Lotus Year 80
Skills
[Roots Whiplash] - Lv 8
Create roots capable of purifying water and absorbing nutrients.
[Celestial Absorption] - Lv MAX
Absorb the magical power of celestial bodies through the process of photosynthesis, generating MP and SP.
[Undine's Embrace] - Lv 7
Use Mp to summon water-type elementals, the result of the summoning will depend on the sacrifice offered and the level of the host.
[Earthward Caller] - Lv 6
Use a catalyst and an Mp sacrifice to summon an Earthward that will follow your orders at the cost of SP.
[Lotus Blessing] - Lv 1
Bestow a blessing upon an allie that ncreased luck and fortune.
[Purified Wellspring] - Lv 7
Use MP and Sp to add magical properties to large amounts of water near you.
[Lily Pad Shield] - Lv 8
Create Lily Pads that can serve as resistant shields, Lily Pads cannot generate energy.
[Solar Beam] - Lv 6
Use a flower to generate a concentrated beam of energy capable of causing massive damage, the solar beam must be charged and its strength is limited by the intensity of sunlight.
[Serenity Blossom] - Lv 8
Use MP and SP to create flowers capable of emitting a hormone that calms and tranquilizes anyone who feels it.
[Toxic Bramble] - Lv 1
Create a small thorn trap that, if activated, will trap its victim with vines of poisonous thorns.
[Aquatic Allies] - Lv 8
Use Mp to summon a variety of aquatic creatures that can serve as your allies.
[Whispering Mist] - Lv 1
Conjures a misty veil that not only obscures vision of the target, but also imitates sounds that have already been heard by you.
[Lotus Light] - Lv MAX
Use Mp to create a small light source in lotus flowers.
[Floral Flourish] - Lv MAX
Makes plants around you grow faster.
[Pond's Reflection] - Lv 7
Use Mp to reflect any image, as long you have viewed it before.
[Kelp Keep] - Lv MAX
Use Sp to create small amounts of highly nutritious algae.
[Stormcaller] - Lv 3
Use large amounts of Mp to generate rain of intensity equivalent to the value offered.
[Enchanting] - Lv 1
Use large amounts of MP to add a random effect to an item.
[Illusory Reflection] - Lv 5
Use MP to create and maintain a mirror image of your target. The mirror image cannot cause physical damage.
[Mana Manipulation] - Lv MAX
Makes your mana control more refined
[Blossom Rest] - Lv 2
Enter a state of hibernation after suffering large amounts of damage. While in this state, the host is immune to all status effects and gradually heals from injuries.
[Poison Resistance] - Lv 7
Gain resistance against poisons
[Purifying Tuber] - Lv 3
Use Sp to create tubercles that can safely store poisons and harmful substances.
The... "humans", I'll call them that for now, didn't give me a good first impression, I felt truly threatened by them when the goat woman tried to steal the energy in my lake's water.
She couldn't know I'm here and that i'm dangerous? Of course she could! If a mysterious and magical lake appeared in the middle of a zombie apocalypse you would think "Thanks god! A Miracle!" or "Oh shit! A Trap?!", it could be that she was too excited, or hopeful with this big "miracle", but I still wanted to kick out all the "humans" present there on that time.
At first I planned to send my elementals and a violent blast of solar rays to make everyone run out with the tail between the legs, but when they threw themselves to the ground and became so... Vulnerable. Thath's made me feel bad for them, I don't feel remorse about killing and crushing anyone who tries to hurt me, but attacking people who clearly aren't causing any harm is... Weird?
I fight to survive, that's all, and nothing more, I'm not going to waste resources and precious energy on "jokes". If someone wants to fight, then we will fight, but otherwise, I'm more than happy to share a mutual existence, as long as they don't try to steal my resources.
Because of this I decided that I would only have a... "Small talk" with the goat woman, this would make her an "example" for other colorful humans with strange horns to understand the message. But when I caught her in my hands she just looked so... Fragile.
All I saw in her eyes was fear, despair, and a big pile of resentments. A mixture that made my head shake and makes my roots feel chills as if i were looking at a somehow a weird deja vu. I am oblivious to any kind of suffering not directly connected to me, i don't care when animals are brutally murdered and devoured right in front of me, or when I see death face to face. But there are rare cases that manage to move me in a way I didn't know was possible.
Because of that my desire to fight soon disappeared, and instead i decided to give a blessing to the goat woman. The blessing manifested itself as a small 3-leaf lotus flower on her forehead, so I decided to disperse my "water avatar."
These people are dangerous, I know they are. They may seem fragile and vulnerable, but no one so fragile and vuneralvel lives in the middle of a zombie desert. The old guy with brone-colored skin is proof of this, I don't think I can defeat those dirh giants he created, but I don't think he's in a position to invoke other dirt giants.
Even so, there still some people in the group who give me the feeling of danger, the goat woman, the old man with bronze color, a tall woman with red skin and white hair and a strange guy who seems to be the group's leader.
This last one was one of the uniques who didn't fall to the floor as soon as I appeared, and really had to be pulled by several people to the floor, all the time he looked at 'me' with sharp eyes and kept his hand on his sheath in his waist.
The man has purple hair like a plum, an ambar-colored eyes and a beige skin with lighter cracks. He carries a florete on his belt and all the time wore a long cover. I could feel a sense of danger emanating from him, something that told me clearly, "you are not a threat to him." And yet he never made any movement against me, perhaps because he didn't know my real strength, or perhaps because he realized that my water puppet was not "The real Me."
I am very good at controlling water, I had decades to improve myself more and more, I can basically do anything with water, from furniture to weapons. I can create small shapes of water that fly on the sky, water animals, water currents that run around and I can even create water mannequim! But I fail in the details.
Creating very detailed images with water is a job that requires perfection and concertation, and I need to keep this control all the time activated to keep the "perfect" form. So when I tried to create a water mannequin, I tried to copy the goat woman, but in the middle of the way I realized that creating so many details was very difficult, so what ended up was a basic form of a manequin, without facial expressions, no fingers, and hairless form, just a water mannequin that happened to have something like an water dress that was just a gross attempt of me to try to mimic the cover of the goat woman.
Now when it comes to water weapons, I'm very good. I can grind stones to sand with a high pressure water bubble, I can create small water thorns that fall quickly over someone, and even play a little with water mirrors.
The water of my lake is so crystal clear that I can create thin water layers in the air and use my skills to create illusions on these sources of water. Creating something like several illusory mirrors that reflect things that are not really there.
And with my skills I can also make theose illusory images emit random sounds or repeat sounds that I have heard before. Basically creating a entery zone full of wispering mirrors that try to confuse and scare you.
The disadvantage of this is that it is not very useful in an open space, it is quite easy for someone to realize that it is all an illusion, and since my mirrors are just a layer of water floating in the air, people can simply go through my illusions and destroy them at the price of getting a little bit wet.
I also have a big problem with magic itself, colorful humans, amalgams, and several other beings can create these magical circles full of a bunch of strage symbols and create a strange and cool spell. But all I can do is manipulate the water and give it a purpose and shape, it is very powerful in its own way, but I wanted the same guided missiles of that amalgam that attacked me in the past.
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Lotus Year 81
A year has passed, and horned men never left, I had been analyzing them over time and managed to understand some things about them and how they work.
They whole group seems to be made of people of several different social classes, warriors, nobles, commoners, farmers, healers, aristocrats and merchants. Possibly all these people ended up together after rushing in the middle of the disaster of the demon lord of the plague and ended up with a random group of people to survive.
Some people seem to be more important, while others simply "are there". People like the woman of goat horns and the man with the florete are "important" because they can fight, overthrow zombies and make decisions, while other people without use in battle take care of simpler things, such as carrying the group's luggage or like now, take care of the camp while the warriors take care of safety.
These people seem to have a certain respect for me, maybe it's because of the goat woman, who i decided to call Silver, she seems to be making a positive advertisement of me, even if the man with purple hair does not aprove her actions, but people seek idols to adolate and things to believe in times of suffering and disasters.
Be it a patriarc or maternal figure, a friend, a leader, a god or a strange lake in the middle of nowhere. The people are always looking for something to believe in, something to bring them comfort in the midst of suffering and despair, and by chance I ended up playing this role for them, the people here even ended creating a small place where they do a brief prayer once in a while time to time, they also began to hunt the fish of the lake and even plant some strange plants around here.
The land around the lake is the only "not comprimissed" land in kilometers, so it is very valuable to everyone, literally and symbolically. It was 100% occupied with strange seeds and plants that the horned people brought with them and in the sorrounding of this small farm place the horned men began to create they small village.
A wall of dirt was erected in the meantime and a ditch was built to ward off the zombies. The dirt wall is barely 3 meters, but it's still a project in course and the people here are really trying they best to survive in the middle of nowhere.
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What is the most valuable resource in the desert? Water of course. Now what is the most valuable resource in the middle of a desert of zombies and poison? A big lake full of miraculous water.
My lake water can be drunk to regenerate a little bit of mana, can be used to slowly purify the contamination, and can be consumed as common water, this is very valuable when all water sources are contaminated or dirty with poison and corpses.
I had a small stream that supplies me with water some time ago, but this stream only bringed me polluted and dirty water, so a long time ago I used my powers and the help of my earthwards to cut the connection to the stream once and for all.
It is not like I needed his water supply, since I can create my own water, and having a polluted water source filling my lake every moment of the day with black poison is disconcerting.
I also never showed "myself" again to these people, I created some magic flowers on the lake that emit pale blue lights at night, but no elementals flying around, or me playing with water to pass time, I'm just a normal nothing suspicious lake in the middle of nowhere.
Analyzing the people in the village, I soon found out that they are very strange, some have elemental powers like me, ora most of the people I had met in my life, but some others have powers that are a bit more ... Abistratct I would say.
The red-skinned woman whit white hair looks like some kind of war demon or something, that woman can grow up to 3x her original size and get super muscular in the process. Crushing zombies as if they were a lot of boiled eggs, her skin turn to be so hard that the zombies teeth can just break when trying to bite her and her only weakeness seem to be getting a little to much crazy when she enters the "red giant" mode.
There is also a woman in the village, who is clearly was part of some rich family or nobility in the past, because she has a more beautiful and well-groomed robe, jewelry in her horns and ears and a beautiful precious stone necklace. She have pink hair like flowers, red eyes like roses and a white and delicate skin like porcelain full of freckles.
She has a strange power to make people around her cry when she is crying for some reason, and even I can be affected by her power! But instead of tears I am hit by a huge wave of sadness with no apparent reason, the pink lady is like some kind of antenna that emits collective depression to everyone around her when she is sad.
The mysterious thing about her is that she seems to be alone here, no friend, no family, no allies, her appearance does not match anyone in the village, and her only card on the sleeve is to be noble and have a strange power, because she is one of the people classified as "Worthless" because she does not fight, and don't know how to make domestic jobs, so her unique utility is to irritate everyone when she is crying over something stupid for no reason, and by the way she can't control this strange skill or natural abillity, and whenever she gets sad, the people around her also get sad even without wanting to.
Even with this apparent "uselessness", I would still say that she is at least in the top 10 most dangerous people in the village, because my senses have never lied to me, and I can still feel danger coming from her.
Another mysterious figure is a thin and clearly as day weird man, he has curly black hair that covers his violete deep eyes. Dark skin with clear spots as if it had vitiligo, and strong ugly dark circles under his eyes. He seems to be some kind of rascal, or thief or just a regular weird guy you can find out there. But he has a mysterious power to mix into the shadows, basically sinking into someone's shadows and disappear without leaving traces, but that's all he can do, he doesn't seem to be strong or brave enough to use his strage powers for good or evil, and only uses it to hide and possibly that's how he survived until this day.
Also there is the caliente woman, a woman I would think to be a noble or at least rich, because she has beautiful clothes and a few jewelry, and what draws most attention to her are her trick breasts and her mysterious power to burn everything that she touches with her naked hands.
She wears strange gloves almost all the time, but once in a while she would takes off her gloves to reveal a strange power, the ability to set things on fire. Whenever she touches something with her hands this thing begins to heat up quickly until it started to burn or melt, and just like the pink cry-baby she seem not to be able to disable this blessing? Curse? But different from crying lady she gots a job at the blacksmith of the village and works there with a really cool guy who's i call Smith, because he has black skin like coal and red hair like a burning flame.
The caliente woman has a bulky, dark red long hair that falls to her waist, which she braids into a small hairstyle convenient for moving, yellow eyes with red details and tanned skin, despite the giant breasts she has nothing more that draws attention to her beyond the power to burn everything that touchs only her hands.
And lastly, we have the mysterious nothing suspicious lady, a tall, slender woman, emanating a clear as day royal aura, who is the straightforward and one-sided target of the man with purple hair. She has a emplumated golden hair that falls to her ankles, deep blue eyes, 2 sharp adorned horns with jewelry and laces, and clothes that emit grace and elegance despite the difficulties over time.
She is a super famous healer around here, and seems to be the most "socially" important member of the village, she can cure several people per day of their wounds and exaustion, and is commonly seen telling stories and past events for children, perhaps in an attempt to teach them about their ancient glory, or a way to teach the younger ones.
At our meeting she was also one of the first to fall to the ground on her knees and start to encourage the people around her by doing the same, she has a warm and friendly personality type and seems to prioritize the well-being of most people above her own well-being.
The woman seems to be alone too, away from family, friends and allies, and now she is being strongly pressed romantically by the man with purple hair, different than it seems he doesn't seem to have bad intentions directed at her, he is just a passionate idiot. But there are boundaries for how many times someone can receive a "no" as a response to a declaration of love, and keep trying, but he does not seem to know that there is a limit.
The guy brings flowers of the farm, the biggest fish he can find and best hunts he can get, bouquets of lotus flowers from the lake, and even tries to give her wood statues of her that he creates meticulously in his free time, all to try to please the girl, but she seems to refuse everything and is not in the mood for a relationship.
Maybe she's too exnoble to accept him, or perhaps he is too insistent to the point of being creepy, perhaps the guy thought the apocalypse was his golden opportunity to lie down with the royalty and is determined not to let this opportunity slide though him , maybe she has someone in her heart or even may be already compromised with someone, so thath's why she refuse his advances, but I have no way of knowing, because I cannot extract anything from they tense discussions since i do not understand their language.
Everyone in the village tries to only survive every day, they kill the zombies that fall into their ditches, defend the wall, take care of their children, try to fish and take care of their animals and farms, but people have carnal and material desires, something that I can't understand about them at all, why would I want to become a very rich plant? Just to leave the gold and jewelry forgotten at the bottom of the lake? Why would I cling to someone if this person is fated to die or leave me at some point of my life?
No expectations, no disappointments, I never wait for the best, and not wait for the worst, I just wait. And I react to the events as conveniently as possible, in some cases my emotions may influence me but I am sure that if I needed I would escape to my little secret cave under construction and leave everyone and everything behind to die without thinking twice.
Everything can be rebuilt, everything can be restored and redone, plants, water, connections, people and feelings, everything can be fixed over time.
But I don't, if I die is over, maybe I would get back to the white room and get another spin in the roulette of life, but if it was so easy to win those merit points that i need I would have the memories of several past lives, so I'm not willing to waste away this life, since I have no idea what i had done in my past life to earn this so called merit points to gain a "Next life Spin".
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Inside my little cave I've started to create various roots along the walls and various flowers that brighten up the place. The whole cave is full of crustaceans made of mud that work non-stop to expand the cave and pierce the hard stones of the walls.
My trusty Earthwards work around the clock to expand the place and create a decent space for me, and now the cave is at a size worthy of attention. The cave contains a small lake that contains my main body and a waterfall that falls upwards, connecting with the lake on the surface. The entrance to the cave is covered with slime and algae that block the view of the entrance and two large mud crustaceans that use large stones as shells.
Inside the lake there is nothing but a huge tangle of roots growing everywhere, growing up the walls, through the bottom of the artificial lake, and growing between the waterfall that connects to the lake on the surface.
The whole place glowed mythically with lotus flowers scattered all over the place and the bright light emitted by the great magical waterfall. Inside the great tangle of roots, a kind of marine green jewel could be seen inside of dozen of shells all submerged in the water shining brightly while dozens of small roots moved slowly on its surface.
Leaving the cave and heading for the lake outside, it was possible to see several plants and roots growing at the bottom of the lake among the stones and algae. Several fish swam happily in shoals while a few axolotls rested quietly on rocks and holes in the lake, occasionally eating fish or frogs from the lake.
When you come out of the water, you would come across a small island of land surronded by decorative stones in the middle of a large lake, a wooden bridge connecting the small island to the edge of the lake had been built by someone and a large statue of a mysterious woman with long hair and a flowing dress had been placed in the center of the small island, the statue had an expression of serenity and tranquillity, while she was helding a small jug tilted down with both of her's hands. The statue was surrounded by various flowers and small altars where people left their prayers and offerings, while it was covered by dozens of small roots connected wit the lake.
A considerable amount of water mysteriously was running out of the jub that the statue was holding, even though there was no apparent source of water in the statue, the water flow never stopped.
On the other side of the bridge, a large wooden pier had been built, housing a small area where the people of the region performed their ceremonies under the light of the lake's flowers. Several small stones have been placed around the lake for decorative purposes, and several small water channels that supply the small village near the lake have been dug over time.
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Lotus Year 82
My cave plan is giving me fruits, since the cave is already usable, I decided that the best thing to do would be to move my main body there once and for all.
That way if anything bad happens, I can just disconnect me from the surface and hide insid the cave fot time long enough for all the bad things to pass. The problem with this is that I still needed direct access to the surface of the lake to keep myself connected to the world, I could do this with just my roots, preventing the lake water from flowing through the cave entrance and simply using my roots to drill into the ground and have access to the lake.
But by doing that I would be closing off my only entrance and exit, so I decided to use a little magic to help me in this situation. With my water manipulation powers, I created a waterfall that falls upwards, similar to my water pillar from before, but this waterfall had the sole function of connecting me with the lake, and serving as a bridge between the 2 places.
The inverted waterfall is a direct way for me to stay connected with the lake's water source, Ushiki and his friends can also use it as a bridge and from time to time come here to take a bath in water with high concentrations of mana.
Since the lake that my main body is connected to now is small, I can use [Purified Wellspring] much more efficiently, and now I can create water filled with high concentrations of mana, I would say that the concentration of mana in the water outside the cave is 3X smaller than inside the cave, and over time the difference will become even greater.
I have also been creating a lot of jewelry in my free time, but over time I discovered a truth that has always been very obvious.
These jewels are worthless.
Maybe for someone they have value, after all they are created with high amounts of mana and time, so they must be worth something, but for me? They are only useful for creating complete Earthwards, treasures are useless to me, but unfortunately I only realized this when I had already created dozens of jewel shells.
Undoing them now in the middle of the jewelry creation process would be a waste of mana, so I continued to let them work, I even used some jewelry to encrust the cave walls, creating a very attractive kind of mosaic. But I was running out of ideas what to do with the jewels, they don't have much use for me, and they are expensive to make.
The horned men seem to like the jewelry, I had a few pieces of jewelry scattered around the bottom of the larger lake and some swimmers ended up finding them. And what they did with the jewelry was create a strange type of cup made of metal that they use in wedding, burial and birth ceremonies.
These people started to develop a culture around the lake, created a statue of me that was clearly not really me, and even started saying prayers to that statue after I started making water come out of its jug.
Okay, a statue that produces water is already something quite "miraculous", but I was just trying to be nice, at that time they had placed the statue on the edge of the lake, and it was sitting there useless, so I started to grow roots around it, and I ended up making pure water begin to flow from the jug on its hands.
Because of this, the people of the village were impressed, as if it were a "divine sign", and moved the statue to the middle of the lake, where they earth wizards created a small island, and the builders created a small fence of ornamental stones, and a bridge connected to a pier.
People went to the statue to pray, talk, touch, or just look, but everyone has already gone there. And it was from there that their madness began, they created the metal cup encrusted with jewels, which on certain occasions was filled with water from the statue, and used in rituals.
A young couple who were getting married would share a cup of water with each other, if one person died, the cup would be filled with just a little water which was placed in the mouth of the deceased, and if a new life was born, the parents would pour some water from the cup in the head of the newborn with they fingers.
It seems like rituals are important to them, but to me it seems like a big stupidity. Why drink water at a wedding? Why wet the lips of the dead with water? And why spray water on a newborn? What does that mean? What do they hope to gain from this?
I don't know how to say it, their cultures don't make sense to me, nor do their way of living their lives.
The people of the village have a strange way of life, the girls who want to get married cannot cut their hair for their entire lives, and those who cut their hair are all single warriors forever. But men don't have that rule, boys can fight, get married, and cut their hair without consequences. Now, girls see their horns as a type of weapon, or decoration, so breaking or damaging them is not "the end of the world", since they grow back like fingernails.
But not the boys, unlike girls who have pointy horns that grow upwards like those of goats, boys have spiral horns like those of sheep, and this spiral is a symbol of beauty in the village.
If a male breaks his horns, they grow crooked and asymmetrical to the other horn, making the male become "Ugly", so it is quite common to see men giving a lot of value to their horns while girls value their hair.
The oldest people in each family or group are the ones who decide who each person will marry, this is not a rule written in stone, as I have seen some couples who clearly did not receive the "elders approval" form, but Normally, 2 patriarchs or matriarchs of their respective groups would get together with each other and decide who would marry who.
Marriage promises are made with lotus flowers picked from the lake, if a young boy offers a lotus flower to a girl, and she accepts, then they are simply engaged.
People like the red giant, or the weird guy in the shadows are left aside, the red giant for not finding a date, and the weird guy for being very unattractive, but other people like the crying pink-haired woman rushed to get married with a man with a sour personality, just to gain a little bit of power in the village.
The people here also have some kind of exaggerated meritocracy, where people like the red-skinned woman can do whatever they want to almost whoever they want without being punished, while people like farmers and cleaners don't have any kind of power or voice in the village.
The red woman can hit, scream or be rude to anyone she wants, because she is the best warrior in the village, in her "red giant" mode, not even the earth giants of the bronze skinned man can stop her, the only thing that she is absolutely prevented from doing by everyone is having a romantic relationship with someone, but I doubt she has a line of admirers waiting for her.
The woman who looked like a princess also ended up getting married, but unlike what I imagined, she didn't marry Mr. Eggplant Head. But rather with a friendly guy who was also a farmer in the region, he has light green hair, tanned and rough skin from hard work, and yellow eyes like wheat.
He has no apparent magical powers, and all he can do is take care of the field, but something about him awakened the golden princess's passion, because she chose him in the end, and is even pregnant with him! Needless to say, Mr. Eggplant Head didn't like this, but instead of acting crazy and trying to kill everyone, he just isolated himself in a shack, and could be seen with his head down almost every day, simply "Existing".
He may have been a little over the top in his 'conqueror ways', but he's not a bad guy, just misunderstood, he tried really hard to burn off his frustration by slashing some zombies, but I caught him crying by the lake a few days ago while everyone slept.
I feel a little bad for having judged him without thinking much beforehand, he seemed like an asshole, but that's just when I looked at it from the golden princess's perspective, looking at it from his point of view, it must be horrible to dedicate so much to someone for just be exchanged for someone else.
Life is always like this, loving, suffering, hurting, repeating. Everything is always in an endless and miserable cycle, maybe he'll be lucky next time.