The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 64: "The World Tree and the High Elf"

Even though it had already been [Charmed], it was still able to put up a resistance. This was a rather powerful monster. But eventually, the furious shaking of its leaves stopped.

It had accepted Rare's [Subordinate].

"So it's an 'Elder Camphor Treant.' It's a lot stronger than those treants from before..."

<<Your follower has fulfilled a condition for reincarnation. You may spend 5,000 XP for it to reincarnate. Permit reincarnation?>>

—Reincarnation!

She never would have imagined that a follower would fulfill the conditions before she could. But this was a perfect opportunity. She would have to think about what the exact conditions were later, but for now she should jump on this chance. Right...

—Even if I have to use up XP... Wait, 5,000?! That's expensive!

Even for Rare, paying 5,000 XP wasn't something she could just blithely accept without batting an eye. She did have enough, though. She certainly did, but...

"I wonder if... there's some way I could take out a loan...?"

<Princess? Is something the matter?>

"No, it's nothing, just hold on a second..."

<<The current action will now be deferred.>>

"No, I wasn't talking to—Never mind, that helps."

This here was peak confusion.

However, she needed to force herself to calm down and think things through. She wasn't sure if this was the only chance she had to reincarnate the treant. If she let this opportunity pass, would there be another? The condition was unmistakably linked to the act of taming. The question was whether the timing was "while it was being tamed" or "after it had been tamed." If it was the former, then this was her only chance; if it was the latter, then it was possible at an unspecified future point in time for her to trigger a reincarnation. She really wanted to test this out. But that was also really risky. She couldn't waste this chance.

Plus, Rare found that she was having trouble suppressing a compulsion born out of pure curiosity. In any case, it cost 5,000 XP. No normal person would be able to go out and just earn that much XP on a whim. Who out there would choose to go forward with the reincarnation? Who aside from Rare, that is?

—All right, let's do it. I permit the reincarnation.

<<Initializing reincarnation.>>

Immediately after, the elder camphor treant's bough began to shake, and little grains of light began to sprinkle down. The grains covered its branches and trunk until the entire tree started to shine.

<Wh-What?!>

"Boss?! What's..."

Her other followers already recognized this tree as one of their allies, so they didn't sense any danger, but that didn't stop them from being startled. Deas and his fellow knights used to be human but were now undead; that meant they should have gone through reincarnation at some point, but they probably had never seen it happening themselves. Neither had Rare, but she simply found the experience of watching in and of itself fascinating.

Before long, the light-covered treant's entire body began to shiver, then, with a creaking noise, it started to grow. It had already been the tallest thing in the forest, but now it grew even taller, to the point where the top of the tree was no longer visible from the ground. Its trunk was becoming thicker as well; Rare's group had already backed up, but the space where Sieg had originally been was already taken over by the still-expanding trunk, tearing up the earth and piling it into constantly growing mounds. At that point, the trees at Rare's back suddenly began to fall over. As she wondered why that would happen, she realized that the elder camphor treant's roots were growing as well, displacing those trees from under the ground. It was quite an unbelievable sight.