By now, Logan could craft a mutant carbon tree with barely any effort. Usually, he used his own Karma, but this time, he wanted to deploy his skills to spread a killing net over these insects. Logan could use [Life Fabricator] to drain their lifeforce, but sourcing power from a living species tended to have side effects. Shoot was evidence of that. He'd drained the lifeforce of Pied's rat army, trying to grow a regular old vine, and ended up birthing a rat vine. Literally.

Already, Logan knew that if he put his mind to it, he could force the tree to grow the way he wanted, but he had another option up his sleeve.

[Liche Devourer]. He hadn't forgotten the blackhole. It was taking a heck of a lot of Karma to move that needle, so he might as well use the caterpillar's Karma. If he fully funded that 'blackhole,' he could have it in his back pocket during Pied's Shitty Integration Tournament. After all, if the Man in Black showed up, Logan would need every advantage he could get.

For the first time in a long time, Logan was going to experiment.

Not just to grow a monster carbon sucking tree, but something else.

Lara was the one pouring through the books he'd grabbed from the library, looking for easy carbon reduction solutions, but there was something Logan could do right now. He hadn't forgotten that the System had awarded him KarmaCoin not just for growing trees, but for discovering a weird, funky looking mineral.

Logan rummaged through his spatial storage collar and removed one of the large green rocks he'd found when looking for boulders and logs. The stone landed in front of his feet with a thud. It was the size of a large boulder, but unlike a boulder, it shone like an emerald. Crouching, Logan scrunched his eyebrows as he scanned it with [Idiot's Inspect].

[Olivine. A mineral that absorbs carbon when crushed and scattered on the ground. Awards available upon mineral carbonation deployment.]

Logan wasn't a scientist, far from it, but the System's description was clear, and he had a vague idea how this worked. If he managed to pulverize the stone and grind it into sand, there could be a pay off. But other than stomping on the stone, how the hell could he crush it? Logan had used [Life Fabricator] for many things, but never something like this.

Wait a minute.

Back when he'd first formed his talons, he'd taken the diamonds he'd found in the queen serpent's lair and used [Mimicry Armour] to crush them into diamond dust. If he could do that with diamonds, he could do the same with the olivine.

First thing's first.

A tree.

Keeping his senses wide open and narrowing in on an undead caterpillar wasn't difficult, but when he tried to latch onto each one, he felt a sharp pain behind his eye. He didn't know how many insects were crawling on these trees, but it had to be more than a hundred, easy. The challenge wasn't growing a tree or testing his olivine hypothesis, the challenge was grabbing onto each insect's lifeforce and not letting go.

Latching onto one caterpillar was the start. Only the start. The next part would require him to broaden that network. Well, why not use what was already available? Back in New York, he'd managed to drain the lifeforce from hundreds of rats by envisioning a straw that funneled power back to him. With these caterpillars, they already had something that connected them to the others.

Their silk.

Like spiders crafting webs, each one of these creepy crawlers either clung to the pine trees with their sticky silk or dangled from a silk line that let them drop to the ground. With a little bit of finesse, he could use their own weapons against them.

Latching onto that single caterpillar's aura, Logan shifted his focus and drifted to the silk, getting a sense for how it pinged on his radar. It was barely anything, so delicate that he would have passed right by it if he hadn't been looking for it. But once he had it, he could trace the line like following a length of string with a treat at the end. Only, this treat was a bug. Ugh.

Walking over to that bare patch of soil that he'd eyed before, Logan deployed [Life Fabricator] and began crafting one of his monster carbon sucking trees. He didn't use a seed, just the lifeforce of these bugs. Crafting a tree from nothing always had a higher cost. Concentrating on his tree, Logan envisioned roots that travelled deep into the soil like an upside-down canopy, to the sprout that inched out of the soil. To the—

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

Logan followed that silk line, latching onto five caterpillars at once. It was a tiny ass bug, so he wasn't surprised that he'd already drained it dry. Frankly, if anything, he was surprised it had taken so long in the first place.

Biting his lip, Logan pushed, forcing his tree to grow at a rapid rate, and when it started to lean one way, wanting to take on the characteristics of these damn bugs, he forced it back. This was his skill; he was the master; it would obey.

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 9 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 8 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 8 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 9 Undead Caterpillar!]

But the purpose of using [Liche Devourer] wasn't just to sip from the lifeforce of these bugs. To feed his blackhole, he needed to latch onto them all. This would be the tricky part. He'd replicated this back in New York, but he sensed that he wasn't just dealing with a hundred bugs. There could be thousands.

Clenching his fist, he envisioned the silk as a network, a hub connected to every single one of these buggers. And then he drank their Karma and lifeforce while forcing his tree to expand so rapidly it created a crackle like thunder. The limbs exploded out of the trunk, its canopy increasing, thickening, to the point that it cast a shadow over Logan.

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 9 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[….]

[You have defeated a Level 8 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have fed the blackhole! Liche Devourer at 56% satiation.]

Yes! Logan wanted to fist pump the air, but a sense of urgency washed away everything else. He was draining these things of everything they had, but he'd barely touched the surface. Already, keeping concentration on that silk line network was proving taxing; the dull ache behind his eyes had started to feel like a poker digging through his brain.

Logan glanced up at his tree, making sure the leaves were crafted for maximum carbon capture, and then strode past it, disregarding the System's messages as his boots crunched over the mycelium saturated ground.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Ding!

[You have successfully deployed the skill, Life Fabricator, in a carbon reduction event! Calculating carbon reduction… 105,000 tons captured! 10% Mass Murderer title penalty in effect! You have been awarded 401,000 KarmaCoin!]

With renewed focus, he willed the olivine back inside his spatial storage collar and then walked towards the beach. Nothing said that he couldn't continue sucking the life out of the bugs and continue funneling it into his blackhole, but Logan was set in his purpose. He hadn't set out to figure out a way to make progress on his Save Humanity Quest, but why not take this as an opportunity?

Logan couldn't go too far, since he knew he'd lose the tether connected to the bugs, but the tree line was close to the beach, a few feet at most. Once close to the water, he willed out the olivine from his spatial collar again and dumped it onto the sand.

Now for the tricky part.

He'd done this before with [Mimicry Armour]; he could do it again.

And yet there was a significant difference between crushing small diamonds and crushing a boulder the size of a barrel. Not to mention that he already felt a strain from keeping that tether active. He needed to do this now, or he'd have to start all over again.

Adrenaline surging, he clenched his fist. Visualization. It always came back to visualization. Deploying [Mimicry Armour], Logan envisioned the massive olivine boulder rising into the air, hovering in place. The stone jerked as if he'd nudged it, but other than that, it didn't move at all.

Logan closed his eyes.

The stone wasn't a stone. It was light as a feather, light as the fine sand grains he used to assemble his exoskeleton. All he had to do was change his perspective, and the skill would obey.

Logan opened his eyes to the sight of the massive olivine boulder hovering in the air. His feet felt light, his nerves on fire with excitement. A wizard! Logan was a wizard!

It was also taking a massive amount of Karma to keep this thing up in the air.

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 9 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[….]

[You have defeated a Level 8 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have fed the blackhole! Liche Devourer at 57% satiation.]

The longer he kept it up in the air, the more Karma he sucked from the creepy crawlers, which resulted in so many kill notifications he couldn't keep up. 10, 20, 30—they kept coming!

Logan grinned, and then sobered, trying to calm himself down. This next part would take focus, concentration. Keeping his gaze on the hovering olivine, Logan imagined a compactor. A massive metal compactor designed to pulverize stone.

In his mind, the compactor closed around the olivine from all sides and began crushing the thing with the force of every ounce of Karma that he was sucking from the swarm of caterpillars. So much force that the System notifications poured in like the tide.

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 9 Undead Caterpillar!]

[….]

[You have defeated a Level 8 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have fed the blackhole! Liche Devourer at 59% satiation.]

Even as the stone crunched underneath the force, shards breaking from the main stone, Logan bared his teeth and forced that same compactor around the pieces, once again crushing with everything he had. The compactor wasn't just a compactor, it was a blender, transforming the stone into pieces. The pieces ground against each other until they turned into fine grains.

Logan felt half outside himself as he watched what looked like a mini-meteorite hover in and shatter into thousands of pieces.

Ding!

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 8 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[….]

[You have defeated a Level 9 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have defeated a Level 10 Undead Caterpillar!]

[You have fed the blackhole! Liche Devourer at 60% satiation.]

There was another System notification, but Logan disregarded it, his entire attention on his next task. He couldn't stop here. This wasn't how he'd win the Save Humanity Quest. Although he wasn't a scientist, he had a basic understanding about how this worked. He'd just crushed the olivine, grinding it into fine particles, but left on their own, it would take years, hell, decades or even centuries before the particles sucked enough carbon to make a difference.

Logan didn't have years.

Just like his monster carbon sucking trees, could he do the same with the olivine?

Logan rubbed a smear of blood away from his nose, his senses on fire from keeping [Liche Devourer] active. But hell, this was nothing. Logan had been through the Perception Trial, through acid eating away at his skin. This was child's play.

Clenching his fist once again, he forced the olivine particles to hover. He knew the particles had to be in water for the process to occur naturally, but what if instead of the lake, he sucked carbon directly from the atmosphere? In a normal world, it would be impossible, but this was no longer a normal world.

After all, he'd picked his [Fabled Creation] class for a reason.

[You only have to will it, and you shall have it.]

It was true that he had no idea how the natural process worked, how this broke down in scientific terms, but Logan didn't need to know the details. All he needed was to have an image in mind and will that image into existence.

He kept the fine particles of olivine hovering, flexing like a mini-sand tornado, the skill taking an enormous amount of Karma. Karma that was sourced from the bugs. Logan had lost count of how many kill notifications he'd received, but he knew that he must be getting close to killing them all.

Urgency ate away at his stomach; he had limited time before he'd have to use his own Karma, and he suspected that what he wanted to achieve might require more Karma than available in his own pool. That meant he couldn't try this again until he found another lifeforce to drain. Hell no. He was on a mission here.

His mouth dry, Logan once again closed his eyes. He pictured each grain of olivine like a tiny, emerald speck that shone in the sun. Next to each speck, he pictured carbon drifting towards it, as if the speck were a vacuum, sucking it close. Within the stone, there were tiny, miniscule cracks, cracks that sucked in the bad air, bonded it to the green stone, compacted the carbon, then molded with another speck of olivine. Like a magnet pulling iron into a ball.

Feeling a gush of blood pour from his nose, Logan gasped, his airways growing tight.

His heart racing, he pulled up his Karma stat:

25/3,888.

99/3,888.

24/3,888.

He'd killed all the bugs!

Grinding his teeth, he searched for the next best thing.

The mycelium saturated ground. The ground pinged on his radar like rot, a sickness, as if a layer of black, toxic mold covered the forest floor. Logan reactivated [Liche Devourer], sucking lifeforce and Karma from the rot, funneling it into his hovering stone hurricane.

He felt an immediate lessening of the pressure around his throat.

With renewed focus, Logan continued the same process, carving out cracks in the stone, merging the olivine together and sealing the carbon inside.

Ding!

[You have defeated a level 5 undead fungi hatching zone!]

[You have defeated a level 4 undead fungi hatching zone!]

[….]

[You have defeated a level 5 undead fungi hatching zone!]

[You have leveled up!]

[You have fed the blackhole! Liche Devourer at 65% satiation.]

Grain after grain, until he formed a mashed-up glinting green stone, something that truly resembled a meteorite. With a last gasp, Logan drained the remaining Karma from the straggler mycelium, turning the brittle ground into dried up husks of dead fungi, and then released the skill.

With a sharp thud, the warped lump of stone dropped to the beach.

Ding!

[You have successfully locked away carbon in a permanent carbon sequestration event! Well done, Idiot! Calculating carbon reduction… 2,000,301 tons captured! 10% Mass Murderer title penalty in effect! You have been awarded 1,000,000 KarmaCoin!]

Logan grinned from ear-to-ear, his heart alight with satisfaction. He'd done it! Better yet, he'd managed to feed his blackhole and kill the bugs and mycelium without lighting the forest on fire. And hell, he couldn't believe his eyes. Growing one tree captured 100,000 tons of carbon, but with this boulder, he'd captured over 2 million tons. That was twenty trees worth!

There was a cough behind him. "Ah, mister? Mr. Octo-Man…? We're ready to go."

Right. The kids.

Logan tried to hide his grin when he turned around to face them, but he knew his face was beat red, his eyes shining in pleasure. With his hair standing on end from his flying escapades, he must not inspire confidence.

Kate had her arm wrapped around Mark in a protective embrace, her lips pinched as she stared at him. Mark was holding a bundle in his arms, a backpack and supplies, while Kate had a bag slung over one shoulder.

Logan rubbed the back of his neck. "Right. You have your supplies, then? If you want, I can take the tent. Don't worry about taking too much; it's not a problem at all."

Kate shifted, her eyes drifting to his olivine meteorite. "One of the beavers tore it. It's not worth taking."

Logan smiled. "Sounds good. I've got a portal skill that will take us directly to our settlement. It might feel a little odd, cold at first, but it's safe. We'll introduce you to the group, get you settled."

Tasha might be a good influence for Kate. She had an agility and dexterity build that would jive well with Kate's skills.

Come to mention it, why hadn't he run into Tasha and Jack since he returned to the cabin?

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