Stray Soul

Getting up after a long night of tinkering with my soul, adapting it to the new body I had, I glanced at the shell of the gigantic turtle one last time and got going on my way.

Where was I going? Well, I was planning on getting the hell outta here!

Now, while this part of the forest was fine like any other, and the existence of the dungeon gives is a good boost of points, I can't stay here because of one simple reason, the goblins.

Because, while their existence in on of itself is not a problem, the fact that they know how to deal with normal undead is concerning to say the least, and I am not curious to learn how fast they adapt to killing new types of undead—not that I am an undead but, I still don’t want them to start seeing me as a threat to their colony or whatever and decide to get rid of me.

And I am also positively sure some goblins have seen me killing this hog, how you may ask?

Simple, this hog had a long streak at its side, which is while something that can be done by animals, animals usually have more than one claw at their paws, so it is more likely that a goblin or something else with the capability to use tools has injured this hog, and if they can hunt animals as big as this, they probably know how to track them back after making their escape too!

So, nope!

I am going to the river, then back tracking to the gigantic tree and from there going down stream to whatever the fucks there!

At least whatever’s downstream, it will be a problem for the future me to deal with, not the current me and, at worst case scenario, I can just forgo anything to help me path find, and go deep into the woods, or just escape to somewhere that is inaccessible by normal means.

After clarify why I was doing what I was doing, I just let my lesser selves control my body and bring me to the river, and after a few hours of travelling they alerted me that I had reached the river, so I just crossed it and continued on my way to the gigantic tree, from which I would go down stream, but as the day advanced, and I was getting incredibly bored of just tinkering with my soul and mana, a thought hit me.

What would happen if I got a branch from the gigantic tree, and grafted it onto myself?

The tree itself clearly had magical properties after all, and I was able to gain racial skills from the beings that I possessed, so if the weird aura the tree is spreading a racial skill, I’d be able to use it, to a lesser extend but still, I could have my own aura, or whatever that weird magical phenomena is called in this world.

The prospect of actually being able to do something magical that would be felt by other beings immediately kicked my brain into overdrive, and as the day passed and the moon rose, just for it to be overtaken by the sun again, I kept thinking about how I would go about grafting the branch I would take onto myself, and would I even be able to do it.

After all, the soul lingered in parts of plants even after their parts were separated, so if the tree had particularly strong life force, I might just not be able to possess it even after cutting a branch.

It might also be something too expensive to use, like in the case of Shadow Meld, I could technically use it, but doing so would cost an arm and a leg!

And as I mulled over these questions and many more, I finally reached the tree, and encountered my first hurdle, I was too fucking fat to climb the tree.

Who would’ve guessed wild hogs were not supposed to climb trees? Oh, the tragedy!

But now, how would I climb the tree and get my divine right in the shape of a branch from a random tree?

“Hmm... should I go find a few lynxes or hybrids?

...Nah, can’t be bothered to track down a wayward pride of hybrids or lynxes, hybrids probably won’t come out at the day anyways, and I just wouldn’t be able to find enough lynxes to take down a decent sized branch in a reasonable amount of time... so, what to do?”

Sitting next to the tree, and letting myself be embraced in its calming aura, I soon started to focus on my body, specifically on the branches of the bushes that kept my body from collapsing into a pile of rotting flesh, and started thinking if I could just... ram them into the crevices in the trees trunk because, while there weren’t that many places to ram my branches into, and the ones that existed were too small for my branches to enter into and support my weight, I might be able to enlarge them if I bunch them up together, harden them with the function Harden, and then ram them into those small holes, I may be able to enlarge them enough for my branches to get hold.

Quickly deciding to put my idea to test, I started bunching up my branches on one side together and put a few dozen points of mana to harden them, and then rammed them into tree’s trunk, and I could feel them penetrate the trunk, but not by much.

It was as if this tree wasn’t made of wood, but rock. And I was just chipping away at it.

And after I pulled my branches out to see the damage I had done; I was clearly able to see the tree regenerating what little damage I had done to it.

“...I need more bushes, A LOT MORE bushes.” I said, and this time I wasn’t planning on continuing with my tried-and-true tactic of trying to brute force something over and over again, expecting a different result, and decided to take the path of least resistance, I was just going to use my branches to tie myself to the tree, and slowly climb upwards, towards the newer and thinner branches.

Quickly leaving the gigantic tree behind and entering the forest proper, I started to dig out whatever bushes and shrubs I could get my hooves on, and started grafting them onto myself, and after a few hours of I had coated myself in a thick layer of branches and leaves, hiding my fur under layers upon layers of wood, making me seem as if a walking bush in the shape of an hog, instead of an hog covered in a stupid amount of bushes.

Quickly going back to the gigantic tree, I felt its warm aura surround me once more as I entered the small grassy area that surrounded it.

Staring up, to the top of the tree, I steadied my self and stopped dilly dallying around, and quickly hugged the tree and let my branches cover it and started slowly but surely crawling up the tree.

Was it the fastest way to climb upon the tree? Nope!

I could’ve just gotten a smaller critter like a squirrel and climbed onto the tree that way, but the main reason why I was doing this was because I needed the weight of the hog to safely break a branch to grab for myself, and not like breaking a few bones mattered, after all I could repair what damage was on me after a few hours of tinkering with branches.

Hell, if I could I’d just forgo the whole corpse thingamajig and just have a body made up of plants, becoming Groot 2.0 in the process, but alas, I needed bodies to give me stat points.

So, until the day I become a god of mana, or just learn how to warp plant matter into becoming like muscles, I’ll keep on using the bodies of the random critters I find laying around the forest.

Clearing my head from my thoughts, I focused on climbing the tree and after an arduous hour or so after, I was able to reach the bottom most branches!

Hey, I never said this would be easy, I just said it’d get me the branch I wanted!

Looking at the ground from the branch I was on, dread filled me because I was only a few meters off of the ground at most, and the branches I was confident in being able to break were at the very top of the tree... yeah, this was going to take some time.

...

..

.

Climbing the tree over the course of the night was an hellish process to say the least, and I broke at least a few bones because there were times where I fucked up and fell a few branches, but towards dawn the next day I stood triumphant at the top of the gigantic tree, and grasped on to the main body of the tree with all of my branches, hanging on for dear life, not because I was scared of heights or anything, but because falling off at this point might actually give me a mental breakdown.

But seeing the rising sun from my position atop the world gave me some solace and let me give myself a break.

But after half an hour or so of standing there and just watching the world move at its usual slow pace, I decided to get going and started eyeing the branches that were around me and started looking for a decent sized one.

Now, I wasn’t sure if the whole aura surrounding the tree was a racial trait or not, though I really wished it was but alas, I didn’t know for sure.

So, I was considering if I should get a small branch or a decent sized one because to break a small or a decent sized branch I’d need to give my full weight to it, and as I was thinking, a gust of wind suddenly stopped my thought process, swaying me from side to side but I didn’t drop thanks to my alertness.

But as the wind flew past me, I remembered something, my mana theory.

I theorized that, like many of the game world from my previous world, in this world mana and matter might just be the same thing, and what better place was there to test this out other than the top of a tree?

Quickly spreading a few branches outwards, making a wing like shape, I pushed some of my mana cloud out of my body as well, filling in the gaps between my branches, and letting me feel everything passing through them.

If I had better mana sense, I might’ve been able to do without pushing my mana cloud out of my body, alas, I didn’t have that kind of skill and needed my mana cloud to be out of my body to sense mana.

Focusing on my mana cloud, I could clearly sense a lot of waves of mana passing through it, faster than the ones on the ground, and with my branches and leaves, I could also sense wind but the mana and the wind didn’t seem to be in sync, because sometimes wind would stop and the mana waves continue, other times the mana waves would stop for a moment and the winds continue.

And after half an hour of testing, making sure I was right I could say with confidence that mana and matter weren’t one in the same.

They clearly affected each other, don’t get me wrong, mana could obviously interact with matter, and matter could make the mana act in different ways, but they weren’t one in the same.

Though this begs the question, can I just store mana in a bottle and drink it whenever I want to regenerate my mana?

If so... that seems overpowered, though that may be not advisable as mana, being the esoteric matter that it is, effects the living in weird ways, hell, I am literally controlling a body of a hog, and dozens of bushes right now, you don’t get weirder than that!

Retracting my mana cloud and branches back into my body, I once again turned my attention to the branches in front of me, and decided to just go with the decent sized branch instead of the small one, after all, I was already up here and it didn’t matter if the branch would give me a racial skill or not, worst case scenario, I use it as an improvised tool to ram into things that try to hurt me.

Then I started carefully moving onto a decent sized branch, and after getting most of my branches on it, I jumped off on top of it to break it!

...But nothing happened.

So, I just started swinging my mass from side to side, try to break the branch, but no matter how long I did it, and whatever I tried, it just wouldn’t break.

“C’mon you—you... FUCK, I don’t have any insults for plants! I mean, who would?!

C’mon William, you cannot disappoint the other weebs that would kill to get a chance at being a reincarnator! What to say, what to say... AHAHA!

Your mother smelled of elderberries, and your father was a hamster you brown cunt!”

But despite my insults, the branch didn’t budge.

“Okay you son of a—” but the a few moments after I stopped swinging the branch, it gave up and finally broke.

*creak~~*

“...Uh oh...”

*swoosh!*

As my face quickly approached the ground, miraculously missing all the branches on my way down, I could only hurl insults at the gods for what they had done to me, but alas, no one listened, and my insults went unheard.

*BAM*

Ungraciously landing on the ground, my fall was somewhat broken by the many branches surrounding my body, but I could still feel a few bones cracking, and could feel some mana leaving my body after my skull cracked, but thankfully, it was not a lot, and I was mostly fine.

After falling to the ground, and laying there for a few moments, just coming to terms with my stupidity, I heard some noise coming from the tree line, and when I turned my eyes there, still laying on the ground, what I saw shocked me.

“I-is that a fucking elf?!”