“Why are they out of the ground?” He asked, his old, newly teen voice returning to him. The tree unnervingly bounced up and down in the dark.

An impression of laughter to soothe Rhodney. It wasn’t working. Rhodney was more skeeved out at the fact that all its pantomimes seemed to move through his mind so smoothly. The being seemed to think that the statement was silly.

Roots sticking out the earth… on earth, would be terrible because it would mean that a tree would lose out on valuable nutrients.

But here on Dulmpa, that was not the case, she told him. The best plant monsters were the ones who could adapt to the world around them. One’s that could scavenge, one that could attack, and one’s that could defend those in which they could.

And besides,

Here It had no predators, no enemies, nothing that could harm it in this space.

Why not bask? Get a tan? Let one’s roots stretch towards the sun.

“But there’s no sun? And… I’m not sure that’s how roots work.” A root waved him off like “Yeah, Yeah,” like it’d heard this before.

Rhodney stared at the tree awkwardly and looked down… Man… he missed having shoes. He wiggled his–Oh my lord–honest to god toes. He couldn’t get dirt between his toes, because getting his socks wet in any space would be horrid. But at the very least, he could enjoy being taken back to where he was before.

Back when things were… at least kind of normal.

No horns bringing his head down, No hooves causing him to trip, no enemiesRegardless of how messy they were, it felt good to be able to walk properly again. He was tired of stumbling around the forest. And this swamp smelled so… sweet.

Rhodney’s head started to hurt, as he–listened–to the tree. His head started to pulse as the waves and ruffles were translated.

As its waves got more intricate, Rhodney slowly began losing the translation.

It felt good to walk and even the opportunity to enjoy that feeling was something that he’d have to thank this old lady with later. He was grateful,

Tree’s didn’t get this big without living for very long so… Old lady wasn’t disrespectful, right? He didn’t know. Wait, why was he so focused on this?

God it smelled good here.

He interrupted its anecdote about… some kind of scarecrow? Scarecrow? He chuckled, his translation was getting wacky as whatever was keeping it going started to run out of fuel. Scarecrow??

“Excuse me, this is nice and all but why am I here?” He tried to ask politely, not sure how a tree would view words or respect.

The tree continued to pantomime, Rhodney gave, “Uh huh’s, Yeah, Okay, Hold on… Slow down… Your mother???”

The sound of Rhodney’s heart in his head became intense, and regrettably, he let go of that rope that allowed him to understand the creature. Some passive things came through, but he didn’t force himself to move anymore.

His reserves were tapped.

Gone.

He only had about a glimmer left.

The tree slowly became more unintelligible, Eventually going all the way, as it gave more and more complex waves that didn’t make any sense. He was really reading people. Like, really good. Freakish. But now that he knew that it’s power was rooted in magic, and now that he’d stepped in a world where some beings didn’t speak in the same way he did… he was slowly learning more and more about his limits.

Everything required power. Even if that well is large, he couldn’t keep taking from the bucket. He needed… some sleep.

Some rest.

Like now.

It was a tree. A hyper emotive wacky looking sort of inflated looking root tree, but still a tree.

He needs to bring in a translator, interpreter, something! The tree’s roots flexed angrily as Rhodney stopped trying to understand it. The rain becoming more wild around it.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t understand you, you need to use words!” Rhodney yelled into the rain. Said rain, and the tree fell still. Its standing roots fell into the mud in a resounding Smack as the tree gave up in exacerbation.

Sigh.

This wasn’t going to work.

There was a slight barrier that they couldn’t pop under these conditions… he needed to. A realization. The guardian had told him how to reshape his soul when they had met. Moving it in a way so that it could experience things in it’s own space when it was unfit for the things like grass and trees and air.

The guardians was a space he had purchased from another deity, and these were spaces of consciousness that their minds just sort of created. They were differen’t… but the theory was the same, right? So far nature magic was all about understanding and enhancing. Healing allies, commanding people, and exaggerating effects.

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This seemed… a little under his prerogative.

“Hey… Can I try something?” He asked the tree. The tree just stared at him ‘It always had but… You know what he meant!’ Slight apprehension. Its roots rolled back and pointed more towards itself, protectively.

“I’m not going to use fire magic on you,” Rhodney said, rolling his eyes, a gesture the tree wouldn’t understand. “If you let me do what I need to do… you’ll be able to talk.” It perked up, stretching slightly. Its base tilting to the right a little in a confused gesture.

‘How come it can understand me but I can’t understand it?’

“Just… Trust me. You brought me here cause you wanted to talk, so let’s do it. Do you really want to sit here just staring and waving at each other?”

It didn’t.

Rhodney saw and felt the ground begin to tear.The sounds of it burrowing out hit his ears, and muddy water being penetrated. Mud and water split like a mini red sea, and a long root slowly inched out. His face illuminated with the slight disco pink lights shining in his face.

It was larger than his head and moved around curiously. He saw its pink mana veins already glowing on the wooden tentacle. They pulsed like a fluorescent squid, “Weird…”

Rhodney was just going to walk up to touch the trunk of the behemoth, but like most plants, the true essence was indeed underneath it, not above.

Rhodney didn’t know if trees had seeds, but that is besides the point. He lightly grabbed onto the wood and pulled at his irregular mana.

Besides healing people or making the stone, or the tree in the cradle, he’d never intentionally shaped something before.

He had an intuitive sense of these things. His affinity told him the basics, but not anything complex. It told him things like, “How to make a tree kind of spiky!” and “How to talk to birds!” But nothing like, reshaping someone’s soul.

Give me that tutorial would you?

Rhodney’s veins began to glow, and he tried to push his energy through the thick hull of the tree.. Its roots extended forth, stretching the dirt beneath them in the real world moving in time as he pumped the creature full of energy. The being didn’t need to be healed, and it didn’t seem to want to change, it’s form resisted the energy on instinct.

There was a slight frustration at the stubbornness, but also a realization as he realized that he would probably be the same if someone was trying to alter his body.

But that isn’t what he was going for.

He reached deeper, trying to go past the skin as his floodgates didn’t close. He couldn’t move like a dentist, drilling, and then stopping to refresh with water, drilling and sucking out the spit. He this was a rush job.

He couldn’t stop his mana so there were no breaks. He would have to move past the physical, mental, and get all the way down to the essence of the creature,

Which sounded about as easy… as it sounded.

Not easy at all, especially with his lack of experience.

He hoped the old monster that had been around for a long time could help… maybe it knew a little soul magic to help out. But at the moment, the rushing made it a little… hard to communicate. He sucked his teeth and dug his heels deeper grabbing tight onto the large root. He tried to push up the root and past its wooden exterior, trying for something further in, but was only met with more wood.

He felt the tree’s swell from get bigger from the inside. Its wooden implements getting all dense. “Quit all the root stuff!” The tree couldn’t talk but it probably would say something like, “You’re the one trying to make me talk, bozo.”

Which… Accurate.

He felt his power start to dim as he just made the tree grow more. And slowly started to dry heave as he poured his already thinning reserves into even more people.

His back had this thinning airy sensation that he did not enjoy as he funneled.He grabbed onto the wood tightly and tried to go more in, but felt the tentacle suddenly slip from his two hands and smack him in the face.

His head twisted, he fell to the ground. Even with a large hunk of wood hitting him at a decent speed… it didn’t hurt as bad as he imagined. “What was that for?!” He croaked out. Rhodney heard the tree start to shake and then looked from his view from the ground.

The tree simply shrugged and laughed it's impression of a laugh. It found his efforts entertaining, but it clearly didn’t want to see him kill himself just for a conversation. “Yeah… that makes sense…”

The being wasn’t some kind of malevolent force, it was just trying to give a simple message to him. It was just the two of their faults that they had been born in two different kinds of sapient bodies.

“If only the Guardian offered me a tree body,” Rhodney said, “That would’ve been great,” He’d probably be better as a tree. He probably wouldn’t screw up at magic so much. He probably wouldn’t have kept bringing things to life or been used as a battery by his “Teammate.”

On an offensive or even control level he felt really pathetic. Healing and command was only so useful in his eyes.

He was told there were a bunch of people like him in this world, and he knew that as he got older he would only meet more. He needed a reliable way to protect himself. He couldn’t just count on Navy to drag him around.

It hadn’t happened yet, but he had the shrinking feeling after plinth had showed up that his powers may cause some… problems. For his group.

And from the sounds of Navy panicking near his body, only confirmed it, but at least he knew the tree had no bad intentions. He could laugh as he heard his teammates muffled talks about “A powerful monster beneath us!” He laughed a little. That wasn’t so bad, at least none of his creations were dangerous.

Rhodney sat in the mud and watched the long wooden tentacle worm move over to him, rubbing him in an apologetic way. “It’s alright… Thanks,” He said, “I should… probably start heading back, huh.” The root looked at him like, “What about the talking thing.”

“I can’t reach your soul like I did mine. I was dead when I learned how to do that and was only a soul.

“You aren't that, and–No offense–you’re too big to move through.” He had no qualms telling the tree about his past. He would have to tell some people as they met more irregulars, and people would probably eventually find out.

The end goal was to become powerful and valuable enough that his identity as a reincarnate wouldn’t be ostracized. Honesty was the best policy after all and the faster he could get someone to teach him how to properly use what he had, the better.

They had been injured multiple times, and he had been inside this space for lord knows how long. Literally anything could be happening outside. Rhodney needed to leave and go see what was going on.

He quickly told the tree what The Guardian had told him about shaping his own soul when they were on Dulmpa for the first time.

He wasn’t sure if the being was even compatible with the technique, this was some odd stuff. Shaping your own body in the space of your mind sounded daunting to be sure.

He saw the creature’s pink mana veins glow slightly green, peeking out a bit of the irregular mana Rhodney gave in understanding. They would have to work on it.

This would take time.