“Ah, it smells like a new car in here.”

Licht comfortably shifted around in his new space. A few feet under the base of the young tree where trunk met ground, an array of roots had bundled up and formed together, enclosing a spherical shape in a spiderweb of wooden fibers. In the enclosed space Licht let out a stress-free sigh. Of course, Licht couldn’t actually smell the space around him, but he was too proud of his accomplishment to go into detail about his realistic limitations.

“Now let’s see what this puppy can do.”

He was not so comfortable that he would rest on the laurels of his accomplishment. No, the problem of shelter was solved but next lay the problem of food and water. Licht willed the roots of the tree to touch him, sending his sense through them to see a great distance around the tree.

Another thing, he found, was that he could extend his own sense through the roots he connected with, thereby exponentially increasing his range of view. It was not yet at the level he had back in his body on Earth, but it was more than sufficient for finding the rabbit’s body that still laid against the big tree he had fallen from and dragging it over to the one he was buried under.

Licht scanned the rabbit’s corpse in front of him. He knew that he had already gathered all the endurance stats he could get for now, but food was still important for him as a lifeform. Licht also wanted to test the effects it would have on the tree. He dug into the rabbit’s body with the tree’s roots, experiencing something like a pulling sensation as the roots slowly absorbed the nutrients of the rabbit.

The roots inside the rabbit enlarged as they performed the action. Expanding in pulsations as large bits of rabbit flesh passed through their hollow midsections and into the core of the tree. It was a slow but gruesome sight, reminding Licht of a snake swallowing a mouse. As the roots continued to sink into the rabbit’s exposed insides and tear out chunks, Licht confirmed his guess.

“I was right, the tree is actually visibly growing. The potent AF in the rabbit’s flesh must be accelerating its growth.”

With Licht’s senses being mostly shared with the tree, he could feel the leaves on its top growing minutely heavier, minute by minute. The specks of a budding sensation could also be felt along the topmost extremities of the tree. A sign that new branches were being grown from those preexisting.

“Wonderful. I’ll soon have a sturdy tree to give me safety. Though something is wrong. None of these nutrients are going to my orb.”

Licht wasn’t panicking for the moment. There were no more stats he could gain from the AF-laced flesh until his next evolution and he was still satiated from his last meal, but it defeated the purpose of having the rabbit’s corpse if he couldn’t eat it himself. Licht tried directing the food from the root’s hollow bits into his room underneath the tree, but this worked to only marginal effect, it was not a long-term solution. Creating a path for his body to reach the outside world through the hollow tubes of the roots wouldn’t be worth it either. It defeated the purpose of using the tree if he had to exit it for every meal.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

He wondered, could he use his own roots? The withe tendrils were what he used to absorb food into in the first place, or at least he thought so. They were sort of roots too, actually. Licht decided to just go for it and stop hypothesizing. He extended one of his withe limbs forward, coiling it around a root that headed outside. Quickly, he hit a wall with length.

“Do I not have enough length?”

No, surely he was average sized. The withe tendrils were definitely long enough too. He decided to strip all the withe fibers coiled around his body off and add them to the outgoing line. He wouldn’t need them to get around inside the tree’s roots anyway. This quickly worked, the withe vein wrapping around the single root of the tree that was going out far enough for him to reach the rabbit’s corpse. There it was able to start absorbing the flesh and send it back to his body. This time through a direct channel.

[Max END reached! Evolve or ascend in rank to increase END further.]

“Nice! I’ve reached maximum stat gains from absorbing like I thought, but I can still benefit from using [Nutrient Absorption] even if I don’t get stats.”

Like for instance, directly pumping those nutrients into growing more withe tendrils. This way he would be able to absorb into his body directly from every one of the tree’s roots.

“Delightfully devilish, Licht.”

…

At the end of the week, from what Licht could tell anyway, his tree had grown substantially bigger than before. He could only vaguely guess the time based on the day and night cycle, though he didn’t know if this place had twenty-four hour days or what, but he was surprised to see only a single moon in the sky.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be some fantasy setting? Where’s my second moon?”

Nevertheless, by the end of the week Licht had greatly familiarized himself with his task, performing it constantly to a near automatic standard. He only took occasional breaks during the night to fall into a sleep-like state. By now, the rabbit’s corpse had withered down a great degree, and his own tree had grown to encompass its surrounding vicinity in a far more intimidating manner. By that, he meant that its leaves had expanded in diameter and turned white.

“I’m starting to feel more and more like an anime protagonist now. First I get reincarnated, then I get help from a wise and powerful elder, and now my hair turns white. Okay, ‘leaves’, but my point still stands. Oh shit!”

Licht was brought out of his focus as he saw the slithering form of a root suspended in air approach his location. It squirmed left and right as it descended by his trunk, creating blank gaps in Licht’s sense with its movements. It was intelligent.

The root paused in front of Licht’s tree, hovering in place at the strain of its doubtlessly long body originating from deeper in the forest.

“Uh, Giving Tree? Please tell me that’s you?”

The root moved, unfurling a sea of metallic fanged barbs along its exterior.

“Shit.”