<Dani… Just… Fine.> I tried doing as she told me. Nothing happened at first, but after a bit of trial and error a fine mist, more like water vapor began emanating from my puddle. The vapor went where I told it to, clinging to anything it touched unless some vapor had made it there previously. This vapor was true Essence, but I knew somehow that I could not reabsorb this. Is this what other people would come here to cultivate? Luckily for me, the amount of Essence I used to create the vapor, my influence, was miniscule.
<I’m doing it!> Soon I was at the edge of my territory and began forcing the vapor to expand outward, gaining vision and knowledge with every fraction of an inch.
“Hey! Go up and down too.” Dani demanded, twitching up off her rock an inch to look at my apparently shoddy work.
<The floor and ceiling? Why?> There was so much to look at! I really did not want to waste time on empty space.
“Those need to be permeated with your Essence most of all!”
<Ugh…> Why couldn’t she just tell me why? I sighed with frustration. She hadn’t steered me wrong yet, I guess.
I reached as high as I could go, and coated the ceiling and floor, then kept doing what I could to fill the chamber. Quickly I found that I had tripled my range of influence, and was just starting to get worried about the amount of Essence I had remaining, when I found mushrooms. As I learned everything about this type of mushroom, I tasted it for the first time. It was made of a mixture of plant and earth Essence, and both types of Essence were more abundant than either the rocks or the moss had been able to contain or give me. While it was more difficult to take the Essence from the mushrooms than the moss had been, it was still far easier than the stone, and so I began to eat. Cultivate. Whatever.
The flavor was reminiscent of sweet salad leaves dipped in the rich chocolate that is the earth. I ate much slower than ever before, the complexities of this Essence eluding my slavering “tongue” until I discovered the trick of it, breaking the complex Essence down to its elemental form, separating it into its basic Essence, finally absorbing it in a sweet and fulfilling rush. The flavor was so wonderfully potent that I was nearly unable to hear Dani when she started to talk to me. “You made it! That is surprising, it only took you a few days!”
<That long? It felt like such a short time...?> I was still focused on the Essence I was acquiring, only listening to her with half an ‘ear’.
“Well, that isn’t surprising now, is it? Time doesn’t have the same effect on us as it does other living things.” Dani explained. “By the way, how do you feel now with your Essence?”
Turning my attention inward, it was obvious that the energy in me was less than it had been, but not nearly the amount that I had feared it would be. The tiny amount of the mushrooms overall energy had replaced this much?! Surprised by this development, I told Dani.
“That is great! It means that although you are unique in many ways, my knowledge isn’t entirely useless!” She boasted with a ‘wink’ that consisted of her light dimming and shining in a strobe-like way. “As the range of your influence increases, the Essence of the world will passively flow to you, very slowly filling your Core to replace what you use. Obviously, it is far slower than actively pulling the energy to yourself, but as your range grows, so will the passive Essence influx. Eventually, you may not even need to pull Essence to increase in ranking.”
<This is great! By the way have you ever had mushrooms before? Those white ones are safe for you to eat.> I promised her, feeling happy now that I was gaining sustenance again.
“I don’t need to eat! The energy you provide me with directly fulfills those needs.” She assured me. “How is that Essence by the way? You having any trouble with it?”
<Why would I be?> I retorted, slurping in a long stream of earth Essence.
“Well, that is a more Complex Essence is all.” She told me carefully. “It is intrinsically combined earth and water Essence, right? That is known as ‘mud’ Essence, and is notoriously hard to cultivate from.”
<Oh. Well, it didn’t want to separate right away, but I got the hang of it!> I assured her, not stopping my gorging.
“You are going to be the most amazing dungeon ever. I just know it!” Dani then looked at the quickly wilting stalks of the mushrooms I was pulling Essence from. “Hey, you want to learn how to grow more of those?”
<Yes please.> More would be good. Much more.
She looked at me oddly, “I thought you would be more excited than this.” Zipping over to me she looked at my Essence. “G-rank five already?! This is wonderful! You are growing so well! And so fast.” She murmured, almost with concern.
<I want to know how you can tell my ranking, but first those mushrooms?> The ones I was ‘gnawing’ on were going to die soon if I did nothing to spread out the drain on their resources.
Dani seemed to shake off her contemplative stupor. “Right, so, focus on the mushroom that you want to grow first, I’d suggest that reddish poisonous looking one. Got it? Ok, now focus on what it needs to survive, you should know all of that, look at what it needs to grow and reproduce.”
<I got it!> Growing and reproducing was almost its entire pattern after all. A pattern is the intricate design that comes together in a unique way to create everything in the universe. An inanimate object has a far less complex pattern that a living being, which explained why it was easier to absorb Essence from rocks than plants. Plants had really simple purposes in their life.
“Great, hold the pattern in your mind, exactly as it is. Got it? Good. Now pour a bit of Essence into the pattern, try and integrate it into the flow that is moving through it. When it feels mature, make it produce and release spores into the room. When those land, you can do one of two things.” She explained thoroughly, “Either infuse the spores with Essence directly, and grow those with your Essence, or slather that Essence-rich vapor onto the area they land, which will allow them to grow naturally but still way faster than they could otherwise. You can control how fast and where things grow by infusing different amounts of Essence into the area. Don’t want something to grow? Don’t give it any Essence! Really easy.”
<Alright I think I understand. First, focus on the pattern.> I concentrated, and the pure Essence inside me began to flow into the mushrooms pattern. The tiny stalk on the ground rippled, and grew a little bit. <I did it!> Now, to make it get large and reproduce. I fed it a trickle of Essence. Nothing seemed to happen, so I increased the flow to a steady stream.
“Stop, stop!” ordered Dani, dismayed. “It takes a moment to change into the Essence its own… type. Oh my.”
It was obvious that the mushroom absorbed the Essence, because it began to grow at a rapid, mutated pace. I could see how much energy this took, nearly what it would produce in its own natural lifespan, and it still was not close to the amount I had given it. Continuing to grow, it suddenly shuddered and began to develop a crease in the stalk. As we watched, the crease grew, and the remaining Essence began to diffuse throughout the entire plant, focusing heavily for a bit on the crease. When the Essence was stable, Dani flew closer to get a better look at the finished product.
“Ahhh!” She screamed as the plant lunged at her, the crease revealing itself as a mouth filled with sharp thorns instead of teeth. Zipping back to a safe distance Dani stopped screaming. The mushroom exuded an air of disappointment until it settled back into its stationary state, looking just like a larger version of the others around it. “Too close! Ohmygosh that was scary!” Dani panted.