Chapter Three

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Being a tree wasn’t bad now that he thought about it. Long life, no work to go to, no need to find food since you make your own. Everything he hated about life a tree didn’t have to worry about. The only downside was being chopped down, but that seemed unlikely based on how strong the people in the closest city were. That Ironfire Claw Bear was a mid-range beast that was strong enough for most of the people in the city to people their pants when they saw it. Only an idiot like that human would try and hunt it down.

Not like it was his problem if he died or not, but it was nice to know he was counted as a high-rank beast. Well plant really, Demonic Tree would be the name the humans used for trees with Mana. The name for his species was unknown since a Mana Tree had consciousness and they didn’t like it when you grouped them with other Mana Tree. They usually named themselves a new species of tree that only they and their offspring were in.

I will call myself a Netherite Tree and my name is. I don’t know, can’t use Alex since that’s just boring. Maybe Neath or Ventrilo. I like the name Naen. Naen the Nethrite Tree sounds cool and nice. He also found a way to keep track of time. There was a plant that changed every minute and the bigger the change the different hour. There was one near me so I spread my roots to it and sent all my Mana into it.

This was a mistake that turned out to be what I wanted since I got a skill called [Ticking Time] which let me know the time. It also made me wonder if I had a status since you know this was a magic world.

The flood of info came rolling in again. This time it was based on the human's memories. It was like a ranking of beasts and how I could use it to make a visual representation of my stats. Thanks to video games I thought of a stat window like the ones from video games.

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Name: Naen

Age: 4 Years

Species: Nethrite Tree

Stage: 3rd Rank Spirit

***

The stages went from Mortal to Spirit then Magic. That was the highest a commoner knew so that’s as high as I knew. Mortal had 3 ranks which went Low, Mid, High. Spirit went from the 1st-5th rank and Magic went Low Tier, Normal Tier, Expert Tier, King Tier, then Emperor Tier.

I have no idea who made the names but they didn’t seem to be trying. I also realized I was only 4. It was kinda sad since I just bullied someone who was 12 years older than me. If only they knew they just got bodied by a 4-year-old, not like really mattered here. You could live a good 120 years at Mortal Low Rank. At my level, a human could live a good 650 years and a tree that more like 850 years. When you get to the Magic Rank you live for who knows how long. Commoner live lifetimes before a Spirit dies. Magic Rank people usually die in battle and not of old age.

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

It felt weird to know that age doesn’t count as anything to me. It was officially just a number. I will probably stop count at like 300 cause what's the point. I would either be way more powerful or just vibing to life. The only thing that could match my growth power was hero’s and they had a literal blessing from the Gods.

Not like I would let them catch up. I was turned up now. I started pumping the Mana around my body making it stronger every round. No hero would ever match me or beat me as long as I was alive.

Year 4, Month 5, Week 3, Day 2

The human came back with friends. A lot of friends, it looked like he brings an army of people with him. He came storming onto my territory seemingly as confident as a bull. Was he trying to fight me or was he coming to hunt something down? If he was coming to hunt then he better not expect to leave alive.

I was much stronger, I had hunted a lot in the past month. Killed many Ironfire Claw Bears that came near. I was a 5th Rank Spirit now, ready to breakthrough into Magic rank.

The prob of Mana I sent came back and it turns out he got his love interest and gained a lot of power in the city after bring back the corpse. It took him a month and a lot of medical herbs to breakthrough to a 1st Rank Spirit. He couldn’t sleep knowing he got bodied by a tree so he came here with a lot of men all at least a Mid-Rank Mortal. He also read a lot at that time so I have a lot of memories to go through after I deal with him and his army.

Without any hesitation now that I knew why they were here, I sent a flurry of [Root Strike]s at them killing about 15 of them before they could hideaway. Now that they were hidden I would have to break something to get to them to send my roots too far away so [Root Strike] wasn’t a good option. I still had my leaves though and those were much stronger now. It cleaned up another 20 of them making my kill count 35. There were only 135 left now but I didn’t have any other ways of attack.

They weren’t dummies either since they saw that I wasn’t attacking and started throwing Mana constructions like [Fireball] and [Ice Spike]. I realized that I did have another way of attack after seeing these. Nature Magic.

I did the first thing that came to mind, [Wood Clone]. Yes, it was a Jutsu from Naruto but it was the first thing I thought of. It didn’t work though since it had no idea how to do it. So I went a simple route by making thorns on my roots and making them secret poison. I call is [Posion Thorn]. The poison gave me an idea though and through bending fire mana I managed to make the poison a gas. Now I had [Posion Mist]. Now that I had other ways of attack I did the best way to use them. A control skill. [Root Forest] it wasn’t a forest but it was a lot of roots that forced the people in them to move to the center. I didn’t need a defense skill since m bark was holding them off just fine.

Now that I had my skills ready I attacked, letting lose [Root Forest] with the roots being [Posion Thorn] roots making the skill [Posion Root Forest]. Now they were all forced to the center where I unleashed [Posion Mist] to not only make them get lost but also slowly kill them off. The mist wouldn’t be enough since they would eventually realize it was poisoned and try to escape so I also sent a [Leaf Barrage] into it. All that made a skill called [Mist Assains Forest] or as I like to call it “Mist Forest of Death”. Now there was still a chance they would get out but that was minimal, but just in case I sent a [Root Barricade] in there too which would block the way of some routes. Trip a few of them then drag them into pits where [Posion Mist] was very concentrated.

People will think twice next time they try and attack me I hope, or I may just become worthy of being called a serial killer. I did let the human who started this leave though. Just so it could spread my name. The poison was slowly killing them and in a month they should drop dead.