I might have underestimated this guardian, when given some thought. Isn’t a monster that can be completely hidden, terrifying?

It’s not as if I have some great motivation to take over this tree. Aside from alleviating my boredom and extreme curiosity. And the quest.

Climbing up the tree, hidden as always, I ready my vine-stake and throw it into one of the longer thicker branches that far out from the tree.

I quickly pull with some strength to check if it would hold me after I jump down and pick up speed.

This is a new stake I made out of the tree patience. Better material makes better tools.

I have made my presence here known after throwing out that stake with rapid hand movement.

I stand on the edge of the tree staring cautiously at my surroundings.

I got a new spear in hand, the same as the stake made from this tree. My breath has picked up and my heartbeat is racing.

I can hear some noise coming from one of the branches. Long thick branch started moving as if it were waking up.

It blends perfectly with the tree bark. This is exactly how I looked when I was being hunted by that eight legged mutant beast. Endless bark breaking off into fine dust.

Two startling white eyes open up and look at me. I feel as my spirit has left me, I can no longer feel the warm embrace of naturai and my body is already many times heavier. What did it do? How?

It doesn’t move but I can see the energy around its head gathering. Small vibrations knock me off balance before a gust of incorporeal power slams into me. T

The air leaves my lungs and with it a bucket of blood. Free falling after being knocked off the tree I still hold a vine in my hand with a death-grip.

Everything feels slow, even my speed is like a leisurely fall but I know better. The wind pressure, the cool shade of the tree, the numbing sensation and throbbing pain tells me I am falling fast diagonally away and down the tree.

I am tempted to let go of the vine, the pain it will induce when I finally reach maximum distance with me still grabbing it.

But there is something in all of us that lets us survive no matter the means. Mentally preparing myself won’t be enough.

I reach out with my almost useless right hand. I have already dropped the spear. I grab a hold of the vine and weave it around my hand, please don’t dislocate anything.

I can only solemnly pray to the naturai that the stake and vine won’t falter under the pressure.

When I finally reach the end of the vine I can feel a tearing sensation as I desperately hold on.

The angle that I was thrown has to be favorable because I swing in a large arc naturally but the speed is putting enormous pressure on my internal organs.

In their already tattered shape I can’t fight the second round of blood forcing its way through my through and out of my mouth.

Watching the trunk of the tree coming closer and closer, I am out of ideas. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold on after I slam into the tree at this speed.

With a thought, my skill-menu pops up and I quickly skim over it, what can reduce my speed? If anything.

| Nature affinity |

| Rapid hand movement |

| Gentle hands |

| Hide presence |

| Energy regeneration |

| Energy shield |

| Empower: Eye |

| Empower: Hand |

| Empower: Feet |

| Empower: Leap|

| Strength and dexterity increase |

| Body enhancing|

| Energy compression|

Maybe I can try and throw something and reduce the speed with rapid hand movement. No, I don’t have the time or the strength to even reach for my spear or stakes.

Should I slam my foot down with empower: feet? Shit, no, the empower abilities have very little impact and don’t affect my body's durability.

Leap? Will leap work? I can’t jump on air though. Ai my head hurts. The blood I spat out didn’t go far and is covering my face, I can hardly keep my eyes open with it flowing into my eyes.

Energy shield! I can use energy shield! This is kinetic energy! But it’s me that is moving and not the tree-trunk.

Won’t it abruptly stop my body abruptly either way? Ah, why can I only think so fast the moment before my death? If I always thought this fast, I wouldn’t be in this situation. Energy shield it is.

I put up a spherical energy shield around me, not even a second passes before I hit the wall. New information, fantastic information!

The shield mechanics work like a rubber ball when I slam into the tree. Once it starts to expand, I can see the minute vibrations or whatever force is dispersing the kinetic energy.

Shooting back out like a rubber ball, the speed reduced to a crawl in comparison. I gently land with my feet on the tree-trunk.

First thing I do is look up, there is no sight of that tree-beast. I grab a second vine-stake and with rapid hand movement pierce into the tree-trunk.

I grab onto the vine and start to slowly make my way back down. Even if the creature doesn’t follow me, I am feeling weaker by the minute, my energy pouring out like water. I have no idea what is going on, am I leaking?

When I reach one of the offshoot branches I sit down and start to meditate.

After what I assume is mere minutes, I abruptly get torn from my trance and lose all power in my body, I helplessly fall to the side and slowly start slipping off the branch.

What is happening? Why can’t I move? Where did all my energy go? I have no way of sensing my body or energy right now, even the pain is gone.

I am like an empty vessel. What in the actual fuck is going on!

As I slowly but surely slide off the branch, which is still somewhere in the middle of the tree.

My hand comes into sight, the hands wounds after holding onto the vines have already healed, I don’t know when or how. Why? What did that son of a Jar do! Bastard creature.

Just watching the ground waiting there to meet me I am full of regret. Was that beast even stronger than the other two?

It might just have been that I got extremely lucky with the first two. Thinking about it, the first one didn’t even register me as a threat or was in some kind of hibernation.

The other I managed to get off some spear throws, but not without a heavy price. I was lucky to not have fallen off the tree in fact.

Ugh, I’m now in my tree, this is the second tree. We need a name, I’ll call it the tree of luck. The first will be named tree of origin.

Every time you respawn, the body and mind are full of energy so I waste no time and start heading toward the tree of origin.

The trees are placed just before you enter the middle layer, well that’s all relative, it can be considered placed in the middle layer.

The beasts just don’t get too close to it. I ignore everything on my way there and I am traveling at my fastest speed.

The nature energy has recovered and my body is again agile and lithe.

It can’t be considered a mistake to fight that guardian, fight? I mean get the shit smacked out of me.

When I go there again, I’ll simply have to find it and throw spears at it before it can use that power or whatever it was. It felt like I had been rammed by invisible energy.

When I arrive, I use the pulley system to get up without any hassle. I sit down and relax.

Now. What in the world happened to all my energy? So I threw a stake, but I can throw at least ten of those before I feel like I need to slow down.

I used empower: hands to keep a firm grip on the vines. That must have drained me somewhat.

Then of course the energy shield. Maybe it withdrew too much energy to mitigate the impact.

And that all makes sense, but why couldn’t I even meditate to regain my energy. I even have an energy regeneration passive.

Before I dwell too deep into that, I have to spend some time to go over my recorded logs.

I still remember I recently opened my skill-menu and went over the abilities just before I smashed into that wall, so that won’t be a problem.

The worst case is that I’d have to go retrieve some skill-books or scour through the boon to find how I got the skills.

Before I do that lets try some math. One plus one is two. Great, didn’t forget numbers.

From what I can tell, I haven’t forgotten any abilities but I still haven’t read the new book I found.

Shouldn’t be too much of a loss, hopefully I’ll be able to retrieve it later. Now what should I do? I’m thinking about becoming a scholar. An educated man.

Maybe force my facial hair to grow to better fit my scholarly and hermit stature. If I had a pen and paper, I’d catalog the books but I guess picking them up one by one is fine. Starting with the crafting once, I still have five I haven’t looked into.

“The flower that wouldn’t bloom” an introduction into herbs and how to care for them.

“Don’t drink that” a book on potion making. Covering a myriad of items that can be used to make various elixirs.

“A rabbits’ hole” oddly about mining and a list of minerals.

“The secret ingredient” featuring cooking methods and edible materials.

“Soft and hard” this one should be very helpful, a general book meant to assist with the initial crafting methods. And the way it words it. I hope it means there will be more crafting professions.

I couldn’t get permission to enter any of the other areas of the library in the sanctuary, a hermit can dream though.

Much of the information is just endless catalogs of materials, impossible to memorize but the system works wonders here, it does it for me.

Just like the skill-books, I inherently know the contents of the books. Which is why I still remember that some guy loves a type of leather that has the color of dark yellow. It’s great.

These days have been great, just reading about materials and how to work them, even the short stories about how they hand this or that materials in their hand or how they got it.

Nothing has been of much help yet but I learned a new skill, called hard hands. It’s the counter of gentle hands. It has no use right now, but if I ever decide to do some blacksmithing I’ll be more equipped.

Turns out everything has to do with energy, although I figured as much with the other crafting books.

It tells you to very gently and slowly channel mana almost unconsciously while you work.

They don’t mention what for but the words they use for energy differ greatly. Mana, Qi, heavens power, the borrowed, spirits, the power and even Fredrick’s gift. Which incidentally was the author of the potion book.

Making use of the cooking skill, I made myself something to eat. The results are decent, I can feel something similar as to when I got the energy regeneration skill.

From that I assume it gives me a buff, the icon that blinks in the upper left corner of my peripheral vision has grown to two icons. I still haven’t found a mental command to inspect them.

I miss the internet, one search and I would have been able to get more ideas to try but at last, I am simply not bright enough to crack this puzzle.

“A man and his cloud” a book about the world, this is the first book I’ve read that actually has some information about this world.

Turns out the flying circles in the sky are called sun and moon. I get a feeling I should have known that, almost like deja vu.

I can’t tell exactly where I am in the world but I am definitely not on my home planet.

There are eight continents, one bigger than the next until the largest one. They are very close to each other from what I can tell, there is no expansive ocean.

From the pictures, it looks like massive rivers between islands.

There is another thing I noticed, the book never tells of any villages, towns or cities. It’s mostly just a nature enthusiast describing various climates and beautiful landscapes.

These are all the books that the system has authorized me to read, I assume they won’t be of too much worth.

Hopefully I get some information about quests or how to get them aside from my current, absurdly hard quest. Or if there is such a thing as experience, or if I have any stats to distribute.

I’ve been hunting a bit and looking for wild plants to use in my cooking, I didn’t even occur to me to bother with any of it before.

Having knowledge really is fortuitous. This meal still doesn’t compare to the restaurants in the sanctuary but beats everything else I’ve ever made.

The buff also appears in the upper left corner, but I simply don’t know what it does. The buff I get for being in Abraser is still standing strong.

My empower skills keep improving while I read, it was a struggle to keep them up while reading at first but eventually I got used to it.

But again, I simply can’t know what level they are or even if they have levels. This system needs a major quality of life improvements update.

A lot of the books are just stories to read, they are the thickest. The thickest one has seven hundred pages and is a bit larger than the others. Titled “The void.”

still haven’t cracked it open, other than to check it’s title and flip through it to see if there is anything worthwhile.

I haven’t read any of the non-essential books, which is almost all of them but it is nice to have something to stave off boredom.

I’ve been meaning to make plans to kill that fuckwit guardian. Every time I think of it straight up bitch slapping me off the tree I get the urge to stay in my little tree forever.

If it wasn’t for my incomparable tree-hugging will I probably would as well.

So the plan is to check out the other tree whilst hunting in the middle layer, honing my abilities and hoping to find more skill-books.

I’m thinking about training my close-combat prowess. Rapid hand movements should work for it. I just have to design a better spear to handle melee situations. Which means longer spears.

Watching all the furs around this place laying around the tree of origin. Where the hell did all these furs come from? Every inch of this place has something laid down on it.

The place has been fully furnished with two chairs and two beds. Did I make all of this and forget about it? That has to be it, I am the only person that has ever been here.

Right? Actually I do remember skimming over the logs, supposedly I had an imaginary friend that I brought here.

I wonder what happened to my hermit’s pride. Bringing people to the holy mistress. Have I been blasphemous?

Aii, I know that I am stalling but I don’t want to go a long ass trek to another tree, I’m going through the middle layer as well to hunt.

Hopefully I’ll find some very strong monsters that drop better books, I am most hoping for an ability to sense my surroundings. If I had that, the guardian of patience could be taken by surprise.

I started making my spear, I started with a little thicker branch and carved it down, relying on gentle hands to do it smoothly.

I also found that I could smooth it over with hard hands. The spear reaches from my feet to my shoulders. It took longer than usual to imbue with enhancements.

Finally after gathering some herbs I started my adventure, version six point zero.

Operation: Road to royalty. I am not staying in the canopy, I fight all the non-gigantic monsters on the way with my spear complimented by rapid hand movement. I

It takes some time to get used to but the results are brutal. Empower hands works really well with it. An enhanced item is also very easy to channel energy through.

I can’t say I’m really thrusting the spear more like pointing at beasts and activating rapid hand movements while moving towards them.

I also have to hold the spear above me striking down to make it effective. After I pierce through the skull of a wolf about the same height as me I skim over the items dropped, nothing but wrapped up meat and leather.

I haven’t gotten a wearable item for what seems like an age. Ai, I live life too fast.

I still creep through the forest while travelling. I really don’t need something jumping on me, taking me by surprise.

However when I locate something to kill, I make sure it knows I’m there. I can’t very well train properly if all I do is attack from hidden locations.

Since it's taken me so long to move around I haven’t met any powerful foes but the ambient noise has been picking up for a while now.

An enormous bear? I think it’s a bear. It has very thin long front legs and walks in an odd way.

I pound the back end of my spear on the ground to catch its attention, the ambient noise went on full blast when I did.

It looks like my hidden presence lowers any potential danger, according to the system. Or so I assume, ai, I need to interrogate those NPCs in the Sanctuary.

The creature turns around and doesn’t hesitate to sprint towards me roaring majestically while doing so.

I lift up my spear, activate all my supplementary abilities and wait for it to get into range before using rapid hand movement to forcibly drill into its body.

I was kind of nervous and ended up puncturing the beasts’ body with multiple holes that rained blood over me. This is definitely a demerit of close combat.

Nothing of value is left behind and I ended up covered in the warm essence of the bear.

The ambient noise didn’t go down, I heard at least two more roars coming from the same direction.

Should I go up the tree? I am not sure if I can actually handle two of these at the same time.

I am no soldier, I am an assassin if anything, just specializing in wooden spears. Nothing odd about that, just smart!

The earth starts to shake a little bit before two far larger bears arrive. This is odd, but not too uncommon, some beasts travel in packs.

They never stop and have already picked up momentum. I really regret not climbing up the tree, these things are very fast but their acceleration slow.

I have my spear raised up high and throw it towards the beasts on the left side. I quickly grab a second spear off my back.

This forest area is dense so before they got into my sights they were already very close.

As quickly as I can I activate rapid hand movement, I was going to throw this one but it is already too close.

The spear goes into its left side, making it tilt to the right a little bit losing its balance. It however is still in its full momentum just in mid-air about to slam into me.

I tried to duck away but I activated my energy shield just in case. I can’t feel anything hit me but I quickly turn around, another spear in my hand.

Rising from the ground the bear has a broken spear lodged into its ribs. I waste no time and throw my spear full force, the spear blasts out going straight through its head.

Watching it slump over I can’t help but feel relieved. A skill-book was on the ground but ended up being another empower: hand.

These things really aren’t rare. I would leave it if I didn’t believe I could use it to trade with other people.

Rethinking my naive train of thought I climb back into the trees, I really can’t be down on the ground, it is far too dangerous.

I can think much faster under pressure and react very quickly but why risk it? Exactly! The spear assassin, the green killer.

To be back in the canopy makes this all a lot less stressful, I got a little cocky after killing all those weak creatures easily.

The monsters are a lot more common here in the middle layer. The never ending ambiance is a clear indicator.

It however doesn’t get too loud while I hide my presence, which is reason enough to always stay hidden.

Though to be honest, it just means I’m slow enough to make less noise and my breath is also a lot more controlled.

Occasionally I have to stop and make some spears, I only have two from the great tree left, and they are clearly stronger so I don’t want to waste them.

I stopped looking for beasts at this point but I still attack them if they appear in front of me.

Occasionally I find some skill-books but they are always the empower books.

I wonder if it’s because all the things I kill are the same, never anything new. I of course don’t even touch the glowing insects.

They can be used for potion making, however there are no formulas or recipes for any potion written in that damnable book.

So four skill-books so far, on my left is the great tree Luck. I can’t exactly see the next tree but there is a sort of dark brown mirage on the horizon.

It is really nice that the trees are so easy to find. The distance between this one seems a little further than the tree patience and the tree of origin.

I’ve long since stopped counting how many things I kill but I feel it’s probably less than thirty.

They have also all been very easy to kill. I kind of want to go a little bit deeper into the forest before I reach the tree.

No, no. I don’t want to accidentally die before reaching the tree and have to travel all the way back here.

Also, where do all these water streams come from, every so often I see a small river or a little stream. They all come from the same direction, the deepest part of the forest.

If it weren’t for the never ending fog clouding my vision, would I be able to see if there was a giant water fountain stationed there?