Fey travelled in a remote part of the Elvenwood; her isolation was reinforced by the fact that she was split into her own instance of the forest for the duration of her quest.

She examined the mana tree seed she held:

 

<Mana tree seed: This seed, born from the Elvenwood’s Mana Tree, has the potential to grow into a mana tree if planted and nurtured properly. It needs to absorb a large amount of mana before it will sprout.>

<Mana absorbed: 0/10,000>

 

Fey was by no means one of the highest-ranking players in Fantasia; therefore, plenty of people had already completed the avariel quest and there was an abundance of information available on the subject. She took the time to do an Internet search.

It was clear that while optional bonus tasks varied, the main quest was always nurturing a mana tree seed. Many methods to provide the necessary mana had been attempted, and some of those had proven to work. Mages had the easiest time of it, being able to directly focus on the seed and channel magic into it as if invoking a spell. For the other classes, watering the planted seed with various magical substances seemed to work, though the process was not nearly as efficient.

 

Given Fey’s repertoire, it seemed to make the most sense to create a huge amount of enchanted water to pour onto her seed. The plan had the benefit of being “free”; it would only eat up her time and mana stores. The downsides of the plan were mainly logistical, given that she would require a great deal of water and that enchanted water was incredibly dense. She remembered how much she had strained under the weight of a small flask of the liquid (see Chapter 10 if you don’t remember) and wondered how much even Boris could carry.

 

The first part of making enchanted water was collecting a large volume of it to be condensed. “Too bad I don’t have Squishy’s old tank,” she commented aloud. As far as she knew, the tank was sitting in Sirena’s item storage after the jellyfish had graduated to floating in air.

 

Amethyst squeaked and the smaller Feypets rummaged around in Boris’ saddle-pack, managing with difficulty to extract the huge glass tank, which expanded as it left the volume-decreasing influence of the pack. (Clearly, our heroine’s knowledge isn’t exactly the most up-to-date.) They then had to scramble to keep the unwieldy object from immediately falling off Boris’ rounded back, the glooms contorting themselves into odd shelf-like shapes and Amethyst anchoring the top with her bubble-arm.

 

Fey stopped walking. “…How…?”

Despite her natural affinity for Fantasia’s particular brand of whimsy, sometimes even Fey had to stop and gape. First, there was the ridiculous sight of seven tiny pets balancing a large object that clearly did not belong in the forest on top of a very large pet that looked far more suited to shattering glass than transporting it safely. After processing that, she had to wonder exactly how the tank even fit into her pack, which held only a modest volume-reducing enchantment (*cheap*). Even if she accepted that the enchantment was sufficient to carry the tank, she then faced the mystery of exactly how and when someone had put such a large object in there without her noticing.

 

Amethyst squeaked earnestly, but for once, Fey was unable to come up with a coherent explanation to accompany her pet’s vocalizations. She did, however, subconsciously identify the squeak the Feypets had collectively chosen to represent Mimi. (Roughly translated, it means “She-who-gives-nice-pats-and-is-good-at-everything-she-does”.)

 

Not knowing why she thought Mimi would have an explanation but nonetheless going with the intuition, she sent a PM:

 

<Fey: Hey, do you know anything about a giant glass tank appearing in Boris’ pack?>

<Mimi: I asked Sirena to find Boris and put it in before you whistled for him to come find us.>

 

Clearly, Mimi had researched the avariel quest before running off into the remote wilderness (like a smart person would). She had also correctly guessed Fey’s preferred method of completing the quest and made all the necessary preparations without telling Fey.

Before Fey could sort through how she wanted to reply, Mimi added,

 

<Mimi: I had Boris’ saddle-pack enchantments augmented during the tournament. Think of it as a team investment.>

 

This was adding up to a level of preparedness and sneakiness that both delighted and disconcerted Fey. She considered and discarded multiple responses and finally came up with:

 

<Fey: You’re unreal.>

<Mimi: You’re pretty unbelievable yourself ;)>

 

Fey shook her head and mentally added another 50,000g to the debt she owed the sniper. Fey’s share of the tournament winnings had made a dent in repaying some of the four million, but not a huge dent, given that it was limited to the actual monetary prizes; none of the rare and valuable items had been sold. None of the team had any crafting skills and Mimi could have easily sold the crafting materials they had earned for a tidy sum, but the sniper had silently and gracefully bowed to Fey’s irrational feeling that they would become useful one day, not even selling her personal share of the items. This made Fey feel guilty enough that she had almost told Mimi to sell off the materials, but in the end, her hoarding tendencies proved too strong and the materials sat, unused, in their item storage.

 

Properly equipped, Fey made her way to the part of the river that was closest to a possible location to plant a mana tree seed, with approximately a kilometre in between.

 

Picking up the tank, Fey dipped it into the river and filled it to a level where she was still able to haul it back out. In her real body, that would mean maybe a fifth of the tank, but with her strength up to 138, the tank was almost full when she placed it on the ground.

Holding her hand over the water, Fey focused her mind and began Enchant.

“Water.”

 

Fey squinted at the tank. She had consumed 200 mana points, but she did not notice an appreciable difference in the volume of water in the tank. This was due to the large amount of water she was trying to Enchant at once. Fully enchanted water was approximately 20 times denser than regular water and cost 20 mana points per millilitre, with the enchantment spread out over the total water included in the spell.

Fey snorted at herself and tipped the tank until it was only a tenth full, an amount that she could conceivably fully enchant before she died of old age. She spent the rest of her mana reserves casting Enchant, purposely casting the spell a final time when she had less than 200 points left to overdraw her reserves and hopefully cause a spontaneous intelligence increase.

 

Amethyst squeaked. The slime’s stat allocation heavily favoured intelligence and wisdom, resulting in a mana pool almost four times larger than and a mana regeneration rate double that of Fey’s.

“You think you can do better, eh?” Fey asked dryly. She picked the slime up by the bubble and dipped her into the river, then held her over the tank.

A cupful of fully enchanted water dripped into the tank. It did not look particularly impressive, but it was an expenditure of over 4000MP in a matter of seconds. Thankfully, the full and partial enchantments were compatible and simply mixed together, resulting in an enchantment level in between. Fey had the interesting experience of seeing the water level fall as Amethyst’s contribution dripped in.

Fey looked at Amethyst, still dangling by the bubble. Both of their mana stores were completely depleted and would take hours to replenish themselves. “So… I guess we go do other stuff now.”

Amethyst squeaked. (“Let’s kill things!” Bloodthirsty little thing.)

Fey nodded thoughtfully. “I do have all of these ‘imbalances’ the Mana Tree showed me. Let’s go check it out.”

 

Fey headed to the places on the map marked as having imbalances and did her best to correct them. Overpopulation of certain monster populations was fairly straightforward to fix; Fey (and Feypet army) spent a few hours exterminating the monster in question faster than it could respawn, causing the respawn rate to permanently decrease. Underpopulation was a trickier matter: sometimes, it meant judiciously hunting the next predator up the food chain; sometimes, it meant spending some of her hard-earned enchanted water to encourage the growth of certain plants; one particularly memorable time, it involved Terrifying a group of skunk-like creatures into moving to a different section of forest. (Fey had to log out and back in to get the stink out of her skin and clothing after that one.)

 

<Guardian’s Blessing has reached level 5!>

 

After the skunk incident, Fey was sorely tempted to just stick to the main quest. However, she vaguely remembered Leandriel advising her to get Guardian’s Blessing to level 10 a long time ago (all the way back in Chapter 13), so she persevered.

By the time the game day was nearing its end, Fey’s Guardian’s Blessing was level 7 and she had a mostly-empty tank (*pessimistic*) of enchanted water representing half of the 10,000 mana points she needed to have her mana tree seed absorb.

 

<Mimi: Done yet?>

<Fey: About half. I have tons of side tasks to complete. You?>

<Mimi: Handing in the quest now.>

<Fey: Whaat? How did you do that? Your intelligence stat isn’t much higher than mine.>

<Mimi: It involved a lot of blood and +2 in infamy.>

<Fey: …I’ll take my slow method.>

<Mimi: Want me to wait for you?>

<Fey: Nah, go ahead. You can figure out this wing thing first or go rejoin Sirena and Blade or go train your pet or whatever.>

<Mimi: Okay.>

 

Fey continued working away at her quest until it was time to wake up and continued the next night. She ended up doing all sorts of random tasks to ‘balance’ the forest ecosystem in between enchanting more water. Through trial and error, she figured out that the odder tasks that were not straightforward extermination quests tended to give more experience to Guardian’s Blessing, so she went after those, managing to get the ability to level 9. Players either gained the blessing or gained a level in it when completing the avariel quest, so she headed to the spot where she had planted her mana tree seed.

 

Fully enchanted, she only required 5 litres of water, but that water was twice her body weight. With difficulty, Fey lifted the tank out of Boris’ pack and poured it carefully over the seed. She watched the seed’s indicator bar climb rapidly as it absorbed magic, flashing when it became full.

A soft glow appeared around the soil and a small, luminescent tendril pushed out of the earth. A tiny leaf unfurled.

 

Fey was captivated. All her hours of hard work and headaches from overdrawing her mana reserves had paid off. She cupped a hand reverently around the seedling, not quite touching the fragile life.

Her task was done, but she was inspired to one final action. Holding the concept vividly in her mind, she cast Enchant directly on the seedling.

“Life.”

 

The seedling grew taller and sprouted another leaf.

Smiling, Fey left the tiny mana tree to visit the very large Mana Tree.

 

(Wait, she could have just cast Enchant directly on the seed this whole time? What was with all that water hauling nonsense?)