44. Progress (Patreon)

Progress had been severely limited. Aloe had managed to infuse something, but she wasn’t sure if she had managed to infuse a different type of infusion besides the default accelerated growth.

Attempts at removing the vitality from the seeds or rewriting the established vitality also proved fruitless endeavors. She took her grandfather’s words to heart and decided to let the matter rest for a few days as she would eventually get her results. Grass already was a fast-growing plant so she expected the Cure Grass to show its growth after only a few days if the infusion had worked correctly or not.

Days hastily passed by, mostly because Aloe used one to take a fully deserved rest. Mostly sleeping, bathing in the oasis, and eating dates. A life that, whilst simple, she couldn’t deny it had its appeal. Free of worry and duty.

But she did have a duty.

Every single day she had to water every crop she had planted beside the existing flora of the greenhouse. Watering didn’t take much time, but cooking, shoveling waste, washing clothes and dishes did once she added them up together.

But there was some fun.

“Faster, faster!” Aloe shouted like a little girl as the dweller cruised through the sands.

“Hrooooo!” Fikali grunted excitedly.

Sometimes a girl needed a respite, and that respite was mounting a monster several times heavier than her at breakneck speeds.

Peak of femininity.

Unlike her first attempt at dweller riding, Aloe was now equipped with a saddle, and that made things infinitely easier. Besides also having appropriate clothing like boots and tight pants. She decided on an open shirt though.

“Let’s go there!” Aloe shifted her body down so Fikali could see her finger pointing at a tall dune.

“Wrooo!” Fikali added in euphoric agreement.

No matter the heat and dryness of the desert, Aloe was refreshed by the constant air meeting her exposed chest. Her petite constitution made it so it was nonsensical to wear clothing on her breasts. Even then, pieces like bras were more of a nobility thing that noblewomen used to highlight their assets. Quite the opposite of modesty.

It didn’t take Fikali more than a few seconds to reach the apex of the dune. Despite her advanced age, she was incredibly fast. In fact, she had only gotten faster with every outing they had.

“Damn, we are high up,” Aloe commented as she dismounted the dweller and stretched her arms. “A bit more and I think we could see Sadina. I can’t even see the oasis from here. We have gone far and beyond today, haven’t we?”

“Huo?” Fikali tilted her head in confusion.

Aloe booped the playful dweller’s snoot. “Yeah, I don’t expect you to understand it. You already do a good job by even comprehending some words.”

“Wroo!” The dweller vigorously bellyflopped, splashing sand everywhere, as she identified that she had been praised.

“Yes, yes. Relax.” Aloe patted the top of Fikali’s her, prompting her to nuzzle her head against Aloe’s legs. “There, there.”

She is honestly like an overgrown cat. Fikali let out a grunt of pleasure, not that dissimilar to purring, only reinforcing Aloe’s beliefs.

They stayed up there in the top of the dune, doing nothing else but watching the endless desert, the horizon was an ever-shifting blurry line by the blinding shine of the sun. It didn’t take much longer for Aloe to not be able to tolerate the heat. She didn’t bring her straw hat because she honestly couldn’t. Fikali rode too fast for her hat to stay put on her head. And she was lightly clothed, meaning she didn’t have the defenses against the elements of her desert garb.

Much to Fikali’s dismay, they rode back to the oasis. After arriving, Aloe left the dweller to roam free around as she didn’t seem to be satisfied yet. Tying her down would only be counterproductive.

“Huh?” Aloe saw something in the corners of her eyes. “Is that...?”

She hadn’t spent much time on the oasis this morning, or at least, the time she did so was absentmindedly. Mainly gather dates and coconuts and washing them up to have them for breakfast for the coming days. It was still early; noon was closing yet far away.

It was easy to detect the dissonance as all the surrounding grass had been cleared. It was vaguely visible, but in the clear patch of brown dirt, a hint of green sprouted.

“The potatoes are germinating!” Aloe hoped in enthusiasm as she rushed for the crops. The leaves coming out of the ground were diminutive, but they were, and that was all that mattered. “I cannot believe I’m excited to see plants grow.”

A few weeks back, Aloe would have laughed in the face of anyone who told her that she would be cultivating plants, especially enjoying it.

“Does this mean that the Cure Grass has grown?” She rushed to the windowsill to check as she hadn’t yet watered the plants today.

Only three days had gone by since she planted them, but the grass grew fast by default. And those only were evolved plants – which Karaim had mentioned already grew faster than normal ones – but also infused ones.

There were two jars filled with dirt on the windowsill. One had the first evolution Aloe had done with the default infusion, the other was her second evolution with – hopefully – the ‘bountiful harvest’ infusion type.

Only one pot had germinated.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Aloe celebrated with all her might, prompting confused grunts from Fikali. She ignored those. “Finally some progress!”

But her pessimistic and realist banker mindset nudged her to calm down. The child-like glee died down for a more noble composure.

“Do not celebrate yet, Aloe.” She told herself. “There may be differences in the substrate that may have induced one to grow before the other. Besides, is the germinated one even with the default infusion type?”

She had left a note inside her house to distinguish which was which, as she knew she wouldn’t remember. Fortunately, her progress didn’t vanish and the Cure Grass that had germinated first was indeed the one with ‘accelerated growth’ typing.

“That’s good.” Aloe sighed in relief. “But the only way to know if I succeeded will only be when the other pot grows. I don’t know how a ‘bountiful harvest’ works. Will the hole jar be overflowed with weeds? If the palm trees are to be trusted, that’s how it should work. But it isn’t like there aren’t any trees without this typing on the oasis.”

Even if she tried to calm herself with negativity, Aloe couldn’t hold the smile on her face. The vital arts were incredibly simple, she would as far as to call them rustic, but they were indeed magical.

And no inner child could resist the call of magic.

Now that she was on the plants, Aloe took the opportunity to water them. There were a lot of them after all. On the first day, she planted crops; namely bananas, potatoes, beans, and pistachios. But then she added the medicinal plants: sage, chamomile, black seeds, and thyme. And then she had to water the ones in the oasis, even if most were cacti.

After watering the medicinal plants, none had yet to germinate.

“I guess they need a few more days to sprout, those were the last ones I planted. Grass notwithstanding.” But it was true that she didn’t expect them to take much longer. Those plants were herbs, not crops, so they should grow faster.

Much to Fikali’s possible dismay, the pistachios had yet to show signs of life.

“Hmm... I have free time now...” Aloe said as she rested on the shade of a palm tree after finishing with the greenhouse. “It feels odd...”

She had been working nonstop for many days, even on her ‘free days’. She couldn’t just leave the watering or hygiene for later.

“I could try to evolve plants...” She mussitated. “But they should be the seeds I brought myself, and I already have planted them.”

Whilst she felt a bit lazy now, Aloe veritably doubted the efficacy of Evolution in such a scenario. Karaim had explicitly stated that Evolution only worked on seeds and not grown plants. Maybe those she had planted would no longer be effective and unearthing them would just undo the seeds’ progress.

And it had to be those seeds. Karaim hadn’t talked about this in the cultivation technique, but rather implicitly, he said that he had tried all the seeds in his storage. And he had a lot of them.

“Besides those, I could use banana seeds or pistachios, but I run into the same problem.”

Aloe absolutely wouldn’t want to undo the progress of the banana seeds, those would already take a long time to grow.

“There’s also potatoes and beans. Did Karaim have beans?” Aloe vaguely recalled the myriad of pots and jars in the closet storage. “He did have some legumes, but I don’t know if some were beans... I guess I could try those first, I have many potatoes and beans still in their sacks.”

With a groan, Aloe jumped out of her resting position and stretched her arms.

“I doubt it will work; all evolved plants so far haven’t been crops so far. But it’s a rather small sampling pool to give definitive answers to... well, anything. I don’t lose anything for trying, I guess. Just a potato and a single bean.” Aloe snickered. “Bean. What a funny word.”