As a pair of razor-lined snaking roots rained down on him from above, he knew the answer to that question. The root’s pulsating orange veins making them at least ten times more intimidating, also didn’t help in preventing a layer of mental sweat from drenching Licht. He supposed that the sharp razors, which he still couldn’t produce himself, didn’t help either. Though now he was more convinced it was some kind of spell the tree had applied to its roots than a virtue.
Before the roots could end their parabolic arc and crash downward however, he activated his communication skill with the Giving Tree.
[Wooden Commune]
“Hello again, sorry if I’ve overstepped my territory here. I just now realized that these trees were underneath your canopy.”
Licht explained while protecting his thoughts from being leaked. It wasn’t that he was malicious of course, the hulking plant life had given him nothing but benefits, and he would be a fool to forsake it now. It was just that he had actually realized that the trees were under the Giving Tree a lot sooner, but continued connecting to see what would happen. If this tree species was important to the Giving Tree in some way, he wanted a plausible excuse in case he had accidentally ‘ruined’ some of them.
“See White-leaf. Knows smell. Happy.”
Oh, so GT was just happy to see him, wasn’t that just swell? Well, not many would get that impression when you reach out with two lengthy strings of blades, you know? Maybe tone down the violence for future greetings…
Also, White-leaf? Come on.
But what did it mean by smell? Could it smell things while he can’t? When did he miss the passing out of that genome?
“Ah, I see. Well I came out this way to search for something, but I’ll look in another direction. Wouldn’t want to bother you over here would I? Hahaha…”
Licht said he didn’t want to bother it, which was true. The work to find something that would germinate a moss-like plant and then move it over by him would be grueling. He was no scientist, and it would be entirely trial-and-error. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, after all. Something that involved possibly killing exotic plant life, the only thing he could imagine being the solution to his problem in a forest full of mostly plants, likely wouldn’t be something the Giving Tree would want to see going on.
“Search. For. What.”
Dang. Minus the pauses, that was almost grammatically correct.
“Oh, umm, I’m looking for something to help me grow moss. But that’s likely not here anyway, right? So I should probably just start searching somewhere else.”
Licht kind of wanted to avoid the discussion of what he was still doing connected to the illuminated trees. The Giving Tree hadn’t made it clear yet that they were important to it, but they kind of looked like saplings of the same species as the tree…and Licht would rather not give up his connections to such a rare species.
As he was thinking that, one of the orange-veined roots of the giving tree turned, echoing out with wooden creaks. It curled around one of the nearby bioluminescent trees and pulled a bulbous light off of it, snapping the cord from which it hung from the tree branches. It then twisted back toward Licht’s occupied trees, showing him.
“Grow. Here. Cham-ber.”
Licht looked in surprise at the bulb, which looked exactly like the ones that hung from his trees even after it had separated from its own. It was still glowing, alive.
“Bulb. Seed.”
“Good. For. Growth.”
”Take.”
The way the tree spoke made Licht feel like he was talking to himself as Racheal. When they had spoken, after the fungoid woman had gotten more comfortable with him she had described the way his voice had sounded to her through the commune skill. Licht had been surprised, believing before that his voice sounded entirely masculine, which was the way it had sounded to him inside his head.
Stolen novel; please report.
It was likely that it had something to do with one’s inner monologue sounding very different from the way their thoughts were vocalized by their body. Though in Licht’s case, the skill didn’t allow one to hear the reverberation of their voice, so he had been in the dark until then. He wondered if that had frightened Muan? Eh, it didn't seem like it.
“Thank you.”
Licht accepted the luminous tree bulb. Seeing that the Giving Tree’s roots started to slink back, he deactivated the skill.
“Really…every time we meet I receive far more than I could give back. Why is it so generous to me?”
The Giving Tree being so generous to him didn’t make sense, beside it possibly being for reasons of kinship. But that was a flimsy reasoning. It seemed far more intelligent and knowledgeable each time than Licht gave it credit for. Although with the communion skill it came off as abrasive and ineloquent, with each word being enunciated, it was possibly just not used to speech. Muan had caught on much faster in that regard, but it had been younger at the time. If human standards were to be compared to, it should be far easier to learn skills like language and speech at a younger age.
Licht wondered if the tree even thought in words.
Regardless, his conversation also brought up questions like what kind of experiences had the Giving Tree gone through? It was possible from the earlier warning that the tree had experienced the hunters coming for a white-leafed tree, and knew nothing good came out of exposing oneself. Although it itself was a little conspicuous for that line of thought, being probably more than three hundred feet tall. But unlike him it had plenty of sharp ways to defend itself.
Well, Licht had appreciated the help. He then snappily cast his skill on the grasped bulb. Since he had been presented with it, it was about time for this kind of thing.
[Psychometric Observation]
[Imperial Delia Bulb (D+)]
“Serving as the storage of excess nutrients and moisture of the Imperial Delia Tree as well as a deterrence to small insects and pests, these bioluminescent bulbs will shine well after they’re severed from their stalks. Ranging in size from that of a walnut to a grapefruit, they are also an excellent food source for those undeterred by their poisonous surface hairs.”
This was just what he was looking for. Strangely enough, it seemed that what he was looking for all along was supplied in readily-available means. The Giving Tree hadn’t even expressed for him to dissolve his connections with the trees, which meant he was probably free to connect to even more.
Not that he would, though. He didn’t want to be greedy, he would start with what he had.
He cast the skill a few more times on similar looking bulbs within his connected area. Although they did look identical, he had to verify that they were all the same to be sure of his plan.
“Should I take a blossom down here to test it, or bring them back there?”
Licht debated whether he should experiment with a single blossom to make sure the bulbs would indeed work for his purposes, as he really hadn’t explained what he was looking for before the Giving Tree had given him something. Although from the description it sounded like it would work, he wanted to go with the most cost-effective route.
“No, I think the blossoms should stay where they are for now. I’ll take these trees back straight away.”
Like he had mentioned before, he only had so many Manacle Blossoms at hand, and even those would be unusable in the near future. There were a few by that cave that he had remembered, but those would be the last resort. He didn’t want to pick them now in case their grade dropped below C.
Licht quickly found the seeds of the Imperial Delia trees scattered around the forest floor. It appeared that unlike most other fruit bearing trees, their seeds weren’t stored within the fruits but dangled below them. Once the bulbs reached a large enough size the sack that was below would drop and scatter the tree’s seeds.
“It seems odd that it would evolve in such a fashion. Did the tree evolve to house its seeds outside of the fruit bulbs because the fruit skin is poisonous?”
But then why go to the effort of having poisonous fruit at all if you don’t want it to be eaten? Most plants on Earth valued the strategy of having the little critters of the forest eat their seeds so that they may excrete the seeds in a greater area of dispersion. That this tree didn’t do so made him question its evolutionary path. Not that he was such a tree expert, but it seemed weird.
Licht wondered, focusing within on the sensations he received from occupying the Imperial Delia Trees. He tried to extend a root. No problem. Then he tried extending it a little more, a little past what he should be able to. Naturally, he was stopped, but he felt a sensation. It was a little bit like inhaling a breath.
“Is that the nutrients from the bulbs?”
Licht concentrated his vision sense to within the tree itself. Yes, it was. The wooden fibrous material of the tree wasn’t just serving as a center for growth and repairing the tree, there were pipelines connecting it to the outer branches. Pipelines of wooden matter that extended from the bulbs of the outer hanging branches to the tips of the roots. This species of tree could not only store excess nutrients and water, but draw from it as well! The bulbs were actually serving as banks, shrinking and expanding at will to meet the demands of the trees.