Chapter 7: The Lilly and the Bees

When I woke up, my body was drenched in sweat to the point that there was a puddle under me. Everything in a ten-foot radius had also been pushed away from where I was in a large circle. One drone looked at me with a fearful look, hiding in its shell as another unidentified creature stared at me with a small black body made of shadows.

My groggy head pushed away all the questions I had as I knew I wouldn't get answers from anyone around me. Plus thinking about my headache only made it worse, so I would need something to take it off my mind.

Six eyes stared at me each blinking as pairs, when I looked at it eight legs were pushed to the limit to hide behind the drone. When the drone tried to move it was held in place by several black tentacles that seemingly burst out of the ground. The small foot long blob of shadows and darkness seemed to be a small black hole with legs that skittered about.

"You're the first Strangler, don't be a coward you're the one who's going to be fighting the most out of your brothers." I rubbed my head in annoyance as it still felt as though I was having a hangover. Reaching for my handgun, it flew into my hand like it was magnetic. "When did I turn into a Jedi?"

I looked over the gun confused, chucking it several feet away from me before calling it back to my hand. After about ten or so throws the shock faded and I helplessly smiled, "I guess the pain was worth it."

'Since the Strangler evolved with double the amount of biomass needed it has become an Elite Strangler. All potential has gone up a single grade, and will continue to grow if it continues down the path of an elite.'

"Well, that's convenient, though I need numbers more than quality right now. With only three of you, I feel like we're understaffed." Pointing to the strangler I smiled, "Make some babies for me, we need to start the next generation."

The strangler reluctantly moved from behind the drone, its tentacles wiggling around before picking up a single corpse. As I watched the tentacle got bigger in one area as if something was going through it, much like a snake regurgitating its food. When it reached the tip of the tentacle, the stomach of the boar seemed to inflate taking in whatever was in the tentacle.

My face was suddenly stricken with horror, I never thought that the reproduction process would be like that. If that's the case didn't I just create a creature that would be the bane of every Elf Princess for the rest of time? I couldn't watch this creature embed more eggs into corpses so I took my leave.

This made me fear my shadow manipulation a little, so I decided not to practice it for now as I feared that my power might manifest like that eldritch horror I created. Those fears were unfounded since I was missing two traits that would allow me to do that, but I might as well be safe for now.

Now that everything was done there I needed to check out my rewards for my quest. They had been hiding away in the library all this time, and I had yet to touch them. The large golden book better be worth it for it to look so atrocious in my library.

As I entered the library, I rose my hands up into the air into a Y, "Praise the sun! Praise Apollo!"

'For praying to Apollo before you study, Apollo's favorability of you increase by 5. It wasn't like he missed the praises of his temples.'

Mission: Apollo doesn't miss his worshipers.

Worship Apollo in your own unique way, find something he adores more than knowledge.

If I remembered right, Apollo was also the god of music, which gave me an idea. Something I could do while reading as I was a bit of an audiophile myself, loving a great many genres of music. Around me air swirled slowly following a path of magic that I hadn't learned, also I doubted existed in this world.

Slow hums started to be produced around me as the air vibrated in unique rhythms that only I could hear. As an amateur at a theremin, the sounds were strange yet unique. Since sound was just the process of vibrating the air at the correct frequencies so assuming you could get those frequencies you could mimic any sound.

Putting my wind affinity to work I was hoping my lack of affinity would be made up for by my high mental potential. In theory, it should work, though in practice things could only progress slowly. Though if it worked, I could finally listen to some great musical tunes from both our worlds and maybe introduce people to Led Zeppelin!

As I took a seat in front of the great book and started reading as part of my mind focused on the wind magic beside me. With a high mental potential, splitting my mind to multiple tasks was hard, but not impossible. It would just decrease the efficiency of my wind magic since I was only putting in a minimal effort.

Hundreds of thousands of pictures greeted me as I started reading the book, smells, and textures that had such a resemblance to my books. It made this easy to remember, each page being easy to digest and transferable into a book.

The first few pages were techniques to create various medicine from crushing the plants to make them finely grained, how to clean and soak leaves. Several methods to create teas, ways to make most things into pills, or how to make most plants into an herbal paste. It went into different terminology of plants, animals, beasts, and bugs including how to clean, harvest, and store organs, and blood if they didn't have special instructions.

After that, there was a whole chapter dedicated to human bodies and the points that magic should follow based on different affinities for different magic. This included ailments that can arise if people followed different paths, in big letters it said that only life magic should ever get close to the heart, as that was the body's largest supply of life energy.

Detailed paintings lined the book of the human body dissected in various ways, showing off abnormalities. Each muscle clearly labeled, each organ categorized by what element most responded to it in both good and bad. How to probably use buffing magic in various parts of the body to promote healthy growth of muscles.

For creation magic, it suggested always having your pathways close to the skin so that the skin would turn more durable and flexible. From the various elements, you crafted from some residue would always remain, so having it close to the pores would allow you to expel those harmful to you through sweat. In the side notes, it marked down several pages for formula and plants that would positively change the body for a creation focused mage.

The biggest section held various plants, and animals most of them were unknown to me were listed out in detail, every single attribute of them from their medical benefits to their taste was marked on each page. With this detailed knowledge, I was mesmerized by each word, with each description that seemed to bring these creatures to life. Clippings we're actually on a few of these pages, and formulas were on every fifth page.

These formulas were organized in a chaotic mess that filled up the very brim of the paper leaving you wondering which line discussed what if you made a quick glance. The small handwriting a bit sloppy, much worse than the rest of the book makes you feel as if it was written during his experiments.

Considering I wasn't even to the formula section of the books, and half of these had failure across them it seemed as though the writer wanted people to see how hard he worked to get to where he was. I felt as though the failures screamed out that they wanted to be completed, they were just looking for someone with the time and patience to nurture them. Like a seed hungry for water these unfinished works were at the edge of sprouting but had been abandoned by their owner.

A feeling of sadness was in each line as I touched the dried ink, and I felt the need to finish them. I knew I lacked the fundamental knowledge to do so right now though, so I read on letting my mind get absorbed as strange sounds filled the air.

My appetite wasn't suppressed until I got to the last page, a feeling of depression hit me as I did. That feeling of loss that came when you finished your favorite book washed over me like a torrent. There was an endless chasm of information at my fingertips, and at the bottom of it, there was an even bigger hole.

'Gained the skill, Observation.'

Observation: Your vast knowledge of plants and animals of this world has become an encyclopedia in your mind. Bringing up information about anything observed will show you what you know about that thing. Doing experiments on your own, or learning more knowledge about the objects you observe will complete their description more.

With a frown, I sighed, "I guess I can't get the skills of video games where it just gives me knowledge now can I? I guess it's more like Skyrim's alchemy system."

Most games gave you a rough knowledge of what every item did, magical or otherwise through the Observe skill. This allowed them to use any object in the game as soon as they found it. Instead, if I observed something new I wouldn't even get its name. I felt as though I was cheated out of an amazing skill that would make my life a bit better, especially dealing with plants for medicine.

My eyes suddenly widened as I took out the goggles given to me by the system, "Maybe these goggles can cheat it a bit?"

That experiment would have to be put off, now I had to learn the process of breeding animals through alchemical means. It seems a large portion of my life now will be worrying about breeding in one way or another. Hopefully, the worst is being me...