Wraithwood Botanist

It was hard to believe that all the hell I went through over the last four months had finally concluded.

Winter was coming, bearing its own flavor of difficulties and tragedies, I was sure, but at least I didn’t have to deal with Thorvel, Drokai, guardians, legacies, harvesters, or any of that other BS for an entire year.

A year.

An entire goddamn year of doing whatever I wanted, aside from harvesting my tribute.

It was going to be so nice.

I couldn’t wait.

True to my word, Kline and I decided to build our home on the exact location where we had woken up upon integration, just for spite.

I took a deep, satisfied breath as I looked at the colossal trees surrounding me. Four months ago, a reaper sprouted from the exact spot I was standing on, sticking to Kline’s fur. I had to cut him loose with a pocket knife to survive back then. Now, I was standing on its corpse with a machete, flanked by my little warrior, who was now strong enough to kill one of the strongest beings in the Fourth Ring.

It was satisfying, empowering, and soothing, giving me a sense of advancement and perseverance.

Dronami was an accursed planet, an abhorrent source of alarm and agony. It embodied every A-prefixed synonym for awful and similar strings of sharp words for every letter of the alphabet.

But it was also quite cool in some ways.

I mean, I was a quasi-immortal superhuman, for fuck’s sake. How couldn’t that be cool?

Kline didn’t feel so empowered. He slashed at the grass where the reaper snagged him, bitter memories playing out on his frown. I giggled and pulled his tiny body against my chest, fighting back against his protests as I cradled him in my arms.

"Cheer up, grumpy gus," I said. "This is our new home."

I gave us a spin, showing him the open field of colossal trees with thirty-foot diameters, each perfectly sized for little apartments or facilities. There was the making of an elven village all around us.

"That one," I said, pointing at a tree. "That’s going to be our home. And that one," I pointed at the one opposite it, "is going to be my alchemy workshop. And that one." I pointed at the one that the reapers had used to sling my backpack in the air like a sacrifice. "That’ll be our meditation chamber. We’ll thread our cores there. What do you think?"

Kline’s eyes widened, and he released an emotional meow. I giggled and held him against my chest. "Then let’s get started."

I didn’t know what I was doing, but I figured that the first step to creating a home from a hollowed tree would be to hollow it out. So I pulled out my machete and started hacking one up.

It was hard to imagine what it would be like to do that with a hatchet, like in My Side of the Mountain because my mana sharpening cut through the tree like a laser cutter through foam.

Because of the ease, I took my time, carving thoughtfully—methodically—pulling out the wood and piling it up in my new courtyard to use as kindling.

It felt easy at first, but the repetitive movement wore me down, and I found myself sitting in the tree, watching the sun casting its sunset glow over the meadow.

"We’ll continue it tomorrow," I whispered. "Let’s eat."

Kline meowed and zagged back and forth rearward, playful and energized for no reason. "Play with Kael," I said, nudging my head in the direction the alpha lurvine left in.

Kline lay down grumpily as I set up my pop-out stove and cooked torok meat, but he soon forgot his beef when I fed him small strips as they finished cooking.

The lurvines returned from their hunt as I was setting up a campfire, dragging a bearish creature into the meadow and nudging it with their noses, asking me to cook it.

"You’re so spoiled," I muttered, but I chuckled and skinned the beast, cleansing and cooking ribs over the fire as I lay, looking up at the canopies that were changing to their fall-time colors.

Soon, all the plants would be dead for the year.

How ironic.

But that was okay. I had eight months of foraging and botany after winter, so I drifted into sleep and hit the construction effort hard the next day.

By mid-afternoon, the tree was generally hollow in a miner’s shaft sort of way, and I didn’t know how far I could hollow it before it turned shaky.

I realized it was silly to even worry about it. It was twenty feet in diameter, the size of one of those overpriced studio apartments people suffer in to live in the city instead of on the outskirts.

"This’s getting satisfying," I said, crashing onto the floor, hurting my butt from the jagged surface. "What a pain. I wonder if there’s magic for this."

I activated my guide to check for spells and that’s when I got some news I wasn’t expecting.

2.

"What the fuck is wrong with him?" Leeka Melhan screamed as she paced back and forth in Kal’s room. Her son had woken up, but not only was he unable to remember his name, but he had also lost the ability to create coherent sentences.

"Isn’t that obvious?" her husband Reasan asked. "He has what Hallard had."

"And what did Hallard have?" she asked venomously.

"If I knew that, do you think I’d keep that from you? Even if it were confidential, I’d tell you to shut you up."

Leeka tried to slap him, but he caught her wrist and wrapped his free hand around her neck, stopping before he touched her skin. Then he pushed her off as she sobbed, wondering how she had ever married someone so heartless. His son was a vegetable, and he was staring at him with apathetic scorn!

"Quit your hysteria," Reasan commanded. "Whatever happened to him—he deserved it. He was a failure. He was always a failure. And you enabled him. And now what, Leeka? Now we’re down—"

"Don’t you dare bring up requests," she warned.

"Don’t bring up requests? We spent two heirlooms on him!"

"He was our son!"

"Of which there can be many!"

"The next lot is next century!" she screamed. Due to the potential for immortality straining resources from overpopulation, there was a strict child-rearing pool that spanned centuries, even with priority given to legacy families. Their son was dead, and they wouldn’t have another heir for at least a century—if at all.

"I can’t believe you’re thinking of children. It’s ridiculous!" He picked up a mana lamp and threw it against a wall as she sobbed. "No…" He paused and stormed out of the room.

Leeka thought he was gone, so she knelt beside Kal, muttering crazed nothings in grief. Then Reasan returned in a fury, holding three plants. He lifted them to Kal.

"Tell me what color they are!" Reasan demanded.

"Reasan!" she screamed.

"You need… to shut… the fuck… up." She did as he thrust the plants in front of Kal.

Kal blinked thoughtlessly and pointed at the poison clasa plant, and said, "Purple."

"Yes!" Reasan said. "And this one?" He pulled out an alchemic herb.

"Orange," Kal said.

"Oh than the gods."

"Reasan!" Leeka screamed.

Her husband cast her the most damning glare she had ever been subjected to, and she fell silent.

"I’m three seconds from divorcing you," he warned, "stripping you of your titles, and then demanding reparations from your father. So I suggest you shut up."

Leeka sobbed and fell silent as Reasan brought out more plants to ensure that his son still had a purpose for him. It was a nightmare that she thought she would never wake from.

I wasn’t sure what the Melhans were experiencing, but I imagined it was brutal. I got the notification that Kal had woken, followed by a message that read:

-

Scion Mira Hill has met the conditions to be promoted from Level 25 to Level 26. You’ve leveled up!

You have received two requests:

Information Request

Free Request | Grade: Epic

Description: You have to be the only psychopath who popped their kill cherry on a pack of roaming legacies. Not only did you effectively kill three of them, but you also reduced the Melhan heir to an invalid whose only purpose in life is to say the words "Purple" and "Orange." Congratulations.

-

I gulped and read the rest aloud.

"Putting aside the banter, your feat is unprecedented for a recent integree, so it was deemed worthy of the utmost praise. In fact, you were one kill away from getting a legendary reward, but alas, there’s always someone competent enough to escape and ruin the party. But rejoice… an epic request is still an epic request. Consider bolstering your fighting capabilities. Right now, your battle capacity stands somewhere between a double-barrel shotgun and a nuclear weapon, and both have obvious drawbacks."

"I bet they’re pissed…" I thought about the Melhans, leaning my back against the wall of the hollowed tree, staring at the notification aimlessly. I was afraid to keep reading for some reason, but I forced myself to press on. The next read:

-

Congratulations! Scion Mira Hill has met the conditions to be promoted from Level 26 to Level 27. You’ve leveled up!

You have received two requests:

Information Request

Free Request | Grade: Gold

Description: You survived a chase with two legacies. It seems inconsequential, but that is worthy of ten levels for normal folks.

-

The next was essentially the same, only it was for surviving a race with multiple torok instead of the legacies, which was, in fact, a challenge worthy of a reward.

The fourth notification was when things got interesting. It read:

-

Congratulations! Scion Mira Hill has met the conditions to be promoted from Level 28 to Level 29. You’ve leveled up!

You have received two requests:

Information Request

Free Request | Grade: Diamond

Description: Part of becoming a god is winning the respect and admiration of those around you. You managed to not only captivate the harvesters but also inspire powerful families to act upon your vision, healing those you’ve wounded to curry favor. That is a remarkable feat.

-

Reading that was a breath of fresh air, proving that killing wasn’t the only way to earn levels. The next was equally enlightening. It read:

-

Congratulations! Scion Mira Hill has met the conditions to be promoted from Level 29 to Level 30. You’ve leveled up!

You have received two requests:

Information Request

Free Request | Grade: Diamond

Description: Part of becoming a god is making laws and enforcing them through violence and fear. This year, you managed to establish laws, then enforced them like a shepherd behind the scenes, even going so far as to strike terror into the hearts of offenders in a grand reveal. Even if you die, that sign-off will be remembered for generations.

-

I smirked and quickly read through the next. I earned a gold request by delegating my killing to others, namely Kline, who registered as my follower. Since he killed over eighty people upon my orders and enforced my laws, I proved I had talent in managerial killing.

They were all sort of grim, but the next one was absolutely vindicating. It was a diamond request that rewarded my stubbornness. It read:

It takes a very stupid person to turn down a mansion, prestige, power, wealth, teachers, and your dream job to live in a shitty forest, but somehow you managed to stick to your convictions, even though they’re atrocious most of the time. That stubbornness will kill you, but egos are what makes gods "gods," separating them from mortals who do what’s best. You chose to live an isolated life to pursue your passions, and for better and worse, you’re keeping with them, even after everything you’ve been through—and what you’ve been through has been truly a biblical sight to behold.

-

If things stopped there, I would’ve been satisfied, fully rewarded for my bad behavior and decisions. But the last reward put the rest to shame, encapsulating all the hell I had gone through in the last four months.

It was long overdue—and it was worth it.