This time, there were no suicidal gardeners, so I figured that I had finally gotten the answer correct. Just give all the staff blinky rings. Oh, of course, it was horribly inefficient if I were to break it down and do a Mana cost analysis, but that wasn't my goal. Right now was the time to see if the other parts of the plan came together properly, and then it was just a matter of refining the solution.

If my turrets killed bandits as well as they did gardeners, it might just do something close to what I wanted to have happen.

A little while later, when the bandits began moving towards the estate, they silently killed the gardeners on the outer perimeter. It didn't matter because I wasn't the one who harmed them, so I didn't care! Minor success, no friendly fire!

Then, as they were closing in on the door, they finally got in range of my turrets. They all targeted the first person they saw and mowed her down. I let out a sigh of relief at the fact that it worked.

Though after she dropped, the bandits had all frozen, not moving into the effective range of the turrets. At the same time, they talked to each other. I couldn't see what they were actually saying. Their mouths were shrouded as they spoke, probably to get around the translation feature of the system.

One of the bandits in the back nodded and began wiggling their hands in that stupid way mages do. Then, they started taking out the turrets one by one with summoned rocks, doing the same set of hand motions for each rock. I had no idea why he needed to do that to channel magic into his Authority field, but then again, mages were silly. Maybe he just hadn't thought of a way to loop back his Mana into a targeting manifold within his body. This was just the first puzzle, though, so I assumed it was taking it easy on me. Unless most mages are just that braindead? I'll have to confirm that hypothesis later

Anyway, this run failed as well. The bandits did the same thing they did last time after they entered the manor, so I just reset the puzzle on my own.

Alright, what to do next? I could start trapping the house, but then I might accidentally hit a staff member in the crossfire… Oh! Landmines! It doesn't matter if I'm committing war crimes, because I haven't been told any rules of war here!

The design was fairly simple: a pressure plate that would blend into the grass around the property, but when stepped on, would explode in a shower of corruptive Nature Mana in a liquid state, which would then rain down on everyone nearby.

A gardener quickly showed me what I forgot by calmly walking into the open field to commit suicide by landmine. I didn't mind that much. They demonstrated the effectiveness of the mine when their body was turned into a puddle of black, nutritious ooze, and all the nearby foliage was killed. The one problem, besides the mutilation of an innocent life, which counted as a puzzle failure. Was that because this process was so destructive that it began setting off the other landmines nearby as well?

This meant I needed to design them such that a structural failure wouldn't start a chain reaction. Because reducing the payload was a non-feasible solution.

Going through my materials list, I noticed that Bloodroot Vine was anti-conductive to Mana. Whatever that means, it sounds useful. So it would hopefully work as a method to keep the mine's payload from prematurely detonating. Then I just had to use a little bit of Fire to burn the coating away when the device was triggered. Even if it resisted Mana, it couldn't resist the effects of Mana manifested on the environment. Hopefully.

Then I just had to detect the rings… I wondered if I could maybe store a sensor in the centre of the explosive that would prevent detonation if it detected a specific pulse occurring nearby. I hadn't ever tried that, but it should work. I could then use this as a way to send like radio signals, but with Mana.

Which meant I had to make the signal within the ring stronger, and I was out of Mana at that point.

I just started the simulation, curious how they would handle the mines.

The bandits walked out of their cover on cue. I watched with bated breath as they began stepping through the minefield.

Then one of them with a crossbow on their waist strap pointed out a mine in front of them, and yelled something, and all the bandits froze. He pointed out trap locations, carefully marking each one. The guy must have insane perception. What Stat would that even be? It could be Wit for perception, or maybe Spirit? I can't remember if my senses became stronger after levelling.

Actually, it was mostly upgrading my design that improved my perception. Maybe I just didn't get that improvement from Stats? It would make sense because I didn't have normal eyes—

One of the bandits stepped on a mine by accident and took four of their squadmates with them. Yes! Only twenty to go.

From there, nothing really happened. One person stepped in range of the static defenses and was killed. Then they looted the house as usual.

I sighed and closed the puzzle. I'll figure it out later.

Finally paying attention to my surroundings, I noticed something. Out in the distance, in front of me, I saw something other than an endless glass Plane. There was some sort of shimmering barrier that extended up into the sky, maybe a kilometre or two ahead. Which was a little bit odd, it's obviously another Zone, but I don't remember that kind of barrier last time I crossed between Zones. Although I may have missed it, the situation was a bit chaotic at the time, and I was moving very quickly.

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Well, not quickly compared to how I can move now, but at the time, it was quick.

Glancing at Autumn, they seemed to be still passed out. I noted that I hadn't actually analyzed the plant material they consist of yet. Could I? They wouldn't miss a finger, right? And they can just regrow it. I bet the material has some really interesting properties. Maybe even the kind that would help me with the puzzle, I couldn't dismiss the possibility without testing it.

I raised their hand to my mouth and debated with myself whether this was a good idea. Yeah, they probably wouldn't miss it, and the new material that I could grow would benefit us both.

"Hey Ellie, are you about to eat me?" Autumn asked, and I immediately dropped their hand.

"Nope, why would you think that?" I asked, then realized the timing was suspicious. "Also, have you been faking being passed out for a while to get a free ride?"

"Haha, no, why would you say that? I just recovered from Mana exhaustion right now." Autumn said, turning their eyes away from me.

"Right, cool, you're awake," I said, then promptly dropped them. "There's a new Zone up ahead. Want to walk with me and explain how the hell you pulled off that root-burial thing?"

"Instinct mostly? I don't really know how I did what I did. It just felt like the right thing to do. Every new Wildegraft I consume grants me a new set of instincts on how my powers have evolved. Such as… Well, this will be a small example. I'm regenerating Mana slower than normal because I burned it all pulling us through the undergrowth." Autumn replied, then allowed a strand of glowing blood to extend from their body. It cracked like a whip, and the ground one hundred metres ahead of us shattered. "If that hits a creature with blood in their body, I can siphon their Life Force, or convert it to Mana. I've never done it before, but just know how it works."

"Are those how Skills naturally manifest? It's not fair that you get told exactly how your Skill works. I just get the absolute basics and a description of what the Skill does, a name, and a Tier."

Autumn chuckled, "No, I think that tradeoff is worth it for you. You get told exactly the function of how your 'Skill' works, which means you can figure out the theme and discover new functions easily. I just have a set of things I'm able to do, and if I'm lucky, I'll stumble upon a new thing that gets added as a new instinct. I have no idea what the general themes of my abilities are, beyond some kind of spatial manipulation. The blood seed one was even more limited before I added this new seed. The only thing I knew how to do was blood magic and pulling in Life Force from an opponent to increase my internal supply."

"Well, the first seed you ate was called the Bloodroot seed, and the second was a seed of The Mother Tree, or The World Tree. Whatever you prefer." I looked over at Autumn when they didn't say anything in response. They were staring at me with an odd expression on their face.

"You fed me something actually derived from The Mother? It wasn't an offshoot species?" Autumn asked, and I just nodded in response, to which their expression changed to one of confusion. I let out a sigh and indicated 'Yes' using a gesture in Rootspeech.

Autumn looked like they were about to cry after I responded, "My people would kill me if they knew. What have you done?"

"Why? It's just a seed? I got it as a prize for completing the Zone Quest, so either you ate it or I did."

"Just a seed?! The Mother Tree is sacred to—" They were cut off when my hand covered their mouth.

"Alright, I get that it's sacred to your people or whatever," I said, softer now. "But we don't have the luxury of caring. Not right now. If we want to survive, we need every advantage that we can get. Your Lady wanted me alive, so this is just something we needed to do. I'm sure the spriggan people would acknowledge that fact if they figured it out. Now enjoy your new powers."

Autumn did the equivalent of nodding in response and looked down at the ground. I gave them a head pat to make them feel better.

Ugh, such a sycophant. At least that makes them easy to manipulate.

"Hey, don't resist," I said to Autumn and began channeling [Natural Enhancement] and building up Authority.

"What?" They asked.

"Keep up," I said. [Covenant of the Unbound] snapped into place as I kicked off the floor.

Autumn nearly stumbled as they sped up, but seemed to match my pace. It looked rather odd. They were just walking normally, but were sliding forwards rapidly alongside me.

"Do you even have to move your legs?" I asked.

"Your command? Is that the thing you're using? Was 'Keep up' which implies I have to do something to keep up with you, even if the command pulls me alongside when I fail." They replied, "I don't think stopping would be a good idea. At least not while you're at this speed."

I was moving fairly quickly. I had seemingly incredible traction even while sprinting across a glass surface. Probably some Stat bullshit going on. If they stopped… They would probably be dragged along? I think?

Definitely need to practice using [Covenant of the Unbound] more often.

A couple of minutes later, we arrived at the edge of the Zone. For some reason, that shimmering barrier was impossible to see through. It was like there was some kind of fog on the other side, or maybe there was something wrong spatially? I couldn't tell. It was like my mind was unable to process what was going on.

"You want to try going through here? It's a straight shot to the Quest we have to complete." I asked Autumn. They were forced to come with me, so I wanted to hear their opinion. If they felt it was a death trap, then we could take a different path. Turning to where they should have been, I noticed they had detached from me at some point and were catching up. Commands have a limited duration gotcha. I repeated the question when they finally caught up.

Autumn made the equivalent of a sigh, "Doesn't matter to me, just make the decisions that you think would be best."

"Alright, let's go then." I stepped across the boundary and immediately regretted my decision. Who the fuck designed this Zone?

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