《One Of Many: The Story Of A Walking Bush》Chapter 5 – Wooden element
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“Is it really over?... Oh praise the lord!!!” As I saw the bug fall without slowing down I was sure that it’s going to died and as the bug approached the ground a small dust cloud could be seen where it landed in an open area. “What an unlucky bastard, the trees didn’t even cushion his fall.” At that moment I was happy for the stupid bug misfortune and for my fortune.
*Experience reached the desired quantity “Ontopary bush” leveled up to Lv2*
*Experience reached the desired quantity “Ontopary bush” leveled up to Lv3*
“What?... Oh right... If I am at a pseudo rpg world, there should be at least lvs here as well.” I was startled for a second, but then I sighed with relief and slowly relaxed. “But wait I didn’t see any experince in my self awareness skill.” Thinking that the self awareness skill hides information from me got me little annoyed.
”I leveled up 2 levels just from it, interesting what level was it? And more importantly how did the bug fly off the cliff?” As I mention that I looked at my chewed side and checked the damages, half of my body was missing its leaves, only broken twigs and small pieces of chewed leaves could be seen.
Between the damaged leaves and twigs I saw, bunch of my branches tied up together as they formed a shape of a hand. I was happy that I could move, but at the same time concerned about my damages, if a normal person was missing half of his body he would already be dead. The only moment till now that I was happy for being a useless plant.
“Did my body took this shape because of the two new skills?” When I got the skills I really didn’t paid any attention to them and was more focused at the flying bug. “I should inspect them what were they called?... eh, I don’t remember... *Self Awareness*”
*Self Awareness leveled up to Lv2*
-Ontopary bush Lv3-
Experience: 13/30
Rarity: Common
Health: 3/6
Mana: 8/12
Stamina: 4/4
Race: Berry bush.
Status: Unique-Intelligent
Skills:
*Self Awareness Lv2* *Magic Perception Lv3(Active)* *Calm Mind Lv4* *Inspect Lv2* *Rage Lv1* *Killing Intent Lv1* *Pain Resistance Lv1* *Mana Manipulating Lv1* *Wood Element Control Lv1*
Titles:
*Clutz Lv1*
“Now you show me it you bastard of a skill, good now my self awareness skill gives me more information.” As I looked truth my stats I said with little concern, “All of my stats have been raised, but my mana raised the most. I would be more happy if my health rose, it would make me tanky and not so squishy.”
“But who cares about all that, more importantly I should be able to move right now!” Fastly I checked for the names of the two skills I got last time. “Hmm Mana Manipulation and Wood Element Control, I guess the combination of both of the skills helped me. Now that I think about it, I still can see this weird little blue aura around me, but not the bits of the red one that was present before, is that somehow related to Mana Manipulation? Anyway I should inspect them. inspect *Mana Manipulation*, inspect *Wood Element Control*.”
*Mana Manipulating Lv1* - Let the user release the mana trapped inside his body and give him the ability to control it.
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*Wood Element Control Lv1* - Let the user control the element of wood with the help of his mana, the element of wood could be found mostly in nature, such as in plants trees etc, the control of those elements depends on the user.
“The mana manipulator have a vague answer as always, but I don’t care anymore because I can move!” As I said that I concentrated my mind on my body and tried to control the wood element inside it, but nothing happened… “Did I do something wrong? The Wood Element Control skill should be passive for me so it should work, maybe I need release more mana?” I tried to release more mana from my body.
Slowly but surely the blue the glow around my body became more vivid as I released more mana I tried to move my crude hand that was made of branches. For my surprise it worked and like an idiot I was just waving my arm in front of my face(view), for the next couple of minutes.
If I had a face at that moment, its expression be equal to a face of a person that won the lottery.
“At last!” I said with tears running on my imaginary face. “I can move! I can do whatever I want, am free!!” Then I looked at the ground and saw my roots still inbeded into the ground. “Ok maybe not exactly free, but still this is progress.”
I looked at the left side of my green body and said “It will be nice if I could make myself a second hand, but won’t the leaves be a nuisance and if I pluck them won’t I get damage?” With that tough in mind I still tried to form a second hand on my left side, in a few moments the branches on my left side formed a crude shape of a hand, I didn’t removed the leaves from it for the fear of damaging myself.
“I should inspect the Rage skill that I acquired long ago and categorized it as useless, Inspect *Rage*”
*Rage Lv1* - Core skill of the rage family, the skill let the user accumulate rage inside its body and use it to power the skills of the family tree. This skill is rare to find in many people, because of its strong nature of madness, only those who enter this endless state of frenzy can use this skill for their own good.
“Compare to those two other skills there more details about this one, that mean I have more affiliation with this skill, wait did the world see me as a mad crazy small bush?!.. And what's a core skill? Inspect *core skill*.”
*Core Skill* - A skill that have lots of branch skills, those skills can’t be learned without the core skill, core skills can have amazing abilities or have no abilities at all, whatsoever mostly depends on the skill itself.
“Yep useless skill, so that was the dim red aura around me, at least now I can visually see that I am angry… Wait if I remember correctly the bug could see it too, or at least feel it right? Nope it's still useless, I have the killing intent skill that can be used the same way and the result it gives is much much more effective. At least now I know that there such skills, if I want to increase my chances to survival I should try to get more of those core skills, some of them could be really useful.”
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After gaining all the information that I wanted from my new skills, I started to prepare a plan how to get the hell out of this area, “I should move away from here, I don’t really know if there any more of this stupid bugs in this area, if so I will be killed in no time.”
I looked at my injuries and then looked at the roots that was sticking out of the ground with concern. “I think my injuries won’t heal for a while, I should try to get some kind of skill to help me with that. It would be really nice if my Self Awareness skill would tell me my health regeneration speed, I just need to level it up to higher levels and it should show me it then.”
At this moment my imaginary face was shaken, but after that it became even more uglier. ”Not even to mention, how the hell will I leave this place? If I get my roots out of the ground, won’t I become a land octopus.
I am not even sure how long are my roots are, there some bushes that can have roots of the length of up to fifty meters, in worse case scenario it will take me days to pull them out of the ground and don’t even mention the part where I don’t know for how long I can survive being a land octopus.”
Even though I found a way to set myself free, it would still take some time to get there. “Theres my injuries as well, I need to find out if I can heal them when I am sleeping. But if that does not work, I need to find another way restore myself to my former glory (image of a mighty bush popped out).”
With all that thinking about the future, I chose to do something in the present. First I wanted to learn more about how to control my body and then to think of a way to slowly pull some of my roots out of the ground.
“Hmm I am quite flexible.” I said when the torso of my body was twisted into a knot, “I should not go overboard and break something.” I turned back my body to its original posture. As I continued to play with my body and to learn all its nooks and crannies, I was little surprised. “It's not so hard to control my body at all, even though the way of moving is totally different from that of a real body, it's still plausible.“
If another person would given a body of another creature to control, it would take him some time till he could move at all, but in my case it just happened instantly. ”Maybe magic perception helps me with the controls, or maybe I am just a genius.” Genius or not I was still lucky, currently my location wasn't the safest, I didn’t know if another bug could appear any second, so the less time I stayed here the better it would be.
My plan was really simple, it wanted to stay here for the night and in the morning to find a safer place. I didn’t know how the forest is at night, so I didn’t take the risk to leave immediately, there could be scary creature lurking in the darkness, so it's better not to wander around at the dark, so I chose to stay here for another night.
Hours passed and the sun was already setting, I didn’t move much at that time because my mana should be almost depleted, but I still didn’t go to sleep, because I wanted to know why the forest called Great Forest Of Dusk , if it have dusk in its name something special should happen at dusk but what?
I was sitting there looking at the sun as it was setting, slowly I was losing my patience. “Nothing happens… Don’t tell me the origins of its name came from some stupid event, that just happened at dusk *sigh*...” I sighed with disappointed, it was a long day for me, I was almost killed and saved only by luck, tomorrow most likely won’t be easier either, so I needed to rest.
Just when I almost gave up and started to think about turning off the magic perception skill, the sun already was behind the horizon, only a glimpse of light still could be seen as it faded away and all the forest were eaten by shadows. As I took the last glimpse at the sun I asked myself with disbelief in my voice. ”What's going on?”
As if hot knife cutting truth butter, pillars of light were piercing through the shadows from below, one by one those pillars were raising and for my surprise they came from the trees. The whole forest was full of colors even more beautiful than before, every tree was bright in colors some green some red and so on. Looks like the colors of the leaves change the color of the light, the scenery was so breathtaking that all I could do is look at it.
A minute passed after it another, but I didn’t even budge. Only after few more minutes I came to my senses and with surprise I discovered that the same light was coming from my own leaves as well. The color of my light was green, I was puzzled, “This is interesting...” I didn’t understand why all the forest flora was illuminating like a glowfish at the night. After examining myself I was surveying the surrounding, the golden trees light was one of the strongest around.
The forest could be explained only by one word and it was “Magical… It’s just magical...” After getting out of trance I could, hear howls and growls coming from afar, the creatures of the night woke up, even though you could barely call it a night, the inner clock of an animal wouldn't care.
I chose to discard those noises and continued staring at the forest, most likely there will be no danger to me from those creatures as all the other nights. And so I continued to look at the forest with imaginary sparkling eyes, as I watched it my vision slowly became blurry and everything turned to black.
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