Licht let out another breath and perused his system screen. There was no use in hurrying through it and potentially missing something. For some reason, he felt more like his old self now than ever before. Almost as if his evolution had given him back some of his more human habits.

“Let’s see…the evolution options? Maybe there was something in the description for the Woodland Controller that I missed.”

It was as good a place to start as any, Licht supposed.

He had gotten five options this time instead of three, which made sense if they were based on his past actions over the last couple months. At the time he had discounted both the mature Woodland Ego and Imperial Delia Ego as being lackluster for his current needs. Even in his pain riddled mind at the time he had felt like scoffing as he quickly scanned the Imperial Delia Ego description. Both of them seemed like throwaway options that the system had given him just for kicks.

Being able to use AF better made the Imperial Delia Ego slightly appealing…but Licht felt like there were too many limitations for what it offered. First he had restricted himself from a Nature’s Ego to a Woodland Ego, then he would do it again to an Imperial Delia Ego? No thanks. Licht could stomach going from all of nature to just a biome, but then to go to just a type of tree? Just because he was specializing didn’t mean he was getting stronger. It seemed like a dead end, and Licht didn’t want to hit another roadblock like he had before farming the blossoms.

Although it struck him as odd now that the description for the final stage of the Woodland Ego wasn’t very clear. “Much is left unknown about their capabilities”? It was almost as if the system itself was unsure of the capabilities of a mature Woodland Ego. But that thought seemed ridiculous. That would almost be like saying the system got its information from somewhere else, which didn’t sound right to Licht somehow. And as trusting his instincts hadn’t gone too poorly yet, he put that thought aside.

The Magna Arboriate had seemed like a strong choice, but Licht had seen too many hive mind movies and related media to make that path desirable, and that sealed his choice. He wasn’t about to take advice from webnovels, but movies and television? Very reliable.

He also didn’t want to end up as a pure conglomerate of trees without a true body. He liked his individualism far too much to go that route. Plus, not being able to use AF would suck even more than his current situation.

That had left him to deliberate briefly between the Serrated Nepenthes and the Woodland Controller. Although the Nepenthes was a unique option, given to him entirely because of his over usage of pitfall traps and the Fool’s Oasis, and seemed strong, he didn’t want to give up his wood specialization for it, and chose the Woodland Controller which seemed like the safest option out of all of them.

Now that he read his race’s description, he realized that when it said “lower affinity with individual plant life” it meant much more than that. What an understatement. Somehow, that had translated to losing both [Wooden Commune] and [Withe Body], which had been staple skills of his. And he was supposed to take some kind of managerial stance over his territory now?

Licht scoffed. Without his connection, he had no territory! The descriptions were useless. He moved on to his stats.

“Boosts in strength, dexterity, and endurance. I haven’t gotten much use out of those skills from the inside of a tree, so I’m not going to notice a difference anyway. What about health? It's at five hundred now? Huh, so after the evolution my endurance stat accounts for more health per point. The ratio has doubled since I hit level five too.”

The ratio of endurance to health points was now 1:20, doubling from when he had hit the halfway point while he was still a Woodland Ego. While that seemed nice for about half a second, Licht decided to move on to other things. This was no fight, so his newfound health wouldn’t help him right now.

“Everything thus far has been unhelpful…hoh, so it seems like it always comes down to skills.”

Holding out a small grain of hope, Licht sighed and checked his new skills.

[Construct Body] and [Arboreal Sense], both passive skills, were what had replaced his staple skills. Licht noticed that their ranks hadn’t changed at all when they mutated, so it seemed likely that there was some kind of balance being kept, right? In that case, Licht felt it was probable that these should function as his new staples, and bear some kind of similarity with the previous skills. Or at least he hoped.

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“If only I could use [Psychometric Observation] on skills…”

But unfortunately he had to be touching something to use the skill. Licht contemplated. First he would try to just activate the skills, which would be trouble enough. There was obviously some difficulty in forcefully activating a passive skill. He had been aware of Nutrient Absorption before it had become a passive skill, so that one he could use with ease, but the two new ones?

It was hard to automate a process you’ve never felt before. It was like giving a man wings and asking him to fly. How would he be able to expertly control muscles that he had never felt before? It was nearly a sisyphean task, and Licht felt that pressure.

He could figure out how the new skills would help his situation after that.

…

Due to reasons that remained obscure to most of the local populace, for many years the Trescult Woods had remained inaccessible to most groups. Whether by official intervention or something mysterious, there was something that caused groups who entered the woods to never be seen again.

Thanks to this, many species of tree were able to flourish that would have otherwise died out in a harsher environment, or a place with more beast activity.

Among the myriad delicate species, a type of tree which shed soft petal-like leaves was present, and particularly numerous in the current area.

Under these soft, hair-thin leaves a presence slunk. Beneath the foliage and grime of the forest floor an emerald green mass flowed forward, taking advantage of suction to carry itself between trees.

After reaching a certain point by itself, the movement of the creature ceased.

Acting as if it had reached the intended destination, the slime shifted around to take in its surroundings. Letting a tentacle of green stretch forward it cupped the lower part of the tree. If one were to look closely at the creature’s featureless surface, they might be able to pick out a lump moving underneath the membrane of the creature’s exterior toward its edge.

Once Felfit felt that the parasite had reached the surface of the tree, it let a small gap form at the edge of its body, allowing the organism it hosted within it to feel the grain of the bark.

“Hrrgterdergerk! I can feel it! It went through here about an hour ago…probably less. Hrrrg. There’s a presence in the tree, but it’s fading. I need to be closer to take a look.”

The creature within Felfit ended with a gurgle.

“No. Back, now.”

Felfit ordered the creature to return from the outer periphery of its body mass. Though it received a satisfactory response from the creature, it would not give it any more freedom than its job warranted.

It was a slave, intended for Felfit to house merely for this single mission. Once Felfit finally finished this job for Nokken, it would make sure to promptly digest the slave parasite.

Though that wasn’t to say Felfit wouldn’t investigate the tree itself. The parasite’s notice had intrigued it, for even if the target came through here but an hour ago, their presence still shouldn’t be so heavy within the tree.

Felfit extended itself, its green viscous body coating the surface of the tree and rapidly melting into it, releasing gusts of vapor. As it dug deeper into the tree, Felfit found what the parasite had detected.

“A clump of fibers, decaying and starting to rot? It seems that they are affecting the tree itself as well. This entire tree would have died shortly even if Felfit hadn’t come.”

Felfit wondered. This fiber material was a part of their target’s body? If that was the case, it seemed likely that the target was wood-based.

Felfit showed as much emotion as a featureless green blob could. He excelled in hunting such targets. This would be enjoyable.

Felfit scraped some of the rotting fiber into its gelatinous green body. Its gel-like mucus would generally dissolve anything placed within it, but should Felfit wish it could also preserve items placed within it, and compress them to liquid if need be. The withe thread of wood so rotted it was nearly liquid already, so Felfit didn’t have any problem storing it.

Once it was done examining the remains left by its target, the creature began moving through the forest once more. Changing its shape constantly, it put effort into hiding. The viscid life form had found that the tasks it was assigned frequently went smoother when it employed maximum deception and stealth. And so naturally it had hidden itself inside of a carrot.

Both it and the slave it carried were liquid-based plant life forms, and both were born from parasitic evolutionary lines. The fact that it could condense itself into a vegetable not an eighth its own size would come as a surprise to no one who was knowledgeable of its race.

The now especially delicious-looking carrot was eaten shortly thereafter by a passing fawn. But the vegetable, now chewed and sitting in the stomach of the young deer, did not digest as one would expect.

Felfit, detecting through its hygroreceptors and other senses that it had successfully entered the body of a mobile host, spread itself and shortly took control over the brain and body of the young deer.

“Now, Felfit will search for the target. The cluster of these trees seems to form a route forward to Felfit’s target.”

Even from the fawn’s hazy eyes, he could see.

A forest canopy blanketed in white leaves, in the middle of summer.