Better Gardening 3 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

Better Gardening

Chapter 3

-VB-

Narco was nice.

For a giant prehistoric alligator.

Rule One of animal care, I heard from Mana, was to respect the animal. It may be my Guardian. It may be a genetically altered specimen that made it much more docile than his kin. It may be “cuddly” by lizard standards.

But it was still an alligator.

And I couldn’t help myself.

“Wheee~~~!!!” I manly giggled as as Narco raced down the hallways with me riding on his back. Sure, it was a bit of a bumpy ride, but I was riding something that was practically a dinosaur!

After what seemed like too fucking short, Narco skidded to a stop and threw me off of his back. I tumbled in the air, briefly seeing myself in the mirror and then briefly seeing Narco looking up at me with a lizard version of “oh, right, that happens when I suddenly stop” realization, and then struck the floor on my back, then my face, rolling rapidly sideways, and then landed on my ass.

I swayed where I had assplanted and then fell back, my back and head hitting the floor with a thu-thunk.

Oddly enough, it didn’t hurt.

I manly giggled.

“You giggle too much, administrator,” Mana said as she showed up in a flying screen.

I didn’t know why but I felt oddly disappointed by her mode of transportation.

“Well, I had fun! People laugh when they have fun, right?”

“Yes, administrator. Boys and girls laugh and giggle, men and women chuckle and laugh.”

“Well, I laughed.”

“No, sir. You were giggling like a little girl.”

Why did that comparison irk me?

“No, I didn’t. I … manly giggled.”

“Uh huh, sure, sir. Well, you’ve run the poor Guardian for the past four hours. I think you should stop. He is only flesh and blood, after all.”

I blinked. “Can he not run more?”

“Sir, running for four hours as a giant alligator is already a miraculous feat in and of itself thanks to the biotech that was used to breed him. His normal cousins would have died before the second hour from exhaustion. Literally.”

“Oh,” I muttered as I looked over my shoulder. Yeah, Narco was panting hard. “Sorry! I didn’t know you couldn’t run for long!”

Narco grunted at me and plopped down.

“Now, let’s get back to scheduling how you want to start seeding the planet below with life.”

-VB-

“As I have explained before, you should be able to understand most animals. Not in the exact word-for-word and sound-to-concept how we understand each other but more in feelings and emotions. Those who you can’t understand immediately will simply take a bit more time for you to understand. You should also be able to understand the needs of the animals, which means you can also train them,” Mana explained. “However, not all worlds you have access to are the same. Some are primitive like the primitive world that Narco’s genes came from with no other adaptive traits. Some worlds do have odd changes.

“Our example here is the world EECX-924, discovered by the Exoverse Exploration Company. This world is filled with creatures - and some humans - who can use energies that are not standard to most universes. Humans who use these energies are said to have “aura” and the animals that use these energies are said to use “type energy.” This world would be both the hardest and easiest world for you first visit as the special animals here, called Pokemon by the locals and there are also regular animals, come in far too big of a range in size, shape, temperament, and abilities. Even with a point of reference, a lot of what you will encounter will be counterintuitive.

“A good example of this will be the ‘zubat’ lineage,” Mana said as she pulled up a picture of -.

“A bat.”

“Yes. Zubats are similar to many species that belong to the Chiroptera family of mammals. Bats are, in general, not aggressive. They may come into contact with people because a house that a human likes to live in is very similar to caves that bats also like to live in and thus bats might move into unused spaces like attics, but overall, bats will avoid humans where they can. This is not the case with zubat lineage. If they see humans, then they will harass, attack, bite, screech, and even kill humans.”

“So… what I might have hardcoded in me to understand because of all of the techs and the prep they gave me…”

“May run counter to what the world of Pokemon demands, yes. Counterintuitive.”

I hummed as I looked over all of the data she had on this “Pokemon” world. It was fascinating but … “Why is there so little information?” I asked her curiously.

“All expeditions that entered the pokemon world and its alternates faced serious challenges. Namely, our method of transportation tended to attract pokemons that the locals call ‘ultra beasts,’ or pokemons that also had access to interdimensional space. The end results were … damaging.”

“These pokemon can ward off expedition teams?” I asked with alarm.

“They didn’t.”

“Oh.”

“They annihilated the expedition teams.”

“Oh.”

“The first team of nine members came back with only two. The second team of nineteen came back with four. The third and final team was not a strictly civilian expedition team but an armed and armored military branch with permission to shoot to kill. That team never reported back.”

“Yikes…”

“On the other hand, there are also worlds where we have encountered little to no resistance to exploration while also having special differences of their own. If you collect enough samples from there, then we might be able to augment your body, which then can allow you to explore more dangerous worlds for their species.”

I hummed as Mana brought up information on these safer worlds, though it was a stretch to call them safe considering that while most of the animals on such worlds were not an issue and would be safe to transplant, the locals were the most dangerous elements.

“How about we start with something more normal and average and see how well they do on the world below first?”

“If that is your wish as the administrator, then it will be so. For that, we have a dozen recommended options. The first is …”

-VB-

The planning took a total of thirty hours across nine separate meetings. Even if I was the top culmination of biological and technological advancement, the human mind was still a fragile thing that couldn’t go twelve hours without rest. And that was for a trained mind.

For someone more normal like me, three hours was the most I could focus myself, and began to fray after ten hours.

And so, we decided on my first world to explore and transplant fauna and flora from.

The Pleistocene Era Earth.