The results came in quickly, once I put my mind to it.

The potatoes, apples, mangoes and watermelons all grew nice and fat within seconds of me infusing them with magic. The seeds spreading open and rooting themselves to the ground with astounding alacrity, despite how blackened and stiff the dirt down here was.

Indeed, a wave of greens and vibrant browns soon started overtaking the bleak landscape of the first floor. The looming stone trees and their bare branches losing much and more of their overbearing presence when contrasted with the newly blossoming vegetation.

"It's so weird to see living trees here." Drew commented.

"That's what you think is weird?" Ramji asked, raising one of his eyebrows. "Not the fact that they're growing in minutes?"

Drew made a rude noise.

"Of course that's not weird. It's magic."

Emma chortled for a second. Before one of the spreading branches of a mango tree struck her in the face.

"Hey! Watch it!" She complained. Embers starting to gather at the corners of her eyes. Turning their usual deep blue into a resplendent yellow that matched her locks. The air crackling like a log in the fireplace as waves of heat washed off of her.

Elsie only laughed off her indignation.

I wasn't paying much attention to them though.

All of my senses were transfixed on the majesty of this transformation.

My eyes drowned in the vibrancy of the new colors pushing back the grey. The changes stark even in this sullen darkness.

My ears hummed with the sounds of growing tree trunks and branches. A chorus of wood scraping and snapping under the weight of their own growth, only to feel no pain from their own enlargement. I heard each and every leaf grow out of each knub on every branch. So quickly that it sounded like a hundred different maracas shaking in the evening air. A music that brought life from death. Joy from misery. The sounds were so pleasant, so very intoxicating, that they took me away from myself. From the here and now.

My nose was tickled by the fresh smells of nature. Real, true nature. Not like the cheap imitation of the first floor. Not like the empty, drained, bleached backdrop where Rippers and ghouls made their lairs amidst the stale air of a thousand, thousand fossilized carcasses. The smells entered my nostrils and assaulted my brain. Until the trees all around us shred in the sensations and reveled in their own scents. Enjoying stimulating ideas and concepts they would never have been privy to.

My fingers gripped the earth. The new, living earth. I felt some of the roots digging deep into the dirt, into the hardened soil beneath, into the very bedrock of the Dungeon floor. I gasped as I began to share their sense of touch. My fingers seeming to multiply within the recesses of my mind as I felt wooden claws tearing and ripping at the barriers that tried to stem their flow.

I swallowed and tasted a little bit of blood in my mouth. My nervous system spreading out over other organisms as my new magical senses shared me, all of me, over them.

So that I was all that I had grown.

So that I could very clearly see the forces stemming further growth. The conspirators enforcing a limit to this sense of happiness and expansion and fulfillment.

So that I could feel the hunger creeping in again. The primordial rage that had so thoroughly consumed me during my fight against the monsters in the swamp. The very same fury that had radiated from the bears and apes that I had set loose upon my fellow humans.

Then there were roots. Incalculable in number and endowed with a strength foreign to most plants, magic or otherwise. They sought rippers and they sought ghouls.

Exploding from the ground like a million, million wooden splinters. To skewer bags of dead meat up on high above the previously dead canopy.

Then there was fire.

Then there was smoke.

And the air became choked with the screams of the dying and the ashes of the dead.

Something, someone, some human, had set the area alight. There were voices accompanying the travesty. Calling out for some foreign concept. A bag of muscle and bone and sinew that had turned into me.

For a brief instant, it was as if there was no being called Cecil. Only another, smaller, more potent tree. Fathering thousands upon thousands more. New seeds erupting from adult fruits and falling unto the ground like raindrops. Continuing the cycle over and over and over and...

"....il!.... Ce....il! Cecil!"

I blinked. The sound of my name taking out of whatever stupor I had been locked in.

Or, rather, I tried to blink.

My eyes felt.... well. They didn't feel like they were there. Instead, I felt another layer of bark where my face should have been. Spreading down my torso and legs so that it anchored me to the same earth that my plants now called their own.

I then felt, other things. Tugging and pulling coming from decidedly human hands. Trying to lure me away from the spot to which I remained rooted.

I undid the transformation on myself. Turning bark back to flesh and bone with a grunt of effort.

"Well, at least I got to burn something before we had to cut this trip short." A voice spoke. It sounded like Emma, but it was hard to tell with how detached it was from the mess my senses had become.

When I came out, my shirt was shredded beyond recognition. Looking more like a rag some hobbled monster would wear during a school play than anything else.

My shoes hadn't survived the process either. Though, thankfully, enough of my pants remained to protect what little dignity I had left.

Elsie and Fernanda both whistled. The former in a mocking fashion, with the latter joining in to back her up.

"Whoa there, city boy! Don't they teach you modesty out there in the mean streets of Toronto?" Fernanda giggled.

"Hey!" Marco snapped. "Cut that nonsense out! I've been where he's at. It happens every time someone in our family starts practicing with their gigantification. You guys piling on isn't cute. It's bullying behavior and it makes you seem like... like some things I am not going to say. It's a learning process okay? Can the quips until my buddy here gets his bearings."

Stolen novel; please report.

Elsie at least, had the grace to blush.

"Chill out Marco. We were just teasing him a little." Fernanda countered. Though even her brother was giving her a measured, silent glance.

Ramji stepped forward then. As did Drew.

"Yeah right. Of course. So I guess you won't mind standing over there quietly now."

Drew scoffed.

"You're asking too much. Their little brains need the stimulation. Can't go a full five minutes before kicking someone while they're down. Why did you even come here if all you were gonna do is whine and cackle like a bog witch?"

"Excuse me?" Fernanda stammered. Reddening as she reared back. "You're the one that came to us asking for a favor. You're the one that wanted us to be here in case you needed help with..."

She waved her hands at the burning forest all around us.

"Whatever this is. Kudos by the way. Those trees are gonna be real easy for your little cousin to fight. You can tell by all the dead Rippers hanging off the branches. I'm sure Mr. Robertson is gonna be real pleased too. The normies outside are gonna love having to risk their limbs to grab apples from the man-eating tree. Or potatoes that are trying to tear their legs off as they jump up from the ground. That's going to be a real people-pleaser."

Elsie tugged at the hem of her shirt in silence. Drawing her away with a silent motion and going back to the staircase hand in hand.

Their departure left the rest of us in relative silence, with the only noises around coming from the remains of Emma's attack as the leaves burned overhead.

I looked up. Trying to take in the full extent of what I had done and suddenly finding myself weakened from the near-total depletion of my magic.

Up above, the fruits remined mostly intact, despite the rampaging flames eating away at the branches. The apples and mangoes having grown so large that they resembled pumpkins more than anything else.

'And even then, they would have been freakishly large pumpkins.'

Another few glances below told a similar story.

The potatoes were half-dug into the ground, with only a few vines and leaves sticking out to taste the air in a manner that was very clearly predatory.

At the same time, the watermelons had grown to the size of cars. Their sheer bulk making it so that any one of them here could feed a couple of families for a week. Maybe two, depending on how many people we were talking about.

Meanwhile, the green beans were....

"Hey, where did the green beans go?"

"Deeper into the Dungeon" Julian offered. "I pegged them as the most dangerous right from the start. They grew teeth before any of the others and some started shooting at us."

I narrowed my eyes in confusion.

"Shooting at us?"

'Did they grow little green pistols too?'

"Yes Cecil. Shooting at us." Sean confirmed. Doing that sinister thing with his hands where he kept touching his fingertips together in front of him. "From what I gathered, it seemed to be a process that relied on building up air pressure very suddenly, in order to propel sharpened projectiles. Sort of how human lungs take in air by stretching outwards and then push it out by compressing themselves. In that sense, you could see the, improvised artillery as something akin to a highly-efficient Pneumatic Air gun. Only, inside a biological organism. One that produces its very own ammunition in real-time by way of growing specialized sharpened seeds shaped like high-caliber bullets."

He pointed to one of the nearby boulders that the trees had displaced as they consumed the land beneath them. There, on the surface, was a spiderweb like pattern where the stone had been fragmented, with a hole at the center that had the width of a watch's face.

There was a small tangle of green vines reaching out from the hole at the center. The tiny tendrils having embedded themselves into the solid material before aggressively expanding.

I thought of what might have happened if the target had been a person, instead of a rock.

Then I shuddered.

In contrast, Sean looked oddly pensive. Almost pleased.

"You know, [Plant] isn't considered a very strong basic core. Not compared to other ones like [Fire], [Strength] or [Grow]. It isn't often called upon to attack... well... anything. It being far more useful in construction and the rapid development of a barren terrain. That, or as a way to quickly replenish the town's resources when the Dungeon has one of its episodes and needs some time to cool off. This way of using the magic to create a field of death has been tried, but, I do not believe it has ever seen this level of success. I does make me wonder. My own core, [Dinosaur] is a mixture of [Adaptation], [Constitution], [Animal] and [Grow], so I believed our abilities would be somewhat similar and that there was much we could learn from each other. Yet, I can't help but think that I'm missing a key component, now that I have seen this spectacle. I've been too narrow minded in my views. Yes. Too complacent. It is a good sign. So much more to learn. So many more options to explore. After all, if you could do this with mere seeds and beans, who knows what you could do with some fossils or living descendants of dinosaurs."

He let out a small cackle.

"Mmmm. Yes. Soon the day will come when dinosaurs walk the land again. Soon. Very soon."

I turned to my friends.

"Seriously! Does no one else see a problem with this!?"

Ramji and Marco glanced at each other briefly, before shrugging as one.

"I think he's giving you a compliment." Drew explained. "In his own, Sean sort of way."

"Well, for what it's worth, I thought it was cool." Yuann offered afterwards. "I mean, yes. We did get shot by a bunch of beans, but I think it was a learning experience. There's a first time for everything and this seems like it went pretty smoothly, now that we got you out."

"I agree." Julian concurred. "You losing track of the growth of the plants was, not ideal. But everyone here has at least a few stories where something went wrong the first few months they started training in earnest."

He snuck a peek at Marco.

"Some more than others."

Marco shrugged in response.

"I ain't about to apologize for that time, if that's what you were setting up. I maintain that it was an accident made while under stressful circumstances. I also maintain that you're a tool for holding a little thing like that over me all these years."

Julian rolled his eyes.

"Fine. Whatever. My point is, this isn't necessarily a big deal Cecil. Mr. Robertson wanted a lot of food to be grown very quickly and you showed you could deliver. You wanted some nice little docile monsters for your cousin to fight and you got them. Now..."

"Wait, I did?" I asked in surprise. Looking around once again to take in the devastating effects of my magic.

"The watermelons." Drew suggested. "They're actually the only ones that haven't attacked us. Even when we hit them a few times. Could be they're so tough they don't even feel my punches, but Julian cracked one open and the rest didn't fight back. So, I think we're good."

Julian cleared his throat.

Bringing our attention back to him.

"That is true. However, that doesn't mean this session has to end today. It has only been an hour or so and this is only the first floor."

He pointed to some of the fallen apples and mangoes. Their ripe innards having been exposed to the air after crashing down. Revealing larger seeds than the ones we had started with.

"We do have an opportunity here, with all of us working together. You could get a lot more training in, if we went deeper. I've already heard you guys did well against the jellyfish boss, right? Imagine how much training we could get on that floor. Or the fifth. Or the sixth."

His eyes shone with an avaricious gleam.

"It wouldn't be dangerous, with someone as high-levelled as Elsie tagging along. Who knows? You might even squeeze a point or two while working on your..."

He paused, considering his words.

"Skill issue."

I heard his argument. Nodding all the while.

Yet, when I looked around from my sitting position, I saw something the rest of them did not.

I saw how the life I had sown had taken the magic of the first floor and made it their own. What's more, I felt their echoing hunger. A lingering malice that, while weaker than those of the apes and the bears I'd previously made, still simmered underneath a surface of tranquility.

If the effect was this catastrophic up here, what would happen if I lost control in the deeper floors while we weren't being supervised?

"No." I said, resolutely. "I... Don't get me wrong. I appreciate all you guys being here with me, but I think any more would put us in danger."

'Some more than others.'

"I don't think it would smart to keep going. Not until we have adult supervision in case something goes completely off the rails."

Julian was about to say something, when his eyes drifted over to a point above my head.

I stood up, looking back to see where he was looking at.

Then I blanched.

There, next to the staircase leading to the surface, was coach Russell.

A predatory grin plastered on his face.