Valerie had successfully improved the 'compress earth' spell, she did not get the genius trait but she also didn't get nothing. Her bonus trait was 'genius disciple', the system was apparently serious with the time frame on the genius traits. On the flip side because she received training from a previous owner she gained a connected trait that basically gave her a weaker version of the same bonuses and noted she was on a waiting list. I was probably going to get several girls on that list, in which case I wondered how it decided who went first to get the full trait... in any case it let her see her skill levels now, but the improved verbosity was not part of it. The spell itself became easier to handle by letting her compress less instead of maximum power all the time.
I could pseudo do that by throttling the power manually, but I could only get it down to about half power, while her mastery effect let her go down to near twenty percent. After a bit of testing with the new control and getting a couple more levels in it we focused more on 'harden stone', and since she already got the nearest equivalent to the genius trait I could help her think of things to try without worrying I would screw up her ability to get it. Some time into testing it turned out the answer was penetrative power, mastery let it go deeper into the rock with one zap instead of needing energy to build up on the surface that then seeped in. Once again I could sort of do that manually with raw power and doing a double cast, but even with all that her spell was more efficient at it.
We finished up grinding out levels with that before we switched to trying something weird, I wanted to see if I could jump her straight to 'control dirt' like I did with Victoria, or if that was only possible because of our already established connection. I had her hold a ball of dirt in one hand and I grabbed the opposite one, then like before I attempted to use her body as a wand. It was much more difficult to do so and she said it was very painful, but she felt okay to continue, her feedback resistance was high enough that it just hurt without doing real damage. I turned on my feedback absorber at low strength to take the edge off of her and kept pushing through, I lost track of time with how concentrated I was on this but eventually I connected to the dirt ball.
I felt my resistance tick up a notch in how much pain it was absorbing when that happened, so I was glad I decided to pull some off of her. I then instructed her to try and weave her magic so it did exactly what mine was doing, and she did her best at that for quite some time, and although it hadn't worked as I intended, it may have still worked. As she funneled her magic along mine her 'move dirt' started gaining exp like mad, even though we were already well past it's diminishing return point. Meaning that she may actually get it to level fifty and unlocked the next tier before her adult molt, I was worried that the leveling restriction would have left us just short of the mark, which would have annoyed me to no end.
Even that hit a bottleneck soon, she was stuck at level forty on the dot, sixteen levels in one day was a massive boost, and if we could pull off near a repeat performance tomorrow then we will be golden. Well, silver in Valerie's case, but you got the idea. I eased off on the spell channeling and she was suddenly really woozy, like my magic was holding her up and without it she felt wrong. I told her to try and rub her feedback resistance on the odd parts, and yes I knew that trying to rub a passive skill on something made no sense but it was worth a shot, and maybe she would be better after a good sleep. She agreed to try before we got dinner and headed inside for the night.
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It had been five days since Valerie changed from a larva, and judging by her height compared to other workers I was sure this was to be her last day as a nymph. After breakfast we immediately resumed our training from yesterday with channeling magic through her body to learn it. I increased my feedback absorption level so she could focus more on the spell instead of the headache and thus maybe gain exp faster. It worked brilliantly and we only stopped at ninety-nine percent xp on level forty-nine because she needed the mastery requirements. Let's see, advanced mastery is force amplification so she needed to stress the spell on those aspects. Starting out some sticks and working up to largish branches to break with remote dirt hands.
Once she snapped a branch with crushing force she dropped the magic and got an excited look before she went slightly cross eyed from reading a notification. After she finished reading it I asked what she got, it was an even bigger bird themed boost, Moon bird, a forty percent exp boost for skills she learned early, and it was a very rare. Hopefully getting something like that before her adult molt would be a big deal. Next I told her to ask the box if she was allowed to unlock 'control dirt', turned out it unlocked a quest that needed to be done to earn it. "Move a total of one thousand tons of dirt", it was not retroactive, but luckily she could query it and it would tell her how much she had done. With it we did some testing and it showed that moving a glob, dropping it, then picking it back up and moving it again didn't count, she needed tons of different dirt.
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It sounded a lot worse than it actually was, since she could use magic for it she could easily move a hundred tons a day, but she only had maybe hours left until her molt so getting it before that was impossible. I told her to relax until it was time to change so she had plenty of energy to pull free of her current casing. She surprised me by giving me a hug and thanking me for dedicating so much time and effort to her own growth at the cost of mine. I had to ask what she was talking about, and it seemed that while they didn't get exact memories like queens there was a sort of vague collective knowledge of the role of workers. According to that, a worker was the most replaceable caste so me spending so much time with her made her really happy.
That was kind of sad, that their father caring for them was such a foreign concept that getting it made them incredibly happy. It didn't help that her boosted stats were the only reason she could feel this way, the other workers just didn't comprehend the idea of caring about someone just because. I could spend a month hanging out with a normal worker and they would never get it, they would just think I was making sure they did a good job. So I explained to her that if she ever wanted some affection she was allowed to just find me and ask to hang out, I may need to work out some scheduling but I would find time to do that. I also told her to pass it on to her sisters, even if they never took me up on it they should know they had the option.
She nodded and after another quick hug she said she would be with mother if I needed her before she finished, otherwise she would come find me when she was done and headed inside. Hmmm, now let's see what I could do for the rest of the day... ah, I'll get started on a bigger better charcoal maker, the last batch was starting to get low and there were tons of branches laying around from the wall building. Making a giant hollow mound of dirt with extra clay in it for stability was easy enough but how to make it easily reusable? I got it! I can make a plug door with an angle like a bottle stopper so it will be a snug fit even if there was shrinkage. A few waves of my hand was all it took to form my dirt desire, hmmm.. I need to get the fire into the middle and have vents to draw fire all the way through it.
Another hand wave and new holes with matching plugs formed along the base and a largish roof one to finish the set. Yeah, that looked good, now the tedious task of breaking wood bits into proper sized chunks. Lucky for me it was actually not as tedious as it could have been, having multiple dirt hands working in concert let me break and move a staggering amount of wood really quickly. In perhaps less than an hour I had filled my charcoal mound and had a dry leaf matrix through it so the whole thing would be ignited quickly. I grabbed a hot coal from the cooking fire and dropped it in the top, then used my dirt bellows technique to fan the flames super effectively, with all the setup beforehand the entire thing was lit up in minutes.
One last wave of my hand jammed all the plugs in and, unlike a normal mound made of plain dirt, the high clay content of this one made it not even smoke. I sat next to it and passively worked on 'move dirt' while I waited, it was fun playing with the formations I could make because of it's limitations. When a soldier came home with new meat I told her what the mound was and to not open it, it could cause a backdraft from all the hot wood suddenly getting air. She didn't get what a backdraft was but she did understand that the mound had fire in it, so she agreed to spread the rule when she saw a sister. Hmm, now what... guess I will go see what the berry grove is up to, maybe the tree was done transforming, or at the least the pod was finished regrowing it's mana lattice?
But I didn't want to go alone in case the tree was done growing, I needed a worker to come with to explain any rules about tree fruits. I just had to wait a few minutes and one came up with an armful of rock dug from the tunnel, she piled them against the wall and turned around, but before she headed back inside I stopped her and told her come with me instead. She emoted that her crew would be confused by her long absence, so I let her go back down to tell them she had a new assignment and to put someone else on rock moving duty. She moved pretty quickly and once back up we headed out to the grove to hopefully get something new from the place.
On arrival it looked much the same as before but the tree had grown immensely, and while it still lacked fruit it was starting to look like a real tree instead of three bushes twisted together into the form of a tree. The mana pod was repaired and a little bit bigger, and the flower was much bigger, large enough that if it had a hole I could fit into it. Still, nothing interesting happened when I entered the grove so I walked up to the mana pod and started feeding it. Without a celestial to feed and gear boosting me I only needed one break from running too low on mana this time.
I watched it with mana sense as it crunched down the offering and the energy was absorbed by the central mass, but the response mana burst flaired up not only the central energy root of the flower but the secondary root woven around it lit up as well. Nothing seemed different at first before I realized the response mana wasn't a burst, it was a steady stream of energy this time, I looked over at the flower just as it began to open.