The last time he’d visited the willow tree, he’d been amazed at its growth. This time, in one day, it had somehow gotten larger. The trunk had been the size of a VW Bug yesterday, but now it was the size of a minibus! Its branches were so large, drooping in their massive weight, that the limbs were like a skirt, billowing onto the shoreline. There was no way a tree could grow that much in such a brief time without something hinky going on.
Logan tugged off the bandages on his hand and placed his palm into the lodestone.
[Welcome, Idiot! Entering the Karma Lodestone Menu.]
[What would you like to buy?]
“Go to the weapons menu.” There was no point in looking at the other options. They had enough vegetables to start the greenhouse and clothing wasn’t a priority until he had extra KarmaCoin to throw around.
[…. Conditions met.]
[F GRADE WEAPON MENU:
1 length of rope: 200 KarmaCoin
1 paperclip: 400 KarmaCoin
1 ballpoint pen: 800 KarmaCoin
1 large fork: 1000 KarmaCoin
*unlock further options at higher grades]
This was the tricky part. He only had five KarmaCoin, so even if he wanted to see what the fork did, he’d have to spend the entire day growing trees to raise anywhere close to 1000 KarmaCoin. Lara and the kids didn’t have time for him to screw around. He felt like 400 KarmaCoin could be achievable, and even though it was only a paperclip, if he bought it at least he’d know if the weapons were more than simple office supplies.
Decision made, Logan rewrapped his hand and then walked back to the hill to find another pinecone. Once he found one, he went through his usual process of burying the seed in the ground and then began his visualization.
And visualized.
And visualized some more.
Logan opened his eyes.
The skill had gotten so routine he only had to think about visualization and it deployed. This was decidedly not that. He knew [Life Cycle] had merged to create a new skill, but was it that different?
Maybe it was like cross-country skiing when you were used to downhill. It might need a slight tweak. When he’d deployed the [Life Cycle] skill he’d thought of it in levels. Grow a sprout, level one. Grow a sapling, level two. [Life Cycle Master] didn’t have levels, just growth.
Logan furrowed his brow as he studied the dirt covering the seed. He could still sense the seed, but like in the greenhouse, he could sense more. Surrounding him was a plethora of life and the potential for it. From the earthworms underneath his feet, to a line of rapidly scurrying ants that just missed his shoe, to the spider crawling through his hair. Logan shuddered and brushed it aside. It was level zero, but after the spider rat, he’d had enough of creepy crawlers.
Logan crossed his arms and backed up while he considered what to do. There was so much around him that it was challenging to focus, but wasn’t that something he should be especially competent at? As a call center rep, he was expected to have conversations while a hundred other reps around him did the same—some staff were loud, some quiet, but the workplace was a buzz of noise. He’d learned to focus on the person on the other end of the line to the exclusion of everything else.
How could focusing on a seed be any more challenging than that?
Filled with new resolve, Logan kneeled on the ground, faced the buried seed, and opened his mind.
He had it.
It was eager, ready to grow, wanting sunlight, water, and life. All he had to do was nudge it along. Logan gasped as he deployed the skill, the familiarity of growing a sprout slotting into his mind like a key into a lock. He’d never lost it: it had been there all along. It just had a different flavor, a foreign feeling he needed to adjust to; it was as if the seed were both dormant and already alive, wanting help to start its life cycle, while at the same time, wanting to evolve.
In front of him, a small sprout breached the earth, the stem climbing, base thickening. It grew at a rapid pace, way quicker than before. So quickly that he soon had to look up. When the sapling formed branches of leaves and had grown a good five feet, Logan stood up, swaying in place, instinctively knowing to pause the skill. His airways were clear, but when he opened his stat sheet, he could see that he was moments away from exhausting his Karma pool.
Karma: 3/270.
Logan had stopped the skill past the sprout and sapling levels, but he’d received no confirmation of skill deployment, and no monetary reward. Yet when he reviewed the rest of his stats, his KarmaCoin total had gone up from five to fifteen.
Wait, that meant this tree had only given him ten KarmaCoin. [Life Cycle] had given him sixty for the same effort!
What a rip off.
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[Life Cycle Master] gave him less money and yet cost more Karma to deploy. Doing the math, Logan calculated that he would need to raise an additional 425 KarmaCoin to account for the cost of the paper clip plus the ten percent processing fee. If deploying the skill on a pine tree seed only gave him ten points each, he’d need to grow forty-three saplings! At that rate, he’d be here for a week!
If nothing else, he could save enough for the length of rope which would cut the requirements in half. Twenty-one trees? A ton, but manageable in a morning. Still, he wasn’t excited about rope. What was he going to do, lasso the fish?
There was one other thing he could try. Logan waited for his Karma pool to regenerate, each minute feeling like an age. When he finally had another 270 Karma ready to go, Logan re-launched [Life Cycle Master].
The skill still had that strange flavor of wanting to grow and at the same time evolve, but he disregarded it, scrunched his nose, and pushed. He focused on the trunk, thickening the bark, growing more and more rings—growth that would take years in a normal tree life cycle. The tree wanted him to form a large hollow in its trunk, so he etched it with his mind, shaping it like a bucket, smoothing the edges, that feeling of evolution getting stronger.
Elation surged through him as the skill progressed, as effortless as breathing. What Logan wanted, he only needed to push, and he could achieve it. And why stop here? Logan would truly own the name of his skill and become a [Life Cycle Master].
Next were the branches; he urged them to reach for the sky, pine-needles growing, multiplying. And underneath his feet, he sent the roots into the ground, expanding them in a multi-layered network. The pine tree was no longer a sapling; it was a mature tree and Logan wanted more. He—
Choked to death!
Gasping, Logan clawed at his neck, trying to get air.
In his excitement, he’d forgotten to monitor his Karma pool.
[Drawing on a skill with insufficient Karma can cause paralysis and eventual death. This is the third time we’ve told you this. Would you like to change your name to Super Idiot?]
“Fuck off!” gasped Logan.
He got the sense he’d offended the System, but he could care less. Talk about pummelling a man when he was down.
Logan leaned against the new tree trunk as he gasped for air, clearing his throat, hacking and spitting as his Karma pool recovered. The bark felt rough against his back, his neck itching. At first, he thought it was the side effects of almost choking to death, but then he realized that the itch persisted even when he could breathe again.
He’d never had an allergic reaction in his life, but this itched like nothing else. He felt as if something were crawling on his skin. Still gasping, Logan scratched the back of his head, feeling—shit! Something had just crawled over his hand.
More spiders?
Logan pushed away from the tree trunk and turned to the face the pine tree.
It towered over him, easily twice his height, its trunk thick like a fire hydrant. At eye-level, he could look directly into the hollow he’d formed, sculpted like something out of a fairytale. It appeared dark inside and as wide as a basketball. And deep, as if the hollow filled the whole lower trunk.
And inside the darkness…
Logan blinked. He could have sworn he’d seen eyes flashing at him, like a black cat blinking in the night. No way. He’d just grown this thing—how could something already dwell inside of it? His eyes were playing tricks on him.
Logan was about to pull up his stat sheet, when he stopped, blinking again. He wasn’t seeing things! Two eyes… no, four, six, ten!
They flashed at him from the dark hollow. Logan backed up slowly, reaching for his baseball bat. He’d set it down when he’d launched [Life Cycle Master]. As the fingers of his good hand wrapped around the handle, two insect-like legs popped out of the hallow, curling around the edges.
Logan used [Idiot’s Inspect] on whatever was inside.
[Bark Ant: Level 1. An ant that has merged with a tree. Or is it a tree that has merged with an ant?]
Logan couldn’t believe it. He should have known something was off when he’d felt two conflicting needs pulling at each other—one wanting life, one wanting to evolve. In addition to growing the tree, he’d managed to latch onto one of the ants crawling next to his shoe. And when he said evolve, he meant monster evolve. The ant must have merged with the tree, taking on its features.
He'd created one freaky-looking ant.
Oh well, it wasn’t any threat to Logan. It was an ant; easy enough to kill.
An ant… that was the size of a mouse. The thing crept from the hollow, legs made of twigs; body covered in brown bark. In place of the ant’s antennae, two thick pine needles wiggled around, sensing the air. Its mandibles looked like the ridges of pinecones, sharp on the edges and curved like a claw. The ant crawled down the tree trunk, twig-legs latching on like a spider.
Logan took another step back.
Nothing to worry about. It was only level one.
Then another bark ant crept out of the hollow, this one the size of a rat.
[Bark Ant: Level 2. An ant that has merged with a tree. Or is it a tree that has merged with an ant?]
How was it level two already? He’d just grown the thing!
Still, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. Logan raised his bat, getting ready to swing.
And then the floodgates opened.
Dozens of the buggers poured out of the hollow like wasps out of a nest. One after another, ant after ant. They jumped up and down in excitement with their twig-legs as they caught sight of him, crawling down the tree trunk in a production line.
The first one jumped at him, leaping from the tree trunk and going for his head. Logan slammed his baseball bat into it with a smack. It went flying, but then it shook itself after it landed and rejoined the others.
Another ant flew at him, going for his face. As Logan turned, darting out of the way with only a second to spare, the ant sprayed a sticky substance that splashed his forehead. It smelt like tree sap! It had been trying to blind him!
Holy shit, more kept coming, dozens and dozens! The ones that hadn’t jumped at him had made their way down the trunk and now they circled around him, surrounding him, trying to cordon him like regular-sized ants trying to overwhelm their prey.
Level one and two would normally be no problem, but not when hundreds were attacking him! There was no retreat, they were all around him, and they made excited clacks as they crept up to his shoes.
Shit shit shit. Logan kicked with his legs, wincing as he jarred his toe wound inside his shoe as he sent one flying. The ants were hard as rock, the bark acting as a layer of armour. And soon the one he’d kicked had gotten to its feet with an excited clack, rejoining the others. The smaller ants latched onto his shoes, climbing up his bare legs with their sharp pinecone mandibles. Logan jumped in place, trying to kick them at the same time as shaking them loose.
Holy fuck, after everything he’d been through, he was about to be done in by his own monsters! Logan screamed as he swung his bat, trying to clear a path to escape, but it was like trying to advance through an army. He inched forward, literally inched. As soon as he landed a hit, another one took is place, giving the one he’d hit enough time to shake it off, getting to its feet with creaking twig-legs. No matter how many he hit, they got back up, ant after ant!
Ants! Ants! What could kill an ant?!
Wait.
What could kill a tree?
These things were made of bark and bark was vulnerable to fire. With a thought, Logan willed the can of hairspray he’d stored for Lara’s kids out of his spatial collar, and with another thought, removed a barbeque gas lighter he’d planned to use for a campfire.
Dropping his baseball bat to the ground, Logan held the can of hairspray with his good hand, his finger on the trigger, and then readied the gas lighter with his other.
This would either work, or he’d end up cooking himself.