Forest Coming Alive

Chapter 15

Forest Coming Alive

"Aii," Leo sighed. He'd been trying to find the ingredients for the medicinal thingamabob for the Hawk for nearly six hours, but hadn't come across a single one.

As he had no clue what any of the ingredients looked like, he had a rather simple system: pick every flower he came across with the exception of any lotus-looking thing, where he'd pluck 10 of its petals, as well as pry out a piece of bark of every tree he'd come across. Furthermore, he had to carry them all and leave none behind, as he never knew when he'd finally gather all the ingredients.

He sat down to rest for a moment, leaning against a tree trunk and enjoying the shade. As always, he was not alone; there were quite a few critters accompanying him. In addition to the standard ones, there were also a couple of rainbow-colored parrots that followed him around. They never landed on or near him, mostly maintaining a distance of about fifteen or twenty yards, but they were always there, in the background.

"I should name some of you," he mumbled, caressing the top of the white panther's head. He had some reservations, however--if he named one, then what about the second? And the third? Won't all the animals want names? Was he creative enough to give names to potentially dozens of animals? Of course he was! "I'll call you... Milky," he said as the white panther glanced at him, tilting its head quizzically for a moment before lowering it back down, enjoying the scrubs. "Your brother... yeah, let's go with Blackie. The monkey--ah, I'll just call him Red. The owl... hmm, let's call him Hoot. The python... hmm, the python... Long Johnson? Pfft--no, wait, what am I? Five?!"

Long Johnson hissed at him and curled further into his robes, hiding away. Feeling somewhat rested, Leo stood up, stretched, and resumed his hunt. By the nightfall, he'd lost all hope. He couldn't find a single ingredient for the entire day, which meant that he'd have to find all of them in the remaining day he had.

Moonbeams pierced through the fading canopy of the trees, illuminating the forest in a strange, eerie, silvery hue. The trees seemed to grow alive with luminosity, and the dirt itself flickered with inviting colors. The wind blew and rustled the world around ever so lightly, causing a cacophony of sounds. At the same time, in the far distance, howls beckoned.

And then... there was nothing.

Silence.

Leo melded into it, shading himself in the shadows and darkness, observing the becoming around him. From the roots of the trees, he observed strange shape manifest and grow legs--from tiny bugs into man-sized phantoms. They glanced at him and, as though they could not see him hiding in the shadows, disappeared someplace else.

At the same time, the moonbeams shivered and shimmered, the blades of light wiggling as though corporeal before liquefying into rain--however, it did not fall as rain ought to. Rather, the individual drops seemed to move in slow motion, thick and large and silver like mercury. Eerily, the trees stretched out their branches and caught the liquids, sucking them up into their innards. The silver light shone and burst through the cracks in the wood, forming a brilliant, though fading, light show.

He could not make neither the heads nor the tails of anything--the forest seemed to become a wholly different world at night. However, it had never happened back home--back where the mud huts were. He slightly regretted going so far away, but as he was still wholly unharmed... perhaps it was all just a macabre performance, and not a deadly crisis.

[A piece of Lucen Tree Bark has been acquired!]

A window startled him and made him realize that he'd become so nervous one of his hands had dug into the bark of the tree he was leaning against. His fingernails had cracked and were bleeding, but the rather soft-to-the-touch piece of bark sitting on his palm was a decent consolation price.

He threw it inside his robes and washed the blood off; it hurt a decent amount, but he could only ignore it and hope that his magical cultivation healed it quickly.

Leo couldn't sleep all night long--rather, the forest would not let him. Every few minutes, just as it seemed he was about to crash into deep sleep, something would transpire. Either a transparent spirit of a stag chasing after a butterfly bleeding blood like rain, or ghastly faces of morbid chimeras crying out into the sky, or any number of other oddities and terrifying apparitions, all seemed determined to keep him awake in the nightmares.

As the dawn came and the first rays of sun managed to break through the darkness, Leo exhaled--it felt as though he was holding his breath all night long, suffocating, and the pressure had finally disappeared.

"Alright," he mumbled to himself, standing up. "Never spend the night outside the camp again, I guess. No, wait--" he finally remembered that he was supposed to be immune to fear and terror and such, but quickly numbering the days on his fingers made him realize that a week had passed... and his grace period was over.

"No, wait again--" re-doing the number of the days through the magic of his fingers, he realized that he couldn't quite remember whether the grace period was supposed to end last night, or the night before, or the night before the night before. "Huh."

Math, and, indeed, many other things, were always difficult for Leo. But he did understand something strange--even without the system's grace, he still didn't feel as much terror as he thought he would. After all, he could distinctly remember peeing himself a little when he dinged his dad's Audi, and the worst thing that would have happened back then was his allowance being cut, not dying.

Stroking his chin, he coughed awkwardly and forced back the embarrassing memory of that day, reinvigorating himself. Regardless of everything, he had gathered one of the necessary ingredients, and he only had a day to gather the rest of them. Though he scarcely had any 'love' for the hawk that appeared out of nowhere, he still felt strange kinship with all animals of the forest and didn't want it to die.

After all, the animals were the ones to not only show him which food was safe to eat, but they also gave him clothes and kept him company so that he was never alone. The least he could do was help them with whatever ailed them, especially if there was practically no risk to his life.

From the corner of his eye, he spotted something strange, something that wasn't there yesterday--beneath a tree, there was a small, fist-sized flower, silver-white in color with exactly four perfectly symmetrical petals. Leo recalled that there was nothing there last night when he decided to camp, prompting him to crouch down and pluck it. And, just then, a window appeared that made his lips stretch out into a wide smile.

[1x Moondew Flower acquired!]

He really was extremely lucky!

Maybe he was not endowed with a great deal of cultivation talent, and perhaps he would never become one of those overbearing immortals and such, but at least it seemed that he was blessed by lady luck. Otherwise, how could finding two out of three ingredients right next to each other after a night of suffering all be explained? Coincidence?

"Yeah, it's probably just a coincidence," he sighed and stored away the beautiful flower. All that was left were the ten petals of the Dawn Lotus Flower. Considering it had 'Dawn' in his name, Leo feared that it could only be harvested at dawn which was why he began to panic a little bit. He didn't have another dawn in him--if he waited until tomorrow, it would be too late.

Additionally, 'dawn', as a term, was extremely vague! When was it? Between the sunrise and some random, magical point between that and the midday? Or was it sunrise plus an hour? Or two? Who could tell him?

As such, he hurried--dashing about without direction, looking for anything even resembling a flower and plucking ten of its petals. He became a bit of a menace, he admitted, doing what could potentially be irreparable damage to the eco system of this place, but he had no choice.

No new windows popped up for the three hours that he spent running around like a headless chicken. Feeling a bit tired, he sat down and took out a few pieces of fruit, eating them. It was also then that he realized he was alone--like, alone alone. Frowning, he looked around but saw no animals in sight--he didn't know when they left him, as he was simply too accustomed to them always being there, somewhere around him.

"Maybe they got bored...?" he mumbled, shrugging. "No, wait--isn't this like bad foreshadowing or something?!"