Treelecommunications (1/2)
Year 82 Month 1
A new year, but same old threats. The demons found the volcano, and now we fight a three-way battle. The native golems, the demonic forces who seemed to be interested in the same mana-source in the volcano, and my beetles. This to me, is sufficient confirmation that the demons are looking for mana-rich sources, and so maybe they will look to my [ThreeTrees of Mana] soon.
Without the walkers, it isn’t that difficult to defend these two locations, but I am having some trouble with the demon knights, so I do need to deploy Horns, Lausanne, and the Valthorns. I mean, I could root strike the knights, and I do every now and then, to delay and postpone the battle until I can get Lausanne and gang into battle.
The reasoning is really simple. I’m way too high level that defeating the knights is really quite pitiful for my experience gain, even with my overpowered experience gain. It’s far more fruitful to save mobs of this level to Lausanne and the budding initiates, such that they get to a level where they can be of some use against the demons.
At first, they were excited.
But after one full month of constant battles throughout the volcanic area against the demons, Lausanne and the initiates are beginning to realise the enormity of the task.
“Wars are not nice.” One of the young initiates, she’s 8, as she sat next to Lausanne at a campsite. She sipped on a small wooden flask containing a kind of healing fluid. There’s a few subsidiary trees here so they benefit from my [healing aura] and [demonic suppression aura], so it’s a relatively good campsite.
One of the captains, who came along nodded. “Good that you realise that when you’re young. It’s not a nice feeling going out to fight, and realising you might not come back. We’re lucky that our Tree Spirit watches over us, in this area.”
The volcanic area’s outer area is mostly conquered by my subsidiary trees by now, effectively forming a ring of trees to block out the demons. I call it, the Volcano-TreeLine. That didn’t stop the demons from trying to break through, occasionally with 500-1,000 strong forces.
Lausanne sighed, she massaged her left shoulder. A wooden vine surrounded her, an effect of the special tree familiar. She’s level 42 from a whole month of demon-fighting, most of it from taking on a few demon knights. “Doing it every day is quite different from fighting occasionally.”
The captain smiled. “You may be a genius, Lady Lausanne, but fighting daily is a reality for most common soldiers and guards in small villages.” There was a group of soldiers who also came along. It didn’t look good to leave the fighting to young kids.
She nodded. Jura did tell her stories of the past, when Freeka was still the village of Freeka, the men frequently patrolled the woods to defeat monsters. But still, nothing beats the experience of active duty, to know what it’s like. “If only we can stop this for good.”
The captain smiled and patted Lausanne on her lean shoulder. “Honestly, New Freeka has it good. The protection of the Aeon’s beetles meant we soldiers can fight more carefully, and less frequently.”
Lausanne twirled her right hand, and the vine formed itself into a spear. “Ah, let’s not have this talk.” She twirled her fingers again, and the spear unmade itself into a vine, and then into a wooden sword. This is one of her daily practice routines, to hone her mastery over the flexible vines from the special familiar. She would alternate the vine’s forms, a spear, a sword, a whip, a lasso, a bow.
The rest of the initiates watched. To them, it’s a bit like a magic trick.
They would rest for an hour, before continuing their journey home. Thankfully, the beetle army carried them. A few of the beetles have things resembling seats, and since each beetle is about the size of a large rhino, about 2-3 could fit on each beetle. Except for one of the centaur Valthorns. She’s one of the younger Valthorns, from the 2nd batch, but centaurs tend to be bigger and larger despite having similar ages. She would gallop next to the beetles, and her stamina is pretty good.
The soldiers who return to relieved family members, happy to see their family returning safe. The Valthorns would mostly be greeted by the ladies of their orphanage.
The orphanage is frankly overloaded, the number of kids aged 3 to 13 is close to 1,100, and Laufen and Belle are tasked with supervising the expansion of two additional buildings. The population is generally supportive of the orphanage, so there really wasn’t any challenge in terms of funding or land, though the politicians see it like a private military academy, given the extensive combat training in their curriculum, so according to my people-watcher Ivy, there are little pockets of discontent.
In fact, the expansion of the orphanage meant about 30% of the Order’s budget is now used to fund the charitable segment. Both the death-services, orphanage, and birth gifts all do not generate money.
One of the priests suggested ‘Tithes’ or ‘Donations’, but I shot down the idea. I feel if people start giving money to priests, that’s going to just send us into a downward spiral of corruption. So no, I insist on the priests being paid a salary, and no donations or tithes.
Instead, the Order has to do work for money. We run a vegetable market, food market, and herbs market.
“Herbal soup, herbal soup.” Well, there’s actually a lesser-variant of ginseng, grown by our herbalist. It doesn’t have the full effect of the [Ginseng Plant], and this variant’s boost is temporary. We thought of using the term ginseng, but then that might ruin the branding of the real ginseng plant, so decided for just plain old herbal root soup.
“Ginger tea, ginger tea!” An employee of the Order shouted.
“Flavored olives!”
“Oranges!”
“Cotton!! And clothes!”
Yeah. A market. I thought of having a more upmarket feel to the premises, but somehow it just organically transformed into this chaotic mess of a market that wouldn’t feel out of place in any Asian or middle eastern metropolis. I wonder whether this is what the Grand Bazaars of Baghdad would be like.
I would usually tune out the shouting match in the markets. There’s only so many times you can bear a middle aged lady repeatedly shouting, “Potatoes for sale, Potatoes for sale.”. Listen to it for too long, I find that those words end up repeating in my thoughts too.
Thank goodness, like the [rootnet], I can tune out all these chatter.
But Ivy likes the market. She says the gossip in the markets is her top 5 ways of getting information. The things ladies share with each other while haggling over carrots and tomatoes is quite... interesting.
95% made up, by the way, but still, that 5% is worth it.
Oh. And the bigger orphanage kids are usually tasked with security. If there weren’t in the orphanage, they’d be the ones stealing. I thought it’s a good way to deter the food-thieves, and you know, it takes a thief to catch a thief.
Until we got some rather interesting comments from the general populace.
“Why can’t we just give our surplus away?”
“Can we just run charity kitchens for the poor and hungry?”
Hmmmm... the council already does have some kind of community kitchen, a legacy of the New Freekans’ origins as refugees. The generation that came and survived the move to New Freeka generally appreciate the community kitchen.
“Never mind.” I decided to just stick to the plan.
-
The little tree of prayer shipped to Ransalah has safely arrived and planted in a small public garden. A rarity in Ransalah, from what I hear.
Sadly, because it’s way too far from any of my other subsidiary trees, it is not connected by root, to the rest of the rootnet, so I can’t really communicate with that tree. All I know is, it lives, and it’s there in that little garden somewhere.
My [rootnet] needs to get some kind of wide-area network service. I mean, do we have like 4G transmission trees? Or [Wide-Area Network]?
Ah. Nothing much I could do, except to find a way to extend my roots into that area of town, so for now, I hope that [tree of prayer] is well taken care of. It’ll take a few generations of rootnet upgrades before I’ll get there.