Chapter 2: [Now this is just ironic]... "SHUT UP!"
"Alright, alright, you don't need to pester me twice."
'Status'
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| Name: Ixa | Species: Fallen Treant
| Stats
STR: 0
AGI: N/A
VIT: ?
INT: 6
| Skills & Abilities
<Fallen Treant>
<Hands of Life and Death>
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"My name is Ixa?.... nice name."
[Just think of the skill, and the description will pop up.]
"Aight."
'Hands of Life and Death'
<Hands of Life and Death>
- Life is on no-one's leash, and death doesn't bend a knee to anyone, yet both have submitted to you in tandem; they both hold your hands, yet you stand in the wake of both of them, separate, yet, together, and with them beside you, they'll do impossible things, all you need is the mind to will it.
| - Manipulate practices of life and death to your will.
"That's....I don't even know, 'broken', 'unnatural', but considering my species name, I guess it makes sense...in a way, and speaking of which..."
'Fallen Treant'
<Fallen Treant>
- This is what you are, not a living piece of wood like a normal Treant, but an undead one, yet, you're not really undead either; you're a peculiar case, as the breathing life of a Treant and the reaping scythe of death have both failed in taking you as they fought each other off in dissonance, yet in that conflict, they have found completion; you are more than a simple 'living tree' now, as they now find peace & contentment in one another, in you.
(Infancy Stage) | - Unknown.
"Now that's really not specific, the first one sounds somewhat straightforward, albeit nuts, 'in death & life' and all that, but this one straight up doesn't mention anything besides it being in the infancy stage, and that the effects are unknown, but neither of them show-wait, System, what exactly did you want me to see?"
He dismissed the status screen.
"These skills sound interesting and powerful, but without having a medium to see, much less not understanding how to use either of them, especially the one that's named after my species, trying to protect myself with them is just...not possible."
[Both are skills that come with your species, so they are, for the most part, built into you, so they should naturally come to you.
Conclusion: 'feel' them out, try and empty your mind to feel out for what these "functions" of your species are, you should feel them as an inclination; while <Fallen Treant> is the most mysterious one out of the two, you should sense when an opportunity arises, but for <Hands of Life and Death>, simply put, try and seek out the 'inclination' of it in your mind, its 'will', if you will, then, the answer will present itself.]
"So just feel out the availability of the skills that are given to my body... kind of like how animals have their instincts to help survive out in the wild but repurposed for the sentient mind...I have to admit, it sounds awesome, okay, I'm gonna try it."
Quieting his mind, he felt around his head and body, despite not being able to move and see, heck, even feel to a certain extent, but that was when he noticed the slightest sliver of 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠, it felt... drafty, cold, and distanced, like a part of him was feeling it, but was desensitized to it, well, more so than normal.
'Odd, to say the least', but he let the thought go as focusing on that feeling was his top priority.
Allowing his mind to just wander about it, to be curious, at first, he simply tried to grasp the feeling, but the "inclination" was fleeting in an instant, it was 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 out of his reach, on the furthest reaches of his mind, in his subconscious, but it fell over into obscurity before he could even register it, but it gave him a goal to work towards, so he tried again, and again...and again... and again.
He tried numerous times, but it was like trying to catch a small, wild animal bare-handed, with completely no experience.
In the first dozen of tries, repetition gave no differing results, 𝐛𝐮𝐭, instead of getting tired of it or perhaps even frustrated which would be a natural response, his failures actually made him more curious if anything; to be able to firmly grasp those thoughts that came into existence on the cusp of the subconscious and bring them into your actual consciousness, would be nothing short of a miracle of control and patience, and he recognized that little nugget of information: success won't come easy, especially on the first try, that is something reserved for born geniuses, and he wasn't one of those, besides, he'd rather earn it instead.
Slowly, he learned to approach this 'inclination' calmly and slowly, like a hunter with his prey, instead of shooting straight for it, and after each try, he was getting closer and closer, he was content with his progress, and finally, he was about to get a handle on it, but before he could, it fell over again into the endless abyss that was whatever laid beyond the subconscious without reason, just like the first time he tried to seize it...
He didn't understand, this time, he felt like he finally understood why he kept on losing the inclination.
Beforehand, he learned to approach, not with the intent to catch it, but to simply move forward, and this worked, however, to keep this up was not only difficult, but tiring, as in the end, he 𝐰𝐚𝐬 trying to catch it, he had to learn to improve over multiple attempts, getting closer and closer with each try, but eventually, it would fall over, and this time, he was 𝐬𝐨 close...
But before he could even find himself frustrated, Ixa noticed that it didn't just fall over, but instead, it felt like it was leading him to something...if that or any of this made any sense inside of someone's head, but he didn't have the processing power to even think about that after all of that focus, so, both from his understanding and exhaustion, he didn't think about it.
The inclination was calling him from beyond his consciousness & even subconscious...and he followed it, beyond his body, and he could still feel every part of the process.
He didn't try to understand what was going on, as it felt the moment he stepped back to try and understand this, it would be gone, like his unawareness was the protection that allowed him to follow the inclination in the first place.
At some point, the inclination was right in front of him, yet it wasn't being difficult, it felt like he just had to reach out for it, and so he did.
At that immediate moment, his mind swirled with momentary understanding, and his body tingled & became slightly more numb, despite following the inclination outside of his body.
He felt unrestricted in his movement along with an immediate change in the environment, and he can open his... eyes?
"I...succeeded? But in what?"
[Congrats are in order, as you successfully managed to conceive what was eluding you, the knowledge of the skill, or to be more exact, the will of the skill, as it remains in the subconscious of the being, waiting to join into the main consciousness to be of use, and in order to find it, you dived into the sea that is your subconsciousness by rendering your conscious mute, silent, and eventually, you managed to grasp at the opportunity given by it itself, even managing to go beyond the sea of unconsciousness around it and bring it back into your consciousness, if that is overwhelming, in the simple terms, think of it as grasping control of a part of the body that was not a part of your waking mind, that was autonomous and part of your body doing its job of keeping you alive; you followed it as a guide to what the skill does...or at least a part of it.]
"... I can't even begin to try and understand what I just went through, but I think I get what you mean, but I still don't understand what I-the skill did..."
[Just open your eyes. (: ]
"The fact that I can somehow tell that you're smiling is concerning on so many levels, but okay."
He slowly opened his eyes to find a dark, murky forest surrounding him, and he was small, smaller than the supposed couple of dozens of inches he was supposed to be...
"Wait... why do I have white fur...I didn't have any fur..."
He noticed a small, dirtied body of water in this seemingly dead forest and slowly walked to it on all fours, it felt natural, yet odd to be walking like this, but once he saw himself in the reflection of the water, he couldn't help but grow incited in that moment... and also slightly scared stiff at the reflection.
"This... I know you joked about this System, about one eating my core, but this isn't funny, not one bit."
He was...
[A rabbit, wow, what are the odds, I didn't know this was what the skill led you to, but it's ironic to say the least.]
"Don't you even start..."
[Don't start getting jumpy at me {: ]
"... I'm not even going to respond to that."
He was a white bunny, there wasn't much else to mention besides the fact that there were two sunken holes of just pitch darkness where the eyes were, which was what scared him, anyone would mistake him for a regular bunny as long as they didn't look at his eyes, or at least he thought so, he didn't exactly know what a rabbit was supposed to look like.
"How did I even gain control of this bunny, I know I control life and death to some extent, but I didn't think it would go so far as to give me full control of anything alive."
[Living beings are going to be much harder to fully control, yes, however, this body you are possessing is dead and therefore has no will of its own.]
"Wait, it is dead? It doesn't look dead, how did it die?"
[Who knows, maybe to starvation, a natural poison, there are endless possibilities, but that doesn't matter, for now, I suggest finding your body and affirming the surroundings, for all we know, there's already some animal already trying to prey on your actual body.]
"Okay, okay, you don't need to command me, I can think for myself, I'm not helpless, you know."
For a moment, he was confused on which direction he should head, but then, he felt that same feeling from before, a distanced cold and drafty feeling, but it was slightly stronger than before, which gave him the idea that this is what his body is feeling, and he could discern which direction it was coming from, so he started walking towards the location of his body.
'Now that I think about it, the feeling that led me to this body...it must've been what this body was feeling...as to how something dead feels, I don't even want to begin on thinking how.'
The overall forest was dark, all the trees were dead, no animals in sight, not even any bugs, so he was not obstructed at all, although, this begs the question of why a bunny of all animals was in such a forsaken place?
As he walked through the dead forest with curious thoughts, a cold breeze blew by, dried leaves from who knows where scrapped past him, some crumbling with the wind, Ixa's body, or rather, the bunny's, continued to push forward, against the wind, feeling little to no cold or resistance...a dead body is an unfeeling one, at least partially...
"That reminds me, you still haven't answered me, how did I even control this bunny, I know I can use both life and death, but I didn't even know what that would look like, much less looking like this, controlling dead things, but how exactly does it work, I didn't even know what I was doing until I saw myself in the reflection."
[As a being that has death under one thumb, you can quite literally be in the position of the old folklore legend of what many call, "The Grim Reaper", claim one's life, hold dominion over the dead, and take responsibility in their passing to wherever they end up after death, and as such, you can 'reap' its benefits, like having a sense for the dead, or those who are close to their end, and like now, take command of the dead's bodies, and the same can be said for life, however, they aren't exactly the same, obviously, so those options aren't the same for life, like, say, trying to take over a living person, that would be much more difficult, as life is the presence of something, well, 'alive', so it would be like trying to override a person's will, a constant state of struggling, like trying to claim a spot in existence where something already exists.
As for how exactly you do it, I do not know, but, what I do know is that this ability is operated internally by your inherent skills of your race, of your body and mind, meaning that if you truly wish to know, you need knowledge on how you work and function.
The more you understand yourself, the more you'll understand your abilities, and I'm sure there is information in this world to sharpen your mind to be capable of figuring it out for yourself.]
"So it really has a broad range of uses, and the only way for me to fully flesh out just how much my skills can do and how they work is..."
[To experiment and try new things, and considering I can't find out your lifespan as it's a dead end, I'd say you have all the time in the world, but that's beside the point, your body should be just up ahead.]
"Hold up, back it up a second, my lifespan is essentially undefined?"
[Yep.]
"This is just getting more insane as it goes along, I'll shelve that thought for now-oh ****."
He finally arrived at his body, but what he found was not safety, not some animal trying to eat his core, but a freaking human that has somehow stumbled upon his body in this dense part of the forest where his body was located.
Dead trees surrounded the area his body was in with dry dirt making up the ground, which was a welcome change to the somewhat watery, other times soggy ground, with the trees somehow so interwoven that there was only one way to enter and exit this space, and that one gap was where he current is.
His actual body was located near the back of the small clearing, opposite to where he's standing.
"Oh ****, ****, ****, what do I do?"
But just then, he felt something, it felt... like the inclination of <Hands of Life and Death> again, he didn't know what exactly it was wanting him to do, but he put it off; he would have tried anything to protect himself, but that would only be a last resort, as he felt that this 'inclination' was going to cost him...
In his mind, it also pushed him physically to move towards him, but he shook his head to rid himself of it.
He thought of another idea, but if it didn't work, he would have to follow his instinct.
He immediately started hopping over, across the small clearing, to the front of the human, who was slowly approaching his body, and once he entered the person's line of vision, the human halted, and watched with startled eyes.
What ensued was a stalemate, as Ixa was nervously awaiting the human man's action while the man was staring at him, both were making direct eye contact, although, for the human man, he was doubtful if it was even meeting his gaze, or even if it saw him, as what he saw was two gaping holes where the eyes were supposed to be.
The man was in a sort of scout's outfit, thin and flexible brown leather & deep blue textile, with brown armguards with thin sleeves that go all the way to just below his wrist, with rough looking blue jeans, accompanied by the same brown knee guards, black boots on his feet, he looked quite sturdy & strong, a warrior's build, with a scabbard on his waist.
'What the...?...There should be no animals in this forest, so why is a bunny of all things here, especially one so... perturbing.'
"And it is...guarding? This... thing, whatever it is…this forest has been anything but eventful every time I visit, nothing really changes, but this… maybe I should head back and alert the guild about it..."
That put Ixa into an even more precarious position, if he were to be revealed to a mass of people, he may be deemed a threat, or at the very least, he would be at a greater risk, as his existence is very... delicate, to say the least, with being, well, rooted, he'll be in even more danger, if any arises.
Even if they choose a peaceful approach, not everyone is kind, there may be someone that has ill intentions, it would be better if he wasn't exposed, so he needed to make a choice, but what choice would that be, if he were to hurt, or even kill this individual, it would only be a matter of time until he was discovered as a man being missing is sure to be noticed, especially a man from a 'guild'.
Just then though, he heard footsteps, multiple of them overlapping each other, which broke their stare down as they both looked to see who was coming, it sounded like a crowd, what the heck! Why was a crowd heading this way?
They were a group of armored individuals, around 12 of them, some with steel swords in hand, and they were dressed as if they were going to war, all of them had an air about them, the feeling... what was the word again? Ah, that's it, 𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐬... they had a 𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐬 air about them, it didn't matter if they were a man or woman, they looked and gave out an aura of wanting to murder, and it was all directed not at him, but the man, who caught onto it very quickly, as he started to suddenly back up, ignoring Ixa as he was in the back of his mind now.
'What is going on now?!'
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Storyteller_0
Storyteller_0 Things are starting to get interesting, no? You thought it was a straight line to the auxilary chapter? Nope, now, get ready for a doozy, and I hope you guys are fans of the loop-d-loop, and for the people who already added this book to their collection, Thanks! And buckle up for one heck of a story!
Adios, my readers! And have a wonderful read and day!
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
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