36. Monster (Patreon)

It didn’t take Aloe much time to set up the leaf pipe after she carved it. Unlike the error-prone system she had on the oasis to irrigate somewhat expansive crop fields, for the greenhouse she just needed to relay a bit of water to a solitary seed.

“Okay, my vitality has been long topped up. I guess it’s time to go back to check all those seeds for an evolution.” Aloe whipped the sweat out of her forehead as she talked. Most of that sweat was just from climbing a while ago rather than her current activities.

It spoke at great length about her that she had only managed to evolve and infuse a single seed on her third day back. She was far from her optimal state – whether that was physical or mental – but Aloe didn’t care for that. She just wanted results, and results she hadn’t gotten.

The lure of magic and the impossible called for her. And she yearned for it.

She sat down on her chair, almost collapsing on the wooden seat as her bottom rested on it.

There were many seeds at display, thankfully her antics and spasms hadn’t shuffled them back together. It would have been torture to have to classify them again. Boring torture rather than traditional torture, but torture, nonetheless.

Aloe grabbed a random pair of black spherical-ish seeds as she no longer recognized any of the remaining ones and went down to business. She left one on the desktop and the other one she clasped in her hands.

Before pushing vitality into the seed, Aloe checked her insides. The flow of her vitality looked far better than when she arrived at the oasis, but the damage dealt by the taxation to evolve the Blossomflame was obvious. If she hadn’t done such a foolish act, she would have been recovered by now.

But she didn’t repent her decision, far from it.

In and out, the girl took a deep breath and let it out, the air flowing like the vitality in her body. Though unlike the vital energy traveling through her vessels, the air was hot instead of chill. Aloe focused on that soothing chill.

An ice cube on a desert trek.

A refreshing bath after being covered in dried mud.

That was what her vitality was, a calm breeze in the harshest of moments.

However, that breeze had been somewhat perturbed by Aloe’s abuse of drugs.

“Evolution test number two, starting...” she prolonged the last syllable to add some dramatism, “now!”

Aloe pushed her vitality into the seed with one single unified intent: to evolve it.

What a shame a wall instantly blocked her off.

The cultivator sighed. “I guess it was to be expected. I just got lucky the first time. I hope I at least get one more evolution out of this seed batch though.”

The unknown black seed hadn’t refused her vitality, for she would have been able to infuse it with ease, but the intent that accompanied the vitality. Aloe didn’t know why intent was so important and prevalent in the vital arts – both Evolution and Infusion used it continuously – but she knew the intent was mandatory to perform the respective magics.

Whilst she would not actively go around chasing answers, Aloe wouldn’t deny she wanted to know them.

“Time to continue, I haven’t even lost a percentage of vitality with that, if I even lost something.” Aloe left the black seeds where she had picked them up and grabbed another pair of black ones, though these were more elongated. “Oh, these ones have hairs!”

Aloe excitedly caressed the hair-like protrusions that the seeds had in one extreme. Even though she had organized them beforehand, she had been so idle-minded that she kind of forgot about what the seeds even looked like.

“Are these called hairs? Scholars always like to give weird and complex names to everything. Maybe its filaments, or something like that.” Aloe stopped brushing the seeds and left one on the table. “Focus, Aloe.” She took a deep breath. “Evolution test number three, starting now.”

She kept her calmness unlike the previous test as she wanted to go through the seeds as fast as possible because she had a thousand chores to do today, and the sun was also threatening her to reach its apex.

That calmness instantly vanished from her visage, composure thrown out of the window, as the seed started drinking her vitality.

Yes! Aloe mentally fist-bumped whilst keeping her concentration strong. The last thing she wanted now was to lose the seed. Wait, does it even happen something to the seed if I fail an evolution? It hasn’t happened before so I kinda just assumed it was bad, but I actually don’t know if the process cancels or just gets halted.

As much as curiosity itched her to know the answer, Aloe knew better than to lose her concentration on purpose, no matter how cheap the seed in her hands was.

The drain on her hands was stronger than that of infusions, but far weaker than that of the Blossomflame. Instantly, Aloe knew he was dealing with a way cheaper evolution cost.

It was easy to recover her composure after that, but there was a giddiness in every evolution that she couldn’t just concentrate through.

Before she even noticed, the evolution process ended. Her vitality reserves had been drained but after the arduous and frenetic drain of the Blossomflame, it even felt light on her body although half her deposit – or her entire pre-vital arts capacity – though it should have shaken more than it did.

Aloe didn’t know how to feel about that. Nevertheless, she left the evolved seed on the desk – no magical warmth this time – and reached for an Aloe Veritas leaf. With the same care she dedicated to every seed appraisal, she dripped the new seed in ink.

The arcane sigils on the surface of the parchment-like leaf shifted into legible scripture and they revealed the following:

Species: Centaurea Secare

Sobriquet: Thousand Cuts

Description: An evolved member of the Centaurea Diffusa species, a species known for its ability to pursue any moving living creatures to lacerate it.

Alignment: Life, Death

“That’s... a bit worrying?” To say that there were several eye-opening problems with the text was an understatement. “What do you mean with lacerate moving creatures?” Aloe looked down at the seed in her hands. It had changed a bit but not much. “Are you just gonna...?”

She couldn’t bring herself to finish that thought. The plant seemed too...

“Dangerous,” Aloe mumbled. “I cannot plant this. This is just a menace to everyone and everything. What if the seed grows bigger than a tree and starts walking around with the only purpose of terrorizing people?”

Aloe couldn’t know if that was the case, but there was no reason to even check it, not even curiosity. The Blossomflame still presented some useful details that made her consider planting it like its size or ‘healing allies’ part.

The Thousand Cuts, on the other hand, appeared to be purely negative in its actions.

“Yeah, and the death alignment doesn’t inspire much... of anything, really.” Aloe carefully set the seed on the desk, treating it with the respect that inspired. “I’ll keep a note of this new alignment... but I hope no more of them appear in the future. Death sounds... not good. Not good at all.”

Aloe rested her back on the chair only to realize how badly her hands were trembling. What the plant had truly inspired was fear.

Fear of possibilities.

Other plants had positive possibilities like the ter’nar with the tea or the Flourishing Spring with its water, but this one... if Aloe used its possibilities, the outcome couldn’t be good. If Karaim’s theory that monsters were just evolved animals was true, then what Aloe had made here was a new type of monster.

And no matter how she was interested in Evolution and new magical plants, she wasn’t that crazy to let this seed grow. Or that was what she wanted to believe.

She walked outside, struggling for fresh air. Of course, the desert didn’t provide her that air, but it was air, nonetheless. And that was all she needed.

Aloe moved toward the oasis and automatically started doing some chores like setting up the boiling kit. She didn’t want to think.

The possibilities were obvious to her. If the Thousand Cuts worked as she thought, nay a fraction of that, then the potential would be colossal.

The potential of warfare.

The potential of terror.

The potential of death.

This plant seemed like a line she didn’t want to cross. If it grew and truly functioned like the Aloe Veritas described, everything would change. Mostly her, but also the world. Nobles and imperials had a lot of martial power, but what about a legion of weaponized plants?

The boundary between what could be classified as a magical botanist or apothecary into something else.

Something like the assassins.

____

Author note: I doubt the Thousand Cuts will appear in the story for the aforementioned reasons, but you can see how a grown specimen looks like in the Bulk Art #1.