Still feeling incredibly weak, Diedrich looked helpless at the thought of transporting the snake back to his village.
Leaving the corpse behind never crossed his mind as from its hide some very tough armor could be made, while the meat could probably last the village for a long time.
Staring at the bone tree, Diedrich suddenly got an idea. Going alone into the jungle he had two goals, one was leveling up which he did, while the other was getting a new treant from at least an uncommon grade tree.
Making his way back to the tree Diedrich first removed the remaining 4 bone apples, after that he activated his Treant creation skill. Feeling an immediate drain and when he looked at his status he noticed he only had 30 EP left! And the drain was still continuing, watching the EP lower from 30 to 20 to 10 Diedrich became nervous, however it eventually stopped at 7.
Diedrich counted himself lucky he had not used a lot of EP during the fight, only having used it when he turned the wooden bracers into spears.
Diedrich felt the strangely familiar energy again exit his body and go into the Bone tree, the tree then started to transform.
It began to visibly shrink in front of him compressing itself, a few of the branches fused together to turn into two arms with hands and fingers, while the roots turned into legs.
The canopy from the tree also shrunk but did not disappear turning into the supposed hair of the treant.
Eventually in front of Diedrich stood a 1.50 meter tall stocky humanoid treant that was primarily brown from the trunk with speckles of white, it still had no other facial features except for two green glowing eyes.
Checking its status Diedrich became surprised.
_____________________
Species: Treant (✩)
Gender: N/A
Tier: 1 (Lv:1)
Stats: Strength: 17, Intelligence: 0, Agility: 9, EP: 15, Constitution: 24
Affinity: Nature
Skills: Natural Bone armor (✩), Alluring sap (✩)
_____________________
This Treant was much stronger than the other ones Diedrich had created, and even its skills looked much stronger even though it was still a rank 1 creature.
_____________________
Natural Bone armor (✩)
Description: Able to absorb bones of other rank one creatures and apply it as armor to the surface of the user's body.
Alluring sap (✩)
Description: Creates a sweet-smelling sap attracting creatures with a sense of smell, within a 5 kilometer radius.
_____________________
Diedrich was shocked by the skill bone armor because with its high constitution it would literally be a tank, the skill alluring sap in retrospect was less impressive but still useful for setting traps he figured.
Starting in amazement at his new creation, Diedrich became excited at the thought of turning more uncommon plants into Treants especially the Euterpe tree which had insane toughness.
Finding his carrier for the snake Diedrich slowly made his way back to the village.
It took Diedrich two hours to return, this was mainly due to the Treant's slow movement especially since it was dragging the snake that must weigh at least 800 kilos.
They also encountered a few badgers and wolfs on the way that tried to snack on the dead prey, although Diedrich wasn't in optimum fighting condition he could create wooden darts and throw them at the creatures either outright killing them or injuring letting them escape.
In the end, he killed 2 badgers, whose sole cores he gave to the treant making him level up thrice, he also let it absorb the badger's bones and saw how the root of the treant's fingers penetrated their corpses and seemed to liquefy and absorb the bones as they began growing on the outside of his body like armor, although it was still incomplete as only the chest was now covered.
Diedrich didn't know why but he felt that the animals were getting closer to the village as he spotted a boar who managed to escape 4 kilometers away from Tarak village.
Knowing this was serious Diedrich had to start thinking about the village's defences.
Returning into the village, the villagers were greeted by the shocking site of a bloody and pale Diedrich along with his treant covered by a strange white armor dragging a monstrous snake behind it.
Seeing their chief covered in blood the villagers stopped what they were doing and crowded around Diedrich with Karla asking with a concerned expression "What happened?".
"The outside....Might be more dangerous than what I previously thought".
After that Diedrich told them the story of his fight with the serpent, during the story, Marta eventually arrived and gave a plate of food and a cup of water to him which he looked grateful to her for, he devoured the food while continuing the story.
After everything was said, the group became quiet, some looked terrified as they peered into the jungle while others looked at Diedrich with more respect.
leaving the massive snake next to the village unable to be stored anywhere, Diedrich told them that he needed to rest as he walked towards his living quarters with the treant following closely behind. He then fell on his bed passed out completely spent from the day's events.
"Oink!"
"QUICK, ALL SPEARMEN GATHER BOAR ATTACK!"
Woken up by the shout, Diedrich knew the village was under attack, and immediately stood up letting out a slight groan as he was still in pain.
Running as fast as he was possible with the treant following him Diedrich came outside to the visage of 3 spearmen infantry members fighting a lone boar, one of the spearmen Jacob was no longer in the battle sitting on the ground holding his shoulder in pain.
The boar had already been struck by one spear in its back, but the fight was still far from over as it simply turned around to Karla the one who had pierced it sending her running for her life as she lost her grip on the spear and was now being chased by the boar.
Hans tried to distract it by yelling while charging at it, and it worked but maybe too well as the boar's eyes suddenly had a red glint in them while its charging speed increased heading directly for Hans.
Being too close to run away Hans could only prepare himself to face the charge, the boar just about to reach him with Hans seeing his life flash before his eyes as the tusk was just about to hit him.
Crunch
Staring wide-eyed Hans no longer saw the boar before him only the Treant bashing its shoulder into the boar's side making it fly to the left.
After the blast, the boar flew for two meters until it crashed into the ground the treant because of the recoil was blasted to the other side a similar distance as the boar.
The boar weakly got up as it spat a mouthful of blood and turned to face Alex who was dashing straight for it.
Just as it was about to react to the spear coming for it, the spear suddenly elongated piercing the boar's throat, falling down again it took its last few desperate attempts of air.
Diedrich having commanded the Treant from afar only now arrived at the scene, and first went to Jacob who was sitting on the ground while Otto was helping him, Diedrich looked at his injury and it seemed the boar had dislocated his shoulder.
Jacob was the first one who spotted the boar and had called the others, it seemed he also tried to fight it, however with his lack of experience and being under leveled he was lucky to still be alive.
Diedrich didn't know how to place and arm back in the correct position, so instead he gave him one of the Bone apples and hoped with the increased constitution it would put itself back into place, he also told Otto to help Jacob get up and see if anyone in the village knew how to fix his arm.
Walking up to the trio who were standing around the corpse of the boar, Diedrich felt gloomy. If a boar had caused them so much trouble already, how would the village survive if something stronger or a group attacked them when he wasn't there.
Having made up his mind that creating a wall surrounding the village was a priority Diedrich walked up to Hans, Alex, and Karla. Seeing Diedrich still somewhat gloomy expression Alex decided to break the ice by asking "So who gets the core?".
Feeling a bit perplexed Diedrich said, "You're kill, you're core".
Alex felt relieved while the others were jokingly outraged, with Hans even putting his arm around Alex's neck and saying "You gotta share with a fellow brother".
"With a fellow sister too" Karla chimed in making the previously heavy atmosphere a bit lighter.
Diedrich also feeling more comfortable, told them about his plan for the defenses of the village and also asked them for their input on what could be improved about it, as he made the final details for the village's reconstruction.
Having hashed out the plan with a few alterations due to the trio, Diedrich shared it with the rest of the village, they were only too happy to start working on it with the few hours of sunlight left, knowing that if they had to fight those creatures without levels or a class they would definitely die.
After three hours it became dark, however with the efforts of the entire village and Diedrich although mostly his treant the west side of the village now had a wall, the wall wasn't impressive only being 180 centimeters tall which was the maximum length Diedrich could manipulate wood, however, the wall was very sturdy being 200 meters long and 1 meter wide, with support beams added to the side that should a boar ram it, the wall should hold.
Although the other sides were left undefended, the west side was the main side facing the jungle while the south side was where the lake was.
They had also decided that the soldiers and some volunteering villagers would take night shifts changing with each other three times based on the position of the moon, it wasn't accurate but it was their only way to guess the time.
The night was however uneventful and when day came Diedrich told the still awake night watch to get some rest.
Diedrich first ate some boar meat and after summoned new villagers, he only summoned 4 today with one of them turning out to be a rank 1 which he added to the Nature's spear infantry.
The villagers having woken up continued with the construction of the village, seeing that everything was coming along Diedrich took three soldiers to go hunt.
He decided to let Elise stay after she said she had discovered something interesting as she felt she could somehow manipulate her EP through other objects.
Hoping her the best, Diedrich left with soldiers. He stayed as close to the village as possible and used the treant as a substitute for himself whenever one of them needed help as he was still not in any condition to fight although walking didn't seem to bother him anymore.
After three hours Diedrich returned with their hunt's bounty and took the next group of soldiers. this process he repeated two more times, giving Matilda and Mark more work skinning and cooking than they had bargained for.
Matilda decided in the end, to just create jerky out of much of the meat otherwise it would just go bad.
The snake still hadn't been touched largely due to Mark being unable to cut its thick hide, and Diedrich having no available personnel to help him.
Diedrich felt a bit bad for both of them however with the defense of the village taking priority he had no other choice.
For the next two day's things stayed the same, with the village's walls being completed it was circular and had four exits one on the east, west, south, and north side.
The soldiers had grown to 8, while the village now had a population of 33 with living quarters no longer fitting them all cottages for the extra citizens had also been built.
Standing on the wall were four soldiers patrolling the outside.
"two Boar's incoming!" one of the soldiers suddenly yelled.
"Got it" said Alex and Karla, both jumping down from the wall towards the oncoming rushing boars the fight was short as the boars were easily defeated.
Hearing their victorious bellows of laughter, Diedrich walked in the village with a content smile on his face.