I was distracted the entire rest of the night; my efforts to emulate Steven’s skill with lifeforce bearing only the tiniest fraction of fruit. I had succeeded in generating a lifeforce edge-coating like Steven had generated on his spear, but mine was faaaar from being as smooth as his. It clashed and rubbed and just generally wasted energy, especially where the flows came back together, so there was definitely a lot to improve. On the other hand, now that I had an example of what I should be doing, and my experiences balancing otherwise conflicting lifeforce streams from my internal countercurrent, and the countercurrent itself limiting my available lifeforce to manageable levels, I should be able to improve more quickly. Maybe I should have started with simply flowing lifeforce up one side of the weapon and back down the other until it was smooth, but when did I ever start with something small when I could instead make things complicated.

  …maybe my eyes are bigger than my stomach.

  Speaking of which- I should probably concentrate on making breakfast and avoid Tear giving me a weird look again. I’d only absentmindedly infused lifeforce into one egg! Then again, slowly becoming infused with ambient mana is how food gains buffs- is it possible to do it quickly using my own mana?

  “Are you going to blow my breakfast up again?” the catgirl interjected sardonically.

  Is she psychic or something?

  She reached out and swiped the egg from the frying pan while I was busy boggling at her.

  “Hey!”

  I found myself staring at the area on my map representing the big blank absence of trees in the centre of the Beast Forest. It wasn’t possible to make out any details- it was very low resolution due to having only seen it from space.

  Despite Steven’s warning, I was curious. And, since it was miraculously not raining for once -with the gap in clouds visible from space looking like it would stay open for a while- I decided to go take a look. I wasn’t curious enough to be suicidal though, so I made sure to prepare for a quick escape, Steven’s warning and subsequent tales of other Forbidden Zones engendering a certain level of caution- almost as though I was preparing to hunt for a Bone Key.

  To start I deactivated my lifeforce countercurrent, suppressing my aura in the normal way for the time being, and added a Recall Potion to my hotbar- it was the fastest method to escape any situation, faster even than using the Shellphone.

  I also swapped my third loadout to that of my ranger character- I should summon them- which I would switch to when further into the Forest in order to obtain maximum stealth and nullify the aggro-drawing properties of my Solar Flare Armour. That plus an Invisibility Potion should remove all traces of my presence and allow me to scout undetectably just in case there was something I couldn’t handle with my current combat capabilities.

  From what Steven had told me, the Beast Forest was roughly divided into regions based on the mana density and thus danger level of the monsters. Outermost was the Beast Woods, where the Outpost was, then the outer Beast Forest which is where I built the Abyss Tower. Then came the middle and inner forests, and finally the centre, which is where the bare stone area area was.

  “Be back late, dinner’s in the slow cooker!”I called to Tear, spreading my wings and heading out, taking a moment to orient myself before paralleling the path the mana artery followed deep underground: in towards the centre of the Beast Forest.

  I flew fast to begin with, though keeping below the sound barrier; I would slow my flight as I got deeper in.

  The mana density in the air rose as I moved inward; before too long it had doubled and was still rapidly climbing. After a little over an hour’s steady flight, it had surpassed the mana density in my Tower before I had dredged the spring down to the mana artery. The trees were taller and thicker- some of the bigger specimens easily a hundred and fifty metres tall and ten thick. Their presence meant I was nearing the middle forest.

  Deeper still and the mana and trees rose even higher, an occasional few arboreal giants soaring far above their compatriots- in Terraria I would have called them the somewhat redundant Living Wood Trees, but here they were simply ‘Giant Trees’.

  By this point I had met a few monsters drawn in by the aggro-inducing properties of my armour and suppressed aura, but they were dispatched quickly, few lasting more than a few moments against Daybreak and its life-burning flame.

  I landed in the canopy of a Giant Tree to tighten up my aura suppression even further to reduce the leaking Solar Flare aggro, then set off again.

  By the time another hour had passed, the mana density was beginning to concern me, having easily surpassed the current density in my tower. Normally around the Tower, the Radar in my Shellphone detected 10-20 monsters within its detection range of 250 metres, but here it was telling me there were just under a hundred monsters.

  And- having landed to fight some- they were stronger than the ones around the Tower. They still weren’t much of a threat, but they did warrant some caution now, as a freshly healed scratch on my armour attested.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Giant Trees were now becoming more and more common, crowding out their lesser brethren with their canopies until the understorey was a darkened mass of old branches, raised roots, and thick moss; even from above I could see the monsters roaming throughout it. Big and small they were everywhere- in the soil, in the moss, in the bark, in the leaves- if I landed I would be swarmed, and I still wasn’t at the centre. I was starting to think Steven was right and I was only at the inner forest.

  A gigantic wooden hand reached up to grab me as I flew over the canopies, the Giant Treant fixing sap-rheumed eyes on my form and uprooting itself to give chase. Likely the aggro drawing effect of my armour- now that the monster had seen me it wanted me dead. Since I wanted to avoid burning the entire forest down, I opted to not use Daybreak or the Solar Eruption, instead pulling out my Terrarian yo-yo, switching an accessory to the Magic Yo-yo Bag.

  Flitting around the tree giant I sent buzz-sawing green energy blasts shooting into it from all sides, easily dodging its wild swings and the blast of razor-sharp leaves it fired from its canopy. Splinters flew and sap dripped from the gouges I carved deep into its heartwood like a demented woodpecker, but it was tough, the wood more like mythril in its durability.

  Eventually it fell with a groan and thunderous cracking of wood, smaller monsters fleeing its collapse. I dropped down to collect it and was immediately pounced on by some tiger-esque creature which proved a lot less tough than the Giant Treant.

  I decided to take the opportunity while I was here, pulling out my Vortex Hamaxe and giving it a twirl as I squared up, practising my new infusion method on its axe blade.

  With a goan, another gap opened in the canopy as a real Giant Tree fell, unlocking the active effect of my Timber! Title.

  Once finished making use of the strength boost provided by the Solar Flare armour, I switched to my Vortex Armour stealth ranger loadout, the number of monsters drawn towards me due to the aggro-inducing properties reaching annoying levels.

  I quietly dealt with those that were already locked onto me, each quiet pop from my Sniper Rifle signalling the end of a monster. I didn’t try any trickshots, that was more Potshot’s thing- I should summon my other characters.

  But first- I gathered up the monster corpses, and the felled Giant Tree, tossing the lot into my inventory, then hopped into back into the air.

  It wasn’t too much longer before the trees began to thin and it only took a little observation to realise why. Monsters moved all through the trees around me, all heading inward as I was, and when two monsters met they fought, upheaving dirt and carving gouges from the mythril-like tree trunks.

  I gained some height and downed my Invisibility Potion; I had just seen a Giant Tortoise be bitten in half so I knew that they would be on the tougher side for monsters and didn’t want to be bogged down here before getting to the centre. The only plants I could see other than the wildly tough Giant Trees were busy also fighting the monsters- bladed vines strangling and slicing, clouds of pollen causing monsters entering to seize and collapse within moments, and more exotic methods of defence: I spotted a bush which was vibrating so rapidly it blurred, any monster that came close either turned round immediately or- as happened to one many-eyed, many-legged fox-like creature- had its head explode.

  I was flying more slowly now, taking my time to dodge past the occasionally flying monster, but it didn’t take too much longer before I cleared the last of the Giant Trees, flying out into the evening sunlight.

  Billowing blue plumes- geysers of mana like my mana spring after dredging it- shot up everywhere as though replacing the missing trees, the gushing fountains of gleaming blue being dissipated by the shockwaves of clashing monsters, forming a fine haze that filled the air like a pale blue fogbank, out of which congealed monsters by the hundreds.

  And the shockwaves- everywhere I looked monsters fought, fed, spawned, fought again. Nothing was still; everywhere teemed and writhed with deadly life; monsters the size of buildings clashed- the source of the shockwaves- and everywhere between titans, smaller monsters swarmed. It was an endless slaughter of immense proportions. My Radar was reading in the thousands now, the number rapidly oscillating.

  There were no trees, no grass, no dirt, just a barren expanse of empty stone, all else having been ripped up and blown away. You’d have expected the ground to be just one thick carpet of corpses but no; I watched as a particularly large new spawn dissolved back into mana mere moments after having congealed, ripped to shreds by the perpetually spinning bladed tube of a worm which had spawned next to it.

  I watched as the bladed worm was overwhelmed and hollowed out to just the exoskeleton by a flowing tide of tiny bright red things which were then stomped into paste against the nigh-indestructible stone by an immense titan of a beast which in turn was felled with a sharp crackle and victorious screech- audible even over the raucous din- the lightning-winged raptor vanishing from the sky to seize a house-sized green wolf-thing in glinting talons, only for both to fall seemingly without cause into the circling rows of jaws which ripped out of the ground and closed around its victims like the unholy offspring of a chainsaw and a bear trap, the ground regenerating underneath it like a living thing even as the emerging enormous rock worm was torn into from all sides.

  It never stopped, nothing ever had enough time to build up momentum to survive more than a minute. The rare few monsters I saw which did simply ran into another strong monster and weakened each other enough to be subsumed by the melee.

  Even as high up as I was, I still had to dodge the occasional flying monster and rogue projectile destined to eventually land somewhere and ruin something’s day.

  One on one against any of these monsters, or even one on one hundred, I would win. But… I double checked my map. The grey, bare stone area stretched on wide enough to be clearly visible from space- at least 50 miles in every direction. It would be an endless flood collapsing in on me, as more monsters spawned every second than I would be able to kill. I probably wouldn’t have a problem staying alive using the Zenith dps loadout to mass clear the area, I just wouldn’t ever be able to win. Even if I used the Stress Ball and sat there day and night, there would still be an endless horde pouring towards me from every direction, preventing me from harvesting any of the materials these novel monsters might provide. Plus I could somehow tell that if I killed a wide enough area to feel comfortably safe in, then the monsters arising from the even more concentrated mana and death would have the time to strengthen themselves enough to potentially escape the centre once I left. They wouldn’t survive long outside the ultra high mana, but if any managed to reach civilisation before they died- or worse managed to adapt to the lower mana…

  To summarise… Steven was right. It wouldn’t be worth it.

  “Nope,” I muttered, turning and flying away.