Ivy

I continue to check on Ivy every half an hour, marvelling at her continuing growth. Ivy’s growth has slowed considerably in terms of height, but I attribute that to an increasing amount of mass required to maintain the same proportions of her base form. She’s also growing a lot less than she’s eating. I ask Mia about that, and she shrugs. “Don’t worry about it, it works is all I know.” She says.

Ivy continues to eat and grow into the evening, when Mia makes the both of us dinner. After we’ve finished eating, I find that Ivy has grown to just over 2 metres tall, and there’s still a lot of titanium left. “Can you shrink?” I ask Ivy. “Yes, I can increase the density of my form and become smaller.” She confirms.

Her voice now sounds the same out loud as it does in my head, and a part of my heart melts at hearing it. She does still look just like a statue though. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to change that. “And you’ll be able to shrink no matter how much you eat?” I ask. She nods in response. “Awesome. Eat the rest of the materials then. Keep using them to grow bigger, but don’t get taller than the ceiling.” I instruct her. “Yes Gemma.” Ivy says obediently, and continues to eat.

“Why’d you tell her that?” Mia asks as we do the washing up. “Because her being bigger means she’ll be able to eat things faster.” I reply. “This is seriously so cool.” Mia exclaims again and I giggle. “It really is.” I agree with her. We finish doing the dishes and go up to Mia’s room to spend some time together doing more than just cuddling.

After a few rounds of passionate sex, some level ups of my passive sex skills, and a quick shower, we lay down to go to sleep. I reach out mentally to Ivy to check on her and find that she’s just finishing the last of the titanium. I tell her to eat the rest of the materials and the loot on the table. Ivy agrees mentally. ‘After you’re done eating, are you okay doing nothing for a while?’ I ask her. ‘I do not mind.’ Comes the content answer from Ivy. With that, I fall asleep, cuddling Mia close.

I wake up to a gentle mental prodding from Ivy. Blinking and waking up quickly, I check the time. It’s 7AM. ‘Are you alright Ivy?’ I ask her mentally. ‘Yes Gemma.’ She replies. Satisfied, I nudge Mia awake. “Good morning honey, time to get up.” I whisper gently to her. She groans and rolls over. I chuckle and kiss her on the forehead. Her eyes flutter open and focus on mine.

“I love waking up to that.” Mia whispers, a broad and warm smile making its way onto her face. “This is like the first time it’s happened.” I respond cheekily. “Yes and I love it. Now give me the morning kisses I deserve.” Mia pouts and I smile, kissing her gently. “We’re skipping school today by the way.” Mia says after we break the kiss. “Why?” I ask. “You think we’re going to just leave Ivy here and not experiment with what she can do?” She asks in return. “Fair point.” I acknowledge, grinning at her.

A few minutes later, Mia and I make our way into the dining room, where we left Ivy. There, we find a 3 metre tall Ivy standing idly, waiting for me. “Wow you’re tall now.” I remark and Mia giggles at me. “Would you like me to shrink?” Ivy asks. “Yes please. I’d like you to shrink down to about a head taller than me.” I tell her, and she nods in understanding. Just then, a bunch of windows pop up. Rather, the same window a lot of times.

Counting the windows, Ivy is now level 19 after having eaten everything. I raise an eyebrow at that, noting the 70 statpoints that I have to spend for her. “What is it?” Mia asks. “Ivy is level 19 now. She has 70 more statpoints I can spend.” I tell her. I turn back to Ivy as she finishes the process of shrinking. She’s now about 6 feet tall, or 184cm. I’m only 172cm tall, so this is exactly what I wanted.

“Perfect, thank you Ivy. I’m going to raise some of your stats now, you might feel a bit weird.” I tell her. She nods, and I put 9 statpoints into Wisdom, leaving the stat at 10. Ivy blinks a few times in surprise. “Oh…that feels weird.” She says, traces of emotion in her voice that were not there before. “How so?” I ask her, curious. “I’m…I’m not sure. Why do I feel this way?” Ivy asks.

“I raised your wisdom stat.” I tell her. “What is wisdom?” She asks, looking up at me. “It’s sort of the ability to use what you know in a productive manner?” I respond, not entirely sure how to answer the question. “The quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgement.” Mia reads out from her phone. “That sort of makes sense. Thank you.” Ivy says. “You’re welcome.” Mia grins. “We’d better have breakfast.” Mia goes into the kitchen to start making us breakfast, while I continue to ponder about what to spend Ivy’s statpoints on.

In the end, I decide that since Ivy is hopefully going to be a healer, I might as well prepare her for that role. “Ivy, I’m going to raise your wisdom and intellect stats again. You’re probably going to feel pretty weird in a sec.” I warn her. I raise both her intellect and wisdom to 25, leaving me with 41 more statpoints to spend.

Ivy blinks rapidly in response to the massive stat increases and looks at her hands and examining them as if they’re foreign objects. I suppose they kind of are, after such an explosive increase in intellect and wisdom. She looks up at me, uncertainty in her eyes. “I….I exist? Gemma what is this?” Ivy asks me, her voice trembling slightly.

“Well, I think you may have just passed the wisdom and intellect threshold for sentience.” I explain. “Sentience…” Ivy mumbles, looking down at herself. “I am your creation…I realise that more now than I did before? This is so strange…I do not know how to process this…” She says. “May I hug you?” I ask her, in an effort to comfort her. “Yes…please…” Ivy says, and I embrace her.

“I need time to think about things…” She mumbles. I rub her back gently. “It’s okay, you’re safe. You can have all the time in the world to think.” I promise her. “Thank you creator Gemma.” Ivy says. “Breakfast is ready!” Mia calls, exiting the kitchen with two plates. “What is breakfast?” Ivy asks. “It’s the name for the meal we eat at this time of day.” I respond, separating from Ivy and taking one of the plates from Mia.

“As far as I’m aware, you can’t eat the same food as Mia and I can, because you’re an artificial spirit.” I continue. Ivy nods slowly, still getting used to her own existence. Mia and I sit at the table, and I pat the seat next to me, inviting Ivy to sit down with us. She does so, still pondering and looking very much confused.

While we eat breakfast, I spend the remaining statpoints I have for Ivy. I distribute 9 points each into strength, agility, endurance and charisma, leaving her at 10 for each stat. I put the remaining 5 points into endurance. Ivy’s character sheet is looking a lot better now. The problem so far is that her stats are all she has, she doesn’t have any magical abilities. I ponder how I’m going to resolve that problem.