I push my new body nearly as much as I push myself normally and although it doesn’t quite match my physical attributes, it comes close to my former level 50 stats. That is worlds better than my previous root ‘avatars that were molasses slow, if fairly strong’, but the real change is the construction of the brain and how I connect with it.

At a superficial level, it doesn’t seem anything special, just a poor imitation of my grey matter, but the way it folds and twists hypnotically drawing me in and the ease the skills hold on the body providing a fully immersive experience is out of this world. It is not quite transferring my consciousness over in full, after all, the natural perception field is still limited to my body or at most the root network, though it comes as close as possible with nearly all my skills working just fine.

There is also a new sense right on the edge. A sense of connection to the plants around me usually takes a moment when I’m simply walking. It comes not only from the skill and avatar but the skill’s interaction with my main class.

I swing from a branch with too much strength and it cracks. A scream and a vivid picture of its insides are thrust into my mind, fading nearly instantly as I’m startled back in my real body.

I walk with my real body closing the 90 meters a little and reestablishing control of the Avatar. It takes some mental effort, but as I do so, the new sense is gone, and I don’t feel anything special about the tree.

Instead of moving off and testing the range limits of my new skill, I walk with the avatar while sitting on the ground again and touch the tree. I try to extend my Qi, and it comes from my main body with ease that I never felt with mana. With ease and speed that nearly gets me dizzy, less than a dozen points head into the tree and do everything they need. Pulling the fiber strands back together as I transform it into nature Qi and the wood heals to its original form.

The effort is no effort at all even without any Runes to guide the transformation, though larger works tend to make the few extra moments of preparation to save this smidge of mental stamina for my Qi pool worth it. Let alone when I worked with multiple times my Qi pool.

I finish the job using only some 60 Qi, so I start playing with the remaining 40 or so points. I pull from my gut, steadying my power and trying to bring life back to the tree, not my resource Life, but as strength drawn from the ground and a little vitality.

It comes sluggishly in the stagnant ground. A simple being nearly incapable of thought and like all its brothers stunted by the system simply was put here with no rhyme or reason except to be part of the scenery in our particular instance.

I let it all wash over me. But as the brief impression that I knew this tree forever pass, I’m left only with more questions.

I knew its stage of growth, but not how old it was, how deep it went, but not what the path it took to get there. I even knew that it was healthy again, but not if it had ever been injured before now.

All of that is not about talking to a tree that can’t answer, even if I developed my Telepathy skills enough, this is about the depth and breadth of my new skill.

I already had a special relationship with plants and connecting to a tree is infinitely easier than doing the same to a rock. But if I didn’t learn to properly use this connection skill, all that knowledge, as impressive as it may be, will also be limited and sporadic for a long time.

I send my avatar to the 90 meter mark where I start to feel the strain on our connection and then purposefully make it march forward.

He walks 97 meters, 98 meters, 99 meters and then the connection snaps with prejudice.

A sting of pain comes my way along with sending the avatar too far and it falls to the ground in full glory of my perception field.

After playing with it for an hour, my skill had settled down at level 25, and making a few assumptions that is pretty much smack dab on my Mana range with a 25 percent addition to it.

Before I get up, I try something else. I reach out with my perception field and open two portals, one in front of my hand and another with the other side right above the Avatar with a small gap between them inside the inner world.

If my hand could pass through the inner world, I would be able to poke the avatar, but it doesn’t even twitch, so I start playing with the portals and my Qi. I’m a bit surprised at its instant jerking as I pass a continuous tendril of Qi through both portals and touch the Avatar with it.

It springs to life and the only reason I don’t jump in surprise is our significant distance. The perception field had an immediacy even at the maximum range but after developing it, my understanding of distance and direction is as good as my own eyes. I don’t even have to evoque anything that is missing from my lizard brain and I’m thankful for that. If I went jumping around every time someone made a brusque movement in the 99 percent of the cases that it isn't anywhere near me, I would go mad.

My heart which stopped beating for about a tenth of a second returns to its rhythm and everything is right with the world.

I play around trying to ascertain the limits and even push that beyond this range. Adding about 100 meters to the normal 100 doubles my effective range, but I need some way to do the same through the network, but all my attempts my initial success are straight failures.

Even extending a tendril of Qi the full 80 meters I can reach and circulating it out of the portal on the other side is futile.

In a desperate attempt I try to use mana, but even that is worse than useless. Even with the greater help the system provides on my use of Mana compared ot Qi, I’m not the source of it and my range actually shrinks a little. In the end, the total range of my Avatar skill stays smack dab on 101 meters, which is the perfectly mathematically correct answer for a level 27 skill giving me 27 percent extra range. At level 99 I would probably be able to extend to about 160 meters plus my inner world range which was just over 100 meters which is about 260 meters, but any more increases would not come easily after that.

In an emergency, I could press the spatial distortion generator, aka, SDG button and extend the range of the inner world for a few moments. But even that is only useful in very select circumstances and it is an expensive prospect given the tremendous mana use for just 20 or 30 extra meters that lasted less than a second.

As that thought comes to mind, the changes I didn’t check with the inner world come to mind.

I just upgraded my class and level, why didn’t the normal range got extended with it? Or I just missed the memo. I move to open the screen but behind me, someone approaches my hut, and I look back.

“Nash.” The messenger clad in their typical garb and barely winded calls out. How things change. He ran for miles faster than even the king of sprinting. Mr. Bolt could for brief seconds without even a sheen of sweat.

“Hi.”

“Are you busy at the moment?”

“Go ahead. It is no trouble.”

“You haven’t added anything from your book to the network. You were away for a few days and since you returned you didn’t call for a scribe.”

“Ohh, I didn’t realize. I probably have that noted down somewhere, but I will put that in order first thing. Did you come all this way just to ask about that?”

“Nah, I was returning from another assignment through here and I remember Richard mentioning something, you probably just didn’t see him.”

“Thanks anyway. I will get to it when I have a spare hour.”

He moves off at their typical jogging pace that looks closer to a flat out sprint but that I could sustain for days, and I don't even fully specialize in agility and endurance.

I shake my head at the brief interruption, but I’m thankful for it. I need to move on and the next time on the list should probably be my inner world.

I open the stat screen and tap the inner world option.

Inner word diameter:

Modified (Current Range):

Min. 82 Meters

Max. 105 Meters

1400.20 Meters maximum achievable range (Option: Lowest stat)

You have modified the spatial and structural integrity of your inner world. Chose when to apply the following bonuses:

+50 meters permanently to Current Range (Level 100 unlock)

That is it? Just 50 meters, not a doubling?

Still, I shouldn’t complain. I was expecting a percentual increase, not a flat one, but it is better than nothing.

What should I do? If I increase the size now, would it make the further development even harder, or was this free-range like the base 50 meters used to be?

It could also be something in between.

I hesitate but instead decide to put it off until the entire inner world is as large as I can make it without waiting for months. With the preparations I have in place, that might even be today, but a few more days to prepare won’t hurt anything.

Merlin had helped both before he left the inner world and during our ‘brainstorming’ and studying session in the following days to my return. I had everything prepared, all the structural placements and runic plans to make it in one go.

All without removing the gravity of the large wooden dome.

I even started modifying the internal capillaries of the roots and branches making up the main structure and gave it the capability to raise ‘water’ to a higher altitude. Trees supposedly can’t reach higher than some 125 meters in height, but that is following the normal rules under Earth’s gravity, and the normal physics, I still were not changing much, just adding a ‘ladder reservoir’ that should nearly double the height and was entirely possible for any tree that did the same.

It is still not strictly needed, but it is going to come up eventually and I was starting to prepare.

I look at my world inside and call everyone to return to the protected building in the middle.

Interlocking plates ready to slide behind each other and small but meaningful silver/copper alloy runic works of a few critical points and the ‘tunnel’.

My entire knowledge and instinctive understanding of space melded with Merlin’s capability for a deep understanding of the nature and utilization of runes along with a little more practical knowledge that Burges contributes and so many more small ideas from the others that I wouldn’t know how to attribute them all.

The result is all for my benefit, but the effort was larger in scale and I don’t mind putting credit where credit is due even if I can’t name the concrete contributions of each individual person beyond the first 3 or 4.

The preparations are complete, I’m centered and rested, the rabbits are all hiding in the central room and nothing important remains unprotected.

I stop sending my Qi out to cycle slowly and back and instead push to actively use it. At first, a thin stream comes back to me, but soon that increases and increases, until I’m nearly drowning in it, but when I’m up to my neck in Qi nature runes take it all as I through them.

“It’s now or never Aspen.”

The usual gentle and slow process is not going to work this time. I have new ideas and they may not work at all. Not considering the larger size and my lack of patience for this endeavor. All the new plans are rolled into one simultaneous effort. The entire thing may be a quick one and done or take days and force me to rely on droves of Mana to finish.

Mana from the batteries and Aspen power the runes in the roots pushing the barrier out. Like a giant wooden armadillo that is growing in size, roots shorten like muscles and the entire structure starts expanding. Thousands of pieces slide over each other and move outward.

My calculations say that I can reach a little further than normally possible with my strategy, I just hope all my efforts won’t be in vain. Even without having to touch, the thousands of mana a second push space out quickly, and it all starts closing up.

In minutes the whole thing is nearly in place. The plates all come into place melding with each other, but my Qi can’t let up and the thousands of points just continue rushing out as soon as they arrive in my grasp. We pass over and join all of the seams not relying on the interlocking mechanisms, but on making the entire dome one piece of wood.

A few more runes split into parts amongst the various pieces come into place, and the edge of space gets even further out as it is powered by mana. But as the entire upper comes close to ready and connects to the band around the place, the real test comes.

I slow the mana passing through the runes and helping extend te inner wolrd even further out.

From over 1000 mana for an extra 3 meters, then:

100 mana a second drops it to a meter.

10 mana a second and 15 centimeters.

1 mana a second just 2 centimeters out.

No mana.

Pain hits me for an instant, but it’s a sharp and brief thing as Aspen loses about a millimeter or so of the precisely positioned runes and wood along with the outside edge. Luckily, nothing important goes missing and besides a few creature comforts and redundancy, the entire thing is done.

A little over 86 meters all around the entire dome.

Now I can work on the underground slowly, given the easier time given gravity is helping instead of hindering me. If my calculations are correct, I would be able to push nearly 110 meters out permanently, along with a low mana cost version of Merlin’s range extensions. Or a few meters short of that for the static version.

I lay back, trying to go back to cycling the last drags of Qi coming back to me as I get ready for a good and long night’s sleep.