65

Halfway through the night in the early hours of the morning, everybody had been gathered together from their hunts and to the grove where they offered their services to the golem. However, for them it was not as simple as walking up and saying, "Need a hand?" Nope, they actually had work to do.

Go was the next Nature Guardian after me, which made him the eighth Guardian Spirit and raked in fifty reputation for him on top of his class specific earnings. His task, though, was to help expand the borders of the grove by leveling the surroundings hills. How he did it did not matter as long as it got done, which meant that I could assist in the labor.

This job mostly consisted of me transmuting Hardened Hickory hammers and shovels for us to displace soil with on top of our shared Quick Quake skills. Unlike me, though, Go did not have Elementalism to buff his elemental magic or reduce its cost so his quakes were just noticeably weaker than my own. This was not much of an issue until our mana ran out.

When our mana ran out it came down to cratering and shoveling the next hills while waiting for our mana to replenish. In the area around the grove we actually received a mild mana recovery perk from the potent mana, but Go did not have the same level of mana recovery that I did to begin with. His Agility and Endurance skills were his main stats while Strength had been his spare point pool until acquiring magic skills.

Even now, though, it was Intelligence that he invested in to increase his overall mana and slightly boost the strength of his magics.

When Oleander and Merch arrived they became the next guardians of nature as well as the ninth and tenth Guardian Spirit players. It was probably around now that the titles would drop in value to epic since even Merch's tenth title was gold. However, there were two high value titles still involved with each of them to continue raising the average for our clan.

Reputation points was honestly not what I would have considered the most ideal ranking to make myself and my clan known for, but it really was basically the best representation of achievements in general even if not the player's more individual aspects. As well, a clan's total reputation would speak of the clan's overall potential.

Would I have preferred to be famous for being an unparalleled fighter or mage or craftsman or all of the above and include the clan in that consideration? Of course! Did I have that option? Not yet!

The nameless Golem Guardian Spirit or Evergreen Golem ended up giving everybody the initial task of expanding the grove. Once everybody was finally at work, though, it eventually became my quest's part two. However, once all of us were together it was little effort at all to pair up and break down hills while leveling out the ground with quakes.

By the time the sun's first rays began lightening the sky, we had expanded the grove by roughly a hundred yards in every direction. This was when the golem finally told us to rest.

[Completed Nature's Need Pt2]

[Awarded: +300XP, +10% affinity with Evergreen Golem, (small) Farming Rights, (small) Housing Rights]

While we rested, the golem traveled about the edge of the turned soil surrounding the grove and cast out seeds into the soil. From these seeds swiftly grew small trees that leaned out over the ground as they grew outward from the expanded territory. As they grew larger with longer limbs, these hardwood trees began curling up the sides of neighboring hills or even filling the shallow valleys between them with their leafy branches.

Finally, these trees reached up with their limbs to creature natural walls roughly fifteen feet in height with plenty of places to climb, hide, and fight from. Left open, though, was a wide entryway large enough to fit our wagons side by side between the trees. This driveway of sorts also led straight to the road.

Planting a single seed just outside the grove, the Guardian Spirit grows a single massive oak tree's trunk out from the grove that reminded me of the Elder Oak by Sierra. When this tree reached about thirty feet out passed the wall of other trees, it suddenly disconnected from its root base and just lay there as the stump shriveled away into the ground. Then the inside of the tree began breaking down into dust particles and blowing out all around the grove.

After the tree was done hollowing out it revealed a broad wooden road leading up to the grove as well as a tall second story loft space. Coming to standing with my party and I, the golem says, "This where you… and yours… stay. Will make land for you raise plants. Other time. You leave, I sleep."

Then the golem simply lumbered away into the grove while my team and I received system prompts asking us to leave the current quest area. Once we were outside, though, I received an update prompt for the quest.

[The Golem Guardian Spirit must rest to recover its strength, return at any time after three days from now to begin Pt3 of Nature's Need]

"Everybody get that update?" I ask after reading the system prompt, looking around to see the others had done the same. "Alright, we finally have our first real group quest. The Delai Family was mostly my thing to begin with, but this time I got to include you guys right at the start! Alright, let's group hunt our way back to camp and let the dragons rest."

Even though it took more than two hours to get back to camp, our group was so large that we only saw one or two confrontations an hour along the way. The first two were one pack of mixed kobolds and then one pack of entirely mature kobolds but they died quickly even though they numbered either over twenty or just under twenty on either occasions. They just were not as strong as our collective firepower, even without the land dragons!

The third time was an incredible blessing in the form of over twenty wyrms. Among them was a rare Elite Wyrm Viper. This was just a common upgraded version of a normal mob with boosted physical stats but the loot it dropped was wonderful.

Unlike normal vipers who had horizontal mouths, these wyrms had vertical mouths that split their faces down the middle as well as worm-like wiggling bodies that had tubes instead of a proper spine. Unlike the regular wyrm vipers, this elite model had a face that was four separate mandibles that each bore a single long, hook-like venomous fang. As well, it was about five feet longer than the others and more than a foot bigger around at the fattest area of its body.

The elite dropped all four mandibles, fangs, its hide, and its core but sadly did not drop any venom.

The fourth wave of enemies was a small fleet of giant hornets the size of large dogs. These put even the land dragons on edge and we had little choice but the burn the meadow around us to desensitize and blind the insects with smoke. Once the flames were out of the way, thirty giant flying insects were dealt with in roughly a minute.

Despite the face that we were used to fighting superior numbers of enemies as a team, fighting different monsters required different tactics so we could not simply form up around our tanks the way we did at the Elder Oak. In fact, to deal with the bees, we formed ranks around our mages while our familiars did most of the work. They handled the regulars while we dealt with the elite in about the same time it took to clean up the bees.

A few people took hits but nobody was actually bit and exposed to venom so we were safe for the most part. I personally took a sting in the arm from a bee, but all it did was trigger Assimilate which triggered Corrupt while the bee was still attached to my body. I learned a new toxin as well as acquired the ability to 'Replicate Chitin'.

For once the others were actually happy to hear about this achievement even though it did not come with any actual achievements. The fact that I had an innate armor ability just increased my abilities as a front liner as well as a rearguard for protecting our back row players. Even though I was not really fond of my grosser abilities, they were still useful.

When we finally got back to camp we let the land dragons rest and cast healing spells over them while they slept. To kill time I made the others get to work on their crafting skills while I worked on my skills. Namely, I once again emptied my mana to summon spirits.

None of the spirits in this batch were sentient but they still managed to raise Geist's abilities.

[Geist has grown stronger. +1 to all stats]

[Elder Midnight Hauntings for One Hundred Layers now has a 50% chance to cast a Spirit Slash worth 50% true damage when blocked and 30% chance to cast when blocking]

After enriching one of the first things that had made me unique in this game, I went to work training my Transmutation skill by shaping an elder root spear into different weapons and shapes as well as changing the properties of the mana inside or the structure of the wooden items. Over the course of an hour-and-a-half in which the land dragons slept, I actually managed to raise my Transmutation skill by more than ten levels.

[Unlocked Wood Material Enchantment: Natural Strength Enhancement]

[+30XP]

[Natural Strength Enhancement: Lv1: After studying the properties of different materials in the same substance category you can now enhance the natural strength of (Wood) materials to make them hit harder and lost longer with (5)% more strength]

[Unlocked Wood Material Enchantment: Natural Pliability Enhancement]

[+30XP]

[Natural Pliability Enhancement Lv1: After studying the properties of different materials in the same substance category you can now enhance the pliability of (Wood) materials to make them more supple and resilient with (5)% more pliability]

[Unlocked General Enchantment: Conduction Enhancement]

[+50XP]

[Conduction Enhancement Lv1: After studying the way in which mana can interact and change the matter it is imbued into, you have learned how to increase the mana conductivity of most any materials so that they can contain more mana and thus more can be done with the material. Weapons, armor, tools, and general equipment with enhanced conductivity can act as better extensions of yourself for different forms of spell casting, becoming (10)% more efficient in the use of mana]

After hitching the land dragons up to the wagons, though, everyone returned to their traveling positions and I started the Assimilation process for a Hardened Hickory sapling while the others voted on Fast Traveling.

[Assimilated: Hardened Hickory]

[+50XP]

[Learned Skill: Hardened Hickory's Cell Wall]

[+50XP]

[Hardened Hickory's Cell Wall Lv1: After Assimilating a young Hardened Hickory tree you can now produce the cell wall or bark tissue of the tree on the outside of your body. This will increase your physical defenses by (10)% by overlaying the grain of your skin with bark scales but will also cause Fire Aversion which makes you (20)% weaker to fire damage]

Dismissing these prompts after coming out of Fast Travel during the third calendar day since leaving Sierra- even though this was probably our fifth day cycle on the road- I guide the land dragons off the side of the road before checking our travel progress for the day. We had managed to travel just over twenty miles from our previous camp.

The mountains in the path of the sunset had not grown much larger but far to the north could now bee see a tall and dense foggy forest of white trees and smoke-like air. Because this forest was a lowland area at the very foot of a mountain range it experienced regularly cold climates from the surrounding mountain range. However, the general region was in just north of the middle of a continent not unlike North America in equator positioning and general size scale to the rest of the planet.

It was currently late summer or early fall, so the weather for the rest of the region on this side of the mountains was still warm. This was what created the ever-present veil of fog and cycling snow in the Winter Wood all year round. It was honestly a wonderful fantasy setting with natural realism potential but I personally REALLY disliked the cold.

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