Claff
patreon
Chapter 15
🕑 Added 2025-01-13 03:16:19 +0000 UTCI had grown 100 inches by the time I got my first major interruption.
A pack of wolves came running by, which majorly scared my feathery tenants. There was no way in hell that the wolves would be able to reach them, since they sat on my highest branch over 25 feet in the air. Yet they were still tempted to run. I sent them both a calming feeling and a mental video of me killing all the wolves if they even tried climbing my trunk.
The video mostly consisted of me wrapping my vines around each wolf’s throat and hanging them 5 feet off the ground. It felt like a disturbing picture to me, but it seemed to more than do the trick. The mated pair started tweeting at the wolves as they ran under my branches, almost challenging them to even try to bother them. I wanted to smack them for being idiots, but I guess that was better for them than sitting there scared out of their feathers.
The pack was gone after 2 minutes. I was surprised at how many there were in the group. I expected maybe around 15 to 20, but it was closer to 180 to 200 of them. It would truly have been a blood bath if I decided to take them out. I wondered what could cause them to run like that. I hadn’t seen them migrate over the last couple years, so this was definitely new to me. In fact, the only mobile living beings I’ve seen on this planet are ants, goblins, birds, and now these wolves.
I formed the connection with the birds again and asked about what other creatures inhabited these woods. They showed me images of full tribes of goblins, packs of wolves, the occasional feline that looked very panther like, and a few humanoids as well. I was disappointed that they couldn’t give any more information other than there being tall, skinny humanoids, short fat humanoids, and short green humanoids.
I can only guess the short fat ones are some sort of Dwarf, the green ones are Goblins, and the tall ones are regular humans. I guess this is still better than nothing though.
I went back to my daily routine of growing and relaxing in the sun. It was another 75 days when I got my next visitor to my little slice of heaven. Though I doubt this one would call it heaven. I heard them before I saw them, given how much they were stumbling.
A cloaked figure limped in my direction, barely able to make it to me before almost collapsing at the base of my trunk. I was easily able to see their face, given I could see everything in my Domain. It was a beautiful woman with some very sharp cheek bones and even sharper jaw line. I had a hunch, so I also checked out her ears as well.
Damn, I really thought she was going to be an elf. What human actually looks that good? Damn her normal, rounded ears. But good god she’s got some great features.
After I stopped checking out the dying person in front of me, I looked more into what her state of being was. I felt a bit like a creeper for checking under her cloak without her permission, but given the circumstances, I felt it appropriate.
She appeared to have a large gash running across her lower stomach. It looked pretty deep, and looking at her trail, she was losing a lot of blood.
Despite the protest of my two avian companions, I reached up to my higher branches with one of my vines and tore off a small handful – vineful? - of the health berries. It took a couple tries to get them properly balanced, but I got them down to the woman.
I felt skeptical giving my resources away like this, but I also didn’t want a human to die right in front of me when I had the opportunity to save her life. I just hoped she made it through this so these wouldn’t go to waste.
When I brought the berries in front of the woman, she initially was very hesitant, going so far as to try to get back up and run away. She stumbled and fell after two steps.
I brought my berries over to her once again, hoping this time she would accept them. I knew I should probably try connecting to her through Telepathy, but I wasn’t sure how much that would help, given her clear panic.
At this point, she started to look pale from blood loss. I had a small pool of it at the base of my trunk, which was feeding me a small amount of resource points, which only helped replenish the berries I took out for her. The first berry was already mostly back to being fully grown.
I used a few vines to grab her arms and flip her over, as gently as I could. She no longer resisted, which I assume was her giving up and accepting defeat. I held the berries up to her mouth again, which she thankfully ate without much of a struggle. At least, she tried to eat, but she looked too weak at this point to even chew.
I grasped the berries right above her open mouth, and squeezed the juices out of them, hoping this would be enough to get her to the point of being able to eat on her own.
She drank the Health Berry juice eagerly. As she took the first gulp, I checked on her wounds. I was hoping that the bleeding would at least stop after eating a couple of these, but I was wrong. So wrong.
After drinking the juice of two berries, her stomach was almost completely healed. The once gaping wound was now down to just a long scratch. She was still a lot paler than she was before, but she was already in a lot better condition than before.
I brought down 4 more Health Berries for her to eat. Thankfully she was a lot less hesitant of eating them now.
When she saw the next batch of berries being brought down for her, she whispered, “Thank you.” It was clear as if she were talking in normal English to me, so I was happy with my choice in skill upgrade.
She ate the next 2 berries with gusto. After the third berry, she started to regain her color. And by the fourth berry, she was looking almost completely back to normal.
So, it takes only 6 berries to bring someone from looking like the brink of death all the way back to normal? That’s insane. Each one is only 1% of my Health to make. Maybe I shouldn’t have made so many. This feels dangerous.
The woman sat up, using my vines as support. When she was back to full health, she stood and walked over to my trunk. She placed a hand on me, and I chose this moment to reach out with Telepathy to her.
“Hello there.” I said to her. To myself, I finished the quote with, General Kenobi.
The woman jumped a bit, obviously startled. She placed her hand back on my trunk before responding. “Hello, great tree spirit. Thank you for helping me”
“I only did what any great tree would do in my situation. It’s not every day I get to meet a new person, after all.”
She shook her head, opting to remain silent, so I continued. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”
“My caravan was attacked by a group of Orcs. I was barely able to make it out alive, and I’m sure most of my friends are dead now. I’m just glad I wasn’t followed here.”
I felt a wave of sadness with a small stream of relief came from her as she said that. I almost shivered a bit in grief myself. There was also a tinge of anger in there, but it was all overshadowed by the enormous amount of fear she was experiencing. I was almost surprised she was still able to stand with how strongly the emotions she had going through her were. It was inspiring, to say the least.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I told her. As she finished talking, I started hearing grunting and sniffing. I doubted she could hear any of it though.
She ripped her hand from my trunk and spun around. What she saw seemed to have scared her, as I suddenly had a small yellow pool at the base of my body. I just shook my head and continued conversing with her.
“Might I be of some assistance? I doubt Orcs would be very good at climbing.” I suggested to her. She just stared off in the direction that the birds showed me was the road, which is the direction she came from. I assumed that the source of the noises I was hearing was in fact Orcs, and that they had followed the woman to me.
Maybe I should ask her name. I feel weird just referring to her as ‘the woman’.
After a few seconds of her silence, the first monster crossed the threshold of my Domain of Awareness. I was honestly impressed at what I saw.
Before me stood a 7-foot-tall humanoid wearing nothing but a leather loincloth wrapped around his waist. I was glad it covered enough to not be shameful. As my gaze ventured north, I saw pure muscle ripping through the green, hairy skin that was littered with scars. When I got to the head, I was unimpressed. Compared to the woman in front of me, this guy looked like a pig. Especially given he had a snout instead of a human nose. It was only exaggerated by the Orc sniffing and snarling in my direction. Well, I guess in her direction as he probably thought I was a normal tree.
The woman in front of me just continued to stand in the puddle of her own piss, so I wrapped her in a couple of vines and dragged her up to my higher branches. The Orc was unarmed, though its claws looked impressively sharp. There should be no way for it to attack her, especially since I didn’t intend to let it live long enough to do so.
As I brought her up higher in my branches, she started screaming. I mentally sighed and disconnected my mind from hers. She was scared and I didn’t want to be distracted from what was going to come next.
The Orc was obviously attracted to her screams, and charged right at me. Its eyes had to be horrible, since it took so long for it to react. The woman was still screaming, which I feared would only bring the Orc’s friends over. I connected to her again and told her to quiet down so I could deal with this little mess. It didn’t seem to help. I almost gagged her to get her to shut up, but thought better of it.
Meh. If I kill them all, I’ll get some pretty sweet Exp for my next level. Here’s nothing!
I was tempted to try attacking the Orc with Telepathy, but I feared the consequences of being counter assaulted, so I held off. I knew it was probably a dumb monster, but I was supposed to be a thoughtless tree, so who knew what could happen.
I wonder if there’s something like a mental enhancement skill. I might have to put more thought into that. That’s for later though. I have a pig to deal with.
The Orc was charging at me, and I waited until he was fully surrounded by my vines before acting. I used 15 vines to wrap around his whole body, and I was glad I used so many. The Orc was strong, as evidenced by his rippling muscles.
I wanted to get more in on the action, but I had them spread out too much to properly wrap his whole body. Then I remembered my extra-long vine.
I untangled the hundred-footer for the first time in a while and wrapped it around him. The pig man was so thick I could only get it wrapped 9 times before I was out of vine.
Now that I had nothing to fear from him, I loosened one of the regular vines and brought it around the Orc’s neck. I intended to strangle the damn thing.
I tightened the vine’s grip around its neck and held it there for a few minutes. It kept struggling the whole time I was strangling it. I brought in another vine to help deal the finishing blow to the monster in front of me.
It took 10 whole minutes for the Orc to die. I was about to give up when I felt its body loosen ever so slightly at the 3-minute mark. It kept going more limp as the minutes passed by, and I finally got the kill notification.
Orc has been slain. Exp has been awarded.
I nodded to myself and used Telepathy to connect back to the woman who was crying in my canopy. I had wrapped a few vines around her and the branch she was sitting on so she wouldn’t fall off. I was glad I didn’t accidentally tighten those vines too, otherwise things would’ve been awkward.
“The Orc is dead. You’re fine now. Be at peace, young one.” I sent her soothing emotions, which were swept aside by a tidal wave of fear and sorrow. She had just lost her friends after all. I guess I should be more surprised at how well she was acting when I first made contact with her.
I kept the steady stream of calmness heading her way for about an hour until she finally ran out of tears. She then moved on to a much quieter sob until she eventually passed out.
I draped a few more vines over her limp body to try to help with the slight chill that has been going on lately. I doubted it did much, but it was better than nothing, I suppose.
While she slept, I checked in with my feathery companions. They seemed displeased about the woman making so much noise during their quiet hours, but were much more sympathetic when I tried to explain the situation to them. They seemed to understand more when I mentioned her friends dying. After that, they went to sleep as well.
With everyone asleep, I had nothing to do but wait for either someone to show up, or for one of these three to awaken. I spent the time elongating my vines again.
I realized during the fight that the 5 inches hanging on the ground weren’t nearly as impressive as I originally thought. I couldn’t really reach the Orc with most of my vines, at least the way I had them spread out.
I guess I should spend some more time and Stamina elongating them before I continue my search for the rest of the forest.
I focused on the first vine I used to wrap around the Orc’s neck. I brought it down another 15 feet before calling it good. I then draped the vine over one of my branches so it wouldn’t look so ridiculously long. I then spent the next 9 hours doing the same to as many vines as I could, waiting for my Stamina to fill back up before continuing with the next one.
It was a long night, made longer by my glowing anticipation of finally having someone to actually talk to.
