A quick look into Lauren’s Energy view reveals she isn’t completely healed, but also isn’t in danger anymore. While my Energy pool is full again, I don’t have any interest in waking her up early, and even less in making her in peak fighting condition. Honestly though, she should probably have already healed completely by now. My health was at about half when I passed out, and I’m full now, so it stands to reason that she should also be almost healed. Instead, she still looks like a bit of a mess. A recovering mess, but still. Maybe if she had a healing potion. Not that I’d give it to her.

I think major injuries might decrease healing rate. Like how Rav couldn’t recover past a certain point due to his amputation. Or maybe serious injury reduced overall Health and it takes some time to regenerate that.

Enter Energy healing. It can fix what ails you fast. Faster, anyway.

That being said, Energy isn’t exactly the best for quick tricks and gimmicks in combat, so I’m going to see what I can do to add a bit to my rapid-response ability.

With alchemy.

Producing the alchemical ingredients I found in the fields, on my way to the river the first time, I finally take note of what I actually have:

* 5 orange flowers

* 5 white flowers

* 5 green flowers

* 5 green buds (Immature flowers, I think)

* 5 red flowers

* 5 purple flowers

Time to test their properties. And if video games and cooking have taught me anything, that means eating them.

Oh boy.

What follows could only be described as a slightly harrowing experience of Russian Roulette but with a proverbial gun that could have all blanks or have all live rounds and I wouldn’t know.

With me being the only player.

The orange flower appears to do nothing, and doesn’t taste like much, until I open my mouth to put the next flower in, when I notice a small amount of light coming from inside. Just to make sure it isn’t my imagination, I spend a few moments opening and closing my mouth, but sure enough, it’s like I ate a firefly. Useful.

White is next. It tastes… familiar. Why, exactly, I couldn’t say, but it becomes a little more clear when a small ‘+1’ appears for a moment over my Energy bar. My initial excitement is dashed as I find it is not, in fact, a max Energy upgrade, but a current Energy upgrade, and it doesn’t go above my max. Still, regenerating Energy faster would be invaluable for more difficult wounds.

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Or people with an Energy void like Lauren…

The green flower does not appear to do anything. It tastes a bit like onion though, which is nice.

The green bud is really chewy and quite an unpleasant taste. Kinda like grass. My heart drops further as I see a +1 appear over my Health bar. Why couldn’t the onion one have been Health?

Bullshit.

My good luck with non-harmful ingredients comes to an abrupt end with the red flower, which literally burns the inside of my mouth and sizzles lightly on the ground after I spit it out. It even manages to deal a damage to me! Which… I’ll concede is getting off light compared with what could have happened.

What if I had swallowed it…

Talk about heartburn.

Finally, the purple flower. I’m a little wary after being scalded, but there’s only one way to find out what it does. I gently chew the flower. It tastes almost… purple? A force, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, radiates through my body, burning and tearing at me, causing my health to rapidly drop. Tense seconds go by as I spit it out but the effect doesn’t stop. My mind is going too fast for me to think about using Energy to help, and I can only watch, panicked, as my health drops with each wracking wave.

Suddenly, the effect stops and the damage levels off after only a fifth of my Health is gone.

I’m left, sweating on all fours, with no idea WHY THAT HAPPENED.

The pain mostly vanished when the effect ended, but there’s a spot on my leg that burns particularly painfully. I pull up my shorts leg to investigate, and there’s a dime sized area of scorched skin. Why the fuck? Why there in particular?

I check the pocket, to see if there was something metal or something, as I’d obviously just been shocked pretty badly by a flower, but instead I find the little Mana battery, now glowing slightly.

The memory of Rav talking about the process involved in getting Mana, the danger it poses, how it has to essentially create channels for itself in your body… That was a Mana flower, but I have no Mana pool, so it just… tried to leave.

If the trend of previous ingredients holds, that was the effect of one Mana applied to my body. Holy fuck.

Rav wasn’t kidding, I would probably have died if I insisted on being given Mana. I’m sure his control would have lessened the damage a bit, but I really doubt it would have been enough.

[You have been afflicted with the status effect: Burned Channels - An overflow of Mana has caused damage to your Mana channels, preventing you from regenerating Mana. Consult your Village Healer for a cure. Duration: ---]

Ffffffuck.

Yeah, that was the kind of thing I was really hoping *not* to have happen. Health I can replace, poison I can outlast, paralysis will go away at some point, but a semi-permanent status effect? That literally says in the tooltip that I need a ‘Village Healer’ to fix? Fuck me.

At least it only affects my Mana, which I don’t actually have any of-

There’s a Mana bar.

I have a mana bar now.

It reads: 0/1.

I hate this fucking game.