“We have two, arguably three, plant mages,” I mused. “Green and warm sounds kind of plant-y or jungle-y.

“I don’t think plant-y is a word,” Kene mused. “But I agree for sure, it makes the most sense, if it is a plant challenge. If it’s not a plant challenge, then… I mean, at that point, we may as well pick any door.”

Liz and Travis agreed, and we set out to fly across the desert. A few large birds swooped down to attack us, but a combination of aura lances and ice spears was enough to push them away.

When we arrived at the door, I was surprised to see just how… Simple… it was. I’d been expecting another ostentatiously carved gate, with elaborately overdone designs of the sage battling monsters.

Instead, it looked… Normal. Like the kind of door I’d see at any house, just painted green. Liz unlocked it with a key she must have found while I was in recovery, and pushed the door open. There was a flicker of spatial magic, and we appeared in a garden.

Or rather, a greenhouse.

It was large enough that I could barely make out the panels in the ceiling, but they were definitely there.

The sage’s illusion appeared next to us.

“Ah, you have chosen the route of plants… Plants, what wonderful things. Much as a death mage can use the shades of the dead to unleash spells they lack, a mineral mage can use magical minerals, or a sufficiently strong knowledge mage can utilize the words of power, the humble life mage can direct and shape the power of plants.”

I started to tune him out and shuffle around as he went on about how much skill and power it took, before he finally got to the point.

“Scattered throughout this greenhouse you will find seven tiles, each with a type of magic inscribed onto it. You must utilize the plants in the greenhouse to match the magic, and nothing but. Fail once, and you’ll be booted from the tower! For those of you without a plant mage, a cauldron shall be provided.”

“Do we want to skip this one?” Liz asked. “We’ve made good time thus far, but this seems like it could take forever.”

“Nah, not at all,” Kene said. “This will be an easy win. Let’s save our skips that will take more time.”

I nodded and started stretching my senses over the garden, searching for everything I could.

Finding the plants was the easy part, but the tiles took a little more time, almost a full hour – the last time had been hidden underneath the pot of an aloe plant.

Once they were found, it was a simple enough matter of draining the plants of energy and crumbling the dried, mana-rich leaves onto the correct tiles. Kene had me do the bulk of it, then finished clearing out anything I’d missed, his skills better at manipulating the leaves we were using than mine.

Draining the mana out was odd, since the plants were clearly mental illusions, but my mana still reacted strongly to them.

For all the faults the sage had, he’d clearly not skimped out on the quality of his illusion work.

As soon as we’d sprinkled the plant dust on the seventh tile we were teleported away.

We appeared in a caravan, riding along a massive, windswept, dry and dusty landscape that reminded me somewhat of the pictures I’d seen of parts of Suntorch. As the wagon wheeled forwards, the driver at the front spoke up.

“Won’t be but a day or two till we get to Halima,” he said. “They’ll be…”

I tuned him out as I glanced at Liz, Kene, Travis, and Dusk.

“We should skip this, too much time.”

Nobody disagreed, so with a quick snap, space blurred around us.

We appeared in the colosseum again, and I glanced at Liz.

“You said that this was usually the first and last challenge, right?” I asked, then turned to address the rest of the group.

“Want to use our last skip?”

Even as the monster, some massive troll-giant hybrid creature, stalked from the first of the gates, there was a mumble of agreement, and I snapped the balsa wood stick.

Space flickered, and we appeared in a ritual sacrifice chamber once more. This time, rather than a statue of the sage, there was a large fountain, with a spigot that led down into a glass vial.

“The golden elixir,” the voice of Idyll said, echoing through the room. “Or, as you likely know it, destiny mana.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I did have a question,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”

Idyll manifested a physical form next to me, and then let out a dry, unamused laugh.

“It’s rare I spend so much time talking to a contestant,” she said. “What is it?”

“I’m not planning to do this,” I said. “Just to be clear. You’ve made it clear that if I do, then I’ll be kicked out. But I was wondering, could Dusk grow the destiny plants? I mean, you’re both world spirits.”

“She’s still a child, with unformed roots, and no well to speak of,” Idyll said, shaking her head. “She may have been born with the winds of destiny, but she’s not yet strong enough to support the plants. If she tried, she would likely die, or worse, succeed, but at such a severe warp of destiny that she would write a tragic tale for the ages.”

I shivered slightly, and nodded.

“Understood. I was really just curious. Oh, do you know why my legacy lets me get some fortune and resolve from it?”

“Is it a choice type legacy?” Idyll asked.

“Yeah, Mana Mirror,” I confirmed. It wasn’t like it would be hard to guess – few people had opposing mana types, after all.

“All choice legacies have… Strange… interactions with the deep manas,” Idyll said. “You’re not the first to ask me, even in this competition. If you want my advice, however?”

“Please,” I said, bowing slightly. Better to be over polite than not enough.

“When you delve, remember my words.”

Idyll faded away at that, and I mentally noted down her words, even if I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. Once I was sure I’d memorized the conversation, I considered what would be a good sacrifice. I’d already planned out what I was going to give for a growth item, but this… I mean, what could I put that was even remotely close in value to the drops of destiny?

In the end, I put a couple of leaves from my rarer plants down, most notably, three leaves from my Healer’s Heart. That was probably the most valuable plant I had, and I figured that it had to be worth something…

I considered if I had anything else to sacrifice, but when nothing came to mind, I sent a thread of mana into the fountain.

Golden light filled the fountain, and a moment later, a drop emerged from the top of the fountain. It plopped down the sculptures that made up the fountain, then into the tube. A moment later, another drop followed, then another, and another.

By the time it finished, I had thirteen drops – a truly powerful haul.

I carefully measured out four drops into a small, reinforced glass vial from the alchemy room, and sent it into Dusk’s vault. I’d be saving those four. What for, I didn’t know, but third gate had some truly crucial and powerful spells for my development, and I wanted to be able to invest into my future.

After all, I might have chosen to work with Meadow, but Orykson did know what he was doing, and he’d said that third gate was where ‘real magic’ got started.

While there was always a chance that someone could steal the drops, Dusk had broken through to third gate, and that had further improved her defenses, as well as allowed her to create a guardian. It might not be enough to stop someone like Orykson from breaking through her security, but I kind of figured that if he really wanted to get his hands on four drops of it, he’d be able to crack me open like an egg and steal the yolk.

Heh. Good luck – I’d cracked midway through highschool.

I shook my head and downed the vial of nine drops. If I’d had it my way, I would have given at least half of them to Kene, in order to enforce their tattoos, but I knew that Kene would have ever accepted it.

As the power broke down into thirds in my spirit, I considered where to invest it.

I’d poured a lot of power into my full gate spells, and there was nothing wrong with that. They were pulling more than their fair share of weight, and even if they weren’t enough to let me bridge the gap to third gate alone, they were absolutely a large part of the reason that I was holding on so long.

But there was something that I’d been told that they were able to do, but that I’d not tried yet. I’d experienced something similar with the elixir that Octavian had given me, though – investing in the soil of my mana-garden.

This was a guess, based on what I could guess with my limited experience, but I thought that it might have been the key to what allowed Ivy to feel stronger than many fourth gate mages I’d met, despite not being anywhere near the peak of third gate.

Even if I was wrong, though, investing in my mana-garden’s foundation should be a powerful improvement to everything I did. Even if the boost was weaker than applying the power to a single spell, it would improve everything, not just a spell.

I started with the fortune mana, letting it water the roots of my mana-garden, soaking down deep into my foundation.

My mana surged and spun through my spirit like a cyclone, and I felt a thousand little connections between my spells all connect and improve. The imbued effects of my plant and fungal spells all had a synergistic effect, and that synergy surged forwards, growing together. It wasn’t just my plant spells, though, my cumulative effects of my sensory spells grew stronger, the interlacing of my full gate spells with all of my body and all of my magic grew more intense. As it pushed through me, I felt the spells that were almost there slip into place, their roots coaxed deeper, their branches higher.

I heaved in a deep gasp.

That… I’d never invested so much power directly before, and it was quite a trip.

I let out a dry cough, then touched the void that seemed to be resolve. I sent it pouring into me, and felt my mana go wild again. My mana surged again, but this time it boiled, gushing out of the foundations of my mana-garden like nothing I’d ever felt. The connection to my staff grew deeper, and the trees and plants that made up imbued effects surged upwards, spearing higher into the sky. Those that weren’t were ripped down as if pulled by a black hole, while also being yanked upwards, as if pulled away at the very edge between two great powers.

I took a few seconds to recover, and even reached into Dusk’s realm to pull out a leaf of spiritbalm and chew on it.

That had been rougher and more intense than fortune had been, and if I understood myself, I thought that destiny would be rougher still.

With a moment of focus, I pushed the destiny mana into my foundations.

My power crunched inward, a force infinitely stronger than anything I’d ever felt before pushing down on it. It was stronger than Orykson, stronger than Meadow, stronger than Ikki. It was fundamental, a part of me, but it did not suit me. Its power bore down like the wrath of an angry prime, and I felt my ingrained and mastered spells begin to splinter, all of their inefficiencies cracking off and falling to the floor.

Worse was the effects on my unmastered spells, and I was confident that if I didn’t have the Beast Mage’s Soul pulling them into my body and inscribing them physically, they would have blown apart.

Then the storm receded. I closed my eyes and let myself slip into unconsciousness.