Even though her calculations told her she was on track for greatness regardless of what she did, Aloe couldn't help but press herself forward. She had nothing to do now besides evolving and training, after all.

She couldn't wait to change her evolving habits from Cottonpulls to Radiating Undergrowths, so she wanted to get that optimal vitality as soon as possible.

Growth was paradoxically slow yet fast. Compared to any other type of growth, Aloe was ahead of the curve by leagues, both in vitality and Nurture. But precisely because she knew her numbers were so massive, she wanted them even larger and faster.

Aloe drowned herself in a puddle, waiting for tomorrow as today was too slow for her.

Slowly – agonizingly so – but surely, she made her underground camp habitable and able to suit most of her needs. The Radiating Undergrowth provided light, the Blossomflames provided heating and cooking, normal cotton provided insulation and comfort, and the liberty caps and potatoes were her source of sustenance.

She had all those plants providing for her, but a thought in her mind couldn't stop gnawing at her. "What if I had more?" She kept herself asking. Her suffering wasn't one of perfectionism, but greediness. She wanted more. She needed more. It was an unconscious effort that drained her energies, Aloe couldn't control it, but her body ached for more.

A splinter in a wound that the Blossomflames couldn't heal.

Training her body closed off the sounds of her mind. The more she steeled her body, the more silent her inner djinns were.

"Ugh… ugh…" Aloe panted as she heaved a boulder up and down. It was difficult doing so, but her strength was greater than a human being should possess. "And… ten!"

The boulder almost as big as her made a dust cloud once Aloe let it fall to the ground. Her hands and arms trembled, but her heart pumped full of vitality. Lively.

"Training with potency certainly has its advantages, but I need more data before coming up with a conclusion. I can't yet tell if weight training is more or less effective than without it."

She was utterly spent after lifting a rock that even two soldiers would have struggled to carry, but it wasn't that difficult for someone with the strength of twelve people. Maybe even more.

"Well, I think I'm ready to start evolving death cap spores now," she commented as she wiped her sweat off and undid her ponytail. It was awkward having to tie it as she had never had enough hair to do so, but training was a harrowing experience if she left it free.

Over these last weeks, Aloe had been growing her physical capabilities – muscle mass just one of many – and her vitality reserves. She was not quite there on the optimal value she had calculated to start using Radiating Undergrowths as her default evolution, but impatience was getting the worst of her. She needed change, and the Cottonpulls had yet to fully grow even if they were taking quite the unusual shape, and her single Dream Spore still had to regrow.

Though both were close.

Her excuse for breaking her 'promise' to herself was that she also needed to train and become acquainted with the death cap spores' flow of vitality to evolve them far more efficiently.

The cultivator donned toughness and made a small incision on a mushroom of her death cap colony, then slowly, she removed the spores on her knife until one remained.

Evolving a Radiating Undergrowth, whilst not trivial, was easy. She had well over a mansworth excess of the vitality needed to evolve it, so she didn't suffer from pains.

The same couldn't be said for the exhaustion.

"Oof…" Aloe panted as she was done with the evolution of the new specimen a few minutes later. "No matter how much vitality I end up getting, spending two digits will always leave me breathless, eh."

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Aloe chuckled to herself and got up. Considering the evolved spore could grow anywhere, she had better hurry up before it started growing on her knife. This new Radiating Undergrowth was planted far from the former two to distribute light across the chasm as efficiently as possible. She had clear it in her mind that she didn't want one growing in her crevice. Sleeping next to such bright light, especially the closer you got to it, would have been a near impossible task, even if it provided her with the warmth she very much needed.

She was more than happy enough to sleep with a potted Blossomflame.

"Maybe I could already spend a bit of vitality on blood infusions?" The petite woman mused once she started cooking. "Hmm… maybe after I have started with three daily undergrowth evolutions, otherwise I will handicap myself and will only be able to evolve one per day."

Such was the inevitable repetition of routine. A series of highs and lows so temperate that meant nothing for the current self. Yet they were a key factor in one's future.

Exercising. Cooking. Eating. Evolving. Washing. Resting. Sleeping. Many actions could describe Aloe's activities in the underground, yet she constantly felt as if she was drowning in mundanity doing nothing, no matter if she didn't have a moment to breathe from the moment she woke up since the moment she went to sleep.

Insidious hooks that drove and were driven by the mind.

Twelve.

That was the amount of mansworth she needed to evolve three death cap spores per day. A number that she reached one week later. Her recovery internal infusion now worked at speeds her younger self back at the oasis would have thought outright impossible. Besides having far larger reserves, she had also extensively trained her body's innate regeneration by pushing herself this hard and far.

Aloe could restore a mansworth, the very amount of vitality a human possessed, in five minutes.

And that number would just inevitably grow larger and larger and larger.

"Why do I feel this… empty when I have so much?" The cultivator opened and closed her hand repeatedly as a Radiating Undergrowth spore rested in her palm. "So empty yet lively?"

Her body felt more alive than ever before, more energized and active than those days she sat behind a desk, even before the events of Asina. Yet her mind… her mind lagged behind. A shadow of what her body was.

"Only after I evolve the living stones…" She promised herself and planted the new spore.

Exercising. Cooking. Eating. Evolving. Washing. Resting. Sleeping.

It took one week before the chasm suffered any change.

"Hmm?" Aloe looked at the darkness-coated ceiling of the chasm as she heard something. "What was that? An earthquake?" She knew what those were, but she couldn't say she had ever experienced one. A few motes of dust and pebbles fell all around her camp, but after a few minutes, the movement and the sound stopped. "Huh, weird."

She let it pass as even if the sounds had been quite astounding once she wielded acuity, the tremors were quite acute.

"I wonder if I should do some endurance training in the river?" So soon were her thoughts replaced by another thing. "Maybe if I catch hypothermia or something I could train toughness, but would the Blossomflames protect me against such afflictions? Hmm, I need to talk about it with the pillow."

And then she promptly forgot about that too. Truth was, she was reticent to train her toughness internal infusion as it would involve putting herself in too much danger for her liking. And she already felt like it was her strongest stance by far.

When she woke up the next day, she was surprised to find another change.

"Finally!" Aloe jumped on the spot as her eyes landed on a matured and flourished Cottonpull.

Unlike the Radiating Undergrowth who had a binary switch from growing to matured, she had been able to see and document the Cottonpull's growth as it acted as a more traditional plant with stages. Those documents consisted of crude sketches of the Cottonpull in its diverse stages of growth more than actual theory and annotations.

The reason why Aloe knew that the Cottonpull had truly flourished was because her vitality sense told her so. Plants – any living being, really – emitted some sort of sensation beyond their latent vitality. It wasn't of quantity, but quality. Seeds were a buzz, growing plants were an occasional static discharge like that one you got when you wore wool, and finally, matured plants were a constant thrum not unlike the beating of a heart.

She was getting the latter impression from the Cottonpull before her.

Aloe approached the Cottonpull with acuity active as the Radiating Undergrowth's light didn't quite reach here, but her first impression upon seeing it was…

"Big…" The cultivator peered at the sack hanging above the main plant.

It was an uncommon sight, though not fully physics-defying. The Cottonpull's sack looked like a bag that had been filled with balls and left hanging on a clothesline. Only that instead of pointing downward as it should, the sack's bottom pointed to the heavens with its mouth pointing to the ground.

"How do you work?" Aloe mouthed as she slowly put herself under the sack. The interior would have been dark if it weren't for acuity. "Yup, those are balls."

As she looked upward, the petite woman saw multiple balls resting in the sack, but somehow, they defied gravity and refused to come down.

"Alright, I can think of some applications… but first let's get one out of there."