Beneath Kushal’s skin, between the muscle fibers, organs, and bones, a part of the slime-like creature Felfit laid undetected. Controlling the extremities of Kushal through the link it had with the elf’s brain, it held aloft the stitched-together withe thread of its target before the audience. Through expert manipulation of acid, it was able to coat the nearly decayed object in a shiny green gloss.
The small fiber gave off an aura of heat in the air. Seeming to the elves to be part of their mysterious savior, it was enough to convince the desperate camp of elves of its relation to the roots that had freed them.
Normally such a trick wouldn’t be very convincing even for the most starved and delirious of folk. But Felfit held two factors in its favor.
One was that Felfit had made use of a spectral ability to fool the elves. Acid manipulation was intrinsic to its being and was something often called a Talent, but the spell [Acidic Blast] had been gained artificially. Felfit was not a spectral, but was able to use a spell!
It accomplished this by harnessing the AF of another creature in conjunction with its own latent pool of AF. By having the slave parasite it kept within its body act as a kind of AF battery, Felfit could access its own unused spectral abilities for as long as the slave lasted.
To accomplish this, one had to have the latent potential for spectralism in their body. Not just the AF, but the genes for a spell as well. Like the caravan leader Chuck, or the slave parasite, just having an Ambient Force presence in one’s body was not enough to use this technique. One also needed the capacity for a specific spell. The unfortunate thing was that out of all life on Hadea, over ninety percent had no AF within their body, another chunk had AF but not the genes for a spell, and about one percent had both the latent AF in their body and spell genes, but could not use them.
Only a very, very small minority could access the spectral arts naturally.
But at this moment, the creature known as Felfit did so artificially. Using a spell to coat the thread was much easier to do in front of the elves, and it gave off the mystical aura of spells that Felfit wouldn’t have been able to replicate through basic acid manipulation.
[Acidic Blast] was nominally a ranged attack spell, but through constant use and the expenditure of many ‘batteries’ Felfit’s control had grown so that it could hold the spell in place, allowing it to coat the remainder of the withe thread.
As a side note, because it had the genes for a spell and latent AF, Felfit was considered a special asset in Blackreed, and had been placed directly under Nokken’s charge. This, among other considerations, was one of the reasons why it had been given the responsibility to carry out an important mission.
The other fact that was in Felfit’s favor was the desperation of the elves. The sickness brought upon by the fawn’s meat was far worse and longer-lasting than any natural food-borne illness, and was entirely by his own cause. A sudden immobilization of the camp at this time would create desperation and confusion. Something for the creature to capitalize on and use the momentum to approach its target stealthily.
For wood and tree-type intelligent plant life, being mobile and under cover was most efficient for this kind of mission. Especially so given the high energy readings that Blackreed had picked up on, it was likely that the target was a highly capable spectral. If Felfit were to approach the plant life casually and attack, based on their predictions it would likely not even get the chance to use its acid offensively.
And that was the purpose after all. Nokken had been clear, this was a clean-up mission. Not recruitment.
Through the eyes of Kushal, Felfit scanned the crowd. After giving it’s speech, the pallid gray expressions of the elves seemed to have returned some measure of vitality.
“Good.”
Felfit thought. It had been the right call to poison the elves with parts of itself. Negotiating from a higher position was always easier, even more so when you were attempting to gain control over the movements of a group.
Felfit turned to look through the eyes of Kushal at the elf next to him, Kabir. Through Kabir’s eyes, he looked at Kushal.
Although Felfit had split its body up equally through the edible portions of the fawn, it couldn’t control who ate it. In the end, it was these two elves that it had the greatest presence in, and thus full control over.
Luckily for Felfit, the elf known as Kushal had enough of a history amongst this group to allow for the plan to move forward. Or at least, the elf had enough of a standing remaining with a few people.
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Strangely though, its dispersed body didn’t seem to affect everyone in the camp equally. The adult elves were sick, some more impacted by himself than others, but still. What came as a surprise to Felfit was not the presence of Racheal, for it knew she’d likely have a tolerance to his parasitic poison, but the two children of the camp. Felfit wondered if they had a resistance, or some means to tolerate its poisoning from within their bodies.
Of all the members of the camp, Felfit figured they would have had the most adverse reaction, perhaps even leading to death. But that hadn’t been the case.
Either way, unlike the fungoid woman, they were still merely elves. Parts of its body were still within them, so they’d feel the effects sooner or later.
Not that it mattered anymore, as Felfit had already accomplished its goal by poisoning the camp. Soon, they would depart for the north, toward the target.
There, it would finally get its use out of this group.
…
By now, Licht had been running for nearly half an hour south. Having spent this long but seemingly still so shallow into his journey, he realized again how convenient being connected to the trees via thought had been.
“If I was still connected, this journey wouldn’t have been even a minute long!”
As Licht ran, he chided. The more he thought about it, the fewer advantages did it seem he had gained from evolving. Was he wrong to push for it? To race toward collecting experience and leveling up?
Licht wasn’t sure, but the conclusion felt incorrect somehow.
“And this intuition. Doesn’t it feel like it's showing up more as time goes on? And stronger too.”
Though as time went on he was leveling up and growing stronger physically too, so it likely wasn’t purely based on time alone. Regardless, the thought did stick with him.
Of all Licht could do, manipulating wood, sending thoughts and his senses over long distances, constructing a body with a thought, even harvesting thousands of alien flowers, he still felt that his sense of intuition was the most foreign of his abilities. It didn’t show up in his interface, and neither did Licht think it was connected to his nature as an Ego. It was the strangest of his ‘skills’, and yet the one he had probably relied on the most.
Or at the very least he owed most of his success to it. He just didn’t understand it.
The other skills and abilities seemed to more or less come naturally to him once he figured out what they did. But not the quasi-sixth sense he seemed to have.
“Speaking of which, is there any way to get there faster?”
Licht paused running. He could surely find a way to travel faster than this! He had created a body in the human image because of its familiarity, not because he wanted its limitations as well. Licht thought about what to do.
His intuition, that again, told him he should be able to do what he was imagining, so he tried it out.
[Construct Body]
Stretching his hands out to his sides, he felt the white-capped leafy branches of nearby trees bend down and wrap around his arms and upper body. They didn’t have to bend far, with his shoulders nearly being at their elevation. The branches and nearby roots quickly coiled around his form and grew denser.
After he was fully immersed in another layer of wood, he realized it had formed an egg-shaped cocoon of branches. From inside, he pulled himself forward at break-neck speed. Still able to see out of the cocoon, he found that movement through pulling and pushing the egg-cocoon with wood manipulation was far faster than merely using his legs.
Though as he went faster he had to maintain his form by absorbing new branches and roots from the forest into him. The problem was that he was a little too like an egg, and the outer layer of the wooden construct kept shattering and breaking after scraping past trees.
“The structure of the wood here is very brittle.”
Licht squinted while observing the passing surroundings. A large percentage of the woodland’s trees were fully bleached, while he could see none that had tops that were all green.
”It’s because of the toxins spreading into the trees.”
Licht’s voice betrayed deep discomfort.
That was right. Perhaps his intuition said that his evolution hadn’t been a mistake, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t costly.
It hadn’t just created problems for him, but had cost the whole forest a great deal. By the time he had initiated the level up, his territory expanded miles in all directions. From deep into the Giving Tree’s domain of Imperial Delias up north, to well beyond the southern camp of elves.
Now all of that plant life was going to die. Bleaching white and becoming toxic. Licht’s stomach unconsciously churned when he thought of all of the lives that could possibly be displaced or affected by his thoughtless actions.
The native beasts and even normal critters he didn’t really care for, he could admit, but it was possible that communities or villages he hadn’t seen would be affected by a migration of creatures caused by him. Not to mention the intelligent plants who had helped him and who he had formed relationships with. Muan and the Giving Tree would surely be affected.
Muan was who he was more concerned with. Its growing independence was evident but it still clearly needed forest land to feed from. Once he confirmed the elves were fine, he would think about how to move Muan to a more suitable place.