War Tree

Adam fell silent as he glanced at the milk tea in Grindelwald’s hand, with several extra spoonfuls of brown sugar and all sorts of toppings added to it.

Fine. After all these years, Adam still hadn’t gotten used to British taste buds. To him, no amount of tea could suppress that lethal dose of sugar.

"Let’s reduce everyone’s assignments a little for the time being and let them get some proper rest."

"Mm."

Grindelwald nodded, then smiled.

"The ecosystem in the Forbidden Forest has been somewhat affected lately. This is a good chance to let it recover."

"The Forbidden Forest is still too small."

It wasn’t a solution to keep making him use magic to replicate magical creatures and magical plants.

Adam considered expanding the first and second zones to the size of the fifth zone. If he did that, Hogwarts’ small number of students would have no impact on the ecosystem at all.

But… first-years who still couldn’t ride broomsticks would probably need several days to complete tasks that had originally taken only one class.

It would be better to place some restrictions on what students did in the Forbidden Forest. They couldn’t be allowed to casually go after magical creatures and magical plants unrelated to their assignments anymore.

Even expeditions exploring new continents emphasized sustainable development. Adam suspected that the combined space of the Forbidden Forest was smaller than an ancient tree forest, and it couldn’t withstand a bunch of bratty children endlessly wrecking it.

As for how to restrict them…

Adam stroked his chin, running through a long list in his mind before ultimately deciding to uproot a few War Trees from the special zone and plant them in the other zones.

As overseers, they should be enough for the job. The only problem was that the War Trees looked rather large, and shrinking them would affect their combat strength… But as official overseers, there seemed to be no need to keep them hidden.

Then it was happily decided~

During dinner, Professor Grindelwald relayed Professor Gandalf’s decision to everyone: practical training in the Forbidden Forest would be reduced for a while.

"Oh—"

At first, entering the Forbidden Forest had been a novel experience for most students. But more than half a year had passed, and once the initial novelty wore off, the forest’s complicated environment had changed many students’ minds.

"Besides that, there is something else you all need to know."

Grindelwald spoke with a smile.

"To keep the Forbidden Forest’s environment in a healthy state that can meet the training needs of every year, Professor Gandalf has enchanted some of the trees within it, making them supervise you and ensure that you do not do things unrelated to your assignments."

Grindelwald’s gaze swept over every student. After more than half a year together, he knew each of them extremely well.

"This includes, but is not limited to, attacking other magical creatures, gathering magical plants unrelated to your assignment, provoking different magical creature populations in the Forbidden Forest into fighting, casting indiscriminate large-scale destructive magic, and so on…"

"Of course, some of you may want to ask what happens if you are attacked by magical creatures. Would being forced to fight back count as breaking the rules…"

Professor Grindelwald was prepared. He looked at several students and cut off their questions before they could speak.

"If that happens, I will take you to the Headmaster’s Office. I believe Professor Gandalf will give you a fair judgment."

Thinking of that naturally gifted Legilimens headmaster, several students couldn’t help putting on pained expressions.

Fred and George sighed in unison.

"Ah~ Looks like we can’t keep getting free materials from the Forbidden Forest."

"Yeah. Billywig stingers have gone up in price again lately, and there are all those delicious berries…"

They exchanged a glance, then sighed together again.

"Ah~"

When Fred and George first learned that they still had to attend classes and take exams this year, they had been extremely anxious.

But after giving it some thought, the two realized there was no need to worry about the exams. After all, they had already secured employment. At worst, if they did badly, their mum would give them a beating… It wasn’t as if she could beat them to death, right?

So rather than waste their lives exhausting themselves over exams, they might as well hurry up and develop a few more prank items before graduating and officially running Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes!

Once that thought cleared their minds, Fred and George completely let themselves go. They even started eyeing the special zone in the Forbidden Forest, with the result being that Molly Weasley was invited to Hogwarts for a talk…

After leaving the hospital wing, Fred and George became much more restrained. Yet they still had their eyes on the Forbidden Forest, that treasure trove of materials. At least a quarter of the forest’s ecological pressure was their responsibility.

Although some students had been singled out for a major blow, these two pieces of news were good news for most students, and cheers immediately erupted through the Great Hall.

With everyone’s actions in the Forbidden Forest regulated, they would almost never again have the experience of finally finding their assignment target, only to discover that it had already been maliciously ruined by certain ill-tempered classmates or disturbed by passing upperclassmen!

After hearing this news, Uther and the others couldn’t help recalling their first time entering the Forbidden Forest.

That stunningly beautiful Tree Card big sister, who had transformed into an entire forest in the blink of an eye and turned countless Acromantulas into nourishment for trees, remained unforgettable to them even now.

Adam had enchanted the trees… Could they be the Tree Card from back then?

That night, while everyone was having supper, Klon casually asked Adam about it.

"Tree Card… You could say that."

Tree Card had indeed participated in the creation of the War Trees.

More precisely, the true bodies of the War Trees were a type of Wood Sprite, two-dimensional beings of the material world and the Spirituality Dimension. They could freely change bodies, and the stronger the tree used as a body, the more power a Wood Sprite could wield.

The ancient trees Adam had cultivated using Tree Card were naturally the best possible choices for the Wood Sprites. Once the two were combined, they became War Trees.

After listening to Adam’s explanation, the group fell silent.

"How long has it even been? You can already create living creatures? I thought those were merely the result of you controlling and transforming them through Tree Card!"

Uther muttered.

Because he possessed sufficient inherited occult knowledge, Uther understood even more clearly just how outrageous this was.

This wasn’t like Hagrid gathering a bunch of magical creatures and making them crossbreed. What kind of bizarre hybrid resulted from that depended entirely on luck. Things like Blast-Ended Skrewts—Professor Scamander would call them heresy on sight.

Rather than magical creatures, Blast-Ended Skrewts should really have been called monsters. They did not consider one another their own kind at all. Even placing one male and one female together would make them fight each other to the death. On top of that, Hagrid had been deeply affected by The Daily Prophet and the Ministry of Magic at the time, so the Blast-Ended Skrewts ultimately never produced a second generation.

But Adam’s War Trees were different. They possessed sufficient intelligence and could even communicate. They had clearly been created with a purpose in mind—a living creature with a specific function!

"It’s not that exaggerated. The War Trees weren’t created from nothing, either."