layer is breached.

Jura, Madeus and Yvon prepared on top of the 4th makeshift wall layer. "Lausanne, Stay with TreeTree. This is not your battle, not yet."

"But my level is already in the 30s! I should be out there fighting!" The young lady protested. She too, was armed for battle, and she had two anti-demon wooden short-spears on her back.

"She’s right. She’s a valuable battlefield asset. We need her on the field, together with the girls." One of the captains said. The archers got into position. They’ve been waiting for this moment. Many had a good meal last night, perhaps in preparation of death.

"No. Not Lausanne, and not the kids. The Valthorns stay back." Jura insisted. "Right, TreeTree?"

"Lausanne should be fighting, but let her take one of the flanks where it’s less risky. Together with Horns. The beetles will cover her." The beetles are all hidden in the tunnels. All 10,000 of them. But I can spare some to act as Lausanne’s squad.

The demon walker roared, and the demonoids all received a boost it. My [lesser demonic suppression] is effective, and the roar merely offsets the effects of my aura.

Yvon nodded. "You can’t coddle her forever. Fighting demons is a regular affair, she best get some experience-"

The giant walker had a large head, and it’s head resembled part-tortoise, part-dragon, it had spikes and horns and it roared, revealing its fangs. It’s a different roar, the vibration was different. And that roar sent out an energy blast.

[Steelwood barrier] [Woodshield] [Shield Generators].

The Subsidiary Trees that function as shield generators create a large wall of wood, blocking the energy blast-

*crack*

The energy projectile from the blast slammed into the shields, and it crushed the first barrier and woodshield, and then cracked the last shield.

"Okay fine. Go. Keep yourself safe." Jura sighed, turned and faced the horde of demonoids. The demon knights lead the charge against the 1st layer walls. "Remember what we discussed. We’ve got to take on the demon knights. TreeTree will focus on the demon walker."

Yvon nodded, and then shrugged. "Though I would prefer to observe TreeTree in action, but I suppose we don’t have a choice... Be careful of the Knights."

Lausanne smiled. "Okay. Stay safe, everyone." Jura gave Lausanne a pat on the head.

"You too, retreat or ask for TreeTree’s help if you’re in trouble. Better alive than dead."

An armor of wood surrounded Jura, and in his hand, a dark-brown wooden sword. There’s multiple wooden spears on his back, and multiple smaller wooden stakes, enchanted to weaken demons.

"And Yvon, you can watch after the ‘knights’ are destroyed."

The demonoid horde still charged. And in one area where the density was highest, I activated [Root Surge] and skewered about 2,000 demonoids.

The walker stepped closer, and the earth shook. It roared again another energy blast, this time it aimed for the 2nd layer of walls. I couldn’t stop the full power of the energy projectile in time, and this time, a section of the 2nd layer walls disintegrated, and killed about 20 archers and the beetles hiding underneath.

"TreeTree, can you stop that blast?" Jura asked, while running towards the army. The archers have started their volley overhead.

"I am creating shields right in front of it, to deflect and absorb the blast. That should take the heat off you. But be prepared to run if I can’t stop it in time."

"Great." Jura cut down a few more demonoids in the way. He's looking for the knights.

A roar, and another energy blast, this time, I stopped it. It took 4 layers of [steelwood barriers].

A special demon, one with wings appeared, and it landed with a bang. The explosion from it’s ‘crash’ crushed another section of the 2nd layer of walls. And then it stabbed the few soldiers right in front of it.

"Jura, there’s a winged demon elite. Look out for it, it should be on your left."

"Aye. I don’t see it." Jura’s deep in battle, fighting some more demonoids.

The horde breached through the new gaps in the 2nd layer of defenses, like a pipe with holes.

The mages conjured their fireballs and spells. And the demonoids raised a shield made of their demon-matter. Since when did the demonoids have shields? The explosions from the spells still destroyed a few demonoids, but the shields reduced the damage.

Two knights close in on Jura’s position. Tall, dark, and honestly quite-cool looking with that jagged-edged demonic body, one uses an axe, the other uses a spear. I should create wood knights. They look cool.

*Roooooaaaaaaaaar*

An energy blast from the walker again. My shields block it, but there’s still collateral damage from some of the deflected blast, a part of the 3rd layer walls is destroyed. It's using the blasts to open a way for the horde. These makeshift walls aren’t that tough, but the 4th layer was the one we built previously. The 4th wall is tougher, and where most of the men are stationed.

"So, you’re the demon knights." Jura’s deep in battle near what remains of 2nd layer walls, and his wooden sword glowed. "Show me what you can do."

[Speed slash] Jura’s sword flickered like streaks of light, and the first demon knight turned to mincemeat.

"Oh. Easy?" Jura looked at the other knight, and closed in. Indeed, the Level 80 warlord crushed the level 40-ish knight within 5 swipes. Honestly using his high-speed skill is overkill.

*Roooooaaaaaaaaar*

The walker stomped, and it interrupts the archers' and mages' spells.

Another energy blast, and somehow I got the angle a bit wrong. The projectile deflected and made a hole in one of the valley-cliffs.

The walker, it’s large size meant it could easily walk over the walls, and it did so. It stepped across the 2nd layer of walls. He’s entered the range where my root strikes are at full power. .

Something hopped off the demon walker’s back, and landed right in front of Jura.

A demonoid with wings, proper demon-like horns, and a sword large enough to to cut a cow in half, he radiated a magical aura.

Jura smirked. "So the demons now have tiers of elite forces too, eh? TreeTree, you watching this? This the guy?"

"Yes." But my focus is on the Walker. My 3 artificial minds are working really hard to help. Trevor, Dimitree and Ivy’s manage the beetles, create root tunnels and help to activate all the the [subsidiary trees], [cactus defense system], [shield generators], and provide battlefield-intel to Horns who’s deep in the fighting with Lausanne. It’s a good thing I can delegate some of my abilities to them.

Yvon landed next to Jura after killing one demon knight. "Need help?"

Jura shrugged. "I’ll let you know. But I’ll try to handle him myself, for now. I got skills I’ve been itching to test out on... something strong."

"Alright, I’ll keep the demon knights from meddling."

"What should we call this demon?" Jura looked at Yvon, and the demon-elite looked quizzically back at them. It’s large sword glowed red, and then black. A black flame emerged from it.

Demonfire, again. How nostalgic.

The walker stepped closer. A bit more. I just needed it’s entire massive body entirely within range. Most of the horde of soldier-demonoids crossed the 2nd layer of defenses. Those makeshift walls really don’t last very long, but it served the purpose.

"For TreeTree!" Horns mentally shouted. "Battle-beetles, let’s go!" There’s no new beetle type, it’s just a name Horns came up with. It’s punny, he says. Wisp say their personalities take after an aspect of their creators, so I think Horns inherited a punny part of me.

Beetles streamed out of the tunnels under the 2nd and 3rd layer of walls, charging into the mass of demonoids from both sides, and the entire area turns into a massive brawl.

Strangely, despite the chaos of the brawl, all the demons had the sense to avoid the demon-elite and Jura, both in intense, rather high speed combat.

The demon-elite or general could fly, but at that distance, neither could really hurt each other, It seemed that the demon-elite wasn’t much of a spellcaster, so they went into a full melee.

Jura ducked, dodged, and sidestepped the demon-elite’s large bastard sword repeatedly, often narrowly avoiding mini-explosions from the sword-blast.

"Demon-general’s a better name?" Jura’s sword cut the demon-general’s wings, but the wings regenerated. It roared in response, its mouth shot out a mini-projectile at Jura. "And screw this." Bamboo generated a massive wooden shield in front of Jura. The wooden shield disintegrated, but it seemed like the demon-general didn’t have that many uses of that projectile, since it went back into melee..

Right above, the demon walker stepped even closer. It’s feet now crossed over the 3rd layer walls easily. It roared again, this time the energy blast is aimed right at the forest, right at me.

"It can sense our presence, master." Trevor commented. "It knows of the magical energies you are radiating."

In my mind, I don’t think so.

[Steelwood barrier] x 5. Thank goodness I seem to have more than few hundred uses of these shield-skills per day. Multiple large wooden barriers once again appeared to block the energy blast. Four barriers disintegrated, but the last one held. "Well, what do you know, my shields at this distance can stop that blast."

Below it, the beetles and the demonoids fight it out in a massive brawl. The militia and the order’s soldiers keep up the volley of arrows, but in such state, there’s quite a bit of friendly fire. The beetles large size don’t help.

The walker roared again, and... the spires on its back glowed red, another spire glowed purple. Once that started, the demonoids glowed red too, and they went into a kind of battle-frenzy, and the ‘damage’ suffered by the demonoids seemingly regenerated.

"Oh. That castle’s an aura-machine." I mentally smack myself. Of course, the castle imparts passive buffs, like me.

The spires started to shoot out smaller, less powerful energy blasts.

"And it’s equipped with laser-turrets." Alexis looked in amazement. "It’s a walking laser tank."

For me, those glowing red spires reminded me of the Obelisk of Light.

"The blood-rituals don’t look so bad now." I sighed. To be fair, without the walker, I’d defeat the 40,000, even 60,000 demonoids without a problem. 10,000 beetles would’ve taken out 20,000 demonoids, easy. Clearly, for regular humans without special anti-demon skills and weapons, they would need to gather a large group of high level individuals. At least multiple level 80s.

It really makes my multiplier against demons a great advantage.

Madeus, together with the mages of New Freeka changed their targets to the giant walker, since it’s hard to avoid friendly fire with the beetles fighting literally in the ‘trenches’. Lausanne’s doing fine. She’s got a whip-like weapon that seems to cut through the demons like they are made of paper, and only against the knights that she needed help from the beetles.

"We’ve got them held up at the 3rd layer." One of the captains said. Well, the 4th layer is the last layer of walls, and after that its New Freeka’s own town walls or the forest itself. I’m not keen on letting the walker anywhere near the forest, since the Treefolks’ village is between me and them.

The walker stepped, and kicked the 3rd layer’s walls with its large feet.

"Oh." I kind of forgot that it could just... hit things instead of using the energy blast. And it kicked again.

And that segment of the walls crumbled. Most of the men had retreated to the 4th layer, it’s mostly just ranged combat, except for beetles. Some of the soldier-elites also tried to fight the demonoids. By now, the demonoids thinned to about 30,000, and I’ve lost about half of my beetles. Somes losses on the soldiers or the Order, mostly from the walker. But it looks like they will have to bear some more.

The walker stepped through the crumbled sections. It kicked the 4th layer walls with incredible force, and then, strangely, walked past the 4th layer of walls. It walked towards me. As if it knows I’m there. Waiting.

"Oh, it dares to approach TreeTree?" Alexis grinned. "Even though TreeTree has anti-demon powers?"

It roared. My wooden shields blocked the energy blast. Good. Come.

"Get as close as you need to. So I can shove all the roots I have through your body."

Hmm, let’s see whether there’s going to be any collateral damage.

"Have the Treefolks evacuated?"

"Let me check... yes." Trevor said.

Most of them are now in the designated ‘safe-houses’. Those that can fight are on the 4th wall, and some back at New Freeka’s town walls. The demonoid army’s still behind it, caught up in the brawl with the beetles, though some are trickling past the 3rd wall.

Jura and the demon-general fought toe-to-toe, as Yvon focused on fighting the other demon knights that tried to come to the demon-general’s aid.

Jura’s still has an edge, but if there’s 2 of them, he’ll be in trouble. He took a few hits, but thankfully the armor bore the brunt of it. Yvon on the other hand, focused on the other demon knights.

At first Yvon wanted to help, but her own level is only about 60, so she changed her targets. Jura and the demon-general traded blows.

The demon general leaped high up, half of it’s wings torn from an earlier well-placed slash. It’s large bastard sword cracked, and a massive wooden fist punched it right in the body. It staggered back, and Jura changed weapon, again. The wooden swords don’t last long, but he has a whole lot stored.

"So, any tricks?" Jura’s body is surrounded by Bamboo’s wood-armor, and it’s flexible form means it’s also a weapon. "Or are you just faster, stronger, and hit a whole lot harder?"

The demon-general’s staggered, even with the aura-effects from the Demon Spires. There’s three wooden spears lodged in its body, the wooden spears are enchanted with holy magic and made from TreeTree’s anti-demon wooden stakes. It’s enchantment meant it drained some demonic energy out of the demon-general.

"Well, time to end this. [Speed Slash]."

A flash of light, and the demon-general’s body was cut in half, then it disintegrated.

"Just a faster, stronger demon knight. I’d be worried if they start having actual skills." Jura did a fist, and then he realised there’s still a whole lot of demons to fight.

"Good, I’m going to be fighting the demon-walker now."

"Is this how godzilla looks like? It’s massive." Meela looked in amazement. "Are we going to have a monster-fight now? Tree versus demon-walker."

Size-wise, it is larger than the earlier demon-champions. But it feels like maybe it’s not as strong. Or maybe there’s some trade-off. It certainly doesn’t feel as threatening, despite its enormous size.

A demon champion. I’ve long awaited this day.

The special anti-demon bolts are ready. I’ve gained 20 levels and many skills since I last fought the demon champions 8 years ago, and I have more hero fragments too. I have prepared for this moment, with skills, and items. I believe I can take it, and now, to see whether I can.

The giant demon walked, and now it’s on the very edges of my forest.

And that’s as far as I’m going to let it go. A wall of wood shields appear in front of it.

"You shall not pass!" Alexis shouted.

Meela did a facepalm. "That’s lame."

[Super anti-demon rootstrikes] x 5. All tipped with the specially-made demon bolts. One rootstrike for one of those giant legs. The roots shoot out of the ground, a dense energy surrounds each of the bolts and the edge.

And it exploded right on the legs. The demon-walker roared, and this time, it shot out a few energy blasts. I blocked three of them, but the fourth one left levelled a patch of forests, and destroyed a section of the Treefolk’s village.

Still, I’m happy. The rootstrikes did what I expected it to do. It stopped walking, as large chunks were taken out of its 5 legs. It looked unsteady, as if it’s going to crumble on it’s own weight. But it didn’t.

It roared again, this time it turned it’s head. It’s not aimed at me, but at the 4th layer walls.

Shit! I created the wood shields in the wrong place, and the blast vaporised a large chunk of the 4th layer walls. Some of the beetles and soldiers there were killed.

"TreeTree! Don’t let it shoot at us!" Jura shouted, some of the men were buried under the rubble.

Heh, all it can do now is shoot? The spires on it’s back glowed and shot out red beams and it set a portion of the forest on fire. It’s large head roared again, and blasted one more energy blast.

My wooden shields caught the shot, but still, the impact caused the space right before the shield to burst into flames.

[Constrict] Using vines, I attempt to force the head to aim only at me.

[Super anti-demon root strike] x 5. More bolts, and this time, before it could release another round of energy blasts, I took out it’s 5 feet. The giant crashed into the ground, and with it came a huge shockwave of smoke and dust. But it’s not dead yet, the spires on it’s back still shooting beams.

Still, I’m confident. Let’s see whether it has any tricks left.

[Super anti-demon root strike] x 5.

More bolts. I have about 90 bolts left, and have many more super-root strikes to go.

It struggled.

It roared again, and more energy blasts. This time, I think it used a special attack, because it blasted through all of the defensive shields I had, and then blew up three [subsidiary trees] and then the energy blast smacked right into my main body.

And I felt a chunk of my bark fall off. "Oh. I’m still alive." Thank goodness for all the fragments.

Well, let’s retaliate.

[Super anti-demon root strike] x 10. The hard shell around the main body shattered on impact, and a few of my roots struck whatever’s inside. I think I hit something important.

The ground shook, like something exploded inside of it’s body..

It’s head roared again, charging another energy blast. This time, because of the poor angle, the shot went wide and flew into the sky.

No chances. I shot out another 10 [Super Anti-demon Root Strike], aimed at the giant head. It cracked, and then the entire head crumbled.

The spires of the castle collapsed. A humanoid giant appeared in it’s place. It’s... body is half-hexed, as if the demon-flesh is rotting, and each step, chunks of it fall off, as if it’s melting. If this is what the hexbomb does, it feels like the future’s gonna be quite... grim.

"Uh..."

The giant humanoid demon stepped forward, and more parts fall off. Yet, I see it struggling, as it attempted to regenerate the destroyed parts. It’s an ongoing battle between the demon’s regeneration and the corruption of the hexbomb.

"Uh..."

It’s a demon, and there’s no time for caution.

[Super anti-demon root strike] x 2.

Two roots shoots out of the ground, and impaled the giant through it’s chest and what I suspect is the head. Seriously, a humanoid demon.

And then it disintegrated, along with the rest of the demon walker body.

"Uh... is that it?"

"The walker is down! The walker is down!" Alexis shouted and clapped her spirit-like hands.

I mentally made a fistbump. I’ve finally reached the point where I can take on a champion by myself.

As the body disintegrated, the aura from the spires faded too. The elves, centaurs, treefolks and beetles who are busy fighting the regular demonoids, suddenly found their opponents become far weaker than they originally were. The energy that was resisting and offsetting my [lesser demonic suppression] gone, and now, they felt the full effect of the aura.

What’s left of the 20,000 or so weakened humanoid demons fell to the might of the remaining forces. Or skewered in the flood of root strikes that followed.

[Level up! You are now level 137! (+5 levels)]

[Skill acquired : Healing Aura]

[Skill upgraded : Subsidiary Trees - 15,000. Subsidiary Trees gains a share of main body's environmental adaptations &amp; Auras. Only applies to Subsidiary trees within 100km of main-tree]

[Skill upgraded : Woodcrafting]

[Skill upgraded : Steelwood Barrier]

[Skill upgraded : Root tunnels]

Post-battle assessment

Year 81 Month 6 (continued)

"We lived." Yvon sat. "I thought that was... not the hardest battle I’ve been in."

Jura tapped her shoulder. "We still got work to do." He pointed to the many, many injured soldiers, and the dead. The energy blasts from the Demon Walker still killed many, and there was a portion of New Freeka that's blasted wide open. A whole load of repairs to be done.

"But... but... the demon walker was defeated... we deserve a celebration!" The captains said.

Jura smiled, "Perhaps. Though I would give credit to TreeTree's exceptional anti-demon weapons. The demon general would have lasted a lot longer without his demon-draining weapons."

"But you would still win." Jura just smiled and looked at a young girl running over, her short hair fluttering.

Lausanne ran, she's covered in dirt, blood, and a whole load of demonic shards. Mostly unhurt.

"Uncle!" She landed right in front of him. "I destroyed 87 demons!"

"Good job." Jura smiled and just rubbed her head. "Hope you gain a level!"

"I hope I gain many levels!"

Jura smiled. "How is it, your first true battlefield experience?"

"Oh it is a lot less bloody and messy than my dreams. I think TreeTree exaggerated how gory and brutal it is..."

"TreeTree been giving you gory war-dreams, eh?" Jura frowned a little. Using the essences, and my own memories of wars, I could somewhat mold the general direction and types of dreams Lausanne gets. I honestly don't know what exactly happens in the dreams, [dream tutor] is kinda like a random map generator where I put in the parameters, ingredients, and things just happen.

"Yeah. I told him I wanted to feel like-" Lausanne then paused. "Oops."

Yvon frowned too. "I better check what dreams the other kids are getting, it's not good to have visions of death and destruction at that age."

What, I need to start parental guidances for dreams now?

Lausanne shook her head. "TreeTree is just helping, so that I know what to do when it's the real thing."

Jura sighed, "Anyway, not a good time to argue aboit it. Let's get the wounded to the healers, those seriously wounded to the biopods, and the dead back to the morgue."

There's a lot of wounded and dead soldiers, despite my interference. About 800 soldiers, and close to 7,000 beetles still died in the fight against the demons, the soldier deaths mostly from the demon knights. But then, my new [healing aura] kicked in, and for the injured, their wounds begin to heal, even before the healers get to them. And my new aura even improves the effect of healing.

"New skill?" Jura asked, noticing the unusually quick recover of his own cuts and wounds, and those injured suddenly finding their strength returning to them.

"Yup."

The mood all round is mixed, but getting better. Some groups are upset and mourn the death of their comrades. Some are just incredibly amazed that they survived a battle against a towering giant, and of those that survived, a lot of the soldiers would gain levels from this battle.

The citizens also got the signal to leave their respective bunkers and hideouts, and there is a big blast that wrecked a portion of the city. I also had to get the mages to help put out the fires, since I don't have my own water magic.

Beetles closed in on what remains of the demon walker. I had a quarantine zone established, and Madeus, our resident wizard, tasked to investigate the remains. There's a massive rubble where the main body of the walker collapsed, and most of the demon walker's body disintegrated into nothingness, there are still some remains.

The rotting thing that is the hex. Like a sludge, it now pooled on the ground.

"Aeon, can you see this?" Madeus poked it with his wooden stick. It kinda latched on, like a slimy thing. Madeus likes to refer to me as Aeon, since he feels it’s inappropriate to refer to me as TreeTree. He poked it. It’s not exactly... a slime, but it sure radiated a kind of energy. "I don’t feel too good being so close."

"Hmm, then stay away."

[Inspection]

A hex, made from the sacrifice of souls.

Uh. Doesn’t tell much,

"Can you do anything about it?"

"Uh..." Madeus tried to use some spells, the hex kind of just... stayed there. It didn’t react to it.

"Can you blast it to smithereens or something?"

"Nope." Madeus did a fireball. Hex remained. It’s not exactly... destroy-able. It kinda just gets splattered.

"So... we just leave it there?" I ask, this is new to me.

Madeus looked at his staff, the hex damaged the wood somewhat, a section that came in contact with the hex rots. "Yeah. I think it’s best we just seal off this area, and let the hex dissipate naturally."

"Uh." Hmm... I’m not sure whether I should get near the hex, though. Alexis’s nuclear description somehow made me suspicious that this hex might be ‘radioactive residue’. But, I have to know for sure. "Can you take a very small sample? Just one cup?"

"Oh. Okay." I had one of the beetles carry the small wooden container. The almost-black hex-slime seemed to have a purple glow, and really, Alexis took a glance at it, shook her head.

"Disgusting."

As a precaution, I created a biolab some distance away, such that, if anything happened, such as... rotting, I could cut off the biolab and I don’t suffer the consequences.

"This hex thing... it’s created from sacrifices, eh?" I asked.

"Yeah. Blood magic’s quite special in the sense that it powers itself, and lasts really long. But of course, the cost of it is... usually someone’s life. It’s common in the countries with extensive slavery some time ago, but it’s practice and use has dwindled as the constant use of slaves is... unsustainable, and there’s often a great deal of backlash from blood magic, such as the spellcasters suffering nightmares or perpetual hauntings." Alexis went into full nerdy magic mode. Even Madeus didn’t know that much, but it seems Alexis was a mage, and she did somehow manage to read such things.

"It’s just bad." Meela frowned her wooden eyebrows. I think they look like little stems from a flower. She's got an actual flower on her head now, she says it helps in the whole hospitality business thing.

"According to our modern sensibilities." Alexis frowned. "But blood magic is primordial, I recall meeting a shaman on one of the islands we visited, and they used to sacrifice goats and cows to the gods, and they say they’ve been doing for ages. Kind of like our ancient civilisations, Meela."

"Which one?"

"Most of the mesoamerican ones, even now there’s some ritual sacrifices that happen in many cultures. I would think there must be some parallels with how blood magic is in this world. Perhaps, they sacrifice and trade for some godly powers?"

I take a look at the blackish hex-liquid. Godly? Certainly doesn’t feel that way, but well, what do I know?

"How do you plan to investigate it? Biolab? Pour it into your pod and figure it out?" Alexis asked.

"Yeah. It certainly looks a bit... organic." Well. Yeah. Black, hex like thing. Maybe it’s like sludge, from like... a petrol spill? But there’s a purple glow, so there’s clearly some magic to it happening.

I decided I needed more time to think about what I’m going to do, so I let the specimen sit on a little storage container in that lone biolab in a corner of the valley.

-

Year 81 Month 7

After a brief status check, New Freeka emerged mostly... unharmed. The site of where the ‘hex-sludge’ left behind by the massive demon walker, by order of the Council and Order, is to be quarantined. So it is now surrounded by walls and guarded by beetles. If reports are true, they will spawn monsters, though so far, I’ve not seen any.

The ‘sludge’ kind of just pooled together into a large blackish pool, and it seems they are somewhat magically ‘intertwined’, like magnets, that they will naturally merge into one interconnected body. Not that anyone wants to get near it. It seems Madeus said he felt sick for a few days, and I had to check on him.

It’s not a ‘bodily’ sickness, or maybe if it is, it’s not something that [healing aura] or my powers do offset. It really does give credence to the whole radiation theory that Alexis has, but the idea of doing nuclear fusion or fission with souls just... boggles my mind.

"I think the [tree of prayer] does relieve the symptoms a bit. I think its all the ‘negative’ energy from the blood sacrifice." Madeus theorised. Again, something worth investigating. Or maybe it could just be additional placebo from the calming effects of the [Tree of Prayer].

On the political front, the defeat of the demon walker was significant, and greatly boosted the Order's standing. Jura, is now viewed as a hero, and the soldiers, even those from the Council, now view Jura as a respectful, good man, because he fought on the front lines, unlike the Council who hid, or fled. That meant the council had to shut up on their anti-Order rhetoric, though I suspect this silence is only a temporary one.

The euphoria and memories of this battle will fade, and with it, these power-hungry folks will rear their head again, someday.

And the news of the victory spread quickly, drawing the attention of the guilds. "The Merchant guild has determined that we are a high-priority safezone in the region, and they will send a fair bit of resources and manpower here." The Order's treasurer read out the notice. "The guild plans to explore the possibility of establishing a regional trade coordination and cartography center, and also a collection of high-security storage warehouse."

Jura clapped his hand. "I must confess I don’t exactly understand what some of those words are, but sounds like a good thing."

The merchants’ guilds are essentially like the world’s shipping companies, they are the blood vessels that connect the world. So much produce and money changes hands through the guilds, that they often are able to sway kingdoms into fighting wars for them. But I wonder whether this world has protests against banks and corporations. After all, capitalism can be pretty nasty.

The treasurer nodded. "It is. They will be having a proper office here, and an actual [merchant prince] or [guild trader], rather than just appointed representatives. This is usually followed with the opening of a guild’s marketplace and exchange, and the regional contracts department. The council will be approached to discuss the regulations on the markets, once they arrive to survey the location."

Jura nodded. Honestly trade is not his strongest suit, though he has improved. Laufen just smiled. "Don’t worry, most of us will attend the meetings, and will let you have the summary."

The recent battle also made the elves think about the future of their combat forces.

"We need more combat experience." Lausanne looked at Yvon. "The demons are coming, you know it, we know it, everyone knows it. All of us, need to have experience." Lausanne referred to the rest of the Valthorn, especially the 4 girls from the first batch.

Yvon shook her head. "I spoke with TreeTree and Jura, and we’re only letting those level 20 to actually join the battle. Until then, the rest of them are staying back." Only one of the girls hit level 20, so she will join the next battle, if there is one.

"But Lady Yvon! It doesn’t make sense! We gain levels when we participate in battles, holding us back is just taking away our levels! And TreeTree needs high leveled fighters to fight the high leveled enemies."

"I know, but they are too young, and they are not ready. They are not you, Lausanne."

"If they don’t get chances, they will never be." Lausanne’s now... 12, so she's got more opinions. "I gained seven levels in that battle. Seven! I’m almost level 40 now." By most accounts, she’d be classified as a genius. "Wasn’t it you that told us that during great battles, explosive levelling happens? Then why are they not given the chance?"

Yvon sighed. "I... I get your point. Let me discuss with the rest, perhaps an arrangement depending on what kind of battles. If it’s a smaller scale battle, we can consider putting you and the girls on support."

Lausanne nodded.

For me, I do need to expand the Valthorns. It is true that I can't multi-task as well as I like, and when I end up focused on the demon walker my ability to coordinate all the other fights on ground had to be delegated to my tree-minds, and yet, I needed my skills on hand against the walker.

So, I need more high level fighters. Multiple Jura and Yvons, to win such a fight consistently, with minimal casualties. Speaking of casualties...

There was a funeral procession for those who fell in battle. It was something one of the officers suggested, something they had from where they came from. A practice of one of the world’s southern continental religions, the Urgama, to honor the dead, and the benefits of it is that the dead’s spirit apparently enchants the surviving soldiers to carry on the fight. The mechanics of how such a ‘magic’ work is interesting, and as a Soul Tree that helps the reincarnation and passing on of the fallen spirits, it’s... educational.

"Surely they don’t have time to do such processions when a demon army is on their doorstep?" Alexis wondered, the Southern Continent is embroiled in massive wars with the demon hordes. According to the merchants, there are 4 demon-walkers in that continent alone, and inland trade prices are sky-high.

"I wouldn’t know."

Well, for us, the procession went on, and... we didn’t get any blessings. Or at least, nothing I can see for now. It’s all business-as-usual in my soul realm too, people are dying all over the continent to the demon hordes, but thanks to the fall of the demon walker, it seemed the rate of death throughout the entire continent also somewhat dropped.

I wonder whether it’s a coincidence, or the walker has some kind of continental-boost ability. If it does, would the King have some kind of worldwide ability?

But anyway, it’s still not the end. Now that the demon-walker battle is over, I go back to making more demon-weapons, and research. The whole schtick with restoring Jura’s hand is still ongoing, so... more brutal animal explosion followed, but... I’m getting there. I think.

I had to get some help in cleaning the room though, since... there’s a lot of blood splattered everywhere. So I made a quarantine area where the specimen animals remain.

And blow up. Or lately, it’s more like leaking pipes. Like the tail would regrow and then somehow a hole would appear, and blood just keeps dripping out of it. And no amount of healing would fix it because it’s a flaw in the ‘soul’.

In a way, it’s like... 3D printing. I have to set up the ‘template’ in the soul, and then the body would heal in accordance to that template. At the same time, I need to make the ‘soul-part’, using my new tools, in a 3D printing fashion, putting the bits and pieces in, piece by piece. All of this is from a sudden epiphany, when I saw a key-duplication contraption one of the New Freeka’s smiths had.

Essentially, I needed a tool that worked simultaneously, that reads whatever scan results I have, and reproducing it in the soul forge.

Also, I needed to also build a ‘library’ of organs that I can use in the future. Kind of like playing Spores, the game. Honestly, I didn’t know why it took me so long to figure shit out. Maybe there’s mold in my wooden brain somewhere.

Oh and on research... where was I?

Research Status:

Beetle - anti-magma armors stage 4 - completed

Metal hyperaccumulator trees - Stage 1 - completed

Phytoremediation process - basic - 10 months

Ah yes. I have new accumulator trees. These Hyperaccumulators function primarily to absorb high levels of metallic content from the contaminated poop-ground, which continues to be something of a problem, even if a contained one.

But I suppose it’s a good time to force the council.

"We’re having the upper hand after the recent victory. The population sees us as the protectors of the valley, and TreeTree’s position is close to unassailable. And we want to use that goodwill on... sewers?" One of the treasurers tried to debate with Jura in the meeting room.

"Yes. Sewers. We need sewers."

"Why not more seats? Have our own candidates on the council against the other group? Some of the independent leaning councillors now feel they should lean towards us, given the Order’s secure position as the defenders of the valley. No political power can change that."

Jura frowned. Sometimes, the Order’s own officers get sucked into politics.

"Perhaps we need more resources for the Order’s military?" Jura frowned too. Between me and Jura, both of us generally feel that quantity is unnecessary. I’ll need about three to four months to replenish the beetles, but my beetle army is tough, and for what it’s worth, unlimited and expendable. The only drawback is that they can’t gain levels, but who cares when I have so many of them. If anything, it’s the Valthorns that need to be expanded. There’s really no point throwing more fodder at a monster like the demon-general or the demon walker.

-

The merchants delivered the gems that provided light and other stuff meant for the hideouts, and it came with an alchemist' contraption thing, so I requested for one of each for research, which led to an upgrade for my labs.

[Biolab upgraded : Centrifuge]

[Material lab upgraded : Centrifuge]

These gems are essentially concentrated ‘light’, ‘mana-sensitive rock’ and ‘mana’, that, via some fluke of natural magical forces, formed into a gem. There are apparently ‘artificial’ variants as well, but these don’t last as long as the naturally mined gems.

This new centrifuge essentially acts as a concentrator, creating for higher concentrations and enriched versions of... Ginseng. Okay, it works for more than just ginseng. I meant things, but when I was thinking about the possible uses of this item..

Wait.

If I need to concentrate ginseng, and concentrating them eventually makes them into gems, that means I should be able to use gems as [soul forge] components? But I tried that previously. When I acquired gemstones.

Running the ginseng through the centrifuge I got...

[Concentrated ginseng - medium quality] that takes the appearance of a brownish paste, kinda like those kind of funky paste used in exotic oriental massages.

Is this it? Maybe I need to soak it in mana or something? Like how there’s a layer of mana on the body? It’s really not going anywhere, is it.

"Again?" Jura asked. Well, he's busy. There’s still a lot of demonic movements to keep track off. It’s been a year since the rifts opened, so the demon king should appear soon.

"No, I just wanted to test something out..."

Infusing ginseng into Jura’s soul using the soul forge took about an hour, strangely easy

[Ginseng infusion successful.]

"How do you feel?"

"Uh... nothing? Did you do anything?" Jura woke up from the quick nap. "Or maybe not yet?"

"Maybe it takes a while."

Year 81 Month 8

"Will the Council grant us rights to grant us refuge, rights to purchase land and build a mansion?" A royal envoy from a nearby nation of Rajahskan came, with 'gifts', and money. They were not the only one.

Well, what's happening was quite simple.

The royalties of the nearby nation, now that they realised I could fend off a Demon Walker, want to set up a refuge. Essentially, they will buy land, build a small palace where their family can hide. Although the Kings usually do not leave, there are some weird rules about King's powers being related to being 'present' in their Kingdoms, these Kings want to protect their offspring and successors by sending them away to a safehouse. Kind of like what Madeus' allies did. But they want exemptions, special treatment, and the ability to ‘rule’ over their own properties. Which, is absolutely ridiculous.

"It's politically advantageous for us to accept. But if we do, we must be prepared to accept most of them, except those who have crossed us." A councillor said.

A delegation from the Council, and the envoys came to present the case. The Council, being the usual politicians, would like to agree. But Jura said. "This is a decision for Aeon. It is his protection to give, not us"

"I do not fancy the creation of a royal district where our laws do not apply." The idea that all these runaway princes come to my place and set up little outposts just frankly annoys me. When I imagine all these stuck up royals treating this little valley of mine as their summer palace, I just feel disgusted. "No. They may come as regular guests, but they will be treated in the same manner as any other refugee in this valley. If the Council wishes to extend any privileged treatment to them, let them know that I will not recognise that privilege, and if I so desire, I will not hesitate to crush them. In this valley, they are ordinary souls, like anyone else."

The Councillors froze. "But... but... Counsel Jura, surely Aeon can recognise the value these royals can bring?"

Jura shrugged. "I’m afraid the Tree Spirit is very firm about not giving royals any privileged treatment. And if I may add, accepting royals and granting them special treatment contradicts why New Freeka exists. Do you guys really want to put up with the whims of royalty all over again? Do you not forget that it is royal conflicts that brought all of you here? They can still come, should the demons ever threaten their lands, but they will be like any other refugee."

One of the Councillors stared at Jura. "The Tree Spirit has no concept of royalty, isn’t it?"

Jura nodded. "He is aware of it, but he does not intend to recognise their power in this valley."

Three of the envoys, from three kingdoms were present. "Surely there is something that our Kingdoms may provide, to sway the Tree Spirit’s view?"

It is one of the Order’s head priests who responded. "Aeon’s Protection is a blessing, and one cannot haggle or bargain one’s blessing, even if you are royalty. Accept, or do not. When you stand before a local deity, what is a royal?"

I mentally cheered for the priest, good comeback. I’m a bit embarrassed that they think I’m some kind of deity, but I’m too far into that whole religious schtick to bother correcting it now. And if I gain even more levels, I guess a deity isn’t too far off anyway.

The envoys frowned. One of the envoys, the one from Rajahskan then said. "It’s a shame that the Tree Spirit of this valley rejects our King’s offer. I will relay the message and I fear he will not be pleased."

I told Jura then. "Is that a threat? I don’t like receiving threats." Of course, the envoys couldn’t hear this.

Jura smiled at the envoy. "I am afraid your King must get used to it. Aeon’s under no obligation to obey a King’s demands. What more one of another nation."

"And Aeon doesn’t not even heed the views of his Council?" The envoy retorted.

"Aeon was here before the Council was born, and he may remove the Council should he so pleases." Jura smiled, but it was the creepy kind of smile, and the room’s air suddenly felt heavy. A [Warlord]’s Skill, [Heavyweight Presence]. He looked at the Councillors, and the Councillors somehow all took two steps back.

The envoy too, took a step back. Then, he took a deep breath, and sighed. "I see. But surely... we can still purchase property in New Freeka?"

"You may, but your property will be subject to all of New Freeka’s rules and regulations. There will be no exemptions. In short, you will be like any other wealthy merchant who invests in a property in New Freeka. And know this, you will be watched."

The envoys traded glances. They discussed with each other a bit, but then they all decided to leave. But I could still eavesdrop on them as they walk back to their inns.

"Who does this Tree Spirit think it is?" One envoy said. "Our King’s adventurers can chop down a tree."

"But your adventurers cannot slay a demon walker." The envoy for another country said. "Or you wouldn’t be here."

"Ugh."

The Rajahskan envoy said, "A powerful druid or monster tamer should be able to sway this Tree Spirit’s mind."

"I wouldn’t count on that. Any monster able to slay a demon walker has to be at least Level 100, and you won’t find many druids or monster tamers willing to do even try taming a creature of that level. It’s a life-or-death battle."

The Rajahskan envoy nodded. "Perhaps. Maybe a heroic artifact could."

The two other envoys eyes lit up. "Ah... that certainly changes things. Is there such an artifact?"

The Rajahskan envoy, "The Elven Kingdom’s may still possess Roana’s Staff. I reckon a level 80 druid wielding that can bend this Tree’s will."

The two envoys laughed. "And I thought you have such an item! That staff was destroyed long ago!"

"Is it? I had the impression it’s what they used to keep the Guardian Tree of the Elven Capital under control..."

"Hah. Don’t tell me you believe some of that kind of silly propaganda. It’s a myth to maintain the royal family's legitimacy."

The envoy frowned. "Well... the King won’t be pleased with this. I... I don’t know how to go back."

"Well, we’re in the same boat. I bet the King’s gonna have my head. He tends to do that when he loses his temper."

"I’m just going to fake my death. Demons killed me on the journey back. That’s going to be my story."

The three envoys sulked together. Are there seriously no good Kings around? Or do they just die because they are too nice?

Year 81 Month 9

Another demon walker has been spotted on our continent this month, and strength returned to the demonoid forces throughout the continent. Thankfully, it appeared so far south, nearer to Gila. I guess they can use their newfound sacrificial blood-magic powers, and test it out. For us, we still see small packs of roaming demonoids close to our territories, but they are easily crushed by the patrolling beetles.

It’s a bit annoying that we only free from demon walkers for 3 months, but then again, I’m expecting the demon king within the next 6 months. Can’t be helped that the ‘escorts’ will increase before the main character comes along. Let’s just hope it appears on the Southern Continent, where there are now 6 demon walkers. The nations in the South managed to kill 1 using the blood magic, but it takes more than one shot to slay the demon walkers.

So, it’s really quite a miserable battlefield, the Southern Continent. I heard from Jura that they’ve sent all sorts of requests for assistance.

Ah, too bad for them, that’s their problem. For now, I focus on rebuilding my stockpile of anti-demon bolts.

Treelevator?

Year 81 Month 10

Winter arrived early. Apparently something to do with moon-movements, according to Madeus, every 30-32 year or so the moons change position and somehow cause this world’s winter to last a month longer. Not sure how that actually works, and why, or whether its magic

And fun fact about the world, nobody can agree on how many moons there are. Some say three, some say four, some say ten. The night sky, even with magic, sometimes reveal odd ‘moons’, that only appear every now and then.

"Ellipticals moons." Alexis said, she’s been sky-gazing almost every day. She’s even got a telescope recently. "I suspect some of them have century-long orbits."

"That’s like... crazy." Meela’s quite into the moon and star stuff too, but mostly for astrological sign stuff. Some of her guests enjoy that kind of service. "I thought even the biggest planets from our world orbits the sun in a few years, how can something orbit a small planet so slowly?"

"Or they could just be comets. Not strange for them to mistake comets for moons. Comets have crazy orbits."

"Could just be magic." Well, that’s my view. I mean, there’s really no reason why the astronomical rules that apply from one world, should carry over into another world. The forces acting on interstellar objects could be different, maybe, there's like a 5th magic force, or maybe dark matter in this world comprise of aether or star mana. You know, weird shit like that.

"True." Alexis sighed. "TreeTree, how high can you grow?"

"Uh... why?" And that was a weird off tangent comment.

"I wonder whether it’s possible for you to grow until well... space. Like a space-elevator. Or maybe you could be like a super-tall viewing gallery and observation tower."

"That’s going to be absurdly high." I said. "No way." Well, the required height of a space-elevator is dependent on rotational spin and planetary gravity, no, unless I have some kind of magical item or object that create some kind of ‘levitation effect’ such that it functions as a counterweight... I doubt it. I recall Earth’s space elevator needed to be like... 35,000km high. How could a tree ever grow that tall? Unless there's some really wonky magic.

"I mean, maybe you could be like... magically super strong that you could support the weight. Maybe you could even reach like... uh... what’s the word for it. Geostationary orbit?" Alexis mused. "Or Low Planet Orbit?"

Meela shook her head. "I think you should just think about using magic. Magical rockets, Alexis. Magical rockets and levitation."

But why would I even want to grow so tall that I reach space? Is there something to achieve there? Fruit-satellites? Or would star mana harvesting be far more efficient because of the altitude and exposure to direct star-light? Or more solar power?

Seriously, growing so tall just sounds like... Jack and the beanstalk? Unless.

"You know, maybe ancient space elevators are how stories of world trees come around. You know, Yggdrasil supposedly connected itself to 9 worlds, and if you imagined a modern, futuristic setting, a tree-shaped space elevator would be the ‘gate’ to those other worlds." Alexis said.

"Oh wait. Do you want me to explain what all those words are?"

"Yeah." And Alexis went on about space elevators, Yggdrasil, and stuff like that. I sort of recall the story.

It’s a fascinating thought, but I suppose there are magical... alternatives to a tree that grows into space. And why would I want to go to space?

A tree cannot into space. Or can it?

Anyway, enough about space, and winter, and moons. Demon battles intensified throughout the world, refugee movements increased, and news of death, destruction, glory, and victories flood the merchant channels. And that Gila country was crazy enough to actually use the blood sacrifice again

And I think Gila used three rounds of that blood sacrifice ritual. Because my sensors detected three surges of magic.

But it didn’t kill the walker, though it did somewhat disable it. News reports two of the hex-bombs hit the walker’s legs, and so the walker’s unable to move. Still, that didn’t bring an end to the intense fighting, as the walker did what it could, which was to spawn demonoids and flood the area with them.

So, it kinda sucks, because... the walker’s a walking demon-hive. It just vomits out demonoids when it doesn’t move.

And thanks to the merchants, there’s increasing awareness that the demonic ‘camps’ are all hives as well, constantly spawning demonoids, and taking them down would be key to reducing their threat.

"I think they are like ants, despite looking like.. Humans." Meela suddenly said, giving a cleaning analogy. "How do you kill ants? Wipe out the nests, or the ants will just keep roaming the entire kitchen."

Turns out, she’s not the only one with that idea. Jura’s been asked to support a 5,000 strong force meant to take down a demon fort found in the vicinity of a neighbouring kingdom. A ‘coalition’ force, a common thing during demonic wars. I recall that Lord Rajjiv Nung was also part of a coalition force.

"So... are you going?" Yvon asked.

Jura shrugged. "I’m not keen, and I told the merchants that my place is here. Joining coalition forces are for youngsters."

"I’m starting to think you spend too much time with TreeTree, that you’re getting his stationary-habits."

Jura didn’t mind the jab. "TreeTrees got a point. Staying home’s nice, and I’ve got better things to do. Like practice. Besides, they’ve got a general, don’t they? Or some of the human elites. They don’t need me."

Yvon sneered.

"They’ll be fine. I don’t quite trust this coalition force anyway." Jura felt these coalitions generally had ulterior motives, like getting a good sense of what his strengths are, and so on. I think that’s his diplomatic-sense tingling.

"Heh." Yvon’s not exactly trusting of them either. "Merchants probably just want to clear that base for a trade route. It is between this side of the city and the other, and they can’t be using their airships all the time."

The coalition is partly funded by the merchants, and they will handle the logistics, supply and also provide reimbursement. Forces from various kingdoms would join, usually the lower ranked ones. Battles are a good chance to gain levels, and usually such coalition forces try not to take on challenging opponents, due to the political fallout from a failed coalition attack.

Throughout the world there are multiple such coalitions, many based on century-old treaties for mutual protection, or ancient commitments with temples and religions.

"But they will insist on someone, and the council will look to us to volunteer someone." Madeus, who’s also in the meeting, responded. He’s not keen either, and like Jura, he’d prefer if he could just study and conduct magic research all day.

"I’ll ask one of the captains to volunteer, then. He’s about level 40s and should see more battle experience."

"I’d send Lausanne if she’s a few years older." Yvon shrugged.

"True, but she’s not. So she stays. We have enough demons roaming the countryside as it is."

Well, Lausanne and the Valthorns are now attached to a mobile ‘cavalry’ unit. They ride beetles, in a way, as the proto-beetleknight squad, travel the countryside and hunt any demon packs that we spot. Helps that I can telepathically communicate with her over the distances, for coordination.

A feature of her special-familiar contract.

"Maybe Roma can join if he’s a bit older... depending on how long this demon king lasts..."

Yvon shook her head. "Roma doesn’t seem to have inherited our combat talents. He’s more... into books. Perhaps a mage." Yvon’s son, Roma, is about 9 now, and he seems to prefer being at home with his books. Her mom struggled to get him to practice with her, and well, there’s a bit of resentment between the two. Maybe he needed a father figure. In fact, Roma’s relationship with Eriz is a whole load better, and Yvon frequently had to rely on Eriz to speak to Roma.

Jura nodded. It’s between her and her son, not for us to intervene.

"Ah never mind." Yvon diverted the subject. "I hope the girls come back safely."

Lausanne lead 4 of the girls, together with a group of 100 beetles. They’re headed for a 100 strong demonic raiding force. They should win relatively easily, and Horns is close behind with a force of another 100 beetles.

Even though New Freeka’s territory is small, my subsidiary tree network stretches far, thanks to my prior expansions, and with my newfound Aura-sharing skills, the subsidiary tree network functions like ‘defensive’ lines, a place where the intercepting troops can return, should the battle turns bad.

Gradually, I am extending this network of trees further, they are after all, a great early warning system. Trees have eyes, y’know.

Year 81 Month 11

Wars. Wars. Wars.

Battles and battles, seemingly endless ones. So much, that my soul realm is filled with the souls of the recently departed. My soul harvesters are busy, battlefield after battlefield they visit, and each trip, they bring back more souls.

Even as the cold began to sweep through the continent, the demons do not stop fighting. And so, the defenders are forced into battle even when they do not wish it.

"I feel a little bad, being safe and warm here." One of the captains joked, the other one was out, as part of the merchant coalition force.

Madeus laughed, and then he sipped on his ginger tea. The group decided to have something a bit more cozy, so they brewed a few pots of fruit tea, ginger tea, garlic tea, and snacks. Mainly some fried potatoes, chips, fries. One of Meela’s kitchen projects was to recreate potato fries, because part of the global-domination plans involved being a chain-restaurant, like... McDonalds. So she had to have fries.

Wesley, and our priests sat around the meeting room too. "Don’t jinx us. Appreciate that we can still huddle around in such comfort, even when there’s a demon walker around."

Meela’s happily playing the caterer. Apparently serving food contributes to her levels as a Hotel-Tree. Jura, Laufen and Lausanne also ate the snacks. "Yeah. Never know when the good times come to an end."

There’s a nod of agreement throughout the room. I wonder whether they feel it. That the demon king is coming. I certainly think I can. The strange twitches to my star-mana leaves. The unusual fluctuations there...

"I’m just missing good chilli sauce to go with my fries. Or ketchup, for that matter." Meela whined to both me and Alexis. "I need to get chillies and tomatoes."

Meela clearly’s more focused on unlocking new recipes for her restaurant. I’m starting to think she’s playing hotel-tycoon or Overcooked, since the whole demon king thing is really just a ‘distraction’ for her.

"The council’s of the view that we should be building more walls, and have the sewer project modified." One of the treasurers speak to the group. Even though it’s cozy, it’s still a Valtrian Order meeting.

"Four layers of walls is insufficient?"

"Well, they thought that some of the collateral damage could be minimised, and we do have the capacity to add walls. As for the sewer project, they’re now thinking of adding bunkers and hideouts to double it’s function as a safe zone from the demons. Should we oppose such a motion?"

Jura shook his head. "I think it’s fine. It’s aligned to what we wanted, and the city should be allowed to protect itself. But it should be funded by the Council, not from the Order."

Most of the other meeting attendees nodded. Then went back to eating.

"Any other business?" Jura asked. Most of them had just completed regular updates and reports. Discussions on the demonic forces take up about half the time, due to the far reaching implications of the demons on trade, funding, military and infrastructure.

"The demon king, according to whispers among the temples, will arrive within the next 3 months." A priest said.

In my mind, well, that’s what I think too. This meant the temples may have some kind of star-mana equipment.

"How reliable is this prediction?" Jura leaned forward. "And even if so, what can we do about it?"

One of the captains, "I believe the best thing to do, Counsel, is to just keep watch. You are right to say that we have no way to stop whatever the demon king does. Be on the lookout, and move out of it’s way."

"Agreed." Jura nodded. I think it’s probably the best decision as well. "I’m personally more interested in when the heroes will arrive, what powers do they have, and how can we spot them. So that we can stay out of their way."

"We... don't like heroes?" Meela asked, the crowd here doesn't know her true identity as a former reincarnated hero.

"If they are not humans, I will like them." A captain said. "Else these stupid heroes will buy into the propaganda the royals feed them and treat us non-humans as enemies, once the war is over."

Meela did not reply. I think she's trying to remember what the other kings and royalties have said to her in the past. She deftly served a plate of fried potatoes to one of the priests.

"Thankfully all the previous generation heroes died with the demon king." It was a priest that said it. "The post-war political jostling is usually... terrible. Heroes who see it as their duty from the gods to correct all that is wrong in this world."

Meela stopped. She sighed.

Yvon, who was invited for the food, nodded. "Indeed. We should do our best not to offend them, we stick out, with our presence as a non-human nation in this region. But let's hope the gods spread out the heroes a bit, and that some of them are non-humans. If that's the case, the heroes will balance each other out. Or maybe all of them die to the demon king."

Meela sagged a little.

"Never mind, never mind. Let's just wait and see what happens..." Jura munched on a piece of bread.

Year 81 Month 12

The Hutan druids responded that the meetup with the other tree spirits will be delayed because of the demons. Their efforts are dedicated to defending their areas against the demons.

Ah well, I didn't expect much from these druids anyway. I intended to reach out to these tree spirits without their intermediation anyway. I certainly would prefer to have discussions without the eavesdropping of others. Somehow, I have a gut feeling that there will be things only we, tree spirits, should know.

Or should I say root-feeling? What would be a plant equivalent of gut anyway.

After my recent level gains, and my recent subsidiary tree numbers, I might have just enough to extend one long chain to the Giant Lilypod City, but I would have to give up all the other subsidiary trees around, and that would leave.... The valley defenseless and without it’s early warning system.

Ugh.

I’ll wait for my next subsidiary tree upgrade then.

Or maybe... I can extend half way there and see whether I gain levels killing the demons I encounter along the way. But Giant Lilypod City is way down south of my continent. Hmmm, even past that Gila country where the leg-less demon walker is.

Hmmm....

Decisions.

-

Treelecommunications

Year 82 Month 1

A new year, but same old threats. The demons found the volcano, and now we fight a three-way battle. The native golems, the demonic forces who seemed to be interested in the same mana-source in the volcano, and my beetles. This to me, is sufficient confirmation that the demons are looking for mana-rich sources, and so maybe they will look to my [ThreeTrees of Mana] soon.

Without the walkers, it isn’t that difficult to defend these two locations, but I am having some trouble with the demon knights, so I do need to deploy Horns, Lausanne, and the Valthorns. I mean, I could root strike the knights, and I do every now and then, to delay and postpone the battle until I can get Lausanne and gang into battle.

The reasoning is really simple. I’m way too high level that defeating the knights is really quite pitiful for my experience gain, even with my overpowered experience gain. It’s far more fruitful to save mobs of this level to Lausanne and the budding initiates, such that they get to a level where they can be of some use against the demons.

At first, they were excited.

But after one full month of constant battles throughout the volcanic area against the demons, Lausanne and the initiates are beginning to realise the enormity of the task.

"Wars are not nice." One of the young initiates, she’s 8, as she sat next to Lausanne at a campsite. She sipped on a small wooden flask containing a kind of healing fluid. There’s a few subsidiary trees here so they benefit from my [healing aura] and [demonic suppression aura], so it’s a relatively good campsite.

One of the captains, who came along nodded. "Good that you realise that when you’re young. It’s not a nice feeling going out to fight, and realising you might not come back. We’re lucky that our Tree Spirit watches over us, in this area."

The volcanic area’s outer area is mostly conquered by my subsidiary trees by now, effectively forming a ring of trees to block out the demons. I call it, the Volcano-TreeLine. That didn’t stop the demons from trying to break through, occasionally with 500-1,000 strong forces.

Lausanne sighed, she massaged her left shoulder. A wooden vine surrounded her, an effect of the special tree familiar. She’s level 42 from a whole month of demon-fighting, most of it from taking on a few demon knights. "Doing it every day is quite different from fighting occasionally."

The captain smiled. "You may be a genius, Lady Lausanne, but fighting daily is a reality for most common soldiers and guards in small villages." There was a group of soldiers who also came along. It didn’t look good to leave the fighting to young kids.

She nodded. Jura did tell her stories of the past, when Freeka was still the village of Freeka, the men frequently patrolled the woods to defeat monsters. But still, nothing beats the experience of active duty, to know what it’s like. "If only we can stop this for good."

The captain smiled and patted Lausanne on her lean shoulder. "Honestly, New Freeka has it good. The protection of the Aeon’s beetles meant we soldiers can fight more carefully, and less frequently."

Lausanne twirled her right hand, and the vine formed itself into a spear. "Ah, let’s not have this talk." She twirled her fingers again, and the spear unmade itself into a vine, and then into a wooden sword. This is one of her daily practice routines, to hone her mastery over the flexible vines from the special familiar. She would alternate the vine’s forms, a spear, a sword, a whip, a lasso, a bow.

The rest of the initiates watched. To them, it’s a bit like a magic trick.

They would rest for an hour, before continuing their journey home. Thankfully, the beetle army carried them. A few of the beetles have things resembling seats, and since each beetle is about the size of a large rhino, about 2-3 could fit on each beetle. Except for one of the centaur Valthorns. She’s one of the younger Valthorns, from the 2nd batch, but centaurs tend to be bigger and larger despite having similar ages. She would gallop next to the beetles, and her stamina is pretty good.

The soldiers who return to relieved family members, happy to see their family returning safe. The Valthorns would mostly be greeted by the ladies of their orphanage.

The orphanage is frankly overloaded, the number of kids aged 3 to 13 is close to 1,100, and Laufen and Belle are tasked with supervising the expansion of two additional buildings. The population is generally supportive of the orphanage, so there really wasn’t any challenge in terms of funding or land, though the politicians see it like a private military academy, given the extensive combat training in their curriculum, so according to my people-watcher Ivy, there are little pockets of discontent.

In fact, the expansion of the orphanage meant about 30% of the Order’s budget is now used to fund the charitable segment. Both the death-services, orphanage, and birth gifts all do not generate money.

One of the priests suggested ‘Tithes’ or ‘Donations’, but I shot down the idea. I feel if people start giving money to priests, that’s going to just send us into a downward spiral of corruption. So no, I insist on the priests being paid a salary, and no donations or tithes.

Instead, the Order has to do work for money. We run a vegetable market, food market, and herbs market.

"Herbal soup, herbal soup." Well, there’s actually a lesser-variant of ginseng, grown by our herbalist. It doesn’t have the full effect of the [Ginseng Plant], and this variant’s boost is temporary. We thought of using the term ginseng, but then that might ruin the branding of the real ginseng plant, so decided for just plain old herbal root soup.

"Ginger tea, ginger tea!" An employee of the Order shouted.

"Flavored olives!"

"Oranges!"

"Cotton!! And clothes!"

Yeah. A market. I thought of having a more upmarket feel to the premises, but somehow it just organically transformed into this chaotic mess of a market that wouldn’t feel out of place in any Asian or middle eastern metropolis. I wonder whether this is what the Grand Bazaars of Baghdad would be like.

I would usually tune out the shouting match in the markets. There’s only so many times you can bear a middle aged lady repeatedly shouting, "Potatoes for sale, Potatoes for sale.". Listen to it for too long, I find that those words end up repeating in my thoughts too.

Thank goodness, like the [rootnet], I can tune out all these chatter.

But Ivy likes the market. She says the gossip in the markets is her top 5 ways of getting information. The things ladies share with each other while haggling over carrots and tomatoes is quite... interesting.

95% made up, by the way, but still, that 5% is worth it.

Oh. And the bigger orphanage kids are usually tasked with security. If there weren’t in the orphanage, they’d be the ones stealing. I thought it’s a good way to deter the food-thieves, and you know, it takes a thief to catch a thief.

Until we got some rather interesting comments from the general populace.

"Why can’t we just give our surplus away?"

"Can we just run charity kitchens for the poor and hungry?"

Hmmmm... the council already does have some kind of community kitchen, a legacy of the New Freekans’ origins as refugees. The generation that came and survived the move to New Freeka generally appreciate the community kitchen.

"Never mind." I decided to just stick to the plan.

-

The little tree of prayer shipped to Ransalah has safely arrived and planted in a small public garden. A rarity in Ransalah, from what I hear.

Sadly, because it’s way too far from any of my other subsidiary trees, it is not connected by root, to the rest of the rootnet, so I can’t really communicate with that tree. All I know is, it lives, and it’s there in that little garden somewhere.

My [rootnet] needs to get some kind of wide-area network service. I mean, do we have like 4G transmission trees? Or [Wide-Area Network]?

Ah. Nothing much I could do, except to find a way to extend my roots into that area of town, so for now, I hope that [tree of prayer] is well taken care of. It’ll take a few generations of rootnet upgrades before I’ll get there.

In a way, my network of trees is essentially a subterranean cable line, kind of like those subsea fibre optic cables that cross oceans to form my homeworld’s internet. Of course, the scale of my rootnet is miniscule in comparison, but I’d like to think, with all the research and advancements I’m doing, I’m like a precursor to DARPA, and my rootnet’s like... root-arpanet?

So, I’m TARPA? Tree’s Advanced Research Projects? Wait. Isn’t that TARP? TARPANET?

Never mind. That’s horrible. I mentally told myself that set of names is to be forever banished from existence.

Year 82 Month 2

[Demon King Sabnoc has arrived]

The news came like a wave. An actual energy wave swept through the world, coming from all directions. I felt it, and I’m sure everyone felt it too.

But, the wave stayed, like some kind of background... disturbance. Buzzing. Like... white noise from a radio.

Jura gathered all the leaders. "What’s going on?"

"We... we don’t know. None of my [message] spells are working." Madeus looked afraid. "It seemed like the demon king has somehow managed to interrupt all long range communication spells."

I tried to check on my beetles. And got no response.

I lost contact with all the beetles that wander too far off from my [subsidiary trees]. Immediately, I ordered all beetles to stay close to my subsidiary trees.

"Lausanne’s out on patrol." I spoke to Jura. Looks like here, near my main tree it still functions. I can’t contact her.

"We’ll have to do it the non-magical way. Couriers, messengers. Escorts." Jura looked, and the captains ran out to summon as many couriers and messengers they could get.

Madeus sat, there’s another mage I rarely see next to him. "This has never happened."

Well, times have changed. Certainly, this new demon king seems to try rather exotic strategies. I wonder whether he’s a reincarnator. That would be something very, very scary to think about.

In the past, dedicated couriers, messengers, or even scouts used to travel long distances to deliver highly classified messages, before the encrypted magical means of communication were invented by one of the heroes a few generations back. These days, diplomats and merchants take over the role of official documentations and treaties, and the magical encrypted messages are the mode of communication for discussions. Magical obsolescence, I suppose.

But I suppose a return to the analogue ways has it’s... interests. "What do we know?" Jura sent out the couriers and messengers to all the nearby kingdoms, requesting for status updates. A new set of magical seals were made, to facilitate these sort of letters and messages/

The merchants was the first to quickly summarise the effects of the demon king. It seemed they managed to retain some form of communication network throughout the continent, though their intercontinental networks are now broken.

"Message spells are unreliable at 10km. High-tier communication spells are unreliable at 30km. Warnings on summons, magically controlled monsters have a chance to break their servant-master link at a distance of 500m to 5km, depending on the type."

Hmmm... all my subsidiary trees are still in contact. Rootnet is still online.

"Message integrity decays at 5km onwards. Merchant’s guild is still experimenting with supercharging magical messages."

The [Message] spell is essentially the communication ‘backbone’ of the present society. War, commerce and trade all rely on it. A [message] spell is essentially a message wrapped up into a magical ‘container’, and sent like an invisible ‘letter’, where it then arrives at the other side as a letter. It is possible to ‘secure’ the ‘packet’ by way of encryption codes, and similarly, it is possible to ‘intercept’ them as they pass through.

All [message] spells travel along corridors high up in the sky, known as the Aurora currents. These currents help to reduce the mana load required to travel long distances, as the Aurora currents have a positive, ‘recharging’ effect on these [message] packets. Apparently, and this is also something that is debated, the Aurora currents were created by some heroes a long time ago, to facilitate their anti-demon efforts. Some day, it’s made by the gods, because why else would the currents be so convenient? It boggles the mind that a supposedly ‘natural’ phenomenon can be exploited to function as a global airborne [message] superhighway.

A mage learning how to use [message] learns about the worlds’ magical currents, and sends the ‘coordinates’ along the packets. The way I understood it, as Madeus explained it, is that the [message] network is essentially like a collection of email servers, with some snail mail features.

For example, a mage who wants to send a [message] from New Freeka to say Ransalah, must know which ‘current’, ‘node’ and ‘sub-node’, kind of like a traditional country-state-city hierarchy common in addresses and old school mailing systems. The [message] packet itself is then wrapped with some ‘identifiers’ and ‘locators’ so that it can ‘locate’ the intended receiver. Or what most nations have, is a magical artifact that acts as an ‘anchor’ to receive the [messages], sort of like a ‘post box’.

But now, this network is unusable. The chaos is perhaps similar to what happens when the internet went out. Learning the intricacies of the [message] system works, only when the system goes down, is like how people start to study the intricacies of how planes work after a flight crash occurred. A little too late.

Merchants especially, scrambled to find alternatives to their usual sources. Trading prices for certain goods started to fluctuate, because the merchant’s ability to obtain market price information from other cities is now gone, and a merchant’s willingness to purchase local goods dropped significantly, because he’s unable to guarantee his own ability to make a profit by locking in another deal in some other part of the world.

"How about scrying and remote viewing?" I observed the mages in New Freeka’s mage guild, in a discussion with the local merchants. Thankfully, this newfound magical interference from the demon king didn’t affect my ability to see my own trees, and I believe my own energies are repelling that interference somewhat.

It really brings back memories. The guys banging on our IT admin’s tables, demanding to know why are the payment systems down, and how soon we can fix it.

"Doesn’t work either... and we do not have mages who focus on such spells."

"Then what works? I’ve got a warehouse full of goods, and I can’t find out where to send them, or whether the route is even safe! There’s got to be something?!"

"I’m afraid the best chance, at this point, is a messenger." The mage tried to placate the angry merchant.

"That’s too slow!"

"We’re still trying..."

Over at the military side, Jura attended a meeting with the New Freeka council, together with a lot of military guys. A strategist under the council’s employ was present to give a quick briefing on the situation.

"One, our ability to coordinate our military with our allies is now significantly reduced. Two, our ability to locate the demon king and demon walkers, on a close to real-time basis is also almost gone. This meant the blood sacrifice spells used to bombard the demon walkers is effectively useless."

Ah. Shit. That is a bad thing. What use is a nuke if you don’t know where to shoot it?

"Also linked to that second point, we’ll need to rely a whole lot more on scouts to monitor the demon’s movement."

I suppose they need to return to flares, fire-signals and stuff like that?

I still haven’t heard from Lausanne, so I decided to send some [subsidiary trees] towards her last known location.

Volcano Defense

Year 82 Month 3

Silence is eerie. Without the communication networks to inform one’s decisions, most travellers decided to stay put and wait. Only those truly desperate, or daring, make the journey.

Throughout my network of trees, demons appeared more frequently, and in larger numbers. Given my now-smaller effective range due to the interference of the demon king, it’s also harder to move my beetles from one place to another as they have to travel close to my chain of [subsidiary trees].

"When is the damn messages going to get through?" Merchants, some of them have started drinking extensively. It seemed they are in a limbo. Some of them started to band together and just try to make the trip to the next town. A small minority just sold all their inventory and decided to just stay put.

"I’m not going anywhere. This town can defend itself against a demon walker, I’ll just stay. It’s a risk to go out there, you might not know if a demon walker is nearby!"

"We are merchants! We do not sit still in a place. We need to sell to make money!"

Anyway, back to the beetles, the attacks throughout my network increased, and so, with Trevor and Dimitree’s advice, I’ve split my beetle force into six squads, of 1,500 each, all stationed in a different part of my network, the rest of them in New Freeka. I can’t move the beetles as quickly as before, because of the longer route they now have to take, and with lesser ‘visibility’, I have lesser amount of time to ‘plan’ and ‘respond’ to any incursion.

In a way, this is a hub-and-spoke strategy, mini-bases for my beetles.

Frankly, I didn’t see this coming. I thought demon kings were just overpowered, and have high destructive abilities. Utility or passive abilities wasn’t something I expected. It really feels like there is a mind behind the demon.

"Would you think it’s a reincarnator? A hero from your world?"

Alexis paused. "That... would be terrible, isn’t it? If they brought someone from my world..."

"There’s really no reason why the demon kings would change tactics this time. There has to be a trigger point. When you fought the demon king, what did you think?"

Alexis waited, and then she responded, off tangent, but very relevant. "...I wonder whether the demons accessed my memories."

"Huh?"

"When I was trapped as a fire-demon. Whether... whether the demons looked into my mind, just like how I saw their homeworld."

"You... you saw their homeworld?"

"I think so. I’m not sure whether it’s a dream or it’s their home world, but after the demon walker, it brought back memories. It’s a massive desert with large spires, similar to the ones on the demon walker's back, but many, many times bigger, and more."

"Okay, now we have two suspects. One, the demons somehow brought a reincarnator or offworlder. Two, the demons took a look at your mind and decided to copy some tactics. Or possibly both are true. Or you may have let the demons in on where you are from, and therefore they can now summon their own version of heroes."

Alexis’s spirit body rotated and twirled in the air. She looked horrified. "That... I hope not. We need to warn everyone if we are potentially dealing with an enemy reincarnator. All the nations must treat the demons as intelligent!"

"Hmm... let’s not panic yet." I do suspect that this generation’s demons are possibly intelligent, or have some kind of thought process to their tactics, but the fact that they only have a small variety of units, seem to imply that there is some kind of ‘migration-limit’ on what they can bring to this world. Maybe the reincarnator himself isn’t here in this world.

"We need countermeasures. We need to do something!" Alexis spinned. I think her spiritual body is changing color. "Meeelaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."

Meela was happily in her inn. Now that the merchants aren’t going anywhere, they need a place to stay, so her inn is full house. And many merchants are drinking their worries away.

"Busy, Alexis. I’ve got a full house to manage." Meela waved her off.

"This is important Meela, IMPORTANT!!!"

"After I’m done with my customers... which is like, really, really much later. Later, okay?"

"Meelaaaaa!" Alexis pouted.

In the meantime, I called Jura and Madeus to discuss the possibility of an ‘intelligent’ demon king.

"Demon kings are somewhat monster-like, at least in history. They seek out places with large populations, and have an ability to sense the presence of heroes. Their instincts seem to drive them towards the heroes. They have some primitive intelligence, according to statements from past heroes, but in combat, and once provoked, they are like... monsters."

"So, how bad is it, if the demon king is intelligent, say... like an average human."

"On the bigger scale of things, it’s probably the demonic equivalent of a very very nasty undead necromancer."

"Is that bad? It sounds bad." I asked.

Jura shook his head. His knowledge about such things are quite... shallow. Madeus has a better understanding on historical outbreaks.

Madeus nodded. "Hmmm... if the heroes can work with the kingdoms, should still be possible to defeat the demon king. After all, the demons can’t level, and the lower level demons, demon walkers don’t display the kind of intelligence that I would associate with ‘sentience’. So... it’s likely that only the demon king is ‘fully’ intelligent."

"I agree with that theory." Indeed, the demon walker or the demon general did not appear to be 'intelligent', even if they have some tactical sense. Else, they would not have walked in a straight line towards the source of the Hexbombs. If so, all the thinking must be done by the demon king, and that is inherently a weakness.

Jura and Madeus looked at the map. There's nothing on it, now that we have no data on the demons.

Jura shrugged. "Nothing actually changed, isn't it? The heroes still have a demon king to slay, it just meant the process is harder for them. For the rest of us, the demon king will continue to wreak havoc. Our preparations just need to continue."

"True."

Alexis on the other hand. "We need to send letters to all the kingdoms. The threat of the demons should be higher."

"That achieves nothing. For kingdoms already fighting for their survival, such as those in the Southern Continents, the demons are already their number one threat. For those currently safe, all of them are preparing. By now, no one is treating the demon king lightly. I believe many other strategists and kings must have come to the same conclusion as we did, that this demon king is sentient and intelligent."

Alexis pouted.

"Our best course of action is hunker down and prepare for war. And pray the demon king isn't on our continent. As for you, what have you got from all your research? Can you research how to counteract or offset this demonic interference, so that we can restore the communication with all our neighbours?"

"...I will get started."

-

Lausanne came back at the end of the month. They have been forced into hiding, to avoid the roaming demons. With the beetles 'asleep', they do not have the numbers to take the demons in a fight, so their progress home was super slow.

Laufen was delighted to see her daughter again, and gave her a big hug.

"Happy to see you too, mom." Laufen was worried sick, even if she put on a strong face in front of others.

"We need to stick closer to the trees from now on." Jura was relieved, of course. Lausanne wasn't alone, her squad had twenty others. Luckily, none of them died. Avoiding battle is a good choice.

Year 82 Month 4

"When will the heroes be summoned?"

"Usually 6 months to a year after the demon king." Maybe less? I hope it's less.

If the demon king is smart, he should expand as fast as he could and crush all the allied kingdoms. That way, the heroes have less support, the kingdoms stand no chance against a creature like the demon king. If he is truly intelligent, he will use this head start to cement his position.

"Aeon! A demon army in the distance!" I spotted it too, they seem to employ a scorched earth strategy and are headed for the volcano. New Freeka won't deploy itself, but I will have to defend the volcano.

After the demon walker battle, I have 15,000 subsidiary trees, about a third of which are beetle-nests. Each tree, with Horn's upgrades, is home to 5 beetles, so I have a total beetle force of 25,000. I am literally a one-tree beetle army, but I have to spread this force throughout my network.

7,000 is at home, in the valley as its defensive force, and I lost about 4,000 beetles is various smaller skirmishes in the past months. That leaves 14,000, of which spread into the six 1,500 squads, give or take a few hundred.

20,000 demons. There are already 1,500 beetles stationed in that segment of my tree network. The rest of my beetles, the 7,000 stationed at home will take about five days to get there. It's a battle away from my main tree. Not my ideal battleground.

"They... they are headed for the volcanic area??" The Order captains are surprised, of course. They presumed they would head here.

"The volcano is a natural mana source. A difficult one to work with, but a mana source. We must defend it, else we will have a demon factory as our neighbour." I told the Order, and Jura relayed the message to a clearly spooked New Freekan council.

The councillors are afraid, so the councillors all summon their local supporters for views. Some of them want to participate, they see why it should be defended. Some prefer to wait and hold a defensive line here, in the Valley.

So, the choice is given to the councillors, and they gather support. Either send an army to fight a force near the volcano, or tolerate a demon base next to New Freeka and die eventually, anyway.

In a way, it is an easier battle since it is just a large army of regular demonoids. There are no giant walkers. BUT, the flipside is my ability to intervene slightly weakened by the distance.

"Jura and Yvon, I need both of you at that battle."

Lausanne tapped herself. "Me too." Well, I planned on including her anyway.

"And you." Laufen gave her daughter a hug. "And the Valthorns. I need every high level person I have at that battlefield. Go, and go quickly. The beetles there may not be able to hold the line for more than three days. And the demons are only two days away."

In a way, this could have been prevented had I created an outer perimeter of subsidiary trees, but even that would only give me one extra day's advance warning. Still, I made a note to further fortify the Southern forest and [ThreeTree of Mana]. Clearly that magic ley line would be a juicy target for the demons, should they discover it.

To delay the demonic force while the rest of the forces get into position, I activated [rooting field] and [poison field] multiple times. Sadly, poison doesn't work on demons, but the roots did manage to delay them.

The battle began as expected, five days later on the edges of the volcanic area. I have increased the amount of [subsidiary trees] I have, so that I can keep control over the beetles, and with new [subsidiary trees], the present beetle force stood at 2,500. My 7,000 beetles are a day away, and the New Freekan army of 4,000 soldiers are two days away.

The demons? 21,000 or so. The demons themselves are increasing. The demons charged, led by humanoid demons, riding on demon hounds, wielding long halberds and spears.

"Fucking hell, they have cavalry." They had demon knights that rode hellhounds some time ago, a small 'elite' brainwashed humans that chased the heroes, but this is my first time witnessing pure-demonoid cavalry as combat force.

Actually, how did the demons brainwashed those humans? Could they be the source of this change in tactics too?

Something isn't right. If demon knights, brainwashed by the demons exist, that means the demon kings had always been sentient. Because you need a certain measure of intelligence to utilise 'demonic-corrupted human knights'. And the previous demon king had manticores and wyverns too.

Ah, I need to come back to this thought later. Now I need to focus on the fight to defend the volcano.

The demonoid riders smacked into my beetles, we are fighting defensively, using the trees as a kind of makeshift wall. Beetles can fight even when they are partly-crawling on trees, the demonoids less so. I need to delay them as long as I can, until the rest of my 7,000 beetles arrive.

Utilising the beetles ability to burrow, the beetles dug numerous trenches throughout the battlefield, all meant to delay the demons.

A kind of treench warfare, but these are mixed in between the layers of trees.

Some of my [subsidiary trees] are [carnivorous plants], and they chomp on one or two demonoids before they needed time to recharge.

Here, at this distance, the effect of my [lesser demonic suppression aura] is slightly reduced, and a defensive battle meant my beetles can still benefit from my [healing aura].

But these things merely serve to delay the inevitable.

The number disadvantage was too massive, and they killed 1,500 beetles within the first few hours of skirmish. The remaining 1,000 retreated back to the last line of trees. On the positive side, half of the demonoid cavalry have been killed, and the demon army is now about 19,000 strong.

"Jura, Lausanne, Yvon. Situation isn't good. We are likely to have to fight the demons after they breached the tree-line. There are a few demon knights in the force." Indeed, the demon knights, with their various short-range weapons, made the trenches unfavorable to the beetles.

A mistake, on hindsight. Silly me, thinking my beetles are the only ones who have an advantage in the trenches.

The 7,000 beetles are still half a day away.

The demons continued their charge, and the fighting continued into the night.

"Master. Bad news, another 20,000 has been spotted in the north corridor. They are headed to the former dungeon, the naga-hole." Trevor flagged the news. In fact, by the time we spotted the demons, they were already at the dungeon's doorsteps.

"There's nothing there?" How did the demons spawn so many demons? Don't they need bases for this?

With another battle ongoing at the volcano, I had to concede the former naga dungeon. I didn't have enough beetles to fight two battles at the same time, so the beetles in that area retreated.

Back at the volcano, my defensive line broke really quickly. There really was no way I could stop an army of 19,000 demons with only 1,000 beetle, even if I kept using my skills to thin their numbers.

I had to make a call then, I retreated with the 500 surviving beetles, and joined them up with the 7,000 that arrived a little too late. The demons had breached the tree-line and entered the volcano area.

"The demons are in the volcanic area."

"Should we continue, then?"

"Yes. We must defeat the demons before they establish a base in the volcano. We cannot let them tap into the volcano's mana source."

"The men are not keen." One of the captains said. Some of the men didn't see why they should risk their lives protecting a volcano.

"Then die when the demons come along." It really wasn't a lie. A demonic base next to us? They could spawn more demons, more than the beetles I can field.

Still, keen or not, we had to fight. I was not planning on letting the demons get too far into the volcanic area, and already I see the demons fight the native magma golems.

The native magma monsters didn't mount any extra defense, after all, they didn't even know an army was headed their way, but the giant magma golems were more than a match for conventional demonoids.

But the demons were focused. While some demonoids kept the magma golems occupied, they charged for the caldera. And I didn't plan on letting them get there and establish a foothold.

I spawned subsidiary trees, even in this hostile terrain, the army of beetles and New Freekans chased after the demons. They have one day's head start, and the army passed by more casualties by the wayside. Some soldiers took this chance to collect any loot that the golems dropped, since the demons were not interested.

As the beetles and soldiers headed up, I felt it.

A surge in mana, a shiver in the magma and earth below. "Shit." I told myself, they might have already started. Demonic energy is starting to corrupt the volcano's energies, and all the trees in the area can feel the incursion.

An hour of climbing up the volcano with this army, we saw the demon's fortress. Past a field of crushed golems and the half-skewered demonoids, right at the edge of the volcanic caldera, a fortress in the making. It’s growing slowly, but it already has the shape of spires, similar to the spires of the demon walker. There it was, at the center of the under-construction fortress, a banner-like reddish object, the so called demon-rod as told by the merchant guilds.

"This.... this is a terraforming army." Alexis muttered. "They plan to turn the world into the factories of their homeworld?" We could see the demonic energy leaking from the rod into the ground, and it’s trying to take control of the land beneath it. But the volcano would not be tamed so easily.

This scene somehow reminded me of a game I played, where the four factions used little magical rods to conquer the land, and with it, convert the neutral land into the four types of racial terrains, hell, blight, frost or bloom.

"No time to waste. The fortress is not ready, and we must destroy it now." Or actually, destroy the rod first. If the rod is the source of the corruption, there's really no need to focus on the army.

In fact, I thought of cheating, so I created a few subsidiary trees as close as I could to the fortress and started unleashing [root strikes] at the rod.

But it all met a barrier of some kind. And that barrier prevented my roots from approaching, and it also blocked my subsidiary tree.

There were 3 demonoids standing around the rod, in a mini-circular formation. They seemed to be channel the energy from within the rod to create the fortress and the barrier protecting the rod. I need to stop them, or by tomorrow they would start to spawn demons. The barrier blocked the roots attacking the 3 demons too. Ugh.

"Jura, need you to take those 3 demonoids down."

"What, where?" I forgot they can't see past walls, unlike my top-down visual through all my subsidiary trees. The demonic army form up around the fortress, and now we have a better sense of what we were up against. The demonoid army had suffered losses to get to this part, a section so close to the top of the volcano.

No matter. 16,000 demons noticed our presence, and they fought hard to hold back our 7,500 beetles and 4,000 soldiers. And once again, another larger scale battle.

Without a demon walker to focus on, my role in this battle is to prevent unnecessary deaths. This meant, observing the soldiers, and interfering when they are in trouble. At the same time, I also clear a path for Jura and Yvon that leads to the three channeling demons, so that they can quickly end the rod's corrupting magics.

They are my best combatants, and since there is a magical barrier, I hope they can still physically pass through the barrier.

Jura quickly cut through tens of demon knights, Lausanne, Yvon and some of the captains take out a few as well. The battle lasted three hours, and the beetles finally managed to punch through the wall of demons. A path is open, Jura, Yvon and some soldiers charge in. The barrier does in let them through.

Yvon rushed ahead, and with a quick slash, she slashed through the three demonic channelers.

The rod was almost completed enveloped it some kind of demonic energy, and when the three demonic channelers evaporated into demon-dust, it just levitated in mid-air, un-moving.

"Is it done?" Jura asked, I sensed the corrupting influence of the demonic rod slowly subsiding.

"I think we need to hit it." Another soldier looked and said. Apparently other countries have destroyed such rods before.

"Uh..." Jura looked at it, it is surrounded by a black flame. "I am not touching that. Madeus?"

"Guard it. Don't let any of the other demons continue channeling the rod." The beetles and Order soldiers fight off the rest of the demonoids. We should not stay long, I saw a giant magma golem starting to form in the distance. The native monsters are trying to fight back, and they see both us and the demons as intruders.

"TreeTree, can you move it, or knock it out? The channelers are gone, so the barrier should be down." Jura asked, Madeus was busy blasting some demons. Jura continued to cut through demonoids. The captains reorganised the men into defensive formations, the beetles doing the bulk of the fighting.

I launched a few more [root strikes], and there's no barrier blocking it. It hits through the demonic flame, my roots just lightly scathed by the black flame, and the massive banner-rod falls down. But even as it collapsed, cracked, I could sense residual demonic energies from it.

The rod fell to the ground, dark energies jumped out like an arc lightning, and it tried to create more demonoids. This rod is the ‘spawner’ of the demonic hordes, isn't it?

"Destroy it!" Jura shouted. "It's trying to spawn more demons." That’s obvious enough. The demonic fortress and the spires around the soldiers started to vibrate, shake, and chunks started to collapse. By now, the demonoids have been defeated. We're only left with the rod.

But no, I don't plan to destroy it, just yet. "Take the rod." I asked Jura, but then I realised it’s massive.

"What? No way. It's still emitting that black demonflame. You need to knock it out a bit more."

Ugh. That meant I am the only one that can manipulate it? A beetle approached and the flames burned the beetle.

I briefly considered leaving it here, but that meant the rod will spawn more demons, and that defeats the purpose of this incursion.

I decided to weaken the rod a bit more, so with some [Root strikes,] the demonic energy dissipated, and the rod itself cracked. Still, I could sense some remaining demonic energy, and that's what I wanted. Good, I feel it would be better for me to hold onto it and subject it to some research, see what I can learn from it. If this demon king is ‘intelligent’ as I predict it is, then I need to know how I can counter him, whether I can use the energies from such rods against it.

No one wants to touch the demon rod surrounded by the residual black flames, and only I had the necessary resistances.

I used a bit of my vines and the black flames are unable to hurt the vines much, and I moved the rod. It takes a bit of effort to play pass-the-baton with my vines, tossing the rod from one subsidiary tree to another, all the way down from the volcano, back to New Freeka. This baton-pass took two days, for the rod to arrive back at the valley.

Must look rather silly, trees passing a cracked rod, swinging it from tree to tree. It took a lot of effort to get the rod to move correctly.

Wait. Why does that sound wrong?

"Okay, let's retreat before the golems respawn. There is no need to fight the natives." Meanwhile, Jura ordered the army to retreat home. I would rebuild my defenses around the volcano after this.

[You gained a level. Level 138]

[New Skill learned : Vine-Ropeway Network. Vine-Ropeway networks allows you to move things and people from place to place, like a cable-car or aerial gondola system. Must be part of the same connected network of vines.]

[Star mana-variant : Consumes 150 star mana : Creates a star-mana vine-network that temporarily folds space and time, and open a portal between any two subsidiary trees or your main body. Allows movement of any one person, animal or thing instantaneously from any subsidiary tree to any other subsidiary. Need not be connected.]

(TreeTree presently has 300 star mana, and generates 30 star mana per month)

Uh. Wait.

This is like that story Jura, or was it Casshern, said so long ago, of the twinned tree spirits that have a steady portal between one another. Like paired stargates.

Stick it into the flame

Year 82 Month 5

Two moons, high up in the sky. One blue, one white. Alexis says sometimes they change color, and apparently, the alignment of the moons influences the power of certain magics and monsters. Back home, there are stories of how some werewolves gain power from the moon, in this world, there are also certain kinds of werewolves that gain different powers, depending on which full moon in the night sky. It’s certainly a fascinating mechanic to magic. There’s a third moon that moves a whole lot slower, and for now, it stays out of sight.

Anyway, my immediate focus was on the now-broken demonic banner-rod, and I put it inside a large lab-tree close to my main body.

This is because, unlike the lab which experiments on the hexbomb's hexsludge, which is located really far away for safety, I am a whole lot more confident fiddling with the demonic rod, thanks to all of my anti-demon resistance. In fact, it's better for it to be nearer since the [demonic suppression aura] is stronger.

There is a layer of extremely dense demon-mana swirling in the core of that rod, a crystalline object that resembles daemolite. In fact, I think it is daemolite. The dense demon-mana protected the core from the probing vines, and I am in the process of overpowering the demon-mana, by slowly draining the demon-mana.

It tried to fight me. The demon-mana from the rod even attempted to latch onto my body, but as expected, my body is resistant and pushed back. I activated [natural mana overwhelming], and did what I’ve done in the past, just like how I used the mana from me and all the trees to overwhelm the demon hounds, and Alexis.

So, slowly, but surely, my mana begins to break into the rod, untangling it, and bit-by-bit, in slightly less than a month.

And then...

[Your mana has completely taken over the demonic-presence rod. Demonic rod has now transformed into The Stick of TreeTree. The Stick Of TreeTree retains the mana-conversion and assimilation abilities of the original rod, will grow trees wherever it is placed, and spread your influence.]

The strange looking rod now resembles a large wooden spear, with overgrown vines all tangled up around it. The daemolite core, once purple and reddish, now entirely light-green in color.

But seriously, I didn't come up with such a name. Or maybe I did. Maybe it's my subconscious.

Decided it was a horrible name, I decided to call it the [Forest Rod] instead. I’m just too embarrassed to even tell my beetles to carry the [Stick of TreeTree].

-

Throughout New Freeka, news is rare. Most [message] services are not operational, and not many couriers or messengers in service, they are often employed, at great cost, to deliver the most important messages.

Some merchant groups decided not to wait any longer, and instead, they spend money to hire a large escort force. It's a well reasoned choice, since the demon king will not die until the heroes arrive. How long could they wait anyway?

Messengers, couriers are escorted by riders, and armed cavalry. At this point, speed is key.

"Airships. Where are the airships anyway?"

"I would think they are reserved for the most important tasks, like patrolling the capitols, transporting royalty or urgent expeditions. Smaller ones are used by adventurers, but charging the daemolite’s usually really... costly."

I am starting to suspect the airship I downed so many years ago was somehow stolen. Or just somehow... airships just fell out of favor? Under such circumstances, I would think airships would work, unless something’s interfering with that too.

Throughout my network of trees, I’m starting to see more ‘travellers’. Merchants, and others.

A courier from Salah arrived today. Jura looked at a letter, and then casually placed it aside. "They must be truly desperate, to demand that we all contribute military to their defense. What a waste of valuable couriers’ time."

"Huh?"

"Well, just a strongly worded letter demanding that New Freeka provide protection to the royals of Salah, and support the continental coalition army. Salah’s part of the ‘organising’ nations this time around, together with Takde and the eastern Nagra."

"Nagra. Where’s that?"

"Further east of Salah. It’s a coastal nation,and it’s capital is actually on a large island just off the coast of our mainland. Funny it decided to play a part..."

"Maybe demons found a way to sail across the oceans."

"Demons can fly, though. At least, elder demons." Madeus added. "If one of these giant demon walkers have some kind of flying ability..."

"The previous demon king was a floating castle after all... But what’s the point of the coalition army anyway, if they can’t hold a candle to the demon king."

"They can act as a big fat decoy." A captain said. "That’s what happened to the last coalition army. A decoy to re-direct the demon king elsewhere."

"Ignore them, then." I think all these royal schemes tend to fail in the face of the demon king.

Jura laughed. "I’ve never intended to respond. We’ve got enough on our own plate."

Year 82 Month 6

Now that I have this... stick, suddenly, a whole load of ideas came back to my mind. Could I do what the demons did? To ‘claim’ the volcano as my own using this rod? The fact that it has that ‘spread’ my mana thing seems to suggest, yes. I can. I mean, that’s how it worked in that other game I played, right? Rods spread influence, and if I have a rod, I can do it too.

And after dwelling on the idea for a few days, I decided to call on my beetles, Horns, and it is time for me to try to use the demon’s tactics for myself.

The trees I have on the volcano has been destroyed, uprooted by the magma golems, but won’t be hard for me to get back there again. 6,000 beetles, charged up the volcano.

We fought golems, and giant golems along the way, and it’s a little easier this time around, with [healing aura] somewhat offsetting the natural ‘burn’ damage from the volcanic environment. With stronger beetles, thanks to the upgrades, we managed to secure a one-way chain of trees up till the caldera.

And there we have it. The giant magma golems.

Defeating the giant golems is easy. But consistently holding on to it, while saving all the things are dying? That’s harder. I had to personally intervene every time the giant golems attacked, and that made holding onto the volcano exceptionally time-consuming. That’s even before the issue of the volcano’s raw natural mana, which I can’t seem to access. My subsidiary trees also keeps burning from the natural heat of the volcano, and that meant I had to constantly replace them.

Thankfully, after the past few upgrades, they are a little bit tougher.

I’m hoping this [forest rod] changes that. If this works, I’m going to start hunting the demons for more rods.

A torrent of [root strikes] later, the golems are down, and with four beetles helped to insert the [Forest Rod] into the edge of the caldera.

One of my [subsidiary trees]’s vines and roots then tangled with the [Forest Rod]’s growing vines, and I felt a strange sensation. I felt like I was in a hot sauna, but I’m a tree. Focusing on the [forest rod], I quickly see that it’s the natural mana from the volcano, and my own natural mana, mixing.

I think this might work.

And more of those magma golems appeared. They seemed to have been riled up by the sudden shift in mana, and we, the trees and the beetles now play defense.

I suppose it’s like tree versus volcano, then?

And we spent five days, defending the [forest rod] while it channelled slowly. There really was no way I could speed it up, since the rod itself seemed to just work... automagically once supplied with mana. Increasing it doesn’t work.

Maybe it’s like cooking, you can’t speed up a natural process. Not too much, at least.

So we endured for five days, of constant healing. all the damaged [subsidiary trees] from all the spontaneous combustion. The heat meant the trees were getting drained of all their liquids, and when they are sufficiently dry, they would just... burst into flames. That’s on top of the attacks from golems.

To slow down the effects of the intense heat, I tapped on the waters from the rest of my network and constantly ‘pumped’ water to the subsidiary trees on the volcano. It worked, somewhat, but instead some of the trees started to ‘boil’. Which killed them too.

But we held our ground.

Five days of constant fighting against golems, and I lost 4,500 beetles after 5 days. Battling in this unfavourable terrain meant their effectiveness is low, and I’ve seen it first hand during the earlier battle with the demons. A beetle that was normally able to take on three, maybe four demons, can only take on one demon, because of the damage from the terrain itself.

For five days, golems attacked the subsidiary trees and the makeshift walls from all sides, and I had the beetles try to do some rudimentary digging. The beetles suffered much, digging through hardened magma, and doesn’t help that there’s been a few... accidents. Some beetles accidentally stepped on a chunk of loose rocks and then slid to their deaths, into the molten lava lake in the center of the caldera. Or some chunks of ground suddenly erupted and a geyser of lava torched a few threes.

Five days. Honestly, five days is just a blink of an eye, usually. But this long ‘grind’ of ‘barely’ defending the [forest rod] really reminds me of the early days of the [ginseng tree]. At least the rod’s pretty tough, it can take a few punches.

Five days. I suppose I’m not as ‘good’ at ‘corrupting’ the land, since the demons were almost done in two.

And five days of magma-golem genocide later, the volcano filled with the burnt trees burnt beetles, we completed the channelling of the rod.

The [Forest Rod] transformed into a large tree right at the edge of the caldera. It’s massive.

And then, one of the longest skill notifications I have ever had.

And I mean, it’s really, really long.

[Natural Feature - Volcano integrated. Volcano has now transformed into Verdant Volcano]

[Verdant Volcano will now spawn Giant Wildbeasts instead of Magma Golems. Giant Wildbeasts and other spawned creatures will recognise your trees and subordinates as natives]

[Volcanic Minerals- Passive - Must maintain connection to volcano - Subsidiary trees now share nutrients and minerals from the volcano to its surroundings. Provides significant improvement to crop output, tree growth and regeneration and crop health. Bathing and drinking volcanic waters improve overall health. Resistance to disease, plague improved for New Freeka inhabitants]

[Soul Forge : Red unlocked]

[Soul Forge : Red increases artificial soul level caps to Level 50]

[Soul Forge : Red unlocks additional repair options, and allows the repair of souls damaged by psychic or mental attacks. Improves a soul’s ability to withstand exposure to other kinds of mana and also improves skill harvesting rate]

[Dream Harvester Spirits unlocked. Dream spirits harvest essences, soul fragments and occasionally, ‘skills’, from those having dreams, aspirations, and strong passions]

As you have unlocked 3 Soul Forge colors, you’ve gained access to the [Titan Souls]. Titans are guardian monsters, protectors of incredible power, and summons of yore. You have sufficient power to support one Titan. To create a Titan, you must have a [Titan Frame]. Titans start at level 70, and have a level limit of 150. Once destroyed, they will respawn in one year in your main tree, until deployed again.

[Titan Frames] are collected when a level 150 person, or a divine hero, or a dragon (or monster of similar grade) dies in your vicinity.

Trevor, Bamboo and Horns, who are now at their level 40 cap, have unlocked new upgrade options. Taking these upgrades will allow them to level up to level 50.

Trevor

Red - blood-path - Requires 10 rubies, and three barrels of monster blood.

Bamboo

Red - Flower path - Requires 10 star garnets and two boxes of red flower petals

Horns

Red - Scarlet Steel Beetle path - requires 1 tonne of Iron and 10 rubies.

And I’m not done yet.

[You have gained a level! You are now Level 139]

[Skill obtained : Main Body Environmental Adaptation. Your main tree body is now able to survive all environments]

Metaphorically, I felt like I had to sit down and digest all that. In actual fact, that means just... doing nothing. A tree can’t sit. I can move my roots to resemble sitting, but it’s not sitting.

Year 82 Month 7

I had a lot to think about, particularly about the nature of my new powers. Firstly, the colors of the soul forge, how many colors are there? I had earlier suspected that there are at least 5 colors, similar to how some trading card games do it, white, blue, green, red, and black.

If there’s 5 colors, would that imply a level limit of 70 if I have all 5 colors for my artificial souls? Or if there are more?

And acquiring more colors expands the kind of souls I can create, so if 3 colors unlock Titans, what would 5 colors do? Or if there are more, what would those functions be? These are things I think I will discover in the future.

Then, the Titans. Sadly, it’s effects are not retrospective, so I do not benefit from Alexis’s death in my hands. I wonder whether it still counts if I kill the heroes when they are weak. Does it? Or slaying dragons?

And environmental adaptation. Uh... Kind of lame of a level 139 skill, since... I’m here. At least if somebody used a super-blizzard, I’ll be fine.

Also, the rod worked.

To me, this rod is a great gamechanger. I can’t make the rod, but I can find more. And then I can corrupt it to expand my influence. It even helps to expand my forests. More forests is good. I like having more forests everywhere.

Even now, the volcano’s surface is filled with small shrubs and trees, the once ‘violent’ mana now a whole lot less ‘hostile’ to vegetation. I should have more of these rods.

So it’s time for me to turn the heat back on the demons. Because these rods are awesome.

And for that purpose, I created a new [artificial soul]. Too bad I can’t have a Titan yet, but I suppose Titans are like end-game units. Like Khaine, or the Warboss.

"Stratreegy, online. Awaiting your instructions, commander." Damn, I love the fact that the artificial soul can leech on my memories to shape his voice and conduct. I honestly modeled him after the adjutants and advisors in all the 1990s RTS games I used to play.

"Good. Here’s our plan. Dimitree, Trevor, your roles remain, that is defense and administration of the southwest forests, the valley, and now, also the volcano area. Ivy, your role remains to monitor the inhabitants of New Freeka. Stratreegy, your role is to be my war room, and battlefield command. Your task is to find, and hunt for these ‘demonic rods’."

"Acknowledged."

"As it is, our visibility and scouting range has been significantly weakened, thanks to the interference of from the Demon King, and beetles are only able to operate within a specified range of our [subsidiary trees], this will be a difficult task. But together, we will hunt down more of these rods."

Silence.

"As such, I am delegating control over 4,000 beetles and 500 unused subsidiary tree slots to you. Get me more of those rods."

"Understood, Commander."

And so, I let me new artificial soul on its way. I feel a bit like the Overmind, creating new cerebrates to perform specific tasks. Helps that my special project, the [Grand Mind Tree], is going to be ready in two more months.

What would I be called, then? I honestly don’t want a name with a ‘mind’ in it, because I think my mind’s really not all quite there. As much as I try to resist it, my mind splinters, and goes off in weird tangents. It’s almost like my mind’s some kind of multi-threaded computer, jumping from one train of thought to another.

I wonder sometimes, whether I’m still Matt. But then, a part of me just brushed that off and pushed me back to my duties, which the valley, and caring for all my trees and ‘citizens’. I do like my trees. There’s so many of them now, and I consider them an extension of me.

Yeah. My mind’s not all there. I wonder whether the gods are playing tricks on my mind, like how they play tricks on the heroes.

-

How long before the heroes arrive anyway? It’s already been 5 months. It seemed that the courier services are getting more and more active, with more people taking on the ‘job’ of delivering messages to nearby towns.

We still haven’t received any news from the other continents, but we’re starting to get a better sense of what’s happening on our own. The merchant’s guild has finally set up something of a ‘high-priority’ courier network, using their best scouts and messengers to travel along specified routes.

The good thing is, at least the demon king isn’t on our continent. The bad news is, there’s a lot more demon walkers. But that’s a small matter. Now that I am well aware of the value of the demon-rod, I want more of it.

So I need to help Stratreegy along.

Jura seemed quite puzzled, but once I explained how I ‘corrupted’ the demon rod, he too, saw value in it.

"Yes. Preferably ones where there are known ‘demon rods’. Jura didn’t want to explain too much, but said that I have uses for them.

"Uh..." The captains seemed strangely appalled.

"You do not have to engage. You just need to find it and report back."

"We’d rather not, Counsel. With communication lines so limited, the men would prefer to remain close to home." The captains didn’t like the idea of looking for demons, outside our immediate territory.

I could sense their hesitation, and I decided to tap on another source of valuable talent. Adventurers.

20 gold for the first party that spots a demonic banner-rod. And indeed, that helped to mobilise the adventurers. I mean, conventional military men aren't really looking to risk their lives unnecessarily. The idea of poking the hornet's nest is strange to most regular forces, and only those with high levels in [scout] or [spy] or [infiltrator], would even think of risking their lives.

Adventurers on the other hand are more than willing to take on danger for simple, good old moolah.

I mean, at what point does money loses value anyway? In a world where monsters and demons are so insane, why should money have any value? Shouldn’t ‘protection’ and ‘safety’ be more valuable? What really gives money value in a world with no certainty of value? I mean, theoretically, if you are more likely to die than ever be able to trade that gold for anything of value, the gold is essentially worthless once you stepped out of the city gates, no? Perhaps one of the gods somehow guarantee the value of gold, then? Acting as some kind of universal monetary authority? Or does the merchant’s guild play that role indirectly, functioning as a de-facto reserve bank?

It’s a rhetorical question. I need to stop getting side-tracked.

I need more rods. Maybe I can plant them at the lake. Or what if I used it on the large mound of daemolite?

How do I get green, and white colored soul forges?

Tree Uses Heal, Round 3

Year 82 Month 8

The fact that the rod worked made me ask more questions about the nature of these ‘mana sources’. Why were my normal [subsidiary trees] able to tap into the magical leyline, yet it didn’t work on the volcano?

What made the rod special?

I made a few theories, but I must admit these are shaped by my experiences with my own games.

The first possibility is that there are compatible and incompatible 'colors' for mana, and so, if my base color is blue, then red is therefore an 'opposing' color. So, I would have to go through a lot more steps and upgrades to assimilate an 'opposing' color mana, hence the [Forest Rod].

That, of course, is just a theory. I had asked the Wisp, but the Wisp is surprisingly clueless about such things, and I suspect only other Tree Spirits may be able to answer me.

The second but not mutually exclusive theory, was that there are 'tiers' to the mana. In this theory, the dungeon core and leyline beneath constituted ‘directly accessible' mana, and the volcano's natural mana constituted 'mana that required processing'.

The mental model I had for this theory, similar to the oil &amp; gas industry, which has different types of rigs and mines, like regular pumps, deep sea rigs, oil sands, or shale oil, each with different rates of recovery, at different kinds of technological difficulty. I built this theory on the knowledge that heroes and myself have 'star mana', and the sick princess was exposed to 'void mana', so it may not be too hard to then theorise 'star mana' is like nuclear fuel. So, if we were to lay down the types of mana on a scale, there would be an increasing difficulty?

Of course, the fact that I have the ability to produce star mana challenges this theory, like... if I can make star mana, why is the volcanic mana a challenge?

Anyway... whether these are 'types' of mana or 'tiers' of mana, or even both, I frankly have no proof. Or maybe I’m just imagining things.

The rod is able to circumvent the tiers, or whether it is the colors, but other than it worked, I have little insights into the underlying mechanics of how it took the volcanic mana and made it usable to me. So, what I can do, is to keep expanding and growing, use the rods in different circumstances and then observe the outcomes.

-

Meanwhile, somebody important came. We knew its important, because that person came in a rare airship. Apparently, after some sniffing, daemolite-powered airships are quite sensitive to the magical interference by the demon king, and so many, many fleets has been grounded. This airship, is powered by Quantium, an expensive and rare crystal. The fact that it is deployed, meant a lot.

"The Kingdom of Takde summons all high level individuals to assault a demonic fortress. It’s located in the ruins of a once-large city. All individuals above level 50 are invited to participate, and Takde will bear all lodging and costs."

The demons have managed to take down a large city, and a rod has been planted. In the ruins of a place that witnessed intense death, the rod’s magical harvesting ability mixed with the residual death energy, and as a result, they started producing special kinds of demonoids.

The envoy described it as an upgraded version of demon knights. Bound to the ground, without wings, but they are twice as large as any regular demonoid. The size of a troll or a large ogre, these demons are equal in strength to a regular demon knight, the equivalent of a level 30 to 35 captain. Not a problem per say, but the issue is really about numbers. This rod produced these demon ogres by the hundreds every week.

"Fascinating." Alexis mused. "It’s like these rods have some kind of natural-adaptation ability to produce special kinds of units. Like an... adaptive breeder."

It’s expected. The volcano’s ‘conversion’ created special giant beasts. Looking at this sort of trend, the former snake-dungeon might be spitting out snake-demons very soon. I should look into that.

"But why didn’t these sort of special units appear earlier?" I wondered. Perhaps it’s a condition for unlocking the next tier units, that requires the presence of the demon king. Or like Queens in a hive, it is the demon king who introduces genetic diversity into their population?

A few adventurers in New Freeka agreed to join. I had the impression adventurers avoid participating in such high profile demon-related matters unless the heroes were involved, but I suppose some people are going to bite, if the rewards are good.

"So... that snake-dungeon, are you just going to leave it?" Alexis asked. Well, no.

I looked at Stratreegy’s overlay, showing a large map, split into numerous hexagons. It’s an overlay and presentation resembling Age of Wonders, with my main body, at the center. There’s five straight lines of trees, one to the volcano, one to the south-forest, one that goes all the way to Ransalah, one that leads close to the former snake dungeon, and another one that’s headed south, towards where the other demon-walker was once spotted.

"I’m thinking." It takes one beetle pod, one month to regrow one beetle. So theoretically, I can lose about 5,000 beetles per month with no real ‘loss’ to my force. I could consistently assault that location with 5,000 beetles, but it’s probably better to hammer it with a larger force.

Unlike the humans, or the elves, or any other nation who man their force with non-renewable lives, my beetles essentially allow me to fight the demons with their own strategy, a war of attrition.

Outside of my own extremely overpowered abilities against demons, this is my second advantage against demons.

"How about your spiders? They’ve not been seeing use. Outside making webs here."

"They’re anti-air... and are campers. They’re not suitable as an invasion force. Beetles, being a mobile unit, are kind of like... cavalry."

"Your other beetle-variants? The dungbeetles, or the spear-beetles?"

I looked at the map again. Visibility is still crap. A comparison to age of wonders would be being able to see only one or two 'hex' away.

"So... TreeTree, would you want to send anyone to join the Takde’s force?" Jura interrupted my thoughts, the envoy met a whole load of other adventurers and fighters.

"No." I’ll deal with them separately. "Get me a map of where that location is." I’m still very happy that I can actually ‘see’ now, instead of just ‘spirit vision’. I can read maps! Apparently Takde’s airship is already filled with other adventurers the envoy picked up. It’s going to be a rather massive force, and the Takde High-King intends to use a large collected group of high leveled adventurers as a sledgehammer. "What about the coalition army that Salah’s leading? Or was it Nagra?"

"It’s participating, of course. But to minimise casualties, they need this high leveled force. Every week delay increases the demon-ogre force by a few hundred." Jura explained.

Alexis magically created a floating, holograph-like map. "So, either strike early with a smaller force, or strike later and face a bigger standing army. Sounds like fun."

From Ransalah, a chain of trees up to the Takde Demon Fort wouldn’t be too far. I want to see the demon-ogres for myself, whether they really are the threat that the envoys say it is.

"So... you’re going to sweep in to save the day?" Alexis asked.

"The beetles won’t get there in time. Not with that kind of distance."

"Even with your new ability?"

"It’s a pulley system based on vines, it’s better for goods, and it's not fast." Pulley systems exist in this world. Many ports have engineers who design large contraptions to help with moving goods. It seemed one of the heroes, a long time ago, did manage to introduce some rudimentary container system, though the practice is competing with magical holding bags.

"So what’s your plan? Just create a chain of trees and watch the battle?" Alexis didn’t seem too impressed.

"Honestly, yes. I like seeing new types of demons. I think it’s fascinating, and it gives us insights into how intelligent this demon king is."

Alexis frowned. The airship with the adventurers left. There’s some information trading as well.

-

Some of the adventurers we hired did come back with some targets. And after a few battles with smaller demon bases, this is where I made a discovery.

The rods must be collected, either when they are unused, or still under construction or in transport. Once fully channeled and transformed into a ‘base’, or a ‘fort’, most of that mana-corrupting ability is lost. Left untouched, the fully channeled rods can still continue to generate ‘small’ amounts of demonoids, but they lose most of their ‘base-creation’ ability.

In short, a single-use item. Ugh.

I had the idea of smashing some demon bases, and stealing the rods, but it makes more sense that the rods are mostly a single-use item.

Back to the drawing board.

Year 82 Month 9

[Completed The Grand Mind Tree project]. The grand mind tree resembles a bunch of walnuts stacked on top of each other, the entirely of the Mind Tree is wrinkly, with multiple branches twirling around.

Located just next to me, the moment it’s fully completed, I could see it glow a faint greenish light.

And then I had a massive, massive headache.

For a good... one hour.

But only one hour. I've had worse headaches.

[Mind Control resistance significantly increased. Each of your artificial minds will now act as ‘counterchecks’ against attempted mind control attacks. Mind control must now apply to more than half of your artificial minds to work.]

Ah wonderful. The blockchain node approach to mind control resistance.

Also, my awareness of soul matters suddenly took a giant leap. If I focus, I can now observe greater details in the folds of my [soul realm]. And most importantly, the processing power to alter souls at a fine level. It’s been something that I wanted, something I figured might solve what I have been facing with Jura.

After a string of successes with smaller rats and animals, I tried moving onto bigger things, and realised... I just couldn't.

I had ‘resolution’ issues. Because I couldn’t create a ‘canvass’ big and detailed enough. That meant, I would work halfway and realised I couldn't copy more. Even with a live version as a reference.

It was like working with a forced 600x480 resolution when I needed ten times that.

This [grand mind tree] is kind of like a massive RAM and solid state harddisk.

"Jura. Soul forge, now." With the grand mind, I now have what I needed to create a functional copy of the ‘hand.’

He looked puzzled, but he’s not one to challenge me that much. So he agreed. I had Lausanne and Laufen gather all sorts of materials, animals and place them around my main tree.

With all three [soul forge : red, blue and black], I draw the mana from all over my network of trees, and they appear as three separate balls of energy, one blue, one red, and one black. This distinction is also made possible by the improved mana-manipulation ability from the [grand mind tree].

And from the [soul realm], I took a bunch of the soul fragments, and started to form the shape of a hand.

Jura’s now asleep inside, the vines pumped nutrients and mana. And three viney feelers, ethereal, both ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’, reach into his body, and pulls his soul out. Just partly.

It revealed an elf-shaped soul, but with one hand gone. A gap. It’s rounded now, like a soul-version of a stump.

Two more feelers appear and touch the other, still present hand. The Grand Mind Tree glowed, and in sync, another feeler started to work on the floating hand, formed from the broken soul fragments of the dead. With the mental processing and storage power of the grand mind tree, the necessary ‘mental’ capacity to copy all the details of his existing hand. And we started to work.

Ivy and Trevor acts as my assistants. They helped maintain some of the mana flow, and regulated the [soul forge].

Cocooned in mana, it took a good four hours, and the floating hand now resembled the other, with the necessary corrections. Previously I could only do 3 hours. It had all the vessels, muscle strands and bone shapes, a perfectly flipped copy of the other hand.

Then, multiple ethereal feelers appeared, and it cut into the stump on Jura’s soul. It’s a slow process, slowly, using the fragments of souls to create all the components, and joining the existing soul to this new hand. Bit-by-bit, vein-by-vein, bone-by-bone, strands of muscle joined their counterparts on Jura's soul.

This took another four hours, and day had now turned into night. There were people looking for Jura, but Laufen sent them off.

The three glowing mana balls entered the ‘new’ hand, and then, the energies mixed and bound them together. Before I woke Jura, I checked.

And double-checked. I made sure I fixed every part of the connection. Trevor and Ivy helped to check as well.

Checking my own work took another two hours. I had to be sure. If I lose Jura to my own mistakes, I'm not sure how I can forgive myself.

But after that, I felt I was okay. Jura's body is stable. Gently his soul returned back to his body, and then I used the [biolab] functions to check another time. 15 minutes. He's alright, soul spring appears stable. There's a new section in there.

I injected something, and roused him from his slumber.

Jura woke up and shouted.

He felt immense, immense pain. Because what was once a ‘stump’, was now something he can feel in his soul. The loss, the lack of a hand, the pain that once was, all of it returned.

He shouted. But now, I can apply healing magic.

With more... surgery. And I sent him back into sleep. I had to wake him to check his response.

This time, with real physical feelers, inside a biopod, I cut into the physical stump on his body, and started to apply [healing]. And instead of healing back to a stump, it started to form a hand.

I did it slowly, making sure the recovery of the hand didn't cause any cuts or gaps that would leak blood. Trevor and Ivy helped monitor his vital stats.

And after another two hours of slow ‘reconstruction’, Jura woke up to find that he had... both his arms.

Jura was speechless when he saw his returned hand.

He touched it, and he felt it. And he just stared at his ‘new’ hand for a good 15 minutes, just moving his fingers, his wrist, his muscles.

I decided to just let him have his moment. He sat, and he cried for a while.

"TreeTree... you... fixed my hand. Only gods and their miracles can do such things. Maybe... maybe heroes too."

Great, I took so long to do something a hero probably could do in his sleep.

"I didn’t know I could too. So... uh... be gentle with your new hand?" I wasn’t sure whether everything’s fine yet, even though all the stats from [biolab] are positive.

"Yeah." He stretched it. "It... It still feels kind of strange to be having my own hand, and not Bamboo’s wood hand. I’ll be careful."

When he stepped out of the biopod room, everyone gasped. Jura smiled, "Hey. TreeTree made a hand."

-

"So... that tree makes you smarter?" Alexis asked. "Is it like your brain, but... bigger?"

"No. It’s just a special-tree type I have, increases research, and improves my mental resistances."

"Huh. For something that takes up so much resources, and almost two years to grow, I expected it to be more... impressive. Like, warp space-time or something."

"I believe there are abilities that I have yet to discover."

"But I guess you needed it to fix Jura’s hand. That’s pretty good." Alexis mused, and looked at the magical labs. "Too bad you can’t fix this magical interference. Could it create like a psychic bubble to push back the demon king’s interference? You know, like erm... Professor X’s "

"Why?" How’d that link

"Well, you can fix this newsless world for a change."

"Hah." I’m a bit torn. Should I care about the outside world? I like just caring about growing more trees, spreading trees from place to place. I like just looking after what’s mine, my forests, and my valley, the trees that I have.

Wait. Was that me?

But then, the world’s never going to just let me be. A part of me, echoes the words of Gewa, that I have great power, and I should use it to fight the demons. The lives that could have been saved if I did something.

Yet, that earlier part of me resists that notion. I wonder whether this is the 'tree' part of me that just wants to mind my own business, and focus on just growing trees. Helping trees. Trees are my friends, my family, and they are mine, in a way these elves and humans can never be. Maybe a part of me feels that they, these trees are... me. I sometimes think about where all these come from, a yearning for self preservation?

A collective instinct for self-preservation, drawn from the thoughts of all the trees?

Is this world, and all these artificial minds and grand mind tree, unknowingly influencing my thought processes? Is it deliberate? Or is there something like how the gods can subtly guide one' thoughts in a particular direction without one knowing?

Again, why do my mind wander like that? I was having a discussion on the demons, was I not?

"TreeTree, you... okay?" Alexis seemed puzzled. "You just stopped... talking."

"I... have a lot on my mind."

"Ah, because you actually have a mind, now." Alexis pointed to the mind tree. She laughed. "I was wondering where you did your thinking, like... is there a brain in your tree? Or are you like jellyfish and the roots in the ground function like some neural network?"

"Uh." Well, I’m beginning to suspect it is some kind of neural network. Or is it overstimulation from all the data coming in from all those other trees?

"Never mind. I often make jokes that only I find funny." Alexis shrugged.

"Yes. Back to subject. Demons." There's a big fight with the demon ogres.

The Takde's force of 1,500 high leveled adventurers and fighters was super impressive, and it managed to crush the force at the demon city. The battle lasted for about half a day, and they were successful.

Of course, I had some trees nearby to watch the action. The demon ogres are just giant versions of their own demonoid soldiers, nothing much to be afraid of, and their combat ability is less than a captain. The kingdom of Takde exaggerated the threat, but I suppose that helps to ensure a smooth defeat of the demons.

The adventurers and generals did have to work a bit harder against the few demon-generals, but they still vastly outleveled most of the demons.

And, as a bystander, I witnessed many high level skills used by some of the higher leveled adventurers.

Yet, even the best of them are just about level 80 to 90.

I suppose its a bit of a letdown, on both the adventurer and demon fronts, but hey, guess the variants the demon-rods make aren't that overpowered, unless the source itself is powerful. Or maybe... there are more powerful variants?

Maybe the demons capture a dragon cave or cemetery and start to spawn dragon-demons?

That, would be a hell of a sight.

P67 - Wintree

Year 82 Month 10

After the demon base over the ruined city was destroyed, the 'captured' souls were gradually released. The city, a field of death of many, had many wandering souls, spirits, and the rod caught on to them and leeched off their energies. I could tell, because now that my trees are nearer to this location, some of these lost souls entered my soul realm, and their condition looked pretty bad.

It seemed the demonic interference also meddled with the navigational abilities of souls. Would it be like Warp Immaterium? Now corrupted by the presence of the demon king?

Ah, well.

[Class seeds - Knight x 6 received]

[Class seeds - Paladin x 2 received]

[Class seeds - Ranger x 4 received]

[Class seeds - Mage x 4 received...]

[Skill seeds - various classes...]

The souls, as they return to the [soul realm], gave me various class and skill seeds. Many of those perished in combat, many more in the chaos after the demonic army breached the walls. These are the fragments, as they die the things that held their soul spring together starts to break apart. So, I might as well pick it up.

After all, once they enter the soul realm, only the inner soul is needed for reincarnation.

"It's a horrible thing, for these souls, that even in death they have to serve the demons for a while."

"Different demons, or are we talking about the same demons?" I asked Alexis. If these 'demons' are extraplanar in nature, isn't the term 'aliens' more appropriate?

"Yeah... but I mean, the native demons of the world are more of... djinns. Or like... dark-faeries who make unfair deals. Any resemblances on the physical appearance is coincidental, because what powers them underneath it all, is very different. These demons... are invaders."

"That’s because you’ve seen it. To the most of the mortals fiddling with demons, I’m not sure if they know. But heh... too bad there aren’t any demon-hunter classes."

"There are. I guess you’re just unlucky. But then, paladins can gain skills that boost damage against demons."

But if they are aliens, why do they benefit from the same 'boosts'? The skill system clearly acknowledges that they are demons. Even my own skills consider them demons. Or is this some kind of godly classification?

"Hmmm..." I wonder whether I can just plant these class and skill seeds and let them grow, so that I have more such seeds. Each of these class seeds gives one level in that class to the person that consumes the fruit made from these seeds. But second helpings do nothing. Skill seeds on the other hand, there are specific types, and generic types. Specific types will grant a skill in the type, if the person has a compatible class. Generic ones, will grant a skill from that class’s pool of skills. In a way, generic ones are stronger, since it’s theoretically possible to give someone one class seed, and multiple generic skill seeds to let him have multiple skills.

They are seeds, right?

[You can compress 10 class seeds or 10 skill seeds of the same type into a ‘class tree’ or ‘skill tree’. These class or skill trees produce 1-3 seeds every year.]

Oh. It’s theoretically possible to create an orchard of these class trees and skill trees?

I mean, if I have a 100 paladin seeds, I can create a 100 paladins, right? Level 1, for sure, but still, a 100 paladins! What if I have crazy powerful classes like [kings] or [heroes] or [emperors]?

What happens if I give a 100 people all [king] classes? Do they fight each other for a chance to be king? What if I have a 100 knight seeds, and have them fight each other to level up? That’s possible, right? A survival of the fittest gauntlet to produce a strong fighter? Sounds like something out of those mobages where one fuses units together to level up.

Why can’t I just fuse those class seeds together? Wouldn’t fusing class seeds create hybrid classes? Or this world’s classes don’t work like that?

[Class fusion and creation requires a compatible class or creature type and the divine gift - Taskmaster, or the divine gift - Evolutionist]

What. It’s possible! And divine gifts?? What is that?

"So... are you doing anything with those class seeds?"

Well, I’m sitting on a lot of class seeds, skill seeds and experience seeds. I think I have enough experience seeds for about 20 levels now. Too bad only class and skill seeds can be multiplied, else, imagine a fruit that gives levels? That’s really overpowered isn’t it?

But skill seeds are pretty good too, since they give new skills. If I could create a skill seed-tree that produces a strong skill every year, I could have a team of very highly-skilled fighters.

"Uh... nothing." For the experience seeds, I’d like to use it on Lausanne or Jura, or Laufen, but Lausanne continued to gain levels from all the demon fights she participated in. So there’s really no need to use it now. The rest of the Valthorn Initiates too are on the lower side of the levels, so they are still able to gain levels.

-

"Commander." A part of me feels happy every time I get called that. Really felt like the days when I am playing RTSs as a kid, only, well, I am fully immersed in it. Stratreegy has been really busy with all the demonic movements. He deployed another 3,000 beetles, and [subsidiary trees] to go with it, to hunt for more rods.

He wants to get his first rod. He's thirsty.

"Glory to the Countree. We will expand our reach." He even has a catchphrase, like what usually happens when a player selected a unit in an RTS.

Uh. Did he just invent a new name for the state? Countree of Freeka? Does that make me the primogenitree? Count-Tree Aeon?

Anyway, focus, focus. Stop getting distracted. Grand Mind Tree, if you can, help me stay on track.

Demon rods, well, the issue really is intercepting the rods before they are fully deployed. Maybe someday I can get the necessary powers to make my own rods, rather than robbing the demons for their rods.

"Operation Rob the Rod status update. We are pursuing a small demonic base that's just been spotted. The beetles will attack the rod as soon as we spot it to disrupt its channelling."

Well. The attack failed to secure the rod. The demons were able to protect the base until it was fully channeled, and because it was located in an open space, there was nothing slowing down the channel.

The demon rod's channel time is correlated with the ambient magic energy in the area, so using the rod in a regular plains doesn't take very long.

Ugh. Next target.

"Please bestow your punishment on me for my failure, Commander." Stratreegy wasn't happy.

"Do a post mortem and tell me what you think, can improve your chances for success."

"Maybe... maybe you should flip it around. Look for magical places, and lure the demon rods to them." Alexis suggested.

"Genius!" I mean, why didn't I think of it? All these minds and I can't get a good idea?

-

News from the southern states of the continent. A demonic walker has been spotted swimming across the ocean. The southern naval states are forming an armada to intercept the walker before it hits land.

"This means the southern continent is done for." Jura looked at the parchment. "Else, why would the walker make the journey across the ocean."

"Intercepting the walker before it hits land is a good idea. The regular demonoids are unable to fight on water."

"Could the demonoids be... I don't know... walking beneath the oceans? Like that... pirate movie where the undead marched underwater?" Alexis asked. "I mean, they aren't exactly living things, right, so... they may be able to function in water just as well as on land."

That's a good point, Alexis. So I asked Jura and the leadership team.

"Uh... there have been documented records that some generations of demons were able to function underwater, or fly... But walking underwater is not something that has been observed." Madeus explained, he rummaged through a few massive tomes. "But... Aeon is right, nothing rules out that possibility that the demons could simply walk underwater."

"So..."

"Perhaps it is a trap? I mean, what would the naval forces be able to do? Shoot cannons and fire spells at the walker until it somehow sinks? But if it doesn't breathe, that doesn't change a thing, does it?" Jura thought out loud.

"Whatever the outcome, I feel it doesn’t change that we’re going to have more demons from the south, so we need to increase our southern-sector defenses." This does mean I need to widen my net of [subsidiary trees], but I’ve already deployed most of my subsidiary trees. I need my next level up.

15,000 trees is pathetic, compared to the kind of numbers the demons can put out. I’d like to be a tree supercluster with billions, no, trillions of trees. I mean, if I could somehow become a massive forest that covered the entire continent, I could take on the demon king myself. I mean, I could just keep throwing beetles and trees at it until I win by attrition.

That's what ants do. That's what invasive plants do. Outnumber and overpower.

I would like to see a world where trees ruled the entire world. Where there are all kinds of trees, from the north pole to the south. Maybe trees on the moon, and other planets. Earth was once like that.

If I’m back home, I could solve global warming by just spawning trees everywhere. I recall reading some articles while working that a few billion trees would help fix the whole carbon dioxide emissions thing.

-

Anyway, I wanted to gather my thoughts.

So much had happened, so many places to watch, a whole load of news from all over the world. I have had so many new skills, and faced new foes.

Since the end of the year is coming, it’s time for me to do a bit of a checkup. Maybe I should do such things once a decade, or maybe once every few years, since a year’s really short to me.

Introspection, or I suppose, intreespection is very much overdue.

Wait! Didn't I assign one of the artificial souls to keep track of things for me? "TREVOR!"

"Apologies master. I had minimised the task manager when the demon king spawned." Trevor noted. "Pulling it out now and updating. Volcano... completed. Airship... pending. Research and Upgrades.... suspended due to demon king. Mineral hunting... suspended due to poor visibility and reduced beetle range. Rune deciphering.... no progress."

"Is that all?"

"The task list remained what was given 5 years ago."

"You didn't add new things to it?"

"..." Trevor didn't reply, but then I think he either needs explicit instructions, or he isn't sure what needs to be included.

The artificial souls have quite a bit of ability, and they are able to make judgements in their fields of expertise. But I suppose being artificial, their ability to make judgements and self-organising doesn't apply to all fields and all kinds of tasks. Then again, even a regular folk has different parameters for tasks. Some people are better able to judge cooking ingredient sizes than others. Trevor's really good at forest management and he can decide on the direction of growth of plants, decide when to cull and replace normal trees that have gotten sick, or damaged due to animals or monsters. So, perhaps this issue of judgement is a matter of.... unfamiliarity?

"Never mind." I wouldn't have been able to handle that much anyway. "Where are we on the sewage issue?"

"The newer hyperaccumulators trees are performing well, and we are introducing layered trees to the area. However, utilising 1,000 subsidiary trees to contain and process sewage and high magical toxin fecal matter is honestly not the best application of the subsidiary trees. I would recommend further research into the hyperaccumulator trees, as the single metal/magic type restriction on trees mean we have to utilise multiple trees adapted to different materials to remove all the toxins."

"Ah. Upgrades..." The demon king’s interference meant most of the merchant networks are down, and inter-continental traffic slowed down significantly. What this then means for me, is that I am unable to purchase the materials needed to upgrade my 3 artificial souls, without incurring significant spending, and without the usual delivery guarantee.

"No progress, master."

Of course, rare gems are rare. Even if I could mine some of the gems, it remains that there are other materials that would be located far away.

"Ivy, Dimitree, what else is being worked on? Anything of note?"

"Observation of the citizens in ongoing. Nothing to report."

Dimitree’s turn. "Defense is strong. Preparations and traps for the southern demonic incursions are ready."

Winter is coming.

Year 82 Month 11

A fairly quiet month for the valley. Maybe it’s the cold.

During this month, Lausanne and the Valthorns spent a lot of time fighting smaller demonic incursions. It’s good for their experience, and they do need it. The second strongest girl in that Valthorns is now level 18, and that’s pretty decent at the age of 9. I recall Lausanne only reached level 16 at age 9. It’s partly due to a mix of starting early, and being exposed to the effects of all the leveling skills. It’s still a long way for them.

Stratreegy’s also busy extending trees to places where the demons might want to establish a base. We want to lure them there, just as the volcano did. I do hope to mount an offense against the snake dungeon and retake that location, but I’m waiting for more information to come in. Not easy when the cold reduces the operating range of beetles.

According to recent courier reports, another demon walker has been spotted in the south, on top of the one that’s immobile. That makes 2 demon walkers on our continent. And if we add in the demon walker that’s somehow swimming across the ocean like some kind of massive island-turtle, that’s gonna be 3 demon walkers in the southern parts of our continent.

"I don’t recall having that many demon-champion equivalents during the last demon king?" I asked Alexis.

"You have a point. It’s likely that the demon king delegated more powers to it’s walkers, rather than holding most of the power. Even the demon champions are just a wee-bit stronger than the walkers. But then again, this demon king is also harvesting energies and mana from the world itself, and it may be using that energy to create more demon walkers. If so, the demon king may be just as insane as my time."

"Insane, eh?"

"I mean, it did blow up a massive crater, did it not? A crater that still remains today, and left all that stray daemolite embedded throughout, creating weird monsters."

"I wonder whether the demon rods work on daemolite." It’s a thought, right? If these demon rods work on mana sources, would it work on the demon king’s remains?

"I wonder what happens when your captured rods is in the demon king’s crater." Alexis retorted.

Has the demons taken control of where the previous demon king perished? From what I understood, after the ‘defenders’ of the valley are cleared, the nearby nations usually attempt mine all the daemolite for sale, given how valuable it is. Maybe it’s cleared out by now. Apparently most demon king’s corpses have been cleared out due to how valuable daemolite is as a store-of-mana. Maybe it’s like this world’s equivalent of a super-lithium-ion battery.

Year 82 Month 12

Winter’s fury mixed with demonic attacks. With winter in full swing, my beetles are forced into a retreat, even with their upgrades. It’s harder for the beetles to move in such cold, but at least around my trees, the effect of [heat transmission roots] meant I could keep the surroundings of New Freeka relatively warm, and the beetles can still perform optimally in the ‘warmed’ areas.

Yet, this also meant I can’t attack the snake-dungeon. The cold affects my beetles more than the demons.

So we waited for this winter to pass. We fought mostly defensive battles where my roots provided warmth, and worked on research.

Winter also meant traffic and news from the south came... really slowly.

On some days during the cold winter, the sky turns really really clear. And we could see about multiple astral objects. The moons, the stars, and things that just seemed to drift in space. On days like this, my star-mana production is slightly, very very slightly, better.

For the New Freekans, it is a month of preparation, hiding, and retreat. The subterranean hideouts are now popular, thanks to the presence of heated water from the volcanoes, a great way to warm up.

News also slows to a crawl, thanks to the thick snow and occasional blizzards. With news being carried by physically, so almost all the towns would be in a similar state. It’s only thanks to my network of roots that I can still see what’s going on in my surroundings.

Midway through the cold, we detected the presence of blood magic being used again. Somewhere, somebody out there is desperate enough to use blood magic, perhaps the demon king?

"Triangulating... Southern Continent."

"That far?" The readings of the amount of sacrifice is insane. Trevor and Alexis ran through some calculations and calculated perhaps 3,000 to 5,000 was sacrificed for a spell this large.

With little else to do, we spent our time theorising about the nature of blood magic.

How does Blood Magic even work, really?

What really is blood magic, and why is it so powerful?

I mean, I can see the effects of the hex created from blood magic, even at the few locations near to me, it's just corrupted by the hex, though it is slowly decaying.

Alexis's theory is that it really like is a nuclear weapon. The hex is a magical version of radiation. I mean, looking at the indicators high power, fallout. It feels like it.

She wondered would the origins of blood magic be similar. That it's the magical equivalent of weaponizing the... soul? Perhaps the numbers make the spell stronger, by the same principles of nuclear fusion or fission, that blood magic fuses or breaks apart the components of a soul into some kind of unstable form, and in doing so releasing all these magical energy, and the unstable soul-remnant form is what creates the 'fallout'?

Given how difficult it is to access the soul, I thought it’s quite unlikely that the blood magic works at that level. So, I thought maybe its really the 'blood' that's like some kind of superfuel, and blood magic binds the superfuel and concentrated it into a bomb. The hex is just the leftover, unexploded bomb. Essentially, what I thought happened during a blood ritual is, life-energy or mana of the ‘sacrificed’ is converted into an energy form, and that’s the bomb.

Kinda like when you pack a big bunch of low-quality fireworks together, and then when you blow it up, sometimes there are some of these fireworks that doesn’t ignite, or old world war 2 bombs that for whatever reason, failed to detonate.

When I think about it, I realise our theories are similar. Just at different levels. I just presume the blood ritual converts the energy of the living into that of a weapon. Essentially whatever that is happening at the ‘mana pool’ and ‘body’ into another form.

I like Alexis's theory, since there is an elegance to it. It's like the blood magic version of 'breaking the atom', and has far more consequences. Like, the realisation that there is a kind of magic or energy that fundamentally hold the souls together. A peek into the true natural 'forces' of the world.

I suppose it can be tested. If Alexis’s theory is true, I should be able to witness some kind of soul-change during a blood ritual. Or perhaps detect whether there are soul-residue in the hex, which I so far did not. Perhaps it’s a size thing, if Alexis’s analogy of nuclear bombs is true, perhaps the soul-fission creates even smaller particles that require specialised equipment to be detected.

Like... soul-quarks? Squarks?