Epsilon Twilight
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43. Spore
🕑 Added 2024-11-09 12:35:21 +0000 UTCIt would have been easy to go directly for the next evolution attempts, but Aloe had learned the need for a good rest. She had used thirty mansworth in a matter of hours, far more than she had ever consumed before, and even if she felt well at that moment, she knew she would face the consequences later.
And face them she did.
When she woke up the next 'day', she felt like an absolute pile of manure.
"Ugh, I knew it." She groaned her way out of bed, her body numb from the extreme vitality consumption and her head throbbing in protest. "I can't keep mistreating my body this way. Ugh, I feel like puking."
She did not puke, but that didn't mean her nausea magically vanished. Whilst the day wasn't wasted from her 'vitality hangover' like it would be with her menstruation, she was forced to take it slow. After resting and having her fair share of food and water, she only evolved two cumin seeds the whole day. Which, to be honest, was infinitely more than what she was doing in Sadina or during her escape.
"I guess it's a good time to make an inventory of the seeds and spores I can evolve," she lazily waltzed across her riverbed camp in search of her future evolutions.
There weren't many untested seeds and alike at her disposal. The ones she had fresh on her mind were the uninteresting mushroom, the edible one, and the lichen. If she was lucky, she would be able to evolve one of them. However, she would try to maximize her options and opportunities by trying to find some hidden evolution requirements.
On her satchels and some forgotten corners of her pockets and backpack, she found around seven different kinds of seeds – less than ten for sure – she had obtained either in Selen or the small town before that. She wasn't expecting much from them, mostly because she recognized some of them even if she couldn't put a name on them, but she was going to try for different requirements, nonetheless.
Today, she rested. Tomorrow, she would experiment.
{*}
The morning was a… concept down there. Sunlight didn't reach that far down, not that it could as there was a ceiling on her head, so morning was when she woke up and night was when she went to sleep. Still, breakfast wasn't something she looked up to. Because of the long cooking sessions, Aloe couldn't be bothered to prepare breakfast each time she woke up, so before going to sleep she left some soup resting overnight that she would heat when she woke up.
It was odious having to cut herself first thing in the morning, but the food was already done and the time she needed to spend was only on how warm she wanted her meal.
"Let's go with the liberty caps first," Aloe told herself after finishing the soup. "I don't know if they will evolve, but if they do, there's a high chance that they will be also edible, meaning that I will have even more food at my disposal. I wonder if evolved liberty caps will taste differently…"
For the first time ever, the cultivator decided to think with her stomach. She was used to thinking with her mind, her heart, or even her greed, but not her stomach. That was very much a new one for her.
Getting access to liberty cap spores was easy as she had a whole field of them. Unlike her other plantations, they were more… amicable to the idea of growing on a literal rock. Not that they could. If one mushroom could, then that would be the recent Radiating Undergrowth.
"Or lichen," she mussed. "Lichen can do that, can they? Maybe they aren't 'literally' growing on stone though…"
When one was as devoid of entertainment as Aloe, maundering was a given.
Once again, she found herself with copious amounts of spores in her hands. Not all of them were visible to the naked eye, especially with her limited visibility, but she could sense the vitality inside of them. The ever-present darkness of the chasm had done wonders for her 'vitality sense' as it was getting easier and easier to detect the specific vitality of a living being, even from afar.
She had the sensation that this 'sense' may actually be one and that it was boosted by acuity.
Her mind locked on a specific spore; its vitality was infinitesimal compared to the mushroom it came from. Aloe's mind focused on a single thought: intention.
And that intention was to transform the spore in her hand into a new form of life.
"Liberty cap evolution test begins… now!"
And it failed.
The spore on her hand refused to accept her Evolution-intended vitality.
But Aloe didn't allow herself to be discouraged by the fact. She knew that plants – or mushrooms or whatever – could have hidden requirements to evolve. Maybe not all of them could evolve, but she had to try.
She went with her only tested requirement so far: books. Even after evolving, a handful of Aloe Veritas, the old booklet she had bought had more than enough content to be used and exploited.
The cultivator pressed her hand against the gnawed parchment of the book and forced her intent and vitality into the spore once more.
"Liberty cap evolution test two begins… now!"
Aloe's lips instantly curved upward when the spore started accepting her vitality.
"Two for two, atta girl!" She praised the little spore, though her expression soured the next moment. "Hmm…"
The spore was accepting her vitality slowly. Not incredibly so, but the pace was slower than the Blossomflame, let alone the Radiating Undergrowth.
"Ah…" She sighed. "I mean, it's great to have a new evolution and all, but at the same time, I would prefer really expensive ones."
Her 'dream' was to have an ascending ladder of evolution costs, so in theory, she could constantly increase her vitality at accelerating speeds without suffering the consequences of evolving multiple plants on the same day.
"Alas, it would seem a girl can only dream."
Aloe was happy for her own success, she really was, but she knew she could be happier. And that made her sad.
The spore ended up taking around four mansworth to evolve. Way more than a Flourishing Spring, but somewhat less than the Blossomflame. Now her prayers were redirected to another place.
"Please be a useful plant," she closed her hands into fists and raised them beyond her head as if she was squeezing the luck out of the heavens.
Then it was finally time to cut a veritas leaf and coat the spore with its ink. The evolved spore was no different than the other ones – unfortunately, no Radiating Undergrowth scenario – besides having ever-so-slightly more vitality as it was now a different species, which allowed Aloe to separate it.
Otherwise, the situation would have quickly escalated into a mess as she tried to search for the evolved one with little to no success. She made a mental note to only leave a spore on her hand if possible when she was evolving fungi.
Once she let a drop of ink fall on the spore, as dropping it directly on the plant would have caused her to probably lose it forever, the parchment of the veritas began shifting and making whole sentences. No matter how many times she saw the scene unfold before her eyes, the magic of how the ink gained sentience to displace itself into words would never cease to amaze her.
The process ended after a few seconds and the parchment now read:
Species: Psilocybe Adhlucinor
Sobriquet: Dream Spore
Description: An evolved member of the Hymenogastraceae family, a species known for its ability to vibrant colors, gas pustules, and hallucinogenic properties.
Alignment: Life, Information
"Uhh…" Aloe squinted and groaned with her mouth half-open as she reread the parchment. "I don't think this will be edible. And even it is… I don't think I'd like to eat it. The term 'gas pustules' is already making me nauseous."
Now that she was sure the danger had passed, Aloe cut herself and invoked the fires of the Blossomflames next to her to get a better look at the parchment to evaluate the plant. She hadn't done so before out of paranoia, if the evolved spore was dangerous, then she didn't want her lifeline to have exhausted part of its power.
"There are no red flags on the name and sobriquet that I can see, so that's good." Not always the names were self-describing, and this seemed to be one of those cases. "The description is… lacking. Two physical details and only one about its properties. It could be better. Could you do better?"
Aloe shook the Aloe Veritas leaf as if she was extorting it, but the leaf didn't exhibit any of the spontaneous changes it could produce.
"It was worth a try," Aloe groaned. "Vibrant colors normally indicate poisonous things, but I feel like the veritas would have said so if it was the case. Gas pustules though… I guess it's a property too," she wasn't enthusiastic about that one. "Surely that hallucinogenic factor is related to the gas. I won't know if I should eat them until they have grown, but for now, it's better if I plant them away from the riverbed. Maybe the river as a whole, I wouldn't like some gas polluting the water I'm going to drink."
She gave a bit more thought to the veritas' description, but she found herself groaning once more as it was too lacking for her tastes. Not all descriptions could be winners.
"I'm struggling to find any uses right now," she scratched her scalp furiously. "If this came to me a year ago when I was dealing with the sultanzade and the assassins, maybe someone would have bought it, but now… this just sounds like a more potent version of the liberty caps." Shivers went down her spine as she recalled her frigid encounter with the river. "I'm going to plant it if just out of morbid curiosity, but I'll need to watch out for any possible intoxication."
Instead of planting it so far away from her camp that it went unsupervised, Aloe decided to plant it a bit over the boundary but downstream so if it affected the water, at least not the one she would drink.
"Okay, infusion time. Let's hope you don't take unlimited amounts of vitality to be infused, will you?" She whispered to the Dream Spore.
Literally. It was a Dream Spore's spore.
Like before with the Radiating Undergrowth, the petite cultivator opted for the accelerated growth external infusion as fungi wouldn't need shade acclimation to grow. And like its small – relatively speaking – evolution cost, the evolved spore didn't need much vitality to evolve.
"Oh, that's a solid number, around a mansworth to be infused, and that's taking into consideration that it's an evolved plant. Good to know."
She marked the spot where she planted the Dream Spore spore – this alliteration would be the death of her – with a pebble circle, and she went on with her day.
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