Unfortunately that's the only side of my house I'm going to complete right now. The corpse flowers are out of juice and need time to draw out more. On the plus side, the snow is now about half melted. The downside to that, there is a crap ton of water everywhere. This place is starting to look more like a swamp than a valley. Now, the question is, what do I do now? Hmm, I guess I can run a few more tests with the buffs and healing. I’m wondering, since I am connected to the network and basically use it as an extension of myself, can I cast things through it? The description says more powerful enchantments with skill level increase but what exactly is an enchantment? Is it that thing where I make the wood harder using mana, applying some sort of spell to the plant, casting through the plant? I don’t know but I’m going to see if I can find out. First I’ll start with the hardening the branches with mana thing…. Scratch that, I wasn't paying attention to how much it cost before. So there is no way I’ll be able to tell how much cheaper it's gotten, if it even has. If the skill ever upgrades I’ll try to remember to keep an eye on it. Actually that makes me wonder something, if I pump mana into the branches to strengthen them is it permanent or what? Well, that's an easy test, I’ll push mana into a branch and keep an eye on it while I test other things. I pick a very distinct branch that somehow has formed an S shape naturally, should be easy to remember and find it. I pump as much mana into it as possible until it’s as hardened as it will go. Then I immediately switch my focus to a twigling, then swap back to the branch. It’s still full of mana and hardened, ok so they don’t lose it when I focus on something else, didn’t think they would but good to check. I’m going to leave it while I work on other stuff and see if it slowly discharges over time, or at all. I guess it theoretically could be on a sort of timer then go away completely after a set time frame, that would be a pain in the ass to figure out.

I turn my attention back to the task at hand, seeing if I can cast spells through the plants around me, or my network. I don't even know where to begin here. Maybe it would be a function of plant forming? I switch the skill on and mentally scroll through, but can’t find anything in regards to remote casting, or even casting period, or spells. Hmm, maybe it's built into the plant manipulation function. I swap to manipulation and extend a branch towards one of the new twiglings, once it’s touching I start trying to cast heal through it. First attempt I imagine the spell occurring at the end of the branch, nothing happens, doesn't even use any mana. Second attempt I imagine the spell running through my connecting vine, into the pod, along the network, and out where I want it to cast. I’m partially successful, I can feel the flow of mana through my tail and into the pod. It seems to fade out at the edge of the pod's root system where it meets the network. Interesting, but that gives me another idea. I call the other new twigling over to one of the outer petals and grab hold, then cast the body reinforcement spell, this time imagining it casting through the petal. The spell takes without issue and casts on the twigling, now it's buffed so I send it back to its base station. Interestingly, the pod is treated as a part of my body. I mean it makes sense considering I'm directly hooked into the thing.

Casting through it is no problem, my network on the other hand is a bit more resistant. The weird thing is that the spell seemingly faded away while passing through, not dead stopped at the connection point like I thought it would. I go back and start casting heal the same way as before, carefully monitoring the area where it fades out to see what happens. All I can tell is that the spell fades away, I can’t sense the mana after it leaves my pod so I have no way of knowing what exactly is going on there. My best guess, it loses cohesion or something after leaving my ‘body’. Well that blows leaves…. I seriously just thought that, this body is going to be the end of my sanity. I’ve got two more ideas, I wanna try casting the spell continually, and try casting the spell in the area where it dies off. I try the second one first, and to my joy it takes, casting a heal spell over my network, albeit I can tell its efficiency is heavily reduced. Now for the first option, I try running it along my network and just hold it. About ten minutes pass before I give up. I hoped it would slowly progress or make a breakthrough or something but no such luck. It just sat there doing nothing but wasting my nearly unlimited mana supply. Well, I’ve made some progress, finding out I can cast through my pod is nice. It saves me the work of having to get out every time I want to boost a twigling. But I have one more thing to try, it will also test my theory on skills while I’m at it. If it doesn't work, oh well, not like I'm short on time out here. I start casting the healing spell in the same spot as before, it's technically on my network not my pod. I’m hoping that if I hold this enough I’ll get a skill offering out of it. So I settle in and get comfy, this will take a while. It took me nearly a day of straight throwing snowballs to get the throwing skill offered, so I’m expecting this to take a minimum that long. And so I wait, doing nothing but healing dirt and roots.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

…………………..

It's long into the night, most of the snow has melted, leaving about four inches of slushy goodness that makes me want to stay in my pod. Seriously, I'd have rather dealt with the four feet of snow that the crap currently outside. But I digress, I've been healing the ground for the majority of the day. Only occasionally taking a break to keep my sanity from hitting zero. Concentrating on nothing but healing is tedious at best. But I've gotten through the daylight hours and part of the night doing this so I have to be close. Or I could be doing this wrong and get nothing, which would piss me beyond off. I'll have to get to at least the full twenty four hour mark before I even consider that a possibility though, to many unknowns I'm working with right now.

General Skill Available: Medium Casting

Oh there we go, as usual I'm bitching over nothing. Let's see what new trick I manage to pick up.

Medium Casting:

Allows the user to cast spells remotely using connected mediums or magically connected catalysts. Higher levels enable the casting of more powerful spells, improve range, control, and efficiency.

Oh I like, I’ll take that.

General Skill Acquired: Medium Casting

General skills:

* Universal Communication – Level: 1 (Max)

* Blend – Level: 10 (Max)

* Plant Forming – Level: 10 (Max)

* Mobile Podding – Level: 4(+)

* Throwing Proficiency - Level: 1(+)

* Medium Casting(Passive) - Level: 1(+)

It's got an indicator that it's a passive skill, neat. Guess I won't need activate it every time I want to use it. Downside is I'll need to be careful not to accidentally cast stuff using it and incur costs I don't need. More a problem when I'm walking around and not podded up with near unlimited mana. So let's give this a whirl. I cast heal on a twigling and imminently I feel the new skill kick in. The spell runs out of my pod and across the network, coming back out on the twigling in the form of a full body heal. I try to focus the spell on specific points but don't have any luck. I might need more levels in the skill to do stuff like that. Next up is a moving target test. I order the twiging to detach and walk a circle around my pod. For the first half of the circle I try to keep a healing spell on the twigling while it's moving and have no problems. For the second half I repeatedly drop the spell and reacquire the twigling as target when I recast, again no problems. It seems I can now use my network as a catalyst for casting, and even I realize just how awesome that is. So many possibilities, attacking things, defending, supporting, and healing my twiglings. My home field advantage just soared through the metaphorical roof.

Well that's all and good maybe next I'll experiment more…. Shit I forgot about the spells branch I was working on. I take a quick look only to find it empty of mana and as Weak as a regular branch. So the enchantment does not last forever, good to know. I re-reinforce the branch, vowing to check up on it sooner this time. Now for the next order of business, the corpse flowers should have had plenty of time to gather nutrition. Time to finish my house.