It turns out, doing anything like what I had hoped was much more difficult than I expected. Changing something about the edible aspects, like taste and textures was a breeze in comparison. But anything even tangentially relating to the special properties of these herbs was a very finicky process to alter.

Most changes ended up with a plant that was either worse than the original, didn’t have any properties that affect the system's resources, or even something outright poisonous. Though it was a weak poison.

I already spent almost two days working almost exclusively on this task, and I’m starting to get tired. What I have managed to do, however, is not to be discounted.

I stare at the two of my most successful variants. One of them is a proper leaf. A thick, soft, and plump leaf with lots of juice inside. And it seems it is the juice that actually produces the desired effects. The problem is that this ‘juice’ loses its effectiveness almost immediately as it is squeezed out of the leaves.

Even on the easiest plant to work with, the Health one, any alterations are hard to make.

The book in the library dealing with these types of things will take a while to get. Its cost is measured in mithril coins. A while ago, we confirmed one of our long-held suspicions. Each of the bookcases has books priced with coins made of a certain metal. I think we already bought one of the cheapest books on the second case, the one requiring gold coins.

I shake my head and get rid of the thought, it’s not the time to think over that. I send my perception to the basic Health Herb. The differences between one harvested near our village, and another from hundreds of miles away, are mainly in taste and shape. The working principles of all of them are very similar, even amongst different resources.

With a close look, I see most of the liquid pockets inside the plant with the liquid I learned to recognize. On the upgraded health leaf, I managed to make it have a third category of liquid. Concentrating the small cell structures I managed to create something that was about twice as potent. In this other leaf, the ratio of liquid to other structures is at the very limit of what I could do. So long as it was fully ‘ripe’ it would provide double the benefit from the base or about a 20% increase in health regen up to 20 health points. The original leaf only increased it 10% and lasted until a point of health regenerated. With this other leaf, they may even be able to make more potent healing salves, or maybe even figure out how to make proper potions.

Admittedly, there are drawbacks. The leaves are more delicate and will take almost two months to grow to full size on an adult tree vs the daily harvest we currently experience. Each of the leaves is also larger, weighing about five times as much as the original. But its effects far surpass any insignificant weight penalty. And that penalty exists only in a short-sighted view given they have 4 times more resources per unit of weight.

After getting the first idea to work fairly well, and hitting a hard bottleneck in how concentrated I could make it, I went in another direction. Taking the other part of the equation to the extreme and making it as big as possible. I attempt to graft a tomato to the health potion leaf. After all, even if I couldn’t make it more concentrated, I could always just make its effects last long after consumption, couldn’t I?

This was in the end even easier compared to the previous work. The limitation however came soon as I noticed that 1 hour later, the regen buff would disappear regardless of what I did.

And so the fruit that should have been able to provide about 1000 points over a day became inactive after an hour on the dot. I didn’t let that stump me for long and went to work on the other leaves. I had already looked at them before, but if I thought health was difficult, the plants for the other resources were a nightmare.

I ended up only copying what I did from the Health potions over. Even that was a finicky process. Mana leaves, which only had a slight amount of this juice before, became actually useful. With my enhanced leaf regenerating about 8 mana twenty percent faster.

And the bigger version managed the same 20% increase, up to 300 mana points. I didn’t manage to make any other changes to the Mana leaf not already tested and refined on the Health one, and even then it took time and effort as they were not exactly the same, just very similar.

The ones that were supposed to be stamina ones, though people still debated that, clearly were cut from a different cloth. Inside of them, amongst thousands of pockets of liquid, only a couple here and there presented any regenerative properties.

This was also the most difficult one to affect without screwing with the natural balance required for it to continue being considered a resource plant. From simple calculations of the amount of liquid inside, a basic leaf can regen about 0.01 stamina point, and that is why we couldn’t reliably measure it. Stamina is too volatile for the simple tests we were running and the minute changes these leaves provide. In theory, it regenerates at a constant rate, but it is fast and the consumption, even for someone sleeping, varied too much to measure without considerably better equipment than we had available.

The stamina leaves could, when I exhausted my ability to manipulate them, regenerate 5 points 13% faster. And I didn’t even manage to make the bigger tomato version work at all. Grafting them onto the tomato, always led to strange and dangerous combinations. In the future, as my ability improves, I might be able to overcome that but for now, I have exhausted all the possibilities, and it is time for something else. Next week I may try again.

Something that concerns me is the sheer amount of nutrients these plants started to take from the ground. Eventually, the nutrients will come back, but it is alarming nonetheless. So I stop any accelerated growth inside my inner world and start to make use of the earth all around the village to bring the necessary nutrients to my little wooden hut.

To finish this endeavor, I start growing around my hut and all along the back wall of the village these modified shrubs. I position them so they will have plenty of sunlight, and limit the amount to something the area around the village will be able to sustain relatively long term. It would not do to take everything from the soil and be sucking our thumbs when we need these resources later.

Tired after so long spent in this endeavor, I get up from my sitting position, with the help of my roots and stretch for a moment.

My wound is a lot better. In a couple more days I will not even notice that something happened if things keep going at this pace. Especially with the small tomatoes, I am eating every hour.

Not quite the ideal diet for my digestive track, but I would make do.

I close the top of my hut and the room becomes nearly dark as I head out. This time, I walk around almost normally, though my roots are all around me bearing all of the actual weight, so it’s like I am floating on water.

A second or two looking at the shadow the sun is casting and I confirm the time. Nine o’clock.

I walk around the village observing things and offering my advice where I believe it will be useful until I arrive at the smithy. This time I don’t stay long, just enough for Blackwood to pump out two axes. We won't have the money to buy them for a little while. Still, Charlie is working on treaties with plenty of other villages, it is only a matter of time before he starts to sell these weapons for a hefty profit. He probably is gonna want to attach conditions to their use, otherwise, it might come back to bite us in the ass.

Next, I stop by the Apothecary section of the school Merlin is running, and I see the girl in charge of it. She is the one who figured out how to make the healing salve, and everyone is pinning their hopes on her to manage the mana and stamina equivalents.

“Hi Nash,” she surprises me by talking without looking up.

“Hi,” I answer trying to remember her name.

“So, you don’t remember my name?”

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly, “I just remember what you did.”

“You and half the people around, and I won’t tell you now.”

“Fine,” I say disconcerted. “Well, I think I got something you will be interested in.”

She raises her eyebrows, so I take a few of the fruits and leaves from my inner world and place them neatly stacked on the table separated by type.

“These are new variants I made from the base plants for resource regeneration…”

Before I can continue, she interrupts me excitedly.

“Do you have any… Is... How… Wait. How good are they? And is this Stamina?”

Cheekily, I answer:

“They are very good, and yes this is stamina. It’s a very finicky process, but I managed to get these working.” Withdrawing a piece of paper I quickly write the approximate values for each type.

I give her the paper, and as she reads it her eyes open wider and wider with each word.

After a few minutes of talking, she complains mildly.

“Damn, too bad that there seems to be a hard cap on the duration. but even then what you have done is enough for practical use of all of them. And given what I’m guessing you did to manage this, at the very least I will be able to make a healing patch that increases the healing rate to double the current ones. The healing patches will be able to increase health regen and healing rate by nearly 50%.”

“Regen and healing rates are so different?” I ask already knowing the answer but wanting perspective straight from the source instead of relying on second-hand reports.

“Yep, like you are probably aware, the wounds we suffer and the amount of damage that the health numbers show are not an exact match. I mean how could they e?” She starts, and with rapt attention I sit and talk with her, expanding on my knowledge of this particular facet of the system. It may even help me improve on the very herbs I brought to her.

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After finishing my round of the whole village and taking care of all the miscellaneous things that always seemed to pop up whenever I am here, I come back to my little hut. Inside, I take stock of the progress I made in the last couple of days.

My money pile is increasing, though soon a couple of projects will require most of it.

My runic working, including the battery and control structures, are all coming along nicely, and I have finished working with the resources regenerating plants, for now.

The preparations for the likely upcoming fight with Lord Max have little to do with me. Even if I joined, I would not involve myself in the negotiation. People are hoping for a resolution through diplomacy with the contracts we unlocked. They not only allow any alliance on our part to be much more secure but the restrictions on Lord Max’s villages would be enforced by the system.

Some people say, even talk of settling for anything other than total annihilation was foolish, but we can’t think like that. How many people were just forced to be part of his army? They are our fellow humans, and that means the thing to do would be to make them concede and pay for their mistakes, not with their lives but with their actions, or more realistically with their wallets.

After having taken care of everything more urgent, I allow myself some time to look over the Strange Aether from the Robot. I have been bubbling inside at the mere thought of experimenting with it ever since I got it a couple of days ago. I almost failed to contain myself a couple of times, but somehow I managed. After finally finishing the more urgent tasks, I finally have some spare time.

Sitting, I start to meditate. A single thought is on my mind. My breath goes in and out, and nothing else is of concern in the world. I go deep enough I can easily do anything I have ever done in meditation.

All around me I feel myself, and I know entering my soul would be only a question of desire, not even effort, it’s just there. Though I ignore all that, focusing instead on my Aether well. I withdraw a small amount and cycle it around me. This time I don’t focus on anything specifically; I just let the cycling be an expression of myself. This seems particularly apt, given that this is exactly what Aether is supposed to be. It’s the power of your story or something.

Missing is something, so I connect to my buddy. This time however I look for more, for something deeper. I don’t keep the connection shallow so I can do other things at the same time, I just absorb it all. Cycling greater and greater amounts of my Aether to him, and as he has just begun to learn, he takes hold of it and returns it to me. This simple but profound cycle continues for minutes until neither of us knows where we began and the other ends.

It’s like we are the same person for a few moments, and I relish the feeling of having a gigantic body spread over in all directions for over a mile. And the thinner, but still noticeable tendrils that go even further.

Coming back to myself ever so slightly I become aware of the little Aether I manage to keep under control. In a corner, hidden away, I keep it in place with a tight hold. The amount I took, something like a hundred-thousandth of my own Aether pool, is minuscule in my grasp. When I arrived it would have been too little for me to properly manipulate.

Just interacting with it opened all sorts of possibilities in my mind, but I can’t contain myself, and I have to directly experiment with the object of my desire. So I draw the smallest amount I can reliably keep in my hold. Even as focussed as I am, it is still over a tenth of it.

I start to move it to my own pool to absorb it, but before I do so something in my gut tells me that this is not very wise, so I stop. What if absorbing Aether is like absorbing mana? Perhaps I should be a little more cautious.

Asking for Pando’s seed help, I make a line with the little ball between my hands and stretch it as far as I can. I try to absorb something below what would be my normal minimum amount for manipulating Aether. As I draw it to myself, nothing happens. I failed.

So I attempt it again and again. Each and every time, I’m met with the same result, but I don’t let that deter me. It's just like things were for Alex the last few days; I don’t have the feedback to know how close I am to success.

Hundreds of attempts later, when I’m already beginning to tire and am about to stop for a break, I succeed. Though I barely notice it as I’m battered by a torrent of sensations. And just as suddenly as everything happened at once, nothing at all happens and my consciousness slips away.