Last night I finished up with the book. It described the life of the author after origin had collapsed, nothing too interesting. But it ended with a note addressed to Tiddol ‘i believe I am the last of my kind, I have only held off from death through sheer force of will. A will to let the story of my people be passed down after this, I believe giving you my final creation will bring that to fruition. It won’t be long after you leave me that I will have died.’ I cried at that.

For the rest of the day I checked up on everyone else. I had read to the exclusion of pretty much everyone else for more than a week now.

I first checked in on Tiddol. She was playing with willow, and for some reason watching it reminded me of how my mother would play with me when I was younger. I watched for a little bit before deciding to leave them alone.

Parius probably had the biggest change. I’ve never seen a city before, but what his tiny tribe has turned into is now what I imagine a city looks like. Par himself was drilling a bunch of goblins, and based on my limited understanding of fighting they were actually really good, much better than they were a week ago.

Thes was nowhere to be found, when I asked Mest about it he said he went hunting to blow off some steam.

Mest was amused by the fact that I tuned everything out for over a week to read, said it reminded him of himself when he was younger. I ended up getting into a lengthy discussion about the things I learned from the book, and while he couldn’t appreciate any of it the way I could, he could appreciate the skill and power it took to pull off those feats. In the end, we both acknowledged that we came out of the conversation with some new enlightenment.

The trees had grown significantly as well. It seems I had fallen into something of a trance while reading, and though not quite as effective as focusing on them, I managed to inadvertently feed the trees during that trance. My running theory on why is a combination of the book itself drawing out mana and my utter engagement in it to the exclusion of all else, the book ended up drawing out more than I needed to and I unconsciously fed the rest to the trees, and action I was intimately familiar with.

I also grew myself. Aside from the knowledge I gained from the book itself I feel like my connection with the plants of my grove has reached an even deeper level, I'm not sure what exactly this will involve in the future, but for now the most immediately noticeable effect is an increase in mana regeneration.