As we return to the lab, I ask Merlin to start without me.

“I need about an hour meditating. I don’t want to remain stuck to this thing forever.” I say pointing to my bed of roots.

“Ok, I can keep practicing. I also have a few other things to get to for the day.” With a thumbs-up, he heads inside the room, while I stay outside bathing in the sun.

I spend the next few minutes just relaxing. Looking over my health meter, it’s already almost full, and I flinch at each probe on my wound. But I want to know how things are going. The pain is significantly fainter and it looks to be healing nicely. I will need a couple more days even at this good rhythm to fully heal, but that is already way better than I had been hoping for.

My breathing relaxes even further, and the cycle that was happening every 15 seconds is lengthened to about 30 as I let my senses fall away. I focus singularly on my wound. I send Aether, health, and vigor to it. Not sure which is better, or even if they will have any meaningful impact, but I keep up the exercise. My meager passive regen slowly increases as I go deeper into my meditation. Sometime after Health is full I open my eyes and start breathing normally.

The world around me has changed as always. A quick look at the sun confirms I have been meditating for about 2 hours.

I slowly move to the magic lab feeling something there. Inside, different from my expectations, I find Merlin using ginormous amounts of mana, and managing to do what I thought was impossible. I see a single swaying leave.

Observing the interaction, I connect fully with Pando’s seed and feel what he is doing. Trying to go over how he did this doesn’t tell me anything. The way he has shaped the mana is incomprehensible to my senses. But the result is clear, even if it's taxing, he can fully control the roots with only his capabilities as long as he has access to the control structure.

A few seconds later he reabsorbs all the mana left. As he droops his shoulders and sighs, I make myself know.

“Huhum, interesting.”

“Ohh, you are back,” he says with a small jump. Scratching his head, he continues “I was trying something different and…”

I continue his line of thought as he stops.

“And you succeed, it’s not enough for meaningful control yet, but eventually I wouldn’t even need to be involved in the endeavor.”

“I guess.” He replies with a shrug. He tries to straighten his back but it’s as if his arms were made of lead and the hunch slowly creeps back in. “It's nice and all I can do this on my own, but this is exhausting.”

“I would imagine so, I do not even have any idea of what you were doing, and I had a first-row seat to the whole things from every angle imaginable.”

“Well…” Merlin then launches on a few theories he had about how magic worked. High-level meta stuff that I could barely comprehend, and with each of his words I feel more and more lost.

But over the next hours, as we practice, and he slowly introduces aspects of his theories in more manageable chunks, I begin to see where he was coming from.

He posited that magic was individual, and any belief could be the basis for it. That is in itself quite simple and in line with our current theories. But he somehow manages to interact with mana on a deeper level, a meta approach to magic, so that with enough focus he wouldn't be limited by his affinities, type of mana or not having someone’s mana signature. All that could be simulated. The added complexity was usually not worth it, but it may be able to bypass simple magic security systems and opened up all kinds of possibilities for working with different elements.

Each attempt is closer to something workable in actual combat. As his mana runs out we start to pull from the batteries. Thousands of mana points. That fuels not only the experimentation but making the root network under the village only grow in strength and scope.

“Yeah, just like that. Hold the image in your mind and the rest should fall into place effortlessly.” I say as I guide him to take his perception the farthest roots, now over a mile from the village in the direction of my home.”

“Nah, it may be a good exercise, but for anything approaching proper combat, it’s not worth it. With your help, I can increase reduce the difficulty, but it is still not enough to reliably go over 100 meters.”

“Either way, there is about an hour before noon. I don’t know if the attack will be now, but better prepared than not. We should stop so you can get some rest.”

Rubbing his forehead in his hand, he replies.

“That sounds like an incredible idea. Meet you at the wall.”

After checking that we weren’t forgetting anything I slowly head for the wall. Climbing it is quite easy, though significantly slower than when I was just moving on level ground. Slowly, making sure to disturb my abdomen as little as possible I sit on the ground. I need plenty of help from roots, but sitting with folded legs at all is already an improvement.

Being here is a welcome change of pace. I could think a little, but I end up just connecting with my root network. I spread my awareness to every inch on it, along with communicating with Pando’s seed. The root network was technically part of the seed, but it somehow just seemed a little different.

I think about the smithy. Could I…? Even in my meditation, I can suddenly feel my heart pounding, at the mere thought of my next actions. Minutes go by, as I try to come up with the right approach, but when I succeed, my mana goes into the forge from hundreds of feet away. The hour to noon passes, and enough time for Blackwood to forge two weapons passes. I need to take a look at it later, see if it even worked.

Without compunction, after having done all I can for the immediate time, I let go of all my concerns and simply am alongside the roots.

I feel as people step on the ground above them, and they slowly expand. as water and nutrients move through each of the capillaries, and as in a few spots they start to integrate the vegetation above into themselves.

Focusing on the long tendril, I start to send about a mana per second there, fully focussed, the slow and steady growth that was happening until now seems to be negligible. And the rate of growth was already orders of magnitude faster than any plants had a right to be.

Each second the tendril grows about three inches. All the excess of mana-mana goes into accelerating the thickening of the roots along the way.

An hour later, the tendril is 300 meters longer. If I rely only on this mechanism, this will take forever, along with a boatload of mana. But for now, this is how I’m doing it.

Hours go by, and I barely notice their passage. Someone else joins me by my side and tries connecting to the roots without the runic formation needed.

It can only mean one thing, Merlin has shown up.

With warmth in my and Pando’s seed hearts, we extend a few roots, that encompasses his body, and form the needed runic formation around him. This time however no strenuous activities are taken on his part. He just connects with the roots and meditates while watching my effortless actions.

People come and go for hours until the sun goes down. It is then that suddenly all the noise is gone. The absence of noise sends my perception to the edges of the clearing, and in only a few moments, I feel beings stepping on them.

The little root map I set up on the last attack in the commander table is revived, and I updated it with the info getting to me.

Enemies: 200, 300, 500, 1000. As the numbers reach a thousand, they stop increasing. Reports from scouts arrive through the comm network, which I’m tapped into. Approximately 600 goblins, 300 wolves, 100 archers, 10 shamans, and a chief. Average level 35.

Merlin continues to familiarise himself with Pando’s seed and the roots. His progress is remarkable.

My attention goes back to the enemy. They approach the very same defenses that made all the difference in the last two attacks. We didn’t make any new ones, just repaired everything up.

Merling gets ready for action. I place both my hands on his head, not sure if this is actually helpful for my telepathy, but it seemed to help slightly. In a few spots, I take action, but I attempt to let Merlin do as much as possible to increase his Exp share.

The fight is fairly anticlimactic and very short. Hundreds of fireballs are heading for the enemy, as the mages move the ground and eliminate a few more. My roots tangle dozens of them with every movement. Greg and a couple of other levels 50 people join in the fray just below the wall. They run amock amongst the goblin and wolves. Merlin makes full use of this distraction. In five minutes, over 200 goblins are tangled, and only a couple of stragglers are left behind.

The goblin Chief is also easily slain by Greg. A single full-powered blow to the torso from him sends the goblin tumbling back with a fatal wound. He was after all about 20 levels higher than this level 50 Chief.

I look over everyone’s actions. It’s clear, this time the disparity in the exp bounty will be great. Most people did very little.

After the goblin’s chief demise, only two minutes are needed to mop up every single one of the stragglers.

After hours of sitting in the same position, I carefully get up with help from my roots. Seeing Merling opening his stat screen, I’m rewarded with one of the brightest smiles I have seen in a while.

“This… this is a massive Exp bounty for me.”

I look at him jumping around for a moment. After a few moments, he tries to control himself as he looks at me. With a simple smile on my face, knowing that the reward should have been massive, I ask.

“How much?”

“Over 8M experience points. It was a seven percent contribution.”

Elation hits me at seeing the fruits of my work. If only I could do the same for other people. Perhaps on the next month’s trial. For now, a single person that can hit lv 100, especially someone as talented as Merlin will have to be enough.

Someone to the side, that heard the exchange, before slightly confused, finally gets what we talking about and her mouth goes wide. In a shrill voice, she says:

“Eight million Exp. points? How the hell….?”

I leave everyone to their celebration, not because I don’t also feel elated, but the cost even if expected was still higher than I had hoped for. I felt elated at the benefit it will provide the village, the strengthening in its defense capabilities, but the cost was the lives of the wolves and goblins coming to stand against us.

I don’t waver in my decision, but that doesn’t mean I relish the slaughter. I don’t let myself numb to it, or learn to enjoy it. I doubt any normal human actually liked confronting this particular dilemma.

A quick peek at the System’s prompts tells me how such a small attack managed to achieve this high in total Exp.

You have participated in a trial of your village. Bonus Exp. 7x +100% No serious casualties. +50% Attack commanded by Chief +25% Finished in less than 10 min. +25% Completely countered enemies strategy. +10% Very little damage to village's defenses. Enemies: Goblins Avg. Lv. 35 x598 Wolves Avg. Lv. 31 x296 Archers Avg. Lv. 35 x103 Goblin Shaman Avg. Lv. 50 x10 Goblin Chief Avg. Lv. 70 x1 Total Exp: 5,014 M *7*(1+210%) = 108.80 M Exp. Your contribution awards you: 18.82 M Exp. (17.3%)

Now the numbers were just getting stupid. Regardless, I still didn’t have the class I wanted. So it was time for another project. Expanding the root network over this entire instance.