Volume 2

Chapter 1

Spring came as always. This time, however, we had a little difference: It was little sister’s first birthday!

It wasn’t much different from my own.

Sigh..

Another small torn on my heart.

Not being special is though!

By the way, yes, I’m back walking around with the kids on the neighborhood.

Oh, little sister’s name?

She was named Johannah, but grandma immediately gave her a nickname as “Anna”.

Ann and Anna.

My two sisters.

What a lack of creativity.

But on the other side, people do name their kids after themselves, so the more the more repetitive the names tend to be.

Going back to what matters, however.

Yes, I’m back walking with the kids in the neighborhood.

They even came to little sister’s birthday as mine and Jacen’s invited guests.

Ralphe, Elipha and Maurus.

Yes, even Maurus.

I said we were trying to make him our friend, right?

Not that we need much work. I don’t usually talk much with the kids, being the “distant and quiet one” of the group, so Jacen and Ralphe are the ones who are truly becoming his close friends.

Elipha?

She doesn’t care for me, and I don’t care for her.

And no, I don’t feel attracted to her in a sexual manner.

I said it already, but I’m going to repeat: My sex drive is almost nonexistent.

If I masturbate myself I can get an erection and even an orgasm. But anything comes out and I don’t feel any need or desire to do it.

I’m at the point that I won’t feel desire even if I see a girl totally naked. It only reacts to direct touch.

How do I know this much?

I have said it already, so I will repeat: The neighboring houses around us have very little privacy. Seeing one of the neighbors taking a bath is easy.

Which reminds me of something interesting.

A few days ago we were strolling around the town, near the hunter’s storehouse, when we saw one of the other kids in the neighborhood looking at the cracks in the window of the building.

His friends where a few meters behind, on the roadside of the fence, hidden away.

What where they seeing?

We took turns approaching the window and I soon was able to see it.

It was too of the hunters doing it.

Sex I mean.

Or maybe should I say hungrily fucking each other’s brains out?

They looked as if they were holding it in for a long time.

And it was two males out of anything.

When I saw that I though some things.

First was : “Oh, so that’s why those kids are laughing hysterically”.

Second was : “Shit, Jacen’s going to get horny”.

The first one was true, but hopefully the second one wasn’t. He just became embarrassed. Deeply embarrassed.

And then the kids started to bully him because of that.

Luckily Ralphe was there to defend him.

If I should have done something?

Eer… how can I put this…

I support Jacen becoming intimate with Ralphe if he wants to. So this is a good thing for me.

Besides, defending him would blow my cover.

Or, even worse, expose us.

So, well done Ralphe.

I just hope you’re gay as well, or Jacen is in for a pretty hard heartbreak latter.

***

And since we’re talking about Jacen’s love interests, I have a problem in my hands.

You see, there’s a small love triangle forming.

No, not with me.

It’s Elipha, Jacen and Maurus.

Or maybe I should call it a Love Square?

Maurus seems to like Elipha, since he is always trying to impress her.

But Elipha looks to Jacen with a look of respect and follows him as if she was following her own big brother.

Which is exactly the same thing Jacen does to Ralphe, which, by his turn, looks dearly to his little sister.

No, I don’t think they have THAT kind of relationship, nor that Maurus or Elipha have any sexual meaning to what they do.

But childhood admiration and desires of affection easily develop into love, so I’m thinking on how to deal with this.

Me and Jacen?

Well, it was just sex to begin with, so I don’t feel much.

Maybe just… a little bit of Jealousy?

I’m really fragile in my heart since little sister took my spot as the young bud of the house.

But I’m not particularly attracted to older brother. When I look at his face I just feel something going like “urgh, no, thank you, but no”.

Weird feelings are weird.

So, the love square.

I guess it would get easily solver to my own best interest if Maurus got Elipha and Jacen got Ralphe.

This way we could have Ralphe’s family serving as a cushion between us and the Dorians.

We would be friends and almost related by marriage, but not so close to the level where we would need to bring them inside our house and create feelings of disgust between old enemies.

That, of course, if man could marry each other in this world.

They can’t. At least not officially.

Which mean they hardly can live together, since there aren’t churches here. Marriage means to move to someone’s house and start living with them. But it’s very weird for two unmarried man to share a house. They would be expected to live in their parent’s house until they marry.

So Jacen and Ralphe can’t be together.

Well, the worst thing that can happen is if Jacen gets a crush on Elipha. Maurus’s jealousy and envy would break our friendship and put him in a straight course against us.

I think. Maybe this will all be different by the end of the year.

Anyhow, this is almost impossible since Jacen seems to like man more than he likes woman.

At least when we were in our thing with sister he was more interested in me.

But wait, what if he was more interested in me because I’m me, and not because I’m a man?

…

Now things look even more dangerous.

***

I decided to ask for directions from grandma.

What?

Oh, yeah, of course she knows about us. She has [Aura Analysis] after all.

It was super weird giving her a report on what happened between me and Jacen in detail, but she also gave me some valuable pieces of information.

It seems our clan has a mark on our auras which grandma called “the Sparkle”.

It’s a sparkling point located a little to the left of our hearts.

When two people destined by the [Course] meet this point sparkle and keeps sparkling as long as they are close to each other.

This is the mark that tells when someone from our clan has met someone else they are supposed to love more than anything – the love that’s written in the stars.

It seems one can love people without the need for the Spark, but that the spark marks two people who will definitely love each other and produce offspring, no matter what they think of each other.

Quite a number of tragedies happened in the past when the people of our clan married others trying to escape from the [Course] and meet their destined person later in life.

That’s also why our clan had a custom of never allowing someone’s first marriage to be with someone they didn’t had the spark with – and one of the reasons why grandma cursed the [Course].

I didn’t understand very well, but her soul was clearly sending feelings of longing, lost loves and things of the far past.

I think she lived some kind of forbidden love in the past.

Anyway!

The love square.

Grandma said I shouldn’t intervene directly. The maximum help I should give is by defusing conflict.

Why?

Because it’s extremely easy for me to get entangled in this mess if I try to make something.

Besides, it’s still too early for us to do anything. It seems I will be able to directly intervene once she teaches me a bit of soul magic.

And now I will be using magic to manipulate young kid’s hearts.

Damn I’m a cold manipulating bastard!

Let’s use this for justice only.

Against tragedy, in favor of peace. 

Uhm?

No,no, I haven’t learned soul magic yet.

I’m still working my way with the physical magic and techniques.

It seems in terms of Aura Control I have achieved the maximum level grandmother knows of.

That would be the so called [Aura Mastery].

I’m able to control my aura to the degree of making it as thin as a hair and wave or knit it as if it was regular thread.

Still, I have this feeling that I can go even further if I keep training.

But this is something for other day.

Since my time training spells have increased.

In qigong?

Well, I’ve hit two-thirds of the way to the end of the [bottleneck].

Now, an unexpected ability I have also gained with all of this training was the one of singing really well.

Not spells, but regular music.

During little sister’s birthday I kind of stole a little bit of the stage by singing the folk songs we know to the best of my skill.

It felt good to be praised.

***

Spring came and is now gone. Then autumn came, and there’s no birthday for me this year, so it’s being just more of the same.

Except for a little weird thing, which is Ralphe’s absence from our kid group.

What happened?

He turned ten, that’s what happened.

And also something that changed totally our internal power dynamics.

Without the “big brother” guiding us we now have Jacen and Maurus in constant conflict for leadership.

I sincerely don’t know who should I support in this.

If Jacen becomes our leader we will get Maurus in an advantageous position as our “younger brother”.

But if this happens Elipha may start looking up to him even more.

Then if Maurus become our leader, we will be in a disadvantageous position as his underlings…

It seems, in the end, the only option is…

Yes.

I will have to create another kind of group dynamic.

You see, without Ralphe to be our leader it’s clear that me and Jacen will have to become the pillars that keep Maurus from being bullied from others.

If we have a single leader this will be a problem, since I would need to blow my cover to become this person and the other two have the problems previously mentioned.

So the only option for us is a brotherhood.

I shall be the smart kid which gives the plan, Maurus shall be the impetuous kid who gets things done and Jacen should be our strong brother, which keeps others from bullying Maurus.

I will be the smarts, Maurus the impetus and Jacen the muscles. Elipha shall be our hearth, of course.

Not because she’s a girl, but because that’s basically what she has been doing.

She’s an active and smart kid, but she’s still the “leader’s little sister”. That’s the position she has been occupying in our group since ever.

There’s no way she can take over her older brother either.

Yeah, let’s go with this.

Luckily it isn’t something very difficult to do. I must only take the position as the “smarts” and the others will get naturally on their positions.

After all, Jacen is indeed the strongest in the group – if you take me off the equation, of course – and Maurus has a lot of desire to prove himself.

Only Elipha remains as a wild card, but she won’t do a thing.

***

And she did.

Oh, for fucks sake.

Elipha is taking over her big brother in a spectacular manner.

The plan was simple.

Last week a few kids took a lot of our marbles.

It was a fair game, but it was bitter.

So, my part was to give the group the ingenious idea of making new marbles.

They got surprised, since none of them had thought about this idea, but things didn’t go as I expected.

Instead of Maurus taking the lead it was the Elipha the one who did it.

Just like Ralphe would have done, she said “That’s great! We can get them back and give then a lesson!”.

No!

Girl, you should be the heart, not the guts!

“But isn’t this cheating?”

Jacen, what are you doing?

You’re not supposed to be the heart! You’re the brawls!

“It isn’t cheating. It’s just us taking it back!”

There, now Maurus is trying to show off to Elipha by pretending to be the muscle-head!

Sigh…

We went with the plan and made the marbles.

In the end we have Elipha as our leader, Maurus as our brawls and Jacen as our heart, while I’m the smarts.

That’s bad.

I don’t want for Maurus to be our brawls.

It’s bad if he thinks he can deal with things by using violence. In the future he may become the brawny adult who wants to solve everything with fists.

Things like our old grudge.

Sigh…

It’s grandma’s counselling time again, isn’t it?

***

Grandma said I should stop meddling with them while I still can. That I shouldn’t become so involved.

She isn’t carrying much for the possibility of tragedy, is she?

Or maybe I have really became too intertwined in this?

I mean, it’s just kids, right?

The first time we have a fight with other group Jacen will naturally become the brawls, since he is the stronger one in our act.

Why fighting?

Well, we are a small gang made by kids who like to pretend they own something in a village full of the same.

It’s play one day, fight the other. Just as it would be expected of a bunch of rowdy kids, really. It’s the law of the strongest here. At least until it gets in the way of all of the fun. Then past fights are forgotten and all is fine again.

Oh, talking about strength, now I’m finally allowed to bring two buckets of water home each time, instead of only one.

Grandma has watched me in soul form a few times, giving me tips on how to pretend to be making an effort to carry the buckets, but after a while I guess I got the hang of it.

How is the former bucket carrier, A.K.A, Ann, doing?

Well, she’s still doing her best at the county’s capital dojo.

It seems they have an incomplete version of our [Body Refining] technique.

And I mean very incomplete.

It’s only the breathing exercises, and it’s also slightly off.

Luckily she knows the right technique, so she’s progressing faster than most people from the dojo.

Which has also earned her even more credit with the Dojo’s master and kept his son out of the way.

As expected.

***

And our first fight with other kids after Ralphe’s departure indeed helped solving the problem.

I played my role as the smarts by pretending to be weaker, while Jacen gradually took the lead and Maurus tried his best to protect Elipha every time more.

Not that she remained totally still, but at least the roles of “brawls” and “heart” between Jacen and Maurus seem to have been switched.

That will do.

That will do, indeed.

So, besides the manipulation of my little friend’s group’s hearts, I have also achieved something new and interesting.

And that would be the very end of my [bottleneck].

I noticed it during my night training. Suddenly I felt as if my skin was soft and loosen.

When I touched it, it was almost as returning to my fat days.

It scared me a bit, I have to say.

The skin wobbled from one side to the other, as if I had a lot of fat underneath.

So, grandma said I should stay still on my training camp for that day, which was also an opportunity to test some of my survival skills.

I hunted a boar piglet and used some wild herbs to make it tasty. I also built a small roof, collected some water, and proceeded to complete my [Breakthrough].

It took me a week, during which grandma had to calm my worrying parents over and over again.

Anyhow, it was a very, very weird process.

My body started to go into small cycles of swelling, cracking and producing a little light with steam.

It didn’t swell much, just a little bit, but it was still a very weird sensation.

According to grandma this was the technique working on all of my body, from the outside to the inside.

After the week it took for the process to complete itself I shed a layer of compacted skin with various kinds of dry meaty bits in it.

There were even shadows of my bones. It was as if someone had put me on a cartoon and passed over my body with a steamroller. That was the appearance of that weird compacted skin layer.

I didn’t lose a single drop of blood, however. And It wasn’t painful either. It was just weird.

So, that happened.

And I reached the second stage of power according to the old empire’s measuring scale.

The next bottleneck seems to be so far away I don’t need to carry about it, so, now…

It’s Soul Spells learning time!

***

So, first night of training for soul spells!

Also happens to be the day of Tom’s annual visit.

The merchant brought his stuff and I remembered grandma didn’t show me the Orc village yet.

So tonight I will see if we can do both things.

I mean, I got most kinds of [Magic Flexibility] already. It’s not like we don’t have time.

“Good night grandma.”

“Good night dear. Ready for your first day of soul training?”

“Grandma, can we see the Orc village first? It will be quick, right?”

She stopped to think for a moment.

“Tom has been in the village today, right?”

“Yes”

“Then it’s a good chance. I planned to go there once we were over here, but since you want to go, let’s go.”

“Why would you go there grandma?”

“I’m used to go there to warn them about newcomers.”

“So, should I wait you here?”

“Uhm? Of course not. We will go on soul walk.”

“Can they see us?”

“Very badly. But the Shaman can hear me.”

A shaman.

How picturesque.

And I have to say, their village was also pretty picturesque in its own way.

It’s a large village, quite larger than ours. I would say around two hundred houses.

Plus, they have not only people who turned on orcs but, it seems, also children born as orcs.

Later grandma told me demi-humans can reproduce as well – at least most of them, the elves being exceptions for unknown reasons.

But I didn’t expect for their offspring to be demi-human. That explains why even noble ladies would be sent out of their families once they became demi-human. They would be useless for aristocracy, even if it’s just as marriage partners to other people.

So, this was an interesting discovery.

Another very interesting discovery, however, was that grandma is a goddess.

Just joking.

She isn’t.

But she surely is treated as so in the village.

As soon as we appeared in the middle of the square, grandma going there by “feeling” the location and I by “feeling” grandma, people started to come to greet and knew in front of us.

First it was the guards.

The orc militia spotted us and came in a hurry to knew in front of grandma. Then one of them went to ring the bell in the middle of the square.

Soon a sea of orc heads, old and young, was bowing in front of us.

It was at that moment that the Shaman came.

He looked like a middle-aged orc due to the wrinkles on his face, but I have no idea how old is he. I don’t know how orcs age, after all.

This one came to the front of the heads and bowed deeply while greeting grandma.

“Fair lady of the forest, we welcome thee.”

“Raise your head Shaman, and tell me your name.”

“I’m known as Ghoorr, Fair lady.”

“Ghoor of the Great Orc Tribe, has your predecessor passed away?”

“Yes, Fair lady. Gnir now lies with the ancestors.”

“Very well. I shall look for him in the soul world.”

“Thank you, fair lady.”

“Ghoorr, a newcomer is arriving. He is on the trial now.”

“I understand fair lady.”

“Do you have anything you want to ask of me, Ghoorr?”

“Fair Lady, the ´noids have been attacking my people. We are scared of hunting because of them.”

“How many there are?”

“Fair Lady, there are five of them.”

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“I shall not interfere. However, my grandson will kill them.”

…

Wait.

Is she talking about me?

Grandma, what?

‘noids ?

Aren’t those the almost fully monstrous people who have gone through the process to become Superior Beings and failed beyond the point of no return, but just not hard enough to become totally monstrous?

The “humanoids” as people call them? The human monsters?

“The Fair Lady has a grandson?”

Aah, the people are whispering. They are totally whispering to each other.

I would whisper too if some kind of spirit just came and said to me “hey, I have a grandson”.

Do spirits even mate?

“Yes. I shall present him for you.”

“It will be my honor, o Fair Lady.”

“Come.”

Okay, I’m going. Hope they don’t get too disappointed with me.

“This is my grandson.”

“This is the grandson of the fair lady, but I can see him as clearly as I can see the fair lady herself. This me is honored to meet such powerful person.”

“Ghoor, this has been everything. You and your people can go back to your sleep.”

“We of the Great Orc Tribe honor the Fair lady!”

“HÁ!”

Suddenly a yell from all of those guys.

Seriously, don’t startle me like that.

Anyhow, our job here is done.

***

“Grandma, what was that?”

We are finally back at my training camp.

“That was the village, darling. But I think you want to know why they treated us like that?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an old story. Go back to your body and seat in the ground.”

“Okay”

As soon as I seated grandma started to explain.

“Once in the far, far past… before the time of the empire… it’s said that the demi-humans and the humans where totally different beings. They could not produce offspring, and a human couldn’t become demi-human except with the use of magic.

The [metamorphs] clan, of course, was an exception.

However, still before the time of the empire, at some point, the demi-humans and the humans started a big war. This was known as the [Thousand Fangs] war and it waged for a very long time.

In the end, it was this war that brought all humans together and allowed for the first [Emperor] to be born.

With his might unparalleled, the emperor slaughtered the demi-human clans of our continent, but in a last effort to survive, the dying magic-users of the demi-human clans created a potent magic.

It was the first ever recorded world-wide magic, and also the inspiration for the Emperor’s own [curse], many years later.”

“And this magic made humans capable of becoming demi-humans?”

“Yes. But not only that. It also preserved their feelings.”

“Their feelings? Not their souls?”

Grandma looked at me with candid eyes.

“Darling, what do you think happens once someone’s soul scathes?”

“They are reborn?”

“And how do that happen?”

“Because their minds don’t scathe!”

“Correct. Their minds just sleep, they don’t scathe. So those demi-humans the emperor killed someday…”

“Are bound to be reborn as humans!”

Grandma is smiling.

“The old magic of the demi-humans was meant to make those who were reborn as humans regain their old bodies and minds with time. For the first decades that worked to perfection, and once a reincarnated demi-human reached enough power to change his own body with magic, his mind awoke by itself. However, nowadays this magic is almost depleted and they only remember very little.”

That’s interesting.

And also, maybe, a solution for me?

If I research how the old demi-humans did this magic I would be able to make my family into people who can remember their old selves even after dying and being reborn.

And I wouldn’t have much problem even if they just wanted to finish the present life and live a new one.

It is one way to achieve immortality, indeed it is!

“Grandma, can you teach me this spell?”

“Haha. I would darling, except it was lost long ago. I don’t know it.”

Well, magic researcher I will be, magic researcher looking for old demi-human ruins I shall become!

“Then, that’s why they were treating me with so much respect. They remember there used to be forest spirits in the old days, so they have mistaken me for one of them.”

“Isn’t this dangerous?”

What if they notice? Wouldn’t they raid our village?

“A little. But I don’t ask anything for them, and help a lot. Even if they realize I’m not a forest spirit they should still be grateful enough to respect me. And now you as well.”

“But why me?”

“Because if anything happens you know where to go to.”

Oh, I see.

Insurance in case I need protection from the world.

Well thought grandma. Well thought. But..

“What are forest spirits?”

“Have you noticed how trees have just a faint glow over then in the soul world?”

“Yes”

“That’s the beginning of a soul. They don’t have souls themselves, but they have those glows and, if the forest becomes old and powerful enough, their glows will entwine together and create a soul for all of them. That allows for a mind to connect to that soul and live as a forest spirit.”

So, it’s literally the spirit of the forest.

“But grandma, our forest doesn’t have one?”

“Indeed it doesn’t darling. Forest spirits have become very rare after the emperor casted his curse. Since monsters usually have their own souls and eat most of the aura from the environment, they don’t allow for the forests to become powerful enough to give birth to a forest spirit.”

Oh, I see.

So the emperor increased the aura output of the world and that created more monsters. Those monsters eat up all the magic in the air and the regular trees can’t use it themselves to become a huge collective organism which is the “forest spirit”.

“Now, are you ready to start learning soul magic?”

“Yes!”

And finally we started on that.

***

So, soul magic.

It’s pretty much the same as physical magic, except it’s totally based on getting the right combination of feelings you need to vibrate from your soul to the world around you.

What does that mean?

Well, souls are… weird.

They can change shapes easily and easily obey mental commands.

So to make magic which affects the soul, you need to remember what you want to do, that is, the kind of feeling you want to create, and then kind of “throw” it on your target.

For example, if I want to burn the fleeting soul of a tree, I need to remember how soul fire feels and then create it around me and then project this emotion to the tree’s soul while using my own soul to make it.

It’s a dangerous kind of magic, since an error and you can damage your own soul in the process.

And that’s also another reason why I needed to go through my [Breakthrough] in order to do it well.

Because my soul has been strengthened by the [Soul Advent] part of my qigong technique, it can resist better when I do something wrong – and this avoid me getting badly hurt.

Which is great, since grandma decided to start the training on hardcore mode.

She made me go back to my body and try the soul spells while inside of it.

This way I can learn how to keep my physical actions separated from my soul actions – something hard to do at the beginning but which will spare me training time in the future, since I won’t need to re-learn everything in order to be able to use soul magic while inside my own body.

But soul spells don’t exist only to damage souls!

No my friend, I can generate any kind of emotions with them, and If I use it while also manipulating the aura in the environment I can do even things like programing how my improvised lightning rod will work.

You see, it’s all about making it act like a machine.

If you put the appropriate feeling of a lightning spell inside the mana pebble I embedded in it and also a feeling of “allowing” or “denying” based in a small command like an activation series of sound or the pressing of a small surface, it’s possible to make the lightning rod work.

It will depend on magic power, of course, but it will work.

Which is great, since I have mastered [Magic Flexibility: Crystal], which allows me to control crystallization processes like the one which makes rocks into mana pebbles.

Soon I will be able to start producing my own magic equipment.

That said, I still have a lot of training to do before doing that.

After all, after mastering soul spells I have a whole new league to reach… which are mind spells.

And, just like how the soul can be used to influence the physical plane, the mind can be used to influence the soul plane.

So magic made with base in thought alone, be it soul magic or physical magic, not only is possible but also one of my goals to master until the end of the year.

I will do my best, since magic is cool!

***

I feel like I’ve grown apart from the family.

I was reflecting on that today as we ate our lunch.

Father’s stories all look a bit boring now. Plus, mother just doesn’t have much to tell us… not to mention she is always taking care of younger sister, so our only time together is really at the meals.

I mean, this is normal and expected.

The rule of sending your children out of the house when they turn five exists precisely for this reason – so they would start growing apart from the family and eventually build relationships with the world around, growing into adults by themselves.

But I don’t have any way to build those relations. I have become too powerful, so I can only look at other people’s struggles like I see the kids struggling. I don’t relate to it.

Truth be said, I just have no one to talk to, except maybe grandma – and she isn’t much of a talker besides when we are training.

I have tried to ask about history and the such, but she will only tell me stuff in a secretive manner.

I guess it’s part of her cover. After all, I myself can’t believe she was really a simple peddler.

No way she was just that.

She probably did sell stuff from town to town, but she is far too powerful to had been that because she needed to.

So she has this habit of omitting things and deceiving everyone constantly, which means I can’t have a proper conversation with her.

Who am I supposed to talk to?!

I’m growing lonesome.

Maybe I should try and find spirit friends?

Grandma said we could start exploring the soul world if I wanted to, but she also said I shouldn’t do it lightly.

Spirits have this small problem, you see… since most of them are aware that people reincarnate after dying they don’t really value life so much.

They will kill you as easily as a normal person would go into a fist fight. Because for them making you hurt or killing you have both the same ending – you will come back on your foot and that will be that. Eighty years later or eight hours later, that’s the only difference in their view.

Or in this case in new feet, since you will be reincarnated and such.

So it’s dangerous to have spirits as friends. Specially for my family, since there are some who will attempt to kill your loved ones to “play a prank” on you or something.

Dangerous, dangerous, it’s too dangerous to have spirits as friends.

Unless…

Maybe I can make friends with people like grandma has become “friends” with the orcs?

I’m stronger and superior to most people, so if I go around in soul form and find someone to…

Naaah.

It will be just me bragging all day long.

What’s the point?

It may do wonders to my sense of pride and make me feel a little less lonely, but it won’t be people I can trust or rely on.

It won’t be true friendship, with mutual benefits and happiness.

So, how can I…

Oh, I know!

What if I create a forest spirit?

Grandma said they are created once the forests grow old and powerful enough. They also seem to help people who help the forest, destroy monsters on their own and also have a generally nice and easygoing personality.

Winter stories talk about villages in the times of old which would even enter mutual agreements with those kind of spirits in order to be able to collect lumber and wild herbs in exchange for taking care of the forest.

And the best of all is that the forest spirit will even take in things like human wastes and repel bad people like bandits.

How are forest spirits different from regular spirits?

Well, they do have bodies so they do know how painful it is to lose one’s physical body. So they value life!

On another words, it’s the perfect friend for me.

I can make use of this forest around us, and then I will have a friend.

Let’s do this!

***

Grandma is making a reflexive pose with her soul.

“It’s possible darling, but very difficult… you would need to patrol the forest destroying the monsters, establish an [altar] and command regular [goodwill ceremonies] for the forest. Are you sure you can do this much?”

“Ceremonies? Like as if I was [praying]?”

“Yes. In the old times, the easier way to create a [forest spirit] was by praying. You need to make a piece of the forest into a small [holy ground] dedicated to the spirit you want to create, and then keep all of the space around it [holy] and clean as well, while redirecting energy to the trees and injecting the feelings you want into a mother-tree, which will become the first one to link to others. You must inject the right feelings of union, peace, love, friendship and happiness, otherwise you may create a lot of monsters like ents, dryads, nymphs or even treants. And you need to do it for a long time. At least every day for a full year.”

“But in a single tree? Don’t I need to connect them to the whole forest?”

“Once you make the mother-tree filled with the right amount of [feeling] it will generate [compassion] by itself, and then link its own small soul to the other trees around it. It will spread and grow with time.”

“Then, I want to try it!”

“Very well. Let’s find a good place for your [temple] and [sanctum].”

So, to find a good place where to create my mother-tree. The one which will start the process of creation of my future friend, the forest spirit.

Now, which is a good place to do it well?

You see, I need a place where things like sunlight and water flow with ease.

But I also need it to be idyllic and clean, with good soil and lots of trees around.

I don’t intend to start with a tree that has been in the forest for a long time either, since it would have too many emotions by itself already.

No, the best is to start with a sapling and then use [crop growth] on it once I have made its soul sufficiently filled with good emotions.

This is to make sure the spirit will go around and become a true forest spirit, but also as a countermeasure to help select which mind will become coupled to it.

What do I mean?

Well, I can’t create minds by myself, and grandma said it would be better to have a real mind coupling with the forest spirit, since a newborn mind is too innocent and may harm others or itself by mistake.

So by making the tree’s soul full of good feelings we can more or less attract minds which also think positively and are good-natured, since those kind of minds feel more attraction to souls with lots of good feelings in them, while the opposite is also true – souls with lots of bad feelings in then tend to attract minds which think negatively and have mischievous thoughts.

And like that I decided for a clearing in the woods, some sixty kilometers from the village, pointing south.

There’s a natural water spring nearby, so water is secured.

Besides, there’s also plenty of sunlight and the trees around seem healthy.

It’s a nice place with soft and tender ground and everything.

That said, the first step is to create small stone walls delimiting the space of my [temple]. Why is it needed?

Because they will say where the limit is for things which aren’t consecrated to the [holy] ground.

From the wall inside the ground will be consecrated, so only people and things with positive and happy thoughts can go inside.

How am I to be sure that’s what’s going to happen?

Mana pebbles my friends! Mana pebbles!

I have gotten permission from grandma to create a few of them using the forest’s energy and then I will use my soul to program a simple algorithm into their souls. Something like this:

This should guarantee that no one stays inside the temple with bad emotions which could contaminate my forest spirit.  

Not even myself, if I for some reason slip on my thoughts and start producing bad feelings.

Besides, it shall also keep the good feeling gradient of the sealed holy space roughly saturated, which will be beneficial for what I’m doing.

How will I seal the place?

Well, there’s a soul technique called [Soul Cushion], which can be used to create something like the [Aura Cushion] technique, but for souls.

I will program a second row of mana pebbles with a protection algorithm, like this:

With this I will be able to create an egg-like protection barrier around the temple, with the only place left without it being the main door.

This way nothing can enter the temple if not by entering by the main door.

And if you enter by the main door but have bad feelings, the temple will shoot you off of it.

I think I could improve the protection algorithm to recognize people with bad intentions and create a barrier on/off switch to create a double protection, but, sincerely, that is far too much work.

We are in the middle of the jungle, what’s the need for it?

Besides there will be heavy wooden doors to be open if someone tries to get in, which give some protection, and I can’t go around taking too much energy from the area.

I can manipulate the energy of the surroundings to feed the mana pebbles, but the more mana pebbles competing for the energy, the weaker the overall amount.

So this much is fine already.

That said, construction is going to take me quite a while.

I have to be extra careful while programming the mana pebbles and check on them regularly to be sure that they won’t rebel and start becoming dungeons. This is going to take a heck load of time.

Not to mention I can’t put all of my night hours into this, since I have to take care of the humanoids grandma promised the orcs I would kill.

Yeah.

There’s that still.

***