Gareth's POV

The forest itself was rather easy to navigate through, as I made my way to the [Elsewood] village. The village itself was guarded by giant fences surrounding the entire area, with various guards patrolling the perimeter likely for beast attacks. As I strode forward, I was stopped by two guards. I could definitely see the effects of the sickness, they looked rather pale as if they have not been feed for a long period of time.

"Welcome traveller, what business do you have here?" They asked politely. Wow. That's a first.

"I am a healer and I want to help investigate the cause for the 'sickness' of this village" After I said that, their eyes widened and they looked at each other.

"Really? Can you truly help us?" They asked with an expectant look on their faces.

"Not sure, but I can try" I told them as they opened the gates to let me in.

I was met with a rather large village, houses made of wood and various people, mostly children roaming about. They all turned to me as I was still wearing my mask which caused them to be rather confused. None of them seemed to ask me anything though.

As I roamed around, I found some villagers especially the old ones to be extremely pale and you could see even see the bones of their face. There was something really off about this village and all of it points toward this mysterious disease. There was one extremely odd thing about this disease, it affected plants and trees alike. It was roughly spring time in this world but yet the leaves of the trees were dying. You could see various dead plants on the ground, trees with barley any leaves on them, crops dying and rotting extremely fast. It could be a mass famine but why would it affect humans? It was not like the villagers did not have enough to eat. They traded rather frequently with the Kingdom so they had a steady supply of food coming in. 

My healing spells had nearly no effect on the villagers. It was a [Mid Healing] spell that could heal almost any wound. Would I need to use a violet one to resolve this crisis? I did not exactly want to expose that I had that much power. I could only imagine the amount of people who would want to hunt me for the things I knew if word got out. As I strolled around, I came across the center of the village. There was a massive tree in the center and various people roaming around it worshipping it. There were also various plants growing around it. The only problem was: it was healthy. There were no dead leaves around it or any sign of plants rotting. 

I walked to one of the people worshipping the tree and asking him a question

"Might I ask, what does this tree mean?" I asked him

"Ah! This is the holy tree. The tree of life. The undying tree. It is said that it was personally planted by the Goddess of Fertility, and said to be the center of the world" He responded in near fanatical worship.

"So the Goddess of Fertility created this world?" I asked once more wanting to confirm.

"Yes" If the world had the confidence of this guy..

Hmm. Seems like there are people in this world who still believes in God, albeit the wrong one. Since I knew the original creator of this world and he did not mention any planting of a tree to me. This is shady as fuck. How can this tree stay healthy while every other tree in this village is dying? Not to mention the people are growing more and more sick as the day goes. That really leaves one explanation: this tree is absorbing the life force of everything around it. But why now? This tree is rather old and large so it should not just suddenly start siphoning life force. 

"Do you not find it odd that this tree is the only healthy one in this village?" I asked him

He looked appalled as if I just insulted his great ancestors "Of course not! This was the tree that the great Goddess herself planted? How it could be compared to those trees in the village!" He shouted at me.

Alright, guess this is going to lead nowhere. Unless there is a third God I am not aware of this tree is the root of all the problems in this village. But I doubt something as simple as a tree absorbing life force could be considered a 'calmaity' especially consider this tree's range is only around the perimeter of this village. I was stumped. I could't really check out the tree under the eyes of all these people so I went to an inn and decided to wait till night.

Sneaking out of my inn while casting [Mid Light] on myself. I went to check out the tree and it was still the same as before: healthy. Wanting to try something new I willed my mana and placed my hand on the tree [Trees are a plant with a trunk, stem and leaves in most species] the mana glowed bright red color. It was nothing more a simple observational knowledge so it could only amount to [Low Tree]. I could make the tree grow out more branches and leaves but other than that I could do almost nothing. I willed my mana along with the [Low Tree] spell trying to find any oddity in it. A large portion of the absorbed life forced seemed to go to the roots while the rest is spread across the tree itself. 

The roots..

Usually it should be the other way around, the nutrients should travel up the roots but for this it's a backward process. Is there an insect of sorts living in the roots?

Willing more mana into the tree. The roots was not in soil it felt open. A cave..the roots lead to a cave like structure.

With my findings, I went back back to the inn and slept for the day to come.

Waking up, I walked downstairs and left the inn. I went around and began to ask people questions concerning the cave the root is growing into. The results of the answer were that there was a small dungeon south of the village. There seemed to be a large number of arachnida (Spiders) dwelling in the dungeon. Gross. 

I made my way to the dungeon. Didn't look much different than the goblin ones though it did have a large number of dead bodies hanging from the ceilings. Not wanting to deal with spiders I just casted [Mid Light] to see in the dungeon and simply burned any spiders I saw. 

The dungeon eventually lead to opening to a cave which was very well lit. With torches. Why the fuck does this cave have torches in it. As far as I am aware nobody in this village made it this far into the dungeon to begin with. 

Walking across the unusually lit cave I heard some odd chanting. Quickly going to the sides of the cave and slowly walking along the walls I peered in to find a man with a large stature with a black cloak on with various red coloring in it. If there was any gold on there I was about to think the Harth Kingdom was into some shady things..

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

He seemed to trying to draw a formation. It felt very familiar yet different It was the same as the one I was summoned with but the various characters written in it were a bit different. It was definitely a summoning formation.

Casting [High Gravity] on my body which allowed me to run a lot faster than usual and preparing my [High Healing] ring. I jumped in and quickly threw a [Mid Fire] at him. The cloaked figure quickly caught on and stopped the fireball with his own. 

"Who are you infidel to dare disrupt the summoning?" He asked in a low, deep voice.

Didn't give me much of a chance to answer though as he quickly threw ice lances at me. I simply blew them back with fire spells of my own. 

As I was trying to fight the various ice lances coming at me I saw something very troubling. He was willing mana. White mana. This could not end well for me. Before he could complete his spell I quickly chanted off [High Gravity] so he fell to his knees. I quickly pulled out my sword running at him. He completed the spell and I ended up ramming into an ice wall. My sword pierce through the wall and it was stuck... Grasping my head I quickly casted [High Time] on myself my increase the time around by ~40%. I could react to things much faster as the world grew slower. However from his perspective all he should be seeing is me going faster.

He willed more mana into his this time it was a blue color. Dammit there should be no way this guy has this much knowledge..unless...he is using the life force as compensation..! The tree was the damn catalyst for his summoning.

He had an entire village worth of life force to spare to use against me.

His spell was completed and I saw a large electric current coming straight at me. I barley managed to avoid it as it nicked my arm and caused it spasm. Luckily the [High Healing] on my ring activated and healed the neurons on my harm. He was preparing 

I can't fight this guy as long as this steady form of life force. Leaving with no other choice I chanted [Fire is hot due to the conversion of weak oxygen bonds] this time my mana became a bright blue color and threw a massive fireball right at him. He had rather fast reflexes as well so he quickly dodged it. However, I was not aiming for him. He seemed to realized too as it was too late. The fire hit the roots of the tree and the source of his life force. He quickly tried to chant an ice spell to put it out however I was not going to give him that chance so I chanted [High Gravity] to make him fall to his knees once more. 

"Bastard! Do you not know what you are stopping here! You are stopping the Great One from aw--!" He bellowed out. I didn't really care for the cliche Villain line so I punched him the face but due to the increased gravity around him it caused my arm to increase weight increasing the force his face was struck with. Whoops. Forgot about that. Screaming out in and clutching my nearly broken hand I quickly casted [High Healing] on it letting it slowly repair.. As for the guy who was actually hit he was knocked unconscious possible with a cracked skull.

Putting my hand on his head, I began to shift through his memories. Most of it was extremely hazy as I likely just gave him a form of amnesia..but from what I could tell he was part of a very small cult hell bent on summoning something.. though the scriptures he used was extremely vague so they likely had to utilize a large amount of life force so they choose this village to do it. I did find something interesting in his body though a book sloppily written by someone. It was nothing more than a collection of various outdated inventions that would not work or had no use. However, the part that interested me was the research done in Life Force written down. 

[Life Force is a form of energy that travels through all beings that have life. It flows similarly to mana and even travels side by side. However life force travels around the body and never leaks out unless it is forcefully extracted by the casting of a spell or extracted by an external source. 

Life Force cannot be created nor destroyed and could only be transferred from various food we eat to our body. Life force is used frequently to supplement mana and can be transformed in similar ways mana can but extracting life force will make the body weaker and more susceptible to diseases. Extracting life force from the body seems to take from the blood and make it a thinner color.]

Using basic biology I could fill in the information that it lacked..the life force likely is associated with ATP.. though they were not quite the same, it also likely took away energy from the cells of the body..

With this information I could cast [Mid Life] magic and with me filling in the information I could turn it into [High-Mid Life]. There was nothing I could do with it other than extract life force from someone or give life force to people. I could build an amulet of sorts that stores large quantities of life force to use when my mana runs out. Since I can extract life force from trees and animals I could easily create a rather large source. The only problem would be that life force can only exist in a living being so finding an amulet which can store it would hard and pulling such large amounts of life force to myself would make me turn into a human-mana beast hybrid..it was likely why the crazed worshipper used the tree as a middle man.. I could make an amulet out of wood...no but then it would dead... carry a plant around? No..would not be able to store much life force. I would eventually think of some use for this magic other than to kill people slowly.

I looked at the formation drawn at the ground and could not make much sense of it more less read it as I had no idea how summoning magic worked to begin with. Might need to ask the Gods the next time they call me. I made sure the roots of the trees burnt the tree should stop sucking in life force and the village life should return to normal.

With the mission given by the Gods completed. I made my way to the surface.

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The Goddess are going to call once more next chapter and since the MC does not do things for free.. I am looking for things he could ask for.