Homesteading in a fantasy world

Pov Arabella

Before I knew it, I was in front of the tree, and both of my hands were against it. Then my trait triggered. The rest of the world fell away, leaving me in darkness except for the tree that towered over me. At first, it was quiet, but then I could hear a hum getting louder. It didn’t take long for it to start hurting, but when I tried to back away from the tree, I couldn’t; I was stuck to it.

Then I remembered my training, and instead of trying to pull away, I pushed towards the tree and felt my hands sink into the bark a little bit. All of a sudden, the bark started to grow over my hands and slowly make its way towards my shoulders.

I needed to stop this from happening, but it was so hard to resist. An image of Rich standing in front of us while hordes of monsters were trying to get us flashed through my mind.

How could I be weaker than him? Immediately, I started to push the bark back, but it was still so difficult. I do not know how long it took me, but I was drenched in sweat when I finally pushed all the bark away from my skin. If I relaxed even for a moment, my progress would be undone.

During all of this, my body was continuously heating up, but that was because I couldn’t enter the tree. During all this time, both of our beings wanted to be pulled together, but I needed to let it happen in a controlled way; otherwise, I would just become a part of this tree and not bonded with it.

The struggle continued, but slowly I was able to push my hands deeper into the tree. It was an incredible juggling act because while I needed to enter the tree and merge together, I couldn’t let the bark consume me, which it was constantly trying to do.

My struggle finally ended when I managed to pull my left foot into the tree. The last part of me that had been outside of it. Now, I didn’t know what was going to happen because no one had told me what would happen afterwards.

It was as if I became one with the tree and could see what it saw, hear what it heard, and feel what it felt. It was a weird perspective to have because it was so different from my own. Even then, I could still feel some commonalities between our species: the need for food, to have offspring, and simply enjoying the beauty of life.

The tree showed me its most favourite memories. Most of them were of beautiful night skies filled with endless stars. But there were a few memories of a person I also knew.

It seems that the tree liked the person because he had helped lighten its burden and given its offspring a chance at life. Those were only brief memories, perhaps calling them memories would be a stretch, but it seems even trees can remember.

Then I felt everything click together as it was supposed to, and the next moment, I fell out of the tree onto the snowy ground. What I found was new strength coursing through me and a clarity of mind that has helped our leaders be the wisest among us.

What I was, however, was completely exhausted, and I could only give a brief smile to Rich, who was standing over me before I passed out.

Pov Rich

I watched as Arabella rushed next to the tree, and when she touched it, my energy sight was basically blinded for a moment. After blinking the spots away from my eyes, I saw an incredible dance of energy moving between Arabella and the tree.

What I didn't expect was for her hands to sink a little bit into the bark without destroying it. Then the bark started to crawl over her skin, and it looked like she was in pain.

So, this wasn't just a simple bonding. If she failed, I am guessing she would die. That would truly be unfortunate, but I also couldn’t help her. What was happening was way too complex for me to understand. That didn't stop me from absorbing as much information as possible. Her battle seemed to go on forever, but slowly, she was merging with the tree.

It took her 12 hours to step into the tree, and then about three hours after that, she walked out of the tree. I quickly rushed to check if she was okay, and she gave me a small smile before passing out.

"I guess you’re more than fine, but let's get you out of here." She somehow felt heavier and more substantial than before. Fortunately, it didn’t matter as I was strong enough to easily carry her back home.

Fortunately, this wasn’t a night that I needed to sleep, so I could give her my bed while I went out to meditate. Sitting on the bridge that I built, which seemed like so long ago, I started to meditate on what I saw.

It was an incredibly complex process, but I think I could figure out a simpler way that would allow me to connect myself to trees as well, but nowhere even close to what Arabella did just a few hours ago.

When I came out of my meditation, communing with the land and nature around me, I had figured out a bit of what I wanted, but it was a good starting point and something that I would eventually figure out.

When I came out of my meditation, I found that Arabella was sitting next to me on the railing, deep in thought but quite energetic. "I assume everything went well?" I asked her, and she quickly confirmed my assumption.

"Up for a little spar?" she asked, but when I felt her energy, it seemed that she was still rank 2. A little bit of exercise wouldn’t be too bad, but perhaps I was being too confident. Who knows what the bond actually gave her. I should be at least a little bit careful.

"Some morning stretching would be nice," I said while getting up. She gave me a mocking smile and started to walk to the other side of the river and closer to the forest, where there was plenty of open ground. When we had walked a little bit, she pulled out two daggers. "How about we do not destroy this place. I assume you have similar weapons?"

My response was to pull out two daggers: one from my lower back holster and another smaller one from my tattoo storage. The next moment she was in front of me using some kind of movement ability, I matched her and backed away an equal distance with my own movement ability. She rushed in again, but this time I stepped towards her.

I was able to block one attack and deliver another, while she was able to block one and deliver two attacks. My attack moved her and crashed through her block, giving me one point, but I was only able to block one of her attacks, and the other one hit my armor, giving her a point. She truly was a lot tougher, as my attack should have easily sent her flying at least a few feet.

We stopped the fight when I reached 25 points and she had 18. The fight had actually made me sweat a bit, which was truly nice. She was in a similar condition, but we were both smiling widely. "You know, Rich, you should not be that fast and flexible and that big. It's simply unfair."

"You’re one to speak. Your hands move way too fast. Do you perhaps have an ability that allows you to have a phantom hand or something?" Of course, she didn't answer me.

It was, however, time to get back to the Connection, and I also needed to bring Francis with me. That reminded me of an unfortunate truth. While Francis was strong enough to pull the old wagon if it was empty, he was not yet strong enough to do so while it had stuff in it.

We still needed him, but I now needed to pay a lot more to get a different wagon. Eventually, Francis will be able to rank up or get strong enough through training, but that time wasn't now. At least he was quite excited to be able to start pulling heavy things once again.

It turns out that the road-making device we had made for him had gotten easy for him to pull over the last summer. We were all truly fortunate that Francis likes pulling heavy things so much.