I sit in the back of the flying bus. I should really name these things myself, instead of letting others decide how to name my inventions. I made it and nobody else should have the right to name it.
Humm.
In front of me in between the seats lays the beast’s corpse. Even after all the abuse it had taken, its hide and possibly other body parts will still be useful.
I didn’t offer to put it in my inner world. We all had to make our choices, and I didn’t begrudge their choice of not only killing it but harvesting its body, I even tentatively agreed with it. But we should never forget and I would not be complicit should they try to dress this up. I will not dress up the end of life, even if it was necessary, as anything other than a serious decision.
Even if not another sentient being, it was a living creature. Modern life had done much to detach us from our roots, some were so disconnected that they never thought that anytime they ate another being had to give their life so they would have sustenance. The very least we could do was to acknowledge that and thank them for their sacrifice.
Perhaps hypocritical on my part but it is how I try to live. I open my system prompt.
Lion - Lv. 140
Exp reward: 1956 Exp
It didn’t even give good exp. There were no multipliers like on the attacks of the village and it was a single enemy, so the reward is lackluster.
Too bad Exp scales linearly with the level while power skyrockets, especially after level 100. Adding everyone’s numbers the lion was worth about 50k exp. At least it counts as a boss Exp wise and gives at around 350 Exp per level instead of the more normal 150 points for most other mobs.
Though after we returned from here to Earth and all the hidden exp multipliers would be gone and even this much would probably seem like a veritable tide of Exp.
I take a deep breath and go back to my deep meditative session. This time not looking for stats or improvement in skills like in recent days, but in letting the one things not attached to the system develop.
My natural perception field.
It was a marvelous thing that help me in nearly every aspect of my formation, but there was much missing from it.
I could not sense mana with it and though it only had happened once, a beast had managed to slightly camouflage itself and I was only able to faintly notice it.
That was not to be allowed. Anything inside my domain should be known to me, more deeply than most people ever come to know anything and it should take me only an instant.
I cycle my perception field outside and inside, I create spatial distortions powered by a smidge of mana and let the dizzying and headache inducing phenomenon assault me without letting up.
I could take it easy, take my time at the beginning of the journey in the path towards freedom for the council's manipulations, but that is not sufficient.
It seems that with each step I take, I only come closer to the reality that I cannot push things with my belly and should treat them by what they are.
Our enemies, our nemesis.
I doubt this will be my last revelation, but I let this encounter with the reality of the situation calcify my resolve and prepare for each encounter with their cruelty further driving me. No matter how many times it happened, never letting my heart grow cold and callous. I need to feel if only to remember the fallen and those squished in the path of the machine.
Cycle the perception field.
Once, twice, thrice.
Look at the book, back to the air taking in the smallest of particles, then the pinprick of spatial distortion and so on.
In the back of my mind, several plans start to form and I get ready to implement them. Though even being serious I realize that it was not the most productive mode to be inflexible.
I will let others follow at their own pace. I will also need breaks and rest as well, but there is no time to waste and I go as deep as possible in my meditation cycling through past my soul and Aether pool down the great darkness.
Minutes give way to hours even at our fast moment speed back to the village, and I open portals on the way connecting to the network and letting my perception extend further and further in the instants that I have before the portals are too far away and I have to dismiss them and form new ones ahead.
I cannot get around the fact that each action takes something from me, makes me more tired, and drains a little bit of my mental stamina, but it is also training that I gladly take to. One day I will be able to extend my perception field thousands of times what I can currently do, and I can't let something as pesky as a headache hold me back. However, with the proper training, that day will come all the sooner and I would not let the goal slip away ever forward.
As we enter the village I think of the changes to come in the Innerworl which reminds me to ask Aspen something.
“I’m getting ready to reform the inner world and prepare for a few upcoming things, so I will come across what you have been working on in secret. Do you want to tell me now?”
A disappointed and naughty feeling comes from him. A mixture I did not expect to come from the innocent being. Both fellings concepts that a tree wasn’t supposed to have. But instead of kicking and screaming as I would have expected from any human child, he just relents and deep down I can even sense pride at what he has brought into reality.
In the deepest spot of dirt in the inner world, I find something that had never occurred to me to do, something marvelous.
“What did you do?” I ask.
More of myself, more of the grove, more of Pando
“Why?”
The grove was never meant to be alone.
The strange meaning is impossible to capture in words, especially as his understanding of the encapsulation of ideas with words is still lacking.
“But why not just follow Pando’s lead and make yourself bigger instead of adding other separate entities.”
I have wisdom that Pando never needed. There should be more of me, of us.
“Are you fine with me gifting your ‘saplings’ to others?”
That is preferable to being alone on the ground
“How developed are they?”
See for yourself
That is exactly what I do. I had gifted small seeds to others, though I never really expected that they would develop on their own. As my telepathy and Aether connect with the developing multitude of seeds I see what he made, who he made.
Well over a hundred seeds, each as developed as he was after more than a month over here. Not quite intelligent and capable of communication yet, but there is an underlying and undeniable undercurrent of thought and development. The flavor of their thoughts makes them distinctly closer to Aspen than Pando, but they are all of the same family.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
As his name crosses my mind, I think of Aspen’s progenitor, the original Grove.
In the slow ‘time zone’ we had experienced about four months but that would translate to over 10 years back on Earth. That is a large difference. Soon we would have spent longer apart than the time we knew each other.
A pang of sadness at how long my friend spent alone, and the decision that would spend even longer as I looked to find out how long I could remain here in the instance.
Though if the hints in the book were even halfway correct, there is no chance that I would be able to come back anytime soon. After we left the instance while Earth’s transformation wasn’t finished we would all be in stasis or something on the way back. It wasn’t hard information, but the sheer amount of information that I was collecting was giving me a better outline of what to expect in a lot of areas.
The knot in my throat and the burning of my heart are all I’m left with for the next few minutes as I go back to my work. Though as it usually happens, my attention turns to my current activity and Pando fades from the forefront of my mind.
There is too much to do and I will start with getting a better look at the engravings the rabbits were working on. Not all of them, just the single colony that had a different runic schematic.
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Pando’s POV
A strong wind hits the tallest trees on the edge of my domain. Just minutes before the start of the attack. Faint rays of reflected light hit me, something I had grown much more used to as I developed the capability to observe things outside my own domain, but it was not nearly as accurate as the sense I had of anyone or anything standing inside my domain.
Fear, something I never really had before the system is all encompassing. , The closest I ever came across was the slowly dwindling of my health a d vitality that would have eventually seen my long life end. Now I understand some of what my friend explained to me.
A faint sense of the trials to come, the ever increasing challenges that threatened to destroy me if I was found the least bit lacking.
With my friend’s help, I am certain I would have succeeded, but alone I am so much… less.
As I came to learn in the last few seasons the resource Aether he had left did much more than just be a common resource. It became clear his very essence melded with mine and that is what allowed me to so easily sense any who came inside my domain and to understand the underpinnings of reality and further integrate with the system.
Without both of these, I would already be gone.
Even with their help, how long can I last without my friend?
The first rays of directed sunlight hit me.
‘yellow’
A light splotch in the sky against the blue backdrop. That is the mental picture that comes to me through a lot of concentration as I absorb the light entering my domain.
I stop forcing my vision to the sky and pay attention to the approaches of the enemies to enter the very edge of my domains, domains that I expanded as fast as possible. Though throughout my outer domain there were other enemies inside already. The remnants of all the attacks where some of them fled.
Small spaces compared to the vastness of my domain, each only as wide as a few of my older tres were tall. I dither over my decision of not putting my entire effort into eliminating them after I began to run into them with my rapidly expanding domain, though even if I succeeded, it would cost me. Especially with the troublesome powers from the elves. Just a few of them in the concerted effort through the lunar cycle would be enough to slow my growth a good margin.
All idle thoughts flee as the first of the new enemies approach the edge of my domain. Orcs, shamans and goblins.
Wait, there is a bigger and much stronger looking goblin in the middle.
(*#4$&¨#$*6&¨#(* - Goblin Chief - Lv. 101 $*#6(*¨*&(
He points the wooden shaft with a pointy metal implement in the direction of the forest and all the others change as the shamans get to work rounding the forest in the very slow work of burning. With thousands of goblins hacking and slashing their metal implements to cause as much destruction.
Fire, steel and muscle against nature. Fully grown trees of other species that I incorporated into the grove and changed on a fundamental level until all of them became ME.
Each step of my enemy is a slog as I fight nearly twelve thousand of them.
I should have let my friend explain numbers to me a little more but with my improving memory, I could still slowly recall lessons he gave me and fill in the gaps.
This time there is one more ‘number’ symbol after the name. Three distinct characters, instead of two. Could the strength gap be as large as the gap between a being with a single symbol and two symbols?
As the Orcs move in and rip entire trunks of the inner trees they make the long track encircling the grove. Most of the day passes in this exercise though as the sun is going down on the other side of the sky, the last of the enemy stragglers join, totaling some 30 thousand and they drive inward without stoping to destroy anything.
Very few of them are hindered by my myriad of attempts to poison and slow them down, though the branches and brangles now survive long enough to contact their skin even through the wide flame fields the shamans conjure up. That should continue while they keep the fire spread and their fast pace.
In their path, a large group meant to defend the grove the ever expending and move diverse group of creatures awaits to confront them after they finished their strafing runs.
The shaman’s fire is dangerous, but they were waiting near a few of the runes I’m slowly learning about. I could use mana anywhere in my domain, but it is too wasteful to without the rune’s help.
The wolves, deer, mooses, and half a dozen other large species head in the confrontation with me expecting the same fray as always as I use my powers to mitigate the damage their fire can do with simple water orbs.
What happens next is not something nature ever intended.
The wolves all rush the Goblin chief which spins his metal instrument of death and reaps the lives of a pair of wolves in a single swipe. A kick knocks a moose to the ground which is pounced upon by three orcs. The goblin chief uses the last of its momentum to drive an overhead blow a deer’s head with the expected outcome.
A single instant and four forest defenders couldn’t even react. A single instant later the dreadful enemy is advancing again.
The fire from the group of shamans is as always a danger, but I manage to mitigate most of it. The greatest danger is the chief. Nothing I do is enough to hold him back and every few moments a score of defenders falls too injured for me to even help them heal, no matter how much vigor I send their way.
Today is the beginning of the end. The downward spiral towards my demise. Before I still had hoped I could do this alone, without my friend, but now it is proven that there is no chance. No matter how large and how many fire and water balls I can conjure. No matter how wide is the grove, no matter how strong I get this enemy is too much for me to bear.
I will not fall today, nor tomorrow, but the end is coming and can only hope my friend gets back to me before the tide of enemies drown me.
---------------------------
Earth’s integration System ‘employee’.
I stand before the regional administrator in complete silence. No sense in showing any disrespect and pissing him off given the state of things.
He flicks his pad reading one last page and then puts it to the side. From behind his large imperious desk, his gaze bores into my soul and any idle thoughts of trying to pin the mess on someone else is simply gone.
“What is happening on Earth?”
“Humm,” I swallow after choking and dive right in, it won’t become better if I just stall. “Things are not going smoothly.”
He looks at me intently, so I just continue.
“We have much more capable spying technics capable of being used in the planets during integration given that there are no system users there yet and we send 17 times the normal number of observation platforms to the closest orbit allowed, but there is both some strange interference and an obvious delay in the normal integration timeline.”
“I may be new to this post, but I’m familiar with how most of this works, I came from security, I’m not an actual gree horn. What I need to know is the cause. What is it?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not sure if you read the report I drafted, but the main impediment is a nearly sentient ‘clonal tree hive’. Like I said we don’t have good recognizance on the planet. But as far as we can determine, it is expanding instead of just barely making it through. I fear there is even a small chance that it will survive.”
“No, there is no chance, Pando will die, of that I’m certain. The only small chance it had was if it had somehow gotten full system access right at the start. As soon as the monsters hit level 100 and ‘unlock’ their real power it won’t stand a chance.”
“I hope so,” I say slightly more relaxed, though still careful to show a respectful tone. “
“Send in three orbital class recognizance stations”
I take a step back widening my eyes.
“Ohh, I never said it wasn’t dangerous and the delay it is causing is annoying. If it survives long enough it might cascade into a lengthened planetary transition. If it goes beyond the standard 250 years and allows the other heritage sites on the planet to survive nearly intact will be even worse. Forcing the system to use raw Aether instead of the perfectly attuned version harvest from itself planet will also delay Earth’s integration and by consequence the other planets in the region. Earth is the linchpin of the expansion push in that corner of the galaxy, or did I get that wrong from the report?”
“No, you seem to have a solid grasp of the situation,” I say trying to hide my surprise.
“Well, just tell me when the stations are in place and what you learn.”
I nod quietly filling out as he goes back to reading more and more reports at the quick speed only an extremely high level person could hope to achieve.
Three orbital-class recognizance stations. We only had about a dozen in the entire galaxy and he was sending three just to this planet. The cost of active operations is enormous, but he is the administrator. Now even the infinitesimal chance Pando may have had before just evaporated.
With accurate real time information, manipulating the system into increasing its priority will be a breeze and help eliminate this nuisance even earlier instead of letting it linger on.