Divinity Rescue Corps

In the retelling of what I’d learned through the diagnosis, I left out the part about Claudius and Jocinda. The administrators had created the entire system, except for the new parts I was finding out about, and their whole deal was a complete mystery to me. I had only a vague idea why they hated each other, or why Claudius wanted to take Jocinda into custody. I assumed that he just wanted to punish her for whatever shenanigans she’d gotten up to when crafting the system.

As best as I could understand, Jocinda’s entire thing was playful naming. Claudius just wanted to create the system, and got tired of her ridiculous naming requirements. After all, the brighter and larger yellow moon had been named Shagnasty, and the blue moon was called Snuffletrouser von Zipyankee. Every settlement I’d been to so far in this world had a ridiculous name as well: Slinktrickle, Glumpdumpkin, Flunt-on-the-Rustle, and Saxwhacket. Clearly, Jocinda was behind these.

Although, under further consideration, Jocinda was a magic user who specialized in nature magic. The Fletcher of old had had gimpy legs, and as a result played a fair amount of video games. That Fletcher knew a lot about tabletop RPGs as well. I knew my dungeons and I knew my dragons, and the player’s handbook I’d been given once upon a time had not given Druid as an option.

It hadn’t listed Warlock as an option but the concept of warlocks as heroes had never really made a lot of sense. After all, if you had an extremely high level patron telling you what to do, things would get bad. And to add insult to injury, there were no Fighters or Barbarians either, since violence from sentient beings wasn’t a thing and the Agency wanted to keep wholesale slaughter to a minimum. Guardians didn’t go full murderhobo.

Jocinda could have been a Sorcerer, wielding plant magic, but it appeared Sorcerers in this world were focused almost entirely on a single element. She had time stopping as high level magic, and her face window was constantly growing flowers, then leaves, then the flowers wilting, and finally the leaves going autumn colors and falling off. Both of those things told me she was a Druid.

Adding one and one together, it seemed reasonable that Claudius didn’t like her, and therefore simply shut Druid out of the class options. When you created an entire system to govern the new magic world, you could do stuff like that. Claudius’s hatred and adherence to the Agency doctrine told me he’d outlawed Druids simply because he didn’t like Jocinda.

All of this was speculation. Fun speculation, but speculation nonetheless. It didn’t get the Vulpetunia or the other Nakamamon back to their normal selves. It didn’t reunite me with my mother or my lover, and it didn’t cure my mom’s cancer. I had work to do.

I cracked my knuckles and sat down with Jacoby and her people.

We got together, the Wizards and support classes, along with several of the Guardians, around a campfire. They’d cut down one of the non-boogie trees that didn’t have lazy smiles on their faces, and created a bunch of stump stools. It felt nice, until you looked around and saw the bubbling swamp and the clouds of bloodsucking insect Nakamamon, or the weird purple thing with the thrashing tentacles in the water over there, being fed almost continuously to keep it happy. In all, it was almost a dozen of us sitting around the fire.

I quickly filled them in on the chakra situation, and how beast and bug aspects didn’t really mean anything in this instance. It was like a placeholder aspect. They needed to keep their single aspect Nakamamon bonds away from the fighting ones.

“It sure is a shame that none of you are Healers,” I said.

“That is literally the whole reason you’re here,” Jacoby said, expression darkening. She rolled her hands in circles, a gesture that said ‘get on with it.’ “Lament less, cure more.” 

“Here’s where we stand. We want to stabilize her chakras. The spirit, or soul, correct me if I’m wrong, is a magical and divine construct.” The Wizards among her party nodded and muttered their affirmatives. “Every Nakamamon in this world has a touch of the divine, and that weaves together with their mana pathways and chakras in a particular way to give them aspects. Right now the entire soul is being changed.”

“Now, none of you have herb or plant knowledge, or Healer abilities…” I said, and trailed off. I could give Jacoby a Healer ability. All we’d have to do was get to know each other, carnally.

The Ranger stared at me, all flawless Asian skin tone and exotic Asian eyes and silky black hair in a ponytail.

“You already said that,” she said.

She sat next to a Bard with permanent smile lines etched into her face, who probably would’ve been a pin up model in the 1950’s. Savannah wasn’t supermodel gorgeous in this day and age, but she had that curvy appeal that had once been every man’s dream. And across from the fire were several more pretty and fit team members.  Some of them Guardians with impeccable physiques, and some of them willowy or mousy Wizards giving off girl-next-door vibes. Like in the movies, where you remove their glasses and let their hair down and they’re cute as heck.

“Earth to Fletcher.”

I had been given powers specifically engineered to spread the one thing this world lacked: Healers. Right now Vellenia and Shakindria had healing abilities. Tara, Ivy, Isabelle, and Cinzy had healing abilities, but were stranded on earth.

The god who had given me these sex abilities, the Lovers, they had done so in order to insulate me from harm. I’d gotten abilities from my lovers that kept me from getting killed, but turned the people around me into the one thing this world needed most desperately.

Fighting aspect might be a sort of magical and spiritual virus, but my entire existence was as well. If I was cool with trying to seduce and casually hook up with every woman I met. Big if there.

Fingers were being snapped in front of my face. “Fletcher. Come back to us.”

“Huh?”

Jacoby was kneeling in front of me, giving me an excellent view down her shirt to some decent cleavage. The angle was just right that I could see the junction of her thighs too. She was wearing a skin tight suit and I had an ability called Eagle Eyes. It gave me an extra detailed view of her camel toe, and I looked away before my body started reacting.

“What just happened?”

“Mate looked like he had an apostrophe,” Oz commented with a chuckle.

“It’s an epiphany, you dingus,” one of the Wizards said.

“Fair play,” Oz said.

I shook my head.

“I’m going to make a list of potential plants that I think could help, but here’s the other thing: each of these Nakamamon has a different chakra and mana channel vibrancy, okay? The way it works for one is not going to be the way it works for all of them.”

Groans all around.

There were, however, a ton of flowers, herbs, and other plant materials that did influence magical growth. I had just slid a god back into the correct mana alignment before leaving to grab my mother and sneak her into this world. I could start there.

We definitely needed hardwood. This final ingredient would harden the creature’s soul and mana channels against future intrusion. Black walnut, maple, oak and ash were the best types, but I’d also used black cherry. I told the Wizards I’d transmuted a cherry pit into a black cherry pit, and grown the tree I needed from there. The Wizards told me they’d get on it. They would attempt to transmute a different wood or seed into one of the types I listed. Or all of the types.

Next, we’d need herbs and flowers that gathered and channeled mana. I’d used purple morpheus and had one, along with a blue passionflower, which were just the weirdest looking flowers. Usually pure mana ended up becoming a purple color, but they could also harvest flowers that were white or had clear glassy parts to their petals. We would experiment with all these.

After that, it was down to the spiritual component, the soul component.

“Listen,” I said. “I’ve healed up gods, but they’re pure divinity. The flowers and herbs I’ve used will probably be way too much for what we’re trying to do here. I can water them down, but we’ll need to look for alternatives.”

Halo sage had been used before and was probably our best bet. The sage plant was generally small and didn’t have a strong divine essence. The lotus flower petals, by comparison, were thick with divinity. We’d also used bamboo, which was laced with divinity. We’d get some of that too.

I’d left all the ingredients out of sight with Regina and my mom because I didn’t want Jacoby to have all my stash. They were operating in good faith, but Regina and Shakindria were under orders to disappear if Fairy Poppins didn’t report back on time.

After taking Jacoby aside and making her promise not to have Fairy Poppins followed or spied on, I sent Poppy back to ask for a sample of our holy and our magical plants. There was never enough paranoia when it came to my mother’s safety.

I went out, under guard, to harvest plants and flowers, and show how Verdant Rejuvenation worked.

It occurred to me that this chakra problem might be the perfect time to work on splicing plants together.

Verdant Rejuvenation III

(Special Ability, uncommon, passive)

Herbs and plants harvested by you and stored by you will last twice as long as normal.

I- By placing cuttings of plants in the soil, watering and tending them, they will sprout if they remain within half a mile of your location over the course of 18 hours.

II- By placing cuttings of plants together in an enclosed space and tending them they will sprout a hybrid plant if they remain within half a mile of your location over the course of 48 hours. Hybrids may not be bred with other hybrids.

III- Plants you have tended and grown personally have enhanced recuperative properties, and grow 33% larger than ordinary plants of their species.

It took a full day and a half to collect all the plants in the area that had even a minimum of mana or divine recuperation properties, but I started splicing as soon as Poppy and Airaconda showed up with a bag of samples for me to plant and tend.

On the second day I’d begun with every splicing combo I had: halo sage with purple morpheus, halo sage with blue passionflower, halo sage with mist lilies, and halo sage with henge grass. I then repeated all these splices, but with lotus mixing together with the mana plants, and then bamboo the same way.

The results looked hilarious. I sliced the bamboo stalk into a straw-like thing and stuffed henge grass into it, then simply stuck it in the dirt and watered it. I did the same, and the image of a huge target-shaped blue passionflower or purple morpheus sticking out of a green bamboo tube made me laugh.

The other splices were even dumber and more chuckle-worthy. Imagine cutting a lotus flower down the middle, shoving it against half a blue passionflower or a clump of henge grass, and then planting them side by side. On earth this would never work. It was comical. Here though, I had magic and I had special abilities.

We carefully labeled all of them by wood burning the contents of the splice into a small board that was placed behind it. It soon looked like the backyard garden from hell.

The Wizards, I have to say, loved this work. They got experience for finding out new things, so they were all in on cataloguing these splices in minute detail. Since they couldn’t use ink in this mana-rich world, they would use a flame spell to burn their sketches into blocks of wood, or use a stylus to gouge it into a hunk of wet clay. I felt a bit like a nutty college professor, being followed around by half a dozen robe-wearing, bespectacled students with their easels furiously wood burning or carving sketches into their gigantic journals, only to have them shrink the results into the size of playing cards to put them into specially built binders.

“Good lord, mate,” Oz said when the Wizards all left for the day. “You got em all in a froth, eh? Do anymore of this kinda thing and I think you’ll end up with all of em sneaking into your tent in the middle of the night.”

I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll switch tents with you tonight if you want.” Oz gaped at me. “That’s not even a joke.”

Of course I would definitely not turn down the opportunity to sleep with and empower the Wizards. I doubted Oz was right, but on the off chance he wasn’t, I’d happily do him the favor of getting him laid. If my experience had taught me anything, it was that you wanted the party’s Rogue on your side at all times. He might not be as crucial to the party’s survival as any other class, but having him against you was the absolute worst.

Several things needed to happen before I could consider dipping my toe in the Wizard pool, though. One, I needed to clear it with Jacoby. The gorgeous Asian Ranger was the leader of this expedition and had already shown some interest in Vellenia and possibly me, by extension perhaps. I wouldn’t mess with any of her expedition members without first feeling her out. Then there was Fairy Poppins. I’d already spent some time in bed with the pushy, tiny little monster, and she had a jealous streak a mile wide.

Jacoby’s people got a roaring fire going and re-enchanted the circle around the little island against the insects. They roasted food over Wizard fires while getting some Agency supplies out for dessert: banana boats and s’mores. The bananas they had sprinkled with cinnamon and chocolate sauce, then crushed nuts and raisins, while the s’mores were your standard graham cracker smooshing your chocolate to your superheated and probably blackened marshmallow.

These were the perks of having high enough level Wizards to grab up supplies from HQ. I suggested we plant the bananas in order to get more, and was given the seeds.

“We’re going to have a talk about space,” I told Jacoby. In under two days, I was already taking up over two thirds of the empty space on this little hillock of land with my Verdant Rejuvenation garden. My garden was now creeping awfully close to whatever the swamp tentacle thing was.

“You know what that is?” I asked.

“We’re not sure,” one of the Wizards said.

I walked to the edge of the small island, where I could hear the tentacles thrashing a little. Two Guardians and Jacoby came along.

With Eagle Eyed, I could still see the roiling mass of tentacles, though the rubbery purple texture and color were harder to make out. Still, Identify did its job.

Injectacle

Second Stage Nakamamon

Not much is known about this poison aspect. Few creatures can withstand this Nakamamon’s powerful paralytic venom or its tentacles. Manufacturing the venom means this creature is always hungry, and occupies a large territory. They emerge from under water only rarely, to hunt or mate.

Typical length: 4-5 foot (small)

Typical weight: 50-75 pounds

Gender: female

Aspect: poison/water

Transformations: unknown -> unknown -> Injectacle

Injectacle has been added to your Nakamadex.

“You’re not going to like this,” I told the Guardians and Jacoby, “but I’m going to need a sample of that thing’s venom.”

This is Christopher about to get shouted down.