Thanks for all of the support everyone! I'm glad I can continue writing for you all! Leave a rating/comment if you enjoy it or have any suggestions, comments, or edits!

And, as I promised, the 2nd chapter of the week! Woohoo!

Link to Chapter 28: A Worthy Sin, HERE!

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— POV Mathias —

My two cats are frolicking about my field, chasing an aggressive hog around. That stupid fucking hog woke me up from my sleep, digging up my roots near the edge of the field. Apparently, since I’ve been stockpiling my natural energy, or GP, even dispersing my energy throughout my roots has given me a healthy glow everywhere. It apparently even got to the point that the cubs, Jard and Torgue, woke up and said ‘Pretty’ as they looked up at my tree and throughout the grassy field.  It made me feel pretty accomplished, if I do say so myself. I thought it wouldn’t matter that much, due to my mana aura being large and imposing, but apparent fucking-ly, pigs are fucking greedy and thought it could come munch on my grassy toes. Fuck that, I grumbled to my new guards, and had them work in tandem with my Slaughter guards, with their offspring watching from the side. My original 13 are about the size of an apple now, and each are fast, strong, and can use some simple magic. The younger generation is slightly weaker, but more specialized. They work better in small teams. Of course, I base this only on their effective ability to attack small birds that fly close that I deem ugly or potentially hazardous, like woodpecker-like birds. I did, at first, have trouble teaching the cubs that the bugs were our friends, and not ‘tasty treats’, but thankfully with some disappointing tones, and showing favoritism to the bugs when the cubs tried to eat them, they learned to only ‘play’ with them. This still involved them frightening them to death, but on the other hand it did make my bugs fly faster all around.

While the other bugs have been terrorized - I mean trained, June’s taken to hiding within Jard’s fur, blending in. At first Jard wasn’t too keen on letting June stay, but apparently he learned to appreciate having June take care of him when he rolled around in some grass and got more than a few ticks covering his body. For some reason Torgue and June didn’t have great interactions, maybe because his boisterous, energetic behavior was too much for her and she couldn’t hide on him. Because of that, I’ve reinvented the flea comb and tick remover to take care of him. Occasionally one or two of the other Slaughter Guards, or their brood, may come over and help, but it can’t be helped if they fly away before they are done due to him running off.

Back to the stupid boar, it’s really sloppy. Their teamwork is okay, with Torgue slashing at its flanks, chasing the boar, and bleeding him out. It’s also good for my roots - I can already start to feel the increased GP I’m accumulating. Jard runs off to the side a bit, every once in a while jumping onto the back of the boar, or trying to attack the jugular. My Slaughter Guards are running distraction, flying in front, landing on its face, goading and confusing the boar. But they are just big bugs, they can’t do much damage to the boar. Even the two cubs, while their small bodies pack a ton of power, their inexperience shows in times like these.

Torgue is missing the tendons on the leg, and is only superficially scratching the back legs. He must be trying to imitate something he’s seen before, but the damage is minimal at this state. Jard is also trying to copy someone, but is missing the fleshy part of the neck and is instead only biting the shoulder meat or bone. I wish I could give pointer, but being mute and all doesn’t help much. They will have to learn how to fight by themselves, the best I can do is give them encouragement when they need it. Of course, I’m ready at any time to activate one of my several pits I’ve dug around the area, but this is good practice for them, so I’ll leave them to it.

Should be any time now, oooh, the boar is going into a raged state, it’s not running anymore and it’s making some impressive squeaking noises… ah! Torgue got to one of the tendons on its hind leg, it can’t run anymore, that’s why it’s digging in! This is when a hog is at its most dangerous! I need to send them caution emotions and my true worrying emotion!

I’m ready with an earth spell prepped, it just needs a last surge of mana to activate it. Shit, this is tense! It’s an old-fashioned stare-down! It looks like they don’t know what to do at this stage - may the force be with you young padawans. I wonder what they will do now? Technically they could just harass the boar and wait for it to bleed out, but something’s telling me that the boundless energy f cubs won’t translate well into waiting… and as I though, there they go, fuuuu.

Man, I forgot how fast they can run! They’re doing lightning-quick attacks, in and out, in and out. It’s needlessly done, however they are doing it fairly skilled. Several times they’ve barely dodged counter-attacks, and… wait a second, damn, they aren’t as skilled as I thought. My Slaughter Guards are helping them out by sitting on their bodies, and when they boar gets too close they jump out at the eyes to scratch. It’s pretty gruesome, but effective. The boar is blind now, uselessly flailing around, tearing up… my roots. Damnit, they always say parenting hurts, but come on! I’m sure they weren’t actually talking about your kids taking their nails and scraping off your skin as they run around, geez!

In that time, it appears that they actually managed to bleed the hog out. Haaa, really? Torgue is standing up all proud, like he did everything hahaha! That’s the way Jard! He tackled him over, and now they’re play wrestling. Really, after that long chase, they still have this much energy? The spirit of youth is strong with these two. Oh well, I gotta take care of the hog anyways. If I leave it to them, they’ll just get all bloody and the carcass won’t be cleaned properly. Besides, I don’t want my pets to get sick from biting the intestines, or eating the balls of the hog. Gross. Not while I’m here. While I can’t lift the hog, I can drag it towards the spring so that I can clean and gut the beast. They’ll still have to eat it raw, I’m still not allowing fire magic around me. No way.

Thankfully, I have , along with my hardening and thorn skills, so cutting the hog is easy, especially since I can apply a lot of roots to help apply pressure. I can’t lift the hog physically to bleed it, but I expertly (Well, I really just made a huge gash) cut the neck of the hog and made a small pit below it to hold the pouring blood. Hopefully it’s enough. By now the two cubs have come over and are looking at the boar with shining eyes, wanting to jump at it. Sheesh, even me giving them a stern emotion, and trying to signify waiting is needed, they look like they’ll pounce at any moment. Guess there’s no use. I’ll slice off a leg for each of them to eat and play around with. AFTER I wash it though, even though it’s hard, I’m trying to eradicate ticks and fleas from the area. They don’t eat plants, so I can only poison them from the air, but that may bring about a disaster, so I’m holding off on that side of things.

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There, take it you greedy cubs! Not even waiting for me to finish preparing it, You’re lucky I even cut off the scent glands from the legs! I’ll have to make sure later to somehow get them clean again… sigh. Looks like they’re enjoying the meat at least, so cute. They really are more like tigers and jaguars, they chew on the bones a lot, and don’t seem to play with their food so much.

Now that the meat is bled out, I can skin the pelt off to give them a warm, soft space to sleep in. But it probably smells, and even though I can’t smell, I don’t want my tree to be know as a smelly tree in the future. I’ll try and prepare the pelt as best I can, but I really don’t know much other than it needs pee to cure it or something. Ammonia, I think, but I’m not sure. I’ll just rub it all along some of my grass after I thoroughly scrub it in the water and dry it using some of my fire mana. I still can’t get over that - the dichotomy of grass having the ability to cast fire magic… It’s ridiculous! Natural selection is probably frowning at me right now, I’m a blight that goes against the grain.

After the pelt, comes the meat. I don’t really have the ability to cure it correctly, but by digging a pit, and filling it with a ton of ice spells, then sealing it off, I have a primitive freezer! The meat does get mightily freezer-burned, but it’s better than leaving most of it to waste! I also siphon off a small bit of meat for my Slaughter Guards to munch on. They’re draining me dry of my sap, they’ve gotten so big! I need to subsidize my costs somehow, and this is the best way, well, the best way I can think of!

Now that that is taken care of, I guess I should continue expanding my area of influence. Slowly, I’ve been spreading my tree roots further and further underground and further and further around, I think I’ve managed to spread for about a mile now. I can’t really feel along these branches unless I forcefully think about it, but I’m slowly expanding my awareness. Right now the best I can tell, without focusing, is how damp or dry the ground is, and whether the area is higher or lower than I am. I really just let my instincts guide my growth their - some of the benefits of being a plant, the roots naturally wind around nutrients, and naturally try to spread as far as possible under my directive. I can taste the different metal compounds below me, and can tell, due to a root withering, or a root not reacting, or a root wrapping even more tightly around the metal, what kinds of metals they are for the most part. Bad metals are metals like cadmium, copper, mercury, lead, etc. Good metals are stuff like calcium, magnesium, or zinc. The neutral metals could be anything, so I’m not bothering with them. I mark them with a potato, but that’s it. I’ll leave them alone for now.

Things are on the up and up! Nothing can go wr-. Nope, not gonna say it. Hopefully I stopped in time. I’m already sweating, that sequence of words is a herald of change, damnit. I was just feeling good!

…

Pheew, nothing’s popped out and scared me yet! Jard and Torgue are lazily gnawing on their bones… I think Jard even fell asleep with the bone in his mouth. Ah, a nice breeze even started… hopefully not a wind of change! NO, I’m fine here! Go away. Fuuuu, Fuuuu! Damn having no mouth, I can’t blow the wind back. Great. Maybe if I ignore it the wind will just go away.

…

Fuck, it just grew stronger, as if to slap me in the face! Hmmm, rain? Oh fuck, this is a storm, a really strong storm.

‘Boom’

Oh shit oh shit oh shit, one of my tree neighbors just exploded when it was struck by lightning! Damnit, the absolute predator of trees, lightning has struck! Poor cubs are in misery, huddling in my branches, I need to act quickly before they get injured! I need to provide a low-resistance channel for a lightning strike to go into the ground. I don’t have time to make a metal lightning rod, nor even the right metals probably. Something I can do is make a salt-ion mixture of sap that will flow near the edge of my bark to guide the electricity down and around my two pets, all the while keeping the damage minimal from my core.

My trunk is creaking and cracking as I quickly make a small tube without planning inside of my trunk. It hurts, but I have to do this! I can’t build this all the way to the top, so-

‘BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM’ ‘CRASH’

It worked, it hurt like hell, part of my trunk blew up, but at least these two cubs are safe. I need to quickly activate my regeneration to the max so I can quickly heal that channel back up and continue protecting my pets. After that, I’m going to pass out, goodbye world… zzzzz…

— Taeya —

It’s been a week since I ran away from my village. I can’t call it home, since I never felt as if the people there truly cared about me. So that’s what I decided to look for, a place to call home. I don’t know where I am, all I know is that I am miles away from their hurtful stares. They can’t hurt me anymore.

A terrible storm hit, I nearly drowned from the raging rainstorm and nearly died to the many lightning strikes that hit the trees around me. I barely survived, but I’m pretty scraped up.

I’m so hungry, I’ve never felt these pangs to this extreme before. I’ve tried eating from roots and berries, but they aren’t enough, but they are all I have. The water in the streams are hit and miss, I could be fine, or I could be bowled over with cramps throwing up. The rain forcefully hydrated me, so that can be seen as a blessing at least. There’s also been several times when a beast seemed to be close, I could sometimes hear rustling in the bushes, but I never saw what it could be. Each time I heard a twig snap or leaves crunch I would run to a hole, a burrow, or up a tree and not move for hours. Luckily, whatever monsters in the forest I heard did not take an interest in me. I don’t know how much longer I can go on - my vision is showing black spots when I walk, I’ve fainted innumerable times, but I just want to find a home. It’s been dark in this forest for so long, and I feel so cold, but I see something twinkling ahead. Maybe, maybe this… is where… I can be at peace.

Find Chapter 28, A Worthy Sin, HERE!