72 Life? Live? Love?

'Did I value life and how much?'

'Can life even have a set value?'

'Is there a difference between different lives?'

I didn't know where or when life started, nor its purpose or endpoint, if such a thing even existed. But I remembered the feeling when I saw those fleeing armies leaving behind their fallen comrades, I felt unwilling to end their lives. To be completely honest, I had also felt unwilling to end the ones already fallen but somehow it felt different...

What was it that had changed?

...

...

...

Necessity! The death of those fallen was necessary for me to survive. The fleeing ones didn't have to die because they didn't mean to harm me anymore.

Was that the right answer, was it fair?

No! But, it was my answer nevertheless.

The value of all life was immeasurable but if the necessity arose, I would choose my own over others. A contradiction but that is just how life is.

How life is...

...

I lost track of time as I tried to dig deeper and deeper into what life was to me. I only stopped when I had succeeded. I had my own innate understanding of life.

It was time for me to return to the outside world, wake up so to speak.

Outside I got a little shock when I saw the place where the beginnings of a city had been before. It had been replaced by a ginormous city, fit to be called a capital city.

'How long have I slept?'

\u003cRoughly 73 years, give or take a few months. Rise and shine sleeping beauty.\u003e

'I should really go take a look at what changed.'

I was about to send out my spiritual body but the system interrupted.

\u003cDid all that time meditating make you dumb? Evolve and you'll be able to go there with your real body!\u003e

That was indeed a proper thought. If I had a humanoid form, I would be able to stroll around in the city and all that fun stuff.

Hence, my evolution commenced. My magic spread around my whole body and slowly, gently compressed it. Every fiber of my being became denser as I shrunk bit by bit.

I had been an enormous existence before and now I returned to being normal-sized. However, the biggest change happened to my magic core and magic reservoir. The core was also condensed and even purified by the pressure.

I could feel both my physical and magical capabilities experience a qualitative change.

Finally, I ended up with the perfect shape of a human. Only the texture left some things to be desired. My skin was still made of bark and my hair consisted of leaves.

Thank the goddesses for transformation magic. My leaves became silken strands of light green hair, my bark looked like tanned skin, and from some leftover leaves, I made myself an attire.

Then, I wanted to walk towards the city. I was currently in a crater where my roots had been before. Decisively, I lifted one foot and took my first step as a somewhat human.

The outcome was not so good. I wasn't accustomed to walking yet, so my step was a little stiff, especially when setting my foot down again. My foot hit the ground with a boom as the earth around me shook. I took a hurried step back to stabilize myself but found an even greater tremor following the first.

\u003cStop moving so much. You only condensed your body, your weight and strength are still the exact same!\u003e

Right, I should have thought of that. Maybe the long time in seclusion had really made me somewhat slow-minded. I used some gravity magic to reduce my weight by several thousand times and sealed a part of my strength with magic.

The tremors subsided and I could finally exit the crater and visit the city. As I approached it, I realized it was even bigger than I had thought before. My small body was dwarfed by the enormous city wall.

This was a somewhat refreshing feeling. I wasn't looking down on things anymore and I could probably look right into the human's eyes by now. Though I did miss the feeling of looking down on people...