They now started brainstorming: what to do?
The different paths could be summarized like this: fight, run, or hide.
Fighting was everyone's last choice. The person or people hunting them were not necessarily evil, but Dei wasn’t going to let them kill Fendrascora either. He made this clear to her as well, that he believed she’d served her sentence and should be allowed to roam free now. There was no way at all he was going to let her die to save his own behind.
Running was both the most complicated and simple plan. They would escape somewhere else, leading their trackers on a wild goose chase. It was not a permanent plan, but it would buy them time to work out something else. The issue with that was Fendrascora. They needed to work out a way to move her, because this was the first place they would check. Running would be complicated because the process of moving her without leveling her up past one hundred was difficult, and she wouldn’t even survive on her own unless she got back to at least level three hundred because her debuffs would be a liability. They had to make a specialized container for her, and move her that way.
Hiding was the last way, and hopefully the one they would end up taking. It involved finding a way to remove his tracking mark, and moving Fendrascora somewhere else. If they did this, they wouldn’t need a specialized container, just to move her a short distance away. It might potentially be easier to get her to level one hundred, then move her that way.
Fang tried and failed to find the tracking mark, but Dei was hopeful. If he could level up his [Good Samaritan] Skill enough, it might be able to outpace that tracking. To this end, he had a rather funny way of using the crystals.
He would dig them all up, coating himself in tracking marks, and helping accelerate the process of leveling it. After all, one was already on him, and there were a good few hundred he’d yet to use. Clever was also quite interested in these crystals, and told him they would help accelerate his growth a bit, as the earth mana contained within would make him larger.
They also needed to work out a way to move Fendrascora. She said that she wasn’t positive what a “specialized container” was, but when she was in the human village, the water was attuned to the innate magic in her body, and she thought she’d need a container attuned to her for it to count. The container would need to be in constant change, like the river she’d grown up in, because her connection to the flow demanded it be so. It would have to contain a liquid at least high in water, because she was a Flow Embodiment derived from water. She said there were some that used lava, but hers was water.
That's when Dei had another gross and unsure thought of something that fit two out of three of those requirements… his own bloodstream. Again, he rubbed his temples as he realized he’d need to physically allow for a being into one of his private sanctums, but this one was at least not nearly as personal as his soul. Not to mention, Dei was starting to trust Fendrascora. After reading her soul through Identify a lot, he was getting a good feel on her personality, and it felt like she’d never think of betraying anyone again, her scars from betraying the humans running too deep.
Reluctantly, he raised the point with Fendrascora, and she said that the idea had merit. Though her current body was too large, that wasn’t unfixable.
Fendrascora said that when The Mother gave her a packet of information about the world for becoming sapient, it involved things related to her current race: Embodiments.
Embodiments could supposedly make hidden mini-worlds for their extra mass when they wanted to shrink down to a sapient form, though Fendrasora hadn’t figured out how to do so.
Dei also got the chance to ask what The Mother was, as he’d experienced the touch of this being on Fendrascora when he glimpsed her past.
“I must work off of what The Mother herself gave me, so this is all I know about her, please forgive me if it isn’t enough. The Mother called herself the… mind of the world. She said that she is responsible for all monsters, and guides those who gain sapience but choose to stay as monsters. She told me that if I became a human, a Sapient Race, then I’d fall outside of her domain, and that she couldn’t help me any more. I don't know any more than that, I’m afraid.”
‘Another mystery to figure out, and perhaps an answer to some of my earlier questions.’
When he thought about it, if this “Mother” thing was the consciousness of the world, that had terrifying implications.
First of all, she didn’t have any sway over humans and other things considered the “Sapients.” Dei managed to piece together from Fendrascora that a Sapient monster and a Sapient Race were two separate things. Sapient monsters could think in abstract concepts, but did not have access to all the virtues and vices. Virtue and Vice affinities decided if a race or being was a Sapient Race.
To become a Sapient Race, a monster needed to either gain an affinity for all seven of both, a difficult and arduous task, or to get The Mothers permission and simply let her attune a person to a particular, already existing, Sapient Race.
If a monster gained all the seven virtues and vices, they would create a new race. If the monster chose to let The Mother help, they would turn into an existing one.
They speculated for a bit longer, but ultimately had to get back to the task at hand.
Dei’s blood needed to become attuned to Fendrascora, and she needed to learn the necessary skill to shrink herself down. To attune himself, he knew that he needed to have her “essence” running through his blood, whatever that meant. Similar to the river she’d hidden in, his blood would have to be permeated with her magical signature.
The inverse might help as well, if she became slightly attuned to him. This way, they might meet in the middle.
To this end, he determined to go the “Fang” route. He would leave a small hole in his body, and Fendrasora would exchange some of his blood for her water, replacing one for the other. She was, luckily, not exactly pure water, containing some small amount of salt that would help his bloods balance. It wasn’t perfect, because she was saltier than his blood, but she eventually figured out how to pull some of the salt out of herself, concentrating it at the bottom of the pond and leaving it there. The salt in her body wasn’t necessary for her survival, it just helped her hide when needed to. She said she kept herself slightly salty when she was in the great river, that way she could expel the salt out in one way while going the other, and the enemy was occasionally fooled by it. After all, it was much harder to smell a freshwater elemental in freshwater.
‘Does the world run on my blood? Why do so many things drink it?? This is bullshit’ he grumbled mentally. Fang drank almost nothing at this point, occasionally taking a sip, but now it was Fendrascora’s turn to take a bunch of his blood and let his Homeostasis Skill level up. The difference was that now they didn’t even have the time to occasionally hunt, so he would need to watch his dizziness levels and hope that the vegetable ration he ate now contained varied proteins and nutrients. They would find out quickly if it didn’t
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He took the chance to send another message through the glowing cracks of his soul as well, hoping it reached his mom. Dei was sending a few every now and again, simple stuff such as “I love you” “I hope you’re okay” and “I’m doing okay,” but he took the chance to send a long summary of everything that’d happened so far.
He left out Fendrascora and how he was helping a monster that’d destroyed a village though, that would need to be shared in person.
Homeostasis Skill leveling up once again, Dei quickly got to work mining the different crystals.
* * *
[Since the Fall: 10/15/809 - 11:37:23]
[Skill Leveled Up: Good Samaritan (2) -> (13)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Meaningful (36) -> (38)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Growing Pains (116) -> (119)]
[Total Stats Gained: +3 Physical]
[Skill Leveled Up: Astral Projection (10) -> (12)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Solidity (80) -> (84)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Homeostasis (58) -> (73)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (76) -> (83)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Identify of the Stout Protector (58) -> (60)]
[Skill Leveled Up: High Mind (70) -> (77)]
[Profession Leveled Up: Pondering Sage (Level 6) -> (Level 7)]
[+5 Spiritual]
It’d taken three full days to get all the crystals out… and what a haul it was. Dei didn’t really know what to do with some three or four hundred crystals, so Clever had just been slowly eating them. After two hundred though, Clever got a stomach ache and had to stop.
‘Rock candy… heh.’
Clever was sleeping it off now, but he was starting to grow at an almost visible pace. From the size of Dei’s hand. Clever was leaning closer to how large his sister was last time they’d seen her: the size of Dei’s forearm.
Dei, himself, was still growing incredibly fast too, but for different reasons.
They’d also verified that the vegetable rations did have enough proteins and nutrients in it to make up for all his blood loss. After three straight days of slowly swapping out his blood with her water, Fendrascora was looking much more red, and Dei was regenerating blood far faster. It was a little scary how quickly he could produce blood now, but useful.
Since he had a heightened rate of growth and blood production, he’d been devouring the calorie-packed ration. It’d taken him months to chip away at a single one before, now in just three days, he was a quarter of the way through this one.
It was working though. Dei couldn’t tell, but Fendrascora, Clever, and Fang all said that the “feel” of Dei and Fendrascora was starting to blend.
Fang continued to search for the mark on Dei, but it refused to be found. When another hundred Null mana were produced, Dei was reminded that he had a tool specifically made to destroy mana, and tried to flush the mark off of him by flooding his body with the Null mana.
Alas, it did not work. He couldn’t find it at all, and [Good Samaritan] continued to level, showing that he hadn’t accidentally removed it either. He couldn’t keep his body flooded with Null mana for too long, as [Connection] was still the only thing holding his soul together, and it put a strain on the Skill.
He also donated another five hundred Soul mana to Fendrascora to help strengthen her, netting him two more levels in Astral Projection.
As he worked the last few days, he noticed the rate at which his Skills were leveling up skyrocket, and he thought that perhaps the safety of The Garden lowered how much experience he got. It’d already been shown that Skills leveled up faster when he was in danger, so maybe having that safety net made the experience worse, even if he was still in danger.
This was particularly enunciated by his seventh level in [Pondering Sage], a momentous occasion with how pathetically slow the level ups were in his profession.
The four of them were in overdrive at this point. Fendrascora was trying to figure out how to compress herself, Clever was trying to peer into the future, and Fang had insisted that she was doing something, though she refused to say what it was.
Now that he had dug up all of the crystals, Dei started planning out how they were going to escape. He knew they had at least a week and a half, because thats how long it took for him and his mom to reach The Garden, and Fendrascora was at the same depth.
Their village was one of the deepest in the Gem Dweller system though, so they most likely had more than that. Still, always account for the worst case scenario. He wanted everything to be done in this area within a week and a half, then, they’d be out of here.
If he could just buy enough time for [Good Samaritan] to overpower the tracking mark, he would be safe.
Before he went running though, Dei wanted to try and reclaim all of the surviving spiritual signatures in the area. There were three more, and he wanted to visit them all.
The Garden had some relation to the red blade, so there was a chance it was related to the other three as well. He would look at them, and if it seemed sketchy, he’d go back to the Garden and use [Astral Projection] to send a spiritual version of himself towards the scattered spirits, that way, the Garden could intervene if his soul was attacked.
The voice in the Garden had said “Live well, Dei. I did not, and I sometimes regret that.” Which seemed to imply that it’d been a person at some point. Dei didn’t want to leave him here alone, so he had an idea.
If there were a bunch of spirits in the area related to the Garden, what if he collected them all, then reunited them? It would probably be a nicer eternity if they were together.
The voice might’ve wanted Dei to leave the sword behind, but thought Dei would die without a weapon. Now, Dei had Fang, and it would be nice to have the extra weapon, but not required. He just couldn’t find it in himself to feel good about abandoning the voice down here, alone, doing nothing at all.
So, whenever Fendrascora could move again, he’d go dragging her around places, looking at all the spirits in the area. It would give her some new experiences too!
He really hoped she figured out how to hide her body by that point. It would be a little awkward otherwise.
He wondered what she was going to do with the Floating Lilies, but Fendrascora said she’d figure something out. She didn’t want to leave them behind.
Speaking of, she didn’t want to leave behind any of the extra plants. She’d planted every last one, from the trees to the grass, in her body, and now Dei was frequently making trips to get more water for both him and Fendrascora.
She was a ridiculous sight by this point, filled with blood and growing trees, grass, and lilies in all the different parts around her, but she was very happy with it, practically giggling in joy each time she said something to him.
He’d Identified her after a few days, and saw the leaps of progress she made.
[Corrupted Damaged Crippled Embodiment of the Flow - Level 29]
It was incredible progress. She’d gained a massive burst of experience when they first started conversing, as the jarring difference in years of silence compared to a weird little spirit coming visit you was rather significant, but now she was on a steady path to power, quickly rebuilding herself.
Not much else to do, he began physically training and splitting his mind multiple times to meditate faster. He was still meditating on his connection to Fang, hoping that something came out of that so she could utilize his Spiritual defense, but nothing had come of it yet.
All in due time. He had to be patient, but he also could not afford to slow down. He would soon be able to travel more freely, finished with this area, then he believed life would get a bit interesting. In a good way, hopefully.
