Haha! I told you you'd get 2 chapters a week, and I will not disappoint! Here's the first chapter!

As usual, Chapter 27 is found: HERE

In the mean time, Chapter 26 is below! If you see an errors, or edits that should be made, let me know! I read every comment!

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— POV Mathias —

It… it connected! I can feel a link to them! Yes! I officially have pets now! The first step to any relationship is communication! I should send them warm feelings…

(Jard) ‘Hello? Are you the tree? Did you see our papa around here?’

…

…

…

They can speak to me!? How could this happen! I thought I only have ! That should only be able to express and sense emotions! What’s going on! Also, how in the world can I understand them? I need to test if I can communicate with them.

‘Testing, testing, 1,2,3? Hello? Can you hear me? I’ve never talked with anyone with this - can you hear me?’

…

…

…

Damn, it doesn’t work. Meanwhile they are still both looking at the tree, better reply with how I know I can. First, I’ll give them an emotion for happiness, to signify yes, then sorrow, to signify that their papa is not here anymore. Hopefully they get the message.

— POV Torgue/Jard —

(Torgue) After Jard asked his question, the tree didn’t answer for a little bit, but then it gave off a feeling of happiness then sadness. What does that mean? I wish it would talk with us to make its message clear.

‘Jard, do you understand what it’s trying to say?’

‘I think so Torgue, I think so ‘sniff’. It’s a tree, so of course it would respond slowly. But I think that it is saying that yes, it is the tree that is talking with us, and that he feels sad about the second part of the message. It could be it feels bad for us for us being lost, or… it means… that it’s sad for papa.’

‘NO, Jard! It can’t be! I can feel papa! He can’t be dead! He has to be here somewhere!’

‘I can feel him too, but there isn’t any other reason for the tree to answer that way unless he’s gone!’

‘… Maybe, maybe Jard,maybe he is dead, but his spirit lives on! Maybe the tree absorbed part of him and they combined somehow! This has to be it, this has to be it!’

‘Torgue, calm down! I don’t know if it’s possible, we can ask the tree and see if it can tell us about papa! I miss him just as much! ‘Sniff’. I really hope he lives on somehow…’

(Torgue) ‘Tree, are you papa? You’re papa, right?’

— Mathias —

Awww, poor kittens. ‘Sniff’ I could hear what they were arguing about, but I can’t speak with them… Little guys, I may not be your ‘papa’, but I can be your new ‘papa’. I’ll take care of you guys.

I’ll give them just a happy emotion, that way, in the future, I can decide to tell them the truth if I feel it’s right. Otherwise, these guys need a father figure, a safe place to rest, and food, something that I can provide. And once I can control my leaves better, I can pet them!!! They look so soft, I miss sitting at my computer with a lap cat to stroke when I needed a break.

Yes, my new pets-I mean sons, I will be your papa. Depend on me, and protect me, and I shall give the stars to you.

— POV Torgue/Jard —

(Jard) It… could it be… papa? I know it’s different, but I’ve never heard of a sentient tree before that could speak. I’ve heard of Dryads being able to commune with trees, but only in very simplistic means. Actual answers to our questions, and while slow for us, immeasurably faster than Dryads’ trees, is unheard of.

(Torgue) ‘Papa! Yay, papa’s here! Papa’s here! He’s different, but he’s still here! No one else has this type of mana, it fits! Right Jard!?’

‘I think… it might be him! He’s changed, but you’re right, his mana is here, and he gave us food and tried to talk with us! I think… We’re home!’

‘Yay! We’re finally… home… zzzzzzzzzz’

— Mathias —

Aww, they fell asleep on top of each other, how cute. It looks like I’ve successfully filled in their father role. It’s a shame that I can’t talk with them, but when I get the opportunity to I’ll truthfully tell them that he and I merged to become one, which is basically what happened. In a really dumbed-down way. I mean, there is part of him inside of me, his mana, so I’m not lying, just stretching the truth. Either way, I cant wait to have some entertainment from them in my glade! No more boring days wasting away! I got used to all of my near-life ending dangers, and with nothing distracting me, I’ve just been vegging out watching the wind blow my leaves around. A man can only take so much magic training, guard training, growing, optimizing, and planning for the future before he starts to burn out. With this, I can relieve my boredom without doing much and take much needed breaks from my solitude. I’m still scared shitless, well, at least that’s what my other thought-process keeps informing me.

I also got their names from their dialogue - Jard and Torgue, awful names if I do say so myself. I wanted to use Yin and Yang, but they are actually not that far off in personality, it doesn’t fit my view of Yin and Yang. Torgue looks like a tiger, but I can’t call him Tigger due to the lack of black stripes… What about Blaze? Nah, too chuunibyou. Fine, King it is. He has the bearing and the presence of one anyways with that awful pressure. I’m an emperor, or sovereign, so it would look bad if I didn’t have any Kings under me haha. Now for Jard, there’s so many cool names for black cats and Jaguars, but which one should I use? It can’t be something evil, both of these cats are really nice and cute. Damnit, I can’t think of a cool name that isn’t taken by crappy teenage books or overused in media! I can’t very well give one a nickname and not the other, fuuuu. I guess they both get to keep their names due to my ineptitude, this is depressing…

‘Sniff’

Back to reality! Since they’re sleeping, I should start on my priority goal: being able to pet my two new cats! I have reactive and fast growth, but actually wiggling around is really limited. I even have spines I can soften in order to brush their hair with, but no fine-motor control. I can’t think of any plants that do what I want, damnit! I’ll have to see if I can evolve that ability using normal means instead of knowing the specific genes that activate it. I hope this gamble pays off - usually anytime I’ve done this it comes with both pluses and minuses. Hopefully the minuses are minuscule, or don’t affect me. Guess I should check it out!

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Genetic Mutation: Dexterous Movement

Grants the ability to quickly and finely manipulate your body. The larger the body part, the slower it moves.

Cost: 450

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That… Seems reasonable! Woohoo! Nice! Instant buy! Ok, I should test this out first… Yes! I can wave my body all around! Nice! Can’t wait to bitch slap some fools with my mighty serrated blades of doom! Also, I finally get to pet my new pets! Let’s move this branch…

‘Crack’

… ow …

You’ve gotta be FUCKING KIDDING ME! What the fuuuuuuuck, that hurt so bad! Argggghhhhhh!!!!

Note to self: Branches with bark on it will fucking HURT when bent or broken. Shit. Stupid ability didn’t tell me that! So only my roots and non-bark stems can be moved without damaging myself. At least the damage isn’t too bad - just one of my branches cracked all the way around. It’s like having a cracked lip that was healing then suddenly opening your mouth as large as you can, opening all of the cracks and just calling yourself a dumb mother-fucker. Looks like I need special moving branches, kinda like vines, that I can manipulate without cracking open my skin and bleeding.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And… There we go, a stem for each of them with a hardened-spine comb and small tendrils at the end to pick off any bugs or twigs from within their fur. They’re so passed out that they aren’t even moving when I’m picking out the debris that’s caked in their fur, in fact they’re snuggling closer together. Ahhh, this is bliss! Pure bliss!

Hmmm, but I can’t see these thorns doing any damage to these guys, and they are even little cubs. I’ve been wondering what to do about my abysmal attack power - right now all I really have is poisons. I could use spells, but all I’ve really done is nit-pick about what symbols I use and trying to increase my efficiency. I’ve mastered the most basic of spells in earth, water, air, light, and ice. I haven’t made much inroads into dark, fire, and lightning. Dark because I have no idea what symbol I should use, the closest I could think of was a skull or a spooky ghost. No way am I going to try to use a pentagram in there - that’s definitely dark, but it might be like a summoning type of spell. Plus, they might throw fire when they are summoned! So I’m stuck, both symbols are abysmally poor at producing a magical effect. I can barely get anything to happen with them. For fire and lightning, it should be obvious. Both are mortal enemies to my species - like hell I’m going to catch my field on fire! Those magics can just stay in my ignorance field for now. But the rest I’ve managed to make a small ball of the element appear.

My offensive options that I should work towards should be either earth, water, or ice. But I have a problem with ice - since I can’t control my mana very far from my body, it gets really cold on my leaves and it ends up damaging my leaves and it hurts. As for water, I would either need to use a lot of it, or maybe use a little, high pressure jet of it. Neither of which I can do. My mana pool is still abysmal… I can only hold 25 mana now, and when I’m using my mana it doesn’t regenerate. Sigh. A simple costs me 5 mana, controlling more water quickly drains all of my mana, and it’s still a small amount. As for a water jet, all the power I could put into it was only at the level of a water pick, great for shooting down annoying flies, not much else. I have been using it for training my guards though, it’s improved their reaction speed by quite a bit! Haha, they should be ready for an attack from any angle! They are the current first and last lines of defense! I tried casting more than one spell at a time, giving them more of a challenge, which actually worked thanks to my ability! But, again, my mana pool restricts my abilities a lot.

Earth magic is probably my best chance at damaging an enemy with my limited mana pool. Speaking of mana pools, do these two little tykes have mana stones? Yes, yes they do. Sigh. Now I have to be ultra protective of them. Hopefully I can protect them when the time comes! But I still don’t want to have one… Well, maybe one? On my tree? That could work, but not right now. In the future I’ll probably grow one, but I’m still afraid of what may happen. Even though it would be sad, if people come to hunt these guys and kill them, I still need to survive. I need to be able to cut my losses and restrict the damage done to my main body. It’s fine if they destroy the tree looking for mana stones, and if they don’t find any it might make them go away. But if they find even one, I’m sure those greedy bastards would for sure look all over the field and start digging up the ground, I might even be killed! That’s a no-no!

Their mana stones are pretty normal and what I would expect. The powerful fire and light mana in Torgue and the stealthy, compressed power of fire and dark. They must have gotten the fire aspect from their father, but I wonder what their mother looked like? Something with wings, or maybe the males and females look different? I don’t think that guy had wings… but he was hurt before he came here, maybe he lost them? He was a dog type though, and these are definitely cats… Fuuu, without information it’s useless to conjecture further. I’ll just assume they are some hybrid of some sort.

With Earth Magic I can definitely do some damage, and it’s perfect for traps! Some pits covered by my roots and some dirt can capture wild animals, if they ever come, to feed my two new pets. Spiked traps can be used for enemies of the state, I’m sure growing a mana stone in the middle of one would attract and fuckers that want to die. When/if I decide to get mana stones. I guess I should start practicing Earth magic to kill my enemies.

I can mold the earth using my , without symbols or anything, but it won’t be super efficient for the future. If I learn the spells via symbols, I can see how the mana flows and does its thing, then I can apply it to just learning it naturally. However, doing the other way doesn’t work very well since it doesn’t help me put the symbol in the right place, or even find the correct symbol to use. With my , it takes a lot more attention than drawing circles does. Leaving some of the processing to the spell helps a lot, even if it’s not as mana efficient. If anything, I have mana to spare! Well, it replenishes really quickly. But mostly it’s time and processing efficient.

Hmmm, so a pit. What symbol should I use? Ah, an engineering symbol for a hole! I can imagine cross-hairs over a circle, and imagine those cross-hairs on the ground signifying where the hole should go! Perfect! Damn, just that symbol didn’t work, the mana just fizzled. I guess I need the earth symbol in there too. Since earth is the main component, I should have that in the middle, but how do I put in the other symbol? Hmmm… It’s lopsided no matter where I put it… I’m trying to remember how the wizard made his… It looks like I’m missing connecting lines. But how do I connect the symbols together and balance the power… Damnit, magic is hard.

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…

Finally, after the 20th time, I found a configuration that worked! Haha, once again, I prove myself a magical genius! I ended up drawing a triangle around the central earth symbol, with three smaller pit symbols filling up the corners. With this, using up all of my mana, a small pit is formed by compressing the earth around, and creating stones as well. It’s still easy for me to pierce through with my roots, but it should keep anything I trap inside for me to flood the area with a toxin. I think for now I’ll keep my pits nonlethal, and just create spikes or poison to kill my trapped game.

Now for spikes! Hmmm… This should be easy! A spike symbol is a fucking spike hahahaha! Just substitute the pit symbol for a spike symbol… and voila! I can create a small spike! Again, it took all of my mana, but I made a sharp, hard spike appear! Nice! I have passive defenses and active offensive magic now! Yes!

Chapter 27! HERE