Molting the Mortal Coil

Sage hit the time deadline he’d set. There was still so many things he could still work on, but there was no telling what he might find in that cave. It only took one expedition to make more progress than I did in two decades quietly training. Just like when I was trapped in that mine, I advanced far faster than normal. Life and death situations really do bring out a person’s full potential…

The Insect Shed should be able to carry on for at least two years, so after Sage bid farewell to the less than a dozen members of that Sect that he was familiar with he packed up. It was more of a double check and purchasing supplies for the journey than it was packing. He usually carried everything with him all the time in his storage ring and beast bag. All he had to do was pick up spare clothing, traveling rations, water, and new camping equipment. The stuff he had already was from back in his twenties living on the run. At the time he only carried a few amenities so no one would know he had a true storage ring instead of just a cheap storage bag. Even now he had a storage bag on his belt while the beast bag and ring were hidden. The storage bag had some of his clothing, toiletries, basic rations, gold coins and spirit stones to look like it was his true treasure. The Storage Ring was tied on to his beast bag and hidden under his shirt, it was hidden but still pressing against his skin to give him access. Heh, skin… it’s actually scales now!

He wore an oversized green cloak over his Sect robes. The hood of the cloak was pulled up to hide his strange facial features while the voluminous lower robes could cover his snake tail if he wasn’t moving. When he started to slither slowly his tail would peek out the back of it and if he moved at full speed it was very obvious. That tail of his was around ten feet long, starting at around the waist. Moving at a slow pace he would carry himself at about six feet tall, so three feet of tail gave him height and seven more slithered in his wake. Even with big robes on that only covered about half of it. Moving quickly he had to lower his center of gravity to the ground and the majority of his tail would trail along behind him. On the plus side he could also rear back and stretch out to around eight feet tall for intimidation, going any higher he would quickly lose balance or need a wall to lean against.

His disguise wasn’t ideal, but none of the techniques he had access to in the Sect Library were acceptable. They were either super flimsy or too weak. Changing his facial features and hair color are not enough when you need to hide scales and a snake tail. As such, he just planned to stay away from other people and travel through the wilderness. Normally such a journey would be highly dangerous, but Sage planned on traveling most of it within his Insects.

An eight foot long dragonfly with long legs and a thicker than normal body was flying at high speed. Its carapace was a brilliant emerald green like a gemstone. It drew the attention of all those on the ground it passed by, but only a few large birds of prey could keep up with it. Unfortunately for them, when they drew close the Dragonfly would stop as if on a dime and the unfortunate raptor would feel sudden resistance in their flight. If they continued to attack, it was only a few moments before the stubborn bird would fall from the sky and find themselves turned into a meal.

They’d been flying a few days so far, but the Dragonfly’s speed was no match for the Sect’s Flying Ship. The Dragonfly flew nearly twice as fast as he could move and the aerial route skipped a lot of troublesome areas, so it was still better than other options. The Flying Ship they had taken before was a magic tool created to carry large amounts of good over long distances at high speed. There was no way a mere rank 3 Spirit Insect was going to keep up. The Dragonfly was far better at acceleration and agility, but for pure straight line cruising speed it was no comparison. The trip that would took the Flying Ship only a few days would turn into more than two weeks when all the rest stops were included.

Sage planned the trip to take even longer as there was a half-dozen points of interest on the ancient maps that he was going to look into. The first two were the location of another Sect and a special location for that Sect. Hoping it would end up just like the Soul Taming Abode, Sage was sad to find a large ruins overrun with vegetation. The Dragonfly nearly fell out of the sky when a thunderous roar echoed out of the ruins of a huge stone hall. Quickly retreating, Sage watched in wonder as a black tiger the size of a garbage truck lumbered out of the building and glanced at the Dragonfly with contempt. Despite being dozens of times larger than a regular dragonfly, the Tiger still dwarfed it and could probably bat it down as easy as a cat handled a small bird. Even if there is anything inside, this place is a bust.

Abandoning the location for now, Sage made a note of it in the Memory Sphere map and moved on towards the next location. The abandoned Sect was noted in the ancient map as the ‘Violent Sun Sect’, while his current goal was a place called the ‘Crushing Solarium’. Both locations were within a circle drawn on the map to indicate a territory of influence so he assumed it was an important location to exist on the map separate from the rest of the sect. As the Dragonfly approached closer, Sage was greeted by another set of ruins, but this time far different.

The Solarium was a massive stone structure that looked like something out of Rome. It was a circular structure created with an outer ring of huge pillars easily six feet in diameter and a hundred feet tall. Within the pillars was building carved out of stone and covered in windows. The top was a dome shaped framework of metal inlaid with glass lenses. Well, that’s what Sage’s guess was. At the moment the place was overrun with thick vines and underbrush that grew out through many of the windows and had smashes through at least half of the glass and metal dome roof. Being so overrun with flora, Sage guessed not much would be preserved here either, but there was no harm in giving it a check.

Fortunately, they found no Demonic Beasts in residence. Unfortunately, the resident was even more surprising and rare. The massive collection of vines and leaves was actually a singular plant. A Demonic Plant in fact. Spirit Animals could eventually gain intelligence and transform into a Demonic Beast. The same could happen to a Spirit Plant so it could transform into a Demonic Plant. The difference being that the starting point was much different. For a Spirit Plant to gain intelligence it required hundreds if not thousands of years of growth and resources to gain a spark of consciousness and reach a higher level. In the Library he’d even discovered an obscure tidbit about a class of Tamer that was even more rare than Insect Tamers. As a Tamer himself he had access to their special library area and he stumbled onto the profession of ‘Gardener’. Many assumed the name was just an alternative title for Farmer that sounded better, but in reality it was more like a Tamer that focused on Demonic Plants instead of beasts or bugs.

Sadly, even the Holy Flame Sect, the mecca for Professions, didn’t have any training for Gardeners and Sage was unable to learn more. In fact, that was what led him to becoming a Farmer as he hoped their exclusive library might contain more information. In the end he found nothing more on Gardeners, but he did find a book about Demonic Plants. The species in front of him was not one he’d seen before or read about in a book, but it was somewhat similar to the ‘Climbing Devil Vine’. The shape of the leaves and vines were very similar, but the flower blossoms were quite different. The Climbing Devil had more of a red thistle, a tight cluster of thin spike-like petals, while the blossoms on this one were like white chrysanthemum blossoms. Instead of thin stamen like spines it had a large thicker cluster of thin flower petals that had rolled over into narrows tubes.

Hmm… I wonder if I can steal a seed!