The power of my heartcore floats throughout the entire dimension, and I feel all.
The power of Tree is woven throughout the entire place, and I have received all.
Database is there, both up in the sky and inside my head, and I know all.
I sit up with a gasp. Blinking against the suns that shine way too brightly, I spot Lola looking up at me. That stupid horn is on her head again, the thin strand of red no longer threatening to disappear entirely. I hold out a hand, and feel the entire dimension move with me.
Feeling distinctly uncomfortable at the sensation, I clear my mind. The double-layered feeling vanishes and the world around me returns to its comforting mundanity. I don’t look at Tree, as I know how it feels. I don’t look at the grass, as I know the way it waves. I ignore the lighting bird in the sky, the acid bugs up higher, and the desert worm down below, as I know they exist. I hold out a hand to the one element here that is unknown to me, and she proceeds to bite my ankles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Manducate 2
The Big Provider of Food continues to tickle her, and Lola plays along. The amount of effort the little bunny needs to exert to get any form of attention these days is starting to get ridiculous. It began when everything started to stink of blood, but before Lola could investigate who dared to bleed so much, everyone had vanished.
Not the Black-Haired Girl, nor the Angry Soft One, nor the Not So Sad Anymore Metal One. Not even the new ones, like the Round Soft One or the Small Red One are around anymore. Out of sheer desperation, she had started letting The Big Provider Of Food know that she wanted to be petted by chewing on him.
The little rabbit is smart enough to never try this with the One That Smells Of Scales, though. She knows better than to chew on such a dangerous being. Kicking her in the face or beating her up through brute physical strength? Sure, Lola has done so on more than one occasion. Biting that one is an entirely different thing altogether, though. Especially because the One That Smells Of Scales just changed from a flighty person into a strict and merciless machine.
Completely and utterly lacking the knowledge of how to describe what she had felt, Lola nonetheless understands that the big and straight tree that had emerged from the One That Smells Of Scales was less than good news. The Big Provider Of Food had taken her and left, and now they are back at The Big Golden Plant again. Lola is pretty happy that she is getting the attention she deserved, but it doesn’t last long.
Instead of walking around, seeing new things, and experiencing new places like in the old days, he just sits there. The amount of power coming from his stupid mouth is impressive, but Lola knows that The Big Provider Of Food won’t hurt her, so she isn’t scared. Instead, she chews on him some more, clearly indicating that she deserves more attention.
And she is sent flying as thanks for her kind reminders. Not even towards the Fun And Awesome Cold Place. No, The Big Provider Of Food had just sent her flying towards the Bubbling Rock With Red Lights. Landing inside one of the lava lakes with a splash, Lola is not happy. The adventure in the Cold Place With All The Heavy Stuff was good and all, but the large amounts of tasty power had done something funny to her chest. She had eaten and eaten from the plentiful cold qi that had been everywhere, and she had kept eating even when she had felt full. Then it had hurt for a bit, and then she had been big!
Lola still thinks that this move of hers had been brilliant. She isn’t totally clear on whether or not she actually did this herself, but increasing your own size in order to eat more of the tasty cold power sounds like a smart idea. So Lola decides that she came up with the idea herself as she hops down from the volcano. Finding the otherwise lethal temperatures slightly annoying, she skips across lava streams and avoids volcanic vents that are spewing out massive amounts of superheated steam.
She leisurely saunters through the forest, unhurriedly making her way to the cold mountain. She is sure to play with all the new friends that are living in the forest and the desert. Some of them even play with her for a bit, but none of them wants to play for long, unfortunately. She is also sure to employ her nose to the fullest of her abilities. The Big Golden Plant has been putting small little stones in the ground everywhere. Sniffing again, she finds remnant traces of its vibrant qi. Lola is not completely sure why this is, but the chance of finding extra tasty roots, plants, and fruits is higher in places where she knows the Big Golden Plant has been putting stones in the dirt.
She is constantly chewing on mystical herbs, precious roots, and other natural treasures as she makes her way over to the Nice Cool Place With Lots Of Hard Water. All the power she gains from eating the energy-dense plants is slowly digested, strengthening her small little body in the meantime. The fact that the power around her keeps gaining a heavier smell of The Big Provider Of Food makes her slightly irritated, and she decides to chew on the annoying person some more when she sees him again. Inside her heartcore are three types of qi intent.
Her own rabbit qi is white of colour, a small trace of milky opaque power that is constantly saturating her flesh, bones, blood, and organs. The other two sources of power are clumps of cold and heat, a large blue pool and a small red one. The only reason the source of fire is still inside her heart is because of The Big Provider Of Food’s Big Heavy Hot And Cold Thing that he always keeps on his back. Lola does not understand the miniature sword hanging inside her heartcore, but it smells of the Big Provider Of Food, so it’s fine.
What is also fine are all the frost type plants she keeps finding now that she is nearing the cold mountain. Happily chewing on some rime covered branch, she starts exploring. Her nose wriggles rapidly as she takes in the thick ice-intent qi.
What also isn’t fine is that he keeps throwing her back towards the stupid red mountain. It doesn’t take her long to return to the cool mountain, but the fact that he keeps interrupting her playtime is annoying. So Lola is sure to bite him savagely whenever she sees him. Only when he plays with her is her wroth cooled.
And then the Big Sucky And Stupid Provider Of Food throws her into the sky! Lola is outraged when she realises what he did just now. The Stupid Glowing Piece Of Junk Balls Of Stupid Hotness start revolving around her, and Lola is sure to let her displeasure be known.
Despite her masterfully crafted speech, each squeak containing another aspect in which The Big And Ugly Provider Of Food has wronged her innocent little self, he does not relent. Knowing when she has lost, Lola decides to get some shut eye finally.
She is woken when he starts eating the universe. At first, she doesn’t understand what she is sensing. The Big Golden Plant is still there, but not really. Like looking at a very detailed image or sculpture, the golden glow of the massive tree feels empty to the Rabbit. She then sees The Big Provider Of Food suck up the grass around the massive perennial. Then the ground is sucked up by him, proceeded by the air, the buildings, and the trees around him.
“Why?” Verbalising the best way she can, Lola sends this question towards the big golden lump of wood.
The answer she receives – a collection of images, feelings, and meaning – is proof that it is still alive. Lola does not understand though. Why did it decide to become part of him? Why did it allow him to eat it?
An overwhelming feeling of love wraps the bunny, its golden glow letting her know that Tree is sending this. It tells her in no uncertain terms that it owes its life to the man below. It shows Lola what is and what would have been – staying rooted in its original spot, not even capable of conscious thought, not even knowing that there is a world outside of its small personal universe. Then this man came and gave it life, thoughts, and meaning.
And now it helps this man. Now it can grow with this man. Sure, the Tree acknowledges that its own growth is limited to that of the man, but it doesn’t mind at all. Without him, it wouldn’t have gotten to live a fraction of its current life. Being tethered to its creator on a much more intimate level doesn’t seem so bad from its wooden perspective.
&nbs
p; Lola understands very little of this. All she gets is that the Big Golden Plant is now inside the Big Provider Of Food and that it’s happy. All the new friends inside the forest and the desert also join the Big Golden Plant, none of them even capable of voicing any form of opinion on the weird shift. Then the Big White Thing In The Sky and the Less Big Green Thing That Makes Her Naked And She Hates are swallowed by him, and she feels him coming closer.
Lola wants to join now too. She knows that she will lose something important when that happens, but she doesn’t really care. If it means that the Big Provider Of Food will always give her all the attention she could possibly want, she’ll be fine with that.
She feels warm, ephemeral hands wrap her up in a firm grip, pulling her to the side. The front of consumption somehow misses her, eating up the air in her lungs and the sweat in her fur, but leaving her a whole rabbit. Lola is sad at first, but the fact that the entire world around her feels less now makes her a bit glad. Lola doesn’t want to become less and thinks that she will be able to get his attention despite the fact that she hasn’t given up a part of herself to him.
She lands on the ground, still spooked by the fact that everything seems to miss a certain something now. The Big Provider Of Food is so much more, somehow more than making up for the lessened reality. Despite all this, he still ignores her. Instead of giving her the attention she deserves, she merely feels him moving his mind throughout the forest, the earth, and the sky.
Opening her mouth, she bites down on his ankles, showing her displeasure at his lacking attentions.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Manducate 3
This is all very weird. I look at the bar of metal I have in my hand, and I know that I own it. I don’t just know that the physical object is in my possession. I feel it; I sense it; it’s as if the thing itself is telling me it’s mine. It’s very weird.
I drop the bar and pick up Lola. This little ankle biter is the only thing that still feels solid here, that feels like it doesn’t want to roll over and change it’s very being and nature the moment I wish for it to be so. I think about tossing her up into the sky again, but as if sensing my thoughts, her little claws dig into my skin and clothes. Grinning at her, I just scratch her a little while processing the alien sensations all around me.
Tree is inside my head, and the rest of this little dimension is right there with it. “This is super weird.”
I feel a positive reply. Looking upwards and slightly startled, I sense Tree training its attention on me. It nods along with my assessment, agreeing that it too feels pretty weird. “Did we make a mind link or some… No, you’re somehow a part of my cultivation now?” The fact that I probably shouldn’t recultivate anytime soon is both a bummer and a relief. I really should have tried out one of these fancy new ways of cultivating myself, just to experience them at least once. Now though, every single being inside my core would lose a lot were I to abandon my current base. I look at Tree again. They’d lose a whole lot…
I decide to stop having negative thoughts. All it will take is another ascension gone wrong, and I’ll get that opportunity, after all.
“Stop biting me already!” Lola shakes me from my dark thoughts, and the grass wraps her up as the ground curls up around her. Dropping all my thoughts into the void, I let go of my irritations instead of suppressing them. I let the blackness I’m imagining go, dropping that too. I repeat this until I feel alright again, the suns high above brightening as my mood improves.
Lola has her ears down and is laying flat on the grass. I immediately feel immensely guilty. Deciding that merely petting her a bit won’t be enough recompense, I imagine the juiciest and most delicious carrot I can imagine. Air rushes in as I change a minuscule part of my braincore into a superpowered, bright orange carrot. Lola nearly teleports herself to the thing and begins chomping on it like mad.
Super weird. I didn’t use any of my Will or augur just now. I didn’t break down water and carbon dioxide on a conscious level. I didn’t combine the separated atoms into a complex structure, weaving in nitrogen and trace elements to make a living plant. But still, the cartoonishly orange carrot Lola is chewing on is a living plant, I think.
I’d only be certain of this fact were I to plant the thing in a garden, but I don’t think I can free it from the rabbit without losing a finger.
And instead of manipulating the atoms and molecules, I changed a part of my core. Super weird. Even Tree agrees with the fact that it was quite odd that I managed to make an entirely new strain of plant like that. And I know that trees can’t drool, but I swear I can hear the hungry plant salivate all over the place at the thought of having a plant creation machine like me at its disposal.
“I’m not becoming your farmers market. Go make your own cultivated strains of vegetables!” Tree doesn’t react to my comment and merely keeps its attention on me like some perverted stalker eyeing its prey. “And why are you spewing out my qi? And why is your qi still golden, but it has my fingerprints? And how come I can sense all the data flowing through Database, yet my mind isn’t melting? Why is this so weird. Where did my heartcore go?”
I flex my fingers, feeling the near-liquid amounts of structural qi strengthening my flesh and bone. “Why did my heartcore join in? I was too occupied with processing all the new feelings and impressions streaming into my mind to really take note, but how come it suddenly decided to sacrifice itself to bolster my mental prowess? Where did… Wait, no way. I don’t believe that every single cell of my body now has a core of its own. That’s just stupid. Nope, come on Lola, I’m not believing that one bit.”
Feeling slightly stressed at the fact that I actually sensed a trillion little itty-bitty cores inside the cells of my hand, I pull a meal from my ring. Idly munching on the succulent strips of cow tiger mutant meat in cream sauce with steamed vegetables, I don’t look around. I just keep staring at Lola, as I know what is happening inside Tree by instinct now. My sight trained upon the happily chewing rabbit, I sense the thunderbird settling down on top of a rocky outcropping, calming down after the commotion. The puke-coloured ball of acid and poison up above is also returning to an equilibrium, the newly formed flock of insectoid feathered mosquitos landing in one of the few remaining trees. Database up higher, nestled inside my jade moon is also doing fine, automatically gathering a large portion of the syphoned power that I’m importing.
And Tree. Tree is doing great. Its mind is slightly muddled, as the separation of its rather underdeveloped ego and its physical form wasn’t conducive to its mental wellbeing. It seems content, though. I try to question its decision once again, wondering if it was truly right for it to give up its own autonomy to become a cornerstone of my cultivation. Before I can even start to form the inquiry, it shuts down that train of thought with a firm hand – or rather branch. “Right, right.”
I decide not to get worried about the fact that it somehow has access to my surface level thoughts now. I did absorb its entire mind into my own cultivation base, after all. I also wonder why I start to feel the outer edges of my meal. Any food I eat is slowly absorbed and infected with my qi, that is normal, but even the wooden plate in my hand is slowly turning into my personal matter.
Squinting at the little bit of the remaining meal, I will it to become mine. It takes a slight bit of mental effort, but the food is turned into my own stuff within seconds. Taking a tentative bite, I find out that eating your own matter is a lot less satisfactory than eating foreign matter. Like masturbation and sex, the fact that there is an uncontrollable outside factor present adds to the whole experience.
Willing the meal to vanish, it disappears in a faint smoke of dust and qi. Turning around, I take in my direct surroundings. The area around Tree is looking as naturally beautiful as ever. A small pond, reeds artistically dotting the edges, is located beneath its roots. The thick trunk is framed by slender bushes and thick brush, a network of natural paths giving access to the areas around Tree. A slightly overgrown yet still rather n
eat herb garden is located to the left of Tree, fields that are slowly becoming wilder stretching into the horizon on its other side. Remnants of waving fields of grains and ploughed rows of vegetables are still present here and there.
Further to the left are vast swathes of grass, occasionally cut through by paved streets and slowly collapsing buildings and barns. Cordoned off storage fields are still holding piles and piles of rusting metals and rotting fabrics. To the other side are the few buildings that are still intact. The seven houses of my students have somehow retained their integrity. The ruins of my castle, now a neatly preserved foundation, are also conspicuously clean. The mud and stone wall surrounding the large clearing around Tree is mostly gone, the few parts that are still intact are mostly overgrown by creeper and moss.
The forest beyond is an interesting sight. In the tumult of the last couple of days, many a massive chunk of dirt and tree got dislodged from the ground as Tree and I lost our grip on gravity. As a result, entire stretches of the overgrown wilds have been dumped back in their place at all kinds of exciting slants. Massive trees toppled, while others got buried, and some are now thriving while growing at forty-five-degree angles.
I crack my knuckles and stretch a bit. Let’s try having some fun with this. I somehow know that this entire dimension is mine to do with as I please, as its external qualities are now under my internal control. I turn around quickly, pointing both my fingers at the place where my castle used to be, imagining a rather majestic bastion of sleek lines, white stones, and elegant balconies. The image first forms inside my core as I use all the core shaping training I have been doing lately. The building snaps into existence with a thunderous boom of displaced air, sending out a shockwave that kicks up dust. I cough once, and all the dust settles with a low implosion that reverberates between both mountains. A flourish of my hands adds crenelated walkways and narrow bridges that connect towers, adding a moat for good measure. I walk towards my new abode, shifting the walls between straight-up neatness, outwardly sloped menace, and inwardly slanted defensibility.
The Dao of Magic: Book IV Page 21