Epsilon Twilight
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65. Nutritional
🕑 Added 2024-12-01 12:32:59 +0000 UTCWaking up from a Dream Spore-induced sleep wasn't exactly comfortable, but Aloe appreciated the good sleep that accompanied it. Even more now that she had grabbed a blanket and stuffed it with cotton so it worked as a makeshift bed. A poor man's sofa was a better description.
The first thing Aloe did after waking up was evolve a death cap spore to meet her daily quota. Now that she had this much vitality, she no longer felt mortally tired after each evolution, even if she was spending vast amounts of vitality.
"Hmm?" An idea suddenly blossomed in her mind. "What if I put a Radiating Undergrowth on a Cottonpull cotton ball? Undergrowths technically grow anywhere, and if it works, wouldn't I have moveable light? I could also simulate a sun down here!"
Though that last point wasn't of much importance as she had already planted some Radiating Undergrowth spores quite high up.
"Well, I've gotta try it now, if only out of morbid curiosity." Aloe picked a cotton ball from the nearest Cottonpull sack – yes, nearest, more had grown already since her first experiments – and placed the spore well inside the cotton ball. "Truth be told, I don't expect it to work. It needs to grow mycelium before making a mushroom, and even then, surely the grown undergrowth will weigh more than the cotton ball. But, oh well, I don't lose nothing if I try."
For now, Aloe left the spored antigravitational cotton ball on the entrance of her crevice, lodged on a depression on the ceiling so it wouldn't escape.
"And talking about undergrowths… I've pushed this matter away for far too long now."
The hundred or so Cottonpulls she had planted weren't the only crops that had finished – or were near – growing. The second Radiating Undergrowth she had evolved had reached maturity a few days ago, but she had left the matter aside.
"Okay, let's do a bit of recap here, where's the veritas leaf of the undergrowth?" Aloe went back to her crevice and searched on her stacked leaves as she used her potted Blossomflame as a light source.
Description: An evolved member of the Amanitaceae family, a species known for its ability to grow anywhere, radiate indefinitely, and its absurd nutritional value.
"Absurd nutritional value, alright," she mumbled. "Are there any chances that absurd nutritional value means something totally different from what I'm currently thinking?"
The answer was yes. The alternatives were exaggerated or abstract concepts like 'negative' nutritional value, but considering she was dealing with magic, anything was possible.
"I can't keep running away from this, I've gotta try it. The heavens don't bless the cowards, only the bold. And the gamblers." She said to motivate herself. "Most gamblers stop with their bets before the heavens can bless them, after all."
Aloe Ayad had never placed a bet on her life, though she had gambled with her life. As a matter of fact, she was quite the expert on that latter point.
"The weak point of the undergrowths must be the mycelium, so I got to attack there if I want to get anywhere near the fungus."
As the Aloe Veritas description stated, Radiating Undergrowths radiated indefinitely, and quite potently at that. So potent, in fact, that the force created by the radiation of light and heat physically prevented anything from getting close.
Aloe had tried once to drop water on the surface of a Radiating Undergrowth in one of her many experiments, and whilst results varied, the water never got close to the mushroom. Either the water evaporated before touching the mushroom's halo, or if it reached that point, the pushing force was so strong that the droplets just skittered across an invisible surface until they fell to the ground or finally evaporated.
She thought of using the Radiating Undergrowth to cook once she became aware of how fast it brought water to a boiling point, but the idea never caught on as if it could melt the tip of her boot with a single exchange, she had no idea what sustained exposure to the mushroom may do. Call it paranoia or call it precaution, but Aloe didn't want her only cooking utensil to be destroyed, so she settled with her reliable Blossomflames. Even if it took her ages to cook.
Now, whilst it was unintentional, Aloe had set herself for success with her first Radiating Undergrwoth as she had planted it on a boulder that she could freely move. When donning potency, that was. She was a bit sad about having to destroy her first specimen of the evolved death cap, but it was the easier one to mess with.
"Sorry girl, sacrifices have to be made for the furthering of human understanding." Nonchalantly, Aloe raised the boulder above her head and sent it crashing to the ground. "Dunes!" She exclaimed after seeing that the big rock was mostly unscathed from the impact. "I would've preferred to avoid this, but seeing how hard this boulder is… it seems I've gotta do it myself."
With a deep breath, Aloe punched the rock. She switched to toughness at the last movement possible, so whilst she avoided scratching – let alone shattering – her hand, she had only managed to chip the boulder.
"Well, it seems today's exercise routing is boxing training." The cultivator cracked her knuckles and proceeded to beat down the innocent boulder.
It took her several potency-toughness punches before the boulder started cracking. If it weren't for the fact that her switching time between stances she commonly used was nearing her reaction time, this endeavor would have taken way longer.
"Dunes, I'm getting hot from exercising this close to the undergrowth." Between the movement and the constant radiation, her skin was covered with a lot of sweat.
She removed part of her clothes and continued punching. Even if in her mind she was the fickle girl she had always been, the daily and uninterrupted training sessions had made her gain a bit of muscle mass. Still a far cry from what the sultanzade typically boasted, but far more than one might expect from a scribe.
A few seconds later, the boulder finally cracked in one sudden fissure. Aloe expected the rock to crack open with a bang, but the separation ended up being quite silent. Her punches had certainly been the loud part.
"Huh?" Aloe mused as she saw the interior of the bisected boulder. Mycelium had penetrated deep inside it. "Looks… fleshy. But why is there only one mushroom with this much mycelium, shouldn't there be more?"
The cultivator groaned and let the thought rest, she didn't have enough knowledge of fungi to even know if that was a valid question or not.
"Time to remove the mushroom, somehow."
The bisected bolder offered almost a perfect diagram of a grown Radiating Undergrowth and its mycelium. The evolved fungus had transformed the rock in its mycelium underneath the surface, but on top, it portrayed its radiating mushroom. As she had supposed, the mycelium was without radiating properties, so she was able to stab the mycelium with her knife.
"Ugh, feels fleshy too…" As someone who had done a lot of disgusting things in her life to survive, Aloe still felt repulsed by the touch of the mycelium. And she wasn't personally making contact with it.
With careful and totally not botched incisions, Aloe was able to separate the mushroom from the mycelium. Once it lacked any support, the Radiating Undergrowth fell to the ground, and it started to smoke and sizzle.
"That can't be good…" Aloe took a precautionary step backward.
But soon enough, the mushroom started to flash and become dimmer. With each burst of light, a bit of wind was pushed around. At first, they were slow, but the more time passed by, the faster and brighter the flashes became until they suddenly stopped.
The chasm became darker with the disappearance of one of the Radiating Undergrowth that had been providing its lighting.
"Okay…" The cultivator blinked as she was partially blinded by that last flash even though she had been donning toughness. She waited for a few seconds, if just not to tempt fate. "It seems it has… stopped?" Even a few seconds later, nothing combusted into flames. "Okay, thank the heavens for my paranoia. I know nothing has occurred, but it could! It just didn't."
After validating herself, Aloe approached the mushroom lying on the ground.
"Oh hey, look! It is a mushroom!" Instead of a silhouette of pure light, a white mushroom not dissimilar from the death caps it had evolved from rested before her. "I suppose I can eat it now?"
Aloe grabbed the non-radiating mushroom now with toughness still on, and whilst it was a bit hot to the touch, it was nothing she couldn't handle. Then she started cooking. The cultivator lit her double Blossomflame hearth to heat the water and chopped the Radiating Undergrowth mushroom in the meantime. The evolved fungus looked no different from a normal one from the inside, so she reserved that memory for her sketches and then rinsed the chopped bits.
As she wanted to test the 'absurd' nutritional value of the Radiating Undergrowth, she decided to make a soup with just that, even if it may end up tasting either foul or insipid.
Once the water was boiling, she unceremoniously dropped the chopped evolved mushroom inside and let it stew. Because the punching, the cutting, and the cooking had taken a while, Aloe proceeded to evolve the last Radiating Undergrowth of the day. This one she planted on a nearby boulder instead of some wall to compensate for the now diminished lighting.
And who knew, if the fungus resulted in a solid food source, she may end up eating it and all. Such was the cycle of life for a cultivator and their produce.
"Time for the taste test!" Aloe announced once she considered the meal was done cooking.
Her hands trembled as she grabbed the bowl and led it to her mouth. Just in case, she was near not two, but three Blossomflames, and she was also donning toughness. If that wasn't enough, she had a way or two to force herself to puke. Unfortunately, she had become quite an expert on it.
Finally, she let the soup meet her lips. A piece of chopped Radiating Undergrowth entered her mouth.
"Hmm, not bad." She pondered with her mouth half full. "It could do with other tastes. I can make a solid meal with all my vegetables now, but I would appreciate some salt."
She let the mushroom shimmer in her mouth a bit in case something – quite possibly explosive – occurred as she had more likeliness of surviving if she could spit it out immediately.
As nothing happened over the next few minutes, Aloe swallowed.
"I kinda feel full already," she added after consuming the contents in her mouth. She waited a bit more before eating again, but as nothing else happened, she continued eating until she finished the bowl. "Quite full," Aloe burped as she placed the bowl down.
Nothing else happened at all. No accidents, no violent death, not even a hint of pain. That being said, she didn't eat for the next two weeks as hunger completely avoided her.
Comments
Zachary Patterson
Thank you for the chapter!
The3rd
Infinite sweets and goodness are here 🍨🍦🍪💖🍫🍬🍭🍮🍯🍰🍩🎂♾️
