“Is it really over?... Oh, praise the lord!!!” As I saw the bug fall without slowing down I was sure that it was going to die and as the bug approached the ground a small dust cloud appeared where it landed.
“What an unlucky bastard, the trees didn’t even cushion his fall.” At that moment I was happy for the stupid bug's misfortune and for my fortune.
*Experience reached the desired quantity “Ontopary bush” leveled up to Lv2*
*Experience reached the desired quantity “Ontopary bush” leveled up to Lv3*
“What?... Oh right... If I am in a pseudo-RPG world, there should be at least levels here as well.” I was startled for a second, but then I sighed with relief and slowly relaxed. “But wait I didn’t see any experience in my self awareness skill.” Thinking that the self awareness skill hides information from me got me a little annoyed.
”I leveled up 2 levels just from it, interesting what level was it? And more importantly how did the bug fly off the cliff?” As I mentioned that I looked at my chewed side and checked the damages, half of my body was missing its leaves, some broken twigs and small pieces of chewed leaves could be seen.
Between the damaged leaves and twigs I saw, a bunch of my branches tied up together as they formed a shape of a crude hand that reminded me of mittens.
I was happy that I could move, but at the same time concerned about my damage, if a normal person was missing half of his body he would already be dead. The only moment till now that I was happy for being a useless plant.
“Did my body take this shape because of the two new skills?” When I got the skills I really didn’t pay any attention to them and was more focused on the flying bug. “I should inspect them, what were they called?... Eh, I don’t remember... *Self Awareness*”
*Self Awareness leveled up to Lv2*
***
-Ontopary Bush Lv3-
Experience: 13/30
Rarity: Common
Health: 3/6
Mana: 8/12
Stamina: 4/4
Race: Berry Bush
Status: Intelligent(Unique)
Skills:
*Magic Perception Lv3* *Self Awareness Lv2* *Calm Mind Lv4* *Inspect Lv2* *Rage Lv1* *Killing Intent Lv1* *Pain Resistance Lv1* *Mana Manipulating Lv1* *Wood Element Control Lv1*
Titles:
*Clutz*
***
“Now you show me the experience you bastard of a skill…” I mumbled angrily.
“Well, at least now my *Self Awareness* skill gives me more information.” As I looked at my stats I said with little concern, “All of my stats have been raised, but my mana raised the most. I would be happier if my health rose, it would make me tanky and not so squishy.”
“But who cares about all that, more importantly, I should be able to move right now!” Fastly I checked for the names of the two skills I got last time.
“Hmm *Mana Manipulation* and *Wood Element Control*. I guess that the combination of both skills helped me. Now that I think about it, I still can see this weird little blue aura around me, but not the bits of the red one that was present before, is that somehow related to Mana Manipulation? Anyway, I should inspect them. *Inspect* *Mana Manipulation*, *Inspect* *Wood Element Control*.”
***
*Mana Manipulating* - Let the user release the mana trapped inside his body and give him the ability to control it.
*Wood Element Control* - Let the user control the element of wood with the help of his mana, the element of wood could be found mostly in nature, such as in plants, trees, etc. The control of those elements depends on the user's understanding of the skill.
***
“The mana manipulator has a vague answer as always, but I don’t care anymore because I can move!” I concentrated my mind on my body and tried to control the wood element inside it, but nothing happened.
“Did I do something wrong? The Wood Element Control skill should be passive for me so it should work, maybe I need to release more mana?” I tried to release more mana from my body.
Slowly but surely the blue glow around my body became more vivid as I released more and more mana. I tried to move my crude hand that was made of branches. To my surprise, it worked and like an idiot, I was just waving my arm in front of my face or view, for the next couple of minutes. If I had a face at that moment, its expression would be equal to the face of a person that won the lottery.
“At last!” I said with tears running down my imaginary face.
“I can move! I can do whatever I want, I am free!!” Then I looked at the ground and saw my roots still embedded into the ground. “Ok maybe not exactly free, but still this is progress.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
I looked at the left side of my green body and said “It will be nice if I could make myself a second hand, but won’t the leaves be a nuisance and if I pluck them won’t I get damage?” With that thought in mind, I still tried to form a second hand on my left side.
In a few moments, the branches on my left side formed into a crude shape of a hand that looked exactly like a mitten. I didn’t remove the leaves from it for the fear of damaging myself.
“I should inspect the *Rage* skill that I acquired and categorized it as “useless” while I was eaten alive, *Inspect* *Rage*”
***
*Rage* - The core skill of the rage family, the skill lets the user accumulate rage inside its body and use it to power the skills of the family tree. This skill is rare to find in many people, because of its strong nature of madness, only those who enter this endless state of frenzy can use this skill for their own good.
***
“Compared to those two other skills there are more details about this one, which means I have more affiliation with this skill, wait did the world see me as a mad crazy small bush?!.. And what is a core skill? Inspect *core skill*.”
***
*Core Skill* - A skill that has lots of branch skills, those skills can’t be learned without the core skill, core skills can have amazing abilities or have no abilities at all, whatsoever mostly depends on the skill itself.
***
“Yep useless skill, so that was the dim red aura around me, at least now I can visually see that I am angry… Wait if I remember correctly the bug could see it too, or at least feel it right?” I tried to remember as I saw that the bug started to fear me around the time when I got the skill but in the end, I shook my head.
“Nope it's still useless, I have the *Killing Intent* skill that can be used the same way, and the result it gives is much much more effective. At least now I know that there are such skills, if I want to increase my chances of survival I should try to get more of those core skills, some of them could be really useful.” I mumbled to myself thinking.
After gaining all the information that I wanted from my new skills, I started to prepare a plan for how to get the hell out of this area, “I should move away from here, I don’t really know if there any more of this stupid bugs in this area, I guess I still can stay here for a few days as I can use the cliff for my advantage but anymore more of that and it could be dangerous...” I thought to myself as I didn’t know if another bug would come to munch on me.
I looked at my injuries and then looked at the roots that were sticking out of the ground with concern. “I think my injuries won’t heal for a while, I should try to get some kind of skill to help me with that. It would be really nice if my *Self Awareness* skill would tell me my health regeneration speed, I just need to level it up to higher levels and then it should show me at least I hope.”
After another moment of thought my imaginary face became agitated and nervous. ”Not even to mention, how the hell will I leave this place? If I get my roots out of the ground, won’t I become a land octopus?”
“I am not even sure how long my roots are, there are some bushes that can have roots of the length of up to fifty meters, in the worst-case scenario it will take me days to pull them out of the ground, and don’t even mention the part where I don’t know for how long I can survive being in this weird land octopus state.” Even though I found a way to set myself free, it would still take some time to get there.
“There are my injuries as well, I need to find out if I can heal them when I am sleeping. But if that does not work, I need to find another way to restore myself to my former glory.” An image of a mighty bush popped into my head.
“With all that thinking about the future.” I chose to do something in the present, first I wanted to learn more about how to control my body and then think of a way to slowly pull some of my roots out of the ground.
“Hmm, I am quite flexible.” I said when the torso of my body was twisted into a knot.
“I should not go overboard and break something.” I turned my body back to its original posture.
I continued to play with my body and to learn all its nooks and crannies, I was a little surprised. “It's not so hard to control my body at all, even though the way of moving is totally different from that of a real body, it's still plausible.“
I was surprised as if another person were given the body of another creature to control, it would take him some time till he could move at all, but in my case, it just happened instantly.
”Maybe *Magic Perception* helps me with the controls, or maybe I am just a genius.” Genius or not I was still lucky, currently, my location wasn't the safest, and I didn’t know if another bug could appear any second, so the less time I stayed here the better it would be.
My plan was really simple, it wanted to stay here for a few days and scout the area to find a safer place to stay.
“Maybe I should grab my brother's bush to safety too.” I joked as I looked at the bush that was staying a few meters away from me, but in the end, I shook my head as I knew that it was just a normal bush.
My thoughts returned back to the forest as I didn’t know how the forest was at night, so I didn’t take the risk to scout the area immediately. There could be scary creatures lurking in the darkness, so it's better not to wander around at night, so I chose to go look around in the morning.
Hours passed and the sun was already setting, I didn’t move much at that time because my mana was almost depleted, but I still didn’t go to sleep, because I wanted to know why the forest was called the *Great Forest Of Dusk*.
“If it has dusk in its name something special should happen at dusk right?” I asked myself, not knowing if I was correct or not.
Time slowly passed while I was sitting looking at the sun as it was setting, slowly I was losing my patience. “Nothing happens… Don’t tell me the origins of its name came from some stupid event, that just happened at dusk *sigh*...” I sighed with disappointment, it was a long day for me, I almost got killed and saved only by luck, tomorrow most likely won’t be easier either, so I needed to rest.
Just when I almost gave up and started to think about turning off the *Magic Perception* skill, the sun already was behind the horizon, only a glimpse of light still could be seen as it faded away and all the forest was eaten by shadows. As I took the last glimpse at the sun I asked myself with disbelief in my voice. ”What's going on?...”
As if a hot knife cutting truth butter, pillars of light were piercing through the shadows from below, one by one those pillars were rising and to my surprise, they came from the trees. The whole forest was full of colors, even more, beautiful than before. Every tree was bright in color, some green, some red, and so on.
“Looks like the colors of the leaves change the color of the light…” I mumbled as I looked around in disbelief, as the scenery was just so breathtaking that all I could do was look around.
A minute passed after another, but I didn’t even budge. Only after a few more minutes did I come to my senses and with surprise, I discovered that the same light was coming from my own leaves as well.
The color of my light was green, I was puzzled, “This is interesting...” I didn’t understand why all the forest flora was illuminating like a glow fish at night. After examining myself I was surveying the surroundings, the golden tree's light was one of the strongest around.
The forest could be explained only by one word and it was “Magical… It’s just magical...” After getting out of the trance I could hear howls and growls coming from afar, the creatures of the night woke up, and even though you could barely call it a night, the inner clock of an animal wouldn't care.
I chose to discard those noises and continued staring at the forest, most likely there will be no danger to me from those creatures as all the other nights. And so I continued to look at the forest with imaginary sparkling eyes, as I watched it my vision slowly became blurry and everything turned black once more.