Kora sighed with satisfaction as she finished replacing soil. It wasn’t the process itself that was exhausting but their circumstances. They were in the middle of ‘garden war’ and no matter how silly it sounded, it was anything but.
While these gardens here were simplified, Kora had seen what plants and trees were capable of and she wished to master them or at least become proficient to reap benefits. She wasn't a delusional person and understood her limitations quite well; some things weren’t meant to be. Even though the System offered nearly unlimited possibilities, a path to these achievements wasn’t for everyone. The prime example were traits.
They were extremely rare and without them most of these things remained out of reach.
Speaking of things out of reach…
Kora glanced at Keynes who had been in a trance since the beginning of the competition. The part of the garden he was sitting in was in turmoil. Some plants were dying, others flourished in a manner that seemed alien to Kora.
She couldn’t dwell on Keynes though as she had the other contenders to deal with. Shortly after Torvac was defeated, the most unexpected thing happened, Sophia fell to Esme and then Esme’s garden just died, eliminating her as well; that was why Kora had removed worm flowers. If she kept them, they’d have turned their garden into a desolation.
With 3 contenders out of the competition, the pressure grew as she knew who they needed to defeat to win the whole competition—Zephyr. And as Kora looked at his garden her blood turned to ice. There was wrongness in it.
Theodore and Syman turned sharply to Zephyr at the same time, their eyes wide with fear. Kora noticed that plants in their gardens started to disintegrate.
What is this…
***
Keynes managed to restrain his presence in the spiritual realm, calming it down and slowing down the impact he had been having on the surroundings.
“You’re doing well,”Alice said. She looked like a tiny woman made out of light, calmly walking in the air. “You’re not going to tear this place apart after all.”
“Wait, tear it apart? Is that even possible?”
“Not the spiritual realm,” she snorted. “Just the ecosystem…”
Something got Alice’s attention. Keynes’s spiritual sense wasn’t as attuned as her so it took him several seconds to realise what she had noticed.
A part of the spiritual realm was turning to dark purple. Keynes felt uneasiness coming from that direction.
“What’s that?”
“Something in the physical realm is forcing the change beyond the capacity of the spiritual realm to adjust in a timely fashion.”
Keynes frowned.
“What does it even mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Alice admitted as she landed on Keyne’s spiritual shoulder. “But this isn’t good. I think we should stop it.”
“How?”
“With spiritual energy of course, how else?”
***
Zephyr released the last of liquid death grass and blood stalks. His job was done. All that was required was to wait until all contenders lost. Zephyr would have smiled if not the palpable animosity permeating the air. The Father and his guardians were truly pissed off and Zephyr would have unleashed his Talent against them if they weren’t protected by the System.
Soon. Soon, the event will be over and protection and rules will end. I’ll be free to do as I please.
As Zephyr mused his dark plans, his plants were slowly disintegrating Syman’s garden. Zephyr saw distress on the other contender’s face and his inability to comprehend what was happening. It didn’t matter if Syman would realise his fate; nothing could be done to stop it. Zephyr had made sure of that during his experimentations. The timing was paramount here as several environmental features present could stop his plans, especially fire affinity plants were highly resistant against spores of liquid death grass. This was why Zephyr had to act immediately not allowing other contenders to seize the lava vents.
Syman expended all of his lifeforce, plants in his garden surged to life, filling it with lush greens. Zephyr silently thanked him for his sacrifice. The default plants in their gardens were very susceptible to the spores of liquid death grass, fueling their expansion.
Zephyr turned away from Syman, knowing that the man’s moments were counted. His attention switched to Theodore who seemed to resist in a very surprising way. Theodore had started pulling out any plant that was infected by the spores. Zephyr actually hadn’t considered that. He had assumed that contenders would be too flustered to act rationally. Despite quick thinking, pulling out plants would only take Theodore so far. Once the spores reached his core plant, it would be over for him.
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But things started to slow down and even as Syman succumbed to the spores, Theodore seemed to find another solution, a plant that created a gentle breeze, funnelling spores away from his plot.
Wind. I didn’t consider that either. But this shouldn’t be the problem to the blood stalks… except it was because blood stalks required other plants in their vicinity to fuel their expansion. And without blood stalks, liquid death grass won’t have energy to produce the spores. This was one of the biggest limitations forced on him. Liquid death grass was the deadliest specimen Zephyr created. Its spores could wipe out an entire ecosystem without a warning in a matter of a day but there obviously was a cost. Its anatomy was unable to sustain itself without another plant almost like a parasite and a host relationship.
There were ways around it—there always were—but the Father had many constraints placed on Zephyr. They are afraid of me. They understand what I am capable of. If I only had free rein, I’d have swept through these mediocrity like a knife through butter.
After deliberation, Zephyr approached his towering heart flower, considering using the lifeforce. He didn’t think he’d be forced to steep so low but time worked against him. He glanced toward Keynes and his heart skipped the beat. His garden looked completely transformed with neat alleys and rows of fruit-bearing plants. This wasn’t right…
Developing a stable garden like this should have taken them more time. Zephyr couldn’t understand what was going on. Then the expansion pace of his plants halted.
“That’s not possible. How is the timing so wrong?” He instinctively checked on Sophia and found her plot destroyed together with her neighbour. Useless woman.
Still, the fact that someone like Sophia had already fallen was worrisome. It meant that Zephyr was missing something about the challenge.
***
Keynes pushed his spiritual aura against the growing haze of dark purple energy, which technically was spiritual in nature but different. He didn’t know what to think about this phenomenon. Colour-coded spiritual energy. It seemed strangely convenient so he couldn’t complain.
“Any idea what’s this thing?” he asked Alice. Whatever was happening in the physical realm, how could it have such a profound impact here?
She kept her distance from it and other spiritual creatures that floated around here did the same. He could tell himself that the purple energy was negative in its essence.
When their spiritual energies met, Keynes experienced vertigo, followed by a sucking feeling as if something tried to funnel his consciousness away from his body. Keynes resisted but was unable to go into an offensive as the whole out of body experience in the spiritual realm was too new to him.
“Hmm. It feels like highly concentrated death energy.”
“WHAT?!” Keynes’s outburst almost sent him out of the spiritual realm. “How’s the death energy here?”
“The spiritual realm is built on balance between death and rebirth energies. Having so much death energy in one place without thoroughly changing this spiritual ecosystem should trigger an adequate response.”
“How do you know so much?”
“By eating the lesser spiritual creatures,” she replied with a smile, which made it even harder for Keynes to concentrate.
“You ate… What?”
“You should focus on the task at hand,” she reminded him.
But he couldn’t because she gave him an idea. Could he gain knowledge from these spiritual creatures? What were they in the first place? They seemed to have no Levels here as the spiritual energy possessed its own tiering.
As he mused the possibility, another presence brushed his spiritual perception.
Then another one.
And another.
He watched fascinated as dozens of shark-like spiritual creatures descended from the sky and attacked the death energy.
Alice fled into Keynes’s core.
These things are dangerous to someone like me, she explained. My spiritual energy may not be negative, but the higher spiritual creatures may not see the difference. A snack is a snack.
Okay. That was too much. Keynes lost concentration and was thrown out of the spiritual realm without accomplishing his goal.
He blinked as another vertigo hit him. The world spun for several seconds until it eventually settled down. Keynes was in a neat but beautiful garden and for a moment it confused him. What the hell is going on?
“Are you back?” Kora’s voice reached him. “I need your help here.”
He pulled himself up and approached the part of the garden Kora was working on. She was tearing through the soil with astonishing precision and speed, removing or replanting plants.
“What’s going on here?” Keynes asked. “This wasn’t a part of the plan.”
“I had to improvise. Look.” She pointed at Zephyr’s plot. Devastation lay around it. Theodore was clearly fighting something invisible… The dark purple energy! It didn’t manifest here but Keynes’s spiritual sense picked up immense wrongness coming from Zephyr’s plants as they weren’t natural. “I was going to empower our plants and spur lushness to move on with our plan but whatever Zephyr is doing, lushness wouldn’t work.”
Keynes glanced at her confused.
“How did you know the lushness wouldn’t work?”he asked, trying to think of anything that would explain how she had arrived at this conclusion.
“A hunch?”
“A hunch?” Keynes echoed incredulously. Kora wasn’t a person to follow hunches, especially if they were not part of her carefully prepared plans.
“I cannot explain it other than instinct stemming from the trait.”
Her explanation was quite bland so Keynes spread his spiritual sense to get a better understanding of their situation. Several contenders had already fallen in a rather messy fashion. Some of the gardens were nearly desolate at this point. What the hell happened here?
Keynes fully extended his spiritual aura which easily encompassed the whole area of their challenge. Whatever had happened here left marks in the ground and air; death marks.
It didn’t feel like plants from one garden had naturally overtaken plants from another garden. No, to him nothing in here was natural. Balance wasn’t preserved hence the whole area is slowly dying. Except our garden. Kora brought in an order that counteracts the chaos from Zephyr’s garden.
Of course, it couldn’t be all but in the face of disaster anything positive is a boon.
“What should we do now?” Keynes mused.
On side they had Evren who did fine as he was separated from Zephyr by three desolate gardens. On the other side they had Edward who seemed to bunker down. His garden felt robust and healthy with strong flow lifeforce. If they tried fighting him, it would be a pain to get past the strong root system but leaving him would only reinforce his garden with more plants.
“Evren,” she replied with a predatory stare.