"Oh, great heavens!" Aloe groaned and twirled in desperation. "How awful! I've never felt this soiled before! And I have worked the earth for centuries!" She gagged. "Ugh, I feel the bile coming up again."

  The vegetable human did her best to keep her insides… inside.

  "I haven't touched anything, but I feel so… dirty. Also, I should do something about the chunks of cranium embedded in my foot, I can't go back home like this."

  Aloe scratched her foot against the ground, and whilst it did wash out a bit of the blood, those pieces of cranium remained lodged on her foot. Which was curious to her as her body was stone and she couldn't feel a grain of pain coming from the sharp bones, her vegetable skin enhanced with passive dexterity was too malleable for that.

  "I need water and a lot of it. Now. Ugh…" She shivered as she thought of her dirtiness.

  The druid disappeared into the night searching for water, but she found none. And she wanted copious amounts of it, no shower or bath could satisfy her. Unable to come up with a better solution, Aloe left Selen and switched to haste as soon as she reached the forest.

  With her new body, the speed stance was more potent than before. Not because her plant legs were faster than her human ones – which they were – but because she no longer had to fear any fall. Even with haste on, her sense of balance was uncanny and her toughness legendary, so she had to fear no wounds.

  She could run with all her might.

  It was then that she noticed for the first time how massive her stamina was. All the physical capabilities that the regeneration stance should increase like breath or resting time were constantly working at degrees impossible for most cultivators strictly donning that stance.

  Tireless, fearless, and monstrously, Aloe dashed through the forest.

  Emphasis on the monstrously. The vegetation didn't enjoy at all how fast she was moving.

  Boom!

  A sound scared Aloe even though she kept moving. And the sound kept accompanying her. What the hells is this? The faster she moved, the more repeated the explosions became. Am I doing this? At first, she was scared by the explosions, but as they didn't stop and failed to harm her, she kept going without a care in the world.

  It only took her a handful of minutes to reach the chasm and without hesitation, she dropped inside. The spot she had chosen was so straight and deep that she reached terminal velocity before she hit the ground. Of course, by then she had switched to toughness, so she landed unscathed.

  The same couldn't be said for the ground as the stone had met a projectile with three digits of weight moving at terminal velocity.

  No one cried for the stone. No one ever did. But the stone did cry in protest as the bedrock was split and the fragments outright pulverized.

  But Aloe had other thoughts in her mind.

  "Water!" She threw herself into the Tehen River.

  The water felt cold to the touch, but that was all. Cold. She had the sensation that it was cold, but she couldn't classify the feeling as frigid. After all, her body was completely immune to hypothermia, even without toughness on.

  "Oh, that feels so good!" She talked, only to realize she was underwater. Water poured inside her lungs, but she hadn't been using them for a few minutes already, so keeping it that way didn't bother her.

  She just took the chance to thoroughly clean every corner of her body, inside and out.

  Before she even noticed, Aloe had hit the bottom of the Tehen River. She switched to acuity, which allowed her to guess the depth she was at. Oh dunes, this is quite deep. Around fifty meters? If I had fallen this deep a few… centuries ago I wouldn't have been able to get out. Now it was trivial.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  With a flicker of her big toe and a bit of help from the potency internal infusion, Aloe was able to leave the river. Even though she had put all her strength into the flicker, the water drained all her momentum, and she had barely reached the shore. She threw herself out of the water and puked all the water inside of her body.

  Whilst the noises that came out of her nostrils and mouth were short of hellish, she was completely calm as she still didn't need to breathe again for a few more… Hours? Huh. She was surprised by her body's efficiency.

  But also…

  "Ugh… I still feel dirty, why had that fucker had to… Ew!" She almost puked again. "I can still feel it on my thigh even if there were clothes between us." Aloe grabbed her hair and almost pulled the vines from the root. "If water couldn't clean me… maybe fire can?"

  Aloe dropped copious amounts of vitality and grew a myriad of Blossomflames all over her body.

  "Burn! Cleanse me!" She ordered and an inferno was unleashed.

  The multiple high-powered sources of fire igniting at the same time instantly evaporated the moisture on her skin, therefore creating steam explosions, but Aloe couldn't care less. The flames were just cozy for her.

  "More!" She commanded viciously.

  The Blossomflames burned brighter and started withering from the extraneous exertion, but the druid didn't allow them to die. She pushed vitality into them through her skin, pushing hundreds of Haya into them through the Forced Growth technique. One thing she had discovered was that she could restore the potency and vitality of withered plants with her flowing stance technique. Vitality in the sense of liveliness, not the vital art fuel.

  Only after she felt somewhat dizzy for not breathing for minutes without end and spending enough vitality to evolve a farmland worth of Heartgrowth did Aloe finally stop.

  "Ah," she panted once the flames quenched. "Far better."

  Her chest heaved up and down from her exhaustion, though it was more mental than physical. She doubted she could feel the latter any longer.

  "There's nothing better to cleanse the dirtiness of this world than fire, is there?" The vegetable human chuckled. "It feels good to let out frustration. I haven't been able to run this freely since… ever, really."

  There was a liberating sense to move freely without the fear of others. She had lived with too much fear in her body, and it was great to just… be.

  Be a force of nature.

  Aloe took a deep breath and then jumped.

  Jumped with all her might. Jumped with potency on. Jumped without a care in the world.

  The chasm wasn't fully straight so it didn't allow her a perfectly smooth flight, she had to push herself on the walls more than once to having her body collide against them and killing her momentum, but it only took a handful of seconds to soar up the hundreds of meters of the chasm.

  Then she was out.

  And she continued flying higher.

  And higher.

  Her body reached the heavens, and she couldn't describe how divine the feeling of having the moisture of her skin begin to frost as she reached heights no human had reached before was.

  This was freedom.

  This was life.

  All her doubts disappeared as her mind was pumped full of elation. She was strong, there was no denying that. Nothing would stop her. She would stop for no one.

  Then she began falling.

  As she didn't want to obliterate the forest with her fall, Aloe switched to acuity to control better her airtime and also grew multiple Cottonpulls on her back and arms. Of course, the pathetic amounts of cotton she generated weren't enough to keep her afloat, but what she was aiming for were the sacks holding those cotton balls.

  The handful of sacks presented great drag and slowed her body significantly, more than any amount of cotton would have done.

  Soon, her falling speed reached a manageable point and she took in the sight.

  The skies were dark and cloudy so she couldn't see many stars, but her acuity-boosted eyes had more than enough light to peer at the infinite forest around her that reached the horizon in all directions.

  But not only that, her eyes focused on Selen.

  "Woah…" Even if all the lampposts in the city pointed to the ground, she was able to clearly see the night lights of Selen from kilometers away from her privileged position in the heavens.

  Aloe took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the cold air of the heavens. She had never felt this lucid before. The beauty of the forest, civilization, and the heavens greeted her.

  It was all at her disposal.

  And her disposal alone.

  But the dreams were cut short as she lost too much altitude and Selen was cut out of her line of sight by the forest and the mountains.

  No longer enjoying the sight as much, Aloe cut the sacks and let herself gracefully fall. As graceful as a two-meter projectile could fall from a few hundred meters of height.

  "Mmm~" Aloe moaned as she stretched after having landed. "Okay, I've enjoyed myself too much already. It's time to go back to the issue at hand. The captives from Xochipilli's village are in Sadina so that should be our next destination. I… can't say I'm happy to go back. Maybe if it only had been a few decades instead of centuries…"

  She had long assimilated that nothing she had held dear would remain. Not her acquaintances. Not her family. Not her home. Not her greenhouse.

  But it had to be done. For Xochipilli.

  The druid switched to the haste internal infusion again and she was met by familiar explosions. Oh, hey. The explosions are back. Aloe didn't think much of it as she went back to Selen. Her whole excursion had taken less than an hour.