42. Infusions (Patreon)

“Oh.” The muted sound coming out of Aloe’s mouth was but the pure expression of surprise. No words were needed except... “I knew it.” Her lips curved into a devilish smile, there was no feeling more intoxicating than being right.

However it may be, Aloe read the leaf in front of her fearing it may have been an illusion induced by heat.

Species: Phoenix Dactylifera

Sobriquet: Date Palm

Description: Member of the Arecaceae family, a species known for its sweet fruits and size once fully grown.

Infusion: Drought Resistance

“No, it’s quite real.” Her dark fingers caressed the weak parchment color of the leaf, the ink was cold to the touch. “So it can tell infusions and their names, huh.”

Whilst it was good to have more cards at hand, the truth was that it didn’t change things much for her. She already knew the infusions of all the plants in the oasis and greenhouse, both Karaim’s and hers, the only instance where using an Aloe Veritas leaf to check for infusions was if she was trying new ones. Which, coincidentally, was what she was doing right now.

“How did the veritas decide on the ‘drought resistance’ name, though?” Aloe scratched her right cheek in pondering. “I’ve thought about making it so it wouldn’t need water, not that it could survive droughts. I guess it’s kind of the same thing? This is a bit weird. Hmm...”

She reread the leaf, trying to look for synonyms or double meanings, but unless she had forgotten how to read ydazi, the Aloe Veritas only specified resistance to droughts and not needing less water to survive, even if in practice it meant the same.

“About names... what happens with something I have already named?” Aloe left the leaf and seed on the desk. “I don’t have a precursor for ‘drought resistance’, this is the first time I’ve made the infusion, but what about ‘accelerated growth’ or ‘plentiful harvest’? Are they going to appear like that, or will the Aloe Veritas give them a new name? If that’s the case, where does it get the knowledge from?”

Questions, questions, and more questions. Even though Aloe reiterated constantly she was no scholar, she couldn’t help herself from questioning the world when every new corner was uncharted territory. She wasn’t an intellectual, but only a fool would not ask questions given the situation.

“Well, I guess I have an idea about the knowledge though...”

Aloe shifted through the notes she had left littered on the desk, one of them containing the type of alignments she had discovered so far. Most were self-descriptive like Life, Death, Light, or even Arcane. The plants that had such alignment were magical, even more so than normal. But other alignments had more obfuscated names like Chaos and, most importantly, Information.

She had absolutely no idea what the Aloe Veritas meant with that. And it wasn’t like the plant couldn’t answer those questions. It also didn’t help that in ydazi the word ‘information’ had many meanings, even if she could suppose it meant the definition of ‘knowledge’.

“Whatever Information is, it’s the thing that gives the veritas the knowledge to write on the leaves. Somehow.”

It was magic she was dealing with, and it still sounded downright moronic as it came out of her mouth.

“But beyond seeing the name of named infusion...” Aloe reached for a new leaf, “...I’m more interested if it can tell the infusion of a non-plant.”

Though before that, she needed to shift into an internal infusion first. She went with ‘toughness’ as it was the one she was most used to; and the more mastery she had over internal infusion, the easier it was to shift in and out of them.

In the beginning, when she discovered internal infusions after going through Karaim’s notes, it had taken her five minutes to activate ‘toughness’. In a few weeks, she had managed to reduce that long and agonizing meditation process to a single minute.

Still long and not practical for fight-or-flight decisions, but she knew for a fact that time would only go lower.

And for the first time since she used the Aloe Veritas since she opened the cultivation technique more than a month ago, Aloe dyed herself with the ink. The dark blue ink easily hid in her dark skin, but the spots of ink in the leaf shifted into words regardless.

The Aloe Veritas wrote Aloe’s information on its leaf. And Aloe held a groan from the possible jokes that may arise from the sentence.

Name: Aloe Ayad

Species: Human

Description: Female member of the human species, a species known for their ingenuity, high adaptive capabilities, and societal structure.

Infusion: Toughness

“I’d be damned nince, it does work. Woah.” Her signs of exclamation were shy but enthusiastic. “And it does say ‘toughness’, and that’s a name I made myself so... can the veritas read my mind?”

Having a person reading her mind would be one of the most harrowing experiences of life, but a plant doing so... it didn’t feel nearly as abusive. It still taxed her mind thinking about it.

“Better not to think about it, not a comfortable thought...” Aloe added with a whisper. “Anyways... this doesn’t change anything, I can know my current internal infusion unlike with plants, but it’s nice to have the option to see the name. I guess.”

Aloe sighed and left the leaf on the desk. Maybe she would come up with some ideas in the future. She didn’t hold many hopes in that prospect.

Her hands reached for the newly infused date seeds. ‘Accelerated growth’ and ‘drought resistance’ in the left and right hands, respectively.

“The issue with an infused and uninfused seed was that the difference in vitality was abysmal, but now it will be non-existent, right?” The girl sighed again, thoughtlessly cursing her stupidity. “If there only was a way to infuse seed with less...” Aloe slapped her forehead so hard that the desk vibrated. “Of course!”

In all her time on the oasis, Aloe had applied many infusions, but not many different typings. Karaim had already solved this problem for her in the cultivation technique.

“Heh, at least you solved one, old man.”

Aloe snickered, but instead of going directly for an infusion, she took a rest to lunch. She poured herself a bowl of hot soup before sitting on the chair. It was only when she downed the first spoonful that she realized that the soup was hot. Or that it should be. So ‘toughness’ also protects against burns, noted.

“Yup, awful as always. At least it’s salty.” Aloe degusted the insipid soup in the comfort of her old creaking wooden chair. “Maybe I could add some dates. Or coconut water. Mayhap also black seeds... I have a lot of spices and I have used only salt...” She lingered with a full spoon before her lips. “This... this says a lot about me.”

After finishing her bowl, or rather two, Aloe stretched her arms and legs. They still felt numb from sleeping outside even if she had had a good rest on her bed later.

“Okay, no more soup. I should try throwing things at the cauldron tomorrow. It can’t get worse than that.”

Her vitality had partially regenerated, and whilst she had enough for her experiments, it was a good time as any other to visit the latrine. By the time she finished, she could already see the moon in the sky.

“Yeah, it’s so obvious is winter,” Aloe commented, her eyes fixated on the clear blue skies. “The sun’s still up but so is the moon.”

Before restarting her tests, Aloe grabbed a handful of dates – or more like a whole tree branch – and rinsed them.

“Alright, now I’m ready.” The girl said as she cracked open a date and shoved it into her mouth, the corners of her lips twisting in delight. “Hmm~” Aloe moaned gormandizingly. “Nothing better than a sweet after lunch.”

Whilst eating her weight on dates, Aloe searched for the cultivation technique. Her desk was a mess, but at least she trusted everything to be on the desktop. Soon enough she found it and quickly opened the book by the page she wanted.

Instead of depositing the extracted seed into the bowl with the others, Aloe infused it with an infusion she wasn’t as familiar with as the likes of ‘accelerated growth’. Taste better, better taste. Aloe chanted in her mind to make her intent as clear as possible for the seed and the infusion.

As expected, the seed took her vitality.

Half the cost of ‘accelerated growth’.

“Nice!” Aloe fistbumped the air with the hand holding the seed. “Only a fifth of my reserves instead of two. Karaim had left on his cultivation technique that plants had a sort of ‘infusion buffer’ but I’ve never checked it until now.” She commented as she parsed through the pages of the thin diary. “‘Better taste’ only takes half of that buffer, i.e., half of what ‘accelerated growth’, ‘bountiful harvest’, or now, ‘drought resistance’ cost.”

She smiled at the discovery, or more exactly, the confirmation of the discovery. As time passed, she found herself more accepting of Karaim’s actions and words. He had abandoned them, but he had left so much behind that Aloe had no reason to stay mad at the dead man.

Regardless of what the world may throw at her, Aloe could always find relief in the vital arts.

“I should find more ‘half-cost’ infusions to not let the buffer go to waste. There are some more on these pages, but they don’t seem much useful to me. But before even trying that, I need to check another thing. How to change infusions.”