— POV Sheal (AKA Dragon that is abused) —

Am I really free? I know not to get up any false hopes, but I truly wish for my nightmare to be over.

Each hour. Day. Month. Year. Decade. Century I’ve been counting. Storing my power, biding my time. When finally I strike, I could barely mark her skin with my strongest magic. It was around that time that I realized that I am just a pet, andshall remain one for as long as SHE lives.

Especially these last few decades. No longer was I able to go out and gather power. I was sealed in an unimaginably powerful magic. Stuck. Stagnant. For awhile I thought ‘Am I going to die here, wasting away until I’m skin and bones?’

But then she came back. She dispersed the magic shell and came up and hugged my legs, saying “Let’s go now Sheal! It’s time for a walk!”

…

This is my life now.

…

So much for a ‘walk’. As soon as we left my cave, another shell surrounded me, and it looks like I’m on at ether to her as I float behind.

…

Sigh…

Where are the other dragons? Why hasn’t a dragon prince come and saved me?

Well, now my shell is gone and SHE is motioning me to go eat or something. Finally! I can fly again! It feels so good to stretch my wings!!!!!!!

Aaaaahhhhhh…

I’m ignoring the obviously strong tracking magic that’s been applied to me, as I FEEL SO FREEEEE!!!!!

Food, finally fooooood!

— POV Rose —

Hmmph, Sheal ran away as soon as she could! She didn’t even come and let me pat he! I’ll teach her when she comes back!

…

Oh, wait, how long did I have her cooped in there! She must be hungry! Or even have to go to the bathroom! Okay, I’ll forgive you Sheal! I wouldn’t want to show that to my loved one either! Have fun! Come back soon!!!!

— POV Mathias —

My top concerns are currently fixing both my Mana transportation, GP transportation, and improving my attack and defense. All I have so far for the first is my tiny, anemic grass roots and stems. I can try to pump up the size of my roots, but so far my investigations have shown diminishing returns as the radius becomes bigger, an r-squared problem. That’s why I’ve just been investing my local energy into local improvements, at least that’s what my mind-threads are supposed to be doing. When they can’t go over, they go under. If they can’t go up, they go down. In several places I ahve roots that delve down hundreds of feet, and others I’m covering an entire rock in grass, quickly reaching the other side to continue growing. And still, no other village yet.

I have detected a few large magical beasts. As far as I can tell they seem disinterested in my growth, though a few of the more cantankerous ones have been actively burning or eating me. I make sure it’s not pleasant for them at least, as I load a ton of capsaicin in there. What has REALLY bummed me out is that cyanide, Milkweed, and Nightshade don’t seem to work on creatures with a lot of mana. Even when they ate my little presents they seemed totally fine with it. Either there is another commonish plant with cyanide that the animals have applied Mithridatism to become immune, they have a strong genetic resistance to the poison, or something stupid magical ability like:

[Poison Immunity I-X] - Grants immunity to poison below level y. Grants resistance to poison below level z.

And I bet, because my poison is also not magical, and purely chemical, it might be easier for them to deal with. So cyanide isn’t going to work for me as an attacking method for stronger beasts. For defense, I have investments that should pay off in the long-run, but nothing immediate. Other than pit traps and some explosive spikes I can impale feet on, I am desperately vulnerable. To keep myself safe, when I encounter one of the difficult beasts, I do what I did with my slime nemisis - create thorns and capsaicin to dissuade, and if those measures prove ineffective, I cut my losses and avoid their territory. Lately I’ve been just growing roots now into their territory, a few feet underground, to see if I can’t conquer the area that way. So far, so good, infiltration has been successful.

I need to look for a method of decreasing my leakage of mana and energy over distances. There are a few ways I can try to fix this issue. I can try to find an animal or being that doesn’t leak mana or energy. Sigh, but, by definition, these would be realy hard to find. But it may be worth it to devote a week or so to fully controlling my spread out area to search for an animal like this.

Second option, I regress my mana to a previous generation from my cross-breeding experiments. I would be sacrificing a huge amount of mana, but my mana storage would progress to a much higher amount. Downsides, it doesn’t solve my mana transportation problems.

I could always ask the magic system, but again, the options have been subpar or super expensive compared to what I could do with my plant knowledge. But this may be the exact situation where it could be the most helpful.

Okay, let’s see what my system can do for me!

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Ability is race restricted:

Evolve into larger organism

-Mana Tree Cost: 25,000 GP, 1000 MP

-Vampire Tree Cost: 20,000 GP, 500 MP, Blood from 10 different species

-Vampire Bush Cost: 15,000 GP, 100 MP, Blood from 5 different species

-Bush Cost: 1,000 GP

-Tree Cost: 5,000 GP

Unlocked due to [Boundless]:

-Tree Growth Energy Cost: 150,000 GP

-Bush Growth Energy Cost: 100,000 GP

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Sweet! I totally forgot about [Boundless]!

But...

… Well I still have a ways to go to be able to evolve into something, due to me not being able to store mana the sweetest things look blocked. My mana regeneration can fill the gap in a second, but since my storage is a measly 25 MP, I can’t choose them. Well, if I get a mana stone, I probably could. That leaves the massive GP costs. I could theoretically wait a few weeks and save up enough GP in my main body to evolve. But again, I really don’t want to evolve my species.

Changing my species could do some insanely bad things for me. Just thinking back to my early days gives me the chills. Brrrr. Uncontrollable reactions to my instincts, coming close to dying so quickly because I caught the attention of the local predators. I’m barely keeping a lid on my instincts as they are. Blissful sunlight is like a shot of morphine, resisting the urge to grow leaves is a nightmare. And to top it off I have been feeling the increasing need to “relieve” myself. But that would be disasterous for everyone and everything I’m pretty sure. Mindless clones of myself, with a huge mana supply and the growth rate of grass. Craaaaazy.

The vampire varieties are definitely a no-go. Imagining the instincts involved with that is horrendous. Goodbye life in the surrounding acreage immediately. And as soon as civilization finds out about it, goodbye me. Things like vampires are probably not thought highly of, and will most likely be burnt down or attacked repeatedly.

A Mana tree would probably involve the forced creation of mana stones, or something similar. It also sounds rare. Anything rare is coveted. And I’m not exactly in an area of mana trees around here, I would probably stick out like a sore thumb. My “tree” decoy has been doing it’s thing, protecting me from lightning, but either itself or my other foibles are attracting animals to my glade. Thankfully they’re useful as fertilizer and Jard, Torgue, and myself can take care of them. But what if a dragon or sphynx or something is attracted to my glade because of it? I’ve kept it small for now, but… Wait, if I turn into a tree, what will happen to all of my offshoots and roots everywhere?

Shit shit shit, didn’t even think about that. Will I turn into something like a bamboo forest, but with mana trees everywhere? Shit, that’s like putting up a neon sign in the middle of nowhere saying “Hey, look at me! I’m valuable and grow all over the place! Come log me!”

Bushes would at least be manageable, I think. I don’t know if they would solve my problem fully either though, as hierarchy seems to be grass

Fuck it, I’ll try to save up to upgrade my energy type to tree energy. The risk is too large to evolve with so many unknowns. At least I can understand such a change as energy type changing. I can handle that.

GP transportation has a plan, but Mana is still an issue. Without mana stones to store mana and without a means to transport said mana over distances, my mana is only useful for small magic. I think it’s finally time for mana stones. Why fight something that has evolved for hundreds of years? But I will modify it. But before I can do that, I need the capabilitiy to make mana stones.

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Mana Stone Cost: 100 GP

Allows for the creation of mana stones.

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And bought. Pretty cheap.

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Mana Stone Cost: 1 GP, 10 Mana

Allows for the storage of mana. Size and density determines storage size. The more mana used to grow a mana stone, the more maximum mana the stone can hold (increased mana density). GP determines size of mana stone. Can be turned on and activated automatically for maximum efficiency determined by creature’s ability. Mana stones can be grown continously and improved over time.

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There it is, just as enticing as I thought it would be. It’s just a crystallization of mana, so it’s not expensive. But for high quality mana stones, the cost in creation is far higher than the result. But that’s exactly what I need, lots of small, high quality mana stones for my plan.

I want to have thousands of mana stones that I can transport around my network of roots through my veins. That way I can have a system of slightly wider main veins going through my network that can transport small mana stones. The perfect solution if I can’t normally transport my mana around. This checks all my marks for safety too: Small stones for least visibility, dispersed mana for decreased localization, I can make use of my insane mana generation, and the ability to transport my mana around (though not in the most efficient manner). As a bonus, if it is discovered and harvested, I can move the stones all away from where I am and make another “fake” body.

Okay, I’m going to do it! Let’s see what 1 GP, 10 mana will create. Because my GP is grass based, I doubt that it will be too big.

…

And Success! A tiny mana stone the size of a pen tip (1.0 mm round). And I can fill it with 1 mana at the moment. Fuck yes! I can feel I can still improve it too, let’s pour mana into it to increase it’s density…

And it took 11 more mana to increase it by 1 more mana storage. Since my mana is pretty much unlimited over time, time becomes the highest cost. I’m going to let this sit for an hour and see what density I can get to.

…

Results are in. Increasing mana has some sort of exponential function for mana used, yet the mana input time takes the same per mana used.

3600 seconds = 1800 mana fused into the mana stone. I stopped it a little early, at 50 mana density it took 55 minutes and 1643 mana. It proves that there’s an exponential relationship, as my last mana density point took me 51 mana to put in. Let’s see how long it’d take to get it to 100 mana.

…

Still not bad. 2.75 hours, with the last mana taking 81 mana to be input. Let’s go for a thousand.

…

Okay, a thousand is a little ambitious for now. I’ll stop at 250 for now. It takes about half a day to create this density, and seems manageable. Besides, I don’t want people getting too much from me if they find am ana stone. They should be disposable.

Now to start mass production!