Licht turned the commune skill back on.

“You good buddy?”

“Murhurma! Water! Good!”

Nice. The bush seemed to have much more willingness to communicate now that it was being fed. Actually, had it thought that Licht was a possible hostile before? He internally shook his head. The baby-like vocabulary of the bush hadn’t given him any indication it suspected he was malignant. Though he had difficulty getting emotive reads from using the commune skill in general.

Useful as it was, the method of communication offered by the skill was fundamentally different than speaking using sound. Wooden commune was basically isolating the senses of two speakers and connecting their minds, allowing them to share ideas. Even in this however, it was limited. Licht’s ability to use the skill was not so open-ended that he could share things like vague ideas or mental images.

“If I’m going to be limited in what I can share anyway, I’d rather communicate with sound. At least that way I could see what’s around me at the same time.”

“Mrurumu?”

“Oops! Sorry little guy.”

Licht had totally forgotten that the skill was still sharing his thoughts with the sapling fruit bush. He promptly disconnected, letting his vision expand once again to encompass his entire section of the forest.

“Ahh. Much better. Though that bush gives me a lot of questions. I wonder what led to its birth? Surely the water of this flood isn’t special in any way?”

Nope. Licht tested it once again to be sure. Just regular ol’ water. Good enough to be packed up and sold in expensive rectangular bottles. He internally shrugged and went on to do other things.

As he was doing his other work however, like trapping more animals or growing his trees, he still kept an eye on the baby fruit sapling in the corner of his vision. He had decided to take care of it, after all, and it would be unreasonable not to protect it now after all that he had done.

“What now? Is it having trouble?”

Licht could see in his periphery that the bush was squirming. A few seconds later he pulled the majority of his focus around the bush.

[Wooden Commune]

“What’s up, little guy? Something got you frustrated?”

“Mahrura. Leg stuck! Stuck!”

Licht raised his brow. The bush’s vocabulary was improving at a nice pace. The development of its mind to maturity must be automatic. Licht knew he hadn’t had any involvement in its development, at least.

“Your leg…?”

Licht could see the problem. The little bush was trying to move one of its roots but didn’t have the strength. Periodic tensions were evident along the wooden surface of the bush’s body. Clearly signs that it was trying to pull its own root out of the ground.

“Let me see what I can do.”

Licht disconnected the skill so that he could think.

“Really it doesn’t make sense that it wouldn’t be able to move its roots. The monsoon has just come through here, and the dirt that it's on should be wet and malleable enough to allow for the bush to easily pull itself out. The little guy is definitely big enough by now to be able to move at least one of his roots by himself too. I wonder what the problem is?”

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Licht recalled his own experience. His experience as a newly born had been quite different compared to the sapling. He was first ‘born’ into that weird-looking flower body. It was only after he was eaten by the rabbit and gained his withy body that he was able to move himself unassisted.

“I remember that I felt like I had finally gotten out of a wheelchair at that point. The feeling had been so freeing.”

Thinking of it like that, Licht was starting to pity the little bush more now that he recalled the suffocating feeling of not being able to move himself. Licht doubled down on finding a solution.

“Let me think, my experience with dealing with roots…oh? Why didn’t I think of it before? I was able to move the tree much better after I obtained more virtues. Could that be what this guy is missing?”

Licht decided to test it out. Unfortunately, the Giving Tree wasn’t here so he would have to figure out how to do it himself.

A root sprang out of the water, holding in midair before the bush.

“Let's see…the Giving Tree produced some kind of sap that I absorbed to get the virtue. Will that work for this little guy? Can I even do something like that?”

Hopefully the bush wouldn’t need a skill like [Nutrient Absorption] for this to work. It sounded like a fairly general skill, but Licht had the suspicion that it was a speciality of Nature’s Egos.

Licht made several motions mentally, picturing wringing sap out of the root like a towel. Then it would surely drip down onto the bush and…

“No! No! Stop that, this is getting too weird.”

Licht shook it off. If just thinking about releasing the sap wouldn’t work, maybe there was some sort of technique to it? From elsewhere in the forest, several of Licht’s connected trees swallowed hundreds of gallons of water before sending them to the main tree. Licht then used the nutrients to grow a thread of his withe tendrils down the line of the root, before ending it in front of the bush.

[Biogenical Growth]

“Maybe with this skill I can force my main body to produce that sap, and then send it down the root?”

Before long, the skill consumed his entire tank of AF. He had yet to explore its full limitations but the cost of the skill was truly D+ tier.

“Aaand?”

A drop, merely a thimble of clear, iridescent liquid hung off the tip of the root.

“Yes! I did it!”

Skill Gained: [Bestowal (D+)]

“Oooh? Oh shit!”

Licht celebrated a little too hard at the sudden gain of the skill, causing his root to shake and the drop to fall on the bush’s leaves. A sickening sizzling noise started to resonate, as the contacted leaves of the bush withered and disintegrated.

“Oh no! Stay with me buddy!”

Both the bush and Licht started to panic, as neither one knew what was happening. The bush tried to flick the drop off of itself, only succeeding in rubbing the sap on more of its leaves in the process. On the other hand, Licht worked quickly, taking the idea from Earth that it was better to be alive than well, he started to quickly amputate the affected branches of the bush. Since Licht didn’t have any way to make a blade at this point, he could only slap at the little bush really hard until they broke off. The situation looked like two people trying to swat out a fire.

After a few moments, the ‘fire’ was put out. After confirming that the little bush was still alive and okay for now, he heaved a sigh. For a few moments Licht could only stare at the sapling in silence, a great deal ashamed of his blunder.

“I can’t believe trying to impart the root virtue would do something like that. I should have started smaller with twig.”

After a little too long of trying to hide his guilt, he apologized to the bush through wooden commune.

“...and that was all because I attempted to give you a higher level virtue when I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

“Murma. Hurt, but okay. Forgive.”

Licht was a little shocked. He had expected a being of its immaturity to hold grudges a little more.

“Really? That’s kind of you, but is there anything I can do?”

The bush obviously didn’t have the same growth and self-healing skills as Licht. Its tenderized ligaments were still slightly fuming even now. Licht had no doubt that it would ask him to heal it in some way. Licht supposed he could find a few ways to use his own self healing skills on another–

“Mima! The twig! Need to move!”

Ah, of course. That had been the point of all of this, hadn’t it?