I didn’t realize until too late that I am, in fact, an idiot. What about Solar Energy reacting explosively with mana did I fail to understand? The only part of me that isn’t made out of pure mana is my wooden arm and the device that turns mana into Solar Energy and back again. Well, and my dungeon core as well. What really confuses me is why didn’t this violent reaction occur the first time I evolved with Solar Energy? Does it have to do with the amount of the stuff I was using? Cause that is the only thing that makes sense to me.

Well, I guess that isn’t entirely true anymore, but we’re getting to that.

At first, I was excited, I had succeeded in triggering a Solar Energy evolution by triggering an evolution while in my Solar Energy room and doing some fancy magic with the stuff. Then it started to hurt, not too bad, but any pain is weird when evolving. It is usually a rather pleasurable sensation.

I was worried until I noticed that it was actually working, my body was actually changing for the better. From there I directed the process while observing the basics, trying to figure out how it works so I can replicate it later. Yeah, it was still painful, but not unbearable, and I did manage to figure out how to replicate the process.

And then it reached the part of me that turns Solar Energy into mana. At first, there wasn’t much of a reaction, the mana was quickly grabbed up by the hand of the world, which is more than capable of keeping the two energies from interacting. And so I was directing the world in the usage of both Solar Energy and mana in changing and improving my body. That was when I noticed something interesting, the world was not using mana to try and layer spells on top of me to make my body better, it was only trying to use mana to directly improve the structure of my body, which it is bad at doing, like it would if it was using Solar Energy. That doesn’t take mana out of the equation, mana used in that way just come right back as nothing is tying it up.

So more and more mana was being created, and the amount of Solar Energy was dwindling pretty rapidly. And then the mana reached the part of me that creates Solar Energy using mana as a catalyst. Now Solar Energy was being created and used up, with it being created faster and faster, while mana was only being created.

At this point, the pain was starting to get worse and worse. But I couldn’t stop the process, I had tried a couple times with plants before. The result is not compatible with life in any form. So I had no choice but to bear with it until it was over. But the pain kept getting worse, and more mana and Solar Energy was building up in my body, and then I realized something. Every time I evolve something the evolution only ends when there is no more energy left to use, not a moment sooner. This isn’t a zero-sum system, more energy is being poured into it endlessly. Even worse because the part that was getting the most focus was the part that was making more energy, simply because that is where all the energy was coming from. There was nothing I could do to stop that and the pain was only getting worse as energy built up.

It got to the point where the only thing I could think about was stopping the pain, so I reached for some Flore out of my wooden arm to try and kill the pain. It did help, though not directly. Flore itself was useless for numbing this pain, but it did alleviate the pain for a little bit by giving the energy something else to focus on. And then a different type of pain, something I would relate to twisting flesh, as the perfected forms of all of my plants were pulled from the arm and incorporated into my body as a whole. There were the obvious parts of having Pipeweed veins running throughout my body and Mithrialwood bones, but I don’t care enough right now to figure out what exactly did what.

And that continued for a while, I have no way to know exactly how long, until I started desperately reaching for anything else I could use to kill the pain. The next thing I reached for was my dungeon core, which helped as a bunch of the energy was consumed improving it, but that was only Solar Energy. Mana was incapable of directly interacting with it. Eventually, the production of Solar Energy outpaced what was being consumed by my core again and I started reaching somewhere else. I reached for my forest, trying to flood them with mana and Solar Energy.

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And then everything exploded. Trying to force mana to leave my body while in a room filled with Solar Energy was a bad idea, but I had forgotten that at the moment. In hindsight, I’m glad it happened during an evolution, as the world is determined to keep you alive and healthy while you are evolving, which, as a result of the same action that caused the building to explode, now included my trees. The damage could have been a lot worse, but thanks to blind luck it was not.

Of course, this caused even more problems, like so much more mana flooding my forest from the world, some of which was being paid as tribute to me. Effectively nullifying my attempts to remove that energy from my body, I don’t know if I failed to comprehend that I could or if my trees refused, but for whatever reason I didn’t get them to stop giving me that mana.

And so the pain only got worse as I reached for something else to help numb the pain. My mental connection with Azrezel was the next thing my mind felt, his undead body is incapable of feeling pain and his thoughts are calming. So I offloaded as much energy as I could onto him as I triggered an evolution in him. I didn’t ask, I was in too much pain to think about it, but he accepted it without a fuss.

so I reached further. I found the threads connecting many of the people here to my forest and did the same thing to them. I knew they would hurt from it, but I couldn’t bring myself to care at that moment, it’s difficult to think of other people’s pain when you are in so much yourself. It helped a lot, but it still wasn’t quite enough, production had gotten out of hand at that point.

It still wasn’t enough, and so I reached more. And I found my Ents, all of them, all over the world. I’m not even sure it only included the ones I made personally, there was a lot more than I remember making. And so I made them evolve and poured energy into them. Not all of them were able to evolve at the time, several of them were in danger in one form or another. But they would evolve once the danger has passed, and the energy I gave them would linger till then, being controlled by the hand of the world. I still managed to direct the evolution, it was instinctual, like something I had to do in order for them to evolve at all. And I thought that was the end, the pain was disappearing and the amount of energy I had was decreasing, slowly, yes, but still decreasing.

That didn’t last long, the part that was creating all the energy in the first place was still getting better, it was still producing energy faster and faster.

So I reached further, and I found Azrezel’s telepathic link to his own undead, through my own link to him. So I did to them the same thing I’ve been doing. I triggered an evolution in all of them and gave them as much energy as I could. Every little bit helped, but it still wasn't enough.

I reached for what I thought was the last link I could find, something nearby that had the attention of the hand of the world. Not evolving or anything, the world was simply watching. It was Tiddol, the world was watching her creative frenzy. I didn’t evolve her like I did with everyone else, but I did patch up her body of its various minor injuries accumulated in her frenzy and fueled whatever process was going on that caused the frenzy. It would have ended today or tomorrow, but now it will be extended by another week. That one I feel bad about.

The next connection was vague, even more so than the indirect connection to Tiddol. And it was distant. Par was at the edge of my perception, linked to my core somehow. And his soldiers were linked through him, only even more vague and indistinct. That didn’t matter, within moments of focusing on it the world refined it to be firm and unwavering. And so they all started to evolve, fueled by everything I could give them.

At this point, I had grown numb to the pain, or maybe my body was simply better adapted to whatever it was that was causing me pain in the first place. I don’t know, all I know is that I was no longer thinking clearly at that point, my only thoughts revolved around stopping my evolution without dying myself.

It was at that point that I started to notice something, even now I’m not entirely sure what it is, just that I haven’t stopped seeing it. So I reached for them and found living creatures on the other side, and did to them the same thing I’ve been doing to everyone.

And then there was nothing else to reach for, and I was still producing more and more mana and Solar Energy. So I just started expelling as much energy directly from my body as I could. It wasn’t very fast at first, and improvements to the process were slow with how much my focus was split, but the world did improve my ability to expel mana and Solar Energy from my body, and over the course of several hours it gradually overtook the speed at which I was producing mana and Solar Energy, which had started to plateau.

And now it’s over, and I am incredibly sore. I’m going to take enough Flore to knock out a bear and go to sleep. I’ll figure out exactly what happened tomorrow, I really don’t want to force myself to think right now.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.