It didn’t take long for me to get the operation back up and running. I still had plenty of glycerine for the salve, and if possible I could use the same batch on another one of the afflicted.

    Creating this series of cures wasn’t going to be an action-packed finale to a blockbuster adventure… being a healer was slow, methodical, tedious, tiresome, and sometimes a bit frustrating. And that was okay, because in the end I got to help people. Save people. It wasn’t the dramatic sort of saving most people though of when the beautiful person in danger breathlessly went ‘you’ve saved me’ but it was just as rewarding… without putting myself in the line of fire.

    The other five were not the same type of creature as the Vulpetunia. They had captured one Geodile, which was larger than the Vulpetunia. This bad boy appeared to be a crocodile but with six stumpy legs, and in place of little spikes that crocs had tipping their scales, this one had chips of crystal. It also had bits of crystal in place of teeth, in lots of different colors. The massive body was not composed of stone, but had a chameleon’s ability to alter its skin color to match the color of rock. This one was, for the moment, slate gray like the cage that held it.

    The other four Nakamamon infected included one that looked just like a pygmy elephant that burned with ashy smoke from various holes in its trunk, and where its tusks ought to have been. And by pygmy I meant somewhere in the realm of six and a half or seven feet tall. It was ashy gray with great big splotches of shifting magma and lava colors, like a cow. Jocinda and Claudius had named it the Hellephant.

    The Shrubbit I already knew: a large hare with camouflage for a bush on its enormous ears. Next was a wolf with a green pelt called a Fenrish. The write-up in my Nakamadex told me that this thing liked to hang out in marshes, fens and swamps, where it used a powerful tail to swim, or knock projectiles at prey. After the Fenrish was a thing called an Invineity. The Wizards and Guardians had to prune it all the time and make sure the wards didn’t allow it to expand outside the bars, because this thing was like the evil version of the Shrubber-Nee! It could grow its own food using photosynthesis, but it would happily tangle up and eat anything that fell asleep or died in its vines.

    It was first on my list to heal up.

    Lucky for me, the Fenrish and the Invineity were both about the Vulpetunia’s size, and were also only plant aspects. The Shrubbit was smaller, and the Geodile… was going to have to be last.

    It would require a more concentrated version of the henge sage, like the morpheus sage, and it would need a larger dose. Along with the henge sage, I replanted the morpheus sage but skipped the passion sage. All the other goodies got planted alongside them: the unchanged lotus flowers, the plain old bamboo, and all the other flowers and herbs I’d collected up and brought with me.

    First things first: it was time to do some hardcore gardening.

    Now I added the hardwood trees I had at my disposal, the black cherry, and got out some of the seeds I’d brought along with me from earth.

    “This is going to be awesome.”

    Vellenia peeked out over my shoulder and as soon as I explained what I was doing, exploded with cheer and excitement. Trees were the best, because over the course of 24 hours, they would go from seeds into fully matured trees. Unlike the herbs and flowers, you could sit and watch them grow right before your eyes. Now here I was with lemon seeds, apple seeds, orange and watermelon, sunflowers, and all kinds of others. I’d been eating every fruit I could find on earth: kiwis, star fruit, bananas, passion fruit, dragonfruit, and more. Lychees? No idea what those were, but I was about to grow some. I’d brought seed packets with all kinds of blends. I’d even asked the Agency to get me access to the seed vaults that existed in various places in the country, to give me more!

    I was about two hours into planting when I’d attracted a crowd. Oz and Savannah were both out and doing their respective jobs in town, and several of the Wizards were setting up their own lanes and studies and research stations. The others were here, along with all of the Guardians.

    “What… is happening right now?” The lead Guardian asked.

    “Do you really require this much space?” The lead Wizard asked. This wasn’t Wayne, unfortunately. I found Wayne to be quite agreeable. Wayne had been tasked with helping me with anything I needed, within reason, so right now he was etching the names of plants into a small hunk of wood or clay and burning the clay until it was fired. He then stuck these in the ground and made a map of my garden.

    “You guys want fresh produce, right?” I asked.

    They all turned to regard the supernaturally fast growing plants in a new light.

    “Yeah, we’ve got every fruit you’ve ever heard of, and some you haven’t. The black cherries won’t really be for human consumption, but I’ve got berry bushes that will take a few days to get enough for everybody. They’re exponential growers.”

    “Sorry… berry bushes? What kind of berry bushes?”

    “All of them.”

    Work continued. I found a simple joy in planting and taking care of my garden. It was enhanced by whatever Healer magic empowered Verdant Rejuvenation. I still had to do some work, in planting and watering them throughout the day, but I could go hours without watering or tending and all would be well. Experiments told me I needed to spend some time with each plant once every four hours or so, until the twenty-four hours was up. They then became their regular selves and didn’t require more.

    You would be astonished to watch banana plants grow in hyper fast motion. Or an apple tree, or that matter. It was even more fun watching pecan and cashew trees grow right next to a watermelon vine.

    My new girl twined around my legs and butted her head against my side at every opportunity, getting me well and truly pollinated. She liked her flower-covered ears scratched, and her tails stroked. I asked Vellenia to take over both gardening and tail stroking detail.

    I wasn’t able to watch my plants grow magically fast or pet my new gorgeous fox pet, but instead had to administer the salve to my subjects. After some debate, we settled on the Invineity first. As much as I didn’t want a fighting wolf, I wanted an infinitely growing vine that wanted to punch your lights out even less.

    Once Jacoby was informed that I was ready to proceed, she came out to supervise its pruning, removal from the cage, and holding down. The magic-infused cage messed with my perception, while it slowed the feral vine from growing out of control.

    “Okay then,” I muttered. “Where your chakras at, you weird plant monster?”

    It turned out I needed an Ingenuity check with Administer Cure to figure out what to do.

    I groaned. 19 skill levels and a difficulty of 11. Spending 6 Tokens might do it… I might be able to hit 9 successes on 19 skill levels. Hedging my bets would take 9 Tokens instead, which was only 2 Tokens off a free success anyway.

    Hard choices… in the end I decided to spend the 6 Tokens. I still had four creatures to try and save and very limited time.

    I spat curses. I’d only gotten 8 of the 9 necessary successes on my 19 skill levels. These things happened. They actually provided more experience points than constantly succeeding, which was nice. The UI went on to explain that the salve I’d made up was for a beast rather than a plant aspect. Which I’d known… but I’d been hopeful that the salve would work for both Nakamamon. It was now clear it wouldn’t have worked if I had known where its chakras and mana channels were located, which I did not. Through my failure though, I did well enough to ascertain that the creature had nine chakra points.

    It had a weirdly distributed system of mana channels, just like an octopus, with one in the center and one in each main branch arm. They originated at a single central point, where the beak was.

    “Welp. Apparently it’s got a beak,” I told no one in particular.

    We did the Fenrish instead. Although it was larger than the Vulpetunia, the green wolf was also a beast aspect, so the salve should work. Not so for the Shrubbit, since it was classed as Small rather than Medium. I’d try it after the Fenrish but I had my doubts.

    The Administer Cure check for the Fenrish was much better, being only a difficulty of 7, and being tied to Affinity. Although I’d spent all my Affinity, this also allowed me to use my Mana Affinity skill of 4, giving me a total of 23 skill levels. I ended up passing with 10 successes. My luck was not amazing today.

    The only hitch came when the Fenrish, salved on four of its five chakra points, transformed into a series of vines and wrapped up the Guardian leader, looking like something out of a Japanese hentai. It encircled his arms at the shoulder, at the elbow, the wrist, and had a large tendril wrapped around his neck. As he struggled, all hell broke loose among the other Guardians. A small electric zap from Wayne got it to loosen its grip, and after it fell in a boneless heap, it reformed back into its original wolfy self.

    “Nice,” I said, while the rest of the Guardians stared in wonder at the thin Wizard.

    It was only a small matter of the Guardians pouncing on it and holding its tail so I could smear the salve on the space between its butt and its non-existent sex organs.

    I ignored the congratulations message and slumped back on the grass of the nearest yard. It was now up to Jacoby’s people to get the Fenrish to the exit hole and out into the wild.

    “Just make sure it’s kept away from the other fighting aspects.”

    They assured me they would.

    By late into the night, the Wizards had the circle of protection completed. It was some two hundred feet across, and infused with anti-divinity magic. We were taking over a large chunk of the town that was affected by whatever got was malfunctioning.

    Vellenia joined me at the place I’d been given, an abandoned house made of wood.

    “You’d think this would be normal,” I said, tracing my fingers over the wooden wall, “but it keeps being so weird.”

    “Are houses not built from wood on earth?”

    Using Psyspeech, I was able to project to her an image of what ‘a house made of wood’ meant. I had to use a quick mental video of a house being built, insulated, wired, drywall installed, and finally wallpaper or paint. Her mouth slowly dropped open.

    The house around us had literally been grown out of the ground, and so it was like someone had made a tree in the shape of a house. A thin, silvery bark ran over every surface. On the outside of the house, small twigs were allowed to grow out and bloom into a permanent early spring. Either that or this house sometimes dropped all its leaves. Anything was possible.

    A staircase made of the same wood wound around the one side and up to a second floor that consisted of two small bedrooms.

    “This is technically home invasion,” I said, frowning. I couldn’t deny that spending time in actual doors was much better than being in a tent, where every gust of wind, drop of rain, bird and insect noise was just a thin strip of fabric away.

    “The beds… are not big enough,” she said. After spending some time stacking one very short bed onto the other very short bed, we set up sleeping bags on the bare bedroom floor and made it feel at least a little homey. Sёarch* The N?vel(F)ire.nёt website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    “You know,” she said, drawing close, “we had a long day. I will help you relax…”

    A tiny flash of light sped in through the window and made a squiggly afterimage in front of my eyes. Soon it resolved into the tiny form of Poppy.

    “Come on,” I told the fairy. “Enough.”

    Still, the little monster shook her finger at me, clearly yelling at the top of her lungs, but all I heard was a tinny little squeak at one point. She kept this up for a minute, which was enough to annoy me.

    It was one thing to want something, and to be sad when you couldn’t get it. I could understand her frustration and feeling of being left out. That said, we’d just had sex the other day.

    It was another thing entirely to sabotage my enjoyment with my bond mate. She had gotten in the way of Cinzy enjoying herself before. She had been insistent, even pushy in the pursuit of getting what she wanted. This was the only time when I regretted not going after that other class evolution which let me dominate and control the girls.

    “We are going to have a talk,” I told her. “The way you’re going about this is completely unacceptable. Shakindria is somewhere out there, along with Regina, completely unable to be with me. Your bond mate is in another world, and hasn’t been able to enjoy any bedroom time with me for weeks. Tara also. And while Ivy and Isabelle have each other, Ivy has made it well known that she needs a little something extra, and that’s something I can’t currently provide. So comparing them to you, you’re more than spoiled, all right?”

    Poppy, hovering in front of my face, gestured over at Vellenia, then back down the other way, then Vellenia, mimicking hip thrusts and adding in her own spanking gestures. Another gesture at Vellenia, then her hovering in a bent over doggystyle position, followed closely by more hip thrusting and humping gestures.

    “Oh dear,” I said sarcastically, “it sure is too bad that I can’t understand what you’re saying. How terrible.”

    Her hands flew up and out, then balled into fists. With my Eagle Eyed ability from Tara, I could see a whole lot that was happening in great detail. Certainly much better than my plain old human eyes. She started counting on her fingers, then jabbing one finger down into her open hand again and again, furious.

    On one hand, I got it. Vellenia and I were able to have a ton of sex pretty much every night. Poppy could count on her fingers the number of times she and I had been together.

    My patience with the little fairy was running thin, though. She didn’t know that I could bring Vellenia and her into the bedroom at the same time, using my Pleasure Seeker abilities as they were. Instead, she was going to have to learn.

    This is Christopher about to use pleasure as a teaching tool.