After studying under the guidance of Daiine for several days, I finally heard an announcement in my mind.
"You have acquired the 'Communications Skill'."
"You have unlocked the 'Speaking Branch' of the 'Communications Skills'."
"You have acquired the skill 'Speaking (Common Tongue)' ."
"ai did wit Daiine, ai can tawk now."
It was a little slurred compared to Daiine's speech but it would improve as I leveled up the skill. According to Daiine, the average adult creature would have a speaking (Common tongue) level of 5, that is the average acrass all species. Apperantly an adult dragon should at least have a speaking (Common tongue) level of 15 if they wanted to leave their dens without embarrassing themselves.
"Well done Ashkyr, now let's learn to read. It is quite simple. We simply assign a symbol to all the sounds you learned to speak."
"OK"
Recently Daiine had started to speak from her mouth instead of directly into my mind to help me learn the speaking skill. Before when her voice was coming directly to my mind she was using a high level communication skill called 'Soul Communication' which allows one to speak directly to the soul of another being. With this skill no physical speach is required since the intentions of the soul are directly transfered. Thus even myself who had no communication skills could understand her. Apperantly the gods use a high level form of this skill that allows them to communicate with any soul no matter how far away they are. This is how the system announcements are sent as well.
Over the next few days I would repeatedly memorize and rememorize the symbols Daiine drew in the dirt, copying those symbols were part of the training. Then one day...
"You have unlocked the 'Reading Branch' and the 'Writing Branch' of the 'Communications Skill'."
"You have acquired the skills 'Reading (Common Tongue)' and 'Writing (Common Tongue)'."
"Yes, I've done it. Daiine I can read and write now!"
(my speaking skill was now lv 3 now so I didn't have a slurr)
"Congratulations, now you can finally learn what you are."
Thats right, I'd been so busy learning how to read that I'd forgotten my original goal.
"Status"
The semi-transparent screen appeared before me but this time I understood it.
____________________________________________________
Name: Ashkyr
Race: Ent (???)
Level: 4 Exp (80%)
HP:11
MP:6
Alignment: Evil (5)
Class: N/A
Titles:
1) 'Named By a Dragon' (L) : You have been given the honor of being named by a true dragon, good luck will follow you as long as you don't forsake your name. (the Luck (LCK) stat has been aquired) LCK +3
Stats: Stat Points (12)
STR:5
RES:5
STA:5
DEX:5
INT:5
WIS:5
LCK:3
Skills:
Locomotion Skills:
-Limbless Locomotion Branch
-> Inching Lv 1 (10%): You can inch forward.
-Crawling Branch
->Crawling Lv 1 (24%): You can crawl forwards with at least four limbs.
-Walking Branch
->Walking (Tentacles) Lv 5 (46%): You walk upright in any direction.
-Running Branch
->Running (Tentacles) Lv 2 (13%): You can run forwards and backwards.
Communications Skills:
-Speaking Branch
->Speaking (Common Tongue) Lv 3 (17%): You can speak the common tongue clearly. Your vocabulary is basic.
-Reading Branch
-> Reading (Common Tongue) Lv 0 (12%): You can read the common language but sounding out large words is difficult.
-Writing Branch
->Writing (Common Tongue) Lv 0 (0%): You can write in the common language, although your spelling is terrible and your letters are crooked.
Attack Skills:
-Whipping Branch
->Plant Whip Lv 1 (36%): You can use soft plant limbs as a make shift switch causing minimal damage but the strikes really sting causing enemies to step back.
Racial Skills (Ent) :
1) Absord Lv 3 (67%):
-Passive: You absorb nutrients from the dirt, sun and air around you naturally. As long as there is sufficient sunlight, air and water you have no need to normally consume a food source.
-Active: You can forcefully absorb the life force (or remaining life force) from anything organic. If you absorb enough life force from a living or recently deseaced organism, you can gain a certain percentage of experience points, as if you yourself had killed that organism. (At current level the percentage of experience gained is 1%)
Current absorbtion rate: 3 HP per minute
2) Regrowth Lv 0 (25%)
-Passive: Any damage done to the body can completely heal, even regrow lost limbs, over time. Current Health regeneration rate: 1HP per hour
-Active: Expend Mana to immediately regrow damaged areas, in effect regaining Health. Cost: 5MP per 1HP
____________________________________________________
With help from Daiine I was able to read through my status. It took a while considering my low level in the reading skill but Daiine helped me through the harder words.
"Daiine... What's an 'Ent'."
After reading my stats, although some of my questions were answered, I still have no idea as to what I am. Sure I'm an ent, but what's an ent?
"Hohoho, I thought this would happen. I guess just learning what you're race is won't really answer what you are." Daiine chuckled.
"Do remember the the stories about the different creatures that live in this world?"
"Yes, about how the gods created different creatures in a competition to see who could create the best creature."
"Yes that one, well you see Ashkyr, the story doesn't end there. After the gods created these creatures they placed them in this world. These creatures, being living things, naturally procreated most of time staying within their own species. But over time they interbread amongst each other creating new species and this pattern continued until our present day. Of these original creatures, the most prolific was the race known as 'Humans'. While most species had a limit to how far outside their race they could interbread, humans could reproduce with anything And they did so without reservation. This is what lead to several of the major races in this world being humanoid in shape. Now, the offspring of a human and a tree spirit, a dryad, is a treant. This is different from an ent. Never mistakenly classify yourself as a treant, is that understood Ashkyr. "
" uh huh... Why?"
"Well to put it simply a treant has no intelligence, unlike you who can talk and think and learn, a treant is an animal that only relies on instinct. Now you might be wondering how this all relates to ents. Ents are the result of humans and other creature invading the forests too much. Since the creation of the world humans have stayed mainly to the plains. But as the advanced as a society and technologically, the vegan to invade the forests. While humans aren't evil in their intentions they tend to lack an awareness of their surroundings. There intrusion into the forest upset the forest folk, these are the ancestors of the elves, so in order to protect their forest they asked the ancient dragon of the forest for help. The ancient dragon of the forest was one of the original creations of the gods and possessed great power. When it heard the pleas of the forest folk the ancient dragon had pity on them and shared with them some of his blood. The forest folk took this blood and used to grow new trees. The trees that were grown using the dragon blood grew much faster and healthier than normal trees,and most surprisingly these trees were intelligent. These are the ents. They were raised by the forest folk and taught to protect the forest. But this happened thousands of years ago, it is true that an ent has an infinite life span like a dragon, but since they were used in the war against humans they nearly went extinct. After the war, the remaining ents scattered themselves around the world each either finding a forest it liked or starting one of it's own. Being separated like this they rarely meet making it very rare for a new ent to be born."
"So why was I born? " I asked, it seemed strange that such a rare event would occur randomly. From what Daiine said I must have a pair of pelarents somewhere in this world.
"That is a mystery not even I have an answer to" Daiine answered. "Since I protect this forest there are no ents here and if something as ancient as an ent were to appear here, let alone two ents, there is no way I wouldn't notice. So it is a very curious thing that you are here. But I do not think it was a bad thing, I sincerely enjoy are time together Ashkyr. "
"I don't think it's a bad thing either Daiine" I said smiling up at her.