11 Beacon Tower

If she could go fifty kilometers in a circle, then just how far can she go in a single direction ? 

Sera decided to try. 

This is the first time she has a superpower. What is life without a few stupid decisions ? 

Thus, she changed the shape of the forcefield. 

It was impossible to make a cone. At most, she can make an ellipsis kind of force field, her maximum range being one fifty kilometers. 

' System ! Are you recording ? ' Sera asked seriously. 

[ Yes. This is valuable data. ] 

The answer showed up right away. 

' Good. Then if I did not realize, point out the super dangerous, or super invasive species. I will kill them all. ' Sera decided. 

[ Twenty kilometers on northwest, there's a field of Parthipan. ] 

[ It's a harmless plant when grown in desert, but here it's invasive. ] 

The system informed Sera. 

Sera turned her little forcefield. She wanted to see if she could suck away at the energy of the plant without touching it. For a monster like Gigantea, she needs to keep in physical touch. For these little weeds, she can kill them from anywhere. Or at least that is what the voice in her brain says. 

Sera turned her force field to the plants. 

The next minute, little flickers of light vanished from the giant field, with each flicker killing a plant. 

In under a minute, every weed in that direction died. 

[ Nice. ] 

[ 5 O'clock, Hyacinth patch. ] 

Sera concentrated on it. 

' Wait ! What is that ? ' She wondered as she focussed on the water hyacinths. The growth is extremely lush. They are water plants. Where are they getting the water from to be growing this lush ? she mused. 

As she focused all her senses on the field, she saw it. The water mountain underneath the hyacinths. 

It was a steep uphill, not a pond. The entire mountain is attached to the thinnest part of the rock membrane. It is made of porous rock like sandstone, but the thickness of the layer is ten times that of other rocky layers. ' I can work with this ' Sera thought. 

Excitedly, she kept checking out the terrain all around this patch, making sure to double check the highs and lows of the hills. All she had to do was go to the peak of this water mountain, then grow the world tree seed that held the genes of sequoia and baobab. When the tree grows, the beacon will reach the necessary height needed to break through the atmosphere. As long as the beacon signal goes off, no one can pretend she is dead any more. 

Her mecha returned after rounds around the perimeter. When Sera saw a giant bee nest, she had the mecha pluck the nest. The honey was placed in the storage, bee larvae were added to the samples of living beings kept in the mecha. They were slowly being integrated into the mecha's exterior. Two gigantic horns grew on the head of her mecha, with a wide curve. Under the curve, the bee larvae were being genetically modified to transmit one of the senses in their bodies. 

Sera entered the Redwood man for the night. After all, this mecha is big and the cabin is more like a studio apartment. While the transformer mecha is great, It is not meant for sleeping in. When Sera entered the mecha cabin, vines grew in a criss-crossed pattern, creating a perfect bed for her. On the bed, soft fuzz grew on the leaves. Sera removed her space suit, then laid down to have a nap. 

She fell asleep in no time at all. 

During the time she was asleep, monsters attacked nonstop. Tentacles grew out of Redwood and killed them every time. By the morning, not even bodies are visible. 

First thing Sera did after her morning routine was to grow the wheat. Then, with the help of Redwood and her transformer, she harvested all the grown wheat. Then she retrieved the good berries and fruits that Redwood collected yesterday, discarded them all over the valley. As soon as she finished, she set out to the hyacinth mountain she had seen. 

The mountain is farther than she expected. Despite transforming the mecha she has into a car, and Redwood running beside her, it still took them four hours to get there. 

Sera directly crushed the plants, cleared a path to the top. Yesterday, she had only seen the way up, but not the top of the mountain. It is far higher and farther than she had imagined. 

They trekked up for almost one and half hours, the top is still not in sight. 

[ Oxygen value is too low. Recommending Suit up.  ] 

Sera wordlessly put on her space suit, at the same time, made her first pitch stop. 

The distance they covered should be almost twenty five kilometers from the bottom. Since yesterday, she had been itching to conduct an experiment with her force. She settled down in her seat, then concentrated. She made contact with the emerald on her neck, to see if it really radiated and absorbed life energy as she felt yesterday.

The emerald on her body heated up, melted slowly in the green lines on her skin, making its way to her heart. Sera did not notice this at all. 

She happily extended her force, made contact with the nearest hyacinth plant, gently molded the force field into a thread, wrapping around its stem. Then, she started pulling out the vitality of the plant to the emerald. The life energy of the plant came in touch with the emerald, got purified from dirty green to clean light green, then entered Sera's body. 

The hyacinth spawned through runners. Though she was holding only a little stem, it is connected to a patch spread over more than two hundred kilometers. It has grown all over the porous rock mountains, which are over eight hundred square kilometers. 

Sera sucked clean off this eight hundred square kilometer circle in five minutes. Sera lit the fire to now withered hyacinth. She wanted to know how far the plant spawned. Best way to know it is by using fire. It's only after reaching the summit did she realize how far the field spread. Just by a rough visual estimate, the smoke was rising from hundreds of meters away. She really underestimated the scale of interstellar. 

Now that she's at the summit, Sera cleared away the rest of the weed, set down the selected seed, and started giving it energy. 

Once the tree had grown to the size of a man, she started making strategic holes in the tree, forming a spiral across its trunk. During this time, she did not stop giving energy, only lowered it to a trickle. She could see that as the tree grew out more, the cut she has made has grown into a tree hole. At this point, Redwood picked up the prepared beacon tower and communication antennae, and set them on the crown of the tree. 

Sera continued giving energy to the tree, this time through the force field, with increasing and decreasing the flow. 

As she analyzed the tree with the force in tandem with lowering the energy feed, it seems that growth increases exponentially. Every time she completed one such cycle, a tree ring formed. Sera was elated upon realizing this. Doesn't this mean she is growing this tree following the natural growth pattern ? As long as she matches the energy cycle to the planet's seasons, the tree she has grown will survive quite well on this planet long after she leaves. 

Just like that, she continued. She grew the tree for an hour. During this time, she has learned a lot about using force and energy transfer. First of all, the force field need not form a thread to touch the plant. As long as her force is in touch with the plant, it's more than enough. Plant's mutate when they receive animal's energy. So, the energy must be separated even when she herself absorbs the energy. 

Now that she has established a communication tower and beacon sending SOS signals, the next task is to find resources. 

She ran a map test through the comm tower. 

" Are you … trying to pull my leg? " Sera asked hesitantly as she looked at the dense resources. She thought there would be some on this planet. After all, there were many student casualties. To think that there are so many signals ! at least half of them are mechas ! 

Are virtual systems supposed to have humor ? 

[ No.]

[ There were 4 casualties this year. ]

[102, 203, 167 and 189 casualties respectively in the past four years. ] 

[ In addition, there were the teams of expedition lost on this planet. ]

" You mean to tell me that college arranged expeditions to such a dangerous planet ? "  Sera exclaimed. 

[ Interstellar fighters are not civilians. ] 

[ This is the least dangerous planet compared to the rest of options. ] 

' Indeed. Why did she worry at all ? In this galaxy, the least valuable thing is human life. ' 

If a million die, another million will be born, that's all there is to it. 

She should just go to pick up trash.