Trickling Tree

Zeeth was instructed by Page to create a large walled-in area around the seed where he would pour in water from Leaf. he summoned up a bunch of greystone walls around the seed and poured in water. His water was now the color of green tea, the leaves he got from the forest had been affecting this water as well. Keeping it with him all this time was starting to make his nature attributed slime even greener. It was quickly drained and soaked up by the seed. He kept pouring out water and found that he needed the help of his slimes to have enough mana to constantly feed the seed. A minute in and they saw the ground begin to bulge a little and a small green stem grow out where the seed was. Zeeth continued pouring in gallons of water every second to feed this thing, ten minutes in the water soaking began to slow down and the tree was about 12 feet tall.

Three little eyes opened up on the trunk. The branches, thick with leaves and twigs, swung around as if it was stretching. The roots slowly slithered out of the ground, splashing in the water and others tearing out of the ground.

Page warned them, "make sure to act friendly, don't act like you want to hurt it. They get violent, fast when they realize were after their roots. Zeeth lightly splashed it with more water."

Zeeth let out a stream of tea green water onto its branches and trunk. It splashed around happily, especially glad at Zeeth for the water.

"Good. Just keep it happy and we should be able to cut off a-"

"No, don't cut it off!" Gror interrupted Page, seemingly having grown attached to the happy looking tree, "will it hurt?"

"Yes, of course, it will, but we need it to make that potion."

"But-but look at how happy it is. We can't hurt that."

"Then what was the point in doing all this?"

"I thought it would be an annoying brat or something, but this isn't at all annoying. Is there some way we can get one without hurting it?"

"Yes, if we live with it for over a year, it's old roots should shed and we can use those. But it takes a year, you really want to stay away from First Dwarven for that long?"

"What if we kept feeding it water? Wouldn't that make it grow faster?"

"Zeeth's water is awesome, the growth rate is more than a few dozen times its original growth rate, but it grows much slower and water has a much weaker effect now that it's at this stage. At best we can wait 10 months or something."

"Hmm. maybe I can do that? No, I don't think so." Gror sat down in front of the curious Trickling Tree and splashed water at it from its puddle.

Zeeth felt the same cold brushing sensation on his arm again and told Page, "Page, c'mere."

They sneaked over to the other side of the room while Gror kept playing in the water. He pulled up his sleeve and saw a small green tattoo box underneath his original Tamer Tattoo. This was a large wave of green water and in the center was a small drawing of a slime. "Ho, this is different from what you got in the past. It's weaker than what you had towards the end of my life, but it seems a lot more powerful than what you got when you first achieved a nature-related skill. I think it's due to the box you opened in my father's carriage that you didn't have in the past life."

"How do you know about that?"

"My father was excited to show me the Fluctu Pearl you got him and told me all about it. Originally, it was only affected by the flowers and leaves you got from the forest we went through. Remember the one with the tea leaves and whatever?"

"Yeah, what kind of a skill was it?"

"It was really efficient in assisting small plants to grow and proliferate, like make a common blade of grass grow to the heights of a person. It was really helpful but not that powerful in battle. I think this can be evolved for fighting too. Wait! Were you using your skill or your slimes skill?"

"I think it was my own? I felt like I had a new form of water in my palm and I wanted to try it out."

"Then...I think your slimes skill should be much more powerful, I think we can make this work for all of us! Try replacing the water in there with water from your slime, I think it'll be a lot more effective, although I'm not sure by how much."

"Okay," Zeeth walked back to the little pond, the Trickling Tree reached over and brushed its leaves against his face. He pulled up the small mouth of Leaf up to the opening in his sleeve so that he could pour out water while keeping Leaf hidden. The stream of water was a light, non-transparent blue that sparkled with the lighting from the Lumos gems. It mixed with the tea-green water and swirled around like paint in water. Eventually, the water became bluer and bluer as the green water rushed out from the sides of the greystone and ran down the Lumos gems on the sides. They noticed the Trickling Tree shaking a little, the branches and the trunk growing larger and taller. The sides began growing browner and more cracked, like an aging tree. Leaves began falling out but more grew in their place, it was almost too big for the small pond to hold.

Zeeth created a larger set of walls and destroyed the initial greystone walls. The roots had grown outside the confines of the barriers and broke the floor a little.

Its outer shell began to peel off, splashing into the water. The roots grew far larger than it was before and the white ends grew out like nails. The resulting tree was almost exactly like what it was before, just with a smoother body and whiter leaves.

"Hmm. I guess even Leaf's water wasn't strong enough to feed it so quickly that the roots fall off."

But just as Page said that the Trickling Tree started thrashing one of it's largest roots around violently. It splashed the water around, soaking them all. But the root seemed to come looser near the middle, the white tips seemed to have lost all movement, swaying along with the rest of the root. Soon, the entire thing fell off with a thud and revealed a much smaller, greener root. The root absorbed nearly half the water in the small pool, expanding to twice its size, and the leftover, larger chunk was cast away.

"Incredible, it's as strong as a top tier Tonic of Nature."

"This root should be enough, right?"

"I'm not sure, I didn't think they shed their own roots. I thought we would let it age to the point where it could siphon magic around and grow before having one removed. The leaves on a live Trickling Tree are known to have the ability to turn the dark magic residue into normal mana again so I just wanted to age this guy some more so that it could siphon them real quick and gain strength. That's how they grow but this one is made of just good water and carbon, I don't know if these roots will work. They are also usually a lot darker, these are way too white, the sign of a young Trickling Tree."

Somewhere else in Melanis, Karkov had been standing in a large pile of rubble. It appeared to be some kind of lab, broken tubes, and spilled liquid was everywhere. A certain grey mixture had been sizzling on the ground, blood covered the walls. Many people dressed in white lab coats, now tainted red with blood, were cut up and strewn all over the floor. He grabbed what seemed like a frail human body which was instantly sucked up and disappeared into his hand.

He looked over at a beating heart connected to a computer, grabbed it, and bit into it ferociously, blood flying everywhere. Before any of the blood could hit the floor or walls, he had already run around and caught all of it in his mouth, not losing a single drop to the floor. A single drop hit his cheek and he licked it away.

"Damn. Not good enough. Need to eat more." his cold voice muttered out. He grabbed a few heads of the scientists off tables and broken glass and ate them, completely disregarding the strange liquid on them and shards of glass stuck to their horror-stricken faces. A few eyeballs that had been hooked up to other computers and floating in a circular glass orb wasn't spared either, the glass orbs were grabbed and crushed in his mouth, spilling the viscous purple liquid all over the floor as the eyeball was chewed and swallowed.

The same, long creepy smile etched across his face, stretching into his cheeks and he gave a piercing, cruel laugh. "Almost there."