Chapter Two: Meeting a Human

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It was a brutal fight, a fight I probably should not have won but I did anyway. Now it was time to look at my spoils of war. Well battle not war but let a tree have its imagination.

The bear's body was filled with Mana, so much Mana in fact that it was a bit overwhelming. Like when you drink water too fast. I plunged my roots into its body and sucked it dry of all the Mana it had. It had more Mana than my whole body. Well not counting the Mana spent to upgrade me.

The first thing I did was upgrade my roots because I’m sure that without them I would not have survived. Next was the trunk since the bear had ripped it apart like it was made of cheese. Then the leaves since I thought they looked cool but they couldn’t do jack shit.

After all that I was looking good. A nice dark oak looking and my leaves were much sharper and faster. One of them even managed to cut another tree near me. I felt great as well since I could see much better. I could see as well as a person with short-sightedness. Except it was just grey with bits of color representing what element of Mana.

My [Mana Sight] had gotten way better, I could see the things that were trying to hide around. Like the human-looking figure hiding under that tree.

Wait a minute, why was there a human looking at me. Was a moving tree rare even here? I prepared a [Root Strike] and [Leaf Barrage] in case they tried to attack me. Being a tree made me very patient, I could wait here all day if I needed to. I’m sure the human couldn’t though, humans weren’t known for their patients at all.

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I was right, it took only I think about 2 hours for them to get tired and walk up to me. I shoot out my roots and hung them upside down in front of me. Sending a furry of leaves around them to tell them they shouldn’t try and move. They got the point since they stopped moving and just stayed still.

“Please let me go, I promise I won’t tell anyone” the human cried. I think they pied their pants since there is a tint of blue where their little brother is. We are gonna ignore that though. I couldn’t exactly talk to them could I?

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Then came the flood of info, this should happen the moment it’s available to me. When I first absorbed Mana I became a Mana Tree or a Spirit Tree. This was what allowed me to see Mana and also Souls. This is what the rough shapes were since if I could only see Mana it would just look like random colored gases. Anyway, since trees have denser souls than humans and animals we could do spiritual things like being telepathic way earlier than them. This is also why when the tree got to Soul bending levels of power they were so feared. We could basically wack the jack shit out of someone with way more power with our souls.

With this new information, I sent a bit of my Mana to the human's brain and just surfaced their memories for a bit. I didn’t search that deep just enough to know that I was in a place called The Forest of Nether. This human had been trying to kill the bear to gain the attention of their love interest. They thought I was meditating to try and absorb all the Mana in the bear, so they came and tried to take the bear corpse away from here.

The poor human didn’t know I could absorb all it’s Mana in just a few minutes. Maybe I will try meditating at some point to try it though. Since the human didn’t want any harm and just wanted a corpse which was only minerals to me I decided to give it a light punishment. The punishment was reading all its memories. Not like it even knew what was happening since it didn’t even have 1/5 of my Mana.

Where in the Azure Empire in the Kingdom of Lin. About Southeast of the Kingdoms territory where the city of Birthm was. It wasn’t a small city it was one of the Top 5 in the Kingdom and 30th in the whole Empire. The forest was named The Forest of Nether after the King of the forest which was a Nether Bear. The Nether Bear was in an evolution of the bear that I just killed. It was an Ironfire Clawed Bear, which was practical since its claws were as hard as Iron but also on fire. The other things weren’t as useful since I didn’t exactly need to know who his love interest was or every one of his friends.

‘Since you didn’t mean any harm you can have the bear and go,’ I spoke into his mind with the oldest voice I could make. I didn’t even know if brains could hear sounds in their mind. He got the message though and was very scared it seems. He had pied his pants again for the second time.

“Where are you? What is talking to me” he spoke with a very shaky voice.

‘The tree’ I dropped him at that point and he got the idea. He started dragging the corpse away and before long I couldn’t even see them. I finally had peace again so I started meditating because I didn’t have anything else to do.

I could meditate but not like a human, I just entered a zone where I could feel everything happening to my body. I didn’t know what to do with it so I just kinda let it happen and practiced using my roots and leaves. Time just flowed like a river with nothing to block it. It was freeing since it was like a dream that I could end and start whenever I wanted.

Nature was one with me and I was one with it. I could feel the roots touching mine, the animals climbing my bark, the breeze between my leaves. It could feel myself finally accept that I was a tree, that I wasn’t human anymore. I finally got rid of the wanting to have a human form and accepted my new tree form for all it was.