Owari arrived fairly early in the morning, as he expected the treant was still waiting as always. It may have been more inclined to run away had it not injured him the past few days and gained a bit of confidence. However confidence is not always good, pride came before a fall after all, and the moment your confidence collapses you have nothing to hold onto. Owari intended to exploit this and hopefully by the end of today he would have his second magical beast tamed. If he got injured again and didn't tame it he would have to give up, though if he only failed to tame it and had to leave he could try again. He could only afford to push his body so far, he still had to make his way home after all. With that in mind he centered his mind and focused as he slowly phased out the pain and soreness in his body. He had found that trying to ignore it only made it worse, the best way to handle the pain was to allow it to take over and then it would slowly fade into the background as you get used to it. After doing that he stretched his body and got used to the way his wounds inhibited his movements before pulling his sword free and making his way into the treants range. As soon as he did the treant shook a branch and fired some leaves at him probably assuming with his wounds he would be incapable of countering it.
Owari didn't want to move too violently this early in, he only had so much blood to lose after all and even with his increased blood production he was feeling the effects of blood loss. In order to limit his movement Owari focused carefully and calculated the paths of the leaves like how he did a few days back to save his life. After having entered that state of focus so many times due to his near-death situations Owari was slowly learning how to enter that state intuitively without having to be in life-threatening danger. Seeing the paths of the leaves tracing through the air towards him, Owari carefully made use of his second technique's footwork to make a few solid measured steps and only slightly tilting his body.
As he did so the leaves all attempted to change directions and come at him from many angles but he seemed to step through the seemingly impenetrable net as if he was taking a stroll. Each leaf missed him by a good few centimeters and none were able to change direction quickly enough as he waited until they were close to make his move. In a way this method of dodging captured one aspect of Owari perfectly, like a ghost he never let anything in his path slow him down or stop him. He had forgotten this part of himself as he slowly grew more fond of the violent and intense fighting he had been doing lately. The way it felt to shoot across the ground at high speeds and clash with his enemies, or how it felt to strike away everything that came his way and force his way through. The feeling it gave him was quite euphoric and he slowly grew engrossed with them, he wasn't using his head and even though it was fun it was also dangerous.
This time though he went back to his roots, using his head and acting with efficiency he managed to weave his way through the attack and saved some energy. The treant seemed to panic and tried to attack again but the results were the same, Owari ducked and stepped past the leaves. After this the treant didn't dare continue this type of attack, it used its leaves to secure food and it had used a lot of them in its fights with Owari so it couldn't risk it. As Owari reached the point that had so far been the furthest he had gotten, the treant attacked. It seemed to have weaved a net of roots under Owari as it shot out a dozen of them all from different directions all at once. They seemed to take up every escape route and two even aimed up in case he tried to jump. But Owari didn't jump, instead he focused and found the hole in the treants seemingly inescapable net. He had realized while dodging the leaves that it was difficult to really weave a perfect net, every net had holes and it was only a matter of finding those holes. Of course sometimes it wasn't possible to get through those holes, but this treant was unable to weave such a net otherwise Owari would have never been able to get through those leaves unscathed.
The seemingly all-encompassing roots had many open spots actually. Some could be closed in a moment due to the treant's control over its roots, but Owari only needed one of them to slip through. With a few solid steps Owari slipped past a few of the roots while he tilted his body to make a few miss him by a hair's breadth. The treant was too slow to react in time to redirect its roots and hit him, as he dodged through Owari also swung his sword carefully but with as much focus as he could allowing him to pass his blade through a number of roots. Instead of relying on force he relied entirely on his skill and technique allowing him to spare his wounds from being torn open too badly.
In the end he still needed to put some strength into his attacks and movements so his wounds had already opened a bit, but he was able to dampen the effects. Because of this he easily slipped past and even injured the treant's roots taking out a couple of them before they could retreat. He didn't stop there though and he continued to take step after step slowly closing in on his target. The treant seemed unsure of what to do now, after all it had basically tried everything and nothing kept Owari down forever. Even if he left for a day he'd be back the next regardless, and he only got stronger each time. Owari was like a blade and every fight was another strike of the hammer that would forge him. Even if he was injured it only increased the pressure he felt and that only caused him to grow faster. This was Owari's real talent and it was far more terrifying than any inherent affinity or extra mana.
As he approached the treant considered many things, and finally it came to the conclusion that Owari, as strong as he was, couldn't deal with it quickly enough even if he reached its main body. Its main body was strong and it had the mana and nutrients of the surrounding soil to keep itself healthy. All it needed to do was wait for Owari to overextend and grow tired before it went in for the kill. When Owari got close to the main trunk he reached out his free hand and pressed his palm to the tree allowing his brand to once again sink within the treant. As soon as this happened the treant shuddered and a link was established, Owari used this moment to send over a few thoughts indicating he would keep trying until it gave in.
However the treant fought back and the brand shattered. As it began to prepare for its eventual counter Owari released another brand into its body, he had practiced this technique over and over until he could do it after a mere moment. Again the connection broke after a mere moment and again Owari used another brand. Each time the speed of the connection breaking slowed a beat as Owari sent over numerous thoughts in those moments of connection. The first few times he showed his strong will and desire to tame it as well as his stubbornness. However once he got that message across he worked on sending over other kinds of thoughts such as his knowledge about magical beasts and their evolution and how he could help it grow, as well as threats of how soon humans of even greater strength would come and if it didn't submit to him then it would either submit to them or die. After about 20 or so attempts he felt the brand solidifying, it wasn't a success yet though. The treant was merely putting some thought and consideration into it.
Owari stood there sending over thoughts on occasion as the treant slowly considered things. Eventually it even started to send over its own thoughts and feelings, and Owari finally confirmed that it was only minorly intelligent. It had a mind like a child and it was relatively curious and without a real sense of self. It thought only in terms of how to grow. However it did show an interest in learning new things, as a tree it didn't exactly have the ability to go out and explore easily. It had learned more from the things Owari shared than it had in its entire life before this. Having awakened a desire to learn it slowly came to a concession with Owari. It was aware that it could in theory kill him or at least drive him away at this point, even if Owari hid it for the most part the connection allowed the treant to confirm the state of his body. However it didn't care about submitting to someone weaker than it, not only did it know Owari grew rapidly but it also wanted to learn from him. Not to mention the threat of stronger people coming soon anyway it decided to place its bets on Owari who had left a stronger impression on it than some strangers it didn't know at all. In the end it was still simpleminded and didn't really consider running away or hiding. Eventually after about three or four hours the treant finally accepted the brand and the connection was solidified.
Once this happened it would be impossible for the treant to rebel, and at best it could only put up a moderate resistance to him. Because of this there was no need to fear or hide things from the treant as it could no longer betray him. Since that was the case Owari immediately started to share all kinds of knowledge with it about its own kind, things like how they are born and how they grow as well as their traits and abilities. He even gave it some ideas on how to make better use of its abilities and after about half an hour of transferring knowledge Owari finally sat down and relaxed as his wounds were starting to irritate him. Luckily he hadn't opened them up too badly in his last fight and they had quickly healed back up after he started communicating with the treant, however they still drained him.
As he sat down a branch extended from the treant in front of him and on the branch was a ripened apple. Owari reached out with a bit of surprise and grabbed it before he started to inspect it. Treants who are born from fruit trees would still produce fruit even if the seeds within the fruit were almost always inert. As a treant not only was it difficult for their seeds to actually be able to grow into a new treant, it also required another treant born from the same tree type. As for fruit treants, one of the reasons Owari went so far to tame this one was specifically for its fruit. The fruit of a treant if eaten will raise your affinity as if you had consumed a magical beast, not only that but they were even more effective than most because of how nutrient-packed they were. This specific treant had good metal affinity, and some amount of water and light affinity. Not enough to use for any mystic art but enough to raise his affinity over time as he eats more fruit.
Owari carefully observed the fruit first before eating it, what he noticed was that it was a very shiny red in color. The size was smaller then a normal apple since it was a wild apple, but it still took up his palm. The shine that came off of it wasn't from dew or anything, instead it was because of the metal affinity it had. Owari slowly tightened his grip on it and found the apple was quite tough, though after a bit he felt it give and decided it wasn't too hard to chew. However before he bit into it he pulled out a knife and cut a piece out to check the inside and run a few tests. After determining it wasn't razor-sharp or even harder on the inside and finding it safe he started to eat it happily. As he did he felt his stamina recovering at a noticeable rate and even felt the familiar itch of his wounds healing up. Treant fruit is well known for being packed with nutrients and with the water affinity it turns that nutrition into a healing slurry of sorts that washes the body. On top of that apples are one of the more healing attributed fruits so this was quite a good thing for his ailing body. Of course it wasn't a cure-all nor would it restore his injuries to even a workable state. But this should hold off the wounds from developing into something too bad before he went back to town and got proper treatment.
Speaking of town there was a new problem he had to think about, where would he put the treant? After some communicating and some guidance he figured out what the limits of the treant's shapeshifting was and had it shrink down to be as small as it could manage which was surprisingly about three meters tall and as wide as his torso which compared to its previous size was tiny. Unfortunately one limitation it had was the inability to control its leaves or fruits past enhancing them with some mana. That meant it still had a massive canopy above it which it needed to absorb sunlight to produce food and survive. The same was true for its roots which while it could shrink them it needed them to absorb a certain amount of water and nutrients from the ground or it would start dying.
However after doing some calculations and getting some information from the treant he found it could spend upwards of 12 hours out of the ground if it was in full health before it needed a day of rest to absorb nutrients. As long as it's leaves were in the sun for most of those 12 hours that is. Since that was the case he quickly had it practice controlling its roots to form them into a set of pseudo limbs to walk on so it could move faster. While it was doing that he considered his options for where to put it and decided to bite the bullet and rent out a greenhouse space. It shouldn't be too surprising that spaces for large magical beasts, even plant ones, existed in the city. There were some places where he could rent a small section of well-lit ground for his treant to take root in, and if he paid extra they would even fertilize the area for it. It wouldn't be cheap exactly but given that it was about winter and the treant would enter a state of low energy use it wouldn't need much food and it was able to shrink to a decent size so it wouldn't need a massive space.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
After figuring out what he would do, Owari relaxed and ate a few apples offered by his treant to help his injuries while he directed it on how to use its shapeshifting powers. It was surprisingly versatile, as long as it kept the same mass and didn't mess with the leaves or fruit it could change a lot of its inner workings. After some testing Owari found a decent shape for it to take having it wrap its roots into a set of four limbs that ended in a few claws for stability, meanwhile he had it warp it's trunk in its branches and compact itself as much as possible with the fruits being surrounded by a layer of shiny leaves that covered the treant like a hide.
At the moment it looked like a walking flower bulb which made it look a bit awkward. That being the case Owari decided to have some fun with it so he had it extend a root behind it like a tail and change some of its trunk wood into a lizard head with a few viewing knots before having it change the branch layout to look more like it had leaf-shaped scales. In the end it looked like a shiny wooden lizard statue which was slightly funny and slightly intimidating. In this shape it was three meters long, five with the tail, and the space between it's 'shoulders' was about a meter. Owari and the treant immediately made their way off towards his cart at this point, and now he was glad he had tamed the treant cause otherwise he would be too injured to drag the cart back to town.
As he made his way to the cart he stopped by the places he killed the few other treants while practicing and chopped them up into smaller logs and had his treant drag them along. It didn't really care that they were the same kind as it, not only was it an evolved version and thus not technically the same species but most beasts magical or otherwise rarely cared for their own kind. Treants had some level of natural belonging but now that it was his tamed beast it saw itself as different from them. They took a few hours to make it to the cart, it was sped up a lot because Owari wasn't searching the surroundings so the return trip was far easier. It also helped that few magical beasts bothered him due to the massive tree lizard walking beside him. Once he arrived Owari got to work finding the cart and taking away the camouflage he set up. Luckily it was still there and nobody bothered to steal it. Once it was uncovered he had his treant, who he now considered naming something so he could stop calling it just treant, drop the logs inside of it which took up pretty much all the space. He had half a dozen three-meter long logs on the back of the cart. There were logs from a copper, low silver, and mid silver rank earth affinity treant there.
His intention with these treants was to use them as proof for his discovery of the treant fertile land, and then use that to get a meeting with someone higher up to talk about the ore veins he found. Luckily because he had sold the treant wood before it was impossible for the upper ranks of the Orion Tradecenter to not have heard of there being a possible treant farm nearby. The receptionist had shown a decent amount of surprise and even if she hadn't reported it to the upper ranks they would have seen it in the purchase logs by now.
Owari had only thought of all of these things now though and hadn't really planned it out much. However he suddenly realized that it would be a good idea to actually plan these things out in the future to make his life easier down the line. Planning and acting now could make his life in the future easier and now that he knew that he decided to put more thought into these things. For now though he had the treant wrap its 'tail' around the cart handle to drag it along with them. After that the two of them set out at a casual pace, based on what he calculated they would have to rest for a day before they arrived, it was already late anyway and the treant had been injured and so it could only go so far today before it would need a rest not to mention he himself needing rest.
Once the sunset and they had made it down the road a decent ways, Owari stopped and had the treant root into the ground and return to its natural shape before he leaned against it and prepared to sleep. The treant didn't need sleep so he simply asked it to keep an eye out and warn him through the bond if anyone approached, though with his connection to the ghost eye moth he would sense hostility once anything got within about 12 meters of him. The moth had been progressing well in its evolution quietly as Owari fed it regularly when he went hunting, soon it would reach a threshold and increase it's phantom affinity to a usable level which Owari was curious about.
Before then though he went to sleep while considering a name for his new tamed beast. He never named his moth because at this point it had become an extension of himself and had no will in it outside of his own. It would be like naming his own arm and that felt even weirder than leaving it without a name. When he woke up he didn't actually start moving right away, the treant was still a bit weak and needed to rest for the rest of the morning before it would be able to make it to the city. Owari didn't complain though he was also a bit tired and wanted some time to rest.
Owari leaned against the treant and looked up through the glittering leaves as they reflected the sunlight. He considered what to name it and had a few thoughts, things like chen which means dragon which he got after thinking of its lizard like form, or maybe yggdrasil after the myth of the world tree from the northern lands. He also thought of naming it something funny like sakura or blossom for the irony. However none of those felt right, he wasn't the best at naming things to begin with if his technique names were any indication so he took a lot of time.
He wanted to make sure he got it right since this name would stick with it for a long time and naming it on a whim would feel a bit wrong. It wasn't until they had packed up and had been walking for nearly an hour after noon rolled around and they got a move on that he had an idea for a name he was satisfied with. He thought of naming it Mirra because it was silvery and reflected light just like a mirror. He didn't need to worry about gender or anything because it was a tree so once he came up with a name that didn't sound too bad he decided to ask the treant what it thought. As he expected it neither cared nor really understood what he was even asking about so after explaining it the treant still didn't care. That being the case he gave it the name Mirra and the two moved on without bothering over it too much, he was just glad that even with its new desire to learn Mirra was still uninterested in such things. Of course he still made sure to grill it in the rules it had to abide by once they arrived in the city and although it seemed annoyed it was still willing to listen due to the brand and his promise to teach it more things.
The two of them approached the larger transport entrance to the city, it was pretty normal for hunters to have their magical beasts drag their carts so nobody batted an eye at him. However the two guards in charge today both recognized Owari, and one of them was the younger guy who he had felt hostility from. It was probably some cosmic joke against that guard as there was no way after all this time he didn't know about that guy disappearing. Now nearly two weeks later and Owari walked up as if nothing was off with a massive magical beast in tow. The younger guard was sweating bullets, even though he knew logically Owari couldn't do anything to him and believed Owari was ignorant of his involvement he still couldn't help but feel afraid. However Owari ignored him having completely forgotten who he even was after all the events that occurred these past few days. The other guard asked a few questions about his new magical beast seeing as how Owari had not shown it before and confirmed that it was newly tamed. He didn't ask for details on it besides basic species info and after confirming it was a shapeshifted treant he let them through after grilling Owari a bit on keeping it from causing mischief.
Once he was back in town he checked the time, it was still before sunset so he could get some stuff done thankfully. He was calling it close with his arrival time, in order to keep himself from getting held up at the tradecenter he went to rent a space for his treant first. The location was in the tourist district for obvious reasons, and Owari considered visiting Noel but decided to do that in the morning when he knew he'd have a chance to see her. He checked a couple locations and paid for a relatively cheaper spot that was about 10x10 meters in size which the treant could dig its roots deeply into. He also paid for them to fertilize it once a week since it was still healing after their fight. He had paid for about a month of rent and it was about the same price as his own living expenses if he included food. After confirming his purchase he signed the contract that held them accountable for any injuries his treant suffered on their property and brought it out to the Orion Tradecenter to offload his lumber. He would probably be here a while so after a bit of thought he left the cart in a secure space near the tradecenter after paying a small fee and brought Mirra back to root itself in its new home and rest. After making his way back he was relieved to find nobody messed with his cart, it would have been a nightmare to deal with the legal consequences of stolen goods worth that much.
Owari entered the building and was relieved to find it mostly empty, most people were like him and waited for the next morning to sell stuff because they would come back tired so late at night. He made his way over to the trade desk and waited for the receptionist to finish some paperwork before they spoke up. "Sorry for the wait, how may I help you?" She put on a professional smile filled with a hint of thanks. Most people who came in were independent hunters so they tended to be more impatient and quick-tempered.
"I came to do an exchange, I have some treant lumber that needs appraising." Owari stated his business up front, and he smiled a bit when he noticed the receptionist visibly react to his words.
"Treant lumber?" She reigned in her surprise and confirmed. When she saw Owari nod she thought for a short moment before continuing. "How much?"
"A dozen three-meter long by meter wide logs." Owari gestured towards the door to indicate they were outside.
"I hope you don't mind if I go look? I'll need to call someone to temporarily take my position." Seeing Owari nod she clicked a button under the counter and a younger lady came out from the nearby stairs. After trading a few words the original receptionist stood up and walked out. "Can you take me there?"
Owari nodded again and turned around making for the door. As soon as they left through the door he pointed over to his cart which was parked nearby with the logs still on it. She rushed over and began inspecting them right away. She even took a good twenty minutes looking over every aspect and appraising them. Once she finished up she walked back over to Owari with a smile, but she also seemed slightly apprehensive.
"Was this all of the treants you located?" She asked uncertainly.
"No, I found a location conducive to their birth and there are many more. Probably close to a hundred total and maybe more further in. Obviously I want to talk about selling the location to your tradecenter. However it's probably best if we don't do that in the open. The logs were just a form of proof." Owari didn't bother dancing around the subject and playing the girl's political game, he may have decided to accept a need to do these things going forward but he would do them in his own way as much as possible.
"I see, of course I can schedule a meeting right away." She seemed incredibly relieved hearing Owari's words, and she immediately made for the doors.
"Alright." Owari shrugged and followed along.
The two made their way over to the appointments counter, and the person behind the counter was the very same one who had accepted Owari about a month ago when he had first come here. She seemed to recognize him but he only vaguely recalled her. As a receptionist in charge of dealing with important people she was good at memorizing faces that passed through so it wasn't too surprising she recognized him. "You should be Mister Owari correct? Are you here on business?" She seemed a bit surprised seeing him walking over with another receptionist but she did her best to give a professional smile.
"You know him?" The receptionist he came with seemed a bit surprised, she knew exactly what it meant for this receptionist to know Owari.
"He should be one of our contracted hunters, he signed an exclusive selling deal with us with one of the branch managers. I take it he is here to sell?" She had a pretty good idea what was going on by this point.
"He has the location of a treant farm, Mister Hilton expressly asked for the one who found it to be brought in to negotiate with him." She brought up a name familiar to Owari and he guessed the person in question had already known he had brought in the treant wood and wanted to negotiate personally to make sure it went well.
"Of course. Let me check. He seems to be free right now in fact." Like the professional she was she immediately confirmed everything as fast as lightning and called someone over to go ask the manager if he was able to meet Owari. "Just a moment." She smiled and not five minutes later they were given good news. "It seems he can meet you now. Lead Mister Owari up to the lounge please." She indicated for the one who had done the confirmation to lead Owari up, and the receptionist who had confirmed the treant logs followed along as well.