“The hell’s the problem?”

Despite the severity of the issue, Licht’s first thought was not that he was under attack, but that he had made his body incorrectly.

“It feels like my insides have hardened.”

Everything beneath his bark skin felt stiff and viscous. Licht felt a sensation akin to having one’s blood curdle. Not nearly as painful as that sounded, but not exactly pleasant either.

“LIke I got hit by Medusa’s rays or something. Oh, right! The description said it needed heat, didn’t it?”

Licht remembered that little tidbit from one of the descriptions of the and began thumbing through the system notifications. Yep. Right there, it said that the Manacle Blossom Sap needed to stay warm in order to work. Like machinery, his inner workings needed lubricant to stay moving.

Licht paused in thought for about ten seconds before arriving at the solution. Purely by chance, it seemed he had an appropriate response ready.

“I finally get to use this skill!”

[Warmth]

With a bit of a struggle, Licht pulled an arm around in a crusty motion and placed it on his chest, channeling the skill into his body. Why couldn’t he just activate it through his orb? Well his situation wasn’t nearly desperate enough to forgo proper showmanship.

Plus, he had always wanted to cast some kind of magic through the palms of his hands, emulating his favorite wizards and magi from fiction.

With that pulse of warmth, Licht felt an immediate difference. He had allocated a mere fifty AF to the action, but in an instant he felt his innards begin to sizzle. More than just his sap blood was heated, as even his joints and the dense wooden twists of his body began to feel looser.

“Oh this is much better!”

Although he fleetingly worried about having to constantly use [Warmth] to keep himself going, surprisingly he felt his dense wooden body retaining the heat quite well. Though that wasn’t like all of his issues were cleared.

“Although it's not quite what I had in mind, this new body does give me a few ideas. Moreover, it seems like I can interact with my surroundings with more sophistication than previously.”

As Licht looked around and paused on the differing trees, he could get a sense of what state they were in, as well as roughly what he was able to do with them. This was as he guessed, a result of the [Arboreal Sense] skill, which seemed to only function when paired with his new body as made through [Construct Body].

Although the information from the skill wasn’t as precisely communicated to him as things by the system, it was still easy enough to parse through. What information he got as he looked at the Imperial Delia trees however, made him grimace.

“They’re dying? Moreover, it seems they’re poisoned with something toxic?”

Checking more trees, he found the same problem. The central tree, the Imperial Delias, and even the hickory-looking trees that composed most of the surrounding ex-connected forest were all showing signs of decay in his sense skill. Moreover, their leaves were even bleaching as they did so. What was going on?

Licht silently manipulated the root of a tree to unplug itself from the ground and slither over to him. He then unwrapped the root of the tree to look inside, easily shedding the wood apart with his bare thumbs like wet paper.

“So this is what's causing the problem…that’s very unfortunate.”

Licht had an idea but just confirmed it. Like he had seen before, his withe fibers were dying en masse. What he had just realized now, was that they were poisoning whatever plant life they were ingrained into. Unfortunately for Licht, who had heavily focused on expanding his system of nutrient transport, this included every tree he had connected to in the past.

Licht raised a hand to his forehead, feeling a cold sweat of sap collecting. The longer the decaying fibers stayed in each tree, the faster the toxicity would spread.

“Shit! Can I reverse the process?”

Licht dipped his hand further into the root. Would [Wood Manipulation] work in such a case? Licht had no idea, but the only possible solution he could think of derived from this skill.

Using the skill, he gutted the whole length of withe thread out from the innards of the tree and let it float beside him. Apparently a C-ranked manipulation skill was a high enough level to allow him to suspend the object in mid-air.

With the offender removed from the tree, he turned back to see its condition.

“What’s the situation now?”

The spread of the poisonous toxicity had stopped accelerating, but the tree was still going to die. With [Arboreal Sense] Licht could feel its life slipping. Damn.

Licht looked over to the black mass of thread.

“Hoh…I can’t purify the trees with my current abilities. So what can I do about this?”

Licht reached forward to touch it but paused. His hand, just barely cradling around the decaying withe thread, started to blacken and steam.

[Health 490/500]

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[Health 480/500]

Licht reeled back. Rubbing his blackened hand.

“That’s intense!”

Licht could see why the trees were dying so quickly if this toxicity had shaved off twenty of his health points in mere seconds!

With such a discovery it seemed even more hopeless now that Licht could turn the situation around. He looked down at his hand, blackened and bubbling with toxic spores.

His brow furrowed. He didn’t have a cleansing skill, so he’d have to do it the old fashioned way. It wasn’t going to be pleasant, but it beat dying.

[Health 470/500]

With a firm grip around his wrist, he twisted his hand off and cast it aside, getting rid of the spreading toxicity. The pain transmitted to his orb wasn’t minor, but not nearly as much as he would’ve experienced were he flesh and blood.

[Health 410/500]

[Biogenical Growth]

He then sped up his own healing, watching the threads of wood extend from his wrist’s stump and tie together. Assembling in the shape of a palm and later, fingers.

[Health 500/500]

Licht walked over to the Imperial Delia farm and scratched his chin. Now that he was aware of yet another problem affecting the trees, he altogether scrapped the idea of getting the farm back up and running. Instead he raised his hands, encompassing a large swath of the farm in his manipulation skill’s focus.

Pluck. Slip. Plop.

In unison, hundreds of Manacle Blossoms were unscrewed from their delia bulbs by an equally numerous quantity of roots. Carrying the blossoms, the roots then pulled them over to Licht.

Seeing the blossoms arrayed in front of him, Licht paused.

“I hope this works, because if not, I’ve just uprooted all of the known Manacle Blossoms in the forest with no more healthy trees within range for them to be stored in.”

In Licht’s opinion, his idea was kind of a stupid one, but at the same time he felt like it was something his body was capable of. In the next moment, making full use of his new strength stat points, he fit both hands in opposite positions on his torso, dug in, and pulled.

The expected sounds of wood being stretched and snapped wasn’t what resonated in Licht’s ears. Instead he heard a deep and profound yawn. Akin to the echo of a massive sequoia being felled.

One by one, he manipulated the roots surrounding him to stuff the blossoms into his body’s opening. Beneath his wooden flesh, curled within the dense material was where he would carry the remains of the blossom farm.

After all, if there was one environment he knew he could regulate, it was his body. And perhaps it was because of his new sense skill, but something inside his brain told him it was completely possible.

[Skill Upgraded: Passive Construct Body (E+) -> Passive Construct Body (D-)]

At the end of the process, a system notification sounded out informing Licht of his body skill being upgraded.

“I seem…bigger now?”

Although one might have expected Licht to blow up like a balloon after having hundreds of ping pong ball-sized objects stuffed into him, he didn’t. Instead, his entire frame had just expanded, becoming less dense in order to house the added objects but otherwise retaining his basic humanoid frame. Licht supposed he should thank his general lack of most organs to facilitate such a result.

Though the changes were still noticeable. Whereas before Licht’s wooden body was of normal stature for an average human male, it was now grotesquely abnormal.

Licht’s crown-like head of wood scraped against the canopy of trees. His hands even felt large enough to grasp some of the smaller trees all the way around.

“Seven…no, maybe ten or eleven feet tall? That’s a little concerning. Is it a result of the skill getting upgraded? No, the upgrades only seem to result from me using the skills in different ways, they don’t often change pre-existing norms.”

Aside from those skill upgrades he got from evolutions, it seemed. Licht guessed that the Construct Body skill had overcompensated for the amount of blossoms he had stored within his body. Although he didn’t feel much less dense from before.

…

After walking through the camp, Racheal put aside the canvas entrance flap of a tent and walked inside. Immediately, the scent of cooked meat hit her nose, causing her stomach to rumble a little bit.

Her blue mushroom-capped head turned, looking for the source. Despite the general tendency to set up tents as small housing units, the elves had set this one up for the majority of those present as well as for indoor meals. As it was raining now, many had come inside, and Racheal had to walk around another curtain of canvas in order to see what was being served.

Her eyes widened once she saw what was on the table. An entire body of a young deer was being roasted over open spit, while the smoke was escaping through a specially made cloth covered chimney out the tent.

“Racheal. How are you doing?”

Racheal turned away from the meat and toward the voice. Seeing Emera sitting along with another woman at a table, she responded normally and sat down across from them.

“I’m fine Emera, I hope you’re doing well yourself. It seems our hunting group was successful this morning?”

“Hah!”

This prompted a sarcastic laugh from the female who most thought of as the camp leader.

“It was more like the fawn just fell into one of our traps willingly! I was there. There was no hunt. We were barely out for an hour, after all.”

“Truly? Well that’s a good thing, isn’t it? The less time people are in the forest the safer they are.”

Emera idly stirred the liquid in her cup with a finger.

“Maybe. Any food is good food, but I do wonder how much longer it’ll last.”

“What do you mean?”

Racheal frowned. She had no perceptions of the woman ever being an optimist, but even then she often had the tact during meetings to withhold from being purposefully pessimistic. Her measured and unclouded way of speaking was part of the reason why people viewed her as a reliable woman.

“I don’t know what exactly, but something has definitely happened to the forest. When our group went out to hunt and forage, we could hardly find a single fruit bush or an edible plant. Not to mention, the smaller wildlife that relies on those plants seem to have completely disappeared! All of this happening within such a short time frame. These things were not even visible yesterday!”

Racheal’s expression darkened. Even studying alchemy and herbology, she hadn’t heard of anything that could cause something like this. Would Licht know what was happening? He was likely to be their best bet, if she could contact him.

Emera continued.

“If these events don’t let up in the coming days, I feel it’ll be more suitable for all of us to abandon this camp and make the dangerous trek together with Kushal at the end of the week. We can’t stay where there isn’t food.”

The elf next to Emera nodded in agreement. Racheal then got up from the table and spoke to Emera.

“I understand. I’ll take care for now, but please don’t let anyone spread this to the children, I don’t want to scare them with what may now only be possibilities.”

Emera showed her understanding.

WIth that, Racheal then made extra priority to head over to the spit where the fawn roast was being served. With possible food scarcity coming, she would be sure to get extra helpings for the elven kids who were back at her tent.