Fauna and flora: necessary to environments. Where you find plants, you find wildlife that has adapted to coexist with it.

In a mountain's valley rich with large trees and mana-filled grasses, it's hard to fathom what kind of life would call this place home. Although my staff isn't perfect, it makes a pretty useful tool in-place of real ones; in particular, checking the tough soil has let me see just what all settles near the surface.

Worms. Worms that contain enough mana that it turns them almost blue. Each worm I found from a few spots of digging on my way down the valley is at least a few inches long while the largest ones are almost a foot-long. Brogdar is always full of surprises but at the rate this is going, my quest's name isn't that wrong. I'm getting a good look at the biggest nugget of truth that no amount of ranbi slaughtering could teach me.

Brogdar isn't my old world at all.

If worms are growing this big, then humans living here would either be raising them for food or using them to help breakdown carcasses for nutrition. If humans live in this valley, they wouldn't have allowed these worms to evolve this large, either. Evolution is both a supply and a need to adjust; traits helped evolve worms from my prior life to be smaller to help them be effective, energy-efficient, and harder to collect by predators. Fat worms like these are the sign of a predator-lacking environment.

Compared to the grassy patches and scattered trees, up ahead is one of the first flower fields.

The flowers in the Grey Valley, unsurprisingly, are colorless but range from white to black in shades; it casts an optical illusion of variance even though it's only different shades in close proximity above the blue-hued grass. Amidst it all, I can see a crystalline formation jutting above the line of flowering. Being short makes it hard to see, but I regretfully cast Growth a few times to reach around four feet tall. It places me a good half-foot or more over the flower lines but right now I can't afford to waste anymore MP nor make myself so big that I'd be too wide for that new doorway leading into my dungeon.

Anyway, the crystalline formation isn't just some awe-inspiring outcrop of gems. It's a pair of antlers.

I shall dub them, Gemfawns.

The best way to describe the one I'm looking at is they're about three-and-a-half feet tall. This one doesn't seem young, but generally antlers no longer than three inches or so like it has would make it a female. Its fur is a dark black and shaggier, helping it with poor weather and colder temperatures while likely helping it blend in among these flower fields.

The gemfawn noms on one of the nearby leaves, turning its head and looking off toward the nearby treeline while chewing. Merely shifting its gaze lets me see its white crystal rack of antlers more clearly, each one flickering in the sunlight. Neither of the antlers is terribly sharp but the crystal points of it could probably gore or break off to create edges in a panic so-

Wait. They're not just flickering. The gemfawn's antlers are actually growing brighter.

... Is it actually storing light or mana in its antlers? If that's the case, killing something like it would let me get access to more mana crystals-

Wait. I don't need to kill them. Couldn't I just capture it and take it with me?

... No. At least not now. Not only do I not know how strong it is but there's no way to know if it's even eligible for a pen. There are too many variables to capturing this guy or gal right now.

For now, it might be better to test my strength and find out if I can kill it. But I'll push it off for now since this is more about getting plants and easier-to-collect materials like the worms. Although I did kill those, there wasn't much a worm could do; if the gemfawn decides I need to die, it has the antlers to potentially do it.

So, let's deal with the flowers. I'll collect a few of the white and black ones and try to get all the ones with different flower-types.

...

[Notification] ??? Flower sent to Inventory.

Twenty-nine down, one more before I'm satisfied.

I may not be particularly stealthy but I guess I blend in or the gemfawn has poor hearing; I've been able to move through the flower field and harvest without it even looking at me. To be honest, it's a little concerning to see something so unaware or uncaring of me after being harassed non-stop by ranbi since the day I came to Brogdar.

Something I've been happy about is that I don't need to use my Cutter Thorn on the flowers like I had to with the trees. Instead, I was able to bring out my bone scythe. Of course, that also meant I got that annoying message again-and-again.

[Notification] Ability detected...

Tracking progress...

Since it's when I'm using my scythe, I think it's related to either using the scythe or cutting plants; I got a similar detected message back when Ivy and I originally were cutting the grass and when Ropert and her went out with me on our day-hunt a while back.

Whichever it is, I hope it unlocks soon. Maybe this flower over here will do it. Only one way to find out, right?

Let's cut it!

...

...

... Nope.

If the gemfawn knew I was here, it probably would have felt pity for me after getting hopeful.

Send to Inventory.

The flower flickers out of my palm.

Send to inventory.

And then the scythe.

The sun is starting its downward arc, but I've spent about an hour here cutting flowers. Gemfawn over there has been contently chewing on flowers and even laid down amongst the grass once, but otherwise, it's unbelievably peaceful and mellow I think.

It could be due to all these flowers.

Even if Brogdar isn't my old world, it wasn't uncommon to find a deer species get addicted to certain flowers that had drug-like effects. Mana itself is also still largely a mystery to me, despite my understanding of the theory about magic. All the life in this valley pushes that theory to its edge; while possible within it, a worm that can be this mana-enriched or a deer with naturally-growing mana-storing crystals doesn't seem likely. Taking mana is indeed one of the concepts behind living creatures, but that's normally as a means to cast magic if the mana within them isn't naturally occurring. Consumption of mana to this degree doesn't seem sane.

Yet it's here and I can't deny it. It's an unfathomable but infallible truth that these creatures exist.

A nugget of truth isn't normally this big but at this rate, I'm wondering if the quest isn't too perfectly named. I've not even come across any of the intelligent creatures nor any of the structures yet.

Farewell, gemspawn. I have more searching to do and you have flowers to enjoy. I can't spend any longer cutting flowers on my first exploration of the valley.

...

I think at this point in my traveling, it might be time to start slowing down and making a temporary shelter. The sunlight is getting a lot weaker through the canopy and that means the day is almost over. Flower fields are fairly sparse in this range of the valley and that ultimately limits my ability to gauge time.

The best place to make my shelter, though, is in the trees. Normally that wouldn't be enough to escape problematic bugs but the real reason to escape bugs is to avoid them crawling all over you.

Since I'm a plant and don't really need to sleep, I can just relax over the night. The first thing to do is find a proper tree; most of them are tall but there are some with low-splitting branches.

This one over here will do; it's one of the shorter trees in this part of the forest but the lowest branch is around five feet above the ground.

Send to inventory.

My staff flickers out of existence and I draw closer, feeling my vine-like hands unfurl as if they understand what I'm after. Although I might be relatively small, there is one great advantage to being partly vines even after my evolution: tentacle-like climbing. It's not more grip but smarter grip; fingertips for a human are wider but the points of my vines can dig and hook into the barklines of the tree, helping give me a stronger hold and letting me slide up its side.

As easy as I make it sound, it still takes a good minute or two to climb. I might have better anatomy for climbing but my stats are terrible for it; STR or DEX probably helps handle climbs like this but my stat-line has left me an INT-pouring mage. All of my summons are probably better at this than I am.

... Speaking of which, I've not received any notifications from the Dungeon while I've been out here. That is a bit worrying but I need to trust those three to defend the dungeon if I ever want to get some semblance of freedom to do things. Plus, they're the ones in charge of defending my dungeon; they'll die before they give anyone a chance to harm me.

I settle against the side of the tree, summoning my staff back out from the inventory while draping either of my feet over the branch's edges. My staff settles nicely in my lap but I'll hold the branch in one hand so that if I do lose my balance, I'll be able to catch myself or avoid falling right to the ground without a chance to be upright.

Not that it matters. Being a plant does have some advantages, so falling on my head isn't an issue I need to worry about.

The valley is a lot quieter than I thought it'd be later in the day. A large forested valley should have predators but I won't know until I eventually see them. In the future, I should be able to move a lot faster and avoid any issues like that.

But that's even more reason to spend the night here. I can recall in an emergency and this tree should put me mostly out of danger's way. Recalling would reset all my progress in exploring Grey Valley, however, so if something does come for me, I need to at least try fighting.

Relax, me. Only an hour or two until nightfall. There won't be a lot of time to relax once it arrives.