It was an infuriating experience failing at everything one was disposed to do. Aloe boiled in the hatred of frustration. Countless dreams in the world of ideas had only brought her enhanced insight, but insight was useless without knowledge to complement it.

No matter how many times she pressed herself into one of the hells, she was unable to get anything from them. Surely the world of ideas was related to the vital art of the assassins – Enlightenment as Aaliyah had once called it – but her insight was not realization. There were no revelations, no answers.

It certainly didn't help that Umar was nowhere to be seen. Her fears grew bigger, and she was mostly sure by now that even the man's ghost had passed away, probably to a deeper hell.

For the first time, Aloe comprehended that people could be burnt without any fire.

A searing that didn't permeate in one's body, but the mind, ever-so-fickle.

But she couldn't give up just yet, there was something in that world – in that hell – that she still had to find. Was it answers? Was it a new magic? She couldn't tell, but the insight was calling for her, to keep prying, to satiate her infinite curiosity.

However, her struggles weren't without higher and more difficult obstacles. Most of the time she pulled herself into dreams via Dream Spore, Aloe was forced to see the worst part of herself, the most hideous part of her humanity.

Lust.

Abhorrent debauchery, the sins of the flesh all born from her twisted self.

She could tolerate those wet dreams lying with Rani or Fatima, perhaps even a faceless mist of a person without a defined gender. But things weren't that simple, they always got worse. Sometimes Mirrah would appear. She was disappointed with herself that she was still lusting after her aunt, not only because she was a married woman, but a widow.

A widow… of her own device.

Yet even with the clinging blood of her sins, Aloe saw lust as something worse than murder. Because she saw that it always could get worse. And she no longer was referring to how Naila may also appear in her dreams – lusting over a minor was even more deplorable – but of the ought.

Of the what could be.

What would be next.

What if… what if the dreams could be even worse? What if in one of those dreams that she looked to alleviate her lust it was no longer Rani who appeared but instead…

Aloe puked.

She couldn't even put it into thought. It was too much. She was too scared. Scared of herself.

Of her twisted mind.

She continued to evolve. To practice. To not think. To close herself off in the cold darkness of a heaven-forsaken chasm. Light she may have and have control over, but never before had she felt a more oppressive darkness over her being.

The comfort of ceaseless repetition, of outer instead of inner growth, was one pleasure Aloe was addicted to. Nurturing herself to be greater if paradoxically feebler.

Time had truly lost its meaning. Comfort too. Why waste her hard-won vitality into making her crevice fertile when she could just push through her sleep? She was forced to wield toughness every time she went to sleep anyway. The cyclical functions of her body had… lost their rhythm.

Ah, the effervescence of meaning. Did something have to have meaning to be longed for? To desire it? Such passions were also devoid of such 'meaning', but somehow, Aloe still continued to push herself.

Sixty-one.

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Sixty-three.

Sixty-nine.

Seventy-two.

Seventy-six.

Eighty.

"Ah," the miserable bag of flesh and bones groaned as the mist in her mind slightly cleared. It was hard feeling like oneself as of late, or so those were supposed to be her thoughts. "I promised to try the evolution once I reached seventy-five mansworth. I… forgot."

With a hand pressed against her head, Aloe stumbled forward. Her walk was precarious and her posture crestfallen, yet every time she was nearing a fall, an instinctual acuity kicked in, providing her supernatural balance. It was impossible for her to fall, to get hurt, to get a cold, yet… she felt so weak…

Aloe opened a living stone with her bare fingers. With a single push, the plant burst open, the seeds lying free at her disposal. The mess grabbed a seed and tied it on the tips of her long hair. So lengthy it was now that it reached her knees. So... devoid of meaning.

But yet she knew what she had to do. How to do it. What steps to take during the process. Instinctually, part of a greater whole and practiced repetition, she donned recovery and reached for vitality pills with her hand.

"Living stone evolution test number five begins… now." Her tone may be dead, but her knack for theatrics had become muscle memory. It was as if she was legally bound by a contract to put that emphasis on the last word.

Then the process started.

Vitality poured out of her body and into the yellowish seed with great speed. But she couldn't stay watching. She was close to the estimated amount of vitality the living stone would need to evolve, but she wasn't there just yet. She had to fight for it.

For life was a constant struggle.

No matter her mastery, it was hard fighting against Evolution itself. The drain on her reserves was powerful and even with all her might, Aloe could only make a dent on its potent pump of vitality, but making a dent was more than enough. A statement. A fact that she could make a difference.

With her overwhelming training in vitality usage, Aloe was confident that she was the most capable user of the regeneration stance in Khaffat. Combining her mastery of the stance and her eighty-mansworth, she could now restore a half-a-mansworth per second. Mighty powerful yes, but that was only when her vitality was topped.

The living stone seed quickly made those values meaningless as her vitality reserves were halved in less than a minute. Her vitality regeneration slowed significantly, especially when adding into play the exhaustion that accompanied Evolution, but the process was already midway through.

It was a matter of time before the vitality drain became sustainable.

That was one thing she had failed to account for during all her evolutions, her prodigious restoration of vitality. So far, she had only been evolving beings when she already had the needed total vitality, but when considering that she could regenerate the vitality of a person each second when using recovery, evolutions suddenly didn't look as daunting as before.

She had transcended the need for maximum vitality.

Or that was what the hopeful side of her said. A prideful optimism overtook her, though she didn't know if it was healthy. Not that anything she was doing now was.

Then, the tipping point had been reached.

Equilibrium.

Her vitality didn't wane nor restore. For the first time in her experience with the vital arts, Aloe had managed to balance the output and input of vitality. The living stone seed was draining her reserves at the same rate she could regenerate them.

But the equilibrium was bound to be broken.

In her favor.

Slowly but surely, the seed's evolution started to satiate. The rate at which it absorbed vitality slowed as its hunger was no longer ravenous. It didn't stop sapping her vitality anytime soon, though.

Yet even as she had her vitality drained, it reached the beautiful point she had never expected to witness. The seed was being evolved, but she was naturally gaining vitality, no need for pills whatsoever.

She almost cried.

It was a small thing, one bound to happen if one put a bit of thought, but her body and mind still were overflowing with joy. Taking victories whenever she found them, yes, but nevertheless ones thriving in glory.

"Ah," she let a yelp of fulfillment. She felt as if a part of her that had been empty for a long time had now been filled.

Should she have filled such a hole with such a milestone? Probably not. But sometimes potholes had to be filled with sand just to straighten the road.

It took time. It took tears. It took pain. It took suffering. But it happened. The seed stopped pulling from her very being, its hunger quelled. Voracity overtaken by raw quantity.

Aloe's fingers trembled as she found a greenish seed on the tip of one of her locks. Her reserves were already halfway full when they processed the meaning of her accomplishment. Without thinking about it twice, without enough mental power to take a more logical approach, Aloe pulled the seed out of her hair and rushed over the ever-useful Aloe Veritas.

With a flick of hands faster than thought, Aloe unsheathed her knife, cut a leaf, and sheathed it again. The parchment-like leaf hadn't even started falling when she finished.

The cultivator soaked the newly evolved seed in the bleeding cut, and as the text magically wrote itself on the parchment, Aloe felt herself validated.

Species: Heartgrowth

Sobriquet: Synergic Symbiont

Description: A member belonging to no family, their species is known for their ability to mimic organs and compliment the body of their host.

Alignment: Life, Chaos