"Now, it's time to finish this trial…"
After all his preparations. It was finally time for Ash to reap what he sowed.
The immobile stag dreaded the glowing silvery green aura coming from Ash.
Its eyes stared at the fine mycelium creeping up slowly from Ash's fingers.
The stag tried struggling, but the titanbark roots kept it in place. Not allowing it to move a single muscle.
At last, Ash's mycelium finally invaded the stag's body, sending the silvery green aura that Ash had enveloping the stag.
And when the silvery green aura came, so did the stag's struggle leave.
It just accepted Ash's mycelium entering its body, and the whole knowledge about the stag was recorded into Ash's mind.
The first surprising knowledge Ash learnt about the Verdant Stag was about its silvery green aura.
It wasn't the fact that it was the same aura that he had. It was already a known fact. He had already guessed that they both got their powers from the banyan tree after all.
However, different from Ash, who had a really limited number of them inside the seed, the Stag practically had an infinite amount of them.
As long as the stag's hooves never left the forest, its supply of the silvery green aura would never run out.
'That explains its almost infinite vine body regeneration and its ability to spam that nasty condensed mana ball…'
The only reason it couldn't overwhelm all the poisons, venoms, and also continue attacking was due to the stag's body capacity itself, not the supply of silvery green aura.
The stag's body was only capable of receiving a certain amount of silvery green aura from the forest itself.
And for its current status quo, all the received silvery green aura was instantly sucked away to keep the diseases Ash infected it with at bay.
It meant the silvery green aura would eventually win and completely suppress the diseases.
But it would take some time for the stag to do that. Ash would be safe from any retaliation any time soon.
'Still, it was clear that this stag was designed to be undefeatable as long as it fought inside the forest…
A cheat-like creature indeed.'
And another fact, one that Ash found to be even more shocking, was,
The stag wasn't actually a stag.
It was a doe! A female deer.
He had been misgendering his nemesis all this time!
Not that he would be that surprised if Ash took the time to see that the actual body of the Verdant Stag didn't even have antlers.
Only the viney armor had antlers on them.
'Well, to be fair, even the banyan tree called it a stag… I'm sorry for assuming, oh my dear annoying nemesis.'
But Ash wasn't here to apologize, he was here to take his rewards.
His mycelium began doing its job. Copying 3 sets of DNA at once. Using its maximum capabilities to extract the most op skill sets of the doe.
The first thing Ash chose was none other than its Verdant Flower.
The one who assembled the braided vine armor.
It came from the blessing of the banyan tree, manifesting as a physical flower, similar to the one another deer had.
Ash had a flower on his own from the verdant wolf, so he just modified his flower by adding the Verdant Stag's flower characteristics to it.
The flower was also the receiver of the silvery green aura. Enabling Ash to combine the seed in his chest with the newly modified flower.
Making the seed rest in the middle of the flower.
The modification process was quick and surprisingly painless. The seed just happily combined with the Verdant Flower as if they were meant for each other.
No nerves or muscles of Ash were harmed during this process.
As Ash explored more of the Stag's body, he realized that the deer was really OP because of the flower.
All of its abilities, the flora controlling power, and even the disintegrating ball of light, all of them came from the blessing of the forest.
The Verdant Flower was the one that gave it the power to do those abilities.
And now with a verdant flower himself, Ash was able to yoink them all into his body.
Even if he had to fight the Verdant Stag at full strength now, Ash wouldn't even need as much preparation as he did now.
All the annoying powers the stag had, even the ability to bloom out spores that could control the nervous system of animals, had been conquered by Ash.
He even had an infinite supply of the silvery green aura and more capacity due to him having both the verdant flower and the verdant seed from the banyan tree.
Now, Ash could say with confidence, he was the strongest in the forest.
He was the ruler of the fractured zone, the Verdant Necropolis.
A feat that no living or dead human on Earth could claim other than himself.
He was one step closer to one of his goals.
'Maybe it's time to pay the city a visit…?'
The thought of returning to the city and meeting some old acquaintances entertained him.
But Ash suddenly realized that his environment had changed.
The stag was unusually quiet.
Viney and Woody were rooted in place.
The leaves and tree branches stopped swaying.
Even Keen was stuck frozen in space above the sky.
Ash wondered what happened, but he soon found his answer.
From the ground beside him and the stag, a familiar figure rose from the ground.
It didn't dig out or split the earth.
It just phased through the dirt, roots, and weeds as if they weren't there.
It was none other than the deity of the banyan tree.
It wasn't only speaking in Ash's head this time.
It manifested physically once more, just like back then when Ash saw it for the first time.
Ash still couldn't determine whether the deity was young or old, man or woman, but he decided not to care about it at all anymore.
The fact that the deity was a being that was so out of Ash's reach was already a fact that was too much for him to process.
The deity floated above the ground, staring at the Verdant Stag, who was both frozen in time and frozen in titanbark, chuckled, then turned to Ash.
"You seemed to really have special affection for this little one."
Ash thought he wouldn't be able to speak in the presence of this all powerful being, but he found out that he surprisingly could.
"Uhhh… Um… Mr/Mrs. Deity, I hope you don't mind what I did to her? I was just throwing a little payback for what she did! She wouldn't even die from this. I confirmed it with the seed you gave me!"
Another chuckle, then the deity put their hand on Ash's head.
"Don't worry, child. Thanks for sparing her. She was only doing her job. Something that she has done splendidly for these past decades.
But, I do hope that you can let her continue doing what she has been doing."
Ash found no words to say other than nodding.
Ash had more questions to ask the deity. The words like savior and ruler that they had been saying before were still raising unanswered questions in Ash's mind.
Fortunately, the deity seemed to understand.
"Don't worry. I will explain as much as I can about your confusion."
The deity then pulled back their hand and stood right in front of Ash. Seeing him eye to eye.
"But before that, let me congratulate you, my child.
You have completed all three trials of this forest.
You are now officially the ruler of the Origin Forest.
As a ruler, you are also one of the saviors of humanity."