‘Can you just tell me what they looked like?’ Elijah tried for the tenth time, as he sat next to the evolved plant duck. He’d searched through the entirety of the house on his own several times, checking and rechecking that nobody was hiding around without his notice. Since he hadn’t felt anything akin to the strangeness when the princess’ assistant had used her abilities, he assumed it was another party behind it, yet that didn’t comfort him in the slightest. ‘Or, since you have eyes now, send me the memory of you spotting them.’
Luckily, or unluckily if Elijah’s current mood was put into the situation, the altered plant had spotted the thief in question while they had been walking around the house. They’d apparently said some strange things to the duck, attempting to touch it before being deterred by its inability to see them as anything but food to bite at.
Elijah didn’t care about that, though, just wanting more details about the thief. Their appearance, how they had acted, if they seemed to be searching for something specific, all questions that a plant that had evolved to look like a duck had no reason to answer. It had no reason to even know how to answer, honestly, which was why he was dealing with his current dilemma of trying to wrestle out some form of useful information.
‘I can show,’ the plant tried, spending several minutes sending over everything it had seen during that day. ‘Do you see?’
Elijah did not, in fact, see the thief in his mind’s eye. He didn’t see much of anything that made sense for that matter, as the sensory information he had been sent did not match up with his own view of the world. The color spectrum had been rotated and added to, nuances in colors never seen before distracting them from everything else. Black beyond black, white with added colors while somehow retaining both truths. It didn’t make sense, and his understanding of the visual spectrum was forced to expand as he looked through more and more of the plant’s memories. Where it had gotten the ability to see like this only made more questions pop up.
Yet that was all thrown away in favor of finally looking at some version of the thief in question. They were the wrong color, Elijah doubted their skin was entirely blue and red in reality, but the physical features were still prominent enough for him to see.
A younger woman’s face, looking to be 20 at the oldest, with a dagger in hand that glowed a sickly green. It had been very close to the plant’s head at one point as if the thief had been a moment away from cutting it into pieces, but they had walked by seconds later without giving the fake animal a second glance.
Stranger and stranger.
He saw in the memories that they’d looked through the small room attached to the laboratory, making him recheck yet again that the Luna Nightshade was undisturbed. While some of the leaves seemed off position from the last time he’d taken a look, they were still alive and relatively healthy.
‘Will the food come back?’ the plant asked innocently. ‘I didn’t get any.’
‘Hopefully not,’ Elijah replied, sending the fake animal a bit of Mana to help make the disappointment easier to handle. He really needed to make it lean away from the tendency to look at other humans as food. ‘Have you improved with your mobility while I was away?’
‘Yes!’
What followed was a surprising display of the wings being unfolded and stretched out in all their glory. The fake feathers on the inside had even shifted in color, changing to a more muted coloring due to some structural improvements that had been done. Elijah was impressed, but even more when the plant bravely went over to the edge and jumped off.
He instantly reached out to grab the plant before it dived into the floor and splattered, but Elijah could only widen his eyes when the opposite happened. Instead of a straight fall, it glided at a generous angle, a few beatings of the wings even bringing it up a little higher.
It only lasted for some ten seconds before the plant was tired out, rolling around as it landed on the ground unharmed, but Elijah was impressed regardless.
‘How long can you last without your roots now?’ he asked, carrying the plant back onto the table where it immediately reconnected to the earth. He could easily see as its reserves were refilled, all the energy lost being regained within mere seconds.
‘Longer,’ the plant said, which was all Elijah could really ask for. ‘I’m denser now.’
So it was. While reducing its weight somewhat, to make flying and gliding much easier to maintain, the density of the Mana in its main body had massively increased. Every spot previously empty had been remade again and again until the Mana was spread out as much as it possibly could.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The full body worked as a Core instead of a single organ being granted that function. Elijah was mildly jealous of plants having such an ability since it allowed them to store much more Mana in smaller bodies than most Mages could manage, but there was nothing to do about that.
Looking at the clock hanging on the wall, he noticed time running out. There were still some tests that he wanted to do regarding using the plant’s concentrated petals for healing paste, and if it was possible to further increase the effects through distilling it even further, but that needed to wait as he ventured out of the house to grab Sasha from Cleo’s grasp.
No issues needed fixing, and the woman was ready at the door to be brought back. He did spot a few blue marks on their face and arms, along with bruised knuckles, but he didn’t question it until they had arrived back in the house.
Aleksi and Jack had likewise arrived as well by that time, allowing the recapping of the various events to be explained. None were fans of the intruders that had searched through the house, but there was nothing to do about that other than increase the lethality of traps alongside be more guarded.
As for the others…
“I didn’t know they still used the fighting ring,” Elijah commented as Sasha recounted her time with Cas. He wasn’t a fan of the man himself, the Chronomancer always knowing too much about him. It was never explicitly said what he did and didn't do, but the way he spoke to Elijah always implied that he was about to spill his more vital secrets at any point. “But that hardly matters compared to the wreck of a meeting with the Prince.”
To learn that Elijah hadn’t been the one with the most notable interaction with royalty that day hadn’t been fun. Not because of jealousy but because it required quite a mess-up to even compare with him.
Breaking the nose of the third child of the King certainly managed that.
“And here I thought I would be at the top for the day,” Jack muttered, messing around with the steel gadget in his hands, taking apart a section before putting it back into place. “Got several complaints by the neighbors, you know?”
Elijah had heard as much from Aleksi. The… pistols, as he had put it, were very dangerous weapons, though he could see the potential in them. An explosive powder that could be stored for years, used to shoot out a deadly projectile that could travel for hundreds of meters. It required training to do, of course, but training that any regular person could receive.
It put the power usually reserved for Mages into the hands of the normal man.
A horrifying concept, in all honesty.
“Don’t fire that inside here,” Elijah warned, finishing up removing Sasha’s wounds. Anybody who looked at her now would be none the wiser about the blue lines that had riddled her core body. “Aleksi told me about how loud that can be.”
“I don’t have anywhere near enough gunpowder left to make bullets, so don’t worry about that,” Jack replied, pausing with his fiddling a moment later. “On that topic, is there any chance of getting into the Dungeon soon?”
“Why?”
“Wouldn’t mind the extra boost with more Mana in the air,” the man explained. “And, if I want a full magazine before the end of the month, I’ll need to expand my reserves somehow. That growth method you talked about accepts both being inside a Dungeon and killing monsters, right? Wouldn’t hurt to try it out.”
…
Not a bad idea, actually.
Not the part about bringing the Metamancer into the Dungeon. That was a ridiculous thought at the moment, with how tense the security around the entrance to the depths was. Elijah wasn’t about to risk having Jack show up there and have every guard worth their salt recognize the faces that they just a few days before had been hanging up on every wall and storefront they could find.
But Elijah going into the depths himself, and using the ambient energy to increase the size of his reservoirs? That wasn’t a terrible plan.
While it wouldn’t be possible to do before, as his and Olivia’s deal only granted him access now and then, he wasn’t sure that he would be rejected anymore. While Elijah wouldn’t be granted the position of Royal Healer in the official sense until tomorrow afternoon, he’d already been handed his emblem to show off his connection to the royals. It was to be used when entering the castle and any other area that required permission.
And the Dungeon was on that list.
“When I know I can get through the entrance with followers that don’t need to be checked on, I’ll try bringing you inside,” Elijah promised. “Until that time, I think the trips into the Dungeon will be restricted to Aleksi and me.”
“You talk like you want to leave them here alone,” Aleksi commented. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Elijah didn’t, though he wasn’t sure what else to do. Starting the next day, it would be a necessity since he would be spending his time within the castle walls while they would be holed up in the shop themselves. Bringing them to Cleo would be a possibility, but the ordeal with the third prince made him feel uncomfortable leaving the duo in a place where the Royal could find them and order their deaths.
Even Cleo won’t be able to stop that from happening.
“Since we’re going to be forced to do as much soon, we need something that will stop intruders from entering through the windows more effectively,” Elijah said. His thought was to board everything up, making it a requirement to remove layers of wood to enter, but that would be too obvious from the street and cause questions he didn’t want to answer. And, since the thief that had already been here knew of their usual trap, he would need something more not seen before. “Thorny vines could do the trick.”
“Snarethorn?” Aleksi questioned, catching on quickly. “That’s down one floor further than what we went down to last time.”
“Just within the depth where we can manage any attacks,” he added. “The first floors have already been cleared recently with the Dungeon Break. The ones further down will be cleared by the Royal Guards from tomorrow morning and onwards.”
That small bit of information had been heard during his time in the Royal Garden earlier, Vera having explained that as the reason why he hadn’t been able to meet her older brother. They were too busy gearing up and preparing for the true cleansing of the Dungeon, where they would kill everything that had the slightest chance of proving a threat to the populace above.
“... Fine, but I’m bringing elixir to be safe.”