The cultivator scratched her scalp at the headache of a problem before her. The Slowtide wasn't that expansive, only around the surface of an average person as it decided to grow on an oblong shape biased toward the ground. The highest part of the bright pink lichen reached a bit higher than Aloe's breasts, but it expanded beyond the point where the cavern wall met the bedrock and grew about a foot and a half on the ground.

Aloe's feet, not that unsettling unit that the assassins used to measure distance. I mean, who standardizes foot size and then uses it as a unit of measurement? Junkies, all of them.

"I won't deny, though, this is a bit of a problem," she abandoned her inner jokes as it wasn't the moment. "I mean, how long has it been since I planted the Slowtide?"

She tried to think of an answer. And tried. And tried some more.

"Oh, I'm screwed," Aloe realized. "I can't remember when I planted it. My sense of time is totally and utterly decimated."

The petite woman scratched her head some more trying to come up with an answer, but her mind was currently devoid of any thought. The average state of a cat, basically.

"Let's assume… two months, for now." She gave up and settled with approximations. "If the Slowtide has grown this much in this time – and we assume linear growth – then it will take about… four months before it reaches a crop? I mean, it's not that bad, and I could easily replant the affected crops in question in that time frame, but if it continues to expand, maybe I should do something about it. Maybe."

There were many things Aloe could do with the Slowtide, truth be told, she didn't even know if she would stay that many months down here, though she'd rather not think about that right now. But what she did next was, without a shadow of a doubt, not the best decision.

"Plop." She booped the slimy surface of the Slowtide.

There was something about the light refracted on the surface and also the bright – almost delicious-looking – pink color of the evolved lichen. However, all her curiosity vanished as her finger started plunging into the slime. And then continued sinking, without stopping.

Aloe frowned, but she refused to panic. Maybe it was her twisted sense of safety thanks to her many Blossomflames, but losing a finger didn't seem that much of a problem for her. Instead, she just yanked her finger out.

Or at least tried.

"Come. Out!" She pulled her finger out without applying much force as she feared she would dislocate it. Perhaps she didn't fear pain, but it was better to avoid it if possible. "Alright, it would seem I have become stuck. I need a new plan of action. What did the veritas say about the Slowtide?"

The parchment talked about something about surfaces, but Aloe wasn't familiar with the term, making her incapable of deciphering anything from it.

"Hmm, what about that prey part? The description said it trapped prey inside it, or something around those lines…" Her mind started sowing and blooming thoughts as if it was soil affected by blood infusions. "Trap. Prey. Slowtide. Slowness. Movement? No. The Slowtide does not move, it expands. Maybe the slowness references something else? Hmm…"

It was a foundationless thought, but she tried, nonetheless. Aloe switched her toughness she had prepared beforehand for haste.

Then she pulled with all her might.

Her finger was released as if she was never trapped and she was thrown backward, rolling on her head, and ending up sitting again a few steps away from the Slowtide.

Maybe a bit too much might.

"Ouch…" She grunted by reflex as she didn't really feel the pain with toughness active. Yes, she had also activated it by reflex. "How does this work?" She looked at her finger. It was a bit bruised but otherwise intact. "Slow things sink into the slime, fast ones don't?"

Aloe tried again by putting her finger inside. As she caressed the slime, her finger slowly sank if she didn't fight against gravity. But with a single fast pull boosted with haste, she removed her finger as if there was nothing there in the first place keeping it lodged.

"Not too shabby, though I fail to see any applications besides traps." And she doubted those traps would work as no one in their sane mind would step into bright pink slime. "But how does this work? How can a solid become liquid when force is applied? Hmm… this sounds like the opposite of quicksand. If you are trapped in that the best course of action is not to struggle, and move slowly, but here if you move fast and struggle, you can remove yourself… Scratch that, this doesn't even work as a trap then, the only thing it can trap are things that can't even move."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Still, there was one more property described by the veritas that she was interested in.

"Paraphrasing the veritas description and reading between lines, it seems that the soporific properties apply to trapped prey… well, time for further testing…"

Of course, Aloe didn't submerge herself in the Slowtide but instead put her finger inside again. She was still donning haste as toughness would be counterproductive when what she wanted to test how strong the lichen's sedative was.

The first finger hastily sunk, but even after five minutes, Aloe felt no difference in her wakefulness. So she put one more finger. Then another. And more. Before she knew it, her entire left hand was submerged in the slime. Even if still no sleepiness overcame her, Aloe couldn't her but frown.

"How deep is this pool of slime?" Her whole hand was inside the Slowtide by now, but Aloe had yet to find the bottom of the pool.

So she pushed deeper.

And deeper.

By the time the slime was reaching up to her elbow, Aloe decided to stop, otherwise, she was foreseeing her fall into a bottomless pit of slime.

"Why am I not surprised?" Aloe mumbled after removing her arm with a fell swoop. "I mean, I know I'm dealing with magical plants, but a bottomless pit should at least faze me a bit."

Instead of being bewildered by the Slowtide's apparent endless depth, the cultivator thoroughly washed her arm. She didn't want any of the mycelium to stick to her skin, or heavens forbid, start growing on it.

"So far no soporific properties have been detected," she commented as she dried her arm. "Do I need to take a bath in the slime to feel them? If that's the case, that will be a hard pass on my part. This does increase the value of the Dream Spore in retrospect, though, if I'm able to command the dreams as I do with the fire of the Blossomflames."

However, her tests were far from over. The next one was trying to see if the wall section of the Slowtide had also immeasurable depth.

"Is it called 'depth' if the distance is applied on the horizontal axis, though?" She pondered aloud as she rammed her fist into the liquified wall. "Ow!"

The Slowtide refused to accept her hand and deflected it. Aloe clutched her hand and blew on it. It ached quite a bit as had been using the speed stance.

"Aren't you supposed to accept fast things?" Aloe tried punching the ground section of the floor in case it had been a problem with the wall, but her fist was repelled too. "Am I stupid?"

She asked the heavens, and they failed to answer back. Which she took as an implicit confirmation of her supreme intelligence.

"Hmm… hitting it too fast turns it into a solid. But if I just move fast, it becomes a liquid?" Aloe tried experimenting with what she had already taken for granted.

The results were the following:

One: when slowly applying force, the Slowtide acted as a liquid.

Two: when hastily applying force, the Slowtide acted as a solid.

Three, and here was the kicker: when hastily applying inwards force, the Slowtide acted as a liquid.

"Wait, wait, wait…" She caressed her chin deep in thought. "I think I'm beginning to understand the 'hunting' habits of this lichen. If something walks on top of it, then it will sink inside. Then if they begin to struggle, the surface becomes a liquid, making it harder for them to escape. But if the target was running instead of walking, they would be able to just walk on top of it… which makes sense, kind of, as the Slowtide wouldn't be able to trap a fast-moving creature."

In all honesty, Aloe's brain was steaming by now. She couldn't comprehend how a thing could be both solid and liquid when being applied force in both instances. That felt somewhat more magical than the bottomless properties of the Slowtide.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm going to test this. It's now or never, after all." Her plan was to run on top of the Slowtide, and if her theories failed… well, only one leg would fall inside as the evolved lichen's surface was but a puddle in size at the moment. "Better to test it now before it expands to a pool."

Aloe took a deep breath and donned haste. She was getting jittery as this was going to be the most dangerous experiment she would perform so far. It could cost her a leg! And she was well aware of what life was without them. Too aware.

"And one. And two. And…" She broke into a dash before counting up to three and ran over where the Slowtide was. Just in case, she ran with her left side hugging the wall. If she lost her leg, at least she would lose the one she had less coordination with.

It had taken only five seconds, but when she stopped with her sprint, her heart was already going thrice as fast as it had been beating before.

"Dunes, I think I missed." During her whole dash she didn't feel the feedback on her feet change, and even if her hypothesis was correct and the Slowtide had turned solid underneath her, it would have induced a change of feedback on her spring. And it wasn't unlikely she could miss something as the puddle was small. "Once more I guess…"

The petite woman walked back to the starting position of her dash, still hell-bent on sacrificing her left leg if one was going to take the hit. Now, as she broke into a sprint, she was more careful to land her step into the lichen instead of aimlessly running in fear.

And it worked.

Her left foot felt a difference in springiness as it came back up, and she stopped her movement after experiencing so. After having taken a step or two away from the Slowtide, of course.

"Hmm, it was actually kinda springy under my foot. Like some sort of jump pad like the tensed textiles that the soldiers use for training. I didn't guess it would also be bouncy. It's not much of an important feature, but it's nice knowing it. Now for the dipping test."

Aloe was way less fearful of this experiment even if it required her putting a foot into the Slowtide, just for virtue of being able to sit whilst doing so. That way she wouldn't fall into the bottomless pits of slime.

And sure enough, her foot easily sunk into the mycelium. With a proper application of haste, she was able to remove it without any complications.

"This may be more useful for home defense than I originally thought… but not by much. I could trick an assassin or alike to fall into it, though." She didn't count on it. "Now, where are the soporific properties I have been promised?"

Even after dedicating the rest of the day searching for them, Aloe came empty-handed in her quest for sedatives.