The wooden humanoid that the three others deferred to, obviously their leader from Hemlock’s perspective, hummed in thought.

The casual posture and mannerisms of the giant gave less credibility to the possibility in Hemlock’s mind that they had healed him of the venom purely in the interest of their gains. Observing the giant, Hemlock actually found that many of his gestures appeared personable and human-like, for what that was worth. To a human like himself, it served the giant well in being more relatable and charismatic. Though to a bystander who had not been the receiver of life-saving medicines like himself, he supposed the eyeless appearance would be disconcerting at best. Likely a horrifying image for enemies.

As if he wasn’t aware of the inner doubts of Hemlock at all, the wooden master of the grove responded while referencing the two elven children on the priest’s left.

“For now, I will ask nothing strenuous of you. You are still recovering, even if it appears you have been fully healed. Until you are back to your peak, just follow the directions of Siya and Arjun here. They’ll teach you the ropes and how to be useful around our Grove.”

The priest bowed one more time.

“I thank you then. For your generosity, and for giving me a chance.”

He meant it. Hemlock had cleared his doubts. These were good people. He would prove himself in their presence.

…

Racheal would be proud, Arjun and Siya were growing well. Licht thought with a nod as he recounted how the two had shown themselves to be proficient in many areas in the past few days.

While Licht didn’t trust the man that had come injured into the grove, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to give him a chance. He had been slightly hesitant to do so in the beginning, but seeing his treatment being carried out by the kids in the past week he thought it might be a good idea to keep him around. Even if he proved useless with the physical tasks around the grove, he could still be a good foil for Siya and Arjun to use for practice with medicine.

Or if he had bad intentions, Licht was sure such a tall young man would make good fertilizer for the garden.

In the two years since the death of Racheal, the four of them had been self-sufficient in the grove. They’d had very few positive experiences with outsiders, but since this man hadn’t come to them of his own will and didn’t seem to have any malicious intentions, Licht had decided that he wouldn’t immediately throw him out.

Of course, Licht wouldn’t have let him in or treated him in the first place if he had seemed like a threat. As the man currently was though, Licht deemed him to be of no real consequence. Even though the man could walk around and seemed to be in decent health, Licht knew enough about serpenti venom to know he was likely suffering weakness all throughout his body right now, and it would be a few more days before those symptoms let up.

“Well regardless, I’m sure the kids will find something for him to do. It’s still too early for him to start making trips out with Muan, though. I wonder long-term if he’ll stay here? Seems like it could be possible, the man gives off the air of a refugee.”

Licht had enough experience with refugees coming to the Trescult Woods to be able to spot them.

He briefly remembered the belongings of the man that Muan had delivered to him after he had returned. A necklace and robe, plus a few things that reminded Licht of the Christian priests on Earth. He would look at them later.

After the meeting ended, Licht stepped backward and pressed his body into the inner wall of the hollowed out tree. The wood of his body instantly fused with the bark, and became indistinguishable from its surface as he melded into it.

A moment later, his body reappeared in another location, his tall frame stepping out of a large wooden root, some hundred or so feet below ground of where he just was. His eyes lazily panned around the familiar environment.

His ‘workshop’ as he thought of it, was an expanse that took up a massive hollowed-out space of more than 100,000 square feet, or a little more than a hectare. In most places it was about twice as tall as his own ten-foot height, so he didn’t feel cramped at all despite being so far underground.

He had taken inspiration in equal measures from ant colonies and corporate offices. Forming a space out of roots that had stretching hallways and chambers that endlessly intertwined. He could feel the area around him subconsciously anyway, so he never got lost in the confusing design.

What he had used the space for in the past two years, was research. His focus was very personal, and so he hadn’t allowed the other three entry into this space or even to learn of it. There were no conventional exits or entries anyway, so that had proved to be fairly easy.

The focus of his research: why had Racheal died?

Two years ago, when the parasite had attacked him through possessing two of the elves, they had caused multiple deaths through showering people with acid, but Racheal hadn’t been lethally injured. She could have made a recovery, Licht was sure of it, but had died instead. Why?

The question had plagued him. So much so, that he had established a space far removed from the rest of the grove in order to pursue the answer. Digging out a space and supporting it with reinforced and condensed roots had been the easy part, but the actual research was where Licht had lagged.

“It’s not just that I’m inexperienced, the problem itself is mysterious.”

Licht frustratedly cursed while advancing through the cave system to a particular room. All he had to go off of for Racheal’s cause of death was what she had said, and the spell she had used. If Licht believed what she had said to be the truth, Racheal was not a spectral, but instead had paid some kind of price in order to summon the white flames. The cost of that was her own life, and Licht was trying to study that very transaction.

But he couldn’t start studying what he didn’t understand, so at first he sought out something more basic. Knowledge on spectrals.

Licht arrived at a circular room. Along the wall were two pods. Slightly transparent membranes bulged from the walls like sacks, filled with a clear-bluish fluid and each with a clump of flesh. The flesh masses were disgusting and looked like octopi, each wriggling with slow-moving tentacles.

Licht lightly touched the sacks and checked both for any changes.

[Psychometric Observation]

[Warngreen Parasite - Juvenile (Disce)]

“The Warngreen Parasite lives through infesting and consuming animal prey from the inside. This parasite plant has been stunted cognitively and evolutionarily, likely to function as a subservient slave species. Its consciousness is crippled and its body is an empty shell. Suspended in low-concentrated liquid AF, its body is alive and being kept in a brain-dead state.”

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[Royal Flukeworm Parasite - Matura (Rubis)]

“The Royal Flukeworm Parasite is a high caste of parasite with the ability to secrete a neurotoxin from any surface of its body. This particular parasite has had that function heightened as a result of external interference, likely to serve as a method of assassination. Its mind has been broken and is currently vacant. Suspended in low-concentrated liquid AF, its body is alive and being kept in a brain-dead state.”

Licht retracted his hand.

“Hmm. No change for now.”

Licht frowned. It had only been a few days since he submerged them in the new mixture so he hadn’t expected anything major to happen yet, but a lack of progress was still slightly disappointing.

Both parasite specimens had been recovered by Licht from two different attacks. The first, from the attack two years ago. After Licht had killed Felfit and had begun to take the elves away he had discovered a remnant at the scene. It had appeared that the main parasite had been storing a secondary one within itself, as a slave or assistant Licht had not been able to tell, as when the main parasite had died it fractured the mind of the other parasite. Which meant that by the time Licht found it, the Warngreen Parasite was a mindless husk.

The other parasite had been involved in an attack more recently, a bit more than a year ago. Whoever had sent the first parasite didn’t seem to want to leave it at that, as just after Licht had finished the grove walls, he had received the onslaught of a possessed party of merchants.

Dealing with the merchants from a defensive position had been much easier, compared to the surprise attack before it, and that time Licht was able to capture the main parasite, the Royal Flukeworm.

Unfortunately, forcefully ripping it from its place in the brain of the merchant it had been possessing didn’t seem to do it good, and its mind had been broken too.

So Licht placed them here. Underground in his private workshop, he could study their bodies as he kept them alive and healthy with liquid AF, or Ambient Fluid, as he called it. They had served as the only opposition he had met thus far that could use the spectral arts, and being enemies they made the perfect test subjects. Licht felt no hesitation in using them to study spells and how magick affected the body. With differing concentrations of Ambient Fluid that he was constantly mixing from his garden of Manacle Blossoms, he was also always testing at what level do bodies begin to break down. Pursuing that school of thought, he believed, would lead him to what had happened to Racheal’s body.

And as he had discovered so far, generally when the concentration of Ambient Force in the body reached a level above ten percent of the natural amount of blood, the body broke down.

This was even true across species, as he had tested the same theory with the bodies of the human merchants. Though those had rotted away a long time ago. Unlike with the parasite’s bodies, he couldn’t keep them from dying. That fact had lent itself to a new theory, that the parasites had a natural affinity for sustaining themselves. That their bodies could keep going somewhat on their own after their minds had died made Licht wonder if he could also use them to look into his own capabilities.

More specifically, he was wondering if he could derive from these two samples the means to automate some of his own processes.

Licht practically drooled at the thought. Though it looked like Licht was always available to the elves, that was far from the truth. In reality, over the past two years his ability to multitask had shot up rapidly as his proficiency with [Wood Manipulation] rose. He was once again reaching the level of being able to sense things that touched his far-connected roots, but it was slow going. Part of that was because the roots made from [Construct Body] took far more energy to manipulate than normal wood that had been lined with his withe fibers. But his control had still progressed dramatically in the past years.

And speaking of which, his interface over the past two years had of course updated, and now read as the following.

[Level: 19]

[Exp: 291,532/300,000]

[Name: Licht Welles]

[Race: Woodland Controller (Anima)]

[Health: 1,500/1,500]

[Stamina: 350/350]

[Energy: 235/235 AF]

[Rank: C]

[31 STR, 44 DEX, 200 WIS, 75 END, 3 CHA]

[Virtues: (Twig), (Branch), (Root), (Spark), (Glare)]

[Specializations: Wood, Light]

[Skills: Psychometric Observation (D-), Biogenical Growth (C+), Passive Nutrition Absorption (D+), Passive Acid Resistance (E+), Acid Fiber Infusion (D-), Passive Construct Body (C-), Passive Arboreal Sense (D), Wood Manipulation (C), Arborescent Skill Graft (C-), Bestowal (D+), Light Manipulation (D+), Warmth (D+)]

“With such a chunky health bar you could apply for a boss position at Fromsoft.”

If the previous times had lent themselves to any sort of pattern, Licht would evolve at level 20. Despite knowing this however, he had held himself back from leveling up. With the fact that his accomplishments affected his evolution choices in mind, he wanted to complete a few projects before advancing.

But regardless of stopping before hitting 20, his strength had still advanced a lot. At the midway point of level 10, although the experience requirement had doubled to 20 thousand per level, Licht hadn’t received a significant power jump like he had as an ego. There was no maturation nor was there an increase in the endurance-to-health ratio.

Licht suspected it had something to do with his status as an ‘anima’, but had no clues on what the word signified. From his guess however, he believed the term no longer meant his point in the species’ growth cycle but his status as a being of that race.

Like a phase of matter: liquid, solid, or gas, in terms of the Woodland Controller species, Licht’s state was anima. It was all conjecture, and for the moment it didn’t matter as much to Licht as other aspects of himself that he was trying to improve, so he hadn’t given it much more thought. Of the aspects that did matter, the most noticeable of them were his skills.

Of all his abilities, the most dramatic areas in which he improved was in his control of wood. But even this had a limit. Raising [Wood Manipulation] from (C-) to (C) had taken years of effort, and using the skill in ways he had never considered. Whereas lesser-ranked skills had taken lesser effort to rank, they also stopped leveling after a certain point.

So in the past two years, he had realized two important points.

The first, was that not every skill could carry him to the finish line. Some skills reached the end of their utility at (E+), like his acid resistance skill which couldn’t be called just ‘resistance’ if it ranked up anymore, and Licht had no idea on how to acquire an immunity skill. Other skills just didn’t have the utility to be ranked past what they were. [Nutrition Absorption] was one of these. While having the skill in the past seemed to be overpowered, he just didn’t benefit from it nearly as much anymore. He actually felt it was justified that the system didn’t rank the skill any more than D-rank. As the utility of the skill wasn’t nearly as high as a C-ranked skill like [Wood Manipulation].

So while he hadn’t reached the end rank of all of his current skills, if his line of thought was correct, the most important thing was to focus on a few good skills for now, and not to worry about practicing the skills with shorter lifespans.

But the other thing he had realized had affected him much more in the past two years.

“The system is only a representation of my inherent ability. The skills it shows are not all granted abilities.”

And with that realization brought about by constant use of his skills and growth, he had begun to rapidly change his method of using his abilities. For if he wasn’t bound by the rigidity of summoning his skills through his system, and as he realized he never was, he could experiment with combining them to produce new results.

So in the past few years, Licht had undergone something of a personal technological revolution. Refining his skills and combining them to create new results, which would then be recorded by the system as entirely new skills.

It was in many ways alike to the way spectrals probably trained their abilities, Licht assumed. As using your core abilities in different ways would invariably expand the width of your strength and make you more adaptive.