It took me another hour after Blink got into the safe room to finish up my new project. This was going to be a two-stage project. First, I was going to see if the heavy club that got renamed to Thicket Core would work the way I wanted it to. If it would, then I would seed the dungeon and see if I could plant a dungeon heart into the tree house.

If everything was working right then, I was expecting that I would hit the required faith and the Sisters would start to guide me from this place so that I could find Lannah. While the work was fun, I was getting tired of sitting still again.

I wanted to check the item before I went up. I figured it might be done, but I wanted to know if I did what I was hoping to do.

When I opened the interface for the Thicket the words in all gold.

World’s first

Thicket Core (Cluster)

General

Arn’s Thicket

Level 0

Type Natural Building Core

Class Ultra Rare

Durability 1500/1500

This Thicket is both a tree house and a fort. Through its design, it will provide a place to rest and recover while being secure. As the designer of this core wished to provide safety for those traveling, this Thicket excels at being hidden. This is not just a single core but a cluster of cores working in harmony. The designer of this Cluster also felt that giving a powerful magical item the desire and ability to self-grow was a good thing as it would reduce the overall time he needed to work on making it better.

This Thicket has been dedicated to the Sisters' Order, and Chaos and so is hidden from all other deities.

*This Thicket is the first Thicket core and so is uncapped in level. As such the normal termination for leveling which is 15 is when it can create new Thicket cores.

>Growth

To level your building core you must provide for it items needed to move to the next level of the building type.

Wood 0% Mana 0% Magical Items 0% Nuts 0%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your house has.

Dry: your Thicket keeps all things in it dry from weather Comfort: your Thicket room provides you with a up to a 15 degree change in temperature towards your preferred level Furniture: Your Thicket provides basic Furniture which will repair itself. (Bed, Table, Chair) These items can not be removed. Defense: Vines, provide the base for poison delivery and binding toward all listed enemies. (orcs, goblins, gremlins, wild dogs, snakes, undead) Bushes, provide slowing effects to all who are not welcomed in. Stone projectile: All who are listed as enemies will be attacked on sight by stone projectiles. One per tree at a rate of 1 every 30 seconds. Lay To Rest: Inside the Thicket canopy all dead are laid to rest. Improvement: Will draw what is needed to level.

>Creation

This is locked until level 15

I smiled, “Blink, let’s go see if this thing works the way I was hoping it would!”

I got up, and we headed up top. I would have loved to have had Dave there with me when I dropped the core into the ground and told it to go, but he couldn’t leave the safe room, so that meant it was just Blink and me.

We were just outside the top exit to the dungeon. While I was sure I could find a better place for it to go, I figured that a last line of defense would be good, and if I could get the tree house to take a dungeon seed, then it would provide even more protection. It would also free up some of the growth stakes that I already had up there, so I could use them on the border a bit.

The Thicket Core took just under an hour for the tree house itself to form. It was mind-blowing to watch branches move. They creaked, but nothing broke. The bark moved as the large branches moved around so that they were in the right places, and then they grew towards each other, meeting and weaving together. I had seen branches bent into different shapes in the past grown to look like hearts or into lines. Yet, this happened in such a way that the branches looked like they joined with each other.

Once the four outsides were joined, the trees adjusted across the gap between them, moving so that there were four base branches meeting in the middle where they locked with each other. From there, the trees filled in, growing from the middle branches radials that wove together, creating a smooth surface. From the edge of the platform, branches moved up, building walls that then grew leaves and smaller branches. It looked every bit like a big green tree top from the outside except for the supporting branches.

The outside of the trees then started to shift around smaller branches to help hide the center platform but still let the light come in. From higher in the canopy, branches grew out to form the roof of the tree house. The branches grew forward and met in the center, and then from there developed a twisted joint trunk-like mass that then branched out to create a full tree canopy over the solid roof.

From the center of the platform, branches grew down toward the ground and formed what appeared to be a four-lobed trunk. Almost in the shape of a four leave clover but tighter. When it approached the center stake, it opened up and wrapped around it, making it part of the trunk. Out from this fake trunk grew a series of steps that spiraled up to the platform.

I walked into the Thicket and ran my hand on the banister of the steps as I walked up them. It was a smooth maple-type bark which in and of itself was odd since the four trees I had chosen were all oaks. When I got to the top, I opened the trapdoor with a push and walked into the tree house. The light was coming through the windows on each side. It was a soft greenish light filtered from the leaves. There was a magic light in the middle of the room from a branch that came down to hold it.

The room itself was a simple twelve-foot-in-diameter circle with a domed roof with four large branches acting as rafters. The rafters were the only branches that looked like branches as the rest of the room smoothed out into little ripples.

The floor, while not smooth, was flat and was an intricate pattern of lines as the branches had grown to make the floor. I knelt down and ran my hand across the floor. I could feel the rounded edge of each branch that was pushed up next to the others creating a non-slip floor.

The walls were just the same but with larger divots going around created by the use of large branches. Each branch on the wall was the size of my arm, while the ones making up the floor ranged in size from the four main supports to ones no larger than my pinkie.

Already in the room were live shelves stationed next to two of the windows. Hanging off the wall was a bed that appeared to be a basket made from smaller branches. There was a table with a bench grown out from the wall and floor, along with a spot in the ceiling that I could push out for a chimney.

Everything in here was already part of an active core, so I could not modify it. The bed would never get any runes that could help with sleep. The room itself could not become more. It was all part of the Thicket Core. Not that I minded at all since this would let me set up much easier than if I didn’t use it.

I kept looking around, and the growth was still happening. From the ground, the Thicket brought up earth and shaped it into a fireplace and chimney using the dirt to stone runes that I had built in for its weapon to help finish with the blueprints. Beside the fireplace was a segmented-off section that held a toilet that appeared to flush down the house and to the base of the trees.

Right in the middle of the room where the false trunk would connect was a hole in the floor, with a wooden circle banister running around it. If my intent was followed when I carved everything, then the hole ran all the way to the ground and slightly below. I did this in hopes of dropping a dungeon heart down it and letting the tree house part become the entrance room for the dungeon.

Lastly, I found a cistern on one wall that, when filled, would run down to water the ground and supply the basin that I could put water in or drain it out to the ground. The cistern was set up to collect rainwater out of the canopy of the tree. It could hold about 300 gallons. The basin seemed to heat up water slightly if left in it.

While this was great, I could see that in just an hour, I had a more secure place but not a defensive fort like I was hoping. At least right now, it was noticeably odd, and the protections weren’t that great to start with. All I had up was an intense Fear right now and the Lay-To-Rest field. It would likely keep animals away, but as those wanting in got smarter, so too would their ability to overcome fear. Those that could overcome the fear also would be more likely in the first place to spot it right away and come to see what was going on.

The rest of the defenses needed more time to get online. It seemed that the mana gathering from the world around could only go so fast. Each of the cores that I had put into the heavy club could hold a large amount of magic. It seemed the amount or the way that the cores used it was out of proportion to the amount of mana needed to create it.

The moving and creating of the tree house took a tremendous amount of mana, and so it had to gather more before it could bring the rest of the Thicket online. A tree growth stake, on the other hand, didn’t typically cause movement in the tree. So it could be up and running right away, as it only gave the tree a magical direction.

“I am going to have to carry a few growth stakes with me just to be on the safe side.” I murmured.

Blink asked, “Whats was thats?”

“Oh, just thinking with as long as this takes I want to keep with me a few tree growth stakes as we travel. They activate much faster than this so if we need added support having a few would be good.”

Blink nodded her head. “Goods idea. Buts do we have to go anywheres?”

I shook my head slowly. “Yes, we need to go find Lannah and I need to learn to read.”

Blink stomped her foot. “I don’ts like hers!”

“Why not? She was only helpful while she was here.”

“Yous nots think rights with her!”

“Well I am sure that things will work out. Even if we don’t spend much time with her she makes me more powerful and can help me find someone who can teach me to read.”

Blink folded her arms and looked at me, trying to pout. It was honestly funny. She had picked up the pout look from Lannah but couldn’t pull it off because her lizard lips didn’t move that way. So it just looked like a cute glare.

“Let’s see what my faith looks like now.”

Faith

Order: 170

Chaos: 157

Bards and Summer Beer: 17

Treants and Dryads: 3

Redacted: Redacted

“These numbers make no sense…” I muttered.

* * *