I start my searching quest by taking over a group of 10 trees in a row. They are all one after the other, reaching out as far as I can go in the direction that the orcs are coming from.

  When I tried to take over tree number 11, though, I got a disturbing sense of wrongness. My instincts immediately demanded I take control of the trees surrounding the ones I’ve taken over in a line. I tried ignoring them and took over the next one anyways, but I got a feeling of such vertigo in doing so. It was like when I used to stretch my legs as a human; I wanted to push it further to get a better stretch, but if I extended myself any more, I would only end up hurting myself.

  Instead, I was forced to take control over more land than I initially intended to. I had planned to come back and take over the area regardless, but it was just sooner than I intended. It would take more and more time for me to renovate the area to match my current aesthetics the more land I took control of, but I guess there was no choice. Well, there was A choice. I just wasn’t a fan.

  The choice was to take control over the forest but not renovate. Which, quite frankly, is ridiculous. But that might just be my mild OCD completionist behavior. Which doesn’t pair well with my ADHD. One might think being a tree would get rid of such problems, but low and behold, here I am.

  I take a metaphorical deep breath and get to taking over the forest. I start with the patch of land around the 11 I already had control over, then go a little further. When I reach about 150 feet out, the instincts start to kick in again. Apparently, they really hate when I focus on going in one direction.

  Thankfully, with my new skill, all that work only took a minute or two. It only takes about 10 more minutes to hurriedly grab the trees in the entire perimeter to equalize myself again.

  And thus, the next week is spent expanding.

  Time really has been flying by, between rapid expansion and the occasional dealing with large groups of orcs. I take the occasional few minutes to grow a few bushes to help the critters in the lands I now control flourish. I also grow a few fruit nodes here and there in the canopies to help the birds as well.

  After one full week of nonstop expanding, I start to feel a bit tired. Not mentally, but physically. I feel a bit drained, like I’m low on stamina, or something. I pull up my status to check.

  User: Willow   Race: Nature’s Avatar

  Level: 1      Exp: 5/10,000

  Balance: Least

  H:73%    S:73%    M:73%

  I appalled to see that my vitals are so low! Yet, as I watch, they slowly tick up. It takes just under 3 hours before I’m back at 100% on everything. I wonder for a few minutes as to what exactly could have caused my resources to dip, but then I thought back to the explanation of my changed expansion skill, Homogenous Assimilation. It said that I conquer beings similar to myself using all 3 resource pools. I had thought that it meant the bigger pool automatically won the contest, but, apparently, I have to sacrifice the resources in order to take over the other being.

  I guess it makes sense, otherwise it would be a free expansion. I still wish it would have been clearer in the description. That being said, it still is significantly better than the previous skill I had. Even with the limitation, the fact that I only need to take a 3-hour break essentially once a week is INSANE. Theoretically, the more I expand, the less I’ll need to break as well, given that my resource pool is tied to my size.

  Wait. If my pool is tied to my size, then is it possible that the expansion doesn’t require me to spend my own resources? Is it possible that my size just happened to increase to such a degree and that I didn’t give myself enough time to let the taken over trees recover the resourced they expended in my takeover that my pool only appeared to tick down, despite me not actually spending anything at all? The tiredness could have been from adding so many trees that are empty of resources that the resources I had were just diluted and I needed that break to let the area that I just took over regenerate their resources.

  Okay, that makes sense. Maybe the skill description wasn’t lying after all.

  Anyways, back to expanding.

  The next month is spent on searching for the orcs home base. I spent a week straight doing nothing but claiming more territory, then I would take a break for an entire night. The day following that would be spent creating fruit and cover for the critters of the forest. The when I felt satisfied with my very mild renovations, I went back to expanding.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  During my time claiming more trees, I found out that I didn’t necessarily need to be in the exact middle. I was able to skew my growth slightly off center, allowing me to expand more in the direction I wanted than I previously thought. I still think it was weird that I was allowed to grow in whatever shape at first, but as soon as I created a more uniform circle of territory, I was suddenly forced to keep that shape. As I think about it, though, it was more my instincts that had me reshape the land than my actual desires. I was frankly fine staying to one side of the road, but then I felt the sudden need to refurbish my layout.

  Maybe there are some weird downsides to this evolution.

  Another weird thing happened when I reached about 40 miles from one end of my territory to the other (like I said, I have been doing nothing but expanding, so it’s been going fast.)

  Balance has been increased.

  There was no other explanation for it, just that it increased. I looked all around my land, but couldn’t find any explanation as to why it increased, just that it did. I kept thinking on it as I continued expanding, but there was nothing that I could think of that would trigger such a notification.

  When I reached 45 miles across, I noticed that my rate of expansion had slowed significantly. The first dozen or so miles went by in a flash, but that last 5 miles took most of the week to claim all around myself.

  Unfortunately, at the end of a moth of dedicated searching, I still haven’t been able to find the source of the orcs. The weird thing is, though, that sometimes, they just seem to… appear. There are moments where I’m looking at a certain area, then I’ll take a moment to look somewhere else, then when I look back at the original spot, there’s suddenly a trio of orcs there. The worst part, that wasn’t just a one-time occurrence. It feels almost like they’re teleporting in from some other dimension, just straight up spawning.

  “Oh. Shit. ARE they spawning? I mean, this is a system world, right? Do monsters just spawn in here? Holy shit! Have I been wasting my time on a System-damned goose chase?!”

  I freak out about the implication for a while before resigning myself to still searching for their base. The number of orcs wondering in from the west is just too uncanny for that to be the case.

  That being said, I think it’s time to do at least a bit of renovation. I’ve been holding off for the last month in an attempt to not slow down my expansion efforts. But since they might end up being for nothing, I feel justified in taking some time to spruce up the place.

  I start by comparing and contrasting the area immediately surrounding my primary tree. From the looks of things, the smaller critters seem to be thriving noticeably more than the critters in the area outside of the vine covered trees. I see multiple groups of squirrels with babies and birds making nests all over the canopies. The squirrels have really taken to using my vines as their main method of travel, I almost think that their reproductive increase might be the cause of the notification I received earlier.

  After examining that area, I take a look at the area that I haven’t yet remodeled.

  The critters still seem to be doing better than they were prior to my involvement, but that might have to do with the increase in hiding spots from the thorny bushes I have been providing. Other than that, though, the smaller plants seem to be doing a lot better here than in the area that I’ve created all the vines. If I had to guess, it would probably be from the more direct access to the sun. My vines do create a lot of shade, which I guess prevents the plant life from flourishing as well as they should be.

  I feel like the best way to determine which is better would be to create an area that is sort of between the two. I’ll do that by cutting the new land that I have in half. The northern half will be the control zone, where I basically leave it as mundane as it is now. There are still plenty of new spaces for the critters to move about and hide in, as well as an increase in their food supply. The big difference is that I basically won’t be creating the vines that have become my go-to look. I really hate not growing them out, but for the sake of improvement, I leave the area alone.

  I treat the southern half of the new land the same way as I do the northern half, but I opt to add a few vines here and there. In the central territory, I typically grow out a few dozen feet worth of vines in every tree. The plan for them was basically to use them as the final weapons, if I ever came under attack, but they’ve really grown on me, both aesthetically and literally. It just looks so much more… jungle. The vibe they give feels so much more calming than the empty tree tops in the north. But if it means that I’m preventing the smaller plant life from growing to their full potential, I’m willing to cut back.

  Besides, I practically am under attack from the orcs, and I really haven’t been using the vines all that much. I’ve been opting to go for a much quicker and human defeat for the orc parties I attack with a quick spike through the head, then use Earth Magic to get rid of the evidence. I suppose I could use the vine to act as the spikes, but that feels more like an excuse to keep them than anything. Still, for the experiment, I still need some vines, but just not as much as I would normally make.

  I create just enough vines to connect my trees, but not so many that they affect the amount of sunlight hitting the ground. I mean, there’s a bit more shade than before, bit nothing like what’s in my initial territory.

  I went ahead and took it a step further. In the canopies of most of the trees, I created small hollows, which should further provide protection for the critters. Birds can use them as spots to create nests; squirrels can use them as the same. In every hollow I create, I add a very small node for fruit to grow above the entrance. A majority of the fruit will still be outside, either in the canopy proper or in the bushes, but it’s something small that should help their numbers improve.

  As I finish the last hollow for the day, I get a notification, and a small smile creeps up in my non-existent face.

  Balance has been increased.

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