Chương 45: Ecosystem Destruction: Forest Fire Edition (Part 3)

Tutorial Points: 337409 Yes. My points are beginning to spiral completely out of control. Excellent. I rise from my futon after completing my nap—and the complimentary twenty-three minutes of lying there contemplating existence instead of getting up. Not technically a nap, I suppose. Both the Tutorial clock and the sun inform me that a full eight hours have passed. Tragic. Time to resume productivity. First: free point distribution, which I absolutely have not been neglecting until this exact moment.

I am, after all, the most intelligent, beautiful genius in the world. Such oversights are beneath me. I attempt to flick my hair haughtily. It fails. Again. Not because of the hair tie—it's sitting beside my pillow—but because my hair has been absurdly long for several days now and continues to sabotage every dramatic gesture I attempt.

My storage, meanwhile, remains completely occupied by future cheeseburgers, steaks, and potentially avant-garde dragon tacos, which is why the hair tie is not in it where it belongs. Consequences. I sigh. Then I open my stats. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Stats Vitality: 220 [+20] Strength: 386 [+35] Dexterity: 959 [+87] Perception: 798 (+5) [+72] Charisma: 121 [+11] Free Points: 156 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A bit of quick math isolates the base values. Interesting.

I can push two attributes toward clean milestones—either 500 Strength or 1000 Dexterity. The decision is obvious. Dexterity. Naturally. I raise it to 1000 base first. Then I allocate the remainder into Strength. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Stats Vitality: 220 [+20] Strength: 416 [+37] Dexterity: 1100 [+100] Perception: 798 (+5) [+72] Charisma: 121 [+11] Free Points: 0 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ And then—I wait. And wait some more.

And, just in case the System is delayed by bureaucratic incompetence, I wait a little longer. Nothing. No system window. No triumphant chime. No dramatic proclamation acknowledging my obvious superiority. I inhale. I exhale. Then—naturally—I throw my arms up.

"No milestone skill for 1000 Dexterity!? How does that make sense?!" Of all possible thresholds, one thousand feels aggressively deserving of fanfare. Five hundred is cute. One thousand is a statement. I extend my hand and tear the veil open just a fraction, directing my irritation toward the stars beyond.

"Are you seeing this nonsense?" They are. They are also offended on my behalf. Correct reaction. I nod once, satisfied, and seal the tear. … I pause.

"Wait… what?" I just activated my Arcana—barely—just enough to let their voices through. No soil. No vines. No full overwrite. Just… access. Hm. I fold my arms thoughtfully. I am, after all, a genius. Minor refinements in reality-bending control are well within expectations. … Probably. I will need to conduct proper Arcana research once I escape this soon-to-be-ash Tutorial. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Initially, I assumed it functioned like a standard fantasy domain type skill—territorial overwrite, rule enforcement, localized supremacy. But each new interaction pulls it further from that framework. Very interesting. My ears perk slightly. I have successfully acquired the most powerful ability in the universe. The power to pester my family twenty-four hours a day. Naturally, I exercise this privilege immediately and tear a small hole in the veil. I open my mouth.

"Cows are aerodynamic if you throw them hard enough."

"That's not flight, that's artillery."

"Artillery flies." … I close the tear in reality. Never mind. I have no intention of being dragged into that argument again. Bovine aerodynamics appears to be a recurring topic among the stars. Which is… questionable at best. Concerning at worst. Therefore—I heard nothing. Instead, I scan the horizon. No more visible flames. No more orange-red backdrop. Just lingering smoke drifting lazily into the sky. It seems my fire has finally consumed every piece of plant matter in Zone Five. Excellent.

And already, far in the distance, I can see the remaining silhouettes—those last stubborn survivors of my arson—courtesy of my completely balanced Perception stat. I stretch, loosen my shoulders, and then spend twenty full minutes negotiating, pleading with, and ultimately threatening my hair until the brush forces it into something that can reasonably be described as regal. My bed-head resists. I win anyway. Then I tie it up. The usual morning routine.

I leap off my boulder with the enthusiasm of an overambitious badger spotting an unattended sandwich calling to it from the depths of an inattentive family's picnic basket. It takes an hour and some change, but I clear out every remaining undead and fleshy blob of poor hygiene and mild regret. As I remove the head from the last one—a spear-wielding skeleton with delusions of relevance—something changes. There is no dramatic System window. No Asteria-wide announcement.

No triumphant orchestra swelling in celebration of my achievement. The fog wall leading to Zone Four just… disappears. Instantly. No fade. No shimmer. No respectful acknowledgment of the narrative weight of the moment. Present one second. Gone the next. I stare at the empty space. The concept of aesthetics clearly means nothing to the System. Or to whichever overworked wage slave was assigned to design this Tutorial. Tragic. I could do much better. My tail lashes once in annoyance. Whatever.

At least I have confirmation that Zone Five is fully cleared. Which means— I look at the wall of greenery that constitutes Zone Four and grimace. Now comes the difficult part. I approach quickly and confirm my suspicions the moment I reach the newly revealed forest. Dense. Wet. And containing approximately zero leaf litter, dead plants, or fallen branches. Just aggressively living forest. And this is near the border—where it is less dense than deeper within. Yes. This is going to take a while.

It also means—tragically—that I require an actual plan instead of sprinting through at top speed with my starfire shell active and calling it strategy. Living forest does not spread fire nearly as well as dry biomass. Especially when there is no convenient underlayer of dead matter to act as fuel. I stand there for a few moments, thinking. Alright. This should work. If the forest will not burn easily— —I will make it. Artificial furnaces.

Localized heat concentrations sufficient to dry the surrounding area before ignition. Therefore: Step one: travel approximately forty kilometers inward. Step two: dedicate every available resource toward igniting a singular, skyscraper-sized tree. Step three: repeat with several more trees in the surrounding area. Step four: move another forty kilometers and repeat the process. Step five: continue until the entire forest is fully immolated. I nod once. Not a bad plan. … Probably.

While my education did extend to physics, the thermodynamics of fantasy-scale forest fires was regrettably underrepresented in the curriculum. I begin making my way toward my first arbitrarily selected ignition point. Four vines manifest along my thighs, concealed neatly beneath my skirt before extending outward to their full length. Then they begin working. Anything within roughly a hundred meters that qualifies as "thin" ceases to qualify as "intact." Vines. Bushes. Saplings. Lower branches.

All cleanly severed as I pass. Only the truly massive trunks and thick primary limbs remain standing. The more debris I can force to the forest floor, the better. Severed growth begins dying immediately, moisture loss accelerating once detached. Kindling does not need to be dead for long—just long enough. Efficiency through pre-processing. Naturally, the origin point of the vines remains entirely hidden.

Vines appearing visibly along my skin would aggressively violate my perfectly reasonable aesthetic standards—even if they merely manifest atop it rather than piercing through. There are limits. I may be committing ecological devastation. But I will not look inelegant while doing so. Carrying this profound wisdom like a raccoon clutching an unlawfully acquired graham cracker, I navigate deeper into the forest. It takes longer than it should to reach what I estimate is roughly forty kilometers into the Boundary.

The undergrowth is dense, stubborn, and I deliberately reduce my pace to ensure my vines remain thorough. Precision over haste. When I finally stop, I glance back at the corridor I've carved through the forest. I nod. Yes. That looks appropriately chaotic. As if a divine weedwhacker with unresolved emotional issues had a very public breakdown and made it the underbrush's problem. Good. Now then. I turn toward the massive tree looming before me.

Its trunk is wide enough to be architecturally relevant, its canopy swallowed by layers of green too thick to see beyond. I cannot confirm whether this position is perfectly centered—the canopy blocks any view of the distant fog walls. But forest fires are less a "precision instrument" and more a "to whom it may concern" phenomenon. It will likely suffice. Which means— It is time to begin. First, I circle the massive tree.

My vines shred the surrounding greenery with professional hostility—vines severed, moss peeled from the lower trunk, undergrowth reduced to scattered debris. A stray undead pack wanders too close and is removed without ceremony. A massive spider, which chose this particular tree as its nesting site, also discovers the consequences of poor real estate decisions. Then I begin the real work. Two vines start scoring the bottom twenty to thirty meters of the trunk, carving long, narrow cuts around its base.

Meanwhile, I position myself between two buttress roots and begin carving directly into the wood like a beaver with a personal vendetta against the concept of living forestry. Within minutes, I have established a narrow but workable air cavity. My other two vines slide inside and begin scoring the interior walls, blazing with controlled starfire. Steam erupts from my improvised engine bay as I begin cooking the tree from the inside out. I settle into a cycle. Burn. Withdraw from the superheated steam. Wait.

Carve out the softened interior. Push deeper. Repeat. The bark darkens and splits. Sap boils and hisses like fat in an aggressively heated cast iron pan. Several times I strike pockets of trapped air—and what I assume are fungal colonies—which dramatically accelerate internal drying at the cost of briefly flash-cooking my forearms with sudden bursts of steam. Acceptable trade. Overhead, my remaining vines continue clearing the canopy.

Branches and fresh cuttings pile steadily around the base, forming an increasingly impressive debris apron. Eventually, the wet hissing begins to shift. Dry crackling replaces it. After three full hours of carving, heating, venting, and very briefly questioning my decision to burn the entire Tutorial to the ground, the interior cavity begins to emit the faintest red glow. The steam subsides. Now it smokes. Progress.

All four vines begin scoring higher, carving vertical ventilation channels up the trunk to guide the heat upward. I climb as needed, suspending myself with branches or my vines while the cuts extend. By the sixth hour, the channels glow as well. Small internal flames appear along the carved paths, spreading gradually through the interior structure. The surrounding undergrowth begins to distort from the heat. Leaves curl. Branches smoke. Then—I stop. I simply watch. For nearly an hour, I observe.

Heat climbs steadily. Flames sprout along the scored channels. Nearly forty percent of the branches have been removed, leaving the tree skeletal and exposed, vertical vents carved up its height. The debris field around it now reaches higher than a small building in some areas, tangled heaps spreading outward for hundreds of meters. I nod. Heroic work.

From suspending me mid-air like a rainbow version of Spider-Man to precision carving and sustained internal combustion engineering, my vines have demonstrated remarkable versatility in what may be the strangest practical application imaginable. My tail sways once, satisfied. Then the vines blaze with starfire one final time, igniting multiple small pockets throughout the drying debris. I withdraw quickly. And assess. The tree: now a self-sustaining furnace. Large enough to dry a significant radius around it.

Likely to burn for days—possibly weeks. The debris: ignited, accelerating the drying process. My stamina: catastrophically low after seven continuous hours of vine manipulation and controlled starfire output. Tragic. According to the Tutorial clock, night approaches. Starborn regeneration will compensate shortly. For now, however, I cannot begin the next ignition. I move anyway—several kilometers over to another arbitrarily selected tree.

Then I sit on one of its branches, retract my vines, and employ the ancient Foxkin technique of remaining perfectly still while internally vibrating with impatience. Seven hours to ignite a single tree. Absurd. At least the process will accelerate from here. Even at this distance, I can feel a faint draft pulling toward the colossal furnace I created, despite it being in relatively early combustion stages. As if I required further confirmation of how offensively oversized these trees are. Oh well.

They are, admittedly, extremely cinematic when on fire.