56. Irrigation (Patreon)

Aloe considered herself proficient in many tasks, not a lot, but enough. Mathematics, economics, writing, and... well, at least that was something. But waiting and patience weren’t in her skill set.

As soon as the five-minute mark clocked in, she became restless. Her eyes, hands, and feet wandered around. Standing still wasn’t an approach that worked for her, so she proceeded to water the plants in the greenhouse as she kept an eye on the Flourishing Spring.

“It may not even work.” She muttered as she filled the watering can by diving it into the amphora. “I still don’t know if it can magically spawn water, maybe it was reusing water like a fountain. It’s a spring, not a spring, you know?”

Even if the words sounded stupid aloud, she understood the meaning. Spring as an artificial one with limited water rather than a natural one made by a river or another stream of water.

Aloe gave the Aloe Veritas an extra of water as the poor plant had yet to recover its leaves. She had left the evolved plant naked once more to extract its ink. And she had used a lot of it. So much in fact that she had decided to stop wasting parchment and wrote several of her tests in fallen thatch from the palm trees. Thatch was, surprisingly, a good substitute for parchment.

Not perfect of course, but it allowed her to continue her tests with the Aloe Veritas ink without wasting her limited parchment. Even if said tests had all resulted in failure.

It took Aloe a quarter of an hour to irrigate all the plants on the glass house, but by then, the Flourishing Spring had yet to show any further spurting.

“I guess I don’t need to be here to see if it can make more water.” Aloe sighed. “I’ll just continue with my chores and then check the cup.”

After the greenhouse, her next objective was the crops and the medicinal ‘garden’. After more than two weeks, and more than one week with infusion, all the plants had considerable sprouts basking in the sunlight. They would not be ready for harvest before she marched for Sadina, but they wouldn’t take long after that.

The medicinal herbs grew faster than the potatoes and the beans as they were smaller – or so Aloe assumed. Cultivation was a new subject to her, let alone Evolution and Infusion. She couldn’t know exactly how the vital arts were affecting the plants. Just that they were.

“Grow big and strong~” Aloe sang to the crops. “So later may I eat you~”

One of the biggest priorities on her list, besides getting money and understanding how the Flourishing Spring worked, was to learn how to uninfuse plants. Not only because that would allow her to have tastier meals (though she wouldn’t deny it was a powerful motivator), but because after plants ended up growing she could substitute the default infusing for ‘bountiful harvest’ and then, if they were food, for ‘better taste’.

“What a shame that all tests have failed.” Aloe sighed and stood up from her half-crouching position.

Sensing foreign vitality wasn’t as easy as sensing her own. She couldn’t just change the flow of the vitality of plants, and even if she could, it wasn’t as simple as her internal infusion.

By the time she had even watered the rest of the plants, namely the pistachios and bananas, Aloe was sweating. No matter how suitably clothed she was, fabrics protected every corner of her skin, and slowly she took the work; the high temperatures and the relentless sun would make her drenched.

The worst part was that she had only been watering, so she wasn’t tired at all. In fact, all her exhaustion came from her sweaty clothes.

“Why heavens? Why do we even sweat?” Aloe prayed and cursed simultaneously as she sat down under a palm tree and removed her straw hat. “Ugh...” She groaned as her hand became moist after she passed it through her hair.

Wordlessly, Aloe took a knife out of her satchel and readied to stab a coconut she had just grabbed.

“Hmm~” But she stopped herself. “Opening them is really hard, what if I try a bit of ‘strength’?”

Even if she used such words, she couldn’t just ‘slightly tap’ on her internal infusion. They were binary, all or nothing. Aloe lay her head and back on the palm tree’s trunk as she drifted into a meditative state. Her breathing slowed down and she let herself be caressed by the dry breeze of the desert. The only situation when being sweaty was comfortable.

She pushed the flow of her vitality, the normal slow yet powerful stream became more violent, more forceful. In a single word, stronger.

Aloe exhaled powerfully out of her mouth, more resembling a sigh than anything, and opened her eyes. A few minutes had passed but she didn’t mind much this time, it was a good rest.

Then she stabbed the life out of the coconut.

The sheer strength of her grip was enough to tell that the stab would go through the coconut so Aloe had to actually control herself to not stab herself. Which would be, in fact, very bad.

As her current internal infusion was ‘strength’ that meant that all her other physical qualities were downgraded, which included toughness. So because she was stronger but also frailer, she feared what would happen if she were to injure herself.

And no amount of science would convince her to try it this time.

It only took her a few more minutes to empty the coconut out of its water, and after calling an end to her rest, she found it a good time to empty her bladder out of its water.

“Well... the Flourishing Spring water doesn’t seem to have affected me in any shape or form.” Aloe stretched her arms as she made her way out of the latrine. “And talking about the plant, let’s see if it has done something.”

Truth was, that after cleaning all the dust out of the glass panels, the greenhouse had become quite the feast for the eyes. The sun shone preciously inside, instead of viciously. And the colors were just perfect, not only green and brown but also white and blue.

Aloe stopped for a second before she remembered how to breathe.

“Alright, let’s see.” She stepped into the parterre, her sandals displacing the dirt, and knelt down. A reflection met her.

A shine.

She didn’t even need to check; she already knew the results.

“Oh... magnificent~” Aloe put a hand before her mouth for she was smiling in such a manner a lady shouldn’t. The corners of her mouth elevated to impossible heights, to the point that it was making her dizzy from the pain. “This is good. Very good.”

Aloe applied force to relax her ceaseless smile, only to realize that it was the result of her ‘strength’ infusion. It would appear that it affected all muscles, those of her face included.

It took her a few breaths before calming down, but the sheer ideas were exciting her anew. Her excitement was so powerful that it was hurting her.

She guided her hand down onto the collection cup of the Flourishing Spring. The water flooding her hand was cold and crystalline, allowing her to see a perfect reflection of her visage, only exciting her more with the twisted madness she was putting up. The evolved plant itself didn’t feel dehydrated either, a good sign.

So this is what truly means to be able to ‘survive with mana alone’. Aloe pondered as she found herself unable to talk, her mouth muscles still incredibly contracted in a vorpal smile.

It took far more than a few breaths for Aloe to relax into a meditative state so she could remove her ‘strength’ infusion. As funny as her smile was, it was making her face numb fast, besides also being unheavenly painful.

“One plant won’t be enough.” That was the first thing Aloe said after recovering control of her mouth and also the last one as she jumped out of her spot and rushed into her home.

She took out the pot with black seeds and the other medicinal plant that she couldn’t even bother to remember. She poured out the seeds onto the desktop and counted the black spots in the mess she made.

Nine. She thought before separating eight of them and leaving the last one and the other plant seeds into the jar again.

Aloe left a single black seed separated just in case she needed an uninfused one at some point. What mattered was the future of these eight ones: Evolution. Adding them up together she could have nine Flourishing Springs, which excited her even more, the corners of her mouth elevating again, but not to such bonerending levels.

Air puffed out of her mouth with a hint of expectation but mostly fear. A single black seed evolution was enough to drain her whole vitality deposit and knock her out. And that was without taking into account the cost of each infusion, which was already greater than that of trees.

Such enterprise would not only be straining to her body but also her time. She would need to dedicate days purely to infusing and evolving Flourishing Springs, and that was with her already factoring in the consumption of Cure Grass pills. One for each evolution so I don’t pass out. More if I want to accelerate the process. She calculated.

And why would she go to such lengths to torture herself, to the point of ingesting grass multiple times?

Two simple words:

“Automatic irrigation.” Aloe grinned monstrously.