Icy winds howled through the trees, the sky above churning, a harbinger of a newly born storm. The sound was shrill and piercing, the distant rumblings ominous. Leif heard this through small holes on either side of his mostly featureless head.
Golden eyes gleamed behind slits in the ivory wood as his attention shifted from his system to the piled up snow surrounding him. It was as if he was sitting in a small personal crater. He slowly stood on shaky legs. Not from weakness, but inexperience.
His stance was strong, as if he were latched to the ground firmly by an extra serving of gravity. Instinctually he knew how to walk, echoes of an obscured past brushed against his mind as if guiding and urging him forward.
But he had spent several months scurrying around as a spider tree, newly gained experience warred with distant impulses. He took a deep breath, air passing through a thin, rigid gap on the lower part of his face. Straightening his back and squaring his shoulders Leif confidently took a step toward the nearest incline of snow.
His foot crashed through the frigid surface, a weight he didn’t realise he possessed parting the snow and making him sink. This caused an immediate loss of balance, Leif tumbled forward to spectacularly face plant into the snow, his body sinking over a foot and becoming stuck.
That didn’t go to plan.
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Leif couldn’t move, the snow surrounding him constricted his limbs almost completely. He could wriggle, but doing so just made more snow fall down onto him. Above, the storm began to rage, a new layer of white would soon coat the world.
The newly evolved spriggan was well and truly stuck. If he had still been a tree the cold wouldn’t have bothered him. But now he could feel it seep into his body, sapping his strength. His immediate thought, a thought that he hated, was to use [Settle]. Doing so would let him plant roots into the ground and wait out the storm.
But he hadn’t just evolved away from that path to instantly return to how he was. Leif would find another way. I have new skills. He thought. I just need to learn how to use them.
So, what could Leif do? Well he had several options and all of them had a solid chance of working. But there was something he wanted to try first with absolutely no chance of success.
[Amber Awareness] triggered and everything seemed to fade. Leif was currently lying face down and so couldn’t see anything, but his other senses all took a step back. A moment later he felt himself fall, hit the snow and sink. He felt the cold once again surround him and the sensation of no longer feeling the strong winds against his bark.
That was interesting, but as expected, not helpful in the least. Next he triggered [Gilded Body]... And nothing happened.
What? He thought, slightly confused. Why didn’t that do anything?
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He went to re-read the skill description and… Wait a second!
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Your physique becomes stronger and denser, you become harder to move against your will.
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The skill had increased his density? No wonder he was stuck in a pile of snow!
But it wasn’t only that, as Leif attempted to reactivate [Gilded Body], this time with a clear mental image of the limbs he wished to create, let me clarify something that will take the spriggan a few hours to realise.
His current form had absorbed the previous one. He had the weight of a tree and its root system packed into a much smaller body. The reason he hadn’t noticed this pretty significant factor in his current circumstances was twofold.
The first was that the body of a spriggan, despite feeling familiar and being mostly human in shape and size, was still radically different from the body you might be used to. The second was that just as his density had increased, but so too had his strength. And that was strength from more than just the [Might] attribute. Woven strings of plant fibres created imitation muscles beneath his ivory bark exterior. There were even rudimentary bone and joint structures.
A golden root shot from the Leif shaped pit and flopped listlessly onto the snow. Describing his first proper use of [Gilded Body]’s limb conjuring ability as a bit flaccid would be an understatement.
Leif dismissed the limb into a puff of golden essence and tried again. He focused [Grand Action] to support his [Willpower] attribute, it made picturing his desires easier. Another root shot from just above where shoulder blades would be on a person. This was one far more solid, its shape and colour more defined.
It pierced down into the snow and hooked to give him leverage. Then he mentally commanded the golden root to pull. It wasn’t enough, he created another of similar shape and size but immediately his body sagged. Energy drained away at an alarming rate, his mind fogged and muscles ached.
He lost control of both roots and they dispersed into motes of golden light. Panting, exhausted, in pain from skill overuse and still stuck in his pit of shame, Leif reconsidered his options.
[Blight's Bounty] would let him absorb vitality. Actually, thinking about it he could still do that without any skill… After a few minutes of squirming and wriggling he felt his fingers brush against a cold layer of soil.
The process was fundamentally different from when he had been a tree, but it was still just as agonisingly slow. With considerable effort he managed to work his fingers deeper into the hard earth, then his hand. Then he started on the other. Once he had a firm grasp on the soil beneath him he reached out with his will and began to drain.
Minutes passed as the process continued. But with each passing moment the attribute gain from [Blight's Bounty] accumulated. Not only was his body slowly being replenished but he was growing stronger.
After ten minutes he had exhausted the energy from the ground, he estimated all his attributes had increased by around 20%, what they would have been before the skill had upgraded if he had drained a living creature.
Leif only had one attempt before he would have to resort to using [Settle]. Two golden roots hooked over the edge of the hole and heaved, with the elevation he got his hands properly underneath his body and pushed.
With a surge of strength he rose to his feet, victorious! Then he waded through the thigh deep snow before collapsing under the ice covered leafy canopy of a nearby tree. The whole plant shook when he leaned against it, Leif squinted.