Wilona put a lid on top of the last vase she needed to fill with dried fish. She wiped her brow and sat back, "Can someone tell me why I needed to do this? Seriously. I'm getting kinda miffed that I don't know why I have to store a bunch of fish."

  She opened her status screen and grabbed the cloak that fell from the skies. This, at least, she liked. The rewards that the quests had given her were pretty neat, especially the mana lantern. She'd needed a proper light source for a while now, and with this, she no longer had to cast a spell every time she went out at night.

  And it could also be left on without her needing to focus on it, unlike the orb of light she'd been casting all this time. Maybe she can start working on reading her recipe book now that she has a lamp? That sounded peaceful, just her and her book about the swamp's plant life and some coffee... She didn't have coffee—maybe poisonous fish stew.

  "I don't know..." Fuzz was as oblivious to the situation as she had been the first time Wilona asked her. "But I'm sure it's—"

  "Important, yeah, sure." Wilona rolled her eyes. "I know that already, but like, I need to know more. How else am I supposed to do what I'm supposed to do if I don't even know what it is?"

  "Fair point." Fuzz said in worry. "We just have to wait and see, I guess? It'll happen eventually."

  "Well, it's happening right now," Wilona stood up. "I got an Influence Type quest and, like, you said these are important?" Fuzz replied in a positive, great, so someone answered her finally. "This must be part of what I needed to do then, and the quest is asking me to... Learn how to cast a wide area of effect light spell."

  "What?" The myceloid suddenly said.

  "That's what I was gonna say!" Wilona pointed at her quest. "Like, seriously? A wide area of effect light spell? What? Do I just create a bunch of orbs of light around me or something? Wait—"

  Before Wilona's eyes, the quest shifted. Guess that's not what the person behind the system wanted her to do.

  [New Quest! - Mysticism!]

  [Quest Type: Influence]

  [Rewards: Beginner's Guide to Runework]

  ["You have fulfilled most of the requirements for this quest! Now you only need to do one last thing before you embark on your very first prophecy: learn how to illuminate plant life and make them glow."]

  "Okay?" Wilona shrugged. "If that's what you want, then sure," there was no answer, but like, the quest changed into something more specific when she mentioned an idea to Fuzz. That was an answer all on its own. Also, someone was managing her system without like, saying hello to her. Rude.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Grabbing her lamp, Wilona made her way to the nearby undergrowth. She believed that if there was something here that would be useful for figuring out how to make things glow with magic, it would be the lamp which runs on mana. That and sitting beside actual plants, she'd see how the plants felt while she was meditating and then figure it out from there.

  Wilona sat in a cross-legged position and began meditating. The lamp next to her knees looked bright in this altered state of reality, and Wilona had the urge to cover her eyes when she first looked at it. This only lasted for a moment before whatever it is she uses to see the world while meditating got used to the sight of the lamp.

  The plants too, she was able to see them. They weren't green, but blue-ish. They only had a strange outline of their leaves but nothing else to indicate that they were even there. It’s like they didn’t even exist. The only feature Wilona saw when staring at them were these bright blue veins which ran across the entirety of the otherwise transparent plant. What are these veins? Who knows!

  Wilona would have definitely mistaken them for actual veins if she didn’t know that plants had a lot of capillaries. How did she know this? Reels. Like, some people are weird enough that they decide to remove the pigments of a plant, which is like, cool, but it also reveals all the veins of a plant.

  What Wilona was seeing right now didn’t fit that description, so it must be something else. And not to mention, the veins went down to the roots in a single channel, roots that weren’t visible thanks to her vision being obscured by the ground. The answer must be there, but Wilona didn’t know how else she could view the roots without breaking her meditation and digging them out.

  Mossheart took this moment to come to her, and Wilona saw the ent in her meditative eye. There was a giant ball of something at her chest, the seed no doubt, but more importantly, countless roots that looked similar to the plants around her were connected to this ball.

  And what's more, is that Wilona could manipulate it if she just reached out. She didn't, obviously, but now she knew what was underneath the plant—their core. Seed. Whatever. The seed could also be manipulated. Now all that was left for her to do was see if she could find a way to use this core to make the plants glow.

  At first, she did the obvious—manipulate the plant and then cause them to manually glow. She didn't like this particular method, so she moved on; otherwise, she would be spending days just trying to see beyond the earth and get access to the core hidden underneath.

  Wilona thought it through and settled on one method she knew would be effective: send out a wave of mana that would enter the veins of the plants and go to their roots. When this happened, the mana activated and then caused the plants to glow!

  Simple!

  Not!

  Wilona was willing to admit that she had been overconfident. She learned how to weave mana and turn it into a fireball, yes, but she didn’t know what to do besides that. Throw out waves of mana to go into plants and then make them glow? She didn’t know half of what the fuck she needed to do in order to achieve that.

  Waves of mana first—Wilona practiced sending it out. She wanted to know what it felt like. Then, when she got that down, she pushed the waves towards the plants. She kept doing this until she saw something that visibly affected the plants. After confirming that the waves she sent did, in fact, cause the sudden change, Wilona kept doing it.

  Eventually, she focused solely on throwing the mana waves. She didn’t bother to look at the plants nor anything else. What mattered was how well she could produce mana waves and whether or not she could do it consistently.

  She could, and at a pretty good rate too. She had confirmed this. Now? All that was left for her to do was make it so that the waves had the same properties as her light orb. So, Wilona cast that in front of her and began testing its properties.

  She struck the orb with mana waves and saw how the projectile changed after passing through the orb. Then she copied that, threw it at a plant, and then kept at it until she got a reaction. She tweaked it occasionally, throwing mana waves into the orb until she fully understood how she could change the waves she was creating to repeat the effect of the spell.

  Over and over, she must have spent a long time trying to figure it out because she got hungry at some point. And Mossheart stood by her all this time, waiting. Guarding.

  When she finally got it right, Wilona went into a state of hyper-focus and started to repeat the correct length of mana waves towards the plants. Then she shifted into simply making her body produce the waves naturally. This turned into a spell within her system, and when she got to that point, she was able to do it like it was second nature.

  Things got easier after that, and when Wilona got to the point where she did it so naturally that it was like moving her arm, she opened her eyes.

  And what did she see? An entire forest glowing around her. The tree bark only got affected slightly, but the plants looked outright ethereal. The bugs too had a glow of their own. Not much, but they were brighter than the trees.

  The fact that she came back with her bath and dinner already prepared made Wilona feel so relieved that she didn’t question how Fuzz was able to do it.

  She went to sleep that night satisfied.