Tree… Ant?
A warm breeze tousled raven-black hair. The sound of gently rustling leaves added a calming ambiance to the heathland. Gorse bushelled up around the few sparse trees that sprouted between low-lying shrubs.
Elijah’s toes were tickled by gently swaying heather. Looking down, he saw the odd bilberry poking out from the thick mess of plants that blanketed the ground. Looking up, he was greeted by a wide and open sky. The summer sun warmed the air. In a word, peaceful.
A slow breath in, filled with the dry, fresh scent of familiar foliage. A long breath out, purging the mounting pressure that had been growing insidiously in the back of the young man’s mind. When he opened his eyes, his head was clear for the first time in far too long.
The Trial of Evolution 1: Treeling
You have reached Lv 25 as a Treeling! Welcome to The Trial of Evolution: beat the Evolved Treeling to prove your right to undergo the first Evolution. A better performance in this trial will lead to a more powerful Evolution with stronger monster Skills and Traits.
Elijah calmly turned his head, examining the nearest tree; it was more than a hundred feet away. So long as he maintained his distance, he should be fine. Deciding that immediate combat wasn’t a risk, the teen equipped his garishly coloured, and slightly Slimy clothes.
With slow and measured movements, he began collecting heather. Following the steps a survivalist had taught him on a school trip, the sixteen-year-old created a fairly decent mattress. Taking a moment to gather a handful of bilberries, he lay down on his new bed and relaxed.
The only noise that interrupted the soothing sound of crickets was the occasional popping of the blueberry-like fruit as he tossed them one by one into his mouth.
It may have been an hour; it may have been longer. Elijah had no idea how long he had napped for, but he woke up feeling thirsty. He took a moment to survey the few trees that interrupted the horizon. His paranoia was unwarranted; none of them had moved.
He gathered what little water mana there was in the air and created a handful of the life-giving fluid directly in his mouth. It took a few minutes, as opposed to the few seconds in the previous world, but Elijah was in no hurry.
With his needs met, he returned to his peaceful sleep.
He wasn’t awoken by a violent attack. He wasn’t awoken by a death notification. He wasn’t awoken by a sudden blast of cold. Elijah awoke to the gentle caress of summer sunlight. It seemed that, wherever this endless hillside heath was, or wasn’t, the sun always shined. Elijah was grateful.
While this had been a well-deserved respite, the teen knew it couldn’t last. He still hoped to escape this place; he couldn’t do that whilst lazing around. He opened his Character Sheet and began examining.
There was still something that stumped him. Why did the Class, Nimueh’s Successor, give such bad stats? He had just come to the conclusion that the Skills it gave must be worth a lot more than he realised when something new appeared in the translucent HUD.
An icon in the shape of an envelope was flashing. Did he have… post? Interested, Elijah mentally clicked on the image. It opened, and a new window materialised before him.
Message From Manager Faun:
I don’t have much time. If I stay in here all day, people will get suspicious. I know you are the cause of the ERRORS. You will no longer receive any ERROR messages; I have blocked them. I don’t know how you ended up in the Trials of Evolution nor why a Goddess is doing everything in her power to keep you there. I do know, however, that there is a way out!
Right now, when you complete a Trial, the System doesn’t know where to send you. My predecessor wrote a contingency for this. You should have a 50% chance of being sent back to Terra Torus, but Lady Luck has changed it to -50% somehow.
Your only option is to beat all the Trials, at which point it will have no choice but to eject you. And no, I cannot change the code. The higher-ups are watching too closely for that. I should be able to hide you from them, but that’s about it. In return, I’ll need your help further down the line. You’re not the only one who’s trapped.
For now, you need more Attribute points! I have no idea how you’ve made it this far in life, let alone the Trials. Your stats are that of a child, seriously! I’m considered weak, and my lowest stat is Strength at 138. You won’t stand any chance against the real monsters. In the end, nothing beats raw power.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
To this end, unlock the first level of every Class you can, and DO NOT level up Nimueh’s Successor, whatever that is, anymore! The Xp you get from defeating a monster is determined by your level difference, and, at the moment, your level is only being read as the level of your highest levelled Class. You on the level?
Oh, and one more thing—someone’s here; I have to go.
Quest Unlocked!
Quest: Escape!
Objective:
- Text to be added here.
Rewards:
Text to be added here.
Accept Quest? Yes/No
Well, that brought a very sudden end to what had otherwise been a very relaxing day. Quite honestly, Elijah didn’t know what to think. Was that the reason he had been given -20 Luck? Why? To keep him here? To what end?
The teen tried to find a reply button; he wanted clarifications. There was none. There didn’t seem to be any way to get in contact with this Manager Faun person. Elijah had no idea whether anything that was said in this message could be trusted. And yet, he wanted to.
Elijah needed a sense of purpose. He chose to believe in this message. He would pass all the Trials, be sent to Terra Torus, then find a way back home. Just this small change in outlook helped to bolster his morale to no end.
The young man had been alone for too long and he was desperate for the hope of escape. With that thought in mind, he accepted the unfinished Quest.
As for the content of the message, it made a disturbing amount of sense. Unlocking the first level of every Class was good advice. He seemed to get more stats from that first level. That was definitely smarter than just dumping it all into whatever Class/Evolution he thought would be useful at the time.
Elijah slowly added one point of Xp at a time from his escrow account into his Earth Buffalow Class. At 100 points, he got to level 1.
You have reached Level 1 in E???a????r?????t???h???? ???B?????u????f????f?????a????l????o???w???!????
+2 to Strength
+1 Vitality
New Threshold Met!
You have reached 10 in Strength! This would be the cap for Race: Elijah, but the System allows you to push beyond your limits! Having reached the first Threshold, you are now stronger; things that once seemed heavy can be lifted with ease. Strength can no longer drop below 10.
The rush from reaching the first Threshold in Strength was exhilarating. He watched as his muscles became more toned and defined. He felt like he could crush rocks with his bare hands! With excitement, he picked up a stone from the earth to see if he could.
Elijah squeezed. Something cracked. He proceeded to howl as he grabbed at his hand, hopping around in pain. Though he had gotten stronger, his body hadn’t; something in his hand had given out.
Once the agony subsided, leaving a dull throb in its place, Elijah realised something. On their first levels, both the rank F Classes had given three points. The rank D had given four. Assuming there was no rank E, that could be a pattern.
He hated to do it, but if he wanted to learn more, he would have to place 100 Xp in the Slime Class, whose rank was none. He was loath to level up the Class that had given him such a terrible Trait but Elijah had to admit it was the wisest thing to do.
You have reached Level 1 in S???l????i???m????e????!????
+1 Vitality
Yep, that sucked. Though he did feel moderately healthier, it didn’t change the fact that his hand was still broken, but it did prove that having more stats would be better. That said, levelling up wasn’t the only way to get them. Elijah had received several levels from what was ostensibly training. If he were smart, he could use his presently peaceful Trial as a gym.
He was definitely weak by this world's standards; he refused to believe that a Slime was supposed to be that strong!
But before the training montage began, he wanted to be sure of what monster guarded this Trial. He hadn’t seen any action on the part of the trees; then again, they were trees. He also wouldn’t mind dying to fix his smarting hand.
The trees were the obvious foe. This was the Trial of a Treeling, whatever that was. Elijah had scanned all the twisted and peeling trees with Identify; none had registered as monsters. On second thought, that didn’t mean much. The Skill was rank D and apparently very common among Adventurers; of course, monsters would have a way to hide from it.
With trepidation, the young man walked cautiously over to the nearest wooden plant. Touching it with a tentative toe, nothing happened. It was just a normal tree, cover for the monster to blend in with.
The same was true of the second and third. Elijah was beginning to believe that a Treeling wasn’t a tree-type monster at all when he came to the fourth. Something was different about this lichen-covered arbor. It itched at the back of the teen’s mind, but he couldn’t place a finger on why.
The pain in his hand had dulled his focus somewhat, and he didn’t realise what was wrong until the tree he was nearly touching emerged from the ground, roots and all. The earth cracked, and dirt was sent flying as a creature surfaced from the dry earth. It wasn’t a tree at all, but an oversized backpack for a large and very angry ant!
Identify:
Level: 26
Monster: TreeAnt
Description: The TreeAnd is an Evolution of the Treeling that moves its consciousness from the tree itself to the body of an ant it is bonded with, granting the creature an increased size and creating a guardian and method of transport for the normally stationary Treeling.
patrons: