pets (Conti.)

With my business done and my parent's filled in, I threw myself back into my training, redoubling my efforts to improve myself. Though I called Margaret periodically to check up on her as I'd promised, I largely fell back into the routine of my schedule, training both my body and my mind. Sometimes, it almost felt as if nothing had changed, that the break had never occurred—but that was just the repetitiveness of my days talking. This stage of my training was all about honing my fundamentals, creating something to build upon through repeated effort. Training my stats was a lot harder than training my skills, but they tied into everything and even a slight boost to strength could be multiplied many times over when I called upon my powers.

So I ran and I lifted and I studied the days away. It was kind of funny in its own way, how whatever happened, I always seemed to come back to this. What was that old saying? Before Enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. Even when I could scarcely believe how much some things had changed, I was amazed by how other things just hadn't. Hell, sometimes I imagined myself ten or twenty years from now, training for months to get one more level or grinding some new skill.

Granted, my new companions necessitated a bit of a shift—but even they didn't really change things. With Autumn and Gou in my party and my power thus extended to cover them, I mainly just went about my days with them at my side, keeping an eye on them and helping them improve where I could with my new abilities. The skill I'd gotten while awakening Gou—Beast Tamer—facilitated attempts to train animals in a way similar to Green Thumb…except not really?

Beast Tamer (Active & Passive) LV1 EXP: 0.00% MP: 100

The power to hasten the training and growth of an animal through a resonance of souls. Only possible for those attuned to both animals and nature.

Increase the effectiveness of training on enhanced Animals by 100%.

Increase the HP and SP regeneration of enhanced animals by 100%.

Increased closeness with animals.

Additional 50 MP used per minute.

Enhanced animals cannot be trained beyond the abilities of the user.

As usual, my power wasn't very clear, but…essentially, it allowed animals to improve their abilities—that is, what my ability translated as stats, skills, and possibly even levels—more quickly under my care. I'm never quite sure when it came to stuff like experience and levels and other things that really only applied to me, but I'm pretty sure it amounted to gaining double experience.

Whether it was or not, though, Gou trained beside me all the time, running with me day and night. When he got tired, I restored his stamina with a quick heal, gave him some food and water, and we got back to work. Most days we'd run around Vale a few times in the mornings and evenings and he'd spend the rest of the day by my side, either sitting near my feet or playing around like the puppy he was, though I trained him in other things during what free time I had—mainly just basic dog stuff I'd looked up on my Scroll. He was still a puppy and a long way from being a hunting dog, but I kept a close eye on him and watched him grow both larger and stronger as time went on.

Someday, when he was ready, I'd take him out to hunt Grimm and improve his level as well as his stats. I was nervous about allowing a level one dog fight monsters—but I also knew well that there were more to fights than what my power interpreted as levels. He was growing quickly, physical stats rising as he trained beside me, and eventually…I was worried about putting him in danger, but I knew that by the time I did, he'd be more than up to facing it.

As for my 'daughter'…In many ways, Autumn was the opposite of Gou, growing fairly quickly in level but very slowly in stats. Because of the amount of MP I burnt in a day, she'd quickly fulfilled my claim and surpassed Tukson, growing until she could no longer easily be carried by me. She grew in twisted loops and thorny vines, sustained more by my Aura than any other form of sustenance and growing to reflect that as she grew further and further from a normal plant. A tad sadly, I'd finally crafted the armor and some other spare metal into something between a baby carriage and a rickshaw and begun to pull her along behind me—I tried to think of it as just another form of strength training, but it still left me feeling oddly disappointed.

But I didn't stop her from growing, even when it made it harder to keep her close; I assisted it, at least where I felt right doing so. Though her Vitality had improved a fair bit as she'd gotten bigger, things like her Dexterity and Intelligence improved much more slowly. Though she'd built up a number of points through leveling as a member of my party, without true sapience and mobility she had no way of spending them. It was possible I could have found a way around that, somehow, perhaps spent the points for her. I hadn't found anything when I checked, but that didn't mean there wasn't one. Perhaps I could control her somehow, call up her screen, and make her increase the appropriate stats—

And yet, I waited patiently instead, allowing her to grow on her own. Because for all I wanted to speed the process, that was just my own impatience at work—I knew that she'd gain Intelligence in time, knew that she was becoming slowly more mobile, and so I didn't want to interfere. Because each of those points…I knew well their value and as much as I wanted to spend them for her, it was nothing compared to how much I wanted her to be able to spend them for herself, to choose how she'd grow and develop. Regardless of what I wanted or suspected or desired, I wanted it to be her own choices that defined her, so the points were a…birthday present of sorts, for the life I had created.

Which isn't to say I did nothing. I helped her grow in every way I could, shedding massive amounts of Aura when I had some to spare and—though she didn't truly need them—I nonetheless made sure she had water, nutrients, and light. I even researched some studies on plants and music and followed them.

And, of course, I brought her other plants. I didn't force her in that regard, either, but I didn't have to; in the same way that the Rose and the Zinnia had melded without my input, Autumn naturally sought to reach out to other plants. I simply assisted her by awakening more flowers and leaving them for her to meld with—for with each plant that joined the Amalgam, she grew. Her flowers blossomed in increasingly varied shapes and colors, roots and branches shifting in both shape and function as they did. She took in lotuses and lilies, sunflowers and hydrangea, irises and carnations and more until, in time, she seemed more an cloak of petals then a coil of thorns. And with each, she grew a tiny bit stronger, a tiny bit smarter. Hundreds of flowers came together and then some to create a being that was still more than the sum of its parts.

And yet…

I sighed as I rose from my meditative state, knowing it was time. I'd felt it, seen it for weeks now, and I knew what I had to do.

"I guess you can't grow much more that way, can you, girl?" I said, Gou's ears perking up as I finally rose, brushing a hand through the flowers in the rickshaw. I'd gotten more than a few strange looks around town for running with it and my dog, but that didn't matter to me, compared to this. I'd kept her close to my side for nearly a month and a half now, letting her gaining experience with each point of MP I spent—and I spent a lot of MP. Every day, I burnt tens of thousands of MP, shedding it and swiftly refueling in a trance. In this relatively short time, I must have spent several million MP; probably not even enough to raise me up a single level anymore, but for Autumn…

Who Would Inhabit This Bleak World Alone?

LV 19

Autumn Rose

I felt the blossoms and branches shift slightly at my touch, a definite reaction to contact, to my presence. She'd come a long way, such that even with the addition of many flowers a day, she couldn't grow very quickly anymore. Each flower gave her power, mass, experience, but at this point it was a negligible addition. She needed something larger now, so it was time to try something bigger again.

Slowly, carefully, I lifted the thorny length of a branch, Levant assisting with a buoying winds to support more and more of her. I'd needed to reinforce and enlarge the rickshaw several times as Autumn had grown and all told, she was at least a thousand kilograms of plant. Even with the modifications I'd made, the rickshaw was only able to hold up because of Crocea Mors' assistance, and pulling her around had become my main form of strength training of late.

And I wound the totality of that slowly around the large tree I'd been resting under, curling it around the branches and trunk. It looked, more than anything, like a many-limbed creature was trying to devoured the tree, with dozens of impossibly long and flexible branches rising out of Autumn's main body on the ground—a tiny little thing, compared to the branches and roots that grew so unbelievably. Then, when I was done, I laid a hand on the ash tree's trunk and took a breath, leaning my forehead against it as I closed my eyes.

By now, the ritual was long since routine to me. My soul flowed into the Ash, starting at the roots and rising up towards the sky through the trunk and the branches. All but leafless in the fall, the barren branches grasped at the sky and I felt them as I could feel my own limbs. The light within the tree was concealed by the muck of material existence, but that concealing detritus cracked in a moment under my touch and it shed its restraints as easily as it had its leaves.

I exhaled slowly and stepped away from the tree's murky green light, kneeling beside Ash and Autumn. When the light faded, nothing had changed—it was still an ash tree decorated in Autumn's coils. Not surprising, honestly; this wasn't the first time Autumn had sought to meld with a tree and failed. The difference in size and relative power between her and a tree interfered with her Green Binder and no amount of slow struggling on her seemed enough to change that. Eventually, she'd give up and I'd return her to her carriage.

But today, things were different. My training was nearing its end, with less than a week until Mistral. My physical stats now lingered near seventy, close enough to rectify before the tournament—but my Intelligence…

Having started nearly ten levels higher, it went without saying that it was the first to reach the benchmark. It had taken just a little over five weeks of training, in fact, with the rest spent trying to improve it yet further in the time that remained. Yet…with it now over seventy and my physical stats still trailing a bit behind, I'd spoken to my mother and she'd agreed; I'd be spending the remaining days focuses on my body instead of my mind. Even just taking into account the time it had taken to reach seventy-one…it wasn't worth it, comparatively.

Especially when I could do this instead.

I brought my status screen up and made my changes, inhaling deeply as I did.

By raising INT above 100, you have gained a random ability related to your brain functions.

The skill 'Clairvoyance' was created.

By raising INT above 100, you have gained the passive skill 'Medium Mana.'

By raising INT above 100, you have gained the passive skill 'Mana Regeneration.'

I smiled, looking down at my hand as I flexed my fingers.

"Let's try this again, dear," I said, touching her roots. "Green Thumb."

Even more flowers bloomed across Autumn's limbs until the Ash was all but hidden beneath their bulk, but it wasn't enough.

Not yet.

"It's fine," I murmured. "I can do this all night."

XxXXxX​