New skill [Resource Berry(R)] has been learned!

I pulled up the description of my new skill, hoping I could still manage to make Health Berries and Mana Berries while using this skill. I didn’t quite know what Mana felt like yet, given I still haven’t had the chance to use Telepathy yet, but I wanted to be able to when I got the chance.

Resource Berry(R): Active. User pushed one of their recourses into a small berry that hangs from a user-determined location. Berry color is influenced by resource type. User can access the resources held in the berry at will, though depleted berries will shrivel up and fall. Passive. Depleted or picked berries will regenerate over time. Rate of berry replacement is dependent on surplus resource regeneration. Only previously made berries will be regenerated. No new berry locations will be spontaneously formed without user’s direct input.

Well damn. I stumble into a pretty awesome skill. I still haven’t figured what the letter by each skill means though. I have to assume it involves skill strength, but I don’t know that yet.

The biggest takeaway I get from this is that I can make new berries that will refresh over time. The passive is the biggest win, in my opinion. I don’t want to have to manually go through making new berries after every time I use one.

One awesome part of this skill is that it will give people a great reason to approach me. I’ve been getting a bit lonely ever since Club and Dagger left a few weeks back. I miss their ugly faces.

I reminisced about messing with the Goblins while I continued making new Stamina berries. Each Berry cost me only 2% of my quickly regenerating Stamina pool so I was able to make a large collection of them in relatively quick time.

I was about to start with making the berries all along my vines but thought better of that. I instead made the berries grow up in my canopy where they wouldn't be easily reached by the average person or monster. If I decided to grant someone my berries, they’d only get it by my own choice or by chopping me down. Good luck with that though. Iron Bark for the win!

I left the lone berry on my vine and moved my thoughts higher up. I spread 40 Stamina Berries along the bottom of one of my main branches, stopping myself from making too many, lest I run out of room to make Health Berries or Mana Berries eventually.

After I finished the last berry, I switched my focus to making Health Berries. I didn’t really have a good picture to make the health Berries with, so I decided on a more masochistic approach to my conundrum.

I used one vine to completely strip a second vine of its leaves, in hopes I would be able to get a better grasp on the feeling of what Health was. Unfortunately, the only feeling I got was of someone ripping the hair off of a knuckle. Just the knuckle though, not even the entire back of the hand. I didn’t even lose a single percent of Health.

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Ugh. I guess I have to do this the hard way.

I brought my first vine back to the top of the now naked vine and wrapped it around the bare base. I began pulling with all my might, trying to rip the vine off. I don’t know if it was a mental block or something, but I found it near impossible to tear off.

I was about to give up when I remembered I had more than just the two vines. I recruited 3 more vines before I started to feel the naked vine give. It felt like I was ripping my own finger off. When vine number 5 joined the fray, it finally came off.

When my vine came off, I checked and saw my Health went down by 3%. For how much it hurt, it really wasn’t that big of a deal, apparently.

As I examined the wound, I saw a bit of sap start to drip out of my open wound. It flowed down my grayish bark and dropped from the tip of a twig that had yet to grow its leaves.

Is that Health? Would my sap be considered enough to be called “Health” by the system? Or is there more to it?

Calling it Health felt a bit lacking compared to what I had envisioned to Stamina.

I cast my mind to the broken portion of my branch and felt the pain even more intensely than ever. Where I felt a finger get pulled off before, now it felt like I had completely severed an entire arm.

Yet, as I watched with a grimace, the wound started to slow heal. I focused more on the feeling and started to get a small glimpse of what it meant to heal.

It felt warm, almost cozy. The broken wood started to grow anew, replacing the old vine with a new life. The vine started off as a simple branch, and as my health ticked up a point, my vine was almost back to a stub.

As the stub grew, I felt more warmth flow into it. It reminded me that there was more to Health than just not being injured. Health was being alive to enjoy the Sunlight and to watch the Moon dance among the stars every night.

My health ticked up another point and my vine was already hanging halfway down my trunk to the ground.

The warmth continued flowing, the shining sap that was my blood bringing more life with it as it flowed to create a new branch for me. It brought images of my little cousins growing from being small babies crawling around in their diapers to being grown men and women, ready to take on the world.

My Health finally topped off, and my vine was back to being fully grown. Armed with the feeling of what Health was, I brought my mind up to the second of my main branches and pushed the feeling of Health into a leaf hanging from one a twig on its underside. I pushed the idea of a life well lived into it, the feeling of warmth on a sunny day, of being able to run around and have fun.

The Health I was pushing into the leaf gathered more and more. When it reached a certain threshold, the leaf started turning red. As more collected, the leaf started looking more plump. The next threshold shaped the leaf into a small, red cherry.

Cherries are technically a stone fruit, but I’ll let it slide.

I continued making a few more cherries on the same branch, making them in clusters or 2 to 3 per twig. I had to grow a few extra twigs to make it work that way, but it was Stamina well spent, in my opinion.

I had to take a bit longer to get an even number of cherries, since I didn’t want my health to dip below 98%. The Health Berries – cherries, as I preferred to call them – took 2% of my health each to make. I now had two of the three resource types set to grow as berries so I would have some reserves to replenish me in the event of a fight. I didn’t know how much I would get back in return if I sucked the berry dry, but that was a test for later. I just wanted to rest for a couple days, given how busy I’ve been.

I spread my mind through my upper body once again, which altered my perception of time so it felt like only an hour passed when in fact it was two hours. I spent much of my time like this now, ignoring level notifications and pretty much the rest of the world. I was a tree, and no one could bother me. Oh, how wrong I could be.