There was that OP perk: no, not that one, the other one – Evolve. This was the one he didn’t get to use much, because… of reasons obviously.

With the Elven menace averted and the Lamia famine defeated, or was it the other way round? Anyway, he had plenty of time and energy on his hands.

“Evolve.” He invoked the perk.

A purple light enveloped his new victim. Just an innocent plant, the one his spiders used to make ropes called BanditAgave. It was a prickly bugger and the name was well-earned.

The light show didn’t last and died without sparkles and fanfare. This one needed time to manifest their new changes and couldn’t just pop them into existence.

“I hope you evolve well.” He caressed the prickly plant’s leaf.

The perk drained him, but it drained him less than he thought it would, so he moved to his next victim. It was another plant, and it was quite renowned. This was the one he used to make all that cloth for clothes – StemLeaf. A very imaginative and inspired name, and he was proud of it.

“Evolve.” He dispensed his judgment spraying purple light without mercy from his hands.

Something was not right.

“I’m not feeling well.” He said before he passed out plonking his head right into the pile of wet dirt.

…

He was floating in the endless void of space, stars twinkled happily at him.

“So pretty.”

He felt happy and content just floating around in this dream. A cloud of smoke blinked into being out of nowhere.

“You haven’t used your chaos blessing.”

“Huh?” He was surprised by this speaking cloud.

“YoU HaVen’t UseD YoUr bleSSinG.” It accused.

Well, this cloud was a joy killer and he wanted to tell it to go away.

“Bugger off, cloud.” So he did. “I am busy enjoying my dream.”

“There is a great danger coming. Be prepared.”

“Cloud, cloud go away. Come again some other day!” He chanted an ancient spell towards the cloud.

Surprisingly the cloud shrunk on itself and disappeared from his vision with an audible pop.

“The stars are so pretty.” With the cloud gone, he was back to appreciating the marvels of the Cosmos.

…

Blinking away the dumb dreams he opened his eyes to greet the new day.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” He reminded himself while holding his throbbing head.

He was awake but definitely not okay. Everything hurt and he felt drained. A spider offered him a jug of water. He slurped it greedily as if he hasn’t had any for days; which considering how the perk worked, was probably true.

He felt slight déjà vu trying to get out of his bed.

“Ah… Just carry me.” He decided to let himself be spoiled.

The spider happily complied with the request. Unexpectedly, the ride was smooth and pleasant; these spiders were experts at carrying things on their backs. And he didn’t even need to tell it where to go, the spider knew already.

“Destination. Reached. Disembarking.” The spider chirped.

It chirped and dropped him like a sack of potatoes.

“Ugh! I get what I deserve.” He dusted the dirt off his clothes. “There is it?” he looked for his first victim. “Aha!”

It was standing out like a sore thumb. The BanditAgave has changed colours from dull green to fiery red.

“Congratulation, you have been promoted to FireAgave. Please reproduce quickly.”

It was a shame that he would need to wait until he was able to process the plant and find its properties.

“To the next victim, we go.” He gave a meaningful look to the spider.

The spider picked him up like a sack of potatoes and carried him to the other field. During the trip, he passed other spiders who chirped him hello. He waved at them to return the greeting. And all of a sudden he could feel his mount to become all smug and elevated. Elevated in a literal sense, the spider stood taller and had bigger strides, and other spiders looked at it in envy.

“Wait, why are they looking at you like this?” He couldn’t help but wonder.

“Jealous. I. Carry. The King.”

“I see… Maybe don’t drop The King like a sack when we arrive.” He offered.

“Arrived. Disembarking.”

It dropped him.

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“Hey!”

The spider ran away before he could complain. He would dust himself off but he was too taken aback by the strange sight.

“What is this supposed to be?”

It should have been evolved StemLeaf but instead of a long stem and a big leaf, there was just a bundle of leaves curled up like a cabbage.

“A cabbage?” He uttered staring at the giant cabbage as big as he was.

The leaves began to move. It wasn’t a cabbage, because there was something inside. He looked at it opening like a flower with a bated breath. Behind these leaves, he could see a figure emerge: It had a head, a torso and even hands, but from below the waist it was all plant. He was staring at its back so he couldn’t tell if it had a face.

He walked around unable to take his eyes off this marvel. And then he could do nothing but blush. Inside this ‘cabbage’ there was a figure of a woman, and of course well endowed and naked.

The woman stretched with a big yawn, exposing her feminine charms and not two but four rows of needle-like teeth and a long snake-like tongue. She might be half plant half woman, but she definitely was not a vegetarian. She finished yawning and stared at him with curiosity with her big green eyes. Needless to say, she was all in various shades of green and for the hair on her head she just had leaves.

“What are you supposed to be?” He uttered in wonder.

“Alraune.” She gave him that toothy grin.

The name clicked, it matched with the description of a half-woman and half-plant creature, but those were more like flowers and not cabbages. Well, he should never say that she looked like cabbage, the monster was still a woman.

There was still one thing to make sure. “You were a StemLeaf before right?” No, that was not it. He should have been amazed that she can talk.

“Alraune. Alraune.”

“Sorry I don’t get it.”

“Alraune?”

“Oh, you’re that type of monster. The one who says only its name.”

“Alraune!” the plant woman smiled.

Then she opened her hands wide and sprayed green orbs of light all around her. He had almost got worried for a second, but whatever she had cast didn’t affect him, instead, the StemLeaf plants grew ever so slightly.

“So you can speed the plant growth, amazing.”

“Alraure!”

Yeah, that one-liner can get boring pretty quickly. He wondered if he could somehow excavate the Alraune and plant her where more useful crops were.

A spider walked to the now grown StemLeaf plants to harvest them and alraune snatched the little fellow without warning. Her jaw opened more than it should be possible, she was aiming for the spider's head.

“No!” He slapped the woman hard enough for her to drop the spider. “You can’t eat them. They are friends, do you understand?”

“Alraune?”

“Never mind. Please stay away from alraune from now on.” He warned the little worker.

The spider chirped in understanding.

The plant woman was useful to have around, but she was a wild card and dangerous for his spiders. He couldn’t leave her unsupervised. So he did what any competent king would do, he assigned the minder to this plant. It was a very keen spider who actually volunteered to supervise the hungry plant. Of, course he wasn’t going leave the volunteer without protection. So he crafted something very special.

[You have crafted a peacekeeper stick of superior quality. Crafting +1exp]

Yeah, it was just a wooden stick but…

Congratulations! You have reached Crafting lvl. 2]

[Perk Harvest Material obtained.]

“Finally!” he had unlocked a new perk.

“Harvest Material” He tried it on StemPlant and it instantly provided him with plant fibre.

“I should have gotten it ages ago!” It would have made things so much easier.

However, the amount he obtained was less than if he went through the entire process. And even more however, it was odd that this was considered a Crafting perk and not Farming, but he won’t complain about this. Since it was established that he could do that on plants he grew, he had to try it on animals as well. He went to the boar pen and invoked the skill on a random boar, however, nothing happened.

“Maybe they need to be dead?”

He did the necessary and invoked the perk again. This time it worked giving him [Enchanted Boar Pelt] and [Enchanted Boar Meat]. The rest of the body just broke into sparkles and then disappeared.

He looked at the two items an idea budding in his head. “If only I had a storage ring or loot bag… I could become the ultimate hoarder.” He was tempted by the idea.

“I wonder if the elves possess such things.”

However, the time for that wasn’t right; not yet. He used the perk on another plant, the blue flower DustyBlue. Predictably so, the flower turned into a pile of blue dust. Extracting the dust was never an easy process, but now it was. He collected the dust into the wooden vial.

“I can throw this in defence and give my enemy a debuff.” The dust had a sleep debuff, to which he was now immune so it didn’t even affect him. “Perfect!”

He kept trying this new perk on various things. He could even harvest the fruits instantly, however, it destroyed the fruit vine so it wasn’t always practical to use it. In hindsight, the perk could be used to quickly destroy things like pesky weeds, or unwanted corpses, which probably was an unintended exploit.

And! He intended to use that exploit to full power. There was this pesky plant, a thorn at the side of his farm. It was a spiky vine he had planted hoping to grow a defensive plant. It grew well, maybe too well, it was tall and sturdy, its horns sharp like daggers, and the thorny vine tumbled and rolled in swirling patterns resembling a roll of barbed wire. The problem was, once planted it was very difficult to remove it, so he kind of ignored the problem ending up with a small infestation.

That was until now because he could finally face this undefeated foe. “Away with you, menacing Bane of Spiders, begone, [Harvest Material].”

A small section of the SpikeVine disappeared leaving behind only thorns.

“[Thorn].” The skill after all was there to give him materials and not act as a cheap weedkiller. “I must be able to craft something with that.”

The thorn was as long as his finger but slightly slimmer. Even if it was made of woody material, it was quite strong. He tested it on his armour. Predictably so, it wasn’t able to pierce it and snapped the thorn in half instead.

“What if…” He had another genius idea. “Reinforce.” He used the perk he had gotten from levelling up Building.

[Thorn: Reinforced +1].

This was the day of discovery. He should make this day a national celebration in his kingdom. He was able to reinforce materials! This was a revolutionary discovery because he could reinforce material make an item and then reinforce it again. This was OP!

However, he was jumping to conclusions without putting things to the test. He jabbed the thorn into his armour, of course, it didn’t pierce it, but it didn’t break this time, meaning that paltry +1 was actually a significant amount.

Finally, he was beginning to feel like a real wizard; in a very roundabout exploitative way. He kept turning SpikyVine into light sparkles, disintegrating it, when collected the dropped material and ‘enchanted’ the thorns with another shower of light but this time purple.

Unavoidably the light show had attracted spectators. They were clapping and chirping happily at the unexpected entertainment. They too were glad that the prickly Bane of Spiders was finally dealt with; a task only a true King could achieve.