Wraithwood Botanist

Just as aura gives you natural armor and increases your strength, neara shields the mind and makes it perform better. It's like steroids for your mind without any backlash, as it is, in itself, a workout. I found that out that night when I took a bite of nearan meat when everyone fell asleep and was blasted with sensations far, far worse than Mental Shielding.

I activated Mental Shielding to avoid the backlash, but I still felt like my mind was on fire, and I regretted going straight for third evolution meat—

—even in low quantities. It was truly bizarre to have that experience after the last elixirs I had. I'm not sure what I expected—but it was not that.

Yet once it was done, my mind was left with the runner's high of mental exhaustion, and for the first time in a long while, I willingly went to sleep.

In my dreams, I awoke in a second life in a world that I could create, much like when I took the Reaina Elixir. It put me in control to create anything and everything, and when I asked for people, it created them to speak to me.

"Heya," a man said in a city I built. "You must be the new girl."

"I… can't believe this is a dream," I said.

"\\I wish it wasn't. Just one thought, and I'd be blown to smithereens."

I thought about that possibility, and his body actually exploded and I screamed, closing my eyes, and then suddenly, all the hot blood on me disappeared and I was back in the void, and when I asked where the city went, it returned. The sounds and smells and tastes.

So this's why Reta sleeps, I thought. This world's messed up, so she's made her own…

I walked through this world, turning buildings into large trees, clocks into gnarled wreaths, and steampunk trains into rotting logs. I filled the world with colossal beasts and had them stalk through my new forest. I cloned my body a thousand times, seeing if the last one was weaving through small details as well as the first, and found it so. And when I suddenly woke, I took heaving breaths, annoying Kline, who tried to snuggle but failed and whined, jumping off the bed to find a new location away from the lurvine.

Sina woke and looked up at me. I said, "Go back to sleep…" But she didn't. Instead, she watched as I created small illusions of people in the sky and grimaced at their lack of details.

Hadrian and Brexton and Reasan were easy to copy in detail, but if I were just trying to create a random face, it wouldn't work.

I guess it's just showing what's possible… But I wonder.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember that man's face in my dreams. The details. The grooves on his forehead. The creases in his clothing. The backdrop he was in. Once I did that, his body came to life, details and all, right before me.

I stared at it with a grin. So I can replicate the things I dream about. I guess that's why it's called Dreamscape.

I felt so much excitement over the prospect that I didn't notice that Kline and the lurvines were staring at me. When I turned to them, I smiled sheepishly. "Let's get some second evolution meat. This nearan meat is…" I laughed. "Good. It's real good."

They stood up, and I checked the time. 3:24 a.m.

That's soon enough, I said. I felt energized and awake and antsy as I waited for my little furry friends to stretch up and take full size. Then we left three lurvines on guard and flew through the forest, determined to get some prey.

Felio exited her tree at sunrise to find me. It was cold outside, but she bore it and found herself in my cave as I skinned some beasts.

"Why are you…?" she whispered. "When did you? Why?"

"That's a lot of questions, but look what we found." I picked up a shalk. "I found a little tribe. First evs. Perfect for nearan practice. And I'm pretty sure you can eat it. Now come help me. The sooner we do, the sooner we can have a hot bath."

Felio groaned and rubbed her eyes and lamented everything, but she said, "Okay," and went back into her house. She didn't make it five minutes alone before being surrounded by Cassain and the rest of the guards.

I sighed. "Well, we could use some help."

An hour later, we had skinned and butchered the shalks, and I had threaded the external aura and removed the bad parts of the neara.

"Hey," I said. "I think that all soul anythings are kinda secret, right? Lithco calls me a prodigy, or that I have an aptitude for it. But I'm scared that'll, you know, kill me."

"We've already made that pact," Cassain said. "So don't hold back. Just don't demonstrate anything that would implicate you as more than a soul cook or a threader."

"Well, in that case…" I lifted the shalk meat. "I assure you that this's safe. And it'll blow your mind."

Asail grimaced and looked at Cassain, who stared at the meat and then me and then Felio.

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"I'll eat it first," I said. "I'll eat half, hand it off to you, and you can wait a few days. Deal?"

They reluctantly agreed, and an hour later, I had cooked half the shalk into a stew and was eating it with a feeling of energized euphoria.

This's almost enjoyable… I thought. Third ev is a whole different animal.

A few days later, Felio and the guards had a very different experience. Felio cried out in pain and a few other guards panicked and the whole thing would've gone sideways if it weren't for Cassain and Asail, the most experienced of the guards, having strong nearan channels after over a century of life and strength-building. Cassain finished first and held Felio until it was over, and they all went to bed. But the next morning, everything had changed.

Felio walked into my home with the widest eyes I've ever seen and said, "I can see everything." She was so serious that I couldn't help but burst into overwhelming laughter, and she pouted and cried, "I'm being serious! I can really see everything. The... um... details! I can see the details!" The outburst only made it funnier, and so it took a while to calm down. But during breakfast, when I ate more, I offered it to her and started laughing again.

"Want to see everything again?" I asked.

She didn't find it funny.

That morning after breakfast, I stood and stretched and looked at Felio. "You wanna do some alchemy?"

Felio giggled at my lax mindset and said, "Sure."

After that, we had nothing else to do for the winter, and I was done with my power-ups, so Felio spent the late winter teaching me alchemy in preparation for spring.

As the plants grew and the snow disappeared, Felio and I spent six hours a day exploring the outside world, with her riding on Sina as I walked around. Cassain and Asail took turns accompanying us, bored to tears as we talked about different plants.

Yet Cassain was sharp and knew when to weave in and out, and she always caught me when I subconsciously used Brindle's magic.

"Why's there haircap here?" Felio would ask, crouching before certain moss.

"What's a haircap?" Cassain asked dryly, kindly allowing her to geek out despite probably knowing what it was, anyway.

"Haircap isn't a species, it's a type," she said. "And this one's known for thriving in arid ground. It's great for dry climates because it doesn't have roots. It has what are known as "rhizoids" that are kinda like mushrooms. They can sink deep underground to find water. But this place…" She looked into the forest and found that it was covered in grass and stems. "It's not arid at all."

I put my hand on the ground and used some spell I didn't even know—assuming it was a spell at all. It was just a form of mana penetration that went underground to discover nutrients.

"It's because…" I turned and walked up to the ground cover and frowned. "This thing's soakin' it all up." I kicked the plant almost aggressively.

I used the guide to read the description.

—---

Name: Tragla

Description: Nicknamed the water hog, this invasive weed has absolutely no purpose in this forest other than to bully smaller, more useful plants into leaving their home or dying. Kill it. I know you want to.

—---

"Yep."

I used Kira to create a hoe out of aura and ripped up the ground.

"What are you doing?" Felio cried.

"Gardening," I said.

Felio's lips pursed together, and she giggled. "Areswood? You're gardening Areswood?"

"Proudly," I said.

I thought it was normal, but Cassain watched me like a hawk. On the way back, I could feel her gaze, so I said, "You can just ask, you know."

"Forgive me," Cassain said. "I'm just curious what spell you used back there."

"It's just a spell for tracking moisture." I opened up my menu and asked Lithco what spell could do that. He answered, and I read the name he gave me aloud: "Moisture Measure. Real stupid name. I'm guessing it doesn't have a real name and it's part of a bigger spell."

"Yeah…" Cassain said. "But why did you learn it? It's a horticulture skill." Enjoy new stories from My Virtual Library Empire

I felt an icy chill wash down my back. Nothing gets past this woman. It's annoying.

"I learned it during the winter," I said. "It might not look it, but I'm actually here to study plants. And since I have a huge surplus of rewards at any given time, I feed my interests without holding back. "

"Oh…" Cassain nodded. "Thank you for sating my curiosity."

As we walked, I thought about it. Is it really worth worrying about? I obviously learned it, but there's no way anyone could know how…

I pushed it aside and went on.

In the late afternoons, I traveled to the river to play with the souls, separating them, binding them, and pulling one out and putting it into a plant. I found some things challenging, as if I were rusty, but as I practiced, I realized that I could put real souls into plants, reinforce them, and bring them to life, wiggling and screeching and trying to break free. Then, I could pull out their souls and harmonize them.

No cleansing necessary.

I could simply skip that stage and break down their souls and release them into the air.

What a beautiful power… I said.

A flashback of Brindle corrupting a strong soul he pulled out of his core and forcefully shoving it into the core of a colossus in the Sixth Domain flashed across my mind. I watched the way it broke the beast's mind, body, and soul and sent it into seizures as Brindle restrained its body with roots and trees and killed it with a blade of aura.

And terrifying…

I returned home after that and found Felio in the alchemy shop, swooning with delight as she roamed around. When I walked in, she quit humming and smiled.

"You wanna learn some alchemy?" she said. "I might be nervous about messing up your elixir, but if you tell me what you need to do, I can teach you."

My heart suddenly soared. "Please!"

And so Felio taught me. I requested a meeting with Elana simply to ask what processes I needed to learn, and she came out for five minutes, complaining all the time, to give me a list. But I could tell she appreciated the initiative, and we continued on.

We ate nearan meat every day, and I could feel my mind growing stronger. And after dinner, I entertained my guests with images of Earth and its weird cultures. I enjoyed watching Cassain's face blush and squirm and crumble when I showed her beaches and bikinis and other normal yet "crude" cultures unfit for Dronami's culture. Aiden sat there all the while, egging them on, having me show them movies and rocket ships and planes and all the things from Earth. Then, we would wake up for breakfast and do it all over again.

It seemed like I blinked, and suddenly, I was touring the guard station that Cassain and the guards had built, having Kira help create furniture and set up arrays to heat and cool it. It was about that time that my alchemic exploits were bearing fruit, and I knew that by summer, I would be in a better place to attempt the elixir.

As for the treskirita—I now knew what to do. There wasn't any guesswork. There weren't any internal disagreements about digging it up or speaking to it or injecting it with a corrupted soul. I knew what to do—because Brindle taught me what to do. Yet I was afraid, and that's all there was to it.

I lay in bed at the end of the spring and lamented it.

There's no sense in trying to tell something to stop eating, I thought about the soul-harvesting mushroom. And if I corrupt it, it'll just spread the corruption to Yakana. That means… I have to lure it out. And to do that…

I grimaced.@@novelbin@@

I need a fourth evolution soul.