I've decided to let go of my 'parent' or as my old parents would say... "be independent".
Fighting against my 'parent' would take a long time and a lot of resources.
Resources which, for as long as I am in the desert, I'll not have access to in abundance.
While I do believe I would win had we fough to the end, it's not like I got nothing out of the last half a year.
I've already took over more than 87% of my parent and while I couldn't send it all to my side of the root.
I have grown to at least 40% of my parent original size.
To begin with the prospects of being a flying cactus are more appealing to me than those of being a parasite.
Not that I intend to give up on parasitism or anything like that, it's just the current situation doesn't allow me to fully use their strength.
Hmm... First thing I need to do is to take out my roots.
Most of them them are already flying beneath me but I still have a handful inside of 'parent'.
I unfortunately can't just pull them out, they're too deep inside, only leaving cutting them off as a viable option.
And cutting them off I will.
First I point one of my spikes in their general direction, afterwards I manipulate wind mana into the little empty pocket between my spike and my stem.
I compress said wind mana into a kind of pressurized air bubble.
Then I make a wind pipe/barrel-like structure around my spike and took away some of the air between me and my parent, effectively making a cheap version of a vacuum bazooka.
This is only possible though because of how close we are, had we been further away I wouldn't have been able to make even this cheap version of a gun.
Once that's done, all that's left, is to pop the bubble....and watch the magic happen, quite literally in this case.
*bang*..... And there it goes.
Straight through my roots and deep inside my 'parent' stem.
This is what the skill description was talking about, there's no level to magic only time, talent and effort.
Even if I'm only on my second evolution, with the help of magic, I can lodge a spike inside of my parent stem.
Something, I would probably been unable to do otherwise.
Well a spike doesn't matter all that much given that's its going to dissolve on its own after a few weeks.
What does matter, is that as of right now I am fully floating, without any part of me touching the ground.
I could say that I'm officially a cactus shaped ballon.
That isn't enough to evolve again though, because after the first evolution, the requirements of the second got harder.
Now instead of just separating from my parent like in the first evolution, I need to separate and become self sufficient.
Something which in opinion while being harder isn't impossible but definitely a lot more time consuming.
So, I should probably focus on reaching the clouds first before even thinking about becoming self sufficient.
To do that, I'll create a lot of roots beneath me, instead of growing the ones I alredy have.
That's because each root propels me upwards with the same amount of strength regardless of their size.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
I look into my status and see 2 skills
[Extended description]
*ability to grow 'young','wind' and 'normal' - type roots at a rate of 163.84 cm per hour.
(MAX REACH = 15KM)
.
< teen root growth > (lvl 1)
[Extended description]
*ability to grow 'teen', 'wind' and 'normal' - type roots at a rate of 0.1 cm per hour.
(MAX REACH = 10KM), young roots can grow out of teen roots
.
Oh, 0. 1 cm per hour that's 10 times what young roots where at level 1, the same happens with max reach.
I've decided to grow some of them beneath my stem they look like thicker versions of the young roots.
Besides that the only difference is that I can grow young roots from them in the same way that trees grow branches.
Another thing that tryed to do is growing roots from the upper part and sides of my stem.
I though that now that I have accepted to flying roots, there's no point in limiting the area where my roots can grow.
Unfortunately it seems like roots can only grow from beneath me.
A pity but not an unexpected one.
It only makes sense that roots can only grow from beneath me, just like spikes can't grow on roots.
Speaking of roots, now that I've reached a high-ish altitude I've noticed something.
Previously I though that the presumed fire or heat element cactus was growing bigger.
While true, now I've also noticed that he was getting closer using his roots like humans use legs.
He was approaching other cactus in order to absorb them and grow bigger in the same way I used to parasite on my 'parent'.
Before I came, my 'parent' and 'fiery' over there would probably been a good match, if only in size.
Now though, that I've taken away at least 40% of his mass.... I don't have such high hopes for him.