Check Levels, Water the (other) Plants

Soon enough, he's taken his leave with his clothes fitting rather poorly, and Siena's back with me. "Will that be all?" She asks, her voice showing the conflict between her brand-granted loyalty and her apparent dislike of me.

"Nope!" I cheerily disregard the latter. Handing her the potent potion, I instruct her. "Go, divide this equally among all those we planted last night. Should be good for them." She accepts the mixture, nods to show her understanding, and then begins walking off.

That, fortunately, gives me a nice little time to myself while I check for the results of a very different type of farming: that of the XP variety! Throbbing Spells leveled twice from me making sure everything I cast used it-it seems three is the point where stuff starts becoming non-trivial to level, given how much of my skills are sitting there.

The final little toying with Augment Body appears to have pushed it over that threshold, leaving it as my highest skill/spell at level 4.

Internal Toxicology didn't level-but it did gain new options. It appears that the taste of potion had given me enough to replicate it, adding Overwhelming Mana Potion to the list.

I let myself get excited, and test that out immediately. I feel positively enervated as the process rapidly drains my mana-creating only a few drops of the glowing fluid from my body. Dang-looks like the increased potency is just upping the concentration, and I still need the same amount of mana to put into the process-no infinite mana loops for me. Could still be useful as a form of storage for a rainy day, though. Might as well do something with my mana regen when I'm at full. An unusual feeling accompanies the creation of that drop-and I realized I just soared up two levels at once in Internal Toxicology! Sequence breaking to something way more potent than I'd otherwise have is good for training. The ensuing skill looked like this:

Internal Toxicology(Erosarkic)(Level5)-Increases the potency of all alchemical substances produced by this creature's body by 10% per level, and opens up body's ability to produce more alchemical substances. Current Additions:

-Lesser Lust Draft

-Lesser Stimulant Mixture

-Overwhelming Mana Potion

-Minor Paralytic Poison

But most notably, the healing spell I'd gotten from my class has now leveled! And what an upgrade it was, no wonder this took so long:

Heal (Priest)(Spell)(Level2)-Channel mana into a target, restoring their hit points, or curing mundane afflictions (blinded, deafened, paralyzed, diseased, or poisoned not stemming from genetic or magic causes).

So, it went from just a cure ability to cure and lesser restoration, to borrow terms from my nerdy days. Definitely useful if I'm going to keep helping them out. That should cover most of their needs. Speaking of, I should take a closer look at my two other beginners class spells, even if their utility does seem a bit less applicable.

Animate Dead (Priest)(Spell)(Level1)-Raise a pile of bones or a corpse as a weak skeleton or zombie for 24 hours, before they de-animate back into the material from whence they came.

Rebuke Dead (Priest)(Spell)(Level1)-Sever the ties that keep an undead moving, inflicting heavy damage to it.

Smite (Priest)(Spell)(Level1)-After a moment spent channeling the power of your god, unleash it in a heavily damaging wave, element dependent on patron deity (Dark).

As I stood engrossed in the solipsism of my own growth, my reverie was eventually broken by the tapping of a bottle against my form-my servant had returned successful! I turn my focus to the small grove we'd planted. As I suspected, the mana potion is doing excellently for their growth-the small, stickly bushes are rapidly gaining in size and vigor-growing leaves (albeit, an odd blue instead of green) and getting rather dense. But most notably-they are no longer still. They wriggle side to side as the earth at their base moves, like something digging at their roots. Which it is, of course-that would be the rest of the monster, now mature, beginning to emerge from their initial hibernation.