As he climbed Bernard was pleased to discover the tree had a couple spots that would be safe to sleep in. Places where the thick limbs had grown in such a way as to make it virtually impossible to toss and turn his way off of whichever one he ended up choosing. Not that he had ever been much of a restless sleeper. He usually woke up in the same place and position he had fallen asleep in. It was just a risk he would rather not take. He doubted falling dozens of feet to the forest floor would be a pleasant way to start the day.

Sleep was on his list of things to accomplish, and was getting higher on that list with every passing minute, but he was forcing himself to stay alert as long as possible. He hadn't ever had a concussion before and it didn't seem that severe since, as far as he could tell, he was still thinking clearly. He just remembered being told repeatedly throughout his life that you shouldn't let someone with a concussion go to sleep until they see a doctor.

Since there weren't any doctors in the middle of a massive rainforest filled with horrifying monsters he would just have to settle for not sleeping for as long as he could manage. It did begin to occur to him as he climbed the tree that he had actually only encountered the one monster despite wandering the forest for a while. There were suspiciously few critters about, now that he thought about it.

Regardless, he needed to get his bearings, so he kept climbing. It took far longer than he had expected, but he eventually got high enough to catch useful glimpses of the sky through the canopy around him. Unfortunately, he had no idea what time of day it was and had to sit and wait for the position of the sun to shift enough to give him a direction to travel in.

The gentle swaying of the tree in the wind and the sound of the rustling foliage almost lulled him to sleep. The only thing that saved him from plummeting to his doom the moment he loosened his grip as he relaxed was the god-awful cacophony of screeches that erupted from dozens, if not hundreds, of monkeys that suddenly showed up in his vicinity.

Abruptly brought back to full awareness he clutched at the tree limbs tightly as his heart pounded in his chest. The troop of monkeys was making swift progress through the canopy around him, seemingly unaware or uncaring of his presence as they moved. He decided the best thing to do was to simply quietly wait for them to pass.

He had a hard enough time defending himself from that pig-ape thing, if these monkeys ended up being hostile he was doomed. He could probably take a monkey or three in a straight up fistfight, they were considerably smaller than him after all. A hundred monkeys though? In their own habitat? There wasn't a shadow of a doubt in his mind that that would be a fight with terrible odds.

Something occurred to him after a couple minutes of watching howling monkeys stream through the canopy around him. They were moving fast. It was almost as though they were fleeing from something, and he didn't even like the idea of having to defend himself from even a few monkeys, let alone something that could send hundreds of them fleeing for their lives.

Discretion being the better part of valor and all, he decided to slowly and carefully climb back down the tree. If whatever was chasing the monkeys was at the same level in the trees as the monkeys themselves, then being a few dozen feet lower than that should dramatically reduce the chances of him being discovered. He also reasoned that the monkeys would most likely ignore him due to their preoccupation with fleeing.

He reasoned wrong.

The moment he started moving the volume of the screeches heightened, and bits of debris began to pelt him. Nuts, sticks, even the occasional rock as unlikely as it was. He did his best to ignore the barrage as he climbed down as fast as he could. It wasn't until something splatted against the back of his head and he instinctively reached to swipe at it, hoping against all hope that it wasn't what he expected it to be, that things went horribly wrong.

He didn't even get a chance to find out what hit him. With one hand behind his head and decidedly not gripping the tree, the sharp rock that cut into the back of his other hand a bit and made him reflexively loosen his grip and start to fall. His footing had been solid enough, but the overripe fruit mixed in with the other detritus flying his way had made the branches slicker than he expected and the extra weight from losing his grip caused him to slip.

For the fourth time in a single day he found himself falling down an unforgiving surface. First down the stairs, then technically back up them, then up them again while fleeing the pig-ape, and now he was falling out of a tree. "I think-" he grunted as his hip smashed across a branch, "I hate-" his shoulder slammed into another branch with a crunch sound he desperately hoped was from the branch and not his bones, "heights."

He bounced a bit further from the trunk and the lack of impacts allowed him to pick up an alarming amount of speed before he crashed into something solid with a wet crunch. He froze in place for a moment, waiting for the pain to set in. Instead of pain he got Aegis messages.

Congratulations! You have slain a level five Razorclaw Panther!

Congratulations! For defeating two higher leveled foes with a single blow each you have been awarded the title David and an extra class feat selection for your next level! Would you like to display your new title?

Congratulations! You have earned enough energy to advance to level two! Would you like to advance now?

"Display my title? What does that mean?" He asked woozily. He was still dizzy from the fall and slightly concerned at the number of branches his head struck on the way down.

Title selected for display.

Chosen titles will be shown to any creature intelligent enough to identify other creatures. Note: some skills will grant the ability to see all titles and personal information of others at will, so long as the target is either willing or of lesser strength.

"Huh, I guess it won't hurt nothin' for the monkeys to see how scary I am, lookie me, scary David man! That's not even my real name. What was that other thing again? Oh yea, Imma level up. Last time I had to buy things and didn't have enough to level up. How do I…" A cloud of silver and black shrouded him.

Congratulations! You have reached level two in your class, Arboreal Warden, you may select one of the following feats! Well-rooted, Regeneration, Hyphal Network, or Iron Bark.

"My head hurts. You talk too loud. Regeneration, what's that one do?" His answer came in the form of a tingling sensation he almost didn't notice, and the disappearance of the cloud. Ultimately, exhaustion from the unusual amounts of extreme activity and his wounds took their toll and he dropped into a deep and dreamless sleep right where he landed.

*****

Bernard's return to the waking world was slow and almost luxurious. He felt better than he had in a good long while, and certainly better than he had the last time he was awake. At least from what he could remember. The last thing he remembered clearly was falling… out of a tree? Everything else was somewhat blurry.

In a sudden panic he shot bolt-upright as the memory of the fall processed, only half noticing the strange squelch that sounded as he rose. He twisted around to find that he had landed on one of the spots he had considered as a potential place to sleep. He also found that the strange sound he heard as he sat up was the sound of his body being pulled from a half splattered carcass he couldn't begin to identify beyond catlike and disgusting. He backpedaled instinctively, heedless of the direction he was moving. His primary concern in the moment was to get away from the nasty thing.

At least, it was his primary concern until he hit the edge of the thick branches and slipped. He was quickly losing count of the astonishing number of times he had fallen from improbable heights in the last, however long it had been since the nightmare he was trapped in had started. Luckily the forest floor wasn't particularly far from where he had been, and was well enough padded by fallen leaves and bits of bark that he was relatively uninjured by the impact.

Physically. His ego, on the other hand, was taking some serious blows. He laid there for a minute or so to catch his breath, since the landing had winded him. As soon as he calmed back down, a thought began to prickle at the back of his mind. He remembered the event that sent him tumbling down the tree in the first place and tentatively ran his hand down the back of his head. He froze and a chill ran through him when his fingers found something gooey plastered there.

Those monkeys threw feces at me! The realization brought him to a level of rage and hatred he hadn't realized he was capable of, generally aimed at any and all kinds of monkey. Then in a sort of morbid fascination he brought his hand around to look. It was so much worse than he had thought. The gunk plastered all over him wasn't just monkey droppings. It was mostly dead cat bits.

In hindsight he should have realized that waking up on top of a splatted corpse would directly imply that he would have some of it stuck to him, but all he was concerned with in the moment was getting it off. That, and a considerable amount of dry heaving. He wasn't sure if he should be grateful for the fact he hadn't found any food or water yet and as such had nothing to vomit. Although finding water was now at the tippy top of his priority list.

He glanced up at the tree he once had such great hopes for with a grimace. He most certainly wasn't staying here.

He was a dozen yards from the tree when he remembered his growth items and groaned. Heading back to the foot of his newest nemesis with something of a dejected air, he was pleasantly surprised to see a significant difference where he had planted his acorns. Or at least he hoped it was a pleasant surprise. He wasn't particularly sure what he was looking at.

One looked like a particularly large thistle, only with glossy black berries nestled amongst the thorns. Are they called thorns? I could have sworn I read somewhere that there were different names for the stabby bits of plants. Regardless, with his rudimentary-at-best knowledge of plants he was sticking with thorns. Heh, sticking with. The thistle was clearly intended to be his weapon, and the other growth was his armor.

Somehow anyway. It was a bush riddled with curved wooden plates scattered through its branches. The plates were made of a dark red wood, while the leaves on the bush were a remarkably dark green. The only problem was that he couldn't even begin to tell how he was supposed to put on the armor or use the thistle as a weapon. Well, the thistle was fairly easy to figure out if he was honest with himself. Provided he was willing to actually touch its insanely sharp looking spikes it seemed obvious that he could grab it by the base of the stalk and hit things with the bulbous end like a mace.

"I wonder if there's an identify ability? Scan! Analyze! Inspect? Identify? Analyze?" He felt increasingly foolish with every attempt and soon stopped trying. "It showed me information on them before though." He said a bit petulantly. "I was touching them before, do I have to touch them for it to work?" He glanced at the thistle for a split second before making the obvious choice. He touched one of the wooden planks in the bush and tried again, getting the same result.

With fading hope he reluctantly decided to try the thistle. He tried to gently touch it on a relatively safe area but against all odds it twisted just before he made contact and drove a razor sharp spine into his finger. Cursing and shaking his hand as he pulled away from it, he was shocked to get a notification.

Congratulations! You have bound a growth item! Nightshade Thistle will now respond to your desires!

Dumbfounded, he looked at his bleeding finger for a minute. "So it's a deal with the devil kind of thing then?" He muttered before wiping his bloody finger on the bush.

Congratulations! You have bound a growth item! Bloodiron Platemail will now respond to your desires!

"Bloodiron? That's kinda foreboding isn't it?" He heard a drip and glanced up before wincing. "Oh, I guess that explains it." The branches holding the dead cat were directly above the bush and he was pretty sure blood had been dripping on the bush for a while. "I wonder if I can get better details for them now?"

He tentatively reached in the thistle's direction and was thrilled to see the thorns along the base of the stalk twist and wrap themselves around it to form a grip perfectly suited to his hand. When he grabbed hold of it the roots burst from the soil, surprising him, but all they did was wrap around his hand and form themselves into a guard similar to what he would expect to see on a rapier or other such weapons with fancy hilts.

In eager anticipation he turned to face the bush and was excited to find its branches had shifted to present a pair of plates at its base that were clearly intended for his feet. Once he stepped onto them the bush began to twist and shift against him, layering him in wooden plates. The process was fascinating, and he almost felt like a superhero. I could be Woodenman, only instead of fighting terrorists and supervillains with lasers and micromissiles, I would be fighting horrible monsters with a big thistle.

Once he thought it the rest of the way through he decided he would very much prefer to leave the hero-ing to the professionals.

A slight tingling sensation washed over him as the armor closed around his face. Then pain as it suddenly felt like it sprouted thorns of its own on the inside of the armor. "Ow! Son of a-"