“Okay, so you’re level 30 at only three and a half years old, you’re already speaking full sentences, better than my adult step sisters did, and you’ve already grown to be almost 30 feet tall? How far do your roots reach? Your rate of growth is quite frankly amazing! You must have some truly remarkable skills to have grown this much so quickly! To even be able to take out an adult Orc, and go toe to toe with an Alpha Wolf! The Ants, while annoying shouldn’t have been as big of an issue, but to already have earned an achievement... WOW!”


    Lilly had been gushing about my growth for the last half of an hour, barely getting a breath in the whole time. She took turns between pacing between two stumps of my roots to doing laps around my trunk, talking the whole time.


    “To answer your question before you move too far on, my roots reach out around 55 feet from the base of my trunk.” I reached out with my hundred-foot-long vine and drew a shallow line around me that was at the edge of my vision. My roots reached right under the line I was making.


    “Holly hells! That’s enormous! How have you grown so fast! Oh sorry! It’s considered rude to ask about someone else’s skill like that. Please, ignore that.”


    I could feel a tinge of guilt through our connection when she clarified. I was honestly willing to share my skills with her, as long as she returned the favor.


    “I''ll tell you what. You tell me all of your skills, and I’ll tell you all of mine. Do we have a deal?” I reached out with a vine, mimicking a handshake. Lilly grasped the end of the vine and shook it with a smile.


    “I’ll tell you right now, I haven’t got anything all that interesting. Most of my skills are related to merchanting. I have one for self-defense, but that’s mostly for perverts who get a bit too handsy.” She said with a smile. She then proceeded to list a bunch of skills that revolved around getting the customer to pay the most amount of money for an item as possible.


    “I have Bargain, Bargain Steal, Up Price, Sale, Appraisal, Hide Status and Hand-to-Hand Combat. Your turn!” She eagerly listed off.


    I took mental notes of what she mentioned, and considered getting Appraisal and Hide Status for myself in the future. I guess that’ll be for my level 35 and 40 skills.


    “Before I give mine, I want to ask about the letters beside the skill names. I have a few guesses about what they mean, but I’d like a proper explanation, if you don’t mind.”


    Lilly paused for a moment before answering. I could feel her excitement growing at my question.


    “The letters represent skill rarity. In order of weak to strong, it goes C, U, R, E, and L. They mean Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. There’s a story about a sixth tier, M, for Mythic, but nobody actually believes it to be real. I guess that since you’re asking, you probably have a few higher tiered skills yourself?” Lilly was practically glowing with excitement at the possibilities of what I was about to tell her. I suddenly wished I didn’t word the offer the way I did.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I pulled up my Status for the first time in a while so I had a full list of all my skills. I did promise to share all of my skills, after all.


    User: Willow  Race: Tree


    Level: 31  Exp: 60/2300


    H:100%   S:100%  M:100%


    Skills: Photosynthesis, Iron Bark, Domain of Awareness, Rapid Growth, Vine Control, Fire Resistance, Telepathy, Improved Digestion, Resource Berry


    “I was mistaken. I’m actually level 31. I guess the Orc kill brought me over the ledge and I missed the notification. But yes, I do have a few Uncommon rank skills. And Resource Berry is a Rare rank skill as well.” I then listed out all of my skills, skipping over the fact that I actually didn’t have a single Common rank skill. Every skill besides Resource Berry was actually Uncommon rank.


    Lilly was bouncing with joy at this point. I could feel her taking mental notes, and filing questions away for later. I could only smirk at her overly excited behavior, but I interrupted her before she could start asking them. I had a few questions of my own, and I knew this conversation would be the best time to ask them. Hell, I''ve already gotten some great information out of her already. I needed to keep pushing while I had momentum.


    “Besides getting either a new skill or skill upgrade, what exactly does gaining a level do for me? I haven’t exactly felt much of a difference between levels.”


    Lilly stared at me for a minute. I could feel her mind racing for an answer. She found multiple, but she threw them away, realizing that I’m a tree and I don’t get stats the same way humanoids do.


    After 5 minutes straight of her struggling to piece her thoughts together, she finally started to speak, though slowly and cautiously.


    “Well, for humans, we get Stats. Each level gives us 1 point in each of the 6 major stat groups, and we get an extra ‘free point’ we can assign by ourselves. We have 3 physical stats, Strength, Agility, and Endurance, and we have 3 nonphysical stats, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. We can also train to increase our stats as well. It would explain your size at such an early age.”


    She gave a few examples for how humans can spread their stats for a better life, and how they can specialize and a bunch of other crap, but none of it was relevant to me, so I only partially listened. I only tuned fully back in when she got to a part that seemed interesting to me.


    “As all creatures level up, they also get an increase in resource pools, which can be affected by size as well. So, when you level up, I’m sure most of your benefits go towards increasing your resource pools and possibly resource generation. Hell, you probably get a growth spurt every level as well.”


    Well, that would explain how I’m able to grow so fast. I get resource boosts every level, plus I have skills that also help out in that department. Improved Digestion and Photosynthesis help generate and the Resource Berries help store the extra. It was a pretty awesome system, if I do say so myself. I still wondered how fast I would be getting resources if I were to grow to a hundred feet. Or even a thousand.


    Lilly tried to get my attention for a while, but I was too lost in my thoughts of grandeur and world domination via vines to notice. She eventually gave up and climbed my trunk to take a nap where it was safe. I absentmindedly set up a ladder and sent a few berries her way while I pictured kings paying homage to my roots.