Manning

Although it wasn’t my original plan, the roaming trial seemed like a nice addition to the forest. When the new corrupted sylva had been born I was shocked and worried. Ash had already explained that sylvas were awakened trees spirits and had the ability to awaken other trees that had lived long enough to become sentient, but nothing in my forest should have met that threshold. The fact that the original sylva had picked her silver pear tree as a home had been purely happenstance.  

When she’d awoken the dark willow, I didn’t know what to think. Nothing happened for ages and I assumed that it was a failed awakening, until that thing peeled off the trunk. It was about 4 feet tall and thin, like a few of the willow switches wound around each other. With two arms and legs that looked like disjointed twigs and a knob around where one would assume the face was, it was just creepy. That's right, assume. The thing had no face.

It peeled itself off the floor of the forest and stood swaying in the wind for almost an entire hour, knob facing in the direction of my core. Then the second one split off the tree, significantly smaller. Another hour later and the smaller shoot off waltzed over to the closest willow and merged with it, designating it a hearthtree.  

There wasn’t another birth, so I assumed the sylva’s awakening and birthing was completed and let Ash know. I was worried about telling her sooner in case she put herself in danger if it wasn’t a sylva after all.  

My dryad companion arrived at the site and confirmed my fears. ‘It just feels wrong.’ I moved the two awakened willows deeper into the forest where I’d been growing the pyrolusite oak trees, the mixture of the two dark feeling trees and the blackened metal forest meshing well together. A few minutes later I noticed the other dark willow trees along the river bank starting to wilt.  

At first I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Well, obviously they were dying because I’d moved two of them, but I didn’t know why. Upon further investigation I realized that all their roots were interconnected and when I’d removed the two I severed the chain. They were still individual trees but it looked to me like they’d also relied on each other for energy, a lot like Ash’s story about the first Dryad.

Naturally, I decided to move the rest of them into the section of my forest that was rapidly beginning to feel like some sort of haunted trial. I had my hedgehogs rush a bunch of willow seeds out to the river bed and poured mana into them until they’d grown up tall and normal, most of the sapients wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyways.

With all this maintenance, and the sylva aberrations resting in their willows, I was feeling inspired to create a new trial. A trial of bravery, or whatever. Really I didn’t care so much about what the trial was “testing” so much as I did that it was beautiful and unique. The first trial confirmed how viable it was to farm a sapient for the passive energy they gave off, but it had no tact and I wasn’t likely to employ it again, regardless of how often that priest and his collection of fanatics begged me.  

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

But with all this spooky stuff coming together, I finally had an idea. Recently the villagers had started camping out in my forest or partying here until all hours of the night. The passive energy was really nice, but I still needed my rest. Having an intruder in the dungeon felt a lot like a slight itch. Scratching it at first was really satisfying, but eventually it just drove me crazy. I’d also noticed I couldn’t use my mana as efficiently in the areas they were located in. I was tired of rushing to regrow the hardwood trees for the villagers to build with in the two hours between when the cult left and the dwarves arrived.  

To this end I decided I’d build a “wandering trial”. Although I didn’t have traditional floor bosses like Cara, the concept of a wandering boss fascinated me. I’d already created one with my impromptu assignment of a section of the forest to the uniboar and his concubines, but I wanted a wandering forest too. With my ability to control the paths and change the effects of distance in my borders, I could make it so that anyone who entered after dark was led to this new dark forest area, regardless of the path they were taking.  

I’d make it a random thing, that way it felt more like the forest was moving than the path changing. After all if the first path led straight to the dark forest every time, it would be pretty obvious that the forest wasn’t moving. Rather I’d just have it change after a random turn.  

The blackened metallic trees already made the area very gloomy looking, and the depressing aura from the two awakened willows made it feel that way too. I hardened the dirt in the area and killed most of the grass, replacing it with naked bushes and bramble with the occasional root sticking up as a trip hazard.  

I even made the path thin out as it entered the patch of land and allowed entrance from multiple areas of the forest. With the flora settled on for now, I decided it was time for the fauna. Step one was bats. What was the point of a dark, spooky forest if there weren’t bats there to terrify you. I had the small colony of bats I’d been breeding elsewhere move into the area and invited a few ravens and crows as well.  

Along with the regular cave-bats turned forest-bats, I had a few of Cara’s dropper bats as well. Not only would the adventurers have to watch out for willow trees trying to choke them, but even the dark oak trees would be concealing something dangerous, blending in amongst the darkened bark and awaiting an unfortunate soul to pounce on.   

I also decided it was time to start trying to cross breed the creatures and attempt to get something unique, I wanted my own spin on the bats. To this end I had squirrels and spearrels moved into the area as well, nesting them with forest-bats and dropper-bats alike. The creatures would not usually be able to mate and reproduce, but I fully intended to flex my ‘dungeon core semi-god like’ muscles and make it happen.  

Even though these kinds of things happened over the night, they also didn’t happen overnight. I assisted with the insemination of both female squirrels and bats, but the pregnancies needed time to be carried to term, even if it was being rushed by the changes made to dungeon creatures. The best I could do was make sure the pregnancy took, usually through an influx of mana and very fine control during the mating process, and hope that the creatures weren’t too deformed to salvage.

I’d managed to make something out of the near-stillborn mess that was once Rocky, so I was fairly confident that as long as the babies came out with a pulse I’d be able to make it work.  

The trial wouldn’t be ready to start testing the villagers for a few weeks, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t start sending the message. I started making paths twist and turn, having creatures rustle the bushes in the dark, and sent bats to scare the idiots stupid enough to wander out of the safety of their fire. Nothing deadly, but I was setting the theme for the new trial.