Putting her ponderings as to the origin of the Bathar aside, Zalia checked the other room and found it was a library of sorts. It had many odd shelves with storage spaces in a diagonal square pattern with scrolls filed away in them. Despite the quite well preserved interior of the castle, many of the scrolls were in a decayed state bad enough she didn't touch them. There might be some magical way to preserve or refurbish them that she didn't know about and destroying ancient knowledge wasn't really in her list of things to do today.
While many were in a bad state, possibly as a result of being ancient even before the fall of the city they resided in, some were still good. Unfortunately, much like the rest of the writing she had found it was unreadable for her. Annoyed at her inability to read the possible information she had found, Zalia left the room leaving everything in its place. She wanted to go hit something but knew it was unwise to try the two Silver guards until her anti-death and long cooldown abilities were back up. That meant she had almost an entire day to kill.
She could have tried to get past the guards with her new teleport ability but deemed the idea unwise, the risk too great. She had a look over her ability level ups from killing the couple high ranked guards.
Congratulations! Hunter’s mark has reached Iron 16.
Congratulations! Nature’s wrath has reached Iron 14.
Congratulations! Protection of the Wilds has gained two levels reaching Iron 12.
Congratulations! Druid class has gained two levels reaching Iron 12.
She’d ignored the messages since they didn’t hold anything exciting and quickly cleared them away. Some of her Hunter abilities were getting quite close to a rank up but her Herbalist abilities were falling far behind. Then she realised that hey, maybe that was something she could spend her day doing. She had quite a few plants now that she didn’t need as well as the Water Lily she had already planted. Maybe starting a garden near her cave and searching some other islands for herbs would be a good idea.
With that in mind, Zalia went back up to the tower and using the ritual for her wings, she gave a set to Boreal and Delphi too.
“This will be a new experience,” Delphi said nervously.
“Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine,” Zalia comforted.
‘Mreow,” Boreal said.
“Yeah exactly, Boreal will catch you if you fall,” Zalia translated.
“Comforting,” Delphi replied deadpan.
They took off from the balcony, Delphi flying around near the ground experimentally for a moment. The flying frog was an odd sight to see but it would be the fastest way home and Zalia definitely wanted to spend the least amount of time out in the open as possible. They eventually made it across the city, up a pillar and back over to the island they all called home. Delphi was quite wobbly to begin with and both Boreal and Zalia had to slow down to make sure he didn't fall but the little frog eventually got a handle on it.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
When they arrived back, Zalia left the few pieces of parchment she had collected near to the pond edge of their cave home while Delphi dove into the water to meet back with the collective. It would be some time while they sorted through and thoroughly investigated each memory so Zalia and Boreal had some time. She started with pushing some healing energy into the Water Lilies, watching as their slightly withered stems came back to full life and slowly grew.
She definitely needed to stay around or at least come back to the pond often enough to keep them alive otherwise the, somewhat fainter down in the cave, corrupting aura would wither them much like the trees outside. Looking over at the small wooden shrine dedicated to the nameless god that spoke through Ro, Zalia had a thought. Even though the shrine was ancient and the tree it had been made from long dead, she had been able to make it grow roots with her ability. She had thought that the doing of the god when she had pushed her healing into it but now considered it differently.
It was very possible her own Druid ability was just capable of “healing” a plant to that degree. She left the cave to head outside and walked over to the nearest tree. She started pushing her healing into it and to her surprise the tree began untwisting with a cracking sound, leaves sprouting from its dead branches. Within a few minutes, a healthy looking, though still otherworldly, tree stood in front of her. It had strange blue glowing leaves that released a light pollen coating as the wind blew through them, the pollen dissipating soon after it left the leaf. She stopped funneling her healing into the tree and watched as the leaves slowly wilted and died, the trunk twisting in on itself once more with a horrid creaking sound. Before long, it matched the forest around it, dead and corrupt.
Zalia began using her earth and stone manipulation provided by the Physical resistance passive to funnel a good chunk of dirt into the cave. Over the course of the next hour or two, she dug an extra cavern space shooting off from the pool room and filled the floor with a thick coating of dirt. She got some more of the purple glowing mushrooms from the entrance cave, using the stone manipulation to help plant them into the walls of the new room, her healing providing them with a boost to get settled.
Then, she began planting a few of the bits and pieces she still held within her Stasis storage. Bitterbalm was the one she started with, despite it being replicable with her ability now. It was still a good herb to use with any cooking she would need to do, though it didn’t make the grey creature any more pleasant. She pushed some of the pieces containing more stem into the dirt and focused her Healing presence onto them. She watched in awe as small Bitterbalm plants slowly grew out of the stems, branching into the little bush shapes they took naturally. Granted, it was only an Iron rank herb and one of the most common herbs she had that grew everywhere from what she knew but it was still amazing.
She was kind of irritated that she hadn’t thought of trying this before, focused mostly on the healing the ability provided to people.
“Infinite herbs,” she thought.
And it was true, to a degree. She would probably be able to farm herbs using the combination of her Herbalist class and Druid class. In fact, she was a little surprised that her Herbalist class hadn’t come with any ability to grow herbs in the first place. Well, she wasn’t complaining either way though she would have to test if it worked on Bronze or even Silver herbs. Her guess was no. At least, not as effectively.
She tried Snow-leaf next and found it worked significantly less effectively. It only managed to get the herbs to spread a few small roots into the dirt, barely turning it from a herb into a plant.
“Still need the right growing conditions I guess,” Zalia thought.
Well, that was significantly less useful than she was hoping but still good. She wouldn't be able to grow herbs like Flame-root or Zephyr without first replicating their natural growing environments. That wasn’t impossible to accomplish in the short term but making it a more permanent effect would be harder.
That brought her thoughts to her ritual lifespan. Nothing she knew how to make yet was permanent in any way and barely lasted for longer than a few minutes to a few hours. What if she could make something a little more permanent?