Traveling up the tree quickly became dull and routine. Long stretches of uninteresting climbing were interspersed by the occasional visit to a travel hub settlement at each new branch, where I would spend a small amount of time learning about the branch and the tree as a whole before continuing onward and upward.
I noticed a few things as I ascended branch by branch. The variety of transformations seemed to drop the higher I climbed, as local culture seemed to increasingly simplify on the way up. My home’s branching antlers transitioned into a single, straight horn. The locals of that branch said it was to symbolize the growth of the trunk, a tree reaching for the firmament, but it was also clearly a transformation that required less investment of Love to achieve.
That correlated to a larger focus on [Generative Growth]. It wasn’t something I noticed immediately, but after I had passed through a handful, it was clear that the upper branches were younger and had been settled for less time. Rather than invest Love into themselves, much more Love was being spent back on the tree itself, encouraging the growth of the branches the squirrels had more recently settled.
I came to realize that I had been born fairly high up on the tree, all things considered. That was somewhat interesting in its own right, and I began to wonder if I should keep pushing for the peak of the tree, but I was getting a sense that I would learn more about this world by turning around and heading in the opposite direction. The branches towards the base of the tree had more history, and I was increasingly curious about the miasma, and what the tree was growing out of.
The journey itself was useful in that it gave me an outlet for my power that I hadn’t had back home. I pushed myself hard, using Blood skills like augmentation as a matter of course, and relying on empowered leaps to find out of the way nooks where I could stop to grow food without drawing too much attention to myself.
I didn’t need to grow food every day, since each use of [Generative Growth] gave me food enough for several, so I took to stopping regularly to meditate and study energy. Sometimes, I let my Blood recover to a point where it started to hurt, just so I could better feel out the differences in the energies. Then I would purge the excess and use [Restorative Growth], while trying to slow down the flow of Love from the Mother.
It took quite a long time before I figured out how, but I eventually managed to trigger the release of Love from the Mother and into me while holding back the skill the energy was being funneled into. In doing so, my form was temporarily flooded by this energy, held back as potential to be spent as soon as I released my hold on the skill.
The first time I succeeded at that, I felt like I might burn up. This energy was not meant to be held like this, as it was different from mana or Blood. My form did not have the necessary structure to wield this energy. A mana circuit, or something like it, was needed to properly manipulate this energy.
I released the energy into [Regenerative Growth], healing the damage to my body caused by the energy. All in all, I had only held it for a brief moment, but it left me feeling exhausted. Still, it had been progress, so it was something I continued working at in my journey.
As I grew accustomed to it, I pushed myself to hold the energy in stasis for longer and longer, trying to feel out the interactions between energies within me. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to do this without my background in [Mana Manipulation], and once again, I thanked the admin of my life as Tovar for his guidance towards that skill.
The only structure in my body I could guide the energy into was my Blood. At first, they were like oil and water, refusing to blend. My heart felt like it would explode in my chest, but I suffered through it, relying on [Restorative Growth] to heal me afterward.
When I released the skill, my body recovered, but my heart still ached. I was worried I had done permanent damage, but with a stroke of intuition, I used [Blood Restoration] on my transformed heart. I couldn’t use that restoration skill on the fully native parts of my form, but apparently I could on the parts that had been transformed.
I wasn’t sure I was accomplishing anything, but I kept at it through my journey up the tree. Bit by bit, I expanded the amount of time I could hold the energy in me, and I increasingly felt like I was on the cusp of something.
Until, a couple of years into my travels, my attempts yielded results. Love flooded my veins, and as my heart pumped my Blood, some of it changed state.
[Metatransmutation]
Convert local energy into known energy from another universe. Skills dependent on foreign energy remain unlocked through reincarnation.
“Yes!” I cried, then winced and clutched my chest.
I pulled up my System, excited to see all my past skills unlocked, but found it identical to how it looked before, save for the addition of [Metatransmutation].
Focusing my mind, I tried to create mana out of the lingering Love I held in my body, and failed.
“No,” I moaned, burying my face in my hands. I released the Love into [Restorative Growth], to stop the burning pain, and used some [Blood Restoration] to fix my heart, while I thought through my new metaskill.
When I first gained [Metasurvival], it hadn’t been retroactive. I had already lost some of my memories of Earth, and I had no stats or skills to speak of. I didn’t suddenly remember memories of past lives my soul might have gone through before Earth, either. I retained everything since, but it didn’t restore what I had already lost.
It seemed that [Metatransmutation] was the same. I had achieved it by finding a way to unlock a past life’s form of energy in this life and then forcing the two to interact, but mana and my spells were still locked away. They would probably stay locked until I was born into another world with mana, or something similar enough to unlock those skills.
At least it meant I would keep all my currently unlocked skills into the next life. That would drastically change my capabilities in childhood from now on. Losing my spells had been a major factor in my childhood as Mali; if I could figure out the local energy of future worlds fast enough, I’d be able to avoid compromising on my principles by having the strength to fight back from the start.
But, as always, I would be cautious. Having access to forms of restoration early on was extremely helpful, but starting to throw blood constructs around as a baby in the wrong world could absolutely see me burned at the stake. Despite these skills, I could be killed, and all the more so in my childhood. I had power, but I wasn’t all-powerful.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have been able to achieve this earlier, if I had come from a world with magic and skills when I first gained [Metasurvival]. Mana was a lot less rigid than Blood and Love, and I was pretty adept at manipulating it by the end of my life as Tovar. Problem was, that was my first exposure to magic, and I had nothing to compare it to.
“Oh well,” I sighed, getting up to stretch out my sore body. Whether I was slow to achieve this or ahead of the curve, I was immensely satisfied with this accomplishment. I never really felt like I earned [Metasurvival], but I had definitely earned this. My transformed body was still a little fucked up for this life, but I was hopeful [Metatransmutation] would smooth things out in my next life, when I could simply convert the energy rather than try and create biological processes that didn’t fit. I was sure there would be a bit more of a mental burden to that, but I’d figure it out with practice.
In the meantime, I now had a way to artificially reduce the strength of my growth skills. I could open the tap to my Love, convert a bunch of it into Blood, and then release the reduced remainder into my desire skill. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like I could convert the Blood back into Love to use a second growth skill in a day, and holding on to excess Blood for too long damaged me in this form, so it wasn’t a perfect solution. Still, it meant I could cast smaller transformations if I wanted and grow single buds for food around other squirrels.
With that, I considered what I wanted to do next. I wasn’t really learning anything by continuing to climb the tree. Population density was dropping, and transformations had largely tapered off to the point where I regularly saw squirrels with patagia as their only transformation, and some squirrels with none at all. The local stories and teachings seemed all about expanding the tree and helping it reach the firmament, which was interesting, but entirely failed to explain the past or how this squirrel civilization came to be.
I could help the tree grow up in these branches, and help settlements get established, but the squirrels didn’t need me for that. They had it all well in hand.
If I wanted to learn more about this world, it was time to change tack.
At the next branch, I headed away from the trunk, seeking out the branch’s tip. I suffered through some propositioning from male squirrels who thought I was there to settle down and have a family, which I had largely avoided by sticking close to the trunk and staying among other travelers. It didn’t irk me as much as it did before I unlocked [Metatransmutation]. I figured that was because I felt more powerful and in control of my life again. Or maybe it was because I was about to do something that would otherwise be insanely reckless.
The branch thinned out towards the tip, which came much sooner than it would have back on my branch of origin. There wasn’t a settlement nearby, but at some point squirrels would settle down there and, in doing so, would encourage the branch to grow further out. For the moment, though, it was the end of the road.
I looked down. Far in the distance was the roiling black miasma, which was only visible because it was so pervasive. I could vaguely make out branches between myself and the miasma, hard to see due to the distance.
It had taken years to climb this high on the tree, and if I wanted to see the branches below in this lifetime, I would have to take the fast route down.
“Here goes nothing,” I murmured.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and jumped.
*
Wind rushed past my ears, a constant roar as I plummeted in free fall.
I had been falling for a while now, only occasionally making small adjustments as I tracked the branches below. The branches grew out in different directions from the trunk, so there was a lot of room to fall between the one I jumped from and the next closest branch growing in this direction.
Had I not unlocked [Metatransmutation], I probably wouldn’t have tried this. I still may have glided down, but I would have glided alongside the trunk at a relatively relaxed and gentle pace, close enough to land occasionally to temper my fall and stop when tired to rest.
Instead, I was in free fall. I was probably already moving fast enough to tear my patagia if I snapped my arms open, but now I could use the day’s Love to create a Blood construct to eat up some of the velocity, before I discarded it and switched to gliding. Then I could use [Restorative Growth] with the remaining Love to heal any damage from the strain.
I just had to avoid hitting anything while falling at terminal velocity.
I passed by branches stretching out from the trunk both clockwise and counterclockwise to the branch I had leapt from, but they were likely the extremities of branches I had recently visited on my way up, and I hadn’t been falling for that long yet.
The thrill of the fall slowly became mundane as it extended in length. The tree was very, very tall, but it was hard to judge exactly how tall, or how far I was from the miasma-covered “ground”. I began to get nervous about misjudging the distance and splatting into the darkness, so when I spotted the next branch, I made some adjustments to align myself towards it, and prepared myself for landing.
Tapping into my Love, I immediately transmuted the bulk of the energy into Blood, pushing it out of my with [Blood Control] right away as to not overload my circulatory system. I fashioned it into a turned over bowl beneath me, rather than a pair of wings or a parachute trailing behind me, since I was worried the force of the wind would disconnect me from the Blood and I would lose control. As the bowl formed, I used [Blood Compression] to further solidify the construct, and started to feel it push against me as it began to catch the air.
As my fall slowed, I opened my patagia, then leapt off the bowl, kicking it backwards away from the branch so it would tumble off into the miasma as it lost coherency. The strain on my gliding wings was intense, but I gritted my teeth and bore it, navigating towards my target.
Even still, the branch grew in my vision quite quickly.
“Oh, this... is going to hurt,” I said, my voice disappearing into the wind as I prepared myself for my landing.
My Blood parachute and gliding had slowed my fall enough that I didn’t die on impact, at least, which was all I needed. I immediately used the rest of my Love on [Restorative Growth], groaning through the pain and healing.
That could have gone better, I thought. But I guess it also could have gone worse.
I lifted my head to make sure I hadn’t landed near a settlement and surprised a bunch of local squirrels with my living missile act, but found myself alone. I let me head come back to a rest on the branch. This was as good a place as any to sleep until my Love replenished.
I wasn’t sure I could stand yet, anyway.