Chapter 457 Years Later

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Since that day that our life went back to normal, calm days after days of warm breezes, sunny days, and farming with the family. Occasionally hunting with friends, creating items with alchemy weekly, and practicing with my abilities while creating new spells and leveling up my skills while cultivating my body, soul, and spirit orb. Days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years… And in the blink of an eye, I was now twelve years of age.

Those days I spent with everyone as a small child were now in the past, but to me, and my perception of life due to my previous life having lived for so long, it all felt like the blink of an eye. As if it was all just yesterday. Although it was a couple of years, the things that have happened could be all be counted with the fingers of my two hands.

Erika's trees had spread across the village and the forest as we had planned. She continued creating seeds weekly over the months and then years, and the trees grew incredibly quickly, reaching their adult size in only a month, and giving fruits in two months from being planted. Like that, the Miasmic Swamp was completely gone in just a year and a half, and the forest gained several "guardians" in the trees Erika created, which eventually grew bigger than the other trees, and connected with the others through roots, sharing their spiritual energy.

The entire forest changed over time, people started seeing sparkles of light at night, sometimes whispers and voices could be heard. Without realizing the forest transformed into a Spiritual Forest, where small spirits of nature were born, influencing the rest of their surroundings, and imbuing it all with spiritual essence.

Monsters became tamer and less aggressive; they simply minded their own business instead of always seeking to kill humans. Demons were nowhere to be seen now. Apparently they abhorred spiritual essence of this quality and felt it was disgusting, so any wild tribes of demons kept themselves very far away from our territory.

Especially thanks to the tree we planted behind Eric's house. The Lesser Yggdrasil Tree grew three times its original size through these years, reaching almost 80 meters, people obviously began to notice such a behemoth, but thanks to the help of the priest's cooperation, we convinced the village that this was a special Spiritual Tree that protected the village. Many people slowly began to attribute it to Ellergest's death, thinking it was his last gift to protect everyone, so it worked rather well.

And indeed, it worked as intended. The Lesser Yggdrasil Tree connected to the other trees that Erika created, the Dryad Trees, and with them all having a combined series of roots, they created their own "Spiritual Barrier" around the village, which continued leveling up the more trees that Erika planted connected to the Lesser Yggdrasil.

Our village obviously took the attention of the people outside. The village was ultimately renamed as Ellergest village in honor of the High Priest, and they called this tree "Ellergest's Gift" or something. The enormous tree became something of a worshipped figure, and even shrines were built around there. People constantly gathered to pray to the Holy Spirits with the help of the tree.

Of course, Erika's trees were very normal looking, so in all this time nobody suspected anything aside from these being weird trees that always had fruits around the village. Due to this, even the homeless had food available. And even though many people constantly harvested these fruits, new ones popped all the time. Some tried to take the trees for themselves in a fit of greed, but ended being punished by the trees themselves, who can retaliate using Spiritual Auras to intimidate those that attempted to take them out or steal them.

Some insane people tried to burn some of the trees, but because of the giant tree in the village, trees became something like an important figure to the people, those that tried to burn the trees in retaliation of them not allowing these people to bring them away from the village ended being punished back by the priests. Many people were thrown to jail for their stupidity, until they ultimately learned their lesson. Thankfully I didn't had to resort to violence myself, or some heads would had ended rolling over the floor if anybody actually succeeded in burning the trees, which were like Erika's children.

The trees and the giant one became a touristic attraction, however. More adventurers and other nobles traveled to the village constantly, some even deciding to stay here to live. Which improved the village's entire appearance. In these couple of years, it had expanded to the point it resembled a small city, with paved floor and even a large area where carriages were stationed due to the sheer amount of people that came and went from the village. Many nobles heard of this countryside village "protected by the spirits" and moved here for a change of pace and also to feel more protected.

Things expanded over time, there were suddenly more jobs, homeless people became rarer as the chief decided to build more and more houses with the money the village was making, and people was thriving. I never really expected that the trees we planted would end up turning the entire village upside down for the better… And even more, several big trees popped out here and there as well, one in where the swamp was, another where the dungeon was, and several others near the outside of the forest, facing the mountains.

Of course, we did this ourselves to protect our territory even more. These powerful trees weakened, absorbed, and cleansed miasma, which made things safer for everybody. They were incredible and I planned to make even more grow around the world, to cleanse the miasma these damned demons brought to Spiritias.

I felt that it was my calling. I don't exactly know how, but it felt as if the more trees I planted, the more of this strange divine spiritual essence began entering my body. And I also started to sense the eyes of divine beings above the heavens.

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