“What do you mean ‘take me despite my protest’? How could you?”

  I bore down on Silvan with the full weight of my mind while asking her that. So far, I had maintained a boundary of trying to stay out of people’s inner thoughts, but when something so important came to light, I found it necessary to be a little… pushy.

  As I put more and more mental pressure on her, her memories of her conversation with Elvis came to light. From what I could tell, he seemed almost willing to let me stay after my show of strength, but changed his mind after the pair encountered a group of undead in the forest. Little snippets of conversation came through the link as I pressed further.

  “He’s still a Great Tree, Elowen! We need to bring him back with us!”

  “I’ll send out the message. We need to bring the transport team here immediately. We need to get a proper measure of Willow’s range and depth.”

  “He can’t… our plan. If… teleport… country…”

  Her mind started to slip into unconsciousness as I continued digging for information. I eased up on the pressure I was putting her under, but it seems I might be too late; she passed out.

  Elvis caught her falling body in his arms, his worry for her evident on his face. He was still by her side from after our duel, only a short moment passing between her giving up the plans to take me away and her collapsing from the mental strain.

  “Silvan!” he cried out. He patted her cheeks a few times, trying to wake her to no avail. He turned to me, demanding to know what had just happened.

  “She just let slip your little plan. After I was starting to like you two, you went and plotted behind my back! You think you can take me away from this forest? Ha! I’d like to see you try!”

  I reached under them, pulling the floor they were standing on up. I used Earth Magic to remove the section of ground they were standing on and brought it to the front entrance closest to the road. I plopped the slab of compacted dirt on the ground in front of my fortress and closed the hole in the roof they came out of.

  I made a quick dirt table and tossed all the crap from their room onto it before marching it out to them. Once the table was outside, I just let it dissolve into a pile of dirt, covering all their equipment and clothes. I did a quick once-over of my facility before grabbing the last of their stuff and just throwing it outside with a dirt puppet.

  “If I ever see another elf in my area for the next hundred years, there will be hell to pay. You and yours can fuck off, with your constant pompous attitude, slimy scheming, and generic bullshittery!”

  Elvis stayed seated on the platform that I dropped them out on, Silvan’s head resting in his lap. I had torn the connection that allowed us to communicate, but I could still hear him whispering to Silvan. She only woke up after a few hours of restless sleep. The pair took a bit longer after that to pack their thing neatly away before leaving for the road.

  “For fuck’s sake. They seriously wanted to just teleport me? The audacity!”

  I created a couple of dozen drops of mana water out of sheer frustration, guiding them to my slowly growing tank. When I realized how much better I felt after making them, I kept at it. Every drop I made was one less drop of stress running through my mind.

  Night came and went, followed by day, then another night. On the second morning, I pulled myself out of my mana water frenzy. I couldn’t keep moping around. I needed to formulate a plan.

  “I heard something in Silvan’s mind about needing to know my exact measurements. Does that mean that if I were to grow out more, they wouldn’t be able to take me? She also said if I resisted too much, I might be able to stop the entire process altogether.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure as to how I could resist the teleport, but I knew how I could grow larger pretty damn quickly.

  I stretched my mind out to my roots and started rapidly taking over more and more of the surrounding trees around me. Each tree added more resources to my body, of which I turned all the mana into mana water. I poured the stamina I got from them to thicken my branches and make my main trunk taller and taller.

  It only took me a few additions to my network before I reached the edge of the road. I could have stretched the roots out under the cleared path to continue spreading out, but decided to keep my infestation growing on this side only for now.

  After an hour, my body had grown to encompass almost a quarter mile away from the clearing in which I originated. I thought my Domain of Awareness would continue stretching out across the road as I spread out, but as I grew larger, my domain started changing to only show me what was directly around the trees I was overtaking. I still had a large plot of land that I was able to see now, though. I was even able to find bees!

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “I think I should put a pause on growing out any further. My head feels weird.”

  I had started to notice a change in the way I experienced time as I absorbed more and more trees. Every tree I added to my body increased not only my physical size, but my mental faculties as well. Previously, my mind could take up about the size of one of my branches, but after the rapid growth I just underwent, my mind was now capable of filling out my entire body. Well, the pre-growth body I had a little bit ago. As I was now, I stood at almost 200 feet tall. I had spent a lot of stamina increasing the girth of my trunk, though, so I theoretically could have been much taller.

  My growth spurt had the unintentional side effect of messing with the fortress I had made. I debated destroying the whole thing, given it was now tainted by the memory of the rotten elves. In the end, I decided to get rid of the basement floor and instead decided to use the whole section as my new mana water tank.

  During the expansion process, I received so much mana that I was able to fill the 10-gallon tank a couple times over. In fact, I got so good at making the mana water that I got an upgrade to a couple of skills.

  Through intense practice and creation of large quantities of mana water, you have upgraded your skill [Mana Condensation (R+)] to [Mana Condensation (R+1)].

  Through repeated practice and familiarizing yourself with mana, you have upgraded your skill [Mana Efficiency (R)] to [Mana Efficiency (R+)].

  By increasing your mental capacity in such a short time, your skill [Mental Fortitude (R)] has upgraded to [Mental Fortitude (R+)].

  “Oh, I didn’t even notice the last one. I guess it makes sense, given how much my mental ‘body’ has grown. I’m able to move much more freely through my body after that upgrade as well.”

  I practiced moving my mind from tree to tree, creating roads for myself by connecting the roots of various trees to make it even easier. After a quick 10 minutes of reworking the layout, I was able to move my mind from the tree furthest south to the tree furthest north in just under a second, which led to another skill being added to my repertoire.

  Through rigorous mental discipline, your thoughts move with unnatural speed, earning you the skill [Quickened Thought (R)].

  I quickly pulled up the skill description, though I could already feel the effects.

  Quickened Thought (R): Passive. Complex ideas unfold in an instant, patterns reveal themselves effortlessly, and decisions are made in the blink of an eye, or, rather, the drop of a leaf.

  I wasn’t sure how being able to literally move my mind through my body at incredible speeds translated to this, but I wasn’t going to argue with gaining an awesome skill like this. I could already feel ideas blooming regarding past experiments that I hadn’t thought of before. This skill would definitely come in handy.

  One of the ideas that came to my mind involved creating a permanent fog over the area I controlled. The fog wouldn’t be just water vapor, though. The fog would be magical.

  I started by pulling a few drops from the gallons of mana water I had gathered so far. It reacted with minimal effort, even easier than working with Water Magic. It made sense, though, given that this mana water was my literal mana. All I had to do was direct it with my mind, and it responded to my desires.

  As such, it was easy to get the mana fog going. I started with a few drops spreading through the air, then escalated to a few cups of the liquid. I was hesitant to escalate the experiment further, but progress required risk. I could always make more mana water if this failed.

  I ended up needing the full tank to accomplish what I wanted, but when it was fully dispersed, I got the notification.

  Skill [Mana Fog (E)] has been learned.

  I immediately pulled up the description, already eager to read about how it works.

  Mana Fog (E): Passive, togglable. Excess mana dissipates into the air, creating a layer of magical fog around the user. The fog disrupts the casting of spells of foreign entities while they are within its limits. The skill works better when the user is stationary, allowing for the fog to thicken and permeate the area.

  “I guess this mist will get thicker the more I let it be then. It’s pretty thin right now. I’m honestly surprised this was enough to get the skill, even if it counts as several hundred times my full mana pool. Speaking of full mana pool…”

  I was starting to notice that my mana was regenerating much faster than it was before the expansion, by an extreme degree. I was looking at my skills when I noticed my first and oldest had been given a silent upgrade; at least, I didn’t see a notification for it.

  Photosynthesis (E): Passive. User gains 3 Exp per day per tree inhabited. Grants a large increase to the generation of all resources, scaling with number of trees the user occupies.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about not getting a notification for this, but the boost is honestly amazing. At this rate, I’ll be able to reach 50 in no time. Hell, I’m already level 43 just from the boost from the first few trees I parasitized. I should reach 44 in just a couple of weeks at the rate I should be gaining Exp now, too. It can’t come soon enough, though. I really want to reach 50 before the elves come back. I want to start making actual golems before then, hopefully being able to create battle drones, if I need them.”

  I still wasn’t sure how far the elves were willing to go in order to bring me to their stupid grove, but I needed to be prepared. I hope spreading my body out through Parasitic Takeover is enough to prevent them from being successful, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve to make things a little harder for them.

  For one, I can always make my localized tornado again. It would cause enough of a disturbance that it should interrupt whatever spell they had planned to cast. That’s not to mention the mana fog that will be growing thicker as time passes. In fact, I can almost see a difference in the fog already, minor though it is.

  Another thing I can do is try to create some undead of my own.

  From what I saw in Silvan’s memories, just leaving a pile of corpses is enough to create natural undead. So, what would happen if I started farming orcs and creating a mega pile of corpses, then, when the elves get here, just unleash them all?

  “No, I don’t want to be the first necromancing tree. And, besides, I don’t necessarily want to kill the elves. Orcs are fine for killing since they’re just naturally spawned monsters that lack intelligence, but the elves are sentient beings with families and loved ones. That being said, I will defend myself if it comes down to it.”

  Having reaffirmed my resolve for how I want to handle the issue, I went back to figuring out more ways to cause inconveniences to future elves without causing physical or mental harm to them.

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