Chapter 40

My phone rings bright and early the next morning, pulling me from my much needed slumber. As usual, Lala is doing her very best octopus imitation, sleeping on, near and beside me all at the same time, but at least this time it isn't hindering my arms and I escaped smoothly.

"It's Jurgen, time for breakfast and then we've got a mission."

That's it, he gave the message and hung up. Maybe he's calling everyone? He sure sounds excited about the mission though, I wonder if it's something fun, or if Athena found out where he sleeps and he's just in a hurry to escape?

It turned out that he'd managed to hide his room number from the obsessive woman, she was waiting for us in the dining hall. "I heard your team all used this floor's dining room, it seems my source was right" Not that it was hard intel to get, everyone on base knows, and they avoid our floor like the plague.

"Hey Athena, fancy meeting you here. Early morning family reunion? I'll call for something sweet and plenty of coffee." Take that Jurgen, you deserve this for waking me up so early.

Just before the maids arrived with breakfast, so did everyone else, one after another.

"I see you weren't early enough to escape Jurgen." Karl tilted his head to indicate Athena "But since everyone's up, we can leave early to do something fun today. Lala, you get to come too."

This is new, Karl wouldn't take Lala anywhere unsafe, so this must be a unique portal.

"Today's mission is an alien botanical garden. And who better than our resident extradimensional apothecary herself to join as our expert? I'm hoping Lala can recognize some medicinal herbs, and help us avoid anything nasty. Scans show no fauna of any sort in the portal, plant life only, but some of it seems to be carnivorous, so keep your wits about you."

A walk in the carnivorous garden? Maybe we should bring Donovan and Pascal too.

"Hey Karl, should we bring a couple local experts too, in case there's something useful in our world that Lala isn't familiar with? I know the wolves have a pretty good knowledge of plants, but they're not really up on everything the base development plan needs."

"You know someone?"

Me and Lala smile at each other "Why yes we do"

A few minutes and one strongly worded phone call later Karl has the two Earth Mages running into the room.

"Good, you're finally here." He gives them a quick rundown on the plan and their eyes light up. Neither is on an exploration team, they're base staff, so they've never even been into a portal, much less a botanical garden in another world.

"We brought a much bigger sending bag linked to the new plant storage bunker for the city. It can take most small to medium fruit trees through, but we'll need help to actually operate it."

This makes Mary and Karl both give them an evil grin. Looks like the boys are in for a lesson in Arcane magic today, and a serious mana workout.

"Lala, would you be a dear and go grab the temps a bag of essential clothes from the storage room? We'll meet you at the garage." Karl asks in his sweetest voice.

I'm not sure what put him in this mood, maybe just being woken up early, but this happy sounding Karl is actually murderous Karl. I saw it when we met the pink Orcs. It's better when he's gruff or grumpy.

Athena is looking a bit down at the fact we're leaving and tries to slink out of the hall. No doubt to go sulk somewhere until Jurgen returns or she finds another werewolf Alpha to set her sights on. I'd worry for Jake, but I see a fresh mating mark on Mary's neck, and few wolves would dare challenge that bond. Karl grabs her by the scruff of the neck and sits her back down.

"Oh no you don't little girl. You caused this, so you're coming with us"

"I'll be 30 seconds behind you all, I've gotta grab something from my room" I announce and head out quickly to my room. Mary is likely to need ointment and painkillers by the end of the day, thanks to her new love for extracurricular activities, and Lala keeps a stock in our bathroom.

This time we've abandoned the Jeep for a gravel truck with trailer. I see a collection of tools being loaded into a box in the side, so there's definitely going to be some physical work going on. The Toyota stays with us though. The Ramirez brothers can drive a big truck, so they're taking the new addition, while the rest of us pile into the pickup. The girls in the cab with Athena driving, and the boys in the box.

Jake tries to hop in the cab beside Mary, insisting there's space, but gets promptly kicked back out with the excuse that the drive is girls time, and he can go hang out with the others.

Best not to have him and Mary hanging off each other the entire drive. No matter how many puppy dog eyes she gives me.

The drive is short and mostly uneventful. Karl tags a wandering monster with the mounted gun, but signals Athena to keep driving. It must not be a magical beast. More and more reports are coming in of this sort of incident happening outside the cities.

Thankfully the gun loving American culture is keeping the problem to a minimum. Hunting season is year round on monsters, and there's a reward. Small, but more than enough for many.

The botanical garden portal is flat out strange. The walls make complex geometric shapes, some are flat, some are curved, some are a mixture. Not even the material used seems to be predictable, color and texture change seemingly at random.

"Is this some sort of magical array?" I ask Karl. Maybe there's some sort of metaphysical reason for the architecture that's making my head hurt.

"I'm not sensing enough mana in the area to sustain one, but I'll check when we get near the wall, maybe there's a barrier isolating it from entering the area to control plant growth."

Near the wall isn't going to happen anytime soon. Lala is 20 useful herbs into her collection, and we've all been drafted to help pick them to her exacting standards.

According to the Bunny, mishandling can damage some of the plants, making them less effective or changing their properties.

Lunch goes by this way, then dinner, until it's getting dark and the big truck is full. We've not even covered a quarter of this garden, and we've removed half of what we found. We did remember to leave a tenth of each species behind in good order though. Lala says it's good Karma. Who knows, maybe we can keep using this garden once it regrows, or at least show the tiniest courtesy to whoever cultivated it by not looting them dry before we close the portal.

Jake gets voluntold to take the truck back to base while we get dinner ready and return with a fresh and empty one for tomorrow. Everyone's pretty tired, but spirits are high. Even Mary, who's spent most of the day practicing digging up plants with magic to fine tune her mana control is in a good mood, despite Jake being gone for a few hours.

"Hey Mary Mage, how's the body holding up?" I whisper to her, not wanting to embarrass her in front of everyone.

"I'm a bit sore you know? Alpha stamina is no joke. But he finally started to calm down a bit and let other thoughts enter his head by last night." she giggles back in an almost inaudible voice.

I dig the creams and pain pills out of my pocket and hand them to her. "Here, take these, they're all labeled for ease of use." Lala notices what I'm giving her and hides a little smile by turning her back, while Mary sneaks off to the restroom we found in the garden to take care of her 'ailments'. By the time she's back I can hear the truck returning and the juicy smell of water buffalo cooking. Dinner must be almost ready.

The Earth Mage's bag came in very handy today, we used it to send high value plants back safely, while everything else got loaded in the truck. Karl and Mary conveniently neglected to mention they're both powerful Arcane Mages who could hold the bag open for hours on end, instead letting Karl lecture the mages on the finer technicalities of magic use and consumption rate reduction techniques.

Over dinner, Karl hands me a little pamphlet "To read after dinner" he says.

It turns out to be an energy flow pattern and meditation technique to try out. The notes said it helped increase his mana pool growth, so now it's time to try it out on a physical cultivator and see if I get any noticeable results. Supposedly, done correctly, it can replace most of your need to sleep, so it doesn't waste your time either.