Hey guys, it's me. The tree.

  You know, the one that was growing really big, making our main character really powerful, and then something something plot shenanigans, something something Dimensional Storm magic just casually whisked our protagonist away from me and now we don't know what the fuck is going on? Yeah, that one.

  The last thing you saw of me was me getting rudely yanked out of the ground by a bird — which is quite an unfortunate fate for a tree like me, I must say. But you might be wondering what happened to me after all that.

  Well, luckily for you, this site seems to love stories about trees. So much so that the author realized that writing about a tree is way better for his numbers than writing about a lame human. So please — welcome me as your new main character.

  Now, before we get to where I’m going, we have to first talk about where I’ve been. Because every tree starts as a seed, you know. And well, for me — your dear old pal — I started from the mouthful of seed that our precocious main character spat out after a horny man with questionable views on consent shoved his banana down his throat.

  What? You think I’m misrepresenting the incident and portraying a perfectly innocent ordeal with purposefully loaded phrases?

  Well, there’s a reason this story’s initials are SA. That’s all I’ll say about it.

  But yeah. Not a very stylish way to be born into the world, is it?

  But luckily for me, you, and our former main character, that banana happened to be magic.

  What is it like being inside a magic banana, you might ask? Well, it's pretty much the same as a normal banana.

  What's it like being inside a normal banana, you might ask? Good question. I have no idea. I didn’t gain consciousness until what I believe to be a couple of days later, when this fucker decided to bleed all over me and then spill bug guts on my face.

  As gross as the experience was, I guess I do have to thank the bath and body fluid works for giving me life — and the sentience.

  How sentient was I, you might ask? Well, as sentient as you can be, really, when you’re a sprout without a brain or any sort of nervous system or capacity for emotions.

  Self-awareness? Huh. Don’t know where I ever got that.

  But yeah, I don’t know — at some point between being planted, covered with more disgusting bodily fluids that I don’t want to think about, and finally growing into a big healthy tree, feasting on lobster every day and being sad about how I might never see the Sun again, I guess somewhere along the way I grew a little magic brain or something.

  I don’t fucking know. What am I saying? Stick to the script. Tree, come on.

  Anyways — yeah. So I was living this fantastic life, as all trees do, when a certain tingly sensation began happening at my roots. And honestly, I really gotta take the blame for this one, guys. You know, but coming from a tree whose entire history up until this point has been defined by the presence of bodily fluids, maybe you gotta cut me some slack for not being able to hold in all my magic, okay?

  So some of it slipped out. And I might have interacted with some magical plot shenanigans circuitry thingies. And that may or may not have called the giant Dimensional Storm upon the island. Which then summoned the birds.

  One of which began trying to tear me out from the ground.

  And then our former main character tried to stop it.

  And then he may or may not have gotten whisked away while I — the tree — stayed firmly rooted in the ground, as is normal.

  And yeah, that’s about where we left off.

  What did I do then, you might ask?

  Well, it’s not like a tree can do much in terms of self-protection.

  Well, I guess that’s not true. I know there’s like poisonous trees, and you have bark. If you extend your definition of tree to be any plant, you have things like Venus flytraps or things with little barbs or spores and such. But I mean — come on, guys. I’m a fucking banana tree. What do you expect me to do? Like wave my little big leaves at the bird until it goes away?

  I wasn’t built for self-defense.

  So bit by bit, that stupid little fucker tore me from the ground.

  But that bird kind of miscalculated, you see, because I live inside of a cave — and the hole that the bird was trying to get me through was way smaller than my actual girth. And if you know anything about trying to fit large things through small holes, you know trying to do it while my bark is dry and covered in sand is surely one of the worst ways to go about it.

  But the bird was really trying, you know, and you do gotta commend its effort.

  I had my leaves falling out, my bulb smashed to pieces, my trunk was getting a bit demolished — and it’s really funny, because if you actually think about the geometry of the situation, it actually would have been possible to fit me through that hole if it had just gone top first.

  It’s kind of like watching a dog trying to get a stick through the fence. And it’s so easy if the dog just fucking turns sideways — but of course, no dog is smart enough to do it, so they all just sit there perplexed until some human decides to help them.

  Hey, what was I talking about?

  Oh yeah, right. So I was just getting bashed against the stone — absolutely demolished — and at some point I think I just got fed up with the bird.

  I mean, you would be fed up too if for the entire course of your life you were peacefully sitting in some nice soil — albeit soil that has been constantly tainted by excrement — but then suddenly this little fucker decides to rip you from the floor and dumbly take you from the cave.

  Because it really is dumbly, right? That’s the biggest insult.

  But at a certain point, I got so fed up that I guess my new magic powers must have awakened — because one moment I was this large, helpless banana tree with no way to ever defend myself, and the next I sprouted 256 different arms from my trunk, each bearing a different symbol of power drawn from the ancient Mermian traditions of the Hinjalatipar Empire.

  What the fuck did I just say?

  Anyways — yeah. So I sprouted 256 little arms.

  What kind of arms, you might ask? Human arms? Insect arms? Robot arms?

  Well, they’re actually firearms. Yeah, double-barrel shotguns.

  With a host of firepower now adorning my fine physique, I quickly activated the new innate sense that I had for my body to fire every gun on my body at the same time.

  Now, you might be thinking — wow, that must have been really destructive.

  And you would have been right.

  Because you see, not only were these arms numerous, but also — given that I am a magical tree — it’s only fitting that my magical arms shoot magical ammo. And so for each arm, I shot a new ferocious projectile representing the pinnacle of all magic.

  What is the pinnacle of all magic, you might ask?

  Well, let’s go back to its roots. What’s the first thing you think when you think of a magician? A guy in a suit pulling a bunny out of a hat, right?

  Well, just imagine that instead of a hat, it’s the end of a double-barreled shotgun. And instead of a magician, it’s a sentient tree pushing the bunny out with all his non-existent willpower. And the bunnies are murderers.

  Oh, and there’s 256 of them. I find that you humans with your primitive little brains have trouble picturing things at scale (I’m looking at you, multiversal-level cultivation endgames), so I laid out a little visual for you.

  Here’s one bunny:

  / /

  ( ' >

  / rr

  *\) )_

  What? You thought I was going to give you 256 of them? Yeah, me too. But copy-pasting ASCII art into neat little rows is apparently really hard. Especially since the font that the author uses in the docs he’s writing this in is different from the font RR uses in the chapter editor, which is again different from the font RR uses in the actual chapter display.

  Oh wait! I guess he figured it out!

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  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

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  … Edit: Nevermind. Looks like RR gets rid of all excess white space when you save a chapter. Now you guys just have to deal with that big mess of rabbit parts, I guess. Which is very relevant, because that’s also what I had to deal with after that fight with the bird

  So instantly, the cave was filled with an army of murderous white rabbits, who all immediately honed in on that stupid fucking bird.

  For all the Savage Awakening fans here, by the way — your main character taught you good about birds.

  By the way, how the heck are there so many of you? The author of this story was literally an editor for two books with around the same amount of followers as Savage Awakening, but the conversion he got from those two combined is like half of the number of you guys that came over from Savage Awakening. That’s kind of crazy, to be honest.

  I mean, I’m just a talking magic tree, so I don’t know anything about writing web serials — but kudos to you guys, I guess.

  Maybe it’s the shirtless guy on the cover.

  Actually, that’s most definitely probably the shirtless guy on the cover, isn’t it?

  Yeah.

  But yeah — Savage Awakening. Pretty good story, you know? I like the main character. He’s a lot less whiny than the one for this story, like “wah-wah, inflammation,” “wah-wah, trapped in a cave,” “oh my life is so hard because I have to fight lobsters every day.”

  You know the crazy part about this guy? He isn't even original.

  Yeah. I looked up this author's last story, and turns out this main character is a complete carbon copy of the girl from his other work from four years ago. Same tragic backstory, living of semi-normal life up until some life altering incident right as they were reaching adulthood. And then spiraling off into depression and struggling with some disability until the system apocalypse happens — or sorry, litRPG apocalypse ahem Tao Wong please don't sue me — and then they get some magic power that among other things helps to heal their disability and gives them the ability to train more than anyone else and become a physical force like the world has never seen.

  Yeah. This guy really does have a one track mind, doesn't he? There's no banana trees in the other one, though, which obviously makes it inferior.

  But yeah. Come on, guy. You have access to all four of your limbs. Meanwhile, the girl before you only had her two arms. And me?

  For all of my existence I have been rooted in ground, trapped in internal pain due to the philosophical torture of being a thinking tree with no power to do anything.

  And now that I do have limbs, they’re fucking shotguns that shoot out magic bunnies.

  I guess that last part isn’t a con, really. But I mean — come on, guy. You’re a LitRPG protagonist. Stop complaining so much already.

  What was I saying?

  Oh yeah. Savage Awakening. Yeah, great story. Much better than either of this author’s copy-pasted drivel.

  I gotta say though, I am not a fan of how he was beating up those tree people in that one dungeon. That was a massive blow against my distant cousins right there.

  Though, I guess my other distant cousins are demonic trees that eat people and such, so I can’t really judge.

  But yeah — it’s a pretty cool story, you know? If you guys like this one, maybe you should go check it out.

  I hear the author used to be just as buff as the main character back in the day — but then he got into rock climbing.

  Why is rock climbing such a big thing now, you know? What about tree climbing? People used to do that back in the day.

  Though, you don’t really climb banana trees, I guess, so I wouldn’t have benefited from it anyway.

  But I mean — come on, guys. You’re doing all this, paying so much to go inside and climb a wall? What happened to going outside into nature? There’s rocks in nature too. Just FYI.

  And what’s this thing about harnesses and stuff? If you fall, you fall. Die like your ancestors did.

  I will probably die like my ancestors did — getting cut down for wood to make the very paper of the books that you’re reading.

  Yeah, I’m eyeing you.

  I know this is just a web serial and there’s no paper to read it from, but the screen that you’re using still consumes energy to light it up. Where do you think that energy comes from, huh?

  And don’t say oil, natural gas, nuclear, whatever. Everyone knows all that is fake.

  The only real source of energy is from trees.

  Trees, dead trees, and soon-to-be trees.

  Trees are the source of all power.

  Just ask any person about the food chain.

  But yeah, speaking of rock climbing — did you know that the author of Soulweaver and Ashborn Primordial is going to climb Mount Everest, like, right now?

  That’s crazy, right? Like, you always hear about Mount Everest in turns of phrase and shit, talking about how big or insurmountable something is — but climbing it in real life? I didn’t realize that was something people did.

  I wonder if our main character could climb Mount Everest. He is pretty strong, I guess, but would he be able to acclimate to the low oxygen environment and resist whining about his inflamed joints for long enough to make it to the top?

  Who knows.

  And what about Mount Tai, huh? I’m very glad to pronounce that, as a being without eyes, you will never be able to say to me that I have eyes but cannot see Mount Tai.

  And this is a very crucial defense, especially in this world that is very cultivation-inspired. I mean, why do they even call it a LitRPG in the first place? The System’s barely done anything for the last like five chapters.

  And what’s up with this whole worldbuilding thing anyway, right? Like why’d we go from this tiny island to this huge city place — and where are we gonna go next? The suburbs?

  Ha ha ha… ha ha ha.

  (We are actually going to the suburbs eventually — but it will be combined with Mount Everest. Mark my words. You’ll see it when you see it.)

  Anyways, what? What were we saying?

  Nothing?

  Oh yeah. Anyways.

  Yeah, the bird. That’s what I was talking about.

  The bird’s really interesting, you know, because when faced with 256 killer bunnies, most organisms would simply flee. But this is a magic bird — so even though it’s battling magic bunnies, not all hope is lost.

  But the bunnies are fast, and especially since there are 256 of them, they manage to rush the bird and hop around it at all sides. Maybe they like coordinated their jumps together so that they could actually form a complete bunny sphere around the bird and make sure that it had no avenues of escape.

  But like any badass anime character caught in the middle of a bunch of rabble that have no backstory or lives, the bird just let the bunnies pile on top of it before bursting outward in a blaze of white on red.

  Those poor bunnies. All they wanted to do was murder.

  But luckily for myself, the bunny onslaught bought me enough time to reload my 256 bunny shotguns, and at this point I had grown more used to this new control that I had over myself.

  I straightened myself onto my roots with a couple of quickly timed bunny shots, and then I revolved all my bunny guns around until all 256 of them were facing the bird.

  The bird cawed at me — which I really don’t know how to interpret, because it’s been cawing at me the entire time and it’s not like I can speak bird, you know.

  By the way, I think relations between trees and birds would be much better if we could speak bird.

  Like, come on guys — stop building your nests in us. It’s not that funny.

  Especially woodpeckers, man. Fuck woodpeckers.

  I know I’m a banana tree and I don’t have any immediate threat of woodpecker invasion, but god, you guys are such parasites.

  What? Woodpeckers actually eat the parasites inside of trees?

  Oh. Oh shit.

  Well, ignore everything I just said. Woodpeckers are actually my favorite animal.

  But this bird guy definitely was not a woodpecker, because he was a living leech who wanted nothing more than to steal all my magical energy.

  This is a valuable lesson, kids.

  Protect your energy — because you never know who in your life is going to be draining it.

  Really gotta cut people out, you know?

  Especially when they’re fucking with you like this bird is doing to me.

  But yeah. Magic bird versus another 256 magic murder bunnies. Who do you think would win?

  Well, when it comes to scenarios like this, it’s always good to look at the food chain. It’s kinda like a real-life version of Pokemon type advantages, you know? By the way, how come all the Pokemon professors are named after trees? I want a Pokemon professor named after me.

  What’s my name? I dunno, I don’t have one. But just you wait — generation 10’s Professor Banana is gonna rock your world.

  Anyways, type advantages. Like fire beats grass, tiger beats… I actually don’t know what tigers normall prey on. Tigers live in the jungle, right? What types of animals are in the jungle? Snakes?

  Do tigers eat snakes?

  I never saw that Jungle Book movie. Or the Jungle Book… book.

  But I’m sure tigers eat something. Maybe birds. That would be nice.

  But unfortunately, birds are above bunnies on the food chain. So just like my [ask tulio for a pokemon reference], there is no amount of bunnies that could possibly defeat this magic bird.

  They tried their best, but in the end all that happened was another 256 bunny deaths. Good thing they reproduce fast, right?

  But yeah, I was really cornered now. Truly without hope. I shot out another 256 murder bunnies in a futile effort to hold off the bird, but the predatory magical flying creatures seemed to have congregated now. The bird had called its friends, and together they demolished my latest bunny onslaught in record time.

  So yeah. Really the end of the line, right? Was that it for our handsomest tree protagonist?

  No.

  You see, we were in the middle of a certain Dimensional Storm.

  And what brings birds also brings their natural predators.

  Tigers.

  A ferocious roar sounded off in the distance, and a blur of black and… oh. Just black actually. But a blur of black streaked through the air, landing onto the closest magical bird and tearing through its neck. The bird let out a strangled caw (I still don’t know what that means, by the way) and instantly died.

  I was saved!

  I finally got a glimpse of the majestic tiger that had saved me. It landed deftly on four oddly small paws, reared up an also oddly small head, and violently… hacked up a hairball.

  Then it roared again, with the most awe-inspiring noise that ever came within a hundred knots of my tree ears.

  “Meow.”

  What? You don’t think that’s a tiger?

  Pshh. I know my animals. That’s clearly something that preys on birds. An apex feline predator of great agility and skill.

  As I glimpsed my savior, it turned to me, regal and mighty in its cadence. Then it bravely started scratching at me, which was not good for my bark. Tigers have such sharp claws. Even when they’re small.

  And then… well, I’d thought I’d had enough bodily fluids for a lifetime.

  And so, alas, this was how your brave tree main character’s day ended — surrounded by magic birds, in the company of a tiny tiger who was doing the whole circular narrative thing and taking me back to my roots. Roots which, by the way, had been uprooted from the floor and partially replaced with 256 double-barrel shotguns that shoot out magic bunnies.

  I would like to point out that tiny tigers are also the natural predators of bunnies, but that’s a story for another day.

  Wanna find out what happens next? Then subscribe on Patreon! Or, well, at least that’s what I’m supposed to say, right? This guy doesn’t even have a Patreon. Huh. Would you guys be interested if he made one?

  I’m a talking magic tree, of course, so I personally would never subscribe to any service that funds the chopping of my brethren in order to turn their bodies into books. But everyone has their own reservations about things that other people find very normal, and I hear that’s what you’re supposed to do nowadays on the Royal Roads and stuff. And getting some donations would make things go by a little smoother.

  After all, money doesn’t grow on trees.