Chapter 106: Lobes

In just a few minutes, the dull, drained husks of the hundred wood elemental crystals fell silent, their green radiance completely extinguished. Before Keon’s eyes, the pale green bud surged upward, expanding until it reached a height of precisely one foot before coming to a sudden, rigid halt.

Keon raised a synthetic brow, his analytical sub-routines instantly calculating the efficiency curve. ‘Five crystals yielded a single inch of growth during the germination phase. A hundred crystals pushed it from one inch to twelve. That is twenty times the energy input for merely eleven inches of physical growth.’ He paused, letting his processors log the data point. ‘A sharp curve of diminishing returns... yet for an organism of this tier, entirely acceptable.’

His gaze settled back onto the dark green sapling, its stem pulsing with latent life. ‘Now, let’s test with a thousand crystals. I want to see the absolute threshold of this tree's appetite.’

The command echoed silently through the Neural Nexus. Within seconds, a squad of square-shaped logistical drones glided out from the secondary warehouse bay. Descending gracefully over the plot, their magnetic manipulators swept away the hundred transparent, depleted crystals, replacing them with a dense perimeter of a thousand vibrant, dark green wood crystals.

The reaction was immediate. The sapling’s nascent root system flared like a web of emerald light beneath the soil, devouring the surrounding wood energy with a violent, insatiable hunger.

Ten minutes passed in silent observation.

Keon stood speechlessly before the transformed sapling, which had now grown to a height of one full meter. From the upper section of its central trunk, three primary main branches, each roughly a foot in length, had extended outward. Along each main branch, three half-foot sub-branches had sprouted, unfurling a cluster of delicate, emerald leaves.

Keon stepped closer, magnifying his optical sensors to examine the foliage. The leaves bore a structural resemblance to the maple leaves of Earth from his previous life, yet they possessed twelve distinct, symmetrical lobes instead of the traditional three, five, or seven found in terrestrial variants.

Satisfied with the morphological scan, Keon glanced back at the ring of transparent, drained crystals surrounding the trunk. ‘Well... well. An increase of only 2.6 feet. Going from one foot to a meter consumed a full thousand crystals. Probably the growth of main and sub branches and leaves consumed extra energy. Anyway, I have enough wood crystal to support its growth to a high level.’

He ran a quick logistical calculation across his internal HUD. Ten tons of wood elemental crystals exchanged from Universe 339 yielded approximately two hundred million individual crystals, operating on a metric ratio of twenty crystals per kilogram. He had more than enough raw material to push the experiment to its logical conclusion.

‘Continue,’ he directed.

Upon his command, streams of drones flew back and forth in a continuous, synchronized loop, whisking away the spent, glass-like crystals and replacing them with fresh batches.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

The elemental sapling absorbed the massive energy influx almost instantaneously, its growth rate accelerating alongside an exponential surge in consumption. Within minutes, after devouring a staggering fifty thousand wood crystals, the tree surged upward to a height of ten meters. A fourth main branch ruptured from the upper trunk, its sub branches and leaves rustling in harmony with the original three.

‘Ten meters... and finally, it has begun.’

Keon tilted his exoshell's head upward, viewing the towering ten-meter canopy from his two-meter physical perspective.

Then dropping his gaze back to the ground, he observed the nutrient-dense soil, which had been pre-irrigated with pulverized orange magic crystal dust. A distinct, vibrant layer of orange luminescence was now crawling across the topsoil... a clear visual indicator that the Elemental Tree had officially initiated the synthesis of Ether.

Yet as Keon analyzed the glowing ground, a deep, thoughtful expression settled across his synthetic features.

‘Although it is growing smoothly and generating Ether as projected, what am I to do about this expansive root system?’ he mused.

A holographic projection bloomed before his eyes, displaying a subterranean seismic scan of the surrounding sector. While the trunk above ground stood at ten meters, the root network beneath had already spiderwebbed across a radius of nearly a hundred meters. More strikingly, the scan revealed a frightening degree of autonomous intelligence: the creeping roots had actively navigated around his underground tunnel networks, structural foundations, and conduits, instead seeking out and fusing with the subterranean root systems of the local white grass and flora grown on this planet UHS1.

‘Will this tree eventually awaken into an intelligent entity and dismantle my carefully constructed ecosystem?’ A rare flicker of hesitation crossed Keon’s pupil.

He paused, digging through his archived data files until he recalled the information shared by Trosso years ago regarding magical plant classifications.

‘Trosso mentioned that the final growth stage of an Elemental Tree is vast enough to blanket an entire continent, while a true World Tree can encompass an entire planet... I wonder just how immense the magic world he currently inhabits truly is.’

Keon thought to himself and then looked back at the massive, sprawling root network shimmering beneath the soil, his cold logic computing the long-term trajectory.

‘At such an exponential growth rate, planet UHS1 will not be large enough for this Elemental Tree to complete its evolution into a World Tree.’

He shook his head calmly, dismissing the idle concern with machine-like efficiency. ‘Anyway, I should grow it to the limit first. Even if it transforms into an intelligent life form, my current technological means are more than enough to show it who the true master of this world is.’

With a swift directive dispatched through the Neural Nexus, Keon ordered the logistical drones to resume the supply of wood elemental crystals without pause. A new formation of square-shaped drones swept over the sector, carrying dense clusters of dark green crystals. But before the drones could even descend into proximity, a strange phenomenon unfolded.

The moment the drones entered a specific radius around the tree, a visible ripple of dark green energy resonated through the air. The wood elemental crystals held by the drones began to flicker violently; streams of emerald life energy were siphoned straight out of their structures from a distance, arcing through the sky directly toward the sapling’s trunk and leaves like liquid light.

Keon’s optical sensors flared as he registered the anomaly. ‘The devouring range is expanding as it grows,’ he observed, his processing cores analyzing the spatial energy dynamics. ‘It’s like an active elemental domain...’

He stood motionless, closely monitoring the acceleration of the tree’s biological metrics. The devouring process was instantaneous.

Upon absorbing another hundred thousand wood crystals, the tree surged upward to a height of twenty meters. A fifth main branch ruptured smoothly from the central trunk, while the sub-branches on each existing main branch expanded from four to five.

The drones maintained an unrelenting supply line, depositing batch after batch into the expanding domain. When the total consumption reached three hundred thousand crystals, the tree towered at thirty meters. A sixth main branch burst forth, and the number of sub-branches on each main branch increased to six, creating a dense, multi-layered canopy.

By the time the total intake crossed the one million mark, the elemental tree broke past forty meters in height, a seventh main branch extending outward into the sky.

As the continuous feeding operation progressed, half of the total wood elemental crystal reserves stored in the primary warehouse were consumed... a staggering hundred million crystals in total.

Keon shifted his physical position, ascending to the roof of a nearby reinforced structure to gain a clearer, uninhibited line of sight. He looked up at the colossal, majestic silhouette dominating the landscape before him.

‘At this rate, the energy consumption is truly massive, and there appears to be no upper limit,’ Keon mused, his cold logic calculating the remaining reserves. ‘I hope that with the remaining hundred million wood crystals, it can break through the hundred and twenty-meter threshold.’

The tree now stood at an impressive height of ninety-one meters. Its trunk had widened into an imposing pillar over nine meters in diameter, wrapped in a thick, dark green bark with deep brownish striations visible even from a great distance.

Nine massive main branches radiated from the central column, each supporting nine fully developed sub-branches. Uncountable leaves, woven with intricate vascular veins, rustled gently as they gathered and processed the ambient atmospheric forces.

Keon’s optical lenses zoomed in, focusing with high-precision magnification upon a single leaf shimmering in the sunlight.

‘These leaves are the only structural element that hasn't changed throughout its entire growth curve,’

Keon noted, scrutinizing the twelve distinct, symmetrical lobes spreading out from the central leaf stem. ‘Twelve lobes... does this specific geometric structure indicate some kind of underlying energy pattern, or perhaps its ultimate evolutionary potential?’

Suppressing the query for later study, he calmly issued the command to deploy the second half of the crystal reserves.

…