It was probably the worst decision of her life – not that she had taken many – but Aloe decided to stay for another day. When she woke up the next day, she was still feeling awful, and it was most likely that the exhaustion of these last days had finally caught up to her as she was no longer able to outrun it.
She risked being detected as any moment now an emissary with her face and a capture or kill order could arrive. But if guards came for her, she trusted in her capabilities to escape them.
Mostly.
The true problem was that her presence and location would be known and confirmed, which would be a bummer. She truly was risking it all with this elongated rest, but it could pay in the long run. Dividends and such, she thought with a banker's mentality.
The innkeeper still looked at her with worry, the excuse she had come up with had been rather striking, for lack of better words. But alas, she had to interact with the mature woman if she wanted a hot meal.
The words exchanged between them were few, the most Aloe made was pass her a fajati and ask for change. She was quickly running out of small coins, even if she had paid the tailor with electrum. The drupnarea – the small gold coin – still remained in her possession, but she needed it to get a boat away from Ydaz.
Using it just yet wasn't an option.
It was surprising how much a warm meal could do to the body. And also a few vegetables. Her diet had been rather unbalanced these last days, even weeks now, and she needed every grain of power she could muster. The food type too if possible. Dying because her meals were unbalanced was a dissatisfying way to go.
With her Blossomflame already grown, which had healed her once she had done so even if there weren't many embers, Aloe's vitality was now focused on evolving new seeds.
Predominantly black seeds.
She could try evolving cumin now that her vitality reserves were edging closer to sice the…
"I still have to come up with a name for the term, ugh…" She groaned on her bed.
Whilst she could evolve seeds at the ground floor of the inn or around Selen, she didn't want to risk it. Nor expose herself. Not many people knew her face, so there was a chance the fated order had already arrived at the fortress city and people hadn't put two plus two as she had arrived before the wanted poster.
"I mean, there's not any need to overcomplicate the word if I'm the only one who is going to use it…" The cultivator pondered, a handful of black seeds in her hand.
By now her ability to detect vitality was good enough to distinguish which seeds had been evolved and which ones had not without even looking. With her constant rests and eating breaks, she was restoring enough vitality to evolve around three Flourishing Springs each hour. Which wasn't much if she compared it to how many plants she had evolved and infused in the greenhouse, but she was doing this without the assistance of pills.
"The unit, approximately, is an adult's worth of vitality. Let's say that this number is one and that it normally oscillates around a decimal part, so point nine or one point one. Yeah… this makes sense… so I could, yes. Perhaps."
Aloe continued rumbling half-assed thoughts to herself. Even if she no longer had access to her ter'nar tree, her mind ached to have a moment of relief and calmness like this one. Which it showed by never completing a thought.
It took two Flourishing Spring seeds to finally form.
"Mansworth," Aloe snapped her fingers. "An adult's worth of vitality, mansworth. Mmm, I like it. Simple and to the point."
The cultivator was oddly proud of a term that she would only use and that ultimately had no significance whatsoever. She was, quite literally, taking victories wherever she found them.
Another victory could be considered how she had been in bed for a few hours already with a chicken leg in her hand, but at this point, she was tired of eating. She was testing a theory related to starvation and vitality, as using vitality did make her hungry, but so far she hadn't seen a difference – a noticeable one at least – in vitality restoration whether she was full or not.
Still, she needed meat in her bones.
If she hadn't been weighing like forty kilograms, then maybe the djinn wouldn't have been able to send her half a dozen meters into the air with a kick.
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These last two days had been productive, if nerve-wracking. Aloe was walking close to the edge of having 'six mansworth'.
"I'm already regretting this term." She rubbed her eyes and continued infusing.
Whilst a difference between an increase of five hundred percent and six hundred percent wasn't that big, nor the change was sudden but gradual and she had already been reaping the benefits, it motivated Aloe to know that she was close to that mark.
Round numbers scratched that part of her mind that energized her.
When she went to sleep, she had evolved dozens of seeds. And when she woke up, she felt alive.
'By alive' she meant not feeling pain nor excitement, just being able to breathe without having a worry or a wish in her mind. It might seem sad, but Aloe believed a person was truly alive when they were in their most neutral state. She enjoyed neutrality and liked to express it through her impassive masquerades.
Before the sun was fully out, she had tidied up her room, alongside her fully grown Blossomflame that now rested inside her bag. If there were any problems in the future like another monster attack, she was fully convinced that she would overcome them.
A bed, the regeneration stance, and a full belly did good to the body.
With nearly forty hours of virtual sleep on her person, Aloe got out of the inn. Instead of her staple desert garb, she now wore the attire she had bought from the tailor, one more suited to the colder climate to come.
"Ah, how long has it been since I have felt confident in myself?" Never, an awful part of herself whispered.
She did her best to ignore it.
It was hard.
Not only was she loaded with food and water, but also seeds and energy in her body. But even if she felt physically well, the same couldn't be said for her mind. Aloe truly felt being suddenly spotted, so she donned the stealth stance as she pranced around the waking fortress city.
Subterfuge didn't make her invisible, she was well aware of that, but it did make her less noticeable. And if a person wasn't conspicuous, why would you even fixate on them?
She didn't need to be invisible, just another person. Any person except Aloe Ayad.
The guards at the door almost didn't notice her when she left, but after they did become aware of her, they didn't make any fuss. Calmly, without arising any suspicion whatsoever, Aloe strolled out of Selen.
No matter how ready she was for the rest of the journey, she couldn't help but feel giddy about it. Not because it was near to completion, but because she had lost three whole days.
One whilst unconscious and the other two in Selen. One of those two unwillingly thanks to her mortality, and another willingly also thanks to her mortality.
Nurture was incredible, magical, and impossible; yet it made her impotent when she needed it the most. It wasn't enough to be tough or strong one time or the other, no, she needed both or more at the same time.
Once she gathered enough distance from the fortress city, but not enough to shift to haste, Aloe donned recovery. Whilst it wouldn't make her faster, at least she wouldn't tire until the many eyes of Selen no longer had a line of sight of her.
This section of the Ridged Highlands was quite more mountainous than the mostly plane plains she had trod so far. The terrain was still steep and rugged, but now she truly could feel the elevation on her feet as each subsequent step guided her higher up. The ground was also less hostile, with less of the needle-like substrate and more grass all around.
Not that the grass was particularly green.
In any case, it was as dull and gray as the landscape that it inhabited.
Whilst there weren't any trees around, she could recognize some flora. The aforementioned grass, some mushrooms, and living stones.
"Hmm… Are living stones evolved plants?" Curiosity got the better of her as she toyed with her thoughts and she knelt before a colony of living stones, or more commonly known as lithops by academics.
Evolved plants didn't overflow with vitality, or at least not the same vitality needed to evolve them in the first place, but they did have more vitality inside of them than their evolved counterparts.
"I can't sense anything big coming from them…" She mussed with a hand caressing the rock-like plant. The rockiness was more visual than anything else as once she touched the plant it felt fleshy like a mushroom. "If I only had an Aloe Veritas…"
Aloe did carry aloe vera seeds to try to evolve an Aloe Veritas, but it would take a long time to make one grow, even with the assistance of Forced Growth. And it wasn’t like she had another pot to carry it.
"I could try to evolve them…" Her eyes darted back to the living stone.
Evolving unknown plants, though, possessed an inherent risk. She couldn't stop the flow of vitality midway through willingly, the only workaround she had found was putting the seeds on her hair.
"I've just bathed, but it will have to do…" She groaned, took her knife out, and stabbed the lithop.
The heart of the rock-like plant held a chamber with six seeds, and with a hint of disgust, she lodged one out with her knife and cleaned it with a rug. Just in case, she switched to haste. It was paranoia speaking, but if the seed did get entangled in her hair, then she could run away until the wind got rid of it as she wouldn't be able to remove it from her fingers.
"Or I cut my hair." She preferred the speed stance solution. More elegant.
Aloe stood up, got away from the bleeding rock, and lodged the stolen seed in a lock of hair. Loosely enough so she wouldn't accidentally pass out because the seed had drained her whole reserves in a blink.
"It's been a while since last time I said this, but evolution testing begins… now."
The moment her reserves started to drop faster than when she evolved cumin into Blossomflames, she knew she had succeeded. And she was terrified because of it.
The cultivator broke in a mad dash to dislodge the seed, and in the few heartbeats that it had taken her to take a few steps and make the seed fall, too many things had happened.
First, her vitality dropped by two mansworths faster than she could react.
Second, she heard a sound.
Third, she had miraculously avoided a shadow that had dropped on the spot where she had been.
Somehow, a shadow-clad assassin stood behind her.