Stuck as a Dungeon Mob

If the tree wasn't able to pass on the change to its consciousness to offspring, Ed would definitely feel that the entire thing hadn't paid off. While it would still be possible to keep this one alive for a very long time, the slightest mishap would mean having to move a new tree from the storage to the forge adding to the costs.

To find out if the offspring carried on the trait Ed would first need to get the fruit and seeds though. He quickly set aside both a water and an earth crystal. The plant pseudo-element was obviously a mixture of both of these elements.

Ed ruminated over the requirements and realized that the simple merging of these elements accounted for at least a triple-layer array. Nevertheless, Ed knew that a beginner like him would need to break things down further. He hence did just that.

The first two layers would be responsible for collecting the mana of the earth and water respectively. The next layer would then have to allow for Ed to manipulate this mana at will. From thereon, Ed would have to add a layer that maintained the mana he was manipulating until it became only enough to sustain the life of the tree.

That was all well and good, but the way Ed saw it this would require two circles within one or splitting the circles and connecting him through some rune lines.

'Rune lines are not very effective' The reason why the formations were usually made with 2d shapes like a circle was to ensure that the mana was maintained within that area. A line was still able to carry the mana but some of it could leak increasing expenditure.

The shapes weren't perfect either as the mana could still go haywire within the designated areas. There were usually runes that could protect against this though which were usually placed at the edges of the array circles, however.

Making his considerations, Ed realized he could care less about the expenditure brought about by rune lines. The only issue was that if the mana he had to send became higher then his calculations would also need to reflect that. The worst part of this was that the rate of mana loss would be irregular and Ed would have no way to ensure the tree wasn't casually doused with too much mana and cause unintended growth.

In the end, Ed decided to go with this highly inefficient method. To compensate for this however loss Ed decided to up the quality of the ink. He had collected so much blood from Blurak and even after his experimentations spree he had more than half of the original amount left over.

Compensating for his lacking skills with high-quality materials... Ed now knew why he wasn't really considered a formationist by the system. Still, being able to create complicated arrays with only beginner level knowledge was a talent on its own.

'My formation writing is probably at level 0' It was a curious thing but self-taught skills would only appear in his status window after reaching level one. From one angle it was entirely logical since he couldn't really claim he learned a skill that he barely knew anything about but it was also mildly infuriating as the skills tended to not be affected by the experience bonus of assimilation.

Ed's thoughts didn't stop him from making his array. He had begun working on it the moment he planted the orc blood tree anew. 

As Ed drew and drew, the final product became much larger than he had anticipated. There were a total of 7 circles. Six of which were inside of the much larger circle. This circle replaced the rune lines he planned on drawing.

Not having the skill had actually irked him so Ed worked extra hard to think up a solution. Encasing everything inside of one shape became his means of solving this problem.

Then came four sub-layers, these layers were responsible for input. Input being Ed, the two crystals, and the tree. An additional sub-layer responsible for combining the two elements existed before Ed's sub-layer which was placed in the center of the array.

The combined element needed to see Ed's supervision before being passed on to the tree and its roots. As Ed's input had two layers, one for maintaining a constant input and the one that allowed him to manipulate the mana, that accounted for all seven of the array's layers.

The array was drawn on the plain old ground meaning that there were bumps he had to flatten out and debris etc but Ed managed to draw this all in half an hour. As he had only used beginner level techniques all of the runes were easy to draw and turning everything flat wasn't an issue.

Ed placed the earth crystal in its respective slot and the water crystal in the other. He then walked on over to the second-largest circle which was placed in the middle, this was where he would stand.

Once there, he activated the outer edge array causing the entire thing to instantly come to life. The array shone with bright light as the runes floated off of the plain old dirt and whirred rapidly in a circle. The runes shone with blue and brown light and the water and earth mana quickly circulated through them.

This was the second benefit of shapes. The way they spun helped circulate mana, the fewer sides a shape had the worst it was at this job. There were situations where each of these shapes had a use but circles were standard.

'Here it comes!' Ed watched the brown and blue mana entered the combining sub-layer which had yet to activate. As soon as the mana entered it however it flashed into action. The two colors combined to form a dark green element, the plant pseudo-element. It went against color theory but that wasn't the key point.

[<Formationist> lvl. 1> Acquired]

Ed was happy to be acknowledged but he had to focus on what came next so he quickly threw the message to the back of his mind.

His user sub-layer which had long since activated with him at the center was spinning slow and methodically. At least that had been the case until this dark green mana entered the midst. Immediately, Ed was immersed in the action.

Using his Level 8 mana manipulation though, immersed might have been an exaggeration. Ed simply slowed down the mana that rushed in and had it circulate within his circle for the sake of controlling the output.

He allowed some of the mana to escape into the tree's growth spell array and it reacted by becoming vigorous the moment it was touched by the mana. The languidness from having its consciousness shaved into half of what it used to be was gone and the tree began to change at a visible shape.

'It's shrinking?' The most surprising part was that the growth had somehow made it smaller. Ed supposed he was to blame for that and simply watched intently.

'It doesn't seem like it is reverting to its original form' The red color found on the leaves started to abate and be replaced with a less violent orange and other softer hues of red. The bloody aura it used to have started to dissipate though this change was rather small to notice given that it was just a tree.

Once it shrunk a lot however the tree started to grow taller and its branches more burly, at this point, Ed cut off much of the mana and focused on specific branches in hopes of boosting fruit growth.

He didn't remove it outright since now that it was boosted by mana the tree would die without it.

After a whole minute of waiting for the fruit to grow, flowers began to bloom. They were orange in color and emitted a citrus fragrance.

'The fruits should be within sight' Ed wasn't wrong, the flowers were rapidly replaced by fruits thereafter. Ed finally stopped sending mana and activated the secondary array inside of his sub-layer. The plant element mana which circulated around him slowed to a crawl and was kept at a bare minimum allowing him to step out of his circle.

Arrays were usually rather dangerous when activated but it was due to the large quantities of mana inside of them. Ed didn't have to worry too much about this as he could manipulate it to a great extent.

Without any difficulty, he plucked one of the fruits. He gave it a close visual inspection before letting the system have a look.

[Lesser Orc Blood fruit]

Fruit grown thanks to the blood of orcs but in lesser quantity. It is juicy but when eaten in large quantity has a chance to cause small fits of anger.

'Nice!' Ed rejoiced inwardly with the system's expert opinion. He even took a bite of the fruit to celebrate. It had the texture of mango while tasting similar to grapefruit. This caused Ed's face to sour considerably.

He recalled how Sharog ate it so nonchalantly that one time and couldn't help but praise her internally. To eat something like this without saying a single word of comment, amazing!

Ed did understand that the orcs of this generation didn't have much access to fruits though so it was understandable that they could bear with the sour, bitter, and sweet taste of grapefruit.

'I can make the potion now' Or at least he could once he made a juicer… It would go well with his brand of temperature regulators.