When dawn came, the droplet spirit that had settled on my leaves as if asleep would wake.
The spirit greeted the dawn by stretching the droplet upward as if stretching its body.
It did not originally have that habit of stretching. After seeing me finish my dew face-wash and spread my branches wide a few times, it began copying me.
After finishing its stretch, it flew in a circle around me, then settled on a leaf and waited for the dew face-wash. The spirit knew I enjoyed washing with pure dawn dew.
When I rolled the dawn dew around and washed my leaves, the spirit waited quietly on a leaf like an ordinary dewdrop. When its turn came, it joined with the dawn dew and rolled across the leaves with it.
Roll, roll.
It looked truly happy. I couldn't hear a voice, but the droplet's trembling seemed like a peal of laughter. Did it feel like riding an amusement ride?
When every leaf had been washed and the branches were clean too, the dew gathered at the tips of the leaves. The spirit remained mixed in, then fell with it and wet the ground.
When I absorbed it through my roots, it circulated inside my body like ordinary mana, then moved on its own and escaped. It passed through my trunk, formed on a leaf, and returned to being a droplet.
Just as what I did after finishing my dew face-wash changed depending on my mood, the spirit did something different every time from then on too.
It would wash every blade of grass around me one by one, giving them a droplet face-wash, then bounce around proudly. Or it would grab the stem of a yellow flower, tie it to another flower stem, then tremble with a giggle.
But today was very different from usual.
Waaah, is that for me?
The droplet had brought a pebble from outside. The tip of the pebble dangled from the droplet's surface as it floated.
It wasn't an ordinary pebble. It was very flat and wide, like a plate. A rare pebble like this could only be found in the vast outside world.
Wonderful. It's like a souvenir from overseas.
A gift from outside. Since the droplet had been going out beyond my field of vision often lately, it must have thought a lot about me, unable to move.
Woohoo. I became family with a droplet like this. I must be the luckiest sapling in the world.
To express my gratitude, I focused my mind. Though I still wasn't used to it...... Divinity exercised mystery, and will formed language.
—You brought such a cute pebble, didn't you? Thank you. You did so, so well.
The droplet's surface trembled rapidly. It laughed as if it would burst, then flew to my branches and bounced. Its powerful bouncing made my branches sway and my leaves flutter.
Waaah, waaah. You're so strong.
The droplet began picking up gifts every time it went out.
Smooth, round gravel, a twig marked by a squirrel's gnawing, a piece of bird eggshell stuck with down.
One day, it even picked up a snail shell. When it set it down, the snail wriggled out and showed its body, startling us both.
Waaah? It wasn't an empty shell?
The droplet brought something fascinating again today.
The things it had brought so far were items I thought one could find in a forest. But this time was a little different.
Something long and wooden dangled from the droplet's surface. As it floated as if telling me to look, the wooden arrow swayed.
Waaah?
No matter how I looked at it, it was a wooden arrow. The arrowhead part looked like a crude toy made by trying and failing to imitate a real arrow, but it was unmistakably a wooden arrow.
—Where did you get this?
The upper part of the droplet tilted, poking in one direction. It was the direction of the densely wooded forest.
Waaah, I see. Wonderful.
Beyond the forest I don't know, there are wooden arrows.
The world truly is wide and beautiful.
I want to see beyond the forest.
I want to see the birth and life of a wooden arrow.
***
I released my nutrients, but the growth of my body itself stopped.
Just as roots that overgrew didn't grow until they broke through a wall, my trunk and branches had overgrown, so they did not grow either.
But though my appearance had grown more than enough, the experience points required to raise my level had not been greatly satisfied, which gave me a lot to think about.
Maybe I only enlarged the visible exterior. Maybe as much as that exterior grew, the nutrients I needed internally actually increased.
I looked like a sturdy sapling on the outside, but perhaps my inner substance was still weak.
The nutrients were used on the minute parts I hadn't recognized all this time.
Bark, xylem, phloem, leaf veins, root hairs, and more.
To support the weight of my enlarged exterior, the material of my body became tougher and sturdier. As my growth rings increased, it felt as if my soul was growing inside time.
More than a month passed.
The world I could see widened.
【Lightning-Struck Sapling Lv.2】
Exp: 0/2,000,000
[Influence Radius]
7,450cm → 13,850cm
When I looked to one side, the yellow flower field ended, and dense trees surrounding it came into view. This place wasn't the boundary between a plain and a forest. It's the middle of a forest.
When I looked the other way, trees and thickets stood densely beyond the forest. The endless trees made me imagine what lay past the lush growth.
So the wooden arrow was born beyond there.
The droplet spirit flew freely between the thickets blocking my vision. It settled on a leaf, leaped, then snatched a falling green feather.
Then it began turning it around and examining it closely.
You're preparing a gift for me, aren't you? Wonderful.
After swaying the feather and touching each individual strand, the droplet shook its body sharply. As if the feather didn't match the grade of a gift, it tossed it aside carelessly and flew again.
Waaah? That looked good, didn't it?
It seemed not to suit the droplet spirit's discerning eye.
While watching the droplet leave my field of vision, I focused nutrients in my roots.
After I decided to treat boulders as neighbors rather than obstacles, pioneering underground actually seemed to have become faster. Instead of spending time breaking them and making straight paths, I focused on detouring and widening my territory, so the expansion itself was faster.
So this is what they mean by taking the long way around when you're in a hurry.
Because my roots weren't straight, the nutrient paths weren't neat, but in a plant's relaxed life, that didn't seem so important.
My roots filled the underground.
·Influence Radius
7,450cm → 13,850cm (Max)
·Production
22,350/d → 41,550/d
After fully growing them, I focused on my branches.
This time, I planned to do work different from before.
As I basked in the sunlight, swayed in the wind, and carefully observed my branches and leaves, I had discovered something lacking.
People who grow trees often prune them. They cut dead or withered branches to make room and cut densely overlapping branches to let them breathe.
More wasn't always better.
Overlapping leaves couldn't receive sunlight, and overlapping branches couldn't ride the wind.
If I cut off nutrient supply and received help from the droplet spirit, pruning would be possible. But it would be even better to control things from the beginning so they didn't grow messily. It would also reduce the nutrients needed for growth.
I stretched my branches carefully, considering their placement relative to one another. I adjusted the angles of small branches and matched the range of leaves, seeking an unoverlapped spaciousness.
[【Geometric Branch Network Design】 discovered.]
【Geometric Branch Network Design】
Designs the sky area with a regularized arrangement of branches and leaves. Reduces the resources and time required for branch growth and grants advantages to aesthetic beauty and structure utilization, but requires conscious design.
My trunk grew, and my branches stretched.
·Maximum Height
640cm → 928cm
·Capture Amount
Average 40/d → Average 58/d
Higher, higher.
·Maximum Height
928cm → 1,280cm (Max)
·Capture Amount
Average 58/d → Average 80/d
I'm a 13-meter sapling.
I was about the same height as the trees I could see.
There would be nothing lacking if I introduced myself as a tree.
Woohoo.
***
The droplet brought a gift.
—Waaah, thank you again today. You're like sunlight to me.
Surprisingly, it was a green feather. I clearly remembered seeing it discard a similar feather because it didn't suit its discerning eye.
Is something different about it?
Compared to that feather, it did look more fluttery and glossy. The owner of the feather must be young. The droplet spirit's discerning eye is truly deep and profound.
But something I had never expected was caught by that deep and profound eye.
The droplet entered my field of vision from outside, bringing a gift again. Unlike before, it was a small living animal.
White, fluffy fur and upright ears.
Red eyes, a plump body, and even an adorable tail.
It was a rabbit.
A familiar rabbit I felt like I had seen several times.
The rabbit dangled through the air with both ears held. Perhaps it had given up after resisting, because it hung limp with its soul gone.
Waaah?
You're bringing that? You're really bringing that? Isn't jumping from inanimate objects to a rabbit progressing too fast?
The rabbit was delivered. Perhaps being carried by a mere droplet had dealt a serious blow to its mind and body, because the rabbit remained soulless.
The droplet bounced on top of the rabbit as if asking to be praised.
Come to think of it, the droplet had been with me since I became A Sprout Exceptional from the Seed Leaves Up. We had experienced the life-or-death struggle with the rabbit together.
Did it find a familiar rabbit while wandering outside and kidnap it? Is that what happened?
—Wa, waaah.
I really don't know how I'm supposed to reaact.
—Thank you for the thought, at least.
The droplet bounced happily on the rabbit for a while, then flew to my leaves to play dew games. It settled on a leaf and stopped still, imitating dew.
I was left alone with the rabbit.
Wa, waaah.
The rabbit came to its senses and groomed its ears with its front paws. It did that for a while, then twitched its nose, glanced at me, subtly looked away, and groomed its ears again. It was in a state where leaving felt awkward, but doing something also felt awkward.
An awkward atmosphere drifted between us.
How should I put this? I don't think either of us expected a sudden meeting like this. I don't know how to resolve it. You feel the same, right?
The rabbit looked up. Since its small height and body could not see all of me, it stood on its front paws and looked up to the very end. Its red eyes wavered.
Maybe it hadn't been such a long time for you. For me either.
But I was no longer a sprout.
We have come too far to fight again.
What's here now isn't a sprout and a rabbit, but only a tree and a rabbit.
The wind shook my leaves.
The rabbit lowered its front paws.
It stayed still for a while, then touched its rabbit ears and suddenly began chewing. I thought it might be eating a blade of grass, but it wasn't. A blue gem pellet dropped from its mouth with a pop.
Waaah?
It was a gem pellet like a sapphire.
Why did a gem pellet come out of the rabbit's mouth?
Don't tell me you eat things like that?
Had the shock of losing to a sprout knocked its soul loose so badly that it began chewing stones? Since it was a very clever rabbit, perhaps it had realized how fatal a wound to rabbit honor that was.
The rabbit pushed the gem pellet toward me.
Huh? Is that a gift? An apology?
The rabbit left without picking it up.
Only the gem remained behind.
It left.
Though sudden, maybe it was a good meeting. If we hadn't met now, the rabbit would have watched me from far away, given up, and left. It was nice that we could reconcile in the end.
The gem pellet entered my view.
But if a rabbit eats gems, is its health all right? Our next meeting place might be the afterlife.
Just in case, I examined whether I had mistaken perfectly normal food for a gem.
The blue gem looked similar to an ordinary gem. But when I examined it closely, I realized something.
Waaah, I see. This was that.
The Natural Circulation Method used the principle that mana could remain in plants just as mana remains in the sky.
Then one question inevitably arose.
Could there be cases where it remains in the earth too? If I had properly understood nature's circulation, then such cases definitely had to exist.
I believed it would exist, and it really did.
The blue gem was a complete mass of mana. It had the hard appearance of stone and gem, but its true substance was mana.
It was an object worthy of being called a mana stone.
What a fascinating form.
I used mana like water myself, but this form was unfamiliar.
After thinking for a moment, I gathered mana in my leaves. Mana dew formed with a ripple.
Should I try imagining stone instead of water?
It wasn't easy. I always felt water deeply inside my body, while stone was something I only indirectly touched with my roots. I had decided to treat boulders as neighbors, but there was a fundamental distance between neighbors and me.
But because there was a result before my eyes, it was much easier. When I believed it was possible and thought that mana was like stone, the dew gradually compressed.
Soon, a round blue bead formed.
Waaah, a mana bead.
Sunlight shone on its smooth surface.
I quickly compared the mana stone and the mana bead.
Huh? Something is different.
The mana stone contained the principle of earth. Just as high pressure creates rock and high temperature creates gems, the principle of earth was deeply contained in the mana stone.
By contrast, the mana bead was hardened mana. They were similar if one wanted to call them similar, but compared to the mana stone, many principles were missing.
I think I made some strange other thing. What did I make?
[【Solid Mana】 acquired.]
【Solid Mana】
Materializes mana in solid form in the material world. Greatly increases mana stability and enables physical action.
Waaah?