Barrow and the other adventurers were feeling much better by the next day. Taz had taken on a strange role as nurse, making sure each of the mortals was doing well. Rud caught the dwarf spoon feeding a human man and tutting when soup dribbled down his chin. He blustered when caught, but it warmed the druid’s heart. No matter how tough the dwarf tried to act, he cared about the grove and the mortals passing through. Those mortals perked up even more when they drank the tea, gaining a surge of energy that gave them some pep in their step.

  Once Rud had finished his morning chores—watering, reporting, chatting with Maria, and sending his report for the day—he made his way to the mine. The bear was still snoring away in the cave. To the druid’s surprise, his last instance of Nature’s Cleanse was still working away at the red scar on his chest. He refreshed the spell anyway to make sure the beast wouldn’t wake up. Nothing like an angry bear to ruin the morning.

  For his efforts he earned Level 3 in his Healing Magic skill. The general cost of his Healing Magic spells went down and the power went up. That single skill level was enough to push his druid class to Level 6. It had been so long since he thought of his attributes that he needed a refresher.

  The plan was to get Mind to 10 then work on Affinity. Rud hadn’t seen what affinity could do, but still fancied himself a spellcaster. He had placed his last point into Affinity. That brought him to 8, and his stopping point was planned at 10 to match Mind. The more the druid thought about it, the more he was convinced that Affinity was hard to quantify. Maybe it was something he would understand in the future, but his current plan was the only plan. The other attributes could wait, especially since he had seen no combat and doubted they would be useful for him right now.

  So far the only changes Rud had noticed with either of the attributes he had increased was numbers on his sheet. Perhaps it was worth investigating how the attributes would affect his physical body. Rud shook the thought away, placing his free point into Affinity and inspecting his attribute sheet.

  [Rud]

  Main Class:

  Rank 0 Level 6 Druid

  Subclass:

  Rank 0 Level 5 Grove Custodian

  Attributes:

  Health: 56

  Mana: 100

  Strength: 2

  Agility: 3

  Vigor: 5

  Mind: 10

  Affinity: 9

  Titles:

  [Keeper of the Gladesbale Grove]

  Not much had changed. 10 points into Mind had brought him over the 100 mana threshold, but Affinity had made none of the things on that sheet budge. If Rud concentrated real hard, he could feel something of an effect. Maybe a slight sensitivity toward magic. It was hard to tell, since the grove was constantly soaked in druidic magic. Even the cave wasn’t spared from the energy, and he realized that it was absolutely everywhere. Each surface was steeped in the stuff, rendering it different than how it would appear outside the grove.

  “Well, slow and steady is certainly a choice,” Rud sighed, patting the massive bear on the flank. When the creature stirred, the druid clapped his hand over his mouth. He snuck away from the cave, leaving both the bear and the bats behind.

  Rud loaded two wooden buckets with double-enchanted water and placed them in his bag. With how much junk he shoved inside and how many times he yanked the strap open, he had expected to see some wear on the pack. But the trusty pack held firm as he teleported to the stump forest.

  The druid’s pace of force-growing trees was quicker than the lumberjacks could harvest them. It wasn’t the act of felling a tree that delayed them, but the processing of it after that. The value of that lumber was clear when considering how much of Barlgore was made of wood. Rud contemplated the habits of those mortals. There were plenty of areas to harvest wood that weren’t near the grove. Perhaps the wood here was that much better.

  “Not like I’m a lumberjack. Or a carpenter,” Rud said to himself. “Wood looks like wood.”

  Rud sorted out the trees he could grow, selected a few for force-growing. His pace was indeed faster than the woodcutters. If this continued, the stump forest wouldn’t be filled with stumps for much longer. The druid walked out through the area, feeling a sense of something he couldn’t define filling his chest. He made his way further down the road, probing his feelings as he moved. The same sense of comfort he had while within the grove stayed with him, only fading away when he had walked for quite some time.

  The druid snapped his fingers, looking back over the stump forest. It had been suspiciously empty of workers. Even the house was devoid of those people. He found the nearest bush and pushed through, finding that the Thicket Travel upgrade that Ban held worked.

  “Ah, dang,” Rud muttered, passing through the same bush to arrive at the tower. He accepted the Aspect of Bent and ascended the tower as a squirrel. Without pause, he scanned the area near the stump field.

  “Such furtive movements.” Nulsa’s voice almost startled Rud, but he was getting used to the silent creature. “Is something wrong? Do you need my talons once again?”

  “Fun fact. No one told me about the grove expanding. But it expanded when Ban hit a new rank.”

  “Interesting.”

  There was a logical line to follow here. If the grove expanded every time Ban ranked up, the disorientating effects of the grove would move with it. Since it had covered the area near the woodcutter’s home and they were unaware that it had changed, they wouldn’t have used caution when working in the area. That meant they wouldn’t have used the landscape’s landmarks to prevent getting lost in the grove. One might have gone off to have a pee in the night and been turned around right away.

  “Where are you?” Rud muttered. He couldn’t remember how many people were working on the logging operation.

  After long moments of frantic searching, Rud found the first woodcutter. A human man was circling a tree, holding his face in his hands. The druid activated the Communication System upgrade on his Observatory, projecting his voice to the man. “Don’t move. You’re lost in the grove, but I’m gonna come get you.”

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  The man stopped, looking up at the sky. He said something, but Rud couldn’t hear it. Nulsa offered a soft hoot.

  “Could you help me with this, Nulsa? I know you can’t teleport yet, but could you search for more stragglers?”

  “Certainly,” the owl said, taking off without making a sound.

  Rud shifted into his squirrel form and jumped to the nearest clump of leaves to pass through. He made a quick stop at the enchanted pond for some water, then went straight to the frightened man. The druid scampered down the tree, shifting back into his normal form before revealing himself. Even with that bit of consideration, the man jumped in fright.

  “Have some water,” Rud said, removing the bucket from his bag and offering it. The man took the bucket, draining half of it in one go.

  “I’m lost!” he blurted out, belching loudly.

  “How many others were with you?” Rud asked.

  “Four.”

  Rud got his bearings in the forest. The lost man was about two-hundred paces from the stump clearing. He could almost see the break in the trees, drawing into question how bad the effects of the grove were for mortals. The druid led him through the forest, forcing him to sit down well outside of the dangerous zone of the grove. Before heading back to find more lost souls, he created a new sign and erected a few stone markers for the new line of the grove. The man wouldn’t stop expressing his thanks. Rud just needed him to stay put so he didn’t get lost again.

  After the first hour of searching, Rud recruited every able body within the grove. Mint was too busy with something, but Deana, Taz, and Sarya joined the search. The druid would search from his tower, spotting stragglers while the wolves used their keen senses of smell to sniff them out. Some mortals had pushed too far into the grove, following what they thought was the setting sun. How that happened was beyond Rud, as the sun was in its highest midday position. He learned more about how confusing the grove was for mortals, though.

  “That’s all of them,” Taz said, patting a frightened human woman on the back. He handed her a cup filled with Rud’s special tea. She took it with a concerned nod.

  “Time to address the mortals you have traumatized,” Dean said. Sarya laughed at the joke.

  Rud rolled his shoulders. He wanted to argue back against the accusation, but the wolf was right. It didn’t matter if no one told him this would happen when Ban ranked up. The grove and its relationship with the mortals was his burden to carry. Anything that went wrong was his fault, and he was happy to take responsibility. But as he approached the group of scared individuals, he saw them all perform the sign of respect he had come to know. After that, they bowed their heads lower than he had seen any mortal do so far.

  “Please accept our apologies for trespassing in—”

  “That’s quite fine,” Rud said, holding up a silencing hand. “No harm, no foul. We’ll be more cautious about these things in the future. Alright?”

  A murmur of agreement spread through the group. That cleared the air well enough for them. Between the tea and the approval of the spirits, the mortals were doing much better. They had only been lost for a day or so and were more frightened than anything. Rud reminded them of the rules of the grove, and walked with them to create a new house alongside the road. Dean joined him while the other members of the grove headed off to do their own things.

  A new house was easy to construct from a tree, but the area the woodcutters would be working was thin on those. Rud would need to put extra effort into regrowing this section so they would have something to work on. That got the druid thinking about the other sections of the grove that needed tending. While the area inside the grove was dense, some places outside were bare. Those places could be directly outside the grove, and the druid wasn’t willing to leave those barren.

  Rud moved the stove from the old building and installed it in the new one. Mint would have to steal more of those if the nearby house was going to have heat. But the workers were happy enough with a place to stay while they recovered. He also created a new mailbox out of a sapling and wrote a quick report about what had happened. Even if the workers were the ones to read it, he found the process of writing the message soothing.

  “What a day,” Rud said, shifting into a squirrel and finding a nearby bush. He made a few runs between the enchanted pond and the new edge of the grove to the east, sprinkling twice-enchanted water over the area. A procession of mortal feet had packed the ground tightly enough to make it difficult to grow anything. Nothing a few good jabs with his fingers couldn’t fix, but iron tools would be easier.

  Rud returned to his tower, clicking his radio on to find some comfort in an Earthling’s voice. He hailed Maria, but she didn’t respond. Instead, he used his Farseeing skill to search for anything weird. The south looked fine, the west looked fine… Everything looked fine. The only thing that didn’t look good was the slumbering tree at the grove’s center.

  But she wouldn’t wake just because he wanted her to. Ranking up took time, it would seem. The druid left the tower, unsatisfied and hungry for some soup. At least Taz had kept the perpetual soup going. With the addition of some deer meat, it had taken on a deeply gamey quality that somehow worked. He suspected there were more vegetables than normal, but the only thing that grew in the wild were the potonions.

  Rud stuffed his face and hit the ground, satisfied enough with the food to drift off to sleep.

  ###

  “Did you miss me?”

  Rud shot up from his bedroll, scrambling and almost falling into the fire. He dashed from the spot, tripping over himself several times as he raced for the entrance to the longhouse. Once he was outside, he shifted into a squirrel and hit the wooden road, moving far faster than he could in his scrawny two legged form.

  “Ban!” Rud shouted, throwing himself against the tree. He grabbed onto her bark, pressing his squirrel face against her as she giggled.

  “I wasn’t gone for that long, was I?”

  “You were gone for about twenty years,” Rud said, scratching his face against her bark. “There was a mutiny. I had to put Mint in chains. Sorry about that.”

  Another soft giggle from the tree. “I see you’ve gone to work on the grove. Perhaps it was twenty years.”

  “We missed your guidance,” Rud said.

  “You can get down.”

  Rud let go of the tree, falling to the ground and shifting into his true form. He looked up at the tree. She had grown a bit compared to before ranking up, but not as much as he expected. The tree already towered over the area, spreading her boughs high above the other trees. She towered even higher now, and her trunk was a bit thicker. More than any physical change, she now radiated a sense of deep magical power. Even with his stunted senses, the druid could feel it coming off of her.

  “The upgrade to Energy Nodules is especially nice,” Ban said.

  The flowers that clung to her branches glittered even in the daylight. Rud beamed at the compliment, content with her praise. “I didn’t know the grove would grow when you ranked up.”

  “I didn’t either. But we’ve made good progress. And there is another Sacred Beast that seeks a contract. Interesting.”

  Mint could forge the contracts for Sacred Beasts, but Ban was the one who cosigned them. Now that she was awake, they could accept Nulsa into their fold. The only one that was outside of their reach was the slumbering bear, who had refused to wake up. That red line on his chest was no better than before, but Rud kept the faith. He chatted with the tree for a bit, catching her up on everything that had happened since she was sleeping. She hummed along as he spoke, approving of all the decisions he had made.

  “Curious, though. The amount of dungeons we’re seeing isn’t normal,” Ban said.

  “I know. I was talking to Maria—from Hagsrise Grove—and she’s having the same problem. My theory is that we have some magical-something underground, and its leeching upward—that’s causing the problems with all the dungeons and the orcs and—”

  Ban interrupted. “Slow down, Rud,” she said, giggling softly again. She was gone for so long, the laugh seemed like music. “We can worry about those things later. For now, I was thinking of generating another expansion for you.”

  Rud groaned. “Come on! You just woke up.”

  “You have much to learn about the way things work, young custodian.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ve ranked up. My energy reserves are vast compared to what they were before. I have power. Unless the building I’m working on is overly complex, I will not hibernate while creating it from here on out.”

  “Yay!” Rud shouted, doing a cool pose for the tree. She giggled, which meant it was a good pose. “Blacksmith?”

  “Was there any other option?”