Thanks for helping Heart of the Forest reach 70k views! I'm overwhelmed by the unexpected amount of people that enjoy this story.
I have ideas for both outcomes of the poll, but as I'm not sure about which road to take, I decided to let you decide.
Tomorrow chapter may be delayed to give more time to answer the poll. (if you answer chocolate, I would decide what happens). If you have a 'but', explain what you mean in the comments
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Luke understood from his conversation with Dahani that the forest was vulnerable to an attack from multiple directions at the same time. This wasn’t an issue with goblins, as they were too coward to travel individually. They had too much of a pack mentality, so they wouldn’t separate if they had a choice. However, elves were as smart as any human or perhaps even smarter. It was perfectly plausible for them to strike in one spot and send another unit to attack from somewhere else. Actually, they hadn’t started an hostile relationship with the forest elves, but if the dark elves were any clue, there wouldn’t be any chance of peaceful negotiations.
Another problem of a different kind was that there was no way for Luke to connect personally to the whole forest while preparing and defending the forest from the newest menace. Both activities, the defence and the linking, would take most of his time making it so that he had to select one. Luke felt like something incredible would happen once he finished with the trees, however there was no point in connecting to the forest and then die or be exiled by other beings.
Luke rested his back and head on the trunk of the tree. He had some ideas for a more widespread and automatized defense, but it would require extensive testing. Besides, he wasn’t just thinking about defending against elves, he had to consider that more dangerous things will appear later on. After all, just eleven days had transcurred since The Beginning. It wasn’t hard to realize that most creatures at this point were low level. So he couldn’t be so narrow minded as to make elves the ultimate enemy. They were dangerous, yes, though more for their intelligence that for their individual strength according to his deduction derived from Dahani description of their abilities. He also had to ponder that he might have to leave the forest at some point, or he might get hurt and be unable of participating in protecting the forest. In conclusion, he needed to make the forest defend itself.
“Do Awakened Trees ever get a conscience or something similar?” Luke surprised Dahani with his question. They had been silent for several minutes and the question was completely unexpected. She recalled the little she knew about the Awakened Forest and what her teacher had told her.
“Yes, but it usually takes thousand of years of a Mana rich environment to get that type of result. Some factors may accelerate the process, but it would still take more than a hundred years. My teacher said that it is related to the lifespan and speed of growth of each tree on the forest.” Luke became excited by the affirmative response. Nonetheless, his hope was quickly dashed by the rest of the information provided. There was no way he could wait that long (he wasn’t considering his lifespan, just his chances of surviving in such a vulnerable place for so long).
“Ohh. I will test new spells and wards the rest of the day, so I will stay here probably. Could you patrol the forest for a few hours?” Luke wasn’t comfortable asking someone else to do his job, but there was no way he could patrol and develop new safeguards at the same time. He now realized how fortunate it was that Dahani arrived when she did, otherwise he would have been overwhelmed by the lack of information and the amount of things he had to do.
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The revelation that there was at least one goddess monitoring his thought and actions was unnerving. As there was nothing he could do about it, he put it at the back of his mind. Then he realized another conclusion he could take from that message: He needed to replace the ward that obstructed scrying for a stronger one. He didn’t mind Druantia or Aranyani watching what he did, but there might come a time when a creature allied with a god would attack him. At that time, blocking that god’s sight might be a life or death matter.
‘Well, one thing less, a thousand to go.’
“I was going to explore the forest anyway, so I could do that to, no problem. Is there anything I have to be careful of? Like spiders?” Dahani said. A shiver went down her spine when she mentioned those creatures. It was clear that they didn’t bring good memories back. She didn’t seem to notice Luke’s distraction while he heard the goddess message.
“No, every creature here is a resident of the forest. You should be careful of the usual risk, I mean, a snake or a bear might attack you, but nothing malicious resides here. I annihilated those critters as fast as I could. I couldn’t stand their sight. Besides, It felt like they would consume the forest until nothing remained if left to their own devices.” Luke said. She noticeably relaxed after hearing there were no spiders around.
“They would. Most spiders are antagonist existence to any area they reside in. They had been known to devastate any landscape they arrive at. I’m happy to hear you took care of a colony of them. They can be quite hard to deal with” Dahani reconsidered her estimate of Luke’s strength. Not just anyone could survive a battle with giant spiders.
After a few more back and forth, Dahani left to travel the forest while Luke went back to pondering how to improve the forests mechanism of defense and his chances of remaining alive. There were two things he wished to solve first: how could he alone take care of larger groups of enemies and how could the forest delay, annoy or even kill intruders. He had some ideas for both of those thing, but only trial and error would tell if they were useful.
While he was pondering (actually since they sat under the tree shade), he continued to transfer to the Mana Seed. The reason was simple: he wanted to know how big it could grow and what would happen. He was confident that when it matured, it would bring benefits to him and maybe the forest too. Its growth had been showing less and less external signs after it passed the fifteen meters mark, it didn’t became taller as fast as before, but for Luke who could see what was happening inside the tree, the modifications were no less mind blowing. It looked like the Mana was accumulating in every cell of its ‘body’ (Do trees have bodies?). When it reached saturation, it circulated the energy through his trunk, branches and leaves, reinforcing them. Then, the tree emanated it back to environment. It continued this cycle of absorbing, storing, circulating and releasing without stopping. The tree was enhancing its body through Mana.
Luke could see that if it wasn’t for the Mana he transfused to this plant, it would at most do a cycle a day (maybe a little more considering the high Mana density in the area). Each successive cycle required more Mana for each step. It wasn’t much, less than 10% but when added up it was a terrific amount of energy. Luke was certain that if he hadn’t modified his Mana pool, it would have taken him years to reach this point. He decided to spend the next few hours in trying to finish maturing the tree. He was worried about being attacked, but maturing the tree might help with this trouble. He also doubled the amount of Mana he transferred per second. He wanted to increase it even more until he noticed that 100 Mana/Second was the maximum rate it could cope with.
Luke focused his mind in the task at hand and prepared for a few hours of doing nothing.