Cultivating Plants

It had taken but a blink. Mother Nature blamed it on her low vitality as her senses had been greatly diminished by the conflagration but also her rock bottom reserves. She still had more Haya than most beings in Ydaz even in that sorry state – which was why she was even capable of restoring her vitality in just a handful of seconds – but in that small window of time when she wasn't a full capacity, it was enough for a legion of motes of vitality to drop on her.

Cultivators.

Assassins.

Cultivator-assassins.

Meaningless grains of vitality they were, but also many.

"FOR YDAZ!" They all shouted in zealous rage.

Whilst the ruler of Ydaz had decided to keep her mind clean, that didn't seem to apply to her forces as they disappeared into shadows. A handful materialized around Mother Nature, but most of them didn't wield weapons of 'living' steel, so their blades shattered upon contact with her skin even if she was donning recovery instead of toughness.

And even then, those that managed to wound her skin didn't boast the strength of their calipha so they could only make small incisions on her skin.

"BLEED HER DRY!" They chanted in a chorus as the cultivator-assassins that had assaulted her puffed into shadows before she could kill them, and without any delay, another wave of assailants attacked her.

"I see," Mother Nature calmly mused to herself as diminutive soldiers hacked at her colossal body like a swarm of angry bees. "I understand what you are doing," she tried to grab one of the soldiers that had stabbed her in the chest, but they became a mess of dark fog before she could catch them in her clutches. "But it is futile. I am not Aaliyah; you will not win in a battle of attrition."

The feverous soldiers obviously ignored her warning and continued to assault her like firing squads of archers: constant waves without any rest between them. The cultivator-assassins had also been trained in that oppression that affected her mind, and whilst she wasn't defending herself with glamour, the damage was easily ignorable if she didn't wield the acuity internal infusion.

No matter how big a number was, if it was multiplied by zero, it would remain zero. No matter how much contamination they dropped on her when one already felt nothing the outcome wouldn't change.

Mother Nature's gaze searched for the calipha she had critically wounded, but she was nowhere to be seen around the tidal wave of bodies. Has she run away? No, she wasn't in condition to do so. She must have been extracted by these shadow-stepping bastards.

The druid groaned.

For what seemed an instant, the onslaught of the cultivator-assassins stopped as a silence of both actions and heartbeats was made, but they recovered themselves in a heartbeat and continued attacking her with everything they had.

Their best was pathetic.

It's not enough, Mother Nature thought to herself as the ants tried to assault the elephant. It's not satisfying enough. She needed Naila, their confrontation wasn't over. Her quest wasn't over.

IT COULDN'T END THIS SOON.

The vegetable woman extended her arms forward. Whilst the gesture wasn't intended to hurt any of the assailants, the cultivator-assassins of that wave backed down without landing their attack, too afraid of a counterattack. That almost got a chuckle out of her. But they weren't wrong, there was an attack incoming.

Mother Nature clapped. Once.

The sound barrier was broken for a brief moment, and whilst the transmission of energy between her clap and the surroundings was minimal as it only created a paltry shockwave, it was more than enough to break some eardrums and discombobulate far more people.

Cultivator-assassins were useful with their dual usage of vital arts, but they shared the weaknesses of both, the druid saw it in their bloodshot eyes. Their concentration wavered for a handful of heartbeats, but that was more than enough.

Mother Nature spoke.

"Perish."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

And they did.

Like oil on a pan, an invisible wave formed and extended around the tree-sized woman. It wasn't instantaneous, but it was painless. The closest ones to her were the first to have their flames of life extinguished, snuffed out like a candle. The ripple expanded slowly but inexorably, ending the lives of next to the ones who had already perished.

As the ground of the world of the living became littered with corpses, so did the world of ideas as many ghostly cyan shapes appeared, their eyes still blood red.

The living and the dead looked at her with abject horror. The living tried to run away, but their demise was inevitable. It didn't matter if they ran or shadow-stepped away, their lives ended equally. Some of the dead tried to flee too, incapable of realizing that they were already dead.

Naila had been right. This wasn't a game.

Mother Nature wasn't playing around anymore. She understood that the pleasure in the release of herself she had been waiting for was impossible. That joy had long been wrung out of her being.

She had outgrown this reality.

The zealotry and morale of the assassin-cultivators were completely substituted with a strong survival instinct, no one tried to attack her anymore. They were aware that they could die if they tried before. Now they were aware that they would die.

As the druid stepped forward – more dying with every step she took – her advance wasn't limited to the hell of the living. Emerald roots filled the world of ideas. Perhaps she wasn't donning glamour anymore, but she didn't need to either. She never needed to. In a way, she had always been faking it. Always been playing.

Ending the cultivator-assassins wasn't enough. The assassin-cultivators also needed to go.

She was no longer next to Sadina, but that mattered not for her unending vitality in the hell of cognition. The distance was relative, but she was the absolute observer.

Her steps came slowly; death came swiftly.

The only people that managed to escape were the pure cultivators that had been there just to fill the ranks and make noise as they were mostly unaffected by the tendrils of vitality that thrashed the world of ideas yet managed to run faster than the ever-growing ripple of death.

So many deaths…

As Mother Nature walked forward, the ground was covered by corpses. She made no attempt to avoid them, and she simply stepped on them. The sight would have been even more brutal if it wasn't for the fact that the tree-sized human didn't have the actual weight of a tree, otherwise, all those bags of meat would have exploded like the custard-filled pastries she had once eaten with her disciple.

Xochipilli… A kernel of humanity came back with that thought as she was reminded yet again that she was against the clock. She needed to finish her business already and attend to her disciple's needs before it was too late.

The cultivator-assassins that had carried Naila away when Mother Nature wasn't looking hadn't been able to take her far away as she had dealt with that pesky swarm of bugs in a matter of seconds. As a matter of fact, because those cultivator-assassins who had taken away her target were more experienced with Enlightenment than the rest, they had died before the druid's ripple had gotten to them. Instead of the peaceful snuffing of the candle of life, they had writhed in agony as every orifice of their body bled from the emerald roots. Their bodies rested beside that of Naila. The calipha still lived as her chest slightly heaved up and down, her back rested against a lone tree in the plains of corpses.

"Ah…" The cultivator muttered as the druid approached.

The Sultanzade had been calcinated by the flowing stance fire technique, but fire was also what kept her alive as one of the nearby corpses cradled a small flower that caressed the bicentennial woman's body with soft tendrils of flames.

"I was telling myself that I was overestimating you," Naila mused as Mother Nature calmly pranced forward. "That it was better to be safe than sorry and mobilize everything I had to stop you."

Her body was unrecognizable; she was no longer a paragon of beauty, just a charred shell. Her assistants had managed to remove the soot from her face, but that was all. A clean visage amongst a sea of charcoal.

"But I was wrong, I was only underestimating you. Not only you power…" The more the cultivator spoke, the coarser her voice became. "But your mentality too. You were never weak, Aloe. I had that misconception since I met you. You chose to run away or use diplomacy, but that was not because you were…" Naila was assaulted by a coughing fit. She was wielding the defense stance and was being healed by the miniature Blossomflame, but it didn't look like she would last much longer. "…it was not because you were weak, but because you did not have enough power. You always had this violence and lust for blood inside of you. You were just not able to use it. Oh, if you only had had more vitality back then…"

Naila smiled. Mother Nature failed to react, her visage as unfeeling as a tree.

Wordlessly, the vegetable woman grabbed one of the living tulwars and traced the inscriptions of the blade with her root-like fingers.

"Last words?" One could have thought by those words that she was having mercy for someone who had known her for two centuries and who had tried to understand her, but anyone hearing that tone devoid of life would say the opposite.

It wasn't mercy, but curiosity of the utmost morbid degree.

"I thought I was doing what was best for Ydaz. You are a danger, Aloe. This was not the best way, but it was the right way." As she stopped speaking, Naila took a deep breath and inclined her head backward, its back resting on the bark of the lone tree.

Mother Nature pushed the blade into the calipha's chest. Such a gesture couldn't be called a stab, yet as her innate strength and the blade's sharpness combined, the tulwar simply slid instead of the charred bosom and came out from the other end.

"Ah…" Naila moaned, her eyes becoming glossy. "Did I do right, Aya?"

The cultivator's breathing and heartbeat stopped. No living people remained except Mother Nature as her vitality had consumed every trace of others, the utmost apex of predators. And yet… as she had finally completed her quest, Mother Nature felt completely empty.