《Diary of Erica Kron》


 Day 1-5

    Day 1


    Hello, my name is Erica Kron. and I am just now realising how weird it is to say Hello to a diary, wouldn¡¯t something more along the lines of dear diary be better? Or maybe just ditch the greeting and say my name. But whatever. I am writing this to document my life, I don¡¯t know if it will be useful, or even enjoyable, but I want to try at least.


    Now for my current situation. I have just started to grow my grove, the place I will most likely live for the rest of my life, the paper I am writing on is made from the bark of young trees, and I am using charcoal to write, and it is making my hands dirty, I¡¯m going to have to wash my hands after I¡¯m done writing. I guess this is all I¡¯m going to write today, I¡¯ll try to write something every day.


    Day 2


    I just realized that I completely forgot to tell you what''s going on, although now I think I¡¯m being weird, talking to a book, back to the point. I had to run away from my home a while ago because it was burned down, a real tragedy, that grove was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, which isn¡¯t saying much as I have only seen fifteen years. but now everyone I have ever known is dead, I have already grieved for them, but now I must move on lest I follow them into reincarnation. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Day 3


    Again, I haven¡¯t told you something, diary. Still pretty weird to me to be talking to a diary but oh well. I haven¡¯t yet told you what I am. I am a sprite, a forest sprite in particular, I thrive in wooded areas and can¡¯t stay long outside of them.


    I realize now that I should probably start talking about what I¡¯m doing. I am creating a grove to live in, I may not be able to leave my grove again. Hopefully, I will attract sprites like myself and maybe some other creatures, I have always liked beasts, I hope some fluffy beasts move in with me.


    Day 4


    Today I have recorded the progress I have made over these last two weeks, I have managed to grow sixteen trees to my shoulders. It is very taxing, using my natural gifts like this, but these trees should start to rejuvenate me soon, but until then I want to sleep. I may not be able to write all I want today, diary. But one thing I want to say before sleep takes me is that I am finally able to relax, something I haven''t done in a long time. I must put my diary down now lest I fall asleep mid-sentence.


    Day 5


    Today a small gnome visited. Reading that sentence makes me think less of myself, of course a gnome is going to be small, all gnomes are going to be small compared to me. Anyway, back on track, the gnome was a dungeoneer, apparently looking for a dungeon in the area. They asked if they could spend the night in the comfort of my grove, when they offered a type of seed I had never seen before I accepted. I can¡¯t wait to see what type of plant will grow from this. After the gnome falls asleep I will plant the seed and spend the night feeding it my mana, I should have some idea what it is in the morning.

 Day 6-10

    Day 6


    Hello, today''s weather has been perfect, nice and sunny with a light drizzle of rain keeping everything cool, if it wasn''t for this new plant I would have slept all day. as for said plant,I have no idea what it is. It seems to be a type of shrub, and it''s absorbing ambient mana faster than any other plants I have, but beyond that, I have no idea. As for the gnome, they left saying they would probably be back in a couple days. hopefully, they bring back something interesting again, I''m looking forward to it.


    Day 7


    Some beasts appeared today, squirrels I believe they are called. They didn¡¯t stay long, just looked around, when they saw me they froze, before running away. I was a little disappointed, they were kind of cute, I would have liked it if they had stuck around. The rain from yesterday left the ground all muddy today, but it made the flowers smell even better than before, at least for a little while. Speaking of flowers, the shrub has started to grow some, seems like it will bear fruit within the next couple days. I spent the majority of the day lounging around, smelling the flowers, and just generally relaxing, it was a good day.


    Day 8


    I woke up today to a sweet smell, a short investigation led to the shrub, which was now completely covered in small flowers, I can barely see the green of the leaves beneath the flowers, which worries me for a moment, until I feel the shrub still absorbing plenty of mana.


    I¡¯m a little worried the scent will draw in a creature I¡¯m not able to deal with, but there is nothing I can do about that short of destroying the shrub, and that would be too much of a waste. Towards the end of the day, I saw some of the flowers begin to turn into unripe fruits.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    Day 9


    About a quarter of the fruits are ripe today, they are a kind of berry, small and yellow, about ten of them fit in my palm. I ate one, and then another, and then another, before I knew it I had eaten at least twenty five berries. They taste great and are pleasantly invigorating, likely due to the high concentration of mana in them, unfortunately, this causes me to feel full a lot faster than I normally would, preventing me from eating more. I take care to plant the seeds, although I can¡¯t nurture them quite as much as their parent.


    Today a pair of birds made a nest in one of my trees, they were about the size of my hand stretched out, and a dull brown colour, but they had beautiful voices. I fell asleep listening to them around midday. Hopefully, in a couple months there will be chicks.


    Day 10


    Today a monster showed up, a goblin. He, and it definitely was a he, was sopping wet, likely fell into a river or a small pond near by. The only things the goblin had was a loincloth, a small sack on his back, and an obviously well-used club. The little guy was ugly too, a smashed in face with a long wide nose, ears that would be in a point if they weren''t so badly shredded, scars all over his body, sickly green skin, and a hollowed out stomach. He had obviously seen better days, though probably never seen a mirror. When he saw me he tried to attack me, only to fall over, his stomach growling audibly. He looked over at the berries, and then at me, with puppy dog eyes, which did little to help his ugly mug. Still, goblins can be useful if you can get them to work for you, so I feed him, and as soon as he able too he runs away.


    I¡¯m more than a little disappointed, but I¡¯m sure he will probably be back, but for now, it¡¯s getting late, and I want to sleep, so good night diary.

 Day 11-13

    Day 11


    Today i woke up to the songs of the pair of birds. It was a pleasent way to wake up, nothing like waking up to fire falling from the sky.


    The gnome returned today. They were incredibly excited, if their eagerness to show off their spoils said anything. Apparently they got a pretty powerful potion, it was difficult for me to get them to calm down enough for me too understand what it does. Eventually they managed to tell me, a life- extention potion. according to them it will increase someone''s lifespan by between 75 and 90 years. After a lot of deliberation they decided to drink it, commenting ''this tastes like shit, literal shit'' after.


    Later we snacked on some berries while i listened to some of their stories as a dungeoneer. I particularly enjoyed the story of them killing a dungeon dragon whelp with a small explosive and some glue. They were exciting to listen too, nothing like my life, where the only really exciting thing that has happened was the day that, no nevermind. I''m sorry. I''m not ready to talk about that yet.


    Day 12


    Last night i fell asleep in the gnome¡¯s arms, who¡¯s name i found out to be Tiddol. They told me they would leave in a couple days again but would definitely return, hopefully with something interesting.


    Today was fun, Tiddol and i hung out mostly. We tried running races against each other, i would always win despite their superior physique, being able to walk through trees is useful when running in a grove. They also brought out some cards and we played a few games, i would always lose those.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    There was a bit of drama when the goblin showed up again, Tiddol thought he was a pest, as goblins usually are. I explained to them that i had fed them and were trying to befriend the goblin and they let him go, with a couple berries.


    At night they told more stories of their adventures, like the time they met one of the last remnants of Origin, whatever that is. I enjoy being with Tiddol, I guess they would be my friend, I wouldn¡¯t know, the only ones i have ever been close too before were family. It¡¯s nice, having a friend.


    Day 13


    Today I woke up to something wet hitting my face, turned out to be rain. It ended up pouring all day. The rain makes the flowers smell nice, but mud gets everywhere. Tiddol pitched a tent for the two of us to keep dry though I spent as much time out of the tent as in it. Personally, I don¡¯t mind the rain as much as Tiddol does.


    I have something to admit; I didn¡¯t Learn their gender till today when the rain soaked through their clothes I could see that Tiddol was definitely a her. The reason I didn¡¯t ask before was because I didn¡¯t think it mattered, but still it¡¯s nice to know.


    The birds stayed in their nest today, so there were no lovely songs from them. After mentioning that too Tiddol she offered to play some music for me before pulling out a wooden instrument she called a flute. I had never seen one though that¡¯s not saying much as the only instrument I had seen was the ocarina my dad used to have.


    The song she played felt, sad almost. Like the music told a story of loss. I loved the song.


    I want to write more but it¡¯s time for me to sleep, so goodnight.

 Day 14-15

    Day 14


    Today was a slow day. Not much happened today. The goblin showed up again, and didn¡¯t show signs of leaving so I decided to put him to work. I mostly had him planting a couple seeds I had saved up from the berry bush, it took a bit of convincing, and explaining, but once he got the hang of it he was done pretty quickly. Goblins are good at menial labor, though they have difficulty grasping complex topics. Once he was done I tasked him with watching over the seeds, basically to shoo away anything that tries to eat them.


    A little later that day Tiddol brought up the need to name the ugly little guy, she recommended the name Lord Parius The Magnificent, par for short, though that was probably due to the intoxicant she was drinking. I spent the next five minutes rolling around on the ground clutching my stomach as I couldn¡¯t stop laughing. Eventually, I managed to stop laughing long enough to approve of the name.


    Later we presented Lord Parius The Magnificent with his new name. There was a flash of recognition in his eyes before he returned to watching over the seed. A couple seconds later he threw a rock into a bush, scaring off a hiding rodent. I gave him a berry as a reward for the Magnificent display of gaurdsmanship.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I am increasingly unsure of how to end these entries, so I¡¯ll just cut it here.


    Day 15


    Yesterday Par asked me what I had been doing as I was writing in this diary. It was odd, for the most part because I had never heard his scratchy voice before. Without going into too much detail it the exchange ended in me promising to teach him to read today.


    When I woke up Par quickly made his way over to me, requesting lessons on reading. Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t have any books, other than this diary, so I had to borrow one from Tiddol. The book was a short story book full of fables.


    After teaching him how to sound out all the characters and the meanings of most of the words in the book I set him to reading it. Overall it took till early afternoon for Par to really get the hang of reading. He proceeded to spend most of the rest of the evening reading the short book, pausing constantly to ask what a word or phrase meant, how exactly to pronounce something, or other things of that nature.

 Day 16-17

    Day 16


    This morning Par approached Tiddol and thanked her, like really thanked her. I was in a state between shock and amusement after hearing how profusely he thanked her, only for it to turn closer to shock when he thanked me in the same manner.


    A couple minutes later he was reading another of Tiddol¡¯s books. For a while after that event Tiddol and I talked. According to her Par had obtained sentience partially due to being taught how to read. She also said that he would likely have a thirst for knowledge as a result of how he obtained sentience, and as such would need a lot more books or he would grow restless.


    That afternoon Tiddol announced that she was leaving again. She should be back within five days and promised to bring some souvenirs with her. Making sure to leave a decent stack of books, going up to my belly button, behind in the tent for Par to read.


    The birds came out again today. The songs they sang were a little different, triumphant almost. Checking the nest there were six speckled eggs, it looks like we¡¯re going to have chicks.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Day 17


    Today Par read practically all day. I only saw him get up once, to eat some berries. He even made sure to thoroughly get the juice off of his hands before picking up a book again.


    The birds were out in a frenzy, at least one of them was, the other was sitting on the eggs. It seemed to me that they were trying to eat as much as they could. I don¡¯t know much about birds but I think they''re saving up food for the chick when it hatches.


    Around noon it started raining again. I had asked Tiddol the other day why it is raining so much, according to her it is the rainy season, and it should all but stop raining in a month or so, at least for a little while.


    All in all, today was a little slow, nothing big happened, but several small things happened. Oh! I planted a new batch of trees on the south end of my grove. Now that the trees I already have are mostly fully grown I figured it was time to plant more. I¡¯ll be infusing my mana into them all night.


    As for what types of trees they will be, I have no idea. Tiddol gave me some of the seeds, others I picked up here and there, I know there are at least a couple nut trees mixed in, not sure what else. I guess we''ll just have to wait and see.

 Day 18-19

    Day 18


    Today was, interesting, to say the least. It went about the same as any other day, but a little more eventful.


    In the morning another pair of birds came along, these ones having beautiful feathers, but average voices. Almost like a painting.


    These birds got in a fight with the ones that were already here, I''m assuming it was over the best nesting tree, but I could be wrong. The fight ended with the males injured and the new birds finding a different tree.


    Later in mid-morning a young boar decided it would be a good idea to try to trample the young sprouts Par was watching over. Par was having none of it and proceeded to beat the boar to death with a large stick before it could cause much damage. He then proceeded to follow the directions outlined in one of the books to gut, clean, skin, cook, and season the boar. He presented it to me almost like a trophy of his accomplishments.


    On a related note, we had a delicious meal of grilled boar meat, I''m not big on eating meat, or much of anything really, but this was really good.


    The early afternoon was oddly quiet.


    Late afternoon saw Par stop reading and begin to swing his large stick in apparently haphazard ways. I was worried for a bit until I saw what he was reading beforehand, an instruction manual for swordplay. I watched as he flailed his body around for most of the rest of the day with little in the way of improvement, stopping every once in a while to read more.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    As for what I did today, I mostly continued to feed the new trees with mana.


    Day 19


    Today it rained again. Of course, it did, it is almost always raining, but today¡¯s rain was a lot harder than normal, a torrential downfall if you will. I wasn¡¯t able to put my hand out of the tent without my arm becoming completely soaked, so naturally, I danced in the rain.


    Then the wind started. At first, it was just a light breeze, then it began to pick up, fast. It got to the point that some of the thinner limbs of trees were being ripped off. One even hit me in the face, which isn¡¯t a big deal as I can still move through them despite the limbs no longer being attached to trees, but still, it was startling.


    The lighting struck. At first, it was far away, I could barely see it on the horizon. But it gradually grew closer, until it struck my grove. I¡¯m not too sure what happened after that, I remember getting really angry, and then gathering all my mana up for a spell. After that I don¡¯t recall, I woke up on the muddy ground, the storm all but past. The tree that was struck was a little singed practically everywhere, but it wasn¡¯t extensively harmed. The biggest problem I faced when first waking up was an overwhelming hunger, without thinking I ate the last of the berries on the bush, before collapsing again.


    Now, I am going to stop this entry here as I don¡¯t know how much longer I can stay awake.

 Day 20

    When I woke up this morning I was absolutely famished, to the point that I could barely move. I was slowly feeling better because I was absorbing ambient mana, but at this rate it would have taken me all day to be able to move.


    Luckily for me, Par seemed to be keeping a close eye on me, so it was easy to ask him for food. well relatively easy, it was kind of hard to speak because of the hunger pains.


    The food he brought me was the leftovers from the boar he killed the other day, it was old, dry, and kind of smelly, but I ate all of it within minutes. It didn¡¯t help much, but it at least took enough of an edge off that I could concentrate on something that would actually fix my problem, absorbing ambient mana faster.


    It took till mid-afternoon before I was satisfied. At that time I decided to ask Par what happened, it was kind of hard to interpret so I will sum it up. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    First, the lightning struck the tree, lighting it on fire and breaking it in several places. Then I cast a spell, the spell put out the fire and repaired the worst of the damage. And lastly, I collapsed. I¡¯m assuming that I collapsed due to how much mana the spell consumed. as I am a creature almost entirely made of mana if I consume too much I will die, so I probably blacked out to avoid that.


    Personally, I am just glad the tree is fine, yeah it is burnt a little and there are shallow cracks running along its trunk but it is still alive and healthy, amazing even as it seems to have absorbed a lot of mana from something. All the trees have, but that one, in particular, absorbed the most.


    The birds came out as I was writing this. I enjoyed watching the colorful ones dance through the sky while the other ones sing with their beautiful voices.

 Day 21

    Tiddol came back early this morning, her first words upon seeing the state of the place were ¡®what the fuck happened here¡¯. Looking around at the state of things for the first time in days, everything was a mess, mud and holes covered the tent, the grasses and small shrubs were all torn up, and there were branches everywhere. Oh yeah, and there were bones from a boar just lying around.


    After explaining everything that happened over the last couple days her first reaction was to make sure i was alright, before praising Par, and then declaring that we needed to get the place cleaned up. Par agreed almost immediately, after receiving his orders he started gathering up all of the branches into a pile. Tiddol and I got up to help the overly earnest goblin, quickly gathering up all the branches into a pile about as tall as par, and just as wide.


    Tiddol then performed a spell on the pile. The spell caused all the mana in the branches to be expelled from them, causing the ambient mana to be a little more dense and the branches to shrivel up. Grabbing one a bit later it turned into ash in my hand, it was actually pretty fun so I ended up repeating it with the rest of the pile. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    When I asked how she did it later she simply replied with ¡®I have my own bag of tricks¡¯.


    After that she had par start cleaning the mud off of the tent while she started grinding up the boar bones into dust before collecting it into jars, i¡¯m not sure i want to know why.


    After the mud was mostly gone Tiddol began patching the tent up, using a combination of magic and sewing.


    All in all cleaning up took most of the day, with semi-frequent breaks. We managed to get the place mostly back to normal, though i had to spend a while regrowing the grass and shrubs as well as repairing damage to the other plants around.


    At the end of the day she left, saying she would be back in the morning with her party mates.


    Another thing i noticed today is that Par started referring to me as ¡®my queen¡¯, no idea what that¡¯s about.

 Day 22

    Tiddol got back before i even woke up this morning, so i ended up waking up to the smell of breakfast. There are definitely worse smells to wake up too.


    There were three strangers immediately outside my glaive, hanging around a cooking fire. I was confused until i remembered Tiddol was supposed to be bringing her party mates by today.


    I spent a while just looking at them, this was the biggest gathering of people i had seen for a very long time.


    The most eye catching one was easily twice my height, with an ax bigger across than I was tall strapped to his back and little more than a leather loincloth in the way of clothes. The guy was ripped too, he would have to be to swing that ax around. After a little closer look he appeared to be some kind of bear.


    The second guy was a little taller than me and really slender, he looked like a twig. He was also had a pair of straight horns, about the width of my palm on his forehead. He didn¡¯t carry any obvious weapons but i felt an uncommonly large mana pool from him. I think he is some kind of demon, though i have no idea what kind, i know very little of demons.


    The last guy was a small centaur, basicly a pony as he definitely was not a child. He had a bow and a small sword, as well as a container of, something, i couldn¡¯t see what. The centaur also had a flowing mane of golden hair, whipping behind him like a flag. There was no wind and would continue like that even when he turned around, so it was probably magic. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I was caught just staring at them and Tiddol encouraged me to join them, which i refused. Stepping out of the glaive, even just a little felt, wrong, too me. I don¡¯t know why but i felt on a very fundamental level that it would be very wrong for me to leave.


    After a minute of Tiddol encouraging me the demon said something i couldn¡¯t quite catch. Tiddol seemed to understand immediately however and had everyone move into the glaive instead, while staring at me with wide eyes. I didn¡¯t manage to get out why however.


    After that incident i was introduced to everyone. The bear was named Thes, he was basically a walking, talking, giant ball of rage, and their only frontline fighter as a result.


    The demon was Mest, and he was basically a living encyclopedia, as well as a competent mage.


    The centaur was named Lesys, or more commonly referred to as goldie. He was a competent archer and passable with a sword. Apparently the hair thing was caused by a curse, it also had the effect of making his hair next to impossible to cut, so he kept the curse as a sort of armor despite having a skilled mage able to remove with a thought.


    When i asked what Tiddol¡¯s specialty was they all responded with ¡®she¡¯s our trickster¡¯. I didn¡¯t get anything more than that.


    The rest of the day was a breeze, they readily accepted me, well except for Thes, who stayed silent with a permanent scowl on his face. Mest treated me with a respect i didn¡¯t think i deserved and i think lesys tried to get in my pants at least once before being scolded by Tiddol.


    I think i am going to wrap it up here diary. I have never written this much before and my hand is starting to cramp up, so goodnight.

 Day 23-25

    Day 23


    This morning i found Mest, the demon, acting really excited around the tree that got struck by lighting the other day. According to him there was an infant sprite growing in the tree. The sprite should be ¡®born¡¯ a month from now. According to him there were two main ways for a sprite to be born, either the normal way with a mother and a father or from natural phenomena, especially when there is a lot of mana involved.


    Around mid-morning, I saw Par training with Thes, the ball of rage. It was surprising watching the little goblin get throw around by a giant bear, only to be healed by a spell from Mest. there was a certain fire in Parius¡¯s eyes, like he desired something, i have no idea what.


    Tiddol greeted me with lunch around noon. At the time i was feeding some saplings my mana, so it was easy for me to take a break. Apparently her party, including her, will be leaving this evening, and are packing up as I am writing this. Lesys found a dungeon nearby and they are going to do a dive.


    I should probably go help the thoroughly exhausted goblin to a bed now so this is all I will write today.


    Day 24Stolen novel; please report.


    It rained again today, just a light drizzle, nothing too bad.


    The birds were out in full form today, singing and dancing through the air, it was a very pretty show. Par even stopped what I believe to be training to watch.


    A small goblin showed up today, watched us for a couple minutes and ran away. I only even noticed because Par pointed him out to me.


    In the afternoon Par suddenly found an old rusted short sword with a chunk of the tip missing, not a very good weapon, but still better than his stick. According to him he literally tripped over it while training. It was kind of adorable how excited he was to have a ¡®real¡¯ sword now.


    For dinner Par managed to catch a couple rabbits in the fields around the glaive while training, so we ate rabbit soup. It was pretty bland but it left me feeling satisfied.


    All in all, it was a slow day today.


    Day 25


    Not much happened today.


    I spent most of the day feeding some plants my mana. Some more berry bushes are starting to produce fruit. Without my direct attention they aren''t growing as fast so it should be about three days before Any can be eaten.


    Par tried to make something for breakfast, following a recipe he from a cookbook. While trying to make the bread like substance he failed and everything he had made caught on fire. From the look in his eyes he would have tried again, but he lacked the ingredients.


    Par told me he saw another goblin in the distance, two actually. As soon as they noticed him looking at them they ran away.

 Day 27

    I apologize for not writing yesterday, I did not get an opportunity too. So today I will first write the events of yesterday.


    We were attacked mid-afternoon, not by boars, or dungeoneers, or something else of that vein. We were attacked by a small tribe of goblins. I couldn¡¯t track exactly how many there were, but it was at least thirteen. First, they surrounded Par and I, before slowly splitting us apart during the fighting.


    I had never fought before, so there wasn¡¯t much I could do but hold them off. The trees and other plants seemed to recognize my plight and assisted me in little ways with a well-placed root or branch.


    The fighting lasted well into the night, before the goblins numbers started to dwindle, and then they started to run. Once the goblins were all gone, I collapsed, falling asleep instantly due to my exhaustion.


    I woke up to Par standing guard over me, his body covered in cuts, bruises, and scabs. I believe many of his bones to be broken. Par managed to fashion a splint for his left arm and right leg, as well as bandage most of his injuries, but he obviously hasn¡¯t slept. I regret not learning any kind of magic before now, perhaps it could have turned the tide soonerHelp support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    I told him to go rest, which is met with some objection at first, but he eventually concedes.


    I am physically fine, no injury to speak of. But I am starving, not as bad as the time with the storm, but getting close. Unfortunately, the berries aren¡¯t ripe yet so I had to look around for some food. I didn¡¯t find any. instead, I found the corpses of several goblins, I didn¡¯t bother counting how many, all dragged into a pile and just left there. Somewhere around there i find the old rusted sword Par found, broken into several pieces, along with several other weapons, most rusted and/or in pieces.


    Eventually, I did find some food, some nuts from one of the first trees I grew. I ate about half of them from the tree before I was satisfied, planting the rest.


    Once I was full I went to check on Par, he was laying down, reading. Seeing his battered and slightly swollen form I desired nothing more that to be able to heal him. At that moment I felt a tug inside me. I ignored it as I stared at Par, he was healing, his bones resetting and mending, bruises fading, and cuts healing closed. By the time he was fully healed I felt hungry again, not as hungry as before, but I would estimate I was about a quarter down.


    Nothing really happened for the rest of the day, it was business as usual for the most part. I spent some time healing some of the plants that got damaged before spending time feeding some of the younger ones my mana.


    As for the corpses, we just left them alone, not knowing what to do with them.


    I am tired, so I will stop writing here.

 Day 28

    Today Par dragged all of the bodies too the field outside the grove. He piled them up with some dried grass and firewood Tiddol and the rest left behind. It didn¡¯t take long for the entire pile to catch fire. It burned from mid-morning to late afternoon, dying down shortly before I am writing this. All that is left is a pile of ash and bones.


    I still haven¡¯t fully comprehended this event. We were attacked, but why? What would cause a bunch of goblins to attack us here? What could they possibly want from us? It¡¯s not like we have a bunch of food, or anything even remotely valuable.


    I realised that thinking about it won¡¯t lead me to any answers after thinking about it for hours. It would have been a waste of time, but it¡¯s not like there was anything for me to do anyway.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Around noon I asked Par for a storybook, I just wanted something to take my mind off of everything. He ended up recommending an interesting story.


    The story was about a common soldier. This soldier fought hard and fought well. He quickly rose through the ranks, gaining land, status, and a noble title. Eventually, this man who had started out as a mere soldier was appointed to be the king¡¯s personal guard. He bonded with the king over the years, becoming like brothers until the day he took a blade for the king. The once soldier was celebrated throughout the land after his death, but ultimately it was in vain as the king soon fell ill from grief and died, leaving his wife to rule the kingdom.


    It was a sad story, but I liked it.

 Day 29-31

    Day 29


    This morning I had something Par made for breakfast. It was a flat piece of sweetbread cooked on a pan over the fire, pancakes he called it. It was served with a syrup he made with sugar Tiddol and the others left. I made a bit of a mess eating it, but it was really good.


    Par disappeared after breakfast for a while. I couldn¡¯t find him until several minutes before I am writing this. He found the home of the goblins that attacked us last night, he intends to ¡®get rid of the pests¡¯ tomorrow. I could probably convince him otherwise, but I''m not sure I should.


    Around noon the birds came out and danced and sang. It was pleasant to enjoy while I fed the trees my mana. I am steadily moving my glade closer and closer to a rock face, i figure it would be something good to have at my back, at least for a little while.


    Overall it was a slow day. I like slow days, everything is calm, and I can focus on the development of my home. I hope to have more days like these in the future.


    Day 30


    This morning Par left, before I could try to convince him not to he was already gone. I hope he doesn¡¯t get himself killed by attacking those goblins.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    There wasn¡¯t much I could do today, Tiddol and her party won¡¯t be back for two more days, Par is gone, even the birds were holed up today. It is the first time I have been truly alone in almost a month.


    I decided to read today, nothing in particular just the first book I picked up. It turned out to be a book about the basics of cooking, unfortunately, I had no ingredients to practice with and I refuse to leave my glade to forage. It was enlightening, though not as interesting as I had hoped.


    Other than reading, I spent my time feeding my trees mana, growing new trees and making them stronger. I have noticed a definite increase in the amount they are able to feed me as they are growing more plentiful and stronger. It¡¯s pleasant, noticing those small changes.


    Day 31


    Par didn''t return today. I''m worried he got himself captured, or killed. I would track him down myself, but I can''t leave the glade. I don''t know why, I just can''t.


    The berries started to ripen up today, so I ate well. I found myself wondering What Par could make with them, I bet it would be delicious. I hope he returns soon, I miss the ugly little guy. Hopefully, Tiddol will be back soon as well, I''m getting lonely.


    For the most part, I just fed the trees today. I feel like I''m more attuned to them somehow, like I can communicate with them on a very simple level. They seem, appreciative, for lack of a better word, of me somehow. Almost thankful but not quite.


    I''m going to bed early today, I feel tired somehow, not physically but mentally and emotionally. I hope Par is alright.

 Day 32-33

    Day 32


    This morning i saw a large number of goblins, led by what looked like a much larger goblin, approach my glade. It was terrifying, i thought that the large goblin had killed Par and was now coming to kill me.


    I was shocked at first when the large goblin bowed to me throwing the head of a large goblin at my feet saying ¡®my queen, I return bearing the head of our enemy¡¯. I knew who it was then and there, Parius had won.


    After some near crying on my part, I managed to hear the whole story. Par found the tribe and snuck inside. After looking around he managed to identify the leader, a greater goblin according to what Par had read. He challenged the leader for control over the tribe, the fight lasted for the better part of a day before Par emerged victorious. After killing the greater goblin he fell asleep, evolving through the night into a hobgoblin.


    Compared to before he isn''t ugly, certainly not attractive but his face alone wouldn''t scare someone off. He is also about twice his old height and very lean, almost no fat on him.


    For dinner Par organized some goblins into making rabbit soup, it was ok, not as good as the stuff Par makes himself. He did make a batch specially for me however, that was nice.


    It''s good to have the not-so-ugly little guy aroundIf you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Day 33


    Today I got to watch Par organize and lead a small tribe of goblins, around twenty-five of them. It was pretty impressive in my opinion.


    He organized ten of them into hunting parties of two each. They were instructed to bring back at least a certain amount of food, while more would get them rewards and less would get them punished. Unfortunately most brought back under the goal, Par spent at least an hour beating them before giving them what little was leftover from dinner. One group actually brought slightly more than was requested, they got one of the berries as a reward. Based on their expressions when they ate it they are going to try harder tomorrow.


    He spent most of midmorning teaching five of the goblins how to build a small shack with wood he requested from me. I didn¡¯t have to harm a tree to get it, I just had to kind of ask for the wood while providing energy to grow it, plus a little extra. The shack was big enough to fit five goblins comfortably if all they did was sleep there. He told me he planned on having them build several more of the shacks tomorrow, I happily provided him the wood required.


    As for the last of the goblins, he had them start to plant a certain type of grain. According to him, it grows best in partial shade, and I instinctively knew he was right.


    Listening to him talk about his plans for the tribe is fascinating to me. He ultimately wants to develop the tribe into a city. Most of what he said about it went over my head, but one thing I did get is that he wants it to be able to benefit me.


    I ate berries today for every meal.

 Day 34-35

    Day 34


    Tiddol and her party got back this morning, only someone was missing. The centaur, Lesys i believe his name was, wasn¡¯t there when they returned. They weren''t as sad about it as i would have thought, but I could tell, his death was eating away at them. The didn¡¯t even ask what happened with all the goblins around today, though Thes did acknowledge Par.


    I managed to get Tiddol alone around midmorning. She cried. It was heartbreaking. I spent a while just embracing her, and it seemed to help a little. Eventually she fell asleep, so i carried her to her bed. When i tried to pull away then she clung tighter, saying something in her sleep that I couldn¡¯t make out.


    We laid there almost all day, only when she woke up to the smell of richly spiced stew did she let me go. When i asked her if she was alright then she said ¡®no, but i will be. This isn¡¯t the first time we¡¯ve lost a companion and it won¡¯t be the last. I¡¯ll get over it eventually.¡¯


    The stew was amazing, even if it tasted bad I would have said that because it managed to really cheer up Tiddol, though it did also taste amazing.


    I¡¯m going to stop writing here because Tiddol asked me to let her hold me while she falls asleep. It was comforting to her, and she could use it. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Day 35


    I hung out with Tiddol all day. To her credit, she didn¡¯t spend the time moping about. It was a pretty active, if mostly unproductive, day.


    We made breakfast in the morning for everyone, including Par¡¯s tribe. I am not exactly skilled at cooking, but I don¡¯t think they minded. We made scrambled eggs in large batches and mixed in some cooked sausages before wrapping the whole thing in a flat piece of bread Tiddol told me was a tortilla. She told me it was called a breakfast burrito, and it was pretty good, not as good as the pancakes Par made the other day, but it was good.


    After we were done with breakfast we played with a deck of cards Mest had. The two of us played several different games, so many that I wasn¡¯t able to keep track of them. Occasionally Par would join us, but he mostly spent the day fighting with Thesys, I think they were actually trying to kill each other, or organizing his tribe.


    In the evening she asked me to explain what happened with the goblins. When I told her she stared at Par with a look I had never seen before. It was close to respect, but not quite, admiration perhaps? No even that feels a bit off, I guess time will tell.


    For dinner, Thesys made bear steak, which struck me as a little wrong coming from the bearzerker, but I wasn¡¯t about to argue with the taste.


    It is a bit difficult to write this as Tiddol fell asleep holding onto my dominant arm, forcing me to write with my other hand. It was a fun day, tiring though so I am going to end it here and go to sleep.

 Day 36-38

    Day 36


    Today I woke up feeling miserable. My stomach hurt, my head was throbbing, and I felt like I was freezing but I couldn¡¯t stop sweating, and worst of all, the food tasted bad.


    Mest took a look at me and said I would be fine in a couple days, and I hope he¡¯s right. This is killing me. He also said I¡¯m not contagious, so I don¡¯t have to be quarantined, whatever that means.


    Tiddol made me some soup, it had noodles and chunks of meat from a draconic creature known as a cocratrice. It didn¡¯t taste good, but it didn¡¯t taste bad either, it was just kinda meh.


    I don¡¯t want to write a lot because my head is killing me, so I¡¯ll cut it off here.


    Day 37


    Today I woke up in a cold sweat, I had covered myself in blankets and furs through the night and now all of them are soaked through with my sweat. At least I felt better in the morning.


    I''m feeling a bit better today, everything still hurts and food still tastes bad, but not quite as much. Mest spent yesterday brewing a potion to help me, saying ''I might not be a very good alchemist but at I can at least brew a cure-all''. I drank it down all at once, fast enough that I couldn''t taste it. Mest recommended that since it is supposed to taste horrible. It made me feel horrible for all of ten minutes, when I vomited up something. After that, I felt significantly better.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    I was finally feeling good enough to walk around shortly after that event, unfortunately Tiddol wouldn''t let me. She wanted me to stay in bed until I was completely cured, and stayed by my side to help me with anything I might need. for once I was glad that sprites didn''t have bowls to dispose of waste as we just turn all of our food into mana. It was nice, having Tiddol wait on me hand and foot, though I would much rather be up and moving around.


    I''m going to be cutting it off here. I am really tired, and Mest says I should be all but recovered in the morning, so I am going to go to bed early.


    Day 38


    When I woke up this morning I felt amazing. The first thing I did was run outside and climb a tree, before jumping from tree to tree. It was great, not being in constant pain. Tiddol was relieved knowing that I was fine.


    Today I ate so much that I felt bloated. I could taste something good for the first time in two days! For breakfast, it was pancakes, for lunch, roasted boar, and dinner was something called curry. It was all Delicious, I couldn¡¯t stop myself from eating until I was too full to eat another bite.


    After lunch, Mest and Thesys approached me. I was confused until Mest spoke, then I was confused. He thanked me for helping Tiddol get over the death of their companion. ¡®She always gets hit the hardest, you have helped keep her mind off the situation, for that we thank you.¡¯


    Other than that I just ran around and played. I managed to organize a footrace with the goblins, with Par¡¯s permission of course. To tell the four of them apart I gave one a feather the songbirds shed, one a feather the colorful birds shed, one of them I made a bracelet made of grasses, and the last one a flower. They ran five races before they were too tired to continue, with Tiddol and I being the judges. The one with the flower won Three times while the two with feathers won once each, the last one came in second every time. We gave the one with the flower three berries, and he obviously loved it.


    It was a nice day, but now I am exhausted. Now I am going to sleep, so goodnight diary.

 Day 39

    I got an odd request from Mest today. He asked me to concentrate on feeding the tree with infant sprite growing inside. According to him, it should help the sprite develop faster. To humor him I did, and I definitely felt something in the tree. It was almost thankful.


    I didn¡¯t eat anything new today, but i made sure to savor everything.


    During lunch i asked Mest about how i got sick earlier, since he seems to know a lot about the subject. According to him it is just something that happens sometimes, it is caused by mana inside me getting tangled up in a certain way or something. From what he was saying there was nothing abnormal with it. I also heard him mention how dedicated mages always get hit the worst.


    I spied on Tiddol a little today when she thought i wasn¡¯t looking. It wasn¡¯t intentional, i just caught her watching Par training with a little more enthusiasm than i would have expected and decided to watch her for a little bit. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I also decided to watch Par train a bit, though i have no idea what was so mesmerizing. It did, however, remind me of how i managed to heal Par after he got beaten up a couple days ago. I tried to replicate the magic but i couldn¡¯t figure out how to do it. So naturally i approached our resident magic guy, who i have no doubt is more than a little annoyed at all the questions I''m asking him today, and asked him about it.


    I ended up getting a long-winded lecture about magic, almost all of which went way over my head. What i did understand is this; magic is just as much about understanding as it is desire. Basically, as long as you have enough mana, you can do anything so long as you either understand how to do it, have a strong desire to do it, or a combination of the two. As i understand very little about healing magic i can¡¯t do it without something i really want to heal.


    The rest of the day went as usually nothing new or overly exciting happened, though i did here that Tiddol and her party are staying for about a week before the return to the city to cash in their recent prizes.


    So, for now at least, good night.

 Day 40

    Today I decided to cook something. It was fun, but I have to admit, Par is better at it than me. Which is no surprise, he¡¯s had more practice than me. After my first batch of food ends up slightly burnt and over seasoned I ask him to teach me a little today.


    We spent till mid morning cooking. With hims showing me little tricks he¡¯s discovered to make cooking easier. In the end we had a very overstuffed bearzerker laying on the ground with a protruding belly. We couldn¡¯t just waste all the food we cooked.


    For lunch we ate some leftovers from my cooking lesson.


    After lunch till about mid-afternoon Tiddol and played a game called poker using pieces of candy to bet with. I¡¯m pretty sure i was winning because my pile of candy grew more than it shrank. Afterwards she was grumbling something about beginners luck.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Before dinner, I watched Par and Thes spar. It was fun to watch as they were both obviously pretty good at it, though Thesys is at a definite advantage. At one point Par managed to stab Thes in the heart, I was about to get up and help him but I saw that neither Tiddol nor Mest were worried about this so I stayed put. Thes started to glow a reddish color before the stab wound stitched itself closed quickly. The rest of the sparring match was Thes one-sidedly smacking Par around, literally smacking as he wasn¡¯t using weapons.


    Overall it was a fun day, I got to learn about cooking and eat plenty of sweets. Tiddol is curled up next to me, falling asleep, though i think she¡¯s having a little difficulty with that because of the light. I should end this here, so goodnight.

 Day 41-42

    Day 41


    It was a slow day today. I spent most of it feeding the tree with the infant sprite growing inside. Nothing noticeable changed today, but I feel like at this rate something will change tomorrow, or if I don¡¯t feed it tomorrow, the day after. I don¡¯t know what, but I know something will change.


    Other than that I ate some of the berries. Mest asked if he could take a bunch of them. I saw no reason to refuse him so I accepted. He ended up putting them in these glass jars, some full of brine, some not. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was making pickles and wine, and that it should take about a month to finish, around a week if he puts most of his energy towards it.


    This morning Tiddol went off and started painting on a canvas without saying anything. I wonder what she is painting, she won¡¯t let me see or tell me.


    I am running out of paper so I am going to have to end this here. I need to make some more tomorrow.


    Day 42Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    Today I made paper. It isn¡¯t a difficult task, all I really have to do is provide a tree with mana and ask for it, but it is a long one. The upside to it is that it doesn¡¯t take much more time to produce two sheets than it does one, so mass producing it is preferable. Of course, other than a small startup cost it takes about the same amount of mana for each sheet. Using about half my mana when I first started this diary made a little more than a month¡¯s worth of paper, and my mana pool is a little bigger since then, by about a tenth. It took me from early morning too early evening to make about a month and a half worth of paper.


    I didn¡¯t eat much today as I couldn¡¯t break concentration or I end up with unusable sheets, though I did eat some berries after I finished.


    It looks like Tiddol is going to be finished with her painting tomorrow morning, I¡¯m not going to look at it till it¡¯s done.


    Before heading turning in today Mest approached me and asked if there was anything I wanted them to pick up, before subtly mentioning paper. I felt like punching him in the face for not bringing it up sooner, I don¡¯t exactly enjoy doing essentially nothing for an entire day. Ultimately I decided to leave it up to him, I don¡¯t exactly know much about what would be available in a city. The simple idea of so many creatures in one area living together is so alien to me, I¡¯m half convinced it¡¯s a hoax.


    Anyway. It¡¯s time for sleep, so goodnight diary.

 Day 43

    Today Tiddol and her party started to pack up to go into the city, they are going heading out tomorrow. They mostly packed food, money, and what they got from the dungeon, everything else was left behind.


    Tiddol¡¯s painting was finished today. It was breathtaking. It was a painting of Lesys in what i assume were his final moments. He was covered in wounds, many of which were still bleeding, one ear looked like it was bitten off, two of his legs looked broken, most of his hair was burned away, and he was missing an eye. And yet despite all that he was standing, holding his bow with an arrow nocked as he glared at the enemy with a primal fire in his eye, almost as if saying ¡®I¡¯m taking you with me¡¯. I cried a little looking at it, wishing i had known the centaur better.


    I just stood there and stared at the painting for a while, taking in all the details i never noticed while he was alive. The patch of grey in his mane, the fact that one eye was a couple shades lighter than the other, the spots of silver dotting his back, his perfectly white teeth. I never knew him, and now I regret that. But i met him, and i will likely remember what little i know of him for a very long time.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I asked them about their deceased companion, and the stories showed how much they cared about him. As they said it he was selfless and brave, if a bit of a womanizer. They would have all died if not for his sacrifice.


    Eventually i looked at the back of the canvas. There was writing there that read


    Lesys Fathom


    Born on the eighth day of the fifth month in the year two hundred and seventy nine.


    Died on the twelfth day of the sixth month in the year three hundred and two.


    May the world know that his final moments were glorious.

 Day 44-45

    Day 44


    Today Tiddol¡¯s party left for the city, saying they would pick me up something good. I was left alone with Parius and his tribe, which seemed to have tripled in size over the last several days. When I asked about that he said some other wild goblins have filtered in and joined the tribe.


    I spent most of the day feeding the unborn sprite. I felt constantly that something was going to change very soon. And after lunch, it did. The tree developed a crack in it going from the base to the tip, with the widest point being the width of my palm, and slowly growing. At this point i could no longer feed it, but the infant sprite was growing much faster. If i were to guess it would be ready to be born in around a day. I¡¯m not sure if this makes me a mother, a sister, a cousin, or something else entirely.


    Par offered to have his goblins build me a house to live in. I rejected his offer saying I would prefer to sleep in out in the open. He then offered me a blanket made of pelts from a beast with exceptionally soft fur, and it felt amazing against my skin, I¡¯ve never slept naked before but now I¡¯m tempted. He also offered a bed, and though it is a nice bed, it isn¡¯t as great as the blanket.


    Today had its share of excitement and small pleasures, and now I think I''m going to try out a couple of those small pleasures, so goodnight diary.


    Day 45Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Today I woke up feeling incredibly refreshed, Par''s gifts from yesterday really showed through.


    I decided to try cooking with Par for breakfast. It turned out a little better than last time, but still not very good. The goblins ate it up just the same.


    For most of the day I played around with magic. mostly just feeding plants in different ways to see how they would react. I managed to get some interesting results.


    I tried taking a seed and feeding it while it remained in my palm, it sprouted a flower that quickly withered when I stopped feeding it. I remembered what Mest said about desire and this inspired me to try some things differently.


    I tried, successfully, to have the flower wrap around my wrist as a bracelet. It was pretty, and withered away the moment I stopped feeding it.


    I spent most of the day doing little experiments like this, stopping only to eat and to let my mana replenish.


    My most successful experiment was when I tried to wrap it around my body. I had already learned quite a bit that I put into practice there. The end result was stunning, I watched as I was covered from head to toe in a second skin of flowering bark, at the end i felt pricks of pain all over my body, but that quickly passed. It left me feeling starving, a sign I had used up too much mana.


    After it was done growing I slowly felt less hungry, it seemed the the flower was nourishing me now. It reminded me of the way the plants of my grove gave me mana, but much more direct, more intimate I suppose.


    After a while i asked it too leave my body, it complied, sinking into the dirt before becoming a flowering sapling tree. I could have sworn I got that seed from a flower.


    It took a light breeze for me to realize the plant left me naked, I''m assuming it consumed my clothes while growing.


    O verall it was an interesting day, I definitly learned a lot. Hopefully I''ll be able to put some of it too use, but for now, goodnight.

 Day 46-48

    Day 46


    Today i decided to nourish my glade, with one more push I believe it can get to the cliff face i talked about earlier.


    I decided to wrap a plant around me in a similar fashion to what i did yesterday. It seems to give me mana while it is attached to me, so I should have more available.


    I managed to make it a little while before writing this. I had a minor celebration after reaching the cliff face. It was the first major accomplishment i had achieved with the growth of my glade.


    I hope to expand my glade into a true forest, for it to stretch as far as I can see, and further. But for I need to sleep, so goodnight diary.


    Day 47


    This morning I found a new flower. It was growing at the base of the cliff I reached yesterday. As it was a flower I had never seen before I naturally wanted to smell it. That was a mistake.


    As soon as I took a whiff of it I fainted, with my head right next to the flower. I was asleep while breathing in whatever it was that was causing me to sleep. I didn¡¯t wake up to mid-afternoon.


    According to Par, he found me laying down at the base of the cliff around mid-morning and thought I was just taking a nap on some soft grasses, something I do from time to time. It wasn¡¯t till lunchtime that he realized something was wrong and he moved me onto my bed. He didn¡¯t worry too much as he could tell I was still very alive.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    When I woke up I still felt extremely tired, but a minute or so of deep breathing cleared that. After that, I felt extremely refreshed, like I just took a great nap, which I suppose I had.


    I¡¯m glad Par is around, otherwise, I would likely have been sleeping till Tiddol got back, if I ever woke up. I don¡¯t think I¡¯m going to sleep very well tonight, but I should at least try, so goodnight.


    Day 48


    Today I decided to read. When I asked Par for a recommendation from the books he has he gave me thick volume about plants, especially dangerous ones. I glared at the smug hobgoblin for a while before accepting the book.


    It was fascinating to me that so many different plants could exist, eventually, I want to have all of them. Even after reading for most of the day I wasn¡¯t even close to the halfway mark.


    I did manage to find the entry for the flower that knocked me out yesterday. It was one of the longer entries, between an entry on a carnivorous tree and one on a parasitic fern. The flower is called Dead Tulip, to quote the book ¡®it makes one sleep like the dead¡¯. The most notable symptom was obviously its ability to make creatures fall asleep, but that wasn¡¯t the only thing it did. Apparently brewing its stem in tea made a mild stimulant, and the petals had a sweet taste. According to the book, its most famous use is by healers anytime some needs extensive healing, putting them to sleep apparently makes it easier for both them and the injured creature.


    I think I¡¯m going to stay up a little late tonight to keep reading, so I¡¯m going to stop here for the night.

 Day 49-50

    Day 49


    The crack in the tree with the young sprite has stopped growing, and now something is happening inside, but i can¡¯t figure out what. I can tell that it is happening pretty fast, as far at these things have been happening, so it should move on to the next step in a day or so, whatever that next step is.


    The eggs hatched today. I first noticed from the chirping, and then i went and checked the nests out. The song birds¡¯ eggs have hatched, and now they have twelve chicks. Their voices were no where near as pretty as their parents, kind of annoying actually. After observing for a moment i realized that they quieted down a little when their parents fed them, so i decided to help the new parents out.


    They seemed to favor grains, but their aren¡¯t a lot of them in my glade. I ended up asking Par if he has seen any outside my glade, Luckily he had, it¡¯s what he makes bread out of after all. Par then sent out a couple goblins to gather a basketful of grains.


    While they were out i got a good look at the tribe Par has built. There is a small wall surrounding most of it, with the part that isn¡¯t covered facing the glade. Within those walls were dozens of shacks, and even a couple more well made building. I didn¡¯t see any other hobgoblins, but i saw several greater goblins, like the old chief.


    The song birds were grateful to have more than enough readily available food to feed their chicks. And i was grateful that they weren''t making that annoying chirping sound, it isn¡¯t too bad once you get used to it but still.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    I am going to go to bed early tonight, I stayed up too late reading. I¡¯ll probably read some more tomorrow but for now i will sleep.


    Day 50


    I read a bit in the morning, though I didn¡¯t learn anything particularly noteworthy. Most of it was about exotic plants, and while interesting, didn¡¯t seem very important at the moment.


    Around lunch, I was reading through some of my earlier entries. I used some rather formal language there for a while, I guess I was nervous about the whole diary thing. I¡¯ve relaxed quite a bit in that regard, I feel more comfortable about writing. I realize that a diary is supposed to be about the emotions of its writer, and I can definitely improve there. It¡¯s practically emotionless writing, almost like it was written by a, I don¡¯t know, something that doesn¡¯t feel emotion. I¡¯ll try to be better about that, though no promises.


    So, how I''m feeling about my life at the moment. When I stop to think about it, pretty overwhelmed. I¡¯m still just a child, I realize this now more than ever. Everything I had known was ripped out from under me, my family is, my family died while I ran away. Desperation fueled me as I ran, eventually desperation gave out to hunger, so I feed the nearest sapling until it started to feed me. And since then I¡¯ve been avoiding dealing with everything anyway I could. Even starting this diary was a way to take my mind off things.


    And honestly, I¡¯m angry at my parents. How dare they go off and die, how dare they leave me alone, how dare they do this to me. Why couldn¡¯t they keep our home from burning to the ground, it was all we had, and now I just want to see them again.


    I still don¡¯t know how to end these things, so good night.

 Day 51-52

    Day 51


    I guess putting my emotions to paper is easier than I thought. I just started writing them down and they flowed out.


    I ended up crying myself to sleep last night. I had pent up my emotions for months, and I guess I managed to get some kind of release. Honestly, I don''t know what I''m talking about, it''s just something my parents would talk about occasionally.


    I feel better today, less overwhelmed I guess. More clear headed if you will.


    I think I found my favorite meal today. Par called it biscuits and gravy. I asked Par to teach me how to make it, and he obliged. I''ve come to expect no less from him.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I''ve also come to expect very little from my own cooking, I''m improving, though very slowly. The biscuits weren''t terribly burned and I only added a little too much flour to the gravy. Overall it was alright so I''m a little encouraged.


    One other thing happened today, there was a change in the unborn sprite. If I''m correct, which I''m about fifty percent certain I am, she should be born tomorrow or the day after. I can''t wait.


    I don''t think I''ll get any better at ending these entries, so good night diary.


    Day 52


    Not much happened today. The most exciting thing would have to be the pretty birds'' chicks hatching. there was a total of eight of them, and they are Much quieter than the songbird chicks.


    I am absolutely certain that the sprite will be born tomorrow. Tiddol should be back tomorrow as well, at least I hope so.


    I spent most of my time feeding the trees. It''s gotten to be relaxing for me, familiar. a constant in my life that will never go away.


    Other than that there isn''t much to say, so good night diary.

 Day 53

    Tiddol, Mest, and Thes returned early this morning, along with a couple large muscular creatures who were carrying wood. They are going to build a house outside my grove so they don''t have to sleep in a tent every night. They were done and on their way before lunch time.


    It was around noon that the sprite was born. I was watching as it happened. It looked like the tree turned itself inside out a couple times before a sprite fell from the bark. She then wrapped herself around the tree and fell asleep.


    Mest, who came running as soon as it started, told everyone to let her sleep. Apparently she needs to acclimate to being outside the tree and waking her now could seriously hurt her. He seems to know a lot on the subject so I''ll trust his judgement.


    I can''t help but feel like I need to protect the sprite, though not like a mother, it''s different, less intimate and not as powerful. At least compared to what I imagine motherly instincts are.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Overall today has been a happy day, my friends returned from the city, a sprite was born, and I got to see more creatures in one place than I thought possible. Maybe they weren''t lying about the city.


    One last thing before I go to sleep. The gifts they brought back. All three of them brought something. Thes brought a very pretty sword for Par, it practically oozed mana. I didn''t even know metal could be magical, I thought only living things could be. Mest brought back a necklace, which also oozed mana, saying that it should protect me. How or why I don''t know, I forgot to ask. Tiddol brought me something, this something is inside a puzzle box so i won''t find out till i solve it, unfortunately I''ve never even heard of that before today so it will take a while.


    Tiddol also got another gift, this one for Par. It was a necklace made of living flowers. After observing them for a while I realize that so long as they aren''t crushed they will never die. It was a simple gift, one I could probably replicate with some practice. But it makes me curious, why? What''s with her and Par? Why is she paying so much attention to him? I mean he is Pretty great, but still, I want to know.


    Anyway, goodnight diary. (Nailed it this time!)

 Day 54-55

    Day 54


    The sprite woke up this morning. She seemed to have a broken understanding of the language making it difficult, though not impossible, to converse. Before trying to get a solid understanding from her Tiddol, Mest, and I decided to try to teach the language to her as well as possible.


    It went well, as in she willing tried to learn, however, she didn¡¯t make much progress. It¡¯s funny, the language barrier seems to be the biggest problem in overcoming the language barrier. It¡¯s more than a little frustrating, but we did manage to make solid progress be the end of the day.


    I just realized that I haven''t described what she looks like yet, or what I look like for that matter, so here I will describe both of us. She is tall, a good two heads taller than me, her hair is a vibrant yellow while mine is green, her hair goes halfway down her back while mine rests on my shoulders, her skin was tan while mine is pale. The biggest difference, however, is two lumps on her chest that I don¡¯t have. I remember something similar on my mother, but I have no idea what they are or why they are, so naturally, I asked.


    I learned that they are called breasts and they grow when a woman reaches maturity. So eventually I''ll grow a pair as well. I also asked Tiddol why she didn¡¯t have any, and she seemed pretty insulted for some reason, apparently, hers are just small.


    It took me a while to figure out why she had the body of a mature woman despite the fact that she was just born. Eventually, I just asked Mest. Apparently, when a sprite is born from a tree she might need to protect the tree very quickly, and a younger body wouldn¡¯t be very helpful for that. While a sprite born the way most other creatures are born doesn¡¯t have that as a concern and is free to gradually develop.


    Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    Other than that I worked on the puzzle cube for a bit. I didn¡¯t make any progress through. I also saw Par testing out his sword against Thes, I won¡¯t provide commentary on it because I have no idea what was happening but it looked like they enjoyed themselves.


    It¡¯s getting late so I should go to bed now. Goodnight diary.


    Day 55


    I spent most of the day teaching the new sprite language. She is improving faster, but still nowhere near literate.


    We still need to think of a name for her. We¡¯ve thrown around a couple names but nothing feels right.


    During the parts of the day that I wasn¡¯t teaching language I was working on the puzzle cube. I think I figured out the first step, but passed that I¡¯m hopelessly lost.


    Thes and Par sparred again today. Which is no surprise as they spar all the time. Par seems to be getting better, or at least I think he is. I¡¯m pretty sure getting hit less is a good thing.


    I had fun today. There is something oddly satisfying about teaching someone something you know well. Watching the new sprite improve fills me with a sense of pride, I hope she quickly gets to the point where it is easy to converse with her.


    The young sprite crawled into bed with me to sleep. She might be physically mature, but she still acts like a very young child, because she is a young child. She seems comforted by me, I¡¯m not sure why, but I guess it¡¯s a good thing.


    Goodnight Diary

 Day 56-58

    Day 56


    Today we continued teaching the soon to be not-nameless sprite language. And she is improving faster and faster, she should be conversation level by tomorrow. It made me sad actually, it made me think of how my father taught me how to read and write.


    The young sprite is playful, as I would imagine any child would be. She also seems to mature very quickly, almost like her mind is trying to catch up to her body.


    Before lunch the sprite got hurt, I¡¯m not sure what happened but she came to me with a cut up forearm. I actually managed to heal her, based on what Mest told me before I must have really wanted to heal the wound. I even managed to gain a small amount of insight on healing, I should be able to do some minor healing in the future. I doubt I could save a stranger''s¡¯ life, but maybe the life of a friend.


    I am going to stop here for a moment because I think I came up with a great name for her. I¡¯ll be back after consulting with the others.


    Yup, it¡¯s official, we will be calling her Willow from now on. Mest complained a little, saying that it was a pine tree she came out of, not a willow tree. Pretty much everyone else liked it, even Willow herself.


    Other than that not much happened. The baby birds are starting to grow their adult feathers, within the next week or so they should be old enough to fly away.


    I should go to sleep now, so good night diary.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Day 57


    Today I was finally able to get a fully formed, relatively well-articulated sentence out of willow. It was ¡®why are your tits so small¡¯ to Tiddol. I then watched as Tiddol beat Mest into the dirt as he laughed, screaming something about it being worth it.


    I spent most of the rest of the day answering any questions Willow could have. Like why trees are a thing, that one was almost word for word. I seriously had no answer for that, I had never considered that question before.


    Other notable questions were, where did I come from, which was pretty easy to answer, what are all these ugly green things running around, again pretty easy, and countless what is that questions.


    All in all, it was pretty amusing, and she seemed to be learning quickly which made it more satisfying. By the end of the day, she was asking questions like ¡®what is the meaning of life¡¯ and other philosophical things like that. I tried to encourage her asking questions like that, though I couldn¡¯t help her find an answer.


    I even got a question of my own answered. I asked if she felt nervous leaving the grove, but no she was completely fine with it. She would run and play with ¡®the creepy green things¡¯ as she called them, though I saw Par keeping a close eye on them to make sure they didn¡¯t try anything.


    That was pretty much all that happened today, so good night diary.


    Day 58


    Today I taught Willow how to feed the trees her mana. And she didn''t do very well at it, she described it almost like she was incompatible with them. As Mest is our resident magic expert we decided to take it up with him.


    According to him, Willow is not a forest sprite. He thinks she is likely a wind sprite, and as such is much better at absorbing ambient mana, but not so good at making bonds with plants.


    This seemed to get her excited, she wanted to control the wind. It took some convincing, but eventually he conceded saying ¡®it''s better than letting her accidentally damage something.¡¯


    I saw Tiddol talking to Par today. That wasn''t out of the ordinary, but he seemed almost embarrassed and shy about it, which I thought was weird.


    And that''s pretty much it for today, so goodnight diary

 Day 59

    This morning was pretty quiet. Willow had gotten up early to pester Mest into giving her lessons and Tiddol and Par had snuck off somewhere. So it was just me and Thes.


    We ended up talking for awhile and I got to know him better. He wasn¡¯t very articulate but he seemed to enjoy talking and when I could get him to talk about something beyond a grunt he would talk at length. He¡¯s a wild man through and through, born in a forest he grew stronger hunting and fighting with others near and above his own strength. Eventually, he gained sentience and then learned to use weapons, eventually deciding on the axe as his weapon of choice.


    Another noteworthy fact is his favorite color, it¡¯s vibrant pink.


    For a little while, I watched as Willow practiced controlling the wind just outside of the grove. For a while, she didn¡¯t really seem to be getting the hang of it. Then all at once, the wind picks up incredibly quickly and a tornado forms. Based on the wide eyed smile on Willow¡¯s face, she was controlling it. She then got really excited and stop paying attention to it, luckily it dispersed instead of continuing un controlled. I had a similar event happen when I first started learning how to feed the trees, only without a tornado.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Out of all of us, Mest seemed most amazed, based on the fact that he started to ramble about something that no one else understood. Eventually, we managed to get him to explain what he was saying. Apparently, Willow isn¡¯t a wind sprite, she''s a storm sprite.


    From there Willow made a lot of progress towards controlling her power at the behest of Mest. managing to create miniature storms in the palm of her hand. They are honestly pretty cool to watch, though her accidentally hitting me with a tiny lightning bolt wasn¡¯t fun. She seemed apologetic so ultimately I forgave her after a brief lecture.


    During down time I worked on the puzzle cube while feeding the trees. I made a bit of progress, and at this rate, I should finish it within ten days.


    I¡¯m excited to see where she can take her powers, and it gives me an idea for a project. I wonder how small I can create a thriving ecosystem, plants would be easy for me to manipulate, but I¡¯m going to have to learn how to manipulate other creatures as well. I don¡¯t know if I can do it, but I''m going to try.


    Anyway, it¡¯s time for bed. So good night Diary.

 Day 60-62

    Day 60


    Today marks two months of writing in this diary. I¡¯m proud of myself for making it this far.


    Today I spent most of the day working on the puzzle cube or practicing manipulating plants.


    Tiddol and her party decided they were going back to the city tomorrow so they spent most the day packing up. Par decided to try a new training program for his tribe, so they were all wrapped up with that. And Willow spent her time practicing with miniature storms. This left me to my own devices all day.


    I made some good progress on the puzzle cube, two more days of solid concentration on it and i should have it completed. As for practicing manipulating plants, i made some good progress there as well, though not as much as i would have thought. I feel like I''m close to hitting a wall there.


    Overall it was a pretty relaxed day, physically at least, mentally I''m exhausted from concentration. So this is all I''m going to write. Good night diary.


    Day 61


    Today Tiddol¡¯s party left for the city again. And Par was still busy training his tribe. Willow wanted to play with me for a bit today though.


    We ran around and played games for most of the morning. We stopped for a bit to watch the baby birds struggle to fly, one of them actually managed to get off the branch for a moment.


    After a while she decided to take a midday nap, leaving me to my own devices.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    I got thinking about my father, and for the first time in months, it wasn¡¯t sad thoughts. He was something called a satyr. He was a prankster and very whimsical, but he was honest and loyal. He was a good man, I hope he reincarnated into something nice.


    I remember him telling me the story of how he met my mother. He ran into her for the first time, and I do mean actually running into her, two years before I was born. He was new to the area and had mostly just traveled from grove to forest to grove, never really settling down. Once he met my mother it was love at first sight, for him at least. It took almost a year of courting for her to consider it.


    If you believe what he said the first year filled with fiery passion, the stuff of men''s dreams. Whatever that means. My mother never corrected him on that. And then they had me, he said the passion never died, but it was more discreet. Again, whatever that means.


    I feel happy, and melancholy. Well, good night diary.


    Day 62


    Today Par took most of his tribe somewhere, I have no idea where. The ones he didn¡¯t bring with him were either injured or sick.


    Seeing an opportunity I decided to practice healing magic. I gathered up a bunch of berries, so I could regain mana much easier and got the remaining goblins sitting in a line. I spent most of the day going down that line and healing the goblins.


    Of course, I wasn¡¯t very good at first, I''m pretty sure most of the mana was wasted during the process of healing. But I steadily got better, improved my control and my understanding of both healing and creatures that aren¡¯t plants. The latter should help me as I try to learn how to manipulate non-plant creatures.


    When I was done the goblins looked at me with a sense of, compassion? No that¡¯s not quite right. Loyalty? Closer but still not quite right. I honestly can¡¯t figure it out.


    I got done healing about late afternoon early evening to discover that Willow had been watching me for most of the time. She said she was curious about how I manipulate life. Which I thought an apt description of the magic I can do.


    Anyway, it¡¯s growing late so I should sleep. Goodnight diary.

 Day 63-64

    Day 63


    Par did not return today, which worries me a little. No a lot, as he is more than capable of handling himself, but still.


    Willow did something interesting this morning. She tried using a tornado to pick herself up off the ground. It didn¡¯t go well and she ended up being thrown against a tree. Luckily she is made of mana so it wasn¡¯t nearly as bad as it could have been, especially after a little bit of healing magic.


    She spent most of the rest of the day trying to master that ability, by the end of the day she actually managed it for a decent amount of time. She would still get thrown around a lot, but there was nothing I could do about it. I didn¡¯t have the ability or inclination to stop her.


    I ended up spending most of the day perfecting my ability to manipulate plants. I managed to make a tree grow a sword, like the one Par uses. It was even sharp enough to cut into me a little. That I was not expecting, it happened on accident when I was trying to swing it around the way I''ve seen others do. Luckily it wasn¡¯t too deep, so it was easy to heal, but it was still painful. I think I''ll leave the fighting to the others.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Needless to say, I didn¡¯t try to make another weapon.


    When I got bored of practicing manipulation I worked on the puzzle box. I managed to make a couple breakthroughs with it, I¡¯m understanding how it works a lot better now. Tomorrow I think I¡¯m going to focus on it, hopefully, I¡¯ll be able to figure out what''s inside.


    Day 64


    Today I focused on the puzzle cube until I solved it. It was so satisfying to hear that final click and watch as a door opened up on the side facing up. The cube incorporated both magical and mechanical puzzles, nothing too difficult in as far as what I had to do, but figuring out what to do was another story. This was easily one of the most mentally challenging things I¡¯ve ever had to do.


    In the compartment that opened up I found a small, deep red stone. Touch my middle finger and thumb together and it would barely pass through the opening.


    When I picked it up it sank into my palm. I wasn¡¯t able to stop it. I didn¡¯t feel any different afterward, nothing immediately noticeable at least. However, when I tried to manipulate plants later I noticed a qualitative improvement. It was like it came easier to me out of nowhere.


    I wasn¡¯t too worried about it, an improvement is a good thing, right? But I made a note to talk to Tiddol and Mest about it.


    I could say a couple other things about today, but all of them would pale in comparison to this event, at least for me. So I¡¯m going to leave it here, Good Night Diary.

 Day 65-66

    Day 65


    This morning Tiddol and her party got back, along with a couple other people. They didn''t stay long, leaving almost immediately.


    They did, however, tell me what was going on. Those people were mercenaries, they were planning on diving into the dungeon that took Lesys from them, and killing it.


    I didn''t get much of a chance to respond, or to say anything for that matter.


    Other than that, I decided to take a break from practicing magic. Doing the same thing every day gets tedious no matter how much you enjoy it.


    I played around, cooked a bit, with no noticeable improvement, and fed the trees.


    Willow tried to cook, only to strike a pork chop with lightning, turning the outside to ash and doing nothing to the inside, it wasn''t even warm. She started laughing at this, it was almost childlike. Which makes sense considering everything, but she is definitely more knowledgeable than I was at her age, more mature too, so it''s easy to forget.


    Anyway, Good Night DiaryUnlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    Day 66


    Today Willow, Par, and I played tag, at Willow¡¯s request. I had only a slight advantage. We kept it to the grove because I won¡¯t leave it. In the beginning I dominated, and by that I mean I didn¡¯t get tagged once, then Willow managed to tag Par, who went straight for me. Despite my advantages, he was way too fast for me, in the end, I got tagged after running away for a while.


    This went on from breakfast to lunch, ending because Willow got hungry. It was an interesting dynamic, Par was physically far beyond either of us, so he could usually catch us with a bit of effort, Willow was clever, she seemed to learn quickly and used everything at her disposal to evade or capture us pretty well, and I just had my innate abilities and advantages inside the grove. Overall we were pretty evenly matched.


    From lunchtime till a little before now I practiced manipulating plants. I want to learn how to manipulate creatures other than plants, but I have no idea how I would get started on that, so I figured if I pretty much master plant manipulation then manipulating other creatures should be a bit easier, or so I hope.


    Mostly I just got used to my sudden jump in control from two days ago, it is definitely noticeable, but not extreme. It¡¯s what I imagine would be easily achieved from an inspiration of some sort. If before I could make a flower go from seed to blooming in the time it takes me to count to one hundred, now it takes me till I count to ninety-three.


    That''s it for today. I think I''m going to grab a snack before bed today, some of those berries would be great. Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 67

    Today I fed the trees. I¡¯m trying to expand my grove into a forest. Though now that I think about it, when does a grove become a forest? I¡¯m pretty sure it has to do with the overall size of it. Is it when it takes more than a day to move from one end to another? No that doesn¡¯t make sense. Maybe there are people that come and say, ¡®this is a forest¡¯ and it is so. But still, that doesn¡¯t sound right. Hmm, maybe it¡¯s when you can¡¯t see the other side when you at the top of one of the trees on the edge, yes, I think I''m going with that definition.


    Anyway, the growth is slow, but it has increased in speed recently. I think my practice with manipulating plants has had some effect here as well. I managed to grow three whole trees today, beating my previous record of two in a day. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Willow played around with some of the goblins today, I think they were some of the ones I healed, though it¡¯s hard to tell as they all look pretty much the same green, short, big fat nose and ears, hairy, and ugly.


    Another thing I noticed today is hard to describe. I fell closer to the trees somehow, like I can understand them better. Or like they can understand me better. It¡¯s nothing really tangible, more a gut feeling, but still.


    Anyway, it¡¯s time for bed. Good Night Diary.

 Day 68

    Today Tiddol¡¯s party came back. The people that had joined them before quickly left after receiving something from Mest. they brought back something interesting, it looked like a green version of the stone I got out of the puzzle box. I felt a small instinct at the back of my mind to snatch it from them, but I refrained.


    When I asked what it was they told me it was a dead dungeon core. After a bit of conversation I learned that I got really lucky with getting a dungeon core from the puzzle box, apparently, it was like the third place prize or something. After some more conversation I ended up telling them what happened with the stone I got and the results of it. Mest was incredibly curious for some reason, which would make sense because knowledge is his power.


    Shortly after that Mest brought up how they were going to divide up the loot, before saying he wanted the stone as part of his. The others agreed to let him have it. A while after that he asked me to ¡®absorb the dungeon core¡¯. I thought it was an odd request, but after listening to all of them talk a little it sounded like this type of thing was normal for him. He usually spends all his money on satisfying his own curiosity. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Naturally, I took the stone. This time it didn¡¯t sink into my hand immediately, instead, it was a slow process, like whatever it was inside me that was absorbing it was struggling. It also felt less complete, like a good chunk of it was being wasted.


    Mest seemed, disappointed almost like he expected more. He left muttering something about a waste of resources, which stung a bit. I understood where he was coming from though, I was expecting more myself, but still.


    I tried manipulating plants again afterward, and there was a noticeable difference, but it was nowhere near as much as before.


    In the afternoon I saw Tiddol and Par sneak off together, I was curious so I spied on them a little. I can honestly say I have no idea what they were doing or how to describe it, so I''ll leave it there.


    Anyway, I''m getting tired so I''m going to sleep. Goodnight diary.

 Day 69

    This morning I asked Tiddol what she was doing with Par yesterday. She had a very mixed reaction, one part embarrassed, one part confused, and one part running off to ask Mest something.


    She came back a couple minutes later and proceeded to ask me what I knew about where babies came from. I knew that under normal conditions at least, there had to be two creatures, but not much else. I then proceeded to have one of the longest lectures of my life, one that left both Tiddol and me blushing and embarrassed. Apparently what she was doing was having sex, which is how children are normally created. When I asked why they were trying to make a child she said ¡®we weren''t, it just feels good. Besides, I don¡¯t think it would be possible for the two of us t have a child.¡¯ I¡¯m not entirely sure I understood everything, like the various ways for creatures of different species to have children, but that at least doesn¡¯t seem too important to me, at least not now.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    When I asked her about when those feelings would start she said this. ¡®It varies from species to species, with longer living ones going through puberty, what it''s called when those things start to happen, later than others. For example, Gnomes like myself usually live to be around seventy at most, so we go through puberty at around age ten. I had to ask Mest earlier to confirm, but there has never been a case of a sprite dying from old age, so they go through puberty a bit later, between fifteen and sixteen.¡¯


    I don¡¯t really know how to feel about this. For one thing, I¡¯m a little scared, my body is going to change rapidly soon, and I have no idea when it will start. It sounds like it will hurt. On the other hand, a lot of those changes sound exciting, both the sprite I have known with adult bodies have been very pretty, I''m excited to be just as pretty. Sex also sounds exciting!


    Other than that eye-opening experience the baby birds are finally able to fly away. The parents left soon after, taking their song and dance routines with them. I was sad to see them go, but they seemed happy so it¡¯s not all bad.


    Anyway, I have a lot to process today, so Good Night Diary.

 Day 70-71

    Day 70


    Today I put on a little show for everyone. I took what I''ve learned from manipulating plants and made a spectacle. I made flower crowns appear seemingly out of thin air, though I was really just holding a seed out of sight. I made small puppets of wood that I could control through magic, and have them do everything from mock combat to a dance routine. I created a dress of flowers for myself, when I would twirl it created a rainbow of color surrounding me, everyone seemed to enjoy it.


    Overall it was very strenuous, but really fun. I¡¯m already planning out the next little show I want to do. It¡¯s a good feeling to have all of my hard work recently be validated.


    Around lunch I realized that I never asked Tiddol how old she is, So naturally, I asked her. She was surprised by the question at first, but did answer it, I also learned the ages of her other party members. It seems Tiddol is eighteen, Mest is twenty-nine, almost thirty, and they believe Thes to be around twenty five. There was no certainty with Thes because he didn¡¯t obtain sentience till he was grown.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Late evening I asked Mest about my endeavor to manipulate creatures other than plants. His response summarised too I have no idea. He also said that it wasn¡¯t something that interested him, but if he found a book on the subject he would be more than willing to get it for me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.


    Day 71


    Today was a slow day, I mostly spent it feeding the trees or practicing manipulating plants.


    I didn¡¯t see much of Tiddol, or Par for that matter, all day.


    Mest was doing whatever it is he does in his free time, usually something to do with magic. This time I think enchanting something.


    At one point a couple injured goblins came up to me and asked me to heal them, I obliged them. They seemed very grateful, and offered their services should I need them.


    Willow was practicing controlling her storms. Now she¡¯s able to create a light breeze, though she obviously struggles to reign in her power like that.


    overall almost everyone kept to themselves today. Nothing too exciting or interesting happened. It was a good, relaxing day. And now the day is over, so it is time for sleep. Goodnight Diary.

 Day 72-73

    Day 72


    Today Tiddol¡¯s group started packing up again. They said they were going to challenge a local dungeon. This one is pretty big so they will be gone for a while, but should return with a lot of loot.


    They invited Par to join them, but he rejected saying he couldn¡¯t leave the goblins alone, or they could start killing each other. Based on his tone he was serious too.


    I noticed that it hasn¡¯t rained in several days, it looks like it¡¯s almost summer now. I hope the heatwaves aren¡¯t as bad here as they were where I was born, though I somehow doubt I moved that far.


    Willow asked me for help with something today. Then she proceeded to drench me in rain before blowing me mostly dry with a strong warm wind. I didn¡¯t particularly mind, though I wish she had told me what she was doing beforehand. Apparently, she was trying to figure out how best to dry something off with her particular brand of magic and got tired of getting wet herself to experiment.


    I asked why she didn¡¯t just use clothes to experiment, she responded by going tight-lipped, turning around, and walking away, grabbing a shirt I had hung up to dry after it got soaked. I¡¯m assuming she didn¡¯t think of it.


    Tomorrow I promised Willow to help with some other things so I''m going to bed a little early today. Good Night Diary.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Day 73


    Today I found Willow at the base of the mountain, asleep. It took me a moment to remember about the Dead Tulip flowers. I grabbed Willow as quickly as I could and started to carry her away, but I moved painfully slowly after picking her up, I''m not exactly very strong. In the end, I managed to get a good enough distance away that we shouldn¡¯t be affected by any more pollen, but not before breathing in more than enough to knock me out. I ended up sleeping from mid-morning to early afternoon, waking up almost on top of a still sleeping willow.


    I watched over her, unfortunately, unable to heal her, until she woke up. It was late afternoon, early evening when she finally did, asking what happened. I spent a little while explaining to her what happened, and the first thing she said was ¡®let''s use that to mess with the big bear¡¯. My immediate response was ¡®no, he might actually kill you if you tried that¡¯.


    She was more than a little disappointed, but she got over it. We spent most the rest of the day talking. She told about how confusing everything was, and still is, for her. How sometimes she freezes up in terror for a moment before remembering that she isn¡¯t alone. I never noticed that I guess I keep to myself quite a bit when I''m not approached. How she sometimes feels like there was something before all this, but she can¡¯t make out anything other than the edges of a memory.


    It made me think about myself a bit. We really don¡¯t have a lot in common, willow and I. yeah we are both sprites and call this place our home, but that''s really about it. I was lucky enough to have loving parents, she was born into a world where she¡¯s expected to be able to survive on her own. I was able to gradually learn everything I needed to, or at least a lot of it, over years, while she was expected to do the same in a matter of days. I can¡¯t imagine what that must be like, especially when you can¡¯t comprehend another possibility.


    There is not much else I can say, so Good Night Diary.

 Day 74

    Today I hung out with Willow. For part of the day we practiced magic together. The two of us worked together to try to make a small self-sustaining ecosystem, and made almost no progress. Neither of us knew what we were doing so we were mostly just throwing ideas around and hoping something would work, now we¡¯re left with dozens of ideas that don¡¯t work, and none that do. And the best part is neither of us knows what we were doing wrong.


    After Willow inevitably got bored of that we decided to play a game. After brainstorming for a bit we came up with this. I would grow a puppet made of wood and put it a certain distance away from Willow, then I would have it try to move up and touch her. During this she wasn¡¯t allowed to move and could only use magic to prevent it from reaching her. Obviously, the scale of the magic she was allowed to use was restricted, a fire tornado in the middle of a wooded area is not a good idea, but she could do anything from strike it with electricity to blowing it away to buy time. When it was no longer functional she won, when it touched her I won. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    For the first ten matches she won every time, I just couldn¡¯t control the puppet very well. But on the eleventh match I managed to barely get a victory, everything below the shoulder could still move alright, so it counted. She seemed to really enjoy herself so we kept going for about a hundred matches, taking a break after most of them for her to recover mana. By around match seventy I was managing to win about half of them, it¡¯s amazing what some competition can do for improvement. My control was still pretty clunky, but it was a lot better than my starting point.


    At one point Par noticed what we were doing and came over to watch, after we stopped he came up to talk to me. He said that he would be willing to have his goblins spar against my puppets, said something about me being able to protect myself better? Anyway, I don¡¯t care about that, that''s why I have Par around, but that does sound fun, like a game.


    Willow decided to sleep with me tonight, she¡¯s already asleep. Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 75-76

    Day 75


    Today I had my puppets spar against Par¡¯s goblins. I made it a dull wooden sword, which was basically a glorified stick, so they wouldn¡¯t get too injured.


    At first, I did miserably, though my control over them has improved since yesterday, it is still really rough. As the day went on I went from swinging haphazardly too actually being able to hit occasionally. Though I never managed to make a goblin concede, I had fun. I was right yesterday when I said it would be like a game, it is like a game, a pretty fun one too. Maybe once I progress enough I¡¯ll be able to take on Lord Parius The Magnificent himself, that¡¯ll be the day.


    I had Willow on the side cheering me for the first little while until she inevitably got bored. I believe she tried to get Par to teach her a bit about cooking. But I didn¡¯t pay much attention.


    After I got tired of playing with the goblins I just lounged around for a while. I fed the trees a bit, but didn¡¯t really focus on it. Instead, I was thinking, though it was mostly just me getting excited about the loot Tiddol¡¯s party will bring back. I hope they bring back something tasty, I want some good candy.


    Anyway, it¡¯s time to sleep. So Good Night Diary.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Day 76


    Until lunch today I used my puppet to fight against the goblins. And they were improving, faster than I was. By lunch, I was hardly winning any fights. I hit a wall, not one of my own ability though, or at least my own ability was a minor problem. The design of the puppets themselves was flawed, which is no surprise considering I spent almost no time thinking about the design, simply going for something that has two arms and legs.


    After lunch, I got to work refining the puppet. And it went about as well as Willow¡¯s and my attempt at creating a miniature biome the other day. I found nothing that worked and dozens of things that didn''t. It wasn¡¯t until I watched a couple goblins butcher something they hunted that I had an inspiration.


    My first successful improvement was putting small balls in the shoulders, wrists, elbows, knees, and hips. Before I was just bending the puppet with a generous application of mana, now it takes much less concentration and energy to move it. The only real downside was its increased vulnerability, though I have no idea how to fix that.


    Testing it against goblins again it was alright, I definitely had more room for improvement now. I ended up winning roughly half the matches with the new model.


    Thinking about it, it¡¯s not immediately obvious why I enjoy this game so much, fighting is not something that usually interests me. Maybe it¡¯s because I see it as a game that it is so much fun? Like there is no chance of pain for me, so who cares if I lose? I guess somewhere that lack of fear towards losing made me enjoy the challenge a little. But overall, who cares? It¡¯s fun.


    Anyway, today was satisfying, if tiring. So Good Night Diary.

 Day 77

    Today was mostly more of what I did yesterday. I improved the Puppet as well as my ability to control it. The biggest improvement was in the way I made it. Instead of just being one solid block of wood, it was knotted everywhere. This made it harder to cut through it, though it certainly didn¡¯t do many favors with aesthetics.


    Other than that a couple notable things happened.


    Par gave Willow and I a lesson on cooking, and I actually made something I''d be willing to eat. I felt proud of myself for that, I was making noticeable progress. Willow didn¡¯t do very well, but still a tad bit better than she did last time.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I watched Willow as we were together today, thinking about what she said a couple days ago. I noticed her freezing up a couple times, but never for more than a moment. I tried to comfort her whenever I saw her freeze up, and she would seem thankful whenever I did. By the end of the cooking lesson she was freezing up less often, or at least I noticed it less often. She might not be entirely comfortable with being, well, alive, but I''m glad she¡¯s here.


    Anyway, I''m feeling pretty exhausted today. I think I''m going to take a break from playing with the goblins tomorrow and mostly just rest. Good Night Diary.

 Day 78

    Today I did exactly what I said I would yesterday, rest. It was, for lack of a better word, restful.


    I just kind of laid around all day, even ended up taking a nap after lunch. Though to be fair it was an amazing lunch. Something par made out of a boar, some wild plants he called a potato, and spices that I couldn¡¯t even begin to name. It was amazing. A combination of my already lethargic mood, feeling stuffed and satisfied, and having nothing important to do led me to take a nap from between lunch and mid-afternoon. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    In the latter part of the afternoon Par was bragging a bit about his best goblins. He said a group of three of them managed to take out a bear with only minor injuries. He added that a couple of them might be evolving soon. He also said that practicing against my puppets could be a pretty effective way to get them use to one on one fights.


    I was a bit conflicted about that. On one hand, I gained a bit of pride from his words. On the other I don''t want my little game to turn into training, I just want it to remain as something I do for fun.


    Overall it was a good day, spending every day like this would be boring, but it¡¯s nice every once in awhile. Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 79

    Today I spared against the goblins with my puppets again. And now that I think about it I should really figure out a way to say the more concisely.


    Anyway, I enjoyed myself. And I got better. By mid-afternoon I was winning most of the fights, a fact that I was proud of. Unfortunately, this meant that I wasn¡¯t improving much, so I asked Par to send some of his stronger Goblins against me. Long story short, they destroyed me. I didn¡¯t win another match for the rest of the day. That isn¡¯t to say I didn¡¯t improve, in fact, I improved more then than at any other time. I thought about improving the puppet itself again, but there wasn¡¯t much I could do there without cutting up another creature for inspiration, something I would rather avoid, so I just continued to spar with them. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    Other than that I hung out with Willow, we didn¡¯t really do much, just hung out. I almost passively noticed that she froze up less often today, it seems she getting use to being alive.


    One thing she mentioned was that she was remembering a life before this one a little more clearly. Or at least that¡¯s what she said. ¡®I dug in the dirt a lot, and planted things¡¯ was how she described it. It sounds nice and quiet, though I would get pretty bored.


    That''s about all that happened today. Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 80

    Today Tiddol¡¯s party returned. They were bruised and battered all over, and smiling. I got to work healing them up as they told me about their adventure.


    Apparently, the first couple floors were pretty easy, so they passed them quickly. The described the creatures they fought in the dungeon pretty well, but none of it was particularly memorable. What I got out of it was that they started struggling at around the halfway point, and stopped at the boss creature that marked the three-quarters point. Apparently, they managed to get a pretty rare piece of loot from that one, though not one anyone could actually use so they just sold it, along with most of the loot.


    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The few things they did keep were for the most part not very interesting, a new axe for Thes, a couple miscellaneous potions, and a fancy looking cooking knife to name a few. A couple items that were interesting included an enchanted ring that Tiddol kept, apparently, it could create a small shield when fed mana, and a magical herb known as Astrie. It¡¯s used as an additive to make some potions more potent, at least according to mest that is. As none of them are good alchemists they plan on growing some and selling it and asked me to help out.


    Naturally, i agreed, I am always willing to bring new plants into my grove. They tried to offer me money in exchange, but I declined. What would I do with the money? Instead, I had them promise to bring me new plants every once in a while.


    Other than that nothing really noteworthy happened today.


    Overall it was an exciting day, I hope to have many more days like it in the future. Anyway, Good Night Diary,

 Day 81

    Today I focused on cultivating the new plant. It didn¡¯t take much to adapt it to the environment of my grove, though it did take a lot of mana relative to its size to grow. I almost messed up really badly when I thought to mix it with the Dead Tulip, putting the different plants close to each other elicited no reaction, but when I tried to combine them through more magical means the pollen of the Dead Tulip was rendered much more dangerous. Luckily I noticed before something bad happened, so no harm done.


    I spent most of the rest of the day messing around with the Astrie plants. One of the most interesting things I did was form an armor out of it like I had previously with other plants. Like the other times I made an armor I felt an increase in the amount of mana flowing into me, but it wasn¡¯t as large as with the others. Instead, i felt an odd sense of power, like every movement of mana inside me was exaggerated. I just sat there for a while, studying the sensations. When I finally tried to manipulate mana it was to modify a plant. Everything was easier, more efficient, and faster. It was also incredibly exhausting, not physically but mentally. I could only hold on for the space of a couple breaths before I had to remove the armor or faint. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Latter I tried making a staff out of it, like the one I''ve seen Mest use when doing magic. I had a hunch that it somehow assisted in magic, and my experience with the armor supported this thought. In the end, it did work, though not how I thought it would. It improved overall power and efficiency but made everything related to magic harder to control.


    I actually managed to get Mest to praise the staff. He said ¡®not bad, my own is only a tad bit better, and that''s simply because I''ve enchanted it. If I enchant this one well enough it could be a much better replacement¡¯. I think that might be the most I''ve ever seen him praise someone, which brings me no small amount of smug satisfaction.


    Anyway, playing around with the Astrie plants has left me exhausted, so I''m going to bed early. Good Night Diary.

 Day 82

    Last night I realized something, I have been trying to keep busy almost constantly, not giving myself a chance to think about much other than what I busy with. Yeah, a lot of what I''ve been doing is fun or interesting or exciting, but today I decided to just sit with my own thoughts.


    I thought about the future, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve. In the longest term, there is one thing I want to achieve, growing my grove to be as big and diverse as I possibly can. Other than that I want to just live life and have fun. Something my mother said really resonates with me there, always live life without regrets.


    My thoughts then turned to the past. First the more recent past. Meeting Tiddol for the first time, to naming Lord Parius The Magnificent, and everything after that. Many of my favorite memories from this time are with those two, games we¡¯ve played, discussions we¡¯ve had, and just hanging out.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    Inevitably my thoughts turned to my parents. I don¡¯t feel as angry at them anymore. Instead, there is sadness at their death and a melancholy fondness of their memory. I thought of how locks of my mother''s hair would tickle my nose when she read me a story as I was falling asleep, about how my father would and I would put on little skits for my mother and he would use a deep gruff voice to play all the characters, even the young or female ones. I started to cry as I was thinking of those fond memories, I wasn¡¯t sad, instead, i felt like I would do anything to relive those memories, to see them again, if only to say goodbye, or I love you one last time. But I know that''s almost certainly never going to happen, they¡¯ve probably already reincarnated somewhere else with little or no memory of me. But still, it would be nice.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 83

    Today I played with my puppets. I didn¡¯t have them fight the goblins, instead I had them dance and perform.


    It was my first time trying to control more than one puppet at the same time, and it didn¡¯t go so well at first. I kept switching between them, controlling one and then controlling the other. Having them do the same thing at the same time was easy, it only took slightly more effort than controlling one, but what I wanted to do was control them independently of each other.


    I made very little progress at that today. I did manage to get them to mirror each other, instead of doing the same thing, or switching back and forth, but nothing more than that. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Willow came to me today holding a bottle with a storm cloud in it, excitedly showing it off to me. She said she finally managed to make something self-sustaining at that small of a scale, she then proceeded to give me a very detailed explanation of how it works, almost all of which going over my head. What I did get is that it isn¡¯t perfect, so it will fade away over the course of the next week, which is still significantly longer than she¡¯s been able to do before, and for her age probably feels like forever.


    Today was, frustrating, to say the least. Usually, when I work on what feels like an impossibly difficult project, like figuring out how to create a miniature self-sufficient ecosystem, I feel like I at least managed to make a little progress. I don¡¯t feel like I made any today, it makes me want to rip something apart. After I''m done writing this I''m going to go have my puppet spar against some goblins, hopefully, I can vent some frustration that way.


    Anyway, I can¡¯t really say goodnight, since I''m not going to sleep yet, but goodbye for now diary.

 Day 84

    Today I decided to make a list, a list of all of the things I want to accomplish. Here is that list in no particular order.


    Grow my grove into a forest


    Perfect my puppet


    Acquire new plants


    Learn how to manipulate other creatures the way I can manipulate plants.


    Create a tiny self-sufficient biome


    Learn how to cook


    Learn how to control more than one puppet at a time.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Why I decided to make this list? I¡¯m not entirely sure, but hopefully, it will come in handy. Today I mostly worked on the first one, gowing my grove.


    Last nights sparring matches got me, heated, for lack of a better word. Instead of being a fun distraction or helping me vent frustration I just got angry. I was making obvious mistakes to the point that I felt like diving in and just fighting myself, it wasn¡¯t until Tiddol pulled me away and forced me to calm down did I start to feel a little better, though even then I was angry at my own failures. So I fed the trees, it¡¯s very relaxing, very meditative.


    I didn¡¯t sleep last night, nor did I do much of anything other than feed the trees today. And it gave me time to think, about myself mostly but about a couple other things too, I actually made that list during this meditative feeding session. I asked myself why am I getting so worked up about not being able to improve? Well I mean obviously it would frustrate anyone, but not like this. I guess I just feel like like when I don¡¯t improve that I''m failing on some very basic level, like, I don¡¯t know, emotions are complicated.


    Anyway, I haven¡¯t slept in two days, it''s going to sleep now. Good Night Diary.

 Day 85

    Today I slept in. the sun was almost directly overhead when I woke up. I felt great when I woke up, and hungry, really hungry. I asked par to help me make pancakes, and they turned out alright, not as good as par could do, but still tasty.


    Thes freaked out today around early evening. I didn¡¯t see what happened but I saw the aftermath, several goblins lay dead, and many more were injured. While I was treating the injured ones I saw Thes being magically restrained by Mest. Par was pissed.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I was shocked by this turn of events. I just kind of went through the motions of healing the goblins while I took it in. yeah, I knew he was dangerous and a little unstable before, but I didn¡¯t fully realize it. And frankly I''m pretty angry myself, I don¡¯t think I can allow him back into my grove until he is able to fully control himself.


    There really isn¡¯t much else to say about today. Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 day 86

    Today Mest came to apologize to me. He was apologizing for letting Thes get out of hand the other day. After some discussion, i found out that sort of thing happens semi-frequently and is the only reason they have him as the only front line fighter. Anyone else has a high chance of being killed. Usually, when they aren¡¯t fighting Mest watches over him and can react fast enough to restrain the raging bear before he can cause any damage. According to him, it¡¯s happened a couple times since they came to my grove, I just never noticed. This time, however, Mest was distracted at the wrong moment and things turned out bad.


    It was stunning how much humility the mage was showing, he was normally uptight and had an air of ¡®i know I''m better than you, but I''m too polite to tell you that¡¯. I felt none of that this time, he was genuinely sorry. He didn¡¯t even ask for forgiveness, just said that he will make sure to prevent this from happening again.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Around noon Par came over to brag to me, in his usual almost worshipful manner. Apparently getting attacked by a giant bearzerker the other day triggered something in many of his goblins, and a big chunk of them fell asleep to evolve.


    I saw Willow And Tiddol play together today, it looked like Tiddol was teaching Willow how to make rope, while Willow watched and practiced intently. Or at least that''s what they were doing when I saw them. After I asked Willow about it a bit later she said that it was something they did all the time, Tiddol loved teaching her and she loved learning. I¡¯m just glad I accomplished that much when we were teaching her about the world, a love of learning will take you far, at least that''s what Mest says from time to time. Par too recently, though only really towards his more intelligent followers.

 Day 87

    The evolved Goblins woke up this morning. Most of them became greater goblins, but one out of every three goblins that evolved became hobgoblins like Par. I tried sparring against some of them, and while I lost every time when I went up against a Hobgoblin, I could win a couple matches against greater goblins. It was definitely much more of a challenge, which made it a bit more exciting.


    At one point during the day, I saw Tiddol holding a Dead Tulip. Naturally, I freaked out until I realized she wasn¡¯t drowsy, and I wasn¡¯t getting drowsy for inhaling the pollen. Naturally, I was really curious. She said that she managed to figure out a way to harvest them with little risk, or rather harvest the pollen. It was actually a pretty simple process, she held her breath and ran straight for a small patch of the flowers before putting them into a small pouch made of a thick cloth before running away far enough to be relatively safe. She then shook the flowers for a while until all the pollen fell off. Repeat a couple times and she had a bag filled with sleeping dust. She kept the one flower because it was relatively intact, and she thought it looked pretty, which I have to agree with. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Mid-evening I was messing around with the Astrie plants when I decided to make a puppet out of it. The process took a lot more mana than when I used other plants, but it went quicker. I tested the puppet out during a couple sparring matches and I noticed a couple things were different. The most obvious difference was how it controlling, it controlled a fair bit easier, about the same difference between before and after I added joints to the puppet, maybe a little less. Unfortunately, this had the drawback of a more brittle wood, it would crack and splinter quite a bit easier than with the wood I was using before. The last difference I noticed was I was able to heal it a lot easier, to the point that repairing it in the middle of a fight was actually possible. Overall it was a solid improvement, well not solid so much but you get the idea. I wonder if the improved control could help me actually control more than one puppet at a time? I¡¯ll try that out tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 88

    Today i focused on manipulating two puppets at a time, using puppets made from the Astrie plant. And I actually made some progress. It wasn¡¯t much, simply moving the hands in different ways, but it was more than i was able to do before. Unfortunately even that much took most of the day and would leave me feeling mentally drained, but it was progress, progress that i could work with.


    While i was resting my mind between attempts i talked to Willow. Overall just getting an update on her life. She¡¯s more confident and articulate, that i could tell without her telling me about it. She also told me more about her ¡®memories of another life¡¯ as she has chosen to call them, she remembered being something called a farmer, which grow plants, called crops, in large amounts for profit. I didn¡¯t even realize such a thing was possible, i thought the only ones that worked with plants were either those like me, who create groves and forests as their home, or alchemists that use them for their own work. Honestly, thinking about it know, it makes sense, i just never considered it. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    Not much else noteworthy happened today, and i¡¯ve already stayed up latter than usual practicing manipulating the puppets. Speaking of, days seem to be getting longer, and there hasn¡¯t been any rain for a long time, at this point we are well into summer.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 89

    Today Par asked me for a favor, which in itself was odd because he almost never asks me for anything. What he asked me for was wood, specifically wood he could build with, and a lot of it. I had no problem filling his request. If I do it right I can make some low-quality timber really quickly, and Par said he didn¡¯t particularly care about the quality. In addition to that, at this point I could do that all day without a problem, it doesn¡¯t take much concentration and my mana regeneration is almost enough to match what I would be using, so I grew the wood that Par needed while doing other things today.


    When I asked him what he was going to use all the wood for he said it was for housing. He wants to have a couple large communal housing buildings built because of how quickly his tribe is growing. I never really noticed a growth in the number of goblins, but then again I never really paid attention, and they seem to stay out of my way. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I talked to some of the new Hobgoblins and greater goblins for a while. One Hobgoblin, in particular, seems to have taken over as Par¡¯s second in command, though whether that will is to be seen. They are all definitely much more intelligent than the goblins, though the hobgoblins are smarter than the greater goblins, that at least is to be expected.


    Speaking of Par¡¯s tribe, more of the goblins are starting to evolve. it¡¯s actually been going at a steady rate for the last couple days, nowhere near the number that initially evolved, but still around one or two a day.


    Another thing that I thought was noteworthy. Some of par¡¯s tribe were talking about strange people that were hanging out a ways off. It doesn¡¯t seem too important, but the way they were talking about it made more than a little uncomfortable.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 90

    Today I decided continued working on controlling two puppets at once. I managed to get it to the point where I could move their hands individually without tiring myself much more than I would have with one puppet. This meant that, with a large amount of mental strain, I could manipulate their entire bodies at the same time, albeit in a very rough and simplistic way. It honestly wasn¡¯t much different from manipulating the hands with precision, only slightly more complicated and on a much larger scale. The amount of progress I''m making on this is amazing.


    Between attempts at manipulating puppets, I talked to Tiddol a lot. I finally managed to get her to explain what she does in her little party, at least some of it. As she describes it she¡¯s something of a jack of all trades, she knows a small amount of magic, though not much as Mest usually covers there, and the same is true of most combat, as Thes, and until recently Lesys, took care of that. She took care of all the support stuff, cooking, making sure the gear wasn¡¯t about to fall to pieces, basic combat healing, and occasionally crippling the enemy in ways the others can¡¯t. What she meant by that last point I have no idea, but I''m assuming it has something to do with the sleeping powder from the other day.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Other than that not much happened. The people from yesterday are still there, Par¡¯s goblins keep evolving at the same rate, and willow flung herself into the air on accident when creating a tornado, a surprisingly common occurrence based on how well she handled the situation.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 91

    Today I primarily worked on growing my grove outwards. It¡¯s been awhile since I''ve put most of my concentration on this task. A couple days ago when I meditated on feeding the trees wasn¡¯t so much growing out but growing up, so it¡¯s not the same thing. The growth was very noticeable, to the point that the people on the outside of my grove could watch it move towards them. Honestly seeing the difference in my own ability between now and when I first started is immensely satisfying.


    Mid-evening Par came to me, he seemed really nervous and on edge about something. According to him the people his tribe have been watching have him really on edge, he said something along the lines of ¡®i¡¯ve read about this type of event in stories¡¯. I didn¡¯t really get exactly what he was talking about, but I understood the basics. He want¡¯s me to make his tribe a bunch of wooden weapons to prepare for a potential attack soon. he says the weapons I can make are better than most things he¡¯s been able to acquire for his tribe, which made me glow in pride a bit, it¡¯s always nice to be acknowledged. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    Naturally, i agreed to his request, it¡¯s not like it¡¯ll take much time. I even managed to get a quarter of them done before writing this. But I am going to go to bed early today, draining my mana like I have today tires me in a way that isn¡¯t quite physical and isn¡¯t quite mental, It also makes me hungry, but that''s a completely different thing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 92

    In the morning I finished making a sword for each of Par¡¯s tribe. It didn¡¯t take long, I was done shortly after breakfast. His tribe definitely seemed appreciative.


    For most of the rest of the day, I worked on my ability to manipulate plants, mostly just trying to be able to manipulate them as fluidly as possible. My ability to do this is instinctual, and I want to get to the point where my skill is instinctual as well. I make a good amount of progress, and with pretty much everything I''ve been working on recently having something to do with this, my skill level is pretty high. Unfortunately, i feel like I''m getting close to a wall in my growth, I know quite a bit about manipulating plants, too the point where I don¡¯t know about enough of the things I need to know to properly improve. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    It shouldn¡¯t be too difficult to break through this wall, I could probably find a manual about it somewhere, or at least ask other people to find a manual. If that doesn¡¯t work I''m sure Mest would be more than happy to debate theories of magic with me, I''m sure something would be applicable. And besides, if all else fails I could brute force my way through it.


    Overall it was a pretty calm day, not peaceful, but calm. There was a tension in the air, but nothing noticeable was changing. It will probably pass without incident.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 93

    Today Par¡¯s fears came true. Those people his tribe had been watching spontaneously attacked us. They were slavers as I found out after the fact.


    We managed to fight them off, the only ones they managed to kill or capture were goblins. It¡¯s still a tragedy, but not nearly as bad as if Par or Tiddol got captured. It was scary, though not quite terrifying, it was all I could do to keep them away from me with my puppet. And even then the puppet was almost completely destroyed by the end, I''d never seen it splintered away so badly. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    I¡¯m not too sure what happened during the fighting, but after the fact, everyone had injuries of some kind. Tiddol and Mest were able to stop most of the injuries from bleeding out, but not enough for them to recover. After that fight, I focused on healing everyone I could. Willow first, as I hate to see the child suffer, then Tiddol so she could better heal others, and then the rest in no particular order.


    I¡¯m. I think I''m going to go to sleep now. I need time to process.

 Day 94

    I killed someone yesterday. Three people actually. It wasn¡¯t with my own hands, but rather through my puppet, it was impersonal. But instead of that making it better, it makes it worse. I know it was in self-defense, but that doesn¡¯t change anything.


    I don¡¯t want to hurt people, I don¡¯t want to cause pain and suffering any more than I want to suffer. I want to lead a simple, quiet life, free from violence. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    I didn¡¯t really do anything today, just sat around. Yesterday there were bodies littering the area, but they were gone this morning. At one point Tiddol came to me with words of encouragement, but the impact was hollow.


    I feel tired, emotionally exhausted, so I''m going to bed for the night now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 95

    I couldn¡¯t make a puppet today. It came as no surprise. I don¡¯t want to make one, subconsciously that is. Regardless of how I tried, my body and my mind didn¡¯t cooperate with me. That¡¯s fine though.


    I couldn¡¯t make a sword either. Nor could I make a bow, a staff, or even arrows. Armor though, armor I could make. I took to wearing my armor, being comforted by its presence, and distinctly aware of its absence.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    I could make other things too, and I did. I reveled in the joy of creation today. Well, reveled is a bit strong, distracted myself might be a better phrasing.


    It seems the people that attacked us were slavers. But it doesn¡¯t matter, not to me at least.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 96

    Today I overheard Mest and Par talking. Some of the slavers got away, that gave me an odd sense of relief, though not for long. It seems their part of a group famous for being vindictive, so it¡¯s likely they will return eventually. So the two of them were discussing ways to quickly make us more powerful overall, and they both agreed the fastest way would be to train the goblins.


    I volunteered to heal par¡¯s tribe as they became injured, something inevitable. It feels good to heal, it brings me a sense of joy similar to that of creation, though maybe to a slightly lesser degree. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Tiddol joined me in healing the injured, and we managed to swap note, trade insights into magic, as a result we both improved pretty quickly. Though I will admit that Tiddol improved a bit more than I did.


    By the end of the day, the two of us had a handful of Par¡¯s tribe asking us to teach them how to heal. Healing magic I might be able to teach, it is the only one of my magics that I understand on a level other than instinctual. It¡¯s something I can explain, at least a bit.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 97

    Today Tiddol and I taught several members of Par¡¯s tribe, we really need to come up with a better name for that, healing magic. A couple of them were able to learn it, though most didn¡¯t do too well. The two of us decided to focus on teaching the more gifted ones and get them to teach the rest. By the end of the day, the top ten of them could match Tiddol and I combined when it came to healing.


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    I had nightmares last night. In one I was standing still, staring at my bloodied hands while people around me were screaming. In another I slowly merged with my puppet while we fought another creature, when we fully merged, we killed the other creature.


    I talked to Tiddol about them, she offered to sleep with me tonight to see if that would help. I gladly accepted.


    Anyway, I''m getting tired, so Good Night Diary.

 Day 98

    I had nightmares again last night. But they weren¡¯t quite so bad as the night before. Tiddol would wake me when I got too restless in my sleep, and it helped. I feel bad for her though, she didn¡¯t look very well rested this morning. If it doesn¡¯t get better or it gets worse I think I''ll use Dead Tulip pollen to help me sleep, that gave me a dreamless sleep.


    I decided to experiment with that very same flower today. The first thing I had to do was figure out how to work with it safely. I tried using various objects to cover my face, getting Willow to make it rain a little over the flowers, and just holding my breath. Ultimately the solution was pretty simple, for me at least, I figured out that I was able to manipulate the pollen in the air the same way I could a plant, albeit with a tad bit more difficulty.


    The most notable thing i managed to do was make a fruit grow from the flower, This fruit did the opposite of what the pollen did, making the one who ate it energetic and awake. The fruit, that has yet to be named, is similar to a peach in shape, but closer to a nut in texture, which is weird because it has a pit. The most interesting part about this discovery was that the Dead Tulip originally didn¡¯t have a fruit, i made it myself using borrowed parts of other plants and a lucky accidental modification of the flowers¡¯ sleeping property, i was trying to make it more potent and failed in an amazing way. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Other than that everything else I figured out with the flower lines up pretty well with what I thought would happen. Making an armor out of it causes a cloud of the pollen to follow me, and gives me the same basic benefits as most other plants, while nothing spectacular came about when I changed other aspects of the flower.


    Oh yeah, I''ve decided to start recording all of my findings in a book, like the one Par showed me months ago.


    Now that I think about it I forgot to mention something. A while ago, when they were getting back from one of their trips, Tiddol brought me a bunch of paper, the stack went well over my head. Hopefully, that will last me for awhile.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary. I hope I sleep soundly tonight.

 Day 99/100

    Day 99


    The nightmares didn¡¯t get better, though they didn¡¯t get worse either, Tiddol was even more tired today than yesterday, I really feel sorry for her. Tonight I think I''m going to inhale some Dead Tulip pollen, modified so it lasts longer without being as strong.


    Not a lot happened today. I practiced manipulating plants but I didn¡¯t come across anything new and interesting today. I just polished my skills.


    Mest commented on the fruit I made yesterday, saying that he could make quite a bit of money if he sold it to a skilled alchemist. At his request, I planted a couple of them.


    And that is about all that happened today, at least the interesting parts.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.


    Day 100


    Last night I slept just fine, I didn¡¯t have any nightmares and I woke up feeling refreshed. I think I''m going to use the pollen again tonight.


    Today I decided to read, there are still a lot of books here I haven¡¯t read. With permission from Tiddol, I looked through her little library and pulled out a book at random. It was of Origin, or the creators of almost all life. According to the book the first of the Origin appeared roughly five hundred years ago, and at the time they were the only things in the world that could count as being alive. They were little more than balls of mana, most sentient, some not, as such they had an amazing ability to manipulate mana, beyond the innate abilities of any species that has come after them.


    It was a large book, and I didn¡¯t get very far in it today, but Origin fascinated me. They''re basically my progenitors, the first creators, they created and changed life on a whim. A feat I am striving to replicate, if I can learn more about them maybe I can make my first real strides towards manipulating creatures other than plants. Tomorrow I''m going to read as much of the book as I can. I remember Tiddol telling me she met one of the Origin once, I need to get her to tell me about it.


    Anyway, It¡¯s getting late, and I should sleep. So Good Night Diary.

 Day 101

    In the morning I decided to ask Tiddol about the time she met one of the last surviving Origin. According to her, it looked exactly like described in the book, like a floating ball of light. She also mentioned the way it talked, or rather didn¡¯t, she described a voice just appearing in her mind while she discussed with it. She didn¡¯t talk to it long, but from what she said it was dying, or at least it seemed like it was dying. When she left it gave her a parting gift, the book I picked up yesterday, made out of pure mana in the blink of an eye.


    After that, I returned to reading. I read about their first creations, all of them ended in failures, I read about how they tried over and over again until the managed to make something that didn¡¯t die instantly, a troll. How they solved the problems they were faced when creating life fascinated me. The first, and most obvious problem was the weight of the world itself, anything they would make was crushed to death almost immediately. They solved that problem by making their creations sturdier and more durable, allowing them to survive longer. But no matter how durable they made their creations they would always fall sick and die within a couple days. Supposedly it took them years by our current understanding for them to figure out the problem, it was mana, or more specifically mana poisoning. Their creations were not built to handle mana, and so it wrecked their bodies. At the time Origin as a whole had no idea how to allow a living thing to wield mana, so instead, they made it impervious to it. After more than a year of refinement, they finally managed to produce the first viable form of life other than themselves, the trolls. Their durable bodies and near perfect immunity to magic, coupled with immense regenerative power made them ideal for surviving and possibly thriving.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    What amazed me most was the level of detail in the book, most of it I couldn¡¯t even begin to understand, but the little bit I did was eye-opening, to say the least. I might have to read this book a couple times, and that could take awhile, but for the first time, I have a solid lead on how to manipulate all forms of life. And not just that, but also to create life too.


    Needless to say, I''m probably not going to get much sleep tonight, because it''ll be reading. The biggest problem with that is light. Maybe I''ll get Mest to teach me a basic torch spell, shouldn¡¯t be too difficult, hopefully.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 102

    Last night I read until I was basically falling asleep, and then slept in this morning. Luckily I managed to use Dead Tulip pollen before falling asleep, so I didn¡¯t have any nightmares.


    I kept reading all day, not even taking a break to eat, as eating isn¡¯t necessary for me. I read about their other creations, about how they figured out how to create creatures that were able to use magic, how they created the earliest of all chains of evolution we know today, the plants, the beasts, the monsters, the bipeds, the demons, the angelics, and lastly the draconic. The undead came later and was viewed as an abomination of their work by most of the Origin, while their creations didn¡¯t mind it for the most part. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    Partway through reading, I noticed something. The book was enchanted and was using my mana to fuel the enchantment. While reading I tried to stop the flow of mana, but then everything became fuzzy and difficult to understand like my mind was struggling to grasp the concepts written, but with it on everything was incredibly clear, I wasn¡¯t able to increase the consumption of mana. That Origin must truly have been amazing to create something like this.


    Anyway, I''m not going to be able to stay up late again tonight, so I''m going to sleep now to wake up early. So Good Night Diary

 Day 103

    I didn¡¯t get to read much today, unfortunately. Though I did get to learn quite a bit, though most of it seems like useless information.


    It started when I first opened the book to read. Willow came in and asked me a question about the sun and the moon. I don¡¯t remember exactly what it was. I didn¡¯t have the answer, so the two of us went to Mest, it would be more surprising if he didn¡¯t know.


    Anyway, it turned into a lecture that lasted most of the day. He ended up explaining to the two of us why there is a day and night cycle, and where the sun goes when it isn¡¯t in the sky, things like that. To summarize the most interesting bits the sun and the moon orbit the world, which is significantly larger than them, so much so that there are actually many moons and suns, but they rarely show up in the sky at the same time. One of those events is actually supposed to happen in this area in a month or so. The reason day and night are more or less steady is pure chance as far as he knows, though it isn¡¯t always as steady. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    It was an enlightening, if not particularly useful, day. Willow seemed to enjoy listening to Mest¡¯s lecture, so that was nice.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 104/105

    Day 104


    I read again today, and at the rate I''m going it¡¯ll be ten or eleven more days until I''m done with this book. It¡¯s bigger on the inside than the outside, almost certainly due to the magic that the author used to make it.


    It was all fascinating. The book covers everything from the fundamentals of magic too ancient history, and its done in a way that makes me feel like I am learning with the creatures I am reading about.


    Unfortunately, I am mostly incompatible with the methods origin used to do magic, but I am compatible enough, due to my state of being a mana based creature, that maybe I could adapt those methods to be used by myself. It would take time, a lot of it, but significantly less than it would for me to do the same on my own.


    One thing at a time though, perfecting the art of creating life comes first.


    Anyway, Good Night DiaryUnauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Day 105


    I had to take a break too eat this morning. I¡¯ve never really gone without food for so long without also going without any kind of nourishment, something I never want to repeat, so it was surprising how hungry I was getting. Naturally, it still wasn¡¯t necessary for me to eat, but it is uncomfortable.


    Anyway, after eating i got back to reading. Today I came across the part that details the creation of dungeons. It wasn¡¯t as detailed as the rest, but that makes sense as even among origin it was only known by a handful of individuals exactly how they were created. However, it did give a pretty good idea about why they continue to be created and what exactly they do. The reason they were created in the first place is because they were running out of mana, so a couple of them worked together to take some large gems and make them produce mana, and they were somehow successful at making them produce mana from nothing, eventually those gems obtained sentience and as a result became a very free spirited people, hence the birth of the modern dungeon. It also mentioned earlier how plants at the time weren''t able to create mana, though based on what was said here I''m not sure that''s actually what plants do.


    The reason why dungeons continue to pop up is also pretty weird, and still a little confusing to me. It referenced ¡®the laws of the world¡¯ frequently, without explaining exactly what that is, though I do get the gist of it from context. It seems these ¡®laws of the world¡¯ govern how everything in the world works, like evolution and many forms of magic, though not all it seems. What they did was add to these laws somehow, it had nothing on how they did it, to make the world itself create dungeons when various criteria are met. Obviously so they could always have access to more mana.


    Anyway, that''s all for tonight. Good Night Diary

 Day 106

    Today I kept reading, of course. It was all fascinating, but not much of it was stuff I would be able to simplify here.


    What I read today was mostly about evolution. It talked about how several of Origin changed the laws of the world to create evolution as we know it today. They didn¡¯t create anything new there, just changed what was already present into something else. Before, evolution would happen gradually and would produce much less noticeable effects over longer periods of time. This annoyed origin because they needed their creations to be more stable so they could study them and improve them better. It wasn¡¯t such a problem before this point as there weren''t many things alive at the time, so nothing really had to compete, but as they created more and more competition got more fierce. Naturally, this led to creatures being more likely to become more powerful, which resulted in evolution.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    According to the book, they spent almost a decade changing the laws of the world so evolution would happen all at once in a short burst, instead of gradually. The book was very vague about how they went about changing those laws, almost as if the author didn¡¯t want that information to be known.


    I had to put the book down for the night as it started to talk about plants again, so I''m looking forward to that tomorrow. Also, it seems that I''m able to read the book at a faster rate than I thought, I should be done in four to six days, not nine or ten.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 107

    Today i received a gift from Tiddol. She called it a clock. This clock was a solid metal box with what was called a face on one side. This face had the numbers one through ten listed on it with two hands, the larger of which moving faster than the smaller one. According to tiddol the smaller hand completes one full rotation every day, and moves from one number to the next with each rotation of the larger hand. I can definitely see it being useful.


    From now on i think i¡¯m going to use this clock to measure time, it should be much less vague than before. For reference i woke up when the clock hit three this morning.


    Back to what i read today. It was about plants, and how they produce mana. They actually managed to accomplish this in several diffrent ways, all of which involved taking energy from another sorce. The two most effective ways were either taking the light energy of the suns, and yes what was said in this book confirms what Mest said a couple days ago about the suns and moons, and turned it into mana. The other involved taking energy from deep below the surface of the world and turning that into mana on the surface. The way they did that was fascinating, it is something i feel like i¡¯m on the verge of being able to mimic or change. Recently i¡¯ve been working on being able to change plants into a variety of things based on their base, but i¡¯ve never really considered changing their actual base nature, something that in hindsight is pretty obvious.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    It was a bit after the seven mark when i went started writing this. I decided to look up at the sky and look at the moon, and it is definitely different from the one last night, this one is a bit bigger, and light green as opposed to blue. Interesting, but not useful.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 108

    Today i continued reading, obviously. But the story had taken a slightly darker turn, this was the point that Origin had started to fall. At first they didn¡¯t realize what was happening, they were just dying off one at a time, and fewer were being born. It was a relatively normal occurrence for origin to just die, they weren''t immortal after all, nor was their society perfect and free from strife. It wasn¡¯t until there was a noticeable decrease in their populations that they realized something was wrong, and by the time the figured it out they were too late. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    See the key to their downfall was mana, or more specifically to much mana. See their bodies of magical glowing light could only handle so much mana before they burned up, and they had no way of regulating their intake of mana. They wouldn¡¯t notice anything happening unless they were looking for it, they would just feel like they were getting more powerful faster than they should.


    And that¡¯s as far as i got today. Knowing that they aren¡¯t going to bounce back from that is kind of depressing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 109

    I am reaching the end of the book, just a little more reading tomorrow and I will be done.


    This part was rather depressing, it described how Origin tried to counter the effects too much mana was having on them. One of the more successful things they did was the creation of a plant that absorbed mana and crystallized it, but it wasn¡¯t effective enough to decrease the amount of ambient mana. It did, however, allow origin some extra time by making areas that had less mana than everywhere else. Ultimately this failed to keep up with the steady climb in ambient mana. They also tried to develop methods of storing large amounts of mana inside gems, that worked out just as well as the plant did.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    The writing slowly got more desperate as time went on, describing the various methods used by origin to combat this growing threat. But all efforts were in vain. Eventually, it took on a more resigned feel, like the author had given up hope for survival. It went on to describe how many of origin forced an evolution into a lesser creature just so they could survive a little while longer. Others decided to merge themselves with the dungeon cores, thinking that would allow them increased freedom, and it did in a way, they were able to keep most of their previous power intact, but were unable to travel the way the could before.


    The largest group, however, just decided to die. They were unwilling to part with their freedom and died as they lived, creating, trying to leave their mark so thousands of years after they are all gone they will be remembered.


    There isn¡¯t much left to read, so I think I''ll finish it up before bed tonight.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 110

    Last night I finished up with the book. It described the life of the author after origin had collapsed, nothing too interesting. But it ended with a note addressed to Tiddol ¡®i believe I am the last of my kind, I have only held off from death through sheer force of will. A will to let the story of my people be passed down after this, I believe giving you my final creation will bring that to fruition. It won¡¯t be long after you leave me that I will have died.¡¯ I cried at that.


    For the rest of the day I checked up on everyone else. I had read to the exclusion of pretty much everyone else for more than a week now.


    I first checked in on Tiddol. She was playing with willow, and for some reason watching it reminded me of how my mother would play with me when I was younger. I watched for a little bit before deciding to leave them alone.


    Parius probably had the biggest change. I¡¯ve never seen a city before, but what his tiny tribe has turned into is now what I imagine a city looks like. Par himself was drilling a bunch of goblins, and based on my limited understanding of fighting they were actually really good, much better than they were a week ago.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Thes was nowhere to be found, when I asked Mest about it he said he went hunting to blow off some steam.


    Mest was amused by the fact that I tuned everything out for over a week to read, said it reminded him of himself when he was younger. I ended up getting into a lengthy discussion about the things I learned from the book, and while he couldn¡¯t appreciate any of it the way I could, he could appreciate the skill and power it took to pull off those feats. In the end, we both acknowledged that we came out of the conversation with some new enlightenment.


    The trees had grown significantly as well. It seems I had fallen into something of a trance while reading, and though not quite as effective as focusing on them, I managed to inadvertently feed the trees during that trance. My running theory on why is a combination of the book itself drawing out mana and my utter engagement in it to the exclusion of all else, the book ended up drawing out more than I needed to and I unconsciously fed the rest to the trees, and action I was intimately familiar with.


    I also grew myself. Aside from the knowledge I gained from the book itself I feel like my connection with the plants of my grove has reached an even deeper level, I''m not sure what exactly this will involve in the future, but for now the most immediately noticeable effect is an increase in mana regeneration.

 Day 111

    Today I focused on putting what I learned reading into practice. I started with plant manipulation as I felt it would be the easiest for me to translate into real-world ability.


    It was actually easier than I thought, or at least scratching the surface was. I had already been doing many of the things described subconsciously, now that I''m aware of them I can change and improve them. It was slow going at first, even if I knew how to manipulate many of the smaller details I wasn¡¯t sure exactly what they do, and I need to master this before I am confident enough to move on to something like changing the most basic properties of a plant.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I was, however, improving faster than I was before. I didn¡¯t manage to do anything spectacular or flashy today, but there was an improvement.


    I have an idea for how I can start learning what I am now going to call flesh manipulation, but for that, i need to master this first. I know I''m not wasting my time, but I hope I''m advancing in the right direction.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 112/113

    Day 112


    Today was more of the same. I¡¯m making progress incredibly quickly, which makes sense when you consider that I am naturally gifted in manipulating plants and have many insights into it that I only need to fully grasp. This rate of progress will only last maybe a week, but by the end of that week I should be able to manipulate flesh, assuming I''m right of course.


    Nothing profound has been touched on yet. I am reading over certain parts of the book to help me solidify the knowledge but so far all I''ve changed is minor, though instead of scratching the surface now it¡¯s more like I''m scraping away at it.


    Mest read over the description of origin¡¯s magic systems today, before deciding that he was incompatible with them. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary


    Day 113


    Today I did touch upon something profound. A way to change the color of flowers so that even their offspring will keep the change. Changing colors in a plant, especially flowers, is easy, but it never carries to the children of the plant.


    When I demonstrated it to Tiddol she said I could make some amazingly vibrant dyes with them. Something that is supposedly pretty rare around here. Unfortunately, i have no use for money right now so not much will come from that line of thinking for a while.


    Other than that Par¡¯s tribe seems to have evolved beyond a hunter-gatherer group and now has dedicated professions and has even started harvesting grains. Tiddol said something along the lines of ¡®It¡¯s like he¡¯s trying to build society from the ground up.¡¯ in reference to recent advancements they have made.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 114

    Today I continued on my path to mastering plant manipulation. I managed to achieve several minor things today, but the most noteworthy would be this. I took the berries from so long ago and made them not only pump the mana the plants produce into them, but also gather mana from outside the plant to fill the berries with. It was hardly very efficient, and I could probably learn quite a bit from perfecting the process. It won¡¯t cover everything, but it will cover almost everything.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Mest loved the berries, saying that if they get any better they would be incredibly useful to a mage like himself. It is much easier to absorb mana that is already inside you than it is to absorb ambient mana.


    I stumbled across some sort of shrine, or at least that''s what it looks like to me from what I''ve read and heard about. After some inspection, it seems to be dedicated to me. Noticing that I stood up and walked away, I am not going to mess with that, flattering though it may be.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 115

    Today was more of the same. It¡¯s exciting, exploring new ways to manipulate and create.


    Towards the end of the day, I made a major breakthrough in refining the berries. Well, actually, it was more a bunch of minor breakthroughs finally bearing fruit. Tiny mana crystals, barely perceptible, had started to form in and on the berries. If I leave them to grow they will grow indefinitely, albeit very slowly. Or at least that¡¯s the theory. As a side effect, the berries should never rot again.


    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    Around lunchtime, Par came to me and started bragging about one of his underlings. A goblin had evolved into a variant hobgoblin, one with a talent for communicating with plants, no doubt due to my presence. He wasn¡¯t able to manipulate plants in the same way I was, the new hobgoblin saying something along the lines of ¡®they will only obey the master of the forest¡¯, but he could offer his services, and the plants could ask for things. The plants could offer him boons for his service, like giving him a steady supply of mana.


    Why have I never thought of trying to directly communicate with the plants in my grove? Yes, I have managed to get a feel for their overall state, and what would make them happy, but not direct communication. Something to try tomorrow I guess.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 116

    I tried to communicate directly with the plants in my grove today. It came as easy as breathing for me, something I''ve always known how to do, and something I''ve done subconsciously forever.


    They didn¡¯t ¡®speak¡¯ in language, but rather thoughts and ideas. They seemed happy, joyous even, that I was making an effort to communicate with them. It was stunning really.


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    While working on perfecting the berries I communicated with various plants in my grove. Most were content, though many wanted to be changed by my hand, most of them things I could do with ease.


    After a while I noticed something, many of the different species of plants had coalesced into something of a hive mind, and even some of those hive minds have merged to form a hive mind. The individuality of the one being sacrificed for the good of all, always done willingly. There was only one that remained wholly separate, the tree willow was born from.


    As for progress with the berries, the only noticeable difference was the mana crystals grew faster.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 117

    Today was just more of the same. I spent all my time solidifying the knowledge I gained from origin. I feel like I am getting close to the goal I set for myself once I finished the book, It''s exciting.


    The berries were completely covered in mana crystals by the end of the day, a major leap forward. What I''ve been doing is mostly improving its efficiency in various ways, today I also manage to increase the amount of mana it was able to absorb from the air. Relative to the amount of ambient mana it¡¯s negligible, but it still almost doubled the amount of mana I was able to pack into the berries by this evening.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I watched Mest take a couple of the berries and throw them before something happens. It was different each time. I also heard him saying that it improved his magic somehow, though I''m not sure how that is.


    Other than that nothing really noteworthy happened today.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 118

    Every day gets me tangibly closer to my goal of manipulating flesh. Today the berries stopped growing mana crystals and became mana crystals themselves. It was pretty weird when I first saw it happen, at first I thought I had failed. The berry was the same color as it was before I started this whole thing, only a little shinier. It took me a little bit before I realized what it actually was.


    After that, the berries stop getting bigger as quickly, but they got denser as I improved them. I could feel the satisfaction the berry bushes were getting from these improvements. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    My plants have started to refer to the new hobgoblin more and more. They aren¡¯t sure what to make of him, many even want me to meet with him. Though what they want me to do when we meet varies. He¡¯s certainly done a good job of getting them to notice him, and several of them approve of him, but not all of them. I¡¯ll have to meet with the guy, or girl, it¡¯s not too clear which it is. The plants referred to him as whisperer, or at least that''s what I have decided to interpret that pattern of, thoughts? Ideas? Not too sure how to describe it. Anyway, I¡¯m going to try to meet with this whisperer fellow tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 119

    Today I met with the hobgoblin known as whisperer. And honestly they kind of creeped me out, the way they treated me was slightly flattering, but to the point of being weird. I overheard Tiddol whispering something derogatory about religious zealots shortly after meeting with him. I don¡¯t know what a religious zealot is, but from what Tiddol said it is something annoying.


    Overall he didn¡¯t strike me as being particularly dangerous, at least not to anyone I cared about, simply unnerving. The plants seemed to like him, for the most part at least, and Par lets him have a bit more freedom than his other minions. We will definitely keep him around, he has his use. Who knows, maybe his existence can help other goblins evolve into similar creatures, then I could leave the growth of my grove to them. I even mentioned as much to him, though I doubt anything would come as a result. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    As for my process of improving the berries, there was an all-around improvement. Nothing particularly noteworthy though. I am getting closer to the limit of what I can achieve with my current level of knowledge, then i need to do a little bit in other areas and I will be ready to attempt flesh manipulation.


    Willow and Tiddol¡¯s has gotten pretty good, the young sprite treats her almost like a mother, and Tiddol has taken to the role alright. It¡¯s heartwarming to see them together.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 120

    Today I focused on getting myself ready to start flesh manipulation. Solidifying minor concepts that I wasn¡¯t able to cover, or at least not cover very well while perfecting the berries, and going over exactly what I am going to attempt. All of this took the better part of the day.


    I saw Thes and Mest sparring outside my grove today. It was obvious Mest was holding back, as he is more than capable of subduing the bearzerker when both are going all out. Every time Thes managed to get close to Mest they just called it Thes¡¯s win because Mest can¡¯t really take a hit from Thes, but if Mest subdued Thes before he got close then Mest won. Overall Mest won every two out of three times. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    I thought about sparring myself for a little while with my puppet, but no, I don¡¯t think I''m going to fight again for a very long time. I still see the faces of the people I killed in my dreams, it isn¡¯t as bad anymore, and this whole thing with the book has helped distract myself quite a lot, but they won¡¯t go away.


    On a happier note, Willow made a crown of clouds for me to wear for a while. It was a nice gesture and it shows how much she¡¯s advanced in her ability to control her storms. I¡¯m happy for her.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 121

    Day 121


    Today I started attempting to manipulate flesh, or more specifically I started trying to turn wood into flesh. I have no idea how I would go about manipulating flesh directly, but if I could get wood to the point that it basically mimics flesh, could I get it to turn into flesh?


    With this thought in mind I go about crafting a new puppet, not to fight, but for the simple joy of creation. I took my time, starting from the ground up, redesigning everything, pulling bits and pieces from diagrams and descriptions in the book, as well as creating some things that are purely my own. I made quite a bit of progress, but I''m nowhere close. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    This will take a long time, as just redesigning a single toe took me from when the clock hit five, to when it hit eight, most of the time I spent working on it today. I need to make sure every minute detail is correct to increase the chances that this will work. I know I will get better at this as a continues, so I have no idea how long this will take. But it has ignited my passion like nothing before it has, I want, no need to make this dream into a reality.


    During my lengthier than normal lunch break, as I was expending mana much faster than I''m used to, I discussed my project with Mest. It was pretty obvious much of it when over his head, but he still managed to be an interesting conversationalist.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 122

    Today I continued working on the puppet, with progress being slow and steady.


    Willow brought me something she made today. She had somehow managed to catch lightning in a bottle. The way she did it was mildly interesting. After many experiments next to a nearby river, that is not yet part of my grove, she discovered that when lightning struck the sand around it the sand turned to glass. After a lot of trial and error, she managed to get the lightning to form a crude bottle when it struck. While it did that she just had to do something with her mana, it wasn¡¯t clear what, and the lighting would be trapped, albeit significantly weakened. She liked throwing the bottles in the air and hitting them with a stone, saying ¡®I like the pretty lights¡¯. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    I¡¯m stunned by her development, not just magically, but also emotionally. It wasn¡¯t too long ago that she would have bouts of fear regarding the world around her, and all the unknowns it contains. But today it either didn¡¯t happen a single time, or she¡¯s gotten really good at hiding her fear.


    Tiddol told me that they have started to pack up to head out to the city and that they will be leaving for the city tomorrow. Willow practically begged them to let her come, so for a while, it will just be me, Par, and his tribe. It¡¯s been awhile since they left, maybe Mest ran out of materials for his experiments, whatever they are.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 123/124

    Day 123


    They left this morning, and now only Par, his tribe, and I are left. Though I hardly noticed as I spent all day working on the puppet.


    My breaks got shorter when I realized I could eat the newly improved berries to help with mana regeneration. They had a nice crunchy texture and a sweet taste, the would be good in a pie. Stolen novel; please report.


    Nothing else particularly noteworthy happened today.


    Day 124


    Again I spent all day working on the puppet. Yesterday I finished the left foot, today I copied that over to the right. It¡¯s similar enough to make it easy after finishing one, but not so similar as to make it perfectly mirrorable.


    I had to remind myself to write today, I spent so much time today just working on improving the puppet in any little way I could, and I¡¯m only on the feet. But writing in here is not a habit I want to break


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 125/126

    Day 125


    Today marks a minor breakthrough. Mimicking bones has become easier for me, not to the point that I could create the entire skeletal system in a day, but still. I managed to glean several small enlightenments in regards to mimicking bones while making the feet. The Bi-Ped I chose to mimic has a surprising amount of bones in the feet, most do. I¡¯m assuming they are used for balance, but i¡¯m not entirely sure of that.


    I hope I can finish before everyone gets back, I doubt I will, but it would be great to see the look on their faces when I unveil my creation.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Day 126


    Today I didn¡¯t make much progress. It doesn¡¯t seem like my method of going from the ground up will work very well. the feet were mostly skin and bone, both of which don¡¯t need much else to work properly, and the rest was small enough for me to brute force my way through it.


    I decided to start working on the skeletal system first, seems like it would be the best. Not only am I most familiar with it, but from what I can tell most other systems rely on it while only really relying on the muscles system to keep itself together. In the meantime, I can cheat a little and use magic to hold the mimicked bones together.


    Par came to me during one of my many breaks. We talked for a while and it seems like there have been a couple other goblins ranking up into varient greater goblins and hobgoblins, most of them attuned to plants, but there was also one attuned to storms and one attuned to magic in general. Overall there are now five variant hobgoblins and greater goblins, it seems like a lot at first, until you realize just how many goblins Par has collected, pretty much every tribe in the area has joined up, and the ones that didn¡¯t were either eradicated or forced into joining.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 127

    Today I focused on creating the skeleton. It was slow going and tedious at times. With just creating the foot each attempt didn¡¯t take long, roughly the time it took for the larger hand on the clock to move one number. Creating the entire skeleton took five times that, per attempt. Despite that, it is still better than trying to work from the ground up.


    I didn¡¯t make as much progress as I would have liked today, though if nothing else I''ve gotten faster at mimicking bone. I feel like i¡¯m missing something crucial with the bones, like a function I forgot about after reading the notes, whatever, I can always come back to it and change it when I figure out exactly how it will interact with the rest of the body. For now the most important function of the bones is a framework to build everything else on, and honestly, I¡¯m probably overdoing it a bit with how much work i¡¯m putting into it at the moment. What I have already satisfied my immediate needs, I can¡¯t expect it to be perfect right off the bat. I still need to see how everything interacts before I can really perfect anything.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Other than my work on what I have tentatively named ¡®mimic¡¯ life is pretty dull. When i¡¯m not working on the mimic i¡¯m either recovering mana or sleeping. All other tasks are carried out while I recover mana, even writing here.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 128

    Today I started working on the tendons and ligaments, as they are required for to attach the muscles to the skeleton, and the skeleton to itself without magic, which is what I was going to do today before realizing this. Of course, i¡¯m substituting muscles with magic for today, it will make it easier to test.


    Honestly, I have no idea what I¡¯m doing, I think I have a basic understanding of the diagrams, but every time I try the tendons and ligaments are either too weak, and break, or not flexible enough, and break. And that''s just one part of the massive undertaking that is adding tendons and ligaments to bones. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Calm down, one step at a time, I just need to get it to the point that I can add muscles onto the mimic without any major issues, it will be easier to return and iron out the problems after everything is basically in place.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 129

    Today I got to the point that I can add muscles, and started adding muscles. Though I didn¡¯t get too far on the second thing.


    While I was working on the mimic I noticed that I¡¯ve been regenerating mana faster, not by a lot, but by enough that it¡¯s noticeable. It can¡¯t be me getting better at gathering mana, as that has little to do with my own skill. Whatever, I¡¯ll figure out why eventually. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Par came to me to brag about how more of his goblins are evolving into variants, with the vast majority of them being plant aligned, similar to the first one.


    I noticed that the plants seem to think that i¡¯m creating some sort of champion for myself, something to fight in my name. Really I just want to learn how to mold flesh and shape bone, and this is the best starting point I can think of.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 130

    Today I got the rudimentary muscular system to the point that it should support the other systems, with a little magical assistance. I was considering doing the skin next, but I think I''ll do it last because it will be easier for me to work that way. Instead, I started to work on the cardiovascular system, except that''s long and annoying to write, so I''ll refer to it as the blood system. The odd thing about it is I didn¡¯t see where the blood was actually made in the body, I probably skimmed over that part, whatever, I''ll figure it out eventually.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Par asked me if there was anything I wanted in the city, apparently, he was planning on sending his most intelligent hobgoblins into the city to buy some stuff, and wanted to know if I needed anything. After thinking about it for a moment I told him I wanted dungeon cores, after learning what they actually are I''m really curious to see what''s happening when I absorbed them before.


    Other than that I¡¯m starting to get to the point where I can¡¯t build the mimic system by system, in a couple days I¡¯ll have to build it based on how it connects more than system by system.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 131

    Today I worked on ironing out a bunch of minor things with the mimic, basically improving what I have in the most obvious ways. There was definitely enough of that to take up the whole day. I was able to more or less perfect the joints, at least relative to everything else I have so far, the only noticeable problem currently with them is friction. Everything rubs around way too much, and while it isn¡¯t a big deal with what I¡¯m doing right now, I can definitely see how that would be an issue. Not like any of that matters at the moment, that problem will be solved as I introduce new systems.


    I had an epiphany while working today. I thought of a way that could improve my efficiency when creating these mimics, and anything based on plants really. Why don¡¯t I create it from pure mana, instead of using a base material? Yeah at first using a base is going to be faster, but creating it out of mana has a higher potential for speed, and it allows me much more freedom with how I create anything, which doesn''t matter so much with my current project as it is almost entirely mechanical, with few purely magical components, but for creating something like the Dead Tulips it would make it much easier. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    What this means for the near future is my overall efficiency will drop quite a bit, I won¡¯t be able to accomplish as much every day. But as I get better at creating plants without a base I will get even faster than before.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 132

    I didn¡¯t get much done today, I was mostly working on connective tissues. It makes the whole mimic more stable, which reduces the amount of magic required for me to actually test it, which in turn makes it easier for me to practice this new method. I think it will take a couple days to get these connective tissues to work with everything I have so far, at least with how i¡¯m trying to do things. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Par said that his minions should be returning tomorrow. I¡¯m pretty sure he has some method of long-distance communication because he said they definitely have a couple dungeon cores for me, though he was a bit dodgy about the subject of where they were found. Not that I really care if they were stolen, but whatever.

 Day 133

    Today was more of yesterday. All I really worked on was connective tissues, though I did get farther today than I did yesterday. I think it will be about six days from now before I get to the same level of efficiency I had before.


    The highlight of the day came when Par¡¯s hobgoblins returned, with three small dungeon cores. Each of the cores was about half the size of the ones I had before. I didn¡¯t hesitate to grab them one at a time, watching as they melted into my palm one after another. Before I didn¡¯t notice any real change, maybe because I wasn¡¯t looking for one, but this time I did. It was small, almost inconsequential. It wasn¡¯t a real improvement in anything as far as I could tell, instead, it seemed to be affecting something inside of me. I wasn¡¯t able to figure out what that something was, the feeling of it had faded almost as soon as I noticed it. I¡¯m going to need a lot more dungeon cores to figure this out, too bad they¡¯re so rare. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 134

    Today I finished the connective tissues I was able to and then continued working on the blood system, though I didn¡¯t get very far there. For that system, all I can do right now is the heart and the blood vessels in the muscles and bones. Speaking of, I think I figured out where the blood is made, in the bones, though i¡¯m not even going to attempt that part for a while, at least until the rest of the blood system is done. I really don¡¯t want to get sprayed with mimic blood.


    I realized something today, it is less than a month until my 16th birthday, Day 170 if we are going by the dates in this diary. Which reminds me of something else, I should find a calendar. Anyway, Birthdays have always been something of a big deal for my family, or at least it was. This upcoming birthday is extra special for me, for many reasons. My mother would always tell me that I would start to become a woman around my 16th birthday, and now that she¡¯s gone I want to find a way to honor her on that day. Not only that but it¡¯s the first major, I¡¯m not sure how to put it, holiday makes me sound vain and I can¡¯t think of anything else since I''ve made new friends and started to come into my own.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    I am going to embarrass myself in front of everyone by crying, aren''t I?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 135

    I can¡¯t really explain what I did with the mimic today, mostly because it was a bunch of small pieces of different systems, trying to get as many points of contact working together as possible so I can work on more complex systems.


    I noticed something different about Par¡¯s tribe today, there were creatures that weren¡¯t there before. When I asked about them Par said he picked them up in the city, he wanted to diversify his tribe a bit more. Theoretically, they could evolve into dragons, over the course of many generations, so not likely to happen anytime soon.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Other than that Tiddol and co. are coming back in two days, at least according to Par. I¡¯m going to need him to explain his long-distance communication method to me sooner or later.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 136

    I am almost as fast at creating plants without a base as I was with one, which means I am probably even faster with a base, but whatever.


    The mimic is coming along at a steady rate, though i¡¯m starting to question whether this will actually let me mold flesh and shape bone. Regardless I am going to complete this project, I might not get what I am looking for, but I have a gut feeling that I will get something fantastic.


    I noticed something today, my healing magic has improved significantly since I last used it. I am going to go out on a limb and say it¡¯s because of my drastically improved knowledge of living things in general that allows me to heal better. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    I also noticed something else when Par asked me to heal up a couple goblins and kobolds that got into a fight. Despite their outward similarities, the two are incredibly different inside. I know that logically as I have seen the diagrams in the book, and it was completely different groups of origin that create each one long before the first sentients came about, but seeing it for myself was amazing.


    The most glaring difference was that kobolds lacked any blood vessels, their blood simply washed over their organs to give them nutrients. The second most glaring difference was a completely different layout of the organs. While many were similar across the two, for example, both had vocal cords, even those were very different, the kobold¡¯s vocal cords were larger and less developed, more suitable for snarling growls than speech.  There are a lot of little differences like this, it was fascinating to see it as more than a diagram on paper.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 137

    The mimic currently is at the state that it resembles a brutalized corpse more than anything alive. The parts that are there at all are very patchwork, bits and pieces here and there. What I¡¯m planning on doing is getting dozens of points of contact complete to function as a sort of framework for putting in whole systems, and then filling in all of the points of contact for those systems as I build them. I have no doubt that there is a more efficient method, but I don¡¯t know it yet. Assuming I had access to unlimited mana the first method I tried, building from the ground up, would have easily been the best method, but unfortunately, it isn¡¯t.


    It was to the scene of me working over what was, at first glance, a heavily destroyed body that Tiddol found me when she returned. The horrified look on her face was hilarious. Luckily it didn¡¯t take much for her to realize what was going on, at which point she complimented me on my progress so far.


    Mest had a different reaction, namely confusion. When he found me a couple minutes later I was running a couple tests and had the mimic walking around, the demon mage thought I had been practicing necromancy for an instant. Though he covered it up by saying he was thinking about necromancy when he stumbled upon me.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Thes just chose to watch for a while. He had a gaze of what I can only describe as longing in his eyes, not directed at me, not exactly, and certainly not directed at the mimic. I didn¡¯t particularly mind his presence, he can be good company even if he¡¯s quiet and a little broody. Is that even a word? Doesn¡¯t matter, if it wasn¡¯t before it is now.


    Over dinner, we all met up and talked about our recent exploits. There were some interesting stories that the three of them brought back from the city, my personal favorite being Tiddol setting a town guard up with a barmaid, and them really hitting it off.


    In turn, I explained to them the process of creating the Mimic, which went over everyone¡¯s heads, except Mest¡¯s. Though when I mentioned the name I had for it Tiddol quickly corrected me. I had no idea Mimics were actually a thing, apparently a type of shapeshifting monster that uses ambush tactics to kill prey. I¡¯ll have to come up with another name tomorrow.


    Maybe one or two of Par¡¯s Goblins could evolve into Mimics? It is theoretically possible, if incredibly unlikely, maybe over the course of several generations, each one taking a step towards becoming a mimic?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 138

    Today I tried to come up with a good name for the thing I''ve been working on. My first thought was golem, but then I realized that the reason it was my first thought was because I read about it in the book, which I also need a new name for. Every other name I could think of either didn¡¯t sound right or was already something that exists. Eventually, the name Ent came to me and, after confirming it wasn¡¯t something that already existed, It sounds right for some reason. From now on I will refer to this massively upgraded puppet as an Ent.


    The progress I made on the Ent was more of yesterday, though I am getting quicker. It should be a week or less before I am able to move on to the next major step. It feels great to be able to consistently make progress on something.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I realized something today, I¡¯m still wearing the armor I make from plants instead of actual clothes. The only time I take it off is to clean myself, as cleaning or changing it can be done with a little magic, but even that short period of time leaves me feeling vulnerable. And thinking along those lines the idea of fighting, especially by proxy, appalls me. I guess I can¡¯t deal with that kind of trauma by burying it under hard work, however fascinating that work is.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 139

    I¡¯m making more and more progress as time goes on, though still nowhere near fast enough yet. Not that I could ever be fast enough to truly satisfy myself. Other than that there isn¡¯t much to say about the Ent.


    That book that I¡¯ve been keeping on different things I discover about plants is filling out pretty well. though I will admit that almost all of the information in there was copied from other books, I have, however, gone through and compared different entries from different books. I haven¡¯t spent much time on it, but with how much time i¡¯m spending now just recovering my mana I¡¯ve been able to put more effort into it. I have even managed to record some information that I have personally gathered, although most of it would be useless to someone without my particular abilities. Mest even commended me for my efforts in this endeavor, saying I would fit right in with his order. He even proposed to send a copy of the completed work to his order in my name, whatever any of that means. I should probably ask him about this ¡®order¡¯ of his, I¡¯ll do it tomorrow.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 140

    The Ent is coming along steadily, i¡¯m getting closer and closer to taking the next big step to its completion.


    I asked Mest about his ¡®order¡¯ today, and it was actually pretty interesting. This ¡®order¡¯ was supposedly founded by The First Sentient, he was very particular that it was a title and therefore had a capital letter for each word. The First Sentient was a troll that kept memories of a previous life almost entirely intact, which is what he attributes his sentience too. Fitting that the first creature to obtain sentience, other than origin, would be part of the first successful species, other than origin. The order itself is dedicated to learning everything they can about the world, and they have created quite the library in its almost three hundred years of existence, 293 to be exact.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Mest himself primarily studies dungeons. As a result of that, he also studies offensive magic, as there has never been a report of a dungeon cooperating with, anything really as they are known to kill other dungeons to some unknown end. How they reproduce, other than the world itself creating them is a mystery so they can¡¯t exactly raise one in a controlled environment. Ultimately there is very little known about dungeons. Mest¡¯s personal favorite theory is that a dungeon deserves the name the title of The First Sentient, but as of yet no one has been able to prove whether or there are any dungeons that are sentient, at least the ones that were not merged with members of origin, but that started after The First Sentient was born.


    Ultimately the weirdest part of the whole thing was that an organization that was almost entirely composed of mages was led by a creature inherently incapable of any known magic, he can¡¯t even directly benefit from magic.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 141

    Nothing to report about the Ent, which is unfortunate because that comprises almost all of my time recently.


    I talked to Tiddol today, actually, I talk to Tiddol every day that she¡¯s in my grove, it¡¯s just not always something I would put here. Anyway, after talking for a bit we ended up on the subject of Thes. To quote ¡®he is jealous and envious of you, but he admires you, likely for the same reason he envies you. Those aren¡¯t emotions that are common for him, especially envy and jealousy¡¯.  The question is why? Tiddol didn¡¯t know, and I don¡¯t exactly feel comfortable about asking Thes about it, we don¡¯t exactly speak a lot.


    Actually other than Par¡¯s tribe, note to self: that needs a better name, he¡¯s the only one I don¡¯t speak to on a regular basis. I guess he¡¯s kind of intimidating, being twice my height and four times my width doesn¡¯t make you very approachable. Plus he doesn¡¯t speak much anyway, always introspective, it makes it difficult to join a conversation with himUnauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Maybe I should start reaching out to him more? That will be difficult, unfortunately, he makes me nervous, and not in butterflies in my stomach type of nervous. I guess it would be better described as apprehension, Thes could easily crush me with his bear hands. But still, other than when he goes into a berserk mode that he can¡¯t control, he¡¯s actually a really nice guy. He¡¯s brought me food on many occasions, well more like he brought everyone food that he hunted, but still. And someone who can make a rotisserie that great can¡¯t be a bad person, right?


    I want to get to know him, but he intimidates me. I¡¯ll try to make a concerted effort to get to know him better starting tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 142

    I should be able to start the next step of the Ent tomorrow. Specifically connecting the dozens of points of contact I have created, that should allow me to make pretty rapid progress in the next couple days.


    I talked with Thes today. Tried to get to know him. Luckily the conversation came up organically during lunch. From what I know of him he¡¯s a good guy. We talked about everything from favorite foods to past exploits to family. Apparently, he has a couple children wandering around the world, though he doesn¡¯t really see them as being his. Pretty much all of those children are the result of one night stands and the like, which is a concept he had to explain to me. He sees Mest as a wise older brother, a best friend, while Tiddol is simply a close friend. He sees Parius as being his apprentice, a view Parius shares.


    He and Mest go way back, everyone else they have partied with has come and gone, with many losing their lives in the process. Dungeon diving has a high death toll. Tiddol joined them a couple years ago when she was only a year older than I am now, sixteen. She¡¯s the longest lasting of their party members to date, which is actually really impressive. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    He¡¯s an old man. His species doesn¡¯t live very long and at twenty-five, he¡¯s on the edge of old age for his species. If he doesn¡¯t evolve within the next ten years he will die within them, and even if he does he will still be suffering old age. It¡¯s sobering to know that while I can theoretically live forever, the people close to me will grow old and die.


    He told me that he¡¯s jealous of me. I did not ask, he offered the information readily. He¡¯s jealous, not because of my youth and potential immortality, he doesn¡¯t care about that, he¡¯s jealous because all he can do is destroy, while I strive to create. He¡¯s jealous of my ability to shape life, and at the same time, he expressed a desire to protect that. He realizes that he won¡¯t be able to create in the same way Mest or I can, any time he tries it ends in failure if he¡¯s lucky, otherwise,  disaster.


    I left the conversation feeling as if I had a reliable ally in Thes, makes the me of yesterday feel childish and naive, ignorant if you will.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 143

    I made pretty rapid progress today, and I will likely continue to make rapid progress for the next several days. I have started connecting different points of contact that I have built into the Ent over the last several days. The Digestive system is almost completely finished, while everything else is coming along steadily. This rapid progress should last roughly three days if I am properly gauging my abilities, I should be able to have the whole thing finished by day 165, give or take a day or two.


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    I told Tiddol about my upcoming birthday today. Actual what happened was she asked me when my birthday is, she responded with ¡®wow, It¡¯s only three days before mine¡¯ so yeah, our birthdays are close together, for some reason that¡¯s really satisfying.


    Hmm, I need to think of something to get Tiddol. Something practical no doubt, she¡¯s not one for luxury. It has to be something I make myself, I don¡¯t have a way to get ahold of something from the city, and even if I did she would be able to get it easier than me. Bah, I can¡¯t think of anything now. I¡¯ll figure something out.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 144

    I focused on getting the digestive system completely finished today. I wasn¡¯t as efficient as I could have been, but I still made quite a bit of progress. That said I¡¯m not sure if it is actually complete as I need everything to be in place in order to fully test anything properly, so it is as complete as it¡¯s going to get until the last couple steps.


    I have an idea of what I¡¯m going to do for Tiddol¡¯s birthday. I want to make an armor out of a flower that she would be able to use and reuse. I feel like once I¡¯ve completed the Ent something like that would be easy for me to make, so I should definitely finish it on time.


    I found Mest, Par, Tiddol, and Thes playing with dice. When I asked specifically what they were doing they said ¡®gambling¡¯. My thoughts on it was why would anyone bother? It seems pretty boring and unless your playing super high risk the potential for gain isn¡¯t worth it, and even then not so much. There is also the problem that I have nothing to gamble with. This view is one Tiddol and Par seemed to share as the quickly grew bored of it and went off for some ¡®couple time¡¯. I ended up casually talking with Mest and Thes, it was a fun time.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I was terrified when I saw Willow get struck by lightning five times in a row. After a moment of freaking out, Willow explained that she was really resistant to lighting, though wasn¡¯t able to explain why. I should ask Mest about that. She also said that she did it intentionally, she explained some magic bable that I wasn¡¯t really able to understand. But from what little I did get it wasn¡¯t harmful and helped her learn more about the lightning.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 145

    Today I worked on connecting more things together in the ent. The completion of the Digestive system makes this really easy, It surprising how interconnected things are, and finishing the digestive system removes one step from implementing many organs, sometimes more than one.


    Willow came to me to show off her abilities with lighting. Apparently, she¡¯s been training with it for a while now. She¡¯s gotten to the point that she can create it out of her fingertips easily, where before she needed to create a full-scale storm, even if only a small one. The sheer power she can produce is amazing, she fired a bolt of lightning at the sky and it made a large hole in a cloud, it was almost completely silent too. She explained the silence by saying that she hated the loud noise it usually makes, and so she worked on making it quieter. Supposably she can easily double the power if she isn¡¯t trying to make it silent. My biggest concern is that I never noticed her training, I must get more engrossed in my work than I realize.


    Power and silence isn¡¯t all she worked on. She said that she was inspired by the show I put on a while ago before showing off what I can only describe as sculptures and paintings she made out of lightning. It''s amazing how she managed to use different colors of lightning to weave together art like that. Yeah, it is pretty simplistic and rudimentary, but that doesn¡¯t make it any less impressive. The sheer control over her magic that must require is mind-blowing, and the constant visualization on top of that, I was sad to watch the art fade away as Willow ran out of mana. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    As she put it, her staying power was her biggest problem. A single full powered blast was enough to knock her out while she can¡¯t last more than the time it takes her to walk from one end of my grove to the other before she can¡¯t express anymore, which is how she referred to the art.


    She¡¯s so young, and despite, or perhaps because of, that Willow is the most impressive person I know. She''s beautiful, intelligent, her technical knowledge of magic is stunning, and she loves to learn. I¡¯m proud of how the young sprite has developed, she¡¯ll be a great ally in many future endeavors.


    One last thing, Willow has started to refer to Mest as papa, and Tiddol as mama. I guess their the closest thing to parents she has. It reminds me that she¡¯s not even a year old yet, which is incredibly humbling.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 146/147

    Day 146


    Tomorrow I will be at the point where I am able to start implementing full systems into the ent. Every day I get more and more excited to see this project come to fruition.


    Other than working on the ent not much notable happened today. I talked to everyone, but nothing truly meaningful.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.


    Day 147


    The respiratory system was easier to implement than I thought it would be. Though that may be due to the fact that I was already half done with it. I¡¯m not quite done with it yet though, just a bit of work tomorrow should be enough to move on to another part. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    I noticed that the kobolds were integrating surprisingly well with the goblinoids in Par¡¯s tribe (i still can¡¯t come up with a better name for that) as evident by many of all species in Par¡¯s tribe listening to Whisperer speak earnestly about something. Though I couldn¡¯t hear what Whisperer was talking about, his voice was soft and obviously only meant for those in his audience, his voice carried an obvious magical weight to it. This particular magic had a different feel that what I¡¯m used to, it wasn¡¯t as structured and logical as Mest¡¯s, as domineering as Willow¡¯s, or as alive, for lack of a better term, as mine. For one it had no intentional structure to it, at least none that I noticed, yet it felt controlled in an almost instinctive manner. Bah, Mest could explain it much better than me.


    I noticed something else, a significant number of Whisperer¡¯s listeners had the approval of many of the plants. That alone was bizarre at first, but if I think about it for a moment it makes sense. They are probably the ones that managed to evolve into something plant aligned, I even heard a couple of them are able to manipulate plants outside of my grove, but not inside it. That¡¯s something I¡¯ll have to look into.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 148

    With the respiratory system more or less finished I move on to the blood system. I¡¯ll have to add in quite a bit of the blood system as I finish other systems, but that''s fine. I don¡¯t think any of the other systems will go as quickly as the ones I have done so far, none of them are as complete as the ones I have already done were.


    I am almost completely certain by this point that this project of mine will in no way help me shape flesh and mold bone, that doesn¡¯t make me any less excited to see it complete. There would have been some kind of shift by now if there was going to be any shift, so either I am going down the wrong avenue of thought or I am doing something completely wrong. Well I mean theoretically it is possible, but I think I would have to be much more powerful than I am now, so i¡¯m leaning towards the first possibility. Whatever the case it is a lower priority for me at the moment, Creating the ent is the second greatest project I have ever taken on, with the first being creating a forest. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Looking at what I have achieved so far I am amazed at myself. I have come so far through a process of trial and error, over and over again until I get something right. After so much of that, i have started to be able to sense when something is going to work, or not going to work, and i¡¯m usually correct. Frankly speaking, it¡¯s amazing how much I have grown through this, and i¡¯m not even done yet. I¡¯m just getting so nervous and excited about seeing the completed piece despite the fact that it is 2 weeks away, at least if I¡¯m guessing correctly.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 149

    There is nothing really to note about the Ent today. It was a bit slower today for reasons I will detail below.


    I had a pretty interesting conversation with Par today. He told me about something that happened recently. He was escorting Willow through the nearby area, something he assures me happens on a semi-regular basis, when a feral, non-sentient, humanoid attack them. He believes the humanoid was a halfling, which wasn¡¯t particularly important all in all, getting attacked by feral creatures when you don¡¯t have a veritable army close by (like par¡¯s tribe) is pretty common around here. No, what was really interesting was what this feral halfling was carrying. He was carrying a stone, not a dungeon core but a gemstone. The stone was pretty high quality, but rather small. Apparently, gemstones are able to be used to store mana in them, a necessity for any mage.


    Ultimately Par gave the stone to Willow, I didn¡¯t really need or want it, Mest has plenty already, and no one else that he had considered giving the stone to could use it. It ended up boosting her storage by about a tenth, or at least that¡¯s my understanding. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    I offered to make a necklace or a ring for her to help her not lost the stone, and she asked me to make a necklace. So naturally, I went all out. I made the necklace out of the Astrie plant, only modified a bit. Just normal Astrie would be useless for this. I modified it¡¯s magical properties so that instead of making a shield or amplifying magical abilities when used it acts as a pathway between the gemstone and the host. When Willows mana dips below half it will siphon mana from the gemstone and into her mana pool, and vice versa if she¡¯s almost full. Naturally, it takes a sliver of the mana to sustain itself. Though I say it¡¯s a necklace it is closer to one of my armors, in that it sticks into the skin and won''t come off unless either she or I want to take it off, otherwise, it has to be destroyed.


    Designing and creating the necklace took the better part of a unit of time on the clock, another thing I need a better name for, maybe one already exists? Even Mest was impressed by the result and asked me to make him something similar.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 150

    I should be finished with what basically amounts to the rough draft of the Ent by day 155, then I start on finishing touches. Basically making everything run smoother.


    Willow loves the necklace I made her, though it¡¯s a bit concerning that she cut her shirt a little lower to show it off. I¡¯m not sure why, but it makes me a little nervous to look at her, not in a bad way though. More embarrassment than anything else really. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    I am not going to admit to knowing the first thing about fashion, but I have to admit, that necklace looks great on her. The cloudy gemstone accents her dusk grey hair really well. And the necklace itself draws attention to, other parts of her body.


    Anyway, enough on that vein of thought. I may or may not have overheard Tiddol and Par planning a surprise party for me. And no, I was not eavesdropping, it was a genuine overhearing. It both makes me excited and makes me feel a little inadequate, I don¡¯t think I could do the same for Tiddol, especially just a couple days after my own party.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 151

    Nothing to say about the Ent other than I am making steady progress.


    I read a book today. A short one, about as thick as a finger, as tall as my forearm, and as wide as my hand stretched out me far as I could get it. The book itself wasn¡¯t very important, a simple, heartwarming story about a barmaid being gifted the bar after its previous owner retired. What was more important though was my audience. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    When I started reading Willow asked me about the book, before asking me if I would read it aloud to her, naturally, I accepted. While I was reading a couple of Par¡¯s tribe joined the listening, including whisperer. All the while whisperer was whispering under his breath, too quiet for me to hear. His voice was obviously magical, and obviously affecting the other members of Par¡¯s tribe, but that magic was steering clear of Willow and I, so I paid it no mind.


    Everyone present seemed to enjoy the story, though whether it was listening to me or the story itself I couldn¡¯t say.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 152/153

    Day 152


    Every day that passes makes me more and more excited to see the finished Ent, to the point that I had to walk away just to cool my head at one point today. I returned afterward and made more progress on the next attempt than I did with any other attempt today.


    I played board games with Tiddol, Willow, and Par today. Somehow Willow won every time, though second place was always a tossup. It was fun to hang out with them.


    Other than that not much happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.


    Day 153Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I finished the bulk of the nervous system today, it was a lot less complicated than I thought it would be, I just hope it is actually not that complicated and I didn¡¯t mess something up really bad.


    I little bit of an incident occurred today. About half a dozen goblins started brawling with each other for unknown reasons, and the aftermath was pretty grizzly. Luckily no one died, but that took a fair bit of effort on my part. I won¡¯t describe the scene because it¡¯s something I would rather forget.


    What was most impressive, to me at least, was how much I¡¯ve improved at healing. Yeah I know I said something a while ago about how the experience with the Ent is improving my ability to heal rather drastically, but that doesn¡¯t make it any less amazing for me. Unfortunately, it doesn¡¯t translate perfectly, because the structure of a monster is inherently different than that of a biped, and monsters are the group that has the widest variance in biology, but goblins are close enough that most things do transfer. Luckily no Kobolds had been caught up in the brawl, with the kind of injuries there the kobold would have died with me being able to do little about it, their biology is so different that very little carries over.


    On a side note, I¡¯ve been feeling really sore recently, and it¡¯s getting slowly worse. Nothing noticeable is actually damaged inside me so it can¡¯t be too dangerous, but it¡¯s uncomfortable. At least it lets me sleep better.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 154

    Today I started working on the reproductive organs. For some reason, this part was super embarrassing for me. I also faced another dilemma, what sex should I make the Ent? Ultimately I decided I would make two Ents, one male, one female, male today, female tomorrow. The Reproductive organs are different enough that it should increase the total amount of time I spend on this project by about a day, but once I have those more or less complete I could work on improving everything, working out problems that won¡¯t show themselves until I have everything working together.


    I was curious about something, specifically exactly how biology assists with magic. Naturally, I asked Mest about it. He actually had a collection of transcribed notes on the subject, he said he thought it might help him figure out how a dungeon controls its creatures, it didn¡¯t.


    Reading it through most of the concepts went over my head, and even according to the notes most of the effects were negligible, but a couple things were simple enough that I could understand them well enough to put into practice. One thing in particular caught my eye, an organ, or organ system depended on the particular set of notes on it, unique to demon species that are heavily focused on magic. The naming of it conflicted quite a bit between different notes on it, something that is pretty common in these notes at least. The organ improves how quickly the creature pulls in mana, uses the mana they pulled in, and has a minor bonus to how well mana can be used. It functions almost identical to the heart, only with mana instead of blood, so i¡¯m going to call it a mana heart. I feel like I understand it well enough to implement it in the Ent, that along with several other minor improvements, all that should make the Ent a very capable mage. Naturally, this will take time, but that hardly matters, it shouldn¡¯t throw my projected schedule off too much. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    With his permission, I examined Mest¡¯s body using my healing magic and confirmed that he does indeed have a mana heart. Naturally, i took advantage of the situation to fully examine the heart inside and out. That should make it super easy to replicate it with wood, though not just any wood, I will have to modify Astrie to make it usable for this project. I might even end up using Astrie for the entire finished product. I can¡¯t use it for much experimentation because it costs exponentially more mana than less magical woods, but with some modifications, in various ways, Astrie could be ideal for creating new life.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 155

    Today I finished the female reproductive organs and started working on the mana heart. I am very fortunate that intention is a large part of magic because intention and a lot of general knowledge on how to manipulate plants was enough for me to get Astrie to work the way I wanted it to, though it will need some fine-tuning in the final product. With this, i will be able to start the process of fine-tuning everything tomorrow, after I finish implementing the mana heart. The fine tuning stage is where I will make all the minor changes to improve not only magical abilities but also physical strength and dexterity. I want to make my Ent¡¯s be well-rounded creatures.


    I¡¯m amazed at what I¡¯ve managed to achieve so far. It feels like forever ago that I was making simple puppets that I controlled with more brute force than finesse. It is surprisingly pretty, in a slightly gruesome way, I haven¡¯t added skin yet so I can still see in perfect detail the movements of the muscles when I have it walk.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Par and Thes brought back a wyvern and cooked it up for everyone to eat. I saw it before they butchered it and was more than a little intimidated, that was the largest creature I had ever seen, with the exception of a couple plants. The taste was exquisite, somewhere between pig and bear, only much richer. Its texture was just as good. To top it off, the meat left me feeling energized and empowered, that slowly faded, but not completely. I think I found my new favorite food.


    If that was a mere wyvern, what would a dragon taste like? I can¡¯t imagine.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 156

    Today I fully implemented the mana heart and moved on to perfecting the Ent. with this final step I can¡¯t really focus on one part of the Ent, I need to make sure everything works smoothly with everything else. A small change in the foot could have an effect on the eyes, so I need to thoroughly test everything. I¡¯ve developed a kind of instinct for this type of thing over the last little while, so it should only take a couple days, five to seven seems like a good estimate.


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    What i¡¯m doing now doesn¡¯t require much in the way of mana, so I don¡¯t get a lot of downtime for recovering mana. This is a good thing as it leaves me feeling more energized and a tad bit less sore. This also means I didn¡¯t spend any time doing anything other than work on the Ent, eat, and write here. I guess I could say that eating the last remains of the wyvern from yesterday was delicious, but I¡¯ve said that already.


    Well, either way, I might be physically on the up, but mentally i¡¯m exhausted. I¡¯m going to go to sleep now.


    Anyway, Good NIght DIary.

 Day 157/158

    Day 157


    I¡¯m going to keep this brief because I am mentally exhausted.


    Nothing to report about the Ent. it is still taking constant fine-tuning, which requires incredible focus.


    I hardly feel sore at all today, but sometime tomorrow I will have to take a break to let my mind rest.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.


    Day 158


    Wow, my penmanship yesterday was terrible, I guess that''s what I get for writing with a migraine.


    I made pretty steady progress on the Ent today, though I did take a long break to let myself recover. The mana cost at this point is negligible, but the constant concentration is more exhausting than anything I¡¯ve done since creating the grove. The break worked wonders, I even got Tiddol to help me out with the migraine. She did something she called a massage, it was great, no, it was amazing.


    Now I really have to think of a suitably impressive birthday gift for Tiddol, I don¡¯t think a simple piece of armor will cut it. The problem is i¡¯m feeling rather uninspired in that department right now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 159/160

    Day 159


    I didn¡¯t do much other than work on the Ents today, yes Ents, plural, i¡¯m at the point where I have to balance for differences in sex on top of everything else, so I have to work on two Ents at the same time. Working on the genitals still makes me shy.


    During my mental break, I experimented with Astrie. Figuring out ways I can make it useful for Tiddol¡¯s birthday present. It is nowhere near as mentally taxing as working on the Ents and I have plenty of mana to spare. I managed to figure a couple things out, nothing good enough yet though.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.


    Day 160


    I¡¯m so close to being done with the Ents. Tomorrow, I make the final adjustments tomorrow. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Today I remade the Ents out of Astrie. There was a lot of variation in the Astrie, for example, the wood that makes up the bone is similar to a gemstone in that it stores mana very well, while the blood system carries it well, a lot of little nuances like that. The best part, in my opinion at least, was how I made the mana heart. I made it out of what is basically supercharged Astrie, using everything I know about the plant, and plants in general, to make it as potent as possible for every part of magic, without negatively impacting other parts. It took me no less than three tries to get it right,  three more tries to make it better, then I kept making minor adjustments to make sure it was perfect, and each try almost completely depleted my mana, and then I had to make another one for the female. Luckily the female one only took minor changes to get it to work.


    I didn¡¯t take a mental break because I had time enough to relax while my mana regenerated from attempts at the mana heart. I spent this time excited talking with Mest about my creations, and he seemed genuinely intrigued by them, which is saying something because he usually isn¡¯t very interested in this type of project.


    I need to force myself to sleep now otherwise i¡¯m going to stay up all night in excitement and mess something up because i¡¯m tired.


    So, with that, I¡¯m going to sleep. Good Night Diary.

 Day 161

    It took me almost the whole day, but i finally perfected the Ents. The moment i made the final change something shifted, something changed. I felt myself grow weaker, grow colder, and i was tired in a way i¡¯ve never been tired before, but the Ents stood up, on their own, without any input from me. They couldn¡¯t speak, not in a way that would be recognizable as language anyway, they had vocal cords but no knowledge of how to use them. Despite that, I could understand them, in the same way, I can understand all plants. They called me Mother. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    They are loyal, that much is very obvious. They leap to accomplish anything I ask of them, sometimes literally. It was similarly obvious how little control they had over their bodies, like someone learning how to use a tool for the first time, but they learned quickly, and they are incredibly intelligent.


    I will learn more of their abilities in the coming days, but for now, i¡¯m tired, and cold, and weak. I want to wrap myself up in a heavy blanket and sleep.


    So, Good Night Diary.

 Day 162

    I still feel cold, tired, and weak today, just less so.


    Mest came to talk to me today, apparently after seeing what I had achieved he told everyone to leave me alone for the evening. He was amazed at what I had accomplished, apparently creating new life is almost entirely up to luck, most the time at least. He knows a surprising amount about the process, which makes sense because he studies dungeons, which are the only creatures other than origin able to reliably create new species, and even origin use a more brute force, trial and error method, but that''s more their own perfectionism than anything else. He was amazed I managed to pull it off, to say the least.


    The way someone goes about creating a new species is; create the body of the creature you want to create and channel mana into it until either it starts to rot or comes to life, repeat until you succeed, or more likely than not, give up in frustration. One running theme with every success is it takes something from the creator, something Mest referred to as the ¡®Spark Of Life¡¯, he believes it to be either the same as the soul or very similar. I used up twice what someone who had tried normally would have. Luckily it is something that recovers, slowly.


    Mest asked about my health with a look in his eyes I only see when we discuss magic, taking notes all the while. After neither of us had more questions he ran off, saying he needed to think, while pulling out a magical item that I didn¡¯t recognize. All in all, it took one unit of time for this discussion to happen. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    As for the Ents themselves, well, they were learning. Or to be more specific, Tiddol was trying to teach them, it wasn¡¯t going well, with them being unable to understand language and all. When she saw me I was forced to take over, not that I complained or anything, I would have done it anyway. Naturally, I started thinking of the best way to teach these creatures, to teach my children. I thought about the connection I had with them, not in an abstract way but the very real mental connection I had that let me communicate with them, and all the other plants. I could communicate simple ideas with them, like raw emotion, or colors, so naturally, i decided to try to communicate more complex ideas, like how to use vocal cords, not something you can really explain with words, but as a sensation, it worked amazingly well.


    I spent the rest of the day teaching them language, and with the benefit of instant comprehension and near instant communication I got pretty far. They were far from conversation level, but they could say enough simple phrases, and actually understand them, that they could almost pass off as being conversation level.


    It was mentally draining, but nowhere near the level that actually making them was.


    I also got a feel for their minds in the process. They are sharp, incredibly so, I¡¯ve never touched a more intelligent mind among all the plants I¡¯ve communicated with, I doubt I¡¯m even that smart. And the mana flowing through their bodies was intense, almost blinding, it was beautiful in a way something I could see with my eyes couldn¡¯t be.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 163

    I am steadily healing from my expenditure of ¡®the spark of life¡¯, Mest is increasingly amazed at how quickly i¡¯m recovering, saying it goes a long way to confirm a theory of his. I wasn¡¯t able to what that theory was out of him today. I was, however, able to confirm that the magical item he pulled out yesterday was built for communication.


    I continued to teach the Ents language today. They learned exponentially faster, the more they knew about language the faster they could learn. The way they did that was fascinating, it was similar to a couple people brainstorming, but at the speed of thought. Like this I believe I could easily teach them anything I know, be it skills or knowledge, and vice versa.


    They think together, constantly communicating through that link in their minds. At first, I was worried they would end up as one personality with two bodies, that didn¡¯t happen. I¡¯m actually amazed at how distinct their personalities are from each other, despite not being fully formed yet, and they only grow more distinct. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    I think we have the right idea here. First with Willow and then with the Ents we have almost immediately set about teaching the young minds in our midsts everything we can, starting with language. And from what little I can tell from the Ent¡¯s still developing personalities, we¡¯re three for three with molding thinkers, people that thirst for knowledge. It makes me proud.


    I set to creating Tiddol¡¯s birthday present after teaching the Ents all I could about language, instructing them to meditate on the new knowledge. I started by taking some relatively normal wood and trying to give it some sort of trigger to turn it into an armor. I was able to accomplish that much, but I still had to use my own abilities to manipulate plants to activate it, which would be useless for what I want, an armor that anyone can use, something I can give to Tiddol to protect herself with.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 164

    Today I divided up my time between teaching the Ents and working on Tiddol¡¯s present.


    The Ents are learning just as rapidly as before, only now instead of teaching them language, i¡¯m teaching them about the area, and the things in it. It is nice seeing them be so curious about the world around them. They have tried asking others about various things, but no one was able to really explain anything the way I can. well I mean Whisperer can, but he¡¯s not very good at explaining things for other reasons. They didn¡¯t really go into detail about that, seemingly intentionally.


    As for the armor, I did make pretty good progress. I figured out a way to make the armor reusable, but it takes a ludicrous amount of mana to recharge, roughly twenty times as much as normal. The vast majority of that excess is due to inefficiencies in the design, things I can iron out in the next couple days.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Mest explains his theory to me today after I pressured him into it. He explained that he thinks I¡¯m turning into something called a Dungeon Lord, which is basically a hypermobile dungeon core. According to him, the biggest indicator was how quickly I healed after expending so much of my spark of life, apparently dungeon cores, and dungeon lords, can absorb the excess spark of life that all creatures who aren¡¯t currently restoring it creates, it usually gets wasted and turns back into ambient mana, but I tap into that and take it for myself, or at least what¡¯s produced in my territory.


    The other big tell, according to Mest at least, was how easy it was for me to create life. Something unique to origin and dungeons, and we can be pretty certain that I am not an origin.


    The last clue, which was pretty minor as Mest said, was that I can¡¯t leave my territory. He also says that there are a couple other reasons that could be the case. The most likely, and probably also true on top of me becoming a dungeon lord is that I am the lord of the forest. He didn¡¯t go into detail on what that meant, despite me pestering him for information.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 165

    The first half of the day was pretty normal, I worked on Tiddol¡¯s gift and I taught the Ents. Only a couple more days before I will be done teaching them everything I can, probably before my birthday even. As far as the armor went, I just ironed out all the inefficiencies I can, pretty routine work after building the Ents.


    After lunch, however, something happened. I was walking around alone when I heard crashing above me, like something was falling through branches. Then a girl fell in front of me. She was a beast species I didn¡¯t recognize with pointed ears and a fluffy tail, I¡¯m embarrassed to say that my first thought about her was that she was pretty. She was also pretty banged up and lapsing into unconsciousness.


    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I reached her just as she was closing her eyes, falling unconscious. I set to healing her right away. She was covered in blood, not all of it hers. The worst of her injuries were several gashes on her torso, claw marks by the look of it, based on the loose feathers on her i¡¯m assuming she was attacked by a giant bird. Luckily the gashes were the worst of the damage, no internal organ had been damaged beyond my ability to repair, and the only head trauma had been light, but she was absolutely covered in smaller wounds, several of which were half healed or scars. She wasn¡¯t in any danger after I healed the worst of it so I took my time healing everything else. Ultimately it took the rest of the day.


    She¡¯s no longer unconscious, more like she¡¯s asleep. I might be able to heal most wounds, but exhaustion is beyond my ability to fix.


    Also, I can¡¯t help but blush when I look at her, she¡¯s really pretty.I can''t wait to talk to her when she wakes up.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 166

    The girl woke up early this morning, waking me up when she threw the blanket I had set on top of her. It was an impressive throw.


    Her name is Talus, pronounced Tal-us, she was very particular about that. Her species is a Lesser Kitsune, a Beast in the fox line with an innate talent for fire magics. As for physical appearance, she¡¯s slightly taller than me, has long golden blond hair and green eyes, and her skin is lightly tanned. She looks to be about my age, though is actually a year and a half younger, her species reach maturity younger than sprites do.


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    Apparently, I was more or less right about what happened yesterday. She was picked up by a large bird that thought she would make an easy snack, but Talus fought tooth and nail, literally, until the bird dropped her on top of me. Before that, she was on the run, from what I can¡¯t say, and that¡¯s what caused most of the other injuries and scaring. She thanked me profusely for fixing those by the way.


    Personality wise, she energetic and playful, running around excitedly almost all day. She¡¯s also cunning and devious, I won¡¯t go into details about what happened, mostly because I was there and i¡¯m not sure what happened, but it was impressive.


    I hope we keep her for a while.


    As for the armor and teaching the Ents, it was more of the routine work, nothing noteworthy.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 167

    I noticed the faintest hint of yellowing on the leaves of many of my trees, fall has begun. I know from experience that I will start to become a little more drowsy as the trees lose their leaves, what I don¡¯t know is how bad it will be, I have never been this connected to them before.


    I hung out with Talus today, it seems we¡¯re going to keep her around for a while. It¡¯s cute watching her squeal about the smallest things.


    She went head to head with Mest today, and she didn¡¯t lose too badly. They fought away from the tree line out in the fields surrounding it so nothing could get too damaged. The fight itself was spectacular, the flashes of Talus¡¯s fire accompanied by the assortment of magical tricks Mest put to use made for a brilliant light show. Mest gave the impression of someone with a deep, methodical understanding of his craft, while Talus was, primal, for lack of a better word. Where Mest used his magic as a very flexible tool, Talus used her fire as a limb. While Mest seemed to be able to know where to look to find dangers, Talus didn¡¯t even have to notice them to avoid them. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    My opinion of them was that they are polar opposites in terms of fighting styles, and Mest agreed with my thoughts saying ¡®she fights with emotion and instinct, Thes would make a better teacher for her than I¡¯.


    I hope it¡¯s not too obvious, but I think I have a crush on her. I hope I don¡¯t embarrass myself, I¡¯ve never been good at hiding my emotions. Now that I¡¯ve written that I hope no one reads my diary.


    As for teaching and working on the armor, I am more or less done teaching the Ents everything I can and I have managed to cut the total mana consumption of the armor in half. I have managed to more or less perfect the mechanisms that allow it to be remade after the armor is shed. Overall I think I can cut the mana cost of it down to about a fourth of what it currently is, pretty negligible considering it¡¯s something you¡¯ll be able to prepare in advance.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 168

    Only two days until my birthday. I can¡¯t wait.


    Progress with the armor is slowing down, which was expected. I¡¯ve gotten rid of all the easily solved inefficiencies, and now I am working on the harder ones. I also need to keep in mind ways to make it deploy faster or be more durable, those type of things could save her life.


    Most of us played board games today, something really complicated that took entirely too long for us to figure out the rules of. Tiddol was really good at it, and that sparked a competitive spirit in Talus, and that sparked a competitive spirit in the rest of us, even the Ent¡¯s got involved.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    In the end, we spent most of the day playing the board game, I should really check the bag it came in to figure out what the name is. The final standing was Mest in first place, Tiddol and Talus tied for second, on a technicality at least, with me coming a close fourth place, the Ents coming fifth and sixth, they kept sabotaging each other otherwise they would have claimed first and second, Willow came seventh, but she had the most money at the end, which is what she was trying for, and Parius came last, despite his massive armies, though he could have easily won through elimination if it kept up for just a couple more rounds, Thes didn¡¯t play.


    It was a great time for everyone, though a couple people were bitter, Par, in particular, he claimed it was stupid that the mage was allowed to go after the magic victory.


    I hope we can continue to have happy, peaceful days like this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 169

    I am almost done with the armor, another day of working on it and I¡¯ll be done with any improvement I can implement in a reasonable amount of time.


    My birthday is tomorrow, and I am really excited. I wonder what presents I¡¯m going to get. This is my first birthday since my parents died, and the first one where so many people have been able to celebrate it with me.


    Talus came up to me today when I was working on the armor, asking me about it. She seemed genuinely interested in it and asked me if I could make her one with a lot of resistance to fire, naturally, I agreed but said that I couldn¡¯t do it now.


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    She asked me if she could try one on, I agreed. It was only after I agreed that I remembered the fact that it tends to destroy cloths when it forms, something I don¡¯t have to deal with anymore as I just wear a variant of the armor. She stripped down right in front of me before having me talk her through how to activate it. I couldn¡¯t stop blushing, and I hope I wasn¡¯t staring too much but I couldn¡¯t look away. Just thinking about it makes me feel like i¡¯m overheating, but not in a bad way.


    I asked Tiddol about that, as I figured she might know more than Mest, and she gave me a sly, knowing smile before reminding me about our previous discussion on puberty and then told me, rather wickedly, to wait until I start bleeding. That freaked me out more than a little so I asked Mest, who proceeded to burst out laughing, saying ¡®purly mana based creatures don¡¯t bleed, there¡¯s no reason for them too.¡¯ That seemed to annoy Tiddol, who got indignant about it, at least I think that¡¯s the right use of the word.


    So yeah, puberty. Exciting and more than a little scary, I hope Mest is right, bleeding doesn¡¯t sound like fun.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 170

    Today is my 16th birthday. I was expecting a surprise party, what I wasn¡¯t expecting was a surprise. All at once two tables appeared out of nowhere, one with a large cake on it, the other with wrapped presents. Latter Mest explained that he used an extra-dimensional bag and a bit of short-range teleportation to pull it off.


    The cake was really good. It was spicy and sweet in a way that didn¡¯t clash, and the frosting gave me a slight buzz of mana. It was bought off of a professional chef from the city that Par had his Hobgoblins pick up.


    As for gifts, I¡¯ll go by who gave me what.


    Tiddol got me a type of plant known as Singing Grass, it has a tendency to vibrate in tune with other blades of Singing Grass, creating a beautiful singing sound. I am looking forward to playing around with that.


    Mest gave me a gemstone known as Demon Glass, something a cousin of his made with his racial abilities after evolving. It has a dark reddish color and the way the light reflects off of it give it the appearance that it¡¯s pulsing, like a beating heart. It is also a very potent gemstone, able to store almost my entire mana pool before overfilling. Mest said that the really high-end stuff is even able to grow using the mana inside as fuel, unfortunately, this is low in terms of quality. If this is the low-end stuff, i don''t think i would ever be able to fill the high end stuff. I am looking forward to making a necklace like the one I made for Willow out of it.


    Lord Parius The Magnificent got me a crown. It was made of woven branches and cheap gemstones, some things his tribe pulled up from a dungeon dive he said. The gemstones all together are about half the storage of the Demon Glass, but I feel like I can improve it in a couple ways, something Par encouraged me to do. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    Thes got me a knife, more a dagger really, and a sheath. It was well made and simple in design and enchanted. I learned later that the knife was enchanted for durability and sharpness, while the sheath was enchanted for maintenance purposes. It¡¯s a nice knife, better than anything I can make, but I hope it doesn¡¯t see much use.


    Willow got me a book. It detailed healing of all forms, something i¡¯m definitely going to have to read over a couple days from now.


    The Ents and Whisperer worked together to get me a potion. They encouraged me to drink it all right away, which I did after they explained what it does. It was thick and sickeningly sweet. After drinking it I felt an amazing amount of control over mana, both the mana inside me and the ambient mana, which is really surprising considering the fact the usually I can¡¯t control ambient mana at all. That faded over the next hour or so, but not completely. It wasn¡¯t until afterward that they told me that it was made from the Ent¡¯s sap, their blood, after it was refined down quite a bit by Whisperer. That left me conflicted, on one hand, I was happy they were willing to go to such lengths for me, on the other hand, I didn¡¯t want them getting needlessly hurt, even for my sake. I was going to punish Whisperer for making them do it, but it seems the Ents came up with the idea on their own.


    Talus didn¡¯t get me anything, which isn¡¯t surprising considering the fact that she only showed up five days ago and didn¡¯t even know it was my birthday until last night. She promised she would get me something soon though.


    We played that board game from a couple days ago again today, this time Par went straight for Mest right at the beginning, taking him out quickly. He was situated to win until the Ents teamed up to take him out, after that it was no contest and they took 1st and 2nd.


    Overall it was a great day, something I¡¯ll remember for a long time.


    I didn¡¯t get much time to work on The armor, but I did get a little bit done, I should be finished tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 171

    Today I finished the armor with plenty of time to spare. I actually managed to do better than I thought I would, the mana cost for recharging it is only twice as much instead of the two and a half times I predicted.


    Once I was done with the armor I decided to perfect the crown Par gave me. I had a couple ideas for what I could do to improve it. First, I started by slowly replacing the wood with Astrie, the same type that I made Willow¡¯s necklace out of, just with a bit more mana behind it. That made it so that the mana contained in the gemstones could be accessed almost as quickly as my own internal mana, and the weak point is the gemstones, not the wood.


    The second thing I did was take the Demon Glass stone and put it in the crown as the centerpiece. For the branches that connect that stone to me, I made them even more potent. That particular gem has no problem with quality, and no matter how much mana I used to for those branches there was still room for improvement until it got to the point that my own skill was the limiting factor. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Ultimately it took a dozen renditions to get the crown to a state I was satisfied with. When I finally put it on and let it connect to me head the same way my armor connects to my body I felt something hollow, like an empty part of me had opened up. That empty part filled pretty quickly with mana. The momentary high of having that much mana at my fingertips was amazing, but i quickly got used to it.


    Talus was the first person to see me wearing it, definitely because she happened to be there and not because I planned it or something like that. She said it made me look like a real queen before saying it looked good on me, that made me feel giddy.


    Though that was a sentiment shared by everyone.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 172

    Talus confessed to me today.


    It feels more real now that it¡¯s down on paper.


    It happened this morning, after breakfast. She pulled me aside, away from prying eyes, and said that she wanted to go out with me. In hindsight, the way she bumbled awkwardly through it was adorable, especially because I know I would have done worse, but in the moment I was stuck between shock and elation.


    After that, we talked for most of the day, while holding hands. It was nice. I told her about myself and my situation, how I created the grove and how I won¡¯t leave, about my situation in coming here in the first place, and many of the things I''ve accomplished since.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    She told me about herself as well. Apparently the injuries she had, at least the ones unrelated to giant bird attacks, were from weeks of dodging a gang of slavers that were after her, from her description they were the same ones that attacked us. When I told her about what happened when they attacked us all she said was ¡®good¡¯. She told me about her parents, how she hadn''t seen them in years, though avoided why, it was the first time I¡¯d seen her be shy. From the way she described them, they were intense, the father was a retired soldier, a veteran of several wars while the mother was a mercenary. They met on opposite sides of a war, and it seemed every time they fought, the other was on the opposing side. They grew to respect each others ability, and when they eventually met outside the battlefield they hit it off spectacularly, and the result is my new girlfriend. Just writing that last bit down makes me embarrassed and a little proud.


    She was an only child, like me. But unlike me, she had aunts and uncles and cousins. She told me about the trouble she would get in with them with a melancholy sort of joy.


    When we parted ways for sleep she kissed me on the cheek, before asking for the same. It was pleasant and embarrassing, I look forward to doing it again.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 173

    It¡¯s Tiddol¡¯s birthday today. She turned nineteen today.


    As for the gifts that she got it was as follows. two potions, the uses of which I am unsure of, a pretty looking dagger, a Demon Glass stone, and, of course, the armor I made. She loved my gift, she changed into it almost immediately. I built it to look similar to her normal clothes and made sure I would chafe or anything like that, so she could really use it in any occasion. She loved it if the fact that she hugged me after I told her what it was is any indication. I''m glad she likes it, I put quite a bit of effort into it.


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    The party itself was just as grand as mine, without the surprise part. There was cake and this amazing sweet dish known as iced cream, too bad it¡¯s difficult to find cause I want some more of it. When I asked about how it was made no one knew.


    Talus said something that I thought was pretty sweet. I was the first person she saw when she woke up, and her first thought when seeing me was ¡®wow, she¡¯s adorable¡¯. It took some coaxing to get it out of her, and she was beet red when she said it, but it was worth it.


    Something pretty funny happened around lunchtime. When Talus and I were hanging out and cuddling Tiddol walked by and commented that we were being ¡®nauseatingly cute¡¯. I¡¯m not sure whether that¡¯s a compliment or an insult so I¡¯ll take it as a compliment.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 174

    Today I started to read the book about healing I got on my birthday. I sat down with my back against a tree and started to read, after a little bit Talus saw me and asked what I was doing, that ended up with the two of us reading together. The way we were situated made things a bit awkward, but we made do.


    The book was fascinating, confirming many of my theories and denying other constantly as I read. We only got about halfway before we had to stop for the night. Talus mentioned that maybe we should practice healing the day after tomorrow, after we finish the book, I agreed. There¡¯s always injured goblins after all, and if we somehow manage to heal all of Par¡¯s tribe then I don¡¯t think healing them is going to help us practice much. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    It¡¯s odd seeing her care so much about learning magic, she always seems like the instinctual type when it comes to magic. Either way, you can¡¯t go wrong learning how to heal, even if it is only for yourself.


    Well, anyway, good night diary.

 Day 175

    Talus and I finished reading today. I learned quite a bit about healing, and not just healing certain groups of creatures, but healing pretty much every evolutionary tree, with the exception of plants. Like learning how to heal plants could possibly help me at this point.


    While we were reading Talus groped me a couple times, in a way that makes it questionable whether or not it was an accident. I¡¯m not really complaining, it was fun, I would just prefer it if she would be a bit more subtle about it.


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    During lunch I went for a walk, only to discover that my grove has grown a lot since I last checked the size. Naturally, I tried to figure out why. I stumbled across three plant variant hobgoblins feeding trees at the outskirts of my grove, at the base of the cliff, an area I don¡¯t visit often. Luckily the Dead Tulip flowers have stopped producing pollen with the onset of fall so they weren''t affected by them. After asking a couple questions I found out that Whisperer set them up to the task, after asking a few more it seems Whisperer directly guided them towards evolving as a plant variant hobgoblin, which is interesting, a mystery for another day I suppose.


    Everything I learn about Whisperer makes him simultaneously more creepy and more useful. He seems to be pretty loyal to me so I can overlook the creepiness, but still.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 176

    Today Talus and I practiced healing on the goblins. Practically all of them had an injury of some sort, so there is no way we could run out of patients to practice on.


    Talus seemed to struggle quite a bit with healing, which is pretty admirable because she''s working at it despite not being talented. It shows a level of dedication I don''t have.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The goblins were very thankful, which is not surprising, I just wanted to say that it''s heart warming to see a creature be so genuinely thankful. We really did them a big favor by mending their flesh and setting their bones.


    Wait a moment, I think I just had an epifamy. Isn''t healing just an application of flesh manipulation. Could I learn how to mold flesh and shape bone by taking healing in that direction? It''s something to try at least, when my mind isn''t bogged down by exhaustion.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 177

    This morning Mest asked me to let him examine me with mana, after a bit of explaining it seems he was going to check for a developing dungeon core inside me. I agreed.


    The actual process was pretty simple for me, no idea how complicated it was for Mest, I  just had to stand there and not resist the spell he cast. I felt a tingling sensation spreading throughout my body, vanishing almost as quickly as it appeared. When it was over Mest had a self-satisfied grin on his face, before telling me that he did find a dungeon core, albeit a tiny one. He then said that he is going to want to do the same thing every day for the next little while to get an idea of my progress. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    As for flesh manipulation, I have no idea how to start with that. Well I mean I know exactly where to start, trying to use healing to do something that isn¡¯t healing, but that is going to cause whatever creature I use it on a lot of pain in a way plant manipulation doesn¡¯t. While plants do feel pain, they are also a lot more flexible in form, making it easier to manipulate them without causing damage, other creatures don¡¯t have this luxury. I don¡¯t want to hurt another creature if I can help it.


    Instead, I decided to work with the Singing Grass. I didn¡¯t really have anything specific in mind, just experimenting. Nothing really unexpected happened, but I did figure out how to change the qualities of the sound it produces. With some trial and error effort, I should be able to make a symphony.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 178

    After the soon to be routine checkup from Mest I got started trying to create music with singing Grass. Unfortunately, I know nothing about music, the closest thing I¡¯ve gotten to it is my parents singing to me or reading about it in a book.


    I spent a good part of the day mixing and matching the different sounds I know how to produce with Singing Grass and making a mental note of the ones I think sound good, I even managed to find several new sounds. It¡¯s a slow process because i¡¯m pretty much just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    A little after lunch Talus realized what I was doing and offered her help, apparently she is not only familiar with music but also has learned to play several instruments. Unfortunately, she doesn¡¯t have any of them on her at the moment, that would make this so much easier, but she can help me with other things.


    I honestly have no idea how much progress the two of us made today, but our partial symphony sounds nice so far, and Talus is moderately pleased by it, so I¡¯m assuming we did pretty good. I wish I could write down the sounds somehow, maybe one day I''ll figure out how, but that day is not today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 179/180

    Day 179


    Today was more of what I did yesterday. Mest giving me a magical checkup in the morning and working on making music with the singing grass with Talus until one of us got bored, then we would do whatever caught our interests for a while before getting back to the singing grass. What we have so far sounds really pretty, I feel like i¡¯m starting to get a hang of this whole music thing. Talus was complaining a little about how quickly i¡¯m picking it up, something about endless forced practice.


    One such break happened during lunch. Tiddol came to me and asked me to make her a necklace using the Demon Glass she got for her birthday. It was draining, as I wasn¡¯t willing to provide anything but the best, but it didn¡¯t take long. Honestly, it looks pretty good on her.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Day 180


    This morning I made an accidental discovery, I managed to make Singing Grass muffle sound. Personally, I don¡¯t see many ways this could be useful, but Talus was adamant that we build a small hut with this for insulation. I didn¡¯t have a problem with that so we ended up spending a good chunk of the day building it.


    It was a surprisingly complicated process. It couldn¡¯t just be a dome of grass, there would either have to be a hole in it, defeating the purpose of making it out of sound muffling material, or there would be no airflow inside. That wouldn¡¯t be a big problem for me, I don¡¯t need to breathe, though it gets really uncomfortable when I don¡¯t, Talus does. Light is also an issue, but I figure we can use magic to solve that problem.


    Ultimately I made a frame out of Astrie with a relatively thin layer of sound muffling Singing Grass, so air and a little bit of light can enter. I made the Astrie in such a way that it could amplify the effects of the Singing Grass, so there could be less of it and achieve the same result.


    What really confuses me is the why part, why does Talus want something like this? Is she planning on doing something that makes a lot of noise? Whatever the case she wouldn¡¯t tell me when I asked.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 181

    We finished the first project with Singing Grass today, I feel like I learned a bit about music from this. The song was fast paced and intense, filling you with adrenaline when you listen to it.


    There was something magical happening to the people who listened to it, like literal magic, not a figure of speech. When I asked Mest about it he said that he knew nothing about music, It¡¯s not even close to his field of study. It¡¯s interesting, so I¡¯m going to look into it more, but i¡¯m going to need more songs to study, for a frame of reference. This should be fun.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    The song went over pretty well with everyone, everyone got pretty pumped up while listening to it at least. I know I did.


    At the end of the day, Talus and I discussed what we should make next, I think we¡¯re going to go with something somber and mellow.


    oh yeah, I slept in the soundproof hut last night. I made a bed with an Astrie frame, because Astrie seems to make everything better, and a type of plant that has a relatively soft, fibrous material that I made to be much softer. It was one of the best nights sleep I''ve ever gotten, I''m not sure if that''s why Talus wanted me to build it, but I don''t regret it.


    I invited her to sleep with me, but she said ''my hearts not ready'' whatever that means.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 182

    We started working on the next song today. I really wish there was a way that I could put the songs into the pages of this diary, but there isn¡¯t a method I know of to do so. I have no doubt that one exists, with magic and all, but I don¡¯t know about it.


    We aren¡¯t really progressing faster than last time, but I feel like this one flows better, or at least what we have flows better. I think a big part of that is us learning to communicate better, I¡¯m the only one really able to mess with the aspects of the singing grass, and she¡¯s the one with all the musical skill, though I am getting better, and so most flaws are from improper communication more than anything. This is good, it gives me hope that we will be together for a while yet.


    I checked in on those berries I modified to the point of growing mana crystals instead of berries, and they definitely grew a lot. There were much heavier too, beyond what would be reasonable with their size increase. There were even smaller crystals growing on the bark of the bush.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    There were a ton of them too, and while I watched birds and small creatures all avoided the plants. I found out myself why that was when I reached out to grab a berry, mana was pulled out of me and into the bush, not to the extent that it would harm me, but more than enough to kill a small, weak, creature.


    The berries were too big for me to eat in one bite, so I broke a chunk of it off. It came off in a new, crystalline structure, accompanied by a very satisfying cracking sound. It literally melted in my mouth, and the taste was definitely in my top five. And the rush of energy it gave me, it would perfect to wake me up when I needed it. I want to cook this into something, but I¡¯m worried my poor cooking abilities can¡¯t do it justice.


    I tried giving some to other people, but only Willow could eat it, though Mest did say he had other uses for it, everyone else said it was too hard to bite. I¡¯m going to assume that only creatures made entirely out of mana, for example, sprites like myself and willow, can eat a berry made of pure crystalline mana. Disappointing, but makes sense when you think about it.


    At the end of the day, I invited Talus to sleep with me again and was refused again. I feel like she¡¯s making a bigger deal out of it that it is, it¡¯s just nice to sleep next to someone you care about, what''s so embarrassing about that?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 183

    The song we are working on is turning out as I had hoped. It has a slow rhythm to it, and it has parts that I would describe as almost crying. Solemn, sad, exactly what we were going for.


    As I have failed to think of a good name for Par¡¯s tribe, and no one else has offered one, I¡¯m going to refer to it as just ¡®the tribe¡¯ for simplicity''s sake. I doubt there will be another tribe nearby anytime soon, or at least not one that lasts long.


    The Ents, who have not yet been named, something I¡¯ll have to remedy soon, challenged Par to a sparring match today. From what I saw I can say with complete confidence that the Ents have Par beat in terms of pure power by a large margin, and Par has them beat in experience by an even larger margin. With the two of them working together they managed to almost pull a victory on him. They work together incredibly well, no doubt due to their ability to share thoughts, it¡¯s just that they don¡¯t really know what they¡¯re doing in a fight. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Another thing concerning the Ents happened today. Mest got word that Ents are popping up in dungeons around the world, It¡¯s only a matter of time before they start showing up outside of dungeons. According to our resident dungeon expert and magic master, dungeons are always the second to create and use new species, with the original creator being the first. It makes sense I guess, but I wonder if any creatures outside of a dungeon have evolved into Ents yet, not likely considering how slowly plants evolve. I would love to meet a wild-born Ent.


    I¡¯m going to drag Talus to sleep with me tonight, I¡¯ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 184

    I think I figured out why Talus was so resistant to sleeping with me before, we both had different things in mind when thinking of sleeping together. It made for a pretty funny scene last night, at least in retrospect, where Talus was blushing furiously while I guided her to the hut. She calmed down after we laid down and realized that I wasn¡¯t dragging her off to do something to her, I don¡¯t think either of us are ready for that. Though she did react well to me being so forward, something to keep in mind for the future?


    Talus is really warm, so holding her while I fell asleep was pleasant. Apparently, it¡¯s a trait of her species, and that somehow makes it better. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    Ultimately she fell asleep last and woke up first, I¡¯m starting to sleep longer and longer as fall sets in. I woke up to her face gazing softly at mine, it was nice.


    We were almost finished with the song when it came the usual time for us to go to bed, so we stayed up late finishing it. I might regret that in the morning, but I don¡¯t now. I¡¯m looking forward to playing it for everyone in the morning.


    I¡¯m going to sleep now, I don¡¯t think I can stay awake much longer.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 185

    More than one person cried when we played the song this morning, which is part of what I was after. It gave me plenty of time to analyze the patterns of mana it makes, this time they were much more pronounced than they were last time, making it easier to study.


    I can tell you right now that there¡¯s no way it''ll be able to create the same effects using mana as the song does, at least not without something major happening. But it is still enlightening to see the magical effects music can have on people, maybe I can use it to make better music.


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    I learned more about Talus¡¯s family today. Apparently, she is the only child of a small branch of a major clan in a city far from here. Her parents forced her to learn music to make her more desirable, for what she didn¡¯t say, except that it had to do with strengthening her family. She ran away from home but didn¡¯t touch on why. The cousins she mentioned before are the children of other branches of her clan.


    I spent the rest of the day practicing cooking. It was something I haven¡¯t done recently and something I still want to improve at. Had I learned yesterday that Talus is a pretty good cook I would have been surprised, today not so much. She¡¯s a much better teacher than Par or Thes, she says that¡¯s because she struggled to learn cooking, while they are naturally talented, makes sense. The food I made today turned out alright.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 186

    Parius announced today that his scouts have seen some suspicious looking people hanging around nearby. He¡¯s worried they are somehow connected to the slavers from before. His scouts tried keeping an eye on them, but the people managed to find the scouts and kill or capture them, wasn¡¯t clear which, so he isn¡¯t able to gather much information on them. Hopefully, nothing will come of it.


    I was reading through my earlier entries today I came across the list I made of things to do. I realized that I never really made a tiny, self-sufficient biome. Maybe now I¡¯ll be able to do it. Creating small plants is pretty easy, but the question was how to introduce other aspects of the Biome? After some brainstorming, I figured out the solution to a different problem, Insects. They¡¯re similar enough to kobolds that my skill with healing them transfers over a bit. Why didn¡¯t I consider it before? Insects would make a great starting point when it comes to learning how to manipulate flesh. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    So I ended up spending most the day trying to figure out how to manipulate insects. I had no real successes, all of the experiments died almost as soon as I was no longer supporting them. It makes me think about how easy it is for me to manipulate plants, it¡¯s literally in my nature to do so, while this goes against that, and so I struggle a lot more. I¡¯ll keep at it though, Can¡¯t be worse than building the Ents.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 187

    I continued manipulating the flesh of insects today, I had no more success than I did yesterday. I¡¯m not improving either, I¡¯m just not skilled enough to work on such a small scale with any success, and if I can¡¯t even have the smallest of success I can¡¯t improve. One thing that trying this has reaffirmed was me not doing it on larger creatures, the insects have all died instantly, but a larger creature would survive for at least a couple seconds, and those seconds would be incredibly painful. I¡¯m not good enough at it to get good at it without also being heartless, and I just can¡¯t bring myself to hurt another creature like that, so i¡¯m going to have to give up for now. Maybe practicing healing will help me there?This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    Mest has started teaching the Ents magic, at their request. They are naturally gifted at magic, which is a point of pride for me, the most difficult parts of starting to learn magic, sensing and manipulating mana, are both things that they are innately capable of, and their minds are flexible enough to really grasp the concepts. All in all, they are shaping up to be fantastic mages.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 188

    I¡¯m feeling a little depressive today. Logically I can pinpoint the exact reasons for this, it¡¯s mainly a combination of the effect Fall naturally has on me and realizing that, short of incredible luck, it will be a very long time before I can even start working towards one of my biggest aspirations, knowing this doesn¡¯t make it any better. At another time I would clear my head by feeding my grove to allow it to grow, but it is done growing until spring, for the most part at least. So instead I just kind of laid around today, curled up in the sun, I just felt really tired. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Talus brought me a bowl of soup for lunch, it was something Tiddol made, had a bit of kick to it and tasted great. While I was eating Talus sat with her back to me, and started talking, words of encouragement I believe. I must have fallen asleep at one point because I woke up with my head in her lap.


    I¡¯ll get over this slump, I have done it before and I no doubt will do it again in the future. I just need a little bit of time to get over it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 189/190

    Day 189


    Not much happened today, I just kind of lounged around again. I feel like Talus was getting a little irritated with me over something, but I couldn¡¯t figure out what, I hope she doesn¡¯t get too angry at me. Other than that, there really isn¡¯t anything to say


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary


    Day 190This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Talus and I had a fight today, nothing too serious, I hope. I wasn¡¯t sure what was going on, so naturally, I asked. According to her, seeing me be all depressive ticks her off, she described one of her cousins, that she was particularly close too, who was constantly in a depressive haze, and, let''s just say it didn''t end well for anyone involved.


    That did actually rouse me from my depressive episode, but by that point, it was too late in the day to do much so we just played board games. My favorite was a simple, short one that had the players cooperating as small beasts against a much larger creature. you win if you can tire the creature out before everyone is eaten, and you lose if everyone dies. we only managed to win once, and even then I died.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 191

    So, last night happened. I am not going to go into too much detail, but let''s just say that Talus knows how you use her hands, and every other part. Now i¡¯m worried that i¡¯m not good enough, but not too worried.


    Today we made another song, this one isn¡¯t as long as the ones we made before. It¡¯s calming, designed to bring the listeners to a state of ease and tranquility. It gave me another chance to study the magic the music is making, and I feel like I can start to replicate it through music, though not very well, and certainly not without the crutch of music.


    During lunch I chatted with Mest about magic, which is something I do regularly, and we got to the subject of innate racial magics. The majority of creatures have them in some form or another, and very few have a blanket bonus to all magic, or even just a bunch of types of magic. To give some examples, Talus can control fire, I control plants, Willow controls storms, and Mest and the Ents get a blanket bonus to magic. It¡¯s a matter of pride for me that the Ents are better suited to magic than Mest¡¯s species. It¡¯s also very difficult for creatures to learn magics outside of the realm of influence their species has, or it requires a lucky break, my healing magic is an example of a lucky break, but healing is known around the world as one of the easiest magics to learn. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    I was curious about how you could make it easier to learn new magics you aren¡¯t predisposed towards. Apparently, as the ambient mana level increases people everywhere will have more access to mana and so more people will be able to use magic, until pretty much everyone is capable of magic. Unfortunately, that isn¡¯t very useful to me, I can¡¯t really change my access to magic in the near future. He also said that learning new magics is something that can be trained, like pretty much anything else, and having a good teacher makes it easier. Though it doesn¡¯t seem like that was an invention for me to ask for lessons, because when I did he was surprised, agreed, but was surprised.


    So yeah, I¡¯m going to be studying different types of magic under Mest for a while.


    I¡¯m really looking forward to going to bed tonight, so I¡¯m going to wrap this up here.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 192

    Today I started magic lessons with Mest, it didn¡¯t go too well. I made progress, but not much, it was even worse than when I first started working on the Ents. specifically, i was learning how to manipulate water, not so much to learn how to manipulate water, I don¡¯t really care about that, but to make learning new magics easier, so I only need to get a good grasp on it, not really master it. Though the reserves of mana I can store in my crown was very helpful, something about being able to waste tons of mana makes it easier to learn how to do new things.


    Talus is also teaching me a thing or two.


    Speaking of Talus, I heard her mention memories from before she was born, It seems she¡¯s like Tiddol and Willow then. It took a bit of asking but I eventually got her to tell me about her past life, or at least the little bit she can remember. She has very little idea about things like species or profession, but one thing she remembered very clearly were relationships, which does explain a lot, in many different ways. It was interesting to hear her talk about the old flames of a previous life. I commented ¡®I hope you remember me in your next life¡¯ and got a memorable response ¡®I have no doubt that I will, you¡¯re pretty unforgettable.¡¯ that made me smile.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Another thing happened today. I watched a short fight between Thes and Par, it was the first time I have seen Par win, and based on his minor celebration afterward, it was the first time he had won. It gave me a sense of pride that the ugly little goblin I picked up all those months ago was growing into a fine warrior, though not much has changed about the ugly part.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 193

    Today Talus joined in on the magic lessons, though she seemed to struggle with it quite a bit. She didn¡¯t really seem to grasp the concepts behind how magic works. Although she seemed to learn a thing or two about the not so magical properties of fire, which will definitely help her. I let her borrow my crown for a while, and it definitely helped. She also said that the amount of mana was overwhelming, in a scary way, so she rejected using it again. Apparently, mana based creatures have bigger mana pools naturally, I mean it makes sense, I had just never thought about it.


    I made only slightly more progress than Talus did, but I was less frustrated by a lack of progress. I hadn''t managed to move water on a scale big enough to see, but I did manage to move water. Not nearly enough for me to be satisfied, this much is easily forgotten. I think I¡¯ll set a goal of being able to hit a target board in the center and actually pierce it. Either that or control some large amount of water dexterously? I don¡¯t know, there are too many ways to define skill when it comes to magic, I just want the basics. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    On second thought, I¡¯ll go with being able to create a very rough likeness of myself out of the water and hold it for a while, then I will move onto manipulating dirt.


    I have no idea how long this will take, but if I can master learning new forms of magic then maybe I will be able to properly learn how to manipulate flesh without hurting people. Even if it isn¡¯t enough, it will at least help.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 194

    I made a breakthrough with water manipulation today, I went from being able to manipulate less than water than I can see, to being able to manipulate some the size of my fist. Something just clicked and it got easier.


    I also decided how I will gage mastery of water manipulation. When I could hit a target from a certain distance away, and actually damage the target, three times in a row and create a rough likeness of myself. Once I am able to do that I will move on to dirt manipulation.


    Talus also made a minor breakthrough today. She managed to make her flames hotter, changing the previously red flames to an orange color. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Oh yeah, Tiddol accidentally lit herself on fire doing something she called alchemy, which is apparently how potions are made, she was quickly put out with a spell from Mest and I healed her up, so the overall effect was more humorous that serious.  She admitted that she wasn¡¯t very good at alchemy, but also said that seeing me struggle to improve myself constantly inspired her to try to learn. Good for her, I hope she succeeds.


    It was a good day, everyone I know is making great strides forwards or helping the others make those strides. Willow is getting much better at controlling lighting, though not in a flashy way, or at least not in a way that¡¯s flashy for lightning. The Ents are making strides forwards in whatever magic it is they have chosen to pursue. Even Par¡¯s tribe is bigger and stronger than it has ever been, and even when you ignore combat ability, they have developed technologically and socially well and beyond what I ever expected. I even found some crude art some of them have created.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 195

    We were attacked today. The same group of slavers that attacked us last time came, this time in a much bigger force.


    Long story short, we destroyed them.


    Tiddol was on top of her game, keeping large chunks of the enemies out of the fight using various tricks and traps. Thes let himself succumb to his rage, drawing fire from their mages and archers while occupying many of their front line. Par and his tribe cut off all their avenues of escape, cutting down all those that tried while harassing the back. I focused on keeping everyone healed up.


    The real heavy hitters were our mages, Mest, Talus, Willow, and the Ents. Every spell ended in at least one casualty, and most ended in several. Mest and the Ents casting a wide range of offensive magic, while Willow caused lightning to strike with pinpoint accuracy, while Talus, almost gleeful, darted across the battlefield, burning slavers with her fire. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    At one point Talus got herself surrounded, she couldn''t escape. In a moment of desperation, I lashed out with my grove, roots sprung from the ground, pulling her assailants into the ground, immobilizing them and allowing her to escape.


    No one escaped, and out of their entire force only around thirty survived, all of them because either Tiddol or I took them out of the fight completely without killing them. It was agreed upon that the strongest of them would join Par¡¯s tribe as slaves themselves, while the rest would be sold in the city along with anything pilfered off the corpses.


    I know for a fact that I caused the deaths of many of them, possibly all of them depending on how you think about it, but it doesn¡¯t really affect me the same way it did last time, I think the fact that I didn¡¯t actually kill anyone myself has a big part in that.


    Overall, it was intense and exciting. I remember why I enjoyed sparring with the goblins through my puppets. Speaking of, I haven¡¯t made a puppet in awhile, I should try that tomorrow.


    I think tonight is going to be just as intense and exciting.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 196

    I just remembered something, tomorrow two suns are going to be in the sky. It¡¯s supposed to be very beautiful, and have some kind of magical effect, though what that effect is isn¡¯t too clear. I do know that it has some kind of special effect on plants, as many of them draw energy from the sun to turn into mana, so i¡¯m pretty excited for that.


    In regards to my magic training, I managed to hit a target today, technically. What actually happened is Tiddol had an accident while brewing a potion and threw it away from herself, just in case, it landed behind the target and exploded, sending it flying at me, or more specifically, where I was moving a small ball of water around in front of me. That, plus the fact that I was moving the water in the direction of the target means I technically hit the target. Luckily no one was injured and no plants were damaged, so the overall effect was funny. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Needless to say, Tiddol marked down that recipe as one to further test and refine.


    Other then that, progress is steady, no major breakthroughs. Oh yeah, Par chose the ex-slavers he wanted to keep today, tomorrow he is going to take the rest back to the city to sell them.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 197

    I didn¡¯t practice magic today, I was content to just lay in the light of two suns. Yes, today had two dawns, one shortly after another, and a little bit ago l watched two sunsets. The light was energizing to me in a way that it wasn¡¯t for everyone else, plants draw energy from the sun to turn into mana, I get a portion of that mana, so when there are two suns in the sky that means twice the light and twice the energy that¡¯s being turned into mana, and twice the mana that I get. Not only that, but the light of the suns provides me with a different kind of energy. It¡¯s like if before only plants were able to pick up on it, but now I was too, at least temporarily.


    Instead of practicing magic with this extra mana I decided to meditate in the light of the suns. During spring or summer I would focus outwards, on growing my grove, but fall is a time for reflections, a time for rest, so I turned my focus inwards. Upon doing so I felt another kind of energy, one that was not mana, but something simpler, something fleeting. My first thought was ¡®this must be the energy plants use to make mana¡¯ my second was to try to figure out what to do with it while I had it, it obviously won¡¯t last long on its own.


    I tried to make this energy stay in my body as long as possible, to allow it to pool up. I quickly found that circulating it throughout my body was the best method I could think of. From there I had no idea how to use it, so I didn¡¯t, I just let it circulate in my body, letting it affect me how it would for as long as I could let it.


    I felt it change me in subtle ways, the only thing that was drastic was the change in my ability to hold mana, it increased by half, but other things changed too. The paths that mana, or rather energy, could use to travel through my body became a bit more refined, a bit more numerous, my body grew more solid, not in the literal sense, but magically it became more solid. The, spells, for lack of a better word, that make up my body became more refined. Along with several other, more minor changes. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Watching these changes made me think about how I could best benefit from this energy while I have it. I guided the energy to make a change to my skin, one that would allow me to emulate a plants ability to absorb this energy. I felt a shift almost immediately, the amount of this energy I was bringing in rapidly increased, to the point that I couldn¡¯t guide it effectively, so I didn¡¯t. by that point I had made enough of a change that the energy was doing the work on its own, I just had to keep ahold of it. It didn¡¯t stop at my skin, it continued its work through the rest of my body, improving it in various small ways, making it so I could use this new energy better, but not well enough to control this much.


    It was around this point that I felt another energy flow into my body, mana this time. This came from the world beneath me instead of the two suns above me, and it took everything I had to keep awake enough to keep circulating the sun energy. As the mana from the world entered my body it destroyed the energy from the suns, so I circulated it faster, which slowed down its destruction, allowing me to use it for longer.


    Both energies were circulating my body, changing it for the better in thousands of small ways, constantly going after each other and improving on what the other had done. I got the distinct feeling that this mana from the world remained a lot longer than it should have because of this solar energy.


    Eventually, the suns set, and the flow of solar energy into me came to an abrupt stop, with what I already had dissipating shortly after that, and the mana from the world shortly after that. The first thing I noticed was the pain, the same type you would expect from an intense workout, the second thing I noticed was my lack of clothing, my armor had fallen off around me, as had my crown. If I had to guess I would say that the changes to my skin ejected the bindings both of those had to me, making them fall. The third thing I noticed was a set of very lecherous eyes from a certain fox girl, they would have made me excited if I wasn¡¯t in so much pain.


    This is probably more than I reasonably should have written, I need to go to sleep to recuperate.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 198

    This morning, after my daily checkup, Mest looked at me and said ¡®You¡¯ve changed, drastically, what happened?¡¯. After explaining exactly what happened to me yesterday he went quiet for a moment before speaking up. There is really no way I can think of to put down what he said without butchering it too badly except for transcribing it, so here we go ¡®What you described, or at least part of it, sounds like an evolution, but a very strange one. Not even the most powerful creatures can stay awake during an evolution, even if they normally don¡¯t need to sleep, though you will never evolve when you are in danger, that¡¯s beside the point. I will admit that my knowledge of evolution is lacking, it is not my field of expertise, but I have never heard of a case like yours. In addition, this solar energy you mentioned is even farther from my field of study, I have no idea what to make of it. If you would allow me to invite some of my peers to your home they may be able to give you more information, if you let them examine you.¡¯


    Seeing no reason to refuse, I agreed. He ran off to his house, Par¡¯s tribe built it for him, saying he would be back soon with word from them. In the meantime I examined my own body, excluding the changes that can be chalked up to aging, my hair has grown, i¡¯m a tad bit taller, and my chest isn¡¯t completely flat anymore, there weren¡¯t that many outwards changes. The most obvious one would be my skin color, I¡¯ve gotten darker during a time that my skin usually lightens. I didn¡¯t get any time to examine my insides today as after Mest got back Talus didn¡¯t give me a break from her all day, which is definitely not a bad thing. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    When Mest did get back it was with surprising news, and again I think I¡¯ll butcher it too badly if I try to butcher it at all. ¡®My evolution specialist friend will be here in a week, perhaps sooner if he can pull some strings. In addition, many of my other peers are very interested in your case¡¯. When I asked why that was he responded with this ¡®I have been keeping them updated about you, or rather I have been submitting regular reports to my order where you have been mentioned, and they have been reading them. You have been an intriguing case from the beginning, accomplishing several things that are rare to achieve. Until now, however, you haven¡¯t accomplished anything so rare that I have not heard of a similar case, and even then I had never heard of someone accomplish everything you have, and eventually, things can¡¯t be coincidences anymore. So naturally more of my order is becoming interested in your case. But, due to other reasons involving both are internal rules and your rule of this grove and, through Parius, the surrounding lands, none of my order can come without your explicit permission. I ask that you grant that permission to two of my close friends and my younger brother.¡¯


    When I asked him to explain why those people, in particular, he explained that they cover most fields I have touched on or he expects I will touch on in the future, in addition to him wanting any boons to come as a result of anything they learn from me to be primarily shared with those close to him. I accepted with a couple stipulations, like I can make them leave at any time, and a couple other things. I will be compensated for this, though i¡¯m not entirely sure how.


    Other than that event I had fun playing with Talus all day, and in a bit I will have fun ¡®playing¡¯ with Talus.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 199

    I got a chance to examine my own internal body structure today, to really see what¡¯s different. The most painfully obvious difference is my mana storage, the other day i said that i noticed it increasing by about half, well after that i kind of stop paying attention to that part. My mana capacity increased to double that, so a total of triple the starting point, this is going to take forever to fill up, especially since my plants aren¡¯t producing as much mana right now, and that¡¯s only going to slow down, but hey, having access to that mana will make learning new magics easier.


    The next thing I noticed was many of the changes to my body¡¯s internal magical structure, everything was improved, usually drastically. Possibly the smallest increase was too my physical strength, which was only noticeable because I was looking for it. I¡¯m also much more durable, if before Parius could snap me in half with one hand, now he would need two, now that I think about it, could Parius do that? I know he wouldn¡¯t, but still, now i¡¯m curious. I¡¯m also a lot more coordinated and a lot faster. All of these things are something everyone experiences to a degree, as testified by everyone I know who has evolved at one point or another.


    Now the real interesting part is what happened with the parts that are used in magic. All of them went through significant changes, not all of them are immediately obvious why. The way some parts changed offered little to no benefit when using magic, while nothing outright made magic more difficult it didn¡¯t improve things to the level I would have expected with how much everything changed. That isn¡¯t to say my ability to use magic hasn¡¯t improved much, quite the contrary, the change was huge, to the point that I completed my goal with water manipulation today, and then some. Of course, I was only learning the basics, anything more complicated is going to take a lot more time. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    The one thing i was looking forward to the most, however, wasn¡¯t there. The whole reason behind my evolution in the first place was what i did with the solar energy i managed to gather the other day, forge a way for me to gather it in the future. And there is nothing, no solar energy anywhere in my body. I guessed that it was being destroyed faster than it could pool in my body was correct, because when i circulated everything in my body faster enough, both what little solar energy i was gathering and all my mana, it became noticeable.


    From there I managed to run some tests, and here is what I learned from said tests. The amount of skin the sunlight directly touched directly correlates to how much energy I gather, hair counts, my armor doesn¡¯t, for now at least the most effective way to gather it is to lay down in the sun completely naked, not something I want to do. The energy does, in fact, turn into mana when it is destroyed, and it¡¯s the mana that is destroying it, this means that I could get stable access to it if I were to remove all the mana from my body, which would kill me so no thanks. I am also unable to gather up a usable amount of Solar energy without focusing on gathering it to an unreasonable degree, at least for now, I¡¯m going to try to change that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 200

    I tried manipulating plants in ways that I haven¡¯t been able to do very well before today and found them to be much easier. I feel like I could do almost anything with plants if I had the right base material, I just lack creativity. I have all this new potential for creation at my fingertips, but I have no idea what to do with it. My first thought was to try to make something that can store solar energy, but I lack the right base material, Astrie is possibly the worst plant I have access to for storing solar energy and everything else just isn¡¯t good enough with any kind of energy. Maybe I could change Astrie to be more suitable somehow, but it won¡¯t be with mana, and solar energy is so hard to accumulate that once I am able to use Astrie for storing it i won¡¯t need it. For now i am at a loss for what to do with my newfound power, besides the obvious of learning the basics of as many fields of magic as i can.


    I asked Mest when the next double sun event would happen, and the answer was disappointing. It¡¯s pretty easy to be somewhere when there are two suns in the sky with the advent of permanent teleportation circles, but on average there are about three decades between it happening at a particular place. So if it wasn¡¯t for the thing that allows me to profit from it in the first place I would be able to get a bunch of solar energy by just following it. I¡¯m not going to be able to rely on that to fix my problem.


    So, as it turns out the Ents are still much more suited to magic than me, despite my evolution. I believe the Ents will remain a source of pride for me for a very long time. Unfortunately, they are similarly lacking in creativity, but that is more due to a lack of experience than a creative block. Plus they haven¡¯t yet hit the point where they need to get creative to get stronger, which worries me a little, I don¡¯t want my children to stagnate when they reach that peak. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Other than trying to figure out what to do with magic I got the basics down of many fields of magic. The common ones, ones that any creature could reasonably expect to learn. In particular, these fields were earth, fire, force, air, and conjuration. Though elements of conjuration are present in most fields of magic, especially my own plant manipulation, so despite being considered one of the hardest to learn it was pretty easy for me. I tried to get Willow to show me how she makes lightning, but I am nowhere near skilled enough to copy her method. She does it in a roundabout way, instead of creating lightning directly she creates a storm that then creates the lightning that she controls, I imagine this way is much more difficult for someone whose talent isn¡¯t storms than just creating lightning to begin with.


    Despite all of that I don¡¯t feel like I have really improved much today, I mean on an objective level I have, but I don¡¯t feel like I¡¯ve come much closer to being able to manipulate flesh. It doesn¡¯t matter how much I can control my magic, if I have no idea what i¡¯m doing someone is going to die painfully, something I am going to avoid. I thought about using already dead meat, but, while good to actually stretch my control of flesh, doesn¡¯t address the problem at hand, I can¡¯t figure out what works and what doesn¡¯t by doing that. Maybe one of the specialists Mest called in will have some insight for me, because no one else does and I certainly don¡¯t.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 201

    Today I continued to practice magic, this time trying to figure out what my limits are for plant manipulation. The most obvious difference is everything is faster, everything takes about a third of the time it took before. I¡¯m also able to do everything better, making Astrie better with mana, making Dead Tulips put someone to sleep faster, allowing Singing Grass to have a much wider range of sounds it can produce, things like that.


    Another thing I did today was make a puppet. It is very similar to making an Ent, I just don¡¯t finish it. That way it doesn¡¯t develop a soul and I can control with magic. I thought at first that maybe I shouldn¡¯t add a mana heart, but it turns out that adding a mana heart makes the puppet much more responsive to my commands, so I left it in despite it taking as long as the entire rest of the puppet to make. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I didn¡¯t really do anything with the puppet, just kind of used it to stretch my magical abilities. And stretch my limits it did, not only did it take quite a while to make, relative to everything else I can make, but it¡¯s also still very difficult to control two, but not quite impossible.


    For the rest of the day, I hung out with Talus, Par, and Tiddol to play games.


    Oh yeah, pretty much everyone is leaving tomorrow to go dungeon diving, the only ones that are staying are myself, Talus, the Ents, and most of Par¡¯s tribe, including Whisperer. I always forget Whisperer, and only partially intentionally. I would say i¡¯m curious about what he¡¯s been up to recently, but I would be lying, he still creeps me out.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 202

    Everyone left this morning, saying that they should be back late tomorrow. They aren¡¯t really going to make money or to challenge themselves, more to get some of the younger members use to diving. The overall power level of the dungeon is far below that of at least Mest, so even if something goes horribly wrong, it can¡¯t go so wrong he can¡¯t fix it.


    Instead of practicing magic I decided to make a list of the things I am trying to accomplish, so I can better organize what I need to do in my head. I remember making a similar list a while ago.


    In order of importance


    Learn how to manipulate flesh without painfully killing anyone.


    Learn how to properly harness Solar Energy.


    Figure out what to do with my abilities.


    Learn how to learn new fields of magic.


    Learn how to control two or more puppets.


    Create a miniature biome (something I hadn''t really thought of till I reviewed my old entries.)


    I decided to work mostly on the second one today. The first thing I did was ask the plants about it, they had no idea what I was talking about. Observing them for a while didn¡¯t show Solar Energy gathering enough to be noticeable unless I knew what I was looking for, it seems all plants use it for is to turn it into mana. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    One thing that¡¯s bugging me is why doesn¡¯t the Solar Energy get turned into mana by the ambient mana before it reaches a plant, or myself. The sun is far enough away that even if it was moving incredibly fast the ambient mana would still have more than enough time to consume the Solar Energy.


    This was a surprisingly easy question to answer. Despite how hard I looked I couldn¡¯t detect any Solar Energy in the air, while I could occasionally detect it in plants and myself. I even examined Talus and several goblins, none of them had even the slight trace of Solar Energy, ever. I¡¯m thinking that plants somehow create it using the light that hits them, which would also explain why I had access to it when I shouldn¡¯t have, as far as I know, most forest sprites can¡¯t produce mana in the same way plants can, so I couldn¡¯t have done it on my own. That leaves one possibility, my armor. It was drilled into my skin at hundreds of tiny points, so there was a very clear connection between it and myself, maybe clear enough to allow the excess Solar Energy it was producing from the two suns to flow into me. From there I used it to change myself in a way that allowed me to produce it on my own.


    This insight gives me an idea for something I can try to maybe gather more Solar Energy if only I could get it together in a large enough quantity and move fast enough to overcome mana destroying it. My idea is something like a massive umbrella made up of leaf matter connected directly to my body. The idea is to maximize the surface area to allow more Solar energy to gather. The problem with that is the amount of mana increase at the same rate as the surface area does, meaning it would take a ludicrous surface area to make it functional.


    Ugh, the is so frustrating, why does this have to be so difficult. I can¡¯t decrease the amount of mana in the leaf without destroying its structural integrity, which makes it useless. I need a plant that has naturally very large and very durable leaves, something I don¡¯t have. Yeah, I could make it with magic, but that defeats the purpose. I¡¯m going to ask Par¡¯s tribe to keep an eye out for such a plant while the explore the surrounding areas, but I doubt much will come of it.


    As it is only around lunchtime while i¡¯m writing this I am going to put down my work and just try to have fun with Talus for the rest of the day.

 Day 203

    Everyone got back today while I was preparing lunch for myself and Talus, it turned out ok. Apparently, the dive went about as badly as it could have possibly gone without anyone dying. Everyone was maimed in one way or another, and in the case of one particularly unlucky hobgoblin, would be permanently disabled without the help of a mildly competent healer, like myself. One of the Ents, the male, was missing two limbs from when they threw himself in front of an attack meant for his sister, as they are still technically plants this isn¡¯t a big deal as they will just regrow their limbs naturally, or I could do it for them much faster.


    From what I understand they stumbled across one of the most powerful creatures in the dungeon in a place that they couldn¡¯t escape from, a place where that creature shouldn¡¯t have been. The didn¡¯t manage to beat it until Mest stepped in to help, and even then they didn¡¯t get more than a couple coins for loot. Overall it was a pretty bad experience for them.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Although, how they all reacted to this defeat was pretty interesting. Parius and Willow both shrugged it off and returned to life as normal. The veterans, aka Tiddol, Mest, and Thes, all tried to offer guidance to the others, with various degrees of success, which makes sense because they were only there as a safety net and to teach. The members of Pars tribe that joined listened to the veterans, practically hanging onto every word.


    The Ents had the most extreme reaction, they basically fought each other for the rest of the day, pretty viciously too, only stopping when one was too injured to continue, at which point they would return to me to heal. When I asked them why they communicated ideas of lust for power, for unmatched physical and magical might, to be more useful to me. It was intense, and after that, I couldn¡¯t just stop them, so I let them continue with the promise that they won¡¯t do enough damage to really break something in a way I can¡¯t fix. They agreed readily enough.


    Towards the end of the day, I got word that Mest¡¯s friends will be here early tomorrow. I am a little excited and a little nervous, not about them exactly, but more about what I will learn from them.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 204

    Mest¡¯s friends were delayed for some reason, it was explained to me why but I thought it was pretty boring so I forgot about it. They got here just a little bit earlier, dead tired. They are currently sleeping in one of the huts Par¡¯s tribe have built. I was able to talk to them a bit, and they did give me a good first impression. Of the three only one really talked, another was already asleep and being carried by the third, who was also arranging a place for them to sleep. He was polite and respectful, and that was even before he knew who I was. When I commented on that he replied with ¡®in my line of work you never know if the person in front of you could kill you with a thought, so it¡¯s best to always be courteous¡¯.


    During the rest of the day I mostly practiced controlling the puppet better, and I did make a small amount of progress. I found that the best way to practice is to try to use the puppet while i¡¯m doing other things, try to get to the point where I can dexterously use the puppet constantly without it impacting my day to day life. I am a very long way off from that, I don¡¯t think I would be able to do it perfectly if I spent a year straight practicing, but I could get halfway much more reasonably.


    As for what I was doing while trying to get the puppet to run at the back of my mind, I was doing some stretches Talus showed me that are supposed to improve your physical body. As I don¡¯t have a physical body, i¡¯m just a bunch of very complicated spells woven together with some equally complicated illusions covering everything up, all of which is driven by a soul, it¡¯s not normally useful for me to do this kind of thing. I could sit still for a decade without moving, and when I stand up I will be just as physically fit and just as flexible, assuming something didn¡¯t go wrong. The opposite is also true, I could lift weights for years before showing any tangible results. From my understanding, the only way for me to become physically stronger, more flexible, etc, excluding evolving, is through magic. Both temporary enhancements and general magical growth work for that. It is theoretically possible for me to modify the magic that makes up my body, but that would essentially be suicide, and I get the feeling it¡¯s not just because I know nothing about that kind of thing. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Anyway, the reason I was doing those exercises was to figure out exactly how physically strong I am now after I evolved. Endurance is straightforward and hardly an issue, as soon as I run out of mana i¡¯m no longer able to do much, meaning as long as I don¡¯t go overboard I can go pretty much indefinitely, ignoring the need to sleep and the desire for food.


    Strength is less obvious, it¡¯s more about finding a happy medium right before the mana cost for things becomes exponentially larger. I could theoretically lift anything if I had access to enough mana, but then again so could anyone. I definitely enjoyed an increase to my strength, though there wasn¡¯t much need for it.


    Flexibility to increased dramatically. I won¡¯t go into details, but due to recent events, I am more aware of how flexible I was before evolving than I was aware of how strong I was.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 205

    I talked to the newcomers this morning, getting to know them mostly. Of the three, two of them are demons, a Devil and an Akan specifically, I honestly know next to nothing about either of those species. The third is a monster, specifically a troll water variant, where he any other creature that variant trait of his would grant him great control over water, but as trolls are incapable of magic he is instead able to do things like swim really well and breathe water, not just breath underwater but actually breathe water, he was rather clear about that. That last part does allow him to spit water hard enough to break stone though.


    Anyway, the Akan, whose name was Toreth, was the one that talked to me the night before. He primarily studies dungeons, but in a different way than Mest does. While Mest mostly studies already established dungeons, Toreth primarily studies young and newly forming dungeons as well as what causes them to exist in the first place.


    The Devil was named Soros, he is a botanist, which is apparently someone who studies plants. He is the one I¡¯m most interested in learning from, after all, plants are literally my life in many different ways. It seems he brought a number of interesting samples with him, I¡¯m going to need to see about getting some from him.


    Lastly, the water troll, Trovich, studies evolution, specifically monster evolution. He has stated that his life¡¯s goal is to map out the entirety of the monster evolutionary tree, he also mentioned a friendly rivalry he has with a lion kin who is attempting the same with the Beast evolutionary tree. Something he said at the end of that particular discussion stuck out to me, he said ¡®jokes on him, trolls are immortal¡¯. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    It got me thinking about the fact that I am supposedly immortal, and after asking around it seems that so are many other people around. All of the newcomers and Mest belong to supposedly immortal species, while Lesser Kitsune live a very long time, so long in fact that no one has seen a kitsune die of old age, despite the fact they obviously age. Other then that Willow is in the same boat I am, being a sprite and all, while the Ents are plants, more similar to a tree than to any other kind of plant, and there are entire forests in the world that predate most Origin, obviously not all of Origin as something had to make them. And beyond my circle, it seems like immortality is still pretty common, for one all dungeon creatures can be resurrected when killed so long as the dungeon lives, which doesn¡¯t really count but close enough.


    After talking to the resident scholars it seems that immortality isn¡¯t really a big deal until you are able to obtain it through brute force, but they weren''t clear on the why for that last part. Though it does seem like certain trees of evolution are more prone to being immortal. Undead and plants have the highest rate of immortality among sentients, to date, not a single sentient undead or plant discovered has been mortal, while undead drops of sharply when you include non-sentients, while plants keep that top spot. Of course, plants and undead also have the lowest rate of sentience any of the trees of evolution, with Undead being slightly higher than Plants. Next, we have Demons and Angelics tied for second place for the highest rate of Immortality overall, tied one to one as all Demon species have an Angelic counterpart, like Devils and Angels, Pixies and Fairies, and Imps and Cherubs. Draconics barely beat out Monsters like myself. A little farther down Bipeds barely beat out Beasts while Undead is dead last in terms of absolute rate of immortality.


    Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t get to learn more about what exactly I am now because the evolution expert is a troll, and so he can¡¯t directly examine me with magic, he needs to use specialized tools to do so, and those tools had to be set up, and that took all day.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 206

    Today, early in the morning, the magical devices Torvich needed to examine me were done being set up. After going through a rather long, and occasionally uncomfortable, series of tests He reported to me with his findings. It seems I am a Forest Nymph variant, specifically a plant variant, which, according to the troll, is weird because all nymphs are technically variants, there are no ¡®normal nymphs¡¯, the same with sprites. Nymphs, in general, are pretty much a direct upgrade to their Sprite counterparts, with a few minor differences, in particular, Forest Nymphs all have control over plants, they don¡¯t need the plant to be willing to work with them, though it is still much easier if it is willing. It¡¯s also incredibly rare for a Forest Nymph to be directly born from a tree, but not impossible.


    As for what my status as a plant-based variation on an already very plant-centric species entails, he wasn¡¯t sure exactly but did have some ideas. Plant type variations in other monsters, as he only really cares about monsters, usually have a couple things in common, they all gain the ability to communicate telepathically with plants, they can use that ability to do favors for the plants, which doesn¡¯t happen very often, in exchange for some kind of boon, like mana or a particularly tasty fruit. Neither of those things are useful to me, I could already do them as a sprite. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    The one thing that was pretty common among plant variants that seemed interesting was a particular type of magic. Many such species learn how to apply certain attributes of plants to themselves and others, temporarily turning your skin into bark was the example he mentioned. I¡¯m not sure if I was capable of it before, well not capable, technically anyone could do it if they figured out how, it would be more accurate to say i¡¯m not sure if I could have done that easily before but now i¡¯m going to try.


    I ended up spending most of the day talking to Torvich and doing some more tests, more about what i¡¯m capable of than anything else. It was enlightening I learning things about myself that I had no idea I could do, though most of them were pretty minor and inconsequential. I also had an epiphany during one of these tests about how I might be able to solve the Solar Energy storage problem I have, but it will take a couple days before I can do it as I will need a bit to start out, and to get a usable amount I need a whole day to sit in the sun, preferably naked in order to get as much energy as I can.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 207

    After comparing notes with Mest Toreth, the dungeon specialist, asked if he could examine me. As he would know more about the growth of a dungeon than Mest does I agreed. From what he says the core inside of me is about the size a wild one would be when it is just starting to be able to manipulate its surroundings, but nowhere near the maturity of one at that stage.


    According to him my core can¡¯t be more than a year old, and its maturity level reflects that, but its size has grown much faster than even the fastest growing wild cores. He attributes that to three things, the first is the dungeon cores I absorbed a while back, the second is the fact that my territory is massive for such a young dungeon, giving my core significantly more resources to work with, and the third is my recent evolution, which Mest says more than doubled the size of my core. Though Toreth did say that the core would still be massive for its maturity level even if it was half its current size.


    Toreth also said that my core is different from any other he¡¯s observed, but it is too early to tell exactly how it is different, it will have to develop a bit more. He¡¯s reasonably convinced about the cause of the change, however, a developing core being inside someone while they evolve hasn¡¯t happened before, or, for that matter, has a core developed inside another creature at least not to the knowledge of anyone present. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    It¡¯s pretty well known that many more powerful dungeons have lords instead of cores, basically what happens is the core gets powerful enough to forge itself a body, or it just wants one for some reason and it doesn¡¯t actually take a lot of effort to make one, that part isn¡¯t too clear. There is a lot of nuances there that I don¡¯t really understand, but it¡¯s their job to understand every detail of dungeons, not mine. Anyway, It¡¯s completely unheard of for a creature to become a dungeon lord, but not for a dungeon lord to exist, so i¡¯m special, but not that special.


    The good news is I got a time frame for when I should be able to use my core in a meaningful way. In about a year I will be able to build great labyrinths with my mind, though a particularly traumatic event could speed that up. The logic behind that is wild dungeons would only really be traumatized after just barely fending off an intruder, or being forced to endure constant heavy assault for a long time, both would need the dungeon to grow stronger faster in order to compensate.


    As to why it will take a year, barring extraneous circumstances, a core takes roughly two years to be developed enough to do anything, and while mine is getting bigger rapidly, it isn¡¯t maturing faster than average, or at least not by a notable margin.


    This is all pretty exciting, but it still doesn¡¯t really feel real. I mean we are talking about something that is a year away, never in my life have I had to consider something that far away. except on my birthday when I was younger, back when I couldn¡¯t wait for the next birthday, but that doesn¡¯t really count.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 208

    This morning Thes left, saying he was going hunting. He should be fine, but I hope he doesn¡¯t get too injured.


    I took the day to relax. I have been way too active these last few days for the middle of fall and it¡¯s starting to wear on me.


    I laid in the sun today, not really too gather Solar Energy, that would be exhausting, but because being in the sun is rather comforting since my evolution. I actually slept for a while, just basking in the sun. when I woke up I found Talus pressed up against me, asleep.


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    Overall it was a nice day, I really want to get back to doing stuff but it''s always important to take a day off.


    Tomorrow i¡¯m going to talk to the botanist. I don¡¯t really like them though, they always smell of a particularly pungent herb that they are always smoking. And they seem kind of dumb, earlier they were amazed at the fact that daggers are used to stab things, hopefully, they are more competent as a botanist.


    Anyway, good Night Diary

 Day 209

    Thes didn¡¯t return today. He¡¯s still alive, we know that much. Mest did some magic thing that I don¡¯t understand to be able to tell when he dies. We have no idea where he went or how long he planned to go hunting so all we can do is wait I guess.


    Mest and I talked about why exactly he went on this hunting trip. Thes is striving for an evolution, after he saw me evolve he thought that maybe evolving could help him contain his rage. Mest isn¡¯t too sure that it will work well enough, though he is absolutely certain it will work to a limited degree. I¡¯m just going to transcribe the next part, I don¡¯t think I can do it justice ¡®What i¡¯m terrified of is this, what if he still can¡¯t perfectly control his rage afterward? If he can¡¯t perfectly control it then it¡¯s only a matter of time before he snaps again, and what then? Currently, he is just weak enough that I can subdue without issue when he snaps, but after an evolution I may not be powerful enough. And there is no one else here who would be able to give me meaningful support in subduing him, except maybe you. You could maybe delay him for a second or two with vines and roots, but no one else would have the power to slow him down. And, even worse, I¡¯m nowhere near an evolution of my own, it will be years till I get another, and if I can¡¯t subdue him then I die, and hopefully no one else dies with me. We can¡¯t kill him either, he¡¯s practically my brother.¡¯This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Side note, I learned that the fastest hand on the clock is called the second hand, indicates seconds. I didn¡¯t realize it had a name, and apparently, the other two are minute and hour.


    When I asked if his friends might be able to help he said no, apparently they are staying another week at most before their needed elsewhere, and they aren¡¯t quite as powerful as Mest. we started discussing other things that could be tried, and couldn''t think of something they haven¡¯t already tried. No metal they have ever found has been able to constrain him for more than a second, venting his rage doesn¡¯t end well for reasons Mest didn¡¯t go into, and exile isn¡¯t an option because we would both lose Thes and piss off some other group, which could end horribly for everyone involved.


    Honestly, I don¡¯t want to see him go, I like the guy. Not a great conversationalist but I can respect him.


    No, i didn¡¯t talk to the botanist today, and it definitely was not because I think he smells bad or that he looks like he¡¯s never heard the word bath, and it certainly isn¡¯t because the smoke from his pipe gives me a slight headache.


    I honestly don¡¯t think he would notice if I stole a couple samples as long as I don¡¯t touch whatever is in that pipe and don¡¯t take all of any one plant.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 210

    I did end up talking to the Botanist, when he came to talk to me first. Apparently he had heard about my ability to change the qualities of plants and wanted me to do something for him. From there it wasn¡¯t too difficult to get a sample of each of the plants he has. As for what he wanted me to do, it was really simple, i just had to make one of his plants, the one that he puts into his pipe, much more potent.


    A short while later I had roughly five new types of plants available to me, and only two of them had any kind of magical effects. One of them is a mind-altering substance when smoked, or if cooked right apparently, not that I really care, the other is a vine that glows slightly. The rest are mundane plants, with one of them maybe being useful as a spice.


    I quickly discovered that I can change the brightness and the color that the vine glows. Using that I can make an interesting light show if I wanted, overall a little underwhelming.


    The other plant, referred to as Drowsy Clover, is a bit more interesting. Its base, mildly mind-altering effects aren¡¯t that interesting to me, why would i want to cause someone to experience hallucinations? Or experience them myself? But what i could do with that baseline was much more interesting, making potent painkillers for one. Honestly painkillers aren¡¯t that valuable when you can just heal pretty much any injury, but you never know. Maybe i could sell them to get money for more exotic plants?


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    After a bit of experimentation, with the help of some all too happy goblins, I found a couple things it could do. The most notable being the following, cause pain, kill pain, cause an adrenaline rush, calm you down, make you sleepy, wake you up, and cause you to hallucinate. Dead tulip pollen could already cause you to become tired, or wake you up if I changed it right, but this new plant is able to do it though a completely different mechanism, though i¡¯m not sure exactly what those mechanisms are.


    After a bit of experimentation, which took most the day, I talked to Mest about the possibility of getting some more exotic plants from a merchant and the like. I didn¡¯t talk to the Botanist because he was completely zoned out all day, and also he smells like he hasn¡¯t bathed in weeks. Anyway, Mest said that he has some contacts that might be able to facilitate something like that if I had the money for it.


    As I do not have the money I decided to see if I could get Par to have his minions sell some things in the city for me. I made a bunch of every type of plant I had available that I thought might be worth something, except Dead Tulip because it doesn¡¯t produce pollen this time of year. It ended up being every single Drowsy Clover variation, several Astrie variations, and many mana berries, everything else seemed pretty useless without my ability to manipulate plants, or at least in the small quantities I was able to make. I could see how the noise deadening singing grass could be useful in large quantities.


    I should know in a couple days what sells the best and I can focus on making that.


    Honestly, I never would have come up with this on my own, either the buying exotic plants part or how I could go about raising money for them. I have Talus to thank for that, she outright said that I should think of trying to buy exotic plants, and reminded me of something the others said a while back about selling my plants.


    I wonder what plants I could get, I guess I¡¯ll find out sooner or latter.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 211

    Thes was still missing, but he was for certain still alive.


    Mest¡¯s friends are leaving two days from now, they still need to do something. I don¡¯t remember what it was because it was honestly pretty boring, something to do with paperwork maybe? I made sure to ask Toreth the Akan dungeon specialist to give me something that would describe what I could expect as my core matures, and he gave me a copy of his notes. Apparently, he is really good at writing with magic, like almost as good as I am at manipulating plants good. Apparently, it has to do with his species, Akan were developed by a small group of Origin to help them archive information, they later turned that skill towards mass producing books with important information for their order.


    That got me wondering about something, creatures specifically designed to be intelligent have existed for a very long time, much longer than the three hundred years since the first non-Origin sentient. So why didn¡¯t a creature gain sentience until roughly three hundred years ago? And a troll no less, I mean trolls aren¡¯t stupid or anything, but they certainly aren¡¯t known for their intelligence. I thought that maybe there was something I¡¯m missing, so I asked the scholars available to me. Apparently, the question was one many of their order have asked many times, but the general consensus is that obtaining sentience is hard, and mana makes it easier, so the increasing ambient mana density made it easier for creatures to obtain sentience. This kind of makes sense, but then why was a troll the first to gain sentience? They aren¡¯t affected at all by mana. Apparently, that particular troll is super old, like thousands of years old according to some Origin that knew him before he became sentient, this easily makes him one of the oldest living creatures. In addition to that, he is really smart, likely on account of his age, and had a reincarnated soul that managed to keep some memories, all of which helped him obtain sentience without the benefit of mana. Sentience among trolls is still pretty rare.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Apparently, it was years before the first sentient came across another, even with Origin being ready and willing to help. One of the visiting scholars even mentioned that the second sentient was an ancestor of Mest¡¯s. they were a Tiefling, a lesser form of Demon pretty close on the Demon evolutionary tree to Devils. In the end they died of old age.


    One last thing before I go to sleep, apparently the Kobolds have started evolving into Greater Kobolds, actually, they started more than a month ago. I didn¡¯t notice because the only real difference visually between a Kobold and a greater Kobold, the greater Kobold is slightly taller on average, and has slightly more lustrous scales, but that''s about it. Even when healing them there isn¡¯t much difference until I really look for it, then I see that everything just works better, it¡¯s overall design is improved in subtle but effective ways. It was actually pretty interesting to study, and will no doubt be useful if I ever try to make a Kobold Ent, or properly learn Flesh Manipulation.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 212

    Thes returned today. It was an impressive sight, his fur shone a lustrous red color and he was dragging a massive, mutilated lizard behind him. I couldn¡¯t tell it was a dragon until he got up close, and it definitely wasn¡¯t a young dragon. He was successful in evolving, that much was clear, even without the obvious change in fur color he had too few wounds, and all his scars were gone, both of those things are fixed when you evolve.


    We feasted on dragon meat all day, and it was an intense experience. It was incredibly tender, the meat was so soft I could practically drink it. The already amazing taste was enhanced by a combination of mana berries, Astrie I specifically modified for the task, it makes a surprisingly good seasoning, and some mineral seasonings Mest had, all that combined to make the best tasting meat I have ever eaten.


    It wasn¡¯t just the taste and texture either, the meat was infused with mana, I could practically feel myself becoming heartier, stronger, and more resistant to fire, it was a fire dragon after all.


    Based on its size alone the dragon was at least a couple centuries old and given how intelligent dragons tend to be, probably sentient too. Their entire evolutionary tree isn¡¯t named after them for no reason, they are very powerful, Thes even said that the only reason he won was a combination of luck and the dragon being injured in the first place.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    As for his evolution, he became a greater fire variant grizzly bear. Other than the usual boosts one would expect from an evolution he can also breathe fire, that¡¯s just terrifying, it''s really inefficient in mana consumption though so he can¡¯t keep it up for long.


    As for the main reason he tried to evolve, it worked, mostly, which is worse than if he failed to evolve. His rage is easier for him to contain, but it is still there. He described it like a pot of water, as time goes on water and heat are added to the pot and eventually it boils over, he snaps, now the pot is a lot bigger, he can handle a lot more before he snaps, but he will still snap eventually, and it will be worse because there¡¯s more there. The only positive here is that we have time to figure something out, by the sound of things a month, maybe two.


    Maybe I could modify Drowsy Clover in a way that might help, the problem is I have no idea how. By the man¡¯s own admission he¡¯s tried the basic stuff before and it did very little to help, he even tried the most potent variant they could find, and it did something, but not much, and it messed with him in other ways.


    In happier news Talus got a pretty big power boost from eating that dragon, seems have a similar affinity made the effect much more pronounced. The upper limits she was capable of before are only enough to discomfort her now, at least for a little while, then it starts to hurt. On top of that, her fire is half again as strong as it was before. And let''s just say that the improved endurance was noticeable, she made a joke about how for once she¡¯s the insatiable one, that got a good laugh out of me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 213

    Par¡¯s minions are starting to bring in some money from selling my plants. It¡¯s a little too early to tell but it seems that Drowsy Clover variants are selling the best, though we still don¡¯t have enough information to determine which variations of it are the best. Par¡¯s minions picked up some mundane plants in the city using some of the money.


    I talked to Par about how exactly we were going to divide up the profits. I¡¯ll spare the details but it turned out like this, I get a fourth of everything, I don¡¯t have a lot of need for money and creating the plants in the first place is far from difficult, Par gets around a tenth for personal use, a tenth goes to the ones that actually selling it, and the rest goes to benefit Par¡¯s tribe, which is now a small town in its own right. With the money he should be able to build a proper city, or at least build it slowly.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Talus and I actually talked about it a bit later, and apparently Drowsy Clover is completely illegal where she comes from. It was also from this conversation that I learned what a prison was, I mean, I¡¯ve needed to know about what happens to people that break laws, I wasn¡¯t even aware that was a thing. Talus asked me if I¡¯ve been living under a rock my whole life, I responded with ¡®no, I¡¯ve been living under a canopy¡¯


    In my spare time, I was working on making a version of Drowsy Clover that might be useful with Thes¡¯s situation, I made very little progress, but I did make progress.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 214

    I was curious about exactly how fire resistant I am, so naturally I thought it was a good idea to test this by trying to burn myself. A mistake as I would find out later.


    I started by trying to burn myself with fire I am able to make with magic, and let''s just say I¡¯m not exactly good at wielding fire. The end result was I am not able to make a fire hot enough to hurt myself, which isn¡¯t saying much.


    I then tried, and eventually succeeded, to convince Talus to try to burn me. I had to say that as long as she was using weak flames I would be able to heal any injury with my own magic, and even then it took some convincing.


    The weakest flame she could keep stable was only enough to make me feel uncomfortably warm, but any hotter gives me a small burn, good to know. It was around here that I made a mistake by being careless, and my armor, which is a sundress made out of wood, caught on fire.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    It hurt, I managed to shed it quickly but I still ended up with mild burns all over my body, nothing I wasn¡¯t able to heal, but it gave me a new respect for fire. The armor wasn¡¯t salvageable as clothing anymore, at least not without more mana than it would take to make a new one, but I could make it into something else.


    I managed to make a new one before the smoke cleared, and there was a lot of smoke, so no one saw me naked, luckily.


    This whole event reminded me of the time I tried to make armor out of Astrie, it works very well, but I wasn¡¯t able to handle it without being exhausted. Maybe now that I¡¯ve evolved I can try again. I should probably try it out with other plants that I¡¯ve gotten since then.


    Now that I think about it ¡®Armor¡¯ is not a good name for it, clothes would be more accurate. Eh whatever, clothes could get confusing so I''ll keep it at Armor, after all, it is fully functional armor.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 215

    I talked to Whisperer again today, he seems different somehow, more mature, more professional, and better spoken, charismatic. He still gives me the creeps, but not quite as bad.


    I ended up in a heated discussion about morality and ethics, about how I see the world and other philosophical stuff like that. It wasn¡¯t until later in the day that I realized he was having two other plant variant hobgoblins writing down everything I said word for word.


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    I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever opened up to someone like I did to whisperer, which scares me more than a little. The fact that he, and his followers, have earned the trust of the more intelligent plants in my grove does make me a little relieved though.


    Speaking of Whisperer¡¯s followers, they have been feeding my grove mana near constantly for months now. If it wasn''t fall my grove would be near twice its size, but as it stands my grove is in for a massive growth spurt come spring.


    Spring feels so far away, just thinking about that makes me a little tired, but then again most things do, and will continue to do so until late winter. On that note, i¡¯m going to bed.


    Good NIght Diary.

 Day 216

    I worked on making new armors today. I wanted to see what I could create with what I have available and if I could withstand using an Astrie armor for long periods of time.


    Of course I tested Astrie first, and I can withstand it for much longer than before, but it still isn¡¯t something I can use regularly, and the headache lingers. Maybe I could use it to somehow train Flesh manipulation, though it might not be enough. I can change how it works, mostly just changing how it affects my magic, though I did manage to make it weaker so it doesn¡¯t affect me as much, but by that point the effect is not worth the effort.


    Next I tested Dead Tulip because it¡¯s the one I¡¯ve had for the longest. I found myself being able to control the pollen it produces with amazing accuracy, something I would never be able to do with normal Dead Tulip pollen. I need to remember this, it might come in handy for subduing Thes when he snaps.


    Following that, I worked on one made out of Singing Grass. It took me dozens of rather mana draining attempts to create well, but once I pulled it off I managed to make something that is more instrument than armor. As I am still pretty much illiterate with music I have no idea how to describe the sounds produced by it, but I can control it consciously to play music wherever I go. I also figured out how to use it to make my movements completely silent.


    For the armor I made out of glowing vines, which will be referred to as Glovine, something interesting happened. It didn¡¯t behave the same way as any other armor I¡¯ve made before. Most armors simply dig into my skin and root themselves in place, Glovine dug under my skin completely and evenly, it was honestly pretty painful but it didn¡¯t last long. In the end I was naked and my skin was glowing, and I had complete control of how it glowed. I could make it brighter or darker, I could make it a rainbow of colors or I could paint portraits on my skin. It was honestly pretty fun, though I think I was standing in the open a bit too much when it happened, it was pretty embarrassing. I¡¯m pretty sure more than one person saw me, but no is going to admit it. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    It was easy enough to remove, much less painful than putting it on. Now I¡¯m pretty sure there is a lot about Glovine I have to learn, I¡¯m much more enthusiastic about it than when I first got some.


    Last but not least I experimented with making Drowsy Clover armor, I turned the effects of it way down just in case. Of all my plants it¡¯s the one i¡¯m most scared of, and the second most potentially useful, after Astrie, though i¡¯m not sure how exactly it will be useful.


    It turned out that I was right to turn the effects way down because as soon as I put it on I started to feel more tired, relaxed, and a couple other minor things. This turned out to be very helpful in identifying exactly which parts of the plant do what, with this knowledge, I should be able to modify a version of it that I can give to Thes without causing negative side effects.


    I think I can somehow combine different aspects of these plants to create a better armor that can serve many purposes, in fact, I think that will be the next major project I take on, after modifying drowsy clover to work for Thes of course.


    One last thing before I go to sleep. I ordered my first new plant with money I got from selling plants in the nearby city, mostly Drowsy clover variants. The plant is a weak medicinal herb used in low-grade healing potions, not that potency really matters to me. It¡¯s really cheap to buy, but they only sell it in bulk so I had to buy a lot of it. Unfortunately getting it here will take some time for a couple reasons, the biggest one is that the plant is very fragile when exposed to powerful magics, like that of a long-range teleport spell, on top of that it is used to very cold areas far to the south of here, so it will take time to move and a good chunk of the plants will be dead by the time I get them, good enough for healing potions, but not for growing them. There should be a couple that are fine though, and that''s all I need. It should be here in a week or two.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 217

    I decided to get the modified Drowsy Clover I needed out of the way today so I can move on to what I actually want to do, work on a new armor. I managed to make good progress, I got the important parts finished today, but I want it to be as perfect as I can make it, just in case. I still have some kinks to work out, but I should be finished tomorrow. Hopefully this will be enough.


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    Talus has started to worry about me, I told her I would be sleeping a lot more as winter approaches, but she never thought it would be this bad. We¡¯re only about halfway through fall too, so I¡¯m sleeping around four and a half hours a day, as opposed to the three I sleep during the summer, though that number can go as low as two at times. I¡¯m dreading winter, especially the start of it. I¡¯ll have practically no time awake to do what I want, and there¡¯s a lot I want to do.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 218

    I managed to finish up perfecting the Drowsy Clover modification before lunch today. Its only effect is to calm down the person that ingests it, regardless of how it is ingested. I even managed to concentrate it to a rather extreme degree, to the point that it started to form crystals of the particular substance on its leaves.


    Of course, that was hardly the most interesting thing that happened today.


    Just after lunch, I felt a very large ball of mana approaching, and so did everyone else with at least a little magical ability. A couple of us gather at the edge of a grove to see what it was, only to watch a ball of light crest a nearby hill. I had no idea what it was, but Mest, Tiddol, and Thes knew instantly, it is An Origin.


    When it got close I could feel some kind of connection too it, and so could Willow. I was reminded of a conversation I had a while back about how creations feel attached to their creators, following my own creation of the Ents. This particular Origin created, or helped create, Sprites and Nymphs. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    It decided to stay in my grove for a while but didn¡¯t explain why. I¡¯m fine with it, what better creature to learn about the intricacies of creation from than one of the first creators. The fact that it reminds me of my parents in a good way helps.


    It talked with verbal language but seemed to struggle with it, like they haven¡¯t quite mastered it. On the other hand, they communicated with me in a manner very similar to how my plants do, only with much more clarity. Don¡¯t get me wrong, it was still very emotional and conceptual, it¡¯s just that those emotions and concepts were much easier to understand. Whether that clarity is from sentience, something all my plants lack, or from experience I don¡¯t know, but I did find myself struggling to make myself understood as clearly.


    The seemed to favor Willow and me above everyone else, which makes sense because they created the first of our respective species. The result of that is the fact that the two of us learned a lot more about their past, which is old even by Origin standards. It was a quiet existence, nothing really in the way of conflict or suffering, except recently as they have had to watch old friends either sacrifice a large part of themselves or die, the only reason they have survived so long is they have had millennia on most Origin to hone their ability to control mana.


    They haven¡¯t yet explained why they are here, but hopefully, they will tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 219

    I found out why the Origin wants to stay here. It¡¯s looking for a place to die. The best word to describe the emotions I got from it is forlorn. Everyone he once knew is dead or completely unrecognizable, and so he wants to die. When I asked him something to the effect of why here the ideas I received from him could be summed up as why not, it''s not like there''s a better place to die.


    I feel sad about this, I never knew them, and I will never know them, but in a very real way, they are responsible for my existence.


    They examined the Ents today. It was a tense moment for me, this is a creature that is a true master of my craft, what would they think of my creations? I was asked something to the effect of ¡®is this your first attempt at creating life?¡¯, when I responded with a yes It praised my talent, saying most Origin never achieved something that well made on their first attempt. We then talked, for lack of a better word, about creating life. It told me about the creation of Sprites and Nymphs, supposedly we were a gift to another Origin, someone they considered to be family. First, the Sprites were made, and then a century or so later it decided to use the experience its gained in that time to make them better, creating the Nymphs. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Other than the story of my species creation we talked about the actual process of creating life. I learned much, but most of it I can¡¯t implement yet due to lack of skill or resources. When I do finally master flesh manipulation I have a lot more I can do with it.


    When I asked about how I could about getting my ability to manipulate flesh to the point that it won¡¯t cause needless harm it responded with something along the lines of ¡®I have no idea¡¯ it seems that comes as naturally to them as plant manipulation does to me, if not more so.


    I hope I can learn much more while it is still alive, however long that may be. I know there is much more for it to teach me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 220

    As the Origin was caught up talking to Willow today I worked on experimenting with armors.


    Something the Origin said the other day gave me the idea to try to specialize my Astrie armor. My reasoning was as follows, if directly weakening the power isn¡¯t an option why don¡¯t I weaken the scope? It worked, it worked much better than I imagined it would in fact. Not only is the baseline power level easy for me to endure, but if I specialize it enough I can even go as far as doubling the power level. Of course, at that point it¡¯s useless for an entirely different reason, being able to do one specific task incredibly well can be useful, but I¡¯m better off with something less specialized. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I know I can use this with flesh manipulation, but that is still too broad to have a large effect. This much still isn¡¯t enough, but it¡¯s a step in the right direction.


    One other noteworthy effect I managed was a combination of Glovine and Singing Grass. I didn¡¯t make an armor out of it but I was able to synchronize lights to the sound. It was interesting but I don¡¯t really see a practical use.


    Nothing else was really noteworthy, but I do feel more confident in my decision to create an armor out of every magical plant I have available.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 221

    Today I talked to the Origin again. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I listened as it spoke. Although spoke isn¡¯t accurate either, but I talked about that earlier.


    I listened as it talked about other Origin it considered to be friends and family, I listened as it talked about other creatures it helped design and create, I listened as it talked about the rise and fall of schools of thought around creation, I even learned the general idea of many of them.


    What was without a doubt the most impressive achievement was the fact that it helped design the Trolls. Although it didn¡¯t technically create them, it did play a pivotal role in figuring out how to make them that magic resistant. Unfortunately, it seems that there is too much ambient mana to replicate the process, so any truly magic immune creature will be a Troll or Troll Variant.


    If you think about it Trolls are actually cousins of mine. Well, I mean I could theoretically evolve into a Troll, both Nymphs and Trolls are monsters after all, but that''s like saying I could evolve into a goblin, possible, but realistically impossible.


    Another thing It told me was that Tiddol was close to evolving. Under normal circumstances she would need several years more, but due to the number of creature around here that have evolved recently it is much easier to do so, and as it belongs to the species that helped create the laws of the world, like the evolution system, i¡¯m pretty sure he¡¯s right. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    See, how it works is for every creature that evolves in a small area the bar for evolving is lowered, with a couple stipulations. When multiple creatures of the same species evolve into the same species it simply resets the duration of the effect, and evolving into a variant of a species that would otherwise follow the previous rule makes your evolution have a much smaller effect. There is also a pretty restrictive range limitation. In the end, the effect is equivalent to 5 and a half evolutions, all making it easier to evolve. There are the goblins evolving into greater goblins and hobgoblins, plus variants, that amounts for two and a half. Then there are the kobolds evolving into greater kobolds, me, and apparently an insect nearby managed to achieve an evolution without anyone of us noticing, possible because of us. Thes was too far away to count.


    The end result is that it will be super easy for Tiddol to evolve in the next little while, she was already relatively close so all she needs to do is a demonstration of her abilities. Technically Par is pretty close as well, though he isn¡¯t as close and he is a warrior, so he would need to hunt something powerful to demonstrate his abilities. That would force him to leave the range of the effect making it pointless. If a decently powerful creature attacks us and Par fights it off on his own in the next little while he will evolve, but that''s not likely. On the other hand, Tiddol¡¯s power lies mostly in preparation for conflict, she just has to prepare something particularly useful or powerful and she will evolve, which would make it easier for Par, but still not enough.


    I¡¯m going to tell her tomorrow, I got too caught up listening to the Origin that she went to sleep before I had a chance to tell her.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 222

    Today I told Tiddol what the Origin told me last night. She got pretty excited and ran off, saying she knew exactly what to do.


    The origin decides to spend the day talking to Willow, so I continued to work on my armor.


    I made a big breakthrough today. I tried to make it so that an Astrie armor only improves my ability to manipulate my armor, and it worked splendidly. With this I think I can successfully integrate every useful plant I have into an armor, now all I need to do is figure out how to make Astrie into a frame for my soon to be new armor.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    It turned out to be more difficult than I would have thought. Creating an actual frame is easy, but that is more or less useless on its own.  What I need to do is combine everything all at once, which requires me to control several very different types of plants at once, that isn¡¯t easy. It¡¯s like trying to make several highly customized armors out of several types of plants, all at once.


    Despite its difficulty, I am feeling rather confident about this project, overall the project is rather simple and I know exactly what I need to do next in order to get it done. Once I manage to successfully make it once it will be easy to recreate it and fine tune it.


    Overall today has been a good day. I can¡¯t wait to see what Tiddol makes in her attempt to evolve.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 223

    The Origin died today. It happened this morning. I was the first to know because a piece of what I can only describe as his soul entered my core, it didn¡¯t really do anything, it just sat there. I had expected the part about a piece of the soul of everything that dies in my territory to be absorbed, along with scraps of memory and knowledge, but it¡¯s supposed to disperse into my core, not sit there, wound up into a ball.


    It wasn¡¯t until I tried to communicate with it in the same way I communicate with plants that something happened. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with knowledge, everything from the creation of certain plants to scraps of history was absorbed. Nothing really concrete, and in the brief moment that I was connected to the ball it shrunk slightly, and unfortunately most of the information absorbed during that time was lost. I¡¯m guessing that I am going to have to meditate on the ball of soul and actively search for the information I want in order to keep it. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The death of my species creator is a sad moment, but he left me a gift, one that I hope to take full advantage of. I hope it is happy in its next life. I¡¯m sad that I''ll never really get to know it, but not as sad as I would be had I actually known it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 224

    Today I got back to work. The death of my progenitor was a tragedy, but it isn¡¯t enough to keep me from pursuing my desires.


    I quickly figured out that using a modified Astrie armor to make it easier to manipulate multiple plants helped a lot, but it isn¡¯t quite enough. It does make it easier to figure out how to manipulate multiple plants at the same time, however. This should make it so I can get to the skill level necessary to create an armor out of all of my magical plants at once take days instead of weeks.


    As for what i¡¯m going to do with soul package hanging out in my core, I have no idea. From my very limited glimpse into it, I got the feeling that I can essentially ask it a question and, assuming the knowledge required to answer is contained in it, I will get an answer. But it has limited uses, and those uses depend on what I ask, some things take more effort to explain than others. As for how I know all that, I¡¯m assuming the origin set it up so that would be the first thing I learned.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    I have no idea what to ask, yeah I could look for information that would help me in the here and now, but would that be for the best? What if there is something I desperately need to know, something that I could have possibly learned, but I can¡¯t because I used it all up?


    When I do finally decide to use it I have to make sure to ask very specific questions, that should help it stretch further.


    Willow also got a gift, a book to be precise. The most immediately obvious thing about it when you hold it is its weight, something should be much bigger to weigh that much. In addition it has more pages than it looks like it should, so I¡¯m assuming some space manipulation magic is at work.


    She ended up reading it for most of the day and didn¡¯t even start to make a dent, but she seems enraptured by whatever it was she¡¯s reading. I want to read it as well, but I will have to wait until Willow is done. Based on how much she got done today it will be around mid-summer of next year before she finishes, assuming she only rarely takes a break and doesn''t start reading faster.


    Other than that not a lot happened, or at least not a lot that I noticed. Tiddol is still working on her major project and only lets Par interrupt her, and even then she isn¡¯t happy about it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 225

    Today I practiced manipulating multiple plants at the same time. I am confident in my ability to combine three plants into one, and based on how quickly i¡¯m improving I should be able to make something using all of my plants in two or three days.


    Here are a couple noteworthy combinations I¡¯ve managed to make so far.


    Combining Astrie and Singing Grass in a particular way lets me throw my voice. What I do is make a cup-like shape out of the singing grass with the base melded into a vine of Astrie. When I hold the other end of the Astrie vine and channel mana into it I can make the singing grass cup make noise. It took some practice but I did figure out how to make it form words, even in voices that aren¡¯t mine.


    When I created that the Female Ent came over, took one look at it, and recreated it. She then proceeded to make a mocking voice of Mest and started to run around with it. Mest was not pleased. That was the first time I can truly say that I¡¯ve been intimidated by someone, I¡¯m naturally gifted at manipulating plants and have roughly sixteen years of experience doing so, on top of that I¡¯ve evolved into a form that''s even more suited to manipulating plants and evey plant in this grove goes out of its way to make manipulating them easier for me, but she managed to figure something out that took me days of practice in less than a second. I¡¯ve created something terrifying.


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    While I¡¯m on this tangent The Ents chose names for each other today, it was surprisingly sweet seeing them pick a name for their sibling. The female chose Kaire, pronounced kai-re, for her brother and the male chose Lulem, pronounced lu-lem, for his sister. Despite their terrifying magical potential, they are still my children and seeing this melts my technically non-existent heart.


    Now that tangent is over back to what I was talking about. Another interesting combination I managed to make involved the crystallized mana berries, Singing Grass, and Glovine. This particular result was discovered by me losing concentration during its production because I heard something that sounded very similar to Mest screaming childish obscenities. I ended up making something that makes a very bright light and a very loud sound when the berry is popped. My ears were ringing for minutes after I popped it between my fingers while trying to figure out what it does. Could be very useful in a fight, easy and quick to make and uses very little mana, but I don¡¯t want to experience that again.


    Those were the only two really noteworthy combinations I managed to make, but I did make several other, less interesting ones.


    Talus gave me a gem today, she said it was a late birthday gift. It wasn¡¯t an ordinary gemstone, it couldn¡¯t be used to store mana. Instead, if I were to overfill it with mana it would break, and temporarily grant me the ability to use some pretty potent fire magic, like burn a tree to ash in seconds kind of potent. I didn¡¯t actually test it as it¡¯s very much single use, but according to Tallus it will use up mana very quickly, and once i¡¯m out the effect will end.


    Apparently, it¡¯s something Talus figured out how to make after eating that dragon, but it takes a lot out of her. If she were to really push herself she could make maybe two of them in a day, and it would leave her mana storage crippled for around a day.


    It is a great gift, one I hope I never use.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 226

    Like yesterday, today was dedicated to practicing plant manipulation. I didn¡¯t really discover any noteworthy combinations, but I did make solid progress.


    Something that was notable was Tiddol running up to me and basically begging me to make several very specific variation to a couple of my plants, mostly Astrie. Apparently, she¡¯s making a potion, or several potions, it wasn¡¯t clear which. I had forgotten that Astrie¡¯s original use was as a minor overall increase in the effect of alchemical solutions, potions. I don¡¯t remember what the exact specifications it was she wanted, but I do know there were a lot of them, and by the end, it almost drained my entire mana pool. I didn¡¯t mind too much though, I¡¯ll do anything in my power to help a friend of mine do something as monumental as evolve. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Tomorrow I should be able to start on the armor, though I almost certainly won¡¯t be able to make a functioning version tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 227

    Today I made my first attempt at making an armor out of all of my plants. It went well, and by well I mean it didn¡¯t fail horribly. I was genuinely concerned that it would explode because of all the different effects I was working with.


    It didn¡¯t really do anything interesting, which is what I was going for. Doing nothing is better than exploding after all. It will take several days of trial and error for me to get an armor that¡¯s usable, and then several more days to perfect it. Overall it will probably be a long boring process.


    Around lunch, I asked Thes about the Drowsy Clover variant I made for him, how it was working, any complaints he had, stuff like that. He said it was exactly what he wanted, it¡¯s only effect was calming him down, but that he is slowly developing a tolerance for it. It should be fine for a while, it¡¯s not like it takes me much time or mana to create regardless of how much he needs, but eventually, I won¡¯t be able to make it more potent and he would have to spend a ridiculous amount of time-consuming the plant in order to get any effect. But for now, we have bought a couple months at least. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I considered asking the soul ball the Origin left me about anything I could use to help with this issue but were not that desperate yet.


    One last thing, I thought of something I might be able to attempt in order to enable myself to store Solar Energy. Maybe I could make a bag lined with mana on the outside and solar energy on the inside, I know that when I have mana and solar energy moving quickly enough the mana can¡¯t destroy the solar energy, so maybe I can use that principle to make a bag. I¡¯ll have to spend all day gathering up solar energy before attempting to make it, and even then it will likely fall apart the moment I stop paying attention to it. I have no doubt that it won¡¯t be an effective long-term solution, but if I can get it to work maybe I can make a long-term solution. Once i¡¯m done with this armor I¡¯ll attempt it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 228

    Today went exactly as I expected it too, with little in the way of interruptions. I continued to work on the armor, though I didn¡¯t make much apparent process I am improving my own skill. I should be able to make a functioning version within the next five days at my current rate of improvement, assuming I don¡¯t figure out a major breakthrough or hit a wall in development.


    One of the very few interruptions was to hang out with Talus, something I haven¡¯t done enough recently. Between increasingly long sleep times and my own passions there isn¡¯t enough time for my girlfriend, I need to fix that.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    We didn¡¯t really do anything special, just hung out together talking about life. She heard that the plant I ordered a while back should be coming in within the next couple days, so that''s interesting.


    She kept me up much later than I probably should have stayed up, I don¡¯t regret it though.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 229

    I made a couple minor breakthroughs today, nothing really big, but it¡¯s something.


    Talus got sick today. It isn¡¯t anything serious, just something that happens every once in a while. She was vomiting and had a bad headache, so I kept her in bed in order to recover.


    I examined her with magic to see if there was anything I could do to help her out, and no there isn¡¯t. What¡¯s making her sick is something that makes me think of a very poorly executed spell, not something I could mess with and not cause issues. I tried healing the symptoms, but that just made the thing causing them stronger. Though it did visibly grow weaker while I was observing it, so she is fighting it off on her own. Still, though, it¡¯s not fun to see her in so much pain and being unable to do anything about it. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Mest examined Talus before saying that she should be fine and that it isn¡¯t contagious. When I asked him what that meant he explained that sometimes when someone gets sick whatever it was that got them sick, be it a misfired spell, sabotage, or just the ambient mana happening to arrange in a particular way, can recreate itself and grow. Those cases almost always end in death for all but the most skilled mages, those with access to the most skilled mages, and the lucky. It¡¯s good then that it is almost never contagious.


    That¡¯s also why Mest knows a thing or two about sickness. Apparently, some of the people at the head of his order are super paranoid about a sickness spreading and killing everything. As his order is one of the few groups with easy access to the right kind of mages to deal with that eventuality everyone was trained to protect themselves from sickness and recognize when one is contagious.


    I hope Talus gets better quickly, hearing about how dangerous sickness can get has made me pretty worried about her. She should be fine, but I can¡¯t help but worry about her.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 230

    Tiddol evolved. Last night she completed her project and fell asleep in order to evolve. Staying conscious during an evolution, like I did, is nearly impossible, I just had ideal circumstances.


    She evolved into a species known as human. Luckily both Talus and Mest have had some interaction with humans in the past, so we know a bit about them. They are a very intelligent species, but relative to other species of equivalent intelligence they are easily one of the weakest. What this means is that they have a very high birth rate and a similarly high death rate. They are frequently described as being the goblins of intelligent species.


    They make up for their shortcomings by developing tools better than every similarly intelligent species on record. They also have a weak generalist bonus to magic, they can use all forms of magic with no more or less difficulty. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    What this means for humans as a whole is that when a society of humans can get going, it is usually very successful, but it is also prone to sudden collapse. It is a very boom and bust species, occasionally even going completely extinct.


    What this means for Tiddol is this, she¡¯s almost twice as tall, she is much more intelligent, she is a little stronger, faster, more durable, and she¡¯s quite a bit better with her hands. She also spent most of the day having alone time with Par, and it¡¯s exactly what it sounds like.


    As for what she made to achieve an evolution, it was an arsenal. It was just a ton of everything she uses in a fight, potions, bombs, poisons, darts, and many other things that I can only guess at.


    Talus is almost completely better, she¡¯s up and moving and only has minor stomach pains today. Those should be gone by tomorrow. She said it was her own fault she got sick, she was trying to cast a spell that was beyond her abilities and it backfired. She got pretty unlucky and as a result, the backfired spell caused her to get sick.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 231

    Only about two weeks till winter, I¡¯m sleeping about four hours a day.


    Talus is completely recovered. For her first meal in a couple days that wasn¡¯t tainted by being sick, she asked me to cook. I did ok with the boar meat I was provided. I made a pretty good roast, but it¡¯s nothing compared to the roasts Thes makes.


    The herb I ordered came in today, the one that is mostly used for healing potions. Well, technically a box as tall as I am stuffed with the things came. Only one in four of them were still alive, but I really only needed one.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    It was exactly what I expected it to be, an herb with minor healing properties. I¡¯m not sure exactly how it works, but that doesn¡¯t really matter as I am able to change that to a limited degree.


    I didn¡¯t really get much of a chance to experiment with it as it came pretty late in the day. I did, however, manage to make a breakthrough on my armor. I figured out a way to integrate an Astrie frame with pretty much anything else, and then change the Astrie so it makes manipulating the whole structure easy. This should make it much easier to progress going forward.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 232

    I spent the first part of the day experimenting with White Foot, the healing herb I got the other day. Supposedly it¡¯s called that because it looks like a white foot, but no, it does not look like that at all. It¡¯s a stupid name and I hate it.


    Anyway, there was nothing really surprising about the herb. At the maximum strength, i was able to make it was just poison, at least to the injured goblins I was experimenting on. They are nowhere near strong enough to endure it. The strongest stuff was able to slowly regenerate limbs and organs, but I would need all I can make in several days to really regenerate a limb. I have pretty good control over how it goes about healing too. I can make it so it either draws on internal mana, ambient mana, or a mixture of both, and I can make it so that it directs the body to heal itself or I can make it so it heals the body directly. Yes, that distinction is important, some creatures can¡¯t heal themselves very well, so using an herb that directs the body to heal itself isn¡¯t going to do much, but directly healing will. The opposite is also true, some creatures, notably trolls, aren¡¯t going to be affected by the kind of magic that directly impacts their bodies, while something that instead boosts their healing rate might actually have an effect. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    For the last part of the day, I spent it working on my armor. Nothing really noteworthy happened with it but I should have a functional version of it by tomorrow. After that I¡¯ll spend some time working the kinks out, I want it to be as perfect as I can make it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 233

    I got a functional version of my new armor done today. Putting it on feels exhilarating, I feel certain power suddenly at my fingertips. I¡¯m attributing that mostly to the Astrie frame.


    As I have said before the frame is made of Astrie, designed to assist me in manipulating my armor to a rather extreme degree. Because of how specialized I am able to make the Astrie, to the point that it wouldn¡¯t work with any other armor than the one I made it for, I am able to control the armor several orders of magnitude better than without it. Unfortunately, I have noticed an interference with all of my other magics when I have it on, nothing works quite as well, with the closer it is to the function of Astrie the less it is effected. So while my ability to throw fire is drastically reduced, my ability to manipulate plants is hardly affected. I can likely decrease this effect while I refine the final product, but not remove it.


    When I asked Mest about the phenomena he gave me an ¡®I don¡¯t know¡¯ look before saying ¡®You¡¯re probably going to have to figure that one out on your own.¡¯


    For the other plants, I can pretty much do anything I could normally do with them, only much better. Of course, I have to do a rather roundabout method to get anything that isn¡¯t directly manipulating the armor done, but it¡¯s worth the effort. I would never be able to make an Ent like this, but if I were to do that again I would use a pure Astrie armor.


    There are a couple particularly interesting things i can do with certain parts of my armor. For example using a combination of basic plant manipulation and Glovine I can make my armor look like pretty much anything, as long as it isn¡¯t too large, I can even make the entire armor look like it isn¡¯t there if i want too. Of course the Glovine constantly takes mana to glow like that, a little more than what i get from the armor, so i can¡¯t use that all the time. Also using Glovine I can change the color of my skin or even make myself invisible almost instantly, with a bit more effort i can even paint my skin. All of this take constant effort, so i can¡¯t keep it up forever even if my mana production is high enough.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    With singing grass i can do things like throw my voice, using the method i figured out before. If i add Glovine i can even make the vine invisible. I can also create any sound i can think of, creating a symphony is now only a matter of imagination. I can even use it to speak for me, better than i can normally speak even. Obviously i have more control there, but it is also very slightly faster than speaking normally. I used this to give my voice a cool echoey quality. That plus making my eyes go completely white allowed me to get a pretty good reaction out of Talus, she was terrified for a moment before getting angry, it was adorable.


    With the White Foot herb, I am able to use it to directly supplement my healing. A combination of healing magic and plant manipulation allows me to heal pretty much any injury I can think of, short of death of course, given enough time. The White Foot, empowered by both my plant manipulation and the Astrie¡¯s over specialization more than makes up for the drawbacks of the Astrie¡¯s over specialization when it comes to healing. I am considering making an armor out of just White Foot and Astrie for emergencies.


    Using Drowsy Clover I am able to do exactly what I expected, nothing particularly new or interesting. I am able to make it affect me exactly how I want it too, which is not at all. I guess this makes it easier to manufacture the stuff Thes needs, but that is hardly surprising.


    Dead Tulip was the same, it just allowed me to make myself or another fall asleep almost instantly. Well except Tiddol, she took a little bit, apparently, she¡¯s been building up a resistance too it partially by accident, partially intentionally.


    I looked over a list of other plants I might be able to get with the amount of money I have from selling plants, primarily Drowsy Clover variants, in the nearby city. In short, I don¡¯t have enough for anything interesting. Everything is either similar enough to something I already have, like a slightly higher grade healing herb, not something i¡¯m interested in, who would want a fire-spitting flower? Or flower that made you spit fire, wasn¡¯t too clear on which, or way out of my price range, I would love a plant that can teleport people, but that one would take years of saving up at my current rate. I guess I¡¯ll have to wait a while longer before I can get something.


    Over the next few days i¡¯m going to perfect my armor and once i¡¯m satisfied I¡¯m going to attempt to make a bag able to store Solar energy, I hope it goes well.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 234

    I spent today perfecting my armor. I¡¯m making it work slightly better in every way, more efficient, more responsive, more comfortable, etc. I should get to a point that I¡¯m satisfied in around four days, then I can move on to something more exciting.


    Mest has started to get preliminary reports about Ents in dungeons, particularly the lower floors of dungeons, which apparently are the harder floors. There isn¡¯t much information in these reports, as they are all pretty new, but there are still some interesting bits. For example, a dragon was replaced with an Ent as a mid-boss on one of the lower floors of a particularly old dungeon and is even more challenging than the dragon was. There¡¯s more than one report about new floors entirely dedicated to plants, something completely unheard of before, with Ents as the main defenders. I had to have most of what that meant explained to me by some of our resident divers as I know next to nothing about what a fully realized dungeon is actually like. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Mest was really excited about these reports for a couple reasons that he explained to me. The first was that all of them were specifically for him, not passed around and eventually winding up with him. This means that he is being considered to be one of the foremost experts on dungeons now, something that has been a dream of his for a long time. The second is the fact that these changes are causing a buzz in his order, this is getting people excited, and that means that people that study dungeons, particularly those that are considered to be the top of their field, and likely to receive a rather large funding boost. Something that rarely happens for dungeon experts as they can supplement their income with dives better than most others. Again, I had to have most of this explained to me, something Mest was all too willing to do.


    When he returned to reviewing the reports he left me with the somewhat cryptic line ¡®I¡¯ll buy you some flowers as thanks for this gift¡¯. I hope it means what I think it does.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 235

    I made more progress perfecting my armor, but nothing really noteworthy. This isn¡¯t really the type of thing that would benefit from a sudden inspiration, it is almost entirely brute force grunt work, a thousand minor things and nothing major. The only way for me to go faster without spending more time on it is to get better at fixing those minor issues, something I am already pretty good at.


    I have started to feel a very slight increase in my mana production lately, which is odd because this time of year plants start to produce less mana. I knew this was going to happen because the scholar that Mest invited, I can¡¯t remember his name but he was the one that studied developing dungeons, told me about what to expect. Apparently, I am just now starting to absorb wasted mana. It is very similar to the wasted soul energy that helped me recover from creating the Ents. specifically what happens is this; when someone¡¯s mana pool is full they don¡¯t stop absorbing ambient mana, instead, it overflows and becomes ambient mana again. I somehow absorb that wasted mana significantly better than ambient mana. On top of that, any spell cast by all but the best mages has at least some wasted mana, and again I can absorb a portion of that.


    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    How much of it I can absorb will increase as my core matures and grows in strength, my core is actually rather immature to be absorbing wasted mana but because of it¡¯s abnormal strength comparatively I can do just a tiny amount.


    As for what my own wasted mana does, that depends on how it¡¯s wasted. Any waste from a spell I cast will be absorbed in the same manner as everything else. But if my mana pool overflows then that waste will go towards strengthening my core.


    Too bad I never have a full mana pool. With the additions of so many gemstones, including my core functioning as one, and a rather sizable decrease in mana production lately as a result of the season my mana pool is never full. Not that it really matters to me, my core is already well above average and making it just a little stronger isn¡¯t that interesting to me.


    It is nice to know that my spells are becoming more efficient regardless of what I do.


    Oh yeah, the reports about Ents in dungeons are continuing to stream in, though nothing really noteworthy yet. It feels weird having a creation of mine become such a big deal, though i¡¯m not sure if that''s more from the dungeons or the scholars researching them. It is a point of pride that my work is being acknowledged by some of the most powerful creatures alive, origin can¡¯t compete because they lack the numbers they use to have.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 236/237

    Day 236


    Tomorrow I should be done with my armor. I¡¯ve already made it more efficient in a couple ways by half, I wonder how much I¡¯ll be able to do by the end.


    Overall today was pretty boring, nothing disturbed me from my work other than my own mental exhaustion. Not exactly mana intensive work, but it is mind-numbing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary


    Day 237Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I finally finished the armor, any other changes I could make for it would take days to fully implement and the effect would be negligible at best.


    Tomorrow I am going to get up before dawn to get ready to try and make a magical bag to hold Solar Energy. I¡¯m going to need to set up an area so I won¡¯t be interrupted or spied on, I don¡¯t exactly want everyone seeing me naked, only Talus gets to see that.


    I¡¯m getting really excited and nervous, I have no idea if I¡¯ll be able to pull it off on the first attempt but I hope I will. I can¡¯t lose concentration for a moment or the entire day will go to waste, that definitely would not be a good thing. Luckily being in a meditative trance makes that part pretty easy.


    Ok, I need to stop thinking about this so I can sleep. Maybe I can convince Talus to help me take my mind off of it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 238

    I didn¡¯t think this through properly.


    Everything went fine for the most part. I got prepared and managed to gather up as much Solar energy as I possibly could during the day. I got up before the sun, made a small clearing and created a comfortable place to lay down and everything went well.


    Until I actually had to use the stuff. I forgot that I know next to nothing about manipulating mana outside of myself, healing and plant manipulation is closer to creating an extension of myself that I then manipulate while I actually form the spell for everything else inside myself. On top of all that both Sprites and Nymphs are horrible at what Mets calls external mana manipulation. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I can¡¯t make it in my body, that sounds like a great way to blow myself up. I¡¯m going to need to train, a lot. Not general external mana manipulation, that would take years for me to get anywhere, no, I need to focus my efforts on doing exactly what i¡¯m trying to with solar energy.


    From what little I know about Solar Energy it does handle pretty similarly to mana, so what I learn about manipulating mana should transfer over to Solar Energy.


    Now, I am exhausted. I want to write more but at the same time, I really don¡¯t want to do anything more than sleep. I¡¯ll see if I can get Mest to teach me something tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 239

    Today I slept in till lunchtime, to the surprise of no one. When I did wake up I asked Mest to help me out with my problem.


    While Mest was more than happy to teach me how to manipulate ambient mana, I was not a very good student. Even attempting it gives me a headache. By the end of the day, the only progress I had made was a steadily worsening migraine. That''s not entirely true, I did improve very slightly, so slightly that I didn¡¯t even notice. At least that¡¯s what Mest was telling me, and he hasn¡¯t lied to me yet. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I am genuinely considering asking the piece of soul the Origin left me with for a solution to the problem at hand, but i¡¯m conflicted.


    You know what, if I don¡¯t make noticeable progress in the next ten days, and I can¡¯t think of a different solution, then i¡¯m going to ask. It has to know something, after all, it was one of the ones that helped make plants, which were explicitly designed to make mana out of Solar Energy so it should know something.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 240

    I have made no noticeable progress since I started, Mest says that I have improved since yesterday but I don¡¯t see it.


    Today Tiddol asked me to examine her and see if she needed healing. Supposedly she¡¯s been feeling off in the last couple days. It was almost immediately obvious what was going on, I had seen it a couple times before when healing members of Par¡¯s tribe. Tiddol is pregnant.


    It is too early to tell whether the child is Human or Hobgoblin, but we do know that the child will be one or the other. The chance of them becoming something completely different is almost zero, or at least that¡¯s what Mest said.


    No one was expecting it, but in hindsight, there was almost no chance it wasn¡¯t going to happen. Tiddol went from a species with a rather low fertility rate to one with a rather high fertility rate, and Hobgoblins are rather virile. Both the goblin line of creatures and Humans are able to breed with pretty much any other species, a rarity for creatures that aren¡¯t able to achieve immortality through brute force. Most can breed with species very close to them on their evolutionary tree, but almost none can breed with creatures of an entirely different evolutionary tree, it just so happens that both Hobgoblins and Humans are among those numbers. I know that thanks to the book written by an Origin I read a while back.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Overall i¡¯m pretty excited. It will be the first child born here that wasn¡¯t born in an easily educated state. It was easy to teach Willow and the Ents language, it won¡¯t be so easy to do that with this child. On top of that Tiddol seems happy, and I¡¯m happy for her.


    I was looking back over some of my earlier entries because this new child was making me reflective. I have come a long way since I started building this grove, I have found a new family and I am able to pursue my passions with little stopping me. Oh yeah, and I guess a fluffy beast really did end up moving in with me, I just never expected her to end up as my girlfriend.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 241

    Today I realized that I am an idiot. At the rate i¡¯m progressing with external mana manipulation it will take years before I can make a mana bag to store Solar Energy, but that doesn¡¯t mean someone else can¡¯t do it. While Mest is the uncontested number one when it comes to magic around here, at least for a little while as I think the Ents are catching up, he wouldn¡¯t be a good fit there because of how difficult it would be to communicate. So who better than the Progenitor or the Cognacit of Ents? Yes, i did learn those words today, no I was not waiting all day for a chance to use them, you¡¯re delusional.


    In all seriousness though, they will be perfect for this task. I can communicate with them with thoughts instead of words, and speaking is pretty difficult when i¡¯m trying to manipulate Solar Energy, plus I¡¯m not skilled enough at language to properly convey what i¡¯m trying to make in the heat of the moment. On top of that, they are the most naturally gifted mages Mest has ever seen, I would say that about me, but that doesn¡¯t really mean much because I haven¡¯t met many mages.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Also, Par¡¯s tribe is less of a tribe now and more of a large village, or at least that¡¯s what Tiddol said, I still have not seen a city of any size in my life, except Par¡¯s of course.


    Since I had most of the day to myself I decided to perfect a version of my armor that is solely for healing, and it feels really weird to use. It give me a rush just to wear it, while at the same time I feel a mixture of supreme confidence and abnormal frailty, and I am indeed frailer while wearing it, not that it matters because any injury is healed in a blink of an eye. I guess it is so specialized that the armor is somehow interfering with the spells making up my body.


    This gives me an idea, could something similar made of Astrie designed to heighten the spells that make up my body boost my physical abilities? If I focus on one ability, like dexterity or durability how much more would it affect it. My healing armor is made out of White Foot and Astrie. would only using Astrie make the effect more pronounced? If so by how much? Too bad I don¡¯t have any more time for experimentation today.


    I¡¯m going to check in early today, I need to get up early for another attempt at long-term Solar Energy storage.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 242

    After gathering Solar Energy all day I started to direct Lulem on what I wanted to be made. Manipulating Solar Energy outside of my body was much easier than doing the same with mana, I¡¯m blaming that on my variant evolution. Unfortunately, even with making the bag as small as we could keep it stable I barely had any excess, which makes sense because this is easily the worst time of year to be doing this. Luckily I was prepared enough to be able to quickly create a Solar Energy battery out of Astrie that I had prepped. To prepare it I basically stripped it of everything except a slightly altered version of its core function, mostly to remove any mana that I could.


    Solar Energy is a lot more different from mana than I was expecting, the only reason I was able to succeed at this on any level was my vast knowledge of plants and Astrie in particular. Even then the amount of energy able to be stored in it is a hundredth of the amount that was used to make it, and about a tenth of the efficiency, I could reasonably get with just a day¡¯s worth of practice. Unfortunately, I have a shortage of resources, not time. Stolen novel; please report.


    All of that effort just to get a small, green piece of wood about a fourth the size of my pinky nail and just as thin. The good news is it should fill up on its own while it is exposed to sunlight. The bad news is that I have no idea how fast it will fill up, and the worse news is I don¡¯t think the amount I can store in there is enough to do anything with. I¡¯ll have to do this a couple more times in order to get anywhere, but first, I should wait for the tiny bit of Astrie to fill up.


    It won¡¯t be tomorrow regardless of what happens, I¡¯m going to sleep in.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 243

    Let¡¯s start with the most interesting part. The small Solar Energy battery managed to fill itself completely before the sunset, which was honestly pretty slow. It did seem to start to lose Solar Energy after it set, though not very fast.


    I mostly just relaxed today. I hung out with everyone and even took a nap at around five.


    I figured out what happened to the slavers that Par kept as slaves. The ones with useful abilities and talents were given a chance to earn their own limited freedom through those abilities, instead of being a slave they would be what Par called a second-class citizen, basically the bottom of the social hierarchy while being better treated than a slave. Plus they get the ability to become a normal citizen with hard work. The ones without useful talents were used for manual labor, doomed to be a slave till they die. Only around a quarter of them had any talents beyond basic combat, some were somewhat skilled mages, there was at least one mason, and there were a couple that managed to impress Par through sheer martial ability, along with several other talents.


    The children of the ex-slaves will be given the same rights as any other member of society, while children of slaves will be given similar treatment as the slaves if they can demonstrate an ability to assist the community beyond basic combat or manual labor they will be considered full members of society. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Par also said that he treats prisoners of war similarly if they were the offenders they will start as slaves and have to work their way up, if they were the defenders they start as second-class citizens.


    Apparently, Par has in fact gone to war on several occasions without anyone really realizing it. I guess he never needed any assistance. He¡¯s raided several more primitive villages and has been raided a couple times in turn, how I never noticed that I have no idea.


    Also, Par¡¯s tribe has grown big enough to be considered a village now. Too bad almost all of it is outside my Grove so I can¡¯t explore it. I¡¯ll have to fix that come spring.


    The whole reason I bring this up is because I met a member of Par¡¯s village that wasn¡¯t in the goblin line, the kobold line, or one of the slavers. Apparently, there is some severe social stigma against second-class citizens visiting me, and it is very frowned upon to bring your slave to visit me. A couple creatures are just now getting out of second-class citizen status, though not many, and as such, it is now socially acceptable for them to visit me. Why they are making such a big deal about it I have no idea, yeah I¡¯ve healed several of them from near-fatal injuries in the past but that shouldn¡¯t be enough to warrant that. Overall it¡¯s a good thing, they seem to police themselves about bothering me, though i¡¯m not sure how exactly.


    This just makes me excited for spring, I¡¯m going to grow my Grove in order to engulf the Village just so I can explore it.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 244

    I decided to gather Solar Energy again today, this time with Kaire assisting me.


    Almost Immediately after I started I took the Solar Energy that I had stored in the Modified Astrie and added it to my own minuscule supply. This made it easier starting off to gather larger amounts of Solar Energy because the more I already have the easier it is to gather more.


    The end result was about a tenth more total Solar Energy, or about three times as much Solar energy left over after making a bag. If I repeat this process one more time I should be able to regularly have access to a usable amount of Solar Energy every day. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    When I went to expand my existing Solar Energy battery I noticed something odd, it had started to die. The total energy capacity of it when I made it compared to now had it down by a fourth, but I used a small amount of Solar energy to rejuvenate it before expanding it. This means that the end result was a storage space of just under four times what I had before.


    The problem is I have no idea why it¡¯s dying. I can¡¯t exactly examine it because I will probably break something if I use mana and I don¡¯t exactly have much Solar Energy at my disposal, I guess this is just something I¡¯ll have to look into once I am able to actually use Solar Energy.


    The battery is now the size of my pinky nail, and still just as thin. It still won¡¯t hold a usable amount of Solar Energy but it will in a couple days.


    Now I am exhausted, it is time for sleep.


    Good Night Diary.

 Day 245

    I woke up to see a beautiful sleeping face beside mine. I just laid in bed wrapped in Taluses arms for a while. I was in no rush, there was nothing I needed to accomplish today. With how cold it¡¯s getting I really appreciated her fiery body, in more ways than one. When she finally woke up we had a short, sweet kissing session before her stomachs cry for attention forced us to get up. By this time it was close to lunchtime so I made us something to eat.


    Talus took a break from practicing to hang out with me. We talked about many things, though it didn¡¯t really get heavy or serious. At one point we played board games, and Tiddol joined us. Tiddol has just barely started to show her pregnancy, and after a quick examination, it seems that the child is actually two children, a Human and a Hobgoblin, though I still have no idea what their sexes will be. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    When I told the expecting parents they practically beamed.


    Another thing. I overheard talk from some of Par¡¯s people about an attempt to lure a powerful creature into his village so that Par can kill it and hopefully evolve, seems he¡¯s making an effort to evolve after all. I wonder how he¡¯s going about luring a powerful enough creature?


    Overall I had a lot of fun today, and tomorrow is definitely going to be exciting.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 246

    I got started gathering Solar Energy before the sun came up by first gathering up all the energy in the batteries to prepare for the sun rising. At the end of the day I ended up making double what I made the last time I tried, I¡¯m getting better at both gathering Solar Energy and at using it, though not very fast. If I had unlimited access to Solar Energy just for training I could have easily made that four times over and still had some Solar Energy left over with what I gathered today.


    Starting tomorrow I will be able to grow Solar Energy Batteries more passively, as I will now have enough storage space to actually use what I can store. The next thing I need to figure out is how to keep it from dying off. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Par¡¯s people recently found a plant with very wide leaves and transplanted one of them into my grove. It happened to be a young tree and the sheer amount of effort it must have taken is incredible. It took me awhile to figure out why I asked Par to keep on the lookout for such a plant before realizing that I needed to help gather Solar Energy.


    I think the amount of Solar Energy I have available in storage space would be barely enough to make one of those leaves gather Solar Energy, but I have a feeling it would rot away very quickly without constant attention. This should make it so I can gather much more when gathering actively, but it will take more effort. If I can get to the point where I can use a couple leaves it will have the bonus effect of no longer needing me to be naked, which will be great because it¡¯s getting cold.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 247

    I talked with Willow today. She¡¯s gotten over her fears. She doesn¡¯t freeze up and she doesn¡¯t have sudden panic attacks anymore. She has fully adapted to this life.


    She has also gotten much better at controlling lighting, which is one of the two things she¡¯s been focusing on. When she saw how I was able to mimic voices with my plants she decided to try and replicate it with lighting. It was honestly pretty impressive, she managed to make a static version of my voice with just some lightning flowing between her fingers.


    The other thing she¡¯s been focusing on is reading the book our Origin left for her. It¡¯s a big book, and she¡¯s managed to put some of the knowledge she¡¯s gained from it to practical use. Apparently, she learned something about sound having to do with the way air moves and applied that to her lightning.


    She¡¯s planning on going on the next dungeon dive as a full member of the team, either that or forming her own team with Par and the Ents. From what she said the four of them would make a pretty good team if a bit overspecialized in offensive magic. Willow can do more damage in a single spell than any other mage I know, though she lacks the versatility and endurance of Mest and the Ents, and she lacks the experience of Mest. The Ents are incredibly talented Mages with deep mana pools and a lot of versatility, from the way Willow was explaining it they make for great support mages with their healing and crowd control. While Par makes for a good dexterity tank, a term she learned from Tiddol which basically means someone that gets everything to attack him and survives by not getting hit. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    It¡¯s nice seeing the young sprite come into her own. And it¡¯s adorable to hear her talk about Tiddol and Mest as mama and papa respectively.


    Another thing that happened today is a Greater Kobold evolved. It was born a Greater Kobold and had lived all its life with Par¡¯s village, which makes it really impressive as it is way too young for an evolution under normal circumstances, but I guess all the evolutions around here recently really helped it out. The Greater Kobold evolved into a Dragonewt Saint, with Saint apparently being a variant on the base of Dragonewt.


    The reason he evolved was because he managed to heal another Greater Kobold to perfect health from near death. From what I heard the Greater Kobold had multiple missing limbs, basically liquified internal organs, and many other injuries I won¡¯t mention. The reason the injured creature wasn¡¯t brought to me was due in part because he couldn¡¯t be moved without risking death, though whether or not they were a second class citizen was rather vague.


    The young Dragonewt Saint was brought to me in mid-afternoon and I managed to talk to them for a while. Apparently, the one he saved was someone he is hoping to make his mate. I asked him to demonstrate his healing abilities and to my surprise he is half as powerful at healing as I am when I am wearing my White Foot armor, an impressive feat for a draconic, which aren¡¯t known for their magical ability.


    As a gift to the young healer I asked Par to do two things, the first was have one of his Village make a copy of the book on healing I own and gift the copy to him, the second was to make his potential lover a full citizen regardless of her current social status. The young Dragonewt was almost crying after that one, apparently, she was a slave from a tribe that tried to attack a hunting party, it obviously didn¡¯t end well.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 248

    Just before dawn, I spent all the gathered Solar Energy to both modify one of those leaves and to connect it to my body. In the end, I had barely any leftover but I managed to increase the surface area i¡¯m absorbing Solar Energy from three times. If I had more Solar Energy I could probably make the leaves much bigger.


    In the end, I gathered several times what I have managed to gather in the past. I managed to make a Battery roughly half the size of my fist with a Leaf growing out of it, it should gather Solar Energy much faster now, and be able to store several times what it was able to before. I¡¯ll finally be able to start experimenting with Solar Energy Tomorrow. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    If I weren''t so tired I would be ecstatic, if I weren''t so excited I would be asleep by now.


    Also, today¡¯s sun was a little odd. I had never seen a green sun before, a green moon yes, but not a green sun. usually, they are orange or reddish, though I have seen a blue one a couple times.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 249

    The Solar Energy Battery fully recharges roughly every hour, and considering the fact that recently I¡¯ve been awake around four and a half hours a day I am able to use it four times.


    The first time I used it to do a rough examination of the whole structure. It is almost identical to normal Astrie and the normal version of whatever that big leafed plant is called. There was only a small difference, which I¡¯m assuming is what¡¯s allowing it to actually gather and store Solar Energy. This means that the plant is still trying to survive off of mana, which it doesn¡¯t have access too, which is why it is slowly dying.


    The second times was practice for the third time.


    The third time was an attempt to make the whole system run off of Solar Energy, instead of trying to run off of mana. It worked, but it was rather crude. I know for a fact i can do a better job with more resources and practice, but for now it''ll have to tolerate hundreds of inefficiencies all of which decreasing both storage and production. If i want to fix it i need to get access to more Solar Energy, but this one is probably damaged beyond repair, i can likely improve it but if i want peak efficiency i will need to make a new one. Also it should grow on it¡¯s own now, using the excess production that it can¡¯t store, though actively growing it will be much more efficient. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    For the final use of the battery, I decided to focus on making both the leaf and the battery bigger. I had enough of an impact that it counteracted the decreased storage space and production, but not much more than that. So overall I get more as I don¡¯t have to put Solar Energy into maintenance.


    This feels really nostalgic of when I first learning magic. My mother was teaching me and I was always ready to do more, but I never had enough mana. That slowly changed as I grew older and my mana pool grew more developed. I miss my parents, I hope their souls are together somewhere. but I doubt it, the chance of them reincarnating together is almost zero, but one can hope.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 250

    I spent all of the Solar Energy I gathered today fixing flaws in my battery. By the end of the day I managed to remove a decent amount of flaws, but I hardly put a dent in the overall number. The overall effect was an increase in both storage and production by about a tenth. What I want to do is get this one as perfected as I can before trying to make another one using what I¡¯ve learned from this one.


    As using solar energy took very little time I had plenty of time to experiment with armors. In particular, I am experimenting with pure Astrie armors.


    The first one I made was specialized to boost myself, and by that I mean the spells that make up my body. The effect was exactly what I expected, I got stronger, faster, more durable, smarter, and many other things. The smarter part would be useful in magic, if it weren''t for the fact that an armor dedicated to magic would be much more effective. Really this version isn¡¯t all that useful.


    Then I decided to see exactly how specific I could make it, location wise. Doing the upper half of my body was fine, doing a single arm was still fine, I started to have problems when I was only boosting my forearm, and only one hand is my limit. Anything beyond that I am afraid I will die. What ends up happening is that part of my body becomes better in every way, while everything else becomes worse, the smaller the area i¡¯m boosting the bigger the effect. This means that I become significantly less durable when I am boosting a small area like my hand. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Next, I decided to see about boosting different aspects of my body, and if it weren¡¯t for the fact that intention and desire are a large part of magic I might have killed myself with this one. Ultimately everything turned out exactly how I thought it would, the more exactly I boost one part or aspect of my body the more effective it is and the bigger the drawbacks, though I did come across some interesting combinations.


    For example, if I increase mass exclusively not only do I sink into the ground halfway up my shins, but it also becomes incredibly difficult to do anything more the superficial damage to me. It¡¯s really easy to break my skin at that point, because of the decreased durability, but getting much deeper is a challenge.


    Exclusively boosting intelligence gives me a migraine so bad all I can think about is removing my armor. Though boosting both magic and intelligence at the same time works out for at least a little while, I might be able to use this to learn magic easier, though i¡¯m not sure exactly how intelligence will help with that. For now though it is really uncomfortable so I¡¯ll stick to what I¡¯ve been using.


    I tried using it to keep myself awake, but that was a mistake. It did work, but removing it caused all the drowsiness I had avoided by wearing it to come back all at once.


    Other than that I hung out with Tiddol, who has started to show visual signs of pregnancy. While I was hanging out with her I noticed the Ents doing something to the twins with magic. It seemed to be beneficial, and I could tell that they didn¡¯t want to be found out for some reason so I didn¡¯t bring it up. Besides, whatever they are doing is making the children much more, pleasant, for lack of a better word, I don¡¯t really know how to describe it. For now though it isn¡¯t doing anything bad, and even seems to be making Tiddol, and by extension the twins, healthier.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 251

    Because of how inexperienced I am with Solar Energy I messed the battery up some more as I was refining it. It didn¡¯t damage its ability but rather its potential. This is fine, it is a learning experience and one I will be able to make use of soon. After refining it a bit more tomorrow I believe it will be at its limit, from there I will make a new one.


    Something interesting happened with the Dragonewt Saint from before, or rather something interesting happened with his mate. She evolved into a variant Dragonewt, this one with an emphasis on plants. She has a similar ability to the one Whisperer has, but it isn¡¯t exactly the same. I¡¯m not sure exactly how it is different but the plants seem to like her a lot more than they liked Whisperer at first. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    I met with her and she was a surprisingly good conversationalist. We didn¡¯t really talk about anything meaningful but it was fun nonetheless.


    For the rest of the day I mostly spent it cuddled up with Talus, it¡¯s starting to get really cold. The last of the leaves on the trees are going to fall any day now I can practically feel the first snow of the year coming, I am not looking forward to it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 252

    After refining the Battery today I was able to double the output and storage space, at least when compared to the starting point. Tomorrow i¡¯m going to make a new one, this time i¡¯m going to be very slow and deliberate, so I don¡¯t mess anything up.


    I heard from Mest that he will be getting a major report within the next week about Ents, I¡¯m looking forward to it. It should contain a detailed examination of the capability of Ents, at least as far as dungeons are concerned.


    Mest was also excited about something else, money. As one of the leading experts in the study of dungeons he has been given a rather large grant from his order, as such all his expenses are paid. He no longer needs to go diving for money, he can instead focus his efforts on diving for information. Though he has said that doing so is mostly unnecessary at this point, he already has a great specimen to study in me. He still is taking data on my development, or rather the development of my core.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    When I asked if there was anything different about my core than others he said that there were two differences. The biggest is size, which I already knew. The second one was how mature it was for its age, it hasn¡¯t pulled ahead by a lot, but it is certainly noticeable. When he was explaining why he believed that was he said it was most likely due to trauma, which causes dungeon cores to mature faster. This can be either emotional, physical, or magical trauma, though for me it is most likely magical.


    Other than that I ended up discussing magic with Mest for most of the day. In particular, we were discussing the possibilities that Solar Energy might have, apparently he had recalled reading a report about this magical energy from the sun but forgot most the contents of it. What he did remember was that it was more potent than mana, not because it was inherently more potent than mana but because it is always destroyed and turned into mana when you cast a spell with it because of the sheer amount of ambient mana. Somehow that destruction makes anything done with Solar Energy more exaggerated.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 253

    The new battery turned out exactly how I thought it would. In the end, it was a fourth the size of the first one and was half as good. I could have probably made it much bigger with a lot more storage space and production, but I decided to put all my effort into making it as perfect as I could. I think i¡¯m going to spend about a week working on it before moving on.


    I thought of something today. What if I ask the ball of soul in my core exactly how best to use it? I figure the knowledge I gain from that should allow me to make greater use of it, making up for what I used up in order to ask.


    So I did, and it had the added effect of letting me know exactly how many times I can use it again. With an almost perfect efficiency, I should be able to ask ten specific questions, in total so nine now. Had I not asked it would have been closer to five or six total. I also know that using it will permanently strengthen my soul, as the energy that is used up has to go somewhere, might as well be the initial destination. On top of all that I learned how to gather knowledge from other creatures that die in my territory, but I am far from being able to make use of that, my core isn¡¯t nearly mature enough to get anything beyond a very vague idea. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Other than that I mostly slept or hung out with Talus. She wanted to show off her progress with healing magic, and she¡¯s actually gotten pretty good. She could probably heal her own missing limb over a month or so, though healing someone else¡¯s is beyond her still. Still, that''s more than what she wanted it for so i¡¯m proud of her. After some praise, I offered to give her a couple pointers, which she accepted. I¡¯m happy to know that she¡¯s gotten past the really difficult part of learning healing magic, now she has a grasp of the intricacies she should steadily get better and better, though it is doubtful that she will ever surpass me, outside of extreme circumstances like my own death or attracting the attention of a master healer to teach her, it will be more than enough to save her life.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary

 Day 254

    I am going to grow the second battery for the next five or six days before experimenting with it. By that time I should have plenty of energy to do things other than build a battery. I say this today because I tried to do a couple things with solar energy. If I had used the same amount of mana it would have been easy, but I wasn¡¯t able to do anything with Solar Energy. It seems Solar Energy is much less efficient than mana, or at least I¡¯m not very good at using it.


    Other than that I continued to experiment with pure Astrie armors, and I found a couple interesting effects.


    For example, I managed to isolate a couple parts of my body that are responsible for magic, not all magic but some of it. Almost all of those parts had to do with manipulating mana inside my body, which really isn¡¯t all that useful to me. The only thing I can think of doing with that is directly alter myself, but that¡¯s basically suicide if I mess it up. Still, it¡¯s good to know.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I also figured out most of the parts that relate to strength, figuring out many more would require either a lot of time and luck, or put me uncomfortably close to death by way of weakening everything else to the point that my own strength might break me in half.


    I¡¯m basically just dissecting myself in a very indirect and inefficient way. There is no way I¡¯d be able to replicate anything even close to myself. That would require me being able to manipulate mana externally and become a master illusionist, on top of other disciplines I¡¯ve never heard of. But this information will be incredibly useful nonetheless.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 255

    Nothing new to report about the Solar Energy battery, it is growing exactly as I expected.


    Willow, the Ents, and a Hobgoblin Par recommended are going to check out a recently discovered dungeon about a day away from here. The Hobgoblin was apparently trained by Par, and though he isn¡¯t as strong as Par he is much more durable. Par didn¡¯t go because he wanted to stay with the soon to be the mother of his children. Everything should be fine, Mest is going with them as both a fail-safe and to take some notes on the recently discovered dungeon, so even if everything goes wrong no one will die. We have enough competent healers here that even if only half of them returns we can still save them, as long as they are alive of course. On top of that, the Ents could probably regenerate themselves from much less than that.


    I was talking to Tiddol today, our usual banter, when I noticed something odd. Her mana would periodically drain rapidly, before refilling and draining again. All that mana went to the two children and every time it happened it seemed to make Tiddol very uncomfortable, if not downright painful. So naturally, I offered her my help with that. I have both a much higher mana pool and a much higher mana regeneration than her, so it shouldn¡¯t be too much of a burden.


    After she said that she would accept any help I could give I got to work figuring out exactly how I would give my mana to her. It was more difficult than it seems, I can¡¯t exactly direct it to flow into her body, and even skin to skin contact doesn¡¯t work, the mana just spills out into the ambient mana. Eventually, I did manage to figure it out, why don¡¯t I use Astrie? I can modify it to move mana from a gemstone to me and vise versa, so why not from me to her?


    As it was already something I pretty much knew how to do I succeeded on the first try, much to the obvious relief of Tiddol. There were two problems, however, the first being the sheer amount of mana I could give her, it wasn¡¯t much, the second was the fact that holding hands all the time is awkward. After some brainstorming and trial and error, we managed to figure out a solution to both those problems.


    I had Tiddol ride on my back. There was a bunch of Astrie connecting the two of us, more than enough to constantly transfer my entire production to her, which is much more than necessary. In order to actually carry her I made my armor boost my strength and my endurance, with that she¡¯s light enough for me to carry around indefinitely.


    Apparently, the twins have been siphoning off practically all of Tiddol¡¯s mana since shortly after she knew she was pregnant. As I have never experienced it myself I have no idea how it feels, but It seems like a pretty miserable experience. Tiddol was very clear about how thankful she was, I had to tell her the constant ¡®thank you¡¯s was getting annoying for her to stop, though it might have to do with the fact that she fell asleep around the same time.


    I guess for the first time in a while Tiddol and I will be sharing a bed.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 256

    Nothing to report about the Solar Energy batteries.


    Today that big report on Ents came for Mest, who isn¡¯t here right now. Luckily Tiddol was able to receive it, Mest had given her something that basically says she¡¯s one of his most trusted companions and so the person delivering it was able to hand it to her. Why they didn¡¯t just teleport it over like all the rest I have no idea, Tiddol didn¡¯t either.


    The report itself was about as thick as my palm is wide, and obviously infused with magic. According to Tiddol, who is still clinging onto my back, when a particularly skilled scribe writes something down they infuse it with mana. This apparently makes it much easier to read and understand, assuming the scribe wanted it to be understood. They must have gotten one of their best scribes to write up the report, which makes sense for a report of this importance.


    We took the report back to his room where we started to read it. I was a little nervous at first but Tiddol insisted that as long as we don¡¯t damage it we will be fine.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    There is a lot to cover in this report, and I wasn¡¯t even able to read most of it, so I¡¯ll just pull out the most interesting bits.


    There are a couple trees that have been documented as being sentient that have managed to evolve into an Ent, on even managed to evolve into a fire variant Ent, that one lived at the base of a volcano and had its roots stretched into the magma.


    In the depths of one of the oldest dungeons in the world there is an Ent that has become a True Immortal, basically, they achieved immortality through brute magical force. This is noteworthy because even that dungeon has a hard time producing True Immortals. Although, according to Tiddol, there was another dungeon that managed to get an imp, basically the demon equivalent of goblin, to that level, when asked why it said ¡®to prove that I could¡¯.


    Also, there is not a single documented instance of a non-sentient Ent. Even when they are first born, and they can reproduce sexually, they are fully sentient, and as a result of their telepathic abilities, they are also fully capable of communication.


    Other than that not much happened, Talus asked me about why I am carrying Tiddol on my back, Tiddol responded to this with some light-hearted mockery that made Talus go crimson in the cheeks.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 257

    It snowed today, I hate snow. Yes, it¡¯s pretty, but it¡¯s cold and wet and sticks to everything. It also signals the beginning of winter, Which means I¡¯ll be sleeping for longer and longer periods of time. At this time all but the pine trees have lost their leaves, It is uncomfortably quiet. As almost all of the trees are hibernating I can¡¯t hear them. And to make everything worse all of the flowers have died. All this makes me glad i¡¯m going to be sleeping through most of it. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Needless to say, I stayed inside all day, and I probably should have slept inside too. Waking up to being covered in snow was not pleasant.


    Tiddol, Talus and I played board games for around Three and a half hours, which is about how long I can stay awake so good night diary.

 Day 258

    I started experimenting with Solar Energy today, finally. I know I said I was going to grow the battery for a couple more days, but there was nothing else to do. I have a feeling we are going to get a lot of snow this winter, it¡¯s going to be miserable. Maybe I can make an armor to keep me warm? Something to check out tomorrow.


    The first thing I noticed about Solar Energy is that it takes a lot more energy to get anything going, but once I can create an effect that effect is always amplified. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The next thing I noticed was that I could actually manipulate it outside my body, it seems all those seemingly useless changes to my body when I evolved actually do something. This makes it much easier to cast spells that aren¡¯t related to plants or healing. Honestly, from what I¡¯ve seen so far Solar Energy would be atrocious at healing, it is consumed too fast to have any control and the fact that it is consumed makes everything exaggerated, which could be a death sentence for anyone I try to heal, Imagine going to heal a bone only to create three entire bones on top of that bone, not fun.


    I wanted to experiment a little with plants but by the time I got around to it I didn¡¯t have enough Solar Energy.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 259

    Everyone came back today with the spoils of their dive. They managed to get to the mid-boss of the last floor before Mest had to step in, which was when they left. Most of their loot was gold and gems, though there were some other items there, all of which were already divided up between everyone.


    I got a couple gems as gifts, five gems to be exact. I was able to fit one more gem in my crown but for the rest I substituted the ones that were already there, as the new ones are higher quality than most of the originals. Maybe I can make some jewelry to give to par to award some of his people with? I mean they were the ones that gathered the gems in the first place, might as well let them end up with them in the end.


    As for what I did with solar energy today, not a lot. It took all day to make one plant, a mundane flower. I did manage to make it store Solar Energy, but just enough for it to last a couple days out of the sun. Other things I managed to do include making it bloom during winter, be very virile, and be very resistant to damage. All things I could have done much easier with mana.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Honestly, I¡¯m pretty underwhelmed by Solar Energy. The only thing special it is really able to do is to allow me to manipulate it outside of my body, which is troublesome for two reasons, one I don¡¯t really care, two it will become impossible anyways in a century or two. External energy manipulation just isn¡¯t something I care about, I would rather have a boost to my ability to manipulate plants, my ability to heal, or even making it easier to shape flesh and mold bone. On top of that the mana density is only going to increase, in a couple hundred years it will be impossible to manipulate Solar Energy beyond making an explosion, so why should I care?


    I thought that maybe it might have an innate ability to change living things but that isn¡¯t right. I experimented with goblins a little by letting some Solar Energy flow into them and nothing happened. I even tried to swirl it around inside of them and again, nothing, or at least nothing other than it slowly and harmlessly turning into mana.


    Now that I think about it the thing that triggered my evolution was not the fact that I was controlling Solar Energy, I had been doing that for a couple hours before I evolved. No, it was because I tried to change myself on a fundamental level, and succeeded. Had I done it with mana I would be much better off than I am now.


    At the very least when I manage to get another evolution in several decades I now know how best to get the most out of it. but honestly, mana is just better in every way.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 260

    Today a blizzard hit. It came out of nowhere too. When I woke up there was not a cloud in sight, but a minute later it had started to snow. Based on how quickly it happened and the fact that we couldn¡¯t find Willow when we retreated indoors makes me think she was the one to do it, the question is why? This part of the world gets a blizzard naturally maybe every decade, why cause one? What do you have to gain from making everything miserable for the rest of us?


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Needless to say, I¡¯m really annoyed with her right now, I hate snow, why would I want a mountain of snow taller than I am?


    Today I just cuddled with Talus to keep warm, there wasn¡¯t much else to do.


    Last night after I went to bed it seems that the Ents and Mest teamed up to somehow solve Tiddol¡¯s issue of all her mana going towards her children. Not sure how they did it but it seems to be working.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 261

    The snow stopped. The sun came out. The snow melted away. Everything warmed up. And Willow evolved.


    Apparently, she caused the storm yesterday on a hunch that it might cause her to evolve, and she was right. So I guess I can forgive her for the inconvenience.


    She did not evolve into a Nymph as I expected but rather into a Sylph, a monster with a talent for air, wind, the weather, and Mana manipulation, oddly enough. Willow specifically evolved into a storm variant Sylph. Also, unlike Sprites and Nymphs, Sylphs aren¡¯t always variants, to the contrary, most of them aren¡¯t variants.


    I did manage to figure out how Tiddol¡¯s mana deficiency issue is being handled. Apparently, Mest has a pair of items that allow people to transfer mana between each other much more efficiently and at a much longer range than I was capable of. The Ents and Mest all take turns giving her mana so it¡¯s not too much strain on any of them. On top of that, all three of them individually have much more mana production than I do so it shouldn¡¯t be difficult for any of them to keep up with the demand. Apparently, Mest had the items so he could siphon mana from Thes during a fight, this served two purposes; to make use of mana that Mest can use better than Thes, and to potentially weaken Thes if the worst happens. Thes has a surprisingly high mana regeneration, nothing compared to our more magically minded but still.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    This sleeping all the time business is getting really annoying, and not just for me, Talus is getting annoyed that i¡¯m not hanging out with her as much as either of us would like. I don¡¯t blame her but there is not much I can do about it.


    One last thing before I go to sleep. For the last couple days I have been growing and changing the Solar Energy batteries to be better and more efficient. I also grew two more, though they are both half the starting size of the second one still. I have gotten them to the point that they will grow on their own using Solar Energy nearly as efficient as I would if I were to manually make them grow, and considering the fact that I am awake for about half the time the sun is on a good day recently they will grow much faster if I just left them alone. I might have my misgivings about Solar Energy, but I might as well make use of it since I¡¯m stuck with it. I mean you never know when you will need to throw a massive fireball at someone.

 Day 262

    Today I went back to my experiments with pure Astrie armors. I didn¡¯t get much done though, not enough time to find anything really interesting. Not to say it wasn¡¯t useful, I¡¯ve managed to isolate a couple parts which is the grunt work of this task.


    Talus helped me take notes. It wasn¡¯t really necessary but I wanted to hang out with her today, and board games are getting boring. It turned out to be really helpful though because she inspired me about another method I could use to dissect myself.


    When I explained to her exactly how what I was doing works she asked me if I was specifying that it should only work for myself or if it should be working for anyone. As I have already explained the more specific I make something the more extreme the effects are, so I tried it. I kept the idea that anyone could use this armor in my mind while I made it and it worked, without changing the amount of my body that is being boosted I managed to decrease the effects by a pretty significant margin. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    This won¡¯t help me dissect myself faster, nor will it make the process any less tedious, quite the contrary, instead it will allow me to dissect myself with a level of detail previously impossible. It has added a smaller knife to my toolkit if you will.


    I¡¯m getting tired, It¡¯s time for sleep. I really hate winter.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 263

    Today I was talking to a couple hobgoblins. It is a fairly regular thing, Parius rewards particularly hard-working members of his town with a chance to meet me, my cultural significance to them has not gone unnoticed.


    Every meeting starts with Par asking me if I have time, or me asking Par to arrange one if i¡¯m bored. Par chooses a couple that are on the waiting list and brings them to meet with me for around an hour, sometimes less sometimes more depending on my mood. First, I heal them of any injuries they may have and then we sit down to talk. Par or one of his inner circle usually watches over the meetings, acting a pseudo-guard, this is completely unnecessary as even if there was a member of Par¡¯s town that wanted to hurt me none of them are strong enough to pull it off. Besides, anyone that would be genuinely capable of hurting me wouldn¡¯t need to bother with the pretenses.


    Not to say that no one has ever tried to hurt me using one of these meetings. There was one boy, in the middle of puberty for his species, that did try. He was a beast, I think the species was raptor variant avian. He was screaming something about how I ruined his family, which is ridiculous, I¡¯ve never met the kid before, or even any raptor variant avians before, I had met a couple avians in passing though. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    He was put on trial in front of his peers and it was unanimous, the penalty was execution. It was a small tragedy, he died too young. I hope he reincarnates into something nice in his next life.


    Back to what I was originally talking about. The hobgoblins I was talking to were sharing their view of the current state of things, politics they called it, this is pretty normal. The nearby city, which I have since learned is named Pearlhold after it¡¯s pearly white walls, has started turning away Par¡¯s people at the gate forcing them to sneak in to buy and sell goods. There is some tension rising and some of them think there might be a war. Apparently, a couple important officials have taken an extreme disliking to some of the stuff they are selling to the people.


    Shortly after the meeting was over Thes came to talk to me. He has started to rapidly become resistant to the modified drowsy clover I was making. I made him some of the most potent stuff I could before telling him that I would try to figure something out for tomorrow. I guess I know what i¡¯m doing tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 264

    Today I worked on modifying Drowsy Clover to help Thes out, and it was much easier than I expected. With the help of a specialized Astrie armor and some goblins I managed to isolate three patterns that would do what Thes needs them to; if I want more I am going to need a new plant.


    Since it took significantly less time than I thought it would I decided to see what else I could do with Drowsy Clover, after giving Thes his supply of course. I might not care for the effects of the plant but it is my ticket to getting new plants, might as well make as much use of it as I can.


    The first thing I managed to do is locate something that seems to have no purpose other than harm, which isn¡¯t too bad in the base form because it isn¡¯t potent enough to do lasting damage. However, I always amplify the effects somehow which makes it worse. That was easy enough to get rid of. After that, I decided to take a fine-toothed comb to the structure of the plant to isolate every similar pattern. There were surprisingly few parts that had no apparent positive use, but I made sure to mark all of them down to strain out of everything I make in the future. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I then spent the rest of the day refining everything I¡¯m having Par¡¯s people sell so there isn¡¯t anything other than the intended effect going on, with limited degrees of success. Yes, I did make progress, but this is so much more complicated than what I was doing earlier for some reason, it seems like creating a mind-altering substance is more difficult than removing a bit of gunk or finding something I already know how to look for. It is actually basically what I¡¯m doing to myself using Astrie, only much more direct and efficient, though it would still take months of work to complete it. Two or three days, however, should be enough to get the easiest stuff out of the way.


    I hope Thes doesn¡¯t become immune to this new stuff to fast, we still haven¡¯t figured out a good way for him to let his rage out with minimal damage.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 265

    I spent most of the day refining the various forms of Drowsy Clover and learned quite a bit.


    One of the first things I tried to do was restrict it in a similar way as I restrict Astrie and nothing. It seems Drowsy Clover just doesn¡¯t work that way.


    I spent most of my effort refining the painkiller and the one that makes you really energetic because those two are the best earners according to Par. By the time I was done I managed to make them slightly less dangerous and quite a bit more effective, and I know I can do much better.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Par came to me and asked for a favor around an hour before writing this. He needs weapons and armor, and a lot of them. He is trying to outfit his army for a major war and needs significantly better gear. I accepted of course.


    I spent the last hour experimenting with Astrie armor on a couple goblins, and while it does have an effect, that effect is drastically reduced. There are a couple obvious things I can do to improve that, and I did so, but beyond that, I have no idea how to make it work better for them.


    I do have a couple ideas for what I will make for them, as Par gave me a list of different types of gear he needs. The biggest one is something that attracts attention and is able to take a beating, while the others are as follows; a set for dealing a lot of damage up close, a set for ranged combat, a set for stealth, a set for healing, and a set for magic. It should take too long to design them all, but actually producing them will take longer. It won¡¯t be too difficult though, I should be able to fit it in between my other experiments.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 266

    Today I spent most of my time refining Drowsy Clover, and most of my mana designing and creating gear for Par¡¯s people.


    With Drowsy Clover I made the Painkiller and the one that makes you excited slightly better in every way, progress is slow but steady.


    I am going to make the gear in the order Par listed them to me the other day, I figure he listed the most important ones first. Today I designed and produced the one that¡¯s supposed to take a beating. I made it rather hard while still remaining flexible, yeah the joints will be weak spots but after talking to a couple of Par¡¯s best warriors it seems that being able to move better is more important than a little extra armor.


    I also made it out of a combination of Whitefoot and Astrie. The Whitefoot and the Astrie mesh in a way that lets the user pour mana into the armor in exchange for some quick healing, which should keep some of them alive longer. The Astrie has a couple parts, maintaining the armor is a big one as others can¡¯t do that nearly as efficiently as I can, plus it should allow for mid-combat repairs. It also serves as a mild boost to stamina and durability for the user, I did manage to work out a couple major issues with efficiency there though it is still nowhere near as efficient as I can get it myself.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Overall designing it didn¡¯t take long, everything was pretty routine. All I really needed was some input from the people that will actually be using it.


    It seems everyone else is taking this threat seriously as well, except maybe the Ents, but then again you can hardly blame them, it¡¯s not like they have ever experienced real adversity in their lives.


    Tiddol has thrown herself into producing new gear for herself, Mest is designing a new spell, something Willow inspired apparently, I can frequently see masses of silent Lightning bolts raining from the sky from Willow, Talus is sparring against anyone that will fight her, Thes seems to be meditating, and Par¡¯s village is constantly doing drills.


    One other thing before I go to sleep. Tiddol accidentally mixed the wrong ingredients while making a potion and came out with a fruity tasting drink, there was no fruit involved in its making. It was honestly really tasty, and she recorded the recipe so she, or any other alchemist, can make it anytime, the ingredients aren¡¯t even expensive.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 267

    After today any further progress with the particular forms of Drowsy Clover I¡¯ve been working on will take longer, I¡¯ve done all the easy stuff.


    For the gear, I managed to get a little above the amount Par wanted and even managed to modify all of them so that they rot away when their user dies with time to spare, time that I spent designing the next request, something to do a lot of melee damage.


    For this one I focused a lot on the weapon, a sword. I made it as sharp as I possibly could, sharp enough for the Hobgoblin that was assisting me to cut through a slab of wood twice as thick as he was, I also made it as hard as I could to help keep it in shape, that plus some regenerative qualities meaning it is never losing the edge. That alone felt a little lackluster so I tried to think of something else I could add to it, ultimately I decided to add a modified version of Dead Tulip. I managed to change the sleep-inducing pollen for a paralytic liquid that seeps out of the edge when mana is applied right. It wasn¡¯t an easy change to make, at least relative to everything, but I think it tied the blade together nicely. The end result was a sword made out of Dead Tulip and Astrie, with the Astrie being designed to boost strength and vitality on top of everything else I¡¯m having it do. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The armor part was simple, it was designed solely with freedom of movement in mind, though I did include the self-healing part I¡¯m going to include in all the armors. It was made of Astrie and Whitefoot. The Astrie was designing for flexibility, something easy to do in any plant, fixing itself, and boosting maneuverability of the wearer in several small ways, it is also hardened but not as drastically as everything else.


    I was asked to join a meeting with everyone about what our next steps were, and while most of it sounds like gibberish to me I did learn a couple interesting things. Par fully intends to go to War with this neighboring city, he says it won¡¯t be easy but that we will win in the end. Mest, and by extension his party, can¡¯t directly get involved with events like this due to some bylaws of his order, but he can defend the area they are residing in if it gets attacked. Based on some comprehensive scouting of their military we know that their elites aren¡¯t on our level, while the common soldier is more skilled than ours, though no longer better equipped. And last but not least, their soldiers take significantly more time to train, while goblins can reproduce rapidly and are in fighting shape within a week of birth, and well trained within a month.


    It was a full day, I like when things get exciting like this, now if only I could find a cure for winter. Maybe I could use Dead Tulip, something to look into.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 268

    I know for a fact that I could drastically reduce my need for sleep with Drowsy Clover, I have already made the stuff necessary, but that comes with other problems I don¡¯t want to deal with, while the only problems Dead Tulip might have are purely physical, something I can heal. I know I can pull it off with Dead Tulip, but it might take a while, mostly because testing will take a lot longer for each one.


    With the help of some goblin assistants I made twelve different types of Dead Tulip and distributed them among a bunch of goblins, I figure since it takes so long to get each result I might as well get amazing results.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    As for the gear i¡¯m making for Par, I¡¯m almost done with this set, I should be done early tomorrow.


    I spent most of my time working on the Drowsy Clover modifications, and I made steady progress. It will be a very long time before I¡¯ve perfected them though, there is a lot of really small issues to fix. If it was a couple massive issues it would be much easier, as I wouldn¡¯t need to spend nearly as much time identifying the issue. Most issues are incredibly easy to fix and incredibly easy to identify, it¡¯s just that I have to identify each and every one individually. I can¡¯t just cut off large chunks either, trust me I¡¯ve tried, it removes more of the stuff that I actually want than I would like without solving the actual problem. Maybe I could try looking at it another way but I¡¯m out of ideas there. I guess my biggest weakness is creativity.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 269

    The first thing I did today was taling to the goblins I gave experimental sleep aid to yesterday. I evaluated the overall health of each goblin as well as looking for less obvious things. Anything with a glaring defect was removed, which was slightly more than half of them. I took the remaining ones and made a dozen variants of each, giving them to various goblins to use tonight. Tomorrow I will repeat the process. It will probably take me a long time before I get something satisfactory.


    With the Drowsy Clover variants progress is the same, slow and steady, and tedious. Still not nearly as bad as making the Ents was though.


    I finished all the melee gear sets early in the morning and started designing the ranged gear sets. According to the advisor that was assigned for this one the most important aspect is strength, both the strength of the bow and the strength of the user. All the archers are already good at hitting things, otherwise they wouldn¡¯t be using a bow. The bow was pretty simple, it has the same regenerative properties everything else does and is designed to be very tough and hard to draw. The bow does get slightly damaged by the bend, but its regeneration is more than enough to keep up with it. The Greater Kobold archer that was advising me on its creation was impressed, so I don¡¯t think I went overboard on it. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    The armor was similarly simple, basically the same thing everyone else has gotten. It focused on flexibility and boosting strength, I didn¡¯t boost vitality as the advisor said it wasn¡¯t necessary and to put what would go to vitality to strength. I was able to boost the strength even higher by only really boosting the muscles used to draw the bow back, which I figured out by observing the advisor use the bow.


    The last part was the most complicated piece. I made a quiver that creates arrows when fed mana. It took dozens of attempts to get a satisfactory result, and then a dozen more to perfect it. The quiver can hold up to twenty arrows, thirty if you don¡¯t care about pulling them out quickly.


    In the end, almost the entire thing is made out of Astrie, with the armor including Whitefoot for the self-healing.


    As fewer of these were required than anything else so far I was able to make all of them before writing this.


    I didn¡¯t really have much time to do anything other than the projects I¡¯m working on.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 270

    Everything is going steady on both the sleep aid project and the Drowsy Clover project.


    The set I developed today was the stealth set. The advisor for this one was a plant variant dragonnewt who excels in hiding in forested areas and sabotaging enemies. According to them, the most important parts are mobility and camouflage. I only made an armor for this set, but it¡¯s the most complicated armor I have made, other than my own. It uses Glovine, Singing Grass, White Foot, and Astrie. The Singing Grass is modified and placed so that it will remove almost all sound the user could make, from stepping on a branch to breathing. The Glovine is combined with Astrie in a way that allows the user to change the color and patterns of both the armor and the user, or even make the user completely invisible though that takes more mana to maintain. White Foot for emergency healing, like everything else I¡¯ve made so far. Astrie is used to facilitate both the emergency healing and the camouflage effects in addition to boosting dexterity and leg strength, allow the user to run faster. The armor as a whole is very flexible and easily the weakest ¡®armor¡¯ I¡¯ve made yet, but if the user is taking hit then they aren¡¯t doing their job right.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    I should be done producing these about halfway through tomorrow, then I can make the set I am most looking forward to, a healing set. That one should be really easy to design, it should only take some minor modification to my own set.


    With all my mana going towards producing sets of armor and most of my time going towards perfecting Drowsy Clover variants, I haven¡¯t had much in the way of free time to do other things.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 271

    I¡¯ve noticed a trend with the sleep aid project. At this point, all of the ones that make you excited in order to decrease sleep have caused other side effects, while all the ones that make sleep more efficient have had significantly fewer side effects. I¡¯m making faster progress than I thought I was with this project, I should have something satisfactory within a week or two.


    After finishing up all of the stealth sets I needed I set to designing the healing set, which was rather simple to do. The most important parts are healing efficiency and mobility. I ended up creating an armor and a ¡®weapon¡¯ for this set. The armor was pure Astrie, with every part of it purely devoted to mobility. It boosts leg strength, control, and endurance allowing the user to run across a battlefield quickly, easily, and repeatedly. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    The staff, which was the weapon I made for the set, is made of White Foot and Astrie. I spent quite a bit of effort trying to perfect this staff as much as I possibly could, bringing it to a level beyond what everything else is. I combined the two plants with the express purpose of making any healing magic that flows through the staff more effective and efficient. The advisor was impressed by the set, so I think I did a good job.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary

 Day 272

    I made a minor breakthrough with Drowsy Clover, namely a way to refine it a little faster. Everything I do with it going forward will be slightly easier.


    Progress with the sleep aid is steady.


    I finished the healing set at around Noon today, I didn¡¯t need to make very many but each one took a little bit longer to make than the others because of how much effort I put into designing it.


    Now it is time to make the last mass produced set, the one for mages. I am going to need to make significantly fewer of these than anything else, so I¡¯ll be done making them tomorrow morning.


    The advisor for this one was a lizardfolk, apparently, he is one of the ex-slavers that I buried with roots.


    As all of the mages are able to heal more efficiently than I can have the armor heal them I was able to make the entire set out of Astrie. For this set I made a staff and an armor. The armor was designed to improve Internal mana manipulation and mana regeneration, as most of the mages form their spells inside before casting them, though there are a couple that focuses on external mana manipulation. What exactly that changes I have no idea, I¡¯ll have to ask one of them, or maybe Mest. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    The staff was built to amplify spells, improve control of the spell after casting, and make it more efficient.


    While I was having the advisor test it out I noticed something. The armor is much more effective on Mages than it is on everyone else except me, I¡¯m still affected by it more than anyone. When I mentioned that the mage assisting me said that it was probably due to the way my armors improve various aspects. See, everyone is enhanced by mana in various ways, what the armor does is it takes that mana and redistributes it, or at least that¡¯s part of what it does. Flesh and Bone non-mages don¡¯t have as much mana as mages, and mages don¡¯t have as much mana as pure mana creatures like myself, so there is more mana affecting their capabilities, and more mana that the armor can draw from to improve other capabilities. Though that doesn¡¯t explain some of the other nuances of how it functions it seems like a reasonable enough explanation.


    This means Willow should be just as affected by the armor as I am, assuming I account for physiological differences that are bound to exist, we are two completely different species after all. I wonder how the Ent¡¯s would be affected?


    Tomorrow I¡¯ll be taking a break from working on Drowsy Clover to design custom sets for everyone, that should be fun.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 273

    Today I spent most of my time and mana working on custom armors for everyone, starting with Talus.


    Her request was simple. She wanted something that would improve her control over fire. Actually getting that took quite a bit of trial and error. In the end, I made something that improves her external mana manipulation, and it took entirely too long to realize that was what she wanted. Making it too specialized causes it to weaken her endurance too much making her get winded easily, so I can¡¯t directly boost her fire magic.


    Next up is Tiddol, who wants something to help with her crafting. This one was pretty straightforward to make, what she really needed was more mana capacity and more mana regeneration. With a good chunk of her own mana and all of the mana she is getting from outside sources going to her children she hasn¡¯t had enough to craft anything. Hopefully not anymore. It was straightforward and fast.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The last one I had time for today was Par. He wanted a sword and armor. The sword was made to be incredibly hard, incredibly sharp, and basically indestructible. I ended up pouring almost my entire mana pool into the sword, that thing could bisect Thes if you got a good hit in with it.


    The armor was simple, only boosting vitality and perception. Vitality so he can fight for long periods of time, perception to allow him a greater understanding of the battlefield that the general needs.


    Naturally, all of them included a self-healing aspect.


    I¡¯m looking forward to the completion of my sleep aid, then I might actually be able to accomplish stuff without feeling rushed all the time.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 274

    The first set I worked on today was for Mest. He, of course, wanted something to improve his magical capabilities. I started with a set of armor that was almost identical to the one I made for Tiddol, boosting mana capacity and regeneration. I did make several minor tweaks to it so it works better for Mest.


    I also made him a staff. It took a bit of trial and error to figure out what exactly he wanted but in the end it was rather simple. I made a staff that functions very similarly to the armor, it gathers and stores mana, only with a lot more focus on the gathering than the storing. Figuring out how to directly store mana in the Astrie was surprisingly difficult, and nothing at all like storing Solar Energy inside of it. The stored mana is then consumed by the next spell to be cast through it, boosting the spell. It takes about as long as it takes me to count to ten for it to completely recharge.


    The staff itself is also very hard, so it can double as an impromptu melee weapon.


    Next, I made a set for Thes. I offered to make him an axe, like the one he normally uses, but he rejected my offer saying that it held sentimental value. I had considered making an armor that might be useful in restraining him when he snaps, but Mest said that they had already tried that and it doesn¡¯t work. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    In the end, I just put all my effort into creating something very flexible, very durable, and rapidly regenerating. Normal armor is usually just destroyed when he rages, if it restrains him he rips it off, if it doesn¡¯t it ends up getting destroyed while he fights, this should fix that. Plus if he is wearing wood when he snaps and I¡¯m around I can at least restrain him a little bit.


    The last set of armor I had time for was Willow¡¯s. I expected her to request something to improve her magic, but instead she asked for something that would allow her to move better, though the particulars about it were rather confusing. It wasn¡¯t until I realized she gained the ability to fly that I realized what she wanted. She sprouts a pair of ethereal lightning coated wings from her back that allows her to fly when she channels mana into her back in a particular way. The armor I made for her reinforces those pathways as well as passively channels mana into them, this allows her to move faster and with better control in addition to offsetting the mana cost of keeping them active. It has the side effect of giving her an ethereal shimmer while she wears it, as her wings are always partially there.


    One last thing before I go to sleep. I noticed that the mana berry bushes have completely lost their leaves. They are no longer producing Mana Berries and we have none stored away, the last was used by Tiddol while making a potion.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 275

    I got the sleep aid to an acceptable quality today. Any further improvements will require me personally testing it. With this I should decrease my need for sleep to five hours, and I know I can do better.


    I asked the Ents if they wanted me to make them any sets of armor, they responded with what was essential ¡®if we wanted that we would make it ourselves¡¯. I¡¯m not surprised but that stung a bit.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I got back to working on the Drowsy Clover variants and made decent progress. Nothing really noteworthy really, it¡¯s the same thing over and over again. Easy and tedious, but most importantly it is very obvious that I am making progress, which to me is the most important part.


    Now I need to figure out something I can do to use up my mana, it isn¡¯t doing much good just building up.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 276

    The sleep aid worked wonders last night, though the fact that it snowed last night put a damper on my enthusiasm. I made a couple tweaks to it that will hopefully make it better.


    Tiddol asked me if there was any way she could get more of the mana berries, apparently they are a key ingredient in most of the potions she makes. It was around that time that I noticed that the mana berries aren¡¯t the only things that have stopped growing, pretty much all of my plants are dormant right now, the only time they grow is when I make them grow. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    I agreed to help Tiddol with Mana Berries, I¡¯m not doing much with my mana right now anyway. Normally there would be no point to making mana berries as only about half of the mana I use to make them with ends up being able to be reclaimed, but in this instance there is a pretty good reason to make them.


    I spent most of my time refining the Drowsy Clover variants. I made really good progress on the painkiller today, I should have it perfected within three or four days, while the one that makes you energetic is being a little more stubborn. I should really figure out a better name for that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 277

    I finished making all the Mana Berries Tiddol needed, but I think I¡¯m going to continue making them. I mean I¡¯m not doing anything else with most of my mana right now, might as well do that.


    Other than work on the Drowsy Clover variants I spent some time with Talus. She was telling me about her family, about all her cousins and her aunts and uncles. She told me about how she was born into a branch family of a noble house, which is basically a family of rich people that control territory. Now that I think about it, would that make me a noble? I mean I am moderately wealthy with all the money that I¡¯m getting from selling Drowsy Clover Variants and I do control a small amount of land, anyway back to the point. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    She was telling me about how her parents had arranged a marriage between her and a man she had never met, apparently an heir to a very successful merchant empire. When she did meet him she described him as being very plain, maybe a bit ugly. He had no talent with magic and was almost sickly looking, but he was very intelligent. Talus did not like him at all, though she didn¡¯t explain why exactly, so she ran away. After that she went on an adventure involve being captured by slavers, being hunted down by family members, being captured by slavers again, almost becoming bird food, and literally falling for me, among other things.


    It was a pretty long day, and that''s a good thing. Days have been getting too short recently.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 278

    Someone came to meet me today, some fat catbeast with more pride than brains.


    The meeting started out civilly, we exchange greetings and I found out that he is a local lord, a noble. Everything was going well until I referred to myself as a noble, then he tried to make it very clear that this land belongs to him. I buried him up to his neck in that instance, his guards started to freak and began threatening me. I didn¡¯t have to do anything about that however as all three of them ended up with a poisoned dagger in their backs.


    After that the noble would not stop yelling. He started threatening me, saying things like ¡®my family will hunt you down¡¯ and ¡®we know where you live¡¯. Anyway, it was getting really annoying so I dragged him completely underground and then forgot about him. I think he¡¯s dead now actually, but I can¡¯t bring myself to care. He explicitly threatened me and my people. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Besides it¡¯s not like I killed him, his need to breathe is what killed him. If he was a mana based creature like me he would have survived.


    Anyway, it seems like one of the guards survived. After he was bound I cleansed the poison from him and healed his wounds, he is going to be a slave now, a very valuable slave with very valuable secrets.


    I¡¯m feeling frustrated and angry, I would say I need to find a way to blow of some steam, but I know that only gets me more worked up. I need to calm down, so I¡¯m going to try to meditate for a while. It¡¯s been a little while since I¡¯ve meditated for the sake of meditating and not something like working on the Drowsy Clover Variants.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 279

    Today something interesting happened, the Drowsy Clover evolved. I now have two new plants to work with that have the effect of making you really energetic and killing pain respectively. They are both refined well beyond what I could possibly hope to achieve within the next decade, I guess that¡¯s the power of evolution.


    Now that I think about it this isn¡¯t all that surprising, I mean I have spent more time and effort refining these two variants than I have any other plant. It wouldn¡¯t be a stretch to say that they were my highest quality plants before they evolved, now I have to make them less potent in order to make them useful. Also modifying them suddenly got much easier. which is also no surprise, the closer a plant is to its base form the easier it is for me to modify and vice versa, this usually isn¡¯t an issue except for the fact that those two plants were getting pretty far from the base version. This also limits thing like how powerful I can make a set of Astrie armor or how potent I can make any of the effects of Drowsy Clover.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    I was showing the new plants off to Par when he asked me to make him a bunch of both. Apparently, he has read about a group of very successful warriors that rely on similar plants for their power. He hasn¡¯t tried to replicate that before because of the downsides, but most of those have been removed with the evolutions of those plants. After figuring out exactly what he needed I agreed to make a bunch for him.


    We are also going to need a new set of armor made for these new warriors Par is trying to create.


    One last thing before I go to bed for the night. The Dragonnewt Saint from before and his mate are expecting children, They have a clutch of eggs in their nest that will hatch in a couple weeks, I requested that they come see me as soon they are old enough to do so. Kobolds and Dragonnewts are much cuter than Goblins and Hobgoblins.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 280

    I started the day by designing the armor set Par needed for his new project. The first thing he asked me for was a way for them to control their emotions, which isn¡¯t something I¡¯m capable of making yet. Instead what I made was something that increases vitality, just increases vitality as much as I could possibly make it. The warriors have enough strength in their flesh and blood that removing a very large chunk of their magically boosted physical strength won¡¯t do too much, while increasing their vitality should allow them to get a lot more out of their flesh and bone strength, more or less countering that loss. There would be the problem of too much strain on the physical body with that, but with that much vitality it doesn¡¯t matter as they out heal that kind of strain, I don¡¯t even need to include white foot for emergency healing because of how quickly their vitality lets them heal. On top of all that these are obviously the finest warriors Par has to offer, with all the extra magical boosts that implies. That means that the Astrie armor has more than enough resources to work with to boost vitality.


    Because there was so few of them, eleven including Par, I was able to tailor each set for the individual warrior. This allowed me to do some interesting things with it. For one only the one I intended it to be used for can use it, this makes it so the armor can¡¯t be used against us and makes the armor more potent. It also allowed me to make many minor changes for the warrior that I wouldn¡¯t be able to do with mass production, like exactly how flexible they want it and exactly how thick, in addition to more magical corrections to make it more efficient.


    After I built the armors we ran them through some tests. First, we had the warriors spar, and while they were visibly slower they were actually slightly stronger than they were without the armor. Everyone agreed that they should focus on using heavy weapons. The second interesting discovery happened when one warrior got a little overzealous in their attack and ran through another right in the heart, It healed completely before I could count to five. I could heal that injury faster with magic, but nowhere near as efficiently, this might be a good opportunity to study healing, especially with my new painkiller. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Now that I think about it wouldn¡¯t this be perfect for practicing Flesh manipulation? I mean the new painkiller I have would completely void any issues I have with causing pain to another creature. Except they are still definitely going to die at first, so I guess that is still a no go, I don¡¯t want to be the direct cause of someone¡¯s death if I can help it.


    I can already picture it, a group of undying, unrelenting, unflinching warriors that are seemingly everywhere at once. I imagine it would be terrifying for a grunt. I¡¯ve never cared much for power, but I do see the appeal of having it.


    Out of curiosity, I boosted my own vitality as much as I could handle, and it was intoxicating. As a mana based creature I can enhance any aspect of myself to a much greater extreme and it really shows. I took it off before I could test too much with it, I was worried I might do something stupid while my intelligence was lowered, like challenge Thes to a duel.


    Other than that I mostly just hung out with Talus, pretty much all the projects I''ve been working on are wrapping up. And with war rapidly approaching I wanted to savor every minute of time I had to spend with my girlfriend before she, along with Par¡¯s army, heads out to lay siege to the city of Pearlhold.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 281

    All preparations are complete, waiting any longer would be procrastination. Par has organized his army and is now marching towards the gates of Pearlhold. I look forward to hearing of his success.


    It feels so empty now, pretty much everyone has left.


    I decided to spend my time indirectly dissecting myself with Astrie armor, I still need to map everything out. I did notice that I am noticeably more efficient with this project, I guess a lot more of the skills I developed while refining Drowsy Clover into the two as of yet unnamed plants are applicable. I think it will take a couple weeks to complete this project, though it isn¡¯t high priority so it will likely take much longer. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Other than that I added to our stockpile of mana berries and hung out with Tiddol, who is becoming increasingly rounder in the belly. She is also becoming much prettier as well, her skin seems to glow, her eyes seem to sparkle, her breasts have definitely grown a couple sizes, overall she is looking amazing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 282

    This morning Kaire came to me with a request. He wants me to make many more Ents, he says that he and Lulem are lonely in their heads when they can only hear each other and the faint whisperings of less intelligent plants. I agreed to create more Ents and got to work straight away.


    I had no issue with mana as both Kaire and Lulem fed me basically all their mana. What I had an issue with was my soul being chipped away a little bit with every Ent I created, though it was nowhere near as bad as when I made the originals. In the end, I only made ten before I was forced to stop.


    While making them I did notice a couple things, the most obvious was something that wasn¡¯t at all obvious, how to improve them. I could not think of a single way to improve upon the original design of the Ents. I guess all the time I spent refining even the tiniest flaw out of them worked wonders. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The next thing I noticed was that each Ent was ever so slightly easier to create, which makes sense because I would be improving at it. His does include how badly it affects me, meaning if I continue to create them eventually I should be able to create them with only a negligible cost, but that would take a very long time.


    After I was done Kaire and Lulem took the newborn Ents away to educate them, basically doing the same thing I did for them only on a much larger scale.


    After that, I spent most of the rest of the day laying in bed recovering, but it will be a couple days before I fully recover from that. I am so glad I have a dungeon core, if I didn¡¯t that kind of expenditure would actually be impossible. It also doesn¡¯t hurt that there are countless goblins and the like running around not too far from here.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 283

    I spent most of the day recovering from yesterday''s expenditure while laying in bed talking with Tiddol. I did remember to make Mana Berries when my mana pool filled up. By dinner time I was almost completely recovered so it didn¡¯t hurt to move around anymore.


    As for what Tiddol and I talked about all day, we kept it light-hearted. We talked about potential baby names for the twins, though she didn¡¯t settle on anything. We talked about things we have done together in the past almost year, wow it really has been a long time. We talked about the things we like and the things we tolerate about our partners, apparently, Par has a verbal tic that she has been trying to fix forever, I never noticed it. We also bragged to each other about our recent achievements, she was particularly impressed by the painkiller and asked me to make her some, saying it would remove the negative effects of one of her more potent healing potions. I was impressed by her healing potions, her higher quality ones can easily heal more than I can in short bursts. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Since I didn¡¯t really feel like doing much at that point I decided to check up on the Solar Energy Batteries that I had set aside. Initially, I was pretty disappointed, the batteries had not grown as much as I thought they would, though not by too much. After I actually figured out how much energy was actually there I was relieved and curious, the Solar Energy was denser than expected, and there was more of it than I would have thought. It seems to be getting denser rather than bigger and at a faster rate than I would have predicted. All of this is interesting and I do have a couple theories about what is actually going on but it will be a while before I will be able to prove or disprove any of them, in the meantime, I need to leave them alone to allow them to continue to grow and develop.


    Other than that I didn¡¯t really do much today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 284

    Today I got back to work dissecting myself, and it was business as usual. I have pretty much sorted out the major parts, and I have made decent headway into sorting out all the less major parts. It will still take a long time to fully sort out those minor parts though, as they are surprisingly difficult to separate from each other. The fact that I will have to redo all this work when I evolve here in several years is disheartening, but not too badly.


    A messenger arrived from Par today. It seems they have finished setting up their camp and most of the fortifications for it, though they are still setting up supply lines. It is getting a little more difficult because the local army has started to prod them a little bit, testing their defenses and their men with disposable shock troops. It is impossible to tell how things are going to go this early, but I am hopeful.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Whisperer didn¡¯t join them, but many of his followers did. I talked with him for a while during my downtime. He seems like a good guy, despite his creepiness factor. We ended up discussing plans for the immediate and slightly less immediate future. Nothing really noteworthy, but it did get me excited for spring.


    Anyway, I¡¯ve stayed up too late so I should get to sleep.


    Good Night Diary.

 Day 285

    Today a small group of people snuck into my forest. Or at least they tried anyway, the trees let me know they were here immediately. As such everyone was prepared when one of them tried to attack me. They were six soldiers, now they are six corpses. Unfortunately, none of them survived Mest¡¯s spell, so we weren''t able to question them.


    Based on a note Mest found on one of them, they were assassins sent to take me out. Whoever sent them seem to think that I am the one in charge. Honestly, most things around here would still run smoothly without me as long as Par was still around, so killing me would have only accomplished pissing off a bunch of people they can¡¯t afford to piss off, namely Thes. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    While exciting, having assassins come after me wasn¡¯t a very time-consuming activity. So for the rest of the day, I work on dissecting myself. I made steady progress, but nothing really noteworthy happened.


    Overall it was a fun day. I got to see Mest¡¯s new spell in action, the one that was inspired by Willow. I also got a bit of time to think about myself, I have come to the conclusion that I am fine with death as long as I don¡¯t directly cause it. It is honestly not really a new inspiration, but it is still the conclusion I keep coming to.


    Oh, I think I know what project to work on next. I should try to refine Astrie in the same way I refined the two evolutions of Drowsy Clover. I can¡¯t really replicate a spell all that easily with it, maybe I can fix that.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 286

    I got to work refining Astrie today. I am trying to make it better able to mimic the effects of spells instead of strengthening magic. That is something it is capable of, just not very well. The best I managed to do today was make it explode, which Mest tells me is usually the first thing more magically inclined races manage to do with magic.


    We received a letter from Par today. He says that everything is going well, fortifications and supply lines are done being set up and all enemy supply lines to the city have been cut off. He is starving them out. A couple assassins have been dispatched to kill off any mages that know how to make food, though they have been limited in success. After the first two, their leaders wised up and kept the mages under armed guard. Most of the assassins managed to retreat but a couple failed and were captured or killed, though not without doing as much damage as possible, as per Par¡¯s instruction. They are currently undergoing hostage negotiations, though the assassins were disposable to begin with so it likely won¡¯t go anywhere.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    It seems like my armor paid off in a small way, allowing goblins with minimal training to take out a couple key targets. I bet Par is planning on utilizing one of his more skilled assassins, or he already has. The letter did say that the information wasn¡¯t current, so that in the case that it was intercepted nothing important would be revealed.


    I also got a letter from Talus this time. It was short and sweet, talking about how it¡¯s only been a couple days and she already misses me. Reading over it made me smile. She also talked about what the last couple days were like. She was a bit nervous being around so many goblins, kobolds, hobgoblins, and the like, apparently she was always taught that they were dangerous and shouldn¡¯t be trusted growing up, which explains why she would always avoid going into Par¡¯s village if she could help it. Of course, her fears were unfounded and she was welcomed with open arms, they didn¡¯t expect her to do much grunt work, but she did anyway. She also commented on how loyal everyone seems to be to Par and myself.


    Other than that not much happened. It was a little amusing when another messenger came by carrying the exact same letters, though the messenger seemed relieved when I said we already received them. I guess Par sent out two messengers to be sure that we got the news.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 287

    I managed to make Astrie not explode for a full second today, which was exactly what I was trying to do. I figure the best way to refine Astrie is to attempt to use it as a spell, do that over and over again while refining it a little each time and I will eventually trigger it to evolve. Yeah there are some obvious things that I could change to make it easier to start off, but most of my projects are a lot of trial and error, this one just has a bit more trial.


    I talked with Mest a lot today. He is definitely useful in helping me learn how to use Astrie as a proxy for magic. He took a personal interest in this project, he says that if I can learn how to use it well enough there is all sorts of stuff I could do with this. The main one he talked about was teleportation, particularly permanent teleportation gates. Honestly, that doesn¡¯t really interest me all that much, but Mest was really excited for it. Supposedly making things like that was incredibly difficult, even when all the ins and outs were thoroughly documented and easily accessed. If I manage to succeed in making Astrie evolve other plant manipulators might be able to make similar items more reliably, and while plants manipulators, in general, are rare, they are nowhere near as rare as people able to make teleportation gates and similar objects. Though manipulators of my skill and power are much rarer. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    According to Mest that would be a major step forward for his order, something they have been trying to achieve for decades but haven¡¯t managed to figure out. They would be able to do research on a scale that was impossible before, at least in some fields, discovering and confirming things that before they could only guess at. And I really don¡¯t care about that kind of thing, but I would be willing to part with some of it as a favor to a good friend, assuming I actually succeed in making Astrie evolve that is.


    Other than that I didn¡¯t do much today. I¡¯ve made some pretty good progress on the sleep aid, bringing the amount of time I need to sleep down from five hours to four, though progress on that is slowing down a lot.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 288

    Today I continued to work on refining Astrie. Mest has put all of his efforts into helping me with this project, and he is definitely helpful. The actual grunt work isn¡¯t any easier with his help, but testing and knowing what to test for has become drastically easier. On top of helping me refine the Astrie, I am learning a lot about magic, though almost all of it requires external mana manipulation so it might be a very long time before I put any of it to use outside of this project. With his help, I think I can do this in half the time it would have taken me otherwise.


    I felt the twins kick today, I didn¡¯t even know babies did that. It was really surreal for me, there is a difference between knowing and seeing evidence of something as amazing as life growing inside someone, it is another thing entirely to feel it with your own hands. I can¡¯t wait to meet the children.


    The new Ents are always together, much like how Kaire and lulem are almost always together. The only way I can think to accurately describe them all is plant, because any other descriptor wouldn¡¯t work for all of them. All of them have their own personality, and all of them are very distinctly their own person. I think that is fascinating, on a structural level all of them are identical, excluding the obvious differences between sexes. On top of that, they have all had basically the exact same life experiences in these last couple days as well. But what is really interesting is the fact that all of them seem to have kept some memories from their previous life, I wonder why Kaire and Lulem didn¡¯t. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Most of them can only remember general ideas, but there are a couple that remember more, three of them to be exact. The first remembers parts of his life that revolve around smithing, He remembers everything about his past life that has to do with smithing, from the master smith that trained him up until the last blade he ever forged, but he can¡¯t remember anything else. The second remembers much about her family and her friends, and a little about the world, enough to know that this isn¡¯t the world of her past life. She is very solemn and sad, she can remember very clearly the face of a mother she doesn¡¯t have, the face of a lover that she will never meet again, and the faces of friends she will never again laugh and play with. I felt like I could connect with her more than the others, like I could understand her better, it made me want to comfort the child. That isn¡¯t something I feel very often.


    The last Ent to hold onto a significant chunk of their memories from their last life took it to the extreme, they remembered almost everything, something only recorded a handful of times. They were a mage in their last life, not a particularly powerful one, but enough to feed a small family. He spent his life doing what he described as grunt work for more successful mages. He doesn¡¯t know a lot about magic, but he knows way more than most others his age do, this should give him a leg up. I am expecting great things from this child.


    It was a full day today, I like days like this. The only real negative about today was the snow, but I have to learn to live with that, I am nowhere near powerful enough to change the seasons.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 289

    Today I talked with the young Ents. I tried to get to know them better, they are, in a way, my children. Most of them haven¡¯t had time to decide what they want to do with their life, but one of them seems dead set on becoming a chef. He said that the only thing he can remember from his previous life was his desire to become a chef, and never being able to fulfill that desire. He asked me if I could teach him how to cook, I let him know that I definitely can¡¯t teach him how to cook as I can barely cook myself. Though I did point him towards Thes, who is a surprisingly good cook.


    I spent almost all of my down time talking to them, either one on one or in a group. I learned quite a bit about them, for one they all collectively decided that they would name each other, much like Kaire and Lulem did, everyone naming one of their siblings. For another thing, most of them are very mature, especially when you consider their age. But that isn¡¯t very surprising when you consider the fact that everyone has at least some memories of a previous life.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Other than that I made steady progress on refining Astrie, managing to get it the point where I can make a simple flame come out of it. It isn¡¯t all that impressive, but it is a step away from uncontrolled or barely controlled explosions.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 290

    We received another letter today. The assassins and saboteurs all managed to either play their part, or die trying and Par doesn¡¯t think he could slip anymore into the city. And so they have begun attacking the city directly, though only in small ways. They have started battering away at the walls with spells, though not much progress has been made there, using some weak scrying magic a couple of Par¡¯s mages have managed to locate a couple depots, though the city mages quickly caught onto them and put up countermeasures. All in all things seem to be going well and I am looking forward to hearing more news.


    I was hanging out with Tiddol today when i examined her children to see how they were developing, with her permission of course. I don¡¯t know much about pregnancy but I do know a thing or two about creating life and i think these children are about half developed, a claim that Mest backs up.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    One last thing before i go to sleep, I have finally come up with names for the new plants. The painkiller is called Flore, why? I don¡¯t know, I just thought of it and decided to stick with it. For the one that makes you energetic i have decided to call it Ergen, I¡¯m pretty sure the thought process there was i was trying to think of a good name that derives from energetic. It is a pretty big stretch, but whatever.


    Anyway, good night Diary.

 Day 291

    Today was eventful. This morning we saw a group of roughly thirty people approaching the grove, all of them obviously well armored. Shortly after that we saw a banner that declared themselves to be not only a group from Pearlhold, but also a war party, or at least that¡¯s what Tiddol said. Based on the fact that they dropped all pretense of stealth they are either trying to intimidate us, or they realized they can¡¯t sneak past me in my own grove.


    After they got a bit closer Kaire and Lulem requested that they be allowed to take care of the soldiers. How they took care of them was stunning, it was a display of plant manipulation on a scale that I¡¯m not sure I could replicate. What exactly they were doing was quickly obscured by the rapidly growing foliage, but the screams were apparent and rapidly fading. By the time they were done all of the soldiers were dead and a kobold messenger was rescued.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Apparently, the messenger was supposed to warn us of the approaching threat.


    When the two of them got back they were in terrible shape, both of them completely drained of mana while Lulem was actively on fire. After putting the fire out it was obvious that the both of them had countless cuts and chared patches, Kaire was even missing half of his hand.


    It took quite a bit of effort to fix them back up, especially because they didn¡¯t have the mana to do it themselves. The whole display was very impressive, though Tiddol was disappointed that we didn¡¯t get to capture anyone to question.


    After that, The Ent with dreams of becoming a chef made dinner for us. He has been practicing for a couple days and thinks he is prepared to demonstrate his skill. Overall it was pretty good, definitely better than what I managed after a couple days of practice.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary

 Day 292

    Today we received another letter. It had one sentence; we have captured their leaders and are in the process of negotiating terms. I¡¯m assuming that anything more could have been used against them somehow, otherwise, it wouldn¡¯t have been so short. This is exciting, hopefully, this will be the end of that and everyone will be able to return home, It¡¯s been so quiet around here these last couple days.


    As for Astrie refinement, I am making good progress. I¡¯ve gotten to the point that it is all grunt work, Mest can¡¯t help me much anymore. It is now obvious to me what I need to change, it¡¯s just that there is so much of it that it is going to take a while.


    After lunch three of the Ent¡¯s, two males and one female, came to me with a request. They wanted permission to explore the world, for different reasons. One, the female, decided that they want nothing from this life other than a sense of adventure, another wants to find himself, figuring that they will have the opportunity to do so in their travels, the third wants to find something of their past life. I agreed, under three conditions. The first condition is that they all receive names before they leave, the second is that they spend a month being trained by Mest, Tiddol, and Parius or Thes on how to survive in any situation, the third is that they come back to visit when they get the chance, they might be born more mature than most, but they are still my children. The accepted those conditions gracefully. Of course, Mest agreed to teach them, I¡¯m starting to think he loves sharing his knowledge more than he loves learning. Tiddol took a bit of convincing, though that is pretty normal recently. Thes just kind of grunted before returning to carving a stick into a figurine. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Overall it was an interesting day.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 293

    Today I was talking with Tiddol a lot. she was rather sentimental, talking about her friends and family and where she was before becoming a diver. Her parents were farmers, but she always thought farming was boring. All her life she had been tinkering with things to figure out how they worked, and though she only had minimal talent with magic she still managed to pick up a couple things. She told me about how her parents would get annoyed with her slacking off on her chores to go and build some magical device, but they stopped when she built something that helped them water their crops during a drought.


    She told me about her siblings. She had two of them, one of them lost their life to a sickness that formed after a failed attempt to cast a spell. The other was a strong young man a couple years older than her, he was conscripted into the army and never heard from again. He was never confirmed dead, and Tiddol still hopes to find him one day, but she has already exhausted all leads.


    She told me about her experience with leaving home. She went up to her mother and father and explained to them that she wanted to travel the world, after some convincing they gave her some of their savings and told her to write home every once in a while. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    Her family is on the other side of the world now, almost perfectly, if she were to try to walk home she would die of old age first even after evolving. As it stands it requires dozens of different teleportations and a very large amount of money to visit home, even with the discounts offered by her association to Mest¡¯s order. If she wanted to get there quickly she would get an incredibly bad case of teleportation sickness.


    She said that writing home is much easier, you can send non-living material a lot farther and a lot safer than you can send living creatures. They write to each other all the time, she told them all about me and everything that¡¯s happened since she met me. She says that she isn¡¯t sure if they like me, but they definitely want to meet me, but they want to meet Par and the children more. Mest actually agreed to pay for them to teleport here to be here for when their child has children, he isn¡¯t exactly poor right now.


    And that is how I found out that I am going to be meeting Tiddol¡¯s parents. I am looking forward to it.


    And another thing. The dragonewt saint¡¯s kids have hatched, I¡¯ll get to meet them in a couple days. I¡¯ve heard that they are really cute, so I am looking forward to it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 294

    Shortly before writing this we received a short letter that read ¡°Pearlhold is officially in our possession, we are coming home¡±. Hopefully, they will be home tomorrow morning. This is exciting news, obviously. It is a major accomplishment for Par, and I¡¯m excited for him because of that. But honestly, I¡¯m more excited that I get to see my girlfriend again for the first time in entirely too long.


    Now for what happened during the day.


    One of the Ents, a male, came to me this morning and said that he wants to be an artist. He was asking me to teach him how to properly manipulate Glovine, Singing Grass, and Astrie. He has the power to do it well, but not the skill. I spent a good chunk of the day teaching him the various little bits of knowledge he needs to properly use it, it took so long because it is mostly a ton of small things that need to be remembered.


    Kaire and Lulem came to me around lunchtime to tell me about something. They told me about the system they have set up with their younger siblings. The two of them would educate them when they are first born in a similar manner to how I educated the two of them. After the basics are covered the newborn Ents are then supposed to think about what they want out of this life, once they have decided they will begin to be taught anything we can teach them about whatever that is. All the while they would be being taught everything they need to survive in the world.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    After their education is complete they set out to travel the world to pursue their dreams. Once that dream is fulfilled then they are to return home and put their new skills to use.


    I¡¯m conflicted about this. On the one hand, it gives my children a chance to grow in an environment where they can reach their fullest potential, it gives them a chance to live out their dreams. On the other hand, it puts them at risk in ways that I can¡¯t even imagine.


    In reality, though that is mostly an excuse, unless they really mess up they aren¡¯t going to be in that much danger, they are Ents after all. Ents are naturally gifted spellcasters, incredibly durable, able to quickly heal themselves, able to regenerate missing limbs, and a dozen other things that set them above the vast majority of other sentients. A dungeon born Ent even managed to become a true immortal within months of me creating them, months. To be fair the dungeon almost definitely had a way to accelerate the growth of that Ent, but my point still stands. How I managed to pull off making the Ents I have no idea, Examining them now I see parts that I don¡¯t remember building, parts I remember building completely differently, and at least one part that has no discernable purpose. It¡¯s almost like I was possessed when creating them, like some kind of enlightenment or something. I¡¯m not sure I could pull off a similar feat if I tried today.


    Anyway, my two oldest children asked me to make them some more younger siblings. Actually, they asked me to make a couple Ents every week, around three or four. That shouldn¡¯t be an issue, it¡¯s not so many that it will leave me feeling weak, and it isn¡¯t like making an Ent take a lot of time, just a lot of mana. Though the two of them are more than willing to provide me all the mana I need for that, and they are more than capable of that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 295

    Today a lot happened.


    In the morning I saw Talus again. She was in perfect physical condition, not even a scar on her body, but she looked emotionally and mentally drained. She lightened up a lot when she saw me, basically running into my arms before crying into my shoulder.


    Through the day she would tell me about what happened from beginning to end. It is all way too long to write down here, but the important part is that she had to do a lot of fighting there at the end and that the fighting was traumatizing for her. She¡¯s not cut out to be an adventurer, or a diver for that matter, she has the fiery passion going for her but like me, she doesn¡¯t like fighting, only she is just now realizing this. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    I ended up spending the whole day with her. I haven¡¯t gotten a break until right now, she fell asleep. It¡¯s fine though, I love spending time with her.


    Oh yeah, the Dragonewt children should be old enough to come out of the nest tomorrow, so I have that to look forward to.


    Anyway, Good nIght Diary.

 Day 296

    There were six Dragonewt children, and they were adorable. Their smooth skin basically shines and their large eyes make them look so innocent. They won¡¯t be like that for long though, within two months they will be fully grown Dragonewts.


    Talus and I only played with them for about an hour before they got tired and had to go home, but it was fun.


    The saint and his mate are doing well. They could barely keep their hands off of each other while they were here. For whatever reason, they weren¡¯t required to join the war effort, so they have had plenty of time together and with their kids. It¡¯s sweet seeing them all lovey-dovey. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I did have the saint show off his healing and it has improved, though it is still far from my own. He is still the second best healer I know of, which isn¡¯t saying much because I don¡¯t know very many healers. Most of the ones I''ve met have actually been trained by the saint.


    For most of the rest of the day, I either hung out with Talus or worked on refining Astrie.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 297

    Par returned to the city today. He has finished whatever it was he needed to do here and now he needs to go finish things up in Pearlhold. I believe what he is doing is organizing their government. Whisperer and many of his followers left with Par.


    I met with several of the warriors, mages, and healer that performed the best during the conflict today. It was interesting hearing different accounts of the conflict, some were downplayed and more were exaggerated but all of them told the same basic story. Though the most interesting conversation I had was with an Ex-slave that managed to become a full citizen. He was taken from a bandit camp that had attacked one of Par¡¯s raiding parties, it didn¡¯t go well for them. Anyway, he said that we should expect some kind of retaliation from the other nearby cities, though he called them city-states. The elf seems to think that the cities will feel threatened by us taking control of Pearlhold and will try to crush us. Several others seemed to share this opinion.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    If they are anything like Pearlhold it will be easy. And once they attack they will be weakened enough to be easy pickings, or at least that¡¯s my thoughts on the matter. I¡¯m not the one in charge of the fighting.


    Other than that I spent most of my time refining Astrie. Progress is the same as ever.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 298

    Today I focused on refining Astrie. At the rate I¡¯m going I should be done I roughly six days, give or take a day or so depending on how much I am interrupted. I highly doubt I will make any new breakthroughs in my refining process as this is ultimately a pretty easy process, just repetitive.


    I also hung out with Thes today, partially because everyone else was busy and partially because he looked lonely sitting there on his own. He still doesn¡¯t talk much though. He doesn¡¯t really seem to have any shared interests with the others, which makes me wonder why exactly he decided to join up with Mest, if I recall correctly Tiddol is a relatively new addition to their team. However. when I asked he didn¡¯t say anything. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    He did tell me that this version of his medicine was getting less effective already, he is going to need the next version soon. After that he will only have two left.


    For a while I tried talking with him about possible fixes for his situation, he stayed silent throughout. Towards the end he asked me a question, ¡®why are you trying to help me?¡¯


    I had no answer for him.

 Day 299

    Again I focused most of my efforts today on refining Astrie. Progress is as steady as ever.


    Par brought me something interesting today, it was a plant. He said it was found in the home of an alchemist that was killed during the siege. The only thing he has noticed it do so far is spontaneously combust, though the explosions rarely harm the plant. They do, however, harm everything else around it, as I found out the hard way when it almost blew my hand off, no that isn¡¯t an exaggeration, if I had bones all of them in my hand would have been shattered. Why an alchemist had this I have no idea, but the first thing I did with it is put it in a place where it can¡¯t harm anything too badly. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    In the end I had to make a fence out of Astrie and singing grass surrounding the three specimens I had of the plant, which is apparently named Blastbark, apparently the texture of the plant resembles bark? I don¡¯t see it. The fence is designed to repair itself and to be slightly more durable than normal in addition to silencing the explosions.


    I get that Par wanted to give me a gift, but this one is super annoying to deal with right now. It took way too long to figure out how to contain it safely, not to mention how painful it was. I had it explode on me nearly a dozen times before it was contained, of course, I can heal all the damage and so there were no lasting consequences but still, ouch.


    I am excited to see what I can make with it, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 300

    First thing I did this morning was put on my healing armor, modified to make it better at healing me. I also used a long-lasting variant of Flore, I really didn¡¯t want to feel it when I inevitable got blown up today.


    After that was done I started working with the Blastbark, only to immediately be grateful that I used Flore a little bit earlier. Despite not being able to feel pain having your hand reduced to little more than stump does not help with concentration.


    The first thing I did was make it more stable, I realized my mistake too late. After a much longer delay in which I had a chance to examine the herb, it blew up again, much more violently. The only reason I managed to stay conscious after being thrown halfway across my grove was because I couldn¡¯t feel pain. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Luckily I managed to heal my injuries before anyone found me, I wouldn¡¯t want someone trying to stop me from making use of Blastbark. Or worse, destroy it.


    The next change seemed to do the trick. What I did was make it significantly less stable, to the point that instead of causing an explosion with the mana it builds up, it just kind of leaks it out. No more explosions.


    But of course, no explosions means that the plant is useless to me. What exactly I need with explosions is a question for another day.


    So I spent the day experimenting with Blastbark. My study focused on keeping the plant stable without having it explode. Something easier said than done. I lost track of how many times I had it blow up in my face today, though it got easier to reduce how much I was injured each time it happened.


    In the end, I did not figure out how to make Blastbark actually stable, but I did make good strides towards understanding it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 301

    Today I worked on analyzing Blastbark. One thing I noticed was that it is incredibly simple, to the point that I almost have it perfectly mapped out. Just a little bit more and it will be complete.


    This tells me a lot about the plant. The most important being that I will never make it truly stable. It has to do with the way my power works, I can¡¯t add something to a plant that isn¡¯t already there. I can remove what is there, and I can change what is there within reason, but I can¡¯t really add anything.


    for the most part, this isn¡¯t an issue, but Blastbark is incredibly simple, almost ridiculously so. It barely has enough to keep itself going, almost all of it is dedicated to exploding. Everything about it screams artificial design, like another plant manipulator took a plant and removed everything that wasn¡¯t necessary for either surviving or exploding. I¡¯m not even sure this plant can reproduce on its own, because if it does it has to be tied to its ability to explode somehow.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    All this makes me wonder what the original was like. I¡¯m assuming something to do with fire, as I doubt it¡¯s original function was exploding. I would be interested in meeting its creator.


    After realizing that it was probably artificially made I took another look at it. This time I noticed small flaws in the plant, flaws that all but confirmed my theory on its origin. I can tell that, at the very least, the creator was not as skilled as I am when they made it, or they didn¡¯t put much effort into it.


    This is the first time I¡¯ve come across another plant manipulators work since my mother died, it¡¯s sobering. I think she would be proud of how far I¡¯ve come, I haven¡¯t even finished growing yet but I¡¯m already in charge of my own grove.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 302

    Today I spent a couple hours testing out different ways to combine blastbark with my other plants before spending the rest of the day Refining Astrie.


    The first this I did was combine Blastbark with Astrie, that was a mistake. I have no idea what I was thinking, obviously if I combine a plant that creates explosions with one that amplifies magic what i¡¯m going to get is a big explosion. It really didn¡¯t help that I was holding it. My entire arm was shredded.


    Anyway, after fixing my arm I managed to figure out how to safely combine Astrie with Blastbark. All I really managed to do with that was improve the control I had over when it explodes, basically, I can pour a bunch of mana into the plant to make it explode sooner.


    The next thing I had success with was combining Astrie, Whitefoot, and Blastbark. Just Whitefoot and Blastbark didn¡¯t have nearly enough control so I had to add Astrie. What I ended up making was a plant that would periodically send waves of mana designed to heal, I could control how potent the healing is and I could control the range, but not much else. I wasn¡¯t able to make it differentiate between creatures so it would be useless in combat, but to heal up afterward it would be great. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    The biggest limiter to it was the scope. It can¡¯t heal anything that the creature would be unable to heal themselves. For most creatures that means it can reattach an arm, but not regrow one. And injuries that are too serious or injuries that affect many internal organs won¡¯t be healed.


    Other than that I wasn¡¯t able to make anything interesting with the plant, or at least not anything that I couldn¡¯t do without it.


    Other than that I hung out with Caire and Lulem. They told me about the Ents that they¡¯re teaching, there was one that wants to dedicate his life to helping less intelligent creatures obtain sentience and another that is absolutely fascinated with magic. So far every one of them has had some level of memories of a previous life, though almost all of them have very few.


    They asked me for some materials that they can¡¯t supply themselves, just some things they need to help teach the newborn Ents and some more specialized materials.


    Ultimately it was a fun day. I¡¯m a little disappointed by the Blastbark, but after realizing how simple it is I wasn¡¯t expecting much.


    Anyway, Good Night diary.

 Day 303

    Today I spent most of my time refining Astrie. I made good progress, though I¡¯m a little behind on my estimate.


    Other than that I spent some time with Tiddol. She is huge, I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever seen a belly stretch out that far. After a quick inspection I can tell that she will give birth within the next month.


    Pregnancy has definitely been kind to her. With the effectively endless supply of mana Mest, Caire, and Lulem have provided for her she has gotten what I assume to be all the boons and almost none of the drawbacks of pregnancy. Basically, she is incredibly beautiful, much more so than she was before, and she was already rather pretty. Her skin is basically glowing, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if I was told that it was actually glowing. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    She told me about how much she was enjoying being pregnant.she said it was much easier on her than she expected it to be, likely as a result of constantly being funneled mana. She talked about how she always feels happy and elated, like nothing can bring her down. She did complain about the frequent need to relieve herself and occasional vomiting, but those problems seem to be a result of more physical issues, like the actual location of the children in her body, so nothing I can do for her their, unfortunately.


    One more thing before I go to bed. The children are almost definitely plant variants on their original species. I am almost certain the Ent¡¯s are the cause. It makes them rather pleasant to be around, I look forward to seeing how they develop.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 304

    Par returned today. It took surprisingly long for him to organize everything at Pearlhold, though he did get it done.


    He tried to send delegates to the other nearby cities, but all were turned away. It wasn¡¯t all in vain, he did manage to gather rumors in those cities. There is a lot of talk about potential military action against the ¡®upstart savages¡¯ as we are being called. Though based on other reports their militaries are not very sophisticated, with a couple exceptions. This area has been really peaceful for quite a while, so beyond squashing banditry there really hasn¡¯t been a need for a military.


    So it is very likely that we will be attacked here in the relatively near future. Eh, whatever, I highly doubt any army that would feel threatened by us would be able to hurt us too badly. It¡¯s not there aren¡¯t more powerful creatures, it¡¯s just that any creature powerful enough to destroy us wouldn¡¯t have a reason to care about us ¡®upstart savages¡¯. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    ¡®Upstart savages¡¯, what a joke. Who do you think founded your cities, huh? If it wasn¡¯t for otherwise feral creature gaining sentience a couple hundred years ago your precious walls wouldn¡¯t even exist.


    ok, so yeah, that comment got me a little ticked off. But I mean seriously? We managed to capture a city in less than a month, we can¡¯t possibly be as savage and unrefined as they think we are. An army of savage berserkers, while effective at destroying things, is only going to destroy things.


    I should probably stop there before I go off on another passive aggressive tangent to no one in particular.


    Anyway, I worked on Astrie for most of the day. Also, it is still getting colder, and snowing. This morning the snow went halfway up my shins, it melted quickly but still, it put me in a bad mood.


    Anyway, good night diary.

 Day 305

    Today I worked on Astrie more, only about three days till it gets to the point that Drowsy clover evolved. I have no idea if it will take more or less effort to get it to evolve.


    In the morning I made some Ents, three to be specific. I then spent most of the day teaching many of them different things, basically whatever they wanted to learn that I was capable of teaching.


    It was fun, and I got to know more about the children. The trend of all of the Ents having memories of a previous life continues, excluding Lulem and Kaire.


    Now that I think about it I have no idea if he spells his name with a C or a K, I¡¯ll have to ask tomorrow.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Anyway, one of the newborns managed to remember much more of his life than most. He told me all about it. His earliest memories were working in a mine as a child slave, watching his fellows grow weak and die in the mines. One day his unusual endurance was noticed and he was taken away from the mines, taught to fight, and forced to fight for the entertainment of others. He remembers very vividly every fight he was a part of. He told me about the stories of the outside world he heard from other gladiators that were brought in, and how his greatest regret was never seeing anything outside the walls of the mine or that arena.


    He ultimately died with a spear in his lung.


    After telling me his story he told me that he wants nothing more than to go out and experience everything he didn¡¯t get to in his last life. I told him what he needs to do in order to get to do that, the same thing all of my other children have to do, get to the point where we are confident in their ability to survive and return home.


    Anyway Good Night Diary.

 Day 306

    It snowed last night, a lot. My hut was completely buried and it wasn¡¯t until this evening that it melted away enough to go outside.


    So I spent the day curled up with Talus with only the light of my Glovine. I didn¡¯t let her out of my arms all day, because it was super cold and she has a very high body temperature. Despite that, I ended up sleeping most of the day, a kind of hibernation I guess.


    When I finally got outside I immediately got something to eat. Over dinner, Mest mentioned that the snow was probably from a magical source, like an unwanted side effect of a spell gone wrong. According to him the spell that made it was horribly designed, and no amateur mage would have access to that much mana, so it has to be an experienced mage messing up on a spell that they aren¡¯t familiar with. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    A quick glance at where the ents were eating made what actually happened obvious, one of them messed up while trying to learn magic from Willow. A bit of telepathy confirmed it when the culprit confessed.


    I made sure to scold her, and told her that she needs to find a way to deal with all this snow, but ultimately she got off lightly, though based on her thoughts she was practically burning with shame. I did make sure to encourage her pursuit of magic, however, I did warn her to be more careful.


    Overall it was an alright day, if a bit cold for my tastes.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 307

    Today I worked mostly on refining Astrie, but I did experiment with it a little.


    The first thing I noticed is that Astrie has become much easier to use. Which isn¡¯t saying much as it was already pretty easy to use. Refining it isn¡¯t going to make it more powerful or anything like that, well I mean it will but it¡¯s not like I can make use of the vast majority of that power up. After all, the limit was never the Astrie but rather my own ability to endure the side effects. Though I am able to use it without specializing it better, but that has more to do with my newfound knowledge of the plant than its own refinement.


    Basically, it isn¡¯t going to become more useful until either I get much more powerful, not happening anytime soon, or it evolves.


    One interesting thing I did today was boost my walking ability with Astrie. It wasn¡¯t something I had considered doing before because it didn¡¯t seem all that useful. After a couple tests I decided to crank it up as high as I could safely go, and the results were spectacular. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    While standing in the middle of my grove I took a single step and was on the outer edge. I took another step back towards my grove and ended up on the other edge. After some experimentation I figured out that I could control exactly where I moved incredibly well, even moving through obstacles I can¡¯t normally move through, like people. Though I was unable to walk through completely solid objects, like the cliff face. What was even better was that this was as easy as taking a light stroll.


    When I gave the armor to some Goblins they had similar results, though they were actually able to go slightly farther than I was. I guess the border of my grove functions as some sort of boundary for me. They could not, however, control where they went quite as well.


    With the more refined Astrie I am now able to make simple armors like this in the time it takes me to snap my fingers, I can now essentially teleport anywhere in my grove at will. That is a power I would have obtained as my dungeon core matured, but this way I¡¯m getting it years earlier.


    This event made Mest really curious, he said that he had to know what was going on here as something like that shouldn¡¯t be possible with what I was trying to do. He told me he would try to ask around to see if anyone knew.


    I am looking forward to hearing his report.

 Day 308

    I spent all day working on refining Astrie. I am almost certain it will evolve tomorrow.


    During my downtime, I hung out with Talus, alone. We didn¡¯t do much talking but we enjoyed each other''s company.


    One of the Ent¡¯s started learning Alchemy from Tiddol today. The occasional explosion was heard all throughout the day. By the evening she was proudly showing off one of her successes, something designed to cure a sore throat. According to Tiddol, the child shows remarkable potential in alchemy, though whether that¡¯s due to talent in alchemy or sheer access to magic she isn¡¯t sure. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Oh yeah, one of Par¡¯s captains got drunk and wandered into my grove. He was hitting on Mest for a while before he started trying to make out with a tree. The tree was indifferent.


    Ultimately someone that I assume is his girlfriend or wife came and dragged him away, shouting obscenities. It was pretty funny.


    It was a pretty eventful day today. And i¡¯m getting really excited for tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 309

    Astrie evolved today. It happened quickly and without theater. One minute I was refining it, the next I felt the worlds mana flow into it and start to change it. I wasn¡¯t able to do anything to the plant while it was in the process of evolving.


    From there Mest and I experimented with the newly evolved plant. Mest proposed the name Spellwood for it, and I couldn¡¯t come up with anything better.


    The first thing that happened was Mest tried to manipulate it, with a little bit of instruction from me. He failed completely, of course. He doesn¡¯t have the right parts to manipulate plants, maybe with years of study or a lucky evolution he would be able to but both of those things are years away.


    The first thing he tried to get me to make was a small teleportation circle. I do not understand anything about teleportation and his explanations went over my head. I think he was getting a little overzealous in his approach. So we dialed it back down.


    The first thing I successfully made was a fire pit. It quickly ran out of mana. I needed to figure out how to allow it to either store a larger amount of mana or draw in ambient mana, otherwise, it would be mostly useless. Lucky for me I created the Ents, I know exactly how to do both of those things, other plant manipulators will not have that luxury. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Even knowing how to do both of those things it took me about an hour before I managed work out all of the kinks. From that I learned something important, working with Spellwood stretches my capabilities close to their limits. After it¡¯s evolution it is easily the most complex plant I have ever worked with, by several orders of magnitude, on top of that it is just innately powerful. Trying to do anything complicated with it will tax me, similar to how actually building the Ents taxed me.


    The upside of that is once I have figured out how to do something with Spellwood it becomes incredibly simple to do it again, though again, that is due to how gifted I am at plant manipulation.


    I am excited about the possibilities of this plant, and even more excited about the opportunity to stretch my magical prowess.


    Mest is a little bit disappointed though. Prior to me completing Spellwood he used his contacts to compile a list of skilled plant manipulators that he could hire. The only ones skilled enough in plant manipulation to actually work with the stuff are those like me, Sprites and Nymphs in charge of a grove or forest, they can¡¯t exactly leave, and even if they could they would be losing a major part of their ability to manipulate plants, making it pointless in the first place.


    I mean one of the Ents could definitely do it, but none of them have shown any interest in anything relating to plant manipulation. Mest knows me well enough that he won¡¯t try to force the issue with them.


    I can work with this plant, but I don¡¯t know enough about magic outside of plant manipulation for it to really be useful.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 310

    Today I decided that I need to learn the basics of other fields of Magic. I now have a plant that requires knowledge I simply don¡¯t have in order to make good use of. Spellwood is essentially limitless on paper, in practice it is heavily limited by the capabilities of its user.


    There was just one problem though, creating anything with Spellwood requires knowledge of external mana manipulation. Something I am completely talentless at. I am capable of forming a spell inside of myself and projecting it outward, losing all control after releasing it, but not manipulating mana to do anything other than manipulating plants or heal outside of my body, and even those are closer to internal mana manipulation than external.


    It would take me years to master the requisite skills to make something truly useful with Spellwood. I could try to work around that by directly manipulating Spellwood, but the indirectness and the inefficiencies that would come with that method would make it just as bad as doing it the old-fashioned way.


    The only reason I managed to build anything at all with it yesterday was brute force and careful instruction by a master, even then it took quite some time.


    Of course, all of those problems all exist if i¡¯m using mana. I have a completely different, perfectly usable form of energy available to me. Solar Energy.


    When thinking about possibly learning how to create something useful I decided to check up on how my Solar Energy farm is coming around, and I was shocked. At first, I was worried, the size of the battery had barely changed, and the leaf had completely wilted. When I finally brought myself to check the actual quantity of Solar Energy my jaw dropped. There were several magnitudes of energy more than even my highest estimate. On top of that, the production was half of what my mana production is.


    At first, I was excited, the energy was creating more of itself automatically and exponentially. Then I was terrified, the energy is obviously contained by the walls of the battery, but what happens if those walls fail? Even if all that happens is the energy gets turned into mana it would be terrible. On a small scale that reaction create sparks, if somehow a very large quantity of Solar Energy was converted to mana all at once without a driving will behind it, well no more grove then. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Acting on that instinct I spent roughly a quarter of the energy on increasing the size and the durability of the battery. Going from something that I could carry in two hands to a cube roughly as big on one side as the width of the biggest tree in my grove, which just so happens to be Willows parent.


    This caused some unintended side effects, namely the fact that the production dropped dramatically, to the point that it is hardly noticeable. After a couple quick experiments I figured out that production correlates with the density more so than quantity. Quantity seems to be a multiplier, meaning it is useless unless the density is already really high.


    So I made changes to the battery, expensive changes. I gathered up most of the Solar Energy in the center of the battery and put walls up to prevent it from leaking out. Then I designed it so that anything above a certain amount would overflow into the next section of the battery, and then rinse and repeat. In total, I made ten such basins to hold energy in, which should give me more than enough time to figure something else out.


    I then realized another flaw in my plan, everything but the center would not have enough Solar Energy to maintain itself. So I put in nine leaves, each one connecting to a different basin, and each one producing slightly more than is required to maintain functionality, just in case we get bad weather keeping it from producing enough to maintain the battery.


    In the end, I used up slightly more than half of the Solar Energy, and the production dropped by half. But with that I am significantly less worried about random explosions happening, I mean I still am worried about them, no sane creature that works closely with mages wouldn¡¯t worry about random explosions, especially if some of those mages have more power than skill, just much less from the solar energy battery.


    That took me the entire day. Mostly because I have little to no experience with using Solar Energy to create plants. Creating high quality work with Solar Energy is surprisingly easy, but when you try to use a finer brush it gets really unstable and more often than not fails, which wouldn¡¯t be an issue if I wasn¡¯t a perfectionist, I won¡¯t be satisfied with my work until I can¡¯t improve it any further.


    Solar Energy seems very brutish and unrefined to me, it takes care of the broad strokes really well but struggles with the details. Even it¡¯s violent reaction to mana shows this trait. Thinking about the two in comparison made me wonder if Mana was capable of producing itself, so I asked Mest.


    He went to his room and grabbed an old, dusty stack of papers. After handing them to me he got back to what he was doing.


    I guess I know part of what i¡¯m doing tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 311

    Today I did not touch the Solar Energy Battery, I need to let it recharge so that it¡¯s production improves. Instead, I returned to the laborious process of dissecting myself.


    While Spellwood isn¡¯t very good at boosting or suppressing magic the same way Astrie is, the fact that I have managed to refine Astrie so much means it is better at pretty much everything. Of course, the way it was refined isn¡¯t directly applicable, but enough of it is applicable that it makes a difference, plus my newfound knowledge on how Astrie works makes it easier for me to use in general. All that means the process of dissecting myself will go much quicker than before, instead of the month I was expecting before I should be done with all I can reasonably do within a week.


    Now I think I am going to finish that project before moving on to something else. I doubt I will learn enough to create a mana based creature, as I don¡¯t have nearly enough subjects and it would require external mana manipulation, but it should make my armors more effective. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Though I would love to be able to create Nonplant based life. Flesh manipulation is always just out of my reach.


    Anyway, one of my children has shown an interest in making use of Spellwood. The only downside is that they are completely ignorant about all things magic, in their previous life they didn¡¯t have any magic, just machines.


    They seem strong-willed enough, that should help immensely with creating their intention. And intention is half of all magic after all. However, that won¡¯t be enough to overcome their ignorance. Even with the Ent¡¯s frankly unfair advantages when it comes to learning magic it will still take years to be able to make full use of Spellwood. In the short term they should be able to make simple devices, however.


    One last thing before I go to sleep. Thes came to me again, saying his medicine was no longer effective, and he requested the next version. I fear that this version will be the last he can take, despite the fact that I have one after it, I just don¡¯t think any of it will have an effect on him anymore. Who knows if this will last a week or a month, though I can¡¯t see it lasting more than two months.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 312

    I realized that I forgot to read the report Mest gave me yesterday, so I read it today during my downtime.


    It was about how mana behaves at different densities, and once I managed to figure out how to read it properly it was pretty interesting, if not exactly relevant.


    The first page or so went on about why they were doing this. They took entirely too long to say that they wanted to know how the world will change as ambient mana density increases. They also explained that the units they were going to use was based on how far from ¡®today¡¯ till mana reaches that density, and based on how old his report looks ¡®today¡¯ could mean decades ago.


    One thing that was noted was that creatures born and raised in areas with high mana density are naturally a lot better at pretty much everything than they would be otherwise, but if you take it too far then once they leave that area of high-density mana then they slowly become sick and eventually die as their body no longer has enough mana to support themselves. Powerful mages seem to be exempt, likely as a result of their control of mana, though they are still weakened. We will start to notice a quantifiable difference from that within the next one hundred years.


    Around a thousand years from now, an occurrence named mana storms start to appear. The people studying it have figured out that what''s really happening is basically like what makes people sick, ambient mana randomly comes together in a shape capable of actually doing something, only on a much larger scale. The people running the experiment were worried that diseases would become more common at that point as well, they determined that unless all that mana was added all at once we should be fine, as anything alive would have gone through a thousand years of acclimation. Trolls only last to nine hundred. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    It is also around that time that they weren''t able to get anything able to live, with the exception of some particularly potent undead mages, and even they weren''t able to create anything else in there. People that entered reported feeling elated and powerful before succumbing to what the report called mana poisoning, something I believe I heard about when I read the Origin book. It was one of the problems they had with making life I believe.


    Once we get to ten thousand years something interesting happens. Many materials simply begin to dissolve, nothing to common at that point but the higher the density the more stuff begins to dissolve. For example, mundane metals begin to dissolve at year five thousand, while magical metals like mithril manage to last to six. At ten thousand years dirt starts to dissolve, though only slowly, at twelve stone. The only substance that was able to completely withstand any level of mana rot, as the researchers called it, was dungeon cores, though only the live ones. How they got a live dungeon core into a room with that much mana is beyond me.


    They weren''t able to go beyond fifteen thousand as the mages in charge of keeping the mana contained had started to get mana poisoning, despite the fact that there were hundreds of them. I guess whoever funded this experiment really want it to succeed.


    There was not a single mention of Mana creating more of itself, it was mentioned that the stuff that dissolves actually gets turned into mana. That made me wonder if what was actually causing the Solar Energy to create more of itself was it being dense enough to turn mana into solar energy, but a couple quick tests, with the assistance of my children, I was able to disprove it.


    There were two moons out tonight, one of them was pure white, the other a glowing purple. According to Mest, the purple one is one of the few Moons that they have sent mages too, and none of them returned alive. Nothing they have tried has fixed that so they kind of gave up.


    Other than that I mostly focused on dissecting myself. I managed to figure out every aspect of what makes my left-hand move today, well I mean those parts do a lot more than just that but many of them intersect in my left hand.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 313

    Today I focused on dissecting myself, I am getting so close to being done.


    Mest got that report back that was supposed to explain exactly why I was able to basically teleport when I put all of myself towards movement. Basically, as you train yourself some of the mana inside of you shapes itself in a way that makes you better at whatever it is you were doing. This is something I already knew, it is obvious enough. But that isn¡¯t the interesting part, the interesting part is what happens when you take that to the extreme.


    It allows for some interesting feats of physical ability once taken far enough, meaning I wasn¡¯t able to teleport I was just moving faster than I was capable of understanding. Similar things happen with anything I could think to boost, though few are that flashy.


    Normally the only ones able to get anything that far are true immortals, but I guess I found a loophole.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    This makes me think, how can I take advantage of this? I can¡¯t just increase mana intake as that will either not work very well or it will have the same result as if they had lived in a mana dense environment, meaning they will probably die once they stop using it after a certain point. Maybe I could increase the ability to retain mana, or increase the efficiency of its use?


    The problem with increasing their ability to retain magic is that it will become more difficult to cast spells because it will be harder to move mana outside of your body, so that isn¡¯t really an option for me or any other mage for that matter. For some of Par¡¯s soldiers on the other hand.


    I set up four separate tests. In the first one I gave a bunch of goblins a set of armor that increases their ability to retain magic and recorded their abilities, I told them to train every day. In the second I used an armor that improves efficiency, the third i did both. And the final test was just a bunch of goblins training. Hopefully, I get something interesting out of this.


    Other than that I didn¡¯t really do anything. It is starting to warm up and the snow is starting to melt. It looks like there is only about a month left in winter. Then I can start growing my grove again.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 314

    I am all but finished dissecting myself. I know exactly what each part does and how they interact with the other parts. I have no idea how to twist any of what makes me, me, together with magic, but now I can better comprehend everything that goes on in my body, and possible the bodies of other Mana based creatures.


    During my downtime I hung out with Willow, we haven¡¯t talked much in a while. It seems she has grown quite a bit in her manipulation of the weather, to the point that i¡¯m thinking that she might be more powerful than Mest, at least in terms of brute magical force. I mean, that¡¯s not anything too rare around here, many of the more magically minded Ent¡¯s are able to outmatch Mest in a magical arm wrestling contest. But I have never seen Mest lose a fight, no matter who he was up against or how many.


    When I asked Willow why she doesn¡¯t just make the snow go away she responded with ¡®It isn¡¯t my place to make the seasons change¡¯. The fear in her voice as she said that was awe-inspiring. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Willow has been alive for almost a year now, but it feels like so much longer. It¡¯s easy to forget that she is less than a year old, especially when you look at her. But more than that, she has developed a level of maturity that I don¡¯t even have, if her refusal to change the season just to be more comfortable is anything to go by. I would abuse that power so much.


    The more we talked the more I realized something, I don¡¯t really know her very well. Yeah, I¡¯ve known her for longer than she¡¯s been alive, in one form or another, but I have never really gotten to know her. I mean I have, but not enough, and people change, especially people who were effectively a blank slate not a year ago.


    She has become quiet and soft-spoken, but underneath that, I can feel an intensity in her. It is almost like she is putting on a front of calmness to hide a storm of emotion, an apt metaphor for one gifted in the ways she is. It reminds me of Thes in a way, I¡¯m not sure that''s a good thing.


    She sees Tiddol and Mest as her surrogate parents, referring to them as Mama and Papa respectively, I think it¡¯s adorable. One thing that surprised me, however, was that she sees Thes as being kind of like her strong older brother, and it seems like Thes has taken to the roll. I hope it will be a good thing for him.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 315

    Today I checked in on the mana retention/efficiency experiment, and nothing has gone horribly wrong. Though it hasn¡¯t been long enough for anything of note to have happened yet.


    After creating a couple more Ents I had nothing to do. Every project I¡¯ve been working on recently is either on hold or complete. I know I have several projects that I¡¯ve abandoned in favour of something more interesting, but I can¡¯t remember what they are at the moment. It will come to me eventually.


    The thing I desire most is the ability to manipulate flesh with ease. With the addition of Flore I can make the process painless for the ones involved, but they will almost certainly die in agony after it wears off, and the very nature of flesh manipulation prevents me from just healing it. I can¡¯t have that on my conscious.


    Honestly, the only way I can see me figuring out how to mold flesh and shape bone is using undead. But I have no idea if I have any talent for necromancy, and Necromancers are a rare enough breed that Mest can¡¯t get me in contact with one. Well I mean he probably could, but not without a steep cost, I¡¯m not willing to make him pay that price for me. Maybe one of my children will pursue the necrotic arts, not likely without a teacher. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Maybe undead aren¡¯t necessary. The problem I am having is not the actual flesh manipulation itself, that is a simple twist off of my healing magic, but figuring out if what i¡¯m creating works and where it is going wrong. One might think there is a simple solution to that, just make it run in the same way I did when creating the Ents. Just one problem with that, I have no idea how to do that short of Necromancy. I just don¡¯t have the same connection to my healing as I do to my plants, I have a great talent for plant manipulation, and only a minor one for healing, so I simply don¡¯t have the same kind of control of my healing as I do with plants.


    The solution to that might seem obvious at first, just train control. But the question is how? Just healing injuries is child''s play for me, in training it¡¯s only useful as a warm-up. I could use flesh manipulation as a way of improving my control, but again, the same problems as before.


    Ugh, I¡¯m repeating myself at this point. I just really want to get ahold of some undead, which means getting ahold of a necromancer. This is just so frustrating. Why is necromancy rarer than plant manipulation, is it really that difficult? I¡¯ll ask Mest about it tomorrow, maybe he can¡¯t get ahold of a necromancer for me, but maybe he could help another way.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 316

    Apparently, I have quite a bit of money now, enough to get a new interesting plant shipped in


    I spent a while going over my options, there were a lot. Ultimately three of them stood out to me for different reasons. The first was a type of tree known as scrywood, which is admittedly a little unimaginative. It basically does what it says it does, when the fruits are processed in a certain way and then consumed it allows you to see distant areas just by thinking about them. There is a range limitation and it has to be an area you are familiar with, but I¡¯m sure I could modify both of those parts. Overall it is definitely the most expensive plant, by about half.


    The second one is a much weaker version of the teleportation plant I saw a while back, this one is actually in my price range.


    The third plant caught my eye mostly because it was cheap. It obviously has a magical effect, but no one has any idea about what it might do. It is also common enough no one is really able to charge a lot for it, seems the person trying to sell it was trying to scam Par¡¯s representative, it didn¡¯t go well for them. So on top of it already being cheap I get the ¡®i really want to keep my head but I pissed off the wrong guy¡¯ discount. It might be totally useless for me but I don¡¯t care, it¡¯s cheap and might do something useful, plus o can get it and one of the other plants. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Neither would really help me all that much, but both seem like they would be interesting to play around with. What I ended up doing was flipping a coin to decide, heads for the scrywood tails for the teleportation. It landed on tails.


    So in the next couple days I will have a couple new plants to mess around with. Also, I won''t be able to buy any new plants for a while, or at least not anything interesting. There are a number of plants I could afford with what I have left, but nothing really caught my eye.


    Other than that I asked Mest about getting me a book about necromancy. He said that if I had asked him before his newfound fame among scholars there would have been no way for him to do that, now, however, he could get me a book by the end of the week.


    I also talked to Tiddol. She was complaining about the fact that she hasn¡¯t been able to go on a dungeon dive in forever. She¡¯s not saying she wants to go on a dive right now, she knows that the children are more important, what she¡¯s complaining about is the fact that they no longer need to. Before a dive served two purposes for their party, the first and foremost was research data for Mest, the second is for money. Recently Mest has been able to get more raw data in a week of studying my growth, or rather the growth of my dungeon core, than he could have gathered during in a month of standard diving. As for money, his order is taking care of all their costs and then some. So there simply isn¡¯t any reason for them to keep diving, they are basically retired from diving.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 317

    Today the book on Necromancy Mest ordered for me came through. I spent most of the day reading, and I managed to finish the book. The book itself is written very simply and straightforward, which makes sense as it was written to teach people necromancy. The problem is I can¡¯t wrap my head around any of it.


    When  I tried to raise a zombie, using a rat corpse, I couldn¡¯t get my mana into the right shape no matter how hard I tried. My mind just kind of went numb, as if I was struggling to even comprehend the magic I ¡¯m trying to use, which I am. Even doing it very deliberately and slowly yielded no results.


    I  asked Mest about it and he sighed in disappointment before he explained what was going on. He said that when I asked about necromancy he decided to run a minor experiment, basically to see if I could learn necromancy in the first place. See healing magic and necromancy are anathema to each other, having any kind of ability with healing magic makes it  all but impossible to use necromancy, and vice versa. Though necromancers do have access to their own necrotic healing, but that slowly turns the person it is used on undead.


    However,  Necromancy is based on dungeons, or more specifically the way dungeons create and control creatures. What happens when a necromancer makes an undead is a tiny piece of their soul, much smaller than one a dungeon uses, enters the corpse and functions as a catalyst for a soul to reincarnate into the body. This forms a connection between the necromancer and undead allowing a much cruder form of control than what a  dungeon enjoys,  because while that connection lets the necromancer physically control an undead it won¡¯t make them want to serve the necromancer. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Back to the topic at hand. Mest was wondering if my status as a dungeon would let me overcome my healing magic when it came to learning necromancy, he didn¡¯t tell me about it because he was worried my knowledge would somehow skew the results.


    That probably means none of the ents are going to be able to learn necromancy then, all of them are innately talented at healing magic because that was the way I made them. And I highly doubt anyone in Par ¡¯s tribe will have the magical capability to learn something as difficult as Necromancy using just a book, maybe if they had a proper teacher then sure, but not from a book.


    Mest won¡¯t learn because he doesn¡¯t want the side effects of constantly shaving small parts of your soul off, and Tiddol already knows a bit of healing magic. Thes and Par are magically illiterate, while both Talus and Willow rely way too much on intention to really learn necromancy. It is supposedly a very theory-heavy field of magic, intention only helps a  small bit.


    It wasn¡¯t a total waste. I did learn a bit about general magic theory, I ¡¯m not sure how exactly that will help but I¡¯m sure it will. Or at least I  hope it will.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 318

    The unknown plant came in today. I could confirm that it was magical, but nothing beyond that.


    The plant seemed to be very weak, but needlessly complicated. It is easily the most complicated plant I have ever seen, making it hard to work with.


    It was difficult to get it to produce any noticeable effects, but after completely emptying my mana pool three times I started to notice that things were getting more chaotic. Not even to an extreme degree either, it is almost like the plant manipulates luck in a certain way, not good or bad just more extreme. Though I might be completely wrong and nearly a dozen improbable events happened closely together out of sheer chance.


    Overall it seems kind of like a gag plant, maybe good for a cheap laugh but ultimately pretty pointless. And even then it isn¡¯t that cheap, most plant manipulators would be completely overwhelmed if they tried to get this plant to do anything, and any that are powerful enough would probably think it is completely useless and forget about it.


    I do think it is completely useless, and I don¡¯t think much of anything can be obtained from this plant, but I also am incredibly bored and have nothing better to do. So I am going to make this plant evolve. Hopefully, I get something interesting out of it, but in all likelihood, it will be a lot of wasted time.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Honestly, the real reason i¡¯m doing it is for the challenge, it is still the most complicated plant I have ever seen. It will probably be a challenge to properly refine it, and a challenge should be interesting at least.


    Other than messing around with the plant whose name I still need to learn I spent some time with my children. The one that aspires to be a chef prepared a dish for me, and it was one of the best things I¡¯ve eaten in quite a while. Another Ent, one from the second batch I made, after Kaire and Lulem, the one that could remember her family from a previous life has only become even more depressed. I noticed that many of the other Ents have tried to help her out, but she pushes them all away. The only ones she doesn¡¯t do that with are Kaire and Lulem, but I think she only tolerates their presence.


    I¡¯m worried about her, I want to help her but I have no idea how to do that. So instead I spent some time teaching her, about magic mostly, particularly healing. I¡¯m almost certain that the only reason I managed to get through to her was my status as her creator, both as a dungeon and the creature that created her species. However, once I got her to open up she took to healing incredibly well. I haven¡¯t had many pupils, but she is the most talented of them by far.


    This probably isn¡¯t enough to help her out of her depression, but hopefully it helps. I¡¯ve been through it, it takes time to recover, something she hasn¡¯t had enough of.


    Speaking of, I hope my parent''s souls are doing well for themselves, regardless of what body they reincarnated into.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 319

    I started refining the new plant today, I have decided to call it Luck Blossom. Progress is slow and inefficient. If I keep going at the rate I¡¯m going it will take years to refine it. Counter to that, this is possibly the best opportunity I have had since evolving to really improve my ability to manipulate plants. So naturally, I am not trying to refine it as fast as possible, but rather to improve my ability to refine it.


    I can¡¯t improve my actual method for refining plants much, at least not without a stroke of insight or months of struggle, and even then the change would be too minute to notice on anything but the largest scales. I might be patient, but I¡¯m not that patient. So instead I¡¯m going to work on other things I hadn''t thought of trying before.


    Currently what I¡¯m attempting is stretching my consciousness as far as possible, so I can be working on as many parts at the same time as I can, though currently, I can only do three. This comes with a couple drawbacks, the most immediately obvious is that my skills suffer when looking at it on an individual level, to the point where I have to go over every part multiple times.


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    The second one I noticed only after the gnawing pit that was my stomach woke me up from my trance after the sun had set, while straining my mind that much I am dead to the world, nothing short of physical pain will wake me.


    The third one is something that will go away as I get better at this method, the mental strain. I don¡¯t notice it while in my trance, but once it breaks it comes crashing down on me all at once. It doesn¡¯t quite hurt, but it is debilitating. There is no way I am going to be able to go from refining a plant with this method to fighting with any kind of haste in the near future, but that''s what I have everyone else for. Anything that could get through Mest, Thes, and the Ents would kill me regardless of my ability to fight at that moment, so I¡¯m not too worried.


    I am just going to have to make sure I get everything I want done in the mornings from now on, I don¡¯t think anyone I going to wake me unless they were desperate. I mean it¡¯s not the first time I¡¯ve gone a while being dead to the world, there was that time with the book Tiddol gave me, the one authored by an Origin. Speaking of, I wonder how far Willow is in the book our progenitor gave her.


    Now that I think about it I still have that little piece of their soul still, I kind of forgot about it because I¡¯ve gotten so used to it being there. I have thought about using it a couple times, but I have always seen a way to fix the problem at hand with a bit of effort. I¡¯m not sure I¡¯ll ever find a use for those nine questions.


    Anyway, I need to eat and go to sleep. So Good Night Diary.

 Day 320

    In the morning I made sure to eat a big breakfast and to let everyone know what was going on. I basically told them that I found a way to train my plant manipulation and that I won¡¯t be able to respond to anything around me pretty much all day. In order to wake myself up from the trance, I asked Kaire to help me out.


    I managed to get my mind to work five times in parallel today, though each one performed worse than the three from yesterday. It is still an improvement, as yesterday I simply wasn¡¯t able to do more than three at any level of quality. I wonder just how high I can push it. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Kaire woke me up right when dinner was done, though I¡¯m not sure how exactly he did so. Dinner was cooked by one of the Ents, it was made out of some kind of grazing beast, I loved the taste.


    The teleportation plant is going to come in sometime in the next two days, so that¡¯s something to look forward to.


    I¡¯m not sure if anything else interesting happened today because I wasn¡¯t there to witness it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 321

    The teleportation plant got here really early, apparently, there was some freak incident involving the plant that caused them to teleport a long way in the right direction, cutting off a day and a half off of the journey. I learned the plant is called Portweed, because Port from Teleport and weed because it grows like weeds in a certain cave that happens to have twice the amount of ambient mana compared to average. That last part is what made it so expensive to transport, it is expensive to pay enough mages to double the average ambient mana for long enough to move it someplace. Luckily I won¡¯t have to worry about that so much, this area has about one and a half times the ambient mana compared to average. Mostly due to luck, but also partially due to my grove producing mana at a faster rate than the average grove, which is my fault. Unfortunately, my core doesn¡¯t produce enough to make a sizeable impact.


    Honestly, my enthusiasm for this plant has been curbed a bit, yeah it would be interesting to see what I can do with teleportation, but I can¡¯t really get much use out of it. I can¡¯t exactly teleport out of my grove. I am much more excited about Luck Blossom, simply because of the challenge it represents.


    I spent the day working with Portweed, but tomorrow I am going to return to working with Luck Blossom.


    I figured out pretty quickly how to control where you would teleport as a result, which is apparently what alchemists use it for, making potions that let you teleport where you want. Apparently, the potions let you do that over and over until the effect wears off, and it doesn¡¯t last long. With a couple tweaks I was even able to teach a goblin volunteer how to use it, though not well, and not without consuming all of his mana. I could easily turn this into a magic item that any competent mage could use in an emergency. It is practically instant to use, but it is very mana intensive. I could make it more efficient, but it would take at least a week''s worth of work for me to be satisfied. Also, any mage that has skill in teleportation would be able to do better regardless of how well I make it, simply because they would have no need for an intermediary. A future project I guess. In the meantime I will keep an item like this on me, it might save my life.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    I wasn¡¯t able to figure out how to make it teleport something to a fixed location, but I did figure out that it is possible, just not in a day''s worth of work. The best I got today was consistently teleporting a rock in a straight line, with no control over distance, or vice versa, teleporting a rock a fixed distance with no control over direction.


    I also checked in on the training experiment I have running, starting to show results but not enough to judge anything.


    Other than that I hung out with Tiddol and Talus today. Roughly nine days till Tiddol gives birth, and she definitely looks it. I have never seen someone with such a huge gut, even goblin mothers growing a brood of a dozen don¡¯t look that big, even taking into account relative body size. Tiddol assures me that it means their healthy, they just grew a lot more in the womb than average because of her mana access.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 324

    Before I started refining I had a rather big breakfast consisting of five mana berries. That was probably my first mistake. My second was forgetting to tell someone to wake me up at a certain time.


    When I started refining I worked at pushing the number of times I can run in parallel as high as I could. I got to six, and then seven, and then it slowed down for a while, and I could feel myself thinking slower. And then, like a dam had burst I shot up to ten, and then twelve, and then sixteen, before stopping at twenty-four. I managed to push it up to twenty-five before it refused to budge any further.


    So I started improving my efficiency with each parallel. It was a slow and laborious process, that felt like it took days, and it probably did take days. In the end, I managed to get every process running at a fourth the efficiency I was capable of. The first tenth was easy, the rest really started to slow down, like I was hitting some kind of mental limit. At that point I started hoping for another breakthrough event like what happened earlier, but in hindsight, I¡¯m glad it didn¡¯t happen.


    After getting it that far I felt my stomach roar in pain, and I woke up. When i first woke up I was really confused because I couldn¡¯t see anything at all, not even the incredibly blurry vision i usually get coming out of this. After who knows how long I was able to see again. First I looked up and saw the sun high in the sky, then I looked down and saw a puddle where most of my body should be. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    It was terrifying, I tried to scream but I didn¡¯t have a mouth. After trying to scream for a moment I noticed that my body was reforming itself, with my mouth reforming faster than anything else. By the time I was able to scream I was more interested in watching the sickening sight of my body reforming itself out of a puddle of Erica sludge. It was super surreal.


    When I stopped to think about it what happened even kind of makes sense. The part of my mind that usually keeps my physical form intact stopped doing that and instead started helping me refine Luck Blossom. I mean it isn¡¯t that different from managing my body if you think about it, both processes involve repeating a very complicated series of magical patterns over and over again, and it wouldn¡¯t be an exaggeration if I said that I¡¯ve done particular pattern more than a million times already, so it is incredibly routine. It would at least explain why my body turned into a puddle at least.


    As for why no one woke me, that is Kaire¡¯s fault. He stopped anyone from disturbing me, saying that if I was really in danger the trees would know, and if the trees knew then everyone would know very quickly. And I mean he is kind of right, they are very sensitive to my well being, and there are enough creatures able to communicate with them around here that everyone would know very quickly if I was in danger. If the trees don¡¯t think I was in any real danger then I am probably fine.


    When I finally recovered enough to move around I went to make sure everyone knew I was alright. I was almost turned back into a puddle on two separate occasions, the first by a very large belly, the second by a very fiery fox. Apparently watching your best friend/girlfriend turn into a puddle is disconcerting to many people.


    Anyway, I¡¯m exhausted. I have been awake for days, and that kind of meditation is very taxing. On top of that, I haven''t used my sleep aid in days.


    So Good Night Diary.

 Day 325

    It seems I missed a bit while I was out. Two days ago there was an attack on Par¡¯s town, the one right next to my grove. They managed to push them out with minimal casualties, but it was obvious that this force was just a scouting party. They weren¡¯t able to figure out who exactly sent them, as anyone they managed to capture was killed by some magical means, but it is definitely one of the nearby cities.


    Tiddol is now half a week away from giving birth. She spends almost all of her time in bed, mostly because the weight hurts her back if she stands for too long. It¡¯s cute seeing Par dote on her, that''s not a side of him I see very often. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I didn¡¯t spend any time today on projects at the request of Talus. Instead, I spent most of the day hanging out with her. We played games and chatted and ultimately just stayed with each other. It was honestly pretty stressful for me because I couldn¡¯t stop thinking about my current project, but it was still fun.


    And that was my day. Nothing dramatic happened and everything was peaceful.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 326

    This morning Thes came to me and said that his meds have stopped working again, so I gave him the last version of it I have. He came to me when I woke up and said that stuff stopped working. We need to figure out another way to deal with his anger.


    I took the training slowly today, getting up to peak efficiency with all of the sets I¡¯m doing before moving on to the next set. I managed to get to seven at peak efficiency by the end, that is seven times the speed I started with. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    When I woke up my body was a bit droopy. It feels like it was easier this time to make the part of my mind that would ordinarily keep my body running refine the plant.


    After all the work I¡¯ve done on refining Luck Blossom I have yet to make a noticeable impact on the amount of work left to do.


    I woke up to my stomach growling and the smell of roasted meat, it was a great dinner. Other than that nothing I noticed happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 327

    Today I woke up to the sounds of explosions. They were far enough away that I wasn¡¯t in danger but it was still rather shocking. It seems some rather potent mages were part of a strike force sent against us, but Par¡¯s people found them before they could get close enough to cause any real damage. We chased them off, causing several casualties, but not without taking a couple hits ourselves. The Dragonewt saint lost an arm in the skirmish, not that it isn¡¯t something he can¡¯t heal himself, but the mere fact that someone got past the front line far enough to injure the healers is proof of their competence.


    In my training I managed to push the number of sets I can do at peak efficiency to eight. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    In the evening I heard more explosives. Apparently, that group has been trying to get close all day. Neither side has enough of an advantage to crush the other, so they have stopped trying a frontal assault and are now trying to bleed us more, they have had mixed results. We have a terrain and a numerical advantage, in addition to superior weapons and armour, but each individual soldier of theirs is much more skilled than any one of ours. We have been able to push them off every time, but we are taking casualties with every skirmish.


    I''m sure they can take care of them, I have confidence in Par.


    Other than that I didn¡¯t have much time to do anything.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 328

    The morning was mostly uneventful for me, though Par finally managed to drive off the invaders. He pulled a gambit that resulted in killing half of their remaining mages, at that point they had to retreat.


    During my meditation I didn¡¯t make significant progress, I did make progress just nothing I can represent in numbers.


    The evening was very interesting for one reason; Tiddol went into labour. I tried to help her out any way that I could, but there wasn¡¯t much I could do to help. She didn¡¯t need much in the way of healing, and what little there was to heal would be counterproductive to heal anyway. She was in a lot of pain at first, but after I gave her a small amount of a long-lasting variant of Flore her pain dropped sharply. At that point there wasn¡¯t much I could do, so I tried just being nearby, out of the way of the people that could actually help, mostly Mest and, to my surprise, Talus. Apparently, she has some experience delivering babies by sheer happenstance. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Unfortunately, the person in the group that has the most experience delivering babies was also the one pushing them out of her body, which admittedly is a very necessary step in the whole birthing thing. Apparently random groups of people being asked to help deliver a child is a relatively common occurrence? Though it might have to do with the groups more scholarly connections in addition to her usually being the generalist of the group.


    As for Mest, he has more theoretical knowledge.


    Apparently, there has been a complication with the process, nothing dangerous considering the magical support Tiddol is getting, but still time-consuming. It won''t be over until the morning.


    So Good Night Diary.

 Day 329

    The children were born today, shortly before I woke up. There was a male and a female, the female was a Hobgoblin and the male was a Human, and both of them were very obviously variants. I don¡¯t think normal humans are born with green hair or with inborn plant shaping powers, and I highly doubt hobgoblins are able to control ambient mana in their sleep.


    When I found them Tiddol was nursing her daughter. The tree they were laying against had started to wrap its roots protectively around them, almost like a cacoon. There weren''t many people the tree let get to them, and the forest as a whole seemed very protective of the children, particularly the human child. The people they let see the children included myself, Par, the ents, Whisperer, and Tiddol of course. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    They finally named them too. Umi is the Female hobgoblin while Ednar is the male human.


    I was shooed away after a little while so Tiddol could sleep.


    I decided to work on refining my plant refining skills after that. After a day¡¯s work I managed to get myself working in parallel nine times at peak efficiency, though I am slowing down slightly I how quickly I improve. I think I might be getting to a big threshold or something like that here soon.


    In the evening when I stopped meditating Tiddol had already gone to sleep for the night with the children, which was disappointing but it¡¯s not like I can do much about it. So after getting something to eat I decided to go to sleep myself.


    Anyway, Good Night diary.

 Day 330

    This morning I saw Talus holding one of the children. She was wearing my favourite dress of hers and the light hit her in just the right way, she was stunningly beautiful in that moment. Not that she isn''t normally, but then even more so. I just watched for a couple minutes, smiling.


    On the more practical side of things I didn¡¯t make any quantifiable progress, but I did make progress.


    In the evening I got a chance to hold both of the children, and they seemed to like me a lot. Talus was teasing me about how I couldn¡¯t stop gushing over them.


    While I was holding Ednar a rather large insect landed on his face, which made him freak out, a lot. Immediately a patch of Astrie basically flung itself onto the child, wrapping him up in armour, one of my designs. The shock of the situation was greatly diminished by seeing the young boy wearing a sundress. After a quick laugh, I reformed it to something more fitting for a baby.


    The mere presence of the armour seemed to comfort the child, and removing it made him more nervous and skittish. That is something I understand perfectly, I get the same way.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    It will be two weeks before Umi is able to walk around, four before she will be able to speak. Of course, that is assuming she was a normal hobgoblin, she is magically gifted and she might have memories of a previous life on top of that. Every other magically gifted creature born in my grove has recently.


    As for Ednar, we have no idea. Humans are one of the last creatures created by Origin, and in fact have only been around for about a decade. It seems to take around twenty years to be fully developed, but unlike most creatures they are able to do things like walk, talk, breed, and even actively use magic long before then, and that last one is no easy feat. according to many people studying them, whose reports Mest has gathered since Tiddol¡¯s evolution, they develop much faster than creatures of a similar intelligence, like elves and dwarves, though they don¡¯t live quite as long as them. They are overall weaker than either the Dwarves or the Elves by an order of magnitude, in fact, they are closer in overall strength to more feral creatures than to other similarly intelligent creatures.


    Their success, limited by their youth as a species though it may be, seems to come from their natural instinct to socialize amongst themselves, something almost completely unheard of. Most civilizations are created by intelligent creatures realizing that having a civilization would make everything better for pretty much everyone, or at least themselves, and working to subdue any instinct saying otherwise. Even goblins tribes follow this, with the brightest goblin usually leading the dumber ones. Humans don¡¯t have those instincts to suppress, quite the opposite in fact. They naturally join up with each other and help each other out, even when objectively it would be better to work on your own to do some kind of sabotage. According to the Origin that made them the intelligence and the tool making were accidents that came as a result of that idea, which was later adopted into the final ¡®mold¡¯ for humans by the part of the world that governs evolution.


    Anyway, enough of that tangent. Good Night Diary.

 Day 331

    If anything really noteworthy happened today i wasn¡¯t there to see it.


    I did, however, make great progress in improving my skills. I did hit a wall in my development pretty early in the day, but I managed to power through it. After that i hit a streak of, i think the phrase is low hanging fruit? Yeah that sounds right. After pushing myself to running in parallel ten times i managed to push myself farther and got to eleven, then twelve, and finally thirteen, all of them at peak efficiency. And despite all that, I still have not made a noticeable dent in the work that i still need to do to refine this plant.


    Normally i would be a little discouraged by that, normally i would be trying to make it evolve. Instead, the fact that i haven¡¯t made a dent in the plant is very reassuring. If anything it makes me more excited to work with it. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    And yet despite the amount of work I have done, at least when you compare it to other plants like Astrie, I know almost nothing about what the plant does. If i had refinined Astrie as quickly as I am refining Luck Blossom then i would have gotten it to evolve in a week. On top of that the act of refining a plant tells me a lot more about it¡¯s functions that anything else will.


    And yet, beyond its most obvious function, I haven¡¯t figured anything out. Much less why the plant is so complicated to begin with. Well, whatever, that knowledge will come with time.


    Besides, its most obvious function of, i actually don¡¯t have a name for that yet, let''s go with increasing chaos. That seems as fitting as anything else would be. Anyway, it¡¯s basic function of increasing chaos is entertaining enough on its own.


    The evening was calm and cold, but not snowy. I am fine with the cold, at least relative to snow. Besides, the cold gives me an excuse to curl up with Talus after a day¡¯s worth of hard work, not that i needed one. This is much more satisfying than when she made me ignore my work for a day and spend time with her, i definitely prefer this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 332

    Today the group that was harassing us before came back, with more soldiers. This time Par had to get involved personally, but we are still driving them off. Luckily our casualties have been kept to a minimum, well, not so much luck as it is properly trained healers. Though more could probably be saved if we put the best healers we have on the field, but they are too valuable to risk like that.


    At least we got the drop on them this time, Par managed to take out their best mage with the opening moves. Apparently, he had wandered away to relieve himself while they were setting up camp.


    As for my refining practice, I managed to get up to fourteen. I think I can get up to around twenty before I get to a wall in my progression, or at least if it is every ten like I think it is that is what will happen. I could be completely wrong though.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Somewhat good news, I have started to notice a dent in the amount of work left to do on this plant, not a big one but still. It means that refining this plant isn¡¯t a quest in futility, which also means that I can¡¯t keep practising on it forever. Hopefully, I am satisfied with the results once I finish refining the plant, but knowing me I doubt that will be the case. If anything I will be bitter over the fact that my best practice material is gone.


    In the evening everyone was trying to figure out ways to completely wipe that group out. Earlier they had come to the agreement that unless they kill all of them they will just flee and come back with more soldiers, and do that again and again until we are wiped out. They did manage to find out that this was an army made up of soldiers from all the nearby city-states. They aren¡¯t really putting their all into it, the reasons why they weren¡¯t kind of goes over my head.


    Anyway, I don¡¯t have any knowledge about that kind of thing so I left it to the others.


    After that, I just went to sleep.

 Day 333

    Some of the Ents have joined Par¡¯s efforts in pushing back the invaders. It actually worked out really well, they weren''t able to do much damage, but they were able to prevent the enemy mages from doing too much damage in return. This allowed the others a better chance to do some damage while denying the enemies the same.


    I made it up to fifteen today with my refining, and it hasn¡¯t really started to slow down again.


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    Apparently some of the Ents i made have left on their journeys, and i missed it because i was meditating through multiple days. The ones that came to me before and asked permission to explore the world are gone, and i have no idea when they will come back, if they will come back. I can¡¯t think like that, they will come back home sooner or latter. I am proud that they are able to strike it out on their own, but i am also terrified that they will somehow get lost and never return home. The thing i¡¯m most disappointed by is the fact that i missed their departure, they even waited a day for me to wake up, but i didn¡¯t. Yeah there are other groups striking out on their own, and i can see them off, but that doesn¡¯t change the fact that I missed sending off the first of my children to leave.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 334

    Today Par enacted his plan for wiping out the invading strikeforce. They lured them to a location with a bunch of thick, dense grasses that they had prepared earlier. The area was absolutely riddled with traps, and after stepping foot in that area they were surrounded. They couldn¡¯t move or risk setting off a trap, and they couldn¡¯t stay still or they would definitely die to magic or an arrow. They tried to flee almost immediately, but the ents and many of Whisperers followers prevented them from doing that by tying their legs up with the grass. A couple of the most powerful mages did escape, simply because they could teleport, but the rest were slaughtered.


    Unfortunately they were unable to take prisoners, the area had too many traps to safely navigate, especially with a prisoner. So they weren''t able to question them, but there were fewer survivors than fingers on my hand, so a pretty solid win nonetheless.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Nothing to say about refining except the fact that I got up to sixteen today.


    In the evening there was a minor celebration, nothing too fancy just a barbeque with some nice spices bought from Pearlhold.


    During the celebration Par remarked that it was odd that Pearlhold hadn¡¯t been targeted by a serious reclamation force. Noone is quite sure why that is, though the general consensus was that there is some politics going on that none of us know about.


    After the celebration i spent time with Talus, listening to her talk about pretty much everything from childhood crushes to her latest improvement with fire. After a while we retired to our bed.

 Day 335

    This morning another group of Ents left. This one was a group of four, the chef went with them. He ended up being named Bossmer, and I am going to miss his cooking. After some goodbyes, they were on their way.


    My progress seems to be speeding up, if anything. I reached seventeen today and show no signs of slowing down. And it isn¡¯t like my body is becoming goopy every time either, well it is, just not bad. If anything that is getting better too, not worse like I thought it would. I guess getting over that first hump made everything much easier than I thought it would.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    In the evening I hung out with Tiddol and her kids. Over the past couple days they have grown a lot, with Umi doubling her size and Ednar doing half that. It really is quite impressive. If they keep growing like this they will get bigger than I am in a matter of months, of course, I doubt they will but it can be fun to imagine. It would be terrifying, seeing a mountain-sized baby


    Ednar has started to try to communicate, but he can only do it in the same telepathic way that plants do. It seems Lulem taught him how to do that, though he is still limited by simple thoughts and ideas, like emotions and sensations. I made sure to encourage him.


    After that, not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 336

    This morning we had a visitor from Pearlhold, a representative from a merchant family. We talked business, particularly the business of his family taking charge of selling many of my plants much farther than Par¡¯s tribe possibly could. I honestly don¡¯t see a problem with it, I don¡¯t know a lot about money but I do know that selling my stuff to a lot more people can only be a good thing, right? It took a couple hours to hash out the details, but apparently, he has already had talks with Par before meeting with me. Par¡¯s people will take care of delivering the goods to the merchants, so I just have to hand them off to Par when they are done. Overall I think it will be beneficial to my ability to acquire new plants. I don¡¯t think I got the best deal possible, but it is good enough.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    After that was over with I started working on refining luck blossom. And despite the reduced amount of time I had to work with today, I managed to get to working eighteen times in parallel.


    In the evening I worked on making the plants that are supposed to be the best sellers. I am trying to build up a stock of them, though I don¡¯t exactly understand why. As for the plant¡¯s themselves, I made them extra durable so that they can handle rougher treatment than normal last longer. By request, I also got started designing a box that can carry the plants in while providing them everything they need to stay fresh, because I am definitely not going to sell any that are capable of reproduction. I should be done with the box by tomorrow, It is surprisingly complicated.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 337

    This morning I finished up the box. The top of the box was made out of Portweed, after messing around with it I figured out that portweed wasn¡¯t just teleportation, it was manipulating space. So I designed it to allow light from the various suns to go through the top without making the top clear. The bottom of the box was made out of whitefoot, and I had several tendrils of wood sticking up throughout the dirt in the bottom quarter of the box. I designed the whitefoot so that it gathers up ambient mana and uses that to keep the plants nice and healthy. The sides were made out of spellwood, and I had one of the Ents help me design a climate control system. Yes, I can make the plants very resistant to high or low temperatures, but the key word there is or. For the most part, the parts that make the plant resistant to one extreme interfere with the parts that make it resistant to the other. Specifically what the spellwood does is make the insides stable, and water the plants inside by conjuring water and letting it drip down the inside walls. I had White foot tendrils throughout the walls to repair any water damage.


    After I was done designing it I had one of my children make a bunch of them for the merchants. After giving the merchants instructions on how to care for their cargo, basically don¡¯t shake it around too much and let them have at least a minute of sunlight a day. The plants I am sending won¡¯t grow very quickly as a result of me cutting down their need for sunlight and water, and they stop growing entirely once the useful part is removed. They will never reproduce and I made it needlessly complicated just to prevent any plant manipulators of lesser skill from copying them. Yeah, it makes it harder to produce, but it is barely noticeable for me, besides, that''s the whole point. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    That whole process took about an hour.


    I spent almost the entire day after that refining my skills, and I didn¡¯t get up till a bit after my bedtime. That kind of sucked because I missed Thes¡¯s cooking, but I did manage to get two more parallels to peak efficiency, bringing me up to twenty total. Not only that but I have noticed that my body is just all around better recently, stronger, faster, more flexible, etc. And in a pretty noticeable way too, like if before I could pick up five rock of a certain size now I can pick up six of them.


    I mean it makes sense if you stop to think about it for a second. A large chunk of my mind is in charge of maintaining my body, which is effectively casting the same spell over and over again, constantly, only it¡¯s more like hundreds of different, tiny spells that interact with each other to form me, but whatever. Anyway, What I am doing with refining my plant refining skill is basically just that, casting the same spell over and over again, or rather the same couple dozen spells over and over again.


    Of course, I could be completely wrong and the two things aren''t connected at all, but somehow I doubt that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 338

    Today I made breakfast for everyone. I¡¯m not sure why I did it, and I certainly could have done a better job, but it was fun. And even if it wasn¡¯t seeing Talus¡¯s face when I woke her up with food was amazing. Shortly after that, I got to work.


    And I continued to improve the speed at which I am improving. By the end of the day, I managed to get to twenty-two time in parallel. On top of that I have made a decent dent in the work I have left to do, if my predictions are correct, which they usually aren¡¯t, I should be done refining this plant in a little over a month.


    And the chaos being caused by these plants is getting slightly more pronounced. At first I sceptical about their actual effects but as time goes on I am becoming more and more sure that I was correct about their effects. After waking up from my meditative trance I saw someone slip and fall, only to save the life of someone else, by slamming into their back making them cough up a rather sharp bone, not the type of thing I can heal. I can remove foreign objects from someone¡¯s body, but not without causing further damage, damage that would have likely killed the man. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    The person that fell hit their head and was otherwise pretty banged up, but the other guy was just fine.


    I later learned that something similar had happened three times this week.


    After that it was a slow day, I mostly spent my time playing with Tiddol¡¯s kids.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 339

    This morning I met with some prominent people from Par¡¯s village. Three of them to be exact. The first one was Par¡¯s second in military matters, or at least that¡¯s how he introduced himself. He would be a very plain looking hobgoblin if not for all of his scars. I offered to fix those for him, but he rejected my offer. One of the first things I noticed about him, excluding his appearance, was that he took his job very seriously, the second thing I noticed was that he doesn¡¯t have some unnaturally high opinion about me like a lot of the others in Par¡¯s village. Overall I enjoyed talking to him.


    The second was Whisperer, no surprise he became one of the most important people in the village. Talking to him has always unnerved me, and I think I figured out why. He has deluded himself into thinking I am much greater than I actually am, and he idolizes me for it. That alone would be bad enough, but he also convinced other people to do that same. As for the exact reason talking to him gives me the creeps, it is due to the way he talks, every other sentence is a compliment to me and he has that weird nasally voice that many hobgoblins have, only he has it worse than anyone else I¡¯ve talked to. His followers aren¡¯t too bad to talk to, though they tend to compliment me a little more than I am comfortable with. Also I think he tried to set me up with a couple of his female followers at one point, but that is better left forgotten.


    The third person was someone I had never met before. He was an Elf, specifically a night elf. Apparently he moved here a while ago, and though he didn¡¯t go into detail about why it is pretty obvious he was being hunted for some reason. Par recruited him for help with subterfuge type stuff, and is incredibly good at it, though it was pretty obvious that the recruitment was not voluntary. Apparently the elf is incredibly terrified of Par, as a result he avoided my grove thinking that in order for me to control him I had to be incredibly cruel myself, which I think is hilarious. Though I have to wonder what Par did to terrify this poor elf so much.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Overall that took about two hours, so I spent the rest of the day, or at least up until dinner, improving my skills. In the end I managed to get up to twenty-three, almost to twenty-four perfect.


    Dinner was a type of fish that lives in a large body of water a long ways away from here called the ocean. Never seen it before but it sounds pretty. The river fish we pull up around here isn''t all that great, but this stuff was amazing. As for how it got here, Mest arranged it to get teleported to Pearlhold the other day, apparently, the fish remind him of home.


    Oh yeah, one last thing. We finally got word about Tiddol¡¯s parents and when they will arrive. One of the teleportation circles stopped working for some reason and they had to wait a while to get it repaired, a surprisingly common occurrence, especially in cities without a dedicated mage to fix that kind of thing. Plus our recent acquisition of Pearlhold definitely did not speed up the process. After all those delays they should be here within the next three days, faster if they get lucky and someone in front of them gets sick or something.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 340

    This morning was slow, though it was confirmed that Tiddol parents entered Pearlhold last night. Apparently this last teleport left her father with a serious case of teleportation sickness, so they elected to spend today in Pearlhold for the day. We should see them tomorrow morning, however.


    During my meditation I managed to push myself up to working twenty-seven times in parallel. On top of that, I am cutting through the work that is left to be done on the plant with a worrying speed. At this point I don¡¯t know when it will be able to trigger an evolution, though it will almost certainly happen within the week. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    In the evening I saw Umi walking around. The little hobgoblin looked unsteady on her legs and fell down a lot, it was cute, watching her struggle to get back up every time. What was decidedly less cute was Ednar crying. The babies are cute, but I glad I¡¯m not their mother.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 341

    This morning Tiddol¡¯s parents showed up. Seeing how short they were kind of shocked me, I had forgotten that Tiddol was born a Gnome. They seemed a little freaked out about everything, Tiddol was saying that it is due to culture shock, which she had to explain to me. They are from halfway around the world, their culture doesn¡¯t resemble ours in the slightest. They were also very obviously uncomfortable around Par, they kept glancing at his sword and shying away from him. On the other hand, they were very friendly with Mest, which makes sense because they have met before. Thes was nowhere to be found.


    When they were introduced to me they asked me about my various projects, and even asked me to show a couple of them off, I obliged them. Tiddol has been telling them about me it seems. As for their impression of me, the father was obviously impressed with me, while the mother was a bit cautious. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    They are doting grandparents, or at least if a couple of minutes is enough to prove anything. Ednar looked a little concerned about being held by his grampa and grandma, but quickly got used to it, while Umi was constantly struggling to get free so she can try to run around


    Meeting with them didn¡¯t take that much time, so I was still left with plenty of time to work on refining. I managed to get up to running my spells thirty at a time.


    In the evening I saw Umi chasing her grandfather around the grove. He was making a faux effort to keep away from her, only to let her catch him every once in a while. When she did catch him she would fall over laughing and the game would restart. It was adorable. It seems Umi is going to grow up big and strong. I wonder when she will be able to talk? I know Ednar is being taught by Lulem and Kaire, as they have at least one way to communicate, but Umi doesn¡¯t have that advantage.


    Other than that, not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 342

    This morning I talked to Tiddol parents again. I finally managed to learn their names too, the mother is Abbly and the father is Tilik. I told them about how I know Tiddol and Par, as well as making sure to reassure them about Par. I also learned a lot about where they are from. Apparently there aren¡¯t any Goblins, or Hobgoblins for that matter, on the other side of the world, instead, the dominant bottom feeder is a type of wolf. The only things they knew about Hobgoblins beforehand was that they were dull, violent creatures that almost never obtained sentience. Which explains their apprehension around Par. And I mean it¡¯s not like they¡¯re wrong, Hobgoblins, while smarter than goblins, are usually rather dull, Par happens to be an exception there with his sentience, the violence part I¡¯m not too sure about. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    After talking with them I started my meditation. I managed to get thirty-four thoughts running in parallel before the end of the day. On top of that, I am now a fourth of the way to making this plant evolve.


    In the evening I hung out with Kaire and Lulem. We didn¡¯t really do anything productive, but it was fun to hang out with my two eldest.


    On that note, Good Night Diary.

 Day 343

    This morning I noticed that Thes was missing. He left for a couple days right before Tiddol¡¯s parents got in. Apparently, they don¡¯t really like him, and he knows it. Something to do with him getting triggered in a destructive, if not very dangerous, way when they first met.


    Figuring that out took almost my entire morning, the rest was consumed by breakfast.


    For my practice, I managed to get up to forty-eight.


    In the evening Tiddol invited me to play a board game, the same one we played around our birthdays. The people that played were Tiddol plus parents, Talus, Three of my Ents, Myself, and a random goblin that happened to be walking by at the time. Apparently, his name is Mick.


    Mick dominated for the entire match, this game is basically all he does with his time. He ended up losing at the end when the rest of us decided to go for a diplomatic ending in order to take him down. No one really won, but Mick lost. Talus had the biggest army, I had the largest city, Tiddol had the most money, and one of the Ents ended up with the largest land controlled. No one really pulled ahead with magic development, except Mick, but he lost. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Ultimately it was really fun. It is amazing how the creator of the game incorporated illusions and other magic I don¡¯t know the name of to make it run smoothly and just work. I wonder if someone could mimic that for something more practical using my spellwood. I probably can¡¯t, I don¡¯t have the right skills for it, maybe one of the ents can.


    One last thing before I go to bed, the first day of spring is coming up here within the next couple days. I will finally be able to start expanding my grove again, not that I can¡¯t during the winter, it just feels wrong. I have grown a lot this winter, more than at any other time in my life, I wonder how that will affect my grove¡¯s growth.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 344

    There wasn¡¯t really anything pressing in the morning so I got right into my practice.


    Luck Blossom will evolve tomorrow. As an unintended side effect of increasing the number of times I can use my refining spells at once I have learned a lot more about said spells, enough to refine them beyond what I previously thought was possible. I noticed this in the morning and decided to spend a bit of time refining the spells themselves, and the difference was night and day. It wasn¡¯t any major change, just a bunch of minor ones to improve things like efficiency and to make them mesh better when used in parallel. After making all of the minor improvements I could find I had more than doubled my refinement speed. And considering my best is now at running the spell fifty times in parallel I am now at one hundred times the speed of my starting point.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    I thought I would get more and more anxious as the evolution of Luck Blossom approached, but I am just getting excited. What will a plant that apparently causes pure chaos do after it evolves? I can¡¯t wait to find out.


    I ended up going way later than I intended to, so I didn¡¯t get much of a chance to do anything before going to sleep.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 346

    Before starting my meditation I talked to one of the Ents. She was the one who became depressed when they realized they will never return to the life they had before this one, the child of mine I personally taught the art of healing. She has since been named Mary, and she is an incredibly talented healer, already surpassing myself when I am not using a specialized armor. Of course, most of that is raw talent and sheer mana production, I am still much more skilled.


    We talked for a while and I loaned her one of the books I used when I got my start with healing and told her to come back when she finishes it. Next, I think I will ask Tiddol to loan her the origin book, nothing in it is explicitly about healing, but there is a lot of useful information in it, like diagrams and the reason different parts are designed the way they are.


    As for what we talked about, it was mostly about her future. She wants to perfect healing magic, or at least get as close to perfecting it as she can. She plans on staying here long enough to learn everything she can about healing from me and anyone else willing to teach her before striking out with another group of my children to pursue her dream. Currently, she is learning under the Dragonewt Saint, whose name I have just learned to be Bug Hornmark, seriously, no one ever tells me names and it is really awkward to just ask for them in a situation where I should already know. Anyway, I approve, Bug is a very competent healer, second only to myself in the local area, with her raw talent she should be able to understand everything he has to teach very quickly.


    Now we get to the reason this is Day 346 instead of Day 345. I spent too long refining Luck Blossom and no one could wake me up, or at least everyone stopped short of causing physical pain to wake me. The last stretch for evolving it was more difficult than I thought it would be, but ultimately I finished it rather quickly. I then observed it while it was evolving, and it really only made the plant more complicated, but in a way that was easy for me to refine. If I had made it evolve using almost any method other than complete systematic refinement it would have been impossible for me to do anything with it, like trying to comb out incredibly knotted hair, at one point you are better off cutting it off.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Luckily for me, I did use that method, and as such refining the new parts was easy, triggering a second evolution. At this point I am absolutely convinced that this plant was intentionally designed by a power much greater than myself, likely a true immortal or an ancient dungeon, nothing else would be capable of perfectly dictating exactly how a creature evolves in the way this plant very obviously was. The second evolution, like the first, only really served to make the plant more complicated in the same way, and again, I managed to quickly make it evolve.


    It is obvious that in the wild each of these evolutions would take at least a couple decades, with each one taking longer than the last. Why any of this exists I have no idea, but I think I will find out soon.


    I ended up spending the rest of yesterday and most of today refining this plant, making it evolve over and over again simply because I could and it was situated perfectly for me to do so. I¡¯m assuming the designer either had someone in my particular situation in mind when they designed the plant, or I found an exploit they hadn''t thought of, as there is no way I wouldn¡¯t be able to pull it off without my status as the lord of the grove, my dungeon core, and my abilities as a plant manipulator combined. I quickly realized Using my dungeon core I was somehow delaying the plants evolution, allowing me to perfect it first, which no doubt made everything else easier, both my dungeon core and my status as the lord of the grove allowed me some level of control over the actual evolution process of the plant, making it possible to direct it into a form that is easier to refine, my status as lord also helped make the plant much more responsive to any changes I make while my abilities as a plant manipulator are there for the raw muscle behind the operation.


    In the end, I lost track of the number of evolutions it went through, but it isn¡¯t like that matters anymore as all traces of the plant are gone, completely disappeared. In its place I felt changed somehow, it is difficult to describe but I feel more in control, over what I can¡¯t say. On top of that, there was a strange metallic cube that had appeared in my hands as if by magic, but there was no mana or solar energy involved, so it can¡¯t be any form of magic I am familiar with.


    Looking at it I know exactly what it is and how to open it, almost instinctively. It is some kind of letter and I do not yet have the resources to open it, tomorrow perhaps.


    One final note before I go to bed. Today is the first day of spring.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 347

    Today was an exciting day.


    In the morning I gathered the resources to open the letter. It took me a bit of trial and error but I eventually managed to figure it out. The hard part was not the actual getting ahold of it, but rather keeping it once I have grabbed hold of it. Apparently, whatever change happened yesterday it gave me a small amount of control over this resource, whatever it is.


    It was surprisingly difficult to get ahold of enough of this resource to actually open the letter, and even then I don¡¯t think I actually got enough and instead was helped out somehow.


    When I finally opened the ¡®letter¡¯ it spoke into my mind, using the same kind of telepathy I use to communicate with plants or with the Ents.


    First, it described my newfound ability. The person that made the letter described it as Fate. it then went on to say that anything that affects you and isn¡¯t completely controlled by you is governed by your own Fate. it described how every soul had a balance of Fate and when bad things outside of your control happen you build up fate, and vice versa, on top of that Fate likes to maintain a balance of zero, so it is difficult to hold onto it. The ability I was granted was the power to do the opposite, to unbalance Fate causing something to happen to justify the new balance as well as to prevent it from balancing itself. It didn¡¯t elaborate on how to actually do that.


    It then described the why. In short, because an incredibly powerful an alien creature decided it would be interesting to grant a small part of its power to a random person on this planet. The plant was designed so that it would be all but impossible to force it to evolve unless it was already close, and even when someone did manage to make it evolve it would be basically reset to its base form, only more complicated. Overall it should have taken at least a millennium to get to the point where someone could randomly stumble across a soon to evolve version of the final form and then, through an act of Fate, gain the ability to manipulate Fate. it then congratulated me for being that person.


    And then the voice went quiet for a couple seconds before popping up again, this part was definitely added in after I finished making Luck Blossom evolve because the voice was directly talking to me. It sounded like it was torn between anger and amusement. The voice, which did not name itself and was of an unidentifiable gender, said ¡®Or that was what was supposed to happen, but then you came along and messed everything up. I guess it is really my fault for not trying to figure out every loophole present in your world. But you are impressive, almost entirely under your own power you managed to achieve the power of Fate manipulation, something that would be truly outstanding if not for one small detail. You are the least talented Fate manipulator I have ever seen. I guess I owe you some advice at least, it would be boring if you died for a stupid reason.¡¯If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Then the voice listed off some tips to using Fate well, stuff like cause a bunch of minor misfortunes to yourself so you can cash in on all the positive fate you accumulate with no risk, and if you want to kill someone with Fate don¡¯t cause a major tragedy to them, they will definitely remember everything in their next life and have access to the tools required for revenge, instead cause something positive to happen to them and watch as their Fate balances itself very quickly. It then signed out saying ¡®be entertaining. Also, you will probably never hear from me again, no more help, if you die without enough stored Fate to keep your powers then that''s it, game over.¡¯.


    After some experimenting with it I realized that he¡¯s right, I am terrible at this. I can barely perceive my own Fate, much less someone else''s. On top of that trying to get my own Fate to budge was a painful mental exercise, and even then I wasn¡¯t moving it enough to cause anything noticeable. Though keeping ahold of the Fate I have gathered got easier as I got used to it.


    But that is to be expected, I have had this power for less than a day. I will get better in time. Besides, that wasn¡¯t even the part of the day I was most interested in.


    It had been too long since I have made my Grove grow. In a display of sheer magical force I made tree after tree sprout from the ground and grow to full size, expanding my grove outwards around and inside of Par¡¯s village, making sure not to damage or get in the way of anything important of course.


    By the end of it I was panting and my mana was completely exhausted, even the stuff I had stored in my crown. But my grove was a tenth more than it was before, and I got to show off more than a little. It had taken a little less than half an hour, and I was able to do it once more before I felt sore, I don¡¯t spend that much mana that quickly very often. It was honestly pretty slow, but I¡¯m only saying that because there was a ton of wasted mana.


    For the rest of the day, I spent time with Talus, much to her pleasure. She was complaining about how I didn¡¯t have any time for her recently, which isn¡¯t true, I spent many of my mornings and afternoons with her while I was refining Luck Blossom.


    Some other stuff happened but nothing was nearly as interesting as the other stuff I mentioned today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 348

    Today I focused on expanding my Grove, it is spring after all, the season of new growth.


    I used the same method I used yesterday when growing, basicly spending all my mana as fast as possible in the growing process. Less because of the stunning results and more because it gives me something to work on, namly making the process more efficient. There was the added side benefit of it freeing up most of my time and the downside of leaving me incapable of all but the most routine and non intensive spells after a couple passes. Well not completely incapable, it just makes it rather uncomfortable, like trying to start running when your legs are already sore.


    I also checked up on my Solar Energy battery, something i should have done earlier. The first and second basins were completely full and had started to overflow into the third basin. I took a chunk of the Solar Energy out of the Third basin and marked exactly how much was left, so i know how much I can use in a day without reducing production.


    I then took the solar energy i had grabbed and started experimenting with it. I haven¡¯t really managed to do much with it besides figuring out how to gather and store it. I just have never had so much that I was willing to mess around with at any given time, and I took just a small fraction of what was in the third basin. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Ultimately it was too little to do much with it, but it was still something.


    Shortly after that I found Tilik asleep nearby the Dead Tulips, apparently he has been coming to this area because no one ever comes here, he wanted a quiet place to read. Until today it had been safe, Dead Tulips don¡¯t flower in the winter, but they decided to flower early this spring, likely because of how excited I am for spring. The end result was that the unsuspecting Halfling was knocked unconscious and I had to rescue him.


    Once he woke up I reprimanded him, if there is a place no one goes and there are mages involved, hanging out in that area could be a death sentence. That should be common sense.


    After that Tiddol¡¯s parents announced that they will be leaving the day after tomorrow, they have to get home and it is a very long trip, and it is only going to get worse in the near future.


    After that it was dinner and game night, nothing else really worth mentioning.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 349

    Today I told Mest about my newfound power. He had never heard of anything like it and asked me if I could recreate the event that led to me gaining it. I definitely can, super easily, in fact, assuming I have access to the plant that triggered it, but there is no more of that plant in my grove, and I told him as much.


    He immediately went off to send some messages to some of his colleagues, unfortunately all of them were unable to find any Luck Blossom before the end of the day, even the one that was studying the plant. Apparently all of it is simply gone, like it was plucked out of existence all of a sudden. Which would make sense, though the voice that told me about my power didn¡¯t explicitly state it, it did heavily imply that there was only going to be one.


    I¡¯m not too worried about that though.


    I did make sure to practice Fate manipulation in the way that the voice recommended I do it. Basically what I do is I cause minor misfortunes on myself on a regularly while preventing it from equalizing itself. I got pelted by rocks a couple times and at one point tripped a little while drinking some water at the perfect time for it to splash me in the face, nothing really painful or dangerous, mostly just annoying really. While that happens I build up Fate bit by bit until I either want to use it or can¡¯t prevent it from normalizing any more, and then something good will happen to me. I¡¯m hoping I can keep it up for several days and get something really good. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    I spent most of my mana growing trees, though I didn¡¯t go so quickly as to make myself sore I did go pretty fast. I want to try to train myself to be able to spend large amounts of mana at a moments notice just in case I need to for whatever reason.


    I spent most of my time refining my sleep aid, which is still just a drowsy clover variant. I all but perfected it today and I can already tell that it will not evolve once I am finished, I had to cut out way too much to get it to a useable form, it is too simple to evolve. If I could somehow add the plant I might be able to improve it, but I don¡¯t know anything about actually designing a plant, which is basically what I would be doing.


    Maybe I could splice a part of another plant into my sleep aid? Not like mixing the two together but combining them on a more fundamental level. Dead Tulip might work for that, as would Astrie. I am going to have to look into this, why have I never thought of this before, it¡¯s like I¡¯ve neglected an entire field of plant manipulation.


    Other than that I helped Tiddol¡¯s parents pack their bags using some magic. I don¡¯t think they will return any time soon, according to Tiddol each of them has almost died nearly a dozen times since arriving here and it is really freaking them out. They were basically begging her to come home with them, saying it was too dangerous a place to raise children. She laughed at them for that line, by the sound of it every event was almost entirely their fault because they lack common sense like ¡®don¡¯t mess with feral goblins¡¯ or ¡®bears are dangerous¡¯.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 350

    This morning I noticed something, all the Fate I had built up yesterday is gone. The only thing I got out of it was a particularly good nights sleep. It seems I have figured out why that voice thought I was incredibly untalented at Fate manipulation, if I can¡¯t maintain my Fate overnight I can¡¯t build it up enough to really matter.


    A bit latter Mest asked me permission to perform a spell on me. He said it creates a magical item tied to my life force, if I die at any point in the future the item will break, before then it is nearly impossible to damage. He then showed off a couple of them that he has, one for Thes, one for Tiddol, a couple broken ones for fallen companions, I saw a broken centaur in there, only one, and a couple intact unnamed ones. The one he had for Mest was the largest and most obvious of them, being a bear tied to a string around his neck. Apparently, he made a couple for Tiddol and Par the other day and wanted to make one for me.


    When I asked him how it works he said that it has nothing at all to do with his field of study and as such has no idea how it works, he just memorized the spell for convenience.


    Of course, I agreed to let him cast the spell on me. It was an odd feeling, reminiscent of creating Ents. I¡¯m assuming that means a part of my spark of life, a piece of my soul, went into the construction of the item. The trinket was of a small tree bent into an unnatural shape and was very uncomfortable to look at. He then made two more, all variations of the same thing. After that he left, saying he was going to give one to Tiddol, Talus, and Par. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    After that I checked on the progress of my Solar Energy battery, noting down its growth. Though I didn''t really do anything with the energy.


    Then I spent some time growing out my Grove, as of today I am able to fully explore Par¡¯s village. Though he has asked me to avoid a couple different spots as best I can, like the farms around his village.


    I spent a little while just walking around the village. It was interesting though not a lot really happened.


    Once I got bored of that I sat down and finished refining my Sleep aid. As I expected, even after perfecting it I wasn¡¯t able to get the plant to evolve. So I got started on the next part of my plan, trying to figure out how to splice the sleep aid onto Dead Tulip. I figured it would be easier to splice the entire thing on and then remove everything that doesn¡¯t mesh well.


    The problem with this is I have no idea how. I can kind of combine plants, but not on the fundamental level I am wanting. There is some kind of wall around the magical structure of a plant that keeps it from directly interacting with other plants, something I didn¡¯t know about until I thought to look earlier today. That wall seems to serve a couple other functions too, like keeping the plant stable, but none of them are relevant in this situation.


    I need to figure out a way to deal with that wall without also destroying the plant. Breaking down the wall is easy enough, hardly even costs me mana, but that very quickly kills the plant, making it useless. So what I need to do is figure out a way to get around the wall without destroying it, something I didn¡¯t manage to do today.


    I spent most of the rest of the day working on that, only really stopping for dinner.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 351

    This morning I asked about when new years is celebrated, mostly because I know it is celebrated on a different day by pretty much every civilization. No one agreed on a date, so I proposed a day that just so happens to line up with the day I started writing this diary. I definitely didn¡¯t do it because it was convenient for me to remember that date, shut up.


    No one really complained so we all decided that we would celebrate new years on Day one. It¡¯s never really been a major holiday or anything, but still, I thought it was important.


    I spent most of the day working on combining my sleep aid with Drowsy Clover, and made a small amount of progress. What I ended up doing was punching a small hole into the walls of the plant and essentially stitching the holes together. It was crude and unstable, but it worked better than anything else I¡¯ve tried. Tomorrow I will work on refining that technique. Hopefully, I can make it more stable, then I can move on to actually making it useful.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    I noticed something today. I got my next dungeon related ability, well I doubt I got it today but I noticed it today. I had stolen a pastry from Talus¡¯s plate and didn¡¯t have time to eat it all when she started turning towards me, so I got the urge to hide it. The pastry just vanished. When she turned away again I managed to bring it back and finished it. I finally unlocked the extra-dimensional storage all dungeons get. Though mine is pretty small compared to most, holding an object the size of a large book at most, that is to be expected. It will get bigger as time goes on.


    I decided to store my Diary in my storage along with a couple pens and some ink. After a bit of practice, I figured out how to write in it without taking it out the storage. I won¡¯t be able to use it as a convenient stolen pastry stash, but this is more convenient for me in the long run.


    I still worked on Fate, but it wasn''t really relevant. I probably won''t bring it up again unless something big happens.


    Anyway, it¡¯s getting late so Good Night Diary.

 Day 352

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    This morning I spent some time With Talus. We didn''t do anything too special, just what we normally do.


    I did make quite a bit of progress on my Sleep aid. I managed to improve my skill at merging two plants together by a large margin, doing it almost perfectly in my sleep aid. I even managed to refine most of it, just a little bit more tomorrow and I should be able to make it evolve.


    At that point, I will be sleeping at most an hour a night, hopefully anyway. that will free up so much time. I might be able to build my Fate up to really useful levels at that point, then it would just be a waiting game until it boosted my ability to use Fate.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Speaking of Fate, I managed to trigger something interesting. I was thinking about my current project when I let go of the fate I had built up today. Almost immediately I thought of a fix to a minor problem I have been having, I tested it out and it worked, not perfectly but it worked.


    After that, not much happened. I played with Tiddol¡¯s kids a bit, hung out with Tiddol and Par, and taught the younger Ents a bit.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 353

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    I got straight to work in the morning and spent most of the day perfecting my sleep aid. I could tell it was ready to evolve at one point, but I was somehow able to prevent it from evolving until I wanted it too, which is something I¡¯ve been able to do to a small extent in the past so nothing too special.


    I did eventually let it evolve, after I was satisfied with my work of course. I immediately got volunteer goblins to test it for me. They almost immediately fell asleep and stayed that way for an hour, when they said they felt like they had a full nights sleep. I¡¯m going to use it tonight, hopefully, I have similar results. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Too bad I won¡¯t be able to get it down to sleeping only every couple days, that would make improving at Fate easy.


    I had plenty of time in the evening to spend after I finished my sleep aid, which I will now have to find a name for. Let''s just say there is a reason I didn¡¯t name the Ents. Nothing really noteworthy happened in the evening, nothing bad or unexpected happened, no one got hurt and no one attacked. It was nice and calm, I like days like this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 354

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    <div>The anniversary of the day I started writing this diary is only eleven days away, so I spent the morning reading back through the beginning. Honestly, those first couple of weeks were so awkward, my writing was mechanical and emotionless. And here we are today, I¡¯m still working on that, but I am much better about it.


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    Par has been with me for almost a year now huh, I wonder when his birthday is. It never really came up, maybe he just doesn¡¯t know? I know Thes doesn¡¯t know his own birthday, so that might be the case. I guess I will ask tomorrow, and while I¡¯m at it I should ask Mest as well.


    And then the time I cast a spell to save Willow¡¯s parent from being reduced to ash, I can still remember the following hunger. Now that I think about it I could cast a similar spell with ease today, it would still drain all of my Mana, but I wouldn¡¯t black out.


    As for my sleep aid, it worked wonders. I slept only an hour last night, and I feel like I got a full night¡¯s sleep. Not to mention it is only the beginning of spring, and my demand for sleep has just stopped going up and started going down. In the middle of the summer I might be able to stay awake for days without ill effects with this stuff. I think I am going to keep a small amount of it on my person at all times, just in case of the worst.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    As for what I did during the rest of the day, I focused on building up Fate. I got my Fate slightly higher than I have in the past, and I got something interesting out of it.


    I ended up releasing my fate while I was doing my daily, if short, experiments with Solar Energy. I don¡¯t really talk about them because I haven¡¯t been able to figure out anything particularly interesting yet. In any case, what ended up happening was I managed to accidentally form a spell I hadn¡¯t thought of before. It formed a bolt that ended up hitting a rock, and the rock was completely turned green, inside and out. No special effects, it was just green. Pretty useless honestly, but I managed to memorise the formula and after a couple attempts I could replicate it at will, assuming I have access to Solar Energy that is. It¡¯s a cool trick I guess.


    At the end of the day we had a small feast, a hunting party brought back some particularly juicy game. No idea what creature it was from but it was delicious. After that everyone was so stuffed that they went straight to bed, on that note I should be doing the same.


    So, Good Night Diary.

 Day 355

    Today I asked Par and Mest what their birthdays are. Par has no idea, he doesn¡¯t remember that far back and didn¡¯t exactly have someone keeping track of it for him. Mest on the other hand, his birthday is in about a month, Day twenty-five if I use my diary as a pseudo calendar, which I tend to do.


    I spent most of my mana growing trees, I want to expand as much as I can before the end of spring, when it will become a bit more difficult to grow my grove. partially for the sake of pride, lord of the forest sounds much better than lord of the grove, but also because that is both of the ways I can increase my mana regeneration. First, the trees all give me a bit of mana, so the more trees there are the more mana I get, second I get a bit of the overflow mana from every living thing in my territory, which is my grove, so a bigger grove means more mana. It wasn¡¯t immediately noticeable but expanding my Grove to cover Par¡¯s village was a huge boost to my mana production, apparently, it takes a couple days for the results of that to really show themselves.


    For the rest of time I spent focusing on my Fate. The good news about that is I that I can do something else while I am focusing on it, though nothing really mentally challenging. The bad news was that I lost every board game I played with Talus, horribly. I have never lost at a board game so badly, never mind twelve different games in a row. And yet it did wonders for my Fate, though I honestly have no idea what it did, which is the rule rather than the norm, unfortunately, both with the positives and the negatives.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    And thinking back on today I think I figured out a trick to this whole Fate thing. At least with the scale I am working at every event I trigger has to do immediately with me, what I am doing, what I am thinking about, what the people around me are doing, stuff like that. Pretty much unless it is entirely under my control, like any time I work with my plants, it can be affected by Fate.


    Also, the amount of Fate I gain seems to rely on the subjective value of the event that happens, like during a couple games from earlier there were times when I really wanted something to happen, even though it would have only been a minor inconvenience for it to not happen, if I triggered my Fate to increase, which I did as often as I could, and that event didn¡¯t happen I would gain a lot more Fate than if I triggered my Fate and an event that was objectively terrible happened, but that I didn¡¯t particularly care about.


    Taking those two facts I know the quickest way to increase my Fate. I just need to put myself into a situation where being unlucky would be very embarrassing and subjectively terrible, but not particularly dangerous. I really don¡¯t want to do this, but if I want any hope of improving at Fate then the only solution is to get as much Fate as possible. I can¡¯t exactly stay up for days on end to build up Fate, I would get too tired to maintain it before lunch on the second day.


    How bad can it be, right?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 356

    Today I spent most of my time and mana growing trees. I could have easily just dumped all of my mana into growing trees and been done with it, but doing it slowly like this is more efficient, assuming I don¡¯t have anything else to do.


    In the evening I did, something with Talus. I won¡¯t go into details because if I somehow forget this experience in the future I don¡¯t want to be reminded of it when I reread my diary. It was humiliating and not worth the Fate I built up in the process, the fact that Talus was obviously enjoying herself didn¡¯t make it better for me. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    As for what I got from releasing my Fate today, I have no idea. I think I am going to lay off on Fate for a while. obviously, I¡¯ll do the more passive form of building it up, would be a waste not too, but beyond that just doesn¡¯t seem worth the effort or the stress.


    Dinner, at least, was fantastic. Par¡¯s hunting party managed to take down a couple wyverns, and I have always liked Draconic meat.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 357

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    This morning, over breakfast, I told Mest about the Solar Energy spell I learned recently, I even demonstrated it for him by turning a fist-sized rock green. He commented that the way it was formed was remarkably similar to the tradition of magic he had been taught. One thing led to another and now I am learning magical theory from Mest, even if more practical skills are beyond me learning the theory behind magic should make me better at using Solar Energy.


    Honestly, the only reason I¡¯m doing it is that I really want to improve at Solar Energy magic, but there is a pretty tight cap on how much I can do in a day. Hopefully, learning theory will let me improve faster despite that cap, though it would likely be much more effective if I had the resources to do both at once.


    Honestly, a lot of the information is boring, though not particularly tedious. But I have done more mind-numbing tasks for the sake of my projects, spending days refining Astrie comes to mind.


    Now that I think about it, learning magic theory should help me with using Spell Wood, right?A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Back on topic, it wasn¡¯t like I could just memorize theory either, that would be mostly useless for my purposes, it is difficult to pull up a memory when you are pouring everything you have into creating or reworking a spell. No, I have to learn it by heart for it to be truly useful, I have to be able to call up the information as soon as it is relevant, or at least that is the way Mest says it.


    Honestly, I have no gift for things like this, and on its own the information is rather useless to me. And if I had the resources I would never have even bothered with this, the trial and error method, while much more dangerous, is much faster and more interesting. On top of that, there is no guarantee that this information is even useful in the context of Solar Energy magic.


    But, I will stick it out for a week at least, longer if I have a noticeable improvement even if only minor. Naturally, I will be exclusively releasing my Fate while using Solar Energy for the foreseeable future.


    I spent most of the day learning under Mest, and I got the impression that he loved teaching me. I like to think that I am an eager student despite my misgivings.


    Once everyone went to bed I stayed up for a little bit longer just to grow my forest out a bit, it feels wrong not to do at least a bit every day.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 358

    Today I continued to study under Mest. Under his supervision, I tried to form a spell using Solar Energy, just a basic torch spell for lighting the way. It failed, though I could tell that it was due to a lack of energy more than using the wrong method. It was obvious this method would work, and it was obvious that it was far from the most efficient, which, when you take into account my general lack of knowledge and skill, means that I won¡¯t be able to actually for a decent spell for a while. With a notable exception for anything relating to either plants or healing, as I know both of those well enough to be able to rely on better methods.


    Mostly what we are doing is trying to figure out what is relevant first. It would take a decade to truly master all of the material, which would be a waste of time considering it isn¡¯t even a good method to begin with, merely a starting point. So what we are trying to do is figure out what will be most useful and master it, before moving onto a more trial and error approach.


    After the lessons, I spent a bit of time growing my grove outwards in all directions. As a result of a compound advantage from my dungeon core and being the lord of the Grove I can work in broad strokes of magic anywhere in my grove, or immediately outside of it, though I need to be up close to do anything with real finesse like healing or true plant manipulation, growing a tree is little more than throwing mana at it till it grows. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I talked to Willow a bit today. I have said in the past that we aren¡¯t exactly close, though I do still feel that minor need to keep her safe. She has become very social and outgoing, but she seems intimidated by me somehow. She has made fast friends amongst several of the Ents, and collectively they really like her, with one exception in the form of a guy whose advances she spurned. When it comes to sheer magical ability she is the equal of the greatest of them, and considering that guy was a mage in his last life means quite a bit.


    I¡¯m happy for her, but she has become something of a stranger to me and has no apparent desire to change that. I just hope she doesn¡¯t come to hate me one day, that would be a real tragedy.


    Other than that, not much happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 359

    This morning I decided to cook. Well, that isn¡¯t entirely accurate, Talus asked me to cook for her and I agreed to. I made pancakes, though I don¡¯t think I did a very good job. I think I tried to learn how to cook well at one point, but it wasn¡¯t as interesting as something else that came up.


    I have noticed that the extradimensional storage space of my dungeon core is growing exponentially, but a really slow exponential. Over the course of a week it increases by a very tiny fraction of its size at the start of the week, obviously, it is doing that constantly but at this point it is only noticeable on a much larger timescale. But considering the fact that dungeons, as a rule, are immortal and many were alive before Origin really got started some of them must have effectively infinite storage space. I wonder how long it would take to consume the whole world in just the storage space I would have available.


    I spent most of the day studying again, though I did not make any definable improvements today.


    And of course I grew my grove up a bit, I think I am going to do that every day until winter at least for a little while. I will take at least an hour out of whatever I am doing to grow my Grove.


    I was talking to Mest today and the subject of mana regeneration and storage came up, though it eventually turned to my grove. Apparently, a major factor in mana regeneration is the size of your pool, though he wasn¡¯t too clear on the theory behind why. I was in a relatively unique state where my natural mana regeneration has been essentially crippled by nature of my species and yet I was still producing more mana than people of equal size mana pools, assuming you ignore my crown.


    The fact that my mana production has nothing to do with the size of my mana pool is rare enough, pretty much only forest sprite and their evolutions have that trait, or at least we are the only ones common enough to have been documented, but when you add a small city''s worth of people and my dungeon core then it gets pretty crazy. On top of that it can improve exponentially if I take the time and effort to focus solely on growing my grove. Most groves and forests have multiple sprites that draw mana from them and they don¡¯t have access to a dungeon core to improve their mana production, meaning they don¡¯t have enough mana to quickly expand their borders. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    On top of that most groves and forests have a personality based on how it came into being, or at least according to many forest sprites, and most came into being slowly and carefully, probably didn¡¯t even have a Sprite tending to it at first, especially when you consider how hard it is for us to move around. Mine did not, it came into being with a sense of urgency and haste, I was actually going to die if couldn¡¯t get a couple trees to support me.


    And one final thing, it takes mana from me to maintain the grove, and the bigger the area the grove covers the more mana it takes, this tends to increase faster than mana production as that has more to do with the trees themselves than the actual area covered. This meaning that in most situations there is a hard limit to how quickly you can grow a grove or forest. But I am special, the Mana I get from my dungeon core increases more by area than it does by time, and at a fast enough rate to more than keep up with the expenses. This is because of small creatures like insects, birds, small lizards, and the like, all of them provide me mana while they are in my territory, and the larger the territory the more of them there are.


    What all this means is that, unlike most forest sprites and forest nymphs I could expand my grove indefinitely, and it wants to expand and grow. Maybe later this spring I will sit down and just spend a week straight growing my grove, maybe that will be enough to reach Pearlhold. I don¡¯t know, I will have to ask how far away it is, I know you can reach it within a day¡¯s journey but that is about it.


    One last thing before I go to bed, it seems the nearby city-states are preparing an actual army to retake Pearlhold, a lot of people are leaving to go defend it. We should expect an attack here. Oddly enough, I¡¯m looking forward to it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 360

    This morning Par requested, I would say ask but he was very formal about it, that I make him some gear for his people. Just the same type from before, he just needs a lot more of it. Apparently, he has done quite a bit of recruiting in Pearlhold. His success there he attributes to the efforts of Whisperer and his followers.


    It was easy enough, I should by tomorrow evening. Being able to make dozens of them at a time is rather useful. The only thing keeping me from finishing them sooner was the amount of mana I had access to.


    I did make some improvements, nothing drastic. Everything is just slightly better in every way.


    That didn¡¯t take up much of my time, only because of how quickly I was burning through my mana. So I spent the rest of my time studying under Mest. I was able to make a functional spell today, not a useful one, but whatever. All it did was create a small flash of light.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    The reason I made this spell, in particular, is because it is what Mest recommends I practice with. It is simple enough to learn really easily, flexible enough to allow me to use it to practice pretty much all of what Mest is teaching me, and cheap enough that I can cast it a couple times before running out of Solar Energy. Honestly, it is the perfect training tool.


    As for the actual subject matter, Mest is planning on teaching me, he says that at the rate I am going we will get through it in around two weeks, assuming no changes.


    In the evening Par left with the gear I had made so far, giving me instructions to hand the rest of it off to someone else tomorrow.


    Oh yeah, I noticed some clouds on the horizon. The trees think it is going to rain soon, which wouldn¡¯t be a surprise, it basically rained all of the last spring I would be surprised if this spring is any different.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 361

    today I finished making gear for Par¡¯s men. I managed to finish up before lunchtime and handed it off to Par¡¯s second, who almost immediately left for Pearlhold. Hopefully, nothing happens during the time it takes for him to get there.


    Most of Par¡¯s soldiers were taken to Pearlhold, he left only the best of the best here to defend my grove. It is doubtful we will be attacked by more than a small strike force, Pearlhold is the real prize here.


    I spent most of the day studying with Mest. today we focused on maintaining effects actively, fire and forget is pretty easy, but actually controlling a spell after it has been cast is much harder. I did manage to pull it off though, if only for a moment. Again, my main issue is the amount of energy rather than my own skill, not to say that I am particularly good at this just that even if I was I still wouldn¡¯t have enough energy to do much with it.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    In hindsight trying to figure out how to make and control spells like that probably wasn¡¯t the greatest idea.


    In the evening I hung out with Tiddol, or at least tried to. She kept having to run off to deal with Umi¡¯s shenanigans. She¡¯s become rather excitable and curious recently, and she has started to get a handle on her magic. She seems to be more like Talus in that all her magic is instinctual, she doesn¡¯t need to know the theory in order to get something to work. In other words, She has a lot of intent but not a lot of understanding.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 362

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    This morning I hung out with talus, we didn¡¯t do anything special or exciting but we did spend time with each other.


    During my studies, we focused on changing the colour of the flash of light. I almost immediately noticed similarities between that and my colour changing spell, the one that makes everything green. Hearing that Mest asked me to demonstrate the spell for him a couple times under his close observance. After using up my allotted Solar Energy for the spell Mest then demonstrated a perfect copy of it, using mana of course.


    Apparently learning how to copy a spell is something most mages learn sooner or later, though only the most talented are able to do that without careful observation.


    He commented that the spell felt wrong somehow. The intricacy is an obvious sign that the spell was designed by someone that was very skilled at what they do, while the actual nuance of the spell speaks of someone that knows nothing about Mana, which makes perfect sense considering it is for Solar Energy and not mana. Mest came to the conclusion that while the same broad concepts are the same the nuances of mana are completely different from solar energy, so you could reasonably get any spell cast originally with Solar Energy to work with mana, and vice versa, it just won¡¯t work well. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    I spent the rest of the day watching as Mest dissected the spell, trying to actually understand the nuances of it better so he could teach me how it works. We did try to get him to actually use Solar Energy, and while he is physically capable of it, which was a big surprise honestly, he couldn¡¯t actually make use of it as it would be destroyed way to quickly. If we had enough Solar Energy we could easily get him to the point of mastery with it, but we definitely don¡¯t have nearly enough.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 363

    Apparently, Tiddol left yesterday. She packed up her stuff and went with a small group of Par¡¯s soldiers, bringing her kids with her. She didn¡¯t tell anyone where she was going, or if she did they aren¡¯t telling me. It is weird that she would just up and leave like that, but I trust her.


    Again, I spent most of my time studying under Mest. He managed to completely dissect the spell last night, or at least he dissected it as thoroughly as his skills allow. The lecture today was a lot easier to understand as a result. Thanks to that I made more progress today than I have on any previous day. The downside is that Mest is getting to the end of what he knows that would be relevant to me.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Apparently, my domain went over a major nest of something that lives underground yesterday, I don¡¯t know how else to explain a sudden sizeable jump in mana production. It isn¡¯t a massive amount by any means, but it is still enough to be easily noticeable.


    Willow put on a small performance today. She made sculptures out of lightning like I have seen her do in the past. Only now they have hundreds of different colours and intricate details, they were pretty, but that wasn¡¯t what was eye-catching about it. The sheer power required to pull off a feat like that is insane. And then she made them move. Willow used her magic to spin a story for the delight of many and the amazement of all. Even Mest was astounded.


    And to top it all off, the lightning was silent, something she has said made everything more difficult for her.


    A couple other things happened, but nothing that was able to top that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 364

    Mest has finished teaching me everything he can today. Now it is up to me to actually figure what of what he taught me is actually useful. Though I might actually just let it be for a little while so production will increase, I still can¡¯t do much with it as it is.


    I talked with Thes today, he said that if things keep going how they have been going he is going to snap in a month. He told me about how he has picked up meditation, it helps but not a lot. He told me about some of Tiddol''s and Mest''s efforts to help him control his rage, some work, some dont. He talked about noticing Mest¡¯s training, and how focused it is on non-lethal tactics, it makes him feel better but he knows it isn¡¯t enough to stop his rage. Tiddol has started working on a sleep gas and other tranquillizers, but they have tried those things in the past to no avail. I asked if they ever tried using a restrictive armour, his response was that unless I can make something stronger than an adamantine, orichalcum, and mithril amalgam that it won¡¯t work, that is beyond my powers for now.


    Thes asked me to kill him, should he enter a rage and no one can stop him. He said that I¡¯m the only one that would be capable of it, on both an emotional level and a physical level. Mest won¡¯t do it, Tiddol is incapable of it, Par was barely able to beat him before his evolution, Willow would have been able to do it, but Thes has obtained a resistance to lightning in his journeys, along with most other things, he was always the one taking hits after all. The Ent¡¯s might be able to do it, but most if not all of them would die in the process. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    He believes that I am more powerful than I give myself credit for, that the grove will directly come to my aid in such an event allowing me to do what no one else can. Despite that I am not going to give up trying to come up with a solution. I saw a plant called iron vine available for sale a while back, maybe that might help me.


    After that heavy conversation I decided to talk with Bug, the healer. We talked quite a bit, all light-hearted subjects. His children have left the nest and are starting to make their way in the world. He talked about one of them in particular, a girl, she has inherited the bulk of his prowess in healing and has a passion for a more martial path. Though her martial skills are a bit lacking her skill in healing magic and an unusually high pain tolerance allows her to take a beating better than anyone else, letting her win fights through sheer attrition. I offered to get her personal training from one of the best soldiers in the village.


    We spent a little while longer talking. We talked about his children, though none were as interesting as his daughter, we talked about his life and my own, and we talked about the wonderful art of healing. It was fun, and left me feeling light-hearted, I enjoy the Dragonewt¡¯s company.


    In the evening I hung out with Talus. She wanted to cook, so I helped her out with it. In the end, we had a nice meal for the two of us. It was a nice, romantic evening.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 365

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    Last night I had a dream. It was a very vivid dream, unlike most dreams I¡¯ve had. In my dream, I was talking with my parents, and I could see them in all the detail I could remember, and then some. They told me that they were proud of who I have become since their death, they told me not to mourn for them any longer, they told me to remember that I was loved by them regardless of what the reincarnate into. We talked for what felt like days, I realized it was a dream pretty quickly. They told me everything I wanted to know and everything I wanted to hear and then some. And then they left, it was sad, watching them go, but I felt like a weight had been lifted off of my soul.


    When I woke up Talus had a wet shoulder and I had teary eyes.


    I spent the day relaxing and thinking about my dream. By now I am sure it was more than just a dream, and some answers I got out of Mest seem to support my theory. Maybe it was actually the souls of my parents coming to visit me one last time, or at least that is what I am choosing to believe.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I will need some time to really process what they said, but it will be good for me.


    Tiddol returned today, carrying a painting. it was a painting of my old home, in all the glory of a burned grove. There was only one tree left standing, one of the ones I played in as a child, and even that was char now. There was new growth, young trees and new shrubs, flowers and some grasses.


    The paints were made from what Tiddol could find there, the flowers proving an array of colors while the remaining ash provided the blacks and greys.


    I cried, my old home was burned to the ground, I knew this before but never have I seen it with my own eyes.


    Anyway, good night diary


    End of year 1

 Year 2 Day 1

    I think Talus is mad at me.


    This morning she asked me what would happen if my parents survived the fire. I responded with ¡®I hope the didn¡¯t¡¯, that seemed to tick her off. She ran off before I could explain why I said that. See my mother was no doubt the guardian or lord of her grove, and there is no way it wasn¡¯t completely destroyed. That grove was a huge part of her on many levels if it was suddenly destroyed she would be broken on a fundamental level, if she didn¡¯t kill herself after that it would only be because she lacked the mental faculties to do so. Even if she didn¡¯t kill herself she would rapidly waste away as a result of having no more mana to feed on.


    On the other hand, my father was never an optimist, quite the opposite. If he were to come too after the fact and still be alive he would not see either me or my mother and would assume the worst, mana based creatures don¡¯t leave corpses after all. He might not kill himself but he would be flung so far into despair that it would achieve the same result. And everything would be worse if mother survived as well, as he would either watch her commit suicide or waste away and die. Something I doubt he would be able to watch maintain sanity.


    So know that when I say I hope my parents died in the fire I don¡¯t mean it out of malice and spite, but rather because I love them and don¡¯t want them to suffer more than necessary. Even when I got a chance to explain that to her I don¡¯t think she listened.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Today a merchant caravan came into the village for a pit stop, though I don¡¯t think they are affiliated with the ones that agreed to sell my stuff.


    Unfortunately, they didn¡¯t have much in the way of plants, they had some Astrie and some Whitefoot but that was about it, they said that they did have some Luck Blossom but that all of it disappeared recently, apparently, they were using it as feed. They didn¡¯t even have any mundane plants other than the grasses they used to feed the creatures pulling their carts, a type of beast I believe.


    I talked to them for a bit, and they apparently got a lot more business here than they were expecting, enough to consider returning. If they do return it will be in twenty days.


    I did end up buying a couple things, though I limited my spending as much as I could. I bought a bit of something they called Ice cream, it was cold and sweet and I liked it. It still pales in comparison to ancient dragon meat, but it was enjoyable.


    I shared it with Talus. She warmed up to me a bit after that, but it¡¯s obvious she is still angry about something. She tries to hide it but I know her well enough that I can tell, she never was good at hiding her emotions. The problem is that I have no idea why she is mad, or even if it is me she¡¯s mad at. I tried asking her but that only seemed to tick her off more, that time it was definitely me she was mad at.


    I even tried burning my Fate when I asked her about it, all that happened was I found some loose change on the ground.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 2

    I need a new project to work on. The last couple days have been fine because they were busy, but that doesn¡¯t happen often. I have a couple things I¡¯m working on but none of them takes up much of my time, about an hour total. I can¡¯t just do nothing with my time, it feels weird and makes me uncomfortable and leaves me feeling oddly stressed. So I need a new project to work on, a dedicated goal to pursue.


    The problem is everything I want to pursue either requires resources that are in limited supply, namely Fate and Solar Energy, or resources I simply don¡¯t have access too, namely flesh manipulation. I could focus on growing my grove, but if I push it¡¯s growth to far too fast I could stress out the trees, yeah that limit is much higher than most groves because of how mine was created but there is still a limit. Stressing my grove out would be bad for their health, and therefore bad for my health.


    I could try to refine one of my plants, but which plant and to what end? Maybe I could try doing something with the small mountain I have in my grove, mine it or something? But how would I go about doing that, and again, to what end? I could try making new life again, but how and why? Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    I guess what I really need to ask myself is what I want to achieve and work backwards from there.


    And I¡¯m still drawing a blank.


    Ok, let¡¯s try again. What would be practical in the near future? The only thing I can think of is the pending attack here. How can I prepare for that? I won¡¯t be able to make any noticeable improvements in my magical skills like plant manipulation and healing before then. I don¡¯t know the first thing about fortifications and have already given the raw materials necessary to the people that do know.


    I think I¡¯ve got it, I am going to start teaching some promising mages healing magic, at least until something more interesting comes along. It was either that or learning how to use a knife in a fight, which seems rather boring, on top of being pretty stupid because I could just use my plants to defend myself should the need arise.


    As for what happened today, nothing. Nothing interesting happened today, hence this brainstorming.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 3

    Today I gathered up a bunch of promising students and began to teach them. I had mixed success, there were a couple that failed to achieve even the simplest of healing, and there were a couple that took to healing immediately. Of course, that is ignoring the success of the Ents that wanted to join, they are naturally talented healers so it is a little unfair to compare them against the others.


    I was talking to Mest today during my downtime. We were discussing potential ways to buy more time to deal with Thes¡¯s rage, though we could only really think of one thing. If it gets to the point that Thes could be triggered at any time then we will send him to let off some steam in the nearby dungeon, almost definitely destroying it in the process. It would be a loss for us, as the dungeon would no longer be available to train Par¡¯s people, but it would be better than the alternative.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Other than that, I hung out with Tiddol. Umi joined my lesson on healing magic today, and she excelled, so we ended up talking about that a bit. Ednar has started to walk around on his own, though it is obvious he¡¯s getting help from some plants. Ednar is obviously a talented plant manipulator, and who knows, maybe one day he will get better than me. I doubt it though.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 4

    Today I continued to teach my students the magical art of healing, I am determined to get all of them at least to the point that they can save their own life. One of the Ents was actually a teacher in their previous life and they taught me a thing or two about teaching, which actually helped me out quite a bit.


    At this point, my worst student is capable of healing a scratch that would normally take a week to heal within an hour, while my best is able to reattach limbs. Of course that is ignoring the Ents, who are significantly more talented than the rest. The worst of the Ents can keep someone alive despite mortal wounds for about an hour, and even then they will only have to stop due to a lack of mana, while the best could fix those same wounds within ten minutes without accidentally messing something up.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    In the evening we all decided to take a break and play board games. It was really fun, though I lost all of the luck based ones thanks to my fate farming.


    Talus was much more friendly to me today, but she still isn¡¯t as touchy-feely as she was before. Honestly, it is kind of a relief, she tends to take it a bit too far, but it feels weird that she isn¡¯t doing it at all. I gave her a kiss and she kissed me back, so that at least is a good sign.


    Overall it was a pretty full day.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 5

    This morning I hung out with Lulem and Kaire. They told me about some of their more promising younger siblings. One that was an accomplished swordsman, one that was a field healer, they described it as ¡®medic¡¯ but it means pretty much the same thing, and one that ruled a merchant empire in his past life. The last one attributes his retention of memories to some things he managed to buy as a result of his vast wealth, and so he wants to replicate that in this life, the swordsman was fascinated with magic and wants to explore its secrets, and the Healer knows an incredible amount about non-magical healing, but is relatively talentless when it comes to the more magical variety, at least for an Ent. though I have a feeling that if they could apply their knowledge of non-magical healing to their magical healing then they could easily overcome that weakness.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I spent most of the rest of the day teaching. I¡¯m getting better at this whole teaching thing, at least I think I am. At the very least I am more confident, which can¡¯t hurt.


    Today a scout from one of the nearby cities was caught and imprisoned, though we didn¡¯t get any answers out of him before he managed to get away. His guards were found dead though some unknown magical means, and the cell door was unable to be found. He didn¡¯t manage to retrieve what he had on him, however. There are a couple letters and some trinkets, a couple obviously magical in nature. Most of the letters were useless, though the last one is obviously in some kind of code, or at least that is what I¡¯ve been told, I haven¡¯t actually seen it.


    Other than that, Not much happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 6

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    This morning I decided to do some light reading, though I didn¡¯t really gain anything from it.


    At this point most of them are able to at least heal most injuries to themselves, given enough time to work with and an ample supply of Mana. so they could all pretty much heal anything under ideal circumstances. Unfortunately ideal circumstances almost never happen.


    My students have started to build a comradery with each other. They have started to rely on each other a lot more and it has started to show the benefits. The most immediate of which is the fact that they are helping each other understand things they might not understand very well, which allows me to focus on furthering everyone''s skills, it also means that the worst of them is progressing much faster than the best of them. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    There is some level of hero worship for the Ents that join my lessons because they understand my lessons better than anyone else and can help to explain them very well. At this point, I could just teach the Ents and it would achieve the same results.


    Other than that not a lot happened. Thes made barbecue for dinner, so that was nice.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 7

    I think that in a couple days I will leave teaching healing up to the Ents, a couple of them are now better than I am, and that¡¯s when you ignore things like raw magical power and other things like that. My pride would be hurt if I hadn¡¯t made them myself, I might not be the best healer here anymore, but I did make them.


    The question is what to work on next. If I am still wanting to focus on preparing to defend my grove I should probably focus on my personal fighting ability. I can do this a couple ways, the first would be to improve my own armour, I have several ways I could achieve this. The second would be to work on making some kind of weapon, only problem is last time I made a weapon for myself I almost cut myself in half, I definitely do not have the kind of skill required to use one of the weapons I can create without hurting myself, I would need some kind of stand-in for myself.


    Which brings me to the third option. I could design a puppet, similar to the Ents but without injecting a piece of my soul into it, that I could control during the fighting. This is the one that I think will have the most effects, but it is also the one I am most wary of. I remember a while ago, around when I made the Ents, creating much cruder puppets that I could control in sparring matches. I enjoyed it, a lot, but it left me in a bad mental state. It wasn¡¯t uncomfortable or dangerous to myself, not in a real sense, but it turned my thoughts more violent during the rest of my time when I wasn¡¯t fighting.


    I am worried about actually learning to fight through a puppet, as I am definitely not going to learn to fight with my own body, but ultimately I think that is what I will go with. Well, that and making an amazing sword. It has the most potential for my purposes, and I wouldn¡¯t be myself if I shied away from that.


    If I am not trying to prepare to defend my grove then I should probably try to find a way to help Thes out. Drowsy clover variants won¡¯t work, he¡¯s already immune, Dead Tulip will just knock him out, doing nothing to alleviate the problem, I might be able to do something with Astrie or Spell wood but what? I have already tried to create something that could drain away his rage, but emotions are definitely not magical in nature. As a result, neither of those plants can directly interact with anything that matters so I would need a more creative solution, and I don¡¯t have a creative solution. And as for Glovine and Singing Grass, I have already made him something there to help out in his meditation. Fate has given me no answers. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    The only thing there that I could think of is making something to restrain Thes with Ironwood, which I don¡¯t have the money for. It is much more expensive than the next most expensive plant I¡¯ve bought so far, and there isn¡¯t a lesser variant, at least not one I can find. for all intents and purposes, it is the lesser variant. I could try asking Mest, but I don¡¯t think he has access to that kind of money. The issue is not the scarcity of the plant but rather the distance, it is incredibly common, where Tiddol¡¯s parents live. It would have to be teleported in from halfway around the world, which causes stress on living creatures, which means I have to have more of it teleported in to get a usable sample, which means more space taken up, which makes it more expensive. I could have it teleported to me within two weeks, but I can¡¯t pay someone enough to do it for me. Maybe I could take advantage of Mest¡¯s contacts to get a hold of some, but I doubt it. I¡¯ll ask tomorrow and make sure to burn Fate while I ask, maybe I¡¯ll get lucky and some Iron Wood will fall out of the sky onto my lap, it wouldn¡¯t be the first time I¡¯ve gotten lucky like that.


    Now that I think about it, Iron Wood would also be perfect for making puppets too. So even more reason to get a hold of it.


    You know what, I¡¯m going to ask right now. I have Fate to burn and I need it sooner rather than later.


    He said he will talk to some members of his order, a couple of them have easy access to teleportation circles that they might let us use.


    Other than that I talked to Talus. It was light and casual and we both avoided heavier topics, so it¡¯s hard to know where I stand with her. I have never been good with this whole social thing, I¡¯m hopeful though.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 8

    I haven¡¯t gotten any news back on whether or not I will be able to get a hold of Ironwood yet, but Mest asked me why exactly I wanted it. I¡¯m not sure if that¡¯s good or bad but it¡¯s a thing.


    In the morning I pulled aside a couple of the Ents, the best healers among them to be exact, and asked them to teach healing in my place. A couple of them agreed and immediately got to work, one of them was the teacher in their past life.


    For most of the rest of the day I worked on a puppet, and I managed to almost perfect it. To be fair I was working with a really strong base.


    I started by creating an Ent, only I didn¡¯t let a piece of my soul enter its body so it never came to life. From there I removed most of its magical abilities, they are useless in a puppet, the ones I left I modified to allow me better control over the body. Then I made sure the puppet was extra flexible and hard to damage. Really I didn¡¯t have to change much from the base, simply add in a couple minor changes that might be disadvantageous to a mage, but would work perfectly for a more physical type of fighter. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Tomorrow I will add the finishing touches, create a weapon, and then spend the rest of my time practising with it. I can¡¯t really improve much upon what I already have without something like Ironwood, or another plant with relevant magical capabilities. I ended up making the control mechanisms and the sensory organs out of Astrie, as it is the best plant for the job there, but the rest I made out of mundane wood.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. Hopefully, I should be finding out whether or not I¡¯m getting my hands on some Ironwood tomorrow, I made sure to burn Fate while hoping for a good response.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 9

    This morning I put the finishing touches on my puppet. it didn¡¯t take much, just a small detail here and there, nothing that would cause any kind of substantial changes. But it was quick and easy so no reason not to.


    After that I spent a bit of time making a sword, for that, I had someone that knows more than me help me out. Basically, I got a blacksmith from Par¡¯s village to show me the general shape and structure of a sword while explaining why every part is the way it is, and a couple other things.


    Ultimately I made most of the sword out of mundane wood, with the core being made out of spellwood. The spellwood is there mostly to constantly repair the blade, because it is surprisingly difficult to do that through a puppet. It does still feed off of the puppet¡¯s mana, however, but that isn¡¯t too big of a deal.


    I then spent most of the rest of the day practising under the instruction of one of Par¡¯s people. Mostly I¡¯m trying to get to the point that I would do more good than harm using my puppet. it is surprisingly easy to cut your own limb off with a really sharp sword, even when that limb is made of hardened wood and designed explicitly not to be cut off. I think that after a week of practice I should be more or less good, not that I¡¯ll be any good with a sword more that I¡¯ll be barely passable. From there I would learn better by actually sparring instead of running drills, which is apparently how they train new recruits. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Other than swinging a sword around through a puppet all day not a lot happened. When I was building up fate I tended to mess up a lot during practice, which was embarrassing, but it did help me improve a lot more than I otherwise would have been able to. Something to do with my flaws being incredibly visible to my teacher. I¡¯ll take that as further proof that Fate is based on subjective, in the moment situations, As opposed to the objective, actual value of the situation.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 10

    I spent the morning practising. It was pretty boring, but it wasn¡¯t too bad.


    Then around lunch time, I decided to burn my Fate, I¡¯m not sure why but I¡¯m glad I did. Shortly afterwards there was a strong breeze and an arrow struck my upper arm. I was standing at the edge of my grove, and the archer that shot me was very visible, despite me not noticing him before I was shot.


    I formed an armour to boost my walking speed and got to the centre of the grove before the archer could nock another arrow, narrowly avoiding an arrow from a second archer. Once there I stopped to inspect my arm. The arrow was gone, and so was most of my arm. To make matters worse whatever enchantment was on that arrow was slowly eating away what was left of the arm.


    I want to say that I immediately formed a knife and cut off the rotting arm, but that would be a lie. The truth was that I hesitated, almost too long in fact. I had to cut through some of my shoulders to remove whatever magic was infecting my arm, luckily the knife was sharp and there were no bones for me to cut through. The fact that I had weakened my body for the sake of speed didn¡¯t hurt either.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    From there I created ten puppets, the limit of what I could control without sacrificing finesse. By the time I was done the fighting was fully underway. It turned out that the force that attacked us was a small force, likely sent either to take out major targets or to test our defences and they were driven off quickly, but not before both sides took a couple hits. Though I say quickly, the fighting continued well beyond sundown, and I made sure my puppets took the brunt of it whenever I could.


    I haven¡¯t managed to heal my arm yet, but I don¡¯t exactly have much mana to spend and I¡¯m not in the best state of mind right now. I didn¡¯t kill anyone, even when I knew I should have. The blades were blunted and I mostly threw my puppets into the fray to be shields for the less durable soldiers, but still, the fighting was hard and I¡¯m tired.


    So, Good Night Diary.

 Day 11

    I can¡¯t heal my arm.


    It doesn¡¯t matter how much mana I pour into it or whatever else I do with it I can¡¯t restore my arm. I was able to heal it up to where that spell had eaten through it, but not beyond.


    It doesn¡¯t hurt either, usually, you would expect to feel some phantom pains from a missing arm but I don¡¯t. It is almost like the arm was never there to begin with.


    When I talked to Mest about it he said that I¡¯m incredibly lucky to be alive right now. The enchantment on the arrow must have been an incredibly dangerous thing developed to take out powerful mana based creatures, of course when they got strong enough it just stopped working on them entirely so it was mostly deemed a failure despite the fact that it works just fine against most mana based creatures. Mest also said something along the lines of it being incredibly expensive to create and at best only working once per enchantment, so it is unlikely they would have had more than one. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    He isn¡¯t sure exactly how it works, just that it somehow messes up the blueprint of the body the creature affected by it has. The end result of that is I can¡¯t heal my arm through traditional means.


    What this means is that the man that shot me was there to kill me, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I hadn''t burned my Fate I would be dead, but a missing arm isn¡¯t too bad, I can make a replacement one out of plants while I try to figure out how to actually fix this problem. I guess that¡¯s what I¡¯m doing tomorrow.


    Other than figure all of that out I spent most of my time healing people. All of the injured were brought to this hospital in the middle of town, I spent from lunchtime on there healing the worst of the injured.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 12

    This morning I talked to Mest about potential fixes to my missing arm, his responses weren¡¯t very hopeful. There are several cases of mana based creatures surviving an attack like the one I had, but actually fixing the damage is incredibly rare. The only documented cases of it being fixed were always at the hands of either Origin or incredibly ancient dungeons, likely ones possessed by an Origin. While the actual description of what they do is relatively easy to get your hands on, actually figuring out how to pull it off yourself as only been accomplished once, by a true immortal. Not exactly something that inspires confidence in my chances of getting my arm back.


    Around lunch time I took about five minutes to create a new arm for myself, it¡¯s not like this type of thing needs a lot of effort at this point. I made it out of a mixture of all the plants I have access to, less for the function of the plants and more for the convenience of simply having instant easy access to all of my tools. I had it wrap around what was left of my shoulder in addition to a good quarter of my torso before it connected to my body.


    When it connected to my body it felt different than what normally happens when I put on a new armour. It connected to me on a fundamental level, and though I don¡¯t understand the how I understand the why and I have an inkling about the what.


    When I put on one of my armors the intention is for it to be a temporary thing, so it only connects to me superficially, but for this new arm the intention was for it to be much more permanent, something I would keep and modify to suit my needs, instead of making something new every time. The intention was different, and As intention is a large part of magic that meant that the result was different.


    The what I¡¯m still working on, but I think I¡¯m safe to say that I¡¯m not going to lose this new arm anytime soon. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    My control over my new wooden arm is much broader than my control over my more normal arm, but that control is a lot less fine. Yeah, I can move my new arm in a full circle at really any point on the arm, though the joints are easiest, I still need a lot of practice before I get the movements down. I can have it take any form I want, but just a normal arm is more comfortable to me so that is what I keep it while at rest. I can also have it do anything that I would be able to do with my plants separately, meaning I could have tendrils of Whitefoot pierce into someone for more directed healing, I don¡¯t even have any of the decreases in efficiency I normally experienced by trying to use my magic indirectly through my plants. I can pull out a particular plant I need from it very quickly, much faster than I was able to before when I just kept samples in pockets of my armour. And finally, I can add a new plant to the arm, with no ill effects, effectively limitlessly. And I can use those new plants in just the same way I can use all the rest.


    When I figured that last point out I went around and I added all of my more mundane plants to my armour with something of a childlike glee. Some even produce food. Obviously, that food is useless to me as it takes just as much mana to make it as I would get back from eating it, but I might have to feed someone without any food readily available someday.


    In the evening Mest came to me excitedly and told me that someone is willing to get me some Ironwood. It wouldn¡¯t even cost any money, just that I make him something when he arrives. It wasn¡¯t clear what he wanted me to make, just that it would be within my power, if only barely. Mest wasn¡¯t clear on what exactly he wanted to be made, but I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if the guy didn¡¯t know yet himself.


    After that, I spent a while practising with my new arm. Everyone else was asleep by the time I stopped.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 13

    We will be attacked again tomorrow.


    We thought the bulk of the army would attack Pearlhold, we were wrong.


    The oncoming army is easily the largest mass of people I have ever seen. There is no chance that they can sneak up on us with that many soldiers, so we saw them a ways out from here. They came from the opposite direction from Pearlhold, so it is unlikely Par knows they''re coming yet.


    They were a little more than a day away from us when we spotted them, and it takes around that long to travel between Pearlhold and here. At best Par will arrive with reinforcements shortly after the fighting starts. And we will need reinforcements. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    As for what I did today, I helped the Ents create walls. The longer we can delay them the better chance we have of surviving.


    Personally, I¡¯m excited. Yes, this is a very dangerous situation, but that same danger presents an opportunity. By all reports this is a very large chunk of the armies of the surrounding city-states, if we can do enough damage to them we can cripple them, leaving them easy to conquer in turn. I¡¯ve never really cared about taking over cities, but Par wants to rule a country, and there are certain benefits from having friends in those kinds of positions. Things like easy access to new plants.


    I¡¯m going to stay up a bit longer to work on the walls, which are more or less made of massive, durable trees. Hopefully, they will delay the approaching army for a while.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 14

    The enemy reached us shortly after the sun rose, Par¡¯s reinforcements reached us when the sun was at its peak.


    Using my puppets I focused my efforts on keeping the better fighters alive. I ended up adding some Whitefoot to the puppets so that I could heal. I didn¡¯t get enough time to perfect it, so the puppets overall were a bit worse, but it allowed me to keep people alive better than I could have if I just had them block blows.


    The downside to this was that it cost a ton of mana to facilitate this level of healing. I¡¯ve certainly healed worse injuries, but never have I tried to heal on such a wide scale, and certainly not through an inefficient method like the puppets. I had to draw on my grove more than I ever had before, and as such my trees need to recover. My mana production will be crippled for the next two days at best, and there is nothing I can do to speed it up. At best I will be receiving enough mana to maintain myself from my grove, I would probably start to starve if it wasn¡¯t for my dungeon core. But that small sacrifice was necessary, it kept people alive that ended up being crucial to the fight.


    When the reinforcements from Pearlhold came the fighting just got even more fierce and desperate, on both sides. Everyone was backed into a corner, and for the vast majority of creatures the first instinct when backed into a corner is to fight your way out of it, worry about injuries later. And so the fighting just got more and more bloody as time went on.


    In the end, we won, barely. It was a pyrrhic victory. We lost almost all of our soldiers, and they were completely annihilated. The survivors were rounded up and executed, no one gave the order, but no one tried to stop them. Stolen story; please report.


    When the list of casualties came back a number of important people had died. Bug was an early casualty, he died saving a friend. Whisperer took a poisoned bolt for me, I simply didn¡¯t have enough mana to heal him. I regret everything bad I ever thought about him. Par¡¯s second in command is missing, no body, alive or dead, has been found. Several of my children were chopped to pieces, beyond their ability to recover from, including a couple of the best healers among them. Willow took a couple hits, but she will recover in a couple days with adequate healing, as did Mest. Thes was heavily injured in the fighting, but he¡¯ll live, even without healing he¡¯ll live.


    And worst of all, a fourth of my grove was destroyed. If it wasn¡¯t for the fire resistance I gained from that ancient dragon Thes brought back when he evolved all of it would have been gone. Now, this war is personal.


    No one expected that they would completely ignore Pearlhold to send their entire army here. We thought they wanted the valuable prize of Pearlhold, not some small village that would cost them more lives to claim than they could possibly recover with a success. And yet they seemed to care more about putting us down than profiting.


    Looking around at the survivors I have never seen people look so defeated, and I have never before seen people so filled with spite. Every single one of them has seen a comrade die.


    I understand a bit of how Thes feels all the time. They came into our home and slaughtered our friends and our families, burned our homes to the ground, and destroyed our crops. The lack of food won¡¯t be an issue simply because of how many of our people died, you don¡¯t have to feed a corpse.


    So naturally I¡¯m angry, but I don¡¯t have a way to act on my anger. So I need to clear my head. To that end I¡¯m going to help the trees recover, I might not have mana production right now but I do have a stockpile of mana berries. The two-day prediction was assuming active support, so it will be about that long before they¡¯re fully recovered.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 15

    Day one of minimal access to mana and I¡¯m already bored out of my mind. Any mana I do get immediately goes to helping the trees recover.


    The mana berries were exhausted before I went to bed last night, apparently, Tiddol and other alchemists used up a lot more of them than I thought. I did manage to fully rejuvenate a couple trees though, which does slightly increase my mana production. The change isn¡¯t really dramatic though, as each individual tree doesn¡¯t offer all that much mana to me.


    I watched Thes fight yesterday, the first time since his evolution. Before he was powerful, only Mest could beat him in a fight and that was only because of very specific countermeasures. Now his sheer power fills me with awe, he cut through masses of friends and foes alike in a barely controlled rage. With Mest able to point him in the right direction he was like a force of nature, breathing fire on scores of enemies one moment and claiming their heads with his axe the next. Not even the mightiest of blows could bring him down. And that is terrifying.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    There was only one title I can use to describe Thes, True Immortal. He has claimed immortality through nothing short of brute physical force, and Mest seems to agree. And we have to figure out a way to subdue him when he finally snaps.


    If he snaps, we still haven¡¯t given up hope for solving his anger issues.


    To make matters worse, the fighting didn¡¯t help Thes. actually, that¡¯s not entirely correct. The fighting itself did help Thes, but the aftermath only made him worse. He personally trained many of the dead soldiers.


    I spent most of the day trying to find something to do. I can¡¯t assist in rebuilding, I can¡¯t mess around with my plants, I can¡¯t go around healing people, and I can¡¯t do a dozen other things because they all require mana. I¡¯m not exactly physically strong or durable, not without some mana at least, so I can¡¯t even lend my physical labour, I would just get in the way if I tried.


    Anyone that I would hang out with is either busy helping out or dead. And it just feels wrong to do some of the more frivolous activities like games or reading.


    So I ended up trying to find something to busy myself with between dumping any mana I had accumulated into my grove. I wasn¡¯t very successful.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 16

    I hit a breakthrough in the efforts to restore the trees today. And by that I mean I got to the point when I was producing enough mana that I could actually actively help them, which made it so I could gather mana faster which made everything go quicker and on and on and on. With just a little bit of effort in the morning, I should be back where I was before the attack, if you ignore the trees that were destroyed entirely.


    I¡¯ve been thinking. If I want to get my arm back, my real arm I mean, not the wooden one, then I am going to need to rely on either an ancient dungeon or an Origin. I will eventually become an ancient dungeon, but that is something in the range of a thousand years away, sentient creatures haven¡¯t even been around that long yet. And I can¡¯t go looking for one either, I¡¯m tied to this place, I can¡¯t just leave. Origin, on the other hand, are nearly impossible to contact and it¡¯s even harder to get them to do what you want, and on top of that there is maybe a hundred left alive right now, and that number is constantly dropping. To make it even less likely an Origin will come here this place is filled with mana, which would be a death sentence. And again, it¡¯s not like I can seek one out. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    There is, however, one Origin that would be more than willing to help me out, and I already have a piece of his soul. The question is whether I want to use one of the nine questions I have to learn how to fix my arm. I know it can¡¯t fix my arm on its own, but it can definitely teach me how to do it myself.


    If there is ever a time to use it this is that time, but I¡¯m not sure I even want to. I like having a wooden arm, it¡¯s convenient. There is also the issue of


    You know what, I can¡¯t think of another reason not to use a question on this without contradicting myself. Why am I hesitating so much on this, I should just do it and get it over with, not wallow in indecision. As soon as I¡¯m done writing I¡¯m going to ask.


    Oh yeah, a lot of the survivors evolved after the fighting was over, some of them into new species even. I¡¯m going to meet with a couple of them tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 17

    It took surprisingly long to fully absorb the knowledge I gained last night. I had to do it slowly and deliberately so as to not lose anything.


    I also didn¡¯t ask about healing my arm, I asked for something a little more broad. From what I understand fixing my arm is on a fundamental level something that can¡¯t be fixed by traditional healing. The only other option is creation on a more fundamental level than just growing back a limb, I have to create a new one from scratch. So what I asked for was knowledge about the design and creation of mana based creatures. And that''s what i received.


    This is where I encountered my problem. See, the soul piece can¡¯t give me skills. If i ask it for ¡®how to use a sword¡¯ I would know all of the information required, but i wouldn¡¯t be able to put it into practice without just that, practice. If I have that practice it can make me an amazing swordsman. and that¡¯s great and all for swinging a sword. But, for something like creating a mana base creature, which is basically what i need to do to fix my arm, I would either need to create one, something that would require external mana manipulation on such a fine level that it would take centuries for me to even get close, to practice on a living creature.


    I can¡¯t practice on myself because i will definitely mess something up that I won¡¯t know how to fix. worse case scenario is I die incredibly painful, and that doesn¡¯t look too unlikely.


    I can¡¯t practice on a corpse or an undead because mana based creatures don¡¯t leave corpses.


    And I won¡¯t practice on a living creature for the same reasons I won¡¯t practice on myself. Regardless of how I look at it mercilessly torturing a creature, no matter how guilty, is objectively a bad thing, a line I should not cross. And if I try to practice on a living creature they will die, most likely in a painful and gruesome way. It¡¯s flesh manipulation all over again, only without the hope that a friendly necromancer will help me out, or even a less than friendly necromancer that we can pay.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    It¡¯s not all bad though. As a result of this I might be the best healer in the world, at least in regards to healing mana based creatures and assuming you ignore dungeons and Origin. Well, I mean a creature with much better access to mana than me and a much better understanding of how healing as a whole works would be able to do better than me, or even one with enough mana and a strong enough desire to heal. Actually now that I think about it there are a lot of aspects to healing, I¡¯ve just mastered one of them with help from the Origin from before.


    Now I¡¯m seriously tempted to ask about other aspects of healing. Maybe I¡¯ll ask the same question, only about flesh and bone creatures instead. Who knows, maybe I will be able to advance my healing far enough that I¡¯ll be able to do Necromancy on my own.


    I ended up spending most of the day meeting with important people of the community. Most of it was just general attempts to improve morale, but a couple of them were interesting. The first one was a Greater Goblin that evolved into a lesser Orc, something we haven¡¯t seen around here before. He was one of Thes¡¯s more skilled disciples. And while he wasn¡¯t a particularly good conversationalist the fact that he exists is objectively a good thing.


    The second was one of Bug¡¯s children, may his soul find fulfillment in another life. This child of his was the same one he told me about before, the healer that desires a more martial path. The most obvious change was the wings. She could now fly, and though she wasn¡¯t very good at it that was obviously due to a lack of practice and not a lack of talent. She evolved into a further variant of Dragonewt, and Winged Dragonewt Saint. Honestly the name is kind of lackluster and literal, but that doesn¡¯t detract from the spectacle any.


    Her natural talent in healing supersedes even that of the greatest of my children. And once she gets a hang of flying she will have some of the best maneuverability of anyone here, other than myself but that is limited to my grove, and a couple people that specialize in that.


    Other than meetings I didn¡¯t have time for much else. I made sure to patch up any remaining wounds Willow and several other mana based creatures had, just to put my new knowledge to work. To really cement it in my mind.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 18

    Par got home today. Once it was clear that Pearlhold wasn¡¯t going to be attacked he started the process of getting everyone ready to march. Every soldier that is battle ready is going to march on the closest city state.


    It has been confirmed that nearly all of their military has been killed in the fighting, they were expecting to sweep over us with minimal casualties, or at the very least for us to surrender once we realized that we can¡¯t win without heavy losses. It should be easy to take the city, and the people are begging for it. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I spent most of my time today replacing the parts of my grove that was destroyed. It will take a couple days of solid work, but it isn¡¯t difficult. Though the whole process is slowed down by my decreased mana regeneration. Even though my trees are back to normal, there are fewer of them, and many of the people that would ordinarily give me mana are dead. It will recover in time, but it has been a while since my mana regeneration has been this low.


    The guy that is supposed to be bringing some ironwood will be coming by tomorrow. Hopefully what he wants me to make isn¡¯t too difficult.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 19

    Today the guy that was bringing ironwood showed up. Immediately I thought he was creepy.


    First, it seemed like he was bragging about the protections he put on the chest containing the plant. It would be destroyed along with the contents and much of the surrounding areas should he die or if it is tampered with, and it was resistant to magical effects that would peer inside the chest, which prevents me from just taking some of the plant.


    Once he told me what he wanted it was clear he was actually threatening me. The thing he wants me to make is ¡®a baby¡¯. Needless to say, we kicked him out with his chest. He should survive the wounds but regardless he will be far enough away that any explosion wouldn¡¯t matter. Wasn¡¯t entirely sure if he was bluffing about the chest, but no point in risking it.


    You know what, I¡¯m just going to try to make my own Iron Wood. I figure if I take mundane wood and refine it for hardness and durability it should evolve into Ironwood, or at least something with similar effects. Why didn¡¯t I think of that before? It would be so easy to evolve something so weak. At worst it will take me four days to trigger the first evolution, at best one. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    That is what I¡¯m going to do tomorrow.


    I ended up spending most of my day working on healing. The knowledge I gained from the piece of soul exists in a kind of vacuum in my mind, any part of it makes perfect sense in reference to any other piece, but I need to work to make sense of it outside of that vacuum. And work to make sense of it I did. I don¡¯t even have to practice healing, for the most part, just some meditation is enough to figure out what makes sense.


    It turns out that some of the information is relevant to healing non-mana based creatures as well, though not nearly as well. Despite failing at the intended purpose I think getting this knowledge was a smart move, and I think I¡¯m going to do the same thing with flesh and bone creatures next.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 20

    Today I focused on refining mundane wood. I almost got it to the point where it can evolve, just a little bit of effort tomorrow should do the trick.


    Something interesting happened to me while I was using my daily allowance of Solar Energy. The sky started to get a lot brighter, so on a hunch I burned my fate. Over the next minute, everything got brighter and brighter and I was flooded with Solar Energy. It wasn¡¯t just me, all of my plants were as well. A couple of them ended up singed but most came out better for it, though by far the biggest gains were in my Solar Energy battery, it filled up to the fourth basin. My solar energy production is now basically doubled. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Then all at once, it was over.


    When I asked Mest about it he said it was probably a solar flare, something that happens every year or so for each sun orbiting the world. Me burning fate probably didn¡¯t have much of an effect, at best putting us in a slightly better position to take advantage of it.


    As for when I am going to ask about the creation and design of flesh and bone creatures, it will be a while. I want to fully integrate the knowledge I¡¯ve already gained first.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 21

    Today I finished evolving some mundane wood. It was much harder and more durable, but not to the point that I¡¯m satisfied. Fortunately, there is still more work to be done with it, evolving it further should be easy. I should get it to evolve again before I go to bed tomorrow.


    I spent some time talking to talus today, which is a regular thing. Today¡¯s conversations were especially noteworthy. We talked about everything from recent events to future aspirations. We were a lot closer both physically and emotionally than we have been in weeks. It was nice, feeling cut off from her sucks. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Parius and his soldiers have reached the nearest enemy city. The last I heard they haven¡¯t engaged yet, but we should hear a lot more in the next couple days. I know it goes without saying, but I really hope that as many of them as possible return home safely.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 22

    This evening I managed to evolve the plant I¡¯m working on again. One more evolution and it will be where I want it to be. That should take me three or four days, maybe less. I tend to overestimate the time it takes to complete these things so probably less.


    We received word from Par today. It was an easy victory. With almost, their entire military destroyed they could only rely on the magical and martial might of the civilians, very few of which could stand up to the might of hundreds of incredibly spiteful veteran soldiers, and those ones were killed by assassins. The only real force that delayed them was the wall itself. The city of Bexley is now ours.


    Mest was talking to me excitedly about a breakthrough he made with a spell he is designing, and not all of it flew over my head. He¡¯s designing a spell that is supposed to debilitate things like muscles, bones, and nerves. The intended purpose is to weaken the target as much as possible, and by targeting specific aspects of a creature he makes it so the spell is potentially more potent, at the cost of not working on all creatures. For example, it won¡¯t affect creatures like Slimes, which are basically animated globs of acidic goo with no muscles, bones, or nerves to speak of, and it won¡¯t affect mana based creatures like myself.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    He figured out how to fix one small issue that was a problem in every single part of the spell, apparently, it¡¯s something that has been plaguing him for a while. I¡¯m happy for him, seeing him so excited makes me want to share his excitement.


    Other than that the merchants from a couple weeks ago showed up selling things again. This time they brought more plants, knowing that I was looking for some interesting samples, though I already have everything they offered. I did show them examples of all of my plants just in case they decide to go looking for more plants to sell to me. Hopefully, they do.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 23

    The aftermath of the battle at Bexley was a massacre. Looting and pillaging have been going on since they managed to breach the walls with little to no order and none of the commanders has been able to put a stop to it. The worst offenders are going to be executed, and the rest will be punished in other ways, but they might not be able to rein in the chaos before the city is completely levelled.


    This is already causing some issues. Mest is throwing a fit, a couple important scholars died in the fighting and he¡¯s now getting some flak for it. Apparently, his funding is at risk or something like that, the politics behind it are rather boring.


    I get why it happened, I¡¯m bitter about the destruction too, but these guys need to calm down. I don¡¯t know enough about warfare and politics to give a concrete reason why but based off of what¡¯s happening with Mest right now levelling cities will only hurt us in both the long term and short term. I might have to do something about this personally, but I honestly have no idea what I could do. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Other than that disaster I spent quite a bit of time thinking about my life. And, aside from a couple hang-ups, it¡¯s been pretty great recently. My relationship with Talus is back where it should be, and while Tiddol is busier than she used to be with her new children I still hang out and have fun with my best friend often enough. I wouldn¡¯t quite say I¡¯m friends with Mest, though I am, it just doesn''t feel quite right, at the very least I respect him and I hope he respects me as well. Thes is an interesting challenge. I want to get to know Willow better but we don¡¯t really have much in common and I don¡¯t really know how to approach her.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 24

    This morning Thes ran off to the nearby dungeon, something I didn¡¯t find out until after the fact. Apparently, he got to the point where he needed to let off some steam or risk snapping at a bad time.


    The dungeon is completely levelled, there is nothing left. We can¡¯t use it to train and gather resources any more, but we have temporarily averted disaster. We should be good for a couple months before Thes snaps again.


    It sucks that we had to sacrifice the dungeon though. We didn¡¯t even get the core back. It¡¯s still there, buried under a mountain of rubble. I mean it¡¯s possible the core of the dungeon survived, but even if it did it will be years before it actually gets to the point where it is usable. Especially because I doubt anyone will be visiting it in a long while, limiting its mana production to what it naturally produces, which is minuscule, and what it can gather from the ambient mana.


    You know, maybe I could offer a donation of mana to the dungeon. I¡¯ve recently found that I can absorb the mana berries practically at will as long as they are within my Grove and no one is carrying them around, no idea why that limits me but I haven¡¯t figured out a workaround quite yet. The same probably holds true to other dungeons, as I¡¯m almost certain my dungeon core is the cause of that effect.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I have quite a few Mana berries stored up that I don¡¯t really do much with, especially now that spring is here and the bushes are producing them in mass. Yeah, the alchemists use them a lot, but other than that there isn¡¯t a lot of use for them beyond a quick pick-me-up from time to time.


    So my idea is first to have Mest go confirm that the dungeon is actually alive, which is well within his powers, and then send a group to basically dig a really deep hole within that dungeon¡¯s territory and drop in a bunch of the berries before burying them. I did a test to make sure that wouldn¡¯t interfere with absorbing them. We should be able to do it tomorrow though I doubt we will see much in the way of results for several months, which is fine, I¡¯m patient. A usable dungeon a couple months from now is better than no usable dungeon.


    I¡¯ll ask about it tomorrow, though I doubt there will be many problems with this.


    As for what I did today, I mostly worked on my attempt at Ironwood. Though at this point I am almost certain what I have is much better than Ironwood ever was. Despite that, I am nowhere near my limit with this plant, and the more I can get it to evolve the better.


    I do like the subtle shade of blue it is turning though, it¡¯s rather pretty. Even more so because I haven¡¯t touched the colouration, that¡¯s all natural.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 25

    I think it will be about a week before I will have finished refining my current project. At that point, it should be strong enough to suit my purposes, and any improvements will start to take a lot longer.


    I asked Mest about my plan this morning and he was all for it. Everything was done before dinner time. I¡¯m not complaining but it was weird how enthusiastic about it he was.


    We managed to confirm that the dungeon is indeed alive, and we did confirm that it was able to claim the mana berries for itself. Hopefully, now it¡¯s recovery will be much easier. Mest even went the extra step of capturing some game and killing it with the dungeon¡¯s territory, so it can absorb the mana and soul of the dead creatures.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    On a related note, Mest brought home dinner today. It was honestly pretty good, he hunted down some high-quality meat.


    Other than that I managed to finally get my Grove back to the size it was before the attack. Now I can start growing again, instead of recovering.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 26

    Today I spent my free time hanging out with Talus. We didn¡¯t really do anything special beyond what we normally do. Play games, hang out, talk about anything, cuddle a bit, that kind of stuff.


    Par and his commanders have finally gotten the looting and pillaging to stop, there were more casualties than we were expecting. Roughly half of the soldiers we sent out died, most of them were killed in an attempt to stop the looting.


    There are no living people left in the city, and the only walls that still stand are the outer walls. But there are plenty of goods to bring home, though our population has been significantly reduced we will be very wealthy. And I¡¯m sure a ton of resources will absolutely help us survive against any attack, what with our crippled army being in ideal shape to repel invaders and all.


    Ok, I¡¯m more than a little angry. Every single person that dies personally hurts me, as it decreases the amount of mana I get. On top of that if our enemies are anywhere near as spiteful as we apparently are then we could be attacked any day now. If we are attacked by any sizable in the near future we will probably have to surrender, otherwise, we will probably all die. It¡¯s not just me saying this, even some of Par¡¯s military leaders think this. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    On the bright side, they might have some new magical plants. Even new mundane plants would be fine, I might be able to use them for something eventually.


    Oh yeah, I¡¯ve gotten a lot more practice with my wooden arm. At this point I can change the texture at will, taking less than a thought, though the default woody texture is still the most comfortable. I¡¯ve also got a lot more control over it just in general, pretty much anything I can do with plants I can do with my arm only faster, with more efficiency, and better control. Once I get better control over it I should be able to dissect myself on a much deeper level than I have before, that plus my newfound knowledge on the structure of mana based creatures should lead to me making much better armours for myself, plus a lot better self-healing.


    With how much more useful this wooden arm is compared to the regular one I don¡¯t think I want to fix it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 27

    Today was pretty slow. Par isn¡¯t going to return until tomorrow, my current project is going steadily, and nothing really out of the ordinary has happened.


    Since nothing particularly interesting happened today I might as well give an update on my solar energy practice. As a result of the solar flare from a bit ago, the amount of solar energy I have has basically doubled. Six of the rings are now filled. Despite that, I haven¡¯t been using any more Solar Energy than I was before to enable it to grow faster. Honestly, I¡¯m thinking of just letting it sit for a while and waiting for the amount to increase. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    The solar energy has actually formed a construct that seems to be rather stable, like it won¡¯t just explode if I combine it all together into one ball. I know for a fact that combining it all will make it produce Solar Energy faster, as density has a lot more to do with production than anything else. I didn¡¯t let it grow too large before because I was worried that it would destabilize and blow up, though in hindsight that was just me being paranoid.


    All that is just a build up to me saying that I removed the dividers in the mana battery by accident. They were a lot flimsier than I first thought they were, either that or the constant contact of Solar Energy corroded them, though I doubt that as Solar Energy seems to be more of a force for creation.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 28

    Today something interesting happened with my Fate, though it did come at a personal cost to myself.


    I was helping Tiddol out with some alchemy when something exploded. I just so happened to trigger my fate a moment before it blew up, after what caused the explosion happened. It just blew up in the worst way possible for me.


    I haven¡¯t not worn my armour in a very long time, having some clothes of my own making out of my own plants on me at all times has become something of a comfort thing for me. I don¡¯t even fully remove it when I bathe, instead of turning it into a trinket of some kind on my body. The liquid that splashed around from the explosion cut me off from the armour. It didn¡¯t physically disappear but any magic that was part of it did.


    It left me feeling more naked than I have ever felt before, more alone and afraid. I have never had an anxiety attack before, but when I later described that event to Talus she said that is exactly what I experienced.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I am almost certain that Fate can make Fate easier to acquire, so why hasn¡¯t it yet? Whatever, maybe late this summer when I will only have to sleep every couple of days I¡¯ll be able to get something really good out of it.


    Anyway, what I got out of Fate was interesting. I burned it while I was working with my Solar Energy like I usually do, when I managed to turn the Solar Energy directly into Mana. On its own this ability is incredibly inefficient and slow, in other words; completely useless. I can already turn solar energy into mana much faster by way of casting a spell.


    What was really interesting was this, I can reverse the process. The reverse is even more inefficient and slow, but now that I know the basics I should be able to improve on it. At least that is the plan, no idea if it will work out in reality though.


    Now I¡¯m conflicted. I really want to work on this, a lot more than I want to create a particularly hard plant. But I need this hard plant a lot more than I need Solar Energy. Maybe I could try to split my focus? I can effectively do fourty things at the same time as long as they are all simple and repetitive, I¡¯ve never tried to do different things with that before, but it is worth a try. I¡¯ll see what I can do tomorrow.

 Day 29

    So I have decided to finish up with my current project before moving on. It should only be two or three days until I finish it anyway.


    Having to wait is agonizing, turning mana into Solar Energy has so much potential. I¡¯ve had Solar Energy since I¡¯ve evolved but I haven¡¯t been able to do anything with it simply because I haven¡¯t had enough of it to do anything. So while I know Solar Energy has potential I don¡¯t know what that potential is, well I know a little bit but not nearly enough to say much about it.


    What I can say is that Solar Energy feels a lot more volatile than Mana, and that Solar Energy feels a lot more creative than mana. Mana is also a lot more slippery than Solar Energy, what I mean by that is if I use Mana for something I always lose that mana. There are ways to recover lost mana from spells and the like, but that requires external mana manipulation, which I am still fundamentally terrible at. Solar Energy, on the other hand, is incredibly easy to reclaim, as long as the energy wasn¡¯t destroyed in the spell I can reclaim nearly all of it. Of course, it is nearly always destroyed during the spell, by the ambient mana if nothing else.


    Honestly, my grove is a terrible environment for using Solar Energy, way more Ambient mana than the average. Now that I think about it, couldn¡¯t I plant some Mana Berries around the area I work with Solar Energy? I am pretty sure that if I do it right I could almost completely seal the area off from mana, at least until winter. If I were to ramp up the plants natural mana gathering abilities beyond what I already have then I should be able to move the mana elsewhere, especially If I combine it with Astrie to function as a kind of pipeline. Basically, create an area of super low mana density and an area of super high mana density. I¡¯m sure our local mages would like a practice ground like that.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    I wonder if that would mess with the mana I get from the trees. I hope not, then I wouldn¡¯t be able to use it for more than a couple hours without starting to starve. When I was a sprite I could have gone days, now not so much. Even if the worst happens I will still survive, my dungeon core produces mana at a flat rate, which should keep me alive in a weakened state, possibly forever.


    It¡¯s odd, thinking that if the worst happens and I¡¯m trapped out in space or something where there is no mana I will still continue to live whether or not I want to, at that point I doubt I will be in any condition to cast spells.


    Also, the amount of mana my core produces is tied to its age, so eventually I would be getting enough mana to maintain my body at its peak just from my core.


    Other than my slightly morbid musings not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 30

    I started working on a low mana density area today. It shouldn¡¯t delay my current project by too much, It didn¡¯t take much time but it did take a bit of mana. I should still finish by tomorrow


    It wasn¡¯t too complicated to build, the only really difficult part was the scale. I had to build a tightly sealed room made out of the mana berry bush and Astrie. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all made from the Mana berry bush, while most of the internals are made of Astrie.


    The way it works is mana inside is sucked into the walls and floors which then carry it to the Astrie, which I had moving the mana outside somewhere. The outside walls absorb any mana that physically touches them and moves it to the astrie inside.


    Just a couple minutes ago I checked on it to find that it has completely failed. I have no idea what happened but that room ended up with a higher concentration of mana than anywhere else in my grove, and the astrie line that was carrying the mana away was completely gone. Like it had disintegrated or something.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    I guess this is going to take a lot more work than I previously thought. At the very least I did learn one thing, the mana berry bush has a lot more potential for moving mana around than Astrie. I still need to refine it quite a bit before I¡¯ll be satisfied with it, but that isn¡¯t an issue.


    It looks like I have a couple projects lined up for me for the next little while, all of which relating in some way to solar energy. I¡¯m actually a little annoyed that I haven¡¯t managed to think of creating a place with minimal mana to use with Solar Energy before now. I¡¯ve had all the resources required for a very long time, Astrie and the mana berries were pretty much the first magical plants I ever got. Why did I never think of using them together? I mean, I¡¯m not going to use them together for this project, the mana berries are better at everything the Astrie could have done, but still.


    Other than my failed attempt at building a room today I got to see a light show put on by Willow and a couple of my children. It was brilliant in many senses of the word.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 31

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    <div>


    Today I finished my current project. I ended up with an incredibly lightweight and hard wood that has a brilliant blue colouration. It isn¡¯t quite perfect, but any further improvements will be slower and slower. I honestly don¡¯t think hardness is something I can actually perfect.


    Now I need to think of a name for it. Mest says it has qualities that are very similar to mithril, so maybe Mithrilwood? Nah, that¡¯s lame. I can come up with something more creative than that


    It was late in the evening when I finally finished, so I didn¡¯t have a lot of time remaining for other things. Though I did a couple things with it. First I tried having Thes try to break it, and he didn¡¯t even manage to damage it without raging, he didn¡¯t rage for obvious reasons so I don¡¯t know how well it will hold up. I¡¯m confident though. I gave him a necklace made of the stuff, it¡¯s light enough that he shouldn¡¯t really notice it¡¯s there and if the worst happens it will make it incredibly easy to restrain him with it.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I also made a couple puppets with it, ten to be exact, as that is the number I can control with ease. It takes an incredible amount of mana to create one, at least compared to the originals, which makes it take a lot longer to create. I can only use mana so quickly after all. The design also needs some major reworking in order to get it to function properly with the new plant.


    There are so many things I want to work on now that I have no idea what to do next. Whatever, I¡¯ll figure it out tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 32

    <div>


    <div>


    <div>


    This morning I made a list of everything I want to work on.


    Turning mana into solar energy


    Creating an area with no mana


    Creating an area with tons of mana


    Refining the mana berry bush


    Perfecting my puppets


    I then crossed of anything the relies on something else, so both no mana and tons of mana, and I also crossed off turning mana into solar energy, as that would be boosted by having an area with no mana. That left refining the mana berry bush and perfecting my puppets, I decided to go with refining the mana berry bush, because while it isn¡¯t anything really special in and of itself it is the prerequisite for what is easily the most interesting part. I really want to be able to actually work with Solar Energy.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I made really good progress on the refining today, in fact, I could probably do it with what I have now. But I refuse to be satisfied until I am unable to refine it anymore, and then when I can¡¯t refine it anymore I¡¯m going to try to force it to evolve by using massive amounts of mana, something I wouldn¡¯t be able to do with other plants. See, this plant can move mana around and store it, and I¡¯m planning on taking that to the extreme, If I pump mana into it for long enough it should evolve. Of course, I have to have it refined as much as I possibly can otherwise I won¡¯t be able to get it to evolve the way I want it to and then I¡¯ll have to wait months to try again because any attempt after that will simply have the same result.


    Needless to say, this will take quite some time, but it is a rather simple plant. I honestly have no idea how long it will take, probably a week or two.

 Day 33

    Today I continued to refine the mana berry bush, I need to come up with a better name than that. I made pretty good progress overall.


    I was thinking about why I was gaining so much progress with Solar Energy recently when it struck me, quite literally in fact. That rock smashed my nose, easy enough to fix but still painful. The answer is Fate.


    See, recently I¡¯ve been putting as much effort as my limited resources allow into developing my abilities with Solar Energy, that includes burning my Fate in a way that I think will help with that. I think this more or less proves my theory that Fate works in my immediate situation and desires more often than random chance would normally allow. Or maybe it¡¯s just that there are a lot more things that will directly and subjectively improve something around me? Either way, it means that I can try to manipulate it.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    For the foreseeable future, I¡¯m going to try to boost my Fate somehow using this method. I don¡¯t really see a way that I can make my surroundings have more opportunities for boosting Fate, so instead, every day when I go to burn my Fate I will think about Fate and try to come up with an idea on how to utilize it better, or something like that.


    While I dislike the inherently chaotic nature of Fate I can see how it can be useful, I just wish I had more control over it. Even if all I could do is ensure a better than even chance that whatever positive effect that happens will benefit my current project that would go a long way to helping me out.


    Other than that not a lot happened. The rock that hit my face was thrown by Tiddol¡¯s daughter while she was messing around, so no harm done. Well, other than my broken nose, but that¡¯s easy to fix.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 34

    Progress on the mana berry bush, the final form of which I have decided to call Pipeweed as I couldn¡¯t think of anything better, is going great. So far I¡¯ve managed to get it to evolve once and I¡¯m pretty sure I¡¯m close to a second one. I have no idea how many times I will have to make it evolve until refining it alone won¡¯t be enough to get it to evolve, but hopefully it isn¡¯t too many.


    As for what i did in my downtime, I have decided to start practicing with my puppets more. We are going to be attacked again, it¡¯s a matter of when, not if. Knowing how to fight through my puppets will make it easier to defend my grove. Plus there are some other, less violent, things I could do with puppets. For one I wouldn¡¯t have to rely on other people for heavy lifting, which will probably be useful eventually. For another they can help me train my mind in order to control multiple things at a time, making refining faster.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Though honestly, the real reason I decided to practice with my puppets was because sparing is fun. There is something about it that gets me excited and competitive. And no one wanted to play board games with me, so I had to settle for the next best thing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 35

    Today I worked on refining Pipeweed. At the rate I¡¯m going I should get it to the point that I can¡¯t refine it anymore in ten days, give or take a couple days. Then I can move on to pumping it as full of mana as I can, hopefully, brute forcing my way to an evolution.


    In my downtime, I managed to get Talus to play board games with me, and I actually managed to win a couple with the handicap of building up my Fate. though to be fair we mostly played cooperative games, like one where we had to lead a resistance movement against a ruthless warlord. It was actually pretty cool, every time we took our turn one of us would draw a card from the warlord''s deck that would describe his actions, and then some other cards would be played and occasionally some dice rolled to determine the results. For example, one time the warlord sent assassins after me, well that happened near constantly but I¡¯m talking about one time, in particular, I had a card that basically let me bait enemies into an ambush which I used to kill the assassins. Or another time we had to lay siege to a city, so we decided to arrange for the food supplies to be poisoned, so talus used a card depicting poison and a card for a master thief and poisoned the army. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    It was a lot of fun, I hope to play again someday. Or maybe we could get a bunch of people together and play the version of the game where the warlord is an actual player instead of what it was this time.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 36

    Today I made about as much progress on PIpeweed as I expected to make, slightly more actually.


    I met a man named Eric today. It was weird¡¯ I¡¯ve never met someone with a name so close to mine. Eric is a labour that was born and raised in pearlhold, and only recently moved here. He was a very conventionally attractive lesser angel, tall with flowing golden locks of hair and a toned body. And he was obviously uncomfortable around me, which is understandable given my position.


    It was just really weird to meet someone with a name so close to my own so I was curious. Apparently, Eric and Erica were really popular baby names half a century ago in this area, but not so much today.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    There is this story about a hero of the people named Eric, no clue whether it is just a story or actually happened, he was a warrior poet that went around killing violent creatures, hunting down bandits, seducing anyone he can get to listen to him for more than a minute, and getting the people to adore him all the while. He was definitely a beast, by most accounts he was a satyr, though some accounts say otherwise.


    The more stories I hear about this hero of the people, this satyr named Eric the more he reminds me of someone. Everything I heard about him doing I could easily see my father doing, and I distinctly remember him telling me about how he changed his name shortly after meeting my mother, if I remember right his original name was Eric.


    It might be a total coincidence, but a lot of things line up right, and honestly, I would rather remember my dad as a hero.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 37

    Today I continued to make progress on my project. Nothing really special to announce there.


    I have gotten pretty good at controlling my puppets at this point, I can move them around about half as well as I can move my own body, cutting down on the number does not improve that. This means that any sparring matches usually end in my favor, though they rarely go my way through the actual match.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    I think the best way to improve myself there would be to put quite a bit of time and effort into refining the puppets themselves, as I have gathered all the low hanging fruit in regards to skill. I¡¯ll probably take a day or two to do that after I¡¯m done with Pipeweed.


    I talked to Par today. Not about anything heavy, just catching up mostly. It was just fun to talk to him.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 38

    I made a small break through with developing PIpeweed today. There was one part that I was kind of dancing around because I couldn¡¯t figure out either what it was, what it did, or what I wanted to do with it. It turned out to be a useless, well useless for my purposes, clump that I could safely remove. That should shave a day or two off of my projected time, as there is simply less that I actually have to do.


    I sparred against Talus today using my puppets and lost miserably. I might be slightly fire resistant, but the most that is going to do is prevent a major wildfire from destroying everything. So nowhere near enough to level the playing field between us. Talus is simply better at this than I am, by quite a bit. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    If anything it was pretty impressive. I¡¯m a little bitter over how easy it seemed to be for her, but I¡¯m proud of her all the same. I definitely don¡¯t have to worry about her running off and getting herself killed.


    Other than that I talked to Mest a bit about my current project, about how I want to create a building with no mana in it. He said that while that type of thing is usually way outside his field of study, though a couple dungeons make use of them, that he is interested in the results. as far as he can tell they have never managed to convince a forest sprite or nymph to enter a zone like that, I wonder why? In general, though, mana based entities will eventually starve to death in similar areas. Which makes sense, no mana means nothing to eat means a slow and painful death, something I definitely don¡¯t want to almost experience again.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 39

    Nothing to report on pipeweed quite yet, Wich is a good thing because it means that I am making steady progress.


    Today a fight broke out. Talus and I were the only people around that were able to stop it. Things got a little violent, and then things got more than a little out of hand. People got hurt, it might have been my fault.


    Hopefully no one ends up dying, everyone was carted away before I could heal them. So I just pretended that I didn''t intend to from the beginning. As long as they don''t die most injuries can be fixed, the only known exception being my arm.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    I don''t want to go into exactly what happens, as I would rather forget, but I had to be a bit more forceful than I would have hoped to subdue some angry warriors.


    Other than that I had a more or less pleasent day with my girlfriend. We got lunch at a restaurant that poped up in town. I think that was the first time I''ve ever been to an actual restaurant. Sitting at a table to eat instead of standing around a cook fire was surreal, but the food was par for the course. Thes makes better.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 40

    Progress with Pipeweed is exactly what I was expecting today. Roughly four more days before I start pumping it full of mana.


    The most interesting event today has to be what happened with the cliff face in my grove. Someone messed up a spell or a potion, it wasn¡¯t clear which, and it caused an explosion, which destroyed a good chunk of the cliff face. Behind that was a small cavern, barely big enough for three people. In that cavern there was a pool filled with hot, running water. Where that water was going I have no idea, but it was incredibly relaxing to soak in.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    There are plans to excavate the hot spring, which is apparently what it¡¯s called. Specifically people want to remove a lot of the rocks above it, as that is what is limiting how many people can use it.


    Though until they excavate it I won''t feel bad about having it for my more or less exclusive use.


    I wonder if someone will find something else in the cave. Maybe an old dead dungeon? Or maybe an old living dungeon. I¡¯ve never met another dungeon before, it would be an interesting experience.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 41

    I¡¯m counting down the days till I can test out whether I can actually get a plant to evolve by pumping it full of mana.


    Excavation on the cavern started today, I¡¯m both a little disappointed and rather excited. I can¡¯t wait to see what is found inside.


    It is entirely possible that this cavern has never been opened before today, that it has gone undiscovered since the time of Origin. If that is the case then there is no telling what we could find inside. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    The population of the town is starting to bounce back, mostly through immigration. Hopefully, we can rebuild an army before we have to deal with any further aggression.


    Other than that I hung out with Tiddol today. At this point Umi is mostly independent, Hobgoblins grow up pretty quickly, but Endar is still nursing. Not much is known about humans, so Tiddol is getting a little worried that Ednar might be slow, which I think is ridiculous because Ednar is one of the healthiest creatures I have ever met. If there was something wrong with him I would know. I think humans just take a lot longer than Hobgoblins to develop.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 42

    Today I spent some time with my children. It was exciting listening to stories from their previous lives. One of my favorites was the story from an Ent that was a princess in her past life. She told me about how she struggled her whole life to claim her people''s crown because she knew that her older brother would destroy everything their family has worked for. Ultimately she failed and was proven right at the same time, when her brother let an invading army take her people''s home.


    These stories made me think, what type of story will I have when I die? When I am inevitably forced to reincarnate what will I remember of this life? There is little chance that I will remember nothing, if for no other reason than Fate. So what will I remember?


    Ideally I would look back on this life and remember everything, but that is even less likely than me remembering nothing. So let me try again, ideally I would be proud of what I accomplished in this life, or at the very least inspired by it.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    But what will I remember? In every single case my children have remembered parts that are core to who they were, names and faces are never remembered but the impact people and places had is. The what is often forgotten but the why is often remembered.


    Practical knowledge is only remembered when used constantly or understood deeply. I will likely remember how to heal, as that is almost entirely my own. But I might forget how to manipulate plants, and even if I don¡¯t I still won¡¯t be as good as I am now. I will definitely lose Solar Energy, as that is entirely reliant on my body. Fate is up to chance.


    It¡¯s weird, out of everything I¡¯ve built so far, my skill in healing is the only thing that I would be able to really claim to be entirely my own skill. Yeah, I did learn quite a bit from that piece of Origin soul, but it is still entirely my own skill that is making use of that knowledge. I can¡¯t claim the same for plant manipulation.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 43

    Tomorrow I should be done with this step of the process of refining Pipeweed. Then I will have a lot more free time and a lot less mana to work with. That should give me some time to perfect my puppets


    So I figured out a way to increase what I can get out of Fate. well not really increase it exactly. I spent too long trying to come up with a good metaphor, so I¡¯m just going to explain it.


    So I can go into the negatives with Fate, now that is generally a bad idea as it increases the chances of things like death. However, I am not good enough at this quite yet for that to be an issue, I simply can¡¯t move my Fate enough to cause or prevent my own death in all but the most extreme circumstances. And even in those circumstances, I will still lose quite a bit, like my arm for example.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    What I can do is when I go to spend my Fate I can cause it to plummet into the negatives from however high I got it, effectively doubling the amount of Fate I can burn in one instant. Of course, then I have to spend a day recovering from that, so ultimately I¡¯m not gaining any more Fate than I would otherwise gain, but that hardly matters.


    I¡¯m almost certain I figured that out when I burned my Fate yesterday, as I figured it in the middle of burning my Fate and immediately put it to use. Though I¡¯m pretty sure all it does is let me come to conclusions I would have come to anyways faster, at least as far magical phenomena goes.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 44

    This morning I finished refining Pipeweed. I got it to the point that it was perfectly refined, and it didn¡¯t evolve. After that, I spent a bit to figure out how best to contain mana within it, less the overall idea and more the nuances. It didn¡¯t take too long before I was emptying almost all of my mana pool into it.


    For the near future, I won¡¯t have much mana but I will have plenty of time. That should be good for refining my puppets, really make them more ideal for what I want to use them for. To start with I have to properly integrate Mithrilwood into them. Shouldn¡¯t take too long.


    So one of the hobgoblins evolved today. They evolved into something called an Orc. Basically a Hobgoblin only bigger, uglier, and with an added pinch of tusks. I¡¯m expecting a slew of new Orcs.


    Speaking of, Par mentioned that he feels like he¡¯s getting pretty close to an evolution. Which makes sense, especially considering how much he has demonstrated his capabilities recently and a couple other factors. The most important being that if a creature manages to evolve once their chance of doing it again increases dramatically. Usually, those latter evolutions are a bit less impressive than the earlier ones though, I¡¯m not entirely sure why but Mest says it is perfectly reasonable so I¡¯ll trust him.


    Other than that I spent most of my downtime playing games with anyone that I could get to play with me, which included the person that seemingly replaced Whisperer. He was a dragonewt I had met in the past, though never really talked to. He was alright, nothing really to say more about there.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 45

    So far there has been no change with Pipeweed, which isn¡¯t a surprise. I don¡¯t expect there to be a change until it evolves, if it evolves.


    The good news is that not even a tiny bit of mana has leaked out of it. I could make something to store mana like this, the only problem would be getting anything out. I could probably work something out using Astrie and Pipeweed but even if I can¡¯t having moderately unstable sacks of incredibly dense mana has its uses. If I tweak it right I could have it blow from a strong enough impact, like throwing it. I probably won¡¯t as that would definitely gets people killed, but there are other uses. I¡¯m not sure what those uses are, but I know they exist.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Talus has been a bit distant recently. It might just be all in my mind but she seems a bit less warm recently. Like yesterday I couldn¡¯t get her to play games with me when she would usually be excited about it. There is nothing physically wrong with her, a healer like me can tell that at a glance. I¡¯ve tried talking to her, but she just seems to avoid the topic a lot better than I am at approaching it. I think that the best thing I can do now is to give her some space, as that seems to be what she wants.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 46

    I just remembered something, Willow is turning a year old soon. I need to figure out what to do about a gift soon. I don¡¯t know her well enough to come up with a good gift idea, so I¡¯ll probably make something practical. Maybe I can convince her to let me examine her while she uses her magic, then I might be able to make a staff or a wand or something for her. No, she seems like she prefers control a lot more than power and efficiency. Whatever, I¡¯ll think of something before then.


    Based on how much mana I have already pumped into the Pipeweed sample I don¡¯t think I will be able to get it to evolve more than once this way, simply because I would get bored waiting for a second evolution.


    I actually set it up so that other people can contribute their mana to the cause. What I did was a built a room with nothing other than a pedestal that had the Pipeweed on it. The entire room is made out of Mithrilwood, including the pedestal. That is in case the Pipeweed sample explodes, the entire blast will be contained to the room. Or at least that¡¯s the idea. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    The pedestal itself is actually connected to the sample, so they would need to saw through it in order to steal the sample. Good luck pulling that off. I guess another plant manipulator might be able to steal it relatively easily, assuming they were close to my level of skill. But there are so few plant manipulators near my level of skill that it would never happen. They are all either like me in that they can¡¯t leave their domain, or they are so old and powerful that I would have no choice but to just give it to them or risk death.


    Not that I¡¯m expecting someone to try to steal it. Actually, I have no idea why I did that, just got carried away while building the room I guess. Well, whatever, it isn¡¯t a big deal.


    So far I¡¯ve gotten many of the Ents to pump a bit of mana into it, as well as a couple other mages. Hopefully, this should make the process a bit faster.


    Other than that not a lot happened. I did make pretty good progress on the puppets, but there isn¡¯t anything interesting to report there.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 47

    Today I finished my puppets. They aren¡¯t perfect, but any further improvement will take a really long time. Now I can actually use them.


    After finishing the puppets I spent most of my time sparring with them. I lost more often than I won, but that is fine. I do have a handicap, after all, Fate tends to make things more difficult while I am gathering it up. I¡¯m not doing it to be good at it, I¡¯m doing it because it is fun.


    Maybe I should work on different models of puppets? Maybe I could make one that is really good at fixing up other puppets. Then I might be able to remove the self-repairing parts of the others, freeing up space to use for something else. I could also try doing a ranged Puppet, though how I would go about that I have no idea.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    For my downtime, I mostly spent my time talking to Mest today. He was telling me about the recent almost disaster that was the aftermath of Thes destroying a dungeon. My idea of gifting the dungeon tons of mana did help quite a bit in that, because the dungeon has made a pretty rapid recovery. They are still much weaker than they were before, but at least now they have an actual dungeon to draw people in, though now they are relaying a lot more on traps and mazes, and a lot fewer combat-capable creatures. Actually, they have almost none of those, pretty much all the creatures the dungeon has now are of the poisonous or annoying variety, supposedly pretty cheap to make for a dungeon.


    Regardless, Mest managed to get the whole situation swept under the rug. That plus some new data on the progression of dungeon cores means that he is actually in better standing than he ever has been.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 48

    Today I took a break and decided to grow my Grove all day. I didn¡¯t dump my mana into the Pipeweed sample, I didn¡¯t work on any projects, I didn¡¯t boost up my Fate, I didn¡¯t even take much in the way of downtime. I just sat and meditated, feeding my trees and growing my grove all the while.


    My grove is so much larger than it was a year ago. When I first started writing this diary, well it¡¯s more of a journal really, I had roughly a dozen trees, of four different types. Now I have several hundred trees and I don¡¯t care to count the different types of plants I have. Just counting magical varieties I have fourteen.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    And yeah, I use some a lot more than others, Astrie compared to Blaskbark for an extreme example, but all have their uses. I just recently gave the people excavating the hot spring some specially requested Blastbark to make the process faster.


    You know, I might be able to get what Blastbark was before another plant manipulator got to it by refining it and making it evolve. Of course, I could end up with something completely different. Either way, I don¡¯t think I¡¯m going to try, I just don¡¯t see it becoming relevant in the future.


    Other than that nothing happened, or at least nothing I noticed.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 49

    Today there has been no change in the Pipeweed sample. There hasn¡¯t been any qualitative change since I started this part of the project. I¡¯ll just keep going till something changes.


    I spent most of my time today tinkering with my armor. Honestly, thinking about it calling what is basically just magical clothes ¡®armor¡¯ is kind of stupid. It is just a sundress, it doesn¡¯t even help protect against a blow through magical means most of the time. And even when it does, it doesn¡¯t do so very well.


    Well, I mean now I can make it pretty effective as actual armor, with having Mithrilwood and all. But even then, clothes is just a better description. I think I¡¯m just going to stick with clothes.


    So, I spent most of my time today tinkering with my clothes. Just messing around mostly. I did manage to make them better in a couple of small ways, but I doubt that will make a noticeable difference in the future.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Between my clothes and my wooden arm, I can pretty much create any effect on my body that I can think of using my plants. Between Astrie and Spellwood I can do pretty much anything, as long as I understand how to do it that is, but having a plant that is more specialized in what I¡¯m trying to do is several orders of magnitude better in every single way. I¡¯ve noticed that Astrie is incredibly inefficient just in general, yeah I have greatly improved that, but I could improve a more specialized plant well and beyond what I can improve Astrie to.


    Plus having a specialized plant brings the benefit of not needing to know how it works to get it to do what I want. I would never be able to get Astrie to teleport something, but with Portweed it is incredibly easy. Not to say that understanding how it works doesn¡¯t help, Whitefoot is still really useful in healing despite of, no, because of my skill and knowledge with healing.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. I did overhear something about being forced into a peace treaty, though I don¡¯t really know much other than the short snippet I overheard. Something about scholars?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 50

    Today Pipeweed finally evolved. Luckily I was there when it happened, so I was able to guide the evolution to create exactly what I wanted. Immediately afterward I incorporated it into my arm, I have a couple things to try using it. But that will have to wait till later, for now, I have to do what I set out to do in the first place.


    I got roughly half done with the first of two rooms on my own today, the one I¡¯ll be storing solar energy in to be exact. The sheer amount of mana required to grow it at all is incredible, this plant would never function in the wild unless I did something to allow it to.


    In the end, I asked Lulem to help me out by providing me with as much mana as she could. If I had enough mana, to begin with, I could have finished within a minute, which is actually a really long time for this type of thing.


    I¡¯m not actually done with the room, just done with the first part of it. First I need to clear out all of the mana, then I need to create a lining on the inside that will keep Solar Energy inside, which has to be made with Solar Energy. So I have to completely clear out all of the mana first, otherwise, there will be a big explosion.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    So here is what I did to clear it out quickly. I made a thick mesh of very thin Pipeweed fibers that all move the mana out of the room. That should be able to remove all of the mana before tomorrow morning. Then I can move onto the next part, which will take three-quarters of my Solar Energy but should allow it to produce a lot more of itself. A good chunk of the cost there is in a large leaf to produce more solar energy in the beginning.


    I will have to cut a lot of corners in order to get it done at all, eventually, I will have to fix that, but I think it will be worth it.


    As for the other room, I¡¯ll get that one done tomorrow. Though I¡¯ll probably have to include a teleporter using Portweed so that people can actually use it.


    I actually had quite a bit of free time today, which I used to figure out a gift idea for Willow. What I ended up making was armor, actual armor. It functions very similarly to how the one I gave Tiddol for her birthday functions, in that most of the time it is a small piece of wood that you can snap in order to cause the armor to surround you, and all the other minor things I added to that.


    The specifics are a bit different though. For one it will be mostly made out of Mithrilwood and Pipeweed, I haven¡¯t made it quite yet. My plan is to have Mithrilwood be there to absorb any physical blows while having Pipeweed there to potentially scramble magical ones. I have no idea if I can actually pull it off, but trying will at least teach me something. I¡¯ll probably end up doing this tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 51

    At around noon I finished the mana void room. Entering it after all the mana was removed felt suffocating. I could feel my body start to shut down and go into a state of self-preservation, though luckily I was able to resist that long enough to finish everything I needed to do with Solar Energy. In a couple days there should be enough Solar Energy to start actually working with it, I¡¯m guessing around three or four.


    I also managed to build the mana collecting room, with Lulem¡¯s help. As I am pretty much the only one that can move through plants I also installed some port weed to teleport people inside of it. The way it works is you have to power the outside portion yourself, while the inside portion will be powered by the ambient mana once there is enough of it. Once the outside portion is full you are moved to the inside part. I wasn¡¯t too concerned about efficiency with the inside part, as any mana used will just be returned to the room anyway, but I did need to bring down how long it took to recharge quite a bit.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    In order to get out, they have to trigger the inside part to take them outside. Doing it without having something outside to catch them is a lot more expensive, but again, any mana used will just be returned.


    Of course, no one but me will be able to use it for about a week because it will take about that long for there to be enough ambient mana inside to power the teleporters.


    I got a bit excited showing off the completed structure to Mest, only to realize that he can¡¯t enter it yet. Plus I shouldn¡¯t disturb him anyway, he seems rather desperate in his pursuit of his latest project. I¡¯m not sure what it is exactly, though based on other stuff I think it might be a really dangerous spell. I hope whatever it works out for him.


    Other than that nothing particularly interesting happened, or at least nothing that I noticed.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 52

    I realized this morning that I forgot to work on Willow¡¯s gift yesterday, her birthday is tomorrow.


    I was able to get it to work how I wanted to, as effectively as I wanted it to, but it is in no way mana efficient. Given another day or two I could make it cost a tenth of what it does now to recharge, even more given a week.


    The physical armor was easy enough to do, the hardest part of that was the actual design of it. The hard part was the magical armor. The way the armor works is it pulls apart any nearby mana, effectively turning it into ambient mana. There is no way to turn this off short of turning the whole armor off, and it can¡¯t distinguish between friendly and hostile magic. On top of that, it messes with your own spells as you cast them, assuming you don¡¯t cast them on yourself. I was able to make it so it doesn¡¯t affect the person inside the armor, meaning it won¡¯t hurt the occupant nor will it disrupt spells you cast on yourself.Stolen story; please report.


    It does interfere with the bodies of mana based creatures like myself, but whatever it is that drives my body makes me more resilient to that kind of effect than a non-animate spell. A similar, though not quite as drastic, resilience is present in spells that are still being actively controlled by the caster instead of fire and forget spells.


    I¡¯ll give it to her tomorrow and tell her that I still need a couple days to create the final version, but might as well let her have the prototype in the meantime just in case.


    I didn¡¯t really do much else today, I spent all my time rushing to finish Willow¡¯s gift on time. I hope she likes it. It will take a bit of work to get accustomed to it, particularly the magical effects. But, she is a rather talented mage, I¡¯m sure she¡¯ll figure it out in no time.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 53

    We had a party for Willow at noon, giving me a bit more time to work on her present. In that time I was able to cut the mana cost for it almost in half, which is a bit more reasonable but still not satisfactory. Whatever, it¡¯s not like it matters as much now.


    I did tell her that it was just a prototype and that I was working on a better, more efficient version of it that should be done in the next couple days. I will be done in about two days from now.


    Regardless of how complete it was, Willow seemed to really like my gift. After the party she went right to practicing magic while wearing it, she didn¡¯t do very well.


    As for the party itself, it was very fun. There was more cake in the cake they brought than I thought existed, and it was really good cake too. I¡¯m not sure what the other brought for her, though the gift she got from Mest seemed to be her favorite. Someone brought something called a pinata, which was basically a large, fragile doll stuffed with candy that you beat with a stick. I thought it was kind of weird, but it was fun nonetheless.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    We also all got together to play various board games and card games. I lost most of the time, usually pretty badly. It was fun watching everyone go head to head in fierce competition where alliances were made and broken at the drop of a hat. Of course, everyone wanted to be allied with the birthday girl.


    The party was definitely the highlight of the day. Pretty much everyone showed up, and even those that didn¡¯t still sent a gift for Willow. Nothing else was really as interesting as the party.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 54

    Today I spent most of my time working on Willows gift. With single a single-minded drive and a bit of Fate I managed to finish it today. I gave Willow the finished product just now saying that I managed to finish it faster than I had anticipated. It isn¡¯t perfect, I could probably make it better with a couple days more, but the effects will be marginal at best.


    Of course, spending all day working on one thing without any downtime is bad for me, and I really shouldn¡¯t do it, but the results speak for themselves. I probably won¡¯t keep it up though.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I checked on the pipeweed rooms today after finishing the armor. It will still be a couple days before either of them start to be useful, but the Solar Energy one is getting really close. I¡¯m guessing it will be right around three days before I can really experiment with Solar Energy to my heart''s content. And about six days before people can start using the mana room. I¡¯m not really sure what will come of that. But I¡¯m interested in finding out.


    Now I need to figure out what to do while I wait. I¡¯m really at a loss, maybe finishing Willows gift today wasn¡¯t the best idea. Whatever, I¡¯ll figure something out tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 55

    Today Talus dumped me. She didn¡¯t even do it in person, instead writing a letter. I never even got to say goodbye, let alone


    I don¡¯t know actually. I don¡¯t know what I would have done had she broken up with me in person, though I probably wouldn¡¯t just sulk like I did today. It makes me worried that she was right in what she wrote in the letter, which I have attached to my diary.


    I don¡¯t know what to do from here, I¡¯m just kind of lost. It doesn¡¯t feel real, like this is some kind of dream and I¡¯m going to wake up soon. I think I¡¯m going to go to sleep now, maybe I will wake up and all of this was just a bad dream?


    To Erica


    There is no easy way to say this is there. I¡¯m leaving and I¡¯m not coming back.


    I don¡¯t think I ever truly loved you, it was infatuation if nothing else. You saved my life, how could I not be infatuated with you? So I confessed to you, and I was ecstatic when you accepted. But you were always a bit cold to me, preferring to work on your projects instead of hanging out with me. Ultimately that wasn¡¯t too much of an issue though, I loved watching you pursue what you loved, and watching you jump in joy when you made a breakthrough made my heart melt.


    And then you killed that noble in cold blood. And no one questioned it, at least not to your face. I¡¯m not saying my hands are clean, but I¡¯ve only killed people in the heat of battle while you make a play of being some kind of pacifist.


    That pulled me out of an infatuated stupor for a while, but ultimately I accepted it and moved on. ¡®It¡¯s not that big of a deal¡¯ I told myself ¡®besides, he was kind of a jerk anyway¡¯.


    Then there was the time I asked what you would do if your parents were still alive. Your answer shocked and appalled me, and even when you did manage to explain why exactly you thought that way it still didn¡¯t sit right with me. Knowing myself I wouldn¡¯t have forgiven you without you doing something to make up with me, but you didn¡¯t I forgave you anyway.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Then a little more than two weeks ago, when the two of us had to subdue some people that were getting particularly violent you killed them, almost all of them. When you could have easily used vines to constrain them you instead decided to end their lives for what was simply a small infraction. You made it out to be an accident, like you didn¡¯t know what you were doing. But I know first hand exactly how much control you have over your plants, and you can¡¯t tell me a healer of your skill wouldn¡¯t know exactly what it took to kill someone. Besides, there was no mistaking the look in your eyes.


    And again, no one questioned it. Quite the contrary, people here worship you, people here pray to shrines dedicated to you.


    Then I realized that you twist the minds of those around you somehow, to the point that they would live and die for you. If you need proof look at Whisperer, the first one to worship you, he died with a smile on his face knowing he saved your life. That blow would have been easy for you to recover from, and yet Whisperer died for you anyway. I don¡¯t even think you realize that you have this effect on the people around you.


    And ultimately I decided that I would be able to accept that, if I could prove that you genuinely loved me. So I read your diary, and I can¡¯t say that you ever really loved me from that. You were attracted to me, yes, but the impression I got was that your emotions towards me didn¡¯t extend much further than that. If anything you seemed annoyed at me from time to time, when I would pull you away from your projects to spend time with me. Sometimes you went weeks without even mentioning me. So I decided that have to leave.


    Normally I would tell you to your face, but you terrify me. I have no idea how you would react to me leaving you. You are so much more powerful than me, and I have seen you turn violent.


    I take back my earlier statement, I do love you, but I don¡¯t think you love me. So I¡¯m going back home. I¡¯m strong enough now that I can stand on my own two feet, my family can¡¯t marry me off to the highest bidder anymore. That is thanks to you, I can¡¯t deny that.


    I will miss you, but it makes me sad that I will miss you a lot more than you will miss me.


    Sincerely


    Talus

 Day 56

    I didn¡¯t really do anything today. I just laid in the sun, drifting in and out of sleep.


    Everything feels so surreal, and it¡¯s hard to think. My train of thought always comes back to Talus. We didn¡¯t do all that much together, but I enjoyed what time we did spend together.


    She isn¡¯t dead, I might be able to see her again someday. But it won¡¯t be the same, that spark wouldn¡¯t be there and it would just be awkward. I hope she doesn¡¯t hate me now, I know that''s an irrational thought, I would be surprised if she didn¡¯t hate me, or at least come to hate me. But I hope she doesn¡¯t.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I hope that wherever she finds herself she does well for herself. No, let me rephrase that. I know she will do well for herself regardless of where she finds herself. I¡¯ve never met anyone that could match her passion, and she is far from defenseless.


    She left me, she physically moved to a place that I can¡¯t reach. I haven¡¯t accepted that, but I will eventually.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 57

    I should have been paying more attention to other people. I would have noticed the desperate energy everyone was working with. I did notice it, but I wrote it off. Foolish in hindsight.


    Thes finally snapped today. I thought we had more time but something must have happened. Maybe the fighting from a while back was much worse for him than we thought, maybe he got sick, maybe someone sabotaged him. Maybe maybe maybe. All we have are maybe¡¯s. Whatever, it doesn¡¯t matter now.


    Mest was the first one there when Thes started to rage out of control, but he wasn¡¯t enough to contain it. My children were next, and many of them got torn to pieces in the process, nothing they won¡¯t recover from. Parius and Tiddol also took part in the fighting.


    I was the last to realize what was going on. When I did the first thing I did was try to bind Thes with the Mithrilwood I had on his person, and it worked, for a moment. Thes tore the restraints off of himself after only a moment of struggle, it wasn¡¯t enough. I called upon everything, all my plants, both magical and nonmagical, it wasn¡¯t enough. I used my puppets, it wasn¡¯t enough. I tried to put him to sleep with the most potent mixture of Dead Tulip, Flore, and drowsy clover, It wasn¡¯t enough. I fought until I had no more mana to spend, and then I drew on the tree¡¯s reserves, it wasn¡¯t enough. Nothing was ever enough.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Thes eventually got through my children and reached Mest. Thes attacked Mest with a vicious fury. And then there was a cracking sound, and an amulet around Thes¡¯s neck shattered. And then Thes stopped, he turned around, and he walked away. Everything was quiet for a full minute, and then another crack. Mest¡¯s bear totem had shattered.


    He¡¯s really dead, isn¡¯t he? Both of them. I was never close with Thes, but Mest was important in all of our lives. To me, he was like that older brother I never had, and now he¡¯s not.


    Everything has been so surreal lately that I can¡¯t tell if this is a dream or not.


    I¡¯m so tired, emotionally exhausted. I¡¯m just going to sleep now.

 Day 58-61

    Day 58


    I spent all day feeding my grove, I just can¡¯t bring myself to care about anything else.


    I created a wall around myself out of trees, I don¡¯t want to interact with anyone right now. My children come say hi to me from time to time, I know I should be happy about that but I can¡¯t bring myself to care.


    Anyway, I¡¯m probably going to go back to sleep now.


    Day 59


    It was my fault, wasn¡¯t it? If I had worked harder or done something different to help out Thes both he and Mest would still be alive. If I had paid more attention I would have realized that we were closer to the edge than I had thought. I could have done something, it would have been enough if I had just done something about Thes.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    And Talus as well, I messed up. I¡¯m not entirely sure how I messed up, but I know I did.


    I haven¡¯t eaten in days, whatever, it¡¯s not like I¡¯m hungry.


    Day 60


    I have done little other than sleep today, it¡¯s been the same for the last couple days. I wouldn¡¯t be sleeping so much if I could actually sleep well, but not even my sleep aid is helping much.


    I can¡¯t think of anything else to say so I¡¯m going to try to sleep again.


    Day 61


    I think I might be dying.


    No, I¡¯m not. This is something very different. Something is changing, I¡¯m not sure what but I think I¡¯ll find out very soon.

 Day 62

    I don¡¯t remember much from before today. That isn¡¯t entirely true, the memories are there, I can feel it, but for some reason I can¡¯t access them. I am pretty sure those memories will come back, how and when I have no idea.


    What I do know is that this form is not my original form, and that I am currently inside of a cavern with some kind of pool of water inside it. Also I can¡¯t leave this cave, locomotion is difficult when you are little more than a colorful rock.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I feel like I need to start creating things. An insatiable desire for creation and growth, and an existential terror for the lack thereof. So I¡¯ve started to turn this cave into a maze.


    I don¡¯t understand how I¡¯m doing it, but I am. It is almost like I¡¯m reaching out with my mind and pressing against the walls, and they move out of the way.


    Now I have a simple maze and I¡¯m out of mana. My production of mana feels like it should be a lot higher than it actually is, almost like something is missing, but I can¡¯t remember what.

 Day 63

    Now I need to add some life to my little maze, to allow for some conflict and growth. So I need to create some kind of ecosystem. Some part of me derives satisfaction from that idea.


    I know on an instinctual level how to get started. First I need I need some kind of plant, the more varieties the better, of which I have a rather large number to choose from. Unfortunately most of them are useless for what I need as they require light to survive, an issue I feel like I could solve given enough time. So instead I gathered what plants I have that don¡¯t require light, most of them are mushrooms, and got to work spreading them around my maze.


    The next thing I needed to do was to create creatures that would eat these plants and creatures that would eat those creatures. Unfortunately I don¡¯t have access to very many creatures that I could make, just one, and it isn¡¯t exactly good at what I would need it to do. The most glaring issue is that it is way to large, I need to start with much smaller creatures.


    That one creature I do have access to does inspire me a bit though, I can create creatures out of the plants that I have. I wouldn¡¯t have to worry about light so much as eating will help with that a lot, so I am able to use plants other than mushrooms. I still can¡¯t use any of the magically inclined plants though, too much upkeep.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    The first thing I made was a small mushroom based creature that moves around by hoping from wall to wall to nibble on a particular type of mushroom. I then designed a bunch of other, similar creatures using other plants and modes of transport. Some of them eat mushrooms, some of them eat other creatures, some eat both.


    Flight was pretty difficult to figure out, but I did manage to figure it out.


    At one point i realized that I could make creatures out of pure mana, it was nowhere near as easy and cost much more mana to create though. I only made a couple varieties of them.


    After designing them all I created a bunch of every variety and released them into my maze, making sure they wouldn¡¯t attack each other for a little while. In a couple days I will check back on them to see which ones all died out, which ones thrived, and which ones just barely got by. From there I¡¯m not sure what I will do.


    One last thing before I go. I realized I have access to something called a terminal, or at least that is what it called itself. I didn¡¯t get much of a chance to do anything with it as it popped up in the middle of me trying to figure out flight, and I was much more interested in flight. But it seems to be some method of communication, with others like myself I hope. I tried just now to open it up, something I understand how to do on an instinctual level, but I didn¡¯t have the mana to do it.


    I¡¯ll try again in a little while.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 64

    I opened the so-called terminal today. It was a weird sensation, I could feel mana being pulled out of my body by some outside force when I opened it up, only for all of it to be returned when I got rid of it.


    I was right in that it was a method for communication between others of my kind, ¡®dungeons¡¯ supposedly. It also does things like facilitating trade, ideas mostly, but some goods are occasionally moved around.


    I did talk to a couple people using the terminal. Most of them contacted me, asking me about some creature I had made, the only one I had access to the other day apparently. There was one that said that I had probably saved his life, apparently, I made a pretty big donation of mana to him in his time of need. I don¡¯t remember this. He gave me a gift, a gift of knowledge specifically. He gave me information on making traps, he said it isn¡¯t much, but it is much better than the basic one I would have gotten from the market.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    I don¡¯t see myself using it much, but we will see where things go.


    I spent a good bit of time expanding my maze, making sure to keep the whole thematic I have going wherever I expand my maze. With the walls covered in many colourful mushrooms and the floor covered in a layer of water. It¡¯s pretty, though I wish I could have some trees.


    While I was working a woman came into my maze a started yelling out a name. Both the woman and the name were familiar to me, pleasant. I want to talk to her, but I have no way to speak. I thought to use the same method I am using to shape the walls to communicate, but it is slow and not fine enough to use to write. I tried using mushrooms to spell something out, this did catch the woman¡¯s attention though I failed to spell anything out. I simply don¡¯t have enough control to do it, which feels wrong to me, but there is nothing I can do about it.


    After I caught her attention the woman seemed to cry for a while. She seemed almost relieved at my failed attempts to communicate. After a while she just stood up and left.


    Anyway, I¡¯m out of mana and there is nothing more to talk about, so Good Night Diary.

 Day 65

    I decided to check out the marketplace of the terminal today. There was a lot of things there, but I don¡¯t really understand what would be useful for me and what would be a waste of time so I held off on buying anything.


    I was surprised by the amount of money I had, apparently, i had been selling a powerful creature on the market without my knowledge. The only creature I had access to the other day when I created a bunch more actually.


    I spent most of my time today making the maze bigger, there really isn¡¯t much to say there. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I also checked up on the tiny creatures I let loose. Most of them have died off by now, which is what I was hoping for. Most of the rest are just barely getting by, while there are a handful that are really thriving. The species that is probably thriving the most is one of the smallest I made, it might actually be a problem because it is killing the mushrooms too quickly. With that line of thought, I decided to make something a bit bigger that preys on those creatures. I hope it works.


    Other than that I talked a bit to some people I met through the terminal. I got several people saying something along the lines of ¡®welcome to the waking world¡¯ to me throughout the day. It seems to be a cultural thing, I think? Several people I talked to were pretty interesting, like the guy that gave me a gift yesterday, or the several people that were willing to answer what was probably inane questions to them. It was kind of fun actually.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 66

    The creature I created yesterday worked a little too well, now both it and the creature I wanted it to prey on are extinct. Well whatever, it isn¡¯t too big of an issue. I will probably start creating more creatures to add tomorrow. Maybe I¡¯ll buy a guide on making an ecosystem from the terminal market, it should help considering I have only the faintest idea of what I¡¯m doing here.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    The woman from before returned today. This time she came with another person, a male warrior, a hobgoblin I think. He is also very familiar to me, but I¡¯m not sure why. They talked to me for a while about nothing in particular, but I liked hearing their voices, even if I can¡¯t talk back yet.


    I saved my mana today, I¡¯m going to need quite a bit tomorrow.

 Day 67

    Today I created a lot of new creatures to add to the maze. All of them were bigger than the previous batch and most of them were carnivores or omnivores. Though there were a couple large mushroom eaters.


    My biggest discovery was how exactly to make fish. Previously the water that covers the floor of the maze was mostly uninhabited except for the few water-loving plants that I could get to grow there. Now they are teeming with as many types of fish as I could think up, though that will inevitably drop significantly over the next couple days.


    Looking at my work from the last couple days I¡¯m proud, but at the same time, I¡¯m disappointed by the lack of trees. The next area I will work on will definitely have trees, but how am I going to pull that off?This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Actually, now that I think about it couldn¡¯t I buy something from the market to help out there. Like maybe a plant that produces sunlight, or a type of tree that doesn¡¯t need sunlight. I feel like if the option is there I should go with a plant that produces sunlight, even if it is more expensive. It would allow me to have a lot more variability in what I can create.


    Might as well check now to see if I can find something. Yup, it exists, but it is super expensive. A plant that produces the type of sunlight that allows other plants to grow will cost about a fifth of the money I have, but I think it¡¯s worth it.


    I think the next step is to get the ecosystem of the first room full fleshed out, which I think I can do with a couple more days. Then I can work on building up the next room, which I am getting more excited for.

 Day 68

    I spent most of my time today creating more species to add to the maze. Many of them are large enough to challenge potential intruders.


    I¡¯ll be honest, I have no idea what I¡¯m doing. This all feels wrong to me. I don¡¯t know how to create an ecosystem, I¡¯m just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. I¡¯m not even sure I even care, or should care for that matter. But for some reason I feel like something terrible, potentially life threatening will happen if I stop. So I will continue for now, I¡¯ve always followed my instincts, why should I stop now?You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    I¡¯m not sure what else I should say, not much is really happening and I don¡¯t exactly have a lot of mana to mess around with recently. It¡¯s honestly kind of boring, I can¡¯t even use the terminal because I don¡¯t have the mana most of the time.


    Well, whatever, I¡¯m going to sleep now. Good Night Diary

 Day 69

    The woman from before returned today. There is an increasing sense of familiarity from her, like I knew her well in a previous life.


    She talked to me and I tried to talk to her, only to get frustrated at my lack of any sort of mouthpiece. Eventually, I gave up and just listened. Everything she talked about was familiar and nostalgic for some reason. I wanted to hear more so I listened, and listened. I neglected everything else to just listen to her. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    And now I have a lot to think about. Chaotic memories jumbling about in my mind, a thousand voices all crying for attention. And now I have to sort them out.

 Day 70

    I remembered who I was, who I am, this morning. I am Erica Kron, Lord and Guardian of the Grove, not some simple dungeon core. And so I remade my body, only better in every way.


    I consumed much of my dungeon core and even got assistance from the world in my attempts at reforging my body. I used up all the mana I had available to me and drew upon more from every source I could. In the end, I rebuilt my body.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    And yet my arm is still made of wood.


    And now I am tired, to the point that I struggle to stay on my feet. The only thing eclipsing my desire for sleep is my desire for food.


    Things are a bit different around here, but exploring how can wait for tomorrow.

 Day 71

    My mana production is absolutely crippled. I am only getting what I need to maintain myself from my Grove, and my dungeon core is similarly crippled. Food is nearly my entire source of mana, which sucks considering how little I get from all but the highest quality of food. I mean I guess I have a couple mana berries lying around here, but not many. I¡¯ll use them up tomorrow to fix up a couple trees.


    There are a lot of strangers here now, and a lot of people missing. Mest and Thes are dead, and I¡¯m not sure if I could have done something to stop it. Willow has left, she said something about striking out on her own and went off with several of my children. One of Bug¡¯s children, the one that evolved into a Winged Dragonewt Saint, left as well. She snuck out in the middle of the night and no one knows where she went.


    The strangers are all either new immigrants or people that are part of Mest¡¯s order. The Haelmer order apparently. They came here to investigate his death and then decided to set up shop here, creating a school or embassy or something. It wasn¡¯t clear what. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    The village is a bit bigger, but not beyond what I would have expected.


    The mana isolation room I built is gone, just completely gone. No one knows exactly what happened to it, it just disappeared all of a sudden, but people are suspecting teleportation magic was involved.


    As for Tiddol, she was ultimately the one that helped me regain my memories. She cried when she saw me, and I cried when I saw her. We just kind of hugged for a while. Eventually, she fell asleep in my arms and I just held her until Par came and took her off my hands.


    Par has several more scars on his face and arms than he did before, and likely even more under his clothes. He seems a bit harder than he did before, almost angry.


    Kaire and Lulem are just fine. They are doing great actually. Both of them are past the point that I would have expected them to evolve. And I can tell that the world wants them to evolve. It seems like the world can¡¯t create something it doesn¡¯t know, I have to be the one to evolve them.


    And one more thing before I go to bed. My Solar Energy room has tons of Solar Energy in it now, but I can¡¯t stay in there for very long because it makes me feel like I¡¯m suffocating and starving to death once my mana pool runs out. I¡¯ll have to fix my Grove first.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 72

    If I were to spend every drop of mana I get on fixing up my trees it would be months before my grove was at peak condition, and that¡¯s with me fixing up several of them using what dew mana berries we had.


    So I had to ask for outside help. With the Ents helping me I should be able to finish within a couple days instead. I give it three or four.


    Today a couple of the scholars approached me and requested to analyze me, basically just the same stuff that Mest used to do.


    I did learn a couple things though. The first is that my dungeon core is both much older and much weaker. This makes sense considering the fact that dungeon cores age faster while under any type of stress, and they consume the actual strength of the core to do so. The last week or so were nothing if not stressful. The older a dungeon is the more tools it unlocks and the better it can use them, though to a much smaller degree than the actual strength of the core.


    The second is that I am now something called a dryad, a pretty rare species on par with lesser dragons when ignoring variants. Specifically, I am a variant of dryad they have started to call a sun dryad, due to my innate ability to control solar energy. Though that isn¡¯t the only way I vary from the basic dryad. In a very real way, I built my own body, I took all the knowledge available to Origin on the subject of creating mana based creatures and all of their skill and used it to craft my ideal body. If anything I did a better job than Origin possibly could have, as I had access to the kind of resources that would have taken an Origin years if not decades to acquire back when they were still creating life.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    My new body is very much me, it is who I am in a way that an evolution guided by the world couldn''t possibly be. When the hand of the world offered its aid it didn¡¯t correct any mistakes, it didn¡¯t try to guide the creative process, it just provided mana and observed. The world itself was watching as I made my body.


    And now I am innately talented in everything I want to do, Healing, Solar Energy, Plant Manipulation, and even Fate is a bit easier to manipulate.


    And on top of all of that, the counter that marks how many times I have evolved in my life is sitting at one. The only way for that to be reset is if you die. Nothing anyone has tried has been successful in resetting it, and there is definitely a strong desire to figure out how.


    What this means for me is that now it is much easier to evolve again. The first time is always the hardest, the second time is always the easiest.


    Other than that nothing really noteworthy happened.


    So Good Night Diary.

 Day 73

    Today I spent most of my time relaxing. My last couple of days have been pretty hectic and I want a break. I found myself going to try to play board games with Talus before catching myself a couple times. I¡¯m still not used to her being gone.


    On a happier note, Par made me dinner today. It wasn¡¯t the greatest thing I¡¯ve had, but it is still really good. It was some kind of small feral Biped grilled a spit over. Apparently, they dig around underground to find juicy roots to munch on and are almost never sentient.


    I need to figure out what to do with my time now. All of my mana is being used up to fix my grove, so I need to find a task that requires absolutely no mana.


    Huh, there aren¡¯t exactly many options like that now that I think about it. I thought about trying cooking, but that takes mana, and a lot of it. I tried doing board games today, but almost all of them take mana, and the ones that don¡¯t aren¡¯t very fun. There aren¡¯t really any projects that I care about that rely on my rather lackluster physical body. I can¡¯t even use my already created puppets, they take a surprising amount of mana to operate.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    That really only leaves one option, Solar Energy. Strictly speaking, it doesn¡¯t require mana at all. However, it feels like I am both starving and suffocating while I¡¯m in there once my mana pool runs dry. On top of that, I can¡¯t regenerate mana while I¡¯m inside either, as the pipeweed walls prevent any mana from entering that isn¡¯t already part of my body. As for what happens to the mana once it is consumed out of my mana pool, it seems to be destroyed.


    Here is what I think I will do. I will order the trees to share their mana with each other while I am inside of the Solar Energy room. This way I don¡¯t lose time on my main project right now and I can fill my time with something rather than nothing.


    Anyway, it¡¯s getting late. Good Night Diary.

 Day 74

    Today I tried to use Solar Energy, but I wasn¡¯t able to stay in the room long enough for me to actually try to. I kept feeling like I was going to die and getting all panicky, so every time I tried I had to leave pretty quickly. On the plus side as I did it more and more throughout the day it took longer and longer for me to start freaking out. I¡¯m adjusting, just slowly.


    I did learn something interesting though, unlike everyone that isn¡¯t either a troll or a highly disciplined mage, I don¡¯t radiate mana.


    Most creatures lose a very small amount of mana over time, with mana based creatures losing a particularly large amount. Usually, this isn¡¯t an issue as the vast majority of creatures are able to gather mana much faster than they lose it. In an environment that is completely devoid of mana, however, things change. Suddenly you have no mana intake and you are still losing mana just as fast, so you eventually run out. Flesh and bone creatures are greatly crippled while mana based creatures just die.


    The mana that you lose, like all mana used in casting a spell, leaves your body and becomes ambient mana. The way it leaves your body varies based on the spell, but in general, that is pretty much how it works. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Not so much for me anymore, I still lose the same amount of mana over time as I otherwise would, but what happens to that mana changes. After some extensive testing I, with the help of the scholars, figured out that the vast majority of wasted mana I produce is being absorbed by my Dungeon core. Only spells that project mana away from my body aren¡¯t affected, so trying to heal someone who is on the other side of the grove won¡¯t be changed, but if I touch someone and heal them through that it is.


    As for the utility this offers? For a normal person, even an incredibly skilled mage, pretty much nothing. It does have the side effect of making my dungeon core grow in power much faster than it would on its own, but that is a pretty minor benefit honestly. The real benefit has to do with Solar Energy.


    It makes it much safer to work with Solar Energy. If I had tried to enter the Solar Energy room without being able to do that it would have exploded and I would have died. Which is terrifying considering how desperately I wanted it to use it. On top of that, I can now easily store a bunch of Solar Energy in a separate energy pool, something that would have killed me before.


    Now all I need to do is get used to the sensation of mana deprivation I should be able to really learn how to use Solar Energy. I could wait until I have plenty of mana to spare, but that will take way to long.


    Other than that it was a slow day, not much happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 75

    There was a storm today. It wasn¡¯t like the rain that falls on a near daily basis around here, though that is starting to slow down, it was a full on storm with lightning and powerful winds and all that stuff. Luckily my grove wasn¡¯t hit with lightning, though there have been a couple close calls.


    I am surprised there haven¡¯t been more storms recently, but I guess willow was preventing any from getting too bad. Now that she isn¡¯t here they are free to rain down on us at full force.


    A couple trees are now fully restored, which increased my mana production quite a bit. I think I should get to the tipping point here in the next day or two. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I spent almost all of my time trying to get to the point that I can stay in Solar Energy room long enough to actually accomplish something. I am improving rather quickly as well, that plus the fact that I am expecting to have vastly more mana than I do right now in the near future should mean that I will be able to stay in there pretty soon. I¡¯m getting really excited about it.


    Other than the storm it was a rather slow day today. I¡¯m on the edge of several things, but I haven¡¯t gotten there with any of them yet.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 76

    I hit a tipping point today in mana production. I can now spend nearly all of my time restoring my trees. I should be done with that late tomorrow, if not early the next day. I¡¯m looking forward to it.


    Other than that I spent some time hanging out with Tiddol. We didn¡¯t do anything really noteworthy, but hanging out with her is always fun nonetheless.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    The storm is still ongoing. One of my trees were actually struck today, but it failed to light the tree on fire. That is really good because I don¡¯t have the mana to put out a fire right now, a fire would be disastrous.


    I¡¯m getting more and more excited about finally being able to use Solar Energy. I can¡¯t imagine what I will be able to do with it because I have no idea what it is capable of. I know it can be used to make fancy lights and to make plants, but beyond that, I have no idea.


    Anyway, it is getting really late, so Good Night Diary.

 Day 77

    It is done, all of my trees are restored, but I am exhausted.


    I spent all day without rest channeling mana into my trees so that they can recover as fast as possible. This isn¡¯t too difficult in its own right, but doing it without a break for the whole day gets pretty draining, and I¡¯m not exactly in the best magical shape right now. I might have a better body for magic than I did before, but I haven¡¯t been able to stretch my magical muscles in way too long. Now I am sore and exhausted. If nothing else I will sleep well tonight. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    Speaking of sleep, I thought of something today. Would I be able to change the way my Sleep aid works so I could better make use of Fate? For example, could I have it so that the sleep aid is just as effective, but make the actual time I am asleep much longer? If I can do that then I might be able to stay awake for days with no consequence, exactly what I need to make better use of my Fate. Now that I have ample supply of mana again it should be easy to test it.


    Besides, what¡¯s the worst that could happen? I sleep a bit too much for no benefit? I¡¯ll take that chance.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 78

    After letting my Mana fill up to full I stepped into the Solar Energy room, and for once I didn¡¯t feel like I was simultaneously suffocating and starving.


    From there I spent most of my time getting a feel for the Solar Energy, which mostly involved going over the various exercises that Mest taught me before he, well just before. It was really fun to bend it to my will, and I did improve quite a bit. It will still be a very long time before I can get much use out of it, but I will be able to get some use out of it. For example, if nothing else it serves as a quick and easy way to create a large explosion, All I have to do is take a small bit out of my Solar Energy pool and put it where I want it to detonate and then release. I mean I could do the same with Blastbark, and more reliably too, but not quite as powerfully or as fast.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    My other major project for today was modifying the sleep aid. I think it worked, but I won¡¯t know till tomorrow. I basically just did what I said I would and made it so it lasts a lot longer and did a couple other minor changes to make it more effective. I took full advantage of what I know of my physiology as well, custom tailoring it to myself in every way I possibly could.


    I can¡¯t wait to see the results, hopefully, it¡¯s the key to me finally being able to make full use of Fate.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 79

    I spent most of my time in the Solar Energy room again today. It went exactly as I expected it to. I am making progress rather rapidly, but my starting point is not exactly very good. There are maybe a handful of people in the entire world capable of using Solar Energy, and I am capable of learning from none of them. It¡¯s kind of funny really, had I gained the use of mana instead of Solar Energy I would have possibly the greatest teachers in the world in addition to not having to worry about having enough energy to use magic with. Instead, I gained the use of something much more volatile and creative.


    The more I use them the more I realize that Mana is very stable and destructive, while Solar Energy is the opposite. Nothing I know of, and nothing the scholars in my grove know of, is able to turn mana into something else. While at the same time it slowly corrodes everything it touches, turning it into more of itself.


    To my knowledge, the only thing that creates Solar Energy is Solar Energy itself, and it wants to be something else. It wants to create things that mana struggles to do. This is most obvious to me with my plants. It took me hours to figure out how to do something with Astrie that will take me upwards of a week to figure out with mana.


    I was able to use the Terminal today, something I haven¡¯t been able to do since regaining my body. I did a bit of asking around on there and I found out a couple interesting things. The first being that I shouldn¡¯t have access to the Terminal at all, dungeon lords, like myself, don¡¯t get access to it. Only dungeon cores and dungeon cores that form physical bodies after becoming strong enough to create a body for themselves. Of course, all the creations of any dungeon, lord or not, are put on sale in the market. It¡¯s just that lords never profit off of it. I made all the money I did by selling how to make Ents, which is why all those other dungeons were able to figure it out. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    Speaking of the market, I did figure out exactly what that plant that creates sunlight does. It literally does just that, create sunlight, also known as solar energy. The way it works is it takes mana in, does something, and pushes out Solar Energy and just as much mana as went in out. The solar energy leaves the plant too fast to interact with the mana, though not a lot is created. No mana is changed during this process, all of it that goes in comes out. And yet the plant won¡¯t work without mana.


    Of course, it doesn¡¯t produce much Solar Energy at all. It is also incredibly complex, it would take me weeks to get it working well enough to really benefit from it, I can¡¯t use Solar Energy to do it faster quicker because the difficult parts have to be made with Mana because otherwise, it does the opposite, turn Solar Energy into mana. Something plants already do by default, and something easy enough to do without an intermediary.


    Other than that one of the scholars convinced me to take a small class on math. I¡¯m not sure why I agreed, but it is only one class for about an hour tomorrow. I haven¡¯t studied math since my dad taught me the basics when I was young, so it might be interesting.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 80

    My attempts at learning an entirely new system of magic without any outside assistance of prior knowledge is going surprisingly well. Actually controlling the energy is easy, figuring out how to make it do something isn¡¯t as easy. Still, being able to control it so well means that I can try again and again much faster than most people would be able to. There are only so many possibilities that I can try that might accomplish what I want, that number is impossibly high, but it is a fixed number.


    As for the math lesson I agreed to, it was rather boring. I did learn a bit in the beginning but after that lost interest. I can see the basics being useful, but I already know the basics, beyond that it seems like it only really gets useful again when you take it to the extreme.


    When I said as much it started a conversation about the great and powerful people in the world. All of them have one of two things, the first and least common is remembering many past lives, they have had the time to figure out the depths of magic or whatever else they were interested in. The second group are those that have specialized into one idea, like how Willow has her lightning, Talus has her fire, and Tiddol has the various tools that she makes.


    It was an interesting conversation, much more interesting than what we were talking about before. It also got me thinking, I should focus my time spent studying solar energy on what I already know how to do with mana. Namely, plant manipulation and healing. Healing will be a bit difficult because I can¡¯t exactly bring people into the Solar Energy room without killing them and myself and outside of it I don¡¯t have nearly as much access to Solar Energy.


    I¡¯m going to need to perfect the sunlight producing plant that I still need to name. I need to be able to passively produce enough Solar Energy for regular use if I am to get good at using it, the Solar Energy is amazing for training, but useless for regular use. The sunlight plant, sunflower? Is what I am going to focus on next.


    Other than that a couple of things happened. I found the book the Origin gave to Willow today, she seems to have left it behind. I also found a tiny mushroom that grows in the bodies of tiny carapaced creatures and seems to control their bodies. I don¡¯t see myself getting much use out of it, but it is still something.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 81

    I spent most of my time today working on refining the Sunflower. It is going exactly as well as I would expect it to. It is the second most complicated plant I have ever worked on, after luck blossom, and as such I expect it to take a while. I am more skilled in plant manipulation than it¡¯s creator, but it¡¯s creator obviously had several orders of magnitude more mana than I have access too. So it isn¡¯t hard, it¡¯s just that there is a lot to do.


    A necromancer showed up in town today. Apparently, he is incredibly talented, though he isn¡¯t affiliated with the scholars. He is young, a bit younger than myself, and as such relatively inexperienced. He is a lesser angel, which are rare around these parts. He is tall and a bit lanky with black hair and slightly sunken in dark brown eyes, and generally gaunt in appearance. Though I¡¯m pretty sure that last part is due to the side effects of the necrotic version of healing.


    We talked and I enjoyed talking to him, he was rather charming. Overall his presence is off-putting to most, a side effect of his gaunt appearance and having a partially carved out soul, like all necromancers. But the first is easily fixed with some good food and the non-necrotic version of healing, while the second is something I have personally experienced so it doesn¡¯t bother me.


    Anyway, he agreed to help me out with ending the single longest pause I have ever put on a project in exchange for free room and board as well as some test subjects, all of which are easy for us to provide.


    Now I have so many things I want to work on.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Perfecting the Sunflower, mastering Solar Energy healing and plant manipulation, finally learning how to manipulate flesh without murdering or torturing anyone, fully assimilating the knowledge I gained from the piece of soul I have, and getting more knowledge from the piece of soul I have.


    All of these directly relate to healing magic.


    Now the question is figuring out what order I need to do these in. All of them require a lot of time but not much mana, with the exception of maybe flesh manipulation which might take a lot of mana, so regardless of what I do I should be able to also feed my grove quite a bit.


    I think practicing with Solar Energy if fine to put off for a while, waiting will only make it easier to train later, the more energy there the faster I can make mistakes and the faster I figure out what works. The same goes for the sunflower, as it is more or less just a vessel to facilitate Solar Energy.


    I have been waiting so long for this opportunity and I want to get the most out of it that I can. So what I am going to do is fully assimilate the knowledge I gained, which I can do in about two days if actively working on it, or two weeks otherwise. After that I will ask for the same knowledge about flesh and bone creatures before starting trying to learn flesh manipulation, as flesh manipulation should help me assimilate that knowledge quickly, making me better at shaping flesh and molding bone, and healing as a whole.


    Now that I think about it, isn¡¯t what I am attempting to learn basically necromancy through healing? I know it is possible, and I know necromancers have their own form of healing, I might be able to help the necromancer boy out with that. I should really learn his name.


    Other than that nothing quite as exciting happened today. I am giddy and excited, which is fine because I don¡¯t need to sleep tonight. I should have to sleep tomorrow though, so we will see what I get then from Fate.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 82

    I spent most of my time today working on finishing digesting the knowledge I gained from the Origin soul piece. I should have it completely finished by midday tomorrow.


    I spent most of my downtime reading the book the Origin left for Willow, the one she left behind. It has everything from stories to history to diagrams of the bodies of various creatures, and so much more. The book is many times larger on the inside than on the outside, so there is a lot here. Unfortunately, not much of it is relevant to me right now. At one point it goes really in depth about everything to do with storms, which was probably added in explicitly for Willow. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. I did spend a bit of time talking to the necromancer, and we seem to get along pretty well. He told me about how his parents were killed by a passing Origin when it was discovered that they were practicing necromancy, which I had forgotten is something that Origin really don¡¯t like. That Origin was killed by another nearby mage overloading it with mana, which is apparently the most effective way to kill an Origin. After that, he struck out on his own and has been wandering ever since with no place to really call his own.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 83

    I finished digesting all of the knowledge I gained about the creation of mana based creatures shortly before noon. After a quick lunch, I used one of my few remaining questions to ask about the creation and design of flesh and bone creatures, knowledge that would take me decades, if not centuries to learn on my own. That should help me out a lot with my next project.


    As for my next project, I got the necromancer, whose name I have learned to be Azrezel, to start helping me out with it. What I¡¯m doing is taking mutilated undead and trying to heal them back to where the body was before it died. Unlike with most healing, there isn¡¯t a blueprint I can follow as the body doesn¡¯t want to heal in any particular way, and in fact, outright resists me. It doesn¡¯t put up much resistance, but it does make it harder than it would be.


    So far I prefer my plants to flesh manipulation. My plants actively help me change and control them, they want my will to be pressed into them. These undead definitely don¡¯t.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Azrezel is looking quite a bit better today, much less gaunt at least. I¡¯ve been healing him the last couple days, though it is rather difficult as far as healing goes. Something about the method of healing he used to keep himself alive interferes with my cleaner version of healing. Though interestingly I noticed some strange kind of vitality that accompanied the dirty version, a long-term positive effect maybe? Some minor boon in exchange for what could be a pretty major backlash? Might be worth looking into though it isn¡¯t really relevant to me.


    Other than that I spent some time hanging out with Tiddol and Par today. I kind of felt like the third wheel in that relationship and it felt a little uncomfortable for me, but they were accommodating. They are still my close friends after all, and I enjoy spending time with them.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 84

    Today I continued working with Azrezel on learning how to properly manipulate flesh. He is surprisingly hard-working and enthusiastic. It¡¯s obvious that he loves what he does and he strives to do it well. That, at least, is something I can admire.


    According to him, he is learning quite a bit from observing and facilitating my attempts to fully restore a mutilated undead. His hope is that this knowledge will help him be more efficient when creating undead in the future, effectively allowing him to make better undead. At least it explains why he is so enthusiastic about helping me.


    The knowledge I gained from Origin is unsurprisingly incredibly helpful, which means it is doing exactly what I wanted it to. I think once I fully assimilate this knowledge I will just ask about healing in general, using up one of my remaining seven questions for it. I have already decided that I shouldn¡¯t save my questions for dangerous life or death situations for a couple of reasons. The most important being that by the time I am able to make use of the knowledge gained it would be too late for it to matter, the second reason being that it is rather wasteful to spend a question on something like ¡®how can I save this person¡¯s life right now¡¯ when I could ask the harder to digest question of ¡®how can I become better at saving lives¡¯.


    Instead, I have decided to use them to improve my knowledge, primarily about healing. Yes, I can and will ask about plant manipulation, but my biggest limits there aren¡¯t knowledge-based but rather issues with how quickly I am capable of thinking.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I wish I could meet with and learn from other Plant manipulators, but any skilled enough for me to learn from are bound to Groves and forests of their own. Plus I don¡¯t really want others from the forest sprite line to move to my grove, it would limit my own access to mana quite a bit. Maybe a passing origin that focused on creating plants would be willing to teach me, I mean I doubt it but I can hope.


    During my downtime, I spent most of my time hanging out with Tiddol. Her daughter is nearly fully grown, while her son only learned to walk a month ago. It seems humans just develop rather slowly.


    Tiddol has been working on her own projects recently, mostly with alchemy. Most of what she is working on is medicine, not the wound healing kind but the stuff that will cure allergies or help you sleep at night. She has asked for my help a couple of times, both for ingredients and my expertise in healing.


    Tiddol has completely retired as a diver, now she puts her skills towards equipping other divers with tools and weapons they can use in a pinch. That and developing new stuff.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 85

    Today I spent most of my time working on Flesh manipulation. It¡¯s funny, nearly a year ago I was getting frustrated because there was simply no way I could practice flesh manipulation without torturing another creature to death, now I am making rapid progress with no sign of slowing down.


    I got the first organ to work properly today, namely the heart. It now pumps fluid almost as well as a normal heart, Azrezel¡¯s heart to be specific. He is who I am using as a basis to compare my work to after all. It is actually really complicated to build something as seemingly simple as a heart, I know it wasn¡¯t this difficult to build one with plants when I was working on the Ents. of course, I had a lot more practice with plant manipulation when I went to make the Ents and the plants were passively helping me. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I spent some time with Kaire and Lulem today. Apparently they are getting close to an evolution, they just need some major show of power to get over that line. They have some ideas that they are working on, and they should come to fruition soon. I wonder what they will turn into when they evolve.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 86

    Today I made I finished repairing the part of the body that carries around blood, the blood system I think I called it before. My biggest issue is fine control, and though I will never be able to do this at range, I am improving in that field rapidly. I am intimately familiar with exactly what I need to do to fix any part of the body. If I had as much control over flesh and bone as I do over plants I could completely repair one of Azrezel¡¯s undead in seconds. But I don¡¯t, so I can¡¯t, and that is why I am practicing.


    And my fears have been proven true several times recently, I have made potentially lethal mistakes dozens if not hundreds of times over the last couple days. Well, lethal to anyone that isn¡¯t an undead.


    Working with Azrezel closely for the last couple days has let me get to know him quite a bit, and I would imagine that it let him get to know me quite a bit as well. He seems to worry about matching up to the skills of his dad, who is supposed to have been a great necromancer capable of even creating sentient undead once or twice. I know almost nothing about necromancy, and by extension undead, but even if he was talentless he still has the work ethic to become a great necromancer. And based on what his dad was able to do, he probably has some level of talent.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. I did notice that my grove is about four times larger than it was at the beginning of the year. I mean it makes sense, I¡¯ve been pouring nearly all of my mana that I¡¯m not using for some other project into growing my grove. And growing my grove is a positive feedback loop, as the bigger it is the more mana I get. At this rate, I might be able to get to Pearlhold within the year. That would be something.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 87

    Today I continued to work on repairing the undead I¡¯ve been working on. I am making progress rather quickly.


    I stumbled upon Mest¡¯s grave today, I didn¡¯t even know it exists. For some reason people don¡¯t tell me these things, it is actually kind of frustrating.


    I talked to him like I used to. I told him all about what it was like to be a dungeon, I¡¯m sure he would have loved that. I told him about my progress in flesh manipulation, something he knew I was constantly trying to learn. I remember bouncing Ideas off of him on potential ways to actually learn, but it always came back to one thing; necromancy. I told him about how Azrezel has been helping me in exactly the same ways Mest and I had discussed before.


    I cried when I realized that we would never really talk again. I¡¯ll never be able to bounce ideas off on him or brag about my recent accomplishments or just vent to him while he listens. I mean, I will be able to do those things, but it won¡¯t be the same, he won¡¯t really be here.


    I know that his soul has reincarnated somewhere in this world, and that if I really wanted to I might be able to find him. But it wouldn¡¯t be him. He was a great mage and an even greater scholar, he will almost definitely keep some of his memories. But he won¡¯t remember me. He was a large part of the beginning of my life, while I was a small part of the end of his.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    He was one of the best teachers I ever had, and he will be remembered for that.


    There a mural on the gravestone, Tiddol painted it. It was of Mest and Thes sitting together in a moment of peace, having an animated discussion. About what, I have no idea, but they were both very invest in the conversation. On Mest you can see all the details on his grayish purple skin, all the scars, freckles, burns, and marks. You can see the way he liked to push his hair behind his horns. You can see all the little magical trinkets he liked to carry around in all of the pockets on his old worn out clothes. On Thes you can see, in no less detail, all of his battle scars. You can see the way his fur tended to curl at the tips and how he sometimes fumbled around his words. His axe was at his side, which it never strayed from. You can see the cracks and the chips in it from where it has struck something just a little too hard.


    In the background you can see the inside of a small house, it is blurry and indistinct but feels familiar, despite the fact that I know I¡¯ve never been there.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 88

    Today I did what I¡¯ve been doing. I give it two weeks before I fully finish fixing this undead, after that I¡¯m not sure what I¡¯ll do. Why did I want to learn flesh manipulation again?


    If nothing else, this experience has made me a much better healer. I am getting close to the point where I might be able to fix things that traditional healing can¡¯t, because of disease or because the body doesn¡¯t know how to make it anymore. I¡¯m still not at the point that I would be able to add something new though.


    At this point I have pretty much completely digested the chunk of knowledge I gained with my last question. Now I need to figure out what to do with the next one. Probably something to do with plants. Maybe I could ask about the creation and design of plants? Or maybe I could ask about the creation of specific trees of evolution, maybe the Angelics or the Monsters like myself? Either way, I¡¯ll come up with something tomorrow for my third question.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    I managed to get Azrezel talking about his goals in life today. Apparently his most pressing goal is to become a Lich, which are one of the very few creatures with a racial talent for necromancy. His issue lies with the whole dying part of the process in becoming an undead. So far there has been only one person documented who turned into a Lich successfully, and that was because the person doing it evolved when they tried. In fact all successful attempts at becoming undead have involved an evolution, since undead started existing any successful attempt to kill someone who is actively evolving has turned them into an undead. Naturally, like most undead, almost all of them didn¡¯t keep their sentience and immediately lashed out at their surroundings.


    Other than that I am going to sleep tonight, and as such I get a chance to burn my Fate. I finally got what I have been wanting for so long, an improvement to my ability to use Fate. I am now able to make slightly larger changes to my Fate at a time, it isn¡¯t much, but it is something.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 89

    No big updates with Flesh manipulation today. Everything is going steadily.


    Kaire and Lulem are almost done preparing for their big show of power. They should be finished tomorrow. I have no idea what they are doing, but I am looking forward to it. I really want to know what they will evolve into. It will probably end up being something a dungeon has made using my designs.


    So I decided on what I was going to ask today. At first, I was considering something to do with necromancy, there seems to be enough of a connection between necromancy and healing that I could improve quite a bit from learning the ins and outs of necromancy. But then I remembered that the Origin despised necromancy, it was a corruption of their life¡¯s work or something like that. Yeah, that was how Azrezel¡¯s parents died, an Origin didn¡¯t take kindly to their practice of necromancy. So no necromancy. I decided to stick with something relevant to my current project so as to get the most out of it, so no plant manipulation either. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    What I ultimately decided on the creation and physiology of beasts, because I am currently working on repairing the body of what was once a beast. You would think that all of the information there would be covered in my previous question, but you would be wrong. By asking a more specific question I get a more specific answer, which is exactly what I had hoped for. I still get the same amount of information, however.


    I think there is some kind of limit to the amount of information I can receive from each question. Which makes me wonder, what would happen if I asked the same question twice? Would I get the same answer both times, or would the piece of soul take into account what I already knew?


    Now that I think about it every question I¡¯ve asked has taken into account what I already knew to provide me with only new or more correct information than what I already had. Now I wish I had thought of this earlier today, I would have just asked about healing in general. I¡¯ll probably use up most of the rest of my questions asking about healing in general if I am correct, I don¡¯t want to accidentally limit myself in what I can do with healing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 90

    This morning Kaire and lulem finished their project. It was a small object, though I didn¡¯t get the chance to figure out what it does because something interesting happened. Or rather something interesting didn¡¯t happen.


    I could feel the starting parts of the two of them evolving, but it never happened. The hand of the world was present, but it was passive. Then I remembered that while the world does facilitate evolution, it can¡¯t create something new. Someone, somewhere, has to have created a species for you to evolve into it. No one has created a truly improved version of the Ent, or someone has but it doesn¡¯t meet some criteria or another. Which is a little surprising honestly.


    This means that I had to spend all day facilitating an evolution for the two of them using nearly infinite mana. I rebuilt them both from the ground up, making everything at least slightly better in every way. Not only have I improved quite a bit since I designed them, but my materials are much better as well and it really shows.


    Aside from being better in every way, like with all evolutions, they gained a new innate ability inspired by my left arm. They can now take in types of plants that they find and use them the same way I can use the plants I weave into my arm, I have no idea if this will have other effects but just improving their bodies wasn¡¯t enough.


    I can¡¯t wait for them to wake up and test out their new bodies, I worked hard on them.


    Of course, this means that I didn''t get to spend any time working on flesh manipulation with Azrezel today, but I think it was worth it.


    Other than that I didn¡¯t get much of a chance to do anything today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 91

    Kaire and Lulem were both very excited about evolving, I didn¡¯t get much time to talk to them before they ran off to experiment with their newfound powers.


    I got back to work on refining my control of flesh manipulation. I think I will get done within ten to eleven days, maybe less if there is some glaring flaw in my methods that I figure out in that time. There is almost certainly countless flaws in my methods, just none that I¡¯ve noticed yet. I have fixed all the ones I did notice.


    I am starting to see how flesh manipulation and plant manipulation compare to each other. They are both very creative things, though flesh and bone is a lot more rigid than plants. A plant can survive in nearly any shape as long as they get sunlight, water, and some form of food. Actually, all you need to support a plant is mana, if you have enough mana you can support a plant forever.


    Flesh and bone, on the other hand, can only be in certain shape and still be alive. You can¡¯t just change someone¡¯s body after it is fully made, it is difficult for you, and excruciating and almost certainly lethal for the person on the receiving end. I imagine that you can get to the point where molding flesh and shaping bone is as easy as breathing and completely harmless for the subject, but that is way beyond my abilities.


    It is actually possible to keep something of flesh and bone alive despite not being in a form conducive to life, it is called necromancy. I can do something similar with healing, but it isn¡¯t exactly the same. I have to get the creature I¡¯m trying to heal up the bare minimum to sustain life while a necromancer can just stop them from dying altogether.


    Other than that it was a slow day. The rain has more or less stopped by now, though I am expecting one last storm before the weather fully clears.


    Oh yeah, Tiddol made cookies today. They weren¡¯t the best thing I¡¯ve ever eaten, but they were really good. I probably ate way more than I should have.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 92

    Today I made quite a bit of progress on fixing up Azrezel¡¯s undead. It is nothing too drastic, I just figured out how to streamline a process I have to repeat quite a bit. It should shave a couple hours off of the total time it will take to finish this current project.


    I have enjoyed working with Azrezel so far. He is fun to be around and he is getting pretty good at making me laugh. And now that he is healed up significantly is a bit of a looker. On top of that, he is also very driven in his craft, something I can only admire.


    Other than that I spent some time with Par. He finally managed to get a break from the whole running two different cities thing, though I think someone else takes care of the day to day in Pearlhold. He was complaining to me that he wasn¡¯t getting enough free time to train recently, the new school and the scholars that are running it are becoming a nightmare for him to manage. The scholars are basically immune to the local laws, our laws, because the order they belong to is so powerful as to be able to completely level this region within the week if they want, and most of that time would be spent getting the right mages here. On top of that, they are fiercely protective of their scholars and have leveled entire regions in retaliation for harming one of their beloved scholars. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    Most of the scholars are pleasant people in my opinion, dedicated to their work and very professional. But according to Par a couple of them have been causing some trouble, and by trouble he means completely ignoring the local laws and basic social etiquette. No one has been killed yet but there have been several close calls. I actually remember personally healing one of those close calls. Because of all of that Par has had to deal with the scholars without being able to lay a finger on them, though that would change if one of them actually killed someone though I¡¯m not sure how or why.


    Anyway, I should Probably get back to work, So Good Night Diary.

 Day 93

    Nothing too exciting happened with Flesh manipulation today.


    In my downtime today I invited Azrezel to play board games with Tiddol and I. He won some, Tiddol won some, I didn¡¯t win some. Gathering Fate makes it a bit difficult to do well in board games, but they are still fun to play and I consistently came in second place. If nothing else learning how to play board games well is helping me learn how to get around the negative parts of Fate, so that¡¯s a plus. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Other than that some drunk guy tried to attack me today. It was pretty funny because he couldn¡¯t actually stand up, so he was just kind of caterpilling towards me while swinging a broken bottle in my general direction. I just kind of let him chase me around a little while egging him on before eventually just healing him and putting him to sleep. He shouldn¡¯t have a hangover in the morning. It was a good laugh for me and based on how drunk he was I doubt he will remember any of it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 94

    There was some pretty heavy cloud coverage today, almost entirely blocked out the sun. Because of that I lost track of time and spent all day working, not even stopping to eat.


    I definitely did get a lot done, mostly fixing up the skin. The skin on this creature is incredibly complicated compared to most I have worked with, it took way too long to figure out how it works well enough to replicate it. I¡¯m not even sure I understand how or why it does what it does, but it does make the skin nearly impenetrable by anything I have. I will have to study it sometime, I might be able to make better armor out of my plants once I figure the structure out. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    As I was busy working on the skin all day I wasn¡¯t able to do much else. Though I did small talk with Azrezel quite a bit today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 95

    Today I made more progress. I think it will be less than a week before we finish this project. This project overall has taken a really long time, possibly one of my longest projects. I mean it makes sense, starting out I only knew the first thing about flesh manipulation and had never actually done it before. I have actually improved quite a bit, much faster than I improved at plant manipulation, evolutions notwithstanding.


    I had pancakes for lunch today. Usually, I wouldn¡¯t mention them, but these pancakes were amazing. There is a restaurant that opened up in town a little bit ago that I decided to check out. The chef was a refugee that came over here through teleportation and apparently they were very famous back home. I have to say that whatever fame they may have had is well deserved.


    Other than that I got to see a meteor shower last night. There was nothing really magical about it, except maybe being literally summoned by magic, but it was still a very pretty sight and I got to see some of them hit the ground in the distance. I hope I never see them from close up.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I have all of this money to spend on the dungeon store, but I have no idea what to do with it. It isn¡¯t doing me any good just sitting there. Maybe I could buy some new plants? But which ones? Most of the cheaper ones I could create on my own anyway, I already have, or I¡¯m not interested in so it would be a waste. I should get some of the really expensive ones, but there are still so many to choose from. Or maybe I should just get every single mundane plant, there is enough diversity there that I would eventually be able to create anything. Want a plant that throws fireballs? Evolve a plant that was adapted to live inside a volcano.


    Speaking of the dungeon store, the evolved form of the Ent is apparently on sale there. Dubbed a Greater Ent it is about one and a half times the price of the first one, though not quite as popular. It doesn¡¯t really help all that much because I have no idea what to do with the money, but it is something.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 96

    Today I made about as much progress at flesh manipulation as I was expecting.


    At this point I can see how my work is making this undead faster, stronger, smarter, and all around better. Maybe it will even be sentient once I¡¯m done with it, I doubt it though.


    Azrezel is getting really excited. As both a necromancer and the creator of the undead he can see a lot more of what is going on with it. To me surprise I actually understood most of what he was talking about when he was telling about how exactly it had changed. It was basically just what I already knew, but way more in depth.


    Apparently there is a huge fight going on between two true immortals in the distance. That is what caused the meteor shower yesterday. They are slowly moving in my direction and neither of them seem close to dieing or giving up. There is nothing anyone that isn¡¯t on their level can really do about it other than evacuate the area. Few people think the fight is going to reach my grove, but already a number of people have left for Pearlhold. The only thing I can really do is hope it doesn¡¯t reach me before it breaks up. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    So I have decided what to buy on the dungeon store. I bought every single mundane plant in the dungeon store, though it only cost me half the money I had. Mundane plants cost almost nothing, but there are tons of variety. What I got was not the plant itself but rather the knowledge of how to create them.


    From there I spent some time producing each plant and integrating it into my arm. It didn¡¯t take too long as I could produce about a hundred at a time and it only took me a moment for each batch. With the addition of all of these plants my arm improved noticeably. It is marginally stronger, faster, and more durable, but that is just the obvious stuff. Overall it feels healthier, though what that entails I have no idea. What other effects it might have I have no idea, but each unique plant I add to the arm seems to make it slightly better.


    I will have to do more testing on this, luckily I now have access to a very large number of plants that would be incredibly easy to evolve, so testing will be easy.


    The took up most of my free time, so if something interesting happened I didn¡¯t notice it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 97

    Progress on flesh manipulation is steady, going exactly as fast as I thought it would.


    Today was rather slow. Not a lot happened. Yeah the immortals fighting got a bit closer, but not enough to make out yet. Yeah I made progress on fixing up the undead, but it was really just the same thing over and over again today. Yeah I burned my Fate today, but nothing noticeable happened.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    The most interesting part of the day was the small talk with Azrezel, but we didn¡¯t really talk about anything deep or consequential. It was fun, just not memorable.


    It just feels like nothing is happening recently, or rather stuff is happening just not to me. I know objectively that it isn¡¯t true, but I just can¡¯t shake that feeling.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 98

    We are getting really close to finishing restoring this undead, just a couple more days and I am certain it will be finished.


    I played board games a lot today and actually managed to win, once. It was a short game with almost no luck involved, all strategy. The whole theme of the game was that you and your opponent were mages fighting a duel. The only luck involved had to do with the actual spells available to the two players, but both players draw from the same pool and everyone can see all the options at all times. It was the longest game of the day, going for triple the number of rounds of any other game when I finally got the resources I needed to get the last card I needed to beat Tiddol. I managed to beat her by the tiniest of margins, had the game gone on even one round longer or had I done even one less damage I would have lost. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I was super tense and excited at the end there. Everyone was watching with bated breath, or at least that¡¯s what I imagined. When I finally managed to win I was screaming in joy. It has been so long since I¡¯ve actually won a game like this.


    I then proceeded to lose every other game I played today.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 99

    Azrezel and I are so close to finishing up the repairs on the undead. I can feel it on the verge of evolving as well. It will almost certainly evolve when I finish, though unlike my plants I will have no control over what happens during the evolution.


    Mary, the Ent that I personally taught healing, came to me today in order to say goodbye. They have learned everything they need to and are setting out into the world. It was a somewhat emotional goodbye on my end.


    I have personally tested their skills in healing, and they have the talent to one day match me. Of course, that is assuming they do nothing but study healing for the rest of their life, which isn¡¯t going to happen. Of course, they could get an evolution, which will make them more talented at healing. Or they could somehow learn from an Origin, like I did. Or a number of other methods that I can¡¯t even imagine. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Speaking of, I used my fifth question today. Five left. I asked about healing in general, and I was proven right. I gained no knowledge that I already knew. I did learn several minor tricks that in hindsight were super obvious and I am embarrassed for overlooking them. And by several, I mean several hundred. It would have taken healing a truly amount of very diverse wounds to figure all of those little things out on my own, basically something similar to what I did with Luck Blossom. Fortunately, most of the information wasn¡¯t that obvious and so I learned quite a bit of information, now I just need to fully digest it by using it.


    Oh, speaking of Luck Blossom. There is no more of it, anywhere. The scholars recently finished searching the entire world for even a small sample of the plant, not even the oldest dungeons had any. I even asked around on the terminal and no one has any.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 100

    I had sex with Azrezel today.


    We finished fixing up the undead and it started to evolve. In my excitement, I kissed him, and he kissed me back. One thing led to another and now here I am, hours later and we haven¡¯t talked yet.


    It was a sloppy, awkward thing. I didn¡¯t really learn anything relevant from Talus. But I enjoyed myself, and I think he did too.


    The problem is that I have no idea where this leaves us. I mean I like him well enough, and I wouldn''t mind being with him, but I have no idea if he feels the same way.


    This is nothing like what happened with Talus. She practically fell into my open arms and professed her love for me.


    I have no idea what to do. I don''t know how to interact with people like Azrezel in this context. With Talus it was easy, she was always the one pulling me along to do stuff together. But with Azrezel he could come to talk to me in ten minutes or ten days, and I have no idea which it is.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    I like Azrezel and I want to keep doing stuff like this with him, and other stuff too, but I have no idea what to say, or how to say it, too get there. I''m worried that I''ll mess everything up and he will hate me because I said the wrong thing.


    I can''t really make myself better at talking to people with my clothes, I mean I can but it doesn''t have much of an effect, or at least not much of an effect that I can see. I could make myself prettier, but I think it''s a little late for that.


    I''m just going to do it, If I get rejected it is better to get it over with now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 101

    Last night I talked to Azrezel, and I think it went well.


    Honestly, his response made me super relieved. He told me that he was just as anxious and unsure as I was, though not in those exact words. Or any of those words for that matter. Really it was a bit difficult to piece together what he said, though that made his nerves a bit obvious.


    So we are a couple now, though I¡¯m not entirely sure what that entails. I mean he is pretty much the polar opposite of Talus. Where Talus gained power from emotion and desire, Azrezel focuses on understanding and study. While Talus would drag me around to do all sorts of activities Azrezel is content to just sit next to me and work in relative silence. Where Talus was emotional and intense, Azrezel is cool and collected.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I¡¯m not really sure what to expect, so I am going to talk about what I actually spent my time doing today.


    I started refining the Sunflower. As it is it¡¯s not very useful, but I can tell that it has amazing potential. To name just one thing that I should be able to do with this plant is increase my mana production, something only Astrie has been able to do so far and even then not very well. Though the main benefit is definitely the constant access to Solar Energy that it offers.


    The Immortals that are fighting nearby have gotten uncomfortably close. They will either run right into us or pass us by in the next couple days, assuming they keep the same general course and don¡¯t stop. The two of them are either pulling a lot of punches or are incredibly durable as neither of them really look like they are injured.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. My grove is pretty empty recently, on account of the incredibly powerful people that apparently have no need for sleep that might be on a collision course for my grove.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 102

    Today I managed to get a piece of Sunflower to evolve. It is still nowhere near where I need it to be, but this is a solid step in the right direction. I think it will take me about eight to ten days before I get to the point where I can¡¯t improve it through simple refining. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll stumble across a way to improve my speed anytime soon, though stranger things have happened.


    I spent most of my freetime today with Azrezel. We were testing out the newly evolved undead, see what exactly had changed. In short, not much. It wasn¡¯t exactly the most stunning of evolutions. It was improved in every way, but it wasn¡¯t improved by a large margin. Basically the equivalent of going from a goblin to a greater goblin.


    It makes sense, I messed up quite a bit when I was fixing it up. It doesn¡¯t matter how perfect your knowledge of a subject is, if you have never done it before you are going to make mistakes. And most of the time I spent working on the undead was spent trying to figure out how to fix my mistakes. I could probably get another one to evolve after two days of dedicated work.


    I think I am going to split up my time between working on Solar Energy and working with Azrezel on Flesh Manipulation. Everything will take twice as long as expected like this, but I really don¡¯t think I can decide between working on one or the other right now. Both projects take a lot of time, though neither takes much mana.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Naturally I haven¡¯t been letting my mana pool just sit there doing nothing, I have been using it to grow my grove. It is easily ten times as large as it was at the beginning of this year, and it is growing faster and faster. The cliff that I got up to early on in the development of my Grove, the one the hot spring turned mini dungeon, well it turns out that it is connected to a mountain. It is pretty hard to tell from the limited vantage point that I had, and no one really talks about it. It isn¡¯t a mountain chain, just a single mountain with a single, rather large, sheer cliff face. The mountain is now completely surrounded by my Grove and some limited mining has begun, though nothing interesting has been found yet.


    The trees are a little stressed out by this rapid expansion, and that does decrease the amount of mana I get from each tree, but they¡¯ll get used to it. It is nothing harmful they will adapt, in fact many of the older trees are encouraging this rapid growth.


    Other than that the fight got really close to my grove today. This made many of my trees scared, which made me angry, which made my trees even angrier, which definitely didn¡¯t make me any less angry. This viciously repeating cycle eventually caught the eye of the fighters, or at least I think it did because they both kind of started heading in a different direction, that did make me less angry.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 103

    I made about as much progress as I was expecting to today, maybe a bit more.


    The undead we are working on now is a rather fat ex-Angelic ghoul that is a bit more intact than the last one. The fat isn¡¯t actual fat, but rather some bloating from the organs breaking down, in life the guy was probably rather skinny. It is my job to fix that, among other things.


    Tiddol got sick today. She had one of her experimental potions blow up in her face and got unlucky the other day. Now she is bedridden, though luckily it isn¡¯t contagious. I tried asking about what it takes to cure a sickness, basically, you need to unravel the spell causing the symptoms manually, something that requires external mana manipulation. Not exactly something I will be able to do any time soon, though maybe I will find a way around it.


    After thinking about it for a while I realized a couple things. The first is that Origin came into existence basically the same way people get sick today, ambient mana randomly forming a viable shape. The thing that is killing the Origin today is the fact that ambient mana is getting to the point where it is denser than the mana in their bodies. So why can¡¯t we kill the spell causing the sickness the same way?The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Well, it has already been tried. It does work, but it is risky. In order to pull it off successfully you need tons of mana available to you, pretty much only the best arch-mages have that kind of mana. It isn¡¯t absolutely necessary to have that much, but messing it up and using too little will make everything much worse every time. The sickness absorbs the mana, if it doesn¡¯t then you messed up at step one, and always lasts much longer than it would have before. Sometimes it actually causes the sickness to change, possibly making it more dangerous and, on more than one occasion, contagious. So yeah, trying to burn sickness out is a fool''s errand.


    Tiddol should be fine in a day or two. It is painful but doesn¡¯t do much other than cause pain. With the help of some Flore, the pain wasn¡¯t an issue at all, though she did end up sleeping all day.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 104

    Today I spent the morning refining Sunflower and the evening working on Flesh Manipulation. I think I will be able to trigger an evolution within about two days of working on this particular ghoul.


    I didn¡¯t really take much in the way of downtime today, instead of getting lost in my work with Azrezel. I know I said it before but I enjoy working with him. He can easily make me laugh and he is driven in the same way I am. I can¡¯t help but admire him. And I love watching him work, or just watching him in general. He has a tendency to wear form-fitting clothes and he does work out regularly. He isn¡¯t ripped but his muscle tone is very obvious. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    It is surprisingly fun to tease him and get him riled up. Must be why Talus would constantly tease me. He is so shy that it is adorable, though I don¡¯t think he will be so shy for very long.


    I can still see the Immortals fighting pretty well. One of them seems to have gotten the upper hand by now, unless something changes he is going to win. Or at least that is what I can tell.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 105

    Today I continued working, the same as yesterday. I will definitely trigger an evolution in the ghoul tomorrow, the question is just what time tomorrow it will happen.


    I gave some of my sleep aide to Azrezel, making sure it was tailored for him, yesterday. Now I guess we are going to see how he likes being able to stay awake for days at a time on what is normal for one day.


    The only time I don¡¯t spend with Azrezel recently is when he sleeps. It is kind of weird being so close to someone all the time, but at the same time it is kind of nice. When we aren¡¯t working on fixing up the ghoul he is working diligently on preparing a corpse to raise, what I¡¯m told used to be an Archangel. He actually had me remove the injuries it took during death, which was pretty easy considering it was little more than a hole piercing its heart. Fixing that is as easy as breathing at this point.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    The fight will be too far away for me to see here in the next couple days, but for now, it is still close enough to serve as some entertainment when I get bored. It is pretty easy to improve my eyesight after all.


    Other than that not a lot happened.


    Anyway, Good Night DIary.

 Day 106

    Today I successfully made the ghoul start to evolve. I¡¯m not sure what it will evolve into quite yet though.


    I know I can do the next one faster. I¡¯m not sure how much faster but It is something. I think I am going to fix up all of Azrezel¡¯s undead before I start experimenting with shaping flesh and molding bone. At that point, I should know enough about how things should look that I can start messing with how I want things to look.


    I think I might have messed up. You see, I finished absorbing all the knowledge from my last question earlier today and was going to ask the next question when I decided to do something a little different. I changed the wording of my question, instead of saying ¡®I want to know about healing¡¯ I said ¡®I want to know everything about healing¡¯. The energy that should have lasted for five more questions is all gone now, in its place is a truly vast amount of knowledge, several orders of magnitude more than any individual question previously. And my head feels like it is being split in two from the inside.


    The structure the knowledge is in inside my head is also very different. Where before it was loose and flowing, and easily accessible, this time it is all bundled up into a rope, only the surface level information of anything is easily accessed, but it takes up significantly less space. And yet despite the new compact shape it is still nearly bursting out of my head. It isn¡¯t enough to cause any lasting damage, but it still hurts. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    It is going to take a lot longer to fully absorb this new set of knowledge than it took for the other sets. For one there is a lot more information, for another, I have to manually take that rope of knowledge apart piece by piece to absorb it. It isn¡¯t difficult to unravel, in fact, it¡¯s structure is eerily similar to that of a plant, but there is so much there that it will take quite a while to even make a dent. The biggest issue by far is one that I currently have a solution too, I need to put the information to use in order to really absorb it and make room to take more out of the rope. I can work on fixing up Azrezel¡¯s undead for a good chunk of it, but a tenth of the information is relevant here, maybe a fifth.


    It will be enough for now, but how am I going to find a use for things as esoteric as manual surgery? It isn¡¯t exactly something that comes up in daily conversation, much less something that is necessary for any situation. Anytime it would be useful I could just as easily apply magical healing and be done much quicker without the drawbacks. And it is completely worthless on mana based creatures, we don¡¯t exactly have organs to perform surgery on.


    Actually, now that I think about it there is an easy way to make use of surgery, even if it isn¡¯t necessary. Azrezel has plenty of corpses of all kinds in an extra-dimensional storage container, I¡¯m sure I could ask him to let me borrow a couple to cut up. It¡¯s not like it matters right now though, it won¡¯t be necessary for a while.


    I highly doubt I got literally everything there is to know about healing, but I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if I got everything the Origin knew about healing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 107

    Azrezel has been my boyfriend for a week now. It has been a passionate week, for lack of a better term. I have enjoyed myself, and I think he has as well.


    I am about halfway done with refining Sunflower, I would be done with it if I focused all my time on it. But Flesh Manipulation is also something I really want to figure out. I don¡¯t even remember why it was something I wanted to learn, I just know that it is important for some reason.


    My headache mostly went down last night, it is still there just very minimal. A constant reminder of how much information I have to process. Once I¡¯m done I very well might be the best healer in the world, when you only take into account actual skill and not the availability of mana. Assuming infinite mana and a basic understanding of healing magic you can heal anything through brute force alone, but in reality, infinite mana is impossible for now.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Of course getting to that point is going to take quite a while, It takes a rather long time to really make any headway into this rope of knowledge. It does take up a lot of space, but turning it into a digestible form makes it take up even more space until I fully absorb it. This means that that start will be painfully slow, but it will get exponentially faster as I make progress.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. It has been an exciting week, a type of excitement that I definitely enjoy.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 108

    I got another undead to evolve late this evening. I think it will be a bit less than two more days worth of work before I get the next one to evolve, finishing in the early afternoon and not late evening.


    Azrezel has a total of two hundred and twelve undead that I have not yet managed to evolve. All of them are at varying levels of power and damage. It shouldn¡¯t take too long to fix them all up, I am rapidly getting better and better at this thanks to what is basically cheating. I would be surprised if more than a handful of people in the world have received a boon like the knowledge I gained from Origin in any field.


    Not that I¡¯m complaining, far from it in fact. It is helping me improve in ways I couldn¡¯t have possibly imagined before. And I want more. Yes, there is a lot of knowledge that I still need to properly absorb, but it is still finite. It won¡¯t last forever.


    The way I see it there are two paths to power open to me; healing and plant manipulation. Plant manipulation is what I was born into, the main way to improve there is to gather new plants and to improve the plants that I have. Healing is something I happened upon on my own, it is something I wasn¡¯t inherently talented in, to begin with, but it is something I have grown to love. The path to power for healing is study and practice, study and practice. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    There is some overlap between the two in the form of White Foot. Using White Foot I can make myself into a better healer. I can¡¯t think of a way to become better at manipulating plants using healing.


    I have always said that I don¡¯t crave power, and I still think that¡¯s true. What I crave is the journey to that power. I don¡¯t care about being able to bring thousands of people from the brink of death to peak physical condition in the blink of an eye, but figuring out how to do that is another story.


    All of this to say that it shouldn¡¯t take long at all before I finish evolving all of Azrezel¡¯s undead. It¡¯s a shame he isn¡¯t able to use healing magic.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 109

    Today was a slow day. Progress was steady on all fronts, and no thresholds were reached today.


    During my downtime, I didn¡¯t hang out with Azrezel, the first time since becoming a couple. Instead, I hung out with Tiddol. We talked and joked around and generally just had fun together. It was nice and relaxing, a stark contrast to the excitement of the last several days. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    A couple of my children evolved into Greater Ents recently, mostly the ones with magical knowledge from their past life. I went through and gave each of them a bit of every plant I have available, so they all get that boon. I hope they use it well.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 110

    I should be finished with refining Sunflower within the next two days. After that it shouldn¡¯t take much time to modify it to turn Solar Energy into mana instead of mana into Solar Energy. If nothing else that will increase my mana production significantly. What I am hoping for though is the ability to actually use Solar Energy outside of the room I have dedicated to it.


    After that I will start spending my time trying to figure out how to use Solar Energy in things like healing and plant manipulation. There is so much potential there, and while I¡¯ve gotten a better idea on what that potential is I still have no idea what I¡¯m doing. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    At this point I¡¯m going to be completely fixing up an undead every single day, with the exception of some of the worse off ones. Not all of them are going to evolve as a result, the one I finished today didn¡¯t, but all of them will be dramatically improved as a result. I mean regardless of the situation it¡¯s hard to walk around with your guts hanging out, putting them back together can only be a positive thing.


    I haven¡¯t been taking a lot of downtime recently. I know that tends to mess me up in the head, but it shouldn¡¯t be to much of an issue, right?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 111

    Tomorrow is when I will no longer be able to refine Sunflower any longer. I can¡¯t wait.


    Progress with the undead is what I expected, maybe a bit faster.


    Today I spent a bit of time submerged in the sensations of my grove. It is always there, but I don¡¯t really focus on it very often. At first, I felt like I was drowning, but I pushed through that. After I got used to the sensations I could feel everything. I could feel the branches swaying in the wind, I could feel the roots digging deep into the ground, I could feel the mana in the air. I could feel everything.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    It was intense and I loved it.


    Other than that I hung out with Par today. It¡¯s his first real day off in several weeks and it shows. It was fun to get a good chance to talk to him. Apparently, he hasn¡¯t been reading much lately because he has been busy nearly constantly. Apparently, some of our neighbors are being rather pushy and it is causing him a headache. I¡¯m not sure what¡¯s going on, but according to him if it wasn¡¯t for the scholars intervening we would be in a state of all-out war right now. Fortunately for our would be neighbors the scholars seem intent on preventing any large conflicts in the region still.


    Apparently, the scholars are really scary, who knew.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 112

    Today I finished refining sunflower. I spent nearly the whole day on this final stretch.


    After that, it took me about a minute to create a Solar Energy version. And it only took a moment to integrate them into my body in a way that would let me easily create both mana and solar energy. It isn¡¯t perfectly efficient, but I can and will tweak it as I learn more about the process.


    And now I realize that I have overlooked something crucial. Any and all mana I spend inside of my own body that isn¡¯t instantly reclaimed is absorbed into my dungeon core. Which is a really good thing when working with Solar Energy, but it makes things a bit difficult. If it wasn¡¯t like that I would blow myself up, but because that happens it is much more difficult to reabsorb mana, a task I already struggle with.


    It isn¡¯t all bad. It is much easier for me to absorb mana I spend in my own body than it is to absorb any other mana. Ultimately what it comes down to is practice. I need to get to perfect efficiency with this, anything short of that and I will have a net negative mana production from this project.


    Finally, after who knows how long I now have access to a reliable source of Solar Energy. With this, I could become a proper mage, not just a plant manipulator or a healer, but really be able to learn any discipline of magic. Unfortunately, there is no one available to me that would be able to teach me how to use magic beyond what I already know. So it would take an act of Fate for me to make any real progress on something outside of healing or plant manipulation. Which is fine, there isn¡¯t much I can¡¯t do with healing and plant manipulation combined. Though most of that utility comes from my plants. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Practicing creating Solar Energy and turning it into mana is little more than a mental exercise. Yeah, it takes up a lot of mana, but it doesn¡¯t take much focus. That means that I can work on it and flesh manipulation at the same time with only negligible drawbacks. Now I should be able to start finishing up three of azrezel¡¯s undead in a day on average, and that is only going to increase.


    Azrezel has started the final preparations for raising the powerful corpse he has. He has some alchemical preparations and potions, the difference being that one you drink and one you don¡¯t, and other stuff that I don¡¯t recognize. A good chunk of it was created by or acquired with the help of Tiddol. He is going all out, some of the stuff is worth more than the entirety of what I have spent on new plants, ignoring the dungeon store. On top of that he also has tons of mana berries, which he assures me probably won¡¯t be enough, and so I¡¯ve been helping him make more. If this doesn¡¯t create a sentient undead I don¡¯t know what will.


    If anything else noteworthy happened today I wasn¡¯t around to see it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 113

    Today I started practicing making Solar Energy and then turning that into mana. It¡¯s slow going, but I am making progress.


    I got one undead to evolve, finished fixing up another one, and am almost done with the third. All of that was done today. I am noticeably getting faster at healing without a blueprint. I don¡¯t understand healing enough to really make improvements quite yet, but I am getting there. Well, that¡¯s not entirely true. I could definitely make improvements, but there would be nasty side effects that I would need to figure out how to fix. The undead I practice on would be completely destroyed in the process of me trying to improve it.


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    I¡¯m not saying I am not going to use that option, simply that I think there are more efficient ways to improve right now.


    The more I digest the rope of knowledge in my head the more space in there to unwind the rope, meaning that I can absorb more knowledge at once, speeding up the process. I have made a decent amount of progress so far, but I¡¯m still only scratching the surface of what is there.


    The more I think about it the more I want to try out surgery. I can¡¯t really think of a good reason for it to be a thing that happens often enough for people to get good at it, which just makes me want to figure it out. What could possibly be the benefits of surgery over magical healing? I intend to find out and soon.


    Other than that I spent most of my time alone with Azrezel.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 114

    Today was more of the same.


    I have no idea how long it will take me to get to the point where sunflower is giving me more mana than I lose to it, but once I get there I will have it in use constantly. No reason not to.


    I got two undead to evolve today and fixed up two more. I¡¯m getting faster and faster as time goes on. I think I¡¯m on the verge of hitting some kind of watershed soon. I¡¯m rapidly getting to the point that repairing injuries without a blueprint is as easy as with a blueprint. Once I¡¯m there I could fix most of the undead within the space of a day. That Is likely when I will be able to try and improve flesh and bone creatures without causing any undue suffering.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I burned my Fate today, and what I got was immediately obvious, something that almost never happens. I shifted the way I was trying to reabsorb mana I spent inside my own body and everything flowed a little bit smoother, more so than any other single changed I had made so far.


    Other than that I spent my downtime reading a couple short stories. Unfortunately, I couldn¡¯t spend the time with Azrezel because he had a spell backfire in a bad way, now he has a sickness that has a very short burn time, but basically knocks him out completely. I¡¯ve already done what I can for him, and he will be fine by morning.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 115

    Today I managed to get four undead to evolve. That was all of the undead I worked on today. Admittedly all of them were rather weak so it wasn¡¯t too difficult to trigger an evolution, but it is still a success.


    It will still be months before I manage to fully absorb all of the knowledge I gained from my ancestor Origin, actually, I don¡¯t think that applies so much anymore, but the knowledge I¡¯m gaining now is helping me rapidly improve at healing without a blueprint. This is the type of stuff that I need to learn in order to fix my arm, which is irrelevant because I¡¯ve decided to keep the new wooden one. Still, nice to know I will have the option soon in case I have to fix any other body parts or some else gets hit by the same stuff.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    I should figure out how the mana-based creature rotting poison is made so maybe I can make some way to counter it because that stuff is vile. If just a tiny drop of it had gotten on my torso or head then I would have died.


    Azrezel is feeling better today, his sickness didn¡¯t last long at all. From the screams, before I used Dead Tulip pollen and Flore on him to help ease the pain it was probably incredibly painful. He didn¡¯t really want to talk about it today, though he did thank me for knocking him out with my plants.


    Other than that there were three moons last night, two medium sized one and a small one. They were all glowing a bright green color that was slightly nauseating. It was cool, but I didn¡¯t look at it for very long due to the aforementioned nausea.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 116

    Today I made a small breakthrough in fixing up the undead. I absorbed a piece of knowledge that directly helped me speed up one of the more time-consuming parts of the process. Partially as a result of that, I managed to fully fix up six more undead and have started working on an seventh, four of them even evolved. A surprisingly high number of the undead are evolving, I wonder why. I know that the more things evolve in an area the easier it is to trigger an evolution, but not to this degree. Something else is going on, because I know I am not good enough at this to be the real cause of the high evolution rate.


    Azrezel is very impressed by my work so far, he says I¡¯m some kind of prodigy in the art of healing despite knowing full well that most if not all of my recent progress has been due to cheating. And my recent progress is easily more than half of my total progress in healing.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    My trees are starting to get a bit excited, though I have no idea about why. When I asked the only response I could get was that something was coming. I don¡¯t know if that something is alive or if that something is weather related or what. The only things I do know are that it has an incredibly strong affinity for plants, otherwise, my trees wouldn¡¯t care, and it is powerful.


    Other than that I spent some time hanging out in town where I learned a bit about recent events. Apparently, this place has gained a reputation for having a lot of evolutions, much more so than the average city. This place is definitely not on the size of a proper city yet. In one, likely exaggerated, tale an old man fell to the ground and started to evolve on the road into the city. So it isn¡¯t just me, evolutions are happening a lot more in the area, but we simply don¡¯t have the numbers for it to be this easy.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 117

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    Progress is faster and faster. Today I finished fixing seven of Azrezel¡¯s undead and almost finished a eighth. All of the ones I finished evolved.


    My plants are getting more and more excited, whatever it is is getting closer. The tree¡¯s excitement is getting me excited too, I wonder what it could possibly be. I¡¯m not seeing anything large in the distance and the sky is clear for as far as I can see. According to the scholars, there is nothing going on with the moons or the suns or anything in that area. Well, nothing relevant anyway. Apparently, there is going to be something called an eclipse a ways away from here tomorrow, but I won¡¯t be able to see it and I doubt my trees would care about something like that.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    During my downtime, I mostly hung out with Tiddol. Her human child has started to walk and talk with some skill now, which actually has me really worried. He is developing so slowly, I don¡¯t know much about humans but from what I do know about development in general thanks to the knowledge I gained from Origin. Unfortunately, my ancestor didn¡¯t have anything to do with the creation of humans. Very few creatures develop as slowly as this child is developing, and the ones that do are strong enough as children to defend themselves. This little boy is almost certainly not strong enough to defend himself from more than a stiff breeze, and that isn¡¯t an exaggeration, I watched as she fell over from a stiff breeze more than once today.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. Well, not a lot outside of the ordinary.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 118

    I fixed up nine undead today, eight of them evolved. Four of those I was certain weren''t going to evolve.


    My trees are still excited, but now they seem almost afraid. I still have no idea about what they are getting worked up over but it is getting closer. Hopefully, it will just pass us by, but I somehow doubt that will happen.


    During my downtime, I hung out with Azrezel. We ended up playing a simple game called checkers. It was surprisingly fun despite how simple it is. Most of the games I¡¯ve played have required magic in order to function, while this game about moving identical pieces around a board in order to remove your opponent''s pieces requires nothing more than a board and 2 sets of pieces and still managed to be fun. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Other than that a couple things happened, the most interesting of which was almost definitely caused by me building up my Fate. I was taking a walk when out of nowhere a bottle of some juice fell from the sky, hitting me right in the head, shattering the glass bottle and covering me with the contents at the same time. Luckily no one saw and it was really easy to clean up with some magic, but it was rather shocking.


    Anyway, it¡¯s getting late and I want to sleep tonight so Good Night Diary.

 Day 119

    Today I managed to complete nine undead, seven evolved. I¡¯ve stopped trying to guess whether or not an undead will evolve once I¡¯m done with it.


    So I figured out what that thing that was getting my trees all excited and afraid was. It was an ent, and not one I create myself. This ent used to be a normal tree, or as normal as a sentient tree can be. They evolved shortly after I created Kaire and Lulem and learned of my existence shortly after that.


    I got to talk to the ancient tree for a while. Apparently, they were stuck in one form for more than a hundred years, having all of the qualifications to evolve, but not having anything that they could possibly evolve into. It isn¡¯t on record anywhere but they were probably the third ent in existence. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    The ent, who, like everyone else, neglected to tell me their name, told me that they wanted to come here and pay their respects to me as I facilitated a major boon in their life. They offered me a small gift, so naturally, I asked for the gift of knowledge, specifically knowledge about plants and plant manipulation. If anyone would know about that it would be a several-hundred-year-old tree, right? After I said that they silently stood up and walked away, out of my grove. They are still pretty close, but completely outside of my domain. I don¡¯t blame them, if I was a tree I would not be willing to sleep within ten miles of a plant manipulator.


    Compared to that nothing is interesting enough to talk about today.


    So anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 120

    More and more undead are fixed up every day, it¡¯s gotten to the point of being routine. Still, most of them are evolving once they are completely intact.


    The old tree came back and handed me a book before going on their way. They said something about not being able to resist my influence forever before they left.


    The book contained a lot of information about plants. Not so much about specific plants but more like broad strokes. Most of the information is stuff I already knew, but a good quarter of it will be useful.


    Plants are very simple when compared to the other trees of evolution. I¡¯ve known this for a while but I¡¯m just now realizing how true it is. When Origin first made the plants they had no desires for them beyond the ability to capture Solar Energy and turn it into mana, and for the most part that held true till now. There were a handful of origin that spent a decent amount of time diversifying the number of plants, but very few of them spent most of their time with plants. This is a sharp contrast to everything else, with the noteworthy exception of the undead. All of them wanted to create new creatures or even new trees of evolution, and plants, while still being creatures, were seen as a static non-entity for all but a small group. As a result of all of this, there is very little variety among plants. I don¡¯t really know what to make of this knowledge quite yet.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I look forward to reading the rest of that book during my downtime. A lot of it is stuff I already know so it shouldn¡¯t take to long, a week at most maybe? I don¡¯t know I¡¯m bad with time.


    And yeah, that¡¯s what I did with my downtime today.


    I¡¯m still pretty far away from beginning able to get more mana out of the solar energy cycle than I put in, at least I think I am. I¡¯m not even going to try to predict how long it will take me to get efficient enough with this stuff as I have absolutely nothing to compare it with and I am talentless in the required skills. I hope it won¡¯t be too long though. If nothing else this is great for my dungeon core¡¯s growth, and for that reason alone I think I might have to try to evolve Sunflower again to make the whole process more effective.


    Other than that not a lot happened. My trees finally calmed back down, but that was expected. I¡¯m not sure if I will see that Ent again, or if they will tell me their name when and if we meet again.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 121

    I hit on something today, a way to make the process of fixing up the undead much faster. I will be done with all of Azrezel¡¯s undead within the week. I¡¯m still nowhere near as good at healing without a blueprint as I am with one, but I am getting closer.


    I spent my downtime cuddled up with Azrezel and reading. It was nice and relaxing.


    Most of what I read today confirms my theories. There were a couple tidbits here and there that I was either unsure about or was unaware of, but those weren¡¯t very common. I¡¯m still more or less at the beginning of the book so hopefully, there is a lot more in the book that I don¡¯t know.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Other than that some kind of explosion happened in the distance. The scholars were getting rather fussy about it. Apparently, some group violated whatever they put in place and have started doing something with their military. I didn¡¯t listen in too much, as I only really cared about the broad strokes, but it seems like something big might happen soon. I¡¯m looking forward to hearing about it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 122

    Today I made as much progress as I was expecting to, maybe a bit less but not by much.


    One thing I love about Azrezel is the fact that I can just sit next to him, that wasn¡¯t something I could really do with Talus. We can sit and work in peace and quiet, not even needing to speak to understand each other. At first, we tended to get in each other''s way, but now we work together smoothly, like. I spent way too long trying to come up with a good simile for this but I can¡¯t really think of things that work together smoothly.


    I was talking to him today and the subject of our parents came up. I told him how my mother held a position very similar to my own when she was still around, and how my father was probably an old folk hero. I was surprised that Azrezel had heard of Eric and had actually met him when he was really young. He told me many stories about the man that I hadn''t heard before, many of which probably exaggerated to a degree, but he also told me stories that I remember being told by my father about himself and his friends. Like the time he lead three separate revolutions at the same time, none of them had anything to do with each other except for involving him, but because he got put in a position of command in all three he united the disparate revolutionaries and overcome their individual foes one by one.


    The more I hear about him the more sure I am that the legend of a man, Eric, and my father are one and the same. Sometimes I wish he was still alive, but then I remember that he wouldn¡¯t be happy if he were still alive.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Azrezel also told me about his parents. I got the feeling that his father was distant and harsh in everything but passing down the art of necromancy. All his life he knew his mother only as one of his father¡¯s failed experiments in creating sentient undead, a fact that haunted his old man.


    Azrezel¡¯s mother died in after a spell backfired on her in the worst way shortly after he was born. The only saving grace was that the disease spawned from her failure wasn¡¯t infectious.


    His death was spectacular if nothing else. He fought the Origin that killed him to a standstill, he kept a being of pure magic with centuries, potentially millennia, of experience on him at bay for a time. But in a fight with no casualties, a necromancer will lose to attrition, the power of the undead isn¡¯t in their individual strength but in their ability to be mass produced in the middle of combat. Azrezel told me how close to the end his father simply told him to run away, and faced his death head-on, injuring the great creator enough to let him escape.


    And now he is here, with me, carrying on his father¡¯s legacy. Attempting to replicate the successes of his father so he can improve on them.


    During my downtime, I talked to Whisper¡¯s replacement. The plant variant dragonewt was a good conversationalist, and my plants like him, though not quite to the level the liked Whisperer. But I still feel vaguely uncomfortable around him, though now I think I know why. He admires me in a way that I don¡¯t think I deserve, but I¡¯m getting used to it more and more.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 123

    Two days. It will be two days before I am done with Azrezel¡¯s broken and battered undead. I have already finished over a hundred undead. It wasn¡¯t so long ago that it took days to finish even one.


    I haven¡¯t been able to hang out with Tiddol as much as I would like. She¡¯s busy between raising her son and helping Parius with managing everything. I know she would be more than willing to make time for me if I ask, but it just feels awkward to ask her to do so. I¡¯ll try to get her to hang out with me tomorrow.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I spent most of my downtime reading, though I already knew everything I read about today. It was mostly about the differences between different types of plants today. Honestly, I don¡¯t think I will gain much from this book, as I have said before. However, it would be incredibly useful if I ever have to teach someone how to manipulate plants.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. The scholars seem to be mobilizing against the people that are ignoring the sanctions on armed conflict in the area, but I have nothing to do with that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 124

    I spent most of my time today in a push to finish fixing up all of the undead. About nine of every ten undead I worked on today evolved. More and more undead are evolving, which isn¡¯t too surprising because the ones I saved for last are the ones that will be the most difficult to repair. The more work that needs to be done the more I improve them by fixing them up, and the more they are improved the bigger the show of power is. And the most important part in triggering an evolution has always been a large show of power. It is still surprising that the rate of evolution is so high to begin with. Maybe one in three of them evolving would be reasonable, not nine in ten.


    I spent my downtime today hanging out with Tiddol. Mostly we talked about boys, two boys in particular, they weren¡¯t invited.


    It seems Par has been doing a pretty good job building our lands up so far. Pearlhold and Par¡¯s small town have both gained a reputation for being very open-minded and relatively fair. Though there is some very obvious favoritism to first class citizens it is all on the surface and anyone can become a first-class citizen with some hard work or talent.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    It also seems like Par thinks he is going to evolve soon. He has been making preparations for a hunt, though I¡¯m not sure what exactly he will be hunting. He should leave within a week or two. I wish him the best of luck in evolving.


    Other than that it seems like the scholars have apprehended or executed everyone involved in breaking their imposed nonviolence in the region. They work fast, really fast. I should keep an eye on them and make sure to avoid disobeying them if at all possible. As I am a valuable research subject they won¡¯t just kill me, but I¡¯ll lose so much more than that if they think I¡¯m not worth the trouble. I might have to push for the kind of power that lets me ignore their threats sometime.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 125

    Today I finished repairing the last of Azrezel¡¯s undead. The last one used to be some kind of Draconic. It was a feathered snake with the ability to fly despite not having any obvious wings or anything else that would facilitate flight.


    I finished the last undead about an hour ago. I spent the last hour alone with Azrezel.


    Now I need to figure out what I am going to work on next. I see a couple of things I can work on next. The thing I am most interested in is figuring out how to use Solar Energy properly, but I can¡¯t exactly hang out with Azrezel while I¡¯m in the Solar Energy room.


    I can also work on refining one of my plants or trying to create something new from the mundane plants I have access too. The question is which one. Maybe Whitefoot? I have been working on healing quite a bit recently. Plus working on Whitefoot might help me to digest the knowledge I gained from my ancestor. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    I could also try working directly on digesting the knowledge I gained from my ancestor. I could do it a lot faster if I focus my efforts there, and it would require working with Azrezel for a lot of it.


    Maybe I should work on trying to improve some of the more disposable undead? Nah, not quite yet. I want to fully digest the knowledge I gained from my ancestor before I work on that.


    I don¡¯t know which one to work on. I think I will decide tomorrow because I want to sleep right now.


    I¡¯m not entirely sure what I gained from Fate today but I think it might have to do with cooking. If not that then I have no possible way of knowing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 126

    I decided to work on refining Whitefoot today. Fairly standard stuff. It¡¯ll be about five days worth of work before I¡¯m no longer able to improve Whitefoot using mana, or at least not without tons of mana. After I¡¯m done with this I will start working on improving my abilities with Solar Energy.


    I didn¡¯t really spend time with Azrezel today so much as I spent time in his vicinity.


    Maybe I should rebuild the room that gathers up mana. I haven¡¯t really done anything about the fact that it was stolen after I died and was reincarnated into my dungeon core. The local mages would probably appreciate being able to use it. I guess I will rebuild it tomorrow. It shouldn¡¯t take more than a minute.


    Speaking of my dungeon core, the ¡®dungeon¡¯ I built is still there. It was inside the hot spring that was found inside the cliff face. It isn¡¯t really all that interesting, to be honest. I mean the insects I made are pretty cool, and they seem to have thrived so far. Maybe I should do something more with them sometime. Perhaps I could make just a ton of varieties of various power levels and release them all into the maze. So exactly what I was doing before I regained my memories of my ¡®past life¡¯. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Other than that I learned a bit about one of the laws of the world, specifically a bit about how creating new species functions. If you create a new species then nothing and no one can create a species relating to the species you made in any way for about a decade. Apparently, that law was put in place during the peak of Origin¡¯s power because it had become increasingly common practice to mess with rivals by making a creature that is really easy for something your rival created to evolve into that has some humorous defect or some other nasty thing. All of them basically said that they were sick of it but wouldn¡¯t stop unless it was straight up impossible. What this means for me is I am the only creature alive capable of making new plants that aren¡¯t rooted to one spot for roughly the next nine years. Other creatures can make them, but their creations won¡¯t be recognized and won¡¯t be able to come to life unless they do something else with it. What the scholars were referring to when they said that, I have no idea.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 127

    Today I made progress on refining Whitefoot. I¡¯m going slightly faster than I was able to before from the little I learned from the book. I don¡¯t think it will make much of a difference though, I¡¯m still on track to finish in the next four days.


    Azrezel cooked for me today. It was ok, just ok. Better than I can do, but nowhere near the best food I¡¯ve ever eaten. It feels like he learned how to cook more so for his own survival rather than learning to be good at it. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    I spent most of my downtime reading the book I got recently. I should be done with it in the next two or three days if I keep reading at this rate. It is definitely an interesting read if not the most engaging. It is difficult to be enthralled in a book when I already know most of the information in it.


    Other than that not a lot happened. If anything interesting did happen then I wasn¡¯t around to notice it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 128

    Roughly two more days before I¡¯ll be done refining Whitefoot. That should be a pretty sizeable boost to my healing related abilities. I know I said that I wanted to start working on Solar Energy next I kind of want to finish digesting all of the knowledge I gained from my ancestor Origin. Partially because it is easier to work with Azrezel while I do that and partially because I have been improving my healing so much recently that I feel like I should keep going.


    Azrezel is getting close to being done with the preparations for what he is calling his greatest undead ever, possibly even on the level to make him evolve. Considering how easy it has been for creatures to evolve recently that won¡¯t be too surprising. He is saying he will complete the preparations tomorrow and will likely cast the actual spell the next day. I¡¯m looking forward to what he manages to create with the dead Archangel.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I am almost finished with the book. About half a day¡¯s worth of reading left till I finish it. I am getting to the more advanced parts of the book so there is more that I didn¡¯t know already, but most of it is stuff I already understand still. Hopefully, there is more stuff in the book that I don¡¯t know yet.


    Other than that the town has been in a bit of a buzz today. Apparently, the circus is going to putting on a show in Pearlhold. It sounds like it would be fun to see, too bad I can¡¯t go to Pearlhold yet, my grove hasn¡¯t stretched far enough. Maybe I can convince them to put on a show here? I hope so.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 129

    Today I continued to make progress refining Whitefoot. As a relatively simple plant it is pretty easy to perfect.


    Most of my plants would never survive in the wild, they simply require too much mana. Thinking about that is weird. For me creating more of one of my plants is incredibly easy and requires minimal mana, but plants have a lot harder time gathering up mana by design. I mean it makes sense, plants were created to increase the ambient mana.


    I would love to know how origin figured out how to make plants catch Solar Energy being released by the suns. All the solar energy that plants don¡¯t catch moves to quickly to actually interact with the ambient mana and goes somewhere, I have no idea where but it doesn¡¯t become mana.


    Asking the scholars didn¡¯t lead to any answers, as far as I know, they know less about Solar Energy than I do. Maybe a specialist would know, but how would someone other than myself get access to solar energy in the first place? I was able to because I was in the perfect position and state of mind to benefit from it when I had the chance, and that was largely due to my affiliation with plants. Maybe someone that studies the effects of having two suns in the sky could figure it out eventually. They wouldn¡¯t have the right affinity for it but with enough time they might be able to brute force it, assuming they were trying to. According to everyone I¡¯ve asked Solar Energy isn¡¯t exactly something that has been studied, or even really observed before Mest sent in some reports on it. He was considered the expert on Solar Energy, but now the only ¡®expert¡¯ is dead. There might be someone somewhere that is studying it, but they aren¡¯t known of at all in this part of the world.


    Azrezel has finished all of his preparations now. The only thing left to do is actually perform the spell required to turn the corpse into an undead. This particular spell is a long, slow spell requiring tons of mana. That is all mostly because he is trying to do something way out of his own league, he simply does not have the skills required to do something like this so he is making up for it by creating a spell that is slow and careful, allowing him to make sure not to make even the smallest mistake, brute forcing the spell with tons of mana, and providing the best possible situation for the spell. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    He asked me for a lot of mana berries a couple days ago so I asked a couple Ents to produce some and now we have tons of them. Unfortunately, they require a bit of concentration in order to actually use, something Azrezel will not be able to spare, so I had to help him out there as well. I let him borrow my crown, it was surprising when he screamed in pain as it burrowed into his flesh, I had forgotten that was a thing that, happened. Next, I took all of the mana berries and merged them all into a single, rather large, mana berry. Then I modified the crown to pull mana from the berry to charge itself faster than Azrezel will be using the mana. It took way too long to make that part efficient enough for my standards. After a bit of practice, Azrezel was able to pull mana from my crown much easier than he was able to pull mana from a mana berry. Not perfect but much better.


    After that I built a privacy room for him. Basically just a room that no one other than myself and the ents could possibly enter until he is done. It also takes advantage of singing grass to remove any potential distractions.


    I was worried about not being able to help him if he gets in trouble during the spell, but if he messes up so badly as to need help then he is just going to die. There would be nothing anyone within a mile could do for him unless there happens to be a true immortal nearby. The scale he is working at here is simply too large. That is a big part of why the spell will take so long, to minimize the chance of catastrophic failure and increase the chance of success.


    I¡¯m getting excited and nervous and it isn¡¯t even my project. I mean I helped, but only in a superficial way. The amount of effort I put into this is minimal, I accomplished all the work needed in the space of an hour in over the course of several days. That doesn¡¯t kill my enthusiasm to see the final project any though. I¡¯ll make sure to burn my Fate towards the end of the spell, hopefully, it will help somehow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 130

    Today I finished refining Whitefoot. If I want to improve it further I need either Solar Energy or to pump it full of more mana than it can withstand. And with that, I got a pretty big boost to my healing powers. My overall control and power have gone way up, every aspect of my healing has improved save one. My efficiency with healing has dropped. Well, that¡¯s not entirely true. What is really going on is Whitefoot helps improve pretty much every aspect of healing, but it doesn¡¯t do a good job of improving efficiency and as the scale of what I¡¯m trying to do with magic increases the efficiency drops, rapidly. Neither healing nor plant manipulation is an exception to this. So what¡¯s really going on is Whitefoot allows me to operate on a much higher scale, but I still have to pay the cost. It gets me to the door, i still have to open it myself.


    Azrezel is still inside the shack I built for him. He should have finished a while ago which means he is either evolving or he really messed up. If he messed up I can¡¯t help him, and would only make the situation worse by trying too, if I¡¯m wrong and he is still working on the spell then I might cause him to mess up, and if he is evolving then he will exit the room once he is done.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    I really want to go check up on him but I know that it isn¡¯t worth the risk.


    Other than that I spent some time in the village today. At one point I was startled by a flash of lightning only to see a shared bird fall from the sky and a couple of kids laughing and running up to it, shouting something about dinner. It¡¯s cute seeing the kids laugh and play, but there should probably be some rules about using aggressive magic like that in crowded spaces. I mean nothing too bad would have happened to anyone if they were struck by the spell because I was around, and it wasn¡¯t powerful enough to kill a sentient creature unless that creature was actively dying, but it still would have left some potentially nasty burns.


    Based on the fact that the kids were chased by some authoritative looking people tells me there probably are rules against that kind of thing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 131

    This morning I woke up to see a tall figure with red eyes, almost skeletal features, and great wings of bone jutting from his back smiling down at me. It took me way too long to recognize Azrezel, his evolution changed him a lot.


    The undead he was creating ultimately ended up a failure. Yeah it is really strong and marginally more intelligent than any of the other undead, but it isn¡¯t smart enough to be sentient which was the whole point.


    It was, however, more than enough to trigger an evolution for Azrezel. Which isn¡¯t surprising with how easy it is to evolve here right now. This is where things get interesting. See, a while back I was talking to azrezel about how I created my own body when I evolved from a dungeon core to the body I have now. And Azrezel has been studying necromancy pretty much since before he could walk, he understands necromancy much better than I understand healing, and that is with the massive advantage I have floating around in my head. I would compare it to plant manipulation, but necromancy is a lot closer to healing than plant manipulation is so it makes a better comparison. So Azrezel decided to change his own evolution.


    Now, Azrezel has no experience manipulating evolutions, much less his own evolution. I was only able to do so the first time because I had tons of energy flowing through my body that I kinda had control over but not really, way back during the double sun event. On top of that the world has not recognized Azrezel as being a creator, like it had with me the last time I evolved. That is apparently a thing that happens when you create several new species and makes everything involved in that a lot easier, especially manipulating evolutions.


    So Azrezel could only stay awake as long as he had enough energy, in this case mana, available to keep him awake. Luckily Azrezel had access to way more mana than he actually ended up needing. We overshot the amount of mana he could end up using by a couple orders of magnitude, he used as much as he could in the creation of that undead and didn¡¯t put a scratch in the supply.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    Just having mana is not enough to stay awake, you also need to know how to use to stay awake, something a proficient necromancer definitely knows how to do. I was able to do it due to the innate qualities of Solar Energy more than anything else.


    Then came the actual creation process. As he worked the hand of the world worked with him in tandem, both using their own pools of energy to improve Azrezel¡¯s body. The world improved his body and he improved upon the improvements, and it went around and around like that until Azrezel ran out of mana.


    He created what he knows, undead. Through evolution Azrezel has become what he sought to create in the first place, a sentient undead. And now I have to cure the taint of necromantic healing from him again, like it wasn¡¯t fun enough the first time.


    I also think I finally figured out why it is so easy to evolve here. The world is really paying attention to me because I¡¯ve created several new species. Pretty much every time I refine a plant as much as I can I am making several dozen new species, I don¡¯t even notice when it evolves anymore. All I really benefit from the plant evolving is extra mana to work with, which is more or less wasted as it isn¡¯t a mana intensive project to begin with. I don¡¯t think it is going to stop paying close attention to me any time soon. The more attention the world pays to me, and by extension my grove and the surrounding area, the easier it is to evolve. The same reason why one evolution makes it easier to trigger a second evolution in the same area, only taken to the extreme as the world couldn¡¯t possibly be paying more attention to me.


    The world seems to like to learn but is incapable of making new things on it¡¯s own, it can merely copy the creations of others. Kind of like a library.


    I ended up spending most of my time with Azrezel today, mostly healing him. The kind of necrotic healing he had to use on his own body left him little more than skin and bone. Most of his internal organs weren''t working at all, actually now that I think about it none of his internal organs were working, not even his muscles. He was just a sack of meat being animated by magic, which is fixable, but will require quite a bit of work.


    Unfortunately as it is necromancy none of the information tied up in my head is relevant, so it is difficult to try to digest that information while I¡¯m healing this affliction. Some of it is kind of relevant, but it is always a bit of a stretch.


    If anything else interesting happened today I wasn¡¯t there to see it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 132

    Today I spent my time either working on fully digesting the knowledge I gained from my ancestor or fixing the damage done by Azrezel¡¯s necrotic healing.


    Because I really wanted to know the point of surgery I worked on that today. I managed to get a couple of bodies from Azrezel. He has quite a few of them in his dimensional storage ring, apparently, it was a gift from his father and he uses it to preserve bodies.


    Cutting up a bunch of corpses probably wouldn¡¯t shine a positive light on me if I did it in public. So I used the room I built for Azrezel the other day to cut up bodies and heal them. I figured out that the best and probably most common use for surgery is to remove projectiles like arrows or thorns from the body. Yes, it is possible to remove those through conventional healing, however, it is easier to just cut it out and then heal the wound most of the time. Takes less time and less mana, and is much easier to accomplish for less practiced healers. It also has use when replacing and grafting limbs, something I didn¡¯t know was possible. I have no idea how to go about replacing limbs without doing it the old fashioned way and I had never even considered grafting limbs onto someone. The last big advantage of surgery is that some people are either incapable of healing magic or react badly to it being used on them, like how necromancy and healing are mutually exclusive. A necromancer is still perfectly capable of surgery. That last one I figured out on my own. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    I haven¡¯t fully digested the knowledge of surgery quite yet, that will probably still take a couple of days. But I have gotten the basics out of the way.


    As for fixing up Azrezel, I managed to get his heart beating again. His blood vessels are still pretty atrophied, but having his heart beating should make it easier to fix them up. After that, the rest of his atrophied body will be marginally easier to fix. I am getting better at fixing the side effects of Necrotic healing, but it is still easily the hardest thing I have to do on a regular basis.


    I have noticed some less obvious changes from necrotic healing. As Azrezel¡¯s physical muscles are next to useless it is surprising how much strength he has. He is actually stronger than he normally is, though not by a lot. He is a bit faster and has better endurance too, though he is more fragile. His body is more likely to break when under assault, but he is less likely to be negatively affected by his body breaking. On top of that, he is less sensitive, not just to pain but all of his senses are dulled.


    It¡¯s not too surprising, healing can accomplish all of those things. I don¡¯t really know how to accomplish it through healing, but I know it is possible. What is surprising is that necrotic healing seems to do a better job of it than traditional healing, though traditional healing lacks the negative side effects and usually isn¡¯t permanent.


    Healing the necrotic taint is removing those effects on his body, though whether or not it will completely remove them is another story. I have no idea if I can perfectly remove the necrotic taint. It was nowhere near this bad the first time I did it.


    If anything else interesting happened today then I missed it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 133

    Today I continued working on surgery and fixing Azrezel¡¯s necrotic taint. I made steady progress, things are getting easier and easier on both fronts for various reasons.


    It was a slow and relaxing day today. Or as slow and relaxing as cutting up corpses to learn about how they work can be. I got covered by a surprising amount of blood today, practically head to toe. Well, I mean it isn¡¯t too surprising because I did heal the body completely between each thing I did. Cleaning up was much more difficult than it had any right to be.


    I¡¯ll be honest, surgery isn¡¯t very fun. I¡¯m glad I can basically cheat and digest the knowledge I need from it rapidly. I should be done with surgery by tomorrow, at least until someone needs me to remove an arrow or I need to operate on a troll. Though if I have to operate on a troll then they must be truly desperate as it means their natural regeneration is gone or otherwise useless.


    I fixed up Azrezel¡¯s skin today, or at least I made quite a bit of progress on removing the Necrotic taint there. With his heart working again and his skin being so brittle he was bleeding nearly constantly, it should be much better now. Though part of that was that I think he is cuter when his skin has a healthy glow instead of being all grey and shriveled. Maybe next I¡¯ll fix his muscles. I definitely know which part of him I am fixing last though if I fix his nervous system before anything else he will be in constant pain until everything is fixed. Right now he simply can¡¯t feel pain. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Other than that I was talking to Par when an envoy of some kind made an entrance by greeting ¡®Lord Parius the Magnificent¡¯ by his full title. It was actually kind of amusing watching all the flourish the envoy added like he was performing some grand play. Par and the envoy spent the next couple minutes talking about trade agreements with one of the nearby city-states, and though I don¡¯t know much about trade Par seemed to be more than a little satisfied by the results, while the envoy was sweating bullets.


    Looking solely at the species the envoy is way higher up than Par, but you wouldn¡¯t get that impression of the situation at all just from looking. Par could likely wipe the floor with the envoy in combat while at the same time backing him into a corner with his words alone. It¡¯s really impressive what this ugly little goblin has become since Tiddol and I took him in and taught him to read.


    Par is ready to evolve, by the looks of it he has been for a while. However, if he evolves now it will likely end up lackluster, and so, with a force of will, he is suppressing the hand of the world that is trying to force him to evolve. It is nothing too difficult, I do it all the time when refining plants, but it also a little draining. I couldn¡¯t imagine doing that constantly for days. I wonder what he is planning on doing as a show of force before he lets himself evolve, maybe not evolving is the show of force. I don¡¯t know, I forgot to ask.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 134

    I have fully absorbed all of the information available to me about surgery, now I move on to less obscure topics and more overall useful topics.


    Progress with Azrezel¡¯s necrotic taint is steady. The more I remove the easier it is to remove. It seems to cause some effects that make healing of any kind much harder. I also learned that it causes the person afflicted with it to heal naturally a lot faster, similar to a troll but nowhere near the degree trolls can heal.


    You know, I¡¯ve never actually seen a troll. I hear so much about them to the point that I know the characteristics of a troll better than the vast majority of other species. Maybe I could arrange a meeting with one? It would be interesting to study their physiology, especially on a magical level. I know that they are completely immune to magic, but I have a hunch that it doesn¡¯t extend to Solar Energy. The only thing that I have been able to find so far that is immune to mana was Solar Energy in a bit of a roundabout way, I managed to get pipeweed to repeal mana a little while ago. So maybe their immunity to magic is based on Solar Energy somehow? I¡¯ll try asking the scholars if they would be able to get me a chance to study a troll. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    In the distance from the edge of my grove, I can see another, much smaller grove. I wonder what will happen once I inevitably run into it? According to Par, it doesn¡¯t have a lord like me so hopefully nothing too dramatic.


    Other than that I spent most of my downtime with Azrezel.


    Anyway, good night diary.

 Day 135

    Today I made steady progress on all fronts. I have no idea how long it will take me to fully absorb all of the knowledge but I do know that the speed I am absorbing it is increasing exponentially. It should only be two or three more days before I¡¯m done clearing the necrotic taint from Azrezel¡¯s body.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    During my downtime, I spent time with Tiddol. It was a slow day today, we didn¡¯t really do much. Mostly just played some games by ourselves, nothing new, unfortunately. Par had the kid today so it was Tiddol¡¯s day off and she mostly just wanted to relax.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 136

    I should be done fixing up Azrezel by tomorrow at around lunchtime. I am steadily getting faster and faster at absorbing the knowledge floating around in my head, so no major change there.


    Today I was working on limbs a lot. I was learning a lot of things about how different limb types function and their various purposes. The most interesting thing I learned today was how exactly wings allow for flight. It wasn¡¯t the most immediately relevant information, but it definitely helps when trying to figure out how to heal someone without a blueprint.


    There are a surprising number of people who fail to get their limbs restored for so long that their body forgets how the limb used to be. I would have thought that, with healing being the single most practiced form of magic, it would be pretty easy to get your arm restored. But it turns out that restoring limbs is actually quite difficult, and even when you can find someone capable of restoring your limb it is prohibitively expensive for most people. Restoring that much flesh and bone is pretty mana intensive after all. Finding someone capable of healing without a blueprint and doing so well is even harder. And to think, I¡¯ve been healing people for free. Not like it really matters, I don¡¯t need money and it doesn¡¯t have an impact on me mana wise.


    Speaking of, it¡¯s weird how little mana most people have. Even most mages have very little mana production compared to me. Of course most people also don¡¯t have an entire grove and just over a thousand people to draw mana from, and most people don¡¯t have a dungeon core.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    And dungeon related spells are expensive. Shaping the terrain into a maze? That costs tons of mana. Creating a new living thing to populate said maze? Even more mana. Creating objects out of mana to stock your dungeon full of loot? Still more mana. You can¡¯t get the mana back after you do those things either, it is somehow woven into the object or creature you are creating, making it overall better but much more expensive. If I actually cared about any of that other than the whole creating life part I would probably be complaining about not having enough mana to do anything with.


    While my mana production is way higher than normal, and only increasing thanks to my ever expanding grove and Par¡¯s ever-expanding town, my mana pool is only a little bit larger than normal, so way to small for my mana production. Most people¡¯s mana pools and mana production are directly linked, while mine have nothing to do with each other. So basically I need a way to increase my mana pool. The only way I can think to do that is with gemstones, but there is a limit to the number I can effectively use at one time, it gets harder to pull from them the more of them there are because it requires more and more attention. So I need the highest quality gemstones I can get my hands on. The best one I know of is Demon Glass, if only for its ability to improve itself. I¡¯ll see if I can get my hands on some high-quality Demon Glass, though I¡¯m not sure I have the money for it. Maybe I can get some from another dungeon?


    Other than that I asked the scholars if they could arrange for me to have a chance to study a troll¡¯s physiology. I could tell that they were struggling not to laugh at me, but they agreed anyway. The troll should be here in about a week. I should probably practice with Solar Energy a bit before then.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 137

    Today I finished curing Azrezel of his necrotic taint. I have to say, evolving has done wonders for someone who was already a wonder to look at. When people say that everything is improved when you evolve, they mean that literally.


    The type of high-grade Demon Glass I want is way outside of my price range. There are three or four people that are not only capable of making it but are also willing to sell the stuff they make, and even when they do sell it they are intentionally selling tiny amounts of it. I definitely don¡¯t have the kind of resources to get ahold of it, unless I buy it from the terminal.


    There isn¡¯t any on the market right now, and the information to actually produce the stuff is ludicrously expensive, but I can see about what it normally goes for when it is on sale. It is pushing it a bit, but I can afford to get a decent sized piece of the right quality. Since I¡¯ll be putting out a request it will be more expensive than it normally would be, and I doubt I will be able to make any kind of meaningful purchase in the near future after this, but I can get it. Another downside of putting out a request is that I have no idea when it will get fulfilled, so I have no idea when I¡¯m going to get it.


    Thinking about my limits with mana made me think about my other limits, in particular, one relating to plant manipulation. I¡¯m reaching a limit with how many times I can think in parallel. It was increasing rapidly when I was working on refining Luck Blossom, but now it has slowed to a crawl. I can manage almost two hundred at peak efficiency, any more and efficiency drops like a rock. Evolving was a huge boon there, but I can¡¯t seem to make any meaningful progress. At the rate I¡¯m going I¡¯ll get to three hundred in about a year, maybe a year and a half. I don¡¯t want to wait that long so I need to think of a way to fix this problem.


    Let¡¯s see, what potential ways could I solve this issue? Flesh manipulation is out, for the same reasons I won¡¯t experiment on myself unless I am actively evolving. Astrie does work, but it comes at a cost and is a temporary solution at best. Spellwood? I wouldn¡¯t even know how to begin. Pipeweed? Possibly, probably not. That weird mushroom I found controlling tiny creatures? Maybe. At the very least it seems like it is related to thinking. I¡¯ll have to experiment with it to see what it can do.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    Three, no make that Four things at the top of my list to do. In no particular order, the first is to practice examining a body, probably mine as no other would handle Solar Energy, with Solar Energy. The second is to finish digesting the rope of knowledge I got from my ancestor, I am maybe a tenth of the way done with that. The third is to figure out a way to make myself think better, possibly involving the mushroom I am now calling Lace. The fourth is to spend time with Azrezel.


    The first one will likely take the least amount of time, so I should get that one done first. I might even be able to get it done within an hour or so, fifteen minutes maximum. The fourth one I¡¯ll be doing whenever possible. The other two have almost nothing to do with each other. Working on one won¡¯t make it easier or faster to work on the other, I can¡¯t do them both at the same time, and I have no idea how long either of them will take.


    I guess the question is whether I want to focus on healing or plants more. Plants, the answer is plants. It has been so long since I¡¯ve really done a lot with plants. Yeah I have been constantly growing my grove and I did refine White Foot a little bit ago, but growing my grove is so simple as to effectively be done without conscious thought, while White Foot is all about healing.


    I didn¡¯t get much done during my downtime today. I was rather distracted by, shall we say, admiring Azrezel¡¯s new form.


    I¡¯ve also noticed that my previously flat chest has been growing recently, quite a bit actually. I hope it doesn¡¯t grow too much because I¡¯ve heard that can cause back pain, which wouldn¡¯t be too big of a deal because I can just heal it, but it still seems like more of a hassle than it¡¯s worth.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 138

    Examining my own body with Solar Energy is actually really intuitive, though that might just be caused by my knowledge in healing. Regardless it is something I managed to get the hang of pretty quickly, so I decided to practice on some undead. Only the first one exploded, I had to apologize to Azrezel for that one. The second time I tried I successfully managed to avoid the Solar Energy interacting with mana, allowing me to get a better feel for using it inside another creature. The information I get from Solar Energy is different, the basics are all there but some of the more in-depth information isn¡¯t quite present, not better or worse than mana, just different. A bit of testing later and I realized I could use both of them together to get a more complete picture of what is going on in someone¡¯s body. It is a small thing, but it will make it easier to heal some injuries.


    I spent most of the rest of the day working with Lace. I named it that because when I have it grow the way it wants to grow above ground it looks like a really fine Lace. Anyway, experimenting with it proved fruitless, it was too weak to affect anything larger than my pinky nail. On top of that, it is super complicated and incredibly inefficient. It was definitely not created by Origin, it¡¯s too complicated to have been done in their early days and too poorly made to be done in their later days.


    So I ended up spending most of my time refining it, but I wasn¡¯t able to get it to the point where I was satisfied enough to let it evolve for the first time quite yet. I¡¯m getting close, but everything is such a tangled mess that it is taking longer than it should. The worst part is every single piece of it seems to be vitally important to the function of the plant so I can¡¯t even try to throw any part of it away.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    No bites on Demon Glass quite yet, though I have looked into other alternatives. Anything of acceptable quality is still just as prohibitively expensive. The most readily available stuff is dungeon cores, but the high-grade ones are ludicrously expensive and they are outright banned on the terminal marketplace, which makes sense I guess. You don¡¯t want people trading around corpses.


    I did find out that it is possible to challenge another dungeon to a fight regardless of where they are in the world, the two dungeons will be connected at their entrances and are able to send creatures in to fight the other dungeon. It is also the only method I know of for a dungeon core to temporarily leave their dungeon without quickly dying. It isn¡¯t necessary for the person being challenged to accept the challenge, but attacking them anyway is liable to get someone much bigger than you to return the favor unless you have some pretty good reason for doing so. Actually killing another dungeon in one of these fights is also frowned upon, though not quite as much as attacking someone without permission. If you manage to kill a dungeon during one of these fights it is your right to keep everything in their dungeon that you can grab before it collapses, including their core. Needless to say, if your core is caught in their dungeon when it finished collapsing you are going to die. It was definitely an interesting read when I came across this information, I don¡¯t think it will ever really be useful unless someone attacks me. I¡¯m too weak to really stand up to anyone and I¡¯m not much of a fighter. It is also really taxing on the actual core, so it is really just inconvenient to actually try to use. As such it is only used when there are irreconcilable differences or some kind of really valuable trade when there is a risk of interference.


    Other than that not a lot happened today, Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 139

    I finally managed to get Lace to the point where I was satisfied enough to let it evolve. Now that I have fully untangled the plant it should be much easier to work with. It is still really complicated, but now it is well organized as well. It will be roughly a week before I perfect it, give or take a day.


    I actually have no idea if Lace will help me refine plants better, but it is the only plant that I have even tangentially related to thoughts. I have no idea how I would even get it to help me. If this fails then I might have to create a plant out of the thousands of mundane plants I have.


    Now that I think about it I know one thing that would definitely help, even if only slightly. Every unique plant I add to my arm the better it gets in every way, though only slightly. I could go through and systematically make as many unique plants as I can in order to get as much benefit out of that as possible. I don¡¯t think I will do that for a long time though, the benefits I get from that are marginal at best.


    Azrezel was bragging to me today about how much better his current body is for necromancy than his old body. That alone isn¡¯t too surprising, when a mage of any kind evolves they are almost certain to gain a body that is better at magic in general. The weird part is that he is specifically better at necromancy, that aptitude doesn¡¯t extend to other forms of magic. This isn¡¯t something that is supposed to happen at all, Necromancy isn¡¯t something you¡¯re supposed to be able to have a natural talent for. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    The scholars said that his body was an undead equivalent of something called a Seraphim, which is what he would have evolved into had he not used necromancy to interfere. Though if he hadn¡¯t interfered he probably would¡¯ve become an angel, which is step down from Seraphim. What kind of undead is what they are trying to figure out.


    His species has some natural talent with magic, especially necromancy and wind magic to a lesser degree. He also has some innate magic that lets him fly using his wings, which is good because his skeletal wings would be useless for mundane flight. That is probably the reason for the wind magic. He is also immortal, but all but the weakest undead are effectively immortal if they have a necromancer.


    I could probably evolve right now if I wanted to. It is honestly pretty weird that I haven¡¯t evolved yet all things considered. This next evolution will technically be my second evolution in this lifetime, which is much easier to achieve than any other evolution. Plus it is still super easy to evolve here. The reason I haven¡¯t evolved yet is that there is probably nothing for me to evolve into, so me trying to change myself will probably be the trigger that makes me evolve. I think I will hold off on doing that for a while, maybe I will evolve after I finish digesting the knowledge I gained from my ancestor.


    Other than that I spent most of my free time hanging out with Azrezel while he had diagnostics done on him by the scholars. I know first hand how boring that is when it isn¡¯t at the uncomfortable parts so I decided to try and entertain him. I think it went well all things considered. I wish I could numb sensations like he can during the more uncomfortable parts, I guess that¡¯s just one thing Necromancy is much better at than healing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 140

    Today I made progress on Lace. It is going a bit slower than I would like, though I think that is because I am not used to working with mushrooms. The structure of a mushroom is subtly different from that of a normal plant. It also doesn¡¯t seem to produce mana by taking in Solar Energy from the suns, but it still produces Mana somehow.


    Azrezel has been working on trying to improve his undead. He isn¡¯t doing as good of a job as I could, but that is irrelevant. Apparently, he learned enough between watching me fix up his undead and helping to shape his own body when he evolved that he has a decent idea on how to do that. Besides, if he messes up it doesn¡¯t matter all that much, most of the undead are disposable and replaceable.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Most of my downtime was eaten up by a different type of experimentation with Azrezel.


    Other than that today was a pretty slow day.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 141

    I made about as much progress as I thought I was going to make today. I still haven¡¯t figured out what energy source mushrooms feed on though, that is going to bug me for a while.


    Azrezel has also made some obvious progress with his undead. He isn¡¯t as systematic as I am with his work, but he makes large sweeping changes much faster than I would be able to. It isn¡¯t as efficient or effective as it absolutely could be, but that hardly matters. With enough time and effort, he might one day be able to mass produce undead using little more than a slab of meat and small pieces of his own soul. If I could figure out how to give him some of the stuff I would normally use to make Ents then we could really mass produce undead. Of course, it will be a little while before we get to that point. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Azrezel took some zombies and made them much stronger and a bit more coordinated, though they kind of shake when doing anything other than standing still now. Apparently, he is trying to design some laborers to do some of the heavy lifting around town, both metaphorically and literally. Currently, they are a bit too twitchy to be useful, but they are getting there.


    Other than that it was a slow, calm day. Like the kind of day, you would expect before a storm.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 142

    I made steady progress on Lace, nothing interesting happened there today.


    During my downtime, Azrezel and I decided to go to a bar that had opened up in town recently. I¡¯ve never been drinking, still haven¡¯t actually but I¡¯ll get to that in a moment, and so when Azrezel recommended we go I was a bit apprehensive but ultimately I agreed.


    When we showed up at the door someone was getting thrown out by a large brutish hobgoblin. I remember healing some cuts on his face the other day, routine work, nothing memorable. What was interesting was the guy being thrown out. He was a dirt, haggard satyr who looked like he hadn¡¯t eaten enough in the past two years. He was wearing an old torn up shirt and shorts that almost certainly used to be pants. His hair was greasy and matted, it looked like it hasn¡¯t seen comb or soap in way too long. His face had a full beard of brown hair and had green eyes, and it was disturbingly familiar.


    When I told Azrezel that we were going to take the passed out Satyr somewhere to heal him up and make sure he was alright he groaned a bit, but shut up when he realized I was serious. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    So Azrezel got one of his undead to pick the scrawny Satyr up and we took him to a secluded location where I built a small house, which was really only a bedroom, in about a minute. After getting him clean and healing the rather extensive damage from alcohol he was soundly asleep in the bed I had made.


    As for why I am going through the trouble, he looks like my dad. Yes, he looks a lot smaller and weaker than my dad did, but the resemblance is still very strong. And it isn¡¯t just me thinking all Satyr¡¯s look the same, I see Satyrs around here from time to time but none of them have looked even remotely like my dad.


    He is sober now, I forced all of the alcohol out of his system. He won¡¯t be waking up with a splitting headache either thanks to me. But he won¡¯t be waking up today either. He is out like a light for at least five hours, maybe more. The kind of healing I did to repair his organs is pretty draining, especially because if you need your organs repaired like that you don¡¯t have the ability to really withstand it.


    I guess I will find out more tomorrow.


    Oh yeah, the troll is showing up tomorrow. I guess tomorrow is going to be either really disappointing or really exciting.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 143

    The satyr woke up about midmorning today. When I showed up he was still looking around confused while sitting in the bed. When he looked at me he just looked sad, on the verge of crying but not willing to cry in front of me.


    After a moment he said to me ¡°you look almost just like my daughter.¡± I let him talk about someone that I was increasingly sure was me for a while, I was certain at this point that this satyr is indeed my father. I didn¡¯t tell him straight away, apparently, my evolutions made me look just different enough to make him think I was someone else, I wanted to hear him talk about me in a selfish twisted way. There was a kind of grief in his voice, mourning almost.


    It was nostalgic to listen to him tell stories again. He took the same extravagant energy, well almost the same, that he used to tell stories about fighting great creatures that could level small villages with a single swipe and used it to describe my childhood play sessions with him. He described in great detail how I would play the hero, fending off my father''s attempts to abduct my mother, though he brushed past the more crude jokes that I didn¡¯t understand at the time. He spoke with an enrapturing kind of emotion about a pair of adventurers fighting a revolutionary war against a terrible empire.


    He spoke about watching this little girl grow bigger and bigger with a kind of joy only a father could muster. He described watching me try again and again to do something as simple as making a seed sprout. He gushed about the look of joy on my round, young face when I finally managed to succeed. He just talked and talked for a full two hours, describing moments of my life I can¡¯t even remember.


    I stopped him before he reached the fire, I couldn¡¯t bear to watch him cry.


    When I interrupted him he got all apologetic for a moment before asking me about what was going on. I told him and we talked for a little bit longer. It seems he had been drunk pretty much constantly since the fire, which I had more or less worked out yesterday.


    When I asked how long it had been since the fire he told me that it couldn¡¯t have been longer than a month in a somber tone before realizing he never mentioned a fire. He asked me in a slightly accusatory tone how I knew about the fire, and was left stunned when I told him I was there a year and a half ago. When he finally figured it out he leapt up to hug me only to trip over his emaciated legs. I made sure he was alright and healed the minor concussion that was forming before pulling him into an embrace.


    We reminisced for most of the day after that. I told him about what I¡¯ve accomplished since running away. I told him about my grove, about my dungeon core, about almost everything really. I didn¡¯t tell him about Azrezel, I didn¡¯t think he was ready to hear about how his daughter, who he thought was dead, has a boyfriend now. I¡¯ll have to introduce him tomorrow though. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    We were interrupted at around dinner time due to my arrangements with the troll that had come into town earlier in the day.


    When I met with the troll I was really glad I hadn¡¯t mentioned to anyone about how I had never met a troll before, because I have met this one. His name was Trovich. He was the same troll that came to examine me using some magical tools previously, I guess he just wasn¡¯t memorable enough for me to remember him until that moment.


    I could describe in painstaking detail about how I examined the Trovich with Solar Energy. Actually no I couldn¡¯t, I have no idea how to put the details of that into words. Anyway, long story short, I was right. Trolls were formed out of Solar Energy, though they are nearly entirely physical with only very small pools of Solar Energy at their disposal for maintenance and improvements. This means two things. The first is that Solar Energy is amazing at creating life, the second is that studying a troll won¡¯t really teach me anything about the process required to make a troll. I need to watch a troll evolve.


    This just brings up even more questions, like how in the world did a bunch of balls of floating mana, which causes incredibly violent explosions when exposed to Solar Energy, gather and work with enough Solar Energy to make a troll. And where did they get that much Solar Energy in the first place, there was enough ambient mana to create Origin already, which is more than enough to destroy any Solar Energy they were working with. And how did they even store it? I highly doubt they were skilled enough at using it to create large enough pockets out of the stuff to keep it safe from the ambient mana especially because they wouldn¡¯t get more than one shot at it as the stuff causes explosions, which balls of mana with no anchor tend to be rather weak too.


    It would explain why the method of creating the trolls is deemed to be impossible now.


    On the bright side, I think I figured out a way to allow a troll to use magic, their bodies seem to be ideal for manipulating it while at the same time being resistant to explosions in case they mess up. Though I should probably make a pure Solar Energy environment that other people can enter, actually no that¡¯s a terrible idea. It only takes one idiot for the entire grove to go up. I should make a battery that people can fill up on and then have a soundproof and explosion resistant room for them to practice in.


    Now that I think about it I should probably secure my own Solar Energy room a bit better. Currently, it would take one of the strongest warriors in town about an hour to hack their way inside. I have added some Mithrilwood to the structure to make it better but it probably isn¡¯t enough.


    Wow, I wrote a lot today. In terms of pure productivity, today was one of my worst days, which isn¡¯t something I care about at all.


    I¡¯m happy that my dad is still alive, but it hurts to see how much he has changed since I last saw him. When I finished up with the Trovich I checked up on him and found that he had cried himself to sleep. He was shivering so I created another blanket to pull over him and when I came close I could hear him mumbling something about my mother, or at least he was repeating my mother¡¯s name in his sleep.


    Other than that, nothing particularly interesting happened. I will probably introduce Azrezel to my dad tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 144

    Today I made progress on Lace. I know myself well enough to know that If I don¡¯t work on my projects for too long I get neurotic.


    It was around lunchtime when I introduced dear old dad to Azrezel. It was obvious that my dad was trying to intimidate Azrezel at first, though that ended when my dad heard who Azrezel¡¯s father was. Apparently, Azrezel¡¯s father was one of my dad¡¯s old teammates back in the day and he even remembers meeting Azrezel when he was young. I actually remember that trip, at one point my dad told us that he would be leaving for a little while because one of his old buddies needed his help, it stuck out to me because it wasn¡¯t something that he did, like at all. He was understandably sad when he heard what happened. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Later in the day, I was talking with my dad when he asked me why I had never asked around about him. I told him that I thought he was dead because to imagine otherwise would be to imagine him suffering in a way that I understand all too well. He scoffed at that, saying no mere forest fire could put him down.


    He isn¡¯t talking about it but I can tell that my dad is broken in a way. He lacks some of the enthusiasm he used to have, and what he can demonstrate is forced more often than not. It makes sense, but it still hurts to see. He has stayed away from the alcohol so far, hopefully, it stays that way. The stuff will only mess him up further.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 145

    I made steady progress with Lace today. I am getting really close to perfecting it, give me a day or two and it will be done.


    My dad started working out today. He pretty much needs to put on some weight, you can only be so malnourished and your muscles can only be so atrophied before you die. And unfortunately, I can¡¯t fix either of those things with magic, unless you count magically prepared food, in which case I can barely treat malnutrition. He will be back in fighting form in no time.


    I took a minute today to build a room for people to practice potentially explosive magic in today. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all made of Pipeweed and Mithrialwood. The Mithrialwood on its own isn¡¯t enough to prevent the thing from being destroyed, and so I added Pipeweed in a way that would scramble and spell that gets close. It¡¯s an issue for anyone entirely made of mana like myself, but it wasn¡¯t intended for that purpose. The outside is covered in a thick layer of noise canceling singing grass, the loudest noise I could make wasn¡¯t even audible from the outside. I then took a good chunk of Solar Energy and made a battery with it and stuck it into the room. In a couple days it will be full enough for experimentation by a troll. Trovich seems a bit excited to try it out.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    One final thing before I wrap up for the day. Someone responded to my request for some high-grade Demon Glass. It is a bit smaller than what I wanted but it is also a bit higher quality. They can have it to me in three days but it ended up costing me pretty much all of the money I have in the terminal.


    Oh yeah, my birthday is coming up here in about half a month, that should be exciting.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 146

    Tomorrow Lace will be perfected as far as I am capable. From there I will experiment with it to figure out exactly what it is capable of. Hopefully, I will be able to figure out a way to make myself think better with it.


    Today was a slow day, especially when compared to the whole thing that was finding out my dad is alive. It feels weird having him around again, I don¡¯t really know how to act now that I am much more of an authority figure than him. Before I was almost wholly dependent on my parents for pretty much everything, but now I only rely on people out of convenience, not necessity. If everyone in my life suddenly disappeared again I would continue to be able to function, I definitely wouldn¡¯t be happy but my life wouldn¡¯t be in danger the same way I was before creating this grove.


    And he reminds me of mom, and there is no way she survived the same way he did. Even if she did survive the actual fire she would have become catatonic from the loss of her grove and then slowly starved, I know that¡¯s what would happen to me if my grove burned down. Well, it would if not for my dungeon core. It¡¯s just painful to see him.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    In happier news, the scholars have announced that their ban on large-scale conflict is going to expire in two days. Par has already begun war preparations. With the enforced peace he managed to acquire tons of resources from raiding dungeons, trading, and immigration. We aren¡¯t quite at the level of a proper city yet, but we are getting closer by the day. A couple of the Ents have started working as full-time house builders and have managed to make quite a bit of money, no one else is capable of manipulating the plants in my grove like that.


    Hopefully, Par can take a couple more cities, because the more cities he takes the more resources I have with which to buy new plants.


    I am getting close to the smaller nearby grove, and my plants are getting excited for it. If I focus my mana on growing in that direction I could make it in two days, which I think I might just do.


    Other than that Tiddol¡¯s son is starting to grow faster. Apparently, he wasn¡¯t getting enough mana which was slowing down his development. Looks like my worrying about his slow growth wasn¡¯t invalid.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 147

    Today I perfected Lace at around lunchtime. This left me with half a day to experiment with it, and it is surprisingly mana intensive to work with. Not to the point of slowing down my ability to experiment with it, but it does slow down the growth of my grove. It will be a couple days longer than I thought it would be before I reach the smaller grove.


    Most of my experimentation with Lace turned out to be a failure, but I did figure out one thing. I managed to forge a one-way telepathic link between myself and another creature using it, I could hear them but they couldn¡¯t hear me. It feels like a weaker version of the same link I have with my plants, though I am pretty sure that is only because I don¡¯t know how to properly use Lace for that application yet. Using it like that on myself doesn¡¯t really do anything, or if it does I didn¡¯t notice it. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Azrezel had a small breakthrough today. He managed to figure out why his modified undead was shaking so much, something to do with the way the bones were connecting to the muscles was going wrong in a way that was not at all noticeable to anything short of a very in-depth look. It was only one cause of the problem, and Azrezel has fixed a lot of those causes, but every time he does a new one seems to pop up in its place. It is improving, but slowly. By the end of it, he is probably going to have to just improve the creature as a whole.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. Tiddol¡¯s son has grown noticeably over the last couple days and I can just feel the sheer amount of Mana being poured into him near constantly. I normally can¡¯t feel that kind of thing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 148

    I continued to experiment on Lace. And I even managed to make a pretty big breakthrough thanks to Azrezel.


    After telling him about my problem he recommended that I try to create a new mind to think for me, and then somehow link my own mind to the artificial mind. I thought it was stupid till he demonstrated that very thing in a couple of his own undead, apparently his various improvements need a bit more brain power and that was the only thing he could get to work.


    This got me thinking, connecting my mind to something like that would be pretty easy, I do something like that near constantly when I communicate with my plants. But figuring out a way to make a brand new mind to think with wasn¡¯t nearly as obvious to solve. So I didn¡¯t try to solve it, instead, I tried to improve the mind of a tree. I didn¡¯t try to manipulate an old tree like that, it¡¯s simply easier to control new growth than old growth. So I made a new tree, this one I focused on improving its mind with a combination of Astrie and Lace. I had no idea what I was doing, but intention was enough. And I know enough about plants to fill many of the gaps. I had a tree that had a lot more processing power than most, still not satisfactory but it was a proof of concept. Again, I had no idea what I was doing when I tried to link my thoughts up with the tree, but again, Intention was enough, if barely.


    The connection I formed with the tree was strong, much stronger than my normal, much more passive, connection. But it still flawed in very obvious ways. Ways I can probably fix. Almost immediately I felt a crash of hair-raising pleasure and self-satisfaction. The tree was proud of itself, and I could feel every bit of that. It was rather intoxicating. Maybe I could figure out a way to do something similar with Azrezel when we are alone together?


    Anyway, after proving that I could indeed make use of the excess processing power of the tree, of which there was quite a lot, I spent the day trying to figure out ways to improve both the processing power of the tree and my connection to it. With the current quality of the connection, I can make use of about half of the available processing power. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    One unexpected side effect of this was that it opens me up to the instincts of my grove much more than I was before, but when have my trees ever led me wrong?


    Around lunchtime, I was interrupted by a loud popping sound, and a colorful stone falling into my lap. Demon Glass, arriving right on schedule. Teleported in by the looks of it. I wasted no time in adding it to my crown, taking a bit of time to improve the overall structure while I was at it. I could almost immediately feel my mana pool triple, and with all of my mana draining into it I felt famished. Luckily for me, lunch was being served.


    Par¡¯s soldiers started marching yesterday and tomorrow they begin their first siege. I don¡¯t know much of the details about it as I am not really interested in military type stuff but I wish Par the best of luck, for more reasons than just the selfish ones.


    We were also attacked here. Well, I was attacked. The potential assassins were subdued easily once their cover was blown, they were banking everything on a single crossbow bolt that failed to kill me despite the fact that it hit me dead on in the face. It would be a smart move if I was made of flesh and bone, but nothing important happens behind my face. They would have been better off shooting for the chest and gut, much more to mess up in that area. As it is all damage was easily healed and aesthetic at worst, yeah I lost an eye but mana based eyes are a cinch to replace. Again, it would have been much harder to heal the eye if I was made of flesh and bone.


    Still, it did hurt quite a lot, I had to take some Flore for the pain. As a result, I may have used a bit more force than was strictly necessary, though Azrezel¡¯s undead did most of the work.


    It hasn¡¯t even been a day since the ban dropped and I already have assassins aiming for my head, literally. It feels nostalgic almost. Reminds me of the siege of Pearlhold and will hopefully be just as fruitious.


    That pretty much sums up all the interesting stuff from today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 149

    Today I made progress on creating a mind to connect to my own. I know next to nothing about the process so I have to make do with brute force and intention. What I do know is mostly only tangentially related to the subject, like the physical structure of flesh and bone brains, but it is enough to actually build something though not enough to build something good. The plus side is that actually creating and improving minds like this helps me learn more about how they work, in a roundabout way at least. So everyone I make is better than the last, though I can only support so many at a time. Currently, I can only connect to about three at once, and while that certainly helps me quite a bit, it is a little lackluster. I feel like I can improve that to at least five pretty easily, everything after that will be a grind. The most obvious limit is with my connection to the trees. If I can improve that not only will I be able to connect to more trees that directly but I will also be able to connect more effectively, making everything better.


    This whole process is ordinarily rather mana intensive, creating a new tree from scratch normally is. Compound the fact that the trees I am making are increasingly complicated and that I am getting better at working faster the more complicated they become and my newly expanded mana pool is almost never full. As a result, the growth of my grove has ground to a halt more or less. It will likely stay that way until I am satisfied with my improved mental abilities.


    Currently, I am able to refine a plant about two and a half times faster than I was able to before, which I¡¯m not quite satisfied with quite yet. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    My father is able to walk around without getting winded now. It is amazing what good food, magical healing, and exercise can do for you. I spent much of my free time chatting with him. It is always nice to hear his stories, he has a way of infusing magic into his voice, both literally and metaphorically. A form of illusion I believe. It allows him to paint a picture in your mind, almost as if you were seeing the events he described first hand.


    I asked him to tell me about his exploits from the time before he met my mother, the dungeon diving, the revolutions, the hunting, things like that. I had heard the stories before from other people, but hearing him tell them was something different. When other people told the stories they were always exaggerated, and that somehow made them less fantastic. It is little wonder why my mother fell for him.


    Azrezel finally got the kinks worked out of his zombies, it is amazing how much effort it took just to improve their strength. They didn¡¯t even evolve from the process. But, improving the strength of a couple zombies wasn¡¯t the point, not really. The real benefit was that now it would be a lot easier for Azrezel to do the same thing in the future.


    Apparently my description of the methods I was using to improve the minds of the trees inspired him to do something similar. It amazes me just how similar Necromancy and Healing are, if you get good enough at one it is indistinguishable from the other. I bet I could make undead myself if I really put my mind to it. Probably not very good undead, but undead nonetheless.


    Other than that not a lot happened. Or at least nothing particularly interesting happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 150

    I have made slow progress on my current project today. I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m doing, not really, what I know is how to figure out how to figure out what to do. I honestly have no way to tell how long this whole process will take, it is almost entirely new ground for me. I am improving how quickly I¡¯m able to improve though.


    I have learned something about Lace recently, it is amazing at connecting to and influencing minds, but it is completely useless at creating a new one. Astrie is alright at it, but while Astrie can do pretty much anything, it can¡¯t do much well. Ideally, I would have a plant that was good at this type of thing, maybe a piece of an ancient tree turned Ent? Might do it, I doubt it though. Normally I might be able to make a new plant out of the plants I already have, but normally I have better than tangential knowledge of the subject. I tried asking the scholars about the subject, but only one of them even knew anyone studying the mind. That got me excited at first, then I was told that they were like me, a lord of a grove using plants to try to simulate it. Doesn¡¯t exactly make it easy to talk to them, and they aren¡¯t exactly known for keeping good notes. Besides, they are on the other side of the world, it would take forever to get anything from them to me.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    Disappointing, but I guess I am on my own for this one.


    If I was willing to take the risk I could probably change myself in the right way to fix this issue, at least for a little while. The problem is that I am absolutely convinced I am more likely to kill myself than actually succeeded regardless of my actual capabilities. No, my current projection might be slow, but it¡¯s better to save any attempt to change myself to an evolution, when I have a safety net.


    Speaking of, I could probably trigger that any time I want at this point. The hand of the world will provide me full support regardless of when I do it, and I have far surpassed the threshold to trigger one. I just want to improve my knowledge of healing significantly first, as it is to be the most directly linked to my ability to improve myself.


    Azrezel messed up today while he was rushing through creating a new undead. It was routine work, but he was stretching a bit and rushing at the same time, not a good combo. Bad news is that he is sick, the good news is that he isn¡¯t infectious. It would be rather pathetic for a mage of his skill to be killed by a bit of magical backfire. Luckily it is just a couple days of bedrest while his head tries to murder him from the inside.


    Other than that it seems that Par¡¯s group met with some conflict today and emerged victoriously.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 151

    Progress was steady today. I got to the point where I could connect directly to four trees. I¡¯m learning more and more about the way a mind works, it¡¯s rather fascinating. There are so many little details that are easy to miss, which is the case with all magic, but still.


    Overall it was a slow day today. I hung out with Azrezel and listened to my dad tell stories of his adventures. I even burned my Fate today, that¡¯s how I figured out how to connect to another tree. It is nice when it¡¯s obvious what I get from Fate, most the time I don¡¯t have the faintest idea.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Oh yeah, the troll, Trovich, has been experimenting with Solar Energy recently. He doesn¡¯t seem to be very good at it, just because he is capable of using it doesn¡¯t mean his body was designed with that in mind. To be fair, he is doing a bit better than I was at first, likely due to actually having a workable amount of the stuff and not needing to worry so much about having the whole thing blow up in his face.


    Anyway, it is time for me to sleep, So Good Night Diary.

 Day 152

    I woke up well rested this morning and got straight to work on my current project. The great thing about it is that the more progress I make the more brain power I have to make more progress with.


    Par¡¯s siege is well underway at this point. He is trying to take this next city with minimal casualties and minimal damage to the city itself. As a result, it will probably take a little while to pull it off. Apparently, there was a bit of an issue in the beginning because they had to let any and all scholars in the city flee before trapping everyone else inside.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    My dad is recovering his strength remarkably quickly, he is already able to run around for a bit before getting winded. It won¡¯t be too long before he is in peak physical condition again.


    He asked me for a wooden practice sword today. Apparently, he wants to start practicing with it again.


    Azrezel has started a new project. He is now trying to create undead that are able to use crossbows. It is surprisingly difficult to load a crossbow, and while they certainly have the strength for it most undead simply do not have the intelligence to operate the mechanisms. I look forward to seeing how Azrezel figures it out.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. Tiddol¡¯s son is already twice the size he was last week thanks to the incredible amount of mana being provided to him constantly.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 153

    Today I managed to connect to five trees at once, though only for a minute. At this point, my connection to the trees is at about seventy-five percent efficiency. All in all, I think I am doing pretty good.


    My birthday is coming up here in less than a month, with Tiddol¡¯s being immediately after that. I¡¯ll be turning seventeen here soon, I can¡¯t wait. I hope it will be a big party like it was last year.


    Speaking of birthdays, I asked Azrezel when his was today. Going by the dates in my Diary it is Day 300, so early spring. Quite a ways off.


    Tiddol asked me for a bunch of ingredients today, most of them made using Astrie or Whitefoot. A lot of really high grade stuff too, the kind of stuff that has a tendency to react violently when mishandled during alchemical reactions, or at least that¡¯s what she tells me. Apparently, she is making something to help my father recover faster. It¡¯s not exactly something that has ever been done by a mortal alchemist and she is hoping pulling it off will trigger an evolution. It is really difficult, if not outright impossible to heal muscular atrophy directly. I certainly don¡¯t know how to do it. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I finally managed to go drinking with Azrezel. Though it was nowhere near as eventful as the first time we tried, no supposedly dead parents showed up, we still managed to have fun. It isn¡¯t something I am going to do regularly though, it is a pain to cure alcohol poisoning while being affected by alcohol poisoning. Or really use any magic for that matter. In fact, I actually had my healing backfire on me a couple times before I managed to cast the spell, I¡¯m lucky I didn¡¯t get sick or worse.


    Azrezel found to his chagrin that undead are more or less immune to poison, including alcohol. He drank the most potent stuff they had and still failed to get tipsy. He was pretty pissed off all things considered.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 154

    Today I was able to reliably stay connected to five trees at once. I have no idea how much farther I am going to go with this, but I don¡¯t really see a hard stop in sight. Maybe I will keep working on this for another week, I can always come back to it later. It is interesting, but not incredibly so.


    It rained today, which is unusual for this time of year. There was probably magic involved somewhere. Who knows? Maybe Willow is nearby and thought it should rain today.


    Normally the rain is warmish, today it was chilling, almost icy. Which is another sign that magic was involved with this rain because it is close to the end of summer, the hottest part of the year. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    As a result of the rain, I stayed inside all day, curled up with Azrezel. He wasn¡¯t much help with the cold, lacking a heartbeat and all the other stuff an undead lacks. Now that I think about it undead are basically mana based creatures that just so happen to use a flesh sack instead of complex illusions for their physical form. Despite some of his biological failings he still performs admirably as a body pillow. And having his wings wrap around me is pretty romantic, especially when combined with the sounds of rain hitting the roof.


    We didn¡¯t really leave that position all day, I can meditate on my grove and manipulate any part of it regardless of where I am while Azrezel doesn¡¯t so much as get stiff from lack of movement. Neither do I, but I don¡¯t exactly have anything to get stiff. Besides, it¡¯s not like we were completely still all day, there was definitely some moving around.


    Other than that nothing I noticed happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 155

    I made steady progress on my current project today. The more I connect to the trees directly like this the closer I am to them and the better I can understand them. It feels like I am opening myself up to my grove in a way. It¡¯s pleasant.


    Tiddol said that her potion will be finished tomorrow. Today she finished all the preparation for it, all the refining and setting up all of the equipment and things like that. I hope the potion actually works out with helping my dad.


    There was some news from Par today. Apparently, they had a small skirmish with the inhabitants of the city they''re sieging. They were trying to break their way through in order to get a caravan inside. It didn¡¯t work out in their favor. Par says they under committed, whatever that means. As a result of this Par got ahold of the caravan and the city lost some soldiers. So far things are looking up.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Tiddol¡¯s human child has grown quite a lot recently. He¡¯s taller than Tiddol was before she evolved now.


    Other than that, not a lot happened today. My birthday is fifteen days away, and Tiddol¡¯s is sixteen. I need to figure out a good gift for Tiddol. I can¡¯t think of anything other than what I did last year, and I don¡¯t want to ask people because it is supposed to be a surprise and she might overhear. I need to figure out something though. Sometimes I wish you could talk to me and give me ideas, diary. Not often, but sometimes.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 156

    Today I made further progress in my current project. I am approaching the limit of efficiency rather quickly. I would say I am at about ninety percent efficiency, give or take a bit. There isn¡¯t much more that I can do there, unfortunately.


    The more I work on this the better I understand the mind. As Intention helps me bridge gaps in my knowledge and as a result helps me fill in said gaps. It is nowhere near a perfect method, but it works even when you have no other way to study something. Might explain why the scholars are so dominating.


    Anyway, back to the point. The mind seems to be related to the soul somehow, and not in the whole ¡®a powerful soul makes everything better¡¯ way either, but an actual direct connection between the mind and the soul. What that connection is, I don¡¯t have the faintest idea, but there is a connection. They are too similar in feel to be otherwise.


    I am a powerful person in many ways. But, I never wanted to be. Originally I just wanted to live a quiet life tending to the grove I was born into. Then I wanted a quiet life tending to my own grove. I¡¯m not entirely sure exactly how I got here but I feel a deep seeded need to do more, to acquire more, to spread the limits of my reach and to be the master of my domain. That feeling has grown recently, quite a lot actually. I don¡¯t want power, but I am driven to acquire it by some base urge in spite of that. I don¡¯t know why, and I feel like I shouldn¡¯t worry about that, but it is still a bit unsettling.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Tiddol finished her potion today, though unfortunately, it wasn¡¯t quite enough for her to evolve. My dad drank it, only for his eyes to light up in pain a moment afterward. He blacked out before he could scream. I wasn¡¯t too worried, I could tell the potion was working as intended, but I didn¡¯t expect the process to be so painful. None of us did. I administered some Flore and some Dead Tulip pollen to help him sleep soundly. With any luck, he will be back in fighting form by morning.


    I took a bit of time to watch the process of my father¡¯s atrophy being healed, it isn¡¯t exactly something I know how to heal so watching it was fascinating. The actual process was pretty crude and unrefined, like an amateur healer using techniques they barely understand. That isn¡¯t too noteworthy as it is the general impression I get from all healing potions, but it does explain the pain. In the end, I learned the basics of treating similar conditions in the future, and the chunk of knowledge I have floating around in my head has even more than just the basics.


    Now that I think about it my current project should make digesting that knowledge much easier.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 157

    I continue to make progress every day.


    My dad made a full recovery as of this morning. At about the same time Tiddol fell asleep and started to evolve, she hasn¡¯t woken up yet.


    Shortly after breakfast, I found my dad sparring with some soldiers Par left behind. The soldiers were ganging up on my dad. They had him surrounded and had bits of netting caught on his limbs, restricting him, or at least that was the intention. I almost felt bad for the soldiers. It didn¡¯t take long for them to all be unconscious.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    I still need to figure out what to get for Tiddol. I want to get her something useful, something only I can make, something that might save her life or something that she will use regularly.  I might just make a vastly improved version of the thing I got her last year, armor at the snap of a twig would definitely save someone¡¯s life. Maybe I could do something with Lace? The only thing I can think of there is maybe some kind of telepathic link with Par, but that isn¡¯t something I am actually capable of making. I might be able to effectively be in multiple places at once, but that is limited to my grove. In order to go the kind of testing, I would need to do in order to do a project like that in any length of time I would need to leave the grove, not an option. Maybe I might be able to do something similar next year.


    Barring sudden inspiration, I think I am going to go with the armor thing. Even if I get inspired I will still probably also go with the armor thing.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 158

    I¡¯ll work on this project for a couple more days, then I will let my grove start to grow again. Two or three more days should do it for a while.


    News from Par¡¯s siege. They got through the wall and managed to destroy several vital resources before getting pushed back again. With any luck they will surrender within the week, if not then they will simply slowly get weaker and weaker.


    I watched my dad fight a bit today, and though I don¡¯t know much about combat he makes it look amazing. He makes use of some simple illusions and other simple spells to do something, I¡¯m not sure exactly what but it certainly looks impressive. I¡¯ve seen him use similar magic when telling stories, but I don¡¯t think I have ever seen him fight. Mother was always a pacifist, maybe that had something to do with it?This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    I might not be very good at figuring out what is going on in a fight, but I am good at reading my father¡¯s emotions. His sparring matches feel angry and ruthless, almost spiteful even.


    Azrezel Has figured out a way for his undead to cast a spell, only one that has to be built in beforehand. He basically figured out a way to get the undead to be able to trigger a very specific spell on instinct. It will do exactly the same thing every time it is used, if the spell causes a firebolt to shoot forwards at a certain speed then it will do it exactly like that every time. The most immediate problem is the fact that Azrezel has to craft the spell manually to implant on the undead, and he can¡¯t exactly do that for magic he doesn¡¯t know how to use. It could be useful, it just needs a bit more work first. I look forward to seeing how he makes use of it.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. There was a big bar fight that ended up in the streets, but I shut that down pretty quickly. Only one person died, it could have been a lot worse.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 159

    I realized something today. I¡¯ve been going through this whole process of trying to augment my ability to think all wrong. Yes creating trees that have a lot of mental power to spare and connecting to them works, but there is another better way. I don¡¯t get as much of a benefit from each individual tree, but I get something from all of them if I just try to deepen my connection to my grove as a whole instead of to each individual tree. It is so much easier to just let the collective consciousness of the grove wash over me and guide it to my own ends than it is to try and force specific trees to do the same. The trees want this, and they are making it easy for me. What I should do next is make all of my trees smarter, the smarter they are the smarter I become.


    The connection is still weak, relative to the connection that I had with singular trees anyway, but as I time goes on and I deepen the connection it will go stronger and I will gain more and more from my grove.


    It will take me two days to improve the minds of all the trees in my grove, though I have already woven Lace into them. After that, I will form all new trees with the same kind of mind. That is the limit to what I am capable of, for now anyway.


    It is yet another way that my grove supports and empowers me.


    I was bragging to Azrezel about my discovery and I think I must have inspired him or something because he starts telling me about an idea he just had for making a sentient undead. Well, ¡®a¡¯ sentient undead would be a misnomer because he wants to somehow try and connect the minds of his undead to form a sort of hive mind that is much more intelligent than individual undead in his control, so about the level of a rather intelligent goblin. He says that he needs my help with that, A bit of Lace connecting the minds of a couple of the undead together so Azrezel can study it and replicate it using necromantic healing. It¡¯s kinda funny, I¡¯m using sheer intention with a few holes patched up with knowledge to provide a way for Azrezel to learn enough about the subject that his intention is enough to patch up the holes. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Neither of us knows how any of this works, just that it is possible and is sorely needed to accomplish what we actually want to do. Neither of us likes using intention alone to learn about or achieve something, it is slow and wasteful and unfortunately, it is the only option.


    Oh yeah, Azrezel¡¯s undead army has nearly tripled since I first met him. Nearly all of them are being kept in that weird spatial storage item of his, ready to be summoned to do his bidding at an instant. Apparently, he managed that pretty quickly and has mostly been focusing on making his own undead better rather than creating more, which is the opposite of what most necromancers do. For most the main source of their power is in the sheer amount of undead they can put between them and an obstacle, as it takes a lot more work to make an undead better than it takes to make more undead. Of course, most necromancers don¡¯t have me as a source of inspiration, and very few have a natural talent for Necromancy.


    Other than that nothing I noticed happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 160

    Tomorrow I will be done with my current project. At that point, I will work on Tiddol¡¯s gift.


    Azrezel is struggling to figure out exactly how Lace works, which isn¡¯t too surprising. So what I did was create several more links using different methods, maybe he can figure it out from that.


    During my downtime, I hung out with Tiddol. We mostly played board games, one on one and cooperative type games. It was fun. We played a game where we had to neutralize an unstable potion that could explode at any moment, Tiddol complained about the realism of the game but I had fun. Apparently, if a potion is going to explode the only thing you can do about it is get far away.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Other than that I stumbled upon a sickly crippled child. Quite literally stumbled, as they were curled up in a ball on the side of the street. I¡¯m actually kind of concerned about that fact that no one brought the child to me or another healer to get her problems fixed, it didn¡¯t even take a moment to fix. There are probably other people in similar straits in town. I am going to get some of my children to organize something to fix that issue. Maybe Kaire and Lulem could do something?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 161

    Today I finished improving all of my trees at around lunch time.


    Now I have restarted growing my Grove towards the other smaller grove. I should reach it tomorrow.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    I started improving my gift for Tiddol. I managed to incorporate mithrialwood into it today, with obvious enough consequences. Now I just need to refine the whole thing to perfection.


    Other than that I spent most of my downtime with Azrezel. Since becoming an undead he hasn''t exactly been up and ready to go, but that''s nothing a little bit of healing won''t fix.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 162

    I reached the nearby grove today. I felt like I had to focus on growing my grove before then, so I did, and I entered a kind of trance where I let instinct take over. There was something in that grove, some kind of will, a threat. It lashed out at me, violent and vicious, as if not fearing for its own safety. On instinct I crushed this will, though I felt a bit drained for my effort.


    After that, I went to investigate the new acquisition to my grove. When I stepped into my new territory I felt profoundly unwelcome, and the plants here resisted my attempts to control them. This made me angry, and so I fixed the issue, a show of force was enough. Now they jump at my command, as they should.


    Tiddol¡¯s gift is pretty much perfected now. But I feel like I should add more to it. It is designed to allow her to move without restriction while also boosting her ability to move around quickly at the cost of some functions that aren¡¯t necessary in a life or death situation. The bulk of the actual armor is positioned to cover her vitals while her joints are left almost unarmored. On top of that, whenever she gets seriously injured it draws from her mana pool to fix it, though she can turn that off. It is designed a lot more for getting out of and away from danger than it is to tank danger.


    I tried including portweed, but that just takes way too much mana to be feasible. Maybe I could get ahold of a gemstone and have the armor run on that first? It might speed up deployment and provide an extra pool to draw from for healing. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Yeah, I think I will do that. Maybe I can get a good gemstone in town? Doesn¡¯t need to be anything too fancy.


    I should really figure out a way to produce gemstones with plants, but the closest I¡¯ve come is the mana berries, which are one-time use. And nothing I¡¯ve seen even suggest something like that is possible, but if it is then I am probably the best person to figure it out. Either way, it isn¡¯t a priority.


    My dad has taken to training a group of young soldiers that he thinks has promise. His training methods seem, brutal, for lack of a better word. Most of the time when sparring I see dulled swords, here everything is real and injuries are common. He doesn¡¯t let anyone heal the injured either, even if they are on the brink of death, which one unfortunate hobgoblin boy was. They have to recover through their own merit, or not at all. I didn¡¯t watch for long.


    My dad seems to have undergone a shift in perspective today, or something to that effect. Before he was more sad and angry, now he is driven and still angry. The anger makes sense, but what is driving him?


    The stories he has told me recently are more violent and bloody than I remember.


    Azrezel finally managed to figure out how to create a link between his undead. Well ¡®figured out¡¯ isn¡¯t entirely correct, he learned enough about how Lace works that his own intention was enough to fill in the gaps. That plus pretty much all of the mana he has access to allows him to connect two undead together. It is a definite improvement, with a bit of work he could get it down to reasonable levels.


    I wish I could help him out with this, but unfortunately healing and necromancy are fundamentally incompatible. I¡¯m sure a true immortal could do both, but I am still far from that level.


    Other than that nothing I noticed happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 163

    Today I noticed the leaves on my trees start to brown. I don¡¯t like that, and neither do the trees. So I fixed it, fall will not come for me this year.


    I went into one of the jewelry shops that have opened up recently and picked up the highest quality gem I could get. It isn¡¯t quite as good as my demon glass, but it is still pretty good. I then spent most of the morning getting the armor to run off of it and making the whole thing self-charging. Pipeweed made that last part easy.


    And with that, I am done with Tiddol¡¯s present. Without getting ahold of new plants there isn¡¯t anything I can do to improve it. Yeah, I could evolve the plants involved to make it better, but that would only result in making the whole thing cost more mana and it¡¯s already stretching it there.


    Now I need to figure out what to do next. I can always try to perfect my plants, or form new plants out of what I already have. Or I could try to fully digest the knowledge floating around in my head, I could probably finish that before my birthday even. Or I could work on getting good at Solar Energy finally, and now that I think about it wasn¡¯t that my original plan anyway? I think I¡¯ll go with Solar Energy.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    I¡¯ve felt driven recently, well I¡¯ve felt driven for quite a while but it is much more intense recently. To what end I have no idea, but I feel driven nonetheless. I don¡¯t want power but I am pursuing it anyway, and I don¡¯t know why but it feels important, more important than anything else even.


    I¡¯m proud of what I have achieved so far. My grove, my most powerful of limbs, is getting closer and closer to becoming a fully fledged forest by the day. The day where I can stand at the tops of the trees on my borders and be unable to see the distant end is near. I have many magical plants and even an entire community has built up around me. But it isn¡¯t enough, and I don¡¯t know why it isn¡¯t enough. I feel like I shouldn¡¯t worry about it, but despite that, I am disconcerted.


    My dad¡¯s young trainees have made remarkable progress in self-healing if nothing else. I¡¯m not too surprised, if the stories are true then it is far from the first time my old man has raised an army, and most of those were with much worse starting material.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 164

    Today I started practicing manipulation plants with Solar Energy. I know a lot about plants and I am naturally talented at using Solar Energy, so I am making some pretty good progress. I mostly worked on making a solar energy version of Astrie simply because it is the most versatile plant I have. Ultimately I want to have a Solar Energy version of every plant in my arsenal.


    At this point I can only barely see the other end of my grove when I stand at the tops of the trees on one edge. It will be a month or less before I grow large enough to become a forest. It¡¯s one major milestone that I have been working towards from the beginning.


    Azrezel has made more progress with forming his undead into a kind of hive mind. He has to actively support it but he has managed to connect a total of five of them together at once. Ideal he will be able to connect them all simultaneously with the undead sustaining it and himself as the will of the hive mind. It will likely be a while before he gets there at this rate, but if he manages to make a major breakthrough then who knows how long it will take. Maybe I could help him with that? How would a connection made with Solar Energy Lace be different than one made with mana? I have no idea but it might be worth trying. It might take me a little bit before I get to that point though.


    I am getting more and more excited for my birthday every passing day. I¡¯m turning seventeen in only six more days, less than a week. And Tiddol¡¯s second birthday that I will be celebrating with her is the day afterwards, she¡¯s turning twenty.


    Oh wow, I¡¯ve known Tiddol for more than a year now, longer than I have known anyone alive other than my dad and I thought he was dead for almost all of that. It¡¯s been hard to hang out with her recently, what with her taking care of her human son, but he is getting more independent every day so maybe that will change soon.


    Other than that I mostly spent my downtime listening to stories from my dad. I know I have said it before but he is an amazing story teller.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 165

    I made steady progress on perfecting Solar Energy Astrie, though due to my lack of knowledge of Solar Energy I have no idea how long it will actually take in order to perfect it.


    News from Par. His assassins have successfully infiltrated most of the nearby cities. Many of them have even managed to gain high-level government positions. After the city he is currently sieging falls it will be easy to siege others. At that point he will draw back and fortify what we already have. What this means to me is that there might be some new plants available soon. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    I got sick today. I was practicing with Solar Energy when I messed up and the spell backfired on me in a bad way. Luckily it wasn¡¯t contagious and only lasted for a couple hours, but it is still gut-wrenching when it happens, both literally and figuratively. I hope I don¡¯t see the day when someone close to me is hit with an infectious disease.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 166

    Today I made more progress at getting better at manipulating plants with Solar Energy. I would say that I am about a quarter done with refining Astrie, and getting faster. So I still have no idea how long it is going to take.


    Azrezel has been avoiding me today. I think it has something to do with my birthday, so I¡¯m not too worried, but it is still kind of disappointing that I didn¡¯t get to hang out with him today. It will likely be a couple days of this too, as I am pretty sure he and Tiddol are working on a something together for me. What they could create between the two of them I have no idea, but I look forward to seeing it.


    So I spent most of my downtime today with my dad playing board games. It was quickly made apparent that the one he did best at and the one he enjoyed the most was a war simulator that was, according to him anyway, incredibly realistic. Which makes sense considering the fact that the person that made this particular game was a general half a world away, or at least according to the box. Despite the fact that Fate held no sway in this game I lost every single time, though I did get better and my dad seemed to be trying to teach me. The last time I even managed to almost take his general, only to not have enough defending my own.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Other than that a meteorite shot through the sky in the distance before hitting the ground with an explosion of rock, Too far away to even feel a shock-wave. Some flying mage probably missed with a spell in the distance. Luckily it only hit the side of a mountain, though it was too far away to tell if anything was injured, which means it is also way too far away to actually do anything about it if they were.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 167

    <div>


    Progress is being made faster and faster. Once I¡¯m done with Astrie I will move onto the next plant.


    I have to say, using my grove to make me think better was a stroke of genius. I am making blindingly fast progress on improving my abilities with Solar Energy as a result of my expanded mental capabilities. It doesn¡¯t make me better at getting to the right solution, it just allows me to try again over and over again faster than I possibly could have otherwise. For the same reason it also make refining my plants an incredibly fast process.


    The growth of my grove is noticeably slower now, despite the fact that I have more and more mana every day to feed to it. This is almost certainly because of the fact that every tree needs a lot more mana to grow thanks to their improved mental abilities. So nothing I didn¡¯t expect, but it is still disappointing to be proven right.


    Azrezel made a breakthrough today. He figured out a way to connect his undead together without an apparent upper limit on the number he can connect together. The downside of this is that it is significantly less efficient than the method he was using before, which sucks because that one was already terrible for efficiency. Plus he still has to maintain it manually and the inefficiency makes that difficult. So the theoretical maximum is much higher than the seven or eight he was getting the other day, but the practical limit is still at two or three. And three is pushing it quite a bit.


    The city Par is seiging surrendered the other day. Something about the General having a very public nervous breakdown being terrible for moral. Either that or the knives pressed against the now ex-leaders of the city necks. The important part, or at least what Parius says is the important part in his letter, is that only minor infrastructure damage was caused.


    Par is going to be home in the next two days barring unforeseen circumstances like a pair of true immortals dueling to the death on his path home. It¡¯s happened before and it will happen again. It is basically the weather, only less controllable.


    Other than that nothing I noticed happened.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 168

    As of today I am about half done with the Astrie conversion and perfection.


    I have actually gotten pretty good at creating floating lights out of Solar Energy, not having any other method of lighting while working inside of the Solar Energy room kind of forces that. Well, it would if the Solar Energy inside hadn¡¯t started to glow recently. The light doesn¡¯t seem the come from anywhere either so there are no shadows, which is a little unnerving honestly. I shouldn¡¯t be surprised, the suns all produce light and I am pretty sure they are made out of Solar Energy, I just wasn¡¯t expecting it. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Today is the day I go to sleep, and as such I get to burn my Fate. Let¡¯s see where this goes. A minor inspiration in healing, I thought of a new way to heal massive burn wounds. Useful I guess.


    Other than that not a lot happened today, or at least nothing that I am awake enough to care about anyway.


    Good Night Diary.

 Day 169

    I made more progress today than I did yesterday and I will likely make more progress tomorrow than I made today. I hope I don¡¯t reach the limit there any time soon.


    I turn seventeen tomorrow, I¡¯m so excited. Mest and Thes won¡¯t be there this year, but my dad will be and Azrezel will as well. Talus has left and Whisperer fell in combat. Bug has also fallen, though his children all alive and health, I¡¯ve made sure of it. And Lord Parius the Magnificent is there as well, I don¡¯t think I could get rid of him if I wanted to. He¡¯s been there almost since the beginning, and he is definitely no longer the ugly little goblin he was at first. He¡¯s almost handsome now, and strong, very strong, about as strong as Thes was before he evolved only without the rage. If I wasn¡¯t with Azrezel I might even be a bit jealous of Tiddol.


    And Willow, I miss Willow. We weren''t close, I wanted to be but I failed at that somewhere. Why did I stop hanging out with her again? I know it was to work on something, but what? A gift for her that I never figured out how to make maybe? I hope I get to see her again, but I can¡¯t in good conscience send someone out to hunt her down. Maybe I could ask Par to send some of his men to make sure she is alive and well at least, the charm Mest made to track whether or not she is still alive is in one piece at least.


    And my children, my Ents. Many of them have left home and have started on their own journeys now, a couple have even returned and one group has set out for a second time. It is nice to see their faces when they return home, though it is almost always undercut with the loss of one or two of my children. Kaire and Lulem have been good older siblings to my children and are even on the verge of a second evolution, though I don¡¯t think I am ready to evolve them quite yet. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Oh wow, It¡¯s been more than a year since I met Talus. I hope she¡¯s doing well. Maybe we will meet again, though maybe not. That would be a bit awkward. Looking back on my relationship with her it was not exactly healthy. She was a bit exploitative, for lack of a better word. I didn¡¯t really talk about it at the time, mostly because I thought it was normal, but she kind of treated me like a doll. She was a bit possessive and tried to be controlling, though I shut her down there every time it interfered with my work. And then during our alone time she was entirely focused on me and wouldn''t really let me do anything, which was disappointing and more than a little uncomfortable. And her it got worse as time went on, up until she left. I know that was at least partially my own fault, but I can¡¯t control anything involving that and so I would prefer not to think about it.


    It feels good to get that off of my chest finally, liberating in a way.


    Tiddol has been there for me almost since the beginning of my not so willing independence, and though she is a lot busier recently since having children she is still my best friend. She might not be as eloquent as my father, but I always make a point of listening to her stories when I get the chance. I always love hearing her tell me about her life as a diver. The story of her old party killing a dungeon dragon whelp with a small explosive and some glue has always been my favorite, though it has understandably taken on an undercurrent of sadness recently. Most of her stories have. I would be embarrassed to tell her in real life but I love you Tiddol, you are the best friend I could have hoped for. I just wish I could do more for her, but I don¡¯t know how.


    Oh yeah, I forgot to mention what Tiddol evolved into. She is something called a High Human, though no one is quite sure what the variant is yet.


    Nothing else is really worth talking about today, So Good Night Diary.

 Day 170

    Happy birthday to me. I¡¯m finally seventeen.


    The party was fun. There was lots of cake made by a couple of local bakers. Good cake too, some of the best I¡¯ve ever had.


    Naturally, there were presents.


    Par, who got into town late last night, got me an enchanted bracelet. It was pretty fancy and was able to tell when it would be useful for stopping a threat to myself only slightly worse than I am. It is also really durable, to the point where a Mithrilwood sword wasn¡¯t able to do more than dent it. The only real downside is that no one knows how to repair something like this, and even the people that might be able to are too scared to touch it out of fear of breaking something delicate. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    Kaire and Lulem got me a ribbon that automatically does my hair in one of a number of preset styles and even changes how the ribbon itself looks. I might start doing my hair now, it was a waste of time before.


    My dad got me an ocarina, very similar to one he owned before the fire. I can¡¯t play it but there are happy memories there.


    Azrezel and Tiddol worked together to make me something. It is a wand made out of alchemically and necrotically treated bone, or at least that is what they said it was. It creates temporary undead to help and serve me when needed and some pretty ridiculous levels of efficiency and power, but as a direct result of that the undead don¡¯t last more than half an hour on average and the body is rendered unusable for the purposes of necromancy after. I can see this coming in handy during an emergency, especially when corpses are plentiful and mana is low. Otherwise, my normal methods of dealing with threats are much better. The wand itself is rather sinister looking and has a good bit of heft to it.


    I got other gifts too, but those were the ones I got from the people I care about the most.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 171

    I made more progress in refining Solar Energy Astrie today, though I didn''t have a lot of time for it.


    Today Tiddol turned Twenty. Assuming she doesn¡¯t die unnaturally or obtain immortality she should live for another hundred and fifty years, give or take. My bet is on immortality, it isn¡¯t like it is that difficult to obtain for someone with her resources. And even if she doesn¡¯t healing magic is more than capable of making someone younger.


    The actual party was very similar to my own, but with a different kind of cake.


    Tiddol Liked my gift. Apparently, she has used the first one a number of times during alchemical accidents to the point that it was starting to wear out. Apparently, she didn¡¯t think of having me fix it up.


    Par gave the mother of his children what looked like a children¡¯s toy. It was a small figure that walks and moves around on its own with no apparent magical input. Tiddol has already taken it apart and put it back together again three times as I am writing this. It seems like she is inspired by something.


    Willow sent a package that arrived today. Which means that at least recently she was healthy and safe enough to send mail. It was a gift for Tiddol¡¯s birthday, she was like a mother to the storm sprite. It is a jewel-encrusted belt, it¡¯s really nice too though it has no function beyond the obvious. It¡¯s inlaid with Mithril and other magical and alchemically treated metals to make it better at being a mana battery. In total it is about as good as my best gem, a bit more storage but isn¡¯t quite as accessible. The jewels themselves are very average, but there is a lot of them.


    My Ents worked together to give Tiddol a very large supply of alchemy ingredients. Apparently, some of them were tired of her constantly asking them for more and are hoping this will last longer, I doubt it though. From what I have picked up from listening to her alchemy ingredients are at their best while super fresh, otherwise, you need more to get a lesser result. From what she told me she is just going to use them up as quickly as she can while not caring about waste cause if she doesn¡¯t then all of them will be useless in a week or two anyway. She could get the Ents to freshen them up pretty easily, but that defeats the purpose.


    After the presents were handed out we played a board game most of us had played before. The one where we all build up a kingdom and compete against each other for arbitrary victory conditions. The players were myself, Tiddol, my dad, Par, Kaire and Lulem, and Azrezel. Azrezel and Par both went for domination victories very early on and ended up clashing against each other. They were at war for a while before they both decided to stop fighting each other, but by that point, they had already fallen behind in magic and were out of the runnings. Kaire and Lulem both worked together and focused on building great monuments but both ended up having their kingdoms destroyed by natural causes long before anyone else found them. Tiddol and I both worked toward a magic victory, but we were quickly outstripped by my dad¡¯s culture victory after he found Kaire and Lulem''s remains and claimed all of their monuments for his own kingdom. Ultimately my dad united the world in song and dance and no small amount of brainwashing. It was fun, though my children were annoyed that they didn¡¯t get to finish building all of the monuments before they took the wrong gamble. I only got as far as I did because I actively avoided any random chance in the game.


    I hope we can play again sometime. Not too often though, it takes a lot of time, more than I am normally comfortable being away from my work for.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 172

    Today I made more progress on my current project. I should be done refining Astrie in the next day or two.


    Tiddol has spent pretty much all day putting that toy she got from Par together in different ways. It seems to be made out of some really fancy clockwork and she is definitely stretching that to its limits. I think she is going to need to get a hold of some more clockwork components if she wants to get further than she is. I might be able to help her with that using Mithrilwood.


    Azrezel managed to figure out how to get a group of ten undead mentally connected and self-sustaining, though the self-sustaining part uses up nearly all of the mental capacity of the undead and require faster than the available mental capacity increases. Nonetheless, it is a big step in the right direction. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Other than that I spent most of my time hanging out with Tiddol. Par had parenting duty today, so we didn¡¯t need to worry about a child running around. We experimented with alchemy a bit, or rather she experimented with Alchemy and I supplied the ingredients. Whatever she was making used a lot of Portweed and even more Astrie. At one point Tiddol was spontaneously wearing a full suite of armor and so I took that as my cue to try and contain a potential explosion. Not a moment too late either, as soon as I had the bottle surrounded by Mithrilwood it exploded, leaving an empty sphere of Mithrilwood. There wasn¡¯t even any mana inside the sphere for a couple moments. The same thing happened three times in a row, one time I wasn¡¯t fast enough and ended up taking half of the blast. Nothing I couldn¡¯t heal, but it still hurt. The armor I made worked like a charm, and Tiddol seems to have developed an instinct for this type of thing, she didn¡¯t even notice it when the armor activated. Now I know that it works well enough, but that I also messed up by prioritizing maneuverability over durability. She probably isn¡¯t going to use it very often in a situation that she needs to run away from, but if today is any marker then she is constantly using it on something she has to endure.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 173

    Today I finished refining Solar Energy Astrie. Experimenting with it told me exactly what I already knew, It interacts with Solar Energy. It alters the way it works depending on how I mold it, just like the mana version. It doesn¡¯t make anything more powerful, but it can be used to focus the power that does exist. So no real noteworthy changes.


    Tomorrow I start working on Whitefoot, It will take three days tops for me to refine it.


    Par left again today. He needs to go and help organize things in the recently captured city so they can move on to the next one, though there is no telling how long it will take to squash all of the small rebellions. I would imagine it would be easier if they all organized under one banner, but then they might actually be a threat.


    Today I stood at the top of the edge of my home and looked out to the horizon, only to not see an end to the trees. As of today, my home is no longer a grove, but a forest, and that makes me immensely satisfied with myself. It is the first thing I ever strived to do on my own that wasn¡¯t ¡®not die¡¯. It all started with me finding a small sapling and feeding it with the last of my mana, I told it to grow and support me as I rapidly starved to death. I thought I was going to die before I started to receive a small stream of mana from the small tree. From there I grew tree after tree desiring, as all Forest Sprites desire, to have a forest to call my home. My grove, no my forest has definitely grown and supported me, and I look forward to more in the future. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    My father''s knights, the ones he¡¯s been training recently, have gotten rather impressive in a short amount of time. Nowhere near veterans, according to my dad at least, but they still have a lot of potential. The only thing I can really judge is the skill in self-healing, which is above adequate, and the fact that they are incredibly ruthless and vicious. They spar like they are trying to kill each other, a couple already have. I watched my dad order one of their executions after the man failed to perform well enough in his sparring match. It was honestly quite shocking, I never would have expected to hear my dad order the death of another man, especially not with such a neutral tone.


    Later he was telling me about the training methods he is using, mostly because I asked. He said that they were inspired by the training method used to train the most dangerous people he had ever met, an elite combat unit, a secret police of sorts, that belonged to a corrupt government he helped dismantle. He received that same training while he was undercover in a successful attempt to take out that group.


    He described every visceral detail of the story in a way that both disgusted and fascinated me. I can almost feel like I am the one holding the sword at times.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 174

    Today I started working on a solar energy version of Whitefoot. Based on how fast I am progressing right now I will complete it by late tomorrow, if not early the next day.


    I will probably end up refining all of my plants and making a perfect Solar Energy version of them in the next week or so. Refining my plants with mana won¡¯t take longer than a day or two, and the limit with Solar Energy is my own practice.


    Azrezel got a letter today. It is from a friend of his fathers, one of his old party members. Which means it is also one of my dad¡¯s old partners as well. The man wants to meet with Azrezel, a gift was mentioned though not what that gift might be. My dad and Azrezel have already left and will likely be gone for a week and a half, maybe two weeks if traffic is clogged at the teleportation circles. I made sure to get some alone time with Azrezel before they left. It will be a lonely week and a half without him, but I¡¯ll manage somehow. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    My dad took his soldiers with him for further training, apparently, the guy they are going to meet is a great teacher.


    I talked to Whisperer¡¯s replacement a bit today, the plant variant Dragonewt who¡¯s name I don¡¯t know. I do so regularly, but they are nowhere near as interesting as Whisperer was. Apparently, he wants to throw a small celebration four days from now and wants me to show up. It is a community organized and run event and a lot of people are looking forward to it. I shouldn¡¯t be doing anything else that day so I agreed to show up. The Dragonewt looked suitably relieved when I promised to show up to his big event, I have kept every promise I have made to him and his group so far after all.


    I don¡¯t think I will ever get used to people writing down my every word, it makes me self conscious when I talk to him. It is even worse when I hear people quoting me later.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 175

    I am almost done refining Whitefoot with Solar Energy. I will be done with an hour or two of work, which I will do as soon as I am done writing this. The actual nitty gritty on how it works is different, but its utility is exactly the same. Except maybe it will help if I ever need to heal a troll. The real benefit of this project is being able to use my full abilities when healing with Solar Energy.


    Early this morning Tiddol received a letter from Par saying something about an issue he is having that only she can fix, something relating to alchemy. Maybe he or someone else important was poisoned? Whatever it is Tiddol is the best alchemist readily available, excluding the Scholars who both have some amazing alchemists in their numbers and are completely unwilling to assist us in this endeavor. It¡¯s a shame, but what can you do. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    It isn¡¯t clear how long she will be gone, the letter only had the barest details as usual. It is almost confirmed that people are intersecting these letters, in the letter Par said he sent five copies while only two arrived. One could be attributed to misfortune or some of the less sentient natives getting to the runners, two would be stretching it while three all but proves Par¡¯s paranoia to be due caution.


    Tiddol has already left, I made sure to say goodbye before she left. I hope she will be back soon. With everyone gone doing other things, I¡¯ll get lonely. Everyone else here hangs onto my every word and practically worships me, and many of them I made with my own two hands. It¡¯s draining dealing with that all the time.


    When Azrezel gets home I am going to curl up and cuddle with him all day, well maybe do other stuff as well but I don¡¯t think we will be leaving the privacy of our own room.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 176

    I could talk about how I finished refining Whitefoot late last night but that hardly matters when you are stuck in metal cell preventing you from doing anything with magic.


    I boosted my Fate a surprising amount, nearly a day¡¯s worth of Fate accumulated in a single instant. That was when I started to freak out in vain. I had already been hit by the poisoned dart and was rapidly losing consciousness, though I couldn''t have been out long because my Fate didn¡¯t burn itself while I was out.


    I haven¡¯t seen my captors yet but I am still within the boundary of my forest. I can still feel my trees, but the connection feels weak. Luckily it isn''t getting any weaker.


    When I came too I was laying on a mat made out of hide and inside of a room made nearly entirely of metal. One wall has tightly spaced bars, like whoever built it was more worried about someone slipping through the bars than actually being able to see through them. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Whatever this metal is it seems to expel all the mana in the building, including what used to be in my mana pool. Luckily the mana that makes up me isn¡¯t affected, but I still need an input of mana in order to not revert to a child-like form and eventually starve to death. Luckily my dungeon core does something there so I won¡¯t starve, merely get rather weak.


    The mechanism that is draining my mana isn¡¯t touching my Solar Energy, I might be able to do something with what little I have.


    As if locking me up like this wasn¡¯t enough they also cut off my wooden arm completely. Whoever these people are, they¡¯ve done their homework.


    And my diary is safe in my dungeon core¡¯s extradimensional space, luckily I can write without removing it.


    Honestly, I¡¯m scared. I don¡¯t know what these people want with me or why they are doing this to me. All of my closest friends and family are gone right now and other than them I don¡¯t see anyone on a regular enough basis for my disappearance to be suspicious. It will be two days at the soonest before anyone notices my disappearance, and that is only because I agreed to attend that party.


    And the worst part is that I can¡¯t access my plants, any of them. I feel so small, lost, and confused without their constant presence and guidance. I need to get out of here as soon as I can. I need to figure out how to do that. And, possibly most importantly, I need something to occupy my thoughts so I don¡¯t have another nervous breakdown.

 Day 177

    At one point today I felt my connection to my trees grow stronger, but it only lasted for a moment before returning to what it was before. Luckily I managed to gather a small chunk of mana during that time, mana that I turned into Solar Energy. It seems I still have a bit of Sunflower inside me, though it is useless for anything other than turning mana into solar energy. I am going to turn half of the mana my dungeon core produces into Solar Energy, any more would leave me too weak to do anything.


    Shortly after that I saw my captors, or at least the people that will be guarding my metal box for the next little bit. There are three of them, all of them flesh and bone, and none of them mage types. Makes sense, they are just as affected by the anti-magic stuff as I am, it¡¯s best to put people here that aren¡¯t terribly affected by it.


    The captors seem to be in a jovial mood, it seems that they think capturing me wasn¡¯t the worst mistake they could have made. Unfortunately, they were too tight-lipped around me to reveal anything interesting.


    I studied the anti-magic effects on the walls today and it was remarkably similar to the way Pipeweed works, only better and on metal instead of plants. It reminds me of the mana room I made a while back, the one that was stolen overnight. I feel like those two things are directly linked.


    Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about that as the source of the effect is the metal itself, and I can¡¯t even try to manipulate metal.


    My captors were careful to avoid bringing in any plant material when they entered, and they would have been successful if it wasn¡¯t for some fungal spores getting in during that brief moment. Nearly all of them were killed by the anti-magic effect, it is actually impossible for something that small to survive without magic, but I managed to preserve a couple of them with Solar Energy before they died. The spores are more or less mundane, which is probably a good thing because it requires less Solar Energy to do something with it than it would otherwise. Unfortunately, I have very little Solar Energy, enough to maybe make a mushroom the size of my palm and half as thick, not enough to really do anything with. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    I¡¯m rapidly shrinking and physically regressing. I currently have the body I had when I was eleven or twelve, I don¡¯t know when the regression will stop. I hate the feeling of starvation, it is the feeling of helplessness, of despair. It makes me angry, and scared.


    What do these people want with me? What have I done to make someone want revenge on me, or maybe I¡¯m just a bartering chip against someone close to me.


    I wish I had more in my little cell than a simple piece of hide, even just some clothes would be nice. It¡¯s cold in here, and pressing bare skin up against cold metal isn¡¯t exactly comfortable. The piece of hide isn¡¯t even big enough for me to lay down on, at least not yet, one small benefit of starving I guess, and even if it was it isn¡¯t exactly good as insulation.


    I understand why they took my clothes, it was obviously plant matter, but I wish they would have given me something to wear, even if it wasn¡¯t cold it is hard to cover myself up with only one arm. But what I really want is something to eat, some warm soup maybe?


    This whole event is making me anxious and paranoid, so much so that at times it makes it difficult to think. If I needed to breath I think I would find myself hyperventilating more than once today. I need to get out of here, but I have no idea how I am going to do that. It will take weeks to get enough Solar Energy to use the fungus to force my way out of here. Other than that I have no idea what I can do to get out of here faster.


    Now, I need to sleep. I don¡¯t have access to my sleep aid and I¡¯m tired. Sleep will be a nightly thing again, unfortunately. I also burned my Fate just now, it let me snag a small piece of meat between the bars when one of my captors tripped and dropped his meal on the floor. It wasn¡¯t much, but it was something.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 178

    The party happened today. People will get suspicious when I don¡¯t show, I hope anyway.


    The chunk of meat I ate the other day isn¡¯t digesting very quickly, which makes sense considering the fact that I don¡¯t exactly have enough mana for digestion at the moment. It also seems to come from a creature that is rather powerful, making it harder to digest but providing more mana from digesting it. This all has the effect of taking the edge off of my starvation and giving me an extra small stream of mana. Picking up that chunk of meat really was Fateful.


    One of my captors got drunk and started bragging about kidnapping me, to me. The other two were asleep, which gave me a chance to prod him about the events leading up to my capture. They were hired by someone whose face they never saw and were told to get me locked up in this room about a month ago, this guy at least doesn¡¯t know any details from before that. After they were hired they immediately pulled up any information they could about me, of which a not so surprising amount came from the scholars. They then somehow figured out how to avoid detection from the trees, which basically amounted to a spontaneous attack without any chance of setting up and immediately moving me. The guy said that he almost missed with the dart but a ¡®lucky¡¯ gust of wind moved back into the right path. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    These people are apparently professionals at this type of thing, they get frequently hired by rich people that want something less than savory done to someone else. And based on the fact that they are all still alive and in one piece they are pretty good at their job.


    I spent most of the day meditating on my connection to my trees. There wasn¡¯t exactly anything else to do and I wanted to see if I could accomplish anything with that connection.


    I quickly realized that the connection is not to me directly but to my dungeon core. This connection has always been there, but it has always been crowded out by the much louder, much more direct connection I have to my trees. It will take a long time to nurture and grow this connection to a point that it would be useful for anything, but like I said earlier, I have nothing better to do.


    My captors have still denied my requests for clothes or a blanket, but at least now I am small enough to fit my entire body on the hide rug. I mean I have to contort myself quite a bit, but I can still fit. I am currently about the size I was when I was nine or ten years old, and my shrinking has slowed down dramatically. I don¡¯t think I will shrink much more than I already have unless something else happens.


    Anyway, I¡¯m getting tired. Good Night Diary.

 Day 179

    Today I spent nearly all of my time curled up on the only thing protecting my bare skin from the cold metal floor while meditating on my connection to my trees. That connection is growing stronger, but slowly.


    My captors are angry and irritated today. I can tell because they were screaming obscenities at who I can only assume is their employer. It seems they got a letter today telling them that they had to stay here with me for a lot longer than they thought they would,  which means I have a better chance of escaping. It seems like the citizens are irritated and unruly, they are trying to figure out where I am after I didn¡¯t show up to the party yesterday. My captors seem confident in the citizen''s lack of ability to find this place. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    One of my captors decided to relieve his anger on me, by way of beating my defenseless and frail body. It took precious mana to fix the serious injuries, and I can¡¯t afford to fix the less serious ones. I¡¯m glad he was holding back, he obviously doesn¡¯t want to kill me and he could have easily done so there. Before I was going to leave them more or less alone when I managed to escape if I could help it, they are just doing their job after all, but now I need to punish that one at the very least.


    I hope I can escape soon, it is taking everything I have not to freak out right now.

 Day 180

    I have started to get a trickle of mana from the connection to my forest. Ordinarily, it wouldn¡¯t be worth mentioning, but now it has doubled my mana production. I have to force myself to not use that mana on maintaining my form, if I start to grow back to my normal size then they might get suspicious. It hurts and is mentally exhausting to do, literally struggling to not eat after starving for days and having food being presented to me, but it is necessary.


    It will be a couple days before I can attempt an escape, a week at most. The fungus spores are still nice and fresh for my use. I can use them to open up a hole in the bars large enough for my small body to fit through and then use them to tie up or otherwise disable them. I need more Solar Energy for that first though.


    It might not affect flesh and bone creatures in the same way that it affects mana based creatures, but flesh and bone creatures are still affected by the manaless atmosphere. I am struggling more and more to keep my wits sharp with every passing day and I have a steady, albeit small, stream of mana to rely on, my captors are having it worse than I am. Yeah, it won¡¯t kill them any time soon, but the lack of mana causes a kind of mental stress that I don¡¯t think they were prepared for. They are obviously stressed and agitated, to the point of yelling at each other. They haven¡¯t quite come to blows yet but they came close. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Unfortunately, this means that they relieve their stress by way of beating me again. I can still heal the actually dangerous injuries, but I don¡¯t have the mana to heal the rest. Were I made of flesh and bone I would have several broken bones and would likely be dead, but as it is I have bruises all over my body, and moving hurts. As long as I remain curled up in a ball I am fine, and I intend to stay like this as much as I can, but anything else is painful. To make matters worse nothing is healing naturally, I simply don¡¯t have the mana to spare to treat anything that isn¡¯t life-threatening.


    I don¡¯t think I have ever hated anyone or anything more than I hate these three men. I want to see them suffer for what they¡¯ve done to me. Not kill them though, I don¡¯t want their blood on my hands.


    Anyway, I¡¯m tired, and in pain. I¡¯m going to sleep now.

 Day 181

    My connection to my forest is steadily getting stronger, and the stronger it gets the more mana I get from it. It will be a day or two before I have the mana to attempt an escape.


    My captors seem the be running low on rations. As a result, they are even more irritable and aggressive. That plus the constant mana deprivation is causing them to go crazy. Thanks to that I managed to overhear them screaming about their employer, a big-shot in one of the nearby city-states. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    They beat me again, but they didn¡¯t stop there this time. I am going to kill them for that.


    I want to see my friends and family again. I want Azrezel to hold me close and tell me everything will be alright. I want to listen to more of my dad¡¯s stories. I want to play games with Tiddol and Par. I want to get out of here, I¡¯m not sure I can last much longer.

 Day 182

    Today I continued refining my connection to my forest. If I could do it perfectly I could probably break out of here right now, but I am not a fighter, and I don¡¯t think I can do everything perfectly. So I will kill my captors and escape tomorrow.


    My captors drank themselves into unconsciousness today. They got really violent before they passed out, but luckily it seems like they forgot I existed. They had a brawl after getting ticked off while drunk, unfortunately, the worst of the damage is only a black eye. Their strikes were doing a lot less damage than they should have been doing, especially for people that are supposedly very skilled at less than savory work. Something else is going on there, I feel like I should know what it is but I can¡¯t think of it right now. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Fortunately, The didn¡¯t touch me today, no injuries to heal and no pain to endure. Or at least no more pain than what I am already experiencing.


    I am pretty sure they are out of alcohol now so I don¡¯t think that will happen again tomorrow. If anything they will be even more irritated and aggressive because now they are injured, have no way of healing themselves, and don¡¯t have any booze. They will almost definitely try to hurt me again tomorrow. Keyword there is try, because that is when I am going to kill them.


    I¡¯m looking forward to tomorrow.

 Day 183

    It was late in the day when one of them finally opened my cell door. At that moment I rushed towards him and embraced him, before digging my nails into his back and letting the fungus spores into his bloodstream. There is no way he could have expected me to attack, much less embrace him, after all up until that point all I had done was occasionally scream out in pain when they beat me.


    With the spores in place, I started growing them, twisting them around inside his body and destroying all of his internal organs. I may have wasted a bit of Solar Energy keeping him alive for a bit longer than he would have otherwise been.


    It was precious moments before the other two realized what was going on. Precious moments that I capitalized on. I spread tumors all around the next one¡¯s body, and then I healed him. It was a simple spell really, all I did was dramatically increase the speed at which his body heals itself.


    I relaxed a little more than I probably should have for the last one. I decided to practice flesh manipulation on him, I didn¡¯t do very well. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    It was easy, too easy. Then I realized something. They didn¡¯t have access to mana either. The mana that maintains and strengthens their bodies was slowly stripped away as they were stuck in here with me. Years, possibly even decades of training washed away by a couple days without any access to mana. I should remember that.


    After I finished with my captors I realized two things. The first is that I had no more Solar Energy left. The second is that the door opens from the outside only. Explains why they didn¡¯t run away. After working at the door frame for an hour with the fungus I finally managed to open up a small crack in it. That crack let mana in and dramatically increased my speed, I was out in seconds.


    The first thing I saw when I exited the building was hundreds of undead beating on some kind of invisible barrier a little ways away from the door. Azrezel was flying over them casting spells at the barrier. When he saw me he flew right into the barrier, only to bounce off and fall to the ground. I immediately rushed to him. I don¡¯t know why he is back from his trip so early, and I don¡¯t really care right now. I¡¯m just glad that I¡¯m out. I¡¯m glad that I can feel close to my forest again. I¡¯m glad that I can not feel like I¡¯m starving.


    For now, I just want to sleep.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 184

    Today I rested. I took time to let myself heal all of my cuts and bruises and to let my body return to its full size. I could have done all of that immediately, but that can be draining, and I didn¡¯t feel like it.


    It seems like everyone realized I was missing immediately. My trees told everyone that was capable of listening and they told everyone else. After that, there was a massive hunt through the forest until they found that magical barrier that is still standing now. It seems like it only goes one way, which is how I was able to get out and why no one else was able to come to my rescue. No one has managed to figure out a way around or through it yet, so it still stands.


    Tiddol and Par are both here as well. It seems like the letter she got was faked. While Par was happy, and a bit confused, to see her, he did not need her help with anything. Once he saw the letter he sorted everything out and figured out what was going on. Someone, probably the people that used to be my captors, sent the letter in order to get her away for a while so it wouldn¡¯t be immediately suspicious when I disappeared.


    The letter to Azrezel was also fake. My dad¡¯s old partner was happy to see him but understandably confused about the visit. After sorting everything out they rushed back home, expecting the worst. My dad was trying and failing to hold back tears when he saw me safe and relatively healthy. My dad¡¯s old partner did agree to come visit my forest, something about wanting to meet me. Apparently, the man couldn¡¯t believe that someone managed to make my dad settle down and have a child. Azrezel was very quick to point out the fact that it was the settle down part, not the child part, that he couldn¡¯t believe. That and some stories I¡¯ve heard about my dad from before he met my mother makes me wonder if I have any half-siblings running around the world. I don¡¯t know how to think about that.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    I need to figure out what my next steps are. The scholars living here could have easily gotten through that barrier, they said as much themselves. But they refused to interfere. Considering the fact that they are partially responsible for this whole fiasco, my captors had information they could have only gotten from their order. This is unacceptable. I need to deal with them somehow, but that can wait till tomorrow.


    I also have to deal with the masterminds behind my capture. From what I overheard from my captors they are part of the leadership of one of the nearby city-states, but I don¡¯t know which one. No matter, we¡¯ll take all of them if we have to, but the people responsible will pay.


    I should also prevent anything like that from happening again. To do that I should refine the part of my connection to my forest that goes through my dungeon core. As far as I can tell nothing short of a more powerful dungeon can block that connection. I¡¯ll never be without access to mana again. And, more importantly, nothing would be able to sever my connection to my forest.


    I¡¯m using my sleep aid tonight for the first time in way too long. It¡¯s time for sleep.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 185

    The first thing I did today was confront the scholars. I explained to them exactly what happened and told them that they would either be a lot more cooperative with us in the future or they would be removed from my areas of control, violently if necessary. One particularly obstinate young scholar scoffed at that and threatened me, saying that I wouldn¡¯t dare hurt a hair on his head or his order would burn my forest to the ground. With a bit of plant magic I threw him out of my domain. I definitely heard a crack when he hit the ground. The rest of the scholars were a lot more compliant after that, though they still said that they needed to talk to the people they have to report to.


    After I finished with them I started to meditate on the part of my connection to my forest that goes through my dungeon core. With the benefit of hundreds of trees all supporting my mind progress is going much faster, it will be days before I get that connection to the point where making it stronger would provide almost no benefit.


    To my surprise improving this connection is actually giving me more mana. A lot more. By the time I¡¯m done it will probably have doubled the amount of mana I¡¯m gaining from my trees. I thought I was already getting all the mana I could out of them so I have no idea why I¡¯m getting more, but I¡¯m not going to question it.


    The rate my mana production is increasing is a lot faster than the rate that I¡¯m able to spend it is increasing. The latter is based almost entirely on the number of spells I can cast at once, which is based on mostly off of the extra mental prowess I get from my trees. While the former is based on both my connection to my grove and my dungeon core and soon to also be based on the mana to solar energy and back again cycle that I have going on. In a couple weeks it will get to the point that I could not possibly spend mana as fast as I am taking it in, I wonder how that will affect me. At that point I will have functionally infinite mana, and I will need a much bigger mana storage. Maybe it will cause my demonglass to grow a lot faster? The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    On top of that, once I have that much mana production it is only going to increase faster and faster. All the excess mana that I don¡¯t spend on normal activities I spend on growing my Forest. Once I hit that point I will be pouring so much mana into my forest that it will be growing faster than ever, which will both give me more mana and allow me to spend that mana faster.


    It¡¯s kinda funny. My innate mana production is so abysmal I would starve to death if I had to rely on it, I almost did at one point. And now my mana storage and mental prowess are also offloaded to something else to such a degree that my innate abilities are mostly inconsequential. For almost everything relating to using magic I¡¯m relying on something bigger than myself, or would it be more accurate to say an extension of myself? Something beyond what is naturally there, something I went out of my way to add. Now the only things that I truly only rely on my innate abilities for are the intention and knowledge aspects of magic.


    Now that I think about it, maybe I can offload those as well? Intention is more than just wanting something, it is also visualization, how well you can picture something happening, something I¡¯ve always been mediocre at. And knowledge is pretty straightforward, the more you understand something the easier it is to do stuff with it. I feel like I might be able to get my trees to assist in both of those, I¡¯m not entirely sure how but I feel like it¡¯s possible, though maybe not easy.


    Other than that I spent my free time relaxing with everyone. They were all very concerned about me and their constant questions about my health, while touching, got a bit annoying. Yes I got kidnapped, yes there was nothing you could do about it, and yes I got beat and injured. Can we please stop reminding me every minute.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 186

    Progress on refining my connection to my forest is slowing down, which is what I expected. It will be about a day or two before it slows down to the point of being pointless to continue. There is only so much mana I can get through this method, and I¡¯m already getting most of it. Maybe once my forest is much bigger I will return to this task and get more out of it.


    Someone finally managed to get through the magic barrier. It took several of the scholars working together about an hour to get through. Another hour after that and the barrier was taken down entirely. Something interesting to note is that the corpses of the people that kidnapped me are all gone, and the scholars dodged the subject when I brought it up. They seemed more than a little scared of me, good, they should be.


    Later a couple of them came to me and said that they would be more cooperative. They claimed that after looking over the information they are getting from studying my rather unique situation that it was worth more than enough to offer their technical support. They said that they were incapable of getting into any fights on my behalf. I pointed out that their vows don¡¯t prevent them from defending their home, and that since they are living here the forest is their home. They didn¡¯t respond to that. I left after telling them that I look forward to future cooperation.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Other than that I spent most of my downtime listening to my dad tell stories. It started when I asked him if he¡¯s ever been kidnapped. The answer is yes, a lot, by all kinds of people. Apparently, he is good at getting people to want to not kill him, which I completely believe, so instead of getting executed when he got captured he got imprisoned. From there he usually escapes, occasionally he gets broken out by his companions or someone that wants him to do something for them, to which my dad usually obliged. Though one memorable time he was sold as a slave to a young noble lady, he refused to say exactly what it is he had to do as her slave, but I have a pretty good idea.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 187

    I don¡¯t think I¡¯m going to get much more out of refining my connection to my grove after today, at least not without more time and effort than it would be worth. I ended up stopping at around noon. I spent the rest of the day after that refining Portweed.


    I offered to improve the weapons and armor that Par has. They are still using the stuff I made them before, and I can easily make better stuff now that I have more plants to work with. I already have a couple of ideas for how I can improve them. I really want to use Portweed in many of the designs. I can see ways to make a combination of Ergen, Flore, and Whitefoot incredibly useful. Singing grass is always useful in stealth, but maybe I can use it to attract attention to particular people as well. Blastbark wouldn¡¯t be too useful in armor, but I could think of a couple of weapons that I could make with it. Actually, I might be able to use blastbark in some armor. Mitrhrilwood is an obvious one to include, and Pipeweed is always useful for making things a bit more efficient.


    I¡¯m getting more excited for this than I thought I would. I need to do a couple things before I actually make anything first. I need to find out what they actually need, I need to perfect the relevant plants, and I need to rely on Tiddol¡¯s much greater experience with this type of thing. It is very close to what she did back when she was a diver. She mostly focuses on alchemy recently, but pretty much all of her stories involve her using some weapon or other creation that she made. Though recently she has been messing around quite a bit with clockwork, I wonder how that¡¯s coming along. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    I¡¯m finding it easier and easier to create new Ents. Cutting off a piece of my soul to a new soul to be born into an Ent isn¡¯t as punishing for me anymore, which can only mean that I have more soul to go around. From what I was told before this will make me slightly better at everything, but not enough to really make a difference anywhere. The real benefit is in my improved ability to make Ents, or any other creatures for that matter.


    Azrezel has made quite a bit of progress in creating his undead hivemind. At this point, the connection is efficient enough that one reasonably intelligent undead can maintain it for roughly one hundred undead, which is about as efficient as can be expected. Now Azrezel is working on making the undead themselves more intelligent with flesh manipulation, though he hasn¡¯t had much progress there. I¡¯ll probably take a bit of time out of every day to help out there, because it is something I am curious about myself, and because healing is better at it than necromancy. Though if I was a necromancer I would have to worry about the pain part of flesh manipulation, because it would render the person incapable of feeling pain, among other things. Of course, I also wouldn¡¯t be able to heal people, and the rest of necromancy just isn¡¯t that interesting to me.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 188

    Today I finished refining Portweed and almost finished refining Ergen. It was surprising just how much faster I am able to refine plants after adding the mental prowess of all of my trees on top of my own. I will be done refining the plants I need for this next project by tomorrow. It doesn¡¯t hurt that Blastbark is incredibly simple and that I have already refined pretty much all of the other ones as far as I am currently capable of. I might need to start figuring out a way to easily refine them further soon, but I don¡¯t that will be necessary quite yet.


    Along with Tiddol, I talked to the people in charge of arms and armor for Par¡¯s military today to figure out what kinds of gear they need. Together the two of us started brainstorming exactly what I would be creating. We bounced around a lot of ideas and we are going to start prototyping tomorrow after I finish refining the last two plants. Stolen novel; please report.


    It¡¯s fun to work with Tiddol like this. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever actually seen her creative process in person before, so this whole thing should be enlightening. Nothing has exploded yet, and if her stories are anything to go by I will be disappointed if nothing explodes before the end.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. Azrezel and I are struggling to figure out how to make undead less stupid and haven¡¯t made much progress there quite yet. We¡¯ll figure it out eventually.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 189

    Today I finished refining Ergen, started and finished refining Flore, and refined Blastbark completely for good measure. It helps that that last one was incredibly simple. I might need other plants for this project, but these are the last of the plants that I didn¡¯t have refined as far as I could that I think I am going to need.


    The guy that handles gear said that they needed things to help them get around walls more than anything else. Well, either around or through. Doesn¡¯t matter how many soldiers you have if none of them can get over the wall. So that is what we worked on prototyping today.


    My first idea was to maybe use Portweed to teleport through the wall. What I did was I a combination of Astrie, Portweed, and Pipeweed twisted them together to make a short range teleportation device. The Pipeweed was to make the whole thing more efficient by helping mana flow through the whole thing better, while the Astrie was used to help direct things. It¡¯s something anyone can use, if they have the mana to use it. That last part is a bit of an issue, teleportation takes a lot of mana, more than the common soldier has access to. It is a solvable issue, but it will take more time and effort to make usable. This idea is a maybe.


    Tiddol suggested that we see about blowing a whole in the wall. She then made a bomb out of Astrie and Blastbark and told me to replicate it. I had never even considered trying to replicate alchemical compounds before, but there is no reason why I couldn¡¯t as long as all the ingredients are plant based. So I did it, though not very well. That is no surprise, doing that kind of thing is fundamentally different from the way I usually combine plants, but it is still just combing plants. I managed to figure it out quickly. I am now reasonably confident in my ability to mimic alchemical compounds, assuming I have a sample and it is only plant based of course. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Anyway, after confirming an easy supply of explosives Tiddol described what she wanted me to make. She wanted me to make something that would attach to a wall and then direct an explosion at that wall. Which is something I can definitely do, I didn¡¯t need the alchemical explosives for it, still useful to know I can do that though.


    What I ended up doing was taking some Blastbark to create an explosion, Mithrilwood to force the explosion in a certain direction, Astrie to control and regulate everything, and Pipeweed to help mana flow and improve efficiency. It works, though it does have some issue. The obvious ones like it not exploding enough and it getting damaged during use are there, and can be fixed with a bit of refinement, but it also can only be controlled by a plant manipulator. They don¡¯t even have to be very good at it, they just have to have some level of skill.


    That is about all we had time for today, but I will have more time to work tomorrow. I might need to learn a bit about alchemy from Tiddol so that I can properly mimic her creations.


    Azrezel made a minor breakthrough today towards making intelligent undead. He modified an undead¡¯s brain in a way that didn¡¯t immediately make the poor creature have violent seizures. It wasn¡¯t really any smarter, but it wasn¡¯t lying on the ground and twitching, or at least not any more than normal. Of course we don¡¯t use Azrezel¡¯s personal undead for this, the ones he animated with patience and care to be as good as his skills allow, he is using a more quick and dirty method to animate our test subjects. We have gone through an unfortunate number of corpses like this, so it is nice to finally get one that wasn¡¯t a complete failure. After one failure the body is useless, so luckily there is an ample supply of corpses.


    Other than that not much happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 190

    Today I spent most of my time making prototypes of various pieces of gear with Tiddol. Today we mostly focused on weapons.


    The first thing I made was an incredibly sharp and incredibly durable sword made almost entirely out of Mithrilwood, compared to some of the other things we made today it wasn¡¯t very good, but it was still useful as a baseline. Anything that wasn¡¯t better than it in at least one way was thrown out unceremoniously.


    The second thing we made incorporated some Dead Tulip and some Drowsy Clover into the mix to cause a debilitating effect on anyone struck by it. I made a version that had me combining the two plants the traditional way and one where I combined the plants alchemically. The alchemical one produced a thick ooze that would seep out of the edge of the blade in small amounts, while the traditional one worked its magic directly on the victim. The alchemical one was more potent while the traditional one was more steady and fast acting, and both of them used roughly the same amount of mana. The alchemical one not only takes a couple moments to properly kick in, but it wouldn¡¯t always affect the victim properly, but it lasts a lot longer and the effects are more intense. I¡¯m not really sure which one would be more valuable in a fight, mostly because combat is not my thing. On arrows though, the alchemical one is much better. It can be designed to use up mana lot faster than the traditional one, mana that would come from the person the arrow is sticking out of, and the effect of the ooze builds up a lot easier than the effect of the traditional one.


    The next thing was a result of a misunderstanding on the nature of one of my plants by Tiddol. She told me to make a blade that vibrates really fast, well she used a lot more detail than that but most of the detail simply was not helpful due to her thinking that Singing Grass affected wind and not sound, but the core idea worked great. A blade made out of solid Singing Grass is useless, it breaks way too easily, but making the cutting edge of the blade out of Singing Grass is a different story. Yeah, the blade doesn¡¯t stand up to much of a beating but using a bit of Spellwood, which I hadn¡¯t found a use for until now, I was able to set it up so the whole blade would maintain itself with a bit of mana. The vibration of the edge somehow lets it cut through things a lot better than it otherwise would, and I have no idea why. Tiddol isn¡¯t sure either, but apparently, she met a wind mage that specializes in doing just that with blades made out of vibrating wind. While experimenting with this one I did accidentally cut my arm off with it, luckily it was my wooden arm but still. It justifies my fears from when I first tried making swords with my magic. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Another one we made incorporated Pipeweed to leach mana from someone hit with the blade. I wasn¡¯t able to get the mana to do anything other than leave the person affected, and it doesn¡¯t remove mana fast enough for anything short of an arrow stuck in the target to be useful, but in that situation it could drain my entire mana pool four times over in a minute, assuming I am not regenerating mana at the time.


    Another noteworthy one was when I tried to use Portweed in a blade, but that one will require tons of effort to get right.


    These were just the best ones we experimented with today, or at least the ones with the most potential. All of them will require a lot more effort to become viable but we are just trying to figure out what might work and what we should focus on when we stop prototyping.


    I know I said it before, but working with Tiddol like this is really fun. She has a kind of experience that I can¡¯t even comprehend and a kind of creativity for instruments of death that I can¡¯t compare to. I kinda think she would have made better use of my powers than I have, at least in the purely creative sense. Of course if she had my powers she never would have gotten a chance to gain that kind of experience, kinda hard to travel the world as a diver when you are stuck in a forest, even worse if there are other forest sprite, nymphs, or dryads in the area because then you don¡¯t even get the benefit of potentially ridiculous amounts of mana because you have to share.


    Other than that I spent some more time with Azrezel working on his project with him. We had a small amount of success, but nothing particularly noteworthy.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 191

    Today Tiddol and I focused on armor. Just like yesterday, everything we made today will require quite a bit of effort to get to the point that the average soldier can make use of it.


    The first thing I made was an armor that teleports the wearer at will. Other than the Portweed there wasn¡¯t anything fancy in this one, just the standard Mithrilwood, Astrie, Pipeweed, and of course Portweed. The drawback of this is exactly what I expected, it is prohibitively expensive to actually teleport, but I know I can dramatically cut that down by refining it and using Astrie to narrow the scope of the armor. Maybe something that will teleport you a short distance when you are in danger? Maybe.


    The next noteworthy item was bright, flashy, and loud. Using Glovine and Singing Grass to make a lot of noise and light respectively. The point was to attract attention to the person using it, and away from other things. According to Tiddol at least, a good distraction makes for great stealth.


    If the last one forced you to look at it, this next one forces you to look away. Basically, I just used Glovine to make the armor as bright as possible, while adding something to filter out that light into a visor. It is so bright that it hurts to look at, and can even damage the eyes of people that look for too long. Downside is that it tends to get a bit hot inside the armor. I don¡¯t know why but I really want to put wings on this one, it will take a bit of work but I think I can make it work. It would be much better if I had a plant relating to air for that one though. Maybe I have enough money to buy one, or I could take some time to make one. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    The next one was the opposite of the previous two. Singing Grass to make it completely silent and Glovine to make it hard to see, though I need to put more effort into that last part in order to make it actually useful. Making someone invisible without also attracting attention to them from some very obvious distortions in the air is surprisingly difficult.


    Another piece of armor used Blastbark and Mithrilwood to create an explosion that doesn¡¯t affect the person in the armor. It wasn¡¯t very effective, but I think I it has potential.


    The last really noteworthy piece of armor we made today was a kind of life-saving armor. It stores an alchemical combination of Astrie, Whitefoot, Ergen, and Flore that is injected into the wearer when they are injured. The main benefit from using an alchemical combination over a traditional one is that you can front-load the mana cost and benefit from it later, so you won¡¯t be using mana on keeping yourself fighting when you need that mana the most. Of course, it is also horribly inefficient and has several side effects caused by an unrefined combination of the relevant plants.


    The last thing I made wasn¡¯t really armor by any definition of the word, but I thought it up today really wanted to make it. It was a combination of Pipeweed, Blastbark, Astrie, and Portweed. It teleports explosions. It doesn¡¯t really control the best, but I can fix that with some work.


    I spent my downtime with Azrezel again. Thanks to a bit of Fate I made a pretty big breakthrough in my own understanding of how the brain works. Nothing came of that immediately today, but it will make things easier in the future. I should also probably mention that I am taking advantage of this to further absorb the knowledge I gained from Origin about healing, though most of what I have gained there has been mostly useless for this project.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 192

    Today was the last day of prototyping. Tomorrow we demonstrate the gear to the people that are in charge of that stuff and see which ones they think will be the most useful.


    One item I created today was a kind of helmet that let two people with twined helmets communicate telepathically. It used Lace, Astrie, and Pipeweed, so nothing unexpected. Its range isn¡¯t very good, and it uses up too much mana to be useful for long periods of time, but I think I can fix both of those issues.


    I made a kind of tiara made using Spellwood that causes thick vines to grow out of it and wrap up the person wearing it, rooting them to the spot but also protecting them while letting their arms move freely. I¡¯m not sure how useful this one would be.


    The next one I made was inspired by the previous one. Basically, it uses a combination of Spellwood, Mithrilwood, Astrie, and Pipeweed to quickly form a wall of twisting thorny vines. The biggest issue with this one is mana. It doesn¡¯t cost a lot of mana, but it does require constant physical contact from the person activating it in order for it to work. I imagine someone skilled with external mana control could get around that, but most people aren¡¯t skilled enough to do that without massive amounts of waste. As far as I know, the only way around this would be a gemstone, which isn¡¯t something I can make. Or is it? Mana berries fulfill a similar function, though they are horribly inefficient. That inefficiency won¡¯t matter quite as much if they are able to be prepared beforehand. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    The last really noteworthy thing we made today spread tons of Dead Tulip pollen over vast areas. The idea was to put everyone to sleep before you attacked them. The most glaring flaw with this one is a lack of directional control, but I can think of a couple ways to fix that.


    As for the project, I am working on with Azrezel, progress is steady.


    Other than that I spent some time hanging out with my dad. This time I was the storyteller, telling him about my life since starting this forest, back when it was just a single tree I was desperately feeding in order to preserve my life. It was a nice change of pace. I think listening to him tell stories has made me better at it in turn.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 193

    Today Tiddol and I presented our creations to the people that are in charge of that stuff. They approved of most of them, but there were a couple that would just be useless outside of extreme edge cases and so would be a waste of time. The most noteworthy of these is the one that causes the user to be wrapped up in vines.


    Tiddol got to work refining the alchemical solutions. I was constantly providing her the freshest and highest quality stuff I possibly could, to the point of using excess mana to make it even higher quality than it normally is. Using the best possible quality ingredients to refine the potions means she is making rapid progress. She started learning alchemy a little over a year ago, but thanks to her natural talent and me supplying her basically whatever ingredient she could need she has made rapid progress, even without a teacher.


    I spent the day refining the plants I didn¡¯t expect to need for this project, and I perfected the few that I hadn''t already, with the exception of Spellwood. Spellwood is much more complicated than any of the others that I hadn¡¯t yet perfected and would take at least three days to perfect, and it isn¡¯t really necessary.


    Tomorrow I will work on refining the gear that won¡¯t take much to perfect, which is most of them. After I have something perfected it doesn¡¯t take much mental effort to mass produce it, but it does take quite a bit of mana, so the opposite of what it takes to refine it. It makes it easy for me because it allows me to mass produce the ones I finish while refining others.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    After I am done with the ones that won¡¯t require much effort I have to work on the ones that will require quite a bit of effort, mostly the ones that use Portweed. Teleportation is seriously complicated, I know how to use plants well, I don¡¯t know how to use teleportation well. I never would have been able to make Portweed on my own, or at least not without an amount of work I wouldn¡¯t have been willing to put into it, or maybe some outside help.


    Speaking of, I do have enough credits with the terminal to maybe buy a new plant, the question is which one? I know I could definitely make new plant using what I already have, but that is pretty boring compared to other things I could be doing instead, so I would rather just buy it. There was one plant that supposedly manipulates time, and I really wanted it, but it would take about a hundred years for me to actually afford it with how much I make from selling the method of creating Ents, plus that is something dungeons are able to do anyway after it gets old enough.


    Maybe I should get something relating to water? Probably not fire as it wouldn¡¯t take much effort to turn Blastbark into something related to fire, but maybe cold or ice? Maybe I could get one that is less general, not so much a concept it control but rather a specific thing it does. There are many of those, but which one to pick? I want all of them, but I only have the money for one, maybe two. I¡¯ll think about it, maybe I will come to a decision by tomorrow?


    Azrezel figured out a way to effectively double the mental power of his undead today, of course, the undead quickly dies for no currently known reason. Seriously, it¡¯s like its soul just spontaneously decides to leave the body, I can¡¯t find a good reason for it to die and nothing either of us has done has slowed it down. The good news is that the body is still suitable for necromancy after it dies from that, but the problem doesn¡¯t go away.


    Other than that not a lot of note happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 194

    Refining the easily perfected stuff will take at most three days, including today.


    The troll, Trovich I think his name was, that was experimenting with the Solar Energy I provided came to talk to me today. They wanted to thank me for basically giving them a way to use magic, something they never would have been able to do otherwise. The got to the point where their pool of Solar Energy was large enough to produce more Solar Energy, so as long as they never use too much of it they will never run out. It seems that trolls are also naturally talented at using Solar Energy too, as this guy is much better at it than I am, despite me having significantly more access to the stuff. Of course, he has also put a lot more effort into it, but without natural talent, he wouldn¡¯t have gotten that far that fast. When I told him as much he agreed with me, and considering the fact that his chosen field of study, evolution, has a lot to do with natural talent that means something.


    Trovich is also getting close to evolving. One big show of power or me triggering it will set it off. and I absolutely have to watch it happen, or, ideally, shape it. So naturally, I tried to steer the conversation in that direction. He was very impressed with my knowledge of the actual mechanics of evolution. That is no surprise, he might know evolution on an academic level, but I know and understand how it works on a level he couldn¡¯t possibly understand. Manipulating your own evolution grants you several insights into how the whole thing works. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Eventually, I managed to convince Trovich to let me manipulate his evolution, but not without a couple conditions. For one I have to keep him awake during the process, which is easy enough for me. Plus he wants some level of control over the results. He won¡¯t try to directly manipulate it, I made it clear to him that he could easily kill himself if he tried, I don¡¯t think the world can handle more than one person influencing an evolution at a time, but he does want to be better at a couple things. There is the obvious like Solar Energy manipulation, but also a couple things I wouldn¡¯t have expected, like improved bladder capacity. You would think that a water troll wouldn¡¯t have any issue there, but I guess not.


    I will take a bit of time out of tomorrow for him to evolve, that got a laugh out of him. Scheduling an evolution is apparently a rather absurd notion.


    Other than that Azrezel and I have made no progress towards figuring out what was going on with the undead dying so quickly, though we have managed to improve their lifespan by a couple seconds.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 195

    Today was a busy day. The primary focus was on refining the various bits of gear, but between working with Azrezel and helping Trovich evolve I only managed to work on that for about half of the day. So about two and a half more days before I finish the easily refined stuff.


    Early in the day I helped Trovich evolve. After making sure I wouldn¡¯t be disturbed I did the necessary preparations to keep him awake during this process. That mostly consisted of something I made using Drowsy Clover, Ergen, Astrie, Dead Tulip, and Pipeweed, it could keep a corpse awake. Aside from a small amount of concentration on the plants that are supposed to keep him awake my entire mental prowess was focused on Trovich, I even stopped pouring excess mana into growing my forest during this time.


    I didn¡¯t expect any issues, but it was also the first time I was evolving something that wasn¡¯t myself and wasn¡¯t plant based so I went overkill with the precautions. Luckily everything more or less went off without a hitch, the only hang up was that he started to thrash about pretty early on so I used the plants to paralyze him. He wasn¡¯t in pain or anything, I think it was caused by his brain being changed.


    My first revelation came almost immediately after I started. I took some Solar Energy and used it to trigger the world to evolve him, a show of power of a sort. Not his though, mine. I was shocked when his body was then flooded with Solar Energy on a scale I had never even thought was possible outside of the suns, and the weird part is that it came from underground, like it always does with mana, and not from the suns. It makes sense in retrospect, the body was made out of Solar Energy to begin with and is completely immune to mana, of course it would be evolved with Solar Energy.


    And it did nothing. The all-powerful hand of the world showed up at my request and waited for me to direct it, like it always does. And so I did. I fell into a sort of trance as I worked. In the end, it wasn¡¯t very different from what usually happens when I evolve one of my plants. And so I was able to focus a lot more on what was actually happening, I already had the routine of evolving something down.


    Really it isn¡¯t all that different until you get down to the nitty gritty of what is going on. Something I am disappointed in myself for not doing to this level sooner. The level of skill and control the world has over Solar Energy is astounding. At the time I was in a sort of trance just trying to learn as much as I possibly could from watching what was going on in front of me, but now it feels overwhelming. Like a child being put in charge of a massive army or being granted supreme magical powers. And yet the world expects me to continue to create new things, because it is somehow incapable of that. If I hadn''t already proven that I am capable of that I would refuse this power, thinking that there is no way I could use it properly. But I wasn¡¯t granted it by some unknowable entity, I reached out and grabbed it with my own hands. Accidentally, yes, but I still earned it. And that idea, that I somehow earned the right to use the hand of the world like this is possibly even more overwhelming. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Watching the small scale of what was happening helped me learn quite a bit. I learned quite a bit about how to manipulate Solar Energy, and that will be very useful, but the real benefit is something else.


    Every time you evolve you get better at everything you are capable of doing, if you have wings you will get better at flying but if you don¡¯t you won¡¯t. With mana that is done two ways, the first is by directly improving everything about your physical body, mostly by changing things in subtle and not so subtle ways to make it better. Ultimately this part doesn¡¯t have quite as much of an effect as the second part, which is where the mana being used to evolve you forms into complex spells that directly improves your body in much the same way that training causes the same to happen, only much faster. This is the same stuff that I move around with Astrie when I make someone stronger at the cost of being dumber, or other things like that. However, that second part can¡¯t happen with Solar Energy, it simply isn¡¯t stable in the same way that mana is and would be rapidly destroyed, giving you maybe a week of improved ability if you are lucky.


    Instead, it modifies, refines, and reinforces the body in a way that mana is simply incapable of, as it necessitates the destruction of the Solar Energy to do. Nothing I know of can destroy mana, while Solar Energy just seems to create and destroy itself.


    I think I can do this outside of evolution, if I can watch the same process happen to myself that is. This puts evolving myself much higher up on the priorities list, which also puts fully digesting the knowledge about healing I gained from Origin slightly higher than that, I still want to finish that before I make myself evolve.


    I¡¯m not sure what exactly the possibilities are there, but I know there are possibilities. I¡¯ll figure that out once I can actually make use of it.


    Other than that progress was infuriatingly slow with figuring out how to keep the smarter undead alive, but at least it isn¡¯t a standstill.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 196

    Today I made steady progress towards refining the various pieces of gear. It will be about a day and a half before I start working on the difficult stuff.


    I have already produced enough of many of the things I already have to keep Par¡¯s men equipped for quite a while. They seem satisfied with their new gear.


    We don¡¯t really have a name for Trovich¡¯s new species, but we do know a bit about his capabilities. He is inherently talented at Solar Energy, much more so than he was before. He is all around better at everything, which is standard. He has gained some level of control over water, though he has to infuse Solar Energy into it first. I think his lack of ability there is entirely a result of his lack of practice, not his lack of talent. His Solar Energy pool has increased in size by an order of magnitude, and the overall structure of it seems to improve the rate at which he produces more Solar Energy. I¡¯m not sure if he would produce Solar Energy if he didn¡¯t have any in his pool, but it isn¡¯t impossible, his body is nearly entirely formed out of Solar Energy after all.


    And the most interesting feature of his body, he can actively use Solar Energy to improve his body. I must have been thinking of that a lot more than I thought while I was making his body, it seems like the idea stuck. It isn¡¯t very fast or efficient, even with my less than stellar skills with Solar Energy I can tell that almost all of it is being wasted in the process, and the benefits from an entire day of work could only be called marginal at best. And the worst part is that due to the fundamental differences between our bodies there is no way I could possibly learn how to do it from observing him, at least not without much more work than it would take to evolve myself and watch a much better, much more custom-tailored example. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I feel like this might be the solution to my current undead problem, or at least part of a solution. Between improving the body with Solar Energy and flesh manipulation I think Azrezel and I can do it. In the meantime, we will just keep working on it.


    I should also mention that I am now the mother of Trovich¡¯s species, and I get all of the benefits that come with it. Most notably the fact that Trovich will think the best of me in any situation.


    Speaking of my current undead problem I figured out a way to make the undead last much longer. Basically, I flooded the brain with the stuff that makes it feel good, and as long as I continued doing that they stayed alive, but it died the moment I stopped. Tomorrow I am going to try and figure out a way to cause that permanently.


    Other than that I spent some time with my dad today. We told stories and played games, it was a fun time.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 197

    Tomorrow I will move on to refining the pieces of gear that use Portweed. I have no idea if I will even be able to get all of them to the point that they actually work, at least not with my current knowledge of teleportation.


    I decide on which plant I wanted to buy today. I saw something called Grey Iris, after the eye-like appearance of its flowers. It has some necromantic properties, so I figured I should be able to use that as a loophole to get around the whole ¡®healers can¡¯t do necromancy¡¯ thing. I couldn¡¯t. Trying gave me a headache, trying more caused me to black out. It caused actual, serious, widespread damage to my body. Luckily it only has that effect when I use it for straight up necromancy, I can do plenty of other things with it no issues. I can use it to drain something from other creatures, I have no idea what that something is quite yet, it will require more observation, but the side effects are markedly similar to what happens when I use up too much of my soul creating Ents. This does cause me some damage, but I feel like I can fix that by refining the plant, and the damage is minimal enough to be irrelevant. I can also use it to make other things, like maybe an Ent?


    Overall it was a waste. I¡¯m sure I will eventually find a good use for it, but as of now I have better things to do than figure out what those uses are. Unfortunately, it was expensive, I don¡¯t think I will be able to afford another plant anytime soon.


    If my mana production were to become stagnant right now I would be able to reach Pearlhold in about two weeks, and that is without focusing on growing in that direction. Of course, my mana production is growing, and it is growing faster and faster and for the foreseeable future will continue to do so. It will be a week to a week and a half before I can step into the great walls of Pearlhold, already I can see it in the distance. It wasn¡¯t all that long ago that it was a day¡¯s journey for the average person to get there.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    I think it is pretty ridiculous just how much mana I have. I¡¯m at the threshold where I couldn¡¯t possibly spend all of the mana I am getting, I¡¯m not quite sure whether or not I am passed that threshold quite yet. Either way, I have never met another creature with this much access to mana, even those true immortals that passed by a while ago didn¡¯t have quite this much production. Of course, they also had several orders of magnitude more mana storage than me, and the same for their skills using said mana. But to be fair my mana storage is only above average for a mage of my age, excluding the gemstones. Even including the gems, I have a mana storage a bit below an average mage twice my age, hardly anything to brag about.


    I could get a couple more gems, but from what I have heard having too many gems makes it progressively harder to use the gems. I am not at the point where that is even noticeable yet, but it will limit my mana storage. The problem is I don¡¯t know any other way to improve my mana storage. It increases naturally as I age, but that is too slow. I need to figure out a way to improve my natural storage capacity, I feel like there is an answer relating to my dungeon core, but I have no idea what that could be. Maybe I could use Solar Energy to do that? Probably not, mana and Solar Energy don¡¯t mix well.


    Other than that I figured out a crude way to have a constant stream of the stuff that makes them feel good pouring into the brains of the undead. Hopefully, that will solve the problem.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 198

    Today I finished working on the simple pieces of gear and started working on the stuff that uses Portweed.


    I managed to get one piece of teleportation gear to the point that anyone could use it. It was the one that teleports you away when you are in danger. Basically what I had to do was restrict it a ton with Astrie, and then add some of the mana berry plant so that it could actually store enough mana to be used about three times before it has to draw on the mana pool. The way it works is it figures out when you are in danger, using things like your mental state and a limited sense of what was going on around you and then teleports you. The user gets no say in anything it does, they can¡¯t determine direction, they can¡¯t determine when it will teleport, and they can¡¯t turn it off without prying the thing out of their skin. I took it from being a piece of armor to being closer to a scale that you attach to your skin, it simply didn¡¯t make good armor.


    Tiddol has finished perfecting all of the alchemical combinations we needed for this project. There was quite a few of them, and I can see many of them coming in handy in the future. A surprising number of them incorporated Lace into the mix, mostly the ones involving Ergen and Flore. It somehow allows them to be more effective at lower doses, making it less dangerous, or something like that. I¡¯m not really sure how that all works, but it does.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    My dad¡¯s old partner, the one they went to visit recently, sent word that he is on his way here. He should be here in a week or two. That should be interesting if nothing else.


    Other than that I worked with Azrezel on the undead, like usual. The ones I modified to have feel-good stuff constantly pumped into their heads are all dead. Examining the bodies tells me that their brains were basically destroyed as a result. I think this route is a dead end, we could probably get it working but it would be cumbersome and take too much mana to be worth it. And Azrezel doesn¡¯t have the kind of mana that I do. So we are going to have to figure out some other way to fix this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 199

    Today I made progress on refining the teleportation equipment. I had to throw a couple of them out because there was no way I could get them to do what I wanted and make them usable by the average soldier, and none of them that I tossed were useful enough on their own to warrant being used by specialists.


    I got sick today. It was my own fault, I was working on the undead when a spell I casted backfired, which happens sometimes. I¡¯m not exactly skilled with flesh manipulation quite yet. This time I guess I was just unlucky and I ended up sick as a result. Luckily it isn¡¯t infectious and it shouldn¡¯t last more than a day, but until it leaves my system I will have a terrible headache. And there is nothing I can do about it. Disease just isn¡¯t something I understand very well, messing with it would probably just make it worse.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    I didn¡¯t really get much done with the undead today, Azrezel made a bit of progress but I had to stop early because of the whole getting sick thing.


    Other than that not a lot happened. I burned my Fate today, I¡¯m pretty sure it affected my ability to use Fate somehow, not entirely sure how.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 200

    I was feeling much better this morning, and by the time I finished breakfast the last of the disease had left my system.


    After cutting down all of the unreasonable pieces of equipment it will be three or four more days before I finish perfecting all of the equipment, and then half a day after that before I finish making all of the equipment. Then Par is marching with his soldiers. It¡¯s only a matter of time before we control every city in the area, then it should be easy to root out the people responsible for having me kidnapped. I need to remember to instruct Par to bring the leadership of all the cities to me alive. I wonder if I can use Lace to read minds? Might need to practice a bit.


    Azrezel has pretty much ditched the idea of using the undead that we have been working on for the last couple days, the ones that were dropping dead in moments. Progress has been too slow on that to be worth it. So instead we worked on making them smarter again, this time avoiding the issue of random death. We did manage to improve them today, but not to the level we had before.


    It¡¯s not like the work we put in to figure out how to keep them alive longer was a complete waste, we learned quite a bit about how the brain works in the process.


    I met with Tiddol¡¯s daughter Umi today. I don¡¯t really see her around very often so I took the time to talk with her when I saw her. She has blossomed into a pretty potent mage, with a focus on studying mana itself. She did try to experiment a bit with the Solar Energy I provided, but she found herself talentess with it, makes sense, she is a natural at controlling mana. Apparently she has spent most of her time between the library and the training fields, Parius refused to let either of his children be incapable of fighting. By all accounts she is a competent battle mage, especially against other mages. She has even evolved recently. It was into something called a Serilis, a creature with intense blue skin, a trio of horns jutting out of her skull, and some kind of gem in her forehead. From what she told me that gem is just that, an organic gemstone, only better in every way than a normal gemstone, except maybe capacity. Naturally that capacity improves as she uses it. Her species is talented at magic, not really any particular kind of magic, just magic in general. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    From what I have heard about her she is driven, intense, and brash. But she was nervous, a bit giddy, and was constantly blushing while we talked, which is a reaction I have grown use to recently.


    I made her a necklace to help her out in her training. It is designed to improve her ability to perceive mana and her ability to control mana, at the cost of her sense of direction. I also made another one at her request, one that completely cripples everything except what would be required to study and understand mana. Any further and she would be injured from using it, it isn¡¯t an exaggeration to say that she is completely paralyzed while using it. I hope it will accomplish what she wants it for, but I¡¯m kind of worried that she will accidentally starve while using it. I let Par know that he should probably check up on her about once a day to make sure she takes care of herself, and to tell him that she asked me for something that might distract her from that.


    Other than that I spent some time hanging out with Tiddol. Ever since her birthday, with a short break to help me, she has been working with some clockwork device. She must have been inspired by the gift she got.


    So far the device she¡¯s making is about the size of a newborn goblin, maybe a bit smaller. I have no idea what it is yet and all I¡¯ve gotten from Tiddol there is ¡®you¡¯ll see¡¯. I hope so, because I am completely stumped on what she might be making. Her not telling me is only making me more curious.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 201

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    <div>


    After today I am confident in saying that it will be two more days before I finish refining all of the gear. I¡¯m looking forward to that.


    Azrezel has had some luck today by making the brain of the undead bigger, much bigger. Previously we had tried this but were stopped by the skull, which would either have to be removed or expanded. Of course that would cause other issues that would need to be fixed, like the neck being too fragile to support the head, and the rest of the nervous system being overloaded by the new, bigger brain.


    On top of that it isn¡¯t a solution to the problem. What we want is a way to make the undead as a whole more intelligent, having all of them have massively expanded brains like this doesn¡¯t solve the issue. With this what we have are specialists whose sole purpose is to provide extra mental prowess, they are too fragile for anything else.


    That isn¡¯t to say it isn¡¯t effective, it is. Perhaps the extra mental prowess will help Azrezel come up with a better solution for the average undead. He ended up making ten of them today and the two of us worked on making them better in any way we could. We ended up brute forcing the supporting structures for their bodies. It makes them more or less useless at anything requiring movement, which is hardly an issue because their massive heads were already doing that.


    It¡¯s weird that healing and necromancy cooperate so well in this one situation, while in everything else they repel each other and interact viciously. Healing and necromancy are two very different tools that have very different intents, but when it comes to shaping flesh and molding bone they do basically the exact same thing, only necromancy is restricted to the dead and the undead.


    Now that I think about it, isn¡¯t necromancy the same thing as plant manipulation? The only real difference is that instead of manipulating plants necromancy manipulates the tree of evolution known as the undead. Every other difference is due to the way the undead and plants work, and not anything fundamental to either field of magic. And even that is superficial, with the proof being the Ents, life created out of something that was previously alive, which is just necromancy. I wonder if Azrezel would be able to make useful combinations of flesh and bone in the same way that I make things out of Astrie and other plants. Maybe we could find some dead creature with useful pieces that he might be able to grow, replicate, and change the same way I take plants and grown, replicate, and change them. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Yes, necromancy was originally an attempt to replicate the life creating powers of dungeons, but how far past that can we push it? From my understanding manipulating the undead under their control isn¡¯t something most necromancers even consider, much less attempt. The scholars have nothing that they could pull up easily, and the opinion of other dungeons towards necromancy stops at ¡®that¡¯s cute, their trying to be like us¡¯. As far as I know we would be pushing into unexplored parts of magic.


    Talking to Azrezel about this I think he is getting just as excited about this as I am.


    There is so much I want to do and so little time in the day to do it all. I¡¯m going to have to start tying up loose ends or I¡¯m going to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff I want to do. I need to finish digesting all of the rope of knowledge sitting in my head, I need to practice reading minds with Lace, I need to perfect all of my plants and then perfect them with Solar Energy, I need to evolve using Solar Energy, and I should go back through my diary to see if there is anything else I missed. And that is just the things that I can finish reasonably quickly. I should get started on that list once I am done with all the gear.


    Other than that I spent my time hanging out with Par. It is interesting seeing the difference between how the masses treat their Lord Parius the Magnificent, and how they treat me. The people treat both of us with respect, but the flavor of that respect is a bit different. Towards Par it is admiration, trust, and something else I can¡¯t quite place. While towards me it is something closer to reverence.


    Par told me that he wants me to help him evolve soon. He has been suppressing an evolution for quite a while as a show of power and he thinks he is on the verge of his ability to continue that. He has a week, two at best. Naturally I accepted and put it pretty high on my priority list. It shouldn¡¯t take more than an hour and he doesn¡¯t want to be awake during the process so it will be simple. I will do it once I am done finishing up all of the gear.


    I noticed something else today, people have started to refer to Azrezel as ¡®The Consort¡¯. I¡¯m assuming it has to do with him being my boyfriend, but it is still a bit weird.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 202

    I am almost done refining all of the gear, and I am mass producing them faster than I thought I would. I should be done with everything by tomorrow. Then I can move onto the next project.


    Tiddol is making rapid progress on her clockwork, thing. It¡¯s growing bigger much faster anyway, and it¡¯s not like the individual pieces are getting any bigger. Quite the opposite they are getting much smaller, to the point where she needs a bit of telekinetic magic to even put them where they need to be. It seems she¡¯s hit on some kind of inspiration.


    The actual pieces are mostly made out of plants a pair of Ents are producing for her, with a couple made of magical metals. It seems one of the Ents set up a sort of mind link, allowing them to communicate at the speed of thought. The result is that every time Tiddol reaches for a part it is right there in her hand. Convenient.


    It still just looks like a blob of gears to me, a distinctly larger blob of gears, yes, but a blob of gears nonetheless. It is too soon to determine to the purpose of it quite yet, but I am looking forward to it.


    While working on the undead we continued to refine the big-brained ones. It was actually a lot easier than we expected to improve them, it is still slow, but not nearly as slow. I say that but what we are actually doing is just making the brain as big as we can, it takes time to build it up and it takes time to reinforce the body so that it can support the brain. We aren¡¯t too concerned with the body itself, but we don¡¯t want it breaking cause that means the brain is probably going to hit the ground. We had it happen once, gore everywhere. It popped like a balloon. It was made worse by the incredibly thin skull, the body can¡¯t really support the weight of a skull thick enough to properly protect the brain.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Now that I think about it, why don¡¯t we remove the body entirely? It would make it much easier to work if we don¡¯t have to constantly worry about reinforcing the body. If I am thinking about it like I think about plant manipulation that would be the logical first step, remove everything that isn¡¯t contributing to my desired end result. Yeah, I think that is what we are going to do.


    Other than that I spent some time with my dad. According to Par his soldiers are remarkably well trained despite how little time they have had to actually be trained, which means that my father¡¯s rather cruel training method does exactly what it is supposed to. Is it really that cruel if it gets results? I mean the soldiers are objectively better off in pretty much every way. Their skills at self-healing are enough that the only way that they are going to die is if they run out of mana, and considering their rather high mana pools I don¡¯t think they will be too big of an issue unless they start needing to reform their entire bodies on repeat. And when the eventually retire there isn¡¯t much that could be a threat to them, or any family members or other loved ones of theirs, unless they somehow piss off someone powerful. At the point they are at random attacks simply wouldn¡¯t be a threat, anyone with real power doesn¡¯t need to rely on that kind of thing to get what they want. Basically, as long as they serve their time as soldiers for us and don¡¯t piss off anyone more powerful than themselves then they can do pretty much whatever they want once they retire. And pretty much all of them are either immortal or could easily become immortal if they wanted too, thanks to their skill in self-healing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 203

    Today I finished my current project. All the gear is refined and mass-produced in large enough quantities for Par¡¯s soldiers. They are going to take a week to train with some of the more esoteric stuff, like the teleportation gear, and then they are going to march. If all goes well I should have the first batch of people that might be responsible for my capture within a matter of weeks.


    Tomorrow I am going to evolve Par. After that, I am going to work on finishing digesting the knowledge I gained from my ancestor. Then I am going to finish perfecting all of my Plants with both Mana and with Solar Energy. After that, I will practice reading minds with Lace. I will probably evolve next, it depends on my confidence in my ability to trigger a Solar Energy evolution. I have no idea how long all of that will take, but all of it is important. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Before I could suggest it today Azrezel recommended that we just remove the bodies of the undead we were working on. His reasoning wasn¡¯t the same as my own but I obviously agreed with him wholeheartedly. After that, we made much faster progress at making the brain bigger, and we didn¡¯t have any accidents. Cleaning up gore is not fun for anyone involved.


    I spent my downtime hanging out with Azrezel, not working on anything just hanging out. It is nice to just curl up with him and relax. His skin is pretty cold, but it doesn¡¯t bother me. It¡¯s a tad frustrating that I always have to take the lead on more intimate things, but it isn¡¯t like it¡¯s his fault he needs a bit of healing for everything to work properly. Besides, it¡¯s fun to be able to have him wrapped around my finger anytime I want, as long as I don¡¯t go overboard of course.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 204

    Today I got to work on fully digesting my knowledge of healing. Well, it would be more accurate to say that I started working harder towards that goal. And I am making good progress, like ridiculously good progress. Of course, last time I put a dedicated effort into this project I hadn¡¯t yet fully connected my mind with my forest, and I certainly hadn¡¯t made my trees smarter. So I guess it makes sense that I am making rapid progress. It will be a matter of days before I finish.


    As the rope of knowledge in my head shrinks there is more space in my head for loose ideas to be pulled out of that rope, and my dramatically improved mental capabilities let me chew through those ideas incredibly fast, making it get faster, faster.


    Basically what I am doing is taking corpses and undead and practicing any sort of healing I might need to practice at that moment. Surgery was surprisingly useful here, as there are all sorts of things you can learn from cutting open a corpse, even if the act itself wouldn¡¯t be too useful for practical healing.


    I noticed today that my forest had surrounded Pearlhold, so naturally, I went to check out the city. Walking through the walls of the city it was weird to find that few people recognized me. I''m used to people looking at me with a sort of reverence when I walk down the street, it¡¯s odd to be ignored by most of the people around me. Not entirely unpleasant, but odd.


    The second thing I noticed about the city was that it was dirty, dark, and dingy. If you ignore the brilliant luster of the walls anyway. I feel kind of insulted by that, to be honest, I¡¯m not entirely sure why. Though if I had to guess I would say that this city is mine in two distinct ways, first Par captured it for us, and then I claimed it with my forest. It being dirty felt like a personal insult or a personal failure, and I¡¯m not entirely sure which.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    And so I told people to clean it up, and keep it clean. I could probably clean it all on my own rather quickly, but then it wouldn¡¯t stay clean, and I also think it¡¯s boring. But ignoring that last part if the people clean up the city themselves then they should be more willing to keep it that way, it was the result of their own labours after all, and I am not completely ignorant to the sway I have with my people.


    The third thing I noticed was that many of the people were unhealthy, and many were injured and damaged. Which isn¡¯t unusual in a city this big, there will always be people that are unhealthy, but with this much, there has to be some root cause, like maybe the place isn¡¯t clean enough? I don¡¯t know, I don¡¯t think being dirty can affect your health that significantly unless you yourself were incredibly dirty, at that point it can wear away your skin and possibly cause other problems. So maybe getting the place cleaned up will help, at the very least it can¡¯t hurt.


    Oh yeah, I heard that My dad¡¯s old companion will be showing up in a day or three, depending on traffic at the teleporters.


    As for refining the undead brains, progress was slowing down a bit, though we are still making good progress. We are reaching a limit to our ability to increase the size of the brain without it collapsing in on itself. We will need to figure out a way to fix that.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 205

    At the rate, I am currently going it will be three days before I finish digesting all of the knowledge I gained, and my prediction is almost always on the high side of things so I am going to say two days.


    Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I evolved Par yesterday. It was a routine and unremarkable experience, which is good because that means everything went exactly how it should have gone. The only really special thing about it was the amount of mana the world provided for me to work with, it was more than any other time I have evolved a creature, but not to a degree that it was surprising. As for what he evolved into, well it was basically what he was before, only better in every way and talented in the things he focuses on, so exactly what you would expect from an evolution. It doesn¡¯t have a name yet as I was the one to create the species, and I suck at coming up with names. I suck at that only slightly less than I suck at learning names.


    We have grown the brain as much as we possibly could without sacrificing the structure of the brain for more stability, which would be counterproductive. So we started experimenting with the structure, trying to figure out how to make it better instead of just sacrificing it for more volume. It¡¯s basically what we were doing before, only the effect of every change is much larger, and so much easier to judge. With this the testing phase of every tiny change is decreased dramatically, allowing us to make more changes faster. Of course, progress is still painfully slow, even more so now after we just had pretty rapid progress for once. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    If I am going to continue to think of this the same way I think of Plant Manipulation then the next step would be to twist what¡¯s left after cutting out all the useless stuff to my will. Azrezel and I have been focused on changing small parts of the structure of the brain, even when we were considering hardening them against collapse it was the small parts we were changing. Why are the big overarching structures the way they are? If it was a plant I wouldn¡¯t even think of them as being relevant.


    Origin, at least after they became more proficient at creating life, wouldn¡¯t create and continue to use something that was anything less than optimal. If you study healing the way I have then it is painfully obvious when a creature was not designed by either a dungeon or Origin, it¡¯s structure just doesn¡¯t work as well. Of course, what was optimal for Origin is not what¡¯s optimal for us. For one they had significantly less access to mana, they are physically incapable of handling this much mana without just dying. For another Origin was trying to do something very different from what Azrezel and I are doing, different goals, different restrictions, and more. So we should try fundamentally changing the structure in a way we hadn¡¯t considered before, there is no reason I can think of that a brain has to be exactly the way it is for it to work the best.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 206

    I think I will be able to finish off my current project by tomorrow, just barely.


    Par and his soldiers left today. They are going to try and conquer the nearest city state, and I am almost certain they will succeed. If it wasn¡¯t for my capture they would have won already.


    My dad¡¯s old partner, whose name I have yet to learn, teleported into Pearlhold today. Now they are recovering from a bad case of teleportation sickness and have decided to sleep it off. Unfortunately, there isn¡¯t much I can do to fix teleportation sickness as it isn¡¯t really physiological.


    Azrezel and I have started changing the structure of the brains. Like everything else with this project, we have no idea what we are doing. This is so far outside of either of our normal everyday scope of practice that very little of what we know is relevant here. That isn¡¯t to say we didn¡¯t make progress, we did, but we have no idea why we made the progress that we did. It is easy to figure out if something is an improvement, but there is no way we could figure out why. And it is frustrating, because if we could figure out why something is an improvement then we could make progress so much faster. It¡¯s like my first time every manipulating plants under my mother¡¯s guidance all over again, only a lot harder because there is no one that understands this better than the two of us, possibly anywhere. There is no one we can ask for help.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Pearlhold is cleaner now, a lot cleaner. There is no more trash in the street, the outside of people¡¯s homes are clean, I don¡¯t care so much about the insides, and people are visibly more confident walking down the street, though overall health hasn¡¯t improved much.


    Other than that I spent most of my free time hanging out with Tiddol. Her project is starting to take shape. It has grown a pair of arms and legs at least. When I asked if she was trying to make a clockwork person she said ¡®about time you guessed it¡¯. When I asked about what inspired her she said she was jealous of me being able to make new species left and right and wanted to try making something herself. I¡¯m not really sure what to make of that, but if there is anywhere in the world that she could pull that off it would be right here, in my forest, under the watchful eye of the hand of the world. I wish her luck in her endeavor.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 207

    It is finally done, I have completely absorbed all of the knowledge I gained from Origin. It feels almost, empty, now that it¡¯s gone. It¡¯s sad, almost.


    Now I move onto other projects.


    My dad¡¯s old partner, whose name I still haven¡¯t learned, met with me today. He¡¯s an older man, It¡¯s rare that you see someone with a grey beard unless they either do not want immortality or are going for a certain look. Based on other things, I would guess the latter.


    He wears what looks like a really fancy silk bathrobe, obviously magical in ways I have no way of knowing. He carries no obvious weapons, though from what little I know about combat I am sure he could kill me in a hundred different ways regardless. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    He has a presence about him, not quite like the scholars but more like a teacher, like someone who knows their own craft so well as to render everything irrelevant. And based on the fact that he managed to punch a hole in a training dummy from across the field means that there is probably some truth to that.


    He was very curious about me, and especially about my mother. I humored him both because he is an old friend of my fathers and the fact that even I can tell he¡¯s good at what he does means that he is much better than I can imagine. Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t get much of a chance to ask him anything.


    Other than that progress with the undead brain creatures is going well. We have found approximately twelve changes that provide positive results, and nearly five hundred that don¡¯t. Of course, of those twelve changes, three of them have been responsible for a quarter of our progress so far, all of our progress, since the start of this project. This was definitely the right path to take.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 208

    Today I tried reading minds with Lace, and it was surprisingly intuitive. I guess studying the brain has helped me in at least one way. By the lunchtime, I was able to pull up memories with perfect clarity as far back as the person is capable of remembering, with only a little discomfort from the person whose mind I am reading. By the end of the day, I was even able to edit memories with minimal risk of failure.


    I feel like I can use this to make refining the brains of the undead much easier, though not the massive twisted ones we are currently working on. Lace isn¡¯t capable of interacting with them anymore, though I could fix that with about a day¡¯s worth of work. Using Lace I might be able to figure out what every part of the brain and nervous system actually does. I¡¯ll suggest that once our progress slows down again.


    Speaking of the undead, the ones we¡¯ve been working on have started getting so tall that they are falling over. I fixed that by doing two things, first I had some plants compact and level the ground around where we have them, then we caused spikes of bone to grow into the compacted ground. I think it would be able to survive a major storm without falling over. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    As for progress, we made a bunch of progress today, more than we did yesterday.


    I spent my free time with Tiddol today. Her project will be completed within the next three days. She told me that she was worried about actually bringing it to life. Unlike Azrezel and myself she has no idea whatsoever about what it takes to create life, so in the case that she finishes the clockwork man and it doesn¡¯t automatically come to life she wants me to bring it to life. I¡¯m not entirely sure how to do that, I know I am physically capable of it, it¡¯s a dungeon thing, but I¡¯ve never done that with anything other than plants before. Actually, there were those tiny creatures I made out of pure mana shortly after I died and before I remade my body, but those hardly matter.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. There was an interesting event where an injured harpy fell out of the sky, breaking its neck when it hit the ground. Harpy meat is actually pretty good, a little gamy but not too bad. It must have been pretty powerful too, the meat had a lot of mana in it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 209

    Today I started refining all of my plants. By tomorrow I should be done refining the mana versions of all of my plants and then I will move onto using Solar Energy, which should take a bit longer because there is more to do, it still shouldn¡¯t take too long.


    Maybe someday in the future, I¡¯ll create every possible version of all of my plants so I can feed them into my wooden arm to make it better. Not for a while though, that sounds like a lot of work for only a moderate amount of profit.


    I got to talk to my dad¡¯s old partner again today, apparently his name is Wujiang and he¡¯s from some far off land I¡¯ve never heard of. He struck out on his own when he was young and after a number of chaotic adventures ended up working with my father, which seems to be a common theme among the adventuring types. Also, his favorite color is bluish grey, I didn¡¯t ask but he told me anyway.


    Progress on the undead is steadily getting faster. With every improvement we make Azrezel gets more mental prowess to work with, allowing him to make more changes faster, which means more good changes faster. It all creates a positive feedback loop where getting better allows him to get better faster. At the same time, every new tree that grows lets me work faster as well, though his improvements are having the bigger impact. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I spent my downtime talking with someone I hadn¡¯t seen in quite a while. Bug¡¯s daughter, the one that evolved into a winged dragonewt saint, the healer that wanted a more martial path. Apparently, her name is Erica Hornmark, Bug named her after me, which is flattering and a little weird to be honest.


    She¡¯s evolved again since then, it would be weirder if she hadn''t. I didn¡¯t get the name of her species out of her, I didn¡¯t really mention her evolution. The most obvious difference is the crown of horns growing from her skull and the faint light emanating from her. Her wings are also bigger, but that might just be the result of her getting older. Making winged armor gave me an appreciation for just how hard flying can be, she makes incredibly complicated maneuvers look easy. Her skill and natural talent make her incredibly dangerous in hand to hand combat, in the same way that I could kill someone just by looking at them. Healing, when intentionally done wrong, is incredibly effective at killing.


    She has also gained some skill over plants despite her species being talentless at it, my forest smiles on her.


    It seems like the people love her, at one point she was complaining about the sheer number of people that want to mate with her. Which isn¡¯t too surprising, she is pretty attractive, but something else has to be going on to get that many suitors.


    It was definitely interesting talking with her now that she¡¯s grown. I offered her a gift, something within my ability to create. She asked me for something to amplify her healing, something a cut above what the average soldier is able to use. It wasn¡¯t difficult to create.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 210

    About an hour ago I finished perfecting the last of the mana versions of my plants. Grey Iris was the most difficult for me to work with, though I think I can change it into something more suitable for my skills somehow. Might work on that next.


    I started working on making Solar Energy versions of all of my plants. I think it will take about a week to finish, maybe a bit less.


    Nothing noteworthy to report on the undead brains today, progress is just the same as it has been.


    Tiddol finished her clockwork person today. But, as expected, it didn¡¯t come to life. It was obvious the moment she ran up to me, and not slowly walked while shivering. If she had succeeded she would probably be bedridden for a couple days at least, up to a month at worst.


    So, of course, she asked me to do the final step for her. I¡¯m not entirely sure how I did it, it was instinctual and reactive, not a process I could think about. But I do know that wanting it to happening and visualizing it happening was enough to trigger whatever mechanism that is in my dungeon core that brings things to life. I had to sit down for a couple minutes afterward, creating a dozen Ents doesn¡¯t take that much out of me. I could feel the world wanting to evolve me at that moment, but I suppressed it, I¡¯m not ready yet.


    The new creature is interesting. He doesn¡¯t have any memories so he is effectively a blank slate. He doesn¡¯t know any language and his mind is alien enough that Lace struggles to communicate with it, which I could fix with a bit of effort. So something we¡¯ve dealt with before a time or two, most notably being Willow when she was first born.


    He is naturally curious, as are all of the creatures I give a chunk of my soul too. Tiddol is in the process of teaching him how to speak and he seems to be taking too it well, though he is a ways away from being conversation level. It would be weird if he wasn¡¯t.


    Apparently, I was given credit for his creation, which is ridiculous. All I did was offer a chunk of my soul at the end, Tiddol did all of the work. But no, the world declares me to be the mother of his species and the terminal put his design up for sale under my name just because I had a small part. Maybe I¡¯ll use the money from that to get Tiddol something. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I was kinda pissed about that so asked why that was on the terminal. The first response was ¡®perks of being part of the ruling class, the world bends to our wills¡¯. A lot of dungeons were bashing the order the scholars belong to, something about how they only think they rule the world. A couple others recognized me, or at least my name, and called me something along the lines of ¡®that lordling prodigy¡¯, apparently my work is pretty popular. Still, others commented on just how weird a creature made of clockwork is and how it doesn¡¯t fit anywhere on the current trees of evolution.


    And for all of that none of them acknowledged the fact that it was not me that created the creature. Everyone that mentions it was basically saying that yes, it was me that made it, or that Tiddol was an extension of my power, or that Tiddol was just my servant and all her accomplishments were actually just mine. And honestly, it kind of pissed me off. Why do I get all of the credit when I didn¡¯t actually do anything? It feels wrong in so many ways.


    I should probably mention that there are a bunch of undead up for sale under my name as well. That at least I get, I did actual work to make the vast majority of them better, though there were a couple that Azrezel did entirely on his own.


    Also, I can now create more clockwork people in the same way I could create an Ent, despite the fact that I don¡¯t know anything about how clockwork works. It¡¯s quite a bit more mana intensive than creating an Ent, but I have enough mana production as to render that irrelevant. It¡¯s a dungeon thing I think, being able to create creatures I have created before. At least it gives me a resource in case I ever want to study clockwork, I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll ever do that. I¡¯ll leave that for Tiddol.


    Speaking of, Tiddol seems excited to make new clockwork creatures. It makes it hard to stay angry when I see her enthusiasm. She wants to make smaller, simpler creatures now. She¡¯s started working on a bird and should be done by tomorrow. It¡¯s already at the point that it can fly, not well but it can.


    These new clockwork creatures are alive, they have a soul, but how do they reproduce? Maybe they will have to learn how to create new members of their species by hand? In that case, how will the nonsentient creatures reproduce? I¡¯m not even going to try to figure it out on my own, clockwork is so far removed from anything I work with that I would just confuse myself. Alchemy at least I can kind of understand, a big part of it relates to the way plants magically interact with each other after all, something I know well.


    I have to say that it is really weird being constantly aware of all the moving parts in the yet to be named clockwork man constantly. Since they are made of living wood I am aware of every detail for as long as he is inside my forest. Even if I don¡¯t really care about clockwork I have a feeling I am going to learn something about it from that, at least passively. Maybe enough to save his life if he gets injured, though in that case, Tiddol would probably be better.


    Not much else of note happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 211

    Today I made steady progress towards perfecting the Solar Energy versions of my plants. There is still a lot for me to learn about Solar Energy, so this is a good method for me to learn.


    Tiddol finished her simple clockwork bird today, and I made sure to bring it to life. Again, I received credit for it, but whatever, there is nothing I can do about that. It was kind of cute, with a slightly mechanical whirring of its wings and the chirps caused by some mechanical interaction with a couple pieces of Singing Grass.


    It¡¯s still weird having all those wooden clockwork pieces in my forest, I am constantly aware of them in a way that I¡¯m not constantly aware of the Ents. yes, I am constantly aware of the Ents, but nowhere near this level. So I look, and I study it, but I don¡¯t understand what it is I¡¯m seeing. My understanding of clockwork stops at ¡®spinning thing makes other thing spin¡¯, I have no idea how Tiddol did anything with the clockwork, much less create life. And I wouldn¡¯t care at all if not for the fact that I can¡¯t seem to shut it out of my mind, like how some people pick at scabs when they can¡¯t get them healed. It¡¯s like an itch that is always just too far out of reach that only gets worse with time.


    Whatever, if I can¡¯t ignore it I¡¯ll dedicate some mental power to it. Not enough to really impact me negatively, but hopefully enough to ease that itch. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    The yet to be named clockwork man is making great strides towards fully learning language. I think tiddol wanted to stick with the traditions we already have for that type of thing. Basically, Tiddol and I were planning on having him take part in the culture the Ents have built up around themselves. They are very similar in more ways than one after all. I can¡¯t think of any other creatures that are made of plants that are also able to move around and are sentient. And in fact, I am pretty sure that Tiddol and I are the only ones in the world capable of making anything like that, at least for the next nine or so years.


    When I told Tiddol that I was capable of making more clockwork people she requested that I do so, ¡®It can hardly be considered a species if there is only one after all¡¯ or so she said. And it would take her days to build another by hand, while I can use some dungeon magic to have it done in seconds. So I did so, and as expected it wasn¡¯t nearly as harsh on me as the first time. Which is exactly what happened with the Ents. another parallel is that the ones I made today all had memories, while the original didn¡¯t. It¡¯s an unexpected parallel, and I¡¯m not sure what it means, but it should be a useful boon. Despite their advantage of more memories the original is learning much faster than them and seems to be overall slightly better at everything. Might have to ask other dungeons about that latter.


    Progress with the undead is starting to slow down. I think the next step for me is to make a version of Lace that is able to interact with these brains, it should speed progress back up for a little bit. Regardless we are reaching the limit of what we can achieve with these large brains with our current abilities. They look nothing like anything I would describe as being alive, closer to massive spires that reach out over the tree line. If I saw them in the distance I would assume they were a type of building, not a living undead.


    Other than that not a lot happened,


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 212

    About four more days till I finish refining all of my plants with Solar Energy. I did take a bit of time to modify Lace to make it more useable with the undead. It took less time than I thought it would, which seems to be normal.


    I helped Tiddol make more clockwork creatures today. She seems to be reveling in the joy of creation, a feeling I know well. I have to say I¡¯m proud of her. She is building things for no other reason than the fact that she can, which is the best reason to create. There are few things more satisfying than shaping life with your own hands, and it seems like Tiddol is figuring that out.


    The undead are making progress faster again. The brains are getting to the point that Azrezel can¡¯t fully make use of any of them individually, the connection he¡¯s formed isn¡¯t good enough for the type of work he needs it to do. So I spent my time working on strengthening that using Lace. I figured out that distance was a component in how efficient the connection is, not the biggest one, but still a significant aspect. What I did was I connected the brains to each other using Lace, that allowed the full weight of the connection to be used as long as he was close to at least one of the brains. I also directly strengthened that connection.


    You know, I could probably make a wooden version of those giant brains. If I could figure out how things work a little better, which I am working on, then I could dramatically improve the mental prowess of my trees. I still don¡¯t think that would be enough for me to be able to spend all of the mana I take in unless I am doing something that takes very little thought and requires tons of mana. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Oh yeah, I burned my Fate today while working on the brains. It caused me to sneeze incredibly violently, disrupting my concentration while I was working with Lace. That caused Lace to go crazy in just the right way to somehow empower the brain directly, something I didn¡¯t think Lace was capable of before. So naturally I took some time to study it and figure out why and how it did that, well I mean the why is Fate but I still don¡¯t understand enough about the brain to know how any of this works. I can replicate it though, and maybe even make it work with less modified undead through brute force. It reminds me of the time I learned a spell to make things green, only much more useful.


    Other than that I spent some time in Pearlhold today. While the streets are spotless, shining in a way that is almost titular, the people are still not healthy. I think I might have figured out why, it¡¯s my fault really. I¡¯ve made all of my plants better but I never really thought about the versions of them that are made for sale. They were really good when I made them, over a year ago. I¡¯ve improved a lot in that time but I¡¯ve neglected to improve drowsy clover variants that weren¡¯t different and specialized enough to become their own unique plants. They aren¡¯t perfect and that has been causing some issues.


    I guess it is a good thing I¡¯m working on refining my plants right now, I can perfect the ones that are for sale. Maybe narrow down exactly what is causing the effect we want and cut out some of the more toxic parts of that effect, make it more pure and all that. We can¡¯t stop selling it, too much money comes in from this business, but if I can I would like to avoid hurting people as much as possible. Unless they deserve to be hurt.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 213

    Today I made a pretty big breakthrough in how I refine plants with Solar Energy. In hindsight, it was painfully obvious. As a result of that breakthrough, it will only be another day before I can move on to the next thing.


    Today, while I was working, Whisperer¡¯s replacement came to me. He was a bit rushed, and poorly hiding the fact that he was freaking out inside. He told me that there was supposed to be a surprise attack here either tomorrow or the next day, let¡¯s really make it a surprise.


    He told me that it was a pretty large force that was supposed to teleport into the forest, which he found out about thanks to having a couple of his people infiltrate the city that is attempting this. It is a large force, with some pretty powerful magical backing, hence the teleportation. We do know where they will be teleporting too, the center of Par¡¯s town, which makes this all too easy. We might even be able to take them all alive, trained soldiers make useful slaves.


    We aren¡¯t sure what time of day it will happen, so whatever preparations we do will have to be up constantly. Which means evacuating the village entirely. Which introduces the problem that there might be a spy in the mix magically reporting our movements. Luckily reading recent memories is easy, and something I can do on a large scale without people noticing, especially while they¡¯re asleep.


    From there we can get some Ents working on a shift to keep a ludicrous amount of Dead Tulip pollen floating around the area. It is possible they have a way to not have to breathe that in so I modified it to be able to be absorbed by the skin. still, a couple people might be immune entirely. for them, there is other magic that other people can use.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Naturally, I came up with very little of this myself, I don''t have a mind for tactics. that hasn''t changed or anything like that. It was mostly Wujiang, my dad''s old partner. Apparently, he has been in a situation almost exactly like this before, which is not surprising in the least.


    So I read people¡¯s minds and found about five people that were reporting everything to one of the local city-states, and a sixth that was reporting to some ¡®dark lord¡¯ a continent away. I left that last one alone as he seemed pretty non-threatening all things considered, I¡¯m pretty sure that ¡®dark lord¡¯ is just a dungeon. The spies were dealt with, they didn¡¯t tell me how exactly though I can still guess.


    And from there it is out of my hands.


    As for the undead, progress was sped up by using Lace, but it is still slowing down. At this current rate it will be about two days before we will have to move onto something else. Probably improving the rest of the undead in a way that doesn¡¯t completely destroy their other uses. Alternatively, we can just make more of these giant spire-like brains and have a bunch of specialists instead of having every undead be providing something to the hive-mind.


    Other than that not a lot happened. I did talk to Wujiang a bit, and apparently, he is going to leave in about a week to go back to be with his family. He told me a couple stories about my dad, embarrassing ones that he would never tell me. He¡¯s not as good at storytelling as my dad, but then again no one is that good, but he is good. Probably picked a thing or two up from the guy.


    I also told him a couple stories of my own, most of them from before the forest burned down, before I start a grove almost two years ago. It was a quiet time, a simpler time. Now I have to worry about armies spontaneously teleporting into my home to try and murder me, and I have people that will help me deal with that stuff when it does happen.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 214

    I am finally done refining all of my plants with Solar Energy, I don¡¯t remember what else I needed to do before I was going to evolve myself. I¡¯ll go back and read through to see what I still need to do tomorrow.


    The army hasn¡¯t yet teleported in, and that has everyone on edge. There are enough Ents willing to assist that there isn¡¯t an issue with keeping a constant vigilance, but I personally would rather it be over already.


    Tiddol has not stopped creating new clockwork creatures. It is still irritating that I¡¯m the one getting credit for them, but I¡¯m glad she is doing this. Now there are clockwork creatures everywhere in my forest, to the point that they are starting to expand outside of it.


    They seem to reproduce by building more of their own kind. They are all inherently talented with clockwork, which both makes sense and is completely ludicrous. Clockwork just seems way to specialized for someone to be naturally talented with it, while at the same time they are entirely made of the stuff.


    If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    They seem to have some innate magic that lets them create the parts required to build another of their kind and then either some manual dexterity or some limited telepathy to allow them to put the child together piece by piece.


    They all also seem to have some limited skill over plants, which makes sense as most of their pieces are made of plants.


    None of them have evolved yet, but I don''t see why one of their evolutions should be much different from anyone else.


    the more complicated they are the better they are in pretty much every way, especially intelligence.


    I have gotten used to constantly being aware of all of their moving pieces, well not completely, but I''m getting there.


    As for the undead, I don''t think we are going to make much progress tomorrow. We have pretty much reached the limit of what we can with these specialized brains.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Good Night Diary.

 Day 215

    I think I know why I distanced myself from Willow now. I was going to make her a gift, something with a small ecosystem in it with tiny creatures and everything, but I didn¡¯t know how to create life at the time. It¡¯s something so simple for me to do today, and it was ultimately what drove me towards creating the Ents and towards learning how to manipulate flesh. I was pursuing a distant, almost impossible goal, and I achieved it, all while forgetting why I even started in the first place. A gift for the oldest child of my forest. Now I don¡¯t know if I¡¯ll ever see her again. Thinking back on it, hers was likely the first soul I seeded. Acting on instinct I casted a powerful spell on the tree that became her parent, and meer mana exhaustion wouldn¡¯t have been enough to make me black out like I did, not with my trees supporting me. Cutting a chunk of my soul out, however, would have been more than enough to make me faint back then.


    Why did I obsess so much over this silly gift? It was to the point that I didn¡¯t want to see her until it was done, and then I forgot about it while pursuing other things and I still didn¡¯t try to connect with her. Why? I¡¯m an idiot, that¡¯s why.


    I want to go to Willow right now and apologize to her, but I can¡¯t leave my forest and I won¡¯t force her to come to me. I could maybe write a letter, but there is no guarantee it will ever reach her. Besides, what could I say? Apologies over paper are cheap, and I don¡¯t think I can ask her to return to the scene where she watched the man that was basically her father get murdered. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Which was also my fault. I could have done something about Thes¡¯s rage. It might not have been easy, but when has that ever mattered to me? Even now I can think of a dozen ways I could have used Drowsy Clover, Dead Tulip, Astrie, and some good old fashioned healing to at least buy some time. And that is with only a moment''s thought. Yes, I¡¯m better at all of that today, but I could have figured out how to fix him if I had just cared enough to put in a concerted effort. Why didn¡¯t I? Because I thought it was boring, and because I thought Mest and Tiddol had it handled. I wish I could go back in time and strangle myself right now.


    I was more concerned with the health of a dungeon after Thes relieved his anger on it than I was about a friend an ally that was close at hand.


    I still have the knife Thes gave me for my birthday last year. It¡¯s sitting by my bed, untouched. I still remember Thes begging me to kill him when he inevitably snapped, but I couldn¡¯t bring myself to try. I knew none of us were strong enough to restrain him, even if we could all worked together flawlessly. But I could have killed him, I had dozens of opportunities to do so, and it is what he wanted me to do. But I didn¡¯t, because I couldn¡¯t bring myself to honor his wishes, and Mest paid the price. Now all of us are a little worse off because of it.


    I can¡¯t bring back the dead, but maybe I can make a gift in case my eldest decides to come back home.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 216

    I spent the day practicing with Solar Energy in order to prepare for my own evolution tomorrow. I¡¯ve evolved plants with Solar Energy enough at this point that I am confident in my ability to trigger a Solar Energy evolution in myself. I have no idea how long it is going to take so I cleared my schedule just in case.


    We were attacked yesterday, and things didn¡¯t go perfectly according to plan. Most of the soldiers were subdued, but more than expected were able to resist the pollen. They were able to cause quite a bit of damage before they were put down, destroying several buildings and killing several of our soldiers. Despite that, it was a one-sided victory for us. There were easily a thousand soldiers, all of them incredibly well trained.


    They sent their elite after us, I imagine that doing anything less would be a massive waste of mana. Just as hard to send a novice soldier as it is to send a highly skilled one. Of course, this means we needed better cells than we thought we would, but that is simply an issue of a bit of mana, something I can easily supply. It will take a bit of work to get them to the point that they can be useful, but even just spending time in my territory would accomplish that sooner or later.


    Tiddol still hasn¡¯t stopped her creative fervor. She has created dozens, if not hundreds of new clockwork creatures. I don¡¯t think she has realized that she is creating the gears and other parts all on her own now, without any assistance from my Ents. The only thing she needs help with is actually bringing the thing to life, which is simple enough for me. She only stops to take care of her physical needs, and even then she eats and drinks so fast that I doubt she can even taste what she¡¯s eating, and she isn¡¯t sleeping at all. I¡¯m worried she¡¯s going to burn herself out at this rate, but there is obviously something magical going on here and I¡¯m worried that stopping her will hurt her. Recovering from burnout just takes time and rest, I don¡¯t know what recovering from having a powerful spell interrupted in your body would take, if it would even be possible in the first place. So I won¡¯t interrupt her, and I¡¯ll make sure her body stays in one piece.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Now that Azrezel and I understand how brains work a lot better, though we still have no idea on the why, we are making a lot more progress towards refining the brains of the undead than we were before.


    I created a telepathic link with Azrezel using a bit of Lace today, at his request of course. We can¡¯t read each other''s thoughts, but we can send thoughts to each other. It¡¯s fun, and more than a little distracting, but it is also pretty useful when we work together, and it is easy enough to shut down my end of it if I really need to concentrate.


    I¡¯ve done something similar with other people in the past, but the difference in the speed of thought between me and most other people makes that a bit frustrating. Not with Azrezel though, or at least nowhere near as bad. His undead don¡¯t provide him with enough mental prowess to match my trees, but they come much closer than anyone else does.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. Tomorrow looks like it¡¯s going to be a big deal.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 217

    I didn¡¯t realize until too late that I am, in fact, an idiot. What about Solar Energy reacting explosively with mana did I fail to understand? The only part of me that isn¡¯t made out of pure mana is my wooden arm and the device that turns mana into Solar Energy and back again. Well, and my dungeon core as well. What really confuses me is why didn¡¯t this violent reaction occur the first time I evolved with Solar Energy? Does it have to do with the amount of the stuff I was using? Cause that is the only thing that makes sense to me.


    Well, I guess that isn¡¯t entirely true anymore, but we¡¯re getting to that.


    At first, I was excited, I had succeeded in triggering a Solar Energy evolution by triggering an evolution while in my Solar Energy room and doing some fancy magic with the stuff. Then it started to hurt, not too bad, but any pain is weird when evolving. It is usually a rather pleasurable sensation.


    I was worried until I noticed that it was actually working, my body was actually changing for the better. From there I directed the process while observing the basics, trying to figure out how it works so I can replicate it later. Yeah, it was still painful, but not unbearable, and I did manage to figure out how to replicate the process.


    And then it reached the part of me that turns Solar Energy into mana. At first, there wasn¡¯t much of a reaction, the mana was quickly grabbed up by the hand of the world, which is more than capable of keeping the two energies from interacting. And so I was directing the world in the usage of both Solar Energy and mana in changing and improving my body. That was when I noticed something interesting, the world was not using mana to try and layer spells on top of me to make my body better, it was only trying to use mana to directly improve the structure of my body, which it is bad at doing, like it would if it was using Solar Energy. That doesn¡¯t take mana out of the equation, mana used in that way just come right back as nothing is tying it up.


    So more and more mana was being created, and the amount of Solar Energy was dwindling pretty rapidly. And then the mana reached the part of me that creates Solar Energy using mana as a catalyst. Now Solar Energy was being created and used up, with it being created faster and faster, while mana was only being created.


    At this point, the pain was starting to get worse and worse. But I couldn¡¯t stop the process, I had tried a couple times with plants before. The result is not compatible with life in any form. So I had no choice but to bear with it until it was over. But the pain kept getting worse, and more mana and Solar Energy was building up in my body, and then I realized something. Every time I evolve something the evolution only ends when there is no more energy left to use, not a moment sooner. This isn¡¯t a zero-sum system, more energy is being poured into it endlessly. Even worse because the part that was getting the most focus was the part that was making more energy, simply because that is where all the energy was coming from. There was nothing I could do to stop that and the pain was only getting worse as energy built up.


    It got to the point where the only thing I could think about was stopping the pain, so I reached for some Flore out of my wooden arm to try and kill the pain. It did help, though not directly. Flore itself was useless for numbing this pain, but it did alleviate the pain for a little bit by giving the energy something else to focus on. And then a different type of pain, something I would relate to twisting flesh, as the perfected forms of all of my plants were pulled from the arm and incorporated into my body as a whole. There were the obvious parts of having Pipeweed veins running throughout my body and Mithrialwood bones, but I don¡¯t care enough right now to figure out what exactly did what.


    And that continued for a while, I have no way to know exactly how long, until I started desperately reaching for anything else I could use to kill the pain. The next thing I reached for was my dungeon core, which helped as a bunch of the energy was consumed improving it, but that was only Solar Energy. Mana was incapable of directly interacting with it. Eventually, the production of Solar Energy outpaced what was being consumed by my core again and I started reaching somewhere else. I reached for my forest, trying to flood them with mana and Solar Energy.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    And then everything exploded. Trying to force mana to leave my body while in a room filled with Solar Energy was a bad idea, but I had forgotten that at the moment. In hindsight, I¡¯m glad it happened during an evolution, as the world is determined to keep you alive and healthy while you are evolving, which, as a result of the same action that caused the building to explode, now included my trees. The damage could have been a lot worse, but thanks to blind luck it was not.


    Of course, this caused even more problems, like so much more mana flooding my forest from the world, some of which was being paid as tribute to me. Effectively nullifying my attempts to remove that energy from my body, I don¡¯t know if I failed to comprehend that I could or if my trees refused, but for whatever reason I didn¡¯t get them to stop giving me that mana.


    And so the pain only got worse as I reached for something else to help numb the pain. My mental connection with Azrezel was the next thing my mind felt, his undead body is incapable of feeling pain and his thoughts are calming. So I offloaded as much energy as I could onto him as I triggered an evolution in him. I didn¡¯t ask, I was in too much pain to think about it, but he accepted it without a fuss.


    so I reached further. I found the threads connecting many of the people here to my forest and did the same thing to them. I knew they would hurt from it, but I couldn¡¯t bring myself to care at that moment, it¡¯s difficult to think of other people¡¯s pain when you are in so much yourself. It helped a lot, but it still wasn¡¯t quite enough, production had gotten out of hand at that point.


    It still wasn¡¯t enough, and so I reached more. And I found my Ents, all of them, all over the world. I¡¯m not even sure it only included the ones I made personally, there was a lot more than I remember making. And so I made them evolve and poured energy into them. Not all of them were able to evolve at the time, several of them were in danger in one form or another. But they would evolve once the danger has passed, and the energy I gave them would linger till then, being controlled by the hand of the world. I still managed to direct the evolution, it was instinctual, like something I had to do in order for them to evolve at all. And I thought that was the end, the pain was disappearing and the amount of energy I had was decreasing, slowly, yes, but still decreasing.


    That didn¡¯t last long, the part that was creating all the energy in the first place was still getting better, it was still producing energy faster and faster.


    So I reached further, and I found Azrezel¡¯s telepathic link to his own undead, through my own link to him. So I did to them the same thing I¡¯ve been doing. I triggered an evolution in all of them and gave them as much energy as I could. Every little bit helped, but it still wasn''t enough.


    I reached for what I thought was the last link I could find, something nearby that had the attention of the hand of the world. Not evolving or anything, the world was simply watching. It was Tiddol, the world was watching her creative frenzy. I didn¡¯t evolve her like I did with everyone else, but I did patch up her body of its various minor injuries accumulated in her frenzy and fueled whatever process was going on that caused the frenzy. It would have ended today or tomorrow, but now it will be extended by another week. That one I feel bad about.


    The next connection was vague, even more so than the indirect connection to Tiddol. And it was distant. Par was at the edge of my perception, linked to my core somehow. And his soldiers were linked through him, only even more vague and indistinct. That didn¡¯t matter, within moments of focusing on it the world refined it to be firm and unwavering. And so they all started to evolve, fueled by everything I could give them.


    At this point, I had grown numb to the pain, or maybe my body was simply better adapted to whatever it was that was causing me pain in the first place. I don¡¯t know, all I know is that I was no longer thinking clearly at that point, my only thoughts revolved around stopping my evolution without dying myself.


    It was at that point that I started to notice something, even now I¡¯m not entirely sure what it is, just that I haven¡¯t stopped seeing it. So I reached for them and found living creatures on the other side, and did to them the same thing I¡¯ve been doing to everyone.


    And then there was nothing else to reach for, and I was still producing more and more mana and Solar Energy. So I just started expelling as much energy directly from my body as I could. It wasn¡¯t very fast at first, and improvements to the process were slow with how much my focus was split, but the world did improve my ability to expel mana and Solar Energy from my body, and over the course of several hours it gradually overtook the speed at which I was producing mana and Solar Energy, which had started to plateau.


    And now it¡¯s over, and I am incredibly sore. I¡¯m going to take enough Flore to knock out a bear and go to sleep. I¡¯ll figure out exactly what happened tomorrow, I really don¡¯t want to force myself to think right now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 218

    I spent almost all day trying to figure out what exactly changed during my evolution yesterday. Other than the whole ¡®being better at everything¡¯ thing.


    The most immediately obvious thing was my height. I had grown a head and a half taller. I now tower over most people. Getting taller during an evolution is normal, growing that much is pretty rare, not unheard of but rare.


    The next thing I noticed was the fact that I was glowing, quite a bit actually. After investigating that I found glovine woven into my skin in a way that I can¡¯t remove it without grievous harm to myself. It took a bit of concentration but I was able to turn off the glow, and I bet I would be able to do other fun things with light on my skin. Maybe make myself invisible or transparent? I¡¯ll have to experiment with that later.


    The next thing I noticed when I stood up, and proceed to bang my head against a rock after losing my balance. The pain was a lot less than it should have been for nearly cracking my skull open, likely a result of Flore. Whatever it is doing to my body doesn¡¯t seem to have an effect on soreness, only sharp pain. It isn¡¯t working at peak effectiveness, as then I wouldn¡¯t feel pain at all, but this is probably better.


    After that, I noticed that I did, in fact, have a skull, and other bones too. Mostly made of mithrilwood, of course. It¡¯s weird, having bones. It¡¯s like suddenly I am much heavier, but at the same time I am also much stronger. Mana based creatures tend to be rather fragile, I guess this should compensate for that a bit. On a related note, because of having bones and a couple other changes to my body I will actually leave a corpse when I die.


    My wooden arm is gone, it was replaced by a more normal arm when I evolved. I didn¡¯t lose any of its functionality either, if anything what replaced it is much better. Now all of my plants are integrated into my body in various ways, I can¡¯t remove them entirely but I can use them to produce more of them for external use.


    When I was found by Azrezel in the smoldering crater of what used to be a battery of Solar Energy the first thing I noticed was that I could see something overlapping him. Well see isn¡¯t the right word, it was more like some kind of extra sense I didn¡¯t have before. It didn¡¯t take long to realize that what I was looking at was his soul, and that I could even see the soul of my trees and of myself, but I have to focus to see myself and my tree¡¯s souls are small and indistinct. It took me quite a while to figure out what exactly was causing it, but eventually, I realized that it was being caused by Grey Iris, the necromancy plant. It seems its purpose was not necromancy, but rather the manipulation of the soul, which just so happens to be most used almost exclusively in Necromancy. It is an ability I would have gained eventually from being a dungeon, but not for another decade or so, so that¡¯s pretty cool.


    After that, I went through to figure out the effects of all of my different plants. Whitefoot made my natural healing speed go through the roof. Lace gave me telepathic abilities. Portweed allowed me to teleport. I¡¯m not quite sure what Spellwood did, or what Ergen or Drowsy clover did for that matter. Pipeweed makes everything to do with magic better, primarily by making the movement of mana a lot easier to control, faster, and more efficient. Blastbark allows me to explode with minimal risk to myself. Singing Grass lets me manipulate sound, but by default causes faint music to play around me. Dead Tulip gave me the innate ability to put people to sleep. While Astrie just made me slightly better at everything, with the ability to specialize easily.


    Of course, I could have done all of these things before with just the plants, but now they work better, or at least differently. It¡¯s like removing a layer of obscurity when interacting with those things. Before I was doing the things through my plants, and while that is still technically true now it feels closer to just doing it on my own. All the power of going through plants and all the control of having personally mastered it. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I should mention that I am absolutely certain that I have not figured out all of the new effects my plants are having on me. I don¡¯t even know how I would go about testing for that stuff at this point.


    The sunflower device I have inside of me is ridiculously effective now. I don¡¯t think it is actually plant material anymore, more like it has been ingrained into my body in an incredibly fundamental way. All the other plants could be removed without killing me, theoretically anyway, but not this. It is now fundamental to the way my body processes energy coming into it, and I¡¯m not sure how. Considering the fact that I already had way more mana than I could possibly use I don¡¯t think this will make too much of a difference, though it should give me ample supply of Solar Energy.


    My energy pools have also increased massively, which isn¡¯t too much of a surprise as they were pretty small, to begin with. Now my pools are comparable to that of an archmage, though an archmage would be able to put it to use much better than I. Despite that I am capable of completely emptying them into the surrounding area within moments, I don¡¯t think I will ever use this power.


    I feel like everything I forced to evolve while I was evolving myself has influenced me somehow, but I have no way of figuring out how exactly. I do know that the connections I used have been strengthened dramatically, to the point that I can feel even the most obscure one as clear as day. I didn¡¯t take the time today to explore those connections.


    Azrezel was also dramatically improved, though overall it was just more of what he already had. Nothing really new. A standard, if intense, evolution. By my standards anyway.


    Literally everyone, except the clockwork creatures, in both Par¡¯s town and Pearlhold evolved. There are no more goblins in the city. It was painful for all of them, though no one complained, at least not in a place I could hear them. Though we haven¡¯t heard back from Par and his soldiers I don¡¯t think it was any different for them. I didn¡¯t try to control these evolutions, so they all evolved into things that already existed before.


    Tiddol¡¯s magically induced creative frenzy will continue for another week, I hope she doesn¡¯t hate me for that.


    I know for a fact that I am missing things, as I don¡¯t know exactly what happened myself. But I am going to move on from the effects of my evolution, I would be at this forever if I was going to try to document everything.


    My project for the day was figuring out everything I could about my new body, but I did take some time to help Azrezel improve his undead.


    Everything was so much easier, it¡¯s almost like I have an instinctual knowledge of how the brain works now. Which I guess makes sense because of the Lace integrated into my body. Thanks to that and the fact that I was using the time to practice improving creatures with Solar Energy we made rapid progress at improving the undead.


    This and something Azrezel said that I can¡¯t quite remember anymore inspired my next project. My limiting factor is mental, I can only do so many things at the same time. Unless I start taking the whole dungeon side of things much more seriously I don¡¯t think I will ever run out of mana, and that sounds pretty boring honestly. I am already getting all I can out of my trees, and using Solar Energy to improve my own mental prowess directly seem like it would be too slow to gain any meaningful progress considering the scales I¡¯m dealing with. So I need to expand in a different way, and I know there is a rather large group of people that are absolutely dying to do anything for me, whether I like it or not, so I might as well make use of them.


    My idea is to create something that will do a couple of things. The first is to trigger an evolution and focus the effects on the brain, while also creating Solar Energy to assist in the process. Unless it is used on a troll it shouldn¡¯t trigger a Solar Energy evolution and if I design it right that shouldn¡¯t be an issue. The second is to create a mental link between everyone that has gone through the process. It should propagate by itself, or at least be able to be intentionally passed from one person to another. And most importantly, it has to provide me with some more thought power. I think I can do it with a bit of time and effort.


    Other than that I spent a bit of time with my dad, who has evolved. Apparently, it was his sixth evolution, which is practically unheard of anywhere. That¡¯s actually really impressive, my dad got five evolutions of his own merit before having one forced on him.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 219

    Today I spent most of my time working with the undead. I mostly practiced using Solar Energy to improve their brains. It¡¯s fairly intuitive once you figure out how to do it, and energy is not an issue anymore. As a result, I was able to get a lot of practice, and the undead¡¯s brains rapidly improved.


    It wasn¡¯t limitless growth though. I think it might have something to do with my own skill but they quickly reached a point where they plateaued and stopped being able to grow quite as fast. That point did increase as I continued to practice, but it did not increase for the ones I already practiced with. So I should perfect the process before I use it on myself. Shouldn¡¯t be too difficult, there are plenty of undead to make use of after all.


    The scholars requested that I make a report about what happened with my evolution today. They were a lot more respectful about it than they would have been before, so I decided to humor them. Apparently, there is no record of something similar happening anywhere, ever. I¡¯m impressed, apparently, I¡¯ve graduated from being one of the few to being the only. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    During that time I was describing the effects of Solar Energy to the scholars, one of whom claimed to recognize them. They claimed that they were going to do a bit more research and get back to me on it. I hope their order knows something about the stuff because I¡¯m working blind here, any little bit would help.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol. Bringing her creations to life one after another while patching her up every time she gets a minor nick or bruise. Normally she would be able to heal them herself, her limited skill in healing is more than enough to fix a small scab, but right now I don¡¯t think she is even aware of her body, much less feeling pain. I¡¯ll be honest, I spent my time with her today out of a feeling of guilt and I hate that. Giving her all that energy was not necessary, and even worse it wasn¡¯t even useful, it didn¡¯t really help me in the end.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 220

    Today I continued practicing with Solar Energy, I am probably going to go through and bring all of the undead¡¯s brains up as high as I can with just Solar Energy before I move on to the next step, I am still making noticeable progress after all.  At this point I am able to raise them about four or five times what I was able to before, and the better I am the more I can do when it comes time to work on myself.


    It should take about three days before I am done with this part of the project.


    So that scholar from yesterday got back to me today. Apparently my Solar Energy has very similar qualities to something that has a bit of use in the far west. We can¡¯t know for certain without getting a sample but what are the chances that there is another energy that matches the description of my Solar Energy one to one.


    It was called Ki, or Chi, or Qi. There were different spellings depending on the author but it all refers to the same stuff. I guess I should probably start using the proper name, Solar Energy was just something I came up with on my own and the vast majority of the people don¡¯t get it from the suns, instead taking advantage of the fact that it creates itself. Though some groups have found natural Sunflower plants to help with their production. There is even an entire city that has had all of the mana drained and replaced with the stuff. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I¡¯ll probably calling the stuff Ki, cause it is easier to write than Chi or Qi, even if only slightly. A K is easier to write than a Q afterall.


    My question is how did they not realize that Trolls were made using Ki to begin with? And the answer was that they did, sort of. People realized pretty quickly that Trolls were able to use Ki, but not very many people were considering the question of ¡®how were trolls made¡¯ in the same way I was. It wouldn¡¯t have taken much thought for someone that knows the full picture to realize that Trolls were made out of Ki, I simply arrived to the conclusion first.


    Also why did the local scholars not figure this out till now? The answer to that was that due to the sheer number of reports and studies done it would be impractical to have every major branch have a copy of every report, teleporting that much bulk is far from cheap.


    I might have to get some more information about these Ki users from the west, I should be able to learn a thing or two that I can put to use myself.


    Other than that I spent my downtime alone with Azrezel in a place no one could bother us.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 221

    Today I almost doubled the effectiveness of my use of Ki. It¡¯s easy to get good at something when you have functionally infinite energy. And I have to say, it feels weird to refer to it by its proper name instead of the one I made up. I think I am just going to refer to it as Solar Energy


    Oh yeah, the scholars sent a message requesting a teacher for me, hopefully, something will come of that.


    As a result of Grey Iris being integrated into my body, I can see people¡¯s souls. It is distracting, but turning it off feels worse. I feel like this should be a much bigger deal than it actually is. I mean, it¡¯s more than just seeing them, I am able to reach out and touch them, manipulate them. This is the very core of what you are, all your thoughts, your memories, everything that makes you, you, or at least that¡¯s what I¡¯ve been led to believe, and I can control it.


    Yeah, I¡¯m not very good at it, but that¡¯s not due to a lack of natural talent but rather a lack of practice. Dungeons are always naturally talented at manipulating the soul, it¡¯s just that most of them are several decades old before they are even capable of it. I¡¯m not even sure I should use this power, not because I¡¯m worried about what I might accidentally do but because of the implications of being able to change people according to your will, regardless of theirs.


    A while ago someone told me that in order to be successful in this world you needed to have an idea, a theme if you will, that your power follows. It could be something like elementalist or something like healer. All paths to power are correct so long as you stick to your path with no deviation. And I should stop lying to myself, I am powerful. I never wanted power but I love the pursuit of it. I love the sense of pride I get when I unlock eldritch secrets or figure out exactly how to do the thing perfectly. I live for that moment. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    So the question is ¡®what is my theme?¡¯ And I don¡¯t know. There was a time when I would have said that it was plants, but then I learned how to heal. Add on to that my dungeon core, my Solar Energy, my forest, my Ents, my Fate, and now most recently my ability to manipulate souls and I don¡¯t know where that leaves me. Yeah, a couple things have obvious connections, like my plants, forest, and Ents are all connected in obvious ways, and my dungeon core, forest, and my Ents all work together fairly well, but how do plants and my dungeon core work together? And out of all of that Fate doesn¡¯t seem to fit anywhere, but to be fair I haven¡¯t really put any effort into it. It has always just been there, passively working in the background.


    I don¡¯t think this is a question I am going to solve in a single night, I don¡¯t think I should solve it in a single night. I either need some major inspiration or I need some time to think about it.


    Other than that it seems like Wujiang is going home today. The retired old martial artist is going to be with his wife and children, or was it grandchildren? It wasn¡¯t too clear which. Considering the fact that he lives more than a continent away it isn¡¯t likely I¡¯ll see him again unless he visits me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 222

    I should be done improving the brains of the undead with Solar Energy by tomorrow. The results of this have been pretty obvious when I take advantage of my mental connection to Azrezel. He¡¯s definitely thinking faster, for one thing.


    So I think I figured out what Spellwood is doing in my body, or at least I have a good guess. It seems to be helping me with routine magic, making it take less focus for me to do things I do a lot. In addition, it seems to be helping me improve at those routine tasks, but I¡¯m not quite sure how exactly.


    So Azrezel decided to take a break to spar with some soldiers today. Naturally, I decided to watch him get all sweaty, his toned body definitely qualifies as eye candy. I¡¯m not even sure why he is toned, he doesn¡¯t exactly exercise a lot, and I¡¯m not sure I even care. It was a struggle not to jump him right then. Not that I didn¡¯t later.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Oh yeah, we also figured out what Azrezel¡¯s species is. He is a variant of something called a Lich, one of the rare undead that is always sentient. There are about a dozen of them on record, all of them either controlled by dungeons or are true immortals. Azrezel was marked down as being controlled by a dungeon. Which, I mean it¡¯s true in at least one way.


    A little bit ago I burned my Fate while practicing with Solar Energy. I was right on the verge of being able to use it to perceive outside of myself without knowing it, and burning Fate bridged that small gap. And now I¡¯m curious, how far can I spread that perception? It might take a bit of time to actually figure out, but I¡¯ll try tomorrow after I finish up with the undead. It will probably turn out to be a waste of time, but who knows, maybe I¡¯ll find something good.


    Other than that I spent some time with Tiddol, making sure she was healthy and all that. Her frenzy should end in about two days, and I want to talk to her again.


    She has produced a truly staggering number of creatures, I don¡¯t even want to try to count. There are clockwork creatures everywhere. New species are constantly being added, and the ones that already exist are reproducing as fast as they can. I¡¯ve already seen several people take some of them in as pets, and it¡¯s honestly really cute to see.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 223

    Today I finished with the undead. Unfortunately, there are no more undead for me to practice on. Fortunately, Azrezel¡¯s hive mind has dramatically improved. I can still use Solar Energy to improve the undead, but without noticeable progress, it is pretty difficult to figure out how to improve. I should also try working on other creatures, as every creature seems to be a bit different, I need to figure out what is consistent.


    After finishing up with the undead I started using Solar Energy to expand my perception. It is something I can do with mana, but not very well. I was curious to see what the limits of it was, it might come in handy in the future.


    After many false starts eventually I hit my groove and managed to expand my perception beyond my forest, everything up to there was much easier. After a stretching out quite a bit farther it all got rather blurry, of course, I expected that.


    What I did not expect was for there to be a massive amount of Solar Energy in the core of the world. This raised several obvious questions, like ¡®why hasn¡¯t it exploded from contact to mana yet?¡¯ and ¡®what is it?¡¯. So I observed closer and I began to realize a couple things. First is that it has some way of repelling mana, as there is a dead zone before actually reaching it. The second is that the mass of Solar Energy is not just some shapeless blob, but actually an incredibly intricate system of spells, well and beyond anything, I could have thought possible. I can¡¯t even begin to see enough to try and comprehend what I am looking at on anything more than the most basic level.


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    On a hunch, I called for the hand of the world and I watched it approach. What I am looking at is the world itself, and it is so much more than I could have imagined. And it wants me to create new life for it. I am one of the many hands of the world, willingly or not.


    And then it hit me, that is my Theme. Life. Everything fits. I create and manipulate life, everything about me supports that in one way or another, even Fate if you consider the fact that I mostly try to use it to get better at manipulating Life. My manipulation of plants is this to a T, as is my healing. Dungeons are all about creating things, especially life. Many dungeons used to be Origin after all. My forest was my first successful major attempt at bending life to my will, while my Ent were my first attempt at creating new life. One major use of Solar Energy is the improvement of living creatures. And souls are one of the fundamental parts of a living creature.


    Knowing this is all well and good, but what do I do with this knowledge? Obviously, I should focus on things that make me better at creating and manipulating life. It can be an incredibly mentally intensive process to create and manipulate life, often requiring me to cast the same series of spells thousands of times perfectly without deviation, or only slight deviation in exactly the right way. That is certainly made much easier by forming a hivemind with me at the center, which in and of itself is all about manipulating life for my own benefit.


    But what else should I focus on once I am done with my current project? I¡¯m not entirely sure. There are a number of things I could do but I¡¯m not sure which one I should do. It doesn¡¯t matter right now, I can think of it later.


    Ultimately this doesn¡¯t change much, I don¡¯t see myself acting much different than I already would have. Of course, I could still be completely mistaken, I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m doing any better than the next guy in regards to this type of thing.


    I should mention that the scholars did find an instructor for me. Someone who can teach me how to use Solar Energy will be here within the next three days.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 224

    Today I spent my time trying to figure out a way to use an item to trigger an evolution. I am almost certain that the plant I need for this is Spellwood with its ability to mimic spells. Ultimately I need to do a lot more than just trigger an evolution with this, but that is one of the first steps. I feel like I should have it down, but I seem to be missing something fundamental from the equation. Whatever, I¡¯ll figure it out eventually.


    I got to talk to Tiddol today. She was tired, mentally exhausted. She could remember everything, I was worried she would forget. Though mentally worn out she was in peak physical condition thanks to my efforts. That she complained about, as it prevented her from sleeping. I offered her some of my sleep aid to help her with that, but she rejected it, saying she wanted to wear herself out the old fashioned way. Considering the fact that she spent about two weeks having little control of her actions, I don¡¯t blame her for wanting to purposefully exert her body.


    She doesn''t seem angry at me for what I did. The only emotional reaction I was able to get out of her about that was pride in her own work, and she has good reason to feel pride. She created hundreds, if not thousands of species. I don¡¯t think I could replicate that feat. There are reports of clockwork creatures in every major dungeon in the entire world, or at least the ones on record. And there are many discussions about the creatures on the terminal, reading through those have been interesting. And for all that the dungeons and the scholars are trying to figure out what makes them tick, pun intended, Tiddol understands them perfectly and implicitly. She¡¯s a mother in more than just the literal sense. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    We have received word from Par about their latest conquest. Apparently, all previous letters have been intercepted through some unknown magic, but now that they have claimed the city the mages responsible have either fled, given up, or died. They made sure to capture all of the nobles and other city leaders and are shipping them back home now. They should arrive tomorrow from Pearlhold¡¯s teleportation circle now that the recently captured city has had their''s reactivated. Perfect timing, I needed some test subjects.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 225

    Today I met with my new tutor. She was from a species of beast known as a sphinx, something in the feline line of beasts. The first thing about her that I noticed, beyond the physical was the fact that she had absolutely no mana in her body, in fact she was actively repelling mana. I¡¯m not sure I would be capable of touching her.


    When she realized that it was me she was supposed to teach she scoffed, saying ¡®there¡¯s no way an intangible can make use of Ki¡¯. A quick demonstration was enough to shut her up.


    Despite, or possibly because of, her initial disbelief she seemed to be an eager and effective teacher. She took a very hands-on approach to teaching me, subtly shaping the Solar Energy I was working within a way that I could easily observe. Though she was always careful to avoid touching me directly.


    At first, I was freaking out a little when she said we were going to practice on myself, and I said as much. When she asked me what I have been practicing with she commented that she wished she had thought of it first.


    She watched in awe as I then created a corpse with a bit of magic and had Azrezel raise it, I will admit to showing off more than a little there. To be fair she did the same thing when she demonstrated her own skills. Also creating a corpse is a lot easier than I thought it would be, well I guess it would be more accurate to call it a body as it never actually died.


    She said that my background as a healer will do wonders for my ability to improve creatures with Solar Energy. Apparently, physiology plays a major part in what she called the cultivation of flesh and bone, so I was right. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    There is so much I have to learn from this woman, and again no one tells me names. I mean I can read minds now, but it is hardly subtle. In the same way that an axe to the face is subtle.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol, we mostly just hung out. Speaking off, I have tons of money in the terminal because of her, like several orders of magnitude more than I ever have had. I guess that is what happens when you have thousands of creatures in a new tree of life up for sale. It feels wrong to use that money for myself, but it is way more than I would reasonably be able to use on a single gift. What should I get her? Probably something really expensive, or something she would be incapable of getting on her own. She has commented that she would love to have a proper laboratory before, so I should get the blueprints for one of those and make it for her.


    As far as I can tell the more expensive something is the better it is, at least in the terminal. So I pulled up the most expensive blueprint labeled laboratory, which I do have enough money for. It seems to cover a ton of stuff, I¡¯m not even going to try and list it out. I did recognize a couple of things, like alchemy, clockmaking, and blacksmithing, but then there are things like glass blowing. Why would you want to blow glass? How would you blow glass? What is that supposed to accomplish?


    Regardless, after buying the blueprint it seems to be really big. I¡¯ll probably carve it out of a mountain or a large hill or something. At first, I was worried about having all the materials required to build it, but then I realized that I would be doing it the way a dungeon would. Materials are irrelevant, only mana matters. It shouldn¡¯t take too long though, and even if it does I would only need a fraction of my attention on it. I look forward to seeing her reaction.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 226

    I figured out my instructor''s name today, it¡¯s Shirliex, with the syllables being shir-li-ex.


    I spent most of the day learning how to properly use Solar Energy from her. Thanks to her efforts I am making progress much faster than I was before. Just what I learned today would have taken at least a week to figure out on my own. She was impressed by that, but not overly. She is used to teaching children and those that are ignorant of Solar Energy. On the other hand, I am familiar with not just magic, but Solar Energy. On top of that, I am naturally talented and have a hivemind at my disposal.


    When I finally managed to convince Shirliex that I wasn¡¯t going to spontaneously explode if a bit of Solar Energy got into my body she examined my body. While she was doing that she grabbed me in shock, which hurt a little bit as I felt my body being repelled by whatever it was that caused her to repel mana, but it wasn¡¯t too bad and I quickly got used to it. Nowhere near as bad as being in a mana dead zone.


    She commented that my physiology makes absolutely no sense, like ¡®how are you alive¡¯ kind of a thing. Basically the only reason anything about my body works is because of a complicated series of systems that would be completely useless without my Dungeon core, and in fact, it would be downright harmful as it would end up combining Solar Energy as mana in the same pool, with the expected reaction. Which I already knew on an intellectual level but had never taken the time to think about. If I ever lose my dungeon core somehow then I will die violently and explosively, there is nothing I can do about that. It¡¯s interesting to think about but, I hope, it will never actually be relevant. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I made the laboratory for Tiddol today. I found a nice hill and turned it into a fancy hole in the ground. I thought I was making it discrete, but a chimney stack sticking out of an otherwise nondescript hill isn¡¯t discrete.


    She loves it. Apparently the equipment there is orders of magnitude better than the stuff she was wanting, which was orders of magnitude better than the stuff she was using. Apparently, this is stuff, not even the scholars have the right skills to make, or if they do it is on a super small scale. I¡¯m not really sure what to say about that except ¡®do whatever you want with it¡¯. If she wants to let the scholars make use of it she can do that, but if she doesn¡¯t I will help her kick them out. Same goes with anyone else she might want to let use it. It is hers.


    Other than that I spent some time with Tiddol, mostly exploring the place with her. Yeah, I do have a blueprint of the thing inside my head, but that doesn¡¯t mean I know what any of the information on it means. There were a lot of tools, most of which neither of us knew anything about. In my opinion, the most impressive part of it was a locker that preserves alchemical ingredients by basically freezing time while the door was closed. There was something like in every area that might have any kind of time crunch in its production. Also, thanks to a bit of teleportation magic it is easy to rearrange the layout of the rooms, so if you need to do something with both blacksmithing and alchemy you can move those things next to each other to make it easier to work with them. A lot of the tools seemed to require some level of telekinesis in order to use properly, which will require a bit of practice from Tiddol. It won¡¯t be a big deal if she breaks something as there is something with each workshop that creates new stuff if anything is broken. Basically whoever built this thought of everything.


    I should also mention that I haven¡¯t slept since the day after I evolved, despite the fact that I have taken my sleep aid.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 227

    Today I continued to learn under Shirliex. She commented about how she wished all of her pupils learned as quickly as me, and that it wouldn¡¯t be too long before there would no longer be anything she would be able to teach me. Or rather no longer be anything she would be willing to teach me, I don¡¯t blame her for wanting to keep her secrets. It¡¯s not like I am the official disciple of her clan or something, she¡¯s doing this for money.


    The leaders of the city Par captured arrived two days ago, but I was more than a little distracted by other things. I couldn¡¯t exactly let my new tutor just wait around, but I could let those captive wallow in a cell.


    They were all chained up very carefully and put under active guard to make absolutely certain they wouldn¡¯t escape. They were also all locked up in separate buildings to prevent any mundane means of communication and there were mages nearby to monitor for magical means.


    They were more than a little roughed up, except for the two of them that had some skill in self-healing. I would prefer they be in good health before I do anything to them so I made sure to heal their injuries.


    Then I started reading their minds. None of them were innocent per se. All of them had plotted against me in one way or another, but that isn¡¯t really surprising considering the fact that I do, did, represent a threat to their home. But for the most part, it is basically what I would expect from someone in their position. Yeah, learning about how they wanted to burn down my forest ticks me off a little, but it¡¯s hardly damning. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    There were three of them that knew about the attempt to kidnap me, but two of them were only aware of it, they had no part in any of it. Or if they did those memories have been wiped, which is a bit of a stretch but not completely impossible. Regardless I would rather not hurt a relatively innocent person, so I ignored them.


    The last guy, however, was a financial backer of the attempted kidnapping. Not a major one, but he did put a significant amount of his own money towards hiring those mercenaries. So with him I did a bit of practice, I wanted to figure out what exactly would happen if you mess up while using Solar Energy to improve the body in all sorts of different ways. A lot of those things ended up being difficult, and painful, to reverse. I¡¯m not so heartless, metaphorically speaking as I don¡¯t actually have a heart, to leave him in constant agony so eventually I did let him die.


    Other than that I spent some time with Tiddol in her new laboratory. It seems like she¡¯s gotten a couple assistant since yesterday. A couple of the Ents had some skill with alchemy and other crafts from a previous life, and the same held true for one of the clockwork people. Most still have not learned language, but he was a quick study. It isn¡¯t very often that you have functionally infinite supplies and high-grade equipment, or so I¡¯m lead to believe, so they are getting a bit ambitious. How exactly I have no idea, but I am looking forward to finding out.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 228

    Today I spent most of my time training with Shirliex. Of course I did, what else would I be doing? Today she taught me a way to make absolutely certain that I was getting as much out of Solar Energy as I possibly could, to her knowledge anyway. The problem is that the method is super slow, like the average person would take decades to actually get anywhere, and at least a century before they reached their first watershed. On top of that, it is incredibly tedious and repetitive. Of course, I am not the average person, and I¡¯m not only used to doing slow, tedious processes like this, that¡¯s basically what refining my plants is, I¡¯m really good at it.


    Basically how you do it is you figure out the smallest chunk that you could get perfect every time, and then go a bit smaller because people overestimate their abilities to do something perfectly a billion times in a row, much less how many times you would need to do it in order to get much use out of this method. It¡¯s actually really obvious in hindsight.


    Shirliex recommended this method to me after I told her about how exactly I refine plants, which came up because I was working on refining one that I bought from the terminal today. A plant by the name of Pyre, which is basically just a fancy way of saying fire. In its natural form it forms a flower out of fire. Apparently, it was created by a pyromancer that wanted to give his dryad lover a gift, it was a surprisingly heartwarming tale.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Its actual ability is the ability to manipulate fire, and I got it because half of all the ex-leaders plans for dealing with me revolved around burning my forest down. My trees are fire resistant, as far as trees go anyway, they are still quite flammable. I figured a plant that manipulates fire would make for a good way to make them fireproof.


    It was surprisingly complex for what it was, it took pretty much all day to refine. Of course, I didn¡¯t devote all of my attention to it. I¡¯m going to try to integrate it into my trees and myself tomorrow. Speaking of, I should probably practice integrating plants into other people as it will be relevant for my current project. I know exactly how to do it for myself, because I saw it happen sixteen times when I evolved, but I have a rather unique physiology.


    Now that I think about it, Blastbark has a very similar structure to Pyre. I do remember saying that Blastbark was made by a plant manipulator by striping down some type of fire plant, could it be that Pyre is what Blastbark was made out of? The shape of the flowers they produce naturally are very similar, just one is made of plant material and the other is made of fire.


    Other than that I spent a bit of time with Azrezel. Now that his hivemind is functioning in full force he has moved on to another project. Azrezel is working on making them better combatants, primarily by focusing on their ability to control their bodies and their ability to react. Both of which are near zero right now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 229

    Today is the last day Shirliex will be my tutor, I have learned everything she is willing to teach me. She¡¯ll be going back home tomorrow from the teleporter in pearlhold.


    I was attacked by assassins today, not too big of a deal. It¡¯s just something that happens from time to time. If they are too much for me to take down on my own I can always teleport away, which almost never happens.


    Anyway, this time they interrupted my lessons, and Shirliex was pissed. It isn¡¯t often that you see people getting ripped limb from limb by someone of similar stature to me. None of them actually died, it is pretty hard to die when you have a master healer nearby, plus I would feel bad if they did end up dying. Some soldiers took them and locked them up afterward, so everything worked out in the end.


    I took a bit of time to incorporate a form of Pyre that was designed to put out fire into all of my trees. It worked wonders, no matter how much I tried to light them on fire I failed. I even had Tiddol use some alchemical solutions designed to create a sticky, lasting flame and even that failed to light the trees. I am confident that nothing short of a true immortal pyromancer or plant manipulator could light my trees on fire, of course, if that happens then I have bigger problems. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    I also incorporated it into my body. It was a bit more difficult than I expected, but by taking it slow and making sure nothing could possibly go wrong I managed to pull it off. I am basically immune to fire now, and I can manipulate it. I don¡¯t see this really being useful beyond the defensive applications. Might be useful if I ever want to cook something.


    Tiddol was happy about the new plant, apparently fire was a missing ingredient in a lot of potions she wanted to make. Also, she seems to have retained the ability to conjure the exact thing she needs for whatever product she¡¯s working on as long as I have access to the relevant plants. It''s not something she has much control over beyond what would be required for that magic to work. Is this a result of my influence? She was able to make use of Pyre the moment I bought it, before I even created any of it, so it is very likely that is the case.


    Now she is begging me to buy a bunch more plants, which does help with my guilt of using the money I got from her creations for myself. I¡¯ll look over my options tomorrow, maybe I¡¯ll find something interesting?


    Other than that I spent my free time with Azrezel, doing what couples do when they are alone together.


    I should probably mention that I have not slept since evolving, ignoring immediately afterward where I used some painkillers to knock myself out. I think that is the effect Ergen is having on me, I no longer need to sleep at all. At least I hope that is what is happening. Even my sleep aid is useless here. The only thing that can make me sleep is a bunch of potent Flore, but that causes damage to my body and invalidates most of the benefits of sleeping. So I probably shouldn¡¯t do that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 230

    Today I said goodbye to Shirliex, we will probably never meet again. It was a surprisingly emotional farewell, we didn¡¯t know each other for very long but we did get along well. Now she is going home with a rather large paycheck.


    And so I got started on the next step in process of adding creatures other than plants to my hivemind. I started trying to integrate plants into people, starting with the undead. Undead are super useful as test subjects, probably why I was looking for a necromancer for so long. I managed to successfully merge Glovine perfectly into a pair of zombies by the end of the day. It is a lot easier than I expected it to be, either that or a lot more of what works on me is applicable to others. Or maybe I¡¯m just that good, both healing and plant manipulation is represented heavily here.


    I spent some time with Tiddol today figuring out which plants she wanted me to buy. I had enough for three different plants and she said that the ones that would be most useful to her would be ones that manipulate air, water, and the ground. I don¡¯t see any of them, except maybe the one that manipulates the ground, being particularly useful to me, but apparently she has several projects she has had to shelve because she was lacking in one of those areas.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    The plant that manipulated Air is called Whitelock, water is Tidereed. Last but not least the ground plant was called Rockgrass, really creative.


    All three were easy to perfect, like all my plants, and easy to incorporate into my body. Whitelock made my body feel light and airy, made me jump better and fall slower, in addition to being able to manipulate air. Tidereed did something, I¡¯m not sure what beyond the obvious water manipulation. Rockgrass made my body a bit tougher, kind of like Mithrilwood but not exactly. Mithrilwood gave me bones while Rockgrass improved my whole body. There is also the obvious ground manipulation.


    Other than that I got a letter from Par saying that he¡¯ll be returning tomorrow by way of teleporter, I¡¯m looking forward to seeing him again. He¡¯s good company, and loyal to a fault. He always brings interesting things whenever he comes home, and interesting stories.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 231

    This morning I went to Pearlhold to greet Par as he arrived with his troops. He¡¯s taller now by about half a head. He grew a pair of horns too, and I can see obvious stumps where he must have filed down some tusks. His skin is also a brilliant scarlet.


    It seems the ugly little goblin has evolved into something called an Oni. And he¡¯s hot, I mean that both in regards to appearance and actual body temperature. Tiddol is going to love cuddling with him during the winter, and hate it during the summer.


    Obviously, he is better at everything, but his physical body received the brunt of those boons. He is physically just as strong as Thes was while enraged, or at least he is pulling off similar feats of strength. If the two of them were to fight I¡¯m not entirely sure who would win. I¡¯m not even going to try to list how else his body was improved, just that everything was vastly improved, and, taking Tiddol¡¯s word for it, I really do mean everything.


    In addition to that, he is smarter. He was smart before but now I think he might be able to rival many of the scholars. Unfortunately, he is still mostly incompetent at magic, the best he can do is some basic self-healing. But really that¡¯s all he needs, any more would be a waste.


    After the small impromptu parade that was our valiant soldiers returning home from combat, I got to work on the next step of my current project. Namely building the thing. It is incredibly complicated, partially because the backbone is Spellwood, partially because it has to replicate itself on demand, and partially because of so many other small issues. It is so much harder to manipulate plants through Spellwood than it is to do it directly, I had to go through maybe a thousand iterations before I even started to understand what was going on. Even then I had to go through thousands of iterations to get it right for a small piece of the overall puzzle. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    I have to get it to trigger an evolution, which I have no idea how to actually do yet. I need it to direct the world to enhance the brain, which is theoretically pretty easy, but in order to even try I would need the first step. I need it to produce Solar Energy during, and only during, an evolution. I need it to join a hivemind and dedicate a portion of the subjects mental prowess to me. And I need it to be able to be spread from one person to another without any action from me.


    It is going to take a couple days to finish this step, possibly even a week, but once I¡¯m done there is much else I have to do. Now if only I could figure out how to make it trigger an evolution. Something to do with my soul maybe? Worth looking into.


    During my downtime I got everyone together so we can play board games. We ended up playing that civilization builder game again, only this time I actually managed to win. I went for a religious victory right from the start, ignoring everything else. I only had one city, almost nothing in terms of a standing army, and pitiful magic. I only survived because I kept bribing Par to declare war on anyone that attacked me. One more turn and Tiddol would have won a magic victory, two more turns and my dad would have won a cultural victory. Par ended up ruling the world, as expected, but Kaire and Lulem ended up the economic centers of the world.


    By the time everyone paid enough attention to me to realize what was going on I was already on the fast track to victory. So what if Par took my only city before I actually won? I still won, and his people revolted for sacking their holy city so I got my revenge.


    It was fun, and I look forward to playing with everyone again sometime.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 232

    Today I figured out how to get Spellwood to trigger an evolution. I was right yesterday when I said it might have something to do with my soul, it needed a piece of my soul in order to work the way I needed it to. It took me a couple tries to get it in there perfectly, as a dungeon I might be naturally talented with soul manipulation, but natural talent is nothing without practice.


    This is more than a little frustrating as now I need to figure out how to duplicate a small piece of my soul, I have no idea if that is even theoretically possible. If it is possible then I think I¡¯m in a good position to do it. Between Spellwood and Grey Iris I think I can pull it off, I just need to learn more about my own soul. Specifically what exactly it is that is triggering an evolution.


    So after figuring that out I started studying my own soul. There is an obvious core to my soul, where all the important structures are, the stuff that actually does something. For obvious reasons, I stayed far away from that. Instead, I focused on the rest of the soul, the more massive part, for me anyway, in other people it''s pretty small. It acts as a kind of buffer for the soul to protect against standard wear and tear, which is apparently a thing that happens. I never would have guessed. It doesn¡¯t happen very fast, but it does happen, it doesn¡¯t need to be very big, or recover very quickly, but it does need to be there.


    This is the part of the soul that you take a chunk out of when you seed new life. And as such the two people in my forest that do that regularly, Azrezel and myself, have much more of it than the average person, with Azrezel having much less than me. He naturally recovers and grows pretty quickly, but I artificially recover and grow quickly. It is also the part of the soul I used to get Spellwood to trigger an evolution, which is a huge relief. I¡¯m guessing this means that whatever it is that lets me trigger an evolution is not something that is an inherent part of me but rather something tacked on by an outside force, meaning I don¡¯t have to dig through the entrails of my soul to figure out how to do this. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    If I did end up needing to I probably would have still done it, but I would much rather not.


    Other than that I spent some time with Azrezel. I can¡¯t help but compare Par and Azrezel to each other. They are the two most attractive people I know, at least since Par¡¯s evolution. While Par is hot to the touch, Azrezel has no natural body heat, so his skin is always room temperature. That is something I can change temporarily with some healing, so it won¡¯t too big of an issue in the upcoming winter months, it would suck to not be able to cuddle with him because it was too cold.


    They are also both rather driven, Par wants to leave his mark on the world with an empire while Azrezel is determined to advance the field of necromancy as far as he can, ideally creating intelligent undead in the process. And both of them are rather competent at what they do.


    I should also mention that both of them are ripped, though not near enough to be musclebound.


    I think Tiddol and I have similar tastes in men.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 233

    Figuring out the exact structure that allows me to trigger evolutions was really easy. It was not subtle at all, so all I had to do was trigger a couple evolutions to narrow it down. It is also really simple, simple enough that I could replicate it easily with minimal practice. The external part of my soul is absolutely riddled with the things, which makes sense because it would exclusively go onto people that would regularly cut chunks of their soul out and you wouldn¡¯t want them losing that.


    I have no idea how it works, but whatever it is it was built with mass production in mind, not subtlety. An ideal situation for me.


    That didn¡¯t take long to figure out, so I moved onto trying to figure out how to get it to replicate properly. It ended up taking all day to get it perfect. Yeah, it was pretty easy to get it working, but that would only last for two or three generations before it collapsed entirely. I had to get it absolutely perfect down to the finest detail in order for it to be able to propagate indefinitely.


    That is a major step I¡¯ve completed. It sends my whole projected schedule for this project way off in a good way, I was expecting it to take way more time than it actually did to figure out how to mimic a part of my soul. Of course, I am always wrong about how long a project will take me, so it¡¯s not too surprising. I don¡¯t expect the hivemind portion to take much time to complete, it¡¯s something I¡¯ve done before after all. Of course, I am always wrong about how long a project will take me, so it could end up taking me weeks. Who knows?The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    I had someone message me over the terminal about a creature they purchased from me, an expensive one. Apparently, something was going wrong and any of them the dungeon made would end up exploding, and as far as they could tell nothing was really valuable about it. It didn¡¯t take long for me to figure out that they had bought my own species and that the issue was that all the excess Solar Energy and mana was pooling where the dungeon core should be, with predictable results. In addition to that, it was lacking all of the plants I have inside my body, except for Sunflower.


    I ended up walking them through exactly what they would need to do in order to make it useful. First and foremost by placing their dungeon core inside of it and using it as their own body. Apparently, that had some interesting effects. And then I instructed them to buy some magical plants and incorporate them into the body, which apparently takes really well to that. I thought it was just my own skill, but apparently, my body goes out of its way to accept plants being incorporated into it. That plus the fact that dungeons are inherently talented at creating and manipulating creatures made it easy for the other dungeon to do that. At that point they got super excited about something and thanked me very quite a bit, saying that they would tell all of their friends about it.  Sure enough, there was a public post about how great my species was later that day, one that got pretty popular.


    So yeah, I am not the only one of my species anymore. Feels kinda weird to know there are now others like myself, and soon to be more.


    Other than that I spent my downtime alone with Azrezel, doing what couples do when they are alone together.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 234

    Getting my current project to tie people into my hivemind was as easy as I expected, or at least the basic part was. The issues came when I had to figure out how to restrict it. I don¡¯t want to use all of their brains and I don¡¯t want other people taking advantage of the hivemind after all. Of course, it was still pretty simple, so I managed to finish most of it before the end of the day.


    I ended up doing a couple things. The first is limit the amount of brain power I am taking to roughly a third of what is available, considering the fact that their brains will become much better as a result of this process they will have much more brain power available to them after this whole process. The second thing I did was form a smaller hivemind for the people, this one takes a tenth of the total available power and dedicates it to use by anyone that needs it. That one also lets everyone who has access to it communicate telepathically with anyone else that has access to it.


    The last thing I did was the one I had the hardest time with, and will probably take me at least another day to perfect. Anyone that undergoes the process will become loyal to the person that controls the hivemind, me. Though theoretically someone could replace me after I die, but that isn¡¯t likely. I did this because it could really come back and bite me if some less than savory people got access to it and I can¡¯t think of an effective way to vet people. So some minor brainwashing is required. It¡¯s not like it changes anything else about their personality, and I intentionally designed it to be easy to fight off with a force of will, so only the most weak-willed people would be able to have it forced on them. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    During my downtime, I hung out with Tiddol in the lab, which is absolutely crawling with her assistants. She¡¯s basically gathered up everyone with applicable skills and had them start to work and improve their craft with the tools available in the laboratory. For trades that no one knew she found some promising youths and had them learn them from scratch with at best a guidebook and the proper tools, and at worst just the best tools for that trade. She¡¯s planning on expanding everything as much as she possibly can and once she has enough people that have a grip on the various trades we have the tools for she is going to start bringing in anyone that might want to learn. Her ideal situation is having an entire laboratory dedicated to each trade, from Alchemy to cartography to glass blowing, which I found out is quite literal and is used to make vases, jars, cups, and the like. I mean, I can see how that would be useful.


    Of course, I offered her my full support with that goal. I don¡¯t really understand the benefit of it but Tiddol assures me that nothing but good things could come from this project of hers, so I¡¯ll trust her.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 235

    Today I perfected the last part of the hivemind, now I only have two parts of it left to perfect. The first is to figure out how to have the device manipulate mana and Solar Energy during the evolution process in exactly the way I want it to. The second is to figure out how to get it to be able to replicate itself perfectly. I can already get it to replicate that small soul chunk pretty well, but that was a simple proof of concept, not even close to what I actually need.


    It seems like another empire is starting to form. A group of pretty powerful angelics gathered together to form a council and have started convincing other cities to join them. From the reports there is some pretty heavy extortion, blackmailing, and kidnapping going on to force those city-states to join their new empire. They aren¡¯t even trying to hide it. With how quickly they are expanding we will eventually clash with them, assuming they don¡¯t stop when our borders touch. I personally would rather avoid fighting them, by all accounts those angelics are getting close to being true immortals.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Speaking of news from out of our territory, we have news about Willow. Apparently, she¡¯s doing pretty well for herself. She has a party that she¡¯s been diving with and has had some great success. I hope she continues to do well for herself, diving is pretty dangerous. Maybe I can send her and her party some new gear? Well, maybe get Tiddol to do it, she was like a mother to Willow, while she wasn¡¯t very close to me.


    I spent my downtime with my dad, listening to his stories. Apparently, he at one point ended up in a fight on a moon. They were hunting down and trying to assassinate a teleporter mage, which sounds pretty hard. So they ended up blindly following the mage through several teleportations before ending up on a moon. At that point, all the mages had to conserve all of their mana so that they could have a way home, so it was down to the others to take out this mage and his lackeys. Luckily the teleporter was spent so he wasn¡¯t running away anymore. After the fight was over, an easy victory for my dad, he waxed poetic about looking at the planet from outside of it. He talked about how massive the planet is, he couldn¡¯t see opposite edges at the same time, even in his peripheral vision. Just listening to him describe it was awe-inspiring, it must have been so much more to actually be there.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 236

    Figuring out how to get the device to manipulate mana and Solar Energy during an evolution was easy. This whole project has been a lot easier than I was expecting. It also wasn¡¯t very difficult to get it to improve exactly the parts that I wanted it to improve. All of that took maybe an hour.


    I spent most of the rest of the day figuring out how to get it to perfectly replicate itself, I should be done with that early tomorrow. That was the last step for this project, I¡¯ll be able to actually start implementing it tomorrow.


    I¡¯m excited. I always am when a project is on the verge of fruition. I have high hopes for this one. The question is what to do next. Maybe I can start working on improving my own body with Solar Energy? That¡¯s honestly kind of boring, maybe I¡¯ll spare a bit of effort for it but it won¡¯t be my focus. Well, I¡¯ll think of something to do.


    Par and his troops marched off again today. Apparently, everything from their most recent conquest has been settled so they are marching to the next city. It won¡¯t be too long before we control every city-state in the area, well, unless the other growing empire gets them first.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. At this point he has dramatically improved every aspect of his undead, and yet they are still just so stupid. They have a level of brain power equivalent to myself before my hivemind, and they don¡¯t use any of it to actually think. It seems to be more or less ubiquitous with undead until you consider Azrezel, who is an intelligent undead. There has to be something going on that isn¡¯t related to their bodies, maybe something to do with their souls? I don¡¯t really know enough to really figure out if anything might be wrong there, but it might be worth checking out.


    Speaking of necromancy, it is super weird how healers can¡¯t use necromancy. Like it isn¡¯t consistent with anything else, and from everything I¡¯ve seen about necromancy would ordinarily lead me to believe that it is just a subfield of Healing. Taken to the extreme the two are indistinguishable anyway, but it would be so much easier if healing didn¡¯t cut you off from necromancy and necromancy didn¡¯t cut you off from healing. They complement each other super well.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    It¡¯s almost like it was intentional. That actually makes so much sense that it is scary. If you think about it necromancers got dealt the worse hand here, almost like someone really wanted to restrict necromancers somehow. The only form of healing a normal necromancer has access to is necrotic healing, which does a number of things, but the most relevant here is that it slowly turns you into an undead. Undead have no fertility, maybe a dungeon somewhere has managed to get undead to breed, but I doubt it. If you can¡¯t have children you can¡¯t pass on your talents to your children, either directly through the innate talents of your species or indirectly through teaching them. Necrotic healing is also not nearly as good as traditional healing in the actual healing department, that means that necromancers are much more likely to die from their wounds, further decreasing their numbers.


    The question is who would want to do that? And how would they do it? I did hear about Origin being able to make changes to how the world worked in their hayday, but they lost that power long before the first sentient appeared, and necromancy didn¡¯t exist until long after that. Talking to other dungeons it seems we have inherited that power. But even then by all accounts of changes Origin made there has to be some kind of major consensus when they did that, and I can¡¯t see the dungeons caring enough about necromancy to do that.


    There have been two groups to have that power, one wouldn¡¯t care enough and the other couldn¡¯t have possibly known when they had the power to do something about it. Was there someone or something before the Origin? I know I have been contacted by some powerful outsider creature before, back when I gained the power to control Fate. Maybe he caused Necromancy to be crippled? Though for some reason I doubt that. Fate doesn¡¯t exactly seem to be something you get good at if you are trying to deliberately affect the world for your own gain. More like something you let happen to you. Maybe there are others? It certainly wouldn¡¯t be the weirdest idea.


    Thinking that some creature well beyond me has somehow restricted my access to necromancy ticks me off, despite the fact that I have no concrete proof that this actually happened. Now I am determined to figure out a way around that. That will be my next project. I can hardly say that I shape life to my will and be incapable of creating undead.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 237

    I managed to get everything perfect before breakfast today. I ended up spending the rest of the day adding people into my hivemind. I explained to everyone I used it on how to trigger its self-replication abilities, though apparently, that wasn¡¯t necessary as the mechanism is instinctual. I also explained to them that they should only use it on someone that is willing to receive it. From here they will spread it themselves, if I¡¯m lucky it will spread far and wide.


    My next project is going to be figuring out how to use necromancy myself. I know that I can mimic necromancy by puppeting corpses, but for some reason, I can¡¯t seed a soul into a corpse at all. Maybe if I can get enough dungeons interested in necromancy I could make it possible for everyone, though I doubt that would be easy. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    We got word from Par today, which is unusually fast. Apparently, the next city they were about to take has conditionally surrendered without a fight, before they even reached the walls. He¡¯s going through the negotiation process now, but that shouldn¡¯t take too long.


    So, one of my Ents was mugged in the street today. By the time I got there it was already too late, the mugger had been ripped to shreds by the citizens in the town. I can heal a lot, but I can¡¯t fix death. Apparently, the people really like my children.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Tiddol. Just taking a break to relax together. I did get her to send a gift to Willow though, hopefully, that will keep my eldest safe.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 238

    As far as I can tell I have made no progress today towards figuring out how to use necromancy myself. Whatever is causing that feedback is subtle, incredibly so. That plus the excruciating pain makes it pretty difficult to figure out what was going on, and that''s with pain killers turned all the way up. Even after a couple hundred attempts I was unable to figure out anything about what¡¯s causing this reaction. It¡¯s frustrating but not unexpected.


    It¡¯s not that I didn¡¯t learn anything though. I did figure out that whatever it is that is causing this is able to cause Azrezel, who is normally incapable of feeling pain, to feel pain. I have no idea what could possibly cause that as even with my skill in healing I¡¯m unable to do that. I was worried about hurting him from this but it doesn¡¯t seem to be causing any physical damage and according to him at least the pain is nothing compared to the first time he split a chunk of his soul off in his first failed attempt at necromancy. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. I did spend my downtime hanging out with Tiddol but even that was pretty calm and relaxed. Aside from the frustration of almost no progress is was just a calm day. The weather was nice and the clockwork birds were singing, I liked it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 239

    Today I spent most of my time observing the soul, specifically Azrezels. I spent my time trying to figure out if there was anything happening to his soul while he was trying to perform healing magic. I feel like I am on the right track, but it is just that, a feeling. I found no concrete evidence one way or another.


    I simply don¡¯t have the expertise required to figure it out. I do, however, know about a large group of creatures that do have that expertise. After about a decade or so a dungeon will start being able to see and interact with souls, of course, many of them would be rather skilled in that field. Yes, dungeons, in general, don¡¯t care about necromancy, but some rare few do, like myself. And people, including dungeons, tend to care a lot more about something when you can offer them something they want. I happen to have quite a bit of money at the moment, with more coming in constantly. And if that doesn¡¯t work there are other rather unique skills I can offer, all dungeons can create life, but few are as good at creating plant-based life as me, and none can create new ents for almost a decade more. And I can always ask Tiddol for a favor, her clockwork children are rather popular. Besides, it can¡¯t hurt to ask.


    Par showed up with the leaders of the recently surrendered city today by way of teleporter. The deal that came too is that if they manage to get my approval then they will be allowed to continue to run their city, with a bit of oversight. So I read their minds, and while all of them were guilty of plotting my downfall, only two of them had any part in the plan to kidnap me, though the rest were aware of it. I can¡¯t fault them for that. Needless to say, those two died. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Upon hearing about the completion of my most recent project Par requested that I let the leaders I did approve of make use of it. I agreed, and Par joined my hivemind himself as well, partially as a demonstration to show that it wasn¡¯t dangerous. I gave Par a version that did not enforce his loyalty to me, I wouldn¡¯t do that to a close friend of mine. Besides, if I can¡¯t trust Par then I don¡¯t think I could trust anyone, if he uses it on anyone then they will get the full effect though.


    I spent my downtime with Azrezel. We basically had date night. Starting with dinner in a restaurant in pearlhold, just a small hole in the wall place. We ended up going in disguise so people wouldn''t recognize us, it was trying to pretend to be an average person. It was a bit difficult to hide Azrezel¡¯s wings though, but it¡¯s not like there aren¡¯t angels in the city so we mostly ignored it.


    After that we went home and ended up making up poetry for each other, we were both really bad at it. It ended up being less romantic and more hilarious, I mean how else would you describe comparing me to peanut butter. It was fun, we should do that more often.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 240

    Today it snowed, a lot. It¡¯s still snowing. It seems winter has come early this year. If it keeps up like this it will be harmful to my trees, so I should probably do something about it. I could probably melt it all with Pyre, use it to make all my trees nice and warm. It would make the ground all muddy, but that¡¯s better than the alternative.


    So my attempts to bribe the dungeons into caring about necromancy has borne some fruit. Apparently, some power players really want me to make them a custom Ent, or Tiddol to make them some kind of clockwork creature. Though they haven¡¯t really made any progress towards solving the issue. I am, however, finding out a lot of information about necromancy as groups of dungeons share the information that they have about the subject with each other. I don¡¯t really understand it, but it is easy enough to give that information to Azrezel, who is finding it to be rather interesting. At the end of this project maybe I will get some of them to consolidate all of this new information.


    I honestly don¡¯t think Azrezel and I would be able to gain ground in this project on our own, or rather I don¡¯t think that the two of us working together would be able to accomplish anything that a bunch of dungeons wouldn¡¯t be able to. Though Azrezel is rather skilled at necromancy, so maybe he could offer the dungeons his knowledge? But it¡¯s not like he would be able to access the terminal, or would he? I actually don¡¯t know, I should probably ask. I¡¯ll probably find out by tomorrow.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I spent my downtime hanging out with Tiddol and her kids. They¡¯re doing really well for themselves. Umi has been learning everything she can about mana from the scholars and is a very talented mage, while my trees just absolutely love Ednar and seem to dote on him in their own unique way. Based on all reports both of them are very well liked by the people, of course they are. Apparently, someone tried to kidnap Ednar at one point, only to get absolutely thrashed by Umi, to hear her tell it.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. There were reports of a group of True Immortals having a brawl in the area, maybe that has something to do with the snow?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 241

    Today I figured out how to let Azrezel access the terminal. Well, technically I followed the directions of someone who told me how to do it so I didn¡¯t actually figure anything out myself. I do have the be physically present though, so it ended up being the two of us sitting together while we went over all the information coming up about necromancy and him regularly offering his own insights.


    So we basically ended up cuddling all day. Which was great cause it was really hot thanks to my attempts to melt the snow faster than it could fall, his cold skin was a nice reprieve from that heat.


    It seems someone tried to assassinate Tiddol today. Looks like they have decided to switch tactics away from trying to kill me after nearly a dozen failures. Tiddol was injured, quite severely in fact, but it wasn¡¯t anything a competent healer couldn¡¯t fix, and what do you know, she is really good friends one of the best.


    The worrying part is that the assassin wasn¡¯t caught. It was a bombing attempt by way of messing with one of the potions Tiddol was working on. Luckily she is very accustomed to having potions randomly explode on her, so she knew what she needed to do in order to not die from the blast or the shrapnel. The only way this could have been pulled off is through some teleportation as Tiddol had a close eye on everything before it exploded. Nothing about that potion would have caused it to explode the way it did without tampering. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I asked Tiddol if it was possible that it could have been caused by the device I made that teleports explosions, but according to her, it was a distinctly alchemical explosion. I¡¯m not sure what the difference, I wasn¡¯t even aware there was a difference, so I¡¯ll trust her judgment on that.


    I hope we manage to find the would-be assassin, if he can teleport things like that he could strike at any time. I¡¯m not even sure how we could begin looking, I would rather not go through and read everyone¡¯s minds because for one that would be rather uncomfortable for both me and the person whose mind I¡¯m reading, and two it occasionally causes permanent brain damage, which is really hard for me to fix, if it is even possible.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol, making sure she was alright after the attempted assassination. Both physically and mentally.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 242

    I spent most of the day with Azrezel, who was talking to other dungeons about Necromancy and then experimenting with it. I spent that time trying to create a new type of Ent, one that can use Necromancy and healing.


    And I technically succeed. I managed to create an Ent capable of Necromancy using Grey Iris while also being able to do some healing, albeit only too itself and other Ents and only by way of plant manipulation. No true healing, unfortunately. I can get Whitefoot and Grey Iris into the same creature, but I can¡¯t get that Ent to then use Necromancy, they just have some limited innate ability to interact with the soul. Even getting an Ent to use both healing and Necromancy together by going entirely through plants failed me, which wasn¡¯t surprising as I had already attempted the same thing personally.


    Azrezel has apparently learned quite a bit. Several of the dungeons have successfully created intelligent undead, always out of already living creatures, yes, but it is still progress towards one of his dreams. His limit with the number of undead he can create is only in how fast his soul regenerates and how many he can control, creating intelligent undead would help with one of those issues. Plus there are the more emotional parts, it¡¯s what his dad was working on when he was murdered, in a very real way it¡¯s his legacy. It¡¯s what he¡¯s been striving to achieve since I met him.


    Tiddol has made no progress towards figuring out who tried to murder her, and short of mind reading everyone, which I highly doubt would actually work, I don¡¯t think I can offer much more help than I have already provided. The most worrying part is that it happened again today. This is stressing her out, a lot. As it probably should, but I think the stress is hurting her more than the actual assassination attempts. I have never seen someone actually pull hair out of their head in frustration before. I can regrow hair, but not perfectly. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The attempt today involved teleporting an explosive potion in midair right behind her. Luckily she is good at not dying in explosions otherwise something I can¡¯t fix might have happened.


    Par returned home late today and hasn¡¯t left Tiddol¡¯s side. We have the scholars trying to figure out a way to find out who the assassin is, it is possible to trace of a teleportation back to its source, but for one this small it¡¯s only possible while it¡¯s happening. And we have Tiddol¡¯s workshop under constant guard from very skilled mages, none of them are teleporters as we don¡¯t have any competent teleporters.


    Maybe I could make something to help protect Tiddol. Something that absorbs explosions for her maybe? I could maybe create something out of Blastbark that would help absorb explosions, maybe weave that into her clothes? No point waiting around for our mystery assassin to strike again, might as well do it now.


    Alright, now that I have woven Blastbark, MithrilWood, and Pipeweed together into her clothes she should have some protection. Apparently absorbing an explosion causes Blastbark to create mana, and not letting that mana go somewhere causes the stuff to explode, hence the Pipeweed. I hope this keeps her in one piece while we solve this issue.


    If there is a next time Tiddol¡¯s armed guard, which consists of a couple mages capable of creating barriers, will contain everyone long enough for me to read their recent memories. If they are close by that should solve the issue, if their teleportation works at a long range then I don¡¯t think we would be able to catch him, or at least I don¡¯t know of any way we could.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 243

    So, I kind of succeed at getting something to use both Necromancy and healing at the same time today. I mean, I wouldn¡¯t count it as a full success really, as the thing wasn¡¯t actually alive, it didn¡¯t have a soul, or at least not enough of one to count.


    See, what I did was I created a device that when touched to a corpse it would break off a piece of its already very small soul scraps and use that to seed the corpse and turn it into an undead. It was also able to use it¡¯s own internal mana supply to do some basic healing, I could make it much better but all that mattered was that it worked.


    I ended up spending all day experimenting with it in various ways and reporting the results to the other dungeons. Things like how much of a soul would I be able to give it before it would no longer work, which turned out to be quite a bit but not infinite. Would it be able to regenerate its own soul and still work, which was a no. And how would it be able to substitute other people¡¯s souls when seeding one into a corpse, which was a resounding no.


    I¡¯m not sure how useful all the small stuff is going to be, but now I¡¯m pretty sure that we have proven that a large part, if not all, of the problem has to do with the soul. It also doesn¡¯t have anything to do with the core of the soul either, the parts that actually make you you, otherwise it would have worked no matter how much soul stuff I gave the device.


    It¡¯s honestly really fun to work with Azrezel on this project, I rarely see his eyes light up like that unless he is working with some new part of Necromancy. It¡¯s really cute to watch him work.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Another explosive potion was teleported to Tiddol today, shortly after dinner. She got seriously injured as a result, but luckily Tiddol has been sticking close to me since yesterday so I was able to patch her up. This potion was much more explosive than the last one, and if it wasn¡¯t for me improving her clothes to be explosion resistant she would have died.


    We didn¡¯t find the culprit, but we did find out where the potion was teleported from, so either they have some way to get out of magical barriers quickly, which isn¡¯t unreasonable as they are a teleporter, or they are using some sort of magical device to teleport them to Tiddol without them being present. Considering the fact that we didn¡¯t find a second marker of teleportation it is probably the second one. Or it is some other option we haven¡¯t considered, we don¡¯t know.


    What we do know is that they are either a competent Alchemist or they have easy access to one. The only ones that we know of that are all the competent is Tiddol and the scholars, and I have already read the minds of the scholars. All of them are either innocent or have some way to obscure their own memories, but there is no point worrying about that as there is nothing we can do about it.


    We also know that they have to be nearby in order to actually set up those traps. If they didn¡¯t have to be then Tiddol would already be dead.


    If we could get a hold of one of those potions then Tiddol or one of the Scholars could analyze it and figure out what it¡¯s made of, that could help narrow things down for us. Of course, that is easier said than done.


    Par has the whole place under martial law at this point, no one goes anywhere outside of their own homes without a military escort. And all of the military escorts are part of my hivemind, which makes it easy to be sure of their loyalties.


    Ideally we would capture the guy red-handed, we can only hope.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 244

    Today Par had to leave to deal with some administrative stuff. Which he was entirely unwilling to do until I said that Tiddol would be under my care constantly, even while she slept as I have no need for sleep.


    Good thing I was too because whoever it is that is aiming for her life is getting bolder. There were two attempts on her life today, both times we failed to capture the person responsible. We did, however, manage to get ahold of one of the potions without it exploding, the second one caught us completely by surprise.


    Tiddol, with the assistance of some of the more alchemically inclined scholars did whatever it is they were doing to the potion to figure out what exactly it is made of, I¡¯m not even going to try to pretend to understand what was going on there. It does contain many of my plants, which is hardly a surprise considering how easy those are to get around here. It also contained a couple of other ingredients, magical metals mostly, that definitely aren¡¯t produced here. They are brought in by traders, but they are found in the potion in such a small amount that it would be entirely reasonable for the attempted assassin to have brought them all with him from elsewhere.


    We have a hunch that the potions somehow teleport themselves to Tiddol so we set a bunch of people on hunting down those traps that are lying in wait. So far none have been found, but my forest is a very large place and the guy doing this is competent in both healing and Alchemy, it wouldn¡¯t be a stretch to assume he was good at hiding his work too.


    The scholars have requested a master teleporter be brought in to help solve this problem, though due to the rarity of master teleporters and their high demand it will likely take quite some time to bring one here, it could be weeks or even months before one is available. I don¡¯t think it is something we should rely on. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    My dad has been wracking his brain to figure out if there is anyone he knows that might be able to help us out here, but so far everyone he has thought of has turned out to be dead.


    This guy might be terrible at actually getting the kill, but he is sneaky and good at covering his tracks.


    I have started mind reading people to try and figure out any clues I can.  It¡¯s uncomfortable and has the potential to cause permanent damage that I can¡¯t fix, but I don¡¯t care so much about that anymore. I just want the person trying to kill my best friend gone. I did offer to let the person whose mind I was reading to join my hivemind first though, that would make everything dramatically easier.


    I started with the merchants that were selling those extra ingredients, none of them were responsible but that did give me a list of people who had bought those ingredients. Though the memories of the merchants were spotty around that information, which isn¡¯t unusual but is frustrating. I didn¡¯t really have time to work on that list today.


    I feel like I should also start trying to figure out a way to prevent teleportation entirely. That, surprisingly, isn¡¯t part of what Portweed is capable of as it is right now. I understand how plants work, so I think I can fix that, but I don¡¯t understand how teleportation works, so I don¡¯t think it will be easy. Especially because, by all accounts, preventing teleportation is much harder than actually teleporting. It would be useful for keeping Tiddol safe and for locking up the guy after we catch him and before we decide what to do with him.


    Azrezel has been hard at work advancing the field of necromancy with the assistance of a bunch of dungeons. I am currently much more focused on catching Tiddol¡¯s would be killer before they become Tiddol¡¯s killer, but I still really want to see this project succeed. I¡¯m not entirely sure what progress was made there.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 245

    By chance, I caught sight of the person while they were placing an explosive potion. They teleported away before I managed to get a good look at them, but judging by the fact that they have breasts I think it is safe to say they are female. There are species where the males have breasts, but she was way too small to belong to one of those species. Maybe a goblin or a gnome of some kind, I would have to get a better look at her in order to be certain.


    The potion was still very much explosive, but it hadn¡¯t been set to teleport when I found her. According to Tiddol, it is basically just a more refined version of the one we got previously, ingredients are all the same but the person that made it took longer to make a better potion.


    Unfortunately, this did not prevent another attempt on Tiddol¡¯s life today, that¡¯ll teach us for letting our guards down for even a moment. Physically she is fine, but I can tell that the stress is getting to her. I¡¯ve never seen someone so twitchy and paranoid in my life, it took a lot of effort just to get her to calm down enough to sleep.


    There are still a lot of people that match the description of ¡®small female¡¯ here, but it is significantly fewer than we were looking at before. Of course the fact that they were able to walk around without a military escort means it might be a bit more difficult to actually find them, that plus the fact that my trees haven¡¯t noticed anything means that they must have some stealth related abilities. Maybe an item of some sort? I highly doubt that one person is able to be a master teleporter, a master alchemist, and a master at stealth without also being a true immortal. Which they obviously aren¡¯t as if they were Tiddol would just straight up be dead, nothing we can do about that. It might be a small team of people though, it would be a lot more reasonable for a teleporter to be good at sneaking around and for that person to be working with an alchemist than for one person to have all three skill sets.


    I spent most of my day reading people¡¯s memories, but no luck there quite yet. I also figured out that it is nearly impossible to learn any practical skills by reading people¡¯s memories unless it is something I am already good at. Something about the level of obscurity between my brain and theirs makes it difficult to understand stuff like that, would be useful if I ever found a skilled healer that would let me pick their brains a bit though. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I have quite a bit of Fate built up, more than I have ever built up before on account of my newfound lack of a need to sleep. I will burn that tomorrow while I am looking for the person trying to kill Tiddol, along with everything else we know hopefully that will be enough.


    Azrezel, with the help of the dungeons, made a pretty big discovery today. They figured out why the only intelligent undead are those that were turned into undead while still alive. Something about seeding the soul into a corpse prevents the soul from forming properly, it simply doesn¡¯t connect to the body the way it should. Nothing you do to the physical body of the undead is going to change that. This is another thing that makes absolutely no sense to me. I understand if the corpse is damaged, that might cause some issues. But even when I create a ¡®corpse¡¯ with flesh manipulation and have Azrezel raise it that issue is still there, despite the fact that the ¡®corpse¡¯ is in perfect condition and has never had a soul in it previously. Also, how is it any different from what I do when I create Ents? I have watched both happen, it is pretty much the same process both times. It isn¡¯t complicated, and aside from the whole ¡®split a piece of your soul off¡¯ thing it isn¡¯t difficult either. It only makes sense from the perspective of someone trying to cripple necromancers, having intelligent undead that were easy to create would be a huge boon to necromancers.


    Luckily there is a way to fix that, by manually fixing what went wrong when the soul was forming. Unfortunately, Azrezel is only really able to interact with his own soul, and even then only really to form an undead. So he asked me to help him with that issue, which is something I am definitely capable of. I¡¯ll do it as soon as we catch Tiddol¡¯s would be assassin. Integrating a plant into someone¡¯s body takes a really long time if I want to make sure not to mess up anywhere. And making sure Tiddol doesn¡¯t die is the number one priority right now.


    Unless we want to turn Tiddol into an undead, which does have some very obvious benefits in this situation, I don¡¯t think Azrezel¡¯s skill set would be too useful right now. I know he feels guilty about that, but there is very little he can do to help here, unfortunately.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 246

    Today is a good day.


    This morning, while I was reading people¡¯s minds, I burned my Fate. The most I have ever burnt at any one time. Almost immediately I read the mind of someone who had recently seen a campsite pretty deep into my forest, one that my trees aren¡¯t able to perceive. I figured that this was probably the base of the would-be assassin.


    Then I hit a bit of a problem, I have not yet figured out a way to prevent teleportation entirely, if we went in all gung ho they would just teleport away. Now, I did have a bit of money in the terminal, enough to buy a plant. There were no plants for sale that were specifically designed to prevent teleportation, but asking around a bit pointed me to something that should work, even if not very well.


    The plant, called Null, does exactly that, nullifies magic. Specifically, it makes the surrounding mana more uniform and does it¡¯s best to keep it like that. The end result is that it is difficult to use magic of any kind. Of course, this can cause some problems for mana based creatures, but only if they are already depressed or injured or there is an overwhelming amount of the stuff. As a plant manipulator, it is easy to make it affect me less, but I would have to be careful when using it around others.


    Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t have the time to refine the plant. So instead I used overwhelming amounts of mana to get it good enough to suit my needs.


    And so we descended on the camp, surrounding it on all sides to prevent mundane escape while my new plant was preventing magical forms of escape. She saw me before I saw her, and she tried to teleport, spending what must have been nearly all of her mana only to appear right next to me. Before I managed to grab her she blew herself up with potions, which apparently weren¡¯t magical enough to be suppressed by such a crude method.


    Fortunately, it was nothing I couldn¡¯t heal, it really hurt though. I did have to disable the Null in order to actually heal our new captive, who had thankfully knocked herself out in the blast. I wasn¡¯t complaining about turning it off, it had started to give me a migraine in the short moments I had used it. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    She is the right size and shape for the person I saw before. She is a demon species known as a Greater Imp, basically just the demon version of a goblin. I used a bunch of Dead Tulip pollen on her in order to make sure she stays asleep while we decide what to do with her.


    I did read her mind, she is definitely the person trying to kill Tiddol. she''s an assassin, of course, she¡¯s getting paid for this. Though she didn¡¯t know who was paying her. Her stealth skills were not her own but rather a magic item she found in a dungeon. While she is skilled in making alchemical bombs, she has no other skills in alchemy. And there were some other bombs planted, we have removed them.


    I spent some time to perfect my new plant and then made a cell using the stuff to keep her in, that took till about lunchtime. We are waiting for Par to get back, which should happen tomorrow, before deciding what to do with her.


    She did try to kill my best friend, but she failed, so it isn¡¯t too bad. I don¡¯t want to think about what I would have done if she had succeeded. Maybe we can make use of her somehow?


    So, while we waited for Par to return, I spent my time messing around with Null. It was a nice departure from the last couple days. I was too giddy to trust myself in a process as delicate as integrating a plant into Azrezel¡¯s body, one wrong move and I could kill him. I probably wouldn¡¯t make a mistake, but I would rather not risk it.


    It has a couple glaring flaws that are fundamental to the way it works. What I thought was going to be the biggest issue, the migraine I got from being within the area it is affecting, turned out to be a nonissue, I figured out how to counter the plant pretty easily. I am not a skilled mage, well I am but not in a way that would be relevant to resisting this. It took me maybe an hour to figure out how to counter it, it would take a mage with relevant skills seconds. I can make it more complicated to counter by refining it, but that would only make it take longer, not actually make it any more difficult. Of course, I can solve that issue with sheer mana, but that quickly loses effectiveness, taking exponentially more mana for the same amount of improvement. Production isn¡¯t an issue there, but storage is.


    I¡¯m not entirely sure what the Solar Energy version of it does as I didn¡¯t really have a way to test it. And I haven¡¯t yet integrated Null into my body.


    Other than that Tiddol was glued to my side all day, it was kind of cute actually. She went from a whimpering twitchy mess, like anyone would when they were under frequent attempts on their lives that they couldn¡¯t do anything to defend against, to being bright, cheerful, and a little sadistic. It¡¯s odd seeing someone be so incredibly happy and so incredibly angry at the same time. And Tiddol generally isn¡¯t particularly emotional, yeah she does have a lot of passion for her work, but anyone who¡¯s anyone has the same.


    Ultimately I think it will be Tiddol that decides what happens to this girl.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 247

    The first thing I did today is integrate Grey Iris into Azrezel, as per his request. Now it¡¯s just down to him practicing until he gets it right and he creates intelligent undead. Nothing more I can really do to help him there, unfortunately.


    The second thing I did today was integrate Null into myself. It seems to make me more resistant to its effects and gives me a greater level of control over the plant itself, so basically what all other plants give me when integrated into my body. I don¡¯t know if it gave me any other benefits.


    When Par got home, at around lunchtime, Tiddol, Par, and I got together to decide what to do with our captive. Ultimately Par and I decided to let Tiddol chose what ultimately happens to her. I thought she would just kill her, maybe a bit of torture. While there was some light beating, it didn¡¯t cause any lasting injury even without healing. What I¡¯m assuming to be Tiddol¡¯s new slave girl is alive and healthy, if under the effects of some experimental potions, aphrodisiacs apparently. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Anyway, it¡¯s not my business anymore what Tiddol does with her new slave girl. Tiddol is safe and satisfied with end result, maybe too satisfied, and that is all that matters. If she needs help with something I will offer it if it is within my power, but otherwise I would rather not interfere here.


    I ended up spending most of the rest of the day hanging out with Tiddol. It¡¯s nice to hang out with her without the constant threat of death. We ended up playing board games today. One that I enjoyed had the two of us controlling tiny characters with magic to beat the other person¡¯s character up. I was pretty bad at it, but Tiddol wasn¡¯t much better. Ultimately she won ten matches and I won five.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. My dad did come to see how Tiddol was doing and stayed a bit to tell stories. I don¡¯t care who you are if a master storyteller like my dad starts telling stories you listen.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 248

    Today I spent my time figuring out what to do next. I can¡¯t really do anything relating to Necromancy without Azrezel¡¯s assistance, and he is busy trying to figure out how to fix the souls of the undead. So I need to have something to occupy my time while I wait for him.


    Other than the whole ¡®figuring out how to use Necromancy myself¡¯ thing there really isn¡¯t all that much I want to do right now. I could work with Azrezel on figuring out how to manipulate the soul, but I¡¯m still not entirely sure how far I want to go with that.


    I could also focus my efforts on improving my body with Solar Energy. I have been doing that a bit but I haven¡¯t really focused on it. But honestly, it kind of feels like a waste of time. Why would I care about how strong I am? If I need to take a hit it is incredibly easy to reassign some of the mana improving my body to doing just that. Being able to move faster wouldn¡¯t help me at all, I can already go from one end of my Forest to the other with a thought, and anywhere in between. The benefit I would gain in magic is minuscule at best, what with my hivemind helping me out there so much. I mean I guess it would be useful for improving my Solar Energy pool, but there is no way I am letting it go anywhere near my mana pool. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I could rebuild my Solar Energy room, but it¡¯s not like that would take very long. And I¡¯m not entirely sure I should, last time it almost ended disastrously, and now people absolutely know that something like that would explode dramatically if I built another one, people that might want to cause that kind of damage.


    You know what, I¡¯ve heard that the town is getting overcrowded, they don¡¯t have enough space or skilled people to create new houses. I bet I could do something to help with that. It wouldn¡¯t be terribly productive, but it would be a good thing to do. Who knows, if I do a good enough job maybe we will get a new influx of immigrants. Yeah, I think I¡¯ll go with this one.


    Other than that I did a small favor for Tiddol. She wanted a collar that drains away the mana of the person wearing it when turned on, which was easy enough to do with Astrie and Pipeweed. She also wanted a chain to connect to the collar that could somehow let her know when the person wearing the collar was trying to use magic and allow her to trigger the effects of the collar and activate some Null in the chain itself, which was a bit more difficult, but I did manage to figure out how to do it. I guess she really wants to keep the imp girl from running away.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 249

    The expansion of my grove seems to have hit a bit of wall, in the form of a massive desert. Anything I try to grow there just dies, it seems to be caused by some sort of poison. Just standing at the edge of this desert quickly makes me violently ill, faster than I can heal. Stepping away from it a little bit allows me to quickly recover though.


    I remember hearing about this desert before. At the time I had scoffed at the idea of a mere desert stopping my expansion and forgotten about it, but I don¡¯t think this is any mere desert. So I set about trying to figure out what was going on with it, which turned out to be pretty easy as all I had to do was ask the scholars.


    Apparently, this is the result of one of their purges, this one a successful attempt to stop the spread of an infectious disease that had resisted all other methods of containment and eradication. This all happened about twenty-five years ago, and, like all major incidents at around that time, my dad and his friends were involved somehow. Probably evacuating the uninfected or something like that.


    The desert is really long but not very wide. I can see the far side pretty clearly, but I can¡¯t see the left or right sides from where I stand. Most people get around it by either teleporting across, or if that isn¡¯t an option, by just walking around it. Though some people have successfully crossed by flying over it if they get high enough. Even true immortals avoid crossing this place, though some have done so successfully in the past. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Not that anyone really needs to cross it all that often. City to city teleportation makes trips like that irrelevant for most, and if you really need to get across and can¡¯t use the city teleporters for some reason then there are some people that could teleport you to the other side for a bit of money. The vast majority of them only know enough to get the job done, but they are supposedly competent enough to be reliable for that.


    Of course, neither of those are options for me. I could go around it, but that would take forever and feels too much like admitting defeat for my liking. I¡¯ll have to ask around a bit more about it, see if anyone has fixed similar problems in the past, how they fixed it, and other things like that.


    I¡¯ll start that process tomorrow.


    As for what I actually did today, I spent my time building houses. It wasn¡¯t too difficult. In the morning I talked to the person in charge to figure out what exactly they needed, she went over things like how the houses need to be designed and where to actually put them with me. By the end of the day, I had eased the strain quite a bit, and created areas where they could easily expand too.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. He has had some success, in that he got an undead to show emotion, apparently they can appreciate a good joke. It is far from perfect, but considering the fact that he has only spent a couple of days on this, it would be weird if it was perfect. It was really cute to watch him telling jokes to his undead and is probably not something I would have thought of.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 250

    Today I spent most of my time trying to figure out as much about this desert as I can. And I did learn quite a bit.


    One thing I learned is that the person who actually created it in the first place did so using a type of magic called ¡®nuclear fire¡¯ which differs from regular fire in that it is significantly more destructive for the same cost and leaves behind barren wastelands. The few people that do figure out how to use it, usually through some knowledge inherited from a previous life, either rapidly become true immortals, or die, usually the latter. They all also have come together and agreed to never teach anyone how to actually make use of it, and they kill anyone who abuses it or teaches other people how to use it. I think this is a good thing because this stuff terrifies me, even more so because this is absolutely what the scholars will send after me if they want to get rid of me.


    Of course, this does cause some problems for me. The wielders of nuclear fire are able to fix the after effects, some of them are anyway, but they refuse to teach anyone else. Apparently figuring out how to clean it up very easily leads into learning how to use it yourself. Which means that if I actually succeed I will probably be visited by one of those people regardless if of if I use the method they use to clean it up. I won¡¯t let that stop me though.


    I learned a couple of other things too, like the fact that there used to be a city in the desert, before it was a desert. And the fact that it is shrinking, just really slowly. Also, it is the dirt and sand that contains the poison, which always leaves the options of just gathering it all up in one place. Maybe as a last resort. The clockwork creatures are resistant to it, not immune, unfortunately, but they don¡¯t immediately get violently ill from being near it. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    I should probably mention that the cities Par has been capturing have been in the opposite direction from this desert, so it hasn¡¯t really been a problem for them so far but will eventually become a problem.


    Now the question is how am I going to work with this stuff? Any expendable undead just ends up dying before they can do anything useful. I can¡¯t heal any damage done to the clockwork creatures, and there will be damage if they help with this, so I would rather not have them handle it for me. I could maybe get away with using a puppet made out of wood if I was really quick. I might have to do some trial and error to figure out what works best as a defense against this poison.


    The dungeons have made progress towards figuring out why healers aren¡¯t able to use necromancy. It turns out I was right when I said it probably had something to do with the soul. Of course, a good chunk of necromancy has to do with the soul, so it''s hardly a wild guess. The dungeons seem to agree with my idea that something had to have caused it to work like that intentionally, though there is no proof of that yet. I don¡¯t even know how we would even go about proving that.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. We had another date night today, which I always enjoy. We both got large bowls of ice cream, something I haven¡¯t had in quite a while, and competed to see who could eat them faster. We could both eat at about the same speed, but despite my ability to heal a brain freeze it still costs my valuable moments that Azrezel, with his undead inability to feel pain, simply didn¡¯t experience. After that, we watched a play, something about a horse flirting with a dragon ended up being hilarious. At the end of it we laid down together, and because neither of us actually need to sleep we just ended up cuddling for a while.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 251

    I have yet to actually interact with the sands of the desert in any meaningful way, but I am getting closer. At this point I am doing little more than throwing puppets at the desert and seeing how long they last. The best one so far hasn¡¯t even gotten to the point of lasting a second, if it had I would have had enough time to grab a small chunk of the sand and bring back to experiment on. Though now that I write it down I am noticing some very obvious flaws in that plan, namly the fact that I have no idea how potent the poison is. This part is going to take a lot more work than I thought it would.


    To make matter worse I have no idea what I need to do in order to make them last longer. Being physically bigger does help, but by such a small amount as to be irrelevant when you consider how much slower a large puppet moves. At this point I am basically making random changes and hoping something works, and I am getting some variation. But unfortunately, more often than not the change is so small that it is nearly impossible to measure if I only make one change, so I have to make a bunch of them to actually figure out if anything works. This has the obvious downside of making it difficult to figure out what exactly is helping and what isn¡¯t.


    This feels like the type of project where I am going to end up throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall until something sticks. I might need to figure out a different method for figuring this part out, my current method will work eventually but that eventually might take way longer than I am actually willing to spend. Or not. Who knows, maybe I will get lucky and figure it out by this time tomorrow. I don¡¯t think I have enough Fate for that but maybe I will hit some plain old luck. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Many of the dungeons have stopped actually experimenting with necromancy and have started doing, something, I¡¯m not entirely sure what. But apparently it has to do with figuring out why exactly Healers aren¡¯t capable of necromancy. Apparently it has to do with going over some set of rules or something like that. Hopefully they find something useful. At this point I don¡¯t even think necromancy would even benefit me all that much, but healing would definitely benefit Azrezel quite a bit.


    Speaking of Azrezel, with time, effort, and more than a little brute force, Azrezel has successfully fixed the soul of one undead. He may have damaged it in another way during the process, but that is why he used one that is disposable to practice with, besides, it¡¯s not like that damage is permanent, the soul is able to fix itself, albeit slowly. It wasn¡¯t perfect, but it was significantly better nonetheless.


    Other than that I hung out with Tiddol today. She has finished a number of projects since asking me to buy her some plants, pretty much all of them requiring one or more of them. I even got to test some of the finished projects, though not many of them as apparently drinking too many potions in a short period of time can cause some issues. My favorite one was something she called stoneskin, which does basically just that, turn you skin into stone. It made me feel heavy and powerful, like I could break a dragon¡¯s nose with my fist. I doubt that was actually true, but it was a nice feeling nonetheless. Another one I liked combined Pyre and Whitelock to let the drinker breath fire for a short time, called firebreath for obvious reasons. It isn¡¯t that these potions didn¡¯t exist before, or that Tiddol didn¡¯t know how to make them before, it¡¯s that Tiddol has somehow made them better, at least according to her. I honestly have no idea how any of that works, so I¡¯ll trust her judgement.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 252

    Today I spent my time much the same as I did yesterday, only I ended up spending more time with Tiddol. Of course, this was mostly because I had asked her to help me with my current problem, I figure someone that makes tools might be better at figuring out how to keep my puppets from dying than me.


    After telling her what I think I have figured out she creates a couple potions and we test them on my puppets one at a time. The first one actually made the problem worse, making the puppet light and agile, at least as agile as my own skill allows, does allow it to do more in a short period of time, but it also caused it to almost immediately burst into flames upon contact with the sands.


    The second one did help a bit. Fire resistance slowed down the burning a small bit, but nowhere near enough to be considered viable. Didn¡¯t even reach a second with this one.


    The third one, stone skin, was a significant improvement. It allowed the puppet to last nearly one and a half seconds, at the cost of being too slow to actually get anything done. I have no doubt that someone really skilled at piloting puppets would be able to pull it off with that, but I am not a master and I don¡¯t use puppets often enough for it to be worth the effort. So not impossible, but very impractical.


    Still, this is the best improvement we have had yet and gave me some ideas about where to go from there.


    My next puppet used a lot of Digger Root and Mithrilwood to make it have similar qualities to what is achieved by the stone skin potion. That one lasted only slightly longer than a second but was easier for me to control, not a lot faster though. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    We spent the entire rest of the day experimenting and ultimately came to the conclusion that it has something to do with weight and mana density. Mana density is easy enough, just turn the whole thing into a massive battery, but mana density on its own isn¡¯t going to be enough, at least I don¡¯t think it is. Weight is harder, the heavier it is the harder it is to actually control, which could be disastrous, and different methods of making it heavier have different effects. Like putting a massive weight on its back does absolutely nothing, while making everything bulkier does help quite a bit with survival time but is possibly the worst offender in regards to control.


    I would have eventually figured all of this out on my own, but that could have taken days or even weeks. With Tiddol¡¯s help I managed to figure it out in a day.


    In the end, I managed to reach four seconds of survival time with the biggest bulkiest puppets, enough time to actually safely collect a tiny sample. Of course, I can¡¯t control a puppet that large for such a delicate task effectively. And I can¡¯t add a smaller, much easier to control, limb onto the puppet because it would just burn away.


    I got two and a half seconds on a puppet that I would be comfortable controlling with a delicate task, which is more than enough time if I want to be reckless. But I really don¡¯t want to be reckless. At this point, I think it will just come down to standard brute force refinement, which is easy. I give it two days tops before I get a puppet good enough to get me a small sample of the sand to test.


    Actually storing the thing shouldn¡¯t be hard, I¡¯ll just build a room with incredibly thick walls and extremely high mana density. I¡¯ll build it close to the desert too, so I don¡¯t risk it damaging anything.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol again. We ended up getting ice cream and watching a play, so very similar to what I did with Azrezel the other day just a lot less touchy-feely. Though to be fair I think it would be a lot weirder if Tiddol started grabbing at me than if Azrezel did.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 253

    In the morning I built a room that I think should contain the poison well enough to keep a small sample of the sand in there. I figured it¡¯s better to have it now just in case. That line of thinking paid off, as, like always, I managed to completely overshoot how long it would actually take me to complete this task.


    I got to three and a half seconds of survival time with a combination of brute force and refinement. That was enough to get some sand into the room, with a little bit of practice anyway. I ran through the motions a couple times before I was confident in my ability to pull it off. I will definitely need better puppets when I actually start to clean up the wasteland, assuming I use puppets at all, but it will be a while before that matters.


    Next, I need to start experimenting with the sand, try to figure out anything I can about this stuff and if there is anything I can do to destroy the poison. I¡¯ll get started with that after I finish writing. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Other than that I saw Tiddol¡¯s kids today. Ednar has spent quite a bit of time helping his mother out in the lab, and so he has learned quite a bit about alchemy. His innate skill with plants should definitely help with that. While Umi has been focusing on her study of mana. The item she asked me to make for her has done wonders for her there, though she is looking a bit gaunt as a side effect. I get it, it¡¯s hard to remember to take care of yourself when you are immersed in studying something you¡¯re passionate about.


    Umi has also been sparring a lot recently, I got the pleasure of watching her fight a bit today. I might not know much about magic in general, but I do know enough to say that her abilities are amazing for someone her age. And she seems to love it too, much more than Ednar who is a bit of a pacifist.


    I hope both of them continue to thrive.

 Day 254

    I spent my time experimenting with the small sample of sand today. I found that the strength of the poison dropped off significantly with distance, to the point that I was comfortable with working in the room personally. Huge mistake, as after a while my own constant healing was no longer enough to keep up and I had to flee. It isn¡¯t an exaggeration to say I almost died, this stuff is dangerous and I got too confident.


    When I tried to figure out why I ended up poisoned I discovered that the room had very little mana in it, something I failed to notice during my experimentation. It seems like ambient mana also blocks this poison, which was the first real lead I had gotten all day. All of the mana had gone into the walls, because I had designed the walls to store as much mana as possible.


    This was an easy fix, I basically just changed the walls to move all of the mana into the room, and then poured out tons of my own mana into the room. Once there was enough mana in there that I was satisfied I got back to work.


    Whatever this poison is it seems to repel mana, though different from how I¡¯ve seen solar energy do that. It seems to basically throw itself outwards at all angles and physically pushes back against mana until it is inevitably consumed by the ambient mana. Which would explain how it makes people sick. It also seems to be another form of energy, like mana or Solar Energy.


    And then I kind of stalled again for a while. Teleporting the stuff didn¡¯t seem to do anything, light and sound were similarly useless, locking the stuff in an enclosed box and making the insides blow up a couple times only turned the sand into a much finer powder. Burning the stuff didn¡¯t seem to do anything, as did using air or water on it.


    It wasn¡¯t until I decided to separate each grain of the powdered sand individually based on what they felt most similar to with Digger Root that I had a breakthrough. A couple small piles of what was once part of the sand were very obviously the source of the poisonous energy. The rest of the stuff was just normal sand.


    This means that there is at least one way to reliably destroy this poison, brute force annihilation. If I overload it with enough mana I can cause the whole thing to be destroyed by mana toxicity. I definitely don¡¯t have the skills required to destroy this type of thing another way. Healing would be useless and I don¡¯t have any relevant plants, nor are any relevant plants for sale. And I highly doubt I would be able to create a plant that is capable of interacting with a new form of energy like this. Even if I could I don¡¯t want to because I am worried I am going to kill myself with this stuff despite taking as many precautions as I can. I understand why the people that know how to use it don¡¯t want anyone else using it.


    This led to another round of testing where I figured out the specifics of how it interacted with mana by watching it as it interacted with increasingly larger amounts of the stuff. I was unable to get the mana density high enough that it could destroy the whole pile of the stuff without also risking both my own life and the integrity of the building. But I was able to destroy a very small amount, and I was ultimately able to destroy all of it by spreading out in the room. Whatever it is made out of is hardly on the level of magical metal, and is incredibly fragile to mana. It only survives because the energy it radiates pushes mana away from it. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    The problem would solve itself, in a millennia or so. I don¡¯t want to wait that long.


    And that is where I stopped for the day, I¡¯ll start working on how to actually go about fixing this issue tomorrow.


    The dungeons managed to find something in whatever it was that they were looking for that validates my entire line of thought regarding why I can¡¯t use necromancy. Apparently, there was a change to the way the world worked that happened well before there was enough ambient mana for the Origin to start appearing. There was a ton of stuff there, some of it describing how evolution worked, a lot of that having been changed by Origin later, some of it describing how the suns and the moons would orbit the world, also changed later by Origin, and a bunch of other stuff that isn¡¯t interesting in and of itself but has connotations that I would rather not think about at this exact second.


    In there were restrictions governing necromancy, and no other form of magic. In those restrictions was everything we had observed, the lack of an ability to use healing and the imperfect connection of souls to undead bodies, among others that the dungeons had found. In addition were a couple things we hadn¡¯t thought of, like something describing how the Origin would fly into a rage at the sight of the undead or Necromancy in general, there was nothing else anywhere describing the Origin, and a bit about how the souls of Necromancers would heal slower than they normally would.


    The dungeons took it to a vote and they all collectively agreed to remove those restrictions entirely, and then the vast majority of them promptly stopped caring about necromancy again. Everyone agreed that the group that found those restrictions were the ones that deserved the reward I offered, though not everyone was happy about it. Now I¡¯m just waiting to hear from them about what exactly they want. I personally hope they want an Ent, then I don¡¯t have to ask Tiddol for a favor.


    I spent my downtime with Azrezel, who is a bit miffed that he still has to fix the souls of the undead he already has if he wants them to be smart. Apparently, he finds soul magic to be rather boring. He is also a bit bummed by this conclusion to his quest to create intelligent undead. Yes, he did technically succeed on his own, albeit in a limited fashion, but any undead he creates from now on, assuming the physical body is good enough, will be an intelligent undead. That is the same for every other somewhat experienced necromancer in the world. It did cheer him up quite a bit when I pointed out that he did help quite a bit in getting everything to a point where it can happen, he inadvertently not only helped allow himself to create intelligent undead but also everyone else as well. In addition to that, he helped prevent similar attacks to what happened on his dad from happening.


    We ended up spending some time teaching each other how to do necromancy and healing, respectively. Though we were primarily focused on teaching him healing as healing is more useful to him than necromancy is to me. Plus I have the advantage of Grey Iris, which is a significant help with necromancy.


    Ultimately I taught him a bit about how to shape flesh and mold bone, which is similar to how he did it through his limited abilities as a necromancer, but better as it lacks the restrictions the necrotic version had. He can learn traditional healing from any old healer, there aren¡¯t very many flesh manipulators and the only one he has access to is myself.


    It¡¯s been a while since I have actually taught anyone, it¡¯s fun. I¡¯ll probably spend my downtime with Azrezel helping him learn.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 255

    Today I spent my time trying to figure out a way to destroy the desert as quickly as I could. What I decided on was building tons of buildings designed to store enough mana to destroy the sand entirely all along the edge of the desert and have puppets go out and teleport sand by the shovel full to the buildings, where more puppets will separate it out into small enough quantities that it can actually be destroyed. Individually it is a slow process, and I can¡¯t think of a more effective method with my current abilities.


    This will stretch my mental prowess to the limit, but luckily I won¡¯t have to refine my puppets much further as I have managed to get the large clunky ones to five seconds of survival time, which is more than enough time. And It isn¡¯t like I need to have super fine control either, as I am not trying to get a tiny sample.


    So I got started setting that up. The first step was to actually build the buildings themselves, which wasn¡¯t difficult as I already have the design down, more or less. I did make some improvements to it, but all I really needed to do was build the things. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    The next step was to fill up all of the buildings, which I am still working on. I guess my newfound talent of draining tons of mana very rapidly actually came in handy for once. It made the limiting factor my mana production anyway, which isn¡¯t something that has happened in a very long time. I should be finished by the end of the day tomorrow.


    I should probably post some guards around these buildings, it would be a problem if someone attacked them. I¡¯ll ask my Ents to do it.


    The dungeons have come to an agreement on what they want me to create for them, and it is surprisingly simple. They want an Ent that is as ridiculously good at magic as possible, and they don¡¯t want that magic being ¡®tainted¡¯ by anything. Basically, a blank slate for them to teach whatever form of magic they want. I¡¯ll do that tomorrow while I fill up the buildings, that takes a lot of mana, but almost no actual effort.


    I spent my downtime with Azrezel again, teaching him how to manipulate flesh. He¡¯s really quite talented at it, possibly even more so than me. He still lacks practical knowledge and experience, but both of those will come easily to him. Given that it is probably going to be one of the main things he focuses on he will inevitably surpass me with this. But for now at least, I am the teacher, and he will learn everything I can teach him.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 256

    By the end of the day, I had finished filling up all of the buildings I have for destroying the desert. I have a trio of Ents guarding each one, with each shift lasting about an hour.


    While I was doing that I was also busy designing an Ent the way the dungeons wanted me too. This Ent is made solely out of Astrie, Pipeweed, and Spellwood, plants that are normally just supports for the others.


    The only focus was creating an Ent that was incredibly skilled at magic, to that end I did a number of things. With Pipeweed I did the usual of making the whole thing dense with magical plumbing to allow mana to move around very quickly, only I took it to an extreme that simply wouldn¡¯t be possible if there were other plants in the way. I used spellwood such that it that would allow the Ent to instinctively shape it in a way that would improve their own magic. It gets better with use and more readily forms to familiar shapes. Astrie was there to provide the actual structure and to improve magic directly.


    I decided that the general biped shape that I have been using for Ents so far would not only be not necessary, but also not very good at what I want compared to what other shapes could offer. The biped form is really good at using tools, something irrelevant with this creation. So I did something else.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    I started with the brain, as it is an incredibly important part of magic. I put what I learned by working the undead to good use by making a brain as good as I possibly could, and as large as I possibly could without interfering with its actual ability to use magic. From there I ended up with a fragile wooden ball, a large fragile wooden ball. Durability is irrelevent and all that matters is magic.


    The next thing I needed to figure out was a way to get it moving. I ended up creating eight powerful, thin, dexterous legs to carry it around. Partially because I couldn¡¯t use a more magical mode of transportation and partially because I felt like it, it¡¯s not like it would impact the Ent¡¯s ability to use magic at all. This has the effect of making the Ent be able to move quite well despite its own bulk.


    After finishing the overall design I went through and improved any minute detail I possibly could until I was satisfied with the results. I then seeded a soul into it and gifted the design to the people in the group that ended up figuring out what needed to change to allow me to use necromancy. I¡¯m now waiting to hear what they think of it.


    Other than that I spent my downtime the same way I have the last couple days, teaching Azrezel how to shape flesh and mold bone. As I have said before he is a quick study, and is dedicating quite a lot of effort to this. I won¡¯t really be able to teach him anything more after tomorrow, the rest he will have to learn on his own. I give it two months before he surpasses me in this field, make it a month and a half.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 257

    Today I started the process of actually deconstructing the desert. I took it slow at first, just to get a bit of practice and make sure everything was working the way it should. After being sure that nothing would go catastrophically wrong I started rapidly going faster until I was going as fast as possible, I can only destroy the sand so quickly.


    There is a lot of sand, so this will take a while. But I also have a lot of the buildings to actually destroy it, so I can make rapid progress. In the end, it should take about a week. Though if it is deeper than I think it is then it will take a lot longer.


    Today I stumbled, quite literally, across a slime that had wandered into my forest. It was odd because slimes aren¡¯t common in this region, actually they are very rare. I have never seen one before at least.


    Its ¡®flesh¡¯ is incredibly acidic, which is exactly what I had heard before. I had some pretty severe burns after tripping over it, nothing I couldn¡¯t heal. It seems to dissolve living material, or material that was once living, really well, while things like metals and dirt take a very long time.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    It has a small orb floating around the clear blue fluid that makes up its body, its core if what I have read it right. Basically, a combination sensory organ and brain, though some powerful slimes are supposedly capable of creating sensory organs.


    Ultimately I captured it in a pot made out of Mithrilwood and closed the lid, it had trouble dissolving that. I had heard one time that slimes could be useful in some kinds of alchemy, luckily I did as Tiddol seemed to appreciate it.


    It isn¡¯t something I am really interested in, but it was definitely a novel experience. Though I can see how they could become powerful, just this little weak one was enough to give me serious burns.


    Other than that I spent my downtime teaching Azrezel. I don¡¯t really think there is much more I can teach him about flesh manipulation, or at least nothing that I could teach him faster than he could figure out himself. He has also learned a bit of traditional healing, enough to keep a seriously injured person alive long enough for a better healer to get there. Hopefully, it won¡¯t be relevant.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 258

    Today I continued destroying the desert. So far it doesn¡¯t seem very deep, a little shallower than I would have thought, maybe as deep as my finger is long. It feels like the person that actually did this focused on making the damage only affect the surface, maybe someone that understood the kind of damage that would be caused and wanted to minimize it? Who knows, I certainly won¡¯t unless I get to talk to the guy.


    I stand by my previous estimate of a week to fully clean up the desert.


    It looks like there is a rather large grove just past the desert, which should definitely help speed up my expansion once I¡¯m done.


    Other than that, I met up with Erica Hornmark today. I feel like I have to include the last name there because we share a first name. She has evolved since we last talked, not including the time I forced an evolution on everyone. So really she has had two evolutions, which is impressive. Her species is called Nothrune, not exactly something common. I think most of them are up in the far north? Anyway, she¡¯s somehow not a variant.


    She is completely covered in iridescent white scales that almost put the walls of Pearlhold to shame, only falling short in scale. Each wing, when not folded up on her back, is longer than I am tall, and she uses them with a flawless grace. Jutting from her forehead are three large horns. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    She is incredibly talented at healing, more so than I am even, though I have other advantages that keep me ahead there. It is hard to beat an Origin¡¯s complete knowledge about the art of healing. She is also a skilled combatant, receiving nothing but praise from Par¡¯s officers in both her ability to lead others, and her ability to fight her own fights.


    Bug would be proud if he could see her now, but I guess I get to be proud in her stead.


    She is happy with her life, she has fulfilled her ambitions and has decided to settle down, and she isn¡¯t even two years old yet, though dragonewts do mature much more rapidly than sprites. She already has a guy she¡¯s interested in, and given her accomplishments she can basically have any guy she wants, or girl for that matter.


    We ended up talking about her life and some of her more notable accomplishments. Like the time she fended off a thunder of drakes during a scouting mission while her subordinates escaped. She is certainly not as good of a storyteller as my dad or Tiddol, but it was fun to listen to her tales nonetheless.


    When we had to part ways I offered to help her out with anything she might need, considering the fact that she will probably be having children soon I think she will end up taking me up on that offer.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 259

    Today I continued conducting the destruction of the desert. Shovel full by shovel full all of the sand is getting destroyed, it¡¯s rather pleasant to watch the desert shrink before my eyes.


    I¡¯ve been constantly refining the actual technique, I am far from perfect efficiency. I¡¯ve found that having the shovel full of sand be immediately blasted around the room via blastbark as soon as it is teleported in is the most effective method to destroy it, as it spreads it out into a fine cloud of dust that allows mana to get to it quickly. The actually poisonous stuff gets dissolved in about half of a second, while it is fine to let the actual sand accumulate a bit. Short of adding more mana, there is nothing I can do to destroy that stuff faster.


    I can see the remains of the city that was destroyed during the creation of this desert now, it was hiding behind a large hill that I reclaimed today, also I wasn¡¯t exactly looking for it in the first place. It¡¯s not a very big city, more like a rather large town. Of course, that might be because the only things left standing are damaged stone buildings, anything made of wood would have been destroyed. It is also going to be a pain to clean up, unlike the surrounding areas that are mostly just sand, these building will probably have the poison embedded deep into the stones. Hopefully, I¡¯m wrong, but I¡¯m probably going to have to just completely demolish the city in order to fully remove the poison. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    It seems that my endeavors to clean up the desert has caught the eye of one of the wielders of nuclear fire, a lot faster than I would have thought. They sent word ahead of them to the scholars, who are now preparing for his arrival. He will probably be here by tomorrow, as a true immortal he doesn¡¯t have to wait in line at the teleporters, or deal with teleportation sickness for that matter.


    I hope he¡¯s reasonable because otherwise I could end up dead from this interaction. Whatever, there is nothing I can do about it now.


    Tiddol seems to have put that slime to good use so far. She¡¯s made a couple potions that she wouldn¡¯t have been able to make before, like a potion designed to dissolve glue, one that makes your body rubbery and elastic, and a sour flavoring. She said that the last one isn¡¯t actually a potion by common definitions, but I wouldn¡¯t know.


    She also has plans to breed it so she can make use of it more, there is only so much she can take from it without killing it. It just so happens that it is most of its body, but that is still not that much for a single slime. To that end she¡¯s been asking the scholars for some help, though I¡¯m unsure about the results of that.


    Other than that I spent some time at a small festival that propped up in pearlhold practically overnight. Apparently, it is to celebrate an old war hero of some sort, though based on how much people knew about it I can¡¯t help but think that the real reason was to have an excuse to throw a party. There was dancing in the streets, children throwing small fragile balls filled with water, more than one person juggling, street vendors selling cheap food, and a lot of other things. It was pretty exhausting, but I enjoyed myself.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 260

    I¡¯ll probably reach the destroyed city by tomorrow, I think at about lunchtime, maybe a bit earlier. I¡¯m not looking forward to dealing with that, it¡¯s going to make this whole process much more complicated.


    The mage that uses nuclear fire showed up today, right on schedule. Kind of surprising actually, if you¡¯re that powerful no one is going to look twice if you do something minor like be a little late.


    He was outwardly hostile at first, it was obvious that he did not like me. Not that I could do or say anything about that to him, he could probably burn down my forest as easily as breathing.


    He asked me a series of pointed questions, a couple of them I knew the answer to, but most of them I did not. What does ¡®radioactive isotope¡¯ even mean? In hindsight, he was probably trying to figure out how much I knew about nuclear fire, which is not a lot.


    After that, he seemed to like me a bit more, though he also seemed a bit confused. That confusion gradually cleared up as I explained to him how exactly I was disposing of the poison. He didn¡¯t believe me at first when I told him that the stuff is incredibly fragile in the presence of mana, saying that it repels mana. I had to actually demonstrate it to him before he believed me, at which point he got absolutely ecstatic. I have to say, the guy wears his emotions on his sleeve.


    After calming down he turned super serious and started talking about business, specifically what it would take to convince me to let him and all of the other wielders of nuclear fire to dispose of the poisonous remains here in my forest. I had to bring Par in on this one, as he is much better at negotiating than me. He was out and about, but it was easy enough for him to teleport into town. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Basically what it came down to is I would dramatically increase the number of buildings able to destroy the stuff as well as train several Ents and other plant manipulators to operate the whole thing. In exchange, they would offer tons of money, which, according to Par, is something he is going to need a lot of soon. This also removes the chance that any of them would be willing to burn down my forest, as any that tried would be murdered by the others. This is the part I was most interested in. The people bringing in the stuff will do so only in large groups so that they can suppress the poison through overwhelming brute force, I don¡¯t want any accidents happening.


    Apparently, there aren¡¯t very many groups that would be able to do something this on this type of a scale, and unlike most of those, we are willing to accept money and a promise of safety. I mean it is just a lot of money. I might be able to get some new plants with that money.


    After that, I talked with the guy about this particular desert. Apparently, he was the one who created it, which explains why he was so grumpy. He really doesn¡¯t like using his powers, but infectious diseases are more dangerous than ¡®nuclear waste¡¯ as he calls it. As a result he tried to minimize damage as much as possible, which means my guess that the person who made the desert really wanted to do just that was right.


    I also explain to him that the whole process would probably be more efficient if he would extract the ¡®nuclear waste¡¯ from whatever it was embedded into before bringing it to us and then turned into a fine powder, that way we don¡¯t have to destroy the surrounding rock and earth along with what we actually want to destroy.


    I should probably focus my mana on making more buildings for now, it¡¯s not like I need to be doing anything else with it yet.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Par. We haven¡¯t been able to hang out in a little while, what with him out expanding his empire. He is very formal while we are in public, but while we aren¡¯t in the prying eyes of the public he is much more friendly. Which, while a little annoying, makes sense, he has appearances to keep after all.


    Apparently, his army is on the verge of taking another city and has received letters from the leadership of several other cities ¡®requesting to join our great empire¡¯, aka surrendering before our armies even show up. I think one of those cities was the one that Talus was from, I¡¯m not sure how to feel about that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 261

    Today I spent most of my time, effort, and mana on destroying this desert. It doesn¡¯t take a lot of mana to operate the buildings properly, and though it does take a lot of my artificially expanded brain, I don¡¯t have enough of them for it to take up all of it. So with the parts of my focus that I wasn¡¯t spending on running the thing I started building more buildings. I think I can shave a day off of my time like this.


    The mage from yesterday left today without even telling me his name. Anyway, they said they would be back in a week or so with some of their fellow wielders of nuclear fire, a good chunk of radioactive waste for us to destroy, and the money. I¡¯m looking forward to one of those three things.


    I spent my downtime hanging out with Azrezel today. We had date night, which is always fun. We laid a blanket out on the ground away from any city and I cleared a path to see the sky. The two of us cuddled while watching the moons, there were three of them out tonight, all of them beautiful. One of them glows with a soft pink light, another is a brilliant green, while the third is a dark blue, almost black. The pink and the green one have countless tiny marks, bumps, and cracks of the surface, while the blue one is almost perfectly smooth. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    We didn¡¯t really talk, which is fine, nice even. It isn¡¯t often that I get a chance to just sit there in my own thoughts without having some kind of distraction. I mean, there are the times I write in my diary, but honestly, this is more of a journal really. I mostly just write out what happened during the day. Regardless, I should do this more often.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 262

    Today I made further strides into the desert. I actually reached the destroyed city yesterday, but I didn¡¯t really want to deal with it so I worked around it. Today, however, I started breaking it down. Basically, the only way I¡¯m going to be able to get rid of all the poison is if I crush the stone making up the ruins into a powder and then treat it all like the sand I have been destroying. It was a lot more straightforward than I was expecting it to be.


    At this point I am getting really close to finishing off the desert, I should be done in two or threes hours. Though it will probably be tomorrow evening before all of the actual sand is broken down. Had this desert been any bigger I would have had to stop for a little while to let it clean the sand out.


    After that I¡¯ll probably just keep making more of those buildings, maybe take the time to teach some people how to operate them.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Par got back today with another victory under his belt. Including the cities that have surrendered to us without a fight our empire controls almost a dozen cities, and that number is only going to grow. Par has definitely done well, if he keeps succeeding like this we will have to rename him from Lord Parius the Magnificent to Emperor Parius the Magnificent.


    I got a chance to inspect some prototype siege engines that Par is wanting to make use of, something I didn¡¯t realize existed until today. Possibly because up until now the only real testing they¡¯ve done was actually in the field. Why the change? I have no idea. How do they work? I am similarly clueless. I do know that Tiddol has taken the initiative to lead that particular project. Of course, she did, who else would have done it?


    Other than that I spent some time listening to my dad tell stories. This time he told me about the siege they had recently returned from. To hear him tell it, it was a clash of the ages, a desperate struggle between an overwhelming invading army and a small yet dedicated defending army until the defenders were eventually overwhelmed and the corrupt dictators forcing them to throw their lives at our unstoppable advance were dethroned. It was even more enthralling than his normal tales, probably because it happened recently and I am seeing the effects of it myself.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 263

    I spent most of my time today between creating buildings to destroy nuclear waste and teaching people how to operate them. This whole process is honestly rather boring so I think I am going to start teaching people how to properly build the things too. Actually no, if I do that then they might build them in other places and then we can¡¯t get as much money for this. I¡¯m just going to have to do it the hard way for a little while.


    Early in the morning I finished destroying all of the desert and spread my forest over what was once a wasteland. When I connected to the small forest on the other side I was met with an immediately hostile and violent will, several of them actually. Were I alone they would have crushed me, but with the assistance of my hivemind they stood no chance as I crushed them on instinct. My trees are opposed to the idea of allowing another will to join me. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    It took a little while to fully integrate these trees into my forest, longer than it normally does. Which I guess makes some sort of sense, these trees are really old. The oldest is almost a thousand years old, almost three times as old as the first sentient. I don¡¯t actually know if that makes a difference, but it seems like it should.


    Other than that I spent my downtime sitting alone with my thoughts, something I promised myself I would do more often. I didn¡¯t try to guide my thoughts towards some goal or desire, I just sat down to think. It was more difficult than I thought it would be, I would frequently catch myself trying to force my thoughts into a particular direction because that is what feels normal to me, that is what I normally do. It was calming, relaxing even. For the first time ever I regret my newfound inability to sleep, as this experience reminded me of dreaming though I can¡¯t put my finger on how exactly.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 264

    Today was more of what I did yesterday. I¡¯ll probably stop working on this in about three days. I don¡¯t need a specific amount of these buildings, just an arbitrarily large amount. Really I could probably stop tomorrow.


    Azrezel has been busy the last little while creating undead, most of which have been intelligent. Unless he goes out of his way to improve the brains of the undead he makes then they still aren¡¯t intelligent by most accounts. Previously he was limited by his ability to control the undead, now that they have some autonomy he is able to let them have a little more freedom, meaning he can control more of them. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    While all of that is interesting, it isn¡¯t as interesting as some of the stuff he¡¯s done with flesh manipulation. I don¡¯t think there are any giants nearby but there is a couple undead that he has turned into giants, I think they were hobgoblins before. They are as tall as my trees and carry around massive polearms the size of tree trunks. He also has spindly looking skeletons with razor sharp claws, fragile but also very fast. As well as about half a dozen other creations.


    Now that I think about it, everything he made seems primarily useful in combat. Makes me think that he wants to start supporting the war effort. I¡¯m sure Par can find space for an army of undead in his ranks. I¡¯ll ask him about it tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 265

    Today I spent most of my time doing the same thing I did yesterday.


    Speaking of, a couple people showed up with a bunch of nuclear waste today. All purified, powdered, and suppressed, exactly how I asked for it. I took the plant manipulators I have been training and had them get to work without major issue. One of them did make a minor mistake, but with the mages there to suppress all of the poison it was resolved easily.


    When I asked why they didn''t just constantly suppress all of it they told me that suppressing the poison is an active process that requires mana, not a lot but it can add up quickly. In addition to that, there are two good reasons not to. The first is that the poison disappears on its own, albeit very slowly, suppressing it prevents that from happening entirely. The second is that gathering it all up, which they would have to do if they wanted to try to suppress it, makes the poison exponentially more potent, which makes it much harder to suppress. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Long story short, they tried, it failed. Now they are paying us to destroy it.


    Other than that I spent my downtime taking part in a festival that Whisperer¡¯s replacement organized with Tiddol. At one point I would have thought that everyone showing me deference would have been really weird, and definitely would have gotten in the way of me enjoying a festival. Now, however, I find myself enjoying this kind of attention. In small doses, of course, it gets annoying when people are constantly acting subservient, but it is nice from time to time. Of course, if Tiddol or Azrezel (with a few noteworthy exceptions) were to act like that I would probably slap them.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Im sorry to say that Diary of Erica Kron is canceled.

    A Story


    You want to hear a story? Well alright, I¡¯ll tell you one. Our heroes find themselves on the outskirts of a small village. Weary from their travels and not expecting to find another town before nightfall they go to find an inn to sleep at.


    ¡°Eric, my good man, would you kindly secure us room and board for the night. Zaphiel do be sure to get your zombies some work during our stay, we are running a little low on funds and it is harvest season. Oh, and Clarence?¡± The scholarly gentleman organizing his fellows is a sphinx by the name of Neteon.


    ¡°Yes?¡± Clarence is a spindly looking Elf with fingers a fair bit longer and more flexible than those of his kin.


    ¡°Do try to stay out of trouble.¡± Neteon says with a straight face, completely devoid of humor.


    ¡°Bah, stop bullying the poor kid. He hasn¡¯t done anything wrong.¡± The pretty faced faun is the man named Eric, praised far and wide for his ability to enthrall even a deaf man with his tales.


    ¡°He was imprisoned five times in the last big city we were in. once for stealing the magistrate¡¯s jewels, and four more times for breaking out of jail.¡± The fourth man of this merry band is an angel by the name of Zaphiel. Looking at him it is easy to see that he was pretty once, but years of necrotic healing having taken its toll on his body, leaving him gaunt and shriveled.


    ¡°So? Who among us hasn¡¯t been to jail at least once in the last year?¡± Eric replies to the necromancer, an incredulous air in his voice.


    ¡°I wasn¡¯t done. He then somehow managed to get the most important tax collector in the city blamed for the whole thing. An innocent man is now rotting in jail because of that whole fiasco, during which you were too busy seducing some barmaid to pay attention.¡± Zaphiel continues with a deadpan voice.


    ¡°Innocent my ass, the man was stealing the taxes that should have rightfully gone to the people. And to make things worse he beat his slaves, and not in a sexy consensual way either, or even as a just punishment. Just regular old beatings for the sake of pain and misery.¡± Eric counters ¡°And I wasn¡¯t seducing any old barmaid, I stopped doing that years ago, I successfully seduced the magistrate¡¯s wife, or daughter. It wasn¡¯t clear which.¡±


    ¡°And then you will say ¡®but he was innocent of the crime he was imprisoned for¡¯. How do I know this? Is it because I know you guys so well? No, it¡¯s because you two have had the same damned argument twenty times in the last week. Now, if you don¡¯t want to be stuck out in the cold all night then find us a place to sleep with that pretty boy face of yours, Eric.¡± The last member of the party is a dwarf by the name of Garun. Like most Dwarves he has a neatly trimmed beard that goes down to his belly. Unlike most dwarves there is no fat anywhere on his lean body.


    ¡°Right, right. I¡¯ll get too it. It¡¯s a bit late so most places will be closed by now but I¡¯ll see what I can do.¡± Eric replies before heading off towards the closest sign marked ¡®inn¡¯.


    Half an hour later the party is sitting at a table of the common area of the Inn they booked for the night. There are about half a dozen other groups in the room in various stages of merrymaking. Most of the men and women in common area were Hobgoblins, though there was the occasional goblin running around.


    With food, drink, and a place to sleep for the night acquired the party engaged in some merrymaking of their own. Everyone had a glass of one form of alcohol or another sitting in front of them.


    ¡°Ohh, looks like Clarence has the hots for one of the locals.¡± Eric noticing the, to him, obvious signs of infatuation starts encouraging the younger elf. ¡°Come on man go for it, you got this.¡±


    ¡°Eashy for you to shay. You¡¯re sho mush of pretty boy even men want to get with you.¡± Clarence, who isn¡¯t holding his drink nearly as well as Eric, replies.


    ¡°Come on man, you can¡¯t have learned nothing from me in the months we¡¯ve known each other.¡± Eric counters. ¡°Besides, it looks like she¡¯s a bit more keen than you think.¡±


    ¡°Fine.¡± Fully trusting the much more promiscuous man¡¯s experience with women Clarence makes his way over to the other table.


    The rest of the party watches in earnest as Clarence introduces himself to the woman. They talk for a couple minutes before the woman brings the elf upstairs.


    ¡°Wow, you were right Eric, she really was interested in him. How do you do it?¡± Neteon asks the Faun.


    ¡°The same way you throw fire.¡± Eric replies.


    ¡°Years of study and a well developed intuition?¡± Neteon says.


    ¡°Exactly. Besides, the thing I said about her being interested in him was just bullshit I said to give him some confidence, which is all he needed really.¡± Eric says.


    This gets a round of laughter from the party and leads to some more light hearted jesting. An hour or so later the party broke for the night.


    The morning was met with hush whispers as a group of soldiers came through the town demanding money. The party watched from the window of a third floor room as a well dressed man, apparently the one in charge of the village, begged the soldiers. For what exactly the party did not yet know, but the man left, obviously distraught as he led the soldiers somewhere out of sight. An hour latter those same soldiers were escorting several carts filled with preserved food.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    ¡°Those are some ridiculous taxes. Not even the bandit princes of my homeland extorted that much out of a small village like this.¡± Zaphiel said incredulously.


    ¡°That has to be at least half of their harvest, probably everything they have harvested so far.¡± Garun says to no one in particular.


    ¡°In that case it should be easy to my zombies some work while we¡¯re here, they¡¯ll be desperate to get the rest out of the fields.¡±  Zaphiel said before making his way towards the door of the room.


    ¡°Yeah, you do that. Meanwhile I¡¯m going to figure out what exactly is going on.¡± Eric replies.


    And so everyone heads out for the day to interact with the town and fulfil their own tasks. The farmers are very appreciative of the help Zaphiel was able to provide. The undead, while not intelligent creatures, are strong and have no need for rest. Meanwhile Eric has tracked down the mayor of the town.


    It doesn¡¯t take long for him to find the mayor¡¯s house, it wasn¡¯t hard to find the biggest building in town. The mayor invites Eric in for a hearty breakfast. While they are eating Eric gets a chance to ask about the events of that morning.


    ¡°So those soldiers from this morning, do they belong to the local lord?¡± Eric asks while dabbing his face with a cloth napkin.


    ¡°You saw that did you. I must admit, it was not my proudest moment.¡± The mayor, a rotund Hobgoblin, replies. ¡°No, they belong to the king.¡±


    ¡°Ah, alright. Pretty small group for a king¡¯s tax tax collectors, but that¡¯s hardly out of the ordinary.¡± Eric muses allowed. ¡°Tell me, does you king always expect such large taxes?¡±


    ¡°Not exactly. The old king died a couple months ago, since then taxes have gotten higher and higher each month, until it looks like what you saw this morning. The soldiers claim that it is to support a war effort, though I don¡¯t know anything about that.¡± The mayor replies between bites of bread.


    ¡°Still, even for wartime taxes, it¡¯s a bit excessive. I know an army runs on its stomach, but surely there are other villages to collect taxes from.¡± Eric says incredulously.


    ¡°There are others villages. But enough of that. You said you were in Canibrey city recently, right? How are things going back home.¡± The mayor says, keen on the answer.


    ¡°The magistrates right hand man was arrested while we were in town, apparently he stole some valuable jewels. It made all of the headlines in the city.¡±  Eric tells the mayor.


    That evening the party reconvened in their rented room. To discuss the events of the day.


    ¡°Sorry I¡¯m late guys.¡± Clarence enters the room where everyone else was waiting. ¡°It¡¯s been a long day.¡±


    ¡°You smell like sex, were you with that woman all day?¡± Garun replied.


    ¡°That¡¯s some impressive stamina. You¡¯re a natural talent.¡± Eric says, obviously impressed.


    ¡°It was amazing, and, and, I don¡¯t even know her name. You do that kind of thing all of the time?¡± Clarence asks Eric ecstatically.


    ¡°Sure, stick with us for a while and make sure to give the ladies a good time when they come knocking and they will come knocking.¡± Eric replies with confidence.


    ¡°Anyway, enough of that. Let¡¯s get down to business. Eric, you talked to the mayor today, yes? How did that go?.¡± Neteon interrupts.


    ¡°It went well, the mayor is a kindly man and he invited me in for breakfast. During breakfast we talked about the event from this morning.¡± Eric then goes on to explain what he talked to the mayor about.


    ¡°Intriguing, looks like we know what we¡¯re doing next then.¡±  Zaphiel says.


    ¡°What, are we now planning a coup?¡± Clarence asks incredulously.


    ¡°No, not a coup, an uprising. Not our first either.¡± Garun offers.


    ¡°You¡¯re serious. So all of those stories you¡¯ve told me since I joined were true then?¡± Clarence asks in amazement.


    ¡°Of course, I¡¯ve never made up a story before. Embellished a little, yes, but never any outright fantasy.¡± Eric explains. ¡°As for why an uprising instead of a coup, it was obvious you were going to ask. With a coup all we are doing is taking one leader and replacing it with another, with an uprising we can do so much more.¡±


    ¡°Alright then, how do we do this?¡± Clarence asks.


    ¡°Go around to as many of the villages as we can and see about drafting some of their people into a militia. It would be really convenient if there was some kind of festival coming up where all the people meet up, I know they are common this time of year.¡± Neteon explains to the group.


    ¡°As a matter of fact there is a harvest festival happening in a month.¡± Zaphiel explains the information he learned during the day, farmers tend to be very appreciative of the assistance of Necromancers. ¡°It¡¯s being held within a day¡¯s hike from here.¡± He hands out a map with the location marked.


    ¡°Excellent, that¡¯s enough time to go to the other villages and let them see Eric¡¯s ugly mug and listen to his tall tales of revolt and revolution.¡± Garun states.


    ¡°Even if we do manage to recruit a militia, how are they going to stand up against a professional army? It¡¯s not like there are many master mages in farming villages.¡± Clarence asks his fellows.


    ¡°A couple ways. A bit of training doesn¡¯t hurt, and it¡¯s like it will be a fair fight anyway. Plus, you can¡¯t underestimate the power of moral, a frenzied mob can strike fear into the hearts of even the most disciplined soldiers.¡± Zaphiel states.


    ¡°Ok, ok. Why are we doing this again? I get that an uprising lets up do more, but why stage an uprising at all?¡± Clarence asks


    ¡°Money¡± Garun states.


    ¡°Fame¡± Eric follows


    ¡°Power¡± Zaphiel says, deadpan.


    ¡°To shape the world in our image¡± Neteon says.


    ¡°One last question. How is overthrowing the local government supposed to help with the first three?¡± Clarence asks.


    ¡°Don¡¯t underestimate the kind of influence you can wield when you put a new king on the throne. That type of connection isn¡¯t something to laugh at.¡± Eric says.


    ¡°Alright, I¡¯m sold. What do you need me to do?¡± Clarence asks expectantly.


    ¡°That¡¯s the spirit. For now we plan.¡± Eric replies


    ¡°What is there to plan? We all know you are going to speak to the people while the rest of us gather more information. We simply don¡¯t have enough information to create any more sophisticated plans, and that isn¡¯t something that is going to change with us talking to each other.¡± Zaphiel states.


    ¡°He¡¯s right, now unless someone else has something to add I am turning in for the night.¡± Garun says to the party.


    With nothing left to be said the party breaks for the evening.


    ¡°And I think that¡¯s a great place to stop for the night.¡± An adult forest sprite interrupts the storyteller.


    ¡°But mommy, daddy hasn¡¯t finished his story.¡± A much younger sprite complains.


    ¡°You heard mommy, it¡¯s off to bed for you. I can continue the story another time if you would like.¡± The storytelling faun replies.


    ¡°Promise?¡± The young sprite asks.


    ¡°Promise.¡± The storyteller confirms.


    ¡°Good night daddy.¡± The young sprite gives the faun a hug before letting him leave.


    ¡°Good night my little sapling.¡± The faun says in turn.


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t you have chosen a shorter tale? Now she¡¯s going to be all excited in the morning, impatient to hear the rest.¡± The older sprite says, exasperated as the couple heads to their own room.


    ¡°Would that really be such a bad thing, my dear? And besides, she¡¯s heard all of my shorter tales, or at least the ones worth telling.¡± the storyteller replies.


    ¡°Couldn¡¯t you have made one up then, my darling Eric? I know you have the knack for it.¡± The sprite asks as she climbs into bed.


    ¡°No, I never make up a story. Embellished a little, yes, but never any outright fantasy¡± The faun replies with an echo of his youth as he climbs in after his lover.


    A moment passes before the sprite speaks up again. ¡°Hey, Eric?¡±


    ¡°Yes, my love?¡±


    ¡°Why me? You could have had any woman in the world, heck you could have had any man in the world. So why did you pick a simple forest sprite like myself in the end.¡± The sprite asks.


    ¡°Because, my dear, you are the single greatest thing to have ever happened to me. And if after all of those fantastic adventures this life is the reward at the end of the tunnel, then I would be satisfied.¡± And with that the two close their eyes and fall asleep.

 Day 266

    I will stop this project tomorrow, until then I will keep building.


    So apparently the Ent I designed as a reward for the dungeons is really popular. I know this not because the dungeons are talking to me about it, but the scholars. Apparently, they are everywhere all of a sudden. And the scholars have no idea how to classify them, hence why they are talking to me about it.


    It was kind of funny to hear the guy have a minor meltdown while explaining to me just how confusing my creation is. When I explained that their specialization was magic, in general, he started cursing at himself rather loudly. Overall it was rather humorous experience, it isn¡¯t often that you see one of the scholars freak out like that.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. The festival is still happening today, so we decided to have a date night while enjoying it. I learned that ice cream tastes even better when you bread it and dunk it in boiling hot oil for a moment. I personally never would have thought of that combination. It was fun. I know I have said it before but I like hanging out with Azrezel like this. Nothing intimate or physical, though I do definitely enjoy that, just spending time together and having fun.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 267

    Today I finished creating buildings, now I need to figure out what to do next.


    I haven¡¯t used my puppets to spar in quite a while. I remember enjoying that quite a bit, but I don¡¯t remember why I stopped. Something more important probably came up and I got distracted. I¡¯m going to do that for a while, between improving the puppets and improving my own skill with them I should be kept busy for quite a while.


    The other empire¡¯s borders are getting closer and closer to our own. With the both of us constantly claiming more cities for our own empires constantly it is only a matter of time before we meet. I give it a month. To make matters worse they absolutely refuse to acknowledge us as a legitimate empire, publicly or privately, or at least that is what I have heard. They have ignored any attempts to contact them and frequently refer to us as ¡®uncivilised savages¡¯ and ¡®barely sentient cur¡¯ and a number of other demeaning phrases. All this from a group of people that have never gotten their hands dirty in actual armed conflict. And their leadership calls themselves ¡®the angelic council¡¯, how pretentious, saying that they speak for the will of all angelics. All of them aren¡¯t even angelics, one of them is a lich.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    I look forward to drawing their cities into my forest, these impersonators of ours. We were the first and we will be the last.


    Wow, that got a lot darker than I was expecting. But yeah, I am pissed off at these guys for mocking us. Hopefully we can come to a peaceful solution, I would like to minimize death if possible, but given how angry our people are at them I would be surprised if anything but war results from our borders meeting.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol. I got to test some new potions of hers. Well, she didn¡¯t actually make them, her assistants did. But she did approve of them. One of them perfectly captured the taste of chocolate despite not containing any chocolate, I¡¯ll be honest that doesn¡¯t really mean much to me as I have never eaten chocolate before, it¡¯s supposedly super expensive and a pain to make. But the potion tasted really good. There was also one that causes you to hover in the air a couple inches, useful for crossing bodies of water without getting wet, or for vomiting up a potion that tastes like chocolate when the vertigo hits you. Teleportation doesn¡¯t make me sick at all, but just hovering a hands length off the ground is apparently too much for my stomach. It¡¯s not like I can heal that kind of motion sickness, I tried, but I wasn¡¯t exactly able to figure out what caused it while I was busy vomiting.


    Overall though it was fun, I particularly enjoyed the flavorings they were busy creating and trying to figure out how to mass produce. I look forward to going back.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 268

    Today I worked on redesigning puppets for use in sparring. I don¡¯t really know what is important in a fight so I am basically just going through and improving everything I can more or less equally. It will probably end up not being very effective at first, but hopefully, it should get better as I figure out what is necessary and what isn¡¯t.


    As for what I did in my downtime, I mostly just sat down and thought for a while. Being alone with my own wandering thoughts. It is still difficult to let my mind wander, but I am getting better at it.


    It was during this time that I realized something, the emotions of the masses are somehow reflected in me. The reason why I got so angry and violent towards the other empire is that the people are feeling angry and violent, or at least that is a big part of it. The only explanation that makes sense to explain why this is happening is my hivemind, maybe I¡¯m not as well insulated from the minds of the masses as I thought. At this point it would be impossible to fix that. And I¡¯m not even sure I want to fix it, my forest has been influencing me just as much as I have been influencing it from day one, why should my people be any different. I don¡¯t normally like acknowledging it but I could shape the lives of my people just as much as I could mold a tree to suit my needs, it might even be easier, requiring just a word to turn over someone¡¯s entire life. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Of course, I don¡¯t actually have proof that this is actually what is going on, but I¡¯m not sure it matters if it is. I¡¯m not sure how I could go about testing it either, so unless that changes it will probably remain a mystery.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 269

    Today I started sparing with the puppet I designed. I could easily overwhelm most people through brute force if I tried to, which would go against the point of this whole thing. So, of course, I had to drastically limit the actual force I was using. I decided to do that by limiting the amount of mana I was allowed to use for the puppets. I¡¯m not sure how much to limit it in order to get a good fight, so I figured that I would go overkill on that and limit it beyond what I think is reasonable. About a quarter of what I used to create the first version of the Ents.


    And honestly, it was really fun. Yeah I didn¡¯t do very well, and I lost almost every match, but the few I did manage to win where exhilarating. Having so much of my mind occupied by controlling a puppet and analyzing my opponent is kind of intimate, in a way. Like trying to read and understand their mind without actually reading their mind. I¡¯m not sure exactly how to describe it, but it appeals to me. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Maybe I¡¯ll go all out and challenge Par one day. I¡¯ll win that fight while limiting my mana, but without those limits, I have no idea.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel, doing what couples do when they are alone.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 270

    Today I spent the morning refining the design of my puppet, while still keeping under the mana limit I set for myself of course. Most of the rest of the day was spent sparring.


    My current design has almost no armor, I quickly realized yesterday that with how much mana making armor takes it is a waste of time. It is much more efficient to make something fast enough to avoid getting hit. I¡¯ll probably remove more of the bulk tomorrow, does it really need to have that much muscle driving it?


    I hung out with my dad a bit today. His personal pet project of soldiers are doing well by all reports. At this point, their self-healing abilities would rival my own ability to heal them, though that isn¡¯t hard when you spend all of your effort on one very specialized thing. It will take quite a bit of adapting if they ever evolve, though not so much that it would be unreasonable. Maybe a week if it is a simple evolution, three months if it is incredibly complicated. Stolen story; please report.


    Other than that I found a particularly shiny rock today, only for it to bite me. Apparently, it was a baby mimic, something I¡¯ve never seen before. It was honestly kind of cute, it a creepy sort of way. I didn¡¯t want to accidentally hurt it, healing or no, so I let it run away. Still, I wonder what it was doing here, they aren¡¯t exactly native to this area. Maybe a traveler accidentally brought it with them? It does kinda look like a gemstone, so maybe?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 271

    I removed most of the muscle mass of my puppet, at this point it is almost entirely bone. Well, wood in the shape of bone, with strands of muscle like fibers connecting them together. There is just enough of those muscle like fibers to allow it to move quickly with its full range of motion, and no more. It can¡¯t put much power behind anything, but it more than makes up for that in speed. Plus bulk costs quite a bit of mana, so I can use what I was spending on bulky muscles on things like improved utility or reinforcing the bones, if there is less space for me to armor then I need to spend less mana armoring it.


    With this puppet, I did better than I did the previous two days of sparring. Which makes me think, what other extraneous things are there that I can cut out? The rib cage maybe? It¡¯s not like there are any internal organs I need to worry about. The skull isn¡¯t necessary either, or the neck for that matter. I could even replace the arms with weapons, if I design it right then I think I can get something able to use those weapons more effectively for less mana than I would spend on arms and a weapon. I wouldn¡¯t have anything to block with though, so dodging would be even more important. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    If I got the cost low enough would I be able to make two of them? Would two cheap ones be better than one more expensive one? I can definitely control two at once, that isn¡¯t a question, but is it worth it? I have no idea.


    Other than that I spent my downtime thinking. I found a nice creak to sit next to and just listened to the water while deep in my thoughts. It was meditative, almost. I definitely felt relaxed afterwards.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 272

    Today I continued to refine the design of my puppet. I mostly focused on the arms, seeing how I could change them to make them most effective in combat. Blocking is entirely out of the picture, the skeleton is too fragile to not be damaged when blocking some heavier attacks, so I mostly focused on perfecting some sort of polearm set to dual wield, easy to support cumbersome weapons like a polearm when you can design the entire arm around it and it lets me keep distance while still being able to attack.


    The actual design of the polearms was more or less inspired by a spine. It uses a bunch of very flexible vertebrae to swing around whatever head I think is going to be most useful. Gives me a good range of attack in addition to allowing me to react quickly and bend around any weapons they are trying to use to block. In addition to letting me grab onto things like weapons quite well if I need to disarm an opponent.


    I¡¯ve been spending all of my excess mana on armoring up the bones, but given how fragile they are despite that I feel like it is a waste of mana. It only really slows the puppet down. I should take that mana and either improve maneuverability somehow or give it more arms to work with. I don¡¯t know which, I¡¯ll figure that out tomorrow. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    As for how well I am doing, I won about half of my matches today. This type of violent conflict is actually really fun, more so than I remembered.


    Oh yeah, two days from now I am going to try and challenge Par, this time with no limits on the amount of mana I can use to build the puppet. He should be back in town from his latest conquest by then, if not then it will be the next day.


    Speaking of Par, he got a letter from the angelic council, which I still think is a stupid name. To put it nicely, it asked us to ally ourselves with them for our own good, to put it not so nicely it said submit to us or die. After that I don¡¯t think peace is an option, the people don¡¯t know yet but when they find out there will be no option other than war. And considering how quickly both of us are expanding our borders, that war is going to happen very soon. It¡¯s gotten to the point that Par has stopped conquering, and instead cities are scrambling to declare themselves to be part of one empire or the other. Our opponents have already all but declared that any city that tries to stay neutral will be crushed, as the one city that tried was quite literally reduced to rubble. Even the scholars are rushing to our lands, everyone predicts war on a scale that has only been seen a handful of times before, and they want to be the ones to record it.


    Meanwhile, my forest is expanding faster and faster, it isn¡¯t going to be long before it overlaps with the borders of our empire. And from there into the borders of our neighbors. And eventually to the edges of the continent, and hopefully out into the oceans, where no plant has gone before.


    Anyway, Good Night Dairy.

 Day 273

    Today I spent some time refining the legs of the puppet. I¡¯m not really sure what makes legs good, so most of the changes I tried actually made it worse. That isn¡¯t to say I didn¡¯t make progress, it¡¯s just that I found a ton of things that don¡¯t work, and a handful of things that do.


    This reminds me a lot of making tools with Tiddol a bit ago, only a more complicated and having an actual way to field test the results. Too bad Tiddol isn¡¯t a plant manipulator, this would be fun to do together.


    Now that I think about it that¡¯s a great idea. Not so much with Tiddol as she doesn¡¯t really have a way to make a puppet like I do, but Azrezel does. I¡¯ll try tomorrow to convince him to try this with me, it¡¯s exactly the type of stuff he is trying to improve at. Plus it would be fun to go up against someone that is improving as quickly as you are. Most people only really improve their skills on a daily basis, what I¡¯m doing is akin to evolving every day. Not only do my skills get better, but so does the body I¡¯m fighting with. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Par is definitely going to be in town tomorrow, so I need to get started designing the puppet I¡¯m going to use to challenge him with. I¡¯ll probably stick with the whole idea of unstoppable assault that I have been going with, only using as much mana as I could possibly fit into it. I¡¯ll think more on that later.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol in her lab. While I was there someone organized a competition to see who could make something explode the fastest. Exactly one second after the starting whistle, someone had a stopwatch, there was a small explosion coming from a dragonewt girl close to me. It wasn¡¯t even powerful enough to break the glass it was in, but it would still an explosion. I don¡¯t think they realized I was there until I offered to make the victor a gift, something the dragonewt girl nervously accepted.


    I¡¯m lead to believe this is a fairly regular thing for the apprentice alchemists to do. Makes sense, it seems like something fun to do. It was fun watching the competition, I know just enough for the whole thing to be interesting but nowhere near enough to actually compete.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 274

    I challenged Par at about noon today, right before lunch. I spent my time before that building a puppet.


    The design I ended on almost completely forgoes armor, instead using speed and regrowing damage to make up for it. Taking advantage of spellwood to make repairs faster to help with the whole regrowing thing. It also has ten legs, letting it move in any direction incredibly quickly while also supporting the rather heavy upper body. For weapons I went with a much longer example of my spine polearm, only instead of two of them I had twenty-two eleven on each side. The limited armor it has is a pair of mobile shields that I can use to intercept any blows and take minimal damage. With this design I was sure I could win.


    So I challenged him with my puppet and we fought. He was obviously going easy on me at first, either that or conserving his strength to figure out more info about my puppet¡¯s abilities. Eventually, he started going on the offensive a lot more seriously and ended up doing some pretty serious damage to my damage before I recovered from the sudden shift, nothing I couldn¡¯t fix though. From there, his strategy was to try to overwhelm my puppet faster than I could heal it, which was working for a little bit but then he started acquiring his own wounds, which took time for him to heal and slowed down his assault.


    That is when I am assuming he actually got serious. All of a sudden he explodes in a cloud of fire, all of his injuries are healed, and he is also on fire. With one hand he wielded a sword, with the other he wielded a flame that somehow prevents anything from growing from the wounds it inflicts with passion and fervor. Suddenly my puppet wouldn¡¯t heal properly, though I quickly realized that I could just grow around the injuries.


    And then he started attacking my puppet with zealous fervor, ignoring any injuries he might take, all his wounds were burned away by that strange fire he wielded. It wasn¡¯t till I stabbed him through the heart that he slowed his assault, and by that time half of my puppet had been chopped up and reduced to ash. It was only enough to give him a moment¡¯s pause as he grabbed the arm that had stabbed him and burned it away, burning away his wounds in the process. That moment was all I needed to recover enough to go back on the offensive.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    And it continued to go like that, back and forth between us as I slowly lost ground and he slowly ran out of mana. He does have quite a bit of mana, more so than most accomplished mages. But that doesn¡¯t matter, I have more.


    By the time he ran out of mana I had three weapons left, seven legs, and the spine of my puppet was reduced to half the thickness it was before, on top of countless cuts and charred bits, both of the shields were gone. And he was still in peak physical condition, his fire must rejuvenate him somehow. At this point I was much more familiar with Par¡¯s fighting style and how to read his movements, so I didn¡¯t lose immediately and I even managed to injure him, albeit mostly superficially.


    Eventually, it was hard to find uncharred places big enough to properly grow a weapon or leg from, and the combination of missing legs and unhealable char was preventing me from moving the puppet as fluidly as I was able to before. At the same time Par was spending every bit of mana he managed to get by burning closed any uncharred bits on the surface of my puppet, usually trading injures for it. And he wasn¡¯t healing any injuries, so he was also constantly being slowed down and hampered.


    At the end of the fight Par overextended, allowing me to get a definitive blow on him, and put his sword through my puppet in a way that rendered it mostly inoperable. He ended up collapsing from the blow, while my puppet couldn¡¯t move anymore. A double knock out. Much better than I had hoped for.


    When I finally healed Par enough for him to wake up he was laughing. Apparently, it is pretty hard to find worthy opponents around here. Then we got into a small argument of who would win if we both actually wanted to kill each other, he seems to think my forest would be able to hamper him enough for me to actually kill him, while I don¡¯t think I would live long enough to do anything like that if we were to fight for real.


    Overall the fight took all day, from lunchtime to dinner time. And I absolutely loved it. I loved the challenge. This high speed react or die challenge is so dramatically different from the slow and steady type of challenge that I am used to that it is a breath of fresh air.


    Thinking back on the fight itself I am reminded quite strongly of Thes, not just in the emotion-fueled style of combat he has, but also the power behind him. I thought Thes was bordering on obtaining true immortality while he was raging, and Par is more powerful than that so I must have been mistaken, there is no way I am able to even come close to beating a true immortal. That would make me a true immortal, wouldn¡¯t it?


    Other than that I didn¡¯t get a chance to do much today, as pretty much all of my time was occupied with fighting Par. So I, unfortunately, didn¡¯t get to challenge Azrezel. I guess I¡¯ll do that tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 275

    Today I talked Azrezel into participating in my sparring matches. So far he is pretty good at it, which makes sense because he has had years to practice manipulating undead puppets. His skills might not be perfectly compatible, but they are relevant.


    We both made a puppet, him with flesh manipulation and me with plant manipulation, that had approximately the same amount of mana and then used them in a fight to the death. He has a lot more experience controlling puppets like this, while I have a lot more experience designing them. Ultimately I won about two-thirds of the matches we had, with both of us only taking a little bit of time between each match to do some tweaks to the design. I feel like Azrezel is going to improve a lot faster than me for a little bit as he gets used to actually building puppets like this.


    The puppets he¡¯s using to fight with, much like my own, do not have a soul and as such are completely controlled by Azrezel. Though it might be interesting to create a massive army of puppets to fight his undead hordes, maybe someday.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Par. I got him to tell me all about his fancy fire. He has no idea how it works, just that one day he started using it in a fight. He isn¡¯t really sure what it does intentionally, in that he has no idea what it isn¡¯t capable of and he doesn¡¯t want to think too hard about it in case he accidentally makes something impossible with it. Apparently, that is an actual thing that can happen when using powers that are driven entirely by instinct and emotion, like his fire is. Though some things he has noticed that it is capable of so far seem to follow a couple common themes, like healing and preventing healing, or nourish and nurturing plants, or destroying them. It seems to be some twisted form of my own powers guided through emotion and zeal instead of thought and understanding.


    Unfortunately, it isn¡¯t exactly the type of thing he can teach other people, I would really like to see more of what it is capable of but I don¡¯t want to hold Par back from his own goals. I am certain he would gladly let me take the time to study him, but I would feel bad about it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 276

    The design of my puppet didn''t change in any major ways today, I mostly focused on refining what I already have.


    Azrezel, on the other hand, made drastic changes to his puppet. He started out with just a normal zombie ghoul looking thing, from there he has followed my example and cut out things like internal organs, skin, large amounts of muscle mass, the whole rib cage, and a couple other things. With the mana saved from that he dramatically improved the muscles. A little too much actually, as he had some issues with bones breaking. He wasn''t able to strengthen the bones enough through brute force without weakening the muscles more than he was comfortable with so now he is mostly trying to refine his overall design for bones.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Other than that I spent my downtime sitting alone with my thoughts. It rained today. Sitting out in the rain with my thoughts is comforting.

 Day 277

    Today Azrezel and I sparred again. He has increasingly pushed his puppet towards mobility and speed, something I am not used to fighting. He won two-thirds of the matches we had today simply because I was learning how to fight something approaching my own speed, while he has been fighting something much faster than him the whole time. That should change pretty quickly though.


    I spent my downtime attending a concert that was happening in Pearlhold. A rather famous traveling band decided to put on a show and everyone was talking about it, so I had to see what the fuss was about. And honestly, it was pretty good. Not quite worth the hype, but still pretty good. Apparently, they are putting on another show tomorrow, I might go see it again with Tiddol or Azrezel. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Other than that not a lot happened today, or at least nothing that was brought to my attention.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 278

    Today Azrezel and I sparred again. I think I¡¯m starting to figure out how to fight a fast opponent, or at least I¡¯m winning more often.


    I figured out a way to dramatically improve the strength of the muscles I¡¯m using, to the point that I had to armor up the bones a bit more to avoid damage. I¡¯m not entirely sure how it works but a simple change in the way the muscles contract worked to dramatically improve things like grip strength or really anything involving the muscles contracting. Oh yeah, I also added an arm that has an actual hand in order to try and grab Azrezel¡¯s puppet, which makes grip strength incredibly valuable. When I can catch him anyway. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I ended up inviting Tiddol to see the concert with me today. This time I was recognized and offered things like better seats and a chance to meet the band after the show, so naturally, I accepted. They were interesting to talk to, one girl was an ex-diver, so Tiddol and her hit it off pretty well. I learned that a number of their songs were inspired by my own father, it is ridiculous just how famous he is. More myth than man really. It honestly gets a little tiring hearing about him from strangers, though I suppose other people will eventually feel the same about me. It would be hard not to be famous with my position being what it is.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 279

    Today I tried making two separate, smaller, puppets and had great results. It is harder to control, but that hardly matters at this point. It might be an issue if there were hundreds of them but two is well within my abilities.


    I ended up winning four out of every five matches I had with Azrezel today simply because I could be in two places at once. It wasn¡¯t until he tried to also use multiple puppets that he started to win again, though even then I still won more.


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    In the distance, I can see the remnants of my old home, no longer burnt and charred but green. It is still too far away to see in great detail, but I should reach it soon. It¡¯s been so long since I¡¯ve seen my childhood home, I¡¯m not sure I¡¯m ready. Regardless, unless something changes I should reach it with the next week. And I won¡¯t let anything stop my growth for long.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Kaire and Lulem. The two of them are doing remarkably well for themselves. Looked up to and respected by nearly everyone, they have fully cemented themselves as being some sort of leaders in the community. And above all that they seem to be enjoying themselves, they seem to like being the older sibling to all of my children. I¡¯m happy that they are satisfied.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 280

    Kaire was murdered today. She¡¯s fine now, physically at least, but being dead seems to have shaken her up quite a bit.


    Backing up a little bit, I was doing some special event game type thing with Azrezel that I will get to in a moment when suddenly something started orbiting me. It took a minute for me to realize that it was Kaire¡¯s soul and that she was still conscious. After that, it didn¡¯t take long for me to figure out how to communicate with her and from there she told me that she was murdered. Well, it was probably more of an assassination, but it is hard to know now as I was a bit overzealous when dealing with the perpetrator. I feel bad for the guys that have to fix and clean up that part of town. I didn¡¯t know one creature could hold that much blood.


    Anyway, I spent the next little while asking the dungeons about the whole thing with her soul orbiting me. I had heard about dungeon¡¯s being able to resurrect specific followers after they had died and figured it had something to do with that. Anyway, what I learned is that one it is incredibly weird that I have gone this long without it happening to me and two it is indeed caused by my dungeon core. Though normally I wouldn¡¯t be able to do anything about it for quite a while.


    See, when a dungeon creature dies while inside of the dungeon its soul is captured by the dungeon core before it can degrade or reincarnate. This only works for creatures whose souls I have seeded as the mechanism relies on the bits of my own soul used in the process of anchoring theirs to the body. Kinda similar to how necromancers use pieces of their own soul to control the undead. This doesn¡¯t work outside of the dungeon because a core only has control within its own borders. Even a step outside is too much, though you might get lucky and have the soul fly back in as it is trying to move on. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    So, to recap. Someone assassinated Kaire, I failed to extract any information from the assailant, and I can bring my Ents back to life if they die in my forest. Unfortunately, at this point it is a little too late to try and keep them all in my forest, unless I cover the entire world with it. At this point it is only a matter of time. And I built Kaire a new body, a bit better than her old one.


    Now, back to the puppet thing. Azrezel suggested that we do a little event. He suggested that I build a fortress and have him try to siege it, both using the same amount of mana. We were to take today to build and design our parts and tomorrow we would do the actual siege. I think I did a good job, though I have no idea what goes into a good fortress. I look forward to testing it against Azrezel tomorrow. I¡¯m getting really excited for this.


    Now that I think about it isn¡¯t that why I stopped in the first place? The whole sparring thing was making me more violent before. And then that whole thing today with the assassin, I killed him. Yeah, it wasn¡¯t in cold blood or anything like that, but normally I would have at least tried to subdue and interrogate him. I acted completely on instinct and anger and ended his life brutally. Logically I know I should be appalled by this, I don¡¯t want to kill people, in fact, I try to actively avoid it as much as possible. But I feel indifferent to his death, no, worse, I feel satisfaction over his death. And now that I am writing this all down and fully realizing it I am freaking out. I don¡¯t want to be violent and aggressive. I don¡¯t want to lash out in anger. I don¡¯t want to kill people when there are better options.


    I¡¯m going to stop with the sparring after tomorrow¡¯s event. As fun as it is I don¡¯t think it is worth it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 281

    Today was the day Azrezel assaulted my fortress with armies of undead. I tried really hard to think of a way to make that into an innuendo but I just couldn¡¯t figure out how. A week from now I am going to think about this moment and come up with a perfect line for this, but by then it will be too late. Or not, maybe I¡¯ll just forget.


    Anyway, the rules of the competition were simple. He had to have one of his undead touch me before sundown in order to win, while I had to prevent that. I could go anywhere within the designated battleground, but nowhere outside of it. Meaning I spent most of the time in the middle of the fortress. While both of us could repair any damage done to our puppets or my fortress, neither of us could create new puppets during the competition and I was limited in the sheer amount of mana I could pour out of myself at any given time.


    It was a one-sided victory in Azrezel¡¯s favor. I honestly have no idea what it takes to defend a fortress, though I did learn quite a bit today. I had the actual design of my fortress down pretty well, I studied pearlhold as by all accounts it is an incredibly well-designed fortress, but I had no idea how to actually use it. Overall my puppets where quite a bit better than his, but he also has way more than me. Were is a field battle without any need for me to spend mana on a fortress I am certain I would have won.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    It also doesn¡¯t help my case that Azrezel has been studying siege tactics recently, not taking all of his time on that of course, but it is something he has been looking into. As one of, if not the, best necromancers in the area siege warfare is something he thinks he is supposed to be good at, especially with how militaristic the people are. That last bit isn¡¯t something I noticed till today, but it definitely makes sense.


    So the siege ended with Azrezel walking cooly and confidently into the command room and sweeping me up into his arms without even breaking a sweat. Not that picking me up would be difficult for him, he is incredibly ripped and I am light as a feather. Though I was a bit irritated at losing so easily that is my own fault and I can¡¯t be irritated at him.


    Other than that I spent the rest of the day with Azrezel, playing out the role of his captive. It was honestly really fun, though I don¡¯t think it will be a regular thing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 282

    Today I spent my time messing around with mundane plants. Well, that isn¡¯t completely accurate as what I was actually doing was trying to see if I could get any inspiration for how to create new magical plants. I haven¡¯t actually made entirely new plants before despite knowing that it is something I can do, or should be able to do anyway.


    What I came up with was I need to somehow manipulate the things surrounding the evolution of a plant inorder to turn it into what I want. My normal method of refining what already exists isn¡¯t going to help me much here, beyond possibly priming it for a bigger evolution. The problem with all of this is I have no idea how to go about it.


    And that¡¯s it. I have no idea how to do that. When I evolve something I am always working with something that already exists and building upon it, never creating a new foundation. They are close enough that I think trial and error would be enough in a reasonable amount of time, if I knew what I was looking for. Yes, I know it would be pretty obvious if I created a new magical plant, but unless it is a complete success I have no idea what to look for in order to see how close I am. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    I guess I could start by evolving a plant over and over again to see what happens. Obviously I would refine the plant between each evolution as that makes the evolutions much bigger and as such should make it easier to get what I am looking for.


    I spent my downtime today hanging out with Tiddol today. She¡¯s been making some new clockwork creatures in the last couple days, nothing ridiculous, but it is always cool to see them come to life.


    Apparently she is planning out the creation of one made entirely out of magical metals instead of wood. Somthing about wanting to prove that it is possible, which is a sentiment that I understand. I look forward to seeing the final product.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 283

    So I succeeded in creating a magical plant today, kind of. I ended up making Astrie, not anything good or high quality or even different, just normal every day Astrie. Identical to the stuff I got ahold of almost two years ago.


    It¡¯s obvious that I¡¯m missing something but I¡¯m not sure what. I  know my idea of evolving a plant till it does something special is a viable one, but it is more complicated than that. I need to change something, but what? The only thing I can think of is focusing on something innate in the plant itself, it¡¯s what I did when I tried to get something specific out of Drowsy Clover. I guess I¡¯ll try that tomorrow.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Tiddol¡¯s progress towards creating a clockwork creature out of metal has hit a bit of a snag, nothing that will stop her, but it will slow her down. See, she has run out of parts and now has to craft them all herself. No one knows exactly how to make the parts she needs and she isn¡¯t the best and smithing, she isn¡¯t bad at it but she isn¡¯t the best. Or so she tells me.


    Other than that I spent most of my downtime with Azrezel. We ended up in a passionate discussion about flesh manipulation. I have to say, it isn¡¯t very often that I can talk to someone about something I am good at and coming away having learnt something. There just aren¡¯t very many people able to rival my skills.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 284

    Today I continued my attempts to turn mundane plants into something magical. I decided to focus on its ability to create mana out of the light of the suns, mostly because it was the thing that stood out to me as being the most obviously magical. I did make progress, but it was slow. The world added to that part of the plant in a meaningful way maybe one in ten evolutions, even with me actively guiding it. Considering the fact that I was able to trigger roughly twenty-five evolutions today, things could be going better. I decided to strip down everything that wasn¡¯t related to the task of creating mana, hopefully, that will make things go a little faster.


    I¡¯ve received word from Par that the angelic council has issued a public declaration of war towards us. Something about subjugating barbarian heathens that have refused to see the light. Our borders have not met yet and still, they declare us to be their enemies. I don¡¯t think they will us to be as easy to push around as they think we are. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Some good news from that, the remaining city-states are all rushing to declare a side in this conflict, none have tried to remain neutral after what happened to the last ones who did that. A majority of them have decided to join us, offering what they can to support the war effort. It seems the council¡¯s purge of a city backfired a little, spreading hate more than fear.


    Other than that I spent my downtime thinking. I returned to that small stream I found before and sat alone with my thoughts. Meditating, almost. It is pleasant and calming.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 285

    Stripping out everything that wasn¡¯t related to creating mana has more than doubled how quickly I am improving this plant. It is still mostly just changing things around without actually making it better most of the time, but now there are a lot more changes. I can take all of those beneficial changes and use them to make a plant that is better at creating mana, though progress is still pretty slow.


    As for what I am going to do with a plant that creates mana better than any other plant? I have no idea. This is mostly a proof of concept to show that creating magical plants out of mundane ones is possible. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    I spent my downtime hanging out with Azrezel. He talked to me about maybe gathering up a bunch of people with a bit of talent and teaching them necromancy. His reasoning was that Necromancers are very useful in a war and we don¡¯t really have any. I helped him organize a schoolhouse for him to teach in as well as helping him prepare a bunch of corpses, artificially made, not naturally, and a place to store them where they won¡¯t rot. Or at least it should take longer for them to rot. I hope this he succeeds, maybe some of the scholars can help him learn how to teach, that seems to be the type of thing they are interested in.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 286

    Today I continued to make progress towards my current project. It¡¯s slow and tedious and exactly like several projects I have done already. Now I say that but I made quite a lot of progress today, mostly due to luck. It is too early to tell, but I think progress is speeding up. I¡¯m guessing that the more progress I make towards this project the fast I will make progress. Hopefully someday soon I will reach some tipping point where I rapidly make incredible amounts of progress.


    I spent my downtime with my dad, listening to his stories. He told me about the time he fought off a titanic beast, probably a true immortal by the sounds of it, and managed to make it redirect its path away from a settlement he was protecting. I loved listening to him talk about his companions and their role in that event, though he downplayed his own involvement. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Other than that a fire broke out in a remote part of my forest. A small tribe of kobolds that had somehow gone undetected so far had set up camp there. They set up a campfire on top of a large mound of dry brush and then they failed to control it. Luckily my plants are resistant to fire so not a lot of damage was done. Besides, I can¡¯t get angry at a bunch of tribal kobolds, they¡¯re cute and helpless. Anyway, I put out the fire and brought them to be integrated into society. One of them seemed to have some skill as a mage, so they should fare pretty well.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 287

    I didn¡¯t work today.


    I reached my old home today. There was no resistance as I claimed it, the trees greeted me as if I were an old friend. Which I suppose is true enough, at one point in time I was going to inherit this grove from my mother, as my mother inherited from her own. I was born here, and had things gone differently, I would have died here as well.


    It¡¯s weird, walking through my childhood home. I can see all the trees that I use to know, most of them now charred husks feeding those living. I can see the husk of my old house, all but destroyed in the fire. I can see the old trees that managed to survive the fire, growing twisted and gnarled in the process, as if scars from a battle almost forgotten. I can see the bedroom where my father would tell me bedtime stories when I wasn¡¯t able to sleep, now exposed to the world from a collapsed wall. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I can¡¯t see the first tree I managed to grow, they were consumed in the fire. I can¡¯t see the old toys I had all but discarded as I grew older. I can¡¯t see the old hiding spots I would use when I wanted to get out of chores. I can¡¯t see my mother¡¯s face anymore.


    I guess some part of me was hoping that my mother had survived, after all my father did and my mother always seemed to be just as strong as him. I thought to myself that if I reached my old home she would be there waiting for me, as if nothing had changed. Logically I knew it was impossible, she was nowhere to be seen when my father came to after the fire. Most mana based creatures don¡¯t leave corpses like I will. Never mind that I would have received word about her being alive by now if she was. But somewhere deep down I was hoping that she was still here.


    I spent my time sitting in this grove and conversing with the trees, feeding them my mana all the while. They can¡¯t comprehend language but thoughts, emotions, memories, and ideas are all easy to communicate. It¡¯s something I used to do as a child to practice, I never found it as interesting as actual plant manipulation but doing it now feels nostalgic. Like a bitter happiness over what once was.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 288

    This whole project is slow and tedious, exactly like many of my previous projects. Progress is speeding up, however. And as it speeds up it seems to speed up faster, hopefully that is a pattern that will continue. And I am getting better at guiding the world to create beneficial changes, a skill I never realized I might need one day as usually it does that all on its own.


    During my downtime, I took my Dad to see the old grove, something I should have done yesterday. It¡¯s a far walk for him but easy for me to just teleport to. I just stood there and watched and listened and he went around and told me stories about various objects and locations in the grove. He told me about a time I threw a fit and wouldn¡¯t eat for a month for some reason, I don¡¯t remember it and he never found out. He told me about the first time he met my mother, a story I have heard countless times before. He told me countless stories of when I was a small child, some I even half remember. He told me stories of times he and my mother would dance in the rain, sometimes I would join them. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    I told him my own stories. Some I half remember, others that feel like they happened yesterday. I told him about how much I preferred it when he was the one to tuck me in at night, about how I always liked mom¡¯s cooking more than his, and about many other things.


    He seemed sad, afterward, but content.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 289

    I think I hit a tipping point in my current project today. It was less that something clicked into place and more like I¡¯m figuring out enough about how to improve the plant to make educated guesses that are frequently correct. If I mess up the worst that can happen is the plant isn¡¯t useful anymore, but I can just make a new copy of it from before I made a mistake. On top of that I am also getting much better at figuring out what actually works and what is useless or outright harmful to the end result, not perfect mind you, but better. This means that I am able to make sweeping changes and get at least a couple things right every time. Do that over and over again and I can make rapid progress.


    I realized something today, I¡¯ve been using the world as a crutch. It wasn¡¯t till I started working on a project that the world didn¡¯t know how to improve that I started to realize this, which I suppose was only a matter of time as the world was only able to create things that it had already seen.


    That isn¡¯t to say that the world isn¡¯t a useful tool, it definitely is, I¡¯ve just been using it wrong. Or at least I think I am, I don¡¯t have any way to know for sure. I am now convinced that the proper way to use it is as a way to both store your designs to easily create latter and as a way to get ahold of more energy for the sake of improving something. For mana that last part isn¡¯t very useful, but for Solar Energy it can be incredibly useful. I guess it''s also useful if you''re creating something potentially dangerous or fragile and want to avoid it getting damaged while you are designing it. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    I am now seeing that there is a lot more to plant manipulation than I originally thought. In hindsight it was fairly obvious, after all, Origin would have had to create creatures before anything could evolve into them. I wonder why I never thought to try and create something new without relying on the world.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Tiddol. She is getting close to finishing her latest creation, and I¡¯m looking forward to seeing how it works out.


    Her clockwork creatures are pretty much everywhere nowadays. I frequently hear the distinct hum of mechanical wings in the trees above me or the whir of gears allowing someone to walk. Earlier today I saw two clockwork birds fight to the death, only for the victor to use the parts of the loser to patch up and improve their own body, and not for the first time either. They¡¯re fascinating to watch as they are basically exactly like any other living thing, but made of something I only barely understand. Yeah, I am learning a lot about clockwork thanks to the fact that nearly all of the gears are plant-based, but even with that I struggle to understand how exactly it works. Tiddol sure doesn¡¯t though.


    Even if we don¡¯t really do anything meaningful together, just hanging out with her is fun. Which I guess is meaningful in and of itself.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 290

    Progress on my current project is getting faster rather quickly. I don¡¯t think there really is a limit to how high I can go anymore, except maybe my own skill and patience, as I am striving to use the world simply as a convenient energy source and to let it learn. Well, there is also the benefit of getting it to do most of the grunt work, which definitely speeds up the process but isn¡¯t necessary.


    I am naturally talented at directly adding onto plants without instead of relying wholly on evolution. Of course I am, I have personally designed my body to be as good at manipulating plants as I possibly could, it would be weird if I wasn¡¯t talented.  That isn¡¯t to say that I am good at it, compared to a normal person I am amazing if only because the average person can¡¯t manipulate plants at all, but if I could master something like this in a day I could probably take on all of the True Immortals and win.


    On a more serious note, I am slightly ashamed that I didn¡¯t think to do this earlier and also really excited for the possibilities. It is much slower than having the world do everything for me, which is honestly probably why evolution is a thing in the first place. But at the same time I am only restricted by my skill and my imagination, whereas when I am relying on evolution I have to have starting materials that might justify the results I want, and even then I am still limited to pieces that the world has seen before. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    I imagine that the main reason I am able to make progress as quickly as I am now is because creating mana is an inherent part of the plant. If I were to try and add something entirely new then it would probably be harder. I don¡¯t actually know how to add something new, but I¡¯m sure that if I know what I want to add then intention should bridge the gap, even if only slowly.


    Other than that I spent my downtime mostly relaxing on my own. I decided to climb up to the top of the first tree I planted and watch the sunset, this one a brilliant blue. I remember when I first started to write this diary it only went up to my chest, now it is four times my height. I guess having a constant influx of mana can help a tree grow quickly. Or at least it does when fed to them by someone who knows how to do it, the stuff they produce naturally only becomes ambient mana.


    I wonder how much taller they will grow? Will they reach into the sky? Will they reach past it to touch the moons? Will they stretch beyond that and grasp hold of the suns? Will whatever is past the inky darkness beyond the suns be forever cut off from me? I do not know, but I look forward to finding out in time.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 291

    I think it is kind of weird that I decided to make this plant, like why would I need more mana? I have more than I need as it is. I guess I can¡¯t exactly be everywhere, which isn¡¯t exactly true inside my grove considering the fact that I can practically be anywhere I want, but outside of it not so much. So really this plant is going to be much more useful for Tiddol than me.


    Actually, I should see about incorporating it into my Ents, once it¡¯s actually complete of course. Especially the spell caster Ent I designed. I could also see about incorporating it into some other people, maybe add it to the whole hivemind thing? Couldn¡¯t hurt to try.


    At this point I am not entirely sure exactly how this yet to be named plant works. The method I have been using to improve it isn¡¯t exactly conducive to figuring that out, rapid-fire guess and check doesn''t help you learn why something works. I do know that it is taking stuff from the suns and turning it into mana, in addition to the energy radiating from the world. But that isn¡¯t enough to explain the sheer amount of mana it is able to produce, and it doesn¡¯t noticeably drop when night comes like you would expect if a large chunk of that was coming from the suns. It seems to be producing mana from some energy that I cannot see, or possibly from nothing. I don¡¯t know which. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    We¡¯ve received word from Par that we are going to clash with our neighbors at the border soon, or at least soon at the time of writing this. The fighting has probably already started. By the sound of things we have the advantage in this battle, hopefully, our victory set the tone for the whole war.


    In probably related news someone tried to assassinate Azrezel today, but a dagger through the heart isn¡¯t exactly lethal to an undead. The poison was similarly useless. The attempted suicide bombing wasn¡¯t so useless, or it wouldn¡¯t have been if the would-be assassin hadn¡¯t been subdued and disarmed before anything too bad could happen.


    So we found ourselves interrogating the assassin while he was covered from head to toe in bone bindings, his own bones by the look of things. Mostly it just confirmed our suspicions, the angelic council sent them to kill Azrezel. He also didn¡¯t really know much beyond that, not exactly someone important by the sound of it. He did say that they have pretty much given up hope of assassinating me, at least until everyone around me was dead.


    I guess we know to look out for more assassins, not that we weren¡¯t already.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 292

    Progress on my current project is starting to slow down. I think I¡¯m getting to the edge of my own skill, I don¡¯t think it will be long before any further progress simply won¡¯t be worth the effort. As I have never done this before I¡¯m not sure how long that will take.


    Tiddol finally finished her latest creation, so naturally, I brought it to life. It was a lot more draining than I was expecting, not to the point of exhaustion, but definitely beyond my normal comfort zone. In design, he is nearly identical to Tiddol¡¯s other bipedal clockwork creatures, which makes sense because she basically mimicked the effects of the magical metals with wood the first time around. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    He didn¡¯t have any memories of a previous life so we are treating him to the same rapid education that has worked so well for us in the past. He seems to have some level of control over metal, about what I would expect from someone with a natural gift and no experience working with it. Both Tiddol and I want to see what can be done with that kind of magic so we have encouraged him to pursue it.


    I spent my downtime teaching, so there isn¡¯t much to say there.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 293

    I had a major breakthrough with my current project today. I figured out how this plant is actually producing mana. Actually no, I didn¡¯t, Tiddol did. She cut a sample of the stuff in half, something I never would have thought to do, and discovered that it was incredibly porous. Which is something I already knew, it¡¯s hardly something worth mentioning.


    What I didn¡¯t know is what was going on inside all of those pores. It is rapidly creating and destroying some substance. This substance is easily destroyed by mana and as a result is what is causing the vast majority of the mana production of this plant. Of course, this means that if all the mana from it is every removed its production of mana will drop down to levels closer to the average plant until it builds up again.


    So, naturally, I spent all day seeing how I can improve on that directly, with dramatic results. It is much easier to improve something when you know exactly what can be improved, even if you don¡¯t know how.


    The first thing I did was try and make all of the pores bigger. It can form more of the substance, which I discovered is some kind of brittle stone, if there is more space for it. This backfired, the larger chunks of the stone were destroyed slower. This reminded me of the whole nuclear waste cleanup thing, that stuff was destroyed faster when it was a fine powder so this probably works the same. And it does. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    When I made the pores smaller the stone was destroyed faster, significantly so. Unfortunately, this also decreased the amount of mana it was producing. I quickly figured out that I needed to actually increase the number of pores in order to improve the plant. So I made the pores as small as I could without interfering with their ability to produce the stone and then spent the rest of the day trying to figure out the best way to cram as many pores as close together as possible through trial and error.


    All of that increased the mana production several times over and made me curious. How would introducing Solar Energy to the system change it? I know some of its production comes from solar energy cast off from the suns, but I know first hand how little that actually is. This will literally blow up in my face a couple times, but I believe I have enough experience with Solar energy to try and make it work.


    I can¡¯t imagine a scenario where I could possibly need to generate this much mana, but this project has already gone well beyond the realm of practicality. At this point, it is more about the challenge than actual results.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Tiddol, though not in her lab this time. I took her to see the sights in my forest, places that would be difficult to reach without being able to teleport. There is one mountain that has a massive lake on it instead of a peak, and the lake is warm enough to bathe in too. We spent some time swimming around in there before moving onto a city I recently surrounded with my forest, one that has massive stone buildings that rival the walls of pearlhold in their splendor.


    It was fun, though not the type of thing I really enjoy doing on my own.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 294

    Day 294


    Today I added parts of Sunflower to my current project, and also healed several self-inflicted lacerations and burn wounds. So basically exactly what I was expecting. I did manage to get a crude version added, so it does stably produce small amounts of Solar Energy and immediately turns them into mana. It is able to run for about an hour before the increasing amounts of mana produces more Solar Energy than the plant can safely turn into mana, then it explodes. Luckily it damages itself beyond repair when it explodes, preventing it from producing Solar Energy.


    It¡¯s progress, but less than I thought I was going to make. Well, nothing I can do about that except keep working.


    As for my downtime, I hung out with Azrezel today. I was showing off the plant I was working on and he was showing off what he¡¯s been working on. He was making some kind of crossbow that he could work into his own undead. It was actually really cool, partially because it is the type of thing that I would be able to make and partially because he¡¯s done a really good job of it. The way he built it has the whole thing contained in the arm of one of his undead and completely restructures the arm to facilitate it, without undermining the durability. The actual bow curves a lot, I¡¯m not really sure how that impacts the weapon but I don¡¯t see them curve that much normally so it probably does something. The arms are a bit larger than normal to try and reduce the impact that the spacial restrictions have, with a lot more muscle as well. The string is made of tendons, I mean what else would you use for this. While the bolt is able to be grown by the surrounding arm from bone, though not very fast. The issue there is mana, and if there was no issue it could fire nearly constantly.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Azrezel is looking forward to my project being completed, mostly because it would enable many of his projects to actually be useful. It takes a lot of mana to make bone.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. It¡¯s been pretty calm recently, even with the start of a war going on.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 295

    Today I made a breakthrough in my current project. It isn¡¯t near perfection yet but I managed to get Solar Energy production to work indefinitely, albeit only a little bit of it. That little bit is definitely a start though, from here it should be easier to figure out how to improve it.


    Something Tiddol noticed when trying to work with my current prototype is that it takes a while to actually get going, how I didn¡¯t notice I¡¯m not too sure. Maybe I just put in way more mana than is strictly necessary when I make it myself? Or maybe because when I work with it mana from the world is always being provided. Who knows? I don¡¯t. Not like it matters too much anyway, just have to use more mana that would be normally needed.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Other than that I spent my time with Tiddol. We ended up playing board games today, nothing too fancy but I had a lot of fun.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 296

    Today I made progress towards integrating Solar Energy into my current project. Really it is just a matter of keeping it moving fast enough long enough that it interacts with the innate parts of the plant that turn that stuff into mana instead of interacting directly with mana and exploding. Easier said than done as the more Solar Energy there is the easier it is for mana to interact with it. If I were to actively guide it then it won¡¯t be a problem, but that would defeat the purpose. The solution is obvious enough, I either need to make the whole system better at processing Solar Energy or make the stuff move faster, or both.


    Ultimately it is just more of the same work I have been doing for almost two years now. It¡¯s amazing how some things tend to stay the same.


    Now that I think about the way I have been improving my body with Solar Energy is the same too, break things down to their smallest parts and improve everything on that scale. I haven¡¯t been putting much focus into it but having a little focus on it constantly does do something. It¡¯s weird, feeling the differential between the plants I have integrated into my body, which I can improve with Solar Energy, and my original body, which I can¡¯t. I wonder what will happen as that differential grows.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Now, it is possible to improve my mana based body with Solar Energy, it happened when I evolved, but I am not capable of pulling that off without risking killing myself. I don¡¯t exactly have the ability to force my body to stay intact as it is actively exploding like the world does.


    Other than that I hung out with Kaire and Lulem for a while, I haven¡¯t done that in a while. I talked to them mostly about how my children are doing. More and more are constantly returning from their journeys and even more are setting out. Some of them have even managed to have normal natural offspring, instead of the whole formed out of magic thing I do. I guess that makes me a grandma, I¡¯m not sure how to feel about that.


    There are a lot of Ents now, so many that they are a frequent sight in any populated area. In general, they are thriving, a couple of them have even become scholars and one of them is a reincarnated scholar. Nearly all of them have some memories of a previous life, though no one was particularly powerful before they died previously.


    We also just hung out and had fun together. They¡¯ve gotten really good at working together.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 297

    Today I nearly doubled the amount of Solar Energy my plant is able to handle primarily by improving how well it can process the stuff. It¡¯s actually much easier to do that than it is to make it move faster. Making it move is an incredibly active process, much more so than turning it into mana.


    Maybe Spellwood could help me here? Its whole purpose is to do repetitive spells over and over again as long as it has energy with which to function. Making Solar Energy move faster in a confined space definitely fits that description. It would be perfect for the job.


    Although, maybe I could ditch that idea altogether and go down a different route. If I try to force Solar Energy to interact with mana as quickly as possible then I could reasonably keep the resulting explosions small enough to be easily contained by Mithrialwood. Admittedly Mithrilwood does take up a lot of space, which is at a premium with this project, but I also wouldn¡¯t need anything to keep Solar Energy moving or to safely turn Solar Energy into mana. Whether I will be able to get enough function out of Mithrilwood for it to work without harming production I don¡¯t know, but I know how to figure that out.


    Other than that we¡¯ve received word from Par that he is stuck in a bit of a stalemate with our enemies. At this point, both sides are too dug in to really root the other out with the forces they have now, so Par is requesting reinforcements to help rectify the issues. Azrezel and my dad are both leaving, Azrezel taking his undead and my dad taking the soldiers he has been training. In addition to a bunch of other people, including many of my children. Whatever Par is doing I hope it works out as he is pulling out a lot of manpower. Luckily we have the teleportation infrastructure to get them all where we need them, otherwise, it would be nearly impossible to move this many people, even then it¡¯s going to be slow.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    That might be a good idea for my next project actually, figuring out how to make teleportation gates. I have quite a few cities and towns in my forest, and yeah all the major ones have teleporters in them but I imagine that having large a massive scale teleporter system might be rather helpful.


    As for my downtime, I spent that by going out to eat. I didn¡¯t really go with anyone I just wanted to eat something good and really didn¡¯t want to cook it myself. Besides, I¡¯m only a decent cook.


    Anyway, while there I met up with Erica Hornmark again. It¡¯s been what, about a month and a half since I last saw her? Yeah, that sounds about right.


    She was with her mate, a rather feminine looking Dragonewt, some kind of variant I think, alchemist whose name I didn¡¯t catch, and their clutch of children. Most of the children are Dragonewts, four of them were the saint variant while three of them were the same variant as their father. The other two were both Northrunes, though I couldn¡¯t tell if they were variants as that species isn¡¯t exactly one I see often.


    I would have thought that the children would be too young to leave the nest at this point but I guess not. Apparently Nothrune normally just leave their children to fend for themselves so they have to develop fast enough to take care of themselves. That would have some impact even with the dragonewt kids. Of course with Mrs. Hornmark here, who is a master healer, easily one of the best in my forest, nothing short of death could permanently scar her kids. And even instant death might be fixed if she manages to patch them up before the soul departs.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 298

    Today we were attacked by an army. I was alerted immediately when a large chunk of my forest disappeared only to be replaced with a large mass of some metal that would take months to drill through with my plants on its own absolutely covered in some kind of magical enchantment that seems to repel and destroy plants. The people on what I quickly realized to be a platform were small in number but obviously very heavily armed and armored, an elite force as we quickly discovered. Their armor was enchanted in a similar way to the platform making it much harder for me to affect them, but not impossible.


    This couldn¡¯t have come at a worse time. Well, it would have been worse if they had waited a couple days as it takes time to move our soldiers but we had already moved a good chunk of our heavy hitters over to Par and the main force is too far away from a teleportation circle. To make matters worse the people we had just sent over probably wouldn¡¯t be able to help either, very few people can be in fighting condition after two very long range teleportations back to back.


    As if that wasn¡¯t bad enough nearly all of our arms and armor is plant-based, and most of the competent fighters still around are literally made of plants. The few things that could actually hurt them reliably were the things that teleported other things, like explosives or poison, into their midsts. Which all but stopped when their teleporter finally recovered, because of course they have a master teleporter.


    When they mount a charge I am able to take out maybe one in two hundred of them with my plants before their armor prevents me from using my plants any more than that. Though I did eventually find some success with overwhelming brute force in the way of all of my mana, but hardly enough to justify the expense. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    My healing turned out to be much more reliable in disabling them, but I don¡¯t want to go too far with it and I really don¡¯t want to kill anyone with it. That is a horrific way to die. Plus I am not used to using healing against a resisting target from far away, so there were some issues.


    Like that we managed to get ahold of some of their equipment, but we are currently stuck in a standstill. The scholars are trying to figure out a way to counter these enchantments and I hope they hurry up. I wish I could do something to help there but this is an entirely alien field of magic to me. In the meantime, the best I can do is keep their healers busy undoing my work.


    Originally I was angry enough to kill all of them, but I failed at that and quickly realized plants wouldn¡¯t help so much here. After my rage settled my normal reluctance to kill came back. I am still incredibly angry, and I want to see them all dead, but I don¡¯t want to be the one to kill them.


    I just wish Azrezel would recover from his teleportation induced sickness quickly, he could probably turn the tide on his own. Tiddol and the other alchemists have done great work so far, but their armor is too good and their healers are even better so damage has been minimal. Even the poison has been rapidly and effectively countered. The only thing that seems to keep them down is instant death.


    Fortunately, casualties on our own side have also been minimal, our armor might not be as good but our healers are better, much better.


    I didn¡¯t really have time for anything else, I think overworking myself is nowhere near as bad as letting my forest be overrun by these enemy soldiers.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 299

    Early in the morning, I got a chance to look at some of the gear we had pulled off of the invaders, though not too closely as I have a lot of plants in my body. And nothing, I couldn¡¯t understand it at all and I wasn¡¯t able to do anything with it. Which was no surprise, but still disappointing.


    The scholars are not doing so well with it either, none of the ones we have here have studied enchanting. All of them specialize in things like dungeons, evolution, plants, alchemy, and other things along those lines. Which makes sense, as we are developing those things quite a lot here, but it is still disappointing. They have called for a specialist to be sent here, though there is no telling if or when they will show up.


    It turns out that Tiddol is the only one who has studied enchanting in any real capacity, and even that was only enough to realize that she found the subject boring. Still, she managed to show me a way to work things that should theoretically turn off any enchantment if you pour enough mana into it, no one knows how much mana is ¡®enough¡¯ but it is irrelevant anyway as the only thing I would be able to do that with is plants, can¡¯t exactly interact with an anti-plant enchantment with plants.


    So finding a counter for their enchantments is a bust unless something changes in the near future. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Luckily Azrezel is no longer puking his guts out from teleportation sickness and is now able to use his undead properly. That is a significant boon to our fighting force, but by the looks of things it isn¡¯t going to be nearly enough. The invaders have been making fast slash and burn attacks against us, basically trying to do as much damage as possible while decreasing the amount of time that they remain away from the safety of their platform as much as possible. Azrezel is able to slow those attacks down a bit, but he doesn¡¯t have the force to attack them on their own base, and with all of our stuff being made of plants they can do a lot of damage. Damage that I can fix pretty quickly once they are gone, but not nearly quick enough.


    To make matters worse, we¡¯ve confirmed that they do have an enchanter with them creating new weapons and armor for the soldiers. So even damaging their gear isn¡¯t having an effect. Luckily casualties have been negligible otherwise I don¡¯t think we would be able to hamper them as much as we are.


    To make matter even worse Par is too pinned down to come to our aid. Practically the moment the soldiers teleported in to attack us they were attacked with a much bigger force than they were preparing for. By the reports, he is in an easily defensible position and the attackers don¡¯t seem concerned with trying to actually kill them, just keep them there, so they should be fine overall.


    I don¡¯t know how we¡¯re going to win this. I could try burning my Fate, I have been building it up for a couple months now, but I don¡¯t think that will be nearly enough. And I think it would be a waste to use it like this. Unless there is somewhere we can pull up an army that I¡¯m not considering it is going to be hard to remove this pest. I can keep trying to find a way around their enchantments but I don¡¯t think it is going to be possible with my plants.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 300

    Today the cavalry arrived in spectacular fashion. From more than a dozen different ex city-states united under our empire came an army of soldiers that charged the base of the enemy with fervor and zealotry. Shouting rallying cries like ¡®strike down the bastards who dare attack our capital¡¯, ¡®for the emperor¡¯ and ¡®for the goddess¡¯. They charged and they attacked, caring not for their own injuries as they truly believed that their goddess will cure anything short of death. With grasping vines of Whitefoot I made sure to meet their expectations.


    Feeling their anger and rage, their hatred and pride, their intensity, it feels good. That rush of fiery emotion rivals anything I have felt before and fills me with my own personal sense of pride.


    But the assault eventually had to come to an end. I can heal injuries and I can heal physical fatigue, but I can¡¯t easily replace lost mana nor can I fix mental fatigue. And these people are not accustomed to large scale battles.


    In the end this assault caused minimal damage to either side. These soldiers are not our best, or even our second best, those are with Par. They are farmers, street urchins, common labourers, a volunteer militia equipped mostly with farming implements and cheap weapons, nothing made of wood. Yeah, there are some divers and adventurers amongst them, but not many.


    That isn¡¯t to say that they had no advantages. While not all of them had access to my hivemind this morning when they arrived, most of them did, and all of them will by tomorrow. Easy to extract the wounded when everyone knows exactly who is wounded and I know exactly who to heal. With Azrezel raising those that died before they can be brought to a place I could heal them in addition to sending his own undead into the offensive our soldiers just simply would not die to anything short of complete annihilation. In addition to that as the fighting went on the soldiers got stronger as many of them started to use some kind of magic to reinforce their bodies. When I asked about it they basically thanked me for my blessings, I¡¯m not entirely sure but I¡¯m guessing that they believed so strongly that I was personally helping them in this conflict that they started to use a spell that made them better at fighting without realizing it. Similar to how I figure out healing for the first time. I should see how I could go about encouraging this. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Their assault did cause some damage, and more importantly it bolstered our moral while striking fear into the hearts of the enemies. I don¡¯t know much about leading an army, but I do know first hand that despair is lethal. Hopefully this will cause them to make more mistakes.


    Shortly after the assault ended I decided to burn my fate while trying to think of a solution to our current problem. Almost immediately I thought to myself that the problem was that I didn¡¯t have enough mana to simply overpower and turn off those enchantments. Given that Fate often shifts my thoughts like this I decided to follow this line of thought to the end.


    If I try to directly attack the platform with my plants while burning through nearly all of the mana I have access to, or solar energy it doesn¡¯t really make a difference, then I can do some damage. Not enough to really matter but enough to prove that this enchantment can be overcome through brute force, if I had enough brute force that is. And thanks to Tiddol I do know a way to turn the enchantment off, if I had enough mana to power it. It just so happens that I have a plant that I was working on that would fix this problem, if only I could perfect it.


    And so I kept thinking about how I could go about improving it and perfecting it. Like a way to use pipeweed and spellwood in a way that could dramatically improve its ability to move Solar Energy faster, using Pipeweed in a way I had never considered before. Or using Null to cause the spells that form the substance in the pores to break down much faster than they would have otherwise, allowing them to work on that substance faster. In addition to subtly changing that substance to somehow be even easier for mana to break down. All of this was likely the direct result of burning Fate, and I feel like I can implement and perfect them all rather easily.


    I will spend as much time as I possibly can perfecting this plant, with my current supernatural luck with this project that should take at most three more days. Who knows if the aftereffects of burning several months worth of Fate will last that long.


    Anyway, I should get back to work, So Good Night Diary.

 Day 301

    Today I focused as much as possible on completing my mana creating plant. Even with the constant interruptions due to healing or recovering from the enemy¡¯s assaults, which are happening more and more often. Yes, there are others capable of fulfilling those roles but none of them can do so on nearly as large of a scale as I can, we start losing this fight faster than we already are if I stopped.


    And we are losing this fight, slowly but surely. Both sides are constantly harassing each other as much as possible. And we are able to keep pressure on them more consistently than they can keep pressure on us, but they have the upper hand in this fight so far. Yeah, we can heal anything short of instant death, but we don¡¯t have many armors that aren¡¯t made of plants, causing instant death is easy for them. And their armor is much better than the weapons we have available to us, we can¡¯t kill them nearly as fast as they can kill us. And they are getting better at doing damage to us faster than we are getting better at damaging them.


    If something doesn¡¯t change soon this whole situation is going to spiral out of control as we lose more manpower than we can afford to. Luckily we have a necromancer and they don¡¯t, which alleviates the issue somewhat but it isn¡¯t enough.


    The scholars are studying the enchantments hoping to try to find a way to counter them or too otherwise get around them, but who knows if they will figuring anything out. Tiddol and her teams are studying the substance their platform is made of hoping to find an easy way to destroy or otherwise damage it. On top of that, some of the smiths that learned in her lab are making weapons and armor, but we don¡¯t exactly have a lot of metal laying around. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I tried asking the wielders of nuclear fire that brought in a shipment of nuclear waste to be destroyed if they could help, but we can¡¯t afford to pay the cost of their power. It would destroy the heart of my forest, the first trees I planted, and it would destroy the entire town and kill many of our people. We wouldn¡¯t be able to evacuate immediately beforehand as they would just scatter and trample through my forest before they could actually be exterminated without our soldiers there to suppress them.


    Good news though, we managed to kill their main teleporter. They have others but none powerful enough to pull off the same type of teleportation that brought them here. Teleporting in dangerous potions or explosives will still be nearly impossible, but they can¡¯t run away. They will be forced to fight to the bitter end, or surrender. At this point, I am hoping for the second option.


    The corpse of the teleporter was retrieved, with all of his very valuable gemstones. Naturally, I added them to my own crown, I¡¯ll need the storage for what I am trying to pull off.


    Assuming nothing changes I¡¯m not sure if we will make it the two more days I need to destroy their enchantments. Luckily my supernatural luck is holding with this project, every decision I make seems to be the right one, or at least close enough to dramatically narrow down the options.


    Speaking of, I should get back to work.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 302

    I should be able to destroy their enchantments by tomorrow night. Then I can slaughter these people who have come into my home and tried their hardest to desecrate everything. I can feel the anger and hatred of the people pushing me on with a kind of determination I don¡¯t often have. It feels good, it feels exhilarating.


    The volunteer army took massive losses today, but not without cost. The invaders struck out in the direction of the core of my forest, so naturally, I got personally involved in the defense this time. Or at least more directly than normal. Between the target of the attack and my physical presence the volunteer army got worked up into a zealous rage and struck against the invades caring not for limb or for life. With that near suicidal drive to fend off the enemy, the soldiers managed to strike down many of our enemies, but many of them were struck down in turn.


    The enemies retreated shortly before entering the heart of my forest. Many trees died, but the oldest of them still remain. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    Their enchanters have been making bricks with the same plant destroying enchantment that they have on everything else these invaders have. Today the soldiers have rushed out in mass to place them around their own platform, expanding the reach of their hateful magic. We have been taking shots at the ones doing this, but haven¡¯t killed many of them. Anything short of death is likely easily healed by them.


    We have tried to hide it as well as we could, but we are running really low on manpower. Their near-constant assaults have been causing our numbers to dwindle faster and faster, undead made in mass on the battlefield can only do so much to alleviate that. Yeah, Azrezel is capable of making amazing undead, but not in that kind of timeframe. It will likely come down to tomorrow to see who wins this battle. If they put their all into an attack before I can disable their enchantments then they will be able to prance around in my forest unopposed for several hours, if they don¡¯t then we will win this.


    I am going to return to working on this project now, every moment I spend on it brings me a moment closer to the end of this mess.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 303

    This morning was marked by a reckless charge by the invaders. It is possible that they noticed our issues with manpower or it is possible that they did it for another reason. But they swept through our defenses with only minor losses.


    Azrezel¡¯s undead army lay in pieces, at least those that wern¡¯t turned into a fine mist. The volunteer army is down to a couple dozen soldiers. And what little other soldiers we had are routed.


    Luckily we had evacuated civilians a while ago, but the city that Par had built from the ground up is now laying in ruin. Only a lone outhouse remains standing, an insult if it was intentional. It was several hours of their manic destruction before I managed to complete my project.


    They destroyed so much. Willow¡¯s mother tree is dead, the first mana berry bushes I planted so long ago destroyed, the trees those birds nested in my first year here reduced to ash and dust. The house that was built for me, the one I have slept and worked in almost every day for the better part of two years, trashed and burned to the ground. And I could do nothing but watch. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    When I finally managed to complete my project and finally had enough mana to destroy their enchantments I did so with a fervor I had never experienced before. I watched as their arms and armor let out sparks of failed magic as I reared up to strike the killing blow. And kill them I did, I painted the forest red with their blood and gore. Slaughtering them to the last and savouring their expressions as they realised that no amount of running, hiding, or teleporting away would save them for me.


    They fled to the safety of their platform, their now useless platform. I might not be able to drill through it, but creeping vines moving over the ground slowly towards them had a certain effect, one that I rather liked.


    And so they died, and I killed them. I know that I should feel bad about this, that it goes against my desire to not kill anyone, but I don¡¯t care right now. They came into my home to defile and destroy it. They killed my people and they burned our homes. They looted and pillaged and now they are dead, and I do not regret what I have done.


    And now I want to sleep. For the first time in several months I want to lay down in my bed, shut my eyes, and dream. And now my bed has been destroyed, along with everything else. I don¡¯t feel like making anything right now, so maybe I¡¯ll borrow one of the medical cots and turn off the Ergen inside of my body so I can finally sleep.


    For the first time in a while this send off feels accurate,


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 304

    I didn¡¯t do much today. I went from hanging out with Azrezel, to hanging out with Tiddol, to hanging out with both. I just wanted to take a break and get my mind off of everything that has happened recently, that and working myself constantly these last few days has mentally exhausted me.


    Azrezel and I talked about little of consequence while he worked to rebuild his army. Both of us wanted to get our minds off of everything. So we talked about things like the weather, music, and foods that we wanted to try fried.


    It snowed today, and for the first time all year, I let it stick to the ground.


    I cried on Tiddol¡¯s shoulder, and she cried on mine. We had both watched as the place we had met was destroyed, her able to do even less than me. We had both watched as the bushes that had grown from the seeds she gifted me were raided and burned. She told me about how she was happy that her kids were with Par on the front line, because it means they didn¡¯t need to see their homes destroyed in front of them. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    We cried until she fell asleep in my arms, and then I sat there holding her until she woke up again.


    At that point we had to get food. I might not need to eat, but her squishy fleshy body needs sustenance in order to survive. Azrezel was the one who ended up cooking for us, though I made the necessary tools for it. We ate some really tasty meat, no one asked where it came from.


    We spent the rest of the day playing board games, nothing too intense or in depth. We ended up playing a cooperative game about growing a tree as tall as possible, involving a real seed that we had to supply ourselves. It was odd, and wildly inaccurate, but it was fun.


    Before I sign off for the day I should mention that I am going to reach the nearest ocean here in a couple days. I¡¯m looking forward to it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 305

    Today I got to work rebuilding. Taking a break is nice, but it can¡¯t last forever. You have to get back to work eventually, or nothing ever gets done.


    I spent most of the time building houses for the displaced citizens. The people in charge of that kind of thing had already spent the day before planning everything out, so I just had to ask them what they wanted me to build where. I made sure to put extra effort into every home, no two that I made are completely identical, and all of them are the best I could make. I can¡¯t replace everything they lost, but I can try to compensate for some of it. By the end of the day everyone had a place to live.


    We got word back from Par today. He managed to finally drive back the army that was pinning him down. Yeah, they threw their best at us but with a perfectly defensible position, it was only a matter of time before Par was victorious. As we no longer need assistance he is going to try and pursue the fleeing soldiers, try to cull their numbers as much as possible. I hope he returns victoriously and alive, the number of pieces he is in doesn¡¯t matter too much as long as he lives. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    There are forty of the volunteer soldiers left after everything was said and done. Looking at them I feel pride, they stepped up when no one else could to fight a battle where they were hopelessly outmatched. It doesn¡¯t matter if they hesitated to volunteer but they certainly didn¡¯t hesitate when it came time to act. And now that the fighting is done they still wish to remain as my loyal soldiers. I will personally train and improve them. I will see to it that they become elite warriors worthy of being among our best and brightest.


    Other than that I spent my downtime socializing with people. Going through to make sure that people I know are alive and to show the people that I am alive and well. The guy that replaced whisperer is just fine and leading the recovery efforts. My dad just got back through the teleporter, apparently, the messenger failed to find him before he met up with Par. Kaire and Lulem were injured, but are fine now.


    Erica Hornmark is dead, she died a martyr. She struck down dozens of enemy soldiers before being dealt a killing blow, allowing countless unarmed civilians to escape mostly unharmed. Her family was in that group.


    She is already being written into the books. She will never be forgotten.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 306

    Today I got to work training the forty soldiers that remain from the volunteer army on how to manipulate plants. All of them have some talent in it as they all have access to my hivemind. They aren¡¯t all equally good at it, some of them obviously have quite a bit of practice already, but all of them have the potential to be great at it.


    Ultimately I plan on integrating all of my plants into their bodies in such a way that makes it easy for them to manipulate them to improve themselves. If they don¡¯t know what they are doing they might accidentally kill themselves. I would rather not deal with that for now.


    My idea for how I am trying to train them stems from their whole self-buff magic, and them thinking that it is me giving them my blessing. They already attribute a good portion of their prowess to me, and in a way it is because of me, so why not expand on that theme? A big part of the magic is intention and a big part of intention is perception and belief, if they believe strongly enough I am granting them strength then they will have strength. I can reinforce that idea by actually making them better than they were before. That plus describing their powers in certain ways and overall trying to shape their perception of things should push those abilities to new heights. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    I can¡¯t teach them how to use a sword or a bow or any other kind of weapon for that matter. But there are many people capable of teaching them those things, and if all else fails they can learn through combat and by fighting each other. They aren¡¯t completely inexperienced there, and some of them are career adventurers and divers.


    I made them a large barracks and training ground place for them to live and train. Currently it is rather sparse, but I plan on making their homes nicer as they improve. A way to reward them. At the end they will be more than capable of making their own homes.


    Other than that I met with Erica Hornmark¡¯s family. There is little I could offer them that they wouldn¡¯t already receive if they were to ask for it, but I did promise to teach the children if they ever wanted me too. The father said he would consider it. I could tell that I was not really welcome so I left quickly.


    I hope they take me up on my offer, all of the children have a talent for healing. It would be a shame to waste that after two generations of amazing healers.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 307

    Today I finally integrated my new plant, which I am calling Requiem, because the humming noise it makes sounds almost, mournful. It does exactly what I expected it to, dramatically increased my mana production. Nothing shocking there. I ended up spending most of the day messing around with the stuff, seeing what I can do with it. I find that it works really well with Pipeweed


    The enchanting specialist showed up today, finally, so I had to meet with him. He was irritated when he found out the emergency that he had been called to handle wasn¡¯t there and probably would have caused some problems if I didn¡¯t offer to pay him to teach some of our people enchanting. Based on his reaction the amount I offered is quite a bit more than what his services are actually worth. It¡¯s not a big deal as the money is coming out of my personal savings instead of the money used for the people, I just wish I had offered a bit less. I just really want to avoid another situation like this.


    The enchanter accepted and from there Tiddol took over, she is the one to handle all of that type of stuff after all. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    The remnants of the volunteer army, who need a better name than that, have made some rather impressive progress in only a day. They impressed me with their ceaseless drive and determination to master what I am teaching them, but they should tone it back a bit so they don¡¯t burn themselves out. A day¡¯s worth of progress isn¡¯t going to make a huge difference here, but they still accomplished quite a lot pretty quickly. Excluding the ones who already had some skill manipulating plants, the best of them is already capable of making a sword in under a second. Still useless to try and use in an actual fight, but it¡¯s certainly better than I could do when I first started.


    One of Erica Hornmark¡¯s kids showed up about an hour ago while I was working, one of the Notherune¡¯s. The kid practically begged me to teach him magic. Considering how ruffed up and twitchy he was, I get the feeling that his father tried to do something to stop them from trying to learn from me. Not that it¡¯s my business, I honestly don¡¯t care if he goes against his father, it will only make him want what I have to teach them more. Maybe I can convince him to bring his siblings along.


    Since there was no way he could really learn much of anything in the mental state he was in I put him to sleep so he could relax and calm down. I¡¯ll start teaching him after I finish writing today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 308

    I spent most of the day training the young Draconic, whose name I learned to be Askos. He is even more talented than either Erica or Bug was, and has the potential to surpass me as a healer if he remains dedicated to the path. Erica also could have surpassed me if she didn¡¯t seek a more martial path.


    I taught him the basics, because where else would you start. I taught him how to fix skin and muscle, Lace was incredibly helpful with that. Mostly to judge how competent he is and how easily he takes to the material. I¡¯ll go over less specific stuff starting tomorrow.


    While teaching the kid we talked for a little while, and he accidentally let it slip that he has memories of a previous life. He didn¡¯t actually say it, we were communicating telepathically at the time, but still. I don¡¯t know why but he was worried about telling people that he had memories from before he was born.


    Anyway, his memories are a lot more detailed than anyone else''s I have come across. With the benefit of telepathy, he showed me bits of his previous life with a level of detail most people can¡¯t muster up for memories of their current life.


    He was a farmer in a world that lacked magic, something I hadn¡¯t even considered the possibility of. All of my Ents come from worlds with magic. I wasn¡¯t even completely certain that there were worlds outside of this one, it would have been reasonable for all the places my children have described in their memories to exist in this world.


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    He showed me memories of wonders like massive towers carved from glass, massive sprawling cities without walls to protect them, and giant metal birds that flew through the sky. He also talked about things like teleporters that somehow don¡¯t rely on magic to operate, though he never saw one in person.


    He gave me a story about how he struggled every day just to get by and to try and make his life better, only to die young. Now that he has access to magic he is determined to make himself someone important. I¡¯m just glad that he is deciding to continue on his legacy.


    At the end of the day, I gave him something I made while experimenting the other day. A ring that can teleport the user, with some restrictions. With Requiem, I can make teleportation devices that are useable by almost anyone, and by making them only work in my forest I am able to give the user a lot of control over where they teleport to. I told him it was to keep him safe just in case, but no one here would hurt someone with the last name of Hornmark in this city and any wild creatures that would be capable of it have long since been integrated into society. No, the real reason I gave it to him was just in case someone tried to stop him from learning from me, he could just teleport away.


    Other than that I was approached by one of the scholars today. Apparently, they are getting a couple angry letters from important people about how much they have been helping me out, something about how they shouldn¡¯t put that much effort into an outsider. Long story short they asked me to write a book that they could add to their libraries, in exchange I would be granted an honorary position in their order. I wouldn¡¯t have any responsibilities but they might occasionally ask for my help with something that I specialize in, which they already do sometimes so it¡¯s not a big deal. In exchange they would be able to continue to offer me help in the same way that they have been, so nothing would really change. Honestly, it just sounds like a lot of politics, but I¡¯m not opposed to writing a book.


    As for my downtime, I tried to spend it with Tiddol but I walked in on her having some, let say quality time, with her assassin turned slave. I left before they realized I was there, at least I think I did. Anyway, I ended up spending my downtime helping Azrezel out with a minor problem in a new design he had for his undead.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 309

    This morning Askos came to me along with his sister, the other Nothrune in the clutch. Her name was Erica Junior, because of course it is. I am just going to call her Junior because calling her by my own name would be weird.


    Anyway, Junior is just as, if not more, talented as her brother, though much less determined. If anything that helps her as she doesn¡¯t blame herself for her own failings. Frustration and rage might help if you want to hurt someone, but healing is a different story.


    I taught them the basics of standard healing, the whole use the blueprint the soul provides thing. It¡¯s cheap, simple, and nearly impossible to mess up bad enough to hurt someone. Well, it is still possible for the spell to backfire and you can get sick from that, but that is something all mages have to deal with sometimes.


    After walking them through the motions I made a couple bodies with several injuries of various severities and had them start treating them under the scenario of a life or death situation. I was puppeting the bodies and would know immediately if, when, and why a body died, and if left alone all of them would die. This was to both help them improve their skills of both healing and diagnosing, if they don¡¯t heal the worst injuries then the body will die and they will have to start over. All the while I was subtly guiding them to the right conclusions and ideas via Lace.


    Though neither even came close to succeeding, the injuries were never the same twice and much too extensive for them to actually heal with their meager skills and mana pools, both of them did accomplish something. Junior took to the exercise incredibly well, trying again and again, only stopping when she had no more mana left to expend. She was calm, patient, and collected through countless failures, always making sure to know exactly what was going on before acting despite the fact that it sometimes takes more time to diagnose the problem than the body has left to live. Askos got increasingly irritated every time he failed, making him increasingly reckless and more likely to try and brute force things. He almost never did a full diagnosis and went straight to figuring out which vitals were injured and brute forcing them fixed. It is a viable strategy in life or death situations like that, he just has nowhere near enough mana to actually pull it off.


    Once it got to the point where one in three spells were backfiring due to him getting frustrated and not putting in the attention he should I had him take a break and talk to him for a bit. I explained to him that of course he was going to fail, he is a beginner and I¡¯m not exactly going easy on him with this exercise. After talking to him for a bit he calmed down enough to get back to work, he still took every failure personally, but less personally. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    He¡¯s probably going to be an adventurer of some kind when he grows up, he fills the stereotypes at least. Hot headed youth with memories of a past life, a drive for power, a dead parent, and a budding desire for revenge.


    As for the other group of people I am teaching, they are doing pretty well. I have them working different things at different times of day.


    In the morning they work on their fine control over plants by trying to complete various obstacle courses with thin strands of a rather flimsy material. If they touch the edges, even the bottom edge, the strand would be destroyed and they would have to start again. There are several courses like that, each one harder than the last, but only the last one really matters. It is the longest one out of all of them and allows for no margin of error, I won¡¯t be satisfied until all of them are able to quickly and reliably pass that test.


    Around noon they work on quickly forming useful objects, like armor and weapons. I want them to be able to instantly form weapons and armor at the slightest hint of danger, and I want that equipment to be of the highest quality.


    In the afternoon they are working on training with the gear they made that day, primarily by beating eachother with it. We have healers on standby in case someone gets injured, but the healers are under orders to only fix injuries that have a chance of causing permanent harm, the rest they have to heal themselves.


    They get short breaks to eat and take care of other bodily needs between each training set and they get a break at the end of the day before bed. I have decided to make this a type of bootcamp after having the idea explained to me. At first I was worried about them burning out, but with their zealotry and their fervor I doubt they will become emotionally burned out, physical burnout is easily fixed, and I want them to be able to function despite being mentally burned out.


    Once they reach a frankly rather arbitrary level of control over plants I will integrate all of my plants into their body while evolving them into a form more suited to make optimal usage of those plants. It shouldn¡¯t take too long for the first couple to get to that point, mostly because a couple of them had quite a bit of skill going into this, but after that I have no idea how long it will take. I should make sure to show up, observe, and offer guidance where it is needed at least once a day until all of them get there though.


    They have taken to calling themselves my Paladins, or maybe other people started calling them that and they decided they liked it. Regardless, anyone talking about them refers to them as being my Paladins so I think the name is going to stick around.


    Other than that I spent my downtime working on that book I am supposed to write. I decided to write a detailed book about anatomy. Mostly trying to get everything I know about the subject onto paper, which is made easy by the fact that I can imprint my thoughts onto paper as fast as I can think them. I figured it would be easy enough to make an encyclopedia of the biology of various creatures, should only take me a couple days to finish it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 310

    Today Askos brought three of his siblings, Junior and two of the saint variant Dragonewts. I didn¡¯t catch their names. The Dragonewts aren¡¯t nearly as talented as their Nothrune siblings, which makes sense as the entire Nothrune species is specialized in healing and has a much higher baseline than Dragonewts overall. They didn¡¯t let that discourage them though.


    Junior worked quietly and efficiently the entire time. She doesn¡¯t really show much emotion at all really, and any emotion I pick up from her via telepathy is muted. Askos noticed too and is worried about her, apparently this isn¡¯t normal. The poor kid is traumatized by watching her mother die, something I can relate to.


    I want to help her, but I¡¯m worried that if I try and fail that I will scare her away from the one thing she seems to enjoy recently, or that¡¯s what her brother told me. And she does enjoy me training her in the art of healing. If her heart had been literally ripped out of her chest I would help her no problem, but her heart was metaphorically ripped out of her chest. And that is, at least here, a much more grievous injury.


    The others are also traumatized, but I get the feeling that they will bounce back better. They didn¡¯t actually see it happen. I can tell that learning how to heal is cathartic to them, but they have no real passion for it. No drive beyond the desire to feel close to their mother.


    It¡¯s amazing the kinds of things you pick up on when you have a constant mental link with someone all day. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I talked to their father towards the end of the day. He said he was initially reluctant but after thinking things through he thought that it would be a great idea for his kids to learn from me. He seemed defeated, depressed, which is reasonable considering what he went through. He walked off after saying his piece, I didn¡¯t get a chance to say a word to him.


    In less depressing news, one of my Paladins reached the point where I think it would be safe to integrate all of my plants into them. It was one of the ones who already had lots of skill with plants.


    And so I triggered an evolution. I shaped their body to be more accepting of having plants integrated into it, better at using plants overall, and much better at manipulating the plants inside of their body. Of course, I also integrated each plant one by one into their body in a way that would make it easy to manipulate and modify as needed. I changed the way my hivemind interacted with them, giving them more control, a bigger slice of the pie if you will. Others with that same modification will also have a much stronger mental connection to each other, my hope is that it will make them work together better. And last but not least I added both Solar Energy pool and a much weaker version of my device that creates Solar Energy using mana. It would be easy for them to figure out how to improve it, but for now, it is better to restrict their access to the stuff until they figure out how not to blow themselves up with it.


    I look forward to repeating the process thirty-nine more times.


    Other than that I hung out with Tiddol. We talked about things, happy things, sad things, traumatic things, memories we could barely keep a hold of, memories we wished we could forget, memories we hoped never to forget. We talked about the recent invasion and the mark it left on the people and ourselves. We talked about the not as recent almost successful attempt on Tiddol¡¯s life, a certain Imp looked away in shame during that part of the conversation. We talked about our first meeting nearly 2 years ago. We talked about Mest and Thes and guessed at what kind of creatures they had reincarnated into. Maybe they are together? Real full-blooded brothers this time, I think they would like that. And we talked about much more.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 311

    The kids¡¯ father was found dead this morning. It was poison. A kind designed to give you a quick and painless death, making it feel like entering a deep sleep. The young alchemist killed himself. I was the last one to see him alive.


    The logical side of me knows that there is nothing I could have done as there was no way I could have realized he was going to kill himself. It¡¯s simply not something I had ever encountered before, and certainly not something I had considered as being a possibility.


    But the not so rational part of me blames myself. I should have tried to do something, despite the fact that I didn¡¯t know to do anything, I would have known to do something if I had read his mind with Lace, but why should I read random people¡¯s minds? It feels like going a step beyond what is ok.


    I have seen people die before. I have been the last one to see several people alive. But I¡¯ve never had anyone I knew commit suicide, and it¡¯s hitting me a lot harder than I thought it would.


    And the kids, what are we going to do with the kids? I will keep training them if they want me too, I doubt Askos and Junior will stop but I¡¯m not sure about the others. And they are too young to survive on their own, Askos might be fine because of the whole memories of a past life thing but the rest won¡¯t. Hopefully, we will figure something out.


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    Askos was understandably not in the mood to practice healing, but Junior wanted nothing more than something to keep her mind off of everything. So I offered her a challenge and offered guidance when she got stuck.


    By the end of the day she successfully healed one of the bodies of all injuries. It was, admittedly, one of the easier ones, but that doesn¡¯t change the fact that she succeeded weeks before I expected her too. She began to cry, when she realized her accomplishment. And so I comforted her, held her until the child fell asleep in my arms.


    I want these kids to have a good life, and more than just because I liked their mother and grandfather. I feel responsible for them somehow. But it¡¯s not like I can raise them myself, ignoring the fact that I would make a terrible mother, being adopted by me would dramatically change the way the people see them. I don¡¯t think it would be healthy for children to be quite literally worshiped as they try to go about their daily lives. I know for a fact that I could get any number of people that would be willing to take care of them, but who would be a good choice. Whisperer¡¯s replacement, whose name I really should have learned by now, knows the people quite well and should be able to point me in the right direction. I¡¯ll look into that tomorrow when they wake up.


    During my downtime, I continued writing the book the scholars wanted me too. I burned my knowledge about the anatomy of as many creatures as I possibly could onto the pages, going into a level of detail I have never seen written down before. I have even included the anatomies of my Ents and all of the clockwork creatures, the latter of which I know way too much about. I never wanted to learn about clockwork, but with how many plant-based clockwork creatures there are around me at all times I bet I could build a clock on my own, eventually. Maybe I could replicate one of the creatures that already exist.


    At this current pace I should have a book that is good enough by tomorrow, though I could realistically spend a couple more days getting everything I know about anatomy onto those pages. I¡¯ll probably perfect it, but something might come up preventing that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 312

    This morning I worked to try and find someone who would be both willing and able to take care of the kids. I used my influence over the people liberally in this pursuit, usually I find that to be rather distasteful, but this is a special case.


    Between the word of people I trust, some light mind reading, and who the kids themselves were able to tolerate, I was ultimately able to decide on a couple guys who wanted to have kids, but were unable to as there wasn¡¯t a female in their relationship. I will admit that the vast majority of the work was done by other people, I don¡¯t really know what makes someone have the potential to be good parents but I do have people that I trust who do. The kids seemed to like them, and the guys genuinely wanted to be good parents so hopefully it will work out.


    That being said, Junior never leaves my side. Even to the point of missing meals or passing out from exhaustion she is refusing to leave my side, which is kind of worrying because I don¡¯t need to eat or sleep so even when I do try to be considerate of her I end up forgetting.


    Luckily Askos is always coming by to check up on her rather frequently, so no real harm was done, but he has been very busy with the rest of his siblings. He is trying to do what he can to keep his siblings healthy and happy, or at least keep them from spiraling into a depression. I just hope he finds time to deal with his own issues.


    I spent most of the day helping Junior train. She¡¯s making progress faster than I had thought she would be capable of. At the beginning of the day one in ten bodies were able to be restored to perfect condition without suffering any permanent damage, at the end of the day it was one in five.


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    I am a pretty good healer, but I¡¯m not that good at teaching. Yeah, Lace helps a lot with that, but not nearly to this extent. She has more than just biological talent going for her. She is incredibly focused on the task in front of her to the exclusion of all else, that alone isn¡¯t weird and it happens naturally with some regularity, but she is doing it intentionally, or at least instinctually. She squashes stray thoughts before they can fully form and filters out anything that isn¡¯t relevant to her task, less as an attempt to do better and more like she¡¯s scared of something. Of what I wasn¡¯t able to get an answer.


    And not just that, but the way she thinks is ideal for this. I don¡¯t really know how to put it into words but the way she thinks about healing taught me a thing or two. She¡¯s a veritable genius. I was wrong about her, she isn¡¯t going to surpass me in healing, she is going to outstrip me so far that I can¡¯t currently imagine the heights she will reach. That is, of course, if she sticks to this one path.


    I¡¯ll do what I can to make sure she has a long and successful life.


    In other news, two more of my paladins are now skilled enough for me to integrate my plants into their bodies. There¡¯s four more that already were rather skilled with the use of plants, and one more that is rather talented and probably going to catch up with them.


    I gave all of them the same modifications and set them up with a couple training methods that I think will get them good at what I think they should be good at. Like being able to form a weapon and armor from the plants in their body in an instant, and being able to change that just as quickly react to new threats. Or changing the way the plants inside of them interact to improve their bodies.


    Once there is one or two more of them I am going to have them start training with a couple of the dungeons around here, I¡¯m already in the process of bribing the dungeons to help me.


    Other than that I spent my downtime working on the anatomy book. At this point, I have all variations of my Ents written down. I give it three more days before I have the sum of all of my knowledge about anatomy on those pages.


    When the scholars asked how my book was coming along they were shocked when they realized that I was already over halfway done, and looked at me in undisguised envy when I demonstrated my ability to burn anything I want onto paper nearly instantly. It was fun to show off like that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 313

    This morning Askos asked to be my official apprentice, quickly followed by Junior asking the same. I was more than a little surprised, not so much that they would ask but more that I had never even considered having an apprentice.


    And I mean, why not? I plan on teaching them everything I know about healing anyway, so might as well make it official. At least this way I also have an excuse to put them to work when I feel like it, and it doesn¡¯t look like Junior is going to stop staying by my side constantly any time soon. So I accepted, and had them start training again.


    Junior has reached a plateau of sorts in her training, she simply doesn¡¯t have enough mana. Yeah, her actual skills with healing are still improving pretty quickly, but without the mana to back it up she is going to have to improve a lot to see even small practical improvements. I¡¯ll ask the scholars if there is anything I can have her do to alleviate the problem, I would rather not integrate any of my plants into them until they are fully grown as that might cause some issues.


    Askos, on the other hand, isn¡¯t quite as talented as Junior. He¡¯s talented, don¡¯t get me wrong, but he¡¯s missing something that Junior has. As a result, I doubt that he will ever improve so fast that his access to mana will be his limiting factor. Though I could be wrong, the two of them are very young and as such have tiny mana pools and as far as I can tell mana pools increase in size very slowly.


    If they are going to by my apprentices then how far should I go? What all should I teach them? Yeah, I will teach them all about healing, but what about flesh manipulation? Should I teach them how to use Solar Energy? That has many applications for healing, some of which are incredibly difficult to do with mana. It¡¯s hard to make a bone harder to break with mana, at least if you don¡¯t want to alter the structure entirely, but it is easy with Solar Energy. Should I teach them plant manipulation so they can make use of Whitefoot? Or should I just integrate it into their bodies to help them out? Or should I even do that much? Should I teach them Necromancy?


    In general, the more specialized a person is the better, my own specialization is manipulating life. But without the benefits that I enjoy it isn¡¯t something easy to make a lot of progress in, at least compared to narrower scopes of practice. They definitely aren¡¯t going to get their own grove any time soon, much less gain a dungeon core. Junior will probably stick to healing, but I don¡¯t see Askos being satisfied with that. I expect him to do what his mother did and pursue both a martial path and healing. So for him learning how to use Solar Energy is an obvious choice, it would assist in both of those pursuits. But I¡¯m not sure if I should teach junior how to use Solar Energy, the benefit for her isn¡¯t quite as stark.


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    On the other hand, Flesh manipulation would work great for Junior, she¡¯s already touched on some of the basics on accident and it plays off of her already prodigal talents with healing. On top of that her slow methodical nature works really well with flesh manipulation. While at the same time I don¡¯t see it being as useful for Askos, getting frustrated and trying to burn through things quickly, as he is want to do, will only cause the subject a slow and painful death. Flesh manipulation is slow and deliberate.


    As for integrating Whitefoot into their bodies, I¡¯m not sure that it is a good idea. Yeah, if they were skilled plant manipulators as well as healers it could work wonders, but they have neither the talent nor the desire to manipulate plants. If I were to integrate it into their bodies then it would serve as a tool that they would be forced to use, and for this type of thing that can cause some problems. At first, it would look like a boon for them, but it would make it harder for them to improve as they wouldn¡¯t be challenged nearly as much. Once they finally did manage to improve beyond it being useful then it would act as dead weight, forcing them to use it anyway. For someone like me figuring out how to use Whitefoot properly is part of the challenge, not so for them.


    Now, something I might be able to do is integrate Pipeweed into their bodies. The pathways that your body uses when it uses magic generally don¡¯t change or improve much unless you evolve, and evolving would absolutely improve any plants integrated into their bodies. That isn¡¯t to say they don¡¯t change or improve at all, but the way they improve is closer to the way a muscle improves than it is to improving your own skill, and that is something I can replicate with plants. They are alive and as such do improve as they are used, maybe not nearly as fast as a plant manipulator could improve them, but you could say the same about a flesh manipulator and actual muscles.


    As for Necromancy, I probably won¡¯t teach them that. Necromancy doesn¡¯t really help with healing or flesh manipulation so much as healing and flesh manipulation help with Necromancy.


    In other news, it seems Willow is alive and well. She was spotted in a small dungeon town pretty far into the borders of the angelic council overlooking shortly after Par caught up to and exterminated the last of the army sent to suppress him. She¡¯s gained quite a name for herself over there as a diver, she and her team have explored and reached the bottom of dungeons that even the best teams have never completed. It seems leaving the nest has allowed her to flourish well and truly beyond what I thought was possible for her, I hope she continues to grow. Maybe one day she will return home and bring tales of her adventures, I would like to listen to them.


    Other than that I spent some time with my dad, though Junior was also present. Based on her wide eyes she was enraptured by the stories my dad could tell. Afterword he asked me when I was going to give him cute grandkids like Junior, when I told them that I already have numerous children in the Ents he just rolled his eyes. He was probably just saying that to make Junior laugh, and it worked, but I get what he meant.


    Unless I go out of my way to make it happen, which both Azrezel and I have said we don¡¯t want to do, then I am pretty sure it is impossible. For one I am a monster and he isn¡¯t, which already makes breeding difficult. For another, my own species, or at least what I was before my last evolution, only has an average fertility rate. And I highly doubt that got any better with my recent evolution. While at the same time Azrezel is an undead, which have never been reported to have successfully had children without the direct assistance of a healer. So yeah, no surprise pregnancies in store for me.


    Besides, I would be a terrible mother.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 314

    This morning I went to talk to the scholars about possible ways to help my young apprentice with her mana issues. Unsurprisingly, this is something that they commonly deal with when teaching particularly talented young mages.


    They gave me several solutions to the problem, and it¡¯s not like I can¡¯t use more than one. The easiest one is probably to build a space with a very high density of free-flowing mana. It¡¯s apparently a lot easier to absorb mana when it is able to move around freely as opposed to being compressed into a tight space, like what I do when I make rooms to trap mana in. With Requiem this one is easy, as I can just make mana at that location.


    They also gave me a couple different meditation methods that should help with improving their mana pools. Most of them revolve around expelling mana from their bodies in careful, controlled ways to maximize the portion of it that goes to expanding their mana pool. Though there were a couple that focused on making the mana in the pool denser.


    Another option was to give them exercises that are supposed to help you learn how to use mana more efficiently, I think Askos would benefit from these the most. These came in a variety of forms, like completing certain tasks with only a limited amount of mana, or shaping mana inside or outside of your body, those two were dramatically different. One that I thought was interesting basically had you throw a small package of mana as far as you could without it dissipating into ambient mana.


    The next option was a number of techniques that I could teach them that would allow them to increase their mana production. At first they would require complete focus from the kids, but eventually, they would be able to do them near constantly, assuming they practice enough.


    The last option would be to directly increase the size of their mana pools myself. It is something I am theoretically capable of doing, but also something I have never really practiced outside of evolution so I should probably not do that.


    .


    The first thing I did was put a bunch of Requiem in the area surrounding where they normally practice. It was easy and straightforward and showed almost immediate results.


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    Then I took the most effective method to increase their production and told them to keep doing it constantly, if they ever messed up or stopped they were to immediately start again. Most people would think that it would be way over their heads to do something like that, and it definitely is. But I¡¯ve been pushing them to do well beyond what I thought they were reasonably capable of since the beginning, and they have shown me that I was underestimating them before, so why not now? Or maybe it¡¯s the other way around, maybe me pushing them beyond my expectations allowed them to exceed my expectations? Either way, I think it is safe to challenge them this way.


    After making sure they got a filling and hearty breakfast I set them to the task. The exercise itself isn¡¯t hard per se, but it does require incredible focus. Focus that they lost frequently because of things ranging from a shift in the wind, to an involuntary twitch, to no reason whatsoever. When it came time for them to eat I told them to keep working at it while I puppeted their bodies so that they could still work on while they eat.


    To my surprise Junior found the exercise to be a lot harder than Askos did, though neither of them succeeded to keep it going for more than a moment. Though Askos was able to keep it going long enough to blink by the end of the day.


    Askos did complain to me about not being able to see his other siblings today, I told him that he better learn how to walk if he wants to do anything other than sit there all day. I honestly felt a bit bad about that, but it should hopefully force him to improve faster as he is even more driven to succeed than before.


    They are currently asleep, but I am going to get them back to work the moment they wake up.


    Spending the whole day watching over them isn¡¯t very productive when I can¡¯t provide guidance, so I ended up working on the book for the whole day. It¡¯s done, a book filled with everything I currently know about anatomy has been completed and given to the scholars for review. At the very least the stuff about Ents should be new or at least much more complete than what already exists.


    Other than that we received word that Par is coming back to town. They are almost out of supplies, the troops deserve a short break, and they need to replace the dead. Of course, they are pretty far away from any teleportation gates in friendly territory, so it will be a couple days before they get here.


    Speaking of I should probably start working on figuring out how to make those gates myself, I want to try to put one in every minor village and ultimately make it so that no place is more than a day¡¯s walk from one of the gates. I figure easy transportation within our borders can only help us. Besides, if I am going to start taking the whole being worshiped thing seriously, like I told myself I would, I should probably start doing more for the people.


    I don¡¯t even need to implement them myself, I have enough competent plant manipulators that they can do the grunt work for me. It¡¯s just that I am the only one skilled enough to really design something like that. Well, I mean Tiddol could absolutely figure it out if she wanted to, probably involving some kind of clockwork, but I don¡¯t think she¡¯s thought about it.


    I¡¯ll start trying to figure out designs tomorrow. With Requiem, it shouldn''t be too difficult.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 315

    Before the kids woke up I decided to go see the ocean. My forest had reached it a bit more than a week ago, but then the whole thing with the Hornmark kids happened and I haven¡¯t had a chance to think about it since.


    The first thing I tried was growing a plant in the water, only to watch it simultaneously dissolve, catch fire, and shrivel up. Seeing that my first thought was ¡®I wonder if the same thing happens when I poke it¡¯ the answer is yes, it does. I lost a finger. I don¡¯t think that it¡¯s water in there, or at least not just water.


    As much as I want to figure out how to expand into the ocean right now it isn¡¯t a priority, I still have a lot of land to expand to and there are more important things to do right now. It¡¯s a shame too, I was looking forward to this challenge. I¡¯ll start working on it the moment I am done with the teleporter design.


    When the kids finally woke up I got them back to work and started my own project. I don¡¯t expect the design to be too complicated, I have made similar items in the past, though not ones that work on the scale I want. The plants I¡¯m going to be using are portweed, pipeweed, Requiem, Astrie.


    Making teleporters that move creatures from one to another is something I have done before, but only ever with a system of two and always with a physical line going from one to the other. Two issues I need to solve then.


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    My current idea to fix both of those problems is to somehow use my trees to conduct things, they are smart enough to do it and adding a bit of singing grass to help them hear things will allow them to listen to where the person teleporting wants to go. It also has the added benefit of not allowing anyone my trees dislike to make use of the network. I just need to figure out how to get it to work properly, which is probably going to consist of a lot of trial and error, like most of my projects.


    By the end of the day, my apprentices had made some decent progress towards their goal. Junior had figured out how to take a breath without interrupting her concentration while Askos managed to do it with his eyes open, he didn¡¯t have any problems with breathing to begin with.


    The last four of my Paladins that were already skilled with plants is now good enough for me to integrate my plants into their body. The rest aren¡¯t too far behind them, like my apprentices they are also exceeding my expectations. I give it a week before all forty of them are good enough to move onto the next step in their training.


    For the ones that have already had my plants integrated into their bodies I am going to give them a couple days before having them go on dungeon dives. I can¡¯t exactly send them into a potentially deadly situation with abilities that they have never used before.


    I spent my downtime with Azrezel. He¡¯s still recovering from the invasion, he can only make undead as fast as his soul can recover, and when he needs to make a couple hundred undead it can take a while. So he has been focusing on creating a few very powerful undead, make them as useful as possible so he doesn¡¯t need as many of them. All of them are a lot smarter than they were before, but most of them aren¡¯t sentient. About a quarter of the ones he creates are sentient and it is more or less up to luck as far as he can tell. Still, according to preliminary reports from the scholars that is several times better than what most are capable of.


    As for what we actually did, mostly cuddle. I have to keep things pretty warm to drive away the snow, and it feels great to press up against his cool body when it¡¯s warm.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 316

    Askos managed to stand up today, only to immediately lose concentration and fall over. It¡¯s pretty impressive honestly. I¡¯m trying to not have expectations about how quickly they will succeed but this is beyond what I thought they were going to achieve. I thought it was going to be a week before either of them could stand up, much less three days. By the end of the week he¡¯s going to be able to walk and talk without losing concentration.


    Junior is catching up as well, though her focus is in a different direction. She¡¯s been trying to figure out how to do magic while still maintaining her concentration on the mana gathering technique. She¡¯s also able to keep concentration more or less indefinitely as long as she doesn¡¯t intentionally move, random twitches are no longer a problem.


    I can¡¯t wait till they are at the point where they are challenging me in healing, hopefully then we can learn from each other.


    I realized a much easier solution to the whole teleportation thing today. If I integrate Portweed and Requiem into all of my trees then anyone my trees like could go up to them and ask to be teleported somewhere else. I might have to integrate Singing Grass as well so they can hear people who aren¡¯t part of my hive mind. There are some obvious kinks to work out, but it would be better than having tons of teleportation gates everywhere.


    Of course, those gates would still be necessary for moving large amounts of people or goods at a time, but I wouldn¡¯t need nearly as many. Previously I would have had to make a gate that was not only able to teleport people around but also not so well made that only I could replicate it so that other people could go and install it. It wouldn¡¯t have been impossible, but it would have been a lot harder than designing one that was just as good as I could possibly make it. If I only need to make a couple dozen then it isn¡¯t really a problem for me to put them in myself. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    As for what I actually did today, I  worked on figuring out exactly how to integrate the plants I need to in order to pull off this project. That should only take a day or two to finish, then maybe a day after that of testing to make sure I didn¡¯t forget anything obvious.


    Other than that I hung out with Tiddol today. She¡¯s been working on a gift for Par. some kind of clockwork pendant that is supposed to do something magical, she got way too into explaining how it works to really tell me what it does. She recently attended a couple of classes that the enchanter specialist put on. She still finds enchanting to be boring, but now she realizes that some of the core ideas behind enchanting can be applied to her own work in a way she never thought of before. The actual specifics of it all went way over my head, which is probably what happens when I explain my own projects to Tiddol, but it is still fun to listen to her talk about it.


    She was also telling me about one noteworthy person who had been attending those lessons. Previously he was just someone with a minor talent for healing, but he managed to figure out a way to carve enchantments onto his own bones, and he also has a high enough pain tolerance to actually pull it off without blacking out. I¡¯m not really sure what he could do with this, but that is probably because I don¡¯t really know what you can do with enchanting. The specialist went on record to say that he was ¡®rather disturbed by the whole thing¡¯ and that ¡®it made my bones itch just thinking about it¡¯.


    Oh yeah, one last thing, Lord Parius the Magnificent is now officially known as Emperor Parius the Magnificent. Or at least that is what people call him when he comes up in casual conversation, that or just ¡®The Emperor¡¯. And he does come up in casual conversation quite frequently.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 317

    Day 317


    Today Junior managed to cast a simple generic healing spell, the type that might heal a minor burn if you are lucky, without losing concentration. She had the spell backfire a couple times while trying to pull it off, and even got sick as a result, but luckily it was small enough that it burned itself out in under a minute. By the end of the day she was able to quickly cast it two or three times before losing concentration, though more complicated spells were still beyond her.


    Askos managed to stay standing for a while, only to black out because he had his knees locked for too long. Why is that even a thing that happens? It seems like something that Origin would have been able to easily remove, but maybe it just never came up? Regardless, having all of his blood pool in his legs definitely made him lose concentration. I should figure out a way to fix that little quirk of flesh and bone creatures and do so every time I evolve one of them. The Origin were obviously brilliant, but not perfect.


    As for the teleportation thing, I think I am more or less done with the design to be implemented into my trees. I just need to get some people to test it out for me. The actual design involves Requiem, Portweed, Singing Grass, and Pipeweed, though I should probably just integrate all of my plants into my trees. Requiem produces way more mana than is actually necessary so that should both increase my own production of mana, like it needed to be any higher, and also increase ambient mana quite a bit. At that point I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if my forest becomes one of the most mana dense places in the world.


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    After I make sure I¡¯m not missing anything It should only take me a couple hours to integrate everything into my trees, it¡¯s a lot easier to do that than it is to grow something like a teleportation gate.


    Par got back into town today, so I spent my downtime with him. Every time I am with him in public I always notice the different ways the people react to him as opposed to me. He is physically a lot bigger than me, so people always notice him before me. And that usually takes the form of a quiet awe, especially among the soldiers and the people close to the soldiers. Whereas with me it is often in the form of praise and worship, which, while fun, sometimes gets in the way of things.


    There was a feast today, celebrating a successful campaign. Though they didn¡¯t capture any cities, they still managed to strike a hefty blow against the forces of the enemy. I don¡¯t think my good cheer was entirely the result of the crowd.


    I got to see Umi and Ednar again as well, they have grown quite a lot in the last year, certainly faster than sprites normally do. Though supposedly conflict and very high amounts of mana can cause children to grow faster, and we have plenty of both. Their birthday is actually coming up here in a couple weeks, I should try to get them something.


    Umi used the last gift I got for her to the point of breaking it, so maybe I could make another one for her? Maybe a bit more durable. As for Ednar, I¡¯m not sure what I could get for the boy. Might have to ask him what he wants.


    Par said that he was going to stay in town until their birthday, letting one of his generals take care of things on the front lines until then. I look forward to having him around, it¡¯s always nice to talk to him faster than someone can carry a letter. Though give it enough time and eventually, there will be enough people that are part of my hive mind that it won¡¯t matter where he goes I¡¯ll still be able to talk to him.


    After nearly two years he still calls me ¡®my queen¡¯. It¡¯s kind of endearing at this point.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 318

    Day 318


    My apprentices are quickly improving. Askos was able to take a couple steps without losing concentration and Junior is able to do more and more complex magic. Based on how quickly they are already improving Askos should be able to walk around by tomorrow while Junior should be able to cast spells just as well as she was able to before within three days. I¡¯ll be honest, this is kinda boring for me so I¡¯m glad they are improving so quickly.


    Testing on my current project went well. The only real issue came up when describing where you wanted to go verbally, but that was easy enough to fix by telling people to teleport to landmarks and other places with proper names. I should be done adding everything into all of my trees before dawn, modifying my trees is a lot easier than building something new entirely.


    One small group of people have decided to practice using these teleporters as much as possible. Some of them teleporting so much that they double over and vomit from teleportation sickness, something normally impossible with how short of a distance they are moving. I¡¯m looking forward to seeing what becomes of them.


    My Paladins, the ones who have my plants integrated into them, are also training with teleportation, but not in the same way. They are trying to do so independently of my trees, so that they can teleport beyond the bounds of my forest.


    Speaking of my paladins, Par decided to assess their combat abilities and found them to be lacking. No surprise for a group of ex-farmers who had only been training for a bit less than two weeks. With his guidance, I set up what should be a much more effective training plan for them.


    I¡¯m not entirely sure how to train them, aside from constantly pushing them to improve, because everything that I want them to know how to do is something I am able to do intuitively. With Askos and Junior healing is something I made an active effort to study, even when I had no talent for it, so it is something I can teach. While plant manipulation is something that has always come easily for me. There is quite a bit I can explain, but in order for any of that to be useful they would need to already have quite a bit of skill in plant manipulation, more than they currently have. Other than pushing them to improve until they figure out how to there isn¡¯t really anything I can do until they reach that point.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Though once they do manage to get good enough that I am comfortable integrating my plants into them then they will share a much deeper mental bond with each other, making it much easier for them to learn from each other''s work. Once they all get to that point they should improve very rapidly, or at least that is the idea.


    I was talking with Par today when the subject of the war came up, or more specifically how he can¡¯t spare the soldiers to subjugate and integrate cities that aren¡¯t on our shared border with the angelic council. Especially cities in the opposite direction of said border, many of which I am getting close to with my forest. No one is really expecting it to be a problem, or if they are they aren¡¯t saying anything about it, but still, something about having cities in my forest that are not part of our empire doesn¡¯t sit right with me.


    And so I tried to think of something to do about that. The only thing that came to mind that didn¡¯t involve murdering a bunch of people was to make them worship me. So I asked the people in charge of that whole group to focus their efforts on those cities, make them want to join our empire. It could work, or it could fail spectacularly.


    Other than that I spent my downtime sitting alone and thinking. This whole war is kinda weird honestly, the angelic council was way too hostile towards us from the start. Like I get that they wanted some kind of ¡®other¡¯ that they could threaten people with in order to keep their people happy, that much I had explained to me, and we make a pretty obvious target for that. The vast majority of our population isn¡¯t very high up on the evolutionary tree, Par was a goblin less than two years ago and he is the emperor. At first glance we should be a pushover, especially when you consider the fact that their founders and their important people are almost all true immortals. And we are the only other group bigger than a city-state that I know of, ignoring the scholars who are mostly untouchable. But we can¡¯t exactly serve the purpose of being the ¡®other¡¯ if they crush us, and based on what they have been throwing into this war that is exactly what they are trying to do. It makes sense for them to hate us and for them to make their people content by saying ¡®at least we aren¡¯t those guys¡¯, and it even makes sense for them to go to war with us while putting in a token effort. Maybe they are trying to take control of everything on the continent?


    And now that I think about it, if they wanted to crush us why didn¡¯t they have some of their true immortals come fight us? They sent in quite a few of what must have been their best soldiers and all that they really managed to achieve is making us angry. I¡¯m not exactly the brightest when it comes to politics and military stuff, but either there is something I¡¯m missing or they aren¡¯t very good at this either. That is entirely possible, they did form an empire on sheer virtue of their own personal strength instead of military might or anything like that. Maybe they just don¡¯t understand military tactics? Well, whatever. That is a bit beyond my sphere of influence, I¡¯ll leave that stuff up to Par.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 319

    Askos is able to walk without losing concentration now, albeit slowly. He¡¯s also able to speak, though he can¡¯t walk and talk at the same time. Of course, the first thing he did was walk off to go check up on his siblings, who are all healthy and as happy as can be expected given the circumstances. I would have let him go if something had actually happened to them.


    Junior has gotten back to work on the same training I had her doing before this whole thing. Though she is still struggling quite a bit still, her dramatically improved access to mana is almost making up for that. It shouldn¡¯t be too long before she is able to fix any set of injuries I can throw at her with ease. I¡¯ll think of where to go from there then, maybe more bodies?


    I spent most of my time working on the large scale teleporter. It shouldn¡¯t be too difficult to design as Requiem makes it so I don¡¯t really have to consider mana efficiency, effectively removing quite a big chunk of what I would normally need to work through. Thanks to that I can put all of my efforts into allowing it to go as far as I need it to and move as much stuff as possible, communication and coordination have already been more or less handled.


    I give it two days before I have the design perfected and another day after that before I have one in every population center, I might put more in larger towns and cities.


    Already people are making heavy use of the personal teleportation system. I¡¯m looking forward to seeing how something like this will change our empire. People can now move anywhere they want at will, I¡¯m not sure what that will change, but I¡¯m sure it will change something. By all accounts the city teleporters changed the world when they were introduced,  I see no reason why this wouldn¡¯t be a repeat of that. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Tiddol managed to finish the clockwork pendant for Par today. The parts of it that I understood was actually pretty interesting. The purpose of it is to create a barrier in reaction to Par being attacked by something he was unaware of. How it determined when to trigger and how it forms the barrier were inspired by enchanting and as such went over my head, but the method it used to recharge itself was one I was familiar with. All it did was use some of the mana berry plant to form a bit of crystallized mana inside the device, something I have personally done. The barrier is quite potent too, able to take a blow from Par without an issue, only one though.


    A group of my Paladins went on a dungeon dive today, inside of a dungeon that I have bribed into compliance. They should be challenged as much as possible, up to and including being horrifically maimed, but not killed. I can¡¯t fix death and it takes time and a fair bit of effort to train these guys. I would much rather give a dungeon a couple of my designs in exchange for their help than have that time and effort go to waste.


    They haven¡¯t returned yet, but according to the dungeon they are still alive. I¡¯m not actually sure how long this type of thing should take so I¡¯ll try to avoid worrying. It isn¡¯t like they are going to starve or anything like that, they can just make food with mana and many of the creatures in the dungeon are edible.


    I also had a number of my Paladins get to the point where I could integrate plants into their bodies, so many that I spent my downtime doing that. Fifteen of the forty have gone through that process by now and the rest aren¡¯t too far behind. Most of them should get to that point within the next three days.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 320

    Askos has started working on magic again. He isn¡¯t doing nearly as well as Junior, but that is to be expected. He is making good progress though, the extra mana at his disposal works with his style of healing really well, more than enough to make up for the issues with concentration. Of course, it is also very wasteful, which is an issue I am going to have to address. I¡¯ll probably have him do an exercise where he is restricted to only a certain amount of mana, probably using a gemstone to simulate the restricted mana pool. I might do the same for Junior, though she wouldn¡¯t benefit from it quite as much as her brother.


    Speaking of Junior, she is as good as she was before in terms of pure skill. Which means she is doing much better. With her main limiting factor more or less gone she is improving a bit faster than she was before. As always I am there to guide her thoughts in the right direction, similar to how Fate often guides my own thoughts.


    If I really wanted to I could implement the large scale teleporter right now, but I want to improve it a bit more first. I should get to the point that I am satisfied tomorrow. After that I can start trying to unlock the mysteries of the ocean, I¡¯m looking forward to the challenge.


    We received reports today that one of the cities on our border is under siege, and has been for several days now. With their teleporters turned off they didn¡¯t really have an easy way to communicate with us resulting in the delay. We have some soldiers in the area that came to their aid, but the bulk of our army was here, enjoying a small vacation. Par didn¡¯t leave with the soldiers, he promised his kids he will be here until their birthday after all, but his generals did take the soldiers to support the besieged city. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Hopefully, nothing bad happens before the soldiers can get there. Unfortunately, it''s still a bit beyond my ability to help. I am getting closer to our border every day, but it is still a ways out. I think I¡¯ll reach the border shortly after new years.


    Other than that I spent my downtime going on a date with Azrezel. We went to a restaurant in a city that I had recently brought into my forest, the food was good, the company was better.


    I saw Talus there. I didn¡¯t talk to her or even approach her, but I did see her. And I couldn¡¯t help but stare a little. She¡¯s a diver now, or at least she¡¯s was wearing armor that I only see on divers. She seems happy.


    The fact that I still find her to be very pretty scares me a little.


    It was awkward, seeing my ex while on a date with my boyfriend. We quickly paid for our food and left, Azrezel understood though I could tell that he was disappointed that he wasn¡¯t able to finish the meal. I didn¡¯t want to risk Talus seeing me, I don¡¯t think I¡¯m ready for that confrontation.


    After that, we made the most of the evening by cuddling for a while. That is always nice.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 321

    At this point, the increased mana generation more than makes up for the mental strain from constantly gathering it. My Apprentices are now both able to fully heal one of the bodies before it dies, though only Junior is able to do so reliably. Both are making rapid progress under my tutelage. Guiding them like this is much more entertaining than waiting for them to learn how to walk.


    I finished the design for the teleporter at around noon. It is able to move approximately five hundred people every minute, given the average around here. That would be a bit less if they are wearing heavy equipment as the limiting factor is not number of people but rather weight.


    I should be done installing them by dawn, maybe a bit after. Ultimately I decided to put one in every town and village while putting two in every city. If more are needed anywhere latter I¡¯ll put in more, but unless it turns out to be not enough then I will continue to keep them at the same rate when I surround more cities.


    The scholars have finished reviewing my book finally. I am now officially an honorary member of their order. Hopefully, I will be able to take advantage of them even more.


    They wanted me to do something for them today as well, it was just identifying a magical plant, nothing too difficult. The plant turned out to be Astrie, but the perfected stuff I made. Apparently, one of their Divers pulled it out of a dungeon and weren¡¯t able to test it without destroying their only sample. It was kind of a disappointment because I was looking forward to getting my hands on a new plant but I encouraged them to bring plants to me for any reason really. Hopefully, some of them will be ones I haven¡¯t seen before.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    Other than that I tried to spend my downtime just thinking to myself, but my thoughts kept returning to Talus, someone I would rather not think about right now. So I instead hung out with Tiddol. Her apprentices were excited to show off some new flavors that they managed to create, this time actually cooked into food. Someone made a steak out plants and some flavoring that was supposed to taste like meat, and it did, but the texture was so far from the real thing that I couldn¡¯t eat it. They did much better with the ice cream and a beverage called hot chocolate, which turned out to be just the chocolate flavoring poured into some hot milk. After eating a bunch of them I can safely say that the alchemical flavorings are best used for sweets, while everything else is hit or miss.


    Apparently, they are trying to figure out how to mass produce the stuff for public use now. Though we don¡¯t really have access to the kind of facilities required for doing that kind of alchemy on a large scale. Apparently, it¡¯s some pretty complicated stuff, well beyond any simple healing potion. And we don¡¯t really have anyone who knows how to create those facilities.


    They talked around the question for a while until one of them finally asked me if I could help out with that problem, which I definitely can as what they are looking for is available through the terminal. It was funny watching them blush in embarrassment as I pretended to think about it. I may have intentionally let the atmosphere get a bit awkward to watch them squirm a bit before agreeing to help them out. There is now a facility to mass produce potions being built outside of Pearlhold. I even put a teleporter in a storehouse I added to its side. It was pretty expensive, but being able to mass produce more complex potions should improve the lives of everyone more than most things I could have bought. I can build more of them if the need arises too, and it won¡¯t be limited to just alchemical flavors in the future. Based on what Tiddol has said they have to create so much more than that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 322

    My apprentices are now at the point where they can fully heal one body before it dies nearly every time. That means that I need to make it more challenging for them. So what I did was I took a pair of gemstones of roughly equal capacity and had them try to heal using only the mana contained within. I want them to be able to not only be able to heal any injury, but to do it in the worst possible conditions.


    Junior is doing alright. She isn¡¯t at the point where she can actually fully heal a body with limited mana yet, but she is doing much better than Askos. With his much more mana intensive method of healing Askos is struggling quite a bit. Based on what they have accomplished already it won¡¯t be too long before they are able to keep a body alive.


    Askos has been blaming himself a lot less for his own failures, which is a good thing. If he kept blaming himself then I would be worried that he would eventually get too frustrated and quit entirely. With the constant failures caused by me making everything as hard as I can failure has become routine and mundane, at least in his mind, while success is something a lot more important. Though he does get irritated when I make things harder for him, so far that has proven to be an effective training method.


    I work them hard but I don¡¯t work them constantly, though Junior would absolutely practice day and night if I let her and things like sleep didn¡¯t get in the way. She still sticks to me even when we aren¡¯t training. Askos, on the other hand, mostly spends his downtime doting on his siblings. From what I¡¯ve heard he is technically the youngest of them by half an hour but he acts more like their older brother, which make sense because he does have memories of a past life. Makes him a bit more emotionally mature than others if nothing else.


    So I wasn¡¯t too surprised when I heard that Askos was with an injured person and needed my help really badly. When I arrived I found Askos and an older man hovering over a much smaller mangled and scarred form in the street while Askos was doing his best to keep her alive. The smaller form turned out to be the daughter of the older man and was missing three arms and both of her legs, in addition to widespread internal injuries and some kind of poison or venom that was making her body resist the effects of healing, something beyond either of my apprentice¡¯s ability to heal.


    The child had hours left to live with Askos¡¯s help, maybe a couple minutes without it. Junior likely would have tried and failed to heal the kid all on her own without considering asking for help. He made the right call asking me for help.


    The poison took quite a bit of effort to fix, but overwhelming amounts of mana was more than enough to drive it out of her system. From there the internal injuries were easy enough to heal.the missing limbs were another story. They had been missing for long enough that traditional healing wouldn¡¯t be able to do anything about them so I had to completely regrow them without a template to work from. Nothing I haven''t done before, but it takes a lot more work to make sure everything is working right without being lopsided or ugly.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    After healing the girl and putting her to sleep, so she wouldn¡¯t feel the worst of the side effects of having new limbs grown on her body, I talked with the father. Apparently, his daughter was attacked after unknowing wandering into a dungeon about a month ago. The low-quality healing potions he had access to were enough to keep her alive, but they weren¡¯t enough to even try to fight off the poison. All of the healers in his village weren¡¯t able to do anything about the poison so he set off to find a master healer that he had heard about, me. Had it not been for the teleportation abilities recently added to my trees they wouldn¡¯t have made it before their supply of potions ran out and she died. With a smile on his face and joy in his voice he told me, and the growing audience, about his long hike across hostile terrain doing everything from fighting off a bear ten times his size with his daughter tied onto his back to waking up constantly every night to make sure she was still breathing. Everyone agreed, the story was very inspiring and before the end of the day everyone in the city was repeating it to anyone who would listen.


    While certainly interesting, that whole thing didn¡¯t take very long. I ended up spending most of my day experimenting with the ocean. It was pretty immediately obvious that it is incredibly acidic. Anything that is able to survive out in the ocean, even if only for a limited amount of time, has some kind of very durable hard shell to keep liquids out. A lot of the fish I saw being brought in by the few creates capable of, or stupid enough too, go out onto the ocean to fish had scales or other protective layers made out of glass. The stuff is surprisingly resistant to damage but shatters into hundreds of sharp shards the moment it is damaged, potentially ruining the meat and killing the fish if it is still alive. Not that it matters too much in the ocean as any damage to that out layer would result in a very rapid death from the acid.


    This makes things a lot more difficult to figure out how to get my plants into the ocean. Everything I have seen able to traverse the ocean uses some method to keep out all liquids, which isn¡¯t an option for my plants. Wood is very porous and if I seal up those pores then the plant slowly dies. And that alone wouldn¡¯t be enough, none of my plants are able to resist the acid permanently, if they were this wouldn¡¯t be an issue. I did try just regenerating the plant faster than it gets destroyed, I wasn¡¯t able to repair it nearly fast enough after taking into account the sheer number of plants I would need.


    I think my best bet is either a plant made entirely of glass, which is theoretically possible but I¡¯ve never seen before, or a plant related to acid, which is something I would be able to buy. I might eventually be able to pull it off with Mithrilwood but I have no idea what it would actually take to do that, besides, making a glass tree would be much more interesting.


    After buying the alchemy building the other day I don¡¯t have enough to buy the acid plant, which is surprisingly expensive compared to other plants. So, for now, it looks like I am going to be trying to make a plant with glass. I have no idea how to do this, and I am choosing this over Mithrilwood mostly because I think a glass tree would be pretty, but I¡¯m looking forward to the challenge.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol. The workshop was more empty than I¡¯ve seen it in a long time as all of the alchemists were trying to figure out how to make the facility I got the other day working, so I took her away from her work so we could go out to eat. I don¡¯t eat every day, but when I do I make sure it is only the best food. Tiddol was grateful for the break. The food was good, not the best I have eaten. For dessert, we had chocolate cake, made with real chocolate. It was my first time eating chocolate, and it was good, but not worth the price tag. The fake stuff tastes just as good as the real stuff. Still, it was a good experience.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 323

    Askos is still struggling with the current training exercise. He is improving, but not quite as fast as he was. Though to be fair most of his improvement previously was in getting ahold of more mana, which is still happening. In fact, with him not using his own mana pool at all, all of that mana he is gathering is overflowing, slowly driving his mana pool higher. It would take a really long time for there to be a noticeable difference, but there is still a difference.


    Junior is doing better. She has managed to stop a body from dying, but she ran out of mana before she could do anything else. It was an easier case and her tactic of understanding exactly what she is working with first and foremost works really well when dealing with limited mana. Diagnostics isn¡¯t exactly mana intensive unless you are bad at it.


    The little girl I healed the other day woke up today, so I decided to go check up on her. She is now a happy, and healthy, if a rather clumsy, girl. She isn''t really used to her new limbs so it will be a while before she is able to do things like run around without biting the dirt or running into something. She doesn¡¯t let running full speed into a tree three times in a row stop her though, at least not for long. If I had spent the last month stuck in chronic pain while being incapable of doing anything for myself I would probably do the same.


    They are going to start heading home tomorrow, they want to be back before their people start thinking they¡¯re dead. I requested that a group of merchants that are part of my hivemind that are going in that direction anyway escort the duo, help them get home faster. I also offered a small gift of healing potions out of my own pocket, much higher quality than the stuff they were using before. It doesn¡¯t cost me much and should hopefully foster goodwill, maybe enough to help turn the people into my followers? It might help with getting people to willingly join our empire as the borders of my forest expand to cover their cities.


    As for my current project, my normal methods are completely useless for it. Normally I take pre-existing traits of a plant and expand and refine them, glass has nothing to do with plants. As far as I know, there is nothing in any of my plants that relates to glass. So I have to rely on much less reliable processes that I don¡¯t understand very well, namely the environmental aspect of evolution. Normally I focus entirely with the plant itself when I am evolving it, completely ignoring everything outside of that plant. And that works, and it is very reliable and easy to replicate. But every once in a while a creature inside of a volcano gains powers over fire and heat when they evolve, or a creature in a forest gains powers over plants. One example was way back when Thes killed that dragon and evolved, prior he had nothing to do with fire, but after that he gained abilities relating to fire. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    That whole thing doesn¡¯t happen very often and is only noticeable in large populations, but it does happen. I only need it to happen once in order to pull this off, but the problem is I have no idea what kind of environment is necessary to allow it to happen in the first place. So naturally the only reasonable solution to is to try every single thing I can think of thousands of times until something finally clicks. Maybe having thousands of tiny glass shards integrated into the plant itself will be enough, maybe I need a massive sprawling cave complex filled with glass to be good enough, maybe I am completely off the mark and need something I have not yet considered. Who knows? Hopefully, I will in the near future. And if the whole idea is a bust then I could try the same thing with the ocean, only trying to make plants based around acid instead of glass.


    My first thought was to just go as big of a scale as possible with this and just go straight for glass caverns. But there was one small problem with that, we don¡¯t really have anyone capable of manipulating glass. It is a bit beyond the average dirt or rock manipulator and outside of the scope of Digger Root. I can¡¯t really call in a specialist from the scholars because no one really specializes in manipulating glass on that type of scale, it¡¯s all on much smaller scales for things like alchemy equipment. The few specialists that do exist I don¡¯t really have the resources to hire as the only ones with connections to the scholars are famous and very skilled artists who can charge anything they want for their services, or true immortals who charge even more. There were resources on how to manipulate glass on the Terminal, but the ones I can afford would be a bit beyond anything any of my people would be able to really make use of. And the ones that can actually help an untrained novice figure things out are super expensive.


    I might be able to get Digger Root to the point of being able to manipulate Glass, but I have no idea if that would actually be possible and it would likely take quite a bit of time. Instead, I am going to try things on a much smaller scale.


    That being said, I had no success today with imbedding countless tiny glass shards into a plant and then submerging that plant into a glass tub full of those same glass shards.


    It might be useful to ask Tiddol about the actual creation process of glass, she should know a bit about that. I don¡¯t actually know anything about how it is made except for the fact that it can be blown into to make vases and bowls when hot.


    My Paladins are rapidly reaching the threshold that I had previously set, so I ended up spending my downtime integrating my plants into them. With my Dad¡¯s assistance, they are all rapidly improving their combat skills. And with my assistance, they are rapidly improving their abilities over plants. With each new person added to their closer knit hivemind their skills should improve faster and faster.


    I¡¯m sending them into various dungeons that I have made deals with so that they can improve their skills in a practical setting. No group is the same twice, every single time the groups are chosen randomly with between one and seven members. Like that they should get used to working both in groups and on their own.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 324

    Today I found out that my apprentices have never actually used the wings on their backs. Their parents died before they got a chance to teach their kids how to use them, they weren¡¯t strong enough at the time. Now, however, things are different. They have grown to the point that their wings are big and strong enough to carry their weight, and they have some natural talent with it, but they have no idea how to actually fly. I know even less than them about flying.


    I found them the best teacher I possibly could, or rather I had someone else find the best teacher. I don¡¯t know people but I do know people who know people. They¡¯re smart kids, it shouldn¡¯t take them too long to figure out how to fly properly. Once they do it will be another variable I can introduce to their training.


    After getting that settled I spent the first part of my day learning how to make glass. Tiddol did know, but she also had someone working under her that knew much better, so she directed me to talk to him. The guy knew a lot, but the gist of it boiled down to glass is normally made out of molten sand and there is a lot of stuff that changes the final result. Ultimately I just decided to have him personally help me create a cave made out of glass instead of trying to figure out exactly what I need to do myself. It should work out better that way.


    With Digger Root allowing me some control over dirt, which does extend to sand, I can form a cave and keep it stable long enough to melt the sand with Pyre. With Digger Root I am also able to modify the components of the sand, I can¡¯t really control the contents but I do have some crude control over things like size and shape of the grains of sand.


    We ran into quite a few issues along the way, most of them on my end. The biggest one was the fact that I have no actual skill using these plants, it isn¡¯t something I have really done before. So we had a number of false starts before things really got going. Properly following instructions was also difficult because of my lack of experience, so it was a little difficult to get the sand just right. The last major problem was the fact that the sand got pretty runny as it melted, making the roof a lot thinner than we expected. Though that did leave a lot of stalagmites and stalactites made of glass. Luckily the roof was strong enough to hold up the dirt above it. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    The glass is incredibly clear and harder than iron, not the fragile stuff I¡¯m used to seeing. While it is clear, there are many imperfections in it, preventing light from perfectly radiating through it. It was a lot darker than I was hoping it was going to be so we decided to make the glass go all the way up to the surface at several points to let some more light in, which had the added benefit of letting people see the cave from above.


    The cave itself is really pretty. The light streams down from the surface and reflects off of the small imperfections in the blueish glass, lighting up the cave in a way that I never would have expected. I can see the sand and dirt just passed the walls, and bubbles and ripples in those walls. The stalactite hand from the ceiling in smooth stretches of glass, while the stalagmites are full of marks where one drop of molten glass fell onto the rest.


    I think it was the right call to try and make a glass tree. Not that this was enough to have any success. We¡¯re going to keep building and slowly turn this into a massive complex of caverns until I succeed at creating a glass plant.


    Other than that I hung out with Azrezel today. It¡¯s been a while since I¡¯ve checked up on his projects. Currently, he is pushing for an evolution, but he doesn¡¯t want me to trigger it for him. Normally this rate of evolving would be ridiculous, but he is both inside an area where evolving is easy and he is actively pushing the boundaries of necromancy, so it isn¡¯t too unreasonable.


    As for his actual project, he recently got ahold of the corpse of a true immortal cultivator, someone who focused on using Solar Energy to improve themselves. The species of the corpse is something called a greater archdevil and was in perfect condition. He is planning on raising it and is almost done with all of the preparations. Naturally, I want to watch him pull this off, and he wants me to be there when he does because this is quite a bit beyond what he normally does. He might mess up and seriously injure himself so he wants me there in case he is unable to heal himself. He¡¯s going to try tomorrow evening, by then everything will be in place.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 325

    My apprentices are rapidly learning how to fly and are only crashing about once every half an hour now. They still need to work on landings though. It will be a day or two before they will be good enough at flying to return to learning under me.


    With most of the issues figured out it wasn¡¯t very hard to start expanding the caverns. We added five new caves of various sizes onto the existing cave, making sure you could see through the glass from one cave to the adjacent ones without dirt and sand getting in the way. We¡¯ve also built up a mound of material outside of the entrance, once we are done I will turn that into glass as well.


    Despite having as many plants as I could evolving as often as I could I only had one that did anything, and it wasn¡¯t really what I wanted. One of the plants developed clear leaves. Not glass leaves, that would have been a success, just normal leaves that are somehow clear.


    Though I did realize something. Two creatures of the same species tend to evolve into the same thing when they evolve close together. I already knew that, but I forgot to take it into account with this project. I was using a bunch of copies of a mundane flower when I should have been using a bunch of different plants for maximum effect. Hopefully, that is what has been missing, or at least makes things go a bit faster.


    Azrezel¡¯s attempted evolution was very interesting. Not because he actually evolved, though he came really close, but because it was the first time I had ever felt the Fate of another person. As soon as Azrezel finished raising the corpse I felt quite a bit of fate balance itself, about what I would be able to build up in a week.


    The original soul that occupied that body came back to it in the process of evolving, in nearly perfect condition based on my limited knowledge of souls. Unfortunately this means that this undead is way too powerful for Azrezel to control it, fortunately, this means that a true immortal owes him a favor, a big favor. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    We ended up serving him dinner, apparently being dead for weeks causes you to get quite hungry. We learned his name was Emericus. Over dinner, he told us about how he died, mostly because I asked him about it. Basically, it was just a series of wild misfortunes one after another in rapid succession, which would definitely build up a bit of Fate even if you couldn¡¯t manipulate it yourself.


    He was flying on a clear sunny day when he got struck by lighting three hundred and seventeen times. No one was trying to hurt him, and the area wasn¡¯t really known for lightning, he just got super unlucky. That alone didn¡¯t kill him, neither did the meteor strike nor the mountain fall on him. The mountain was caused by a nearby fight and he just happened to be in the way. What finally killed him was having his simple healing spell backfire, causing a disease that somehow ripped his soul from his body. Like I said, more than enough to build up some Fate.


    From there the fate he managed to build up when he died kept his soul from being damaged and allowed him to return to his body when it was made available again by Azrezel who had obtained it from a merchant who had found it after the body crashed into his cart.


    Emericus claimed that the reason for the terrible luck was because he failed to ascend and was cursed as a result. Whatever that means. Maybe it has something to do with the creature that granted me powers over Fate? Who knows, but it isn¡¯t the first time I¡¯ve heard of Fate bringing you back after you die. The message I received before mentioned something like that and I have personally experienced it when back when I went dungeony a while ago, though that time I lost access to my memories for a while.


    He decided to stick around for a while, with more than a little coaxing from me. The guy is really shaken up about his failure and claims he wants to take a break from everything for a while. I made sure to arrange the best lodging for him and made sure he had a private chef who was well stocked with the best ingredients in addition to almost anything else he wants. If we can get this guy to stick around long term then we¡¯ll have at least one true immortal, while the angelic council¡¯s leadership is made up almost entirely of them, or creatures close to that level.


    If he tries to leave I¡¯m not going to stop him, I just hope he doesn¡¯t.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 326

    My apprentices are going to return to learning under me tomorrow. It isn¡¯t that they have mastered flying, that will likely take a very long time. Nor is it that they never crash anymore. Instead, they have figured out how to crash in a way that reduces the chance of them getting injured or hurting someone else. So it isn¡¯t dangerous for them to practice on their own anymore.


    I have not yet managed to create a plant that is made out of glass, so the expansion of the caverns continues. The basic idea isn¡¯t wrong, I have been able to create a number of clear plants so far, which proves that I can affect the evolution with the environment.


    At this point, the caverns are deep enough that there is more gravel and rock than dirt, which is slowing us down quite a bit. This isn¡¯t all bad. We have hit a couple ore veins that I was able to extract with Digger Root, normally it can¡¯t manipulate metal but all of the impurities in ore makes it so I can, usually.


    Most of what we found was some low-quality mundane metals. But I did find a vein of nearly pure mithril ore, so pure that I couldn''t manipulate it with Digger Root. This would be great if we had anyone skilled enough to handle mithril, but we don¡¯t have any smiths of that caliber. Tiddol is able to make good use of it when making clockwork creatures and she would definitely know much better than me about how to actually make use of it.


    After finding that ore I thought to myself ¡®that was pretty lucky¡¯ or something along those lines. That stuck with me all day, realizing that luck is somehow relevant to my current situation but not knowing how exactly. Then I realized that I was gaining Fate really fast these last couple days. One thought led to another and now I am pretty sure that building my fate is the reason I haven¡¯t succeeded yet. I mean its whole thing is it causes minor unlucky events now to cause a major windfall latter, and failing to trigger the type of evolution I want is absolutely the type of minor misfortune that would happen as a result of this. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I think I should just keep doing what I¡¯m doing for now, I¡¯ve never had my Fate grow this fast before. It might even get to the point where I can¡¯t keep it stable anymore.


    A city on the edge of my forest was attacked today. It was a small one without any walls. I waited till all of the soldiers attacking the place were within the city, making sure to prevent anyone they wounded from dying, before I had massive walls of roots rise up to cover the city. Then I started evacuating all of the civilians while teleporting soldiers into the city.


    It turned into a one-sided slaughter. With no civilians to protect, me personally healing the wounded and using plants to harass and restrain the invaders they stood no chance against our might. We were even able to take a good chunk of them captive, I¡¯m not sure what the purpose of that was but Par seemed intent on taking as many of them alive as he could.


    Overall there was only a handful of deaths from people who were old or already injured somehow before the fighting began. Property damage was pretty high, but it was all stuff I could easily repair myself. Though this raiding part was quite a bit smaller than I would expect.


    Other than that I spent my downtime talking with Emericus. He¡¯s been spending most of his time meditating and using Solar Energy to improve his body, which is to be expected. He didn¡¯t really talk about himself and I didn¡¯t really ask, but he did ask me a lot about my forest and the things in it. The entire time he treated me as an equal.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 327

    My apprentices were returned to me today knowing how to fly. So I got them to work on the next training exercise I had planned for them. I know they haven¡¯t mastered the previous one but this should definitely help with any type of healing they do going forward. I am, of course, talking about dissection.


    I created a room with a bunch of tables with bodies on them. Next to each table was a bunch of information and diagrams about the body that they should use for reference while cutting them open. One advantage of recently writing a book was that I had all of that information readily available. The goal is to get them too, on their own, dissect and study the bodies of countless creatures, learn about how they work, find common themes, and overall figure stuff out that can help them learn how to heal better.


    Junior got right to work without a second thought, but Askos was a little unnerved by the whole thing at first. Though he did eventually give in to his own curiosity and is figuring things out even faster than Junior is.


    Junior was slow and deliberate, it takes her a while but nearly every observation she makes is correct, or at least getting close to the right answer. Askos, on the other hand, figures things out really quickly but is often wrong. If I weren¡¯t there to subtly guide him back to the right train of thought then he likely would end up in a worse position from this exercise. He is getting better though, the more he understands the better he understands new things.


    Watching the pair work together to understand something they are both genuinely interested in warmed my nonexistent heart.


    Despite knowing that every time I fail to get what I want my Fate is growing I am still getting frustrated. Fate isn¡¯t exactly something I can make use of in my every day, it¡¯s something best saved for emergencies. That being said it is growing rapidly, and it is growing faster and faster the larger the caverns grow. More fate is produced when causing an unfortunate thing that is unlikely perhaps? I know my own perception of the event is the biggest part of it, but it looks like actual chance does matter as well.


    At this point, we are thoroughly into bedrock with our expansion. I had considered expanding outward more but I didn¡¯t really want too much of my forest being over this cave system, that and there is a lot more ore this deep.


    I¡¯ve gotten to the point where I am able to sense the location of ore veins through the dirt and the stone with the Digger Root I integrated into my body. I¡¯m not very good at it but overwhelming amounts of mana solves most problems. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Naturally, we have extracted tons of metal over the last couple days. It is valuable, but we don¡¯t really have many uses for it so far. Par is trying to rectify that by actively encouraging people to learn how to work with metal. With any luck, this will cause a massive increase in the number and quality of metal items, something that will definitely come in handy if the enemy keeps using plant destroying magic.


    According to the scholars, the method we¡¯re using to build the glass caverns is very similar to a method used by powerful stone manipulators when they want to make a quick buck. The reason it isn¡¯t more widespread is that there aren¡¯t many people capable of it and it usually very quickly crashes the market for metals, making them incredibly cheap.


    I am definitely in a position to allow people to do this kind of mining quickly and easily, and if we can get the whole metalworking thing going then a cheap supply of metal can only be a good thing. I wanted to start teaching some Ents and other plant manipulators how to do this, but Par persuaded me to wait until he got some things set up first, or rather Tiddol got some things set up first, as she is always the one in charge of that kind of thing. I¡¯m not entirely sure why, but apparently having too much metal on hand can be a bad thing?


    That being said, I did come across a vein of metal that was radiating the same type of poison left behind by nuclear fire, which was odd, and a little worrying. I decided to leave it in the ground until I could get a chance to talk to people who know more about the stuff than I do. In the meantime, I am going to give it a wide berth.


    With the last of my paladins having my plants integrated into their bodies I have them all constantly going on dungeon dives. They don¡¯t need to sleep, they have Ergen keeping them awake, Flore keeping them from feeling pain, and Whitefoot healing any injuries. They don¡¯t need to eat as they can just create food inside of their own stomachs and they don¡¯t need to drink as they can do the same with water. And they never run out of mana because Requiem produces more than they could possibly spend. And they love me even more for all of that.


    They would train day and night if I let them, constantly approaching challenges with every moment. Of course, I know from experience that doing so is a quick way to burn out that really gets in the way of learning, so they have to rest for at least two hours a day, or at least do something different during that time. Several of them have taken to doing alchemy and practicing other crafts during that time, and what one of them knows all of them know so they are improving at that very quickly. A couple others are being very social with the people, working with them, solving problems, and trying to figure out how to be charismatic. My dad has taken a couple of them under his wing for that. The rest are pursuing other interests like other forms of magic.


    Other than that I spent my time with Azrezel today, who had Emericus with him. Apparently, Azrezel is able to manipulate the mood of the cultivator, in addition to a bit of crude mind reading, through the piece of his soul he used to seed the corpse. Azrezel has been using that to try and make him want to stick around, make this place his home, and hopefully work for us.  This isn¡¯t something Emericus seems to have noticed, or if he has it isn¡¯t something he is irritated by, so hopefully it will work out well.


    That plus the piece of Azrezel¡¯s soul inside him and my own innate abilities should get him to join our cause sooner or later. With him on our side it should be a lot easier to destroy the people who invaded our home and destroyed the center of my forest. Before that, I was willing to make peace and let all of our differences settle by the wayside, now not so much. People will die, which is a shame, and I will try to prevent deaths where I can. But my own people and my own home come before anyone else. There is no peaceful resolution anymore.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 328

    My Apprentices are continuing to dissect and study the bodies I have prepared for them. Once they are done with it I might even make this place automated and open it up to the general public, a place where any healer can come and learn a thing or two about anatomy. Might need to expand it a lot, and allow for a way to update and expand it, but that will have to wait until my apprentices have gotten their use out of it.


    We came across a small cavern during our digging. It was apparently filled with poisonous gasses, I don¡¯t need to breathe so it wasn¡¯t an issue for me, but most of the people assisting in were made of flesh and bone and as such did. Ultimately it delayed us quite a bit as we had to figure out how to get rid of all of that gas without poisoning anyone, or at least not poisoning anyone too much. Ultimately we had a couple air manipulators come in and bottle the stuff to take to our alchemists to destroy. It took almost all day because we don¡¯t really have any air manipulators, the vast majority of them are just using Whitelock.


    A group of wielders of nuclear fire showed up today to get some of the waste from their magic disposed of so I told them about what I found underground and asked them what I should do with it. Apparently, it is the similar stuff that they are bringing me to destroy so they helped me to extract it and turn it into a form that is easier to destroy. They seemed to be impressed by the glass caverns I was making, which is nice.


    Emericus approached me today and asked me for some Solar Energy. Apparently, he lost all of his when he died and isn¡¯t able to make more without already having some. I offered to put the same device I use to create the stuff inside of him, but he rejected my offer on the grounds that it would require mana to operate. So instead I made him an external version, only for him to freak out when I told him what it was. He seemed very scared of me when he realized that I have that device inside of my chest. To hear him say it he has had friends who have violently exploded due to a momentary lapse of mental faculties thanks to mana rushing in and interacting with the Solar Energy inside of them.


    It took me a while to explain to him that it was completely safe and that it would take an act of active sabotage to cause it to explode. And even that wouldn¡¯t do a lot of it was outside of him as the amount of Solar Energy inside of the device at any given time would be pretty small, hardly enough to hurt someone like him. I mean the stuff I have inside myself could absolutely cause a lot of damage, but I can easily build one that is nowhere near as dangerous.


    After that, we had a long discussion about Solar Energy. We touched on topics like why I call it Solar Energy instead of Ki, or one of the other similarly pronounced words. Apparently, it is incredibly rare to use the suns as a method to gather Solar Energy because the amount of the stuff they throw off is so small as to be irrelevant unless you can find a place where there are two of them in the sky. Which I suppose makes sense, there are other ways to get ahold of Solar Energy, most of the ones I know of are much more effective than using the Suns. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    He was also fascinated by the fact that I, a mana based creature, could safely use Solar Energy. Most cultivators rely on the whole repelling mana thing in order to keep themselves safe from mana and people that try to wield both Solar Energy and mana end up dead unless they give up one or the other. He was fascinated, and a bit scared, when I demonstrated my ability to keep Solar Energy from interacting with ambient mana by having it move really fast, and was suitably impressed when I demonstrated what happens when I intentionally stop a bit of it. He was similarly impressed when I demonstrated how much control over the stuff my last evolution and my artificially expanded mind gives me. Showing off like that to one of the best in the world was fun, a lot of fun.


    I also learned quite a bit about Solar Energy. He isn¡¯t a true immortal for nothing, he knows more about the stuff than I possibly could, he¡¯s reached the pinnacle of power relying solely on Solar Energy. Like ways to temporarily and dramatically improve my own endurance and strength, or a couple better methods of manipulating Solar Energy inside of someone else. The first one I don¡¯t expect to be too useful, but the second will be very useful in healing. He also taught me how to use Solar Energy to repel mana, which turned out to be similar to the structure of my Solar Energy pool, only less efficient and able to scale upwards a lot better. Not something I will ever use as it is way too effective, and I am kinda made of mana so it would probably kill me. Still, it is interesting to know.


    Towards the end of our conversation, Emericus asked me to teach him how to use Solar Energy without having to worry about mana. I told him that if you can keep Solar Energy moving fast enough then it can¡¯t interact with mana, and that I am capable of healing him if he hurts himself while trying to figure things out. Though it doesn¡¯t seem like anyone else would really be able to heal him as it takes Solar Energy to properly heal someone improved as heavily by the stuff as Emericus has been.


    We ended the conversation with me giving a demonstration on what he is supposed to be aiming for in addition to giving him an external copy of the Solar Energy making device.


    As I couldn¡¯t really do anything in the caverns today I ended up spending time with everyone, though I spent most of it with my dad because we haven''t hung out much recently. This time we talked a lot about teaching, mostly because I¡¯ve been doing a lot of that recently and I was wondering what he knew about the subject. He told me stories about times where he was the teacher, like times when he trained a bunch of peasants in order to hold off an army long enough for reinforcements to arrive, focusing a lot on the actual teaching than the rest of the story, or times where he had particularly noteworthy teachers.


    At one point during our conversation someone showed up to talk to my dad, someone I recognized as the leader of one of the city-states that joined us willingly. Apparently, my dad was the one to get him his position in one of his adventures long before I was born, a story I remember him telling me. Something about starting a revolution, there were a couple of those stories.


    Anyway, the guy came to visit an old friend so I let them talk and hang out without interrupting them.


    After that, I played some board games with Azrezel and Tiddol. Most of the games we played were cooperative, more than one of them obviously inspired by some of the adventures my dad has told me about, one of them even had ¡®Eric Kron¡¯ on the cover of the box. It¡¯s still weird seeing how famous my dad is, I know logically he¡¯s the single most famous adventurer of a generation, but he¡¯s still my dad. It catches me off guard every time.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 329

    My Apprentices are figuring things out that I hadn''t even considered, like functions for organs beyond its main intended purpose, or ways that certain parts of the body that interact in ways I had never thought about. At this point they are halfway through dissecting all of the bodies, it won¡¯t be too long before they have dissected every body I am able to create.


    It¡¯s getting pretty difficult to keep a steady hold on my Fate now, I give it a day or two before I am forced to use it. The question is how? What is the most beneficial thing I can do with the single largest amount of Fate I have ever gathered before? The ideal situation would be for it to somehow improve my abilities with Fate, but I don¡¯t have any way to influence that. I can push it in other directions though.


    I definitely don¡¯t want to burn it creating a glass plant, that would be a massive waste of Fate. There is nothing I really want to do with it, the only things I am working on is making a glass plant and teaching. Maybe I could use it for the sake of my apprentices? I have no idea how to go about trying to get it to do that though. I¡¯m not sure it really matters what I try to do with it, any control I have over Fate is minimal at best. I think I will burn it while taking some time to think by myself, after Umi and Ednar¡¯s birthday party tomorrow. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Speaking of, I also prepared some gifts for them today. For Umi, I prepared her something using Requiem, Pipeweed, and the best gemstone I could buy, some high-grade Demon Glass. When she places it on her skin and moves mana into it in just the right way it will latch onto her similar to how the clothes I designed do and allow her to make use of the content of the gem almost as well as she could use her own native mana pool. That gemstone is being constantly refilled by Requiem so as to create as close to a bottomless supply of mana that I can. The whole thing can be removed with the same method used to attach it. I figure the only thing a mage really needs is more mana.


    Ednar was a bit more difficult to make a gift for. Anything I could make with plants he could also make, maybe not as well as I could but still. That line of thought got me thinking about what he wouldn¡¯t be able to make with just being able to manipulate plants. The answer I came up with was an artificial brain that connects to his through telepathy and provided more brain power, a much smaller version of my own hivemind.


    Creating gifts ended up taking up my hivemind, while no significant changes happened with the glass caverns. I expect that to change tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 330

    The morning was dominated by the birthday party. It was a pretty small event, all things considered. It was mostly our inner circle, so myself, Azrezel, Tiddol, Par, and a couple of the kids'' friends and acquaintances. And, of course, the people whose birthday it is in the first place, Ednar and Umi. If they wanted to they could have easily turned it into a massive party with thousands of people, being the children of the emperor comes with certain advantages.


    Shortly after that I burned my Fate, and nothing. No sudden sparks of inspiration, no dead dragons landing at my feet, no spontaneous evolution, just nothing. I would expect burning that much Fate to produce some obvious effect, but I guess not. Whatever it did, the results should show themselves sooner or later. Unless it prevented something, which is just a whole new kind of scary.


    It did leave me feeling kind of sore though, like how I would imagine a muscle feels after an intense workout. Which I guess that whole event was. Regardless it was really difficult to bring myself to increase my Fate today, and it felt really good to relax that particular muscle.


    A minute later I got a glass plant, and then twelve more within the next five minutes. I guess the size of caverns was massive overkill. The people building the caverns have decided to continue to expand them, though they won¡¯t be able to quite as fast without my help. Some of them because they can find some valuable stuff down there, others because they think the caverns are pretty, and still others because they enjoy the work. I look forward to seeing what they can create with that. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I ended up spending the rest of the day perfecting a glass plant, made significantly easier by having a lot of variations to draw pieces from. Ultimately I decided to call it Shimmerleaf because of the way that light bounces off of the leaves. By the end of the day it was done and I had a plant growing in the ocean without it being destroyed spectacularly. I did integrate a small amount of Mithrilwood to help keep the plant durable, which gave it a nice blueish color similar to the glass caverns, but other than that I wasn¡¯t able to integrate anything else as the plant was really porous and let acid inside. If I didn¡¯t use some mithrilwood then the whole structure of the tree likely wouldn¡¯t hold up for very long, the plant isn¡¯t exactly magical.


    And now I can expand into the oceans freely. The trees I grow in the ocean aren¡¯t quite as useful as the ones I grow on land but they will eventually reach other continents, where they will become incredibly useful. In the meantime, I might be able to figure out ways to integrate more plants into them.


    Other than that I spent my downtime time thinking to myself, which was when I burned my Fate. it ended up mostly being me getting frustrated over a lack of anything obvious happening.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 331

    Today my Apprentices dissected the last body I made for them. The knowledge that they have gained from this exercise isn¡¯t perfect, but the difference in their abilities compared to before is dramatic.


    I ended up spending my day modifying, improving, and expanding the place they were using to dissect bodies. It¡¯s now ten times as big and is able to be expanded when bodies of creatures that are not currently present are added to it, every hour all of the bodies are restored to pristine condition by way of Spellwood and Whitefoot, and it is open to the public. People will be able to come and go as they please for now, but if it gets too popular we¡¯ll have to start restricting entry. That being said I hope it does get popular as there is little point otherwise.


    I received word today that people that have access to my hivemind have finally managed to infiltrate cities under the control of the angelic council. By all accounts a series of very lucky coincidences allowed them to slip past security that had so far been good at keeping our people out. This happened in every single major city under their control almost simultaneously. It almost certainly has something to do with me burning my Fate yesterday and by all accounts the effects are still persisting, their string of good luck hasn¡¯t stopped yet. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    This is amazing for us, it is a very tangible step forward to taking down the angelic council. With me feeling all of the anger and the hatred the people have towards the enemy this thought is very satisfying. It is only a matter of days before our people are rooted into their cities too far for them to be removed with any kind of ease, and from there we can start taking over their cities from the inside. I have no doubt that they are attempting the same thing, but they don¡¯t have the advantage of a hivemind.


    Other than that I spent some time hanging out with Tiddol. We just kinda relaxed together for a while. At one point she fell asleep on my shoulder. She¡¯s been overworking herself for a while and needed the break. It was satisfying, being able to be there for her in that small way.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 332

    Today my apprentices started a new exercise. This time they are given a couple dozen bodies at various levels of injury and stability. They have to prioritize how they spend their time and effort to save as many of them as possible, at this point they can more or less heal any injury that doesn¡¯t involve some sort of healing resistant poison, but they don¡¯t have the mana to complete this exercise. I expect that to change pretty quickly.


    I have started to run into a problem with the trees I am growing in the ocean; the ocean gets really deep rather quickly. My trees don¡¯t float so I need their roots to reach the ocean floor, which isn¡¯t a problem close to the coast but makes things progress very slowly once I get past that. I¡¯m not really sure how to go about making my trees float quite yet, glass is heavy and it has a tendency to sink. I tried making something in the shape of a boat, but it quickly filled with water and sunk because of all of the pores in the glass. And I can¡¯t remove those or the plant dies. I¡¯m sure I could figure out a way to get it to work with time and effort, which I will be doing, but in the meantime, I am going to try something else.


    See, the trees are too heavy and are a terrible shape to float, but if I make something much smaller then those issues become much more manageable. The design I ended up going with was a bunch of disks connected to each other by some thin, flexible, and relatively lightweight string. I¡¯m not entirely sure why it works but that design manages to float better than every other design except the disks on their own with no string, but that tends to float away or get eaten by sea creatures.


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


    It¡¯s nowhere near as good as having trees, it certainly doesn¡¯t provide the same level of control over the area, but it is better than nothing. Plus it helps make growing trees in the ocean faster.


    My next project is trying to figure out how to get the trees themselves to float. I have a couple ideas about how to go about doing this, but most of them require me to figure out how to get other plants to be able to integrate safely into Shimmerleaf without being destroyed by the acid. Maybe I can use Whitelock somehow to pull the trees upward? I know many Air manipulators are able to use it to fly really well. Something to try tomorrow.


    I talked with Emericus today during my downtime. He¡¯s spent nearly every waking moment since we last talked trying to figure out how to get Solar Energy and mana to coexist, and managed to blow himself up countless times, nothing he can¡¯t handle. At this point he has more or less succeeded, though he still has trouble keeping mana moving fast enough, he is more than able to make up for that with his control over Solar Energy. He still has to concentrate on it quite a lot or it will blow up in his face, but as long as he is concentrating it is stable.


    The guy is very thankful to me, I didn¡¯t even really do all that much, just tell him that it is possible. Still, I won¡¯t complain about having another way that he owes me.


    He asked me to build him a place where he can sit down and meditate for a while without any potential issues. A place that is perfectly insulated from ambient mana outside of itself. This isn¡¯t an issue for me, but I made sure to build it deep underground so that there won¡¯t be any potential problems if he messes up and causes a bunch of Solar Energy to detonate. I also made sure to remove nearly all of the ambient mana on his request, leaving just enough to keep his Solar Energy creating device functioning. From there he teleported into the room, because of course he can teleport, and started meditating. I don¡¯t think I am going to see him again any time soon.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 333

    Askos has taken to this exercise better than junior has. She is the better healer, but he is better at prioritizing who to heal when as well as knowing what he is and isn¡¯t capable of. Junior always goes to the most injured body and starts healing them, and often succeeds, but in the time it takes her to do that several others die because they were wildly unstable already. Askos, on the other hand, gets just barely enough information about everyone to figure out which ones he can completely ignore, which ones he can heal easily, and which ones will die without his immediate attention. He then gives the ones in critical condition a little bit of healing to patch up the most fatal wounds before working on them one at a time, only getting them to the point that they are stable before moving on to the next one. His method would work if he had about five times as much mana as he actually does, but it is a vast improvement over what Junior is currently doing. I don¡¯t want to tell them directly what they need to do, it kind of defeats the whole thing I¡¯ve got going here, but she needs to either figure out that she needs to change how she approaches the exercise or dramatically improve overnight, I¡¯m not sure which will come first.


    As for my personal project, using Whitelock to hold up a tree does work, but nowhere near the scale I need it to. I can get a small shrub to float by creating a balloon that is lighter than air and having it pull up on it, but not anything bigger. Still better than nothing but not nearly enough. Plus it tends to prevent light from reaching the plant which prevents them from producing mana, and whatever else it is they do with light. I know plants are able to survive off of nothing but mana, but they don''t like it.


    Now I¡¯m trying to use Water Lotus to maybe try moving the water around the tree in a way that will help it float, but I¡¯m having issues with that. With Whitelock I am able to have it far above the water line, keeping it from being splashed with the acidic ocean water, but with Water Lotus I would have to have it in the water, which destroys it. Using Shimmerleaf and Mirthrilwood I think I can pull it off without the plant being destroyed, and I am having some success there. But it is hard and I¡¯m not entirely sure what I¡¯m doing, which seems to be a major theme of many of my recent projects. But regardless, I¡¯m sure I¡¯ll figure out how to get other plants to survive in Shimmerleaf, and once I do that it will be much easier to anything with the stuff. Maybe then I can even explore under the ocean without worrying about being burnt alive and melted simultaneously.


    Parius is going back to the front lines today, things have been getting steadily worse for our side while he has been absent. Not to an alarming degree or anything like that, just a couple small losses on our end that wouldn¡¯t have been loses had our great Emperor been there. He¡¯s taking his kids with him again, apparently, they have started to become pretty good tacticians under his tutelage, though I often hear them complaining about being forced to read history books a lot. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Tiddol was a bit lonely with her kids heading off to war with their father again, so I hung out with her today. She ended up giving me a really long and in-depth lecture about alchemy today, I¡¯ll admit it wasn¡¯t all that interesting, but I can see that information coming in handy if I ever need to create my own alchemical stuff with my plants. Of course, the only way I would ever really need to do that was if I was somehow captured again as I highly doubt anyone would be able to take not only Tiddol but also all of the alchemists she has trained away from me. I highly doubt anyone would ever be able to lock me up again, but it is at least more likely than every alchemist around me disappearing.


    There has also been a lot of progress with developing our metalworking capabilities. A massive excess of very valuable metal tends to speed that process along pretty quickly, and our stock is still growing faster than it is being used thanks to people expanding the caverns. None of them are actively looking for metal either, only digging up veins when they come across them.


    From what I hear the biggest progress has been in the refining and purifying of various ores, which makes sense, cut out all of the rock and dirt and there is a lot less stuff you have to store. Plant manipulators using Pyre and Digger Root have been leading that particular endeavor. But there has been some progress in creating actual metal items, at first it was mostly utensils made out of iron or lead, but a particularly skilled healer noticed that lead was poisonous pretty quickly so we no longer make anything relating to food out of lead. Now we are making a bunch of small quality of life items out of metal, mostly iron, but the plant versions of them are still strictly better, and I doubt that will change unless I get ahold of a plant to manipulate metal.


    Now there is an idea, I am sure I could make one if I work with Digger Root enough. I wouldn¡¯t really use it myself, but it would be a good thing for the people. And I know the plant already exists, unlike what happened with Shimmerleaf, so it won¡¯t be difficult to get it to evolve into that direction. I might do that next.


    The members of my hivemind have been rooted out of the capital of the enemy in addition to a handful of other cities, but everywhere else it has successfully taken root. Unfortunately, it seems like their supernatural luck has come to an end, but it achieved more than I expected it too.


    Other than that not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 334

    Junior is still struggling with the current exercise, but at least now she is starting to realize what she¡¯s doing wrong. Askos, on the other hand, is able to keep all of the bodies alive as long as he still has mana to spare, and is even able to get several of them to survive past that, though not without injuries. This isn¡¯t the type of exercise that I think they are going to perfect, it will be years before they have the kind of mana pool necessary for that. Of course, they could prove me wrong, who knows?


    The only real progress I made today on my own project was a small increase in survival time for any plants I integrated into Shimmerleaf trees, and that was only by increasing the sheer amount of stuff I put in there, if there is more stuff to destroy it takes longer to destroy it. I¡¯m going to have to keep the plant above the waterline enough that I can heal it faster than it is being destroyed, but when doing that the best I can get is to make the water spin a bit, not exactly extremely useful.


    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Maybe Tiddol might know a way to make it work, I¡¯ll see about asking her tomorrow.


    My forest enveloped another major city today, one in the opposite direction of the angelic council. They had willingly joined our empire a while back and there was a bit of a festival today celebrating being brought into my forest. I showed up at the event with Azrezel and met with people, mostly the people in charge of the city, though I did meet up with a number of important civilians. One person who caught my attention was a vibrant purple queen slime, one of the very few types of slimes that are consistently sentient and also very rare in this part of the world. Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t get a chance to study their body, it would have been fascinating to figure out how they worked and how they are able to be intelligent despite being more or less a blob of acid. Maybe another day.


    It was fun, the people were nice, there was good food and plenty of entertainment. One of the people we visited with claimed that his alcohol could get even an undead drunk, Azrezel disproved that to his own displeasure. I didn¡¯t drink much of it myself because it tasted terrible, like pure fire.


    Other than that, not a lot happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 335

    It finally clicked for Junior today, she realized what she was doing wrong and as a result, her results improved quite a bit. Either that or she is emulating her brother, which isn¡¯t a bad thing.


    The two of them have been working hard so I thought I would get them a reward for their efforts. I ended up picking up some chocolate ice cream, made with alchemical chocolate flavoring here in town, and they loved it.


    As for what I did with my projects today, I started by meeting up with Tiddol to ask her advice. I described everything I was working with and she suggested that I use a spiral to help push out the water from a large bowl-shaped object. Her logic was that since I could get the water to spin a little safely then I could use that spinning motion to drive it up a spiral and out over the edges of the bowl.


    Initial tests showed that the problems were things I could fix, like water pouring into the bowl too fast, not being able to make the water spin fast enough, or the whole tree tipping over entirely, but it would work. I just need to fix some minor issues first, that¡¯s all, nothing I haven¡¯t done before.


    The first problem I worked towards solving was the tree tipping over, which makes things pretty hard to test everything else. It also seemed like the easiest problem to fix, even if it¡¯s only a temporary fix. I ended up just putting a bunch of weight down in the roots of the plant to make it less top heavy, it took me a lot of tweaking and refinement to figure out how to get enough weight in the right place to prevent it from tipping over without unbalancing it while also avoiding putting so much weight that the whole tree sunk beneath the waves. There are several trees at the bottom of the ocean right now, and they are alive but they aren¡¯t going to be able to grow or reproduce without sunlight. Though I did get a glass mushroom, maybe I can turn what I already have down there into a glass mushroom? It would allow them to thrive in the depths. Maye after I am done with the surface, I¡¯m not in any hurry to explore the depths of the ocean quite yet. I think the only part of my body that could survive that is my dungeon core. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    During my downtime I mostly just thought to myself. I found a comfortable place out in the middle of nowhere and let my thoughts flow, only to be rudely interrupted by a hunter firing an arrow past me at a non-sentient beast that happened to be close by. Based on the fact that he didn¡¯t recognize me I figured he wasn¡¯t from around here, and I was proven right when he said as much himself in a very fancy and overdrawn apology that reminds me of one my dad described himself using in a similar situation. It quickly became painfully obvious that he was trying to emulate my dad to try and seduce me, which is really weird for me. Having met the original everything he tried seemed laughable. I tried ignoring him for a while, but that proved impossible so I teleported away.


    I hope I don¡¯t meet him again, he was really annoying and cocky. He¡¯s probably used to simple-minded girls just gushing at his voice.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 336

    Askos is still taking to this exercise incredibly well, he just needs a little bit more mana and he will be able to keep all of the bodies alive, if not in one piece. Junior, on the other hand, is still spending more mana than she absolutely has to on every single body, keeping her from achieving the same despite the fact that she is the better healer.


    The actual work I did today was more of what I am already used to, refining things until they are perfected. I¡¯m able to keep a plant from sinking for a full minute now, as opposed to the two or three seconds I was getting previously, simply from increasing the speed at which I am able to spin the water. Hopefully, progress will continue like that until I get what I want.


    The people digging caverns have come across something interesting today, a massive natural cave full of hot water. There are even some living creatures in the cave, mostly different varieties of small aquatic beasts, though I did see a small draconic creature in there that was hunting the beasts. How they got down there I have no idea, the mana in the area isn¡¯t exactly thick, mana doesn¡¯t move through solid rock very fast, and there aren¡¯t any obvious holes to the surface. Maybe this is the remains of an ancient dungeon that died before the first sentient? Who knows?


    The creatures inside of the cave were pretty unique compared to other creatures I have studied, one of the beasts in particular had ears good enough to hear and track the heartbeats of every other creature in the cave. It was interesting to study them and I am curious to see how they will change with a massive influx of mana. Regardless, I will try to avoid interacting with them as simply me being close can cause some changes, like easier evolutions. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    My Paladins are doing well, they are quickly becoming some of our best soldiers. With all of them being able to take advantage of the skills of the others, as I have said before they all know everything everyone else has said.


    The news about them isn¡¯t all good though, one of the forty died in an accident. Ended up falling to death inside of a dungeon after some explosions opened a hole in the floor, and several floors below it. I mean, it¡¯s annoying, but it was bound the happen eventually so I¡¯m not too worked up about it. But something interesting happened when he died, or rather something interesting didn¡¯t happen. Based on what I know, when he died everything he knew should have dropped out of their hivemind, but everyone is still able to access what he knew without issues. All of them claim that he is still somehow there, just sleeping. It¡¯s weird, and probably has something to do with the soul so I¡¯m hesitant to touch it, but it is still reassuring to know that death isn¡¯t a total loss.


    It doesn¡¯t happen with the greater hivemind though, I wonder which difference it is that causes that to happen.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with my dad and listening to him tell stories. It is amazing that he still has stories to tell after so many years of never telling to same one twice. I guess there is a good reason for him to be so famous.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 337

    Askos succeeded today, barely. He managed to keep all of the bodies from dying, though on one he had to amputate an arm to keep it from bleeding to death. After all was said and done he had all of the bodies stable and from there it would have been easy enough to take your time and get all of them back into peak condition.


    Junior isn¡¯t able to be as efficient here as Askos is, but she is the better healer. She is coming close to also being able to keep all of the bodies stable. I give it a day, maybe two, before she pulls it off.


    For their next exercise, I will have them trying to heal while being actively opposed by things like Null or a poison that makes healing harder, I could probably make one out of Whitefoot.


    I have also made some significant progress on getting my trees to float. Tiddol came to me with what she says is the best overall design for the actual bowl to maximize the amount of water being carried up by the spiral, which improved the results rather dramatically. It likely would have taken me a week to get a design as good as the one she created.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    I didn¡¯t just improve Water Lotus today, I also figured out ways to decrease the amount of pores in Shimmerleaf. I spent some time figuring out how I could decrease the number of pores without harming the health of the plant and made some decent progress.


    Overall I think I should have something capable of floating indefinitely within the next two days.


    Other than that I saw the same guy from a couple days ago, the one that was trying to seduce me. At the time he was talking to my dad and was very animated and excited, and when he saw me he gave me a whole spiel about how ¡®it was a shame I got called away last time¡¯ and other stuff like that. When I called my dad ¡®dad¡¯ he went white as fresh snow. This time he was the one to run away.


    After talking with my dad for a bit after that it seems that the guy is actually a competent adventure, which is kind of problem because he is trying to emulate my dad, specifically emulate him in his capacity as a kingmaker. It seems he heard about a rapidly growing empire and decided to check things out for himself to ¡®make sure Emperor parius wasn¡¯t abusing his power¡¯. Needless to say, my dad has already made sure that there is a kill squad on standby to take him out if he proves to be a problem, which could very easily happen. In the meantime, my dad is trying to manipulate the guy into going after the angelic council instead. He isn¡¯t a threat to Par or most other important people, but he could cause a lot of damage if he wanted to.


    That ended up taking up my downtime.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 338

    Today I set up some really potent Null in the area around where my apprentices have been training. I don¡¯t expect it to hinder them for too long, but it can be useful to know how to get around it. When they figure that out I will change it up, and I will keep changing it up until nothing I can throw at them hinders them.


    I finally got it so that my trees are able to float indefinitely, assuming there is no outside interference. Ideally, I want them to be able to continue floating regardless of the situation, so I will keep improving it for a bit.


    Today I mostly focused on decreasing the amount of water that gets inside of the bowl and managed to get it to the point where even the smallest improvement there starts to harm the health of the tree, which was unacceptable. Tomorrow I will probably focus on making the water spin faster, it already spins more than fast enough to keep up with what is pouring in, but if a significant amount pours in through the lip all at once then there will be problems. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Tiddol. We ended up playing board games today, she won most of them. One in particular that I won was about alchemy, but the person who made the game apparently knew nothing about alchemy so Tiddol ended up messing up at almost every turn. We decided not to play that one again.


    Overall it was a pretty uneventful day, it was nice and quiet.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 339

    I was right when I said that Null wouldn¡¯t hinder my apprentices for long, they managed to figure to get through the first version I had them working under in minutes. In order to really challenge them, I had to dedicate part of my hivemind to constantly changing it as a static version of Null is just bypassed way too easily. Which does give me some ideas for future a project to work on.


    The constantly shifting form of Null prevented them from quickly adapting and overcoming to it, instead forcing them to find other, harder, methods around it. I¡¯m not sure if anything similar exists elsewhere, but I don¡¯t want it to be able to hinder my apprentices. As I have said before, I won¡¯t be satisfied until they are able to heal any injury under any circumstances.


    It would require active sabotage in order for my floating trees to sink, and even then it would be pretty difficult. By changing the design a bit I have made it nearly impossible for a significant amount of water to enter through the top of the bowl, even while being submerged slightly it expels water faster than it would be able to pour in. I achieved this by just putting a lid on the top, it did take me quite a while to figure out how to get it to work properly, but it was worth the effort. That plus using Water Lily to expel water is more than enough to spread my forest through the ocean. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    For my next project, I think I will try to get Digger root to be able to manipulate metal. It shouldn¡¯t be too difficult, Digger root isn¡¯t exactly a complicated plant. I don¡¯t see myself using it much, but there has been quite a lot of success in getting people to learn how to work with metal. I mean, we don¡¯t have anyone who has mastered it quite yet, it is going to take a long time to get someone on that level, but the sheer amount of metals we are pulling out of the ground gives people a lot to practice with. And getting ahold of a plant capable of manipulating metal should make it easier to do a lot of things with it.


    I spent my downtime with Azrezel, cuddling to cool down mostly, though that failed as things ended up getting really hot and steamy.


    Other than that we got word from Par that he has met the enemy in open combat and currently has the advantage, though at this point the fighting is likely already over. From what I have been told our rank and file soldiers are better than theirs, and we have a much larger population to draw from, but they have a lot more elite soldiers and warriors than we do. The reason we are winning so consistently is that they haven¡¯t started really using their elites.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 340

    My apprentices are still struggling under the burden of an ever-changing field of anti-magic, but they are getting better. They¡¯ve managed to figure out more efficient methods to heal and are able to heal faster, among other things. The mana they waste is decreased when they spend less time and mana on any one thing. Junior is handling this exercise better than Askos is, but not by an extreme margin. Yeah, at first he was very inefficient with his magic, but that is a weakness he has done a very good job of patching up. He still isn¡¯t quite at the level of Junior, but she¡¯s always been the better healer. He makes up for that in other ways.


    I think that I will create an area for people to practice working under the anti-magic zone once I¡¯m done figuring out how to get Digger Root to manipulate metal properly. Well, maybe not create it exactly, more like design it and have my children build it when and where there is demand.


    Standing at the edge of my forest I can see the edge of our empire, it will be about a month before I reach it. From there I will be able to personally push enemy territory, the presence of my forest will only be a boon in this war.


    A couple more cities have been picked clean of people with access to my hivemind. But the ones that haven¡¯t, a bit less than half of their cities, have gotten to the point that it would take a concentrated effort on the part of the enemy in order for them to be rooted out. I¡¯m sure they could pull it off if they diverted some of their military, but it¡¯s my understanding that their military is already barely holding out against ours. If they want to root us out then they are probably going to need to put their elites into play, maybe even some of the council members themselves. That would be a victory in and of itself, potential for an assassination if nothing else. They¡¯ve thrown plenty at us, it would make sense for us to throw some back at them, right?


    Of course, it is entirely likely that I am simply wrong and don¡¯t understand anything about the situation, which wouldn¡¯t surprise me.


    As for my current project, so far I have been focusing on allowing Digger Root to manipulate less pure amounts of dirt and rock. So basically allowing it to indirectly manipulate ores that are purer than before. I¡¯m not completely sure that this will work to allow the plant to manipulate metal, but I¡¯m hoping that intention is enough to bridge that gap eventually. If not it is easy enough to build a giant dome out of metal and rapidly evolve it inside of there. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    I¡¯m looking forward to seeing what the people can make of the results of this project.


    Other than that I spent my downtime giving instruction to my Paladins on things like healing and plant manipulation, lessons they take too almost as well as my Apprentices, who were born into the role. All of them are constantly wearing really heavy bulky armor and they have taken to using large hammers instead of swords. In addition, they are making use of alchemical stuff way better than I would be able to, they are able to make several dozen different potions with the plants that they have inside of themselves and inject it directly into their own bodies at a moment¡¯s notice. Two of them, in particular, are interesting, one of them was named ¡®Thes¡¯ Brew¡¯ which is made primarily from Drowsy Clover, Ergen, and Flore and the other was dubbed ¡®knockout juice¡¯ and was made mostly from Drowsy Clover and Dead Tulip.


    Thes¡¯ Brew, which is an apt name, causes the person using it to enter a berserk rage. During this rage, they ignore pain and exhaustion and are able to fight for a full twenty hours, two days, before being physically incapable of moving due to internal injuries caused by the potent potion. Healing can keep them going for longer. So far the effects seem to last indefinitely, even long after the potion has run its course and existed their system. Only falling into a deep, restful sleep reliably knocks the user out of their rage.


    Normally self-healing and other forms of self-protection and awareness of their surroundings are almost impossible while under the effects of Thes¡¯ Brew, including injecting themselves with something to stop the rage, but their hivemind allows them to bypass most of those negative effects. It somehow interacts with the rage in a way that lets a voice of logic and reason pierce the rage and allow planned out actions. If it didn¡¯t the potion would be useless as it would be more of a liability than anything else.


    Knockout Juice does exactly what it says it does, inject a ridiculous amount of sleep-inducing substances into the body to take you from berserk rage to deep sleep faster than you can blink.


    Both of these potions work as intended, but they have some major drawbacks in the form of terrible internal injuries caused by the potions. They¡¯re working on trying to figure out how to reduce or eliminate those issues, but progress is slow as my Paladins are the only ones able to safely test it. And to make matters worse the two potions clash with each other quite a bit, causing even more damage than either of them would be able to do on their own.


    Tiddol is having the alchemists help them out with figuring out how to improve the stuff, but so far most of the improvements have been things like making the user stronger or faster and not things like making the potion less harmful. I¡¯m sure I could come up with something on my own, but this type of thing does work better with alchemy than with plant manipulation, and it¡¯s best if they figure it out on their own.


    Well, that and it reminds me a bit too much of my own failures. I had all of the tools and skills available, why didn¡¯t I make something like Knockout Juice as insurance if nothing else?


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 341

    Junior is doing significantly better at this exercise than Askos is, at the rate she¡¯s going Null won¡¯t be able to affect her at all in a day, maybe two. Askos will take three or four days before he¡¯s able to fully overcome this challenge.


    Both of them have improved in other ways as a result of this training. When even the smallest expenditure of mana is punished then you tend to figure out how to do things more efficiently. When something is actively trying to strip control away you tend to have a tighter grip, metaphorically speaking. In practice it¡¯ll be harder for anyone or anything to prevent them from working their magic, I bet that not even a solid blow to the head would be enough to make them lose control. Very useful if they ever want to learn other forms of magic, they should have spells backfire less often which means that they will be less likely to get sick.


    Speaking of getting sick, I am currently sick. It isn¡¯t anything severe or life-threatening, and certainly nothing contagious, but the constant headache and hunger pangs are annoying. I didn¡¯t have a spell backfire or anything like that, it just kind of happened. Which is rare but not unheard of, and my current situation has made it much more likely to happen, at least according to the scholars when I asked them today.


    See, sickness is caused by a random formation of a spell inside of your body, this is something I already knew. This is caused most frequently by having a spell backfire on you, but it is possible to cause it in someone else intentionally, in that case it is called a curse. It is possible to make self-perpetuating curses, but doing so gets you hunted by the most powerful people in the scholar¡¯s order, more often than not wielders of nuclear fire. Something to take note of in case I ever decide to study curses.


    Anyway, those same spells can also be caused naturally by random formations in ambient mana. This isn¡¯t really able to cause someone to get sick as it happens in open air, but it does happen quite often. Small bits of stuff are being constantly conjured into existence by any sufficiently dense collection of mana, which explains why places that haven¡¯t been visited in a while are always dusty. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Those same random spell formations don¡¯t really happen in someone¡¯s own mana pool because in general people with large mana pools also have a lot of control over their own mana, which prevents random spells from forming in their own mana pool, while people who don¡¯t have that kind of control generally have small amounts of mana to work with, preventing any random spell forming in their mana pool from doing much of anything before it burns itself out.


    I¡¯m a bit different, as I have said before by access to mana has nothing to do with my ability to control it. I am capable of controlling my mana pool quite well, especially considering my hivemind, but I don¡¯t as unlike most people with the kind of mana I have it takes active effort from me. Now, this was all well and good for a while, but recently the amount of mana I have access to has dramatically increased, most notably because of Requiem, while my control over mana has stayed more or less the same. Me getting sick wasn¡¯t a matter of if, but of when.


    I¡¯m just glad it happened in such a small way, now that I realize it is something I need to actually deal with I can deal with it. Actively settling my mana pool with my hivemind is simple and not very strenuous, but I still had to know it was something I needed to do in order to do it.


    Anyway, enough about my mild headache. The actual meat of the day was occupied by trying to get Digger Root to manipulate metal. I¡¯m starting to hit a wall in my progress there, you can only get so far through manipulating impurities in metal, while pure metal has proven impossible to manipulate. I was hoping that intention would be enough to bridge that gap, but either I¡¯m not close enough or I don¡¯t want it badly enough quite yet. I have no doubt that this method will work eventually, as I will get increasingly emotional and frustrated about the lack of progress that eventually I want nothing more than to actually get this thing to work, but I would really rather it not get to that point. I¡¯ll give it one more day of solid work, if that doesn¡¯t work then I will try something else.


    I ended up spending my downtime looking into why I got sick and what I can do to prevent it, and though the conversations I had on the subject were fascinating, they didn¡¯t exactly leave time for much else. It did remind me of Mest a bit though, specifically of him telling me that pretty much every single one of the scholars is at least trained in how to identify and classify different types of sickness so that they can root out self-perpetuating ones before they become a threat. That seems to be more or less true, while none of the scholars here specialize in studying sickness and curses all of them still knew quite a bit about the subject. The people in charge of their order must be really terrified of the prospect of a sickness that is self-perpetuating.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 342

    Today my apprentices made progress towards completing this current exercise, but nothing out of the ordinary or unexpected happened with them. They are progressing at pretty much the rate I predicted that they would, Junior should have mastered it within a day, Askos within two. From there I will probably make them heal while some kind of poison is actively preventing them from doing so, it should be easy enough to make with Whitefoot.


    So I finally managed to get a Digger Root to evolve into a plant capable of manipulating metal the way its predecessor was able to manipulate dirt and rocks. No Idea what I am going to call it yet, but I¡¯m sure I¡¯ll think of something.


    I ended up pulling it off shortly before lunchtime. I had gotten it to the point that Digger Root could manipulate anything short of pure metal before it finally made the leap to manipulating the metal instead of the impurities, which wasn¡¯t too surprising.


    I just hope people put it to use.


    My next project is going to be designing an object that projects an ever-changing anti-magic field around itself without outside input. The inspiration for this project comes from the current exercise my apprentices are undergoing, of course. I figure it might be useful to train under, and even if it isn¡¯t Par would be able to make use of it in hunting down enemy mages. So I need to make it as overwhelmingly powerful as I possibly can, and have it change itself as often as possible to keep enemy mages from learning how to resist the stuff.


    Plus there is the whole benefit of being able to make use of it better in my own presence. I¡¯ll probably need to figure out how to properly resist the stuff myself soon.Stolen story; please report.


    I can probably do a lot better with this than I did with the one I built for my apprentices. I spent maybe a minute designing it so it is far from perfect, but it was more than good enough for what I needed. Plus I can cut down a lot of the design if I personally power and control it.


    The one that I am going to be designing now needs to be able to power and run itself, as powering Null is actually really expensive. It costs way more mana that it actually should because it is affected by itself and isn¡¯t really able to learn and improve, or rather it is, but on a very large time scale. It would take longer than I have been alive for any noticeable difference to occur.


    Or maybe not. What if I make it smart? It would make the whole constant flux thing a lot easier without causing it to end up being predictable. Something to look into when I actually start this project.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel, who now has several dozen truly intelligent undead under his control. A couple of them have memories of a past life and one of them was even a mage, though in his memories he had access to maybe a tenth of the current ambient mana level. It does give him an advantage, and he had been a mage for nearly two centuries before dying, but the lack of mana makes it difficult to improve. As a result, he matches the best of our own mages while falling short of the likes of Azrezel and myself.


    Azrezel himself has recently been hunting for powerful corpses, when mass producing undead the ones we make through flesh manipulation are just fine, but if you want something really good then you need to work with better base materials. He has been buying up any powerful corpses he can and has even hired a group of adventurers to hunt down powerful creatures and bring him their corpses, the specific creatures they hunt down are of his own choosing, many of them being prominent people in the angelic council. I personally hope they pull those ones off.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 343

    This morning I spent some time designing a poison that would impede healing magic. It wasn¡¯t too difficult, I just had to combine Whitefoot and Astrie in the right way, and I didn¡¯t need it to be perfect either. I just need it to be good enough to cause my apprentices serious issues that they can then figure out how to overcome those problems.


    Creating a mind that is self-aware is actually really hard. I¡¯m not sure I can pull it off without a healthy amount of luck, and I do have a healthy amount of magical luck stored up but I¡¯m not sure if I want to try and use it for this. With some trial and error, I might be able to do something else though. With what I understand about the brain and the mind I should be able to create a crude design of what I want, and then I can take advantage of evolution and hopefully get a more refined version. Repeat that a couple thousand times and I should get there eventually.


    Like most of my projects, the work isn¡¯t hard, just tedious.


    I ended up talking to Talus today, or rather she came to talk to me. She apologized, saying that she wasn¡¯t exactly the best girlfriend, and, I mean, I wasn¡¯t either. She said that in hindsight she didn¡¯t exactly treat me well, though she used harsher language than that. She said that the fact that she had memories of a previous life regarding relationships, memories that she admitted to taking advantage of to try and manipulate me, is much worse than the passive manipulation that my dungeon core applies to everyone because I can¡¯t control that. In regards to that she also said ¡®at least with a dungeon everything you manipulate manipulates you in turn¡¯, something I am going to have to look into more. She said that she regretted treating me like a doll and constantly tried to interrupt me while I was working, though I do admit I could have been a bit more attentive.


    She also thanked me. She thanked me for saving her life when we first met, the injuries she had sustained could have killed her without my help. She thanked me for providing her a place where she could be safe for a while and allowing her a chance to grow into someone able to fend for herself. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    She cried when she found out that the heart of my forest was destroyed, I have never seen sorrow turn to seething rage so fast. She said that the place where we met was the first place since childhood that she truly felt safe.


    We parted ways after that, she didn¡¯t tell me where she was going but she left my forest entirely. It¡¯s quite likely that I will never see her again, which is sad really. We had something for a while, and while it wasn¡¯t all good it definitely had good parts. Would I do something differently? I¡¯m not sure.


    At least I¡¯ve realized that I am over her now. Emotionally anyway, if anything she is even more attractive than she was before. I feel nostalgic over the memories we share, though it wasn¡¯t that long ago, but I don¡¯t feel any desire to return to that.


    I wasn¡¯t the best girlfriend, I intentionally ignored her and often thought she was annoying when all she wanted was to hang out with me. I groaned and bemoaned whenever she would pull me away from my work, which more often than not wasn¡¯t exactly time sensitive. I easily could have taken some time every day to hang out with her without causing any real harm, but I didn¡¯t and I should have.


    And I can¡¯t help but compare what I have with Azrezel now to what I had with Talus. He¡¯s a lot more like I am, constantly working on passion projects and pursuing power because it¡¯s fun, not for any desire of power. We both rely on knowledge and understanding much more than emotion, intention, and desire. And a number of other small little ways in which we are similar.


    I will say that one thing I miss about Talus is her libido, Azrezel doesn¡¯t exactly have one unless I use some healing magic to say otherwise. The biological functions of undead don¡¯t really work properly, even when everything is in perfect condition.


    That was emotional to write, more so than I was expecting.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 344

    My apprentices have surprised me by figuring out how to get around even the most potent crude poisons I am able to produce with ease, according to them, it is very similar to resisting the field of Null, but easier. I¡¯m sure I could make something that would challenge them, but honestly, it is a little discouraging.


    At this point, I am running out of exercises to put them through, so I decided to do the hardest one I have managed to think of. Basically the active battlefield one from before, only with every single complication I can add. The two of them will be the only healers for an army of flesh and bone puppets fighting against another, much larger, force. This whole thing would be much more effective if each side had actual commanders that actually understand mass combat, so I recruit a couple less important military leaders and have them participate in this wargame. That also has the benefit of dramatically reducing the amount of mental resources it takes for me to run the exercise.


    After they master this exercise I will move on to teaching them how to safely shape flesh and mold bone, azrezel has been excited to help me teach that one.


    I heard from the scholars today that someone on the other side of the world a group of their members are preparing to use Requiem to try and start a colony on one of the moons. They are being held back by a lack of actual supply of the stuff as they can¡¯t seem to get it to grow and the only stuff they have is what they pull out of dungeons. They were asking me to create some for them so that they could pull off that project. Of course, I agreed, having my own plants on one of the moons will only make it easier to expand there someday. Stolen story; please report.


    While I was there some younger scholars, who I later learned to be students here for some in the field training, asked me to teach them how I managed to write a book in a couple days. The other scholars a bit angry and reprimanded them for disturbing me, but not before I realized that while teaching someone else how to write a book that fast might be a bit beyond me, I could probably make some kind of device that can do it for them.


    It would have to be something with unlimited potential for improvement, otherwise using magic to write with would be better every single time. Likely something that writes something out as quickly as you can think it? I¡¯ll have to talk about the scholars to make sure that I am not overlooking anything obvious.


    Anyway, as for my actual project, I have made really good progress. What I have now is good enough for what I want, it isn¡¯t actually self-aware but it does have the potential of doing so eventually. And honestly, that is probably better than making something that is actually self-aware, as if it is self-aware from the get-go it is more likely to not listen to instructions. So after I teach people how to make it I think I will be done with this project for now.


    Other than that I spent some time with Azrezel talking about the future. Not the immediate future like what we are going to do tomorrow, or even the decently close future, like what are we going to do with the angelic council, but the far future. We talked about my dream to expand my forest to the edges of the world and beyond. He talked about his desire to perfect the art of necromancy, following the same path his father was on towards the end of his life. He talked about how his father had originally assumed he was going to become an adventurer like he was in his youth, and how azrezel never wanted to be one himself, something unusual for the children of famous adventurers.


    If it weren''t for me he probably would have become one anyway, or at least that¡¯s what he says.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 345

    My Apprentices are struggling with their current exercise, which is definitely a good thing. They aren¡¯t learning if they aren¡¯t struggling.


    It¡¯s amazing how much Askos¡¯ attitude has changed since I met him. He¡¯s still headstrong and determined, but that determination is now tempered by restraint and other concepts I can¡¯t properly name. I doubt he will ever be as good of a healer as Junior is, but he will likely end up being much more important in his life. I can see Junior being satisfied as the head of the Hornmark household and leading a relatively simple life as one of the greatest healers in our great empire, while I can tell that Askos would be miserable in such a simple life.


    There is a certain restlessness about him, once I am no longer able to teach him anything I doubt he will stick around. The good news is he is a healer, healers are hard to kill and even when they are captured they are usually treated well. And he will be in danger in his life, much more so than Junior. I just have to as thorough as I can with his training.


    He hasn¡¯t vocalized his desires, but it is easy to piece things together when you are constantly someone¡¯s mind. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if even he isn¡¯t aware of what he wants yet


    Junior, on the other hand, has been a lot happier and more content recently. She hasn¡¯t been glued to my side nearly as much anymore and actually visits her siblings from time to time instead of putting every waking moment into training.


    She would be miserable as an adventurer, and I see her thriving in a quiet life.


    I spent most of my day talking with the scholars to try and figure out what a good writing device would be able to do. From what they say the single most important part is that it has no skill cap of any kind, so that it doesn¡¯t matter how good you get with it you will always be able to get better. They agreed with me when I said that using thoughts is probably the best way to go about it, though they did mention that some people might struggle to use it like that. Something to do with thinking in images instead of words, though I¡¯m not too sure how to get around that issue. With the scholars also trying to think of a solution we should be able to figure something out sooner or later. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    They did mention that plant manipulators capable of creating something even mildly complex by my standards are incredibly rare, so the device should have a way to duplicate itself in order for it to be able to achieve widespread use, probably something along the lines of feeding it mana and triggering a certain part of the device to make it duplicate itself.


    I also took the chance to ask about Talus¡¯s comment from the other day about dungeons being manipulated by the things that manipulate them, it seemed important. Several of the scholars here specialize in the study of dungeons, part of why they are here instead of somewhere else, so they probably know more than most. From what they said it likely has something to do with the soul, specifically how dungeons are capable of splitting off so many large fragments of their own soul.


    To properly explain it, it goes back to the method dungeons use to control their own creatures, which is the same method a necromancer uses to control their undead, only much more expensive and much more effective. Dungeons are able to pay this cost because they take the cast-offs of all souls inside of their domain, allowing them to replenish their own soul at a dramatically faster rate. Now, having your soul inside of another creature¡¯s soul lets you manipulate it, and the more of your soul present the more you are able to manipulate the creature. But even small amounts of another creature¡¯s soul is able to do something, and dungeons are constantly bringing tiny amounts of other souls to incorporate into their own body.


    I managed to get more information from the dungeons themselves about the subject. In most cases the vast majority of the souls in a dungeon would have been seeded by the dungeon, meaning the dungeon would in effect be getting tiny parts of their own soul constantly, which reinforces the personality of a dungeon and makes it hard for it to change. With younger dungeons this doesn¡¯t matter too much, it is hard enough to survive the day to day as an infantile dungeon, especially if you get discovered before you are able to defend yourself. But older dungeons will go out of their way to invite divers to enter into their home so that they can get a chance to grow and change.


    This is honestly really obvious in hindsight and not at all surprising. I already knew the people were influencing me in at least one way, and I am still me despite all of the countless souls influencing me so I don¡¯t think it is really an issue. That and even if I wanted to change that I don¡¯t think I would be able to.


    I¡¯ll be getting started on the writing device tomorrow, I¡¯m looking forward to seeing how that turns out.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 346

    Askos and Junior are getting much better at healing in a high-stress environment. At first, Junior would freeze up a bit when things started to go wrong, but she managed to quickly get over that and is now constantly darting around the battlefield on her white wings healing the most valuable wounded soldiers, though according to the people running the armies her idea of most valuable could use some work.


    Askos is doing the opposite, caring less about keeping the most valuable soldiers in peak condition and more about keeping as many soldiers in fighting condition as possible, spreading out his healing quite a bit. According to the generals, his approach has much more potential to have a larger impact on the fight as a whole, though they doubt that anyone healer short of my own abilities is capable of making enough of a difference to overcome this exercise. Sure it is a challenging task, more so than anything I¡¯ve had them do before, but most people also think that the speed at which they are improving is impossible for anyone who wasn¡¯t powerful, to begin with. I think they will eventually pull it off.


    By the end of the day, I had a working prototype of my current project. It is actually a really complicated device, it was surprisingly hard to figure out how to thoughts into words and even now you have to think the words very deliberately in order for it to appear on the page, which takes time and is mentally draining. Plus there is a delay of almost a full second before the words actually appear on the page. Also, currently you have to be part of my hivemind in order to actually make use of it, though I¡¯m sure a telepath or plant manipulator of any sort could do it just as well with some practice. There is also the minor issue of it being a pain to move the device along the page while it works, but that should be the easiest part of it to fix. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Overall pretty good for a day¡¯s worth of work, dealing with thoughts and minds is always really complicated so figuring things out this quickly is definitely a good thing. It is still going to take a lot of refining and improving before I get everything exactly how I want it, probably more than most of my recent projects.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Azrezel. He¡¯s been spending most of his time evolving his undead through the brute force method I used before figuring out how to trigger an evolution manually. He understands flesh manipulation enough to reliably and quickly trigger an evolution in some of his weaker undead, and observing and taking part in the evolution process makes for an amazing learning opportunity when it comes to shaping flesh and molding bone.


    At this point, he is probably better at manipulating flesh than me, which would be no surprise as he is definitely talented at it. His control isn¡¯t really on my level quite yet, my hivemind is significantly bigger than his, but his creativity with the subject is much greater. He¡¯s coming up with ideas and techniques that I had never even considered, a little bit of mana control can be trained a lot easier than that. I could probably pull off something similar with Fate, but that would be temporary and I wouldn¡¯t be able to do so regularly.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 347

    My apprentices managed to obtain a pyrrhic victory today, they triumphed at the cost of pretty much all of their troops. What ended up happening was close to the beginning of the fight their commander was taken out by a stray arrow, nothing fatal with so many skilled healers hanging around but he was left unconscious to recover. And so Askos ended up taking command, and as a tactician, he is talented and incredibly aggressive, or so I have been told. Not exactly a subject that interests me.


    All the while he was still healing all of the soldiers constantly, while he wasn¡¯t able to provide any specialized or informed aid to any of the injured he was able to do some very basic healing on a very large scale. It¡¯s really impressive for him to pull it off without the benefit of a hivemind like mine, though the quality of healing he was able to provide is nowhere near what it needs to be.


    He did enjoy being the commander, but that¡¯s not what I¡¯m here to teach him, and he is much more talented as a healer than as a strategist. Once I am done teaching him all I can I will do what I can to get him a good teacher for that.


    The biggest change I made my current project is a change in the way it actually creates words. Instead of printing on paper underneath it and constantly having to move it around the device creates paper from a spellwood creation I made for the project. That makes it much easier to use, though I still need to implement a way to properly store the paper that gets written. Maybe make a scroll like thing? I¡¯m not sure what the best way to go about it would be, but I¡¯m sure the scholars have some preference. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    I was also able to improve how well the device understands words, but not by as much as I would have hoped. It ends up reducing the amount of time to actually put the words on the paper by about a tenth of what it was before. Working with the brain is tricky stuff, and unless I want to start messing with the soul then I¡¯m going to have to keep grinding away like this.


    Other than that I spent some time with my dad today, listening to his stories and telling a couple of my own. He told me about how he ensured his own fame by telling his stories to anyone who would listen, and going out of his way to share them with other storytellers. He¡¯s told me several times that the reason he became an adventurer was because he wanted fame, but this is the first I¡¯ve heard of him ensuring that his fame would spread.


    What makes it weird to me is that he apparently didn¡¯t gloss over his own failures and tragedies. Instead, he embellished them, making them even more grandiose often to the point of painting himself as the bad guy in the stories he was telling and spreading to the masses. But from his own words, he does the same with his victories and his triumphs. To hear him say it he did not care in the slightest whether he was hated or loved, just that he was famous for what he actually did instead of a lie.


    Honestly, it does explain quite a bit, and if anything it makes me respect him more.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 348

    I have asked that Askos focuses on healing until there is nothing else I can teach him, he begrudgingly accepted and agreed to not play the commander in this current exercise.


    My apprentices didn¡¯t manage to gain any kind of victory today, though they did come close on a couple occasions. Both of them have gotten better at avoiding being under fire and preventing their enemies from targeting them, which definitely helps keep them mobile enough to properly heal the soldiers that need to be healed.


    Junior has gotten to the point where she can get a perfect mental map of someone¡¯s body almost instantly. While Askos, on the other hand, is able to figure out what is wrong with a crowd of people in the same amount of time, less information gained from any one person but all of it is immediately relevant to keeping them alive.


    Ultimately Askos would be better at dealing with a large scale emergency in the moment, but Junior would be better at dealing with the aftermath. Which is exactly what happened today.


    There was an explosion in town, there was a large crowd of people coming to see some kind of play and the explosion happened in the middle of that. Five people were killed immediately, with several dozen injured. Askos and Junior happened to be nearby when it happened, close enough to hear it but not close enough to react immediately. Once they got to the scene Junior freaked out a little but managed to get to work on the most injured victims, while Askos was identifying the worst of the damage and organizing everyone to make treatment as smooth as possible, all while keeping the few on the verge of death alive with his own magic.


    By the time I showed up to the scene everything was more or less under control, the perpetrator was caught and no one was at risk of dying. And so I let Askos, Junior, and a bunch of other healers take care of things, only making my presence known at the end to congratulate my apprentices on handling an emergency well. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    I learned a couple things watching them work. My apprentices are already a cut above the rest when it comes to healing, between their natural talent and my personal instruction they have grown very quickly. Askos has always had a cool head when dealing with emergencies, the situation with the poisoned child a while back proves as much. But before he lacked confidence, he was anxious and it showed in a bad way, now he organized the other healers with complete confidence. He didn¡¯t always make the right call, he is still inexperienced, but having him make somewhat bad decisions and getting people to follow them was still better than no decisions being made.


    If anything he did even better leading a small group of healers than he did leading an army the other day. Even my dad agrees, he would make a great adventurer.


    The perpetrator turned out to be a very young child who has more raw talent than control, she wanted ice cream but her mother told her no so she threw a fit. The mother isn¡¯t really able to restrain the child while the father, who is presumed to be a true immortal, is not in the picture. The mother basically just gave up the daughter at that point, I wasn¡¯t there when it happened but from what I heard she just handed the child to the city official and stormed away in frustration.


    As Par is on the front lines it fell upon Tiddol, me, and a number of other important people, including some of the scholars, to determine what was going to happen with the child. The mother is unreachable and the child has no other family who would be able to take her in. The general consensus was that we should build an orphanage, this isn¡¯t the first time children have been left without parents but it is the first time there was no one we could give them too. Having orphans just live in the streets can only end badly, way too many of my dad¡¯s stories involve orphans rising up and decapitating the government they were born into, I¡¯m not the head but I am definitely the face. And even if that wasn¡¯t the case, I don¡¯t want my people to suffer any more than they have to.


    During the discussions the scholars offered to run an orphanage school in the style of their order, assuming we build everything required and fund it. That wasn¡¯t too difficult, we¡¯re making enough money to more than pay for anything and we build more complex buildings in a couple days all of the time. It just fell on the scholars to get all of the materials that we couldn¡¯t get and hire all of the staff required.


    That meeting ended up taking my whole day, I got maybe half an hour to work on my current project. But whatever, it doesn¡¯t matter too much. Building a device to help people type is hardly a time-sensitive issue while building an orphanage is. I just hope the scholars can teach the girl how to control her powers.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 349

    Askos is having a much bigger impact on their current exercise than Junior is. Yeah, she is doing a lot more healing, but Askos is able to keep nearly twenty people in fighting shape at a time at this point, or keep nearly a hundred people from dying. Junior is getting better at getting people back into fighting shape quicker, but she¡¯s only able to do so much.


    By the end of the day, they had managed to force a draw twice, and managed to win once when a luck shot took out the enemy commander. This isn¡¯t nearly enough to be considered passing the exercise, but it is still really good progress for them. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    I spent most of my day refining my current project. Nothing new happened on that front, it was mostly just refining what I already have. Most notably I managed to cut the delay in half.


    I ended up hanging out with Tiddol today. We decided to go see a play together, which turned out to be some romantic drama driven solely by a lack of communication and people generally being horrible to each other. It was so bad it was funny, and Tiddol was laughing so hard she was crying. Good thing we managed to get a private booth otherwise we definitely would have disturbed the other viewers.


    Overall it was fun to hang out and joke around with her. We don¡¯t often take the time to do so.


    Anyway, Good NIght Diary.

 Day 350

    My apprentices managed to get an actual victory today. The commander managed to force a battle of attrition by keeping the amount of time any individual soldier was actively fighting to a minimum, meaning that their troops would always get a chance to heal up and start fighting again, while the enemy troops were constantly slowly worn down. The battle ended up taking three hours and during that time my apprentices were frequently running dangerously low on mana, but they managed to ration it nearly perfectly and were never not healing.


    I think I am going to start teaching them flesh manipulation in the next couple days, maybe once I am finished with my current project. They are reaching a plateau of what they are able to learn with traditional healing, and learning how to shape flesh and mold bone should help them with their healing.


    As for said project, I got it to the point where it is slightly better than writing with a pen, assuming you are a novice in both. It isn¡¯t really good enough for it to find common use, but this is a solid step forward. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    We haven¡¯t really come up with a solution for people that think with images instead of words, but it doesn¡¯t seem to be too big of a deal as the only drawback is making it a bit more difficult for them to use, something that can be remedied by improving the device and improving the skills of the user.


    They have, however, shown that using this device to create images is also possible. Which isn¡¯t really what I built it for, but it makes sense that it works. The mechanism behind it basically just burns what you want onto the pages, it would be weird if you couldn¡¯t use it to make images. I had considered doing a design where I put all of the different letters onto different pieces and to press those into the paper to write, but that turned out to be really inefficient so I changed the design pretty early on, that definitely wouldn¡¯t have worked to create images.


    As for my downtime, I spent it hanging out with Azrezel. We ended up having date night, going to a restaurant that offers live entertainment with dinner. Something of a novelty that propped up recently and gained quite a bit of popularity. The food was above average and the show was better, but the company was amazing. I would be interested in coming again sometime.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 351

    We¡¯re getting really close to new years and I¡¯m getting excited. New years itself isn¡¯t that big of a deal as a celebration, but it would be the anniversary of when I started writing this diary. It¡¯s important to me.


    My apprentices have managed to win a couple more times. Every single time they have won it was through a battle of attrition, while their commander is getting better at forcing battles of attrition, the enemy commander is getting better at avoiding them. At the very least the commanders seem more or less evenly matched, which is all that matters on that front.


    The most obvious change I made to my current project is making it so that the paper comes out in sheets instead of one continuous sheet of paper that goes on until someone cuts it. That doesn¡¯t really make the device more effective but it does make it more convenient, which is definitely a good thing. Beyond that, I am also getting really close to the device being what I wanted it to be. With the next day or two, assuming current progress continues, it will be faster to use my device than it will be to write by hand for all but the best writers. And that is without removing any magical qualities the writing itself has, which is apparently a thing, because it still requires quite a bit of skill and magic to do well. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    I hope this device becomes really popular. I¡¯m not sure how exactly that will help me, but it will definitely be a good thing. From what I hear I already have a lot of attention on me, this should hopefully make more of that attention positive.


    I love Azrezel, he¡¯s so sweet sometimes. Like today he bought me some chocolates, each one wrapped in a paper with either a joke or some cute phrase written on it in his handwriting. I think this is the first time I ever received a gift like this from him, so I¡¯m going to need to think of one to give to him.


    I ended up eating them while hanging out with Tiddol, who was describing to me something about her current project. Eventually, she realized I wasn¡¯t paying nearly as much attention as I usually do, which I do feel bad about, and we ended up talking about our respective partners instead. Tiddol is a bit jealous of the fact that Azrezel stays in town so I get to hang out with him all of the time. I am a bit jealous of the fact that Par naturally has a libido, it can be a bit frustrating when you always have to be the one to initiate anything more steamy.


    One last thing before I go. It hasn¡¯t snowed in a couple days, it looks like spring is here.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 352

    My apprentices are winning consistently at this point. At this point, Askos is able to keep their entire force alive, while Junior is able to get an unconscious ally back into fighting shape almost immediately. All while avoiding being attacked. Not even Null or healing interrupting poison are able to really challenge them. I will start teaching them flesh manipulation tomorrow.


    The writing device is finished and is now able to be produced by any competent plant manipulator that is able to get their hands on one. According to the scholars my grove is not, in fact, the largest gathering of competent plant manipulators, but it is the largest one that they are able to access on friendly terms. The depths of old dungeons can hide many things, and I¡¯m not surprised that one of those things is a truly ridiculous amount of plant manipulators. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    I spent my downtime making a gift for Azrezel. Nothing too complicated, I just used spell wood and singing grass to make flowers that would play recordings of my voice when pressed to the ear. I made sure to have all of them play different sappy romantic things before giving them to Azrezel.


    Other than that we received word from Par about successfully taking a city, in large part thanks to people with my hivemind inside of the city sabotaging it from the inside. They are expecting to be besieged here soon, so they are preparing for that. Our armies don¡¯t have nearly as much experience defending against a siege as the enemy does, but hopefully, things will work out alright.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 353

    Today I started by setting up a place where Azrezel and I can teach my Apprentices how to manipulate flesh and bone. It was basically just the same thing as what I made for them to learn about anatomy, only on a much smaller scale.


    The first step to figuring out flesh manipulation is to figure out how to puppet a body with no soul. It¡¯s either that or necromancy and they don¡¯t have the talent for raising the dead. Regardless they have to be the ones to control the body because that is the best way to figure out what works and what doesn¡¯t.


    They¡¯re struggling with this step. Controlling a body manually is pretty hard to figure out, necromancers are able to get around that problem but necromancy isn¡¯t really an option for them, so they are stuck going at it the hard way. That being said, I would be surprised if they didn¡¯t manage to figure it out within the next day or so. The body already knows how to pilot itself, they just have to figure out how to get it to do that.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Junior is doing a bit better at that then Askos is, though I would bet that Askos would be the one to figure out the trick to it first. He is just more creative than Junior is, he is more likely to try and find a way around the problem than Junior is. Junior will eventually succeed on her own, whether through brute force or by eventually figuring out an easier method. If it wasn¡¯t for Askos then Junior probably would never try anything other than just the most basic and straightforward method.


    I honestly didn¡¯t expect them to struggle nearly this much with figuring out how to puppet the bodies, so I ended up having a bunch of free time and didn¡¯t know what to do with it. Flesh manipulation would take a lot more personal instruction from me than what they are currently working on. So I ended up helping Azrezel with his projects instead, mostly he just bounced ideas off of me while I suggested ideas of my own, though I did do some actual work.


    He is currently trying to make some kind of acid shooting zombie and is struggling with that actual mechanism to shoot the acid. He is able to get a weak stream of acid at best, or the zombie just dribbling over itself at worst. I¡¯m not really sure how all of that works, but still, there was some notable progress by the end of the day.


    Other than that not a lot happened. It was mostly downtime for me today and I will probably end up helping Azrezel again tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 354

    My apprentices are improving their ability to puppet bodies really quickly, which is no surprise. By the end of the day, Askos even managed to figure out what exactly it was he was supposed to be doing. I¡¯m sure there are more effective methods to puppeting a body than relying on its ability to control itself, but all of those would defeat the purpose and would likely be significantly harder to actually pull off.


    I ended up helping Azrezel with his project again. Today we managed to actually get a glob of acid to be spat out by the zombie, which was the goal. It didn¡¯t go very far, and it certainly wasn¡¯t very accurate, but it was an improvement over what we had before. It might be useful for destroying items or in a close melee, but that isn¡¯t really the point of the project. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I also managed to make a minor improvement on the acid. Previously he was just using stomach acid, which is already really potent. So potent in fact that the stomach needs to use some mucus to prevent itself from being damaged in most creatures. I changed the insides of the stomach to something a lot more leathery, removing the mucus that can mix in with the acid. As I said, it¡¯s only a minor improvement, but it does make the acid that much more potent.


    The acid itself will also probably need to be changed eventually as well, but that seems like it is more in the realm of alchemy than in flesh manipulation.


    I spent my downtime sitting by a small creak and thinking to myself, mostly just letting my thoughts wander. It¡¯s definitely a relaxing experience, especially when wannabe adventurers don¡¯t show up to pester me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 355

    By this evening my apprentices had fully grasped how to successfully puppet bodies, tomorrow we will move onto actually teaching them how to shape flesh and mold bone. I¡¯m looking forward to seeing what they can do with that.


    The orphanage school is now fully built, staffed, stocked, and otherwise prepared to actually be used. Naturally, I had to be there at its grand opening, to present it to the public and to meet all of the staff in charge of running the place. One of those people was an interesting gentleman by the name of Alenour Ferkins. And gentleman really is the best way to describe him, what with his wellgroomed grey hair, his obviously fancy suit, and his older style of speech. His wings and halo definitely added to the impression.


    Apparently he has been around for most of recorded history, or at least the stuff that wasn¡¯t recorded by Origin or the Dungeons, turning two hundred and five in this last year, easily the oldest creature that I have ever met, excluding that one Origin. And beyond that he has caused much of it. Apparently he taught one of my father¡¯s teachers, a woman by the name of Velenora, though my father had never met the man himself before today. Which makes sense, as from what I hear he is a world renowned teacher, in much the same way that my father is a famous adventurer. Famous not for what he has done, though he has done quite a bit, but rather for what his students have accomplished, even my father¡¯s achievements are partially attributed to him. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    It was weird because my dad, who commonly boasts about his achievements, was incredibly humble while meeting him. That was what really drove in the point that this guy is someone important.


    And he has come to my forest to teach. He is one of the bigshots in the scholar¡¯s order, like has the ear of The First Sentient when he wants it bigshot, and can do pretty much whatever he wants.


    I could probably go on for a bit longer on just how important he is, but it just boils down to he is very important and he has come to what is probably the equivalent of some backwater town to him in order to teach in my forest. I get that I am making a lot of waves in their order, but I never expected this.


    While it was certainly an interesting event, it didn¡¯t take much more than an hour. So I spent the rest of the day helping Azrezel with his current project. We ended up managing to figure out a way to double the amount of pressure the mechanism in the throat can safely hold, effectively doubling both speed and distance of the acid. It was cute, seeing Azrezel get really excited by that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 356

    Today is finally the day that I start teaching my Apprentices how to shape flesh and mold bone into any form they wish. I could tell that they were almost as excited as I was to get started.


    I started them off with something basic, not really simple but something that they will likely end up needing to do in the future. I created a body with no arms or legs and also no blueprint for those arms or legs, basically representing someone that has had their limbs removed a long time ago and is now beyond the reach of traditional healing. They didn¡¯t do very well at first, were it a normal person they would have been in constant agony until the twisted lumps of flesh were removed. Of course, that is why I have them practice on soulless husks that can¡¯t feel pain and not real people.


    Askos¡¯ next attempt had hands, but not much else. It was kinda functional, assuming the person couldn¡¯t feel pain and never picked up anything heavier than a fork. Junior¡¯s second attempt was much the same as her first.


    And so the day went on with the two of them trying over and over and slowly figuring out what works and what doesn¡¯t. They certainly haven¡¯t mastered it, I would be ashamed of my own progress if they had managed that in a single day, but they are taking to the art really well. And my own guidance certainly doesn¡¯t hurt. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    It won¡¯t be long now before there is nothing else that I can teach them. I am both dreading that day and excitedly awaiting it. I will miss teaching them and guiding them towards mastery, but I want to see how they use the skills I have taught them in the real world.


    Junior no longer clings to me quite as much, though she is still obviously attached to me. She has even talked about getting a job at a local hospital for a while while she figures out what she wants to do going forward.


    Askos has asked me to have someone teach him how to lead an army once I have taught him all I can. I have agreed.


    I spent my downtime hanging out with Tiddol, mostly bragging about our respective students. She doesn¡¯t have any apprentices like I do, but she is teaching quite a few people about how to make tools like she does. A couple of them are doing really well, like the guy who figured out how to make a solid explosive substance that is really stable unless you do something very specific to it, she didn¡¯t mention what that thing was. Or the girl that managed, successfully, to create a new clockwork creature, though I still had to seed its soul.


    I have noticed that she is getting close to being able to evolve, she doesn¡¯t want me to trigger it as she doesn¡¯t think she is ready quite yet. I give it one big project before she evolves.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 357

    Junior managed to create a fully functional arm today. She didn¡¯t do a good job of tying into the body so it would quickly shrivel up and die from lack of blood and the body would not be able to control it, but the arm itself functions well enough.


    Askos, on the other hand, has been struggling with creating the arm itself, always ending up with something pretty lackluster, but has done reasonably well in getting it to tie into the body. The last arm he made had three fingers with two joints each, no wrist, an elbow and a shoulder, but the body was able to use it with decent coordination despite its very limited range. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    It¡¯s a little more than a week away from new years and summer heat waves are already being felt throughout my forest. I need to think of something to do for new years, maybe talk to Tiddol and try to organize a party.


    At around noon we got hit with a heatwave, so Azrezel and I took a break to cuddle, it¡¯s times like these that I am glad that he has no natural body heat. I also think it is a little weird that I have natural body heat as I don¡¯t really have a physical body, I know that was an intentional design in sprites that I haven¡¯t changed in any of the times I have evolved, but that doesn¡¯t make it any less weird.


    Other than that not a lot happened today, it¡¯s not like people wanted to go out and do things in this heat.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 358

    My apprentices each made an arm that I would consider to be of acceptable quality today. It wouldn¡¯t be crippling on an average person to receive an arm made by them. It would probably be worse than their own native arm, but only be a small margin and even then it would certainly be better than missing an arm. There is still a lot for them to improve on, but flesh manipulation is much more of an art form than something like plant manipulation or traditional healing. There are definite ways to improve, but there are no real right ways to accomplish a task, only ways that work and ways that don¡¯t.


    When I wasn¡¯t actively assisting my apprentices with their current task I was trying to organize a new years party with Tiddol. Nothing big or fancy, just a small party with our core group. Tiddol offered to make drinks and bring a cake while I made some simple decorations, well, designed more than made, I¡¯ll make them the day of. I also bought several new board games, including the new version of that empire builder game we¡¯ve all played before. I¡¯m looking forward to beating all of them once and for all. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    My forest is getting closer and closer to our borders, I should reach them shortly after new years. In the opposite direction numerous other towns and cities are being brought into my forest, all of them willingly. It looks like conversion attempts were successful so far. I wonder how far it is to the coast in that direction.


    Speaking of the coast, my trees are rapidly spreading across the ocean and have even managed to come across several small islands, most of them are uninhabited, but I have found a couple with small tribes on them.


    Other than that not a lot has happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 359

    It¡¯s been really slow recently, not a lot has been happening. Yeah, things are progressing, but very little new has happened, or at least very few big things have happened. Maybe something is coming soon to shake that up? Maybe tomorrow I will find out that Parius has managed to force the angelic council to admit defeat and is now returning home triumphant? I doubt it, but it¡¯s a nice thought.


    Still, my apprentices did make progress today. Junior finally managed to figure out how to properly attach a limb to the body, dramatically improving her creations. While at the same time Askos has managed to improve his creations by making them bigger, giving himself much more space to work with. He isn''t really useing the spcae very effectivly, but he is getting better at that as well.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    During my downtime I hung out with Tiddol, which was pretty fun. We ended up going out to eat and even getting a bit drunk, neither of us drink alchohol ver often but it just sort of happened after the resturant owner offered us a ''complimentary bottle of wine''. we danced and we sang, we did so poorly but it was still fun. At one point someone from out of town tried and failed to grope Tiddol because someone else noticed, I had to patch the guy up to keep him from dying after that. Healing while drunk is a lot harder than I expected it to be, but the guy should be fine. Might end up with a bit of a limp, though his liver is much better now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 360

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 Day 361

    Parius showed up this morning and immediately had a feast arranged for his surviving soldiers. That feast lasted from early morning to about noon, when everyone was too full or too drunk to go on. There was more food in one place than I have ever seen outside of a storage shed. And even that is usually just one variety of food, this was hundreds of different types of food, some of which I had never eaten before. I wanted to try everything but I simply wasn¡¯t able to eat that much.


    My apprentices ultimately took the day off, as they ate nonstop during the feast and then promptly fell asleep. They¡¯re still asleep even now. Which is disappointing, but it did give me time to hang out with Par. He told me about how things are going on the front lines. He says that he thinks having the vast majority of our army concentrated in one spot to push forward is very inefficient, but that we have very few people capable of standing up to one of the angelic council¡¯s elite warriors, like the one that drove them home this time. Apparently, he thinks I am one of them, despite the fact that I am not much of a fighter. If one of those people decided to attack an army unescorted by one of our powerhouses then they could completely wipe it out with ease, but if we keep the majority of our fighting force together then it would cause them to at least play things safer.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    He also gave a big speech during the feast about how his current exploits would be impossible without me being here to protect the homes of our people with my forest, and judging from that speech he has had a lot of experience rilling up a crowd recently. I¡¯ve never heard chanting like that before. The people treat him and the returning soldiers like heroes, which is good, they should.


    That more or less sums up the day. It was fun, I certainly wasn¡¯t expecting a feast. It might be something to do again, food isn¡¯t exactly a limited resource for us.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 362

    Today Par arranged for duels his veteran soldiers and my Paladins. After nearly a hundred duels it was fifty-five to forty-five in Par¡¯s favor, which is much better than I had expected everything to turn out. My Paladins have improved a lot since they were a bunch of farmers fighting an enemy that had invaded the depths of my forest.


    When it came to team fights between my Paladins and Par¡¯s soldiers, my Paladins won nine times out of ten. The advantage of the improved version of the hivemind was simply too much to overcome.


    My apprentices have also improved, quite significantly in fact. They are already some of the best healers we have, but given their lineage, no one was surprised by that. People still tell the story of Bug Hornmark, the prodigal healer who did the impossible for a mere slave, there is even a play about the story. His story will likely be told for a long time to come, potentially even hundreds of years from now, if the people worshiping me have anything to say about it. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Their mother, too, will likely stay in public consciousness for a very long time. She didn¡¯t live very long, even for a Dragonewt, which don¡¯t live long in the first place, but in that time she became a martyr. Her story will also likely be retold countless times over the years.


    Everyone is expecting my apprentices to live up to, and possibly exceed, their mother and grandfather. If they do then it won¡¯t be long before the name Hornmark is used to denote greatness.


    Of course, they have also improved quite a bit in the short term as well, finally achieving what I would consider a passable attempt to regrow the arm of a cripple had I done it myself. Nothing amazing, but definitely good enough.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Azrezel. During that time I found out why he gave me the gloves. Needless to say, I will not be wearing them out in public in the future. I should probably get him a pair too.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 363

    This morning, before dawn, I was alerted to a potential disaster. There was an infectious disease discovered in town. It couldn¡¯t have been active for more than three hours before we found it, but even then it had managed to infect at least four hundred people and is believed to have killed seven.


    As I was the only one capable of rooting out everyone infected quick enough to minimize further spreading I was asked to gather up and quarantine all of the infected in a low mana environment, to try to starve out the disease. At the same time, I was to stay away from any of the infected, being a mana based creature meant that I was particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases.


    And so I did. For a while, everything stopped as I pulled on the full weight of my hivemind for the first time ever. After figuring out what I was looking for I was able to find any traces of the disease through my hivemind and my trees, and through my trees I was able to teleport them into a containment building I created and was actively draining mana out of. I put the infected to sleep so as to ease any pain they might be feeling. Even as I was moving them three of them died, all of them mana based creatures. Healing did not help as the very structure of their bodies was being twisted up into a corrupted spell in a manner very similar to flesh manipulation.


    The nature of this disease rendered it incapable of spreading through my trees or through my hivemind, if it had the only thing that would have awaited my forest and the great empire built within it would be a purge by nuclear fire. The containment building has also done its job of preventing the disease from spreading. Small mercies, those.


    All of the scholars here know how to diagnose diseases and to even treat particularly nasty ones, but no one here has training in dealing with infectious diseases. The order doesn¡¯t have many of those, not because they struggle to find people with the talent for it but because those people usually die an early death. But luckily infectious diseases are both rare enough and a serious enough threat that requisitioning the help of a specialist will be easy, relatively speaking.


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    But that will still take days, if only due to how long it takes to travel via teleporter. In the meantime, we have hundreds of sick dying people, many of which are important to the continued operation of pretty much everything. And not just that but Ednar is sick, I can¡¯t let Tiddol¡¯s son die.


    And so we come to the disease itself. First is that it is very dangerous, which was obvious enough, it causes a lot of damage to the host, enough to kill a flesh and bone creature within days, or enough to kill a mana based creature within hours. It is also very hard for the scholars to actually study it directly, to the point where all of them flat out refuse to do so as if their skills prove inadequate to remove the infection they will die. I can¡¯t fault them for that however much I want to.


    From what they have been able to observe from the outside they have said that the disease is imperfect, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good news is that every single cycle the spell goes through it releases a bit of mana, which it would normally reabsorb latter but with the mana being pulled out constantly some of it is removed every cycle. This means that the disease can be burnt out eventually. Bad news is two-fold, one that process is slow enough that everyone inside will die before the disease burns itself out, two this means that the disease likely changes slightly every single cycle. From how they explained it to me this means that at any given moment the disease could suddenly get much worse without anything even resembling a warning, potentially even becoming able to propagate through my hivemind.


    So I cut off everyone infected from my hivemind. It took a bit of mana and likely made their conditions worse, but it had to be done. That kind of risk is not something we could afford to take.


    We have already discussed quite a few treatments. Nuclear fire would work, but it would also kill more or less everyone infected. Healing will keep the people alive, but it will also feed to disease as the mana has to go somewhere. Eventually, the disease will grow too powerful for me to heal that many people fast enough to keep them alive.


    Null does help, whatever this disease is it is surprisingly resistant against the stuff, but null does increase the amount of mana it sheds every cycle. It will help burn out the disease faster, and I could no doubt design something that could work much faster, but that will take a couple days that I am not sure we have.


    At this point, all of the mana based creatures that were infected are dead, nearly one hundred of them.


    If we don¡¯t come up with a way to at least keep Ednar alive then I will be burning my Fate tomorrow morning. It¡¯s not as much as I would have liked, but it will be something.


    All of my attention was on this today, so I wasn¡¯t able to do much of anything else.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 364

    Today I asked Emericus to come out of his meditation. Keeping Tiddol¡¯s kid alive is more important than making nice with a true immortal cultivator, and he might be able to do something that no one else here can. It turned out to be the right choice, Ednar was on the verge of death.


    When I first went to him it was in hope that whatever technique cultivators use to push mana away from themselves would be able to cure this disease, but whatever it was that made it resistant to Null made it resistant to that as well. It causes the disease to burn itself out faster, but not by nearly enough. It does render him incapable of being infected though, and Solar Energy does not fuel the disease either. This means that Emericus can heal Ednar with minimal risk to himself. Healing is not his specialty, but he has access to enough Solar Energy and knows how to use it well enough to keep Ednar alive, and maybe a handful of others.


    In exchange for his help I offered a favor, anything within my power, he just has to ask for it.


    Between my Null and Emericus¡¯ anti-magic aura the disease is slowly burning itself out, I give it a week before it is fully burnt out, assuming anyone is left alive. The problem is I don¡¯t think anyone other than those Emericus can treat will live that long, and the scholars agree with my opinion.


    The children, the elderly, and those that were otherwise vulnerable are already dying off rapidly.


    And then around dinner time, Tiddol finalized a potion that I have had personal experiences with before. A potion designed to disrupt and destroy spells, especially those as complex and resilient as the ones used to make up mana based creatures like myself. The fact that she made it makes me distinctly uncomfortable, but I can recognize its usefulness here. A disease is nothing more than a spell, a malignant spell yes, but still a spell, trapped inside the body of someone. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    And it worked, somewhat. Like Emericus¡¯ anti-magic field and my own Null, Tiddol¡¯s potion is speeding up the destruction of the disease, but it proved too resilient to be unraveled by just that. It is to the point that the scholars believe this to be artificially created, the chance of a disease being this resilient is too low. A curse instead of a disease. They have requested something called an inquisition to find the perpetrator before they create something that could wipe out all life. I do hope that they''re exaggerating.


    Were it not already contained with almost no hope of it breaking out standard procedure would have been to burn everything with nuclear fire. Curse or disease, something that is this resistant to treatment, this infectious, and this deadly is always treated as an existential threat. I¡¯m struggling to keep them from doing just that despite having all of the infected under an effective quarantine.


    I spent my day between meeting with the scholars to come up with potential solutions and refining Null in a way that would speed up the process. It turns out that the potion Tiddol made and the anti-magic field Emericus is making are some of the first things they attempt with any infectious disease, and many are curable that way, with attempting to bleed out the disease in a mana free environment being something they attempt any time they are able to as it is nearly universally effective, so-called ¡®perfect¡¯ diseases are almost completely unheard of. From there a variety of methods are used, few of them useful on a scale of more than a dozen people at a time, and even fewer feasible to us without a specialist. Among those methods include things like getting a powerful, and ancient, dungeon to cut the disease out of the body. This has less to do with any natural talent that a dungeon might have and more to do with the fact that they universally work with creating life, and as such are able to do something like this with minimal risk of causing harm, and are all incredibly powerful, but that method is very costly as the ancient dungeons always demand much in the way of payment. I might be able to bribe one, but it is irrelevant as there aren¡¯t any close enough to reach without teleportation, which isn¡¯t exactly an option here. Another option is for a specialist to manually deconstruct the disease, which opens them up to being infected themselves and is only effective on one person at a time. There is also Nuclear fire, which works every single time, but has potentially catastrophic results and leaves no survivors.


    So without access to some kind of specialist or resource that we simply don¡¯t have the best option available to me is refining to speed things up even if only slightly. The difference of a minute can be the difference of a life.


    I think I am just going to burn my Fate when I am done writing for the day. I¡¯m already exhausted and want this whole thing to be over with. Some new years this is turning out to be.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 365

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    So I burned my Fate early this morning. Shortly after that someone arrived by teleporter.


    They  were a disease specalist that was on vacation in the nearby area, they  came as soon as they heard about what happened here. Suposedly they have  been traveling for about two days now, which makes me think about the  nature of Fate, but that doesn''t matter too much right now.


    What  matters is the fact that this person is both a cultivator and is  capable of deconstructing diseases like this. The are able to become  immune to the disease and they are able to treat the infected, though it  is a slow process. Between Emericus'' healing and this newcomers ability  to fix things no one else will have to die, brining the grand total of  casualties to two hundred and eighty seven, out of four hundred and  fifty infected. A tragedy, but also much less than it could have been. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    It  ended up taking all day getting everything organized and preventing  backlash from this event. Much of that time was spent dealing with  people who''s loved ones had died, and though I was able to keep a  benevloent facade and managed to do what little I could to make up for  their deaths I still feel increadibly drained. I want to go to sleep and  just forget the world for a while. I think I am going to go do that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Year 3: Day 1

    Everything is calm, now. People are still sick, but no one is dying. My forest is on the verge of meeting our borders, but that won''t happen for a couple more days.


    I took the day off after seeing that my apprentices were safe and sound. We all got together to hang out, not exactly the plans Tiddol and I came up with for a party, but close enough. We did play board games, though that was mostly because it was the only thing Tiddol and I had managed to set up before everything went down. We did get to play the new version of the civilization builder game like I had wanted to, though I didn''t get to practice with it before hand like I had planned. I still managed to win with a magic victory, but that is mostly due to an amazing starting location.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    I did hear that it has been more or less confirmed that this was an attack, something about the disease being too streamlined. I know I should care, and I will probably be outraged in a couple days as the will of the masses influences me, but for now I am too emotionally drained to feel anything about that.

 Day 2

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 Day 3

    Today my forest reached our borders, and stopped. Knowing our enemies this is no surprise, though no less frustrating for it. With so many true immortals under their control it would be strange if they had no means to prevent my expansion, they have already demonstrated at least one method by which they are able to destroy my forest. I almost wish that they had brought in lumberjacks to start cutting away at my forest, at least then I can slaughter the pests.


    The will of the people must be affecting me more than I thought. After so many attempts to subvert and destroy us they desire nothing more than the blood of our enemies. At this point I have given up hope for a peaceful resolution to our conflict, my people hate them too much for them to accept such a conclusion. But, I still hope to minimize bloodshed. The best way to do that is to get my hivemind to expand inside of their cities as much as possible, no need for bloodshed if the city greets you with open arms.


    I spent my day trying to figure out how to pierce through the barrier they have set up. I can''t go under, over, or around it, the barrier seems to be a sphere. And I don''t even know how to start trying to go through it, I have no idea how it''s keeping me out after all. None of the scholars know anything yet either, they haven''t had time to properly examine it. Still, it''s only been the better part of a day since I reached the barrier, it will likely take time to get through this new hurdle.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    My apprentices, on the other hand, have had no problems getting through their hurdles. They are able to perfectly replicate the function, if not the form, of nearly every major organ. Which is, admitedly, relatively easy once you know how it is supposed to work. Intention is easily enough to bridge the gap here, especially when you already have some skill with flesh manipulation. And they are better healers than I was when I first started trying to figure out flesh manipulation, in skill if not in shear power. At this point they are capable of making their own bodies, though they still need the ones Azrezel and I can make if only to serve as a reference.


    During my downtime I hung out with Par, who is planning on heading out again tomorrow as he has had plenty of time to refresh his army. It''s a shame I don''t get to hang out with him more often, but he''s always on the front lines expanding our empire. Maybe once the angelic council is crushed he will finally settle down and relax. I know Tiddol would love that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 4

    I have made no progress towards expanding into the borders of our enemy, but that doesn''t mean we haven''t learned anything. For one the barrier is less of a sphere and more an amalgam of spheres, with the center points of them being the cities. This tells me that something in the cities themselves are sustaining or boosting or something the magic that is keeping me out.


    For another, the scholars managed to figure out what type of magic it is that is powers the barrier. It''s some type of ritual that involves dozens or even hundreds of highly skilled mages, though the specifics are a lot harder to figure out, apparently. It is possible that the Angelic council needs to keep all of those mages maintaining the spell constantly, it is also possible that as long as they keep its power source topped up it can go on forever. Luckily the scholars do have someone specializing in the field, but unfortunately they are a student. Not even a particularly good student, just an average student. Still, it''s better than nothing. And what are students for if not learning?


    Anyway, I have provided him with all the materials he might need to study the barrier, he just needs to ask. While his teachers are keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn''t slack off. I hope that doesn''t become nessecary though, this is his chosen field of study, he should be fascinated by what I am told to be an amazing example of what he signed up to learn how to create. If he isn''t then that is just sad, a life pursing something you don''t find facinating, or at least something you desire, is a boring and pathetic life.


    Speaking of students, my apprentices have more or less mastered the basics of flesh manipulation. Everything else is easy enough to figure out on their own, but I still have more to teach them. I can''t really give them the library of information I have inside of my head, or at least I don''t know how to do so. But common themes and noteworthy exceptions are easy enough to teach.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I ended up hanging out with my dad today, and in the process of that I met his new lover. His name was Amir and he was a Djinn, A type of demon with increadible natural talent in magic. Primarilly caused by their incredibly vivid and intense imaginations, that makes the intention part of magic so much easier. Also makes them well known for their abilities to weave together compelling stories. Which is actually how they met, Amir traveled here after hearing that my father, being the world renouned story teller that he is, was making his home in my forest, a tale he recounted passionetly.


    When he arrived, which was right at the start of the whole business with the infectious disease, he challenged my father to a competition, one in which they tell stories to a crowd and the one to get the crowd the most enthralled being declared the victor. And so Amir stepped up and gathered a decent crowd and he proceded to twist a tale of wonder and intrigue, and crowd waited on every word with a bated breath in an expectant silence.


    And then my father stepped up and told a tale of bravery, triumph, of despair, and of revenge. And the crowd was worked up into a fervor, baying for the blood of the antagonist, openly weeping at every tragedy, and shouting in triumph as finally the wrongs are set right.


    Seeing this Amir knew that my father had stolen the victory, and with it his heart.


    It was honestly one of the most sappy romantic things I''ve ever heard, and I grew up listening to the legendary stories of Eric Kron, told by the man himself. It doesn''t hurt that they are cute together, with how lovey dovey they are. I''m glad my dad is finally getting over mom, he deserves to be happy.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 5

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 Day 6

    The student claims to have succesfully figured out the exact location of the thing powering this barrier. They weren''t really able to communicate it exactly, no one really knew how to Interpretate what he was saying except the other scholars, but we were able to make do with some Lace and then using my hivemind to give the right people the information. My people are now planning out the best way to take the place over without arousing suspicion. I personally would rather pretend that the barrier was still in effect while expanding my roots deep under the surface than let the angelic council know we figured out how to deal with their stuff. That way they hopefully won''t think they need any further protection from me.


    I give it four days before my apprentices have learned everything I have left to teach them. At that point they will be more than capable of learning anything else they desire to know on their own more effectively than I could teach them. From there Askos plans on studying under one of Par''s generals, while Junior has disscused opening up a hospital. I can and will help them out with those goals, but at this point they are adults, biologically at least, they can do things for themselves and no longer need me or anyone else to hold their hand.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    I know I''ve said it before, but I look forward to seeing what they make of themselves.


    I''ve noticed that something feels wrong, recently. I''m not sure what it is, but it''s like their is an itch I can''t scratch, only all over my body. It isn''t too bad, but it is getting worse.


    Other than that I spent my downtime thinking alone to myself. We''ve gone through quite a lot recently, so the chance to just relax and clear my head was definitly apreciated.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 7

    My apprentices are learning at a steady rate, if it keeps up like this my prediction will be correct for once. I might actually be disappointed by that.


    The itching has gotten worse, though not by a lot. I asked Tiddol if she had anything that could help with that and she gave me some alchemical substance that kills itching and mild pain when rubbed on the skin. It worked, thankfully, though I''m worried it will get so bad that it doesn''t work. I''m hesitant to use Flore as the plant is a lot stronger than what I want. I can make it weaker, but it is less of a hassle to ask Tiddol for help. Besides, I would rather keep the stuff inside of my body at full strength in case I am ever suddenly in too much pain to do anything. I don''t think anything like that will happen, but it is an unfortunate possibility.


    I ended up spending my downtime with Tiddol. She''s doing well, though she is more than a little lonely with Par being gone constantly. By her own admission she doesn''t get intimate with him nearly enough for her preference and is seriously considering coming out of retirement to join him on the front lines. I''m conflicted on whether or not that would be a good thing, but I won''t stop her if she really wants to. I want her to be healthy and happy, and I want my people to be healthy and happy. Her going to the front lines would definitely make her happy, though it might interfere with the healthy part. While at the same time she is also a very important person to the community, the head of pretty much all research done here and personal teacher of many skilled craftsmen. But there are also plenty of skilled people able to take over her role, so that isn''t as big of a deal.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    I think the biggest thing making me conflicted is the fact that I am not able to join them on the front lines, I would be lonely without her. Which isn''t a good reason to keep her here, but still. She''s practically like a sister to me at this point.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 8

    I spent my day trying to deal with this terrible itching, I want to keep teaching my apprentices but I really can''t focus like this. Every day it gets worse. Pain killers do help, unless if I want to be able to try to solve this then I definitely shouldn''t use painkillers strong enough to account for how quickly the itching gets. I tried that for a while and I ended up being all happy and foggy headed, I couldn''t think straight and everything was hilarious. Which, while fun, I would rather be sober.


    I tried healing myself to see if that would ease the itch, and it worked. Unfortunately it didn''t stop it from getting worse, and in fact made it get worse faster. Why? How could healing possibly cause that?


    The scholars weren''t very helpful, none of them knew anything that might be relevant. Or rather anything that might have been relevant we were able to dismiss. It isn''t a disease, those are pretty obvious when you know what to look for. Nor is it a curse, those can be much more insidious, but are still bound to the same rules that make diseases easy to identify. It isn''t a poison, or if it is then nothing that the scholars know of would be capable of fixing it, and besides I would notice if I had been poisoned.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Actually, now that I think about it I never actually checked. That should have been the first thing I did. I think I''ll do that now.


    This is so much worse that I thought it was. My body is falling apart at the seams. The spells that make up me are unraveling. I need to deal with this. I don''t know how to deal with this. Am I dying? I don''t know! and that is terrifying. I need to go, I need to find someone who can deal with this. Can anyone deal with this? I don''t know.


    I''m going to go talk to the scholars, hopefully they know something. I hope I''m not dying.

 Day 9

    I''ve turned on Flore at full strength, at this point it''s better than the pain killers. When I''m not on them my whole body itches so much that it hurts. Having Flore active on full strength does make thinking harder, but it isn''t as bad as that terrible itching or as bad as some of the more potent painkillers that Tiddol can make.


    Looking closer at my condition it is comparable to a fraying cloth. Tiny holes have started to form all over my body, and the itching is those holes slowly growing. Healing does reverse the damage, but the holes are still there, and healing causes new holes to form. At first I thought that was because my body was somehow in a delicate state and so any amount of roughing it up would cause holes to form, so I tried healing in a much more gentle way. It didn''t make a difference, and an extreme amount of brute force healing just made things so much worse.


    Next I tried to directly patch up those holes, and I did succeed. But it was a pyrrhic victory as the process of fixing one hole made two more. Trying to scale it up didn''t help either, for every hole I managed to patch at least one more formed, and the places where I had patched previously formed new holes much more easily.


    I wish I had focused more of my efforts on studying mana based creatures. Neither flesh manipulation nor plant manipulation are useful here, while standard healing is outright harmful. If I could patch up each hole perfectly I might be able to stop this, but I can''t so it''s a moot point.


    With the scholars help I did manage to figure out what was causing my current condition. In a word, mana. I am suffering from acute mana poisoning. The mana in my body is a couple orders of magnitude more dense than the mana that makes up my body. The same thing that killed off the Origin, for much of the same reasons too. It might be the Flore talking but it is really funny how many parallels there are between me and the Origin. Both good at creating life, both have some relationship to dungeons, both are mana based creatures, and both are dying off because they introduced way more mana than their frail body''s can withstand into their environment.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I tried confining myself to an area with no mana, but it was too little too late. It stopped the formation of new holes, but the damage done to my body is already self perpetuating.


    An Origin might be able to fix me, but they would never withstand the high amounts of mana in my forest and even then, they failed to fix themselves who''s to say they would be able to fix me? An ancient dungeon would probably be able to fix me, but I don''t have access to one and even if I did I would be wary about trusting one like that. The dungeons offer no solutions.


    I really wanted to avoid it, since last time was so excruciatingly painful, but an evolution would almost certainly fix me. But I can''t evolve. Considering how intense my last evolution was I have not done nearly enough to be worthy of an evolution, and my ability to force one can only stretch things so far. I likely will not get another evolution for several decades unless I do something truly spectacular. Assuming I live long enough.


    One good thing to note is that neither the plants integrated into my body nor my dungeon core are fraying. Presumably my soul is housed in my core, but we have no way to verify that. This might not kill me. I hope it doesn''t, because I''m out of things to try. There are no specialists that the scholars can call on, and even if there were they would be too far away to come to my aid fast enough.


    I do have some fate built up, but I would rather save that just in case I actually do die. It always eases the transition between one life and then next in a dying or dead person, or at least it''s been two for two so far.


    I will spend the next couple days teaching and recording as much of my knowledge as I can. That way I at least leave something behind.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 10

    Today I took drew on the full force of my hivemind to try and document everything I know. Every minor detail about every plant, every quirk of biology, a comprehensive guide on practicing flesh manipulation without causing unneeded suffering, and the relatively short history of our empire, among many other things. That last one was particularly comprehensive as I was able to draw from the minds of countless of our people, every event observed from the perspectives of hundreds of people, many of which I was not aware of until now.


    I also spent my time teaching my apprentices, with my hivemind I was able to both at the same time. They took to the task with a sort of grim determination, forcing me to make full use of the mental connection I have formed with them. Forcing me to feel their desperation and hopelessness at my own potential death.


    Already my body has deteriorated enough to show the bone-like plants underneath the surface in many places, including my left hand and half of my face. It''s not exactly something I can hide anymore. On the plus side Azrezel seems to be very attracted to the look, which would be a lot more pleasant if I wasn''t in the process of preparing for my own potential death.


    I''m honestly more worried about the people I would be leaving behind than I am about myself. From everything I know about fate it will help preserve my consciousness should I die, it''s done so once already and I witnessed an extreme example in Emericus, plus the creature that made it possible for me to have this power implied as much in his instructions. But there is no guarantee that I will ever be able to talk to any of the people I have grown to care about ever again. It is possible that I end up in this world again, several of my children have past lives in this world, but it isn''t likely, most come from very different places.


    So even if I die I will likely survive. But I am Tiddol''s oldest friend, all of her other friends have died or have otherwise left her life. She is good at dealing with grief, she has dealt with a lot of it in her time as a diver, but I would still want to spare her that.


    My father likely won''t survive if I die. He tries to hide it but he relies on me emotionally. He was already suicidally depressed after having lost me and my mother once, and since then he hasn''t been the most stable person. If I die he would likely snap.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    My apprentices would probably make it, but my death would hit them hard. They have already had their parents die once, and I have become a sort of parental figure for them.


    Azrezel will probably try to reanimate my corpse, hoping for the same thing that happened to Emericus to happen to me. He might even succeed. It wouldn''t be too much of a stretch, considering we have seen it once before. But if it fails it would probably destroy him. We''re not exactly the most emotional of couples, but he definitely does love me in a way no one else does. I''ll miss him, I really will.


    I have no idea how Par would react to my death. I normally don''t like to admit it, but he, and a lot of other people, have defined a lot of their world view around myself. The only thing I am confident in saying is that he will no longer be so joyful.


    It''s still not confirmed that I am going to die. I have no way to prove it, but maybe I can figure out a way to prove it. It is very possible that my soul is contained in my dungeon core. I can see the soul, but I don''t really understand what I am looking at, but the dungeons do. Maybe I can pay for one of them too teach me how to figure that out? I''m normally a bit against working with the soul, and it won''t change whether or not I am dying, but it might provide some reassurance to the people I care about if it turns out I am not dying, or some sense of finality if it turns out I am. A chance to say goodbye if nothing else.


    I''m a lot calmer about this whole thing now than I was, Flore helps with that a lot, so does putting the sum total of my knowledge down on paper. I honestly just want this whole thing to be over with, if only so my friends and family stop worrying over me. Tiddol, especially, has been driving herself crazy trying to figure out an alchemical solution to my problem, and if she had enough time I''m sure she could do it, but at this rate I have maybe half a week before all of the spells that make up my body fully disintegrate. I can tell that it is more than just the fact that I am her friend that she is working this hard, my situation reminds her of Thes. She blames herself for his death, and for Mest''s, she will likely blame herself for mine as well, however undeserved that blame may be.


    Anyway, I should probably hurry if I want to ease their suffering, so good night diary.

 Day 11

    It was easy enough to find a dungeon willing to teach me about the soul, it is apparently a fairly standard request as dungeons mature and gain the ability to perceive it. Unfortunately being able to pinpoint the exact anchor point of a particular soul is a lot more difficult than I would have thought.


    I did learn a number of exercises and training methods designed to improve the rate at which my soul naturally recovers from splitting a chunk off, apparently that is standard practice as most young dungeons gain the ability to perceive the soul long before they have a large enough population to sustain the process of seeding new creatures required for expansion. It apparently will also make it easier to perceive details about the soul, and the anchor point is a very small detail.


    When I finally got around to asking how long it would take to be able to perceive something like that properly using this method the teacher I had hired said two to three weeks. Considering I might be dead in two to three days this isn''t very helpful. I probably should have explained my circumstances a bit better when I hired him. The dungeon had no idea how to help me with my issues but did believe that something like that might be possible. And so now I have to find a different teacher, though I will likely continue with those exercises as they should help even if I die. No reason not too after all.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    Considering the fact that looking for a teacher did not take much in the way of active effort on my part I had plenty of time to teach my apprentices and hang out with everyone. We talked and reminisce about the past. I wish my dad hadn''t shared so many embarrassing stories about me as a baby, but overall it was a pleasant experience. No one broke down into tears more than twice.


    Par wasn''t able to make it, apparently he is pinned down by some pretty heavy hitters that the angelic council finally decided to let off the leash. His soldiers will be wiped out if they try to return home now. But he was able to get some messages to us, notably one involving Willow. Apparently she was seen in one of the angelic council''s cities helping civilians flee during a raid by Par''s soldiers. Her and her party are doing very well by appearances, they are very well equipped and seem to be very skilled. And I miss her, I would love to see her again but if it turns out I''m dying that won''t happen. Something about worrying about your own death makes you nostalgic.


    I miss Thes and Mest too, they were some of the first people outside of my family I ever got to know. I miss Bug, he was a good man. I even miss Whisperer, despite how creepy he was. Erica Hornmark as well, it was fun to watch her grow.


    Now I feel kinda sad


    It seems like there is someone who might be able to help me with my problem, I should probably check that out.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 12

    So the dungeon that offered his assistance at the end of the day yesterday was one of the oldest dungeons in the world, and asked for a steep price. It seems he was the best in the business as far as knowledge of the soul goes, and what I want to know is something rather esoteric. He didn''t ask for money, he has more than he could ever need, instead he asked for nothing other than a favor, enforced through something he called a soul contract. The specifics of it were a bit hazy to me, but apparently it would allow him to ask for one favor at any point in time in the future and I would have no choice but to fulfil his request, regardless of distance. There are some limitations, like the favor can''t be something that would take longer than a month to achieve and the favor cannot involve or result in the other dungeon gaining control over my soul. And the wording of everything involved matters a lot. In exchange he says ''everything I know about the soul is yours, assuming you are able to learn it.'' Naturally I accepted.


    And so I spent the day learning everything I would need to know about the soul in order to correctly identify the anchor points in any creature, including myself. And the results were promising, every single anchor point between my soul and my body is contained in my dungeon core. I am not dying, not now anyway. I would have learned as much in a day or two anyway, but at least now the people I care about can stop worrying.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I''m going to need to create some new skin for myself. The bony appearance I have now that most of my mana based body is gone might be appealing to Azrezel, but I can tell that everyone else is more than a little creeped out by it.


    I feel oddly relieved by the fact that I am not dying. I thought I had come to terms with it, but when I saw that my soul was connected solely through my dungeon core it felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I feel happy, ecstatic even. The painkillers might be affecting that somehow, but I don''t care.


    Out of everything the thing I am most excited about is the chance to finally finish my apprentices education, and get to see them go out into the world. They have been studying on their own a bit, with the books I made a couple days ago, so there isn''t much left to teach them, but there is something.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 13

    Today was a simple day. There was some small celebration, as I requested the ''I''m not dying party'' to be a small affair, and then I got to work polishing off my apprentices'' education.


    I spent all day going over and filling in any cracks in their knowledge and making sure that they understood everything I could possibly teach them. I made sure they understood every detail I could from anatomy and biology to injuries and traditional healing, and many things beyond. By the end of the day I was satisfied that they were ready to graduate from being my apprentices.


    I''ve already hired a party planner to organize something for two days from now, in the meantime I''m going to need to replace my skin. I would rather not go out into public looking like this if I can help it.


    There wasn''t much left of the spells that made up my body, and I was sick of being on Flore all of the time to deal with the itching. So naturally I decided to speed the process up a bit. That was a mistake. For roughly an hour I was suffering through debilitating pain that not even Flore could properly counter. But it''s over, and with it a sense of finality has settled.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    I''m no longer a monster, am I? The last part of me that consisted of monster stuff is now dead and gone, likely never to be seen from again. All that''s left is plants, an evolution of sorts, though normally evolutions add instead of cut away.


    Didn''t Azrezel go through something similar, when he went from an angelic to an undead? It''s fitting, really, that the necromancer became an undead and the plant manipulator became a plant. I wonder if my specialty had been fire, would I become made of fire?


    Regardless it is an interesting state of being. I am a different species than I was a couple weeks ago, I am now a plant instead of a monster and therefore I have to be a different species. And yet the hand of the world had nothing to do with it, refused to have anything to do with it. Has the world registered what I am now? Is my current species something that can be created by others? I guess that there is a pretty simple way to find out, seeing if I am selling anything new on the terminal.


    And I''m not. What I am does not exist according to the world, or at least I don''t think so. No other creature will be able to evolve into what I am, ever. To my knowledge the world only records species when something evolves or new life is created, neither of those things happen. Even if I were to evolve my current state likely would not be recorded. It''s an odd thought, really. Now I have definitive proof that I am unique, if I didn''t have that already.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 14

    I spent most of my time today trying to grow and form plant matter that behaves like skin. Getting something that looked the part was easy enough, however I''m not satisfied with something just looking the part.


    I don''t actually have any plants with the right qualities to perfectly mimic skin, and any attempts I made came up short. I can get almost there, but it always ends up feeling off, uncanny even. My facial expressions were always too rigid and slow, my skin didn''t shine in quite the way normal skin does, and I don''t quite move in a normal fashion. That and many more effects all cumulate in making me look just slightly off in a bad way.


    Losing the monster part of my body had more effects than I had originally assumed. Now instead of walking by directing my legs to move directly, I instead have to do so through the use of plant manipulation. That goes for anytime I try to move any part of my body, which causes a very slight delay anytime I go to move. With the exception of increasing my reaction time by quite a bit it doesn''t have much in the way of negative effects on me, but everyone says it looks creepy.


    I can likely reshape and reform my body to make my movements look more natural, but that will likely take a lot longer than a day. And practice will go a long way to help speed up my movements. I''m basically just puppeting myself constantly.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Everyone requested that I do something other than try to make my body look as realistic as possible, as it was freaking everyone out. Instead Azrezel recommended I try to pursue a kind of ''ethereal beauty'' and use Shimmerleaf as the main component of my skin. After a quick demonstration as to what that might look like everyone agreed that it was much better than trying to pursue some more realistic skin. My movements were still a bit off and eerie, but it was no longer as bad. According to Tiddol it was ''more interesting and less creepy, attractive even.'' I''m satisfied by the results, given the time constraints.


    Now I''m getting excited to work on my body. There are a lot of things that I wasn''t able to do before thanks to some constraints on my body, but all of those constraints have been removed. The plants that I have integrated into my body did allow for some positive effects, but they were hardly designed for the purpose of existing and operating on their own. I can do a lot to improve on my current body. But the question is what direction should I take it? Obviously the first priority will be improving magical talent, but what else should I do? No idea, but I have time to think about that latter. For now I need to get ready for a party.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 15

    Today we had a party and everyone was invited. It was as much to show off that I was alive and well as it was to celebrate the graduation of my apprentices, even if that was not the intention.


    It was a much more popular event than I had anticipated, though the organizers had made the proper arrangements. In hindsight I probably should have seen this coming. By headcount there was slightly more than half of the population of our empire, when teleportation is so easy it seems that people want to get involved with all of the important events. I''m just amazed that so many people were able to clear their schedule with only a two day advanced warning, very few people are able to drop everything at will like I can.


    A sizeable chunk of people came just for the food. Not that food is expensive here. Quite the contrary, actually, food is free. Meat and cooked food is considered a minor delicacy though, as pretty much everyone is able to subsist off of the mass grown produce created by our plant manipulators with no problems.


    I don''t really blame them, the food was amazing. There was literal tons of very tasty meat, with the best of the batch being from an ancient phoenix, a fiery beast that has some incredibly potent regenerative properties. That one was reserved exclusively for me and my closest companions, especially my apprentices. It was one of those meats that had so much power in it while alive that some of it just oozes into you while you eat it. With how potent it was I don''t think my forest can be burnt down anymore. Even if someone did manage to light something on fire, my trees just don¡¯t burn hot enough to light their own wood on fire. And I''m sure it''s more regenerative effects are providing some benefit, though I doubt I would notice it in myself at this point. My apprentices might notice an improvement in their healing, however.


    With the food came alcohol, so much alcohol. Really good stuff too, at least according to those of us that had experience with the stuff. Azrezel had fun with challenging people to drinking contests, though he was disappointed by the fact that he won every single one easily. I drank a bit, not a lot as I still had to actually do stuff during this party, but definitely enough to get a bit tipsy. Tiddol, on the other hand, got absolutely hammered. Half way through the party she got up on stage, very obviously drunk, and made or a big grand speech. Or at least she tried to. She burped, and then laughed at herself. Then she started telling dirty jokes, getting progressively more obscene untill she was a giggling mess on the floor. It was hilarious.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    My apprentices both drank alcohol for the first time in this life, Askos did have a bit of experience with it in his past life. He was a bit disappointed with the taste, though apparently he''s been disappointed by all food and drink since reincarnating. I did notice that species that primarily eat meat don''t have a lot of sensitivity in their tongues, which might explain it. Though since he is so disappointed by it, he will probably get a much more sensitive tongue with his first evolution, and I would be very surprised if he failed to evolve even once.


    Junior didn''t handle her alcohol well, and by the second glass was already trying to seduce a crowd of very interested dragonewt males. Something she would never sober, too much anxiety. I mean it''s good that she is getting out of her shell, but this might be a bit too far. Luckily she fainted before there was a big scandal in front of half of our empire. She was very embarrassed when she woke up, and more than a little disappointed.


    I also realized that I''ve been inside their heads for so long that reading them has become second nature to me, even without Lace making a mental bond between us.


    Overall I had a lot of fun, though I definitely don''t want to do these parties frequently. I don''t want to even imagine the backlash of having half of our empire away from work for a day will have. Not that I really could as I genuinely have no idea what could go wrong in a day, but my gut instinct is that it isn''t good.


    Starting tomorrow I''m going to have to work on my body, I can tell that quite a few people were more than a little disturbed by my movements. Not a lot, but enough that it was noticeable.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 16

    Today I started working on my body. I can do a lot with what I have available, especially now that I''m not limited by the shell of my old body. There are so many different things I can do to improve myself, so many important decisions to make, that I wasn''t sure where to start.


    Ultimately I decided to work on my appearance first, as that is the part that has caused problems so far. Azrezel has recommended I go for a more ethereal beauty, he used words like ''otherworldly'' and ''alien'' when he was describing it. And, I mean, he did reforge his own body to be more attractive to me when he evolved. I might as well return the favor.


    And so I got to work refining and tweaking everything about my appearance and the way my body moves to try and achieve those ideals. Using a combination of Shimmerleaf, mithirilwood, and glovine I turned my skin into a blue color that almost seems to glow and that has a texture similar to bark. You can almost see what lies underneath, but no matter how hard you look it will always be out of sight. Azrezel described it as ''haunting''. It''s a pretty big departure from the dark brown skin I had before.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    My joints have gone through vast improvements as well, they hardly even existed before today. I intentionally went away from how most people would expect my body to behave. I haven''t perfected it yet, but my attempts to cultivate that image seem to be bearing fruit. Already people look at the way I move with wonder and curiosity, and Azrezel has definitely shown his appreciation.


    Naturally I spent my downtime with Azrezel today. He was rather, direct, with his affections today. I have to say, I am enjoying how amorous Azrezel has been recently. It''s nice not having to be the one to initiate everything.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 17

    I spent most of today working on the way my body moves, and it does move quite well now. Instead of people thinking the way I move is creepy people think it''s ''haunting'' or ''ethereal'' or ''enchanting'' which is exactly what I was going for. I could likely improve myself in this regard quite a bit more, and I likely will do so in the future. But for now any further improvements will have very minor practical value, so my time is better spent elsewhere.


    In more important news, three members of the angelic council have been killed. That wandering adventurer type from before, I don''t remember his name and don''t care enough to go see if I wrote it down, that my dad convinced to point his blade towards the angelic council succeeded, only to die in the process. Apparently it involved a very large explosion and thirty thousand ferrets. Where he got thirty thousand ferrets I have no idea, I''m not sure I want to know.


    Unfortunately he didn''t manage to kill the necromancer, so whatever is left of the corpses has likely been recovered and reanimated by him. Which means we will be fighting three undead made from the bodies of true immortals and one made from the body of someone who can kill said true immortals. The undead will also likely be sentient. I doubt they will have the minds that they previously had, which is a small mercy, but they will still be powerful.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Overall it''s a positive thing. We removed four big looming threats that we can''t really fight directly and they were replaced by four much more immediate and martial threats, something we are much better equipped to deal with.


    My dad is pretty conflicted by this event. On the one hand the guy had directly threatened his family, me, while on the other hand he sent him to his death knowingly, expecting him to have some small success at eliminating our rivals. He isn''t too worked up about it, but he is kind of melancholic.


    I ended up spending my downtime with my dad, trying to cheer him up and all that. I listened to him vent and told him stories of my own. And he told me stories of other young adventurers that were similar to the one that died, some stories that I had heard before, some that I had not. Some of them ended in triumph, while a few ended in tragedy.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 18

    I continued to work on refining my body today. Specifically I was working on getting Pipeweed to move mana and Solar Energy around my body as efficiently and effectively as possible. It was a lot of trial and error but I have definitely made progress. I do have a lot of space to work with now that I no longer have to work around my monster parts so things are turning out to be a bit bulkier than I would like, but I should be able to fix that once I figure everything out and have a decent baseline to work from.


    I also noticed something about myself today, I am now completely infertile. I simply don''t have the anatomy to have children, I mean I noticed before but I never really connected the dots until now. I could definitely fix that with plant stuff, I''ve done as much with my Ents before. But I''m not sure I should. For one I don''t want children, beyond the ones I make manually anyways, and Azrezel hasn''t expressed any interest either. For another, even if I was one of the most fertile people in the world we still would struggle to have kids, as Azrezel is an undead. Not to mention the fact that I would make a terrible mother, and the whole ''being worshiped as a god'' thing would probably really mess with the head of any child I had. And besides, if we ever decide to have kids it is easy enough to fix.


    There is also the not insignificant amount of space that I would be able to use for other, more practical things.


    Now that it directly affects my own body I can definitely see the appeal of learning spatial manipulation. It''s a bit outside of my area of study, and not something dungeons are naturally capable of despite the fact that the vast majority of spatial mages are dungeons, but maybe I could get a plant with relevant qualities? I would have to buy it as I have no idea how I would go about evolving one.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Looking at it now the plant that I want is ridiculously expensive, even compared to other magical plants. It would take about four or five months of the entire income of our empire to be able to afford it, or a year or two of profits from the terminal, a bit beyond the resources I have available.


    That isn''t to say it''s hopeless, apparently teleportation has something to do with spatial manipulation. The way it was described reminds me of the relationship between healing and flesh manipulation, only much more extreme. So I could theoretically evolve something capable of it, but it would be hard, rely mostly on intention, and be almost entirely a roll of the dice. Which means that my constant efforts to increase my Fate is going to get in the way. I''ll keep it in mind for a future project.


    My paladins have been doing really well for themselves, even despite my lack of oversight. There haven''t been anymore casualties so it''s still the thirty nine of them. Individually they aren''t quite the strongest people in our empire, Par''s honor guard holds that title, but together the are the most capable group of soldiers we have. This is mostly thanks to a combination of their wide variety of skills and their perfect coordination and teamwork, which is excellent even when compared to the rest of our military, which also has the benefit of a hivemind. So exactly what I was building them up to be.


    Recently they managed to reach the bottom floor of the oldest dungeon on the continent, which happens to be quite a ways away from my forest. They are still down there, climbing their way out. I found this out because the dungeon contacted me, thanking me for their very respectful behaviour and inviting them to come back any time. I look forward to seeing what they''re bringing back from such a successful dive.


    I spent my downtime with Azrezel. We ended up going out to eat at a restaurant Tiddol recommended. The food was great, and the company better. We talked a lot at dinner, we didn''t talk a lot when we got home. I definitely enjoyed myself, and I would be surprised if Azrel didn''t.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 19

    Tiddol left this morning. As soon as she woke up, she packed her bags and brought her assassin turned slave with her to the edge of my forest. After saying goodbye to me she started walking away, towards where Par and his soldiers are. It was a somber goodbye.


    I was kind of expecting her to leave. It will be a little more lonely without her, but I certainly wasn''t about to try and stop her from leaving to join Par. She''s been a little down recently, this should help with that, I hope.


    Emotionally I don''t like that she left, but logically I know that I shouldn''t try to do anything about it. If it weren''t for this barrier I could try to join them on the front lines.


    Speaking of that barrier, there has been some development regarding it. Apparently it works by preventing dungeons from expanding across it, which effectively keeps me out. However, it also opens up a potential way around it. If I can get a piece of my dungeon into the barrier then I would be able to expand uninhibited. Just growing plants at the border does not work, whatever magic prevents me from expanding my dungeon also prevents me from growing any plants on the other side, and any plants someone else grows does not count as being part of my dungeon or my forest.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I''m not sure how I would be able to get onto the other side of the barrier, but at least I know that if I manage to do so then I will no longer have any issues with it.


    As for what I actually did today, I continued to refine my body. I got my energy circulation system part of my body up to an acceptable level and have started working on my vocal cords. That is mostly because having to manually use singing grass to make sound every time I want to talk is annoying. By the end of the day it became much easier to speak and my voice sounded a lot better, at least in my opinion anyway.


    Considering how slowly my current methodology is going I am probably going to change up how I approach this project starting tomorrow. Probably focus more on the broad strokes than on small pieces like my voice.


    According to the scholars my species would be categorized as a kind of shapeshifter, as I technically have no set anatomy. I would also be the first shape shifting plant on record, and given the lack of mobile plants in dungeons before I made the Ents, probably the first ever. There aren''t very many shapeshifters in this part of the world either, though apparently one of the scholars is one.


    Other than that I spent my downtime alone, thinking to myself. A lot has happened recently, between the disease that has only recently been completely eradicated, my apprentices graduating, and my own transition to a plant. Not all of it has been bad, but I would personally love it if everything was quiet for a little while.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 20

    Something happened, and I have no idea what. And that terrifies me.


    It happened around lunch time when I triggered my Fate to grow. Now normally it grows by a small, manageable amount. Usually the worst that happens is I trip and fall or otherwise embarrass myself in a small way. This has given me a bit of a reputation as a clutz, but it''s not like anyone is going to say that any louder than a hushed whisper.


    This time though, this time was different. All at once I received a massive increase in my own Fate, easily outstriping all of the Fate I have ever built up by a pretty big margin. Something similar happened right before I was kidnapped, though not to this degree.


    It was so much Fate that I was unable to keep it from correcting itself, immediately forcing me to burn my Fate. This particular event came in the form of insight into the nature of the soul. Recognizing the line of thought immediately for what it was I sat down and started meditating on it, shutting everything else out.


    The scary part is that nothing bad has happened yet. Which means that whatever it is has already happened, and I''ve just yet to feel the results. It would have to be something that took no more than a moment, and the only thing I can think of is a decision. Someone somewhere decided on something that will lead to my inevitable death. You don''t build up this much Fate at one time without dying.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    But Fate always leaves a way out of death. It does what it can to keep your mind intact. For whatever reason knowledge of the soul is going to be immediately relevant for my own survival, or at least for the continuation of my soul. Any moral quandaries I had before pale in comparison to that.


    Of course I could be completely mistaken about the nature of Fate, but I really don''t want to take that risk. Especially not when my own mind is at stake.


    And now I am super paranoid. Jerkling my head at every shadow, jumping at every loud noise, and teleporting away at the slightest hint of danger. I need to calm down, do something to take my mind off of the fact that I have definite proof of my own impending death. I did make a deal with that dungeon to teach me how to use the soul, maybe I can get him to teach me more? It will hopefully take my mind off of it.


    It''s kinda funny, I just got over one death scare and now I''m dealing with another.


    I''m glad I have Azrezel to comfort me. Without him I likely would have ended up in a crying, shivering, fearful mess all day, instead of just for a couple hours. He puts up with me so well. I don''t say it often enough, but I love my big undead angel. I mean technically he''s an undead Seraphim now, but he used to be an angel so whatever.


    Anyway, I think I am actually going to sleep tonight, it should relieve some stress. So Good Night Diary.

 Day 21

    I contacted the dungeon that said ''everything I know about the soul is yours, assuming you are able to learn it.'' this morning. Apparently he had hoped that I would die as he wanted to test the range that his contracts had, now he has no idea what he wants me to do for the favor I owe him, but he will ''think on it''.


    I hope he will have me make something for him, I''m really good at that.


    I spent most of the morning answering his questions, most of which were about the soul, but some were seemingly inane. After that he said that he would contact me in a couple days after he finished crafting a lesson plan for me.


    He was rather shocked about my knowledge of the soul, and seemed a bit grumpy when he found out how exactly I learned all that I currently know. He was considerably less grumpy when I explained to him the cost of it. Impending inevitable death is never fun, even for a master soul mage who supposedly has a really good shot at keeping their mind intact when they reincarnate.


    I don''t really have a good context for what I really know about the soul, but based on what I do know it has a lot to do with connections. To people especially. I am probably completely wrong, I see no visual evidence for that when looking at peoples'' souls, and it makes sense that Fate focused on giving my information most relevant to my own survival.


    So I spent the rest of my day working on my body. I mostly focused on things like hand eye coordination, physical strength, flexibility, and other similar things. I didn''t do a lot with my flexibility as I worked on that quite a bit when refining my appearance.


    Improving my physical strength was rather tough. I can''t give myself big hulking muscles as that would ruin my carefully cultivated image, so I can only really refine the mechanism behind the muscles. Ultimately I decided on the same general structure as the Endiaum, a type of rather powerful angel that almost always has slender bodies despite their prodigious strength. My guess is that they were made by an Origin who wanted to see how far he can push physical strength, as that same structure appears in several other creatures in most of the trees of life all with telltale signs that tells me they were made by the same person.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I could definitely improve on the muscles as this design was created to work without nearly as much mana as I currently have. And I can always use Solar Energy to improve everything as well, which I am doing constantly anyway, albeit relatively slowly.


    Hand eye coordination was really just a bunch of small things, most of which was just copied from the best thing I know of. Having an encyclopedic memory of the anatomy of the vast majority of creatures Origin ever created is something I probably should have thought of taking advantage of a couple days ago honestly. It would have made refining my appearance a lot easier.


    I''m still freaking out over what happened yesterday, but not as much. There is nothing I can really do to stop my death at this point, and I''m already doing what I can to let myself survive it so I shouldn''t worry so much. Just that thought alone is enough to help me calm down if I''m ever feeling paranoid.


    Besides, it''s not like I can really do anything with the soul beyond the basic exercises I am already doing. Well I could, but if I mess up then something horrible could very easily happen. If a spell I try to cast backfires and I get unlucky then I might end up with a disease in my soul, I do not want to find out what that is like. And even if I don''t have a spell backfire, even if everything goes exactly how I wanted it to go I could still horribly maim someone''s soul. Which I can''t fix yet.


    So yeah, I''ll wait till the older dungeon can show me how to not mess up before I mess around with the stuff.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. He cooked me dinner and baked me a small cake, it was a good cake. Dinner turned into cuddling, cuddling turned into something more intimate, which made me thankful that neither of us need to breathe, or sleep.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 22

    The dungeon has not contacted me yet, which is making me more than a little nervous. If he has not contacted me by tomorrow I will contact him myself.


    As I did not have access to a tutor quite yet I spent my time today improving my body. Mostly that consisted of figuring out what the best design I already know of would work for what I need, and then smoothing out the edges a little.


    Today¡¯s focus was magic, both with mana and Solar Energy. The first thing I did was add a mana heart into my body, similar to the one I used in the Ents, only much better. It is a rather straightforward organ, doing everything a more mundane heart does, only for mana.


    I also tried to create something that would work with Solar Energy as well, but It¡¯s likely going to take me days to modify something so that it will work properly. The device that produces Solar Energy makes things a bit complicated there.


    I also included structures designed to assist in certain kinds of magic, and even ones that assist in the manipulation of mana directly. It was during this process that I realized that my fine control of plants had diminished somewhat, which makes sense as the same structures I built today were part of my monster body. What made less sense was the fact that my fine mana control was still worse after creating these structures, just not quite as bad.


    Also, as a side effect of this, I no longer have any issues with either external mana manipulation or normal mana production. I can now absorb ambient mana, but the process is just so slow to be worth doing anything beyond passive regeneration. Whatever was preventing me from doing either of those things was part of my monster body and has since disappeared.


    Not that being able to use external mana manipulation matters at this point, It¡¯s different enough from internal mana manipulation that everything I know about that is actually a detriment, as I keep expecting it to behave one way only for it to behave in another. It would take forever to get good enough at it for it to be useful. And besides, I haven¡¯t needed it yet, and anything I could do with it, I can do better through my trees.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Azrezel asked me today why I was working on my body, especially if I was so convinced that I was going to die in the near future anyway. I had to think about that for a moment. Honestly, the real reason is to keep my mind off of that whole thing. I mean, I could do other things, but that was what I was working on before the event. Had I not built up tons of Fate in one go this is what I would have been working on anyway, so might as well continue.


    Besides, I should be able to remember this body post-death and maybe even rebuild it.


    I think I need more friends. Other than Azrezel the only people I can hang out with right now is my dad and Junior, neither of which I can really hang out with as a peer. Askos has already left to start taking lessons under one of Par¡¯s generals, but I would be able to interact with him as a peer either.


    It¡¯s not like I have a large pool for candidates either, most of the people around here literally worship me, not exactly the start of a strong friendship. I could try hanging out with the scholars, but they aren¡¯t all that interesting individually. It would be like trying to make friends with a faceless mob.


    Maybe I could try to hang out with one of the true immortals that frequent here, I¡¯m pretty sure they don¡¯t worship me and they have treated me as a peer in the past. Unfortunately, Emericus went back into seclusion after he finished cleaning up the disease, I probably won¡¯t see him above ground for a while still. Maybe I could try talking to the nuclear fire users?


    I¡¯m honestly more nervous about this than about the threat to my life. I¡¯ve dealt with having my life be threatened countless times in the last couple years, and I¡¯ve even died once before, but I¡¯ve never had to go out of my way to try and make friends.


    I think I will try to talk to them next time they visit.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 23

    The dungeon contacted me before I managed to contact him, saying that his lesson plans were completed and he was ready to teach me. I could just feel the tension leaving my body when I heard that.


    His first lesson was on the basics, and it was a lot more interesting than I thought it was going to be. Though that is partially because I already knew quite a bit thanks to Fate and was able to make connections between what he was saying and what I already knew.


    I already knew that the soul consists of an outer ¡®shell¡¯ and an inner ¡®core¡¯, what I didn¡¯t know was that the outer shell does a lot more than just act as a form of protection for the core. The inner portions of the shell are cannibalized to form the structures in the core and the shell itself empowers the person that the soul belongs to in pretty much every way, though not quite as much as some of the structures in the core do. That is why people feel weak after exhausting the shell of their soul through things like seeding other souls, or learning.


    Yeah, I already knew that memories were stored in the soul, but I was not aware that there was a dedicated structure in the outer core of the soul to store memories. And this structure is expanded upon as you learn new things and form new memories, which means that if you learn too much too quickly you can exhaust the shell of your soul. It is rather fragile structure by default, though I imagine that there are ways to fix that if you are skilled enough with the soul.


    I also learned why it is relatively rare for people to be reincarnated with previous memories. The shell of your soul is ripped away rather quickly during the process, as every part of reincarnation is rather traumatic. If your entire shell is ripped away then it starts to destroy the part of your soul dedicated to memories.


    I also learned a lot of minutia about the structure of the soul, like which structures do what and how they interact. There is a surprising amount there, aside from the memory storage most of the structures inside are rather small.


    He also told me to focus heavily on the exercises the other dungeon taught me, and even taught me how to do them better. Apparently the benefit there is twofold, the most obvious being to make me better at using my own soul. The less obvious benefit is that the soul is very similar to a muscle, and working it out like this will improve it. Something about purifying it and letting it flow better, I¡¯m not entirely sure what he meant by that but I have a decent idea. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    The dungeon was impressed by how quickly I was learning things, saying that I had gone through a day and a half worth of lesson plans within the course of one day¡¯s worth of teaching. Saying he might need to readjust his schedule if things kept up like this.


    And then at around lunchtime, the lesson stopped, with him saying that he can¡¯t afford to teach me all day as he has other stuff to take care of. And so I was left with half a day to work on other stuff, so I decided to take his advice and focused entirely on the soul exercises.


    It¡¯s not really all that different from what I do when I refine plants, it¡¯s basically the same repetitive series of motions over and over again. Only with this, there doesn¡¯t really seem to be an end goal beyond endless improvement. Which is totally fine, as long as I am improving I am satisfied, it¡¯s only when I stop improving that I get frustrated and anxious.


    During my three or so hours of near-total concentration, I noticed a couple things. The first is that the shell of my soul was actually shrinking. After observing for a little bit I didn¡¯t notice any of it being tied up into any of the structures in my core, well, a little, but not nearly enough to account for what was going on. I did notice some of it being cast off and turning into ambient mana, but again, not nearly enough to be relevant. It was just disappearing slowly. It didn¡¯t seem to be doing any damage, and the shell of my soul is a lot thicker than the vast majority of people¡¯s. Plus I can recover from any damage to it pretty quickly. So overall it wasn¡¯t that big of a deal, but it is something I am going to have to ask about.


    It¡¯s also telling that almost nothing that he taught me had anything to do with connections, which means that it¡¯s probably a bit more esoteric. It is entirely likely that I learned more about that because I simply knew more about it as I had to learn quite a bit about connections with the soul in order to confirm that I was not dying when my monster parts were being stripped away. I had more there to base any further inspirations on, which I have noticed is a factor in the type of information Fate gives me.


    On the other hand, it is also plausible that I got that information because it will somehow be relevant to me preserving my mind. Of course, it could just be that it was pointing me in the right direction so I would know where to look on my own. I really have no idea, but I think the best plan on my part would be to operate under the assumption that learning as much about the soul as possible will help me preserve my mind better than anything else I could do right now.


    It¡¯s entirely speculative, but based on the fact that no major negative event has happened so far I would say that whatever is going to happen is going to take a while to actually make itself clear. With how much Fate I gained it¡¯s probably some incredibly powerful creature like the one who let me get access to Fate in the first place subtly working against me. Of course, it could just be that a volcano is in the process of opening up beneath my feet and that at any given moment I could die in a blaze of molten rock. Again, I have no idea. I¡¯m honestly not sure which one I would prefer at this point.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. He was exhausted today so we mostly just cuddled.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 24

    This morning I continued to study under the older dungeon. Today we didn¡¯t go over any major things, it was still just a bunch of minor nuances and little details to keep in mind. I¡¯m not entirely sure how it will help yet, but I know from other magics that I have pursued that learning every seemingly inconsequential detail will definitely help you improve.


    I also asked him about the deal with my soul shrinking slightly while I was doing the exercises he recommended I do. His response was something along the lines of ¡®yes that does happen, but it''s amazing that you were able to notice.¡¯ We then had a conversation about how I was able to notice, he said that the answer might change the way I he teaches me as it implies a level of ability he had assumed was beyond me. Basically, it came down to me using my hivemind to do the exercise countless times simultaneously, which he said would give me a very distinct advantage over other dungeons if I can keep it up for a couple of months. I probably can¡¯t keep it up to that degree for so long, but I can dedicate quite a bit of mental resources to it for a while.


    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    He also said that he needed to take a break for a day to create something that should help him teach me faster. And that before he was teaching me out of obligation, but now he is actually excited to see what I can learn. Which is a good thing I think, I¡¯ve never really had teachers that didn¡¯t want to teach me so I wouldn¡¯t know. I can¡¯t imagine that it¡¯s a bad thing though.


    Once the lesson was done I got to work refining my body again, though with much of my mental resources dedicated to improving my soul I wasn¡¯t able to make a lot of progress. It mostly involved getting parts that were not designed to work together, work together better, and while I did make some progress with it I still have a ways to go.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. I helped him solve a couple problems he was having with a new design for some of his undead. He was trying to design something that was good at magic but was stumbling over the layout of the mana pathways, things weren¡¯t moving around as well as they should be. It took a while but I eventually found a place where two different pathways got a little too close and allowed mana to bridge the gap easily, causing things to get damaged and not work properly.


    It was really fun to work with Azrezel again.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 25

    Progress on getting all of the bits and pieces of my body to work together smoothly is still slow as much of my concentration is still on the soul exercises. I don¡¯t really know how to tell if my soul is improving, so I have no idea how much progress I am making. But I¡¯m sure my progress is relatively substantial.


    In some good news, I am getting better at the soul exercises so they require less focus from me to perform. Which means I can perform more of them simultaneously without needing any more concentration. I know there is an upper limit to how many times in parallel I can do these exercises, but I haven¡¯t quite hit that yet.


    I received word through my hivemind about Willow today. Apparently, a couple of my followers saw her heading towards the city teleporter and overheard her talking about her destination. Apparently, she¡¯s been summoned to the capital, someone important wants to give her party an award for ¡®rescuing¡¯ so many civilians that we wouldn¡¯t have harmed anyway. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    This event feels important, but I¡¯m not entirely sure how yet. Maybe once we can get my eldest to return home we can get some useful information about the capital? I can only hope.


    A couple wielders of nuclear fire returned today with a new shipment of waste for us to dispose of. I decided to talk to them and managed to really hit it off with one of the girls in the group, a rather attractive Archdevil named Jasmine. We got drinks and talked about little of consequence for a while before she had to leave, saying she had some business to take care of. It was fun to talk to her and she said that she would be back in a week or so, saying she would enjoy hanging out with me if I was available then. I¡¯m looking forward to it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 26

    I resumed my lessons on the soul today. The dungeon had taken yesterday to create a kind of telepathic device that would allow us to communicate through telepathy over long distances, instead of using the terminal. This let him teach me much faster, as now I could fully take advantage of my hivemind for learning while also allowing him to better explain the concepts he was trying to teach me.


    I¡¯m still learning about what a soul is, what it¡¯s made of and what it does. We haven¡¯t even begun to touch on what you can do with this knowledge or how you can manipulate the soul for your own benefit. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    I was rather surprised to find out that not only improves magic and memory, but also more physical things like strength and flexibility in much the same way that mana does, though the process of building up those benefits is a lot slower. I wonder if that is due to lack of proper resources or something else, I¡¯ll have to ask.


    Other than that I spent my downtime thinking to myself, well, it was mostly a chance to relax away from everything. No real profound thinking, just some light meditation and clearing my mind. I wouldn¡¯t say that it was fun, but it was definitely enjoyable.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 27

    While fascinating, there is so much minor minutia to learn about the soul that what I¡¯ve learned already could fill up twelve of my diaries, or at least what I¡¯ve already written of it, and still only be a brief summary. I might be exaggerating a little, but it still makes it hard to talk about in my diary. Like in order to fully talk about what I¡¯m learning I either have to go over the broad strokes, which I have already done, or somehow provide context to everything I¡¯m saying, which I don¡¯t even want to attempt.


    Fortunately, it isn¡¯t the only thing that is happening in my life. For example, today my trees out in the ocean ran into a massive uninhabited island. Based on the fact that it was a desert when I found it I think I¡¯m safe in saying that it was at one point purged with nuclear fire, but has since been scrubbed clean of the poisonous residue. There wasn¡¯t really much there, it¡¯s just that it was twice the size of anything found so far.


    As it was pretty far out into the ocean and in a great place for fishing we decided to set up an outpost there, which wasn¡¯t terribly exciting. But it was interesting to watch how the fishers got around the acidic oceans. The primary method seemed to involve a rather large boat covered in some kind of tar, and a fishing line made out of woven glass, courtesy of plant manipulators taking advantage of Shimmerleaf. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    It was definitely not the most successful method however, at least from what I observed. People able to dive into the waters with a net caught more fish than anyone else. Of course, those people could also shrug off the acid like it was normal water, so their advantage is understandable.


    Still, I¡¯m curious as to how they are surviving. They would have to be a lot more powerful in order for biology alone to be able to be enough, and none of them were the living globs of acid known as slimes so they don¡¯t have the advantage of being made of acid when they dive. I mean I¡¯ve asked, and all of them seem to have different methods.


    Well, whatever, it¡¯s a mystery for another time, and more importantly a mystery I already have a solution too.


    Other than that I spent time with Azrezel. We ended up getting into a discussion about his estranged uncle on his mother¡¯s side, apparently, he did something pretty heinous and got exiled for it. Almost certainly dead, though a body has never been found.


    Speaking of family, I wonder what Tiddol¡¯s parents are thinking of all of this. They live on the other side of the world, but surely they must get some news about what happens here, even if only from Tiddol. I have no idea how I would react if I found out that my kids were busy building an empire on the other side of the world. I mean I would probably be proud of them, but it would still be more than a little weird.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 28

    Today my teacher told me that I had learned all that he was able to teach me about the structure and function of the soul. He also admitted that he went into so much detail about all of the tiny minutiae, most of which he admitted will only offer minor benefit to me, because he was hoping I would get bored and not want to learn from him again. He couldn¡¯t just not teach me as that would break the contract we already made, and he couldn¡¯t not take advantage of my hive mind because that would go against the ¡®if you are capable of learning it¡¯ part of our contract.


    The fact that I have managed to learn so much so quickly makes him a little bit more interested in teaching me, but not by enough for him to not be a little irritated by this whole thing.


    And also, now that I think about it, this was originally a completely one-sided deal during the original circumstances it was made in. In my defense I wasn¡¯t exactly thinking straight at that point in time, I was kind of in shock and nothing felt real, but still. He got an unspecified future favor, that could be almost anything, while I got to figure out if I was actually dying or not a couple days in advance. I know that there is probably a lot you can do to prepare for your own death in a couple days, but I am still working on the skills that would let me prepare for my own death at all.


    Still, I¡¯m really glad I made that contract now. I¡¯m more than willing to do a month¡¯s worth of work, especially now that I¡¯ve managed to go over the restrictions on what kind of favor it can be a bit more. For example, I missed the part that says that the service cannot be something that would result in personal harm or death, which means he can¡¯t ask me to damage my forest in any way as it is an extension of myself in the same way that any dungeon is an extension of the dungeon core. It also means that he can¡¯t ask me to hurt or kill my followers or my close friends, as all of them are part of my hivemind and that makes them an extension of my mind, which is part of myself. Now he could ask me to do something that results in harm or death to my forest or my followers, but not directly. Like he could ask me to pick a fight with someone, which results in people dying during the fallout, but couldn¡¯t ask me to kill Tiddol. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    I personally hope he asks me to craft something for him.


    Anyway, he is going to start teaching me how to get use out of the soul starting tomorrow.


    During the time I wasn¡¯t learning about the soul I was refining my body, which was a slow process thanks to a big part of my focus going towards refining my soul. At this rate, it will be three or four more days before I have all of the parts I already put into my body functioning at peak effectiveness, at which point I can start improving those parts.


    I have noticed that adding new material to my body does set me back a bit on my admittedly minimal progress towards cultivating my body with Solar Energy, but that isn¡¯t exactly a priority. In addition, mana is less efficient at healing my body as there is more that I need to heal thanks to Solar Energy, though healing with Solar Energy is still just as effective. I wonder if there have been any other effects as a result of refining my body with Solar Energy? I¡¯ll have to test it out later.


    Other than that I spent my time with Azrezel. We ended up cuddling for a while, I¡¯m kinda surprised it didn¡¯t progress beyond that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 29

    Today I learned about actual practical applications for using the soul, or at least active applications as it does quite a bit passively. Today we mostly went over ways to give yourself temporary buffs using the outer shell of the soul to power them. Like mana using these spells doesn¡¯t actually consume the soul energy involved, but unlike mana the soul energy does not leave your soul at any time, meaning you can keep casting these spells over and over again without risk of running out of energy, assuming you have enough energy that isn¡¯t tied up in other spells that is.


    Casting these spells also works to exercise the soul in the same way I have been doing, though not quite as effectively. And now that I look at it the exercise I have been doing is just one of these spells that is designed to burn through itself quickly. And with how simple it is to cast you are able to do it over and over again very rapidly.


    It is possible to make these spells more or less permanent, but I have been thoroughly warned against doing that until I have more or less mastered the use of the soul as they are very hard to non-destructively pick apart once cast, effectively locking me into to whatever spell I cast until I can somehow remove it. Plus there are other things to do with the soul that uses up that same energy that is being hogged by the spell.


    I also noticed that my soul is, I guess changing color would be the closest description but it isn¡¯t quite accurate. As far as I can tell soul energy has no actual color. Regardless when I told the older dungeon that he just said ¡®good, that¡¯s supposed to happen¡¯ and then refused to comment further. I¡¯m pretty sure he did that mostly to irritate me, but whatever, as long as he is teaching me he will find that I¡¯m hard to irritate. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    I bought Azrezel chocolates today, really chocolate apparently, though I can¡¯t tell the difference. Based on the fact that all of them were gone within a minute I would say that he liked them. He also made me a necklace, I could tell at first glance that it was made out of shaped bone, even the actual chain was made out of specially grown pieces of bone. It was very pretty, and incredibly intricate, though it seemed to be stylized in a way I wouldn¡¯t have expected from Azrezel, with a lot of curves and pieces looping back in on themselves and the greater whole and a whole bunch of other small details, in addition to a rather sizeable gemstone in the center. I quickly found out, however, that it was actually a kind of enchantment on the necklace, or rather the necklace itself was wholly dedicated to the enchantment. He didn¡¯t really design it, he doesn¡¯t have the skills for that. Instead, he paid the guy that has been teaching people enchanting to do that. Apparently, that guy decided to stick around when we built the school.


    The enchantment is a sort of protection enchantment, somehow dissipating hostile magics. It seems to work by absorbing some mana from spells, though how it does that I have no idea. But it will continue to work so long as the structure isn¡¯t damaged and the gemstone at the center has room for more mana.


    It¡¯s a nice gift, I¡¯ll definitely be wearing it from here on out. My own gift feels a bit lackluster compared to his.


    I wonder if there are any plants with a similar effect, something like that would be really useful and would work well with Null. Could I maybe make something like that using Null? I¡¯m not sure, but it¡¯s possible.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 30

    Today was more of yesterday. I learned more ways to provide temporary buffs to myself and others, I learned minor, mostly meaningless, ways to tweak and change those spells, and not much else.


    I have made slow progress with refining my body, but rapid progress in refining my soul. The shell has gotten quite a bit smaller and denser, to a rather extreme degree. It¡¯s smaller not because it can fit less soul energy, but rather because I don¡¯t have enough of the stuff to fill it up to capacity. And it¡¯s density allows a lot more intricate work to be done with it, either that or my own skill has improved drastically over the last several days, which would be more surprising than the soul being more suited to the work. I improve quickly, but not that quickly. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Azrezel and I hung out a bit today during my downtime. We mostly just cuddled while he worked his magic on his undead. A bit later, however, I worked my magic on him.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 31

    Today I learned more about how to use the shell of my soul, but while fascinating that is not what I want to talk about today.


    Willow was seen again on the front lines. She wasn¡¯t evacuating civilians or anything like that, no, she was directly opposing us. And not just that but she somehow managed to take out half of our troops within an hour of fighting, she should not be that powerful.


    It makes sense for her to be powerful, she is my child, after all, potentially even powerful enough to turn a defeat into a victory. But even considering the fact that she managed to attack us more or less uncontested for a while she should not have been able to take out half of our troops within an hour.


    And why would she betray us like this? We haven¡¯t done anything cruel to her and we have treated our people well, even those that were once part of the angelic council¡¯s empire. Did they offer her something she desperately needed? If so why didn¡¯t she come to us? I would have given her more or less anything she needed no questions asked. Is she being threatened? I have no idea, but I doubt it considering how powerful she seems to be now. The only thing that makes sense to me is some kind of brainwashing. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Honestly, I feel angry and betrayed. Why would she do this? She might not consider me to be her parent, but she does, or at least did, view Tiddol as a mother.


    The only thing that makes sense is that it has something to do with the massive influx of Fate from a couple days ago. This certainly makes me feel terrible enough for it to be the case. So Willow is going to somehow cause my death then? Or she¡¯s a symptom of whatever it is. Whatever, I¡¯ve come back from death once and I¡¯ll do it again. I¡¯ll do it as many times as I have to in order to crush the angelic council and kill all of their members. I¡¯ll take over the entire world if I have too.


    I¡¯m not just angry, I¡¯m enraged. And I¡¯m not the only one either. The people saw Willow as one of the founders of our empire, one of the people that will be written about in our history books as a legendary figure. It seems like that will happen, just not in the way we wanted it too.


    I need to focus my mind on something, It¡¯s hard to think with all of this anger. Just distracting myself from it won¡¯t help, not with the people being so angry, I need something that will completely consume my thoughts and require no active thinking. I¡¯m going to start working on refining my soul, if only because it is a simple repetitive task that does not require any active thought.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 32

    Today it was hard to focus on anything, more and more people are hearing the news and so more and more people are experiencing that feeling of anger and betrayal, making those same emotions still feel fresh in my mind.


    It wasn¡¯t impossible to focus, I did learn quite a bit today while studying with the older dungeon, I just wasn¡¯t able to absorb information quite as well. It took a lot more effort on my part to learn the same amount of information. And I enjoy learning, but this anger and betrayal that I feel constantly is making me angry and frustrated, which really takes the fun out of it.Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    The part that worries me the most is that I have an unrelenting urge to hurt Willow, to twist the knife and see her suffer. And I know that those thoughts aren¡¯t mine, but that hardly matters when my thoughts are constantly being pushed in that direction. Clearing my thoughts doesn¡¯t help because it¡¯s not my thoughts to begin with. The only thing that does help is focusing all of my mental prowess on a singular repetitive task, but even then it isn¡¯t perfect.


    I have to do something about this, but I have no idea what I could possibly do. And this anger isn¡¯t helping me think. Whatever, I¡¯ll ask Par what he thinks when he gets back in town tomorrow. In the meantime I¡¯m going to try to actually sleep, I hope it will distract me from this unnatural rage.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 33

    This morning I asked Par if he could do anything about the constant anger and within an hour there was feasts and partying everywhere, he was giving speeches and the mood was changing. It was actually really impressive, even more so because it worked. I was still angry, but not the white-hot searing rage of before. It was a calm, smoldering anger.


    The problem is I don¡¯t know if that anger was my own. People were still angry, that much was obvious, but I¡¯m not entirely convinced that it was enough to really sway my emotions. It¡¯s hard to know what I am feeling when my emotions are too easily overwhelmed by the masses. But I can¡¯t really fix that, to remove someone from my hivemind would be to kill them, we can¡¯t afford that kind of loss. And I have no idea what it is that causes me to feel the emotions of others, so I don¡¯t know how I could go about fixing the problem.


    I managed to learn quite a bit today, relative to the last couple days at least. I learned how to create Illusions using soul energy today by basically messing with the parts of the soul that communicate with the sensory parts of the body like the eyes and the ears. I¡¯m not really sure what the practical applications of this are, but it¡¯s interesting nonetheless.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I¡¯ve also recently learned a lot about the brain, which from my newfound understanding serves as the direct connection between the soul and the body, while also somehow expanding on the effects of the soul? Like many of the functions of the brain and the soul overlap quite heavily and they work in tandem together quite well. I know you can have conscious thought, memories, and life without a brain, but can you do the same without a soul? Might be worth looking into.


    During my downtime, I hung out with Tiddol, though we spent most of the time in silence. She still seems to be pretty shocked by recent events so I just sat there next to her, keeping her company.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 34

    Today I learned more about illusions, things like how to mimic millions of different colors of light and what exactly those colors looked like and other very fine increments of sensations. It was fascinating not because I care about the effects, but because of what I am learning about the way that the brain and the soul communicate and interact. I feel like there is something there, something big that I might be able to do, I just need to understand the soul better to figure it out.


    I¡¯m actually glad that the older dungeon has decided to go with the route of teaching me every single minor detail in the hope that I get bored. There is a lot there for me to learn, and having a teacher this knowledgeable is a wonderful experience. Even with subjects that I normally don¡¯t find interesting, I would probably be just as fascinated if someone just as knowledgeable as my current teacher were to teach me with this method. Unfortunately most creatures so knowledgeable would not have had the time to study any form of telepathy, and very few if any of them are part of my hivemind, they just aren¡¯t that common. Most of them are either dungeons or part of the scholar¡¯s order, and very few of the scholars have joined my hivemind, something about things like that being against their rules. And most dungeons aren¡¯t really capable of the long-distance telepathy that would be required, or if they are then I can¡¯t afford their services, it¡¯s not exactly an innate thing for dungeons. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    I also asked the dungeon if he wanted me to make anything for him, only for him to say that anything I could make he could make better. I¡¯m not entirely sure that¡¯s true, as he has presumably spent his entire life studying the soul. But it isn¡¯t entirely unreasonable, creation is natural for dungeons.


    The shell of my soul is getting worryingly thin, it¡¯s still really dense and has so far proven to be very resistant to damage but I¡¯m uncomfortable with how close the outer edge of the shell is to my memories. Even my teacher mentioned that I should probably take a short break to let my soul recover, so I will probably take a couple days and wait for it to fill back in.


    As a result of that, I made massive progress in refining my body, another day like this and all of the smashed together pieces will be working perfectly with each other. From there I can start actually improving my body, not just stealing ideas from other creators.


    I took part in the revelries today during my downtime, there was an oddly somber tone, one not quite strong enough to affect me directly, but present nonetheless. Mournful, in a way. I wish I had stayed to listen to Par¡¯s speeches now, then I might know what was going on here. Still, it was fun to eat and drink and party with the people. I¡¯ve found that I enjoy getting drunk with large groups of similarly drunk people.


    It definitely helps that I can magic away the alcohol with a simple spell.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 35

    Today I learned more about what you can do with the soul. Either I¡¯m getting better at learning through this method or the other dungeon is improving whatever it is he¡¯s using to communicate with me because it feels like it is getting easier and faster. I¡¯m learning more in the same amount of time. Which is great, because there seems to be quite a lot left to learn about, which makes sense as it is basically the life work of a several millennia-old dungeon, they are supposedly older than most Origin. I honestly kind of feel bad about this, he did agree to it but still. I would certainly hate to divulge my every secret thanks to the kind of deal we made. I¡¯m not going to stop just because of that, but still.


    I finally got around to learning about what the changing colors of my soul mean. It turns out to be pretty much exactly what I guessed, a representation of power. It has something to do with the way soul energy interacts with your perception, there was a long complicated lecture about what exactly was happening but the simple explanation was that as density increases whatever it is that lets people like me perceive soul energy changes. The only real practical effect of this is to cause soul manipulators and others with powerful souls, as apparently manipulating the soul directly is not the only thing that causes your soul to get denser, to stick out like a sore thumb to anyone with the ability to see it. You can mask this, it¡¯s pretty simple as all you need to do is put a layer of relatively normal density soul energy on top of your soul. But a competent soul mage can see right through this and it limits the amount of energy you can have available at any given time. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    It was a really interesting lesson, now if only he would explain what he meant by my soul becoming ¡®more pure¡¯.


    During my downtime today I hung out with Tiddol, which was fun. She seems happier, more relaxed since she has come back from the front lines. She was angry when she first got back, apparently, she managed to talk to Willow before everything went down over there. She had some very strong and colorful words about that conversation but didn¡¯t go into what was actually said. The terms ¡®treacherous coward¡¯ and ¡®brainwashed fools¡¯ were thrown around a lot, and those were some of the tamer examples.


    Once she actually calmed down though she was much calmer and happier than I had seen her in quite a while, she was practically glowing. Makes me wish I could join them on the front lines already. Although I have a feeling that studying the soul might help with that, I¡¯m just not sure how yet.


    Other than that not a lot happened today. The feasting has mostly wrapped up and everyone is in a sort of stupor from partying for two days straight, so there wasn¡¯t really much to do. I¡¯m just glad that we can mass-produce food more or less for free, otherwise, these frequent feasts would be impossible.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 36

    I spent most of my day learning more about the soul. There isn¡¯t really a lot I can talk about without going into more detail than would fit this diary, or at least the vast majority of what I am learning would be more fit for a textbook than my diary. Though I will admit that I often go into more detail than might be necessary.


    I have started to realize something though, soul energy is a lot less free in what it is able to accomplish than mana is. With mana you can do pretty much anything as long as you have the know-how, the will, and enough of the stuff. But soul energy not so much, for example, conjuration is entirely impossible for soul energy, at least from my recently expanded understanding of it. You aren¡¯t going to make a spear to throw at your enemies with soul energy, nor are you going to make a shield to stop the spear. But it is much better than mana at changing and modifying things, not so much the permanent, but small, improvements of solar energy, though it can do that, just not very well. The more temporary, but larger, changes are what it does well.


    And that¡¯s just one aspect of it, there¡¯s also the whole ¡®root of conscious thought¡¯ thing going on as well, and everything with connections that I learned about as a result of Fate.


    I imagine that soul energy is really good at being made into curses, which is all kinds of terrifying. I can¡¯t imagine something like what happened around new-years, only using the soul instead of mana. We would simply have no way to contain it or control it. Luckily soul manipulators seem to be rare.


    Also, my teacher admitted that they were trying to improve whatever it was that is letting them communicate with me so that they can get this whole process over with faster. Which is great because I¡¯m starting to get some ideas for how to use the soul to get over the barrier preventing me from entering the domain of the angelic council, but I want to know everything I can before I commit to anything. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Other than that I spent some time with Par today. He said that he was going to stay in town for a little while in order to train some troops. Following his recent speeches, there was an explosion in volunteers for the military, most of them were untrained. We are also a bit short on trained soldiers thanks to recent events, so he kind of has to stay for a little while.


    He did ask me if I could convince Azrezel to start teaching a class on necromancy, we do have a few necromancers but few of them are really competent. And of those all but two of them are scholars, which brings with it some worrying implications if they were to teach our own necromancers, something about them being beholden to their order, while the other actually competent necromancer is nowhere near as competent as Azrezel.


    After asking around it seems the other skilled necromancer is actually Junior, which was a bit unexpected, but not entirely unreasonable. According to Azrezel she¡¯s actually just an average necromancer with access to amazing materials by way of her ability to just create bodies. But she has potential if only because of her hard work and determination, though her prior knowledge of all things healing certainly helps. She hasn¡¯t really been asking Azrezel for help either, instead, she figured it out on accident and has been experimenting with it a bit. Which isn¡¯t surprising really, she¡¯s never really been one to ask for help when presented with something she doesn¡¯t understand, she buckles down and tries to solve the problem on her own, even is she couldn¡¯t possibly know the solution.


    I wonder how Askos is doing? I haven''t seen him in a little while. He should be in town right now, I¡¯ll see if I can meet up with him tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 37

    Today was an almost unmitigated disaster.


    I spent my morning like I have spent most mornings recently, studying underneath the older dungeon. At around noon when I was done for the day I became aware of the fact that some of my trees were burning.


    I wasn¡¯t too worried about this, it happened sometimes and my trees are fire-resistant enough that even a tree in full blaze isn¡¯t enough to start an actual forest fire. The wood simply doesn¡¯t burn hot enough to spread.


    But then my trees warned me that they were under attack, which I still wasn¡¯t terribly worried about. We could deal with most threats with ease, especially this deep into my forest. It didn¡¯t occur to me then that the fact that my forest was being attacked this deep inside was cause for concern.


    I wasn¡¯t concerned until I arrived on the scene and saw a small army of flying angelics lighting parts of my forest on fire, but even then it was something I could deal with. Putting the fires out was simple enough, but dealing with them was troublesome. Reaching up that high with plants isn¡¯t impossible, but it is annoying and slower than I would have liked. I probably should have realized then that the area they were attacking had nothing of value beyond my forest. The enemy knows where our cities are, they wouldn¡¯t attack blindly. But I was still distracted by what I had learned that day and wasn¡¯t thinking everything through.


    It did strike me as odd that no one else had arrived to support me in fending off these angelic soldiers, but I was enough to deal with them even if it took a while so that didn¡¯t concern me.


    I was not truly worried until I received word from Par that our capital was under attack, the telepathic communication was hazy and indistinct. So I tried to teleport back, but some other magic stopped it, it felt very similar to what happened with the plant destroying enchantment.


    That was when what had happened dawned on me. This small Warband was nothing more than a way to distract me from the real threat, an actual full-sized army attacking our heart. They show up, light a few fires to tick me off, and keep me stuck there long enough for me to not be a threat. They couldn¡¯t beat me, so they weren¡¯t tying. Instead, all they cared about was slowing me down and preventing me from interfering.


    I could have disabled their enchantments with the simple enchantment killer I know, but the process of building that is slow and waiting for it to have an effect that high up in the sky would be much slower. I did try nonetheless, but I was banking mostly on other means of escape.


    I tried boosting my walking speed to extremes, but they were able to somehow sense that and put up a wall blocking me, I didn¡¯t have the reflexes to dodge it. Not my proudest moment. Going any slower than my fastest wasn¡¯t enough either, they had a very durable speedster that I couldn¡¯t really take out or distract.


    I only managed to get out of there in time to actually make a difference because of the soul buffs I was taught. Changing those out as needed helped a lot, though it wasn¡¯t until I destroyed their corpses and everything on them that I was able to escape. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I killed them, and I know I should be regretful about that. But I just can¡¯t bring myself to feel appalled about killing an enemy anymore, especially not one that was actively invading my home.


    When I got to the capital I say it was on fire, being destroyed again. The civilians had already been evacuated and the soldiers were actively fighting off the enemy hoard.


    What must have been the entire angelic council was there, burning everything they could and trying to kill our elites. My paladins were holding off four of them, and as I watched managed to kill one with help from Par. The lich was there, his undead army clashing with Azrezel¡¯s, the adventurer we sent to die at his hands leading the charge. Azrezel was performing admirably, but the other necromancer had simply been around for a lot longer and has had more experience.


    Tiddol was injured, though recovering thanks to a healing potion she drank. She wasn¡¯t as durable as the rest, nor was she able to hurt one of them in a straight fight, but she still managed to decapitate one with a poisoned wire, I found out later that he had some powerful regenerative abilities.


    And Willow, my eldest child Willow. She was the one causing most of the fires. With a type of power that should be beyond her means by several years at least, if not decades, she struck out with her lightning and her storms with a kind of fury that confused me. What could have made her so angry?


    In hindsight, I realize that I was somehow partially cut off from my hivemind until the moment I managed to escape from the distraction. Which is how they distorted communications and prevented my teleportation. Reconnecting with it I felt pure, unbridled rage and fear surge through me, compounded by my own personal rage and fear from seeing so much of what I love hurt and damaged, and seeing Willow work with the enemy so openly. It¡¯s one thing to hear about it, it¡¯s another to see it.


    I do not remember what happened after that, only that when I awoke everything was ash and fire and I was severely wounded, poisoned with something that slows healing, something strong.


    I was told afterward that most of the civilians just went limp, I had taken everything that they didn¡¯t need to keep themselves alive. I apparently caused a lot of damage. Thousands of enemy soldiers died in the initial surge, and again I can¡¯t bring myself to care. I forced Solar Energy into the bodies of our enemies, with the expected results. According to Azrezel, I ripped the soul of the lich out with my bare hands after failing to kill him in other ways. And so many other things.


    And the worst part? Someone recorded it with something Tiddol made. I watched everything from beginning to end. It was brutal and made me sick, despite an empty stomach I wanted to throw up, I still want to, thinking about it. I still don¡¯t believe that the girl with the insane expression wielding plants was me, that thing did so many horrible things to so many people that I refuse to believe that we are the same person. Is this what it¡¯s like, being a berserker with an uncontrollable rage? I understand better now what Thes must have been going through.


    I hate this, I hate this so much. Even if the anger isn¡¯t mine I hate losing myself to it. I need to figure out a way to fix this, if I can¡¯t remove the anger and other emotions then I need to at least figure out how to control it. But how?


    I know that parts of the soul are dedicated to emotion, perhaps the solution is in there somewhere. I doubt the various emotion affecting plants I have would be helpful here, they would only affect my own emotions. I might be able to do it with soul energy, but any solution there will take months if not years.


    I can and will think this over more tomorrow, but for now, I am tired, anxious, and a little scared. I was to cuddle with Azrezel for a bit and maybe fall asleep in his inviting, cold arms.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 38

    The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the massive holes in my forest. Burnt to ashes and dust in many places. I still owned them, but there was nothing alive in there. I immediately got to work regrowing my trees.


    I spent my morning learning from the older dungeon. The soul is still my best chance of dealing with the anger of the people in the least destructive way possible. I need to know as much about it as I can.


    After that, I talked with the others about the situation.


    The first thing I noticed was that Tiddol was an amalgam of flesh and wood and metal, more than half of her body has been replaced with clockwork. She took a beating, a really bad beating. She lost her right arm, her entire left leg and her right leg below the knee. And that was just her limbs. Her spine was broken in two, much of it turned into a powder, and many of her major organs were destroyed, including her brain. She should be dead, and based on the way her soul is clinging to her body, she came very close.


    I could theoretically fix her, but I don¡¯t have enough practical experience working with the soul to guarantee that she would survive it, especially not with how thin the shell of her soul is. Any attempt would likely damage her memories now.


    Azrezel took a similar beating, but being an undead it isn¡¯t quite as big of a deal for him. He¡¯s still fixing up his injuries though. I offered to do it for him, but he wants to use it as a chance to practice healing himself.


    Parius has some new scars, but out of everyone he came out the least damaged. Except for myself of course, but to be fair I am also very good at healing myself.


    To no one¡¯s surprise casualties were high, it was the ideal time for our enemy to attack and they knew it. Our own forces had been crippled by Willow, just saying that makes me irrationally angry, and we didn¡¯t have much to oppose them with. It wasn¡¯t until I showed up that the tide started turning, and even then I was barely enough to hold them off. It wasn¡¯t until the nuclear fire wielders showed up and torched everything that the enemy finally broke, which explains the massive holes in my forest. They were even kind enough to remove the poison after they were done. It seems that they were really opposed to the idea of the only place in the world capable of dealing with the byproduct of their magic being destroyed. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    In the end, half of our already crippled army has been killed, and a fifth of the civilians have died. This is a really major blow, we need to start working on fixing that as soon as possible. I guess I will really need to start leaning into the whole ¡®creating life¡¯ aspect of dungeons.


    Countless of my children have also died, but being dungeon born creatures in their home I was able to fix that easily enough.


    Ten of my paladins died, there are twenty-nine left. I should consider expanding them, especially with how effective they were. It¡¯s odd though, when I look at them all standing together I swear I can count forty different souls.


    My father is missing. He¡¯s not dead, the scholars had one of those life tracking things made for him decades ago and it is still intact. The soldiers he personally trained are also missing with him. I¡¯m not too worried about him, he competent enough to take care of himself.


    It wasn¡¯t all bad, we did manage to cripple their army as well. They likely won¡¯t be able to attack us any time soon, at least not with anything that would be a real threat. In addition, we managed to kill half of the angelic council, capturing two of them in the process. Tomorrow I will pick their brains to see what we can learn.


    Not everyone has been accounted for, notably, Tiddol¡¯s children are still missing as is Askos. The guy that replaced Whisperer is also missing, though there have been reports of him going down in the fighting.


    I spent most of the rest of the day doing my best to make sure all of the wounded got healed and making sure everyone had a comfortable bed to sleep in. It was too easy, with so many dead.


    After this, I don¡¯t think that the war can end any way other than one of us being completely annihilated. Even if we were to make peace the people would likely rebel and go to war anyway. Their hatred runs too deep.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 39

    After my daily lesson, the contents of which seem so small in comparison to everything else that¡¯s going on, I got to work reading the minds of the captive Angelics. Despite me asking nicely they didn¡¯t cooperate.


    Naturally, they had ways to shield themselves from my Lace. It took two hours before I figured out something that worked. I tried using Null to render magic mostly impossible, I tried drugging them into a stupor, I even tried turning them against each other. Nothing worked. That is until I noticed that one of them was on the verge of an evolution.


    Triggering that evolution was easy enough as is everything that followed it. All I did was focus everything the world was putting into this evolution into making it easy to read their minds, to the point that they were constantly broadcasting their thoughts to all nearby. From there it was easy to take all of the information I wanted. After triggering the same evolution in the other one I managed to get all of the information that I could out of them. From there Par took them away, I don¡¯t want to know what he did with them.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    I should really remember that species though, I can see some practical applications for it.


    They knew all kinds of stuff. Nothing I can put to practical use, but the stuff about their empire I¡¯m sure Par can make use of. I also learned way more than I care too about their politics.


    I have also received reports of a massive explosion in their capital. As no one under my control is in the capital it will be some time before we find out what happened. I hope it¡¯s something big.


    I ended up spending the rest of the day creating as many Ents as I possibly could of all kinds. And considering my recently expanded soul that is quite a few. Yeah, it will be a couple weeks before they are able to really contribute, but once they do it will be a massive influx in the number of workers we have available. Unfortunately, it will be a while before I am able to replicate this, my soul takes much longer to replenish itself than it once did.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 40

    My lessons are proceeding faster and faster as my teacher is becoming better able to supply me with ever-increasing quantities of information. My teacher says that after roughly a week there will be nothing left for him to teach, assuming everything is more or less steady.


    Tiddol and Par¡¯s kids turned up today, well, most of them anyway. Umi was fine, a little bruised and battered but otherwise in good condition. She ended up getting completely buried in some unfortunately compacted ash. It took her a couple days to dig herself out, could have done it faster if she didn¡¯t need to conjure fresh air for herself.


    Ednar, not so much. We found his top half-buried under a thin layer of dirt, blood long since drained from his body. The wooden armor he had was scorched but otherwise intact, and the cut was very clean. Very few people can cut through that stuff so easily. It¡¯s likely he was targeted intentionally by one of the enemy¡¯s powerful people. Why? I have no idea. It doesn¡¯t matter too much anyway, they are going to die regardless, if they aren¡¯t already dead.


    Is it wrong that I hope they are still alive? I want to give them as a gift, all tied up and helpless, to Tiddol. Her clockwork eyes hold less warmth than her originals.


    In happier news, we have found out what the results of that explosion the other day were. Three of their council died, between that explosion and the recent attack we managed to cull all but three of their members. That is the majority of their heavy hitters.


    No one is quite sure who caused the explosion, but descriptions of it remind me strongly of Talus¡¯ fire.


    Their population and their standing army is admittedly doing a lot better than ours. It will be a very long time before our numbers reach a point where we can go to war again, but at the same time, very few of our heavy hitters died in the fighting. A couple of Par¡¯s generals died, and my dad and his personal soldiers are all missing, but we are doing a lot better than them.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    If we had an army we could crush them right now, end this threat for good. but we don¡¯t. I¡¯m churning out Ents as fast as I can, but considering the scales we are working with that isn¡¯t likely to make a big enough difference. And Azrezel is doing what he can to expand his supply of undead, but again his soul can only recover so quickly. I should probably teach him those exercises I learned to help him increase how quickly his soul recovers. I¡¯ll see if he has the time for it tomorrow, but everyone has been really busy recently.


    We had a party of adventurers show up today, very competent ones. If they weren¡¯t I wouldn¡¯t be talking about them as adventures show up all of the time. I wish my dad was here to help us turn them towards our side, but based on the stories he has told me we are in a perfect position to recruit adventurers to our cause. A group of people reeling from the recent attack by a powerful enemy that destroyed everything they could was a somewhat common theme, I¡¯m under the impression that adventurers love to cast their weight behind people like that.


    Par was quick to rope them into the rebuilding efforts, he told me a bit later that my dad gave him some lessons on how to deal with adventurers. Give them work with the people, make the people like them and feel like they can depend on them and endear the locals to the adventurers. Turn the place into their home, make them care for the city and its people. Do it right and the adventurers will face down any threat in the world to protect their home, even if it means certain death.


    Other than that, most of my time was spent doing what I could to rebuild. The holes in my forest are mostly regrown, about half of the people have housing. Somehow Pearlhold¡¯s pearly white walls are still standing, but nothing inside of them was. I rebuilt the city as well as I could remember it using wood, going as far as mimicking the color and texture of the original stone as close as I could. I¡¯m sure we have some of it laying around, but it would take months or even years to properly rebuild a city like this using stone. The people seemed to appreciate having something close to their old homes back, though I couldn¡¯t possibly recreate the contents. Well, not without a ridiculous amount of effort that would be better spent rebuilding elsewhere.


    To think, someone from Pearlhold was the first person to try to murder me. It¡¯s kind of nostalgic honestly.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 41

    My lessons are starting to cover so much information that it is hard to properly summarize what I am learning, so I think I¡¯ll stick to the most important pieces.


    I learned today why older dungeons want people to come into their territory, and it mostly has to do with the soul. After a certain point a dungeon will be producing so much soul stuff from their own creatures that they don¡¯t need to get some from divers to keep expanding their domains. But the soul is a very large part of your personality, for a dungeon without a brain this is especially true as the soul has to take care of all of the things that would normally be alleviated by the brain on its own. The shell of your soul in most people is only a small portion of that, as it is a relatively small portion of a person¡¯s soul. Older dungeons, on the other hand, always have very large shells relative to their cores, which increases the importance of the shell drastically. Suddenly it is the major driver in things like personality despite it¡¯s rather inefficient impact.


    Dungeon creatures are formed from cast-off bits of the shell of the dungeon¡¯s soul, and often end up forming large parts of the core as souls are often damaged from dying and the whole process of reincarnation. So even in the best of cases dungeon creatures take after their parent dungeon quite heavily. So the bits of their shells that flake off reinforce the personality of the dungeon that made them, making change difficult.


    Divers shake this up a bit by introducing new stuff to this cycle. It is nowhere near enough to overpower or force the old dungeon to change, but if the dungeon wants to it can use those bits to change and improve itself. It takes time and effort, but without divers they would stagnate entirely.


    I should be fine despite the massive numbers of what to any other dungeon would be considered ¡®divers¡¯. My teacher has done experiments on situations similar to mine, as it is pretty much the polar opposite of most dungeons, and has discovered that the contrasting ideas dramatically decrease how much of an effect the shell of my soul has on my personality. But he did mention that any common themes among those ideas would likely be reinforced even further than normal, as there are so many different and unique things reinforcing it, as opposed to the singular source enforcing the personality of most other dungeons. Those ideas are likely to be simple and revolve around core ideas of the culture of my people.


    There are very few things that significantly influence our culture, I am good friends with most of them. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I feel like I should be more concerned by this, but I already knew my emotions were being impacted by the people. The idea really isn¡¯t foreign to me, and it is something I have already come to accept, just in a different form. Besides, the only thing that will let me escape from this is death, and I¡¯m still keen on getting around that.


    Though if it ever gets unbearable I will likely be able to keep my memories and everything else intact when I die thanks to fate and my much more durable soul.


    My father has turned up, along with Askos and his soldiers. Unfortunately they are in the middle of enemy territory and are pinned down by a group of soldiers. There is nothing we can do to help them right now. We don¡¯t have anyone who can move fast enough to get there in time to make a difference who is also capable of making a difference. We have a couple teleporters that can move that far, but none that can take our non-existent reinforcements. And I don¡¯t have enough combatants in my hive mind in the area to make a difference without also losing my grip on multiple cities.


    I doubt the worst will happen, my dad has gotten out of much worse and survived to tell the tale. The question is whether or not his soldiers will make it.


    In somewhat good news it seems like the enemy has started to focus their efforts on purging my people from their midst. The bad is that I will likely lose my grip on a couple cities, the good is that they will be focusing their efforts there instead of on us, and they killed several scholars yesterday. About twenty five of them by my count, pretty important ones too. Their order is not going to like this, especially since their inquisition failed to find anything more than circumstantial evidence connecting them to the recent curse outbreak, and they did find a lot of circumstantial evidence. They were already under suspicion of creating potentially disastrous outbreaks, and their order has crushed civilizations for less. Admittedly few of this scale, but they have been weakened recently, it would take less effort to destroy them now.


    The fact that I seem to be well-liked among the order can only help my position here.


    I spent most of my day in much the same way as yesterday, building homes for people whose homes were destroyed. At this point, everyone has a warm bed and a roof over their head, though an uncomfortable number of people have to share rooms still. That issue should be fixed by tomorrow even without my help, unless something undoes all of our hard work again.


    I know it¡¯s unhealthy but I haven¡¯t been taking much in the way of downtime recently. I would rather deal with a bit of stress than see my people starve or sleep out in the cold.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 42

    The most interesting stuff we went over today involved connections, mostly because I already knew quite a bit about them. Not everything I learned overlapped with what the older dungeon was teaching me, much of it did but not everything. Some of what I was taught disagreed with or expanded on what I had learned from Fate, while some of it wasn¡¯t quite as expansive as what I learned. There were some subjects that the older dungeon didn¡¯t even mention and approaches that the older dungeon hadn¡¯t considered. We ended up talking for quite a while just discussing this. It was honestly pretty fun to talk to someone like this, it isn¡¯t something I get to do often. Most people don¡¯t have the same level of understanding as I do in the fields I am interested in.


    We had Ednar¡¯s funeral today. It was a small, simple event limited just to those that knew him personally. He wasn¡¯t exactly the most outgoing person. He was young, when he died. Yeah in the grand scheme of things humans tend to age pretty quickly and die relatively young, though not nearly to the scale of a goblin, but even then he was young.


    It rained, during the funeral, and it felt appropriate.


    I wonder what he will reincarnate into, I hope it¡¯s something nice. I hope he remembers us.


    In lighter news, the physical rebuilding is mostly done, there is a sense of pride going around right now. Pride and a whole lot of spite. I get the feeling that if I were to order everyone to march on their capital they would be willing to die in droves just for a chance to spit in the eye of our enemy.


    Naturally, this means that when I started recruiting for my Paladins we got tens of thousands of volunteers in the first hour. A measurable percentage of our population volunteered, and still more are coming. I don¡¯t care to count the numbers at this point, but it is a lot.


    According to Parius, there is no reason not to train everyone that volunteered. In other countries, we might have had an issue with farmers abandoning their farms leading to famine, but every single farmer in our empire could abandon their fields and we would have no issues with food. With nearly everyone being able to manipulate plants we have a functionally endless supply of any kind of plant-based food we could want. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    On top of that, I have a group of highly skilled veterans that are willing and able to dedicate themselves to teaching new recruits day and night. And most people are pretty good with plant manipulation anyway.


    But still, I don¡¯t want to manually integrate all of my plants into so many new paladins. That takes time and effort that I would rather spend elsewhere. I could theoretically build something to do it for me, but part of the weight behind my paladins is that I personally blessed them. That somehow gives them the idea that I will guide them through battle and other pursuits, an idea strong enough to cause magic. Having been inducted into my paladins be something that can be done automatically will weaken that. It¡¯s suddenly just one of my tools, easily mass-produced and replicated. Mundane.


    So we are going to need to figure out which ones are going to be inducted into my paladins and which ones will not be. We will train all of them, no reason not to after all, but not all of them will pass. The question is how should we decide. I don¡¯t want there to be too many, it is a rather time-intensive process after all.


    Devotion, that should be the answer. It is the core of the power behind my paladins, everything I¡¯ve done with them has been to promote that power. And not just a little bit either, most of the people volunteering have achieved something similar to what my paladins have, though to a much lesser degree. So people able to trigger that magic to an exceptional degree. That would be people that are truly devoted to me or people that otherwise truly believe that I am guiding them. That should cut it down to a manageable number.


    I ended up spending much of my time today teaching people plant manipulation in much the same way that the older dungeon is teaching me. Only instead of teaching one person with a lot of mental resources, I am teaching a lot of people with much more restricted mental resources. It took a while to get the hang of it, but it was honestly pretty fun. I enjoyed seeing people thrive under my tutelage. It should also serve as a good way to properly gauge which people I should induct into my paladins. I think I¡¯ll do it as a spontaneous thing, not warn them or anything just start the process in the middle of the crowd. Make it really visible and flashy too so everyone knows what¡¯s happening. I¡¯m sure it¡¯ll have an effect, but I¡¯m not sure what kind of effect that will be. I¡¯m curious to find out.


    Downtime was spent with Azrezel. We mostly just worked side by side silently, me producing bodies and him turning them into undead. He¡¯s only able to produce so many of them before he can¡¯t carve off more flakes of his soul, but he¡¯s not there yet.


    I did get a chance to teach him those soul exercises today, he¡¯s been doing them constantly ever since. It might not have much of an effect in the short term, but it will have an effect.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 43

    My teacher finally asked me for a favor. He wants a hundred thousand master plant manipulators, meaning he is sending me a hundred thousand people and he wants me to train them in plant manipulation. It was certainly not what I was expecting, but it is one of the better possibilities. It kinda fits too, he is giving me knowledge, I give some of his people knowledge.


    I¡¯m worried about being able to teach so many people. Including our own people who have shown up, it would be about two hundred thousand people. And the numbers are still growing. I did not expect nearly this many volunteers when I asked for volunteers. The area I originally designated to train these people is several orders of magnitude too small, and there isn¡¯t really any place to expand it. So I built a completely new facility out in the middle of nowhere, it is able to house about double the numbers we currently have before we will start to run into problems, so it¡¯s a really big facility. So big in fact that Par organized people to set up defenses all over it. Between the way I built it, the various enchantments that are slowly covering every single wall, and many other things it should be safe from attack.


    It¡¯s honestly amazing how quickly he managed to get so many people to start working on this. So many people have had their lives disrupted recently that there are tons of people able to mobilize at a moments notice.


    And so we were ready to receive everyone, both the locals and the people belonging to the older dungeon. I¡¯m not surprised that he has the kind of power available to him to casually teleport a hundred thousand people to the other side of the world to a very precise spot. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Their presence caused some confusion but the newcomers ended up explaining to the locals that I was doing a personal favor for their master, an ancient dungeon. The reaction to that was a lot more subdued than I was expecting, it was less ¡®wow that¡¯s amazing¡¯ and more ¡®of course, why wouldn¡¯t an ancient dungeon come to Erica for help¡¯.


    And so I spent half of the day teaching people how to use plants. The newcomers had no knowledge of the subject, but did have natural talent and were incredibly receptive to this kind of teaching. While my people knew quite a bit about plant manipulation, a good chunk of them were better at it than I was when I first started growing my forest.


    A lot of it is pure skill, which is something I wouldn¡¯t be able to teach with any other method. Unfortunately, I can¡¯t subtly guide them the same way I did with my apprentices as there are simply way too many of them for that to be effective, but that is probably for the best. I¡¯m not trying to encourage self-learning and discovery so much as I am trying to reinforce the idea that I am guiding them. Me very obviously directing their thoughts in the right way should help accomplish that. Plus it¡¯s faster.


    I ended up spending my downtime with Jasmine today, the nuclear fire user I hit it off with a while ago, before everything turned crazy again. Apparently, she worked as something called a nuclear engineer in a world very similar to the one Askos described from his previous life, though her memories aren¡¯t quite as clear as his. Her knowledge was discovered by the scholars when she demonstrated her at the time very unrefined abilities during a test to get into one of their schools. It was fun hanging out and talking with her. I think I will try to do it again sometime.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 44

    At this point the number of people volunteering to train under me is leveling off, I don¡¯t expect more than two hundred and fifty thousand people once all is said and done. Still, it is so many that I am not able to properly teach them all at the same time. So I have to rotate who I teach throughout the day, otherwise, I can¡¯t teach them properly at all. The process will be slower than I would have otherwise liked it to be, but it isn¡¯t terrible.


    I think I¡¯m going to prioritize my teacher¡¯s people a bit, they will learn faster than most of the rest and if I can get them out of here then I no longer need to deal with them. That should make things go a little more smoothly.


    Already there are a handful of people I¡¯m keeping my eye on for potential recruits into my Paladins. Few of them are close to where I want them to be skills-wise, but they do have potential. I look forward to seeing how they progress.


    As for the lessons that I received today, nothing particularly noteworthy happened. Which is good, it means everything is going the way it should.


    During my downtime I hung out with Tiddol, I haven¡¯t gotten much of a chance to do that since she left for the front lines. I think I understand what people meant when they were saying watching me felt creepy after all of the non-plant parts of my body were removed. It¡¯s very uncanny watching her move around with an amalgamation of flesh and clockwork.


    Speaking of, the subject of her newly changed body came up, or rather I asked about it. I was curious, and her situation was very similar to my own. She says that her thoughts don¡¯t come to her quite as clearly, and it¡¯s more erratic. She has trouble focusing on one thing at a time, but at the same time, she has gotten better at multitasking. Not good enough to make up for her constantly divided attention, but still. I can probably make something to help her alleviate that. She also has problems with healing, traditional healing only works on her fleshy bits and she no longer recovers from injuries. She has to repair herself every time she¡¯s injured, even if only slightly. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    On the other hand, she has found that working with clockwork takes much less thought. It¡¯s become instinct for her where before it took a conscious effort. She also doesn¡¯t really feel pain anymore and has no need for sleep or food. Which is good because she doesn¡¯t have a digestive tract anymore.


    She got Azrezel to do a check-up on herself, apparently, she was concerned that she had become an undead somehow. Azrezel did a couple tests and examined her, and the results were a definitive yes for pretty much everything. There is no doubt that Tiddol is currently undead. Also, she probably can¡¯t evolve anymore, like at all. There is simply nothing for her to evolve into, and the world doesn¡¯t have enough information about clockwork creatures for me to guide it into creating something new. So pretty much her only option to improve her body is to do in manually, which won¡¯t get registered by the world.


    As fascinating as her current body is, that wasn¡¯t the extent of our conversation. She¡¯s been changed by this event, it would be weird if she hadn''t. She seems a lot more violent now, less compassionate. She¡¯s also very twitchy, she probably can¡¯t properly control her body. And she has to take a moment to think through what she is trying to say every time she speaks, she never did that before. I¡¯m really worried about her, but I can¡¯t fix her problems without risking her death, I¡¯m more and more sure about that the more I learn about the soul. And there is nothing I can do for her less physical issues.


    While we were talking we were snuck up on by a very large beast, probably not sentient. Before anyone realized what was happening Tiddol had already managed to beat it black and blue with her bare hands. Had I not stopped her she likely would have killed it. She was horrified when she realized what she did, and wouldn¡¯t stop apologizing and sobbing, though she was incapable of crying. It kinda put an end to our conversation, but I still held her until she calmed down, and then at her request kept holding her. I ended up spending quite a while like that.


    She feels colder.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 45

    According to my teacher there will be nothing left for him to teach me after tomorrow. From there I will know everything he knows about the soul, though I still lack the centuries of practice he has had. I will likely be working on that last bit until my soul is destroyed, or at least my memories.


    I have so many things I want to try out with the soul, most of them require a kind of delicate work I¡¯m not yet confident in doing. I¡¯m better of sticking to simple and small scale things that I can easily do without risk of failure and that I can scale up massively. That is likely the best way to leverage my hivemind. Better thousands of perfectly made weak connections than one strong but flawed connection.


    My students, my numerous students, are mostly quick learners. The ones from the older dungeon are all very good at taking advantage of the kind of teaching I¡¯m using, and they represent a bit more than a third of the people around here, while almost all of the rest already had some skill and most people have evolved into something with some natural talent relating to plants by sheer virtue of how much attention the hand of the world pays to me and my surroundings. I expect people to be getting to the point that I can no longer teach them within the week, and I expect people that I deem worthy of joining my paladins to be good enough even before that.


    Not everyone is talented, however. Several people have no skill or talent with plants, many of them have already dropped out. There is one kid, however, that has absolutely abysmal talent, but they have more potential to join my paladins than anyone else here.


    Naturally, seeing as they have so much potential I decided to pay them extra attention. They seem to have really good memories of their past life, not quite as good as Askos but coming relatively close. They came from some war-torn land where life for them was miserable, ultimately they died young and were reincarnated into a happy family in this world, though a different continent. His home was attacked by a group of soldiers and his family had to flee as refugees to my forest, his father killed and his mother severely wounded in the process. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    He found himself in what seemed to be a utopia, where petty things like grievous bodily harm were fixed with ease and no one had to go hungry because there wasn¡¯t enough food. Seeing the kid¡¯s memories of wonder at the home I built melted my heart a little. After that was a cascade of small and large events that made him believe that I was a goddess with every fiber of his being and that as long as he worked for my benefit life would be good. I intend to prove him right. I really want him to succeed, despite his lack of talent.


    It also explains his species, not many Elves in this part of the world. Or bipeds in general for that matter. Mostly just draconics, beasts, and monsters, though more recently there has been an explosion in the population of clockworks and plants on the continent.


    Since Whisperer¡¯s replacement¡¯s death, whom I learned to be called ¡®Speaker¡¯, which I was not expecting, that whole organization has fallen into shambles. There are a lot of people trying to replace Speaker, going to some uncomfortable extremes to do so. I really don¡¯t like this dissonance, especially with what I have learned about the soul. I really don¡¯t want something like this becoming a part of our culture, so I have to do something about it. I made an announcement saying that I would sort everything out in the coming days, but I have no idea how to do that. I¡¯ll try to come up with something tomorrow.


    Other than that I spent time with Azrezel. He¡¯s actually been working with Tiddol a lot recently, mostly making part undead part clockwork creatures similar to the state Tiddol is in, hopefully, so that they can understand her situation better. I ended up helping them out a bit, though the progress was minimal. We made quite a lot of them, but we weren¡¯t able to figure out how to get everything to function together nearly as well as Tiddol did. The standard control scheme for a flesh and bone body just doesn¡¯t map to clockwork at all, even replacing the brain with clockwork doesn¡¯t help as then all we have in a braindead zombie. Tiddol doesn¡¯t really understand how she did it either, it¡¯s pure intuition for her working on her own body, but working on other partial clockwork creatures she draws a blank. I¡¯m sure we can figure out what¡¯s going on here with enough effort, and maybe a little Fate. Assuming it takes long enough for me to build up a big enough amount as assuming it behaves as I want it too.


    I also offered Tiddol something to help her with her multitasking issue, but she said that she wanted to fix it herself.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 46

    Today I finished my lessons, I now know everything that the greatest soul mage in the world knows on the subject. It will take decades, possibly even centuries, before I am his equal, but this was definitely a massive step in that direction.


    With that no longer using up half of my day I am able to put a lot more time and effort into teaching the volunteers. After the first batch of people dropped out very few of them have decided to quit. It seems people decided pretty quickly whether or not they would be wasting their time here.


    There is no one yet who I would consider skilled enough to join my Paladins, and no one is beyond my abilities to teach today.


    We have received word from my dad today, apparently he managed to punch through the soldiers keeping him pinned and with his own soldiers has taken hold of a nearby city. He can¡¯t return home quite yet as the people that were in charge destroyed the city teleporter on their way out and he can¡¯t march through that much enemy territory without risking all of his soldiers. To top it off there is no one in the city willing to cooperate with him that can fix the city teleporter. So he is stuck there, in a highly defensible position in the middle of enemy territory until we are able to come rescue him. At least there is little risk of his hold of the city being destroyed, and it¡¯s not like our enemy could do anything to my dad personally that would stick. He¡¯s survived more knives in the dark than pretty much anyone, that tends to happen when you are as famous as he is.


    We¡¯ve also received word from the scholars about the issues with the angelic council killing scholars. They would prefer to avoid risking their own people and refuse to dedicate any of their more valuable resources, like nuclear fire wielders, to the task. They have, however, offered us people who can teach our soldiers various forms of magic. In addition to several craftsmen of all fields who can teach our own people. Their hope is that we can deal with this issue ourselves by providing us with resources to hopefully overwhelm the enemy.


    It¡¯s less than I hoped for, but it¡¯s still quite substantial. I had wanted soldiers, but when asked the messenger said ¡®we don¡¯t have soldiers, we have tactical weapons¡¯. Considering the way they train their mages I believe it. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    I ended up working with Azrezel and Tiddol again today to try and figure out why her body works and others don¡¯t. It took quite a bit of work before we realized that it was all pointless and the answer was under our noses the entire time, in my case, literally. She is piloting her body the same way I am piloting mine.


    The idea came to me while I was studying her soul, I noticed a distinct lack of anything that would help her pilot her body, the stuff that did exist only maps to her fleshy bits. There was a similar issue in every single creature, undead or otherwise, in the process of trying to figure out what works. And according to Tiddol, there is nothing in that metal skull of hers that would know how to pilot the body, which means that whatever is allowing her to move is not innate. The only thing that would work is if she had some magical control over clockwork, she is able to directly control her body through magic instead of through her brain or soul. Which means that any attempt to replicate her will end in failure, as we can¡¯t teach a corpse until it is no longer a corpse, and then we won¡¯t have enough time to teach them before they return to being a corpse. We also can¡¯t take a living person and outfit them in a similar way as Tiddol as it would defeat the point, if they aren¡¯t created that way or evolve into something greater then Tiddol can¡¯t evolve. We might get lucky and somehow get a soul that already knows how to pilot a body like that, but Azrezel isn¡¯t able to reliably make creatures with memories, and I don¡¯t have the resources to pull it off. I could definitely do it with a bit of Fate and a lot of luck, but I don¡¯t have enough Fate at the moment to be confident in my chances of success.


    I could maybe create something that would work using the soul, but that would require a kind of delicate touch I simply don¡¯t have yet. And I would need to learn a lot about clockwork, though that is the lesser issue.


    Still, it¡¯s good that we know that now. We can move onto other things that might actually bear fruit. But it¡¯s disappointing, I was looking forward to seeing how flesh and clockwork would interact when communicating like that.


    Tiddol is visibly better today. She¡¯s been working on modifying and improving her body quite a bit, she still has a lot of issues but at the very least she is twitching less often and her stride is more even. That isn¡¯t to say she isn¡¯t twitching at all, it¡¯s just much rarer and when it does happen it is much more pronounced. She says it¡¯s under control and I believe her, but it¡¯s still kind of creepy.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 47

    Today I spent most of my time and effort teaching the masses how to properly bend plants to their will. One of them today reached the point where I considered them to be both skilled enough and believed in me strongly enough that they were qualified to join my Paladins. The people around them were shocked when he suddenly started to evolve, and they watched with keen interest as he warped and changed. The man himself was ecstatic to a frankly incredible degree, almost like he had used some of the more potent variants of Drowsy Clover, but there wasn¡¯t anything like that in his system. Halfway through the process, I felt him connect to the others with something resembling a snap. The guy was in a state of awe as he was greeted by his new peers and received their knowledge, while they received his. It was rather entertaining to observe.


    The impact this event had on the ones observing it from the outside was immediately obvious. All of them were filled with a renewed vigor and faith. I expected as much, otherwise, I wouldn¡¯t have done it this way, but I didn¡¯t expect it to be this extreme. These people might gain a lot more out of this than just skills with plant manipulation. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Other than that I hung out with Par today, we mostly talked about what to do with replacing Speaker. We went back and forth a lot, proposing different potential solutions and pointing out the potential flaws and benefits of each. Ultimately we decided that our best bet was to have me chose someone I thought was worthy, but not directly. Instead of outright saying as much I instead make everyone instinctually aware that this guy is the person I chose. I¡¯ll probably spend my downtime tomorrow trying to find someone worthy.


    Overall it was a slow day.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 48

    Today three more people reached the point that they were worthy of joining my paladins. I have no idea how many people will reach that point by the end, but I expect there to be quite a few in a group this large.


    The elf kid from before has improved, quite a bit more than I expected actually. They still are below average, but their single-minded determination and my personal attention has helped them make up quite a bit of the gap. They are now actually able to direct plants to their will somewhat freely, though only when the plant itself isn¡¯t resisting. Most of their issues here will likely be solved once they evolve, but I¡¯m not willing to evolve anyone here who isn¡¯t being inducted into my Paladins. That doesn¡¯t mean that people won¡¯t evolve, in fact, this is actually a really good situation for people trying to evolve. A single-minded effort to achieve mastery in a skill regularly gets people an evolution. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Other than that I spent my downtime today going through the people connected to my hivemind to find someone who is both a natural leader and who completely believes that I am guiding their actions. I also excluded my paladins from that as I want them to remain as something separate. It took a bit of effort, but it wasn¡¯t too hard to narrow down the candidates to a small handful after looking purely at second qualification, while looking at the first narrowed it down even more to two candidates. One has more experience leading and organizing groups of people, though on a smaller scale than this, while the other one was really good at getting people to like her. I ended up choosing the first guy and then made everyone connected to my hivemind aware of my decision.


    I think that this will be the best way to minimize political nonsense in my hivemind, just make their politics irrelevant and hopefully they will stop trying to get one up on each other.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 49

    Today a number of the people I was teaching evolved. I didn¡¯t trigger it, they just managed to trigger it on their own. All of them evolved into something that was better at manipulating plants, it would be weird if they didn¡¯t. Interestingly none of the creatures belonging to the older dungeon evolved, and none of them are even close to evolving either. That tells me that they are probably pretty young, maybe even made specifically for the purpose of learning plant manipulation?


    Speaking of those creatures, I have taken the time to study one of them. They are pretty well made, which isn¡¯t surprising, but it¡¯s also obvious that the person that made them doesn¡¯t know much about plants. Many of the designs and structures inside of them, especially the ones relating to plant manipulation and magic, look like modified versions of my own work, only for monsters instead of plants. I imagine that I would have similar, if a bit lesser, results if I were to create a creature with the intention of using fire or lightning. Overall it was rather impressive, I confirmed a few theories of mine, learned some new stuff, and saw places where the design could be improved. I didn¡¯t do anything to them, I have no idea how the older dungeon would react and it would take a lot of work to pull off, but it was interesting to see.


    Other than that I hung out with Azrezel today. He seemed really happy when I dropped in to see his work, and he really wanted to show me something. He had managed to create an undead creature capable of mass-producing alchemical substances through some rather interesting anatomical traits. It¡¯s actually very similar to my own method of producing alchemical substances with plants, only a lot more versatile. With the assistance of one of my Ents, he managed to create a body capable of producing plant based and flesh and bone based alchemical ingredients in addition to using something similar to a digestive system to process it into the desired form. It¡¯s nowhere near as effective as the massive alchemy building I made to do basically just that, but he¡¯s working on making it compact enough that he can add it to his own undead allowing him to dose them with what would otherwise be some incredibly valuable potions at a relatively minimal cost. It¡¯s not like it¡¯s going to take any more soul energy from him to bring them to life, and that is the main limiting factor for him. He is going to need to learn some basic plant manipulation in order to be able to make it on his own, however, but it¡¯s not like he would need to make anything complicated there as all of the important processes are done with flesh and bone. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    The processes he¡¯s come up with are actually better than the ones I use, which makes sense as he basically took my work and improved on it, so I am definitely going to make use of his work if and when it becomes useful. I wonder if there are any more potentially useful potion recipes I could learn how to make from Tiddol, I might have to ask her about that soon.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 50

    Today some of the creatures that already knew a lot about plant manipulation have gotten to the point that I can¡¯t really teach them anything more. There weren¡¯t a lot of them, most of were Ents, but it was still a couple dozen. I expect people to slowly trickle out like this for a while, and every time someone leaves I can put more resources towards teaching the ones that are left.


    I was really hoping to not take a long time on this project, but it¡¯s too late to back out of it now. At this point, the ideal would be to figure out some way to teach them faster, but as of yet, I have no idea how to go about doing that. Unlike with the older dungeon teaching me, the limit is on the student¡¯s end, not the teacher¡¯s. Making it so I can process more information isn¡¯t going to help here, and I don¡¯t have a way to improve the people yet, still working on figuring that one out.


    Now that I think about it, do I even need to be the one to teach them? Well, yeah, for this batch I do, but in the future, maybe not. I can make memories with soul energy, and what are memories but knowledge? Well, I know how to make memories, I¡¯ve never actually done it before. Yeah, now that I think about this it would be entirely feasible to do this. I would need Grey Iris and Lace to allow people to receive the information, very few people can communicate directly with the soul after all, but everyone in my hivemind can communicate telepathically. I get the feeling I¡¯m also going to need spell wood, but I¡¯m not sure where quite yet. There are some kinks I need to work out, and I would need to practice making memories, but the more I think about this the more I like the idea. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Tiddol has been working with and improving her body quite a lot recently, she¡¯s actually getting really excited about working with it. She¡¯s already done things like build alchemical tools into her own body, though she¡¯s still working on figuring out how to consume a potion without biological parts. It should work in theory, the effects are all magical, but she¡¯s still figuring out the specifics.


    And her physical improvements are amazing, I¡¯ve never seen anyone jump so high without using magic. And her reaction times are a sliver of what they once were. And while she¡¯s concentrating her fine motor control is significantly improved, though when she isn¡¯t focusing she still twitches, more so than last time I hung out with her.


    She seems happier, and she made quite a few jokes about Par being happy with some of the changes she¡¯s made to herself. But it¡¯s obvious, to me at least, that she¡¯s just hiding her darker emotions.


    She still has issues with concentration, her attention is always split between three or four different things and she hasn¡¯t quite yet figured out a way to fix that, or at least give herself enough mental prowess to deal with it. She still isn¡¯t letting me help her there. She still needs to take a while to think about everything she says. That violence is still there, it seems almost spiteful. It worries me, but she won¡¯t let me help her with this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 51

    I have decided to spend half of my time teaching people and half of my time trying to figure out how to make something that would teach people in the future.


    A couple more people are ready to join my Paladins, and more have learned everything I can teach. The elf kid is doing well, really well actually. Under my direct guidance, they are thriving in a way that the vast majority of the other students simply aren¡¯t, I expect great things from them. They are actually progressing slower than most of the others, but when you consider their lack of talent for the subject it¡¯s impressive.


    As for creating memories, I¡¯m not very good at it yet. I am able to do it, but I fail more often than not. Which is more or less what I expected. I can maybe redesign the structure to be less complicated, which would do wonders for my ability to actually create it, but there would be several downsides with that. The most obvious is the fact that it would use up a lot more soul energy to create, as everything would be much more spread out. The second is that it would be more fragile, which means even more soul energy to reinforce the shell of the soul. It is possible to do it in a way that is both simple enough for me to do while also being durable, but they take much more soul energy than I have access to so it¡¯s a moot point. Besides, even if I fail it is good practice for bigger and better things.


    One of those bigger and better things involves expanding and improving my hivemind a little. I want to try and connect the souls of the members to myself and to each other, which should have a number of effects, the most important of which is an increased amount of control over the information and emotions that reach me from my hivemind. Really the other things are irrelevant when compared to that, but there are other things. It should make it easier to share information through the hivemind, which isn¡¯t really necessary currently but still potentially useful. Plus if I do it right I can increase the amount of mental prowess each individual has while also dramatically expanding and improving my own soul, or at least the shell. Any improvements to the core is going to take a lot more control than I have. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    There are a couple downsides, the most noteworthy being that it is going to take a little while before I¡¯m at a point where I can reasonably do this. I¡¯ve tested it a bit on a small scale and it¡¯s just out of reach of my current skills, I imagine that doing it on a scale like this would make it harder. At the same time, it is going to cost a lot of soul energy, easily an order of magnitude more than I have available to me currently. That isn¡¯t too bad as my soul is still rapidly improving thanks to the exercises I¡¯m doing, but it will still be quite a while before I¡¯m able to pull it off. Although, if I do it in smaller increments I might be able to get away with using less energy at a time, that way I could do it much sooner and not have to worry about exhausting or hurting myself.


    I should see about trying to learn other subjects in the same way I learned about the soul, though I doubt anything will come of it. Very few people are capable of communicating like that, most of them being really old dungeons.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Jasmine, as she was in town again today. She complained about not being able to join my hivemind because the benefits would be super useful for her, apparently doing so would get in the way of the whole ¡®preventing people from learning how to use nuclear fire¡¯ thing. That actually spawned a rather interesting discussion about telepathy and other similar things. Apparently, one of the first things they teach newcomers who somehow managed to figure things out on their own is how to shield their minds from telepathy, which makes sense. They also do things like teaching them how to turn off pain or how to remove toxins from the body quickly, apparently so much as a slip of the tongue is enough to let some people figure out how to use nuclear fire, while truth serums and torture have been used on several occasions in the past to get their secrets. At the end of their training, they are all forced into contracts similar to the one I have with the older dungeon preventing them from revealing their secrets without permission from the others. They really take this censorship seriously, it¡¯s kind of ridiculous actually. I can see how damaging it can be, but this is a level beyond what I was expecting.


    As a side note, every single nuclear fire user is a somewhat competent healer or undead. You kind of have to be in order to do things like turn off pain.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 52

    The elf kid managed to evolve today, independent of me trigger an evolution. I was expecting it to happen eventually, but I wasn¡¯t expecting it to happen so quickly. I didn¡¯t try to oversee or otherwise guide the process, I was curious about what he would become. It was obvious enough that he gained a level of talent with plant manipulation, that is what I thought was what caused him to evolve. But it was less than I expected it to be, instead, the improvements came in the way of internal mana manipulation. It was a variant of elf, that much was clear, though it was one I wasn¡¯t familiar with, maybe it was created recently by one of the dungeons? Plant manipulation has gotten rather popular recently, and that is a major theme of this species, though not the central one.


    Regardless, the kid has improved significantly as a result. His improved ability with internal mana manipulation has dramatically improved the effects of his belief in me, which helps him with pretty much everything. I expect him to become one of the best by the end of this.


    As for everyone else, progress is remaining more or less steady. I am learning how to use this style of teaching better, and people are learning how to take advantage of it better, so things are slowly speeding up. And as more and more people leave things should start speeding up even faster.


    As for my other project, things are going well. I have managed to create a crude form of storing memories that I am able to consistently create. There are still a lot of issues to work out, but everything is working more or less how I want it too. I¡¯m not sure how long it will take me to get everything working perfectly, but it shouldn¡¯t be too difficult. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Par. He¡¯s been spending most of his time recently organizing everything and keeping everyone working. As a result of the recent attack, a lot of people died and so a lot of businesses collapsed, if it weren¡¯t for Par paying people to work for him our economy would have ground to a halt, or so he says. But as a result of this, they have been able to build a lot of things, like a simple sewer system underneath every town or city in our empire, or great monuments to the dead. Things I would be able to build in a day or less, true, but that is beside the point. It¡¯s honestly kind of impressive how much they¡¯ve managed to create. There is no limit on resources, we have plenty of metal and an effectively infinite supply of wood, and so labor is what is preventing us from building more.


    The latest project he has set up involves creating massive enchanted areas with various effects. Like hospitals where every brick is enchanted to improve the effectiveness of healing magic, or a sparing field enchanted to help people recover from exhaustion and small injuries quickly, and other similar things. The hospital was really interesting to me because the bricks were made out of Whitefoot, making the effects even more pronounced.


    On top of that, he has a lot of military stuff going on, most of which went over my head or wasn¡¯t particularly interesting. What was interesting though is that we have a lot of very competent plant manipulators and healers, more so than ever before, as such they are forming the backbone of our army. He also spent some time bragging about some new weapons Tiddol has designed, most of them designed to kill flying targets. He seems really excited to put them to use.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 53

    I took some time to study the body of the elf kid today, and what I found was pretty interesting. He still has no talent for plant manipulation whatsoever, while his talent for internal mana manipulation is improved far beyond what I had thought it was. He¡¯s somehow managing to improve his ability to manipulate plants through his devotion to me, and now that I look for it nearly everyone that didn¡¯t come from the older dungeon is. It¡¯s not surprising that it is happening, I had just never considered the possibility before.


    This means that people are going to be improving faster than I thought they were, which is definitely a good thing. I wonder how far this effect will go? Could it allow someone to accomplish something that would otherwise be impossible for them, or is more like making things that they were already capable of easier? More importantly, how would I even test that? It¡¯s not terribly important, but I am curious.


    As for my other project, I am now failing to create memories once every four attempts, which is still way too much to reasonably work with but is much better than I was doing yesterday. Once I am able to reliably create memories I need to be able to read them, or rather I need other people to be able to read them. I can just look at the memories directly, but most people will not have that option. So I need something to interpret it, which isn¡¯t too difficult but it will still take some time to perfect.


    I think the real problem that I¡¯m going to face is figuring out how to keep it all together once I complete it. Right now everything falls apart over the course of a day or so, which I really should have expected. One part of the core of the soul helps keep everything together, and while it isn¡¯t strictly necessary, I do not have the skills required to make something without it, nor do I have the skills required to create it without using more soul energy than I have available to me. So I need to find another solution. This is probably where I use Spellwood and Grey Iris, but figuring out how to get all of that to work properly is going to be a pain. Still, it shouldn¡¯t be impossible for me. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Other than that I got roped into greeting the leaders of a new city that my forest has expanded over. Usually, Speaker would have done this, but his replacement is still getting the hang of things. There was a big ceremony and a party following it, and it was fun, just not exactly what I wanted to do with my time. That isn¡¯t to say I regret going, quite the contrary. I get a chance to meet with that purple queen slime from before and actually managed to get a chance to study their body this time. It seems to keep its shape through a series of thin membranes that run throughout the entirety of the body, which is a simple enough solution, I likely would have come up with something similar if I had too. These membranes are able to move, shrink, grow, and otherwise change themselves at will in order to accomplish any shape desired by the slime, and are able to do so with an incredible deftness. I¡¯ve never seen anyone change their shape so quickly, I would struggle to reproduce the effects with my own body.


    Their core, in particular, was fascinating. It¡¯s very similar in function to a brain, but entirely different in structure. It¡¯s actually a lot more reminiscent of the way the soul is structured, thinking about it that way explains a lot of the design choices made in the rest of the body as well so I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if the original creator of the slimes was trying to create a physical representation of the soul. Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t get a chance to study it but I¡¯m curious about how these similarities impact the communication between the soul and their body. Too bad slimes are so rare in this part of the world, maybe I can get the scholars to bring me some to study. It is theoretically possible for goblins to evolve into slimes, but it¡¯s never been observed to happen outside of carefully controlled circumstances.


    I wonder if I would be able to manipulate the body of a slime with flesh manipulation, in theory, it should work but I didn¡¯t test it because that would have been rude.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 54

    Today was pretty slow, which is a good thing all things considered. I hope to have more relatively slow days in the near future, it is definitely better than my people dying around me.


    My paladins have so far swollen up to roughly twice their original numbers, and I expect their size to double twice more before all is said and done. The new blood is taking to the role quite well, and have adapted to the information and knowledge available to them very quickly. It won¡¯t be long before they are using this knowledge like a third, or in one case seventh, arm.


    Now that I think about it it¡¯s weird how prevalent having two arms is, I can see how having a lot of them would get in the way, but having four or even six wouldn¡¯t really get to that point. Plus you would have all of the benefits from having extra arms, like being able to carry more stuff or being able to do more things at the same time. I could see someone duel wielding two-handed weapons in a fight to great effect. I wonder why Origin designed so many species that way, nearly sixty-five percent of all sentient creatures have the whole Biped body set up, and most of those only have two arms. I get why that whole design is conducive to sentience, it enables easy use of tools which requires a certain level of intelligence. But why two arms? I¡¯m likely never going to figure out the answer to this question without talking to an Origin, which is impossible now as there is way too much mana here for any origin to survive long enough for a conversation. I could try asking the dungeons though. I¡¯ll see what they have to say about the subject tomorrow, or if I forget the next day.


    As for my other project, I¡¯m almost ready to move onto the next step. I¡¯m still failing more than I am comfortable with, but it¡¯s nowhere near as much. It¡¯s one in twenty tries instead of one in four. I figure by the end of the day tomorrow I will be at a point that I¡¯m satisfied with. If not I¡¯ll just keep working on it I guess, but I so rarely undershoot my predictions when it comes to time. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    I have decided that I should not manipulate the souls of other people in any way, to harm or to help, unless I either have their direct and explicit permission or if their soul is somehow at risk of being destroyed. Killing someone is one thing, in general, a bad thing but something that sometimes has to be done, but denying them a chance to reincarnate is so much worse. While I also still have qualms about messing with the fabric of someone¡¯s being, the core of their personality. This doesn¡¯t prevent me from doing things like connecting the souls of all of my followers, I just have to use my own soul stuff to do it, which I already intended on.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Kaire and Lulem, the eldest of the Ents. They have been doing really well for themselves, and are some of the most powerful people in our empire. Not quite top five, but definitely top ten. It makes sense considering the fact that a substantial portion of our population consists of Ents, and all of the Ents love them. And it is in large part thanks to them that Ents have gained a global reputation as adventurers, pretty much the entire culture that sprung up around my Ents revolves around being an adventurer, and everything that entails. I fully expect the next generation of adventures to be my grandchildren. Now that I think about it this generation of adventurers largely consists of the grandchildren of the legendary adventurer Eric Kron, which I¡¯m sure my dad was expecting to happen eventually, but probably not like this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 55

    Today wasn¡¯t particularly fun. For whatever reason, though likely random chance considering the forces at work, Fate seemed intent on giving me worse than normal consequences today. Which means I built it up faster today than most days, but still, it wasn¡¯t fun.


    You see, normally it causes me to do something like trip over my own feet or say something on my mind that is embarrassing but ultimately harmless. This is always really embarrassing, mostly because I have done everything I possibly can to make myself feel even more embarrassed when it happens, but ultimately tolerable. It¡¯s definitely worth the rewards.


    Today, however, started with me getting hit in the head with a brick traveling faster than I could see. My head was thoroughly crushed by this, and if I had a brain behind my eyes I likely would have died instantly. Instead, all I got was a lot of pain and embarrassment, and someone almost got lynched.


    It didn¡¯t really get worse from there, not consistently anyway, but it definitely didn¡¯t get better. Just an hour ago some scholar accidentally dropped a colony of termites on me, really efficient termites. I am so glad I can turn off my sense of pain at will, but even with that feeling so many tiny creatures chew through your body rapidly is not a fun experience. Needless to say, I lit myself on fire, I burned slower than they did. Stolen novel; please report.


    All of this made it much harder to focus on my work, which was the most frustrating part. It wasn¡¯t impossible, but I got maybe half the work done that I wanted to today. And while I did gain quite a bit of Fate, I prefer the steady, constant, and reliable progress of my normal day to day work to the random and chaotic boons I get from Fate. While at the same time I can¡¯t just not Improve my Fate as often as I can, doing that is an integral part of my body. I built something using Spellwood to help me do it even when I was focused entirely on other things, stopping that would take a lot of work and ultimately wouldn¡¯t be worth the effort.


    I don¡¯t really feel like talking about what I accomplished today because thinking about it makes me frustrated and my downtime was spent trying to deal with the results of today''s string of bad luck. With the way I use Fate this was bound to happen eventually, and the occasional thing like this does happen frequently, but never this frequently. I¡¯m also choosing to be more frustrated by this than I otherwise would be because that means I profit off it more, but still, not fun.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 56

    Today my streak of bad luck ended, thankfully. I was able to walk outside without a bottle of ocean water hitting me in the face, seriously, that stuff burns. It was great to just trip over my own feet, though no less embarrassing by design.


    The creatures from the other dungeon are getting really close to the limits of my ability to teach them. I give it three days before there is nothing left for me to teach them, at which point they will return home. Following that everyone else will learn much faster, simply because I will be able to teach better.


    As for my other project, I¡¯m at the point now where I can move onto the next step; figuring out how to get my plants to read the information I¡¯ve stored in the memories. I know the theory behind it, and it is rather straightforward, but not everything lines up perfectly with using plants instead of a brain. A brain would be ideal, but while my understanding of brains has been dramatically improved through learning about the soul, it is still nowhere near enough for a project like this. It¡¯s a shame too, brains are literally designed for this type of work. Still, it should be an interesting challenge if nothing else. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    Other than that I spent my time with Azrezel. It¡¯s been a while since we had date night so we went out on a date. We got something to eat, I got a little tipsy, Azrezel tried and failed to get drunk, and we cuddled while watching the clouds in the night sky for a while, they''re pretty when lit up by the pink light of tonights moon. We¡¯re actually still doing that now, it¡¯s pleasant. Calming, even.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 57

    Today a significant chunk of people got to the point that I could no longer teach them, a little more than two thousand of them. It wasn''t enough to make a siginificant difference to how quickly I''m able to teach people, but it was enough of a difference to be noticable.


    It''s honestly kind of amazing how quickly the elf kid is improving, especially considering the fact that his skill has nothing to do with any innate tallents in his species. With a combination of single minded determination and sheer devotion he is pulling ahead of the masses. There are a couple others similar to him, but he was the first to catch my eye and the most extreme example. All of the rest had at least some talent with plant manipulation to start with.


    I managed to get a crude system working to get my plants to read memories. The process is slow and it fails to work half of the time, and even when it does work there are holes in what it reads and it damages the memories, but it does technicly work. This part is a lot harder than I was expecting it to be, a lot of the theory I know about how a brain comunicates with the soul simply does not apply to plants like I thought it did, or at least not in the way I''m using these plants. I''m basiclly going at this blind, throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. It might end up taking longer than I would have liked, but at least I will learn more about the way plants interact with souls. Using that knowledge I should be able to improve my Ents.


    Maybe I could draw some inspiration from slimes, their bodies seem to revolve around the soul. Or at least the one example I have studied did. It''s worth a shot, even if it fails.


    I ended up talking to the Scholars a lot today, mostly them asking for my assistance with minor issues that were easy for me to solve. Most of it revolving around plants, though I did get asked about the function of a certian organ they couldn''t identify. It turned out to be an oddly shapped bladder belonging to a couple different species of monster. It was designed that way not due to any benefit from that shape, but because the designer didn''t have space for something more functional. Really it''s just bad design, likely created by an amature dungeon. I say that but they were probably older than I am when they designed the creature this originaly came from.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    They were also all talking about how popular my books were. Apparently my books are both increadibly easy to understand and increadibly comprehensive. Which I was honestly kind of shocked to hear about, you would think that people that have spent their entire lives writing would be able to write an easily understood textbook. But no, when I asked the scholars said that anyone capable of writing in such depth either has better things to do with their time or does so in a sort of code so that only the ones the have chosen can understand their works, which is weird, why would you want to obscure knowledge? unless it was super dangerous like self-perpetuating curses or nuclear fire wouldn''t it be better if the knowledge was as wide spread as possible? That way it''s a lot more likely for someone to figure out a way to improve on your work, which you can then go and improve on.


    I should write a couple more books, there are a couple that I have in mind that I want to write. With how well recived my previous ones have been I imagine writing more will only make them like me more, which can only be a good thing. I think I will do so after I''m done teaching plant manipulation.


    The books I want to write now all follow more or less the same theme; instead of being a compendium of information like my last ones were I want to write guide books. Basically how to do magic books with all of the various types of magic I know how to do, with the book itself being able to both replicate itself and functioning as a crutch for those that aren''t able to interact with that kind of magic. Like say a book on the soul made out of Grey Iris, or a book on healing made out of Whitefoot. I am actually getting really exicted about this one.


    But I need to do the other project I had planned with the soul first, it''s more important if less fun. Hopefully it won''t take much active effort to do.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 58

    As of tomorrow, I will no longer be able to teach the creatures from the other dungeon, they will have learned all I have to teach. I''m looking forward to not having to dedicate mental resources to teaching them, though it is impressive how quickly they have learned. I made sure to include some critiques on the parts of their bodies built for plant manipulation, when I say some I mean extensive analysis of pretty much everything, which I sent over to the older dungeon.


    I personally hope he uses these creatures to develop new plants that I can then get ahold of relatively cheaply. As good as I am with making things out of existing materials, I am not very good at creating new plants. It kind of requires you to already know what you are doing in one field or another, which kind of defeats the purpose of making one in the first place, at least for me anyway. Plants are a tool that allows me to do things I otherwise would not be capable of, among many other things.


    I have more or less refined the ingredients needed for the physical part of my current project. I need Spellwood mixed with Grey Iris to actively maintain the memories, I need a mix of Grey Iris and Lace to enable people to communicate with the device, allowing people to learn from the memories inside, I need Mithrilwood to act as a case keeping everything together and because it¡¯s pretty, and I need Requiem to make sure the whole system always has mana, it running out of mana for even a moment would cause irreversible catastrophic damage to the memories. Although that does make it easy to clear them out to replace them with something else.


    I still need to get all of those pieces working together perfectly, which could be going better. There are a number of points with the soul to mind translation part of the device that I am stuck on, I¡¯m not entirely sure how to fix these parts. It isn¡¯t strictly necessary that they be fixed, but I wouldn¡¯t be able to accept the results. It¡¯s just a completely different control scheme from the one I learned about, so of course, I would run into problems like this. I know I can figure it out, even if I can¡¯t figure out the correct solution on my own I can brute force it easily enough. I¡¯m just hoping to avoid having to do that as many of these problems are complicated enough to be annoying to try and brute force, they wouldn¡¯t be problems otherwise. Either way, it¡¯s a learning experience. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Jasmine again as she was in town. We ended up going shopping for clothes, which was a novel experience for me. I have never actually bought clothes before, I always just wear the ones I make, or before that ones my mom made. It¡¯s interesting, and kind of fun, but it¡¯s also a lot of work. There is no way I would ever do something like this on my own, but when hanging out with someone whose company I otherwise enjoy it isn¡¯t too bad.


    Now the only problem is what am I supposed to do with these clothes? They aren¡¯t really functional enough to help me out in a crisis, and recent events have shown that a crisis can happen at any time so I need that extra edge constantly. I could try mimicking the designs with my own clothes, it would kind of defeat the purpose of shopping but some of the designs are really nice. Yeah, I think I¡¯ll do that.


    I thought it was funny that the first thing Jasmine picked up was one of the first ones I designed, way back when I was calling my clothes ¡®armor¡¯. They might be able to function as such, but it was still really weird. Regardless, it was strange seeing her wear what was basically my old clothes, but I will admit that they looked really good on her.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 59

    Today one hundred thousand creatures teleported away from my home in the same manner that they arrived. They did not have access to any form of teleportation related skills, and they did not have any equipment that let them teleport. They did have something that acted as a beacon and that is it. It is honestly more than a little scary that the older dungeon is capable of teleporting that well. If he really wanted to I have no doubt that he could get away with not using some kind of beacon to direct his teleportation. I probably shouldn''t antagonize him in the future.


    Still, I felt the effects almost immediately. With so many people gone everything suddenly got much easier. I''ve said it before several times but I''m expecting, hoping, that people start learning faster under my much more direct guidance. I''m especially hoping that more people will reach the level of being worthy of joining my Paladins as well, though I have less expectation there.


    Other than that I also hung out with Tiddol. It was really eerie seeing her opened up and splayed out across her desk while she was working on some internal piece of her body. Apparently, it was some spring that she could use to drive the motion in her left arm, the specifics of it were beyond me but it was supposed to help deal with the random tremors she sometimes gets. Something about turning that motion into potential energy instead of movement. She talked about it quite excitedly, though almost everything she said was beyond my understanding. This must be what it''s like to talk to me when I am in the middle of a big project that I really enjoy.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    She was also telling me about how Par is heading to the front lines again in a couple days, he already has an army built up again, though the recruits are green and most of them have never seen combat before. She has decided not to return to the front lines with him, as she wants to stay with her kid, who is not going this time, and she is also not in a state to actually fight and stay safe in that type of environment quite yet. She''s still trying to figure out how to get every part of her body working properly, according to her the work she did originally was a rushed patch job that was only half functional in ideal circumstances. I''m looking forward to being able to hang out with her more in the future.


    Maybe I could introduce her to Jasmine, though I''m not sure how well they would get along.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 60

    A lot of people reached the point that I can no longer teach them today, though nowhere near as many as yesterday. Roughly thirty thousand locals have grown beyond my ability to teach them at this point, and I expect more to leave every day. At the current rate, I also expect there to be roughly two thousand new recruits to my Paladins, which is more than I expected when I started this whole thing.


    As far as my other project goes, I did make a lot of progress, but none of it novel. I¡¯m just grinding away at what needs to be done.


    I talked to Par today, I figured that since he was leaving in the next couple days I probably should. He is definitely angry, and for good reason, but that anger is tempered with a calm rationality. He doesn¡¯t want to hurt the enemy, he wants to crush them completely and utterly, and he at least thinks he knows how to do it. I hope he does.


    It¡¯s honestly amazing how much he¡¯s changed from the ugly little goblin he used to be. I look forward to seeing how he grows after we finish taking over everything on the continent, and beyond that as well. How will our great empire grow and develop with him as the head? I may be the face, but he is definitely the head. I guess that would make Tiddol the brains. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Actually, that fits quite well. When people see think of or hear about our empire it often relates to me, between the scholars studying me and other people worshiping me I am always the first part of our empire people are made aware of. Par is the one with actual practical control over governing stuff, he is the one who organizes and controls everything. Without him none of this would have ever happened, as a result, he has the most power. While Tiddol is constantly pushing forward our understanding of pretty much everything, she is the one that controls and organizes our scholars, the ones working for our empire and not the order. It is a really interesting dynamic that has propped up around the three of us. Pretty much everyone else in power has died or isn¡¯t that important, with a few exceptions. Kaire and Lulem, for instance, are both incredibly influential with a sizeable portion of our population, though their influence does not extend far beyond that. Same with the guy that replaced Speaker, I know he changed his name but I¡¯m not sure what he changed it too yet.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 61

    Another large group of people, a little more than four thousand, stopped training under me today. Not all of them were beyond my ability to teach, but most of them left with Par to return to the front lines. I hope their improved skills with plants helps make the difference between defeat and victory.


    The elf kid, whose name I learned to be Veris after I heard an older elf woman call out to him, I¡¯m assuming that was his mother, is currently one of my best students. It is a matter of days before he will be able to join my paladins, and some of the originals are keenly aware of this even without me saying as much. I look forward to seeing what he can accomplish, after all a bunch of untrained farmers managed to turn the tide of battle in our favor before, how will he, as their successor live up to that?


    As I said earlier, Par left this morning. He and his soldiers teleported to the forest¡¯s edge and marched out to war, which is fairly mundane. While I was seeing them off, offering the soldiers my blessing, healing any minor injuries they may have, and other such stuff I took a moment to look over the barrier preventing my expansion. I still don¡¯t understand most of it, but some of the stuff involved involves the soul in one way or another. I wish I understood how because then I could probably bypass the barrier entirely, but this is still good to know. Using my soul to bind my hivemind closer together will likely be influenced by, or influence this barrier, possibly negatively, possibly positively. At the very least now I know to look out for it. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    Speaking of the soul, my teaching device is coming along nicely. I have worked out many of the issues involving interpreting the information, and though it isn¡¯t perfect, I may have figured out a solution to that. See, regardless of what I did it always had a failure rate that was way too high to be useful on a large scale, the method I used to store information wasn¡¯t exactly something that was easy to interpret. So what I did was I had it check twice simultaneously, matching the results up against each other. If the results were the same no problem, if they were different it tried again. It works even when it fails both times, because it almost never fails in the same way twice. Making the thing was also rather straightforward, I basically just ran the memories through a band of singing grass, if both memories were identical it would function normally, but if they weren¡¯t then they would counteract each other. I wish I had thought of this days ago, actually I wish I had thought of this at all. It was actually one of Tiddol¡¯s students that recommended it after messing around with a similar phenomenon.


    Anyway, that¡¯s pretty much all that happened today, so Good Night Diary.

 Day 62

    I have more or less perfected the teaching device, there are some minor flaws in it but they are so small as to be both irrelevant and nearly impossible to fix, I hope anyway. It is entirely possible that I am completely overlooking something, but I doubt it. I will start producing them after I am done training the people that are left.


    Speaking of, even the worst of them is improving quickly. If everything stays steady it will take about a week before everyone is beyond my ability to teach. It helps a lot that pretty much everyone that had no talent with plants to start with either dropped out or evolved into something that did.


    I ended up spending my downtime today with Azrezel, who I found arm deep in the guts of a rather attractive guy. I just watched for a little bit while the two were having a conversation, not at all hampered by the fact that my boyfriend was messing around with his insides. I quickly found out that the stranger was a lich like Azrezel, and he had some magical device lodged into his body a while back. He didn¡¯t really have the expertise to remove it, and having an unknown and damaged magical device in your body is probably not a good thing, so he came here to ask for our help, and Azrezel was the one he found first. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    It was an interesting conversation, and once I realized what was going on I helped out. The work was surprisingly difficult. Using magic on an unknown magical device is usually ill-advised, so we had to remove it directly. Unfortunately, it wasn¡¯t exactly in a good position for that, fortunately, we were working on an undead so it didn¡¯t really matter what we cut up as we could fix it with minimal issues. Plus I certainly wasn¡¯t opposed to the opportunity to study the body of a creature I had never encountered before.


    The device, according to one of the scholars, turned out to be a rather simple enchanted bomb, so using magic directly on it definitely would have been the wrong choice. Upon hearing that the guy left, saying that he had ¡°a treacherous ¡®ally¡¯ to deal with.¡± He did give Azrezel something first, though, it seemed to be a small collection of magical metal, though I¡¯m unfamiliar with the variety.


    I probably should have asked for his name, it would be awkward to meet him again and not know his name. Well, too late now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 63

    Today there was an explosion. It happened right in front of me, were I any closer to the blast it could have done serious damage to me. Luckily, or maybe not so luckily, someone noticed what was happening before I did and dived between me and the bomb. I had never met them before, but they were dead instantly in the blast, didn¡¯t even have enough time to feel pain. I still don¡¯t know who they were, but they weren¡¯t the only casualty.


    It happened on a relatively crowded street, though only five people were close enough to die from the blast. The structural damage was easy enough to fix so it was mostly a non-issue, while the people that weren¡¯t close enough to die instantly were easy enough to heal.


    It turns out that what happened is someone just exploded, seemingly for no reason. There was hardly even a body left, just viscera covering the streets, much less some clue as to why they exploded.


    It¡¯s almost certainly an attack, but on who? The guy who exploded was an important person from out of town, no one affiliated with us, but definitely someone worthy of an assassination. Like that lich from the other day with the bomb planted in his chest.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Actually, now that I dig into it a bit more, it seems like this guy was here seeking medical treatment for some magical device implanted into his body against his will. And we happen to have the best healers in the area, so of course, he came to us. I¡¯m worried what this might entail, is someone attack us, or are we just collateral damage in someone¡¯s killing spree. Either way, we should try to stop this, as any in this area that is affected is likely going to come to us for help.


    What should we do about this, what can we do about this? Informing all of the healers is probably a good start, if one of them tries to start removing this device with magic it¡¯s just going to blow up on them. We should study the one we already have, or rather we should get the scholars to do so, maybe we could figure out some way to deal with it from that? Surgery isn¡¯t exactly viable every single time, and it takes a lot of time and effort that I would rather not have my people spend on foreigners, without some kind of payment of course.


    Ideally, we could figure out who did this and get them to stop before someone else blows up in a population center, or maybe it will all blow over and there will never be another incident of this type of explosion. I somehow doubt it though.


    And there is another boom, I should go check that out, make sure the people that can be saved are saved.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 64

    After warning the healers about the issue and instructing the scholars to figure out how this bomb works there wasn¡¯t much more I could do to assist in this current crisis, beyond responding to each individual case. And I did do that, at least when I was able to. But sometimes I would arrive too late or sometimes I am occupied by other things.


    There were only four explosions today, with thankfully few casualties. One of them happened on an operating table while a healer was trying to dig the bomb out of a patient, as a result, there was no one around other than the healer, who managed to get away quick enough to only be severely injured. So the only casualty of that incident was the person with the bomb inside.


    Tiddol did recommend that we look more into the people who are having these devices implanted inside of them, maybe there is some commonality between them? Maybe a similar country of origin or similar ideologies. It¡¯s worth looking into at the very least.


    Unfortunately, there was very little I could do proactively to fix this situation, so I still spent most of my time working on my actual projects. I have decided to dedicate most of my efforts towards teaching the people, simply so that I can get this part done with quickly. That and I need a little bit to recover my soul enough before I work on my next project there.


    Veris has reached a point of skill in plant manipulation that I would be worried about him accidentally killing himself while experimenting with any plants inside of his own body and as such he is worthy of joining my Paladins. I¡¯ve never seen someone be so happy before in my life. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Though he is the youngest of the group by far, at least relative to each individual species, he is the most zealous by far, and due to the nature of their connection, the others are very much aware of this. He isn¡¯t much of a leader, but I would bet that is due more to a lack of experience than anything else, I expect him to go far and become someone important within my Paladins. I look forward to seeing him thrive.


    You know, technically, when looking at it purely from the perspective of species, whatever Veris evolved into would be higher on the totem pole than any dryad would be. Elves, on their own, were already considered to be greater than any dryad. In a one on one competition with all else being equal a dryad would only beat an elf in plant manipulation. And though I am definitely something quite a bit more than a simple dryad, it¡¯s funny to think of it that way. Even better when considering it from Par¡¯s perspective, the only thing really weaker than a goblin is a slime, and that¡¯s only because slimes normally don¡¯t learn very well. He went from a mere goblin to ruling an empire of countless people, many of whom would otherwise be well beyond his abilities even now. Maybe there is something special about being the one in charge of everything, who knows, certainly not me. Maybe the scholars might know something?


    I didn¡¯t get much in the way of downtime today, most of it was eaten up by handlining minor crisis after minor crisis as people were blowing up in the streets. People are constantly wearing armor or otherwise doing anything they can to protect themselves from a random blast. It¡¯s surreal to see an otherwise normal child playing tag in full plate armor, probably enchanted based on the carvings in the wood.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 65

    Today we got ahold of three more of those bombs intact, and a fourth one that an enchanter managed to partially disable in the middle of exploding. It still exploded, probably even more violently, but it was all in a single direction instead of in every direction. We¡¯ve been storing them in a mana dead room that I built so they stop accumulating mana, and hopefully start to lose some of their energy.


    It turns out that yes, part of the structure of the bombs are formed with enchanting. But unfortunately, none of these parts directly cause the explosion or even allow the gather of mana. Quite the opposite, parts of it limit the potential damage of the explosion and limit the speed it can acquire mana, so turning those parts off would cause more harm than just leaving this situation alone entirely. The materials are still unknown, though some people are suggesting that they are alchemical in nature, though from what I¡¯ve seen, I''m more inclined to believe that they are parts of some kind of creature, probably a powerful draconic or demon. Though admittedly both things are not mutually exclusive. I haven¡¯t tried flesh manipulation yet for obvious enough reasons, but I can still make an educated guess.


    With the delay, it seems like the person or group doing this isn¡¯t just trying to kill the people they are sticking these bombs inside of. They could be trying to kill healers, or hoping that they are in a public place to cause extra damage or make a statement, I¡¯m not sure, but the fact that they are limiting the damage of the blast tells me that this is probably not an attack on us specifically. Or if it is it¡¯s not being orchestrated by the enemy Empire as they would just want to cause as much damage to us as possible, and killing our healers would be a great way to go about doing that. Plus they have never proven themselves to be subtle.


    Plus, to my knowledge, we haven¡¯t really angered anyone else. We haven¡¯t stepped on any toes big enough to step back, except for maybe the scholars. But to be fair, if they wanted to hurt us we would all be dead. They have way more resources of all sorts than we could hope to have. Plus they aren¡¯t exactly subtle about that sort of thing either, in fact, they generally announce their intentions to everyone involved. So unless I¡¯m missing something all signs point to us being an accidental victim in a string of bombings. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Still, despite that life must go on, and I must keep teaching until there is no one left to teach. And I am doing quite well there. I am putting more emphasis on the less skilled ones, so people are growing beyond my ability to teach rather slowly, but within the next couple days people will start reaching that point in massive numbers. Hopefully anyway. From there I will start installing these teaching devices in the training building, seems like a good place for them.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol and Azrezel. Tiddol had run into a snag with the way her clockwork parts interact with her fleshy parts and asked for our help in fixing the problem. The problem was that her fleshy bits reacted much slower than her clockwork bits, to the point of damaging the connections between them. This problem was easy enough to fix, just needed to improve what she had left of her nervous system, which I already knew how to do, and strengthen the connections to the clockwork, which was easy enough to figure out.


    She also talked about Umi quite a bit. The girl actually managed to figure out how to remove mana from existence, if only temporarily. She used it to great effect by temporarily removing mana from her own mana pool before a fight, allowing herself to be refilled halfway through the battle, by temporarily removing a spell from existence, allowing it to go off later than it otherwise would, and by removing half of a spell, effectively destroying it. I thought that doing something like that was impossible, but it seems like if you understand mana well enough then you can get rid of it.


    Tiddol was also saying something about her daughter being a lot angrier recently, which makes sense considering her twin brother was killed. Apparently, Umi was talking about ¡®erasing them entirely¡¯ in reference to the person that killed Ednar, which when combined with what I know about their recently learned skills I think I have a pretty good idea of what they intend to do. As someone who used to be a mana based creature, that is more than a little terrifying.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 66

    Today we had a small development with the bombs. We¡¯ve managed to figure out what material they are made of, more or less anyway. It turns out to be some biological material that has been alchemically treated through an as of yet unknown method. The stuff is the fat of a type of powerful demon, which uses its fat to double as a form of mana storage. There aren¡¯t exactly a lot of creatures on that level anywhere, so it should narrow down the possibilities by quite a bit, but it doesn¡¯t do us as much good as I would have liked as demons are pretty common in the continents near our own, supposedly their home continent is rather close to us.


    While figuring out what it was made of didn¡¯t help as much in the way I had hoped it would, it did give us a way to safely dispose of the bombs. Though whatever alchemical process the fat was treated with hardened it to be about as hard as wood it only slightly increased its melting point. So we are able to safely melt them down if we do it slowly, it still takes all day to do so, but it¡¯s better than the alternative.


    I expect that by this time tomorrow a quarter of the remaining students will have either graduated or joined my Paladins. I give it three days before the rest follow them. I¡¯m curious to see how such a massive influx of highly trained plant manipulators will affect things. Previously I have been the only one truly skilled enough to create things like the teleporters, but with this a large group of plant manipulators might be able to get together and design something similar. Maybe not as quickly as I could do it, but it can happen. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    I¡¯ll admit, I am mostly interested in seeing the new things that these people create, but I expect the social changes would also be interesting to observe. I expect that being good at plant manipulation will be considered a lot more normal, though the actual effects of that aren¡¯t something I¡¯m able to guess.


    Other than that I hung out with Jasmine today as she was in town. Most of the time was spent with her talking to me while I just listened, she¡¯s definitely a lot more outgoing than me in that regard. I learned a lot about her life, this one anyway as she is a bit light lipped about the details of her previous life. She was complaining a lot about having relationship issues, from the sound of it she can¡¯t get a relationship to last longer than a year, though she also never feels as close to her old lovers as I imagine most people do. Maybe she¡¯s just a flighty person by nature? Who knows, I certainly don¡¯t. Still, it was nice to hang out with her. I wish she was in town more often.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 67

    I expect that within the next three days all of my students will have graduated. There are a couple that are straggling behind the rest, but with some dedicated help, I¡¯m almost certain that they can catch up.


    And then next I have to connect all of the souls of my people, simply so I can avoid having another incident where the people¡¯s anger and spite overwhelm me. I¡¯m not looking forward to that. Exhausting my soul, like this will definitely require, is never a fun experience. Everything always feels so cold, even in the heat of summer, it makes me feel unpleasantly cold and lethargic, just sort of lifeless.


    But after that I should get to do something that would be much more fun; writing books to teach people how to use magic. I hope to learn from the creations of those that learn from my creations. Who knows, maybe like that we would be capable of creating something well and truly beyond anything I could make on my own.


    Speaking of creations, the scholars think that they have figured out why people are having bombs implanted into them. Everyone so far has been wealthy, influential, or otherwise powerful and all of them tend to share similar political views. So it¡¯s probably an ideological attack of some kind. I¡¯m not sure how this information helps us, but the scholars seem to know what they are doing so I¡¯ll trust them for now. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Speaking of attacks, another city has fallen to Emperor Parius the Magnificent. And now I can spread my litteral roots farther than before. Unfortunately, the enemy destroyed any useful information on the thing keeping me out before they were driven out of the city, so I am no closer to figuring out how to overcome it than I was before.


    The city teleporter was also destroyed, it seems that the enemy really wants to spite our every advance. So Par will not be returning home after this successful conquest and will instead advance to the next city, he took very few losses and it¡¯s not like food is an issue. Or any other supplies really, as most of the stuff can be produced by the plant manipulators he has available.


    Other than that I took some time to talk to Speaker¡¯s replacement, he calls himself ¡®Preacher¡¯ now. And with his preaching he has done much to improve the moral of the people. And it really is preaching, while his predecessor gave speeches. I¡¯m not entirely sure what the difference is, but Preacher feels more emotional, more intense. While Speaker was always measured and controlled, and Whisperer was subtle and quiet. It fits.


    Preacher has taken to his role remarkably well, as I expected he would. The only person that I have seen manage to rile up a crowd more is Par, and not by that much. If he lives long enough to do so, I expect him to do great things.


    It feels good to have people pay me so much respect and difference.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 68

    Today another large group of people left the training grounds. The rest are on the verge of graduating, with more leaving every second. Everyone should be done by tomorrow, with the exception of a couple of stragglers. Most of the people worthy of being a part of my Paladins have already joined them, they all had some kind of edge over the rest when it came to learning plant manipulation.


    As far as the bombs go, we think we have found the person who has been making them, because they said so in a huge announcement that reached from end to end of the native continent of the demons. And we were right, it was some kind of political crusade. Something about democracy? I don¡¯t know if the guy was for it or against it, but it¡¯s the whole thing where the people vote on what the government does, right? The whole ¡®everyone gets a vote thing¡¯. I mean, it sounds nice but not everyone is equal, I don¡¯t imagine it would last long unless there was some powerful creatures there to enforce it. I imagine it would work pretty well though, then at least the masses definitely get what they want.


    Anyway, that doesn¡¯t matter too much. What does matter is keeping this guy from accidentally killing our people. And we have a lot of powerful people who also want to remove this guy, hopefully, it¡¯s just as easy as telling them what we already know about him and his bombs, though I somehow doubt it. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    This isn¡¯t a big enough event to get the scholar¡¯s inquisition involved, but maybe we can do something similar? We have plenty of people that are capable of reading minds, it just takes a little bit of Lace to pull it off. But I¡¯m not sure if that would be enough, or if it would even help. Well, if anyone asks for our help there I am perfectly willing to dedicate some time to helping.


    Other than that, I spent my downtime with Azrezel. We ended up going to see a play together, the play itself was alright, nothing really spectacular but it did get me to laugh a couple times. There was a minor incident in one of the other private viewing rooms, but it seemed to resolve itself pretty quickly so I wasn¡¯t really worried.


    We talked and enjoyed ourselves. Discussed our various projects and most just spent time being intimate with each other in a tame way.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 69

    The last of the people left the training grounds today. There was a minor celebration, but it was nothing spectacular. Afterward, I got to work setting up the teaching devices all over the building, with this I will no longer have to directly oversee it whenever someone wants to come here to learn plant manipulation, though it will not be quite as effective as when I am personally overseeing things.


    I¡¯ve been feeling a growing sense of pride the last couple days, and it isn¡¯t coming from myself. The people are proud of something, or at least a large chunk of them are. And I have a pretty good idea as to what. You don¡¯t learn an entire skillset in less than a month without some kind of pride.


    As far as the bombings go, there has been some development but I have not yet been informed what that development is.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Tiddol in her workshop. We talked and bantered while I made plants to a much more exact specification than Tiddol would normally be capable of. She still struggles with her words, it still takes her a long time to think of what to say but it isn¡¯t nearly as bad as it was at first. Apparently, a large part of that is due to changing the way she creates noise being better. She¡¯s also a lot better at telepathy, though she still needs Lace to actually do it, something about the way she thinks now just finds it easier to use. It¡¯s odd, but comforting to hear her thoughts like that. It¡¯s also impressive how well she was using Lace, I can tell she¡¯s been practicing, probably since she figured that she can use Lace like that. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Emotionally she¡¯s doing really well, she¡¯s happier and it isn¡¯t just superficial. She¡¯s still angry and mourning, but she isn¡¯t just angry and mourning. I¡¯m not really sure how to judge her physical health, but half the time I see her she is splayed open and fiddling around with her insides, so probably not perfect. Her actual flesh could definitely be doing better, but she is also undead so it should be fine. Also, I¡¯m not entirely convinced that her body is holding her soul to this life at all in the first place, something else seems to be acting as a net and keeping her here. Which is interesting, but I¡¯m not about to poke around my best friend¡¯s soul without permission, and I¡¯m definitely not going to do so when one wrong move might make her enter the cycle of reincarnation. So the mystery will remain unsolved for now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 70

    Today I finally started connecting the souls of all of my followers. It is a simple process, and it takes a lot less soul energy than I expected it would. It still takes a lot of energy, and there are a lot of people I need to do this too, but it¡¯s going faster than I expected.


    Despite that it still leaves me feeling cold and tired, I expected nothing less. It still sucks though. Regardless, I am already feeling some form of control over the emotions I am receiving from the people, though not enough to actually change things yet. With how quickly my soul recovers now it will take about a week before I am finished. I am not looking forward to this week. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    I just want to curl up next to something warm and sleep right now, so I¡¯ll keep the rest of this brief. The bomber guy has been located but not captured yet, and Azrezel makes for a great body pillow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 71

    I feel a bit better today, I¡¯ve decided not to let the shell of my soul get so exhausted, even if it does mean this project will take a bit longer. I just hate the feeling of cold and lethargy that comes with it. It makes it impossible to get anything done.


    It still doesn¡¯t leave me a lot of time for other things, though. If anything doing it like this takes longer as I am trying to be as efficient as possible with how I use my soul energy. If the main limiting factor for me is energy then I should use as little of it as I can.


    The bomber guy was caught pretty quickly when his location was discovered. He had dozens of very powerful people on his location within seconds, and his attempt to teleport away was made irrelevant when a master teleporter figured out where he was going mid teleport and went there ahead of him with a small army. This was a much more intense reaction than I was expecting, but I guess it makes sense. If you make a point to target powerful people then you will piss off a lot of powerful people. Hopefully, this will be the end of this.


    As a side note, it turns out that the bomber was using his own fat to make the bombs, which kind of impressive actually. I wonder how he went about actually harvesting it, I highly doubt that he was a master flesh manipulator and mere healing would only be enough to close up the wounds. And other methods take a lot of mental fortitude, I don¡¯t think I would be capable of manually harvesting something like that from my own body, especially not repeatedly.


    Although, it¡¯s quite possible that he just knows, or rather knew, just the few tricks required to render his own fat with flesh manipulation. The average healer could figure it out with some dedicated practice, though that would likely be even more painful. Every single time you mess up you would have to cut it off with a sharp knife, healing isn¡¯t going to remove something like that. At least not while it¡¯s still there anyway. He must have been brilliant in his chosen fields, or at least incredibly dedicated. Either way, it¡¯s a shame he took the path he did. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Also, Emericus finally woke up today. He seems older, a bit shriveled up, and has incredibly long facial hair. Which is weird because most undead don¡¯t grow hair at all, he would have had to go out of his way to grow it with his own healing magic. He has pretty much mastered the techniques I showed him, better than I possibly could have, as he was very enthusiastic to demonstrate. He was somehow able to keep Solar Energy and mana from interacting while both were almost completely still, just the smallest movement was enough for him to keep himself from blowing up. And he would blow up if he messed up, and he would probably take a rather large chunk of my forest with him. Although he might actually survive, what with his Solar Energy improved body.


    He even managed to create some pretty expansive pockets for Solar Energy out of Solar Energy and mana, like I had to do when first starting out. But unlike me, he was able to keep more than a hundred of them going with barely a thought, each of them being about a quarter of his own internal pool. It¡¯s impressive, he definitely is a cut above the rest. It¡¯s a good thing he seems to like me so much, though I bet a part of that was Azrezel making him more excited while he was showing off.


    I¡¯m glad he has stopped his meditation, having another heavy hitter on our side would be a big help. Although he still hasn¡¯t decided to join us officially, it¡¯s only a matter of time.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 72

    At this point, I am now able to exert a noticeable level of control over the emotions I receive from the people. Really all I can do so far is mildly increase or decrease the intensity, but I get the feeling that soon I will be able to manipulate the type of emotions I receive. Although I''m not yet sure how exactly all of that will work.


    We got word from Par again today, he''s met a rather large army of enemy forces in battle. He''s pretty sure that they are mercenaries as they are quite a bit different from everyone else that they have fought, though the specifics of how their organization was different wasn''t really interesting.


    What is interesting is that these guys are really good at their job, which is a bit of a mixed bag as it means that we will take heavy losses from this while it is likely costing our enemy a lot of money. I''m not sure how much money they have available, but it can''t possibly be more than us.


    I have no doubts that Par will pull through on this battle, I just hope that the troops survive. They are still pretty green going up against veterans. Every dead soldier of our is an edge the enemy gains on us.


    In other news, I came across a large, inhabited, island in the ocean. According to the scholars the island had never been recorded on any maps before. Due to some natural formations on the island, it shapes the ambient mana into a very crude invisibility spell, making it appear as just another patch of the sea when viewed from afar or from above, or at least that''s what I was told. The really interesting part of this is the fact that these creatures that live here have never been exposed to anything beyond it. They have developed their own culture and society in complete isolation from the rest of the world. They have their own customs, their own history, their own language. An entire language! I wasn''t even aware that there were any languages besides the one I''m writing in now. Luckily thoughts are able to bypass language so communication wasn''t too difficult, but this find is huge if only because of how much sway it will give me over the scholars. many of them would kill to study a place like this, and me and my people are the only ones capable of getting there reliably. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I ended up spending all day just exploring the island. There were many species of previously unknown plants, though most of them were mundane. I did find something very similar to White Foot there, definitely a different plant but it functions in much the same way. I wonder how they have developed things like healing, necromancy, plant manipulation, and alchemy, if at all. Their population isn''t very big, relatively speaking, but it is still enough to fill a small city.


    I wish I could read their language, they have so many scrolls filled with what I''m assuming are words. Their characters look nothing like our own, a lot more fluid and wavy. I''m looking forward to learning more about these people in the near future.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 73

    I noticed something interesting today, the amount of soul energy I am receiving from the people has increased. I''m not taking a larger portion, instead, they are producing more. It is only happening with the ones that I have connected with my own soul, which makes sense, but what doesn''t make sense is why. What exactly is causing them to produce noticeably more soul energy? Yeah, me interacting with their soul a little bit would cause it to grow slightly from the stimulation, but the difference would be so minor as to be irrelevant. Nowhere near the level, it has risen too, and nowhere near the rate it keeps rising. It''s definitely a good thing, but I need to know more so I can properly optimize whatever is happening. Luckily I currently have a great way to experiment with that.


    We were sent a sizeable gift today from our powerful neighbors in the homeland of the demons. In effect, it was to apologize for forcing us to deal with their own issue. The gift itself wasn''t really spectacular, expensive yes, but not particularly interesting. Just some rare metals and some odd trinkets that might be useful, nothing that we didn''t have already. If they really wanted to make me like them then they would have sent some interesting magical plants, all of the new ones I currently have access to basically just do the same thing my own plants do, only slightly different in a way I am more than able to replicate.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Jasmine today. We ended up doing some shopping again, which was kind of fun. She tried to get me to buy some makeup for myself, but it was kind of pointless because I can do everything makeup can and more by just changing the way my face looks directly. No point in putting paint on it.


    We did end up running into Azrezel while we were walking, he was out buying candy and our paths crossed. He was obviously a little awkward, and more than once had to stop himself from staring at her, and me. It kind of cute actually, seeing him be so flustered. And, I mean she is really attractive so I''m definitely not saying anything against his tastes. He also was not subtle, as Jasmine was quick to point out after we went our seperate ways.


    I wonder what it would be like if the three of us hooked up together for a night, I know charismatic adventurers often have multiple lovers at the same time and I''m curious. And based on how Azrezel was struggling to stop himself from oogling the two of us I''m sure he would go for it. I mean it can''t hurt to try, so why not? It might be fun.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 74

    As of today, I am half done with connecting all of my people together using my soul. Things are really starting to get interesting. I am not able to completely turn off the emotions I receive from the people, even when only considering the ones I have connected. I would say that I am able to remove about half, the other half has little to do with the soul. It''s probably in the brain, considering all I know about it, which puts it beyond my reach. The only way I can think of to prevent myself from feeling those emotions isn''t exactly something I''m willing to do to anyone, much less my own people.


    That isn''t to say all hope is lost for preventing me from entering a rage when the people get too upset. Being able to cut down on half of the emotions is quite a lot. And with my increased control enables me to feel more nuances in the emotion. From my understanding pure rage isn''t a very nuanced emotion, so hopefully, there will be some beneficial interactions there.


    Before I was only able to feel very general emotions, like happiness, sadness, or anger. Now the emotions I receive from the people are a lot deeper. I can tell when that happiness is love, or when that sadness is despair. All of that is still drowned out by the mass of emotion, but I can pick it out if I pay attention to it. Plus I can much more easily feel the emotions of one particular follower if I pay attention to them. Or to the emotional state of a crowd of people.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    It''s a lot more than I expected, but at the same time, less than I had hoped for.


    Other than that we received word from Par. The mercenaries have been more or less defeated while our army has taken moderate casualties. Very few dead, the mercenaries didn''t seem to be aiming to kill so much as maim, they probably don''t fight healers very often. However, there are a lot of people that were injured beyond the abilities of our front line medics to heal. So many of them will be returning to town for medical treatment before going back to the front. Some of them will likely be beyond all but our best healers, I will try to step in for those cases but beyond that my people have this under control.


    I spent some time with Tiddol today. She''s taking a break from tinkering with her insides to practice some alchemy for a little while. Just a couple small potions, like one designed to make the person who drinks it smell like oranges for five minutes, or one that lets you climb on walls. I have no idea how that last one worked, the first one caused you to release something from your pores, but the second one had no obvious physiological changes associated with it. It just worked.


    I''m glad that she is managing to take a break today, she definitely deserves a chance to rest.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 75

    I should be done with my current project within the next two days, the soul energy that I¡¯m getting from forming these connections is a lot more than I expected to be, even after I realized that it would exist in the first place. Which is great, this isn¡¯t exactly the most fun project. Even with restricting how much I am spending it still leaves me feeling cold and tired, and keeps me from doing other fun things.


    I spent some time talking to Preacher today, he has definitely taken to his role well. He isn¡¯t nearly as good at organizing things as Speaker was, but he is incredibly talented at inspiring and guiding the people in broad strokes. Which is exactly what is needed right now, his predecessors have already laid down the groundwork, now he is the best person to take advantage of it on my behalf.


    Thanks to him there are now efforts to convert every single large group of sentient creatures on the continent, with the exception of the ones under the control of the enemy. This should allow expanding my forest and our empire to be seamless, at least until we reach another continent.


    Speaking of, the island with people on it that I found recently has its own religion, one that is followed quite strongly by the population. In and of itself this is only a small issue, but it is one more issue causing them to reject our authority. They don¡¯t want to join our empire and we can¡¯t spare the troops to force them to join us. At the same time, I don¡¯t think that they would react well to being conquered in the way that the enemy¡¯s cities are. They are much more free-spirited than the people on the mainland, and their whole religion supports this.


    So we need to teach them our language, share our culture, and convert them to our religion, otherwise, they will never willingly join us. Luckily we have two different organizations that would love to do just that.


    The scholars want to teach them our language, they want everyone in the world to share the language that they created and they don¡¯t take kindly to those that refuse to learn it. I have heard stories of civilizations being purged for that type of thing. From what I hear this usually starts with a very aggressive effort to translate everything from the local language into their language, including written works, spoken stories, and common sayings. Then they go in and teach anyone and everyone that is willing to learn their language, including written language. It¡¯s weird to think about, but apparently in places of the world that the scholars have not touched literacy isn¡¯t common, sometimes to the point of a written language simply not existing. How do people record things without writing? I¡¯m sure at least one civilization figured out how to do it with the soul, but that can¡¯t be common. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    As for religion, Preacher is already trying to convert them. He hasn¡¯t had much luck yet, but it¡¯s only been a couple days. I suggested that he look at their religion and see if there are any stories of plant manipulators or healers that he can draw from to help their own efforts and I hope that bears fruit.


    Both of these things will do a lot to spread our culture to them, but to be honest, I would be completely fine with it if they weren¡¯t completely converted to our culture. I haven¡¯t seen everything that they have to offer, but the food alone is amazing. They have so many spices that I simply didn¡¯t have before and that no one else knows how to use properly, even our best chefs haven¡¯t managed to figure out how to make many of them actually tasty yet. And their people are very attractive, as many of my own people will attest to. It¡¯s been a week and already several of my people have already hooked up with theirs, and I expect that to continue. On top of that, the few traditions that I have observed have been interesting, like the way that they treat necromancy. It seems to be something that they honor and respect, but their necromancers are treated as somehow being other or outsiders and are rarely accepted into the general population. But on the one occasion that I did see them accepted they were treated incredibly well, lavished with gifts and praise as they went about their work of reanimating the corpse of a dead relative. It¡¯s a bizarre custom, why do the necromancers put up with that kind of treatment, and why would anyone in that culture willingly become one of them? I haven¡¯t seen any of them with any kind of romantic partner so it can¡¯t be a familial thing, which makes sense considering how often necromancers turn into undead. I really want to know what the story is here.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 76

    I¡¯m so close to being done with this project, just another long day of this constant mild discomfort that won¡¯t go away and it will be over.


    There have been changes I¡¯m sure, but the obvious ones are all more of the same. More control over the emotions I receive, more depth to those emotions, more soul energy production and all of that stuff. I have no doubt that there have been some rather large changes that aren¡¯t so obvious yet, but naturally, I don¡¯t know what they are yet. Someone might wake up tomorrow to discover that they turned into a giant snake in their sleep, I would be surprised if it was related to this but it happens.


    Par took a city today, I found out through my hivemind as it was happening. Our army marched up to the city and the city threw open its gates and let them inside, courtesy of the people we have inside. The city teleporter was intact, and more importantly, whatever it is that was keeping up the barrier was also intact. Now, that is mostly irrelevant now that I can just move my plants into their territory, but they didn¡¯t know that I could do so, and I want to keep it that way. But I also want to expand my plants above ground as well as below, which I can¡¯t do without revealing that their barriers do nothing to me. This gives us a good excuse to be able to expand into their territory slowly without causing them to divert resources away from maintaining these barriers.


    I have to do it carefully though, maybe if I build some kind of device that supposedly lets me stretch the barrier inwards? I don¡¯t need to actually do that, I just need to build something complicated enough that no one else on the continent would actually be able to figure out what it does. Maybe something using Lace designed to confuse anyone looking at it? I¡¯m not sure how to pull that off, but it is theoretically possible. I should definitely give it strict limits, or at least make it appear that way. Hopefully, with that I can bait in some of their troops to try and take a shot at me and then set my paladins on them.


    I wonder how my dad is doing. It is kind of hard to communicate with him over such a long distance and without a city teleporter, I can get the broad strokes pretty clearly from the people connected to my hivemind, and his death or dismemberment would definitely be a broad stroke, so he is alive and well at least. And his current lover is also there with him, so he isn¡¯t exactly lonely. But still, I worry about how he and Askos are getting by over there, with a potentially rebellious city under their probably loose control. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Speaking of my apprentices, I hung out with Junior today at her hospital. I wanted to do so earlier, but with the recent bombings she got really busy. She is one of the very few trained surgeons that we have so her work was in high demand from some very rich and powerful people.


    She is doing really well for herself. Most of the grunt work at her hospital is handled by some undead that she created, and I definitely see what Azrezel said about her work in that field being rough. The raw materials she has to work with are really good, but she obviously doesn¡¯t have a lot of talent in the field. Her tendency towards a single-minded focus allows her to make up for that somewhat, but it is far from perfect. But still, she has earned the recognition she receives as one of the best necromancers in our empire. Even if it isn¡¯t strictly true, her skill with healing more than makes up for that.


    I enjoyed hanging out with her, and I¡¯m glad that she is as light as she is because otherwise, I would have fallen a lot worse when she gave me a flying bear hug when I walked into her hospital. The figurative bear hug turned literal when an undead bear picked both of us up.


    We talked for a while. She complained quite a bit about how many people are constantly trying to gain her affections, to put it kindly. Everyone from wandering adventurers, to pretty much every single draconic in the city, and many of the not so single ones, to a good chunk of the foreign powers that she had to treat recently, and so many in between. I mean, yeah she is definitely pretty, and an incredibly skilled and successful healer, but this goes way beyond that. It is quite possible that she was exaggerating a bit, but with the ability to easily share memories it is obvious that it isn¡¯t by a whole lot. I mean, I¡¯ve only ever had two people try to proposition me, and one of them got sent to their death by my father and the other one was my girlfriend for quite a while. I mean there is also Azrezel, but we were already dating before he asked me out, so I wouldn¡¯t really count that.


    It¡¯s weird, honestly. I mean, I¡¯m certainly not a stranger to stories of someone seducing a lot of people, but the reverse is more than a little weird to me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 77

    Today I managed to finish connecting everyone. I pushed a little further than I maybe should have and managed to get it done by noon, but I felt so tired at the end of it.


    Of course, our enemy had to attack five minutes later. It was a concentrated attack on my forest itself, from a range that prevents me from really retaliating on my own, and in such a way that no one other than a skilled teleporter could bridge the gap fast enough to avoid some serious wounds. There were a lot of crossbows, with every single bolt being enchanted. Some with a simple plant destroying enchantment and others with various offensive enchantments designed to kill my people as they attempted to counter-attack. Plus they also had some enchantments designed to funnel teleporters to particular locations where they can be easily killed. We simply do not have the manpower to overcome this, at least not on this kind of scale. I didn''t think the enemy had this many people at their disposal, or enough money to buy this many mercenaries.


    My Ents were useless in the fight, which significantly cut down the population that could actually combat this threat. There were a couple adventurers that were willing to assist, but few of those were capable of doing anything. I made sure to rewards the ones that could handsomely.


    That really only left my Paladins, with their heavy armor and perfect coordination they are capable of making it through the hail of bolts. And even ignoring that, their abilities with plant manipulation allow them to use portweed well enough to overcome the enchantments the enemy has placed. Unfortunately the attack was spread out over the entire border we share, I simply do not have enough Paladins to cover all of that area. And to make matters worse, the vast majority of them have never seen real combat before, which isn''t too big of a deal with their hivemind, but it does matter.


    I wasn''t really able to go on the offensive, not without revealing my trump card anyway, so I spent most of my effort defending. Preventing my trees from being destroyed and healing the wounded that other healers could not. The bulk of my mana went towards enchantment killers, and it worked, but it didn''t work well enough. It takes exponentially more mana the more work those simple enchantments have to do, so I was only able to break the bolts so quickly. I even had other plant manipulators doing similar things, but even with that it wasn''t enough and my forest was still being pushed back. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    I lost two months of growth today before the enemy decided to run, two months. And they only ran because Par was closing in on them. They still had plenty of enchanted bolts, and my Paladins could only slaughter them so quickly. This time the rage is my own. I wish I could ride out there and grind them under my boot myself, but I can''t. I can''t leave my forest and beyond that, I need to recover. I need to grow as fast as I can so that I can claim their land and their cities for my own. And so that I can turn their people into my own.


    Great, now I''m getting word that they are attempting to purge my people from their cities. All of their cities. At the same time. They should not have these kind of resources. They shouldn''t have the manpower alone to conduct either of these operations, and I highly doubt that there are that many mercenaries willing to work for cheap enough to make up the difference. And even if there were, we don''t have enough wealth to buy that many mercenaries, I highly doubt that they do. They might be able to pull it off with undead, but they are very obviously not heavily using necromancy. They do have necromancers but nowhere near enough of them.


    They have to be backed by someone or something, or otherwise have a near-endless source of wealth. It can''t be the scholars, they are very clear about what they tolerate and the enemy has crossed a number of those lines while we have been nothing but helpful towards their order. Could it be another foreign empire? Maybe one that has been around a bit longer than either of us. Possibly, but why would any of them care? I''m under the impression that it is really hard for a government to affect things outside of their own continent. Plus the few foreign powers we have interacted with have at least a small reason to like us and no reason to dislike us. It could be an individual, but outside of people that are running their own governments and organizations very few of them have the resources to fund a war effort like this.


    Could it be some higher power? Like someone similar to the creature that allowed me to gain access to Fate? No, I don''t think so. If it was they would be able to just simply kill four individuals and completely collapse our empire. They might even get away with only two, but I think Tiddol and Azrezel might be able to stabilize things if Par and I died. Regardless, none of us would be able to resist if something like that decided it wanted us dead.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 78

    I was still locating and destroying the plant killer enchantments the enemy fired into my forest until late this morning. And even once I was done with that there were still numerous people that needed healing, even ignoring the ones that other people are able to treat. I didn''t get a break until shortly before dinner, only to get even more bad news. The city that Par recently captured has been purged. Not a single person left in the city survived the purge, everyone just suddenly started turning inside out and dying. That wasn''t figurative, people were literally turning inside out. Based on some of the reports I got from my people inside the city before everyone died, it was some kind of incredibly virulent curse or disease that spread rapidly through the city only to burn itself out once everyone died. Or at least I hope it burnt itself out. It''s entirely possible that it is still there, but I doubt it.


    Good news is that the scholars are investigating that event. If they determine that it was caused by an artificial curse then we can expect a lot more assistance going forward.


    This is the first time that the enemy has made an attack on us that was not an attempted killing blow. And it is also the first time that they have taken land from us, though they did not claim it for themselves. It will take me at least a month to recover from the damage they dealt today, possibly even two months. It''s obvious enough that this was in response to them losing control of one of the ritual sites that was projecting a barrier. They really want to keep me out of the fight, they know as well as we do that their cities cannot stand up to the might of my forest. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    And purging the city is as much a threat to their own cities as it is an attempt to weaken us, it says ''do not let them in or we will slaughter you to the last''. If this war keeps killing so many people then I''m not sure there will be any people to rule once it''s all over. And yet our people would never accept a peace deal at this point, they are too spiteful. I would probably survive the event, but Par would probably be overthrown if he were to suggest peace now. And the enemy has not even tried to open up communication with us either.


    And the worst part is that I don''t want peace either, I want victory and I want revenge for the dead. I know these feelings aren''t entirely my own, but part of them is, and I''ve been living with them for so long that they might as well be mine. And then there is Willow, thinking about her brings about anger and confusion. And all I can think is why? Why did she betray us? Why did she join our enemies? Why did she never come home? Why did I let myself grow distant from her?


    Anyway, I just feel so tired, so Good Night Diary.

 Day 79

    Today I could finally start on the next project that I have been wanting to do; making books. Specifically, I am starting with a book about plant manipulation, as it is what I know best. The book itself is made out of an amalgamation of all of the plants that I have available to me, I was trying to make it so it made plant manipulation easier, but that was a bit harder than I had expected it to be. I did succeed at it, but nowhere near enough, so instead I will add a couple guided exercises that helps the user figure things out on their own. Basically using Spellwood to force the user to cast a particular spell, and then doing it with progressively less help until they are able to do it on their own. That plus a lot of the other information I''m going to include in the book should allow pretty much anyone to learn how to manipulate plants.


    It shouldn''t take too long to complete, plant manipulation isn''t exactly a complex field. Plant design absolutely is, but that is because you need to take advantage of two entirely separate fields of magic in an incredibly in-depth way. And it isn''t exactly something I''ve ever had a need for, anytime I could have made something I already had the thing I needed, and anytime I needed something I didn''t have the skills to make it.


    I give it another day before I''m done with this one, though others will likely take longer.


    Other than that the day was pretty quiet. Par was busy talking to the scholars about recent events, Tiddol was with him. Azrezel was busy with a major project and asked not to be disturbed, apparently, he got ahold of something really nice and wanted to use it to its fullest. And no one else that I wanted to hang out with was available, so I kind of just laid down for a little while, not doing a whole lot. I was tempted to turn off Ergen and let myself fall asleep for a little while.


    It''s weird to think about how far we''ve come in such a short period of time. It took a little more than three hundred years for civilization to get to where it was before us, and in a little more than two we built all of this. I''ve been told that we are weird in the larger picture, very few empires have been formed in such a short time, and none of them by goblins or other similar creatures. Most are formed similar to the way the angelic council was formed, some powerful creatures get together and decide that they want an empire, so they make one. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    And then there is my hivemind, which is also strange. Hiveminds aren''t rare exactly, they are uncommon but the average adventurer is likely to encounter at least one in their life, assuming they live long enough. What is weird is the size, most hiveminds aren''t more than a dozen people, while those that are much larger than that tend to go crazy somehow, too many voices according to the scholars. And yet mine is constantly expanding but it is still stable, likely due to me serving as a focal point and filtering out things like thought, every individual has to go out of their way to hear the collective.


    And there are so many other minor things. But really a lot of it can be explained away with Fate, it guided me to new discoveries and towards better ways to do things, and one thing led to another and now my advantage is big enough that I can do more than pretty much anyone else in the world. Between having the resources of an empire and the minds of a hivemind at my disposal there isn''t much that I personally cannot do, or perhaps I just need to expand my horizons more. Who knows? Well, hopefully, I will in the future.


    Well, actually I was doing some pretty great stuff even before I got ahold of Fate. I would argue that Fate was a tipping point for me, but even still I was making waves long before that. Though that is much less weird as I am the official daughter of the legendary adventurer Eric Kron, and as such I would either make waves in my life or I would die young. There has never been a recorded exception this rule, all of the official children of legendary adventurers have made some kind of splash in their lives, or they died young. At least that is what my dad has told me, and the scholars backed him up on that, so I believe it. He never admitted it to anyone, but I''m pretty sure that is part of why he settled down with my mother in the first place, so he would be better able to protect his children from whatever threats would find them. Easier to protect someone when they can''t run away and become an adventurer.


    I hope he''s doing well. I know he''s gone through worse but it can''t be easy being stranded in the middle of hostile territory.


    Anyway Good Night Diary.

 Day 80

    The book is done, and it is beautiful. The cover is an earthy rainbow of colors, made up naturally by all of my plants. The book itself is filled with instructions for every single exercise I know, as well as guides to help people perform them. Between each exercise is information relevant to the next one, and each one builds on the previous one. Hopefully going through this as instructed will allow anyone to become a skilled plant manipulator, though that still needs to be tested. In the back of the book is an exercise that allows you to duplicate the book because I figure that would help spread it farther.


    Naturally, the first thing I did when I finished the book was to teach my people how to replicate it, a task that is much simpler than designing it from scratch. I want them to spread it far and wide, I want as many people as possible to master the contents of this book. The more plant manipulators there are the more likely one of them will be able to create something new that I can use or teach me something I didn''t know before, and really that''s all I care about.


    Which one should I make next? Healing, probably. That one will probably include flesh manipulation as well, so I will probably end up making that one out of bone and other similar material. Maybe interwoven with Whitefoot? Yeah, I will probably do that.


    It''s either that, soul magic, or solar energy, and of those I understand healing the best, soul magic is second, while my understanding of solar energy is lackluster at best. Or at least it''s lackluster compared to my other fields of study. Maybe I could get Emericus to help out with that one, though people tend to be a bit cagey around sharing their life''s work with strangers so it might not be easy to convince him to help me with that one.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Speaking of, I might be able to do something similar with Tiddol and clockwork and alchemy, though it would be a bit harder as I understand those two things even less than I understand Solar Energy.


    Oh yeah, the effects of constantly improving my body with Solar Energy are starting to get pretty dramatic. There isn''t really anyone thing I can put my finger on that has changed, it''s just that everything about my body is better in pretty much every way. Physically anyway, the only magical abilities it has impacted is my use of solar energy. I could probably beat our best regular soldier in a physical fight now, with swords drawn or fists flying or something and without magic. I still would have to use magic against one of our elites.


    Other than that there hasn''t been much news. You would think that there would be a lot to talk about with an entire city being culled overnight, but no, not much has happened with that yet. The scholars are still investigating. And with how much of my forest has been destroyed there isn''t much I can do to affect that at the moment, recovery is fast but there is a lot to recover. The completely removed several cities from my forest, though they made no attacks on them during their systematic slaughter of my trees.


    I ended up spending my downtime going on a date with Azrezel. He succeeded with his previous endeavor, creating a rather impressive undead in the process of raising it and I wanted to give him a treat to celebrate. So I took him out to get his favorite meal, the deep-fried wings of a specific type of beast native around his home town. Expensize here, but I can afford it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 81

    I started work on the next book today. I decided to work on healing and flesh manipulation this time, as I talked about yesterday. I spent a good chunk of my morning just trying to figure out how to get the material just right, making something useable out of bone and Whitefoot was easy,  but making something perfect was much harder. Ultimately the material I used for the pages turned out to be very flexible up to a certain point, it doesn''t allow creases easily. It''s effectively a really durable thick piece of paper, except it is made out of bone instead of plant fibers.


    I wonder if this stuff would make good armor. I know some effective types of armor are basically just a bunch of layers of cloth layered on top of each other, and this has many similar qualities while also being much more durable. Might be something worth mentioning.


    During my downtime today I showed off my newest book to the scholars. They were very enthusiastic about it, almost immediately requesting copies so that they could send them in to be added to their archives, hopefully, to be used in teaching.  And if they don''t decide to use it I have also asked my Ents to distribute it during their adventures, so regardless the art of plant manipulation will be spread far and wide.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    It''s odd to think about but before I came along there were very few plant manipulators. Most of us were forest sprites, standard evolutions of forest sprites, or something similar. Now I am the face of an empire where half of the population are competent plant manipulators, while most of the rest are at least capable of growing a bit of fruit for dinner. And now I am trying to spread that over the rest of the world, and not just with plant manipulation either. While healing is one of the most common disciplines people learn, I can''t imagine many people are skilled at flesh manipulation. It just feels weird that I am now in a position where I am capable of attempting to make change on a global scale and can expect something to come of it.  That''s huge.


    And the best part is that I''m not done yet, there is still so much more I want to learn, so much more I want to create. I don''t think that I will be satisfied until there is nothing left to learn.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 82

    While fun, there isn''t a whole lot to talk about with my current project as this book differs very little from the previous one. Yeah, the subject is different, but there isn''t anything to talk about there that I have not already talked about before. It''s all the same or similar exercises to teach otherwise incapable people how to heal, information is laid out in the same way, though there is a lot more space for charts and the like. There isn''t much to talk about the process, but I''m hoping that the results will be fascinating. I''m already eagerly awaiting the day that I get to pick the minds of people who learned from my books for stuff that I didn''t know.


    It might take years for that to happen, but hopefully, it will happen eventually.


    I wonder why books like this don''t already exist. I have read many of the textbooks that the scholars have, some of them were described as being some of the best textbooks in the world, but they were all rather lackluster. Like the information is often incomplete or difficult to understand, much less actually make use of. And all of them require some pre-existing skill as well as outside experimentation for you to even start to figure out what is being described.  I would be surprised if I was the first one to come up with the concept, but maybe people have simply failed to execute it before? I am in a rather unique position, one that does allow me to create things like this, so maybe that is why.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    Regardless, I should be done with this book within the next three days. There is a lot of information to write down, and I need to turn it all into something easily understandable too, which makes things harder.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol. She ended up talking a lot about her daughter, mostly bragging about her accomplishments while we ate lunch at a nice restaurant. It seems that the girl has gotten good enough at creating mana that she has functionally infinite mana, as long as she doesn''t need to do anything intensive or need something that will last longer than a minute. We also gossiped about our love lives, which is always fun, and just generally bantered with each other for about an hour.  It''s always fun to hang out with her like this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 83

    I should be done with this book within the next three days, and from there I will move onto the next one. That one will probably be about soul magic, though my lack of practical skill with the subject might make it a bit more difficult to create. It might end up being little more than an encyclopedia that lets you see souls to be perfectly honest. That isn''t inherently a bad thing, I just hope I can do better.


    The scholars figured out what the cause of everyone in the city dying was, and it wasn''t a curse, unfortunately. It was a type of poison that spreads through the air. Apparently, the structure of the city was ideal for using this type of poison, though why I''m not entirely sure. Apparently, it is really heavy and the design of the walls lets it stick around. I mean it kind of makes sense, but the idea of poisonous air being heavy is weird, all of the alchemical fumes I''ve seen float upwards and I can''t imagine poisonous air that isn''t alchemical in nature. Maybe something biological? Possible, but most of those just stink and aren''t particularly toxic. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Regardless, this isn''t the kind of thing that the scholars are willing to step in about. They do frown on it, and people that make a habit of slaughtering cities eventually end up angering them one way or another, but for now they won''t do anything. Which really sucks, but there is very little I can do about it so I won''t dwell.


    Other than that I spent my downtime healing people today. It wasn''t really necessary, there was a minor spike in injuries due to some accident that happened but we had more than enough healers to take care of everyone. I just felt like it today, no other reason. It was fun to unwind with something like this, yeah people''s lives were in danger, and they were screaming in pain, but there was never any real risk for any of them. I can and have healed significantly worse injuries half-dead, barely conscious, and almost out of mana, so this was like a gentle breeze for me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 84

    Today was more of the same. I spent most of my time trying to put my knowledge down on paper in a way that makes it easy to learn. I made progress about as quickly as I expected and nothing came up that I wasn''t already prepared to deal with. It''s simple and straight forward, which is exactly what I expected it to be. That doesn''t mean it''s not fun, it is, it just isn''t a challenge.


    There was some good news today, the root system of the trees destroyed in the recent attack has turned out to be salvageable. I really should have checked sooner, instead of assuming the enchantment would kill the entire plant. This will days worth of time in the rebuilding of my forest, weeks if I can successfully get my trees to keep the roots alive long enough for me to reach them. If I manage to fully reclaim the roots then I might be able to reduce the amount of time it will take for me to recover to a handful of days, I doubt that will happen though. I''m not entirely sure why, but my dungeon was pushed back when the trees were destroyed and dungeons, or at least my dungeon, seem to be restricted in the ways they can grow. Suddenly acquiring a rather large chunk of land all at once isn''t something dungeons do, with the possible exception of stealing it from other dungeons. It still might work, but I doubt it. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Other than that I took a walk through the forest today during my downtime. I enjoyed seeing my creations quite literally blossom before me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 85

    The book on healing is almost done, I give it a couple hours until it is complete. I''m really quite proud of my work here, it probably won''t have as big of an impact as my plant manipulation book, and definitely not as big of an impact as the soul manipulation one I am going to write next, but with any luck it will help a lot of people learn how to heal. I just hope that some of those people return the favor.


    Speaking of my plant manipulation book, the scholars have started distributing it to their various libraries and schools. They were also talking about actually trying to use it as a teaching aid, plant manipulation isn''t exactly popular so there aren''t very many textbooks on it. The few that do exist were mostly written by people who weren''t exactly the most skilled in the subject, as most skilled plant manipulators are from the forest sprite line and as such don''t really care about much beyond their forest. Which is weird, I thought forest sprites and like tended to cooperate and interact with the scholars. But I''m told that very few of us ever actually join up with the scholars in any official capacity, other types of sprites sure, but not forest sprites. You would think that a forest sprite would be in an ideal position to do much of the work that the scholars do, but I guess not. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    The city my dad has been residing has been more or less entirely integrated into my hivemind now. What this means is that it is a lot easier to get news about the general state of affairs over there. From what I gather they are pretty much under constant assault.  They were under an actual siege for a while, but fortunately for us, things like running out of food were trivially solved while the city has a rather impressive sewer system running underneath it keeping waste from being an issue, at least on this timescale. I''m not able to get anything detailed, but it seems like they are holding up really well under the assault, but are running out of something slowly. I''m not sure what though, seemed like some kind of weapon from the impression I was getting.


    It took a long time to get that information from my hivemind, there were so many voices from so far away, with very few connections between here and there, that nothing but the big picture was getting through. So it ended up taking my downtime to get everything I could. It was worth it though, I got to find out that my dad is probably alive and well, which is plus.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 86

    There was a bit of a problem today. And by a bit, I mean roughly the size of a small mountain, and angry, and bloodthirsty, and incredibly clever.  It was made even worse because I was trying to capture it without killing it or letting it kill my people.


    Luckily the dungeon that it escaped from warned me about it before it left the dungeon. Apparently, it was an experiment that one of the dungeons in my territory was working on that worked a little too well. It suddenly entered a berserk rage and started smashing everything in sight before somehow escaping into my forest, where its reckless violence continued.


    The dungeon also practically begged me to return it to them alive, offering something quite compelling; a new magical plant of their own make. They guaranteed that it was something that I don''t have and can''t easily make. I hope that they''re right, as this beast is still tearing up my forest.


    The damage it is doing is minimal at best, it looks a lot more impressive than it actually is. The damage, I mean, not the beast. The beast is even more impressive than it looks. It was able to rip through my hardest mithrilwood with only a little bit of struggle, it learned faster than I could react, and it killed three of my paladins before I pulled them out. They would absolutely be able to kill it, but they were struggling to do anything less than lethal to it. Even the most potent version of Knockout Juice that they had was shrugged off easily, apparently, it is resistant to poisons. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Really it was nothing more than an almost perfected killing machine, with some obvious flaws but few that I was able to exploit. A bit of lightning would have crippled it, but we don''t really have any skilled storm mages. Luckily I was able to lead it away from population centers, and many of the trees it maimed survived the process, but people still died and trees were still killed off. And it is still going, and I have no way to restrain it. It seems to be tiring, but slowly. I have to keep it engaged and fighting constantly otherwise it will rush off towards a population center to fight something, and I can''t put my attention elsewhere because otherwise, it gets bored of easily fending off my attacks and goes searching for something else to fight. I hope this new plant is worth it.


    Also, it regenerates faster than I can hurt it, because of course it can. Why wouldn''t it be capable of regeneration?


    And I wasn''t able to get any actual work done, nor was I able to take a break at all. At this point, it is going to be an endurance slugging match between me and this beast, which one of us will collapse first? Maybe I can get the dungeon that made the thing to help me out here.


    It''s more annoying than harmful, but it is very annoying.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 87

    It took all of two days, but that beast has finally collapsed from exhaustion, and I feel like doing the same. I would be really impressed by the craftsmanship if I weren''t the cause of a major headache. This new plant had better be worth it.


    The beast was only getting smarter as we fought, and at one point even stopped attacking my trees. I think it noticed the fact that I had rather blatantly avoided a killing blow. It doesn''t know language, as demonstrated by my repeated attempts to communicate with it, but I have no doubt that it is sentient.


    In order to actually knock it out I had to corral it into a mana dead zone that I had to set up, and let me tell you it is really difficult to set up a functioning dead zone in open air. I was somehow able to brute force it with way too much pipeweed, but even then it was constantly on the verge of failure. And that still wasn''t enough to actually end the fight, the beast still kept fighting for over three hours after that, their regeneration working even without mana. Because of course it uses Solar Energy in it''s design. Why wouldn''t it? You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    It wasn''t really that big of a threat, if we were trying to kill it then everything would be over in less than a second. Even a couple dozen of them wouldn''t be that big of a deal. But I was the only one able to properly deal with it without also suffering casualties as Par was absent and Azrezel''s undead were either too valuable or too weak to spend here. I''m sure we could have thrown some adventurers at it until it stopped moving, that is one of the primary purposes of adventurers after all, but I highly doubt that we would have been able to get it alive with that strategy. And also it is always a possibility that they light the city on fire and run off into the night. This is why most cities are made out of stone or other fire-resistant materials nowadays, at least according to my dad.


    Regardless, the beast is in the process of being delivered to its owner. A contract has already been signed so I''m not too worried about getting the plant, getting that beast to dissect and study would be enlightening if not as useful as new plant.


    I don''t really need to oversee anything else, so I''m going to actually sleep for the first time in a little while.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 88

    I finally got a chance to finish the healing book today, it was maybe an hour''s worth of work to put the finishing touches on it, but after that it was complete. Naturally, I immediately started distributing it through every channel I have available.


    And now I am working on figuring out how to structure a book on soul magic, I''m still not sure where I want to take that particular project yet. Ideally, I want it to be something similar to the previous two books, but I''m still working to see if I am capable of that yet. Regardless, even if I am it might take so long for even one exercise that it might not be feasible. Plus I have to keep in mind the soul energy that would have to go into each exercise, if they relly on large, simple designs then most people will be incapable of replicating the book without years of training. Not everyone can have a convenient shortcut to having a powerful soul like me. Though actually, it might be smart to distribute these books through the dungeons. I should look into that.


    Other than that I spent my downtime playing with the new plant I got the other day. It was called a Skeletal Rose, which fits. The bulk of the plant is mundane, but it does produce a rose that has a magical effect on its surroundings. Namely it causes biological material to break down and rot very quickly, which has a tendency to leave skeletons surrounding it. It''s fascinating and possibly useful and I have no idea how it works. I have no idea how to improve this plant beyond the few things that many plants share, I have no idea where to take this plant or what to aim for because I have no idea what it does. Yeah, it rots away flesh, but how does it do that. It''s not through anything related to healing or necromancy or any other field I have access too. If I try to tweak it a little bit then it either does nothing or the plant fails altogether, so whatever it is it has to be incredibly sensitive.


    And it is definitely not simple, easily one of the top three most complicated plants I''ve worked with, up there with the plant that gave me Fate. Which means that either the person who made it is really bad at whatever this thing does but is really good at making plants, which is possible but not plausible, or it''s because the mechanism is fundamentally very complicated.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Even the dungeon I picked this up from has no idea what it does, apparently, they just bought something really expensive a while back hoping it would be useful, and then it wasn''t.


    As for what I know about it so far is that it always works, as long as it has mana anyway. Plant matter, undead, even ash that used to be biological material is affected. Even using Solar Energy on it fails to inhibit the effect. So whatever it does doesn''t directly impact the material, but rather causes something about its surroundings to change. It also causes the soil around it to become much richer very rapidly, and then due to a lack of ground cover caused by all of the nearby plants dying that good soil is quickly spread around by the wind, which does explain the goal of its creator quite well.


    The problem is that I have no idea what would cause this. There doesn''t seem to be any magical effects surrounding the plant either, nothing I can observe anyway. The only thing I know of that causes biological material to rot away is sitting out unattended for a while.


    Wait a second, that''s it. The thing that this plant manipulates is time. Or at least that is my latest theory. Nothing else makes sense to me, or at least nothing that I have thought of. Nuclear waste causes a lot of other issues that simply isn''t present here, plus the whole process looks very different from what happens with that. And beyond healing and necromancy, I don''t know of anything else that might cause it. Everything lines up with time, however. The decay lines up almost perfectly with what would happen if it was just left out, though any differences are easily explained by some of the effects speeding up time would have. Like the bones are never sunbleached because relatively little light reaches them, and it tends to dry out very quickly despite being on really moist ground, the water simply does not have enough time to move from the soil to the meat while it rots.


    I hope this is how it works because getting ahold of a time manipulating plant is ridiculously expensive, like all of the money in the terminal that I have ever had expensive. Time manipulation is hard, and every good older dungeon is good at it despite having no natural talent for it. I''m definitely not a normal dungeon, but having access to time manipulation is so useful that any normal dungeon picks it up as part of their natural development.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 89

    So, trying to get the soul book onto the same level as the other books just isn''t feasible for me. Well, that isn''t strictly true, it isn''t feasible to do it in a way that allows other people to replicate it. Give me a couple of years and I could maybe pull it off, but I don''t want to wait that long. So it is going to turn into an encyclopedia that helps you see and interact with the soul. Naturally, I''m going to do what I can to make the information easily digestible, but without the ability to create different types of exercises the same way I did with the other books I don''t think that it will be as effective.


    On the other hand, those exercises take a lot of time to design and perfect. So cutting them out will speed up the process significantly. I should be finished writing this book within the next five days, and that is a generous estimate. It is possible that I will be done within three days, but I doubt it. There is a lot of information to cover.


    Other than that I spent my downtime experimenting with my new plant. It is an interesting one, I seem to be correct in my assumption that it manipulates time, but it is more restricted than that. Similar to blastbark it seems like something that was stripped down to serve a very specific purpose and to do nothing else, which is both surprising and disappointing. With how complicated it is I would have assumed that it was already capable of directly manipulating time, but I guess not. This doesn''t mean that I won''t be able to get it to the point where I can use it for that purpose, it''s just that I''m going to need to put quite a bit of effort into it, and maybe a bit of supernatural luck, in order to get it where I want it.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    In the meantime though, integrating a perfected version of the plant into my body has opened up some rather destructive possibilities. When combined with my healing it will make for an incredibly effective weapon against anything made up of biological material, which is most things that are a threat to me. Even better because I can control just how much it ages and rots someone, and I can reverse the damage with some healing. It isn''t just a potent weapon, it is a potent nonlethal weapon, one that I won''t feel guilty about using against people who don''t otherwise deserve to die.


    It is inevitable that I will get into a situation that warrants its use, I''m just glad that I have something like this now.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 90

    While I did make rapid progress in recording all of my, mostly second hand, knowledge about the soul in my latest book, there isn''t much to say about that beyond what I have already said.


    For the last couple days, I have mostly cut myself off from news, though not intentionally. So I spent my downtime getting caught up on what has happened in those days.


    Par and his army have engaged another band of mercenaries in an open field, this one being assisted by Willow. The gear and training of these guys were slightly better than the last group, and there are more of them, so they couldn''t have been cheap. We really need to figure out where the enemy is getting the kind of resources required to hire this many mercenaries, we would struggle to hire this many without cutting corners somewhere. Any and all interrogation on the subject has been useless, as the only thing we manage to learn is that they are being paid in full reliably. Our enemy has consistently paid their mercenaries what seems to be at slightly better than market value so far, and there are no signs of their seemingly endless wealth of resources drying up.


    This is a new thing too, if they had this kind of resources from the beginning then we wouldn''t have stood a chance. Though it is possible that they have simply gotten better at exploiting whatever the source of their wealth is. It would explain all of the assassins, it isn''t cheap to train people to kill emperors and the like. Though the existence of adventures makes that much cheaper.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Azrezel figured out a way to maximize the throwing distance of a zombie without increasing muscular strength. Or rather he experimented until he found the ideal design, tweaking every minor detail until everything was just right. Why? Because he felt like it. I can see it being potentially useful stuff to know, I made sure to memorize the design so that I could take advantage of it myself, but I personally never would have thought to figure that one out. I''m sure there are better designs, but I doubt that you could improve on this one much while still keeping to the same general structure of a limb.


    Tiddol figured out how to create that poisonous air that destroyed the recently captured city. She claims that there is no magic required to create it, though magic can be used to speed the process up. The gas is entirely mundane and has something to do with fire, some byproduct of specific fires I think, I''m not entirely sure. It is basically what was described earlier. But we did learn that it is easily destroyed by plants, which explains why it hasn''t been used on anything covered by my forest. It is definitely a relief to have that confirmed, it''s one less thing I have to worry about.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 91

    I should be done with the book by tomorrow. I''m a little underwhelmed by the results, but it is the best I am capable of given the circumstances. Still, it doesn''t change the fact that this will hopefully change things. Most people are unaware of the soul, with any luck this will fix that.


    I know I have said it several times before, but I really want to see what others create with this knowledge.


    We have some good news from the front lines today, Par managed to capture one of Willow''s companions today, alive this time. Apparently, one had been captured previously but he committed suicide before they could get anything useful out of him.


    The guy has been quiet and very resistant to any form of interrogation they are capable of performing on the front, so they are in the process of trying to teleport him back to us. They are kind of pinned down by the mercenaries they are fighting, and although they are winning it is a slow process. They can''t really keep such a valuable prisoner guarded effectively with Willow and the rest of her party hovering around and trying to free him. So they have to teleport him back home using some large teleportation circle their plant manipulators are making out of Portweed.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    From there I should be able to get some useful information, hopefully even the source of their vast wealth and why Willow decided to join with the enemy.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Azrezel. We went to see a play again, this one turned out to be a horror story about a bunch of necromancers using zombies to take over the world, which was hilarious because of how inaccurately they portrayed necromancy. I mean, sure, you could turn people into undead using the bite of another undead, but the undead would still be the same person they were before, and as long as the brain isn''t damaged then they would even have all of the same memories and personality, as there is no chance of the soul being damaged as it does not move. And you certainly wouldn''t be able to control them, trying to design it in a way that would allow you to control all of them would be stupid for anyone but a dungeon, as the sheer amount of soul energy required would cause your soul to be destroyed very rapidly.


    Plus a number of other ridiculous ideas about necromancy.


    Regardless, it was pretty fun to jeer at the play with Azrezel. Plus getting my own private viewing room and room service was nice.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 92

    I got the book done about an hour ago, I already have people producing copies of it. The scholars made quite a stir over it, apparently, they don''t really have a reliable way to interact with the soul yet. The dungeons haven''t exactly been helping them in that field. This gives me hope that something will come of it.


    It is entirely possible that the scholars will try to censor it in the same way that they have censored nuclear fire, it is potentially dangerous enough to warrant it. But I intend to have these books spread far and wide before they could possibly decide on that. To that end, I have sent out many of my children and even hired several adventurers to go out into the world and distribute these books. If you pay an adventurer to deliver something it will get where you want it too, eventually. It might take decades or centuries, and everyone involved in the beginning might end up dead, but some other adventurers will pick up the package and deliver it. Or at least that''s something my dad would tell me. So if I ask them to deliver copies of this book everywhere then it will end up everywhere sooner or later.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Next, I should get Tiddol to help me create a book on alchemy, with the help of Lace it should be possible. I''ll ask her about it tomorrow.


    During my downtime, I disguised myself as one of my children, which was made easy with my ability to change my entire appearance at will, and attended one of Preacher''s sermons. I wanted to see what they were like, and I was not disappointed. It''s not often that you see people get worked up into such a fervor so quickly, especially not large crowds of people. Preacher is really good at it, which goes without saying, and it had a very noticeable impact on the strength of my blessing. During the height of their fervor I wouldn''t have been surprised if I saw them move mountains by simply believing I would move the mountains for them, and even after it was over there was still a noticeable increase from before the sermon.


    I should try to find a way to take advantage of that. Maybe I can restore my forest faster with this? If it doesn''t work it might cause some issues, but if it does then I could use it to solve a lot of problems. I''ll have to think about this some more, in the meantime, I am going to work on my new plant while I wait for Tiddol to wake up.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 93

    Tiddol was a bit confused about the project I am working on when I asked for her help this morning, not so much the what, but the why. It took a bit of convincing, and though she eventually agreed I don''t think she really understood my reasoning. Which is fine, not great, but fine.


    So we got started on that, or rather we have been working out how to get everything working. It took quite a while to design a system to allow people to experiment with it, but we figured it out. We went for a system that creates a copy of all of the tools and ingredients you might need when you pour mana into a certain page, with instructions on how to do that at the beginning. Most of the glassware is made out of a kind of Shimmerleaf with all of the pours sealed up, which causes it to die and become useless after about a day, which is more than enough time for our purposes.


    There were a few kinks in the beginning, but once we got those worked out everything went smoothly. I''m definitely looking forward to seeing the results of this one.


    I did spend quite a bit of time working with Skeletal Rose last night while I waited for Tiddol, but I''m still working on refining it into a more useable form. A lot of it is still guess and check thanks to how complicated it is, and many of the parts I want to enhance simply don''t exist due to how specialized this plant is, but I am making progress.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Other than that I spent my downtime by going on a date with Azrezel. We ended up going to some event that a wandering circus set up. They had some master teleporter take advantage of some way that teleportation works to throw you high up into the air and then catch you. It was a little scary, I had never been that high up in the air before, but it was fun. Azrezel was a bit bored by it, but then again he can fly so he can do something like this whenever he wants. That and as an undead a lot of the sensory stuff, like feeling your stomach drop, just wasn''t there for him. He did enjoy the shows with exotic creatures, some of them I had never seen before. We made sure to bribe the right people to let us examine them after the show. Nothing was really new to me, I just had never seen any creatures put together that particular way before. The slime was interesting, as it is another example of a slime body mimicking the standard structure of a soul.


    I keep forgetting to request some slimes to experiment with. I''m going to go do that now before I forget, hopefully, the scholars can help me there.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 94

    Progress is slow, relatively speaking. It takes a lot more effort to transcribe the knowledge of someone else than it does to transcribe my own knowledge. And for the same reason, this transcription creates errors that Tiddol has to proofread for, and considering just how much information we''re putting on paper this takes a long time. And to make it worse Tiddol says that the whole process is disquieting like there is some kind of dissonance with her thoughts while I''m transcribing information. Which, strictly speaking, is absolutely true.


    I don''t want to make Tiddol uncomfortable, but she seems fine with continuing so I''m not going to stop yet.


    As a side effect of this project, I am learning quite a bit about alchemy. Nowhere near enough to consider myself competent in the subject, but enough to actually understand most of what Tiddol is saying, even if only vaguely. Unfortunately, I don''t see how any of the information I''ve learned through this so far would be useful to me, but I''m sure I''ll figure something out sooner or later. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Other than that I met up with Jasmine today, she was back in town with a load of nuclear waste for us to process. It was a lot of fun to go out around town with her. We ended up going to a dance party, a novelty for me, and getting more than a little tipsy. At one point we invited Azrezel to join us. After that things were a bit of a blur. Things got more than a little intimate and now I''m laying in bed next to both of them, and neither Azrezel nor I want to move for fear of waking Jasmine. This is going to be an awkward talk in the morning, but I mean it can''t be any worse than after the first time I slept with Azrezel.


    Good thing neither of us needs to move our bodies to keep working on our various projects.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 95

    So, I got seduced by an adventurer. Because that is exactly what  Jasmine is, an adventurer, just one that operates on a much larger scale than any I''ve met before. It''s weird to think about that,  especially because she is far from the first adventurer to try to get in bed with me.


    It certainly wasn''t a bad experience, in fact, it was rather fun. Everyone agreed on that. It''s just that I had always told myself that I would never let myself be seduced by an adventurer, Talus doesn''t count because she didn''t become an adventurer until after she left me. I thought I had heard enough stories to always know what I''m looking at, but I guess not. She didn''t really act like an adventurer while she was here, or at least she wasn''t obvious about it.


    And to top it all off the three of us agreed to hook up again in the future, and I think I''m looking forward to it. And that is just really weird to think about. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Other than having a minor existential crisis I spent most of my time today working on the alchemy book. We are starting to figure out how to do everything better, which means that I''m able to get everything down on paper faster and with fewer errors. Tiddol still needs to check over everything, but less time is spent on corrections. This means that we were able to make twice as much progress today as we were yesterday, and there is still quite a bit of room to improve.


    I''m not quite sure how long this one will take as I have no idea how much information there is to put on paper. So it could take weeks before this book is complete. Theoretically, it could be done by tomorrow, but I  doubt it.


    I did more than just work on this book with Tiddol today. We also went to lunch and hung out. We talked about a lot of stuff, a lot of it involving her daughter and our various projects. As always it was a pleasure to hang out with her.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 96

    According to Tiddol, we have about three more days before we are done  writing this current book. I''m not sure if that is with us at our  current rate,  or going slightly faster than our current rate, or something else.  Regardless, it is a good time frame to shoot for, even if we ultimately  miss.


    I received some interesting news  today. There is a dungeon incredibly close to the city my father is  currently holding. There is a lot we can do with this. The easiest and  most straight forward is getting a message out, and hopefully receiving  one in return. It would be a simple matter to pay the dungeon to do this  for me, pocket  change effectively. I could also bribe the dungeon to send in some  supplies for them, which would likely be quite a bit more expensive but I  am certain that I have the money for it.


    And  then there is something I had forgotten about until today, I could  start a fight with the dungeon. With their consent of course, and I  wouldn''t actually try to damage anything inside of them, but it would be  a way to move people and anything else we might need into that area. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    My  first thought was to try and take out their capital by sending in all  of our troops through a dungeon near their capital. But that isn''t  really an option as all of the dungeons in that area are constantly  patrolled by enemy soldiers, which makes sense as dungeons are great  training grounds. It isn''t exactly feasible for an army to fight their  way out of a dungeon when an enemy army really wants to stop that, even  if we had the cooperation of the dungeon. We would take massive  casualties in the attack, even taking into account my personal  assistance. It could work, but we would need to cripple their army  somehow first.


    I''m not sure how best to  take advantage of this, but I do know people who do. I''m sure Par can  turn this to our advantage, but I''m mostly concerned with making sure my  dad isn''t going to die in the near future. I''m going to try to get the  dungeon to send a message for me. I really should have considered this possibility sooner.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 97

    We got a message back from my dad today, the dungeon was willing to cooperate. According to the message they have taken quite a beating recently, but the walls are holding. They are more or less good on resources, but the enemy seems to be trying to deprive us of as many people as they can. They aren''t trying to starve us out they are trying to slaughter us to the last.


    It makes sense, people really is the only resource we have a finite amount of. I can only produce Ents so quickly, and as versetile, as undead are, they either aren''t as useful as a well-trained soldier or way too expensive to be produced in mass.  On the other hand, as long as we have people it is easy to turn them into what we need, we can easily create soldiers or craftsmen or anything else. And we have no shortages of food or metal or healing or anything else you might need to power an army. Just a shortage of people.


    And the problem is I have no idea how to fix that. Yeah, healing helps a lot, but you can''t fix death. At least not without the soul. I could try to replicate whatever it is that happened to Tiddol, but I''m not willing to experiment with that on myself and it''s a line I''m not willing to cross with other people.


    Although, for some reason the souls of my Paladins tend to stick around even after death. I''ve had a number of them die, but their souls are still there, and their knowledge is still useable. I could theoretically bring them back to life at a negligible cost to myself. I''ve done it with Ents that have died in my forest, but that was relying on a mechanism that is part of my dungeon core. It doesn''t take any effort for that on my part, but I can''t rely on that to revive my Paladins.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    I know how to do it, it isn''t exactly complicated. It is very similar to seeding a soul, only instead of splitting a piece of your own soul off you just plant a new soul entirely into the body. I am almost certain that I can do it, but I''m not certain that I can do it in the first shot. And messing up here would mutilate the soul I''m working with. So I need to practice somehow.


    This means I need to try and create an artificial soul, which will take a lot of practice but doesn''t matter nearly as much if I fail. Of course, I still have a couple books I want to finish, and I would really rather avoid abandoning a task right in the middle again. This isn''t an urgent issue, it would currently only get us another hundred or so people. A hundred or so incredibly skilled people, mind you, but still only a hundred. And I don''t exactly have the resources to dramatically expand my Paladins. The connections between them are incredibly strong, which means that I need to spend progressively more soul energy to add each new Paladin.


    I could also try improving the design of the Ents, but that won''t increase the rate at which I am able to make more of them. I could teach my ents how to artificially create more of themselves, but none of them have the soul energy required to actually seed a soul. Undead, sure, but not anything else.


    In the end, I think that I am going to leave this issue to others to solve. I''ll do what I can to alleviate it but I can''t do more than that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 98

    The alchemy book was completed today, and with it another book is being mass-produced and spread as far and wide as possible. Personally, I''m glad that the scholars pretty much demanded that every man woman and child in every civilization learn how to read, illiteracy would hurt the effects of this endeavor.


    Once I am done writing for the day I am going to ask Azrezel to help me write a book on necromancy. I imagine that this one will be a bit more mana intensive for the reader as creating bodies with mana is rather expensive, though it does leave open the option of sourcing their own corpses. Necromancy is actually incredibly cheap when it comes to mana, assuming you already have a corpse.


    There is some news from the invisible island. There is an event halfway between a purge and a civil war in one of the major countries on the island currently going on. And it is indirectly our fault. From my understanding there were two social groups in the area, I''m not familiar with the specifics but they didn''t like each other all that much. It was a kind of rivalry. One of those groups was open to trading with us, while the other shunned outsiders. So naturally, the people that I put in charge of converting them decided to do what they could to improve the social standing of the group that was willing to trade with us, a relatively easy task with the kind of resources we have access too. This resulted in them becoming wealthy and powerful very quickly, and also led to many of them learning our language, culture, and religion, which really irritated the other group. And now they are trying to slaughter each other. Which is good for us, with our support the group that favors us is going to win eventually, we have more resources than they could squeeze out of their entire island, and that is just with what we are able and willing to put towards this conflict.


    Huh, now that I think about it could our own enemies be doing something similar? The Angelic council has seemingly infinite funds with which to buy mercenaries and other stuff, but there is no obvious source to their funds. Taxes couldn''t possibly be enough for all of that, and neither could their dungeon divers. They don''t engage in a lot of trade and we would know if they had some incredibly valuable goods that they could export in bulk. But a very wealthy patron would go a long way to explaining their resources.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    It can''t be a true immortal, or at least it can''t be just one. It has to be something larger, like a well established foreign empire. But from my understanding there aren''t a lot of those, and the few that do exist would have little reason to care about us over here, and even if they did they would probably do a lot more than just provide funding to our enemy. It could be some kind of merchant organization, but I''m not familiar with any of those. And besides, we have a lot more valuable stuff that we can produce cheaply than our enemy, and we are very willing to trade. Why would merchants support them over us?


    I think that it is plausible that some grand creature, similar to the one that granted me control over Fate, is backing them. Possibly one of the creators of this world? It has to be intelligently designed, otherwise whatever structure the dungeons altered to allow the undead to accept souls properly simply wouldn''t be possible. As for why they aren''t doing more, well they might be, I can''t prove that they aren''t. But they aren''t doing anything flashy, and I might have an explanation for that, assuming that everything I have said is true of course. I know for a fact that there is at least one of them, so there is quite possibly several of them. Maybe the one funding our enemy wants to avoid being noticed by the others for whatever reason. It is a common enough thing in the stories my dad would tell me that it seems like a reasonable explanation.


    I''ll admit that I''m more than a little unfairly attached to this theory as it would offer a good explanation for why Willow betrayed us, and for why she''s so powerful. Neither of those things had happened until she met with the angelic council, and while it is reasonable that they could have done something to her, Willow is willful enough that I don''t think any kind of brainwashing they were capable of would stick so quickly. But against a force equivalent to someone who had completely mastered Fate? No one in the world would be capable of resisting them.


    Of course, the vainest way to interpret that, in my opinion anyway, is that the creature that granted me power over Fate wants to test and challenge me for some reason.


    In the end though, I have no way to know if this is actually what''s going on. It''s not like I can ask. And it''s not like the scholars would be able to find anyone like this if they didn''t want to be found, maybe the oldest of the dungeons could do it but even if they could I can''t afford their price.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 99

    Azrezel was perfectly willing to help me out with a book on necromancy, but he also was more than a little confused about my reasoning for making it. Is the idea of spreading knowledge to one day get the same in return such an alien idea? I mean immortality is common enough, any healer worth their salt is capable of living long enough to profit off of that kind of exchange. And that is just the lowest hanging fruit.


    Alchemists are also great at fixing old age, healing potions are some of the first ones any alchemist makes and even a novice can make one good enough to take a couple of years off if they have the right ingredients. Those ingredients are really hard to get ahold of in most places, true, but that doesn''t change the fact that alchemy is another quick and easy path to immortality. The knowledge I gained from writing a book with Tiddol is already showing through.


    Necromancy is another easy path to immortality, for fairly obvious reasons. And for similar reasons many other types of magic have a simple method to live forever, become what you manipulate. Few actually do that, but it is a logical step for many people, especially those that are dying. Similar to what happened with Tiddol.


    And that non-exhaustive list doesn''t even include things that can dramatically extend your lifespan, like cultivating or any other type of body-centric stuff. It doesn''t even have to be magical as just training your body like that will cause mana to form the right shapes to keep you fit and healthy long after you would otherwise have fallen to the ravages of time.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    And you don''t even need that really. Some of the people who worship me, especially my paladins, are already turning back the clock thanks to the more magical effects of their zeal. In all but the most extreme cases it isn''t quite enough to become immortal, but the potential is there. Simply wanting or believing in something enough will grant you immortality.


    Simply having an acquaintance that is a skilled healer is enough to fend off old age, and all of my friends are capable of living for a very long time even without my help. So why don''t people think to try to spread knowledge amongst the masses in an attempt to have your own knowledge be pushed up by those masses? Even the scholars don''t think like that, or at least the ones I''ve talked too. They teach their students primarily out of obligation, not for any desire to learn from them. Although it is quite likely that their leaderships thinks like that as some of their behavior doesn''t make sense otherwise. Their motto is supposed to be ''knowledge at all costs'' I feel like this should have been a fairly obvious step for them. But no, many of them think that the idea is crazy, that the ones who deserve to know are the ones willing to put in the effort to learn.


    This is really irritating me now, I want to fix this. I want to do everything I can to undermine that mentality. I am officially a member of their order, and a well respected one, or so I''ve been told. I wonder how I can use that to sway their opinion to my view. It could take years for these books to pay off, so that isn''t really a viable option until then. Maybe I could invite some of the leadership of the scholars to my home to talk with them? It seems like the best option for now, so I think I will write them a letter.


    I ended up spending my downtime going around and asking people about this, so I didn''t exactly have a lot of time for other things.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 100

    Azrezel and I are making great time in our combined efforts today. He understands necromancy really well, while I understand healing, flesh manipulation, and the soul. We are also no strangers to trying to communicate and share information like this. Really he is probably the ideal partner for a project like this, second only to already knowing everything and working on my own. It shouldn''t take long for this book to be complete.


    During our break the two of us went on a date. We went to see a play about a beast in the cat line that evolves into a kind of dog only to get shunned by his tribe. He ends up joining up with a tribe of dogs, falling in love, raising a family, etc. for several years before meeting his old tribe in battle with his new tribe. He dies in the fighting, killing the one who banished him in the first place.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    It was a pretty good story, it was paced well and had interesting drama. But the premise is kind of stupid, why would you shun someone who just evolved? Especial for a group that was obviously rather small and weak. Someone who just evolved would be a huge boon, that isn''t exactly something that happens often. So really they were just stupid for kicking him out.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 101

    I think it will be about four or five more days before this book is done. Necromancy is already pretty important culturally in many places in the world, so I do see this having an impact all over the world, but I think that the impact will be quite a bit different than the rest. I think the impact will be more cultural than academic, though I am still hoping for a strong academic impact.


    I visited the caverns underneath my forest for the first time in a while. They have been expanded quite a ways beyond the glass section that I built in order to create Shimmerleaf and now they extend across nearly my entire forest, and reaching incredibly deep into the ground. All of the walls have been turned into art in one way or another, though relatively little of it is made up of glass. I saw murals made up of light, intricate carvings of the history of our empire, however short that may be, statues of anything and everything, and so much more. There are entire cities down here that I was only vaguely aware of before, most of them with few inhabitants. No one really has an accurate map of the place as it is growing and changing constantly, and it is so large and mazelike that no one wants to take the time to do so. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    Honestly, I should have come back down here before. It''s all very pretty, and the dungeon in me is satisfied by the idea of having a massive cave complex full of art.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 102

    Another day brings with it several hundred pages worth of progress. Which doesn''t really mean all that much to be completely honest. A page could be as small as the palm of my hand or as big as my torso, or at least that is the range I have seen. I''m sure there are pieces of paper or other writing surfaces that are significantly bigger than anything I''ve seen.


    Regardless we are making about as much progress as I had expected.


    Par returned from the front lines today, his soldiers earned some time off as well as some time to do some recruiting. I took the time to tell him about what I might be able to do with the assistance of the dungeon, he was more than a little excited. After discussing it for a while he decided to wait a while on using a dungeon to invade the inner reaches of the enemy''s land. He doesn''t have the manpower to make it worth the effort quite yet, but it is definitely something we need to take advantage of.


    Beyond that, we also talked about other things, like the war effort and my recent projects. He seemed interested in getting ahold of a couple copies of my books to use to educate the soldiers. Though he seemed most interested in one about Solar Energy, which I have not yet created. He went as far as saying that he will wait for a Solar Energy book to be created and distributed amongst the soldiers before setting out again, and outright saying that anything Emericus might want in exchange for assisting in the creation of something like this should be given if at all possible. I mean, I get why, Solar Energy can go a long way towards improving the body, but he was a bit overzealous about it.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I wasn''t expecting him to set a copy of each book on a table and demand that every single soldier come and get a copy of one of them to study, asking some of his underlings to copy the books for every soldier and having them distribute the books amongst each other. It was impressive how quickly everyone ended up with one of them, with a pretty big bias towards plant manipulation and healing. Although I did see several copies of the other ones as well. I expected more people to be interested in alchemy, but I guess not. While the necromancers were almost universally interested in the soul book.


    I had fun hanging out with him today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 103

    Today, after I was done working on my current project for the day, I decided to go into the depths of the cave system under my forest with Tiddol. I figured it would be fun, and neither of us had been to the bottom before.


    Naturally, we started at the entrance to the glass caverns. Those are always a popular place to hang out. We saw a lot of small groups of people, hanging out with friends and family, going on dates, eating dinner, and whatever else you might do at a hangout spot. It was fun to watch, but that wasn''t why we were here.


    And so we went down deeper, and things got darker. It wasn''t really an issue as both of us have methods to both create light and see in the dark, but it still made things feel a bit eerie. This honestly only made the entire experience better as it contrasted with the sense of wonder you enjoy from impressive works of art.


    And there was a lot of art. My personal favorite from this area is a full-sized castle, complete with stone soldiers and functional gates. All of it carved out of stone, magically reinforced stone, yes, but still stone.


    It feels like those stone soldiers could come to life, their surface has more detail than my first attempt at creating Ents.  I''m half tempted to do it.


    Further down we came across a glowing lake that made a pleasant humming sound. There were very few people this far down, but there was a sign describing this particular lake. Apparently, it formed like this naturally, the glow is caused by a moss not dissimilar to Glovine that lives inside of the waters while no one is quite sure what caused the humming. It was probably built by an Origin, but to most people that qualifies as being naturally occurring.


    Also, the water is super poisonous, at least one person died trying to drink it. So swimming out into it is ill-advised, to say the least.


    We ended up stopping to eat dinner by that lake. It was nothing fancy, just something that the two of us prepared beforehand and some fruits that I created. It was a quiet meal, not that we weren''t talking but rather the inside of my head was very quiet. It wasn''t cut off from the surface entirely, but it was distant. All of the noise that I had grown used to was reduced to a distant whisper. It was an odd sensation, leaving me caught halfway between relief and paranoia. I was worried that something would happen on the surface, but at the same time I appreciated the chance to listen to little other than my own thoughts. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    And so we went farther down and came across many more pieces of art. There was a small town built, in a similar style to the stone castle, completely out of raw iron ore, really high-quality stuff too according to Tiddol. It was a farming town with everything you would expect from crops to an inn to a secret cabal of mages living underneath the mayor''s house. That last one was a surprise to find.


    Tiddol gushed about a large and incredibly intricate clockwork device that was carved from a single mass of stone. She went on about how difficult it must have been to build something like this and how skilled the person who made it must be. And all that for a device that apparently does nothing, well not exactly nothing. It kind of slowly spins in a circle at a very precise and even rate, which is supposedly rather hard to pull off. To me it just looked unfinished, it feels like something is supposed to go on the outside of this device, but there is nothing there.


    And we marched on, deeper still. We came across a set of stairs, a really ornate set of stairs. Each step had a story carved into it, one step depicted a mother grieving over a stillborn child, another depicted an adventurer climbing a cliff. And as you get deeper you realize that all of these small scenes connect with each other, that the grieving mother kills a lot of people, and that the adventurer slowly descends into madness during his quest. It doesn''t end well for anyone, except that one guy that got put on toilet cleaning duty near the beginning. He was fine.


    I''ve been listening to one of the greatest storytellers in the world since before I was born, but I had never seen anything quite like this. It''s different, stunning. I never would have thought that a stairwell could tell such a compelling story entirely without words. I would love to meet the people or person behind this, and the other ones I''ve mentioned too.


    At the bottom of the stairs was a door, and on the other side of the door was a small cave with living supplies strewn about. I would guess maybe ten people were living there, some of the people making these pieces of art if I were to hazard a guess. None of them were there, though I did see a tunnel leading off from the room. It had a sign in front of it asking to not be disturbed, and I did hear what sounded like metal hitting stone over and over again coming from inside. we honored their wishes and left without disturbing anything. I want to see what they make next.


    When we finally got to the surface it was late at night and the moons were high in the sky. Three of them tonight, something that happens very infrequently. From there we just sat and enjoyed the sight of the three moons framed by the black sky.


    It took a lot longer than I was expecting. But it was fun and surprisingly empty. I''ve never felt so quiet before, I was practically whispering the whole time despite there being no one and nothing that could overhear anywhere nearby. I don''t imagine that many people know just how far this extends, but I don''t want to spoil the atmosphere by telling people about it.


    I could have just teleported to the bottom to see what was there, but that wouldn''t have been any fun.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 104

    Today, in contrast to yesterday, wasn''t quite as interesting. It''s hard to beat a small town carved out of solid iron ore and caverns full of other wonderous pieces of art.


    That isn''t to say it was boring, I did do quite a bit that I enjoy. Most of that involved helping Azrezel write a book about necromancy, speaking of, I''m almost done with that. But I also did other stuff, like go on a date with Azrezel.


    Now it just sounds like I''m saying I was underwhelmed by my boyfriend, which isn''t true at all. It was fun, it always is, and I enjoy every chance I get to spend time with him, but we generally do the same stuff every single time. We go to a play and/or a restaurant, we get dessert and then we go home and have a different kind of quality time. I feel like I should try to mix it up a little.  Go do something that isn''t at all related to magic or what we normally do on dates.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    I''ll try to think of something.


    I also ran into Umi today and we talked for a little bit. She''s calm and mature, a lot more so than she was before. Which is a good thing, but I don''t think she''s happy. The way she talked and moved made it feel like she was very resigned, but to what exactly I do not know. We didn''t talk for long, we both had other arrangements to get to.


    I worry about her sometimes. I hope she''s doing alright.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 105

    The necromancy book is done, and I think it is the best one so far. It''s just so complete, or rather it feels that way. It does have some issues with how much mana each practice requires, but we even managed to partially get around that by allowing the book to temporarily store mana in each page. It is nowhere near as effective as an actual gemstone would be, but I was able to mimic the effects well enough in the very limited space I had to work with.


    Now I just need to convince Emericus to help me write the book on Solar Energy. I''ll talk to him about that tomorrow.


    I met with a diplomat on behalf of Par today. Normally someone else handles this stuff, but they got sick, not infectious thankfully, and Par was busy with a minor emergency. Apparently a whole group of spies were caught trying to sneak in under the guise of refugees, but some mild mind-reading picked them out pretty quickly. I imagine that it is hard to spy on a group that is so used to sharing their thoughts.


    Regardless I had to talk to the diplomat. An older man, a mage of some kind though not likely a skilled one. He had a couple of intimidating looking bodyguards, but beyond that, there wasn''t much noteworthy about his appearance. He was just a pretty average Biped, I want to say some kind of Dwarf. Or at least closely related. Halfling maybe? I kinda wish I had taken a moment to examine him closer now.


    He was here to discuss a fairly major trade deal between our two empires. He wanted food and we wanted a type of magical metal that simply isn''t found on this continent, or at least not anywhere that we have dug yet. I found out later that Tiddol requested it for one of her projects, and apparently needs a bunch of it. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    We talked for quite a while, trying to reach a deal that was acceptable for both parties. It was fairly obvious that he was trying to rip us off, though not nearly as much as I had expected. I don''t blame him either, he wants the best deal for his people and I want the best for my people. If I''m going to be a goddess I might as well act like it.


    Eventually, we did come to a reasonable solution, his country would sell the metal to us at a rate of three times its weight in various fruits and vegetables. But we needed to build containers that could keep the goods fresh during the three teleports and long distribution process, which I will leave to other people to create. I could do it easily enough, it wouldn''t really take long. But I didn''t really want too, it seems like a dull task to me. Besides, what''s the point of being a Goddess if you can''t get other people to do stuff like that for you? Sure I will do what I can to improve the lives of my people, but when other people are more than capable of a task in my stead why not have them do it.


    This was a novel experience, I''ve always been the face of our empire, but I''ve never really acted as it before. Also, I''m apparently pretty good at it? Which is somewhat surprising because I''m not exactly the most social person, to my dad''s disappointment I''m sure. But I was raised by Eric Kron, and stories of him charming the pants off of numerous powerful people are still being told today. There are even rumors of him charming true immortals like the first sentient and leader of the scholars, though he hasn''t told me that story yet. So maybe a bit of his charisma rubbed off on me? I mean magical talent is partially passed down in the same way, so it is reasonable.


    Basically it just means that I might have to replace our main negotiator more often when he is indisposed. Which might be interesting.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 106

    I talked to Emericus today about writing a book on Solar Energy, and he was a little uncomfortable with the idea but not completely opposed to it. He wanted me to somehow make him a part of my religion, in the same way that Tiddol and Par are. I''m not really sure how to do that, I don''t really control that. I just told him to interact with me publicly, interact with the public in an official capacity, and to do what he can to build and create and teach the masses.


    Out of everything he could have asked for, that was the last thing I expected. But I guess that just shows how little I know about the man. While I''m working with him I should ask why he asked for that.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    I mean I don''t particularly mind, he doesn''t seem like a bad guy. He''s a little withdrawn, but he is definitely competent enough. And I''m not exactly the most outgoing person myself, so it''s not like I can fault him for that.


    Beyond that I ended up spending my day discussing with Emericus about how exactly to make the book. It''s basically the same stuff as with all the rest, just taking into account the nuances of Solar Energy instead of something else like necromancy.


    Also the book itself needed to be capable of creating Solar Energy, otherwise it''s useless. That is definitely within my power.


    I think I''m looking forward to this one.


    Anyway, good night diary.

 Day 107

    Today we finally started working on the Solar Energy book, and I have to say that Emericus is better at this type of thing than I am. He is really good at communicating large amounts of information through telepathy as apparently, it is very similar to what he does when refining his body.  Even when you take into account the edge my hive mind gives me he is still ahead, even if only by a small margin.


    It makes sense, he is a true immortal after all. And not a new one either, he''s been around for a while and he is obviously good at what he does.


    What this really means is that we made way more progress than I was expecting, and there is way more information to go over than for anything else. It isn''t just how to cultivate, it''s also everything else Emericus knows about Solar Energy as well, arranged in a way that he thinks is ideal for someone to learn.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    I''m definitely looking forward to working with him more in the future if this is the type of quality I can expect.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Par and Tiddol. We ended up going deep into the caverns and having a picnic, simply so no one would bother us. We talked and gossiped and Par told us stories about the front lines, he isn''t as eloquent as my father, few are, but he does have a kind of brash enthusiasm that is infectious. Tiddol was talking about her latest project, which is some kind of potent acid that is theoretically capable of dissolving anything. She is just trying to figure out how to get the recipe right.


    It was fun, but I should have invited Azrezel and turned it into a double date.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 108

    There was a minor skirmish at the edge of my forest today. It didn''t last for more than five minutes, but nearly fifty people were injured in that time. Luckily there were no deaths on our side. No one is really sure who these people were, they don''t seem like anyone from the angelic council nor do they seem like mercenaries. It''s possible that it was a tribe of some kind, they were all the same type of beast or at least similar enough for evolutions to explain the differences. But they were too strong and well organized for a tribe, while at the same time they weren''t expecting anyone else to be here. Or at least they were shocked when people showed up.


    Unfortunately, they have fled already, there is little chance that we would be able to find them in the near future. Maybe they will pop up again and we can ask them what was going on, and maybe we will never see them again. Who knows? I don''t.


    On a different note, Emericus is saying that it will be about a week before this book is done. We are already well beyond what I know about Solar Energy and so I''m trying to put everything to memory in addition to writing it all down. That is easier said than done, however, as the information moves way too quickly for me to properly commit everything to memory. I can write things down a lot faster than I can think about them.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Speaking of Solar Energy, I''ve come quite far in my own passive cultivation. With a constant minor stream of Solar Energy going towards refining and improving my body I''m a lot more physically capable. I''m capable of splitting a slab of rock after punching it a couple times, though it still hurts my hand. Plus I don''t really get tired anymore, or at least I never have to actually exert myself in my day to day life I''m strong and durable enough that I can do things like run constantly without it being noticeably worse than walking. It''s still faster to just teleport though, and unlike with a flesh and bone body, there are no physiological benefits to running and jogging for me.


    In my opinion, the main benefit is a lot more intimate. As I found out today, undead are capable of growing tired if you wring them dry over and over again. Seeing Azrezel collapsed on the bed with a goofy smile on his face was adorable.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 109

    The invisible island civil war spectacularly ended today. Someone blew up the capital during a major military parade. Like the entire city, it''s just gone. In its place is crater filled with still cooling slag. Radioactive slag. They have people capable of using nuclear fire, people that the scholars are not aware of.


    Naturally, I have already started the cleanup of this waste. It should be gone in days.


    Most of the revolutionaries have access to my hivemind, it is very likely that this person is already one of us. But picking them out of the masses is easier said than done. If I don''t know someone well then it can be impossible to find them. But even then I should try to find and talk with them, learn what I can from them. They would be a great asset to have on our side, possibly even enough to end the war. But for now, I am going to try and keep this incident quiet. This never happened and the scholars should not find out, not yet anyway. Not until I can confirm that this nuclear mage is under my power.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    There are scholars on the island, but none of them have heard about the incident yet. All of them fled that country after the war started so I should have time to clean up the waste before they hear about it and start flocking over to the crater. I need to be out of there before that happens. I need to speed things up a lot. Should be simple enough, I''m not doing much with my mana right now. It will make it more difficult to learn about solar energy, but I can always do that later. This has a time crunch.


    It was definitely an interesting way to spend my downtime, and an exciting one.


    Other than that I spent most of my time working on the book with Emericus, but nothing of importance happened today.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 110

    The nuclear waste has been completely cleaned up and all of the structures needed to destroy it have been destroyed. And not a moment too soon either, as an hour later the first of the scholars started arriving, days ahead of when I thought they would.


    Now I just need to find the person who blew up the city before the scholars start to suspect something. I''ve had no luck there so far, but I''m not too worried yet. It can take quite a while to sort through everything, especially when my primary focus is elsewhere.


    The Solar Energy book is now halfway complete, and it is already huge. I thought about making it lighter somehow, but then realized that it would be entirely unnecessary as simply using the book for its intended purpose would allow even the weakest person to be capable of carrying it with ease eventually.


    Considering the breadth and depth of information here I''m more excited to see the results of this book than anything else. This is everything that someone who has spent hundreds of years studying Solar Energy has learned, it covers everything from cultivation to healing to conjuring and so many other things. This book alone could be used to found empires, and it''s not even done yet. Who knows what will happen once it is mass-produced and spread around the world.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Other than that I hung out with Tiddol for a while, mostly just hanging out. She got news the other day that her parents were coming to visit her again, and now that she is significantly more important than she was last time they are given the option of fast-tracking the teleportation. That will cause some severe teleportation sickness, even despite the expensive treatments for it that are now available to them thanks to Tiddol. So they might not decide to go with that route. I do recall that her father had particular problems with teleportation sickness, but with treatments for it maybe they will get here faster? Either way, they will be here between one week and one month from now, though probably somewhere in the middle.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 111

    Through sheer luck, I managed to meet up with the wielder of nuclear fire responsible for blowing the city up days before I expected too. While I was taking some downtime I decided to try to look for them through my hivemind, and I happened to stumble upon someone who was actively thinking about the person in a very friendly way, like they actually knew them instead of admiring their work from afar. From there one thing led to another and I eventually found the person themself.


    They are some kind of offshoot of goblin that seems to be only present on this island, or at least I haven''t heard of them being present in any significant numbers elsewhere. They have grey skin instead of green, their bodies are smaller and more compact, but they are also a lot more durable than their cousins. They have big round heads and large eyes, reminiscent of a child. Their brains are also bigger and more complicated than their cousins.


    This one in particular is a juvenile boy by the name of Dulcian. And he has memories of a past life, as most wielders of nuclear fire do. I think it is really weird how reincarnators try to hide that fact, like it''s not that big of a deal roughly half of all people have memories of some kind, most purely emotional.


    He was young when he died in his last life, relatively speaking anyway. Eighteen is pretty old considering his new species only lives to be about thirteen. And that is not even taking into account the fact that years in his previous life seem to be longer than years here. He was also a student, though by his own admission he wasn''t very good at it. He talked fondly about skipping school to build small explosives with his friends, basically fireworks, that he would set off on a relatives farm out in the middle of nowhere. He also talked fondly of staring up at the night sky and watching the two moons of his old world as well as countless stars, which is a weird concept. Why would there be tiny lights out past the moon? What purpose would they serve? Why were they put there? And apparently his world orbited a singular sun? which is also really weird.


    That is beside the point. Dulcian doesn''t know a lot about Nuclear Fire, most of his knowledge comes from a half-remembered lesson at school. But he does understand the basic concept behind it as well as the potential devastation it causes. That plus some minor talent with conjuration and he is able to produce a material I had previously associated with nuclear waste, in hindsight it is pretty obvious that this stuff is the actual power source of nuclear fire.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    We talked for quite a while and he explained to me exactly what was going on, well enough that I think I would be capable of replicating the effects if I needed too. I will not write this information down here as people have read my diary without my consent in the past, I don''t want anyone figuring it out on accident. I don''t want to replicate it as I would probably kill myself in the process, but Dulcian''s sheer lack of mana saved him from that fate. He couldn''t produce enough all at once to kill himself with it and understood the risks well enough to stay far away from it when he went to blow it up. And he isn''t detonating it directly either, he is conjuring the stuff and using it to power a bomb, like the one he detonated.


    Towards the end of our conversation I asked him to come work for me, and told him that I would give him pretty much anything he wanted, assuming it was within my power. I couldn''t help but laugh when he smugly asked me to make him immortal, like he expected it to be some kind of impossible request. I couldn''t help but notice that he got increasingly smug as I laughed until I told him that I would have made him immortal anyway as I didn''t want him dying on me. After he got over his shock I gave him a list of things that I am offering just by default, an ideal facility to work in, access to my hivemind granted by myself, specialized for his particular circumstances, all living expenses paid, and almost any luxury I can offer.


    He thought about the offer for a while and said that he would accept, assuming I could fulfill a list of demands that he is currently in the process of writing up. Though I have already integrated him into my hivemind, and in the process evolved him. I focused primarily on his mana pool and his mana generation, as mana is the only really effective method to resist the poison of nuclear material. I also added a mechanism that constantly reinforces his body with Solar Energy in hopes that it will somehow keep him from dying. Last but not least was something simple to give him some rather quick regeneration, thus making him immortal. I ended up using more of my own mana than mana from the world in this project.


    I look forward to taking advantage of his knowledge and willingness to risk blowing himself up in exchange for immortality. I''m sorry, I still can''t get over that one.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 112

    The book is almost done, and I''m not able to lift it without magic. This might actually be a problem. It will make distribution much harder, not impossible. Or at least I hope not. At the very least my Ents are capable of lifting it with plant manipulation, so I would be able to task them with delivering them to every population center in the world.


    On the plus side this is absolutely the single most complete set of knowledge about Solar Energy in the world. Any scholars studying the subject will want a copy.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    And honestly, it being cumbersomely large kind of fits. Like the core of Solar Energy is self improvement, and having a massive book like this gives you something to mark your own progress against.


    This behemoth of a book should be complete in the next day or two.


    Other than that I spent time with Azrezel. It was a simple dinner and a show, with something a little more intimate afterwards. So what has become our standard date night.


    Anyway Good Night Diary.

 Day 113

    Dulcian gave me his list of requests today, and it was rather long, it took quite a while to go over. Most of the things on the list were trivial and not worth my attention, though it was interesting to see how everything got progressively unusual as the list went on. It almost seemed like he was trying to figure out what the limits of what he could ask for were. I''m going to make sure to work him hard for this.


    A couple items on the list did give me pause. The boy is more than a little depraved, but not in a sadistic way thankfully. Very few of them crossed over into something I would not be willing to provide, but many of them toed the line. Still, this is an opportunity I don''t want to waste.


    Ultimately we agreed that he would work for no less than six hours a day, reciving a day off once every five days or if he gets sick. If he gets injured then he needs to get that fixed and get right back to work. He also requires very little sleep, about an hour a night. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    Tomorrow I will look on the terminal to find a facility that will be able to do the kind of experimentation required here. I have no doubt that other dungeons have trained wielders of nuclear fire before.


    The book on Solar Energy is done and is in the process of being distributed as far and wide as possible. Par asked me to make a copy for every single soldier, which is a lot of Solar Energy to speed all at once but I got it done. They will take another week or two to allow the soldiers to train, after which they will march off to war again.


    Now I need to finally regrow the damaged parts of my forest, or at least finish it. I did manage to successfully preserve the root structure so all it should take is a couple days of solid focus to get everything back to where it was.


    I''m looking forward to finally expanding into the domain of our enemy. With that, it will only be a matter of time before we win this war.


    I should really figure out a better countermeasure to their plant-killing enchantment.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 114

    In order to speed along the process of restoring the edges of my forest I conscripted every plant manipulator skilled enough to properly grow one of my trees, which is roughly half of the plant manipulators in our empire. With that, I managed to nearly double the speed I could regrow, allowing me to finish with a day instead of two. I really should have done this earlier.


    Now I need to decide on what to do next. Maybe I''ll find the person that carved out a castle out of stone and ask to bring it to life. Yeah, I think I will do that.


    I did find exactly what I was looking for on the terminal; and ideal testing facility for nuclear fire. A place where Dulcian can experiment with the stuff without the risk of causing damage to other things. It does cost a ridiculous amount of mana, but I have plenty of that. And based on the description it is entirely warranted. Between spatial magic to somehow offset it against the surrounding areas and using mana as a buffer against nuclear waste it is going to cost a lot of mana. It was expensive, but I had the funds for it.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    I ended up using Digger Root to carve out a cave large enough to hold the facility. Now we just need to wait until it is completed within the next day or so, then Dulcian can get to work mastering his power over nuclear fire.


    Other than that I spent my downtime down in the tunnels, taking a pleasant walk and relaxing away from the unceasing noise of the thoughts of the masses. Hearing little more than a faint whisper.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 115

    It was a lot harder than I expected it to be to track down the one that carved the castle of stone. A lot of people knew of him, and many of them had even met the guy before, but in general, he seems to be rather reclusive and spends most of his time underground working on something. A stance I can respect.


    Eventually, I did find him. He was busy and I didn''t want to disturb him, so I sat and watched him work for a while. I know I don''t like being disturbed while working, I can''t imagine he does either. I watched as he carved a vertical field of flowers into a wall where three different ore veins intersect. The different colors in the natural rock combined with the skill of the artist created something exquisite. Every single flower was carved out in such detail that were it not for their lack of movement I would struggle to tell them apart from the real deal. It is one of my favorite pieces in these caves.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    When he stopped he stepped back and looked over his own work before sighing and saying ''another failure, what am I doing wrong?'' I was worried he was going to smash it but he just sighed again and turned to walk away, finally noticing me.


    I told him what I wanted to do and he told me to wait, he wants time to think. And he walked away muttering to himself.


    that was only a minute ago, the sun has long set and there are two crimson moons high in the sky. I spent all day looking for and watching the artist work. I didn''t even get a straight answer.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 116

    As the artist has not gotten back to me yet I have decided to start working on Skeletal Rose.


    It was easy enough to do some simple refinement, but beyond that I have no idea what I''m doing. Removing large chunks of the plant always caused it to fail, but I can kind of guess at the function of each peice.


    I simply don''t know anything about time manipulation, and this plant was designed in a way that makes my usual methods not quite effective. So I''m falling back on the only universally effective method I know and brute forcing it by modifying each little peice in isolation. Of course this does introduce a fair amount of luck to the situation. I will get it eventually, but how long it takes is up too luck. This is having the expected interactions with Fate and is why I generally avoid this method.


    It should take no longer than a week for me to figure out what everything does, after that it should only take an hour or so to get too a useable state. And I''m definitely looking forward to using it.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Junior in her hospital. When it comes to pure skill in healing and flesh manipulation she is my better, even if only by a small margin. It would be weird if she wasn''t improving faster than me, she certainly has the talent and she spends most of her time improving herself. I even managed to learn a thing or two from her. I''m proud of her, she is definitely living up to the legacy of her mother and grandfather.


    Speaking of that legacy, she has taken a lover. A polite Frost Drake from another continent. I didn''t get a chance to really meet with him.


    She is wanting to evolve before she had children, and she is getting close to evolving. Her current species is unusually fast to mature, anything she has the potential to evolve into will not be the same way. It will be a very long time before the next generation of Hornmarks becomes prominent, possibly even a decade. I am looking forward to meeting them though, the Hornmark children have always been cute.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 117

    My time was spent refining Skeletal Rose today, and I think I have an idea for how to speed things up. There are bits and pieces spread throughout the plant that at first glance didn''t appear to do anything, but looking at them from a bigger picture they all interact in an interesting way. To put it plainly whoever made this plant took a modified version of Whitefoot and integrated the entire thing into this plant. So definitely not the work of Origin, I''m guessing a dungeon created this, possibly even the dungeon who gave it to me.


    Removing this is a good place to start, and if I''m right then it will dramatically reduce the amount of stuff I need to sift through to refine this plant. If I''m wrong then no harm done, I will still have made progress, just less than I thought I had.


    I can confirm that removing Whitefoot from the plant makes it a lot more dangerous, speeding up time dramatically for everything inside instead of just things made of flesh. Which tells me that if I were to integrate a different plant there then I might achieve a similar result with something else. Could I subject a mountain to the mercy of time by using Digger Root? I''m pretty sure I can.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    This is made even worse by the lack of mana inside the area, it isn''t that there is no mana to begin with but rather no more is able to move into it, at least relative to the speed the thing being effected is going at.


    That''s a little disappointing. It means that I won''t be able to make good use of the plant on my own without covering my entire forest in the stuff, I don''t have much mana storage relative to my generation. And I definitely can''t get enough mana being generated in my forest to pull that off without also murdering nearly every mana based creature in my forest. So ultimately it will not be for me to use, or at least not in a significant way. Still, I am certain that I can get great use out of it.


    Other than that I went on a date with Azrezel, only for the two of us too get ambushed by a group of particularly zealous  worshippers. I will admit that having people literally throw themselves at your feet is a pleasant experience, though I would have rather had alone time with Azrezel.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 118

    I think I''m on the right track with my refinement of Skeletal Rose. I''m still not entirely sure how it works, but like this basic brute force refinement is significantly more effective. At this rate I should be done by tomorrow.


    Kaire and Lulem are both ready to evolve, have been for a while. I''m intentionally preventing them from doing so for now as I want to do it myself. I also want to include Skeletal Rose into them, mostly because I''m curious about what an Ent with time powers could do. So I''m waiting on that one for now.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Par. We mostly talked about what we need to do inorder to take the most advantage of the dungeon next to the city my dad is occupying. We are getting closer to a deadline as they are being worn down constantly, it''s only a matter of time before they fail.


    And so we will march tomorrow. Par believes that his soldiers have more figured out the basic techniques of Solar Energy well enough to no longer absolutely need the books.


    Now we have a solid plan for what to do, or rather we made sure all of the information we have lines up. I''m looking forward to seeing my dad again, and my apprentice. I hope they are doing well.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 120

    I didn''t get much of a chance to write yesterday, things are just now calming down.


    The moment our soldiers started moving through the portal into the other dungeon they heard the sounds of conflict. We had arrived in the middle of a siege, one that our side was losing badly.


    From there it was all hands on deck. The enemy had so many soldiers that they outnumbered us three to one, and they weren''t exactly novices. I might not have been able to stray from the other dungeon, but I had to do everything I could to assist in the fighting. Primarily I just kept our soldiers awake and alive, and without that, we would have no doubt lost.


    But after nearly two days of bloody fighting, we managed to drive off the besieging army. We suffered moderate losses as the enemy quickly learned that nothing short of instant death was enough to keep our soldiers down, but they often weren''t equipped for that type of fighting.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Once the enchanters finish repairing their city teleporter we will have a solid foothold in the middle of enemy territory, we are close to being able to march on their capital. My Paladins and I can pressure them from their edges, while Par can pressure them from the middle. Forcing them to either abandon one or split their forces.


    It''s great to see Askos and my father again. They both look older, Askos for the better and my father for the worse. Askos is more mature, more confident, while my father looks worn down and drained. There is nothing biological that I can fix, it''s all mental. He''s tired, for lack of a better word, and there is little I can do to help.


    I wish I could have stayed longer, but we couldn''t keep the portal open indefinitely. It can strain the dungeon cores to do something like this, and if we are unlucky then one of us would have blacked out before everything was done causing the portal to close. If I was still inside the other dungeon then I would die.


    I''m not sure what it going on over there right now, but I do want to get back to work. There is nothing that needs my attention at the very least.


    So Good Night Diary.

 Day 121

    One thing that strikes me as being odd about the recent fighting is that Willow was not present. She seems to always be present during major attacks, but not for this one. I don''t think that it is too important, just weird.


    It feels good to be able to work on my projects after two days of fighting. I give it three days before I get it to a point that I can start really experimenting with it, from there it will be a lot easier to improve it.


    Even now I''m able to do enough that I can make some guesses as to how time manipulation works. It isn''t anything like going back in time, though from the perspective of someone stuck inside of the area of effect going forward in time is absolutely possible. With this plant, I will be able to dilate time, though I have no idea what kind of extremes I will be capable of pulling off. The biggest restriction is probably the fact that it is really hard to diffuse things into the area of effect, so you would be very limited in the amount of mana you have available, but as of now, I don''t see any reason why you can''t just recycle the mana you brought in with you. Beyond that, I''m not really sure what the effects of this might be, I guess I will find out eventually.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I''m also increasingly certain that I will not be able to personally benefit from any kind of time dilation, it just seems like it would strip away everything else that gives me an edge. Tiddol might benefit from it quite a bit, however.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Askos, he came back with me when portal with the other dungeon was failing. We mostly caught each other up on recent events. He told me that they have been under near-constant seige since the moment they took control of the city, and the enemy was obviously focusing on trying to kill as many people as possible, not breaking into the walls. This is in line with what we have experienced with them in the past, they want to bleed us dry, not take our land. Once this war is finally over this whole continent is going to be a severally depopulated forest unless we can end the fighting soon. I''m sure Par is already aware of this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 122

    The city teleporter was finally fixed. It isn''t quite as open as the teleportation network in my city, but it is so much better than what we had before. Now we have a staging ground in the middle of enemy territory, and it won''t be long now until we can take their capital.


    The sculptor from before sought me out this morning and has asked me to bring all of his creations to life, or none of them. I''m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn''t that. I have to admire him, actually. It takes guts to demand something from someone like me, I don''t want to encourage this type of behavior, but I am not opposed to what he wants me to do. So instead I told him that I will bring to life the castle, and if I am pleased by the results I will do more.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    And so I spent the day bring to life various sculptors and pieces of art in the caverns, not even limited to the works of that one artist, but rather every piece I could find, starting with that castle. By the time I was done scouring the caverns for art that I could bring to life I was exhausted. It will take me several days to recover from this, but it is done and I''m curious to see what will happen now.


    It''s amazing how much my soul has grown since I learned how to manipulate it, before this would have taken years to fully complete. I still remember when I brought Kaire and Lulem to life, that took me down for days all on its own.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 123

    Today I was too tired to do much more than continue to refine Skeletal Rose, draining my soul like I did yesterday is never fun. It should be completed by tomorrow, I''m looking forward to making use of it.


    My Paladins have shown up in force to grow my forest faster. Any one of them individually is nowhere near enough to make a difference, but there are now a lot of them. On top of that they learn very quickly, and this is an ideal situation for their own progress.  So right now they aren''t doing much to speed up my growth, but that speed will pick up very rapidly. With so many independent minds doing everything they can to improve the whole it won''t be long before it is more effective to give them my mana to work with rather than grow it all myself.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Now that I think about it, I should probably do that anyway. Their main limiting factor right now is skill, but if they can afford to be a little wasteful with mana then they can improve skill much faster. With how potentially effective they are I should be trying to maximize their resources as much as possible. Maybe I should task some of them to maximize their own usage of mana? Maybe.


    I think I will have a couple hundred practice using massive amounts of mana as efficiently as possible, there is no point to using the absolute minimum amount of mana if all you can accomplish is lighting a campfire. I have no idea if this will bear fruit for our current endeavor, it really is a shot in the dark, but it should help future endeavors at the very least.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 124

    Today marks the completion of my refinement of Skeletal Rose, and it''s potential is great.


    The most noteworthy use is in cultivation, allowing us to turn anyone into even more competent warriors and soldiers than ever before. I had hope that I would be able to personally benefit from that one, but nope, my method of cultivation is impossible while being cut off from the outside world.


    I might be able to use it to produce Solar Energy faster, which won''t have a major impact but it will do something.


    All of the imediatly obvious benefits of time manipulation revolve around training people, and they all run into the same issues of lifespan. With effectively endless amounts of mana and easy and reliable healing for everyone old age is easily prevented, but curing old age is a lot harder than preventing it and healing is hard to come by when you have finite mana. And healing with Solar Energy isn''t nearly as good at the specific type of healing required to prevent old age.Stolen novel; please report.


    This whole issue is made even worse by the fact that mana flows out of an area where time is sped up very quickly, as it moves around like normal while inside until it escapes the area at high velocity once it touches the edge of the area. That has its own uses, but it makes other things more difficult. And it''s not like we can pump new mana inside, it just doesn''t move fast enough.


    Beyond training I have no idea how to make use of this, but I''m not the only one thinking about it. Plus I can always ask there dungeons about how they make use of time.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 125

    I evolved Kaire and Lulem today, incorporating Skeletal Rose to interesting results.


    Not being sure where to put it I let the hand of the world have a bit more control there, it ended up reinforcing the nervous system and brain. I''m guessing a dungeon has already tried something similar in the past. In effect it caused those functions to run several times faster than normal, with obvious benefits.


    That didn''t take too long, so I spent much of that day doing the same with my Paladins, this time without the benefit of evolution. Mostly I just wanted to get as much practice as possible before doing it to myself, but the benefits in their ability to learn was immediately obvious.


    Speaking of, my Paladins have already improved at my chosen task rather dramatically. I''m sure much of that is low hanging fruit, but it is still impressive how quickly they are improving at using massive amounts of mana.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    One thing that they did that I thought was interesting was get several people together to cast a spell. Something I highly doubt would ever work without some form of telepathy, and they have the best of it. Really working together on large scale magic seems like something that they would be really good at.


    Other than that I spent my down time in the caverns, now much more full of life. It was interesting seeing how all of them interacted, they all seemed to act out some kind of role with minimal deviation. Soldiers and other militant types engaged in some kind of conflict or another without ever causing real lasting harm. Doctor, and there is a surprising number of doctor sculptures, repaired damaged sculptures. And so many other things. Few, if any, are sentient, otherwise they would deviate from the script that they all seem to be following.


    I''m curious to see how they develop in the future.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 126

    I received a report from Par today. After a surprise attack and the following two days of combat, he has successfully taken control of a staging ground that was used by the enemy to marshal mercenaries. In the process managing to slaughter many and scattering the rest. Thanks to this it should be a while before they gather in enough numbers that their armies can threaten us. In the meantime, we are more or less uncontested in the region.


    And so, for the first time, our army is going to be split up. Instead of having everyone follow under Par, which was necessary to take cities in the past, it has been divided up into five sections. Small enough groups to move quickly while still being large enough to hold on long enough for help to arrive should the worst happen. With any luck, we will have captured all major population centers in the area within the month.


    In addition to that, the enemy has started marshaling at our borders in order to fend off my paladins. They are not currently trying to directly oppose us, I don''t think they have the numbers for that yet, instead it is small groups of them harassing us for a moment before fleeing. More annoying than dangerous, and they obviously don''t have any real specialists yet, but I have no doubt that they will eventually become an actual threat. In the meantime, I should probably talk to our enchanters to try and figure out a way to counter any plant destroying enchantment.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Which is exactly what I spent my day doing today, with minimal progress, but progress nonetheless. I got them to create a weak plant destroying enchantment and spent my day trying to grow some vines towards it, by the end of the day my plants were able to last a second, which was a second more than they were before. Meanwhile, I tasked them with figuring out as many different possible methods to counter an enchantment like this and the ones we picked up after the last time they attacked us.


    I didn''t take a break today, with the enemy attacking my forest again I wanted to be ready for the inevitable happens and they start using those annoying enchantments. So it kind of slipped my mind.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 127

    During my experimentation with resisting plant destroying enchantments, I discovered something. The same mechanism that allows things improved with Solar Energy to repel mana also prevents enchantments from interacting with them. I tried it out mostly on a hunch, and it took me a little bit to figure out how to do it, but it does work.


    Unfortunately, I don''t think that this is the solution to the problem. The first time I had ever really attempted this was today, it was only recently that being near that effect wouldn''t kill me and I am skilled enough with my control of solar energy to render it irrelevant in most cases. So I''m not very good at replicating it cheaply, and it is expensive. I simply don''t have the kind of Solar Energy production required to maintain our growth like this. Not to mention that it would absolutely have unintended side effects in the way my forest functions.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The enchanters did come up with a method for me to incorporate an enchantment designed to specifically counter the plant-killing one very efficiently, but it only works on one iteration of the enchantment. It would work on anything similar, but at drastically reduced effectiveness. This would be a great solution if I already knew a lot about enchanting, as I could update the enchantments in real-time as the enemy improves and changes theirs. They also proposed a solution where we basically just pile on a whole bunch of similar enchantments, and that would work, but it also makes it so that each tree is costing more mana that it earns me. So it is not an option long term, at least not without a ton of refining, but it could work to react to an immediate threat.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Tiddol. We made a point to talk about anything other than the current war, as that is all either of us have been thinking about recently. It was mostly light banter, and it was relaxing. I''m glad I''m able to have fun with her like this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 128

    Today an enemy master teleporter showed up to assist the offensive against my expansion. They brought with them a lot of highly skilled reinforcements, which we attempted to blow up the moment they arrived. It wasn''t very effective, but I would be surprised if it was. The enemy is now able to directly challenge us more, and they are doing so. This is a good thing as it means that we are able to kill them better, allowing us to do more damage to them than we would have been able to do if they were using more hit and run tactics.


    The time where I will have to resist those annoying enchantments again is coming soon, so I need to be ready. I took the most effective and the most efficient designs that the enchanters have already created to counter a large range of plant destroying enchantments and incorporated them into the trees bordering my forest, this way I can turn them on when I need them and if the most efficient one doesn''t work for some reason I can use something that will work.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    I''ve also put together a method to brute force my way into figuring out how to directly resist the enchantments. I made thousands of variations on every single plant I have, even the mundane ones. Then I slowly pass a weak version of that enchantment close to all of them, the ones that survive I study for any common themes and iterate again on that. So basic guess and check that I have done several times before. It isn''t a very fast method, but until I figure something else out this is the best method I''ve got.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. We spent a long time not talking.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 129

    Today the enchanters made a breakthrough. They figured out a method to make the whole set up more effective over a much larger range of potential enchantments, in effect allowing them to create something less complex and having the same result. And less complexity means that it is cheaper to maintain.


    Unfortunately, I had significantly less success with my own project. I don''t think that plants innately have any kind of resistance towards enchantments. And there are no plants available for sale that would resist enchantments without also repelling mana entirely. This means that it probably doesn''t exist and I can''t evolve something into something that has that ability without doing it manually. But I don''t know how to do that, enchanting simply isn''t something I understand. And it would take quite a bit to reach a point where I could create an enchantment killing plant.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    I''ll keep at it though, it isn''t like I have had zero success, just much less than I had hoped for. I''m sure there is something that will work, I''m just overlooking it.


    Another solution might be building large structures that spread the effects of the counter enchantment over a large area. It would cost a lot less mana, but it would also introduce a single point of failure, which is probably worse. Still might be interesting to look into.


    Other than that I spent my downtime wandering around in the tunnels, observing the interactions of the living art. It is interesting to see how they have all settled into their own roles, like how the villagers give up some of the iron food they grew to the soldiers when they come by. And they really are growing the iron food, like the iron isn''t coming from anywhere. They are growing it in an iron vein, yes, but they didn''t take it from said vein. Also, the stone soldiers eat it the same way I would eat real fruit.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 130

    The plant destroying enchantments have made their first appearance in the current conflict today. It wasn''t a big opening salvo, just a couple of isolated incidents of enchanted weapons being used. I made sure to disable these ones directly, by destroying the enchantment the way I have done so in the past. I don''t want them realizing that I have other methods to destroy them just yet.


    On a worrying note, this time the enchantments were harder to destroy. They are improving at their craft, hopefully we can improve faster.


    And we are improving, every iteration of enchantments and plants brings us closer to an ideal solution, on top of improving our stopgap methods. The latest iteration of my plants are able to, without assistance, reliably resist the weakest form of the plant destroying enchantment available. The one plant that seems to be the most effective at directly resisting its effects is Astrie, a plant I haven''t really worked with all that much recently. Astrie seems to manipulate magic directly. It makes sense that it would be relevant here. Astrie is resisting the enchantment in a dozen different ways, and many of them are completely incompatible with each other. Some try to subvert the effects by making the plant seem like something it is not while others directly challenge the effects. None of them have obviously pulled ahead of the others in effectiveness quite yet.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    Other than that I spent my downtime helping Azrezel with an issue he is having with his latest design of undead, it wasn''t anything major but it was irritating. It turned out that a defect with the smallest toe was causing the aim of these spear throwers to be just slightly off enough to consistently miss at the type of ranges we wanted them to work at.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 131

    I caught the enemy trying to burrow under my forest today. Based on how fast they were moving when I found them they were pretty good at mining through all kinds of material. I never would have noticed them if they hadn''t damaged one of my trees in the process.


    To prevent this from happening again I took some time to stretch the roots of my trees down as deep as I could and turned them into a thick mat that makes it impossible for anyone to go through without damaging or otherwise removing the roots from their path. That effectively stalled our progress for the day, but it removes a couple different threats.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    The enchanters only improved their current project by a minor amount. Most of their attempted solutions today flopped and the ones that worked were only a slight improvement. And unfortunately, I have to say the same about my own project. Minimal progress was made all around today.


    Other than that I spent my downtime hanging out with Jasmine, she got into town late last night. We went to something called a spa, basically a place that cleans you in a fancy and relaxing way. It was an interesting experience. After that the two of us met up with Azrezel, which led to a conclusion that I''m embarrassed to admit that I was looking forward too.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 133

    Yesterday was a disaster, but not an unmitigated one.


    About halfway through the day, I was ambushed from above my forest, beyond the ability of trees to detect. They shot me with some kind of projectile enchanted with the plant destroying enchantment. Were my soul bound to anything other than my dungeon core I would have died right there, instead I was merely rendered unconscious due to the pain of having my entire body disintegrated instantly. I am glad that I cannot remember the pain.


    I was stupid to assume that I would not be targeted when assassination attempts were the core of their strategy from the very beginning. Why did it never occur to me to use the countermeasures we had developed on myself? That should have been the first thing I did, I am made of plants after all.


    I am lucky that my people were able to instantly respond to my distress and flock to my aid, without my hivemind or the teleportation system it is quite likely that the enemy would have been able to capitalize on my moment of vulnerability to kill me. Instead, the attackers fled without attempting anything. I knew I made the right choice when I decided to focus more on improving the lives of my people.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    While I made minimal progress over the last couple days, due in large part to my pain induced unconsciousness that even Flore wasn''t able to mitigate, the enchanters approached their work with a renewed vigor, and it showed. While they lacked any particular inspiration they worked their way through the grunt work in record speed, which is the only reliable way to make progress. They were able to add thousands of potential variations to the defensive enchantments, easily tripling what was there before. On top of that, they redesigned the whole thing in a way that has everything overlap in a way that dramatically reduces the required complexity and mana cost to achieve the same results. Not a new idea, and in fact it is an idea that they have been working to implement for quite a while. But with an enchantment so big and diverse it takes a lot of effort to pull off correctly.


    Other than that I hung out with Jasmine today, mostly it was her trying to console me and also getting angry about not being able to rip everything apart to find the person responsible for almost killing me. I think she has gotten a little attached to me. Also, it was weird having someone who is super angry try to calm me down while I am otherwise calm.


    Tiddol and Azrezel were also similarly angry, but their abilities actually let them do something without destroying everything in the process. So naturally, they were out doing something, namely hunting down as many of the enemy soldiers as they can and bringing them in to be interrogated by Ents specializing in using Lace.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 134

    My forest has reached the nearest city today, one that was already under our control. There were cheers as their city went from an island surrounded by hostile lands to a part of the main bulk of our empire. Some loyalists to the angelic council tried to stir up trouble, but they were kicked out of the city in a massive impromptu manhunt. That was a surprise to everyone involved, I never would have expected anything like that to occur.


    I checked up on Dulcian''s progress today and was pleasantly surprised. He has managed to reliably create a small bomb that makes use of nuclear fire without leaving behind any nuclear waste, something that will be important if we are ever going to make use of his talents. And we will be making use of his talents.


    The bomb is only as powerful as the most powerful alchemical bomb that Tiddol is capable of making. It can do a lot of damage, but nothing on the scale of what I have seen other nuclear fire wielders do. It won''t level a building on its own. The good news is that it is tiny, about the size of the palm of my hand, though Dulcian thinks that he can make it smaller.


    He is, unfortunately, not yet capable of making anything bigger with the same level of efficiency. That bomb might be good enough for killing soldiers, but not so much for anything else. And I really don''t want to take the risk that would result from using it against common soldiers.


    Other than that I spent my downtime helping Tiddol modify her body. She is still having some problems with her clockwork parts, but she has compensated for most of the physical problems. The mental problems, the anger, the lack of focus, are all still present, as is the twitching. She can compensate for the twitching through several methods, but she isn''t able to do so indefinitely,  and she can''t do it over her entire body at a time for longer than a minute.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I was helping her bind some of the wooden pieces to some of her few remaining flesh pieces so that she could mount something new to it. Her explanations as to what it is went over my head, but it seems to be something relating to alchemy. I think it is supposed to allow her to produce alchemical potions inside of herself more or less at will, assuming she set it up properly first.


    She is absolutely ready to evolve, but there is nothing to evolve into, and that likely will not change. The same problems exist, and we haven''t done anything that has had an impact on them. The only real solutions that might work are teaching me everything there is to know about clockwork so that I might be able to evolve her manually, or to somehow evolve an undead to have clockwork parts. That last one is, to my knowledge, more or less impossible due to the way the trees of evolution work, for much the same reasons that plants cannot become undead. Meaning I have no idea why, it''s just the way it is.


    The first one would be difficult, but not impossible. The only one with enough skill in the subject to teach me is Tiddol herself, but she doesn''t have the mental prowess to teach in the method that would be needed. Her issues already caused some problems when making the alchemy book, issues we were able to compensate for, true, and that is a simpler task than teaching. Plus Tiddol understands Alchemy way better than she understands clockwork, allowing her to be even better at correcting for mistakes. On top of all of that I have no talent for clockwork, even constantly observing it for months, sometimes even actively, and working with Tiddol on multiple occasions to help her out with clockwork related stuff I have learned almost nothing about the subject. It''s just kind of mind-numbing to me.


    I don''t think that it would be impossible to pull off, just long and hard.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 135

    The enchanters spent the last couple days studying the plant destroying enchantment that almost killed me. It is the single most effective plant destroying enchantment that we have seen so far, and likely could have overcame the defenses we were able to make use of at the time. Not that they would have been useless, just that I still would have been destroyed, only slower.


    However, studying it has significantly improved our countermeasures to it. The efficiency of the enchantment is now high enough that I can feasible make use of it in every single tree in my forest. I''m not going to do that as it would leave me with barely a trickle of mana left, but I could. I will, however, prep my forest so that I can activate that enchantment at a moment''s notice should the need arise. Who knows, maybe one day I will need to prevent the entire forest from being destroyed.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    I should ask the enchanters to figure out a way for it to activate automatically when the tree is being damaged by a plant destroying enchantment. Although maybe it would be better for me to figure out a solution for that, yeah I think I can do that one easier.


    I wish I could try to increase the production of my trees, that would be a fast way to solve the issue, but I''m getting worried that the mana density of my forest would rise too quickly for the mana based creatures to survive. Another thing to add to the list of stuff to figure out is a way to quickly acclimate mana based creatures to high densities of mana. It''ll be tough trying to figure that one out as I can''t really heal the damage caused by it.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 136

    Today I created a crude method to automatically trigger the counter-enchantments in case I am indisposed if, for example, I am in too much pain to react. This method is purely reactive and is very slow, basically, it waits until a decent chunk of my body has been destroyed before triggering, anything less and there are way too many false starts. At first I didn''t think that would be a problem, but it seems to disrupt my ability to use magic when active, and me using magic on myself is what causes the false starts to begin with.


    I''m certain that I could figure out solutions to these problems, but I wanted to get something working now in case I get attacked like that again. I''ll likely spend the next little while refining this trigger mechanism, but even if something comes up this is better than nothing.


    It feels really weird to rely on an imperfect mechanism like this. I''m so used to taking the time to perfect my creations that this just feels sloppy and uncomfortable. This is going to bug me until I fix it, but fixing it is going to take time that I''m not sure I''ll have. The enemy is constantly ramping up their assault against us, despite the offensive going on in the middle of their empire. I might have to take efforts to directly counter some new threat.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    My paladins are getting really good at large scale magic, even managing to figure out some very effective methods for doing magic in a group. Something that the scholars have told me is pretty rare and only really seen with runic and verbal magic, two things that aren''t seen often in this part of the world. I''m not sure why though, runic magic, from the sound of it, is just type of enchanting. And verbal magic, or using my magic by way of certain phrases or words, seems easy enough to teach someone. Musicians employ it all of the time, and great choirs of thousands of people can work some pretty amazing spells.


    It seems like there are a lot of things that simply aren''t common here, more than other places. I must have been born onto some kind of backwater continent no one really cared about until recently. It''s kind of sad to think about really, though it would help explain why my father settled down here, he did tell me he wanted a quiet place to raise a family in peace.


    My downtime today was mostly spent helping the scholars out with a couple problems that they didn''t have the expertise to solve. Mostly identifying plants or healing injured scholars, they even had one scholar who somehow still had an unexploded bomb implanted inside of him from that incident a little while ago. How it hadn''t gone off I have no idea, but it did seem misshapen.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 137

    We reached our second city today, this one did not join as nearly as willing as the previous one. It has massive plant destroying enchantments covering the walls, how they pulled an enchantment of that scale we have no idea. It is very crude, according to our enchanters. It relies on overwhelming resources to work it''s magic, and it definitely does have overwhelming resources.


    The city has yet to be claimed by us, I could take it right now if I wanted to but that would require revealing the trump card that is our ability to counter these enchantments by any method other than the most simple one. So instead I have been trying to destroy the enchantments the old fashioned way while others are trying to turn them off in different ways. Unfortunately, the inhabitants seem dead set on keeping us out of the city. If it weren''t for the fact that most of our best soldiers were augmented with plants this wouldn''t be nearly so difficult.


    I have no idea if we are making progress towards taking the city, and it is diverting valuable manpower from the front. I can only keep hammering away at its enchantments directly, attempting to counter their ridiculous amounts of mana with my own. This city simply isn''t valuable enough to reveal my trump card for.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    Maybe I could try a different method. instead of going through the walls why not go over them? It would be very difficult to grow a plant that goes over the walls without getting close enough to be destroyed by them while also avoiding being destroyed by the inhabitants. But I think I could do it. Then I could take out their center and we would have a bridge inside.


    It is worth a shot at least.


    Other than that I spent some time talking to Par, who was in the city for the day to get some supplies. Things are going well on his end, with so many troops diverted to deal with me their war effort has been a breeze. And with their focus on killing soldiers and destroying supplies, the enemy is being given little chance to recover. A tactic straight from their own book. And if we keep killing lots of soldiers then eventually mercenaries will stop working with them, regardless of how many resources they have.


    As much as I''m glad she''s not part of the fighting right now, I''m worried about the fact that Willow hasn''t shown up yet. Ignoring the fact that I want to talk to her, to understand why she betrayed us, she is a threat to us. She could easily stop us in our tracks for a little while if she wanted to, but she hasn''t. So what is she doing that is so important? Hopefully, she''s having some kind of personal crisis and is regretting joining with the enemy, but somehow I doubt it.


    I''m going to have to burn my Fate soon. I have no idea what I should try to spend it on.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 138

    As of today the anti plant destroying enchantments are now efficient enough for me to be willing to use them constantly. I''m not going to as I have found that it disrupts the natural flow of mana in my forest, which can''t possibly be good for the health of my trees. I did set it up so that I can trigger the enchantments nearly instantly, even improving my previous methods. So that shouldn''t be too big of a deal.


    I also spent some time refining the trigger mechanism I have on myself, it''s blanket ''if so much of my body is destroyed then turn on'' effect has some obvious problems. The most obvious is that if it wasn''t caused by a plant destroying enchantment then it would interfere with me trying to fix the problem that has caused me to lose a significant amount of my body. Plus if I am somehow low on mana and unconcious then this might be a death sentence, as it would use up all of my mana. But I did improve it a bit, it is still far from perfect but now it is less likely to kill me. Maybe I can set up something similar that is a bit more sensitive that will flood my body with Flore, killing any and all pain? Might be worth a shot, it would make it easier to act while under fire.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    We have made minimal progress in our siege of their city. They have successfully stopped every attempt I have made at growing a bridge over or under their walls. I''m half tempted to just pick up the city entirly, but I''m not sure if I am actually capable of that.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel. We found a nice, quiet, secluded spot in the caverns and had a picnic. It was just desserts. There are a lot of different types of dessert, way too many for either Azrezel or I to eat in a single day, but we sure tried out best. I''m also glad that I don''t actually store food physically inside of myself for any length of time, my digestive system still works exactly the same as a mana based creature. Still, I felt kinda bad for Azrezel, he was groaning in pain from eating too much. I offered to fix the problem, but he refused to let me.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 139

    The city my forest swallowed a couple of days ago has fallen. And I mean that literally. I dropped it into a sinkhole. It wasn''t enough to break everything, but it did do quite a bit of damage. Nothing I can''t repair and replace given enough time, but it was enough to cripple the city. I''m not sure anything less would have done the trick, the walls almost survived the fall, and the enchantments with them.


    This is just in time for us to come across the next city. Well, fortress would be more accurate. I think I''m just going to go right for the same tactic as last time, I don''t think anything else would work. I could just counter the enchantments, but a single city isn''t worth giving up that element of surprise. I want to try to lure in a large chunk of their army before revealing that card.


    So I have started excavating dirt and stone from beneath the city, far beneath the city as the enchantments on the walls stretch deep and I want to be sure of a victory. I have also started rebuilding the other one now that my people occupy it.


    While that takes a decent chunk of mana it didn''t take much focus, so I started discussing a way to try and lure in as many enemy soldiers as possible with the military-minded people and some of my Paladins. Pretty much everyone is in agreement that the only prize that the enemy would dedicate that much effort towards claiming is my life.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    So we need to figure out a way to bait them into launching an all out attack on me. Can''t be some kind of decoy, the way I interact with my forest passively alone would be enough to give away any decoy for a fake to anyone that knows how to look, not to mention the sheer quantity of mana that leaves my body every moment. So we need to show that I am vulnerable without me actually being vulnerable.


    Based on some information that my paladins have managed to gather, they are actively looking out for me through magical and mundane means. And I''m not exactly hard to find. So really I just need to stay in one place for a little while. somewhere close enough to the front. As scary as the idea of being bait for an entire army is, I think that it will be worth it in the end. I hope.


    I spent my downtime building a house. The one that I am going to live in for the next little while. I can normally build a house in less than a second, but I took my time to get it to be exactly how I wanted it, and then add intricate details to everything that I would normally ignore.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 140

    Today, before I had planned, the sinkhole I was opening up underneath the fortress collapsed. It did a significant amount of damage to the walls, but not enough. It will take a couple days of stripping away the enchantments and probing for weak spots before I can fully capture it. Not the worst fate in the world, but it is wasted time.


    Speaking of Fate, I will have to burn mine tomorrow. I think I will just let it happen and see what comes of it. Maybe I''ll get better at manipulating Fate. That would be the dream


    I spent most of my day trying to improve the natural resistance of my plants too the plant destroying enchantments. cooped up in a large, very visible, and obviously vulnerable house the goal is for me to get attacked by the bulk of their army. I mean finishing this project would also be great, but that isn''t strictly necessary.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    This is way more nerve-wracking than I expected it to be, and I expected it to be pretty nerve-wracking. Like I don''t expect the soldiers to really be able to hurt me, but just knowing that they are going to attack me at any moment makes it hard to focus on anything.


    I wasn''t able to do much with my downtime as I am not really leaving this area that I am at. So I ended up taking a nap, which did help calm my nerves quite a bit.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 141

    So our trap worked a little too well. Willow showed up and personally led the assault against me, and she almost killed me in the process.


    Luckily I managed to hold her focus long enough for the trap to be sprung, the scattered survivors didn''t survive long in my forest. But I''m not much of a fighter, and Willow absolutely is. It wasn''t so much a one-sided beat down, I would have died were that the case, but more a slow attrition where Willow burned through my body faster than I could mend it while I could barely touch her. Large swaths of my forest were burned away by her lightning and her bottomless mana pool. Something that is becoming irritatingly common. I would love it if everyone would stop trying to destroy my forest.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Willow''s lightning seemed to have an effect similar to Par''s fire, in that it restricts healing and growth. It isn''t exactly the same though, her lightning packs a lot more of a punch and the effect is weaker, temporary. If that weren''t the case I would have died. Another thing that is becoming irritatingly common.


    When Tiddol finally did show up most of my body had been charred away while Willow was a mess of bloody cuts that only went skin deep. And then she started to freak out, ranting about some kind of warning, about some ''goddess'', and about how all of this is somehow our fault. Eventually, she just ran away, leaving behind all of the destruction she caused and all of the corpses she made.


    I''m sure there is much that I can learn from this fight, but I just want to take a nap right now. I''ll think about it more in the morning.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 142

    Willow''s body has been improved with Solar Energy, that much is obvious. Achieving that kind of durability with mana would have been very obvious to me. The lightning was also based on Solar Energy, which supports that idea. I didn''t get a chance to study her body, but it is made of flesh and bone, otherwise she wouldn''t bleed. Which is very weird considering the fact that she was born a sprite, a mana based creature. It isn''t impossible for mana based creatures to evolve into flesh and bone ones, but it is incredibly rare. On a surface level, a transition to using Solar Energy could be enough to warrant such an evolution, but there is no reason to make such a transition if you are already made of flesh and bone, with a few exceptions.


    I highly doubt that Willow has become some kind of life mage, but there are other potential causes. I''m sure that I could, with a bit of effort and maybe some soul magic, figure out how to cause a mana based creature to evolve into a flesh and bone one, so it is reasonable that some other creature, maybe a dungeon or whoever that ''goddess'' that Willow mentioned, changed her. I doubt it was a dungeon, most of them see themselves as being above the concerns of non-dungeons, and the few that aren''t are only involved because they are weak enough to be threatened. And child dungeons wouldn''t have the resources to pull something like this off.


    It is also possible that Willow had someone teach her how to use Solar Energy in the same way I learned soul magic, and then she evolved into something with flesh and bone latter. But again, most of the creatures capable of that are dungeons, and Solar Energy isn''t exactly good at that kind of telepathy. And she would need something similar in order to be that good with Solar Energy so quickly. And even then, she wouldn''t be able to have such a durable body so quickly unless some powerful creature gave it to her or she was some kind of ridiculous prodigy, but if she were the latter she would be better at using it.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Obviously I can only guess at the cause, but lacking more information it seems pretty clear cut what is going on. Willow has some kind of patron, this ''goddess'' of hers, that has granted her power. Why? I do not know.


    Why does any of this even matter? Well, it could help us figure out how to better counter her if she shows up again, and she probably will.


    No, that''s not why. Well, it is a sound point, but that isn''t why I care. I kind of hope that it is some powerful creature that twisted her body and mind to be opposed to us. It would make a certain amount of sense for her betrayal to be unwilling or at least magically coerced. It wouldn''t make her actions forgivable just understandable.


    And I really just want the her that betrayed us to not be the same person that I watched grow accustomed to being alive, whose soul I seeded, the child that I failed to connect with. I don''t want that shard of innocence to have been corrupted.


    And really, I just want my oldest child back.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 143

    I finished repairing the damage from my fight with Willow today. Most of what was destroyed were trees, it pains me to say it but my trees are simple to replace.


    For the last two days we have marched nearly unimpeded through enemy territory, they just don''t have the manpower to slow us down anymore. Even their cities are undefended, as we found out when my forest swallowed one yesterday. Our trap worked, yeah we lost more soldiers than we expected to thanks to Willow, but our plan still worked. Even if these were all mercenaries and we didn''t kill their actual soldiers then this should still cripple them, I highly doubt mercenaries would be willing to fight a war with this kind of casualty rate.


    Now we just need to plan for their counter attack, their probably devastating counter-attack.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    This has turned into an arms race, hasn''t it? A race to see who can kill the most people the fastest. Why did this happen? I wanted to avoid killing people. This isn''t going to end, is it? Not until one of us lays down and dies. We have both killed way too many people for either side to submit, I know my own people would revolt and then fight to the last. And neither of us would ever accept a cease-fire, not without reparations. I could push for peace, but I don''t think it would accomplish anything more than getting my own people killed.


    I was the one who planned out the ambush, when did I become so bloodthirsty? The real problem is I can''t think of anything I would have done differently, except trying to get to know Willow better. I''m sure there is something that I am just not considering, but I can''t think of it.


    I think I need to think about this for a little while.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 144

    Tiddol''s parents got into town today, they spent all day unpacking their bags in the house I built for them. They brought a lot of stuff, more personal trinkets and items than I have ever seen in one place, much less owned. It was impressive in an odd way.


    Also, seeing the two gnomes next to their significantly taller daughter was cute. Although they were very worried about her appearance, the changes are rather striking. I imagine that it would be hard to ignore it if your daughter was suddenly made of tons of clockwork.


    I have come to the conclusion that killing people is fine, but only if my own people would suffer from leaving them alive. We should try to minimize casualties whenever and wherever possible, but enemy soldiers should not be spared.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Junior found a dead tree on the edge of my forest a couple days ago, I only found out about it today when my forest was talking about a weird tree that joined the forest, one that just wasn''t quite right. Junior had performed necromancy on the tree, and now I have an undead tree in my forest. I''m not entirely sure what to make of this, but it is interesting. I have never heard of an undead plant before, but there is no reason why it wouldn''t be possible. I wonder how it would be different from a normal undead or a normal plant. I''ll have to investigate that tomorrow.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 145

    We almost took another city today, only to get there too late to rescue the civilians from being purged. Men, women, sick, healthy, all of them burned to death in with a single, massive spell. If they were able and willing to do this to a single small, relatively unimportant city then they can do this again, and likely will. The last time they purged a city was because the city was in an ideal shape for the methods they had available, and they wanted to deny us their population.


    I don''t think that we can take another city without the same thing happening to them. It would be easy enough for me to stop it from hurting my own people, my forest is fire-resistant enough to render an attack like this moot, but if they bomb their own civilians like this then there is nothing I can do. I simply don''t have the time to put myself into a position where I can do something about it. Not without a month''s worth of practice and preparation, and maybe not even then as the enemy would no doubt also strive to perfect this method.


    The scholars are already referring to this as the bloodiest war in history. This isn''t a war, not really, this is a brutal slaughter, a game of chicken where neither side can afford to be the first one to stop anymore. If this is how they treat their loyal citizens, I have no doubt that they would do much worse to their enemies.


    I need to get my people out of their cities, now! I need to get their people out of their cities. They need to scatter into the hills, hide in hostile dungeons, dive into the ocean if necessary. It''ll kill fewer people. And it needs to happen yesterday, they need to get out of there before the enemy purges them.


    I need to calm down and think straight, rushing into this will only get more people killed. A coordinated mass exodus is the best solution, if everyone flees all at once then we should be able to get as many people as possible out. Fleeing for the hills is a bad idea, with that kind of magical might the vast majority of them will be slaughtered like livestock. I have no doubt that they can and would burn the hills themselves just to keep us from claiming them.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    There are no dungeons that I would be able to bribe that could protect all of these people. The only ones that could do it don''t care about any of the things that I have.


    That isn''t entirely true, there is one dungeon that might be capable of it, me. The only way to ensure that as many people as possible survive is to bring them directly here. City teleporters would do it. City teleporters are the only things that would do it, we never had any truly skilled teleporters. Even if we did, even a true immortal teleporter wouldn''t be able to pull something like this off on their own.


    Everyone agrees that this is risky. Everyone agrees that this is the only thing that might work. Everyone wants to save the civilians, though not all of us want to for purely selfless reasons. We need the population plain and simple, the war effort is unsustainable otherwise. It is easy enough to train a craftsman or a soldier, but we don''t have anyone who isn''t already either a craftsman or a soldier or contributing in some other specialized way.


    It is very risky, if we mess this up then we will end up with an army in our borders. But we can''t afford not to risk it.


    Three days, that is how long this will take to set up. That is how long this has to take to set up, any more than that and there is no point. People better at this than me will organize everything, I just need to prepare the welcoming comity. Simple things, like leveling one of the countless empty cities we have around its teleporter and setting everything up to welcome a vast amount of refugees, and an army.


    I should burn my Fate while preparing this.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 146

    Choosing a city to level was easy enough, I just picked a random uninhabited one. Most of them have a couple stragglers living inside, but a couple of them are actually completely empty.


    Leveling the city was a lot harder. I had to collapse every building without somehow damaging the city teleporter, and because of the way the teleporter is designed that means I need to minimize damage to the foundation of the city. All of this without being able to directly manipulate any of the buildings. The best I could do is lace the buildings with fungus, which gives me more or less direct control, but that method is both slow and isn''t universally applicable, and we have a time crunch. So I had to resort to much less controlled methods of demolition.


    Funny enough just lighting everything on fire proved to be very effective, yeah the wooden buildings were easy enough to remove, but getting the stone ones hot enough damaged them, making them easier to tear down. Plus the city teleporter was protected against attacks like that, being able to talk to the original architects made it a lot easier to work around it.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    So I basically just lit the city on fire a couple times and then cleared away all of the cracked and broken rubble before breaking down the now much weaker stone buildings. Making sure the buildings didn''t collapse too hard was difficult, but not unreasonably so, it mostly just took time and care.


    But by the end of the day, the only structure left standing was the city teleporter. I had to rush some of the buildings, and I wasn''t able to be a careful as I actually wanted to be, but I got it done with minimal damage to the teleporter. Now I just need to build up battlements and other structures that we will need. Like a place to store people while we sort them out and a field hospital, not that we are expecting many wounded.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel, spending a long time alone blowing off steam and not talking. It wasn''t great, I wouldn''t really call it fun, but it helped a lot.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 147

    With the city leveled and the ground flattened it was time to get building. For this I just followed the instructions of the specialists, and those instructions were very precise. Like really precise, seemingly needlessly so. I doubt it''s actually needless, they wouldn''t waste time with the time crunch that we have, but I am really the only person we have capable of building structures like this so quickly and reliably.


    My Paladins could pull it off, but not to this level of precision, or at least not nearly as quickly as I can. That being said, they were very helpful with the a lot of the grunt work, the parts that weren''t so precise like the walls.


    As for why such precision was needed, we were building siege weapons and other devices designed to protect our own people and prevent an enemy army from wreaking havoc while also sparing innocent civilians. The Balista specifically was capable of firing into a large crowd and only killing one person, or with a small change that can be done with little more than a thought by any plant manipulator can take out the entire group. From what I heard it would be more or less useless against any durable foe, as it sacrifices some power for control and accuracy, but it is no less impressive.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    There was also a rather large building designed to separate incoming civilians to let us examine them any way we could to make sure that they weren''t enemy spies or soldiers here to cause some harm. It is an imperfect system, the enemy is aware of our abilities to read minds and has no doubt figured out a way around that, and no other method is nearly as effective. Still, it should root out many potential problems, and we are mostly relying on speed to hopefully prevent any serious attacks by the enemy. If they don''t have time to prepare then they can''t throw anything big at us.


    And now everything is in place, well almost everything. We just need to open up the teleporter and welcome in the populations of as many cities as possible. I''m amazed that my people managed to convince so many civilians that this was a good idea, I guess news travels fast and no one wants to be caught up in a purge. Tomorrow will be a big day, and I''m excited, nervous, and terrified all at once.


    I''m going to put some finishing touches on everything, see if there is anything I can do to help right now. I just can''t sit still.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 148

    We managed to evacuate everyone possible without running into any issue we weren''t already prepared for. Soldiers came in and tried to massacre civilians, but our weapons took them out before any substantial damage could be done. There was a tough spot in there when someone started throwing a lot of lightning around, but luckily it wasn''t Willow and the enemy soldier was dispatched with a single shot from our fancy ballista.


    We found way more spies than I thought we would, but apparently it was about what the people who organized this whole thing expected. I have no doubt that we missed many of the spies, but none of them that we did catch had any skills or items that would be too dangerous to us beyond telling the enemy about our movements, so I''m not worried. I don''t imagine a spy can survive long in my home without outing themselves.


    I don''t imagine that anything big will come of this for a little while, so I think it is fine to relax for now.


    I hung out with Jasmine today, though maybe not for as long as I would have liked. She and the other nuclear fire wielders got in a couple days ago while I was busy with the whole ''all of the civilians are going to die if I don''t do something'' thing. They got done with the latest shipment and are heading out to collect more nuclear waste from one of the more dangerous sites, and they need all hands on deck to deal with it. Or at least that is the general gist of what was going on. Next time she is here she should be able to stick around for awhile longer.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    I''m pretty sure Tiddol''s mother really don''t like us. I can understand that given the state her daughter is in, but this goes a bit beyond that. She seems to think we are some kind of cult, which I mean, we are, kind of. I don''t think it is a cult if it is the official state religion, but regardless we are the leaders of that cult. She seems to really hate me, or at least I overheard a whole rant about why I am a bad influence on Tiddol and how Par is some kind of malignant evil being driven to burn everything they love into ash. The only one that she seemed to like was Umi, as they called Tiddol a horrible mother and a failure as a daughter after she refused to come home with them and refused to let her take Umi with her.


    When she stormed out after that rant I was worried that I was going to have to prevent her from hurting someone, or pissing someone off and getting hurt. But she saw me and went completely pale and stood perfectly still for a full three seconds before running away. I terrify her, and I don''t like that.


    I comforted Tiddol until she stopped crying, something that she hasn''t done in a very long time. Her metal form is cold and uncomfortable to hold, but she is my best friend, and I have no idea what I would do without her.


    I don''t think that we are going to see her parents again for a very long time.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 149

    Today we started organizing a festival. We are doing this for a couple reasons, two noteworthy ones. The first is to improve morale, something we definitely do need. The second one is to root out spies and other hostiles in the group we just picked up. A festival would be an ideal time to strike, and if we are prepared for it then we can both minimize damage and get rid of spies. Or at least that is the idea.


    This isn''t exactly something that requires my help, all of the preparations were done with plenty of time to spare. Enough space to fit nearly everyone in our empire and enough food and drink and meat to feed them all for a month if rationed liberally. There is no chance of us running out of anything. Preacher has even prepared a couple events.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    I won''t be attending, and neither will my inner circle. We are too valuable to waste here and our time is better spent elsewhere. It is more important that we take as much land and as many cities as we can before the enemy manages to recover from their recent injuries than root out some spies, and expanding my forest myself is the best way to do that while most of my paladins are spy hunting.


    Which is exactly what I spent my time doing today, expanding my forest as rapidly as possible. I have no doubt that the enemy can recover from any blow we deal them with enough time and aid from their patron, so time is of the essence. Especially now that we actually have a reasonable population size. With that and a solid strike against the enemy right now we could win this war within the year.


    I''m actually getting excited.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 150

    The festival was a mistake, and now everyone is dead. It''s my fault really, how could I not have thought of this possibility? How did the thought ''what if they have access to nuclear fire?'' never cross my mind. Of course they do. Why wouldn''t they? They are being aided by a creature more powerful than any true immortal, and the secret to nuclear fire is just so simple. It would weird if some creature from beyond the moons didn''t know the secret behind it, and of course they would tell their little pet how to murder millions of innocent people in under a second with the utmost efficiency. They obviously want to know, what with how zealous they seem to be about cold-blooded murder.


    Sure, I can bring back my Ents and my Paladins, but that hardly matters as they were maybe a tenth of the casualties at best. It wasn''t just the civilians we rescued, but nearly all of our civilians. Our craftsmen, our alchemists, our artists, our miners. We no longer have the population to sustain a military, not really anyway. Not on the scale that we need too. Sure, I can pull back my Paladins and have them make stuff, but they can only be in a couple thousand places at once. It will take a long time before they are good enough to fully sustain everything we need out of our military.


    Yesterday I was hopeful to see an end to this war, now that end is coming whether I want it too or not.


    Preacher is dead, it would be weird if he wasn''t. He was running the whole thing. His replacement named himself Whisperer and left my forest. I could find out where he is heading, but at the moment it doesn''t seem that important.


    Junior''s lover, that polite Frost Drake, is dead. I haven''t seen her like this since the original Erica Hornmark died. She seems dead inside, even when looking at her new clutch of eggs she looks hollow. I hope she doesn''t do anything rash. I wish I could do more for her, but the best I can do is comfort her.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    Now that the enemy has used nuclear fire the scholars have to openly back us, right? Nope, apparently not. Their higher-ups have voted to do nothing. Nothing! Sure they say that they will support us, but nothing that they can offer us is valuable beyond their overwhelming military might. Raw materials are worthless, they don''t have enough craftsmen to send us to make a difference, and they aren''t able to make and transport mass-produced goods in high enough quantity or quality to be relevant. They can offer us knowledge and teachers, but we simply don''t have the manpower to pull soldiers or craftsmen away from their work for long enough to make a difference.


    They will let us suffer and die just to hopefully find a way to counter nuclear fire, but I don''t care about that anymore. I''m just going to burn them all down. I already have enough nuclear bombs for it. If I spend a couple days making massive quantities of Requiem I could be at their capital in two weeks, and it''s not like there are any mana based creatures that would get killed by the massive increase in ambient mana levels, I had the few that were left either join my paladins or be evolved into something made of flesh and bone.


    This war will be over soon, and our great empire does not have the population to survive the end of this unifying factor. Already we are struggling to hold them together, pure spite and a desire for revenge is the only thing holding this small group of people together. My people always were spiteful.


    We had a good run, but it isn''t over yet and these are still my people. I will see to it that anyone who seeks to do them wrong dies, even if it kills me. And it probably will.


    You can''t escape the will of Fate after all. It is, in the end, neutral.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 151

    Today I visited Dulcian on the invisible island for the first time in a while. Yesterday when I said that I had enough nuclear bombs to level their cities I wasn''t completely sure. Now I know that my estimate was way off, Dulcian already has enough nuclear bombs to level the entire continent. He ran out of storage space for them a long time ago and has only kept the best of the best, and he has gotten very good. He has had to constantly expand and improve the facility just to keep from damaging the environment around it, he tried to explain to me how exactly he improved it but I get a feeling that he isn''t sure why everything he did works in the first place.


    As for Dulcian himself, I have never seen so much excess. I am providing him almost everything that he could ask for, but seeing the results is something else. He has more than a dozen slaves, and while he isn''t cruel they don''t seem to be doing much productive. A bunch of men and women just sitting there, looking pretty for him in every way they can imagine. He has an entire warehouse dedicated to cured meats, not just any old meat either, the type of stuff that takes a team of powerful adventurers to kill, often with several deaths in the process.


    He even set up an entire winery, complete with a massive garden to harvest fruits from, above the underground complex, and given a year or so I''m pretty sure it would be able to sustain his lavish lifestyle on it''s own. This is a good thing, as soon I won''t be able to sustain it myself. In order to ensure his loyalty to my people I took some time today to design an entirely new type of Ent whose sole purpose is to tend too, manage, and ensure a profit from the winery. I don''t want to be guilty of breaking promises, or at least minimize any guilt.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Keeping his services is expensive, especially now, but it is worth it given what he has given us, and his obvious loyalty. At this point I am confident that he would do anything short of die for me, which is exactly what I wanted from him in the beginning.


    This display of opulence feels off, almost wrong, to me with what has happened recently. I can get over it, but it still feels eerie. Besides, he has given us exactly the tools we need to strike back against our enemies. And with my massively increasing mana production thanks to Requiem, we will arrive at their gates soon.


    I only took a break because Tiddol outright abducted me and forced me to sit down and relax. I''m not sure why she''s worried about me, I feel fine, great even, driven. More so than usual. I am quite possibly doing some of my best work ever right now, the new type of Ent I created today is easily one of my most effective creations ever. I always work best when I have a goal, and never before has my goal been so important. But, I care about Tiddol a lot, I don''t want her to worry any more than she has too. So, for her sake, I will take a break and relax. I wonder if Dulcian would share some of his cured meats with me, they looked and smelled amazing.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 152

    Creating requiem is coming along nicely, by tomorrow it should have doubled my mana production. This is a fair bit faster than I had expected it to progress, I didn''t really understand just how fast the rate I would be able to build them would increase. And there is no sign of it slowing down either, I''m doubling my mana production in two days. I can cause significant damage to the entire world with this if I wanted too, I can''t let myself double it more than two more times, past that and I''m worried something bad will happen on a scale that I can''t imagine.


    This whole process started with me trying to figure out what the best shape for Requiem to be in was, only to rapidly figure out that just making entire trees out of little more than Requiem was the most effective method. It wasn''t the most productive method, that was a complicated lattice network that allowed mana to flow through it very easily, but it was the one that maximized the amount of mana that I can get ahold of.


    Already I am running into issues with this plan, namely my mana pool. My mana production has always been significantly higher than other people with my mana pool, by several orders of magnitude. Until now I have been using gemstones to compensate, and today my Demon Glass, the old low-quality stone that Mest gave me for my birthday, broke. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I feel numb. Just numb. It''s another casualty in this brutal, bloody war.


    It was the one of the last two items I had from the brothers, and they were brothers, by everything except blood. Everything else was destroyed when my house was destroyed by the enemy the first time. Now the only thing left is the knife Thes gave me, it hasn''t been used yet.


    My mana pool has not expanded significantly since I last evolved, the high-quality demon glass does improve, but not very fast. It would take decades to get what I need out of it. And with how much constant stress I am under my dungeon core is maturing a lot, at the expense of power, and power is what matters when it comes to mana pool size. If I could get ahold dead dungeon cores that would go a long way to solving that issue, but I can''t turn living dungeons into dead ones. Ignoring the fact that murdering innocent neutral parties is something I want to avoid when possible, slaughtering my fellow dungeons would see them ganging up to murder me. And if they find out that I am buying dungeon cores then that could cause some more issues. And it''s not like we have any on hand, I have already absorbed all of them.


    I don''t know if increasing the size of my mana pool will actually matter, but there isn''t much I can do about it right now. I don''t have enough money in the terminal to buy anything big enough to matter, and the scholars claim that they don''t have anything on hand. Buying something like that from a private seller could take months if I''m unlucky. So I just have to hope that nothing happens.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 153

    It Is almost scary how rapidly my mana production is growing. I''m glad I put so much energy into improving my ability to expel mana from my body last time I evolved, even if accidentally. If I hadn''t I would have long since reached my limit, but like this there is no end in sight. I will likely end up reaching my limit to spend this mana efficiently long soon, but that is why I had my Paldins train in large scale magic.


    It''s eerie how empty everything is, even the caverns that always had a low hum of the echoes of other people are quite. There are no real artists anymore, no one has time to make anything big. Not that there is nothing being created, just that no one is able to spend all of their time on it.


    Besides, we have all of the metal we could possibly need, why would we need to dig more caverns?Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with my father, who was feeling rather down today. He tried to hide it, but I know him better than anyone else alive, possibly even himself. He says that he is feeling off kilter, wrong. He''s had some time to reflect recently and has realized, not for the first time, that he has gone from a revolutionary fighting for fame and fortune and trying to minimize actual damage and casualties in his countless wars too being a key leader of a crumbling empire for the sake of his family and newfound people that is at the tail end of the bloodiest war ever. It is quite a stark change from his youth and the stories he would spread across the world. He has become what he spent his youth fighting. And I''m touched that he would go so far for me.


    I wish I could do more than offer reassurance that he is doing the right thing here by fighting against the people causing the bloodshed, and I don''t think my words alone are much help.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 154

    In two more days I will stop producing Requiem and start growing my forest again. From there it won''t be long before I reach their capital. And then everything will be over. We will have peace once our enemies no longer exist.


    Already those of my paladins that are made of mana are starting to die, but this is why I did not allow anyone not part of my paladins to continue to be made of mana. With me replacing their bodies with ones made of flesh and bone it won''t be long now before there are no mana based creatures in the entirty of our empire. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Tiddol. We ended up having a picnic in the caverns again, we wanted to go see a show but there are none playing. So we packed up a bunch of meats and cheeses and I made fruits and breads and other similar things and we had a small feast away from public eye. I could tell that she was putting a lot of effort into making me laugh and smile, though her jokes were often a little stilted. It was sweet, fun even. I''m glad that I got a chance to know her in this life.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 155

    Tomorrow is the last day I will create Requiem, anything more than that is dangerous. I''m not even sure I should be doing this much, but I can''t afford not too.


    At this point I am struggling to expell mana fast enough, it''s not impossible but my level of control does suffer. It isn''t bad now, but it is rapidly getting worse. Luckily I don''t need to control all of the mana I am using, I trained my paladins for a reason, but this will take workers away from producing nessecary equipment for our soldiers.


    I wonder if there is a way to fix this issue. There is probably very little I can do to improve my ability to expell mana on a physical level, that is already refined well beyond my ability to improve thanks to my last evolution. A bit of practice would certianly help, but it would take a long time to fix that issue. Maybe it has something to do with the size of my mana pool? None of the scholars I talked to knew anything about that off hand, but they promised that they would dig arround. Although I wouldn''t be surprised if they found nothing, no one has ever had such a disparity between mana production and mana pool size, and for that matter no one has ever had this much mana production. There isn''t enough atmospheric mana to support it, and those capable of creating mana are few and far between, and none of them have done so on this kind of scale. If they had there would be more mana.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    If this issue does have anything to do with my mana pool then I''m not sure that there is anything I can do about it. Removing the gemstones from my mana pool doesn''t have an effect on my control over mana, and adding a ton of gemstones would just make everything worse. The only way that I could really increase the size of mana pool is through my dungeon core, and the only way I can think to do that would be to do nothing with my mana, or at least the only way that doesn''t risk the ire of powerful dungeons. And that would likely be for naught due to the constant emotional and magical stress that I am under, though it would likely make my dungeon core mature very rapidly.


    I wonder what kind of effects that would have. It generally expands your capabilities and I know some of the big ones, like soul manipulation, but I never looked out beyond a couple decades for a normal dungeon. My core is definitly maturing much faster than average simply because of how much mana is constantly flowing through me, but by how much I wonder. I''ll ask around the terminal, someone probably knows, some dungeons have been arround for thousands of years after all.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 156

    Today was interesting to say the least. Everything started about an hour after I made a post on the terminal about my current state asking for advice when a couple dungeons basically called me a liar despite the fact that all of this information, and much more, is avalible for anyone to see on the terminal. And to the best of my knowledge no one has figured out a way to stop that or make it lie. Of course there was some real disucssion, some of it rather useful and interesting. Apparently the level of power of my dungeon core is so low that there is nothing for it to consume in order to grow more mature.


    And then a group of twenty dungeons decided to attack me all at once, without my consent. I immediatly had a small group of my paladins shut down the advances of those dungeons while I continued to discuss with the other dungeons. The conversation quickly turned into a discussion about potential cures, and among them the one that seemed to be repeated most frequently was dungeon cores, but it always seemed to be in a jokeing way. That was until someone mentioned that I was at war with twenty dungeons and had been for over an hour, and that there had been no formal agreement between me and any of those dungeons prior. Meaning that I could take anything I wanted from them, even their lives, without fear of repercussion. The dungeons seemed to think that was funny, most thinking I was doomed to die until I asked if that meant it would be fine if I just slaughtered them. Everyone was quiet for a solid minute, in which time one of my paladins managed to take the core of the dungeon he was supressing too me.


    Very quickly the other dungeons started pleading for their lives, but they have already declared themselves my enemies and the enemies of my people, and no one powerful enough to matter would complain if I took what I wanted from them. Infact dungeons were encouraging me to do that, outright telling me to kill them and take their stuff, some of them even saying that if I failed they would take care of it themselves. It seems that attacking someone like this was even more of an insult than I thought.


    The weird thing is that none of these dungeons are strong enough to actually threaten me, even grouped up together they are mostly a nusicence. And they terminal gives a lot of data about each dungeon, so it should be pretty obvious whether or not they could take me on and win. So naturally I asked about it, and apparently, based purly on the numbers that the terminal shows, I am increadibly unstable and weak. The power level of my core is increadibly low, pretty much every dungeon with a similar power level has not woken up yet, they are still mindless gemstones. The amount of land I occupy is increadibly high, most ancient dungeons fall far short of the half continent that I control, and large amounts of land, especially coupled with a weak core, is generally indicative of an unstable dungeon that is streached too thin. The number of creatures I control, which only considers the ones whose souls I seeded, is large for the maturity of my core, but tiny compared to the amount of land I control. It is also a tiny part of my military might, most of my Ents are craftsmen, not soldiers. The only thing that hints at me being more powerful than I apear to be is my mana production, which is rediculously high.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    All of that adds up to me looking like a jucy target to a group of dungeons that think that they can profit a lot from the stuff that they can steal from me. And they aren''t wrong, they can profit quite a bit. Getting ahold of the corpse of one of my more powerful Ents would give any of them a massive edge simply with what they could learn from breaking it down. Any damage that they do to my dungeon itself, any territory that they cost me and anything they destroy would be money that they would be stealing out of my wallet. As long as they don''t try to take my core they should be able to get away without an ancient dungeon deciding to punish them. Of course all of that means nothing if they can''t actually break or steal anything and survive long enough to retreat.


    But as it is, in less than three hours my paladins managed to mop them all up. And I was presented with a small hoard of some of the most valuble gemstones in the world. Along with a bunch of very interesting information, though not much of it is immediatly relevent to my situation. It is interesting that I should be developing soul perception here within a week or so, but it''s a little late for that. I should also gain a much sharper mana sight here pretty soon, especially now that my core is maturing without being inhibited by my lack of power. There is also a whole bunch of stuff that is super useful for a traditional dungeon but just isn''t useful to me, like the ability to freely manipulate doors or being able to project an avatar, two things I am already capable of. I don''t exactly build things the way dungeons do and I had a body long before I had a core. There is also some stuff about just generally being able to percive things better in the dungeon, which ultimatly leads to some limited ability to tell the future. That is interesting, but probably beyond what I will be able to make use of any time soon.


    And there was something else, an offer from an ancient dungeon. Apparently my situation caught his eye for similar reasons that it caught the eye of the scholars. He is basically willing to offer me regular dungeon core fragments, ones that he breaks off of his own core, in exchange for me attaching a device onto my core that will moniter it and provide him data for his own research. I took him up on the offer, it isn''t anything more invasive than what the scholars are doing.


    All of that coupled with me creating the last of the Requiem resulted in a very interesting day. Tomorrow I begin advancing on the enemy again.


    I feel better today than I have in weeks.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary

 Day 157

    I was right, making my core more powerful does increase my mana pool. After all was said and done it was increased by half, a surprisingly small amount when you consider just how much mana a lot of the basic functions of a dungeon consumes. And I was also correct in thinking that my mana pool was restricting my ability to control my mana, but not in the way I had thought. Where I had thought that it limited how much mana was able to flow out, similar to how pipeweed functions where only so much mana or solar energy is able to flow through it at a time, instead increasing the size of my pool seems to decrease the effect that the unformed and chaotic mana coming into my pool has on the stuff going out. It gives it a chance to sit and calm down before focusing on something new. If it weren''t for my hivemind I would have started having problems with this sometime last year, it takes quite a bit of concentration to force mana to settle like that, but unless it gets really bad, like what happened to me, it is only a lot on the scale of a single spell, doing it in mass is a lot easier.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    All of that is to say that my immediate concerns are dealt with and now I can focus all of my efforts on taking the enemy capital. The faster I reach it the better. But I can''t really take any of my Paladins away from crafting if I can help it, the army is already struggling with a lack of supplies. If they don''t get as much support as we are able to offer they might collapse under the onslaught of the enemy before I can provide support.


    So I spent the bulk of my day designing a tree that I can grow extremely quickly, that supports the infrastructure I have already built up, and that I can easily improve to be on the level of my other trees. And now that it is complete I don''t think it will take long at all to reach Parius.


    Other than that I spent my downtime with Azrezel, blowing off some steam in the bedroom. I definitely needed that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 158

    Two days, I give it two more days before I can come to the rescue of our great Emperor. As long as nothing happens in that time we will be just fine. Their common soldiers are nothing noteworthy, at least not compared to our own, and the few elites that they have currently on the field aren''t enough to overcome our own quite yet, but they are trying to leverage their own surplus of elites to their advantage, and given enough time they will succeed. We have no idea what ''enough time'' means here.


    But there is nothing I can do that I am not already doing, so I shouldn''t worry about it. I do worry about it, but I shouldn''t. I am already expanding my forest towards them as fast as I possibly can without opening up vulnerabilities that would potentially cripple us. Creating more supplies for them with magic would be a waste of mana, it''s better spent moving quickly. On such a short time scale designing something new for our craftsmen to create would be a waste of time, we would waste more time teaching them how to work everything than we would make up for with that item. The only thing I might be able to do is to buy something from the terminal that I could send to the front lines, but any discreet item I could buy feels like a waste of money and buying the schematics to make anything would be a waste of mana.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    So really I should relax. But there is nothing to do. Pretty much every avenue of entertainment that I had has dried up. There are no more restaurants, and besides, there isn''t anyone to go out to eat with right now. No more stores, and that isn''t any fun without company. There is no new art in the caverns, and seeing the old stuff is fun, but it feels dull without a companion. My dad, who would usually love to tell me stories of his youth, is off on the front lines with his soldiers. Tiddol is busier than the other craftsmen, there are some very valuable supplies that only she can make efficiently, and it''s the same story with nearly everyone else. Everyone is scrambling to deal with the current crisis, and no one, except me, can afford to take any free time.


    I''m bored, and there isn''t anything valuable I can do with my time without using mana. And there is very little entertainment left. Maybe the scholars will lend me a book, it isn''t like they are doing much else for us.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 159

    It is only a matter of hours before I reach our army. I can see them fighting in the distance, struggling under the assault of an army an order of magnitude larger than our own. Or at least it looks like it.


    I''m so close that I can almost reach out and touch them, but I''m still stuck here sitting around and doing nothing. Luckily I got a book I could borrow, so I''m not completely bored, but still. There is nothing productive I can do with my time.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    The story I read was ok, just ok. The conversations felt stilted and forced, the plot had more holes than a net, and the bad guys were completely one dimensional. But the characters were somewhat compelling. I actually cared about their struggles, despite the story''s other failings. I can''t say I cried when characters died, but I wasn''t completely unmoved.I didn''t shout for joy with their triumphs, but I still shared in their victories.


    Overall it was a pleasant distraction. I kind of wish I had the time to read more often.


    I wonder if this will be the last book I ever read in this life. Possibly.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 160

    I made it in time, thankfully. We suffered minimal casualties over the last couple days, which is amazing considering just how much the enemy outnumbers us.


    Once I reached the fighting they attempted to use their plant destroying enchantments, which I shut down immediately. Seeing that their primary weapon against me is doing nothing they started to flee, and about half of them have managed to get away from my grasping forest. This was a big blow against the enemy, but it is not big enough to turn the tides, it''s not enough to cause them to collapse.


    I had to fend off the attacks of several of their elites, and I think I did pretty well at not dying. I''m not exactly a warrior and my focus was mostly on thinning their ranks, but it caused enough of a distraction for the actual warriors, my dad, Par, and Askos surprisingly enough, to cripple and kill them. Not all of them, but definitely more than half.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    It won''t be long now before we reach their capital. Three days, two if we manage to keep enemy harassment to a minimum.


    Now we have dodged the biggest danger, our forces are no longer at risk of someone like Willow showing up and butchering everyone. We can relax a little, not a lot, but we don''t all have to be constantly vigilant. Unfortunately, it looks like everyone is going to be just as busy as before, preparing for the next incoming disaster instead of preventing one that is potentially happening right now. This is a good thing for our long term survival, but it means I need to figure out how to entertain myself.


    Maybe I will focus on improving my soul or cultivation, there isn''t exactly much else to do that doesn''t require mana.


    Yeah, I think I''ll do that.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 161

    I spent the day focusing on refining my soul. It''s amazing what you can accomplish in a single day when you have functionally unlimited resources and the might of a hivemind behind you. Even with how rapidly these soul exercises consume the shell of my soul, I have way more energy than I could possibly need on account of how many people have died in my territory recently. Having nearly everyone in the entire continent blown up in a single attack tends to kill a lot of people.


    Sure, focusing on cultivation would provide a lot more immediate benefits, but I''m expecting to die in the near future. Cultivation is almost never preserved post reincarnation, while improving my soul will make it much more likely that I will be able to reincarnate myself into something good. It''s not a sure thing, obviously, I would need several years worth of improvement and several attempts at reincarnating myself before I could pull it off reliably, but it gives me a fighting chance. And doing that to someone else is completely different to doing it to yourself, it''s pretty hard to have control when you are nothing more than a soul.


    As far as our march towards the capital, it''s going about as well as we expected. They are sending pretty much everything at us now, even Willow and her party has joined the fray. She gets shut down almost immediately every time she pops up, but it pulls our most valuable fighters away from other tasks for a time. Still, we have managed to kill a couple of her companions. Hardly a perfect result, but we can''t really expect one.


    They don''t really have a way to stop the advance of my forest, but we don''t have a way to break their army. Once we reach their capital there will be a stalemate, and, were I not to use a nuclear bomb, would result in a drawn-out siege that would see our empire collapse under its own weight long before the enemy would submit. And I highly doubt the city busting techniques I have used before would be effective, as well as several I haven''t thought to try.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Their nuclear fire user has not joined the fight quite yet, but we are already preparing countermeasures for when they inevitably do. This is assuming that they didn''t somehow kill themself in the attack, which is entirely possible, but I would be surprised if there wasn''t more than one of them.


    I''m thinking that the most effective method would be to just drown them in as much mana as possible, get enough and it will render nuclear fire useless. To that end I have set up a system of Pipeweed running through the roots of my forest in order to allow me to dump tons of mana on a spot with pinpoint accuracy. Obviously, we don''t really have a way to test this, so I hope it just works, but things rarely work out like that. It''s not like I can abandon the front lines right now to test some hypothetical counter to a potential future threat when I have to be able to react fast enough to keep a very real and very present threat subdued as much as possible. Willow and her party will kill a lot of my people very quickly without my interference, while a nuclear mage might kill a bunch of my people if they group up.


    So staying on the front lines and refining my soul while I wait for someone important that I need to pin down for others to deal with is how I expect to spend the next few days. It feels better than just sitting arround and trying to entertain myself at least.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 162

    Today I laid my eyes on the enemy capital for the first time. I can see why they chose this city. Its radiant walls put pearlhold to shame. There is a permanent sunbeam striking the city just right to produce a truly dazzling result, like perfectly cut gemstones. I''m pretty sure some of the buildings are actually made of gemstones too, which is crazy, who has that much of any kind of gemstone? Certainly not me. We didn''t exactly pull many of them out of the ground, and the ones we did weren''t exactly high quality.


    I can see why they chose this city, although the fact that it is their capital probably played more of a role in its splendor than anything else. I almost feel bad for wanting to destroy it, almost.


    We will reach their city in a matter of hours, and they are working double-time to stop us. Or more specifically they are trying to thin our numbers, from what we have learned from the commanders that we have captured they are very aware of our precarious situation. They believe, rightly so, that we will completely collapse if they manage to kill a good chunk of our soldiers.


    The last remaining member of their ''angelic council'' has taken the field today as well. They aren''t quite as durable as Willow, but they have a much greater potential for destruction. We need to take them out if we are going to reach the city, and all we need to do is reach the city.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Whisperer popped back up in an explosive way. A suicide bombing, a very effective suicide bombing. He managed to take out not only their nuclear fire wielder, but also the majority of their reserve forces, or at least that is what he said to me over telepathy before detonating a collection of alchemical explosives. He was asking for permission, he wanted to ensure that he was serving me well in death. I told him to do it, saying to myself that I would save his soul and reincarnate him, knowing full well that grabbing a soul from that kind of distance is really hard, grabbing a specific soul that you aren''t familiar with from a crowd of them is also really hard, and doing both at the same time is nearly impossible for me. I failed, I knew I was going to fail. I have ordered people to their death before, to fight against an enemy that would see us all slaughtered, but I have never ordered someone to die for me, not without immediately bringing them back in a new body. I would do it again given the option, but it makes me feel sick. I hate this, I just want it all to be over.


    We just need to take out their leader and it will be, or maybe not even that. All we need to do is keep him occupied for a couple minutes, which is easier said than done. I think we can do it, we have no choice but to do it.


    I need to prepare and make sure everything is ready.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 163

    Our perfect opportunity came sooner than expected. Their leader fell right into our trap, which we sprung perfectly. Everyone played their parts perfectly, we had him pinned down and we had people absolutely shredding him. And we failed.


    We spent nearly every last resource we had. We don''t have enough weapons, armor, potions, or anything else you might need to keep an army working. Not by a long shot. We no longer have enough people to have an army, much less sustain one.


    The enemy had some kind of method to interfere with anyone trying to teleport anything into the city. That is pretty standard during wartimes, but we weren''t aware of the exact function of it, nor if it was possible to bypass it. We knew that it was always possible to bypass it through brute force, but that might have unintended consequences. I didn''t want to risk those consequences so we tried to get close enough to just drop the bomb into the city. That''s no longer possible.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Dulcian is very good at creating nuclear bombs, he has spent much of his time experimenting to figure out how best to create them. He also has a lot of bombs, more than I care to count. I used all of them, teleporting them all one by one into their city, using as much mana as I possibly could and teleporting them in as fast as possible.


    I quickly found out the nature of their defenses, when a bomb hit an uninhabited part of my forest nowhere near the city. It sends the teleported object to a random location.


    I quickly ordered my people to flee, and Whisperer''s replacement, a female hobgoblin who took up the mantle of Banneret, took charge and organized everyone remarkably well. It didn''t take long for the only ones to be left on this continent were my Ents and my Paladins, Par, my dad, Azrezel and his undead, and Tiddol.


    The continent is devastated. nearly half of it has been leveled by nuclear bombs. But it worked, their capital has been destroyed and along with it all of our enemies are dead, or at least I hope that they are.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 164

    Willow and her party survived, why would I expect anything less? She is slaughtering those of my people that stayed behind after the city fell, but thankfully all of them are people I can bring back.


    We are trying to pin her down and it isn''t working. She is slippery and powerful, no matter what any of us do we can''t keep her in one place long enough for our heavy hitters to reach her. I''m not even sure we can beat her, even with Emericus and Jasmine assisting us. No other nuclear fire wielders are here, just Jasmine.


    We haven''t completely failed, we have managed to kill one of her companions. There are only two left at this point.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    I have been focusing my efforts on cultivating my body with Solar Energy, and not the slow, clean, perfectly effective method either. I''ve been taking shortcuts and sacrificing long term profits for short term power, exploiting my knowledge of anatomy to squeeze as much power out of solar energy as possible in a short amount of time. If I survive this then I will have crippled my ability to progress along this path in the near future. But for now, I feel amazing like I could carry the world in my hands. And besides, it would be no great loss to build myself a new body after all is said and done.


    With a couple days of this we might actually win in a fight. And at this point I just want it all to end, as long as my people are safe I care little about the results.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Day 165

    Willow has some sort of method to damage the soul. We had thought that it wouldn''t hurt to let her continue to kill the ones that I can bring back to life, but we were wrong. Sure, they still aren''t permanently dead when killed, but their memories and their personalities are being eroded. I should have noticed this sooner.


    I ordered all of my Paladins and all of my Ents to withdraw, all they were doing was distracting her. And now that all of her companions are dead it''s not like they would be much use in a fight against her, not without a couple years of training for my paladins.


    And now there are only ten sentient creatures in this entire continent. Myself, Tiddol, Parius, Azrezel, two of Azrezel''s undead lieutenants, Jasmine, Emericus, my father, and Willow herself. I''m surprised that Jasmine and Emericus will be joining us for this, but I''m thankful for their assistance. I hope this will be enough.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    We don''t have much time to prepare, I need to spend it squeezing as much power out of my body as I can.


    Honestly, I''m terrified. I don''t want to fight Willow, she is still my oldest child. I don''t want to see her hurt my friends and my family any more than she already has. I don''t want to see any of them die. I don''t want to die.


    I am going to die here.


    Running away was never an option, no matter how much I wish it was. I can''t flee and willow would pursue those who could after she killed me. There is nowhere I can hide where she won''t find me, I''m sure she has some stupid method to track down anyone. She seems to be capable of anything else she needs to be capable of to spite me.


    Regardless of the results, this is going to be the end. We had a good run. We built an empire. We formed a culture, a people, and spread them to the far corners of the world. We built something that will echo in the minds of the great empires of the world for millennia to come. We left scars on the world, and it will never forget us.


    Or at least I hope it won''t.


    Please don''t forget us.


    I''m not sure I can face that kind of oblivion after all of this.

 Day 167

    We won. Willow is dead. It was a long, hard battle. We expected nothing short. We aren''t unscathed but we are unbroken. No one is dead or dying.


    No one, that is, except me.


    My body is unraveling and my dungeon core is shattered. Either of those problems alone would be easy enough to fix, or at least survive. Already my connection to my forest feels distant, anemic. My control over magic the same.


    It''s not all without hope, I can try to reincarnate myself. I am reasonably certain that I will succeed. Making a body is something I have done millions if not billions of times, and transferring a soul from one body to another is something I have done thousands. With a bit of Fate I think I can pull it off, but I don''t have much time to try. Already my soul is starting to slip loose from the fragments of my core.


    I hope I''m not just deluding myself.


    I''m stalling the inevitable, aren''t I? Everyone else is unconscious or otherwise indisposed, nothing they won''t recover from, but they won''t be recovering quickly. None of them will be getting a chance to say goodbye. I won''t be getting a chance to say goodbye.


    I just want my dad to tell me a story one last time before I leave. But I won''t live long enough to hear the ending.


    Maybe I should tell him a story this time. Yeah, I think I''ll do that. I''ll leave my diary for them.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    To Tiddol


    Thank you for being my best friend, for everything we shared together. For sticking with me in the good times and the bad. You are the closest thing I ever had to a sister.


    To Parius


    We never would have made it anywhere without you. You made us much grander than we otherwise could have possibly been. You were like a brother to me, and I admired you for everything you managed to accomplish. Please make sure our people prosper in the future, and please take care of Tiddol for me.


    To Azrezel


    It''s kind of funny, we were like gods to them. All of us were, but the two of us more than the rest. Me, the goddess of life and creation, and you the god of death. And now the goddess of life is leaving this world behind. I loved you, love you, in a way that I never loved anyone else. With a kind of cold passion, an endless drive that I don''t think I can ever forget.


    To Dad


    I''m sorry. I''m sorry I wasn''t able to give you the quiet retired life you wanted. I know that is why you settled down with mom, so that I wouldn''t be able to get into trouble out of your sight. I guess I found a way to do that anyway. I''m sorry I wasn''t a better daughter. But please indulge one last selfishness from me, please take care of your grandchildren. I made sure to leave you plenty of them, just like you wanted. Please share your stories, and mine, with the world again. Please forgive me, and know that I love you.


    To Junior and Askos


    Take care of yourself, my apprentices. You have the weight of both myself and the Hornmark name behind you, you will accomplish grand things if you so much as try. Grander than I can even imagine right now. Take your legacy and thrive.


    To Talus


    You were my first, you always will be. And though I can''t say ''I love you'' anymore I can say thank you. Thank you for everything you did for me. And good luck with your future endeavors. You can take the world by storm if you try.


    I don''t have much time left, I don''t think I''m going to succeed. But I have to try anyway.


    Anyway, Good Night Diary.

 Epilogue: Parius, The Once-Emporer

    My Queen is dead.


    I was the first to find her broken body, laying on top of a perfect replica of herself. Oh, how her burned and twisted form made my heart ache and my bones quiver. No sight could be more horrific. More terrible and vile than even the worst of our enemies.


    I do not remember how the fight ended. One moment I was engaged in glorious combat with a worthy enemy with my greatest allies at my side, and the next I was waking up to a green sun rising over the horizon.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    We held a funeral that day. It was a small thing, not worthy of someone so grand. But my lover says it''s what she would have wanted, and she always knew My Queen better than I.


    We''ve lost so much, nearly everything. And though our enemies are dead and gone we still need to rebuild.


    It is what my queen commanded of me.


    The forest cast us out after that, it was grieving the only thing it ever loved.


    And now we rebuild in a new home. Our people are scattered now, our homeland has been cut off from us, but we can form a new homeland. We can rebuild.


    My Queen will be back, of this I have no doubt. I want to present this world to her when she returns. Nothing short of perfection is acceptable.


    It may take decades or even centuries, but it will be done.

 Epilogue: Tiddol

    An amalgamation of clockwork and flesh in the form of a woman stands in front of a classroom. The students sit in rapt attention, some excited to learn, others terrified of displeasing their professor.


    "Good morning class, my name is Tiddol, but you can refer to me as Profesor until I say otherwise. As you no doubt already know I am the foremost expert in the field of clockwork biology, why else would you spend so much money to be a part of this class in particular. Now, any questions before we begin?"


    Nearly half the students raised their hands, and the ones who didn''t looked expectantly at the ones who did.


    "Yes, you in the back. You had your hand up first, what is your question?" The professor asks a young lesser devil girl.


    "Are you the Tiddol? Like the one who Erica called her best friend?" The student asks, her eyes starstruck.


    With a sigh, the professor addresses the class "are there any questions that aren''t about my relationship with Erica?"


    Every student put their hands down. There is a tense disappointment in the air and many students stop paying attention entirely.


    "Fine, as it seems like we won''t be getting any work done until this is discussed I''ll tell you all about her. But only on the condition that every single one of you focus on my lessons afterwords. Do we have a deal?" The professor asks, her metallic voice both irritated and hopeful.


    Every student rings out some sort of affirmation, from a ''yes'' to a ''sure'' to just a simple nod.


    "Alright then, I''ll hold you to it. Where to start."The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "Sometimes I regret meeting Erica. She took every single aspect of my life and made it more, for good and for ill.


    "She may have seemed like a clutz on the outside, but few were convinced of her act. She was as cunning as she was crazy. She grew obsessed with ideas and built wonders with her bare hands. I am simply one of those wonders, and I loved her for it.


    "When I first met her I just wanted to find a safe place to stay for my team while we prepared for the next dive, and it''s hard to do better than a forest sprite''s domain. Outside of a city of course. At that point no one could have predicted who she would become, least of all me.


    "We got along well enough, she was bright and happy and she always tried to make us laugh, though she wasn''t very funny. And she got attached to me, in hindsight you can hardly blame her. I probably reminded her of her father to be honest, the great Erik Kron, revolutionary extraordinaire, the archetypical adventurer for an entire generation.


    "She changed, for lack of a better word, as time went on. She was always obsessive, but she became more so with time. She was the ideal scholar according to many, always pursuing knowledge for no other reason than her own curiosity.


    "Outwardly she became rather unstable too, always having minor accidents or tripping over something or some other ultimately inconsequential incident. And she always reacted as if it was the end of the world, only to have completely forgotten about it not even a moment later. I know now that it is because of her so called ''Fate'' but it still left a certain impression


    "I do admit that I loved her like a sister, she really was my best friend. But she also terrified me. Many people see her as something so much better than the person she was, she was no saint, no epitome of kindness, nothing like that. She was better than most, I will grant you that, she had more empathy than anyone I''ve ever met before, and likely ever will meet. But she was more vicious and spiteful as the rest of us combined, just a lot slower to anger.


    "Without her I never would have met Parius, I never would have created an entirely new tree of life, I never would have had two lovely children. But without her I never would have had my flesh torn to ribbons and been forced to replace my body with clockwork, I never would have found my child''s corpse, I would still be on speaking terms with my own parents.


    "Without her I would be less than I am today. Erica was special, there will never be anyone quite like her again.


    "Now, can we get onto the lesson at hand?"

 Epilogue: Willow

    It''s dark and warm, so warm. So pleasantly warm. And the beating, like a drum, it''s soothing. But it won''t last. Why won''t it last?


    It''s bright now, so very bright. Someone is screaming, I am screaming. Why am I screaming? Why is it so cold?


    What happened last? My mind is so foggy. Everything is a blur. I remember a deal, a contract, it makes me feel regret. What do I regret?


    My friends, we were trying to help people, right? Yeah, that sounds right. So then what do I regret? Did I hurt someone? I, I think I did.


    Who did I hurt? Why? My head hurts. Why won''t the screaming stop?


    I made a deal, with who?


    Mommy, she told me to stop. Stop what? I can''t remember. Why didn''t I listen? My friends got hurt because I didn''t listen.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    Why did my friends get hurt? Did I hurt them? I''m not sure. I think I caused them to be hurt.


    Where are they now? They died, didn''t they? Why did they die?


    The contract, we wanted power. I wanted power. I got what I wanted, but what did it cost me? Too much, I lost too much.


    But what did I lose? My friends? My family? I think the answer to both of those is yes.


    Everything feels clearer now. I died, didn''t I? But I''m alive, so did I reincarnate? How? I died inside of a dungeon, I shouldn''t have been able to reincarnate.


    Why did I die inside of a dungeon?


    I tried to kill Erica. I almost succeeded. Why would I do that?


    I tried to not kill the others, but she wouldn''t let me spare Erica. Why not? Who is she? Is this related to the contract?


    Yeah, I think it is.


    I remember now, I was granted power in exchange for slaying ''a great evil''. Was Erica that great evil? Why? She didn''t seem very evil when I knew her.


    I remember it clearly, it still hurts. I ran away from home, from the forest. She failed, we all failed. It wasn''t her fault, not any more than mine. So why was I so angry at her? Why was I so spiteful?


    I don''t know. I feel so tired.


    I hurt her, I hurt everyone. I think I will try to make it up to them, if they will let me.


    The screaming has stopped, and everything feels so heavy and warm, and the drum beats are back. I think I''m going to take a nap. Good Night.

 Epilogue: Observers

    A trio of beings stand on the surface of a pale white moon, staring at the planet above them.


    "So what''s the verdict?" A young-looking man asks.


    "Good end." An old man with eyes that look to the future responds.


    "How? She lost? She died!" A passionate woman shouts with a booming voice easily achieved through body cultivation.


    "And if she had won?" The young man asks.


    "Bad end. Would have made this whole thing a waste of time." The Oracle replies, obviously relieved.


    "Wasn''t she the one you guys wanted to groom for this role? How can she do that if she''s dead?" The woman asks, confused as she looks up at world she crafted with her own hands. "What happens now?"


    "She would have eventually become our equal had she lived, yes, but she would have never have expanded off this planet. With no stars left there is little to strive for in the night sky. And she never truly believed there was more out there, or at least not anything she could have reached." The oracle answers with confidence.


    "So that''s why you guys had me bless those angels? To kill her? It sounds to me like we are back at square one. Is it the cyborg chick next? she seemed like she had potential. Craftsmen make great empires."


    "Craftsmen make fragile empires, they never outlive the craftsmen. No, the plan still holds as it is. She is both Fate blessed and a soul mage, her successful reincarnation is inevitable." The young man says, speaking from eons of experience. "Besides, hive minds are much more stable. If their centerpiece dies it will usually just reincarnate within their own ranks. Usually, anyways, not this time, not yet."


    "I''m not even sure we should be going for a hivemind in the first place, much less an expansionist one. The old empire killed them all on sight for a reason." The worldsmith replies with some apprehension.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Yes, I know. I was there when that decision was made, it''s because hiveminds are nearly impossible to properly put down, and expansionists can be absolutely terrifying. This one, thankfully, is almost purely informational, free will is almost perfectly preserved." The not-so-young man states with a small amount of glee.


    "And if it wasn''t?" The woman asks incredulously.


    "It is still better than the alternative. We need a unifying force to throw off the next invasion, there is no free will in oblivion. There is no coming back from the void." The man states, melancholic.


    The woman sighs, defeated. "You''re right, I got worked up, I''m sorry." After taking a moment to compose herself the woman asks a question. "So why did you have me bless her enemies? Assuming it wasn''t just to kill her."


    "to provide her with a challenge, to force her to grow and acknowledge the parts of herself that we wanted her to acknowledge. She never would have started caring about her people if you hadn''t had them slaughtered over and over again, not really. Not fast enough to matter anyway." The oracle responds in a slow even voice.


    They sit in silence for a while, watching the world above them.


    "So what''s next?" The Fate Blessed man asks.


    "Nothing, now we wait. Any more interference now will be detrimental. We have a couple millennia before we need to be ready again. She is an expansionist by nature, she will set up hiveminds on every single planet she lives on if only to advance her own skills. Eventually, she will be able to reach out far enough to connect to the ones she leaves behind, and then there will be little capable of preventing her from claiming the heavens, for a time at least." The oracle answers. "She''s already on her way to the perfect planet to get started from."


    The trio follows after the unconscious soul hurtling through space at impossible speeds towards its next life, apparently dodging anything that might harm it by the narrowest of margins.


    "A world without magic? No Ki, no Mana, no Aether, no psionics, just normal mundane people? Why? I don''t imagine that it would be easy to set up a hivemind here." The woman asks, more than a little confused by this turn of events.


    "Of course it is, that''s the point. She loves a challenge, and this will force her to learn how to use her soul for any magic she wants to perform, or Fate, I guess. She will get very, very good at using the soul." The Fate blessed man says, excitedly. "We should introduce ourselves to the local worldsmith, there is no way a garden planet like this one is untended, and we should try to avoid any unnecessary interference."


    And so the trio waited and watched as the one they hope to be their savior grows and develops. But that is a story for another time.

 Afterwords

    Hello, it''s me, the author. We''ve come along way from a scarred girl being along in the world for the first time. We''ve seen the rise and fall of empires, of gods, and of people. So many people.


    I can honestly say that I cried while killing off some of my favorite characters, especially Mest and Thes. But they never really mattered in the end.


    I started this story so that I could practice writing a character. So that I could ignore everything except for the character. And it showed in the way I approached this story. No one in this story mattered except for Erica, everyone else''s stories can start, progress, and end completely off-screen and the story would not suffer for it, because they aren''t what matters. And Diary Of Erica Kron did exactly what I wanted it to, it helped me learn how to write about a character.


    It wasn''t perfect, there are plot holes and inconsistencies. Some things don''t make sense and others I tried to sweep under the rug with mixed success. But none of that matters because the story still did what it was supposed to do.


    And now it is over. 3ish years of my life. That is more than 10% of the time I have been alive. And I finished it. I wrote a book. No, at 1400~ pages I wrote a trilogy. And it ended more or less exactly how I expected it too.


    What happens next? Well, I want to get it published on Amazon. I''m planning on splitting it up into 3 pieces. To do that I need new cover art, I don''t have commercial usage rights on the piece I already have, which I have already commissioned. I also plan on going back through and fixing grammar, spelling, etc issues, but I don''t plan on rewriting any of it, that would be more work than I would be willing to put in.


    After that I plan on starting up a new project.


    I have something to admit, I have no idea how to write good dialog. It takes me a lot of work to do anything with spoken language. And so my next piece is going to focus heavily on dialog. It also will not update nearly as quickly as Diary Of Erica Kron did. Between my dramatically different life situation compared to when I started and the kind of effort I am wanting to put into my next piece updating daily just isn''t possible. It wasn''t even possible for the end of this story, and I had been writing in this style for years at that point. Of course, it is going to be quite a while before I get that one up and going, as I want to put a bit more effort into planning it out this time around. I did build a basic roadmap for Diary Of Erica Kron, but I didn''t really do a good job, and finding anything in this story that I had mentioned before was a nightmare. I don''t really want to do that again.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    I don''t plan on returning to Erica in the future, at least not as a POV character. Her story is over. If you guys want to write fanfiction or whatever about her or anyone else in the world go ahead, there is certainly space to fit all kinds of different stories there.


    It''s been nearly three years in the making. I poured so much of myself into this story, and now there is nothing left to give. I tried to write more epilogues from other character''s perspectives, but I just couldn''t do it. It''s over, and like a long car ride through the desert, I''m glad it''s over. The journey has had its ups and its downs, and there have been times when I did not enjoy writing. But I got it done, and I''ve written an entire story from beginning to end. I''m proud of that, it''s not my ultimate goal in this life, that would be immortality, but it is still an accomplishment that I never thought I would have achieved. I remember thinking to myself multiple times when I was young and reading something like harry potter or Artemis Foul or Warriors or the Inheritance cycle or any of hundreds of other stories that I grew up with and loved that I would never be capable of creating something like this. I would never be capable of crafting a great story with my own hands. Well, young me, you can go fuck yourself because I did it anyway. I can''t claim to have created something so grand as the stories I grew up with, but this is only my first real story, and I have created something to be proud of. Something I never even dreamed of being able to do until I started this project.


    Anyway, I think it is time to say Good Night to this diary one last time.


    Sweet Dreams