NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter Seventy Two
Cutting a hole into the barrel was easy. What was hard was thinking up poisonous enough plants that would take down a freaking giant. There’s a couple of the popular ones, you know; Nightshade, hemlock, mistletoe, poison sumac, oleander, various mushrooms, that kinda stuff. Of course, I threw alllll of those in. Heck, I even threw in some poison ivy, just, you know, because! I grew a bunch and tossed them in, but who knows if that’s gonna be enough? Luckily, I don’t have to worry about the old giant being able to see the stuff in her drink, since there’s a filter on the tap of her barrel. Apparently her booze is made from seeds or something? There’s actually already a ton of seeds floating around in there, so I don’t have to worry about her seeing any of the atrocious shit I poisoned her booze with, since that filter is already in place to stop any seeds from getting out with the drink. The color is a bit, uh…. different now, but that’s fine. She’s old. I’ve seen her drink this shit for several nights in a row without even giving it a single look. I’m sure it’ll be just fine.
When the moment of truth came, I waited (relatively) nearby, watching from a shadowy corner as she followed her daily ritual. She went to her pantry with a mug, poured herself a disgusting looking cup of booze, and shuffled herself back to the table to enjoy it. Her first sip, as always, was her biggest. She pulled a face afterwards, though, and peered into the mug as if she’d tasted something absolutely heinous.
Should I have maybe mixed in something tasty to convince her to keep drinking?
The old woman immediately overturned the mug into the garbage, shuffling back over towards her pantry to check on her barrel and see what had gone wrong with it. However, just as she was about to open up the barrel and look inside of it, a loud choking, gagging noise came out of her throat. The barrel that she’d picked up came crashing to the ground, spilling its contents everywhere, and sending a small flood my way. If I wasn’t able to climb the walls like the faux spider I am, maybe I would have been washed away by it.
Still, my gaze was firmly locked onto the old woman, watching the effects of my life-taking brew.
She grabbed her throat and opened her mouth wide, showing off how puffy and red both her lips, tongue, and the inside of her mouth had become, but she could still only make that awful gagging noise. Her eyes began to turn red and water, and her face began to swell as well, just like her mouth had, and she began to run towards her door in a panic; She didn’t make it very far, though, before she crashed down onto the ground as her muscles began to spasm.
I came closer to get a better view, morbidly curious if this would be enough to end the giant blue old woman. It was looking like the odds were in my favor for a while, really. But when five minutes had passed and the woman was still writhing around in pain on the ground, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. Well, I say my own, but really I think it’s time for Trig to make a little appearance and end this little show for me!
Here’s something interesting about Trig that I’ve found out! I guess it’s to be expected, but did you know that he’s excellent at growing things if I get him to around the right age?
As it turns out, no matter how much I age Trig up or down, he actually never ever grows a mouth. Like, he doesn’t even have a toxic gas attack like me and Shui do, because he literally never gets a way to open the pathway to his stomach! It’s insane to me, really; I guess he’s just always eaten by using those little saplings of his. But do you know what that means? It means Trig has actually always been good at growing things! I mean, it’s obvious that he’s good at growing trees, considering the territory that I found him protecting, but what’s much less obvious is that he’s actually quite good at growing anything that I ask him to. Seems it’s just that he prefers to grow trees, and not that it’s his only option! So long as I can imagine it, he can grow it into existence at almost the drop of a hat. Even trees that would take me a few minutes to grow only takes him a few seconds, and at a much more reasonable cost, to boot. I hate to admit it, but he’s leagues better than me at it. So now, whenever I need to grow something quickly, I just get Trig to do it.
Like for instance, Trig will be the one growing the trees that are going to fill this old woman’s nose that’s still somehow letting her bring in those miniscule amounts of air that's keeping her alive right now!
Yeah, after her nose was completely plugged with wood and leaves, there was no option left for the old woman but to die. Good to know that the Ice Guardians who seemed so amazingly strong need oxygen to live just like most things do. If these Aqua Cores I came for were supposed to come from something that lives in the sea, then this might have been a much much harder problem for me!
I circled the old woman’s body when she finally stopped moving, climbing all over her in search of where my beloved Aqua Core was supposed to be located. And just when I was starting to wonder if I would have to cut the darn thing out of her somehow, her body suddenly began to glow and shine, before starting to steadily dissolve like ice. I moved away, getting some distance so I could watch what was happening more closely, and as I looked, her body grew smaller and smaller, melting more and more away, until only her heart remained. It glistened beautifully, just a bit bigger than the size of my body, looking as if it were made of the deepest, prettiest, purest blue jade in existence. I came up close to it, marveling over its beauty, and also stupefied over the fact that it was still way way way too big for me!
Even wrapping my tentacles around the heart, it was almost impossible for me to attempt to lift it up; It was just that heavy and slippery! Maybe if I got my little corpse team to help me we might be able to maneuver it, but that still leaves the problem of how I’m gonna eat the darn thing. I tried, and my mushrooms also can’t seem to get a good grip on them, so I guess that’s not gonna be an option. What do I need to do to get it to the nice small size it was when I found that first one in the orc village all those months ago?! Does it… Does it need to be buried or something?! Dear god I hope it’s not that they need to be compressed by the weight of a mountain to reach a more reasonable size…
Eventually I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to at least try to dig a hole to plant the damn thing in, and I summoned up Trig to get busy digging, but that plan didn’t last very long before I realized that I was overthinking things. Turns out the Ice Guardian heart or Aqua Core or whatever also keeps melting down and shrinking, just like the old lady’s body did after she died. It just happens extreeemely slowly, so I didn’t notice it at first. I’m glad Trig’s only good at digging himself into the ground, and not good at digging in general, or maybe we would have buried the core too quickly and not noticed the shrinking right away!
Still, with how slowly it was melting, it seemed like I would still have to wait a bunch of hours before I’d finally get to eat that Aqua Core I’d worked so hard for.
~~~
It took four hours. FOUR HOURS of me staring at the thing, basically watching ice melt like an idiot. But yeah, after that, it finally melted down enough that I could force it down into my mouth. I had to open up as wide as possible to fit it in there, and honestly it was a suuuuper big struggle, but I did it. Luckily I didn’t have to have it all inside of my mouth for it to start digesting it in the fizzy, pop-rocks sort of way that it did the first time, so that’s good. I got a little worried part of the way through that all the bubbles it was making were going to fizz right over the sides of my mouth and get everywhere, but the rate of my digestion was good enough that that thankfully didn’t have to happen, and I was able to force it all down!
And man, was I IMMEDIATELY hit with a tidal wave of magic.
It wasn’t like the first time, where I felt good. No, this time I had so much magic filling me up that it actually hurt. It was like being overfull for the first time, painfully so, as if I would explode from all the pressure inside of me. It was almost like I could feel my seed humming and shaking, unable to contain everything. The only solution I could think of was to quickly start photosynthesizing and agonize my way through all of the magic so that I wouldn’t waste any of my efforts, but even though the floors and walls are basically made up of packed dirt and rock, even after putting my roots down I still couldn’t photosynthesize! I felt like a complete fool, too in pain to remember at first that there wouldn’t be any sun inside of a literal mountain. Still, after getting a bit more used to the bursting feeling in my seed, I could tell that I wasn’t completely not getting a reaction; There was just a little bit of something, like being in dense shade while the sun was out. Something was shining on me. And luckily I wasn’t so stupid that it didn’t take me more than 10 minutes to figure out what it was!
The crystals.
The crystals produce real light!
I have to basically rub my stupid little body against them, but apparently some of the colored crystals that light these caves up actually produce enough photon-filled light for me to use! I guess these things are basically grow-lights! Man, if I didn’t think ripping them off of the wall would make them lose their shine one day, then I’d totally take some along with me once I leave here. Do you know how useful having a light that I can use at any time would be? Do you know how much photosynthesizing I could get done?!
Mmm, but yeah, it’s totally not gonna happen. These lights work, but they’re not as effective as the real sun. I hate to say it, but I’m probably not going to get 100% of what I could have out of this magic I consumed… Besides, I already learned from this fur I’m wearing that I don’t really like lugging things around with me. What, would I just use one of my tentacles to hold the crystals all the time? Or maybe I’d plant it in my head like a little hat? Pffft, as if. For now I’m just gonna have to give up on that dream. Who knows, maybe there’ll be a mountain somewhere in the forest that has some good crystals located in it? Maybe I could make my home close to there or something. It’s definitely worth a try, don’t you think?
For now though, it’s just a pipe dream.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to splat myself uncomfortably against these crystals and… idunno, daydream or something. At least when I’m outside I can watch the clouds go by. It’s always freaking boring, but at least there was that and nature-watching to do. The dirt here is so dense and compressed that I can’t even listen to the sounds outside of this room for entertainment!
Ya know, I take it back.
Maybe I won’t make a home near a crystal cave!