Epsilon Twilight
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44. Alignment
🕑 Added 2024-11-10 12:02:41 +0000 UTCThe next day, Aloe relaxed with the evolution experiments. She wasn't in any real haste, and she no longer had her sanity trickling out of her body thanks to the growing supply of Blossomflames and light, so she dedicated the day to unwind, draw a bit, and evolve more cumin seeds.
It may seem like a joke, but she was getting good with the knife. Aloe didn't have many references to draw, so she found herself drawing the same things over and over again, namely her plants. This contributed to her progress as she was making them better with each iteration. She even planted a Flourishing Spring to be able to draw it.
The sketches of the plants she was satisfied with she took them to the crevice and stored them. Aloe Veritas leaves seemed to be more like parchment than she initially believed as some of her early leaves were still as fresh as when she cut them a month ago, just a little stiffer, but that was a plus. This motivated her to keep drawing as her drawings wouldn't deteriorate.
"I would like to have some pigments to give some color, though." Alas, the only real paint she had was the veritas ink. "Maybe if I grind some Blossomflame leaves and mix them with the veritas ink it will turn red."
Ideas like those were plentiful, but their success was null more often than not. That didn't stop her from trying, like she was doing with her selective breeding experiment.
After she ended her drawing session full of ink as she wasn't careful when she was practicing – it didn't matter if the parchment's surface was covered with her description – Aloe decided to take a 'bath'. It was a strong word calling bath those times she wetted a towel and cleansed herself with it though. She once thought to boil a bit of water in her ceramic pan to not chill herself to death, but it was too much time to boil barely a few glasses of water.
And besides, if she wanted to heat herself, she could always cut herself.
In the sense that a Blossomflame would shower her in flames, not because she wanted to heat her body through hemorrhage. Though she couldn't deny that also worked. The human body did tend to heat up when losing blood, if the blood loss was minimal, of course.
Some part of her was scared of her growing dependency on Blossomflames, but another just whispered "They are so useful and comfortable though…"
Ironically enough, Aloe wanted to discover new evolutions to depend on them rather than continue depending on the Blossomflames. Distributing her dependency and such. She had high hopes for the Radiating Undergrowth as they would seem to provide both lighting and rations. Even if she was hesitant to eat them once they grew. But that was weeks away, she needed to think of today.
But that was for tomorrow, today she slept.
And sleeping was just a blink. Recovery allowed her to sleep with ease, and more often than not, without dreaming. That was the true blessing of the stance. Why she didn't dream or have nightmares – most of the time – whilst donning that internal infusion was beyond her. She was just glad about it.
After having breakfast and gathering her seeds, Aloe proceeded to run her evolution experiments.
"Unknow seeds evolution test begins… now!" She pushed her vitality and intent into the seed whose nature she hadn't bothered to check with the veritas. "Hmm…"
The cultivator wasn't surprised to find her test ended up in failure.
"Okay, time for the requirements tests." The first one was the book one.
Which failed.
After recalling the description of the Na'mul Ter'nar and checking that of the Aloe Veritas and the Dream Spore, Aloe noticed that all the plants that required a book had evolved into plants with the Information alignment. That didn't mean much to her other than it was obvious when put into words. But it did give her an idea.
"If Information evolutions require books, then evolutions with other alignments may require related items to their alignment," she theorized. "Most plants by default are Life, and they are alive, so I don't know how much of a requirement that is. Light must be any source of light, which makes sense as the only Light plants I have evolved were under direct sunlight."
Those plants in question were the Myriad and the Grace's Exaltation.
"But beyond these three alignments, I'm out of ideas. Chaos… many plants I have evolved had a Chaos alignment like the Myriad, the Blossomflames, and the uhm… how was it called? The Chlorotrophy? Yeah, I think that was the name. Those are three plants with Chaos, but all had either Life or Light alignments too, so I don't know what influenced their evolutions. Fire still is a solid clue for Chaos though…"
She would be lying if she wasn't making stuff up and gaslighting herself as she went on. Her excuse was 'they are only theories', even if they were – most likely – nonsense.
"Next on the list of alignments: Time," she waited for a few seconds, waiting for her brain to come up with something. "Yeah, no idea. The only plant I have seen with it was the Nature's Bounty, and that also had Life. I can only guess that time needs to pass as a requirement for such plants, but time will always flow so…"
She gave up and went for the next one.
"Arcane is a curious one, I have seen it a lot of times. The Na'mul Ter'nar, the veritas, the Moonlight's Tooth, and the Flourishing Spring," she took a deep breath after her enumeration. "This may be the most common alignment after Life. But I also have no idea how to get a requirement out of it. The ter'nar and the veritas were evolutions via book, and the moonlight and the spring had Life alignments too… Maybe life is just the most important requirement? But that's a bit too redundant, isn't it? Evolution can only evolve living beings."
Aloe stopped herself there as it would seem that if she continued down that path, she would spend all day arguing philosophy with the darkness.
"What alignments remain?" She pondered for a moment and counted with her fingers. "Void and Death, those are the last ones, hmmm…" The cultivator hummed deep in thought. "I can imagine what could work with Death, but when I evolved the Radiating Undergrowth and the Thousand Cuts, there was no dead matter around me. But that abomination of a seed had also Life, so I can discard it."
What ensued was a series of groans and scratches on her scalp.
"Void is the only one I have no answers for, but at the same time, I have met some requirements for it to evolve it. The Radiating Undergrowth is Void and Death, so I must have met one requirement. Which alignment was it, then?"
Aloe was, of course, ignoring the obvious question of "Do all plants need to meet requirements to evolve?"
Which could or could not be the case.
"I'd like to guess Death is influenced by dead things, even if I have no proof. And unless Evolution itself is saying that I am dead inside, I'd say Void was the real influence here." Truth was, Aloe couldn't distinguish if her last comment was a joke or not. "I have a good theory of what could be the requirement of Void: darkness. I mean, it makes sense. If I'm right about Light being well… light, then Void should be darkness."
The number of 'what ifs' the foundation of her thesis was grounded on was looser than a tower of grains of sand. And she knew it.
"Now, if the requirements I've come up with do make sense and are true, then every time I try to evolve a plant right now I'm meeting the Life, Void, and maybe Time requirements. I'm basically ninety-nine percent sure of the requirement for Information, so I should work on Light, Chaos, and Death."
A Blossomflame could meet two of those requirements if she was right with her theories, so she focused on the latter. Considering the sprawling size of her garden, obtaining dead matter wasn't much of a problem. But to be thorough, Aloe cut a flower from her cumin plantation and burned it with a Blossomflame. This way she would undoubtedly have a dead plant in her hands.
"Alright, I should have seven of the eight possible requirements now. Perhaps. Maybe," her tone provided no confidence at all. "Let's see if this seed will evolve with any of these requirements."
Spoiler, it did not.
According to her hypothesis, she had already tried Life, Void, Time, and Information; and after showering the seed in light and fire from a Blossomflame and putting it next to the dead cumin flower, no evolution occurred.
"Oh well," Aloe sighed, but she wasn't disappointed. This was the reality of Evolution. She had failed tens of them, maybe a hundred already with all the different seeds and species she had tried. She was no stranger to failure.
But she would be lying if she wasn't frustrated. This was the perfect moment to prove her – admittedly makeshift – theories. If a single seed evolved through being in contact with Blossomflame fire or dead plants, she would feel validated.
"Six more seeds to go, I believe!" So, she tried with the next ones.
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