I grow and grow and grow. I repair, heal and overcome, but while my enemies, high level goblins don’t have unlimited mana and stamina, I’m only one being and therefore limited in scope. A large limit that I can slowly improve to be sure, but limited still. Even the dozens of seeds helping are just young and inexperienced pups, tiring out before the hundreds of enemies standing against us.

Nearly two hours of frantic fight yield no progress. At least when it came to growing my network. But even if in the end I technically lose the fight, the knowledge and skill gained are of much greater value than my pride or anything of the sort. And I do all that without giving away all my secrets. A steady stream of enemies, enter and leave the combat areas giving me the impression that they are still not taking me seriously and I do all I can to make sure they underestimate me.

I limit my skills in breadth and depth, though I do keep at it until my mental stamina starts to flag. I don’t push too deep underground, nor do I push at too many places at once. Though I don’t know how much difference that would make.

As I prepare to keep fighting for just another hour, so as not to over exert myself, I sense a ping in the life detection network around the HLZ, a much more robust and extensive network after so long. I drop the effort, leaving only the seeds holding the fort and pull my perception field to the region before the advancing beast leaves the HLZ.

Why?? It is not time for their next attack. Did I poke the bear?

The few instants that my perception field takes to hone in send my mind on a roller coaster, but seeing the single goblin child running brings a frown until I realize why there is a familiar aura about him.

Instantly I know why. He is carrying a large seed in his backpack.

That is new. What are you doing?

I estimate his trajectory for a minute and then start building a basic Avatar. It won't be useful for me at this distance, but I can simply send over the consciousness of a seed through the network.

I look for one that has the most experience midst of the sea of volunteers.

I concentrate only on the brain while the others make it a well-protected skull and the rest of its body making as good of a runner as possible should this scrawny goblin be hostile.

Just ten minutes in, I throw the seed’s consciousness to it and it instantly sprints off like it was for that.

I go back to the goblin and realize that he has changed his heading and will miss my avatar entirely.

I grow a few roots in his view making them the most intense colors without taking the time to invent new pigments or make the complex structures that vibrant flowers would require.

He stops, nearly tumbling and he looks side to side wildly, but instead of just pushing faster movement, I concentrate on the single growth and keep a constant thin stream of Qi to it, so it will grow very slowly upward while relying on my knowledge and experience to grow colored leaf shaped petals more eye grabbing than anything a root or branch could become.

Acting in a mixture of a cornered animal with a child’s wonderment, the Goblin locks into place and I try to maintain the balance until the avatar gets nearby.

He looks, seeing the strange root coming out of a trot and walking slowly to him.

A wave of the system’s attention passes over my senses. The subtle pull from when someone that is not me acts and the system takes notice.

He moves to tighten his fists but chooses to relax his body instantly. It lasts a moment, as even this far away, I can feel the Gaze of the system. Finally, his expression returns to normal.

His heart pounds and his sweat glandules produce the foulest of chemical compounds but he survives.

“The ruthless eye in the sky. So you may be a child, you have some spine.”

I ask the Avatar to move forward, approaching him.

The system gaze descends on him, again and again and again.

It is all he can do to simply stand still. He doesn’t take a single threatening action, nor he even prepares for combat. Cold sweat drips from his face as he waits for the seed to start communicating. Though even if it now has access to a brain substitute, it is still very young.

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Milthree’s POV

I’m the leaves of a willow.

I bend before the ruthless eye in the sky.

Most weeks I don’t get this much attention from the system, but it is really intent on making me fight. That is where you are wrong eye in the sky, the further you push me, the more I will defy you.

We need to leave quickly, but this being is just like the seed that fell from the sky. If I can meet its progenitor, I would be even better than defecting to the human side. After all, I’m not that stupid, the humans will leave in time and I will be dragged back to my planet with a thousand clanmates angry at me.

He touches my arm and I sense something.

Friend.

I am also a friend.

You escaped the system?

Yes, no. Escape the ruthless eye in the sky. I’m not a user, I’m a toy in its grasp.

As are we all, in a lesser or greater form.

We should move. There may be pursuit, no way to know.

A wave of agreement, that is a lot closer to what I always imagined spirits sound like passes over me as the being of the forest, made entirely of wood takes off at a decent speed. Just about the exact speed that I can sustain.

So they were watching me.

We keep going for another ten minutes deeper into the ‘enemies’ territory until I find a cursed thing. I look at its unnatural shape and another prompts from the ruthless eye in the sky hits me.

Destroy.

Why would I destroy something with such beauty and usefulness, the pinnacle of speed this early in the game? A bloody flying machine, unless I was off my rockers. The enemy was supposed to have plenty of these flying craft, their only drawback is a high mana consumption. Though the tribe’s scouts were seeing more and more of them even as the roots encroached and limited our scouting efforts.

The wood being invites me in and I enter just behind him nearly laying down before a thin panel is pulled back into place above and melds itself shut as we take off through the air. He pays a modicum of attention to piloting the craft, but soon he puts his hands back and I only pay insular attention to what is on the other side of the mana shields.

I try asking a lot of questions, but instead of answering, he just gets more acquainted with my way of speaking, likely to not give information that the original being doesn’t want to be dolled out.

I could be totally wrong, but these plants don’t feel like naturally developed ones, they are the progeny of a superior breed and contain more intelligence than most sentient plants.

How the hell did the ruthless eye miss something like this?

Only humans and the trial’s inhabitants were supposed to be here. But if only death awaited me back on my village, I might as well go the full distance instead of hesitating.

Now I just hope that this plant being doesn’t see fit to suck my brains out so that it can birth more of its progeny or something stupid like that.

-----------------------

Nash’s POV

I let the back of my mind listen to the reports from the seed piloting the craft. A much better pilot than any few months old human baby could have managed. In the end, however, after the first few minutes that I could matin constant contact through the network, I stop getting even those reports. For as amazing as the comm runes are, they have limits and high mana costs as distance increases.

If it was time sensitive, I could dedicate a lot of attention to it, but it seems like too much effort if in a few hours they will be here. I use the time to go over what I learned and start expanding a few other locations, none quite as wildly as the first, but all simultaneously.

Concentrating on the roots and tendrils already in place for anything close to the surface, the connections will enjoy the protection of much thicker and sturdier defenses than growing hair-thin tendrils from scratch would yield. I also head deeper with a few roots to provide even more protection and redundancy. Some of which will eventually reach about fifty meters underground.

I nearly give up on the wide swathe that the goblins attacked, but even a thread of my attention and Qi can bridge gaps and reconnect dozens of acres, or even square kilometers of territory. And what becomes glaringly obvious is that the goblins don’t seem able to tell where the network is in the disconnected pieces, but the continuous stretches still connected, everything else instantly goes dark for both of us at ehsame time.

I try testing what makes them become aware and attack a set of roots, but while I have some initial success in learning their habits, soon the quick tests are over. Hopefully, this second goblin defector can shed some light on the situation.

I reach for smidges of Life and a lot of Vigor. Though life is a precious resource, and I only use the amount I will regenerate in a single day of meditation. Along with Qi, the triad, a mixture of resources that made sense and worked for infusing my body heads out.

With as deft a hand as I can manage, I take fractions of a droplet of my Life, like it is the strongest of food colorants, and mix it in liberal amounts of juice in the form of Vigor and a single dose of the Hard liquor: Qi.

The resulting punch packs a lot of power and even if its use will be limited, the extra few percent in speed is already a magnitude more than is needed to make it worthwhile. But this is not the end of my efficiency gains. My second attempt is better, the third even more so and that continues for hours. Adjusting the formula, trying to find the perfect balance of kick, flavor and cost.

I leverage every smidge of my stats, slowly developing a greater mental dexterity and the needed muscle memory for this endeavor.

“Aspen, can you send me a little of Vigor?” I ask to avoid waiting the couple of minutes that refilling my pool would take if I meditated.

“Only a little bit.” He sends it back through our link.

I open myself, expecting to receive something closer increased natural recharge rate that I got while in forests, instead of the torrent that Pando can dish out.

The droplets of water in the desert never hit my mouth for a torrent washes me away. I couch and wheeze from all of its water rushing up my nose and nearly drowning me.

“Wait,” I call, trying to get control of the vigor that he is sending me instead of opening up the way.

Felling off, I take a deep breath and mentally clear the channels to my vigor pool. Slowly recharging it, I say:

“You say that this is only a trickle.”

“Yes, Pando could do even more and his stores were legendary.”

“I think your memories are a little corrupted given that you never saw him giving me anything. How the hell I could have spent all that vigor in a blink, look at the size of my body, I’m not even two meters tall.”

“Ohh.”

I feel Aspen turning his thoughts over.

“Never mind,” I say with a chuckle to hide my sheepish self as a thought strikes me. How strange is vigor? Pando seemed to have used it millennia before I was even alive, but the system implicitly seems to consider it one of the three resources that were mine. Our connection was deep, but I could gift others Vigor with no problem. Qi and Life however are completely different. While Life could affect Aspen, he couldn’t actively use it, and when it came to Qi the rules changed yet again as he couldn’t even influence it.

Sometimes I could barely tell the difference between me and Aspen, other times the lines couldn’t be more clear. Perhaps there is more to this bond than I know. I need to learn what it is all about, though Pando is light years away and I only have his progeny with me, I should still be able to make a few educated guesses.