I think I need a personal rebrand. I mean, the Ants were literally all trying to kill me, so I feel perfectly fine with having wiped them out. Speaking of which, I still haven’t found a single ant pile or colony around the clearing. I can see about 80 feet outside of my clearing now, since my root system has grown tremendously, but I haven’t found any evidence that Ants ever existed. Strange.

  Anyways.

  I was fine wiping them out since they started the attack on me first. And I was fine killing the Orcs that were attacking Lilly and the Laughing Viper trio. So why am I starting to feel guilty about all the other Orcs I’ve killed? I mean, I was told they were violent monsters, so the more that I killed, the less would be around to kill other sapient beings, right? I should be in the moral clear, yet I still feel a pit in my metaphorical stomach whenever I think about the Orc corpses underground.

  I feel that I’ve been getting too... active... lately. It was fine when I was just practicing magic and trying to get my golem going, but I think it’s been getting out of control with the killing. I think I need to embrace my role as a tree more. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be a magical tree.

  Maybe I should get back into trying to learn more magic? I’ve partially embraced the magical tree position already, when Lilly and gang were here. It wouldn’t be hard to get back to it. I think I’ve made enough body modifications for quite some time, so I can easily justify dropping the incessant need to farm Exp through killing monsters. Besides, the Photosynthesis upgrade is already doing that for me.

  With renewed determination, I dove straight into learning new magic. Since I already had Water Magic and Earth Magic, I only needed fire and air to complete my basic elemental collections. After that, well... I might turn back to figuring out how to create Golems.

  I wonder what would happen if I learned a skill by myself that I was waiting for my level ups to teach me. Would I get a refund for my previous wasted level skill bonuses, or would they just be wasted?

  Tossing the thoughts of wistfulness out of my mind, I decided to start with Air Magic.

  Earth Magic was easy for me to get a hold of since I had spent the entirety of my time on this planet partially buried and feeding off the various minerals and other organic stuff in the dirt. I was intimately familiar with the clearing and everything in here. It was almost like flexing an arm, even easier than learning how to use Vine Control.

  Water Magic was also easy for me to learn because the “water” I was trying to practice on came from the filtered juice of my Resource Berries. It was full of my mana already, and I went above and beyond by flooding it with even more mana. I’m not sure I’ll be able to reproduce such an effect to learn Fire Magic, but it might be possible to do for Air Magic.

  The first step in my brute force method to learning Air Magic will be to flood the surrounding air with my mana. So that’s what I did. I activated my Mana Circulation skill to give me some extra oomph, then from every branch, vine, leaf, and fruit I had, I unleashed a torrent of mana.

  I did my best to control the mana, making it stay in a somewhat proximity to my trunk. It seemed to work for a short bit, but it took immense mental effort. After the mana reached a certain threshold though, it started to just spill out and away from me. And as the mana started to flow away from me, the air started to flow with it, as if it caused a current.

  I waited with bated breath.

  And waited. And waited.

  Damn. I was hoping that that would be enough to trigger the skill notification. I guess since it was an unintentional movement of the air, what I did wouldn’t be enough. I need to make it flow with a purpose.

  The aura of mana swirling around me had dissipated a little while I waited to see if I would get the Air Magic skill, but it was easy enough to replenish and regain control. Looking at my status, I barely used 20% of my mana so far, so I was fine to use more.

  I pulled up my resources to look at what I had used.

  H:100% S:100% M:81%

  As I watched, the mana counter ticked up another percentage. And then another, and another.

  Oh. So, it’s not that I used 20%, it’s just that my regeneration was so high that it only looked like I used 20%. Sweet!

  I poured some more mana into the air around me and took control of the mana again. This time, I moved the mana in a bit of a whirlpool around me, similar to what I did to earn the Water Magic skill, but on a much grander scale.

  The result was devastating.

  I started off with a small push, which was just enough to cause a small breeze and earned me the skill. However, I felt that I could do more with what I had already put out into the air around me. I kept the push going and kept a tighter grip on the mana I was controlling. This time, the mana stayed in a small vortex around me, spinning faster and faster.

  As the mana picked up speed, so did the breeze that followed it. The wind whirled around my canopy, going faster and faster. My vines started swaying in the wind, only to be tangled up in each other. They all eventually wrapped around my trunk as much as they could. I hadn’t gotten the chance to elongate them since I had my growth spurt, but they were still flung around a good bit.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The air around me was harder to control than either the dirt below me or the water within me. I was able to fine tune my control with practice over each element, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do the same with Air Magic. The breeze I was picking up started to affect the rest of the wind around my area as well, turning it into a gale.

  Soon after, as I kept pushing my mana faster and faster, I had reached the point where I was tearing at the ground and making minor dust storm. I reinforced the ground with a bit of Earth Magic, which helped keep it down. Unfortunately, the more mana that I pushed into the ground, the less mana I had to push into the air. I settled on reenforcing the ground with my roots as well before turning my attention back to the tornado I was creating.

  That’s exactly what it was. It was a tornado. I had to admit that I was quite proud of my magical achievement. It turns out that I wasn’t the only one though.

  Through your achievements in creating an artificial “Act of God”, your skill [Air Magic (U)] has been upgraded to [Air Magic (R)].

  Apparently, my tornado counts as an “Act of God”. I was supremely proud of myself for that. The increase in rank of my skill is just the cherry on top.

  I kept my tornado going for a few minutes to see if anything else would happen, but when nothing did, I started turning my mana in the opposite direction. This forced the air to slow down and eventually come to a complete stop. When I was sure that everything was back to normal, I looked around to see how much damage was done. Tornadoes were a widely destructive force regardless of how well controlled they were.

  What I saw hurt my heart a little.

  It turns out that my little act of God tore up a bunch of the trees around me. Most of them survived, but none of them got by without at least a little damage.

  I zoomed my focus on the tree nearest to me, which happened to be the tree I had first made mental contact with a while ago. Our roots were a bit intertwined, since I had spread out a lot while growing. That made it easier to check on its wellbeing, since it was pretty much a constant presence in my mind, given we were always touching.

  Unfortunately for the little guy, I had torn off a few of its smaller branches. It was easy enough to tell which branch was his (yes, I started calling it him) due to the way they broke off. Luckily, all it took was using a bit of Earth Magic to make a dirt puppet to grab the broken pieces and a second puppet to bring over a few Health Berries that I dropped to the ground to heal it up. It only took a few minutes for each branch, and then it was over. The tree was back to normal.

  I only had to do the same thing to another eighty trees around me to fix everything back to how it was before I started this fiasco. It was my fault these guys were hurting, so I should be the one to put them back together. Thankfully, I did get a reward for my work.

  Due to your efforts in assisting the injured, you have earned the skill [First Aid (U)]. Due to being the one who caused those injuries, skill has been demoted to (C) rank.

  Damn. The system is sassy, huh? Well, it does have a point. I did cause those injuries to the trees. I guess that’s fair.

  When I was done healing everything up, I returned the dirt puppets to the ground and removed the root spikes from the surface. The spikes were what helped keep the ground intact while the tornado was going. I didn’t want to leave them there for someone to get hurt on by accident.

  Now that everything was back to how it was before I started my elemental experiments, I had to decide between pushing forward with more elemental experiments, trying to make a golem again, or just taking a nap for a bit. It wasn’t like I was in a rush, right?

  Well, rather than trying to figure out the nuances of making a proper golem, I decided it was time to make a few more wooden puppets. I had plenty of fun making the last one, so I’ll try making a few different versions this time around.

  Nearby

  Brom had just sat on a log near a small cooking fire to warm his lunch when he felt a strong magical presence.

  He had set out earlier that day to complete the mission his brother had brought him. It was a simple recon mission, needing only to provide some information about a clearing with a large tree in it. These were the simplest ones, but due to the level shift in the area, the Lord of the city wanted higher level adventures to take this job. Apparently one of his men had gone missing in the area, and he wanted to know more about what he was up against.

  One of his “men” he says. Like everyone who’s someone doesn’t know about Ostlan’s pet giant. The number of villages that had gone missing just to fuel that beast's growth is disgusting. I can excuse the missing murderers and rapists, but innocent people died for that thing. I can’t say I’d care if it died. Though I know how high its regeneration is. It even survived an attack from me, though it wasn’t a serious one.

  Brom shook his head and focused back at the direction of the source of the mana he felt. The magnitude truly was consistent with that of a death zone. Those things were terrifying, being known to spawn rare and deadly variants of monsters. They didn’t follow the normal rules, spawning monsters much stronger than they should for the area they are in. Even if this forest just went through a level shift from rank F to rank C, a death zone in the area could pop out rank A monsters. They could be devastating if not properly taken care of.

  Brom ate his lunch as he watched the direction of his target. It was still a few miles away, which is why he wasn’t overly concerned, but the strength of the signature just kept growing. Soon enough, he started to see signs of it changing the weather.

  It started off with him seeing the clouds move. They started to swirl around above his target. Soon they formed a downward tunnel that quickly grew into a full-fledged tornado. It was a violent, but short-lived tornado, but one that he was sure would cause a lot of local damage.

  What Brom was disturbed by was how centralized it was. It was almost as if it were an artificial tornado, caused by someone who wanted to cause a bunch of damage to a specific spot. Almost as if they were... hiding... something...

  Crap, that’s the area I was supposed to search.

  Brom checked the map that was the result of one of his skills, and sure enough, that area should be exactly where his brother and his lord sent him to search.

  Brom stuffed the rest of the rabbit meat he was eating into his mouth and kicked a bunch of dirt on his fire. Needed to leave immediately if he were to have a chance at catching whoever cast such a spell. If he acted quickly, he could get there before the perpetrator left. That spell had to cost quite a lot of mana, and that should leave them largely exposed for now.

  He grabbed his bag and took off in a sprint. He still had around 10 miles between where he was and where he was supposed to be, but he was fast. Very fast. In fact, it would take a level 50 human who had invested the entirety of his free stats into agility to match him. There were very few people like that. In fact, most people capped at level 15, since few people actively hunted monsters.

  All of that is to say Brom reached the point where he could see the clearing in only 5 minutes. What he saw left him with more questions than he has had in his entire life.