Epsilon Twilight
patreon
33. Blossomflame
🕑 Added 2023-11-07 13:52:05 +0000 UTCAloe woke up feeling... fine. With all that had happened these last days, that was more than alright for her. She could settle with fine if that meant no more problems.
“Hello, hello.” The girl mumbled weakly on her bed. “Alright, it seems I can somewhat talk now. It still hurts, though.” She sighed as she got out of bed, she still didn’t understand how her throat got hurt this badly.
Her previous day's routine tasks, whilst not sufficient, had provided her with some clean water and cooked food. Even if she wanted to have some dates and coconuts for breakfast, Aloe opted for just a glass of water and a strip of jerky as she still felt drowsy. She wasn’t that far gone to have cold soup for breakfast.
Whilst her meal was far from satisfactory, she wasn’t feeling especially peckish. Aloe had not exerted herself... physically exerted herself these last days, so her stomach was not feeling quite up to the task, even when her previous encounters with extensive vitality usage had shown that consuming vitality made her hungry. After finishing her breakfast as she stood on the kitchenette – standing still proved to be an exercise she had found herself lacking in her routine as of late – she knelt down beside her desk.
“Alright, time to see what you are, you bugger.” Aloe grabbed the evolved seed that had been left on the ground since yesterday. “Or seeder? Is that even a word? I don’t know how I should insult a seed... That was a sentence, huh? I must be going crazy with all this vitality and... things.”
The girl refrained herself from thinking, lest her mind wandered somewhere she didn’t want to.
“Hmm...” Aloe heaved the seed up and down once she sat on her chair. “It’s warm. I thought I had imagined that yesterday, but the seed is actually warm.”
Aloe opened her palm to reveal no longer a black-and-white elongated cumin seed but a light brown almost-chestnut-like-in-shape seed. She traced her fingers across the ovoid seed, feeling the small crevices of the future plant. It didn’t matter if she used her fingers, nails, palms, or the backside of her hands, she could still feel the heat irradiating from the seed. It was small, barely noticeable against the desert heat even if it was still early in the morning, but it was indeed there.
The evolved seed had its own temperature.
“This is curious.” Aloe rubbed her chin as her father used to do, but quickly stopped as she found the gesture rather dumb. “All evolved seeds until now have been normal, it was only when they grew up that they displayed their abilities. Even the Myriad wasn’t made out of glass when it was just a seed.”
But as she had commented, this was all that it was: a curiosity. Aloe, whilst well educated for someone of her pedigree, was far from a scholar. She could identify that the seed was special because it was different, but it wasn’t as she could research or dwell on the why.
Her conclusion simply was, “I guess that’s because it needed more vitality to evolve.”
And her theory – no matter how simple it was – wasn't without its merits. The seed had a lot of vitality inside when Aloe inspected it closely.
“I’d say this is more interesting than the warmth,” All evolved plants were magical, Aloe had already assumed that, so a plant that produced its own ‘body temperature’ didn’t sound exactly farfetched. “Every time I’ve evolved a plant, there was a loss in vitality. A Cure Grass seed had less vitality inside than the needed to evolve it, there isn’t much distinction from a normal grass seed, to be honest. And with the Flourishing Spring that’s even more extreme. Even though it takes me a whole deposit to evolve a black seed, the Flourishing Spring seed has barely twice as much vitality as a normal seed, which is to say, not much at all...”
This whole theorizing business scratched an itch in Aloe’s mind that she didn’t know she ever had. It was almost making her feel... happy. Or at least less discontent. She wouldn’t describe herself as curious but rather as analytical. Maybe I chose the wrong profession...
But now it was no time to repent of her life decisions. She had already been doing that her whole life.
Now it was time to appraise that seed.
Aloe shakily reached for the jar where she stored the Aloe Veritas leaves. But this shaking was not born out of exhaustion or pain like before, but giddiness. How amazing must a plant that required this much vitality to evolve be? That was the thought on her as she grabbed a leaf of the magical plant.
She took a few breaths before trying to examine the seed because if with her movements she touched the ink before the seed, that leaf would have gone to waste. And it wasn’t like she had many remaining after the ink shenanigans.
Expectations were high, but with almost surgeon-like precision, Aloe dyed the evolved cumin seed with veritas ink. Like before, the blurry and non-sensical ink spots on the surface of the Aloe Veritas leaf shifted to give place to intelligible text.
Aloe would never grow used to that unnatural shifting of ink. Nor tired.
Species: Blossomflame
Sobriquet: Lifefire Flower
Description: A member belonging to no family, their species is known for their ability to drown their enemies in flames and heal those they consider allies.
Alignment: Life, Chaos
Her expectations were not betrayed. Though there are too many questions in her mind to worry about such trivialities. The main question was of course...
“No family?” Aloe tilted her head in confusion. “This plant can’t stop being the first in a lot of things, huh? Though I guess it’s a flower? I mean, the sobriquets and species haven’t lied yet. The ter’nar was indeed a tree and Cure Grass was... well, grass.”
Aloe felt rather dumb for the last comment, but her mind quickly switched her shame to the question that first plagued her.
“What do you mean with no family?” She asked no one as the Aloe Veritas leaf could not talk. “Is that even possible? I’m no scholar, but I’m quite sure every plant is part of a family of other similar plants. And that’s not even the end of it. It’s not even saying that the seed is an evolved member of anything, so like the Myriad or the... Namul Ter’nar was it? Anyways, of the ter’nar, it’s an independent existing plant instead of an outright evolution like Cure Grass or the Aloe Veritas. But if that were, in fact, the case; why doesn’t it have a family?”
Aloe looked at the dirty seed in her hand. It was still warm to the touch, she had expected the heat to fade away at some point, but no. The Blossomflame seed was still warm.
“I am veritably confused on this one.” She blinked thrice and then groaned out of nowhere. “Ugh, that was an awful pun.”
Aloe would have killed herself for that one if it hadn’t been an unconscious wordplay. Anyhow, she tried to get real numbers from the Blossomflame seed as the questions about its family – or lack thereof – would lead her nowhere.
Seeds, regardless of if they were evolved or not, didn’t have much vitality inside of them. The amount was more or less equal to that of a single common grass blade for normal seeds and a Cure Grass blade for evolved ones. There wasn’t much difference between the two either way. The amount of vitality she was working with was so small that she had difficulties measuring it. Even if the seeds were infused they didn’t...
“Argh!” Aloe groaned in realization as she led her hands to her head. “Dunes! I have to evolve the nince-damned seed!” Strength left her arms; she was left crestfallen. “Ugh, I fear how much vitality will I even need to evolve this monstrosity!”
She revised her mental notes for the vitality costs of previous infusions but found her memories a bit hazy. It was hard to say if it was because of the evolution, other recent events, or just her memory being faulty.
“I should note all of this somewhere...” She sighed in defeat. “But anyways, it shouldn’t take that much vitality. The rule is that evolved plants take double vitality to infuse than non-evolved plants, but... is this even an evolved plant? The definition of an evolved plant is already very convoluted. The Aloe Veritas doesn’t describe the Myriad as an evolved plant, but it did take double vitality to infuse, nonetheless. And even then, if the double cost rule is – as a matter of fact – universal, what’s the baseline for the Blossomflame, normal cumin seeds?”
There were many questions, but no solutions. Well, there was a simple solution, but Aloe sort of wanted to avoid it.
“I guess I can check on the cumin.”
Aloe grabbed the remaining cumin seed on the desk, but as she was going to infuse it, she had a change of heart.
“Wait, if I infuse it, I won’t be able to evolve it later...” Because infused plants had their ‘vitality cap’ filled, it was impossible to use Evolution on them as seeds needed to be injected with vitality to evolve. “Meh, it’s not as if I have a time limit or they are expensive.”
And then she changed of opinion again as she would be going back to Sadina rather sooner than later.
“Yeah, I guessed as much.” Aloe sighed as she infused the cumin with the default infusion, also known as ‘accelerated growth’. “Only five percent of my entire reserves. Not much vitality, but kinda a lot for a common and rather small plant.”
Technically, the Blossomflame would only take around ten percent of her deposit if cumin were just flowers, which didn’t feel right if that was the case.
“Wait, no. That’s just wrong.” Aloe slapped her forehead in realization. She was feeling rather dumb as of late. “The infusion cost isn’t dependent on the previous plant, just on the size of the future plant. Trees took a third of my deposit because they are big, but potatoes only like a tenth. And whilst every Flourishing Spring was around half, they are evolved plants. Flowers, yes, but still bigger than most plants out there.”
Aloe tapped the desk deep in thought.
“In theory then, the Blossomflame shouldn’t take more than half my reserves... Though I don’t want to test it right now. Instead of losing vitality, I rather lose other weights first...”
It was early in the morning, and she still had yet to visit the least glamorous of the three buildings in the oasis today.
Comments
Epsilon Twilight
By all means, Aloe should eat and will. As mentioned in prior chapters, whilst she may be starving she cannot bring herself to eat.
Alpenmann
Thanks for the chapter.
BrGustl
Interesting in one of the Interludes which mentioned or favorite feminist Tyrant it was mentioned that after using her arts she would be able to eat a whole elephant. So it should make her peckish if her way isn´t different from the one used by the cultivators. Also why do I get the feeling that that plant is either going to be some warden in that place or spirit plant for our dear MC. I mean the Interludes threw a looming curveball at her so her plotarmor iight have started triggering for a bit...
