Green Bronze Portensa

[Cladonia portentosa (Healthy)

Name: Portensa

Common Name: Reindeer Lichen (Reindeer Moss)

Rank: Green Bronze

Stars: None

Core: Spirit Refining Stage - 5%

Skills:

 Symbiosis - The lichen can surround and integrate an organism. Has a rare opportunity to form a symbiotic partner with a suitable organism. This opportunity to form a mutual symbiotic partnership is based on pre-existing factors and is not due solely to chance.

 Link - The primary partner in the symbiosis can form a link with other organisms allowing these linked organisms to share knowledge. Efficiency (+5%)

 Asexual Duplication - Specializes lichen tissue to mimic the appropriate incubation chamber for its symbiotes and induces the creation of clones.

Symbiotic Partners:

 Chlorophyceae (color mutation)

 Skills:

 Photosynthesis - The algae can convert water and carbon dioxide into sugar. Energy production is increased by 10%.

 Enhanced Cell Walls - The algae's cell walls have been enhanced to provide faster transfer of molecules in and out of the algae. Efficiency (+5%)

 Stiff Cellulose - Algae are suffused with an enhanced form of cellulose. Cellulose makes the algae more durable allowing it to withstand far more abuse as well extremes in environment.

 Microsporomyces magnisporus

 Skills:

 Acid - The yeast produces an acid that harms predators when ingested. Acid has a deterring effect.

 Flagella - An appendage allows the yeast to move within the larger phallus body of the reindeer moss.

 Enhanced Peroxisomes - Increases the function of peroxisomes. With more oxidizing agent the acid's effect will increase.

Lesser Standard Cultivation Manual

Skills:

 Mana Sense: The manual has the ability to sense mana.

 Mana Manipulation: The manual has the ability to manipulate mana.

 Skill Optimization: Allows the user to increase the efficiency of one skill. Skill must be within the manual's saved memory.

Earth Elemental (Defense mutation)

Skills:

 Embody: Passive ability which condenses a physical form with defined limits. Enhanced (10%)

 Transform: Can take on a single form. Enhanced (5%) (Current Form: Earthen stand)

 Solid Defense: Growth in all aspects will be targeted towards defense.

Description: A fungus with a three pronged branching thallus body now consists of three partner groups an algae and a yeast.

]

Casually Gordon saw that every single symbiote was ranked at the green bronze level. This was the second time that every individual symbiote met the standards of the evolutionary symbiote. Usually when a pet ranked up they would receive one additional skill. But not only had Portensa's main body and symbiotes gained one skill, but each of the original black iron and lower skills had increased in efficiency as well.

The first skill he looked at was the main body's skill and it made Gordon freeze. 

'What? This is a little broken, isn't it?'

If he was to naively take the [Asexual Duplication] at face value he would have to assume that it would start forcing all the symbiotes to create clones. Of course this wasn't a problem for the algae and the microsporomyces magnisporus symbiotes because those were single cell organisms and there were already thousands of them within the reindeer lichen. In fact there might be more than just a few thousand. Considering that these were microscopic individual cells, there could be millions.

What made him sweat a little was the idea of thousands of manuals or even elementals. If clones of the lesser standard cultivation manual and the earth elemental started growing he could be eaten out of house and home. Hopefully Portensa would take this idea of clone incubation slowly.

Swallowing Gordon had visions of seeing Portensa increase in size exponentially.

Carefully he looked at Portensa. The earthen stand was the same size as before about a one by one by one meter roughly cube shaped platform. And it was covered loosely by a layer of the lichen main body with the brighter green color of the main lichen body with the various shades of brown from the elemental produced a sort of natural look. He brushed his hand through the lichen and found that his pet's usual look was firmly attached to the elemental's mostly rock body. The many branched reindeer antler fronds stood out from the cube just like they had from the book before.

But now that he looked at it he couldn't find the lesser cultivation manual. Searching all the sides and leveraging Portensa up on its side he could not even find the book on the bottom. Before the book had been the main surface upon which Portensa had grown. However, now it looked like the book had already been subsumed into the structure of the lichen. It must be somewhere within the body of the elemental. 

There was no way for Gordon to even start to thinking about how the main body and all the symbiotes were dwelling together within the underlying cube like structure of Portensa. Was there any purely elemental portions, was the book still whole? Would the skills of the elemental and cultivation manual deteriorate over time? Would Portensa's influence nurture her symbiotes or would she parasitize them in the end? Sucking all their benefits out and leaving them to die in the end. These things were not questions that he could answer at this time. However, as far as he knew the mutualistic relationship between the symbiotes of a lichen allowed all the various mutual parts to flourish.

Weren't scientists in Gordon's old world able to remove various algae and or yeast from old world fungus and find that those algae and yeast could continue to function even after? Hopefully he wasn't misremembering these things.

Swallowing Gordon decided not to worry about it for now. He would probably learn step by step just by watching and living with Portensa.

Well since the cultivation manual was already inside the one meter cubed current form, Gordon assumed that Portensa could clone the thin cultivation manual hundreds of times before exploding the 1 meter cube. But on the other hand if the elemental was cloned, then wouldn't that double Portensa's size? And if the elemental part of Portensa was cloned hundreds of times she would be so large there was no way she could ever be brought out of his beast taming space. Once the elemental had been duplicated thousands of times over, all Gordon could hope for would be to find a property somewhere and settle down. He would never be able to travel ever again. 

That said before he had come out of Talon with Jessica he had never travelled before so theoretically it would just be a matter of finding a spot inside Talon and then he could post up and live there the rest of his life. Except for one problem, only nobles could own land within Talon and even if you were a noble land was incredibly expensive. 

Living outside the protective walls of Talon was out of the question at this stage. While Portensa truly was showing amazing potential her ability to protect herself was severely limited.

While it was true that the elemental increased Portensa's theoretical defense, unfortunately the innate structure of his lichen still was the most delicate and weak. Her thallus bodies were on the outside. If the main body's fungus supporting network was destroyed the entire lichen itself would probably decompose into its component parts.

And he wasn't about to start experimenting with what percentage of the antler like thallus body branches he could destroy before the lichen itself was killed.

'Let's just wait to see if the defense applies to the entire lichen and not just the underlying elemental structure.'

Swallowing Gordon went back to reviewing Portensa's skills turning now to the two single celled symbiotes. Both of which received fairly plane green bronze skills, [Stiff Cellulose] and [Enhanced Peroxisomes]. Cellulose was the fundamental building block of all plant type organisms and peroxisomes were critical for the creation of acid.

Wishing he could direct these skills a little more Gordon could only give up and wait to see if these two skills did much at all to increase the potential of his lichen.

On the other hand the new skill for the Lesser Standard Cultivation Manual looked good. He didn't know how to load a skill into the cultivation manual currently. But that was mostly because he couldn't even find the manual inside his own pet! However, even the thought of this ability made Gordon interested in seeing if he could make it happen and load a skill. If he could earn enough money through adventuring perhaps he could buy a skill.

Automatically he started thinking about what skills would be best. Could he buy an offensive skill? What about a defensive skill? An ethereal barrier would help solve the problem of the his lichen's extremely weak fungus body. The problem was that he could only have one skill, so he had to be really careful in making a selection. 

Shaking his head he shook off the thought of skills for the moment. There was no use worrying about it till at least after the Philos family's initiation was completed. And probably till after he had reported back to Angelica. Resigning to his fate Gordon turned back to Portensa's status screen.

Last, but not least, he focused on what the earth elemental brought to the group's dynamic. [Embody] sounded like a foundational skill that any elemental would need. Without a physical form wouldn't an earth elemental just be a complete energy being? Maybe similar to a spirit.

The next skill [Transform] looked like it went hand in hand with [Embody]. Aren't these two skills very similar?

Anyways the [Transform] skill directly specified the ability to take the earthen stand shape. Gordon decided not to over think it. Maybe this transform skill could be thought of as some sort of memory. If the [Embody] skill allowed the original elemental body to gain cohesion, then the [Transform] skill allowed the elemental to remember a certain form that it could always go back to.

'Let's try it and see if I can get Portensa to release the [Transform] skill.'

Portensa couldn't interact with him at all. It had no consciousness, but Gordon sent some happy thoughts to the lichen to see if it would be able to respond at all. 

To his surprise the lichen really was finally able to respond now that it was at the green bronze level. Portensa released the earthen stand form and sort of spread out taking on a round saucer shape.

Thinking that this was definite progress towards being able to talk and communicate Gordon hoped that there might be more. After a few minutes he realized that that was it. Portensa could only sort of bounce between the saucer and cube shapes. And even then it wasn't a very fast transition. This was still not something he could rely on in battle.

That said in the saucer shape the hardness of the elemental portions of Portensa was completely lost. The pale brownish yellow color of resulting earth type substance was extremely unappetizing. Resembling puke or poop more than anything else, however in this soft shape he found that he could push and prod. Stealing himself he even reached in and fished around until he found the lesser standard cultivation manual. 

There was still a film of fungus matter adhering to the manual's cover which was actually very sticky, but it was a simple matter to uncover the manual's ports. 

With this Gordon realized that the idea of saving a skill to the manual's memory could be realized. Happy that it would be possible to take advantage of the cultivating ability of the manual's green bronze level skill he quickly put the cultivation manual back within the elemental's body when he was that the sticky fungus body was turning black. Thinking that the fungus was dying he sighed.

There were so many weaknesses to his lichen bonded mate. He would have to continue babying and taking care of her during this critical stage if he wanted to continue growing.

Thinking of this Gordon finally decided to spend some time figuring out how his upgrade system worked. Wouldn't he normal have to earn experience points or complete quests to gain system benefits. So far none of that had been clarified or made available. 

They were almost to the temple. Even walking at a leisurely rate Gareth was so big that they were almost there already. It would have taken Gordon the entire day and he would have had to start much earlier in the morning.

Having Jessica contract these behemoths was paying off again. The rings might limit their battle power so as not to over extent Jessica's beast master abilities, but their size was still the same. The advantages of taming diamond rank beasts at the apprentice beast master level weren't just a few.