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Luckily, not only I had warded my cave greatly, but also, as the tree grew, one of the roots reached the cave, allowing me to continue feeding it with mana while staying hidden. I watched from my hidden spot, assisted by several wards, as several cloaked figures arrived at the opening I had chosen as my hidden spot.

Admittedly, I was annoyed with the development. Based on the aggressive expansion of the undead and the defensive state of the undead, I expected the undead to arrive first. I had stayed close to the territory of the elves, because I hoped that the signs of battle would be the thing that received their attention.

Their aggressive scouting surprised me.

As they got closer, I realized that it was a small party of four, each armed with bows and arrows — and I noticed that none of the arrows had fletching, and the arrowhead was just the thickness of the branch that had been used as well. They looked grown rather than crafted.

It was a comment at a distance, but I felt rather accurate in my expectation.

I didn’t have the slightest idea of their language, but their shocked cries weren’t particularly difficult to decipher, nor their heated gestures as the group split into two, pointing between the tree and their encampment.

In the end, three of them stayed with the tree, tense, with their bows raised as they looked in the upstream direction, while the last one rushed back with great speed. Their reaction was not too surprising, making sure the news was delivered safely was important, but defending the sudden appearance of another guardian tree was clearly more important for them.

And, as I watched the elves, I realized that I might have misunderstood the importance of the guardian trees, even after what I had watched them in the battle. The battle itself was chaotic, with many things to focus on, but the current circumstances were much safer.

Enough for me to observe the elves more in detail. At the first glance, they were not too different than humans, but then I noticed them absorbing the nature-life energy that was radiating off the trees.

At first, I thought that they were preparing to cast the spell, but then I realized it was a passive, one-way absorption, eerily similar to breathing, implying a certain level of dependence on the guardian trees — though, I had no idea whether it was something of a luxury like a good dessert, or something truly vital like water.

I needed to observe more — preferably with more invasive methods than secret tendrils of mana — to make a definitive conclusion, which caused me to temporarily abandon that track, focusing on feeding the tree.

And, in response, it continued growing, the amount of nature-life mana getting more and more significant. When elves returned fifteen minutes later — this time as a group of twenty — the tree already gained another foot of height, with a corresponding increase in the mana that it constantly radiated.

I turned my attention to the elves. Out of the twenty, nineteen of them were archers, dressed in similar garbs, with the signs of battle still in their bodies. However, one of them was considerably different.

A man, wearing a different cloak, carrying a staff, its robe carrying several silver inscriptions that looked completely alien to my gaze. I didn’t need to feel the mana gathering around him, following his commands to detect that he was a mage.

I still used my detection capabilities to examine him. After all the times I had practiced that particular trick, examining others’ soul spaces, it was one trick I was truly confident in applying, easily invading his being before he could notice.

I noticed a great difference between him and the other elves immediately. A crystallized piece of Divine Spark, almost exactly like the Light Node the headmistress had created for me and Titania, though made of Nature Spark rather than Light Spark.

Still, the amount was small. Not as small as the minuscule amount the fruit I had stolen had been carrying, but still smaller than the tree had been carrying. It was enough to allow him to transform some mana, but I didn’t want to imagine just how long or exhausting such a process would have been.

I might have wondered why he hadn’t been a part of the earlier battle, but his face, etched with exhaustion, told me the story. The way he stumbled toward the tree just further confirmed the extent of it.

One of the archers approached to help, only to be dismissed with a harsh bark.

Interesting, but not as interesting as the ward that he started creating … or growing, I corrected myself, because the way he cast his spell was significantly different than anything I had seen, even when I included Janelor’s tricks.

Instead of using the mana to create a node and surround it with an outline and building the additional nodes one by one, he created — for the lack of a better term — a seed, and started gently supporting it with the nature-life mana the was supplying, and the ward started to grow slowly, just like the tree itself did under my assistance.

An interesting casting strategy, and one, in certain aspects, could probably generate a lot of advantages, but the disadvantages were equally clear. It was impossible to use it in any kind of direct confrontation.

Maybe his exhaustion wasn’t the only reason he wasn’t a direct part of the battle.

Another disadvantage was the lack of control during its growth phase. I had the ability to subtly break and take control of other wards as well — a skill I had applied against a great number of enemies. And while I could imagine such a different ward would have been harder to interfere with than a similarly-powered ordinary ward, the exact opposite was true while in the growth phase.

Making it trivial for me to intervene while keeping myself hidden.

I didn’t have the ability to transform nature-life mana directly, but with the tree helpfully providing a lot to me, all I needed to do was to gather some from the air and form it into the exact shape of the tendrils the tree had been extending into the astral dimension, and change the shape of the ward.

Just like that, the ward had changed shape. The initial intention was to create a protective layer around the roots. After seeing their other attempts, it was clear that they wanted to uproot the tree and bring it back to their encampment.

Too bad I didn’t trust myself to stay hidden as they brought it along. And even if I was confident, I had no intention of traveling to an area firmly under their control. So, under my intervention, the protection ward changed shape, and turned into an ordinary defensive ward that would protect the roots.

The protection such a ward would offer compared to anything I could create was negligible, but it didn’t mean that it was worthless. It created another layer to hide my intervention when they tried to dig around for my intervention.

An intervention I expected. After all, he was a mage — a terrible one, but a mage nonetheless — and it was only natural for him to start digging around why his ordinary spell had failed.

But his reaction proved that I might have misunderstood the extent of their difference. He cast another spell, but, rather than for it to travel down underground to explore the ward he had cast, it wrapped around the tree, then, connected to every single elf around the tree.

He barked another order, and all elves — except two of them that continued to guard — gathered around the tree, and started some kind of ritual, reminding me of an elegant dance, yet extremely serious.

I expected some kind of mana pattern to appear around them, ready to break it up, expecting them to use a more forceful method to move the tree. I was prepared to redirect their clumsy spell, or even break it directly if necessary.

I didn’t want the bait I had worked so hard to establish to be broken.

No spell appeared even as their ritual continued to build up, which surprised me. I expected them to charge a stronger spell, but then I realized there was no excess mana for that.

With nothing to do, I split my attention between observing them and feeding the tree, waiting for the undead to arrive and finally interrupting them.

Yet, it was not the undead that interrupted me first, but a flare in the depths of the tree. A flicker of Divine Spark.

My first reflex was to blast every single elf into pieces. Who were they, daring to try to steal the Divine Spark under my control, just because I didn’t let them move it.

I pushed my mana into the tree, ready to pull that flicker of Spark back, only to realize the Divine Spark of the tree was still intact, and it was an additional flicker.

How intriguing.

[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]