A bird flew over.
It perched on a charred-smelling branch and pecked at the leaves. Ash powder fell from the blackened leaves.
Suddenly, the sapling's branch shook. The bird was startled and flew off into the sky. My mind woke groggily inside the lightning-struck sapling.
Uuuh?
My mind felt numb, as if I had fainted and woken up. My whole body was heavy and ached as if I had been hit somewhere. When I shook my branches as if coughing, ash powder fell.
What happened to my state? What happened last night?
I definitely remembered enjoying the rough wind like a deep-rooted tree. Then why had I blacked out in the middle and only woken up now?
In my disheveled state, I retraced my memories.
The cry of thunder and lightning came to mind.
Waaah?
Did I get struck by lightning?
When I checked my body, I was covered in blackish ash. The surface of my trunk had burned and cracked, and some of my leaves had fallen, leaving me sparse.
【Lightning-Struck Sapling Lv.1】
I had definitely been a Mana-Infused Sapling, but I had been forcibly converted. I suppose being struck by lightning was a bigger event than being infused with mana.
Waaah......
In awe, I groggily did my dew face-wash.
I carefully rinsed my leaves one by one with mana dew. Ash powder fell away, revealing burn marks and green surfaces.
After I finished the dew face-wash on my branches and trunk too, I at least looked presentable.
Woohoo......
Good thing I learned the dew face-wash. Otherwise, I'd have had no dignity left as a mysterious sapling.
Warm sunlight shone on my burned leaves. It was toasty.
For noow.
Since I had at least done the minimum washing......
Maybe I should let my mind go blank while my body recovers.
I basked in the sunlight and spaced out.
A month passed.
***
Start the day with a dew face-wash.
I rolled mana-mixed dawn dew over my leaves.
The clean dew made the leaves spotless, then rolled down a branch and headed to another leaf.
When I finished washing and spread my branches, the green scenery was dazzling.
Woohoo. I'm all better.
The traces of lightning remained on my body, but I had become a perfectly fine sapling.
After a month of spacing out while being hit by sunlight, I finally had room in my heart. Sunlight, this is thanks to you.
First, I checked my surroundings.
I was worried about whether my neighbors were all right after lightning had struck right in front of them.
The yellow flower field was fine, but some burn marks remained in the grassland. Since it was right against me, it seemed to have been affected.
Still, thanks to the rain falling with us, it was a relief no fire started. I think it would be sad if all my neighbors burned and I alone were left standing in a wasteland.
But not everyone was all right.
When I checked the neighboring sapling, all I could see in that spot were traces of a lightning strike. The marks where it had been uprooted by the violent wind were clear in the soil.
The one who had taught me my dream left the world before me. I knew we would someday part within nature's order, but I had never imagined it would happen this way.
I felt bitter, and at the same time, my feelings were complicated.
Maybe this isn't a simple farewell.
When its burned roots return to the soil, flowers and trees will grow above them and drink dew. If the breath of new life reaches me on the wind, then the fact that we're neighbors will never change.
Even if its form is different, the neighboring sapling is still together with us inside the world. Perhaps there's no need to grieve too deeply over parting.
That was what I thought.
I looked at the neighboring sapling's place for a while, then examined myself.
I checked my title again.
【Lightning-Struck Sapling Lv.1】
So I'm not a Mana-Infused Sapling anymore. Did something change?
【Divinity Lv.1】
Something I had never seen before had appeared.
What exactly is Divinity?
When I tried to look at the details, nothing appeared. There was no detail window at all. Was it treated differently from mana?
Like when I had gained mana, I checked whether I had gained some mysterious sensation or energy. I carefully sensed inside my body and examined everything outside it, down to each leaf, but I couldn't really tell.
Something must have changed.
Separate from Divinity, there had been an enormous change to my mana.
·MP
50 → 10,050
·MP: 10,050/10,050
Waaah? What happened?
I had no memory of the moment the lightning hit me, so I didn't know the reason. Still, it was clear the lightning had left a good effect behind.
Vast mana circulated inside my body. It even felt a little burdensome and difficult. Was it because this was mana I had gained by chance instead of honestly accumulating it?
I had thought my body hurt because I was struck by lightning, but maybe it was actually because of the amount of mana. Having a lot is nice, but what should I do with this?
First, I should take the newly gained mana out of my body.
Moisture formed on every leaf. As I gathered it together, the droplet gradually grew larger. A large mass of water settled heavily on a branch.
It's huge.
It was so large that my current mana sense had difficulty handling it. I used even my small branches and leaves to hold the mass of water as it sloshed with gravity and wind.
What should I really do with this? It was a scale difficult for a sapling that had only just stopped being a sprout to handle.
At the very least, it'd be nice if it were smaller.
[A large amount of mana is influenced by mystery.]
Huh?
The mass of water surged.
It floated up, rotated, and gradually compressed.
Suddenly, a small droplet formed at its center.
The droplet held sunlight and shone.
[The droplet that has been with the divine existence since before it was divine responds to mystery.]
All the mana condensed into the small droplet.
[Existence takes residence in matter.]
Light burst out.
Inside the light, the droplet changed form.
It became a leaf made of water, then changed into a petal, mimicked a honeybee, copied a hummingbird, became a rabbit, then, as if it had not found a form it liked, returned to a droplet.
The droplet flew freely around me. Its watery trail scattered the sunlight dazzlingly.
[【Liquid Mana Spirit Manifestation】 acquired.]
【Liquid Mana Spirit Manifestation】
Manifests liquid mana in the forms of nature. Grants a major advantage in the use of nature, but requires sincere affection and respect.
***
It was a small droplet.
A small droplet that had held dawn dew and washed my seed leaves. A droplet that had felt rain with me and enjoyed the wind. I simply had not realized it, but it had been an existence that stayed with me.
The droplet bounced from leaf to leaf. After bouncing across every leaf on one branch, it moved to the next branch and conquered every leaf there too.
Woohoo. I have a mysterious droplet now.
The droplet spirit was an entity independent from me. It was half-connected to me in the form of mana, but it could think and act on its own.
It would circle around a blade of grass as if fascinated and then flow down the leaf, or sit on a flower and bounce.
When a hummingbird came, it flew after it and startled it. It also played a slightly mean prank by watching an ant work, then dropping a water droplet with a plop and making it flail.
Most of all, the moment I truly felt it was an independent existence was when the droplet, freely flying around, went outside my field of vision.
Waaah? It went out......?
I trembled my branches in bewilderment, but nothing happened.
Even though the droplet spirit left my influence range and wandered around, it returned just fine. It must have found something fun, because it even went out again from time to time.
It was truly an independent existence, only half-connected by mana.
I see.
I have family now.
And family I have to take care of, at that.
From now on, I want to become a dependable tree. A dependable tree where the droplet spirit can come rest anytime after playing to its heart's content.
Let me devote myself even more.
I'll become a great tree it can lean on as much as it wants.
***
When I became a mana-infused tree, my Influence Radius had widened greatly. That meant the underground area I had to pioneer with my roots had also increased.
My roots had not grown during the month I spent spacing out, so I had to put in the effort myself.
·Influence Radius
890cm → 3,200cm
·Production
2,670/d → 9,600/d
As the range widened, I faced several difficult obstacles.
Whenever I stretched my roots into one area, they were consistently blocked by an obstacle. It was a large gray boulder.
It's huge and hard.
Its size was far beyond anything I could dream of grabbing with my roots and splitting in two. For now, I detoured around it and expanded my roots while thinking of a method.
I think I could break the boulder itself. If I kept digging into it with roots wrapped in mana, even the boulder would fail to endure and turn into stone dust.
But perhaps because I had seen the death of the neighboring sapling, my thoughts went deeper than that simple idea.
This boulder isn't here to be my obstacle.
With its weight, the boulder firmly compacts the underground. Above it, it supports the soil and creates sturdy earth where plants can grow.
If I greedily spread my roots while turning every boulder I could see into stone dust, everything would seem good for the moment.
But if the earth I had taken for granted collapsed and the moment came when I realized I was merely one member of the world, it would be too late to undo it.
Rather, if I wrap this boulder with my roots, it'll become a dependable neighbor that supports me when storms blow and I sway.
I wrapped the boulders with my roots and detoured around them. For boulders covering too large an area, I carefully pierced only a hole, like making a tunnel without pushing a mountain aside.
[【High-Strength Foundation Design】 discovered.]
【High-Strength Foundation Design】
Designs sturdy ground while considering the load above the earth. Allows a foundation for large structures to be prepared, but requires deep understanding of the earth.
[Roots]
·Traits
【Resource Focus Strategy】 【Expansionist Root Plan】 【Hierarchical Root Network Design】 【High-Strength Foundation Design】
·Influence Radius
3,200cm → 7,450cm (Max)
·Production
9,600/d → 22,350/d
I'm done with my roots, so shall I grow my branches now?
***
I simply had not paid attention to them or focused nutrients on them. My branches had grown well too. In truth, my roots were just far too large by themselves. My branches were also at a sapling level.
[Branches]
·Traits
【Mana Structure Utilization】 【Liquid Mana Filter】
·Maximum Height
128cm
·Capture Amount
Average 8/d
After roughly checking, my branches were structured to depend on my trunk, so the trunk was included in Maximum Height.
I'm a 1.3-meter sapling.
And a sapling that can grow even bigger.
However, I wondered whether my height would grow all the way to the limit of my field of vision like my roots.
After all, it makes sense that I can't see beneath my roots, but not being able to see above my branches would be strange.
If a bird perched on my highest branch and I couldn't see what kind of bird it was, that would be truly unfortunate. Even if it were possible, I don't want to accept that situation.
To check the limit too, I focused nutrients. Just like my roots, my branches gained the Resource Focus Strategy trait and slowly grew taller along with my trunk.
My trunk grew and raised my branches high. Small branches split off from the branches. They stretched toward the sky, unfurled leaves, and cast shadows on the earth.
[【Expansionist Branch Plan】 discovered.]
【Expansionist Branch Plan】
Boldly occupies a wider area of the sky. Grants a major advantage to branch growth, but reduces capacity to respond to external threats.
Mana dew filled countless leaves. Wind blew, and mana clung to the dew. Its volume grew little by little.
·Maximum Height
128cm → 512cm
·Capture Amount
Average 8/d → Average 32/d
Perhaps because the branches overlapped one another's roles, the capture amount did not increase as much as the range, but it still increased enormously.
When I looked around, the adult trees surrounding one side of my field of vision somehow felt familiar.
They're all taller and higher than me, but I feel like I can catch up soon. I just have to grow twice as large as this.
·Maximum Height
512cm → 640cm (Max)
·Capture Amount
Average 32/d → Average 40/d
My branches and leaves supported the sky.
Sunlight poured down through the gaps.
Woohoo. I'm a 6.4-meter sapling now.