Trials (8)

After finishing his preparation, Ash woke his little buddy up.

Keen had been living in the forest ever since he was born, so a little poke to his feet was enough to get him up on his feet.

He almost flew away as fast as he could when he felt something touching his talons, but after seeing a familiar face, he calmed down and cawed.

"I assume you are asking what's up, so I will tell you. I've solved the problem!"

Ash answered before continuing his explanation. Making sure he used as few words as possible and used more body language for his explanation.

Keen saw and heard Ash's solution and nodded his head in agreement.

It didn't involve Ash's dreaded brute force teaching method, and it also wouldn't change Keen's syrinx to a human's vocal chord, so the two were now in agreement.

Ash inserted his mycelium into Keen once more and told Keen to prepare himself.

Keen gripped the wooden table tightly, held his wings close, and cawed.

Giving Ash the go ahead signal.

With the DNA Ash had just stored in his seed a couple of minutes ago, Ash sent it into Keen's body, integrating it with Keen's brain.

The process was less quiet than Ash had expected, though.

Keen's whole body twitched, almost causing him to unintentionally fly away from his jerking wings.

Ash almost stopped the process. He didn't want his little friend to get hurt too much, even with the slug's super regeneration keeping Keen safe.

Fortunately, his mycelium soon told him that Keen wasn't in pain. The twitching and jerking were only caused by the process of adding a component to Keen's brain.

When the twitching stopped, the process was also done.

But Ash kept his mycelium still inside Keen's body.

"Alright now, for the second part. Wish me well, buddy."

Ash copied the DNA that had been integrated into Keen, but isolated a certain part from it, and not extracting that part.

On the other hand, he extracted another part, one that didn't belong to the original DNA, but one that he would use to merge with parts of the original one.

His seed easily stored the two DNA, and Ash finally retracted his mycelium back.

The first part of the process had gone well, and Ash wasn't that worried about it in the first place.

What made him gulp was this second process.

'Here goes nothing,' He thought as Ash closed his eyes.

The mycelium grew once more, but it didn't spread out from his hands.

Instead, the mycelium spread itself all over Ash's body, spreading their minuscule roots inside him.

More knowledge bombarded Ash's brain.

He already knew some of them from his biology classes, but the information about his own body was never this clear.

But the knowledge that would be headache inducing if not for his passive mental ability was the new knowledge about all the things that his body had adopted.

The magical DNA that was responsible for creating his steelbark skin, the ones that could summon vines, and even his myriad of poisons and venoms were all included in the knowledge.

'Who would have guessed that even magical abilities were recorded in a magical DNA…?'

Ash let his brain slowly process all this knowledge first before he finally proceeded to the second part of his plan.

Letting the mycelium touch his brain, Ash inserted the two DNA strands that he stored within the seed at the same time.

He meticulously arranged them so that they would come out as one, combined DNA.

With the magical power of the seed, he had successfully done it.

But now comes the adaptation part.

The DNA arrived in him and began multiplying, following the command that it had within its structure.

As a result, the repeat of what happened to Keen happened.

Ash's foot kicked against the ground, launching him head-first into the ceiling of the cave.

Not stopping there, poor Keen was forced to fly out of the cave as Ash accidentally punched the wooden table into pieces.

"Help restrain me, buddy!"

The doppelganger jumped into action. Its vines began bending and twisting in the air to wrap around Ash.

The doppelganger had a little problem managing Ash's strength, but he graciously helped his buddy by buffing the doppelganger with the buffing thorns.

Finally, sealing Ash inside a thick, layered cocoon of vines.

About 15 seconds had passed until a voice was heard, "MMHM!"

The doppelganger heard it and released its vines, setting Ash free.

"Thank you again." Ash gave the doppelganger a thumbs up before walking out of the cave.

Ash shouted to the large clearing, "Keen! I'm done, come back here!"

Several cawing echoed into his ears, letting Ash know that Keen was flying between the hanging roots of the banyan tree above.

But when he heard the caws, Ash stood still on his spot, his eyes staring wide at the raven flying towards him.

What Ash had heard wasn't simply caws, but, 

"You're done? Make sure you're really done! I don't want to get smashed!"

Keen was about to land on Ash's shoulder, but the latter caught him mid-air and started spinning around.

"Keen! I understood what you're saying! I understand! Wohooo!"

Several caws that felt more like cries resounded as the answer.

"Yes! I understand! Please! Stop! I'm a fragile creature! I don't want to dieeee!"

Ash finally stopped spinning and forced the poor raven into a tight hug instead.

Fully incapacitating Keen to even release another caw.

Fortunately for the raven, Ash soon released him and put the raven on his head instead.

"Now we can understand each other! I don't have to teach you English for a whole year!"

As if acknowledging Ash's success, the voice finally returned to him.

"Congratulations, child. You have succeeded very quickly. Exceeding our expectations once more."

Ash agreed, he was surprised himself.

Who would've thought that he needed to use the doppelganger's DNA, one that was responsible for connecting it to Ash's mind?

He had to put the copy of the DNA into Keen, but then he needed to modify it a little.

Keeping the parts that were responsible for transferring the intention of the target, while changing the target itself.

What he did to the DNA before copying it to his body was change the object of the DNA from himself to Keen, making it possible for him to understand the raven.

With the two of them having the DNA that connected them with each other's minds, communication between them was as easy as if they were twins who had been together from birth.

He thanked the spirit of the banyan tree, or whatever the being was, for giving him this trial.

He might not have gotten rewards from the tree for completing the trial.

But now he had a pet raven that could help him scout.

And a cute little friend that he could talk to.

"Now you only need to pass one last trial. Succeed, then you will become the ruler."