I knew that I was dreaming because I was floating in empty nothingness as if my mind was swimming through and endless dark mire. Occasionally, flashes of comprehension emerged, but they were very brief and far in between. The Dryad part of me told me that this was normal, the whole point of being a dryad was gradual, incremental, slow growth.

The brilliant and now long dead Agromancer Kopusha had designed a masterpiece, a pinnacle of Magecraft achievement - the [Chrysalis] skill. The Acolyte of Tricameron didn't do it alone in a vacuum - she had scouted countless libraries of the Citadel, combined Animancy with Agromancy based on thousands of research song-spells and used incredible artifacts produced by her now fallen civilization. Kopusha's dryad was a "magibiotek" experiment, a bio-organic-magic-anima-construct as she labelled her thesis on Bio-organic life. Its seed, its magical programming, was set up in a way that the dryad could survive almost anywhere on planet Novazem.

Kopusha had chosen to plant her tree in her favorite park, close to Skyisle Valley town, surrounded by lush boreal forests and glacier covered mountains. In her final evolution, had the Seditionist uprising never occurred, Leemy would have emerged from her tree as a lovely, human-shaped girl formed from moss, bark and ferns, a crown of branches and flowers topping her head.

However, Kopusha could have chosen to plant the dryad's seed somewhere else. For example, she could have planted a seed near a volcano, and then Leemy would have turned into a volcanic tree and become a spirit avatar with her hair made of flames.

Or... the Alanian Acolyte could have planted Leemy into a glacier and then the final result would be a girl made of mosses and lichens, rocks and a head covered in icicles, a very cold creature indeed, able to survive the harshest and coldest climate.

There was of course a downside to every choice being made here. A tree made of bark did not survive the wall of flames. A girl made from fire would not survive a snowstorm and a girl made from ice would melt and suffer as soon as she came down from the mountain.

As the Astral tree slowly absorbed power leaking from the broken Astral Engine battery, it grew in size and ever so slowly evolved to survive in the Astral. Whatever would come out of the tree, would be a creature of the Astral Ocean, one that would feel at ease in this place and be incredibly weak and fragile elsewhere.

In the brief flashes of awakening, I realized that I could ever-so-slowly, mentally nudge the process of evolution in a direction that I desired - something that Leemy had never done because she simply lacked the mental capabilities to do so as a small shard of Kopusha's soul.

Could I produce viruses or bacteria? The answer to that was a big NO, since my Life Furnace and Dryad skills were pathetically weak and couldn't manufacture something so minute... but something the size of a large spore could actually work!

I thought of the most effective, the most dangerous creature from earth and arrived at a very satisfying conclusion. Mold. Mold fit perfectly within the Green-magic-design of the dryad. The tree could actually create mold... and not any random mold. Because I was evolving into an Astral tree, I could begin producing Astral fungus inside of the Life Furnace within the tree.

One of the most dangerous types of fungi from Earth was the Cordyceps fungus. A few soviet biochem researchers like myself had explored the bewildering fungus that was found in the Amazon jungle.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, an insect-pathogenic fungus, was first discovered by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1859. Most Cordyceps species of fungus are endoparasitoids - meaning they posses the terrifying ability to control insects and other anthropods, some even able to become parasites on top of other fungi.

O. unilateralis infected ants of the tribe Camponotini, with the full pathogenesis being characterized by alteration of the behavioral patterns of the infected ant. To put in plain terms, the fungus turned the ant into a zombie version of itself. Once infected, the ant left its colony and foraging trails, heading up to an area of humidity suitable for fungal growth. Controlled by the monstrous fungus, the ant then attached itself to a vein on the underside of a leaf and slowly died as new fungal spores grew inside it. The ant took four to ten days to die, resulting in a mushroom-like structure growing from the ants head that bloomed and ruptured in the end, releasing more fungus spores into the air.

Interestingly enough O. unilateralis was also susceptible to fungal infections, which limited its spread. Otherwise, it was known to devastate huge ant colonies, spreading unabated. I very much doubted that there would be another type of Astral Fungus around, as this place seemed dead and devoid of life.

. . .

As I discovered, [Life Forge LV 0] was... pathetic.

After what felt like ages of suckling on the battery, I was able to produce a single, very large and very lopsided fungus spore. Upon release, it floated away from the tree, away from the obelisk, spiraled sideways and got stuck in between the ossified bodies in the ground, slowly turning white and pale. In a few moments it was dead.

Right.

I forgot to design the infection part of it. Thinking clearly while being half-asleep was hard. I needed a body. Needed to be fully awake. Needed to be able to level up, not just make crooked, useless, half-assed spores.

I set the Astral tree to manufacture me a female body avatar, as it was originally programmed to do and went back to sleep.

. . .

Something had interrupted my dreaming. A glowing... something emerged from the gloom.

A strange, fractal jellyfish thing was roaming the wasteland of broken men. Its shimmering tentacles sucked the remnants of life and memories out of the hollow, dead things as it moved towards me.

Shit! That was a phantom. A creature of the Astral Ocean. A killer whale!

The silver-blue, jellyfish-shaped hunter whale saw me, grew in size as it got close. Its razor covered tentacles spread out, aiming for me.

It reached the black Obelisk and then... comically slammed into an invisible wall. It screeched horrifically in what sounded like ultrasound and began to circle the perimeter of the invisible field, searching for a way to reach me... to get to my lovely, glowing, emerald tree.

[Create a new spore]