[Dimensional Manipulation]
Portal Generation Proficiency has increased slightly!
[Dimensional Manipulation]
Dimension Generation Proficiency has increased!
Level Up! x2
Heads Up!
Weapon Evolving!
Your Thorn Spear has evolved Wolf Slayer’s Thorn Spear!
[Thorn Spear] Durability and Power has increased!
[Thorn Spear] Effectiveness has greatly increased against wolves!
[Thorn Spear] System will repair and strengthen when covered in wolf’s blood!
With his spear firmly wedged between the wolf matriarch and the ground, Jake crawled out from under the dead monster. Once he was out he teleported the spear into his Inventory.
He looked up to the sky. Though it looked like the murder wasps held a numbers advantage over the bees, they were making a swift retreat.
“It is over,” Jake heard the Mother Tree’s whisper. “The invaders, they are retreating.”
Quest Completed!
Like bees tend to do, the swarm kept chasing. They followed wasps all the way beyond where Jake could see out from over the garden and beyond the hedge. He assumed they’d be chasing them until they reached the tunnels they had flown out from.
With a huge smile on his face, Jake turned towards the hedge he had entered the clearing from and started jogging. He heard a weak and gentle laugh as the Mother Tree opened a gap in the hedge, revealing the thorn sentry behind it.
“Thorn!” Jake shouted, speeding up as he drew near. Thorn stepped through the gap in the hedge and only managed to take a few steps before Jake had run up to him.
“We did it!” Jake cheered, lifting the thorn sentry up. “We won!” He’d never been on any serious sports team in his life, but he imagined this would be the way he’d feel after his team won.
As he lifted Thorn up again he noticed something different about his face. Thorn didn’t have that stoic, neutral look on anymore. A smile had taken its place.
“Jake,” the Mother Tree said, sounding very winded, “Thorn of My Vines has something to say to you.”
“Oh?” Jake asked, his eyes still on Thorn. Just looking at the wooden child’s smile made his own smile even stronger.
“He says, ‘Please put me down.’”
“Oh.”
Once Jake had put Thorn down, Thorn took his sweet time walking over to one of the sentinels laid out on the ground. Jake recognized it as the one that he’d seen split in half by the wolf matriarch.
Thorn knelt down and grabbed the broken sentinels hand.
“This one is the one who held the wolf mother’s mouth shut for you and pulled her into your blade,” the Mother Tree explained. “Thorn of My Vine would not have had the strength.”
“But this guy had enough when they were already split in half?” Jake asked.
“She is the most developed of my sentinels and therefore the strongest.”
“She?” Jake looked down at the sentinel. He supposed—for a block of wood—she was a little more curvy than the other thorn warriors?
He decided that he’d rather not spend his time thinking about how these plant children differed between their sexes. Instead, he followed Thorn’s lead and grabbed the wounded warrior's hand.
“Thanks for holding the wolf’s mouth shut,” he told her. “And sorry for cutting through your vines.”
The thorn sentinel grabbed his hand in return.
The Mother Tree spoke for her. “She says that there is no need for an apology. That she would sacrifice a thousand of her vines and limbs to help save her kingdom.”
Guy or girl, they’re all pretty stoic, Jake thought. “What’s her name?” he asked.
“She is the Leaf That Remains In the Winter.”
Considering that she was the only thorn sentinel left alive in the clearing, Jake thought it was a name that suited her well.
“She asked me to thank you for slaying the wolf matriarch when she had no hope left.”
“Will she live?” Jake asked. If she was human, the answer would obviously be no, but with her being a wooden warrior, he wasn’t sure if he was looking at an injured soldier or a dying one.
“Yes,” the Mother Tree said. There was certainty in her voice. “This one is strong, but like the rest of my kingdom, it will take time for her to recover.”
Jake nodded. He stayed silent by the injured warriors' side.
The wolf matriarch had had a huge advantage over him in terms of levels, strength, speed, and vitality. His powers were strong, but he was still developing them. If it hadn’t been for the thorn warriors giving their lives before he arrived, he doubted he’d have been able to take her on.
Though these wooden children were generated people, fighting alongside them and seeing their resolve summoned emotions as real as what he had felt when facing the goblins. In the case of the wooden children, however, he was feeling respect rather than hate.
Thorn and Jake waited there by the wounded warrior’s side until Will showed up. While they were waiting, Jake pulled up the quest completion notification.
Quest Completed!
Bonus Received for Outstanding Achievement!
Beyond what could have been expected, you’ve saved the Mother Tree from her doomed fate! The invading forces make their retreat and her kingdom remains standing. This small kingdom may yet prosper again.
As long as the invaders do not return, that is.
Rewards for Quest Completion
Progress towards Level Up
Level Up! x2
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
1,800 Game Tokens Rewarded in Total
+1000 Tokens for Outstanding Achievement!
+500 Tokens for Quest Completion!
+200 Tokens for 3-Day Quest Completion Streak!
+100 Tokens for Early Beta Tester Bonus!
$1,800 U.S Dollars Rewarded in Total
+$1000 Dollars for Outstanding Achievement!
+$500 Dollars for Quest Completion!
+$200 Dollars for 3-Day Quest Completion Streak!
+$100 Dollars for Early Beta Tester Bonus!
Current Non-Token Funds in Holding
$4,000 U.S Dollars
Jake
Level 13
Mana Capacity: 20
Strength: 20
Agility: 20
Vitality: 20
Unallocated Stat Points: 20
“Jake!” Will called out to him as he arrived in the Mother Tree’s courtyard. Jake and Thorn looked to him and saw that he was carrying a thorn sentinel on his back.
Will ran up to them and let the familiar-looking sentinel off of his back. As soon as the sentinel was down, Thorn raised his arms and sped walked up to Will. It was like he was a toddler rushing up to his dad after daycare.
“Thanks for watching out for Jake, Thorn,” Will said, lifting the wooden child up for a hug.
“Nice to see the family reunion,” Jake joked.
“Good job,” Will said to Jake once he finally got around to putting down Thorn. They shared a homie handshake and grinned at each other.
“Thanks, man. Did you manage to save any of the saplings?”
“A couple sets,” Will admitted. “Not as many as you just did by killing that big wolf over there, though.”
“So, what’s your level now?” Jake asked.
Your party member, Will, is now Level 7.
“Nice.”
“ So, are you going to tell me what happened or am I going to have to ask Thorn,” Will said.
Jake wrapped his arm around Will’s shoulder. “Well, you see if you put in a little bear spray and a little bit of back into it you can accomplish anything, buddy.”
Though he started with a joke, Jake did his best to describe what had actually happened to Will. He made sure to make the moments when the other’s had helped him larger than life.
“And after that the wolf fell down, dead. The Spear That Moves Stone did not bend against its weight and I was able to slide out from under wolf. The wasps went running after that and well, that’s it.” Jake closed his explanation.
“So let me check if I got the full list right here,” Will said. “So there was a little back in there, a little bit of bear spray, a little bit of help from Thorn and the Mother Tree, some acid, some chainsaw action, ten points into agility, a spiked ten foot long pole that you had to twist the shaft for…”
Jake raised his hands. “Okay, okay, there was a lotta bit more than the little bit I mentioned in the summary. The point is… I’m the man.”
“Perhaps, calling you the hero would be a more appropriate fit?” the Mother Tree proposed. “Truly, my kingdom can not thank the two of you enough for what you have done for us.”
“Hey, we helped ourselves as much as we helped you,” Jake said. “I’m just glad that we made it in time.”
Branch That Moves Stone: Still, this one can not see it in himself not to thank you.
So it was Branch, Will had been carrying, Jake thought. He hadn’t been sure.
Leaf That Remains In Winter: This one too cannot thank you enough.
“You’re a hero too, you know, Branch,” Jake said. He ported the thorned spear he had gotten from the sentinel into his hands. “If it wasn’t for the spear that you gave me, I’m not sure if we would have been able to save the day on time.”
Branch gave a slight nod.
Branch That Moves Stone: Then this one is happy to have been able to provide a minor assistance.
Leaf That Remains In Winter: This one is happy to have been able to provide a minor assistance as well.
Will raised his hand. “I am also happy to have been a minor assistance to the great hero,” he said with a joker’s grin.
Thorn raised his hand too, but either Will didn’t forward his thank you message to Jake or Thorn just didn’t bother sending one.
“Guys, we’re all on the same team here,” Jake said. Though he knew Branch and Leaf were being genuine, he was very aware that Will was only about twenty-percent serious and eighty-percent joking. In Thorn’s case, he was definitely just following Will’s lead.
“You guys don’t need to thank me,” Jake continued. “If it wasn’t for everyone here we wouldn’t have had a chance. Everyone did great.”
“Yes,” the Mother Tree chimed in with a sleepy voice. “And everyone shall be rewarded. These three at a later time and the two of you now.”
“Well, hold on,” Jake said. “Before I forget, do you guys know what grafting is?”
“We have not heard the word before,” the Mother Tree said. “Unless you have mentioned it and we have forgotten.”
“It's when you try to stick a part of a plant together with another one and try to get them to fuse together,” Will said. “You can try to do it with broken tree limbs too if you do it fast enough. Doesn’t work all the time, but I think it might be easier for you guys compared to a plant without a brain.”
The Mother Tree hummed. “It is similar to a process that we are already aware of. We take the blossoming flowers from the stem and let them take root in our flesh. Perhaps, a similar method could work for the Leaf That Remains In Winter?”
Will shrugged. “It's worth a shot.”
“You want to try reattaching your spear too, Branch?” Jake asked. He held up the spear the thorn sentinel had given to him. It was a pretty great weapon already without the upgrade it had just received, but with it Jake felt he could probably stick with it for a while. That said, he wasn’t going to deny its original owner if he wanted it back.
Branch shook his head and pushed the spear back.
Branch That Moves Stone: This one does not need it. It shall grow again.
If it is of any use to you, I wish for you to take it.
Jake nodded. “Then I will.” He ported the spear back into his Inventory and took out some duct tape for Leaf.
“Do you guys have anything that could help to heal your wounds?” Jake asked the Mother Tree. He didn’t really know much about tree health. The only plant he had taken care of was the pea plant he grew for a class project back in elementary school. He was just assuming that there had to be types of medicine for trees and the plant people were the most likely to have it.
“The soil around me should be medicine enough,” the Mother Tree said. “I can guide the nutrients to her if we bury her near me.”
“Then I guess we’ll be needing this,” Jake said, porting out a shovel from his Inventory.
“You’ve got everything in there, don’t you,” Will said.
“I don’t have one for you.”
“Left mine back in the car?”
“...Yes.”
Will shook his head. “Let’s go get it before you start burying her.”
Having completed their quests, the two friends took off their display shades without any of the dimensional motion sickness they would have suffered otherwise.
“The full Matrix experience,” Will said, holding his shades as he looked over his mother’s mundane garden.
“Yep,” Jake said as he started towards the house. And a whole bunch of consequences that come with it.
Rather than heading straight to Jake’s car, the two friends went to Will’s kitchen to get a couple of drinks and some quick food first. After all, everything involved in that quest had been quite a bit of work for just over an hour’s time.
Good food goes down fast and easy after hard work. Once they finished up in the kitchen, they headed to Jake’s car and fetched the shovel. When they headed back to the backyard and reentered the instance, they ended up right back where they had started the quest.
When they looked back at the tunnels the invaders had dug up around the garden, they got a new quest notification.
Heads Up!
New Quest!
Three new quest notifications to be exact.
“Let’s save them for later,” Will said. He was type to check these sorts of things immediately, but he’d read a little bit about grafting while they were outside the instance. The reattachment was something that they should handle in the first few hours after the split.
Which made sense, of course. People didn’t exactly take their time rushing to the hospital when trying to reattach someone’s finger now, did they?
Though the Mother Tree still needed to spend her reduced energy to contain the fires that the goblins had spread throughout her hedge maze kingdom, she still managed to spare enough to open a quick path through to her for Jake and Will.
When they arrived in her clearing at the center of the maze, they found their three thorn warrior friends had moved to the base of the Mother Tree. Leaf had been laid against the Mother Tree’s trunk while Thorn and Branch were standing by her side.
Above the thorn warriors hovering in the air was a small group of bees. Surrounding the thorn warriors along the ground was a banquet’s worth of fruits.
“Let it be known that this one does not forget the rewards she promises, great heroes,” the Mother Tree announced.