Four millennia.

When I say it out aloud in my mind it sounds simple, short, and easy.

The last thousand years have actually been rather profitable for everyone involved.

Dryad has taken up my hobby of Gardening turning the area around the castle into a lush primordial forest.

Some of the creatures she let’s take up residence in there are…

Not what I would call…

Safe.

On the other hand, it kept her occupied until I could break the bottleneck I encountered a thousand years ago, so it all worked out.

I’ve grown a great deal in the intervening time!

Now, rather than a tiny seedling I have matured!

My size is great, dreamy, fantastic, and amazing!

Yes…

Ok, no.

Just, no.

For some reason my dimensions are the size of a large sequoiadendron giganteum, at least, for the first meter up.

A meter.

That’s all I’ve risen in height, on the other hand my girth….

I blame the recent problems on the Crunchy Munchy spell.

It allows me to eat anything and everything turning sustenance into Chaos power.

The downside is all the growth given through the spell only applies out never up.

This means that there is enough for Dryad to work with now, in terms of creating a body.

It’s just the body will have to be a smaller, younger, and less well-endowed version.

When I told her that, well, it wasn’t pleasant.

She didn’t shout, or scream, or yell at me.

It was tears, the brutal weapon of women everywhere.

Tears that said, “You’re an evil, mean, sadistic Tree that couldn’t even support his Dryad properly.”

Tsk.

It’s not like I quickly sprang the fact that I figured out a way to escape from this place on her as a distraction to counter the waterworks.

Hmph, this old man has more tricks than a bag of amazon rain frogs.

Crunchy Munchy may sound like a strange spell, it may even be a strange spell…

However, it’s the ticket out of this place!

That’s right.

I have made progress in another Dao besides Fire!

Be amazed!

Be in awe of my greatness!

Most of all find me another batch of those crunchy insects that taste like…

Ah! Distracted again….

Right!

The greatest Dao, the shining apex, or close enough that I can’t tell the difference.

It’s the Dao of Nix, I have no clue where the name came from, it just appeared in my mind one day.

Ignore those pests around that call it the Dao of Gluttonus Trees, or the Dao of an Unending Maw.

And I find another individual throwing up posters around claiming I opened a portal into the Abyss in my stomach…

That bastard will live a loooooong time.

In absolute agony.

Anyways, it shouldn’t take more than a century to get out of this prison.

At first I admit, I was a little leery to break out.

I mean, if someone is in ‘prison’ then, they probably did something bad.

After talking with Vex though, and using a few truth spells on the sly, I’m convinced it is a terrible crime of injustice.

Those exist!

I remember how some poor guys were imprisoned for years in Earth, sometimes even decades for crimes they didn’t commit.

The choice to break out or stay put looking for a safe method to exit had nothing to do with the fact that Divinities might respond to the escape.

Tasty. Divinities.

I was not in any way lured by the promise of Divine corpses to feast on.

At. All.

Dryad forming her body is going to be a pain, so I’ve decided to sleep through it.

I’m not a coward, this is simply a result of marshalling my power before the finale.

Yes, if I tell myself that enough times it might even become true!