Quickly getting up from the ground, I divided my free stat points between intelligence and wisdom, bringing them up to 21 and 19 respectively, then I started scanning the forest around me, looking for some vines, or any long plant that I could kill, and then use to make the harness of my armour.

But looking around I quickly noticed something... there were no vines anywhere, which I knew I could easily manipulate.

Of course, I could always just go to the patch of tall grass nearby but... I am really not confident in my ability to make ropes from grass, even if I turn the said grass into a part of me.

Hmm... what can I use to make my harness then? I am pretty sure I won’t find any vines any time soon, and I am also sure that I am not going to figure out how to make ropes anytime soon so... roots?

I mean... tree roots should be strong enough to make a harness out of, how strong? I don’t know, but they should be strong enough to not get cut from the attack of a random animal the moment they get hit, but there is a problem with choosing roots because... roots of normal plants are probably not that strong.

And I kinda can’t get access to the roots of trees without cutting a tree so... no luck there either.

Hmm... maybe go with a quantity over quality option and then stack stacks upon stacks of something’s roots on top of each other?

I mean I know people from Earth made bricks out of mycelium, so why couldn’t I do that?

Except... mycelia are the main body of fungi, so their souls are probably spread around so, even if I wanted to take control of some mycelia, I would first have to shoot out their soul from inside of them... somehow.

Can I even effect the souls of other things? I mean, I can now sense the souls of other beings, so maybe it’s possible? But sadly, that’s not an option for now.

So, I need something that is plentiful, or just overgrown, that also won’t take years of work to get my hands on...

Scanning over the surroundings a few more times, and focusing on every plant I could see, I found my answer just a bit away from me.

Bushes.

Or shrubs.

I don’t know the difference between them, and I would like to say that I’ve never claimed to be intelligent, and I never will!

Moving on!

Bushes have a lot of branching branches, which would allow me to manipulate them into any shape I want and if I manage to find a thorny kind of bush, I’d have passive too!

...Well, passive defence against birds or small bugs because I really doubt anything crazy enough to attack the moving corpse of a deer would care if they got some scratches.

But I might need a couple bushes too cover my body... which will take time, but also can you imagine encountering something that looks like a gigantic bush with black chitinous plates, a rotting deer head for a head, and black horns that are being held with vines?

Yeah, if I ever encounter something capable of thought, they’d probably order a napalm strike on the whole forest to get rid of me!

Good thing I’ll never encounter fucking forest gnomes or something stupid like that, right?

...Actually, I wonder what real gnomes would look like... NO! William, don’t set a flag. You’ve read enough shitty fantasy novels and manga and have watched enough anime to know not to set up a flag!

What I am saying is, I am not getting napalmed by a bunch of gnomes!

...Hopefully not because they don’t have napalm but because I’ll never encounter them.

Anyways I should get moving and grab my trusty big horn because those bushes are not going to unearth themselves!

And neither will that plant-bug hybrid armour make itself!

Then, I got to working. I grabbed the big horn from where I dropped it off and went to the nearest decent sized bush I could find, which was not that far away.

But before I started excavating it, and then killing it, I decided to look at its soul, and watch how the entire process of death looked like for a soul.

So, I just extended out a vine from which I extended a tendril of mana and soul, and appreciated how the soul of the bush looked, which was very similar to how a tree looked just a bit... different. Not that I can put a finger on the difference, just know that it was different in some way.

Then, I rammed the large horn into the ground, and started hammering away at it with a rock.

Then, slowly but surely, the plant came loose from the ground. And... it was still alive which made sense because plants don’t tend to immolate the moment, they are disconnected from mother earth... at least the ones I know don’t do that. Magical world, ya’ know? All sorts of weird shit are probably just a common sight.

Hmm... then how do I go about killing a bush do I just... start hacking away at it?

But can’t most plants regrow from small bits like branches and such? So, at what point would a plant become dead enough for its soul to leave its body? I’d guess never but... that surely can’t be the case now, can it?

Otherwise, I won’t be getting my cool drip and will be asking for this world’s boss, and yes, I am saying that I will become a karen if need be.

Soon, I decided to give up on the question of when a plant truly became dead, which I believe only god or a biologist can explain, and started hacking away at the bush, reducing its size bit by bit.

Firstly, I removed its roots, then I moved on the bush itself and separated it into 2 main parts for ease of use, and then continued hacking away until parts of the bush got as small as I liked them to be.

And while I did this, I of course monitored the parts I cut with mana tendrils, just in case a part of this bush’s soul decided to implode.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

And yes, for those wondering, the soul of the bush did separate into smaller chunks after I cut it. But it felt like the soul of the bush wasn’t connected in the same way I was to my lesser souls. How did I know that? A gut feeling. And while my gut is not right most of the time, I’d say it was correct with this one.

But as I continued to hack away at the bush, turning it into smaller parts to be integrated into my body, I suddenly felt one of the branches I was holding feel empty.

Turning my attention to the branch I realized that it had just... lost the soul inside of it.

The soul wasn’t decaying into mana or ectoplasm, it wasn’t slowly fading away, it wasn’t seeping out to the world and being destroyed by ambient mana, no. It just... disappeared, but the weird thing was... the mana cloud was still there, so the soul should’ve been still safe even though the mana cloud was significantly weakened.

Then I started wondering if it had lost the ability to live even if it was planted on the ground, so I decided to test it by just ramming the branch into the ground.

Then something weird started happening... instead of it remaining as it was before, soulless, or immediately gaining its soul back, a new soul started forming inside of it.

Immediately, I surrounded it in every direction with broad tendrils of mana, trying to sense the soul seeping into the plant but there wasn’t anything that was seeping into the plant. The soul particles or whatever they were, were just... appearing inside of the plant.

“Well... that’s a fuck you and a half from the world if I’ve ever seen one.” I muttered to myself, because the world had really fucked up with my theories!

If the soul disappeared the moment I had excavated the bush, I’d be fine.

If the soul started disappearing slowly, I’d fine.

Hell, I’d be fine if the soul just randomly disappeared and appeared, but it disappearing randomly and then being slowly reconstituted back?!

How—how on god’s green ear—whatever this planet is, am I supposed to come up with a theory that can make sense of what I am seeing right now!

Bullshit is all I am going to say. Bull fucking shit!

I think my plot armour doesn’t come with mental protection, which I’d prefer instead of surviving an encounter that should’ve killed me... wait, I take that back. But I’d really like if my plot armour also covered my mind’s protection, or at least covered the cost of the therapist I am going to be seeing after I find civilization.

But, seriously, how the fuck am I supposed to advance my quest and get that sweet, sweet exp if I can’t even begin to understand what a soul actually is?

I mean, I know that living beings possess souls, even if that soul seems—feels incomplete...

You know what? Future William’s problem. Current Will is trying to keep its sanity so the future Will, will have to take one for the team.

Will the future me hate the current me? Probably, but also time magic probably, hopefully, doesn’t exist, so the future me can go suck an egg for all I care!

Then I grabbed the branch that I’d planted on the ground and ripped it off of the ground, and the forming soul inside of it disappeared, which prompted me to think about if I should watch how long it takes for a soul to form, and how does a soul form, but it was also future Will’s problem, so not an important detail for now.

Then, I went back to the remaining parts of the bush and cut them down to a size small enough for them to lose their souls and then rammed my own soul inside them and started manipulating them, and soon realized that manipulating something with a... relatively hard bark wasn’t that easy of a task.

Not impossible but also not easy.

Ugh, the dreams of an eldritch tree ent are already disappearing... oh, the cruel world!

Anyways, after that I started the slow and arduous process of manipulating the branches into taking shape, which was like what I said, slow.

But before I started making my harness, I first started off with implanting a few branches inside me, which was really just me opening a few small holes around my chest and putting branches inside them and making sure they wouldn’t fall and could be used as support for the harness.

Which reminded me... when should I just drop all my organs? They really, really aren’t useful to me anymore, and they are just being unnecessary weight to me right now.

...Eh, later. First comes the harness! Totally not because I want to rp as a dark knight, but because protection is important! Yup, totally, like how totally I am keeping my sanity, but I am a man so that isn’t a necessary thing, so we can just ignore it!

Anyways, jokes aside, I should really drop my organs when I decide to move out, it would take a big load off of my shoulders, very literally at that.

But now that I am doing my bush harness and manipulating the branches I wonder... how will I actually make these branches hold the plates?

I don’t exactly have any super glue to use as an adhesive, and I don’t know if the resin of the branches I am grafting onto my body is strong enough to hold the plates in place... so, what to do?

Hmm... I guess I gotta just experiment with the plates themselves because as many of you’ve figured out by now, I am winging everything right now.

Then, I took the remaining branches of the bush, and went to the pile of plates, and horns, with the big horn in tow.

But to my dismay, some critters had messed up the piles for some... ungodly reason, so I had to quickly scare them away before starting my work.

Then, I grabbed a plate from the pile and started working on, trying to find inspiration in defensive equipment from earth, while also continuing to grow my harness.

So, my first thought was to just put a hole through it and connect it, like a really shitty chain mail, but there was a problem with that in the shape of chitin being really, really hard.

Not hard as in strong, impenetrable, but hard is in if I try to make a hole in this thing, its going to fall to pieces.

So, that was a no go, so I took a few more plates laid them on a small part of the harness which was completed and tried to squeeze them in with the help of the harness, so they would stay rigid and unmovable.

But I couldn’t do so because I sucked.

What? Did you expect another reason? I was just bad at making armour. That’s it. That’s the truth.

But I need to figure out a way to make a proper armour because if I lose this armour... wait, if I lose this armour... nothing of importance will actually happen...

...Yeah, I’ve been too dedicated to making a good armour that wouldn’t get destroyed, but that’s not my speciality, my speciality is to get destroyed, and then act like it’s a casual Tuesday.

It doesn’t matter if parts of the harness are broken, or a few dozen plates are lost! What matters is this harness is strong enough to take a hit or 2 from something in the same power level as I, or hopefully from something stronger.

So, fuck it, I am going to make a harness design that is neither efficient, nor sustainable.

After deciding on a course of action I started to place plates on the harness one by one and encasing them in a few small branches so they wouldn’t fall off.

What would happen if they got hit? They’d probably absorb some of the damage and then probably fall off. But like I said, my goal isn’t, and shouldn’t be, to make the greatest armour I can make, my goal is to make one decent enough to take a hit or two, because even if it fails, as long as my muscles are not tearing apart or my spine broken, I’ll be fine!

Then, over the course of the next few hours I laid plates of chitin on the harness made out of branches and leaves, covering the plates in strands of branches just enough to keep them in place.

And after I was finally done with the armour, I took one of my front eyes off, placed it onto a vine, and started looking at my new armour, which was actually pretty well concealed!

Because I made some gaps between plates, which were necessary for branches to keep them in place, some leaves and the branches that were holding the plates in place were over them, hiding most of the black plates with brown and green.

Appreciating the latest work of my genius a bit more, I soon put the eye back in its place, picked up some horns to use as weapons and placed the big horn on my back, because you’ll never know when something will be useful.

Then, I started contemplating where I should go.

I mean, I’d decided that I’d go up stream and maybe find the origins of the big tree but... I was confident enough in myself to step into a higher levelled area!

Which totally doesn’t come from my previous gaming experiences which are totally not wrong in this world and should still hold up well!

After a bit, I decided to go towards the mountains in the distance because... well, mountains are high levelled areas, right? So, it’d make sense for me to go there to level up and improve my skills!

So, after doing what I said I’d do, which was removing my organs which were no longer necessary, I placed most of the remaining plates and the horns into the new cavity in my body that’d just opened up, closed it with my new branches via penetrating my skin and flesh like a needle, and then using the branches as string, and then I set off to... hopefully not get eaten by a dragon.