Chapter Forty-Six

The girl gestured at the core with a slightly trembling hand as she spoke in a calm, flat tone. “So, what do we do with the core? We can’t leave it out in the open.”

Arden stared at the girl for a few moments, anger flashing but vanishing just as quick. Both of them were at fault in the situation. She just forced his hand. They had to live with the consequences, and that meant working together.

Fortunately, they kept the bridge. If they severed it, their co-rulership would be much more difficult and awkward. Not like it wasn’t awkward already. He barely knew the girl, and a good chunk of their interactions were less than friendly.

A long sigh escaped him as he pushed down the words he wanted to say but would come to regret. Instead, he focused on the task at hand. She was right. The core couldn’t stay out in the open.

The problem was where should they put it. It was obvious placing it under the tree, but it was probably the best place until they had another solution. The tree was the center of their territory, so the furthest spot from their borders.

Since it wasn’t his decision alone, he gestured toward the base of the resurrected tree. “My first thought was to dig a hole under the tree and place it there, but it seems too obvious. What do you think?”

She nodded in agreement at this point. “What about inside the tree? It would force them to work harder to get at it and it should help the tree grow.”

Arden eyed the core, then the tree trunk. It would fit easily. The problem was, how did they get it in there? Since she suggested it, she must know how, at least he hoped. “Sure, if we place it at the center, it would take a lot to reach it. Though going by the charred state of the stump fire is an issue.”

At his answer, she bent down and picked up the core, which looked comical as the core was much wider than she was, but somehow, she lifted it. Either she was really strong, or the core was light. If he had to guess, it was likely the latter.

Curious, he grabbed the other side, finding it was in fact unnaturally light. They carried it to the tree trunk, then to Arden’s surprise, the core sunk inside.

A glance at the girl revealed her bracelets shining, so she must be activating a card. Probably the territory card. It said it granted authority over the territory, so maybe it allowed them to manipulate things, or the core was special.

Whatever the reason, the core slipped inside the tree without issue. One last push by them caused it to disappear. Even out of sight, he could sense the exact location of the core as if he was linked to it, which he supposed he was.

It continued to move after it disappeared into the tree, seemly gaining a life of its own. Considering her bracelets weren’t shining anymore, she wasn’t the one controlling it either.

The core centered itself within the trunk, then ascended until the trunk split off into a handful of smaller trunks wider than his torso a hundred meters up.

Maybe he would make a treehouse home high in the branches. He was part bird, after all. It was only natural to make a nest in a tree. A smile formed as he imagined himself in bird form nesting high in the tree.

With the core taken care of, silence returned as they alternated looking at the core and each other for several seconds before Arden spoke. “So, since we are territory co-owners, I think it’s about time we introduced ourselves. My name is Arden, no family name, as I’m not a noble, but I suppose that just changed.”

He stared at the girl, who wore a conflicted expression, maybe contemplating what to reveal. It annoyed him that her trust was so low that she had to think about introducing herself, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Now that they were territory owners, they needed to learn to trust one another.

Her expression turned imperious, chest puffed as she spoke, though her soft, emotionless tone hurt the impact. “I’m Solanine of the Vipera clan.”

Vipera? He supposed the clan’s name made sense based on her aspect, but he never heard of it. From her demeanor, it should mean something, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about some unknown clan.

Though he had a feeling he would have interactions with them in the future. While territory ownership didn’t extend to the family of the owner, many considered them just a step below the owners.

Did that mean his parents were nobles now as well? Other than an aunt who was supposedly his birth mother, he didn’t know of any other living family. He hoped it stayed that way. There were stories about people winning fortunes only for every distant relative appearing to milk them for everything they had.

Arden cleared those thoughts and returned his attention to the girl, no Solanine, who was frowning at him. “Well, Solanine, what do you think we should do next? I planned to find my parents, but territory ownership complicates things. It might be better to consolidate our gains and reinforcing our territory core before either of us go anywhere.”

Without a word, Solanine nodded her head, then turned to walk away. She stopped at the edge of the clearing, eying the stone trees with distaste before sitting down and closing her eyes.

A sigh escaped him as he also turned away from the core. It would take a while to get that girl to open up to him. He didn’t care about being friends, but they needed to trust one another if they were going to run a territory together. They had a long road ahead of them.

He put Solanine out of his mind as he focused on his staff, wincing upon scanning it with his mana sense. It wasn’t a wince of pain, more like loss. The previously overflowing staff barely had any mana left. Still more than he held in his core, but that wasn’t saying much, as he was only grade one.

It really took a dungeon’s worth of mana to resurrect the tree? That didn’t seem right. Sure, the tree was big, but not much larger than the ones inside the dungeon. Were trees so inefficient to grow?

His attention shifted to said tree. With all his senses, he scanned it. His equilibrium sense spiked, warning him the tree was essential to the balance of nature. Instead of being warned off, he looked deeper, as it looked like a regular tree from the outside.

A powerful, vibrant melody played in his mind, but even that wasn’t special, giving him no clues to what made the tree so important.

Finally, when he shifted his focus to his mana sense, the reason hit him like a sledgehammer. The tree shined with both nature and life attuned mana, in such high quantities he jerked back at the sight.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Fear warred with awe as he stared at the tree. There was no way to hide a beacon of mana like that. Somehow, there was more mana inside the tree than his staff had. That discovery sent another shot of surprise through him.

He scanned his surroundings with his mana sense. Only now did he realize the tree radiated mana filling the clearing with rich nature and life attuned ambient mana.

Said clearing now had a healthy green covering consisting of moss, small plants and patches of grass where the sun snuck through the dense canopy, providing shade to most of the clearing and beyond.

Maybe he wouldn’t need the staff to provide nature mana after all. They created an oasis in the stone forest. It made sense, he supposed, as territory cores usually appeared at some landmark.

Keeping their territory hidden would be much harder than he thought. Not only was the mana saturating the clearing, but it was growing stronger and spreading. He didn’t know how far they were from civilization, but it was only a matter of time before someone sensed their territory and came to check it out.

The worst part was the first to sense it would likely be the strongest. Far stronger than they were.

At the thought of strength, he refocused on his staff, a determination fueled by fear pumping through him. He needed to grow stronger, and that meant reaping every reward he could.

He latched onto the handful of cards he sensed within the staff, frowning when he remembered there used to be over a dozen. Upon extracting the cards, any thoughts of the missing cards vanished, however.

Despite gaining many cards within the dungeon, he couldn’t help but become giddy as he looked upon the cards. Each card had green borders, one for each nature attunement aside from life. Three of them he recognized immediately, and so did his Ortus bracelets, as they began flashing.

Heart racing, he opened his Ortus menu and looked at the notification, hoping it was what he thought it was. Not only would he free up passive hand slots, but it would give him another edge.

Full set of nature affinity boost cards detected.

Would you like to merge them to form Nature Boost (Epic)?

Warning! The resulting card will reset to level 1.

The moment he read it, he hit yes, a broad smile forming. Just those three cards were a worthy reward.

Like the previous merges, the two cards ripped from his deck and floated in front of him, joined by the other three cards before they phased together to form one holographic and shining card.

Arden grabbed the card out of the air, not even letting it float down, and inspected it.

As with the other nature attuned epic cards, it had all five attunements present, this time in a line with arrows pointing upward from each green orb.

Nature Boost (Epic) Level 1

Type: Passive card

Affinity: Nature

Attunement: Nature

Effect: Passively draw mana to boost the effects of nature attuned cards. Effect scales with level current boost ten percent. Must be in the user’s passive hand to activate.

He immediately added the card to his deck and put it in his passive hand. As soon as he did, a shot of power went through him before it settled.

Now all his nature affinity cards would receive the boost. Including his Nature Manipulation and Nature Resistance cards. The card gave him a ten percent boost to his entire deck, and that was only the starting boost.

To make it better, each level would boost everything. It could be his most valuable card.

Still buoyant from the boost card, he turned his attention to the last two cards. Somehow, his excitement soared higher. Two shining and holographic cards sat in his hand. He immediately noticed a link, causing him to think he may have found another set.

Both cards had a blank card with a plus above it as the picture. The only difference between the two cards was the color of the border. One had the forest green of wood attunement while the other had a mint green denoting biological. Since he already had the boost cards for those attunements, it made sense he would receive another card, but he didn’t think it would be epic ranked.

Most of his deck limit was from epic ranked cards. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Fortunately, most of them saved deck space as they gave the effects of five rare cards each. Still, he may need to focus on gaining lower ranked cards to fill out his deck.

Of course, he wouldn’t pass up more high ranked cards and try to squeeze them all into his deck like the cards in front of him.

Upon reading the description of the wood attuned card, however, thoughts of deck space vanished as yet again they wouldn’t take up the full eight of an epic card. Well, at least technically not.

Wood Rank Up (Epic) Level 1

Type: Single Use card

Affinity: Nature

Attunement: Wood

Effect: When added to the user’s deck, they may choose one wood attuned card to rank up one rank.

He paused before he added it to his deck. A glance at the other card confirmed it had a near identical description except for biological cards.

Upon checking his deck, he only had two wood attuned cards. Wood Spike and Conjure Roots. If he didn’t have Nature Manipulation, he would have ranked up Wood Manipulation in a heartbeat, but fortunately he didn’t.

Who knew if ranking it up would mess with the merge? It would suck to rank it up only to block the merge for Nature Manipulation. The problem was, what card did he choose? Both were useful cards. Well, one he knew was while the other he never tried.

At that thought, he activated Conjure Roots. Another card activated, presumably his Nature Boost card, as a single root sprouted up from the ground. He continued to feed mana into the card, causing the root to grow a meter in height.

A wave of light-headedness hit him as he cut the connection, finding the root remained like the poison cards. The light-headedness turned out to be a nearly empty mana core. He didn’t recover all his mana from claiming the territory.

Wanting to test the root, he siphoned off mana from the staff, just then realizing it wasn’t in his hand. He must have dropped it in his excitement.

That brought another flash of excitement upon realizing he could siphon mana even if it wasn’t materialized. It was a second mana core. Except, as far as he could tell, it didn’t generate its own mana.

As awesome as it sounded, it wasn’t as rare as it seemed. His parents had several small mana batteries they kept with them in case of an emergency.

Still, it was nice to know he had a backup source. He just had to keep it charged. With that in mind he materialized it and sat down cross-legged with the staff resting on his lap.

A glance with his mana sense brought a smile. His guess was right. The staff recharged on ambient mana like a high-end mana battery. It was slow, but it was nice to know he could charge it without having to hunt down nature attuned creatures to kill.

At least he thought he needed to kill nature attuned creatures to recharge it. He needed to do some testing on the staff, just like his deck.

It would be awesome if the dungeon below them reopened to supply them with nature attuned creatures and resources.

Usually, a territory core came paired with a dungeon giving the owner of the territory a personal money maker. He hoped that was the case for them as well. Even if the trials didn’t exist any longer, there were still a ton of resources to collect.

They didn’t kill the core, at least he didn’t think they did, so the dungeon should reopen, eventually. Though with how much mana they took, it might be a while.

His mood took a darker turn as the gravity of his to do list weighed down on him.

So many things to do and fortunately, he wasn’t on a timer. Well, not an actual timer, but time was still ticking on them. It was only a matter of time before someone came knocking.

It might be a good idea to do some scouting, but first he needed to finish with his dungeon gains.

With the mana he siphoned off, he activated his Nature Manipulation card for the first time. A gasp escaped him as he felt he could connect to everything living around him except Solanine, who twitched but remained where she was, eyes closed.

As much as he wanted to test its limits, he felt the card gulp down mana. It would have to wait until he had more mana to spare. He focused on the root and reconnected to it.

To his surprise, he had no problem connecting and moving it with his mind. Was he that much better at mana control now that he was using his own mana, or was the card that good?

Whatever the reason, it felt like an extra limb with how natural it felt to control it. Unfortunately, before he could do more than wave it around, the connection snapped, and another wave of weakness hit him.

With a disappointed sigh, he returned his attention to the two cards in his left hand, still unsure what cards to choose to upgrade.