Hmm, you know what? Maybe things are far from over. Maybe I still have plenty more to do from here before everything can truly become peaceful. Aaaand maybe this stupid Spirit that’s watching over me is being a mega downer in my time of victory. But all of that changes absolutely nothing!

  I saved the forest from the Wind Spirit! I took our nds back! And I did it peacefully, all while taking my body back from mom’s tyranny! No one can tell me that what I did wasn’t amazing!!!

  I feel like a new pnt!

  A changed pnt!

  A more mature pnt!

  I wish I could go show Til all this progress I’ve made somehow!

  But uh… What is it that a new peaceful pnt like me is allowed to eat, again?

  Yeah, I’ve run into a sort of problem these days, it seems: This big, hulking body of mine is actually a bit inefficient! Sure, it runs excellently fuel-wise, and it can do some amazing work, bordering on fantastical, but uh… I’m having one heck of a problem filling it up, you know? There’s almost nothing that I’ve come across that feels like it’s actually worth eating. Everything’s basically no better than a drop in the bucket at this point… And with everything that I did after liberating myself from mom, as well as the fact that Trig is still gallivanting around in the Wind Territory sucking away at my resources, I'm running lower than I'd like on everything right now. Plus there’s also the fact that I’m absolutely hideous currently, and if I want to stop looking like a decaying freak, then it’s gonna cost me a crap-ton of resources to do! So you can see why I kind of really need to do a refill right now!!!

  But if the regur everyday animals in the forest won’t cut it, then what will…? Unless I get lucky, I doubt I’ll find another thriving colony of monsters anytime soon. Pretty sure I wiped out most of the big bands of them that there were to get along these parts while I came through here st time anyways. …And also, like, I hate to say it, but… Well, maybe with all I saw from mom, I feel a little guilty about how I acted with the orcs. It was vindictive and wrong of me, I see that now. A pnt of justice who defends love and peace wouldn’t just kill off entire communities and families of orcs, especially when they lead such humanoid lives, right? Just like how I would feel bad if I killed a bunch of innocent humans.

  Hey, uh… Are there maybe any not so innocent humans around these parts…?

  [...There is a small clew of Rock Worms that you could attempt to unearth a short distance away.]

  Huh? Rock Worms? Never heard of those before, but I bet they're some kinda monster-type-thing, right? Mmm… Are they big? Nah, don’t answer that; Even if they are, I don’t think I really wanna have to go through the effort to try and dig them up. Maybe if Trig wasn’t busy right now then I’d attempt it, but at the moment I’m not too big on the idea. Thanks for telling me about it though, Spirit.

  [Hmmm, then perhaps I could offer you something else. Find the tallest tree in the area, Mellily.]

  Uh, okay? I don’t suppose you’re gonna spoil the mystery by telling me what you’re gonna do before you do it, huh?

  [No, my dear, I wouldn’t dare ruin the surprise for you.]

  Yyyup. Heaven forbid I actually know what’s gonna happen for once!

  [Just hurry along, child. I promise to make it worthwhile for you.]

  Yes yes, I’m going I’m going~.

  ~~~

  Being as crazy tall as I am, I was usually able to peek over most of the treeline. It’s a double edged sword though really, since navigating around all these trees without toppling them under my extreme mass was actually quite difficult. For the most part, I had to stand on my tippy-tentacles to help me weave around everything, or maybe unravel my roots and do it. In fact, I’ve become so big that I think I’ve completely lost the option of stealth; What’s not gonna see something the size of a rge office building coming at them, even with all these trees in the way?

  Really, for all that I thought I’d love being big like this, it’s kinda starting to really show its downsides…

  When I get enough power to change how this ugly body of mine looks, maybe I’ll just make myself as small as I used to be. I mean, when mom made my body look like how she did when she was alive, she was still able to bust out into this super huge kaiju form when she wanted to anyways, right? It’s not such a bad idea to sneak around looking all cute and petite until I need my real body again, right?

  But still, even if I end up doing that, there’s no way I’m letting my big, actual body stay looking as hideous as this.

  No way! Nuh uh! Not happening!

  Aaaanyways, even though I was big like this, that didn’t mean it was super easy to find the rgest tree in the area. Apparently a Spirit’s definition of ‘in the area’ is vastly different from mine. Even if I’ve gotten bigger, that doesn’t mean my weird magical sight has gotten any better. Sure, I can see in quite a rger range now (Which, crazily enough, seems to be somehow proportional to how much my roots have grown?), but that still doesn’t mean I can see infinitely off into the distance. So even though I could scan around for a sec and easily go ‘Yup, that one there, that’s the tallest tree!’, the Spirit kept telling me that I was wrong, and I ended up having to go on a two hour search in a surprisingly rge expanse of the forest before I finally wandered over to the right tree.

  Could this stupid Spirit, who knows everything that goes on in its domain, have decided to possibly maybe, idunno, guide me in the right direction?! Yes! Yes, it totally totally could have!!! But did it? Hell no it freaking didn’t! Really, why send me on a wild goose chase like this?!

  [Calm down child, this is no time for you to be upset.]

  What??? You’re really gonna say that to me right now?!

  [Of course I am. You’ll understand in a moment; Just go channel your magic into that tree.]

  Hmph. Alright, fine! But I’ll have you know that if I wasn’t incredibly interested in what was about to happen, then I wouldn’t be listening to what you want right now!

  Let’s see, how do I channel my magic into this tree again…? My roots are a given, sure, since that’s where my magic usually flows out from when I create stuff, but uh… Well, I guess so far I’ve only really grown things with it if I wasn’t using magic on myself, haven’t I? I don’t think I ever really used it to try and modify anything before…

  Oh, but now that I’m thinking about it, didn’t mom do it when she was in the town? She channeled her energy into that half-elf guy’s body and grew her evil nuke tree out of it! Honestly, it’s pretty simir to just growing a tree out of nowhere, but the fact that she’d had to channel energy into something else to do it was a different enough method that it made me a bit worried to try, you know? It’d especially be no good if I messed up trying while low on resources and wasted them.

  [You’ll be fine, child. It’s no different than the energy you use to grow things.]

  …Are you sure? But usually I have to think the word ‘Grow’ to activate that magic… Am I trying to make this stupidly big tree even bigger?

  I didn’t really point it out, but this tree is irrefutably big. Like, I’ll admit that this thing is sitting on top of a hill, but it would still easily put all the other trees in the area to shame without it for sure; It honestly made me feel a bit silly about all the other tall trees that I’d pointed out until then. It’s a mystery how any of these other trees in the area were even able to grow nearby it, considering how much sun it must be taking up. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that every other tree around here was just an offshoot of this big amazing tree, you know?

  Hey, wait a minute. Just checking nd all, but you’re not trying to make me grow another big disaster tree for whatever random reason, are you…?

  [...Your thought patterns can be so bewildering, Mellily.]

  Alright, I’ll take that as a no! Well, since it seems like you believe I can get this right on my first try or whatever, then I guess this is no time to be skittish! Let’s see what surprise is behind big tree number one!

  My roots intermingled with the tree’s, wrapping around it like several dozen hugs, or like the legs of lovers under a warm bnket. Like a plug into a socket, my magic began to flow out of my seed, through my roots, and into the tree, causing the big tree to glow and shudder under the sudden influx of the raw magical power that was flooding into it. The tree didn’t grow, however, despite what I’d expected it to do. Instead, the glow that it was emitting grew more and more intense, creating such an ethereal heat that the bark began to fall off, leaving only pure glowing light behind in the pces they’d fallen from. And as I witnessed even the leaves of the tree begin to go through much the same transformation, leaving behind shining silver after-images where they once sat, I couldn’t help but think one thing:

  …This looks really simir to what happened to the nuke tree, doesn’t it?

  Hey, did you maybe lie to me, Spirit…?