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Chapter 50
🕑 Added 2025-06-08 16:00:17 +0000 UTCTW: minor violence. Also, bonus chapter coming in later tonight!
I waited a few minutes after the Laughing Vipers made their way away from me before beginning to try the enchantment process. When they were gone, I made my first attempt.
I imagined the whole process of creating the flamethrower. I started it by creating my usual fireball, then created the secondary ball of volatile and flammable mana behind the fireball, and imagined pushing a stream of the mana through the fireball to create the flamethrowing effect.
The result was… less than thrilling.
Inspect! Why isn’t it doing anything? Inspect! Inspect damn you! Wait… That’s the wrong word.
I face palmed using my puppet before trying again.
Identify!
Flamethrower Staff
· Enchantments
o Creates spell: Fireball
§ Stagnant
o Creates mana ball
§ Volatile
§ flowing
This… seemed to be it? I can’t quite tell if this will work or not until Aspen gets back. Damn. I guess it won’t hurt to make a few variations.
I tried making the staff a few times, storing the various successful attempts in my branches. I would bring them down when the group got back from their final day’s hunt.
Some of the variations I made to the enchantment were subtle things like decreasing the size of the fireball, changing the pressure the mana ball would flow through the fireball, and even changing how volatile the mana ball was. Each variation took only a little out of me, but after making 30 different staffs, I was running low on both mana and mental energy.
I need to see if I can store mental energy in a new kind of berry or something similar. If I get caught unaware like I am now, I won’t be too much help in a fight. My mental energy is probably my lowest resource pool right now, since I don’t have much in the way of skills to expand it. Wait. I do have one, don’t I?
I eyed my Parasitic Takeover skill in a new sort of light. I could use this to rapidly increase how much metal power I had by simply stealing it from the plants around me. Heck, I theoretically could even expand my Domain of Awareness skill by taking over trees that were only partially in my current bubble of influence and reaching out through newly acquired (stolen, but whatever) roots.
I tested my theory by stabbing at a tree’s roots whose trunk I couldn’t even see. The roots were slightly entangled with one of the trees I had previously taken over, which made it easy for me to control those roots and follow the previous procedure of injecting nutrients into its tree-veins and expanding my consciousness up and outwards from there.
I could feel my mind expand ever so slightly as I absorbed the new addition to my slowly growing grove. As the tree became a part of me and adapted its body to become one of the collective, I could feel the range of my influence increase to include a new portion of land.
The roots became one with me, making them mine. Making the earth they grew through mine. Making the water they drank mine. Making the nutrients they absorbed mine. Everything it once was is now part of me.
The process was a fast one, taking only a couple of minutes to become fully integrated due to my skill. As I thought, my Domain of Awareness also expanded by several feet, allowing me to see more. And what I saw was amazing.
The birds! They’re back! And they seem to be making babies! Oh… let me give them some privacy.
I was excited to see some old friends again, but they were pretty preoccupied at the moment, so I let them do their thing. I would be reaching out later when they were less… busy.
Now that my mind was slightly refreshed from the influx of new mental energy, I was free to examine the products I made. I had to admit to myself that a few of them were not up to par with what I expected from myself, but there were still enough high-quality staves here for me to show off to my friends. I think Aspen should be very happy with the result.
With my current work done, I decided to relax for a bit. Today has been a mentally taxing one, and I think I deserve a break. Maybe I could have a little dance party while I waited for the group to return.
……….
Aspen took a bite out of another one of the Mana Berries that Willow had provided her. The berries had been an incredible help to her in allowing her to continue helping her party and level herself up. She still found the size of the berries to be ludicrous and their potency to be amazing. Half of a berry brought her from near empty to almost full of mana.
Aspen summoned a ball of fire and threw it at one of the Orcs that was surrounding her party. Then she used her magic to bring forth a few needle-like spires from the ground, piercing a second Orc’s foot and making it stumble. She was capable of summoning one large enough to kill an Orc, but doing it this way allowed for her to conserve her mana and assist her party in killing more of the monsters than if she were to act solely on her own.
That was just basic party logistics.
Ragnar took advantage of the immobilized monster and removed its head with a quick swing of his incredibly sharp blade. Taryn shot an Orc that tried to charge at Ragnar from behind in the eye socket, killing it instantly.
The group was getting an amazing amount of kills due to the rather unorthodox luring method that Willow taught them. The Orcs were attracted to the scent of the rotting meat, and the Laughing Vipers had made a pile of Orc corpses to act as their lure.
It worked wonders, given that they only had at most 5 minutes between groups of Orcs approaching to either eat them or their brethren. Orcs were mindless cannibals that ate anything they got their paws on. The Laughing Vipers had been taking full advantage of that knowledge. Today alone they had already killed almost 50 Orcs, and they haven’t been hunting for a full hour yet.
When the group finally got a moment to breathe, Aspen and Taryn continued the conversation they were having on their way back to the hunting grounds.
“Willow will be fine, Aspen. I doubt anything could take him down. Not with the feats we saw him accomplish. Besides, he took down a Giant by himself. You saw the flames he can produce. That’s ignoring the literal acts of god he can create on a whim. Don’t worry about him so much. Besides, the elven convoy should be here in a few days anyways. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I know he’s strong, but there’s still those out there that are stronger than even him. I don’t think we should make knowledge of his location public until at least your diplomats make it to him. They should definitely bring him to the grove for protection.”
Ragnar decided to make his voice on the matter known as well, after Aspen’s comment.
“Protection? That tree needs no protection. Even with this spectacular axe he made for me, I doubt I could chop that tree down. You’ve seen his collection of Resource Berries. You’ve felt his immense mana pool. You know he’s stronger than the three of us put together. If he wanted to, he could make another pile of Orc corpses and hunt them day in and day out and reach level 40 in no time. I mean, the tree barely sleeps right? He doesn’t exactly need a babysitter.”
Aspen had no choice but to agree with him; he made some great points. Willow was in fact stronger than the three of them put together, and he didn’t exactly need help killing Orcs. Hell, he was their night guard, killing any Orcs that came into their camp at night. Aspen didn’t let the lack of bodies in the camp fool her. She knew that he was getting at least 1 group of Orcs every night.
Her line of thought was interrupted by another group of Orcs approaching them. She used a combination of Earth Magic spells to cripple the Orcs and left the rest to her companions. It wasn’t hard for them to take out the small groups anymore, so instead she contemplated what sort of skill she wanted to use her level 30 bonus on.
The hours dragged on, the group fighting wave after wave of Orcs, until they finally decided to call it a day. The sun was still relatively high, compared to previous outings where they left after it had gone down for the night. They walked through the now quiet forest, eager to return and relax for the day. They have a long way to walk the next few days, so it would be nice to get off their feet until then.
Ragnar took the lead, followed by Aspen then Taryn. Aspen, while capable of hitting above her weight class, was the slowest in terms of attack speed. Ragnar’s speed was determined by how fast he could get his axe up, and Taryn’s by how fast he could pull his arrow back to fire. But Aspen needed to concentrate on her mana in order to manipulate it, usually taking a few seconds to cast a spell, although simpler spells required much less concentration and therefore could be fired faster.
Either way, this was their preferred marching order.
When they got to the clearing, the first thing that Aspen noticed was that Willow’s puppet was doing some sort of dance. It was a humorous sight, watching it flail its limbs about and move around with unnatural ease.
The control that Willow showed over his magic still astounded her. It took her years to get as good as she was now, and she would in no way be able to reach near the fine motor control it took to pilot a puppet the way that Willow did. He had to control each joint perfectly in order to prevent it from falling flat on its face, and there was no way that Aspen would be able to have that level of ability any time soon.
Willow responded to their presence much sooner than he normally did and walked over to approach the group. Aspen had mentally noted the point at which Willow usually noticed they were here was around 20 feet farther than it was just the day before.
Has he gone through another growth spurt? No, he’s still as tall as he was when we left this morning. But I can feel that his magic has spread further than before. Did he take over another tree?
Aspen was able to feel Willow’s magic had spread to more plant life during their stay in the clearing. She noticed when his mana had consumed one of the nearest trees to him, and when it happened a second time. She could only assume that he spread his control over yet another tree, which must have expanded his reach. The rate that he could grow, if he so chose, was honestly frightening. He could take over the whole forest in a matter of moments, and there would be nothing to stop him.
Aspen ran around Ragnar and over to Willow. She wore a large smile on her face as she announced to her arboreal friend that she reached level 30. She relaxed her mind as she felt Willow connect to her.
“Congratulations!” he said in his usual deep voice. Aspen would miss hearing him in her head when they left. “Is that why you came back so soon?”
“That and we wanted to relax for the rest of the day since we’ll be leaving tomorrow morning. Besides, I didn’t want to leave you alone for too long, lest you pull some cosmic horror out of the ground.”
Willow laughed his deep laugh and his main body started shifting. Aspen looked up to see his vines pulling down dozens of staves and bringing them over to her.
“I made you a present, but I’m not sure which will be the best for you. Go ahead and try them out. Take the one that suits you the best. Hell, you can take the rest too. Not like I have any use for them.”
Aspen stared in awe for what felt like hours. She had only told Willow about the basics of enchanting yesterday, and he had already figured it out. That was no surprise. The actual surprise came from him being able to enchant so many items in less than half a day.
Is this what he meant by having things to do? How the hell did he enchant so many in such a short time? Does he have skills for mental power as well? And what the hell is a Flamethrower Staff?
Aspen accepted the first of many staves and prepared to activate the enchantment. To her surprise, it took nearly her entire mana pool to activate the staff to even half of its potential.
The first sign that the enchantment was working was a fireball that popped into existence. Oddly enough, the fireball didn’t shoot out. It only floated above the top of the staff and waited. As Aspen continued pouring more mana into the staff, she felt a second ball of mana start forming a few inches behind the fireball. When that reached some critical mass, she felt it shoot forward towards the fireball – no, it shot through the fireball and continued past it. As the mana flowed, it ignited inside the fireball and came out the other end as a steady stream of flames. The fire reached around 20 feet away from her before dissipating into nothing. The mana ball continued shooting its flame until it ran out of supplied mana and the enchantment ceased working.
Aspen could only watch in awe as she realized the staff was replicating the spell that Willow used to kill the giant; this was the flamethrower spell he talked about. She should have realized from the name, but it was such an odd word that it hadn’t stuck with her until now.
“How do you like it?” Willow asked her.
She could only respond with a mixture of shock and appreciation. She was planning on finding a new staff when she got back to the city, but this was far beyond what she could afford.
“I made a few variations, so check them out. Here, have a few more mana berries. That should help with the testing.”
Willow handed her a large bowl that was more akin to a basket woven from his vines and filled with the large blue apple-sized orbs. Aspen hesitantly accepted the basket and went through the entire stock of staves that Willow had prepared for her. Each staff was enchanted with the same conceptual spell, but with slight differences. When she had gone through them all, she walked up to the one she knew was best for her.
This staff’s fireball had little more fire to it than a candle. It required the least amount of mana to activate that part of the enchantment, and the mana ball portion of the casting was more intuitive to how much mana she wanted to put into it. If she wanted, she could put a tiny amount of mana into the enchantment and only activate the fireball portion of the spell. It was a truly masterful design, and she couldn’t believe that it came from a novice enchanter. This would cost at least 50 gold back in the city.
“Thank you, Willow. Truly. You have done so much for us.” Aspen began thanking him again, but before she could go on, he interrupted her.
“Please stop. This is a gift for a friend. Just be sure to come back and visit from time to time, yeah?”
Aspen agreed and hugged the puppet. She knew it wasn’t Willow’s real body, but it was more comfortable than just hugging an actual tree.
Aspen spent the rest of the day chowing down on Mana Berries that Willow gave her and practicing using the staff. She wanted to try casting the spell without the staff, but she was still nowhere near as good at mana control as Willow yet, so she passed on that for now.
AS the day turned to night, Aspen ate the last of the berries Willow gave her and prepared to go to bed. As she tossed the last morsel into her mouth, she got a notification.
By consuming a large number of mana rich fruits, you have gained the skill [Improved Digestion (U)].
As she read the skill description, she felt a large wave of sarcastic mirth emanating from Willow. The pleasure and humor boiled over through their connection, and she couldn’t help but laugh as well.
It was a beautiful way to end such an amazing hunting trip. Willow connected to Ragnar and Taryn as well, and the four of them giggled and laughed their way to their beds. It was a good night. Aspen would miss these peaceful times.
Comments
Undead Writer
Thanks for the chapter!
