Unmotivated Deity

After the new guard was secured on his training rapier he stood up and offered his had to Emily to help her up as well. His expression was calm and serious, thoughts on how to best utilize the potential of his creation roaming through his mind. The information regarding the three plants as well as the two formations ran through his mindscape as he tried to get a feel for what the end result may be if he released the seal on the guard, and how much of the seal would he have to open to get different effects.

He knew that he could seal the vine back into its sealed form if the worst were to occur but he did hope that he would have at least some added control. He hadn't built in anything like specific commands used for golems mainly because he didn't have the knowledge or formations to do so. That was its own subset of formations and while the basic guide had some casual descriptions regarding, it did not contain actually examples.

If he could exert some control on the plant then there would potentially be an opportunity to mold its actions. If not then he would have to check its usual actions and determine the best way to use it. To this end he took the stance he had been trained so diligently in.

Emily took he own stance, her feet light on the ground and her rapier held at the ready to her front. Mark off to the side took a copper coin from his pocket and with a dinging sound flicked it into the air with his thumb before leaning back to enjoy the show. By his side was Runa who had decided to watch to both ensure Jien's safety and as a form of support for his hard work. Up in his study Earl was also watching carefully.

As soon as the copper coin struck the dirt of the training field with a soft thud Emily struck forward with the intensity of an actual dueling fencer. Her lessons had gone past the point of basics. To make sure that Jien was ready for real life scenarios Emily and Mark had taken the approach of learning through actual combat. This at first had nearly lead to some bad habits in Jien's technique. However, they did not last long as both his mentors quite literally beat the proper form for fighting into him along with the best habits and awareness they could.

Jien allowed Emily to approach, taking a more defensive posture by lightly parrying the blow before quickly side stepping away and beginning to circulate his mana to activate a wind spell that would improve his movement going forward. To this Emily responded by following along with Jien's parry, allowing him to push her into a simple twirl on her heal before striking out once again toward his new location.

They exchanged a few more simple strikes, mostly produced by Emily and parried by Jien. However things changed swiftly after a specific blow by Emily. Rather than parrying the blow or trying to sidestep it he ran his blade along hers, using the force on his own with some forward momentum to lock their blades in a downward motion. Before Emily could shift her position Jien used a bit of mana to interact with the control formation attached to the seal on the plant, opening it to what would be about one fifth of the way open.

The evolved Serpent Vine sensed the first whiff of freedom since it had fallen into hibernation and struck toward it. It was still mostly bound, but the opening allowed for a thin dark green vine covered in brown bark and thin crimson thorns to shoot out of the guard. The vine felt two life forces near it, two sources of food that it could use to continue its growth. Unfortunately it didn't have the capacity to summon a second vine. Instead the vine extended in a short moment, coiled slightly and then attempted to lash in a wide arc, aiming for Jien first. The horizontal arc of the whipping blow was such that it would allow to hit Jien and if nothing else occurred would then be able to continue sweeping to strike Emily.

Jien who saw this knew immediately that his first test had been a failure. Though he had hoped that the mandrake's mild temperament would be enough to allow him better control he realized that stacking two aggressive omnivorous plants and then adding one mild acting one would not have balanced well. Jien's circulating wind spell allowed him to summon a buffer of firm winds to hold back the vine as he applied mana to the control formation, resealing the guard quickly.

The silver lines and runes running along the vine glowed a faint blue and the protruding vine was drawn back into the spiny guard as if a genie back into its lamp. Immediately after after the vine retracted Jien took a step back to signify that they should end it there for the moment. The last bout had lasted but a few short moments but those moments told Jien that the result of his experiments would not be usable as it was. He couldn't have his own weapon trying to kill him, that would lead to his doom even if he was always on guard. There would be a situation where he wouldn't be able to guard against it and manage the situation at the same time.

Jien immediately sat down and started to think over what he could do. Plants, even those that evolved to be of the magical variety did not have brains, they simply worked on their nature to grown like all other plants. The only difference would be that they would have some attunement to Aether like magic beasts.

At this point he wished that he had had the resources to lean more about golems and their control formations. It seemed that just sealing the plant and unleashing it to a certain extent wouldn't be enough. He needed to find a way to control it properly or his vision wouldn't be achievable.