Cultivating Plants

Many things could be said about the new combatant. How lustrous her hair was as it rocked on the ablaze night air of the burning city. How beautiful she was even though – or maybe exactly because – she was wearing armor and ready for combat. But one thing that stood out above the rest to Mother Nature was how straight Naila's back was. How relaxed she was.

The assassins were struggling to breathe or outright dying, yet the calipha stood unfazed before Mother Nature.

A warrior through and through.

However, the druid didn't fail to notice how the cultivator's eyes lingered for a moment too long on her exposed bosoms. Not completely unfazed, Mother Nature thought to herself as her own gaze lingered on the amber-eyed beauty of brown hair and skin, one darker than the other.

They both wielded disgusting powers.

"So, you are here to be a nuisance too?" The vegetable woman said with complete disregard to the wound on the left side of her body and her writhing arm on the ground.

"I fear that is the case," the Sultanzade left her mocking posture and adopted one at the halfway point between relaxed and defensive.

On that posture, Naila swung slightly her right tulwar to make the sap that had clung unto its blade from the cut slide to the ground. The movement created an imprint of thick, yellow sap on the ground with the shape of a crescent moon.

"Your sisters would have said that a sultanzade fears not," Mother Nature recalled the words of a certain woman spoken centuries ago. Not a complete failure of a human that one.

"Fortunately, I am not like my sisters," Naila stated calmly, relaxedly.

Both women knew that wasn't the case for both cases.

"You are like your mother," Mother Nature responded.

The calipha's jaw tightened for a moment as she heard those words, but she didn't let out any outburst, just a soft smile.

"How amusing that you say that, Aloe," Naila talked as she took a handful of steps backward without daring to take her eyes off the vegetable woman. "In any case," she made the gesture of looking around even if her eyes still lingered on the druid, "you are the one who resembles Aaliyah-al-Ydaz the most."

The world shook the moment the cultivator spoke those words.

"You do not know what you are talking about," Mother Nature's words were as dry as the desert she had been raised on.

Naila didn't instantly answer, instead, she took a handful of more steps backward and then tapped on the prone body of the old Grandmaster with one of her blades. He was alive, both women knew that with their enhanced senses, he was simply unconscious.

"I believe you are the one that is confused, Aloe. After all, they did bombard you with a lot of drugs. It is scary how you are still standing." That sentence wasn't an expression; Mother Nature could smell the fear.

"I can assure you I am lucid," the vegetable woman made a movement of her own, much to the dismay of the amber-eyed monarch who jolted into alertness.

Still, no attack came from any party.

Mother Nature slightly crouched to pick up her arm – time the calipha used to continue prodding at the unconscious old man, now with her feet too – and then pressed it into the socket where the wound was. Without the need for the recovery internal infusion or a Blossomflame, her 'flesh' began reweaving and patching up together. Naila made a grimace at the sight of the healing, whether the disgust came from the visceral healing or the fact that her strike had been for naught, the druid could tell not.

"Look around you," the cultivator of shining eyes said calmly as if she was too scared to raise her voice. Or rather, she was too scared to do so. "Was it the title of Sultanah that made Aaliyah-al-Ydaz into a monster, or was it her actions?"

As soon as Mother Nature was about to gesticulate the words to refute her, she felt many signs of life disappear from her vitality sense. A sense that was shaky at best as a whole hell weighed down on her mind.

"No!" The druid screamed in distraught, vitality pulsing along with her voice. "I am not like her!" She turned her head to face the collapsed buildings, the raging fires, the lingering lifeless bodies… "I am not like her! I am not like…"

The slash came before she could finish her sentence.

Mother Nature failed to react as the cultivator tried to bisect her. Emphasis on tried. Naila's cut was ferocious at the start, but it quickly lost momentum once it reached the druid's heart, and as the blade was threatened to get stuck once the vegetable woman's body started regenerating, the Sultanzade quickly retracted her weapon.

"I have sundered your heart," the calipha frowned once her feet landed on the ground from her hasty backstep.

"Quite," the druid responded amicably.

"So why are you not dead?"

"Such wounds will not kill me, Naila."

"Let me rephrase my phrase then," the Sultanzade's tone was polite and collected, but the hand that wielded the sap-laden weapon trembled ever-so-slightly. "How are you not in pain?"

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"I have extirpated my heart before, getting it… sundered is only a minor nuisance at best. You also have to thank your 'allies' as my senses are rather dull currently, especially pain."

In response to that fact, Naila powerfully kicked the passed-out assassin in the stomach. That finally did the trick as the old man wheezed into consciousness.

"You nince-damned moron!" Naila shouted at the man with the familiar rage of a monarch. "Do you have any idea what you have done?"

"V-very," Zayn coughed, "much so." Lethargically, the Grandmaster stood up, putting most of his weight on his cane. "Don't look at me like that. What was I supposed to do? Let her destroy Sadina?"

The Sultanzade scowled and clicked her tongue in response and regained her aggressive posture. As to reinforce the man's point, a metal beam still covered in Cottonpull and ablaze dropped in the middle of the street.

Mother Nature cared not for their exchange as she continued to search through both hells for her disciple's body – a mighty endeavor with her twisted senses – and also regenerate her torn body. The damage was superficial so there was no need for further assistance with her natural healing, though the two strikes had now cost her a fair bit of vitality. More than most people could even imagine, yet still trivial.

"So, what is the plan?" The cultivator openly asked the assassin as the druid failed to react to them.

"I should be asking you that. What about your cultivators?" The old man grunted and snorted a whole satchel worth of powders.

"I came here as fast as I could, but the reinforcements are not as fast as me. We will need a handful of minutes."

"Can you survive a handful of minutes?"

"Can you?" Naila scoffed back at him.

"At least I will continue to be useful after I die, not like a certain someone," Zayn slammed the butt of his cane on the ground. "A lot of my assassins have died, but the pressure they are exerting over that woman with the saffron still lingers. If you manage to make her change stances, we can win."

Naila sighed, her expression troubled. "I will see what I can do."

As the Grandmaster turned into shadows lest he actually died from proximity to the druid, the cultivator approached the vegetable woman with slow yet firm steps. Whether it was out of her need to gain time or the gathering dread in her body, it was hard to tell.

The calipha switched to the speed stance and became a blur, yet for the first time, Mother Nature reacted and sidestepped. The druid's movements were precarious and devoid of the fierce mentality of the warrior, so she only managed to not trip and fall down thanks to her passive dexterity. The assassin had spoken the truth, she was still getting affected by the magics of the assassins, even if a handful of them were already dead.

"First time you dodged," Naila commented once she stopped. "Are you getting scared?"

"Naila," Mother Nature groaned out the name. "I do not have time to entertain you. I need to find out where the body of my disciple is."

"The body?" The gorgeous cultivator frowned but quickly regained her temper. "No, never mind that. You do not have the right to do anything now, Aloe. Have you not seen the destruction you have caused? The death you have caused to my realm?"

The vegetable woman didn't bother to verbally spar against the Sultanzade. She hadn't caused those deaths in the first place, but the monstrous antics of the reborn disciple. The druid didn't speak those words because she didn't have the need to justify herself.

Still, she couldn't afford to waste more time with her so Mother Nature jumped out of the city. There was no need for a nonsensical fight, so she considered it better to avoid it altogether. What mattered was finding the evolved body of his disciple, and leaving the Sadina was also the best choice as she had already scoured over it with many of her enhanced senses.

Yet as she found herself in the smoky night sky – the bonfires of the skyscrapers only raging more with the burning and floating layers of Cottonpull – Mother Nature was taken out of the heavens as a massive projectile hit her. She was still donning glamour, so Naila had been able to catch her easily with a strength stance-empowered jump.

Both women forcefully collided against the ground. One had switched to the defense stance, whilst another was slightly bruised. The one that had been in the defense stance quickly abandoned it for the strength one and hacked the woman who was on the ground.

"Naila, I told you I am not in the mood for games," Mother Nature sternly said as a blade found its way into her eye.

A minor inconvenience.

The lack of the vegetable woman's reaction upon having her head skewered unsettled the cultivator and she backstepped, her guard up as she peered at her with complete disconcertion.

"Aloe," Naila scowled. It would seem that was her only possible reaction. "This is not a game, and the fact that you are seeing it as one is part of the problem. You and your delusions of godhood are a problem!"

"Delusions of godhood?" The druid grimly chuckled on the ground, and then she unnaturally stood up from her prone position without seemingly moving a single muscle. Her body just slowly became upright by not a single physically comprehensible means, which caused even more distress to the cultivator. "I am not the one floundering herself as a living goddess. You are."

"I told you myself that I distanced from Sulnaya," the Sultanzade refuted. Yes, sultanzade, that's what she is. "But right now you are the one who is toying with things that you do not comprehend. Faith is scary, Aloe."

"You do not- you will not lecture me!" Mother Nature's eyes flared emerald as she lunged at the cultivator, but that proved to be a wrong course of action.

The disparity between their physical capabilities was supreme, but even more outrageous was the disparity between their physical abilities. Mother Nature was strength itself, but Naila-al-Ydaz was skill. A warrior trained through decades and centuries, not just someone with overwhelming physical prowess.

By the time the druid reacted, she found herself many kilometers into the air.

It took her a handful of seconds more to process what had just happened. The cultivator was on the strength stance, and as the druid lunged at her with only glamour, she grabbed her and… threw her up.

Xochipilli's reborn body had already shown her how much physical weight mattered in battles with high-level cultivators as Nurture may increase their physical capabilities but not attributes. Yet only now was she able to fully comprehend the severity of that statement.

With the might of the strength stance, Naila had mustered all her power – so much so that the earth cracked beneath her footing for several hundred meters – and redirected it into Mother Nature's body.

The impact wasn't enough to kill the druid, not even close – even if many of her organs had been turned into a paste – but what mattered not was the damage caused by the gesture, but the force that applied to her body.

Mother Nature flayed hopelessly in the heavens as she tried to fight the inertia. Still, her body continued moving upwards against her wishes. By the time her momentum finally died only a couple of minutes later, she found herself with a sight no other being had ever seen in Khaffat before.

The unshackled might of the sun met her even though it was still night and the heavens lay completely bare naked to her eyes without any heavenly veils obscuring the sight of the stars.

"…" As she tried to groan, the druid found herself incapable of doing so.

Beyond the fact that all the air had escaped her body a while ago, none was remaining here. It was the opposite factor of the sound barrier that she experienced on the surface of Khaffat. Instead of being restricted by thick, water-like air, her surroundings were filled with absolute nothingness.

Mother Nature found herself in outer space.