Epsilon Twilight
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26. Camp
🕑 Added 2024-10-16 11:41:03 +0000 UTCAcuity allowed her to dispel the darkness of the chasm to a degree, but that didn't mean she possessed night vision. Alas, no stance granted her such abilities. A fleeting thought led her to wonder if the stealth stance could grant her that as stealth was heavily linked to night as a concept, but she had already tried that stance when performing her body heat tests and she hadn't noticed any changes in her sight back then.
"More vitality it is," in the end, everything amounted to that.
If she wanted to be stronger, faster, survive mortal wounds, or see in the night, then she could only accumulate more vitality until her body surpassed human understanding.
Humans were creatures of multiplicators, and as there was not much difference between the increase of sight of five and six mansworth, Aloe poured her vitality into a black seed each time she maxed her reserves.
"I fear running out of seeds now…" She had restocked everything at Selen, cumin seeds, black seeds, and more. Plus a book, with the hope of restoring her more trusted plant.
Well, second now. She couldn't deny the contributions of the Blossomflame.
And she didn't forget about all the other things she bought in the other town too. A miscellaneous of seeds from an apothecary, grass seeds, and a single potato. Considering how potatoes could grow anywhere and be eaten in any way, she trusted she could make it grow with her Forced Growth technique and created a crop field out of nowhere alongside the accelerated growth external infusion.
"Hells, I almost forgot about external infusions, I've been using internal ones for so long that…" Aloe grabbed her head in distress out of nowhere as a solution for an earlier problem suddenly got an answer in her mind. "I'M A FUCKING MORON!" She shouted in despair, her howl echoing all throughout the subterranean river. "I could have infused the Blossomflame with resistance to drought all this time!"
Answers to problems were normally like that, they only came when the problem had been long resolved. Though in this case, it hadn't been much of a problem in the end, just a thorn in her mind as Aloe had constantly feared dehydration in the desert.
Like she should.
Using her water freely could have been a greater problem, though she had also thought of an alternative solution to that problem back then. But resistance to drought was the way better – and cleaner – alternative either way.
"These ideas depend on Forced Growth too much, when it's far from a perfect skill," she groaned. "I needed around one hundred mansworth to grow the Blossomflame, twice at that. I still don't know if Forced Growth works by the external infusion's logic of size equals needed vitality to infuse, or Evolution's random amounts, but in any case, I still don't have enough vitality to create farmlands out of nowhere."
Yet. She left the last word unspoken.
Aloe wasn't much of a superstitious person, but there was no reason to jinx herself when it wasn't needed. And she needed to get every help she could, even if it was a supernatural and nonsensical one.
The slowness of not wielding haste became all the more apparent when she took a break. She had been walking for hours now since she started yet the landscape looked all the same. Maybe there was a slow inclination leading her upwards, but not much. There also seemed to be less light than before, and as she believed the sun was still out when she left, this meant she had passed over where the chasm closed.
In other words, she was no longer in a ravine but an underground cavern system.
"Alright, two options," her words sluggishly left her lips. Even whilst resting, she felt tired. "Either I turn back and I search for a way upward, or I continue forward and… pray for the best?"
She squinted at her own words and evolved another Flourishing Spring.
"When I put it like that, it feels like I'm walking to nowhere… but at the same time, maybe nowhere is what I need."
Aloe didn't know how the assassins had found her, but she suspected it would be impossible for them to find her here. Mostly because any sane person would think she would have made her way out already or simply died. This was some twisted game of hide and seek, and the best choice was the most moronic one.
Or that was what she preferred to think.
"Loyata isn't safe. Ydaz isn't safe. The border between the two… that might be the best place," she didn't believe her words, but she needed something, even if it was lies, to keep her going forward.
The cultivator stood up and continued treading the darkness. By now her satchel of Flourishing Spring seeds was rather full. Unlike Blossomflames, she could evolve them constantly, and because she hadn't thrown any – unless some had fallen off from her many acrobatics, voluntary and otherwise – they were taking some space.
They were so cheap that, as a matter of fact, she didn't even need to keep them. Having a couple of black seeds was enough. One to have a future black seed plant, and another to have a Flourishing Spring.
"I don't know how I have never pondered this before, but I can grow more evolved plants from other evolved plants," she almost slapped her face at such an obvious thought. "Blossomflames and Flourishing Springs have pistils and such, so I could get seeds from them."
Not that she needed to have more than one of them right now, but the possibility of reproducing evolved plants without the need for vitality was a huge help. And even in her time in the greenhouses, her time was cut short before she could do such things.
"Eh, I don't need this many," and without thinking it twice, Aloe threw a handful of Flourishing Spring seeds on the Tehen River.
This wouldn't have consequences on the ecosystem at all. Clearly.
It took a few hours of walking in more darkness and some more black seeds, but after what seemed to be like an eternity, Aloe bifurcation in the path. Truth be told, this wasn't the first time she had found one, but most were rifts just a few centimeters wide. She was still skinny, but not that skinny.
With a bit of expectation, if just to get away from the cold humidity of the Tehen River, Aloe stepped into the cavernous entrance of the bifurcation. It wasn't as big as the river's ravine, but her small stature was beneficial for once as she found no problem whatsoever as she trudged the narrow cave.
At least she didn't suffer from claustrophobia, because her shoulders – or more precisely her backpack – scratched the cave walls. At the same time, she guessed it was difficult to get claustrophobia from a place you couldn't see.
Unlike the endless course of the river, it didn't take Aloe long to find something worthwhile after not that long. The cave path finally opened in some sort of clearing, if it could even be called that. Because of her limited vision, Aloe couldn't tell how high the ceiling was, but she guessed it couldn't be much. Just enough to remain out of her very limited vision range.
The cultivator prodded around the cave opening with a hand on the wall. In less than a handful of minutes, she completed a lap around the cave back to the same entrance she had come from. The cave wasn't that big and had a vaguely circular shape.
But it was out of sight, and it wasn't as humid as the river shore.
"It beats sleeping in the cold and being drenched," Aloe shrugged, the close stone calls returning her voice back to her in a mighty echo.
It felt wrong calling a cave colder than a yakhchal a camp, but this was the best she had at her disposal, a pocket of air in a ravine where the temperature was barely above the freezing point.
Aloe didn't care, or rather couldn't care any longer, how long she had been awake. She prepared her sleeping bag, grabbed a blanket, and sneaked her way inside the comfort of the heat-trapping leather.
She was cold, wet, and constantly edging a nervous breakdown, but the warm bag of Blossomflame seeds in her hands helped.
If just barely.
Comments
The3rd
Infinite cookies are here ♾️🍪
Zachary Patterson
Thank you for the chapter!
