Waking up from his second meditation session ever, Gunther noticed he felt a lot less tired than before. It might simply be because he had been relaxing in a warm somewhat comfortable position, but he suspected Meditation had something to do with it as well. Now that the thought had come up, Gunther noticed the tree felt more comfortable than before. It didn’t look like much had changed, but the wood somehow felt just a little bit softer and more comfortable. He decided he should use his new control over the wood to smoothen out his bed some more, but only after he had helped the tree recover from what he had done to it.
‘I hurt it, so it is my responsibility to help it get better as well. Even if it means I’ll sleep a little bit less comfortable.’ Gunther thought.
Now that he was fully awake again, getting out of his meditation felt a bit like waking up just a little bit earlier than he would like, Gunther noticed some notifications he had gotten. He read them over quickly, before dismissing them. He had gotten some new stat points, two in Charisma and one in Wisdom. The Charisma stat-points had of course come with a nice and snarky message attached to them, just like the ones he had gotten for every other first increase in one of his stats.
Stat point gained!
For realising you harmed a living creature and trying to make up for it, you have gotten two points in Charisma. Good job, if you keep this up, you will maybe be able to talk to actual sentients instead of trees someday.
Charisma +2
‘It isn’t my fault I can’t go to any settlements yet, I didn’t choose to be the only person on the entire planet to have no Class…’
Aside from mean messages from some bored god, Gunther had also gotten some new skill levels. One in Meditation and two in Wood Attunement. He didn’t know why he had gotten two levels in the latter while only having helped one little piece of wood reconnect, but he suspected it might have had something to do with his understanding of how trees functioned. If his guess was correct, Gunther thought he should be able to level up his skill relatively easy, since he doubted many people would start out with knowing how the cells of trees looked or how photosynthesis worked.
‘This might give me an incredible edge in some skills. The description of Wood Attunement did say it boosts understanding as it levels and I have at least a better understanding than most. I’m sure this will apply to other skills as well. This might be enough to offset my lack of a class and allow me to at least compete a little bit to those who get their skill growth boosted.’
With thoughts like these, Gunther got out of the tree again and looked around a bit. It seemed to be early afternoon by now. He was relieved to see no creatures around, but didn’t let his guard down. He had learned from his encounter the day before, no matter how peaceful and quiet it looked, there were still some rather dangerous creatures around in this forest. Gunther walked around, checking for any sign of danger, finding none, he went to the river and ate one of the pills. Shuddering from the foul taste, he quickly drank some water from the river.
Having finished his ‘lunch’ Gunther went back to the tree and looked at the opening he had made. Sighing, he sat down next to the tree and focussed on his Wood Attunement skill. He used mana to grow back some more of the phloems, but instead of doing it one at a time, he tried to grow them all a little bit now. It was a lot harder to get it right this way, but Gunther thought it would be a bit faster in the end. Feeling his mana go down, he realised he could use his Mana Sense to look at what exactly was using up mana. If he understood what was happening, he could maybe improve his technique.
It was hard to see exactly what was happening, all Gunther really saw was a slight green glow in the air between himself and the tree. He did however feel what was going on in a way. It was hard to describe exactly how, but he somehow he just knew his mana was flowing into the tree and speeding up its natural growth process.
‘The mana is most likely used to send the cells of the tree in an excited state, which makes them do everything faster. That is the most straightforward way to do this after all. It might be possible to find a more efficient way though.’
Another thing Gunther felt, was how his mana sort of guided the tree to grow in the way he envisioned it. Pushing the phloems just a little bit to the side as they were growing. Gunther continued regrowing the tree in the way he had been doing it before, while thinking about a way to improve the efficiency.
After some time, when his mana had almost run out, Gunther suddenly thought about the plants he had seen earlier. He had suspected they grew with the help of mana. If he could somehow understand and replicate the process, he could probably speed up his work with the tree. Stopping the mana still flowing towards the tree, Gunther looked at the notifications he had gotten while working.
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He had gotten two new points in Intelligence and one in Wisdom, none in Charisma this time. That made sense though, since he had gotten the points from his decision to right what he had done wrong and he hadn’t done anything new to deserve more points. The points in Intelligence and Wisdom had probably just come from his practise with handling his mana.
Aside from stat points, there were also a few skill level-ups. His Mana Sense had gone up to level 4, his Wood Attunement to level 5 and even Analysation had gone up to level 2. Gunther had noticed the dual skill seemed to be much harder to level. He had been using the active part of the spell every time he used his magic to do something new and yet it had only leveled just then.
Deciding not to meditate, but to let the ambient mana flow into him instead, Gunther walked towards one of the little plants sprouting all over the place. His mana was down to 30 points, it was low enough to benefit from just letting the ambient mana flow in, but luckily there was still some of it left to experiment with it. It was getting a bit dark already, which was great for Gunther's plan to test if the plants really could use mana to grow instead of sunlight. Controlling wood didn’t cost a lot of mana and Gunther had managed to regrow quite a bit of the tree before his mana reached the 30 points it was at now.
Trying to clear his mind a bit, Gunther breathed in and out slowly. He then got down on his knees and held his right hand over one of the plants. It looked a bit like a Bluebell from earth, the only difference being that it was not blue. Here there seemed to be variants in all colours, making the ground almost look like a rainbow carpet. This particular plant was yellow. Gunther shook his head, in an attempt at preventing his thoughts from wandering of even more.
He used his mana in much the same way as he had to make the tree grow. This time, however, he didn’t give the plant any ‘orders’ about how it would grow. Instead, Gunther observed what happened using his Mana Sense carefully. Then, something quite unexpected happened. The flower absorbed his mana and began to glow. When Gunther stopped giving mana, the flower didn’t stop glowing. He waited a while and after some minutes, the flower dimmed.
“Interesting…” Gunther mumbled. ‘I wonder if the other flowers have the same ability. Maybe they do different things, according to their colours. Could also just be different colours of light though.’ Deciding to just try it out, he walked to a blue flower. Using his Wood Attunement skill to pour some mana in, he watched with his Mana Sense activated. Gunther was slightly disappointed when he saw it just shone with blue light instead of yellow.
Luckily, feeding the flowers with mana take less of it than the amount of ambient mana he drew in. Deciding to experiment a bit, Gunther tried to feed two flowers at the same time. He extended his left hand to another flower and send some mana to it. The flower shone with a brilliant orange colour. Gunther took his hands away from the flowers, but tried to keep the connection. It was harder, but he managed to do it in the end. Having managed this, Gunther decided to have a little bit of fun and take it to the next level.
He disconnected his mana from the two flowers and waited for them to stop glowing. Looking at his mana, he found it at the level of the ambient mana, 45 points. It took about one point for a flower to glow for a minute, so that would be a little more than 45 flowers he could light at once, considering he would regenerate some mana while lighting the flowers. Gunther sat down next to his tree in the lotus position, just because he thought it would look cool.
Using his Mana Sense, Gunther closed his eyes and tried to feel the mana inside of the plants around him. It was pretty difficult at first, probably because of his low level in the skill. The first thing he sensed was the tree he was sitting next to, he recognised it because he had used it to gain the Mana Sense skill in the first place. After some searching he found the first flower. He knew what to look for now and he found some more soon after. He spread out this feeling as far as he could manage and slowly felt more and more of the flowers around him. He filtered everything out that wasn’t a flower, or what he hoped was a flower. It would be awkward if he sent out all his mana into the grass after all.
Having lost count after the first twenty or so flowers, Gunther decided to just look for as many flowers as possible and then just work his way outward until his mana was depleted. Losing count after just twenty was almost embarrassing, but it just took a lot of Gunthers concentration to even find the flowers at all. Deciding he had found enough of them, Gunther used his Wood Attunement skill to send some mana to the closest flower. He found it a lot harder compared to first connecting to the flower and then distancing himself, but he didn’t let that stop him. When he had sent a little bit of mana to the first flower, he started on the second and then the third. He didn’t stop providing mana to the flowers he had already lighted, but instead tried to send the absolute minimum of mana in order to make sure they would still be glowing when he was done. Connecting to the flowers became easier as he went on, probably because he gained some levels in a skill or two. He didn’t let that distract him though and continued connecting his mana to more flowers. As he was adding flowers to this little network of his, Gunther got in some sort of trance, sending mana out without even a thought.
When he got out of his trance, Gunther sent all of his mana into the channels without a thought. He opened his eyes and gasped. He must had to have used Meditation by accident, because it was night, the sun already gone beyond the horizon. That wasn’t, however, what had made Gunther gasp. What had made him gasp was the beauty of the scene around him. There must have been hundreds of flowers glowing gently in the forest. It was a sea of light consisting of tiny glowing flowers. For the first time since he had arrived on Elovar, Gunther truly relaxed just enjoying the sheer beauty of this new world. Suddenly exhausted, but smiling happily, Gunther lied down amidst the flowers and fell asleep.