The biggest thing I learned during my gunsmithing experiments actually wasn’t how to make the gun. No, it was to remember that I am the forest, and not to harm the damned trees! I swear, I’m the biggest magical genius idiot I have ever met on this planet.

  I guess it’s not saying much, given how few people I’ve actually met. But still. Don’t aim destructive experiments at your own dang body!

  I chastised myself for a few more moments before finally getting the courage to rip the bullet out of myself. It realistically only hurt like a splinter would hurt in my old life, but it was still an uncomfortable thing to leave in there.

  Laughing at my own comparison, I flexed a bit of Metal Magic to guide the bullet out of my body. I thinned the metal out into a needle to make it easier to remove, and when it was fully out, I threw a Health Berry at it and watched as the wound healed over. After around 10 seconds, it was like I hadn’t done a thing.

  “Okay, enough experimenting with things I’ll never use. This can never be brought out into the wider world, so it needs to be destroyed.”

  Disenchanting made quick work of the potential weapon of mass destruction. With the mana completely removed and it reverting back to dust in the wind, the thing was no more.

  “Since I don’t want to get back into creating more crap from the old world, how about I get back to magical experimentation? So far, I’ve only combined Earth Magic and Fire Magic to make Metal Magic, and Fire Magic and Air Magic to make Lightning Magic. What other combinations are there that I’m missing?”

  I was mostly talking to myself, but it appears that Honey was listening in as well, and approved my line of thinking. I decided to ask her what my next combination experiment should be, and she said I should try mixing Earth Magic and Water Magic. Not being one to disappoint, I obliged her request. Funnily enough, she also suggested I experiment more with my Dryad Creation skill as well. Apparently, the magical golems I left in charge of defense in the main clearing have proven to be rather beneficial to her and her hive.

  I brought my attention back to the clearing body and started checking everything out. I immediately felt a bit better as my mind slotted back into my body, like a glove fits in a hand. When I focus on other parts of the forest, I feel somewhat like I’m wearing clothes that are a size to small for me, kind of like there’s overflow. But when I bring my mind to the tree that was my- no, is my original body, I feel much more relaxed. But given the nature of my experiments and the activity of Honey’s hive in the clearing, I feel more comfortable going elsewhere in case of a catastrophic failure, like an exploding gun, for instance.

  As I got comfortable again, I watched my surroundings. I saw multitudes of bees flying around the expanding garden. Every once in a while, I felt a pulse of mana as one of the guardian golems used a bit of Air Magic to help an overly ambitious bee carrying too much pollen make her way up the hive in my branches. Another pulse of mana from a different area showed two of them using Earth Magic to create humanoid dirt constructs that were tending to the flowers in the garden, under instruction from the bees!

  It appears that I’ve missed much in the last couple of days. I was somewhat displeased by how freely the golems were using my mana water, but when I checked the reserves, I saw that they had still used less than I was passively creating, so I let it slide. I checked in with all of them and heard how they gave the reason that it was all in an effort to help the bees that I charged them in protecting, so I really couldn’t be mad. I made sure to communicate to each of them that as long as the mana water reserves are still growing more than they’re falling, they’re free to use as much as they need to help the bees.

  Another thing I checked on with the golems was their magical aptitude. I had mainly given them access to the mana water as a means to fuel their practice and make sure they would be battle ready if and when the time came. From what they told me, though, they really didn’t need much practice to begin with. When I created the acorns that made up their cores, I had imbued knowledge of the elemental magic that each one possessed into their personalities. They used their first hour of practice each with such efficiency, that they didn’t need more time to practice after that. Since they didn’t need to waste mana in magical practice, they instead took to helping the bees out with their day-to-day stuff.

  I was again peeved at the lack of communication, but given they didn’t have a means to get my attention, I decided to wave off their insubordination. After all, they were helping the bees. I can’t be mad at that.

  I watched the bees for a bit longer, relaxing in the comfort of my body. I was so relaxed that I actually ended up spending the rest of my day just watching them and basking in the glow of the sun. When the sun finally went down and the moon came up, I figured now was as good a time as any to get my magical practice in. I brought my mind back to the experimentation clearing.

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  “Alright, she wants me to experiment with Earth Magic and Water Magic. That shouldn’t be so hard, right? The first thing to come to mind is something like swamp magic, or mud magic. That feels cheap though, like I’m just mashing it together instead of anything with finesse.”

  As I pondered the combination of the two, I made a large bowl in the ground. I just removed a bunch of dirt and spread it evenly across the surrounding forest. In place of that dirt, I drew up a bunch of water, creating a pond. The pond was extremely clear, since I had control of the water. In order to make it feel more realistic, I started agitating the top layer of soil in the pond. Now there was a layer of mud at the bottom. To continue the realism, I decided to grab a few leaves from the surrounding trees, including the one that I shot earlier. I removed some moisture from the leaves and crumbled them up. I then added them to the mix of mud, hoping to create a more nutrient rich layer that I might be able to add some water-based plants to.

  This went on for a while. I made little adjustments here and there, looking to create as natural of a pond as I could. I added worms from the forest, grass along the edges, and even threw in a few floating leaves, for ambience of course. When I was done, the only thing I was missing was some fish.

  Throughout the construction process, I pondered on how the two elements fit together, and the only other solution I could think of was creating ice.

  One of the obscure facts I remember from my old life was that ice was technically a mineral, but only when found in nature. To be a mineral, it needs to be naturally occurring, inorganic, solid, and have a crystalline structure. Ice from a freezer, while fitting most of the criteria, wasn’t naturally occurring, and was therefore not a mineral. But ice that forms in cold places, like on the sidewalk during winter, is technically a mineral. If you had a large enough quantity of ice, it can be considered a rock, like an iceberg or a glacier.

  Now my problem is how do I apply this knowledge to create Ice Magic?

  My first thought is to use Fire Magic to remove the heat from the water, which would obviously lead to ice being made. But that just felt like a cheap cop out, and wasn’t what I was trying to do. I wanted to specifically use Water Magic and Earth Magic to create ice.

  The method I came up with was by zooming in using Domain of Awareness and going through each water molecule and experimenting with the way the atoms bond. If the water needs to be in a solid state, then I can just manually form the ice. It might not make it a mineral, since the whole nature requirement is there, but it still should work.

  “What am I saying? I’m a tree! I AM nature! Everything I do should be considered natural!”

  With my thought process stubbornly reinforced, I proceeded to try my method. I went through and tried forming different shapes with the water molecules. I felt like an octagon was pretty close to what I needed, but it wasn’t quite there. I tried straining my memory a few times to remember what shape the water molecules took when they were frozen into ice, but it just wasn’t coming to me.

  After several attempts, I took inspiration from Honey’s honey comb and tried a hexagonal pattern. I found that it worked even better than the octagon did, and kept adding more and more water molecule to it. The more I added, the faster I was able to work. Soon enough, I finally formed a large block of ice!

  Well, large in comparison to the molecule that make it up.

  I zoomed my vision back out to normal, and the vertigo I felt caused me to shiver. The surrounding forest started shaking violently for a few minutes, enough that Honey had to check in on me. When I stopped shaking, I let her know what I did.

  “I did it! I made ice!”

  “Tree God made ice? Tree God amazing! Tree God best god! What do with ice?”

  “Uh… I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I guess it’s just something I can do now?”

  “Cool!”

  I laughed at her pun, then reassured her for a few more minutes before getting back to the new pond area. The small chunk of ice that I had made had already melted, and there was no trace of it. I checked the pond’s level of energy using an odd application of Fire Magic and saw that there was a patch that was ever so slightly colder than the rest of it, though it was quickly dissipating and evening out again.

  Through gaining an understanding of energy in relation to heat, you have learned the skill [Thermal Sense (U)].

  Intrigued, I opened the skill description.

  Thermal Sense (U): Passive, toggleable. User can sense varying levels of heat.

  “Well, that’s very lackluster. That’s probably the shortest skill description I’ve seen so far. The only skill I can think of that might even be short is something like ‘Dark Vision (whatever rarity): User can see in the dark.’ I guess it can be useful though.”

  I tried out my new skill, checking out various things to see how hot or cold they are. I quickly got tired of it and turned it off though. I just didn’t have a use for it right now.

  I tried creating more and more blocks of ice, but that only served to give me more and more fits of vertigo. I quickly gave up on my manual creation of ice and instead opted to try the boring way I thought of earlier.

  I floated a sphere of water up and out of the pond I made using Water Magic. Using it this was felt more like telekinesis than what it technically is, but I didn’t complain. I used Fire Magic to remove the heat from the sphere and transferred it to the surrounding air. I created a gust of wind to carry the heat away, and watched as the water quickly turned to ice. I zoomed my vision in and watched as the hexagon formation that took me so long to form was created in mere moments. What was left was a floating ball of ice.

  Through increase your understanding of energy, skill [Fire Magic (R+3)] has been upgraded to [Fire Magic (E)].

  Skill [Ice Magic (R)] has been learned!

  “Damn my stubborn ways! That was too damn easy!”

  Discord Here!