It was tiresome to harvest her potatoes and mushrooms and then replant them, but that was what a woman had to do to eat. Even then, what was more tiresome was to re-infuse all the food from their respective internal infusions to better taste. Now, Aloe had gotten wise and re-infused all the liberty caps she had to better taste already as she had fields of them, and they didn't require the shade acclimation infusion.

That penultimate statement may be an exaggeration, but she had planted so many of them and they already grew fast enough that even if she doubled her food intake, she wouldn't run out of them. So making better taste their default infusion was the right choice.

Nothing would save her from re-infusing the potatoes before each meal, though.

The next day was way easier on her body as she slowly adapted to evolving Cottonpulls.

"I know each plant – every living being actually – has their own flow of vitality, but as I'm getting the hang of the cotton's flow, it's becoming easier and less taxing to evolve them. I wonder if this phenomenon could be exploited?"

Short answer, no. She had evolved so many Cure Grasses, Flourishing Springs, and Blossomflames that she had lost count and, even then, she couldn't evolve them in a repeated and abusive manner without facing consequences.

It would take her at least a week to run out of cotton plant seeds at this rate, time which the other cotton plants would use to grow and the grown one to germinate. In other words, she didn't need to worry about her supplies.

But the crops she wanted to be grown weren't the cotton plants – in a few weeks she would have too many to even store – but the evolved ones. The first one to achieve a mature state was looking to be the Dream Spores, which Aloe… wasn't the most enthusiastic about. But a new lifeform was a new lifeform.

If it didn't finish growing in the coming days, impatience would get the best of her, and she would force the Dream Spore to grow. That was the most likely outcome.

"Huh, that almost sounds like a threat. I'm gonna force you to grow!" She chuckled to herself. "I mean, I can force people to grow, that much is true. Kinda."

To kill time meanwhile, Aloe decided to train. She could feel herself withering away, that much wasn't new, but it wasn't only mentally, but physically as well. And what was the best way to fight her decay but boost her default strength?

Fatima and Naila had taught her how to train the strength stance, but she didn't have at her disposal the same tools she had at the palace of Sadina. Dumbbells were her preferred choice, especially when she was still wheelchair-bound, but now she would need to perform more overall body-intensive exercises.

"Ugh!" Aloe groaned as she tried a push-up.

A single one.

"Okay," she sat down after completing the single push-up. "I may or may not be slightly out of shape. I mean, I could do them easily with potency, but that undermines the whole point of building up strength. Though now that I think about it… recovery should be fine, should it not?"

Aloe donned the regeneration stance and took a deep breath. She felt her inhalation explode in oxygen content.

"Alright, gimme two!" She cheered and coached herself as there was no one around to do so. "Ooone," she said with some difficulties, "aaand two."

She then collapsed on the ground.

"I didn't account for the fact that recovery weakens me physically. That is quite the important factor." She took a gulp out of her waterskin. "I mean, there are advantages in being physically weaker to train my strength and muscles, but perhaps the best choice will be to go uninfused and only activate recovery to rest."

So she did that. With some difficulties. Aloe tried to do a ten-push-up repetition, and whilst she managed to do so, it took her embarrassingly long to finish. By the time she finished with the tenth one, her arms had become wet noodles.

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"Oh, I'm out out of shape." Aloe collapsed on her belly and rolled on her back. The cold touch of stone was rather appealing after such intensive exercise. "It seems I will need to add training on to my daily duties…" She sighed. "At least this will have a reward in the long run."

Truth be told, even with her lacking diet and lack of movement, Aloe was in a far better state – physically speaking – than when she was still in a wheelchair. Or so she liked to believe. At least now she was moving her body, as little as she did, so there was no chance for her muscles to atrophy again.

After another grueling repetition, Aloe rested as lunchtime was nearing. No better activity to rest than cutting one's wrists and lighting fires. Even though she was eating a lot of food thanks to her constant use of vitality, she felt even more peckish after exercising, so she went for a double cooking session and made herself a handful of potatoes and a whole bowl of mushrooms.

Instead of going straight for more exercise, she decided to evolve the second Cottonpull of the day. It was exhausting, but like when one was exhausted by a day at the office, the exhaustion from using vitality and doing exercise wasn't quite the same.

"It's like using different muscles," she murmured after planting the newly evolved cotton plant seed. "In the office, you use your brain; during exercise, you use your body; and whilst using vitality… something else. Yeah… this wasn't quite the analogy I had thought, it sounded better in my mind."

As her arms were still sore from the push-ups, Aloe opted for doing some sit-ups. Those were even more grueling as she didn't have much elasticity or strength in her back, so after only five of them, she was utterly devastated.

"Okay, no more sit-ups for a while…" She panted even after having donned recovery. "How about squats?"

Squats proved to be far easier for her as her legs still remembered her grueling escape across the Qiraji and beyond, so at least she had some muscle mass left even after these last months.

"Is it normal that I feel more energetic after moving this much?" She told herself with a hint of worry. Grand escape notwithstanding, Aloe hadn't exerted herself much like… ever.

Not in this way at least.

Most activities had left her panting, but not struggling and numb.

For the rest of the day, Aloe spent it thinking of different training exercises that Naila had taught her, though most were in a sitting position as Aloe wasn't in a position to do anything else back then.

"Oh, I totally forgot about stance training," she snapped her fingers in realization. "I could be training acuity and haste even with minimal movement. And considering my vitality reserves are more than twice as massive as when I stopped training… I should probably do that."

She could already imagine herself being unable to use the haste internal infusion because a single step would trip her. At least her toughness activation was so fast and second nature that she doubted the speed stance would ever kill her.

"I've got no cups, so… juggling it is?"

One of the many speed stance training exercises Naila had taught Aloe that didn't require footwork was juggling. Considering the stance accelerated every slight movement, an already hard task like juggling could become nearly impossible.

On her first attempt at juggling, Aloe almost killed herself. That was a bit of an exaggeration, at most she would have just lost an eye – which she could probably recover with the Blossomflames – as she threw a pebble directly at her head as she miscalculated the speed.

"Oh…" She turned acuity on and noticed how the pebbles had cracked in two and left a dent in the wall. "Dunes, haste can turn things like slings utterly terrifying."

Not that they weren't already, she had seen people dent iron helmets with them. Aloe could easily recall soldiers training with them in the barracks of Sadina when Ja…

"Don't think about it, don't think about it." Aloe grabbed her head and repeated that mantra to keep a certain name from surfacing. "Deep breaths, deep breaths…"

Even if she was wielding the sense stance, the darkness felt more oppressive than ever.

Aloe switched her infusion for potency and cut her arm. Her slash was so visceral that she carried away chunks of flesh with the edge of the knife.

She couldn't care less.

"Burn bright!" The cultivator commanded and the three nearest Blossomflames were set ablaze.

The conflagration was powerful, but greater was her distress and control. Living flames swirled around her and her arms, covering her in a maelstrom of healing and warmth. Aloe hugged herself as the triumvirate of evolved flowers dissipated the darkness.

For better or worse, she was alone down here. It was silent, it was damp, and it was cold, but she also had the power to make it lively, dry, and warm. It wasn't only her body and her vital arts that she had to train, but also her heart and mind. She would defeat no one with a broken self. She needed to be stronger in all aspects. She promised herself that.

What hope could she have at defeating someone else if she couldn't defeat her inner djinns first?

"Burn!" She shouted again even though her body was now devoid of wounds. That didn't matter, for she commanded the Blossomflames, and they would obey. "No darkness will defeat me! Do you hear that?"

She shouted to the heavens.

They didn't answer back.