Chapter 4

If you read the first draft, this isn't a new chapter, just dividing a slightly modified division of the old chapter 4 into two chapters.

*Somewhere in the Calm Belt, almost 11 years before the start of cannon*

With all of my immediate needs secured, a reliable food and water source at hand, even having a shower, I turned to the only things left on "Stranded on an deserted island: a guide for idiots", exploring and figuring out how to leave the island.

And proceeded to procrastinate the hell out of it.

Still lost on who, what and where am I, somewhat afraid of getting my face broke in by three armed primates and mostly because of being lazy, I just...chilled this closing year.

Just doing some light experimenting on my powers, trying out whatever way of using said power would pop in my mind and practicing on my connection with the flora, especially my ability to sense the world through them.

I made a lot of discoveries about my powers during the period and bettered my sensing range and the information I get from it, having a constant mental picture of most of the island already.

It may sound impressive, especially considering that some forgotten inner self screamed that nothing about this was normal, but I couldn't help but think it wasn't enough.

I didn't put in enough effort to really master anything and, more importantly, I haven't left the coastline that I'd woken up on, remaining in my home ever since that second day fight against the gorillas.

It started with the idea of training up a bit of my powers, wanting to know more about then before betting my life on them against the native fauna. With the variety of plants I could make it and their ability to modify their surroundings, I may have kinda lost track of time just relaxing in my safe zone.

A safe zone that now, after a year of (not) hard work, was a large walled part of the former beach, covered in expansive grasslands, with a concentration of large fruit bearing trees to the right, a gigantic tree dwarfing everything around in to the left and a large artificial lake in the middle, along with some differing trees from various experiments that were spread around sparsely.

The lake was filled with filtered sea water, brought in by a large tube like root, made much like my shower, but underground, the only indication of it in the surface being a straight line of greener, taller grass.

Some smaller fish had even managed to swim through the tube into the lake, some somehow managing to survive the change from salt water to fresh water and spreading across the man-made lake. Small fish being in comparison with the monstrosities I saw on my first days, most were still about the size of my torso.

Where before was one cube, now three evenly spaced cubes sat in a triangle formation between the sea and the lake. Each cube connecting with the others through roofed wooden passageways, with a field of different colored, pleasant smelling flowers and a large tree in the middle.

Okay, I spent most of the time experimenting, lazing around and doing some tuning on my lawn.

Right now I was laying on a large wooden recliner covered in a cushion like moss, resting by the shore of the aforementioned lake, looking at the almost a full meter long koi-eel like fish swimming in it as I sipped on my newest attempt of imitating coffee. Making fruit with an energizing juice was easy, still not getting the taste right though, my surprisingly well informed amnesiac brain told me.

I could actually say I was training right now.

I was currently connected with my various plants, being practically omnipresent around the island, simultaneously seeing groups of the three armed gorillas playing around with each other, one of said gorillas being eaten by an even larger feline with a spiked prehensile tail and various toucan like birds flocking from one tree to another pecking at fruits and each other.

Can't say omniscient though, I was almost everywhere, but I could actually comprehend just a bit of what I received. I'm already able to have at least an idea about the entire island and what each animal was doing if I truly focused on it, now I just need to train to do it without a meditative trance. That was what the training was for.

All the while using my actual eyes to watch as the skin on my right hand slowly grew a culture of fungi, creeping up my arm and slowly covering the entire limb.

Though I did complain to myself more than once about my own laziness, I did find out plenty about my powers. I'm able to make every type of plant, during the year I made various types of trees, flowers, herbs, mosses, cacti, algae and even fungi, some poisonous, some even venomous.

The biting purple flowers that surrounded my beach were pretty deadly.

I had been working primarily on the sensing and creating any random type of plant I could think of, thin as hair vines, walking trees... The unfortunate attempt of creating sentient life. I would rather not think about it.

On a brighter note than deformed monstrosity that called me father and begged me for a swift release from the pain that was existence, I've also just recently started training on growing the plants directly from my skin.

I knew I could do it since the bamboo straw, but now I've been working on larger constructs and the growing speed. The exercise I was conducting now was simply growing, destroying and regrowing the bark armor around my hands as I moved my fingers.

The armor currently didn't look much a like an armor at all. It looked more liked my skin rippled as I moved my finger, barely keeping the construct together.

I tried a couple different types of armors. So far, my stronger one was a 15 centimeters thick living, moving plate of dark grey wood, stronger than the common rock.

No idea its resistance compared to steel, I felt some minerals beneath the island through my roots, but no idea what they were, iron, gold, silver, copper, whateverinium. Or what to do with it if I mine it.

Either way, now I've been trying more inconspicuous armors, this one currently made from actually a colony of fungi around my skin. It was able to take any colour and maintained my shape, so it wouldn't looked as if I was armored, besides some lifelessly to my eyes and expression, but most wouldn't notice.

A bit softer than the full greybark plate, but still resistant to most attacks. Tested by me getting wacked by an tree branch that was as thick as I'm tall at 50km/h.

It was still going slowly, the armor was way harder to both create and maintain when moving, but I might need to do it while fighting, so this is baby steps training.

Also training on growing ever stronger bark, it's a long term project, but I'm training it right now too, focusing on attempting to making the fungi culture that composed my armor harder, more resistant and compact every time I destroyed and remade it.

I knew it likely wasn't going to be the strongest armor, I didn't feel a thing when wacked by the same branch with the greybark full plate, but I wanted it for its comfort and lightness. And the greybark was kinda itchy...

Anyways! The main point of all this monologue, the one undeniable truth right now! I'm bored.

I've been training in the same things, in the same place for too long, I needed a change of scenery, an epic adventure. I would explore the island today! With my own eyes instead of the somehow both vague and far more detailed picture that I get through the plants.

Getting up before this surge of motivation left me, I gathered basket v.2, that was resting by the recliner, and moved towards the woods.

Basket v.2, is not actually a basket, being a large, thick coat/cape made up of branches, vines, grass and some fruits. Draped it over myself and it automatically snugged in, the roots growing slightly over my shirt and exposed skin to hold itself on.

It was easier to carry around the more compact living coat than the original rectangular basket, and it carries around the same number of fruit inside its vines that the basket did.

It also helps out in a fight as I found out it's both quicker and less energy expensive to grow a preexisting plant than to create a whole new one and I've been compressing and compacting vines around the coat to the point I rarely need to grow anything at all for a fight. Which really helps as it takes no energy to control previously grown plants, just some concentration.

Arriving at the section short walls directed at the inland island's forest, the doorless walls opened for me to leave.

Passing the walls, that closed behind me, I glanced at the line of large purple flowers resting by the wall as I passed by. Each flower had five wide petals covered in small, stout spikes filled with venom, all laying above green, thorny semi-spheres sticking out the ground, spheres that were actually really long vines rolled in on themselves.

My actual wall against the wildlife of the island.

Through the line, I was once more out of the safe zone to try and explore the island, after almost one full year of pushing it forward.

I knew the time because one of the many experiment created was a tree that changed the shape of it's branches with each day cycle. It was created after 8 day cycles in the island, and now it's branches are shaped like 319.

Stopping just before the start of the native vegetation, I closed my eyes and once more connected with my plants, focusing on the roots around the island.

Though I had restrained myself and the trees I created to the coastline I woke up in, the same couldn't be said to my roots.

Wanting to have protection on and knowledge of the whole island I let my attack roots continue to spread and grow as they had been, only now connected to and completely sustained by a single, ever-growing tree.

Despite the fact that the tree where all roots meet stood at the edge of the sea line half into the sea half in the grass land beach, its roots had already reached almost all corners of the islands. Just missing a bit of the other corner of the island, but it's getting there.

The tree itself is a still growing titan, already towering far over all of the island original century old vegetation.

Its wide canopy cast a shadow over all of the colonized coastline, made of branches larger than most trees, eachfull of vibrant, wide green leaves. Already reaching into a good part of the sea in front of it and almost half of the native jungle.

Its roots growing along the sea line had begun to slowly add more surface land to the beach.

Through this extensive and growing network of roots I could roughly "sense" what's going on through the entire island. It's difficult to explain, the sensing is a strange mixture of hearing, feeling and tasting what's going on.

Using it, I sensed around the forest besides me. I could see troops of the three armed gorillas that I met, even if not the top of the food chain, they dominated the local wildlife, spread all over the island. Standing high up the canopy, like most of the time he sensed the primates, differing from a normal gorilla's behaviour of staying mostly on the ground.

I also got used to ignoring the question that still rages on the back of my mind on why the hell I know how a gorilla is supposed to act, but not my name.

Ignoring the many groups of gorillas, and definitely ignoring the five felines three times the size of the gorillas just a few minutes away, I decided to go to a close by piece fauna that -hopefully- won't try to kill me.

There was a small group of toads, large for a regular sized one but small for the island, around a small clearing about ten/twenty minutes walking. It seemed like a good enough place to start.

Opening my eyes, I took my first step and was off on an adventure.

It was nice, though there was some dense forestry in the fruit tree area of my beachhead, there was something different about walking in the more primordial native jungle.

Pushing hanging vines by hand, dodging growing roots and trying not to stumble in the uneven ground I kept walking. I could of course order the surrounding original trees with a quick touch, but it was a nice walk.

After almost twenty minutes of walking, seeing nothing but vegetation (not by accident, I made a conscious effort to avoid the large felines I sensed before),I finally reached the clearing.

It was an oval clearing in the dense jungle, a bit larger than the one holding the poneglyph, with something between a pond and a lake in the middle, five of the toads I sense visible by it. The rest were spread around close by.

One of the visible three was siting still just in front of me, half of its body submerged, head and antennae poking out of the water.

So I decided to do the second oldest thing humans do to animals, just after eating. Bother them for no reason.

Moving to the the small pond, I glanced at my reflection for a second. Long, uncut brown hair with dark brown eyes and a shaggy, clearly unkempt beard. Anything between early twenties to early thirties.

Turning to my new companion.

"Hello."

"GROAH" It greeted me in return.

It was an ugly thing, with a stout, blueish gray body with six eyes and two strange antennae, each pointing at a different direction.

"Aren't you a cute little thing." I lied to my first company after a year of just plants.

"GROAH" It thanked me for the kind compliment, I'm sure.

"Boop." I sounded, lightly touching the snoot of the toad. Just some physical contact, after a year of none and no memories of any, it felt surprisingly good. Despite it being just a toad.

"GROOOOAH" then it exploded in a green cloud that quickly covered the surroundings.

Breathing in instinctively, the last things I managed to understand before passing out was the grounding opening up as my roots moved to encircle me and my bowels just giving up.

"Shit"

It dragged on way more than I expected, so I'm dividing the 4 years of training into three chapters. This one will cover the first year and the basic training on the powers, the next will cover getting in shape and learning how to fight, the last will expose some unmentioned ways of using the powers and set "sail".