Questions swim in my head as I head back to the village without even getting close to the barrier. It must have lasted only a few seconds because I didn’t see it again when after blacking out and I had seen no sign of it since.

After everything that happened I doubt I would see it again, not unless the very system has to protect me from the monsters on the other side should they try to attack me. That is the only thing that makes sense to me about the source of their pain. Some type of punishment of the system.

Even a day later, the experience still makes me shake and I want nothing else other than to return to the village directly, but I need to go back to my hut right outside the Black Panther’s territory. I’m counting every mana point in order not to run out in the middle of the trip and the mana stores there are closest ones.

I connect with the tendril extending north once in a while but drawing mana from it is too troublesome on the move and I don’t want to waste even a second by setting down here. So I continue heading for the battery I left in the hut. It was not the largest, but it would be enough for the last leg of the trip and a couple of hours later I arrive.

Without taking even a moment to sleep, I sit in the little hut atop the battery and the roots underground, shaded from the sun high in the sky and protected from any attacks by the formations and the shield. I refill the mana stores and start to look around relying on my connection to the network of roots. I struggle to push my perception through, after 5 days straight without a wink of sleep my attention is starting to lag, but I manage.

I hesitate but end up helping Blackwood make the customary pair of weapons, for a well-earned 20 silver as I send a smooth stream of mana into the forge. As I work, Pando’s seed continues growing and increasing the network. After finishing I look around searching for anything interesting. Hundreds of square miles of land, a good portion of it inside the high level zone.

As I brush my perception against one of the inner islands in the high level zone about 100 kilometers south I find something different. I go over it again and again with my brain still scattered from the ordeal and the lack of sleep, but finally I see what my subconscious was hinting at and let out a hoot.

“Hell, yeah”

I find a lot of silver ore just at the edge of my field on one of the underground tendrils. I start pumping a lot of mana in that direction no longer feeling the tiredness. As the roots underground grow closer and closer to the source of my excitement, though, without the speed boots of my subclass class nature connection skill given how far away it is, a picture is painted in my mind.

A picture that I had not thought was possible and so didn’t search for consciously. A different metallic taste and a cold feeling even stronger than copper, but more diffuse.

What I find is silver ore, though not just a little ore but an entire mine. Smaller than the copper and iron mines we were used to, but still a new and regenerable source of a very valuable resource. Something that we wouldn’t trade for a dozen copper mines.

This will be an enormous boon to our economy. Looking in the direction of the mine I rub my eyes and my gaze passes over the Panther's territory. I approach the red line in the ground, forcing myself not to let the fear take hold of me and after passing an arm into it, I wait for the beast to come running.

As it gets within 50 meters, it leaps at me far faster than I thought it could so I jump back. Though this time it’s not the mad scramble of my last encounter with the 11 beasts that almost cost my life. My mana shields and defenses are all working like intended and I’m on the safe side of the line.

I go over each inch of its body again, inside and out, trying to find how it suddenly got so strong, though it’s using the identifying function of the system that answers the question.

Black Panther - Lv. 129

That is a much higher level than I expected. How did you increase in levels so quickly and even more important, will you keep increasing in levels this fast?

What prompted the abrupt change? By day 60 there wasn’t a single one of you with a level higher than 110, now you are 20 levels higher than the strongest beast of a couple of weeks ago.

Is the system intent on denying us entry to this zone, always moving the goal post further and further?

Even if I was over level 100, it would not change enough for me to be able to enter it. I didn't choose a single direction to take my stats into, being a better fit to fight multiple enemies over a large area instead of a single one. Maybe not even a dedicated combat person like Greg could hold his own if he was your level, and you just got much stronger out of nowhere.

I look back in the direction of the village and my home and then turn my eyes south to the silver mine. My gaze goes back and forth, but in the end, I just sit down again. It would make little difference if I was there in person. All my actions would have to be done with my roots. I can't enter the high-level zone and after witnessing the strange abilities these high-level mobs showed I’m not going to push my luck.

So I begin to work on a smaller and more efficient vessel just big enough for a few kilograms of silver that will be able to move independently. Next, I start growing roots throughout the length between me and the mine ‘small mana charging pads’ while Pando’s seed grows more roots in the direction of the silver mine.

About ten minutes later, I send the small toy boat on its way floating 2 meters high. I try to keep track of it, though soon I realize my idea won’t work. Even including a communication rune to keep in intermittent contact, the small toy isn’t very good at flying straight.

I was bound to find something that I thought was easy to do and didn’t work well in practice one of these days, but this was a surprise. Maybe other people will be able to fix what the problem is or maybe find workarounds but I give up on it for now.

Looking away from the panther to the south and I think of letting it go. It would be there if I returned a few days from now, or I could always send someone else, but I can’t.

So I push through the exhaustion and fly over to the mine at about 170 kilometers an hour, faster than the 150 kilometers cruise speed of the flying bicycle but still far short of the wasteful 10 mana a second for about 200 kpm that it could reach. That is not something do be doing often or for long periods of time.

Anything so I can shorten my trip and get some deserved sleep without wasting too much mana, and I was game. A contradiction of thought given the very action of heading to explore this new development instead of heading back right away.

I get there in less than 40 minutes and sit on the ground to continue the growth of the root network Pando’s seed had taken over during the trip. It hasn’t stopped for a moment as I could connect to the roots underground through my inner world even without touching the ground. A very handy trick that only got more impressive as the inner world grew and I could reach farther and farther away with the portals.

I need to find a way to expand the inner world soon, being limited in size was putting a big hamper on my more ambitious plans, but it was already a good size, so even I failed, it wouldn’t be the worse thing in the world.

As my entire awareness focuses on the mine a good 600 meters beyond the dividing line, I find a few of the biggest chunks of rock and start growing thin roots to encompass them, wiggling them back and forth, and like baby teeth, after a good long while, the smaller one’s start to fall out without needing to get pliers or to go the dentist.

I use my earth magic to create a fist-sized tunnel through the soil and cover it with roots, before rolling the pieces of ore back to me. After the long track, I put my hand in the hole grabbing the thumb-sized chunk of silver ore.

I lift the small rock and look at it against the light of the sun, before sending it into my inner world and focussing the perception field on it, judging the concentration to be around 1 percent. I didn’t know if that was low or high, but if the other mines in this instance were any indication, this should be a very rich ore. Back on Earth, there were very few mines that produced ore even approaching the quality we found routinely in the instance.

With th mine so close I realize I can’t go back before picking all the ‘low hanging fruit’ in the mine and with my full focus, I start to bring chunks of ore, some as big as a fist, others smaller than the tip of my pinkie, but all parts of the process. I extend the wood tendrils out to every single inch of the mine, crawling along on the stone floor and walls like snakes, and bringing forth every single piece that I can extract without specialized mining tools.

This mine is on the smaller side, perhaps a tenth of the size of our main copper mine and it can’t regenerate the loose chunks of ore fast enough for even a single person working hard but an hour later I look at the pile in my inner world and smile. I extracted over 200 hundred kilograms of ore.

In the copper mines, we can extract twenty times that amount in loose stones and with a concentration of metal in the ore much higher. Instead of something like one percent, it varied but it is always above 30 percent for copper or iron, and that number was even higher for tin, though we have little use for the soft metal. Bronze may be stronger than copper, but for magic it was inferior, and we could process Iron and steel easily enough.

But I shouldn’t complain about the size of the mine or anything else. This was already much more than what I had access to just a day ago. This batch once smelted would be a good 2 kilograms, much better than relying on melting silver coins any time I want to engrave on better materials than copper.

Now I finally got access to proper metal to make Pando’s coins which is bound to increase in value. The copper ones slowly being stamped in the village don’t do him justice.

I make a larger hole and cover it before starting to make my way back, it will after all save some effort if I want to remotely work the mine. Though ideas for how to efficiently do this are still running short, I can’t tie myself to it and spend all day long toiling away over here. The reward is significant but there is so much more that I want to be doing.

I head in a straight line back to the village. I have plenty of mana for this short trip back even after the detour and the mana used to grow the roots. Six hundred miles, though heading straight means losing contact with the network for most of the time. But I am far too tired to keep connecting and disconnecting with my inner world especially while trying to work something dozens of miles away, so it’s was not a great loss. Something Pando’s seed vehemently disagrees with as he expounds in detail through our Aether and mana conetion.

I meditate lightly, nearly falling over every so often, though I have enough presence of mind to keep my eyes open and watching the path I’m taking through the mana shields keeping the wind away from my face as I fly in my recumbent faired bicycle.

Hours later, I almost cry seeing the walls of the village and head over them, though I need to do so above the front gates as this smaller vehicle doesn’t have the ground clearance needed to pass elsewhere.

I sat down the craft right in front of the town hall and head in not bothering to park it properly and too tired to care. I pass two people in the corridor and as I cross the door of the map room a bright light comes over me. Opening the system prompt, I look through it just to see if there is anything with a time limit on it, though I couldn’t tell why that seems so important.

Finding nothing, I drag my body out of the building, lay on the ground and without a single care in the world I start sleeping.

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Pando’s seed POV

Friend is tired. He needs to recover. He is always building covers when he lays on the ground. I will build one for him.

Yes, that is a wonderful idea. I’m so smart. I just connect to the outside world, send my roots.

Build, build.

Grow, grow.

Uhhhggn. This is too small, he always builds something so small, I will make a big cover for him.

Grow, grow, grow.

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

“Charlie, you got to see this.” I hear a young messenger coming into my office.

“What?” I ask him.

“Nash just returned from his trip, went into the map room, and when he came out he went to sleep in the middle of the central square.”

“So what? Is something new in the map room?”

“No, it's not about that. It’s better if you come to see for yourself what has happened to the central square.”

I follow him at a jog to the central square, though even before I arrive there, I start to see foliage in low shrubs and roots spreading on the ground and what happened starts to sink in.

Roots and branches and leaves all around. A big building, like a small teepee house, except over 10 meters tall and without any way to enter or exit it, with roots covering the entire central square and beyond.

Well, I need to have a talk with Nash after he wakes up. Nash’s plant companion must have taken liberties after he went to sleep. He had enough control of the mana, and we hadn't had a problem with him taking mana from the village when Nash wasn’t paying attention, but this was new.

I think of waking him and talking to him right now, but over 5 days awake is pushing, even with our enhanced physiology granted by the system. I don’t know anyone that went longer than 3 days without starting to suffer from the same adverse effects we had back on Earth. Even if his limits are a little higher, I should let him be. His companion want’s hurting anyone.

I turn around intent on heading back to my office, unlike the dozens of people in the central square, I have much more important things to do than to laze around here talking about this, but as my gaze passes over the town hall, the map room crosses my mind.

Did it expand, maybe even gain some new capability after Nash’s exploration?

I can take five minutes just to take a peek.