Epsilon Twilight
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53. Gazed
🕑 Added 2024-11-19 11:48:01 +0000 UTCEven if she now had permanent access to light, Aloe found herself aching for sunlight after all these months. But she knew going out just to experience sunlight was dangerous, so she prepared herself a shopping list to serve as an excuse.
"What do I need?" She asked with her pen-knife and veritas parchment in hand. "Some cooking utensils, more vegetable varieties, and perhaps some new clothing. Otherwise, I think I'm doing fine." She etched her need in the leaf even if she wouldn't be carrying it with her. "Well, if I could get my hands on banana seeds, I could maybe evolve a Myriad. That would be an infinitely better way of having light than using Blossomflames, and technically speaking, I would have a day and night cycle down here."
For now, she decided to ignore the logistics of setting up a Myriad in a way that the light of the sun would reach down here.
She pondered over some other things she could buy, but she needed to be frugal. Beyond her single drupnarea, she was on a tight budget. And if she still wanted to get on a ship after the sandstorm she lifted with her escape passed by, then she needed that gold coin.
Aloe got herself dressed, cleaned and groomed her hair so she didn't look like a wild beast, and made her way downriver. Her attire was composed of the Loyatan winter clothes, her backpack devoid of most of her possessions to leave space for whatever she bought, and a Blossomflame.
That last one she used to illuminate her way through the chasm as she preferred having a light source if possible.
The trek following the course of the Tehen River was a slow one. She couldn't afford to wield haste down here as the ground was too slippery, so the next best thing was using recovery and moving on a constant trot as it took her longer to tire herself whilst exercising under the effects of that internal infusion.
It was a lot of dead time, but Aloe only managed to evolve a single Cottonpull as they utterly decimated her, and she was unable to evolve more.
"Should've brought cumin instead of cotton," she grunted.
After many hours, the composition of the walls changed significantly. Namely, she was able to see some terraces. The section of the chasm where her camp was located had mostly flat and vertical walls, but these ones were more oblique with more than one flat platform and far more rugged cliff faces.
This told her she was no longer on a chasm, but on a ravine. An open clench.
"Nighttime?" Aloe mused to herself. "I can't see the ceiling even with acuity, and it's very dark, so I guess I arrived when the sun's still down."
The cultivator shrugged, and with a grunt, she began climbing the walls. Even though she was donning potency, Aloe wouldn't have been able to climb them without gear as she was doing if it weren't for their slight slant. The main problem wasn't that it was hard climbing up, potency was doing most of the work, but that the rock was hard.
As she constantly grabbed the jagged and cold rocks, Aloe found her fingers being cut and bleeding. The strength stance weakened the hardness of her skin, so it made sense that the smallest contact with a sharp edge could open a wound.
Aloe simply pushed through that pain.
She had had infinitely worse.
And even if she hadn't, the Blossomflame at her back kept sending small embers at her hands to patch up the equally small wounds and bruises as they surfaced, which also worked as the perfect auxiliary light source.
The only rest she knew was whenever she found a platform to rest on, and she could go almost half an hour without finding one big enough to rest on. She wasn't the fastest climber – nor did she need to – as the strength stance weakened her stamina, speed, and whatnot.
On the next platform she found, her stomach grunted.
"Ah, this much climbing is making me hungry," Aloe groaned and started searching her backpack for the provisions she had readied. Just a handful of baked potatoes. "Dunes, they are cold."
That much was to be expected, but Aloe preferred her food warm whenever possible. And right now, it wasn't. She shrugged and with a wry smile, ate through her cold baked potatoes and took a swig of her waterskin.
"At this point, it will be day already when I reach the top," she grunted as she gnawed on her cold potatoes.
Climbing as fast as she did was only possible thanks to her internal infusions. Potency boosted her climbing prowess, recovery made her recover faster whilst resting, and toughness prevented her from being fearful of falling. All these three factors combined were what allowed her to climb what felt like kilometers in a handful of hours.
Then finally…
"Light!" Aloe exclaimed with her head glued to the stone wall. She was so high up now that the surface was no longer damp, only cold.
No matter at what angle she twisted her neck, Aloe was not capable of seeing the sky just yet, so she continued to climb until she found another resting place. This was so small that her butt barely fit in, but she managed to sit by putting her backpack on her lap.
For the first time beyond practice sessions, the cultivator donned the agility stance. Or as she liked to call it, dexterity.
The first time she had used the stance had been an awful experience as her body was hurt and her bones shifted into places bones shouldn't be, but she feared the pain no longer. Not only she wasn't hurt anymore, but she also had a Blossomflame at hand.
The effects of the dexterity internal infusion were pronounced as she had barely used it and when she had done so, it had only been with vitality reserves almost a third of her current ones. Her neck bent to impossible degrees as she almost placed it perpendicular to the stone wall at her back. The near-right angle made it possible for her to see the sky.
Dark blue with tinges of orange.
"Oh, early morn!" She almost jumped in glee before remembering her precarious position. And if she fell, she wouldn't like to activate toughness before having time to put her neck back into its place. The sheer image sent shivers down her spine. "Gotta hurry for sunrise then."
Aloe locked her neck back in place with a satisfying crack and donned potency again. She was only several tens of meters away from the ravine's edge.
A breeze, basically.
"One… last… push!" Aloe jumped out of the ravine by throwing herself into the air with an armful. Sometimes she forgot that having the strength of nine people was significant, especially for her low weight.
She didn't gain much height as she was tired, but she switched to toughness as the outside soil grew closer to her.
"Oof…" She groaned when she collided with the ground. "Hey, grass!" She noticed the patch of grass before her and pushed herself out of the dirt. "It's been a while since I've last seen normal grass."
Aloe threw her backpack on the ground and proceeded to stretch her arms and legs. More than one responded to the treatment with a nasty noise as they snapped back into place.
"Sun's not out yet, nice!" She pumped her fist in the air and recovered her backpack. "Let's get somewhere high to have a good look at it."
Her body and mind craved sunlight. Real sunlight, not the poor and haunting substitution the Dream Spore's hallucinations had forced into her. As she proceeded to walk toward the biggest hill – or more accurately mountaintop – she could see, Aloe took another hearty gulp of her waterskin. Unlike her previous misadventures across the Qiraji, she was no longer scared of running out of water.
It was weird for her to see this clearly even if it was still technically night. She wasn't donning acuity, but her eyes had grown used to the darkness after these months. After many months, Aloe used haste again to transverse hard terrain.
The increase in vitality made it hard for her to navigate the rugged terrain of the Ridged Highlands as she had basically duplicated her movement speed since the last time. Still, she hadn't been using that internal infusion nonstop for a whole month without learning something.
Even if her speed was that of nine adults, for her it had only increased by a factor of two, so she had no problem adapting quickly to the increased pace as humans were creatures of multiplication. She hadn't increased her speed by a factor of eight hundred percent, but one hundred percent from her normal haste speed.
That didn't stop her from falling more than once during her trip as she tried to outrun the rising sun. Thankfully, the moment she fell to the ground, it only took her a few seconds to switch back to haste.
When the ascent got more perilous, she switched to potency to climb with her hands instead of her feet as she was dealing with more vertical walls than pre-established paths as time went on.
In a matter of minutes, Aloe had fallen several times, switched infusions tens of them, and traveled a handful of kilometers in all axes.
There she stood. At the top of the world. The tallest mountain her sight could gaze. She finally switched to acuity and her eyes started to burn. The sun had yet to come out, but her eyes were no longer used to even a hint of its light.
A few minutes later, the heavens finally shone. Sunlight announced the arrival of its progenitor as the sun rose from the horizon. Powerful, destructive, life-giving, warm, blinding.
"Ah…" Aloe moaned as a part of her remembered what was like being under the attentive gaze of the sun.
Then, her hyper-perceptive sense detected them. The rhythm of steps. The shadows of the horizon. The smell of smoke. The sun in all of its mercy revealed to her the figures of hundreds, if not thousands.
"Ah," she moaned again, but the tone had completely subverted.
What she gazed at was but a marching army.
Comments
Zachary Patterson
Thank you for the chapter!
Zachary Patterson
Ooh aloe has changed while aloe has been out!
The3rd
Infinite cookies are here 🍪♾️
