Anything ~ 29!

- Andre -

His eyelids felt so heavy. Frankly, he had been feeling like this for weeks, but Andre really thought that getting a good night’s sleep had been enough for him to get to a better place. Trying to think about what had happened, he let his eyes slowly peel open to take in the view of the sandstone building he had made. “Right… made the building so that we’d be visible. What an intellectually-driven decision.”

Even so, the memory of having his new Ability was enough to make him smile. It hadn’t come easily, but cleaning up that toxic dump that was poisoning the earth and the air would have been worth it even without gaining a blessing for it. As soon as he had managed to roll up all the impacted area and shove it back through the Scar, his Ability had arrived in full force, and he had used it to seal the Scar in quartz. Effective, if a short term solution.

Ability gained: Earthblood Terraformation. Tier 4, level 9.

Effect 1: Inserting a half liter of blood into a triplet circle will allow you to use mana to shape and control the earth around you. Costs 25 mana to begin the process, with a 1/20th liter of blood and 5 mana per second to control. The blood used does not need to be your own.

Bonus 1, at range: Range of earthen control increased by 1+n meters per 1/20th liter of blood that has been used for this Ability, where n = ability level.

Effect 2: Adding a liter of your own blood while using this Ability will bind the impacted earth to your will until you use this Ability on a new target, retaining its shape and reforming if damaged for 10 mana per square meter of repair.

Bonus 2, Multitarget: You can now bind the earth to your will in multiple locations without losing control of a previous location, up to 50*n*Talent square meters of earth per plane, where n = ability level.

The new ability was already on the cusp of Tier five, and he was going to make sure it got there in short order. With his talent at twenty, and the Ability level at nine, he could control up to nine thousand square meters of land per plane. That was already incredibly significant, and he had already found that he could simply remove his will from an area and the formed earth would retain its shape. That meant he could raise a city’s worth of buildings and move along without impacting this Ability, so long as he had the mana and blood to make it happen.

“I finally met the requirements to be an Urban Druid.” He chuckled softly to himself. Just as he was about to get up, he heard Taylor arguing with… herself? No one was answering, so it may have been Luke? He got up and went to see what was going on.

“You don’t understand how potent this is, Luke!” Taylor hissed at the Murderhobo. “A half pound of unicorn horn can improve mana channels from ‘Faulty’ to ‘Weak’.”

“You’re right. I have no idea what that means, and I don’t care.” Luke retorted as he tested the strength of the wall Andre had made. The Druid winced as a section was broken, and he felt a slight drain as it began repairing itself. “This stuff is neat. I like watching it fix itself.”

“Can you stop, please? That costs me mana per second until it’s fully repaired.” Andre rasped out, only now realizing how dry his throat was. “This desert sucks the water right out of me. Follow me, I’ll show you how to…”

He stumbled away from the nonsensical conversation and went over to the watermelon that was growing inside the building. Just by being near it, he was able to feel its condition: the roots had reached the water table deep underground. Nodding, the Druid pumped mana into it, and the melon began to swell to an enormous size. He set a modified sunflower seed atop it as it grew, and soon the roots of that seed were inside the melon.

When the sunflower sprouted, he made it grow to its maximum height and carved the ceiling away. With all the preparations complete, he formed a tap out of quartz and stabbed it into the side of the melon before healing the damage to the plant. After forming a cup, he lifted it to the melon and twisted the spigot. Cool, melon-flavored water poured out and into his mug. A single taste confirmed that the water had been well-purified by the system of plants it had moved through. He drained the water, and motioned for the others to follow him.

They stepped outside, and he motioned at the flower peeking through the roof. “This is my plan for turning the desert into a forest. I give you… the Sunshower!”

With his flourish, the flower’s roots opened wide. The head of the flower pointed up, and a continuous spray of water gushed dozens of feet into the air. All around them, every fifty feet or so, a similar spectacle was appearing. A huge swath of land was quickly wet, even with the desert’s heat evaporating a large portion of the water. Andre felt the land as the water filtered down through the sand, only for the root system of the irrigation-melons to suck up whatever got back down there and pull it back to the top.

“It’s working!” Andre started to laugh as the seeds that had been planted throughout the lichen, fungi, and mosses began pulling in water and using the surrounding vegetation as fertilizer. Weeds, long grasses, small bushes, and the thick fronds of ferns pushed up through the shifting sand and began expanding their own root systems down and outward. He wasn’t even using his own mana for this, as the Lotus Coffins had been priming the seeds and were now supplying a small but steady stream of mana to the modified sprouts.

He watched for over an hour as the area around them in a quarter-mile diameter went from a sad sand pit to a verdant green humid paradise and connected with him directly. His withered skin filled out instantly, and his mana regeneration kicked into high gear. Andre rubbed at his chin as the wind picked up and sprayed into the new oasis. “Trees are going to be the next things we need… maybe a full hedgerow along each perimeter to keep the low sand out, but the trees are the only thing that’ll keep all that ground in place.”

Finally turning to see the other two, he smiled at the dumbstruck expression on Taylor’s face and winced at the knuckle-cracking Murderhobo. “Please don’t attack the foliage. It’s all doing what it’s supposed to do, and it is all supposed to be here like it is.”

“That’s what you said about those ‘natural rocks’.” Luke muttered under his breath.

Andre had to concede the point, but he did try to drive home his needs. “Right now, this is a really fragile area. Everything is grown by me, and by mana. The bugs and bacterium needed for regrowth in case of age or failure just aren’t here. They will be, thanks to the corpses you provided, and the stench of some of the plants luring creatures into the desert, but right now this patch of land is pristine and fragile.”

“We get it, Andre.” Taylor waved him down.

“Do you, though?” The Druid chuckled as Luke bit into a leaf and started chewing. “Both of you?”

“Are these edible?” Luke started toward another one, when a vine came up from a flower and smacked him. “Hey! It attacked me!”

Without a thought for the humor of the situation, he punched the flower; leaving behind a small crater. Andre let his head loll to the side as he stared at Taylor and began laughing. “L-luke, hah… the oasis fights against anything that damages it. Hold on, let me… okay, now they won’t attack you unless you hurt them again.”

“How hard can those hit?” Taylor seemed impressed by his handiwork, so Andre’s chest swelled with pride as he replied.

“At this size, about ten damage per hit. Not a ton, but when they get fully grown, they’ll pack a wallop.”

Zed’s voice reached them at that moment. “Hey, cool garden. Also, did you know that your really freaking shiny building has been seen by practically everyone? I hope you guys are ready, because all the groups I’ve been keeping an eye on just started moving.”