Reincarnated As A Plant Life - Chapter 248: True Elmando [II]

“Lighted One, I ask that you not proceed with your sun drawn. The… plant, is very sensitive,” the chieftain said meekly. It was clear to Lucius that the chieftain was concerned about how he would react to whatever it was he was about to see.

He thought it over for a moment, spreading out his Earth sense as far into the dark room as he could before turning to look at the chieftain.

~Well, there’s only a single presence in that room, and its energy readings are even lower than Zhayen’s~, Lucius thought to himself, still staring at the chieftain.

“Very well then,” he said out loud, before recalling his solar crux, and entering the dark room, continuously using Earth sense to give him an idea of where he was walking.

Once he sensed that the presence was right before him, he stopped.

“How am I supposed to inspect this thing without any light?” he whispered to himself, as he stared into the area of darkness where the object would’ve been.

After a few seconds of silence, he felt something nudge at him from the ground. It wasn’t physical contact, but rather something pulling at his Earth sense.

This was the first time Lucius had ever felt anything apart from the forest itself do something like this.

~Hmm, is it trying to communicate with me?~ he wondered to himself, before attempting to communicate with his Earth sense as well. However, after straining for some time, he found that this was not an ability available to him.

~It seems I’m not as good as you; you’ll have to settle for Elmando,” Lucius whispered, before stretching out his Elmando to the object in front of him.

For a moment, the pull from his Earth sense halted, and he thought that he had messed up by trying to use Elmando.

However, after a few seconds, he began to feel a tug pulling at his body.

Lucius and the strange entity in front of him tugged at each other in this manner for a few more minutes, each time tugging just a little harder. .

Although he couldn’t exactly understand what the thing in front of him was trying to say, two things were clear to him.

One, the object… or creature held no malice towards him. Them continuously increasing the strength of their Elmando was sort of like a trust fall between the two; it showed that although the other had some power, they did not intend to hurt the other.

And secondly, this creature was indeed a plant.

This was a realization he couldn’t quite explain. But a big part of it came from the fact it had used Earth sense to try to communicate with him initially. For some reason, it just felt like something only plants could do.

Their Elmando pulls on each other felt almost like a sort of pinging system. Whilst they relayed their trust in each other, the plant creature was also trying to see if Lucius was still there.

Every time he took even a second too long to respond to its pings, its next ping would be a little harder, almost as if it had gotten desperate.

“Are you scared being all alone down here?” he whispered to it, before reaching out his hand.

He was hesitant to touch a creature he barely understood, with little to no light no less; however, for some reason, he felt like he already knew this creature. Like they had interacted before this.

And so, after a few seconds of thought, he touched it.

His mind felt fuzzy, then warm. The darkness around him was slowly burned away by a blinding light until he was in a white void similar to the one he went to during evolutionary processes.

However, instead of a sun at the centre, there was a small sapling, with glowing golden leaves and obsidian black branches.

Lucius stared at it for a moment, in awe of its beauty, before suddenly remembering where he had met this creature before.

“The Marked Tree,” he whispered to himself.

And the sapling sent out a solar wave; it felt like a warm embrace to his skin.

“Then are you the seedling?” Lucius wondered, before trying to float closer to it.

The sapling sent out yet another solar wave.

“This is… incredible,” Lucius whispered.

Earlier he had taken a look at his skills, and he was certain that it had shown him he still had one Solar Relay charge. Meaning that if he could replicate whatever process had created the sapling he would be able to have multiple marked trees.

With this, defeating the necromancer would almost be child’s play.

However, as if being able to read his mind, the sapling sent out another solar wave. This one felt cold… unwelcoming.

“No?” Lucius asked, unsure about what the sapling meant exactly.

The sapling froze for a moment, before releasing one of its golden leaves. The leaf floated towards Lucius, before touching his head.

With that, a series of images played within his mind. All of them portraying some sort of infant in a situation of weakness.

A baby crying after it had attempted to kill an ant but was instead bitten.

A puppy whining after it had tried to pick a fight with a cat but lost.

In all these images, the parent came to save it.

The next few images were hard to describe. In fact, Lucius wondered if the images themselves were important or whether it was the emotions they were invoking within him. A feeling of being unimportant… being washed out, a fraction of what he once was.

“Then are you saying you can’t become like how you used to be?” Lucius asked, to which the sapling replied with a warm solar wave.

“Hmm.”

“Then what is it you want me to do?” he asked after some thought.

The sapling released another one of its golden leaves, and once again, it floated towards Lucius’s head.

This time it played images of two things joining together and becoming larger. It didn’t take a lot of these images for Lucius to understand what it was trying to tell him.

~Can I trust this thing?~ Lucius wondered, and right then, the sapling sent a warm solar wave.

~I suppose if you were going to try to do something, you’d have done it already,~ he thought to himself, realizing that this thing had complete access to his mind.

After all, most of the images it had played were of his old world, and not of this one.

“Then, I’ll help you… if you can help me,” Lucius said out loud.

The sapling began glowing brightly until it was almost indiscernible from what seemed like a solar crux.

The crux slowly hovered towards him, before floating around him, as if inspecting his body. After a few moments, it decided on a spot, and hovered towards the area where his tail met his body.

[Foreign entity detected…]

[System traces detected within entity… attempting communication…]

[Communication established…]

[『Solar Relay』 remnant requests symbiosis]

~Accept.~

[Processing…]

With this, Lucius felt an embracing warmth cloak his entire body.

A moment later, the warmth retreated towards a spot right next to where his tail met his body.

[Symbiosis Complete!]

[Skill Elmando has been chosen as shared trait.]