Chapter 178 - That Which Is Planted Often Grows (Patreon)

We're back! Another interlude, but we're back home with Raika and co come next chapter. I think we'll start the climb to the end of arc 4, reach that climax soonish, and jump into the next part of the story soon after. Expect the return of Shin Ren and some brand new thangs goin on with our main cast and supporting actors!

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The land waits. The land grows. The land hungers. 

The land has no true language, and certainly no true speech, but it knows that it is new, and in that newness, there is the novelty of existence. It really only had two senses to begin with; the passage of time, and a sense of pressure. When some things came close and drifted away, pressure would come with them, like the world itself was pressing down on it. It was ever so small, and for a long time the pressure came and went as one of the sources of pressure nearly enveloped it, but then, as time passed, that changed. It was put somewhere, and a newer sense of pressure came, that of being packed in tightly and with a lighter sort of weight from all sides, and the presence that had carried it here went away.

It discovered something new, as the sources of pressure drifted away from it and left it where they had planted it. It has instincts. 

On instinct, it began to reach out. It began to grow, inch by inch, and the land began to become more of itself. What was once only a small piece, a single core chunk of something tiny, so much smaller than it felt it should be, began to grow further and further out.

It felt the pressures from before, the things that moved and shifted and carried it, and felt them move above it, and so the land discovered direction. Up and down, and out, in every other form, as it continued to send out roots.

The roots that were part of the land in a physical way, that were part of what could be carried, felt numb and distant, but new roots grew from them. Things that felt right, that didn’t need to dig past that lighter pressure surrounding it and could simply flow out from it freely. Long lines of strength, bit by bit, extend through the dirt out and down and around…

And then it discovered something new. 

All its instincts screamed and cried and pulled for it to go deeper, deeper into the earth. Towards the safeness of the dark down below, where its roots could spread far and wide in all directions and it could begin to build.

And then the new thing happened. The unexpected thing, that changed all its instincts into mere suggestion.

Something delicious dripped down into the earth.

It was only later that the land realized it came from the same pressure that brought it to this place, because in the moment, all it could sense or want or know in its limited cognizance was that the very same thing it would dig its roots down deep for was here, being fed to it directly. Rich droplets bursting with vitality, with life, with delightful flavor and burning color.

It drank deep, absorbing every droplet from the soil. For the first time in its life, it realized how hungry it was, and discovered, as it did with time and pressure, a new element: satiation. It drank, and was filled, and for a while, all was good.

Its instincts guide it once more, and the land begins to dig down deep again… but not as deep as it would have. There is new information, now; the food came from above, not just in the hidden places below. Lifeblood, assuaging its hunger, was available in large quantities upwards.

It still dug down… but slowly, spreading its mass and roots more horizontally than vertically. Its core was moved somewhere safer, that survival mechanism couldn’t go ignored, and a bit deeper, beneath an area of lighter pressure that waved to and fro in a new sort of way, but it waited. Just to be sure.

And then the food came a second time, and the land experienced, alongside satiation, vindication. It was right. The food came from above in this place, despite what feels natural. Emerging up from the soil still most certainly could not be permitted, not with all the risks that would entail. The land, above all else, knows that it is vulnerable, and one does not advertise their vulnerabilities… but it could perhaps strike a balance. It dug down, and it dug wide… but it did not move its core deeper. It kept itself in the part of itself called “water”, and began to spread its roots more carefully to claim the space it now inhabits. It even set up a sort of false core, keeping a dense cluster focused beneath the strange structure and the pressures which, it is now certain, feed and protect it.

The food came again, and again, each time allowing it to grow further and to begin to shape itself, as is only proper. It might not be deep beneath the earth, free to shape its defenses however it might please without fear, but it is still able to create said defenses. Too great a change, though, and it would be noticed, it would be seen…

Slowly, the land grew roots into the things that fed from the same soil it inhabits. At first just bits of grass here and there, but a few days later it had bushes, then trees, and became able to reach its invisible tendrils through the ground to drink of the food inside the little scurrying things on its surface. The pond alone it kept intact, lest someone be able to look to its bottom and see a hint of its core- there, it grew the tendrils into the swimming life forms that were so very fun and unique to look at. The more it grew, the more it learned, and what it learned most of all is that the world is full of complicated, interesting, wonderful things that taste pretty darn good, and it began to use that knowledge.

Copying patches of bamboo forests, it drew a wide wall at the edge of its roots, wide enough to require quite a bit of walking through. In that time, the land could easily become aware of its intruders, and either feed on them or turn them around, lest it alert their fellows of their deaths. For a while, it considered doing what felt right and proper again, and thought to create defenders… but it hesitated. It had eaten most of the animals on its surface, and the few in the pond, while growing quickly under its influence, weren’t adequate tools to build anything with as much pressure as it felt from those already on its land. And they fed it already, meaning they were… already defenders?

So in spite of instincts and half-understood impressions trying to push it towards making new entities that could defend it and which would rely on it entirely… it once again decided to do something different.

It very much did create new entities, of course. That was just too interesting not to do, and before long the pond began to fill with new fusions and experiments on the bodies within it… but when it came to true defenders, it decided on the same evolutionary path that so many creatures have taken throughout history. Mutualistic symbiosis.

The land was brought to a safe place and fed by these creatures, and they often returned from trips outside its borders holding dead bodies and bits of new creatures for the land to learn. They were, and are, much stronger than it is, and yet they offer it things it cannot do without.

So… it reciprocates.

The winding maze of the bamboo perimeter never tries to get them lost. No insects or sickness finds them within its territory, and it doesn’t feed from them directly. Animals that might sneak in during the night are instead driven away, or on occasion left dead and visible, their essence taken but their flesh left un-consumed so it might be shared. When the densest of the four pressures tries to plant new things in the soil, the land reaches up to them and gives back a fraction of the food it is given.

And… things seem to go well. Nothing tries to eat it. No monsters or hunters manage to make it through its borders. It continues to eat freely of what is offered to it, and spends its time gradually changing the life forms in its pond.

To some it adds new limbs, new sensory features, additional functions, and when it gets bored of that, it begins to get truly creative. Some of the creatures live inside other creatures, others become part rock and start to grow food for others off their body, and yet more develop defense mechanisms that allow them to spawn copies of itself that run away when threatened. The land actually runs into a new issue with all these experiments, one greater and more threatening than any other it has faced before.

It’s running out of room.

At first it expanded the pond by a bit, but that brings its own risks. It heightens the possibility of detection, and the amount of space the pond would have to expand is prohibitive at best, reshaping the entire landscape in its borders if it’s to truly fit all its wonderful ideas. 

The land spent days on this problem, its core churning with pulsing rhythms and the occasional squelching sound as it thought long and hard. It had grown larger, grown fatter off the energy being fed to it… but it wasn’t using most of it. It had nearly stopped expanding, and outside its experiments on the pond and the life forms within, it had grown static.

Instinct once again raised its head, and the land realized what it had to do. It needed to challenge itself. 

So it took stock of what it had. Above all else, it had so much food stored inside it. Whatever the food is (it thinks its protectors call it “Qi”) seems to almost never disappear, only changing when the land uses it to grow more roots and when it changes the life forms. It notices that sometimes, the life forms need much more “Qi” than others, usually when it later discovers it made a mistake in fixing some of the pathways and messy bits inside of them. 

That gave it the hint it needed. This Qi stuff, the stuff its roots and self were fed by, could be used to fix problems when something didn’t happen the “normal” way. The normal way would mean destroying its landscape or getting too big and being noticed, so it pushed in a different direction.

In a storm of pulsing Qi and a mind so multifaceted and subtle it can perceive the nuances of each cell of a thousand different organisms at once, the land focused on its pond. It commanded its roots to expand the pond, to make it grow, all while telling other roots to hold firm, keep it in the exact same place and space as before.

At first, it just felt a strain… but therein was the challenge. The need for growth, for something new. It began to feed more and more Qi into both sets of roots, until it felt like the world went sort of squishy, and-

And it worked.

The pond grew.

The pond stayed the same size.

Both were true at once, and all of a sudden, the land found much more room to play with.

Most of its original creations would have perished from the pressure at the new deep end of the pond. Most of those same creations are now almost miniscule in comparison to what it built in its newfound domain.

And for a while, once again, things were good.

The land had things to play around with, and its protectors began to train in its boundaries, letting it sip from the energy that was wasted or cast aside and further increase its diet. It even became a game, trying to perfectly nullify any escaping Qi so that none could sense them and come looking. The land spent its time building new tools and toys, expanding its inner spaces, and admiring its allies and their delicious growth.

And, admittedly, tending to its surface. There was even this one little bug that was weirdly hard to find sometimes, but it only ate other bugs and little pests, so eventually the land just let it be. It lives in the reeds now, a fat, beautiful beetle that lords over all other remaining insects within the land’s perimeter, and alongside it, the remaining plants and animals allowed to grow here grew fat and well indeed.

And then came the day of calamity. The day of [IGNITION].

It does not know what that word means, or what a word is, but the concept arrives in its mind perfectly as its protectors grew to stunning proportions. It only barely contained the light of that first burst of power, but the second time? Impossible flame that altered the land and the very space around it, melting materials which cannot be molten and glowing in beautiful and impossible colors, matched by the strongest of its protectors reawakening the impossible, radiating energies within her and becoming something as impossible as anything the land had seen. Despite its best efforts, so much of those thunderous transformations echoed out into the world, and it felt the attention of powerful, hungry things turn their eyes to it and its protectors.

The land felt it when its protectors met the great and terrible beast at its border, the beast it could not possibly have stopped on its own. It felt when that beast retreated, but did not leave, its new den much too close for comfort.

And it felt when its protector, the one who has kept it safe and fed it and given it purpose and power, spoke to it.

The land has no true language, and certainly no true speech, but for some reason, the words of its protector and nectar were True in a way few things seem to be. 

She had said that someday soon, she would be leaving. That the food would end… and that choices would need to be made.

So the land thinks. 

The land prepares.

The land comes to a decision. 

And the land, which was once a seed and is now a small Dungeon Heart in and of itself, begins to change.