It was always strange - the moment after a battle. The world seemed to hang still, and their heavy breaths filled the air, the sound echoing alone off the cave's stone walls. Then, in the next moment, when it became apparent that no more monsters would filter through the tunnel, the details of his being that had been forgotten in the haze of violent focus and adrenaline returned.

In a disorienting jump, Clover became acutely aware of a rumbling in his stomach and stabbing pain in his hand - sensations that had seemed insignificant while fighting enlarged themselves. More importantly, a consuming awkwardness swept over his throat. He fiddled with his hands, shifting their position in his lap.

What even was appropriate to say after brutally murdering monsters - it was a hard silence to break.

The smell of burnt hair and meat wafted his way as the Two-tailed Squirrel continued to burn. Claire stood over it, looking down into the smoldering flames that consumed its corpse with a disturbed expression that he could not place. The flames gently swayed and tilted, angling toward her as if pulled by a string, reflecting in her brown eyes, giving them an intense yet fragile molten quality. At least visibly, she did not react to the flame's heat.

Ron coughed in the fake sort of way that public speakers did to gain an audience's attention. “We should head back for now - take some time to regroup.”

Clover hesitated; part of him wanted to continue. He needed to gain as many Levels as fast as he could! However, he recognized the folly in his thought. He was dangerously low on mana, and his one remaining Golem was damaged. He needed time to rest and recharge - to build back his Golems.

He had done enough for today.

Yesterday, he had made a mistake, recklessly pushing himself forward even when he knew he shouldn't have - today, he would not.

Claire nodded, snapping herself from her daze. Silently, she stepped away from the monster’s corpse, leaving her cracked sword behind.

As a group, they retraced their steps, returning to the twisted tunnel of leafy branches and glowing crystal fruits.

"So, uh, I guess we were wrong about all the monsters being a low Level," Clover said as he quickly snagged two glowing crystals from the branch.

They were cold to the touch, and upon closer inspection, they were identical down to the smallest detail. Further, now that he had seen it a second time, he noticed that even the trees were identical - exact clones of each other, though placed at slightly different angles.

"It doesn't make any sense. There's no way there could have been enough people out here for them to hit Level 5," Ron said, more curious than confused.

“Maybe they ate each other?” Claire added, conjuring up a brutal image of squirrel civil war.

Clover shrugged - it was possible.

With the two crystals firmly tucked away in his bag and Mr. Cat placed on his lap to conserve its energy, Clover exited the Monster Nest, reentering the museum exhibit.

"There may be another way for monsters to Level up that we haven't considered yet," Ron said. His trademark quick Agility enhanced speech had slowed somewhat - a sign of his exhaustion. Running around at high speeds was probably tiring, at least more tiring than riding around in a wheelchair.

“Oh, yeah, like what?” Clover asked.

“The Monster Nest description said the item at its core had mutated the local wildlife, so it's possible that prolonged exposure to it could have increased their Levels,” Ron said.

“Maybe they Level up just from existing. Like they gain Levels as time passes,” Claire said. She glanced back and forth between Ron and Clover when they did not immediately respond. “That’s a thing in games, right?”

Clover shrugged again - it was quickly becoming one of his favorite motions. “Well, whatever the case is, we should head back for the day. I’m just about out of mana.”

“Ya, I’m beat,” Ron said.

Absently, Claire rolled up her sweater, revealing her stomach. She looked down - a gnarly rock-shaped bruise had already begun to set in. "Me too," she said as she flattened the fashionable sweater back into place. "It hurts if I try to move around too quickly."

Clover looked away with a slight blush.

Carefully, they made their way back to the museum’s entrance.

"I'll be back for you," Clover whispered covetously as they passed the giant T-rex skeleton. One day, he'd have a badass dinosaur Golem!

Thankfully, no one overheard him.

They continued, not encountering any resistance. They passed through the Roman exhibit, where Claire stole a recreation of an ancient spear, carefully pulling it down off the wall, noticeably less guilty about the thievery the second time around.

They exited the Ohio Museum of Natural and Ancient History.

Clover took a deep breath, enjoying the clean air. Above, fluffy white clouds marked the bright blue sky, partially blocking out the sun. Without a watch, he had no way of knowing what time it was or how long they had spent in the museum other than a rough estimation.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,“ Clover said, half asking and half making a statement.

"Of course," Ron said, looking at his [Treasure Map] before hiding it in his pocket. From what Clover had seen, black ink had spread across the paper following the path they had taken, vaguely marking out the landmarks they had passed.

Claire bobbed her head, preoccupied with figuring out an efficient way of carrying the spear she had liberated from the museum - it was too long to carry like a sword.

Clover nodded; now, they just had to make it back to the Safe Zone in one piece.

Surprisingly, the journey wasn’t as perilous as he had imagined it would be. They barely saw any monsters, and those that they did - the spiders - they were able to cut a wide arc around, avoiding any conflict before it could break out.

While traveling, Clover spotted two blue pillars of light in the sky, marking the locations of both Safe Zones. Whenever they ventured on the edge of being lost, all they had to do was look up, and the pillar would illuminate the path forward. In the same vein, Clover spotted a faded golden pillar of light in the distance. He’d have to ask Ms. Lin what it was when he got back to the factory. She would probably know.

Clover paused as he reached the hospital; Claire and Ron turned to see why he had stopped.

“This is my stop. I’ll meet up with you guys later,” Clover said.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind tagging along,” Ron said.

Now that the sun was high in the sky, exploring on his own was much less dangerous, but Clover knew, in the hospital, none of that would matter. He couldn’t say why, but he had a feeling… no, he knew that the tree monster would be there - still alive. “I’ll be fine.”

“Be safe,” Claire said, then turned, facing the opposite direction. “I have something I have to do before heading back too.”

Ron let out an overdramatic sigh. "You two are too productive. You're making me feel bad," Ron said as he readjusted his collar. "I'll scrounge up some food, so how about we meet back up at the Safe Zone for a team dinner."

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Claire and Clover nodded.

Clover didn’t know what to say next, so he settled for a short wave, then he wheeled over to the hospital’s entrance. The corpse of the Bone Rat - the first one he had killed - was nowhere to be seen. It had disappeared without a trace.

The strange electronics shop that had been teleported into the hospital's parking lot by the System looked as out of place as ever - maybe even more so now that he could see it clearly in the daylight.

As Clover wheeled through the entrance, he coughed; the mere proximity to the building and the memories he had made in it were enough to bring back his symptoms in full force. He massaged his chest, navigating to where he remembered the elevator to be.

It wasn't difficult to find. He had spent enough time in the hospital that he could probably find it with its eyes closed.

Above, the flickering lights that had guided him last time were absent; the generator that had powered the building must have run out of fuel. He figured that today or tomorrow, the same would happen to most buildings that had invested in a backup generator.

Which brought into question whether it would even be worth the trouble to retrieve his wheelchair's charger.

Guided by streams of light that flickered in through smashed windows and his enhanced Perception, Clover navigated the dim hallway.

He stopped outside the elevator. He pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

Clover sighed, then circled back to where he knew the stairwell to be.

With narrowed eyes, he stopped, counting each stair - he'd have to climb three floors worth of them one way or another. He considered his options; there didn't seem to be any elegant solutions. Clover cursed under his breath. Waiting wasn't going to make his task any easier.

He shifted his bag full of liberated museum treasures to the ground and commanded Mr. Cat to follow him.

Clover put two of the Free Stat Points he had gained from Leveling into Strength and the other into Vitality. His muscles surged with power. He feared it would not be enough.

Resigned to experiencing the arm workout of his life, Clover shifted, lifting himself from his wheelchair. He pressed himself upward one stair at a time, straining his muscles and his Strength Stat to move himself forward. In such a manner, he climbed three steps.

Already feeling the burn, he twisted and grabbed hold of his wheelchair, then lifting it, he pushed it up the stairs. With his wingspan, he couldn't move it far enough to reach the landing, so he had to settle for placing it sideways on a stair. It was too large. It teetered backward, unbalanced, at the edge of falling.

Frustrated, he spent a minute balancing it, then once it had reached a momentary equilibrium, he pressed himself up to the next step, enjoying his newfound Strength.

He repeated the process over and over again, slowly climbing the stairway.

A dubious amount of time later, covered in sweat, Clover reached the third floor.

He rested with his back against the floor for a moment. A shiver of anxiety roused him; he couldn't rest here.

With a groan, he picked himself up and slowly forced himself back into his electric wheelchair; then, he wheeled down the dark hallway, keeping an eye and an ear out for any monsters that may approach.

Before long, he stopped outside the hospital room he had been staying in. The door, suffering from a series of claw marks, had a large hole in it, though it was angled low to the ground, so he couldn't clearly see into the room through it.

Clover paused, waiting and listening for any sign of movement. There weren't any. Prepared to use [Unstable Mana Bolt] at a moment's notice, he twisted the handle and opened the door with a loud creak.

Preempting some sort of horrific attack, Clover wheeled backward out of range. An attack never came.

Inside the room, two dead Bone Rats were wrapped in thorny branches, drained of their blood. Following the branches back to their source, Clover noticed that the tree, for some reason, had formed a dome around his hospital bed, completely blocking it from view.

It had probably gotten confused when he had escaped and tried to eat the mattress.

A stray thought entered his mind, and he was reminded of the strange dream he had dreamt the night the System had introduced itself. It had seemed to last a lifetime, though he couldn't remember a single detail about it.

In the same way, with all that had happened, it felt like it had been weeks or months since he had last been in this room. He glanced at the broken clock. Its glass face had shattered, cracking in a weirdly fractal pattern down the middle as its hands were stuck, jittering almost imperceptibly at midnight. Clover shook his head. It was strange, but it wasn't important right now.

Paranoid yet nostalgic at the same time, breathing hard, Clover commanded Mr. Cat to retrieve his wheelchair’s charging cable. Prancing forward, the damaged Golem followed his command.

At first, the monstrous tree did not respond. Then, as Mr. Cat tugged at the cord, trying to free it from the outlet, a familiar rustling of leaves followed as a branch slowly began to encroach toward him, and a sliver of energy pressing down on him began to grow.

Inside his soul space, an idol began to construct itself. Shocked, Clover observed it for two seconds. Unlike the other structures in his soul, this one did not have a defined form - more a bundle of shifting energy than anything else.

Through it, dull impressions of images and emotions flowed. Distorted by static, a forest flashed in his mind's eye, becoming visible for a fraction of a second as a stray strand of energy stretched out, growing into the unfilled darkness of his soul space.

Focusing his will. Clover tore apart the construct before it could take hold - a process that he found easy and intuitive from his experience making Golems and experimenting with [Unstable Mana Bolt]. The energy that had pressed down on him evaporated. Clover's lips twitched upward.

Now that he knew the trick, he could ward off the tree. Barring a catastrophic failure on his part, its branches were too slow to catch him. Something that had seemed impossible to fend off only a few days ago was now within his capabilities to resist.

His body seemed to naturally attack the few remaining strands of foreign energy in his soul space, eradicating them. As the tree's branch slowly stretched toward him, he thought back to the images and emotions that had unnaturally flashed through his mind.

It had all happened so fast that his memory was blurry. Still, he distinctly remembered that inside of that forest, there had been a picnic table surrounded by three empty chairs and something he was unable to place - an object whose details were square but indistinct rested on top of the table.

An emotion that was hard to place, possibly confusion or something more tragic, tinged the scene.

Mr. Cat returned with a cable in its jaw.

“Thank you,” Clover said to the tiny golem, packing away the item.

On a counter, Clover spotted the notebook the older man he had shared a room with had sketched in. He ordered his Golem to retrieve it out of some sense of obligation. Maybe, if the man was still alive, he could return it to him.

Mr. Cat maneuvered toward the counter, gaining height in a series of leaps. As he waited, keeping his distance from the magical tree, Clover used [Appraisal] on it.

The Skill encountered resistance, something that had never happened before. Inside of him, he could feel his mana straining, brushing up against something.

After a long 15-second wait, a blue screen appeared.

Congratulations! Appraisal has reached Level 4. +1 Skill Point.

Congratulations! Appraisal has reached Level 5. +1 Skill Point.

Tree

A common tree.

Well, that wasn't useful. Unlike most monsters, the man-eating tree did not have a red name tag or any for that matter. Maybe it was because it was only an offshoot of the monster - not its main body. In any case, he couldn't glean any information from its name tag because it was nonexistent.

Carefully holding the notebook in its jaw, Mr. Cat arrived at his feet with its head tilted downward awkwardly from the weight and size of the object.

Clover scooped up the notebook and the Golem, then reversed course, heading back to the stairwell. He briefly considered launching himself from the third floor. He had survived the fall once before, and it sounded a hell of a lot more convenient than going down the stairs again.

Unfortunately, deciding on the more rational route, Clover arduously made his way down the stairs one step at a time. An unholy amount of time later, with sore arms, he wheeled down the hospital's first floor and exited the building.

Outside, he paused, not immediately heading back to the Safe Zone.

Driven by curiosity, he carefully wheeled around the hospital's exterior, stopping outside the window of his hospital room. A thick tangle of branches - the monster - had scaled the exterior of the building. However, as he looked down, there was no clue where the monster's main body was; the branches emerged straight from the ground.

He used [Appraisal] again. This time, the wait for the screen to appear wasn’t nearly so long.

Congratulations! Appraisal has reached Level 6. +1 Skill Point.

Magical Tree

An unlikely hybrid of the kapok and willow tree.

This time, [Appraisal] revealed much more information. Though, Clover didn't know what to do with that information.

Clover dismissed the screen and leaned a bit closer to the mysterious tree. There, hidden amongst the grass and branches, five pale white fingers stuck out of the ground.

Clover bit back a scream.

Ya, he'd pushed his luck enough for one day. He wasn't sticking around to see what that was. When confronted with creepy paranormal occurrences, the correct answer was always to run away.

Hurriedly, Clover fled the scene with a racing heart.

One day, he'd be back to burn the damn tree down, but that day was not today.