Licht’s first priority was finding a secure, dry place to stash his current supply of Manacle Blossoms while he searched for a solution of how to germinate their spores. Leaving the flowers unplucked at the edge of the cave mouth but remembering where they were, he sunk his focus back to his main body.
The pile of damp Manacle Blossoms had about a dozen left in it, give or take. It might not seem like they were worth saving, but Licht had only seen a bundle of three at the cave. For all he knew, he had given the majority of them to the elves, and was now left with a mostly barren forest. In any case, it would be worth saving the ones he had.
Licht extended forth the roots of his main tree. Perhaps it was due to their proximity to him, or his blending of several trees together, but they were much stronger and he had greater control over them than normal roots. Still, the drawback was that he could not use too many roots from his main tree for any one task. His entire web of connections relied on roots connecting between each other, sharing his withe tendrils. If he took out too many roots from a tree that was well connected like his main one, entire parts of his forest would go dark.
He used the stronger roots to bind stones together, and pull them out of the ground. Setting them around and on top of each other in a formation, he made a cover for the blossoms. It sort of looked like a primitive stone oven, except with two exposed entrances where he hadn’t put stones. It would serve for now to allow the blossoms to dry.
After Licht put the bundles in there, he turned back to his earlier experiment. Now that he knew the blossoms were likely a kind of moss, it made sense why his earlier experiment had failed. The four that he had used would likely be unable to be used for anything else, so he might as well test their quantity of AF for absorption.
Licht first went to the azure-colored flowers, each sporting five tear drop-shaped petals. He tried simply sucking one up into his root and using [Nutrient Absorption] to start off with. Basically how he would absorb organic flesh and water.
[Absorbed Ambient Force: 100.1/500 AF]
Accumulated Benefits: 5 WIS, 5 AF
Licht reeled back. For real? Only 0.1 AF from a leaf? The system hadn’t been kidding. There really was only a minute amount of liquid Ambient Force in these. For reference, he had netted a hundred AF alone from the handful of crystals that had been absorbed from Chuck.
“Maybe it will be different if I try to extract just the liquid?”
Licht reasoned, thinking that maybe it was the concentrate of the leaf he should be going for. It was possible that the raw plant matter had somehow diluted it. He tried crushing up another leaf, before scraping off a few meager dribblets of sap onto his roots. He then absorbed that.
[Absorbed Ambient Force: 100.1/500 AF]
Accumulated Benefits: 5 WIS, 5 AF
“Even less?!”
He had clearly been off the mark, as the liquid he absorbed didn’t even show up on the interface. It seemed that it only showed a single digit after the decimal point.
“So going after the concentrate really doesn’t do anything. I better just stick to whole leaves then.”
Licht pulled the rest of the leaves off of the flower and absorbed them, feeling them dissolve quickly within the small hollow chamber of his root. He also took the rest of the leaf he had crushed up and absorbed it.
“I’m going to have to farm a lot of these things if only their petals give AF.”
Licht thought while pulling the petals of the rest of the blossoms toward him and absorbing.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
[Absorbed Ambient Force: 102/500 AF]
Accumulated Benefits: 5 WIS, 5 AF
It was not a terribly high amount of AF to absorb, making Licht a little worried about the future. With only two points from four blossom’s worth of petals, his only gains were the raw AF values. He had felt no change with his level of connection, so it was likely he needed to increase his wisdom stat for that. Though AF would still be welcomed for the sake of his costly skills, he needed twenty it seemed for every point of wisdom.
“Hopefully the orbs have better liquid AF content.”
Licht mused as he dug up the four failed experiments. Now looking at them with the flowers in mind, the Manacle Blossom with its central orb looked a bit like he had, when he was first reincarnated. Though if Licht was compared to a tennis ball in size, the orb of the Manacle Blossom was akin to a golf ball.
“I wonder if there is a relation there? It’s not like I was born near a cave mouth, and I don’t think the flower I was in was a kind of moss. Maybe I should mention it to Racheal next time we speak?”
Licht didn’t want to bother the woman right now. He was sure if he looked back toward the camp he would see her busy at work caring for the two elven children, who seemed to be parentless.
Slurping up one of the yellow balls into his root and absorbing it, Licht’s expression changed for the better.
[New Virtue Discovered!]
[??? Progress: 1/5000]
“Ooh la la! Is it already christmas?!”
Licht could kiss someone right now, he was so ecstatic. Hundreds of trees surrounding his main body suddenly began to shift and shake. A flurry of leaves was sent down in all directions, cascading among the muddy forest floor. The occasional puddles that had yet to dry up and were scattered around rumbled with the movement of the trees.
Licht’s mood soared from happiness and surprise as he saw the system update. This is what he was looking for! And it fell right into his lap!
An unexpected perk of farming the Manacle Blossom had appeared to him. When he had been considering how to grow stronger, the thought of unlocking a new virtue was one that was far too vague to consider. He knew that it would lead to a greater increase in strength than many of the other methods he was thinking about, but with no way to go about it he had simply put it at the corner of his mind.
But here he was! It was no longer a fantasy, and the path forward was laid in front of him. He quickly swallowed up the rest of the orbs, filling the progress bar if by only a little bit.
[??? Progress 4/5000]
“I still don't know what the new virtue is, but whatever it is I’ll accept it. It can’t be worse than not having it, surely?”
Although Licht felt there was a chance of it being a random and useless virtue that didn’t correlate to his race or situation, it was probably low. The Manacle Blossom orbs had been what triggered it and so it was probably something related to nature.
“Now I really have to figure out how to grow this flowering moss by myself.”
The deadline had definitely moved up, taking a more important position in his mind. He should focus on expanding, searching outward for a solution. There would be little use in looking for something within his territory now. Even if he found something like a cave, he wasn’t about to move his main body, no, he was rooted here. The Manacle Blossoms would be brought to him, not the other way around. Any sort of vegetation or herbs that still remained undiscovered in his territory likely also wouldn’t be very helpful for this kind of task. That was why he was focused on new connections right now.
At that moment, as he was busy locking roots together and threading withe fibers through them, he looked around himself, a little shocked.
“Hey, isn’t this where the Giving Tree is?”
The tree that he had just connected to was adorned with dangling luminescent bulbs, cradled in nets of a fibrous membrane. Licht recognized the tree as the species that had been in large swaths underneath the canopy of the Giving Tree. At the time, he had thought that they were offspring of it, like semi-intelligent plants. Of course that was before he had met Muan, or even realized how rare intelligent plants were.
When Licht connected to it he realized instantly that it was just a regular tree.
“Then what makes this species of tree so special? I haven’t seen it anywhere in the forest except here. Except for that type of hickory or whatever it is, but these feel completely different.”
Licht continued connecting to more of the bioluminescent trees, jumping his way slowly over to the direction of the Giving Tree. Before long, he recognized the gleaming foliage overhead that shimmered like stars. He had finally made it back to where he had met his first friend.
“I wonder if it recognizes that I’m here?”