“Wha-what do you mean by this?” Lucas stuttered.

“I mean that you die,” the ancient tree said casually. “But don’t worry; I can bring you back to life, as long as there’s no mortal injury in your body. You probably only need to be dead for a few minutes, anyway.”

“Wait. Is this all this seed does? Couldn’t he have killed himself in any other way?” he asked finding it a little suspicious.

“Yes, he could, but he wouldn’t be able to resuscitate afterwards. Other ways tend to leave injuries in the body; even poisons or suffocation leave injuries. But that isn’t even the great issue; it’s the soul.” Explained the tree calmly, now almost looking like the wise tree Lucas expected to find the first time. “When you die, the soul leaves the body almost immediately. What the seed Elanésis does is bring you very close to death, without you actually dying, because the soul remains attached for a few more minutes. That’s also why he needed my help; even if the soul remains attached, someone with strong life energy is required to bring the user back to life.”

Hearing that, Lucas recalled the words he read in Faruk’s journal: “Yet, I believe I have discovered the reason for my failures—its profound affinity with death energy. Despite my proficiency in necromancy, the fact that I am alive deems me incompatible.”

“Faruk mentioned something about this in his journal, or the System did, I guess,” Lucas said, nodding.

“What did it say?” The tree seemed interested.

“It said that the orb seemed to be a mistake for having such requirements.”

The tree was silent for a time, which Lucas interpreted as processing what he said. And he was proved right a few minutes later.

“You know, I never got involved with his research, so I didn’t know how he planned to connect with the orb, but now I know why he wanted the orb in the first place. The fact that the orb requires the person trying to connect with it to be dead really seems like a mistake, an impossible feat, at least for anyone on our level.”

“Didn’t you say I had a chance?” Lucas said a little flustered.

“Yes, but that was only a guess based on your constitution; I didn’t know anything about the process behind the necromancer’s theories. But don’t worry; I still maintain that you have a chance.”

Lucas was a little nervous, and for good reason; he had already lost the treasures of the necromancer, and the next step probably involved him dying. It almost seemed like he was joining some weird cult instead of just acquiring something valuable. And the last words of the tree didn’t leave him any less anxious.

Did he even trust the tree enough to bring him back to life? What guarantees did he have? Despite his doubts, he couldn't find a reason for the tree wanting to kill him. He didn't get the feeling that the tree was nefarious in any way from Faruk’s account, and he also didn't think they would gain anything from his death. He was probably more valuable to them alive, based on that mysterious extra condition the tree required.

Taking him out of his thoughts, the tree asked him to read aloud from Faruk’s journal anything that could be related to the orb. And that’s what Lucas did for the next hour.

“There’s something I haven’t asked you,” the tree said when he was in the middle of a sentence. “How did you know that the orb was underneath the ground?”

“What do you mean?” Lucas asked, confused by the question; he didn’t know how could he not have seen it.

“I knew it was there, because I have the domain over this forest. The necromancer knew because he was a mage with death affinity, so he could sense it. But you don’t seem well-versed in magic.”

“I’m not… I don’t know how I knew, I just sensed it. Rick could feel the aura from the fog, isn’t that the same thing?”

“No, the fog was created by the necromancer and it was meant to be sensed. The orb, however, isn’t emitting any specific aura; it’s just there.”

The tree waited for an answer, and Lucas had none to give. But he thought of something else. “If you have control over the forest, why didn’t you know about Rick, and me?”

“I had been sleeping. My fellow trees are still sleeping while we talk. The life of trees isn’t a very agitated one, so we sleep when nothing is happening. Otherwise we might keep looking to an empty forest for thousands of years,” the tree said and Lucas thought he could hear a tinge of sadness in its voice, but he wasn’t sure.

“Shouldn’t we wake them up then, for the next part?”

“No, let them sleep a while longer,” the tree said, sounding mysterious.

“All right, then what’s the next step?”

“You have to learn how to interact with the orb. If you can feel it, you should be able to get in touch with it. But I can’t help you with that.”

…

Lucas left after a few complaints. The tree talked about getting in touch, like he just needed to send a DM to the damn orb. How was he supposed to do this if he didn’t even know how he felt it in the first place? However, there was no use arguing with the tree; it was as stubborn as a mule. That’s what a million years will do to you, Lucas thought while he headed for the place where he found the skeleton. Whatever he needed to do, would be done there.

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He asked the tree how it would help him being so far away, but it said that it could change bodies for a few hours if needed and to call when he was ready to try.

Lucas arrived at the clearing about two hours later. He wasn’t particularly fast because he had a feeling it would take a while for him to figure this stuff out. He noticed with a tinge of relief that he could still feel the orb when he arrived. It was as clear as ever, like a beacon. Now the question was, how did he feel it?

…

After thirty useless minutes trying to figure this out, he decided to take a different approach. How did he know the orb was related to death? That one was easier, it was because it seemed to emanate the same aura Faruk’s fog had. But according to the tree, that shouldn’t be possible.

After a few minutes, he reached a conclusion. It could only be his constitution. That was the only different thing about him. He wasn’t a mage, he didn’t even know the first thing about it, but he could still feel the aura from the orb. Does my constitution allow me to feel auras? What’s an aura, even?

He felt like that was a question for the tree, but there was no way he would go back just to ask this. No, he could figure it out by himself. He had to. It was time to trust his mind again.

…

It can be the aura, he decided after a few hours. He had felt the aura from the orb and also felt an aura coming from the tree. Those were life and death auras. He couldn’t be sure, but he imagined there was more. Regardless of this, he felt them because they were life and death; he believed that might have a connection with his constitution that let a symbol next to his Vitality.

Vitality was life, and that would explain why he could feel life auras. Now the death ones… it was a stretch, but he came to the conclusion that his constitution might not be so simple as to increase his Vitality or regeneration; it might include the opposite of that too. He wasn’t sure what that entails, but it was his best theory at the moment.

The next part, however, would be the hardest because up to this point, he had only used his constitution in a passive way, meaning: faster regeneration. Or in this case, sensing life and death auras. However, what he needed to do next was to use it in an active way: trying to connect with the orb, which was the closest to magic that he had ever gotten since coming to this planet. He was excited but also hesitant.

Lucas was hesitant; he didn’t even know how to begin. He wasn’t deluded about his intelligence; it was good, but not on a genius level. He relied on the knowledge of others to learn. If there was a book about it, he would read it until he understood. In this case, however, there was no precedent that he knew of. He would have to figure out everything by himself. It seemed like a simple task, but it touched on aspects that he wasn’t even introduced to. How does a person from Earth come into contact with an orb buried several feet below the ground?

…

Three hours later, it was beginning to get dark, and he was still there, having made no progress. He could still feel the orb, but he couldn’t do anything else. Now lying on the ground, he was considering whether he should just start digging, but rejected the idea. If it was so simple, the tree would’ve said so.

The journal might have something useful. There’s no point in me staying here through the night, if I don’t have anything new to try. That part of the forest didn’t have any beasts, but Lucas didn’t fancy sleeping next to a necromancer skeleton; that was a little too much, even for him. And since it was hard to read during the night, he decided to start fresh the next day.

…

The next day, the journal really proved to be useful. Surprisingly, it wasn’t due to the entries about the forest, but one of his early studies. In there he was talking about how to feel the mana around you and reach out to them, a concept he had learned after becoming a mage. Lucas tried to feel the mana but had no luck. But there was one thing he could feel, and it was below him. He would try to apply the same concepts the journal talked about but instead of mana, he would use aura.

Faruk said one had to feel the mana inside them, to only then feel the mana outside. Lucas had gone the other way with the auras. He had felt them outside, but he never thought about if he had his own. With this idea, he seated lotus style, only because it felt right, and then tried to look inside himself.

Now, that was a hard thing to do for anyone who never had experience with meditation or anything like that. There was always some annoying thought getting in the way, some discomfort in the body, or just a general boredom. But Lucas didn’t find it so difficult, probably because sometimes he did so without even thinking when he needed to calm down and analyze the situation. The difficult part, however, was to find what he was looking for.

After thirty minutes, he sensed something. It was very tiny compared to the orb or the fog, but he could definitely feel there was an element of death somewhere inside him. It scared him. It felt like having a parasite living inside his body, but he soon came to the conclusion that this aura wasn’t an invader; it was a part of him now. He had mixed feelings about it, but that was a reflection for another day.

He didn’t feel the life aura, however, and he didn’t keep looking. The death aura was the most important for the next part. According to the journal, reaching his inner mana, in this case, his aura, should be easier than the outside’s. He only needed to extend his consciousness and wrap around it.

He tried for the next couple of minutes, and suddenly felt a link. If he had to describe it, it was like catching a fish in the hook; he felt a ping in his conscience, and it was exhilarating. He didn’t feel any pain from it either. Now onto the next step. He had to expand his aura and reach the others around him, in this case, the orb below. He tried, and though it was difficult at first, he now had a little control over it. The journal said that was one of the basic steps of mana control, so it shouldn’t be so hard.

…

After hours of attempt and fail, Lucas finally managed to have some success. Apparently what Faruk considered basic was something very hard for any normal person, because sweat was pouring out of every pore on Lucas’s body after hours of that. But just as he managed to bring some of his aura out, he met another problem: the distance.

He could only extend his aura nine inches from his body, and that was after training for another couple of hours. He had no idea how long it would take to go from inches to yards, or even a lot of them. But by now he was starving; his stock from before he entered this woods were now gone, and he needed to hunt again. The problem was he hadn’t seen a single animal besides a few birds high in the air ever since he got there.

The death aura must have scared them away, he thought. That meant he would have to go back in order to hunt. That made him uneasy. Will everything still be the same when I come back? If he was still sticking to this world as a game-like world theory, this should be some sort of dungeon, and he wasn’t sure if everything would reset or not once he left.

He thought about going to the tree to ask about this but waved it off. If everything did reset, he would only need to do everything again; the second time it would be even easier, and he wasn’t afraid. With this reassurance, he set off, excited to go back hunting after so long. He realized he now missed it as much as his studies.

“Time to see if I still got it,” he smiled.