It wasn’t bad that my plans were ruined. I wasn’t inflexible enough that a sudden change of circumstances that forced me to throw away most of my plans would leave me helpless.
Though, that didn’t feel me from feeling a deep annoyance, one that I forced myself to ignore to the best of my ability. Redrawing my plans was not a big problem, but redrawing my plans while I was leveraging my short action window was much more annoying.
Especially since half of the necromancers had already fallen, and their reduced numbers made it even harder for the rest to defend. As they got defeated, elves would return, and I didn’t want to trust my illusion capabilities to hide completely without the assistance of the wards.
I ignored the temptation of stealing the Divine Spark from the tree. The amount was not as important compared to my reserves, barely as much as I had put into the ward. And while the more Divine Spark was helpful, I preferred to keep the tree intact.
I had a feeling elves would react negatively to any harm to the tree, and it was not impossible for them to somehow discover I was responsible. After all, I had no idea about their magical capabilities, especially since I could see no mages as a part of the group.
It was a toss-up whether it was about the rarity of the mages among them, or the intensity of the battle they were suffering.
Instead, I started examining the Divine Spark in the tree, trying to understand how it was used. As far as I could see, the way the guardian tree used it somewhere between a solid node and a limited free flow, which positioned it right between a Chosen and Demi-God in terms of usage. It was not supposed to work like that, but clearly, being a semi-sentient plant had some impact on it.
I continued to examine the nature of the tree, measuring the merits of taking at least some of it, to try to create something similar to the fake Chosen node I had created for Light Divine Spark, which had came much more useful than I had been expecting.
I had no idea just how it could be used, but having options wouldn’t have harmed me.
Yet, I was about to take the risk, when I felt the tree starting to feed its mana into one of its branches. A branch that was holding a fruit — one that had the smallest, weakest flicker of Divine Spark I had ever felt.
Still, much better than harming the tree for the first layer of experimentation, I decided as I pulled the small fruit with a simple magical tendril, which looked like an overgrown hazelnut. While I was busy taking that fruit, another three necromancers decided to do particularly convincing renditions of porcupines, telling me that my temporary adventure was over.
I retreated before elves could return to handling the zombies, but I avoided the hill I used as a vantage point. I wanted to do some experimentation, and no need to potentially waste such a strategic observation spot for that.
Pity that, with my limited observation abilities, I wasn’t confident enough to establish a teleportation beacon, or it would have been very useful.
I left the elves behind as they gathered around the largest tree and shouted, which was no doubt a celebration of victory, traveling back the path I had taken — taking a few seconds to disperse the wards I had created, as the undead didn’t have the chance to pull back after that, and I didn’t want to leave a trapped ward for my potential allies to find.
Instead, I traced my steps back upstream, staying near to water, wanting to see if there was any undead party that was willing to follow. For a moment, I was split between prioritizing an ambush and experimenting, before I noticed my folly.
I could do both, especially by creating a very convenient target.
First, I put my hand on the ground, sending arcana mana underground, using it as a detection. My trusty detection trick wasn’t as useful here, the natural mana interfering with the detection capabilities, but after several attempts, I discovered a natural cave, large enough to be temporary housing, yet close enough to the river to allow me to intervene or observe as necessary, and dug a tunnel.
It was a frustrating affair that took a few minutes, the Arcana much less useful than Earth mana to do so, but it was nothing compared to my other aim.
Creating several tunnels that would allow me to escape without being noticed, deep enough that the interference would keep me from being detected as well. It was supposed to be the priority, but I could feel the throbbing under my fingers.
The seed hidden in the fruit was slowly losing its life.
I didn’t want to ruin my only tool of experimentation, so I decided to handle it the moment I finished the emergency escape tunnel. It was the first, and shortest among the tunnels I prepared — opened right under the river, allowing me an express escape path — I turned my attention to the seed.
I used the original entrance to travel to the surface, warded the entrance for concealment, and then, I planted the seed, right at the entrance, directly on top of the cavern. A risky proposition, but I had a feeling that if my experiment was successful, the seed would show its presence, working as a beacon for both elves and the undead.
Giving me a chance to observe whichever arrived first from my heavily warded location. And, while it was risky to do so without completing all the escape tunnels I wished, once again I had to choose immediate results over perfect safety.
First, I purified the ground from any necrotic energy, not wanting the seed to die the moment it touched the ground. Then, I pushed a tendril of Arcana mana into the seed, maintaining tight control over it not to affect the way it worked, but enough to allow me to observe the changes slowly.
The seed worked even faster than I expected, a flicker of life appearing in its core as the surrounding protective layer cracked, and a thin tendril, the beginnings of a root, sank into the ground, searching for water…
And mana, I realized, as it pulled a very minuscule amount of mana from the ground, directing it toward its very small Divine Spark. For the seed, the Divine Spark was much more like a Chosen than a Demi-God, a crystallized core, inefficiently processing the mana.
I decided to help it a little bit, using my own abilities to purify mana, softening its structure to the point of uselessness.
It proved to be a good choice, as the seed devoured that over-purified mana easily, transforming it with much greater speed, the growth of its root hastening rapidly, and soon, another tendril appeared on the opposite side, determined to breach the little layer of Earth that prevented it from receiving any light.
Though, I doubted that they required light as much as an ordinary plant, especially when compared to their clear need for mana.
Unlike its grown counterparts, the seed didn’t radiate any of its unique life energy, clearly using it for its own growth instead. Barely minutes later, it pushed its head through the surface.
I was carefully watching the state of its Divine Spark, hoping that it would get bigger. It wasn’t a big hope, but despite the limited probability, the potential implications were significant enough to make hope.
With my unique ability to break down Aether and Primordial Aether, I could easily imagine creating an amazing farm. Pity that turned out to be not possible.
“Even if you can’t give me infinite Divine Spark, you’re still good bait, I suppose,” I muttered as I prepared to move down the cave while continuing to feed the tree from my concealed spot, not wanting to take the risk of accidental discovery, when I decided to test another trick.
I stole half of the Divine Spark the seed had, only to watch its growth come to a standstill, even starting to lose its life. Yet, that didn’t last long before I ‘softened’ the Divine Spark, replicating the same trick I had pulled with the Headmistress, allowing the seed to bond with its Divine Spark more efficiently.
Then, I repeated the same trick again with the rest, even sacrificing some of my own Divine Spark to double the initial amount — after all, I could always take it back before leaving — until the sapling had passed the state of the other tree I had observed, handily reaching to Demi-God status.
I wasn’t surprised to see the tree absorbing the mana with an even greater speed, though amusingly, its growth slowed down. But I could see its structure getting stronger.
I was supposed to stop there, but sometimes, curiosity was hard to beat. I continued to replicate the trick, allowing the sapling to continue bonding with the Divine Spark even easier.
Until it turned into a God. An extremely weak one, but still a god.
What harm could it do, I thought as I continued to feed it purified mana, moving underground.
[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]
