26. Evolution (Patreon)

Aloe’s body was in a rough state. Not even five minutes in and her back was already on fire. The only positive point she could take was that the ground was no longer burning her glutes as all the temperature had transferred to her body. The sand was still coarse to the touch, though. And her skin didn’t like that.

She truly tried to sense something in the seed, but it felt impossible. The Cure Grass seed was encased between her palms and no matter how much she directed her thoughts to the oval black speck, nothing happened.

Are you going to give up after only five minutes?

The only way she found to continue forward was to deprecate herself. If her time as a banker’s apprentice had told her something it was that insults did work. They built hate - a lot of it actually - but they did push people forward.

Sweat trickled down her palms, yet her back was infinitely dry.

Aloe continued pushing herself forward.

Her full attention was on the Cure Grass seed, she tried to close her senses, the less she thought about her discomfort, the less heat she would feel. Or so she told herself.

At some point, Aloe had closed her eyes because her sight was becoming dizzy. Forget about dehydration, her main concern was now insolation.

Stop thinking.

She told herself, yet her thoughts wandered around once more. It was hard keeping oneself focused as your mind was melting.

Why are you even doing this?

The next voice that whispered did not continue pushing her forward, but the opposite. It beckoned her to stop, albeit with an implicit speech. The uptight tone sounded just right for a banker.

Yes, that’s right. Why am I even doing this?

Her weak mind sought the light, for the suffering to end. It was a tone of weakness. But then she remembered the words of her father.

Never show weakness.

The banker had used the words for very different situations to which Aloe was applying them to. He talked about contracts and promotion opportunities, not life-or-death situations. Yet those words had become a pillar to Aloe’s school of thought.

Weakness was inferiority. And a person should only strife to greater heights. And strife implied challenge. And challenge implied difficulties.

But why are you doing this?

This voice wasn’t damming like the others, but veritably curious. A child-like innocence and interest that was looking for answers to the questions they didn’t have answers to.

I...

Aloe found herself at a loss.

Why was she doing this? Why was she exposing and torturing herself? Was it money? Evolution had infinite opportunities to make her rich.

No...

Her mind was guided by money, yes, but now she was thinking with her heart. Was it power then?

No.

A resolute answer. Aloe had never sought power, however tantalizing it was. Money granted power, but her true obsession with money lay in the comfort it allowed her, not the influence that it gave.

Then what?

Her mind was a mess, but she managed to come to a solution. It wasn’t respectable, honorable, or any of the epithets one may use to justify a goal.

No. It was a primordial reason. Not elaborate by the mind, and not the heart. At least of an adult, that was.

Magic.

The words and images shook her. Aloe had been captivated by the arcane indescribable abilities of the Aloe Veritas and bewitched by the beauty of the Na’mul Ter’nar. What guided her forward was the heart of a child. The dreams of a child that could never let go of the fantasies of their overreaching mind.

Magic at my fingertips.

Aloe had forgotten about her precarious state, her ramblings had locked her in her mind, but now she recovered her sense of touch. She traced her tongue along her teeth and palate. The exposed bones were incredibly cold to the touch whilst the flesh on her mouth was awfully dry.

Saliva didn’t come to hydrate her mouth.

Before she could even think about her lack of hydration, a jolt of lightning traversed her arms. Her body was completely numb from the dehydration, the sun, the heat, and her awkward posture; yet she felt a palpitation.

It was incredibly dim, she almost feared that she had lost the sensation away, but in the next heartbeat of her slow pulse, it was still there. A tingle. Not powerful. Just a spec of energy.

But with her closed eyes and her desensitized skin, Aloe could feel it.

And she knew what it was.

Her mouth didn’t utter a single word, but she didn’t stand still in amazement. Aloe jumped out of her spot, sand violently splashing everywhere, and booked it to the house.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She cursed as the hot sand calcinated her feet. “Fuck all of this!”

Aloe ran as if her life depended on it, but she hadn’t taken into account her famished and dehydrated state. Her sight spun around and she fell from the dune she had been sprinting on.

She closed her mouth and eyes as she tumbled down, the sand was like a thousand hot needles, so coarse that it felt as if her skin was being torn up. Maybe she had not been lacerated by the time she hit the foot of the dune, but it certainly had felt like it.

“Augh...” Aloe groaned as she slowly stood up. She was incredibly tired. Her heart skipped a bit until thinking about the seed she had been carrying in her palms and... “It’s still there... I still feel it!” She didn’t care about the seed itself, but the energy that it was emitting.

Aloe hopped in joy, the sand embedded in her skin flowed down from the sudden movement, and she almost stumbled back to the ground, but at the last moment, she managed to regain her footing.

The exhaustion, the hunger, the thirst, the heat, the pain, the nakedness... all was forgotten. Only expectation lingered on her mind.

She rushed to her house, having one or two more close calls as she almost fell again. She didn’t care. Aloe’s visage was plated with a child-like glee.

Nothing could remove her smile.

She swung the door wide open with tackle and rushed to the waterskin she had readied this morning. In three seconds, she emptied the leather sack.

“Live again!” Aloe panted with enthusiasm, though that quickly diminished as she saw all the sand she had brought into the house. “Fuck!” Even after recovering, her curses still lacked any flourish.

As her stomach grumbled, Aloe checked the cauldron. The water was bubbling, and it had thankfully not boiled away. She unceremoniously dropped beans and chunks of jerky into the cauldron and called it a day. She didn’t care about meals now, no. She rushed to the desk, sitting in the chair with her exposed skin and sand-laden body, her focus was single-mindedly on the cultivation technique.

“If you have managed to sense vitality coming from the seed, congratulations! Otherwise, I recommend....” Aloe quickly skimmed over the following lines, that didn’t interest her. “...but now it’s time to begin with vital arts. Let’s try evolving a grass seed as Cure Grass is the evolved plant that I have seen that requires less vitality to create.”

Aloe jumped from her seat, covering the house with even more sand. She didn’t even need a minute to find the jar with grass seeds in the storage closet and bring it to the desk.

The expectation was palpable in the air and her heartbeat. Closer to that of a critter than a human.

“Next step after you sensed foreign vitality, is to feel your own.”

This was something Aloe had expected. Karaim had already dropped in an off-hand comment that to use Evolution one had to infuse their own vitality.

“Try to replicate that same feeling, but instead of outwards, try inwards.” The old man stated. “If you work better with a mental image, think about the rays of sun penetrating your body. That energy growing inside of you, like a plant.”

After her meditation session on the sands, she could easily visualize that image. The sun violently raped her body like war machines did with city walls or a flail violently striking a criminal.

The heat and pain returned to her.

For a brief instant, she hyperventilated. It had been truly painful, even if she had hidden it from herself. But the energy... the energy she understood.

It was a vague feeling, like a mixture of a jolt of lightning and a filling gulp of water. But it wasn’t that simple to describe, she could add the refreshing taste of mint, but the relaxing smell of jasmine.

That was how the energy felt.

The vitality.

It wasn’t a straightforward concept, but a tangible one, nonetheless.

She couldn’t point it out in her body, but it was there, somewhere. Her eyes peered back to the diary.

“Canalizing vitality is a bit harder, but not that complicated to do. More like taxing. Grab a grass seed, you don’t need any thoughts, actually having your head empty will do better. Your intent is what matters. Just press really hard on the seed with all your might and act as if you were pushing your blood to the seed. You’ll know when you have succeeded.”

Aloe pressed hard on her hand without hesitating, blood vessels instantly showing their relief from the skin.

She pushed and pushed.

Her right arm trembled by the sheer amount of pressure she was applying. She gritted her teeth and continued forward.

It was impossibly tiring, her breathing became ragged as she pushed. How was putting strength in a fist this draining?

And suddenly, her strength ceased.

As if the metaphorical strings controlling her body snapped, her arm dropped down.

Aloe panted heavily as she looked at the seed dangerously hanging in her fingers. Her head fell to the desk accompanied by a scary thud, and with great difficulty, she stretched her other arm to the Aloe Veritas leaf jar and grabbed a sample. As she rubbed the magical plant against the seed, she couldn’t help herself but smile.

“Evolution...” She whispered in an exhausted daze, barely hanging to her consciously.