Ellie rummaged through the remains of the and found several good pieces of wood.  Treant wood was suitable for several different kinds of items and was an excellent conductor of all types of mana.  Jude was helping as well, but the final choices were up to Ellie as she knew what was best to use.

“Ellie’s a blacksmith isn’t she?” Krinn asked Wen, “How can she do carpentry work for Jude as well?”

“Even blacksmiths need to know how to work wood,” Wen replied.

“Really? For what?” Krinn tried not to act surprised.

“See that handing on your axe?  A carpenter may have made that, but a blacksmith is just as capable.”

Krinn and Wen continued chatting while Ellie examined the few pieces of usable wood left over.

“I think you went a little overboard when you killed this treant,” Ellie said to Jude. “That last both shattered and scattered the remains everywhere.  Now there is not much wood left to use.”

“It’s not entirely my fault,” Jude retorted, “These are brittle.”

Ellie sighed, “If we are going to experiment with some brushes we are going to need more wood.”

“I’m more concerned with the wood itself,” Jude said.  “Have you inspected it?  On the few pieces that I’ve analyzed, I’m not sure if this wood will be functional to what I need.”

“I inspected it.  There is a lot of dark and death elements in it, but there are a lot of unusable elements in many raw materials.  We just need to find the right way to refine this wood, though it would be easier if they weren’t the Snag variety of treant.”

“Then what do we need to do?” Jude asked.

“We will need to create a bath for the wood to soak in and some oils for conditioning.  I have the oils, but I’m more worried about the water.  We don't have a lot, and this place is pretty dry.” Ellie stated.

“I still have a water fountain scroll, but I was planning on using it when we got lower on water.” Jude thought out loud, “But if we use it now and we can make some more brushes, then I can just write another scroll.  If we had a few more water containers, I would feel better about it though.”

Ellie said, “That could work, I’ll have to create a container for the staff anyway.  I might as well make a few more that can carry water.”

“Good,” Jude agreed, “Then let’s do that.”

Ellie pulled out her portable forge and started to set up her work area.  She could do it all through her skill set, but it would be very draining.  It was always better to rely on the tools of the trade when one could.

The rest began to dig out a large trough for the water.  The area that they were in was still quite rocky, so a bit of magic and martial skill was implemented to get the job done.  When that was finished, they had created a 10-meter wide hole and nearly half a meter deep.  Jude set up the Fountain scroll in the middle, laying it on the ground.  Activating it caused a large spout of water to shoot up and slowly the pool began to fill with water.

Jude sighed, magic was truly a fascinating thing.

They decided to stop at this location for the rest of the day.  They filled up as much water as they could and got the wood Ellie collected into some purifying chambers.  They even had a chance to bathe.

During this time, Jude borrowed Cairfray’s ring once again.  He was experiencing some heat problems when using skills inscribed into the sword.  After some tests, he came to the conclusion that it was excess mana residing in the skill circuitry and the mana was not being properly dissipated.  Now he was examining Cairfray’s ring to find a solution to the problem, but the ring could only show him so much.

Jude’s design hadn’t reached the level that Cairfray’s ring was at, so there were many things that either he didn’t understand or couldn’t implement.  Instead, Jude had to rely on his own experimentation.  So he spent the rest of the day experimenting with the sword.

He finally decided to quit when it was already late.  Most of the others were already asleep, and only Ellie was up keeping the watch.  She noticed Jude stir and the sword he was working on dim a bit.  The sword now seemed to glow perpetually.

“I made some more items for you to test with,” she said as he walked over.

“You did?” his eyes sparkled with excitement.

“I made a dagger, a set of bracers, and a letter opener.”  She said it calmly but had a slight smile at the last one mentioned.

“A letter opener?  An interesting choice,” he replied with his own smile. "I don't suppose you could make me another ring?"

“I can make a simple ring, but I can’t make a magical one.  I’m not a Jeweler after all.  But the items I did make all have glyphs on them.  I think you’ll like the combinations.”

Jude accepted the items and smiled at the glyphs, “You certainly know me." But after looking them over he chuckled and said, "And you have a sense of humor.”

“I thought you’d like that.  But don’t go working on it tonight.  You should sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

***

The next day the headed out and entered the withering forest.  Along the way, they ran into more and , but their numbers were manageable.  They also started encountering new types of enemies; the most notable was the .

This animal was a giant elongated wasp that flew upright so that its thorax was vertical and its abdomen hung down and stinger pointing forward.  It's slightly curled stature was still as tall as a man.  The actual danger of this creature was not the stinger, but the maggots that it carried in its abdomen.  The abdomen itself was riddled with holes like a hive, and when its enemy was at a distance, it would shoot a swarm of maggots out.  These maggots would attempt to drill into their victim and eat them from the inside out. 

Fortunately, the ‘swarm’ in their name didn’t derive from them grouping together, but from the maggots the used as a weapon.  However, the deeper they got into the forest, the more prominent the wasps became.  But this didn’t sway Jude or his friends.

They continued to push on, albeit slower than the first expected.  Encounters continued to increase which impeded their progress.  But it also proved to be a perfect place to raise their levels.  After two weeks they had yet to make it to the tree, but they also attained level 27, and their levels finally evened out between all of them.

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Jude had to give up working on his item skill creation as the threat was always present and it wasn’t suitable to experiment.  The night is especially dangerous as a new breed of treant stalked this area.  The was only active at night and extremely hard to pick out during the day from the rest of the dead and dying trees.  But they were a terrifying thing when darkness fell.  Their exterior turned pitch black at night, and they moved silently.  They were not as big and thick as other treants, but their wood was far denser.  Because of this, two people at a time were needed to keep the watch.

Eventually, they had to start sneaking through the forest to limit the encounters.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to survive.  After all, they only had limited supplies, and mana didn’t recharge instantly.

One day they finally got close enough to the tree to see the trunk.  They were inside some shrubbery, peaking over the small mound that the brush grew on.  Beyond that was a clearing made by the large crown of the giant tree.  Under it, no other tree could survive.

The large clearing extended downwards into a valley that the majestic trunk grew out of.  But to their dismay, they found that the trunk housed the nest of the .

Gouged into the trunk were many holes with the wasps crawling in and out and all over the surface.  On the ground below were the corpses of many different kinds of creatures, all of which had turned gray.

“So that’s how the tree is able to live,” Nellie said.

“What do you mean?” Krinn asked.

“The wasps bring back the corpses they feed on for the tree to absorb.  That is why this tree is the only one in the forest that is still green.” Nellie explained. Since her class was Healer, she had a better understanding of life than the rest did.

She continued, “I would even guess that the tree mutated over the years because of absorbing all of these monster corpses.  We should be careful, if it somehow gained intelligence, it might be far more dangerous than any treant we’ve faced so far.”

“There’s no reason to go through this area is there?” Ellie asked.  “We were just using it as a guidepost right?”

“Yes, beyond this valley should be the hill region,” Krinn said, and then he looked over at the hundreds of wasps, “We should wait until it's night and make our way around.  That way the wasps will be asleep, and it will be safer.”

“I’m not afraid of a good fight,” Wen joined in, “But moving at night is far more dangerous than moving during the day.  We can’t see at night without a , and that could attract the attention of the wasps or even the tree itself if what Nellie says is correct.”

“That’s going to be a problem regardless when we’re this close.  We can’t camp without light; otherwise, the ebonies will get us.” Krinn argued.

“Cosh the ebony treants, we may as well go now,” Wen angrily.

“We can’t go now.  We would call the entire swarm over with the first fight we got into.” Krinn countered.

Ellie interjected, “Stop, let Jude decide.”

Jude had a far off look in his eyes as he was staring at the gigantic tree.  But he had been listening so when Ellie said his name he turned toward the group.

“Ellie, make me six small plates with a glyph that has something to do with sight,” Jude said.

“Okay, but it will take a couple of hours since I will be doing it without tools and only crafting skills,”  Ellie replied.

Krinn and Wen shared a look, and both guessed that Jude was going to make them something that would allow them to see in the dark.  Perhaps he was going to make Jude's classic variant of : Spectral Vision.  They had both wondered what it was like to be able to see that way.  But if it was Spectral Vision, why did they need six plates?  Couldn't Cairfray already use this magic?

Ellie made the first two plates rather quickly and handed them over to Jude.  Then she sat still to regenerate her mana.

Jude took the plates and focused on the hidden space inside of them where he could write circuitry.   He recalled the complexity of Cairfray’s ring and began to imitate some of the designs he understood.  But he didn’t stop there, he also created and inside inscribed ruins creating another layer of complexity and functionality.

By the time he finished the first one, Ellie had two more plates done.  Jude began working on the next plate, but this time he went quicker than before.  He already had a template from the first plate, and it was an easy task to in his