Epsilon Twilight
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21. Infiltration
🕑 Added 2025-01-18 12:30:57 +0000 UTCXochipilli proved quite a capable druid. He had no problem evolving Cure Grass, but at the same time, neither had she when she had originally evolved them. The evolved grass didn't require much vitality, so it made for better practice than Flourishing Springs. Aloe was still ashamed of having committed that mistake. She was so used to vitality being a limitless resource that she hadn't even pondered what could have happened to a child like Xochipilli if he tried to evolve a plant he didn't have enough vitality to complete the evolution.
He could have died. The old druid kept telling herself, that the mistake could have killed her disciple. She wanted to make him try evolving a black seed again to document how he had even succeeded, but she also didn't want to push the child any further.
There was a limit to how much she could push him in a day, even if the boy was excited and wanted to try more things.
Before things could get out of hand, Aloe set him to sleep with some Dream Spore spores. The boy was too jumpy and that unsettled her, he should have some rest, even if she had to push it onto him.
As Xochipilli slept on the mattress on the floor, Aloe took a deep breath and undressed.
"I've left this aside for too long…" Anything else she could mutter would be just excuses, so she didn't bother to say any other word.
Aloe donned subterfuge and shifted her body. Like before, her body became shorter and slimmer, no longer as voluptuous as it had been with glamour. Her skin turned darker and darker but also mate, allowing her to blend with the shadows. She looked at herself in the reflection of the mirror by the wall and saw that her eyes also shone less than before.
"I'm still too detectable," she said with a scowl before ripping the Aloe Veritas from her head. She held much love and appreciation for the plant, but it had no business being up there besides being a nuisance.
Dark ink flowed down from her head like coagulated blood, and even if it was sticky, Aloe felt refreshed. The vegetable human also removed any lingering plants and mushrooms from her body, only leaving behind her ivy hair as she could tie it in a bun. As there wasn't a place to dispose of her plants, she stored them on the Slowtide for the time being. She feared how cluttered that place was becoming, and how long it would take to clean it afterward.
Aloe took another deep breath and left Xochipilli sleeping alone in the house.
Guided by the lingering memories of the slaver's dream, Aloe had a destination in mind. The place where the slaver and his peers had been storing the slaves. She had intended to visit the place before, but between being amazed by the city's grandeur and having to take care of Xochipilli, she had left the task on hold.
She felt so dirty and miserable for having done so. It should have been the first thing she should have done after reaching Selen, but at the same time, she couldn't afford to be discovered for the sake of strangers. What if Aaliyah heard of a powerful plant-person and put one and one together?
Losing the surprise factor was not on the table.
Instead of traversing the streets, Aloe jumped for the roofs. The lampposts provided too much light, so her only real way to move undetected was to jump from rooftop to rooftop. Of course, that wasn't much of a problem for her enhanced physical capabilities, though she was particularly worried about her weight.
It may not seem like it, but she was quite heavy. Not in the sense that she was a two-meter-tall woman and also quite wide, but her body, whatever it was made of now, was heavier than flesh and bones.
Thankfully enough, the stealth stance seemed to take her weight into account. The internal infusion couldn't make her mass vanish, but it could help her displace her weight more intelligently to produce less noise and prevent her from making a hole in someone's room.
That latter part was more important as the further she went from the city's center, the fickler the rooftops became. Roofs went from strong materials like brick to more unstable ones like sheets of metal. Poor quality ones at that.
Soon she reached the outskirts of the city, and she lurched on one of the rooftops of the tallest building around overwatching her objective. It was some kind of warehouse meant for heavy-duty industry. She still wasn't used to the technology of this era, and the surroundings were more advanced than anything else she had seen around.
Even though she was quite exposed, the moonlight itself ignored her as her skin absorbed all the light. Her heart accelerated as she realized she was going to do something quite illegal. She may not respect the government of Ydaz, but her common sense was screaming at her.
Not only she was going to infiltrate a private building, but she was also doing it naked.
Part of her was scared, and another excited.
Which was quite moronic as no being in the city would be able to faze her. A brief pulse of the sense stance confirmed her that; no vitality signs came even close to her own, and even those that she felt beneath her didn't even reach the three digits.
Ah, I feel like an assassin, she pondered and snickered. Maybe not the magical kind, but surely the normal one. This is what Xochipilli wanted, didn't he? Cultivator, druid, and assassin.
Those thoughts calmed her down, and with a slight deformation of all her 'bones', Aloe was able to slip through a half-open skylight. Her bones – or whatever she had now as substitutes – didn't even crack as she had switched to dexterity for the briefest of instants before her body started shifting, making her body even more fluid than water.
Okay, I'm in. Now to make this infiltration worthwhile.
As she silently strode above the beams of the warehouse, Aloe was instantly disappointed. Or rather, angry. This spot… I've seen in the slaver's dreams, but I don't feel enough vitality signs to justify a trapped group of slaves. And even if there were slaves, the druid only detected signs with more than one Haya, which already disqualified those persons as slaves.
From her conversations with Xochipilli, the people of Tecolata didn't know of Nurture, or at least, didn't have the capabilities and knowledge to access it.
I prefer not doing this but… it seems I will have to get personal and ask some questions. Aloe silently groaned and made her way downwards.
The warehouse had a lot of walls and corridors, so it made it easy for her to move around undetected. If needed, she was able to walk on walls, but she preferred not to do so as she hadn't experimented with such movement techniques.
For starters, she sought the person who was more isolated but simultaneously had the most vitality, as it was likely that it would have some insight into the operation the slavers were running or would outright be one of the heads.
She pondered on how to do this as she prowled on the man from above. He calmly smoked as he sat in an office. I don't think I have enough control over the dreams to interrogate someone in them. I could barely affect the slaver's dream, and when I did, he snapped out of it… Let's try a more classical method for now.
Aloe dropped behind the cultivator and switched to the charm stance. It felt appropriate to call it charm stance instead of glamour as she wasn't comfortable with what she was going to do next.
The vegetable woman tapped on the man's shoulder and her eyes glowed emerald as he turned.
"Whuh?" He expressed with a modicum of confusion and drowsiness but before his mind could elaborate another thought, his eyes fixated on Aloe's body.
"Hello, handsome," Aloe flaunted her curves and nakedness. She wanted to cringe at her behavior, but this was what she was required.
There was no shame in her attitude even if she was fully naked; this wasn't like when she first revealed herself to Xochipilli and the slaver as that time she wore bark armor on top of her body. No, she was fully exposed like when she was brought to the world. There was no shame, only disgust. Mostly at herself.
"Could you answer some of my questions?" She was green in what seduction was considered, so she did her best to imitate Rani. One of her hands she placed under her breast to move it upwards, whilst the other she used to caress the man's chin and lips.
"I… uh…" The man tried forming some thoughts, but between the gazes he dedicated to her body and her eyes, he was already lost to lust.
The cultivator ragged and lagged in every word, which made Aloe cringe internally more. It wasn't his quickening heartbeat that disgusted her, but his rising body temperature.
Still, he had yet to fall to her clutches, she had to strike harder. No. Softer, whilst the glass was still hot.
Aloe closed her body into the man's, sitting on top of his lap and pressing her bosom against his chest. The man was spasming in response to her gestures, but she wasn't quite done yet.
"Could you repeat that? I didn't quite understand it~" She whispered her melodious charmed voice into his ear.
Something in his mind broke, from his eyes she could see her clutches decimating the man's common sense. An old yet vivid memory flashed in Aloe's mind, one tainted in pink. She threw that image away; she was the one in control now. She was strong. Her eyes shone brighter.
"I-it would be a pleasure, my lady." He almost begged with those words. He wanted to serve her.
And he would.
Comments
Zachary Patterson
Thank you for the chapter!
The3rd
Thanks for the chapter, infinite goodness is here 💖♾️
