“Oops, I almost forgot,” Aloe said as she took out the Cure Grass pills from her satchels. “That could’ve been bad. Better to have them as accessible as possible.”

She had yet to find a pattern for the evolution costs of the seeds if there even was one, and if one of the new ones – yet again, if there was even a new evolution hiding among them – a vitality cost higher than the Flourishing Spring could seriously mess her up. Those were a lot of ifs, but the was no harm in minimizing her chances of any sort of peril.

“Alright, what’s the next one?” Aloe moved her hand on top of the seeds as if she were some sort of fortune teller. “I guess I’ll go with cumin. This is the only one I’m able to recognize after all...”

It said a lot about her that she owned a greenhouse, a whole oasis at that, and she was not able to recognize most of these seeds. Not that she had ever been tutored on them, but still felt rather dumb.

She grabbed the two cumin seeds, one she left on the desk as backup and the other she enclosed between her hands.

“Come on, if I get at least one from this batch I’ll be satisfied.” The girl jiggled the seed as if it were a coin she was ready to throw into a wishing well. Not that Aloe would ever do that, that would be a waste of a good drupnar.

Aloe dispelled her random thoughts to clear her mind and pushed her vitality into the black and white cumin seed.

No matter how many times she had done it, she still needed focus and a calm mind to infuse things. And whilst the number of times she had infused plants was nearing the hundreds, that couldn’t be said for evolving them. If it weren’t for the Flourishing Springs, that number wouldn’t even reach the two digits.

Her breathing stopped.

Not out of concentration, but out of surprise.

The cumin seed was taking her vitality.

And fast.

It hurt.

It truly did.

But at least this time she knew it would hurt. Aloe had mentalized, steeled her mind for this exact moment. It was as if the biggest mosquito to ever exist was sucking all her blood, and it was nowhere near full.

With a steady pulse, she grabbed a Cure Grass pill and downed it.

Only now, as it took a couple of seconds to quick into effect, she panicked. Fuck. Aloe cursed. I shouldn’t have done this so soon after eating. It had been a while since she had last consumed any pills, so she had forgotten about the little fact that it took them more time to take effect if her stomach was full.

Her only saving grace was that it had taken her an ungodly amount of time to organize the seeds, so most of the soup – which was also a very light meal – was long digested.

Still, she shouldn’t have taken this risk.

The Cure Grass pill almost instantly recovered a bit less than a third of her vitality, just in time as her vitality was reaching critical levels.

And it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t unexpected, Aloe had thought – or more like her paranoia imagined – that an evolution would take far more vitality than she would be able to provide.

Aloe downed the second pill.

As before, nearly immediately her vitality reached around a third of her maximum reserve. Fearing for the worst, Aloe put on a third pellet on her tongue. She hoped she would have not needed it, but soon enough, it became apparent that her vitality would once more reach critical unconsciousness-inducing levels as it continued decreasing.

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The girl swallowed her third pill.

Aloe breathed hard as she reached for the fourth. Her hands were shaking, she couldn’t even think straight. Even if she was recovering her vitality, the back and forth was too taxing for her body. Migraines littered her mind as the pill fell to the ground. She didn’t even have enough presence of mind to curse, simply mindlessly reaching for another one and putting it in her mouth, ready to down it when the time was right.

She had her body hurt before from evolving seeds, but never her mind. It was always sudden unconsciousness; she had not managed to stay awake to reach this point.

The only thought in her mind currently – the only conscious one at least – was that she had to pour more vitality into the seed in her hand.

Her vision blurred as her vitality reserves yet again neared depletion.

Fourth pill.

A dry cough escaped her mouth threatening to end her concentration, and it almost succeeded. Aloe was amazed at how much she was holding up.

Her throat was swollen from all the pellets she had ingested. The pills were too big for her small constitution, and they scratched the walls of her neck as they fell into her stomach.

And talking about her stomach, the pill digestion was getting slower. No longer instantaneous or just a few seconds to activate it, but more like half a minute. As soon as Aloe noticed this, she ingested another pill. She no longer had the time nor the focus to calculate how long it would take her to run out of vitality. At this point, she needed a constant intake to keep up with the seed’s thirst.

Aloe coughed once more; it was no longer dry though.

Her stomach threatened her with pouring its contents out as bile gathered in her mouth. Aloe swallowed the liquid, making her cringe from the acidity, and reached for yet another pill.

Her hand trembled too much to pick it up, it was only then that a spasm turned her arm berserk and threw the remaining pills to the ground.

There weren’t many left.

Aloe put more strength into the hand with the seed. She could no longer feel the pain, her whole body was growing numb, but she knew her grip was close to drawing blood as her nails dug deeper into her palm.

As she tried to breathe, more coughs assaulted her. The cumin seed continued to draw vitality, and it may well be her imagination, but the rate of absorption was getting slower.

She could make it.

She just needed to hold up.

The two pills in her stomach burned at the same time, shooting up her reserves to half deposit, far less than she should have obtained considering that she was around ten percent before the pills kicked in.

Diminishing returns.

Even with half of her vitality, which was a far greater amount than that she had had when originally initiated in the vital arts, wouldn’t be enough to finish the process.

She, of course, couldn’t know that. But her instincts told her this battle was not over yet. Soldiers fought with their weapons against their enemies, but Aloe had no weapons beyond her body. And if someone were to be her enemy, that would be herself.

That lapse in thought costed her ten percent of her reserves.

“Ah...” Aloe tried to swear but not only it was difficult to come up with words in her troubled mind, but also her throat impeded her from using actual speech. In the end, only a dry plead came out of her lips.

Her vision lost focus as did her mind when she tried to reach for the pills on the ground. Equilibrium was, rather obviously, long forlorn by her body.

The whimpering girl crashed into the ground, the ruckus of the chair almost leaving her deaf. A wooden crash exploding greater than the rumbling of war drums. But most worryingly – for her, that was – almost ending her concentration.

It hadn’t even occurred to her that there still should have been some pellets in her satchel pockets, but at the same time, there wasn’t much of a thought going on in her mind any longer.

It was all an instinctual mess.

All of this could have stopped long ago, so why she hadn’t?

Why was she torturing herself this much?

Was it some macabre exercise of self-flagellation? Or just the lack of realization? No one knew, not even herself, for her mind was a sea of delirium and her thoughts a breached hull.

Aloe twisted in the ground like a worm, not out of pain, but as a primal and crude method of movement as she found herself unable to move her extremities. She didn’t even think about why was that the case, she just continued to move forward.

Pushing on.

The pills lay scattered before her, so close yet impossibly far. Aloe wiggled her head, stretching her neck to the point that it hurt, and so barely reached a pill.

Even if she was not yet in critical vitality levels, if she didn’t consume the pill right now, she would fully run out of vitality before her stomach had time to digest it.

In an act of desperation, Aloe stretched her tongue to grab the pellet. Her tongue rubbed the ground, sand and dust sticking to the wet muscle, but she continued unfazed unable to understand any common notions. Her eyes closed; sight was getting too taxing. A bit more, she thought, or at least, she would have liked to think. Everything was a blur.

Contact.

She could no longer see the pill, but it was as dusty as the ground as it entered her mouth and promptly into her throat.

Sixth pill.

Aloe lay on the ground, panting and whimpering as she waited. Either she would run out of vitality, or the pill would arrive on time. She did not know which one would be first, nor she have the strength to reach for another one.

And as she exhaled, her lungs feeling drier than the very desert she was on, Aloe realized one thing.

The seed was no longer draining her.