Reincarnated As A Plant Life

Lucius lazily turned around to look at who it was, his mind still playing images of all the runes he had etched over the past few hours.

"Asclepius... it's nice to see you," Lucius said lazily, regarding her with a tired nod before slowly looking toward the squad she had come with.

It seemed her team was comprised of the most massive this colony had to offer, with the smallest among them being bigger than even he was. They were a species he had never seen before, though they reminded him slightly of a more humanoid and less feral black bear.

They had come back with several carts crafted from a mixture of different types of wood. He guessed that Hannibal had probably asked one of the beaver people to craft it to his specifications. After all, it likely wasn't very difficult for them to mold wood.

Though Lucius couldn't say he was that interested in whatever they had brought back. Right now his mind was completely focused on the rune he and Hannibal had been trying to understand for the past two hours.

This specific rune seemed to have some sort of energy flow function, as it changed the normal paths that energy would usually take and was never found in isolation, but always linked to the more complex runic circuits. However, even with Lucius's ability to control and sense energy flow, it was hard to discern exactly why it was required. 

It seemed they would have to figure out what the complex runes did, before attempting to decipher this one.

"I guess since you're actually here I won't get to keep these then," Asclepius whispered, with exaggerated disappointment, as she stared at the runes as well.

Lucius looked to see what she was referring to and noticed that one of the bear-men behind her was carrying his sack and Einyr's sceptre in its hand.

~How did I forget about this,~ He thought to himself before standing up and approaching the Bearman.

Lucius had to admit, the 7-foot-tall, muscular bear creatures were a bit intimidating. Sure he had met larger creatures before, however as a former human, his bias towards bears, or anything that looked like a bear was a bit...

"Lighted One," the bear said softly under its breath, before bowing and presenting the items to Lucius.

Unlike the other creatures here, these bear creatures seemed a lot less... advanced. As if their intelligence wasn't up to par with the others.

And as if to confirm his hypothesis, Lucius noted the markings on the bear-man's shoulder. It had three strikes- a third tier.

Whilst all the others had two strikes.

~So this is their leader,~ he thought to himself.

However, this raised another question.

How exactly had a group of creatures this strong found themselves here? Low tier or not, Lucius's readings placed the leader on the same threat level as Ghost, and the others a little lower than Hannibal.

"Bow lower," Pagan shouted from the corner of the room. Even as pious as he was, standing and watching Lucius and Hannibal mumble over their work had bored him half to death, so he had been napping close by.

The bear-man bowed lower and presented the items even higher.

~Ahh, so Pagan,~ Lucius thought to himself, realizing that he shouldn't have been surprised to begin with.

"You can stand," Lucius said as he took the items. "All of you," he added, to which the rest of the bear-men stood up.

He looked through the sack and confirmed that everything was there, before tossing it towards Pagan.

"Can you take the contents in there, and ask around if anyone has the skill to replicate the work?" he asked, to which Pagan bowed before leaving the room.

Lucius inspected the sceptre for a moment, before calling out his crux and using 『Solar Beam』 to turn it to dust.

Hannibal and Asclepius looked at Lucius in disbelief, in fact, if not for their respect for him, he was certain they would've punched him in the face.

"This was too dangerous to try and use in our research. The type of magic Eiknyr was using was even more morbid than the necromancer's. I don't know what kind of spells they were, but without a doubt, we'd be asking for trouble if we messed around with it," Lucius explained, with a finality that showed he was not willing to discuss the matter further.

Hannibal and Asclepius nodded in apparent understanding, however, it was obvious from their body language alone that they were a little disappointed at the fact that Lucius had destroyed it.

"Then I guess you won't be wanting this either?" Asclepius asked, holding her hand out towards the bear-man to her left, who placed what looked like black silk onto her hands.

"Eiknyr's robe," Lucius whispered as Asclepius handed it over to him.

He inspected it for a moment, using earth sense to see if it was emitting any sort of energy.

However, even after trying to run energy through it to see if it had a runic circuit engraved into it, nothing happened. It seemed it was just a normal robe.

Lucius slowly put it on, and though it was a little too big for him, it felt nice on his body.

"It suits you, Lighted One," the leader of the bear-man commented, before bowing once more.

Lucius nodded in response, before attempting a few combat moves. It restricted his movements quite a bit, so he definitely wasn't going to be going into missions with this.

However, it did give a rather regal look to him. Something that would help in his image as Plant Messiah.

"Thank you, Asclepius, and..." Lucius said, looking towards the bear-man. He understood that his concept of relating animals from this world to those from his old one was ignorant.

"This creature has no name. Lord Pagan has deemed that we are unworthy," the leader replied.

Lucius sighed at this, before making a mental note to have everyone in this colony come together for a meeting. He could admit that Pagan was good at conquering, but this sort of dominance would definitely become a problem over time.

Especially if they planned to grant everyone in their commune access to the solar and radiant index.

"You guys can continue doing what you came to do. Don't mind us," he said finally, before sitting down to continue with his research.