As I made my way back to the trunk, I discovered I had overshot my home branch in my reckless dive. It would have been nice to check in on my mother and sister, but at the same time, a large part of me was glad to avoid it and any discomfort that might come with it.
Having already bypassed the branch, it didn’t make sense to go back up to it, and I let that carry me onward, heading down the tree. This time, I made my jumps alongside the trunk, as controlled glides rather than full-on dives, making my way downward one branch at a time.
Where the culture of transformation seemed to fade in my climb upwards, I saw the inverse heading downwards. I saw crystal spikes and spines, plates like armor, and other growths that were clearly rooted in combat and violence.
Curious, I asked around about it, and listened in as old timers recited the local legends. Much of what was said about the Mother was the same as in the upper branches, but there was something else that seemed to be left out or forgotten there.
“We grow these in honor of our ancestor who survived the battle against the great enemy,” an older squirrel with a pair of crystal pauldron-like growths explained.
“Great enemy?”
“Creatures of the darkness. They emerged from below, climbing the trunk in an attempt to devour the Mother. Our ancestors fended them off before ascending to help the Mother grow taller stronger.”
I frowned slightly. “So the enemy was defeated? The Mother is safe now?”
“Of course,” the squirrel said, gesturing to the settlement around us. “That’s why we’re at peace.”
After thanking the old squirrel for his time, I considered what he said and what I had learned growing up. Communication up the tree was clearly very limited, and while here they talked about peace after a war against the darkness, further up the tree there was no talk about an ancient war at all. In the generations it took for squirrels to migrate upward, some history had been left behind or revised.
I was beginning to suspect that even here, things were being left out or forgotten. The base of the tree was still far, far away. Far enough that no living squirrels could reach this branch from the lowest ones in their short lifespans.
It made sense for the squirrels here to believe they were at peace, in order to contentedly live their lives and reproduce. Their children would either stay, continuing the local traditions, or migrate. Some would travel up the tree, where their descendants would aid the growth of the tree, ultimately creating new habitat for the growing population to live on. With only oral storytelling, migrants would lose some of their history, adapting to the culture of the branch their family settled on.
And what of the children that migrated downward?
Details had been lost of forgotten, but ultimately, every squirrel above must trace their ancestry down the tree, from a time when the tree had yet to grow that tall. There were surely still squirrels living towards the base of the tree, but those branches must be fairly overpopulated already, let alone with the addition of migrants. Some of the locals would migrate up the tree, swapping positions with those that came from up above, but there had to be a downward limit, since there was a finite number of branches.
That is, if the tree were actually at peace.
Conflict, I had been repeatedly told, was inevitable, and all the more so in a System world. Resources didn’t push squirrels to go to war with each other, since they could literally generate their own resources. Thanks to Mother’s Love being replenished daily, it was always simpler to generate food than try and take it from their neighbors, so there was no real need to fight. When Love was the only way to produce land and food, that was a form of “conflict” in and of itself, as it pushed the squirrels at the top of the tree to use their Love daily to survive, growing the stat.
Squirrels had litters, and with no threats to their lives, there should be an ongoing population explosion. It was clear the number of squirrels on the tree was increasing, but so was the size of the tree. I just wasn’t sure, based on what I had seen on the branches I had ascended to, that the tree’s growth matched the rate of the population growth. And the lower branches must already be at their limits, but in that case, there should be a much heavier flow of migrants heading up the tree.
It stood to reason that there was something negatively affecting the population lower on the tree.
I continued my descent, growing increasingly curious about what I would find. Falling and gliding to travel was a completely different pace from climbing, even with my Blood advantages. I was covering relative distances that were far in excess of the distance between the Uli and the Sheowon, and while these branches weren’t separated by an ocean of water, they were separated by an ocean of time.
Sure enough, after passing a number of branches, the narrative started to shift again. Here, the squirrels knew there was a battle going on below, but it was being handled and didn’t threaten the tree. Another number of branches down, the squirrels spoke of the battle as one of balance, where it was needed to protect the tree, but it was equally important to climb the tree and grow.
Another distance below that, the squirrels actively told stories about the war effort. More than anywhere else on the tree, here squirrels were encouraged to descend the tree and aid it. Here, transformation wasn’t cultural, but functional. It was a way to fight in the war. Those that climbed weren’t shunned, but there was an underlying current that only cowards climbed.
The ocean of time that would separate these parts of the trees from the rest explained the disconnect. No one wanted to admit to being a coward, so the only squirrels that moved up the tree were ones who would champion ascent to their children, explaining how important it was to climb and help it grow. They would downplay the severity of the war, to prevent their children from heading back down. Over generations of climbers, that turned into a tale of a war handled, or even won, and that the tree was at peace. The only legacy was that of transformation as symbolic culture, its origins completely forgotten.
It created a divide between the upper tree and the lower tree, one that could only be bridged in one direction.
I had a strange relationship with conflict. One of the first things I intentionally set out to do after being reincarnated was seek out a fight with the goblins that killed my brother. I was pretty disconnected from my new life at the time, though, and the motivations weren’t revenge so much as hoping to level up so I could get stronger.
It had paid off, giving me access to mana and put me on the path towards learning magic, but that didn’t temper my charge towards conflict. I almost died in a dungeon, losing my hand in the process, albeit temporarily. It was only after surviving that I realized I didn’t need to seek out battles, and that there were other things to live for, and that more strength would come from living a full life.
Then, in my next life, when I wanted to live peacefully, I was forced into conflict regardless, this time against my fellow Uli. I accepted it as the way of life in that world, and did what I had to, until I couldn’t accept it anymore. It took a certain amount of strength to make that choice, and it set me on a path which would bring me back to conflict, though that time for the greater good.
This life looked short and sweet, but I should have known that conflict would be simmering beneath the surface. I was already getting old for this world, and didn’t have much time left here. This world didn’t have levels, so whatever the enemy was, they weren’t monsters like those I fought as Tovar. From the sounds of it, they also weren’t just another race or tribe of squirrels, like the primary conflict in my life as Mali.
The lower I got on the tree, the clearer the descriptions were: lumbering creatures of darkness, keen on devouring everything with their gaping maws.
If they weren’t monsters and they were another kind of sapient being, they were probably just a force of nature. Animals, really, like the uqandu I helped push back upon my return to the Uli. A danger to sapient life, and very possibly a danger to the ecosystem itself if left unchecked.
I had acquired a lot of strength, especially now that I had [Metatransmutation]. That didn’t obligate me to do anything, especially since the squirrels probably had it in hand. I could settle down and enjoy the rest of my life, but settling down probably wasn’t a path to happiness here, especially if I was going to be hounded by males to have their babies.
Normally, I wouldn’t rush into this conflict, but fending off creatures of darkness and saving lives was something I could get behind.
Having come to my decision, I continued my descent of the tree.
*
“You’d like to join the front lines?” the grizzled old squirrel asked me, clearly surprised. “New recruits are usually younger. No offense.”
“None taken. Is my age a problem?”
“Not a problem, exactly,” he said, frowning slightly as he glanced up at the top of my head. “You just might find your existing transformations a hindrance in battle. There are other ways to help in the fight against the great enemy. Healing the wounded, growing food for the front. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do that?”
The squirrel I was talking to had no patagia, and definitely no showy antlers like mine. His transformations came from a lifetime of warfare; crystal plates to protect him, crystal claws for gripping the tree and tearing into the enemy, and small crystal spikes jutting out from his back. Here, transformation was for combat.
It re-contextualized a lot of what I had thought about the squirrels in this life so far. Despite all my traveling, I hadn’t encountered any other growth skills besides transformation, restoration, and tree generation. Transformation had always seemed like a bit of an outlier, but now that I knew there were creatures in the miasma that sought to harm the tree, I was viewing everything a bit differently.
The squirrels talked about the Mother like she was both their home and their creator. She was the source of their power, and they couldn’t live without her. Now, I knew the squirrels also defended her and protected her. If I looked at the tree as an entity, not just an ecosystem, the squirrels were like her immune system, at least when they needed to be. And if they weren’t acting as an immune response, they were self-replicating. Rather than being cancerous or a burden, they actually returned her invested energy in the form of healthy, cultivated growth. The tree and the squirrels were symbiotic. The Mother got back what she gave out in Love each day, both directly and indirectly.
Growing food and healing other squirrels were both valuable acts which I could do to help the war effort, and might have if all else was equal, but it didn’t account for my Blood. I needed to burn off my excess energy to stay healthy, and if I didn’t, I needed to purge it and spend my daily Love on my own restoration. I could do more in direct battle, using up my Blood to fight harder, though it would be hard to explain.
I considered the antlers growing out of my head. I was pretty sure they were pure crystal, and didn’t have nerve endings or anything like that. I had seen some broken ones that elder males hadn’t bothered to regrow, and they seemed fine.
If they would get in the way during battle, there was an easy solution to that.
I reached up, grabbed hold of them near the base, and using the sheer strength of my high stats, snapped them off and tossed them aside. All that remained were two jagged shards.
“I’ll fight,” I said.
The old squirrel’s eyes widened slightly at the display, then hardened at my resolve. He gave me a curt nod. “Well all right then. Let’s get you into training.”