Stray Soul

After prodding the system for answers to how I manage to get the overpowered sounding version instead of mana manipulation, and not getting any answers, I decided to stop looking the gift horse on the mouth and continue with my day.

“Ugh!” getting up from the place I was sitting for the better part of the night, I made a satisfying grunt.

You might be asking, ‘William, it wasn’t anywhere close to night when you lost your control over your body, how come have you spent all night in the same place??’ and my answer to that would be, regaining control after losing my control takes a long time.

I don’t know why but, it just does and by the time I become conscious again it was already sundown, so I just decided to sit where I was and do nothing.

The fact that a random mama bug had wandered near me and was protecting some hatchlings that were swarming the corpse of a squirrel also helped in me making the decision to stay here.

I don’t have any clue how she managed to kill a squirrel, but she somehow did. Maybe she used my unconscious body as a distraction, but I don’t know.

Looking around a bit and spotting the small lump on the ground that indicated the spot where the mama bug had burrowed herself, I quickly started making my way upstream once more and started lamenting the fact that I didn’t make any progress in any of my skills last night.

After gaining enough mana, I just started trying to make the wall of mana I first wanted to do, but my mana control was more about sudden bursts rather than continuous manipulation.

Though I wonder, could I use this for some kind of attack or distraction? I mean, I’d doubt that many animals are used to being distracted by gusts of wind—or blasts of mana in my case, so I might actually be able to set up a trap if I am careful.

Oh, and about the hole behind my back, it appears that it wasn’t as big of a danger as I had initially thought.

After nearly losing all my mana due to my lacklustre control over it, I immediately pulled my soul deeper into my body, hoping that the ambient mana coming from the hole in my back wouldn’t be able to reach it and I was right… kind of.

It appears that, while ambient mana still penetrates solid matter, it spreads through it at a slower rate than it does air which is fair. So, I really didn’t have to worry about it at all to begin with… but thanks to my stupidity I was able to finally get mana control, so I count that as an absolute win!

Oh, and after realizing I wasn’t going to be able to improve my skills, I started fine-tuning my soul to fit this body better. So, I should lose less mana while moving or fighting.

Though I don’t think my current soul shape is the best it can get… for some reason I feel like something is missing from it, but I just can’t put my finger on it… but it may just be my paranoia striking again. But, even if its not my paranoia, I am sure my current soul shape is vastly inferior to what I will be able to make it in the future… I hope.

Stopping in my tracks, I tried focusing on the river because I thought I saw it opening up to something. Thinking about what it could be, my thoughts landed on it either being a lake or a pond but from this far away I couldn’t say for sure what.

But, not wanting to go next to it totally unprepared, I started making my way to the bushes in the forest, and quickly understood why the other bugs lived next to the river.

To put it lightly, I was so seeable through all the foliage and greenery that a blind man could see me from the other side of the forest.

Okay, I might be exaggerating but, it is pretty close to that!

If I want to not be seen by something, I need to stay nearly fully inside the bushes which I can do, but if I do that, I won’t be able to see anything myself!

Argh, the things I do to be careful.

Sucking up my complaints, I started carefully making my way from a bush to the other, slowly creeping on the lake in front of me.

After creeping up on the lake, which I was sure was a lake now because of its sheer size, I started admiring its natural beauty without realizing.

I was kinda captivated by the birds flying over it the, the reflection of the trees in it, and everything would be all and well, if not for the gigantic tree on the other side of the lake that was taking all my attention.

I mean, yes, everything looks gigantic to me because I am literally a bug, but that tree was towering over the other ones by far and there weren’t any other trees near it, or any shrubs, only short grass.

…Is-is it a magical tree? Did I hit a jackpot in my first exploration mission? I mean… it doesn’t look magical, it literally looks like a big tree, no different than the others growing around me…

Hmm… maybe it itself is not magical, but something that caused it to grow that large and didn’t allow any other trees to grow around it is?

…Ahhh… I need to go look there now, don’t I? But it’s so far away! When I said the other side of the lake, I meant it! It’s like what, a few kilometres away from here? The only reason I even realized it is because of its gigantic size I was talking about. And there is always a chance that I am just seeing things wrongly or, while the tree itself is rare, they are not impossible to find around… I am getting on the move then…

At least I can think of a few contingency scenarios while I am approaching it, first of all, if I don’t see any birds on the tree or animals near it, I am not going on the grass that separates it from rest of the forest because there is a non-zero chance that this tree is actually magical and somehow carnivorous… or omnivorous because you know, there are no trees near it.

Secondly, it could actually be the home of some animals, which probably wouldn’t like me wandering in and if I see a lot of animals near it, I will just dip and start my search for a good base location or other packs near this place, if I can’t find a lot of packs, or I can’t find a good home base location, then I’ll dip for real and continue fallowing the river until a new area of interest.

Thirdly, if its actually a magical tree of some kind or, god forbid, a member of the tree yakuza I was talking before, I’ll just run.

Can’t have the literal yakuza after me while I don’t have any power projection over the forest.

Fourthly… I think that’s it actually… I mean, there’s probably a lot more things that could happen like a wild dragon god of trees appearing and voicing their dislike of me desecrating their trees or some stupid shit like that, but I am just going to hope that’s not going to happen.

Deciding to stop thinking about the weird tree, I started focusing on the forest surrounding me, paying more attention to being sneaky and glancing at my mana points to make sure I never dropped below half, because I didn’t want to fight something while I wasn’t at my max strength, and half way through the journey to the tree, I had to take a short break that actually wasn’t all that short and probably took a few hours.

But after many hours, and with a nearly full mana point counter, I lay my gaze on the gigantic tree that bringed me all the way here and to say that it was really gigantic would be an insult to the tree that would surely set the yakuza behind me.

The tree was about 3-4 stories tall and was absolutely towering over anything I had seen in this world so far; it was even bigger than any tree I ever saw in my previous life!

… Not really, but you get my point right?! This tree was an absolute unit, and would make a lot of chairs if I could bring it to a carpenter, but alas, there was no sign of civilization on this forest so far, so nature will continue to thrive for a bit longer in this corner of the world but one day, I will turn this tree into a nice chair… or a branch of it, I don’t want to actually cut the whole tree, it would just be a waste if I did!

But, before letting the tree’s magnificence entrance me, I started looking around the grassy clearing and the tree’s branches, looking for something living that wasn’t the tree itself or some short grass and before long I saw a buck with short fuzzy antlers resting below the tree’s shadow, and it looked really serene, as if it was having the best moment of its life.

I could also see a few birds hiding between the branches and the leaves, but they are just a given, so I’ll just ignore them.

“Hmm… there doesn’t seem to be anything weird other than the trees immense size and the weird clearing around it… I am not getting near it because of the buck, though I may be a bug, I don’t want to be smashed like one…” as I was just about to head off and find something more interesting, I decided to take another look at the buck that was sitting beneath the tree, and this time I realized something weird about the buck. It’s colour.

While I know deer are brown normally, but I swear this buck was richer in colour, it looked almost earthen even! And the weird things on its back… wait… are those?

“Wait a fucking second! There are vines all over it!” I don’t understand how, but just now did I realize that there were a few vines coming out of the buck, as if they were a part of it.

“Good thing I didn’t decide to come close to the tree… it’s apparently something parasitic… wait, what?” but as I was just calming myself and giving myself a pat on the shoulder for not deciding to investigate the tree, I saw the buck open its eyes and send a glare in my direction and start to slowly get up, the vines growing out of its sides swaying threateningly.

“H-hey, calm down, we can talk about this…” but before I could start trying to calm the very dangerous looking buck down, I heard the sounds of many steps to my back, making my self as small as I could and not moving an inch, I waited, hoping whatever was behind me wasn’t trying to hunt me and was instead here for the buck with parasites in it.

And not before long, I saw a few wolves coming out from behind me and stepping into the clearing and starting to encircle the buck.

“Why are they stepping into the clearing without any worry? If they are from around here, they’ll surely know that this tree is parasitic… or maybe the tree isn’t? But how would a deer have plants growing out of its sides if they are not some kind of magical parasites… wait, could it be?” but before I could conclude my thought process, the wolves came down on the poor deer, which I was sure was magical now, but the buck was not about to accept its fate, it quickly dashed to the left, attacking the wolf on its way with its vines, and making its way out of there, but the wolf was still able to take a good swing at its sides, making a clear cut that started bleeding quickly.

And as the wolves chased the buck—or the vine deer or whatever into the forest, I came out of my hiding place after making sure there wasn’t anything around that might want to take a bite out of me.

And as I fully stepped into the grasslands that was surrounding the tree, suddenly a weird sensation of warmth covered my whole being, it wasn’t literal heat but more of a… concept of welcomeness… it-it’s weird, I cannot describe it fully, but I just knew that whatever this feeling that was covering my very being, it wasn’t bad.

And I could also think clearly… I think… at least now I understood why the buck was so… serene.

Moving closer and closer to the tree, I started to ponder about the things I just saw, and the things I was feeling.

Was this tree magical? If so, how?

Will I get plant manipulation powers if I stay close to it?

Or does it have nothing to do with the vine deer?

How did that deer even gain magical powers?

What about the birds then, can they control plants as well?

What is this warmth that surrounds me? Is it some kind of passive magic emanated by the tree, or is it something else?

“What are your secrets…” I muttered to myself, but even though I wasn’t sure what this tree was all about, I knew what I had to study first in this forest…

After deciding on a base of operations and finding a new and stronger corpse of course and exploring around a bit of course.

“At least there is a pack of wolves and a few deer around… I hope there isn’t literally only 2 groups of animals, or I am going to run out of corpses real soon…”