I ignore the people still looking at me and take my shoes off. I had long gotten used to walking barefoot, and I relish the feeling transmitted through the ground to me. Pando can’t send it vigor very fast if I’m not directly touching one of his limbs, but it’s more than enough.

I head to the clearing I found in my first visit and find the tallest tree. It is now some 12 meters taller than the trees around it. On my last visit, it was about slightly taller. So I lie on the ground with my back against this very tree and start to eat. It was hard work coming here and I’m a growing boy. I need my food.

After a while, I lift my head from the ground to realize I fell asleep. A glance at my wristwatch tells me two hours have passed. So I dig a little hole and place the rest of my food while covering it with the soil side of the heart of the grove. At least that is what I came to call this place.

A quick glance around shows me a little boy probably a couple of years younger than me when I first came here. So I walk to him and with a smile touches his forehead. With a bit of intent, I transfer most of my vigor and a sliver of what I call mana.

In the last year, those two concepts had formed in my mind, mana doesn’t seem to do anything but vigor was the mental component that affected the body. I didn’t have a larger pool than any healthy adult but I was much better at manipulating it. When in contact with nature, I could also recharge it much faster.

Being here was a whole different experience. Pando could replenish him orders of magnitude faster than the normal rate.

After the boy opens his eyes again I spin around leaving thin trails of mana that I recover with my other hand. As the sounds of leaves and branches being broken arrive near us, I make my getaway.

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Boy’s POV

I watch as the man runs away and looking back in few moments my mom comes out to the clearing and sees me.

“Mom, mom, the magic man,” I say pointing to where he left.

“Come here, didn’t I tell you not to run off?”

“Sorry mom, but I saw the sleeping man, and he was digging, and he was spinning magic and he touched my forehead.” I try to explain to her, but I know I failed. Her eyes are instead of going wide with wonder, frown in concern.

What could be wrong? I ask myself but ignore the question when she starts to speak again.

“What I told you about talking, and especially letting strangers touch you?”

In the proudest and most reasonable argument in the entire world, I answer:

“But if I hadn’t let him touch me in the forehead, I wouldn’t be able to see magic now would I?”

It should have convinced her, but her frown gets even deeper. No worries, I have forever to convince you of my magic. Yes, I need to come up with a cool name for myself. To try it out, I mutter one of them to myself.

“Alex, the Magic Seer.”

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Pando’s POV

I don’t understand why the moving sapling that had already so little of such precious resource would give some of it away. In the end, however, it didn’t matter why. Nash’s actions in the past, even when they did not make sense, were always beneficial. So I will imitate him.

I remember the day, not so long ago, I met Nash.

So much energy in the air. I absorbed in a few moments more than in my existence before. After that, the ambient energy also increased quite a lot. But even with so much more floating around, my stores were still depleting slowly. There was just so much to do.

When the smaller moving sapling was a few feet away from one of my limbs I repeat the inscrutable actions from Nash and send a bit of my precious life source. This smaller moving sapling absorbs it easily. Although, moving sapling is perhaps not the best way to describe him. Once this ordeal was over I would spend a season pondering over it.

In another couple of seasons, I will be able to reach all my limbs. The impatient sapling helped me expand myself to new fields very quickly. Though the brashness of youth had its uses. I could feel myself growing stronger each day. And my domain would soon incorporate more as I reached the last of the limbs growing away from myself.

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Nash’s POV

I walk in the direction of the closest spokes planted and see a couple of people there. Most of the trees visible from here are about 4 meters tall. Closing the distance, an older woman says:

“You heard about what has been happening around here and came to check it out?”

“What has happened?”

“Can you see?” She says while gesturing to the two closest spokes. “The grove isn’t dying anymore. And to top it off, someone planted a couple of thousand trees around. They are growing quite quickly. A few botanists have preliminary findings that most if not all of these new trees are part of Pando, not new Aspen groves.

“Interesting,” I say without expanding on it. And it was very interesting to watch your actions through someone else’s eyes.

“It truly is, they can’t make heads or tails of this. There are all kinds of explanations about why this happened, from that somebody planted them, to you know… aliens.” She says while waving her hand around meaningfully.

“It wasn’t aliens, not unless I’m one.”

“Yep, definitely not aliens, but you got to admit, it is pretty strange.”

“Nope, just magic.” I walk a few meters to a branch shorter than my palm. I break it off gently, come back some ten paces away and plant it with all the care in the world. I know she won’t believe me, but I still repeat it: “See, magic.”

“Damn, that does seem a bit surreal… but that is not magic. Invigorating, not magic. “

After a moment of staring at me, she begins again. This time faster and in a slightly admonishing tone

“Just, don’t do that again. With the increase in tourism and researchers, they might escort you out. A decade ago you were allowed pretty much anything around here. But things have changed. Security was increased in the last couple of years. Especially in the last year. They always have a couple of rangers patrolling.”

“Thanks, I will be careful and keep my clandestine activities on the down-low.”

We talk for another minute and I stealthily plant a couple of cuttings. I put my shoes back and go the closest ranger station a mile downhill. I talk with a couple of rangers stationed there, compliment them on their job, and soon am on my way. Never hurts to become friendly with the authorities, put a human face to who they interact with. I say my goodbyes less than three hours after getting here. I shouldn’t get home too late.

That is how my first solo visit to Pando went.

I came back many more times over the next years. Four of my happiest years pass. At first, I visited Pando every month. Then every forth-night. Then every week.

By the time I was 16, I visited every single free day I had. I changed my bicycle two times and every day I was faster. It got to the point I could do 7 hour round trips. At 16 I could probably have gotten a car or at least a motorcycle but I didn’t want to rock the boat with my parents. Boy, it was a delicate balance.

A week after I turned 18, I left my house and that deeply affected my parents. I still kept in contact, but I was focused. And for any who may one day read my story, the grove might be the most focal and interesting thing, but it still only represented a couple of percent of my overall time up to this point.

As the years passed I noticed I was not like everybody else. And with each day the difference only increased. I needed only five hours a day of sleep unless I was especially tired. I ate less while doing more exercise. But where the difference was most stark was my mind. Time seemed to move both faster or slower. I had more patience. I could watch a magician and see what tricks he was pulling no matter how fast he was. I could also forget myself when I doing something boring.

So I studied, learned, and worked. Soon after I visited the grove on my bicycle “The Internet” become cheaper. I got a computer and a DSL modem on the first opportunity I had. The internet, oh, so much information. I just drank it all in. I spend hours and hours researching.

I learned something about everything that interested me and soon, I was doing the math to optimize for the orbital insertion of a rocket or learning how much oxygen someone uses when exercising or even how to calculate the yield of a nuke.

Most important of all I learned to understand, not simply apply a cookie-cutter formula to get a result.

I ended up fixing electronic devices, strange as it may seem to people who saw me around Pando. I had a knack for figuring out what was broken and what might take a half-hour for someone else to fix, I could in two minutes. It wasn’t a unique skill, but I was the only one around with it. I did fix stuff for my neighbors and schoolmates, but most of my business was mailed in.

Pando now had lodgings, a bigger and better-funded ranger station, an attached research station, and a few shops. You could see even a couple of other constructions being set up. There was more security around than ever. The restrictions being added sometimes did rankle me a bit. But it was mostly positive. Pando was growing as a tourist attraction and now more than a thousand people visited on a busy day. Around the time I came with my grandfather, a busy day didn’t reach a hundred people.

This week had been a rush as I pack all my stuff in the car I just bought. Two hours later, I’m parking in my almost finished house. A small plot and where a premade house was being finished. It was all wood, a single 200sqft room, and a garage. I spend about USD 200K buying 200sq yards of land. Even if it wasn’t the most expensive place in the world I still cried a little at most of my saving evaporated instantly. With my situation getting a loan wasn’t in the cards, so I forked over the entire amount in cash.

It was then that my real work began, people around welcomed me and I appreciated it, but everyone knew my real love was for the grove. I talked to all the rangers, the lodging staff, the frequent tourists. And everyone kind of knew each other. The rangers did try to curtail my interventions occasionally when they saw me.

The first month I went around planting cuttings and was more conspicuous about my activities. Most people that saw me just dismissed me as background. At the start counting only the connected trees, the grove occupied most of the area in a half-mile radius almost quadrupling its previous area and it had tendrils extending 3 miles from its oldest roots.

In a month I added over 100 thousand new saplings that would cover an area of 4 square miles in a couple of years if my calculations were correct. All the trees seemed to grow much more quickly than normal. And that speed seemed to increase a little every single day.

When, however, I start to carry bio-matter from further afield to feed the grove, the rangers spet in more forcefully trying to talk out of it. They cite all kinds of reasons, but I’m not dissuaded.

The other people rarely saw me by now, but the rangers were paying close attention, and sometimes they noticed notice me. But I was getting better at passing unnoticed, and just sliding off the mind of whoever saw me.

The rangers, even considering their efforts, all respected me and understood that I was a good caretaker. I was the gardener, they were the guards. The dichotomy in their minds saw a strange balance and the game we played with each other evolve into something quite intricate. If they didn’t catch me in the act, they didn’t mention anything. I was pretty sure they didn’t even write up any reports about it.

Most people would not understand our relationship. But they had seen me at work for years, and the forest was doing better than ever. They kept people from burning down the forest as I nourished it.

After 6 months of this uneasy silent agreement about the intent and the letter of the law, a new variable is added. A supervisor shows and tries to put a hard stop to it.

All that happens is that I go even deeper, and they see me less and less.

For years to come the forest subtly changes. Terrain shift here and there that show up overnight. Depressions of hundreds of cubic meters suddenly filled with a layer of fresh soil on top. And the next day and another. By the end of the week, all they would see was a flat terrain I painstakingly filled out.

They had no idea how I could be doing all this alone. Without heavy machinery, they would need a dozen men around the clock working, and they would leave indications of their work everywhere. I laughed silently sometimes, standing only a few feet away above their heads in the nights as they talked to each other.

I try my hardest to subtly convince everyone of the reality right in front of their eyes. The magic all around them as a few children told the tale of the Magic man in the magic forest.

All that changed when one day I sleeping in the sun while near the tallest of the trees. A 50 meter tall, 5-foot wide aspen tree. Probably the single biggest aspen tree on Earth. The heart of the forest.

AS I get up, a few rapidly changing blue screens disorientate me. I sit on the ground and close my eyes before breathing deeply. Mana fills my body from some source, much more than ever before. I try to read the screen remember each of the screens that made their appearance.

System initializing Error Previous incomplete System initialization Corrupted file System initializing (new instance, computing all skill and relevant information)

This last message doesn’t disappear. It stays in place for a minute before changing one last time and I can now interact with it. The instinctive knowledge just shows up in my head, though I don’t know if I should trust it.

Welcome to the System

Your world has accumulated enough Aether that it will be integrated into the system. System interfaces are activated for all relevant entities. As you are a new system entity you have 1h 17m 17s to prepare yourself to be transported to a new area for rapid acclimatization to the system. This and all system prompts are thought or gesture controlled. The controls can be adjusted on your stat screen.

My blood is pumping faster than in years, my mind is going a mile a minute. But, I force myself to calm down. I take another slow and deep breath and concentrate on figuring out the optimal course of action.

Information. Yeah, the first step before any action was to understand the world around me. Only then could my actions be purposeful. Only then will I achieve what I desire.

I dismiss this screen after reading it again and try to summon my stat screen. Before I can look through it properly, hundred of messages show up in front of it and make my way through them.

Congratulations you are the first to learn 5, 10, 20, 50 distinct skills, you gain and upgrade the title: Skill Scholar – Unique rank 10% faster skill progression Congratulation, you have acquired the title: Ancient – Mythic rank Your immense age has granted you an intangible quality to what you do and who you are.

Bonuses:

Hidden bonus to mental status, soul stat, and growth.

Choose one boom from the system. You have 60 seconds to choose.

Damn, the system seems to really like countdowns. I think quickly. I fold m legs to be in my meditation position and try to think of what the situation is and what I could ask of the system. What l lack the most seems to be knowledge. That much was clear. I may have read a few stories about what happens in a situation like this, but it’s like trying to figure out how to defend yourself from a vampire from what the mainstream media has to say about it.

If you have time to figure it out, sure. But it seemed we didn’t have the time. Choosing the option that will leave my mouth stinking and have absolutely no effect on protecting me was a real concern. To have the hubris to assume I know something is to dare the universe to beat me on the head with it. Like everything else in life, I will have to make tentative assumptions and test them.

By choosing knowledge I hope to shorten my path a bit, especially in the initial turmoil. Another screen shows up and I stare at it.

Do you wish for Knowledge of the system?

So it’s confirmed, it can read my mind. After a couple of seconds, I accept without hesitation and a book shows up in my lap alongside the following prompt occupying my vision.

Book of knowledge – common rank

Book provides commonly available information throughout the system territory to the owner.

Bound to the owner, cannot be further away than 3 feet from the owner. Can be stored and retrieved from inventory, even without an appropriate item.

Information provided tends towards what the owner desires to know.

More information becomes available as the owner grows.

More important information can be obtained by upgrading the book. The rank can be increased with a massive infusion of the required materials. Other bonuses may be acquired.

That is exactly what I wanted. No, exactly what I needed. I don’t spare a second and I start to read the book, I devour only the first couple of pages. The rest is blank for now, but it doesn’t matter, not like I could read an entire book in a few minutes.

I read every single word in the five and a half pages. It may not look like a lot, but it was enough. And after reading I knew with certainty, we were in deep shit.

--------------------------------------------

Worker in the system’s bureaucracy – Hours before Earth’s integration.

Finally, I finish the review of The Document.

This report would be submitted to the system, on the council’s recommendations for the integration of a new world. I had spent years familiarizing myself with all the iterations on this massive report to catch any errors that people responsible for smaller segments may not have the context to appreciate.

The council had many problems in the past with alien cultures that worked outside the average humanoid mentality.

I look with pride at the plaque with my name on it. Wrahpsi Stix – General council of The Document for integration N56A-SR81HGT.

I spent years studying human culture, their planet, and everything that could reveal possible problems that might arise from the proposed strategies. I made sure the optimizations towards extracting maximum profitability from this small new planet were in place. In another century I may even get a promotion, should everything run smoothly.

They would make sure that at least the most significant historical sites be purged and have their Aether extracted to fuel the systems terraforming. Places with significance in people’s minds were dangerous. Especially if they accumulated enough Aether could improve the defenses of the planet as a whole.

With effort and cooperation from the sapient life forms, it might not be cost-effective to try and extort their resources. With some planning, all they needed was to buy a little time to grow into their power. The convoluted rules of the system were mostly geared toward protecting them.

And with a modicum of strength and the system on their side, the council might be obliged to deal with the resources this new planet could produce at ‘fair market price’.

Some people argued for proper trade amongst everyone would generate a more healthy economy. The council stopped any talk of such nonsense and their supporters kept a tight hold over all the best resources. So nobody had a choice but to grow into a force that could challenge them.

I kept going through the report like I did a thousand times before. There was always a chance I would see something new.

No human had gotten early system access. Those cases were nightmares. Even if whoever gained access didn’t have much talent, it was troublesome. You had someone already used to the system, possibly for decades, with a few levels under their belt, plenty the first titles, huge wealth, and influence.

They also possessed the bane of the council. Knowledge.

Smidges of knowledge they shouldn’t have. Just their power to get a good portion of the population working diligently towards some goal was a huge boost. But knowing how to proceed efficiently was an unbelievable advantage. With proper planning, they could curtail any hope for the council of extracting resources from the world.

Then I get to the single most significant threat to their expansion in the region. A Clonal tree hive or something. The locals called it Pando. It was by far the oldest tree on planet Earth. It was huge by the standards of this tiny backwater planet. The problem was the fast turnaround in its health. In the eleven years since the Aether wavefront hit the planet, everything changed.

Everyone was so happy when we got the data on the planet, the one real threat was dying, and even if it persisted for a little while, it was sure to be killed off in the integration. But the fast change took everyone by surprise.

It was manageable; it had happened before and would happen again. We had whole strategies for just such occurrences.

It somehow gained a smidgeon of sentience when the Aether wave pass through it. It even seemed to have gotten access to a limited version of the system. Learning to use Aether and was growing faster than ever were great concerns. It was an attraction that brought people from across the globe to visit it. There was even talk of making it the 8th wonder of the world, luckily that didn’t happen. There wasn’t enough time for it to develop.

Still, some damage had happened, a few people started to get in a mindset about magic that was not very good news for us. It was hard to predict the future, but another decade and it might have done irreparable damage to their carefully laid out plans.

Hell, another fifty years and even if they convinced the system to kill this pest, it would probably survive. And then they would have a real contender for a future council world. We need to make sure it doesn’t get integrated into the system any further. The council considers this the highest priority for this integration.

Let’s see the arguments presented to the system.

It was disruptive, dangerous, grew at an unsustainable rate, and would be a good Aether source. Perfectly acclimatized Aether for the environment. This would minimize impact in the world. And would save a little Aether. The fact that it absorbed so much Aether in the initial wave, and even delayed system integration a year or two only gave credence to their arguments.

I smile looking at my masterpiece. I will definitely get that promotion.