Alright, now that I have my new puppet, I think it’s about time I took some time to relax again.

  Rather than leave my new wooden puppet, I made a throne for it to sit in. I only really need it for when I have visitors, and other than the minor rustling I heard earlier, there isn’t much going on around here. In fact, it’s even been a while since I’ve seen any Orc or other monsters. I guess my little tornado scared them all off.

  Anyways.

  Once the throne was made, I decided to fancy it up. My last puppet sat on a rather bland looking chair. I wanted this one to have a nice and pretty place to sit. So, I added a few eccentricities to it. The entire body was given a nice finished look by compacting the wood in a way to make it look smooth. I lacked any linseed oil for a proper finish, but I think it still looks nice. I added a few curves here and there, and when I was done, it looked like something out of a movie. I was truly proud of my work.

  Then I started a bit of a dance.

  I had been in this world for too long without being able to burst out into dance, so I took the time to loosen up with a floss. I whipped my puppet’s hips around, throwing my arms by my side, and just had fun. I must have looked like an idiot to anyone out there that was looking. Good thing there wasn’t anybody to see me.

  When I got my puppet to its new resting place, I readied myself for a long nap. I had made great progress in my elemental pursuits and only had fire left to add to make me fully elemental. Once I had all four elements down, I might try for “higher tier” elements, like lightning or darkness. I want to try to figure out healing magic, which I assume would require a whole lot of mental imagery and biology lessons, but I don’t have any willing test subjects. That and I promised myself to try to avoid needlessly harming wildlife around here. I could experiment with a few Orcs, but that would be needless torture on the poor bastards.

  Regardless, I deserve a break. In fact, I might just nap until something interesting happens without my direct interference. I think I deserve it, given how much effort I have been exerting lately.

  That being said – er, thought? – I spread my awareness partially through my branches and vines and reminisce about my old life and different ways I can abuse that old knowledge to gain more power in this life. I’ve done well for myself so far, but I can always go further.

  Three days. That’s how long Brom waited for something to happen in the clearing. He was looking for literally anything, any movement in the branches, a shift in the mana in the area, any indication that there was some sort of life in this clearing. But nothing came. Well, except the Orcs.

  The Orcs came in droves, always in their groups of three. Brom made sure that they never noticed him, but he was sure that they would cause something to happen with the earth golems that made up the ground in the area. Yet when the Orcs tramped their way through the dirt, nothing happened. It was almost enough to make Brom question whether or not there really were golems there.

  But I saw them with my own eyes. It’s impossible that they AREN’T there. Two giant, size changing earth golems! And why hasn’t the damn dryad done anything? They usually kill most aggressive monsters that trespass in their domain. These Orcs should definitely qualify for trespassing. Hell, I should qualify for trespassing with how close I am. This is strange. Very strange.

  Brom started packing his little campsite when he started hearing voices from the other side of the clearing. People were here. And they were coming from the direction of the road. After grabbing his gear, Brom moved to get a better position to eavesdrop. He didn’t know what the party composition was, only that there were three people. He was sure to keep himself hidden until he learned more about them.

  “By the gods, this was his clearing right? This is the same place as before, but how the hell did he get so… big?”

  A big man with a big axe in his hands came into my view. He was followed by another two who looked very familiar, but it looks like these two got an upgrade to their equipment. It almost makes me suspicious of if they sold my berries like they promised not to.

  I reached out to Axel and the others with a tendril of thought that I split three ways to connect them all. This time though, rather than start from one of my vines which were now way up in the air, I originated the tendril of thought from my roots under the trio.

  “It’s nice to see the Laughing Vipers again. It has been a while. What kept you waiting?”

  All three jumped a bit when I started talking. I stifled a little laugh, though I did let some humor sink through the connection.

  “Well, it’s not exactly an easy thing dealing with a rich merchant with connections like Lilly’s family. Her step-mother wanted the four of us hanged for allowing her children to die on our watch. She refused to accept that we didn’t even get to see her children, other than Lilly. They’ve all been eaten by the damn Orcs by the time we got here.” Came the response from Axel. If I remember correctly, he was the leader of the group.

  “The four of you? But you are only three. Don’t tell me she tried to have Lilly hanged as well! I swear I’ll lay siege on the damn city if you tell me she’s dead for something not her fault!”

  I let waves of anger crash into them, which caused all three to drop to their knees, clutching their heads and wailing in agony. It took a few seconds for me to regain my composure enough to realize I was harming them. I quickly withdrew my mind from them to regain control of myself. I immediately felt bad for them and dropped a total of six Health Berries, two for each of them, as an apology.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  As I brought the berries over using my new puppet, Axel was telling me about what happened when they got there. Apparently, he was able to recover faster because he had a mental defense skill. I definitely needed to see if I could learn one of those. Right now, my mind is my greatest weapon.

  “She’s fine. I can promise you that. She’s actually the one who helped us upgrade our gear as a thank you for saving her so many times. Her step mother tried to have her killed. That led to her dad filing for divorce, then a few low-level assassins were sent Lilly’s way, but we were there to protect her. That led to her step mom getting hanged, as we had one of the assassins confess as proof that she was the one to hire them, and now she’s completely safe. Though her dad did up the security of their stores because of all this. I’m sure the two have a lot to talk about though.”

  I listened impatiently, though I was sure to keep a tight control on my emotions from now on. I can’t believe that someone would send assassins after their own daughter, step or not. That did make me feel largely appreciative of the Laughing Viers trio though. I’m glad Lilly had such good people protecting her. I wonder if there’s anything I can do to help them as a thank you. They did save my first human friend in this world, after all.

  “I see. Thank you for saving her so many times. The three of you will always have a safe place to stay while in my clearing. That being said, can I do anything for you?”

  Archy looked around after eating his berries and commented, “I see you redecorated. What happened to all the grass? Where did the little hut you had built go?”

  Oof. I forgot about that.

  “So, I might have gotten a little bit frustrated at one point while trying to build a golem. The puppet I’m using is actually a similar prototype to what I was going to have my golem look like, but I couldn’t get it to be autonomous. After a few days of effort with no reward, I might have thrown a minor tantrum as a result. That led to the whole thing being flattened. And as for the grass, well that’s a result of the dirt puppets I’ve made. The grass just kind of gets folded into the dirt, and I forgot one time to filter the grass out, so it died, and now it’s all dirt. Oops.” I leaked a bit of an embarrassment through the mental connection.

  Archy hung his head in disappointment. I could feel that he expected better of me. I forgot that he was a nature lover.

  “Screw the grass,” came a female voice. I’m surprised she waited this long to comment on anything. “Tell me what sort of magical training have you been up to since we last saw you! I need to know!”

  I laughed a bit before telling her I gained Air Magic and what I did to get it upgraded to Rare quality.

  “You made an actual act of god?!” she exclaimed. “How large was it? How fast did you get the air currents going? How did you maintain the perimeter so tight that the mana didn’t fly away?”

  Aspen fired off a bunch of questions in rapid succession. I wasn’t even able to get a single word in for a full twenty minutes while she prattled off, answering her own questions as often as asking new ones.

  While the girl was talking her head off, the guys were starting to set up camp. Since I had destroyed the last “hotel” I had made for them, they started putting up tents. I told them to hold off for a moment and made a crude building that was little more than a row of three stalls all connected with their doors facing a hallway leading to a larger room that could be used as a common room. After it was done, it was basically a large rectangle with a few walls dividing the rooms. The doors were basically a few vines with extra wide leaves to provide some privacy.

  With my large resource capacity and regeneration, I was able to finish making it before Aspen was done with her ranting. When she finally finished, she looked around and saw a building pop up out of seemingly nowhere. She jumped a bit, clearly startled that such a feat of magic could be done right under her nose without her noticing, then sheepishly walked to the last available room to unpack.

  I gave the trio some privacy to set up and unpack before continuing our conversation. I didn’t realize just how much I was looking forward to their return until Then. I was starting to get conversation starved. The Orcs weren’t exactly great talkers.

  Archy explained the party’s plans.

  “Basically, we’re here to grind some levels. If you’re fine with it, we would like to use you as our base of operations to hunt Orcs. They tend to stay away from large settlements like cities and large towns, and all of the smaller villages around Flora are already overrun with others trying to do the same thing. But out here, there’s practically nobody to bother us or steal our kills.”

  I nodded my puppet’s head.

  “I see. If that’s the case, then I’ll spend a bit of time upgrading your temporary abode. You can also use the resource berries when needed. My regeneration lets me regrow them rather quickly, so they won’t be missed too much. How long do the three of you plan on staying here? Days? Weeks?”

  Axel smiled in appreciation and said, “Well, that depends on how quickly we can level. We’re all currently in our mid-thirties, and I think we can get up to the forties in a few weeks, depending on how many Orcs we can find. How many Orcs typically pass by here?”

  I thought for a moment before responding.

  “Well, I used to get a lot of them when I left their corpses laying around. I think it had something to do with the smell of rotting flesh that attracted them. The number slowed down significantly after I started burying their bodies. So, if you start a corpse pile, you should get a large number of them in a few weeks.”

  Axel’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “How large was your pile? I didn’t take you as much of a monster hunter.”

  “I had around sixty bodies spread out. I will advise caution though. The last monster that I lured with my corpse pile was a Giant. He was a tough bastard to take down. In fact, he’s still technically alive, just buried under 40 feet of dirt and surrounded by a wooden prison. The mind is dead, but the flesh lives. I think it has a high level of regeneration. It survived even its brain being destroyed.”

  The Laughing Viper trio all went pale at the mention of a Giant. All three started flashing back to memories of a Giant running rampant through a series of villages. In all honesty, that Giant looks just like the one I have buried under my roots.

  “Willow,” Aspen finally croaked out, “you need to kill it. Giants are A tier monsters. It must be an anomaly of the area’s level shift, being spawned from a random buildup of mana. If what you say is true, and you can’t kill it, then you need to try fire. Fire will counteract the regeneration, and if its mind is truly dead, then it won’t suffer. But it NEEDS to die. If a Giant were to run rampant, it could destroy a whole city. We would need to contact the guild leader of Ostlan’s Adventurer’s Guild if it escaped. If you need me to, I can teach you Fire Magic, but we can’t in good consciousness leave before that thing dies. Not after one destroyed our village.”

  Well damn. I knew it needed to die, especially since it would essentially be a vegetable without a working mind. It wouldn’t be able to eat, drink, walk, or do anything due to my actions. On one hand, I felt bad for torturing it this way, but on the other, it appears that this Giant has killed a whole bunch of people. So, I guess it’s sort of poetic justice that one of the survivors of its rampages is the one to teach me the magic needed to kill it.

  “Alright. Where do we begin?”