I reached my mind into the golem’s body and looked around for what had gone wrong during my evolution induced slumber. As soon as I touched the core, I felt it spark, and it immediately came back to life. I had to do some minor repairs to the construct, mostly cosmetic damage caused by Rocky dragging his body here, but nobody needed to know that.
My hypothesis as to why the golems all turned off was that some part of my incorporeal form was temporarily removed from this plane of existence while I was evolving. That spark that caused the golem to jump back to life was probably the connection being reestablished and the connection to my system being reformed. But that was just a guess. For all I know, the golems might shut off every time I take a nap.
And it was for that very reason that I decided to name Rocky’s friend.
My thoughts were that I didn’t want to leave the land up to its own devices every time I wanted to sleep a little. And given how the dryads struggled under the number of orcs that were invading, I think it would be best if I ramped up the number of dryads I had at my disposal. That, and apparently, the golems weren’t as strong as I had thought they were against the orcs. From Rocky’s telling of his first encounter with the golem, apparently, they struggled against the orc trios. However, if I named them and evolved them into dryads, they would be given access to their own system, be able to level up, and grow stronger, making them better at protecting the land. Protecting ME.
I reached into Rocky’s companion’s core again and gave it a name, keeping with the movie theme.
“I name you Paulie, friend of Rocky. Go and protect each other’s backs. Grow strong together, and protect the forest from the invading orcs.”
I felt a sense of glee radiating from my connection with Rocky as the two left on their merry way, Paulie now having his own system and ability to gain more skills and increase his stats. I gave the order for the other dryads to rest, then when they were ready, they could go back to hunting orcs outside of the clearing.
Speaking of orcs in the clearing, there was a group of orcs heading their way. I took care of them quickly, then moved on to clearing the entire forest of the pesky creatures. As the monsters were slain, I was given a notification, though it was different than the ones I was used to. It was even more condensed, thankfully.
Orcs x243 have been slain. Balance has been increased.
I wasn’t quite sure what this whole ‘balance’ thing was about, but I was pretty upset that I lost out on the easy experience. I guess it made sense, though. It felt like a bit of a cheat that I was able to farm the same monsters over and over for nearly infinite experience.
Regardless of whether I was gaining experience from them or not, their numbers were beyond ridiculous. Even now, there were more orcs making their way into my territory. A few found some of their dead and started cannibalizing them. It was disgusting, and I put an end to it immediately, then quickly buried the bodies of the fallen. From now on, they would be fertilizer, fueling the growth of the plants around them.
And yes, I did mean plants. Despite my overzealous nature in taking over any and all trees around me, I never absorbed any flowers or grass, though I have nabbed the occasional bush to help grow some berries for critters to eat and hide under. The orcs would do great to help the smaller plant life grow. Not that I won’t reap any benefit from it, but that’s beside the point.
Cleared of any pests, I figured it was about time I found out where these jerks were coming from. They all seem to be meandering in from one direction, and since my species is supposed to be constantly taking control over more land, I figure that’s as good of a direction to conquer as any.
I started by taking control of one tree. I went through the motions of the basic Parasitic Takeover, but noticed it felt different. Before, I used to inject some nutrients through the roots, then insert my mind into its body and absorb its mental energy. But this time felt so much smoother. As soon as I connected my roots to the roots of the other tree, it was like they just blended together and the tree became part of my body. There was no mental battle of absorbing its energy, no feeling of my mind expanding. It was like the tree just became part of me.
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Confused, I opened my status and looked for the skill. What I found was much different than the system interface that I had before my evolution.
User: Willow Race: Nature’s Avatar
Level: 1 Exp: 1/10,000
Balance: Least
H:100% S:100% M:100%
Skills:
- Tree
- Body
- Magic
- Crafting
- Other
Achievements
I had to admit, though. This felt a lot less cluttered than the previous interface, specifically in the skills department; they were kept in subsections that I was able to open on a whim. Almost everything else was the same, except for the addition of the balance indicator. And while I was intrigued by the new addition, I was more immediately interested in what happened to my skill. I opened the Body tab and found that it had been replaced. I opened the new skill and its description, hoping to shed some light on the matter.
Homogenous Assimilation (E): Active. The user targets a being similar in nature to its own and attempts to conquer the other being, using all 3 resource pools. The being with the larger resource pools will win the competition, assimilating the loser into the winner’s body. The loser’s body takes on attributes of the winners, truly becoming one body with the winner.
“Well, that’s horrifying. If I had a lesser resource pool size, then I would have been screwed! Why wasn’t I informed of the skill change? This is important information!”
I thought back to the description of my new race. The only thing it mentioned about the skill was that I needed one that would let me expand. Nowhere in there did it mention that it would be changing my skill into another one.
But, still thinking about that description, it did mention that I needed a minimum size and that my resource pools were now tied to how big I was. Realistically, I didn’t have anything to worry about. That didn’t stop me from being pissed off at the lack of information regarding the change, though. That being said, this was going to make expansion so much quicker.
I set my eyes on another target and felt the skill activate. Now that I was paying attention to it, I could feel a small wave of my energies flooding the tree’s system. On the third tree I took over, I paid even closer attention and felt that my energies were warring with the other tree’s energies. It was like my health was destroying the tree’s health and then replacing it with more of my own.
On and on I went, taking over more and more trees. Once I took control over a good 30ish of them, I decided to turn back and start making the standard renovations. I connected all of their roots to help nutrients flow freely, grew out a few of the standard vines, and grew a few shrub looking things out of the ground from the roots. In the shrubs, I dug out a small place for some critters to live in, as well as adding a few nodes of fruit and even two diluted resource berries, one health and the other stamina.
I repeated this process a few times. I would take over a small swath of land, refurbish it to look like the rest of the area that was under my control, then move on to the next portion. I felt weird just moving in one direction, so I opted to expand the entirety of my territory.
An entire week was spent expanding the area I controlled. I occasionally took breaks to eliminate the orcs that were in my area, but that only took a few seconds every day. At the end of that week, I had grown exponentially. I was now spanning an entire 10 miles in every direction from the clearing that housed my original body.
That’s right. I crossed the road.
As a matter of fact, I decided to change the road up a bit, now that I had almost 20 miles of it under my domain. I shifted the landscape to alter the road to run around my main body. The path was a big circle around the garden that the bees were growing. I made sure Honey knew about the changes, and she was happy to let me do whatever I wanted. I also ordered the magical golems (now dryads) to ensure their safety if anyone were to pass by. They were ordered to stop performing magic when people were around unless it was for the safety of the bees. Even then, they were told to keep it to a minimum and try to avoid hurting people.
As for standard protection, I tossed out the failed golem guards. Well, more like I gave them the standard jobs of going out to hunt orcs instead of just waiting at home for orcs to come to us. I had a plan for new guards for that.
I created a new set of guards. Each guard was given Spear Mastery and Body Manipulation, and told to upgrade the first skill to at least rare through leveling up. They were also tasked with getting skills related to increasing their physical abilities, be it strength, agility, or speed; all 3 were vital to winning battles.
The guards were then named and given their weapons; the spears were made into dryads as well. They were given Iron Bark and Body Manipulation. They were then told to upgrade Iron Bark to the absolute max. With any luck, hearing of what it evolves into will give me ideas to upgrade my own skill.
I broke the guards up into two groups. Group A would go out hunting orcs for 1 week, then at the end of that week, they would return and switch with group B. With this plan, they should be constantly getting stronger.
The guards were also given the instruction to ignore any and all interactions of any humanoid that comes into the grove. The sole exception to that rule was if they were harming the bees. Then they were allowed to fight.
With my little break done, I think it is about time I got back to finding those damn orcs. Awkward or not, I was going to start heading straight for where they were coming from. I needed to find out whether or not I was facing an Orc colony, and if I was, if I had to fight any giants, like in the vision I was given in the evolution scene.
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