Whatever place this level took inspiration from had a very quick night and day cycle, with the whole cycle completing in around 5 hours. This was probably also one of the reasons for the extremely fast winds and frequent sandstorms on the level.

During the day the two suns would fly across the sky, and at night 2 more distant stars lit up the night, making the light never go below twilight levels of brightness while still being able to see the sky full of stars.

The sandstorms seemed to come and go in around 30 minute intervals on and 2 hours off. At least, I came to this conclusion because in the past 5 hours 2 more storms had gone by while I stayed out in the open. The last one had just passed, and my wounds from the storm were still healing.

The first time I had taken on the sand/wind blades, in the cave, had only been for 5 minutes or so, and that hadn’t even been in the open storm. However during the past 2 storms I had to expose myself to about 30 minutes of flying blades much stronger than the ones I had taken on inside the cave. After enduring the much more powerful storm blades, I was grateful for the misty ice-steel ring’s effects that brought me much needed recovery to get through the storm, without its healing I would’ve had to use a lot more mana; as it is I already used up more than what I regenerated just to keep my body reinforced throughout the storm, if I had to heal myself at the same time I might’ve ran myself dry just to get through a storm.

During the time in between the storms I wandered the sandy landscape, and during this time I picked up multiple natural sunstones that were extremely uncommon, at least naturally formed sunstones were, artificial sunstones weren’t hard to make, so the natural sunstones weren’t as valuable as they used to be back before the method to create them had been discovered.

Sunstones were light attributed stones that shone with the sun’s light whenever another sunstone they were connected to was receiving the sun’s light. They had their own uses, but nowadays they weren’t as necessary for lighting and were mostly used for crafting purposes.

The sunstones were about all I could find while roaming the almost barren landscape. Although it wasn’t certain that each level would have something valuable, I hoped I could find something more valuable than sunstones. Currently I was exploring some of the large ravines that frayed the landscape. It still counted as being out in the open for my Forced Task, so I decided to wander them instead of the featureless dunes that seemed devoid of anything valuable or interesting.

After recovering from the storm, I continued to wander the ravines, and while wandering I came across a red crystal tree lying in a tucked away area in one of the ravines. It was about a meter tall, and didn’t have any leaves, but there was a fruit hanging off the tip of its singular branch.

I knew what this tree was the moment I saw it, not only because of its appearance, but because I also felt its influence in my mind. This was a Restless Ruby Tree, no doubt about it; they used mental coercion to make other creatures want to help them, in return for various benefits.

This Restless Ruby Tree was small, barely a sapling; it looked similar to a pointed stick with a singular small branch coming out of it, and it had a fruit hanging from this small branch. It was barely a meter tall from base to tip, and was only as thick as 2 fingers at its widest. However, despite its size, this one was much more valuable to me than a fully grown Restless Ruby Tree.

Thanking Jilly for the good luck, I was about to go pick it up and store it in excitement, but a jackrabbit creature with two pronged horns went up to the base of the tree and started to shake it with its horns, probably trying to get the fruit hanging from its branch to drop.

I felt a weak ‘go away’ feeling come from the baby tree when the jackrabbit continued to shake it, and the jackrabbit must’ve felt it too because it paused and backed up a little bit. However the horned jackrabbit took another look at the fruit and went back to what it was doing. The horned jackrabbit looked skinny, and desperate for food, it didn’t look like the baby tree’s weak mental pleas would work on it.

Seeing this, I was again going to go towards the tree, this time to save it from the horned jackrabbit, but a medium sized scorpion appeared in a rush, hurrying towards the tree. The horned jackrabbit didn’t see the scorpion approaching until it was too late, and with how gaunt the horned jackrabbit looked, it didn’t stand a chance against the scorpion’s fast attack. The jackrabbit tried to struggle, but the scorpion’s stinger put a quick stop to its weak struggles.

With the jackrabbit incapacitated the scorpion proceeded to drag the jackrabbit over to the base of the tree and backed away while watching. I watched as well, as the tree sent a crystalline spike into the jackrabbit.

The jackrabbit immediately started to deflate like a balloon, and after only a minute or so the tree’s spike retracted back into the tree leaving behind a pile of bones and fur. The fruit on the tree started to swell and grow, to the point that the thin crystalline branch it was hanging on started to slightly bend from its weight. Before the branch could snap though, the fruit fell from the branch and the scorpion madly started to devour the fruit.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Well it’s great that the tree isn’t in danger anymore, but now the tree’s scorpion guardian is here.

Taking the tree for myself wouldn’t be as easy if the baby tree had its guard nearby, not because it would be difficult to deal with the guard, but because I would have to deal with the guard in a manner that would leave the tree intact.

A baby tree like this wouldn’t be able to handle the shock of me killing something it has bonded to, but there must be a way for me to incapacitate the scorpion or deal with it some other way. Mental attacks won’t do, with the tree’s connection to the scorpion I could really harm the tree by doing that.

While I was thinking about a way to deal with the scorpion, the scorpion finished its fruit, and after it was done a glowing barrier enveloped the scorpion making it difficult to see the scorpion beneath the glowing shell. In just a few seconds the scorpion started to grow, and it grew to fill its barrier while the glow faded away, leaving behind a larger scorpion than before.

It seems that because the scorpion isn’t fully grown that its desire to grow influenced the tree, to make the fruit produced by the tree make whatever ate it grow larger, or maybe older. I wouldn’t want to eat that fruit, but if I can get the tree to make a connection with me, then I can influence what kind of fruit the tree produces.

It was a nice byproduct that I would get from connecting with the tree, but it wasn’t the main reason I wanted to do so. No, I wanted to make a connection with this tree because it would enhance my mental defenses considerably.

Although the tree’s mind was still nascent, plant minds were inherently resistant to mental effects, so if I could form a deeper bond with this tree then I would be able to greatly enhance my mental defenses. It would take a while for the tree to grow and become useful, but it would be worth it in the end.

Usually a mental connection/bond with a Restless Ruby Tree would be limited in its usefulness because of the plant’s unmoving nature, and whenever something that was bonded to the Restless Ruby Tree left its range they would suffer a growing restlessness to return and defend the tree. Hence the name Restless Ruby Tree; but with it in my Internal World this wouldn’t be a limiting factor in the slightest, and I would be able to enjoy the benefits all the time without any of the drawbacks.

I might not be able to mentally manipulate the scorpion, because of its connection to the tree, but I should still be able to lure it away in a normal way.

Then it occurred to me, I could use some of the lizard corpses from the first level to lure the scorpion away, and while it was gone I could dig up and store the tree. It shouldn’t have many roots with how small it is, so digging it up shouldn’t be hard. If I stored the tree away while the scorpion was out of range, then, to the tree, it would be like the scorpion left and never came back, which would allow the tree to slowly lose its connection over the course of a few days or weeks.

With that idea in mind, it would be a simple task to lure the scorpion away. In this desert environment where there weren’t many predators around, I didn’t have to do much of anything to protect the lizard corpse from being left out in the open.

So, after walking a sufficient distance away, I took out the lizard corpse and placed it on the ground. I placed the corpse down on a simple array I carved into a rock face. Although I wasn’t an array master, this array was a simple one that would make the corpse stick to the rock, long enough for me to get my job done at least. And with that complete I hurried my way back towards the tree while hiding my presence.

With the corpse placed upwind from the scorpion it noticed the smell before I even got back to the tree, and while it moved off to get the corpse, I moved in towards the tree. When I felt the mental activity around the tree lessen to the point that it became dormant, I knew that the scorpion was out of the range of the tree, and the tree wouldn’t be able to call it back. So I moved swiftly, but tried not to alarm the tree.

I reached the tree and used my still budding earth magic abilities to sense the tree’s roots and pull it safely out of the ground. I could feel the tree’s weak mental ‘go away’ feeling pestering me while I worked, but it was like a weak breeze compared to the Vivid Vortex. Now came the difficult part, putting it in my Internal World. Overcoming a living entity’s resistance to being influenced was a huge hurdle to get through, but thankfully plants had comparatively less ability to actively resist than other living things, even if it was a mental plant. So with a bit of effort, and mana, the Restless Ruby Tree found its way into its new home in my Internal World.

The Restless Ruby Tree had different senses, so when it entered my Internal World it ceased to sense anything around it and started to relax its mental flailing. It would be a while until it was ready to accept a new bond, and I was happy to wait. If all I got from this level was this Restless Ruby Tree, then it would all be worth it.

I was originally going to use one of my rewards, from completing the Dungeon of Tribulation, to shore up my mental defenses. However, now I would have the bare minimum to fill my requirements.

If others were to hear about my minimum requirements for mental defenses they would probably call me extremely paranoid, and maybe I was. But for someone like me who came from Earth, allowing others to mess with my mind was an extremely frightening prospect, which was part of the reason why I chose to spend so many of my POINTS just to be born with a mental [Metaphysical Organ] and [Power].

In the end my fears had been proven right, and now my stance towards protecting my freedom was even greater than it was in the past. This extended beyond just passive mental defenses though, I was afraid of even allowing others to get close to me. I was only even friends with Genesis because she couldn’t do anything to me in prison, and having her see me as a friend was beneficial to me. I felt like a horrible person for thinking about her in this way, but my fear of being chained down wasn’t something I could just get rid of.

The only reason I wasn’t an emotional wreck was because of my (Adaptive Mind) and (Mental Operator), without them I would probably have gone mad at some point. But, in my opinion, considering my circumstances I was doing just fine.