Well, that was weird.
Not weird enough to distract me or to make me ponder on it for long, however. But enough to keep it on the last burner at the edge of my consciousness while I went to train and eat dinner with most of the party.
Upon returning to my room, I took the saplings from within and promptly left. Choosing to relocate to the section of the courtyard frequented by Urshure to smoke and run my experiment in peace.
I 'sat' cross-legged in the air with the plants orbiting around me and grabbed one at random for a quick inspection before I began casting. A pot as wide as a dinner plate housed the sapling, which stood about knee-high. With many cloud-like branches of black needles clumped together in masses that loosely resembled snowflakes.
After capturing the image in my Eye, I drew the Chrono Dial around my wrist and formed a small domain around the sapling, set the rate to one month per second, and let it run. Then watched closely as the leaves and stalk began writhing and enlarging at a slow and steady rate.
My main focus was to see if the plant could survive the process with the soil in the pot alone. My terrestrial assumptions led me to presume that the nutrients would eventually be depleted, causing the sapling to wilt. Though everything I learned in this world told me that such lines of thinking were wrong.
Nevertheless, the sapling soon began wilting after just six or so seconds- which meant that at least part of my hypothesis was correct. It just needed refinement.
That said, I had no way to test or modify the soil without chemicals or testing other spells. It was at least the same color, and, aside from a surprisingly thin amount of moss for six months of relative time, it seemed unchanged. So the soil wasn't the problem.
According to my herbarium, it thrived in bright light or darkness and would morph depending on the environment it spent the majority of its time in, a tree if in bright light or thickets if in darkness. Only then would they produce their umbral radiance. A stage none of my saplings had managed to reach.
Still, that revelation narrowed the culprit down to mana. Which, in turn, left me with two hypotheses. It was either corrupted by my spell. Or it was starved of raw mana.
Since I couldn't experiment without the Chrono Dial, I decided to test the latter and retrieved the next sapling. This time, however, I maintained and controlled the domain with one hand while I captured and poured a stream of ambient mana into the sapling with the other.
If everything I've learned was correct, the sapling wouldn't take in more mana than it could handle. So I put that to the test as well and produced far more mana than sapling would ever need. So much so, that it caused the finger-sized trunk to bend into a bow shape from the concussive mana banging against it.
As before, I watched it grow and grow and, after about ten seconds, I stopped to prune a few branches with a tiny Void Knife and wrap some wire around the branches and trunks before cranking up the Dial again to repeat the process. Growing, trimming, pruning, wiring, growing. All the while maintaining a potent stream of mana around my subject.
Several minutes came to pass in such fashion, yet I saw no transformation or metamorphosis take place. The sapling only stopped growing in height, choosing instead to increase its girth to about that of my wrist before it began spitting out an aura of twilight.
I was forced to transfer the tree to a larger pot after a few more iterations but continued all the same. And eventually, the trunk ceased to bend from the force of my mana. Yet, I continued to pour larger volumes of mana over its needled leaves as I went through one more iteration.
And with that, I felt satisfied enough to kill the Chrono Dial and marvel at my work.
The small sapling was now a mid-century old tree that stood to my waist when on the ground. With that pot itself equal in height to the top of my boots. A bit too large for my liking, but it was beautiful nevertheless.
Its charcoal bark was stripped along the front of the waving trunk. Revealing the chalky grains beneath that gave the entire piece some much-needed contrast. I wired the branches to extend out to the sides like waving arms tipped with cloud-shaped hands splaying tiny- nearly indistinguishable needles out into the air.
Such form and the aura of twilight surrounding it gave me the sense of gazing upon a lone, ancient tree. One that's been overlooking the sunset since time immemorial. Sort of like my mark.
But not quite.
After wallowing in satisfaction and smoking for a bit, I floated as far as I could to the dorms. Making it to the door until I was faced with the arduous task of carrying a miniature tree and two saplings back to my room.
'Where's Zakira when I need her.' I groaned.
***
Eventually, Slate came to help me. Thankfully. Upon thanking him, I went off to meditate and awoke four hours later to go through the usual routine of shitting, showering, and, thankfully, not shaving. Like most days, I cooked and ate breakfast in my room. Then emerged to lounge and smoke and eventually train with Zakira and the other vampires until the other students started to migrate into the gym.
After arriving in Olga's class, she wasted no time in distributing our seeds or spores and guided us on germinating them. Reiterating again and again that we focus on keeping our plants alive for now.
For me, it was a sealed petri dish and an open invitation to her lab in the far corner of her room. A room full of cultures sealed in Petri dishes and an abundance of other lab equipment and 'food' for various types of fungi.
As was commonly done on Earth, my Cloudhead Mushroom started in the form of a culture inside the container and needed to be touched only with sterilized materials. For this, Olga had me stop at the antechamber leading into her lab and told me to put on my mana veil before entering. I'd long been in the habit of wearing it whenever possible, so I entered without delay and immediately backpedaled in the face of a bright, violet light flooding my eyes. Only to disappear in the next instant.
Looking at her in shock, she simply smiled and apologetically explained the functions of the 'cleansing ray' before walking off.
While crude and abrupt, it was a clear indication that none of the 'unified' societies had any grasp of any type of radiation outside of visible light. Ironic as that was.
After shrugging aside my surprise, I racked my Eternal Eye and the books Olga gave me to make a mental road map for my task.
The first step was in transferring the culture. For this, I filled a jar with sterilized grains and added a relatively small piece of the culture from the petri dish. Sadly, that was all I could do at the moment, as it would take time for the mycelium to spread across the grain and colonize the jar.
Once that was done it would be transferred to a substrate and be allowed to colonize into that before being introduced to the main substrate- a log or compacted sawdust.
That, however, was long down the road. So I left the grow room and returned to my squad to take note of the plants my teammates were growing before I spent what was left of class wandering the garden.
With that, the schedule resumed until the following day, when Doyle pulled me aside after class with an amiable smile.
"I must say, I don't know which is more impressive. Your magic, your fighting skills, or your mastery over the elements."
"Thank you." I bowed in obligatory fashion. Though it was more than clear he was trying pry. "If I had the choice, I'd rather use magic," I said. "But I've made it a habit to first engage in martial combat to preserve my mana."
"A wise tactic. Stamina can be regained whilst casting and the same could be said in reverse." Doyle stepped in to give me a friendly nudge. "You'd make an outstanding Battle Mage. Ow!"
"I'm going to be a Monk and an Artificer." I smiled at him, rubbing his elbow. "Beyond that, I'd only consider a Class that compliments my natural abilities. Or maybe something that'll get me in tune with dragons."
"Dragons?" Doyle blinked rapidly. "Why would you want to get closer to dragons?"
"For information. Why else?" I contemptuously laughed. "Dragons are said to be the oldest and wisest creatures in existence."
"So." Doyle drolled on, still blinking madly. "You want to talk. To… a dragon? Why?"
"Ugh." I groaned. "How far back does our knowledge of history go?"
"Almost 1500 years." Doyle retorted immediately.
"And what unwritten events happened during that time? What happened before?" I asked. "A thousand years of war and a few centuries of peace seems like an awfully short story, doesn't it?"
While I could tell he was deeply considering my words, I couldn't tell if he considered what I was saying a good or bad thing. His poker face was just that good. Even as he distantly looked away as if he were in a trance.
"Can't say I know for sure." He finally turned back to me with a grunt. "Maybe you should make it your mission to find out. Or have this conversation with Zeff. He's much more of a… thinker."
"I already have made it my mission." I bluntly stated, having long grown tired of the small talk. "Now, why did you pull me aside?"
I could see hints of anger flash in his eyes, yet he turned away with a deflated sigh and locked his eyes on some ambiguous point in the distance. "I wanted to see if you're the one who taught your party how to control the elements with such ease."
"And if I was?" I blankly asked.
To which he bowed at the neck. "Then I would ask you to teach me."
I couldn't help but laugh aloud at the irony.
"If, I had a unique method for elemental manipulation, why would I share it for free?" I laughed. "Ethics aside, what would you be willing to give to receive it?"
"I suppose you would have a point, in that case." Doyle straightened his posture with a sigh. "Thank you for your time." He turned back to me with a nod. "Have the class gathered in Zeff's classroom in the morning. You're dismissed."
"Right." I nodded. Then turned for the door without an ounce of expression on my face.
Internally, however, my eyes were rolling like bowling balls in their sockets. More so, I couldn't help but sigh in frustration.
Honestly, I had no idea what he was thinking. If he actually believed I'd just give him my secrets then I gave him far more credit than he deserved.
That said, if the conversation went differently- if he showed his true capacity for greed, I would've had no qualms about making a deal with Doyle Wolfgang.
Or any of the Bodhi Tree's staff, for that matter.