Esu’s warm greeting threw me for a loop. All I was expecting was an acknowledgment of our presence. So I racked my brain in panic for an appropriate answer.

“It’s an absolute pleasure to be allowed in here,” I growled, expressing what an honor it was for him to show me the World Tree. Clumsy to say and phrase it that way, true feelings nonetheless.

Hearing me, Lightfeather quickly added what a privilege it was for their side too, and that they would do everything in their power to help, or at least not to hinder the tree’s awakening.

Maybe it was the playful mood prevailing around the World Tree seedling that played on my feelings and made me grin. Though I prefer to chalk it up to the fact that I finally had someone next to me who understood my growls and the intentions they carried. It was the same the other way around. Sure, that Lightfeather could growl was odd. Yet awesome at the same time.

“Your help not needed. Human presence enough, balancing ours,” replied Esu after a brief pause. “Tree delighted.”

Was it? How could he tell? I didn’t sense any intent from the World Tree or a change in its presence. Perhaps the playful vibe? That was the only thing that came to mind and made me wonder what the tree’s usual presence was, if that was the case.

“Did our arrival disturb the tree?” This question of mine earned me a frown from Lightfeather. However, I was of the opinion it was better to make sure we didn’t mess anything up, and the tree’s mood change wasn’t our fault than to regret it later.

“The world more than one side, tree sees now.”

A bit cryptic, to be honest. Nor was the meaning behind his words any clearer.

“O-okay,” I grumbled, expressing my lack of understanding for good measure.

“Pup, young. Lots to learn,” remarked Esu amusedly and growled at one of the young mossbears that came into the expanse, telling the beast to get ready.

“W-wait. Like now...and here?”

“No better place, show balance to tree.”

Balance? What the hell did that have to do with my training?

“You all right, Little Beast?” Deckard asked, noticing my fit of panic.

“Sure as fuck I’m not!” I shot back. “Esu wants me to fight a young mossbear here under the World Tree.”

“Are you sure?” Even he found it hard to believe.

“What do you think?”

“Okay, you are,” he said, seeing my expression. Then he switched to his laid-back attitude. “I know this isn’t the place either of us had in mind, but isn’t your training the reason we came here in the first place?”

“Yeah, still...”

“Think about it. This must have been Esu’s intention from the beginning, so why not just let it go and do what he tells you?”

Was he serious? One look at him, and I knew he was. The gut feeling and go with the flow stuff. Frankly, he was right. There was no point worrying about it too much when Esu willed it so. What I needed was to focus on the upcoming fight, a bout I’ve been looking forward to less and less.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I hit my mind with [Indomitable Will] to soothe it down before I looked back at the ancient beast on the other side of the pond. “Who is my opponent, Esu?”

He didn’t answer me. Instead, he gave a slow, weary look at the young mossbear from earlier and grunted, letting me know that was the one. As the young beast in question caught my gaze, it immediately growled back, challenging me. So I issued my own dare, not backing down. If I did that and lowered my head, not only would it hurt my beast pride, but I would lose any respect I had with the mossbears.

With that done, the fight was on, and I made my way to the beast, away from the banks on which the human expedition awkwardly camped. Seriously, one look at them, and it was clear how far out of their comfort zone they were. No wonder, though. They were soldiers used to fighting the beasts, not negotiating with them.

“What is going on? Where’s she going?” asked Colonel Gill in a hushed voice, well aware of where he was, yet able to put a strong edge to his tone, still suspicious of me.

“What she came here for, to train with the mossbears. It was in the report,” Deckard replied before joining me.

Less than two steps later, the whispered chatter of the soldiers reached my big floppy ears.

“Is she serious?”

“She’s what, level one hundred? What’s the weakest beast you’ve seen here?”

“I think it was the one outside the forest, a level 211 hedgehog snake.”

“Idiot, I mean here in Esulmor, mossbears.”

“Fuck you!

“Level 293, you?” said another.

“295, my point exactly. That one’s not right in the head, I tell you...”

They kept their voices down, yet I’ve heard it all. Some were of the opinion that I was bat shit crazy, others found it hard to believe that what they were told was true, and a few found my courage admirable.

I, on the other hand, knowing what I was getting into, was quickly losing my resolve and had trouble finding the bravery to take each step. Without any pain reduction, I was in for a hell of an agony. Actually, a night full of pain, most likely until the World Tree wakes up or the sun comes up. With that realization, dread began to creep into my heart.

Still, I kept going, knowing there was no other way but to endure it, do my best, and get the most out of the torture. Deckard told me several times what a fantastic opportunity this was. And honestly, it was. I needed it. My skills were at lousy levels. In that regard, I was arguably weaker than last time.

Another reason I wasn’t looking forward to the training and saw no point in holding back. I used some of my nutrient reserves, glad for the [Behemoth] among my skills, giving in to the beast. The tier three change came to me smoothly, and I turned full beast even before I reached the spot where the fight was to take place.

Class Skills (8/8):

Indomitable Will (Passive V): lvl 121

Master’s Shield (Active II): lvl 23

Behemoth (Active I): lvl 9

Wrought Hide (Passive I): lvl 6

Unbending Resilience (Passive I): lvl 5

Fierce Pounce (Active I): lvl 7

Mantle of Magic (Active I): lvl 5

Call of Nature (Passive I): lvl 7

General Skills (10/10):

Eleaden Standard Language (Passive I): lvl 7 -> 8

Perfect Equilibrium (Passive II): lvl 26

Spatial Domain (Passive II): lvl 28

Beast (Passive III): lvl 34

Never-Dying (Passive III): lvl 42

Tail of Poison Empress (Active II): lvl 14

Heart of Magic (Passive I): lvl 9

Striving Mule (Passive I): lvl 9

Dancer’s Stride (Passive II): lvl 15

None to Squander (Passive I): lvl 8

A quick skill check before a fight, something Deckard tried to drill into my head to do every time I faced an enemy, eased some of my worries. While not impressive in terms of levels, I was satisfied with my skillset. The only unknown for me was the skill [Ride of Ancestors], something I was planning to amend here tonight.

Not right from the start, though. First, I wanted to get up to speed, to test my skills without burdening myself with the unknown.

“I’m here if you need me, Little Beast.” A bit patronizing, yet I found his reassurance comforting.

One of the mother mossbears was here, too. The massive beast was hard to miss. She was here to make sure her young one didn’t actually kill me and to heal my wounds when necessary.

My ears twitched as the young mossbear roared, demonstrating its power and daring me to show mine. I just bared my fangs back this time, seeing no reason for joining this pissing contest. Instead, I watched the beast, looking for my chance to attack. This place between the roots of the World Tree was far from the ring where the referee would start the match, and from what I learned last time, initiative mattered.

There! I pushed forward, giving it my all to reach the beast before it moved.

Much to my dismay, the young mossbear reacted quickly, trying to slow me down with moss shoots and facing me head-on, something I would do if I were in its place. The beast’s intentions were at odds with mine, though. Who in their right mind would go head to head against those massive paws armed with claws and a mouth full of sharp teeth?

No, my target was the beast’s flank. The spot that worked for me last time and that I dug my claws into the moment I got near. The claws were a sure thing. With them, I was sure to do some damage. The same could not be said for my fists. Even with [Fierce Pounce] granting more power to my punches, I didn’t see the point of hammering at the layer of fat that the beast possessed.

And so I quickly got into a rhythm where I tried to stay by its side, deflecting the moss shoots with my barrier while I had to be careful with my steps amidst the tangle of roots of the World Tree that was our training ground. Deckard’s dance lessons were proving increasingly useful.

However, even knowing better how to move on the dance floor didn’t stop me from making a mistake in the end, and it was as painful one as I feared. Actually, given the absence of [Painless Agony] and the roots beneath me, the beast has pinned me to, worse, much worse. The pained scream that escaped my throat did little to ease the anguish that paralyzed my body.

Then to make it even worse than that, the young mossbear sank its teeth into my shoulder. Painful as hell, but worse I found his rotten breath wafting over my face. Seriously, I almost barfed.

That was it, though. The beast made no further attempt to tear me apart but dragged me off aside to Deckard. He was sitting a good bit above me on one of the roots sticking out of the ground, enjoying the show. And he wasn’t the only one, as I quickly learned.

“Fuck me! That’s brutal.”

The woman’s voice was definitely not Deckard’s. So I fixed my senses behind him, where a trio of imperial soldiers stood. One woman and two men.

“Here to see me get my ass whooped?” I asked, lying helplessly beneath him while the moss was quickly covering my body.

“Does it bother you? I can shoo them away.”

Did their presence here annoy me? The idea of them seeing all my tricks kind of did.

On the other hand... “If they have half the perception you have, it doesn’t matter, right?”

“Well, mine is a kind of oddity, a nuance of my class. Anyway, don’t mind them. This is your training, and if their presence should throw you off...”

“Nah, I don’t give a shit about them,” I grumbled. A little harsh. True, nevertheless. When I plunged my focus into the fight, hardly anything else mattered. Cool, huh? Not really.

While fighting horned rabbits, I learned that not being aware of my surroundings was a blunder. Quite a huge shortcoming that I’ve been working to fix little by little. Not easy to achieve when you couldn’t slack off in focus on the fight itself. So I exercised my noggin, expanding the scope of my focus whenever I had the opportunity, mostly in combat.

Seeing that I didn’t mind, Deckard decided to drop the onlookers issue and stick to my training. He gave the young mossbear nursing its wounds I had inflicted a look. “Try to find the pattern in its attacks. We all have one, the beasts even more so.”

“You too?”

“Believe it or not, so do I.”

“I would have thought...”

“What? That I’m skilled enough to avoid something like a pattern in my fighting style?”

Lying on the ground, I nodded. “Something like that.”

“What do you think training is? You learn how to react to specific situations. How to shield, deflect, or dodge an attack. You practice it over and over again for it to get burned into your memory. If you succeed, it becomes your instinct. By training, you create your fighting habit, way, style, pattern if you will.”

“Isn’t that disadvantageous? I mean, wouldn’t it be better not to have one?”

“And how do you think a man achieves that?”

The shrug I gave him only brought me pain. My shoulder was in the process of healing. “I don’t know, you tell me.”

“Years and years of practice,” he said, amused by the sight of me. “Someone like you only knows, let’s say, three ways to deal with sword swings. It’s easy to find a pattern in that, but if someone knows ten or fifty ways how to deal with it, it’s much harder or perhaps even impossible to find one. At that point, it may appear then that there is no pattern behind their movements at all.”

That...that made sense. “So you’re saying that with enough practice, the moves will become my instincts?”

“For sure.”

“But isn’t that what makes it easy to tell what I’m going to do when I react based on instincts?”

“You mean like I know what you’ll do if I put a well-done steak in front of you, pinch your ear, or slap your ass?”

Not what I had in mind. “Yeah, sort of.”

“What do you think is better in a fight? To consider every move you make or to react immediately on instincts? I’m not saying to abandon your reason in battle, but overthinking everything can cost you seconds you don’t have. As I said, you just have to hone your...instincts to the point where it will be difficult for anyone to find a pattern in your movements.”

It sounded to me like his go-with-the-your-gut approach. Not saying it was bad, I liked it. I’d just love to hear Rayden’s opinion on this as well.

In any case, his talk of instincts brought me back to that one unexplored skill I had, [Ride of Ancestors].

I told him what I wanted to do, that I would give it a few more rounds, and then I would swap my skills. Most likely [Mantle of Magic] gonna be the one that takes the fall. It was a level five skill and one I didn’t use in combat at all. What I needed from him was reassurance that he wouldn’t let me go completely feral should that happen. And he gave it to me.

***

Okay, I know I said a few rounds. It turned out to be almost a dozen before I found the courage and swapped [Mantle of Magic] for [Ride of Ancestors]. Now it was just a matter of using it.

“What about Lord Wigram, Lightfeather, Pip, and the others?” I asked while feeding on the moss-like salad after mother mossbear fixed me up. Even though I had taken the step to swap those skills, I was still hesitant and needed a distraction, something to take my mind off things, at least for a moment. And since he went to check them out after the end of the last round, hence my question.

“Seriously, you’re worried about a squirrel?”

What could I say? I was.

“This one?”

“Pip?” I growled in my beast talk.

“Here,” chirped a squirrel sitting on one of the roots next to Deckard. “Wanna nut? They taste better.”

That made me chuckle, and I nearly choked on the moss. “I’m sure they are, Pip. But no thanks, according to mother mossbear this is all I need.” It may very well have been so, just like it might have been what the mossbears mainly lived on, yet it didn’t make the taste of it any better.

Pipsqueak looked at the massive beast and back at me. “More nuts for Pip then.”

“Done?” Deckard shook his head, seeing me talking to a squirrel. “Things have settled down. Wigram tried to negotiate with Esu, but he refused, saying that he would only do so after the World Tree awakened. So they asked again what they could do to make that happen.”

“Balance?” I tried from the top of my head.

“Why do you even ask, Little Beast? Yeah, balance. Wigram thought about it a lot. It would be tempting to think that keeping the world in balance was what was needed, given the nature of the tree. But that would be impossible for Esu to achieve here in the middle of his woods. Not sure even dragons could do it. Not his main point, though. It’s just a seedling we’re talking about here, the roots of which may not yet span the world.”

“So, what does he think Esu is talking about?”

“About balance on a much smaller scale and more direct impact. Like the amount of sunlight and moonlight it gets.”

“S-something like yin and yang?”

“The what now?” He paused before it dawned on him. “Your world, huh?”

“Sorry. Then what else besides the sun and the moon? Mossbears? Humans? Is that why we’re here?”

“You get the idea. Impossible to say how long the tree grew, but it only had mossbears around it the whole time. Esu must have realized that he would run into the same issue as the elves, and so he’s trying to diversify the environment around the tree. This may not be the first full moon when he tries to awaken the tree for all we know.”

It probably wasn’t. If it was, it would be an incredible coincidence. What Deckard said got me thinking, though. “Without light, there can be no shadow, without war, there can be no peace, that kind of shit? Diversification....that’s why we brought horses along? But there was nothing when the first World Trees woke up.”

“That’s where Wigram’s theory has some cracks, and he is aware of it. Back then, you could say the scales were even. Balanced.”

“So, what made the trees wake up then?” Something didn’t add up.

“Beats me. That’s long lost in history, and all we can do is guess. This one, this one is a whole different matter,” he said in my mind, then looked beside him before speaking up. “According to Lightfeather, Pipsqueak here thinks the tree is...curious.”

“It is, lady,” squeaked the little squirrel defiantly. She was sure of it, which gave me pause. Did she sense something different from the tree’s presence than I did? Then everyone else? Wasn’t it the playfulness of a little child? That’s when it hit me. I’ve never seen a little kid who wasn’t curious.

“You’re a clever little rascal, Pip,” I growled, expressing my awe to her.

The squirrel squeaked happily and puffed out its chest in pride, making me chuckle again.

“Not sure what she just told you, but there’s something to that curiosity idea of hers. When the Shadowbreakers dragged you here, there’s a good chance it got the tree’s attention.”

“I was under the impression that from time to time, there were people brave enough to venture through Esulmor,” I argued, knowing full well that I could be wrong. “Wouldn’t they have gotten the World Tree’s attention already?”

“No one is stupid enough to fight here, let alone challenge Esu,” he said, referring to the fight Aspen, and I started and my desperate attempt to save myself. “If that’s true and Esu sensed the change in the tree’s presence, that could be the reason you were supposed to be here today, and let’s not forget what happened today.”

“Lots of people, northern eagles, fighting, death. Quite a change for the relatively quiet woods.”

He nodded. “Until now, no one knew what this place was hiding. It was all mere speculation, fairy tales, legends, and all far from the truth. That’s how well Esu guarded the tree. And all of a sudden, we’re all here? Even the northern eagles, predators other than mossbears in his territory. Something has changed, drastically changed, and Esu is reacting to it.”

That a World Tree seedling could be curious was a crazy notion. No crazier than talking to animals and beasts, though. So why couldn’t the World Tree’s awakening be sparked by curiosity to learn more about the world in which it grew?