The journey was, most of all, boring.

"There is nothing here. Nothing!" The dryad complained.

It must have been hours at this point, and the black pillar didn't seem any closer than when she began walking. She was starting to feel thirsty, too. Not surprising. I'm a plant. She thought.

Then, she remembered her [Tree Heritage] trait. She apparently could sprout roots and sink them into the ground. Maybe there was some water beneath the dusty earth?

She had nothing to lose, the journey would take ages either way, so she stopped, and planted her not-feet firmly on the ground.

"How do I activate this? Do I just think at it?"

She imagined her legs growing roots that then snaked their way through the soil, and as she did, she felt tingling from her trunks. It worked!

It was, however, slow. Almost literally like watching grass grow.

"Okay, time to speed things up. [Growth Spurt]!"

She was pretty sure she didn't need to exclaim the ability's name, but it felt good, and there was no one around to criticize her.

She imagined her roots accelerate their growth, and felt something pull at her... that's weird. It's like it's pulling at me, but not at my body. Is this my soul?

She felt something drain out of that weird part of her and flow into her roots, which now grew much quicker. She stopped the process after a few seconds. This took energy, and she hadn't seen anything resembling food around, so she had to use the Skill sparingly.

Then again, I have leaves for hair, maybe I can just photosynthesize?

Leaving that topic for later, she instead focused her senses on the new appendages. The roots reached a few meters down, and... yes, that was moisture! The roots had something between touch and taste, so she could feel wetness brush against her, but it didn't feel like moist earth. It must have broke through into an air pocket of some kind. No, the moisture felt more like... ew, is that spit?!

Something was licking her roots, and oh boy, is that a sentence. She moved the touched root to swat at whatever the thing was, and received a bite for her troubles.

"Shit! What is that thing?"

The "thing" didn't dignity her with an answer, and instead bit harder into her wooden flesh.

"Ow! Stop that! Fuck this, I'm out."

She concentrated at reabsorbing her roots back into her legs. She wasn't sure if that was something she could do before she tried, but her body obeyed her wishes. Again, slowly. But not as slowly as it took to sprout the roots in the first place. After a dozen seconds or so, she had uprooted herself and stumbled away.

Behind her, there was a rumbling.

That thing must be really hungry to chase after me like that.

The creature burst forth from the ground, scattering dust around itself like a miniature volcano erupting.

It was a giant insect. Giant, as in, about twice the size of a house cat. It had three sharp teeth protruding from its wide maw, a snake-like tongue dancing between them. Its whole carapace was pale white, covered in grey hairs. Its six legs looked like a misconception of how regular insects worked: they were ended in sharp claw-like points that dug into the ground, instead of small, flattened digits that real insects possess.

The only saving grace was that the monster lacked any eyes, so it wouldn't notice if she just slowly walked away...

Before she could take a proper step away, the thing snapped its head in her direction, tongue extended to taste the air.

It can't see me, but it can smell me. She realised.

"Fuck it. Come at me, then! I always wanted to know what bugs taste like!"

The creature charged at her.

She imagined her arms becoming long spears, activating [Growth Spurt] again to hasten the transformation. Just as the sharp points formed, the monster was upon her.

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With her best approximation of a war cry, which amounted to a weird sort of groan, she stabbed her right spear-arm at her enemy.

It threw itself to the side, but she managed to scratch its carapace a little, transparent hemolymph oozing out of the crack.

The giant bug released a shrill screech of pain, and rushed at her once more.

With the size of her new arms, she genuinely wasn't expecting the creature to survive the first hit, so she was completely unprepared for retaliation. It turned out she wasn't a fighter in her previous life.

The three teeth sunk into her bark and pierced through, firmly attaching the beast's maw to her left leg.

Then, it began to suck.

She could feel the piercing pain and the extremely uncomfortable sensation of her sap-blood being drained from her. She failed around in pain and panic, falling to the ground.

The hit in the head emptied her mind briefly, letting productive thoughts in once more.

I need to kill it. Now.

She stabbed the monster again. With it stuck to her, it couldn't have dodged if it tried, and it was too absorbed with its meal to even notice her fight back. She pierced its chitin armor deeply, spear sinking into the soft goo beneath.

She pulled out, and struck with the other arm.

And again.

The beast was no longer moving, but she pierced it three more times, just to be sure.

You fought your first enemy and persevered. Level up!

+5 attribute points.

"Well, that's nice. Sure was worth almost getting killed." She remarked sarcastically between quick breaths. Or rather, she thought she would be breathing quickly, but she realised that, aside from taking air in to speak, she didn't much need to breathe.

"So I am photosynthesizing. As long as there's light and carbon dioxide, I don't need to breathe, then. Presumably. Maybe."

She sat there, stating at the corpse of the giant bird-like thing that tried to suck her dry for nutrients and water. And she realised she could probably return the favor.

After all, that's why she let down roots in the first place.

She could just eat it, she supposed, but the thing looked like it had a disgusting texture, in and out, plus she had no clue how to go about butchering it.

Instead, she forced her roots into the corpse.

They slid in much easier than into the ground. The insides of the creature were disturbingly soft and sliding into them made her quite uncomfortable, but it definitely beat having to eat the thing instead.

She waited for something to happen, before realising she had full control over her growths, which meant she had to specifically think of absorbing the nutrients from the "soil". Once she gave the command, though, the process required no concentration.

It was, as was becoming a trend, slow going. She supposed trees aren't exactly known for doing anything swiftly. She spent the time to look over her gains from the fight. It seemed she only got the single level and 5 Attribute points to allocate.

First, she put three in Constitution. The Attribute was lacking for what she immediately decided was a tank build. It's nice to have a large health pool, but it's better if that health also recovers faster.

The other two points went into Spirit. She needed more mana to grow things on the fly. Adaptation was key to survival.

She supposed she could upgrade her Presence, as it was her lowest Attribute, but she didn't understand it enough to invest in it.

Species: Dryad lvl 2 (clade: Awakened Plants)

Class: -

Health: 185/200

Mana: 81/110

Attributes:

Strength: 13

Toughness: 20

Constitution: 12

Mind: 11

Spirit: 13

Presence: 7

Traits: [Sapient Plant 1-A], [Tree Heritage 1-C]

Skills: [Growth Spurt 1-B]

Now, there was nothing left to do but wait for her roots to finish their meal.

It took about half an hour by her estimation. The time oassing and the nutrients from the bug corpse helped her heal some of the damage she sustained in the fight, and she no longer felt thirsty, so on the whole, she considered the scuffle worth it.

With the corpse drained utterly, leaving behind only a pale, empty shell, she reabsorbed her roots, and continued her march towards the distant pillar.

"This is so fucking boring." She complained for the twenty eighth time. She kept count.

Over the hours, the light that seem to come from every point in the sky hadn't grown no disappeared. In other words, there was no day or night in this place. No way to know that time was passing.

No variety. Boredom.

She grew some more leaves on her back and arms, mostly to do something, but also because she didn't know when she would encounter the next source of food, so she decided to increase her are of catching the dim light.

Even the novelty of being a plant had worn off.

Whenever she started feeling thirsty, she rooted herself again. From time to time, she happened upon a small pocket of water underground, which at this point was enough variety to be genuinely exciting. She had yet to find any living being aside from herself and the giant bug she ate, though.

Every second "watering cycle", once she soaked her thirst, she would stay rooted for a while, falling asleep standing. She had no way of knowing how long she slept, of course, but nothing had ever woken her up, so it didn't matter. Time didn't matter.

The only thing that mattered was survival, and the pillar. The pillar that was slowly, agonisingly slowly, filling more of the horizon. She was getting closer. She would arrive there, eventually.

And that thought kept her mind intact. Mostly.