Tree Uses Heal, Round 3 (2/2)

With all three [soul forge : red, blue and black], I draw the mana from all over my network of trees, and they appear as three separate balls of energy, one blue, one red, and one black. This distinction is also made possible by the improved mana-manipulation ability from the [grand mind tree].

And from the [soul realm], I took a bunch of the soul fragments, and started to form the shape of a hand.

Jura’s now asleep inside, the vines pumped nutrients and mana. And three viney feelers, ethereal, both ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’, reach into his body, and pulls his soul out. Just partly.

It revealed an elf-shaped soul, but with one hand gone. A gap. It’s rounded now, like a soul-version of a stump.

Two more feelers appear and touch the other, still present hand. The Grand Mind Tree glowed, and in sync, another feeler started to work on the floating hand, formed from the broken soul fragments of the dead. With the mental processing and storage power of the grand mind tree, the necessary ‘mental’ capacity to copy all the details of his existing hand. And we started to work.

Ivy and Trevor acts as my assistants. They helped maintain some of the mana flow, and regulated the [soul forge].

Cocooned in mana, it took a good four hours, and the floating hand now resembled the other, with the necessary corrections. Previously I could only do 3 hours. It had all the vessels, muscle strands and bone shapes, a perfectly flipped copy of the other hand.

Then, multiple ethereal feelers appeared, and it cut into the stump on Jura’s soul. It’s a slow process, slowly, using the fragments of souls to create all the components, and joining the existing soul to this new hand. Bit-by-bit, vein-by-vein, bone-by-bone, strands of muscle joined their counterparts on Jura's soul.

This took another four hours, and day had now turned into night. There were people looking for Jura, but Laufen sent them off.

The three glowing mana balls entered the ‘new’ hand, and then, the energies mixed and bound them together. Before I woke Jura, I checked.

And double-checked. I made sure I fixed every part of the connection. Trevor and Ivy helped to check as well.

Checking my own work took another two hours. I had to be sure. If I lose Jura to my own mistakes, I'm not sure how I can forgive myself.

But after that, I felt I was okay. Jura's body is stable. Gently his soul returned back to his body, and then I used the [biolab] functions to check another time. 15 minutes. He's alright, soul spring appears stable. There's a new section in there.

I injected something, and roused him from his slumber.

Jura woke up and shouted.

He felt immense, immense pain. Because what was once a ‘stump’, was now something he can feel in his soul. The loss, the lack of a hand, the pain that once was, all of it returned.

He shouted. But now, I can apply healing magic.

With more... surgery. And I sent him back into sleep. I had to wake him to check his response.

This time, with real physical feelers, inside a biopod, I cut into the physical stump on his body, and started to apply [healing]. And instead of healing back to a stump, it started to form a hand.

I did it slowly, making sure the recovery of the hand didn't cause any cuts or gaps that would leak blood. Trevor and Ivy helped monitor his vital stats.

And after another two hours of slow ‘reconstruction’, Jura woke up to find that he had... both his arms.

Jura was speechless when he saw his returned hand.

He touched it, and he felt it. And he just stared at his ‘new’ hand for a good 15 minutes, just moving his fingers, his wrist, his muscles.

I decided to just let him have his moment. He sat, and he cried for a while.

“TreeTree... you... fixed my hand. Only gods and their miracles can do such things. Maybe... maybe heroes too.”

Great, I took so long to do something a hero probably could do in his sleep.

“I didn’t know I could too. So... uh... be gentle with your new hand?” I wasn’t sure whether everything’s fine yet, even though all the stats from [biolab] are positive.

“Yeah.” He stretched it. “It... It still feels kind of strange to be having my own hand, and not Bamboo’s wood hand. I’ll be careful.”

When he stepped out of the biopod room, everyone gasped. Jura smiled, “Hey. TreeTree made a hand.”

-

“So... that tree makes you smarter?” Alexis asked. “Is it like your brain, but... bigger?”

“No. It’s just a special-tree type I have, increases research, and improves my mental resistances.”

“Huh. For something that takes up so much resources, and almost two years to grow, I expected it to be more... impressive. Like, warp space-time or something.”

“I believe there are abilities that I have yet to discover.”

“But I guess you needed it to fix Jura’s hand. That’s pretty good.” Alexis mused, and looked at the magical labs. “Too bad you can’t fix this magical interference. Could it create like a psychic bubble to push back the demon king’s interference? You know, like erm... Professor X’s ”

“Why?” How’d that link

“Well, you can fix this newsless world for a change.”

“Hah.” I’m a bit torn. Should I care about the outside world? I like just caring about growing more trees, spreading trees from place to place. I like just looking after what’s mine, my forests, and my valley, the trees that I have.

Wait. Was that me?

But then, the world’s never going to just let me be. A part of me, echoes the words of Gewa, that I have great power, and I should use it to fight the demons. The lives that could have been saved if I did something.

Yet, that earlier part of me resists that notion. I wonder whether this is the 'tree' part of me that just wants to mind my own business, and focus on just growing trees. Helping trees. Trees are my friends, my family, and they are mine, in a way these elves and humans can never be. Maybe a part of me feels that they, these trees are... me. I sometimes think about where all these come from, a yearning for self preservation?

A collective instinct for self-preservation, drawn from the thoughts of all the trees?

Is this world, and all these artificial minds and grand mind tree, unknowingly influencing my thought processes? Is it deliberate? Or is there something like how the gods can subtly guide one' thoughts in a particular direction without one knowing?

Again, why do my mind wander like that? I was having a discussion on the demons, was I not?

”TreeTree, you... okay?” Alexis seemed puzzled. “You just stopped... talking.”

”I... have a lot on my mind.”

”Ah, because you actually have a mind, now.” Alexis pointed to the mind tree. She laughed. ”I was wondering where you did your thinking, like... is there a brain in your tree? Or are you like jellyfish and the roots in the ground function like some neural network?”

”Uh.” Well, I’m beginning to suspect it is some kind of neural network. Or is it overstimulation from all the data coming in from all those other trees?

”Never mind. I often make jokes that only I find funny.” Alexis shrugged.

”Yes. Back to subject. Demons.” There's a big fight with the demon ogres.

The Takde's force of 1,500 high leveled adventurers and fighters was super impressive, and it managed to crush the force at the demon city. The battle lasted for about half a day, and they were successful.

Of course, I had some trees nearby to watch the action. The demon ogres are just giant versions of their own demonoid soldiers, nothing much to be afraid of, and their combat ability is less than a captain. The kingdom of Takde exaggerated the threat, but I suppose that helps to ensure a smooth defeat of the demons.

The adventurers and generals did have to work a bit harder against the few demon-generals, but they still vastly outleveled most of the demons.

And, as a bystander, I witnessed many high level skills used by some of the higher leveled adventurers.

Yet, even the best of them are just about level 80 to 90.

I suppose its a bit of a letdown, on both the adventurer and demon fronts, but hey, guess the variants the demon-rods make aren't that overpowered, unless the source itself is powerful. Or maybe... there are more powerful variants?

Maybe the demons capture a dragon cave or cemetery and start to spawn dragon-demons?

That, would be a hell of a sight.

Announcement

sorry for the delay, life happened.

Update for 28/11/2019. I've started  advance chapters on Patreon. For $3, read one chapter/one week ahead. Regular chapters will be released on 4 Dec 2019.

Why? Because I'm temporarily jobless (between jobs) XD