A summer wind skated across the plain, rustling the sparse vegetation before tousling Elijah’s hair. He sighed, propping his forearms on his knees as he stared at the dancing flame of his campfire. Nearby, he could feel various skittering insects as well as a few lizards who fed on them. In turn, he knew there was a nearby snake waiting to ambush any lizard who happened to cross its path. Above, a hawk screeched, ready to swoop in and capture the snake.

And somewhere, something assuredly hunted the hawk as well. That was nature. A constant cycle of conflict and death from which life was both sustained and renewed. Idly, he wondered where he fit in that circle.

But one look at the hunk of snake roasting over his fire told him precisely where he stood. For better or worse, he was at the top of the food chain. An alpha predator with few real threats. Yet, Elijah didn’t really take joy in his place above the other animals. Instead, he just felt a sense of belonging. He was as much a part of the ecosystem as any other beast. He was just self-aware enough to recognize it.

He did wonder about the wider universes, though. There were nine realms attached to the World Tree. And those realms were each host to innumerable universes that, in turn, contained a bevy of planets, many of which were populated. The vastness of those connected universes beggared Elijah’s imagination to the point where he couldn’t really comprehend it.

All he knew was that he was small.

Very, very small.

Never did he feel that more acutely than when he glanced up at the night sky and saw a blanket of uncountable stars. He sighed, leaning back as he waited for the snake cook. There was peace in knowing his place, even if he was no more important than a single grain of sand.

Those thoughts and more flitted through his mind as he stared up at the stars and listened to the sizzling sound of searing meat. The serpent had been a large creature – some form of mutated rattle snake, he thought – but it had died easily enough to a single swipe from a Predator Strike-enhanced claw. It had barely even awarded any experience.

But that didn’t matter. He’d hunted it for food. Not for progression.

In any case, it had weighed almost a hundred pounds, so, even though he didn’t particularly like snake, he had no issues with using the meat to augment his dwindling supplies. Eventually, the snake finished cooking, and he tore through the gamey meat, pairing it with a couple of grove berries and a jug of fresh water. It was a bit wasteful, but he’d grown so attached to the taste of those berries that he often ate more than he should.

Soon enough, though, he’d finished his meal. After that, he wrapped the remaining meat in wax paper he’d gotten back in Ironshore, then shoved the parcels into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel.

Finally, he retrieved the glittering leaf he’d gotten from the Branch back in Arvandor. It was called Druidic Cultivation, and he hoped it would be precisely what he needed. The Librarian had claimed as much, but Elijah wasn’t so sure. His class was supposed to be rare, and his archetype even more so. So, finding a means of cultivating his Soul – which required him to rebuild the pathways that had been dissolved during the initial stage – was something he considered a long shot.

When he opened the guide, he realized that his doubt was misplaced. The first bits recounted methods of reaching the first stage of cultivation. However, he was a bit surprised to learn that he’d had it quite a bit easier than most people. Apparently, his grove had assisted him quite a bit.

A druid’s grove is an incalculable benefit to their cultivation. With it, many of the typical requirements, which can include expensive potions and rare natural treasures are unnecessary. However, the true benefit of a grove lies with inspiration. Normally, cultivation requires an epiphany. An understanding of the world and one’s place in it. Yet, for the first three stages of cultivation, a druid needs no such thing, so long as they have their grove. After that, understanding is necessary.

It went on to explain that a sufficiently powerful grove could play host to hundreds of druids. Apparently, as the sole Druid bonded to the grove – indeed, the progenitor of such – he gained significantly more powerful benefits than was typically seen. It wasn’t multiplicative. In fact, much of that power went to waste. Yet, it still put him in a far better situation than any other cultivator, according to the guide.

That made sense. Elijah had long wondered why everyone hadn’t reached the first stage of cultivation, at least in one category. Now, he understood it. Everyone else needed expensive potions or natural treasures, incredibly dense ethera, and, worst of all, some mental component that Elijah didn’t truly understand. As a Druid, he needed none of those things – for now.

He went on to read that the grove was only one part of that. Indeed, the mere fact that he’d been offered the Druid archetype in the first place meant that he was more capable of understanding his place in the world than most. Then, the addition of One with Nature had hammered that home. Repeatedly. The bond with the grove had sealed those lessons in his mind, internalizing insight on an instinctual level.

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That advantage would dissipate after the third stage, though that was a long way off, as far as he could tell. According to the guide, after a certain point in their progression, people’s priorities tended to shift from gaining levels to seeking insight and proper environments for cultivation. Levels, it said, would come during that journey.

Elijah read it all with no small degree of anticipation. The notion of going to wonderous places in pursuit of opportunities certainly appealed to his sense of wanderlust. But he had a long way to go before that would be necessary. For now, he needed to focus on cultivating his Soul.

And despite his advantages, it looked incredibly complex. The pattern was there, but it wasn’t as simple as memorization. Even with his multi-faceted Quartz Mind, it was a daunting prospect. Not only did the pattern look like the world’s most complex root system, with microscopic strands twined around one another, but it was also three-dimensional. Because of that, Elijah knew that learning it would be the product of months, rather than the few hours he had originally suspected.

In addition, the guide also claimed that some archetypes may require the cultivator to make slight adjustments based on the way everything felt. To put it mildly, it was a much more difficult process than anything else he’d endured.

But it was nice to have a goal. So, Elijah spent a few hours studying the guide’s example until, at last, he decided to get some rest. As he fell unconscious, images of branching root systems occupied his mind. Thankfully, his dreams didn’t follow suit, and he awoke the next morning feeling as refreshed as ever.

After stripping down and stepping away from his campfire, he cast Healing Rain and took a shower. In the wilderness, the availability of a shower – even if it was rainwater that would disappear soon after the spell completed – was a nice convenience, and the process of bathing left him feeling even better.

So, once he’d finished and dressed, he enjoyed a breakfast of leftover snake meat, and set off in the appropriate direction. As he did, one facet of his mind remained occupied by the root pattern. Even with constant thought, Elijah knew it would take quite a lot of time before he would be comfortable enough to try to force himself to take the next step in Soul cultivation.

But that was okay.

There were no timers, after all. He could take however long he needed. Slowly, he covered the ground, his new staff clacking against the dry earth as the hours passed into a few days. His routine remained the same, and though the way was nominally difficult, Elijah had to admit that he enjoyed himself. On the surface, the desert looked lifeless. However, via One with Nature, he could tell that that impression couldn’t be further from the truth. He felt every insect, every reptile, and every hardy plant he passed.

And it gave him more than a small sense of appreciation for how fervently they clung to survival. To him, it felt appropriate. That was the ultimate goal of everything in nature, after all. Survival, both on an individual and a species-wide level, was the most potent driving force behind every creature’s behavior.

Elijah was so caught up in it that, when he crested a hill and the area changed, it hit him like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, it felt like he was swimming in a pool of death. He stumbled slightly, then looked around.

Everywhere his eyes went, there were corpses, and in an advanced state of decay. Most were naked, but quite a few wore damaged bits of armor. Broken weapons – swords and spears, mostly – were scattered all around. Clearly, a battle had been fought in the area.

Elijah wasn’t certain how long had passed. A week or two, at most. Not more than that, he suspected. And clearly, there were thousands of casualties. As far as he could see, there were dead bodies. Crows and other carrion eaters feasted on the corpses, cawing loudly at one another.

It was a disturbing sight, but when Elijah focused on One with Nature, he was even more horrified. The level of carnage in the area had stained the very land. If the ambient ethera in his grove represented nature, then the battlefield was dedicated to death. To conflict. War.

Elijah had felt various other flavors of ethera – especially in the Reaver’s Citadel, where two wings had been dedicated to the opposing forces of fire and ice – but nothing could have prepared him for what he experienced standing on the edge of the battlefield. It made his skin crawl, but it also got his blood pumping as his heart raced under the influence of a burst of adrenaline.

He could easily imagine that aura pushing other people to greater heights of aggression. One spark, and conflict would ignite.

Elijah didn’t like that one bit. So, he crouched, holding his staff upright as he let the ambient ethera waft over him. It felt wrong. Unnatural. And Elijah knew that, as a Druid, he needed to set things right. However, at first, he had no idea how he was meant to do that.

Then, it dawned on him.

If he removed the evidence of the battle, then perhaps it would curtail the aura from growing even denser. After all, when he focused on each one, they felt like miniature natural treasures, though not the sort that anyone would want to use. They were tainted. Corrupted. They were grotesque.

But once the idea had flitted across Elijah’s mind, he couldn’t abandon it. Besides – people deserved proper burials, didn’t they? That was normal. Noble, even.

So, Elijah girded his loins and gathered his mettle before wading in and getting to work. He didn’t dare shift into the form of the lamellar ape. It already came with rage issues, and he didn’t want to exacerbate that with the aura of conflict. Besides, it felt more respectful to embark on the task as a human.

Over the next three days, Elijah engaged in the task. He dug a huge, mass grave in the center of the battlefield, then dragged each of the decomposing bodies to the site, then tossed them into the pit.

It was traumatizing, and Elijah hated what he was forced to do. However, with every passing hour, he grew more convinced that it was necessary. Eventually, seven facets of his Quartz Mind were occupied with preparation for his Soul cultivation, while the remaining two respectively focused on his environment and the task.

Eventually, though, he completed the task, covering hundreds of gathered corpses with the previously excavated dirt. But once it was finished, Elijah knew it wasn’t enough. So, he went in search of some appropriate seeds. What he found was a Joshua tree only about a mile away, which he thought fit what he had in mind.

So, seeds in hand, Elijah retreated back to the grave site, where he planted the seeds in a wide circle. He had no intention of using it as a teleportation point. Rather, he simply wanted to overwhelm the aura of conflict and death with one of nature. So, in that pursuit, Elijah cast Healing Rain, then flared Nature’s Bounty.

Over the next few days, he continuously coaxed the seeds to sprout into saplings. As he bathed the area in his own ethera, which was further reinforced by the juvenile trees, the aura left behind by the battle retreated until it was barely even noticeable. Only then did Elijah step back and consider it a job well done.

So, once he was certain that his efforts would kick off a cycle of renewal, he moved on, satisfied with his efforts.