Chapter 96

I stretch on the ground after a good and long night's sleep.

Looking over at the sky, I see a lot of light peeking through a tall covering of roots. It must be almost noon.

As the light fog of sleep fades and my mind starts firing on all cylinders, I furrow my brows.

Wait. Where am I? What is all this around me?

Sending out my perception field with low detail and maximum range, I absorb everything around. There is something unnatural about the building 20 meters to my side, but the feeling is familiar so I relax.

I’m still in the village and the spatial distortions of the town hall try to drive spikes in my brain, but I instinctively exclude it from my field.

Connecting to Pando's seed, I ask:

“Did you grow all of these roots?”

A vague impression of being proud of his creation comes over me.

“Thank you, but next time, don’t grow it so big, at least not in the middle of the village.”

A confused feeling comes over our connection to me, but it will take time to explain the intricacies of my thought process or at least as much as he can understand.

I set out drawing the house and most of the roots into the ground or my inner world, which takes me only a few minutes given how light the whole structure is.

As the roots start disconnecting, I close my eyes and picture the structure in my mental palace before I modified it, and even if the place should have been flimsy with how thin and light everything is, I beam with pride. He started to learn how structures work. Some of that was instinctive, being a tree the organic patterns that made for incredibly sturdy structures is in his nature, but building a hut imitating a shape while developing his own blueprint?

“You made something really strong. I’m impressed.” I send over with the feeling I was proud of his work, before stopping to think about the mixed signals.

Getting to the roots spread all over the ground, I stop myself. Well, perhaps not all of it has to go away. I sweep them to the sides so they wouldn't be tripping anybody, but try to create a harmonious and beautiful atmosphere.

As my gaze goes over to the source of my pain, I remember the entire reason I didn’t sleep for the long trip. There could be some type of reward for doing it this way, but as I take my first step in that direction a small voice stops me.

“Hey, mister.”

“Hi.” I look back to see a girl holding a small cutting of the shrubs around, she couldn’t be more than 13 years old. I don’t remember her, so more than likelly a recent addition having just crossed the age of 12 and sent our way by the system.

“Is it true that you have a tree friend?”

I look at her, thinking about my answer, but while I didn’t advertise it, I didn’t hide Pando’s seed nature.

“Yes. I call him Pando’s seed.”

“That is a lousy name. Why?”

“Because Pando gifted me a seed on integration day. He just grew a lot.”

“What kind of name is that? So lame. He should have his own name.” She says.

“I agree, but I’m not a very good person with names. I didn’t even come up with the name Pando.”

“There are a lot of names. I don’t know, just call him Aspen. That sounds like a good name for a tree.”

“Not sure he will like that, he is very picky,” I say not wanting to deal with the overwhelming feelings he would send through our bond if he started to fear I might try to name him that should he not like the name. Narrowing my eyes, I ask the girl “How did you come up with this name? I mean, Aspen that is his actual species, he came from an aspen tree, or rather a grove.”

“I don’t know,” She shrugs before continuing. “It just came me. But what does it matter, ask him already, if he doesn’t like it I can come up with other names until we found a good one.”

Hesitantly, I call him and send the closest translation of the name I can expecting to hear a rejection but the response overwhelms me in resounding affirmation.

“Yes… Aspen.” Echoes through my mind louder than any words he ever spoke before. He is growing stronger and more aware, and this was actual speech, though it will take him time to grow further.

And he didn't even need to ask any more about the name.

“He likes it, no he loves it. You do, don’t you little Aspen?”

As I speak the words to both him and the girl as more normal, but still strong reactions continue coming from him.

Well, that’s one more problem solved and I didn’t even have to do anything.

I look down at the excited girl and say.

“How would you like a companion like Aspen for yourself?”

“Ohh, yes, yes… Wil he grow smart and be able to talk in your head like yours?”

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I look at her wondering how she knew, but just shake my head and plow on:

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Ok, give me already.”

Excited at the idea, I draw on my entire collective knowledge and sit in the familiar cross-legged position before stippling my fingers together and starting to focus in creating a little seed like Aspen. I doubted the girl will be able to interact with it like me, but even if all she can ever do was to talk with it, it will already be enough.

I try to send into the seed as much of the knowledge of Pando left behind for Aspen to unlock as I can with the newfound closeness the system was somehow nurturing between me and Aspen. Though I doubt the system’s actions are intentional. It is such a cheat to be able to cast spells hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

Hell, I wouldn’t even have found the mine for months, possibly years if we had to grow strong enough to challenge the monsters in the high-level zone. It may have outside of our future all together if they kept growing so much stronger by the day.

The seed I end up with is the size of a penny with tendrils sticking out. The girl moves closer at my prompting.

“Are you certain it won't hurt?”

“Yes, I’m certain, it will stay quiet right above your eye. If you develop nature mana it will help you a lot… I think.”

I say goodbye to the girl who goes around running with a skip in her steps before I walk into the town hall. Finally ready to find out if the tripwas worth it, and especially if keeping myself awake for so long was needed.

Getting there, I see a dozen people pouring over the map, each with their own part of the table as if they were using a giant touch screen, though the paper-like feel is very different from the white slightly bluish light of what we had back on Earth. Stepping inside, I recognize one of them and I head over with a grin.

“Charlie.”

He looks back at me for a moment before his mental process catches up: “Nash, hi.” He gestures for me to approach before turning back to the map. “This time you surpassed yourself, take a look at this.” He zooms in on a restaurant of our village, further and further, until I can see someone leaning against the door, and not as a blob-like before, but with decent definition.

“Yeah, we expected that the increase in resolution, what is the big deal?”

Shaking his head, he zooms out until the 2 feet section of the table he has drafted for himself is showing the entire instance. I furrow my brow staring at the much larger area now covered. But there is still a giant empty circle in the middle of the map. So much for increasing it to include the entire High-level zone.

He swipes to one of the villages on the north, some 2000 miles away and zooms in on a few people in front of the merchant shop. As he enlarges the picture with a gesture anyone who has ever owned a smartphone would recognize, my jaw drops. We can see a couple of people with just as much clarity as in our own village.

“Holy...”

“Exactly. We have much more contact with other villages, but the instance is far too large and there is plenty we can learn about other villages. We will be able to complement our efforts with the ones with better industry and organization without any problem. It will save us so much time.”

“I can only imagine,” I say.

“We can make out details even from the other side of the instance. Tracking individual people, following our scouts, getting messages from them, and several other things. The size of the writing they have to do is quite small compared to before. Letters only a foot or two in length will easily be legible. Your network is very useful, but this doesn’t require any infrastructure.”

“Uhh, I’m glad my sleeplessness served a purpose.”

“That is not all, the map only showed the largest mines and sources ore before, but take a look at it now.”

Charlie comes back to near our village and after tapping a new icon on the edge of the area he was using, the view of the map changes with many of the details fading from the satellite view and becoming closer to a traditional hand-drawn map. Something much less visually saturated and I see the hundreds of spots surrounding us, along with the dozens of mines in our vicinity.

I lock my eyes on another copper mine, this one much closer than the one we currently use, a less than 5 miles from the village.

“How did we miss a mine this close?”

“It’s much smaller than the one we are using and it was very well hidden. We will need to enlarge the entryway, it’s barely afoot wide right now.”

“Too bad it can’t show the high-level zone.”

Charlie grins and moves the view again before speaking.

“I would have preferred to have access to the entire map, but we have a few pieces to study.” Zooming in on the spot with my little hut near the black Panther’s territory, I see spots and tendrils fill out, instead of being a solid white. After only a moment, I realize the significance of the strange shapes.

“How didn’t I immediately notice that?”

“So, I’m assuming this is a perfect map for how your root network has extended into the high-level zone?”

“As far as I can tell.” Taking a piece of the ore I brought back, I ask him. “Can you zoom in about a hundred miles south and 600 meters inward?”

“Sure, what you are looking for?”

I grin widely at him griping the piece of ore in my fist.

“A silver mine.” His eyes go wide and we look for exact spot. Although I’m glad to see the spot, there is no Mark like on all the other mines spread throughout the instance.

“Too bad we can’t get to it.” He mutters.

“Who says we can’t? I have to admit it isn’t very convenient, but I have a few ideas in mind. Even without any further input from me Merlin could plant himself there and collect pounds of silver every hour, but I think there are more effective ways to work.”

We both move out and let the cartographers and other professionals do their jobs, cataloging all of relevance on the map and scrubbing through the entire instance.

As we walk out of the town hall, he asks:

“What are you thinking? We can’t waste Merlin, we only have him able to use the roots and metamagic.”

“Not sure yet, but we can have a remotely controlled carriage breaking the rocks and carrying it back. Not very efficient but I’m certain we can figure out at least something like this and probably more advanced designs. We should have a meeting with Stuart later. He is bound to have some good ideas.”

“So I’m guessing you didn’t bring any back?”

Lifting my hand and opening my hand I show him the thumb-sized chunk of ore.

“Ohhh, but I did. Not sure about the concentration, but I estimate get 2 kilograms of silver after smelting it.”

He whistles at my bounty. “All in a few minutes of work.”

“Closer to an hour, but yeah. Though I can probably work even from here and have someone picki up the ore to bring it back.”

“I told you before, but I will reiterate, you never cease to amaze.”

“I’m kinda breaking the rules, everyone should catch up to me in most aspects over time,” I say before changing the subject. “Are you going to be selling the information you are collecting from the map to other villages?

“Maybe. I think we may be better served by providing it for free, with a few concessions backed by a contract of course.”

“Of course,” I say, but my mind turns back to the map and my tone turns grim. “Though I have to admit, the thought of other villages being able to follow us when they finally get around to repeating my feat is unnerving. They can just follow anyone traveling over open terrain and even going through where the trees are denser we may not lose them.”

“Yeah, I was thinking of that as well, we can probably come up with a basic runic camouflage, we just have to keep the mana costs low, but even if it’s expensive mana wise a few minutes here and there can do a lot to lose anyone following our scouts.”

I nod and we each go our separate ways.

The system is a strange beast and I don’t like the direction some of the developments are heading in, but I will learn as I always strive to do and deal with the things as they came.

I run through the illusion runes learned from the rabbits and start modifying one of them for my use. It’s good practice and I have enough mana to never turn it off, though I probably won’t be quite that liberal with its use in the future.