My apprentices are still struggling under the burden of an ever-changing field of anti-magic, but they are getting better. They’ve managed to figure out more efficient methods to heal and are able to heal faster, among other things. The mana they waste is decreased when they spend less time and mana on any one thing. Junior is handling this exercise better than Askos is, but not by an extreme margin. Yeah, at first he was very inefficient with his magic, but that is a weakness he has done a very good job of patching up. He still isn’t quite at the level of Junior, but she’s always been the better healer. He makes up for that in other ways.

I think that I will create an area for people to practice working under the anti-magic zone once I’m done figuring out how to get Digger Root to manipulate metal properly. Well, maybe not create it exactly, more like design it and have my children build it when and where there is demand.

Standing at the edge of my forest I can see the edge of our empire, it will be about a month before I reach it. From there I will be able to personally push enemy territory, the presence of my forest will only be a boon in this war.

A couple more cities have been picked clean of people with access to my hivemind. But the ones that haven’t, a bit less than half of their cities, have gotten to the point that it would take a concentrated effort on the part of the enemy in order for them to be rooted out. I’m sure they could pull it off if they diverted some of their military, but it’s my understanding that their military is already barely holding out against ours. If they want to root us out then they are probably going to need to put their elites into play, maybe even some of the council members themselves. That would be a victory in and of itself, potential for an assassination if nothing else. They’ve thrown plenty at us, it would make sense for us to throw some back at them, right?

Of course, it is entirely likely that I am simply wrong and don’t understand anything about the situation, which wouldn’t surprise me.

As for my current project, so far I have been focusing on allowing Digger Root to manipulate less pure amounts of dirt and rock. So basically allowing it to indirectly manipulate ores that are purer than before. I’m not completely sure that this will work to allow the plant to manipulate metal, but I’m hoping that intention is enough to bridge that gap eventually. If not it is easy enough to build a giant dome out of metal and rapidly evolve it inside of there.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the people can make of the results of this project.

Other than that I spent my downtime giving instruction to my Paladins on things like healing and plant manipulation, lessons they take too almost as well as my Apprentices, who were born into the role. All of them are constantly wearing really heavy bulky armor and they have taken to using large hammers instead of swords. In addition, they are making use of alchemical stuff way better than I would be able to, they are able to make several dozen different potions with the plants that they have inside of themselves and inject it directly into their own bodies at a moment’s notice. Two of them, in particular, are interesting, one of them was named ‘Thes’ Brew’ which is made primarily from Drowsy Clover, Ergen, and Flore and the other was dubbed ‘knockout juice’ and was made mostly from Drowsy Clover and Dead Tulip.

Thes’ Brew, which is an apt name, causes the person using it to enter a berserk rage. During this rage, they ignore pain and exhaustion and are able to fight for a full twenty hours, two days, before being physically incapable of moving due to internal injuries caused by the potent potion. Healing can keep them going for longer. So far the effects seem to last indefinitely, even long after the potion has run its course and existed their system. Only falling into a deep, restful sleep reliably knocks the user out of their rage.

Normally self-healing and other forms of self-protection and awareness of their surroundings are almost impossible while under the effects of Thes’ Brew, including injecting themselves with something to stop the rage, but their hivemind allows them to bypass most of those negative effects. It somehow interacts with the rage in a way that lets a voice of logic and reason pierce the rage and allow planned out actions. If it didn’t the potion would be useless as it would be more of a liability than anything else.

Knockout Juice does exactly what it says it does, inject a ridiculous amount of sleep-inducing substances into the body to take you from berserk rage to deep sleep faster than you can blink.

Both of these potions work as intended, but they have some major drawbacks in the form of terrible internal injuries caused by the potions. They’re working on trying to figure out how to reduce or eliminate those issues, but progress is slow as my Paladins are the only ones able to safely test it. And to make matters worse the two potions clash with each other quite a bit, causing even more damage than either of them would be able to do on their own.

Tiddol is having the alchemists help them out with figuring out how to improve the stuff, but so far most of the improvements have been things like making the user stronger or faster and not things like making the potion less harmful. I’m sure I could come up with something on my own, but this type of thing does work better with alchemy than with plant manipulation, and it’s best if they figure it out on their own.

Well, that and it reminds me a bit too much of my own failures. I had all of the tools and skills available, why didn’t I make something like Knockout Juice as insurance if nothing else?

Anyway, Good Night Diary.