I had half of this chapter ready yesterday, but didn't want to hurry.

Slightly longer chapter.

Luke watched as the group of goblins entered his forest. There were close to forty of the disgusting creatures. He wasn’t worried, but he should be careful. A knife to the brain will kill no matter how high your attributes. He checked to make sure he had the five passives shots and that his Mana Shield was activated. Then, he Treewalked to a tree twenty meters away with uninterrupted view of the creatures advances. Steve wasn’t with him, he was gone. To the other side of the forest, patrolling. After all the forest was big and he couldn’t protect it by himself. He had acquired the help of the pack that was happy with the extra food when they killed or repelled invading enemies.

Luke confirmed the position of the two shamans. They were the most dangerous of the squadron. He locked on their position and shot each once to their death. Striking meant that his stealth was broken (at least for a few seconds even if he wasn’t spotted) and the goblins quickly noticed his presence. It took the poor witless creatures a few seconds to link the death of their magic users and Luke, but when they did, they charged him. He fired the rest of his Mana Bolts and casted the spell once to grisly results. He had discovered that an added bonus of the Penetration the skill had, was that it could go through more than one enemy before dissolving. When the goblins foolishly charged in a narrow formation (not because of training, but due to how close each tree is from each other), he could end more than a third of their numbers before they got close. The archers tried to turn him into a pincushion, but his shield did its job and blocked every projectile. In the time since he created it for the first time, he had used the ability almost constantly to increase his proficiency in it with positive results. Besides his ridiculously high Intelligence enhanced it beyond what any magic shield had rights to be.

However, there were still twenty goblins that made it. If it was a fair fight, he would be overwhelmed eventually, dying under their relentless attacks. He performed his favourite skill, and then he was a dozen meters deeper into the forest. The goblins tried to advance, but were rooted to their place by well roots. And some branches. The trees around were more than content to immobilize the creatures while Luke took care of them.

It had been a week since Luke changed race and class and he hadn’t stopped training for a moment. He soon discovered that being part spirit meant that he needed less than half the sleeping time of an average human, added to his stats he could go without rest for days. Besides defending the forest, he has proposed himself as a goal to connect personally to every tree. Although he despaired when he did the math (if the 5km radius had a million trees more or less, it would take Luke 57 years to connect with each with the connecting rate previously mentioned), he started the task because there was no reason to delay. The second day, he realized he was going at this the wrong way and stopped to meditate in how to be more efficient. He pondered for three days before he finally was confident in finishing in the short run. This happened when Awakening reached Advanced lvl 1. Advanced was the stage next to intermediate. Luke didn't know how many more stages there were but he guessed there were at least one more related to ‘mastering’ the skill like with his Runic Language. Anyway, when Awakening became Intermediate he could link to a tree every four minutes or so. He was overjoyed. Then he did some calculations, and it wasn’t enough. It would take a year at that rhythm. This time he advanced the skill in a single day. He had just made the ‘treaty’ with the pack, so they took care of everything. Now, connecting to the whole forest would take him ten days with eight remaining. He divided the forest in ten sectors and did one of them every day. The first sector he did was the area around the clearing of his house, the other sectors resembled eight pizza pieces. This calculation would remain appropriate if the forest doesn't start growing faster. For the last week, it increased its radius a dozen of meters. That meant a few thousand trees per day (it was mind blowing to see tiny plants popping out from the earth to become a more than ten year old tree by the end of the same day.

He was delayed of his pondering by constant skirmishes against different creatures. The usual pattern was once everyday, he was raided by goblins. Then, a new animal creature appeared to populate the forest. Some were friendly some not. The friendly included bears, snakes, tree sprites and sylphs. It seems that the mana in this forest is highly concentrated (maybe due to been awakened or maybe due of Luke being part spirit himself, or both) attracting the more spiritual beings easily. The first two weren’t able to communicate but they understood that Luke was the landlord. They didn’t attack him and even helped him in dealing with goblins if they believed their part of the forest to be invaded. The latter two had intelligence similar to a child. A mischievous, adorable and clingy child. They were the first to come, distributing themselves evenly through the forest. They mostly stayed hidden due to their shy nature, but they seemed to have taken a liking to Luke. Everytime he went through a part of the forest inhabited by one of them, they would do small pranks (like putting rock and twigs to make him slip) or stand on his shoulders. He didn’t really care, they got a little on his nerves, but were an excellent alarm system. They took it as their job to warn him if anything was close to the forest. Mostly, tree sprite worked as sentinels in their trees and sylphs would relay the message. They appeared to have a symbiotic relationship. Luke at first thought there were only a few hundreds of them, until he saw a family reunion. It was shocking to watch so many of them. He estimated that there were above tens of thousands. Anyway, they were nice company most of the time.

The problem were the spiders. A group of them with a Queen settled close to the forest (apparently giant spiders aren’t considered forest inhabitants) and desired to expand their territory in that direction. It took him two days to eliminate every eight-legged terror and their gigantic Queen. The trouble was finding and killing them before they could sneak attack him or escape. He solved it by blocking every exit of their nest except one and then lighting it up. It was like they were purposely lining up so that he could train Mana Bolt.

The goblins didn’t represent any danger now, but it was worrisome that the amount spawning everyday was growing. They were excellent cannon fodder to level up though. He gained three more levels with all the fighting. Luke had carefully considered his future distribution after he changed, but he decided that he should continue with the same plan: everything to Intelligence. He had to make the most of his ‘Mind over body’ achievement. He suspected that his attributes were monstrously high in comparison to humans. On a side note, he discovered he had been mistaken in how stats worked. Ten wasn’t the human average, it was the bonus the system gave to all humans. The base strength wasn’t considered in that. Then, every extra stat point increases that attribute in a 1%. For example, Luke wisdom recently got to one hundred, so he is now two times wiser (base Wisdom or 100% + 100% from stat points) than an average human.

Anyway, he collected the goblin's weapon and started his way back. He won’t use them, but the metal could be melted to use it later. A sylph came flying, sitting on his right shoulder. They were hard to distinguish as individual. The only difference he noticed between two of them was the colour of their eyes and of their hair. Besides that, they were less than twenty centimeter tall (he suspected they could change their body size, but hadn’t confirmed it yet) with long hair and pale skin. They could turn invisible at will or transform into wind, he wasn’t sure. They had an androgynous look that made it impossible to know if they were male or female.

While returning, he didn’t forget to go connecting to each tree. Even though he had divided the forest and decided which sector to do each day, that was used as a guide. He wasn’t going to stick so faithfully to the plan. He entered his house clearing and made a lap around it. He was confirming than nothing happened to his last ward. Luke tied the branches of the trees at the border of the clearing forming a circle. Actually, there were three circles: he tied branches at three different heights, enhancing the strength of the ward and making it harder to disrupt. Then, he went tree by tree to put the enchantment. It took him some creative thinking to find a way to mark the trees without doing it any damage. He ended just asking nicely. He transmitted a picture of the runes he wanted to each tree and they complied by altering their bark somewhere to form the design. This brought the added bonus that the symbols were in different places on every tree, making them harder to find. He put the hieroglyph for ‘connect’ and ‘defense’ to every tree but the third symbol wasn’t homogenous. He inscribed ‘drain’ in some, ‘repel’ in others and ‘hide’ in the rest. The first, absorbed the Health and Mana of hostiles giving it to the trees. He hadn’t been able to test the consequences, but he guessed that the more enemies invaded, the stronger his sentinels (he liked to call these trees like this, after all, they were the first to awaken) would be. ‘Repel’ worked like in the Pokemon game: it made animals and monster go away. It wasn't perfect as it didn't work in anything as smart as a child (sylphs and tree sprites could bypass it with no difficulties) though it gave him some peace against anything that based its decisions on instincts. The last one was used to block anyone trying to find him or his house through magic. For him, it would work while he was inside the clearing,, so he could still be tracked (or scryed as some novels call magical tracking) when he left, but it did give some measure of protection. The runes common to all the trees created a magical shield that could block attacks from the outside but not the other way around (defense). ‘Connect’ did the obvious, it linked every tree between themselves to empower the ward (it was like a circle of mages casting a single spell: the result was more powerful that the sum of the parts) and also to luck, allowing him to see a 3D picture of the clearing from every side. This worked to let him look inside the glade and toward the outside. The ward transformed the clearing into a something similar to an audience room of a king: you have to announce yourself to enter or suffer the consequences.

The other thing that changed was the grass. The well mowed lawn has turned into an overgrown area. The tallest grasses reached to Luke’s hip. This was caused by himself. No, he didn’t forget to mow the grass, this was on purpose. After the pondering about the forest ended, he thought whether other plants besides trees could be awakened. The answer was a resounding yes. He awakened a single blade of grass in the morning and that same day the field around the house had changed into it’s actual situation. The good news was that due to his high level in Awakening and that grass was a simpler life form than a tree, he became automatically connected without having to go one by one.

Luke entered the house, checking every room like he always did, when he heard some noises from his father’s room. He softened his steps as he made haste for the dormitory. He grabbed his staff with his left hand after being certain that he had the five passive shots ready. He opened the door suddenly, prepared to empty his ammo. What he discovered though, changed his mind. There, passed out, was a gorgeous, slightly green skinned woman.